by Sir Thomas Browne

Religio Medici — "The Religion of a Doctor" — was written by Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682) around 1635 during his years as a traveling physician. A private meditation that became public when a pirated copy appeared in 1642, the authorized first edition followed in 1643. In it, Browne reflects on his faith as a Church of England man who has traveled through Catholic France and Italy and Protestant Holland, and emerged with a charity broad enough to encompass them all.

The work ranges across theology, natural philosophy, the supernatural, death, friendship, music, and the nature of the soul, all in prose that Samuel Johnson called "vigorous but rugged, learned but pedantick." It was translated into Latin, Dutch, French, and German during the author's lifetime, imitated in no fewer than thirty-three treatises, and placed on the Vatican's Index of Forbidden Books — perhaps the truest compliment a work of religious tolerance could receive.

This text reproduces the eleventh edition (London, 1682), the last published in the author's lifetime, from the edition prepared by J. W. Willis Bund (Sampson Low, London, 1869). Editorial notes and footnotes have been removed; the text stands as Browne wrote it.

Introductory Note

Sir Thomas Browne (whose works occupy so prominent a position in the
literary history of the seventeenth century) is an author who is now
little known and less read. This comparative oblivion to which he has
been consigned is the more remarkable, as, if for nothing else, his
writings deserve to be studied as an example of the English language
in what may be termed a transition state. The prose of the Elizabethan
age was beginning to pass away and give place to a more inflated style
of writing—a style which, after passing through various stages of
development, culminated in that of Johnson.

Browne is one of the best early examples of this school; his style,
to quote Johnson himself, “is vigorous but rugged, it is learned but
pedantick, it is deep but obscure, it strikes but does not please, it
commands but does not allure. . . . It is a tissue of many languages, a
mixture of heterogeneous words brought together from distant regions.”

Yet in spite of this qualified censure, there are passages in Browne’s
works not inferior to any in the English language; and though his
writings may not be “a well of English undefiled,” yet it is the very
defilements that add to the beauty of the work.

But it is not only as an example of literary style that Browne deserves
to be studied. The matter of his works, the grandeur of his ideas, the
originality of his thoughts, the greatness of his charity, amply make
up for the deficiencies (if deficiencies there be) in his style. An
author who combined the wit of Montaigne with the learning of Erasmus,
and of whom even Hallam could say that “his varied talents wanted
nothing but the controlling supremacy of good sense to place him in the
highest rank of our literature,” should not be suffered to remain in
obscurity.

A short account of his life will form the best introduction to his
works.

Sir Thomas Browne was born in London, in the parish of St Michael le
Quern, on the 19th of October 1605. His father was a London merchant,
of a good Cheshire family; and his mother a Sussex lady, daughter of Mr
Paul Garraway of Lewis. His father died when he was very young, and his
mother marrying again shortly afterwards, Browne was left to the care
of his guardians, one of whom is said to have defrauded him out of some
of his property. He was educated at Winchester, and afterwards sent
to Oxford, to what is now Pembroke College, where he took his degree
of M.A. in 1629. Thereupon he commenced for a short time to practise
as a physician in Oxfordshire. But we soon find him growing tired of
this, and accompanying his father-in-law, Sir Thomas Dutton, on a
tour of inspection of the castles and forts in Ireland. We next hear
of Browne in the south of France, at Montpellier, then a celebrated
school of medicine, where he seems to have studied some little time.
From there he proceeded to Padua, one of the most famous of the Italian
universities, and noted for the views some of its members held on the
subjects of astronomy and necromancy. During his residence here, Browne
doubtless acquired some of his peculiar ideas on the science of the
heavens and the black art, and, what was more important, he learnt to
regard the Romanists with that abundant charity we find throughout his
works. From Padua, Browne went to Leyden, and this sudden change from
a most bigoted Roman Catholic to a most bigoted Protestant country
was not without its effect on his mind, as can be traced in his book.
Here he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and shortly afterwards
returned to England. Soon after his return, about the year 1635, he
published his “Religio Medici,” his first and greatest work, which
may be fairly regarded as the reflection of the mind of one who, in
spite of a strong intellect and vast erudition, was still prone to
superstition, but having

        “Through many cities strayed,
Their customs, laws, and manners weighed,”

had obtained too large views of mankind to become a bigot.

After the publication of his book he settled at Norwich, where he soon
had an extensive practice as a physician. From hence there remains
little to be told of his life. In 1637 he was incorporated Doctor of
Medicine at Oxford; and in 1641 he married Dorothy the daughter of
Edward Mileham, of Burlingham in Norfolk, and had by her a family of
eleven children.

In 1646 he published his “Pseudodoxia Epidemica,” or Enquiries into
Vulgar Errors. The discovery of some Roman urns at Burnham in Norfolk,
led him in 1658 to write his “Hydriotaphia” (Urn-burial); he also
published at the same time “The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincunxcial
Lozenge of the Ancients,” a curious work, but far inferior to his other
productions.

In 1665 he was elected an honorary Fellow of the College of Physicians,
“virtute et literis ornatissimus.”

Browne had always been a Royalist. In 1643 he had refused to subscribe
to the fund that was then being raised for regaining Newcastle. He
proved a happy exception to the almost proverbial neglect the Royalists
received from Charles II. in 1671, for when Charles was at Newmarket,
he came over to see Norwich, and conferred the honour of knighthood
on Browne. His reputation was now very great. Evelyn paid a visit to
Norwich for the express purpose of seeing him; and at length, on his
76th birthday (19th October 1682), he died, full of years and honours.

It was a striking coincidence that he who in his Letter to a Friend
had said that “in persons who outlive many years, and when there are
no less than 365 days to determine their lives in every year, that
the first day should mark the last, that the tail of the snake should
return into its mouth precisely at that time, and that they should wind
up upon the day of their nativity, is indeed a remarkable coincidence,
which, though astrology hath taken witty pains to solve, yet hath it
been very wary in making predictions of it,” should himself die on the
day of his birth.

Browne was buried in the church of St Peter, Mancroft, Norwich, where
his wife erected to his memory a mural monument, on which was placed
an English and Latin inscription, setting forth that he was the author
of “Religio Medici,” “Pseudodoxia Epidemica,” and other learned works
“per orbem notissimus.” Yet his sleep was not to be undisturbed; his
skull was fated to adorn a museum! In 1840, while some workmen were
digging a vault in the chancel of St Peter’s, they found a coffin with
an inscription—

“Amplissimus Vir
Dus Thomas Browne Miles Medicinæ
Dr Annis Natus 77 Denatus 19 Die
Mensis Octobris Anno Dnj 1682 hoc.
Loculo indormiens Corporis Spagyrici
pulvere plumbum in aurum
convertit.”

The translation of this inscription raised a storm over his ashes,
which Browne would have enjoyed partaking in, the word spagyricus
being an enigma to scholars. Mr Firth of Norwich (whose translation
seems the best) thus renders the inscription:—

“The very distinguished man, Sir Thomas Browne, Knight, Doctor of
Medicine, aged 77 years, who died on the 19th of October, in the year
of our Lord 1682, sleeping in this coffin of lead, by the dust of his
alchemic body, transmutes it into a coffer of gold.”

After Sir Thomas’s death, two collections of his works were published,
one by Archbishop Tenison, and the other in 1772. They contain most
of his letters, his tracts on various subjects, and his Letter to a
Friend. Various editions of parts of Browne’s works have from time to
time appeared. By far the best edition of the whole of them is that
published by Simon Wilkin.

It is upon his “Religio Medici”—the religion of a physician—that
Browne’s fame chiefly rests. It was his first and most celebrated work,
published just after his return from his travels; it gives us the
impressions made on his mind by the various and opposite schools he had
passed through. He tells us that he never intended to publish it, but
that on its being surreptitiously printed, he was induced to do so. In
1643, the first genuine edition appeared, with “an admonition to such
as shall peruse the observations upon a former corrupt copy of this
book.” The observations here alluded to, were written by Sir Kenelm
Digby, and sent by him to the Earl of Dorset. They were first printed
at the end of the edition of 1643, and have ever since been published
with the book. Their chief merit consists in the marvellous rapidity
with which they were written, Sir Kenelm having, as he tells us, bought
the book, read it, and written his observations, in the course of
twenty-four hours!

The book contains what may be termed an apology for his belief. He
states the reasons on which he grounds his opinions, and endeavours
to show that, although he had been accused of atheism, he was in all
points a good Christian, and a loyal member of the Church of England.
Each person must judge for himself of his success; but the effect it
produced on the mind of Johnson may be noticed. “The opinions of every
man,” says he, “must be learned from himself; concerning his practice,
it is safer to trust to the evidence of others. When the testimonies
concur, no higher degree of historical certainty can be obtained; and
they apparently concur to prove that Browne was a zealous adherent to
the faith of Christ, that he lived in obedience to His laws, and died
in confidence of His mercy.”

The best proof of the excellence of the “Religio” is to be found in
its great success. During the author’s life, from 1643 to 1681, it
passed through eleven editions. It has been translated into Latin,
Dutch, French, and German, and many of the translations have passed
through several editions. No less than thirty-three treatises have been
written in imitation of it; and what, to some, will be the greatest
proof of all, it was soon after its publication placed in the Index
Expurgatorius. The best proof of its liberality of sentiment is in the
fact that its author was claimed at the same time by the Romanists and
Quakers to be a member of their respective creeds!

The “Hydriotaphia,” or Urn-burial, is a treatise on the funeral rites
of ancient nations. It was caused by the discovery of some Roman urns
in Norfolk. Though inferior to the “Religio,” “there is perhaps none of
his works which better exemplifies his reading or memory.”

The text of the present edition of the “Religio Medici” is taken from
what is called the eighth edition, but is in reality the eleventh,
published in London in 1682, the last edition in the author’s lifetime.
The notes are for the most part compiled from the observations of Sir
Kenelm Digby, the annotation of Mr. Keck, and the very valuable notes
of Simon Wilkin. For the account of the finding of Sir Thomas Browne’s
skull I am indebted to Mr Friswell’s notice of Sir Thomas in his
“Varia.” The text of the “Hydriotaphia” is taken from the folio edition
of 1686, in the Lincoln’s Inn library. Some of Browne’s notes to that
edition have been omitted, and most of the references, as they refer to
books which are not likely to be met with by the general reader.

The “Letter to a Friend, upon the occasion of the Death of his intimate
Friend,” was first published in a folio pamphlet in 1690. It was
reprinted in his posthumous works. The concluding reflexions are the
basis of a larger work, “Christian Morals.” I am not aware of any
complete modern edition of it. The text of the present one is taken
from the original edition of 1690. The pamphlet is in the British
Museum, bound up with a volume of old poems. It is entitled, “A Letter
to a Friend, upon the occasion of the Death of his intimate Friend.
By the learned Sir Thomas Brown, Knight, Doctor of Physick, late of
Norwich. London: Printed for Charles Brone, at the Gun, at the West End
of St Paul’s Churchyard, 1690.”

To the Reader

Certainly that man were greedy of life, who should desire to live when
all the world were at an end; and he must needs be very impatient,
who would repine at death in the society of all things that suffer
under it. Had not almost every man suffered by the press, or were not
the tyranny thereof become universal, I had not wanted reason for
complaint: but in times wherein I have lived to behold the highest
perversion of that excellent invention, the name of his Majesty
defamed, the honour of Parliament depraved, the writings of both
depravedly, anticipatively, counterfeitly, imprinted: complaints may
seem ridiculous in private persons; and men of my condition may be as
incapable of affronts, as hopeless of their reparations. And truly had
not the duty I owe unto the importunity of friends, and the allegiance
I must ever acknowledge unto truth, prevailed with me; the inactivity
of my disposition might have made these sufferings continual, and
time, that brings other things to light, should have satisfied me in
the remedy of its oblivion. But because things evidently false are
not only printed, but many things of truth most falsely set forth;
in this latter I could not but think myself engaged: for, though we
have no power to redress the former, yet in the other reparation being
within ourselves, I have at present represented unto the world a
full and intended copy of that piece, which was most imperfectly and
surreptitiously published before.

This I confess, about seven years past, with some others of affinity
thereto, for my private exercise and satisfaction, I had at leisurable
hours composed; which being communicated unto one, it became common
unto many, and was by transcription successively corrupted, until it
arrived in a most depraved copy at the press. He that shall peruse
that work, and shall take notice of sundry particulars and personal
expressions therein, will easily discern the intention was not publick:
and, being a private exercise directed to myself, what is delivered
therein was rather a memorial unto me, than an example or rule unto any
other: and therefore, if there be any singularity therein correspondent
unto the private conceptions of any man, it doth not advantage them; or
if dissentaneous thereunto, it no way overthrows them. It was penned
in such a place, and with such disadvantage, that (I protest), from
the first setting of pen unto paper, I had not the assistance of any
good book, whereby to promote my invention, or relieve my memory; and
therefore there might be many real lapses therein, which others might
take notice of, and more that I suspected myself. It was set down
many years past, and was the sense of my conceptions at that time,
not an immutable law unto my advancing judgment at all times; and
therefore there might be many things therein plausible unto my passed
apprehension, which are not agreeable unto my present self. There are
many things delivered rhetorically, many expressions therein merely
tropical, and as they best illustrate my intention; and therefore also
there are many things to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and
not to be called unto the rigid test of reason. Lastly, all that is
contained therein is in submission unto maturer discernments; and, as I
have declared, shall no further father them than the best and learned
judgments shall authorize them: under favour of which considerations, I
have made its secrecy publick, and committed the truth thereof to every
ingenuous reader.

THOMAS BROWNE.

Part the First

For my religion, though there be several circumstances that
might persuade the world I have none at all,—as the general scandal of
my profession,—the natural course of my studies,—the indifferency
of my behaviour and discourse in matters of religion (neither violently
defending one, nor with that common ardour and contention opposing
another),—yet, in despite hereof, I dare without usurpation assume
the honourable style of a Christian. Not that I merely owe this title
to the font, my education, or the clime wherein I was born, as being
bred up either to confirm those principles my parents instilled into my
understanding, or by a general consent proceed in the religion of my
country; but having, in my riper years and confirmed judgment, seen and
examined all, I find myself obliged, by the principles of grace, and
the law of mine own reason, to embrace no other name but this. Neither
doth herein my zeal so far make me forget the general charity I owe
unto humanity, as rather to hate than pity Turks, Infidels, and (what
is worse) Jews; rather contenting myself to enjoy that happy style,
than maligning those who refuse so glorious a title.

But, because the name of a Christian is become too general
to express our faith,—there being a geography of religion as well
as lands, and every clime distinguished not only by their laws and
limits, but circumscribed by their doctrines and rules of faith,—to
be particular, I am of that reformed new-cast religion, wherein I
dislike nothing but the name; of the same belief our Saviour taught,
the apostles disseminated, the fathers authorized, and the martyrs
confirmed; but, by the sinister ends of princes, the ambition and
avarice of prelates, and the fatal corruption of times, so decayed,
impaired, and fallen from its native beauty, that it required the
careful and charitable hands of these times to restore it to its
primitive integrity. Now, the accidental occasion whereupon, the
slender means whereby, the low and abject condition of the person
by whom, so good a work was set on foot, which in our adversaries
beget contempt and scorn, fills me with wonder, and is the very same
objection the insolent pagans first cast at Christ and his disciples.

Yet have I not so shaken hands with those desperate
resolutions who had rather venture at large their decayed bottom,
than bring her in to be new-trimmed in the dock,—who had rather
promiscuously retain all, than abridge any, and obstinately be what
they are, than what they have been,—as to stand in diameter and
sword’s point with them. We have reformed from them, not against them:
for, omitting those improperations and terms of scurrility betwixt
us, which only difference our affections, and not our cause, there is
between us one common name and appellation, one faith and necessary
body of principles common to us both; and therefore I am not scrupulous
to converse and live with them, to enter their churches in defect of
ours, and either pray with them or for them. I could never perceive any
rational consequences from those many texts which prohibit the children
of Israel to pollute themselves with the temples of the heathens; we
being all Christians, and not divided by such detested impieties as
might profane our prayers, or the place wherein we make them; or that a
resolved conscience may not adore her Creator anywhere, especially in
places devoted to his service; if their devotions offend him, mine may
please him: if theirs profane it, mine may hallow it. Holy water and
crucifix (dangerous to the common people) deceive not my judgment, nor
abuse my devotion at all. I am, I confess, naturally inclined to that
which misguided zeal terms superstition: my common conversation I do
acknowledge austere, my behaviour full of rigour, sometimes not without
morosity; yet, at my devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my
hat, and hand, with all those outward and sensible motions which may
express or promote my invisible devotion. I should violate my own arm
rather than a church; nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr.
At the sight of a cross, or crucifix, I can dispense with my hat, but
scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour. I cannot laugh at,
but rather pity, the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the
miserable condition of friars; for, though misplaced in circumstances,
there is something in it of devotion. I could never hear the Ave-Mary
bell without an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant,
because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all,—that
is, in silence and dumb contempt. Whilst, therefore, they direct their
devotions to her, I offered mine to God; and rectify the errors of
their prayers by rightly ordering mine own. At a solemn procession I
have wept abundantly, while my consorts, blind with opposition and
prejudice, have fallen into an excess of scorn and laughter. There are,
questionless, both in Greek, Roman, and African churches, solemnities
and ceremonies, whereof the wiser zeals do make a Christian use; and
stand condemned by us, not as evil in themselves, but as allurements
and baits of superstition to those vulgar heads that look asquint on
the face of truth, and those unstable judgments that cannot resist in
the narrow point and centre of virtue without a reel or stagger to the
circumference.
In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the church is
my text; where that speaks, ’tis but my comment; where there is a
joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome
or Geneva, but from the dictates of my own reason. It is an unjust
scandal of our adversaries, and a gross error in ourselves, to compute
the nativity of our religion from Henry the Eighth; who, though he
rejected the Pope, refused not the faith of Rome, and effected no
more than what his own predecessors desired and essayed in ages past,
and it was conceived the state of Venice would have attempted in our
days. It is as uncharitable a point in us to fall upon those popular
scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs of the Bishop of Rome, to whom, as
a temporal prince, we owe the duty of good language. I confess there is
a cause of passion between us: by his sentence I stand excommunicated;
heretic is the best language he affords me: yet can no ear witness I
ever returned to him the name of antichrist, man of sin, or whore of
Babylon. It is the method of charity to suffer without reaction: those
usual satires and invectives of the pulpit may perchance produce a good
effect on the vulgar, whose ears are opener to rhetoric than logic; yet
do they, in no wise, confirm the faith of wiser believers, who know
that a good cause needs not be pardoned by passion, but can sustain
itself upon a temperate dispute.

