Letter to a
Friend.
Sir Thomas Browne
Introduction | Religio
Medici | Urn-Burial | Letter to a
Friend | Notes
Note on the e-text: this Renascence
Editions text was transcribed from the edition of J. W.
Willis Bund, 1869, by Judy Boss of Omaha, Nebraska, by whose kind
permission it is here published. The text is in the public
domain. Content unique to this presentation is copyright ©
1998 The University of Oregon. For nonprofit and educational uses
only. Send comments and corrections to the Publisher, rbear at
uoregon.edu
LETTER
TO A
FRIEND.
IVE 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 intimation thereof by
dreams, thoughtful whisperings, mercurisms, 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 Appian 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 complexion, 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 diseases, 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 time after seemed to discover that odd mortal
symptom in him not mentioned by Hippocrates, that is, to lose his
own face, and look like some of his near relations; for he
maintained not his proper countenance, but looked like his uncle,
the lines of whose face lay deep and invisible in his healthful
visage before: for as from our beginning we run through variety
of looks, before we come to consistent and settled faces; so
before our end, by sick and languishing alterations, we put on
new visages: and in our retreat to earth, may fall upon such
looks which from community of seminal originals were before
latent in us.
He was fruitlessly put in hope of
advantage by change of air, and imbibing the pure
ærial nitre of these parts; and therefore, being so far
spent, he quickly found Sardinia in
* "Cum mors venerit, in
medio Tibure Sardinia est."
+ In the king's forests they
set the figure of a broad arrow upon trees that are to be cut
down.
|
Tivoli,* and the
most healthful air of little effect, where death had set her
broad arrow;+ for he lived not unto the middle of May, and
confirmed the observation of Hippocrates of that mortal time of
the year when the leaves of the fig-tree resemble a daw's claw.
He is happily seated who lives in places whose air, earth, and
water, promote not the infirmities of his weaker parts, or is
early removed into regions that correct them. He that is
tabidly2 inclined, were
unwise to pass his days in Portugal: cholical persons will find
little comfort in Austria or Vienna: he that is weak-legged must
not be in love with Rome, nor an infirm head with Venice or
Paris. Death hath not only particular stars in heaven, but
malevolent places on earth, which single out our infirmities, and
strike at our weaker parts; in which concern, passager and
migrant birds have the great advantages, who are naturally
constituted for distant habitations, whom no seas nor places
limit, but in their appointed seasons will visit us from
Greenland and Mount Atlas, and, as some think, even from the
Antipodes.#
Though we
could not have his life, yet we missed not our desires in his
soft departure, which was scarce an expiration; and his end not
unlike his beginning, when the salient point scarce affords a
sensible motion, and his departure so like unto sleep, that he
scarce needed the civil ceremony of closing his eyes; contrary
unto the common way, wherein death draws up, sleep lets fall
the eyelids. With what strife and pains we came into the
world we know not; but 'tis commonly no easy matter to get out of
it: yet if it could be made out, that such who have easy
nativities have commonly hard deaths, and contrarily; his
departure was so easy, that we might justly suspect his birth was
of another nature, and that some Juno sat cross-legged at his
nativity.
Besides his soft death, the
incurable state of his disease might somewhat extenuate your
sorrow, who know that monsters but seldom happen, miracles more
rarely in
* "Monstra contingunt in medicina." Hippoc.--"Strange
and rare escapes there happen
sometimes in physick."
+ Matt. iv. 23.
|
physick.* Angelus Victorius gives a
serious account of a consumptive, hectical, phthisical woman, who
was suddenly cured by the intercession of Ignatius. We read not
of any in Scripture who in this case applied unto our Saviour,
though some may be contained in that large expression, that he
went about Galilee healing all manner of sickness and all manner
of diseases.+ Amulets, spells, sigils, and incantations,
practised in other diseases, are seldom pretended in this; and we
find no sigil in the Archidoxis of Paracelsus to cure an extreme
consumption or marasmus, which, if other diseases fail, will put
a period unto long livers, and at last makes dust of all. And
therefore the Stoics could not but think that the fiery principle
would wear out all the rest, and at last make an end of the
world, which notwithstanding without such a lingering period the
Creator may effect at his pleasure: and to make an end of all
things on earth, and our planetical system of the world, he need
but put out the sun.
