Part 3 (2/2)
54.--There is no salvation to those that believe not in Christ; that is, say some, since his nativity, and, as divinity affirmeth, before also; which makes me much apprehend the end of those honest worthies and philosophers which died before his incarnation. It is hard to place those souls in h.e.l.l, whose worthy lives do teach us virtue on earth. Methinks, among those many subdivisions of h.e.l.l, there might have been one limbo left for these. What a strange vision will it be to see their poetical fictions converted into verities, and their imagined and fancied furies into real devils! How strange to them will sound the history of Adam, when they shall suffer for him they never heard of! When they who derive their genealogy from the G.o.ds, shall know they are the unhappy issue of sinful man! It is an insolent part of reason, to controvert the works of G.o.d, or question the justice of his proceedings. Could humility teach others, as it hath instructed me, to con- template the infinite and incomprehensible distance be- twixt the Creator and the creature; or did we seriously perpend that one simile of St Paul, ”shall the vessel say to the potter, why hast thou made me thus?” it would prevent these arrogant disputes of reason: nor would we argue the definitive sentence of G.o.d, either to heaven or h.e.l.l. Men that live according to the right rule and law of reason, live but in their own kind, as beasts do in theirs; who justly obey the prescript of their natures, and therefore cannot reasonably demand a reward of their actions, as only obeying the natural dictates of their reason. It will, therefore, and must, at last appear, that all salvation is through Christ; which verity, I fear, these great examples of virtue must con- firm, and make it good how the perfectest actions of earth have no t.i.tle or claim unto heaven.
55.--Nor truly do I think the lives of these, or of any other, were ever correspondent, or in all points conformable, unto their doctrines. It is evident that Aristotle transgressed the rule of his own ethicks;<70> the stoicks, that condemn pa.s.sion, and command a man to laugh in Phalaris's<71> bull, could not endure without a groan a fit of the stone or colick. The scepticks, that affirmed they knew nothing,<72> even in that opinion con- fute themselves, and thought they knew more than all the world beside. Diogenes I hold to be the most vain- glorious man of his time, and more ambitious in refus- ing all honours, than Alexander in rejecting none. Vice and the devil put a fallacy upon our reasons; and, provoking us too hastily to run from it, entangle and profound us deeper in it. The duke of Venice, that weds himself unto the sea, by a ring of gold,<73> I will not accuse of prodigality, because it is a solemnity of good use and consequence in the state: but the philoso- pher, that threw his money into the sea to avoid avarice, was a notorious prodigal.<74> There is no road or ready way to virtue; it is not an easy point of art to dis- entangle ourselves from this riddle or web of sin. To perfect virtue, as to religion, there is required a , or complete armour; that whilst we lie at close ward against one vice, we lie not open to the veney<75> of another. And indeed wiser discretions, that have the thread of reason to conduct them, offend without a pardon; whereas under heads may stumble without dishonour. There go so many circ.u.mstances to piece up one good action, that it is a lesson to be good, and we are forced to be virtuous by the book. Again, the practice of men holds not an equal pace, yea and often runs counter to their theory; we naturally know what is good, but naturally pursue what is evil: the rhetorick wherewith I persuade another cannot persuade myself.
There is a depraved appet.i.te in us, that will with patience hear the learned instructions of reason, but yet perform no further than agrees to its own irregular humour. In brief, we all are monsters; that is, a com- position of man and beast: wherein we must endeavour to be as the poets fancy that wise man, Chiron; that is, to have the region of man above that of beast, and sense to sit but at the feet of reason. Lastly, I do desire with G.o.d that all, but yet affirm with men that few, shall know salvation,--that the bridge is narrow, the pa.s.sage strait unto life: yet those who do confine the church of G.o.d either to particular nations, churches, or families, have made it far narrower than our Saviour ever meant it.
56.--The vulgarity of those judgments that wrap the church of G.o.d in Strabo's cloak,<76> and restrain it unto Europe, seem to me as bad geographers as Alex- ander, who thought he had conquered all the world, when he had not subdued the half of any part thereof.
For we cannot deny the church of G.o.d both in Asia and Africa, if we do not forget the peregrinations of the apostles, the deaths of the martyrs, the sessions of many and (even in our reformed judgment) lawful councils, held in those parts in the minority and nonage of ours. Nor must a few differences, more re- markable in the eyes of man than, perhaps, in the judgment of G.o.d, excommunicate from heaven one an- other; much less those Christians who are in a manner all martyrs, maintaining their faith in the n.o.ble way of persecution, and serving G.o.d in the fire, whereas we honour him in the suns.h.i.+ne.
