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 comports and sympathiseth 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 them agree
with my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a
churchyard 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, and 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 absolutely detest or hate any essence but the devil; or so at
least abhor anything, but that we might come to composition.
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 Maria 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 offer 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
consist in the narrow point and centre of virtue without a reel or
stagger to the circumference.
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_! It is 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 impossible 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. It is 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 prophecies and mystical types
could raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities.
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
that heavenly and celestial part within us; that mass of flesh that
circumscribes me limits not my mind; that surface that tells the heaven
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 arc 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.