The Works of Sir Thomas Browne Volume III Part 31

4. In the Fourth part of his reply, he clears himself of Ingrat.i.tude which h.e.l.l it self cannot hear of; alledging that he had saved his life when he was ready to be burnt, by sending a mighty Showre, in a fair and cloudless day, to quench the Fire already kindled, which all the Servants of _Cyrus_ could not doe. Though this Shower might well be granted, as much concerning his honour, and not beyond his power; yet whether this mercifull Showre fell not out contingently or were not contrived by an higher power, which hath often pity upon Pagans, and rewardeth their vertues sometimes with extraordinary temporal favours; also, in no unlike case, who was the authour of those few fair minutes, which, in a showry day, gave onely time enough for the burning of _Sylla's_ Body, some question might be made.

5. The last excuse devolveth the errour and miscarriage of the business upon _Crsus_, and that he deceived himself by an inconsiderate misconstruction of his Oracle, that if he had doubted, he should not have pa.s.sed it over in silence, but consulted again for an exposition of it. Besides, he had neither discussed, nor well perpended his Oracle concerning _Cyrus_, whereby he might have understood not to engage against him.

Wherein, to speak indifferently, the deception and miscarriage seems chiefly to lie at _Crsus_ his door, who, if not infatuated with confidence and security, might justly have doubted the construction: besides, he had received two Oracles before, which clearly hinted an unhappy time unto him: the first concerning _Cyrus_.

_When ever a Mule shall o'er the Medians reign, Stay not, but unto_ Hermus _fly amain._

Herein though he understood not the _Median Mule_ of _Cyrus_, that is, of his mixed descent, and from a.s.syrian and Median Parents, yet he could not but apprehend some misfortune from that quarter.

Though this prediction seemed a notable piece of Divination, yet did it not so highly magnifie his natural sagacity or knowledge of future events as was by many esteemed; he having no small a.s.sistance herein from the Prophecy of _Daniel_ concerning the Persian Monarchy, and the Prophecy of _Jeremiah_ and _Isaiah_, wherein he might reade the name of _Cyrus_ who should restore the Captivity of the Jews, and must, therefore, be the great Monarch and Lord of all those Nations.

The same misfortune was also foretold when he demanded of _Apollo_ if ever he should hear his dumb Son speak.

_O foolish_ Crsus _who hast made this choice, To know when thou shalt hear thy dumb Son's voice; Better he still were mute, would nothing say, When he first speaks, look for a dismal day._

This, if he contrived not the time and the means of his recovery, was no ordinary divination: yet how to make out the verity of the story some doubt may yet remain. For though the causes of deafness and dumbness were removed, yet since words are attained by hearing, and men speak not without instruction, how he should be able immediately to utter such apt and significant words, as ?????pe, ? ?te??e ????s??,[279] _O Man slay not_ Crsus, it cannot escape some doubt, since the Story also delivers, that he was deaf and dumb, that he then first began to speak, and spake all his life after.

[279] Herod. _l._ 1. 85.

Now, if _Crsus_ had consulted again for a clearer exposition of what was doubtfully delivered, whether the Oracle would have spake out the second time or afforded a clearer answer, some question might be made from the examples of his practice upon the like demands.

So when the Spartans had often fought with ill success against the _Tegeates_, they consulted the Oracle what G.o.d they should appease, to become victorious over them. The answer was, _that they should remove the Bones of_ Orestes. Though the words were plain, yet the thing was obscure, and like finding out the Body of _Moses_. And therefore they once more demanded in what place they should find the same; unto whom he returned this answer,

_When in the Tegean Plains a place thou find'st Where blasts are made by two impetuous Winds, Where that that strikes is struck, blows follow blows, There doth the Earth_ Orestes _Bones enclose._

Which obscure reply the wisest of _Sparta_ could not make out, and was casually unriddled by one talking with a Smith who had found large Bones of a Man buried about his House; the Oracle importing no more than a Smith's Forge, expressed by a Double Bellows, the Hammer and Anvil therein.

Now, why the Oracle should place such consideration upon the Bones of _Orestes_ the Son of _Agamemnon_, a mad man and a murtherer, if not to promote the idolatry of the Heathens, and maintain a superst.i.tious veneration of things of no activity, it may leave no small obscurity.

Or why, in a business so clear in his knowledge, he should affect so obscure expressions it may also be wondred; if it were not to maintain the wary and evasive method in his answers: for, speaking obscurely in things beyond doubt within his knowledge, he might be more tolerably dark in matters beyond his prescience.