'Tis true, we all hold there is a number of elect, and many to be saved; yet, take our opinions together, and from the confusion thereof, there will be no such thing as salvation, nor shall any one be saved: for, first, the church of Rome condemneth us; we likewise them; the sub-reformists and sectaries sentence the doctrine of our church as d.a.m.nable; the atomist, or familist,<77> re- probates all these; and all these, them again. Thus, whilst the mercies of G.o.d do promise us heaven, our conceits and opinions exclude us from that place. There must be therefore more than one St Peter; particular churches and sects usurp the gates of heaven, and turn the key against each other; and thus we go to heaven against each other's wills, conceits, and opinions, and, with as much uncharity as ignorance, do err, I fear, in points not only of our own, but one another's salvation.
57.--I believe many are saved who to man seem reprobated, and many are reprobated who in the opinion and sentence of man stand elected. There will appear, at the last day, strange and unexpected examples, both of his justice and his mercy; and, therefore, to define either is folly in man, and insolency even in the devils. These acute and subtile spirits, in all their sagacity, can hardly divine who shall be saved; which if they could prognostick, their labour were at an end, nor need they compa.s.s the earth, seeking whom they may devour. Those who, upon a rigid application of the law, sentence Solomon unto d.a.m.nation,<78> condemn not only him, but themselves, and the whole world; for by the letter and written word of G.o.d, we are with- out exception in the state of death: but there is a pre- rogative of G.o.d, and an arbitrary pleasure above the letter of his own law, by which alone we can pretend unto salvation, and through which Solomon might be as easily saved as those who condemn him.
58.--The number of those who pretend unto salvation, and those infinite swarms who think to pa.s.s through the eye of this needle, have much amazed me.
That name and compellation of ”little flock” doth not comfort, but deject, my devotion; especially when I reflect upon mine own unworthiness, wherein, accord- ing to my humble apprehensions, I am below them all.
I believe there shall never be an anarchy in heaven; but, as there are hierarchies amongst the angels, so shall there be degrees of priority amongst the saints. Yet is it, I protest, beyond my ambition to aspire unto the first ranks; my desires only are, and I shall be happy therein, to be but the last man, and bring up the rear in heaven.
59.--Again, I am confident, and fully persuaded, yet dare not take my oath, of my salvation. I am, as it were, sure, and do believe without all doubt, that there is such a city as Constantinople; yet, for me to take my oath thereon were a kind of perjury, because I hold no infallible warrant from my own sense to confirm me in the certainty thereof. And truly, though many pretend to an absolute certainty of their salvation, yet when an humble soul shall contemplate our own un- worthiness, she shall meet with many doubts, and sud- denly find how little we stand in need of the precept of St Paul, ”work out your salvation .” That which is the cause of my election, I hold to be the cause of my salvation, which was the mercy andof G.o.d, before I was, or the foundation of the world. ”Before Abraham was, I am,” is the saying of Christ, yet is it true in some sense if I say it of myself; for I was not only before myself but Adam, that is, in the idea of G.o.d, and the decree of that synod held from all eternity. And in this sense, I say, the world was before the creation, and at an end before it had a beginning. And thus was I dead before I was alive; though my grave be England, my dying place was Paradise; and Eve miscarried of me, before she con- ceived of Cain.
60.--Insolent zeals, that do decry good works and rely only upon faith, take not away merit: for, depending upon the efficacy of their faith, they enforce the condition of G.o.d, and in a more sophistical way do seem to challenge heaven. It was decreed by G.o.d that only those that lapped in the water like dogs, should have the honour to destroy the Midianites; yet could none of those justly challenge, or imagine he deserved, that honour thereupon. I do not deny but that true faith, and such as G.o.d requires, is not only a mark or token, but also a means, of our salvation; but, where to find this, is as obscure to me as my last end. And if our Saviour could object, unto his own disciples and favourites, a faith that, to the quant.i.ty of a grain of mustard seed, is able to remove mountains; surely that which we boast of is not anything, or, at the most, but a remove from nothing.
This is the tenour of my belief; wherein, though there be many things singular, and to the humour of my irregular self, yet, if they square not with maturer judgments, I disclaim them, and do no further favour them than the learned and best judgments shall authorize them.
PART THE SECOND.