I was not so curious to
entitle the stars unto any concern of his death, yet could not
but take notice that he died when the moon was in motion
from the meridian; at which time an old Italian long ago would
persuade me that the greatest part of men died: but herein I
confess I could never satisfy my curiosity; although from the
time of tides in places upon or near the sea, there may be
considerable deductions; and
* "Aristoteles nullum animal
nisi æstu recedente expirare affirmat; observatum id multum
in Gallico Oceano et duntaxat in homine compertum," lib. 2,
cap. 101.
+ "Auris pars pendula lobus dicitur,
non
omnibus ea pars, est auribus; non enim iis qui noctu sunt, sed
qui interdiu, maxima ex parte."--Com. in Aristot. de
Animal. lib. 1.
|
Pliny* hath an odd and remarkable passage concerning the death of
men and animals upon the recess or ebb of the sea. However,
certain it is, he died in the dead and deep part of the night,
when Nox might be most apprehensibly said to be the daughter of
Chaos, the mother of sleep and death, according to old genealogy;
and so went out of this world about that hour when our blessed
Saviour entered it, and about what time many conceive he will
return again unto it. Cardan3
hath a peculiar and no hard
observation from a man's hand to know whether he was born in the
day or night, which I confess holdeth in my own. And
Scaliger4 to that
purpose hath another from the tip of the ear:+ most men are
begotten in the night, animals in the day; but whether more
persons have been born in the night or day, were a curiosity
undecidable, though more have perished by violent deaths in the
day; yet in natural dissolutions both times may hold an
indifferency, at least but contingent inequality. The whole
course of time runs out in the nativity and death of things;
which whether they happen by succession or coincidence, are best
computed by the natural, not artificial day.
That Charles the Fifth5
was crowned upon the day of his
nativity, it being in his own power so to order it, makes no
singular animadversion: but that he should also take King
Francis6 prisoner upon
that day, was an unexpected coincidence, which made the same
remarkable. Antipater, who had an anniversary feast every year
upon his birth-day, needed no astrological revolution to know
what day he should die on. When the fixed stars have made a
revolution unto the points from whence they first set out, some
of the ancients thought the world would have an end; which was a
kind of dying upon the day of its nativity. Now the disease
prevailing and swiftly advancing about the time of his nativity,
some were of opinion that he would leave the world on the day he
entered into it; but this being a lingering disease, and creeping
softly on, nothing critical was found or expected, and he died
not before fifteen days after. Nothing is more common with
infants than to die on the day of their nativity, to behold the
worldly hours, and but the fractions thereof; and even to perish
before their nativity in the hidden world of the womb, and before
their good angel is conceived to undertake them. But in persons
who outlive many years, and when there are no less than three
hundred and sixty-five days to determine their lives in every
year; that the first day should make the last, that the tail of
the snake should return into its mouth precisely at that time,
and they should wind up upon the day of their nativity, is indeed
a remarkable coincidence, which, though astrology hath taken
witty pains to salve, yet hath it been very wary in making
*
According to the Egyptian hieroglyphic.
* Turkish history.
|
predictions of it.*
In this consumptive condition and remarkable
extenuation, he came to be almost half himself, and left
a great part behind him, which he carried not to the grave. And
though that story of Duke John Ernestus Mansfield7* be not so easily swallowed, that at
his death his heart was found not to be so big as a nut; yet if
the bones of a good skeleton weigh little more than twenty
pounds, his inwards and flesh remaining could make no
bouffage,8 but a light
bit for the grave. I never more lively beheld the starved
characters of Dante+ in any living face; an aruspex might
have read a lecture upon him without exenteration, his flesh
being so consumed, that he might, in a manner, have discerned his
bowels without opening of him; so that to be carried,
+ In
the poet Dante's description.
# i.e. "by six
persons." § Morta, the deity of death or fate.
||
When men's faces are drawn with resemblance to some other
animals, the Italians call it, to be drawn in caricatura.
|
sexta cervice# to
the grave, was but a civil unnecessity; and the complements of
the coffin might outweigh the subject of it.
Omnibonus Ferrarius in mortal dysenteries of
children
looks for a spot behind the ear; in consumptive diseases some eye
the complexion of moles; Cardan eagerly views the nails, some the
lines of the hand, the thenar or muscle of the thumb; some are so
curious as to observe the depth of the throat-pit, how the
proportion varieth of the small of the legs unto the calf, or the
compass of the neck unto the circumference of the head; but all
these, with many more, were so drowned in a mortal visage, and
last face of Hippocrates, that a weak physiognomist might say at
first eye, this was a face of earth, and that Morta§
had set her hard seal upon his temples, easily perceiving what caricatura||
draughts death makes upon pined
faces, and unto what an unknown degree a man may live backward.