Though =EI= were inscribed over the Gate of _Delphos_, yet was there no uniformity in his deliveries. Sometimes with that _obscurity_ as argued a fearfull prophecy; sometimes so _plainly_ as might confirm a spirit of divinity; sometimes _morally_, deterring from vice and villany; another time _vitiously_, and in the spirit of bloud and cruelty: observably modest in his civil enigma and periphrasis of that part which old _Numa_ would plainly name,[280] and _Medea_ would not understand, when he advised _aegeus_ not to draw out his foot before, untill he arriv'd upon the Athenian ground; whereas another time he seemed too literal in that unseemly epithet unto _Cya.n.u.s_ King of _Cyprus_,[281]

and put a beastly trouble upon all _aegypt_ to find out the Urine of a true Virgin. Sometimes, more beholding unto memory than invention, he delighted to express himself in the bare Verses of _Homer_. But that he princ.i.p.ally affected Poetry, and that the Priest not onely or always composed his prosal raptures into Verse, seems plain from his necromantical Prophecies, whilst the dead Head in _Phlegon_ delivers a long Prediction in Verse; and at the raising of the Ghost of _Commodus_ unto _Caracalla_, when none of his Ancestours would speak, the divining Spirit versified his infelicities; corresponding herein to the apprehensions of elder times, who conceived not onely a Majesty but something of Divinity in Poetry, and as in ancient times the old Theologians delivered their inventions.

[280] Plut. _in_ Thes.

[281] _V._ Herod.

Some critical Readers might expect in his oraculous Poems a more than ordinary strain and true spirit of _Apollo_; not contented to find that Spirits make Verses like Men, beating upon the filling Epithet, and taking the licence of dialects and lower helps, common to humane Poetry; wherein, since _Scaliger_, who hath spared none of the Greeks, hath thought it wisedom to be silent, we shall make no excursion.

Others may wonder how the curiosity of elder times, having this opportunity of his Answers, omitted Natural Questions; or how the old Magicians discovered no more Philosophy; and if they had the a.s.sistance of Spirits, could rest content with the bare a.s.sertions of things, without the knowledge of their causes; whereby they had made their Acts iterable by sober hands, and a standing part of Philosophy. Many wise Divines hold a reality in the wonders of the aegyptian Magicians, and that those _magnalia_ which they performed before _Pharaoh_ were not mere delusions of Sense. Rightly to understand how they made Serpents out of Rods; Froggs and Bloud of Water, were worth half _Porta's_ Magick.

_Hermolaus Barbarus_ was scarce in his wits, when, upon conference with a Spirit, he would demand no other question than the explication of _Aristotle's Entelecheia_. _Appion_ the Grammarian, that would raise the Ghost of _Homer_ to decide the Controversie of his Country, made a frivolous and pedantick use of Necromancy. _Philostratus_ did as little, that call'd up the Ghost of _Achilles_ for a particular of the Story of _Troy_. Smarter curiosities would have been at the great Elixir, the Flux and Reflux of the Sea, with other n.o.ble obscurities in Nature; but probably all in vain: in matters cognoscible and framed for our disquisition, our Industry must be our Oracle, and Reason our _Apollo_.

Not to know things without the Arch of our intellectuals, or what Spirits apprehend, is the imperfection of our nature not our knowledge, and rather inscience than ignorance in man. Revelation might render a great part of the Creation easie which now seems beyond the stretch of humane indagation, and welcome no doubt from good hands might be a true _Almagest_, and great celestial construction: a clear Systeme of the planetical Bodies of the invisible and seeming useless Stars unto us, of the many Suns in the eighth Sphere, what they are, what they contain and to what more immediately those Stupendous Bodies are serviceable. But being not hinted in the authentick Revelation of G.o.d, nor known how far their discoveries are stinted; if they should come unto us from the mouth of evil Spirits, the belief thereof might be as unsafe as the enquiry.

This is a copious Subject; but, having exceeded the bounds of a letter, I will not, now, pursue it farther. I am

_Yours_, etc.

A PROPHECY

Concerning the future state of several Nations,

In a Letter written upon occasion of an old Prophecy sent to the Authour from a Friend, with a Request that he would consider it.

TRACT XII

SIR,

I take no pleasure in Prophecies so hardly intelligible, and pointing at future things from a pretended spirit of Divination; of which sort this seems to be which came unto your hand, and you were pleased to send unto me. And therefore, for your easier apprehension, divertis.e.m.e.nt and consideration, I present you with a very different kind of prediction: not positively or peremptorily telling you what shall come to pa.s.s; yet pointing at things not without all reason or probability of their events; not built upon fatal decrees, or inevitable designations, but upon conjectural foundations, whereby things wished may be promoted, and such as are feared, may more probably be prevented.

