Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend Part 2

Pineda<35> quotes more authors, in one work,* than are necessary in a whole world. Of those three great inven- tions in Germany,<36> there are two which are not without their incommodities, and 'tis disputable whether they exceed not their use and commodities. 'Tis not a melan- choly utinam of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general synod--not to unite the incom- patible difference of religion, but,--for the benefit of

* Pineda, in his "Monarchia Ecclesiastica," quotes one thousand and forty authors.

learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors; and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers.

Sect. 25.--I cannot but wonder with what exception the Samaritans could confine their belief to the Penta- teuch, or five books of Moses. I am ashamed at the rabbinical interpretation of the Jews upon the Old Testament,<37> as much as their defection from the New: and truly it is beyond wonder, how that contemptible and degenerate issue of Jacob, once so devoted to ethnick superst.i.tion, and so easily seduced to the idolatry of their neighbours, should now, in such an obstinate and peremptory belief, adhere unto their own doctrine, expect impossibilities, and in the face and eye of the church, persist without the least hope of conversion.

This is a vice in them, that were a virtue in us; for obstinacy in a bad cause is but constancy in a good: and herein I must accuse those of my own religion; for there is not any of such a fugitive faith, such an unstable belief, as a Christian; none that do so often transform themselves, not unto several shapes of Christianity, and of the same species, but unto more unnatural and contrary forms of Jew and Mohammedan; that, from the name of Saviour, can condescend to the bare term of prophet: and, from an old belief that he is come, fall to a new expectation of his coming. It is the promise of Christ, to make us all one flock: but how and when this union shall be, is as obscure to me as the last day. Of those four members of religion we hold a slender propor- tion.<38> There are, I confess, some new additions; yet small to those which accrue to our adversaries; and those only drawn from the revolt of pagans; men but of negative impieties; and such as deny Christ, but because they never heard of him. But the religion of the Jew is expressly against the Christian, and the Mohammedan against both; for the Turk, in the bulk he now stands, is beyond all hope of conversion: if he fall asunder, there may be conceived hopes; but not without strong improbabilities. The Jew is obstinate in all fortunes; the persecution of fifteen hundred years hath but confirmed them in their error. They have already endured whatsoever may be inflicted: and have suffered, in a bad cause, even to the condemnation of their enemies. Persecution is a bad and indirect way to plant religion. It hath been the unhappy method of angry devotions, not only to confirm honest religion, but wicked heresies and extravagant opinions. It was the first stone and basis of our faith. None can more justly boast of persecutions, and glory in the number and valour of martyrs. For, to speak properly, those are true and almost only examples of fort.i.tude. Those that are fetched from the field, or drawn from the actions of the camp, are not ofttimes so truly precedents of valour as audacity, and, at the best, attain but to some b.a.s.t.a.r.d piece of fort.i.tude. If we shall strictly examine the circ.u.mstances and requisites which Aristotle requires<39> to true and perfect valour, we shall find the name only in his master, Alexander, and as little in that Roman worthy, Julius Caesar; and if any, in that easy and active way, have done so n.o.bly as to deserve that name, yet, in the pa.s.sive and more terrible piece, these have surpa.s.sed, and in a more heroical way may claim, the honour of that t.i.tle. 'Tis not in the power of every honest faith to proceed thus far, or pa.s.s to heaven through the flames. Every one hath it not in that full measure, nor in so audacious and resolute a temper, as to endure those terrible tests and trials; who, notwith- standing, in a peaceable way, do truly adore their Saviour, and have, no doubt, a faith acceptable in the eyes of G.o.d.

