And an orthodox Christian of that time could hardly be expected to predict.

The impression we get is that, in his sanguine enthusiasm, he imagined that a "prudent interrogation" of nature could extort all her secrets in a few generations.

As a reformer he was so engaged in the immediate prospect of results that his imagination did not turn to the possibilities of a remoter future, though these would logically follow from his recognition of "the inseparable propriety of time which is ever more and more to disclose truth." He hopes everything from his own age in which learning has made her third visitation to the world, a period which he is persuaded will far surpass that of Grecian and Roman learning.

[Footnote: Advancement, ii.

24.] If he could have revisited England in 1700 and surveyed what science had performed since his death his hopes might have been more than satisfied.
But, animated though he was with the progressive spirit, as Leonardo da Vinci had been before him, all that he says of the prospects of an increase of knowledge fails to amount to the theory of Progress.