SIR THOMAS BROWNE (1605-1682) CHE first copy of Sir Thomas Browne's "Religio Medici» appeared in 1643, when it was printed from one of his manuscripts without his consent. He was thus forced to become famous, for when his corrected version of the essay appeared, it gave him at once the place he still holds among the most notable essayists of modern times. He followed it by his treatise on "Vulgar Errors," » «Urn Burial," and "The Garden of Cyrus." After his death in 1682, his "Christian Morals» and «Miscellanies were published by his literary executors. The "Religio Medici" itself is its author's best biography. "Now for my life," he writes in it; -"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 a hospital; and a place not to live, but to die in." As we examine the intellect capable of this conception, we are more and more astonished at its unlikeness to what we are accustomed to assume as realities. Living in the England of the civil wars, in a world where Episcopalian and Presbyterian, Calvinist and Catholic were hacking and stabbing, torturing and burning and decapitating, he summed up his politics and his theology in the sentence: "Natura nihil agit frustra»: Nothing is vain that Nature does; God's law at last shall work his will. Resting secure in this faith, he uttered no anathemas and split no skulls for conscience' sake. To him as to Goethe in the midst of the Napoleonic wars, the disturbance produced by the evil passions of ambition, hate, and anger were unreal and transitory. The universe was still sane. The insane world in which others lived-Napoleon's world dominated by the God who sides with the best artillery — had no power over him. If it be true that at the sack of Syracuse, Archimedes was killed because he rebuked the victors for interrupting his mathematics, his aloofness from the world of brutal struggle for survival illustrates a frame of mind closely related to that in which Doctor Browne quoted and translated Lucan: - "Victurosque Dei celant ut vivere durent "We're all deluded, vainly searching ways It is hard for minds with modern habits fully to understand a thinker to whom Paracelsus was a scientific authority, witchcraft a reality, and the primum mobile a scientific definition, but the "Religio Medici» derives an additional charm from the imperfections which it owes to the superstition or the imperfect definitions of its times. It is never likely to go out of date. The passage of time which reveals its errors gives it a greater value as one of the most remarkable of those rare documents in which the human mind has recorded realities, both of strength and weakness, belonging not merely to the individual, but to humanity itself. The author of "Religio Medici" was born in London, October 19th, 1605. By profession he was a physician, educated at Oxford and Leyden in all the learning of his day. "Religio Medici" appeared in the year in which Charles I. left London to take the field against the Parliament, but Doctor Browne practiced medicine and wrote philosophy without interruption until the Restoration. Charles II. knighted him, and he lived to the age of seventy-seven, dying, October 19th, 1682, on the anniversary of his birth. W. V. B. RELIGIO MEDICI PART I OR my religion, though there be several circumstances that Fmight persuade the world I have none at all, as the gen eral scandal of my profession, the natural course of my studies, the indifferency of my behavior and discourse in matters of religion,— neither violently defending one, nor with that common ardor and contention opposing another-yet in despite hereof, I dare, without usurpation, assume the honorable style of a Christian. Not that I merely owe this title to the font, my education, or clime wherein I was born, as being bred up either to confirm those principles my parents instilled into my understanding, or by a general consent proceed into the religion of my country: but having in my riper years and confirmed judg ment, seen and examined all, I find myself obliged, by the principles of grace, and the law of mine own reason, to embrace no other name but this: neither doth herein my zeal so far make me forget the general charity I owe unto humanity, as rather to hate than pity Turks and infidels, and (what is worse) Jews; rather contenting myself to enjoy that happy style, than maligning those who refuse so glorious a title. But because the name of a Christian is become too general to express our faith, there being a geography of religion as well as lands, and every clime distinguished not only by their laws and limits, but circumscribed by their doctrines and rules of faith; to be particular, I am of that reformed new-cast religion, wherein I dislike nothing but the name: of the same belief our Savior taught, the Apostles disseminated, the fathers authorized, and martyrs confirmed; but by the sinister ends of princes, the ambition and avarice of prelates, and the fatal corruption of the times, so decayed, impaired, and fallen from its native beauty, that it required the careful and charitable hands of these times to restore it to its primitive integrity. Now the accidental occasion whereupon, the slender means whereby, the low and abject condition of the person by whom so good a work was set on foot, which in our adversaries beget contempt and scorn, fills me with wonder, and is the very same objection the insolent pagans first cast at Christ and his Disciples. Yet have I not so shaken hands with those desperate resolutions, who had rather venture at large their decayed bottom than bring her in to be new trimmed in the dock; who had rather promiscuously retain all, than abridge any, and obstinately be what they are, than