Sir Thomas Browne / by Edmund Gosse.

  • Edmund Gosse
Date:
1905
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir Thomas Browne / by Edmund Gosse. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    40/232 page 28
    and the mercies of God” will effect a conciliation between those who, to an eye fixed upon the miserable present age, seem as unlikely to be united as the poles of heaven. After a general survey, the medicus prefers the Church of England. But he accepts her rule not because he thinks her infallible, but because, on the whole, and having examined other systems of piety, there is no church whose every part so squares into his conscience. He endeavours to observe her con- stitutions. But outside the skeleton of her Articles, he fills up the outlines of his conduct in harmony with his personal convictions :— ““Whatsoever is beyond, as points indifferent, I observe according to the rules of my private reason, or the humour and fashion of my devotion ; neither believing this because Luther affirmed it, or disproving that because Calvin hath disavouched it. I condemn not all things in the Council of Trent, nor approve all in the Synod of Dort. In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the Church is my text ; where that speaks ’tis but my comment: where there is a joint silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason.” This is Thomas Browne’s creed, and it is so moderate, and in essentials so conservative, that we may wonder that it awakened any scandal. We shall see, however, later on, what exceptions were made to it, and at what particular points it was attacked. But returning for the time being to the medicus himself, we presently detect a cunning in his apparent innocency. It would not have been worth while for him to compose a long treatise merely to assert that he is in accordance with the Church of England. He makes his confession, as
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3