2. PART THE SECOND.
Sect. 1.—Now, for that other virtue of
charity, without which faith is a mere notion and of no existence, I have
ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and humane inclination
I borrowed from my parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed
laws of charity. And, if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated
and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue,—for I am of a
constitution so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all things; I
have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour, air, anything. I
wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools,
nor at the Jews for locusts and grasshoppers; but, being amongst them, make
them my common viands; and I find they agree with my stomach as well as
theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a church-yard as well as in a
garden. I cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or
salamander; at the sight of a toad or viper, I find in me no desire to take
up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in myself those common antipathies
that I can discover in others: those national repugnances do not touch me,
nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but,
where I find their
actions in balance with my countrymen's, I
honour, love, and embrace them, in the same degree. I was born in the eighth
climate, but seem to be framed and constellated unto all. I am no plant that
will not prosper out of a garden. All places, all airs, make unto me one
country; I am in England everywhere, and under any meridian. I have been
shipwrecked, yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study, play, or
sleep, in a tempest. In brief I am averse from nothing: my conscience would
give me the lie if I should say I absolutely detest or hate any essence, but
the devil; or so at least abhor anything, but that we might come to
composition. If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do
contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and
religion, the multitude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken
asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of God, but, confused
together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than
Hydra. It is no breach of charity to call these fools; it is the style all
holy writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical Scripture,
and a point of our faith to believe so. Neither in the name of multitude do
I only include the base and minor sort of people: there is a rabble even
amongst the gentry; a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the
same wheel as these; men in the same level with mechanicks, though their
fortunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound for
their follies. But, as in casting account three or four men together come
short in account of one man placed by himself below them, so neither are a
troop of these ignorant Doradoes
[I.79] of that
true esteem and value as many a forlorn person, whose condition doth place
him below their feet. Let us speak
like politicians; there is a
nobility without heraldry, a natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with
another, another filed before him, according to the quality of his desert,
and pre-eminence of his good parts. Though the corruption of these times,
and the bias of present practice, wheel another way, thus it was in the
first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the integrity and cradle of
well ordered polities: till corruption getteth ground;—ruder
desires labouring after that which wiser considerations
contemn;—every one having a liberty to amass and heap up riches,
and they a licence or faculty to do or purchase anything.
Sect. 2.—This general and indifferent temper
of mine doth more nearly dispose me to this noble virtue. It is a happiness
to be born and framed unto virtue, and to grow up from the seeds of nature,
rather than the inoculations and forced grafts of education: yet, if we are
directed only by our particular natures, and regulate our inclinations by no
higher rule than that of our reasons, we are but moralists; divinity will
still call us heathens. Therefore this great work of charity must have other
motives, ends, and impulsions. I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my
brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of my God; I draw
not my purse for his sake that demands it, but his that enjoined it; I
relieve no man upon the rhetorick of his miseries, nor to content mine own
commiserating disposition; for this is still but moral charity, and an act
that oweth more to passion than reason. He that relieves another upon the
bare suggestion and bowels of pity doth not this so much for his sake as for
his own; and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also. It is as
erroneous a conceit to redress other men's
misfortunes upon the
common considerations of merciful natures, that it may be one day our own
case; for this is a sinister and politick kind of charity, whereby we seem
to bespeak the pities of men in the like occasions. And truly I have
observed that those professed eleemosynaries, though in a crowd or
multitude, do yet direct and place their petitions on a few and selected
persons; there is surely a physiognomy, which those experienced and master
mendicants observe, whereby they instantly discover a merciful aspect, and
will single out a face, wherein they spy the signature and marks of mercy.
For there are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them
the motto of our souls, wherein he that can read A, B, C, may read our
natures. I hold, moreover, that there is a phytognomy, or physiognomy, not
only of men, but of plants and vegetables; and is every one of them some
outward figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward forms. The
finger of God hath left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical, or
composed of letters, but of their several forms, constitutions, parts, and
operations, which, aptly joined together, do make one word that doth express
their natures. By these letters God calls the stars by their names; and by
this alphabet Adam assigned to every creature a name peculiar to its nature.
Now, there are, besides these characters in our faces, certain mystical
figures in our hands, which I dare not call mere dashes, strokes
à la volee or at random, because
delineated by a pencil that never works in vain; and hereof I take more
particular notice, because I carry that in mine own hand which I could never
read of nor discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in his acute and
singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of chiromancy:
[I.80] yet I believe the Egyptians,
who were nearer addicted to those abstruse and mystical sciences, had a
knowledge therein: to which those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians did
after
[I.81] pretend, and perhaps retained a
few corrupted principles, which sometimes might verify their prognosticks.