Though the beard be only made a distinction of
sex, and sign of masculine heat by Ulmus,* yet the
precocity and early growth thereof in him, was not to be liked in
reference unto long life. Lewis, that virtuous but unfortunate
king of Hungary, who lost his life at the battle of
Mohacz,9 was said to be
born without a skin, to have bearded at fifteen, and to have
shown some grey hairs about twenty; from whence the diviners
conjectured that he would be spoiled of his kingdom, and have but
a short life; but hairs make fallible predictions, and many
temples early grey have outlived the psalmist's period.+ Hairs
which have most amused me have not been in the face or head, but
on the back, and not in men but children, as I long ago observed
in that endemial distemper of children in Languedoc, called the
* Ulmus de usu barbæ
humanæ.
+ The life of
man is threescore and ten.
# See Picotus de
Rheumatismo.
|
morgellons,# wherein they critically break out with
harsh
hairs on their backs, which takes off the unquiet symptoms of the
disease, and delivers them from coughs and convulsions.
The Egyptian mummies that I have seen, have
had their mouths open, and somewhat gaping, which affordeth a
good opportunity to view and observe their teeth, wherein 'tis
not easy to find any wanting or decayed; and therefore in Egypt,
where one man practised but one operation, or the diseases but of
single parts, it must needs be a barren profession to confine
unto that of drawing of teeth, and to have been little better
than toothdrawer unto King Pyrrhus,* who had but two in
his head.
How the banyans of India maintain
the integrity of those parts, I find not particularly observed;
who notwithstanding have an advantage of their preservation by
abstaining from all flesh, and employing their teeth in such food
unto which they may seem at first framed,
* His upper jaw being
solid, and without distinct rows of teeth.
+ Twice tell over
his teeth, never live to threescore years.
|
from their figure and conformation; but
sharp and corroding rheums had so early mouldered these rocks and
hardest parts of his fabric, that a man might well conceive that
his years were never like to double or twice tell over his
teeth.+ Corruption had dealt more severely with them than
sepulchral fires and smart flames with those of burnt bodies of
old; for in the burnt fragments of urns which I have inquired
into, although I seem to find few incisors or shearers, yet the
dog teeth and grinders do notably resist those fires.
In the years of his childhood he had languished under the
disease of his country, the rickets; after which, notwithstanding
many have become strong and active men; but whether any have
attained unto very great years, the disease is scarce so old as
to afford good observation. Whether the children of the English
plantations be subject unto the same infirmity, may be worth the
observing. Whether lameness and halting do still increase among
the inhabitants of Rovigno in Istria, I know not; yet scarce
twenty years ago Monsieur du Loyr observed that a third part of
that people halted; but too certain it is, that the rickets
increaseth among us; the small-pox grows more pernicious than the
great; the king's purse knows that the king's evil grows more
common. Quartan agues are become no strangers in Ireland;
more common and mortal in England; and though the
ancients gave that
* Asphalestatos kai rheistos,
securissima et facillima.-- Hippoc.
+ Pro febre
quartana raro sonat campana.
|
disease* very good words, yet now that bell+
makes no strange sound which rings out for the effects thereof.
Some think there were few consumptions in the
old world, when men lived much upon milk; and that the ancient
inhabitants of this island were less troubled with coughs when
they went naked and slept in caves and woods, than men now in
chambers and feather-beds. Plato will tell us, that there was no
such disease as a catarrh in Homer's time, and that it was but
new in Greece in his age. Polydore Virgil delivereth that
pleurisies were rare in England, who lived but in the days of
Henry the Eighth. Some will allow no diseases to be new, others
think that many old ones are ceased: and that such which are
esteemed new, will have but their time: however, the mercy of God
hath scattered the great heap of diseases, and not loaded any one
country with all: some may be new in one country which have been
old in another. New discoveries of the earth discover new
diseases: for besides the common swarm, there are endemial and
local infirmities proper unto certain regions, which in the whole
earth make no small number: and if Asia, Africa, and America,
should bring in their list, Pandora's box would swell, and there
must be a strange pathology.
