A true and full coppy of that which was most imperfectly and Surreptitiously printed baefore under the name of Religio Medici the 8 Edition Printed at London 1682. RELIGIO MEDICI The Eighth Edition Corrected and Amended WITH ANNOTATIONS Never before Published Upon all the obscure passages therein ALSO OBSERVATIONS By Sir KENELM DIGBY Now newly added LONDON Printed for R. Scot T. Basset J. Wright R. Chiswell 1682. A Letter sent upon the Information of Animadversions to come forth upon the imperfect and surreptitious Copy of Religio Medici whilst this true one was going to Press Honoured Sir GIve your Servant who hath ever honour'd you leave to take notice of a Book at present in the Press intituled as I am informed Animadversions upon a Treatise lately printed under the name of Religio Medici hereof I am advertised you have descended to be the Author Worthy Sir permit your Servant to affirm there is contain'd therein nothing that can deserve the Reason of your Contradictions much less the Candor of your Animadversions and to certifie the truth thereof That Book whereof I do acknowledge my self the Author was penn'd many years past and what cannot escape your apprehension with no intention for the Press or the least desire to oblige the Faith of any man to its assertions But what hath more especially emboldened my Pen unto you at present is That the same Piece contrived in my private study and as an Exercise unto my self rather than an Exercitation for any other having past from my hand under a broken and imperfect Copy by frequent transcription it still run forward into corruption and after the addition of some things omission of others transposition of many without my assent or privacy the liberty of these times committed it unto the Press whence it issued so disguised the Author without distinction could not acknowledge it Having thus miscarried within a few weeks I shall God willing deliver unto the Press the true and intended Original whereof in the mean time your worthy Self may command a view otherwise when ever that Copy shall be extant it will most clearly appear how far the Text hath been mistaken and all Observations Glosses or Exercitations thereon will in a great part impugn the Printer or Transcriber rather than the Author If after that you shall esteem it worth your vacant hours to discourse thereon you shall but take that liberty which I assume my self that is freely to abound in your sense as I have done in my own However you shall determine you shall sufficiently honour me in the Vouchsafe of your Refute and I oblige the whole World in the occasion of your Pen. Norwich March 3. 1642. Your Servant T. B. Worthy Sir SPeedily upon the Receipt of your Letter of the third Current I sent to find out the Printer that Mr. Crook who delivered me yours told me was printing something under my name concerning your Treatise of Religio Medici and to forbid him any further proceeding therein but my Servant could not meet with him whereupon I have left with Mr. Crook a Note to that purpose entreating him to deliver it to the Printer I verily believe there is some mistake in the information given you and that what is printing must be from some other Pen than mine for such reflections as I made upon your learn'd and ingenious discourse are so far from meriting the Press as they can tempt no body to a serious reading of them they were Notes hastily set down as I suddenly ran over your excellent Piece which is of so weighty subject and so strongly penned as requireth much time and sharp attention but to comprehend it whereas what I writ was the imployment but of one sitting and there was not twenty four hours between my receiving my Lord of Dorset's Letter that occasioned what I said and the finishing my Answer to him and yet part of that time was taken up in procuring your Book which he desired me to read and give him an account of for till then I was so unhappy as never to have heard of that worthy discourse If that Letter ever come to your view you will see the high value I set upon your great parts and if it should be thought I have been something too bold in differing from your sense I hope I shall easily obtain pardon when it shall be considered That his Lordship assigned it me as an Exercitation to oppose in it for entertainment such passages as I might judge capable thereof wherein what liberty I took is to be attributed to the security of a private Letter and to my not knowing nor my Lord's the person whom it concerned But Sir now that I am so happy as to have that knowledge I dare assure you that nothing shall ever issue from me but savouring of all honour esteem and reverence both to your felf and that worthy production of yours If I had the vanity to give my self reputation by entring the Lists in publique with so eminent and learned a man as you are yet I know right well I am no ways able to do it it would be a very unequal progress I pretend not to learning those slender notions I have are but disjoynted pieces I have by chance gleaned up here and there To encounter such a sinewy Opposite or make Animadversions upon so smart a Piece as yours is requireth such a solid stock and excercise in School-learning My superficial besprinkling will serve onely for a private Letter or a familiar discourse with Lady-auditors With longing I expect the coming abroad of the true Copy of that Book whose false and stoln one hath already given me so much delight And so assuring you I shall deem it a great good fortune to deserve your favour and friendship I kiss your hand and rest Winchester House March 26. 