Sect. 26.--Now, as all that die in the war are not termed soldiers, so neither can I properly term all those that suffer in matters of religion, martyrs. The council of Constance condemns John Huss for a heretick;<40> the stories of his own party style him a martyr. He must needs offend the divinity of both, that says he was neither the one nor the other. There are many (questionless) canonized on earth, that shall never be saints in heaven; and have their names in histories and martyrologies, who, in the eyes of G.o.d, are not so per- fect martyrs as was that wise heathen Socrates, that suffered on a fundamental point of religion,--the unity of G.o.d. I have often pitied the miserable bishop<41> that suffered in the cause of antipodes; yet cannot choose but accuse him of as much madness, for exposing his living on such a trifle, as those of ignorance and folly, that condemned him. I think my conscience will not give me the lie, if I say there are not many extant, that, in a n.o.ble way, fear the face of death less than myself; yet, from the moral duty I owe to the com- mandment of G.o.d, and the natural respect that I tender unto the conservation of my essence and being, I would not perish upon a ceremony, politick points, or indiffer- ency: nor is my belief of that untractable temper as, not to bow at their obstacles, or connive at matters wherein there are not manifest impieties. The leaven, therefore, and ferment of all, not only civil, but re- ligious, actions, is wisdom; without which, to commit ourselves to the flames is homicide, and (I fear) but to pa.s.s through one fire into another.

Sect. 27.--That miracles are ceased, I can neither prove nor absolutely deny, much less define the time and period of their cessation. That they survived Christ is manifest upon record of Scripture: that they outlived the apostles also, and were revived at the con- version of nations, many years after, we cannot deny, if we shall not question those writers whose testimonies we do not controvert in points that make for our own opinions: therefore, that may have some truth in it, that is reported by the Jesuits of their miracles in the Indies.

I could wish it were true, or had any other testimony than their own pens. They may easily believe those miracles abroad, who daily conceive a greater at home --the trans.m.u.tation of those visible elements into the body and blood of our Saviour;--for the conversion of water into wine, which he wrought in Cana, or, what the devil would have had him done in the wilderness, of stones into bread, compared to this, will scarce deserve the name of a miracle: though, indeed, to speak pro- perly, there is not one miracle greater than another; they being the extraordinary effects of the hand of G.o.d, to which all things are of an equal facility; and to create the world as easy as one single creature. For this is also a miracle; not only to produce effects against or above nature, but before nature; and to create nature, as great a miracle as to contradict or transcend her. We do too narrowly define the power of G.o.d, restraining it to our capacities. I hold that G.o.d can do all things: how he should work contradic- tions, I do not understand, yet dare not, therefore, deny.

I cannot see why the angel of G.o.d should question Esdras to recall the time past, if it were beyond his own power; or that G.o.d should pose mortality in that which he was not able to perform himself. I will not say that G.o.d cannot, but he will not, perform many things, which we plainly affirm he cannot. This, I am sure, is the mannerliest proposition; wherein, notwith- standing, I hold no paradox: for, strictly, his power is the same with his will; and they both, with all the rest, do make but one G.o.d.

Sect. 28.--Therefore, that miracles have been, I do believe; that they may yet be wrought by the living, I do not deny: but have no confidence in those which are fathered on the dead. And this hath ever made me suspect the efficacy of relicks, to examine the bones, question the habits and appertenances of saints, and even of Christ himself. I cannot conceive why the cross that Helena<42> found, and whereon Christ himself died, should have power to restore others unto life. I excuse not Constantine from a fall off his horse, or a mischief from his enemies, upon the wearing those nails on his bridle which our Saviour bore upon the cross in his hands. I compute among piae fraudes, nor many degrees before consecrated swords and roses, that which Baldwin, king of Jerusalem, returned the Genoese for their costs and pains in his wars; to wit, the ashes of John the Baptist. Those that hold, the sanct.i.ty of their souls doth leave behind a tincture and sacred faculty on their bodies, speak naturally of miracles, and do not salve the doubt. Now, one reason I tender so little devotion unto relicks is, I think the slender and doubt- ful respect which I have always held unto antiquities. For that, indeed, which I admire, is far before antiquity; that is, Eternity; and that is, G.o.d himself; who, though he be styled the Ancient of Days, cannot receive the adjunct of antiquity, who was before the world, and shall be after it, yet is not older than it: for, in his years there is no climacter:<43> his duration is eternity; and far more venerable than antiquity.

