Reason His Only Religion
October 17, 2014 |
| Sir Thomas Browne |
Sir Thomas Browne.
(1605–1682). Religio Medici.
Vol. 3, pp. 253-265 of
The Harvard Classics
The religion of
Thomas Browne - a liberal man in a most intolerant time - was not
taken from either Rome or Geneva, but from his own reason.
(Browne visited by
Evelyn of "Evelyn Diary," Oct. 17, 1671.)
The
First Part
FOR my
Religion, though there be several Circumstances that might perswade
the World I have none at all, (as the general scandal of my
Profession, 1 the natural course of my Studies,
the indifferency of my Behaviour and Discourse in matters of
Religion, neither violently Defending one, nor with that common
ardour and contention Opposing another;) yet, in despight hereof, I
dare without usurpation assume the honourable Stile of a Christian.
Not that I meerly owe this Title to the Font, my Education, or the
clime wherein I was born, (as being bred up either to confirm those
Principles my Parents instilled into my unwary Understanding, or by a
general consent proceed in the Religion of my Country;) but having in
my riper years and confirmed Judgment seen and examined all, I find
my self 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, Infidels, and (what is worse,)
Jews; rather contenting my self to enjoy that happy Stile, than
maligning those who refuse so glorious a Title.
II.
But, because the Name of a Christian is become too general to express
our Faith, (there being a Geography or Religions 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 Saviour taught,
the Apostles disseminated, the Fathers authorized, and the Martyrs
confirmed; but by the sinister ends of Princes, the ambition and
avarice of Prelates, and the fatal corruption of 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 2 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.
III. Yet have I not so shaken hands with those desperate
Resolutions, 3 (who had rather venture at large
their decayed bottom, than bring her in to be new trimm’d 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 4 and Swords point with them. We
have reformed from them, not against them; for (omitting those
Improperations 5 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
Temples of the Heathens; we being all Christians, and not divided by
such detested impieties as might prophane our Prayers, or the place
wherein we make them; or that a resolved Conscience may not adore her
Creator any where, especially in places devoted to His Service;
where, if their Devotions offend Him, mine may
please Him; if theirs prophane it, mine may hallow it. Holy-water and
Crucifix (dangerous to 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 6 I do acknowledge austere, my
behaviour full of rigour, 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 Saviour. I cannot laugh at,
but rather pity, the fruitless journeys of Pilgrims, or contemn the
miserable condition of Fryars; for, though misplaced in
Circumstances, there is something in it of Devotion. I could never
hear the Ave-Mary 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 directed their Devotions to Her, I
offered mine to GOD, and rectified 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.
IV. 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
extreams, their contrarieties in condition, affection, and opinion,
may with the same hopes expect an union in the Poles of Heaven.
V. But (to
difference my self nearer, and draw into a lesser Circle,) there is
no Church whose every part so squares unto 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 endeavour 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, or disproving 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, ’tis but my Comment: where there is a joynt 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 errour in our selves, to compute the
Nativity of our Religion from Henry the Eighth, who, though he
rejected the Pope, refus’d not the faith of Rome, and effected no
more than what his own Predecessors desired and assayed 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 a temporal Prince, we owe the duty of good
language. I confess there is cause of passion between us: by his
sentence I stand excommunicated;Heretick 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 Satyrs and invectives of the Pulpit may
perchance produce a good effect on the vulgar, whose ears are opener
to Rhetorick than Logick; yet do they in no wise confirm the faith of
wiser Believers, who know that a good cause needs not to be patron’d
by passion, but can sustain itself upon a temperate dispute.