Most men expected
to find a consumed kell,10
empty and bladder-like guts, livid
and marbled lungs, and a withered pericardium in this exsuccous
corpse: but some seemed too much to wonder that two lobes of his
lungs adhered unto his side; for the like I have often found
in bodies of no suspected consumptions or difficulty of
respiration. And the same more often happeneth in men than other
animals: and some think in women than in men: but the most
remarkable I have met with, was in a man, after a cough of almost
fifty years, in whom all the lobes adhered unto the pleura, and
each lobe unto another; who having also been much troubled with
the gout, brake the rule of Cardan,* and died of the stone in the
bladder. Aristotle makes a query, why some animals cough, as man;
some not, as oxen. If coughing be taken as it consisteth of a
natural and voluntary motion, including expectoration
* Cardan in his Encomium
Podagræ reckoneth this among
the Dona Podagræ, that they are delivered thereby
from the phthisis and stone in the bladder.
+ Hippoc, de
Insomniis
|
and
spitting out, it may be as proper unto man as bleeding at the
nose; otherwise we find that Vegetius and rural writers have not
left so many medicines in vain against the coughs of cattle; and
men who perish by coughs die the death of sheep, cats, and lions:
and though birds have no midriff, yet we meet with divers
remedies in Arrianus against the coughs of hawks. And though it
might be thought that all animals who have lungs do cough; yet in
cataceous* fishes, who have large and strong lungs, the same is
not observed; nor yet in oviparous quadrupeds: and in the
greatest thereof, the crocodile, although we read much of their
tears, we find nothing of that motion.
From the
thoughts of sleep, when the soul was conceived nearest unto
divinity, the ancients erected an art of divination, wherein
while they too widely expatiated in loose and in consequent
conjectures, Hippocrates+ wisely considered dreams as they
presaged alterations in the body, and so afforded hints
toward the preservation of health, and prevention of diseases;
and therein was so serious as to advise alteration of diet,
exercise, sweating, bathing, and vomiting; and also so religious
as to order prayers and supplications unto respective deities, in
good dreams unto Sol, Jupiter coelestis, Jupiter opulentus,
Minerva, Mercurius, and Apollo; in bad, unto Tellus and the
heroes.
And therefore I could not but notice
how his female friends were irrationally curious so strictly to
examine his dreams, and in this low state to hope for the
phantasms of health. He was now past the healthful dreams of the
sun, moon, and stars, in their clarity and proper courses. 'Twas
too late to dream of flying, of limpid fountains, smooth waters,
white vestments, and fruitful green trees, which are the visions
of healthful sleeps, and at good distance from the
grave.
And they were also too deeply dejected
that he should dream of his dead friends, inconsequently
divining, that he would not be long from them; for strange it was
not that he should sometimes dream of the dead, whose thoughts
run always upon death; beside, to dream of the dead, so they
appear not in dark habits, and take nothing away from us, in
Hippocrates' sense was of good signification: for we live by the
dead, and everything is or must be so before it becomes our
nourishment. And Cardan, who dreamed that he discoursed with his
dead father in the moon, made thereof no mortal interpretation;
and even to dream that we are dead, was having a signification of
liberty, vacuity from cares, exemption and freedom from troubles
unknown unto the dead.
Some dreams I
confess may admit of easy and feminine exposition; he who dreamed
that he could not see his right shoulder, might easily fear to
lose the sight of his right eye; he that before a journey dreamed
that his feet were cut off, had a plain warning not to undertake
his intended journey. But why to dream of lettuce should presage
some ensuing disease, why to eat figs should signify foolish
talk, why to eat eggs great trouble, and to dream of blindness
should be so highly commended, according to the oneirocritical
verses of Astrampsychus and Nicephorus, I shall leave unto your
divination.
He was willing to quit the world
alone and altogether, leaving no earnest behind him for
corruption or aftergrave, having small content in that common
satisfaction to survive or live in another, but amply satisfied
that his disease should die with himself, nor revive in a
posterity to puzzle physic, and make sad mementoes of their
parent hereditary. Leprosy awakes not sometimes before forty, the
gout and stone often later; but consumptive and tabid* roots
sprout more early, and at the fairest make seventeen years of our
life doubtful before that
* Tabes maxime contingunt ab anno
decimo
octavo and trigesi mum quintum.--Hippoc.
+ A sound
child cut out of the body of the mother.
# Natos ad flumina
primum deferimus sævoque gelu dura mus et undis.
|
age. They that enter the
world with original diseases as well as sin, have not only common
mortality but sick traductions to destroy them, make commonly
short courses, and live not at length but in figures; so that a
sound Cæsarean nativity+ may outlast a natural birth, and a
knife may sometimes make way for a more lasting fruit than a
midwife; which makes so few infants now able to endure the old
test of the river,# and many
to have feeble children who could scarce have been
married at Sparta, and those provident states who studied strong
and healthful generations; which happen but contingently in mere
pecuniary matches or marriages made by the candle, wherein
notwithstanding there is little redress to be hoped from an
astrologer or a lawyer, and a good discerning physician were like
to prove the most successful counsellor.
