SIR THOMAS BROWNE AND HIS 'RELIGIO MEDICI': an Appreciationwith some of the best passages of the Physician's Writings selected andarranged by Alexander WhyteD. D. 

[Illustration from 1642 edition of Religio Medici: ill. Jpg]

Oliphant Anderson & Ferrier

Saint Mary Street, Edinburgh, and21 Paternoster Square, London1898

DEDICATED TOSIR THOMAS GRAINGER STEWARTPRESIDENT OF THE BRITISH MEDICAL ASSOCIATIONAT WHOSE REQUEST THIS APPRECIATION WAS DELIVERED ASTHE INAUGURAL DISCOURSEAT THE OPENING MEETING OF THE ASSOCIATIONIN ST. GILES' CATHEDRAL ON THE 26TH JULY 1898IN GREAT GOOD-WILL AND LOVE BYALEXANDER WHYTE

APPRECIATION AND INTRODUCTION

The _Religio Medici_ is a universally recognised English classic. Andthe _Urn-Burial_, the _Christian Morals_, and the _Letter to a Friend_are all quite worthy to take their stand beside the _Religio Medici_. SirThomas Browne made several other contributions to English literaturebesides these masterpieces; but it is on the _Religio Medici_, and onwhat Sir Thomas himself calls 'other pieces of affinity thereto, ' thathis sure fame as a writer of noble truth and stately English mostsecurely rests. Sir Thomas Browne was a physician of high standing andlarge practice all his days; and he was an antiquarian and scientificwriter of the foremost information and authority: but it is theextraordinary depth and riches and imaginative sweep of his mind, and hisrare wisdom and wealth of heart, and his quite wonderful English style, that have all combined together to seal Sir Thomas Browne with his well-earned immortality. 

Sir Thomas Browne's outward life can be told in a very few words. He wasborn at London in 1605. He lost his father very early, and it must havebeen a very great loss. For the old mercer was wont to creep up to hislittle son's cradle when he was asleep, and uncover and kiss the child'sbreast, and pray, 'as 'tis said of Origen's father, that the Holy Ghostwould at once take possession there. ' The old merchant was able to leavemoney enough to take his gifted son first to Winchester School, and thento Oxford, where he graduated in New Pembroke in 1626. On young Browne'sgraduation, old Anthony a Wood has this remark, that those who lovePembroke best can wish it nothing better than that it may long proceed asit has thus begun. As soon as he had taken his university degree youngBrowne entered on the study of medicine: and, in pursuit of that fast-rising science, he visited and studied in the most famous schools ofFrance and Italy and Holland. After various changes of residence, through all of which it is somewhat difficult to trace the youngphysician's movements, we find him at last fairly settled in the city ofNorwich, where he spent the remainder of his long, and busy, andprosperous, and honourable life. 

Dr. Johnson laments that Sir Thomas Browne has left us no record of histravels and studies abroad, and all Sir Thomas's readers will join withhis great biographer in that regret. At the same time, as we turn overthe pile of letters that Sir Thomas sent to his student son Edward, andto his sailor son Thomas, when they were abroad at school and on ship, wecan easily collect and picture to ourselves the life that the writer ofthose so wise and so beautiful letters led when he himself was still astudent at Montpellier and Padua and Leyden. 'Honest Tom, --God blessthee, and protect thee, and mercifully lead thee through the ways of Hisprovidence. Be diligent in going to church. Be constant, and notnegligent in your daily private prayers. Be a good husband. Cast upyour accounts with all care. Be temperate in diet, and be wary not tooverheat yourself. Be courteous and civil to all. Live with anapothecary, and observe his drugs and practice. Frequent civil company. Point your letters, and put periods at the ends of your sentences. Havethe love and the fear of God ever before your eyes. And may God confirmyour faith in Christ. Observe the manner of trade: how they make wineand vinegar, and keep a note of all that for me. Be courteous and humblein all your conversation, and of good manners: which he that learneth notin France travaileth in vain. When at sea read good books. Without goodbooks time cannot be well spent in those great ships. Learn the starsalso: the particular coasts: the depth of the road-steads: and therisings and fallings of the land. Enquire further about the mineralwater: and take notice of such plants as you meet with. I am told thatyou are looked on in the Service as exceeding faithful, valiant, diligent, generous, vigilant, observing, very knowing, and a scholar. When you first took to this manner of life, you cannot but remember thatI caused you to read all the sea-fights of note in Plutarch: and, withal, gave you the description of fortitude left by Aristotle. In places takenotice of the government of them, and the eminent persons. The mercifulprovidence of God ever go with you, and direct and bless you, and giveyou ever a grateful heart toward Him. I send you Lucretius: and with itTully's Offices: 'tis as remarkable for its little size as for the goodmatter contained in it, and the authentic and classical Latin. I hopeyou do not forget to carry a Greek Testament always to church: a manlearns two things together, and profiteth doubly, in the language and thesubject. God send us to number our days, and to fit ourselves for abetter world. Times look troublesome: but you have an honest andpeaceable profession like myself, which may well employ you, and you havediscretion to guide your words and actions. May God be reconciled to us, and give us grace to forsake our sins which set fire to all things. Youshall never want my daily prayers, and also frequent letters. ' And soon, through a delightful sheaf of letters to his two sons: and out ofwhich a fine picture rises before us, both of Sir Thomas's own studentlife abroad, as well as of the footing on which the now famous physicianand English author stood with his student and sailor sons. 

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You might read every word of Sir Thomas Browne's writings and neverdiscover that a sword had been unsheathed or a shot fired in England allthe time he was living and writing there. It was the half-century of theterrible civil war for political and religious liberty: but Sir ThomasBrowne would seem to have possessed all the political and religiousliberty he needed. At any rate, he never took open part on either sidein the great contest. Sir Thomas Browne was not made of the hot metaland the stern stuff of John Milton. All through those terrible yearsBrowne lived securely in his laboratory, and in his library, and in hiscloset. Richard Baxter's _Autobiography_ is as full of gunpowder as ifit had been written in an army-chaplain's tent, as indeed it was. Butboth Bunyan's _Grace Abounding_ and Browne's _Religio Medici_ might havebeen written in the Bedford or Norwich of our own peaceful day. All menare not made to be soldiers and statesmen: and it is no man's duty toattempt to be what he was not made to be. Every man has his own talent, and his corresponding and consequent duty and obligation. And bothBunyan and Browne had their own talent, and their own consequent duty andobligation, just as Cromwell and Milton and Baxter had theirs. Enough, and more than enough, if it shall be said to them all on that day, Welldone. 

'My life, ' says Sir Thomas, in opening one of the noblest chapters of hisnoblest book, 'is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were not ahistory, but a piece of poetry; and it would sound to common ears like afable. ' Now, as all Sir Thomas's readers must know, the mostextraordinary criticisms and comments have been made on those devout andthankful words of his concerning himself. Dr. Samuel Johnson's were notcommon ears, but even he comments on these beautiful words with a wooden-headedness almost past belief. For, surely the thirty years ofschoolboy, and student, and opening professional life that resulted inthe production of such a masterpiece as the _Religio Medici_ was amiracle both of God's providence and God's grace, enough to justify himwho had experienced all that in acknowledging it to God's glory and tothe unburdening of his own heart, so richly loaded with God's benefits. And, how a man of Samuel Johnson's insight, good sense, and pious feelingcould have so missed the mark in this case, I cannot understand. All themore that both the chapter so complained about, and the whole book towhich that chapter belongs, are full of the same thankful, devout, andadoring sentiment. 'The world that I regard, ' Sir Thomas proceeds, 'ismyself. Men that look upon my outside, and who peruse only my conditionsand my fortunes, do err in my altitude. There is surely a piece ofdivinity in us all; something that was before the elements, and whichowes no homage unto the sun. ' And again, 'We carry with us the wonderswe seek without us. There is all Africa and all its prodigies in us all. We are that bold and adventurous piece of nature, which he that studieswisely learns, in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided pieceand endless volume. ' And again, 'There is another way of God'sprovidence full of meanders and labyrinths and obscure methods: thatserpentine and crooked line: that cryptic and involved method of Hisprovidence which I have ever admired. Surely there are in every man'slife certain rubs, and doublings, and wrenches, which, well examined, doprove the pure hand of God. And to be true, and to speak out my soul, when I survey the occurrences of my own life, and call into account thefinger of God, I can perceive nothing but an abyss and a mass of mercies. And those which others term crosses, and afflictions, and judgments, andmisfortunes, to me they both appear, and in event have ever proved, thesecret and dissembled favours of His affection. ' And in the _ChristianMorals_: 'Annihilate not the mercies of God by the oblivion ofingratitude. Make not thy head a grave, but a repository of God'smercies. Register not only strange, but all merciful occurrences. Letthy diaries stand thick with dutiful mementoes and asterisks ofacknowledgment. And to be complete and to forget nothing, date not Hismercy from thy nativity: look beyond this world, and before the era ofAdam. And mark well the winding ways of providence. For that handwrites often by abbreviations, hieroglyphics, and short characters, which, like the laconism on Belshazzar's wall, are not to be made out butby a key from that Spirit that indited them. ' And yet again, 'Tothoughtful observers the whole world is one phylactery, and everything wesee an item of the wisdom, and power, and goodness of God. ' How any man, not to speak of one of the wisest and best of men, such as Samuel Johnsonwas, could read all that, and still stagger at Sir Thomas Browne holdinghimself to be a living miracle of the power, and the love, and the graceof God, passes my understanding. 

