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The First Part.Section IV.
Section IV.
XXXVI. The whole Creation is a mystery, and particularly that of Man.
At the blast of His mouth were the rest of the Creatures made, and at His
bare word they started out of nothing: but in the frame of Man (as the
Text describes it,) He played the sensible operator, and seemed not so much
to create, as make him. When He had separated the materials of other
creatures, there consequently resulted a form and soul; but, having raised
the walls of Man, He was driven to a second and harder creation of a substance
like Himself, an incorruptible and immortal Soul. For these two affections^76
we have the Philosophy and opinion of the Heathens, the flat affirmative of
Plato, and not a negative from Aristotle. There is another scruple cast in
by Divinity concerning its production, much disputed in the Germane
auditories, and with that indifferency and equality of arguments, as leave
the controversie undetermined. I am not of Paracelsus mind, that boldly
delivers a receipt to make a man without conjunction;^77 yet cannot but
wonder at the multitude of heads that do deny traduction,^78 having no other
argument to confirm their belief then that Rhetorical sentence and
Antimetathesis^79 of Augustine, Creando infunditur, infundendo creatur. [By
creating it is poured in, by pouring in it is created.] Either opinion will
consist well enough with Religion: yet I should rather incline to this, did
not one objection haunt me, (not wrung from speculations and subtilties, but
from common sense and observation; not pickt from the leaves of any Author,
but bred amongst the weeds and tares of mine own brain;) and this is a
conclusion from the equivocal and monstrous productions in the conjunction of
Man with Beast: for if the Soul of man be not transmitted and transfused in
the seed of the Parents, why are not those productions meerly beasts, but have
also an impression and tincture of reason in as high a measure as it can
evidence it self in those improper Organs? Nor, truely, can I peremptorily
deny that the Soul, in this her sublunary estate, is wholly and in all
acceptions^80 inorganical; but that for the performance of her ordinary
actions there is required not onely a symmetry and proper disposition of
Organs, but a Crasis^81 and temper correspondent to its operations: yet is not
this mass of flesh and visible structure the instrument and proper corps of
the Soul, but rather of Sense, and that the hand of Reason. In our study of
Anatomy there is a mass of mysterious Philosophy, and such as reduced the very
Heathens to Divinity: yet, amongst all those rare discoveries and curious
pieces I find in the Fabrick of Man, I do not so much content my self, as in
that I find not, there is no Organ or Instrument for the rational Soul; for in
the brain, which we term the seat of Reason, there is not anything of moment
more than I can discover in the crany^82 of a beast: and this is a sensible
and no inconsiderable argument of the inorganity of the Soul, at least in that
sense we usually so receive it. Thus we are men, and we know not how: there is
something in us that can be without us, and will be after us; though it is
strange that it hath no history what it was before us, nor cannot tell how it
entered in us.
[Footnote 77: Sexual intercourse.]
[Footnote 78: Derivation (of the soul from the parents).]
[Footnote 79: The giving of two different meanings from two different
arrangements of the same words.]
[Footnote 80: Acceptations.]
[Footnote 81: Constitution.]
[Footnote 82: Skull.]
[Footnote 83: Made flesh.]
XXXVII. Now, for these walls of flesh, wherein the Soul doth seem to be
immured before the Resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental composition,
and a Fabrick that must fall to ashes. All flesh is grass, is not onely
metaphorically, but literally, true; for all those creatures we behold are but
the herbs of the field, digested into flesh in them, or more remotely
carnified^83 in our selves. Nay further, we are what we all abhor,
Anthropophagi and Cannibals, devourers not onely of men, but of our selves;
and that not in an allegory, but a positive truth: for all this mass of flesh
which we behold, came in at our mouths; this frame we look upon, hath been
upon our trenchers; in brief, we have devour`d our selves. I cannot believe
the wisdom of Pythagoras did ever positively, and in a literal sense, affirm
his Metempsychosis, or impossible transmigration of the Souls of men into
beasts. Of all Metamorphoses or transmigrations, I believe only one, that is
of Lots wife; for that of Nebuchodonosor proceeded not so far: in all others
I conceive there is no further verity than is contained in their implicite
sense and morality. I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and
is left in the same state after death as before it was materialled unto life:
that the Souls of men know neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist
beyond the body, and outlive death by the priviledge of their proper natures,
and without a Miracle; that the Souls of the faithful, as they leave Earth,
take possession of Heaven: that those apparitions and ghosts of departed
persons are not the wandring souls of men, but the unquiet walks of Devils,
prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villany; instilling and
stealing into our hearts that the blessed Spirits are not at rest in their
graves, but wander sollicitous of the affairs of the World. But that those
phantasms appear often, and do frequent Coemeteries, Charnel-houses, and
Churches, it is because those are the dormitories of the dead, where the
Devil, like an insolent Champion, beholds with pride the spoils and Trophies
of his Victory over Adam.
