wound a thousand and at one blow assassine the honour of a Nation It is as compleat a piece of madness to miscal and rave against the times or think to recal men to reason by a fit of passion Democritus that thought to laugh the times into goodness seems to me as deeply Hypochondriack as Heraclitus that bewailed them It moves not my spleen to behold the multitude in their proper humours that is in their fits of folly and madness as well understanding that wisdom is not prophan'd unto the World and 't is the priviledge of a few to be Vertuous They that endeavour to abolish Vice destroy also Virtue for contraries though they destroy one another are yet in life of one another Thus Virtue abolish vice is an Idea again the community of sin doth not disparage goodness for when Vice gains upon the major part Virtue in whom it remains becomes more excellent and being lost in some multiplies its goodness in others which remain untouched and persist intire in the general inundation I can therefore behold Vice without a Satyr content only with an admonition or instructive reprehension for Noble Natures and such as are capable of goodness are railed into vice that might as easily be admonished into virtue and we should be all so far the Orators of goodness as to protract her from the power of Vice and maintain the cause of injured truth No man can justly censure or condemn another because indeed no man truly knows another This I perceive in my self for I am in the dark to all the world and my nearest friends behold me but in a cloud those that know me but superficially think less of me than I do of my self those of my neer acquaintance think more God who truly knows me knows that I am nothing for he only beholds me and all the world who looks not on us through a derived ray or a trajection of a sensible species but beholds the substance without the helps of accidents and the forms of things as we their operations Further no man can judge another because no man knows himself for we censure others but as they disagree from that humour which we fancy laudible in our selves and commend others but for that wherein they seem to quadrate and consent with us So that in conclusion all is but that we all condem Self-love 'T is the general complaint of these times and perhaps of those past that charity grows cold which I perceive most verified in those which most do manifest the fires and flames of zeal for it is a virtue that best agrees with coldest natures and such as are complexioned for humility But how shall we expect Charity towards others when we are uncharitable to our selves Charity begins at home is the voice of the World yet is every man his greatest enemy and as it were his own Executioner Non occides is the Commandment of God yet scarce observed by any man for I perceive every man is his own Atropos and lends a hand to cut the thred of his own days Cain was not therefore the first Murtherer but Adam who brought in death whereof he beheld the practice and example in his own son Abel and saw that verified in the experience of another which faith could not perswade him in the Theory of himself Sect. 5 There is I think no man that apprehends his own miseries less than my self and no man that so neerly apprehends anothers I could lose an arm without a tear and with few groans methinks be quartered into pieces yet can I weep most seriously at a Play and receive with true passion the counterfeit grief of those known and professed Impostures It is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto any afflicted parties misery or indeavour to multiply in any man a passion whose single nature is already above his patience this was the greatest affliction of Job and those oblique expostulations of his Friends a deeper injury than the down-right blows of the Devil It is not the tears of our own eyes only but of our friends also that do exhaust the current of our sorrows which falling into many streams runs more peaceably and is contented with a narrower channel It is an act within the power of charity to translate a passion out of one brest into another and to divide a sorrow almost out of it self for an affliction like a dimension may be so divided as if not indivisible at least to become insensible Now with my friend I desire not to share or participate but to engross his sorrows that by making them mine own I may more easily discuss them for in mine own reason and within my self I can command that which I cannot intreat without my self and within the circle of another I have often thought those noble pairs and examples of friendship not so truly Histories of what had been as fictions of what should be but I now perceive nothing in them but possibilities nor any thing in the Heroick examples of Damon and Pythias Achilles and Patroclus which methinks upon some grounds I could not perform within the narrow compass of my self That a man should lay down his life for his Friend seems strange to vulgar affections and such as confine themselves within that Worldly principle Charity begins at home For my own part I could never remember the relations that I held unto my self nor the respect that I owe unto