{"collection":"scripture-revelation","full_text_available":true,"graph_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/api/page/gutenberg_16359/graph","html_url":"https://unchartedknowledge.5gfusion.net/v2/page/gutenberg_16359","id":"gutenberg_16359","license":"Public Domain (US)","rights_basis":"gutenberg_metadata_copyright_false","source":"gutenberg","source_url":"https://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/16359","summary":null,"tags":["Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682","Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682. Religio medici","Category: British Literature","Category: Essays, Letters & Speeches","Category: Philosophy & Ethics","Category: Religion/Spirituality"],"text":"Transcribed from the 1898 Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier edition by David\nPrice, email ccx074@coventry.ac.uk\n\n\n\n\n\nSIR THOMAS BROWNE AND HIS 'RELIGIO MEDICI': an Appreciation\nwith some of the best passages of the Physician's Writings selected and\narranged by Alexander Whyte\nD. D.\n\n\n[Illustration from 1642 edition of Religio Medici: ill.jpg]\n\nOliphant Anderson & Ferrier\n\nSaint Mary Street, Edinburgh, and\n21 Paternoster Square, London\n1898\n\nDEDICATED TO\nSIR THOMAS GRAINGER STEWART\nPRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATION\nAT WHOSE REQUEST THIS APPRECIATION WAS DELIVERED AS\nTHE INAUGURAL DISCOURSE\nAT THE OPENING MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATION\nIN ST. GILES' CATHEDRAL ON THE 26TH JULY 1898\nIN GREAT GOOD-WILL AND LOVE BY\nALEXANDER WHYTE\n\n\n\n\nAPPRECIATION AND INTRODUCTION\n\n\nThe _Religio Medici_ is a universally recognised English classic.  And\nthe _Urn-Burial_, the _Christian Morals_, and the _Letter to a Friend_\nare all quite worthy to take their stand beside the _Religio Medici_.  Sir\nThomas Browne made several other contributions to English literature\nbesides these masterpieces; but it is on the _Religio Medici_, and on\nwhat Sir Thomas himself calls 'other pieces of affinity thereto,' that\nhis sure fame as a writer of noble truth and stately English most\nsecurely rests.  Sir Thomas Browne was a physician of high standing and\nlarge practice all his days; and he was an antiquarian and scientific\nwriter of the foremost information and authority: but it is the\nextraordinary depth and riches and imaginative sweep of his mind, and his\nrare wisdom and wealth of heart, and his quite wonderful English style,\nthat have all combined together to seal Sir Thomas Browne with his well-\nearned immortality.\n\nSir Thomas Browne's outward life can be told in a very few words.  He was\nborn at London in 1605.  He lost his father very early, and it must have\nbeen a very great loss.  For the old mercer was wont to creep up to his\nlittle son's cradle when he was asleep, and uncover and kiss the child's\nbreast, and pray, 'as 'tis said of Origen's father, that the Holy Ghost\nwould at once take possession there.'  The old merchant was able to leave\nmoney enough to take his gifted son first to Winchester School, and then\nto Oxford, where he graduated in New Pembroke in 1626.  On young Browne's\ngraduation, old Anthony a Wood has this remark, that those who love\nPembroke best can wish it nothing better than that it may long proceed as\nit has thus begun.  As soon as he had taken his university degree young\nBrowne entered on the study of medicine: and, in pursuit of that fast-\nrising science, he visited and studied in the most famous schools of\nFrance and Italy and Holland.  After various changes of residence,\nthrough all of which it is somewhat difficult to trace the young\nphysician's movements, we find him at last fairly settled in the city of\nNorwich, where he spent the remainder of his long, and busy, and\nprosperous, and honourable life.\n\nDr. Johnson laments that Sir Thomas Browne has left us no record of his\ntravels and studies abroad, and all Sir Thomas's readers will join with\nhis great biographer in that regret.  At the same time, as we turn over\nthe pile of letters that Sir Thomas sent to his student son Edward, and\nto his sailor son Thomas, when they were abroad at school and on ship, we\ncan easily collect and picture to ourselves the life that the writer of\nthose so wise and so beautiful letters led when he himself was still a\nstudent at Montpellier and Padua and Leyden.  'Honest Tom,--God bless\nthee, and protect thee, and mercifully lead thee through the ways of His\nprovidence.  Be diligent in going to church.  Be constant, and not\nnegligent in your daily private prayers.  Be a good husband.  Cast up\nyour accounts with all care.  Be temperate in diet, and be wary not to\noverheat yourself.  Be courteous and civil to all.  Live with an\napothecary, and observe his drugs and practice.  Frequent civil company.\nPoint your letters, and put periods at the ends of your sentences.  Have\nthe love and the fear of God ever before your eyes.  And may God confirm\nyour faith in Christ.  Observe the manner of trade: how they make wine\nand vinegar, and keep a note of all that for me.  Be courteous and humble\nin all your conversation, and of good manners: which he that learneth not\nin France travaileth in vain.  When at sea read good books.  Without good\nbooks time cannot be well spent in those great ships.  Learn the stars\nalso: the particular coasts: the depth of the road-steads: and the\nrisings and fallings of the land.  Enquire further about the mineral\nwater: and take notice of such plants as you meet with.  I am told that\nyou are looked on in the Service as exceeding faithful, valiant,\ndiligent, generous, vigilant, observing, very knowing, and a scholar.\nWhen you first took to this manner of life, you cannot but remember that\nI caused you to read all the sea-fights of note in Plutarch: and, withal,\ngave you the description of fortitude left by Aristotle.  In places take\nnotice of the government of them, and the eminent persons.  The merciful\nprovidence of God ever go with you, and direct and bless you, and give\nyou ever a grateful heart toward Him.  I send you Lucretius: and with it\nTully's Offices: 'tis as remarkable for its little size as for the good\nmatter contained in it, and the authentic and classical Latin.  I hope\nyou do not forget to carry a Greek Testament always to church: a man\nlearns two things together, and profiteth doubly, in the language and the\nsubject.  God send us to number our days, and to fit ourselves for a\nbetter world.  Times look troublesome: but you have an honest and\npeaceable profession like myself, which may well employ you, and you have\ndiscretion to guide your words and actions.  May God be reconciled to us,\nand give us grace to forsake our sins which set fire to all things.  You\nshall never want my daily prayers, and also frequent letters.'  And so\non, through a delightful sheaf of letters to his two sons: and out of\nwhich a fine picture rises before us, both of Sir Thomas's own student\nlife abroad, as well as of the footing on which the now famous physician\nand English author stood with his student and sailor sons.\n\n* * * * *\n\nYou might read every word of Sir Thomas Browne's writings and never\ndiscover that a sword had been unsheathed or a shot fired in England all\nthe time he was living and writing there.  It was the half-century of the\nterrible civil war for political and religious liberty: but Sir Thomas\nBrowne would seem to have possessed all the political and religious\nliberty he needed.  At any rate, he never took open part on either side\nin the great contest.  Sir Thomas Browne was not made of the hot metal\nand the stern stuff of John Milton.  All through those terrible years\nBrowne lived securely in his laboratory, and in his library, and in his\ncloset.  Richard Baxter's _Autobiography_ is as full of gunpowder as if\nit had been written in an army-chaplain's tent, as indeed it was.  But\nboth Bunyan's _Grace Abounding_ and Browne's _Religio Medici_ might have\nbeen written in the Bedford or Norwich of our own peaceful day.  All men\nare not made to be soldiers and statesmen: and it is no man's duty to\nattempt to be what he was not made to be.  Every man has his own talent,\nand his corresponding and consequent duty and obligation.  And both\nBunyan and Browne had their own talent, and their own consequent duty and\nobligation, just as Cromwell and Milton and Baxter had theirs.  Enough,\nand more than enough, if it shall be said to them all on that day, Well\ndone.\n\n'My life,' says Sir Thomas, in opening one of the noblest chapters of his\nnoblest book, 'is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were not a\nhistory, but a piece of poetry; and it would sound to common ears like a\nfable.'  Now, as all Sir Thomas's readers must know, the most\nextraordinary criticisms and comments have been made on those devout and\nthankful words of his concerning himself.  Dr. Samuel Johnson's were not\ncommon ears, but even he comments on these beautiful words with a wooden-\nheadedness almost past belief.  For, surely the thirty years of\nschoolboy, and student, and opening professional life that resulted in\nthe production of such a masterpiece as the _Religio Medici_ was a\nmiracle both of God's providence and God's grace, enough to justify him\nwho had experienced all that in acknowledging it to God's glory and to\nthe unburdening of his own heart, so richly loaded with God's benefits.\nAnd, how a man of Samuel Johnson's insight, good sense, and pious feeling\ncould have so missed the mark in this case, I cannot understand.  All the\nmore that both the chapter so complained about, and the whole book to\nwhich that chapter belongs, are full of the same thankful, devout, and\nadoring sentiment.  'The world that I regard,' Sir Thomas proceeds, 'is\nmyself.  Men that look upon my outside, and who peruse only my conditions\nand my fortunes, do err in my altitude.  There is surely a piece of\ndivinity in us all; something that was before the elements, and which\nowes no homage unto the sun.'  And again, 'We carry with us the wonders\nwe seek without us.  There is all Africa and all its prodigies in us all.\nWe are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies\nwisely learns, in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece\nand endless volume.'  And again, 'There is another way of God's\nprovidence full of meanders and labyrinths and obscure methods: that\nserpentine and crooked line: that cryptic and involved method of His\nprovidence which I have ever admired.  Surely there are in every man's\nlife certain rubs, and doublings, and wrenches, which, well examined, do\nprove the pure hand of God.  And to be true, and to speak out my soul,\nwhen I survey the occurrences of my own life, and call into account the\nfinger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and a mass of mercies.\nAnd those which others term crosses, and afflictions, and judgments, and\nmisfortunes, to me they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the\nsecret and dissembled favours of His affection.'  And in the _Christian\nMorals_: 'Annihilate not the mercies of God by the oblivion of\ningratitude.  Make not thy head a grave, but a repository of God's\nmercies.  Register not only strange, but all merciful occurrences.  Let\nthy diaries stand thick with dutiful mementoes and asterisks of\nacknowledgment.  And to be complete and to forget nothing, date not His\nmercy from thy nativity: look beyond this world, and before the era of\nAdam.  And mark well the winding ways of providence.  For that hand\nwrites often by abbreviations, hieroglyphics, and short characters,\nwhich, like the laconism on Belshazzar's wall, are not to be made out but\nby a key from that Spirit that indited them.'  And yet again, 'To\nthoughtful observers the whole world is one phylactery, and everything we\nsee an item of the wisdom, and power, and goodness of God.'  