gather the same gain out of it that its author enjoyed and gained out of it himself. In short, the properly prepared and absolutely ingenuous reader of the Religio Medici must be a second Thomas Browne himself.
‘I am a medical man,’ says Sir Thomas, in introducing himself to us, ‘and this is my religion. I am a physician, and this is my faith, and my morals, and my whole true and proper life. The scandal of my profession, the natural course of my studies, and the indifference of my behaviour and discourse in matters of religion, might persuade the world that I had no religion at all. And yet, in despite of all that, I dare, without usurpation, assume the honourable style of a Christian.’ And if ever any man was a truly catholic Christian, it was surely Sir Thomas Browne. He does not unchurch or ostracise any other man. He does not stand at diameter and sword’s point with any other man; no, not even with his enemy. He has never been able to alienate or exasperate himself from any man whatsoever because of a difference of an opinion. He has never been angry with any man because his judgment in matters of religion did not agree with his. In short he has no genius for disputes about religion; and he has often
felt it to be his best wisdom to decline all such disputes. When his head was greener than it now is, he had a tendency to two or three errors in religion, of which he proceeds to set down the spiritual history. But at no time did he ever maintain his own opinions with pertinacity: far less to inveigle or entangle any other man’s faith; and thus they soon died out, since they were only bare errors and single lapses of his understanding, without a joint depravity of his will. The truth to Sir Thomas Browne about all revealed religion is this, which he sets forth in a deservedly famous passage:—‘Methinks there be not impossibilities enough in revealed religion for an active faith. I love to lose myself in a mystery, and to pursue my reason to an O altitudo! ’Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved enigmas 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 anything else is not faith but persuasion. I bless myself, and am thankful that I never saw Christ nor His disciples. For then had my faith been
thrust upon me; nor should I have enjoyed that greater blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. They only had the advantage of a noble and a bold faith who lived before the coming of Christ; and who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities. And since I was of understanding enough to know that we know nothing, my reason hath been more pliable to the will of faith. I am now content to understand a mystery in an easy and Platonic way, and without a demonstration and a rigid definition; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to stoop unto the lure of faith.’ The unreclaimed reader who is not already allured by these specimens need go no further in Sir Thomas Browne’s autobiographic book. But he who feels the grace and the truth, the power and the sweetness and the beauty of such writing, will be glad to know that the whole Religio is full of such things, and that all this author’s religious and moral writings partake of the same truly Apostolic and truly Platonic character. In this noble temper, with the richest mind, and clothed in a style that entrances and captivates us, Sir Thomas proceeds to set forth his doctrine and experience
of God; of God’s providence; of Holy Scripture; of nature and man; of miracles and oracles; of the Holy Ghost and holy angels; of death; and of heaven and hell. And, especially, and with great fulness, and victoriousness, and conclusiveness, he deals with death. We sometimes amuse ourselves by making a selection of the two or three books that we would take with us to prison or to a desert island. And one dying man here and another there has already selected and set aside the proper and most suitable books for his own special deathbed. ‘Read where I first cast my anchor,’ said John Knox to his wife, sitting weeping at his bedside. At which she opened and read in the Gospel of John. Sir Thomas Browne is neither more nor less than the very prose-laureate of death. He writes as no other man has ever written about death. Death is everywhere in all Sir Thomas Browne’s books. And yet it may be said of them all, that, like heaven itself, there is no death there. Death is swallowed up in Sir Thomas Browne’s defiant faith that cannot, even in death, get difficulties and impossibilities enough to exercise itself upon. O death, where is thy sting to Rutherford, and Bunyan, and Baxter, and Browne; and to those who diet their imaginations
and their hearts day and night at such heavenly tables! But, if only to see how great and good men differ, Spinoza has this proposition and demonstration that a ‘free man thinks of nothing less than of death.’ Browne was a free man, but he thought of nothing more than of death. He was of Dante’s mind—
The arrow seen beforehand slacks its flight.
The Religio Medici was Sir Thomas Browne’s first book, and the Christian Morals was his last; but the two books are of such affinity to one another that they will always be thought of together. Only, the style that was already almost too rich for our modern taste in the Religio absolutely cloys and clogs us in the Morals. The opening and the closing sentences of this posthumous treatise will better convey a taste of its strength and sweetness than any estimate or eulogium of mine. ‘Tread softly and circumspectly in this funambulatory track, and narrow path of goodness; pursue virtue virtuously: leaven not good actions, nor render virtue disputable. Stain not fair acts with foul intentions; maim not uprightness by halting concomitances, nor circumstantially deprave substantial goodness. Consider whereabout thou art in Cebes’ table, or that old
philosophical pinax of the life of man: whether thou art yet 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.’ And having taken his reader up through a virtuous life, Sir Thomas thus parts with him at its close: ‘Lastly, if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation. Reckon not upon long life; think every day thy last. And since there is something in us that will still live on, join both lives together, and live in one but for the other. And if any hath been so happy as personally to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exaltation, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the divine shadow, according to mystical theology, they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven: the world is in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.’ ‘Prose,’ says Friswell, ‘that with very little transposition, might make verse quite worthy of Shakespeare himself.’
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