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no gap for heresy, schisms, or errors, of which at present I hope I shall not injure truth to say, I have no taint or tincture. I must confess my greener studies have been polluted with two or three; not any begotten in the latter centuries, but old and obsolete, such as could never have been revived but by such extravagant and irregular heads as mine. For. indeed, heresies perish not with their authors, but like the river Arethusa, though they lose their currents in one place, they rise up again in another. One general council is not able to extirpate one single heresy; it may be cancelled for the present, but revolution of time, and the like aspects from heaven, will restore it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again. For, as though there were a metempsychosis, and the soul of one man passed to another, opinions do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them. To see ourselves again, we need not look for Plato's year; every man is not only himself; there have been many Diogeneses, and as many Timons, though but few of that name; men are lived over again; the world is now as it was in ages past; there was none then, but there hath been some one since that parallels him, and is as it were his revived self.

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The wonders of Nature.-(Part i., sections 15, 16.)—I could never content my contemplation with those general pieces of wonder, the flux and reflux of the sea, the increase of Nile, the conversion of the needle to the North; and have studied to match and parallel these in the more obvious and neglected pieces of nature which, without further travel, I can do in the cosmography of myself. We carry with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all Africa and her prodigies in us. We are that bold and adventurous piece of nature which he that studies wisely learns in a compendium, what others labour at in a divided piece and endless volume.

Thus there are two books from whence I collect my divinity. Besides that written one of God, another of His servant-nature, that universal and publick manuscript, that lies exposed unto the eyes of all. Those that never saw Him in the one, have discovered Him in the other this was the scripture and theology of the heathens ; the natural motion of the sun made them more admire Him than its supernatural station did the children of Israel. The ordinary effects of nature wrought more admiration in them, than in the other all His miracles. Surely the heathens knew better how to join and read these mystical letters than we Christians, who cast a more careless eye on these common hieroglyphics, and disdain to suck divinity from the flowers of nature. Nor do I so forget God as to adore the name of nature: which I define not, with the schools, to be the

1 A fountain in Sicily; according to the belief of the ancients, this fountain was connected under the sea with the Alphæus, a river in Greece, so that anything thrown into the river rose in the fountain.

2 i e., a transmigration of souls.

3 A revolution of certain thousand years, when all things should return unto their former estate, and he be teaching again in his school, as when he delivered this ⚫pinion. 4 In the literal sense of "standing still."

FROM THE RELIGIO MEDICI."

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principle of motion and rest, but that straight and regular line, that settled and constant course the wisdom of God hath ordained the actions of His creatures, according to their several kinds. To make a revolution every day is the nature of the sun, because of that necessary course which God hath ordained it, from which it cannot swerve but by a faculty from that voice which first did give it motion. Now this course of nature God seldom alters or perverts; but, like an excellent artist, hath so contrived His work that, with the self-same instrument, without a new creation, He may effect his obscurest designs. I call the effects of nature the works of God, whose hand and instrument she only is; and therefore, to ascribe His actions unto her is to devolve the honour of the principal agent upon the instrument; which if with reason we may do, then let our hammers rise up and boast they have built our houses, and our pens receive the honour of our writings. I hold there is a general beauty in the works of God, and therefore no deformity in any kind of species or creature whatsoever. I cannot tell by what logic we call a toad, a bear, or an elephant ugly; they being created in those outward shapes and figures which best express the actions of their inward forms; and having passed that general visitation of God, who saw that all that He had made was good, that is, conformable to His will, which abhors deformity, and is the will of order and beauty. There is no deformity but in monstrosity; wherein, notwithstanding, there is a kind of beauty; nature so ingeniously contriving the irregular parts, as they become sometimes more remarkable than the principal fabric. To speak yet more narrowly, there was never anything ugly or misshapen, but the chaos; wherein, notwithstanding, to speak strictly, there was no deformity, because no form; nor was it yet impregnate by the voice of God. Now nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature; they being both the servants of His providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In brief, all things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.

Books. (Part i., sections 23, 24.)-Men's works have an age, like themselves, and though they outlive their authors, yet have they a stint and period to their duration. The Scripture only is a work toc hard for the teeth of time, and cannot perish but in the general flames, when all things shall confess their ashes. I have heard some, with deep sighs, lament the lost lines of Cicero; others, with as many groans, deplore the combustion of the Library of Alexandria; for my own part, I think there be too many in the world, and could with patience behold the urn and ashes of the Vatican,1 could I, with a few others, recover the perished leaves of Solomon.2 I would not omit a copy of Enoch's pillars,3 had they many nearer 1 The library of the Vatican at Rome, which was in Sir Thomas's days the most valuable in Europe, as indeed in some respects it still is.

2 It says in 1 Kings that Solomon wrote five thousand proverbs, and one thousand and five songs, most of which are of course lost.

3 According to Josephus, Enoch, informed by Adam that the world was to be twice

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authors than Josephus, or did not relish somewhat of the fable. Some men have written more than others have spoken. Pineda1 quotes more authors in one work than are necessary in a whole world. Of those three great inventions in Germany, there are two which are not without their incommodities. 'Tis not a melancholy wish of my own, but the desires of better heads, that there were a general synod, not to unite the incompatible difference of religion, but for the benefit of learning, to reduce it, as it lay at first, in a few and solid authors, and to condemn to the fire those swarms and millions of rhapsodies, begotten only to distract and abuse the weaker judgments of scholars, and to maintain the trade and mystery of typographers.

