CHAPTER I.

Produced by Henry Flower and Judith Boss, Omaha, Nebraska

Transcriber's Note

The printed text contained both footnotes and endnotes. These have

been renumbered in continuous series of letters and Arabic numerals

respectively.

Corrected errata are listed at the end of the text.

The following List of Contents has been added by the transcriber:

RELIGIO MEDICI

HYDRIOTAPHIA

A LETTER TO A FRIEND

NOTES TO THE RELIGIO MEDICI

NOTES TO HYDRIOTAPHIA

NOTES TO LETTER TO A FRIEND

RELIGIO MEDICI.

_RELIGIO MEDICI_,

HYDRIOTAPHIA, AND THE LETTER TO A FRIEND.

BY

SIR THOMAS BROWNE, KNT.

WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY

J. W. WILLIS BUND, M.A., LL.B.,

GONVILLE AND CAIUS COLLEGE, CAMBRIDGE,

OF LINCOLN’S INN, BARRISTER-AT-LAW.

LONDON:

SAMPSON LOW, SON, AND MARSTON,

CROWN BUILDINGS, 188 FLEET STREET.

1869.

INTRODUCTION.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE (whose works occupy so prominent a position in the

literary history of the seventeenth century) is an author who is now

little known and less read. This comparative oblivion to which he has

been consigned is the more remarkable, as, if for nothing else, his

writings deserve to be studied as an example of the English language

in what may be termed a transition state. The prose of the Elizabethan

age was beginning to pass away and give place to a more inflated style

of writing--a style which, after passing through various stages of

development, culminated in that of Johnson.

Browne is one of the best early examples of this school; his style,

to quote Johnson himself, “is vigorous but rugged, it is learned but

pedantick, it is deep but obscure, it strikes but does not please, it

commands but does not allure. . . . It is a tissue of many languages, a

mixture of heterogeneous words brought together from distant regions.”

Yet in spite of this qualified censure, there are passages in Browne’s

works not inferior to any in the English language; and though his

writings may not be “a well of English undefiled,” yet it is the very

defilements that add to the beauty of the work.

But it is not only as an example of literary style that Browne deserves

to be studied. The matter of his works, the grandeur of his ideas, the

originality of his thoughts, the greatness of his charity, amply make

up for the deficiencies (if deficiencies there be) in his style. An

author who combined the wit of Montaigne with the learning of Erasmus,

and of whom even Hallam could say that “his varied talents wanted

nothing but the controlling supremacy of good sense to place him in the

highest rank of our literature,” should not be suffered to remain in

obscurity.

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

works.

Sir Thomas Browne was born in London, in the parish of St Michael le

Quern, on the 19th of October 1605. His father was a London merchant,

of a good Cheshire family; and his mother a Sussex lady, daughter of Mr

Paul Garraway of Lewis. His father died when he was very young, and his

mother marrying again shortly afterwards, Browne was left to the care

of his guardians, one of whom is said to have defrauded him out of some

of his property. He was educated at Winchester, and afterwards sent

to Oxford, to what is now Pembroke College, where he took his degree

of M.A. in 1629. Thereupon he commenced for a short time to practise

as a physician in Oxfordshire. But we soon find him growing tired of

this, and accompanying his father-in-law, Sir Thomas Dutton, on a

tour of inspection of the castles and forts in Ireland. We next hear

of Browne in the south of France, at Montpellier, then a celebrated

school of medicine, where he seems to have studied some little time.

From there he proceeded to Padua, one of the most famous of the Italian

universities, and noted for the views some of its members held on the

subjects of astronomy and necromancy. During his residence here, Browne

doubtless acquired some of his peculiar ideas on the science of the

heavens and the black art, and, what was more important, he learnt to

regard the Romanists with that abundant charity we find throughout his

works. From Padua, Browne went to Leyden, and this sudden change from

a most bigoted Roman Catholic to a most bigoted Protestant country

was not without its effect on his mind, as can be traced in his book.

Here he took the degree of Doctor of Medicine, and shortly afterwards

returned to England. Soon after his return, about the year 1635, he

published his “Religio Medici,” his first and greatest work, which

may be fairly regarded as the reflection of the mind of one who, in

spite of a strong intellect and vast erudition, was still prone to

superstition, but having

“Through many cities strayed,

Their customs, laws, and manners weighed,”

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

After the publication of his book he settled at Norwich, where he soon

had an extensive practice as a physician. From hence there remains

little to be told of his life. In 1637 he was incorporated Doctor of

Medicine at Oxford; and in 1641 he married Dorothy the daughter of

Edward Mileham, of Burlingham in Norfolk, and had by her a family of

eleven children.

In 1646 he published his “Pseudodoxia Epidemica,” or Enquiries into

Vulgar Errors. The discovery of some Roman urns at Burnham in Norfolk,

led him in 1658 to write his “Hydriotaphia” (Urn-burial); he also

published at the same time “The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincunxcial

Lozenge of the Ancients,” a curious work, but far inferior to his other

productions.

In 1665 he was elected an honorary Fellow of the College of Physicians,

“virtute et literis ornatissimus.”

Browne had always been a Royalist. In 1643 he had refused to subscribe

to the fund that was then being raised for regaining Newcastle. He

proved a happy exception to the almost proverbial neglect the Royalists

received from Charles II. in 1671, for when Charles was at Newmarket,

he came over to see Norwich, and conferred the honour of knighthood

on Browne. His reputation was now very great. Evelyn paid a visit to

Norwich for the express purpose of seeing him; and at length, on his

76th birthday (19th October 1682), he died, full of years and honours.

It was a striking coincidence that he who in his Letter to a Friend

had said that “in persons who outlive many years, and when there are

no less than 365 days to determine their lives in every year, that

the first day should mark the last, that the tail of the snake should

return into its mouth precisely at that time, and that they should wind

up upon the day of their nativity, is indeed a remarkable coincidence,

which, though astrology hath taken witty pains to solve, yet hath it

been very wary in making predictions of it,” should himself die on the

day of his birth.

Browne was buried in the church of St Peter, Mancroft, Norwich, where

his wife erected to his memory a mural monument, on which was placed

an English and Latin inscription, setting forth that he was the author

of “Religio Medici,” “Pseudodoxia Epidemica,” and other learned works

“per orbem notissimus.” Yet his sleep was not to be undisturbed; his

skull was fated to adorn a museum! In 1840, while some workmen were

digging a vault in the chancel of St Peter’s, they found a coffin with

an inscription--

“Amplissimus Vir

D^{us} Thomas Browne Miles Medicinæ

D^r Annis Natus 77 Denatus 19 Die

Mensis Octobris Anno D^{nj} 1682 hoc.

Loculo indormiens Corporis Spagyrici

pulvere plumbum in aurum

convertit.”

The translation of this inscription raised a storm over his ashes,

which Browne would have enjoyed partaking in, the word _spagyricus_

being an enigma to scholars. Mr Firth of Norwich (whose translation

seems the best) thus renders the inscription:--

“The very distinguished man, Sir Thomas Browne, Knight, Doctor of

Medicine, aged 77 years, who died on the 19th of October, in the year

of our Lord 1682, sleeping in this coffin of lead, by the dust of his

alchemic body, transmutes it into a coffer of gold.”

After Sir Thomas’s death, two collections of his works were published,

one by Archbishop Tenison, and the other in 1772. They contain most

of his letters, his tracts on various subjects, and his Letter to a

Friend. Various editions of parts of Browne’s works have from time to

time appeared. By far the best edition of the whole of them is that

published by Simon Wilkin.

It is upon his “Religio Medici”--the religion of a physician--that

Browne’s fame chiefly rests. It was his first and most celebrated work,

published just after his return from his travels; it gives us the

impressions made on his mind by the various and opposite schools he had

passed through. He tells us that he never intended to publish it, but

that on its being surreptitiously printed, he was induced to do so. In

1643, the first genuine edition appeared, with “an admonition to such

as shall peruse the observations upon a former corrupt copy of this

book.” The observations here alluded to, were written by Sir Kenelm

Digby, and sent by him to the Earl of Dorset. They were first printed

at the end of the edition of 1643, and have ever since been published

with the book. Their chief merit consists in the marvellous rapidity

with which they were written, Sir Kenelm having, as he tells us, bought

the book, read it, and written his observations, in the course of

twenty-four hours!

The book contains what may be termed an apology for his belief. He

states the reasons on which he grounds his opinions, and endeavours

to show that, although he had been accused of atheism, he was in all

points a good Christian, and a loyal member of the Church of England.

Each person must judge for himself of his success; but the effect it

produced on the mind of Johnson may be noticed. “The opinions of every

man,” says he, “must be learned from himself; concerning his practice,

it is safer to trust to the evidence of others. When the testimonies

concur, no higher degree of historical certainty can be obtained; and

they apparently concur to prove that Browne was a zealous adherent to

the faith of Christ, that he lived in obedience to His laws, and died

in confidence of His mercy.”

The best proof of the excellence of the “Religio” is to be found in

its great success. During the author’s life, from 1643 to 1681, it

passed through eleven editions. It has been translated into Latin,

Dutch, French, and German, and many of the translations have passed

through several editions. No less than thirty-three treatises have been

written in imitation of it; and what, to some, will be the greatest

proof of all, it was soon after its publication placed in the Index

Expurgatorius. The best proof of its liberality of sentiment is in the

fact that its author was claimed at the same time by the Romanists and

Quakers to be a member of their respective creeds!

The “Hydriotaphia,” or Urn-burial, is a treatise on the funeral rites

of ancient nations. It was caused by the discovery of some Roman urns

in Norfolk. Though inferior to the “Religio,” “there is perhaps none of

his works which better exemplifies his reading or memory.”

The text of the present edition of the “Religio Medici” is taken from

what is called the eighth edition, but is in reality the eleventh,

published in London in 1682, the last edition in the author’s lifetime.

The notes are for the most part compiled from the observations of Sir

Kenelm Digby, the annotation of Mr. Keck, and the very valuable notes

of Simon Wilkin. For the account of the finding of Sir Thomas Browne’s

skull I am indebted to Mr Friswell’s notice of Sir Thomas in his

“Varia.” The text of the “Hydriotaphia” is taken from the folio edition

of 1686, in the Lincoln’s Inn library. Some of Browne’s notes to that

edition have been omitted, and most of the references, as they refer to

books which are not likely to be met with by the general reader.

The “Letter to a Friend, upon the occasion of the Death of his intimate

Friend,” was first published in a folio pamphlet in 1690. It was

reprinted in his posthumous works. The concluding reflexions are the

basis of a larger work, “Christian Morals.” I am not aware of any

complete modern edition of it. The text of the present one is taken

from the original edition of 1690. The pamphlet is in the British

Museum, bound up with a volume of old poems. It is entitled, “A Letter

to a Friend, upon the occasion of the Death of his intimate Friend.

By the learned Sir Thomas Brown, Knight, Doctor of Physick, late of

Norwich. London: Printed for Charles Brone, at the Gun, at the West End

of St Paul’s Churchyard, 1690.”

TO THE READER.

CERTAINLY that man were greedy of life, who should desire to live when

all the world were at an end; and he must needs be very impatient,

who would repine at death in the society of all things that suffer

under it. Had not almost every man suffered by the press, or were not

the tyranny thereof become universal, I had not wanted reason for

complaint: but in times wherein I have lived to behold the highest

perversion of that excellent invention, the name of his Majesty

defamed, the honour of Parliament depraved, the writings of both

depravedly, anticipatively, counterfeitly, imprinted: complaints may

seem ridiculous in private persons; and men of my condition may be as

incapable of affronts, as hopeless of their reparations. And truly had

not the duty I owe unto the importunity of friends, and the allegiance

I must ever acknowledge unto truth, prevailed with me; the inactivity

of my disposition might have made these sufferings continual, and

time, that brings other things to light, should have satisfied me in

the remedy of its oblivion. But because things evidently false are

not only printed, but many things of truth most falsely set forth;

in this latter I could not but think myself engaged: for, though we

have no power to redress the former, yet in the other reparation being

within ourselves, I have at present represented unto the world a

full and intended copy of that piece, which was most imperfectly and

surreptitiously published before.

This I confess, about seven years past, with some others of affinity

thereto, for my private exercise and satisfaction, I had at leisurable

hours composed; which being communicated unto one, it became common

unto many, and was by transcription successively corrupted, until it

arrived in a most depraved copy at the press. He that shall peruse

that work, and shall take notice of sundry particulars and personal

expressions therein, will easily discern the intention was not publick:

and, being a private exercise directed to myself, what is delivered

therein was rather a memorial unto me, than an example or rule unto any

other: and therefore, if there be any singularity therein correspondent

unto the private conceptions of any man, it doth not advantage them; or

if dissentaneous thereunto, it no way overthrows them. It was penned

in such a place, and with such disadvantage, that (I protest), from

the first setting of pen unto paper, I had not the assistance of any

good book, whereby to promote my invention, or relieve my memory; and

therefore there might be many real lapses therein, which others might

take notice of, and more that I suspected myself. It was set down

many years past, and was the sense of my conceptions at that time,

not an immutable law unto my advancing judgment at all times; and

therefore there might be many things therein plausible unto my passed

apprehension, which are not agreeable unto my present self. There are

many things delivered rhetorically, many expressions therein merely

tropical, and as they best illustrate my intention; and therefore also

there are many things to be taken in a soft and flexible sense, and

not to be called unto the rigid test of reason. Lastly, all that is

contained therein is in submission unto maturer discernments; and, as I

have declared, shall no further father them than the best and learned

judgments shall authorize them: under favour of which considerations, I

have made its secrecy publick, and committed the truth thereof to every

ingenuous reader.

THOMAS BROWNE.

RELIGIO MEDICI.

SECT. 1.--For my religion, though there be several circumstances that

might persuade the world I have none at all,--as the general scandal of

my profession,[1]--the natural course of my studies,--the indifferency

of my behaviour and discourse in matters of religion (neither violently

defending one, nor with that common ardour and contention opposing

another),--yet, in despite hereof, I dare without usurpation assume

the honourable style of a Christian. Not that I merely owe this title

to the font, my education, or the clime wherein I was born, as being

bred up either to confirm those principles my parents instilled into my

understanding, or by a general consent proceed in the religion of my

country; but having, in my riper years and confirmed judgment, seen and

examined all, I find myself obliged, by the principles of grace, and

the law of mine own reason, to embrace no other name but this. Neither

doth herein my zeal so far make me forget the general charity I owe

unto humanity, as rather to hate than pity Turks, Infidels, and (what

is worse) Jews; rather contenting myself to enjoy that happy style,

than maligning those who refuse so glorious a title.

_Sect._ 2.--But, because the name of a Christian is become too general

to express our faith,--there being a geography of religion as well

as lands, and every clime distinguished not only by their laws and

limits, but circumscribed by their doctrines and rules of faith,--to

be particular, I am of that reformed new-cast religion, wherein I

dislike nothing but the name; of the same belief our Saviour taught,

the apostles disseminated, the fathers authorized, and the martyrs

confirmed; but, by the sinister ends of princes, the ambition and

avarice of prelates, and the fatal corruption of times, so decayed,

impaired, and fallen from its native beauty, that it required the

careful and charitable hands of these times to restore it to its

primitive integrity. Now, the accidental occasion whereupon, the

slender means whereby, the low and abject condition of the person

by whom, so good a work was set on foot, which in our adversaries

beget contempt and scorn, fills me with wonder, and is the very same

objection the insolent pagans first cast at Christ and his disciples.

_Sect._ 3.--Yet have I not so shaken hands with those desperate

resolutions who had rather venture at large their decayed bottom,

than bring her in to be new-trimmed in the dock,--who had rather

promiscuously retain all, than abridge any, and obstinately be what

they are, than what they have been,--as to stand in diameter and

sword’s point with them. We have reformed from them, not against them:

for, omitting those improperations[2] and terms of scurrility betwixt

us, which only difference our affections, and not our cause, there is

between us one common name and appellation, one faith and necessary

body of principles common to us both; and therefore I am not scrupulous

to converse and live with them, to enter their churches in defect of

ours, and either pray with them or for them. I could never perceive any

rational consequences from those many texts which prohibit the children

of Israel to pollute themselves with the temples of the heathens; we

being all Christians, and not divided by such detested impieties as

might profane our prayers, or the place wherein we make them; or that a

resolved conscience may not adore her Creator anywhere, especially in

places devoted to his service; if their devotions offend him, mine may

please him: if theirs profane it, mine may hallow it. Holy water and

crucifix (dangerous to the common people) deceive not my judgment, nor

abuse my devotion at all. I am, I confess, naturally inclined to that

which misguided zeal terms superstition: my common conversation I do

acknowledge austere, my behaviour full of rigour, sometimes not without

morosity; yet, at my devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my

hat, and hand, with all those outward and sensible motions which may

express or promote my invisible devotion. I should violate my own arm

rather than a church; nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr.

At the sight of a cross, or crucifix, I can dispense with my hat, but

scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour. I cannot laugh at,

but rather pity, the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the

miserable condition of friars; for, though misplaced in circumstances,

there is something in it of devotion. I could never hear the Ave-Mary

bell[A] without an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant,

because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all,--that

is, in silence and dumb contempt. Whilst, therefore, they direct their

devotions to her, I offered mine to God; and rectify the errors of

their prayers by rightly ordering mine own. At a solemn procession I

have wept abundantly, while my consorts, blind with opposition and

prejudice, have fallen into an excess of scorn and laughter. There are,

questionless, both in Greek, Roman, and African churches, solemnities

and ceremonies, whereof the wiser zeals do make a Christian use; and

stand condemned by us, not as evil in themselves, but as allurements

and baits of superstition to those vulgar heads that look asquint on

the face of truth, and those unstable judgments that cannot resist in

the narrow point and centre of virtue without a reel or stagger to the

circumference.

[A] A church-bell, that tolls every day at six and twelve of the clock;

at the hearing whereof every one, in what place soever, either of house

or street, betakes himself to his prayer, which is commonly directed to

the Virgin.

_Sect._ 4.--As there were many reformers, so likewise many

reformations; every country proceeding in a particular way and

method, according as their national interest, together with their

constitution and clime, inclined them: some angrily and with

extremity; others calmly and with mediocrity, not rending, but easily

dividing, the community, and leaving an honest possibility of a

reconciliation;--which, though peaceable spirits do desire, and may

conceive that revolution of time and the mercies of God may effect,

yet that judgment that shall consider the present antipathies between

the two extremes,--their contrarieties in condition, affection, and

opinion,--may, with the same hopes, expect a union in the poles of

heaven.

_Sect._ 5.--But, to difference myself nearer, and draw into a

lesser circle; there is no church whose every part so squares unto

my conscience, whose articles, constitutions, and customs, seem so

consonant unto reason, and, as it were, framed to my particular

devotion, as this whereof I hold my belief--the Church of England;

to whose faith I am a sworn subject, and therefore, in a double

obligation, subscribe unto her articles, and endeavour to observe her

constitutions: whatsoever is beyond, as points indifferent, I observe,

according to the rules of my private reason, or the humour and fashion

of my devotion; neither believing this because Luther affirmed it,

nor disproving that because Calvin hath disavouched it. I condemn

not all things in the council of Trent, nor approve all in the synod

of Dort.[3] In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the church is

my text; where that speaks, ’tis but my comment;[4] where there is a

joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome

or Geneva, but from the dictates of my own reason. It is an unjust

scandal of our adversaries, and a gross error in ourselves, to compute

the nativity of our religion from Henry the Eighth; who, though he

rejected the Pope, refused not the faith of Rome,[5] and effected no

more than what his own predecessors desired and essayed in ages past,

and it was conceived the state of Venice would have attempted in our

days.[6] It is as uncharitable a point in us to fall upon those popular

scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs of the Bishop of Rome, to whom, as

a temporal prince, we owe the duty of good language. I confess there is

a cause of passion between us: by his sentence I stand excommunicated;

heretic is the best language he affords me: yet can no ear witness I

ever returned to him the name of antichrist, man of sin, or whore of

Babylon. It is the method of charity to suffer without reaction: those

usual satires and invectives of the pulpit may perchance produce a good

effect on the vulgar, whose ears are opener to rhetoric than logic; yet

do they, in no wise, confirm the faith of wiser believers, who know

that a good cause needs not be pardoned by passion, but can sustain

itself upon a temperate dispute.