1.--Now, for that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity. And, if I hold the true anatomy of myself, I am delineated and naturally framed to such a piece of virtue,--for I am of a const.i.tution so general that it consorts and sympathizeth with all things; I have no antipathy, or rather idiosyncrasy, in diet, humour, air, anything. I wonder not at the French for their dishes of frogs, snails, and toadstools, nor at the Jews for locusts and gra.s.shoppers; but, being amongst them, make them my common viands; and I find they agree with my stomach as well as theirs. I could digest a salad gathered in a church-yard as well as in a garden. I cannot start at the presence of a serpent, scorpion, lizard, or salamander; at the sight of a toad or viper, I find in me no desire to take up a stone to destroy them. I feel not in myself those common antipathies that I can dis- cover in others: those national repugnances do not touch me, nor do I behold with prejudice the French, Italian, Spaniard, or Dutch; but, where I find their actions in balance with my countrymen's, I honour, love, and embrace them, in the same degree. I was born in the eighth climate, but seem to be framed and constel- lated unto all. I am no plant that will not prosper out of a garden. All places, all airs, make unto me one country; I am in England everywhere, and under any meridian. I have been s.h.i.+pwrecked, yet am not enemy with the sea or winds; I can study, play, or sleep, in a tempest. In brief I am averse from nothing: my con- science would give me the lie if I should say I abso- lutely detest or hate any essence, but the devil; or so at least abhor anything, but that we might come to composition. If there be any among those common objects of hatred I do contemn and laugh at, it is that great enemy of reason, virtue, and religion, the mul- t.i.tude; that numerous piece of monstrosity, which, taken asunder, seem men, and the reasonable creatures of G.o.d, but, confused together, make but one great beast, and a monstrosity more prodigious than Hydra.
It is no breach of charity to call these fools; it is the style all holy writers have afforded them, set down by Solomon in canonical Scripture, and a point of our faith to believe so. Neither in the name of mult.i.tude do I only include the base and minor sort of people: there is a rabble even amongst the gentry; a sort of plebeian heads, whose fancy moves with the same wheel as these; men in the same level with mechanicks, though their fortunes do somewhat gild their infirmities, and their purses compound for their follies. But, as in casting account three or four men together come short in account of one man placed by himself below them, so neither are a troop of these ignorant Doradoes<79> of that true esteem and value as many a forlorn person, whose con- dition doth place him below their feet. Let us speak like politicians; there is a n.o.bility without heraldry, a natural dignity, whereby one man is ranked with another, another filed before him, according to the quality of his desert, and pre-eminence of his good parts.
Though the corruption of these times, and the bias of present practice, wheel another way, thus it was in the first and primitive commonwealths, and is yet in the in- tegrity and cradle of well ordered polities: till corrup- tion getteth ground;--ruder desires labouring after that which wiser considerations contemn;--every one having a liberty to ama.s.s and heap up riches, and they a licence or faculty to do or purchase anything.
2.--This general and indifferent temper of mine doth more nearly dispose me to this n.o.ble virtue. It is a happiness to be born and framed unto virtue, and to grow up from the seeds of nature, rather than the inoculations and forced grafts of education: yet, if we are directed only by our particular natures, and regulate our inclinations by no higher rule than that of our reasons, we are but moralists; divinity will still call us heathens. Therefore this great work of charity must have other motives, ends, and impulsions. I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil and accomplish the will and command of my G.o.d; I draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but his that enjoined it; I relieve no man upon the rhetorick of his miseries, nor to content mine own commiserating disposition; for this is still but moral charity, and an act that oweth more to pa.s.sion than reason. He that relieves another upon the bare suggestion and bowels of pity doth not this so much for his sake as for his own; and so, by relieving them, we relieve ourselves also.
It is as erroneous a conceit to redress other men's misfortunes upon the common considerations of merciful natures, that it may be one day our own case; for this is a sinister and politick kind of charity, whereby we seem to bespeak the pities of men in the like occasions.
And truly I have observed that those professed eleemo- synaries, though in a crowd or mult.i.tude, do yet direct and place their pet.i.tions on a few and selected persons; there is surely a physiognomy, which those experienced and master mendicants observe, whereby they instantly discover a merciful aspect, and will single out a face, wherein they spy the signature and marks of mercy.
For there are mystically in our faces certain characters which carry in them the motto of our souls, wherein he that can read A, B, C, may read our natures. I hold, moreover, that there is a phytognomy, or physiognomy, not only of men, but of plants and vegetables; and is every one of them some outward figures which hang as signs or bushes of their inward forms. The finger of G.o.d hath left an inscription upon all his works, not graphical, or composed of letters, but of their several forms, const.i.tutions, parts, and operations, which, aptly joined together, do make one word that doth express their natures. By these letters G.o.d calls the stars by their names; and by this alphabet Adam a.s.signed to every creature a name peculiar to its nature. Now, there are, besides these characters in our faces, certain mystical figures in our hands, which I dare not call mere dashes, strokesor at random, because delineated by a pencil that never works in vain; and hereof I take more particular notice, because I carry that in mine own hand which I could never read of nor discover in another. Aristotle, I confess, in his acute and singular book of physiognomy, hath made no mention of chiromancy:<80> yet I believe the Egyptians, who were nearer addicted to those abstruse and mysti- cal sciences, had a knowledge therein: to which those vagabond and counterfeit Egyptians did after<81> pretend, and perhaps retained a few corrupted principles, which sometimes might verify their prognosticks.
