that part of our noble friends that we love, is not that part that we embrace, but that insensible part that our arms cannot embrace. God being all goodness, can love nothing but himself, and the traduction of his Holy Spirit. Let us call to assize 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, forget our mother in a wife, and the womb that bare us, in that that 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. (148) 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.

I conclude therefore and say, there is no happiness under (or as Copernicus will have it, above) the sun, nor any crambe 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 chimæra, and

(148) That is, it descends, but does not so truly ascend. However, human nature furnishes splendid examples of the contrary. -ED.

there is no such thing as his felicity. That wherein God himself is happy, the holy angels are happy, in whose defect the devils are unhappy; that dare I call happiness: whatsoever conduceth unto this, may with an easy metaphor deserve the name; whatsoever else the world terms happiness, is to me a story out of Pliny, a tale of Boccacio or Malaspini; an apparition or neat delusion, wherein there is no more of happiness than the name. Bless me in this life with but peace of my conscience, command of my affections, the love of thyself and my dearest friends, and I shall be happy enough to pity Cæsar. 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 of Providence; dispose of me according to the wisdom of thy pleasure. Thy will be done though in my own undoing.

THE END.

OBSERVATIONS

UPON

RELIGIO MEDICI,

BY SIR KENELM DIGBY, KNIGHT.

TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE EDWARD EARL OF DORSET, BARON OF BUCKHURST, &c.

MY LORD,

I RECEIVED yesternight, your lordship's of the nineteenth current, wherein you are pleased to oblige me, not only by extreme gallant expressions of favour and kindness, but likewise by taking so far into your care the expending of my time, during the tediousness of my restraint, as to recommend to my reading a book, that had received the honour and safeguard of your approbation; for both which I most humbly thank your lordship. And since I cannot in the way of gratefulness express unto your lordship, as I would, those hearty sentiments I have of your goodness to me; I will at the last endeavonr, in the way of duty and observance, to let you see how the little needle of my soul is throughly touched at the great loadstone of yours, and followeth suddenly and strongly, which way soever you beckon it. In this occasion, the magnetic motion was impatient to have the book in my hands that your lordship gave so advantageous a character of; whereupon I sent presently (as late as it was) to Paul's church-yard for this favourite of yours, Religio Medici: which after awhile found me in a condition fit to receive a blessing by a visit from any of such masterpieces, as you look upon with gracious eyes;

for I was newly gotten into my bed. This good-natured creature I could easily persuade to be my bedfellow, and to wake with me as long as I had any edge to entertain myself with the delights I sucked from so noble a conversation. And truly, my lord, I closed not my eyes till I had enriched myself with, or at least exactly surveyed all the treasures that are lapped up in the folds of those few sheets. To return only a general commendation of this curious piece, or at large to admire the author's spirit and smartness, were too perfunctory an account, and too slight a one, to so discerning and steady an eye as yours, after so particular and encharged a summons to read heedfully this discourse. I will therefore presume to blot a sheet or two of paper with my reflections upon sundry passages through the whole context of it, as they shall occur to my remembrance. Which now your lordship knoweth, this packet is not so happy as to carry with it any one expression of my obsequiousness to you. It will be but reasonable, you should even here give over your further trouble of reading, what my respect engageth me to the writing of.

Whose first step is ingenuity and a well-natured evenness of judgment, shall be sure of applause and fair hopes in all men for the rest of his journey. And indeed, my lord, methinketh this gentleman setteth out excellently poised with that happy temper; and showeth a great deal of judicious piety in making a right use of the blind zeal that bigots lose themselves in. Yet I cannot satisfy my doubts thoroughly, how he maketh good his professing to follow the great wheel of the church in matters of divinity; which surely is the solid basis of true religion: for to do so, without jarring against the conduct of the first mover by eccentrical and irregular motions, obligeth one to yield a very dutiful obedience to the determinations of it, without arrogating to one's self a controling ability in liking or misliking the faith, doctrine, and constitutions of that church which one looketh upon as their north star: