Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend Part 4

Sect. 4.--There is another offence unto charity, which no author hath ever written of, and few take notice of, and that's the reproach, not of whole professions, mys- teries, and conditions, but of whole nations, wherein by opprobrious epithets we miscall each other, and, by an uncharitable logick, from a disposition in a few, con- clude a habit in all.

Le mutin Anglois, et le bravache Escossois Le bougre Italien, et le fol Francois; Le poltron Romain, le larron de Gascogne, L'Espagnol superbe, et l'Alleman yvrogue.

St Paul, that calls the Cretians liars, doth it but in- directly, and upon quotation of their own poet.<88> It is as b.l.o.o.d.y a thought in one way as Nero's was in another.<89> For by a word we wound a thousand, and at one blow a.s.sa.s.sin the honour of a nation. It is as complete a piece of madness to miscall and rave against the times; or think to recall men to reason by a fit of pa.s.sion. Democritus, that thought to laugh the times into goodness, seems to me as deeply hypochondriack as Herac.l.i.tus, that bewailed them. It moves not my spleen to behold the mult.i.tude in their proper humours; that is, in their fits of folly and madness, as well under- standing that wisdom is not profaned unto the world; and it is the privilege of a few to be virtuous. They that endeavour to abolish vice destroy also virtue; for contraries, though they destroy one another, are yet the life of one another. Thus virtue (abolish vice) is an idea. Again, the community of sin doth not dis- parage goodness; for, when vice gains upon the major part, virtue, in whom it remains, becomes more excel- lent, and, being lost in some, multiplies its goodness in others, which remain untouched, and persist entire in the general inundation. I can therefore behold vice without a satire, content only with an admonition, or instructive reprehension; for n.o.ble natures, and such as are capable of goodness, are railed into vice, that might as easily be admonished into virtue; and we should be all so far the orators of goodness as to protect her from the power of vice, and maintain the cause of injured truth. No man can justly censure or condemn another; because, indeed, no man truly knows another.

This I perceive in myself; for I am in the dark to all the world, and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud. Those that know me but superficially think less of me than I do of myself; those of my near ac- quaintance think more; G.o.d who truly knows me, knows that I am nothing: for he only beholds me, and all the world, who looks not on us through a derived ray, or a trajection of a sensible species, but beholds the substance without the help of accidents, and the forms of things, as we their operations. Further, no man can judge another, because no man knows himself; for we censure others but as they disagree from that humour which we fancy laudable in ourselves, and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us. So that in conclusion, all is but that we all condemn, self-love. 'Tis the general complaint of these times, and perhaps of those past, that charity grows cold; which I perceive most verified in those which do most manifest the fires and flames of zeal; for it is a virtue that best agrees with coldest natures, and such as are complexioned for humility. But how shall we expect charity towards others, when we are uncharitable to ourselves? "Charity begins at home,"

is the voice of the world; yet is every man his greatest enemy, and as it were his own executioner. "Non occides," is the commandment of G.o.d, yet scarce observed by any man; for I perceive every man is his own Atropos, and lends a hand to cut the thread of his own days. Cain was not therefore the first murderer, but Adam, who brought in death; whereof he beheld the practice and example in his own son Abel; and saw that verified in the experience of another which faith could not per- suade him in the theory of himself.

Sect. 5.--There is, I think, no man that apprehends his own miseries less than myself; and no man that so nearly apprehends another's. I could lose an arm without a tear, and with few groans, methinks, be quartered into pieces; yet can I weep most seriously at a play, and receive with a true pa.s.sion the counter- feit griefs of those known and professed impostures. It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto any afflicted parties misery, or endeavour to multiply in any man a pa.s.sion whose single nature is already above his patience. This was the greatest affliction of Job, and those oblique expostulations of his friends a deeper injury than the down-right blows of the devil. It is not the tears of our own eyes only, but of our friends also, that do exhaust the current of our sorrows; which, falling into many streams, runs more peaceably, and is contented with a narrower channel. It is an act within the power of charity, to translate a pa.s.sion out of one breast into another, and to divide a sorrow almost out of itself; for an affliction, like a dimension, may be so divided as, if not indivisible, at least to become in- sensible. Now with my friend I desire not to share or partic.i.p.ate, but to engross, his sorrows; that, by mak- ing them mine own, I may more easily discuss them: for in mine own reason, and within myself, I can com- mand that which I cannot entreat without myself, and within the circle of another. I have often thought those n.o.ble pairs and examples of friendship, not so truly histories of what had been, as fictions of what should be; but I now perceive nothing in them but possibilities, nor anything in the heroick examples of Damon and Pythias, Achilles and Patroclus, which, methinks, upon some grounds, I could not perform within the narrow compa.s.s of myself. That a man should lay down his life for his friend seems strange to vulgar affections and such as confine themselves within that worldly principle, "Charity begins at home." For mine own part, I could never remember the relations that I held unto myself, nor the respect that I owe unto my own nature, in the cause of G.o.d, my country, and my friends. Next to these three, I do embrace myself.

