SOURCE: Wise, James N. “Browne and His Critics.” In Sir Thomas Browne's ‘Religio Medici’ and Two Seventeenth-Century Critics, pp. 1-11. Columbia, Mo.: University of Missouri Press, 1973.

In the following essay, Wise provides a brief overview of Browne's ideas concerning the nature of divinity in the context of critical reaction from Alexander Ross and Kenelm Digby.

Why should we look once again at the writings of three controversialists of seventeenth-century England—Sir Thomas Browne, Sir Kenelm Digby, and Alexander Ross? Browne has become so traditionally a part of the history and texture of classic English prose style that we sometimes unconsciously undervalue his ideas and their power to arouse dispute in his time. The primary purpose of this study is to assert his significant, albeit ambivalent, position in the history of ideas in seventeenth-century Europe. Only minimal attention will be paid to Browne's stylistic excellence as such—a matter...