VI. I could never divide myself from any man upon the
difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgment for not
agreeing with me in that from which perhaps within a few days I
should dissent my self. I have no Genius to disputes in Religion, and
have often thought it wisdom to decline them, especially upon a
disadvantage, or when the cause of Truth might suffer in the weakness
of my patronage. Where we desire to be informed, ’tis good to
contest with men above our selves; but to confirm and establish our
opinions, ’tis best to argue with judgments below our own, that the
frequent spoils and Victories over their reasons may settle in
ourselves an esteem and confirmed Opinion of our own. Every man is
not a proper Champion for Truth, nor fit to take up the Gauntlet in
the cause of Verity: many from the ignorance of these Maximes, and an
inconsiderate Zeal unto Truth, have too rashly charged the Troops of
Error, and remain as Trophies unto the enemies of Truth. A man may be
in as just possession of Truth as of a City, and yet be forced to
surrender; ’tis therefore far better to enjoy her with peace, than
to hazzard her on a battle. If, therefore, there rise any doubts in
my way, I do forget them, or at least defer them till my better
setled judgement and more manly reason be able to resolve them; for I
perceive every man’s own reason is his best Oedipus, and will, upon
a reasonable truce, find a way to loose those bonds wherewith the
subtleties of error have enchained our more flexible and tender
judgements. In Philosophy, where Truth seems double-fac’d, there is
no man more Paradoxical than my self: but in Divinity I love to keep
the Road; and, though not in an implicite, yet an humble faith,
follow the great wheel of the Church, by which I move, not reserving
any proper Poles or motion from the Epicycle 7 of
my own brain. By this means I leave no gap for Heresies, Schismes, 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 Heresie: it may be cancell’d 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
Metempsuchosis, and the soul of one man passed into another, Opinions
do find, after certain Revolutions, men and minds like those that
first begat them. To see our selves again, we need not look for
Plato’s year: 8 every man is not only himself;
there hath been many Diogenes, and as many Timons, though but few of
that name: men are liv’d 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.
VII. Now
the first of mine was that of the Arabians, That the Souls of men
perished with their Bodies, but should yet be raised again at the
last day. Not that I did absolutely conceive a mortality of the Soul;
but if that were, (which Faith, not Philosophy, hath yet throughly
disproved,) and that both entred the grave together, yet I held the
same conceit thereof that we all do of the body, that it should rise
again. Surely it is but the merits of our unworthy Natures, if we
sleep in darkness until the last Alarum. A serious reflex upon my own
unworthiness did make me backward from challenging this prerogative
of my Soul: so that I might enjoy my Saviour at the last, I could
with patience be nothing almost unto Eternity.
The second
was that of Origen, That GOD would not
persist in His vengeance for ever, but after a definite time of His
wrath, He would release the damned Souls from torture. Which error I
fell into upon a serious contemplation of the great Attribute of
GOD, His Mercy; and did a little cherish it
in my self, because I found therein no malice, and a ready weight to
sway me from the other extream of despair, whereunto Melancholy and
Contemplative Natures are too easily disposed.
A third
there is, which I did never positively maintain or practise, but have
often wished it had been consonant to Truth, and not offensive to my
Religion, and that is, the Prayer for the Dead; whereunto I was
inclin’d from some charitable inducements, whereby I could scarce
contain my Prayers for a friend at the ringing of a Bell, or behold
his Corps without an Orison for his Soul. ’Twas a good way,
methought, to be remembered by posterity, and far more noble than an
History.
These
opinions I never maintained with pertinacy, or endeavoured to
enveagle any mans belief unto mine, nor so much as ever revealed or
disputed them with my dearest friends; by which means I neither
propagated them in others, nor confirmed them in my self; but
suffering them to flame upon their own substance, without addition of
new fuel, they went out insensibly of themselves. Therefore these
Opinions, though condemned by lawful Councels, were not Heresies in
me, but bare Errors, and single Lapses of my understanding, without a
joynt depravity of my will. Those have not onely depraved
understandings, but diseased affections, which cannot enjoy a
singularity without an Heresie, or be the Author of an Opinion
without they be of a Sect also. This was the villany of the first
Schism of Lucifer, who was not content to err alone, but drew into
his Faction many Legions of Spirits; and upon this experience he
tempted only Eve, as well understanding the Communicable nature of
Sin, and that to deceive but one, was tacitely and upon consequence
to delude them both.
VIII.
That Heresies should arise, we have the Prophesie of CHRIST; but
that old ones should be abolished, we hold no prediction. That there
must be Heresies, is true, not only in our Church, but also in any
other: even in doctrines heretical, there will be super-heresies; and
Arians not only divided from their Church, but also among themselves.
