Religio Medici [70]
resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contingency.+
Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.
To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their pro- ductions, to exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope, but an evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St Innocent's# church-yard as in the sands of
* Isa. xiv. 16. + The least of angles. # In Paris, where bodies soon consume. Egypt. Ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.*
--"Tabesne cadavera solvat, An rogus, haud refert."--LUCAN. viii. 809.
* A stately mausoleum or sepulchral pile, built by Adrianus in Rome, where now standeth the castle of St Angelo.
A LETTER TO A FRIEND,
UPON OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF HIS INTIMATE FRIEND.
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LETTER TO A FRIEND.
GIVE me leave to wonder that news of this nature should have such heavy wings that you should hear so little concerning your dearest friend, and that I must make that unwilling repetition to tell you "ad portam rigidos calces extendit," that he is dead and buried, and by this time no puny among the mighty nations of the dead; for though he left this world not very many days past, yet every hour you know largely addeth unto that dark society; and considering the incessant mortality of mankind, you cannot conceive there dieth in the whole earth so few as a thousand an hour.
Although at this distance you had no early account or particular of his death, yet your affection may cease to wonder that you had not some secret sense or intima- tion thereof by dreams, thoughtful whisperings, mer- curisms, airy nuncios or sympathetical insinuations, which many seem to have had at the death of their dearest friends: for since we find in that famous story, that spirits themselves were fain to tell their fellows at a distance that the great Antonio was dead, we have a sufficient excuse for our ignorance in such particulars, and must rest content with the common road, and Ap- pian way of knowledge by information. Though the uncertainty of the end of this world hath confounded all human predictions; yet they who shall live to see the sun and moon darkened, and the stars to fall from heaven, will hardly be deceived in the advent of the last day; and therefore strange it is, that the common fallacy of consumptive persons who feel not themselves dying, and therefore still hope to live, should also reach their friends in perfect health and judgment;--that you should be so little acquainted with Plautus's sick com- plexion, or that almost an Hippocratical face should not alarum you to higher fears, or rather despair, of his continuation in such an emaciated state, wherein medical predictions fail not, as sometimes in acute dis- eases, and wherein 'tis as dangerous to be sentenced by a physician as a judge.
Upon my first visit I was bold to tell them who had not let fall all hopes of his recovery, that in my sad opinion he was not like to behold a grasshopper,<1> much less to pluck another fig; and in no long
Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.
To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their pro- ductions, to exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their Elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysicks of true belief. To live indeed, is to be again ourselves, which being not only an hope, but an evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St Innocent's# church-yard as in the sands of
* Isa. xiv. 16. + The least of angles. # In Paris, where bodies soon consume. Egypt. Ready to be anything, in the ecstasy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.*
--"Tabesne cadavera solvat, An rogus, haud refert."--LUCAN. viii. 809.
* A stately mausoleum or sepulchral pile, built by Adrianus in Rome, where now standeth the castle of St Angelo.
A LETTER TO A FRIEND,
UPON OCCASION OF THE DEATH OF HIS INTIMATE FRIEND.
[page intentionally blank]
LETTER TO A FRIEND.
GIVE me leave to wonder that news of this nature should have such heavy wings that you should hear so little concerning your dearest friend, and that I must make that unwilling repetition to tell you "ad portam rigidos calces extendit," that he is dead and buried, and by this time no puny among the mighty nations of the dead; for though he left this world not very many days past, yet every hour you know largely addeth unto that dark society; and considering the incessant mortality of mankind, you cannot conceive there dieth in the whole earth so few as a thousand an hour.
Although at this distance you had no early account or particular of his death, yet your affection may cease to wonder that you had not some secret sense or intima- tion thereof by dreams, thoughtful whisperings, mer- curisms, airy nuncios or sympathetical insinuations, which many seem to have had at the death of their dearest friends: for since we find in that famous story, that spirits themselves were fain to tell their fellows at a distance that the great Antonio was dead, we have a sufficient excuse for our ignorance in such particulars, and must rest content with the common road, and Ap- pian way of knowledge by information. Though the uncertainty of the end of this world hath confounded all human predictions; yet they who shall live to see the sun and moon darkened, and the stars to fall from heaven, will hardly be deceived in the advent of the last day; and therefore strange it is, that the common fallacy of consumptive persons who feel not themselves dying, and therefore still hope to live, should also reach their friends in perfect health and judgment;--that you should be so little acquainted with Plautus's sick com- plexion, or that almost an Hippocratical face should not alarum you to higher fears, or rather despair, of his continuation in such an emaciated state, wherein medical predictions fail not, as sometimes in acute dis- eases, and wherein 'tis as dangerous to be sentenced by a physician as a judge.
Upon my first visit I was bold to tell them who had not let fall all hopes of his recovery, that in my sad opinion he was not like to behold a grasshopper,<1> much less to pluck another fig; and in no long