Religio medici.

  • Thomas Browne
Date:
1831
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religio medici. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    compiling of an history: there is no reproach to the scandal of a story; it is such an authentic kind of falsehood, that with authority belies our good names to all nations and posterity. IV. There is another offence unto charity, which no author hath ever written of, and few take notice of; and that’s the reproach, not of whole professions, mysteries, and conditions, hut of whole nations, wherein by opprobrious epithets we miscall each other, and by an uncharitable logic, from a dispo- sition in a few, conclude a habit in all. Le mutin Anglois, et le bravache Escossois; Le ****** Italien, et le fol Francois; Le poultron Romain, le larron de Gascongne, L'Espagnol superbe, et VAleman ivrogne. St. Paul, that calls the Cretans liars, doth it but indirectly, and upon quotation of their own poets6. It is as bloody a thought in one way, as Nero’s was in another7; for by a word we wound a thousand, i 6 That is, Epimenides; the place is, Tit. i. v. 12, where Paul useth this verse, taken out ol Epimenides. KpTjTes aet xj/evarai, K<xna Gripia, ycurrepes apyai 7 I suppose he alludes to that passage in Sueton, in the life of Nero, where he relates that a certain person upon a time, spoke in his hearing these words, ’Epov Gavovros yala puxG'fl'ru Tvvpl, i. e. When I am dead let earth be mingled with fire. Whereupon the emperor uttered these words, ’E^uoD £o>vtos, i. e. Yea, whilst I live: there by one word, he expressed a cruel thought which I think is the thing he meant. This is more cruel than the wish of Caligula, that the people of Rome had but one neck, that he might destroy them all at a blow. L
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