We have seen in his own noble words how Sir Thomas Browne's life appearedto himself. Let us now look at how he appeared to other observing men. The Rev. John Whitefoot, the close and lifelong friend of Sir Thomas, hasleft us this lifelike portrait of the author of _Religio Medici_. 'For acharacter of his person, his complexion and his hair were answerable tohis name, his stature was moderate, and his habit of body neither fat norlean, but [Greek text]. In his habit of clothing he had an aversion toall finery, and affected plainness. He ever wore a cloke, or boots, whenfew others did. He kept himself always very warm, and thought it mostsafe so to do. The horizon of his understanding was much larger than thehemisphere of the world: all that was visible in the heavens hecomprehended so well, that few that are under them knew so much. And ofthe earth he had such a minute and exact geographical knowledge as if hehad been by divine providence ordained surveyor-general of the wholeterrestrial orb and its products, minerals, plants, and animals. Hismemory, though not so eminent as that of Seneca or Scaliger, wascapacious and tenacious, insomuch that he remembered all that wasremarkable in any book he ever read. He had no despotical power over hisaffections and passions, that was a privilege of original perfection, butas large a political power over them as any stoic or man of his time, whereof he gave so great experiment that he hath very rarely been knownto have been overpowered with any of them. His aspect and conversationwere grave and sober; there was never to be seen in him anything trite orvulgar. Parsimonious in nothing but his time, whereof he made as muchimprovement, with as little loss as any man in it, when he had any tospare from his drudging practice, he was scarce patient of any diversionfrom his study: so impatient of sloth and idleness, that he would say, hecould not do nothing. He attended the public service very constantly, when he was not withheld by his practice. Never missed the sacrament inhis parish, if he were in town. Read the best English sermons he couldhear of with liberal applause: and delighted not in controversies. Hispatience was founded upon the Christian philosophy, and sound faith ofGod's providence, and a meek and humble submission thereto. I visitedhim near his end, when he had not strength to hear or speak much: and thelast words I heard from him were, besides some expressions of dearness, that he did freely submit to the will of God: being without fear. He hadoft triumphed over the king of terrors in others, and given him manyrepulses in the defence of patients; but when his own time came, hesubmitted with a meek, rational, religious courage. '

Taking Sir Thomas Browne all in all, Tertullian, Sir Thomas's favouriteFather, has supplied us, as it seems to me, with his whole life andcharacter in these so expressive and so comprehensive words of his, _Anima naturaliter Christiana_. In these three words, when well weighedand fully opened up, we have the whole author of the _Religio Medici_, the _Christian Morals_, and the _Letter to a Friend. Anima naturaliterChristiana_. 

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The _Religio Medici_ was Sir Thomas Browne's first book, and it remainsby far his best book. His other books acquire their value and take theirrank just according to the degree of their 'affinity' to the _ReligioMedici_. Sir Thomas Browne is at his best when he is most alone withhimself. There is no subject that interests him so much as Sir ThomasBrowne. And if you will forget yourself in Sir Thomas Browne, and in hisconversations which he holds with himself, you will find a rare and anever fresh delight in the _Religio Medici_. Sir Thomas is one of thegreatest egotists of literature--to use a necessary but an unpopular anda misleading epithet. Hazlitt has it that there have only been but threeperfect, absolute, and unapproached egotists in all literature--Cellini, Montaigne, and Wordsworth. But why that fine critic leaves out SirThomas Browne, I cannot understand or accept. I always turn to SirThomas Browne, far more than to either of Hazlitt's canonised three, whenI want to read what a great man has to tell me about himself: and in thiscase both a great and a good and a Christian man. And thus, whatevermodification and adaptation may have been made in this masterpiece ofhis, in view of its publication, and after it was first published, theoriginal essence, most genuine substance, and unique style of the bookwere all intended for its author's peculiar heart and private eye alone. And thus it is that we have a work of a simplicity and a sincerity thatwould have been impossible had its author in any part of his book satdown to compose for the public. Sir Thomas Browne lived so much withinhimself, that he was both secret writer and sole reader to himself. Hisgreat book is 'a private exercise directed solely, ' as he himself says, 'to himself: it is a memorial addressed to himself rather than an exampleor a rule directed to any other man. ' And it is only he who opens the_Religio Medici_ honestly and easily believing that, and glad to havesuch a secret and sincere and devout book in his hand, --it is only he whowill truly enjoy the book, and who will gather the same gain out of itthat its author enjoyed and gained out of it himself. In short, theproperly prepared and absolutely ingenuous reader of the _Religio Medici_must be a second Thomas Browne himself. 

'I am a medical man, ' says Sir Thomas, in introducing himself to us, 'andthis is my religion. I am a physician, and this is my faith, and mymorals, and my whole true and proper life. The scandal of my profession, the natural course of my studies, and the indifference of my behaviourand discourse in matters of religion, might persuade the world that I hadno religion at all. And yet, in despite of all that, I dare, withoutusurpation, assume the honourable style of a Christian. ' And if ever anyman was a truly catholic Christian, it was surely Sir Thomas Browne. Hedoes not unchurch or ostracise any other man. He does not stand atdiameter and sword's point with any other man; no, not even with hisenemy. He has never been able to alienate or exasperate himself from anyman whatsoever because of a difference of an opinion. He has never beenangry with any man because his judgment in matters of religion did notagree with his. In short he has no genius for disputes about religion;and he has often felt it to be his best wisdom to decline all suchdisputes. When his head was greener than it now is, he had a tendency totwo or three errors in religion, of which he proceeds to set down thespiritual history. But at no time did he ever maintain his own opinionswith pertinacity: far less to inveigle or entangle any other man's faith;and thus they soon died out, since they were only bare errors and singlelapses of his understanding, without a joint depravity of his will. Thetruth to Sir Thomas Browne about all revealed religion is this, which hesets forth in a deservedly famous passage:--'Methinks there be notimpossibilities enough in revealed religion for an active faith. I loveto lose myself in a mystery, and to pursue my reason to an _O altitudo_!'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involvedenigmas and riddles of the Trinity, with incarnation and resurrection. Ican answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with thatodd resolution I learned of Tertullian, _Certum est quia impossibileest_. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; foranything else is not faith but persuasion. I bless myself, and amthankful that I never saw Christ nor His disciples. For then had myfaith been thrust upon me; nor should I have enjoyed that greaterblessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. They only had theadvantage of a noble and a bold faith who lived before the coming ofChrist; and who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raisea belief and expect apparent impossibilities. And since I was ofunderstanding enough to know that we know nothing, my reason hath beenmore pliable to the will of faith. I am now content to understand amystery in an easy and Platonic way, and without a demonstration and arigid definition; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason tostoop unto the lure of faith. ' The unreclaimed reader who is not alreadyallured by these specimens need go no further in Sir Thomas Browne'sautobiographic book. But he who feels the grace and the truth, the powerand the sweetness and the beauty of such writing, will be glad to knowthat the whole _Religio_ is full of such things, and that all thisauthor's religious and moral writings partake of the same truly Apostolicand truly Platonic character. In this noble temper, with the richestmind, and clothed in a style that entrances and captivates us, Sir Thomasproceeds to set forth his doctrine and experience of God; of God'sprovidence; of Holy Scripture; of nature and man; of miracles andoracles; of the Holy Ghost and holy angels; of death; and of heaven andhell. And, especially, and with great fulness, and victoriousness, andconclusiveness, he deals with death. We sometimes amuse ourselves bymaking a selection of the two or three books that we would take with usto prison or to a desert island. And one dying man here and anotherthere has already selected and set aside the proper and most suitablebooks for his own special deathbed. 'Read where I first cast my anchor, 'said John Knox to his wife, sitting weeping at his bedside. At which sheopened and read in the Gospel of John. Sir Thomas Browne is neither morenor less than the very prose-laureate of death. He writes as no otherman has ever written about death. Death is everywhere in all Sir ThomasBrowne's books. And yet it may be said of them all, that, like heavenitself, there is no death there. Death is swallowed up in Sir ThomasBrowne's defiant faith that cannot, even in death, get difficulties andimpossibilities enough to exercise itself upon. O death, where is thysting to Rutherford, and Bunyan, and Baxter, and Browne; and to those whodiet their imaginations and their hearts day and night at such heavenlytables! But, if only to see how great and good men differ, Spinoza hasthis proposition and demonstration that a 'free man thinks of nothingless than of death. ' Browne was a free man, but he thought of nothingmore than of death. He was of Dante's mind--

 The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight. 