For heads that are disposed unto Schism and complexionally
propense 9 to innovation, are naturally
indisposed for a community, nor will be ever confined unto the order
or œconomy of one body; and therefore, when they separate from
others, they knit but loosely among themselves; nor contented with a
general breach or dichotomy with their Church do subdivide and mince
themselves almost into Atoms. ’Tis true, that men of singular parts
and humours have not been free from singular opinions and conceits in
all Ages; retaining something, not only beside the opinion of his own
Church or any other, but also any particular Author; which,
notwithstanding, a sober Judgment may do without offence or heresie;
for there is yet, after all the Decrees of Councils and the niceties
of the Schools, many things untouch’d, unimagin’d, wherein the
liberty of an honest reason may play and expatiate with security, and
far without the circle of an Heresie.
IX.
As for those wingy Mysteries in Divinity, and airy subtleties in
Religion, which have unhing’d the brains of better heads, they
never stretched the Pia Mater 10 of
mine. Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in Religion for an
active faith; the deepest Mysteries ours contains have not only been
illustrated, but maintained, by Syllogism and the rule of Reason. I
love to lose my self in a mystery, to pursue my Reason to an O
altitudo! ’Tis my solitary recreation to pose my
apprehension with those involved Ænigmas and riddles of the Trinity,
with Incarnation, and Resurrection. I can answer all the Objections
of Satan and my rebellious reason with that odd resolution I learned
of Tertullian, Certum est, quia impossibile est. I
desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for to credit
ordinary and visible objects is not faith, but perswasion. Some
believe the better for seeing CHRIST’S Sepulchre;
and, when they have seen the Red Sea, doubt not of the Miracle. Now,
contrarily, I bless my self and am thankful that I lived not in the
days of Miracles, that I never saw CHRIST nor
His Disciples. I would not have been one of those Israelites that
pass’d the Red Sea, nor one of CHRIST’S patients
on whom He wrought His wonders; then had my faith been thrust upon
me, nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that
believe and saw not. ’Tis an easie and necessary belief, to credit
what our eye and sense hath examined. I believe He was dead, and
buried, and rose again; and desire to see Him in His glory, rather
than to contemplate Him in His Cenotaphe or Sepulchre. Nor is this
much to believe; as we have reason, we owe this faith unto
History: they only had the advantage of a bold and
noble Faith, who lived before His coming, who upon obscure prophesies
and mystical Types could raise a belief, and expect apparent
impossibilities.
X. ’Tis true, there is an edge in all firm belief, and
with an easie Metaphor we may say, the Sword of
Faith; but in these obscurities I rather use it in the adjunct the
Apostle gives it, a Buckler; under which I conceive
a wary combatant may lye invulnerable. Since I was of understanding
to know we knew nothing, my reason hath been more pliable to the will
of Faith; I am now content to understand a mystery without a rigid
definition, in an easier and Platonick description. That allegorical
description of Hermes 11 pleaseth me beyond all
the Metaphysical definitions of Divines. Where I cannot satisfy my
reason, I love to humour my fancy: I had as live you tell me
that anima est angelus hominis, est Corpus DEI, [the
soul is man’s angel, GOD’s body]
as Entelechia; 12—Lux est umbra
Dei, [Light is GOD’s shadow] as actus
perspicui. 13 Where there is an obscurity
too deep for our Reason, ’tis good to sit down with a description,
periphrasis, or adumbration; for by acquainting our Reason how unable
it is to display the visible and obvious effects of Nature, it
becomes more humble and submissive unto the subtleties of Faith; and
thus I teach my haggard 14and unreclaimed Reason to
stoop unto the lure of Faith. I believe there was already a tree
whose fruit our unhappy Parents tasted, though, in the same Chapter
when GOD forbids it, ’tis positively said,
the plants of the field were not yet grown, for GOD had
not caus’d it to rain upon the earth. I believe that the
Serpent, (if we shall literally understand it,) from his proper form
and figure, made his motion on his belly before the curse. I find the
tryal of the Pucellage and virginity of Women, which GOD ordained
the Jews, is very fallible. Experience and History informs me, that
not onely many particular Women, but likewise whole Nations, have
escaped the curse of Childbirth, which GOD seems
to pronounce upon the whole Sex. Yet I do believe that all this is
true, which indeed my Reason would perswade me to be false; and this
I think is no vulgar part of Faith, to believe a thing not only above
but contrary to Reason, and against the Arguments of our proper
Senses.
