THE LIFE OF SIR THOMAS Browne.
THOUGH the writer of the following Essays seems to have had the
fortune common among men of
letters, of raising little curiosity after his private life, and has, therefore,
few memorials preserved of his felicities or misfortunes; yet, because an edition of a
posthumous work appears imperfect and neglected, without some account of the
author, it was thought necessary to attempt
the gratification of that curiosity which
naturally inquires, by what peculiarities of
nature or fortune eminent men have been
distinguished, how uncommon attainments
have been gained, and what influence
learning has had on its possessors, or virtue on its teachers.
Sir
Thomas Browne was born at London, in the parish of St. Michael in Cheapside, on the 19th
of 0ctober, MDCV.Life of Sir Thomas Browne, prefixed to the antiquities of Norwich.
His father was a merchant of an antient family at
Upton in Cheshire. Of the name or family of his mother, I find no account.
Of his childhood or youth, there is little known; except that
he lost his father very early; that he was, according to the common fate of
orphans,Whitefoot’s character of Sir Thomas Browne in a marginal note.
defrauded by one of his guardians; and that he was placed for his education at
the school of Winchester.
His mother, having taken three thousand pounds,Life of Sir
Thomas Browne.
as
the third part of her husband’s property, left her son, by consequence, six
thousand;
a large fortune for a man destined to learning, at that time when commerce had not yet filled the nation with nominal riches. But
it happened to him as to many others, to be made poorer by opulence; for
his mother soon married Sir Thomas Dutton, probably by the inducement of
her fortune; and he was left to the rapacity of his guardian, deprived
now of both his parents and therefore helpless and unprotected.
He was removed in the beginning of the year MDCXXIII
from Winchester to Oxford; and entered a gentleman-commoner of Broadgate-Hall,Wood’s Athenæ Oxoniensis.
which was soon afterwards endowed, and took the name of Pembroke-College,
from the Earl of Pembroke, then chancellor of the
University. He was admitted
to the degree of bachelor of arts, January 31, MDCXXVI-VII; being, as
Wood remarks,
the first man of eminence graduated from the new college, to which the zeal
or gratitude of those that love it most, can with little better, than that
it may long proceed as it began.
Having afterwards taken his degree of master of arts, he turned
his studies to physick, and practised it for some time in Oxfordshire;Wood.
but soon afterwards, either induced by curiosity, or invited by promises,
he quitted his settlement, and accompanied his father-in-law,Life of Sir
Thomas Browne.
who had
some employment in Ireland, in a visitation of the forts and castles, which the
state of Ireland then made necessary.
He that has once prevailed on himself to break his connexions
of acquaintance, and begin a wandering life, very easily continues it. Ireland
had, at that time, very little to offer to the observation of a man of letters:
he, therefore, passed into France and Italy;Ibid.
made some stay at Montpellier
and Padua, which were then the celebrated schools of physick; and returning home
through Holland, procured himself to be created Doctor of Physick at
Leyden.
When he began his travels, or when he concluded them, there is
no certain account; nor do there remain any observations made by him in his
passage
through those countries which he visited. To consider, therefore, what pleasure
or instruction might have been received from the remarks of a man so curious and
diligent, would be voluntarily to indulge a painful reflection, and load the imagination
with a wish, which, while it is formed, is known to be vain. It is, however, to
be lamented, that those who are most capable of improving mankind, very frequently
neglect to communicate their knowledge; either because it is more pleasing to gather
ideas than to impart them, or because to minds naturally great, few things appear
of so much importance as to deserve the notice of the publick.
About the year MDCXXXIV, he is
supposed to have returned to
London;Biographia Britannica.
and the next year to have written
his celebrated treatise, called Religio Medici, “The Religion of a Physician,” which he declares
himself
never to have intended for the press, having composed it only for his own
exercise and entertainment.Letter to Sir Kenelm Digby, prefixed to the Religio
Medici, folio edit.
It, indeed, contains many passages, which,
relating merely to his own person, can be of no great importance to the
publick: but when it was written, it happened to him as to others, he was
too much pleased with his performance, not to think that it might please
others as much; he, therefore, communicated it to his friends, and receiving,
I suppose, that exuberant applause with which every man repays the grant
of perusing a manuscript, he was not very diligent to obstruct his own praise
by recalling his papers, but suffered them to wander from hand to hand,
till at last, without his own consent, they were in MDCXLII given to a printer.
This has, perhaps, sometimes befallen others; and this,
I am willing to believe, did really happen to Dr. Browne: but there is,
surely, some reason to doubt the truth of the complaint so frequently made of
surreptitious editions. A song, or an epigram, may be easily printed without the
author's knowledge; because it may be learned when it is repeated,
or may be written out with very little trouble: but a long treatise, however
elegant, is not often copied by mere zeal or curiosity, but may be worn
out in passing from hand to hand, before it is multiplied by a transcript.
It is easy to convey an imperfect book, by a distant hand, to the press, and
plead the circulation of a false copy as an excuse for publishing the true,
or to correct what is found faulty or offensive, and charge the errors on
the transcriber’s depravations.
This is a stratagem, by which an author panting for fame,
and yet afraid of seeming, to challenge it, may at once gratify his vanity, and preserve the appearance of modesty; may enter the
lists, and secure a retreat: and this, candour might fuller to pass undetected
as an innocent fraud, but that indeed no fraud is innocent; for the confidence
which makes the happiness of society, is in some degree diminished by every man
whose practice is at variance with his words.
The Religio Medici was no sooner published than it excited the attention of the publick, by the
novelty of paradoxes, the dignity of sentiment, the quick succession of images,
the multitude of abstruse allusions, the subtlety of disquisition, and the
strength
of language.
What is much read, will be much criticised. The
Earl of Dorset recommended this book to the perusal of Sir
Kenelm Digby, who returned his judgment upon it, not in
a letter, but a book; in which, though mingled with some positions fabulous and
uncertain, there are acute remarks, just censures, and profound speculations; yet
its principal claim to admiration is, that it was written in twenty-four
hours,Digby’s letter to Browne, prefixed to the Religio Medici, folio edit.
of which part was
spent in procuring Browne’s book, and part in
reading it.
Of these animadversions, when they were not yet all printed,
either officiousness or malice informed Dr. Browne; who wrote to Sir
Kenelm with much softness and ceremony, declaring the unworthiness of
his work to engage such notice, the intended privacy of the composition,
and the corruptions of the impression; and received an answer equally gentle
and respectful, containing high commendations of the piece, pompous professions
of reverence, meek acknowledgments of inability, and anxious apologies for
the hastiness of his remarks.
The reciprocal civility of authors is one of the most
risible scenes in the farce of life.
Who would not have thought, that these two luminaries of their age had ceased
to endeavour to grow bright by the obscuration of each other: yet the animadversions
thus weak, thus precipitate, upon a book thus injured in the transcription,
quickly passed the press; and Religio Medici was more accurately
published,
with an admonition prefixed “to those who have, or shall peruse the observations upon a former corrupt
copy;” in which there is a severe censure, not upon Digby, who was to be
used with ceremony, but upon the Observator who had usurped his name: nor
was this invective written by Dr. Browne, who was supposed to be
satisfied
with his opponent’s apology; but by some officious friend zealous for
his honour, without his consent.
Browne has, indeed, in his own preface, endeavoured to
secure himself from rigorous examination, by alleging, that “many things
are delivered rhetorically, many expressions merely tropical, and therefore many things to be
taken in a soft and flexible sense, and not to be called unto the rigid test of reason.” The first glance upon his book will
indeed discover examples of this liberty of thought and expression: “I could be content (says
he) to be nothing almost to
eternity, if I might enjoy my Saviour at the last.” He has little acquaintance
with the acuteness of Browne, who suspects him of a
serious opinion, that
any thing can be “almost eternal,” or that any time beginning and ending
is not infinitely less than infinite duration.
In this book, he speaks much, and, in the opinion of
Digby, too much of himself; but with such generality and conciseness as
affords very little light to his biographer: he declares, that, besides
the dialects of different provinces, he understood six languages; that he
was no stranger to astronomy; and that he had seen several countries:
but what most awakens curiosity, is his solemn assertion, that “His life has been a miracle of thirty
years; which to relate, were not history but a piece of poetry, and
would sound like a fable.”
There is, undoubtedly, a sense, in which all life is
miraculous; as it is an union of powers of which we can image no connexion,
a succession of motions of which the first cause must be supernatural:
but life, thus explained, whatever it may have of miracle, will have nothing
of fable; and, therefore, the author undoubtedly had regard to something,
by which he imagined himself distinguished from the rest of mankind.
Of these wonders, however, the view that can be now taken
of his life offers no appearance. The course of his education was like that
of others, such as put him little in the way of extraordinary casualties.
A scholastick and academical life is very uniform; and has, indeed, more
safety than pleasure. A traveller has greater opportunities of adventure; but:
Browne traversed no unknown seas, or Arabian deserts: and, surely,
a man may visit France and Italy, reside at Montpellier and Padua, and at
last take his degree at Leyden, without anything miraculous. What it was,
that would, if it was related, found so poetical and fabulous, we are left
to guess; I believe, without hope of guessing rightly. The wonders probably
were transacted in his own mind: self-love, co-operating with an imagination
vigorous and fertile as that of Browne, will find or make objects of astonishment
in every man’s life: and, perhaps, there is no human being, however hid
in the crowd from the observation of his fellow-mortals, who, if he has
leisure and disposition to recollect his own thoughts and actions, will not
conclude his life in some sort a miracle, and imagine himself distinguished
from all the rest of his species by many discriminations of nature or of
fortune.
The success of this performance was such, as might naturally
encourage the author to new undertakings.
A gentleman of Cambridge, whose name was Merryweather,Life of Sir Thomas Browne.
turned it not inelegantly
into Latin; and from his version it was again translated into Italian,
German, Dutch, and French; and at Strasburg the Latin translation was published
with large notes, by Lennus Nicolaus Moltfarius. Of the English annotations,
which in all the editions from. MDCXLIV accompany the book, the author is
unknown.
Of Merryweather, to whose zeal Browne was so much indebted
for the sudden extension of his renown, I know nothing, but that he published
a small treatise for the instruction of young persons in the attainment of
a Latin stile. He printed his translation in Holland with some difficulty.Merryweather’s letter, inserted in the life of Sir Thomas Browne.
The first printer to whom he offered it, carried it to Salmasius, “who
laid it by (says he) in state for three months,” and then
discouraged
its publication: it was afterwards rejected by two other printers, and at
last was received by Hackius.
The peculiarities of this book raised the author, as
is usual, many admirers and many enemies; but we know not of more than
one professed answer, written under the title of “Medicus medicatus,”Life of Sir Thomas Browne.
by Alexander Ross, which was universally neglected by the world.
At the time when this book was published, Dr. Browne
resided at Norwich, where he had settled in MDCXXXVI, by the
persuasion
of Dr. Lushington his tutor,Wood’s Athenæ Oxonienses.
who was then rector of Barnham Westgate in
the neighbourhood. It is recorded by Wood, that his pratice was very
extensive,
and that many patients resorted to him. In MDCXXXVII he was incorporated
Doctor of physick in Oxford.Wood.
He married in MDCXLI Mrs.
Mileham, of a good family in
Norfolk;Whitefoot.
“a lady” (says Whitefoot) of such
symmetrical proportion to her worthy husband, both in the graces of her body and
mind, that they seemed to come together by a kind of natural magnetism.”
This marriage could not but draw the raillery of contemporary
wits upon a man,Howell’s letters.
who had just been wishing in his new book, “that we might
procreate, like trees, without conjunction;” and had lately declared,
that “the whole world was made for man, but only the twelfth part of man for woman;”Religio Medici.
and that “man is the whole world, but woman only the rib
or crooked part of man.”
Whether the lady had been yet informed of these contemptuous
positions, or whether she was pleased with the conquest of so formidable
a rebel, and considered it as a double triumph, to attract so much merit, and overcome
so powerful prejudices; or whether, like most others, she married upon
mingled motives, between convenience and inclination; she had, however,
no reason to repent: for she lived happily with him one and forty years; and bore him ten children, of whom one
son and three daughters outlived
their parents: she survived him two years, and passed her widowhood in plenty,
if not in opulence.
Browne having now entered the world as an author, and
experienced the delights of praise and molestations of censure, probably
found his dread of the publick eye diminished; and, therefore, was not
long before he trusted his name to the criticks a second time: for in
MDCXLVI
he printed Enquiries into vulgar and common errors;Life of Sir Thomas Browne.
a work, which as it
arose not from
fancy and invention, but from observation and books, and contained not a
single discourse of one continued tenor, of which the latter part
rose from the former,
but an enumeration of many unconnected particulars, must have been the
collection
of years, and the effect of a design early formed and long pursued, to which
his remarks had been continually referred, and which arose gradually to
its present bulk by the daily aggregation of new particles of knowledge.
It is, indeed, to be wished, that he had longer delayed the publication,
and added what the remaining part of his life might have furnished: the
thirty-six years which he spent afterwards in study and experience, would
doubtless have made large additions to an “Enquiry into vulgar errors.”
He published in MDCLXXIII the sixth edition, with some improvements; but I think rather
with explications of what he had already written, than any new heads of
disquisition. But with the work, such as the author, whether hindered from
continuing it by eagerness of praise, or weariness of labour, thought fit to give, we
must be content; and
remember, that in all sublunary things, there is something to be wished,
which we must wish in vain.
This book, like his former, was received with great applause,
was answered by Alexander Ross, and translated into Dutch and German, and not many years ago into French.
It might now be proper, had not the favour with which it was at first received
filled the kingdom with copies, to reprint it with notes partly supplemental
and partly emendatory, to subjoin those discoveries which the industry of
the last age has made, and correct those mistakes which the author has committed
not by idleness or negligence, but for want of Boyle's
and Newton's philosophy.
He appears, indeed, to have been willing to pay labour
for truth. Having heard a flying rumour of sympathetick needles, by which,
suspended over a circular alphabet, distant friends or lovers might correspond, he procured two such alphabets to
be made, touched his
needles with the same magnet, and placed them upon proper spindles: the
result was, that when he moved one of his needles, the other, instead of
taking by sympathy the same direction, “stood like the pillars of Hercules.” That it continued motionless,
will be easily believed; and most men would have been content to believe
it, without the labour of so hopeless an experiment. Browne might himself
have obtained the same conviction by a method less operose, if he had thrust
his needles through corks, and then set them afloat in two basons of water.
Notwithstanding his zeal to detect old errors, he seems
not very easy to admit new positions; for he never mentions the motion
of the earth but with contempt and ridicule, though the opinion, which admits
it, was then growing popular, and was, surely, plausible, even before it
was confirmed by later observations.
The reputation of Browne encouraged some low writer to
publish, under his name, a book called “Nature’s cabinet unlocked,”Wood, and Life of Thomas Browne.
translated,
according to Wood, from the physicks of Magirus; of which Browne took care to clear himself, by
modestly advertising, that
“if any man had been benefited by it, he was not so ambitious as to challenge
the honour thereof, as having no hand in that work.”At the end of Hydriotaphia.
In MDCLVIII the discovery of some antient urns in Norfolk
gave him occasion to write Hydriotaphia, Urn-burial,
or a discourse of sepulchral urns, in which he treats with his usual learning on the funeral rites of
the antient nations; exhibits their various treatment of the dead; and
examines the substances found in his Norfolcian urns. There is, perhaps,
none of his works which better exemplifies his reading or memory. It is
scarcely to be imagined, how many particulars he has amassed together, in a treatise which
seems to have been occasionally written; and for which, therefore, no materials
could have been previously collected. It is, indeed, like other treatises
of antiquity, rather for curiosity than use; for it is of small importance
to know which nation buried their dead in the ground, which threw them into
the sea, or which gave them to birds and beasts; when the practice of cremation
began, or when it was disused; whether the bones of different persons were
mingled in the same urn; what oblations were thrown into the pyre; or
how the ashes of the body were distinguished from those of other substances.
Of the uselessness of all these enquiries, Browne seems not to have been
ignorant; and, therefore, concludes them with an observation which can
never be too frequently recollected.
“All or most apprehensions rested in opinions of
some
future being, which ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted
conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which christians pity or laugh at. Happy are
they, which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little for futurity, but from reason; whereby the noblest
mind fell often upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions: with these hopes
Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits, against the cold potion; and
Cato, before he durst give the
fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the Immortality of
Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the animosity of that
attempt.
“It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw
at man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is
no further state to come, unto which this seems progressional, and
otherwise made in vain: without this accomplishment, the natural expectation
and desire of such a state, were but a fallacy in nature; unsatisfied considerators would quarrel the
justice of their constitution, and rest content that
Adam had fallen lower, whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper ignorance
of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferior creatures,
who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures;
and being framed below the circumference of these hopes or cognition of better things, the
wisdom
of God hath necessitated their contentment. But the superior ingredient
and obscured part of ourselves, whereto all present felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able to tell us we are more than our present
selves;
and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their own accomplishments.”
To his treatise on Urnburial was added
The Garden of Cyrus, or the Quincunxial lozenge, or network
plantation of the antients,
artificially, naturally, mystically considered.
This discourse he begins with the Sacred
garden, in which
the first man was placed; and deduces the practice of horticulture from
the earliest accounts of antiquity to the time of the Persian Cyrus, the
first man whom we actually know to have planted a Quincunx; which,
however, our author is inclined to believe of longer date, and not only discovers it in the
description of the hanging gardens of Babylon, but seems
willing to believe, and to persuade his reader, that it was practised by
the feeders on vegetables before the flood.
Some of the most pleasing performances have been produced
by learning and genius exercised upon subjects of little importance. It seems
to have been, in all ages, the pride of wit, to shew how it could exalt
the low, and amplify the little. To speak not inadequately of things really
and naturally
great, is a talk not only difficult but disagreeable; because the writer
is degraded in his own eyes by standing in comparison with his subject,
to which he can hope to add nothing from his imagination: but it is a perpetual
triumph of fancy to expand a scanty theme, to raise glittering ideas from
obscure properties, and to produce to the world an object of wonder to which
nature had contributed little. To this ambition, perhaps, we owe the Frogs
of Homer, the Gnat and the Bees of Virgil, the Butterfly of
Spenser, the
Shadow of Wowerus, and the Quincunx of Browne.