my own nature in the cause of God my Country and my Friends Next to these three I do embrace my self I confess I do not observe that order that the Schools ordain our affections to love our Parents Wives Children and then our Friends for excepting the injunctions of Religior I do not find in my self such a necessary and indissoluble Sympathy to all those of my blood I hope I do not break the fifth Commandment if I conceive I may love my friend before the nearest of my blood even those to whom I owe the principles of life I never yet cast a true affection on a woman but I have loved my friend as I do virtue my soul my God From hence me thinks I do conceive how God loves man what happiness there is in the love of God Omitting all other there are three most mystical unions two natures in one person three persons in one nature one soul in two bodies For though indeed they be really divided yet are they so united as they seem but one and make rather a duality than two distinct souls Sect. 6 There are wonders in true affection it is a body of Enigma 's mysteries and riddles wherein two so become one as they both become two I love my friend before my self and yet methinks I do not love him enough some few months hence my multiplied affection will make me believe I have not loved him at all when I am from him I am dead till I be with him when I am with him I am not satisfied but
forgetting the prophecie of Christ Sect. 14 Now therre is another part of charity which is the Basis and Pillar of this and that is the love of God for whom we love our neighbour for this I think charity to love God for himself and our neighbour for God All that is truly amiable is God or as it were a divided piece of him that retains a reflex or shadow of himself Nor is it strange that we should place affection on that which is invisible all that we truly love is thus what we adore under affection of our senses deserves not the honour of so pure a title Thus we adore virtue though to the eyes of sense she be invisible Thus that part of our noble friends that we love is not that part that we imbrace but that insensible part that our arms cannot embrace God being all goodness can love nothing but himself and the traduciton of his holy Spirit Let us call to assize the loves of our parents the affection of our wives and children and they are all dumb shows and dreams without reality truth or constancy for first there is a strong bond of affection between us and our Parents yet how easily dissolved We betake our selves to a woman forget our mother in a wife and the womb that bare us in that that shall bear our Image this woman blessing us with children our affection leaves the level it held before and sinks from our bed unto our issue and picture of Posterity where affection holds no steady mansion They growing up in years desire our ends or applying themselves to a woman take a lawful way to love another better than our selves Thus I perceive a man may be buried alive and behold his grave in his own issue Sect. 15 I conclude therefore and say there is no happiness under or as Copernicus will have it above the Sun nor any Crambe in that repeated verity and burthen of all the wisdom of Solomon All is vanity and vexation of Spirit There is no felicity in that the World adores Aristotle whilst he labours to resute the Idea's of Plato falls upon one himself for his summum bonum is a Chimaera and there is no such thing as his Felicity That wherein God himself is happy the holy Angels are happy in whose defect the Devils are unhappy that dare I call happiness whatsoever conduceth unto this may with an easie Metaphor deserve that name whatsoever else the World terms Happiness is to me a story out of Pliny a tale of Boccace or Malizspini an apparition or neat delusion wherein there is no more of Happiness than the name Bless me in this life with but peace of my Conscience command of my affections the love of thy self and my dearest friends and I shall be happy enough to pity Caesar These are O Lord the humble desires of my most reasonable ambition and all I dare call happiness on earth wherein I set no rule or limit to thy Hand of Providence dispose of me according to the wisdom of thy pleasure * Thy will be done though in my own undoing FINIS ANNOTATIONS UPON RELIGIO MEDICI Nec satis est vulgasse fidem Pet. Arbit fragment LONDON Printed for R. Scot T. Basset J. Wright R. Chiswel 1682. THE ANNOTATOR TO THE READER A Gellius noct Attic. l. 20. cap. ult notes some Books that had strange Titles Pliny Praefat. Nat. Hist speaking of some such could not pass them over without a jeer So strange saith he are the Titles of some Books Ut multos ad vadimonium deserendum compellant And Seneca saith Some such there are Qui patri obstetricem parturienti filiae accercenti moram injicere possint Of the same fate this present Tract Religio Medici hath pertaken Exception by some hath been taken to it in respect of its Inscription which say they seems to imply that Physicians have a Religion by themselves which is more than Theologie doth warrant but it is their Inference and not the Title that is to blame for no more is meant by that or endeavoured