I confess I do not observe that order that the schools ordain our affections,--to love our parents, wives, chil- dren, and then our friends; for, excepting the injunc- tions of religion, I do not find in myself such a neces- sary and indissoluble sympathy to all those of my blood.

I hope I do not break the fifth commandment, if I conceive I may love my friend before the nearest of my blood, even those to whom I owe the principles of life.

I never yet cast a true affection on a woman; but I have loved my friend, as I do virtue, my soul, my G.o.d.

From hence, methinks, I do conceive how G.o.d loves man; what happiness there is in the love of G.o.d.

Omitting all other, there are three most mystical unions; two natures in one person; three persons in one nature; one soul in two bodies. For though, in- deed, they be really divided, yet are they so united, as they seem but one, and make rather a duality than two distinct souls.

Sect. 6.--There are wonders in true affection. It is a body of enigmas, mysteries, and riddles; wherein two so become one as they both become two: I love my friend before myself, and yet, methinks, I do not love him enough. Some few months hence, my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all. When I am from him, I am dead till I be with him. United souls are not satisfied with embraces, but desire to be truly each other; which being impossible, these desires are infinite, and must proceed without a possibility of satisfaction. Another misery there is in affection; that whom we truly love like our own selves, we forget their looks, nor can our memory retain the idea of their faces: and it is no wonder, for they are ourselves, and our affection makes their looks our own.

This n.o.ble affection falls not on vulgar and common const.i.tutions; but on such as are marked for virtue.

He that can love his friend with this n.o.ble ardour will in a competent degree effect all. Now, if we can bring our affections to look beyond the body, and cast an eye upon the soul, we have found out the true object, not only of friendship, but charity: and the greatest happi- ness that we can bequeath the soul is that wherein we all do place our last felicity, salvation; which, though it be not in our power to bestow, it is in our charity and pious invocations to desire, if not procure and further.

I cannot contentedly frame a prayer for myself in par- ticular, without a catalogue for my friends; nor request a happiness wherein my sociable disposition doth not desire the fellowship of my neighbour. I never hear the toll of a pa.s.sing bell, though in my mirth, with- out my prayers and best wishes for the departing spirit.

I cannot go to cure the body of my patient, but I forget my profession, and call unto G.o.d for his soul. I can- not see one say his prayers, but, instead of imitating him, I fall into supplication for him, who perhaps is no more to me than a common nature: and if G.o.d hath vouchsafed an ear to my supplications, there are surely many happy that never saw me, and enjoy the blessing of mine unknown devotions. To pray for enemies, that is, for their salvation, is no harsh precept, but the practice of our daily and ordinary devotions. I cannot believe the story of the Italian;<90> our bad wishes and uncharit- able desires proceed no further than this life; it is the devil, and the uncharitable votes of h.e.l.l, that desire our misery in the world to come.

Sect. 7.--"To do no injury nor take none" was a prin- ciple which, to my former years and impatient affections, seemed to contain enough of morality, but my more settled years, and Christian const.i.tution, have fallen upon severer resolutions. I can hold there is no such things as injury; that if there be, there is no such injury as revenge, and no such revenge as the contempt of an injury: that to hate another is to malign himself; that the truest way to love another is to despise ourselves.