It is the common wonder of all men, how, among so many millions of faces, there should be none alike: now, contrary, I wonder as much how there should be any. He that shall consider how many thousand several words have been carelessly and without study composed out of twenty-four letters; withal, how many hundred lines there are to be drawn in the fabrick of one man; shall easily find that this variety is necessary: and it will be very hard that they shall so concur as to make one portrait like another. Let a painter carelessly limn out a million of faces, and you shall find them all different; yes, let him have his copy before him, yet, after all his art, there will remain a sensible distinction: for the pattern or example of everything is the perfectest in that kind, whereof we still come short, though we transcend or go beyond it; because herein it is wide, and agrees not in all points unto its copy. Nor doth the similitude of creatures disparage the variety of nature, nor any way confound the works of G.o.d. For even in things alike there is diversity; and those that do seem to accord do manifestly disagree. And thus is man like G.o.d; for, in the same things that we resemble him we are utterly different from him. There was never anything so like another as in all points to concur; there will ever some reserved difference slip in, to prevent the ident.i.ty; without which two several things would not be alike, but the same, which is impossible.
3.--But, to return from philosophy to charity, I hold not so narrow a conceit of this virtue as to con- ceive that to give alms is only to be charitable, or think a piece of liberality can comprehend the total of charity.
Divinity hath wisely divided the act thereof into many branches, and hath taught us, in this narrow way, many paths unto goodness; as many ways as we may do good, so many ways we may be charitable. There are in- firmities not only of body, but of soul and fortunes, which do require the merciful hand of our abilities. I cannot contemn a man for ignorance, but behold him with as much pity as I do Lazarus. It is no greater charity to clothe his body than apparel the nakedness of his soul. It is an honourable object to see the reasons of other men wear our liveries, and their borrowed understandings do homage to the bounty of ours. It is the cheapest way of beneficence, and, like the natural charity of the sun, illuminates another without obscuring itself. To be reserved and caitiff<82> in this part of goodness is the sordidest piece of covetous- ness, and more contemptible than the pecuniary avarice.
To this (as calling myself a scholar) I am obliged by the duty of my condition. I make not therefore my head a grave, but a treasure of knowledge. I intend no monopoly, but a community in learning. I study not for my own sake only, but for theirs that study not for themselves. I envy no man that knows more than myself, but pity them that know less. I instruct no man as an exercise of my knowledge, or with an intent rather to nourish and keep it alive in mine own head than beget and propagate it in his. And, in the midst of all my endeavours, there is but one thought that dejects me, that my acquired parts must perish with myself, nor can be legacied among my honoured friends.
I cannot fall out or contemn a man for an error, or conceive why a difference in opinion should divide an affection; for controversies, disputes, and argumenta- tions, both in philosophy and in divinity, if they meet with discreet and peaceable natures, do not infringe the laws of charity. In all disputes, so much as there is of pa.s.sion, so much there is of nothing to the purpose; for then reason, like a bad hound, spends upon a false scent, and forsakes the question first started. And this is one reason why controversies are never determined; for, though they be amply proposed, they are scarce at all handled; they do so swell with unnecessary digressions; and the parenthesis on the party is often as large as the main discourse upon the subject. The foundations of religion are already established, and the principles of salvation subscribed unto by all. There remain not many controversies worthy a pa.s.sion, and yet never any dispute without, not only in divinity but inferior arts.
What a [Greek omitted] and hot skirmish is betwixt S.
and T. in Lucian!<83> How do grammarians hack and slash for the genitive case in Jupiter!<84> How do they break their own pates, to salve that of Priscian!<85>Yes, even amongst wiser militants, how many wounds have been given and credits slain, for the poor victory of an opinion, or beggarly conquest of a distinction! Scholars are men of peace, they bear no arms, but their tongues are sharper than Actius's razor.<86> their pens carry farther, and give a louder report than thunder. I had rather stand the shock of a basilisko<87> than in the fury of a merciless pen. It is not mere zeal to learning, or devotion to the muses, that wiser princes patron the arts, and carry an indulgent aspect unto scholars; but a desire to have their names eternized by the memory of their writings, and a fear of the revengeful pen of succeeding ages: for these are the men that, when they have played their parts, and had their , must step out and give the moral of their scenes, and deliver unto posterity an inventory of their virtues and vices. And surely there goes a great deal of conscience to the compiling of an history: there is no reproach to the scandal of a story; it is such an authentick kind of falsehood, that with authority belies our good names to all nations and posterity.
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