It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of faces,
there should be none alike: now, contrary, I wonder as much how there should
be any. He that shall consider how many thousand several words have been
carelessly and without study composed out of twenty-four letters; withal,
how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the fabrick of one man;
shall easily find that this variety is necessary: and it will be very hard
that they shall so concur as to make one portrait like another. Let a
painter carelessly limn out a million of faces, and you shall find them all
different; yes, let him have his copy before him, yet, after all his art,
there will remain a sensible distinction: for the pattern or example of
everything is the perfectest in that kind, whereof we still come short,
though we transcend or go beyond it; because herein it is wide, and agrees
not in all points unto its copy. Nor doth the similitude of creatures
disparage the variety of nature, nor any way confound the works of God. For
even in things alike there is diversity; and those that do seem to accord do
manifestly disagree. And thus is man like God; for, in the same things that
we resemble him we are utterly different from him. There was never anything
so like another as in all points to concur; there will ever some reserved
difference slip in, to prevent the identity; without which two several
things would not be alike, but the same, which is impossible.
Sect. 3.—But, to return from philosophy to
charity, I
hold not so narrow a conceit of this virtue as to
conceive that to give alms is only to be charitable, or think a piece of
liberality can comprehend the total of charity. Divinity hath wisely divided
the act thereof into many branches, and hath taught us, in this narrow way,
many paths unto goodness; as many ways as we may do good, so many ways we
may be charitable. There are infirmities not only of body, but of soul and
fortunes, which do require the merciful hand of our abilities. I cannot
contemn a man for ignorance, but behold him with as much pity as I do
Lazarus. It is no greater charity to clothe his body than apparel the
nakedness of his soul. It is an honourable object to see the reasons of
other men wear our liveries, and their borrowed understandings do homage to
the bounty of ours. It is the cheapest way of beneficence, and, like the
natural charity of the sun, illuminates another without obscuring itself. To
be reserved and caitiff
[I.82] in this part of
goodness is the sordidest piece of covetousness, and more contemptible than
the pecuniary avarice. To this (as calling myself a scholar) I am obliged by
the duty of my condition. I make not therefore my head a grave, but a
treasure of knowledge. I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning. I
study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for
themselves. I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that
know less. I instruct no man as an exercise of my knowledge, or with an
intent rather to nourish and keep it alive in mine own head than beget and
propagate it in his. And, in the midst of all my endeavours, there is but
one thought that dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with myself,
nor can be legacied among my honoured friends. I cannot fall out or contemn
a man for an error, or
conceive why a difference in opinion
should divide an affection; for controversies, disputes, and argumentations,
both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable
natures, do not infringe the laws of charity. In all disputes, so much as
there is of passion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then
reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the
question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are never
determined; for, though they be amply proposed, they are scarce at all
handled; they do so swell with unnecessary digressions; and the parenthesis
on the party is often as large as the main discourse upon the subject. The
foundations of religion are already established, and the principles of
salvation subscribed unto by all. There remain not many controversies worthy
a passion, and yet never any dispute without, not only in divinity but
inferior arts. What a
Βατραχομυομαχια
and hot skirmish is betwixt S. and T. in Lucian!
[I.83] How do grammarians hack and slash for the genitive case in
Jupiter!
[I.84] How do they break their own
pates, to salve that of Priscian!
[I.85]
"Si foret in terris, rideret Democritus." Yes, even
amongst wiser militants, how many wounds have been given and credits slain,
for the poor victory of an opinion, or beggarly conquest of a distinction!
Scholars are men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper
than Actius's razor.
[I.86] their pens carry
farther, and give a louder report than thunder. I had rather stand the shock
of a basilisko
[I.87] than in the fury of a
merciless pen. It is not mere zeal to learning, or devotion to the muses,
that wiser princes patron the arts, and carry an indulgent aspect unto
scholars; but a desire to have their names eternized by the memory of their
writings, and a fear of the revengeful pen of
succeeding ages:
for these are the men that, when they have played their parts, and had their
exits, must step out and give the moral of their
scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of their virtues and vices.
And surely there goes a great deal of conscience to the compiling of an
history: there is no reproach to the scandal of a story; it is such an
authentick kind of falsehood, that with authority belies our good names to
all nations and posterity.
