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.

    261/280 (page 249)
    However, to palliate the shortness of our lives and some- what to compensate our brief term in this world, its crood to know as much as we can of it, and also so far as possibly in us heth to hold such a theory of times past as though we had seen the same. He who hath thus considered the world, as also how therein things long past have been answered by things present^, how matters in one age have been acted over in another, and how there is nothing new under the sun\ may conceive him- self in some manner to have lived from the beginning, and to be as old as the world ; and, if he should still hve on, ’twould be but tne same thing. Lastly, if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation. Reckon not upon long life : think every day the last, and live always beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his expectation hves many lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his days. Time past is gone like a shadow ; make time to come present. Approximate thy latter times by present apprehensions of them ; be like^ a neighbour unto the grave, and think there is but httle to corne. And, since there is something of us that will still live on. join both hves together, and live in one but for the other. He who thus ordereth the purposes of this life will never be far from the next, and is in some manner already in it, by a happy conforrmty and close apprehension of it. And if (as w*e have elsewhere declared)^ any have been so happy as personally to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exolution, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingreosion into the Divine Shadow, according to mystical theology, they have already had an handsome anticipation of Heaven ; the world is in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them. 1 [See p. 10, 1. 17]. ^ Eccles. i, 9-10. HP- 135, last §].