I could never divide myself from any man upon the
difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not
agreeing with me in that from which, perhaps, within a few days, I
should dissent myself. I have no genius to disputes in religion:
and have often thought it wisdom to decline them, especially upon a
disadvantage, or when the cause of truth might suffer in the weakness
of my patronage. Where we desire to be informed, ’tis good to contest
with men above ourselves; but, to confirm and establish our opinions,
’tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent
spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an
esteem and confirmed opinion of our own. Every man is not a proper
champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of
verity; many, from the ignorance of these maxims, and an inconsiderate
zeal unto truth, have too rashly charged the troops of error and
remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in as just
possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender; ’tis
therefore far better to enjoy her with peace than to hazard her on a
battle. If, therefore, there rise any doubts in my way, I do forget
them, or at least defer them, till my better settled judgment and
more manly reason be able to resolve them; for I perceive every man’s
own reason is his best Œdipus, and will, upon a reasonable truce,
find a way to loose those bonds wherewith the subtleties of error
have enchained our more flexible and tender judgments. In philosophy,
where truth seems double-faced, there is no man more paradoxical than
myself: but in divinity I love to keep the road; and, though not in an
implicit, yet an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the church,
by which I move; not reserving any proper poles, or motion from the
epicycle of my own brain. By this means I have no gap for heresy,
schisms, or errors, of which at present, I hope I shall not injure
truth to say, I have no taint or tincture. I must confess my greener
studies have been polluted with two or three; not any begotten in the
latter centuries, but old and obsolete, such as could never have been
revived but by such extravagant and irregular heads as mine. For,
indeed, heresies perish not with their authors; but, like the river
Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place, they rise
up again in another. One general council is not able to extirpate one
single heresy: it may be cancelled for the present; but revolution
of time, and the like aspects from heaven, will restore it, when it
will flourish till it be condemned again. For, as though there were
metempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions
do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that
first begat them. To see ourselves again, we need not look for Plato’s
year: every man is not only himself; there have been many Diogenes,
and as many Timons, though but few of that name; men are lived over
again; the world is now as it was in ages past; there was none then,
but there hath been some one since, that parallels him, and is, as it
were, his revived self.
that
the souls of men perished with their bodies, but should yet be raised
again at the last day: not that I did absolutely conceive a mortality
of the soul, but, if that were (which faith, not philosophy, hath yet
thoroughly disproved), and that both entered the grave together, yet
I held the same conceit thereof that we all do of the body, that it
rise again. Surely it is but the merits of our unworthy natures, if we
sleep in darkness until the last alarm. A serious reflex upon my own
unworthiness did make me backward from challenging this prerogative
of my soul: so that I might enjoy my Saviour at the last, I could
with patience be nothing almost unto eternity. The second was that of
Origen; that God would not persist in his vengeance for ever, but,
after a definite time of his wrath, would release the damned souls
from torture; which error I fell into upon a serious contemplation of
the great attribute of God, his mercy; and did a little cherish it
in myself, because I found therein no malice, and a ready weight to
sway me from the other extreme of despair, whereunto melancholy and
contemplative natures are too easily disposed. A third there is, which
I did never positively maintain or practise, but have often wished it
had been consonant to truth, and not offensive to my religion; and
that is, the prayer for the dead; whereunto I was inclined from some
charitable inducements, whereby I could scarce contain my prayers for
a friend at the ringing of a bell, or behold his corpse without an
orison for his soul. ’Twas a good way, methought, to be remembered by
posterity, and far more noble than a history. These opinions I never
maintained with pertinacity, or endeavoured to inveigle any man’s
belief unto mine, nor so much as ever revealed, or disputed them with
my dearest friends; by which means I neither propagated them in others
nor confirmed them in myself: but, suffering them to flame upon their
own substance, without addition of new fuel, they went out insensibly
of themselves; therefore these opinions, though condemned by lawful
councils, were not heresies in me, but bare errors, and single lapses
of my understanding, without a joint depravity of my will. Those have
not only depraved understandings, but diseased affections, which cannot
enjoy a singularity without a heresy, or be the author of an opinion
without they be of a sect also. This was the villany of the first
schism of Lucifer; who was not content to err alone, but drew into his
faction many legions; and upon this experience he tempted only Eve,
well understanding the communicable nature of sin, and that to deceive
but one was tacitly and upon consequence to delude them both.

That heresies should arise, we have the prophecy of Christ;
but, that old ones should be abolished, we hold no prediction. That
there must be heresies, is true, not only in our church, but also in
any other: even in the doctrines heretical there will be superheresies;
and Arians, not only divided from the church, but also among
themselves: for heads that are disposed unto schism, and complexionally
propense to innovation, are naturally indisposed for a community;
nor will be ever confined unto the order or economy of one body; and
therefore, when they separate from others, they knit but loosely among
themselves; nor contented with a general breach or dichotomy with
their church, do subdivide and mince themselves almost into atoms.
’Tis true, that men of singular parts and humours have not been free
from singular opinions and conceits in all ages; retaining something,
not only beside the opinion of his own church, or any other, but also
any particular author; which, notwithstanding, a sober judgment may
do without offence or heresy; for there is yet, after all the decrees
of councils, and the niceties of the schools, many things, untouched,
unimagined, wherein the liberty of an honest reason may play and
expatiate with security, and far without the circle of a heresy.

As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy
subtleties in religion, which have unhinged the brains of better
heads, they never stretched the pia mater of mine. Methinks
there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith:
the deepest mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated,
but maintained, by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose
myself in a mystery; to pursue my reason to an O altitudo! ’Tis my
solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas
and riddles of the Trinity—with incarnation and resurrection. I can
answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that
odd resolution I learned of Tertullian, “Certum est quia impossibile
est.” I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for, to
credit ordinary and visible objects, is not faith, but persuasion. Some
believe the better for seeing Christ’s sepulchre; and, when they have
seen the Red Sea, doubt not of the miracle. Now, contrarily, I bless
myself, and am thankful, that I lived not in the days of miracles; that
I never saw Christ nor his disciples. I would not have been one of
those Israelites that passed the Red Sea; nor one of Christ’s patients,
on whom he wrought his wonders: then had my faith been thrust upon me;
nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe
and saw not. ’Tis an easy and necessary belief, to credit what our eye
and sense hath examined. I believe he was dead, and buried, and rose
again; and desire to see him in his glory, rather than to contemplate
him in his cenotaph or sepulchre. Nor is this much to believe; as
we have reason, we owe this faith unto history: they only had the
advantage of a bold and noble faith, who lived before his coming, who,
upon obscure prophesies and mystical types, could raise a belief, and
expect apparent impossibilities.

’Tis true, there is an edge in all firm belief, and
with an easy metaphor we may say, the sword of faith; but in these
obscurities I rather use it in the adjunct the apostle gives it, a
buckler; under which I conceive a wary combatant may lie invulnerable.
Since I was of understanding to know that we knew nothing, my reason
hath been more pliable to the will of faith: I am now content to
understand a mystery, without a rigid definition, in an easy and
Platonic description. That allegorical description of Hermes
pleaseth me beyond all the metaphysical definitions of divines. Where
I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy: I had as lieve
you tell me that anima est angelus hominis, est corpus Dei, as
ἐντελέχεια;—lux est umbra Dei, as actus perspicui. Where there
is an obscurity too deep for our reason, ’tis good to sit down with a
description, periphrasis, or adumbration; for, by acquainting our
reason how unable it is to display the visible and obvious effects of
nature, it becomes more humble and submissive unto the subtleties of
faith: and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop unto
the lure of faith. I believe there was already a tree, whose fruit our
unhappy parents tasted, though, in the same chapter when God forbids
it, ’tis positively said, the plants of the field were not yet grown;
for God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. I believe that the
serpent (if we shall literally understand it), from his proper form
and figure, made his motion on his belly, before the curse. I find the
trial of the pucelage and virginity of women, which God ordained the
Jews, is very fallible. Experience and history informs me that, not
only many particular women, but likewise whole nations, have escaped
the curse of childbirth, which God seems to pronounce upon the whole
sex; yet do I believe that all this is true, which, indeed, my reason
would persuade me to be false: and this, I think, is no vulgar part of
faith, to believe a thing not only above, but contrary to, reason, and
against the arguments of our proper senses.

In my solitary and retired imagination (“neque enim cum
porticus aut me lectulus accepit, desum mihi”), I remember I am not
alone; and therefore forget not to contemplate him and his attributes,
who is ever with me, especially those two mighty ones, his wisdom
and eternity. With the one I recreate, with the other I confound, my
understanding: for who can speak of eternity without a solecism, or
think thereof without an ecstasy? Time we may comprehend; ’tis but five
days elder than ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world;
but, to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning,—to give such
an infinite start forwards as to conceive an end,—in an essence that
we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my reason to St
Paul’s sanctuary: my philosophy dares not say the angels can do it.
God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him; ’tis a privilege
of his own nature: “I am that I am” was his own definition unto Moses;
and ’twas a short one to confound mortality, that durst question God,
or ask him what he was. Indeed, he only is; all others have and shall
be; but, in eternity, there is no distinction of tenses; and therefore
that terrible term, predestination, which hath troubled so many weak
heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in respect to God no
prescious determination of our estates to come, but a definitive blast
of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that he first decreed
it; for, to his eternity, which is indivisible, and altogether, the
last trump is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the
blessed in Abraham’s bosom. St Peter speaks modestly, when he saith,
“a thousand years to God are but as one day;” for, to speak like a
philosopher, those continued instances of time, which flow into a
thousand years, make not to him one moment. What to us is to come, to
his eternity is present; his whole duration being but one permanent
point, without succession, parts, flux, or division.

There is no attribute that adds more difficulty to the
mystery of the Trinity, where, though in a relative way of Father and
Son, we must deny a priority. I wonder how Aristotle could conceive
the world eternal, or how he could make good two eternities. His
similitude, of a triangle comprehended in a square, doth somewhat
illustrate the trinity of our souls, and that the triple unity of God;
for there is in us not three, but a trinity of, souls; because there
is in us, if not three distinct souls, yet differing faculties, that
can and do subsist apart in different subjects, and yet in us are thus
united as to make but one soul and substance. If one soul were so
perfect as to inform three distinct bodies, that were a pretty trinity.
Conceive the distinct number of three, not divided nor separated by
the intellect, but actually comprehended in its unity, and that a
perfect trinity. I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras,
and the secret magick of numbers. “Beware of philosophy,” is a precept
not to be received in too large a sense: for, in this mass of nature,
there is a set of things that carry in their front, though not in
capital letters, yet in stenography and short characters, something of
divinity; which, to wiser reasons, serve as luminaries in the abyss of
knowledge, and, to judicious beliefs, as scales and roundles to mount
the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity. The severe schools shall
never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world
is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a portrait, things
are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some
real substance in that invisible fabrick.

That other attribute, wherewith I recreate my devotion, is
his wisdom, in which I am happy; and for the contemplation of this only
do not repent me that I was bred in the way of study. The advantage I
have therein, is an ample recompense for all my endeavours, in what
part of knowledge soever. Wisdom is his most beauteous attribute:
no man can attain unto it: yet Solomon pleased God when he desired
it. He is wise, because he knows all things; and he knoweth all
things, because he made them all: but his greatest knowledge is in
comprehending that he made not, that is, himself. And this is also the
greatest knowledge in man. For this do I honour my own profession,
and embrace the counsel even of the devil himself: had he read such a
lecture in Paradise as he did at Delphos, we had better known
ourselves; nor had we stood in fear to know him. I know God is wise in
all; wonderful in what we conceive, but far more in what we comprehend
not: for we behold him but asquint, upon reflex or shadow; our
understanding is dimmer than Moses’s eye; we are ignorant of the back
parts or lower side of his divinity; therefore, to pry into the maze of
his counsels, is not only folly in man, but presumption even in angels.
Like us, they are his servants, not his senators; he holds no counsel,
but that mystical one of the Trinity, wherein, though there be three
persons, there is but one mind that decrees without contradiction.
Nor needs he any; his actions are not begot with deliberation; his
wisdom naturally knows what’s best: his intellect stands ready fraught
with the superlative and purest ideas of goodness, consultations,
and election, which are two motions in us, make but one in him: his
actions springing from his power at the first touch of his will. These
are contemplations metaphysical: my humble speculations have another
method, and are content to trace and discover those expressions he hath
left in his creatures, and the obvious effects of nature. There is
no danger to profound these mysteries, no sanctum sanctorum in
philosophy. The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied
and contemplated by man: ’tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God,
and the homage we pay for not being beasts. Without this, the world is
still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day,
when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive or say there
was a world. The wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar
heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his
works. Those highly magnify him, whose judicious enquiry into his acts,
and deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout
and learned admiration. Therefore,

Search while thou wilt; and let thy reason go,
To ransom truth, e’en to th’ abyss below;
Rally the scatter’d causes; and that line
Which nature twists be able to untwine.
It is thy Maker’s will; for unto none
But unto reason can he e’er be known.
The devils do know thee; but those damn’d meteors
Build not thy glory, but confound thy creatures.
Teach my endeavours so thy works to read,
That learning them in thee I may proceed.
Give thou my reason that instructive flight,
Whose weary wings may on thy hands still light.
Teach me to soar aloft, yet ever so,
When near the sun, to stoop again below.
Thus shall my humble feathers safely hover,
And, though near earth, more than the heavens discover.
And then at last, when homeward I shall drive,
Rich with the spoils of nature, to my hive,
There will I sit, like that industrious fly,
Buzzing thy praises; which shall never die
Till death abrupts them, and succeeding glory
Bid me go on in a more lasting story.

And this is almost all wherein an humble creature may endeavour to
requite, and some way to retribute unto his Creator: for, if not he
that saith, “Lord, Lord, but he that doth the will of the Father,
shall be saved,” certainly our wills must be our performances, and our
intents make out our actions; otherwise our pious labours shall find
anxiety in our graves, and our best endeavours not hope, but fear, a
resurrection.

There is but one first cause, and four second causes, of
all things. Some are without efficient, as God; others without
matter, as angels; some without form, as the first matter: but every
essence, created or uncreated, hath its final cause, and some positive
end both of its essence and operation. This is the cause I grope
after in the works of nature; on this hangs the providence of God.
To raise so beauteous a structure as the world and the creatures
thereof was but his art; but their sundry and divided operations, with
their predestinated ends, are from the treasure of his wisdom. In the
causes, nature, and affections, of the eclipses of the sun and moon,
there is most excellent speculation; but, to profound further, and to
contemplate a reason why his providence hath so disposed and ordered
their motions in that vast circle, as to conjoin and obscure each
other, is a sweeter piece of reason, and a diviner point of philosophy.
Therefore, sometimes, and in some things, there appears to me as much
divinity in Galen his books, De Usu Partium, as in Suarez’s
Metaphysicks. Had Aristotle been as curious in the enquiry of this
cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him an imperfect
piece of philosophy, but an absolute tract of divinity.

Natura nihil agit frustra, is the only indisputable
axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature; not any thing
framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces. In the most
imperfect creatures, and such as were not preserved in the ark,
but, having their seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are
everywhere, where the power of the sun is,—in these is the wisdom of
his hand discovered. Out of this rank Solomon chose the object of his
admiration; indeed, what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of
bees, ants, and spiders? What wise hand teacheth them to do what reason
cannot teach us? Ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of
nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess,
are the colossus and majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow
engines there is more curious mathematicks; and the civility of these
little citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker. Who
admires not Regio Montanus his fly beyond his eagle; or wonders
not more at the operation of two souls in those little bodies than but
one in the trunk of a cedar? I could never content my contemplation
with those general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea,
the increase of Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; and
have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious and
neglected pieces of nature which, without farther travel, I can do in
the cosmography of myself. We carry with us the wonders we seek without
us: there is all Africa and her prodigies in us. We are that bold and
adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learns, in a
compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.

Thus there are two books from whence I collect my
divinity. Besides that written one of God, another of his servant,
nature, that universal and publick manuscript, that lies expansed unto
the eyes of all. Those that never saw him in the one have discovered
him in the other; this was the scripture and theology of the heathens;
the natural motion of the sun made them more admire him than its
supernatural station did the children of Israel. The ordinary effects
of nature wrought more admiration in them than, in the other, all
his miracles. Surely the heathens knew better how to join and read
these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a more careless
eye on these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from
the flowers of nature. Nor do I so forget God as to adore the name of
nature; which I define not, with the schools, to be the principle of
motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that settled and
constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions of his
creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution every
day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course which
God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty from
that voice which first did give it motion. Now this course of nature
God seldom alters or perverts; but, like an excellent artist, hath so
contrived his work, that, with the self-same instrument, without a
new creation, he may effect his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth
the water with a word, preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the
blest of his mouth might have as easily created;—for God is like a
skilful geometrician, who, when more easily, and with one stroke of
his compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather
do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and
forelaid principles of his art: yet this rule of his he doth sometimes
pervert, to acquaint the world with his prerogative, lest the arrogancy
of our reason should question his power, and conclude he could not.
And thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and
instrument she only is; and therefore, to ascribe his actions unto her
is to devolve the honour of the principal agent upon the instrument;
which if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast
they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our
writing. I hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and
therefore no deformity in any kind of species of creature whatsoever.
I cannot tell by what logick we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant
ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which
best express the actions of their inward forms; and having passed that
general visitation of God, who saw that all that he had made was good,
that is, conformable to his will, which abhors deformity, and is the
rule of order and beauty. There is no deformity but in monstrosity;
wherein, notwithstanding, there is a kind of beauty; nature so
ingeniously contriving the irregular part, as they become sometimes
more remarkable than the principal fabrick. To speak yet more narrowly,
there was never any thing ugly or mis-shapen, but the chaos; wherein,
notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no deformity, because no
form; nor was it yet impregnant by the voice of God. Now nature is not
at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants
of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now
as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one
world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature
is the art of God.

