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SIR THOMAS BROWNE

RELIGIO MEDICI

Sir Thomas Browne, English essayist, came of a Cheshire family, but was born in London on October 19, 1605.  Educated at Oxford, where he graduated in 1626, he next studied medicine at the great universities of Montpelier, Padua, and Leyden, and in 1637 went to live at Norwich, where he remained until his death on October 19, 1682.  He was happily married in 1641, and was knighted by Charles II. in 1671.  Sir Thomas Browne is one of the greatest figures in English literary history.  He had extraordinary learning, a magnificent style, a certain dry humour, and, above all, great power and nobility of mind.  In his two most valued works, “Religio Medici,” or “Religion of a Physician,” published in 1643, and “Urn Burial,” in 1658, he deals with the greatest of all themes, the mysteries of faith and of human destiny.  The “Religio Medici,” written about 1635, was not at first intended for publication; but the manuscript had been handed about and copied, and the appearance, in 1642, of private editions, forced the author to issue it himself.

I.—­THE BROAD-MINDED CHRISTIAN

For my religion I dare, without usurpation, assume the honourable style of a Christian.  Not that I merely owe this title to the font, my education, or the clime wherein I was born; but that having, in my riper years and confirmed judgment, seen and examined all, I find myself obliged, by the principles of grace and the law of mine own reason, to embrace no other name but this.

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—­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 authorised, and the martyrs confirmed; but, by the sinister ends of princes, the ambition and avarice of prelates, and the fatal corruption of the 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.

Yet do I not stand at sword’s point with those who had rather promiscuously retain all than abridge any, and obstinately be what they are than what they have been.  We have reformed from them, not against them, for 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 am naturally inclined to that which misguided zeal terms superstition; at my devotion I love to use the civility of my knee, my hat, my hand, with all those outward and sensible motions which may express or promote my invisible devotion.  At the sight of a crucifix I can dispense with my hat, but scarce with the thought or memory of my Saviour.  I could never hear the Ave-Mary bell without an oraison, or think it a sufficient warrant, because they erred in one circumstance, for me to err in all—­that is, in silence and dumb contempt.