what they have been, as to stand in diameter and sword's point with them: we have reformed from them, not against them; for omitting those improperations, and terms of scurrility betwixt us, which only difference our affections, and not our cause, there is between us one common name and appellation, one faith and necessary body of principles common to us both; and therefore I am not scrupulous to converse and live with them, to enter their churches in defect of ours, and either pray with them, or for them. I could never perceive any rational consequence from those many texts which prohibit the children of Israel to pollute themselves with the temple sof the heathen; we being all Christians, and not divided by such detested impieties as might profane our prayers, or the place wherein we make them; or that a resolved conscience may not adore her Creator anywhere, especially in places devoted to his service; where if their devotions offend him, mine may please him; if theirs profane it, mine may hallow it. Holy water and crucifix (dangerous to the common people) deceive not my judgment, nor abuse my devotion at all. I am, I confess, naturally inclined to that which misguided zeal terms superstition: my common conversation I do acknowledge austere, my behavior full of rigor, sometimes not without morosity; yet at my devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, and hand, with all those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote my invisible devotion. I should violate my own arm rather than a church, nor willingly deface the name of saint or martyr. At the sight of a cross or crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Savior: I cannot laugh at, but rather pity the fruitless journeys of pilgrims, or contemn the miserable condition of friars; for though misplaced in circumstances, there is something in it of devotion. I could never hear the Ave Maria bell without an elevation, or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all, that is, in silence and dumb contempt; whilst therefore they direct their devotions to her, I offer mine to God, and rectify the errors of their prayers, by rightly ordering mine own. At a solemn procession I have wept abundantly, while my consorts, blind with opposition and prejudice, have fallen into an excess of scorn and laughter. There are, questionless, both in Greek, Roman, and African churches, solemnities and ceremonies, whereof the wiser. zeals do make a Christian use, and stand condemned by us, not as evil in themselves, but as allurements and baits of superstition to those vulgar heads that look asquint on the face of truth, and those unstable judgments that cannot consist in the narrow point and centre of virtue without a reel or stagger to the circumference. As there were many reformers, so likewise many reformations; every country proceeding in a particular way and method, according as their national interest, together with their constitution. and clime, inclined them,- some angrily, and with extremity, others calmly and with mediocrity, not rending, but easily dividing the community, and leaving an honest possibility of a reconciliation, which, though peaceable spirits do desire, and may conceive that revolution of time and the mercies of God may effect, yet that judgment that shall consider the present antipathies between the two extremes, their contrarieties in condition, affection, and opinion, may with the same hopes expect a union in the poles of heaven. But to difference myself nearer, and draw into a lesser circle: there is no church, whose every part so squares into my conscience; whose articles, constitutions, and customs seem so consonant unto reason, and as it were framed to my particular devotion, as this whereof I hold my belief, the Church of England, to whose faith I am a sworn subject; and therefore in a double obligation subscribe unto her articles and endeavor to observe her constitutions; whatsoever is beyond, as points indifferent, I observe according to the rules of my private reason, or the humor and fashion of my devotion; neither believing this, because Luther affirmed it, nor disapproving that because Calvin hath disavouched it. I condemn not all things in the council of Trent, nor approve all in the synod of Dort. In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the church is my text; where that speaks, it is but my comment: where there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason. It is an unjust scandal of our adversaries, and a gross error in ourselves to compute the nativity of our religion from Henry VIII., who, though he rejected the Pope, refused not the faith of Rome, and effected no more than what his own predecessors desired and essayed in ages past, and was conceived the state of Venice would have attempted in our days. It is as uncharitable a point in us to fall upon those popular scurrilities and opprobrious scoffs of the bishop of Rome, to whom, as temporal prince, we owe the duty of good language. I confess there is a cause of passion between us; by his sentence I stand excommunicated; heretic is the best language he affords. me; yet can no ear witness, I ever returned him the name of Antichrist, man of sin, or whore of Babylon. It is the method of charity to suffer without reaction; those usual satires and invectives of the pulpit may perchance produce a good effect on the vulgar, whose ears are opener to rhetoric than logic; yet do they in no wise confirm the faith of wiser believers, who know that a good cause needs not to be patroned by passion, but can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute. I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not agreeing |