Julius Scaliger, who in a sleepless fit of the gout could
make
two hundred verses in a night, would have but
* Julii Cæsaris
Scaligeri quod fuit.--Joseph. Scaliger in vita patris. |
five* plain words upon
his tomb. And this serious person, though no minor wit, left the
poetry of his epitaph unto others; either unwilling to commend
himself, or to be judged by a distich, and perhaps considering
how unhappy great poets have been in versifying their own
epitaphs; wherein Petrarch, Dante, and Ariosto, have so unhappily
failed, that if their tombs should outlast their works, posterity
would find so little of Apollo on them as to mistake them for
Ciceronian poets.
In this deliberate and
creeping progress unto the grave, he was somewhat too young and
of too noble a mind, to fall upon that stupid symptom observable
in divers persons near their journey's end, and which may be
reckoned among the mortal symptoms of their last disease; that
is, to become more narrow-minded, miserable, and tenacious,
unready to part with anything, when they are ready to part with
all, and afraid to want when they have no time to spend;
meanwhile physicians, who know that many are mad but in a single
depraved imagination, and one prevalent decipiency; and that
beside and out of such single deliriums a man may meet with sober
actions and good sense in bedlam; cannot but smile to
see the heirs and concerned relations gratulating themselves on
the sober departure of their friends; and though they behold such
mad covetous passages, content to think they die in good
understanding, and in their sober senses.
Avarice, which is not only infidelity, but idolatry,
either from
covetous progeny or questuary11
education, had no root in his
breast, who made good works the expression of his faith, and was
big with desires unto public and lasting charities; and surely
where good wishes and charitable intentions exceed abilities,
theorical beneficency may be more than a dream. They build not
castles in the air who would build churches on earth; and though
they leave no such structures here, may lay good foundations in
heaven. In brief, his life and death were such, that I could not
blame them who wished the like, and almost to have been himself;
almost, I say; for though we may wish the prosperous
appurtenances of others, or to be another in his happy accidents,
yet so intrinsical is every man unto himself, that some doubt may
be made, whether any would exchange his being, or substantially
become another man.
He had wisely seen the
world at home and abroad, and thereby observed under what variety
men are deluded in the pursuit of that which is not here to be
found. And although he had no opinion of reputed felicities
below, and apprehended men widely out in the estimate of such
happiness, yet his sober contempt of the world wrought no
Democratism or Cynicism, no laughing or snarling at it, as well
understanding there are not felicities in this world to satisfy a
serious mind; and therefore, to soften the stream of our lives,
we are fain to take in the reputed contentations of this world,
to unite with the crowd in their beatitudes, and to make
ourselves happy by consortion, opinion, and co-existimation; for
strictly to separate from received and customary felicities, and
to confine unto the rigour of realities, were to contract the
consolation of our beings unto too uncomfortable
circumscriptions.
Not to fear death,* nor
desire it, was short of his resolution: to
* Summum nec metuas diem nec optes.
+ Who upon some accounts, and
tradition, is said to
have lived thirty years after he was raised by our Saviour.-- Baronius.
# In the speech of Vulteius in Lucan,
animating his soldiers in a great struggle to kill one
another.--"Decernite lethum, et metus omnis abest, cupias
quodcunque necesse est." "All fear is over, do but
resolve to die, and make your desires meet
necessity."--Phars.iv.486.
|
be dissolved, and be with Christ, was his
dying ditty. He conceived his thread long, in no long course of
years, and when he had scarce outlived the second life of
Lazarus;+ esteeming it enough to approach the years of his
Saviour, who so ordered his own human state, as not to be old
upon earth.
But to be content with death may be
better than to desire it; a miserable life may make us wish for
death, but a virtuous one to rest in it; which is the advantage
of those resolved Christians, who looking on death not only as
the sting, but the period and end of sin, the horizon and isthmus
between this life and a better, and the death of this world but
as a nativity of another, do contentedly submit unto the common
necessity, and envy not Enoch or Elias.
Not to
be content with life is the unsatisfactory state of those who
destroy themselves,# who being afraid to live run blindly upon
their own death, which no man fears by experience: and the Stoics
had a notable doctrine to take away the fear thereof;
that is, in such extremities, to desire that which is not to be
avoided, and wish what might be feared; and so made evils
voluntary, and to suit with their own desires, which took off the
terror of them.
