Sir Thomas Browne : an essay / Charles Edward Sayle.

  • Charles Edward Sayle
Date:
1915
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Sir Thomas Browne : an essay / Charles Edward Sayle. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    law unto my advancing judgment.’ Incidentally he acknowledges loyalty to the Church of England; but he has a wider concept. ‘Every man’s reason is his best Cidipus,’ he says. ‘But in Divinity L love to keep the road and follow the great wheel of the Church.’ ‘I leave no gap for Heresie, Schismes, or Errors.’ But hear him further : The mortallest enemy unto Knowledge, and that which hath done the greatest execution upon truth, hath been a peremptory adhesion unto Authority and more especially, the establishing of our belief upon the dictates of Antiquity.! The voice has changed. No longer the young writer who had taken the world by storm in his first book. The second passage occurs in the very forefront of the great Pseudodozia, the advance work and fortifications behind which he was to establish the truth such as he found it. The titles of these early chapters of this his second book are significant in themselves,—‘ Of the Causes of Common Errors ; Of Credulity and Supinity ; Of Adherence unto Antiquity.’ But to return to his earlier book on religion, we find him with a belief in God, and prone to contemplate his attributes, especially those two mighty ones, his Wisdom and Kternity, and he defends the doctrine of the Trinity through the writings of Aristotle. In a crucial terse sentence he defines his position more clearly : ‘I call the effects of Nature the works of God.’ If Browne is prepared to accept this attitude, and if we are prepared to accept Browne’s axiom, then a good deal of misunderstanding is swept away. ‘In a wise supputa- tion all things begin and end in the Almighty.’ Atheism he attributes to ‘the bad construction and perverse com- ment on second causes.’ ‘Thus the Devil played at Chess with me, and yielding a Pawn, thought to gain a Queen.’ Analysing the Religio Medici, it will be found that the whole of the first part treats of Faith, and the second part Charity. Here he states what he means by Heaven, Purgatory, and Hell. But turn the page, and you find the maturer man again talking of all Authority as ‘a powerful enemy into Knowledge?.’ You will ask how Browne reconciles these two voices?. His reply is that there is in every man, not one man but four men. The opinions which he cited were the 1 Pseud, Epidemica i. 6, BE dei de > Buckle points out the same advance in Browne’s opinions,
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