XXXVIII. This is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us so
often cry, O Adam, quid fecisti? [O Adam, what hast thou done?] I thank God
I have not those strait ligaments, or narrow obligations to the World, as to
dote on life, or be convulst and tremble at the name of death. Not that I am
insensible of the dread and horrour thereof; or by raking into the bowels of
the deceased, continual sight of Anatomies, Skeletons, or Cadaverous reliques,
like Vespilloes,^84 or Grave-makers, I am become stupid, or have forgot the
apprehension of Mortality; but that, marshalling all the horrours, and
contemplating the extremities thereof, I find not any thing therein able to
daunt the courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian; and therefore
am not angry at the errour of our first Parents, or unwilling to bear a part
of this common fate, and like the best of them to dye, that is, to cease to
breathe, to take a farewell of the elements, to be a kind of nothing for a
moment, to be within one instant of a Spirit. When I take a full view and
circle of my self without this reasonable moderator, and equal piece of
Justice, Death, I do conceive my self the miserablest person extant. Were
there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities of this World should
not intreat a moments breath from me; could the Devil work my belief to
imagine I could never dye, I would not outlive that very thought. I have so
abject a conceit^85 of this common way of existence, this retaining to the Sun
and Elements, I cannot think this is to be a Man, or to live according to the
dignity of humanity. In expectation of a better, I can with patience embrace
this life, yet in my best meditations do often defie death; I honour any man
that contemns it, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes
me naturally love a Souldier, and honour those tattered and contemptible
Regiments that will die at the command of a Sergeant. For a Pagan there may be
some motives to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be amazed at
death, I see not how he can escape this Dilemma, that he is too sensible of
this life, or hopeless of the life to come.
[Footnote 84: Latin, corpse-bearers.]
[Footnote 85: Idea.]
XXXIX. Some Divines count Adam thirty years old at his Creation, because
they suppose him created in the perfect age and stature of man. And surely we
are all out of the computation of our age, and every man is some months elder
than he bethinks him; for we live, move, have a being, and are subject to the
actions of the elements, and the malice of diseases, in that other World, the
truest Microcosm, the Womb of our Mother. For besides that general and common
existence we are conceived to hold in our Chaos, and whilst we sleep within
the bosome of our causes, we enjoy a being and life in three distinct worlds,
wherein we receive most manifest graduations. In that obscure World and Womb
of our Mother, our time is short, computed by the Moon, yet longer then the
days of many creatures that behold the Sun; our selves being not yet without
life, sense, and reason; though for the manifestation of its actions, it
awaits the opportunity of objects, and seems to live there but in its root and
soul of vegetation. Entering afterwards upon the scene of the World, we arise
up and become another creature, performing the reasonable actions of man, and
obscurely manifesting that part of Divinity in us; but not in complement^86
and perfection, till we have once more cast our secondine,^87 that is, this
slough of flesh, and are delivered into the last World, that is, that
ineffable place of Paul, that proper ubi^88 of Spirits. The smattering I have
of the Philosophers Stone (which is something more than the perfect exaltation
of gold,) hath taught me a great deal of Divinity, and instructed my belief,
how that immortal spirit and incorruptible substance of my Soul may lye
obscure, and sleep a while within this house of flesh. Those strange and
mystical transmigrations that I have observed in Silk-worms, turned my
Philosophy into Divinity. There is in these works of nature, which seem to
puzzle reason, something Divine, and hath more in it then the eye of a common
spectator doth discover.