In the prosecution of this sport of fancy, he considers
every production of art and nature, in which he could find any decussation
or approaches to the form of a Quincunx; and as a man once resolved
upon ideal discoveries, seldom searches long in vain, he finds his
favourite figure in almost every thing, whether natural or invented, antient
or modern, rude or artificial, sacred and civil; so that a reader, not watchful
against the
power of his infusions, would imagine that decussation was the great business of the world, and that nature and art had no other
purpose than to exemplify
and imitate a Quincunx.
To shew the excellence of this figure, he enumerates
all its properties; and finds in it almost every thing of use or pleasure: and to
shew how readily he supplies what he cannot find, one instance
may be sufficient; “though therein (says he) we meet not with right angles,
yet every rhombus containing four angles equal unto two right, it virtually
contains two right in every one.”
The fanciful sports of great minds are never without
some advantage to knowledge. Browne has interspersed many curious observations
on the form of plants, and the laws of vegetation; and appears to have
been a very accurate observer of the modes of germination, and to have watched with great nicety the evolution of the parts of plants from their
seminal
principles.
He is then naturally led to treat of the number five; and finds, that by this number many things are circumscribed; that there
are five kinds of vegetable productions, five sections of a cone, five orders
of architecture, and five acts of a play. And observing that five was the
antient conjugal or wedding number, he proceeds to a speculation which I
shall give in his own words; “The antient numerists made out the conjugal
number by two and three, the first parity and imparity, the active and passive digits, the material and formal principles in generative
societies.”
These are all the tracts which he published: but many
papers were found in his closet, “Some of them, (says Whitefoot)
designed for the press, were often transcribed and corrected by his own hand,
after the fashion of great and curious writers.”
Of these, two collections have been published; one by Dr.
Tennison,
the other in MDCCXXII by a nameless editor. Whether the one or the other
selected
those pieces which the author would have preferred, cannot now be known: but they
have both the merit of giving to mankind what was too valuable to be suppressed; and what might, without their interposition, have, perhaps,
perished among other
innumerable labours of learned men, or have been burnt in a scarcity of fuel like
the papers of Pereskius.
The first of these posthumous treatises contains “Observations
upon several plants mentioned in Scripture.” These remarks, though they
do not immediately either rectify the faith, or refine the morals of the reader,
yet are by no means to be censured as superfluous niceties or useless speculations; for they often
shew some propriety of description, or elegance of allusion, utterly
undiscoverable to readers not skilled in oriental botany; and are often of more
important use, as they remove some difficulty from narratives, or some obscurity
from precepts.
The next is “Of garlands, or coronary and
garland plants;” a subject merely of learned curiosity, without any other
end than the pleasure of reflecting on antient customs, or on
the industry with which studious men have endeavoured to recover them.
The next is a letter “on the fishes eaten” by our
Saviour with his disciples, after “his resurrection from the dead;” which
contains no determinate resolution of the question, what they were, for
indeed it cannot be determined. All the information that diligence or learning
could supply, consists in an enumeration of the fishes produced in the waters
of Judea.
Then follow “Answers to certain queries about fishes,
birds, and insects;” and “A letter of hawks and falconry antient and modern:” in the first of which he gives the proper
interpretation of some antient names of animals, commonly mistaken; and
in the other has some curious observations on the art of hawking, which
he considers as a practice unknown to the antients. I believe all our sports
of the field are of Gothick original; the antients neither hunted by the
scent, nor seem much to have practised horsemanship as an exercise; and
though, in their works, there is mention of “aucupium” and “piscatio,”
they seem no more to have been considered as diversions, than agriculture
or any other manual labour.
In two more letters he speaks of “the cymbals of the Hebrews,” but without any
satisfactory
determination; and of “repalick or gradual verses,” that is, of verses
beginning with a word of one syllable, and proceeding by words of which
each has a syllable more than the former; as,
“O Deus, æternæ stationis conciliator.” Ausonius.
and, after his manner, pursuing the hint, he mentions many other
restrained methods of versifying, to which industrious ignorance has sometimes voluntarily
subjected itself.
His next attempt is “On languages, and particularly the Saxon tongue.” He
discourses with great learning,
and generally with great justness, of the derivation and changes of languages;
but, like other men of multifarious learning, he receives some notions without examination.
Thus he observes, according to the popular opinion, that the Spaniards have retained
so much Latin, as to be able to compose sentences that shall be at once gramatically
Latin and Castilian: this will appear very unlikely to a man that considers
the Spanish terminations; and Howel, who was eminently
skilful in the three provincial
languages, declares, that after many essays he never could effect it.
The principal design of this letter, is to shew the affinity between the modern
English and the
antient Saxon; and he observes, very rightly, that “though we have borrowed
many substantives, adjectives, and some verbs, from the French; yet the
great body of numerals, auxiliary verbs, articles, pronouns, adverbs,
conjunctions, and prepositions, which are the distinguishing and lasting parts of a language, remain
with us from the Saxon.”
To prove this position more evidently, he has drawn up
a short discourse of six paragraphs, in Saxon and English; of which every
word is the same in both languages, excepting the terminations and orthography.
The words are, indeed, Saxon, but the phraseology is English; and, I think,
would not have been understood by Bede or
Ælfric, notwithstanding the confidence
of our author. He has, however, sufficiently proved his position, that the
English resembles its parental language, more than any modern European dialect.
There remain five tracts of this collection yet unmentioned; one “Of artificial hills, mounts, or burrows, in England;” in reply
to an interrogatory letter of E. D. whom the writers of Biographia Britannica
suppose to be, if rightly printed, W. D. or Sir William Dugdale, one of Browne’s
correspondents.
These are declared by Browne, in concurrence, I think, with all other antiquarians,
to be for the most part funeral monuments. He proves, that both the Danes
and Saxons buried their men of eminence under piles of earth, “which admitting
(says he) neither ornament, epitaph, nor inscription, may, if earthquakes
spare them, outlast other monuments: obelisks have their term, and pyramids will tumble; but these mountainous monuments
may stand, and are like to have the same period with the earth.”
In the next, he answers two geographical questions; one concerning Troas,
mentioned in the Acts and Epistles of St. Paul, which he determines
to be the city built near the antient Ilium; and the other concerning the dead
sea,
of which he gives the same account with other writers.
Another letter treats “Of the answers” of the oracle of Apollo
at Delphos, to “Crœsus king of Lydia.” In this tract nothing
deserves notice, more
than that Browne considers the oracles as evidently and indubitably supernatural,
and founds all his disquisition upon that postulate. He wonders why the physiologists
of old, having such means of instruction, did not inquire into the secrets of nature: but judiciously concludes, that
such questions would probably have been vain;
“for, in matters cognoscible, and formed for our disquisition, our industry
must be our oracle, and reason our Apollo.”
The pieces that remain are, “A prophecy concerning the future
state of several nations;” in which Browne plainly
discovers his expedition to be the same with that entertained
lately with more confidence by Dr. Berkley, “that America will be the
seat of
the fifth empire:” and “Museum clausum, sive Bibliotheca abscondita;” in which
the author amuses himself with imagining the existence of books and curiosities,
either never in being, or irrecoverably lost.
These pieces I have recounted as they are ranged in
Tennison's
collection, because the editor has given no account of the time at which any of them
were written. Some of them are of little value, more than as they gratify the mind
with the picture of a great scholar, turning his learning into amusement; or shew,
upon how great a variety of enquiries the same mind has been successfully employed.
The other collection of his posthumous pieces, published in otavo,
London MDCCXXII, contains “Repertorium; or “some account of the tombs and
monuments in the cathedral of Norwich; where, as Tennison
observes, there is not matter proportionate to the skill of the Antiquary.
The other pieces are, “Answers to Sir
William Dugdale's enquiries about the fens; A letter concerning Ireland;
Another relating to urns newly discovered; Some short strictures on different
subjects; and A letter to a friend on the death of his intimate friend,”
published singly by the author’s son in MDCXC.
There is inserted, in the Biographia
Britannica, “A
letter containing instructions for the study of physick;” which, with
the Essays here offered to the public, completes the works of Dr. Browne.
To the life of this learned man, there remains little
to be added, but that in MDCLXV he was chosen honorary fellow of the college
of physicians, as a man, “Virtute et literis ornatissimus,—eminently embellished with literature and virtue:” and, in
MDCLXXI, received, at Norwich, the honour of knighthood from
Charles II; a prince who, with many frailties and vices, had yet skill to discover excellence, and virtue to reward it, with such honorary
distinctions at least as cost him nothing, yet conferred by a king so judicious
and so much beloved, had the power of giving merit new lustre and greater
popularity.
Thus he lived in high reputation; till in his seventy-sixth
year he was seized with a colick, which, after having tortured him about
a week, put an end to his life at Norwich, on his birthday, October 19,
MDCLXXXII.Browne’s Remains.
Whitefoot.
Some of his last words were expressions of
submission to the will of God, and fearlessness of death.
He lies buried in the church of St. Peter, Mancroft, in
Norwich, with this inscription on a mural monument, placed on the south pillar
of the altar:
M. S.
Hic situs est Thomas Browne, M.D.
Et Miles.
Ao 1605. Londini natus
Generosa Familia apud Upton
In agro Cestriensi oriundus.
Scholâ primum Wintoniensi, postea
In Coll. Pembr.
Apud Oxonienses bonis literis
Haud leviter imbutus
In urbe hâc Nordovicensi medicinam
Arte egregia, & fælici successu professus,
Scriptis quibus tituli, Religio Medici
Et Pseudodoxia Epidemica aliisque
Per Orbem notissimus.
Vir Prudentissimus, Integerrimus, Doctissimus;
Obiit Octobr. 19. 1682.
Pie posuit mæstissima Conjux
Da. Doroth. Br.
Near the Foot of this Pillar
Lies Sir Thomas Browne, Kt. and Doctor in Physick,
Author of Religio Medici, and other Learned Books,
Who practic’d Physick in the City 46 Years,
And died Octr. 1682, in the 77 Year of his Age.
In Memory of whom
Dame Dorothy Browne, who had bin his Affectionate
Wife
47 Years, caused this Monument to be Erected.
Besides his lady, who died in MDCLXXXV, he left a son and three
daughters. Of the daughters nothing very remarkable is known; but his son, Edward Browne, requires a particular mention.
He was born about the year MDCXLII; and after having passed
through the classes of the school at Norwich, became bachelor of physick at Cambridge; and afterwards removing to Merton-College in Oxford, was admitted there to the
same degree, and afterwards made a doctor. In MDCLXVIII he visited part of Germany; and in the year following made a wider
excursion into Austria, Hungary, and Thessaly; where the Turkish Sultan then kept his court at
Larissa. He afterwards passed
through Italy. His skill in natural history made him particularly attentive to mines
and metallurgy. Upon his return he published an account of the countries thro’ which
he had passed; which I have heard commended by a learned traveller, who has visited many places after him, as written with scrupulous
and exalt veracity, such as is scarcely to be found in any other book of
the same kind. But whatever it may contribute to the instruction
of a naturalist, I cannot recommend it as likely to give much pleasure to
common readers: for whether it be, that the world is very uniform, and
therefore he who is resolved to adhere to truth, will have few novelties
to relate; or that Dr. Browne was, by the train of his studies, led to
enquire most after those things, by which the greatest part of mankind is
little affected; a great part of his book seems to contain very unimportant
accounts of his passage from one place where he saw little, to another where
he saw no more.
Upon his return, he practised physick in London; was
made physician first to Charles II, and afterwards in
MDCLXXXII to St. Bartholomew's hospital. About the same time he joined his name to
those of many other eminent men, in “A translation of Plutarch’s
lives.” He was first censor, then elect, and treasurer of the college
of physicians; of which in MDCCV he was chosen president, and held his
office, till in MDCCVIII he died in a degree of estimation
suitable to a
man so variously accomplished, that King Charles had honoured him with this panegyrick, that “He was as learned as any of the college, and as well
bred as any of the court.”
Of every great and eminent character, part breaks forth
into publick view, and part lies hid in domestick privacy. Those
qualities which have been exerted in any known and lasting performances,
may, at any distance of time, be traced and estimated; but silent excellencies
are soon forgotten; and those minute peculiarities which discriminate every
man from all others, if they are not recorded by those whom personal knowledge
enabled to observe them, are irrecoverably lost. This mutilation of
character must have happened, among many others, to Sir Thomas Browne, had
it not been delineated by his friend Mr. Whitefoot, who “esteemed it
an especial favour of Providence, to have had a
particular acquaintance
with him for two thirds of his life.” Part of his observations I shall,
therefore, copy.
“For a character of his person, his complexion and hair was answerable to his name; his
stature was moderate, and
habit of body neither fat nor lean, but ἐυσάρκος
“In his habit of clothing, he had an aversion to all
finery, and affected plainness, both in the fashion and ornaments.
He ever wore a cloke, or boots, when few others did. He kept
himself always very warm, and thought it most safe so to do, though he
never loaded himself with such a multitude of garments, as Suetonius reports
of Augustus, enough to clothe a good family.
“The horizon of his understanding was much larger
than the hemisphere of the world: All that was visible in the heavens he comprehended so well, that few that are
under them knew so much: He could tell the number of the visible stars
in his horizon, and call them all by their names that had any; and of
the earth he had such a minute and exact geographical knowledge, as if
he had been by Divine Providence ordained surveyor-general of the whole terrestrial orb, and
its products, minerals, plants, and animals. He was so curious a botanist,
that besides the specifical distinctions, he made nice and elaborate
observations, equally useful as entertaining.
“His memory, though not so eminent as that of
Seneca or Scaliger, was capacious and tenacious,
insomuch
as he remembred all that was remarkable in any book that
he had read; and not only knew all persons again that he had ever seen
at any distance of time, but remembred the circumstances of their bodies,
and their particular discourses and speeches.
“In the latin poets he remembred every thing that
was acute and pungent; he had read most of the historians, antient and modern, wherein his observations were
singular, not taken notice of
by common readers; he was excellent company when he was at leisure, and expressed more light than heat in the temper of his
brain.
He had no despotical power over his affections and passions,
(that was a privilege of original perfection, forfeited by the neglect of the use of it;) but as large a political
power over them, as any Stoick, or man of his time, whereof he gave so
great experiment, that he hath very rarely been known to have been overcome with any of them. The
strongest that were
found in him, both of the irascible and concupiscible, were under the
controul of his reason. Of admiration, which is one of them, being the
only product, either of ignorance, or uncommon knowledge, he had more,
and less, than other men, upon the same account of his knowing
more than others; so that tho’ he met with many rarities, he admired
them not so much as others do.
“He was never seen to be transported with mirth, or dejected with
sadness; always chearful, but rarely merry, at any sensible rate; seldom heard
to break a jest; and when he did, he would be apt
to blush at the levity of it: his gravity was natural without affectation.
“His modesty was visible in a natural habitual blush,
which was increased upon the least occasion, and oft discovered without any
observable cause.
“They that knew no more of him than by the briskness of his writings, found themselves deceived in their expectation, when
they came in his company, noting the gravity and sobriety of his aspect and conversation; so free from loquacity, or much talkativeness, that
he was something difficult to be engaged in any discourse; though when he was
so, it was always singular, and never trite or vulgar. Parsimonious
in nothing but his time, whereof he made as much improvement, with as
little loss as any man in it: when he had any to spare from his drudging
practice, he was scarce patient of any diversion from his study; so impatient of
sloth and idleness, that he would say, he could not do
nothing.
“Sir Thomas understood most of the
European languages; viz. all that are in Hutter's bible, which he made
use of. The Latin
and Greek he understood critically; the Oriental languages, which never
were vernacular in this part of the world, he thought the use of them
would not answer the time and pains of learning them; yet had so great
a veneration for the matrix of them, viz. the Hebrew, consecrated to
the Oracles of God, that he was not content to be totally ignorant of it; tho’ very little of his science is to
be found in any books of that
primitive language. And tho’ much is said to be written in the derivative
idioms of that tongue, especially the Arabick, yet he was satisfied with the
translations, wherein he found nothing was admirable.
“In his religion he continued in the same mind which
he had declared in his first book, written when he was but thirty years
old, his Religio Medici, wherein he fully assented to that of the Church
of England, preferring it before any in the world, as did the learned
Grotius. He attended the publick service very constantly, when he was
not withheld by his practice. Never missed the sacrament in his parish, if he were
in town. Read the best English sermons he could hear of, with liberal applause; and delighted not in controversies. In his
last sickness, wherein he continued about
a week’s time, enduring great pain of the cholick, besides
a continual fever, with as much patience as hath been seen in
any man, without any pretence of Stoical apathy, animosity, or vanity of not being concerned
thereat, or suffering no impeachment of happiness. Nihil agis
dolor.
“His patience was founded upon the Christian philosophy, and a
sound faith of God's Providence, and a meek and humble
submission thereunto, which he expressed in few
words: I visited him near his end, when he had not strength to hear or speak
much; the last words which I heard from him, were, besides some expressions of dearness, that he did freely
submit to the will of God, being without fear: He had oft triumphed over the
king of terrors in others, and given many repulses in the defence of patients;
but when his own turn came, he submitted with a meek, rational, and
religious courage.
“He might have made good the old saying of Dat Galenus
opes, had he lived in a place that could have afforded it. But his indulgence
and liberality to his children, especially in their travels, two of
his sons in divers countries, and two of his daughters in France, spent
him moree a little. He was liberal in his house entertainments, and in his charity; he left a
comfortable, but no great estate, both to his lady and children, gained
by his own industry.
“Such was his sagacity and knowledge of all
history, antient and modern, and his observations thereupon so singular, that
it hath been said by them that knew him best, that if his profession,
and place of abode, would have suited his ability, he would
have made an extraordinary man for the privy-council, not much inferior to the
famous Padre, Paulo, the late oracle of the Venetian state.
“Tho’ he were no prophet, nor son of a prophet, yet
in that faculty which comes nearest it, he excelled, i. e. the stochastick,
wherein he was seldom mistaken, as to future events, as well publick
as private; but not apt to discover any presages or superstition.”