Sect. 29.--But, above all things, I wonder how the curiosity of wiser heads could pa.s.s that great and indis- putable miracle, the cessation of oracles; and in what swoon their reasons lay, to content themselves, and sit down with such a far-fetched and ridiculous reason as Plutarch allegeth for it.<44> The Jews, that can believe the supernatural solstice of the sun in the days of Joshua, have yet the impudence to deny the eclipse, which every pagan confessed, at his death; but for this, it is evident beyond all contradiction: the devil himself confessed it.* Certainly it is not a warrant- able curiosity, to examine the verity of Scripture by the concordance of human history; or seek to confirm the chronicle of Hester or Daniel by the authority of Meg- asthenes<45> or Herodotus. I confess, I have had an un- happy curiosity this way, till I laughed myself out of it with a piece of Justin, where he delivers that the children of Israel, for being scabbed, were banished out of Egypt. And truly, since I have understood the occurrences of the world, and know in what counterfeit- ing shapes and deceitful visards times present represent on the stage things past, I do believe them little more than things to come. Some have been of my own opinion, and endeavoured to write the history of their own lives; wherein Moses hath outgone them all, and left not only the story of his life, but, as some will have it, of his death also.

Sect. 30.--It is a riddle to me, how the story of oracles hath not wormed out of the world that doubtful conceit of spirits and witches; how so many learned

* In his oracle to Augustus.

heads should so far forget their metaphysicks, and destroy the ladder and scale of creatures, as to question the existence of spirits; for my part, I have ever be- lieved, and do now know, that there are witches. They that doubt of these do not only deny them, but spirits: and are obliquely, and upon consequence, a sort, not of infidels, but atheists. Those that, to confute their in- credulity, desire to see apparitions, shall, questionless, never behold any, nor have the power to be so much as witches. The devil hath made them already in a heresy as capital as witchcraft; and to appear to them were but to convert them. Of all the delusions wherewith he deceives mortality, there is not any that puzzleth me more than the legerdemain of changelings.<46> I do not credit those transformations of reasonable creatures into beasts, or that the devil hath a power to transpeciate a man into a horse, who tempted Christ (as a trial of his divinity) to convert but stones into bread. I could believe that spirits use with man the act of carnality; and that in both s.e.xes. I conceive they may a.s.sume, steal, or contrive a body, wherein there may be action enough to content decrepit l.u.s.t, or pa.s.sion to satisfy more active veneries; yet, in both, without a possibility of generation: and therefore that opinion, that Anti- christ should be born of the tribe of Dan, by conjunc- tion with the devil, is ridiculous, and a conceit fitter for a rabbin than a Christian. I hold that the devil doth really possess some men; the spirit of melancholy others; the spirit of delusion others: that, as the devil is concealed and denied by some, so G.o.d and good angels are pretended by others, whereof the late defec- tion of the maid of Germany hath left a pregnant example.<47>

Sect. 31.--Again, I believe that all that use sorceries, incantations, and spells, are not witches, or, as we term them, magicians. I conceive there is a traditional magick, not learned immediately from the devil, but at second hand from his scholars, who, having once the secret betrayed, are able and do empirically practise without his advice; they both proceeding upon the principles of nature; where actives, aptly conjoined to disposed pa.s.sives, will, under any master, produce their effects. Thus, I think, at first, a great part of philosophy was witchcraft; which, being afterward derived to one another, proved but philosophy, and was indeed no more than the honest effects of nature:--what invented by us, is philosophy; learned from him, is magick.

We do surely owe the discovery of many secrets to the discovery of good and bad angels. I could never pa.s.s that sentence of Paracelsus without an asterisk, or an- notation: "ascendens* constellatum multa revelat quaeren- tibus magnalia naturae, i.e. opera Dei." I do think that many mysteries ascribed to our own inventions have been the corteous revelations of spirits; for those n.o.ble essences in heaven bear a friendly regard unto their fellow-nature on earth; and therefore believe that those many prodigies and ominous prognosticks, which forerun the ruins of states, princes, and private persons, are the charitable premonitions of good angels, which more careless inquiries term but the effects of chance and nature.