[Footnote 86: Completeness.]
[Footnote 87: After-birth.]
[Footnote 88: Dwelling-place.]
[Footnote 89: Embolden.]
XL. I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or travel, been
able to effront^89 or enharden me; yet I have one part of modesty which I have
seldom discovered in another, that is, (to speak truely,) I am not so much
afraid of death, as ashamed thereof. `Tis the very disgrace and ignominy of
our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us, that our nearest friends,
Wife, and Children, stand afraid and start at us: the Birds and Beasts of the
field, that before in a natural fear obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance,
begin to prey upon us. This very conceit hath in a tempest disposed and left
me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of waters, wherein I had perished
unseen, unpityed, without wondering eyes, tears of pity, Lectures of
mortality, and none had said.
Quantum mutatus ab illo!
[How changed from that man!]
Not that I am ashamed of the Anatomy of my parts, or can accuse Nature for
playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own vitious life for contracting
any shameful disease upon me, whereby I might not call my self as wholesome a
morsel for the worms as any.
[Footnote 90: "Who willed his friend not to bury him, but to hang him up with
a staffe in his hand to fright away the crowes.": - T. B.]
[Footnote 91: Boastful utterance.]
XLI. Some, upon the courage of a fruitful issue, wherein, as in the
truest Chronicle, they seem to outlive themselves, can with greater patience
away with death. This conceit and counterfeit subsisting in our progenies
seems to me a meer fallacy, unworthy the desires of a man that can but
conceive a thought of the next World; who, in a nobler ambition, should desire
to live in his substance in Heaven, rather than his name and shadow in the
earth. And therefore at my death I mean to take a total adieu of the World,
not caring for a Monument, History or Epitaph, not so much as the bare memory
of my name to be found any where but in the universal Register of God. I am
not yet so Cynical as to approve the Testament of Diogenes,^90 nor do I
altogether allow that Rodomontado^91 of Lucan,
-Caelo tegitur, qui non habet urnam.
He that unburied lies wants not his Herse,
For unto him a Tomb`s the Universe.
but commend in my calmer judgement those ingenuous intentions that desire to
sleep by the urns of their Fathers, and strive to go the neatest way unto
corruption. I do not envy the temper of Crows and Daws,^92 nor the numerous
and weary days of our Fathers before the Flood. If there be any truth in
Astrology, I may outlive a Jubilee:^93 as yet I have not seen one revolution
of Saturn,^94 nor hath my pulse beat thirty years; and yet, excepting one,
have seen the Ashes and left under ground all the Kings of Europe; have been
contemporary to three Emperours, four Grand Signiours, and as many Popes.
Methinks I have outlived my self, and begin to be weary of the Sun; I have
shaken hands with delight, in my warm blood and Canicular^95 days, I perceive
I do anticipate the vices of age; the World to me is but a dream or
mockshow, and we all therein but Pantalones and Anticks, to my severer
contemplations.
[Footnote 92: These birds were supposed to live several times the length of
human life.]
[Footnote 93: Fifty years.]
[Footnote 94: Thirty years.]
[Footnote 95: Dog-days: here, figuratively, for young manhood.]
[Footnote 96: Make crooked.]