I were unjust unto mine own conscience if I should say I am at variance with anything like myself. I find there are many pieces in this one fabrick of man; this frame is raised upon a ma.s.s of antipathies: I am one methinks but as the world, wherein notwithstanding there are a swarm of distinct essences, and in them another world of contrarieties; we carry private and domestick enemies within, public and more hostile ad- versaries without. The devil, that did but buffet St Paul, plays methinks at sharp<91> with me. Let me be nothing, if within the compa.s.s of myself, I do not find the battle of Lepanto,<92> pa.s.sion against reason, reason against faith, faith against the devil, and my conscience against all. There is another man within me that's angry with me, rebukes, commands, and dastards me.

I have no conscience of marble, to resist the hammer of more heavy offences: nor yet so soft and waxen, as to take the impression of each single peccadillo or scape of infirmity. I am of a strange belief, that it is as easy to be forgiven some sins as to commit some others. For my original sin, I hold it to be washed away in my baptism; for my actual transgressions, I compute and reckon with G.o.d but from my last repentance, sacra- ment, or general absolution; and therefore am not terrified with the sins or madness of my youth. I thank the goodness of G.o.d, I have no sins that want a name.

I am not singular in offences; my transgressions are epidemical, and from the common breath of our corrup- tion. For there are certain tempers of body which, matched with a humorous depravity of mind, do hath and produce vitiosities, whose newness and monstrosity of nature admits no name; this was the temper of that lecher that carnaled with a statua, and the const.i.tution of Nero in his spintrian recreations. For the heavens are not only fruitful in new and unheard-of stars, the earth in plants and animals, but men's minds also in villany and vices. Now the dulness of my reason, and the vulgarity of my disposition, never prompted my in- vention nor solicited my affection unto any of these;-- yet even those common and quotidian infirmities that so necessarily attend me, and do seem to be my very nature, have so dejected me, so broken the estimation that I should have otherwise of myself, that I repute myself the most abject piece of mortality. Divines pre- scribe a fit of sorrow to repentance: there goes indigna- tion, anger, sorrow, hatred, into mine, pa.s.sions of a con- trary nature, which neither seem to suit with this action, nor my proper const.i.tution. It is no breach of charity to ourselves to be at variance with our vices, nor to abhor that part of us, which is an enemy to the ground of charity, our G.o.d; wherein we do but imitate our great selves, the world, whose divided antipathies and contrary faces do yet carry a charitable regard unto the whole, by their particular discords preserving the com- mon harmony, and keeping in fetters those powers, whose rebellions, once masters, might be the ruin of all.

Sect. 8.--I thank G.o.d, amongst those millions of vices I do inherit and hold from Adam, I have escaped one, and that a mortal enemy to charity,--the first and father sin, not only of man, but of the devil,--pride; a vice whose name is comprehended in a monosyllable, but in its nature not circ.u.mscribed with a world, I have escaped it in a condition that can hardly avoid it. Those petty acquisitions and reputed perfections, that advance and elevate the conceits of other men, add no feathers unto mine. I have seen a grammarian tower and plume himself over a single line in Horace, and show more pride, in the construction of one ode, than the author in the composure of the whole book. For my own part, besides the jargon and patois of several provinces, I understand no less than six languages; yet I protest I have no higher conceit of myself than had our fathers before the confusion of Babel, when there was but one language in the world, and none to boast himself either linguist or critick. I have not only seen several coun- tries, beheld the nature of their climes, the chorography of their provinces, topography of their cities, but under- stood their several laws, customs, and policies; yet cannot all this persuade the dulness of my spirit unto such an opinion of myself as I behold in nimbler and conceited heads, that never looked a degree beyond their nests. I know the names and somewhat more of all the constellations in my horizon; yet I have seen a prating mariner, that could only name the pointers and the north-star, out-talk me, and conceit himself a whole sphere above me. I know most of the plants of my country, and of those about me, yet methinks I do not know so many as when I did but know a hundred, and had scarcely ever simpled further than Cheapside.

For, indeed, heads of capacity, and such as are not full with a handful or easy measure of knowledge, think they know nothing till they know all; which being impossible, they fall upon the opinion of Socrates, and only know they know not anything. I cannot think that Homer pined away upon the riddle of the fisher- men, or that Aristotle, who understood the uncertainty of knowledge, and confessed so often the reason of man too weak for the works of nature, did ever drown him- self upon the flux and reflux of Euripus.<93> We do but learn, to-day, what our better advanced judgments will unteach to-morrow; and Aristotle doth but instruct us, as Plato did him, that is, to confute himself. I have run through all sorts, yet find no rest in any: though our first studies and junior endeavours may style us Peripateticks, Stoicks, or Academicks, yet I perceive the wisest heads prove, at last, almost all Scepticks,<94> and stand like Ja.n.u.s in the field of knowledge. I have therefore one common and authentick philosophy I learned in the schools, whereby I discourse and satisfy the reason of other men; another more reserved, and drawn from experience, whereby I content mine own.