Sect. 32.--Now, besides these particular and divided spirits, there may be (for aught I know) a universal and common spirit to the whole world. It was the opinion of Plato, and is yet of the hermetical philosophers.

If there be a common nature, that unites and ties the

* Thereby is meant our good angel, appointed us from our nativity.

scattered and divided individuals into one species, why may there not be one that unites them all? However, I am sure there is a common spirit, that plays within us, yet makes no part in us; and that is, the spirit of G.o.d; the fire and scintillation of that n.o.ble and mighty essence, which is the life and radical heat of spirits, and those essences that know not the virtue of the sun; a fire quite contrary to the fire of h.e.l.l. This is that gentle heat that brooded on the waters, and in six days hatched the world; this is that irradiation that dispels the mists of h.e.l.l, the clouds of horror, fear, sorrow, despair; and preserves the region of the mind in serenity. Whatso- ever feels not the warm gale and gentle ventilation of this spirit (though I feel his pulse), I dare not say he lives; for truly without this, to me, there is no heat under the tropick; nor any light, though I dwelt in the body of the sun.

"As when the labouring sun hath wrought his track Up to the top of lofty Cancer's back, The icy ocean cracks, the frozen pole Thaws with the heat of the celestial coal; So when thy absent beams begin t'impart Again a solstice on my frozen heart, My winter's o'er, my drooping spirits sing, And every part revives into a spring.

But if thy quickening beams a while decline, And with their light bless not this...o...b..of mine, A chilly frost surpriseth every member.

And in the midst of June I feel December.

Oh how this earthly temper doth debase The n.o.ble soul, in this her humble place!

Whose wingy nature ever doth aspire To reach that place whence first it took its fire.

These flames I feel, which in my heart do dwell, Are not thy beams, but take their fire from h.e.l.l.

Oh quench them all! and let thy Light divine Be as the sun to this poor orb of mine!

And to thy sacred Spirit convert those fires, Whose earthly fumes choke my devout aspires!"

Sect. 33.--Therefore, for spirits, I am so far from denying their existence, that I could easily believe, that not only whole countries, but particular persons, have their tutelary and guardian angels. It is not a new opinion of the Church of Rome, but an old one of Pythagoras and Plato: there is no heresy in it: and if not manifestly defined in Scripture, yet it is an opinion of a good and wholesome use in the course and actions of a man's life; and would serve as an hypothesis to salve many doubts, whereof common philosophy affordeth no solution. Now, if you demand my opinion and meta- physicks of their natures, I confess them very shallow; most of them in a negative way, like that of G.o.d; or in a comparative, between ourselves and fellow-creatures: for there is in this universe a stair, or manifest scale, of creatures, rising not disorderly, or in confusion, but with a comely method and proportion. Between creatures of mere existence and things of life there is a large dispro- portion of nature: between plants and animals, or creatures of sense, a wider difference: between them and man, a far greater: and if the proportion hold on, between man and angels there should be yet a greater. We do not comprehend their natures, who retain the first definition of Porphyry;<48> and distinguish them from ourselves by immortality: for, before his fall, man also was im- mortal: yet must we needs affirm that he had a different essence from the angels. Having, therefore, no certain knowledge of their nature, 'tis no bad method of the schools, whatsoever perfection we find obscurely in our- selves, in a more complete and absolute way to ascribe unto them. I believe they have an extemporary know- ledge, and, upon the first motion of their reason, do what we cannot without study or deliberation: that they know things by their forms, and define, by speci- fical difference what we describe by accidents and pro- perties: and therefore probabilities to us may be demonstrations unto them: that they have knowledge not only of the specifical, but numerical, forms of in- dividuals, and understand by what reserved difference each single hypostatis (besides the relation to its species) becomes its numerical self: that, as the soul hath a power to move the body it informs, so there's a faculty to move any, though inform none: ours upon restraint of time, place, and distance: but that invisible hand that conveyed Habakkuk to the lion's den, or Philip to Azotus, infringeth this rule, and hath a secret convey- ance, wherewith mortality is not acquainted. If they have that intuitive knowledge, whereby, as in reflection, they behold the thoughts of one another, I cannot peremptorily deny but they know a great part of ours.