This is the ordinary and open way of his providence, which
art and industry have in good part discovered; whose effects we may
foretell without an oracle. To foreshow these is not prophecy, but
prognostication. There is another way, full of meanders and labyrinths,
whereof the devil and spirits have no exact ephemerides: and that is
a more particular and obscure method of his providence; directing the
operations of individual and single essences: this we call fortune;
that serpentine and crooked line, whereby he draws those actions his
wisdom intends in a more unknown and secret way; this cryptic and
involved method of his providence have I ever admired; nor can I relate
the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, the escapes, or
dangers, and hits of chance, with a bezo las manos to Fortune, or
a bare gramercy to my good stars. Abraham might have thought the ram
in the thicket came thither by accident: human reason would have said
that mere chance conveyed Moses in the ark to the sight of Pharaoh’s
daughter. What a labyrinth is there in the story of Joseph! able to
convert a stoick. Surely there are in every man’s life certain rubs,
doublings, and wrenches, which pass a while under the effects of
chance; but at the last, well examined, prove the mere hand of God.
’Twas not dumb chance that, to discover the fougade, or powder
plot, contrived a miscarriage in the letter. I like the victory of
’88 the better for that one occurrence which our enemies imputed to
our dishonour, and the partiality of fortune; to wit, the tempests and
contrariety of winds. King Philip did not detract from the nation, when
he said, he sent his armada to fight with men, and not to combat with
the winds. Where there is a manifest disproportion between the powers
and forces of two several agents, upon a maxim of reason we may promise
the victory to the superior: but when unexpected accidents slip in, and
unthought-of occurrences intervene, these must proceed from a power
that owes no obedience to those axioms; where, as in the writing upon
the wall, we may behold the hand, but see not the spring that moves
it. The success of that petty province of Holland (of which the Grand
Seignior proudly said, if they should trouble him, as they did the
Spaniard, he would send his men with shovels and pickaxes, and throw it
into the sea) I cannot altogether ascribe to the ingenuity and industry
of the people, but the mercy of God, that hath disposed them to such a
thriving genius; and to the will of his providence, that disposeth her
favour to each country in their preordinate season. All cannot be happy
at once; for, because the glory of one state depends upon the ruin of
another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their greatness, and
must obey the swing of that wheel, not moved by intelligencies, but by
the hand of God, whereby all estates arise to their zenith and vertical
points, according to their predestinated periods. For the lives, not
only of men, but of commonwealths and the whole world, run not upon a
helix that still enlargeth; but on a circle, where, arriving to their
meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the horizon again.

These must not therefore be named the effects of fortune
but in a relative way, and as we term the works of nature. It was
the ignorance of man’s reason that begat this very name, and by a
careless term miscalled the providence of God: for there is no liberty
for causes to operate in a loose and straggling way; nor any effect
whatsoever but hath its warrant from some universal or superior cause.
’Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables;
for, even in sortileges and matters of greatest uncertainty,
there is a settled and preordered course of effects. It is we that
are blind, not fortune. Because our eye is too dim to discover the
mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the
providence of the Almighty. I cannot justify that contemptible proverb,
that “fools only are fortunate;” or that insolent paradox, that “a
wise man is out of the reach of fortune;” much less those opprobrious
epithets of poets,—“whore,” “bawd,” and “strumpet.” ’Tis, I confess,
the common fate of men of singular gifts of mind, to be destitute of
those of fortune; which doth not any way deject the spirit of wiser
judgments who thoroughly understand the justice of this proceeding;
and, being enriched with higher donatives, cast a more careless eye
on these vulgar parts of felicity. It is a most unjust ambition, to
desire to engross the mercies of the Almighty, not to be content with
the goods of mind, without a possession of those of body or fortune:
and it is an error, worse than heresy, to adore these complimental and
circumstantial pieces of felicity, and undervalue those perfections
and essential points of happiness, wherein we resemble our Maker.
To wiser desires it is satisfaction enough to deserve, though not
to enjoy, the favours of fortune. Let providence provide for fools:
’tis not partiality, but equity, in God, who deals with us but as our
natural parents. Those that are able of body and mind he leaves to
their deserts; to those of weaker merits he imparts a larger portion;
and pieces out the defect of one by the excess of the other. Thus have
we no just quarrel with nature for leaving us naked; or to envy the
horns, hoofs, skins, and furs of other creatures; being provided with
reason, that can supply them all. We need not labour, with so many
arguments, to confute judicial astrology; for, if there be a truth
therein, it doth not injure divinity. If to be born under Mercury
disposeth us to be witty; under Jupiter to be wealthy; I do not owe
a knee unto these, but unto that merciful hand that hath ordered my
indifferent and uncertain nativity unto such benevolous aspects. Those
that hold that all things are governed by fortune, had not erred,
had they not persisted there. The Romans, that erected a temple to
Fortune, acknowledged therein, though in a blinder way, somewhat of
divinity; for, in a wise supputation, all things begin and end in
the Almighty. There is a nearer way to heaven than Homer’s chain;
an easy logick may conjoin a heaven and earth in one argument, and,
with less than a sorites, resolve all things to God. For though
we christen effects by their most sensible and nearest causes, yet is
God the true and infallible cause of all; whose concourse, though it
be general, yet doth it subdivide itself into the particular actions
of every thing, and is that spirit, by which each singular essence not
only subsists, but performs its operation.

The bad construction and perverse comment on these pair of
second causes, or visible hands of God, have perverted the devotion of
many unto atheism; who, forgetting the honest advisoes of faith, have
listened unto the conspiracy of passion and reason. I have therefore
always endeavoured to compose those feuds and angry dissensions between
affection, faith, and reason: for there is in our soul a kind of
triumvirate, or triple government of three competitors, which distracts
the peace of this our commonwealth not less than did that other the
state of Rome.

As reason is a rebel unto faith, so passion unto reason. As the
propositions of faith seem absurd unto reason, so the theorems of
reason unto passion and both unto reason; yet a moderate and peaceable
discretion may so state and order the matter, that they may be all
kings, and yet make but one monarchy: every one exercising his
sovereignty and prerogative in a due time and place, according to the
restraint and limit of circumstance. There are, as in philosophy, so
in divinity, sturdy doubts, and boisterous objections, wherewith the
unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us. More of these
no man hath known than myself; which I confess I conquered, not in a
martial posture, but on my knees. For our endeavours are not only to
combat with doubts, but always to dispute with the devil. The villany
of that spirit takes a hint of infidelity from our studios; and, by
demonstrating a naturality in one way, makes us mistrust a miracle
in another. Thus, having perused the Archidoxes, and read the secret
sympathies of things, he would dissuade my belief from the miracle of
the brazen serpent; make me conceit that image worked by sympathy, and
was but an Egyptian trick, to cure their diseases without a miracle.
Again, having seen some experiments of bitumen, and having read far
more of naphtha, he whispered to my curiosity the fire of the altar
might be natural, and bade me mistrust a miracle in Elias, when he
intrenched the altar round with water: for that inflamable substance
yields not easily unto water, but flames in the arms of its antagonist.
And thus would he inveigle my belief to think the combustion of Sodom
might be natural, and that there was an asphaltick and bituminous
nature in that lake before the fire of Gomorrah. I know that manna is
now plentifully gathered in Calabria; and Josephus tells me, in his
days it was as plentiful in Arabia. The devil therefore made the query,
“Where was then the miracle in the days of Moses?” The Israelites saw
but that, in his time, which the natives of those countries behold
in ours. Thus the devil played at chess with me, and, yielding a
pawn, thought to gain a queen of me; taking advantage of my honest
endeavours; and, whilst I laboured to raise the structure of my reason,
he strove to undermine the edifice of my faith.

Neither had these or any other ever such advantage of me,
as to incline me to any point of infidelity or desperate positions of
atheism; for I have been these many years of opinion there was never
any. Those that held religion was the difference of man from beasts,
have spoken probably, and proceed upon a principle as inductive as
the other. That doctrine of Epicurus, that denied the providence of
God, was no atheism, but a magnificent and high-strained conceit of
his majesty, which he deemed too sublime to mind the trivial actions
of those inferior creatures. That fatal necessity of the stoicks is
nothing but the immutable law of his will. Those that heretofore denied
the divinity of the Holy Ghost have been condemned but as hereticks;
and those that now deny our Saviour, though more than hereticks, are
not so much as atheists: for, though they deny two persons in the
Trinity, they hold, as we do, there is but one God.

That villain and secretary of hell, that composed that miscreant
piece of the three impostors, though divided from all religions, and
neither Jew, Turk, nor Christian, was not a positive atheist. I confess
every country hath its Machiavel, every age its Lucian, whereof common
heads must not hear, nor more advanced judgments too rashly venture on.
It is the rhetorick of Satan; and may pervert a loose or prejudicate
belief.

I confess I have perused them all, and can discover
nothing that may startle a discreet belief; yet are their heads carried
off with the wind and breath of such motives. I remember a doctor in
physick, of Italy, who could not perfectly believe the immortality of
the soul, because Galen seemed to make a doubt thereof. With another I
was familiarly acquainted, in France, a divine, and a man of singular
parts, that on the same point was so plunged and gravelled with three
lines of Seneca, that all our antidotes, drawn from both Scripture
and philosophy, could not expel the poison of his error. There are a
set of heads that can credit the relations of mariners, yet question
the testimonies of Saint Paul: and peremptorily maintain the traditions
of Ælian or Pliny; yet, in histories of Scripture, raise queries and
objections: believing no more than they can parallel in human authors.
I confess there are, in Scripture, stories that do exceed the fables of
poets, and, to a captious reader, sound like Garagantua or Bevis.
Search all the legends of times past, and the fabulous conceits of
these present, and ’twill be hard to find one that deserves to carry
the buckler unto Samson; yet is all this of an easy possibility,
if we conceive a divine concourse, or an influence from the little
finger of the Almighty. It is impossible that, either in the discourse
of man or in the infallible voice of God, to the weakness of our
apprehensions there should not appear irregularities, contradictions,
and antinomies: myself could show a catalogue of doubts, never yet
imagined nor questioned, as I know, which are not resolved at the first
hearing; not fantastick queries or objections of air; for I cannot
hear of atoms in divinity. I can read the history of the pigeon that
was sent out of the ark, and returned no more, yet not question how
she found out her mate that was left behind: that Lazarus was raised
from the dead, yet not demand where, in the interim, his soul awaited;
or raise a law-case, whether his heir might lawfully detain his
inheritance bequeathed upon him by his death, and he, though restored
to life, have no plea or title unto his former possessions. Whether
Eve was framed out of the left side of Adam, I dispute not; because
I stand not yet assured which is the right side of a man; or whether
there be any such distinction in nature. That she was edified out of
the rib of Adam, I believe; yet raise no question who shall arise with
that rib at the resurrection. Whether Adam was an hermaphrodite, as the
rabbins contend upon the letter of the text; because it is contrary
to reason, there should be an hermaphrodite before there was a woman,
or a composition of two natures, before there was a second composed.
Likewise, whether the world was created in autumn, summer, or the
spring; because it was created in them all: for, whatsoever sign the
sun possesseth, those four seasons are actually existent. It is the
nature of this luminary to distinguish the several seasons of the year;
all which it makes at one time in the whole earth, and successively
in any part thereof. There are a bundle of curiosities, not only in
philosophy, but in divinity, proposed and discussed by men of most
supposed abilities, which indeed are not worthy our vacant hours, much
less our serious studies. Pieces only fit to be placed in Pantagruel’s
library, or bound up with Tartaratus, De Modo Cacandi.
In Rabelais.

These are niceties that become not those that peruse so
serious a mystery. There are others more generally questioned, and
called to the bar, yet, methinks, of an easy and possible truth.

’Tis ridiculous to put off or down the general flood of Noah, in that
particular inundation of Deucalion. That there was a deluge once
seems not to me so great a miracle as that there is not one always. How
all the kinds of creatures, not only in their own bulks, but with a
competency of food and sustenance, might be preserved in one ark, and
within the extent of three hundred cubits, to a reason that rightly
examines it, will appear very feasible. There is another secret, not
contained in the Scripture, which is more hard to comprehend, and put
the honest Father to the refuge of a miracle; and that is, not only
how the distinct pieces of the world, and divided islands, should be
first planted by men, but inhabited by tigers, panthers, and bears.
How America abounded with beasts of prey, and noxious animals, yet
contained not in it that necessary creature, a horse, is very strange.
By what passage those, not only birds, but dangerous and unwelcome
beasts, come over. How there be creatures there (which are not found in
this triple continent). All which must needs be strange unto us, that
hold but one ark; and that the creatures began their progress from the
mountains of Ararat. They who, to salve this, would make the deluge
particular, proceed upon a principle that I can no way grant; not only
upon the negative of Holy Scriptures, but of mine own reason, whereby
I can make it probable that the world was as well peopled in the time
of Noah as in ours; and fifteen hundred years, to people the world,
as full a time for them as four thousand years since have been to us.
There are other assertions and common tenets drawn from Scripture,
and generally believed as Scripture, whereunto, notwithstanding, I
would never betray the liberty of my reason. ’Tis a paradox to me,
that Methusalem was the longest lived of all the children of Adam;
and no man will be able to prove it; when, from the process of the
text, I can manifest it may be otherwise. That Judas perished by
hanging himself, there is no certainty in Scripture: though, in one
place, it seems to affirm it, and, by a doubtful word, hath given
occasion to translate it; yet, in another place, in a more
punctual description, it makes it improbable, and seems to overthrow
it. That our fathers, after the flood, erected the tower of Babel, to
preserve themselves against a second deluge, is generally opinioned
and believed; yet is there another intention of theirs expressed in
Scripture. Besides, it is improbable, from the circumstance of the
place; that is, a plain in the land of Shinar. These are no points of
faith; and therefore may admit a free dispute. There are yet others,
and those familiarly concluded from the text, wherein (under favour) I
see no consequence. The church of Rome confidently proves the opinion
of tutelary angels, from that answer, when Peter knocked at the door,
“’Tis not he, but his angel;” that is, might some say, his messenger,
or somebody from him; for so the original signifies; and is as likely
to be the doubtful family’s meaning. This exposition I once suggested
to a young divine, that answered upon this point; to which I remember
the Franciscan opponent replied no more, but, that it was a new, and no
authentick interpretation.

These are but the conclusions and fallible discourses of
man upon the word of God; for such I do believe the Holy Scriptures;
yet, were it of man, I could not choose but say, it was the singularest
and superlative piece that hath been extant since the creation. Were
I a pagan, I should not refrain the lecture of it; and cannot but
commend the judgment of Ptolemy, that thought not his library complete
without it. The Alcoran of the Turks (I speak without prejudice)
is an ill-composed piece, containing in it vain and ridiculous
errors in philosophy, impossibilities, fictions, and vanities beyond
laughter, maintained by evident and open sophisms, the policy of
ignorance, deposition of universities, and banishment of learning.
That hath gotten foot by arms and violence: this, without a blow, hath
disseminated itself through the whole earth. It is not unremarkable,
what Philo first observed, that the law of Moses continued two thousand
years without the least alteration; whereas, we see, the laws of other
commonwealths do alter with occasions: and even those, that pretended
their original from some divinity, to have vanished without trace or
memory. I believe, besides Zoroaster, there were divers others that
writ before Moses; who, notwithstanding, have suffered the common
fate of time. Men’s works have an age, like themselves; and though
they outlive their authors, yet have they a stint and period to their
duration. This only is a work too hard for the teeth of time, and
cannot perish but in the general flames, when all things shall confess
their ashes.

I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines
of Cicero; others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the
library of Alexandria; for my own part, I think there be too many
in the world; and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the
Vatican, could I, with a few others, recover the perished leaves of
Solomon. I would not omit a copy of Enoch’s pillars, had they many
nearer authors than Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of the fable.
Some men have written more than others have spoken. Pineda quotes
more authors, in one work, than are necessary in a whole world.
Of those three great inventions in Germany, there are two which
are not without their incommodities, and ’tis disputable whether they
exceed not their use and commodities. ’Tis not a melancholy utinam
of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general
synod—not to unite the incompatible difference of religion, but,—for
the benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and
solid authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of
rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgments of
scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers.
as much as their defection from the New: and truly
it is beyond wonder, how that contemptible and degenerate issue
of Jacob, once so devoted to ethnick superstition, and so easily
seduced to the idolatry of their neighbours, should now, in such an
obstinate and peremptory belief, adhere unto their own doctrine, expect
impossibilities, and in the face and eye of the church, persist without
the least hope of conversion. This is a vice in them, that were a
virtue in us; for obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good:
and herein I must accuse those of my own religion; for there is not
any of such a fugitive faith, such an unstable belief, as a Christian;
none that do so often transform themselves, not unto several shapes
of Christianity, and of the same species, but unto more unnatural and
contrary forms of Jew and Mohammedan; that, from the name of Saviour,
can condescend to the bare term of prophet: and, from an old belief
that he is come, fall to a new expectation of his coming. It is the
promise of Christ, to make us all one flock: but how and when this
union shall be, is as obscure to me as the last day. Of those four
members of religion we hold a slender proportion. There are, I
confess, some new additions; yet small to those which accrue to our
adversaries; and those only drawn from the revolt of pagans; men but
of negative impieties; and such as deny Christ, but because they never
heard of him. But the religion of the Jew is expressly against the
Christian, and the Mohammedan against both; for the Turk, in the bulk
he now stands, is beyond all hope of conversion: if he fall asunder,
there may be conceived hopes; but not without strong improbabilities.
The Jew is obstinate in all fortunes; the persecution of fifteen
hundred years hath but confirmed them in their error. They have already
endured whatsoever may be inflicted: and have suffered, in a bad
cause, even to the condemnation of their enemies. Persecution is a bad
and indirect way to plant religion. It hath been the unhappy method
of angry devotions, not only to confirm honest religion, but wicked
heresies and extravagant opinions. It was the first stone and basis of
our faith. None can more justly boast of persecutions, and glory in
the number and valour of martyrs. For, to speak properly, those are
true and almost only examples of fortitude. Those that are fetched from
the field, or drawn from the actions of the camp, are not ofttimes so
truly precedents of valour as audacity, and, at the best, attain but
to some bastard piece of fortitude. If we shall strictly examine the
circumstances and requisites which Aristotle requires to true and
perfect valour, we shall find the name only in his master, Alexander,
and as little in that Roman worthy, Julius Cæsar; and if any, in that
easy and active way, have done so nobly as to deserve that name, yet,
in the passive and more terrible piece, these have surpassed, and in
a more heroical way may claim, the honour of that title. ’Tis not in
the power of every honest faith to proceed thus far, or pass to heaven
through the flames. Every one hath it not in that full measure, nor in
so audacious and resolute a temper, as to endure those terrible tests
and trials; who, notwithstanding, in a peaceable way, do truly adore
their Saviour, and have, no doubt, a faith acceptable in the eyes of
God.

