Mundi' of 1731. But no one mentions the English of 1728. This English seems to agree with the Latin; but there is a mystery about it. The preface says, 'That this work as here published is genuine will so clearly appear by the intrinsic marks it bears, that it will be but losing words and the reader's time to take pains in giving him any other satisfaction.' Surely fewer words would have been lost if the prefator had said at once that the work was from the manuscript preserved at Cambridge. Perhaps it was a mangled copy clandestinely taken and interpolated.
Lord Bacon not the author of 'The Christian Paradoxes,' being a reprint of 'Memorials of Godliness and Christianity,' by Herbert Palmer, B.D. With Introduction, Memoir, and Notes, by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart, Kenross. (Private circulation, 1864).
I insert the above in this place on account of a slight connexion with the last. Bacon's Paradoxes,—so attributed—were first published as his in some asserted 'Remains,' 1648. They were admitted into his works in 1730, and remain there to this day. The title is 'The Character of a believing Christian, set forth in paradoxes and seeming contradictions.' The following is a specimen:—
He believes three to be one and one to be three; a father not to be older than his son; a son to be equal with his father; and one proceeding from both to be equal with both: he believes three persons in one nature, and two natures In one person.…He believes the God of all grace to have been angry with one that never offended Him; and that God that hates sin to be reconciled to himself though sinning continually, and never making or being able to make Him any satisfaction. He believes a most just God to have punished a most just person, and to have justified himself, though a most ungodly sinner. He believes himself freely pardoned, and yet a sufficient satisfaction was made for him.
Who can doubt that if Bacon had written this, it must have been wrong? Many writers, especially on the Continent, have taken him as sneering at (Athanasian) Christianity right and left. Many Englishmen have taken him to be quite in earnest, and to have produced a body of edifying doctrine. More than a century ago the Paradoxes were published as a penny tract; and, again, at the same price, in the 'Penny Sunday Reader,' vol. vi. No. 148, a few passages were omitted, as too strong. But all did not agree: in my copy of Peter Shaw's edition (vol. ii. p. 283) the Paradoxes have been cut out by the binder, who has left the backs of the leaves. I never had the curiosity to see whether other copies of
