Read The Major Works (English Library) Online
Authors: Sir Thomas Browne
The Major Works (English Library) (7 page)
8. That Heresies should arise we have the prophecy of Christ,
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but that old ones should be abolished wee hold no prediction. That there must be heresies, is true, not onely in our Church, but also in any other: even in Doctrines hereticall there will be super-heresies, and Arians
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not onely divided from their Church, but also among themselves: for heads that are
disposed unto Schisme and complexionally propense
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to innovation, are naturally indisposed for a community, nor will ever be confined unto the order or æconomy
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of one body; and therefore when they separate from others they knit but loosely among themselves; nor contented with a generall breach or dichotomie with their Church, do subdivide and mince themselves almost into Atomes. ’Tis true, that men of singular parts and humors have not beene free from singular opinions and conceits in all ages; retaining something not onely beside the opinion of his own Church or any other, but also any particular Author: which notwithstanding a sober judgement may doe without offence or heresie; for there is yet after all the decrees of counsells and the niceties of the Schooles,
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many things untouch’d, unimagin’d, wherein the libertie of an honest reason may play and expatiate with security and farre without the circle of an heresie.
9. As for those wingy mysteries in Divinity, and ayery subtilties in Religion, which have unhing’d the braines of better heads, they never stretched the
Pia Mater
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of mine; me thinkes there be not impossibilities enough in Religion for an active faith; the deepest mysteries ours containes, have not only been illustrated, but maintained by syllogisme, and the rule of reason: I love to lose my selfe in a mystery to pursue my reason to an
oh altitudo
.
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’Tis my solitary recreation
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to pose my apprehension with those involved a enigma’s and riddles of the
Trinity, with Incarnation and Resurrection. I can answer all the objections of Satan, and my rebellious reason, with that odde resolution I learned of
Tertullian, Certum est quia impossibile est
.
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I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point, for to credit ordinary and visible objects is not faith, but perswasion. Some beleeve the better for seeing Christ his Sepulchre, and when they have seene the Red Sea, doubt not of the miracle.
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Now contrarily I blesse my selfe, and am thankefull that I lived not in the dayes of miracles, that I never saw Christ nor his Disciples; I would not have beene one of those Israelites that passed the Red Sea, nor one of Christs Patients, on whom he wrought his wonders; then had my faith beene thrust upon me, nor should I enjoy that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe & saw not.
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’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 then to contemplate him in his Cenotaphe, or Sepulchre. Nor is this much to beleeve, 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 comming, who upon obscure prophesies and mysticall Types
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could raise a beliefe, and expect apparent impossibilities.
10. ’Tis true, there is an edge in all firme beliefe, and with an easie Metaphor wee may say the sword of faith; but in these obscurities I rather use it, in the adjunct the Apostle gives it, a Buckler;
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under which I perceive a wary combatant may lie invulnerable. Since I was of understanding to know we knew nothing, my reason hath beene more pliable to the will of faith; I am now content to understand a mystery without a rigid definition in an easie and Platonick description.
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That allegoricall
description of
Hermes
,
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pleaseth mee beyond all the Metaphysicall definitions of Divines; where I cannot satisfie my reason, I love to humour my fancy; I had as leive you tell me that
anima est angelus hominis, est Corpus Dei
, as
Entelechia; Lux est umbra Dei, as actus perspicui
:
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where there is an obscurity too deepe for our reason, ’tis good to set downe with a description, periphrasis,
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or adumbration; for by acquainting our reason how unable it is to display the visible and obvious effect of nature, it becomes more humble and submissive unto the subtilties of faith: and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoope 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 growne; for God had not caused it to raine upon the earth.
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I beleeve that the Serpent (if we shall literally understand it) from his proper forme and figure, made his motion on his belly before the curse.
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I find the triall of the Pucellage
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and Virginity of women, which God ordained the Jewes,
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is very fallible. Experience, and History informes 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;
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yet doe I beleeve 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.
11. In my solitary and retired imagination, (
Neque enim cum porticus aut me lectulus accepit, desum mihi
)
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I remember I am not alone, and therefore forget not to contemplate him and his attributes who is ever with mee, especially those two mighty ones, his wisedome and eternitie; with the one I recreate, with the other I confound my understanding: for who can speake of eternitie without a solæcisme, or thinke thereof without an extasie? Time we may comprehend, ’tis but five dayes elder then our selves,
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and hath the same Horoscope with the world; but to retire so farre backe as to apprehend a beginning, to give such an infinite start forward, as to conceive an end in an essence that wee affirme hath neither the one nor the other; it puts my reason to Saint
Pauls
Sanctuary;
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my Philosophy dares not say the Angells can doe it; God hath not made a creature that can comprehend him, ’tis the priviledge of his owne nature;
I am that I am
, was his owne definition unto
Moses
;
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and ’twas a short one, to confound mortalitie, that durst question God, or aske him what hee was; indeed he only is, all others have and shall be, but in eternity there is no distinction of Tenses; and therefore that terrible terme
Predestination
, which hath troubled so many weake heads to conceive, and the wisest to explaine, is in respect to God no prescious
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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 eternitie which is indivisible, and altogether, the last Trumpe is already sounded, the reprobates in the flame, and the blessed in
Abrahams
bosome.