XLII. It is not, I confess, an unlawful Prayer to desire to surpass the
days of our Saviour, or wish to outlive that age wherein He thought fittest
to dye; yet if (as Divinity affirms,) there shall be no gray hairs in Heaven,
but all shall rise in the perfect state of men, we do but outlive those
perfections in this World, to be recalled unto them by a greater Miracle in
the next, and run on here but to be retrograde hereafter. Were there any hopes
to outlive vice, or a point to be super-annuated from sin, it were worthy our
knees to implore the days of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but
incurvate^96 our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, and
(like diseases,) brings on incurable vices; for every day as we grow weaker in
age, we grow stronger in sin, and the number of our days doth but make our
sins innumerable. The same vice committed at sixteen, is not the same, though
it agree in all other circumstances, at forty, but swells and doubles from the
circumstance of our ages; wherein, besides the constant and inexcusable habit
of transgressing, the maturity of our judgement cuts off pretence unto excuse
or pardon. Every sin, the oftner it is committed, the more it acquireth in the
quality of evil; as it succeeds in time, so it proceeds in degrees of badness;
for as they proceed they ever multiply, and, like figures in Arithmetick, the
last stands for more than all that went before it. And though I think no man
can live well once, but he that could live twice, yet for my own part I would
not live over my hours past, or begin again the thread of my days: not upon
Cicero`s ground, because I have lived them well, but for fear I should live
them worse. I find my growing Judgment daily instruct me how to be better, but
my untamed affections and confirmed vitiosity makes me daily do worse. I find
in my confirmed age the same sins I discovered in my youth; I committed many
then, because I was a Child; and because I commit them still, I am yet an
infant. Therefore I perceive a man may be twice a Child, before the days of
dotage; and stand in need of Aesons Bath^97 before threescore.
XLIII. And truly there goes a great deal of providence to produce a mans
life unto threescore: there is more required than an able temper for those
years; though the radical humour^98 contain in it sufficient oyl for seventy,
yet I perceive in some it gives no light past thirty: men assign not all the
causes of long life, that write whole Books thereof. They that found
themselves on the radical balsome,^99 or vital sulphur^99 of the parts,
determine not why Abel lived not so long as Adam. There is therefore a secret
glome^100 or bottom^100 of our days: `twas His wisdom to determine them, but
His perpetual and waking providence that fulfils and accomplisheth them;
wherein the spirits, ourselves, and all the creatures of God in a secret and
disputed way do execute His will. Let them not therefore complain of
immaturity that die about thirty; they fall but like the whole World, whose
solid and well-composed substance must not expect the duration and period of
its constitution: when all things are completed in it, its age is
accomplished; and the last and general fever may as naturally destroy it
before six thousand, as me before forty. There is therefore some other hand
that twines the thread of life than that of Nature: we are not onely ignorant
in Antipathies and occult qualities; our ends are as obscure as our
beginnings; the line of our days is drawn by night, and the various effects
therein by a pensil that is invisible; wherein though we confess our
ignorance, I am sure we do not err if we say it is the hand of God.
[Footnote 97: For restoring youth.]
[Footnote 98: The moisture essential to vitality according to the old
physiology.]
[Footnote 99: Supposed sources of longevity.]
[Footnote 100: Ball (of worsted).]
[Footnote 101: Lucan`s "Pharsalia," iv. 510.]
XLIV. I am much taken with two verses of Lucan, since I have been able
not onely, as we do at School, to construe, but understand:
Victurosque Dei celant, ut vivere durent,
Felix esse mori.^101
We`re all deluded, vainly searching ways
To make us happy by the length of days;
For cunningly to make`s protract this breath,
The Gods conceal the happiness of Death.
There be many excellent strains in that Poet, wherewith his Stoical Genius
hath liberally supplied him; and truely there are singular pieces in the
Philosophy of Zeno, and doctrine of the Stoicks, which I perceive, delivered
in a Pulpit, pass for current Divinity: yet herein are they in extreams, that
can allow a man to be his own Assassine, and so highly extol the end and
suicide of Cato. This is indeed not to fear death, but yet to be afraid of
life. It is a brave act of valour to contemn death; but where life is more
terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live. And herein
Religion hath taught us a noble example; for all the valiant acts of Curtius,
Scevola, or Codrus, do not parallel or match that one of Job; and sure there
is no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any Ponyards in death it self like
those in the way or prologue to it.
Emori nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil curo.^102
I would not die, but care not to be dead.
[Footnote 102: Quoted by Cicero, "Tusc. Quaest." i. 8, from Epicharmus.]
