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The Second Part.Section II.
Section II.
IX. I was never yet once, and commend their resolutions who never marry
twice: not that I disallow of second marriage; as neither, in all cases, of
Polygamy, which, considering some times, and the unequal number of both sexes,
may be also necessary. The whole World was made for man, but the twelfth part
of man for woman: Man is the whole World, and the Breath of God; Woman the Rib
and crooked piece of man. I could be content that we might procreate like
trees, without conjunction, or that there were any way to perpetuate the World
without this trivial and vulgar way of union: it is the foolishest act a wise
man commits in all his life; nor is there any thing that will more deject his
cool`d imagination, when he shall consider what an odd and unworthy piece of
folly he hath committed. I speak not in prejudice, nor am averse from that
sweet Sex, but naturally amorous of all that is beautiful. I can look a whole
day with delight upon a handsome Picture, though it be but of an Horse. It is
my temper, and I like it the better, to affect all harmony: and sure there is
musick even in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far
sweeter than the sound of an instrument. For there is a musick where ever
there is a harmony, order, or proportion: and thus far we may maintain the
music of the Sphears; for those well-ordered motions, and regular paces,
though they give no sound unto the ear, yet to the understanding they strike a
note most full of harmony. Whatsoever is harmonically composed delights in
harmony; which makes me much distrust the symmetry of those heads which
declaim against all Church-Musick. For my self, not only for my obedience,
but my particular Genius, I do embrace it: for even that vulgar and
Tavern-Musick, which makes one man merry, another mad, strikes in me a deep
fit of devotion, and a profound contemplation of the First Composer. There is
something in it of Divinity more than the ear discovers: it is an
Hieroglyphical and shadowed lesson of the whole World, and creatures of God;
such a melody to the ear, as the whole World, well understood, would afford
the understanding. In brief, it is a sensible fit of that harmony which
intellectually sounds in the ears of God. I will not say, with Plato, the
soul is an harmony, but harmonical, and hath its nearest sympathy unto Musick:
thus some, whose temper of body agrees, and humours the constitution of their
souls, are born Poets, though indeed all are naturally inclined unto Rhythme.
This made Tacitus, in the very first line of his Story, fall upon a verse;
and Cicero, the worst of Poets, but declaiming for a Poet, falls in the very
first sentence upon a perfect Hexameter. I feel not in me those sordid and
unchristian desires of my profession: I do not secretly implore and wish for
Plagues, rejoyce at Famines, revolve Ephemerides^29 and Almanacks in
expectation of malignant Aspects,^30 fatal Conjunctions,^30 and Eclipses.^30
I rejoyce not at unwholesome Springs, nor unseasonable Winters: my Prayer goes
with the Husbandman`s; I desire every theng in its proper season, that neither
men nor the times be put out of temper. Let me be sick my self if sometimes
the malady of my patient be not a disease unto me. I desire rather to cure his
infirmities than my own necessities. Where I do him no good, methinks it is
scarce honest gain; though I confess, `tis but the worthy salary of our
well-intended endeavours. I am not only ashamed, but heartily sorry, that,
besides death, there are diseases incurable: yet not for my own sake, or that
they be beyond my Art, but for the general cause and sake of humanity, whose
common cause I apprehend as mine own. And to speak more generally, those three
Noble Professions which all civil Commonwealths do honour, are raised upon the
fall of Adam, and are not any way exempt from their infirmities; there are not
only diseases incurable in Physick, but cases indissolvable in Laws, Vices
incorrigible in Divinity. If General Councils may err, I do not see why
particular Courts should be infallible; their perfectest rules are raised upon
the erroneous reasons of Man, and the Laws of one do but condemn the rules of
another; as Aristotle oft-times the opinions of his Predecessours, because,
though agreeable to reason, yet were not consonant to his own rules, and the
Logick of his proper Principles. Again, (to speak nothing of the Sin against
the Holy Ghost, whose cure not onely but whose nature is unknown,) I can cure
the Gout or Stone in some, sooner than Divinity, Pride or Avarice in others. I
can cure Vices by Physick when they remain incurable by Divinity, and shall
obey my Pills when they contemn their precepts. I boast nothing, but plainly
say, we all labour against our own cure; for death is the cure of all
diseases. There is no Catholicon or universal remedy I know, but this; which,
though nauseous to queasie stomachs, yet to prepared appetites is Nectar, and
a pleasant potion of immortality.