Now, as all that die in the war are not termed soldiers,
so neither can I properly term all those that suffer in matters of
religion, martyrs. The council of Constance condemns John Huss for a
heretick; the stories of his own party style him a martyr. He must
needs offend the divinity of both, that says he was neither the one
nor the other. There are many (questionless) canonized on earth, that
shall never be saints in heaven; and have their names in histories and
martyrologies, who, in the eyes of God, are not so perfect martyrs as
was that wise heathen Socrates, that suffered on a fundamental point
of religion,—the unity of God. I have often pitied the miserable
bishop that suffered in the cause of antipodes; yet cannot choose
but accuse him of as much madness, for exposing his living on such a
trifle, as those of ignorance and folly, that condemned him. I think
my conscience will not give me the lie, if I say there are not many
extant, that, in a noble way, fear the face of death less than myself;
yet, from the moral duty I owe to the commandment of God, and the
natural respect that I tender unto the conservation of my essence
and being, I would not perish upon a ceremony, politick points, or
indifferency: nor is my belief of that untractable temper as, not to
bow at their obstacles, or connive at matters wherein there are not
manifest impieties. The leaven, therefore, and ferment of all, not only
civil, but religious, actions, is wisdom; without which, to commit
ourselves to the flames is homicide, and (I fear) but to pass through
one fire into another.

That miracles are ceased, I can neither prove nor
absolutely deny, much less define the time and period of their
cessation. That they survived Christ is manifest upon record of
Scripture: that they outlived the apostles also, and were revived at
the conversion of nations, many years after, we cannot deny, if we
shall not question those writers whose testimonies we do not controvert
in points that make for our own opinions: therefore, that may have
some truth in it, that is reported by the Jesuits of their miracles
in the Indies. I could wish it were true, or had any other testimony
than their own pens. They may easily believe those miracles abroad, who
daily conceive a greater at home—the transmutation of those visible
elements into the body and blood of our Saviour;—for the conversion
of water into wine, which he wrought in Cana, or, what the devil would
have had him done in the wilderness, of stones into bread, compared
to this, will scarce deserve the name of a miracle: though, indeed,
to speak properly, there is not one miracle greater than another;
they being the extraordinary effects of the hand of God, to which all
things are of an equal facility; and to create the world as easy as
one single creature. For this is also a miracle; not only to produce
effects against or above nature, but before nature; and to create
nature, as great a miracle as to contradict or transcend her. We do too
narrowly define the power of God, restraining it to our capacities. I
hold that God can do all things: how he should work contradictions,
I do not understand, yet dare not, therefore, deny. I cannot see why
the angel of God should question Esdras to recall the time past, if
it were beyond his own power; or that God should pose mortality in
that which he was not able to perform himself. I will not say that God
cannot, but he will not, perform many things, which we plainly affirm
he cannot. This, I am sure, is the mannerliest proposition; wherein,
notwithstanding, I hold no paradox: for, strictly, his power is the
same with his will; and they both, with all the rest, do make but one
God.

Therefore, that miracles have been, I do believe; that
they may yet be wrought by the living, I do not deny: but have no
confidence in those which are fathered on the dead. And this hath ever
made me suspect the efficacy of relicks, to examine the bones, question
the habits and appertenances of saints, and even of Christ himself. I
cannot conceive why the cross that Helena found, and whereon Christ
himself died, should have power to restore others unto life. I excuse
not Constantine from a fall off his horse, or a mischief from his
enemies, upon the wearing those nails on his bridle which our Saviour
bore upon the cross in his hands. I compute among piæ fraudes, nor
many degrees before consecrated swords and roses, that which Baldwin,
king of Jerusalem, returned the Genoese for their costs and pains in
his wars; to wit, the ashes of John the Baptist. Those that hold, the
sanctity of their souls doth leave behind a tincture and sacred faculty
on their bodies, speak naturally of miracles, and do not salve the
doubt. Now, one reason I tender so little devotion unto relicks is, I
think the slender and doubtful respect which I have always held unto
antiquities. For that, indeed, which I admire, is far before antiquity;
that is, Eternity; and that is, God himself; who, though he be styled
the Ancient of Days, cannot receive the adjunct of antiquity, who was
before the world, and shall be after it, yet is not older than it: for,
in his years there is no climacter: his duration is eternity; and
far more venerable than antiquity.

But, above all things, I wonder how the curiosity of wiser
heads could pass that great and indisputable miracle, the cessation of
oracles; and in what swoon their reasons lay, to content themselves,
and sit down with such a far-fetched and ridiculous reason as Plutarch
allegeth for it. The Jews, that can believe the supernatural
solstice of the sun in the days of Joshua, have yet the impudence
to deny the eclipse, which every pagan confessed, at his death; but
for this, it is evident beyond all contradiction: the devil himself
confessed it. Certainly it is not a warrantable curiosity, to
examine the verity of Scripture by the concordance of human history;
or seek to confirm the chronicle of Hester or Daniel by the authority
of Megasthenes or Herodotus. I confess, I have had an unhappy
curiosity this way, till I laughed myself out of it with a piece of
Justin, where he delivers that the children of Israel, for being
scabbed, were banished out of Egypt. And truly, since I have understood
the occurrences of the world, and know in what counterfeiting shapes
and deceitful visards times present represent on the stage things past,
I do believe them little more than things to come. Some have been of my
own opinion, and endeavoured to write the history of their own lives;
wherein Moses hath outgone them all, and left not only the story of his
life, but, as some will have it, of his death also.

It is a riddle to me, how the story of oracles hath not
wormed out of the world that doubtful conceit of spirits and witches;
how so many learned heads should so far forget their metaphysicks, and
destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, as to question the existence
of spirits; for my part, I have ever believed, and do now know, that
there are witches. They that doubt of these do not only deny them,
but spirits: and are obliquely, and upon consequence, a sort, not of
infidels, but atheists. Those that, to confute their incredulity,
desire to see apparitions, shall, questionless, never behold any, nor
have the power to be so much as witches. The devil hath made them
already in a heresy as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them
were but to convert them. Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives
mortality, there is not any that puzzleth me more than the legerdemain
of changelings. I do not credit those transformations of reasonable
creatures into beasts, or that the devil hath a power to transpeciate
a man into a horse, who tempted Christ (as a trial of his divinity) to
convert but stones into bread. I could believe that spirits use with
man the act of carnality; and that in both sexes. I conceive they may
assume, steal, or contrive a body, wherein there may be action enough
to content decrepit lust, or passion to satisfy more active veneries;
yet, in both, without a possibility of generation: and therefore
that opinion, that Antichrist should be born of the tribe of Dan, by
conjunction with the devil, is ridiculous, and a conceit fitter for a
rabbin than a Christian. I hold that the devil doth really possess some
men; the spirit of melancholy others; the spirit of delusion others:
that, as the devil is concealed and denied by some, so God and good
angels are pretended by others, whereof the late defection of the maid
of Germany hath left a pregnant example.

Again, I believe that all that use sorceries,
incantations, and spells, are not witches, or, as we term them,
magicians. I conceive there is a traditional magick, not learned
immediately from the devil, but at second hand from his scholars, who,
having once the secret betrayed, are able and do empirically practise
without his advice; they both proceeding upon the principles of nature;
where actives, aptly conjoined to disposed passives, will, under any
master, produce their effects. Thus, I think, at first, a great part
of philosophy was witchcraft; which, being afterward derived to one
another, proved but philosophy, and was indeed no more than the honest
effects of nature:—what invented by us, is philosophy; learned from
him, is magick. We do surely owe the discovery of many secrets to the
discovery of good and bad angels. I could never pass that sentence
of Paracelsus without an asterisk, or annotation: “ascendens
constellatum multa revelat quærentibus magnalia naturæ, i.e. opera
Dei.” I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions
have been the corteous revelations of spirits; for those noble essences
in heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow-nature on earth; and
therefore believe that those many prodigies and ominous prognosticks,
which forerun the ruins of states, princes, and private persons,
are the charitable premonitions of good angels, which more careless
inquiries term but the effects of chance and nature.

Now, besides these particular and divided spirits, there
may be (for aught I know) a universal and common spirit to the whole
world. It was the opinion of Plato, and is yet of the hermetical
philosophers. If there be a common nature, that unites and ties the
scattered and divided individuals into one species, why may there not
be one that unites them all? However, I am sure there is a common
spirit, that plays within us, yet makes no part in us; and that is,
the spirit of God; the fire and scintillation of that noble and mighty
essence, which is the life and radical heat of spirits, and those
essences that know not the virtue of the sun; a fire quite contrary to
the fire of hell. This is that gentle heat that brooded on the waters,
and in six days hatched the world; this is that irradiation that
dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of horror, fear, sorrow, despair;
and preserves the region of the mind in serenity. Whatsoever feels not
the warm gale and gentle ventilation of this spirit (though I feel his
pulse), I dare not say he lives; for truly without this, to me, there
is no heat under the tropick; nor any light, though I dwelt in the body
of the sun.

“As when the labouring sun hath wrought his track
Up to the top of lofty Cancer’s back,
The icy ocean cracks, the frozen pole
Thaws with the heat of the celestial coal;
So when thy absent beams begin t’ impart
Again a solstice on my frozen heart,
My winter’s o’er, my drooping spirits sing,
And every part revives into a spring.
But if thy quickening beams a while decline,
And with their light bless not this orb of mine,
A chilly frost surpriseth every member.
And in the midst of June I feel December.
Oh how this earthly temper doth debase
The noble soul, in this her humble place!
Whose wingy nature ever doth aspire
To reach that place whence first it took its fire.
These flames I feel, which in my heart do dwell,
Are not thy beams, but take their fire from hell.
Oh quench them all! and let thy Light divine
Be as the sun to this poor orb of mine!
And to thy sacred Spirit convert those fires,
Whose earthly fumes choke my devout aspires!”

Therefore, for spirits, I am so far from denying their
existence, that I could easily believe, that not only whole countries,
but particular persons, have their tutelary and guardian angels. It is
not a new opinion of the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras
and Plato: there is no heresy in it: and if not manifestly defined in
Scripture, yet it is an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the
course and actions of a man’s life; and would serve as an hypothesis
to salve many doubts, whereof common philosophy affordeth no solution.
Now, if you demand my opinion and metaphysicks of their natures, I
confess them very shallow; most of them in a negative way, like that
of God; or in a comparative, between ourselves and fellow-creatures:
for there is in this universe a stair, or manifest scale, of creatures,
rising not disorderly, or in confusion, but with a comely method and
proportion. Between creatures of mere existence and things of life
there is a large disproportion of nature: between plants and animals,
or creatures of sense, a wider difference: between them and man, a
far greater: and if the proportion hold on, between man and angels
there should be yet a greater. We do not comprehend their natures,
who retain the first definition of Porphyry; and distinguish them
from ourselves by immortality: for, before his fall, man also was
immortal: yet must we needs affirm that he had a different essence
from the angels. Having, therefore, no certain knowledge of their
nature, ’tis no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection we
find obscurely in ourselves, in a more complete and absolute way to
ascribe unto them. I believe they have an extemporary knowledge, and,
upon the first motion of their reason, do what we cannot without study
or deliberation: that they know things by their forms, and define, by
specifical difference what we describe by accidents and properties: and
therefore probabilities to us may be demonstrations unto them: that
they have knowledge not only of the specifical, but numerical, forms
of individuals, and understand by what reserved difference each single
hypostatis (besides the relation to its species) becomes its numerical
self: that, as the soul hath a power to move the body it informs, so
there’s a faculty to move any, though inform none: ours upon restraint
of time, place, and distance: but that invisible hand that conveyed
Habakkuk to the lion’s den, or Philip to Azotus, infringeth this rule,
and hath a secret conveyance, wherewith mortality is not acquainted.
If they have that intuitive knowledge, whereby, as in reflection, they
behold the thoughts of one another, I cannot peremptorily deny but
they know a great part of ours. They that, to refute the invocation
of saints, have denied that they have any knowledge of our affairs
below, have proceeded too far, and must pardon my opinion, till I can
thoroughly answer that piece of Scripture, “At the conversion of a
sinner, the angels in heaven rejoice.” I cannot, with those in that
great father, securely interpret the work of the first day, fiat
lux, to the creation of angels; though I confess there is not any
creature that hath so near a glimpse of their nature as light in the
sun and elements: we style it a bare accident; but, where it subsists
alone, ’tis a spiritual substance, and may be an angel: in brief,
conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit.

These are certainly the magisterial and masterpieces of
the Creator; the flower, or, as we may say, the best part of nothing;
actually existing, what we are but in hopes, and probability. We
are only that amphibious piece, between a corporeal and a spiritual
essence; that middle form, that links those two together, and makes
good the method of God and nature, that jumps not from extremes, but
unites the incompatible distances by some middle and participating
natures. That we are the breath and similitude of God, it is
indisputable, and upon record of Holy Scripture: but to call ourselves
a microcosm, or little world, I thought it only a pleasant trope of
rhetorick, till my near judgment and second thoughts told me there was
a real truth therein. For, first we are a rude mass, and in the rank
of creatures which only are, and have a dull kind of being, not yet
privileged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the
life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the
life of spirits: running on, in one mysterious nature, those five kinds
of existencies, which comprehend the creatures, not only of the world,
but of the universe. Thus is man that great and true amphibium, whose
nature is disposed to live, not only like other creatures in divers
elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds; for though there be
but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other
invisible; whereof Moses seems to have left description, and of the
other so obscurely, that some parts thereof are yet in controversy.
And truly, for the first chapters of Genesis, I must confess a great
deal of obscurity; though divines have, to the power of human reason,
endeavoured to make all go in a literal meaning, yet those allegorical
interpretations are also probable, and perhaps the mystical method of
Moses, bred up in the hieroglyphical schools of the Egyptians.

Now for that immaterial world, methinks we need not wander
so far as the first moveable; for, even in this material fabrick, the
spirits walk as freely exempt from the affection of time, place, and
motion, as beyond the extremest circumference. Do but extract from the
corpulency of bodies, or resolve things beyond their first matter, and
you discover the habitation of angels; which if I call the ubiquitary
and omnipresent essence of God, I hope I shall not offend divinity:
for, before the creation of the world, God was really all things.
For the angels he created no new world, or determinate mansion, and
therefore they are everywhere where is his essence, and do live, at a
distance even, in himself. That God made all things for man, is in some
sense true; yet, not so far as to subordinate the creation of those
purer creatures unto ours; though, as ministering spirits, they do,
and are willing to fulfil the will of God in these lower and sublunary
affairs of man. God made all things for himself; and it is impossible
he should make them for any other end than his own glory: it is all
he can receive, and all that is without himself. For, honour being
an external adjunct, and in the honourer rather than in the person
honoured, it was necessary to make a creature, from whom he might
receive this homage: and that is, in the other world, angels, in this,
man; which when we neglect, we forget God, not only to repent that
he hath made the world, but that he hath sworn he would not destroy
it. That there is but one world, is a conclusion of faith; Aristotle
with all his philosophy hath not been able to prove it: and as weakly
that the world was eternal; that dispute much troubled the pen of the
philosophers, but Moses decided that question, and all is salved with
the new term of a creation,—that is, a production of something out of
nothing. And what is that?—whatsoever is opposite to something; or,
more exactly, that which is truly contrary unto God: for he only is;
all others have an existence with dependency, and are something but by
a distinction. And herein is divinity conformant unto philosophy, and
generation not only founded on contrarieties, but also creation. God,
being all things, is contrary unto nothing; out of which were made
all things, and so nothing became something, and omneity informed
nullity into an essence.

The whole creation is a mystery, and particularly that of
man. At the blast of his mouth were the rest of the creatures made;
and at his bare word they started out of nothing: but in the frame of
man (as the text describes it) he played the sensible operator, and
seemed not so much to create as make him. When he had separated the
materials of other creatures, there consequently resulted a form and
soul; but, having raised the walls of man, he was driven to a second
and harder creation,—of a substance like himself, an incorruptible
and immortal soul. For these two affections we have the philosophy
and opinion of the heathens, the flat affirmative of Plato, and not a
negative from Aristotle. There is another scruple cast in by divinity
concerning its production, much disputed in the German auditories,
and with that indifferency and equality of arguments, as leave the
controversy undetermined. I am not of Paracelsus’s mind, that boldly
delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction; yet cannot but
wonder at the multitude of heads that do deny traduction, having no
other arguments to confirm their belief than that rhetorical sentence
and antimetathesis of Augustine, “creando infunditur, infundendo
creatur.” Either opinion will consist well enough with religion: yet
I should rather incline to this, did not one objection haunt me, not
wrung from speculations and subtleties, but from common sense and
observation; not pick’d from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst
the weeds and tares of my own brain. And this is a conclusion from the
equivocal and monstrous productions in the copulation of a man with a
beast: for if the soul of man be not transmitted and transfused in the
seed of the parents, why are not those productions merely beasts, but
have also an impression and tincture of reason in as high a measure,
as it can evidence itself in those improper organs? Nor, truly, can
I peremptorily deny that the soul, in this her sublunary estate,
is wholly, and in all acceptions, inorganical: but that, for the
performance of her ordinary actions, is required not only a symmetry
and proper disposition of organs, but a crasis and temper correspondent
to its operations; yet is not this mass of flesh and visible structure
the instrument and proper corpse of the soul, but rather of sense,
and that the hand of reason. In our study of anatomy there is a mass
of mysterious philosophy, and such as reduced the very heathens to
divinity; yet, amongst all those rare discoveries and curious pieces I
find in the fabrick of man, I do not so much content myself, as in that
I find not,—that is, no organ or instrument for the rational soul; for
in the brain, which we term the seat of reason, there is not anything
of moment more than I can discover in the crany of a beast; and this
is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the inorganity of the
soul, at least in that sense we usually so conceive it. Thus we are
men, and we know not how; there is something in us that can be without
us, and will be after us, though it is strange that it hath no history
what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it entered in us.

