Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
that the thing which we now see before our eyes is thy Finger and a true
Miracle; and forasmuch as we learn in our topics that thou never work-
est miracles but to a divine and excellent end, (for the laws of nature
are thine own laws, and thou exceedest them not but upon great cause,)
we most humbly beseech thee to prosper this great sight, and to give us
the interpretation and use of it in mercy; which thou dost in some part
secretly promise by sending it unto us.”
40
At the end of his prayer, the wise man's boat was unbound, though all the
rest “remained still fast,” and taking this as a summons, he rowed toward
the pillar, which now dissolved back into the heavens, leaving only the ark
of cedar upon the water. This ark, an allusion to the Noah narrative and, by
virtue of its cedar construction, to the house and temple built by the wise
Solomon, is found to contain both Testaments of the Bible and a letter from
the Apostle Bartholomew, a favorite of Protestants, explaining how an angel
had instructed him to “commit this ark to the floods of the sea” for the pur-
pose of delivering “salvation and peace and goodwill” to “that people where
God shall ordain this ark to come to land.”
41
The intercessory role played by this scientific actor in bringing Chris-
tianity to the island dramatizes the familiar Baconian notion that the sci-
entific motive, once rightly conceived, is the same motive that opens God's
revelation to all believers. By selecting one of the men of Salomon's house
to break through the supernatural barrier that kept the Bensalemites from
God's revelation, Bacon has merely applied to science St. Paul's admoni-
tion not to “despise prophesying” but to “test everything” (1 Thessalonians
5:21-22). But what was in this regard an effort to affirm science's orthodoxy
also attained radical implications once science's revelatory powers were spe-
cifically associated with the millennium. Every biblical epoch is defined by
some new revelation, and thus by making science the prophetic ingredient
that made Bensalem a picture of the purified church to come, Bacon also
insinuated that science was destined to attain new regulatory authority. As
Bacon's history progresses from Bensalem's Christian beginnings in the
first century to its present-day prosperity, we discover that its scientific insti-
tution has become the “very eye of this kingdom.”
42
It was the continuous
presence of that same natural revelation that certified the truth of the bibli-
cal revelation upon its initial reception that ensured that this imaginary
Christendom was not beguiled into following those detours which had led
to the real church into its Babylonian exile. It had been this complementary
revelation that Christendom previously lacked that was destined to make it
complete in its final rebirth.