_Sect._ 6.--I could never divide myself from any man upon the

difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not

agreeing with me in that from which, perhaps, within a few days, I

should dissent myself. I have no genius to disputes in religion:

and have often thought it wisdom to decline them, especially upon a

disadvantage, or when the cause of truth might suffer in the weakness

of my patronage. Where we desire to be informed, ’tis good to contest

with men above ourselves; but, to confirm and establish our opinions,

’tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the frequent

spoils and victories over their reasons may settle in ourselves an

esteem and confirmed opinion of our own. Every man is not a proper

champion for truth, nor fit to take up the gauntlet in the cause of

verity; many, from the ignorance of these maxims, and an inconsiderate

zeal unto truth, have too rashly charged the troops of error and

remain as trophies unto the enemies of truth. A man may be in as just

possession of truth as of a city, and yet be forced to surrender; ’tis

therefore far better to enjoy her with peace than to hazard her on a

battle. If, therefore, there rise any doubts in my way, I do forget

them, or at least defer them, till my better settled judgment and

more manly reason be able to resolve them; for I perceive every man’s

own reason is his best Œdipus,[7] and will, upon a reasonable truce,

find a way to loose those bonds wherewith the subtleties of error

have enchained our more flexible and tender judgments. In philosophy,

where truth seems double-faced, there is no man more paradoxical than

myself: but in divinity I love to keep the road; and, though not in an

implicit, yet an humble faith, follow the great wheel of the church,

by which I move; not reserving any proper poles, or motion from the

epicycle of my own brain. By this means I have no gap for heresy,

schisms, or errors, of which at present, I hope I shall not injure

truth to say, I have no taint or tincture. I must confess my greener

studies have been polluted with two or three; not any begotten in the

latter centuries, but old and obsolete, such as could never have been

revived but by such extravagant and irregular heads as mine. For,

indeed, heresies perish not with their authors; but, like the river

Arethusa,[8] though they lose their currents in one place, they rise

up again in another. One general council is not able to extirpate one

single heresy: it may be cancelled for the present; but revolution

of time, and the like aspects from heaven, will restore it, when it

will flourish till it be condemned again. For, as though there were

metempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed into another, opinions

do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that

first begat them. To see ourselves again, we need not look for Plato’s

year:[B] every man is not only himself; there have been many Diogenes,

and as many Timons, though but few of that name; men are lived over

again; the world is now as it was in ages past; there was none then,

but there hath been some one since, that parallels him, and is, as it

were, his revived self.

[B] A revolution of certain thousand years, when all things should

return unto their former estate, and he be teaching again in his

school, as when he delivered this opinion.

_Sect._ 7.--Now, the first of mine was that of the Arabians;[9] that

the souls of men perished with their bodies, but should yet be raised

again at the last day: not that I did absolutely conceive a mortality

of the soul, but, if that were (which faith, not philosophy, hath yet

thoroughly disproved), and that both entered the grave together, yet

I held the same conceit thereof that we all do of the body, that it

rise again. Surely it is but the merits of our unworthy natures, if we

sleep in darkness until the last alarm. A serious reflex upon my own

unworthiness did make me backward from challenging this prerogative

of my soul: so that I might enjoy my Saviour at the last, I could

with patience be nothing almost unto eternity. The second was that of

Origen; that God would not persist in his vengeance for ever, but,

after a definite time of his wrath, would release the damned souls

from torture; which error I fell into upon a serious contemplation of

the great attribute of God, his mercy; and did a little cherish it

in myself, because I found therein no malice, and a ready weight to

sway me from the other extreme of despair, whereunto melancholy and

contemplative natures are too easily disposed. A third there is, which

I did never positively maintain or practise, but have often wished it

had been consonant to truth, and not offensive to my religion; and

that is, the prayer for the dead; whereunto I was inclined from some

charitable inducements, whereby I could scarce contain my prayers for

a friend at the ringing of a bell, or behold his corpse without an

orison for his soul. ’Twas a good way, methought, to be remembered by

posterity, and far more noble than a history. These opinions I never

maintained with pertinacity, or endeavoured to inveigle any man’s

belief unto mine, nor so much as ever revealed, or disputed them with

my dearest friends; by which means I neither propagated them in others

nor confirmed them in myself: but, suffering them to flame upon their

own substance, without addition of new fuel, they went out insensibly

of themselves; therefore these opinions, though condemned by lawful

councils, were not heresies in me, but bare errors, and single lapses

of my understanding, without a joint depravity of my will. Those have

not only depraved understandings, but diseased affections, which cannot

enjoy a singularity without a heresy, or be the author of an opinion

without they be of a sect also. This was the villany of the first

schism of Lucifer; who was not content to err alone, but drew into his

faction many legions; and upon this experience he tempted only Eve,

well understanding the communicable nature of sin, and that to deceive

but one was tacitly and upon consequence to delude them both.

_Sect._ 8.--That heresies should arise, we have the prophecy of Christ;

but, that old ones should be abolished, we hold no prediction. That

there must be heresies, is true, not only in our church, but also in

any other: even in the doctrines heretical there will be superheresies;

and Arians, not only divided from the church, but also among

themselves: for heads that are disposed unto schism, and complexionally

propense to innovation, are naturally indisposed for a community;

nor will be ever confined unto the order or economy of one body; and

therefore, when they separate from others, they knit but loosely among

themselves; nor contented with a general breach or dichotomy[10] with

their church, do subdivide and mince themselves almost into atoms.

’Tis true, that men of singular parts and humours have not been free

from singular opinions and conceits in all ages; retaining something,

not only beside the opinion of his own church, or any other, but also

any particular author; which, notwithstanding, a sober judgment may

do without offence or heresy; for there is yet, after all the decrees

of councils, and the niceties of the schools, many things, untouched,

unimagined, wherein the liberty of an honest reason may play and

expatiate with security, and far without the circle of a heresy.

_Sect._ 9.--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_[11] of mine. Methinks

there be not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith:

the deepest mysteries ours contains have not only been illustrated,

but maintained, by syllogism and the rule of reason. I love to lose

myself in a mystery; to pursue my reason to an _O altitudo!_ ’Tis my

solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas

and riddles of the Trinity--with incarnation and resurrection. I can

answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that

odd resolution I learned of Tertullian, “_Certum est quia impossibile

est_.” I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for, to

credit ordinary and visible objects, is not faith, but persuasion. Some

believe the better for seeing Christ’s sepulchre; and, when they have

seen the Red Sea, doubt not of the miracle. Now, contrarily, I bless

myself, and am thankful, that I lived not in the days of miracles; that

I never saw Christ nor his disciples. I would not have been one of

those Israelites that passed the Red Sea; nor one of Christ’s patients,

on whom he wrought his wonders: then had my faith been thrust upon me;

nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe

and saw not. ’Tis an easy and necessary belief, to credit what our eye

and sense hath examined. I believe he was dead, and buried, and rose

again; and desire to see him in his glory, rather than to contemplate

him in his cenotaph or sepulchre. Nor is this much to believe; as

we have reason, we owe this faith unto history: they only had the

advantage of a bold and noble faith, who lived before his coming, who,

upon obscure prophesies and mystical types, could raise a belief, and

expect apparent impossibilities.

_Sect._ 10.--’Tis true, there is an edge in all firm belief, and

with an easy metaphor we may say, the sword of faith; but in these

obscurities I rather use it in the adjunct the apostle gives it, a

buckler; under which I conceive a wary combatant may lie invulnerable.

Since I was of understanding to know that we knew nothing, my reason

hath been more pliable to the will of faith: I am now content to

understand a mystery, without a rigid definition, in an easy and

Platonic description. That allegorical description of Hermes[C]

pleaseth me beyond all the metaphysical definitions of divines. Where

I cannot satisfy my reason, I love to humour my fancy: I had as lieve

you tell me that _anima est angelus hominis, est corpus Dei_, as

ἐντελέχεια;--_lux est umbra Dei_, as _actus perspicui_. Where there

is an obscurity too deep for our reason, ’tis good to sit down with a

description, periphrasis, or adumbration;[12] for, by acquainting our

reason how unable it is to display the visible and obvious effects of

nature, it becomes more humble and submissive unto the subtleties of

faith: and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop unto

the lure of faith. I believe there was already a tree, whose fruit our

unhappy parents tasted, though, in the same chapter when God forbids

it, ’tis positively said, the plants of the field were not yet grown;

for God had not caused it to rain upon the earth. I believe that the

serpent (if we shall literally understand it), from his proper form

and figure, made his motion on his belly, before the curse. I find the

trial of the pucelage and virginity of women, which God ordained the

Jews, is very fallible. Experience and history informs me that, not

only many particular women, but likewise whole nations, have escaped

the curse of childbirth, which God seems to pronounce upon the whole

sex; yet do I believe that all this is true, which, indeed, my reason

would persuade me to be false: and this, I think, is no vulgar part of

faith, to believe a thing not only above, but contrary to, reason, and

against the arguments of our proper senses.

[C] “Sphæra cujus centrum ubique, circumferentia nullibi.”

_Sect._ 11.--In my solitary and retired imagination (“_neque enim cum

porticus aut me lectulus accepit, desum mihi_”), I remember I am not

alone; and therefore forget not to contemplate him and his attributes,

who is ever with me, especially those two mighty ones, his wisdom

and eternity. With the one I recreate, with the other I confound, my

understanding: for who can speak of eternity without a solecism, or

think thereof without an ecstasy? Time we may comprehend; ’tis but five

days elder than ourselves, and hath the same horoscope with the world;

but, to retire so far back as to apprehend a beginning,--to give such

an infinite start forwards as to conceive an end,--in an essence that

we affirm hath neither the one nor the other, it puts my reason to St

Paul’s sanctuary: my philosophy dares not say the angels can do it.

God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him; ’tis a privilege

of his own nature: “I am that I am” was his own definition unto Moses;

and ’twas a short one to confound mortality, that durst question God,

or ask him what he was. Indeed, he only is; all others have and shall

be; but, in eternity, there is no distinction of tenses; and therefore

that terrible term, predestination, which hath troubled so many weak

heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in respect to God no

prescious determination of our estates to come, but a definitive blast

of his will already fulfilled, and at the instant that he first decreed

it; for, to his eternity, which is indivisible, and altogether, the

last trump is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the

blessed in Abraham’s bosom. St Peter speaks modestly, when he saith,

“a thousand years to God are but as one day;” for, to speak like a

philosopher, those continued instances of time, which flow into a

thousand years, make not to him one moment. What to us is to come, to

his eternity is present; his whole duration being but one permanent

point, without succession, parts, flux, or division.

_Sect._ 12.--There is no attribute that adds more difficulty to the

mystery of the Trinity, where, though in a relative way of Father and

Son, we must deny a priority. I wonder how Aristotle could conceive

the world eternal, or how he could make good two eternities. His

similitude, of a triangle comprehended in a square, doth somewhat

illustrate the trinity of our souls, and that the triple unity of God;

for there is in us not three, but a trinity of, souls; because there

is in us, if not three distinct souls, yet differing faculties, that

can and do subsist apart in different subjects, and yet in us are thus

united as to make but one soul and substance. If one soul were so

perfect as to inform three distinct bodies, that were a pretty trinity.

Conceive the distinct number of three, not divided nor separated by

the intellect, but actually comprehended in its unity, and that a

perfect trinity. I have often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras,

and the secret magick of numbers. “Beware of philosophy,” is a precept

not to be received in too large a sense: for, in this mass of nature,

there is a set of things that carry in their front, though not in

capital letters, yet in stenography and short characters, something of

divinity; which, to wiser reasons, serve as luminaries in the abyss of

knowledge, and, to judicious beliefs, as scales and roundles to mount

the pinnacles and highest pieces of divinity. The severe schools shall

never laugh me out of the philosophy of Hermes, that this visible world

is but a picture of the invisible, wherein, as in a portrait, things

are not truly, but in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some

real substance in that invisible fabrick.

_Sect._ 13.--That other attribute, wherewith I recreate my devotion, is

his wisdom, in which I am happy; and for the contemplation of this only

do not repent me that I was bred in the way of study. The advantage I

have therein, is an ample recompense for all my endeavours, in what

part of knowledge soever. Wisdom is his most beauteous attribute:

no man can attain unto it: yet Solomon pleased God when he desired

it. He is wise, because he knows all things; and he knoweth all

things, because he made them all: but his greatest knowledge is in

comprehending that he made not, that is, himself. And this is also the

greatest knowledge in man. For this do I honour my own profession,

and embrace the counsel even of the devil himself: had he read such a

lecture in Paradise as he did at Delphos,[D][13] we had better known

ourselves; nor had we stood in fear to know him. I know God is wise in

all; wonderful in what we conceive, but far more in what we comprehend

not: for we behold him but asquint, upon reflex or shadow; our

understanding is dimmer than Moses’s eye; we are ignorant of the back

parts or lower side of his divinity; therefore, to pry into the maze of

his counsels, is not only folly in man, but presumption even in angels.

Like us, they are his servants, not his senators; he holds no counsel,

but that mystical one of the Trinity, wherein, though there be three

persons, there is but one mind that decrees without contradiction.

Nor needs he any; his actions are not begot with deliberation; his

wisdom naturally knows what’s best: his intellect stands ready fraught

with the superlative and purest ideas of goodness, consultations,

and election, which are two motions in us, make but one in him: his

actions springing from his power at the first touch of his will. These

are contemplations metaphysical: my humble speculations have another

method, and are content to trace and discover those expressions he hath

left in his creatures, and the obvious effects of nature. There is

no danger to profound[14] these mysteries, no _sanctum sanctorum_ in

philosophy. The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied

and contemplated by man: ’tis the debt of our reason we owe unto God,

and the homage we pay for not being beasts. Without this, the world is

still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixth day,

when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive or say there

was a world. The wisdom of God receives small honour from those vulgar

heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire his

works. Those highly magnify him, whose judicious enquiry into his acts,

and deliberate research into his creatures, return the duty of a devout

and learned admiration. Therefore,

[D] “Γνῶθι σεαυτὸν.” “Nosce teipsum.”

Search while thou wilt; and let thy reason go,

To ransom truth, e’en to th’ abyss below;

Rally the scatter’d causes; and that line

Which nature twists be able to untwine.

It is thy Maker’s will; for unto none

But unto reason can he e’er be known.

The devils do know thee; but those damn’d meteors

Build not thy glory, but confound thy creatures.

Teach my endeavours so thy works to read,

That learning them in thee I may proceed.

Give thou my reason that instructive flight,

Whose weary wings may on thy hands still light.

Teach me to soar aloft, yet ever so,

When near the sun, to stoop again below.

Thus shall my humble feathers safely hover,

And, though near earth, more than the heavens discover.

And then at last, when homeward I shall drive,

Rich with the spoils of nature, to my hive,

There will I sit, like that industrious fly,

Buzzing thy praises; which shall never die

Till death abrupts them, and succeeding glory

Bid me go on in a more lasting story.

And this is almost all wherein an humble creature may endeavour to

requite, and some way to retribute unto his Creator: for, if not he

that saith, “Lord, Lord, but he that doth the will of the Father,

shall be saved,” certainly our wills must be our performances, and our

intents make out our actions; otherwise our pious labours shall find

anxiety in our graves, and our best endeavours not hope, but fear, a

resurrection.

_Sect._ 14.--There is but one first cause, and four second causes, of

all things. Some are without efficient,[15] as God; others without

matter, as angels; some without form, as the first matter: but every

essence, created or uncreated, hath its final cause, and some positive

end both of its essence and operation. This is the cause I grope

after in the works of nature; on this hangs the providence of God.

To raise so beauteous a structure as the world and the creatures

thereof was but his art; but their sundry and divided operations, with

their predestinated ends, are from the treasure of his wisdom. In the

causes, nature, and affections, of the eclipses of the sun and moon,

there is most excellent speculation; but, to profound further, and to

contemplate a reason why his providence hath so disposed and ordered

their motions in that vast circle, as to conjoin and obscure each

other, is a sweeter piece of reason, and a diviner point of philosophy.

Therefore, sometimes, and in some things, there appears to me as much

divinity in Galen his books, _De Usu Partium_,[16] as in Suarez’s

Metaphysicks. Had Aristotle been as curious in the enquiry of this

cause as he was of the other, he had not left behind him an imperfect

piece of philosophy, but an absolute tract of divinity.

_Sect._ 15.--_Natura nihil agit frustra_, is the only indisputable

axiom in philosophy. There are no grotesques in nature; not any thing

framed to fill up empty cantons, and unnecessary spaces. In the most

imperfect creatures, and such as were not preserved in the ark,

but, having their seeds and principles in the womb of nature, are

everywhere, where the power of the sun is,--in these is the wisdom of

his hand discovered. Out of this rank Solomon chose the object of his

admiration; indeed, what reason may not go to school to the wisdom of

bees, ants, and spiders? What wise hand teacheth them to do what reason

cannot teach us? Ruder heads stand amazed at those prodigious pieces of

nature, whales, elephants, dromedaries, and camels; these, I confess,

are the colossus and majestick pieces of her hand; but in these narrow

engines there is more curious mathematicks; and the civility of these

little citizens more neatly sets forth the wisdom of their Maker. Who

admires not Regio Montanus his fly beyond his eagle;[17] or wonders

not more at the operation of two souls in those little bodies than but

one in the trunk of a cedar? I could never content my contemplation

with those general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea,

the increase of Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; and

have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious and

neglected pieces of nature which, without farther travel, I can do in

the cosmography of myself. We carry with us the wonders we seek without

us: there is all Africa and her prodigies in us. We are that bold and

adventurous piece of nature, which he that studies wisely learns, in a

compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.

_Sect._ 16.--Thus there are two books from whence I collect my

divinity. Besides that written one of God, another of his servant,

nature, that universal and publick manuscript, that lies expansed unto

the eyes of all. Those that never saw him in the one have discovered

him in the other; this was the scripture and theology of the heathens;

the natural motion of the sun made them more admire him than its

supernatural station did the children of Israel. The ordinary effects

of nature wrought more admiration in them than, in the other, all

his miracles. Surely the heathens knew better how to join and read

these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a more careless

eye on these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from

the flowers of nature. Nor do I so forget God as to adore the name of

nature; which I define not, with the schools, to be the principle of

motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that settled and

constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions of his

creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution every

day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course which

God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty from

that voice which first did give it motion. Now this course of nature

God seldom alters or perverts; but, like an excellent artist, hath so

contrived his work, that, with the self-same instrument, without a

new creation, he may effect his obscurest designs. Thus he sweeteneth

the water with a word, preserveth the creatures in the ark, which the

blest of his mouth might have as easily created;--for God is like a

skilful geometrician, who, when more easily, and with one stroke of

his compass, he might describe or divide a right line, had yet rather

do this in a circle or longer way, according to the constituted and

forelaid principles of his art: yet this rule of his he doth sometimes

pervert, to acquaint the world with his prerogative, lest the arrogancy

of our reason should question his power, and conclude he could not.

And thus I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and

instrument she only is; and therefore, to ascribe his actions unto her

is to devolve the honour of the principal agent upon the instrument;

which if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast

they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our

writing. I hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and

therefore no deformity in any kind of species of creature whatsoever.

I cannot tell by what logick we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant

ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which

best express the actions of their inward forms; and having passed that

general visitation of God, who saw that all that he had made was good,

that is, conformable to his will, which abhors deformity, and is the

rule of order and beauty. There is no deformity but in monstrosity;

wherein, notwithstanding, there is a kind of beauty; nature so

ingeniously contriving the irregular part, as they become sometimes

more remarkable than the principal fabrick. To speak yet more narrowly,

there was never any thing ugly or mis-shapen, but the chaos; wherein,

notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no deformity, because no

form; nor was it yet impregnant by the voice of God. Now nature is not

at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants

of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now

as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one

world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial; for nature

is the art of God.

_Sect._ 17.--This is the ordinary and open way of his providence, which

art and industry have in good part discovered; whose effects we may

foretell without an oracle. To foreshow these is not prophecy, but

prognostication. There is another way, full of meanders and labyrinths,

whereof the devil and spirits have no exact ephemerides: and that is

a more particular and obscure method of his providence; directing the

operations of individual and single essences: this we call fortune;

that serpentine and crooked line, whereby he draws those actions his

wisdom intends in a more unknown and secret way; this cryptic[18] and

involved method of his providence have I ever admired; nor can I relate

the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, the escapes, or

dangers, and hits of chance, with a _bezo las manos_ to Fortune, or

a bare gramercy to my good stars. Abraham might have thought the ram

in the thicket came thither by accident: human reason would have said

that mere chance conveyed Moses in the ark to the sight of Pharaoh’s

daughter. What a labyrinth is there in the story of Joseph! able to

convert a stoick. Surely there are in every man’s life certain rubs,

doublings, and wrenches, which pass a while under the effects of

chance; but at the last, well examined, prove the mere hand of God.