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Saint
Peter
speakes modestly, when hee saith, a thousand yeares to God are but as one day:
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for to speake like a Philosopher, those continued instances
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of time which flow into thousand yeares, make not to him one moment; what to us is to come, to his Eternitie is present, his whole duration being but one permanent point without succession, parts, flux, or division.
12. 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 eternall, or how hee could make good two Eternities:
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his similitude of a Triangle, comprehended in a square, doth somewhat illustrate the Trinitie of our soules, and that the Triple Unity of God; for there is in us not three, but a Trinity of soules, because there is in us, if not three distinct soules, yet differing faculties,
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that can, and doe subsist apart in different subjects, and yet in us are so united as to make but one soule and substance; if one soule were so perfect as to informe 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 mysticall way of
Pythagoras
, and the secret Magicke of numbers;
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Beware of Philosophy,
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is a precept not to be received in too large a sense; for in this masse of nature there is a set of
things that carry in their front, though not in capitall letters, yet in stenography,
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and short Characters, something of Divinitie, which to wiser reasons serve as Luminaries in the abysse of knowledge, and to judicious beliefes, as scales and roundles
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to mount the pinnacles and highest pieces of Divinity. The severe Schooles shall never laugh me out of the Philosophy of
Hermes
, that this visible world is but a picture of the invisible,
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wherein as in a pourtract, things are not truely, but in equivocall shapes; and as they counterfeit some more reall substance in that invisible fabrick.
13. That other attribute wherewith I recreate my devotion, is his wisedome, in which I am happy; and for the contemplation of this onely, do not repent me that I was bred in the way of study: The advantage I have of the vulgar, with the content and happinesse I conceive therein, is an ample recompence for all my endeavours, in what part of knowledg soever.
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Wisedome is his most beauteous attribute, no man can attaine unto it, yet
Solomon
pleased God when hee desired it.
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Hee is wise because hee knowes all things, and hee knoweth all things because he made them all, but his greatest knowledg is in comprehending that he made not, that is himselfe. And this is also the greatest knowledge in man. For this do I honour my own profession and embrace the counsell even of the Devill himselfe: had he read such a Lecture in Paradise as hee did at
Delphos
,
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we had better knowne our selves, nor had we stood in feare to know him. I know he is wise in all, wonderfull 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,
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we are ignorant of the backparts, or lower side of his Divinity; therefore to pry into the maze of his Counsels, is not onely folly in Man, but presumption even in Angels; like us, they are his servants, not his Senators; he holds no Councell, but that mysticall one of the Trinity, wherein though there be three persons, there is but one minde that decrees, without contradiction; nor needs he any, his actions are not begot with deliberation, his wisedome naturally knowes what’s best; his intellect stands ready fraught with the superlative and purest Idea’s of goodnesse; 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 Metaphysicall, my humble speculations have another Method, and are content to trace and discover those expressions hee hath left in
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his creatures, and the obvious effects of nature; there is no danger to profound these mysteries, no
Sanctum sanctorum
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in Philosophy: The world was made to be inhabited by beasts, but studied and contemplated by man: ’tis the debt of our reason wee owe unto God, and the homage wee pay for not being beasts; without this the world is still as though it had not been, or as it was before the sixt day when as yet there was not a creature that could conceive, or say there was a world. The wisedome of God receives small honour from those vulgar heads, that rudely stare about, and with a grosse rusticity admire his workes; those highly
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magnifie him whose judicious enquiry into his acts, and deliberate research into his creatures, returne the duty of a devout and learned admiration.
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Therefore,
Search while thou wilt, and let thy reason goe
To ransome truth even to the Abysse 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 be ere be knowne.
The Devills doe know thee, but those damned meteours
Build not thy glory, but confound thy creatures.
Teach my endeavours so thy workes to read,
That learning them, in thee I may proceed.
Give thou my reason that instructive flight,
Whose weary wings may on thy bands still light.
Teach me to soare aloft, yet ever so,
When neare the Sunne
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, to stoope againe below.
Thus shall my humble feathers safely hover,
And though neere earth, more then the heavens discover.
And then at last, when homeward I shall drive
Rich with the spoyles of nature to my hive,
There will I sit, like that industrious flye,
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Buzzing thy prayses, which shall never die
Till death abrupts them, and succeeding glory
Bid me goe on in a more lasting story.