How any man,\nnot to speak of one of the wisest and best of men, such as Samuel Johnson\nwas, could read all that, and still stagger at Sir Thomas Browne holding\nhimself to be a living miracle of the power, and the love, and the grace\nof God, passes my understanding.\n\nWe have seen in his own noble words how Sir Thomas Browne's life appeared\nto himself.  Let us now look at how he appeared to other observing men.\nThe Rev. John Whitefoot, the close and lifelong friend of Sir Thomas, has\nleft us this lifelike portrait of the author of _Religio Medici_.  'For a\ncharacter of his person, his complexion and his hair were answerable to\nhis name, his stature was moderate, and his habit of body neither fat nor\nlean, but [Greek text].  In his habit of clothing he had an aversion to\nall finery, and affected plainness.  He ever wore a cloke, or boots, when\nfew others did.  He kept himself always very warm, and thought it most\nsafe so to do.  The horizon of his understanding was much larger than the\nhemisphere of the world: all that was visible in the heavens he\ncomprehended so well, that few that are under them knew so much.  And of\nthe earth he had such a minute and exact geographical knowledge as if he\nhad been by divine providence ordained surveyor-general of the whole\nterrestrial orb and its products, minerals, plants, and animals.  His\nmemory, though not so eminent as that of Seneca or Scaliger, was\ncapacious and tenacious, insomuch that he remembered all that was\nremarkable in any book he ever read.  He had no despotical power over his\naffections and passions, that was a privilege of original perfection, but\nas large a political power over them as any stoic or man of his time,\nwhereof he gave so great experiment that he hath very rarely been known\nto have been overpowered with any of them.  His aspect and conversation\nwere grave and sober; there was never to be seen in him anything trite or\nvulgar.  Parsimonious in nothing but his time, whereof he made as much\nimprovement, with as little loss as any man in it, when he had any to\nspare from his drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion\nfrom his study: so impatient of sloth and idleness, that he would say, he\ncould not do nothing.  He attended the public service very constantly,\nwhen he was not withheld by his practice.  Never missed the sacrament in\nhis parish, if he were in town.  Read the best English sermons he could\nhear of with liberal applause: and delighted not in controversies.  His\npatience was founded upon the Christian philosophy, and sound faith of\nGod's providence, and a meek and humble submission thereto.  I visited\nhim near his end, when he had not strength to hear or speak much: and the\nlast words I heard from him were, besides some expressions of dearness,\nthat he did freely submit to the will of God: being without fear.  He had\noft triumphed over the king of terrors in others, and given him many\nrepulses in the defence of patients; but when his own time came, he\nsubmitted with a meek, rational, religious courage.'\n\nTaking Sir Thomas Browne all in all, Tertullian, Sir Thomas's favourite\nFather, has supplied us, as it seems to me, with his whole life and\ncharacter in these so expressive and so comprehensive words of his,\n_Anima naturaliter Christiana_.  In these three words, when well weighed\nand fully opened up, we have the whole author of the _Religio Medici_,\nthe _Christian Morals_, and the _Letter to a Friend.  Anima naturaliter\nChristiana_.\n\n* * * * *\n\nThe _Religio Medici_ was Sir Thomas Browne's first book, and it remains\nby far his best book.  His other books acquire their value and take their\nrank just according to the degree of their 'affinity' to the _Religio\nMedici_.  Sir Thomas Browne is at his best when he is most alone with\nhimself.  There is no subject that interests him so much as Sir Thomas\nBrowne.  And if you will forget yourself in Sir Thomas Browne, and in his\nconversations which he holds with himself, you will find a rare and an\never fresh delight in the _Religio Medici_.  Sir Thomas is one of the\ngreatest egotists of literature--to use a necessary but an unpopular and\na misleading epithet.  Hazlitt has it that there have only been but three\nperfect, absolute, and unapproached egotists in all literature--Cellini,\nMontaigne, and Wordsworth.  But why that fine critic leaves out Sir\nThomas Browne, I cannot understand or accept.  I always turn to Sir\nThomas Browne, far more than to either of Hazlitt's canonised three, when\nI want to read what a great man has to tell me about himself: and in this\ncase both a great and a good and a Christian man.  And thus, whatever\nmodification and adaptation may have been made in this masterpiece of\nhis, in view of its publication, and after it was first published, the\noriginal essence, most genuine substance, and unique style of the book\nwere all intended for its author's peculiar heart and private eye alone.\nAnd thus it is that we have a work of a simplicity and a sincerity that\nwould have been impossible had its author in any part of his book sat\ndown to compose for the public.  Sir Thomas Browne lived so much within\nhimself, that he was both secret writer and sole reader to himself.  His\ngreat book is 'a private exercise directed solely,' as he himself says,\n'to himself: it is a memorial addressed to himself rather than an example\nor a rule directed to any other man.'  And it is only he who opens the\n_Religio Medici_ honestly and easily believing that, and glad to have\nsuch a secret and sincere and devout book in his hand,--it is only he who\nwill truly enjoy the book, and who will gather the same gain out of it\nthat its author enjoyed and gained out of it himself.  In short, the\nproperly prepared and absolutely ingenuous reader of the _Religio Medici_\nmust be a second Thomas Browne himself.\n\n'I am a medical man,' says Sir Thomas, in introducing himself to us, 'and\nthis is my religion.  I am a physician, and this is my faith, and my\nmorals, and my whole true and proper life.  The scandal of my profession,\nthe natural course of my studies, and the indifference of my behaviour\nand discourse in matters of religion, might persuade the world that I had\nno religion at all.  And yet, in despite of all that, I dare, without\nusurpation, assume the honourable style of a Christian.'  And if ever any\nman was a truly catholic Christian, it was surely Sir Thomas Browne.  He\ndoes not unchurch or ostracise any other man.  He does not stand at\ndiameter and sword's point with any other man; no, not even with his\nenemy.  He has never been able to alienate or exasperate himself from any\nman whatsoever because of a difference of an opinion.  He has never been\nangry with any man because his judgment in matters of religion did not\nagree with his.  In short he has no genius for disputes about religion;\nand he has often felt it to be his best wisdom to decline all such\ndisputes.  When his head was greener than it now is, he had a tendency to\ntwo or three errors in religion, of which he proceeds to set down the\nspiritual history.  But at no time did he ever maintain his own opinions\nwith pertinacity: far less to inveigle or entangle any other man's faith;\nand thus they soon died out, since they were only bare errors and single\nlapses of his understanding, without a joint depravity of his will.  The\ntruth to Sir Thomas Browne about all revealed religion is this, which he\nsets forth in a deservedly famous passage:--'Methinks there be not\nimpossibilities enough in revealed religion for an active faith.  I love\nto lose myself in a mystery, and to pursue my reason to an _O altitudo_!\n'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved\nenigmas and riddles of the Trinity, with incarnation and resurrection.  I\ncan answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that\nodd resolution I learned of Tertullian, _Certum est quia impossibile\nest_.  I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for\nanything else is not faith but persuasion.  I bless myself, and am\nthankful that I never saw Christ nor His disciples.  For then had my\nfaith been thrust upon me; nor should I have enjoyed that greater\nblessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not.  They only had the\nadvantage of a noble and a bold faith who lived before the coming of\nChrist; and who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise\na belief and expect apparent impossibilities.  And since I was of\nunderstanding enough to know that we know nothing, my reason hath been\nmore pliable to the will of faith.  I am now content to understand a\nmystery in an easy and Platonic way, and without a demonstration and a\nrigid definition; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to\nstoop unto the lure of faith.'  The unreclaimed reader who is not already\nallured by these specimens need go no further in Sir Thomas Browne's\nautobiographic book.  But he who feels the grace and the truth, the power\nand the sweetness and the beauty of such writing, will be glad to know\nthat the whole _Religio_ is full of such things, and that all this\nauthor's religious and moral writings partake of the same truly Apostolic\nand truly Platonic character.  In this noble temper, with the richest\nmind, and clothed in a style that entrances and captivates us, Sir Thomas\nproceeds to set forth his doctrine and experience of God; of God's\nprovidence; of Holy Scripture; of nature and man; of miracles and\noracles; of the Holy Ghost and holy angels; of death; and of heaven and\nhell.  And, especially, and with great fulness, and victoriousness, and\nconclusiveness, he deals with death.  We sometimes amuse ourselves by\nmaking a selection of the two or three books that we would take with us\nto prison or to a desert island.  And one dying man here and another\nthere has already selected and set aside the proper and most suitable\nbooks for his own special deathbed.  'Read where I first cast my anchor,'\nsaid John Knox to his wife, sitting weeping at his bedside.  At which she\nopened and read in the Gospel of John.  Sir Thomas Browne is neither more\nnor less than the very prose-laureate of death.  He writes as no other\nman has ever written about death.  Death is everywhere in all Sir Thomas\nBrowne's books.  And yet it may be said of them all, that, like heaven\nitself, there is no death there.  Death is swallowed up in Sir Thomas\nBrowne's defiant faith that cannot, even in death, get difficulties and\nimpossibilities enough to exercise itself upon.  O death, where is thy\nsting to Rutherford, and Bunyan, and Baxter, and Browne; and to those who\ndiet their imaginations and their hearts day and night at such heavenly\ntables!  But, if only to see how great and good men differ, Spinoza has\nthis proposition and demonstration that a 'free man thinks of nothing\nless than of death.'  Browne was a free man, but he thought of nothing\nmore than of death.  He was of Dante's mind--\n\n   The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight.\n\nThe _Religio Medici_ was Sir Thomas Browne's first book, and the\n_Christian Morals_ was his last; but the two books are of such affinity\nto one another that they will always be thought of together.  Only, the\nstyle that was already almost too rich for our modern taste in the\n_Religio_ absolutely cloys and clogs us in the _Morals_.  The opening and\nthe closing sentences of this posthumous treatise will better convey a\ntaste of its strength and sweetness than any estimate or eulogium of\nmine.  'Tread softly and circumspectly in this funambulatory track, and\nnarrow path of goodness; pursue virtue virtuously: leaven not good\nactions, nor render virtue disputable.  Stain not fair acts with foul\nintentions; maim not uprightness by halting concomitances, nor\ncircumstantially deprave substantial goodness.  