parvus carmina fingit.) In which it were peradventure a fault for your lordship to be too well versed; your employments are of a higher and nobler strain, and that concerns the welfare of millions of men: "Tu regere imperio populos (Sackville) memento, Such little stndies as these, belong only to those persons, that are low in the rank they hold in the commonwealth, low in their conceptions, and low in a languishing and rusting leisure, such a one as Virgil calleth ignobile otium, and such an one as I am now dulled withal. If Alexander or Cæsar should have commended a tract of land, as fit to fight a battle in for the empire of the world, or to build a city upon, to be the magazine and staple of all the adjacent countries, nobody could justly condemn that husbandman, who, according to his own narrow art and rules, should censure the plains of Arbella or Pharsalia, for being in some places sterile; or the meadows about Alexandria, for being sometimes subject to be overflown or could tax ought he should say in that kind for a contradiction unto the other's commendations of those places which are built upon higher and larger principles. So, my lord, I am confident I shall not be reproached of unmannerliness for putting in a demurrer unto a few little particularities in that noble discourse, which your lordship gave a general applause unto, and by doing so I have given your lordship the best account I can of myself, as well as of your commands. You hereby see what my entertainments are, and how I play away my time. -"Dorset dum magnus ad altum Fulminat Oxonium bello, victorque volentes Per populos dat jura; viamque affectat Olympo." May your counsels there be happy and successful to bring about that peace, which if we be not quickly blessed withal, a general ruin threateneth the whole kingdom. From Winchester House, the 22nd (I think I may say the 23rd, for I am sure it is morning, and I think it is day), of December, 1642. Your lordship's most humble and obedient Servant, KENELM DIGBY. THE POSTSCRIPT. MY LORD,-Looking over these loose papers to point them, I perceive I have forgotten what I promised in the eighth sheet, to touch in a word concerning grace. I do not conceive it to be a quality infused by God Almighty into a soul. Such kind of discoursing satisfieth me no more in divinity, than in philosophy. I take it to be the whole complex of such real motives, as a solid account may be given of them, that incline a man to virtue and piety, and are set on foot by God's particular grace and favour, to bring that work to pass. As for example to a man plunged in sensuality, some great misfortune happeneth that mouldeth his heart to a tenderness, and inclineth him to much thoughtfulness. In this temper, he meeteth with a book or preacher that representeth lively to him the danger of his own condition and giveth him hopes of greater contentment in other objects, after he shall have taken leave of his former beloved sins. This begetteth further conversation with prudent and pious men, and experienced physicians, in curing the soul's maladies, whereby he is at last perfectly converted, and settled in a course of solid virtue and piety. 192 OBSERVATIONS UPON RELIGIO MEDICI. Now these accidents of his misfortune, the gentleness and softness of his nature, his falling upon a good book, his encountering with a pathetic preacher, the unpremeditated chance that brought him to hear his sermon, his meeting with other worthy men, and the whole concatenation of all the intervening accidents, to work this good effect in him, and that were ranged and disposed from all eternity, by God's particular goodness and providence for his salvation, and without which he had inevitably been damned; this chain of causes, ordered by God to produce this effect, I understand to be grace. |