They that, to refute the invocation of saints, have denied that they have any knowledge of our affairs below, have proceeded too far, and must pardon my opinion, till I can thoroughly answer that piece of Scripture, "At the conversion of a sinner, the angels in heaven rejoice." I cannot, with those in that great father,<49> securely interpret the work of the first day, fiat lux, to the creation of angels; though I confess there is not any creature that hath so near a glimpse of their nature as light in the sun and elements: we style it a bare accident; but, where it subsists alone, 'tis a spiritual substance, and may be an angel: in brief, conceive light invisible, and that is a spirit.

Sect. 34.--These are certainly the magisterial and masterpieces of the Creator; the flower, or, as we may say, the best part of nothing; actually existing, what we are but in hopes, and probability. We are only that amphibious piece, between a corporeal and a spiritual essence; that middle form, that links those two to- gether, and makes good the method of G.o.d and nature, that jumps not from extremes, but unites the incom- patible distances by some middle and partic.i.p.ating natures. That we are the breath and similitude of G.o.d, it is indisputable, and upon record of Holy Scripture: but to call ourselves a microcosm, or little world, I thought it only a pleasant trope of rhetorick, till my near judgment and second thoughts told me there was a real truth therein. For, first we are a rude ma.s.s, and in the rank of creatures which only are, and have a dull kind of being, not yet privileged with life, or preferred to sense or reason; next we live the life of plants, the life of animals, the life of men, and at last the life of spirits: running on, in one mysterious nature, those five kinds of existencies, which comprehend the creatures, not only of the world, but of the universe. Thus is man that great and true amphibium, whose nature is disposed to live, not only like other creatures in divers elements, but in divided and distinguished worlds; for though there be but one to sense, there are two to reason, the one visible, the other invisible; whereof Moses seems to have left description, and of the other so obscurely, that some parts thereof are yet in controversy.

And truly, for the first chapters of Genesis, I must con- fess a great deal of obscurity; though divines have, to the power of human reason, endeavoured to make all go in a literal meaning, yet those allegorical interpreta- tions are also probable, and perhaps the mystical method of Moses, bred up in the hieroglyphical schools of the Egyptians.

Sect. 35.--Now for that immaterial world, methinks we need not wander so far as the first moveable; for, even in this material fabrick, the spirits walk as freely exempt from the affection of time, place, and motion, as beyond the extremest circ.u.mference. Do but extract from the corpulency of bodies, or resolve things beyond their first matter, and you discover the habitation of angels; which if I call the ubiquitary and omnipresent essence of G.o.d, I hope I shall not offend divinity: for, before the creation of the world, G.o.d was really all things. For the angels he created no new world, or determinate mansion, and therefore they are everywhere where is his essence, and do live, at a distance even, in himself. That G.o.d made all things for man, is in some sense true; yet, not so far as to subordinate the creation of those purer creatures unto ours; though, as minister- ing spirits, they do, and are willing to fulfil the will of G.o.d in these lower and sublunary affairs of man. G.o.d made all things for himself; and it is impossible he should make them for any other end than his own glory: it is all he can receive, and all that is without himself.

For, honour being an external adjunct, and in the honourer rather than in the person honoured, it was necessary to make a creature, from whom he might re- ceive this homage: and that is, in the other world, angels, in this, man; which when we neglect, we forget G.o.d, not only to repent that he hath made the world, but that he hath sworn he would not destroy it. That there is but one world, is a conclusion of faith; Aristotle with all his philosophy hath not been able to prove it: and as weakly that the world was eternal; that dispute much troubled the pen of the philosophers, but Moses decided that question, and all is salved with the new term of a creation,--that is, a production of some- thing out of nothing. And what is that?--whatsoever is opposite to something; or, more exactly, that which is truly contrary unto G.o.d: for he only is; all others have an existence with dependency, and are something but by a distinction. And herein is divinity conformant unto philosophy, and generation not only founded on contrarieties, but also creation. G.o.d, being all things, is contrary unto nothing; out of which were made all things, and so nothing became something, and omneity<50> informed nullity into an essence.

