I spent a year or two – maybe more – conducting services with Francis Bacon at my shoulder. I say Francis Bacon but it was, of course, a statue, a seated statue of that great man of the Renaissance. Better than preaching to the back end of a horse – in Rothley, I think it was. But I hasten to point out that Rothley has a superb interior with a masterly 360 HD tour on its website.
Back to Bacon. He became Lord Chancellor in 1618 and wrote ‘The Advancement of Learning’ and other works. He argued that we should study phenomena round us rather thn theorise as the Greeks generally did. Isaac Newton followed in his footsteps. Where Lyell and Darwin went, others followed. Darwin felt impelled to look for a First Cause, He could not accept that blind chance or necessity had brought about our planetary homeland. Julian Huxley and others differed.
The Enlightenment or Age of Reason took on Bacon’s approach. Its spokesman was Voltaire (François-Marie Arouet. In France Diderot and the Encyclopaedists aimed to usher in a new age. In Germany the Enlightenment found its great interest in biblical studies. It commended a new way of reading the Bible with an understanding of its origins. Needless to say, the Scriptures remain as the primary evidence for understanding the Christian faith.
Bacon is seen to best advantage in his essays. Here he writes on death:’It is as natural to die as to be born, and to a little infant, perhaps, the one is as painful as the other.’ And ‘I had rather believe all the fables in the legend, and the Talmud, and the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind.’
WARRINGTON NEWS
Packed with news and still under development is a new-style ‘Warrington Worldwide’, a magazine for readers in the parishes of Newchurch, Culceth and Croft.
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