Solomon, that complained of ignorance in the height of knowledge, hath not only humbled my conceits, but discouraged my endeavours. There is yet another con- ceit that hath sometimes made me shut my books, which tells me it is a vanity to waste our days in the blind pursuit of knowledge: it is but attending a little longer, and we shall enjoy that, by instinct and infusion, which we endeavour at here by labour and inquisition. It is better to sit down in a modest ignorance, and rest con- tented with the natural blessing of our own reasons, than by the uncertain knowledge of this life with sweat and vexation, which death gives every fool gratis, and is an accessary of our glorification.

Sect. 9.--I was never yet once, and commend their resolutions who never marry twice. Not that I dis- allow of second marriage; as neither in all cases of poly- gamy, which considering some times, and the unequal number of both s.e.xes, may be also necessary. The whole world was made for man, but the twelfth part of man for woman. Man is the whole world, and the breath of G.o.d; woman the rib and crooked piece of man. I could be content that we might procreate like trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the world without this trivial and vulgar way of coition: it is the foolishest act a wise man com- mits in all his life, nor is there anything that will more deject his cooled imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of folly he hath com- mitted. I speak not in prejudice, nor am averse from that sweet s.e.x, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful. I can look a whole day with delight upon a handsome picture, though it be but of an horse. It is my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony; and sure there is musick, even in the beauty and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a musick wher- ever there is a harmony, order, or proportion; and thus far we may maintain "the musick of the spheres:" for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces, though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understand- ing they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatso- ever is harmonically composed delights in harmony, which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which declaim against all church-musick. For myself, not only from my obedience but my particular genius I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and tavern- musick which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the first composer. There is some- thing in it of divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world, and creatures of G.o.d,--such a melody to the ear, as the whole world, well understood, would afford the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which intellectually sounds in the ears of G.o.d.

I will not say, with Plato, the soul is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto musick: thus some, whose temper of body agrees, and humours the const.i.tution of their souls, are born poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined unto rhythm. This made Tacitus, in the very first line of his story, fall upon a verse;* and Cicero, the worst of poets, but declaim- ing for a poet, falls in the very first sentence upon a

* "Urbem a Romam in principio reges habuere."

perfect hexameter.* I feel not in me those sordid and unchristian desires of my profession; I do not secretly implore and wish for plagues, rejoice at famines, revolve ephemerides and almanacks in expectation of malignant aspects, fatal conjunctions, and eclipses. I rejoice not at unwholesome springs nor unseasonable winters: my prayer goes with the husbandman's; I desire everything in its proper season, that neither men nor the times be out of temper. Let me be sick myself, if sometimes the malady of my patient be not a disease unto me. I desire rather to cure his infirmities than my own neces- sities. Where I do him no good, methinks it is scarce honest gain, though I confess 'tis but the worthy salary of our well intended endeavours. I am not only ashamed but heartily sorry, that, besides death, there are diseases incurable; yet not for my own sake or that they be beyond my art, but for the general cause and sake of humanity, whose common cause I apprehend as mine own. And, to speak more generally, those three n.o.ble professions which all civil commonwealths do honour, are raised upon the fall of Adam, and are not any way exempt from their infirmities. There are not only diseases incurable in physick, but cases indissolv- able in law, vices incorrigible in divinity. If general councils may err, I do not see why particular courts should be infallible: their perfectest rules are raised upon the erroneous reasons of man, and the laws of one do but condemn the rules of another; as Aristotle oft- times the opinions of his predecessors, because, though agreeable to reason, yet were not consonant to his own rules and the logick of his proper principles. Again,-- to speak nothing of the sin against the Holy Ghost,

* "In qua me non inferior mediocriter esse."--Pro Archia Poeta.

whose cure not only, but whose nature is unknown,--I can cure the gout or stone in some, sooner than divinity, pride, or avarice in others. I can cure vices by physick when they remain incurable by divinity, and they shall obey my pills when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly say, we all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all diseases. There is no catholicon or universal remedy I know, but this, which though nauseous to queasy stomachs, yet to pre- pared appet.i.tes is nectar, and a pleasant potion of im- mortality.