[Footnote 31: Intercourse.]
[Footnote 32: Heightening by contrast.]
[Footnote 33: Poisons.]
[Footnote 34: Intercourse.]
[Footnote 35: Company of evil impulses.]
[Footnote 36: Adam, as not being born of woman.]
X. For my Conversation,^31 it is like the Sun`s, with all men, and with a
friendly aspect to good and bad. Methinks there is no man bad, and the worst,
best; that is, while they are kept within the circle of those qualities
wherein they are good: there is no man`s mind of such discordant and jarring a
temper, to which a tunable disposition may not strike a harmony. Magnae
virtutes, nec minora vitia [Great virtues, nor less vices]; it is the posie
of the best natures, and may be inverted on the worst; there are in the most
depraved and venemous dispositions, certain pieces that remain untoucht, which
by an Antiperistasis^32 become more excellent, or by the excellency of their
antipathies are able to preserve themselves from the contagion of their enemy
vices, and persist intire beyond the general corruption. For it is also thus
in nature: the greatest Balsomes do lie enveloped in the bodies of most
powerful Corrosives.^33 I say, moreover, and I ground upon experience, that
poisons contain within themselves their own Antidote, and that which preserves
them from the venome of themselves, without which they were not deleterious
to others onely, but to themselves also. But it is the corruption that I fear
within me, not the contagion of commerce^34 without me. `Tis that unruly
regiment^35 within me, that will destroy me; `tis I that do infect my self;
the man without a Navel^36 yet lives in me; I feel that original canker
corrode and devour me; and therefore Defenda me Dios de me, "Lord deliver me
from my self," is a part of my Letany, and the first voice of my retired
imaginations. There is no man alone, because every man is a Microcosm, and
carries the whole World about him. Nunquam minus solus quam cum solus [Never
less alone than when alone], though it be the Apothegme of a wise man, is yet
true in the mouth of a fool. Indeed, though in a Wilderness, a man is never
alone, not only because he is with himself and his own thoughts, but because
he is with the Devil, who ever consorts with our solitude, and is that unruly
rebel that musters up those disordered motions which accompany our sequestered
imaginations. And to speak more narrowly, there is no such thing as solitude,
nor any thing that can be said to be alone and by itself, but God, Who is His
own circle, and can subsist by Himself; all others, besides their dissimilary
and Heterogeneous parts, which in a manner multiply their natures, cannot
subsist without the concourse^37 of God, and the society of that hand which
doth uphold their natures. In brief, there can be nothing truly alone and by
it self, which is not truly one; and such is only God: all others do transcend
an unity, and so by consequence are many.
[Footnote 37: Cooperation.]
[Footnote 38: Here, circumference of a circle.]
[Footnote 39: Binding.]
[Footnote 40: Merriment.]
XI. Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate,
were not a History, but a piece of Poetry, and would sound to common ears like
a Fable. For the World, I count it not an Inn, but an Hospital; and a place
not to live, but to dye in. The world that I regard is my self; it is the
Microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for the other, I use it but
like my Globe, and turn it round sometimes for my recreation. Men that look
upon my outside, perusing only my condition and Fortunes, do err in my
Altitude; for I am above Atlas his shoulders. The earth is a point not only in
respect of the Heavens above us, but of that heavenly and celestial part
within us: that mass of Flesh that circumscribes me, limits not my mind: that
surface that tells the Heavens it hath an end, cannot persuade me I have any:
I take my circle to be above three hundred and sixty; though the number of the
Ark^38 do measure my body, it comprehendeth not my mind: whilst I study to
find how I am a Microcosm, or little World, I find my self something more than
the great. There is surely a piece of Divinity in us, something that was
before the Elements, and owes no homage unto the Sun. Nature tells me I am the
Image of God, as well as Scripture: he that understands not thus much, hath
not his introduction or first lesson, and is yet to begin the Alphabet of man.