Consider whereabout thou\nart in Cebes' table, or that old philosophical pinax of the life of man:\nwhether thou art yet in the road of uncertainties; whether thou hast yet\nentered the narrow gate, got up the hill and asperous way which leadeth\nunto the house of sanity; or taken that purifying potion from the hand of\nsincere erudition, which may send thee clear and pure away unto a\nvirtuous and happy life.'  And having taken his reader up through a\nvirtuous life, Sir Thomas thus parts with him at its close: 'Lastly, if\nlength of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation.  Reckon not\nupon long life; think every day thy last.  And since there is something\nin us that will still live on, join both lives together, and live in one\nbut for the other.  And if any hath been so happy as personally to\nunderstand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exaltation, transformation,\nthe kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the divine shadow, according\nto mystical theology, they have already had an handsome anticipation of\nheaven: the world is in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.'\n'Prose,' says Friswell, 'that with very little transposition, might make\nverse quite worthy of Shakespeare himself.'\n\n* * * * *\n\nThe _Letter to a Friend_ is an account of the swift and inevitable\ndeathbed of one of Sir Thomas's patients: a young man who died of a\ndeceitful but a galloping consumption.  There is enough of old medical\nobservation and opening science in the _Letter_, as well as of sweet old\nliterature, and still sweeter old religion, to make it a classic to every\nwell-read doctor in the language.  'To be dissolved and to be with Christ\nwas his dying ditty.  He esteemed it enough to approach the years of his\nSaviour, who so ordered His own human state, as not to be old upon earth.\nHe that early arriveth into the parts and prudence of age is happily old\nwithout the uncomfortable attendants of it.  And 'tis superfluous to live\nunto grey hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues of\nthem.  In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old man.'\nLet all young medical students have by heart Sir Thomas Browne's\nincomparable English, and wisdom, and piety in his _Letter to a Friend\nupon the occasion of the death of his intimate Friend_.  'This unique\nmorsel of literature' as Walter Pater calls it.\n\nThe _Vulgar Errors_, it must be confessed, is neither very inviting, nor\nvery rewarding to ordinary readers nowadays.  And that big book will only\nbe persevered in to the end by those readers to whom everything that Sir\nThomas Browne has written is of a rare interest and profit.  The full\ntitle of this now completely antiquated and wholly forgotten treatise is\nthis, '_Pseudodoxia Epidemica_, or Enquiries into very many received\nTenets and commonly presumed Truths, which examined prove but Vulgar and\nCommon Errors.'  The First Book of the _Pseudodoxia_ is general and\nphilosophical; the Second Book treats of popular and received tenets\nconcerning mineral and vegetable bodies; the Third, of popular and\nreceived tenets concerning animals; the Fourth, of man; the Fifth, of\nmany things questionable as they are commonly described in pictures,\netc.; and the Sixth, of popular and received tenets, cosmo-graphical,\ngeographical, and historical; and the Seventh, of popular and received\ntruth, some historical, and some deduced from Holy Scripture.  The\nIntroductory Book contains the best analysis and exposition of the famous\nBaconian Idols that has ever been written.  That Book of the\n_Pseudodoxia_ is full of the profoundest philosophical principles set\nforth in the stateliest English.  The students of Whately and Mill, as\nwell as of Bacon, will greatly enjoy this part of the _Pseudodoxia_.  _The\nGrammar of Assent_, also, would seem to have had some of its deepest\nroots in the same powerful, original, and suggestive Book.  For its day\nthe _Pseudodoxia_ is a perfect encyclopaedia of scientific, and\nhistorical, and literary, and even Biblical criticism: the _Pseudodoxia_\nand the _Miscellany Tracts_ taken together.  Some of the most powerful\npassages that ever fell from Sir Thomas Browne's pen are to be come upon\nin the Introduction to the _Pseudodoxia_.  And, with all our immense\nadvances in method and in discipline: in observation and in discovery: no\ntrue student of nature and of man can afford to neglect the extraordinary\ncatalogue of things which are so characteristically treated of in Sir\nThomas Browne's great, if, nowadays, out-grown book.  For one thing, and\nthat surely not a small thing, we see on every page of the _Pseudodoxia_\nthe labour, as Dr. Johnson so truly says, that its author was always\nwilling to pay for the truth.  And, as Sir Thomas says himself, a work of\nthis nature is not to be performed upon one leg, or without the smell of\noil, if it is to be duly and deservedly handled.  It must be left to men\nof learning and of science to say how far Sir Thomas has duly and\ndeservedly handled the immense task he undertook in this book.  But I,\nfor one, have read this great treatise with a true pride, in seeing so\nmuch hard work so liberally laid out according to the best light allowed\nits author in that day.  As Dr. Johnson has said of it, 'The mistakes\nthat the author committed in the _Pseudodoxia_ were not committed by\nidleness or negligence, but only for want of the philosophy of Boyle and\nNewton.'  Who, then, will gird up his loins in our enlightened day to\ngive us a new _Pseudodoxia_ after the philosophy of Bacon and Boyle and\nNewton and Ewald and Darwin?  And after Sir Thomas's own philosophy,\nwhich he thus sets forth before himself in this and in all his other\nstudies: 'We are not magisterial in opinions, nor have we dictator-like\nobtruded our conceptions: but, in the humility of inquiries or\ndisquisitions, have only proposed them to more ocular discerners.  And we\nshall so far encourage contradiction as to promise no disturbance, or re-\noppose any pen, that shall fallaciously or captiously refute us.  And\nshall only take notice of such whose experimental and judicious knowledge\nshall be employed, not to traduce or extenuate, but to explain and\ndilucidate, to add and ampliate, according to the laudable custom of the\nancients in their sober promotions of learning.  Unto whom,\nnotwithstanding, we shall not contentiously rejoin, or only to justify\nour own, but to applaud or confirm his maturer assertions; and shall\nconfer what is in us unto his name and honour; ready, for our part, to be\nswallowed up in any worthy enlarger: as having our aid, if any way, or\nunder any name, we may obtain a work, so much desired, and yet\ndesiderated, of truth.'  Shall this Association, I wonder, raise up from\namong its members, such a worthy successor and enlarger of Sir Thomas\nBrowne?\n\nThe title, at least, of the _Urn-Burial_ is more familiar to the most of\nus than that of the _Pseudodoxia_.  It was the chance discovery of some\nancient urns in Norfolk that furnished Sir Thomas with the occasion to\nwrite his _Hydriotaphia_.  And that classical book is only another\nillustration of his enormous reading, ready memory, and intense interest\nin everything that touches on the nature of man, and on his beliefs,\nhabits, and hopes in all ages of his existence on this earth.  And the\neloquence and splendour of this wonderful piece is as arresting to the\nstudent of style as its immense information is to the scholar and the\nantiquarian.  'The conclusion of the essay on Urn-Burial,' says Carlyle,\n'is absolutely beautiful: a still elegiac mood, so soft, so deep, so\nsolemn and tender, like the song of some departed saint--an echo of\ndeepest meaning from the great and mighty Nations of the Dead.  Sir\nThomas Browne must have been a good man.'\n\n_The Garden of Cyrus_ is past all description of mine.  '_The Garden of\nCyrus_ must be read.  It is an extravagant sport of a scholar of the\nfirst rank and a genius of the first water.  'We write no herbal,' he\nbegins, and neither he does.  And after the most fantastical prose-poem\nsurely that ever was written, he as fantastically winds up at midnight\nwith this: 'To keep our eyes longer open were but to act our antipodes.\nThe huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their first\nsleep in Persia.'  At which Coleridge must incontinently whip out his\npencil till we have this note of his on the margin: 'What life! what\nfancy! what whimsicality!  Was ever such a reason given for leaving one's\nbook and going to bed as this, that they are already past their first\nsleep in Persia, and that the huntsmen are up in America?'\n\nSir Thomas Browne has had many admirers, and his greatest admirers are to\nbe found among our foremost men.  He has had Samuel Johnson among his\ngreatest admirers, and Coleridge, and Carlyle, and Hazlitt, and Lytton,\nand Walter Pater, and Leslie Stephen, and Professor Saintsbury; than whom\nno one of them all has written better on Browne.  And he has had princely\neditors and annotators in Simon Wilkin, and Dr. Greenhill, and Dr. Lloyd\nRoberts.  I must leave it to those eminent men to speak to you with all\ntheir authority about Sir Thomas Browne's ten talents: his unique natural\nendowments, his universal scholarship, his philosophical depth, 'his\nmelancholy yet affable irony,' his professional and scientific\nattainments, and his absolutely classical English style.  And I shall\ngive myself up, in ending this discourse, to what is of much more\nimportance to him and to us all, than all these things taken\ntogether,--for Sir Thomas Browne was a believing man, and a man of\nunfainting and unrelaxing prayer.  At the same time, and assuming, as he\ndoes, and that without usurpation, as he says, the style of a Christian,\nhe is in reality a Theist rather than a Christian: he is a moral and a\nreligious writer rather than an evangelical and an experimental writer.\nAnd in saying this, I do not forget his confession of his faith.  'But to\ndifference myself nearer,' he says, and 'to draw into a lesser circle,\nthere is no Church whose every part so squares unto my conscience: whose\nArticles, Constitutions, and Customs seem so consonant unto reason, and\nas it were framed to my particular Devotion, as this whereof I hold my\nBelief, the Church of England: to whose faith I am a sworn subject, and\ntherefore in a double Obligation subscribe unto her Articles, and\nendeavour to observe her Constitutions.'  The author of the _Religio\nMedici_ never writes a line out of joint, or out of tone or temper, with\nthat subscription.  At the same time, his very best writings fall far\nshort of the best writings of the Church of England.  Pater, in his fine\npaper, says that 'Sir Thomas Browne is occupied with religion first and\nlast in all he writes, scarcely less so than Hooker himself,' and that is\nthe simple truth.  Still, if the whole truth is to be told to those who\nwill not make an unfair use of it, Richard Hooker's religion is the whole\nChristian religion, in all its height and depth, and grace and truth, and\ndoctrinal and evangelical fulness: all of which can never be said of Sir\nThomas Browne.  I can well imagine Sir Thomas Browne recreating himself,\nand that with an immense delectation, over Hooker's superb First Book.\nHow I wish that I could say as much about the central six chapters of\nHooker's masterly Fifth Book: as also about his evangelical and immortal\n_Discourse of Justification_!  A well-read friend of mine suddenly said\nto me in a conversation we were holding the other day about Sir Thomas\nBrowne's religion, 'The truth is,' he said, 'Browne was nothing short of\na Pelagian, and that largely accounts for his popularity on the Continent\nof his day.'  That was a stroke of true criticism.  And Sir Thomas's own\nTertullian has the same thing in that most comprehensive and conclusive\nphrase of his: _anima naturaliter Christiana_.  