It is observable, that he who in his earlier years had
read all the books against religion, was in the latter part of his life
averse from controversies. To play with important truths, to disturb the
repose of established tenets, to subtilize objections, and elude proof,
is too often the sport of youthful vanity, of which maturer experience commonly
repents. There is a time, when every wife man is weary of raising difficulties
only to talk himself with the solution, and desires to enjoy truth without the labour or hazard
of contest. There is, perhaps, no better method of encountering these troublesome
irruptions of scepticism, with which inquisitive minds are frequently harassed,
than that which Browne declares himself to have taken: “If there
arise
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 reason is his best
Œdipus, and will,
upon a reasonable truce, find a way “to loose those bonds, wherewith the
subtilties of error have enchained our more flexible and tender judgments.”
The foregoing character may be confirmed and enlarged
by many passages in the Religio Medici; in which it appears, from
Whitefoot's testimony, that the author, though no very sparing panegyrist of himself,
has not exceeded the truth, with respect to his attainments or visible qualities.
There are, indeed, some interior and secret virtues,
which a man may sometimes have without the knowledge of others; and may
sometimes assume to himself, without sufficient reasons for his opinion.
It is charged upon Browne by Dr. Watts, as an instance of arrogant temerity,
that, after a long detail of his attainments, he declares himself to have escaped the first and father-sin of pride.” A perusal of the
Religio Medici will not much contribute to produce a belief of the author's exemption from this
FATHER-SIN: pride is a vice, which pride itself inclines every man
to find in others, and to overlook in himself.
As easily may we be mistaken in mating our own courage,
as our own humility; and, therefore, when Browne shews himself persuaded,
that “he could lose an arm without a tear, or with a few groans be
quartered to pieces,” I am not sure that he felt in himself any uncommon powers of endurance; or, indeed, any thing more than
a sudden effervescence of imagination, which, uncertain and involuntary
as it is, he mistook for settled resolution.
“That there were not many extant, that if in a
noble way feared the face of death less than himself,” he might likewise believe at a very easy expence, while death was yet at a distance; but the time will come to every human being, when it
must be known how
well he can bear to die; and it has appeared, that our author’s fortitude
did not desert him in the great hour of trial.
It was observed by some of the remarkers on the
Religio
Medici, that the author was yet alive, and might grow worse as well
as better:” it is, therefore, happy, that this suspicion can be obviated
by a testimony given to the continuance of his virtue, at a time when death
had set him free from danger of change, and his panegyrist from temptation
to flattery.
But it is not on the praises of others, but on his own
writings, that he is to depend for the esteem of posterity; of which he
will not easily be deprived, while learning shall have any reverence among
men: for there is no science, in which he does not discover some skill; and scarce any kind of knowledge, profane or
sacred, abstruse or elegant,
which he does not appear to have cultivated with success.
His exuberance of knowledge, and plenitude of ideas,
sometimes obstruct the tendency of his reasoning, and the clearness of his
decisions: on whatever subject he employed his mind, there started up immediately
so many images before him, that he lost one by grasping another. His memory supplied him with so many illustrations, parallel or dependent notions,
that he was always starting into collateral considerations: but the spirit
and vigour of his pursuit always gives delight; and the reader follows
him, without reluctance, thro’ his mazes, in themselves flowery and pleasing, and ending at the point originally
in view.
To have great excellencies, and great faults, “magnæ virtutes
nec minora vitia, is the poesy,” says our author, “of the best natures.” This poesy may be properly applied to the
style of Browne: It 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: his tropes are harsh, and his combinations
uncouth. He fell into an age, in which our language began to lose the stability
which it had obtained in the time of Elizabeth; and was considered by every
writer as a subject on which he might try his plastick skill, by moulding it
according to his own fancy. Milton, in consequence of this encroaching licence,
began to introduce the Latin idiom: and Browne, though he gave less
disturbance
to our structures and phraseology, yet poured in a multitude of exotick words; many, indeed, useful and
significant, which, if rejected, must be supplied by
circumlocution, such as Commensality for the state of many living at the
same table; but many superfluous,
as a Paralogical for an unreasonable doubt; and some so obscure, that they conceal
his meaning rather than explain it, as Arthritical analogies for parts that
serve some animals in the place of joints.
His style is, indeed, a tissue of many languages; a mixture
of heterogeneous words, brought together from distant regions, with terms originally
appropriated to one art, and drawn by violence into the service of another. He
must,
however, be confessed to have augmented our philosophical diction; and in defence
of his uncommon words and expressions, we must consider, that he had uncommon sentiments,
and was not content to express in many words that idea for which any language could
supply a single term.
But his innovations are sometimes pleasing, and his temerities
happy: he has many “verba ardentia,” forcible expressions, which he would never
have found, but by venturing to the utmost verge of propriety; and flights which
would never have been reached, but by one who had very little fear of the shame
of falling.
There remains yet an objection against the writings of Browne,
more formidable than the animadversions of criticism. There are passages, from which
some have taken occasion to rank him among Deists, and others among Atheists.
It would be difficult to guess how any such conclusion should be formed, had
not experience shewn that there are two sorts of men willing to enlarge the catalogue
of infidels.
It has been long observed, that an Atheist has no just reason
for endeavouring conversions; and yet none harass those minds which they can
influence, with more importunity of solicitation to adopt their opinions. In proportion as they doubt the truth of
their own doctrines, they are desirous to gain the attestation of another
understanding; and industriously labour to win a proselyte, and eagerly catch at the
slightest
pretence to dignify their sect with a celebrated name.
Therefore no hereticks desire to spread
Their wild opinions like these epicures.
For so their stagg’ring thoughts are computed,
And other men’s assent their doubt assures.
Davies.
The others become friends to infidelity only by unskilful hostility: men of rigid orthodoxy, cautious conversation, and religious
asperity. Among these,
it is too frequently the practice, to make in their heat concessions to Atheism,
or Deism, which their most confident advocates had never dared to claim or to hope.
A sally of levity, an idle paradox, an indecent jest, an unseasonable objection,
are sufficient, in the opinion of these men, to efface a name from the lists of
Christianity,
to exclude a soul from everlasting life. Such men are so watchful to censure,
that they have seldom much care to look for favourable interpretations of
ambiguities, to set the general tenor of life against single failures, or
to know how soon any slip of inadvertency has been expiated by sorrow and
retractation; but let fly their fulminations, without mercy or prudence,
against slight offences or casual temerities, against crimes never committed,
or immediately repented.
The Infidel knows well, what he is doing. He is endeavouring
to supply, by authority, the deficiency of his arguments; and to make his cause
less invidious, by shewing numbers on his side: he will, therefore, not change
his conduct, till he reforms his principles. But the zealot should recollect,
that he is labouring, by this frequency of excommunication, against his own
cause; and voluntarily adding strength to the enemies of truth.
It must always be the condition of a great part of mankind, to reject and
embrace tenets upon the authority of those whom they think wiser than themselves; and, therefore, the addition of every name to infidelity, in
some degree
invalidates that argument upon which the religion of multitudes is necessarily
founded.
Men may differ from each other in many religious opinions,
and yet all may retain the essentials of Christianity; men may sometimes eagerly
dispute, and yet not differ much from
one another: the rigorous persecutors of error, should, therefore, enlighten
their zeal with knowledge, and temper their orthodoxy with Charity; that
Charity, without which orthodoxy is vain;
Charity that “thinketh no evil,”
but “hopeth all things,” and “endureth” all things.”
Whether Browne has been numbered
among the contemners of religion, by the fury of its friends, or the artifice of
its enemies, it is no difficult talk to replace him among the most zealous
Professors of Christianity. He may, perhaps, in the ardour of his imagination, have hazarded an expression,
which a mind intent upon faults may interpret into heresy, if considered
apart from the rest of his discourse; but a phrase is not to be opposed
to volumes: there is scarcely a writer to be found, whose profession was
not divinity, that has so frequently testified his belief of the
Sacred Writings, has appealed to them with such unlimited
submission, or mentioned them
with such unvaried reverence.
It is, indeed, somewhat wonderful, that He
should be
placed without the pale of Christianity, who declares, that “he
assumes the honourable stile of A Christian,”
not because it is “the religion of his country,” but because “having
in his riper years and confirmed judgment seen and examined all, he finds himself obliged, by the principles of
Grace, and the law of his own reason, to embrace
no other name but this:” Who, to specify his persuasion yet more, tells us, that he is of the
Reformed Religion; of the same belief our
Saviour taught, the Apostles disseminated,
the Fathers authorized, and the Martyrs confirmed:”
Who, tho’ “paradoxical in philosophy,
loves in divinity to keep the beaten road;” and pleases himself, that “he has no taint of
heresy, schism, or error:” To
whom “where the Scripture is silent, the Church is a text; where that speaks, ’tis
but a comment; and who uses not
the dictates of his own reason, but where
there is a joint silence of both:” Who blesses himself, that he lived not in the days of miracles, when faith had been
thrust upon him; but enjoys that greater blessing, pronounced to all that believe and
saw not.” He cannot surely be charged with a defect of faith, who “believes
that our Saviour was dead, and buried, and rose again, and desires to
see him in his glory:” and who affirms, that “this is not much to believe;” that as we have
reason, we owe this faith unto history;” and that
“they only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith, who lived
before his coming; and, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise a belief.” Nor can contempt of the positive and ritual parts
of religion be imputed to him, who doubts, whether a good man would refuse
a poisoned eucharist; and “who would violate his own arm, rather than
a church.”
The opinions of every man must be learned from himself:
concerning his practice, it is safest to trust the evidence of others. Where
these 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.
CHRISTIAN MORALS.
TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE
DAVID EARL OF BUCHAN,
VISCOUNT AUCHTERHOUSE, LORD CARDROSS
AND GLENDOVACHIE,
ONE OP THE LORDS COMMISSIONERS OF POLICE, AND LORD
LIEUTENANT OF THE COUNTIES OP STIRLING
AND CLACKMANNAN IN NORTH
BRITAIN.
My Lord,
THE Honour you have done our
Family obligeth us to make all
just Acknowledgments of it: and
there is no Form of Acknowledgment in our Power, more worthy of your Lordship’s Acceptance, than this Dedication of
the last Work of our Honoured and Learned
Father. Encouraged hereunto by the knowledge we have of Your Lordship’s Judicious Relish of
universal
Learning, and sublime Virtue, we beg the Favour of Your Acceptance of it, which
will very much oblige our Family in general, and Her in particular, who is,
My Lord,
Your Lordship’s
most humble Servant,
Elizabeth Littleton.
THE PREFACE.
IF any one, after he has read Religio
Medici, and the ensuing Discourse,
can make doubt, whether the same
person was the author of them both, he may
be assured by the testimony of Mrs. Littleton, Sir
Thomas Brown's daughter, who lived with her father when it was composed by him; and who,
at the time, read it written by his own hand: and also by the testimony of others
(of whom I am one), who read the manuscript of the author, immediately after his
death, and who have since read the same; from which it hath been faithfully and exactly transcribed for the press. The reason why it was not printed sooner is,
because it was unhappily lost, by being mislay’d among other
manuscripts for which search was lately made in the presence
of the Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, of which his Grace, by letter, informed Mrs.
Littleton, when he sent the manuscript to her. There is nothing printed in
the discourse, or in the short notes, but what is found in the original
manuscript
of the author, except only where an oversight had made the addition or transposition
of some words necessary.
John Jeffrey,
Arch-Deacon of Norwich
CHRISTIAN MORALS.
PART I.
TREAD softly and circumspectly in this funambulatoryNarrow,
like the walk of a rope-dancer.
track and narrow
path of goodness: pursue virtue virtuously: leven not good actions nor render
virtues disputable. Stain not fair acts with foul intentions: maim not
uprightness by halting concomitances, nor circumstantially deprave substantial
goodness.
Consider whereabout thou art in Cebes'sThe table or picture of
Cebes, an allegorical representation
of the characters and conditions of mankind; which is translated by Mr. Collier,
and added to the meditations of Antoninus.
table, or that old
philosophical pinaxPicture.
of the life of
man: whether thou art yet in the road of uncertainties; whether thou hast
yet entred the narrow gate, got up the hill and asperous way, which leadeth
unto the house of sanity; or taken that purifying potion from the hand
of sincere erudition, which may send thee clear and pure away unto a virtuous
and happy life.
In this virtuous voyage of thy life hull not about like
the ark, without the use of rudder, mast, or sail, and bound for no port.
Let not disappointment cause despondency, nor difficulty despair. Think
not that you are failing from Lima to Manilla,Over the pacifick ocean, in the course of the
ship
which now sails from Acapulco to Manilla, perhaps formerly from Lima, or
more properly from Callao, Lima not being a seaport.
when you may
fasten up the rudder, and sleep before the wind; but expect rough seas,
flaws,“Sudden gusts, or violent attacks of bad weather.”
and contrary
blasts: and ’tis well, if by many cross tacks and veerings you arrive at the port;
for we sleep in lions’ skinsThat is, “in armour, in a state of military vigilance.” One
of the Grecian chiefs used to represent open force by the “lion’s skin,” and policy
by the “fox’s tail.”
in our progress unto virtue, and we slide not but climb
unto it.
Sit not down in the popular forms and common level of virtues.
Offer not only peace-offerings but holocausts unto God: where all is due make no reserve, and cut not a cummin-seed with the
Almighty: to serve Him singly to serve
ourselves, were too partial a piece of piety; not like to place us in the illustrious
mansions of glory.
REST not in an ovationOvation, a petty and minor kind of triumph. Note to
the first edition.
but a triumph over thy passions.
Let anger walk hanging down the head; let malice go manicled, and envy fetter’d after thee. Behold within thee
the long train of thy trophies, not without thee. Make the quarrelling Lapithytes
sleep, and Centaurs within lie quiet.That is, “thy turbulent and irascible passions.” For the Lapithytes
and Centaurs, see Ovid.
Chain up the unruly legion of thy
breast.
Lead thine own captivity captive, and he Cæsar within thyself.
HE that is chast and continent not to
impair his strength, or honest for
fear of contagion, will hardly be
heroically virtuous. Adjourn not this virtue
until that temper, when CatoThe Censor, who is frequently confounded, and by
Pope
amongst others, with Cato of Utica.
could lend
out his wife, and impotent satyrs write satyrs upon lust: but be chast in thy flaming
days, when Alexander dar’d not trust his eyes upon the fair sisters of Darius, and when so many think
there is no other way but Origen’s.
SOW thy art in honesty, and lose
not thy virtue by the bad managery
of it. Be temperate and sober; not
to preserve your body in an ability for wanton ends; not to avoid the infamy of
common transgressors that way, and thereby to
hope to expiate or palliate obscure and closer
vices; not to spare your purse, nor simply to
enjoy health: but in one word, that thereby
you may truly serve God, which every sickness will tell you you cannot well do without
health. The sick man’s sacrifice is but a
lame oblation. Pious treasures laid up in
healthful days, plead for sick non-performances without which we must needs look
back with anxiety upon the lost opportunities of health; and may have cause rather to envy than pity the ends of penitent publick
sufferers, who go with healthful
prayers unto the last scene of their lives, and in the integrity of their
faculties“With their faculties unimpaired.”
return their spirit unto
God that gave it.
BE charitable before wealth make
thee covetous, and lose not the glory of the mite. If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace with them;
and think it not enough to be liberal, but
munificent. Though a cup of cold water
from some hand may not be without its
reward, yet stick not thou for wine and oil
for the wounds of the distressed; and treat
the poor, as our Saviour did the multitude, to the reliques of some baskets.
Diffuse thy beneficence early, and while thy treasures call thee master: there may be an AtroposAtropos is the lady of destiny that cuts the thread of
life.
of thy fortunes before that of thy life, and thy wealth
cut off before that hour, when all men shall be poor; for the justice of death
looks equally upon the dead, and Charon expects no more from Alexander than from
Irus.
GIVE not only unto seven, but also
unto eight, that is, unto more than
many.Ecclesiasticus.
Though to give unto
every one that asketh may seem severe
advice,Luke.
yet give thou also before asking;
that is, where want is silently clamorous,
and men’s necessities not their tongues do
loudly call for thy mercies. For though sometimes necessitousness be dumb, or
misery speak not out, yet true charity is sagacious,
and will find out hints for beneficence. Acquaint thyself with the physiognomy of want, and let the dead colours
and first lines of necessity suffice to tell thee there is an object for
thy bounty. Spare not where thou canst not easily be prodigal, and fear
not to be undone by mercy; for since he who hath pity on the poor lendeth
unto the Almighty rewarder, who observes no ides’ The ides was the time when money lent out at interest
was commonly repaid.
Fœnerator Alphius
Suam religit Idibus pecuniam,
Quætrit calendis ponere.
Hor.
but every day for his
payments, charity becomes pious usury, Christian liberality the most thriving
industry; and what we adventure in a cockboat may return in a carrack unto
us. He who thus casts his bread upon the water, shall surely find it again; for though it falleth to the bottom, it
sinks but like the ax of the prophet,
to rise again unto him.
IF avarice be thy vice, yet make it not thy punishment. Miserable
men commiserate not themselves, bowelless unto others, and merciless unto their
own bowels. Let the fruition of things bless the possession
of them, and think it more satisfaction to live richly than die rich. For since
thy good works, not thy goods, will follow thee; since wealth is an appertinance
of life, and no dead man is rich; to famish in plenty, and live poorly, to die
rich, were a multiplying improvement in madness, and use upon use in folly.
TRUST not to the omnipotency of
gold, and say not unto it thou art
my confidence. Kiss not thy hand
to that terrestrial sun, nor bore thy ear unto
its servitude. A slave unto mammon makes no servant unto
God. Covetousness cracks the sinews of faith; numbs the
apprehension of any thing above
sense; and only affected with the certainty
of things present, makes a peradventure of things to come; lives but unto one world,
nor hopes but fears another; makes their own death sweet unto others, bitter unto
themselves; brings formal sadness, scenical mourning, and no wet eyes at the grave.
