Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
Text snippets containing the quad
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A29880
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Religio medici
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Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.; Keck, Thomas. Annotations upon Religio medici.; Digby, Kenelm, Sir, 1603-1665. Observations upon Religio medici.
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1682
(1682)
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Wing B5178; ESTC R12664
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133,517
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400
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that the Soul in this her sublunary estate is wholly and in all acceptions 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 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 discourses 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 any thing of moment more than I can discover in the crany 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 conceive 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 entred in us Sect. 37 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 litterally true for all those creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field digested into flesh in them or more remotely carnified 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 Metempsycosis 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 tame slate 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 out-live 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 Sect. 38 This is that dismal conquest we all deplore that makes us so often cry O Adam quid fecisti 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 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 farewel 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 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 exspectation 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 dye 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 Sect. 39 Some Divines count Adam 30 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 entring 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 and perfection till we have once more cast
our secondine that is this slough of flesh and are delivered into the last world that is that ineffable place of Paul that proper ubi of spirits The smattering I have of the Philosophers Stone which is something more then 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 Sect. 40 I am naturally bashful nor hath conversation age or travel been able to effront 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 't is 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 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 Sect. 41 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 be 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 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 nor do I altogether allow that Rodomontado of Lucan Coelo tegitur qui non habet urnam He that unburied lies wants not his Herse For unto him a Tomb's the Vniverse But commend in my calmer judgement those ingenuous intentions that desire to sleep by the urns of theirs Fathers and strive to go the neatest way unto corruption * I do not envy the temper of Crows and Daws nor the numerous and weary days of our Fathers before the Flood If there be any truth in Astrology I may outlive a Jubilee as yet I have not seen one revolution of Saturn nor hath my pulse beat thirty years and yet excepting one have seen the Ashes left underground 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 days I perceive I do anticipate the vices of age the World to me is but a dream or mock-show and we all therein but Pantalones and Anticks to my severer contemplations Sect. 42 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 rectifie but incurvate 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 agrees in all other circumstances as at forty but swells and doubles from that 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 thred 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 before threescore Sect. 43 And truely 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 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 or vital sulphur of the parts determine not why Abel lived not so long as Adam There is therefore a secret glome or bottome of our days 't was his wisdom to determine them but his perpetual and waking providence that fulfils and accomplisheth them wherein the spirits our selves and all the creatures of God in a secret and disputed way do execute his will Let them not therefore complain of immaturity that dye 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