The _Religio Medici_ was Sir Thomas Browne's first book, and the_Christian Morals_ was his last; but the two books are of such affinityto one another that they will always be thought of together. Only, thestyle that was already almost too rich for our modern taste in the_Religio_ absolutely cloys and clogs us in the _Morals_. The opening andthe closing sentences of this posthumous treatise will better convey ataste of its strength and sweetness than any estimate or eulogium ofmine. 'Tread softly and circumspectly in this funambulatory track, andnarrow path of goodness; pursue virtue virtuously: leaven not goodactions, nor render virtue disputable. Stain not fair acts with foulintentions; maim not uprightness by halting concomitances, norcircumstantially deprave substantial goodness. Consider whereabout thouart in Cebes' table, or that old philosophical pinax of the life of man:whether thou art yet in the road of uncertainties; whether thou hast yetentered the narrow gate, got up the hill and asperous way which leadethunto the house of sanity; or taken that purifying potion from the hand ofsincere erudition, which may send thee clear and pure away unto avirtuous and happy life. ' And having taken his reader up through avirtuous life, Sir Thomas thus parts with him at its close: 'Lastly, iflength of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation. Reckon notupon long life; think every day thy last. And since there is somethingin us that will still live on, join both lives together, and live in onebut for the other. And if any hath been so happy as personally tounderstand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exaltation, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the divine shadow, accordingto mystical theology, they have already had an handsome anticipation ofheaven: the world is in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them. ''Prose, ' says Friswell, 'that with very little transposition, might makeverse quite worthy of Shakespeare himself. '

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The _Letter to a Friend_ is an account of the swift and inevitabledeathbed of one of Sir Thomas's patients: a young man who died of adeceitful but a galloping consumption. There is enough of old medicalobservation and opening science in the _Letter_, as well as of sweet oldliterature, and still sweeter old religion, to make it a classic to everywell-read doctor in the language. 'To be dissolved and to be with Christwas his dying ditty. He esteemed it enough to approach the years of hisSaviour, who so ordered His own human state, as not to be old upon earth. He that early arriveth into the parts and prudence of age is happily oldwithout the uncomfortable attendants of it. And 'tis superfluous to liveunto grey hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues ofthem. In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old man. 'Let all young medical students have by heart Sir Thomas Browne'sincomparable English, and wisdom, and piety in his _Letter to a Friendupon the occasion of the death of his intimate Friend_. 'This uniquemorsel of literature' as Walter Pater calls it. 

The _Vulgar Errors_, it must be confessed, is neither very inviting, norvery rewarding to ordinary readers nowadays. And that big book will onlybe persevered in to the end by those readers to whom everything that SirThomas Browne has written is of a rare interest and profit. The fulltitle of this now completely antiquated and wholly forgotten treatise isthis, '_Pseudodoxia Epidemica_, or Enquiries into very many receivedTenets and commonly presumed Truths, which examined prove but Vulgar andCommon Errors. ' The First Book of the _Pseudodoxia_ is general andphilosophical; the Second Book treats of popular and received tenetsconcerning mineral and vegetable bodies; the Third, of popular andreceived tenets concerning animals; the Fourth, of man; the Fifth, ofmany things questionable as they are commonly described in pictures, etc. ; and the Sixth, of popular and received tenets, cosmo-graphical, geographical, and historical; and the Seventh, of popular and receivedtruth, some historical, and some deduced from Holy Scripture. TheIntroductory Book contains the best analysis and exposition of the famousBaconian Idols that has ever been written. That Book of the_Pseudodoxia_ is full of the profoundest philosophical principles setforth in the stateliest English. The students of Whately and Mill, aswell as of Bacon, will greatly enjoy this part of the _Pseudodoxia_. _TheGrammar of Assent_, also, would seem to have had some of its deepestroots in the same powerful, original, and suggestive Book. For its daythe _Pseudodoxia_ is a perfect encyclopaedia of scientific, andhistorical, and literary, and even Biblical criticism: the _Pseudodoxia_and the _Miscellany Tracts_ taken together. Some of the most powerfulpassages that ever fell from Sir Thomas Browne's pen are to be come uponin the Introduction to the _Pseudodoxia_. And, with all our immenseadvances in method and in discipline: in observation and in discovery: notrue student of nature and of man can afford to neglect the extraordinarycatalogue of things which are so characteristically treated of in SirThomas Browne's great, if, nowadays, out-grown book. For one thing, andthat surely not a small thing, we see on every page of the _Pseudodoxia_the labour, as Dr. Johnson so truly says, that its author was alwayswilling to pay for the truth. And, as Sir Thomas says himself, a work ofthis nature is not to be performed upon one leg, or without the smell ofoil, if it is to be duly and deservedly handled. It must be left to menof learning and of science to say how far Sir Thomas has duly anddeservedly handled the immense task he undertook in this book. But I, for one, have read this great treatise with a true pride, in seeing somuch hard work so liberally laid out according to the best light allowedits author in that day. As Dr. Johnson has said of it, 'The mistakesthat the author committed in the _Pseudodoxia_ were not committed byidleness or negligence, but only for want of the philosophy of Boyle andNewton. ' Who, then, will gird up his loins in our enlightened day togive us a new _Pseudodoxia_ after the philosophy of Bacon and Boyle andNewton and Ewald and Darwin? And after Sir Thomas's own philosophy, which he thus sets forth before himself in this and in all his otherstudies: 'We are not magisterial in opinions, nor have we dictator-likeobtruded our conceptions: but, in the humility of inquiries ordisquisitions, have only proposed them to more ocular discerners. And weshall so far encourage contradiction as to promise no disturbance, or re-oppose any pen, that shall fallaciously or captiously refute us. Andshall only take notice of such whose experimental and judicious knowledgeshall be employed, not to traduce or extenuate, but to explain anddilucidate, to add and ampliate, according to the laudable custom of theancients in their sober promotions of learning. Unto whom, notwithstanding, we shall not contentiously rejoin, or only to justifyour own, but to applaud or confirm his maturer assertions; and shallconfer what is in us unto his name and honour; ready, for our part, to beswallowed up in any worthy enlarger: as having our aid, if any way, orunder any name, we may obtain a work, so much desired, and yetdesiderated, of truth. ' Shall this Association, I wonder, raise up fromamong its members, such a worthy successor and enlarger of Sir ThomasBrowne?

The title, at least, of the _Urn-Burial_ is more familiar to the most ofus than that of the _Pseudodoxia_. It was the chance discovery of someancient urns in Norfolk that furnished Sir Thomas with the occasion towrite his _Hydriotaphia_. And that classical book is only anotherillustration of his enormous reading, ready memory, and intense interestin everything that touches on the nature of man, and on his beliefs, habits, and hopes in all ages of his existence on this earth. And theeloquence and splendour of this wonderful piece is as arresting to thestudent of style as its immense information is to the scholar and theantiquarian. 'The conclusion of the essay on Urn-Burial, ' says Carlyle, 'is absolutely beautiful: a still elegiac mood, so soft, so deep, sosolemn and tender, like the song of some departed saint--an echo ofdeepest meaning from the great and mighty Nations of the Dead. SirThomas Browne must have been a good man. '

_The Garden of Cyrus_ is past all description of mine. '_The Garden ofCyrus_ must be read. It is an extravagant sport of a scholar of thefirst rank and a genius of the first water. 'We write no herbal, ' hebegins, and neither he does. And after the most fantastical prose-poemsurely that ever was written, he as fantastically winds up at midnightwith this: 'To keep our eyes longer open were but to act our antipodes. The huntsmen are up in America, and they are already past their firstsleep in Persia. ' At which Coleridge must incontinently whip out hispencil till we have this note of his on the margin: 'What life! whatfancy! what whimsicality! Was ever such a reason given for leaving one'sbook and going to bed as this, that they are already past their firstsleep in Persia, and that the huntsmen are up in America?'