PERSONS lightly dipt, not grain’dNot deeply tinged, not died in grain.
in generous honesty, are but pale in
goodness, and faint hued in integrity. But be thou what thou virtuously
art, and let not the ocean wash away thy
tincture. Stand magneticallyThat is, “with a position as immutable as
that of the magnetical
axis,” which is popularly supposed to be invariably parallel to the meridian, or
to stand exactly north and south.
upon that axis, when prudent
simplicity hath fixt there; and let
no attraction invert the poles of thy honesty. That vice may be uneasy and
even monstrous unto thee, let iterated good ads and long confirmed habits
make virtue almost natural, or a second nature in thee. Since virtuous superstructions
have commonly generous foundations, dive into thy inclinations, and early
discover what nature bids thee to be, or tells thee thou may’st be. They
who thus timely descend into themselves, and cultivate the good seeds which
nature hath set in them, prove not shrubs but cedars in their generation.
And to be in the form of the best of the bad, or the worst of the good,Optimi malorum pessimi bonorum. First
edit.
will be no satisfaction unto them.
MAKE not the consequence of virtue the ends thereof. Be not beneficent
for a name or cymbal of applause; nor exalt and just in commerce for the advantages
of trust and credit, which attend the reputation of true and punctual dealing: for
these rewards, though unsought for, plain virtue will bring with her. To have other
by-ends in good actions sowers laudable performances, which must have deeper roots,
motives, and instigations, to give them the stamp of virtues.
LET not the law of thy country be
the non ultra of thy honesty; nor
think that always good enough
which the law will make good. Narrow
not the law of charity, equity, mercy. Join
gospel righteousness with legal right. Be not a mere Gamaliel in the faith, but let the sermon in the mount be
thy TargumA paraphrase or amplification.
unto the law of Sinai.
LIVE by old ethicks and the classical rules of honesty. Put no new
names or notions upon authentick
virtues and vices. Think not, that morality
is ambulatory; that vices in one age are not
vices in another; or that virtues, which are
under the everlasting seal of right reason,
may be stamped by opinion. And therefore though vicious times invert the opinions
of things, and set up new ethicks against
virtue, yet hold thou unto old morality;
and rather than follow a multitude to do
evil, stand like Pompey’s pillar conspicuous
by thyself, and single in integrity. And
since the worst of times afford imitable examples of virtue; since no deluge of vice is like to be so general but more than eight will escape;Alluding to
the flood of Noah.
eye well those heroes who have held their heads above water, who have touched pitch
and not been defiled, and in the common contagion have remained uncorrupted.
LET age not envy draw wrinkles on thy cheeks; be content to be
envy’d, but envy not. Emulation
may be plausible and indignation allowable,
but admit no treaty with that passion which
no circumstance can make good. A displacency at the good of others because they
enjoy it, though not unworthy of it, is an absurd depravity, sticking fast unto corrupted nature, and often too hard for humility and charity, the great suppressors of
envy. This surely is a lion not to be strangled but by Hercules himself, or the
highest stress of our minds, and an atom of that power which
subdueth all things unto itself.
WE not thy humility unto humiliation from adversity, but look
humbly down in that state when
others look upwards upon thee. Think
not thy own shadow longer than that of
others, nor delight to take the altitude of
thyself. Be patient in the age of pride,
when men live by short intervals of reason
under the dominion of humor and passion,
when it’s in the power of every one to
transform thee out of thyself, and run thee
into the short madness. If you cannot imitate Job, yet come not short of
Socrates,
—Dulcique fenex vicinus Hymetto,
Qui partem acceptæ sæva inter vincla cicutæ,
Accusatori nollet dare.
Juv.
Not so mild Thales, nor Chrysippus thought;
Nor the good man who drank the pois’nous draught
With mind serene, and could not wish to see
His vile accuser drink as deep as he:
Exalted Socrates!—
Creech.
and those patient Pagans who tired the tongues of their enemies,
while they perceived they spit their malice at brazen walls and statues.
LET not the sun in capricornEven when the days are shortest. First edit.
go
down upon thy wrath, but write thy wrongs in ashes. Draw the
curtain of night upon injuries, shut them
up in the tower of oblivion,Alluding unto the tower of oblivion mentioned by Procopius,
which was the name of a tower of imprisonment among the Persians: whoever was put
therein was as it were buried alive, and it was death for any but to name him.
First edit.
and let them
be as though they had not been. To forgive our enemies, yet hope that
God will
punish them, is not to forgive enough. To forgive them ourselves, and not to
pray God to forgive them, is a partial piece of charity. Forgive thine
enemies totally, and without any reserve that, however, God will revenge thee.
WHILE thou so hotly disclaimest the
devil, be not guilty of diabolism.
Fall not into one name with that
unclean spirit, nor act his nature whom
thou so much abhorrest; that is, to accuse,
calumniate, backbite, whisper, detract, or sinistrously interpret others. Degenerous
depravities, and narrow-minded vices! not
only below St. Paul's noble Christian but
Aristotle's true gentleman.See Aritiotle’s Ethicks, chapter of Magnanimity. Note to the
first edit.
Trust not
with some that the epistle of St. James
is apocryphal, and so read with less fear
that stabbing truth, that in company with
this vice “thy religion is in vain.” Moses
broke the tables, without breaking of the law; but where charity is broke, the law itself is shattered,
which cannot be whole without Love, which is “the fulfilling of it.” Look humbly
upon thy virtues; and though thou art rich in some, yet think thyself poor and
naked without that crowning grace, which “thinketh no evil, which envieth not,
which beareth, hopeth, believeth, endureth all things.” With these
sure graces,
while busy tongues are crying out for a drop of cold water, mutes may be in happiness,
and sing the TrisagionHoly, holy, holy. First edit.
in heaven.
HOWEVER thy understanding may
waver in the theories of true and
false, yet fasten the rudder of thy
will, steer straight unto good and fall not foul on evil. Imagination is apt to rove,
and conjecture to keep no bounds. Some
have run out so far, as to fancy the stars might be but the light of the crystalline heaven
shot
through perforations on the bodies of the orbs. Others more ingeniously
doubt whether there hath not been a vast tract of land in the Atlantick ocean,
which earthquakes and violent causes have long ago devoured. Speculative
misapprehensions may be innocuous, but immorality pernicious; theorical
mistakes and physical deviations may condemn our judgments, not lead us
into judgment. But perversity of will, immoral and sinful enormities
walk with Adraste and NemesisThe powers of vengeance.
at their backs,
pursue us unto
judgment, and leave us viciously miserable.
BID early defiance unto those vices
which are of thine inward family,
and having a root in thy temper
plead a right and propriety in thee. Raise timely batteries against those
strong holds built upon the rock
of nature, and make this a great part of the militia of thy life. Delude not
thyself
into iniquities from participation or community, which abate the sense but not the
obliquity of them. To conceive sins less, or less of sins, because others also
transgress,
were morally to commit that natural fallacy of man, to take comfort from society,
and think adversities less because others also suffer them. The politick nature of vice must be opposed by policy; and, therefore,
wiser homilies project and plot against it: wherein, notwithstanding, we are not
to rest in generals, or the trite stratagems of art. That may succeed with one,
which may prove successless with another: there is no community or commonweal of
virtue: every man must study his own œconomy, and adapt such rules unto the figure
of himself.
BE substantially great in thyself, and
more than thou appearest unto others; and let the world be deceived in thee, as they are in the lights of
heaven. Hang early plummets upon the
heels of pride, and let ambition have but
an epicycleAn epicycle is a small revolution made by one
planet in the wider orbit of another planet. The meaning is, “Let
not ambition form thy circle of action, but move upon
other principles; and let ambition only operate as something extrinsick
and adventitious.”
and narrow circuit in thee.
Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow,
but by the extent of thy grave; and reckon
thyself above the earth, by the line thou
must be contented with under it. Spread
not into boundless expansions either of designs or desires. Think not that mankind
liveth but for a few; and that the rest are
born but to serve those ambitions, which
make but flies of men and wildernesses of
whole nations. Swell not into vehement actions which imbroil and confound the earth; but be
one of those violent ones which force the kingdom of heaven.Matthew xi.
If thou must
needs rule, be Zeno's king,That is, “the king of the Stoics,” whole founder was
Zeno, and who held, that the wife man alone had power and royalty.
and enjoy that empire which every
man gives himself. He who is thus his own monarch contentedly sways the scepter of himself, not envying the glory of crowned heads and elohims of
the earth. Could the world unite in the practise of that despised train
of virtues, which the divine ethicks of our Saviour hath so inculcated upon
us, the furious face of things must disappear; Eden would be yet to be
found, and the angels might look down, not with pity, but joy upon us.
THOUGH the quickness of thine
ear were able to reach the noise of
the moon, which some think it
maketh in its rapid revolution; though the
number of thy ears should equal Argus his
eyes; yet stop them all with the wise man’s
wax,Alluding to the Dory of Ulysses, who stopped the ears of his companions
with wax when they passed by the Sirens.
and be deaf unto the suggestions
of tale-bearers, calumniators, pickthank or
malevolent delators, who, while quiet men
sleep, sowing the tares of discord and division, distract the tranquillity of charity and all friendly society.
These are the tongues that set the world on fire, cankers of reputation, and, like
that of Jonas his gourd, wither a good name in a night. Evil spirits may
sit still, while
these spirits walk about and perform the business of hell. To speak more strictly,
our corrupted hearts are the factories of the devil, which may be at work without his presence; for when that circumventing spirit
hath drawn malice, envy, and all unrighteousness unto well rooted habits in his
disciples, iniquity then goes on upon its own legs; and if the gate of hell were
shut up for a time, vice would still be fertile and produce the fruits of hell.
Thus when God forsakes us, Satan also leaves us: for such offenders he looks upon as
sure and sealed up, and his temptations then needless unto them.
ANNIHILATE not the mercies of God by the oblivion of ingratitude: for oblivion is a kind of annihilation; and for things
to be as though they had not been, is like unto never being. Make not thy head a
grave, but a repository of God’s mercies. Though thou hadst the memory of Seneca,
or Simonides, and conscience the punctual memorist within us, yet trust not to thy remembrance in things which need phylacteries.A phylactery is a writing bound upon the forehead, containing
something to be kept constantly in mind. This was practised by the Jewish doctors
with regard to the Mosaic law.
Register not only strange, but merciful occurrences. Let Ephemerides not OlympiadsParticular journals of every day, not abstracts
comprehending several years under one notation. An Ephemeris is a diary, an Olympiad
is the space of four years.
give thee account of his mercies: let thy diaries stand thick with dutiful mementos
and asterisks of acknowledgment. And to be compleat and forget nothing, date not
his mercy from thy nativity; look beyond the world, and before the æra of
Adam.
PAINT not the sepulcher of thy self,
and strive not to beautify thy corruption. Be not an advocate for
thy vices, nor call for many hour-glassesThat is, “do not speak much or long in justification of “thy faults.” The antient pleaders talked by a Clepsydra,
or measurer of time.
to justify thy imperfections. Think not that always good
which thou thinkest thou canst always make good, nor that concealed which
the sun doth not behold: that which the sun doth not now see, will be
visible when the sun is out, and the stars are fallen from heaven. Mean
while there is no darkness unto conscience; which can see without light,
and in the deepest obscurity give a clear draught of things, which the cloud
of dissimulation hath conceal’d from all eyes. There is a natural standing
court within us, examining, acquitting, and condemning at the tribunal of
ourselves; wherein iniquities have their natural thetasΘ a theta inscribed upon the judge’s tessera
or ballot was a mark for death or capital condemnation.
and no nocent
is absolved by the verdict of himself.
—Se
Judice nemo nocens absolvitur.
Juv.
And therefore although
our transgressions shall be tried at the last bar, the process need not be long: for the Judge of all knoweth all, and every man
will nakedly know himself; and when so few are like to plead not guilty, the assize
must soon have an end.
COMPLY with some humours, bear
with others, but serve none. Civil
complacency consists with decent
honesty: Flattery is a juggler, and no kin
unto sincerity. But while thou maintainest
the plain path, and scornest to flatter others,
fall not into self-adulation, and become not
thine own parasite. Be deaf unto thyself,
and be not betrayed at home. Self-credulity, pride, and levity lead unto self-idolatry.
There is no DamoclesDamocles was a flatterer of Dionysius.
like unto self-opinion, nor any Siren to our own fawning
conceptions. To magnify our minor things,
or hug ourselves in our apparitions;Appearances without realities.
to
afford a credulous ear unto the clawingTickling, flattering. A clawback is an old word for
a flatterer. Jewel calls some writers for popery “the pope's clawbacks.”
suggestions
of fancy; to pass our days in painted mistakes of ourselves; and tho’
we behold our own blood,That is, “though we bleed when we are
wounded, though we find in ourselves the imperfections of humanity.”
to think ourselves the sons of Jupiter;As Alexander the Great did. First edit.
are blandishments of self-love,
worse than outward delusion. By this
imposture wise men sometimes are mistaken in their elevation, and look above
themselves. And fools, which are antipodesOpposites.
unto the wise, conceive
themselves
to be but their Periœci,Only placed at a distance in the same line.
and in the
same parallel with them.
BE not a Hercules furens abroad, and
a poltron within thyself. To chase
our enemies out of the field, and
be led captive by our vices; to beat down
our foes, and fall down to our concupiscences; are solecisms in moral schools, and no
laurel attends them. To well manage our
affections, and wild horses of Plato, are the
highest Circenses:Circenses were Roman horse-races.
and the noblest digladiationFencing-match.
is in the theatre of ourselves; for
therein our inward antagonists, not only
like common gladiators, with ordinary weapons and down-right blows make at us, but
also, like retiary and laquearyThe Retiarius or
Laquearius was a prize-fighter, who entangled
his opponent in a net, which by some dexterous management he threw upon him.
combatants,
with nets, frauds, and entanglements, fall
upon us. Weapons for such combats are not to be forged at Lipara:The Liparæan islands, near Italy, being volcanos, were fabled
to contain the forges of the Cyclops.
Vulcan’s art doth nothing
in this internal militia; wherein not the armour of Achilles, but the armature
of St. Paul, gives the glorious day, and triumphs not leading up into capitols,
but up into the highest heavens. And, therefore, while so many think it
the only valour to command and master others, study thou the dominion of
thyself, and quiet thine own commotions. Let right reason be thy Lycurgus,Thy lawgiver.
and lift up thy hand unto the law of it: move by the intelligences of the superiour faculties, not by the rapt of passion, nor merely by that of temper
and constitution. They who are merely carried on by the wheel of such inclinations,
without the hand and guidance of sovereign reason, are but the automatousMoved not by choice, but by some mechanical impulse.
part of mankind, rather lived than living, or at least underliving themselves.
LET not fortune, which hath no name in Scripture, have any in
thy divinity. Let Providence, not chance, have the honour of
thy acknowledgments, and be thy Œdipus in contingences. Mark well the paths
and winding ways thereof; but be not too wise in the construction, or sudden
in the application. The hand of Providence writes often by abbreviatures,
hieroglyphicks or short characters, which, like the LaconismThe short sentence written on the wall of
Belshazzar. See
Daniel.
on the wall,
are not to be made out but by a hint or key from that Spirit which indited
them. Leave future occurrences to their uncertainties, think that which
is present thy own; and since it is easier to foretel an eclipse, than
a soul day, at some distance, look for little regular below. Attend with
patience the uncertainty of things, and what lieth yet unexerted in the chaos of futurity. The uncertainty and ignorance
of things to come, makes the world new unto us by unexpected emergencies; whereby we
pass not our days in the trite road of affairs affording no
novity; for the novelizing spirit of man lives by variety, and the new
faces of things.
THOUGH a contented mind enlargeth the dimension of little things;
and unto some ’tis wealth enough
not to be poor; and others are well content, if they be but rich enough to be honest,
and to give every man his due yet fall not
into that obsolete affectation of bravery, to
throw away thy money, and to reject all
honours or honourable stations in this courtly and splendid world. Old generosity is superannuated, and such contempt
of the world out of date. No man is now
like to refuse the favour of great ones, or be content to say unto princes,
stand out of my sun.This was the answer made by Diogenes to Alexander, who asked him
what he had to request.
And if any
there be of such antiquated resolutions, they are not like to be tempted out of
them by great ones; and ’tis fair if they escape the name of hypocondriacks from
the genius of latter times, unto whom contempt of the world is the most contemptible
opinion; and to be able, like Bias, to carry all they have about them were to be
the eighth wise-man. However, the old tetrick philosophersSour, morose.
look’d always
with indignation upon such a face of things; and observing the unnatural current
of riches, power, and honour in the world, and withal the imperfection and demerit
of persons often advanced unto them, were tempted unto angry opinions, that affairs
were ordered more by stars than reason, and that things went on rather by lottery
than election.
IF thy vessel be but small in the
ocean of this world, if meanness
of possessions be thy allotment upon
earth, forget not those virtues which the
great disposer of all bids thee to entertain
from thy quality and condition; that is, submission, humility, content of mind,
and industry. Content may dwell in all stations.
To be low, but above contempt, may be
high enough to be happy. But many of
low degree may be higher than computed,
and some cubits above the common commensuration; for in all states virtue gives
qualifications and allowances, which make
out defects. Rough diamonds are sometimes mistaken for pebbles; and meanness
may be rich in accomplishments, which
riches in vain desire. If our merits be
above our stations, if our intrinsecal value
be greater than what we go for, or our
value than our valuation, and if we stand higher in
God's, than in the Censor’s book;The book in which the
Census, or account of every man’s estate, was registered
among the Romans.
it may make
some
equitable balance in the inequalities of this world, and there may be no such
vast chasm or gulph between disparities as common measures determine. The
Divine eye
looks upon high and low differently from that of man. They who seem to stand upon
Olympus,An high mountain.
and high mounted unto our eyes, may be but in the valleys, and low ground
unto his; for he looks upon those as highest who nearest approach his
Divinity,
and upon those as lowest who are farthest from it.