1642. Your most humble Servant Kenelm Digby To the Reader CErtainly that man were greedy of Life who should desire to live when all the world were at an end and he must needs be very impatient who would repine at death in the society of all things that suffer under it Had not almost every man suffered by the Press or were not the tyranny thereof become universal I had not wanted reason for complaint but in times wherein I have lived to behold the highest perversion of that excellent invention the name of his Majesty defamed the Honour of Parliament depraved the Writings of both depravedly anticipatively counterfeitly imprinted complaints may seem ridiculous in private persons and men of my condition may be as incapable of affronts as hopeless of their reparations And truely had not the duty I owe unto the importunity of friends and the allegiance I must ever acknowledge unto truth prevailed with me the inactivity of my disposition might have made these sufferings continual and time that brings other things to light should have satisfied me in the remedy of its oblivion But because things evidently false are not onely
some Errors of the Press and one or two main ones of the Latine Translation whereby the Author is much injured it cannot be denyed but he hath pass'd over many hard places untoucht that might deserve a Note that he hath made Annotations on some where no need was in the explication of others hath gone besides the true sense And were we free from all these yet one great Fault there is he may be justly charg'd with that is that he cannot manum de Tabula even in matters the most obvious which is an affectation ill-becoming a Scholar witness the most learned Annotator Claud. Minos Divion in prefat commentar Alciat Emblemat praefix Praestat saith he brevius omnia persequi leviter attingere quae nemini esse ignota suspicari possint quam quasi 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 perque locos communes identidem expatiari I go not about by finding fault with his obliquely to commend my own I am as far from that as 't is possible others will be All I seek by this Preface next to acquainting the Reader with the various entertainment of the Book is that he would be advertized that these Notes were collected ten years since long before the German's were written so that I am no Plagiary as who peruseth his Notes and mine will easily perceive And in the second place that I made this Recuil meerly for mine own entertainment and not with any invention to evulge it Truth is my witness the publication proceeds meerly from the importunity of the Book-seller my special friend who being acquainted with what I had done and about to set out another Edition of the Book would not be denied these Notes to attex to it 't is he not I that divulgeth it and whatever the success be he alone is concern'd in it I only say for my self what my Annotations bear in the Frontispiece Nec satis est vulgasse fidem That is that it was not enough to all persons though pretenders to Learning that our Physitian had publish'd his Creed because it wanted an exposition I say further that the German's is not full and that Quicquid sum Ego quamvis Infra Lucilli censum ingeniumque my explications do in many things illustrate the text of my Author 24 Martii 1654. ANNOTATIONS UPON RELIGIO MEDICI The Epistle to the Reader CErtainly that man were greedy of life who should desire to live when all the World were at an end This Mr. Merry weather hath rendred thus Cupidum esse vitae oportet qui universo jam expirante mundo vivere cuperet and well enough but it is not amiss to remember that we have this saying in Seneca the Tragoedian who gives it us thus Vitae est avidus quisquis non vult mundo secum pereunte mori There are many things delivered Rhetorically The Author herein imitates the ingenuity of St. Austin who in his Retract corrects himself for having delivered some things more like a young Rhetorician than a sound Divine but though St. Aug. doth deservedly acknowledge it a fault in himself in that he voluntarily published such things yet cannot it be so in this Author in that he intended no publication of it as he pofesseth in this Epistle and in that other to Sir Kenelm Digby The First PART Sect. 1 Pag. 1 THe general scandal of my Profession Physitians of the number whereof it appears by several passages in this Book the Author is one do commonly hear ill in this behalf It is a common speech but onely amongst the unlearned sort Vbi tres Medici duo Athei The reasons why those of that profession I declare my self that I am none but Causarum Actor mediocris to use Horace his phrase may be thought to deserve that censure the Author rendreth Sect. 19. The natural course of my studies The vulgar lay not the imputation of Atheism onely upon Physitians but upon Philosophers in general who for that they give themselves to understand the operations of Nature they calumniate them as though they rested in the second causes without any respect to the first Hereupon it was that in the tenth Age Pope Silvester the second pass'd for a Magician