Page:Philosophical Transactions - Volume 005.djvu/3

in the various degrees of Rarity and Density, Weight, and Absence, longer or shorter, for the Respiration of Animals; And have left us manifest evidences of the necessary Weight, and other enforcements of Air, to preserve us from Suffocations and Conculsions; And that neither common liquids can rais their Usual Steams, nor the minutest Insects continue their Motion even whilst they retain life, without the Presence and Help of Air.

And yet I may be asked, what Patronage, what Heroe, or what Genius can give safe guard against the malicious scurrility of many of this Age, who attempt to deface every vertue, and whatsoever is excellent, and particularly that which is most obliging to the Publick? To this discouragement I reply cheerfully, that the malicious and scurrilous are short-liv'd, and will soon expire in an odious snuff, or will hasten to hide themselves in shame and confusion: But Truth is mighty and will prevail; Wisedome will be justified; Vertue will in good time emerge; Knowledge will abound; Arts will flourish; and Posterity will applaud them, from whom they rereive the cleerest Light and the best Accomodations.

I am inform'd by such as may well remember the best and worst day of the Famous Lord Bacon; That though he wrote his Advancement of Learning, and his Instauratio Magna, and many other elaborate Treatises of Philosophy, in the time of his greatest power; wet his greatest Reputation rebounded first from the most (illegible text) Forrainers in many parts of Christendome: It cannot be doubted, but that England had then better knowledge of the absirulities, many troubles and burthens of our Municipal Laws, and Chancery, which lay long and much upon his shoulders; And that he bore the stress of State affairs in almost all King James's days, ottditt Queen Elizabeth's later days; That he adorned the solemn Addresses, and was the Extra-ordinary Pen-man for most Apologies, Deliberations, and gravest Adviso's in Parliaments, and otherwise: Here they saw also, How he excelled in the best Theology of that Age; and in the Politest of Civil and Moral Essays: And therefore here they might justly wonder, how a person so publickly immersed in all Civil Interests should find leisure to do any thing at all in Philosophy: And much more justly may we still wonder, how, without any great skill in Chymistry, without much pretence to the Mathematicks or Mechanicks, without Optick Ayds, or other Engins of later Invention, he should so much tran-scend