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Essay XVII: Of Superstition
Essay XVII: Of Superstition
It were better to have no opinion of God at all, than such an opinion as
is unworthy of him. For the one is unbelief, the other is contumely; and
certainly superstition is the reproach of the Deity. Plutarch saith well to
that purpose: Surely (saith he) I had rather a great deal men should say there
was no such man at all as Plutarch, than that they should say that there was
one Plutarch that would eat his children as soon as they were born; as the
poets speak of Saturn. And as the contumely is greater towards God, so the
danger is greater towards men. Atheism leaves a man to sense, to philosophy,
to natural piety, to laws, to reputation; all which may be guides to an
outward moral virtue, though religion were not; but superstition dismounts all
these, and erecteth an absolute monarchy in the minds of men. Therefore
atheism did never perturb states; for it makes men wary of themselves, as
looking no further: and we see the times inclined to atheism (as the time of
Augustus Caesar) were civil ^1 times. But superstition hath been the confusion
of many states, and bringeth in a new primum mobile, ^2 that ravisheth all the
spheres of government. The master of superstition is the people; and in all
superstition wise men follow fools; and arguments are fitted to practice, in a
reversed order. It was gravely said by some of the prelates in the Council of
Trent, where the doctrine of the Schoolmen bare great sway, that the Schoolmen
were like astronomers, which did feign eccentrics and epicycles, ^3 and such
engines ^4 of orbs, to save ^5 the phenomena; though they knew there were no
such things; and in like manner, that the Schoolmen had framed a number of
subtle and intricate axioms and theorems, to save the practice of the church.
The causes of superstition are: pleasing and sensual rites and ceremonies;
excess of outward and pharisaical holiness; over-great reverence of
traditions, which cannot but load the church; the stratagems of prelates for
their own ambition and lucre; the favoring too much of good intentions, which
openeth the gate to conceits and novelties; the taking an aim at divine
matters by human, which cannot but breed mixture of imaginations; and, lastly,
barbarous times, especially joined with calamities and disasters.
Superstition, without a veil, is a deformed thing; for as it addeth deformity
to an ape to be so like a man, so the similitude of superstition to religion
makes it the more deformed. And as wholesome meat corrupteth to little worms,
so good forms and orders corrupt into a number of petty observances. There is
a superstition in avoiding superstition, when men think to do best if they go
furthest from the superstition formerly received; therefore care would be had
that (as if fareth in ill purgings) the good be not taken away with the bad;
which commonly is done when the people is the reformer.
[Footnote 1: Peaceful.]
[Footnote 2: See Essay xv., n. 3.]
[Footnote 3: According to the Ptolemaic astronomy, the planets moved in
circles called epicycles, the centers of which also moved in circles called
eccentrics, because their centers were outside the earth.]
[Footnote 4: Machinery.]
[Footnote 5: Account for.]
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