Religio medici with Observations thereon / by Sir Kenelm Digby. To which is added, Hydriotaphia, or Urn-burial, a discourse on sepulchral urns; and also Christian morals ; by Sir Thomas Browne.

  • Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.
Date:
1848
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religio medici with Observations thereon / by Sir Kenelm Digby. To which is added, Hydriotaphia, or Urn-burial, a discourse on sepulchral urns; and also Christian morals ; by Sir Thomas Browne. 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.

    136/408 (page 66)
    with those in that great Father securely interpret the work of the first day,jial lux, to the creation of angels, (82) though I confess there is not any crea- ture that hath so near a glimpse of their nature, as light in the sun and elements. We style it a bare accident, but where it subsists alone it is a spiritual substance, and may be an angel: in brief, con- ceive light invisible, and that is a spirit. These are certainly the magisterial and master- pieces of the Creator, the flower, or (as we may say) the best part of nothing, actually existing, what we are but in hopes, and probability; we are only that amphibious piece between a corporeal and spiritual essence, that middle form that links those two together, and makes good the method of God and nature, that jumps not from extremes, but unites the incompatible distances by some middle and participating natures. That we are the breath and similitude of God, it is indisputable, and upon record of holy Scripture; but to call ourselves a microcosm, or little world, (93) I thought it only (si) “ Let there be light—and the light was an expression very judiciously enumerated by Longinus among the most sub- lime in literature.—Ed. (83) We have here a dogma of the stoics, which, from its strik- ing character became current in the ancient world. Philo Juda»us relates it as a common saying: Bpaxuv ji'tv kocr/iov top avQpio- 7tov, /xeyav Se apOpunrop top Kuafiop elpai. (Quis Divin. Action. Hseres.) Macrobius (II. In Somn. Scipion, c. 12.) makes use of nearly the same words : “ Physici mundum magnum homineiri dixerunt; et hominem brevem mundum.” And what, as Lip- sius observes, was the reason of this opinion ? It was this— that as the universe is animated by the Spirit of God, “ All are but parts of one stupendous whole, Whose body nature is, and God the soul— so man’s body is animated by his intellectual soul. Again,