But, that being admitted\nand accepted, which must be admitted and accepted in the interests of the\ntruth; this also must still more be proclaimed, admitted, and accepted,\nthat when he comes to God, and to Holy Scripture, and to prayer, and to\nimmortality, Sir Thomas Browne is a very prince of believers.  In all\nthese great regions of things Sir Thomas Browne's faith has a height and\na depth, a strength and a sweep, that all combine together to place him\nin the very foremost rank of our most classical writers on natural and\nrevealed religion.  Hooker himself in some respects gives place to Sir\nThomas Browne.\n\n'I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and\nthe Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind: and\ntherefore, God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because His\nordinary works convince it.  It is true, that a little philosophy\ninclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's\nminds about to religion.'  The old proverb, _Ubi tres medici, duo athei_,\ncast an opprobrium on the medical profession that can never have been\njust.  At the same time, that proverb may be taken as proving how little\ntrue philosophy there must have been at one time among the medical men of\nEurope.  Whereas, in Sir Thomas Browne at any rate, his philosophy was of\nsuch a depth that to him, as he repeatedly tells us, atheism, or anything\nlike atheism, had always been absolutely impossible.  'Mine is that\nmystical philosophy, from whence no true scholar becomes an atheist, but\nfrom the visible effects of nature, grows up a real divine, and beholds,\nnot in a dream, as Ezekiel, but in an ocular and visible object, the\ntypes of his resurrection.'  Nor can he dedicate his _Urn-Burial_ to his\nworthy and honoured friend without counselling him to 'run up his\nthoughts upon the Ancient of Days, the antiquary's truest object'; so\ncontinually does Browne's imagination in all his books pierce into and\nterminate upon Divine Persons and upon unseen and eternal things.  In his\nrare imagination, Sir Thomas Browne had the original root of a truly\nrefining, ennobling, and sanctifying faith planted in his heart by the\nhand of Nature herself.  No man, indeed, in the nature of things, can be\na believing Christian man without imagination.  A believing and a\nheavenly-minded man may have a fine imagination without knowing that he\nhas it.  He may have it without knowing or admitting the name of it.  He\nmay have it, and may be constantly employing it, without being taught,\nand without discovering, how most nobly and most fruitfully to employ it.\nNot Shakespeare; not Milton; not Scott: scarcely Tennyson or Browning\nthemselves, knew how best to employ their imagination.  Only Dante and\nBehmen of all the foremost sons of men.  Only they two turned all their\nsplendid and unapproached imagination to the true, and full, and final\nObjects of Christian faith.  Only to them two was their magnificent\nimagination the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things\nnot seen.  And though the _Religio_ does not at all rank with the\n_Commedia_ and the _Aurora_, at the same time, it springs up from, and it\nis strengthened and sweetened by the same intellectual and spiritual\nroot.  Up through all 'the weeds and tares of his brain,' as Sir Thomas\nhimself calls them, his imagination and his faith shot, and sprang, and\nspread, till they covered with their finest fruits his whole mind, and\nheart, and life.\n\nSir Thomas Browne was a noble illustration of Bacon's noble law.  For Sir\nThomas carried all his studies, experiments, and operations to such a\ndepth in his own mind, and heart, and imagination, that he was able to\ntestify to all his fellow-physicians that he who studies man and medicine\ndeeply enough will meet with as many intellectual, and scientific, and\nreligious adventures every day as any traveller will meet with in Africa\nitself.  As a living man of genius in the medical profession, Dr. George\nGould, has it in that wonderful Behmenite and Darwinian book of his, _The\nMeaning and the Method of Life_, 'A healing and a knitting wound,' he\nargues, 'is quite as good a proof of God as a sensible mind would\ndesire.'  This was Sir Thomas Browne's wise, and deep, and devout mind in\nall parts of his professional and personal life.  And he was man enough,\nand a man of true science and of true religion enough, to warn his\nbrethren against those 'academical reservations' to which their strong\nintellectual and professional pride, and their too weak faith and\ncourage, continually tempted them.  Nor has he, for his part, any\nclinical reservations in religion either, as so many of his brethren\nhave.  'I cannot go to cure the body of my patient,' he protests, 'but I\nforget my profession and call unto God for his soul.'  To call Sir Thomas\nBrowne sceptical, as has been a caprice and a fashion among his merely\nliterary admirers: and to say it, till it is taken for granted, that he\nis an English Montaigne: all that is an abuse of language.  It is, to all\nbut a small and select circle of writers and readers, utterly misleading\nand essentially untrue.  And, besides, it is right in the teeth of Sir\nThomas's own emphatic, and repeated, and indignant denial and repudiation\nof Montaigne.  Montaigne, with all his fascinations for literary men, and\nthey are great; and with all his services to them, and they are not\nsmall; is both an immoral and an unbelieving writer.  Whereas, Sir Thomas\nBrowne never wrote a single line, even in his greenest studies, that on\nhis deathbed he desired to blot out.  A purer, a humbler, a more devout\nand detached hand never put English pen to paper than was the hand of Sir\nThomas Browne.  And, if ever in his greener days he had a doubt about any\ntruth of natural or of revealed religion, he tells us that he had fought\ndown every such doubt in his closet and on his knees.\n\nI will not profanely paraphrase, or in any way water down the strong\nwords in which Sir Thomas Browne writes to himself in his secret papers\nabout prayer.  All that has been said about this very remarkable man only\nmakes what we are now to read all the more remarkable and memorable.  All\nSir Thomas Browne's readers owe an immense debt to Simon Wilkin; and for\nnothing more than for rescuing for us these golden words of this man of\nGod.  'They were not,' says Wilkin, 'intended by Browne for the perusal\nof his son, as so many of his private papers were, or of any one else.'\nAnd hence their priceless value.\n\n'To be sure that no day pass without calling upon God in a solemn,\nfervent prayer, seven times within the compass thereof.  That is, in the\nmorning, and at night, and five times between.  Taken up long ago from\nthe example of David and Daniel, and a compunction and shame that I had\nomitted it so long, when I heedfully read of the custom of the Mahometans\nto pray five times in the day.\n\n'To pray and magnify God in the night, and in my dark bed, when I cannot\nsleep; to have short ejaculations whenever I awake, and when the four\no'clock bell awakens me; or on my first discovery of the light, to say\nthis collect of our liturgy, Eternal God, who hast safely brought me to\nthe beginning of this day. . . .\n\n'To pray in all places where privacy inviteth: in any house, highway, or\nstreet: and to know no street or passage in this city which may not\nwitness that I have not forgot God and my Saviour in it; and that no\nparish or town where I have been may not say the like.\n\n'To take occasion of praying upon the sight of any church which I see or\npass by as I ride about.\n\n'Since the necessities of the sick, and unavoidable diversions of my\nprofession, keep me often from church; yet to take all possible care that\nI might never miss sacraments upon their accustomed days.\n\n'To pray daily and particularly for sick patients, and in general for\nothers, wheresoever, howsoever, under whose care soever; and at the\nentrance into the house of the sick, to say, The peace and mercy of God\nbe in this place.\n\n'After a sermon, to make a thanksgiving, and desire a blessing, and to\npray for the minister.\n\n'In tempestuous weather, lightning, and thunder, either night or day, to\npray for God's merciful protection upon all men, and His mercy upon their\nsouls, bodies, and goods.\n\n'Upon sight of beautiful persons, to bless God for His creatures: to pray\nfor the beauty of their souls, and that He would enrich them with inward\ngrace to be answerable to the outward.  Upon sight of deformed persons,\nto pray Him to send them inward graces, and to enrich their souls, and\ngive them the beauty of the resurrection.'\n\n* * * * *\n\n'But the greatest of these is charity.'  Charity is greater than great\ntalents.  Charity is greater than great industry.  Charity is greater\nthan great learning and great literature.  Charity is greater than great\nfaith.  Charity is greater than great prayer.  For charity is nothing\nless than the Divine Nature Itself in the heart of man.  In all English\nliterature two books stand out beside one another and are alone in this\nsupreme respect of charity: William Law's _Spirit of Love_, and Sir\nThomas Browne's _Religio Medici_.\n\n\n\n\nSELECTED PASSAGES\n\n\nSIR THOMAS ON HIMSELF\n\n\nI have ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and humane\ninclination I borrowed from my parents, and regulate it to the written\nand prescribed laws of charity; and if I hold the true anatomy of myself,\nI am delineated and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue.  For I am\nof a constitution so general that it comports and sympathiseth with all\nthings; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour,\nair, anything.  I wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs,\nsnails, and toadstools; nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but\nbeing amongst them, make them my common viands; and I find them agree\nwith my stomach as well as theirs.  I could digest a salad gathered in a\nchurchyard as well as in a garden.  I cannot start at the presence of a\nserpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander: at the sight of a toad or viper\nI find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them.  I feel not in\nmyself those common antipathies that I can discover in others.  Those\nnational repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the\nFrench, Italian, Spaniard, and Dutch: but where I find their actions in\nbalance with my countrymen's, I honour, love, and embrace them in the\nsame degree.  I was born in the eighth climate, but seem to be framed and\nconstellated unto all.  I am no plant that will not prosper out of a\ngarden: all places, all airs make unto me one country--I am in England\neverywhere, and under any meridian.  I have been shipwrecked, yet am not\nenemy with the sea or winds.  I can study, play, or sleep in a tempest.\nIn brief, I am averse from nothing: my conscience would give me the lie\nif I should absolutely detest or hate any essence but the devil; or so at\nleast abhor anything, but that we might come to composition.\n\nI am, I confess, naturally inclined to that which misguided zeal terms\nsuperstition: my common conversation I do acknowledge austere, my\nbehaviour full of rigour, sometimes not without morosity; yet at my\ndevotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, with\nall those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote my\ninvisible devotion.  I should violate my own arm rather than a church,\nnor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr.  At the sight of a\ncross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought\nor memory of my Saviour: I cannot laugh at, but rather pity the fruitless\njourneys of pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of friars; for\nthough misplaced in circumstances, there is something in it of devotion.