XI. In my
solitary and retired imagination
(neque enim cum
porticus aut me
Lectulus accepit, desum
mihi,)
[for when porch or bed
has received me, I do not lose myself]
I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contemplate
Him and His Attributes Who is ever with me, especially those two
mighty ones, His Wisdom and Eternity. With the one I recreate, with
the other I confound, my understanding; for who can speak of Eternity
without a solœcism, or think thereof without an Extasie? Time we may
comprehend; ’tis but five days elder then our selves, and hath the
same Horoscope with the World; but to retire so far back as to
apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite start forwards as to
conceive an end, in an essence that we affirm hath neither the one
nor the other, it puts my Reason to St. Paul’s Sanctuary. 15 My
Philosophy dares not say the Angels can do it. GOD hath
not made a Creature that can comprehend Him; ’tis a privilege of
His own nature. I AM THAT I AM, was
His own definition unto Moses; and ’twas a short one, to confound
mortality, that durst question GOD, or ask
Him what He was. Indeed, He onely is; all others have and shall be.
But in Eternity there is no distinction of Tenses; and therefore that
terrible term Predestination, which hath troubled so
many weak heads to conceive, and the wisest to explain, is in respect
to GOD no prescious 16 determination
of our Estates to come, but a definitive blast of His Will already
fulfilled, and at the instant that He first decreed it; for to His
Eternity, which is indivisible and all together, the last Trump is
already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in
Abraham’s bosome. St. Peter speaks modestly, 17 when
he saith, a thousand years to GOD are
but as one day; for, to speak like a Philosopher, those
continued instances of time which flow into a thousand years, make
not to Him one moment: what to us is to come, to His Eternity is
present, His whole duration being but one permanent point, without
Sucession, Parts, Flux, or Division.
XII. There
is no Attribute that adds more difficulty to the mystery of the
Trinity, where, though in a relative way of Father and Son, we must
deny a priority. I wonder how Aristotle could conceive the World
eternal, or how he could make good two Eternities. His similitude of
a Triangle comprehended in a square doth somewhat illustrate the
Trinity of our Souls, and that the Triple Unity of GOD; for
there is in us not three, but a Trinity of Souls; because there is in
us, if not three distinct Souls, yet differing faculties, that can
and do subsist apart in different Subjects, and yet in us are so
united as to make but one Soul and substance.
If one Soul were so perfect as to inform three distinct
Bodies, that were a petty Trinity: conceive the distinct number of
three, not divided nor separated by the intellect, but actually
comprehended in its Unity, and that is a perfect Trinity. I have
often admired the mystical way of Pythagoras, and the secret Magick
of numbers. Beware of Philosophy, is a precept not
to be received in too large a sense; for in this Mass of Nature there
is a set of things that carry in their Front (though not in Capital
Letters, yet in Stenography and short Characters,) something of
Divinity, which to wiser Reasons serve as Luminaries in the Abyss of
Knowledge, and to judicious beliefs as Scales 18 and
Roundles 19 to mount the Pinacles and highest
pieces of Divinity. The severe Schools shall never laugh me out of
the Philosophy of Hermes, that this visible World is but a Picture of
the invisible wherein, as in a Pourtraict, things are not truely, but
in equivocal shapes, and as they counterfeit some more real substance
in that invisible fabrick.