to be prov'd in the Book then that contrary to the opinion of the unlearned Physitians have Religion as well as other men For the Work it self the present Age hath produced none that has had better Reception amongst the learned it has been received and fostered by almost all there having been but one that I know of to verifie that Books have their fates from the Capacity of the Reader that has had the face to appear against it that is Mr. Alexander Rosse but he is dead and it is uncomely to skirmish with his shadow It shall be sufficient to remember to the Reader that the noble and most learned Knight Sir Kenelm Digby has delivered his Opinion of it in another sort who though in some things he differ from the Authors sense yet hath he most candidly and ingeniously allow'd it to be a very learned and excellent Piece and I think no Scholar will say there can be an approbation more authentique Since the time he published his Observations upon it one Mr. Jo. Merryweather a Master of Arts of the University of Cambridge hath deem'd it worthy to be put into the universal Language which about the year 1644. he performed and that hath carried the Authors name not only into the Low-Countries and France in both which places the Book in Latin hath since been Printed but into Italy and Germany and in Germany it has since fallen into the hands of a Gentleman of that Nation of his Name he hath given us no more than L. N. M. E. N. who hath written learned Annotations upon it in Latin whieh were Printed together with the Book at Strasbourg 1652. And for the general good Opinion the World had entertained both of the Work and Author this Stranger tells you Inter alios Auctores incidi in librum cui Titulus Religio Medici jam ante mihi innotuerat lectionem istius libri multos praeclaros viros delectasse imo occupasse Non ignorabam librum in Anglia Galiia Italia Belgio Germania cupidissime legi constabat mihi eum non solum in Anglia ac Batavia set Parisiis cum praefatione in qua Auctor magnis laudibus fertur esse Typis mandatum Compertum mihi erat multos magnos atque eruditos viros censere Autorem quantum ex hoc scripto perspici potest sanctitate vitae ac pietate elucere c. But for the worth of the Book it is so well known to every English-man that is fit to read it that this attestation of a Forrainer may seem superfluous The German to do him right hath in his Annotations given a fair specimen of his learning shewing his skill in the Languages as well antient as modern as also his acquaintance with all manner of Authors both sacred and profane out of which he has amass'd a world of Quotations but yet not to mention that he hath not observed
where the Ability of subtil Disputing to and fro is more prized than the retriving of Truth But such as filleth the mind with solid and useful notions and doth not endanger the swelling it up with windy vanities Besides the sweetest Companion and entertainment of a well-tempered mind is to converse familiarly with the naked and bewitching beauties of those Mistresses those Verities and Sciences which by fair courting of them they gain and enjoy and every day bring new fresh ones to their Seraglio where the ancientest never grow old or stale Is there any thing so pleasing or so profitable as this Nil dulcius est bene quam munita tenere Edita doctrina sapientum templa serena Despicere unde queas alios passimque videre Errare atque viam palanteis quoarere vitae But now if we consider the advantage we shall have in the other life by our affection to Sciences and conversation with them in this it is wonderful great Indeed that affection is so necessary as without it we shall enjoy little contentment in all the knowledge we shall then be replenished with for every ones pleasure in the possession of a good is to be measured by his precedent Desire of that good and by the equality of the taste and relish of him that feedeth upon it We should therefore prepare and make our taste before-hand by Assuefaction unto and by often relishing what we shall then be nourished with That Englishman that can drink nothing but Beer or Ale would be ill bestead were he to go into Spain or Italy where nothing but Wine groweth whereas a well-experienced Goinfre that can criticize upon the several tastes of Liquors would think his Palate in Paradise among those delicious Nectars to use Aretines phrase upon his eating of a Lamprey Who was ever delighted with Tobacco the first time he took it And who could willingly be without it after he was a while habituated to the use of it How many examples are there daily of young men that marrying upon their Fathers command not through precedent affections of their own have little comfort in worthy and handsome Wives that others would passionately affect Archimedes lost his life for being so ravished with the delight of a Mathematical Demonstration that he could not of a sudden recal his extasied Spirits to attend the rude Souldiers Summons But instead of him whose mind hath been always fed with such subtil Diet how many plain Country-Gentlemen doth your Lordship and I know that rate the knowledge of their Husbandry at a much higher pitch and are extreamly