’Twas not dumb chance that, to discover the fougade,[19] or powder

plot, contrived a miscarriage in the letter. I like the victory of

’88[20] the better for that one occurrence which our enemies imputed to

our dishonour, and the partiality of fortune; to wit, the tempests and

contrariety of winds. King Philip did not detract from the nation, when

he said, he sent his armada to fight with men, and not to combat with

the winds. Where there is a manifest disproportion between the powers

and forces of two several agents, upon a maxim of reason we may promise

the victory to the superior: but when unexpected accidents slip in, and

unthought-of occurrences intervene, these must proceed from a power

that owes no obedience to those axioms; where, as in the writing upon

the wall, we may behold the hand, but see not the spring that moves

it. The success of that petty province of Holland (of which the Grand

Seignior proudly said, if they should trouble him, as they did the

Spaniard, he would send his men with shovels and pickaxes, and throw it

into the sea) I cannot altogether ascribe to the ingenuity and industry

of the people, but the mercy of God, that hath disposed them to such a

thriving genius; and to the will of his providence, that disposeth her

favour to each country in their preordinate season. All cannot be happy

at once; for, because the glory of one state depends upon the ruin of

another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their greatness, and

must obey the swing of that wheel, not moved by intelligencies, but by

the hand of God, whereby all estates arise to their zenith and vertical

points, according to their predestinated periods. For the lives, not

only of men, but of commonwealths and the whole world, run not upon a

helix that still enlargeth; but on a circle, where, arriving to their

meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the horizon again.

_Sect._ 18.--These must not therefore be named the effects of fortune

but in a relative way, and as we term the works of nature. It was

the ignorance of man’s reason that begat this very name, and by a

careless term miscalled the providence of God: for there is no liberty

for causes to operate in a loose and straggling way; nor any effect

whatsoever but hath its warrant from some universal or superior cause.

’Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables;

for, even in sortileges[21] and matters of greatest uncertainty,

there is a settled and preordered course of effects. It is we that

are blind, not fortune. Because our eye is too dim to discover the

mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the

providence of the Almighty. I cannot justify that contemptible proverb,

that “fools only are fortunate;” or that insolent paradox, that “a

wise man is out of the reach of fortune;” much less those opprobrious

epithets of poets,--“whore,” “bawd,” and “strumpet.” ’Tis, I confess,

the common fate of men of singular gifts of mind, to be destitute of

those of fortune; which doth not any way deject the spirit of wiser

judgments who thoroughly understand the justice of this proceeding;

and, being enriched with higher donatives, cast a more careless eye

on these vulgar parts of felicity. It is a most unjust ambition, to

desire to engross the mercies of the Almighty, not to be content with

the goods of mind, without a possession of those of body or fortune:

and it is an error, worse than heresy, to adore these complimental and

circumstantial pieces of felicity, and undervalue those perfections

and essential points of happiness, wherein we resemble our Maker.

To wiser desires it is satisfaction enough to deserve, though not

to enjoy, the favours of fortune. Let providence provide for fools:

’tis not partiality, but equity, in God, who deals with us but as our

natural parents. Those that are able of body and mind he leaves to

their deserts; to those of weaker merits he imparts a larger portion;

and pieces out the defect of one by the excess of the other. Thus have

we no just quarrel with nature for leaving us naked; or to envy the

horns, hoofs, skins, and furs of other creatures; being provided with

reason, that can supply them all. We need not labour, with so many

arguments, to confute judicial astrology; for, if there be a truth

therein, it doth not injure divinity. If to be born under Mercury

disposeth us to be witty; under Jupiter to be wealthy; I do not owe

a knee unto these, but unto that merciful hand that hath ordered my

indifferent and uncertain nativity unto such benevolous aspects. Those

that hold that all things are governed by fortune, had not erred,

had they not persisted there. The Romans, that erected a temple to

Fortune, acknowledged therein, though in a blinder way, somewhat of

divinity; for, in a wise supputation,[22] all things begin and end in

the Almighty. There is a nearer way to heaven than Homer’s chain;[23]

an easy logick may conjoin a heaven and earth in one argument, and,

with less than a sorites,[24] resolve all things to God. For though

we christen effects by their most sensible and nearest causes, yet is

God the true and infallible cause of all; whose concourse, though it

be general, yet doth it subdivide itself into the particular actions

of every thing, and is that spirit, by which each singular essence not

only subsists, but performs its operation.

_Sect._ 19.--The bad construction and perverse comment on these pair of

second causes, or visible hands of God, have perverted the devotion of

many unto atheism; who, forgetting the honest advisoes of faith, have

listened unto the conspiracy of passion and reason. I have therefore

always endeavoured to compose those feuds and angry dissensions between

affection, faith, and reason: for there is in our soul a kind of

triumvirate, or triple government of three competitors, which distracts

the peace of this our commonwealth not less than did that other[25] the

state of Rome.

As reason is a rebel unto faith, so passion unto reason. As the

propositions of faith seem absurd unto reason, so the theorems of

reason unto passion and both unto reason; yet a moderate and peaceable

discretion may so state and order the matter, that they may be all

kings, and yet make but one monarchy: every one exercising his

sovereignty and prerogative in a due time and place, according to the

restraint and limit of circumstance. There are, as in philosophy, so

in divinity, sturdy doubts, and boisterous objections, wherewith the

unhappiness of our knowledge too nearly acquainteth us. More of these

no man hath known than myself; which I confess I conquered, not in a

martial posture, but on my knees. For our endeavours are not only to

combat with doubts, but always to dispute with the devil. The villany

of that spirit takes a hint of infidelity from our studios; and, by

demonstrating a naturality in one way, makes us mistrust a miracle

in another. Thus, having perused the Archidoxes, and read the secret

sympathies of things, he would dissuade my belief from the miracle of

the brazen serpent; make me conceit that image worked by sympathy, and

was but an Egyptian trick, to cure their diseases without a miracle.

Again, having seen some experiments of bitumen, and having read far

more of naphtha, he whispered to my curiosity the fire of the altar

might be natural, and bade me mistrust a miracle in Elias, when he

intrenched the altar round with water: for that inflamable substance

yields not easily unto water, but flames in the arms of its antagonist.

And thus would he inveigle my belief to think the combustion of Sodom

might be natural, and that there was an asphaltick and bituminous

nature in that lake before the fire of Gomorrah. I know that manna is

now plentifully gathered in Calabria; and Josephus tells me, in his

days it was as plentiful in Arabia. The devil therefore made the query,

“Where was then the miracle in the days of Moses?” The Israelites saw

but that, in his time, which the natives of those countries behold

in ours. Thus the devil played at chess with me, and, yielding a

pawn, thought to gain a queen of me; taking advantage of my honest

endeavours; and, whilst I laboured to raise the structure of my reason,

he strove to undermine the edifice of my faith.

_Sect._ 20.--Neither had these or any other ever such advantage of me,

as to incline me to any point of infidelity or desperate positions of

atheism; for I have been these many years of opinion there was never

any. Those that held religion was the difference of man from beasts,

have spoken probably, and proceed upon a principle as inductive as

the other. That doctrine of Epicurus, that denied the providence of

God, was no atheism, but a magnificent and high-strained conceit of

his majesty, which he deemed too sublime to mind the trivial actions

of those inferior creatures. That fatal necessity of the stoicks is

nothing but the immutable law of his will. Those that heretofore denied

the divinity of the Holy Ghost have been condemned but as hereticks;

and those that now deny our Saviour, though more than hereticks, are

not so much as atheists: for, though they deny two persons in the

Trinity, they hold, as we do, there is but one God.

That villain and secretary of hell,[26] that composed that miscreant

piece of the three impostors, though divided from all religions, and

neither Jew, Turk, nor Christian, was not a positive atheist. I confess

every country hath its Machiavel, every age its Lucian, whereof common

heads must not hear, nor more advanced judgments too rashly venture on.

It is the rhetorick of Satan; and may pervert a loose or prejudicate

belief.

_Sect._ 21.--I confess I have perused them all, and can discover

nothing that may startle a discreet belief; yet are their heads carried

off with the wind and breath of such motives. I remember a doctor in

physick, of Italy, who could not perfectly believe the immortality of

the soul, because Galen seemed to make a doubt thereof. With another I

was familiarly acquainted, in France, a divine, and a man of singular

parts, that on the same point was so plunged and gravelled with three

lines of Seneca,[E] that all our antidotes, drawn from both Scripture

and philosophy, could not expel the poison of his error. There are a

set of heads that can credit the relations of mariners, yet question

the testimonies of Saint Paul: and peremptorily maintain the traditions

of Ælian or Pliny; yet, in histories of Scripture, raise queries and

objections: believing no more than they can parallel in human authors.

I confess there are, in Scripture, stories that do exceed the fables of

poets, and, to a captious reader, sound like Garagantua or Bevis.[27]

Search all the legends of times past, and the fabulous conceits of

these present, and ’twill be hard to find one that deserves to carry

the buckler unto Samson; yet is all this of an easy possibility,

if we conceive a divine concourse, or an influence from the little

finger of the Almighty. It is impossible that, either in the discourse

of man or in the infallible voice of God, to the weakness of our

apprehensions there should not appear irregularities, contradictions,

and antinomies:[28] myself could show a catalogue of doubts, never yet

imagined nor questioned, as I know, which are not resolved at the first

hearing; not fantastick queries or objections of air; for I cannot

hear of atoms in divinity. I can read the history of the pigeon that

was sent out of the ark, and returned no more, yet not question how

she found out her mate that was left behind: that Lazarus was raised

from the dead, yet not demand where, in the interim, his soul awaited;

or raise a law-case, whether his heir might lawfully detain his

inheritance bequeathed upon him by his death, and he, though restored

to life, have no plea or title unto his former possessions. Whether

Eve was framed out of the left side of Adam, I dispute not; because

I stand not yet assured which is the right side of a man; or whether

there be any such distinction in nature. That she was edified out of

the rib of Adam, I believe; yet raise no question who shall arise with

that rib at the resurrection. Whether Adam was an hermaphrodite, as the

rabbins contend upon the letter of the text; because it is contrary

to reason, there should be an hermaphrodite before there was a woman,

or a composition of two natures, before there was a second composed.

Likewise, whether the world was created in autumn, summer, or the

spring; because it was created in them all: for, whatsoever sign the

sun possesseth, those four seasons are actually existent. It is the

nature of this luminary to distinguish the several seasons of the year;

all which it makes at one time in the whole earth, and successively

in any part thereof. There are a bundle of curiosities, not only in

philosophy, but in divinity, proposed and discussed by men of most

supposed abilities, which indeed are not worthy our vacant hours, much

less our serious studies. Pieces only fit to be placed in Pantagruel’s

library, or bound up with Tartaratus, _De Modo Cacandi_.[F][29]

[E] “Post mortem nihil est, ipsaque mors nihil, mors individua est

noxia corpori, nec patiens animæ. . . . Toti morimur nullaque pars

manet nostri.”

[F] In Rabelais.

_Sect._ 22.--These are niceties that become not those that peruse so

serious a mystery. There are others more generally questioned, and

called to the bar, yet, methinks, of an easy and possible truth.

’Tis ridiculous to put off or down the general flood of Noah, in that

particular inundation of Deucalion.[30] That there was a deluge once

seems not to me so great a miracle as that there is not one always. How

all the kinds of creatures, not only in their own bulks, but with a

competency of food and sustenance, might be preserved in one ark, and

within the extent of three hundred cubits, to a reason that rightly

examines it, will appear very feasible. There is another secret, not

contained in the Scripture, which is more hard to comprehend, and put

the honest Father[31] to the refuge of a miracle; and that is, not only

how the distinct pieces of the world, and divided islands, should be

first planted by men, but inhabited by tigers, panthers, and bears.

How America abounded with beasts of prey, and noxious animals, yet

contained not in it that necessary creature, a horse, is very strange.

By what passage those, not only birds, but dangerous and unwelcome

beasts, come over. How there be creatures there (which are not found in

this triple continent). All which must needs be strange unto us, that

hold but one ark; and that the creatures began their progress from the

mountains of Ararat. They who, to salve this, would make the deluge

particular, proceed upon a principle that I can no way grant; not only

upon the negative of Holy Scriptures, but of mine own reason, whereby

I can make it probable that the world was as well peopled in the time

of Noah as in ours; and fifteen hundred years, to people the world,

as full a time for them as four thousand years since have been to us.

There are other assertions and common tenets drawn from Scripture,

and generally believed as Scripture, whereunto, notwithstanding, I

would never betray the liberty of my reason. ’Tis a paradox to me,

that Methusalem was the longest lived of all the children of Adam;

and no man will be able to prove it; when, from the process of the

text, I can manifest it may be otherwise. That Judas perished by

hanging himself, there is no certainty in Scripture: though, in one

place, it seems to affirm it, and, by a doubtful word, hath given

occasion to translate[32] it; yet, in another place, in a more

punctual description, it makes it improbable, and seems to overthrow

it. That our fathers, after the flood, erected the tower of Babel, to

preserve themselves against a second deluge, is generally opinioned

and believed; yet is there another intention of theirs expressed in

Scripture. Besides, it is improbable, from the circumstance of the

place; that is, a plain in the land of Shinar. These are no points of

faith; and therefore may admit a free dispute. There are yet others,

and those familiarly concluded from the text, wherein (under favour) I

see no consequence. The church of Rome confidently proves the opinion

of tutelary angels, from that answer, when Peter knocked at the door,

“’Tis not he, but his angel;” that is, might some say, his messenger,

or somebody from him; for so the original signifies; and is as likely

to be the doubtful family’s meaning. This exposition I once suggested

to a young divine, that answered upon this point; to which I remember

the Franciscan opponent replied no more, but, that it was a new, and no

authentick interpretation.

_Sect._ 23.--These are but the conclusions and fallible discourses of

man upon the word of God; for such I do believe the Holy Scriptures;

yet, were it of man, I could not choose but say, it was the singularest

and superlative piece that hath been extant since the creation. Were

I a pagan, I should not refrain the lecture of it; and cannot but

commend the judgment of Ptolemy, that thought not his library complete

without it. The Alcoran of the Turks (I speak without prejudice)

is an ill-composed piece, containing in it vain and ridiculous

errors in philosophy, impossibilities, fictions, and vanities beyond

laughter, maintained by evident and open sophisms, the policy of

ignorance, deposition of universities, and banishment of learning.

That hath gotten foot by arms and violence: this, without a blow, hath

disseminated itself through the whole earth. It is not unremarkable,

what Philo first observed, that the law of Moses continued two thousand

years without the least alteration; whereas, we see, the laws of other

commonwealths do alter with occasions: and even those, that pretended

their original from some divinity, to have vanished without trace or

memory. I believe, besides Zoroaster, there were divers others that

writ before Moses; who, notwithstanding, have suffered the common

fate of time. Men’s works have an age, like themselves; and though

they outlive their authors, yet have they a stint and period to their

duration. This only is a work too hard for the teeth of time, and

cannot perish but in the general flames, when all things shall confess

their ashes.

_Sect._ 24.--I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines

of Cicero; others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the

library of Alexandria;[33] for my own part, I think there be too many

in the world; and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the

Vatican, could I, with a few others, recover the perished leaves of

Solomon. I would not omit a copy of Enoch’s pillars,[34] had they many

nearer authors than Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of the fable.

Some men have written more than others have spoken. Pineda[35] quotes

more authors, in one work,[G] than are necessary in a whole world.

Of those three great inventions in Germany,[36] there are two which

are not without their incommodities, and ’tis disputable whether they

exceed not their use and commodities. ’Tis not a melancholy _utinam_

of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general

synod--not to unite the incompatible difference of religion, but,--for

the benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and

solid authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of

rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgments of

scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers.

[G] Pineda, in his “Monarchia Ecclesiastica,” quotes one thousand and

forty authors.

_Sect._ 25.--I cannot but wonder with what exception the Samaritans

could confine their belief to the Pentateuch, or five books of Moses.

I am ashamed at the rabbinical interpretation of the Jews upon the

Old Testament,[37] as much as their defection from the New: and truly

it is beyond wonder, how that contemptible and degenerate issue

of Jacob, once so devoted to ethnick superstition, and so easily

seduced to the idolatry of their neighbours, should now, in such an

obstinate and peremptory belief, adhere unto their own doctrine, expect

impossibilities, and in the face and eye of the church, persist without

the least hope of conversion. This is a vice in them, that were a

virtue in us; for obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good:

and herein I must accuse those of my own religion; for there is not

any of such a fugitive faith, such an unstable belief, as a Christian;

none that do so often transform themselves, not unto several shapes

of Christianity, and of the same species, but unto more unnatural and

contrary forms of Jew and Mohammedan; that, from the name of Saviour,

can condescend to the bare term of prophet: and, from an old belief

that he is come, fall to a new expectation of his coming. It is the

promise of Christ, to make us all one flock: but how and when this

union shall be, is as obscure to me as the last day. Of those four

members of religion we hold a slender proportion.[38] There are, I

confess, some new additions; yet small to those which accrue to our

adversaries; and those only drawn from the revolt of pagans; men but

of negative impieties; and such as deny Christ, but because they never

heard of him. But the religion of the Jew is expressly against the

Christian, and the Mohammedan against both; for the Turk, in the bulk

he now stands, is beyond all hope of conversion: if he fall asunder,

there may be conceived hopes; but not without strong improbabilities.

The Jew is obstinate in all fortunes; the persecution of fifteen

hundred years hath but confirmed them in their error. They have already

endured whatsoever may be inflicted: and have suffered, in a bad

cause, even to the condemnation of their enemies. Persecution is a bad

and indirect way to plant religion. It hath been the unhappy method

of angry devotions, not only to confirm honest religion, but wicked

heresies and extravagant opinions. It was the first stone and basis of

our faith. None can more justly boast of persecutions, and glory in

the number and valour of martyrs. For, to speak properly, those are

true and almost only examples of fortitude. Those that are fetched from

the field, or drawn from the actions of the camp, are not ofttimes so

truly precedents of valour as audacity, and, at the best, attain but

to some bastard piece of fortitude. If we shall strictly examine the

circumstances and requisites which Aristotle requires[39] to true and

perfect valour, we shall find the name only in his master, Alexander,

and as little in that Roman worthy, Julius Cæsar; and if any, in that

easy and active way, have done so nobly as to deserve that name, yet,

in the passive and more terrible piece, these have surpassed, and in

a more heroical way may claim, the honour of that title. ’Tis not in

the power of every honest faith to proceed thus far, or pass to heaven

through the flames. Every one hath it not in that full measure, nor in

so audacious and resolute a temper, as to endure those terrible tests

and trials; who, notwithstanding, in a peaceable way, do truly adore

their Saviour, and have, no doubt, a faith acceptable in the eyes of

God.

_Sect._ 26.--Now, as all that die in the war are not termed soldiers,

so neither can I properly term all those that suffer in matters of

religion, martyrs. The council of Constance condemns John Huss for a

heretick;[40] the stories of his own party style him a martyr. He must

needs offend the divinity of both, that says he was neither the one

nor the other. There are many (questionless) canonized on earth, that

shall never be saints in heaven; and have their names in histories and

martyrologies, who, in the eyes of God, are not so perfect martyrs as

was that wise heathen Socrates, that suffered on a fundamental point

of religion,--the unity of God. I have often pitied the miserable

bishop[41] that suffered in the cause of antipodes; yet cannot choose

but accuse him of as much madness, for exposing his living on such a

trifle, as those of ignorance and folly, that condemned him. I think

my conscience will not give me the lie, if I say there are not many

extant, that, in a noble way, fear the face of death less than myself;

yet, from the moral duty I owe to the commandment of God, and the

natural respect that I tender unto the conservation of my essence

and being, I would not perish upon a ceremony, politick points, or

indifferency: nor is my belief of that untractable temper as, not to

bow at their obstacles, or connive at matters wherein there are not

manifest impieties. The leaven, therefore, and ferment of all, not only

civil, but religious, actions, is wisdom; without which, to commit

ourselves to the flames is homicide, and (I fear) but to pass through

one fire into another.

_Sect._ 27.--That miracles are ceased, I can neither prove nor

absolutely deny, much less define the time and period of their

cessation. That they survived Christ is manifest upon record of

Scripture: that they outlived the apostles also, and were revived at

the conversion of nations, many years after, we cannot deny, if we

shall not question those writers whose testimonies we do not controvert

in points that make for our own opinions: therefore, that may have

some truth in it, that is reported by the Jesuits of their miracles

in the Indies. I could wish it were true, or had any other testimony

than their own pens. They may easily believe those miracles abroad, who

daily conceive a greater at home--the transmutation of those visible

elements into the body and blood of our Saviour;--for the conversion

of water into wine, which he wrought in Cana, or, what the devil would

have had him done in the wilderness, of stones into bread, compared

to this, will scarce deserve the name of a miracle: though, indeed,

to speak properly, there is not one miracle greater than another;

they being the extraordinary effects of the hand of God, to which all

things are of an equal facility; and to create the world as easy as

one single creature. For this is also a miracle; not only to produce

effects against or above nature, but before nature; and to create

nature, as great a miracle as to contradict or transcend her. We do too

narrowly define the power of God, restraining it to our capacities. I

hold that God can do all things: how he should work contradictions,

I do not understand, yet dare not, therefore, deny. I cannot see why

the angel of God should question Esdras to recall the time past, if

it were beyond his own power; or that God should pose mortality in

that which he was not able to perform himself. I will not say that God

cannot, but he will not, perform many things, which we plainly affirm

he cannot. This, I am sure, is the mannerliest proposition; wherein,

notwithstanding, I hold no paradox: for, strictly, his power is the

same with his will; and they both, with all the rest, do make but one

God.

