Religio medici : Urn burial and Christian morals. With an illustrated memoir / Sir Thomas Browne.

  • Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.
Date:
1894
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Religio medici : Urn burial and Christian morals. With an illustrated memoir / 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.

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    the present; but revolution of time, and the like aspects from Heaven, will restore it, when it will flourish till it be condemned again. For, as though there were a metemp- sychosis^ and the soul of one man passed into another, Opinions do find, after certain revolutions, men and minds like those that first begat them. To see ourselves again, we need not look for Plato s year :* every man is not only himself; there have been many Diogeneses, and as many Timons^ though but few of that name ; men are lived over again ; the world is now as it was in ages past ; there was none then, but there hath been some one since, that parallels him, and is, as it were, his revived self, SECTION VII.—Now, the first of mine was that of the Arabians ; that the Souls of Men perished with their Bodies, but should yet be raised again at the Last Day: not that I did absolutely conceive a mortality of the Soul, but, if that were (which Faith, not Philosophy, have yet thoroughly dis- proved), and that both entered the grave together, yet I held the same conceit thereof that we all do of the Body, that it should rise again. Surely it is but the merits of our un- worthy Natures, if we sleep in Darkness until the last Alarum. A serious reflex upon my own unworthiness did make me backward from challenging this prerogative of my Soul: so that I might enjoy my Saviour at the last, I could with patience be nothing almost unto Eternity. The second was that of Origen ; that God would not persist in His Vengeance for ever, but after a definite time of His Wrath, would release the Damned Souls from torture ; which error I fell into upon a serious contemplation of the great attribute of God, His Mercy ; and did a little cherish it in myself, because I found therein no malice, and a ready weight to sway me from the other extreme of despair, whereunto melancholy and contemplative natures are too easily dis- posed. A third there is, which I did never positively main- tain or practise, but have often wished it had been consonant to Truth, and not offensive to my Religion ; and that is, * A revolution of certain thousand years, when all things should return unto their former estate, and he be teaching again in his School, as when he delivered this Opinion.