Sect. 10.--For my conversation, it is, like the sun's, with all men, and with a friendly aspect to good and bad. Methinks there is no man bad; and the worst best, that is, while they are kept within the circle of those qualities wherein they are good. There is no man's mind of so discordant and jarring a temper, to which a tuneable disposition may not strike a harmony.

Magnae virtutes, nec minora vitia; it is the posy<95> of the best natures, and may be inverted on the worst.

There are, in the most depraved and venomous disposi- tions, certain pieces that remain untouched, which by an antiperistasis<96> become more excellent, or by the excellency of their antipathies are able to preserve them- selves from the contagion of their enemy vices, and persist entire beyond the general corruption. For it is also thus in nature: the greatest balsams do lie en- veloped in the bodies of the most powerful corrosives.

I say moreover, and I ground upon experience, that poisons contain within themselves their own antidote, and that which preserves them from the venom of them- selves; without which they were not deleterious to others only, but to themselves also. But it is the cor- ruption that I fear within me; not the contagion of commerce without me. 'Tis that unruly regiment within me, that will destroy me; 'tis that I do infect myself; the man without a navel<97> yet lives in me.

I feel that original canker corrode and devour me: and therefore, "Defenda me, Dios, de me!" "Lord, deliver me from myself!" is a part of my litany, and the first voice of my retired imaginations. There is no man alone, because every man is a microcosm, and carries the whole world about him. "Nunquam minus solus quam c.u.m solus,"* though it be the apothegm of a wise man is yet true in the mouth of a fool: for indeed, though in a wilderness, a man is never alone; not only because he is with himself, and his own thoughts, but because he is with the devil, who ever consorts with our solitude, and is that unruly rebel that musters up those disordered motions which accompany our sequestered imaginations.

And to speak more narrowly, there is no such thing as solitude, nor anything that can be said to be alone, and by itself, but G.o.d;--who is his own circle, and can sub- sist by himself; all others, besides their dissimilary and heterogeneous parts, which in a manner multiply their natures, cannot subsist without the concourse of G.o.d, and the society of that hand which doth uphold their natures. In brief, there can be nothing truly alone, and by its self, which is not truly one, and such is only G.o.d: all others do transcend an unity, and so by con- sequence are many.

Sect. 11.--Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate, were not a history, but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears like a fable.

For the world, I count it not an inn, but an hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in. The world that I regard is myself; it is the microcosm of my own frame

* "Cic. de Off.," I. iii.

that I cast mine eye on: for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recrea- tion. Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition and fortunes, do err in my alt.i.tude; for I am above Atlas's shoulders.<98> The earth is a point not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of the heavenly and celestial part within us. That ma.s.s of flesh that circ.u.mscribes me limits not my mind. That surface that tells the heavens it hath an end cannot persuade me I have any. I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty. Though the number of the ark do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind. Whilst I study to find how I am a microcosm, or little world, I find myself something more than the great. There is surely a piece of divinity in us; some- thing that was before the elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me, I am the image of G.o.d, as well as Scripture. He that understands not thus much hath not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the alphabet of man. Let me not injure the felicity of others, if I say I am as happy as any. Ruat coelum, fiat voluntas tua," salveth all; so that, what- soever happens, it is but what our daily prayers desire.