Man's body. (Part i., sections 36, 37.)-In our study of anatomy, there is a mass of mysterious philosophy, and such as reduced the very heathens to divinity; yet amongst all those rare discoveries and curious pieces I find in the fabric of man, I do not so much content myself, as in that I find not-that is, no organ or instrument for the rational soul; for in the brain, which we term the seat of reason, there is not anything of moment more than I can discover in the cranny of a beast; and this is a sensible and no inconsiderable argument of the inorganity of the soul, at least in that sense we usually receive it. Thus we are men, and we know not how; there is something in us that can be without us, and will be after us; though it is strange that it hath no history what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it entered in us.

Now, for these walls of flesh wherein the soul doth seem to be immured before the resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a fabric that must fall to ashes. "All flesh is

grass," is not only metaphorically but literally true; for all those creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field digested into flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay, further, we are what we all abhor, man-eaters and cannibals, devourers not only of men but of ourselves, and that not in an allegory, but a positive truth; for all this mass of flesh which we behold came in at our mouths; this frame we look upon hath been upon our trenchers; in brief, we have devoured ourselves.

Of the end of the world.—(Part i., sections 45, 46.)—I believe the world grows near its end; yet it is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles. As the work of creation was above nature, so is its adversary, annihilation, without which the world hath not its end, but its mutation. Now, what force should be able to consume it thus far without the breath of God, which is the truest consuming flame, my philosophy cannot

destroyed, once by water and once by fire, erected two pillars,-one of stone, against the water, the other of brick, against the fire; and on these engraved all the knowledge of his time; and thus the flood did not sweep away all the knowledge of mankind.

1 In one work he quotes one thousand and forty authors.

2 Gunpowder, printing, and the compass, of which the first two are those which have occasioned "incommodities."

3 Browne here uses the equivalent Latin word utinam.

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FROM THE HYDRIOTAPHIA.

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inform me. Some believe there went not a minute to the world's creation, nor shall there go to its destruction. Those six days, so punctually described, make not to them one moment, but rather seem to manifest the method and idea of that great work in the intellect of God than the manner how He proceeded in its operation.

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Now, to determine the day and year of this inevitable time, is not only convincible and statute madness, but also manifest impiety. How shall we interpret Elias's six thousand years,2 or imagine the secret communicated to a rabbi which God hath denied unto his angels? It had been an excellent query to have posed the devil of Delphos, and must needs have forced him to some strange amphibology. It hath not only mocked the predictions of sundry astrologers in past ages, but the prophecies of many melancholy heads in these present, who, neither understanding reasonably things past nor present, pretend a knowledge of things to come, heads ordained only to manifest the incredible effects of melancholy, and to fulfil old prophecies3 rather than be the authors of new.

2. FROM THE HYDRIOTAPHIA.6

What song the Syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these ossuaries3 entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarism; not to be resolved by man, nor easily, perhaps, by spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as good provision for their names as they have done for their relics, they had not so grossly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes, which, in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves a fruitless continuation, and only arise unto late posterity as emblems of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding vices. Pagan vain-glories, which thought the world might last for ever, had encouragement for ambition; and, 1 Because Christ says, "Of that day and hour knoweth no man, no, not the angels

of heaven."

2 According to the Jewish Rabbis, Elijah is said to have prophesied the destruction of the world after it had existed 6000 years.

3 The oracle of Apollo at Delphi.

4 The use of words capable of two senses, as when Shakspere says,

"The duke yet lives that Henry shall depose."

-which may mean, either the duke is still alive who is to depose Henry, or the duke is still alive who is to be deposed by Henry.

5 Such as, "In those days shall come liars and false prophets."

6 This treatise was written as a discourse upon some urns found in a field near Norwich.

7 These were the questions which the Emperor Tiberius proposed to the grammarians for their solution.

8 i.e., bones, the persons to whom the bones found in the urns belonged.

9 i, ., solved or answered.

finding no Atropos1 unto the immortality of their names, were never dampt with the necessity of oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantages of ours, in the attempts of their vain-glories, who acting early, and before the probable meridian of time, have by this time found great accomplishment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have already outlasted their monuments and mechanical preservations. But in this latter scene of time we cannot expect such mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the prophecy of Elias,2 and Charles the Fifth can never hope to live within two Methuselahs of Hector.3

And, therefore, restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories, unto present considerations, seems a vanity almost out of date, and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons. One face of Janus holds no proportion to the other. 'Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by monuments whose death we daily pray for, and whose duration we cannot hope without injury to our expectations in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We, whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations; and being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that's past a

moment.

There is no antidote against the opium of time, which temporally considereth all things: our fathers find their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years ;5 generations pass while some trees stand; and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions like many in Gruter, to hope for eternity by enigmatical epithets or first letters of our names, to be studied by antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by everlasting languages.

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To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a frigid ambition in Cardan." Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates's pa

1 Atropos was one of the Fates, and her duty was to cut the thread of human life; hence the passage means, "finding nothing to prevent their obtaining immortality." 2 Viz., that the world was to last only 6000 years.

3 Because Hector lived two Methuselahs-that is, two thousand years before Charles the Fifth was born.

4 The ancients represented Janus with two faces,-one looking behind, the other before. Sir Thomas means that the period during which the world was likely to exist, was probably very small in comparison with that during which it had already existed.

5 Because other bodies are laid beneath them, and they themselves are moved.

6 i.e., in Gruter's famous collection of inscriptions.

A famous Italian physician and astrologer; died 1576.

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