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, mysteries, 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, conclude 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 indirectly, and upon
quotation of their own poet.[I.88] It is as
bloody a thought in one way as Nero's was in another.[I.89] For by a word we wound a thousand, and at one blow
assassin 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 passion. Democritus, that thought to laugh the times into goodness,
seems to me as deeply hypochondriack as Heraclitus, that bewailed them. It
moves not my spleen to behold the multitude in their proper humours; that
is, in their fits of folly and madness, as well understanding 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 disparage goodness; for, when vice gains upon the major part,
virtue, in whom it remains, becomes more excellent, 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
noble 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 acquaintance think more; God 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 God, 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 persuade 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 passion the counterfeit 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
passion 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 passion 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
insensible. Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate, but to
engross, his sorrows; that, by making them mine own, I may more easily
discuss them: for in mine own reason, and within myself, I can command that
which I cannot entreat without myself, and within the circle of another. I
have often thought those noble 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 compass 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 God, 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,
children, and then our friends; for, excepting the injunctions of religion,
I do not find in myself such a necessary 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 God.
From hence, methinks, I do conceive how God loves man; what
happiness there is in the love of God. 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, indeed, 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 noble affection falls not on
vulgar and common constitutions; but on such as are marked for virtue. He
that can love his friend with this noble 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 happiness 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 particular, 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 passing
bell, though in my mirth, without 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 God for his soul. I cannot 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 God 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;
[I.90] our bad wishes and
uncharitable desires proceed no further than this life; it is the devil, and
the uncharitable votes of hell, that desire our misery in the world to come.
Sect. 7.—"To do no injury nor take none" was
a principle which, to my former years and impatient affections, seemed to
contain enough of morality, but my more settled years, and Christian
constitution, 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 mass 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 adversaries
without. The devil, that did but buffet St Paul, plays methinks at sharp
[I.91] with me. Let me be nothing, if within the
compass of myself, I do not find the battle of Lepanto,
[I.92] passion 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 God but from my last repentance, sacrament, or general
absolution; and therefore am not terrified with the sins or madness of my
youth. I thank the goodness of God, 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 corruption. 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
constitution 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 invention 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 prescribe a fit of sorrow to repentance: there goes
indignation, anger, sorrow, hatred, into mine, passions of a contrary
nature, which neither seem to suit with this action, nor my proper
constitution. 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 God; 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 common
harmony, and keeping in fetters those powers, whose rebellions, once
masters, might be the ruin of all.
Sect. 8.—I thank God, 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 circumscribed 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 countries,
beheld the nature of their climes, the chorography of their provinces,
topography of their cities, but understood 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 fishermen, 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 himself upon the flux and reflux of
Euripus.
[I.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,
[I.94] and stand like Janus 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 conceit 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
contented 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 disallow of second
marriage; as neither in all cases of polygamy, which considering some times,
and the unequal number of both sexes, 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 God; 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 commits 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 committed. I speak not in prejudice, nor am averse from that sweet
sex, 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
wherever 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
understanding they strike a note most full of harmony. Whatsoever 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 something in it of divinity more than the ear
discovers: it is an hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole world,
and creatures of God,—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 God.
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 constitution 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;
[I.p] and
Cicero, the worst of poets, but declaiming for a poet, falls in the very
first sentence upon a
perfect hexameter.
[I.q] 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 necessities. 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 noble
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 indissolvable 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 ofttimes 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,
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 prepared appetites is
nectar, and a pleasant potion of immortality.
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[I.95] of
the best natures, and may be inverted on the worst. There are, in the most
depraved and venomous dispositions, certain pieces that remain untouched,
which by an antiperistasis[I.96] become more excellent, or by the excellency of their
antipathies are able to preserve themselves 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 enveloped 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 themselves; without which they were not
deleterious to others only, but to themselves also. But it is the corruption
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
[I.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 cum solus,"[I.r] 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 God;—who is his own
circle, and can subsist by himself; all others, besides their dissimilary
and heterogeneous parts, which in a manner multiply their natures, cannot
subsist without the concourse of God, 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 God: all others do
transcend an unity, and so by consequence 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
that I cast mine eye on: for the other, I use it but like my globe, and turn
it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look upon my outside,
perusing only my condition and fortunes, do err in my altitude; for I am
above Atlas's shoulders.