_Sect._ 28.--Therefore, that miracles have been, I do believe; that

they may yet be wrought by the living, I do not deny: but have no

confidence in those which are fathered on the dead. And this hath ever

made me suspect the efficacy of relicks, to examine the bones, question

the habits and appertenances of saints, and even of Christ himself. I

cannot conceive why the cross that Helena[42] found, and whereon Christ

himself died, should have power to restore others unto life. I excuse

not Constantine from a fall off his horse, or a mischief from his

enemies, upon the wearing those nails on his bridle which our Saviour

bore upon the cross in his hands. I compute among _piæ fraudes_, nor

many degrees before consecrated swords and roses, that which Baldwin,

king of Jerusalem, returned the Genoese for their costs and pains in

his wars; to wit, the ashes of John the Baptist. Those that hold, the

sanctity of their souls doth leave behind a tincture and sacred faculty

on their bodies, speak naturally of miracles, and do not salve the

doubt. Now, one reason I tender so little devotion unto relicks is, I

think the slender and doubtful respect which I have always held unto

antiquities. For that, indeed, which I admire, is far before antiquity;

that is, Eternity; and that is, God himself; who, though he be styled

the Ancient of Days, cannot receive the adjunct of antiquity, who was

before the world, and shall be after it, yet is not older than it: for,

in his years there is no climacter:[43] his duration is eternity; and

far more venerable than antiquity.

_Sect._ 29.--But, above all things, I wonder how the curiosity of wiser

heads could pass that great and indisputable miracle, the cessation of

oracles; and in what swoon their reasons lay, to content themselves,

and sit down with such a far-fetched and ridiculous reason as Plutarch

allegeth for it.[44] The Jews, that can believe the supernatural

solstice of the sun in the days of Joshua, have yet the impudence

to deny the eclipse, which every pagan confessed, at his death; but

for this, it is evident beyond all contradiction: the devil himself

confessed it.[H] Certainly it is not a warrantable curiosity, to

examine the verity of Scripture by the concordance of human history;

or seek to confirm the chronicle of Hester or Daniel by the authority

of Megasthenes[45] or Herodotus. I confess, I have had an unhappy

curiosity this way, till I laughed myself out of it with a piece of

Justin, where he delivers that the children of Israel, for being

scabbed, were banished out of Egypt. And truly, since I have understood

the occurrences of the world, and know in what counterfeiting shapes

and deceitful visards times present represent on the stage things past,

I do believe them little more than things to come. Some have been of my

own opinion, and endeavoured to write the history of their own lives;

wherein Moses hath outgone them all, and left not only the story of his

life, but, as some will have it, of his death also.

[H] In his oracle to Augustus.

_Sect._ 30.--It is a riddle to me, how the story of oracles hath not

wormed out of the world that doubtful conceit of spirits and witches;

how so many learned heads should so far forget their metaphysicks, and

destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, as to question the existence

of spirits; for my part, I have ever believed, and do now know, that

there are witches. They that doubt of these do not only deny them,

but spirits: and are obliquely, and upon consequence, a sort, not of

infidels, but atheists. Those that, to confute their incredulity,

desire to see apparitions, shall, questionless, never behold any, nor

have the power to be so much as witches. The devil hath made them

already in a heresy as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them

were but to convert them. Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives

mortality, there is not any that puzzleth me more than the legerdemain

of changelings.[46] I do not credit those transformations of reasonable

creatures into beasts, or that the devil hath a power to transpeciate

a man into a horse, who tempted Christ (as a trial of his divinity) to

convert but stones into bread. I could believe that spirits use with

man the act of carnality; and that in both sexes. I conceive they may

assume, steal, or contrive a body, wherein there may be action enough

to content decrepit lust, or passion to satisfy more active veneries;

yet, in both, without a possibility of generation: and therefore

that opinion, that Antichrist should be born of the tribe of Dan, by

conjunction with the devil, is ridiculous, and a conceit fitter for a

rabbin than a Christian. I hold that the devil doth really possess some

men; the spirit of melancholy others; the spirit of delusion others:

that, as the devil is concealed and denied by some, so God and good

angels are pretended by others, whereof the late defection of the maid

of Germany hath left a pregnant example.[47]

_Sect._ 31.--Again, I believe that all that use sorceries,

incantations, and spells, are not witches, or, as we term them,

magicians. I conceive there is a traditional magick, not learned

immediately from the devil, but at second hand from his scholars, who,

having once the secret betrayed, are able and do empirically practise

without his advice; they both proceeding upon the principles of nature;

where actives, aptly conjoined to disposed passives, will, under any

master, produce their effects. Thus, I think, at first, a great part

of philosophy was witchcraft; which, being afterward derived to one

another, proved but philosophy, and was indeed no more than the honest

effects of nature:--what invented by us, is philosophy; learned from

him, is magick. We do surely owe the discovery of many secrets to the

discovery of good and bad angels. I could never pass that sentence

of Paracelsus without an asterisk, or annotation: “_ascendens[I]

constellatum multa revelat quærentibus magnalia naturæ_, i.e. _opera

Dei_.” I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions

have been the corteous revelations of spirits; for those noble essences

in heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow-nature on earth; and

therefore believe that those many prodigies and ominous prognosticks,

which forerun the ruins of states, princes, and private persons,

are the charitable premonitions of good angels, which more careless

inquiries term but the effects of chance and nature.

[I] Thereby is meant our good angel, appointed us from our nativity.

_Sect._ 32.--Now, besides these particular and divided spirits, there

may be (for aught I know) a universal and common spirit to the whole

world. It was the opinion of Plato, and is yet of the hermetical

philosophers. If there be a common nature, that unites and ties the

scattered and divided individuals into one species, why may there not

be one that unites them all? However, I am sure there is a common

spirit, that plays within us, yet makes no part in us; and that is,

the spirit of God; the fire and scintillation of that noble and mighty

essence, which is the life and radical heat of spirits, and those

essences that know not the virtue of the sun; a fire quite contrary to

the fire of hell. This is that gentle heat that brooded on the waters,

and in six days hatched the world; this is that irradiation that

dispels the mists of hell, the clouds of horror, fear, sorrow, despair;

and preserves the region of the mind in serenity. Whatsoever feels not

the warm gale and gentle ventilation of this spirit (though I feel his

pulse), I dare not say he lives; for truly without this, to me, there

is no heat under the tropick; nor any light, though I dwelt in the body

of the sun.

“As when the labouring sun hath wrought his track

Up to the top of lofty Cancer’s back,

The icy ocean cracks, the frozen pole

Thaws with the heat of the celestial coal;

So when thy absent beams begin t’ impart

Again a solstice on my frozen heart,

My winter’s o’er, my drooping spirits sing,

And every part revives into a spring.

But if thy quickening beams a while decline,

And with their light bless not this orb of mine,

A chilly frost surpriseth every member.

And in the midst of June I feel December.

Oh how this earthly temper doth debase

The noble soul, in this her humble place!

Whose wingy nature ever doth aspire

To reach that place whence first it took its fire.

These flames I feel, which in my heart do dwell,

Are not thy beams, but take their fire from hell.

Oh quench them all! and let thy Light divine

Be as the sun to this poor orb of mine!

And to thy sacred Spirit convert those fires,

Whose earthly fumes choke my devout aspires!”

_Sect._ 33.--Therefore, for spirits, I am so far from denying their

existence, that I could easily believe, that not only whole countries,

but particular persons, have their tutelary and guardian angels. It is

not a new opinion of the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras

and Plato: there is no heresy in it: and if not manifestly defined in

Scripture, yet it is an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the

course and actions of a man’s life; and would serve as an hypothesis

to salve many doubts, whereof common philosophy affordeth no solution.

Now, if you demand my opinion and metaphysicks of their natures, I

confess them very shallow; most of them in a negative way, like that

of God; or in a comparative, between ourselves and fellow-creatures:

for there is in this universe a stair, or manifest scale, of creatures,

rising not disorderly, or in confusion, but with a comely method and

proportion. Between creatures of mere existence and things of life

there is a large disproportion of nature: between plants and animals,

or creatures of sense, a wider difference: between them and man, a

far greater: and if the proportion hold on, between man and angels

there should be yet a greater. We do not comprehend their natures,

who retain the first definition of Porphyry;[48] and distinguish them

from ourselves by immortality: for, before his fall, man also was

immortal: yet must we needs affirm that he had a different essence

from the angels. Having, therefore, no certain knowledge of their

nature, ’tis no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection we

find obscurely in ourselves, in a more complete and absolute way to

ascribe unto them. I believe they have an extemporary knowledge, and,

upon the first motion of their reason, do what we cannot without study

or deliberation: that they know things by their forms, and define, by

specifical difference what we describe by accidents and properties: and

therefore probabilities to us may be demonstrations unto them: that

they have knowledge not only of the specifical, but numerical, forms

of individuals, and understand by what reserved difference each single

hypostatis (besides the relation to its species) becomes its numerical

self: that, as the soul hath a power to move the body it informs, so

there’s a faculty to move any, though inform none: ours upon restraint

of time, place, and distance: but that invisible hand that conveyed

Habakkuk to the lion’s den, or Philip to Azotus, infringeth this rule,

and hath a secret conveyance, wherewith mortality is not acquainted.

If they have that intuitive knowledge, whereby, as in reflection, they

behold the thoughts of one another, I cannot peremptorily deny but

they know a great part of ours. They that, to refute the invocation

of saints, have denied that they have any knowledge of our affairs

below, have proceeded too far, and must pardon my opinion, till I can

thoroughly answer that piece of Scripture, “At the conversion of a

sinner, the angels in heaven rejoice.” I cannot, with those in that

great father,[49] securely interpret the work of the first day, _fiat

lux_, to the creation of angels; though I confess there is not any

creature that hath so near a glimpse of their nature as light in the

sun and elements: we style it a bare accident; but, where it subsists

alone, ’tis a spiritual substance, and may be an angel: in brief,

conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit.

_Sect._ 34.--These are certainly the magisterial and masterpieces of

the Creator; the flower, or, as we may say, the best part of nothing;

actually existing, what we are but in hopes, and probability. We

are only that amphibious piece, between a corporeal and a spiritual

essence; that middle form, that links those two together, and makes

good the method of God and nature, that jumps not from extremes, but

unites the incompatible distances by some middle and participating

natures. That we are the breath and similitude of God, it is

indisputable, and upon record of Holy Scripture: but to call ourselves

a microcosm, or little world, I thought it only a pleasant trope of

rhetorick, till my near judgment and second thoughts told me there was

a real truth therein. For, first we are a rude mass, and in the rank

of creatures which only are, and have a dull kind of being, not yet

privileged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the

life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the

life of spirits: running on, in one mysterious nature, those five kinds

of existencies, which comprehend the creatures, not only of the world,

but of the universe. Thus is man that great and true _amphibium_, whose

nature is disposed to live, not only like other creatures in divers

elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds; for though there be

but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other

invisible; whereof Moses seems to have left description, and of the

other so obscurely, that some parts thereof are yet in controversy.

And truly, for the first chapters of Genesis, I must confess a great

deal of obscurity; though divines have, to the power of human reason,

endeavoured to make all go in a literal meaning, yet those allegorical

interpretations are also probable, and perhaps the mystical method of

Moses, bred up in the hieroglyphical schools of the Egyptians.

_Sect._ 35.--Now for that immaterial world, methinks we need not wander

so far as the first moveable; for, even in this material fabrick, the

spirits walk as freely exempt from the affection of time, place, and

motion, as beyond the extremest circumference. Do but extract from the

corpulency of bodies, or resolve things beyond their first matter, and

you discover the habitation of angels; which if I call the ubiquitary

and omnipresent essence of God, I hope I shall not offend divinity:

for, before the creation of the world, God was really all things.

For the angels he created no new world, or determinate mansion, and

therefore they are everywhere where is his essence, and do live, at a

distance even, in himself. That God made all things for man, is in some

sense true; yet, not so far as to subordinate the creation of those

purer creatures unto ours; though, as ministering spirits, they do,

and are willing to fulfil the will of God in these lower and sublunary

affairs of man. God made all things for himself; and it is impossible

he should make them for any other end than his own glory: it is all

he can receive, and all that is without himself. For, honour being

an external adjunct, and in the honourer rather than in the person

honoured, it was necessary to make a creature, from whom he might

receive this homage: and that is, in the other world, angels, in this,

man; which when we neglect, we forget God, not only to repent that

he hath made the world, but that he hath sworn he would not destroy

it. That there is but one world, is a conclusion of faith; Aristotle

with all his philosophy hath not been able to prove it: and as weakly

that the world was eternal; that dispute much troubled the pen of the

philosophers, but Moses decided that question, and all is salved with

the new term of a creation,--that is, a production of something out of

nothing. And what is that?--whatsoever is opposite to something; or,

more exactly, that which is truly contrary unto God: for he only is;

all others have an existence with dependency, and are something but by

a distinction. And herein is divinity conformant unto philosophy, and

generation not only founded on contrarieties, but also creation. God,

being all things, is contrary unto nothing; out of which were made

all things, and so nothing became something, and omneity[50] informed

nullity into an essence.

_Sect._ 36.--The whole creation is a mystery, and particularly that of

man. At the blast of his mouth were the rest of the creatures made;

and at his bare word they started out of nothing: but in the frame of

man (as the text describes it) he played the sensible operator, and

seemed not so much to create as make him. When he had separated the

materials of other creatures, there consequently resulted a form and

soul; but, having raised the walls of man, he was driven to a second

and harder creation,--of a substance like himself, an incorruptible

and immortal soul. For these two affections we have the philosophy

and opinion of the heathens, the flat affirmative of Plato, and not a

negative from Aristotle. There is another scruple cast in by divinity

concerning its production, much disputed in the German auditories,

and with that indifferency and equality of arguments, as leave the

controversy undetermined. I am not of Paracelsus’s mind, that boldly

delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction; yet cannot but

wonder at the multitude of heads that do deny traduction, having no

other arguments to confirm their belief than that rhetorical sentence

and _antimetathesis_[51] of Augustine, “_creando infunditur, infundendo

creatur_.” Either opinion will consist well enough with religion: yet

I should rather incline to this, did not one objection haunt me, not

wrung from speculations and subtleties, but from common sense and

observation; not pick’d from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst

the weeds and tares of my own brain. And this is a conclusion from the

equivocal and monstrous productions in the copulation of a man with a

beast: for if the soul of man be not transmitted and transfused in the

seed of the parents, why are not those productions merely beasts, but

have also an impression and tincture of reason in as high a measure,

as it can evidence itself in those improper organs? Nor, truly, can

I peremptorily deny that the soul, in this her sublunary estate,

is wholly, and in all acceptions, inorganical: but that, for the

performance of her ordinary actions, is required not only a symmetry

and proper disposition of organs, but a crasis and temper correspondent

to its operations; yet is not this mass of flesh and visible structure

the instrument and proper corpse of the soul, but rather of sense,

and that the hand of reason. In our study of anatomy there is a mass

of mysterious philosophy, and such as reduced the very heathens to

divinity; yet, amongst all those rare discoveries and curious pieces I

find in the fabrick of man, I do not so much content myself, as in that

I find not,--that is, no organ or instrument for the rational soul; for

in the brain, which we term the seat of reason, there is not anything

of moment more than I can discover in the crany of a beast; and this

is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the inorganity of the

soul, at least in that sense we usually so conceive it. Thus we are

men, and we know not how; there is something in us that can be without

us, and will be after us, though it is strange that it hath no history

what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it entered in us.

_Sect._ 37.--Now, for these walls of flesh, wherein the soul doth seem

to be immured before the resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental

composition, and a fabrick that must fall to ashes. “All flesh is

grass,” is not only metaphorically, but literally, true; for all those

creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field, digested into

flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay, further,

we are what we all abhor, _anthropophagi_, and cannibals, devourers

not only of men, but of ourselves; and that not in an allegory but a

positive truth: for all this mass of flesh which we behold, came in

at our mouths: this frame we look upon, hath been upon our trenchers;

in brief, we have devoured ourselves. I cannot believe the wisdom of

Pythagoras did ever positively, and in a literal sense, affirm his

metempsychosis, or impossible transmigration of the souls of men into

beasts. Of all metamorphoses or transmigrations, I believe only one,

that is of Lot’s wife; for that of Nabuchodonosor proceeded not so far.

In all others I conceive there is no further verity than is contained

in their implicit sense and morality. I believe that the whole frame

of a beast doth perish, and is left in the same state after death as

before it was materialled unto life: that the souls of men know neither

contrary nor corruption; that they subsist beyond the body, and outlive

death by the privilege of their proper natures, and without a miracle:

that the souls of the faithful, as they leave earth, take possession of

heaven; that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not

the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting

and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villany; instilling and

stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are not at rest in

their graves, but wander, solicitous of the affairs of the world.

But that those phantasms appear often, and do frequent cemeteries,

charnel-houses, and churches, it is because those are the dormitories

of the dead, where the devil, like an insolent champion, beholds with

pride the spoils and trophies of his victory over Adam.

_Sect._ 38.--This is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that

makes us so often cry, O Adam, _quid fecisti?_ I thank God I have

not those strait ligaments, or narrow obligations to the world, as

to dote on life, or be convulsed and tremble at the name of death.

Not that I am insensible of the dread and horror thereof; or, by

raking into the bowels of the deceased, continual sight of anatomies,

skeletons, or cadaverous relicks, like vespilloes, or gravemakers, I

am become stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality; but

that, marshalling all the horrors, and contemplating the extremities

thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the courage of a

man, much less a well-resolved Christian; and therefore am not angry

at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a part of this

common fate, and, like the best of them, to die; that is, to cease to

breathe, to take a farewell of the elements; to be a kind of nothing

for a moment; to be within one instant of a spirit. When I take a full

view and circle of myself without this reasonable moderator, and equal

piece of justice, death, I do conceive myself the miserablest person

extant. Were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities

of this world should not entreat a moment’s breath from me. Could the

devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive

that very thought. I have so abject a conceit of this common way of

existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this

is to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity. In

expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life; yet,

in my best meditations, do often defy death. I honour any man that

contemns it; nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes

me naturally love a soldier, and honour those tattered and contemptible

regiments, that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a pagan

there may be some motives to be in love with life; but, for a Christian

to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma--that

he is too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come.

_Sect._ 39.--Some divines[52] count Adam thirty years old at his

creation, because they suppose him created in the perfect age and

stature of man: and surely we are all out of the computation of our

age; and every man is some months older than he bethinks him; for

we live, move, have a being, and are subject to the actions of the

elements, and the malice of diseases, in that other world, the truest

microcosm, the womb of our mother; for besides that general and common

existence we are conceived to hold in our chaos, and whilst we sleep

within the bosom of our causes, we enjoy a being and life in three

distinct worlds, wherein we receive most manifest gradations. In that

obscure world, the womb of our mother, our time is short, computed

by the moon; yet longer than the days of many creatures that behold

the sun; ourselves being not yet without life, sense, and reason;[53]

though, for the manifestation of its actions, it awaits the opportunity

of objects, and seems to live there but in its root and soul of

vegetation. Entering afterwards upon the scene of the world, we arise

up and become another creature; performing the reasonable actions

of man, and obscurely manifesting that part of divinity in us, but

not in complement and perfection, till we have once more cast our

secundine, that is, this slough of flesh, and are delivered into the

last world, that is, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper _ubi_

of spirits. The smattering I have of the philosopher’s stone (which is

something more than the perfect exaltation[54] of gold) hath taught me

a great deal of divinity, and instructed my belief, how that immortal

spirit and incorruptible substance of my soul may lie obscure, and

sleep a while within this house of flesh. Those strange and mystical

transmigrations that I have observed in silkworms turned my philosophy

into divinity. There is in these works of nature, which seem to puzzle

reason, something divine; and hath more in it than the eye of a common

spectator doth discover.

_Sect._ 40.--I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or

travel, been able to effront or enharden me; yet I have one part of

modesty, which I have seldom discovered in another, that is (to speak

truly), I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed thereof; ’tis

the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can

so disfigure us, that our nearest friends, wife, and children, stand

afraid, and start at us. The birds and beasts of the field, that

before, in a natural fear, obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance, begin

to prey upon us. This very conceit hath, in a tempest, disposed and

left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of waters, wherein I

had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering eyes, tears of pity,

lectures of mortality, and none had said, “_Quantum mutatus ab illo!_”

Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or can accuse nature

of playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own vicious life for

contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I might not call

myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any.

