Hence we find the chymical writers of that period boasting of their weakness, yielding up all confidence in their faculties, glorying in what they termed poverty of spirit, which was a state of absolute quietism, and betaking themselves to the invocation of supernatural assistance, on which they depended for that information which had been wisely placed within the reach of their natural capacity. An implicit submission to these monkish tenets was, however, strictly enforced, and all who presumed to depart from them, called forth the severest censures of the catholic church.
But, even in those times of ignorance an ecclesiastic arose worthy of a better age and happier fate. Roger Bacon, undaunted by the terrors of the church, boldly attempted to stem the torrent of superstition, and recal the world to truth and sound philosophy. Such of his writings as yet remain, are composed in a rational, manly stile, void of hypocrisy and dissimulation. He leads us to examine the works of nature and of art, chastly distinguishing those from the sacred truths of revelation, and clearly demonstrating their united operations to be far more wonderful than the pretended miracles of those who boasted of supernatural assistance, whom he justly censures as amusing the ignorant with the fumes of drunkenness, or the ravings of a distempered brain.
The age in which he lived was too much depressed to be roused by his vigorous efforts; and his laudable attempts to emancipate the christian world from that slavish ignorance in which it was held, were, for very obvious reasons, severely censured by the Roman church: he was arraigned, condemned, and cast into prison, where he was exhausted by a tedious confinement and severe penance[1], and soon after fell a victim to the vengeance of his enemies.
The papal tyranny having thus prevailed against the strenuous efforts of this rational and intelligent philosopher, it was easy, under the pretence of exalted devotion, to suppress more feeble attempts toward improvement and reformation.
But those high pretensions to extraordinary sanctity have been so often used as a cloak, by men of an intriguing spirit, that they are now justly deemed suspicious; and we need only look into the lives and writings of the ecclesiastical chymists to be convinced that they were assumed by them, to cover their ignorance, ambition, and dissolute manners. An overweening conceit of their own opinions, and an arrogant contempt for those of others, is, notwithstanding all their pretensions to humility and self-denial, the genuine characteristic of those hypocritical writers. Thus we find them extolling themselves to the disparagement of all mankind. Ye doctors of physick and surgery, says Basil Valentine, come to me, a religious person, and servant of God, I will shew you what ye have never seen, I will make manifest to you the way of health and salvation, which you have not yet known.[2]
In delivering their chymical processes, an invocation of God is the first precept, and they, then, proceed in the name of the Lord. But not content with having magnified themselves beyond their equals, they address their disciples in the stile and manner of the founder of the christian religion: I warn you, says the same ecclesiastical chymist, my disciple and apostle, if you would imitate me, you must take up your cross, and suffer as I have suffered, and learn to bear persecution as I also have done[3]: and having thus made themselves equal with God, they proceeded to disclaim all dependance on the supreme Being, declaring, in their pride, that, if God would not assist them, they would rather consult the Devil than the works of former writers[4].
But if the chymists were more intitled to our confidence; the extravagant praises which they bestow on antimony, would justly render their evidence suspected. Not content with attributing to it an infallible efficacy in the cure of diseases, they assert its influence over the temper and disposition of the mind, and seriously affirm that it disposes to probity and chastity. Notwithstanding these miraculous effects they scruple not to own that, in its original state, it is of a poisonous nature; but they pretend that they can easily convert the most noxious substances into salutary medicines, and the mildest nourishment into deadly poison; and thus is antimony rendered an infallible cure for all diseases, and honey destructive to the human race[5].