\nI could never hear the Ave Maria bell without an elevation, or think it a\nsufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err\nin all, that is, in silence and dumb contempt; whilst therefore they\ndirect their devotions to her, I offer mine to God, and rectify the\nerrors of their prayers, by rightly ordering mine own.  At a solemn\nprocession I have wept abundantly, while my consorts, blind with\nopposition and prejudice, have fallen into an excess of scorn and\nlaughter.  There are, questionless, both in Greek, Roman, and African\nchurches, solemnities and ceremonies, whereof the wiser zeals do make a\nChristian use, and stand condemned by us, not as evil in themselves, but\nas allurements and baits of superstition to those vulgar heads that look\nasquint on the face of truth, and those unstable judgments that cannot\nconsist in the narrow point and centre of virtue without a reel or\nstagger to the circumference.\n\nAs for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties in\nreligion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they never\nstretched the _pia mater_ of mine.  Methinks there be not impossibilities\nenough in religion for an active faith; the deepest mysteries ours\ncontains, have not only been illustrated, but maintained by syllogism,\nand the rule of reason.  I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue my\nreason to an _O altitudo_!  It is my solitary recreation to pose my\napprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, with\nincarnation and resurrection.  I can answer all the objections of Satan\nand my rebellious reason, with that odd resolution I learned of\nTertullian, _Certum est quia impossible est_.  I desire to exercise my\nfaith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visible\nobjects, is not faith, but persuasion.  Some believe the better for\nseeing Christ's sepulchre; and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not\nof the miracle.  Now, contrarily, I bless myself, and am thankful that I\nlived not in the days of miracles; that I never saw Christ nor His\ndisciples.  I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed the\nRed Sea, nor one of Christ's patients on whom He wrought His wonders;\nthen had my faith been thrust upon me, nor should I enjoy that greater\nblessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not.  It is an easy and\nnecessary belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath examined: I\nbelieve He was dead and buried, and rose again; and desire to see Him in\nHis glory, rather than to contemplate Him in His cenotaph or sepulchre.\nNor is this much to believe; as we have reason, we owe this faith unto\nhistory.  They only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith, who\nlived before His coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mystical types\ncould raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities.\n\nNow for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were\nnot a history but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears like\na fable; for the world, I count it not an inn but an hospital; and a\nplace not to live, but to die in.  The world that I regard is myself; it\nis the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for the other,\nI use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my\nrecreation.  Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition\nand fortunes, do err in my altitude, for I am above Atlas's shoulders.\nThe earth is a point, not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of\nthat heavenly and celestial part within us; that mass of flesh that\ncircumscribes me limits not my mind; that surface that tells the heaven\nit hath an end cannot persuade me I have any.  I take my circle to be\nabove three hundred and sixty.  Though the number of the arc do measure\nmy body it comprehendeth not my mind.  Whilst I study to find how I am a\nmicrocosm, or little world, I find myself something more than the great.\nThere is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the\nelements, and owes no homage unto the sun.  Nature tells me I am the\nimage of God, as well as Scripture.  He that understands not thus much\nhath not his introduction, or first lesson, and is yet to begin the\nalphabet of man.\n\n\n\nON GOD\n\n\nIn my solitary and retired imagination, I remember I am not alone, and\ntherefore forget not to contemplate Him and His attributes who is ever\nwith me, especially those two mighty ones, His wisdom and eternity; with\nthe one I recreate, with the other I confound my understanding: for who\ncan speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without an\necstasy?  Time we may comprehend.  It is but five days older than\nourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world; but to retire so\nfar back as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite start\nforwards as to conceive an end in an essence that we affirm hath neither\nthe one nor the other, it puts my reason to St. Paul's sanctuary.  My\nphilosophy dares not say the angels can do it; God hath not made a\ncreature that can comprehend Him; it is a privilege of His own nature.  'I\nam that I am,' was His own definition unto Moses; and it was a short one,\nto confound mortality, that durst question God, or ask Him what He was;\nindeed He only is; all others have been and shall be.  But in eternity\nthere is no distinction of tenses; and therefore that terrible term,\npredestination, which hath troubled so many weak heads to conceive, and\nthe wisest to explain, is in respect to God no prescious determination of\nour estates to come, but a definitive blast of His will already\nfulfilled, and at the instant that He first decreed it; for to His\neternity which is indivisible, and altogether, the last trump is already\nsounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in Abraham's bosom.\n\nThat other attribute wherewith I recreate my devotion is His wisdom, in\nwhich I am happy; and for the contemplation of this only, do not repent\nme that I was bred in the way of study: the advantage I have of the\nvulgar, with the content and happiness I conceive therein, is an ample\nrecompense for all my endeavours, in what part of knowledge soever,\nWisdom is His most beauteous attribute; no man can attain unto it: yet\nSolomon pleased God when he desired it.  He is wise, because He knows all\nthings; and He knoweth all things, because He made them all: but His\ngreatest knowledge is in comprehending that He made not, that is,\nHimself.  And this is also the greatest knowledge in man.  For this do I\nhonour my own profession, and embrace the counsel even of the devil\nhimself: had he read such a lecture in paradise, as he did at Delphos, we\nhad better known ourselves; nor had we stood in fear to know him.  I know\nGod is wise in all, wonderful in what we conceive, but far more in what\nwe comprehend not; for we behold Him but asquint upon reflex or shadow;\nour understanding is dimmer than Moses' eye; we are ignorant of the back\nparts or lower side of His divinity; therefore to pry into the maze of\nHis counsels, is not only folly in man, but presumption even in angels;\nlike us, they are His servants, not His senators; He holds no counsel,\nbut that mystical one of the Trinity, wherein though there be three\npersons, there is but one mind that decrees without contradiction: nor\nneeds He any; His actions are not begot with deliberation, His wisdom\nnaturally knows what is best; His intellect stands ready fraught with the\nsuperlative and purest ideas of goodness; consultation and election,\nwhich are two motions in us, make but one in Him; His action springing\nfrom His power, at the first touch of His will.  These are contemplations\nmetaphysical: my humble speculations have another method, and are content\nto trace and discover those expressions he hath left in His creatures,\nand the obvious effects of nature; there is no danger to profound these\nmysteries, no _sanctum sanctorum_ in philosophy: the world was made to be\ninhabited by beasts; but studied and contemplated by man: it is the debt\nof our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not being\nbeasts; without this, the world is still as though it had not been, or as\nit was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature that\ncould conceive, or say there was a world.  The wisdom of God receives\nsmall honour from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with a\ngross rusticity admire His works; those highly magnify Him, whose\njudicious inquiry into His acts, and deliberate research into His\ncreatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration.  Therefore\n\n   Search where thou wilt, and let thy reason go\n   To ransom truth even to th' abyss below;\n   Rally the scattered causes: and that line\n   Which nature twists, be able to untwine;\n   It is thy Maker's will, for unto none,\n   But unto reason can He e'er be known.\n\n\n\nON THE SPIRIT OF GOD\n\n\nHowever, I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within us, yet\nmakes no part in us; and that is the Spirit of God, the fire and\nscintillation of that noble and mighty essence, which is the life and\nradical heat of spirits, and those essences that know not the virtue of\nthe sun, a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell.  This is that gentle\nheat that brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the world; this\nis that irradiation that dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of horror,\nfear, sorrow, despair; and preserves the region of the mind in serenity.\nWhatsoever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of this spirit\n(though I feel his pulse), I dare not say he lives; for truly without\nthis, to me there is no heat under the tropic; nor any light, though I\ndwelt in the body of the sun.\n\n   As when the labouring sun hath wrought his track\n   Up to the top of lofty Cancer's back,\n   The icy ocean cracks, the frozen pole\n   Thaws with the heat of the celestial coal;\n   So when Thy absent beams begin t'impart\n   Again a solstice on my frozen heart,\n   My winter's o'er, my drooping spirits sing,\n   And every part revives into a spring.\n   But if Thy quick'ning beams awhile decline,\n   And with their light bless not this orb of mine,\n   A chilly frost surpriseth every member,\n   And in the midst of June I feel December.\n   O how this earthly temper doth debase\n   The noble soul, in this her humble place!\n   Whose wingy nature ever doth aspire\n   To reach that place whence first it took its fire.\n   These flames I feel, which in my heart do dwell,\n   Are not Thy beams, but take their fire from hell.\n   O quench them all, and let Thy light divine,\n   Be as the sun to this poor orb of mine:\n   And to Thy sacred spirit convert those fires,\n   Whose earthly fumes choke my devout aspires.\n\n\n\nON THE MERCY OF GOD\n\n\nThe great attribute of God--His mercy; and, to be true, and speak my\nsoul, when I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into account the\nfinger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies,\neither in general to mankind, or in particular to myself: and whether out\nof the prejudice of my affection, or an inverting and partial conceit of\nHis mercies, I know not; but those which others term crosses,\nafflictions, judgments, misfortunes, to me, who inquire further into them\nthan their visible effects, they both appear, and in event have ever\nproved, the secret and dissembled favours of His affection.  It is a\nsingular piece of wisdom to apprehend truly, and without passion, the\nworks of God; and so well to distinguish His justice from His mercy, as\nnot to miscall those noble attributes; yet it is likewise an honest piece\nof logic, so to dispute and argue the proceedings of God, as to\ndistinguish even His judgments into mercies.  For God is merciful unto\nall, because better to the worst than the best deserve; and to say He\npunisheth none in this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity.  