WHEN thou lookest upon the imperfections of others, allow
one eye for what is laudable in them, and the balance they have from some excellency, which may render
them considerable. While we look with fear or hatred upon the teeth of the viper,
we may behold his eye with love. In venemous natures something may be amiable:
poisons afford antipoisons: nothing is totally, or altogether uselessly bad. Notable
virtues are sometimes dashed with notorious vices, and in some vicious tempers have
been found illustrious acts of virtue; which makes such observable worth in some
actions of king Demetrius, Antonius, and Ahab, as are not to be found in the fame
kind in Aristides, Numa, or David. Constancy, generosity, clemency, and liberality,
have been highly conspicuous in some persons not mark’d out in other concerns for
example or imitation. But since goodness is exemplary in all, if others have not
our virtues, let us not be wanting in theirs; nor scorning them for their vices
whereof we are free, be condemned by their virtues wherein we are deficient. There is dross, alloy, and embasement
in all human tempers; and he flieth without wings, who thinks to find ophir
or pure metal in any. For perfection is not, like light, center’d in any
one body; but, like the dispersed seminalities of vegetables at the creation,
scattered through the whole mass of the earth, no place producing all,
and almost all some. So that ’tis well, if a perfect man can be made out
of many men, and, to the perfect eye of God, even out of mankind. Time, which perfects some things, imperfects also others. Could we intimately apprehend
the ideated man, and as he flood in the intellect of God upon the first exertion
by creation, we might more narrowly comprehend our present degeneration,
and how widely we are fallen from the pure exemplar and idea of our nature: for after this corruptive elongation from a primitive and pure creation,
we are almost lost in degeneration; and Adam hath not only fallen from
his Creator, but
we ourselves from Adam, our TychoὉ τύχων qui facit, Ὁ τύχων qui adeptus est: he that makes, or
he that possesses; as Adam might be said to contain within him the race of mankind.
and primary generator.
QUARREL not rashly with adversities not yet understood; and overlook not the mercies often bound
up in them: for we consider not sufficiently the good of evils, nor fairly compute the mercies of
Providence in things
afflictive at first hand. The famous Andreas Doria being invited to a feast by
Aloysio Fieschi with design to kill him,
just the night before fell mercifully into a
fit of the gout and so escaped that mischief.
When Cato intended to kill himself, from
a blow which he gave his servant, who
would not reach his sword unto him, his
hand so swell’d that he had much ado to effect his design. Hereby any one but a resolved Stoick might
have taken a fair hint of consideration, and that some merciful genius would have
contrived his preservation. To be sagacious in such intercurrences is not
superstition,
but wary and pious discretion; and to contemn such hints were to be deaf unto the
speaking hand of God, wherein Socrates and CardanSocrates, and Cardan, perhaps in imitation of him, talked of
an attendant spirit or genius, that hinted from time to time how they should act.
would hardly have been
mistaken.
BREAK not open the gate of destruction, and make no haste or
bustle unto ruin. Post not heedlessly on unto the non ultra of folly, or
precipice of perdition. Let vicious ways
have their tropicksThe tropick is the point where the sun turns back.
and deflexions, and
swim in the waters of sin but as in the Asphaltick lake,The lake of Sodom; the waters of which being very
salt, and, therefore, heavy, will scarcely suffer an animal to sink.
though
smeared and defiled, not to sink to the bottom.
If thou hast dipt thy foot in the brink, yet venture not over Rubicon.The river, by crossing which Cæsar declared war against
the senate.
Run not into extremities from whence there is no regression. In the vicious
ways of the world it mercifully falleth out that we become not extempore
wicked, but it taketh some time and pains to undo ourselves. We fall not
from virtue, like Vulcan from heaven, in a day. Bad dispositions require
some time to grow into bad habits; bad habits must undermine good, and often
repeated acts make us habitually evil: so that by gradual depravations,
and while we are but staggeringly evil, we are not left without parentheses
of considerations, thoughtful rebukes, and merciful interventions, to recal
us unto ourselves. For the wisdom of God hath methodiz’d
the course of things unto the best advantage of goodness, and thinking considerators overlook
not the tract thereof.
SINCE men and women have their proper virtues and vices; and
even twins of different sexes have not only distinct coverings in the womb, but differing
qualities and virtuous habits after; transplace not their proprieties, nor confound
not their distinctions. Let masculine and feminine accomplishments shine in their
proper orbs, and adorn their respective subjects. However unite not the vices of both
sexes in one; be not monstrous in iniquity, nor hermaphroditically vitious.
IF generous honesty, valour, and
plain dealing, be the cognisance of
thy family, or charateristick of thy
country, hold fast such inclinations suckt in
with thy first breath, and which lay in the
cradle with thee. Fall not into transforming
degenerations, which under the old name
create a new nation. Be not an alien in
thine own nation; bring not Orontes into
Tiber;In Tiberim defluxit Orontes: “Orontes
has mingled her stream
with the Tiber,” says Juvenal, speaking of the confluence of foreigners to Rome.
learn the virtues not the vices of
thy foreign neighbours, and make thy imitation by discretion not contagion. Feel
something of thyself in the noble acts of
thy ancestors, and find in thine own genius
that of thy predecessors. Rest not under
the expired merits of others, shine by those
of thy own. Flame not like the central
fire which enlightneth no eyes, which no man seeth, and most men think there’s no such thing to be
seen.
Add one ray unto the common lustre; add not only to the number but the note of thy
generation; and prove not a cloud but an asteriskA small star.
in thy region.
SINCE thou hast an alarumThe motion of the heart, which beats about
sixty times in a
minute; or, perhaps, the motion of respiration, which is nearer to the number mentioned.
in thy
breast, which tells thee thou hast
a living spirit in thee above two
thousand times in an hour; dull not away
thy days in slothful supinity and the tediousness of doing nothing. To strenuous minds
there is an inquietude in overquietness, and
no laboriousness in labour; and to tread a
mile after the flow pace of a snail, or the
heavy measures of the lazy of Brazilia,An animal called more commonly the Sloth, which is
said to be
several days in climbing a tree.
were a most tiring pennance, and worse than a race of some furlongs at the Olympicks.The Olympick games, of which the race was one of the chief.
The rapid courses
of the heavenly bodies are rather imitable by our thoughts, than our corporeal motions; yet the
solemn motions of our lives amount unto a greater
measure than is commonly
apprehended. Some few men have surrounded the globe of the earth; yet many in the
set locomotions and movements of their days have measured the circuit of it, and
twenty thousand miles have been exceeded by them. Move circumspectly not meticulously,Timidly.
and rather carefully sollicitous than anxiously sollicitudinous. Think not there
is a lion in the way, nor walk with leaden sandals in the paths of goodness; but
in all virtuous motions let prudence determine thy measures. Strive not to run like
Hercules, a furlong in a breath: festination may prove precipitation; deliberating
delay may be wise cunctation, and slowness no slothfulness.
SINCE virtuous actions have their
own trumpets, and, without any nose from thyself, will have their
resound abroad; busy not thy best member
in the encomium of thyself. Praise is a
debt we owe unto the virtues of others,
and due unto our own from all, whom
malice hath not made mutes, or envy struck dumb. Fall not, however, into the common prevaricating way of self-commendation and boasting, by denoting the imperfections of others. He who discommendeth
others obliquely, commendeth himself. He
who whispers their infirmities, proclaims his own exemption from them; and, consequently,
says, I am not as this publican,
or hic niger,Hic niger est, hunc to Romane caveto.
Hor. First edit.
This man is vile; here, Roman, fix your mark;
His soul is black, as his complexion’s dark.
Francis.
whom I talk of. Open ostentation and loud vain-glory is more tolerable than this obliquity,
as but containing some froth no ink, as but confining of a personal piece of folly,
nor complicated with uncharitableness. Superfluously we seek a precarious
applause
abroad: every good man hath his plauditePlaudite was the term by which the antient theatrical performers
solicited a clap.
within himself; and though
his tongue be fluent, is not without loud cymbals in his breast. Conscience will
become his panegyrist, and never forget to crown and extol him unto himself.
BLESS not thyself only that thou
wert born in Athens;As Socrates did. Athens a place of learning and civility. First
edit.
but, among
thy multiplied acknowledgements,
lift up one hand unto heaven, that thou
wert born of honest parents; that modesty, humility, patience, and veracity, lay in the
same egg,
and came into the world with thee. From such foundations thou mayst be happy
in a virtuous precocity,A ripeness preceding the usual time.
and make an early and long walk in goodness;
so mayst thou more naturally feel the contrariety of vice unto nature, and
resist some by the antidote of thy temper. As charity covers, so modesty
preventeth a multitude of sins; withholding from noon-day vices and brazen-brow’d
iniquities, from sinning on the house-top, and painting our follies with
the rays of the sun. Where this virtue reigneth, though vice may show its
head, it cannot be in its glory. Where shame of sin sets, look not for virtue
to arise; for when modesty taketh wing, AstræaAstræa Goddess of justice and
consequently of all virtue.
First edit.
goes soon after.
THE heroical vein of mankind runs
much in the soldiery, and courageous part of the world; and in
that form we oftenest find men above men.
History is full of the gallantry of that
tribe; and when we read their notable
acts, we easily find what a difference there is between a life in PlutarchWho wrote the lives, for the most part,
of warriors.
and in Laërtius.Who wrote the lives of philosophers.
Where true fortitude dwells, loyalty,
bounty, friendship, and fidelity may be
found. A man may confide in persons
constituted for noble ends, who dare do
and suffer, and who have a hand to burn
for their country and their friend.Like Mutius Sævola.
Small
and creeping things are the product of
petty souls. He is like to be mistaken,
who makes choice of a covetous man for a
friend, or relieth upon the reed of narrow and poltron friendship. Pitiful things are only to be found in
the cottages of such breath; but bright thoughts, clear deeds, constancy, fidelity,
bounty, and generous honesty are the gems of noble minds; wherein, to derogate
from none, the true heroick English gentleman hath no peer.
CHRISTIAN MORALS.
PART II.
PUNISH not thyself with pleasure;
glut not thy sense with palative
delights; nor revenge the contempt of temperance by the penalty of satiety. Were there an age of delight or
any pleasure durable, who would not honour
Volupia? but the race of delight is sport,
and pleasures have mutable faces. The pleasures of one age are not pleasures in
another, and their lives fall short of our
own. Even in our sensual days, the strength of delightVoluptates commendat rarior
usus.
is in its seldomness or rarity, and sting in its
satiety: mediocrity is its
life, and immoderacy its confusion. The luxurious emperors of old inconsiderately
satiated themselves with the dainties of sea and land, till, wearied through
all varieties, their refections became a study unto them, and they were fain
to feed by invention: novices in true Epicurism! which by mediocrity,
paucity, quick and healthful appetite, makes delights smartly acceptable; whereby Epicurus
himself found Jupiter’s brainCerebrum Jovis, for a delicious bit. First
edit.
in a piece of Cytheridian
cheese, and the tongues of nightingalesA dish used among the luxurious of antiquity.
in a
dish of onions. Hereby healthful
and temperate poverty hath the start of nauseating luxury; unto whose clear
and naked appetite every meal is a feast, and in one single dish the first
course of Metellus;Metellus his riotous pontifical supper, the great variety
whereat is to be seen in Macrobius. First edit. The supper was not
given by Metellus, but by Lentulus when he was made priest of Mars, and recorded
by Metellus.
who are cheaply hungry, and never lose their hunger, or advantage of a craving
appetite, because obvious food contents it; while Nero,Nero in his flight. Sueton.
First edit.
half famish'd,
could not feed upon a piece of bread, and, lingring after his snowed water,
hardly got down an ordinary cup of Calda.Warm water. Caldæ gelidæque
minister. First edit.
By such circumscriptions
of pleasure the contemned philosophers reserved unto themselves the secret
of delight, which the Helluo’sGluttons.
of those days lost in their exorbitances.
In vain we study delight: it is at the command of every sober mind, and
in every sense born with us: but nature, who teacheth us the rule of pleasure,
instructeth also in the bounds thereof, and where its line expireth. And
therefore temperate minds, not pressing their pleasures until the sting
appeareth, enjoy their contentations contentedly, and without regret, and
so escape the folly of excess, to be pleased unto displacency.
BRING candid eyes unto the perusal
of men’s works, and let not ZoilismFrom Zoilus the calumniator of
Homer.
or detraction blast well-intended labours. He that endureth no faults
in men’s writings must only read his own,
wherein for the most part all appeareth
white. Quotation mistakes, inadvertency,
expedition, and human lapses, may make
not only moles but warts in learned authors;
who, notwithstanding, being judged by the
capital matter, admit not of disparagement. I should unwillingly affirm that
Cicero
was but slightly versed in Homer, because
in his work “De Gloria” he ascribed those
verses unto Ajax, which were delivered by
Hector. What if Plautus in the account
of Hercules mistaketh nativity for conception? Who would have mean thoughts of Apollinaris Sidonius, who seems
to mistake the river Tigris for Euphrates? and though a good historian
and learned bishop of Avergne had the misfortune to be out in the story
of David, making mention of him when the ark was sent back by the Philistins
upon a cart; which was before his time. Though I have no great opinion of
Machiavel’s learning, yet I shall not presently say that he was but a novice
in Roman history, because he was mistaken in placing Commodus after the
emperor Severus. Capital truths are to be narrowly eyed; collateral lapses
and circumstantial deliveries not to be too strictly sifted. And if the substantial
subject be well forged out, we need not examine the sparks which irregularly
fly from it.
LET well-weighed considerations, not stiff and peremptory assumptions,
guide thy discourses, pen, and actions. To begin or continue our works
like Trismegistus of old, “verum certè verum atque
verissimum est,”In Tabula Smaragdina. First edit.
“It is true, certainly true, true in the highest degree.”
would
sound arrogantly unto present ears in this strict enquiring age; wherein, for the most
part, probably, and perhaps, will hardly serve to mollify the spirit of captious
contradictors. If Cardan faith that a parrot is
a beautiful bird, Scaliger will set his wits
o’ work to prove it a deformed animal.
The compage of all physical truths is not
so closely jointed, but opposition may find
intrusion; nor always so closely maintained,
as not to suffer attrition. Many positions
seem quodlibeticallyDeterminable on either side.
constituted, and like a Delphian bladeThe Delphian sword became proverbial, not because it
cut on both sides, but because it was used to different purposes.
will cut on both
sides. Some
truths seem almost falshoods, and some falshoods almost truths; wherein
falshood and truth seem almost æquilibriously stated, and but a few grains
of distinction to bear down the balance. Some have digged deep, yet glanced
by the royal vein;I suppose the main vein of a mine.
and a man may come unto the Pericardium,The integument of the heart.
but not the heart of truth. Besides, many things are known, as some are
seen, that is by Parallaxis,The parallax of a star is the difference between its real
and apparent place.
or at some distance from their
true and proper beings, the superficial regard of things having a different aspect from their true and central natures. And this moves
sober pens unto
suspensory and timorous assertions, nor presently to obtrude them as Sibyls'
leaves,On which the Sibyl wrote her oraculous answers.
VIRGIL.
which after considerations may find to be but
solious apparances,
and not the central and vital interiors of truth.
VALUE the judicious, and let not
mere acquests in minor parts of
learning gain thy preexistimation.
’Tis an unjust way of compute, to magnify
a weak head for some Latin abilities; and
to undervalue a solid judgment, because he
knows not the genealogy of Hector. When
that notable king of FranceLewis the eleventh. Qui nescit dissimulare nescit Regnare. First
edit.
would have
his son to know but one sentence in Latin,
had it been a good one, perhaps it had been
enough. Natural parts and good judgments
rule the world. States are not governed
by ergotisms.Conclusions deduced according to the forms of logick.
Many have ruled well, who
could not, perhaps, define a commonwealth; and they who understand not the globe of the earth, command a great
part of it. Where natural logick prevails not, artificial too often faileth.
Where nature fills the sails, the vessel goes smoothly on; and when judgment
is the pilot, the ensurance need not be high. When industry builds upon
nature, we may expel pyramids: where that foundation is wanting, the structure
must be low. They do most by books, who could do much without them; and
he that chiefly owes himself unto himself, is the substantial man.
LET thy studies be free as thy
thoughts and contemplations: but
fly not only upon the wings of
imagination; join sense unto reason, and
experiment unto speculation, and so give
life unto embryon truths, and verities yet
in their chaos. There is nothing more acceptable unto the ingenious world, than this noble eluctationForcible eruption.
of truth; wherein, against the tenacity of prejudice and prescription,
this century now prevaileth. What libraries of new volumes aftertimes will
behold, and in what a new world of knowledge the eyes of our posterity may
be happy, a few ages may joyfully declare; and is but a cold thought unto
those, who cannot hope to behold this exantlation of truth, or that obscured
virgin half out of the pit: which might make some content with a commutation
of the time of their lives, and to commend the fancy of the Pythagorean
metempsychosis;Transmigration of the soul from body to body,
whereby they might hope to enjoy this happiness in their
third or fourth selves, and behold that in Pythagoras, which they now but
foresee in Euphorbus.Ipse ego, nam memini, Trojani tempore belli
Panthoides Euphorbus eram.—Ovid.
Note to the first edit.
The world, which took
but six days to make, is like to take six thousand to make out: meanwhile
old truths voted down begin to resume their places, and new ones arise upon
us; wherein there is no comfort in the happiness of Tully’s Elizium,Who comforted himself that he should there converse with the old Philosophers.
First edit.
or any satisfaction from the ghosts of the antients, who knew so little of
what is now well known. Men disparage not antiquity, who prudently exalt
new enquiries; and make not them the judges of truth, who were but fellow
enquirers of it. Who can but magnify the endeavours of Aristotle, and the
noble start which learning had under him; or less than pity the slender progression made upon such advantages? while many centuries were lost in
repetitions and transcriptions sealing up the book of knowledge. And therefore
rather than to swell the leaves of learning by fruitless repetitions, to
sing the fame song in all ages, nor adventure at essays beyond the attempt of others, many would be content that
some would write like Helmont or Paracelsus;Wild and enthusiastick authors of romantick chymystry.
and be willing to endure
the monstrosity of some opinions, for divers singular notions requiting such aberrations.
DESPISE not the obliquities of
younger ways, nor despair of better
things whereof there is yet no
prospect. Who would imagine that Diogenes, who in his younger days was a falsifier of money, should in the after-course of
his life be so great a contemner of metal?