Now, for these walls of flesh, wherein the soul doth seem
to be immured before the resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental
composition, and a fabrick that must fall to ashes. “All flesh is
grass,” is not only metaphorically, but literally, true; for all those
creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field, digested into
flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay, further,
we are what we all abhor, anthropophagi, and cannibals, devourers
not only of men, but of ourselves; and that not in an allegory but a
positive truth: for all this mass of flesh which we behold, came in
at our mouths: this frame we look upon, hath been upon our trenchers;
in brief, we have devoured ourselves. I cannot believe the wisdom of
Pythagoras did ever positively, and in a literal sense, affirm his
metempsychosis, or impossible transmigration of the souls of men into
beasts. Of all metamorphoses or transmigrations, I believe only one,
that is of Lot’s wife; for that of Nabuchodonosor proceeded not so far.
In all others I conceive there is no further verity than is contained
in their implicit sense and morality. I believe that the whole frame
of a beast doth perish, and is left in the same state after death as
before it was materialled unto life: that the souls of men know neither
contrary nor corruption; that they subsist beyond the body, and outlive
death by the privilege of their proper natures, and without a miracle:
that the souls of the faithful, as they leave earth, take possession of
heaven; that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not
the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting
and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villany; instilling and
stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are not at rest in
their graves, but wander, solicitous of the affairs of the world.
But that those phantasms appear often, and do frequent cemeteries,
charnel-houses, and churches, it is because those are the dormitories
of the dead, where the devil, like an insolent champion, beholds with
pride the spoils and trophies of his victory over Adam.

This is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that
makes us so often cry, O Adam, quid fecisti? I thank God I have
not those strait ligaments, or narrow obligations to the world, as
to dote on life, or be convulsed and tremble at the name of death.
Not that I am insensible of the dread and horror thereof; or, by
raking into the bowels of the deceased, continual sight of anatomies,
skeletons, or cadaverous relicks, like vespilloes, or gravemakers, I
am become stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality; but
that, marshalling all the horrors, and contemplating the extremities
thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the courage of a
man, much less a well-resolved Christian; and therefore am not angry
at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a part of this
common fate, and, like the best of them, to die; that is, to cease to
breathe, to take a farewell of the elements; to be a kind of nothing
for a moment; to be within one instant of a spirit. When I take a full
view and circle of myself without this reasonable moderator, and equal
piece of justice, death, I do conceive myself the miserablest person
extant. Were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities
of this world should not entreat a moment’s breath from me. Could the
devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive
that very thought. I have so abject a conceit of this common way of
existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this
is to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity. In
expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life; yet,
in my best meditations, do often defy death. I honour any man that
contemns it; nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes
me naturally love a soldier, and honour those tattered and contemptible
regiments, that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a pagan
there may be some motives to be in love with life; but, for a Christian
to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma—that
he is too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come.

Some divines count Adam thirty years old at his
creation, because they suppose him created in the perfect age and
stature of man: and surely we are all out of the computation of our
age; and every man is some months older than he bethinks him; for
we live, move, have a being, and are subject to the actions of the
elements, and the malice of diseases, in that other world, the truest
microcosm, the womb of our mother; for besides that general and common
existence we are conceived to hold in our chaos, and whilst we sleep
within the bosom of our causes, we enjoy a being and life in three
distinct worlds, wherein we receive most manifest gradations. In that
obscure world, the womb of our mother, our time is short, computed
by the moon; yet longer than the days of many creatures that behold
the sun; ourselves being not yet without life, sense, and reason;
though, for the manifestation of its actions, it awaits the opportunity
of objects, and seems to live there but in its root and soul of
vegetation. Entering afterwards upon the scene of the world, we arise
up and become another creature; performing the reasonable actions
of man, and obscurely manifesting that part of divinity in us, but
not in complement and perfection, till we have once more cast our
secundine, that is, this slough of flesh, and are delivered into the
last world, that is, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper ubi
of spirits. The smattering I have of the philosopher’s stone (which is
something more than the perfect exaltation of gold) hath taught me
a great deal of divinity, and instructed my belief, how that immortal
spirit and incorruptible substance of my soul may lie obscure, and
sleep a while within this house of flesh. Those strange and mystical
transmigrations that I have observed in silkworms turned my philosophy
into divinity. There is in these works of nature, which seem to puzzle
reason, something divine; and hath more in it than the eye of a common
spectator doth discover.

I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or
travel, been able to effront or enharden me; yet I have one part of
modesty, which I have seldom discovered in another, that is (to speak
truly), I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed thereof; ’tis
the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can
so disfigure us, that our nearest friends, wife, and children, stand
afraid, and start at us. The birds and beasts of the field, that
before, in a natural fear, obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance, begin
to prey upon us. This very conceit hath, in a tempest, disposed and
left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of waters, wherein I
had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering eyes, tears of pity,
lectures of mortality, and none had said, “Quantum mutatus ab illo!”
Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or can accuse nature
of playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own vicious life for
contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I might not call
myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any.

Some, upon the courage of a fruitful issue, wherein,
as in the truest chronicle, they seem to outlive themselves, can
with greater patience away with death. This conceit and counterfeit
subsisting in our progenies seems to be a mere fallacy, unworthy the
desire of a man, that can but conceive a thought of the next world;
who, in a nobler ambition, should desire to live in his substance in
heaven, rather than his name and shadow in the earth. And therefore,
at my death, I mean to take a total adieu of the world, not caring for
a monument, history, or epitaph; not so much as the bare memory of my
name to be found anywhere, but in the universal register of God. I am
not yet so cynical, as to approve the testament of Diogenes, nor do
I altogether allow that rodomontado of Lucan;
“Pharsalia,” vii. 819.

——-“_Cœlo tegitur, qui non habet urnam._”

He that unburied lies wants not his hearse;
For unto him a tomb’s the universe.

but commend, in my calmer judgment, those ingenuous intentions that
desire to sleep by the urns of their fathers, and strive to go the
neatest way unto corruption. I do not envy the temper of crows and
daws, nor the numerous and weary days of our fathers before the flood.
If there be any truth in astrology, I may outlive a jubilee; as
yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn, nor hath my pulse
beat thirty years, and yet, excepting one, have seen the ashes of,
and left under ground, all the kings of Europe; have been contemporary
to three emperors, four grand signiors, and as many popes: methinks I
have outlived myself, and begin to be weary of the sun; I have shaken
hands with delight in my warm blood and canicular days; I perceive
I do anticipate the vices of age; the world to me is but a dream or
mock-show, and we all therein but pantaloons and anticks, to my severer
contemplations.

It is not, I confess, an unlawful prayer to desire to
surpass the days of our Saviour, or wish to outlive that age wherein
he thought fittest to die; yet, if (as divinity affirms) there shall
be no grey hairs in heaven, but all shall rise in the perfect state
of men, we do but outlive those perfections in this world, to be
recalled unto them by a greater miracle in the next, and run on here
but to be retrograde hereafter. Were there any hopes to outlive vice,
or a point to be superannuated from sin, it were worthy our knees to
implore the days of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but incurvate
our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, and (like
diseases) brings on incurable vices; for every day, as we grow weaker
in age, we grow stronger in sin, and the number of our days doth but
make our sins innumerable. The same vice, committed at sixteen, is not
the same, though it agrees in all other circumstances, as at forty; but
swells and doubles from the circumstance of our ages, wherein, besides
the constant and inexcusable habit of transgressing, the maturity of
our judgment cuts off pretence unto excuse or pardon. Every sin, the
oftener it is committed, the more it acquireth in the quality of evil;
as it succeeds in time, so it proceeds in degrees of badness; for as
they proceed they ever multiply, and, like figures in arithmetick,
the last stands for more than all that went before it. And, though I
think no man can live well once, but he that could live twice, yet, for
my own part, I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the
thread of my days; not upon Cicero’s ground, because I have lived
them well, but for fear I should live them worse. I find my growing
judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed affections
and confirmed vitiosity make me daily do worse. I find in my confirmed
age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many then
because I was a child; and, because I commit them still, I am yet an
infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child, before the
days of dotage; and stand in need of Æson’s bath before threescore.

And truly there goes a deal of providence to produce a
man’s life unto threescore; there is more required than an able temper
for those years: though the radical humour contain in it sufficient oil
for seventy, yet I perceive in some it gives no light past thirty: men
assign not all the causes of long life, that write whole books thereof.
They that found themselves on the radical balsam, or vital sulphur of
the parts, determine not why Abel lived not so long as Adam. There is
therefore a secret gloom or bottom of our days: ’twas his wisdom to
determine them: but his perpetual and waking providence that fulfils
and accomplisheth them; wherein the spirits, ourselves, and all the
creatures of God, in a secret and disputed way, do execute his will.
Let them not therefore complain of immaturity that die about thirty:
they fall but like the whole world, whose solid and well-composed
substance must not expect the duration and period of its constitution:
when all things are completed in it, its age is accomplished; and
the last and general fever may as naturally destroy it before six
thousand, as me before forty. There is therefore some other hand
that twines the thread of life than that of nature: we are not only
ignorant in antipathies and occult qualities; our ends are as obscure
as our beginnings; the line of our days is drawn by night, and the
various effects therein by a pencil that is invisible; wherein, though
we confess our ignorance, I am sure we do not err if we say, it is the
hand of God.

I am much taken with two verses of Lucan, since I have
been able not only, as we do at school, to construe, but understand:

“_Victurosque Dei celant ut vivere durent,
Felix esse mori._”


We’re all deluded, vainly searching ways
To make us happy by the length of days;
For cunningly, to make’s protract this breath,
The gods conceal the happiness of death.

There be many excellent strains in that poet, wherewith his stoical
genius hath liberally supplied him: and truly there are singular pieces
in the philosophy of Zeno, and doctrine of the stoics, which I
perceive, delivered in a pulpit, pass for current divinity: yet herein
are they in extremes, that can allow a man to be his own assassin, and
so highly extol the end and suicide of Cato. This is indeed not to
fear death, but yet to be afraid of life. It is a brave act of valour
to contemn death; but, where life is more terrible than death, it is
then the truest valour to dare to live: and herein religion hath taught
us a noble example; for all the valiant acts of Curtius, Scævola, or
Codrus, do not parallel, or match, that one of Job; and sure there is
no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any poniards in death itself,
like those in the way or prologue unto it. “Emori nolo, sed me esse
mortuum nihil curo;” I would not die, but care not to be dead. Were I
of Cæsar’s religion, I should be of his desires, and wish rather to
go off at one blow, than to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture
of a disease. Men that look no further than their outsides, think
health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions
for being sick; but I, that have examined the parts of man, and know
upon what tender filaments that fabrick hangs, do wonder that we are
not always so; and, considering the thousand doors that lead to death,
do thank my God that we can die but once. ’Tis not only the mischief of
diseases, and the villany of poisons, that make an end of us; we vainly
accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death:—it is in
the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every
one we meet, he doth not kill us. There is therefore but one comfort
left, that though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away
life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death. God would
not exempt himself from that; the misery of immortality in the flesh
he undertook not, that was immortal. Certainly there is no happiness
within this circle of flesh; nor is it in the opticks of these eyes
to behold felicity. The first day of our jubilee is death; the devil
hath therefore failed of his desires; we are happier with death than
we should have been without it: there is no misery but in himself,
where there is no end of misery; and so indeed, in his own sense, the
stoic is in the right. He forgets that he can die, who complains of
misery: we are in the power of no calamity while death is in our own.

Now, besides this literal and positive kind of death,
there are others whereof divines make mention, and those, I think,
not merely metaphorical, as mortification, dying unto sin and the
world. Therefore, I say, every man hath a double horoscope; one of his
humanity,—his birth, another of his Christianity,—his baptism: and
from this do I compute or calculate my nativity; not reckoning those
horæ combustæ, and odd days, or esteeming myself anything, before
I was my Saviour’s and enrolled in the register of Christ. Whosoever
enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear
about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions,
the way to be immortal is to die daily; nor can I think I have the
true theory of death, when I contemplate a skull or behold a skeleton
with those vulgar imaginations it casts upon us. I have therefore
enlarged that common memento mori into a more Christian memorandum,
memento quatuor novissima,—those four inevitable points of us all,
death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Neither did the contemplations
of the heathens rest in their graves, without a further thought, of
Rhadamanth or some judicial proceeding after death, though in
another way, and upon suggestion of their natural reasons. I cannot but
marvel from what sibyl or oracle they stole the prophecy of the world’s
destruction by fire, or whence Lucan learned to say—

“_Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra
Misturus——_”


There yet remains to th’ world one common fire,
Wherein our bones with stars shall make one pyre.

I believe the world grows near its end; yet is neither old nor decayed,
nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles. As the work
of creation was above nature, so its adversary, annihilation; without
which the world hath not its end, but its mutation. Now, what force
should be able to consume it thus far, without the breath of God, which
is the truest consuming flame, my philosophy cannot inform me. Some
believe there went not a minute to the world’s creation, nor shall
there go to its destruction; those six days, so punctually described,
make not to them one moment, but rather seem to manifest the method and
idea of that great work of the intellect of God than the manner how he
proceeded in its operation. I cannot dream that there should be at the
last day any such judicial proceeding, or calling to the bar, as indeed
the Scripture seems to imply, and the literal commentators do conceive:
for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in
a vulgar and illustrative way, and, being written unto man, are
delivered, not as they truly are, but as they may be understood;
wherein, notwithstanding, the different interpretations according to
different capacities may stand firm with our devotion, nor be any way
prejudicial to each single edification.

Now, to determine the day and year of this inevitable
time, is not only convincible and statute madness, but also manifest
impiety. How shall we interpret Elias’s six thousand years, or imagine
the secret communicated to a Rabbi which God hath denied unto his
angels? It had been an excellent quære to have posed the devil of
Delphos, and must needs have forced him to some strange amphibology.
It hath not only mocked the predictions of sundry astrologers in ages
past, but the prophecies of many melancholy heads in these present;
who, neither understanding reasonably things past nor present, pretend
a knowledge of things to come; heads ordained only to manifest the
incredible effects of melancholy and to fulfil old prophecies,
rather than be the authors of new. “In those days there shall come wars
and rumours of wars” to me seems no prophecy, but a constant truth
in all times verified since it was pronounced. “There shall be signs
in the moon and stars;” how comes he then like a thief in the night,
when he gives an item of his coming? That common sign, drawn from the
revelation of antichrist, is as obscure as any; in our common compute
he hath been come these many years; but, for my own part, to speak
freely, I am half of opinion that antichrist is the philosopher’s stone
in divinity, for the discovery and invention whereof, though there be
prescribed rules, and probable inductions, yet hath hardly any man
attained the perfect discovery thereof. That general opinion, that the
world grows near its end, hath possessed all ages past as nearly as
ours. I am afraid that the souls that now depart cannot escape that
lingering expostulation of the saints under the altar, “quousque,
Domine?” how long, O Lord? and groan in the expectation of the great
jubilee.

This is the day that must make good that great attribute
of God, his justice; that must reconcile those unanswerable doubts
that torment the wisest understandings; and reduce those seeming
inequalities and respective distributions in this world, to an equality
and recompensive justice in the next. This is that one day, that shall
include and comprehend all that went before it; wherein, as in the
last scene, all the actors must enter, to complete and make up the
catastrophe of this great piece. This is the day whose memory hath,
only, power to make us honest in the dark, and to be virtuous without
a witness. “Ipsa sui pretium virtus sibi,” that virtue is her own
reward, is but a cold principle, and not able to maintain our variable
resolutions in a constant and settled way of goodness. I have practised
that honest artifice of Seneca, and, in my retired and solitary
imaginations to detain me from the foulness of vice, have fancied to
myself the presence of my dear and worthiest friends, before whom I
should lose my head rather than be vicious; yet herein I found that
there was nought but moral honesty; and this was not to be virtuous
for his sake who must reward us at the last. I have tried if I could
reach that great resolution of his, to be honest without a thought of
heaven or hell; and, indeed I found, upon a natural inclination, and
inbred loyalty unto virtue, that I could serve her without a livery,
yet not in that resolved and venerable way, but that the frailty of my
nature, upon an easy temptation, might be induced to forget her. The
life, therefore, and spirit of all our actions is the resurrection,
and a stable apprehension that our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our
pious endeavours; without this, all religion is a fallacy, and those
impieties of Lucian, Euripides, and Julian, are no blasphemies, but
subtile verities; and atheists have been the only philosophers.