To\none that hath committed murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine,\nit were a madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the\nsentence rather than admire the clemency of the judge.  Thus our offences\nbeing mortal, and deserving not only death, but damnation; if the\ngoodness of God be content to traverse and pass them over with a loss,\nmisfortune, or disease, what frenzy were it to term this a punishment,\nrather than an extremity of mercy; and to groan under the rod of His\njudgments, rather than admire the sceptre of His mercies!\n\n\n\nON THE HOLY SCRIPTURES\n\n\nSuch I do believe the holy Scriptures; yet were it of man, I could not\nchoose but say, it was the singularest, and superlative piece that hath\nbeen extant since the creation; were I a Pagan, I should not refrain the\nlecture of it, and cannot but commend the judgment of Ptolemy, that\nthought not his library complete without it.  The Alcoran of the Turks (I\nspeak without prejudice) is an ill-composed piece, containing in it vain\nand ridiculous errors in philosophy, impossibilities, fictions, and\nvanities beyond laughter, maintained by evident and open sophisms, the\npolicy of ignorance, deposition of universities, and banishment of\nlearning, that hath gotten foot by arms and violence; this, without a\nblow, hath disseminated itself through the whole earth.  It is not\nunremarkable what Philo first observed, that the law of Moses continued\ntwo thousand years without the least alteration; whereas, we see the laws\nof other commonwealths do alter with occasions; and even those that\npretend their original from some divinity, to have vanished without trace\nor memory.  I believe, besides Zoroaster, there were divers that wrote\nbefore Moses, who, notwithstanding, have suffered the common fate of\ntime.  Men's works have an age like themselves, and though they outlive\ntheir authors, yet have they a stint and period to their duration.  This\nonly is a work too hard for the teeth of time, and cannot perish but in\nthe general flames, when all things shall confess their ashes.\n\nRest not in the high-strained paradoxes of old philosophy, supported by\nnaked reason, and the reward of mortal felicity; but labour in the ethics\nof faith, built upon heavenly assistance, and the happiness of both\nbeings.  Understand the rules, but swear not unto the doctrines of Zeno\nor Epicurus.  Look beyond Antonius, and terminate not thy morals in\nSeneca or Epictetus.  Let not the twelve but the two tables be thy law:\nlet Pythagoras be thy remembrancer, not thy textuary and final\ninstructor: and learn the vanity of the world, rather from Solomon than\nPhocylydes.  Sleep not in the dogmas of the Peripatus, Academy, or\nPorticus.  Be a moralist of the mount, an Epictetus in the faith, and\nchristianise thy notions.\n\n\n\nON PROVIDENCE\n\n\nAnd truly there goes a great deal of providence to produce a man's life\nunto threescore; there is more required than an able temper for those\nyears; though the radical humour contain in it sufficient oil for\nseventy, yet I perceive in some it gives no light past thirty: men assign\nnot all the causes of long life, that write whole books thereof.  They\nthat found themselves on the radical balsam, or vital sulphur of the\nparts, determine not why Abel lived not so long as Adam.  There is\ntherefore a secret glome or bottom of our days; it was his wisdom to\ndetermine them, but his perpetual and waking providence that fulfils and\naccomplishes them; wherein the spirits, ourselves, and all the creatures\nof God in a secret and disputed way do execute His will.  Let them not,\ntherefore, complain of immaturity that die about thirty: they fall but\nlike the whole world, whose solid and well-composed substance must not\nexpect the duration and period of its constitution; when all things are\ncompleted in it, its age is accomplished; and the last and general fever\nmay as naturally destroy it before six thousand, as me before forty.\nThere is therefore some other hand that twines the thread of life than\nthat of nature; we are not only ignorant in antipathies and occult\nqualities; our ends are as obscure as our beginnings; the line of our\ndays is drawn by night, and the various effects therein by a pencil that\nis invisible; wherein, though we confess our ignorance, I am sure we do\nnot err if we say it is the hand of God.\n\n\n\nON ANGELS\n\n\nTherefore for spirits, I am so far from denying their existence, that I\ncould easily believe, that not only whole countries, but particular\npersons have their tutelary and guardian angels; it is not a new opinion\nof the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato: there is\nno heresy in it, and if not manifestly defined in Scripture, yet is an\nopinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a man's\nlife, and would serve as an hypothesis to solve many doubts, whereof\ncommon philosophy affordeth no solution.  Now, if you demand my opinion\nand metaphysics of their natures, I confess them very shallow, most of\nthem in a negative way, like that of God; or in a comparative, between\nourselves and fellow-creatures; for there is in this universe a stair, or\nmanifest scale of creatures, rising not disorderly or in confusion, but\nwith a comely method and proportion.  Between creatures of mere existence\nand things of life, there is a large disproportion of nature; between\nplants and animals and creatures of sense, a wider difference; between\nthem and man, a far greater: and if the proportion hold on, between man\nand angels there should be yet a greater.  We do not comprehend their\nnatures, who retain the first definition of Porphyry, and distinguish\nthem from ourselves by immortality; for before his fall, it is thought\nman also was immortal; yet must we needs affirm that he had a different\nessence from the angels; having, therefore, no certain knowledge of their\nnatures, it is no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection we\nfind obscurely in ourselves, in a more complete and absolute way to\nascribe unto them.  I believe they have an extemporary knowledge, and\nupon the first motion of their reason do what we cannot without study or\ndeliberation; that they know things by their forms, and define by\nspecifical difference what we describe by accidents and properties; and\ntherefore probabilities to us may be demonstrations unto them: that they\nhave knowledge not only of the specifical, but numerical forms of\nindividuals, and understand by what reserved difference each single\nhypostasis (besides the relation to its species) becomes its numerical\nself.  That as the soul hath power to move the body it informs, so there\nis a faculty to move any, though inform none; ours upon restraint of\ntime, place, and distance; but that invisible hand that conveyed Habakkuk\nto the lions' den, or Philip to Azotos, infringeth this rule, and hath a\nsecret conveyance, wherewith mortality is not acquainted.  If they have\nthat intuitive knowledge, whereby, as in reflection, they behold the\nthoughts of one another, I cannot peremptorily deny but they know a great\npart of ours.  They that to refute the invocation of saints have denied\nthat they have any knowledge of our affairs below, have proceeded too\nfar, and must pardon my opinion, till I can thoroughly answer that piece\nof Scripture, 'At the conversion of a sinner the angels in heaven\nrejoice.'  I cannot with those in that great Father securely interpret\nthe work of the first day, _fiat lux_, to the creation of angels, though\nI confess there is not any creature that hath so near a glimpse of their\nnature, as light in the sun and elements.  We style it a bare accident,\nbut where it subsists alone it is a spiritual substance, and may be an\nangel: in brief, conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit.\n\nI could never pass that sentence of Paracelsus, without an asterisk, or\nannotation; _Ascendens constellatum multa revelat, quaerentibus magnalia\nnaturae_, i.e. _opera Dei_.  I do think that many mysteries ascribed to\nour own inventions have been the courteous revelations of spirits; for\nthose noble essences in heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow-\nnature on earth; and therefore believe that those many prodigies and\nominous prognostics which forerun the ruins of states, princes, and\nprivate persons are the charitable premonitions of good angels, which\nmore careless inquiries term but the effects of chance and nature.\n\n\n\nON MAN\n\n\nThese are certainly the magisterial and masterpieces of the Creator, the\nflower, or (as we may say) the best part of nothing, actually existing,\nwhat we are but in hopes, and probability; we are only that amphibious\npiece between a corporeal and spiritual essence, that middle form that\nlinks those two together, and makes good the method of God and nature,\nthat jumps not from extremes, but unites the incompatible distances by\nsome middle and participating natures.  That we are the breath and\nsimilitude of God, it is indisputable, and upon record of holy Scripture;\nbut to call ourselves a microcosm, or little world, I thought it only a\npleasant trope of rhetoric, till my near judgment and second thoughts\ntold me there was a real truth therein: for first we are a rude mass, and\nin the rank of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kind of being\nnot yet privileged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we\nlive the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at\nlast the life of spirits, running in one mysterious nature those five\nkinds of existences, which comprehend the creatures not only of the world\nbut of the universe; thus is man that great and true amphibium, whose\nnature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in divers\nelements, but in divided and distinguished worlds: for though there be\nbut one to sense, there are two to reason; the one visible, the other\ninvisible, whereof Moses seems to have left description, and of the other\nso obscurely, that some parts thereof are yet in controversy.  And truly\nfor the first chapters of Genesis, I must confess a great deal of\nobscurity; though divines have to the power of human reason endeavoured\nto make all go in a literal meaning, yet those allegorical\ninterpretations are also probable, and perhaps the mystical method of\nMoses, bred up in the hieroglyphical schools of the Egyptians.\n\nThe whole creation is a mystery, and particularly that of man.  At the\nblast of His mouth were the rest of the creatures made, and at His bare\nword they started out of nothing: but in the frame of man (as the text\ndescribes it) he played the sensible operator, and seemed not so much to\ncreate, as make him.  When he had separated the materials of other\ncreatures, there consequently resulted a form and soul; but having raised\nthe walls of man, he was driven to a second and harder creation of a\nsubstance like himself, an incorruptible and immortal soul. . . .  In our\nstudy of anatomy there is a mass of mysterious philosophy, and such as\nreduced the very heathens to divinity; yet amongst all those rare\ndiscoveries, and curious pieces I find in the fabric of man, I do not so\nmuch content myself, as in that I find not--that is, no organ or\ninstrument for the rational soul: for in the brain, which we term the\nseat of reason, there is not anything of moment more than I can discover\nin the cranium of a beast: and this is a sensible and no inconsiderable\nargument of the inorganity of the soul, at least in that sense we usually\nso conceive it.  Thus we are men, and we know not how; there is something\nin us that can be without us, and will be after us, though it is strange\nthat it hath no history what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it\nentered in us.