Some Negros who believe the resurrection,
think that they shall rise white.Mandelslo’s travels.
Even in
this life, regeneration may imitate resurrection; our black and vicious tinctures
may wear off, and goodness clothe us with
candour. Good admonitions knock not always in vain. There will be
signal examples of God's mercy,
and the angels must not want their charitable rejoices for the conversion of
lost sinners. Figures of most angles do nearest approach unto circles, which have no
angles at all. Some may be near unto goodness, who are conceived far from it; and
many things happen, not likely to ensue from any promises of antecedencies. Culpable
beginnings have found commendable conclusions, and infamous courses pious retractations.
Detestable sinners have proved exemplary converts on earth, and may be glorious
in the apartment of Mary Magdalen in heaven. Men are not the fame through all divisions
of their ages: time, experience, self-reflexions, and God's mercies, make in
some
well-temper’d minds a kind of translation before death, and men to differ from
themselves
as well as from other persons. Hereof the old world afforded many examples to the
infamy of latter ages, wherein men too often live by the rule of their inclinations; so that, without any
astral prediction, the first day gives the last:Primusque dies dedit extremum. First edit.
men are commonly as
they were; or rather, as bad dispositions run into worser habits, the evening doth
not crown, but sowerly conclude the day.
IF the Almighty will not spare us
according to his merciful capitulation at Sodom; if his goodness
please not to pass over a great deal of bad
for a small pittance of good, or to look
upon us in the lump; there is slender hope
for mercy, or sound presumption of fulfilling half his will, either in persons or nations: they who excel in
some virtues being
so often defective in others; few men
driving at the extent and amplitude of
goodness, but computing themselves by
their best parts, and others by their worst, are content to rest in those virtues which others commonly
want. Which makes this speckled face of honesty in the world; and which
was the imperfection of the old philosophers and great pretenders unto virtue,
who well declining the gaping vices of intemperance, incontinency, violence
and oppression, were yet blindly peccant in iniquities of closer faces,
were envious, malicious, contemners, scoffers, censurers, and stuft with
vizard vices, no less depraving the ethereal particle and diviner portion
of man. For envy, malice, hatred, are the qualities of Satan, close and
dark like himself; and where such brands smoke, the soul cannot be
white. Vice may be had at all prices; expensive and costly iniquities, which
make the noise, cannot be every man’s sins: but the soul may be fouly inquinatedDefiled.
at a very low rate; and a man may be cheaply vicious, to the perdition of
himself.
OPINION rides upon the neck of reason; and men are happy, wise, or learned, according as that empress
shall set them down in
the register of reputation. However, weigh not thyself in the scales of thy own
opinion, but let the judgment of the judicious be the standard of thy merit. Self-estimation
is a flatterer too readily intitling us unto knowledge and abilities, which others
sollicitously labour after, and doubtfully think they attain. Surely, such confident
tempers do pass their days in best tranquillity, who, resting in the opinion of
their own abilities, are happily gull’d by such contentation; wherein pride,
self-conceit,
confidence, and opiniatrity, will hardly suffer any to complain of imperfection.
To think themselves in the right, or all that right, or only that, which they do
or think, is a fallacy of high content; though others laugh in their
sleeves, and look upon them as in a deluded state of judgment: wherein,
notwithstanding, ’twere but a civil piece of complacency to suffer them
to sleep who would not wake, to let them rest in their securities, nor by dissent
or opposition to stagger their contentments.
SINCEThis is a very fanciful and indefensible section.
the brow speaks often true,
since eyes and noses have tongues,
and the countenance proclaims the
heart and inclinations; let observation so
far instruct thee in physiognomical lines, as
to be some rule for thy distinction, and
guide for thy affection unto such as look
most like men. Mankind, methinks, is
comprehended in a few faces, if we exclude
all visages which any way participate of symmetries and schemes of look common
unto other animals. For as though man were the extra of the world, in whom all were “in coagulato,”“In a congealed or compressed mass.”
which in their forms were “in
soluto,”“In a state of expansion and separation.”
and at extension;
we often observe that men do most act those creatures, whose constitution,
parts, and complexion do most predominate in their mixtures. This is a corner-stone
in physiognomy, and holds some truth not only in particular persons but
also in whole nations. There are, therefore, provincial faces, national
lips and noses, which testify not only the natures of those countries, but
of those which have them elsewhere. Thus we may make England the whole earth,
dividing it not only into Europe, Asia, Africa, but the particular regions
thereof; and may in some latitude affirm, that there are Ægyptians, Scythians,
Indians among us, who, though born in England, yet carry the faces and air
of those countries, and are also agreeable and correspondent unto their natures. Faces look uniformly unto our eyes: how they appear unto some animals
of a more piercing or differing sight, who are able to discover the inequalities, rubbs, and hairiness of the
skin, is not without good doubt: and, therefore,
in reference unto man, Cupid is said to be blind. Affection should not be
too sharp-eyed, and love is not to be made by magnifying glasses. If things were
seen as they truly are, the beauty of bodies would be much abridged. And,
therefore, the wise Contriver hath drawn the pictures and outsides
of things softly and amiably unto the natural edge of our eyes, not leaving
them able to discover those uncomely asperities, which make oyster-shells
in good faces, and hedghogs even in Venus’s moles.
COURT not felicity too far, and weary not the favourable hand
of fortune. Glorious actions have their times, extent, and non ultra’s. To put no
end unto attempts were to make prescription of successes, and to bespeak unhappiness
at the last: for the line of our lives is drawn with white and black vicissitudes,
wherein the extremes hold seldom one complexion. That Pompey should obtain the
surname
of great at twenty-five years, that men in their young and alive days should be
fortunate and perform notable things, is no observation of deep wonder; they having
the strength of their fates before them, nor yet ailed their parts in the world
for which they were brought into it: whereas men of years, matured for counsels
and designs, seem to be beyond the vigour of their active fortunes, and high exploits
of life, providentially ordained unto ages best agreeable unto them. And, therefore, many brave
men finding their fortune grow faint, and feeling its declination, have timely withdrawn
themselves from great attempts, and so escaped the ends of mighty men, disproportionable
to their beginnings. But magnanimous thoughts have so dimmed the eyes of many, that
forgetting the very essence of fortune, and the vicissitude of good and evil, they
apprehend no bottom in felicity; and so have been frill tempted on unto mighty
actions, reserved for their destructions. For fortune lays the plot of our adversities
in the foundation of our felicities, blessing us in the first quadrate,That is, “in the first part of our time,” alluding to the four quadratures
of the moon.
to blast
us more sharply in the last. And since in the highest felicities there lieth a capacity
of the lowest miseries, she hath this advantage from our happiness to make us truly
miserable: for to become acutely miserable we are to be first happy. Affliction
smarts most in the most happy state, as
having somewhat in it of Bellisarius at beggars bush, or Bajazet in the grate.Bellisarius, after he had gained many victories, is
said to have
been reduced, by the displeasure of the emperor, to actual beggary: Bajazet, made
captive by Tamerlane, is reported to have been shut up in a cage. It may somewhat
gratify those who deserve to be gratified, to inform them that both these stories
are FALSE.
And this the fallen angels severely understand; who having acted their first part
in heaven, are made sharply miserable by transition, and more afflictively feel the
contrary state of hell.
CARRY no careless eye upon the unexpected scenes of things; but
ponder the acts of Providence in
the publick ends of great and notable men,
set out unto the view of all for no common
memorandums. The tragical exits and
unexpected periods of some eminent persons, cannot but amuse considerate
observators; wherein,
notwithstanding, most men seem to see by extramission,By the passage of sight from the eye to the object.
without reception
or self-reflexion, and conceive themselves unconcerned by the fallacy of
their own exemption: whereas, the mercy of God hath singled out but few
to be the signals of his justice, leaving the generality of mankind to the
pædagogy of example. But the inadvertency of our natures not well apprehending
this favourable method and merciful decimation,The selection of every tenth man for
punishment, a practice
sometimes used in general mutinies.
and that he sheweth in some what others also deserve; they entertain no sense of his hand beyond
the stroke of themselves. Whereupon the whole becomes necessarily punished,
and the contrasted hand of God extended unto universal judgments: from whence, nevertheless, the stupidity of our tempers receives but faint impressions,
and in the most tragical state of tunes holds but starts of good motions.
So that to continue us in goodness there must be iterated returns of misery,
and a circulation in afflictions is necessary. And since we cannot be wise
by warnings; since plagues are insignificant, except we be personally plagued;
since,
also, we cannot be punish’d unto amendment by proxy or commutation,
nor by vicinity, but contraction; there is an unhappy necessity that we must smart in our own
skins, and the provoked arm of the Almightly must fall upon
ourselves. The capital sufferings of others are rather our monitions than
acquitments. There is but one who died salvifically“So as to procure
salvation.”
for us,
and able to say unto death, hitherto shalt thou go and no farther; only
one enlivening death, which makes gardens of graves, and that which was sowed in corruption to arise and flourish in glory: when death itself shall
die, and living shall have no period; when the damned than mourn at the funeral of death; when life not
death shall be the wages of sin; when the second death shall prove a miserable life,
and destruction shall be courted.
ALTHOUGH their thoughts may
seem too severe, who think that
few ill-natur'd men go to heaven;
yet it may be acknowledged that good-natur’d persons are best founded for that
place; who enter the world with good dispositions and natural graces, more ready to
be advanced by impressions from above,
and christianized unto pieties; who carry
about them plain and down-right dealing
minds, humility, mercy, charity, and virtues acceptable unto God and man. But
whatever success they may have as to heaven, they are the acceptable men on earth,
and happy is he who hath his quiver full
of them for his friends. These are not the dens wherein falshood lurks, and hypocrisy hides its
head; wherein frowardness makes its nest; or where malice, hard-heartedness,
and oppression love to dwell; not those by whom the poor get little, and
the rich some time lose all; men not of retracted looks, but who carry their
hearts in their faces, and need not to be look’d upon with perspectives; not
sordidly or mischievously ingrateful; who cannot learn to ride upon
the neck of the afflicted, nor load the heavy laden, but who keep the temple
of Janus shut by peaceable and quiet tempers;The temple of Janus among the Romans was
shut in time
of peace, and opened at a declaration of war.
who make not only the best
friends, but the best enemies, as easier to forgive than offend, and ready
to pass by the second offence before they avenge the first; who make natural
royalists, obedient subjects, kind and merciful princes, verified in our
own, one of the best-natur’d kings of this throne. Of the old Roman emperors
the best were the best-natur’d; though they made but a small number,
and might be writ in a ring. Many of the rest were as bad men as princes;
humourists
rather than of good humours; and of good natural parts rather than of good natures,
which did but arm their bad inclinations, and make them wittily wicked.
WITH what shift and pains we come
into the world, we remember not;
but 'tis commonly found no easy
matter to get out of it. Many have studied
to exasperate the ways of death, but fewer
hours have been spent to soften that necessity. That the smoothest way unto the
grave is made by bleeding, as common opinion presumeth, beside the sick and fainting
languors which accompany that effusion,
the experiment in Lucan and SenecaSeneca, having opened his veins, found the blood flow so
slowly, and death linger so long, that he was forced to
quicken it by going into a warm bath.
will make us doubt; under which the noble Stoick so deeply
laboured, that, to conceal his affliction, he was fain to retire from the
sight of his wife, and not ashamed to implore the merciful hand of his
physician to shorten his misery therein. Ovid,Demito naufragium, mors mihi munus erit. Note to the first edit.
the old heroes, and the Stoicks, who were so afraid of drowning, as dreading thereby the extinction
of their soul, which they conceived to be a fire, stood probably in fear
of an easier way of death; wherein the water, entring the possessions of
air, makes a temperate suffocation, and kills as it were without a fever.
Surely many, who have had the spirit to destroy themselves, have not been
ingenious in the contrivance thereof. ’Twas a dull way practised by Themistocles,
to overwhelm himself with bulls-blood,Plutarch’s lives. Note to the first edit.
who, being an Athenian,
might have held an easier theory of death from the state potion
of his country; from which Socrates in Plato seemed not to
suffer much
more than from the fit of an ague. Cato is much to be pitied, who mangled
himself with poniards; and Hannibal seems more subtle, who carried his
delivery, not in the point but the pummelI Pummel, wherein he is said to have carried something,
whereby upon a struggle or despair he might deliver himself from all misfortunes.
First edit. Juvenal says, it was carried in a ring:—
Cannarum vindex, et tanti sanguinis ultor, Annulus.—
Nor swords at hand, nor hissing darts afar,
Are doom’d t’ avenge the tedious bloody war,
But poison drawn thro’ a ring’s hollow plate.
Dryden.
of his sword.
The Egyptians were merciful contrivers, who destroyed
their malefactors by asps, charming their senses into an invincible sleep,
and killing as it were with Hermes his rod.Which procured sleep by a touch.
The Turkish emperor,Solyman. Turkish history. Note to the first edit.
odious for other cruelty, was herein a remarkable master of
mercy, killing his favourite in his sleep, and sending him from the shade
into the house of darkness. He who had been thus destroyed would hardly
have bled at the presence of his destroyer: when men are already dead by
metaphor, and pass but from one sleep unto another, wanting herein the eminent
part of severity, to feel themselves to die; and escaping the sharpest attendant of death, the lively apprehension thereof. But to learn to die,
is better than to study the ways of dying. Death will find Tome ways to
untie or cut the most gordian knots of life, and make men’s miseries as
mortal as themselves: whereas evil spirits, as undying substances, are unseparable
from their calamities; and, therefore, they everlastingly struggle under
their anguftias,Agonies.
and bound up with immortality can never get
out of themselves.
CHRISTIAN MORALS.
PART III.
TIS hard to find a whole age to imitate, or what century to
propose for example. Some have
been far more approveable than others;
but virtue and vice, panegyricks and satyrs, scatteringly to be found in all. History
sets down not only things laudable, but
abominable; things which should never
have been, or never have been known: so
that noble patterns must be fetched here
and there from single persons, rather than
whole nations; and from all nations, rather
than any one. The world was early bad, and the first sin the most deplorable of any. The younger
world afforded the oldest men, and perhaps the best and the worst, when length
of days made virtuous habits heroical and immoveable, vicious, inveterate,
and irreclaimable. And since ’tis said the imaginations of their hearts
were evil, only evil, and continually evil; it may be feared that their
sins held pace with their lives; and their longevity swelling their impieties,
the longanimity of God would no longer endure such vivacious abominations.
Their impieties were surely of a deep dye, which required the whole element
of water to wash them away, and overwhelmed their memories with themselves; and
so shut up the first windows of time, leaving no histories of those
longevous generations, when men might have been properly historians, when
Adam might have read long lectures unto Methuselah,
and Methuselah unto Noah. For had we been happy in just
historical accounts
of that unparallel’d world, we might have been acquainted with wonders; and have
understood not a little of the acts and undertakings of Moses his mighty men, and
men of renown of old; which might have enlarged our thoughts, and made the world
older unto us. For the unknown part of time shortens the estimation, if not the
compute of it. What hath escaped our knowledge, falls not under our consideration; and what is and will be latent, is little better than non-existent.
SOME things are dictated for our
instruction, some acted for our
imitation; wherein ’tis best to
ascend unto the highest conformity, and to
the honour of the exemplar. He honours God, who imitates him; for what we virtuously imitate we approve and admire:
and since we delight not to imitate inferiors,
we aggrandize and magnify those we imitate; since also we are most apt to imitate those we
love, we testify our affection in our imitation of the inimitable. To affect
to be like, may be no imitation: to act, and not to be what we pretend to
imitate, is but a mimical conformation, and carrieth no virtue in it. Lucifer
imitated not God, when he said he would be like the Highest; and he imitated
not Jupiter,Salmoneus.
who counterfeited thunder. Where imitation can go no farther,
let admiration step on, whereof there is no end in the wisest form of men.
Even angels and spirits have enough to admire in their sublimer natures; admiration being the act of the creature, and not of
God, who doth not
admire himself. Created natures allow of swelling hyperboles: nothing can
be said hyperbolically of God, nor will his attributes admit of expressions
above their own exuperances.Exaggerations.
Trismegistus his circle, whose
center is every where, and circumference no where, was no hyperbole. Words cannot exceed, where they cannot express
enough. Even the most winged thoughts fall at the setting out, and reach not the
portal of Divinity.
IN bivious theorems,Speculations which open different
tracks to the mind.
and Janus-faced doctrines, let virtuous considerations
state the determination.
Look upon opinions as thou dost upon the
moon, and choose not the dark hemisphere
for thy contemplation. Embrace not the
opacous and blind side of opinions, but that
which looks most luciferously or influentially unto goodness. ‘Tis better to think
that there are guardian spirits, than that
there are no spirits to guard us; that vicious
persons are slaves, than that there is any servitude in virtue; that times past have
been better than times present, than that
times were always bad; and that to be men it sufficeth to be no better than men in all ages, and so promiscuously to
swim down the turbid stream, and make up the grand confusion. Sow not thy
understanding
with opinions, which make nothing of iniquities, and fallaciously extenuate transgressions.
Look upon vices and vicious objects, with hyperbolical eyes; and rather enlarge
their dimensions, that their unseen deformities may not escape thy sense, and their
poisonous parts and stings may appear massy and monstrous unto thee: for the undiscerned
particles and atoms of evil deceive us, and we are undone by the invisibles of seeming
goodness. We are only deceived in what is not discerned, and to err is but to be
blind or dim-lighted as to some perceptions.
TO be honest in a right line,Linea recta brevissima. First
edit.
and
virtuous by epitome, be firm unto
such principles of goodness, as
carry in them volumes of instruction and
may abridge thy labour. And since instructions are many, hold close unto those,
whereon the rest depend: so may we have
all in a few, and the law and the prophets
in a rule; the Sacred Writ in stenography,In Short-hand.
and the Scripture in a nut-shell.