THE PROPHECY

_When_ New England _shall trouble_ New Spain.

_When_ Jamaica _shall be Lady of the Isles and the Main._ _When_ Spain _shall be in_ America _hid,_ _And_ Mexico _shall prove a_ Madrid._ _When_ Mahomet's _Ships on the_ Baltick _shall ride,_ _And Turks shall labour to have Ports on that side._ _When_ Africa _shall no more sell out their Blacks_ _To make Slaves and Drudges to the American Tracts_.

_When_ Batavia _the Old shall be contemn'd by the New_.

_When a new Drove of Tartars shall_ China _subdue._ _When_ America _shall cease to send out its Treasure,_ _But employ it at home in American Pleasure._ _When the new World shall the old invade,_ _Nor count them their Lords but their fellows in Trade._ _When Men shall almost pa.s.s to_ Venice _by Land,_ _Not in deep Water but from Sand to Sand._ _When_ Nova Zembla _shall be no stay_ _Unto those who pa.s.s to or from_ Cathay._ _Then think strange things are come to light,_ _Whereof but few have had a foresight._

THE EXPOSITION OF THE PROPHECY

_When_ New England _shall trouble_ New Spain.

That is, When that thriving Colony, which hath so much encreased in our days, and in the s.p.a.ce of about fifty years, that they can, as they report, raise between twenty and thirty thousand men upon an exigency, shall in process of time be so advanced, as to be able to send forth Ships and Fleets, as to infest the American Spanish Ports and Maritime Dominions by depredations or a.s.saults; for which attempts they are not like to be unprovided, as abounding in the Materials for Shipping, Oak and Firre. And when length of time shall so far encrease that industrious people, that the neighbouring Country will not contain them, they will range still farther and be able, in time, to set forth great Armies, seek for new possessions, or make considerable and conjoined migrations, according to the custom of swarming Northern Nations; wherein it is not likely that they will move Northward, but toward the Southern and richer Countries, which are either in the Dominions or Frontiers of the Spaniards: and may not improbably erect new Dominions in places not yet thought of, and yet, for some Centuries, beyond their power or Ambition.

_When_ Jamaica _shall be Lady of the Isles and the Main._

That is, When that advantageous Island shall be well peopled, it may become so strong and potent as to over-power the neighbouring Isles, and also a part of the main Land, especially the Maritime parts. And already in their infancy they have given testimony of their power and courage in their bold attempts upon _Campeche_ and _Santa Martha_; and in that notable attempt upon _Panama_ on the Western side of _America_: especially considering this Island is sufficiently large to contain a numerous people, of a Northern and warlike descent, addicted to martial affairs both by Sea and Land, and advantageously seated to infest their neighbours both of the Isles and the Continent, and like to be a receptacle for Colonies of the same originals from _Barbadoes_ and the neighbour Isles.

_When_ Spain _shall be in_ America _hid; And_ Mexico _shall prove a_ Madrid.

That is, When _Spain_, either by unexpected disasters, or continued emissions of people into _America_, which have already thinned the Country, shall be farther exhausted at home: or when, in process of time, their Colonies shall grow by many accessions more than their Originals, then _Mexico_ may become a _Madrid_, and as considerable in people, wealth and splendour; wherein that place is already so well advanced, that accounts scarce credible are given of it. And it is so advantageously seated, that, by _Acapulco_ and other Ports on the South Sea, they may maintain a communication and commerce with the Indian Isles and Territories, and with _China_ and _j.a.pan_, and on this side, by _Porto Belo_ and others, hold correspondence with _Europe_ and _Africa_.

_When_ Mahomet's _Ships in the Baltick shall ride._

Of this we cannot be out of all fear; for, if the Turk should master _Poland_, he would be soon at this Sea. And from the odd const.i.tution of the Polish Government, the divisions among themselves, jealousies between their Kingdom and Republick; vicinity of the Tartars, treachery of the Cossacks, and the method of Turkish Policy, to be at Peace with the Emperour of _Germany_ when he is at War with the Poles, there may be cause to fear that this may come to pa.s.s. And then he would soon endeavour to have Ports upon that Sea, as not wanting Materials for Shipping. And, having a new acquist of stout and warlike men, may be a terrour unto the confiners on that Sea, and to Nations which now conceive themselves safe from such an Enemy.

_When_ Africa _shall no more sell out their Blacks._