Let me not injure the felicity of others, if I say I am as happy as any: Ruat
caelum, fiat voluntas Tua [Let Thy will be done, though the heavens fall],
salveth all; so that whatsoever happens, it is but what our daily prayers
desire. In brief, I am content; and what should Providence add more? Surely
this is it we call Happiness, and this do I enjoy; with this I am happy in a
dream, and as content to enjoy a happiness in a fancy, as others in a more
apparent truth and realty. There is surely a nearer apprehension of any thing
that delights us in our dreams, than in our waked senses: without this I were
unhappy; for my awaked judgment discontents me, ever whispering unto me, that
I am from my friend; but my friendly dreams in the night requite me, and make
me think I am within his arms. I thank God for my happy dreams, as I do for my
good rest; for there is a satisfaction in them unto reasonable desires, and
such as can be content with a fit of happiness: and surely it is not a
melancholy conceit to think we are all asleep in this World, and that the
conceits of this life are as meer dreams to those of the next; as the
Phantasms of the night, to the conceits of the day. There is an equal delusion
in both, and the one doth but seem to be the embleme or picture of the other:
we are somewhat more than our selves in our sleeps, and the slumber of the
body seems to be but the waking of the soul. It is the ligation^39 of sense,
but the liberty of reason; and our waking conceptions do not match the Fancies
of our sleeps. At my Nativity my Ascendant was the watery sign of Scorpius; I
was born in the Planetary hour of Saturn, and I think I have a piece of that
Leaden Planet in me. I am no way facetious, nor disposed for the mirth and
galliardize^40 of company; yet in one dream I can compose a whole Comedy,
behold the action, apprehend the jests, and laugh my self awake at the
conceits thereof. Were my memory as faithful as my reason is then fruitful, I
would never study but in my dreams; and this time also would I chuse for my
devotions: but our grosser memories have then so little hold of our abstracted
understandings, that they forget the story, and can only relate to our awaked
souls, a confused and broken tale of that that hath passed. Aristotle, who
hath written a singular Tract Of Sleep, hath not, methinks, throughly defined
it; nor yet Galen, though he seem to have corrected it; for those Noctambuloes
and night-walkers, though in their sleep, do yet enjoy the action of their
senses. We must therefore say that there is something in us that is not in the
jurisdiction of Morpheus; and that those abstracted and ecstatick souls do
walk about in their own corps, as spiriIs with the bodies they assume, wherein
they seem to hear, see, and feel, though indeed the Organs are destitute of
sense, and their natures of those faculties that should inform them. Thus it
is observed, that men sometimes, upon the hour of their departure, do speak
and reason above themselves; for then the soul, beginning to be freed from the
ligaments of the body, begins to reason like her self, and to discourse in a
strain above mortality.
XII. We term sleep a death; and yet it is waking that kills us, and
destroys those spirits that are the house of life. `Tis indeed a part of life
that best expresseth death; for every man truely lives, so long as he acts his
nature, or some way makes good the faculties of himself. Themistocles,
therefore, that slew his Soldier in his sleep, was a merciful Executioner:
`tis a kind of punishment the mildness of no laws hath invented: I wonder the
fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it. It is that death by which we
may be literally said to dye daily; a death which Adam dyed before his
mortality; a death whereby we live a middle and moderating point between life
and death: in fine, so like death, I dare not trust it without my prayers, and
an half adieu unto the World, and take my farewell in a Colloquy with God.
The night is come, like to the day,
Depart not Thou, great God, away.
Let not my sins, black as the night,
Eclipse the lustre of Thy light:
Keep still in my Horizon; for to me
The Sun makes not the day, but Thee.
Thou, Whose nature cannot sleep,
On my temples Centry keep;
Guard me `gainst those watchful foes,
Whose eyes are open while mine close.
Let no dreams my head infest,
But such as Jacob`s temples blest.
While I do rest, my Soul advance;
Make my sleep a holy trance;
That I may, my rest being wrought,
Awake into some holy thought;
And with as active vigour run
My course, as doth the nimble Sun.
Sleep is a death; O make me try,
By sleeping, what it is to die;
And as gently lay my head
On my grave, as now my bed.
However I rest, great God, let me
Awake again at last with Thee;
And thus assur`d, behold I lie
Securely, or to awake or die.
These are my drowsie days; in vain
I do not wake to sleep again:
O come that hour, when I shall never
Sleep again, but wake for ever.
This is the Dormative^41 I take to bedward; I need no other Laudanum than this
to make me sleep; after which I close mine eyes in security, content to take
my leave of the Sun, and sleep unto the Resurrection.