\n\n\n\nON NATURE\n\n\nThus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity--besides that\nwritten one of God, another of His servant nature; that universal and\npublic manuscript, that lies expanded unto the eyes of all--those that\nnever saw Him in the one, have discovered Him in the other.  This was the\nscripture and theology of the heathens; the natural motion of the sun\nmade them more admire Him, than its supernatural station did the children\nof Israel; the ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in them\nthan in the other all His miracles: surely the heathens knew better how\nto join and read these mystical letters, than we Christians, who cast a\nmore careless eye on these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck\ndivinity from the flowers of nature.  Nor do I so forget God as to adore\nthe name of nature; which I define not with the schools, to be the\nprinciple of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that\nsettled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions\nof His creatures, according to their several kinds.  To make a revolution\nevery day, is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course\nwhich God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve, by a faculty\nfrom that voice which first did give it motion.  Now this course of\nnature God seldom alters or perverts, but like an excellent artist hath\nso contrived His work, that with the selfsame instrument, without a new\ncreation, He may effect His obscurest designs.  Thus He sweeteneth the\nwater with a wood, preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the blast\nof His mouth might have as easily created; for God is like a skilful\ngeometrician, who when more easily, and with one stroke of his compass,\nhe might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather to do this in a\ncircle or longer way, according to the constituted and fore-laid\nprinciples of his art: yet this rule of His He doth sometimes pervert, to\nacquaint the world with His prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reason\nshould question His power, and conclude He could not.  And thus I call\nthe effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she\nonly is; and therefore to ascribe His actions unto her, is to devolve the\nhonour of the principal agent upon the instrument; which, if with reason\nwe may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our\nhouses, and our pens receive the honour of our writing. . . .  Now nature\nis not at variance with art, nor art with nature: they being both\nservants of His providence.  Art is the perfection of nature: were the\nworld now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos.  Nature hath\nmade one world, and art another.  In brief, all things are artificial;\nfor nature is the art of God.\n\n\n\nON PHILOSOPHY\n\n\nBeware of philosophy, is a precept not to be received in too large a\nsense; for in this mass of nature there is a set of things that carry in\ntheir front, though not in capital letters, yet in stenography, and short\ncharacters, something of divinity, which to wiser reasons serve as\nluminaries in the abyss of knowledge, and to judicious beliefs, as scales\nand rundles to mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity.  The\nsevere schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that\nthis visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a\nportrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they\ncounterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric.\n\n\n\nON FINAL CAUSE\n\n\nThere is but one first cause, and four second causes of all things; some\nare without efficient, as God; others without matter, as angels; some\nwithout form, as the first matter: but every essence, created or\nuncreated, hath its final cause, and some positive end both of its\nessence and operation; this is the cause I grope after in the works of\nnature; on this hangs the providence of God.  To raise so beauteous a\nstructure, as the world and the creatures thereof, was but His art; but\ntheir sundry and divided operations, with their predestinated ends, are\nfrom the treasure of His wisdom.  In the causes, nature, and affections\nof the eclipses of the sun and moon, there is most excellent speculation;\nbut to profound farther, and to contemplate a reason why His providence\nhath so disposed and ordered their motions in that vast circle, as to\nconjoin and obscure each other, is a sweeter piece of reason, and a\ndiviner point of philosophy; therefore sometimes, and in some things,\nthere appears to me as much divinity in Galen's books _De Usu Partium_,\nas in Suarez's Metaphysics: had Aristotle been as curious in the inquiry\nof this cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him an\nimperfect piece of philosophy, but an absolute tract of divinity.\n\n\n\nON DEATH\n\n\nThis is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us so often cry,\nO Adam, _quid fecisti_?  I thank God I have not those straight ligaments\nor narrow obligations to the world as to dote on life, or be convulsed\nand tremble at the name of death.  Not that I am insensible of the dread\nand horror thereof, or by raking into the bowels of the deceased,\ncontinual sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous relics, like\nvespilloes, or grave-makers, I am become stupid, or have forgot the\napprehension of mortality; but that marshalling all the horrors, and\ncontemplating the extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able\nto daunt the courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian.  And\ntherefore am not angry at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to\nbear a part of this common fate, and like the best of them to die, that\nis, to cease to breathe, to take a farewell of the elements, to be a kind\nof nothing for a moment, to be within one instant of a spirit.  When I\ntake a full view and circle of myself, without this reasonable moderator\nand equal piece of justice, death, I do conceive myself the miserablest\nperson extant.  Were there not another life that I hope for, all the\nvanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath for me; could\nthe devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not\noutlive that very thought; I have so abject a conceit of this common way\nof existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this\nis to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity.  In\nexpectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my\nbest meditations do often desire death.  I honour any man that contemns\nit, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes me\nnaturally love a soldier, and honour those tattered and contemptible\nregiments that will die at the command of a sergeant.  For a pagan there\nmay be some motives to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be\namazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma, that he is too\nsensible of this life or hopeless of the life to come.\n\nI am naturally bashful, nor hath conversation, age, or travel, been able\nto effront or enharden me; yet I have one part of modesty which I have\nseldom discovered in another, that is, (to speak truly), I am not so much\nafraid of death, as ashamed thereof.  It is the very disgrace and\nignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us, that our\nnearest friends, wife and children stand afraid and start at us.  The\nbirds and beasts of the field, that before in a natural fear obeyed us,\nforgetting all allegiance, begin to prey upon us.  This very conceit hath\nin a tempest disposed and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss\nof waters; wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering\neyes, tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, _Quantum\nmutatus ab illo_!  Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or\ncan accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own\nvicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I\nmight not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any.\n\n\n\nON HEAVEN\n\n\nNow, the necessary mansions of our restored selves are those two contrary\nand incompatible places we call heaven and hell; to define them, or\nstrictly to determine what and where these are, surpasseth my divinity.\nThat elegant apostle which seemed to have a glimpse of heaven hath left\nbut a negative description thereof: 'which neither eye hath seen, nor ear\nhath heard, nor can enter into the heart of man': he was translated out\nof himself to behold it; but being returned into himself could not\nexpress it.  St. John's description by emeralds, chrysolites, and\nprecious stones is too weak to express the material heaven we behold.\nBriefly, therefore, where the soul hath the full measure and complement\nof happiness, where the boundless appetite of that spirit remains\ncompletely satisfied that it can neither desire addition nor alteration,\nthat I think is truly heaven: and this can only be in the enjoyment of\nthat essence whose infinite goodness is able to terminate the desires of\nitself, and the insatiable wishes of ours; wherever God will thus\nmanifest Himself, there is heaven, though within the circle of this\nsensible world.  Thus the soul of man may be in heaven anywhere, even\nwithin the limits of his own proper body; and when it ceaseth to live in\nthe body it may remain in its own soul, that is, its Creator.  And thus\nwe may say that St. Paul, whether in the body, or out of the body, was\nyet in heaven. . . .  Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of the\nEgyptians, committed a gross absurdity in philosophy when with these eyes\nof flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his Maker, that is truth\nitself, to a contradiction.\n\n\n\nON HELL\n\n\nMen commonly set forth the torments of hell by fire, and the extremity of\ncorporeal afflictions, and describe hell in the same method that Mahomet\ndoth heaven.  This indeed makes a noise, and drums in popular ears; but\nif this be the terrible piece thereof, it is not worthy to stand in\ndiameter with heaven, whose happiness consists in that part that is best\nable to comprehend it, that immortal essence, that translated divinity\nand colony of God, the soul.  Surely, though we place hell under earth,\nthe devil's walk and purlieu is about it: men speak too popularly who\nplace it in those flaming mountains, which to grosser apprehensions\nrepresent hell.  The heart of man is the place the devils dwell in.  I\nfeel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my\nbreast; Legion is revived in me.  There are as many hells as Anaxagoras\nconceited worlds.  There was more than one hell in Magdalene, when there\nwere seven devils; for every devil is a hell unto himself.  He holds\nenough of torture in his own _ubi_, and needs not the misery of\ncircumference to afflict him.  And thus, a distracted conscience here, is\na shadow or introduction unto hell hereafter.  Who can but pity the\nmerciful intention of those hands that do destroy themselves?  The devil,\nwere it in his power, would do the like; which being impossible, his\nmiseries are endless, and he suffers most in that attribute wherein he is\nimpassible--his immortality.\n\nI thank God that (with joy I mention it) I was never afraid of hell, nor\nnever grew pale at the description of that place.  I have so fixed my\ncontemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of hell, and\nam afraid rather to lose the joys of the one, than endure the misery of\nthe other--to be deprived of them is a perfect hell, and needs, methinks,\nno addition to complete our afflictions.  That terrible term hath never\ndetained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof.  I\nfear God, yet am not afraid of Him; His mercies make me ashamed of my\nsins, before His judgments afraid thereof.  These are the forced and\nsecondary methods of His wisdom, which He useth but as the last remedy,\nand upon provocation; a course rather to deter the wicked, than incite\nthe virtuous to His worship.  