delighted by conversing with that whereas the other would be most tedious and importune to them We may then safely conclude That if we will joy in the Knowledge we shall have after Death we must in our life-time raise within our selves earnest affections to it and desires of it which cannot be barren ones but will press upon us to gain some Knowledge by way of advance here and the more we attain unto the more we shall be in Love with what remaineth behind To this reason then adding the other How knowledge is the surest prop and guide of our present life and how it perfecteth a man in that which constituteth a man his Reason and how it enableth him to tread boldly steadily constantly and knowingly in all his ways And I am confident all men that shall hear the Case thus debated will joyn with me in making it a Suit to our Physitian that he will keep his Books open and continue that Progress he hath so happily begun But I believe your Lordship will scarcely joyn with him in his wish that we might procreate and beget Children without the help of Women or without any Conjunction or Commerce with that sweet and bewitching Sex Plato taxeth his fellow Philosopher though otherwise a learned and brave man for not sacrificing to the Graces those gentle Female Goddesses What thinketh your Lordship of our Physitian 's bitter censure of that action which Mahomet maketh the Essence of his Paradise Indeed besides those his unkindnesses or rather frowardnesses at that tender-hearted Sex which must needs take it ill at his hands methinketh he setteth Marriage at too low a rate which is assuredly the highest and divinest link of humane Society And where he speaketh of Cupid and of Beauty it is in such a phrase as putteth me in mind of the Learned Greek Reader in Cambridge his courting of his Mistress out of Stephens his Thesaurus My next Observation upon his Discourse draweth me to a Logical consideration of the Nature of an exact Syllogism which kind of reflection though it use to open the door in the course of Learning and Study yet it will near shut it in my Discourse which my following the thred that my Author spinneth assigneth to this place If he had well and throughly considered all that is required to that strict way of managing our Reason he would not have censured Aristotle for condemning the fourth Figure out of no other motive but because it was not consonant to his own Principle that it would not fit with the Foundations himself had laid though it do with Reason saith he and be consonant to that which indeed it doth not at all times and in all Circumstances In a perfect Syllogism the Predicate must be identified with the Subject and each extream with the middle term and so consequently all three with one another But in Galen's fourth Figure the case may so fall out as these Rules will not be current there As for the good and excellency that he considereth in the worst things and how far from Solitude any man is in a Wilderness These are in his Discourse but equivocal considerations of Good and of Lowliness Nor are they any ways pertinent to the Mortality of that part where he treateth of them I have much ado to believe what he speaketh confidently That he is more beholding to Morpheus for Learned and Rational as well as pleasing Dreams than to Mercury for smart and facetious Conceptions whom Saturn it seemeth by his relation hath looked asquint upon in his Geniture In his concluding Prayer wherein he summeth up all he wisheth methinketh his Arrow is not winged with that fire which I should have expected from him upon this occasion For it is not the peace of Conscience nor the bridling up of ones affections that expresseth the highest dedlightfulness and happiest state of a perfect Christian It is love onely that can give us Heaven upon Earth as well as in Heaven and bringeth us thither too So that the Thuscan Virgil had reason to say In alte dolcezze Non si puo gioio se non amando And this Love must be imployed upon the noblest and highest Object not terminated in our Friends But of this transcendent and divine part of Charity that looketh directly and immediately upon God himself and that is the Intrinsecal Form the utmost Perfection the scope and final
Period of true Religion this Gentleman's intended Theam as I conceive I have no occasion to speak any thing since my Author doth but transiently mention it and that too in such a phrase as ordinary Catechisms speak of to vulgar Capacities Thus my Lord having run through the Book God knows how sleightly upon so great a sudden which your Lordship commanded me to give you an account of there remaineth yet a weightier task upon me to perform which is to excuse my self of Presumption for daring to consider any Moles in that Face which you had marked for a Beauty But who shall well consider my manner of proceeding in these Remarks will free me from that Censure I offer not at Judging the Prudence and Wisdom of this Discourse These are fit Inquiries for your Lordships Court of highest Appeal In my inferiour one I meddle onely with little knotty pieces of particular Sciences Matinae apis instar operosa parvus carmina fingit In which it were peradventure