XIII. That other Attribute wherewith I recreate my
devotion, is His Wisdom, in which I am happy; and for the
contemplation of this only, do not repent me that I was bred in the
way of Study: the advantage I have of the vulgar, with the content
and happiness I conceive therein, is an ample recompence for all my
endeavours, in what part of knowledge soever. Wisdom is His most
beauteous Attribute; no man can attain unto it, yet Solomon pleased
GOD when he desired it. He is wise, because
He knows all things; and He knoweth all things, because He made them
all; but His greatest knowledge is in comprehending that He
made not, that is, Himself. And this is also the greatest knowledge
in man. For this do I honour my own profession, and embrace the
Counsel even of the Devil himself: had he read such a Lecture in
Paradise as he did at Delphos, 20 we had better
known our selves, nor had we stood in fear to know him. I
know He is wise in all, wonderful in what we conceive, but far more
in what we comprehend not; for we behold Him but asquint, upon reflex
or shadow; our understanding is dimmer than Moses Eye; we are
ignorant of the back-parts or lower side of His Divinity; therefore
to prie into the maze of His Counsels is not only folly in man, but
presumption even in Angels. Like us, they are His Servants, not His
Senators; He holds no Counsel, but that mystical one of the Trinity,
wherein, though there be three Persons, there is but one mind that
decrees without contradiction. Nor needs He any: His actions are not
begot with deliberation, His Wisdom naturally knows what’s best;
His intellect stands ready fraught with the superlative and purest
Ideas of goodness; consultation and election, which are two motions
in us, make but one in Him, His actions springing from His power at
the first touch of His will. These are Contemplations metaphysical:
my humble speculations have another Method, and are content to trace
and discover those expressions He hath left in His Creatures, and the
obvious effects of Nature. There is no danger to profound 21 these
mysteries, no sanctum sanctorum in Philosophy. The
World was made to be inhabited by Beasts, but studied and
contemplated by Man: ’tis the Debt of our Reason we owe unto
GOD, and the homage we pay for not being
Beasts. Without this, the World is still as though it had not been,
or as it was before the sixth day, when as yet there was not a
Creature that could conceive or say there was a World. The Wisdom of
GOD receives small honour from those vulgar
Heads that rudely stare about, and with a gross rusticity admire His
works: those highly magnifie Him, whose judicious inquiry into His
Acts, and deliberate research into His Creatures, return the duty of
a devout and learned admiration. Therefore,
Search while thou wilt,
and let thy Reason go,
To ransome Truth, even
to th’ Abyss below;
Rally the scattered
Causes; and that line,
Which Nature twists, be
able to untwine.
It is thy Makers will,
for unto none
But unto Reason can He
e’re be known.
The Devils do know
Thee, but those damnèd Meteors
Build not Thy Glory,
but confound Thy Creatures.
Teach my indeavours so
Thy works to read,
That learning them in
Thee, I may proceed.
Give Thou my reason
that instructive flight,
Whose weary wings may
on Thy hands still light.
Teach me to soar aloft,
yet ever so,
When neer the Sun, to
stoop again below.
Thus shall my humble
Feathers safely hover,
And, though near Earth,
more than the Heavens discover.
And then at last, when
homeward I shall drive,
Rich with the Spoils of
Nature, to my Hive,
There will I sit like
that industrious Flie,
Buzzing Thy praises,
which shall never die,
Till Death abrupts
them, and succeeding Glory
Bid me go on in a more
lasting story.
And
this is almost all wherein an humble Creature may endeavour to
requite and some way to retribute 22 unto his
Creator: for if not he that saith, “Lord, Lord,” but he
that doth the will of his Father, shall be saved; certainly
our wills must be our performances, and our intents make out our
Actions; otherwise our pious labours shall find anxiety in our
Graves, and our best endeavours not hope, but fear, a resurrection.
XIV. There is but one first cause, and four second causes
of all things. Some are without efficient, as GOD; others
without matter, as Angels; some without form, as the first matter:
but every Essence, created or uncreated, hath its final cause, and
some positive end both of its Essence and Operation. This is the
cause I grope after in the works of Nature; on this hangs the
Providence of GOD. To raise so beauteous a
structure as the World and the Creatures thereof, was but His Art;
but their sundry and divided operations, with their predestinated
ends, are from the Treasure of His Wisdom. In the causes, nature, and
affections 23 of the Eclipses of the Sun and
Moon, there is most excellent speculation; but to
profound 24 farther, and to contemplate a reason
why His Providence hath so disposed and ordered their motions in that
vast circle as to conjoyn and obscure each other, is a sweeter piece
of Reason, and a diviner point of Philosophy. Therefore sometimes,
and in some things, there appears to me as much Divinity in Galen his
books De Usu Partium, as in Suarez Metaphysicks. Had
Aristotle been as curious in the enquiry of this cause as he was of
the other, he had not left behind him an imperfect piece of
Philosophy, but an absolute tract of Divinity.
Note
1. Cf. the saying, “Among three physicians,
two atheists.”
Note 8. A period of
thousands of years, at the end of which all things should return to
their former state.
Note 11. The
description alluded to, “God is a sphere whose center is everywhere
and circumference nowhere,” is said not to be found in the books
which pass under the name of the fabulous Hermes Trismegistus.
Note
24. Plunge into.
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