How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to
believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy. Many
things are true in divinity, which are neither inducible by reason
nor confirmable by sense; and many things in philosophy confirmable
by sense, yet not inducible by reason. Thus it is impossible, by any
solid or demonstrative reasons, to persuade a man to believe the
conversion of the needle to the north; though this be possible and
true, and easily credible, upon a single experiment unto the sense. I
believe that our estranged and divided ashes shall unite again; that
our separated dust, after so many pilgrimages and transformations into
the parts of minerals, plants, animals, elements, shall, at the voice
of God, return into their primitive shapes, and join again to make up
their primary and predestinate forms. As at the creation there was a
separation of that confused mass into its pieces; so at the destruction
thereof there shall be a separation into its distinct individuals. As,
at the creation of the world, all the distinct species that we behold
lay involved in one mass, till the fruitful voice of God separated this
united multitude into its several species, so, at the last day, when
those corrupted relicks shall be scattered in the wilderness of forms,
and seem to have forgot their proper habits, God, by a powerful voice,
shall command them back into their proper shapes, and call them out
by their single individuals. Then shall appear the fertility of Adam,
and the magick of that sperm that hath dilated into so many millions.
I have often beheld, as a miracle, that artificial resurrection and
revivification of mercury, how being mortified into a thousand shapes,
it assumes again its own, and returns into its numerical self. Let us
speak naturally, and like philosophers. The forms of alterable bodies
in these sensible corruptions perish not; nor, as we imagine, wholly
quit their mansions; but retire and contract themselves into their
secret and unaccessible parts; where they may best protect themselves
from the action of their antagonist. A plant or vegetable consumed
to ashes to a contemplative and school-philosopher seems utterly
destroyed, and the form to have taken his leave for ever; but to a
sensible artist the forms are not perished, but withdrawn into their
incombustible part, where they lie secure from the action of that
devouring element. This is made good by experience, which can from
the ashes of a plant revive the plant, and from its cinders recall
it into its stalk and leaves again. What the art of man can do
in these inferior pieces, what blasphemy is it to affirm the finger
of God cannot do in those more perfect and sensible structures? This
is that mystical philosophy, from whence no true scholar becomes an
atheist, but from the visible effects of nature grows up a real divine,
and beholds not in a dream, as Ezekiel, but in an ocular and visible
object, the types of his resurrection.

Now, the necessary mansions of our restored selves are
those two contrary and incompatible places we call heaven and hell.
To define them, or strictly to determine what and where these are,
surpasseth my divinity. That elegant apostle, which seemed to have
a glimpse of heaven, hath left but a negative description thereof;
which “neither eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard, nor can enter into
the heart of man:” he was translated out of himself to behold it;
but, being returned into himself, could not express it. Saint John’s
description by emeralds, chrysolites, and precious stones, is too weak
to express the material heaven we behold. Briefly, therefore, where
the soul hath the full measure and complement of happiness; where
the boundless appetite of that spirit remains completely satisfied
that it can neither desire addition nor alteration; that, I think, is
truly heaven: and this can only be in the enjoyment of that essence,
whose infinite goodness is able to terminate the desires of itself,
and the unsatiable wishes of ours. Wherever God will thus manifest
himself, there is heaven, though within the circle of this sensible
world. Thus, the soul of man may be in heaven anywhere, even within
the limits of his own proper body; and when it ceaseth to live in the
body it may remain in its own soul, that is, its Creator. And thus
we may say that Saint Paul, whether in the body or out of the body,
was yet in heaven. To place it in the empyreal, or beyond the tenth
sphere, is to forget the world’s destruction; for when this sensible
world shall be destroyed, all shall then be here as it is now there,
an empyreal heaven, a quasi vacuity; when to ask where heaven is, is
to demand where the presence of God is, or where we have the glory of
that happy vision. Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of the
Egyptians, committed a gross absurdity in philosophy, when with these
eyes of flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his Maker, that is
truth itself, to a contradiction. Those that imagine heaven and hell
neighbours, and conceive a vicinity between those two extremes, upon
consequence of the parable, where Dives discoursed with Lazarus, in
Abraham’s bosom, do too grossly conceive of those glorified creatures,
whose eyes shall easily out-see the sun, and behold without perspective
the extremest distances: for if there shall be, in our glorified
eyes, the faculty of sight and reception of objects, I could think
the visible species there to be in as unlimitable a way as now the
intellectual. I grant that two bodies placed beyond the tenth sphere,
or in a vacuity, according to Aristotle’s philosophy, could not behold
each other, because there wants a body or medium to hand and transport
the visible rays of the object unto the sense; but when there shall
be a general defect of either medium to convey, or light to prepare
and dispose that medium, and yet a perfect vision, we must suspend the
rules of our philosophy, and make all good by a more absolute piece of
opticks.

I cannot tell how to say that fire is the essence of
hell; I know not what to make of purgatory, or conceive a flame that
can either prey upon, or purify the substance of a soul. Those flames
of sulphur, mentioned in the scriptures, I take not to be understood
of this present hell, but of that to come, where fire shall make up
the complement of our tortures, and have a body or subject whereon to
manifest its tyranny. Some who have had the honour to be textuary in
divinity are of opinion it shall be the same specifical fire with ours.
This is hard to conceive, yet can I make good how even that may prey
upon our bodies, and yet not consume us: for in this material world,
there are bodies that persist invincible in the powerfulest flames; and
though, by the action of fire, they fall into ignition and liquation,
yet will they never suffer a destruction. I would gladly know how
Moses, with an actual fire, calcined or burnt the golden calf into
powder: for that mystical metal of gold, whose solary and celestial
nature I admire, exposed unto the violence of fire, grows only hot,
and liquefies, but consumeth not; so when the consumable and volatile
pieces of our bodies shall be refined into a more impregnable and fixed
temper, like gold, though they suffer from the action of flames, they
shall never perish, but lie immortal in the arms of fire. And surely,
if this flame must suffer only by the action of this element, there
will many bodies escape; and not only heaven, but earth will not be
at an end, but rather a beginning. For at present it is not earth,
but a composition of fire, water, earth, and air; but at that time,
spoiled of these ingredients, it shall appear in a substance more like
itself, its ashes. Philosophers that opinioned the world’s destruction
by fire, did never dream of annihilation, which is beyond the power of
sublunary causes; for the last and proper action of that element is but
vitrification, or a reduction of a body into glass; and therefore some
of our chymicks facetiously affirm, that, at the last fire, all shall
be crystalized and reverberated into glass, which is the utmost action
of that element. Nor need we fear this term, annihilation, or wonder
that God will destroy the works of his creation: for man subsisting,
who is, and will then truly appear, a microcosm, the world cannot be
said to be destroyed. For the eyes of God, and perhaps also of our
glorified selves, shall as really behold and contemplate the world, in
its epitome or contracted essence, as now it doth at large and in its
dilated substance. In the seed of a plant, to the eyes of God, and to
the understanding of man, there exists, though in an invisible way,
the perfect leaves, flowers, and fruit thereof; for things that are in
posse to the sense, are actually existent to the understanding. Thus
God beholds all things, who contemplates as fully his works in their
epitome as in their full volume, and beheld as amply the whole world,
in that little compendium of the sixth day, as in the scattered and
dilated pieces of those five before.

Men commonly set forth the torments of hell by fire, and
the extremity of corporal afflictions, and describe hell in the same
method that Mahomet doth heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and drums
in popular ears: but if this be the terrible piece thereof, it is not
worthy to stand in diameter with heaven, whose happiness consists in
that part that is best able to comprehend it, that immortal essence,
that translated divinity and colony of God, the soul. Surely, though
we place hell under earth, the devil’s walk and purlieu is about it.
Men speak too popularly who place it in those flaming mountains, which
to grosser apprehensions represent hell. The heart of man is the place
the devils dwell in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer
keeps his court in my breast; Legion is revived in me. There are as
many hells as Anaxagoras conceited worlds. There was more than one
hell in Magdalene, when there were seven devils; for every devil is an
hell unto himself, he holds enough of torture in his own ubi;
and needs not the misery of circumference to afflict him: and thus,
a distracted conscience here is a shadow or introduction unto hell
hereafter. Who can but pity the merciful intention of those hands that
do destroy themselves? The devil, were it in his power, would do the
like; which being impossible, his miseries are endless, and he suffers
most in that attribute wherein he is impassible, his immortality.

I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid
of hell, nor ever grew pale at the description of that place. I have so
fixed my contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea
of hell; and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one, than endure
the misery of the other: to be deprived of them is a perfect hell, and
needs methinks no addition to complete our afflictions. That terrible
term hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to
the name thereof. I fear God, yet am not afraid of him; his mercies
make me ashamed of my sins, before his judgments afraid thereof: these
are the forced and secondary method of his wisdom, which he useth but
as the last remedy, and upon provocation;—a course rather to deter
the wicked, than incite the virtuous to his worship. I can hardly
think there was ever any scared into heaven: they go the fairest way
to heaven that would serve God without a hell: other mercenaries,
that crouch unto him in fear of hell, though they term themselves the
servants, are indeed but the slaves, of the Almighty.

And to be true, and speak my soul, when I survey the
occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of God, I can
perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to
mankind, or in particular to myself. And, whether out of the prejudice
of my affection, or an inverting and partial conceit of his mercies, I
know not,—but those which others term crosses, afflictions, judgments,
misfortunes, to me, who inquire further into them than their visible
effects, they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the secret
and dissembled favours of his affection. It is a singular piece of
wisdom to apprehend truly, and without passion, the works of God, and
so well to distinguish his justice from his mercy as not to miscall
those noble attributes; yet it is likewise an honest piece of logick so
to dispute and argue the proceedings of God as to distinguish even his
judgments into mercies. For God is merciful unto all, because better
to the worst than the best deserve; and to say he punisheth none in
this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity. To one that hath
committed murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine, it were a
madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the sentence,
rather than admire the clemency of the judge. Thus, our offences being
mortal, and deserving not only death but damnation, if the goodness of
God be content to traverse and pass them over with a loss, misfortune,
or disease; what frenzy were it to term this a punishment, rather than
an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of his judgments
rather than admire the sceptre of his mercies! Therefore to adore,
honour, and admire him, is a debt of gratitude due from the obligation
of our nature, states, and conditions: and with these thoughts he that
knows them best will not deny that I adore him. That I obtain heaven,
and the bliss thereof, is accidental, and not the intended work of my
devotion; it being a felicity I can neither think to deserve nor scarce
in modesty to expect. For these two ends of us all, either as rewards
or punishments, are mercifully ordained and disproportionably disposed
unto our actions; the one being so far beyond our deserts, the other so
infinitely below our demerits.

There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ;
that is, say some, since his nativity, and, as divinity affirmeth,
before also; which makes me much apprehend the end of those honest
worthies and philosophers which died before his incarnation. It is hard
to place those souls in hell, whose worthy lives do teach us virtue on
earth. Methinks, among those many subdivisions of hell, there might
have been one limbo left for these. What a strange vision will it be
to see their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their
imagined and fancied furies into real devils! How strange to them will
sound the history of Adam, when they shall suffer for him they never
heard of! When they who derive their genealogy from the gods, shall
know they are the unhappy issue of sinful man! It is an insolent part
of reason, to controvert the works of God, or question the justice of
his proceedings. Could humility teach others, as it hath instructed me,
to contemplate the infinite and incomprehensible distance betwixt the
Creator and the creature; or did we seriously perpend that one simile
of St Paul, “shall the vessel say to the potter, why hast thou made me
thus?” it would prevent these arrogant disputes of reason: nor would
we argue the definitive sentence of God, either to heaven or hell. Men
that live according to the right rule and law of reason, live but in
their own kind, as beasts do in theirs; who justly obey the prescript
of their natures, and therefore cannot reasonably demand a reward of
their actions, as only obeying the natural dictates of their reason.
It will, therefore, and must, at last appear, that all salvation is
through Christ; which verity, I fear, these great examples of virtue
must confirm, and make it good how the perfectest actions of earth have
no title or claim unto heaven.

Nor truly do I think the lives of these, or of any other,
were ever correspondent, or in all points conformable, unto their
doctrines. It is evident that Aristotle transgressed the rule of his
own ethicks; the stoicks, that condemn passion, and command a man
to laugh in Phalaris’s bull, could not endure without a groan a
fit of the stone or colick. The scepticks, that affirmed they knew
nothing, even in that opinion confute themselves, and thought
they knew more than all the world beside. Diogenes I hold to be the
most vainglorious man of his time, and more ambitious in refusing all
honours, than Alexander in rejecting none. Vice and the devil put a
fallacy upon our reasons; and, provoking us too hastily to run from
it, entangle and profound us deeper in it. The duke of Venice, that
weds himself unto the sea, by a ring of gold, I will not accuse of
prodigality, because it is a solemnity of good use and consequence in
the state: but the philosopher, that threw his money into the sea to
avoid avarice, was a notorious prodigal. There is no road or ready
way to virtue; it is not an easy point of art to disentangle ourselves
from this riddle or web of sin. To perfect virtue, as to religion,
there is required a panoplia, or complete armour; that whilst we
lie at close ward against one vice, we lie not open to the veney
of another. And indeed wiser discretions, that have the thread of
reason to conduct them, offend without a pardon; whereas under heads
may stumble without dishonour. There go so many circumstances to
piece up one good action, that it is a lesson to be good, and we are
forced to be virtuous by the book. Again, the practice of men holds
not an equal pace, yea and often runs counter to their theory; we
naturally know what is good, but naturally pursue what is evil: the
rhetorick wherewith I persuade another cannot persuade myself. There
is a depraved appetite in us, that will with patience hear the learned
instructions of reason, but yet perform no further than agrees to
its own irregular humour. In brief, we all are monsters; that is, a
composition of man and beast: wherein we must endeavour to be as the
poets fancy that wise man, Chiron; that is, to have the region of
man above that of beast, and sense to sit but at the feet of reason.
Lastly, I do desire with God that all, but yet affirm with men that
few, shall know salvation,—that the bridge is narrow, the passage
strait unto life: yet those who do confine the church of God either to
particular nations, churches, or families, have made it far narrower
than our Saviour ever meant it.

The vulgarity of those judgments that wrap the church of
God in Strabo’s cloak, and restrain it unto Europe, seem to me as
bad geographers as Alexander, who thought he had conquered all the
world, when he had not subdued the half of any part thereof. For we
cannot deny the church of God both in Asia and Africa, if we do not
forget the peregrinations of the apostles, the deaths of the martyrs,
the sessions of many and (even in our reformed judgment) lawful
councils, held in those parts in the minority and nonage of ours.
Nor must a few differences, more remarkable in the eyes of man than,
perhaps, in the judgment of God, excommunicate from heaven one another;
much less those Christians who are in a manner all martyrs, maintaining
their faith in the noble way of persecution, and serving God in the
fire, whereas we honour him in the sunshine.

’Tis true, we all hold there is a number of elect, and many to be
saved; yet, take our opinions together, and from the confusion thereof,
there will be no such thing as salvation, nor shall any one be saved:
for, first, the church of Rome condemneth us; we likewise them; the
sub-reformists and sectaries sentence the doctrine of our church as
damnable; the atomist, or familist, reprobates all these; and
all these, them again. Thus, whilst the mercies of God do promise us
heaven, our conceits and opinions exclude us from that place. There
must be therefore more than one St Peter; particular churches and
sects usurp the gates of heaven, and turn the key against each other;
and thus we go to heaven against each other’s wills, conceits, and
opinions, and, with as much uncharity as ignorance, do err, I fear, in
points not only of our own, but one another’s salvation.

I believe many are saved who to man seem reprobated,
and many are reprobated who in the opinion and sentence of man stand
elected. There will appear, at the last day, strange and unexpected
examples, both of his justice and his mercy; and, therefore, to define
either is folly in man, and insolency even in the devils. These acute
and subtile spirits, in all their sagacity, can hardly divine who shall
be saved; which if they could prognostick, their labour were at an
end, nor need they compass the earth, seeking whom they may devour.
Those who, upon a rigid application of the law, sentence Solomon unto
damnation, condemn not only him, but themselves, and the whole
world; for by the letter and written word of God, we are without
exception in the state of death: but there is a prerogative of God, and
an arbitrary pleasure above the letter of his own law, by which alone
we can pretend unto salvation, and through which Solomon might be as
easily saved as those who condemn him.

The number of those who pretend unto salvation, and those
infinite swarms who think to pass through the eye of this needle, have
much amazed me. That name and compellation of “little flock” doth not
comfort, but deject, my devotion; especially when I reflect upon mine
own unworthiness, wherein, according to my humble apprehensions, I am
below them all. I believe there shall never be an anarchy in heaven;
but, as there are hierarchies amongst the angels, so shall there be
degrees of priority amongst the saints. Yet is it, I protest, beyond
my ambition to aspire unto the first ranks; my desires only are, and I
shall be happy therein, to be but the last man, and bring up the rear
in heaven.

Again, I am confident, and fully persuaded, yet dare not
take my oath, of my salvation. I am, as it were, sure, and do believe
without all doubt, that there is such a city as Constantinople; yet,
for me to take my oath thereon were a kind of perjury, because I hold
no infallible warrant from my own sense to confirm me in the certainty
thereof. And truly, though many pretend to an absolute certainty of
their salvation, yet when an humble soul shall contemplate our own
unworthiness, she shall meet with many doubts, and suddenly find how
little we stand in need of the precept of St Paul, “work out your
salvation with fear and trembling.” That which is the cause of my
election, I hold to be the cause of my salvation, which was the mercy
and beneplacit of God, before I was, or the foundation of the world.
“Before Abraham was, I am,” is the saying of Christ, yet is it true in
some sense if I say it of myself; for I was not only before myself but
Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod held
from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before the
creation, and at an end before it had a beginning. And thus was I dead
before I was alive; though my grave be England, my dying place was
Paradise; and Eve miscarried of me, before she conceived of Cain.

Insolent zeals, that do decry good works and rely only
upon faith, take not away merit: for, depending upon the efficacy
of their faith, they enforce the condition of God, and in a more
sophistical way do seem to challenge heaven. It was decreed by God that
only those that lapped in the water like dogs, should have the honour
to destroy the Midianites; yet could none of those justly challenge, or
imagine he deserved, that honour thereupon. I do not deny but that true
faith, and such as God requires, is not only a mark or token, but also
a means, of our salvation; but, where to find this, is as obscure to me
as my last end. And if our Saviour could object, unto his own disciples
and favourites, a faith that, to the quantity of a grain of mustard
seed, is able to remove mountains; surely that which we boast of is not
anything, or, at the most, but a remove from nothing.