_Sect._ 41.--Some, upon the courage of a fruitful issue, wherein,

as in the truest chronicle, they seem to outlive themselves, can

with greater patience away with death. This conceit and counterfeit

subsisting in our progenies seems to be a mere fallacy, unworthy the

desire of a man, that can but conceive a thought of the next world;

who, in a nobler ambition, should desire to live in his substance in

heaven, rather than his name and shadow in the earth. And therefore,

at my death, I mean to take a total adieu of the world, not caring for

a monument, history, or epitaph; not so much as the bare memory of my

name to be found anywhere, but in the universal register of God. I am

not yet so cynical, as to approve the testament of Diogenes,[J] nor do

I altogether allow that rodomontado of Lucan;[K]

[J] Who willed his friend not to bury him, but to hang him up with a

staff in his hand, to fright away the crows.

[K] “Pharsalia,” vii. 819.

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

He that unburied lies wants not his hearse;

For unto him a tomb’s the universe.

but commend, in my calmer judgment, those ingenuous intentions that

desire to sleep by the urns of their fathers, and strive to go the

neatest way unto corruption. I do not envy the temper[55] of crows and

daws, nor the numerous and weary days of our fathers before the flood.

If there be any truth in astrology, I may outlive a jubilee;[56] as

yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn,[57] nor hath my pulse

beat thirty years, and yet, excepting one,[58] have seen the ashes of,

and left under ground, all the kings of Europe; have been contemporary

to three emperors, four grand signiors, and as many popes: methinks I

have outlived myself, and begin to be weary of the sun; I have shaken

hands with delight in my warm blood and canicular days; I perceive

I do anticipate the vices of age; the world to me is but a dream or

mock-show, and we all therein but pantaloons and anticks, to my severer

contemplations.

_Sect._ 42.--It is not, I confess, an unlawful prayer to desire to

surpass the days of our Saviour, or wish to outlive that age wherein

he thought fittest to die; yet, if (as divinity affirms) there shall

be no grey hairs in heaven, but all shall rise in the perfect state

of men, we do but outlive those perfections in this world, to be

recalled unto them by a greater miracle in the next, and run on here

but to be retrograde hereafter. Were there any hopes to outlive vice,

or a point to be superannuated from sin, it were worthy our knees to

implore the days of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but incurvate

our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, and (like

diseases) brings on incurable vices; for every day, as we grow weaker

in age, we grow stronger in sin, and the number of our days doth but

make our sins innumerable. The same vice, committed at sixteen, is not

the same, though it agrees in all other circumstances, as at forty; but

swells and doubles from the circumstance of our ages, wherein, besides

the constant and inexcusable habit of transgressing, the maturity of

our judgment cuts off pretence unto excuse or pardon. Every sin, the

oftener it is committed, the more it acquireth in the quality of evil;

as it succeeds in time, so it proceeds in degrees of badness; for as

they proceed they ever multiply, and, like figures in arithmetick,

the last stands for more than all that went before it. And, though I

think no man can live well once, but he that could live twice, yet, for

my own part, I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the

thread of my days; not upon Cicero’s ground,[L] because I have lived

them well, but for fear I should live them worse. I find my growing

judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed affections

and confirmed vitiosity make me daily do worse. I find in my confirmed

age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many then

because I was a child; and, because I commit them still, I am yet an

infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child, before the

days of dotage; and stand in need of Æson’s bath[59] before threescore.

[L] _Ep._ lib. xxiv. ep. 24.

_Sect._ 43.--And truly there goes a deal of providence to produce a

man’s life unto threescore; there is more required than an able temper

for those years: though the radical humour contain in it sufficient oil

for seventy, yet I perceive in some it gives no light past thirty: men

assign not all the causes of long life, that write whole books thereof.

They that found themselves on the radical balsam, or vital sulphur of

the parts, determine not why Abel lived not so long as Adam. There is

therefore a secret gloom or bottom of our days: ’twas his wisdom to

determine them: but his perpetual and waking providence that fulfils

and accomplisheth them; wherein the spirits, ourselves, and all the

creatures of God, in a secret and disputed way, do execute his will.

Let them not therefore complain of immaturity that die about thirty:

they fall but like the whole world, whose solid and well-composed

substance must not expect the duration and period of its constitution:

when all things are completed in it, its age is accomplished; and

the last and general fever may as naturally destroy it before six

thousand,[60] as me before forty. There is therefore some other hand

that twines the thread of life than that of nature: we are not only

ignorant in antipathies and occult qualities; our ends are as obscure

as our beginnings; the line of our days is drawn by night, and the

various effects therein by a pencil that is invisible; wherein, though

we confess our ignorance, I am sure we do not err if we say, it is the

hand of God.

_Sect._ 44.--I am much taken with two verses of Lucan, since I have

been able not only, as we do at school, to construe, but understand:

“_Victurosque Dei celant ut vivere durent,

Felix esse mori._”[M]

[M] _Pharsalia_, iv. 519.

We’re all deluded, vainly searching ways

To make us happy by the length of days;

For cunningly, to make’s protract this breath,

The gods conceal the happiness of death.

There be many excellent strains in that poet, wherewith his stoical

genius hath liberally supplied him: and truly there are singular pieces

in the philosophy of Zeno,[61] and doctrine of the stoics, which I

perceive, delivered in a pulpit, pass for current divinity: yet herein

are they in extremes, that can allow a man to be his own assassin, and

so highly extol the end and suicide of Cato. This is indeed not to

fear death, but yet to be afraid of life. It is a brave act of valour

to contemn death; but, where life is more terrible than death, it is

then the truest valour to dare to live: and herein religion hath taught

us a noble example; for all the valiant acts of Curtius, Scævola, or

Codrus, do not parallel, or match, that one of Job; and sure there is

no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any poniards in death itself,

like those in the way or prologue unto it. “_Emori nolo, sed me esse

mortuum nihil curo_;” I would not die, but care not to be dead. Were I

of Cæsar’s religion,[62] I should be of his desires, and wish rather to

go off at one blow, than to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture

of a disease. Men that look no further than their outsides, think

health an appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions

for being sick; but I, that have examined the parts of man, and know

upon what tender filaments that fabrick hangs, do wonder that we are

not always so; and, considering the thousand doors that lead to death,

do thank my God that we can die but once. ’Tis not only the mischief of

diseases, and the villany of poisons, that make an end of us; we vainly

accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death:--it is in

the power of every hand to destroy us, and we are beholden unto every

one we meet, he doth not kill us. There is therefore but one comfort

left, that though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away

life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death. God would

not exempt himself from that; the misery of immortality in the flesh

he undertook not, that was immortal. Certainly there is no happiness

within this circle of flesh; nor is it in the opticks of these eyes

to behold felicity. The first day of our jubilee is death; the devil

hath therefore failed of his desires; we are happier with death than

we should have been without it: there is no misery but in himself,

where there is no end of misery; and so indeed, in his own sense, the

stoic is in the right.[63] He forgets that he can die, who complains of

misery: we are in the power of no calamity while death is in our own.

_Sect._ 45.--Now, besides this literal and positive kind of death,

there are others whereof divines make mention, and those, I think,

not merely metaphorical, as mortification, dying unto sin and the

world. Therefore, I say, every man hath a double horoscope; one of his

humanity,--his birth, another of his Christianity,--his baptism: and

from this do I compute or calculate my nativity; not reckoning those

_horæ combustæ_,[64] and odd days, or esteeming myself anything, before

I was my Saviour’s and enrolled in the register of Christ. Whosoever

enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear

about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions,

the way to be immortal is to die daily; nor can I think I have the

true theory of death, when I contemplate a skull or behold a skeleton

with those vulgar imaginations it casts upon us. I have therefore

enlarged that common _memento mori_ into a more Christian memorandum,

_memento quatuor novissima_,--those four inevitable points of us all,

death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Neither did the contemplations

of the heathens rest in their graves, without a further thought, of

Rhadamanth[65] or some judicial proceeding after death, though in

another way, and upon suggestion of their natural reasons. I cannot but

marvel from what sibyl or oracle they stole the prophecy of the world’s

destruction by fire, or whence Lucan learned to say--

“_Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra

Misturus----_”[N]

[N] _Pharsalia_, vii. 814.

There yet remains to th’ world one common fire,

Wherein our bones with stars shall make one pyre.

I believe the world grows near its end; yet is neither old nor decayed,

nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles. As the work

of creation was above nature, so its adversary, annihilation; without

which the world hath not its end, but its mutation. Now, what force

should be able to consume it thus far, without the breath of God, which

is the truest consuming flame, my philosophy cannot inform me. Some

believe there went not a minute to the world’s creation, nor shall

there go to its destruction; those six days, so punctually described,

make not to them one moment, but rather seem to manifest the method and

idea of that great work of the intellect of God than the manner how he

proceeded in its operation. I cannot dream that there should be at the

last day any such judicial proceeding, or calling to the bar, as indeed

the Scripture seems to imply, and the literal commentators do conceive:

for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in

a vulgar and illustrative way, and, being written unto man, are

delivered, not as they truly are, but as they may be understood;

wherein, notwithstanding, the different interpretations according to

different capacities may stand firm with our devotion, nor be any way

prejudicial to each single edification.

_Sect._ 46.--Now, to determine the day and year of this inevitable

time, is not only convincible and statute madness, but also manifest

impiety. How shall we interpret Elias’s six thousand years, or imagine

the secret communicated to a Rabbi which God hath denied unto his

angels? It had been an excellent quære to have posed the devil of

Delphos, and must needs have forced him to some strange amphibology.

It hath not only mocked the predictions of sundry astrologers in ages

past, but the prophecies of many melancholy heads in these present;

who, neither understanding reasonably things past nor present, pretend

a knowledge of things to come; heads ordained only to manifest the

incredible effects of melancholy and to fulfil old prophecies,[O]

rather than be the authors of new. “In those days there shall come wars

and rumours of wars” to me seems no prophecy, but a constant truth

in all times verified since it was pronounced. “There shall be signs

in the moon and stars;” how comes he then like a thief in the night,

when he gives an item of his coming? That common sign, drawn from the

revelation of antichrist, is as obscure as any; in our common compute

he hath been come these many years; but, for my own part, to speak

freely, I am half of opinion that antichrist is the philosopher’s stone

in divinity, for the discovery and invention whereof, though there be

prescribed rules, and probable inductions, yet hath hardly any man

attained the perfect discovery thereof. That general opinion, that the

world grows near its end, hath possessed all ages past as nearly as

ours. I am afraid that the souls that now depart cannot escape that

lingering expostulation of the saints under the altar, “_quousque,

Domine?_” how long, O Lord? and groan in the expectation of the great

jubilee.

[O] “In those days there shall come liars and false prophets.”

_Sect._ 47.--This is the day that must make good that great attribute

of God, his justice; that must reconcile those unanswerable doubts

that torment the wisest understandings; and reduce those seeming

inequalities and respective distributions in this world, to an equality

and recompensive justice in the next. This is that one day, that shall

include and comprehend all that went before it; wherein, as in the

last scene, all the actors must enter, to complete and make up the

catastrophe of this great piece. This is the day whose memory hath,

only, power to make us honest in the dark, and to be virtuous without

a witness. “_Ipsa sui pretium virtus sibi_,” that virtue is her own

reward, is but a cold principle, and not able to maintain our variable

resolutions in a constant and settled way of goodness. I have practised

that honest artifice of Seneca,[66] and, in my retired and solitary

imaginations to detain me from the foulness of vice, have fancied to

myself the presence of my dear and worthiest friends, before whom I

should lose my head rather than be vicious; yet herein I found that

there was nought but moral honesty; and this was not to be virtuous

for his sake who must reward us at the last. I have tried if I could

reach that great resolution of his, to be honest without a thought of

heaven or hell; and, indeed I found, upon a natural inclination, and

inbred loyalty unto virtue, that I could serve her without a livery,

yet not in that resolved and venerable way, but that the frailty of my

nature, upon an easy temptation, might be induced to forget her. The

life, therefore, and spirit of all our actions is the resurrection,

and a stable apprehension that our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our

pious endeavours; without this, all religion is a fallacy, and those

impieties of Lucian, Euripides, and Julian, are no blasphemies, but

subtile verities; and atheists have been the only philosophers.

_Sect._ 48.--How shall the dead arise, is no question of my faith; to

believe only possibilities is not faith, but mere philosophy. Many

things are true in divinity, which are neither inducible by reason

nor confirmable by sense; and many things in philosophy confirmable

by sense, yet not inducible by reason. Thus it is impossible, by any

solid or demonstrative reasons, to persuade a man to believe the

conversion of the needle to the north; though this be possible and

true, and easily credible, upon a single experiment unto the sense. I

believe that our estranged and divided ashes shall unite again; that

our separated dust, after so many pilgrimages and transformations into

the parts of minerals, plants, animals, elements, shall, at the voice

of God, return into their primitive shapes, and join again to make up

their primary and predestinate forms. As at the creation there was a

separation of that confused mass into its pieces; so at the destruction

thereof there shall be a separation into its distinct individuals. As,

at the creation of the world, all the distinct species that we behold

lay involved in one mass, till the fruitful voice of God separated this

united multitude into its several species, so, at the last day, when

those corrupted relicks shall be scattered in the wilderness of forms,

and seem to have forgot their proper habits, God, by a powerful voice,

shall command them back into their proper shapes, and call them out

by their single individuals. Then shall appear the fertility of Adam,

and the magick of that sperm that hath dilated into so many millions.

I have often beheld, as a miracle, that artificial resurrection and

revivification of mercury, how being mortified into a thousand shapes,

it assumes again its own, and returns into its numerical self. Let us

speak naturally, and like philosophers. The forms of alterable bodies

in these sensible corruptions perish not; nor, as we imagine, wholly

quit their mansions; but retire and contract themselves into their

secret and unaccessible parts; where they may best protect themselves

from the action of their antagonist. A plant or vegetable consumed

to ashes to a contemplative and school-philosopher seems utterly

destroyed, and the form to have taken his leave for ever; but to a

sensible artist the forms are not perished, but withdrawn into their

incombustible part, where they lie secure from the action of that

devouring element. This is made good by experience, which can from

the ashes of a plant revive the plant, and from its cinders recall

it into its stalk and leaves again.[67] What the art of man can do

in these inferior pieces, what blasphemy is it to affirm the finger

of God cannot do in those more perfect and sensible structures? This

is that mystical philosophy, from whence no true scholar becomes an

atheist, but from the visible effects of nature grows up a real divine,

and beholds not in a dream, as Ezekiel, but in an ocular and visible

object, the types of his resurrection.

_Sect._ 49.--Now, the necessary mansions of our restored selves are

those two contrary and incompatible places we call heaven and hell.

To define them, or strictly to determine what and where these are,

surpasseth my divinity. That elegant apostle, which seemed to have

a glimpse of heaven, hath left but a negative description thereof;

which “neither eye hath seen, nor ear hath heard, nor can enter into

the heart of man:” he was translated out of himself to behold it;

but, being returned into himself, could not express it. Saint John’s

description by emeralds, chrysolites, and precious stones, is too weak

to express the material heaven we behold. Briefly, therefore, where

the soul hath the full measure and complement of happiness; where

the boundless appetite of that spirit remains completely satisfied

that it can neither desire addition nor alteration; that, I think, is

truly heaven: and this can only be in the enjoyment of that essence,

whose infinite goodness is able to terminate the desires of itself,

and the unsatiable wishes of ours. Wherever God will thus manifest

himself, there is heaven, though within the circle of this sensible

world. Thus, the soul of man may be in heaven anywhere, even within

the limits of his own proper body; and when it ceaseth to live in the

body it may remain in its own soul, that is, its Creator. And thus

we may say that Saint Paul, whether in the body or out of the body,

was yet in heaven. To place it in the empyreal, or beyond the tenth

sphere, is to forget the world’s destruction; for when this sensible

world shall be destroyed, all shall then be here as it is now there,

an empyreal heaven, a _quasi_ vacuity; when to ask where heaven is, is

to demand where the presence of God is, or where we have the glory of

that happy vision. Moses, that was bred up in all the learning of the

Egyptians, committed a gross absurdity in philosophy, when with these

eyes of flesh he desired to see God, and petitioned his Maker, that is

truth itself, to a contradiction. Those that imagine heaven and hell

neighbours, and conceive a vicinity between those two extremes, upon

consequence of the parable, where Dives discoursed with Lazarus, in

Abraham’s bosom, do too grossly conceive of those glorified creatures,

whose eyes shall easily out-see the sun, and behold without perspective

the extremest distances: for if there shall be, in our glorified

eyes, the faculty of sight and reception of objects, I could think

the visible species there to be in as unlimitable a way as now the

intellectual. I grant that two bodies placed beyond the tenth sphere,

or in a vacuity, according to Aristotle’s philosophy, could not behold

each other, because there wants a body or medium to hand and transport

the visible rays of the object unto the sense; but when there shall

be a general defect of either medium to convey, or light to prepare

and dispose that medium, and yet a perfect vision, we must suspend the

rules of our philosophy, and make all good by a more absolute piece of

opticks.

_Sect._ 50.--I cannot tell how to say that fire is the essence of

hell; I know not what to make of purgatory, or conceive a flame that

can either prey upon, or purify the substance of a soul. Those flames

of sulphur, mentioned in the scriptures, I take not to be understood

of this present hell, but of that to come, where fire shall make up

the complement of our tortures, and have a body or subject whereon to

manifest its tyranny. Some who have had the honour to be textuary in

divinity are of opinion it shall be the same specifical fire with ours.

This is hard to conceive, yet can I make good how even that may prey

upon our bodies, and yet not consume us: for in this material world,

there are bodies that persist invincible in the powerfulest flames; and

though, by the action of fire, they fall into ignition and liquation,

yet will they never suffer a destruction. I would gladly know how

Moses, with an actual fire, calcined or burnt the golden calf into

powder: for that mystical metal of gold, whose solary and celestial

nature I admire, exposed unto the violence of fire, grows only hot,

and liquefies, but consumeth not; so when the consumable and volatile

pieces of our bodies shall be refined into a more impregnable and fixed

temper, like gold, though they suffer from the action of flames, they

shall never perish, but lie immortal in the arms of fire. And surely,

if this flame must suffer only by the action of this element, there

will many bodies escape; and not only heaven, but earth will not be

at an end, but rather a beginning. For at present it is not earth,

but a composition of fire, water, earth, and air; but at that time,

spoiled of these ingredients, it shall appear in a substance more like

itself, its ashes. Philosophers that opinioned the world’s destruction

by fire, did never dream of annihilation, which is beyond the power of

sublunary causes; for the last and proper action of that element is but

vitrification, or a reduction of a body into glass; and therefore some

of our chymicks facetiously affirm, that, at the last fire, all shall

be crystalized and reverberated into glass, which is the utmost action

of that element. Nor need we fear this term, annihilation, or wonder

that God will destroy the works of his creation: for man subsisting,

who is, and will then truly appear, a microcosm, the world cannot be

said to be destroyed. For the eyes of God, and perhaps also of our

glorified selves, shall as really behold and contemplate the world, in

its epitome or contracted essence, as now it doth at large and in its

dilated substance. In the seed of a plant, to the eyes of God, and to

the understanding of man, there exists, though in an invisible way,

the perfect leaves, flowers, and fruit thereof; for things that are in

_posse_ to the sense, are actually existent to the understanding. Thus

God beholds all things, who contemplates as fully his works in their

epitome as in their full volume, and beheld as amply the whole world,

in that little compendium of the sixth day, as in the scattered and

dilated pieces of those five before.

_Sect._ 51.--Men commonly set forth the torments of hell by fire, and

the extremity of corporal afflictions, and describe hell in the same

method that Mahomet doth heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and drums

in popular ears: but if this be the terrible piece thereof, it is not

worthy to stand in diameter with heaven, whose happiness consists in

that part that is best able to comprehend it, that immortal essence,

that translated divinity and colony of God, the soul. Surely, though

we place hell under earth, the devil’s walk and purlieu is about it.

Men speak too popularly who place it in those flaming mountains, which

to grosser apprehensions represent hell. The heart of man is the place

the devils dwell in; I feel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer

keeps his court in my breast; Legion is revived in me. There are as

many hells as Anaxagoras[68] conceited worlds. There was more than one

hell in Magdalene, when there were seven devils; for every devil is an

hell unto himself,[69] he holds enough of torture in his own _ubi_;

and needs not the misery of circumference to afflict him: and thus,

a distracted conscience here is a shadow or introduction unto hell

hereafter. Who can but pity the merciful intention of those hands that

do destroy themselves? The devil, were it in his power, would do the

like; which being impossible, his miseries are endless, and he suffers

most in that attribute wherein he is impassible, his immortality.