[I.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 mass of flesh that circumscribes 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; something that was before the elements, and owes no homage
unto the sun. Nature tells me, I am the image of God, 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, whatsoever 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 God 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
[I.99] of company; yet in one
dream I can compose a whole comedy, behold the action, apprehend the jests,
and laugh myself awake at the conceits 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 devotions: 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 confused and broken
tale of that which hath passed. Aristotle, 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
noctambulos
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 jurisdiction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and
ecstatick souls do walk about in their own corpses, as spirits with the
bodies they assume, wherein they seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed
the organs are destitute 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
beginning 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 waking that kills us, and destroys those spirits that are the house of
life. 'Tis indeed a part of life that best expresseth 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 mortality; a death whereby we live
a middle and moderating 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 colloquy with God:—
The night is come, like to the day;
Depart not thou, great God, away.
Let not my sins, black as the night,
Eclipse the lustre 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 God, let me
Awake again at last with thee.
And thus assured, 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 ourselves urinals, or be persuaded that we are dead,
is not so ridiculous, nor so many degrees beyond the power of hellebore,
[I.100] as this. The opinions of theory, and
positions 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 god 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 without
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 noblest 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 circumstance, 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 noble 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
[I.101] and miserable outsides, those
mutilate and semi bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose
genealogy is God's as well as ours, and in as fair a way to salvation as
ourselves. Statists that labour to contrive a commonwealth without our
poverty take away the object of charity; not understanding only the
commonwealth of a Christian, but forgetting the prophecy of Christ.
[I.s]
Sect. 14.—Now, there is another part of
charity, which is the basis and pillar of this, and that is the love of God,
for whom we love our neighbour; for this I think charity, to love God for
himself, and our neighbour for God. And all that is truly amiable is God, 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 affection 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 title. Thus we
adore virtue, though to the eyes of sense she be invisible. Thus 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; he loves us but for that part which is as it were
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, 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[I.t] will have it, above) the sun; nor any crambe[I.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 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 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.
[FOOTNOTES TO THE RELIGIO MEDICI, PART THE SECOND.]
[[I.p]]
"Urbem a Romam in principio reges habuere."
[ENDNOTES TO THE RELIGIO MEDICI, PART THE SECOND.]
[[I.79]]
From the Spanish "Dorado," a gilt head.
[[I.80]]
Sir T. Browne treats of chiromancy, or the art of telling fortunes by
means of lines in the hands, in his "Vulgar Errors," lib. v. cap. 23.
[[I.82]]
S. Wilkin says that here this word means niggardly.
[[I.83]]
In the dialogue, "judicium vocalium," the vowels are the judges, and
Σ complains that T has deprived him of many letters that ought
to begin with Σ.
[[I.84]]
If Jovis or Jupitris.
[[I.85]]
The celebrated Roman grammarian. A proverbial phrase for the violation
of grammar was "Breaking Priscian's head."
[[I.86]]
Livy says, Actius Nevius cut a whetstone through with a razor.
[[I.87]]
A kind of lizard that was supposed to kill all it looked at—
"Whose baneful eye
Wounds at a glance, so that the soundest dye."
—De Bartas, 6me jour 1me sem.
[[I.88]]
Epimenides (Titus x. 12)— "Κρητες
αει
ψευσται
κακα
θηρια
γαστερες
αργαι."
[[I.89]]
Nero having heard a person say, "When I am dead, let earth be mingled
with fire," replied, "Yes, while I live."—Suetonius, Vit. Nero.
[[I.90]]
Alluding to the story of the Italian, who, having been provoked by a
person he met, put a poniard to his heart, and threatened to kill him if
he would not blaspheme God; and the stranger doing so, the Italian
killed him at once, that he might be damned, having no time to repent.
[[I.91]]
A rapier or small sword.
[[I.92]]
The battle here referred to was the one between Don John of Austria and
the Turkish fleet, near Lepanto, in 1571. The battle of Lepanto (that
is, the capture of the town by the Turks) did not take place till 1678.
[[I.93]]
Several authors say that Aristotle died of grief because he could not
find out the reason for the ebb and flow of the tide in Epirus.
[[I.94]]
Who deny that there is such a thing as science.
[[I.95]]
A motto on a ring or cup. In an old will, 1655, there is this passage: "I
give a cup of silver gilt to have this posy written in the
margin:—
"When the drink is out, and the bottom you may see,
Remember your brother I. G."
[[I.96]]
The opposition of a contrary quality, by which the quality it opposes
becomes heightened.
[[I.97]]
Adam as he was created and not born.
[[I.98]]
Meaning a world, as Atlas supported the world on his shoulders.
[[I.99]]
Merriment. Johnson says that this is the only place where the word is
found.
[[I.100]]
Said to be a cure for madness.
[[I.101]]
Patched garments.
[[I.102]]
A game. A kind of capping verses, in which, if any one repeated what had
been said before, he paid a forfeit.