To pursue the osseous and solid part of
goodness, which gives stability and rectitude
to all the rest; to settle on fundamental
virtues, and bid early defiance unto mother-vices, which carry in their bowels the
seminals of other iniquities; makes a short cut
in goodness, and strikes not off an head but
the whole neck of Hydra. For we are carried into the dark lake, like the Ægyptian river into the sea, by
seven principal ostiaries: the mother-sinsPride, covetousness, lull, envy, gluttony, anger,
sloth.
of that number are the deadly engins of evil
spirits that undo us,
and even evil spirits themselves; and he who is under the chains thereof is not
without a possession. Mary Magdalene had more than seven devils, if these with their
imps were in her; and he who is thus possessed, may literally be named “Legion.”
Where such plants grow and prosper, look for no champain or region void of thorns;
but productions like the tree of Goa,Arbor Goa de Ruyz, or Ficus Indica, whose branches
send down
shoots which root in the ground, from whence there successively rise others, till
one tree becomes a wood. First edit.
and forests of abomination.
GUIDE not the hand of God, nor order the finger of the
Almighty
unto thy will and pleasure; but sit quiet in the
soft showers of Providence, and favourable distributions in this world, either to
thyself or others. And since not only judgments have their errands, but
mercies their commissions; snatch not at every favour, nor think thyself
passed by if they fall upon thy neighbour. Rake not up envious displacences
at things successful unto others, which the WISE DISPOSER of all thinks not fit for thyself. Reconcile the events
of things unto both beings, that is, of this world and
the next: so will there not seem so many riddles in Providence, nor various inequalities in the dispensation of things
below. If thou dost not anoint thy face, yet put not on sackcloth at the
felicities of others. Repining at the good, draws on rejoicing at the evils
of others: and so falls into that inhumane vice,Ἐπικαιρεκακία. First edit.
for which so few languages
have a name. The blessed Spirits above rejoice at our happiness below:
but to be glad at the evils of one another, is beyond the malignity of hell; and falls not on evil
spirits, who, tho’ they rejoice at our unhappiness, take no pleasure at the afflictions
of their own society or of their fellow natures. Degenerous heads! who must be fain
to learn from such examples, and to be taught from the school of hell.
GRAINSee note 1, page 16.
not thy vicious stains; nor
deepen those swart tinctures, which
temper, infirmity, or ill habits have set upon thee; and fix not, by iterated depravations, what time might efface, or virtuous washes expunge. He, who thus
still
advanceth in iniquity, deepneth his deformed
hue; turns a shadow into night, and makes
himself a Negro in the black jaundice; and
so becomes one of those lost ones, the disproportionate pores of whose brains afford
no entrance unto good motions, but reflect and frustrate all counsels, deaf unto the thunder of the laws,
and rocks unto the cries of charitable commiserators. He who hath had the patience
of Diogenes, to make orations unto statues, may more sensibly apprehend how all
words fall to the ground, spent upon such a surd and earless generation of men,
stupid unto all instruction, and rather requiring an exorcist than an orator for
their conversion!
BURDEN not the back of Aries, Leo, or Taurus,The Ram, Lion, or Bull,
signs in the zodiack.
with thy faults; nor make Saturn, Mars, or Venus, guilty of thy follies. Think not to fasten thy imperfections on the
stars, and so despairingly conceive thyself under a fatality of being evil. Calculate
thyself within; seek not thyself in the moon, but in thine own orb or microcosmical circumference.“In the compass of thy own little world.”
Let celestial aspects
admonish and advertise, not conclude and determine thy ways. For since good
and bad stars moralize not our actions, and neither excuse or commend, acquit
or condemn our good or bad deeds at the present or last bar; since some
are astrologically well disposed, who are morally highly vicious; not celestial
figures, but virtuous schemes, must denominate and state our actions. If
we rightly understood the names whereby God calleth the stars; if we knew
his name for the dog-star, or by what appellation Jupiter, Mars, and Saturn
obey his will; it might be a welcome accession unto astrology, which speaks
great things, and is fain to make use of appellations from Greek and barbarick systems. Whatever influences, impulsions, or inclinations there be from
the lights above, it were a piece of wisdom to make one of those wise men who overrule their
stars,Sapiens dominabitur astris. First edit.
and with their own
militia contend with the host of heaven. Unto which attempt there want not auxiliaries
from the whole strength of morality, supplies from christian ethicks, influences
also and illuminations from above, more powerful than the lights of heaven.
CONFOUND not the distinctions of
thy life which nature hath divided;
that is, youth, adolescence, manhood, and old age: nor in these divided
periods, wherein thou art in a manner
four, conceive thyself but one. Let every
division be happy in its proper virtues, nor one vice run through all. Let each
distinction have its salutary transition, and
critically deliver thee from the imperfections
of the former; so ordering the whole, that
prudence and virtue may have the largest section. Do as a child but when thou art a child, and
ride not on a reed at twenty. He who hath not taken leave of the follies
of his youth, and in his maturer state scarce got out of that division, disproportionately
divideth his days, crowds up the latter part of his life, and leaves too
narrow a corner for the age of wisdom; and so hath room to be a man, scarce
longer than he hath been a youth. Rather than to make this confusion, anticipate
the virtues of age, and live long without the infirmities of it. So mayst
thou count up thy days as some do Adam's,Adam, thought to be created in the state of man, about thirty
years old. First edit.
that is by anticipation; so mayst thou be coetaneous unto thy elders, and a father unto thy contemporaries.
WHILE others are curious in the
choice of good air, and chiefly sollicitous for healthful habitations, study thou conversation, and be critical in
thy consortion. The aspects, conjunctions,
and configurations of the stars, which mutually diversify, intend, or qualify their
influences, are but the varieties of their
nearer or farther conversation with one
another, and like the consortion of men,
whereby they become better or worse, and
even exchange their natures. Since men
live by examples, and will be imitating
something; order thy imitation to thy
improvement, not thy ruin. Look not for
rotes in Attalus his garden,Attalus made a garden which contained only venomous plants. First edit.
or wholesome
flowers in a venomous plantation. And
since there is scarce any one bad, but some
others are the worse for him; tempt not contagion by proximity, and hazard not thyself in the shadow of corruption. He who hath not early suffered this
shipwreck, and
in his younger days escaped this Charybdis, may make a happy voyage, and
not come in with black sailsAlluding to the story of Theseus, who had black
sails when
he went to engage the Minotaur in Crete.
into the port. Self-conversation, or to be
alone, is better than such consortion. Some schoolmen tell us, that he
is properly alone, with whom in the same place there is no other of the
same species. Nabuchodonozor was alone, though among the beasts of the field;
and a wise man may be tolerably said to be alone, though with a rabble of
people little better than beasts about him. Unthinking heads, who have not
learn’d to be alone, are in a prison to themselves, if they be not also
with others: whereas, on the contrary, they whose thoughts are in a fair,
and hurry within, are sometimes fain to retire into company, to be out of
the crowd of themselves. He who must needs have company, must needs
have sometimes bad company. Be able to be alone. Lose not the advantage
of solitude, and the society of thyself; nor be only content, but delight
to be alone and single with Omnipresency. He who is thus prepared, the day
is not uneasy nor the night black unto him. Darkness may bound his eyes,
not his imagination. In his bed he may lie, like Pompey and his sons, in
all quarters of the earth;Pompeios Juvenes Asia atque Europa,
sed ipsum Terra tegit
Libyes. First edit.
may speculate the universe, and enjoy the
whole world in the hermitage of himself. Thus the old Ascetick christians
found a paradise in a desert, and with little converse on earth held a conversation
in heaven; thus they astronomiz’d in caves, and though they beheld not
the stars, had the glory of heaven before them.
LET the characters of good things stand indelibly in thy mind, and
thy thoughts be active on them. Trust not too much unto suggestions from
reminiscential amulets,Any thing worn on the hand or body, by way of monition or remembrance.
or artificial memorandums. Let the mortifying Janus of
CovarrubiasDon Sebastian de Covarrubias, writ three centuries of moral
emblems in Spanish. In the 88th of the second century he sets down two faces
averse,
and conjoined Janus-like; the one a gallant beautiful face, the other a death’s-head face, with this motto out of Ovid’s Metamorphosis,
Quid fuerim, quid simque, vide.
First edit.
—You discern
What now I am, and what I was shall learn. Addis.
be in thy daily thoughts, not
only on thy hand and signets. Rely not
alone upon fluent and dumb remembrances.
Behold not death’s heads till thou doest not
see them, nor look upon mortifying objects
till thou overlook'st them. Forget not how
assuefaction unto any thing minorates the passion from
it; how constant objects lose their hints, and steal an inadvertisement upon
us. There is no excuse to forget what every thing prompts unto us. To thoughtful
observators, the whole world is a phylactery;See page 31, note 1.
and every thing we see an
item of the wisdom, power, or goodness of God. Happy are they who verify
their amulets, and make their phylacteries speak in their lives and actions.
To run on in despight of the revulsions and pull-backs of such remoras,
aggravates our transgressions. When death’s-heads on our hands have no influence
upon our heads, and fleshless cadavers abate not the exorbitances of the
flesh; when crucifixes upon men’s hearts suppress not their bad commotions,
and his image who was murdered for us withholds not from blood and murder;
phylacteries prove but formalities, and their despised hints sharpen our
condemnations.
LOOK not for whales in the Euxine
sea, or expect great matters where
they are not to be found. Seek
not for profundity in shallowness, or fertility
in a wilderness. Place not the expectation
of great happiness here below, or think to
find heaven on earth; wherein we must be
content with embryon-felicities, and fruitions of doubtful faces: for the circle of our
felicities makes but short arches. In every
clime we are in a periscian state;“With shadows all round us.” The Periscii are those, who, living
within the polar circle, see the sun move round them, and consequently project their
shadows in all directions.
and,
with our light, our shadow and darkness
walk about us. Our contentments stand
upon the tops of pyramids ready to fall off,
and the insecurity of their enjoyments abrupteth our tranquillities. What we magnify is magnificent, but, like to the Colossus, noble without,
stuft with rubbidge and
coarfe metal within. Even the sun, whose glorious outside we behold, may have dark and smoky entrails. In vain we
admire the lustre of any thing seen: that which is truly glorious, is invisible.
Paradise was but a part of the earth, lost not only to our fruition but
our knowledge. And if, according to old dictates, no man can be said to be
happy before death; the happiness of this life goes for nothing before
it be over, and while we think ourselves happy we do but usurp that name.
Certainly, true beatitude groweth not on earth, nor hath this world in it
the expectations we have of it. He swims in oil,Which being a light fluid, cannot support any heavy body.
and can hardly avoid
sinking,
who hath such light foundations to support him: ’tis, therefore, happy,
that we have two worlds to hold on. To enjoy true happiness, we must travel
into a very far country, and even out of ourselves; for the pearl we seek
for is not to be found in the Indian, but in the Empyrean ocean.“In the expanses of the highest heaven.”
ANSWER not the spur of fury, and
be not prodigal or prodigious in
revenge. Make not one in the
Historia horribilis;A book so intitled, wherein are sundry horrid accounts. First
edit.
stay not thy servant
for a broken glass,When Augustus supped with one of the Roman senators, a
slave happened
to break a glass, for which his master ordered him to be thrown into his pond to
feed his lampreys. Augustus, to punish his cruelty, ordered all the glasses in
the house to be broken.
nor pound him in a
mortar who offendeth thee;Anaxarchus, an antient philosopher, was beaten in a mortar by
a tyrant.
supererogate
not in the worst sense, and overdo not the necessities of evil; humour not the injustice
of revenge. Be not stoically mistaken in
the equality of sins, nor commutatively
iniquous in the valuation of transgressions;
but weigh them in the scales of heaven,
and by the weights of righteous reason. Think that revenge too high, which is but level with
the offence. Let thy arrows of revenge fly short; or be aimed like those
of Jonathan, to fall beside the mark. Too many there be to whom a dead enemy smells well, and who find musk and amber in revenge. The ferity of such
minds holds no rule in retaliations, requiring too often a head for a tooth,
and the supreme revenge for trespasses which a night’s rest should obliterate.
But patient meekness takes injuries like pills, not chewing but swallowing
them down, laconically suffering, and fluently passing them over; while
angered pride makes a nose, like Homerican Mars,
Tu miser exclamas, ut Stentora vincere possis,
Vel potius quantum Gradivus Homericus. Juv.
First edit.
You rage and storm, and blasphemously loud,
As Stentor bellowing to the Grecian crowd,
Or Homer’s Mars.—
Creech.
at every scratch of offences. Since women
do most delight in revenge,
——Minuti
Semper et infirmi est animi exiguique voluptas,
Ultio——Sic collige, quod vindictâ
Nemo magis gaudet, quam fœmina. Juv.
——Revenge! which Rill we find
The weaken frailty of a feeble mind.
Degenerous passion, and for man too base,
It seats its empire in the female race.
Creech.
it may seem but feminine
manhood to be vindicative. If thou must needs have thy revenge of thine
enemy, with a soft tongue break his bones,A soft tongue breaketh the bones. Prov. xxv. 15. First edit.
heap coals of fire on his head,
forgive him and enjoy it. To forgive our enemies is a charming way
of revenge, and a short Cæsarian conquest overcoming without a blow; laying
our enemies at our feet, under sorrow, shame, and repentance; leaving our
foes our friends, and sollicitously inclined to grateful retaliations. Thus
to return upon our adversaries, is a healing way of revenge; and to do
good for evil a soft and melting ultion, a method taught from heaven to keep all smooth
on earth. Common forceable ways make not an end of evil, but leave hatred
and malice behind them. An enemy thus reconciled is little to be trusted,
as wanting the foundation of love and charity, and but for a time restrained
by disadvantage or inability. If thou hast not mercy for others, yet be
not cruel unto thyself. To ruminate upon evils, to make critical notes upon
injuries, and be too acute in their apprehensions; is to add unto our own
tortures, to feather the arrows of our enemies, to lath ourselves with the scorpions of our foes, and to
resolve to sleep no more: for injuries long
dreamt on, take away at hit all rest; and he sleeps but like Regulus, who
busieth his head about them.
AMUSE not thyself about the riddles
of future things. Study prophecies
when they are become histories,
and part hovering in their causes. Eye
well things past and present, and let conjectural sagacity suffice for things to come.
There is a sober latitude for prescience
in contingences of discoverable tempers,
whereby discerning heads see sometimes
beyond their eyes, and wise men become
prophetical. Leave cloudy predictions to
their periods, and let appointed seasons
have the lot of their accomplishments.
’Tis too early to study such prophecies
before they have been long made, before
some train of their causes have already
taken fire, laying open in part what lay
obscure and before buried unto us. For
the voice of prophecies is like that of
whisfpering-places: they who are near, or
at a little distance, hear nothing; those at
the farthest extremity will understand all. But a retrograde
cognition of times past, & things which have already been, is more
satisfactory than a suspended knowledge of what is yet unexistent. And the
greatest part of time being already wrapt up in things behind us; it's now
somewhat late to bait after things before us; for futurity still shortens,
and time present sucks in time to come. What is prophetical in one age
proves historical in another, and so must hold on unto the last of time;
when there will be no room for prediction, when Janus shall loose one
face, and the long beard of time shall look like those of David's
servants, shorn away upon one side, & when, if the expected Elias
should appear, he might say much of what is past, not much of what's to
come.
LIVE unto the dignity of thy nature,
and leave it not disputable at last,
whether thou hast been a man;
or, since thou art a composition of man
and beast, how thou hast predominantly
passed thy days, to state the denomination.
Un-man not, therefore, thyself by a bestial transformation, nor realize old
fables. Expose not thyself by four-footed manners
unto monstrous draughts, and caricatura
representations. Think not after the old
Pythagorean conceit, what beast thou
mayst be after death. Be not under any
brutal metempsychofisSee page 65, note 2.
while thou livest,
and walkest about erectly under the scheme
of man. In thine own circumference, as
in that of the earth, let the rational horizon
be larger than the sensible, and the circle of
reason than of sense: let the divine part be
upward, and the region of beast below; otherwise, ’tis but to live invertedly, and with thy head unto the heels
of thy antipodes. Desert not thy title to a divine particle and union with
invisibles. Let true knowledge and virtue tell the lower world, thou art
a part of the higher. Let thy thoughts be of things which have not entred
into the hearts of beasts: think of things long past, and long to come: acquaint
thyself with the choragiumDance.
of the stars, and
consider the vast
expansion beyond them. Let intellectual tubes give thee a glance of things,
which visive organs reach not. Have a glimpse of incomprehensibles; and
thoughts of things, which thoughts but tenderly touch. Lodge immaterials
in thy head: ascend unto invisibles; fill thy spirit with spirituals,
with the mysteries of faith, the magnalities of religion, and thy life with
the honour of God; without which, though giants in wealth and dignity,
we are but dwarfs and pygmies in humanity, and may hold a pitiful rank in that triple division of mankind into heroes, men, and beasts. For though human
souls are said to be
equal, yet is there no small inequality in their operations; some maintain the allowable
station of men; many are far below it; and some have been so divine, as to approach
the ApogeumTo the utmost point of distance from earth and earthly things.
of their natures, and to be in the consinium of spirits.
BEHOLD thyself by inward opticks
and the crystalline of thy soul.Alluding to the crystalline humour of the eye.
Strange it is, that in the most perfect sense there should be so many fallacies,
that we are fain to make a doctrine, and
often to see by art. But the greatest imperfection is in our inward sight, that is, to be ghosts unto our own eyes; and while we are so
sharp-sighted
as to look thorough others, to be invisible unto ourselves; for the inward
eyes are more fallacious than the outward. The vices we scoff at in others,
laugh at us within ourselves. Avarice, pride, falshood, lie undiscerned
and blindly in us, even to the age of blindness: and, therefore, to see
ourselves interiourly, we are fain to borrow other men’s eyes; wherein
true friends are good informers, and censurers no bad friends. Conscience
only, that can see without light, fits in the AreopagyThe great court, like the Areopagus of Athens.
and dark tribunal of our
hearts, surveying our thoughts and condemning their obliquities. Happy is that
state of vision that can see without light, though all should look as before the
creation, when there was not an eye to see, or light to actuate a vision:
wherein, notwithstanding, obscurity is only imaginable respectively unto eyes:
for unto God there was none; eternal light was ever; created light was for the creation,
not himself; and as he saw before the fun, may still also see without it.