because he understood Geometry and natural Philosophy Baron Annal 990. And Apuleius long before him laboured of the same suspicion upon no better ground he was accus'd and made a learned Apology for himself and in that hath laid down what the ground is of such accusations in these words Haec fermè communi quodam errore imperitorum Philosophis objectantur ut partem eorum qui corporum causas meras simplices rimantur irreligiosas putant eoque aiunt Deos abnuere ut Anaxagoram Lucippum Democritum Epicurum caeterosque rerum naturae Patronos Apul. in Apolog. And it is possible that those that look upon the second causes scattered may rest in them and go no further as my Lord Bacon in one of his Essayes observeth but our Author tells us there is a true Philosophy from which no man becomes an Atheist Sect. 46. The indifference of my behaviour and Discourse in matters of Religion Bigot's are so oversway'd by a preposterous zeal that they hate all moderation in discourse of Religion they are the men forsooth qui solos credant habendo◠esse Deos quos ipsi colunt Erasmus upon this accompt makes a great complaint to Sir Tho. More in an Epistle of his touching one Dorpius a Divine of Lovain who because upon occasion of discourse betwixt them Erasmus would not promise him to write against Luther told Erasmus that he was a Lutheran and afterwards published him for such and yet as Erasmus was reputed no very good Catholick so for certain he was no Protestant Not that I meerly owe this Title to the Font as most do taking up their Religion according to the way of their Ancestors this is to be blamed amongst all Persons It was practised as well amongst Heathens as Christians Per caput hoc juro per quod Pater antè solebat saith Ascanius in Virgil and Apuleius notes it for an absurdity Vtrum Philosopho put as turpe scire ista an nescire negligere an curare nosse quanta sit etiam in istis providentiae ratio an de diis immortalibus Matri Patri cedere saith he in Apolog. and so doth Minutius Vnusquisque vestrum non cogitat prius se debere deum nosse quà m colere dum inconsultè gestiuntur patentibus obedire dum fieri malunt alieni erroris accessio quam sibi credere Minut. in Octav. But having in my riper years examined c. according to the Apostolical Precept Omnia probate quod bonum est tenete Sect. 2 Pag. 2 There being a Geography of Religions i. e. of Christian Religion which you may see described in Mr. Brerewood's Enquiries he means not of the Protestant Religion for though there be a difference in Discipline yet the Anglican Scotic Belgic Gallican and Helvetic Churches differ not
printed but many things of truth most falsly set forth in this latter I could not but think my self engaged For though we have no power to redress the former yet in the other reparation being within our selves I have at present represented unto the world a full and intended Copy of that Piece which was most imperfectly and surreptitiously published before This I confess about seven years past with some others of affinity thereto for my private exercise and satisfaction I had at leisurable hours composed which being communicated unto one it became common unto many and was by Transcription successively corrupted untill it arrived in a most depraued Copy at the Press He that shall peruse that Work and shall take notice of sundry particulars and personal expressions therein will easily discern the intention was not publick and being a private Exercise directed to my self what is delivered therein was rather a memorial unto me than an Example or Rule unto any other and therefore if there be any singularity therein correspondent unto the private conceptions of any man it doth not advantage them or if dissentaneous thereunto it no way overthrows them It was penned in such a place and with such disadvantage that I protest from the first setting of pen unto paper I had not the assistance of any good Book whereby to promote my invention or relieve my memory and therefore there might be many real lapses therein which others might take notice of and more that I suspected my self It was set down many years past and was the sense of my conception at that time not an immutable Law unto my advancing judgement at all times and therefore there might be many things therein plausible unto my passed apprehension which are not agreeable unto my present self There are many things delivered Rhetorically many expressions therein meerly Tropical and as they best illustrate my intention and therefore also there are many things to be taken in a soft and flexible sense and not to be called unto the rigid test of Reason Lastly all that is contained therein is in submission unto maturer discernments and as I have declared shall no further father them than the best and learned judgments shall authorize them under favour of which considerations I have made its secrecy publick and committed the truth there to every Ingenuous Reader Tho. Browne RELIGIO MEDICI Sect. 1 FOr my Religion though there be several Circumstances that might perswade the World I have none at all as the general scandal of my Profession the natural course of my Studies the indifferency of my Behaviour and Discourse in matters of Religion neither violently Defending one nor with that common ardour and contention Opposing another yet in despight hereof I dare