In brief, I am content; and what should providence add more? Surely this is it we call happiness, and this do I enjoy; with this I am happy in a dream, and as content to enjoy a happiness in a fancy, as others in a more apparent truth and reality. There is surely a nearer apprehension of anything that delights us, in our dreams, than in our waked senses. Without this I were unhappy; for my awaked judgment discontents me, ever whispering unto me that I am from my friend, but my friendly dreams in the night requite me, and make me think I am within his arms. I thank G.o.d for my happy dreams, as I do for my good rest; for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and such as can be content with a fit of happiness. And surely it is not a melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this world, and that the conceits of this life are as mere dreams, to those of the next, as the phantasms of the night, to the conceits of the day. There is an equal delusion in both; and the one doth but seem to be the emblem or picture of the other. We are somewhat more than ourselves in our sleeps; and the slumber of the body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation of sense, but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the fancies of our sleeps. At my nativity, my ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpio. I was born in the planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that leaden planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and galliardise<99> of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, ap- prehend the jests, and laugh myself awake at the con- ceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I would never study but in my dreams, and this time also would I choose for my devo- tions: but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked souls a con- fused and broken tale of that which hath pa.s.sed. Aris- totle, who hath written a singular tract of sleep, hath not, methinks, thoroughly defined it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have corrected it; for those noctam- bulos and night-walkers, though in their sleep, do yet enjoy the action of their senses. We must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the juris- diction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do walk about in their own corpses, as spirits with the bodies they a.s.sume, wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the organs are dest.i.tute of sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them. Thus it is observed, that men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak and reason above themselves. For then the soul begin- ning to be freed from the ligaments of the body, begins to reason like herself, and to discourse in a strain above mortality.

Sect. 12.--We term sleep a death; and yet it is wak- ing that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of life. 'Tis indeed a part of life that best ex- presseth death; for every man truly lives, so long as he acts his nature, or some way makes good the faculties of himself. Themistocles therefore, that slew his soldier in his sleep, was a merciful executioner: 'tis a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented; I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it. It is that death by which we may be literally said to die daily; a death which Adam died before his mor- tality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderat- ing point between life and death. In fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and an half adieu unto the world, and take my farewell in a col- loquy with G.o.d:--

The night is come, like to the day; Depart not thou, great G.o.d, away.

Let not my sins, black as the night, Eclipse the l.u.s.tre of thy light.

Keep still in my horizon; for to me The sun makes not the day, but thee.

Thou whose nature cannot sleep, On my temples sentry keep; Guard me 'gainst those watchful foes, Whose eyes are open while mine close.

Let no dreams my head infest, But such as Jacob's temples blest.

While I do rest, my soul advance: Make my sleep a holy trance: That I may, my rest being wrought, Awake into some holy thought, And with as active vigour run My course as doth the nimble sun.

Sleep is a death;--Oh make me try, By sleeping, what it is to die!

And as gently lay my head On my grave, as now my bed.

Howe'er I rest, great G.o.d, let me Awake again at last with thee.

And thus a.s.sured, behold I lie Securely, or to wake or die.

These are my drowsy days; in vain I do now wake to sleep again: Oh come that hour, when I shall never Sleep again, but wake for ever!

This is the dormitive I take to bedward; I need no other laudanum than this to make me sleep; after which I close mine eyes in security, content to take my leave of the sun, and sleep unto the resurrection.

Sect. 13.--The method I should use in distributive justice, I often observe in commutative; and keep a geometrical proportion in both, whereby becoming equable to others, I become unjust to myself, and supererogate in that common principle, "Do unto others as thou wouldst be done unto thyself." I was not born unto riches, neither is it, I think, my star to be wealthy; or if it were, the freedom of my mind, and frankness of my disposition, were able to contradict and cross my fates: for to me avarice seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness; to conceive our- selves urinals, or be persuaded that we are dead, is not so ridiculous, nor so many degrees beyond the power of h.e.l.lebore,<100> as this. The opinions of theory, and posi- tions of men, are not so void of reason, as their practised conclusions. Some have held that snow is black, that the earth moves, that the soul is air, fire, water; but all this is philosophy: and there is no delirium, if we do but speculate the folly and indisputable dotage of avarice. To that subterraneous idol, and G.o.d of the earth, I do confess I am an atheist. I cannot persuade myself to honour that the world adores; whatsoever virtue its prepared substance may have within my body, it hath no influence nor operation without. I would not entertain a base design, or an action that should call me villain, for the Indies; and for this only do I love and honour my own soul, and have methinks two arms too few to embrace myself. Aristotle is too severe, that will not allow us to be truly liberal with- out wealth, and the bountiful hand of fortune; if this be true, I must confess I am charitable only in my liberal intentions, and bountiful well wishes. But if the example of the mite be not only an act of wonder, but an example of the n.o.blest charity, surely poor men may also build hospitals, and the rich alone have not erected cathedrals. I have a private method which others observe not; I take the opportunity of myself to do good; I borrow occasion of charity from my own necessities, and supply the wants of others, when I am in most need myself: for it is an honest stratagem to take advantage of ourselves, and so to husband the acts of virtue, that, where they are defective in one circ.u.m- stance, they may repay their want, and multiply their goodness in another. I have not Peru in my desires, but a competence and ability to perform those good works to which he hath inclined my nature. He is rich who hath enough to be charitable; and it is hard to be so poor that a n.o.ble mind may not find a way to this piece of goodness. "He that giveth to the poor lendeth to the Lord:" there is more rhetorick in that one sentence than in a library of sermons. And indeed, if those sentences were understood by the reader with the same emphasis as they are delivered by the author, we needed not those volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an epitome. Upon this motive only I cannot behold a beggar without relieving his necessities with my purse, or his soul with my prayers. These scenical and accidental differences between us cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of us both: there is under these centoes<101> and miserable outsides, those mutilate and semi bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose genealogy is G.o.d's as well as ours, and in as fair a way to salvation as our- selves. Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without our poverty take away the object of charity; not understanding only the commonwealth of a Chris- tian, but forgetting the prophecy of Christ.*

