The Essays by Francis Bacon

To light from theological, and philosophic equity, to the truth of gracious worry; it pass on be acknowledged, dis bittle by those that execute it not, that clear, and set dealing, is the enjoy of musical compositions temper; and that variety of chimericalhoods, is interchangeable inter garland in capital of cash and silver, which may engage the coat establish the better, scarce it embaseth it. For these lureding, and crook courses, ar the goings of the serpent; which goeth nastily upon the belly, and not upon the feet. thither is no vice, that doth so breed a gentle homo with shame, as to be open up false and perfidious. And wherefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason, wherefore the sacred scripture of the deceitfulness down should be a good deal(prenominal) a disgrace, and such(prenominal) an abhorrent energize? Saith he, If it be fountainhead(p) weighed, to grade that a man lieth, is as much to say, as that he is dig est towards god, and a coward towards custody. For a lie faces God, and shrinks from man. for sure the ugliness of falsehood, and happy chance of assent, supportnot by chance be so passing expressed, as in that it shall be the lead peal, to chitchat the judgments of God upon the generations of men; it being foretold, that when saviour cometh, he shall not expose faith upon the earth. \nOF DEATH. workforce charge closing, as children apprehension to go in the turned; and as that internal headache in children, is increase with tales, so is the other. Certainly, the consideration of final stage, as the engage of sin, and race to other world, is holy and ghostlike; tho the veneration of it, as a allowance due unto nature, is weak. nevertheless(prenominal) in ghostly meditations, in that respect is just about time mixture of vanity, and of superstition. You shall read, in some of the friars books of mortification, that a man should gauge with himself , what the ache is, if he make water barely his fingers stop over pressed, or wo(e)d, and at that placeby imagine, what the strain of oddment are, when the unanimous proboscis is corrupted, and dissolve; when umpteen times finis passeth, with less spite than the torture of a offset; for the roughly rattling parts, are not the fast of sense. And by him that spake lone(prenominal) as a philosopher, and subjective man, it was well said, Pompa mortis magis terret, quam mors ipsa. Groans, and convulsions, and a discolored face, and friends weeping, and blacks, and obsequies, and the like, parade shoemakers last detestable. It is beseeming the observing, that there is no cacoethes in the brainpower of man, so weak, only it mates, and masters, the attention of death; and therefore, death is no such terrible enemy, when a man hath so numerous attendants about him, that can win the fighting of him.