Sect. 36.--The whole creation is a mystery, and par- ticularly that of man. At the blast of his mouth were the rest of the creatures made; and at his bare word they started out of nothing: but in the frame of man (as the text describes it) he played the sensible operator, and seemed not so much to create as make him. When he had separated the materials of other creatures, there consequently resulted a form and soul; but, having raised the walls of man, he was driven to a second and harder creation,--of a substance like himself, an incor- ruptible and immortal soul. For these two affections we have the philosophy and opinion of the heathens, the flat affirmative of Plato, and not a negative from Aristotle. There is another scruple cast in by divinity concerning its production, much disputed in the German auditories, and with that indifferency and equality of arguments, as leave the controversy undetermined. I am not of Paracelsus's mind, that boldly delivers a re- ceipt to make a man without conjunction; yet cannot but wonder at the mult.i.tude of heads that do deny traduction, having no other arguments to confirm their belief than that rhetorical sentence and antimetathesis<51> of Augustine, "creando infunditur, infundendo creatur." Either opinion will consist well enough with religion: yet I should rather incline to this, did not one objection haunt me, not wrung from speculations and subtleties, but from common sense and observation; not pick'd from the leaves of any author, but bred amongst the weeds and tares of my own brain. And this is a con- clusion from the equivocal and monstrous productions in the copulation of a man with a beast: for if the soul of man be not transmitted and transfused in the seed of the parents, why are not those productions merely beasts, but have also an impression and tincture of reason in as high a measure, as it can evidence itself in those improper organs? Nor, truly, can I peremptorily deny that the soul, in this her sublunary estate, is wholly, and in all acceptions, inorganical: but that, for the performance of her ordinary actions, is required not only a symmetry and proper disposition of organs, but a crasis and temper correspondent to its operations; yet is not this ma.s.s of flesh and visible structure the instrument and proper corpse of the soul, but rather of sense, and that the hand of reason. In our study of anatomy there is a ma.s.s of mysterious philosophy, and such as reduced the very heathens to divinity; yet, amongst all those rare discoveries and curious pieces I find in the fabrick of man, I do not so much content myself, as in that I find not,--that is, no organ or instrument for the rational soul; for in the brain, which we term the seat of reason, there is not anything of moment more than I can discover in the crany of a beast; and this is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the inorganity of the soul, at least in that sense we usually so conceive it. Thus we are men, and we know not how; there is something in us that can be without us, and will be after us, though it is strange that it hath no history what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it entered in us.

Sect. 37.--Now, for these walls of flesh, wherein the soul doth seem to be immured before the resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a fabrick that must fall to ashes. "All flesh is gra.s.s," is not only metaphorically, but literally, true; for all those creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field, digested into flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay, further, we are what we all abhor, anthropophagi, and cannibals, devourers not only of men, but of ourselves; and that not in an allegory but a positive truth: for all this ma.s.s of flesh which we be- hold, came in at our mouths: this frame we look upon, hath been upon our trenchers; in brief, we have devoured ourselves. I cannot believe the wisdom of Pythagoras did ever positively, and in a literal sense, affirm his metempsychosis, or impossible transmigration of the souls of men into beasts. Of all metamorphoses or transmigrations, I believe only one, that is of Lot's wife; for that of Nabuchodonosor proceeded not so far.

In all others I conceive there is no further verity than is contained in their implicit sense and morality. I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and is left in the same state after death as before it was materialled unto life: that the souls of men know neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist be- yond the body, and outlive death by the privilege of their proper natures, and without a miracle: that the souls of the faithful, as they leave earth, take possession of heaven; that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villany; instilling and steal- ing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander, solicitous of the affairs of the world. But that those phantasms appear often, and do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, it is because those are the dormitories of the dead, where the devil, like an insolent champion, beholds with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory over Adam.