But the ancient martyrs were
not encouraged by such fallacies; who, though they feared not
death, were afraid to be their own executioners; and therefore
thought it more wisdom to crucify their lusts than their bodies,
to circumcise than stab their hearts, and to mortify than kill
themselves.
His willingness to leave this world
about that age, when most men think they may best enjoy it,
though paradoxical unto worldly ears, was not strange unto mine,
who have so often observed, that many, though old, oft stick fast
unto the world, and seem to be drawn like Cacus's oxen12, backward, with great
struggling and reluctancy unto the grave. The long habit of
living makes mere men more hardly to part with life, and all to
be nothing, but what is to come. To live at the rate of the old
world, when some could scarce remember themselves young, may
afford no better digested death than a more moderate period. Many
would have thought it an happiness to have had their lot of life
in some notable conjunctures of ages past; but the uncertainty of
future times have tempted few to make a part in ages to come. And
surely, he that hath taken the true altitude of things, and
rightly calculated the degenerate state of this age, is not like
to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or
four hundred years hence, when no man can comfortably imagine
what face this world will carry: and therefore since every age
makes a step unto the end of all things, and the Scripture
affords so hard a character of the last times; quiet
minds will be content with their generations, and rather bless
ages past, than be ambitious of those to come.
Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye
might
clearly discover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since
wisdom is the grey hair, and an unspotted life old age; although
his years come short, he might have been said to have held up
with longer livers, and to have been
Solomon's* old man. And surely if we
deduct all those days of our life which we might wish unlived,
and which abate the comfort of those we now live; if we reckon up
only those days which God hath accepted of our lives, a life of
good years will hardly be a span long: the son in this sense may
outlive the father, and none be climacterically old. He that
early arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age, is happily old
without the uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous
to live unto grey hairs, when in precocious temper we anticipate
the virtues of them. In brief, he cannot be accounted young who
outliveth the old man. He that hath early arrived unto the
measure of a perfect stature in Christ, hath already fulfilled
the prime and longest intention of his being; and one day lived
after the perfect rule of piety, is to be preferred before
sinning immortality. Although he attained not unto the years of
his predecessors, yet he wanted not those preserving virtues
which confirm the thread of weaker constitutions. Cautelous
chastity and crafty sobriety were far
from him; those jewels were paragon, without flaw, hair,
ice, or cloud in him; which affords me a hint to proceed in these
good wishes, and few mementoes unto you.
Tread softly and circumspectly in this
funambulous13 track and narrow
path of
goodness; pursue virtue virtuously, be sober and temperate, not
to preserve your body in a sufficiency for wanton ends, not to
spare your purse, not to be free from the infamy of common
transgressors that way, and thereby to balance or palliate
obscure and closer vices, nor simply to enjoy health, by all of
which you may leaven good actions, and render virtues disputable,
but, in one word, that you may truly serve God, which every
sickness will tell you you cannot well do without health. The
sick man's sacrifice is but a lame oblation. Pious treasures,
laid up in healthful days, excuse the defect of sick
non-performance; without which we must needs look back with
anxiety upon the last opportunities of health; and may have cause
rather to envy than pity the ends of penitent malefactors, who go
with clear parts unto the last act of their lives, and in the
integrity of their faculties return their spirit unto God that
gave it.
Consider whereabouts thou art in
Cebe's14 table, or
that old philosophical pinax15
of the life of man; whether thou
art still in the road of uncertainties; whether thou hast yet
entered the narrow gate, got up the hill and asperous way which
leadeth unto the house of sanity; or taken that purifying potion
from the hand of sincere erudition, which may send thee clear and
pure away unto a virtuous and happy life.
In
this virtuous voyage let no disappointment cause despondency, nor
difficulty despair. Think not that
* Through the Pacifick Sea with
a constant gale from the east. |
you are sailing from Lima to Manilla,* 16
wherein thou mayest
tie up the rudder, and sleep before the wind, but expect rough
seas, flaws and contrary blasts; and 'tis well if by
many cross tacks and veerings thou arrivest at the port. Sit not
down in the popular seats and common level of virtues, but
endeavour to make them heroical. Offer not only peace-offerings
but holocausts unto God. To serve him singly to serve ourselves
were too partial a piece of piety, not like to place us in the
highest mansions of glory.