without usurpation assume the honourable Stile of a Christian Not that I meerly owe this Title to the Font my Education or Clime wherein I was born as being bred up either to confirm those Principles my Parents instilled into my Understanding or by a general consent proceed in the Religion of my Country But having in my riper years and confirmed Judgment seen and examined all I find my self obliged by the Principles of Grace and the Law of mine own Reason to embrace no other Name but this Neither doth herein my zeal so far make me forget the general Charity I owe unto Humanity as rather to hate than pity Turks Infidels and what is worse Jews rather contenting my self to enjoy that happy Stile than maligning those who refuse so glorious a Title Sect. 2 But because the Name of a Christian is become too general to express our Faith there being a Geography of Religion as well as Lands and every Clime distinguished not only by their Laws and Limits but circumscribed by their Doctrines and Rules of Faith to be particular I am of that Reformed new-cast Religion wherein I dislike nothing but the Name of the same belief our Saviour taught the Apostles disseminated the Fathers authorized and the Martyrs confirmed but by the sinister ends of Princes the ambition and avarice of Prelates and the fatal corruption of times so decayed impaired and fallen from its native Beauty that it required the careful and charitable hands of these times to restore it to its primitive Integrity Now the accidental occasion whereupon the slender means whereby the low and abject condition of the Person by whom so good a work was set on foot which in our Adversaries beget contempt and scorn fills me with wonder and is the very same Objection the insolent Pagans first cast at Christ and his Disciples Sect. 3 Yet have I not so haken hands with those desperate Resolutions who had rather venture at large their decayed bottom than bring her in to be new trimm'd in the Dock who had rather promiscuously retain all than abridge any and obstinately be what they are than what they have been as to stand in Diameter and Swords point with them We have reformed from them not against them for omitting those Improperations and Terms of Scurrility betwixt us which only difference our Affections and not our Cause there is between us one common Name and Appellation one Faith and necessary body of Principles common to us both and therefore I am not scrupulous to converse and live with them to enter their Churches in defect of ours and either pray with them or for them I could never perceive any rational Consequence from those many Texts which prohibit the Children of Israel to pollute themselves with the Temples of the Heathens we being all Christians and not divided by such detested impieties as might prophane our Prayers or the place wherein we make them or that a resolved Conscience may not adore her Creator any where especially in places devoted to his Service where if their Devotions offend him mine may please him if theirs prophane it mine may hollow it Holy-water and Crucifix dangerous to the common people deceive not my judgment nor abuse my devotion at all I am I confess naturally inclined to that which misguided Zeal terms Superstition my common conversation I do acknowledge austere my behaviour full of rigour sometimes not without morosity yet at my Devotion I love to use the civility of my knee my hat and hand with all those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote my invisible Devotion I should violate my own arm rather than a Church nor willingly deface the name of Saint or Martyr At the fight of a Cross or Crucifix I can dispense with my hat but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour I cannot laugh at but rather pity the fruitless journeys of Pilgrims or contemn the miserable condition of Fryars for though misplaced in Circumstances there is something in it of Devotion I could never hear the Ave-Mary Bell without an elevation or think it a sufficient warrant because they erred in one circumstance for me to err in all that is in silence and dumb
sweat and affected with this dream I rose and wrote the day and hour and all circumstances thereof in a Paper book which book with many other things I put into a Barrel and sent it from Prague to Stode thence to be conveyed into England And now being at Nurenburgh a Merchant of a noble Family well acquainted with me and my friends arrived there who told me my Father dyed some two months ago I list not to write any lyes but that which I write is as true as strange When I returned into England some four years after I would not open the Barrel I sent from Prague nor look into the Paper book in which I had written this dream till I had called my Sisters and some friends to be witnesses where my self and they were astonished to see my written dream answer the very day of my Father's death I may lawfully swear that which my Kinsman hath heard witnessed by my brother Henry whilst he lived that in my youth at Cambridge I had the like dream of my Mother's death where my brother Henry living with me early in the morning I dreamed that my Mother passed by with a sad countenance and told me that she could not come to my Commencement I being within five months to proceed Master of Arts and she having promised at that time to come