Sect. 38.--This is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us so often cry, O Adam, quid fecisti? I thank G.o.d I have not those strait ligaments, or narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life, or be con- vulsed and tremble at the name of death. Not that I am insensible of the dread and horror thereof; or, by raking into the bowels of the deceased, continual sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous relicks, like ves- pilloes, or gravemakers, I am become stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality; but that, marshal- ling all the horrors, and contemplating the extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian; and therefore am not angry at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a part of this common fate, and, like the best of them, to die; that is, to cease to breathe, to take a farewell of the elements; to be a kind of nothing for a moment; to be within one instant of a spirit. When I take a full view and circle of myself without this reasonable moderator, and equal piece of justice, death, I do conceive myself the miser- ablest person extant. Were there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath from me. Could the devil work my belief to imagine I could never die, I would not outlive that very thought. I have so abject a con- ceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I cannot think this is to be a man, or to live according to the dignity of humanity.

In expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace this life; yet, in my best meditations, do often defy death. I honour any man that contemns it; nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes me naturally love a soldier, and honour those tattered and contemptible regiments, that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a pagan there may be some motives to be in love with life; but, for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma-- that he is too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come.

Sect. 39.--Some divines<52> count Adam thirty years old at his creation, because they suppose him created in the perfect age and stature of man: and surely we are all out of the computation of our age; and every man is some months older than he bethinks him; for we live, move, have a being, and are subject to the actions of the elements, and the malice of diseases, in that other world, the truest microcosm, the womb of our mother; for besides that general and common existence we are conceived to hold in our chaos, and whilst we sleep within the bosom of our causes, we enjoy a being and life in three distinct worlds, wherein we receive most manifest gradations. In that obscure world, the womb of our mother, our time is short, computed by the moon; yet longer than the days of many creatures that behold the sun; ourselves being not yet without life, sense, and reason;<53> though, for the manifestation of its actions, it awaits the opportunity of objects, and seems to live there but in its root and soul of vegetation.

Entering afterwards upon the scene of the world, we arise up and become another creature; performing the reasonable actions of man, and obscurely manifesting that part of divinity in us, but not in complement and perfection, till we have once more cast our secundine, that is, this slough of flesh, and are delivered into the last world, that is, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper ubi of spirits. The smattering I have of the philosopher's stone (which is something more than the perfect exaltation<54> of gold) hath taught me a great deal of divinity, and instructed my belief, how that immortal spirit and incorruptible substance of my soul may lie obscure, and sleep a while within this house of flesh.

Those strange and mystical transmigrations that I have observed in silkworms turned my philosophy into divinity. There is in these works of nature, which seem to puzzle reason, something divine; and hath more in it than the eye of a common spectator doth discover.

Sect. 40.--I am naturally bashful; nor hath conver- sation, age, or travel, been able to effront or enharden me; yet I have one part of modesty, which I have seldom discovered in another, that is (to speak truly), I am not so much afraid of death as ashamed thereof; 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us, that our nearest friends, wife, and children, stand afraid, and start at us.

The birds and beasts of the field, that before, in a natural fear, obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance, begin to prey upon us. This very conceit hath, in a tempest, disposed and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of waters, wherein I had perished unseen, un- pitied, without wondering eyes, tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, "Quantum mutatus ab illo!" Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or can accuse nature of playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own vicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I might not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any.

Sect. 41.--Some, upon the courage of a fruitful issue, wherein, as in the truest chronicle, they seem to outlive themselves, can with greater patience away with death.

This conceit and counterfeit subsisting in our progenies seems to be a mere fallacy, unworthy the desire of a man, that can but conceive a thought of the next world; who, in a n.o.bler ambition, should desire to live in his substance in heaven, rather than his name and shadow in the earth. And therefore, at my death, I mean to take a total adieu of the world, not caring for a monu- ment, history, or epitaph; not so much as the bare memory of my name to be found anywhere, but in the universal register of G.o.d. I am not yet so cynical, as to approve the testament of Diogenes,* nor do I alto- gether allow that rodomontado of Lucan;+

-----"Coelo tegitur, qui non habet urnam." He that unburied lies wants not his hea.r.s.e; For unto him a tomb's the universe.

but commend, in my calmer judgment, those ingenuous intentions that desire to sleep by the urns of their fathers, and strive to go the neatest way unto corruption.

