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priority that special revelation would still need to retain in the judgment of
the constituents he appealed to. Religion would need to continue to impose
limits on science, for it would be unwise, he warns in the Advancement , to
“so place our felicity in knowledge, as we forget our mortality,” or to “pre-
sume by the contemplation of nature to attain to the mysteries of God.” 19
But this did not change the fundamental fact that, so far as science was also
God's revelation, it would be “a weak conceit of sobriety or an ill-applied
moderation, to think or maintain that a man can search too far or be too
well studied in the topic of God's word or in the topic of God's works;
divinity or philosophy.” Rather the faithful should “endeavour an endless
progress or proficience in both,” being careful only to “apply both to charity,
and not to swelling; to use, and not to ostentation; and again, that they do
not unwisely mingle or confound these learnings together.” 20
That which offered food for the spirit and guidance toward salvation
was indisputably more important than natural philosophy, but Bacon is
careful to stay clear of language that would invite his readers to think that
science should merely be an underling. Science was obligated to recognize
the supremacy of sacred revelation, but it was only obliged to remain within
its jurisdiction so far as its ethical commandments were concerned. Science
was subject to Christ's great commandment of “charity,” but since it also
read a different topic than the one studied by divines, it could not be asked
to subject its findings to the theological authority of the church. Science,
Bacon reminds his readers, moves only in the realm of “second causes,”
wherein theologians have no more authority than Job's friends (Job 13:7)
who held that his physical maladies were a divine punishment. It therefore
remained at liberty to read and interpret nature on its own terms. As such,
science could not possibly threaten God's truth. Since it dealt in revelation
itself, Bacon could assure his readers that while “a little or superficial knowl-
edge of philosophy may incline the mind of man to atheism . . . a farther
proceeding therein doth bring the mind back again to religion.” 21
In light of the enlarged liberty that this reasoning won for science, it
is not surprising that another traditional metaphor of medieval science, its
placement among an assortment of subjects that were the “handmaids” of
theology, seldom appears in Bacon's rhetorical lexicon. 22 Science still ranked
beneath theology as a merely temporal form of revelation, but the indepen-
dence it now gained by identifying its empirical methodology with the same
plain reading of Scripture also meant that traditional religious authority
had no direct jurisdiction over its inquiries. Science was a fellow laborer in
the field of revelation, just not the same revelation. To make a play upon the
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