OBSERVATIONS

UPON

RELIGIO MEDICI,

BY SIR KENELM DIGBY, KNIGHT.

TO THE

RIGHT HONOURABLE EDWARD EARL OF DORSET, BARON OF BUCKHURST, &c.

MY LORD,

I RECEIVED Yesternight, your lordship's of the nineteenth current, wherein you are pleased to oblige me, not only by extreme gallant expressions of favour and kindness, but likewise by taking so far into your care the expending of my time, during the tediousness of my restraint, as to recommend to my reading a book, that had received the honour and safeguard of your approbation; for both which I most humbly thank your lordship. And since I cannot in the way of gratefulness express unto your lordship, as I would, those hearty sentiments I have of your goodness to me; I will at the last endeavonr, in the way of duty and observance, to let you see how the little needle of my soul is throughly touched at the great loadstone of yours, and followeth suddenly and strongly, which way soever you beckon it. In this occasion, the magnetic motion was impatient to have the book in my hands that your lordship gave so advantageous a character of; whereupon I sent presently (as late as it was) to Paul's church-yard for this favourite of yours, Religio Medici: which after awhile found me in a condition fit to receive a blessing by a visit from any of such masterpieces, as you look upon with gracious eyes;

for I was newly gotten into my bed. This good-natured creature I could easily persuade to be my bedfellow, and to wake with me as long as I had any edge to entertain myself with the delights I sucked from so noble a conversation. And truly, my lord, I closed not my eyes till I had enriched myself with, or at least exactly surveyed all the treasures that are lapped up in the folds of those few sheets. To return only a general commendation of this curious piece, or at large to admire the author's spirit and smartness, were too perfunctory an account, and too slight a one, to so discerning and steady an eye as yours, after so particular and encharged a summons to read heedfully this discourse. I will therefore presume to blot a sheet or two of paper with my reflections upon sundry passages through the whole context of it, as they shall occur to my remembrance. Which now your lordship knoweth, this packet is not so happy as to carry with it any one expression of my obsequiousness to you. It will be but reasonable, you should even here give over your further trouble of reading, what my respect engageth me to the writing of.

Whose first step is ingenuity and a well-natured evenness of judgment, shall be sure of applause and fair hopes in all men for the rest of his journey. And indeed, my lord, methinketh this gentleman setteth out excellently poised with that happy temper; and showeth a great deal of judicious piety in making a right use of the blind zeal that bigots lose themselves in. Yet I cannot satisfy my doubts thoroughly, how he maketh good his professing to follow the great wheel of the church in matters of divinity; which surely is the solid basis of true religion: for to do so, without jarring against the conduct of the first mover by eccentrical and irregular motions, obligeth one to yield a very dutiful obedience to the determinations of it, without arrogating to one's self a controling ability in liking or misliking the faith, doctrine, and constitutions of that church which one looketh upon as their north star:

whereas, if I mistake not, this author approveth the Church of England, not absolutely, but comparatively with other reformed churches.

My next reflection is concerning what he hath sprinkled (most wittily) in several places concerning the nature and immortality of a human soul, and the condition and state it is in, after the dissolution of the body. And here give me leave to observe what our countryman, Roger Bacon, did long ago; "that those students who busy themselves much with such notions as reside wholly to the fantasy, do hardly ever become idoneous for abstracted, metaphysical speculations; the one having bulky foundation of matter, or of the accidents of it, to settle upon, at the least with one foot: the other flying continually, even to a lessening pitch in the subtle air. And, accordingly, it hath been generally noted, that the exactest mathematicians, who converse altogether with lines, figures, and other differences of quantity, have seldom proved eminent in metaphysics, or speculative divinity. Nor again, the professors of these sciences in the other arts. Much less can it be expected that an excellent physician, whose fancy is always fraught with the material drugs that he prescribeth his apothecary to compound his medicines of, and whose hands are inured to the cutting up, and eyes, to the inspection of anatomised bodies, should easily, and with success, fly his thoughts at so towering a game, as a pure intellect, a separated and unbodied soul." Surely this acute author's sharp wit, had he orderly applied his studies that way, would have been able to satisfy himself with less labour, and others with more plenitude, than it hath been the lot of so dull a brain as mine, concerning the immortality of the soul. And yet, I assure you, my lord, the little philosophy that is allowed me, for my share, demonstrateth this proposition to me, as well as faith delivereth it; which our physician will not admit in his.

To make good this assertion here were very unreasonable; since that to do it exactly (and without ex

actness, it were not demonstration, requireth a total survey of the whole science of bodies, and of all the operations that we are conversant with, of a rational creature; which I having done with all the succinctness I have been able to explicate so knotty a subject with, hath taken me up in the first draught near two hundred sheets of paper. I shall therefore take leave of this point, with only this note, that I take the immortality of the soul (under his favour) to be of that nature, that to them only that are not versed in the ways of proving it by reason, it is an article of faith; to others, it is an evident conclusion of demonstrative sci

ence.

And with a like short note, I shall observe, how if he had traced the nature of the soul from its first principles, he could not have suspected it should sleep in the grave till the resurrection of the body. Nor would he have permitted his compassionative nature to imagine it belonged to God's mercy, (as the Chiliasts did,) to change its condition in those that are damned, from pain to happiness. For where God should have done that, he must have made that anguished soul another creature than what it was; (as to make fire cease from being hot, requireth to have it become another thing than the element of fire ;) since that to be in such a condition as maketh us understand damned souls miserable, is a necessary effect of the temper it is in, when it goeth out of the body, and must necessarily (out of its nature) remain in, unvariably for all eternity; though, for the conceptions of the vulgar part of mankind, who are not capable of such abstruse notions, it be styled, and truly too, the sentence and punishment of a severe judge.

I am extremely pleased with him, when he saith, there are not impossibilities enough in religion for an active faith; and no whit less, when in philosophy he will not be satisfied with such naked terms, as in schools use to be obtruded upon easy minds, when the master's fingers are not strong enough to untie the

knots proposed unto them. I confess, when I enquire what light (to use our author's example) is, I should be as well contented with his silence, as with his telling me it is actus perspicui, unless he explicate clearly to me, what those words mean, which I find very few go about to do. Such meat they swallow whole and eject it as entire. But were such things scientifically and methodically declared they would be of extreme satisfaction and delight. And that work taketh up the greatest part of my formerly-mentioned treatise. For I endeavour to show by a continued progress, and not by leaps, all the motions of nature; and unto them to fit intelligibly the terms used by her best secretaries; whereby all wild fantastic qualities and moods, introduced for refuges of ignorance, are banished from

commerce.

In the next place, my lord, I shall suspect that our author hath not penetrated into the bottom of those conceptions that deep scholars have taught us of eternity; methinketh he taketh it for an infinite extension of time, and a never-ending revolution of continual succession; which is no more like eternity than a gross body is like a pure spirit. Nay, such an infinity of revolutions is demonstrable to be a contradiction, and impossible. In the state of eternity there is no succession, no change, no variety. Souls or angels, in that condition, do not so much as change a thought. All things, notions and actions, that ever were, are, or shall be in any creature, are actually present to such an intellect. And this, my lord, I aver, not as deriving it from theology, and having recourse to beatific vision, to make good my tenet, (for so, only glorified creatures should enjoy such immense knowledge,) but out of the principles of nature and reason, and from thence shall demonstrate it to belong to the lowest soul of the ignorantest wretch whilst he lived in this world, since damned in hell. A bold undertaking, you will say. But I confidently engage myself to it. Upon this occasion occurreth also a great deal to be said of