This is the tenour of my belief; wherein, though there be many things
singular, and to the humour of my irregular self, yet, if they square
not with maturer judgments, I disclaim them, and do no further favour
them than the learned and best judgments shall authorize them.

Part the Second

Now, for that other virtue of charity, without which
faith is a mere notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavoured
to nourish the merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed
from my parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of
charity. And, if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and
naturally framed to such a piece of virtue,—for I am of a constitution
so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all things; I have
no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour, air, anything.
I wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and
toadstools, nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but, being
amongst them, make them my common viands; and I find they agree with
my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a
church-yard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of
a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander; at the sight of a toad
or viper, I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them.
I feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in
others: those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold
with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but, where I
find their actions in balance with my countrymen’s, I honour, love, and
embrace them, in the same degree. I was born in the eighth climate, but
seem to be framed and constellated unto all. I am no plant that will
not prosper out of a garden. All places, all airs, make unto me one
country; I am in England everywhere, and under any meridian. I have
been shipwrecked, yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study,
play, or sleep, in a tempest. In brief I am averse from nothing: my
conscience would give me the lie if I should say I absolutely detest
or hate any essence, but the devil; or so at least abhor anything, but
that we might come to composition. If there be any among those common
objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy
of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece
of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable
creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and
a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra. It is no breach of charity
to call these fools; it is the style all holy writers have afforded
them, set down by Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point of our
faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do I only include
the base and minor sort of people: there is a rabble even amongst the
gentry; a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel
as these; men in the same level with mechanicks, though their fortunes
do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound for their
follies. But, as in casting account three or four men together come
short in account of one man placed by himself below them, so neither
are a troop of these ignorant Doradoes of that true esteem and
value as many a forlorn person, whose condition doth place him below
their feet. Let us speak like politicians; there is a nobility without
heraldry, a natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with another,
another filed before him, according to the quality of his desert, and
pre-eminence of his good parts. Though the corruption of these times,
and the bias of present practice, wheel another way, thus it was in
the first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the integrity and
cradle of well ordered polities: till corruption getteth ground;—ruder
desires labouring after that which wiser considerations contemn;—every
one having a liberty to amass and heap up riches, and they a licence or
faculty to do or purchase anything.

This general and indifferent temper of mine doth more
nearly dispose me to this noble virtue. It is a happiness to be born
and framed unto virtue, and to grow up from the seeds of nature,
rather than the inoculations and forced grafts of education: yet,
if we are directed only by our particular natures, and regulate our
inclinations by no higher rule than that of our reasons, we are but
moralists; divinity will still call us heathens. Therefore this great
work of charity must have other motives, ends, and impulsions. I
give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and
accomplish the will and command of my God; I draw not my purse for his
sake that demands it, but his that enjoined it; I relieve no man upon
the rhetorick of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating
disposition; for this is still but moral charity, and an act that
oweth more to passion than reason. He that relieves another upon the
bare suggestion and bowels of pity doth not this so much for his sake
as for his own; and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.
It is as erroneous a conceit to redress other men’s misfortunes upon
the common considerations of merciful natures, that it may be one day
our own case; for this is a sinister and politick kind of charity,
whereby we seem to bespeak the pities of men in the like occasions.
And truly I have observed that those professed eleemosynaries, though
in a crowd or multitude, do yet direct and place their petitions on a
few and selected persons; there is surely a physiognomy, which those
experienced and master mendicants observe, whereby they instantly
discover a merciful aspect, and will single out a face, wherein they
spy the signature and marks of mercy. For there are mystically in
our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our
souls, wherein he that can read A, B, C, may read our natures. I hold,
moreover, that there is a phytognomy, or physiognomy, not only of men,
but of plants and vegetables; and is every one of them some outward
figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward forms. The finger
of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical, or
composed of letters, but of their several forms, constitutions, parts,
and operations, which, aptly joined together, do make one word that
doth express their natures. By these letters God calls the stars by
their names; and by this alphabet Adam assigned to every creature a
name peculiar to its nature. Now, there are, besides these characters
in our faces, certain mystical figures in our hands, which I dare not
call mere dashes, strokes à la volee or at random, because delineated
by a pencil that never works in vain; and hereof I take more particular
notice, because I carry that in mine own hand which I could never read
of nor discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in his acute and
singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of chiromancy:
yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer addicted to those abstruse
and mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein: to which those vagabond
and counterfeit Egyptians did after pretend, and perhaps retained
a few corrupted principles, which sometimes might verify their
prognosticks.

It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of
faces, there should be none alike: now, contrary, I wonder as much
how there should be any. He that shall consider how many thousand
several words have been carelessly and without study composed out of
twenty-four letters; withal, how many hundred lines there are to be
drawn in the fabrick of one man; shall easily find that this variety
is necessary: and it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to
make one portrait like another. Let a painter carelessly limn out a
million of faces, and you shall find them all different; yes, let him
have his copy before him, yet, after all his art, there will remain
a sensible distinction: for the pattern or example of everything is
the perfectest in that kind, whereof we still come short, though we
transcend or go beyond it; because herein it is wide, and agrees not
in all points unto its copy. Nor doth the similitude of creatures
disparage the variety of nature, nor any way confound the works of God.
For even in things alike there is diversity; and those that do seem to
accord do manifestly disagree. And thus is man like God; for, in the
same things that we resemble him we are utterly different from him.
There was never anything so like another as in all points to concur;
there will ever some reserved difference slip in, to prevent the
identity; without which two several things would not be alike, but the
same, which is impossible.

But, to return from philosophy to charity, I hold not so
narrow a conceit of this virtue as to conceive that to give alms is
only to be charitable, or think a piece of liberality can comprehend
the total of charity. Divinity hath wisely divided the act thereof
into many branches, and hath taught us, in this narrow way, many paths
unto goodness; as many ways as we may do good, so many ways we may be
charitable. There are infirmities not only of body, but of soul and
fortunes, which do require the merciful hand of our abilities. I cannot
contemn a man for ignorance, but behold him with as much pity as I do
Lazarus. It is no greater charity to clothe his body than apparel the
nakedness of his soul. It is an honourable object to see the reasons
of other men wear our liveries, and their borrowed understandings do
homage to the bounty of ours. It is the cheapest way of beneficence,
and, like the natural charity of the sun, illuminates another without
obscuring itself. To be reserved and caitiff in this part of
goodness is the sordidest piece of covetousness, and more contemptible
than the pecuniary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar) I
am obliged by the duty of my condition. I make not therefore my head
a grave, but a treasure of knowledge. I intend no monopoly, but a
community in learning. I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs
that study not for themselves. I envy no man that knows more than
myself, but pity them that know less. I instruct no man as an exercise
of my knowledge, or with an intent rather to nourish and keep it alive
in mine own head than beget and propagate it in his. And, in the midst
of all my endeavours, there is but one thought that dejects me, that
my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can be legacied among
my honoured friends. I cannot fall out or contemn a man for an error,
or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide an affection;
for controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy
and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do
not infringe the laws of charity. In all disputes, so much as there
is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then
reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the
question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are
never determined; for, though they be amply proposed, they are scarce
at all handled; they do so swell with unnecessary digressions; and the
parenthesis on the party is often as large as the main discourse upon
the subject. The foundations of religion are already established, and
the principles of salvation subscribed unto by all. There remain not
many controversies worthy a passion, and yet never any dispute without,
not only in divinity but inferior arts. What a βατραχομυομαχία and
hot skirmish is betwixt S. and T. in Lucian! How do grammarians
hack and slash for the genitive case in Jupiter! How do they
break their own pates, to salve that of Priscian! “Si foret in
terris, rideret Democritus.” Yes, even amongst wiser militants, how
many wounds have been given and credits slain, for the poor victory
of an opinion, or beggarly conquest of a distinction! Scholars are
men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than
Actius’s razor; their pens carry farther, and give a louder report
than thunder. I had rather stand the shock of a basilisko than
in the fury of a merciless pen. It is not mere zeal to learning, or
devotion to the muses, that wiser princes patron the arts, and carry
an indulgent aspect unto scholars; but a desire to have their names
eternized by the memory of their writings, and a fear of the revengeful
pen of succeeding ages: for these are the men that, when they have
played their parts, and had their exits, must step out and give the
moral of their scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of their
virtues and vices. And surely there goes a great deal of conscience to
the compiling of an history: there is no reproach to the scandal of a
story; it is such an authentick kind of falsehood, that with authority
belies our good names to all nations and posterity.

There is another offence unto charity, which no author hath
ever written of, and few take notice of, and that’s the reproach, not
of whole professions, mysteries, and conditions, but of whole nations,
wherein by opprobrious epithets we miscall each other, and, by an
uncharitable logick, from a disposition in a few, conclude a habit in
all.

Le mutin Anglois, et le bravache Escossois
Le bougre Italien, et le fol Francois;
Le poltron Romain, le larron de Gascogne,
L’Espagnol superbe, et l’Alleman yvrogne.

St Paul, that calls the Cretians liars, doth it but indirectly, and
upon quotation of their own poet. It is as bloody a thought in one
way as Nero’s was in another. For by a word we wound a thousand,
and at one blow assassin the honour of a nation. It is as complete a
piece of madness to miscall and rave against the times; or think to
recall men to reason by a fit of passion. Democritus, that thought to
laugh the times into goodness, seems to me as deeply hypochondriack
as Heraclitus, that bewailed them. It moves not my spleen to behold
the multitude in their proper humours; that is, in their fits of
folly and madness, as well understanding that wisdom is not profaned
unto the world; and it is the privilege of a few to be virtuous. They
that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue; for contraries,
though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another. Thus
virtue (abolish vice) is an idea. Again, the community of sin doth
not disparage goodness; for, when vice gains upon the major part,
virtue, in whom it remains, becomes more excellent, and, being lost
in some, multiplies its goodness in others, which remain untouched,
and persist entire in the general inundation. I can therefore behold
vice without a satire, content only with an admonition, or instructive
reprehension; for noble natures, and such as are capable of goodness,
are railed into vice, that might as easily be admonished into virtue;
and we should be all so far the orators of goodness as to protect her
from the power of vice, and maintain the cause of injured truth. No man
can justly censure or condemn another; because, indeed, no man truly
knows another. This I perceive in myself; for I am in the dark to all
the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud. Those that
know me but superficially think less of me than I do of myself; those
of my near acquaintance think more; God who truly knows me, knows
that I am nothing: for he only beholds me, and all the world, who
looks not on us through a derived ray, or a trajection of a sensible
species, but beholds the substance without the help of accidents, and
the forms of things, as we their operations. Further, no man can judge
another, because no man knows himself; for we censure others but as
they disagree from that humour which we fancy laudable in ourselves,
and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and
consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that we all condemn,
self-love. ’Tis the general complaint of these times, and perhaps of
those past, that charity grows cold; which I perceive most verified
in those which do most manifest the fires and flames of zeal; for it
is a virtue that best agrees with coldest natures, and such as are
complexioned for humility. But how shall we expect charity towards
others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? “Charity begins at
home,” is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy,
and as it were his own executioner. “Non occides,” is the commandment
of God, yet scarce observed by any man; for I perceive every man is his
own Atropos, and lends a hand to cut the thread of his own days. Cain
was not therefore the first murderer, but Adam, who brought in death;
whereof he beheld the practice and example in his own son Abel; and
saw that verified in the experience of another which faith could not
persuade him in the theory of himself.

There is, I think, no man that apprehends his own miseries
less than myself; and no man that so nearly apprehends another’s. I
could lose an arm without a tear, and with few groans, methinks, be
quartered into pieces; yet can I weep most seriously at a play, and
receive with a true passion the counterfeit griefs of those known and
professed impostures. It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto
any afflicted parties misery, or endeavour to multiply in any man a
passion whose single nature is already above his patience. This was the
greatest affliction of Job, and those oblique expostulations of his
friends a deeper injury than the down-right blows of the devil. It is
not the tears of our own eyes only, but of our friends also, that do
exhaust the current of our sorrows; which, falling into many streams,
runs more peaceably, and is contented with a narrower channel. It is
an act within the power of charity, to translate a passion out of one
breast into another, and to divide a sorrow almost out of itself;
for an affliction, like a dimension, may be so divided as, if not
indivisible, at least to become insensible. Now with my friend I desire
not to share or participate, but to engross, his sorrows; that, by
making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them: for in mine own
reason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot entreat
without myself, and within the circle of another. I have often thought
those noble pairs and examples of friendship, not so truly histories
of what had been, as fictions of what should be; but I now perceive
nothing in them but possibilities, nor anything in the heroick examples
of Damon and Pythias, Achilles and Patroclus, which, methinks, upon
some grounds, I could not perform within the narrow compass of myself.
That a man should lay down his life for his friend seems strange to
vulgar affections and such as confine themselves within that worldly
principle, “Charity begins at home.” For mine own part, I could never
remember the relations that I held unto myself, nor the respect that
I owe unto my own nature, in the cause of God, my country, and my
friends. Next to these three, I do embrace myself. I confess I do not
observe that order that the schools ordain our affections,—to love
our parents, wives, children, and then our friends; for, excepting
the injunctions of religion, I do not find in myself such a necessary
and indissoluble sympathy to all those of my blood. I hope I do not
break the fifth commandment, if I conceive I may love my friend before
the nearest of my blood, even those to whom I owe the principles of
life. I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved
my friend, as I do virtue, my soul, my God. From hence, methinks, I do
conceive how God loves man; what happiness there is in the love of God.
Omitting all other, there are three most mystical unions; two natures
in one person; three persons in one nature; one soul in two bodies. For
though, indeed, they be really divided, yet are they so united, as they
seem but one, and make rather a duality than two distinct souls.

There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of
enigmas, mysteries, and riddles; wherein two so become one as they
both become two: I love my friend before myself, and yet, methinks, I
do not love him enough. Some few months hence, my multiplied affection
will make me believe I have not loved him at all. When I am from him,
I am dead till I be with him. United souls are not satisfied with
embraces, but desire to be truly each other; which being impossible,
these desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility
of satisfaction. Another misery there is in affection; that whom we
truly love like our own selves, we forget their looks, nor can our
memory retain the idea of their faces: and it is no wonder, for they
are ourselves, and our affection makes their looks our own. This
noble affection falls not on vulgar and common constitutions; but on
such as are marked for virtue. He that can love his friend with this
noble ardour will in a competent degree effect all. Now, if we can
bring our affections to look beyond the body, and cast an eye upon
the soul, we have found out the true object, not only of friendship,
but charity: and the greatest happiness that we can bequeath the soul
is that wherein we all do place our last felicity, salvation; which,
though it be not in our power to bestow, it is in our charity and pious
invocations to desire, if not procure and further. I cannot contentedly
frame a prayer for myself in particular, without a catalogue for my
friends; nor request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth
not desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I never hear the toll
of a passing bell, though in my mirth, without my prayers and best
wishes for the departing spirit. I cannot go to cure the body of my
patient, but I forget my profession, and call unto God for his soul.
I cannot see one say his prayers, but, instead of imitating him, I
fall into supplication for him, who perhaps is no more to me than a
common nature: and if God hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications,
there are surely many happy that never saw me, and enjoy the blessing
of mine unknown devotions. To pray for enemies, that is, for their
salvation, is no harsh precept, but the practice of our daily and
ordinary devotions. I cannot believe the story of the Italian; our
bad wishes and uncharitable desires proceed no further than this life;
it is the devil, and the uncharitable votes of hell, that desire our
misery in the world to come.

“To do no injury nor take none” was a principle which, to
my former years and impatient affections, seemed to contain enough of
morality, but my more settled years, and Christian constitution, have
fallen upon severer resolutions. I can hold there is no such things
as injury; that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and
no such revenge as the contempt of an injury: that to hate another
is to malign himself; that the truest way to love another is to
despise ourselves. I were unjust unto mine own conscience if I should
say I am at variance with anything like myself. I find there are
many pieces in this one fabrick of man; this frame is raised upon
a mass of antipathies: I am one methinks but as the world, wherein
notwithstanding there are a swarm of distinct essences, and in them
another world of contrarieties; we carry private and domestick enemies
within, public and more hostile adversaries without. The devil, that
did but buffet St Paul, plays methinks at sharp with me. Let me
be nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not find the battle
of Lepanto, passion against reason, reason against faith, faith
against the devil, and my conscience against all. There is another
man within me that’s angry with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards
me. I have no conscience of marble, to resist the hammer of more
heavy offences: nor yet so soft and waxen, as to take the impression
of each single peccadillo or scape of infirmity. I am of a strange
belief, that it is as easy to be forgiven some sins as to commit
some others. For my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my
baptism; for my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with God
but from my last repentance, sacrament, or general absolution; and
therefore am not terrified with the sins or madness of my youth. I
thank the goodness of God, I have no sins that want a name. I am not
singular in offences; my transgressions are epidemical, and from the
common breath of our corruption. For there are certain tempers of body
which, matched with a humorous depravity of mind, do hatch and produce
vitiosities, whose newness and monstrosity of nature admits no name;
this was the temper of that lecher that carnaled with a statua, and the
constitution of Nero in his spintrian recreations. For the heavens are
not only fruitful in new and unheard-of stars, the earth in plants and
animals, but men’s minds also in villany and vices. Now the dulness
of my reason, and the vulgarity of my disposition, never prompted my
invention nor solicited my affection unto any of these;—yet even
those common and quotidian infirmities that so necessarily attend me,
and do seem to be my very nature, have so dejected me, so broken the
estimation that I should have otherwise of myself, that I repute myself
the most abject piece of mortality. Divines prescribe a fit of sorrow
to repentance: there goes indignation, anger, sorrow, hatred, into
mine, passions of a contrary nature, which neither seem to suit with
this action, nor my proper constitution. It is no breach of charity to
ourselves to be at variance with our vices, nor to abhor that part of
us, which is an enemy to the ground of charity, our God; wherein we
do but imitate our great selves, the world, whose divided antipathies
and contrary faces do yet carry a charitable regard unto the whole, by
their particular discords preserving the common harmony, and keeping in
fetters those powers, whose rebellions, once masters, might be the ruin
of all.

