Sir Thomas Browne and his Religio Medici | Page 5

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