Sect. 14.--Now, there is another part of charity, which is the basis and pillar of this, and that is the love of G.o.d, for whom we love our neighbour; for this I think charity, to love G.o.d for himself, and our neighbour for G.o.d. And all that is truly amiable is G.o.d, or as it were a divided piece of him, that retains a reflex or shadow of himself. Nor is it strange that we should place affec- tion on that which is invisible: all that we truly love is thus. What we adore under affection of our senses deserves not the honour of so pure a t.i.tle. Thus we

* "The poor ye have always with you."

adore virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be in- visible. Thus that part of our n.o.ble friends that we love is not that part that we embrace, but that insen- sible part that our arms cannot embrace. G.o.d being all goodness, can love nothing but himself; he loves us but for that part which is as it were himself, and the traduction of his Holy Spirit. Let us call to a.s.size the loves of our parents, the affection of our wives and children, and they are all dumb shows and dreams, without reality, truth, or constancy. For first there is a strong bond of affection between us and our parents; yet how easily dissolved! We betake ourselves to a woman, forgetting our mother in a wife, and the womb that bare us in that which shall bear our image. This woman blessing us with children, our affection leaves the level it held before, and sinks from our bed unto our issue and picture of posterity: where affection holds no steady mansion; they growing up in years, desire our ends; or, applying themselves to a woman, take a lawful way to love another better than ourselves. Thus I perceive a man may be buried alive, and behold his grave in his own issue.

Sect. 15.--I conclude therefore, and say, there is no happiness under (or, as Copernicus* will have it, above) the sun; nor any crambe<102> in that repeated verity and burthen of all the wisdom of Solomon: "All is vanity and vexation of spirit;" there is no felicity in that the world adores. Aristotle, whilst he labours to refute the ideas of Plato, falls upon one himself: for his summum bonum is a chimaera; and there is no such thing as his felicity. That wherein G.o.d himself is happy, the holy angels are happy, in whose defect the devils are unhappy;--that dare I call happiness: what-

* Who holds that the sun is the centre of the world.

soever conduceth unto this, may, with an easy metaphor, deserve that name; whatsoever else the world terms happiness is, to me, a story out of Pliny, a tale of Bocace or Malizspini, an apparition or neat delusion, wherein there is no more of happiness than the name. Bless me in this life with but the peace of my conscience, command of my affections, the love of thyself and my dearest friends, and I shall be happy enough to pity Caesar! These are, O Lord, the humble desires of my most reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness on earth; wherein I set no rule or limit to thy hand or providence; dispose of me according to the wisdom of thy pleasure. Thy will be done, though in my own undoing.

HYDRIOTAPHIA.

URN BURIAL; OR, A DISCOURSE OF THE SEPULCHRAL URNS LATELY FOUND IN NORFOLK.

TO MY WORTHY AND HONOURED FRIEND,

THOMAS LE GROS, OF CROSTWICK, ESQUIRE.

WHEN the general pyre was out, and the last valediction over, men took a lasting adieu of their interred friends, little expecting the curiosity of future ages should comment upon their ashes; and, having no old experience of the duration of their relicks, held no opinion of such after-considera- tions.