He that is chaste
and continent not to impair his strength or terrified by
contagion will hardly be heroically virtuous. Adjourn not that
virtue until those years when Cato could lend out his wife, and
impotent satyrs write satires against lust, but be chaste in thy
flaming days when Alexander dared not trust his eyes upon the
fair sisters of Darius, and when so many think that there is no
other way but
* Who is said to have castrated
himself. |
Origen's.*
Be
charitable before wealth make thee covetous, and lose not the
glory of the mitre. If riches increase, let thy mind hold pace
with them, and think it is not enough to be liberal but
munificent. Though a cup of cold water from some hand may not be
without its reward, yet stick not thou for wine and oil for the
wounds of the distressed, and treat the poor as our Saviour did
the multitude to the reliques of some baskets.
Trust not unto the omnipotency of gold, or say not unto
it, thou
art my confidence. Kiss not thy hand when thou beholdest that
terrestrial sun, nor bore thy ear unto its servitude. A slave
unto Mammon makes no servant unto God. Covetousness cracks the
sinews of faith, numbs the apprehension of anything above sense;
and only affected with the certainty of things present, makes a
peradventure of things to come; lives but unto one world, nor
hopes but fears another: makes their own death sweet
unto others, bitter unto themselves, brings formal sadness,
scenical mourning, and no wet eyes at the grave.
If avarice be thy vice, yet make it not thy punishment.
Miserable men commiserate not themselves, bowelless unto
themselves, and merciless unto their own bowels. Let the fruition
of things bless the possession of them, and take no satisfaction
in dying but living rich. For since thy good works, not thy goods
will follow thee; since riches are an appurtenance of life, and
no dead man is rich, to famish in plenty, and live poorly to die
rich, were a multiplying improvement in madness and use upon use
in folly.
Persons lightly dipt, not grained, in
generous honesty are but pale in goodness and faint-hued in
sincerity. But be thou what thou virtuously art, and let not the
ocean wash away thy tincture. Stand majestically upon that axis
where prudent simplicity hath fixed thee; and at no temptation
invert the poles of thy honesty that vice may be uneasy and even
monstrous unto thee; let iterated good acts and long confirmed
habits make virtue natural or a second nature in thee; and since
few or none prove eminently virtuous but from some advantageous
foundations in their temper and natural inclinations, study
thyself betimes, and early find what nature bids thee to be or
tells thee what thou mayest be. They who thus timely descend into
themselves, cultivating the good seeds which nature hath set in
them, and improving their prevalent inclinations to perfection,
become not shrubs but cedars in their generation. And to be in
the form of the best of bad, or the worst of the good, will be no
satisfaction unto them.
Let not the law of thy
country be the non ultra of thy honesty, nor think that
always good enough that the law will make good. Narrow
not the law of charity, equity, mercy. Join gospel righteousness
with legal right. Be not a mere Gamaliel in the faith, but let
the Sermon on the Mount be thy Targum unto the law of
Sinai.
Make not the consequences of virtue the
ends thereof. Be not beneficent for a name or cymbal of applause;
nor exact and punctual in commerce for the advantages of trust
and credit, which attend the reputation of just and true dealing:
for such rewards, though unsought for, plain virtue will bring
with her, whom all men honour, though they pursue not. To have
other by-ends in good actions sours laudable performances, which
must have deeper roots, motives, and instigations, to give them
the stamp of virtues.
Though human infirmity
may betray thy heedless days into the popular ways of
extravagancy, yet, let not thine own depravity or the torrent of
vicious times carry thee into desperate enormities in opinions,
manners, or actions. If thou hast dipped thy foot in the river,
yet venture not over Rubicon; run not into extremities from
whence there is no regression, nor be ever so closely shut up
within the holds of vice and iniquity, as not to find some escape
by a postern of recipiscency.17
Owe not thy
humility unto humiliation by adversity, but look humbly down in
that state when others look upward upon thee. Be patient in the
age of pride, and days of will, and impatiency, when men live but
by intervals of reason, under the sovereignty of humour and
passion, when it is in the power of every one to transform thee
out of
thyself, and put thee into short madness.*
If you cannot imitate Job, yet come not short of Socrates,18 and those patient Pagans,
who tired the tongues of their enemies, while they
perceived they spit their malice at brazen walls and statues.
Let age, not envy, draw wrinkles on thy
cheeks; be content to be envied, but envy not. Emulation may be
plausible, and indignation allowable, but admit no treaty with
that passion which no circumstance can make good. A displacency
at the good of others, because they enjoy it although we do not
want it, is an absurd depravity sticking fast unto nature, from
its primitive corruption, which he that can well subdue were a
Christian of the first magnitude, and for ought I know may have
one foot already in heaven.
