Lord Bacon not the author of "The Christian Paradoxes," being a reprint of "Memorials of Godliness and Christianity," by Herbert Palmer, B.D.[297] With Introduction, Memoir, and Notes, by the Rev. Alexander B. Grosart,[298] Kenross. (Private circulation, 1864).
I insert the above in this place on account of a slight connection with the last. Bacon's Paradoxes,--so attributed--were first published as his in some asserted "Remains," 1648.[299] 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 {142} 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 [300] 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 the edition have been served in the same way. The Religious Tract Society republished them recently in _Selections from the Writings of Lord Bacon_, (no date; bad plan; about 1863, I suppose). No omissions were made, so far as I find.
I never believed that Bacon wrote this paper; it has neither his _sparkle_ nor his idiom. I stated my doubts even before I heard that Mr. Spedding, one of Bacon's editors, was of the same mind. (_Athenaeum_, July 16, 1864). I was little moved by the wide consent of orthodox men: for I knew how Bacon, Milton, Newton, Locke, etc., were always claimed as orthodox until almost the present day. Of this there is a remarkable instance.
