Although not one of the translators has left any literary work which would justify the belief that he was capable of writing the more beautiful portions of the Bible, fortunately Bacon has left an example which would rather add lustre to than decrease the high standard of the Bible if it were incorporated in it. As to the truth of this statement the reader must judge from the following prayer, which was written after his fall, and which was described by Addison as resembling the devotion of an angel rather than a man:—
Remember, O Lord, how Thy servant hath walked before Thee; remember what I have first sought, and what been principal in mine intentions. I have loved Thy assemblies; I have mourned for the divisions of Thy Church; I have delighted in the brightness of Thy sanctuary.
This vine, which Thy right hand hath planted in this nation, I have ever prayed unto Thee that it might have the first and the latter rain, and that it might stretch her branches to the seas and to the floods.
The state and bread of the poor and oppressed have been precious in mine eyes. I have hated all cruelty and hardness of heart. I have, though in a despised weed, procured the good of all men.
If any have been mine enemies, I thought not of them, neither hath the sun almost set upon my displeasure; but I have been as a dove, free from superfluity of maliciousness.
Thy creatures have been my books, but Thy scriptures much more. I have sought Thee in the courts, fields, and gardens, but I have found Thee in Thy temples.
Thousand have been my sins and ten thousand my transgressions, but Thy sanctifications have remained with me, and my heart, through Thy grace, hath been an unquenched coal upon Thine altar.
O Lord, my strength, I have since my youth met with Thee in all my ways, by Thy fatherly compassions, by Thy comfortable chastisements, and by Thy most visible providence. As Thy favours have increased upon me, so have Thy corrections, so that Thou hast been ever near me, O Lord; and ever, as Thy worldly blessings were exalted, so secret darts from Thee have pierced me, and when I have ascended before men, I have descended in humiliation before Thee.
And now, when I thought most of peace and honour, Thy hand is heavy upon me, and hath humbled me according to Thy former lovingkindness, keeping me still in Thy fatherly school, not as a bastard but as a child. Just are Thy judgments upon me for my sins, which are more in number than the sands of the sea, but have no proportion to Thy mercies; for what are the sands of the sea to the sea? Earth, heavens, and all these are nothing to Thy mercies.
Besides my innumerable sins, I confess before Thee that I am debtor to Thee for the gracious talent of Thy gifts and graces, which I have neither put into a napkin, nor put it (as I ought) to exchangers, where it might have made most profit, but misspent it in things for which I was least fit so that I may truly say my soul hath been a stranger in the course of my pilgrimage.