While thou so
hotly disclaimest the devil, be not guilty of Diabolism. Fall not
into one name with that unclean spirit, nor act his nature whom
thou so much abhorrest, that is, to accuse, calumniate, backbite,
whisper, detract, or sinistrously interpret others. Degenerous
depravities and narrow-minded vices! not only below St Paul's
noble Christian, but Aristotle's true gentleman.* Trust not with
some that the Epistle of St James is apocryphal, and so read with
less fear that stabbing truth that in company with this vice,
"thy religion is in vain." Moses broke the tables
without breaking the law, but where charity is broke the law
itself is shattered, which cannot be whole without love
* See
Aristotle's Ethics, chapter Magnanimity.
+ Holy, holy, holy.
|
that is "the
fulfilling of it." Look humbly upon thy virtues, and though
thou art rich in some, yet think thyself poor and naked without
that crowning grace which "thinketh no evil, which envieth
not, which beareth, believeth, hopeth, endureth all things."
With these sure graces while busy tongues are crying out for a
drop of cold water, mutes may be in happiness, and sing the
"Trisagium,"+ in heaven.
Let not the sun in Capricorn* go down upon thy wrath, but
write
thy wrongs in water, draw the curtain of night upon injuries,
shut them up in the tower of
* Even when the days are shortest.
+ Alluding to the tower of oblivion,
mentioned by Procopius,
which was the name of a tower of imprisonment among the Persians;
whoever was put therein was as it were buried alive, and it was
death for any but to name him.
# St Matt. xi.
|
oblivion,+ and let them be as though
they had not been. Forgive thine enemies totally, without any
reserve of hope that however God will revenge thee.
Be substantially great in thyself, and more than thou
appearest unto others; and let the world be deceived in thee, as
they are in the lights of heaven. Hang early plummets upon the
heels of pride, and let ambition have but an epicycle19 or narrow circuit in thee.
Measure not thyself by thy morning shadow, but by the extent of
thy grave; and reckon thyself above the earth, by the line thou
must be contented with under it. Spread not into boundless
expansions either to designs or desires. Think not that mankind
liveth but for a few; and that the rest are born but to serve the
ambition of those who make but flies of men, and wildernesses of
whole nations. Swell not into vehement actions, which embroil and
confound the earth, but be one of those violent ones that force
the kingdom of heaven.# If thou must needs rule, be Zeno's king,
and enjoy that empire which every man gives himself: certainly
the iterated injunctions of Christ unto humility, meekness,
patience, and that despised train of virtues, cannot but make
pathetical impression upon those who have well considered the
affairs of all ages; wherein pride, ambition, and vain-glory,
have led up to the worst of actions, whereunto
confusions, tragedies, and acts, denying all religion, do owe
their originals.
* Ovation, a petty and minor
kind of triumph. |
Rest not
in an ovation,* but a triumph over thy passions. Chain up the
unruly legion of thy breast; behold thy trophies within thee, not
without thee. Lead thine own captivity captive, and be
Cæsar unto thyself.
Give no quarter unto
those vices that are of thine inward family, and, having a root
in thy temper, plead a right and propriety in thee. Examine well
thy complexional inclinations. Rain early batteries against those
strongholds built upon the rock of nature, and make this a great
part of the militia of thy life. The politic nature of vice must
be opposed by policy, and therefore wiser honesties project and
plot against sin; wherein notwithstanding we are not to rest in
generals, or the trite stratagems of art; that may succeed with
one temper, which may prove successless with another. There is no
community or commonwealth of virtue, every man must study his own
economy and erect these rules unto the figure of
himself.
Lastly, if length of days be thy
portion, make it not thy expectation. Reckon not upon long life;
but live always beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth
his expectation lives many lives, and will scarce complain of the
shortness of his days. Time past is gone like a shadow; make
times to come present; conceive that near which may be far off.
Approximate thy latter times by present apprehensions of them: be
like a neighbour unto death, and think there is but little to
come. And since there is something in us that must still live on,
join both lives together, unite them in thy thoughts and
actions, and live in one but for the other. He who thus ordereth
the purposes of this life, will never be far from the next, and
is in some manner already in it, by a happy conformity and close
apprehension of it.
Transcribed
by Judy Boss in Omaha, Nebraska.
HTML by Richard Bear, Eugene, Oregon, March 1998.
Introduction | Religio
Medici | Urn-Burial | Letter to a
Friend | Notes
|