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SIR THOMAS BROWNE
RELIGIO MEDICI
For my religion 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; but that 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.
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--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 authorised, and the martyrs confirmed; but, by the sinister ends
of princes, the ambition and avarice of prelates, and the fatal
corruption of the 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.
Yet do I not stand at sword's point with those who had rather
promiscuously retain all than abridge any, and obstinately be what they
are than what they have been. We have reformed from them, not against
them, for 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 am naturally inclined to that which misguided zeal terms superstition;
at my devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, my hand,
with all those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote
my invisible devotion. At the sight of a crucifix I can dispense with my
hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour. I could never
hear the Ave-Mary bell without an oraison, 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.
I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an
opinion; I have no genius to disputes in religion. 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
upon 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 be
able to resolve them. 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.
Heads that are disposed unto schism, and complexionally propense to
innovation, are naturally indisposed for a community, nor will be ever
confined unto the order or economy of one body; and, therefore, when
they separate from others, they knit but loosely among themselves; nor
contented with a general breach or dichotomy with their church, do
subdivide and mince themselves almost into atoms.
As for those wingy mysteries in divinity and airy subtleties in religion
which have unhinged the brains of better heads, they have never
stretched the membranes of mine. Methinks there be not impossibilities
enough in religion for an active faith; I love to lose myself in a
mystery, to pursue my reason to an _O altitudo!_ I can answer all the
objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd resolution of
Tertullian: "It is certain because it is impossible."
In my solitary and retired imagination 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?
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
to mount the pinnacles of divinity.
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 of the
vulgar, with the content and happiness I conceive 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 knows all things because He made them all; but His
greatest knowledge is in comprehending that He made not--that is,
Himself. The wisdom of God receives small honour from those heads that
rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire His works. Those
highly magnify Him whose judicious inquiry into His acts, and a
deliberate research into His creatures, return the duty of a devout and
learned admiration. 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.
That Nature does nothing in vain is the only indisputable axiom in
philosophy. There are no grotesques in Nature, nor anything framed to
fill up unnecessary spaces. I could never content my contemplation with
those general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the
increase of the Nile, the conversion of the needle to the north; but
have studied to match and parallel those in the more obvious and
neglected pieces of Nature which, without further travel, I find in the
cosmography of myself. We carry with us the wonders we seek without us;
there is all Africa and her prodigies in us.
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
public manuscript, that lies expansed unto the eyes of all. 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. 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. Nature hath
made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial,
for Nature is the art of God.
This is the ordinary and open way of His providence, which art and
industry have in good part discovered, whose effects we may foretell
without an oracle. But there is another way, full of meanders and
labyrinths, and that is a more particular and obscure method of His
providence, directing the operations of individual and single essences.
This we call fortune, that serpentine and crooked line whereby He draws
those actions His wisdom intends in a more unknown and secret way.
This cryptic and involved method of His providence have I ever admired;
nor can I relate the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, the
escapes, or dangers, and hits of chance, with a bare grammercy to my
good stars. Surely there are in every man's life certain rubs,
doublings, and wrenches, which pass a while under the effects of chance;
but at the last, well examined, prove the mere hand of God. 'Twas not
dumb chance that, to discover the fougade, or powder plot, contrived a
miscarriage in the letter. I like the victory of '88 the better for that
one occurrence which our enemies imputed to our dishonour and the
partiality of fortune: to wit, the tempests and contrariety of winds.
There is no liberty for causes to operate in a loose and straggling way,
nor any effect whatever but hath its warrant from some universal or
superior cause. 'Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a
game at tables; for even in sortileges and matters of greatest
uncertainty there is a settled and pre-ordered 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.
'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.
I have heard some with deep sighs lament the lost lines of Cicero;
others with as many groans deplore the combustion of the library of
Alexandria; for my own part, I think there be too many in the world, and
could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican, could I,
with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon. Some men
have
written more than others have spoken. Of those three great inventions in
Germany, there are two which are not without their incommodities. Tis
not a melancholy wish of my own, but the desires of better heads, that
there were a general synod--not to unite the incompatible difference of
religion, but for the benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at
first, in a few and solid authors; and to condemn to the fire those
swarms and millions of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse
the weaker judgments of scholars and to maintain the trade and mystery
of typographers.
As 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.
There are many, questionless, canonised 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. The leaven 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.
I thank God I have not those strait ligaments or narrow obligations to
the world as to dote on life or tremble at the name of death. Not that I
am insensible of the horror thereof, or, by raking into the bowels of
the deceased and continual sight of anatomies, I have forgot the
apprehension of mortality; but that, marshalling all the horrors, I find
not anything therein able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a
well-resolved Christian. Were there not another life that I hope for,
all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath from
me. 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, that hath more in
it than the eye of a common spectator doth discover.
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 seems to me a mere fallacy, unworthy the desires
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. 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 brings
on incurable vices, and the number of our days doth but make our sins
innumerable. There is 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.
There is no happiness within this circle of flesh, nor is it in the
optics of these eyes to behold felicity. But besides this literal and
positive kind of death, there are others whereof divines make mention,
as mortification, dying unto sin and the world. In these moral
acceptations, the way to be immortal is to die daily; and I have
enlarged that common "Remember death" into a more Christian
memorandum--"Remember the four last things"--death, judgment, heaven,
and hell. I believe that the world grows near its end; but that general
opinion, that the world grows near its end, hath possessed all ages past
as nearly as ours.
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 assault of another. 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.
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. I do not deny but that true faith 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. If a faith 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.
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. I give no
alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil the command of
my God; I draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but His that
enjoined it. Again, it is no greater charity to clothe his body than to
apparel the nakedness of his soul; and to this, as calling myself a
scholar, I am obliged by the duty of my condition.
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 Caesar! These are, O Lord, the humble desires of my
most reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness on earth:
wherein I set no 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.
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