Sir Thomas Browne has had many admirers, and his greatest admirers are tobe found among our foremost men. He has had Samuel Johnson among hisgreatest admirers, and Coleridge, and Carlyle, and Hazlitt, and Lytton, and Walter Pater, and Leslie Stephen, and Professor Saintsbury; than whomno one of them all has written better on Browne. And he has had princelyeditors and annotators in Simon Wilkin, and Dr. Greenhill, and Dr. LloydRoberts. I must leave it to those eminent men to speak to you with alltheir authority about Sir Thomas Browne's ten talents: his unique naturalendowments, his universal scholarship, his philosophical depth, 'hismelancholy yet affable irony, ' his professional and scientificattainments, and his absolutely classical English style. And I shallgive myself up, in ending this discourse, to what is of much moreimportance to him and to us all, than all these things takentogether, --for Sir Thomas Browne was a believing man, and a man ofunfainting and unrelaxing prayer. At the same time, and assuming, as hedoes, and that without usurpation, as he says, the style of a Christian, he is in reality a Theist rather than a Christian: he is a moral and areligious writer rather than an evangelical and an experimental writer. And in saying this, I do not forget his confession of his faith. 'But todifference myself nearer, ' he says, and 'to draw into a lesser circle, there is no Church whose every part so squares unto my conscience: whoseArticles, Constitutions, and Customs seem so consonant unto reason, andas it were framed to my particular Devotion, as this whereof I hold myBelief, the Church of England: to whose faith I am a sworn subject, andtherefore in a double Obligation subscribe unto her Articles, andendeavour to observe her Constitutions. ' The author of the _ReligioMedici_ never writes a line out of joint, or out of tone or temper, withthat subscription. At the same time, his very best writings fall farshort of the best writings of the Church of England. Pater, in his finepaper, says that 'Sir Thomas Browne is occupied with religion first andlast in all he writes, scarcely less so than Hooker himself, ' and that isthe simple truth. Still, if the whole truth is to be told to those whowill not make an unfair use of it, Richard Hooker's religion is the wholeChristian religion, in all its height and depth, and grace and truth, anddoctrinal and evangelical fulness: all of which can never be said of SirThomas Browne. I can well imagine Sir Thomas Browne recreating himself, and that with an immense delectation, over Hooker's superb First Book. How I wish that I could say as much about the central six chapters ofHooker's masterly Fifth Book: as also about his evangelical and immortal_Discourse of Justification_! A well-read friend of mine suddenly saidto me in a conversation we were holding the other day about Sir ThomasBrowne's religion, 'The truth is, ' he said, 'Browne was nothing short ofa Pelagian, and that largely accounts for his popularity on the Continentof his day. ' That was a stroke of true criticism. And Sir Thomas's ownTertullian has the same thing in that most comprehensive and conclusivephrase of his: _anima naturaliter Christiana_. But, that being admittedand accepted, which must be admitted and accepted in the interests of thetruth; this also must still more be proclaimed, admitted, and accepted, that when he comes to God, and to Holy Scripture, and to prayer, and toimmortality, Sir Thomas Browne is a very prince of believers. In allthese great regions of things Sir Thomas Browne's faith has a height anda depth, a strength and a sweep, that all combine together to place himin the very foremost rank of our most classical writers on natural andrevealed religion. Hooker himself in some respects gives place to SirThomas Browne. 

'I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, andthe Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind: andtherefore, God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because Hisordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophyinclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men'sminds about to religion. ' The old proverb, _Ubi tres medici, duo athei_, cast an opprobrium on the medical profession that can never have beenjust. At the same time, that proverb may be taken as proving how littletrue philosophy there must have been at one time among the medical men ofEurope. Whereas, in Sir Thomas Browne at any rate, his philosophy was ofsuch a depth that to him, as he repeatedly tells us, atheism, or anythinglike atheism, had always been absolutely impossible. 'Mine is thatmystical philosophy, from whence no true scholar becomes an atheist, butfrom 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, thetypes of his resurrection. ' Nor can he dedicate his _Urn-Burial_ to hisworthy and honoured friend without counselling him to 'run up histhoughts upon the Ancient of Days, the antiquary's truest object'; socontinually does Browne's imagination in all his books pierce into andterminate upon Divine Persons and upon unseen and eternal things. In hisrare imagination, Sir Thomas Browne had the original root of a trulyrefining, ennobling, and sanctifying faith planted in his heart by thehand of Nature herself. No man, indeed, in the nature of things, can bea believing Christian man without imagination. A believing and aheavenly-minded man may have a fine imagination without knowing that hehas it. He may have it without knowing or admitting the name of it. Hemay have it, and may be constantly employing it, without being taught, and without discovering, how most nobly and most fruitfully to employ it. Not Shakespeare; not Milton; not Scott: scarcely Tennyson or Browningthemselves, knew how best to employ their imagination. Only Dante andBehmen of all the foremost sons of men. Only they two turned all theirsplendid and unapproached imagination to the true, and full, and finalObjects of Christian faith. Only to them two was their magnificentimagination the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of thingsnot seen. And though the _Religio_ does not at all rank with the_Commedia_ and the _Aurora_, at the same time, it springs up from, and itis strengthened and sweetened by the same intellectual and spiritualroot. Up through all 'the weeds and tares of his brain, ' as Sir Thomashimself calls them, his imagination and his faith shot, and sprang, andspread, till they covered with their finest fruits his whole mind, andheart, and life. 

Sir Thomas Browne was a noble illustration of Bacon's noble law. For SirThomas carried all his studies, experiments, and operations to such adepth in his own mind, and heart, and imagination, that he was able totestify to all his fellow-physicians that he who studies man and medicinedeeply enough will meet with as many intellectual, and scientific, andreligious adventures every day as any traveller will meet with in Africaitself. As a living man of genius in the medical profession, Dr. GeorgeGould, has it in that wonderful Behmenite and Darwinian book of his, _TheMeaning and the Method of Life_, 'A healing and a knitting wound, ' heargues, 'is quite as good a proof of God as a sensible mind woulddesire. ' This was Sir Thomas Browne's wise, and deep, and devout mind inall parts of his professional and personal life. And he was man enough, and a man of true science and of true religion enough, to warn hisbrethren against those 'academical reservations' to which their strongintellectual and professional pride, and their too weak faith andcourage, continually tempted them. Nor has he, for his part, anyclinical reservations in religion either, as so many of his brethrenhave. 'I cannot go to cure the body of my patient, ' he protests, 'but Iforget my profession and call unto God for his soul. ' To call Sir ThomasBrowne sceptical, as has been a caprice and a fashion among his merelyliterary admirers: and to say it, till it is taken for granted, that heis an English Montaigne: all that is an abuse of language. It is, to allbut a small and select circle of writers and readers, utterly misleadingand essentially untrue. And, besides, it is right in the teeth of SirThomas's own emphatic, and repeated, and indignant denial and repudiationof Montaigne. Montaigne, with all his fascinations for literary men, andthey are great; and with all his services to them, and they are notsmall; is both an immoral and an unbelieving writer. Whereas, Sir ThomasBrowne never wrote a single line, even in his greenest studies, that onhis deathbed he desired to blot out. A purer, a humbler, a more devoutand detached hand never put English pen to paper than was the hand of SirThomas Browne. And, if ever in his greener days he had a doubt about anytruth of natural or of revealed religion, he tells us that he had foughtdown every such doubt in his closet and on his knees. 

I will not profanely paraphrase, or in any way water down the strongwords in which Sir Thomas Browne writes to himself in his secret papersabout prayer. All that has been said about this very remarkable man onlymakes what we are now to read all the more remarkable and memorable. AllSir Thomas Browne's readers owe an immense debt to Simon Wilkin; and fornothing more than for rescuing for us these golden words of this man ofGod. 'They were not, ' says Wilkin, 'intended by Browne for the perusalof his son, as so many of his private papers were, or of any one else. 'And hence their priceless value. 

'To be sure that no day pass without calling upon God in a solemn, fervent prayer, seven times within the compass thereof. That is, in themorning, and at night, and five times between. Taken up long ago fromthe example of David and Daniel, and a compunction and shame that I hadomitted it so long, when I heedfully read of the custom of the Mahometansto pray five times in the day. 

'To pray and magnify God in the night, and in my dark bed, when I cannotsleep; to have short ejaculations whenever I awake, and when the fouro'clock bell awakens me; or on my first discovery of the light, to saythis collect of our liturgy, Eternal God, who hast safely brought me tothe beginning of this day. . . . 

'To pray in all places where privacy inviteth: in any house, highway, orstreet: and to know no street or passage in this city which may notwitness that I have not forgot God and my Saviour in it; and that noparish or town where I have been may not say the like. 

'To take occasion of praying upon the sight of any church which I see orpass by as I ride about. 

'Since the necessities of the sick, and unavoidable diversions of myprofession, keep me often from church; yet to take all possible care thatI might never miss sacraments upon their accustomed days. 

'To pray daily and particularly for sick patients, and in general forothers, wheresoever, howsoever, under whose care soever; and at theentrance into the house of the sick, to say, The peace and mercy of Godbe in this place. 