In the city of the new Jerusalem there is neither sun nor moon; where glorified
eyes must see by the ArchetypalOriginal.
sun, or the light of
God, able to illuminate intellectual eyes, and make unknown
visions. Intuitive perceptions in spiritual
beings may, perhaps, hold some analogy unto vision; but yet how they see
us, or one another, what eye, what light, or what perception is required
unto their intuition, is yet dark unto our apprehension; and even how they
see God, or how unto our glorified eyes the beatifical vision will be celebrated,
another world must tell us, when perceptions will be new, and we may hope
to behold invisibles.
WHEN all looks fair about, and thou seest not a cloud so big as a hand
to threaten thee, forget not the
wheel of things: think of sullen vicissitudes, but beat not thy brains to foreknow
them. Be armed against such obscurities,
rather by submission than fore-knowledge.
The knowledge of future evils mortifies
present felicities, and there is more content
in the uncertainty or ignorance of them. This favour our
Saviour vouchsafed
unto Peter, when he foretold not his
death in plain terms, and so by an ambiguous and cloudy delivery dampt not the spirit of his disciples. But in the assured
fore-knowledge of the deluge, Noah lived
many years under the affliction of a flood;
and Jerusalem was taken unto Jeremey,
before it was besieged. And, therefore,
the wisdom of astrologers, who speak of
future things, hath wisely softened the severity of their doctrines; and even in their
sad predictions,
while they tell us of inclination not coaction from the stars, they kill us not with
Stygian oaths and merciless necessity, but leave us hopes of evasion.
IF thou hast the brow to endure the name of traitor, perjur’d,
or oppressor, yet cover thy face when ingratitude is thrown at thee. If that degenerous
vice possess thee, hide thyself in the shadow of thy shame, and pollute not noble society. Grateful ingenuities are content to be obliged
within some compass of retribution; and being depressed by the weight of
iterated favours, may so labour under their inabilities of requital, as to abate
the content from kindnesses. But narrow self-ended souls make prescription of
good offices, and obliged by often favours think others still due unto them: whereas, if they but once fail, they prove so perversely ungrateful,
as to make nothing of former courtesies, and to bury all that’s past. Such tempers
pervert the generous course of things; for they discourage the inclinations of
noble minds, and make beneficency cool unto acts of obligation, whereby the grateful
world should subsist, and have their consolation. Common gratitude must be kept
alive by the additionary fuel of new courtesies: but generous gratitudes, though
but once well obliged, without quickening repetitions or expectation of new favours,
have thankful minds for ever; for they write not their obligations in sandy but
marble memories, which wear not out but with themselves.
THINK not silence the wisdom of fools; but, if rightly timed,
the honour of wife men, who have not the infirmity, but the virtue of taciturnity; and
speak not out of the abundance, but the well-weighed thoughts of their hearts.
Such silence may be eloquence, and speak thy worth above the power of words. Make
such a one thy friend, in whom princes may be happy, and great counsels successful.
Let him have the key of thy heart, who hath the lock of his own, which no temptation
can open; where thy secrets may lastingly lie, like the lamp in Olybius his urn,Which after many hundred years was found burning under ground, and went out as
soon as the air came to it. First edit.
alive, and light, but close and invisible.
LET thy oaths be sacred, and promises be made upon the altar of
thy heart. Call not JoveJovem lapidem jurare. First edit.
to witness, with a stone in one hand, and a straw
in another; and so make chaff and stubble of thy vows. Worldly spirits, whose interest is their belief, make cobwebs of obligations; and, if they can find ways to elude
the urn of the Prætor,The vessel, into which the ticket of condemnation or acquittal was cast.
will trust the
thunderbolt of Jupiter: and, therefore, if
they should as deeply swear as Osman to
Bethlem Gabor;See the oath of Sultan Osman in his life, in the addition to Knolls his Turkish history. First edit.
yet whether they would
be bound by those chains, and not find
ways to cut such Gordian knots, we could
have no just assurance. But honest men’s
words are Stygian oaths, and promises
inviolable. These are not the men for whom the fetters of law were first forged; they needed not
the solemness of oaths; by keeping their faith they swear,Colendo fidem jurant.
Curtius. First edit.
and evacuate such confirmations.
THOUGH the world be histrionical,
and most men live ironically, yet
be thou what thou singly art, and
personate only thyself. Swim smoothly in
the stream of thy nature, and live but one
man. To single hearts doubling is discruciating: such tempers must sweat to dissemble,
and prove but hypocritical hypocrites. Simulation must be short: men do
not easily continue a counterfeiting life, or
dissemble unto death. He who counterfeiteth, acts a part; and is, as it were, out
of himself: which, if long, proves so irksome, that men are glad to pull off their
vizards, and resume themselves again; no practice being able to naturalize such unnaturals,
or make a man rest content not to be himself. And, therefore,
since sincerity is thy temper, let veracity be thy virtue, in words, manners,
and actions. To offer at iniquities, which have so little foundations in
thee, were to be vicious up-hill, and strain for thy condemnation. Persons
viciously inclined, want no wheels to make them actively vicious; as having
the elater and spring of their own natures to facilitate their iniquities.
And, therefore, so many, who are sinistrous unto good actions, are ambi-dexterous
unto bad; and Vulcans in virtuous paths, Achilleses in vicious motions.
REST not in the high-strain’d paradoxes of old philosophy, supported
by naked reason, and the reward of
mortal felicity; but labour in the ethicks
of faith, built upon heavenly assistance, and the happiness of both beings.
Understand the rules, but swear not unto the
doctrines of Zeno or Epicurus.The authors of the Stoical and Epicurean philosophy.
Look
beyond Antoninus,Stoical philosophers.
and terminate not thy
morals in Seneca or Epidetus.Stoical philosophers.
Let not
the twelve, but the two tables be thy law:
let Pythagoras be thy remembrancer, not
thy textuary and final instructer; and learn the vanity of the world, rather
from Solomon than Phocylydes.A writer of moral sentences in verse.
Sleep not in the
dogmas of the Peripatus, Academy, or Porticus.Three schools of philosophy.
Be a moralist of the mount,That is, according to the rules laid down in our
Saviour’s
sermon on the mount.
an Epictetus in the faith, and christianize thy notions.
IN seventy or eighty years, a man may have a deep gust of the
world; know what it is, what it can afford, and what ’tis to have been a man. Such
a latitude of years may hold a considerable corner in the general map of time;
and a man may have a curt epitome of the whole course thereof in the days of his
own life; may clearly see he hath but acted over his fore-fathers; what it was
to live in ages past, and what living will be in all ages to come.
He is like to be the best judge of time, who hath lived to see
about the sixtieth part thereof. Persons of short times may know what ’tis to live, but not the life of man, who, having
little behind them, are but Januses of one face, and know not singularities enough
to raise axioms of this world: but such a compass of years will shew new examples
of old things, parallelisms of occurrences through the whole course of time, and
nothing be monstrous unto him; who may in that time understand not only the varieties
of men, but the variation of himself, and how many men he hath been in that extent
of time.
He may have a close apprehension what it is to be forgotten,
while he hath lived to find none who could remember his father, or scarce the friends
of his youth; and may sensibly see with what a face in no long time oblivion will
look upon himself. His progeny may never be his posterity; he may go out of the
world less related than he came into it; and, considering the frequent mortality
in friends and relations, in such a term of time, he may pass away divers years in sorrow and black habits, and leave none to mourn for
himself; orbity may be his inheritance, and riches his repentance.
In such a thred of time, and long observation of men,
he may acquire a physiognomical intuitive knowledge; judge the interiors
by the outside, and raise conjectures at first fight; and knowing what men
have been, what they are, what children probably will be, may in the present
age behold a good part and the temper of the next; and since so many live
by the rules of constitution, and so few overcome their temperamental inclinations,
make no improbable predictions.
Such a portion of time will afford a large prospect backward,
and authentick reflections how far he hath performed the great intention
of his being, in the honour of his Maker; whether he hath made good the
principles of his nature, and what he was made to be; what characteristick
and special mark he hath left, to be observable in his generation; whether he hath lived to purpose or
in vain; and what he hath added, acted, or performed, that might considerably speak him a man.
In such an age, delights will be undelightful, and pleasures
grow stale unto him; antiquated theorems will revive, and Solomon's maximsThat all is vanity.
be demonstrations unto him; hopes or presumptions be over, and despair grow
up of any satisfaction below. And having been long tossed in the ocean of
this world, he will by that time feel the indraught of another, unto which
this seems but preparatory, and without it of no high value. He will experimentally
find the emptiness of all things, and the nothing of what is pail; and
wifely grounding upon true christian expectations, finding so much pall,
will wholly fix upon what is to come. He will long for perpetuity, and live
as though he made haste to be happy. The last may prove the prime part of
his life, and those his best days which he lived nearest heaven.
LIVE happy in the Elizium of a virtuously composed mind, and let intellectual contents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists place their paradise.
Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor let complexion or contagion betray thee
unto the exorbitancy of delight. Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation,
not thy Diana, life and profession. Voluptuousness is as insatiable as covetousness.
Tranquillity is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent pleasure.
Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going out of it, our sicknesses,
disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do clamorously tell us we come not into
the world to run a race of delight, but to perform the sober ads and serious purposes
of man; which to omit were foully to miscarry in the advantage of humanity, to play
away an uniterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the capital end,
and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Dream not of any kind of metempsychosisSee note 2, page 65.
or transanimation, but into thine own body, and that after a long time; and then
also unto wail or bliss, according to thy first and fundamental life. Upon a curricle
in this world depends a long course of the next, and upon a narrow scene here an
endless expansion hereafter. In vain some think to have an end of their beings with
their lives. Things cannot get out of their natures, or be or not be in despight
of their constitutions. Rational existences in heaven perish not at all, and but
partially on earth: that which is thus once, will in some way be always: the
first
living human soul is still alive, and all Adam hath found no period.
SINCE the stars of heaven do differ
in glory; since it hath pleased the Almighty hand to honour the
north-pole with lights above the south;
since there are some stars so bright that
they can hardly be looked on, some so dim that they can scarce be seen, and vast
numbers not to be seen at all even by artificial
eyes; read thou the earth in heaven, and things below from above. Look contentedly upon the scattered difference of things,
and expect not equality, in lustre, dignity,
or perfection, in regions or persons below;
where numerous numbers must be content
to stand like lacteous or nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim in
their generations. All which may be contentedly
allowable in the affairs and ends of this
world, and in suspension unto what will
be in the order of things hereafter, and the
new system of mankind which will be in the world to come; when the last may be the first, and the
first
the last; when Lazarus may sit above Cæsar, and the just obscure on earth shall
thine like the sun in heaven; when personations shall cease, and histrionism of
happiness be over; when reality shall rule, and all shall be as they shall be for
ever.
WHEN the Stoick said that life
would not be accepted if it were
offered unto such as knew it,‘Vitam nemo acciperct, si daretur scientibus.
Seneca. First edit.
he spoke too meanly of that state of being
which placeth us in the form of men. It
more depreciates the value of this life, that men would not live it over again;
for although they would still live on, yet few or
none can endure to think of being twice
the same men upon earth, and some had
rather never have lived than to tread over their days once more. Cicero in a prosperous state had not the patience to think
of beginning in a cradle again.Si quis Deus mihi largiatur, ut repuerascam et in cunis
vagiam, valde recusem. Cic. de Senectute.
Job would not only curse the day
of his nativity, but also of his renascency, if he were to act over his disasters
and the miseries of the dunghill. But the greatest underweening of this
life is to undervalue that, unto which this is but exordial or a passage
leading unto it. The great advantage of this mean life is thereby to stand
in a capacity of a better; for the colonies of heaven must be drawn from
earth, and the sons of the first Adam are only heirs unto the second. Thus
Adam came into this world with the power also of another; nor only to replenish the earth, but the
everlasting mansions of heaven. Where we were when the
foundations of the earth were laid, when the morning stars sang together,Job xxxviii.
and all the sons of God shouted for joy,
He must answer who asked
it; who understands entities of preordination, and beings yet unbeing;
who hath in his intellect the ideal existences of things, and entities before
their extances. Though it looks but like an imaginary kind of existency,
to be before we are; yet since we are under the decree or prescience of
a sure and Omnipotent Power, it may be somewhat more than a non-entity,
to be in that mind, unto which all things are present.
IF the end of the world shall have
the same foregoing signs, as the
period of empires, states, and dominions in it, that is, corruption of manners, inhuman degenerations, and deluge of
iniquities; it may be doubted, whether
that final time be so far off, of whose day
and hour there can be no prescience. But while all men doubt, and none can determine how long the world
shall last, some may wonder that it hath spun out so long and unto our days. For
if the Almighty had not determin'd a fixed duration unto it, according to his
mighty and merciful designments in it; if he had not said unto it, as he did
unto a part of it, hitherto shalt thou go and no farther; if we consider the incessant and cutting provocations from the earth; it is not without amazement,
how his patience hath permitted so long a continuance unto it; how he, who
cursed the earth in the first days of the first man, and drowned it in the tenth
generation after, should thus lastingly contend with flesh, and yet defer the
last flames. For since he is sharply provoked every moment, yet punisheth to
pardon, and forgives to forgive again; what patience could be content to ad over
such vicissitudes, or accept of repentances which must have after-penitences,
his goodness can only tell us. And surely if the patience of
Heaven were not proportionable unto
the provocations from earth, there needed an intercessor not only for the
sins, but the duration of this world, and to lead it up unto the present
computation. Without filch a merciful longanimity, the heavens would never
be so aged as to grow old like a garment. It were in vain to infer from
the doctrine of the sphere, that the time might come, when Capella, a noble
northern star, would have its motion in the Æquator; that the northern
zodiacal signs would at length be the southern, the southern the northern,
and Capricorn become our Cancer. However, therefore, the wisdom of the
Creator
hath ordered the duration of the world, yet since the end thereof brings
the accomplishment of our happiness, since some would be content that it
should have no end, since evil men and spirits do fear it may be too short,
since good men hope it may not be too long; the prayer of the saints under
the altar will be the supplication of the righteous world that his mercy would
abridge their languishing expectation, and hasten the accomplishment of
their happy state to come.
THOUGH good men are often taken
away from the evil to come; though
some in evil days have been glad
that they were old, nor long to behold the
iniquities of a wicked world, or judgments
threatened by them; yet is it no small satisfaction unto honest minds, to leave the
world in virtuous well-temper’d times,
under a prospect of good to come, and continuation of worthy ways acceptable unto
God and man. Men who die in deplorable days, which they regretfully behold,
have not their eyes closed with the like
content; while they cannot avoid the
thoughts of proceeding or growing enormities, displeasing unto that
Spirit unto whom they are then going, whose honour they desire in all
times and throughout all generations. If Lucifer could be freed from his dismal
place, he would little care though the rest were left behind. Too many there may
be of Nero's mind, who, if their own turn were served, would not regard what
became of others;Nero often had this laying in his mouth,
Ἐμοῦ θάνοντος γαῖα μιχθήτω πύρι:
“when I am once dead, let the earth and fire be jumbled together.”
and, when they die
themselves, care not if all perish. But good men’s wishes extend beyond
their lives, for the happiness of times to come, and never to be known unto
them. And, therefore, while so many question prayers for the dead, they
charitably pray for those who are not yet alive; they are not so enviously ambitious to go to heaven by themselves: they cannot but humbly with, that
the little flock might be greater, the narrow gate wider, and that, as many
are called, so not a few might be chosen.
THAT a greater number of angels remained in heaven, than fell
from it, the school-men will tell us; that the number of blessed souls will
not come short of that vast number of fallen spirits, we have the favourable calculation
of others. What age or century hath sent most souls unto heaven, he can tell who vouchsafeth that honour unto them. Though the number of the blessed must be complete
before the world can pass away; yet since the world itself seems in the wane, and
we have no such comfortable prognosticks of latter times; since a greater part
of time is spun than is to come, and the blessed roll already much replenished; happy are those pieties, which
sollicitously look about, and hasten to make one
of that already much filled and abbreviated list to come.
THINK not thy time short in this
world, since the world itself is not long. The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity; and a short
interposition for a time between such a state of duration, as was before it and may
be after it. And if we should allow of the
old tradition, that the world should last six
thousand years, it could scarce have the
name of old, since the first man lived near
a sixth part thereof, and seven Methuselahs would exceed its whole duration. However, to palliate the shortness of our lives,
and somewhat to compensate our brief
term in this world, it’s good to know as
much as we can of it; and also, so far as
possibly in us lieth, to hold such a theory
of times past, as though we had seen the same. He who hath thus considered the
world, as also how therein things long past
have been answered by things present; how matters in one age have been acted over in another; and how
there is nothing new under the sun; may conceive himself in some manner to have
lived from the beginning, and to be as old as the world; and if he should still
live on, ’twould be but the same thing.
LASTLY; if length of days be thy
portion, make it not thy expectation.Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum,
Grata superveniet quæ non sperabitur
hora. Hor.
Believe, that ev’ry morning’s ray
Hath lighted up thy latest day;
Then, if to-morrow’s sun be thine,
With double lustre shall it shine.
Francis.
Reckon not upon long life:
think every day the last, and live always
beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his expectation lives many lives,
and will scarce complain of the shortness of
his days. Time past is gone like a shadow;
make time to come present. Approximate thy latter times by present apprehensions of them: be
like a neighbour unto the grave, and think there is but little to come.
And since there is something of us that will still live on, join both lives
together, and live in one but for the other. He who thus ordereth the purposes
of this life, will never be far from the next; and is in some manner already
in it, by a happy conformity, and close apprehension of it. And if, as we
have elsewhere declared,In his treatise of Urnburial. Some other parts of these
essays are printed in a letter among Browne's posthumous works. Those
references to his own books prove these essays to be genuine.
any have been so happy, as personally to underhand christian annihilation, extasy, exolution, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the divine
shadow, according to mystical theology,
they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the world is
in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.
CHISWICE PRESS:—PRINTED BY WHITTINGHAM AND WILKINS,
TOOKS COURT, CHANCERY LANE.