_Sect._ 52.--I thank God, and with joy I mention it, I was never afraid

of hell, nor ever grew pale at the description of that place. I have so

fixed my contemplations on heaven, that I have almost forgot the idea

of hell; and am afraid rather to lose the joys of the one, than endure

the misery of the other: to be deprived of them is a perfect hell, and

needs methinks no addition to complete our afflictions. That terrible

term hath never detained me from sin, nor do I owe any good action to

the name thereof. I fear God, yet am not afraid of him; his mercies

make me ashamed of my sins, before his judgments afraid thereof: these

are the forced and secondary method of his wisdom, which he useth but

as the last remedy, and upon provocation;--a course rather to deter

the wicked, than incite the virtuous to his worship. I can hardly

think there was ever any scared into heaven: they go the fairest way

to heaven that would serve God without a hell: other mercenaries,

that crouch unto him in fear of hell, though they term themselves the

servants, are indeed but the slaves, of the Almighty.

_Sect._ 53.--And to be true, and speak my soul, when I survey the

occurrences of my life, and call into account the finger of God, I can

perceive nothing but an abyss and mass of mercies, either in general to

mankind, or in particular to myself. And, whether out of the prejudice

of my affection, or an inverting and partial conceit of his mercies, I

know not,--but those which others term crosses, afflictions, judgments,

misfortunes, to me, who inquire further into them than their visible

effects, they both appear, and in event have ever proved, the secret

and dissembled favours of his affection. It is a singular piece of

wisdom to apprehend truly, and without passion, the works of God, and

so well to distinguish his justice from his mercy as not to miscall

those noble attributes; yet it is likewise an honest piece of logick so

to dispute and argue the proceedings of God as to distinguish even his

judgments into mercies. For God is merciful unto all, because better

to the worst than the best deserve; and to say he punisheth none in

this world, though it be a paradox, is no absurdity. To one that hath

committed murder, if the judge should only ordain a fine, it were a

madness to call this a punishment, and to repine at the sentence,

rather than admire the clemency of the judge. Thus, our offences being

mortal, and deserving not only death but damnation, if the goodness of

God be content to traverse and pass them over with a loss, misfortune,

or disease; what frenzy were it to term this a punishment, rather than

an extremity of mercy, and to groan under the rod of his judgments

rather than admire the sceptre of his mercies! Therefore to adore,

honour, and admire him, is a debt of gratitude due from the obligation

of our nature, states, and conditions: and with these thoughts he that

knows them best will not deny that I adore him. That I obtain heaven,

and the bliss thereof, is accidental, and not the intended work of my

devotion; it being a felicity I can neither think to deserve nor scarce

in modesty to expect. For these two ends of us all, either as rewards

or punishments, are mercifully ordained and disproportionably disposed

unto our actions; the one being so far beyond our deserts, the other so

infinitely below our demerits.

_Sect._ 54.--There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ;

that is, say some, since his nativity, and, as divinity affirmeth,

before also; which makes me much apprehend the end of those honest

worthies and philosophers which died before his incarnation. It is hard

to place those souls in hell, whose worthy lives do teach us virtue on

earth. Methinks, among those many subdivisions of hell, there might

have been one limbo left for these. What a strange vision will it be

to see their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their

imagined and fancied furies into real devils! How strange to them will

sound the history of Adam, when they shall suffer for him they never

heard of! When they who derive their genealogy from the gods, shall

know they are the unhappy issue of sinful man! It is an insolent part

of reason, to controvert the works of God, or question the justice of

his proceedings. Could humility teach others, as it hath instructed me,

to contemplate the infinite and incomprehensible distance betwixt the

Creator and the creature; or did we seriously perpend that one simile

of St Paul, “shall the vessel say to the potter, why hast thou made me

thus?” it would prevent these arrogant disputes of reason: nor would

we argue the definitive sentence of God, either to heaven or hell. Men

that live according to the right rule and law of reason, live but in

their own kind, as beasts do in theirs; who justly obey the prescript

of their natures, and therefore cannot reasonably demand a reward of

their actions, as only obeying the natural dictates of their reason.

It will, therefore, and must, at last appear, that all salvation is

through Christ; which verity, I fear, these great examples of virtue

must confirm, and make it good how the perfectest actions of earth have

no title or claim unto heaven.

_Sect._ 55.--Nor truly do I think the lives of these, or of any other,

were ever correspondent, or in all points conformable, unto their

doctrines. It is evident that Aristotle transgressed the rule of his

own ethicks;[70] the stoicks, that condemn passion, and command a man

to laugh in Phalaris’s[71] bull, could not endure without a groan a

fit of the stone or colick. The scepticks, that affirmed they knew

nothing,[72] even in that opinion confute themselves, and thought

they knew more than all the world beside. Diogenes I hold to be the

most vainglorious man of his time, and more ambitious in refusing all

honours, than Alexander in rejecting none. Vice and the devil put a

fallacy upon our reasons; and, provoking us too hastily to run from

it, entangle and profound us deeper in it. The duke of Venice, that

weds himself unto the sea, by a ring of gold,[73] I will not accuse of

prodigality, because it is a solemnity of good use and consequence in

the state: but the philosopher, that threw his money into the sea to

avoid avarice, was a notorious prodigal.[74] There is no road or ready

way to virtue; it is not an easy point of art to disentangle ourselves

from this riddle or web of sin. To perfect virtue, as to religion,

there is required a _panoplia_, or complete armour; that whilst we

lie at close ward against one vice, we lie not open to the veney[75]

of another. And indeed wiser discretions, that have the thread of

reason to conduct them, offend without a pardon; whereas under heads

may stumble without dishonour. There go so many circumstances to

piece up one good action, that it is a lesson to be good, and we are

forced to be virtuous by the book. Again, the practice of men holds

not an equal pace, yea and often runs counter to their theory; we

naturally know what is good, but naturally pursue what is evil: the

rhetorick wherewith I persuade another cannot persuade myself. There

is a depraved appetite in us, that will with patience hear the learned

instructions of reason, but yet perform no further than agrees to

its own irregular humour. In brief, we all are monsters; that is, a

composition of man and beast: wherein we must endeavour to be as the

poets fancy that wise man, Chiron; that is, to have the region of

man above that of beast, and sense to sit but at the feet of reason.

Lastly, I do desire with God that all, but yet affirm with men that

few, shall know salvation,--that the bridge is narrow, the passage

strait unto life: yet those who do confine the church of God either to

particular nations, churches, or families, have made it far narrower

than our Saviour ever meant it.

_Sect._ 56.--The vulgarity of those judgments that wrap the church of

God in Strabo’s cloak,[76] and restrain it unto Europe, seem to me as

bad geographers as Alexander, who thought he had conquered all the

world, when he had not subdued the half of any part thereof. For we

cannot deny the church of God both in Asia and Africa, if we do not

forget the peregrinations of the apostles, the deaths of the martyrs,

the sessions of many and (even in our reformed judgment) lawful

councils, held in those parts in the minority and nonage of ours.

Nor must a few differences, more remarkable in the eyes of man than,

perhaps, in the judgment of God, excommunicate from heaven one another;

much less those Christians who are in a manner all martyrs, maintaining

their faith in the noble way of persecution, and serving God in the

fire, whereas we honour him in the sunshine.

’Tis true, we all hold there is a number of elect, and many to be

saved; yet, take our opinions together, and from the confusion thereof,

there will be no such thing as salvation, nor shall any one be saved:

for, first, the church of Rome condemneth us; we likewise them; the

sub-reformists and sectaries sentence the doctrine of our church as

damnable; the atomist, or familist,[77] reprobates all these; and

all these, them again. Thus, whilst the mercies of God do promise us

heaven, our conceits and opinions exclude us from that place. There

must be therefore more than one St Peter; particular churches and

sects usurp the gates of heaven, and turn the key against each other;

and thus we go to heaven against each other’s wills, conceits, and

opinions, and, with as much uncharity as ignorance, do err, I fear, in

points not only of our own, but one another’s salvation.

_Sect._ 57.--I believe many are saved who to man seem reprobated,

and many are reprobated who in the opinion and sentence of man stand

elected. There will appear, at the last day, strange and unexpected

examples, both of his justice and his mercy; and, therefore, to define

either is folly in man, and insolency even in the devils. These acute

and subtile spirits, in all their sagacity, can hardly divine who shall

be saved; which if they could prognostick, their labour were at an

end, nor need they compass the earth, seeking whom they may devour.

Those who, upon a rigid application of the law, sentence Solomon unto

damnation,[78] condemn not only him, but themselves, and the whole

world; for by the letter and written word of God, we are without

exception in the state of death: but there is a prerogative of God, and

an arbitrary pleasure above the letter of his own law, by which alone

we can pretend unto salvation, and through which Solomon might be as

easily saved as those who condemn him.

_Sect._ 58.--The number of those who pretend unto salvation, and those

infinite swarms who think to pass through the eye of this needle, have

much amazed me. That name and compellation of “little flock” doth not

comfort, but deject, my devotion; especially when I reflect upon mine

own unworthiness, wherein, according to my humble apprehensions, I am

below them all. I believe there shall never be an anarchy in heaven;

but, as there are hierarchies amongst the angels, so shall there be

degrees of priority amongst the saints. Yet is it, I protest, beyond

my ambition to aspire unto the first ranks; my desires only are, and I

shall be happy therein, to be but the last man, and bring up the rear

in heaven.

_Sect._ 59.--Again, I am confident, and fully persuaded, yet dare not

take my oath, of my salvation. I am, as it were, sure, and do believe

without all doubt, that there is such a city as Constantinople; yet,

for me to take my oath thereon were a kind of perjury, because I hold

no infallible warrant from my own sense to confirm me in the certainty

thereof. And truly, though many pretend to an absolute certainty of

their salvation, yet when an humble soul shall contemplate our own

unworthiness, she shall meet with many doubts, and suddenly find how

little we stand in need of the precept of St Paul, “work out your

salvation _with fear and trembling_.” That which is the cause of my

election, I hold to be the cause of my salvation, which was the mercy

and _beneplacit_ of God, before I was, or the foundation of the world.

“Before Abraham was, I am,” is the saying of Christ, yet is it true in

some sense if I say it of myself; for I was not only before myself but

Adam, that is, in the idea of God, and the decree of that synod held

from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before the

creation, and at an end before it had a beginning. And thus was I dead

before I was alive; though my grave be England, my dying place was

Paradise; and Eve miscarried of me, before she conceived of Cain.

_Sect._ 60.--Insolent zeals, that do decry good works and rely only

upon faith, take not away merit: for, depending upon the efficacy

of their faith, they enforce the condition of God, and in a more

sophistical way do seem to challenge heaven. It was decreed by God that

only those that lapped in the water like dogs, should have the honour

to destroy the Midianites; yet could none of those justly challenge, or

imagine he deserved, that honour thereupon. I do not deny but that true

faith, and such as God requires, is not only a mark or token, but also

a means, of our salvation; but, where to find this, is as obscure to me

as my last end. And if our Saviour could object, unto his own disciples

and favourites, a faith that, to the quantity of a grain of mustard

seed, is able to remove mountains; surely that which we boast of is not

anything, or, at the most, but a remove from nothing.

This is the tenour of my belief; wherein, though there be many things

singular, and to the humour of my irregular self, yet, if they square

not with maturer judgments, I disclaim them, and do no further favour

them than the learned and best judgments shall authorize them.

PART THE SECOND.

_Sect._ 1.--Now, for that other virtue of charity, without which

faith is a mere notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavoured

to nourish the merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed

from my parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of

charity. And, if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and

naturally framed to such a piece of virtue,--for I am of a constitution

so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all things; I have

no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour, air, anything.

I wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and

toadstools, nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but, being

amongst them, make them my common viands; and I find they agree with

my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a

church-yard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of

a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander; at the sight of a toad

or viper, I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them.

I feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can discover in

others: those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold

with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but, where I

find their actions in balance with my countrymen’s, I honour, love, and

embrace them, in the same degree. I was born in the eighth climate, but

seem to be framed and constellated unto all. I am no plant that will

not prosper out of a garden. All places, all airs, make unto me one

country; I am in England everywhere, and under any meridian. I have

been shipwrecked, yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study,

play, or sleep, in a tempest. In brief I am averse from nothing: my

conscience would give me the lie if I should say I absolutely detest

or hate any essence, but the devil; or so at least abhor anything, but

that we might come to composition. If there be any among those common

objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy

of reason, virtue, and religion, the multitude; that numerous piece

of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable

creatures of God, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and

a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra. It is no breach of charity

to call these fools; it is the style all holy writers have afforded

them, set down by Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point of our

faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do I only include

the base and minor sort of people: there is a rabble even amongst the

gentry; a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel

as these; men in the same level with mechanicks, though their fortunes

do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound for their

follies. But, as in casting account three or four men together come

short in account of one man placed by himself below them, so neither

are a troop of these ignorant Doradoes[79] of that true esteem and

value as many a forlorn person, whose condition doth place him below

their feet. Let us speak like politicians; there is a nobility without

heraldry, a natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with another,

another filed before him, according to the quality of his desert, and

pre-eminence of his good parts. Though the corruption of these times,

and the bias of present practice, wheel another way, thus it was in

the first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the integrity and

cradle of well ordered polities: till corruption getteth ground;--ruder

desires labouring after that which wiser considerations contemn;--every

one having a liberty to amass and heap up riches, and they a licence or

faculty to do or purchase anything.

_Sect._ 2.--This general and indifferent temper of mine doth more

nearly dispose me to this noble virtue. It is a happiness to be born

and framed unto virtue, and to grow up from the seeds of nature,

rather than the inoculations and forced grafts of education: yet,

if we are directed only by our particular natures, and regulate our

inclinations by no higher rule than that of our reasons, we are but

moralists; divinity will still call us heathens. Therefore this great

work of charity must have other motives, ends, and impulsions. I

give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and

accomplish the will and command of my God; I draw not my purse for his

sake that demands it, but his that enjoined it; I relieve no man upon

the rhetorick of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating

disposition; for this is still but moral charity, and an act that

oweth more to passion than reason. He that relieves another upon the

bare suggestion and bowels of pity doth not this so much for his sake

as for his own; and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.

It is as erroneous a conceit to redress other men’s misfortunes upon

the common considerations of merciful natures, that it may be one day

our own case; for this is a sinister and politick kind of charity,

whereby we seem to bespeak the pities of men in the like occasions.

And truly I have observed that those professed eleemosynaries, though

in a crowd or multitude, do yet direct and place their petitions on a

few and selected persons; there is surely a physiognomy, which those

experienced and master mendicants observe, whereby they instantly

discover a merciful aspect, and will single out a face, wherein they

spy the signature and marks of mercy. For there are mystically in

our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our

souls, wherein he that can read A, B, C, may read our natures. I hold,

moreover, that there is a phytognomy, or physiognomy, not only of men,

but of plants and vegetables; and is every one of them some outward

figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward forms. The finger

of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical, or

composed of letters, but of their several forms, constitutions, parts,

and operations, which, aptly joined together, do make one word that

doth express their natures. By these letters God calls the stars by

their names; and by this alphabet Adam assigned to every creature a

name peculiar to its nature. Now, there are, besides these characters

in our faces, certain mystical figures in our hands, which I dare not

call mere dashes, strokes _à la volee_ or at random, because delineated

by a pencil that never works in vain; and hereof I take more particular

notice, because I carry that in mine own hand which I could never read

of nor discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in his acute and

singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of chiromancy:[80]

yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer addicted to those abstruse

and mystical sciences, had a knowledge therein: to which those vagabond

and counterfeit Egyptians did after[81] pretend, and perhaps retained

a few corrupted principles, which sometimes might verify their

prognosticks.

It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of

faces, there should be none alike: now, contrary, I wonder as much

how there should be any. He that shall consider how many thousand

several words have been carelessly and without study composed out of

twenty-four letters; withal, how many hundred lines there are to be

drawn in the fabrick of one man; shall easily find that this variety

is necessary: and it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to

make one portrait like another. Let a painter carelessly limn out a

million of faces, and you shall find them all different; yes, let him

have his copy before him, yet, after all his art, there will remain

a sensible distinction: for the pattern or example of everything is

the perfectest in that kind, whereof we still come short, though we

transcend or go beyond it; because herein it is wide, and agrees not

in all points unto its copy. Nor doth the similitude of creatures

disparage the variety of nature, nor any way confound the works of God.

For even in things alike there is diversity; and those that do seem to

accord do manifestly disagree. And thus is man like God; for, in the

same things that we resemble him we are utterly different from him.

There was never anything so like another as in all points to concur;

there will ever some reserved difference slip in, to prevent the

identity; without which two several things would not be alike, but the

same, which is impossible.

_Sect._ 3.--But, to return from philosophy to charity, I hold not so

narrow a conceit of this virtue as to conceive that to give alms is

only to be charitable, or think a piece of liberality can comprehend

the total of charity. Divinity hath wisely divided the act thereof

into many branches, and hath taught us, in this narrow way, many paths

unto goodness; as many ways as we may do good, so many ways we may be

charitable. There are infirmities not only of body, but of soul and

fortunes, which do require the merciful hand of our abilities. I cannot

contemn a man for ignorance, but behold him with as much pity as I do

Lazarus. It is no greater charity to clothe his body than apparel the

nakedness of his soul. It is an honourable object to see the reasons

of other men wear our liveries, and their borrowed understandings do

homage to the bounty of ours. It is the cheapest way of beneficence,

and, like the natural charity of the sun, illuminates another without

obscuring itself. To be reserved and caitiff[82] in this part of

goodness is the sordidest piece of covetousness, and more contemptible

than the pecuniary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar) I

am obliged by the duty of my condition. I make not therefore my head

a grave, but a treasure of knowledge. I intend no monopoly, but a

community in learning. I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs

that study not for themselves. I envy no man that knows more than

myself, but pity them that know less. I instruct no man as an exercise

of my knowledge, or with an intent rather to nourish and keep it alive

in mine own head than beget and propagate it in his. And, in the midst

of all my endeavours, there is but one thought that dejects me, that

my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can be legacied among

my honoured friends. I cannot fall out or contemn a man for an error,

or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide an affection;

for controversies, disputes, and argumentations, both in philosophy

and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do

not infringe the laws of charity. In all disputes, so much as there

is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then

reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the

question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are

never determined; for, though they be amply proposed, they are scarce

at all handled; they do so swell with unnecessary digressions; and the

parenthesis on the party is often as large as the main discourse upon

the subject. The foundations of religion are already established, and

the principles of salvation subscribed unto by all. There remain not

many controversies worthy a passion, and yet never any dispute without,

not only in divinity but inferior arts. What a βατραχομυομαχία and

hot skirmish is betwixt S. and T. in Lucian![83] How do grammarians

hack and slash for the genitive case in Jupiter![84] How do they

break their own pates, to salve that of Priscian![85] “_Si foret in

terris, rideret Democritus._” Yes, even amongst wiser militants, how

many wounds have been given and credits slain, for the poor victory

of an opinion, or beggarly conquest of a distinction! Scholars are

men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than

Actius’s razor;[86] their pens carry farther, and give a louder report

than thunder. I had rather stand the shock of a basilisko[87] than

in the fury of a merciless pen. It is not mere zeal to learning, or

devotion to the muses, that wiser princes patron the arts, and carry

an indulgent aspect unto scholars; but a desire to have their names

eternized by the memory of their writings, and a fear of the revengeful

pen of succeeding ages: for these are the men that, when they have

played their parts, and had their _exits_, must step out and give the

moral of their scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of their

virtues and vices. And surely there goes a great deal of conscience to

the compiling of an history: there is no reproach to the scandal of a

story; it is such an authentick kind of falsehood, that with authority

belies our good names to all nations and posterity.

_Sect._ 4.--There is another offence unto charity, which no author hath

ever written of, and few take notice of, and that’s the reproach, not

of whole professions, mysteries, and conditions, but of whole nations,

wherein by opprobrious epithets we miscall each other, and, by an

uncharitable logick, from a disposition in a few, conclude a habit in

all.

Le mutin Anglois, et le bravache Escossois

Le bougre Italien, et le fol Francois;

Le poltron Romain, le larron de Gascogne,

L’Espagnol superbe, et l’Alleman yvrogne.