'After a sermon, to make a thanksgiving, and desire a blessing, and topray for the minister. 

'In tempestuous weather, lightning, and thunder, either night or day, topray for God's merciful protection upon all men, and His mercy upon theirsouls, bodies, and goods. 

'Upon sight of beautiful persons, to bless God for His creatures: to prayfor the beauty of their souls, and that He would enrich them with inwardgrace to be answerable to the outward. Upon sight of deformed persons, to pray Him to send them inward graces, and to enrich their souls, andgive them the beauty of the resurrection. '

* * * * *

'But the greatest of these is charity. ' Charity is greater than greattalents. Charity is greater than great industry. Charity is greaterthan great learning and great literature. Charity is greater than greatfaith. Charity is greater than great prayer. For charity is nothingless than the Divine Nature Itself in the heart of man. In all Englishliterature two books stand out beside one another and are alone in thissupreme respect of charity: William Law's _Spirit of Love_, and SirThomas Browne's _Religio Medici_. 

SELECTED PASSAGES

SIR THOMAS ON HIMSELF

I have ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and humaneinclination I borrowed from my parents, and regulate it to the writtenand 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 amof a constitution so general that it comports and sympathiseth with allthings; 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; butbeing amongst them, make them my common viands; and I find them agreewith my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in achurchyard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of aserpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander: at the sight of a toad or viperI find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not inmyself those common antipathies that I can discover in others. Thosenational repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice theFrench, Italian, Spaniard, and Dutch: but where I find their actions inbalance with my countrymen's, I honour, love, and embrace them in thesame degree. I was born in the eighth climate, but seem to be framed andconstellated unto all. I am no plant that will not prosper out of agarden: all places, all airs make unto me one country--I am in Englandeverywhere, and under any meridian. I have been shipwrecked, yet am notenemy 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 lieif I should absolutely detest or hate any essence but the devil; or so atleast abhor anything, but that we might come to composition. 

I am, I confess, naturally inclined to that which misguided zeal termssuperstition: my common conversation I do acknowledge austere, mybehaviour full of rigour, sometimes not without morosity; yet at mydevotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, withall those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote myinvisible devotion. I should violate my own arm rather than a church, nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr. At the sight of across or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thoughtor memory of my Saviour: I cannot laugh at, but rather pity the fruitlessjourneys of pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of friars; forthough misplaced in circumstances, there is something in it of devotion. I could never hear the Ave Maria bell without an elevation, or think it asufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me to errin all, that is, in silence and dumb contempt; whilst therefore theydirect their devotions to her, I offer mine to God, and rectify theerrors of their prayers, by rightly ordering mine own. At a solemnprocession I have wept abundantly, while my consorts, blind withopposition and prejudice, have fallen into an excess of scorn andlaughter. There are, questionless, both in Greek, Roman, and Africanchurches, solemnities and ceremonies, whereof the wiser zeals do make aChristian use, and stand condemned by us, not as evil in themselves, butas allurements and baits of superstition to those vulgar heads that lookasquint on the face of truth, and those unstable judgments that cannotconsist in the narrow point and centre of virtue without a reel orstagger to the circumference. 

As for those wingy mysteries in divinity, and airy subtleties inreligion, which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they neverstretched the _pia mater_ of mine. Methinks there be not impossibilitiesenough in religion for an active faith; the deepest mysteries ourscontains, have not only been illustrated, but maintained by syllogism, and the rule of reason. I love to lose myself in a mystery, to pursue myreason to an _O altitudo_! It is my solitary recreation to pose myapprehension with those involved enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, withincarnation and resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satanand my rebellious reason, with that odd resolution I learned ofTertullian, _Certum est quia impossible est_. I desire to exercise myfaith in the difficultest point; for to credit ordinary and visibleobjects, is not faith, but persuasion. Some believe the better forseeing Christ's sepulchre; and when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt notof the miracle. Now, contrarily, I bless myself, and am thankful that Ilived not in the days of miracles; that I never saw Christ nor Hisdisciples. I would not have been one of those Israelites that passed theRed 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 greaterblessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. It is an easy andnecessary belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath examined: Ibelieve He was dead and buried, and rose again; and desire to see Him inHis 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 untohistory. They only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith, wholived before His coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mystical typescould raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities. 

Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate werenot a history but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears likea fable; for the world, I count it not an inn but an hospital; and aplace not to live, but to die in. The world that I regard is myself; itis 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 myrecreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my conditionand 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 ofthat heavenly and celestial part within us; that mass of flesh thatcircumscribes me limits not my mind; that surface that tells the heavenit hath an end cannot persuade me I have any. I take my circle to beabove three hundred and sixty. Though the number of the arc do measuremy body it comprehendeth not my mind. Whilst I study to find how I am amicrocosm, or little world, I find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before theelements, and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me I am theimage of God, as well as Scripture. He that understands not thus muchhath not his introduction, or first lesson, and is yet to begin thealphabet of man. 

ON GOD

In my solitary and retired imagination, I remember I am not alone, andtherefore forget not to contemplate Him and His attributes who is everwith me, especially those two mighty ones, His wisdom and eternity; withthe one I recreate, with the other I confound my understanding: for whocan speak of eternity without a solecism, or think thereof without anecstasy? Time we may comprehend. It is but five days older thanourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world; but to retire sofar back as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite startforwards as to conceive an end in an essence that we affirm hath neitherthe one nor the other, it puts my reason to St. Paul's sanctuary. Myphilosophy dares not say the angels can do it; God hath not made acreature that can comprehend Him; it is a privilege of His own nature. 'Iam that I am, ' was His own definition unto Moses; and it was a short one, to confound mortality, that durst question God, or ask Him what He was;indeed He only is; all others have been and shall be. But in eternitythere is no distinction of tenses; and therefore that terrible term, predestination, which hath troubled so many weak heads to conceive, andthe wisest to explain, is in respect to God no prescious determination ofour estates to come, but a definitive blast of His will alreadyfulfilled, and at the instant that He first decreed it; for to Hiseternity which is indivisible, and altogether, the last trump is alreadysounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in Abraham's bosom. 

That other attribute wherewith I recreate my devotion is His wisdom, inwhich I am happy; and for the contemplation of this only, do not repentme that I was bred in the way of study: the advantage I have of thevulgar, with the content and happiness I conceive therein, is an amplerecompense for all my endeavours, in what part of knowledge soever, Wisdom is His most beauteous attribute; no man can attain unto it: yetSolomon pleased God when he desired it. He is wise, because He knows allthings; and He knoweth all things, because He made them all: but Hisgreatest knowledge is in comprehending that He made not, that is, Himself. And this is also the greatest knowledge in man. For this do Ihonour my own profession, and embrace the counsel even of the devilhimself: had he read such a lecture in paradise, as he did at Delphos, wehad better known ourselves; nor had we stood in fear to know him. I knowGod is wise in all, wonderful in what we conceive, but far more in whatwe comprehend not; for we behold Him but asquint upon reflex or shadow;our understanding is dimmer than Moses' eye; we are ignorant of the backparts or lower side of His divinity; therefore to pry into the maze ofHis 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 threepersons, there is but one mind that decrees without contradiction: norneeds He any; His actions are not begot with deliberation, His wisdomnaturally knows what is best; His intellect stands ready fraught with thesuperlative and purest ideas of goodness; consultation and election, which are two motions in us, make but one in Him; His action springingfrom His power, at the first touch of His will. These are contemplationsmetaphysical: my humble speculations have another method, and are contentto trace and discover those expressions he hath left in His creatures, and the obvious effects of nature; there is no danger to profound thesemysteries, no _sanctum sanctorum_ in philosophy: the world was made to beinhabited by beasts; but studied and contemplated by man: it is the debtof our reason we owe unto God, and the homage we pay for not beingbeasts; without this, the world is still as though it had not been, or asit was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a creature thatcould conceive, or say there was a world. The wisdom of God receivessmall honour from those vulgar heads that rudely stare about, and with agross rusticity admire His works; those highly magnify Him, whosejudicious inquiry into His acts, and deliberate research into Hiscreatures, return the duty of a devout and learned admiration. Therefore

 Search where thou wilt, and let thy reason go To ransom truth even to th' abyss below; Rally the scattered 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. 

ON THE SPIRIT OF GOD

However, I am sure there is a common spirit that plays within us, yetmakes no part in us; and that is the Spirit of God, the fire andscintillation of that noble and mighty essence, which is the life andradical heat of spirits, and those essences that know not the virtue ofthe sun, a fire quite contrary to the fire of hell. This is that gentleheat that brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the world; thisis 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 withoutthis, to me there is no heat under the tropic; nor any light, though Idwelt 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 quick'ning beams awhile 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. O 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. O 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. 