I thank God, amongst those millions of vices I do inherit
and hold from Adam, I have escaped one, and that a mortal enemy to
charity,—the first and father sin, not only of man, but of the
devil,—pride; a vice whose name is comprehended in a monosyllable,
but in its nature not circumscribed with a world, I have escaped it
in a condition that can hardly avoid it. Those petty acquisitions and
reputed perfections, that advance and elevate the conceits of other
men, add no feathers unto mine. I have seen a grammarian tower and
plume himself over a single line in Horace, and show more pride, in
the construction of one ode, than the author in the composure of the
whole book. For my own part, besides the jargon and patois of several
provinces, I understand no less than six languages; yet I protest
I have no higher conceit of myself than had our fathers before the
confusion of Babel, when there was but one language in the world, and
none to boast himself either linguist or critick. I have not only seen
several countries, beheld the nature of their climes, the chorography
of their provinces, topography of their cities, but understood their
several laws, customs, and policies; yet cannot all this persuade the
dulness of my spirit unto such an opinion of myself as I behold in
nimbler and conceited heads, that never looked a degree beyond their
nests. I know the names and somewhat more of all the constellations in
my horizon; yet I have seen a prating mariner, that could only name
the pointers and the north-star, out-talk me, and conceit himself
a whole sphere above me. I know most of the plants of my country,
and of those about me, yet methinks I do not know so many as when I
did but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than
Cheapside. For, indeed, heads of capacity, and such as are not full
with a handful or easy measure of knowledge, think they know nothing
till they know all; which being impossible, they fall upon the opinion
of Socrates, and only know they know not anything. I cannot think that
Homer pined away upon the riddle of the fishermen, or that Aristotle,
who understood the uncertainty of knowledge, and confessed so often
the reason of man too weak for the works of nature, did ever drown
himself upon the flux and reflux of Euripus. We do but learn,
to-day, what our better advanced judgments will unteach to-morrow; and
Aristotle doth but instruct us, as Plato did him, that is, to confute
himself. I have run through all sorts, yet find no rest in any: though
our first studies and junior endeavours may style us Peripateticks,
Stoicks, or Academicks, yet I perceive the wisest heads prove, at
last, almost all Scepticks, and stand like Janus in the field of
knowledge. I have therefore one common and authentick philosophy I
learned in the schools, whereby I discourse and satisfy the reason of
other men; another more reserved, and drawn from experience, whereby I
content mine own. Solomon, that complained of ignorance in the height
of knowledge, hath not only humbled my conceits, but discouraged my
endeavours. There is yet another conceit that hath sometimes made me
shut my books, which tells me it is a vanity to waste our days in the
blind pursuit of knowledge: it is but attending a little longer, and
we shall enjoy that, by instinct and infusion, which we endeavour at
here by labour and inquisition. It is better to sit down in a modest
ignorance, and rest contented with the natural blessing of our own
reasons, than by the uncertain knowledge of this life with sweat and
vexation, which death gives every fool gratis, and is an accessary of
our glorification.

I was never yet once, and commend their resolutions who
never marry twice. Not that I disallow of second marriage; as neither
in all cases of polygamy, which considering some times, and the unequal
number of both sexes, may be also necessary. The whole world was made
for man, but the twelfth part of man for woman. Man is the whole world,
and the breath of God; woman the rib and crooked piece of man. I could
be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or
that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial
and vulgar way of coition: it is the foolishest act a wise man commits
in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled
imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece
of folly he hath committed. I speak not in prejudice, nor am averse
from that sweet sex, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful.
I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though
it be but of an horse. It is my temper, and I like it the better,
to affect all harmony; and sure there is musick, even in the beauty
and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound
of an instrument. For there is a musick wherever there is a harmony,
order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain “the musick of the
spheres:” for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though
they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike
a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed
delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those
heads which declaim against all church-musick. For myself, not only
from my obedience but my particular genius I do embrace it: for even
that vulgar and tavern-musick which makes one man merry, another mad,
strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of
the first composer. There is something in it of divinity more than
the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the
whole world, and creatures of God,—such a melody to the ear, as the
whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief,
it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in
the ears of God. I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony,
but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto musick: thus some,
whose temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of their
souls, are born poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined unto
rhythm. This made Tacitus, in the very first line of his story, fall
upon a verse; and Cicero, the worst of poets, but declaiming for a
poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a perfect hexameter. I
feel not in me those sordid and unchristian desires of my profession;
I do not secretly implore and wish for plagues, rejoice at famines,
revolve ephemerides and almanacks in expectation of malignant aspects,
fatal conjunctions, and eclipses. I rejoice not at unwholesome springs
nor unseasonable winters: my prayer goes with the husbandman’s; I
desire everything in its proper season, that neither men nor the times
be out of temper. Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the malady of
my patient be not a disease unto me. I desire rather to cure his
infirmities than my own necessities. Where I do him no good, methinks
it is scarce honest gain, though I confess ’tis but the worthy salary
of our well intended endeavours. I am not only ashamed but heartily
sorry, that, besides death, there are diseases incurable; yet not for
my own sake or that they be beyond my art, but for the general cause
and sake of humanity, whose common cause I apprehend as mine own.
And, to speak more generally, those three noble professions which all
civil commonwealths do honour, are raised upon the fall of Adam, and
are not any way exempt from their infirmities. There are not only
diseases incurable in physick, but cases indissolvable in law, vices
incorrigible in divinity. If general councils may err, I do not see
why particular courts should be infallible: their perfectest rules are
raised upon the erroneous reasons of man, and the laws of one do but
condemn the rules of another; as Aristotle ofttimes the opinions of
his predecessors, because, though agreeable to reason, yet were not
consonant to his own rules and the logick of his proper principles.
Again,—to speak nothing of the sin against the Holy Ghost, whose cure
not only, but whose nature is unknown,—I can cure the gout or stone
in some, sooner than divinity, pride, or avarice in others. I can cure
vices by physick when they remain incurable by divinity, and they shall
obey my pills when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but
plainly say, we all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure
of all diseases. There is no catholicon or universal remedy I know,
but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared
appetites is nectar, and a pleasant potion of immortality.

For my conversation, it is, like the sun’s, with all men,
and with a friendly aspect to good and bad. Methinks there is no man
bad; and the worst best, that is, while they are kept within the circle
of those qualities wherein they are good. There is no man’s mind of
so discordant and jarring a temper, to which a tuneable disposition
may not strike a harmony. Magnæ virtutes, nec minora vitia; it is
the posy of the best natures, and may be inverted on the worst.
There are, in the most depraved and venomous dispositions, certain
pieces that remain untouched, which by an antiperistasis become
more excellent, or by the excellency of their antipathies are able
to preserve themselves from the contagion of their enemy vices, and
persist entire beyond the general corruption. For it is also thus in
nature: the greatest balsams do lie enveloped in the bodies of the most
powerful corrosives. I say moreover, and I ground upon experience,
that poisons contain within themselves their own antidote, and that
which preserves them from the venom of themselves; without which they
were not deleterious to others only, but to themselves also. But it is
the corruption that I fear within me; not the contagion of commerce
without me. ’Tis that unruly regiment within me, that will destroy me;
’tis that I do infect myself; the man without a navel yet lives in
me. I feel that original canker corrode and devour me: and therefore,
“Defenda me, Dios, de me!” “Lord, deliver me from myself!” is a
part of my litany, and the first voice of my retired imaginations.
There is no man alone, because every man is a microcosm, and carries
the whole world about him. “Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus,”
though it be the apothegm of a wise man is yet true in the mouth of a
fool: for indeed, though in a wilderness, a man is never alone; not
only because he is with himself, and his own thoughts, but because he
is with the devil, who ever consorts with our solitude, and is that
unruly rebel that musters up those disordered motions which accompany
our sequestered imaginations. And to speak more narrowly, there is no
such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone, and
by itself, but God;—who is his own circle, and can subsist by himself;
all others, besides their dissimilary and heterogeneous parts, which in
a manner multiply their natures, cannot subsist without the concourse
of God, and the society of that hand which doth uphold their natures.
In brief, there can be nothing truly alone, and by its self, which is
not truly one, and such is only God: all others do transcend an unity,
and so by consequence are many.

Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which
to relate, were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound
to common ears like a fable. For the world, I count it not an inn, but
an hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in. The world that I
regard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine
eye on: for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round
sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing
only my condition and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am above
Atlas’s shoulders. The earth is a point not only in respect of
the heavens above us, but of the heavenly and celestial part within
us. That mass of flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind. That
surface that tells the heavens it hath an end cannot persuade me I
have any. I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty. Though
the number of the ark do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my
mind. Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm, or little world, I
find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of
divinity in us; something that was before the elements, and owes no
homage unto the sun. Nature tells me, I am the image of God, as well as
Scripture. He that understands not thus much hath not his introduction
or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man. Let me not
injure the felicity of others, if I say I am as happy as any. “Ruat
cœlum, fiat voluntas tua,” salveth all; so that, whatsoever happens,
it is but what our daily prayers desire. In brief, I am content; and
what should providence add more? Surely this is it we call happiness,
and this do I enjoy; with this I am happy in a dream, and as content
to enjoy a happiness in a fancy, as others in a more apparent truth
and reality. There is surely a nearer apprehension of anything that
delights us, in our dreams, than in our waked senses. Without this I
were unhappy; for my awaked judgment discontents me, ever whispering
unto me that I am from my friend, but my friendly dreams in the night
requite me, and make me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my
happy dreams, as I do for my good rest; for there is a satisfaction in
them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit
of happiness. And surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we
are all asleep in this world, and that the conceits of this life are
as mere dreams, to those of the next, as the phantasms of the night,
to the conceits of the day. There is an equal delusion in both; and
the one doth but seem to be the emblem or picture of the other. We are
somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps; and the slumber of the body
seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense,
but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the
fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity, my ascendant was the watery sign
of Scorpio. I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think
I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious,
nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise of company; yet in one
dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the
jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory
as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but
in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devotions:
but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted
understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our
awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that which hath passed.
Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not,
methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have
corrected it; for those noctambulos and night-walkers, though in
their sleep, do yet enjoy the action of their senses. We must therefore
say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction
of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do walk
about in their own corpses, as spirits with the bodies they assume,
wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are
destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should
inform them. Thus it is observed, that men sometimes, upon the hour of
their departure, do speak and reason above themselves. For then the
soul beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to
reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.

We term sleep a death; and yet it is waking that kills
us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life. ’Tis indeed
a part of life that best expresseth death; for every man truly lives,
so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of
himself. Themistocles therefore, that slew his soldier in his sleep,
was a merciful executioner: ’tis a kind of punishment the mildness of
no laws hath invented; I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not
discover it. It is that death by which we may be literally said to die
daily; a death which Adam died before his mortality; a death whereby we
live a middle and moderating point between life and death. In fine, so
like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu
unto the world, and take my farewell in a colloquy with God:—

The night is come, like to the day;
Depart not thou, great God, away.
Let not my sins, black as the night,
Eclipse the lustre of thy light.
Keep still in my horizon; for to me
The sun makes not the day, but thee.
Thou whose nature cannot sleep,
On my temples sentry keep;
Guard me ’gainst those watchful foes,
Whose eyes are open while mine close.
Let no dreams my head infest,
But such as Jacob’s temples blest.
While I do rest, my soul advance:
Make my sleep a holy trance:
That I may, my rest being wrought,
Awake into some holy thought,
And with as active vigour run
My course as doth the nimble sun.
Sleep is a death;—Oh make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die!
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.
Howe’er I rest, great God, let me
Awake again at last with thee.
And thus assured, behold I lie
Securely, or to wake or die.
These are my drowsy days; in vain
I do now wake to sleep again:
Oh come that hour, when I shall never
Sleep again, but wake for ever!

This is the dormitive I take to bedward; I need no other laudanum
than this to make me sleep; after which I close mine eyes in security,
content to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection.

The method I should use in distributive justice, I often
observe in commutative; and keep a geometrical proportion in both,
whereby becoming equable to others, I become unjust to myself, and
supererogate in that common principle, “Do unto others as thou wouldst
be done unto thyself.” I was not born unto riches, neither is it, I
think, my star to be wealthy; or if it were, the freedom of my mind,
and frankness of my disposition, were able to contradict and cross my
fates: for to me avarice seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable
piece of madness; to conceive ourselves urinals, or be persuaded that
we are dead, is not so ridiculous, nor so many degrees beyond the power
of hellebore, as this. The opinions of theory, and positions of
men, are not so void of reason, as their practised conclusions. Some
have held that snow is black, that the earth moves, that the soul is
air, fire, water; but all this is philosophy: and there is no delirium,
if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice.
To that subterraneous idol, and god of the earth, I do confess I am
an atheist. I cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores;
whatsoever virtue its prepared substance may have within my body, it
hath no influence nor operation without. I would not entertain a base
design, or an action that should call me villain, for the Indies; and
for this only do I love and honour my own soul, and have methinks two
arms too few to embrace myself. Aristotle is too severe, that will not
allow us to be truly liberal without wealth, and the bountiful hand of
fortune; if this be true, I must confess I am charitable only in my
liberal intentions, and bountiful well wishes. But if the example of
the mite be not only an act of wonder, but an example of the noblest
charity, surely poor men may also build hospitals, and the rich alone
have not erected cathedrals. I have a private method which others
observe not; I take the opportunity of myself to do good; I borrow
occasion of charity from my own necessities, and supply the wants of
others, when I am in most need myself: for it is an honest stratagem
to take advantage of ourselves, and so to husband the acts of virtue,
that, where they are defective in one circumstance, they may repay
their want, and multiply their goodness in another. I have not Peru in
my desires, but a competence and ability to perform those good works
to which he hath inclined my nature. He is rich who hath enough to be
charitable; and it is hard to be so poor that a noble mind may not find
a way to this piece of goodness. “He that giveth to the poor lendeth
to the Lord:” there is more rhetorick in that one sentence than in a
library of sermons. And indeed, if those sentences were understood by
the reader with the same emphasis as they are delivered by the author,
we needed not those volumes of instructions, but might be honest by
an epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a beggar without
relieving his necessities with my purse, or his soul with my prayers.
These scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me
forget that common and untoucht part of us both: there is under these
centoes and miserable outsides, those mutilate and semi bodies,
a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose genealogy is God’s as
well as ours, and in as fair a way to salvation as ourselves. Statists
that labour to contrive a commonwealth without our poverty take away
the object of charity; not understanding only the commonwealth of a
Christian, but forgetting the prophecy of Christ.

Now, there is another part of charity, which is the basis
and pillar of this, and that is the love of God, for whom we love
our neighbour; for this I think charity, to love God for himself,
and our neighbour for God. And all that is truly amiable is God, or
as it were a divided piece of him, that retains a reflex or shadow
of himself. Nor is it strange that we should place affection on that
which is invisible: all that we truly love is thus. What we adore under
affection of our senses deserves not the honour of so pure a title.
Thus we adore virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be invisible.
Thus that part of our noble friends that we love is not that part that
we embrace, but that insensible part that our arms cannot embrace. God
being all goodness, can love nothing but himself; he loves us but for
that part which is as it were himself, and the traduction of his Holy
Spirit. Let us call to assize the loves of our parents, the affection
of our wives and children, and they are all dumb shows and dreams,
without reality, truth, or constancy. For first there is a strong bond
of affection between us and our parents; yet how easily dissolved!
We betake ourselves to a woman, forgetting our mother in a wife, and
the womb that bare us in that which shall bear our image. This woman
blessing us with children, our affection leaves the level it held
before, and sinks from our bed unto our issue and picture of posterity:
where affection holds no steady mansion; they growing up in years,
desire our ends; or, applying themselves to a woman, take a lawful way
to love another better than ourselves. Thus I perceive a man may be
buried alive, and behold his grave in his own issue.

I conclude therefore, and say, there is no happiness under
(or, as Copernicus will have it, above) the sun; nor any crambe
in that repeated verity and burthen of all the wisdom of Solomon: “All
is vanity and vexation of spirit;” there is no felicity in that the
world adores. Aristotle, whilst he labours to refute the ideas of
Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum is a chimæra;
and there is no such thing as his felicity. That wherein God himself
is happy, the holy angels are happy, in whose defect the devils are
unhappy;—that dare I call happiness: whatsoever conduceth unto this,
may, with an easy metaphor, deserve that name; whatsoever else the
world terms happiness is, to me, a story out of Pliny, a tale of Bocace
or Malizspini, an apparition or neat delusion, wherein there is no more
of happiness than the name. Bless me in this life with but the peace
of my conscience, command of my affections, the love of thyself and
my dearest friends, and I shall be happy enough to pity Cæsar! These
are, O Lord, the humble desires of my most reasonable ambition, and
all I dare call happiness on earth; wherein I set no rule or limit to
thy hand or providence; dispose of me according to the wisdom of thy
pleasure. Thy will be done, though in my own undoing.

Colophon

Sir Thomas Browne (1605–1682). Religio Medici. First published London, 1643. This text from the eleventh edition (London, 1682), reproduced in the edition by J. W. Willis Bund (Sampson Low, Son, and Marston, London, 1869).

Browne was a Norwich physician, born in London, educated at Winchester and Oxford, who studied medicine at Montpellier, Padua, and Leyden before settling in Norfolk. He wrote the Religio Medici privately around 1635; a pirated edition appeared in 1642, and the authorized first edition followed in 1643. He was knighted by Charles II in 1671 and died on his seventy-sixth birthday in 1682. The Vatican placed this work on the Index Expurgatorius shortly after its publication; the Romanists and the Quakers each claimed its author as their own.

This is an archival text. Browne's seventeenth-century English is preserved. See also: Hydriotaphia, or Urn-Burial (1658) · A Letter to a Friend (c. 1656, published 1690) — Browne's companion works in the archive.

Sourced from Project Gutenberg eBook #586. Digitized by Henry Flower and Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska. Compiled and formatted for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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