St Paul, that calls the Cretians liars, doth it but indirectly, and

upon quotation of their own poet.[88] It is as bloody a thought in one

way as Nero’s was in another.[89] For by a word we wound a thousand,

and at one blow assassin the honour of a nation. It is as complete a

piece of madness to miscall and rave against the times; or think to

recall men to reason by a fit of passion. Democritus, that thought to

laugh the times into goodness, seems to me as deeply hypochondriack

as Heraclitus, that bewailed them. It moves not my spleen to behold

the multitude in their proper humours; that is, in their fits of

folly and madness, as well understanding that wisdom is not profaned

unto the world; and it is the privilege of a few to be virtuous. They

that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue; for contraries,

though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another. Thus

virtue (abolish vice) is an idea. Again, the community of sin doth

not disparage goodness; for, when vice gains upon the major part,

virtue, in whom it remains, becomes more excellent, and, being lost

in some, multiplies its goodness in others, which remain untouched,

and persist entire in the general inundation. I can therefore behold

vice without a satire, content only with an admonition, or instructive

reprehension; for noble natures, and such as are capable of goodness,

are railed into vice, that might as easily be admonished into virtue;

and we should be all so far the orators of goodness as to protect her

from the power of vice, and maintain the cause of injured truth. No man

can justly censure or condemn another; because, indeed, no man truly

knows another. This I perceive in myself; for I am in the dark to all

the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud. Those that

know me but superficially think less of me than I do of myself; those

of my near acquaintance think more; God who truly knows me, knows

that I am nothing: for he only beholds me, and all the world, who

looks not on us through a derived ray, or a trajection of a sensible

species, but beholds the substance without the help of accidents, and

the forms of things, as we their operations. Further, no man can judge

another, because no man knows himself; for we censure others but as

they disagree from that humour which we fancy laudable in ourselves,

and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and

consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that we all condemn,

self-love. ’Tis the general complaint of these times, and perhaps of

those past, that charity grows cold; which I perceive most verified

in those which do most manifest the fires and flames of zeal; for it

is a virtue that best agrees with coldest natures, and such as are

complexioned for humility. But how shall we expect charity towards

others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? “Charity begins at

home,” is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy,

and as it were his own executioner. “_Non occides_,” is the commandment

of God, yet scarce observed by any man; for I perceive every man is his

own Atropos, and lends a hand to cut the thread of his own days. Cain

was not therefore the first murderer, but Adam, who brought in death;

whereof he beheld the practice and example in his own son Abel; and

saw that verified in the experience of another which faith could not

persuade him in the theory of himself.

_Sect._ 5.--There is, I think, no man that apprehends his own miseries

less than myself; and no man that so nearly apprehends another’s. I

could lose an arm without a tear, and with few groans, methinks, be

quartered into pieces; yet can I weep most seriously at a play, and

receive with a true passion the counterfeit griefs of those known and

professed impostures. It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto

any afflicted parties misery, or endeavour to multiply in any man a

passion whose single nature is already above his patience. This was the

greatest affliction of Job, and those oblique expostulations of his

friends a deeper injury than the down-right blows of the devil. It is

not the tears of our own eyes only, but of our friends also, that do

exhaust the current of our sorrows; which, falling into many streams,

runs more peaceably, and is contented with a narrower channel. It is

an act within the power of charity, to translate a passion out of one

breast into another, and to divide a sorrow almost out of itself;

for an affliction, like a dimension, may be so divided as, if not

indivisible, at least to become insensible. Now with my friend I desire

not to share or participate, but to engross, his sorrows; that, by

making them mine own, I may more easily discuss them: for in mine own

reason, and within myself, I can command that which I cannot entreat

without myself, and within the circle of another. I have often thought

those noble pairs and examples of friendship, not so truly histories

of what had been, as fictions of what should be; but I now perceive

nothing in them but possibilities, nor anything in the heroick examples

of Damon and Pythias, Achilles and Patroclus, which, methinks, upon

some grounds, I could not perform within the narrow compass of myself.

That a man should lay down his life for his friend seems strange to

vulgar affections and such as confine themselves within that worldly

principle, “Charity begins at home.” For mine own part, I could never

remember the relations that I held unto myself, nor the respect that

I owe unto my own nature, in the cause of God, my country, and my

friends. Next to these three, I do embrace myself. I confess I do not

observe that order that the schools ordain our affections,--to love

our parents, wives, children, and then our friends; for, excepting

the injunctions of religion, I do not find in myself such a necessary

and indissoluble sympathy to all those of my blood. I hope I do not

break the fifth commandment, if I conceive I may love my friend before

the nearest of my blood, even those to whom I owe the principles of

life. I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved

my friend, as I do virtue, my soul, my God. From hence, methinks, I do

conceive how God loves man; what happiness there is in the love of God.

Omitting all other, there are three most mystical unions; two natures

in one person; three persons in one nature; one soul in two bodies. For

though, indeed, they be really divided, yet are they so united, as they

seem but one, and make rather a duality than two distinct souls.

_Sect._ 6.--There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of

enigmas, mysteries, and riddles; wherein two so become one as they

both become two: I love my friend before myself, and yet, methinks, I

do not love him enough. Some few months hence, my multiplied affection

will make me believe I have not loved him at all. When I am from him,

I am dead till I be with him. United souls are not satisfied with

embraces, but desire to be truly each other; which being impossible,

these desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility

of satisfaction. Another misery there is in affection; that whom we

truly love like our own selves, we forget their looks, nor can our

memory retain the idea of their faces: and it is no wonder, for they

are ourselves, and our affection makes their looks our own. This

noble affection falls not on vulgar and common constitutions; but on

such as are marked for virtue. He that can love his friend with this

noble ardour will in a competent degree effect all. Now, if we can

bring our affections to look beyond the body, and cast an eye upon

the soul, we have found out the true object, not only of friendship,

but charity: and the greatest happiness that we can bequeath the soul

is that wherein we all do place our last felicity, salvation; which,

though it be not in our power to bestow, it is in our charity and pious

invocations to desire, if not procure and further. I cannot contentedly

frame a prayer for myself in particular, without a catalogue for my

friends; nor request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth

not desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I never hear the toll

of a passing bell, though in my mirth, without my prayers and best

wishes for the departing spirit. I cannot go to cure the body of my

patient, but I forget my profession, and call unto God for his soul.

I cannot see one say his prayers, but, instead of imitating him, I

fall into supplication for him, who perhaps is no more to me than a

common nature: and if God hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications,

there are surely many happy that never saw me, and enjoy the blessing

of mine unknown devotions. To pray for enemies, that is, for their

salvation, is no harsh precept, but the practice of our daily and

ordinary devotions. I cannot believe the story of the Italian;[90] our

bad wishes and uncharitable desires proceed no further than this life;

it is the devil, and the uncharitable votes of hell, that desire our

misery in the world to come.

_Sect._ 7.--“To do no injury nor take none” was a principle which, to

my former years and impatient affections, seemed to contain enough of

morality, but my more settled years, and Christian constitution, have

fallen upon severer resolutions. I can hold there is no such things

as injury; that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and

no such revenge as the contempt of an injury: that to hate another

is to malign himself; that the truest way to love another is to

despise ourselves. I were unjust unto mine own conscience if I should

say I am at variance with anything like myself. I find there are

many pieces in this one fabrick of man; this frame is raised upon

a mass of antipathies: I am one methinks but as the world, wherein

notwithstanding there are a swarm of distinct essences, and in them

another world of contrarieties; we carry private and domestick enemies

within, public and more hostile adversaries without. The devil, that

did but buffet St Paul, plays methinks at sharp[91] with me. Let me

be nothing, if within the compass of myself, I do not find the battle

of Lepanto,[92] passion against reason, reason against faith, faith

against the devil, and my conscience against all. There is another

man within me that’s angry with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards

me. I have no conscience of marble, to resist the hammer of more

heavy offences: nor yet so soft and waxen, as to take the impression

of each single peccadillo or scape of infirmity. I am of a strange

belief, that it is as easy to be forgiven some sins as to commit

some others. For my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my

baptism; for my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with God

but from my last repentance, sacrament, or general absolution; and

therefore am not terrified with the sins or madness of my youth. I

thank the goodness of God, I have no sins that want a name. I am not

singular in offences; my transgressions are epidemical, and from the

common breath of our corruption. For there are certain tempers of body

which, matched with a humorous depravity of mind, do hatch and produce

vitiosities, whose newness and monstrosity of nature admits no name;

this was the temper of that lecher that carnaled with a statua, and the

constitution of Nero in his spintrian recreations. For the heavens are

not only fruitful in new and unheard-of stars, the earth in plants and

animals, but men’s minds also in villany and vices. Now the dulness

of my reason, and the vulgarity of my disposition, never prompted my

invention nor solicited my affection unto any of these;--yet even

those common and quotidian infirmities that so necessarily attend me,

and do seem to be my very nature, have so dejected me, so broken the

estimation that I should have otherwise of myself, that I repute myself

the most abject piece of mortality. Divines prescribe a fit of sorrow

to repentance: there goes indignation, anger, sorrow, hatred, into

mine, passions of a contrary nature, which neither seem to suit with

this action, nor my proper constitution. It is no breach of charity to

ourselves to be at variance with our vices, nor to abhor that part of

us, which is an enemy to the ground of charity, our God; wherein we

do but imitate our great selves, the world, whose divided antipathies

and contrary faces do yet carry a charitable regard unto the whole, by

their particular discords preserving the common harmony, and keeping in

fetters those powers, whose rebellions, once masters, might be the ruin

of all.

_Sect._ 8.--I thank God, amongst those millions of vices I do inherit

and hold from Adam, I have escaped one, and that a mortal enemy to

charity,--the first and father sin, not only of man, but of the

devil,--pride; a vice whose name is comprehended in a monosyllable,

but in its nature not circumscribed with a world, I have escaped it

in a condition that can hardly avoid it. Those petty acquisitions and

reputed perfections, that advance and elevate the conceits of other

men, add no feathers unto mine. I have seen a grammarian tower and

plume himself over a single line in Horace, and show more pride, in

the construction of one ode, than the author in the composure of the

whole book. For my own part, besides the jargon and _patois_ of several

provinces, I understand no less than six languages; yet I protest

I have no higher conceit of myself than had our fathers before the

confusion of Babel, when there was but one language in the world, and

none to boast himself either linguist or critick. I have not only seen

several countries, beheld the nature of their climes, the chorography

of their provinces, topography of their cities, but understood their

several laws, customs, and policies; yet cannot all this persuade the

dulness of my spirit unto such an opinion of myself as I behold in

nimbler and conceited heads, that never looked a degree beyond their

nests. I know the names and somewhat more of all the constellations in

my horizon; yet I have seen a prating mariner, that could only name

the pointers and the north-star, out-talk me, and conceit himself

a whole sphere above me. I know most of the plants of my country,

and of those about me, yet methinks I do not know so many as when I

did but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than

Cheapside. For, indeed, heads of capacity, and such as are not full

with a handful or easy measure of knowledge, think they know nothing

till they know all; which being impossible, they fall upon the opinion

of Socrates, and only know they know not anything. I cannot think that

Homer pined away upon the riddle of the fishermen, or that Aristotle,

who understood the uncertainty of knowledge, and confessed so often

the reason of man too weak for the works of nature, did ever drown

himself upon the flux and reflux of Euripus.[93] We do but learn,

to-day, what our better advanced judgments will unteach to-morrow; and

Aristotle doth but instruct us, as Plato did him, that is, to confute

himself. I have run through all sorts, yet find no rest in any: though

our first studies and junior endeavours may style us Peripateticks,

Stoicks, or Academicks, yet I perceive the wisest heads prove, at

last, almost all Scepticks,[94] and stand like Janus in the field of

knowledge. I have therefore one common and authentick philosophy I

learned in the schools, whereby I discourse and satisfy the reason of

other men; another more reserved, and drawn from experience, whereby I

content mine own. Solomon, that complained of ignorance in the height

of knowledge, hath not only humbled my conceits, but discouraged my

endeavours. There is yet another conceit that hath sometimes made me

shut my books, which tells me it is a vanity to waste our days in the

blind pursuit of knowledge: it is but attending a little longer, and

we shall enjoy that, by instinct and infusion, which we endeavour at

here by labour and inquisition. It is better to sit down in a modest

ignorance, and rest contented with the natural blessing of our own

reasons, than by the uncertain knowledge of this life with sweat and

vexation, which death gives every fool gratis, and is an accessary of

our glorification.

_Sect._ 9.--I was never yet once, and commend their resolutions who

never marry twice. Not that I disallow of second marriage; as neither

in all cases of polygamy, which considering some times, and the unequal

number of both sexes, may be also necessary. The whole world was made

for man, but the twelfth part of man for woman. Man is the whole world,

and the breath of God; woman the rib and crooked piece of man. I could

be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or

that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial

and vulgar way of coition: it is the foolishest act a wise man commits

in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled

imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece

of folly he hath committed. I speak not in prejudice, nor am averse

from that sweet sex, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful.

I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though

it be but of an horse. It is my temper, and I like it the better,

to affect all harmony; and sure there is musick, even in the beauty

and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound

of an instrument. For there is a musick wherever there is a harmony,

order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain “the musick of the

spheres:” for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though

they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike

a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed

delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those

heads which declaim against all church-musick. For myself, not only

from my obedience but my particular genius I do embrace it: for even

that vulgar and tavern-musick which makes one man merry, another mad,

strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of

the first composer. There is something in it of divinity more than

the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the

whole world, and creatures of God,--such a melody to the ear, as the

whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief,

it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in

the ears of God. I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony,

but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto musick: thus some,

whose temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of their

souls, are born poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined unto

rhythm. This made Tacitus, in the very first line of his story, fall

upon a verse;[P] and Cicero, the worst of poets, but declaiming for a

poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a perfect hexameter.[Q] I

feel not in me those sordid and unchristian desires of my profession;

I do not secretly implore and wish for plagues, rejoice at famines,

revolve ephemerides and almanacks in expectation of malignant aspects,

fatal conjunctions, and eclipses. I rejoice not at unwholesome springs

nor unseasonable winters: my prayer goes with the husbandman’s; I

desire everything in its proper season, that neither men nor the times

be out of temper. Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the malady of

my patient be not a disease unto me. I desire rather to cure his

infirmities than my own necessities. Where I do him no good, methinks

it is scarce honest gain, though I confess ’tis but the worthy salary

of our well intended endeavours. I am not only ashamed but heartily

sorry, that, besides death, there are diseases incurable; yet not for

my own sake or that they be beyond my art, but for the general cause

and sake of humanity, whose common cause I apprehend as mine own.

And, to speak more generally, those three noble professions which all

civil commonwealths do honour, are raised upon the fall of Adam, and

are not any way exempt from their infirmities. There are not only

diseases incurable in physick, but cases indissolvable in law, vices

incorrigible in divinity. If general councils may err, I do not see

why particular courts should be infallible: their perfectest rules are

raised upon the erroneous reasons of man, and the laws of one do but

condemn the rules of another; as Aristotle ofttimes the opinions of

his predecessors, because, though agreeable to reason, yet were not

consonant to his own rules and the logick of his proper principles.

Again,--to speak nothing of the sin against the Holy Ghost, whose cure

not only, but whose nature is unknown,--I can cure the gout or stone

in some, sooner than divinity, pride, or avarice in others. I can cure

vices by physick when they remain incurable by divinity, and they shall

obey my pills when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but

plainly say, we all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure

of all diseases. There is no _catholicon_ or universal remedy I know,

but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to prepared

appetites is nectar, and a pleasant potion of immortality.

[P] “Urbem Romam in principio reges habuere.”

[Q] “In qua me non inficior mediocriter esse.”--_Pro Archia Poeta_.

_Sect._ 10.--For my conversation, it is, like the sun’s, with all men,

and with a friendly aspect to good and bad. Methinks there is no man

bad; and the worst best, that is, while they are kept within the circle

of those qualities wherein they are good. There is no man’s mind of

so discordant and jarring a temper, to which a tuneable disposition

may not strike a harmony. _Magnæ virtutes, nec minora vitia;_ it is

the posy[95] of the best natures, and may be inverted on the worst.

There are, in the most depraved and venomous dispositions, certain

pieces that remain untouched, which by an _antiperistasis_[96] become

more excellent, or by the excellency of their antipathies are able

to preserve themselves from the contagion of their enemy vices, and

persist entire beyond the general corruption. For it is also thus in

nature: the greatest balsams do lie enveloped in the bodies of the most

powerful corrosives. I say moreover, and I ground upon experience,

that poisons contain within themselves their own antidote, and that

which preserves them from the venom of themselves; without which they

were not deleterious to others only, but to themselves also. But it is

the corruption that I fear within me; not the contagion of commerce

without me. ’Tis that unruly regiment within me, that will destroy me;

’tis that I do infect myself; the man without a navel[97] yet lives in

me. I feel that original canker corrode and devour me: and therefore,

“_Defenda me, Dios, de me!_” “Lord, deliver me from myself!” is a

part of my litany, and the first voice of my retired imaginations.

There is no man alone, because every man is a microcosm, and carries

the whole world about him. “_Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus,_”[R]

though it be the apothegm of a wise man is yet true in the mouth of a

fool: for indeed, though in a wilderness, a man is never alone; not

only because he is with himself, and his own thoughts, but because he

is with the devil, who ever consorts with our solitude, and is that

unruly rebel that musters up those disordered motions which accompany

our sequestered imaginations. And to speak more narrowly, there is no

such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone, and

by itself, but God;--who is his own circle, and can subsist by himself;

all others, besides their dissimilary and heterogeneous parts, which in

a manner multiply their natures, cannot subsist without the concourse

of God, and the society of that hand which doth uphold their natures.

In brief, there can be nothing truly alone, and by its self, which is

not truly one, and such is only God: all others do transcend an unity,

and so by consequence are many.

[R] “Cic. de Off.,” 1. iii.

_Sect._ 11.--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.[98] The earth is a point not only in respect of

the heavens above us, but of the heavenly and celestial part within

us. That mass of flesh that circumscribes me limits not my mind. That

surface that tells the heavens it hath an end cannot persuade me I

have any. I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty. Though

the number of the ark do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my

mind. Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm, or little world, I

find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of

divinity in us; something that was before the elements, and owes no

homage unto the sun. Nature tells me, I am the image of God, as well as

Scripture. He that understands not thus much hath not his introduction

or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man. Let me not

injure the felicity of others, if I say I am as happy as any. “_Ruat

cœlum, fiat voluntas tua,_” salveth all; so that, whatsoever happens,

it is but what our daily prayers desire. In brief, I am content; and

what should providence add more? Surely this is it we call happiness,

and this do I enjoy; with this I am happy in a dream, and as content

to enjoy a happiness in a fancy, as others in a more apparent truth

and reality. There is surely a nearer apprehension of anything that

delights us, in our dreams, than in our waked senses. Without this I

were unhappy; for my awaked judgment discontents me, ever whispering

unto me that I am from my friend, but my friendly dreams in the night

requite me, and make me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my

happy dreams, as I do for my good rest; for there is a satisfaction in

them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit

of happiness. And surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we

are all asleep in this world, and that the conceits of this life are

as mere dreams, to those of the next, as the phantasms of the night,

to the conceits of the day. There is an equal delusion in both; and

the one doth but seem to be the emblem or picture of the other. We are

somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps; and the slumber of the body

seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense,

but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the

fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity, my ascendant was the watery sign

of _Scorpio_. I was born in the planetary hour of _Saturn_, and I think

I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious,

nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise[99] of company; yet in one

dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the

jests, and laugh myself awake at the conceits thereof. Were my memory

as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but

in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devotions:

but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted

understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our

awaked souls a confused and broken tale of that which hath passed.

Aristotle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not,

methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have

corrected it; for those _noctambulos_ and night-walkers, though in

their sleep, do yet enjoy the action of their senses. We must therefore

say that there is something in us that is not in the jurisdiction

of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do walk

about in their own corpses, as spirits with the bodies they assume,

wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are

destitute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should

inform them. Thus it is observed, that men sometimes, upon the hour of

their departure, do speak and reason above themselves. For then the

soul beginning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to

reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.

_Sect._ 12.--We term sleep a death; and yet it is waking that kills

us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life. ’Tis indeed

a part of life that best expresseth death; for every man truly lives,

so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of

himself. Themistocles therefore, that slew his soldier in his sleep,

was a merciful executioner: ’tis a kind of punishment the mildness of

no laws hath invented; I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not

discover it. It is that death by which we may be literally said to die

daily; a death which Adam died before his mortality; a death whereby we

live a middle and moderating point between life and death. In fine, so

like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu

unto the world, and take my farewell in a colloquy with God:--

The night is come, like to the day;

Depart not thou, great God, away.

Let not my sins, black as the night,

Eclipse the lustre of thy light.

Keep still in my horizon; for to me

The sun makes not the day, but thee.

Thou whose nature cannot sleep,

On my temples sentry keep;

Guard me ’gainst those watchful foes,

Whose eyes are open while mine close.

Let no dreams my head infest,

But such as Jacob’s temples blest.

While I do rest, my soul advance:

Make my sleep a holy trance:

That I may, my rest being wrought,

Awake into some holy thought,

And with as active vigour run

My course as doth the nimble sun.

Sleep is a death;--Oh make me try,

By sleeping, what it is to die!

And as gently lay my head

On my grave, as now my bed.

Howe’er I rest, great God, let me

Awake again at last with thee.

And thus assured, behold I lie

Securely, or to wake or die.

These are my drowsy days; in vain

I do now wake to sleep again:

Oh come that hour, when I shall never

Sleep again, but wake for ever!

