Religio Medici [28]
beholden unto every one we meet, he doth not kill us. There is therefore but one comfort left, that though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death. God would not ex- empt himself from that; the misery of immortality in the flesh he undertook not, that was immortal. Certainly there is no happiness within this circle of flesh; nor is it in the opticks of these eyes to behold felicity. The first day of our jubilee is death; the devil hath therefore failed of his desires; we are hap- pier with death than we should have been without it: there is no misery but in himself, where there is no end of misery; and so indeed, in his own sense, the stoic is in the right.<63> He forgets that he can die, who complains of misery: we are in the power of no calamity while death is in our own.
Sect. 45.--Now, besides this literal and positive kind of death, there are others whereof divines make men- tion, and those, I think, not merely metaphorical, as mortification, dying unto sin and the world. There- fore, I say, every man hath a double horoscope; one of his humanity,--his birth, another of his Christianity,-- his baptism: and from this do I compute or calculate my nativity; not reckoning those horae combustae,<64> and odd days, or esteeming myself anything, before I was my Saviour's and enrolled in the register of Christ. Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions, the way to be immortal is to die daily; nor can I think I have the true theory of death, when I contemplate a skull or behold a skeleton with those vulgar imaginations it casts upon us. I have therefore enlarged that common memento mori into a more Christian memorandum, memento quatuor novissima,--those four inevitable points of us all, death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Neither did the contemplations of the heathens rest in their graves, without a further thought, of Rhada- manth<65> or some judicial proceeding after death, though in another way, and upon suggestion of their natural reasons. I cannot but marvel from what sibyl or oracle they stole the prophecy of the world's destruction by fire, or whence Lucan learned to say--
"Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra Misturus--"*
There yet remains to th' world one common fire, Wherein our bones with stars shall make one pyre.
* Pharsalia, vii. 814.
I believe the world grows near its end; yet 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 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, with- out the breath of God, which is the truest consuming flame, my philosophy cannot 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 of the intellect of God than the manner how he proceeded in its operation. I cannot dream that there should be at the last day any such judicial pro- ceeding, or calling to the bar, as indeed the Scripture seems to imply, and the literal commentators do con- ceive: for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in a vulgar and illustrative way, and, being written unto man, are delivered, not as they truly are, but as they may be understood; wherein, notwith- standing, the different interpretations according to dif- ferent capacities may stand firm with our devotion, nor be any way prejudicial to each single edification.
Sect. 46.--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, or imagine the secret communicated to a Rabbi
Sect. 45.--Now, besides this literal and positive kind of death, there are others whereof divines make men- tion, and those, I think, not merely metaphorical, as mortification, dying unto sin and the world. There- fore, I say, every man hath a double horoscope; one of his humanity,--his birth, another of his Christianity,-- his baptism: and from this do I compute or calculate my nativity; not reckoning those horae combustae,<64> and odd days, or esteeming myself anything, before I was my Saviour's and enrolled in the register of Christ. Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptions, the way to be immortal is to die daily; nor can I think I have the true theory of death, when I contemplate a skull or behold a skeleton with those vulgar imaginations it casts upon us. I have therefore enlarged that common memento mori into a more Christian memorandum, memento quatuor novissima,--those four inevitable points of us all, death, judgment, heaven, and hell. Neither did the contemplations of the heathens rest in their graves, without a further thought, of Rhada- manth<65> or some judicial proceeding after death, though in another way, and upon suggestion of their natural reasons. I cannot but marvel from what sibyl or oracle they stole the prophecy of the world's destruction by fire, or whence Lucan learned to say--
"Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra Misturus--"*
There yet remains to th' world one common fire, Wherein our bones with stars shall make one pyre.
* Pharsalia, vii. 814.
I believe the world grows near its end; yet 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 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, with- out the breath of God, which is the truest consuming flame, my philosophy cannot 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 of the intellect of God than the manner how he proceeded in its operation. I cannot dream that there should be at the last day any such judicial pro- ceeding, or calling to the bar, as indeed the Scripture seems to imply, and the literal commentators do con- ceive: for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in a vulgar and illustrative way, and, being written unto man, are delivered, not as they truly are, but as they may be understood; wherein, notwith- standing, the different interpretations according to dif- ferent capacities may stand firm with our devotion, nor be any way prejudicial to each single edification.
Sect. 46.--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, or imagine the secret communicated to a Rabbi