I am well aware of the evil report under which Davenant labours, and there are passages in his poems which seem to bear it out, as for example this, which appears to call into question the resurrection:
‘But ask not bodies doomed to die,
To what abode they go:
Since knowledge is but sorrow’s spy,
It is not safe to know.’
At the same time ‘the Philosopher’ here does not so much deny that there is any truth for man as that he has any organ whereby, of himself, he may attain this truth. The poem—it is the dying Christian who is addressed—opens thus:
‘Before by death you nearer knowledge gain,
(For to increase your knowledge you must die)
Tell me if all that learning be not vain,
On which we proudly in this life rely.