This is the dormitive I take to bedward; I need no other _laudanum_

than this to make me sleep; after which I close mine eyes in security,

content to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection.

_Sect._ 13.--The method I should use in distributive justice, I often

observe in commutative; and keep a geometrical proportion in both,

whereby becoming equable to others, I become unjust to myself, and

supererogate in that common principle, “Do unto others as thou wouldst

be done unto thyself.” I was not born unto riches, neither is it, I

think, my star to be wealthy; or if it were, the freedom of my mind,

and frankness of my disposition, were able to contradict and cross my

fates: for to me avarice seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable

piece of madness; to conceive ourselves urinals, or be persuaded that

we are dead, is not so ridiculous, nor so many degrees beyond the power

of hellebore,[100] as this. The opinions of theory, and positions of

men, are not so void of reason, as their practised conclusions. Some

have held that snow is black, that the earth moves, that the soul is

air, fire, water; but all this is philosophy: and there is no delirium,

if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice.

To that subterraneous idol, and god of the earth, I do confess I am

an atheist. I cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores;

whatsoever virtue its prepared substance may have within my body, it

hath no influence nor operation without. I would not entertain a base

design, or an action that should call me villain, for the Indies; and

for this only do I love and honour my own soul, and have methinks two

arms too few to embrace myself. Aristotle is too severe, that will not

allow us to be truly liberal without wealth, and the bountiful hand of

fortune; if this be true, I must confess I am charitable only in my

liberal intentions, and bountiful well wishes. But if the example of

the mite be not only an act of wonder, but an example of the noblest

charity, surely poor men may also build hospitals, and the rich alone

have not erected cathedrals. I have a private method which others

observe not; I take the opportunity of myself to do good; I borrow

occasion of charity from my own necessities, and supply the wants of

others, when I am in most need myself: for it is an honest stratagem

to take advantage of ourselves, and so to husband the acts of virtue,

that, where they are defective in one circumstance, they may repay

their want, and multiply their goodness in another. I have not Peru in

my desires, but a competence and ability to perform those good works

to which he hath inclined my nature. He is rich who hath enough to be

charitable; and it is hard to be so poor that a noble mind may not find

a way to this piece of goodness. “He that giveth to the poor lendeth

to the Lord:” there is more rhetorick in that one sentence than in a

library of sermons. And indeed, if those sentences were understood by

the reader with the same emphasis as they are delivered by the author,

we needed not those volumes of instructions, but might be honest by

an epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a beggar without

relieving his necessities with my purse, or his soul with my prayers.

These scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me

forget that common and untoucht part of us both: there is under these

centoes[101] and miserable outsides, those mutilate and semi bodies,

a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose genealogy is God’s as

well as ours, and in as fair a way to salvation as ourselves. Statists

that labour to contrive a commonwealth without our poverty take away

the object of charity; not understanding only the commonwealth of a

Christian, but forgetting the prophecy of Christ.[S]

[S] “The poor ye have always with you.”

_Sect._ 14.--Now, there is another part of charity, which is the basis

and pillar of this, and that is the love of God, for whom we love

our neighbour; for this I think charity, to love God for himself,

and our neighbour for God. And all that is truly amiable is God, or

as it were a divided piece of him, that retains a reflex or shadow

of himself. Nor is it strange that we should place affection on that

which is invisible: all that we truly love is thus. What we adore under

affection of our senses deserves not the honour of so pure a title.

Thus we adore virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be invisible.

Thus that part of our noble friends that we love is not that part that

we embrace, but that insensible part that our arms cannot embrace. God

being all goodness, can love nothing but himself; he loves us but for

that part which is as it were himself, and the traduction of his Holy

Spirit. Let us call to assize the loves of our parents, the affection

of our wives and children, and they are all dumb shows and dreams,

without reality, truth, or constancy. For first there is a strong bond

of affection between us and our parents; yet how easily dissolved!

We betake ourselves to a woman, forgetting our mother in a wife, and

the womb that bare us in that which shall bear our image. This woman

blessing us with children, our affection leaves the level it held

before, and sinks from our bed unto our issue and picture of posterity:

where affection holds no steady mansion; they growing up in years,

desire our ends; or, applying themselves to a woman, take a lawful way

to love another better than ourselves. Thus I perceive a man may be

buried alive, and behold his grave in his own issue.

_Sect._ 15.--I conclude therefore, and say, there is no happiness under

(or, as Copernicus[T] will have it, above) the sun; nor any crambe[102]

in that repeated verity and burthen of all the wisdom of Solomon: “All

is vanity and vexation of spirit;” there is no felicity in that the

world adores. Aristotle, whilst he labours to refute the _ideas_ of

Plato, falls upon one himself: for his _summum bonum_ is a chimæra;

and there is no such thing as his felicity. That wherein God himself

is happy, the holy angels are happy, in whose defect the devils are

unhappy;--that dare I call happiness: whatsoever conduceth unto this,

may, with an easy metaphor, deserve that name; whatsoever else the

world terms happiness is, to me, a story out of Pliny, a tale of Bocace

or Malizspini, an apparition or neat delusion, wherein there is no more

of happiness than the name. Bless me in this life with but the peace

of my conscience, command of my affections, the love of thyself and

my dearest friends, and I shall be happy enough to pity Cæsar! These

are, O Lord, the humble desires of my most reasonable ambition, and

all I dare call happiness on earth; wherein I set no rule or limit to

thy hand or providence; dispose of me according to the wisdom of thy

pleasure. Thy will be done, though in my own undoing.

[T] Who holds that the sun is the centre of the world.

HYDRIOTAPHIA.

URN BURIAL; OR, A DISCOURSE OF THE SEPULCHRAL URNS LATELY FOUND IN

NORFOLK.

TO MY WORTHY AND HONOURED FRIEND,

THOMAS LE GROS,

OF CROSTWICK, ESQUIRE.

WHEN the general pyre was out, and the last valediction over, men

took a lasting adieu of their interred friends, little expecting the

curiosity of future ages should comment upon their ashes; and, having

no old experience of the duration of their relicks, held no opinion of

such after-considerations.

But who knows the fate of his bones, or how often he is to be buried?

Who hath the oracle of his ashes, or whither they are to be scattered?

The relicks of many lie like the ruins of Pompey’s,[U] in all parts of

the earth; and when they arrive at your hands these may seem to have

wandered far, who, in a direct and meridian travel,[V] have but few

miles of known earth between yourself and the pole.

[U] “Pompeios juvenes Asia atque Europa, sed ipsum terrâ tegit Libyos.”

[V] Little directly but sea, between your house and Greenland.

That the bones of Theseus should be seen again in Athens[W] was not

beyond conjecture and hopeful expectation: but that these should arise

so opportunely to serve yourself was an hit of fate, and honour beyond

prediction.

[W] Brought back by Cimon Plutarch.

We cannot but wish these urns might have the effect of theatrical

vessels and great Hippodrome urns[X] in Rome, to resound the

acclamations and honour due unto you. But these are sad and sepulchral

pitchers, which have no joyful voices; silently expressing old

mortality, the ruins of forgotten times, and can only speak with life,

how long in this corruptible frame some parts may be uncorrupted; yet

able to outlast bones long unborn, and noblest pile among us.

[X] The great urns at the Hippodrome at Rome, conceived to resound the

voices of people at their shows.

We present not these as any strange sight or spectacle unknown to your

eyes, who have beheld the best of urns and noblest variety of ashes;

who are yourself no slender master of antiquities, and can daily

command the view of so many imperial faces; which raiseth your thoughts

unto old things and consideration of times before you, when even living

men were antiquities; when the living might exceed the dead, and to

depart this world could not be properly said to go unto the greater

number.[Y] And so run up your thoughts upon the ancient of days, the

antiquary’s truest object, unto whom the eldest parcels are young, and

earth itself an infant, and without Egyptian[Z] account makes but small

noise in thousands.

[Y] “Abiit ad plures.”

[Z] Which makes the world so many years old.

We were hinted by the occasion, not catched the opportunity to write

of old things, or intrude upon the antiquary. We are coldly drawn unto

discourses of antiquities, who have scarce time before us to comprehend

new things, or make out learned novelties. But seeing they arose, as

they lay almost in silence among us, at least in short account suddenly

passed over, we were very unwilling they should die again, and be

buried twice among us.

Beside, to preserve the living, and make the dead to live, to keep

men out of their urns, and discourse of human fragments in them, is

not impertinent unto our profession; whose study is life and death,

who daily behold examples of mortality, and of all men least need

artificial _mementos_, or coffins by our bedside, to mind us of our

graves.

’Tis time to observe occurrences, and let nothing remarkable escape us:

the supinity of elder days hath left so much in silence, or time hath

so martyred the records, that the most industrious heads do find no

easy work to erect a new Britannia.

’Tis opportune to look back upon old times, and contemplate our

forefathers. Great examples grow thin, and to be fetched from the

passed world. Simplicity flies away, and iniquity comes at long strides

upon us. We have enough to do to make up ourselves from present and

passed times, and the whole stage of things scarce serveth for our

instruction. A complete piece of virtue must be made from the Centos

of all ages, as all the beauties of Greece could make but one handsome

Venus.

When the bones of King Arthur were digged up,[AA] the old race might

think they beheld therein some originals of themselves; unto these

of our urns none here can pretend relation, and can only behold the

relicks of those persons who, in their life giving the laws unto their

predecessors, after long obscurity, now lie at their mercies. But,

remembering the early civility they brought upon these countries, and

forgetting long-passed mischiefs, we mercifully preserve their bones,

and piss not upon their ashes.

[AA] In the time of Henry the Second.

In the offer of these antiquities we drive not at ancient families,

so long outlasted by them. We are far from erecting your worth upon

the pillars of your forefathers, whose merits you illustrate. We

honour your old virtues, conformable unto times before you, which are

the noblest armoury. And, having long experience of your friendly

conversation, void of empty formality, full of freedom, constant and

generous honesty, I look upon you as a gem of the old rock,[AB] and

must profess myself even to urn and ashes.--Your ever faithful Friend

and Servant,

[AB] “Adamas de rupe veteri præstantissimus.”

THOMAS BROWNE.

NORWICH, _May 1st_.

HYDRIOTAPHIA.

CHAPTER I.

IN the deep discovery of the subterranean world a shallow part would

satisfy some inquirers; who, if two or three yards were open about the

surface, would not care to rake the bowels of Potosi,[AC] and regions

toward the centre. Nature hath furnished one part of the earth, and man

another. The treasures of time lie high, in urns, coins, and monuments,

scarce below the roots of some vegetables. Time hath endless rarities,

and shows of all varieties; which reveals old things in heaven, makes

new discoveries in earth, and even earth itself a discovery. That great

antiquity America lay buried for thousands of years, and a large part

of the earth is still in the urn unto us.

[AC] The rich mountain of Peru.

Though if Adam were made out of an extract of the earth, all parts

might challenge a restitution, yet few have returned their bones far

lower than they might receive them; not affecting the graves of giants,

under hilly and heavy coverings, but content with less than their

own depth, have wished their bones might lie soft, and the earth be

light upon them. Even such as hope to rise again, would not be content

with central interment, or so desperately to place their relicks as

to lie beyond discovery; and in no way to be seen again; which happy

contrivance hath made communication with our forefathers, and left unto

our view some parts, which they never beheld themselves.

Though earth hath engrossed the name, yet water hath proved the

smartest grave; which in forty days swallowed almost mankind, and the

living creation; fishes not wholly escaping, except the salt ocean were

handsomely contempered by a mixture of the fresh element.

Many have taken voluminous pains to determine the state of the soul

upon disunion; but men have been most phantastical in the singular

contrivances of their corporal dissolution: whilst the soberest nations

have rested in two ways, of simple inhumation and burning.

That carnal interment or burying was of the elder date, the old

examples of Abraham and the patriarchs are sufficient to illustrate;

and were without competition, if it could be made out that Adam was

buried near Damascus, or Mount Calvary, according to some tradition.

God himself, that buried but one, was pleased to make choice of this

way, collectible from Scripture expression, and the hot contest between

Satan and the archangel about discovering the body of Moses. But the

practice of burning was also of great antiquity, and of no slender

extent. For (not to derive the same from Hercules) noble descriptions

there are hereof in the Grecian funerals of Homer, in the formal

obsequies of Patroclus and Achilles; and somewhat elder in the Theban

war, and solemn combustion of Meneceus, and Archemorus, contemporary

unto Jair the eighth judge of Israel. Confirmable also among the

Trojans, from the funeral pyre of Hector, burnt before the gates of

Troy: and the burning of Penthesilea the Amazonian queen: and long

continuance of that practice, in the inward countries of Asia; while as

low as the reign of Julian, we find that the king of Chionia[AD] burnt

the body of his son, and interred the ashes in a silver urn.

[AD] Gumbrates, king of Chionia, a country near Persia.

The same practice extended also far west; and besides Herulians, Getes,

and Thracians, was in use with most of the Celtæ, Sarmatians, Germans,

Gauls, Danes, Swedes, Norwegians; not to omit some use thereof among

Carthaginians and Americans. Of greater antiquity among the Romans

than most opinion, or Pliny seems to allow: for (besides the old table

laws[AE] of burning or burying within the city, of making the funeral

fire with planed wood, or quenching the fire with wine), Manlius the

consul burnt the body of his son: Numa, by special clause of his will,

was not burnt but buried; and Remus was solemnly burned, according to

the description of Ovid.[AF]

[AE] XII. Tabulæ, part i., de jure sacro, “Hominem mortuum in urbe ne

sepelito neve urito.”

[AF] “Ultima prolata subdita flamma rogo,” &c. _Fast._, lib. iv., 856.

Cornelius Sylla was not the first whose body was burned in Rome, but

the first of the Cornelian family; which being indifferently, not

frequently used before; from that time spread, and became the prevalent

practice. Not totally pursued in the highest run of cremation; for

when even crows were funerally burnt, Poppæa the wife of Nero found a

peculiar grave interment. Now as all customs were founded upon some

bottom of reason, so there wanted not grounds for this; according

to several apprehensions of the most rational dissolution. Some

being of the opinion of Thales, that water was the original of all

things, thought it most equal[103] to submit unto the principle of

putrefaction, and conclude in a moist relentment.[104] Others conceived

it most natural to end in fire, as due unto the master principle in the

composition, according to the doctrine of Heraclitus; and therefore

heaped up large piles, more actively to waft them toward that element,

whereby they also declined a visible degeneration into worms, and left

a lasting parcel of their composition.

Some apprehended a purifying virtue in fire, refining the grosser

commixture, and firing out the æthereal particles so deeply immersed

in it. And such as by tradition or rational conjecture held any hint

of the final pyre of all things; or that this element at last must be

too hard for all the rest; might conceive most naturally of the fiery

dissolution. Others pretending no natural grounds, politickly declined

the malice of enemies upon their buried bodies. Which consideration led

Sylla unto this practice; who having thus served the body of Marius,

could not but fear a retaliation upon his own; entertained after in the

civil wars, and revengeful contentions of Rome.

But as many nations embraced, and many left it indifferent, so others

too much affected, or strictly declined this practice. The Indian

Brachmans seemed too great friends unto fire, who burnt themselves

alive and thought it the noblest way to end their days in fire;

according to the expression of the Indian, burning himself at Athens,

in his last words upon the pyre unto the amazed spectators, “thus I

make myself immortal.”[AG]

[AG] And therefore the inscription on his tomb was made accordingly,

“Hic Damase.”

But the Chaldeans, the great idolaters of fire, abhorred the burning of

their carcases, as a pollution of that deity. The Persian magi declined

it upon the like scruples, and being only solicitous about their bones,

exposed their flesh to the prey of birds and dogs. And the Persees now

in India, which expose their bodies unto vultures, and endure not so

much as _feretra_ or biers of wood, the proper fuel of fire, are led on

with such niceties. But whether the ancient Germans, who burned their

dead, held any such fear to pollute their deity of Herthus, or the

earth, we have no authentic conjecture.

The Egyptians were afraid of fire, not as a deity, but a devouring

element, mercilessly consuming their bodies, and leaving too little

of them; and therefore by precious embalmments, depositure in dry

earths, or handsome inclosure in glasses, contrived the notablest ways

of integral conservation. And from such Egyptian scruples, imbibed by

Pythagoras, it may be conjectured that Numa and the Pythagorical sect

first waived the fiery solution.

The Scythians, who swore by wind and sword, that is, by life and

death, were so far from burning their bodies, that they declined all

interment, and made their graves in the air: and the Ichthyophagi, or

fish-eating nations about Egypt, affected the sea for their grave;

thereby declining visible corruption, and restoring the debt of their

bodies. Whereas the old heroes, in Homer, dreaded nothing more than

water or drowning; probably upon the old opinion of the fiery substance

of the soul, only extinguishable by that element; and therefore the

poet emphatically implieth[AH] the total destruction in this kind of

death, which happened to Ajax Oileus.

[AH] Which Magius reads ἐξαπόλωλε.

The old Balearians had a peculiar mode, for they used great urns and

much wood, but no fire in their burials, while they bruised the flesh

and bones of the dead, crowded them into urns, and laid heaps of wood

upon them. And the Chinese without cremation or urnal interment of

their bodies, make use of trees and much burning, while they plant a

pine-tree by their grave, and burn great numbers of printed draughts

of slaves and horses over it, civilly content with their companies in

_effigy_, which barbarous nations exact unto reality.

Christians abhorred this way of obsequies, and though they sticked

not to give their bodies to be burnt in their lives, detested that

mode after death: affecting rather a depositure than absumption, and

properly submitting unto the sentence of God, to return not unto

ashes but unto dust again, and conformable unto the practice of the

patriarchs, the interment of our Saviour, of Peter, Paul, and the

ancient martyrs. And so far at last declining promiscuous interment

with Pagans, that some have suffered ecclesiastical censures,[AI] for

making no scruple thereof.

[AI] Martialis the Bishop.

The Mussulman believers will never admit this fiery resolution. For

they hold a present trial from their black and white angels in the

grave; which they must have made so hollow, that they may rise upon

their knees.

The Jewish nation, though they entertained the old way of inhumation,

yet sometimes admitted this practice. For the men of Jabesh burnt

the body of Saul; and by no prohibited practice, to avoid contagion

or pollution, in time of pestilence, burnt the bodies of their

friends.[AJ] And when they burnt not their dead bodies, yet sometimes

used great burnings near and about them, deducible from the expressions

concerning Jehoram, Zedechias, and the sumptuous pyre of Asa. And were

so little averse from Pagan burning, that the Jews lamenting the death

of Cæsar their friend, and revenger on Pompey, frequented the place

where his body was burnt for many nights together. And as they raised

noble monuments and mausoleums for their own nation,[AK] so they were

not scrupulous in erecting some for others, according to the practice

of Daniel, who left that lasting sepulchral pile in Ecbatana, for the

Median and Persian kings.[AL]

[AJ] Amos vi. 10.

[AK] As in that magnificent sepulchral monument erected by Simon.--1

_Macc._ xiii.

[AL] κατασκεύασμα θαυμασίως πεποιημένον, whereof a Jewish priest had

always custody until Josephus’ days.--_Jos. Antiq._, lib. x.

But even in times of subjection and hottest use, they conformed not

unto the Roman practice of burning; whereby the prophecy was secured

concerning the body of Christ, that it should not see corruption, or

a bone should not be broken; which we believe was also providentially

prevented, from the soldier’s spear and nails that passed by the little

bones both in his hands and feet; not of ordinary contrivance, that

it should not corrupt on the cross, according to the laws of Roman

crucifixion, or an hair of his head perish, though observable in Jewish

customs, to cut the hair of malefactors.

Nor in their long cohabitation with Egyptians, crept into a custom of

their exact embalming, wherein deeply slashing the muscles, and taking

out the brains and entrails, they had broken the subject of so entire a

resurrection, nor fully answered the types of Enoch, Elijah, or Jonah,

which yet to prevent or restore, was of equal facility unto that rising

power able to break the fasciations and bands of death, to get clear

out of the cerecloth, and an hundred pounds of ointment, and out of the

sepulchre before the stone was rolled from it.

But though they embraced not this practice of burning, yet entertained

they many ceremonies agreeable unto Greek and Roman obsequies. And

he that observeth their funeral feasts, their lamentations at the

grave, their music, and weeping mourners; how they closed the eyes of

their friends, how they washed, anointed, and kissed the dead; may

easily conclude these were not mere Pagan civilities. But whether

that mournful burthen, and treble calling out after Absalom, had any

reference unto the last conclamation, and triple valediction, used by

other nations, we hold but a wavering conjecture.

Civilians make sepulture but of the law of nations, others do

naturally found it and discover it also in animals. They that are so

thick-skinned as still to credit the story of the Phœnix, may say

something for animal burning. More serious conjectures find some

examples of sepulture in elephants, cranes, the sepulchral cells of

pismires, and practice of bees,--which civil society carrieth out their

dead, and hath exequies, if not interments.