I can hardly think there was ever any\nscared into heaven: they go the fairest way to heaven that would serve\nGod without a hell.  Other mercenaries that crouch unto Him, in fear of\nhell, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed but the slaves\nof the Almighty.\n\n\n\nON PRAYER\n\n\nI cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in particular, without a\ncatalogue for my friends; nor request a happiness wherein my sociable\ndisposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour.  I never\nheard the toll of a passing-bell, though in my mirth, without my prayers\nand best wishes for the departing spirit.  I cannot go to cure the body\nof my patient, but I forget my profession, and call unto God for his\nsoul.  I cannot see one say his prayers, but instead of imitating him, I\nfall into a supplication for him, who, perhaps, is no more to me than a\ncommon nature; and if God hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications,\nthere are surely many happy that never saw me, and enjoy the blessing of\nmy unknown devotions.  To pray for enemies, that is, for their salvation,\nis no harsh precept, but the practice of our daily and ordinary\ndevotions.\n\n\n\nON CHARITY\n\n\nThe vulgarity of those judgments that wrap the Church of God in Strabo's\ncloak, and restrain it unto Europe, seem to me as bad geographers as\nAlexander, who thought he had conquered all the world, when he had not\nsubdued the half of any part thereof.  For we cannot deny the Church of\nGod both in Asia and Africa, if we do not forget the peregrinations of\nthe apostles, the deaths of the martyrs, the sessions of many, and, even\nin our reformed judgment, lawful councils, held in those parts in the\nminority and nonage of ours.  Nor must a few differences, more remarkable\nin the eyes of man than perhaps in the judgment of God, excommunicate\nfrom heaven one another, much less those Christians who are in a manner\nall martyrs, maintaining their faith in the noble way of persecution, and\nserving God in the fire, whereas we honour Him in the sunshine.  It is\ntrue we all hold there is a number of elect, and many to be saved; yet\ntake our opinions together, and from the confusion thereof there will be\nno such thing as salvation, nor shall any one be saved.  For first, the\nChurch of Rome condemneth us, we likewise them; the sub-reformists and\nsectaries sentence the doctrine of our Church as damnable; the atomist,\nor familist, reprobates all these; and all these them again.  Thus,\nwhilst the mercies of God do promise us heaven, our conceits and opinions\nexclude us from that place.  There must be therefore more than one St.\nPeter.  Particular churches and sects usurp the gates of heaven, and turn\nthe key against each other: and thus we go to heaven against each other's\nwills, conceits, and opinions, and, with as much uncharity as ignorance,\ndo err, I fear, in points not only of our own, but one another's\nsalvation.\n\nI believe many are saved, who to man seem reprobated; and many are\nreprobated who in the opinion and sentence of man stand elected.  There\nwill appear at the last day strange and unexpected examples, both of His\njustice and His mercy; and therefore to define either is folly in man,\nand insolency even in the devils.  Those acute and subtle spirits, in all\ntheir sagacity, can hardly divine who shall be saved; which if they could\nprognosticate, their labour were at an end; nor need they compass the\nearth, seeking whom they may devour.  Those who, upon a rigid application\nof the law, sentence Solomon unto damnation, condemn not only him but\nthemselves, and the whole world; for by the letter, and written word of\nGod, we are, without exception, in the state of death; but there is a\nprerogative of God, and an arbitrary pleasure above the letter of His own\nlaw, by which alone we can pretend unto salvation, and through which\nSolomon might be as easily saved as those who condemn him.\n\nThe number of those who pretend unto salvation, and those infinite swarms\nwho think to pass through the eye of this needle, have much amazed me.\nThat name and compellation of 'little flock' doth not comfort but deject\nmy devotion, especially when I reflect upon mine own unworthiness,\nwherein, according to my humble apprehensions, I am below them all.  I\nbelieve there shall never be an anarchy in heaven; but as there are\nhierarchies amongst the angels, so shall there be degrees of priority\namongst the saints.  Yet it is, I protest, beyond my ambition to aspire\nunto the first ranks; my desires only are, and I shall be happy therein,\nto be but the last man, and bring up the rear in heaven.\n\n\n\nON THE REFORMATION\n\n\nAs there were many reformers, so likewise many reformations; every\ncountry proceeding in a particular way and method, according as their\nnational interest, together with their constitution and clime inclined\nthem; some angrily, and with extremity; others calmly, and with\nmediocrity, not rending, but easily dividing the community, and leaving\nan honest possibility of a reconciliation; which, though peaceable\nspirits do desire, and may conceive that revolution of time and the\nmercies of God may effect, yet that judgment that shall consider the\npresent antipathies between the two extremes, their contrarieties in\ncondition, affection, and opinion, may with the same hopes expect a union\nin the poles of heaven.\n\nIt is the promise of Christ to make us all one flock; but how, and when\nthis union shall be, is as obscure to me as the last day.\n\n\n\nON A DYING PATIENT OF HIS\n\n\nUpon my first visit I was bold to tell them who had not let fall all\nhopes of his recovery, that in my sad opinion he was not like to behold a\ngrasshopper, much less to pluck another fig; and in no long time after\nseemed to discover that odd mortal symptom in him not mentioned by\nHippocrates, that is, to lose his own face, and look like some of his\nnear relations; for he maintained not his proper countenance, but looked\nlike his uncle, the lines of whose face lay deep and invisible in his\nhealthful visage before: for as from our beginning we run through variety\nof looks, before we come to consistent and settled faces; so before our\nend, by sick and languishing alterations, we put on new visages: and in\nour retreat to earth, may fall upon such looks which from community of\nseminal originals were before latent in us.\n\nNot to fear death, nor desire it, was short of his resolution: to be\ndissolved, and be with Christ, was his dying ditty.  He conceived his\nthread long, in no long course of years, and when he had scarce outlived\nthe second life of Lazarus; esteeming it enough to approach the years of\nhis Saviour, who so ordered His own human state as not to be old upon\nearth.\n\nThough age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might clearly\ndiscover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom is the grey\nhair, and an unspotted life old age; although his years came short, he\nmight have been said to have held up with longer livers, and to have been\nSolomon's old man.  And surely if we deduct all those days of our life\nwhich we might wish unlived, and which abate the comfort of those we now\nlive; if we reckon up only those days which God hath accepted of our\nlives, a life of good years will hardly be a span long: the son in this\nsense may outlive the father, and none be climacterically old.  He that\nearly arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age, is happily old without\nthe uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous to live unto\ngrey hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues of\nthem.  In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old man.\nHe that hath early arrived unto the measure of a perfect stature in\nChrist, hath already fulfilled the prime and longest intention of his\nbeing: and one day lived after the perfect rule of piety, is to be\npreferred before sinning immortality.\n\n\n\nON A HEAVENLY MIND\n\n\nLastly; if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation.\nReckon not upon long life: think every day the last, and live always\nbeyond thy account.  He that so often surviveth his expectation lives\nmany lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his days.  Time\npast is gone like a shadow; make time to come present.  Approximate thy\nlatter times by present apprehensions of them: be like a neighbour unto\nthe grave, and think there is but little to come.  And since there is\nsomething of us that will still live on, join both lives together, and\nlive in one but for the other.  He who thus ordereth the purposes of this\nlife, will never be far from the next; and is in some manner already in\nit, by a happy conformity and close apprehension of it.  And if, as we\nhave elsewhere declared, any have been so happy, as personally to\nunderstand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exolution, transformation,\nthe kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the divine shadow, according\nto mystical theology, they have already had an handsome anticipation of\nheaven; the world is in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.\n\n\n\nON THE RELIGIO MEDICI\n\n\nThis I confess, about seven years past, with some others of affinity\nthereto, for my private exercise and satisfaction I had at leisurable\nhours composed; which being communicated unto one, it became common unto\nmany, and was by transcription successively corrupted, until it arrived\nin a most depraved copy at the press.  He that shall peruse that work,\nand shall take notice of sundry particulars and personal expressions\ntherein, will easily discern the intention was not public: and being a\nprivate exercise directed to myself, what is delivered therein, was\nrather a memorial unto me, than an example or rule unto any other: and\ntherefore if there be any singularity therein correspondent unto the\nprivate conceptions of any man, it doth not advantage them: or if\ndissentaneous thereunto, it no way overthrows them.  It was penned in\nsuch a place, and with such disadvantage, that (I protest) from the first\nsetting of pen unto paper, I had not the assistance of any good book,\nwhereby to promote my invention, or relieve my memory, and therefore\nthere might be many real lapses therein, which others might take notice\nof, and more than I suspected myself.  It was set down many years past,\nand was the sense of my conception at that time, not an immutable law\nunto my advancing judgment at all times; and therefore there might be\nmany things therein plausible unto my past apprehension, which are not\nagreeable unto my present self.  There are many things delivered\nrhetorically, many expressions therein merely tropical, and as they best\nillustrate my intention, and therefore also there are many things to be\ntaken in a soft and flexible sense and not to be called unto the rigid\ntest of reason.  Lastly, all that is contained therein, is in submission\nunto maturer discernments; and as I have declared, shall no further\nfather them than the best and learned judgments shall authorise them;\nunder favour of which considerations I have made its secrecy public, and\ncommitted the truth thereof to every ingenuous reader.\n\n\n\nLAST LINES OF THE RELIGIO MEDICI\n\n\nBless me in this life with but peace of my conscience, command of my\naffections, the love of Thyself and my dearest friends, and I shall be\nhappy enough to pity Caesar.  These are, O Lord, the humble desires of my\nmost reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness on earth; wherein\nI set no rule or limit to Thy hand of Providence; dispose of me according\nto the wisdom of Thy pleasure.  Thy will be done, though in my own\nundoing.","title":"Sir Thomas Browne and his 'Religio Medici': An Appreciation","tradition":"scripture-revelation","translated_text":null,"word_count":16476}