to Cambridge And when I related this dream to my brother both of us awaking together in a sweat he protested to me that he had dreamed the very same and when we had not the least knowledge of our Mothers sickness neither in our youthful affections were any whit affected with the strangeness of this dream yet the next Carrier brought us word of our Mothers death Mr. Fiennes Morison in his Itinerary I am not over credulous of such relations but me thinks the circumstance of publishing it at such a time when there were those living that might have disprov'd it if it had been false is a great argument of the truth of it Sect. 12 Pag. 166 I wonder the fancy of Lucan and Seneca did not discover it Eor they had both power from Nero to chuse their deaths Sect. 13 Pag. 169 To conceive our selves Vrinals is not so ridiculous Reperti sunt Galeno Avicenna testibus qui se vasa fictilia crederent idcirco hominum attactum ne confringerentur solicite fugerent Pontan in Attic. bellar Hist 22. Which proceeds from extremity of melancholy Aristot is too severe that will not allow us to be truely liberal without wealth Aristot l. 1. Ethic. c. 8. Sect. 15 Pag. 174 Thy will be done though in mine own undoing This should be the wish of every man and is of the most wise and knowing Le Christien plus humble plus sage meux recognoissant que c'est que de lay se rapporte a son createur de choisir ordonner ce qu'el luy faqt Il ne le supplie dautre chose que sa volunte sort faite Montaign FINIS OBSERVATIONS UPON RELIGIO MEDICI Occasionally Written By Sr. Kenelm Digby Knight The sixth Edition Corrected and Enlarged LONDON Printed for R. Scot T. Basset J. Wright R. Chiswel 1682. OBSERVATIONS UPON RELIGIO MEDICI To the Right Honorable Edward Earl of Dorset Baron of Buckhurst c. My Lord I Received yesternight your Lordships of the nineteenth current wherein you are pleased to oblige me not onely by extream gallant Expressions of favour and kindness but likewise by taking so far into your care the expending of my time during the tediousness of my restraint as to recommend to my reading a Book that had received the honour and safeguard of your approbation for both which I most humbly thank your Lordship And since I cannot in the way of gratefulness express unto your Lordship as I would those hearty sentiments I have of your goodness to me I will at the last endeavour in the way of Duty and Observance to let you see how the little Needle of my Soul is throughly touched at the great Loadstone of yours and followeth suddenly and strongly which way soever you becken it In this occasion the Magnetick motion was impatient to have the Book in my hands that your Lordship gave so advantagious a Character of whereupon I sent presently as late as it was to Paul's Church-yard for this Favourite of yours Religio Medici which after a while found me in a condition fit to receive a Blessing by a visit from any of such Master-pieces as you look upon with gracious eyes for I was newly gotten into my bed This good-natured creature I could easily perswade to be my Bed-fellow and to wake with me as long as I had any edge to enterain my self with the delights I sucked from so noble a conversation And truely my Lord I closed not my eyes 'till I had enricht my self with or at least exactly surveyed all the treasures that are lapped up in the folds of those few sheets To return onely a general commendation of this curious Piece or at large to admire the Author's spirit and smartness were too perfunctory an accompt and too slight an one to fo discerning and stedy an eye as yours after so particular and encharged a Summons to read heedfully this Discourse I will therefore presume to blot a Sheet or two of Paper with my reflections upon sundry passages through the whole Context of it as they shall occurrr to my remembrance Which now your Lordship knoweth this Packet is not so happy as to carry with it any one expression of my obsequiousness to you It will be but reasonable you should even here give over your further trouble of reading what my respect ingageth me to the writing of Whos 's first step is ingenuity and a well-natur'd evenness of Judgement shall be sure of applause and fair hopes in all men for the rest of his Journey And indeed my Lord me thinketh this Gentleman setteth out excellently poised with that happy temper and sheweth a great deal of Judicious Piety in making a right use of the blind zeal that Bigots lose themselves in Yet I cannot satisfie my Doubts throughly how he maketh good his professing to follow the great Wheel of the Church in matters of Divinity which surely is the solid Basis of true Religion for to do so without jarring against the Conduct of the first Mover by Eccentrical and Irregular Motions obligeth one to yield a very dutiful obedience to the determinations of it without arrogating to ones self a controling Ability in liking or misliking the Eaith Doctrine and Constitutions of that Church which one looketh upon as their North-star Whereas if I mistake not this Author approveth the Church of England not absolutely but comparatively with other Reformed Churches My next Reflection is concerning what he hath sprinkled most wittily in several places concerning the Nature and Immortality of a humane Soul and the Condition and State it is in after the dissolution of the Body And here