ON THE MERCY OF GOD

The great attribute of God--His mercy; and, to be true, and speak mysoul, when I survey the occurrences of my life, and call into account thefinger 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 outof the prejudice of my affection, or an inverting and partial conceit ofHis mercies, I know not; but those which others term crosses, afflictions, judgments, misfortunes, to me, who inquire further into themthan their visible effects, they both appear, and in event have everproved, the secret and dissembled favours of His affection. It is asingular piece of wisdom to apprehend truly, and without passion, theworks of God; and so well to distinguish His justice from His mercy, asnot to miscall those noble attributes; yet it is likewise an honest pieceof logic, so to dispute and argue the proceedings of God, as todistinguish even His judgments into mercies. For God is merciful untoall, because better to the worst than the best deserve; and to say Hepunisheth none in this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity. Toone 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 thesentence rather than admire the clemency of the judge. Thus our offencesbeing mortal, and deserving not only death, but damnation; if thegoodness 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 Hisjudgments, rather than admire the sceptre of His mercies!

ON THE HOLY SCRIPTURES

Such I do believe the holy Scriptures; yet were it of man, I could notchoose but say, it was the singularest, and superlative piece that hathbeen extant since the creation; were I a Pagan, I should not refrain thelecture of it, and cannot but commend the judgment of Ptolemy, thatthought not his library complete without it. The Alcoran of the Turks (Ispeak without prejudice) is an ill-composed piece, containing in it vainand ridiculous errors in philosophy, impossibilities, fictions, andvanities beyond laughter, maintained by evident and open sophisms, thepolicy of ignorance, deposition of universities, and banishment oflearning, that hath gotten foot by arms and violence; this, without ablow, hath disseminated itself through the whole earth. It is notunremarkable what Philo first observed, that the law of Moses continuedtwo thousand years without the least alteration; whereas, we see the lawsof other commonwealths do alter with occasions; and even those thatpretend their original from some divinity, to have vanished without traceor memory. I believe, besides Zoroaster, there were divers that wrotebefore Moses, who, notwithstanding, have suffered the common fate oftime. Men's works have an age like themselves, and though they outlivetheir authors, yet have they a stint and period to their duration. Thisonly is a work too hard for the teeth of time, and cannot perish but inthe general flames, when all things shall confess their ashes. 

Rest not in the high-strained paradoxes of old philosophy, supported bynaked reason, and the reward of mortal felicity; but labour in the ethicsof faith, built upon heavenly assistance, and the happiness of bothbeings. Understand the rules, but swear not unto the doctrines of Zenoor Epicurus. Look beyond Antonius, and terminate not thy morals inSeneca or Epictetus. Let not the twelve but the two tables be thy law:let Pythagoras be thy remembrancer, not thy textuary and finalinstructor: and learn the vanity of the world, rather from Solomon thanPhocylydes. Sleep not in the dogmas of the Peripatus, Academy, orPorticus. Be a moralist of the mount, an Epictetus in the faith, andchristianise thy notions. 

ON PROVIDENCE

And truly there goes a great deal of providence to produce a man's lifeunto threescore; there is more required than an able temper for thoseyears; though the radical humour contain in it sufficient oil forseventy, yet I perceive in some it gives no light past thirty: men assignnot all the causes of long life, that write whole books thereof. Theythat found themselves on the radical balsam, or vital sulphur of theparts, determine not why Abel lived not so long as Adam. There istherefore a secret glome or bottom of our days; it was his wisdom todetermine them, but his perpetual and waking providence that fulfils andaccomplishes them; wherein the spirits, ourselves, and all the creaturesof God in a secret and disputed way do execute His will. Let them not, therefore, complain of immaturity that die about thirty: they fall butlike the whole world, whose solid and well-composed substance must notexpect the duration and period of its constitution; when all things arecompleted in it, its age is accomplished; and the last and general fevermay as naturally destroy it before six thousand, as me before forty. There is therefore some other hand that twines the thread of life thanthat of nature; we are not only ignorant in antipathies and occultqualities; our ends are as obscure as our beginnings; the line of ourdays is drawn by night, and the various effects therein by a pencil thatis invisible; wherein, though we confess our ignorance, I am sure we donot err if we say it is the hand of God. 

ON ANGELS

Therefore for spirits, I am so far from denying their existence, that Icould easily believe, that not only whole countries, but particularpersons have their tutelary and guardian angels; it is not a new opinionof the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato: there isno heresy in it, and if not manifestly defined in Scripture, yet is anopinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a man'slife, and would serve as an hypothesis to solve many doubts, whereofcommon philosophy affordeth no solution. Now, if you demand my opinionand metaphysics of their natures, I confess them very shallow, most ofthem in a negative way, like that of God; or in a comparative, betweenourselves and fellow-creatures; for there is in this universe a stair, ormanifest scale of creatures, rising not disorderly or in confusion, butwith a comely method and proportion. Between creatures of mere existenceand things of life, there is a large disproportion of nature; betweenplants and animals and creatures of sense, a wider difference; betweenthem and man, a far greater: and if the proportion hold on, between manand angels there should be yet a greater. We do not comprehend theirnatures, who retain the first definition of Porphyry, and distinguishthem from ourselves by immortality; for before his fall, it is thoughtman also was immortal; yet must we needs affirm that he had a differentessence from the angels; having, therefore, no certain knowledge of theirnatures, it is no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection wefind obscurely in ourselves, in a more complete and absolute way toascribe unto them. I believe they have an extemporary knowledge, andupon the first motion of their reason do what we cannot without study ordeliberation; that they know things by their forms, and define byspecifical difference what we describe by accidents and properties; andtherefore probabilities to us may be demonstrations unto them: that theyhave knowledge not only of the specifical, but numerical forms ofindividuals, and understand by what reserved difference each singlehypostasis (besides the relation to its species) becomes its numericalself. That as the soul hath power to move the body it informs, so thereis a faculty to move any, though inform none; ours upon restraint oftime, place, and distance; but that invisible hand that conveyed Habakkukto the lions' den, or Philip to Azotos, infringeth this rule, and hath asecret conveyance, wherewith mortality is not acquainted. If they havethat intuitive knowledge, whereby, as in reflection, they behold thethoughts of one another, I cannot peremptorily deny but they know a greatpart of ours. They that to refute the invocation of saints have deniedthat they have any knowledge of our affairs below, have proceeded toofar, and must pardon my opinion, till I can thoroughly answer that pieceof Scripture, 'At the conversion of a sinner the angels in heavenrejoice. ' I cannot with those in that great Father securely interpretthe work of the first day, _fiat lux_, to the creation of angels, thoughI confess there is not any creature that hath so near a glimpse of theirnature, as light in the sun and elements. We style it a bare accident, but where it subsists alone it is a spiritual substance, and may be anangel: in brief, conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit. 

I could never pass that sentence of Paracelsus, without an asterisk, orannotation; _Ascendens constellatum multa revelat, quaerentibus magnalianaturae_, i. E. _opera Dei_. I do think that many mysteries ascribed toour own inventions have been the courteous revelations of spirits; forthose noble essences in heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow-nature on earth; and therefore believe that those many prodigies andominous prognostics which forerun the ruins of states, princes, andprivate persons are the charitable premonitions of good angels, whichmore careless inquiries term but the effects of chance and nature. 

ON MAN

These are certainly the magisterial and masterpieces of the Creator, theflower, or (as we may say) the best part of nothing, actually existing, what we are but in hopes, and probability; we are only that amphibiouspiece between a corporeal and spiritual essence, that middle form thatlinks those two together, and makes good the method of God and nature, that jumps not from extremes, but unites the incompatible distances bysome middle and participating natures. That we are the breath andsimilitude of God, it is indisputable, and upon record of holy Scripture;but to call ourselves a microcosm, or little world, I thought it only apleasant trope of rhetoric, till my near judgment and second thoughtstold me there was a real truth therein: for first we are a rude mass, andin the rank of creatures, which only are, and have a dull kind of beingnot yet privileged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next welive the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and atlast the life of spirits, running in one mysterious nature those fivekinds of existences, which comprehend the creatures not only of the worldbut of the universe; thus is man that great and true amphibium, whosenature is disposed to live not only like other creatures in diverselements, but in divided and distinguished worlds: for though there bebut one to sense, there are two to reason; the one visible, the otherinvisible, whereof Moses seems to have left description, and of the otherso obscurely, that some parts thereof are yet in controversy. And trulyfor the first chapters of Genesis, I must confess a great deal ofobscurity; though divines have to the power of human reason endeavouredto make all go in a literal meaning, yet those allegoricalinterpretations are also probable, and perhaps the mystical method ofMoses, bred up in the hieroglyphical schools of the Egyptians. 