a fault for your Lordship to be too well versed your Imployments are of a higher and nobler Strain and that concerns the welfare of millions of men Tu regere Imperio Populos Sackville memento Hae tibi erunt Artes pacisque imponere morem Such little Studies as these belong onely to those Persons that are low in the Rank they hold in the Common-wealth low in their Conceptions and low in a languishing and rusting Leisure such an one as Virgil calleth Ignobile otium and such an one as I am now dulled withal If Alexander or Caesar should have commended a tract of Land as fit to fight a Battel in for the Empire of the World or to build a City upon to be the Magazine and Staple of all the adjacent Countries no body could justly condemn that Husbandman who according to his own narrow Art and Rules should censure the Plains of Arbela or Pharsalia for being in some places sterile or the Meadows about Alexandria for being sometimes subject to be overflown or could tax ought he should say in that kind for a contradiction unto the others commendations of those places which are built upon higher and larger Principles So my Lord I am confident I shall not be reproached of unmannerliness for putting in a Demurrer unto a few little particularities in that noble Discourse which your Lordship gave a general Applause unto and by doing so I have given your Lordship the best Account I can of my self as well as of your Commands You hereby see what my entertainments are and how I play away my time Dorset dum magnus ad altum Fulminat Oxonium bello victorque volentes Per populos dat jura viamque affectat Olympo May your Counsels there be happy and successful ones to bring about that Peace which if we be not quickly blessed withal a general ruine threatneth the whole Kingdom From Winchester-House the 22 I think I may say the 23 for I am sure it is Morning and I think it is Day of December 1642. Your Lordships must humble and obedient Servant Kenelm Digby The Postscript My Lord LOoking over these loose Papers to point them I perceive I have forgotten what I promised in the eighth sheet to touch in a word concerning Grace I do not conceive it to be a Quality infused by God Almighty into a Soul Such kind of discoursing satisfieth me no more in Divinity than in Philosophy I take it to be the whole Complex of such real motives as a solid account may be given of them that incline a man to Virtue and Piety and are set on foot by God's particular Grace and Favour to bring that work to pass As for Example To a man plunged in Sensuality some great misfortune happeneth that mouldeth his heart to a tenderness and inclineth him to much thoughtfulness In this temper he meeteth with a Book or Preacher that representeth lively to him the danger of his own condition and giveth him hopes of greater contentment in other Objects after he shall have taken leave of his former beloved Sins This begetteth further conversation with prudent and pious men and experienced Physitians in curing the Souls Maladies whereby he is at last perfectly converted and setled in a course of solid Vertue and Piety Now these accidents of his misfortune the gentleness and softness of his Nature his falling upon a good Book his encountring with a pathetick Preacher the impremeditated Chance that brought him to hear his Sermon his meeting with other worthy men and the whole Concatenation of all the intervening Accidents to work this good effect in him and that were ranged and disposed from all Eternity by Gods particular goodness and providence for his Salvation and without which he had inevitably beer damned This chain of Causes ordered by God to produce this effect I understand to be Grace FINIS * A Church Bell that tolls every day at six and twelve of the Clock at the hearing whereof every one in what place soever either of House or Street betakes himself to his prayer which is commonly directed to the Virgin b A revolution of certain thousand years when all things should return unto theirformer estate and he be teaching again in his School as when he delivered this Opinion b Sphaera cujus centrum ubique circumferentianullibi * 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Nosce teipsum * Post Mortem nihil est ipsaque Mors nihil Mors individua est noxia corpori nec patiens animae Toti morimur nullaque pars manet nostri In Rabbelais * Pineda in his Monarchica Ecclesiastica quotes one thousand and forty Authors * In his Oracle to Augustus * Thereby is meant our good Angel appointed us from our Nativity * Who willed his friend not to bury him but hang him up with a staff in his hand to fright away the Crows In those days there shall come lyars and false prophets †Urbem Romam in principio Reges habuere * Pro Archia Poeta †In qua me non inficior mediocriter esse * In his Medicus Medicateus * That he was a German appears by his Notes Pag. 35. where he hath these words Duleissima nostra Germania c. * In Praefat Annotat * Excepting two or three Particulars in which reference is made to some Books that came over since that time Printing Guns * Tho. Aquin in com in Boet de Consolat prope â—inam This Story I have but upon relation yet of a very good hand