I do not envy the temper<55> of crows and daws, nor the numerous and weary days of our fathers before the flood. If there be any truth in astrology, I may outlive

* Who willed his friend not to bury him, but to hang him up with a staff in his hand, to fright away the crows.

+ "Pharsalia," vii. 819.

a jubilee;<56> as yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn,<57> nor hath my pulse beat thirty years, and yet, excepting one,<58> have seen the ashes of, and left under ground, all the kings of Europe; have been contem- porary to three emperors, four grand signiors, and as many popes: methinks I have outlived myself, and begin to be weary of the sun; I have shaken hands with delight in my warm blood and canicular days; I perceive I do antic.i.p.ate the vices of age; the world to me is but a dream or mock-show, and we all therein but pantaloons and anticks, to my severer contemplations.

Sect. 42.--It is not, I confess, an unlawful prayer to desire to surpa.s.s the days of our Saviour, or wish to outlive that age wherein he thought fittest to die; yet, if (as divinity affirms) there shall be no grey hairs in heaven, but all shall rise in the perfect state of men, we do but outlive those perfections in this world, to be recalled unto them by a greater miracle in the next, and run on here but to be retrograde hereafter. Were there any hopes to outlive vice, or a point to be superannuated from sin, it were worthy our knees to implore the days of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but incurvate our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, and (like diseases) brings on incurable vices; for every day, as we grow weaker in age, we grow stronger in sin, and the number of our days doth but make our sins innumerable. The same vice, committed at sixteen, is not the same, though it agrees in all other circ.u.m- stances, as at forty; but swells and doubles from the circ.u.mstance of our ages, wherein, besides the constant and inexcusable habit of transgressing, the maturity of our judgment cuts off pretence unto excuse or pardon.

Every sin, the oftener it is committed, the more it acquireth in the quality of evil; as it succeeds in time, so it proceeds in degrees of badness; for as they proceed they ever multiply, and, like figures in arithmetick, the last stands for more than all that went before it. And, though I think no man can live well once, but he that could live twice, yet, for my own part, I would not live over my hours past, or begin again the thread of my days; not upon Cicero's ground,* because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live them worse. I find my growing judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but my untamed affections and confirmed vitiosity make me daily do worse. I find in my con- firmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many then because I was a child; and, because I commit them still, I am yet an infant.

Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a child, before the days of dotage; and stand in need of AEson's bath<59> before threescore.

Sect. 43.--And truly there goes a deal of providence to produce a man's life unto threescore; there is more required than an able temper for those years: though the radical humour contain in it sufficient oil for seventy, yet I perceive in some it gives no light past thirty: men a.s.sign not all the causes of long life, that write whole books thereof. They that found themselves on the radical balsam, or vital sulphur of the parts, determine not why Abel lived not so long as Adam. There is therefore a secret gloom or bottom of our days: 'twas his wisdom to determine them: but his perpetual and waking providence that fulfils and accomplisheth them; wherein the spirits, ourselves, and all the creatures of G.o.d, in a secret and disputed way, do execute his will.

Let them not therefore complain of immaturity that die about thirty: they fall but like the whole world, whose

* Ep. lib. xxiv. ep. 24.

solid and well-composed substance must not expect the duration and period of its const.i.tution: when all things are completed in it, its age is accomplished; and the last and general fever may as naturally destroy it before six thousand,<60> as me before forty. There is therefore some other hand that twines the thread of life than that of nature: we are not only ignorant in antipathies and occult qualities; our ends are as obscure as our begin- nings; the line of our days is drawn by night, and the various effects therein by a pencil that is invisible; wherein, though we confess our ignorance, I am sure we do not err if we say, it is the hand of G.o.d.

Sect. 44.--I am much taken with two verses of Lucan, since I have been able not only, as we do at school, to construe, but understand:

"Victurosque Dei celant ut vivere, durent, Felix esse mori."*