Works : religio medici; Hydriotaphia; the Garden of Cyrs; Christian morals / of Sir Thomas Browne; with a glossary by William Swan Sonnenschein.

  • Thomas Browne
Date:
1906
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Works : religio medici; Hydriotaphia; the Garden of Cyrs; Christian morals / of Sir Thomas Browne; with a glossary by William Swan Sonnenschein. 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.

    18/280 (page 6)
    but by the sinister ends of princes, the ambition and avarice of prelates, and the fatal corruption of times, sJ decayed, impaired, and fallen from its native beauty that it required the careful ^nd charitable hands ^ these times to restore it to its primitive integrity, ^ow the accidental occasion whereupon the slender means whereby, the low and abject condition of by whom so good a work was set on foot, which m our adversaries beget contempt and scorn, ^ wonder, and is the very same ob]ection the insolen pagans first cast at Christ and His disciples. ^ Yet have I not so shaken hands with those desperate resolutions (who had rather venture at large their de- cayed bottom than bring her in to be new the dock; who had rather promiscuously retain all than abridge any, and obstinately be_ what they are than what they have been) as to stand in diameter an sword’s point with them. We have reformed from them, not against them ; for (omitting those perations and terms of scurrility betwixt us which onlj difference our Affections and not our Cause) there is between us one common name and appellation one faith and necessary body of both; and therefore I am not scrupulous to converse and live with them, to enter their churches in Refect of ours, and either pray with them or could never perceive any rational ®®n9®quence fro those many texts which prohibit the children of Israel to pollute themselves vfith the temples of the heathe^, we^being all Christians, and not divided by such de- tested impieties as might profane our ^ dace wherein we make them ; or that a resolved con Lienee may not adore her Creator anywhere, especi- ally in plaJes devoted to His service ; deLioL offend Him, mine may “ter’and theirs profane it, mine may hallow it. Holy-water , crucifix (dangerous to the common people) deceii e no my judgment, nor abuse my devotion at all. 1 am, I confess, naturally inclined to that which misg i Lai terms superstUion. My common do acknowledge austere, my behaviour full of rigour.