The whole creation is a mystery, and particularly that of man. At theblast of His mouth were the rest of the creatures made, and at His bareword they started out of nothing: but in the frame of man (as the textdescribes it) he played the sensible operator, and seemed not so much tocreate, as make him. When he had separated the materials of othercreatures, there consequently resulted a form and soul; but having raisedthe walls of man, he was driven to a second and harder creation of asubstance like himself, an incorruptible and immortal soul. . . . In ourstudy of anatomy there is a mass of mysterious philosophy, and such asreduced the very heathens to divinity; yet amongst all those rarediscoveries, and curious pieces I find in the fabric of man, I do not somuch content myself, as in that I find not--that is, no organ orinstrument for the rational soul: for in the brain, which we term theseat of reason, there is not anything of moment more than I can discoverin the cranium of a beast: and this is a sensible and no inconsiderableargument of the inorganity of the soul, at least in that sense we usuallyso conceive it. Thus we are men, and we know not how; there is somethingin us that can be without us, and will be after us, though it is strangethat it hath no history what it was before us, nor cannot tell how itentered in us. 

ON NATURE

Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity--besides thatwritten one of God, another of His servant nature; that universal andpublic manuscript, that lies expanded unto the eyes of all--those thatnever saw Him in the one, have discovered Him in the other. This was thescripture and theology of the heathens; the natural motion of the sunmade them more admire Him, than its supernatural station did the childrenof Israel; the ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in themthan in the other all His miracles: surely the heathens knew better howto join and read these mystical letters, than we Christians, who cast amore careless eye on these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suckdivinity from the flowers of nature. Nor do I so forget God as to adorethe name of nature; which I define not with the schools, to be theprinciple of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, thatsettled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actionsof His creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolutionevery day, is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary coursewhich God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve, by a facultyfrom that voice which first did give it motion. Now this course ofnature God seldom alters or perverts, but like an excellent artist hathso contrived His work, that with the selfsame instrument, without a newcreation, He may effect His obscurest designs. Thus He sweeteneth thewater with a wood, preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the blastof His mouth might have as easily created; for God is like a skilfulgeometrician, who when more easily, and with one stroke of his compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather to do this in acircle or longer way, according to the constituted and fore-laidprinciples of his art: yet this rule of His He doth sometimes pervert, toacquaint the world with His prerogative, lest the arrogancy of our reasonshould question His power, and conclude He could not. And thus I callthe effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument sheonly is; and therefore to ascribe His actions unto her, is to devolve thehonour of the principal agent upon the instrument; which, if with reasonwe may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built ourhouses, and our pens receive the honour of our writing. . . . Now natureis not at variance with art, nor art with nature: they being bothservants of His providence. Art is the perfection of nature: were theworld now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hathmade one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial;for nature is the art of God. 

ON PHILOSOPHY

Beware of philosophy, is a precept not to be received in too large asense; for in this mass of nature there is a set of things that carry intheir front, though not in capital letters, yet in stenography, and shortcharacters, something of divinity, which to wiser reasons serve asluminaries in the abyss of knowledge, and to judicious beliefs, as scalesand rundles to mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity. Thesevere schools shall never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, thatthis visible world is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in aportrait, things are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as theycounterfeit some real substance in that invisible fabric. 

ON FINAL CAUSE

There is but one first cause, and four second causes of all things; someare without efficient, as God; others without matter, as angels; somewithout form, as the first matter: but every essence, created oruncreated, hath its final cause, and some positive end both of itsessence and operation; this is the cause I grope after in the works ofnature; on this hangs the providence of God. To raise so beauteous astructure, as the world and the creatures thereof, was but His art; buttheir sundry and divided operations, with their predestinated ends, arefrom the treasure of His wisdom. In the causes, nature, and affectionsof the eclipses of the sun and moon, there is most excellent speculation;but to profound farther, and to contemplate a reason why His providencehath so disposed and ordered their motions in that vast circle, as toconjoin and obscure each other, is a sweeter piece of reason, and adiviner point of philosophy; therefore sometimes, and in some things, there appears to me as much divinity in Galen's books _De Usu Partium_, as in Suarez's Metaphysics: had Aristotle been as curious in the inquiryof this cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him animperfect piece of philosophy, but an absolute tract of divinity. 

ON DEATH

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 straight ligamentsor narrow obligations to the world as to dote on life, or be convulsedand tremble at the name of death. Not that I am insensible of the dreadand horror thereof, or by raking into the bowels of the deceased, continual sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous relics, likevespilloes, or grave-makers, I am become stupid, or have forgot theapprehension of mortality; but that marshalling all the horrors, andcontemplating the extremities thereof, I find not anything therein ableto daunt the courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian. Andtherefore am not angry at the error of our first parents, or unwilling tobear a part of this common fate, and like the best of them to die, thatis, to cease to breathe, to take a farewell of the elements, to be a kindof nothing for a moment, to be within one instant of a spirit. When Itake a full view and circle of myself, without this reasonable moderatorand equal piece of justice, death, I do conceive myself the miserablestperson extant. Were there not another life that I hope for, all thevanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath for me; couldthe devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would notoutlive that very thought; I have so abject a conceit of this common wayof existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think thisis to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity. Inexpectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in mybest meditations do often desire death. I honour any man that contemnsit, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes menaturally love a soldier, and honour those tattered and contemptibleregiments that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a pagan theremay be some motives to be in love with life; but for a Christian to beamazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma, that he is toosensible of this life or hopeless of the life to come. 

I am naturally bashful, nor hath conversation, age, or travel, been ableto effront or enharden me; yet I have one part of modesty which I haveseldom discovered in another, that is, (to speak truly), I am not so muchafraid of death, as ashamed thereof. It is the very disgrace andignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us, that ournearest friends, wife and children stand afraid and start at us. Thebirds and beasts of the field, that before in a natural fear obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance, begin to prey upon us. This very conceit hathin a tempest disposed and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyssof waters; wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, without wonderingeyes, tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, _Quantummutatus ab illo_! Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, orcan accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, or my ownvicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby Imight not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any. 

ON HEAVEN

Now, the necessary mansions of our restored selves are those two contraryand incompatible places we call heaven and hell; to define them, orstrictly to determine what and where these are, surpasseth my divinity. That elegant apostle which seemed to have a glimpse of heaven hath leftbut a negative description thereof: 'which neither eye hath seen, nor earhath heard, nor can enter into the heart of man': he was translated outof himself to behold it; but being returned into himself could notexpress it. St. John's description by emeralds, chrysolites, andprecious stones is too weak to express the material heaven we behold. Briefly, therefore, where the soul hath the full measure and complementof happiness, where the boundless appetite of that spirit remainscompletely satisfied that it can neither desire addition nor alteration, that I think is truly heaven: and this can only be in the enjoyment ofthat essence whose infinite goodness is able to terminate the desires ofitself, and the insatiable wishes of ours; wherever God will thusmanifest Himself, there is heaven, though within the circle of thissensible world. Thus the soul of man may be in heaven anywhere, evenwithin the limits of his own proper body; and when it ceaseth to live inthe body it may remain in its own soul, that is, its Creator. And thuswe may say that St. Paul, whether in the body, or out of the body, wasyet in heaven. . . . Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of theEgyptians, committed a gross absurdity in philosophy when with these eyesof flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his Maker, that is truthitself, to a contradiction. 

ON HELL

Men commonly set forth the torments of hell by fire, and the extremity ofcorporeal afflictions, and describe hell in the same method that Mahometdoth heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and drums in popular ears; butif this be the terrible piece thereof, it is not worthy to stand indiameter with heaven, whose happiness consists in that part that is bestable to comprehend it, that immortal essence, that translated divinityand 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 whoplace it in those flaming mountains, which to grosser apprehensionsrepresent hell. The heart of man is the place the devils dwell in. Ifeel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in mybreast; Legion is revived in me. There are as many hells as Anaxagorasconceited worlds. There was more than one hell in Magdalene, when therewere seven devils; for every devil is a hell unto himself. He holdsenough of torture in his own _ubi_, and needs not the misery ofcircumference to afflict him. And thus, a distracted conscience here, isa shadow or introduction unto hell hereafter. Who can but pity themerciful intention of those hands that do destroy themselves? The devil, were it in his power, would do the like; which being impossible, hismiseries are endless, and he suffers most in that attribute wherein he isimpassible--his immortality. 