Were I of Caesar`s Religion, I should be of his desires, and wish rather to go
off at one blow, then to be sawed in pieces by the grating torture of a
disease. Men that look no farther than their outsides, think health an
appurtenance unto life, and quarrel with their constitutions for being sick;
but I, that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender
filaments that Fabrick hangs, do wonder that we are not always so; and,
considering the thousand doors that lead to death, do thank my God that we can
die but once. `Tis not onely the mischief of diseases, and the villany of
poysons, that make an end of us; we vainly accuse the fury of Guns, and the
new inventions of death; it is in the power of every hand to destroy us, and
we are beholding unto every one we meet, he doth not kill us. There is
therefore but one comfort left, that, though it be in the power of the weakest
arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death: God
would not exempt Himself from that, the misery of immortality in the flesh, He
undertook not that was immortal. Certainly there is no happiness within this
circle of flesh, nor is it in the Opticks of these eyes to behold felicity.
The first day of our Jubilee is Death; the Devil hath therefore failed of his
desires: we are happier with death than we should have been without it: there
is no misery but in himself, where there is no end of misery; and so indeed,
in his own sense, the Stoick^103 is in the right. He forgets that he can dye
who complains of misery; we are in the power of no calamity while death is in
our own.
XLV. Now, besides this literal and positive kind of death, there are
others whereof Divines make mention, and those, I think, not merely
Metaphorical, as mortification, dying unto sin and the World. Therefore, I
say, every man hath a double Horoscope, one of his humanity, his birth;
another of his Christianity, his baptism; and from this do I compute or
calculate my Nativity, not reckoning those Horae combustae^104 and odd days,
or esteeming my self any thing, before I was my Saviours, and inrolled in the
Register of Christ. Whosoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an
apparition, though he wear about him the sensible affections^105 of flesh. In
these moral acceptions,^106 the way to be immortal is to dye daily: nor can I
think I have the true Theory of death, when I contemplate a skull, or behold
a Skeleton, with those vulgar imaginations it casts upon us; I have therefore
enlarged that common Memento mori, [Remember you must die] into a more
Christian memorandum, Memento quatuor Novissima, [Remember the four last
things] those four inevitable points of us all, Death, Judgement, Heaven, and
Hell. Neither did the contemplations of the Heathens rest in their graves,
without a further thought of Rhadamanth,^107 or some judicial proceeding after
death, though in another way, and upon suggestion of their natural reasons. I
cannot but marvail from what Sibyl or Oracle they stole the Prophesie of the
Worlds destruction by fire, or whence Lucan learned to say,
[Footnote 103: In holding that death is no evil.]
[Footnote 104: Combust hours, "when the moon is in conjunction and obscured by
the sun."]
[Footnote 105: Qualities.]
[Footnote 106: Acceptations.]
[Footnote 107: Judge in Hades.]
[Footnote 108: "Pharsalia" vii. 814.]
Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra
Misturus.^108
There yet remains to th` World one common Fire,
Wherein our bones with stars shall make one Pyre.
I believe the World grows near its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor
shall ever perish upon the ruines of its own Principles. As the work of
Creation was above Nature, so is its adversary, annihilation; without which
the World hath not its end, but its mutation. Now what force should be able to
consume it thus far, without the breath of God, which is the truest consuming
flame, my Philosophy cannot inform me. Some believe there went not a minute
to the Worlds creation, nor shall there go to its destruction; those six days,
so punctually described, make not to them one moment, but rather seem to
manifest the method and Idea of the great work of the intellect of God, than
the manner how He proceeded in its operation. I cannot dream that there should
be at the last day any such Judicial proceeding, or calling to the Bar, as
indeed the Scripture seems to imply, and the literal Commentators do conceive:
for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in a vulgar
and illustrative way; and, being written unto man, are delivered, not as they
truely are, but as they may be understood; wherein, notwithstanding, the
different interpretations according to different capacities may stand firm
with our devotion, nor be any way prejudicial to each single edification.
[Footnote 109: Capable of proof.]
[Footnote 110: Madness defined by law.]
[Footnote 111: The time of the existence of the world, according to a
tradition ascribed to the school of Elijah in the Talmud.]
[Footnote 112: Question.]
[Footnote 113: The oracle of Apollo.]
[Footnote 114: Ambiguity.]
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