[Footnote 41: Sleeping draft.]
[Footnote 42: Distribution of rewards and punishments according to the desert
of each.]
[Footnote 43: The justice which is corrective in transactions between man and
man, exercised in arithmetical proportion. The distinction is made by
Aristotle.]
[Footnote 44: Do more than is necessary.]
[Footnote 45: Used as a remedy for madness.]
[Footnote 46: Consider.]
[Footnote 47: Gold was commonly used as a medicine.]
XIII. The method I should use in distributive Justice,^42 I often
observe in commutative;^43 and keep a Geometrical proportion in both, whereby
becoming equable to others, I become unjust to my self, and supererogate^44
in that common principle, Do unto others as thou wouldst be done unto thy
self. I was not born unto riches, neither is it, I think, my Star to be
wealthy; or, if it were, the freedom of my mind, and frankness of my
disposition, were able to contradict and cross my fates: for to me, avarice
seems not so much a vice, as a deplorable piece of madness; to conceive
ourselves pipkins, or be perswaded that we are dead, is not so ridiculous, nor
so many degrees beyond the power of Hellebore,^45 as this. The opinions of
Theory, and positions of men, are not so void of reason as their practised
conclusions. Some have held that Snow is black, that the earth moves, that the
Soul is air, fire, water; but all this is Philosophy, and there is no
delirium, if we do but speculate^46 the folly and indisputable dotage of
avarice. To that subterraneous Idol and God of the Earth I do confess I am an
Atheist; I cannot perswade myself to honour that the World adores; whatsoever
virtue its prepared substance^47 may have within my body, it hath no influence
nor operation without. I would not entertain a base design, or an action that
should call me villain, for the Indies; and for this only do I love and
honour my own soul, and have methinks two arms too few to embrace myself.
Aristotle is too severe, that will not allow us to be truely liberal without
wealth, and the bountiful hand of Fortune. If this be true, I must confess I
am charitable only in my liberal intentions, and bountiful well-wishes; but if
the example of the Mite be not only an act of wonder, but an example of the
noblest Charity, surely poor men may also build Hospitals, and the rich alone
have not erected Cathedrals. I have a private method which others observe not;
I take the opportunity of my self to do good; I borrow occasion of Charity
from mine own necessities, and supply the wants of others, when I am in most
need my self: for it is an honest stratagem to take advantage of our selves,
and so to husband the acts of vertue, that, where they are defective in one
circumstance, they may repay their want and multiply their goodness in
another. I have not Peru^48 in my desires, but a competence, and ability to
perform those good works to which He hath inclined my nature. He is rich, who
hath enough to be charitable; and it is hard to be so poor, that a noble mind
may not find a way to this piece of goodness. He that giveth to the poor,
lendeth to the Lord: there is more Rhetorick in that one sentence, than in a
Library of Sermons; and indeed, if those Sentences were understood by the
Reader, with the same Emphasis as they are delivered by the Author, we needed
not those Volumes of instructions, but might be honest by an Epitome. Upon
this motive only I cannot behold a Beggar without relieving his Necessities
with my Purse, or his Soul with my Prayers; these scenical and accidental
differences between us, cannot make me forget that common and untoucht part of
us both: there is under these Centoes^49 and miserable outsides, these
mutilate and semi-bodies, a soul of the same alloy with our own, whose
Genealogy is God as well as ours, and in as fair a way to Salvation as our
selves. Statists that labour to contrive a Common-wealth without poverty,
take away the object of charity, not understanding only the Commonwealth of a
Christian, but forgetting the prophecie of Christ.^50
[Footnote 48: A symbol of vast wealth.]
[Footnote 49: Masses of patches.]
[Footnote 50: "The poor ye have always with ye."]
XIV. Now, there 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 embrace, but
that insensible part that our arms cannot embrace. God, being all goodness,
can love nothing but Himself; He loves us but for that part which is as it
were Himself, and the traduction^51 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.
[Footnote 51: Derivative.]
[Footnote 52: Tiresome repetition.]
XV. I conclude therefore, and say, there is no happiness under (or, as
Copernicus will have it, above) the Sun, nor any Crambe^52 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 refute 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 easy 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 or Providence. Dispose of
me according to the wisdom of Thy pleasure: Thy will be done, though in my own
undoing.
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