I thank God that (with joy I mention it) I was never afraid of hell, nornever grew pale at the description of that place. I have so fixed mycontemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea of hell, andam afraid rather to lose the joys of the one, than endure the misery ofthe other--to be deprived of them is a perfect hell, and needs, methinks, no addition to complete our afflictions. That terrible term hath neverdetained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to the name thereof. Ifear God, yet am not afraid of Him; His mercies make me ashamed of mysins, before His judgments afraid thereof. These are the forced andsecondary methods of His wisdom, which He useth but as the last remedy, and upon provocation; a course rather to deter the wicked, than incitethe virtuous to His worship. I can hardly think there was ever anyscared into heaven: they go the fairest way to heaven that would serveGod without a hell. Other mercenaries that crouch unto Him, in fear ofhell, though they term themselves the servants, are indeed but the slavesof the Almighty. 

ON PRAYER

I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in particular, without acatalogue for my friends; nor request a happiness wherein my sociabledisposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I neverheard the toll of a passing-bell, though in my mirth, without my prayersand best wishes for the departing spirit. I cannot go to cure the bodyof my patient, but I forget my profession, and call unto God for hissoul. I cannot see one say his prayers, but instead of imitating him, Ifall into a supplication for him, who, perhaps, is no more to me than acommon nature; and if God hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications, there are surely many happy that never saw me, and enjoy the blessing ofmy unknown devotions. To pray for enemies, that is, for their salvation, is no harsh precept, but the practice of our daily and ordinarydevotions. 

ON CHARITY

The vulgarity of those judgments that wrap the Church of God in Strabo'scloak, and restrain it unto Europe, seem to me as bad geographers asAlexander, who thought he had conquered all the world, when he had notsubdued the half of any part thereof. For we cannot deny the Church ofGod both in Asia and Africa, if we do not forget the peregrinations ofthe apostles, the deaths of the martyrs, the sessions of many, and, evenin our reformed judgment, lawful councils, held in those parts in theminority and nonage of ours. Nor must a few differences, more remarkablein the eyes of man than perhaps in the judgment of God, excommunicatefrom heaven one another, much less those Christians who are in a mannerall martyrs, maintaining their faith in the noble way of persecution, andserving God in the fire, whereas we honour Him in the sunshine. It istrue we all hold there is a number of elect, and many to be saved; yettake our opinions together, and from the confusion thereof there will beno such thing as salvation, nor shall any one be saved. For first, theChurch of Rome condemneth us, we likewise them; the sub-reformists andsectaries 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 opinionsexclude us from that place. There must be therefore more than one St. Peter. Particular churches and sects usurp the gates of heaven, and turnthe key against each other: and thus we go to heaven against each other'swills, conceits, and opinions, and, with as much uncharity as ignorance, do err, I fear, in points not only of our own, but one another'ssalvation. 

I believe many are saved, who to man seem reprobated; and many arereprobated who in the opinion and sentence of man stand elected. Therewill appear at the last day strange and unexpected examples, both of Hisjustice and His mercy; and therefore to define either is folly in man, and insolency even in the devils. Those acute and subtle spirits, in alltheir sagacity, can hardly divine who shall be saved; which if they couldprognosticate, their labour were at an end; nor need they compass theearth, seeking whom they may devour. Those who, upon a rigid applicationof the law, sentence Solomon unto damnation, condemn not only him butthemselves, and the whole world; for by the letter, and written word ofGod, we are, without exception, in the state of death; but there is aprerogative of God, and an arbitrary pleasure above the letter of His ownlaw, by which alone we can pretend unto salvation, and through whichSolomon might be as easily saved as those who condemn him. 

The number of those who pretend unto salvation, and those infinite swarmswho think to pass through the eye of this needle, have much amazed me. That name and compellation of 'little flock' doth not comfort but dejectmy devotion, especially when I reflect upon mine own unworthiness, wherein, according to my humble apprehensions, I am below them all. Ibelieve there shall never be an anarchy in heaven; but as there arehierarchies amongst the angels, so shall there be degrees of priorityamongst the saints. Yet it is, I protest, beyond my ambition to aspireunto 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. 

ON THE REFORMATION

As there were many reformers, so likewise many reformations; everycountry proceeding in a particular way and method, according as theirnational interest, together with their constitution and clime inclinedthem; some angrily, and with extremity; others calmly, and withmediocrity, not rending, but easily dividing the community, and leavingan honest possibility of a reconciliation; which, though peaceablespirits do desire, and may conceive that revolution of time and themercies of God may effect, yet that judgment that shall consider thepresent antipathies between the two extremes, their contrarieties incondition, affection, and opinion, may with the same hopes expect a unionin the poles of heaven. 

It is the promise of Christ to make us all one flock; but how, and whenthis union shall be, is as obscure to me as the last day. 

ON A DYING PATIENT OF HIS

Upon my first visit I was bold to tell them who had not let fall allhopes of his recovery, that in my sad opinion he was not like to behold agrasshopper, much less to pluck another fig; and in no long time afterseemed to discover that odd mortal symptom in him not mentioned byHippocrates, that is, to lose his own face, and look like some of hisnear relations; for he maintained not his proper countenance, but lookedlike his uncle, the lines of whose face lay deep and invisible in hishealthful visage before: for as from our beginning we run through varietyof looks, before we come to consistent and settled faces; so before ourend, by sick and languishing alterations, we put on new visages: and inour retreat to earth, may fall upon such looks which from community ofseminal originals were before latent in us. 

Not to fear death, nor desire it, was short of his resolution: to bedissolved, and be with Christ, was his dying ditty. He conceived histhread long, in no long course of years, and when he had scarce outlivedthe second life of Lazarus; esteeming it enough to approach the years ofhis Saviour, who so ordered His own human state as not to be old uponearth. 

Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might clearlydiscover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom is the greyhair, and an unspotted life old age; although his years came short, hemight have been said to have held up with longer livers, and to have beenSolomon's old man. And surely if we deduct all those days of our lifewhich we might wish unlived, and which abate the comfort of those we nowlive; if we reckon up only those days which God hath accepted of ourlives, a life of good years will hardly be a span long: the son in thissense may outlive the father, and none be climacterically old. He thatearly arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age, is happily old withoutthe uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous to live untogrey hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues ofthem. In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old man. He that hath early arrived unto the measure of a perfect stature inChrist, hath already fulfilled the prime and longest intention of hisbeing: and one day lived after the perfect rule of piety, is to bepreferred before sinning immortality. 

ON A HEAVENLY MIND

Lastly; if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation. Reckon not upon long life: think every day the last, and live alwaysbeyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his expectation livesmany lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his days. Timepast is gone like a shadow; make time to come present. Approximate thylatter times by present apprehensions of them: be like a neighbour untothe grave, and think there is but little to come. And since there issomething of us that will still live on, join both lives together, andlive in one but for the other. He who thus ordereth the purposes of thislife, will never be far from the next; and is in some manner already init, by a happy conformity and close apprehension of it. And if, as wehave elsewhere declared, any have been so happy, as personally tounderstand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exolution, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the divine shadow, accordingto mystical theology, they have already had an handsome anticipation ofheaven; the world is in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them. 

ON THE RELIGIO MEDICI

This I confess, about seven years past, with some others of affinitythereto, for my private exercise and satisfaction I had at leisurablehours composed; which being communicated unto one, it became common untomany, and was by transcription successively corrupted, until it arrivedin a most depraved copy at the press. He that shall peruse that work, and shall take notice of sundry particulars and personal expressionstherein, will easily discern the intention was not public: and being aprivate exercise directed to myself, what is delivered therein, wasrather a memorial unto me, than an example or rule unto any other: andtherefore if there be any singularity therein correspondent unto theprivate conceptions of any man, it doth not advantage them: or ifdissentaneous thereunto, it no way overthrows them. It was penned insuch a place, and with such disadvantage, that (I protest) from the firstsetting of pen unto paper, I had not the assistance of any good book, whereby to promote my invention, or relieve my memory, and thereforethere might be many real lapses therein, which others might take noticeof, and more than I suspected myself. It was set down many years past, and was the sense of my conception at that time, not an immutable lawunto my advancing judgment at all times; and therefore there might bemany things therein plausible unto my past apprehension, which are notagreeable unto my present self. There are many things deliveredrhetorically, many expressions therein merely tropical, and as they bestillustrate my intention, and therefore also there are many things to betaken in a soft and flexible sense and not to be called unto the rigidtest of reason. Lastly, all that is contained therein, is in submissionunto maturer discernments; and as I have declared, shall no furtherfather them than the best and learned judgments shall authorise them;under favour of which considerations I have made its secrecy public, andcommitted the truth thereof to every ingenuous reader. 

LAST LINES OF THE RELIGIO MEDICI

Bless me in this life with but peace of my conscience, command of myaffections, the love of Thyself and my dearest friends, and I shall behappy enough to pity Caesar. These are, O Lord, the humble desires of mymost reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness on earth; whereinI set no rule or limit to Thy hand of Providence; dispose of me accordingto the wisdom of Thy pleasure. Thy will be done, though in my ownundoing.