THAT MAN IS, AS IT WERE, A LITTLE WORLD. 87 wind blow them from the stalks; the thoughts of our mind, to the motion of angels; and our pure understanding, to those intellectual natures which are always present with God; and, lastly, our immortal souls (while they are righteous) are by God Himself beautified with the title of His own image and similitude. In this also is the little world of man compared, and made more like the universal (“man being the measure of all things," saith Aristotle and Pythagoras), that the four complexions' resemble the four elements, and the seven ages of man the seven planets; whereof our infancy is compared to the moon, in which we seem only to live and grow as plants; the second age to Mercury, wherein we are taught and instructed; our third age to Venus, the days of love, desire, and vanity; the fourth to the sun, the strong, flourishing, and beautiful age of man's life; the fifth to Mars, in which we seek honour and victory, and in which our thoughts travel to ambitious ends; the sixth age is ascribed to Jupiter, in which we begin to take account of our times, judge ourselves, and grow to the perfection of our understanding; the last and seventh is Saturn, wherein our days are sad and overcast, and in which we find, by dear and lamentable experience, and by the loss which can never be repaired, that of all our vain passions and affections past, the sorrow only abideth: our attendants are sicknesses, and variable infirmities; and by how much the more we are accompanied with plenty, by so much the more greedily is our end desired, whom, when time hath made unsociable to others, we become a burden to ourselves: being of no other use than to hold the riches we have from our successors. this time it is, when (as aforesaid) we, for the most part, and never before, prepare for our eternal habitation, which we pass on unto with many sighs, groans, and sad thoughts, and in the end, by the workmanship of death, finish the sorrowful business of a wretched life, towards which we always travel both sleeping and waking; neither have those beloved companions of honour and riches any power at all to hold us any one day, by the glorious promise of entertainments; but by what crooked path soever we walk, the same leadeth on directly to the house of death, whose doors lie open at all hours, and to all persons. For this tide of man's life, after it once turneth and declineth, ever runneth with a perpetual ebb and falling stream, but never floweth again: our leaf, once fallen, springeth no more; neither doth the sun of the summer adorn us again with the garments of new leaves and flowers.3 In 1 Viz., the black or melancholic, ruddy or sanguine, brown or choleric, and white or phlegmatic. 2 The reader must remember that Bacon and Ralegh did not receive the Copernican system; that they consequently regarded the earth as the centre of the universe, round which all other bodies, the sun included, revolved. (See page 82, note.) The description given by Ralegh of the seven ages of man may be compared with that given by Shakspere," As you like it," Act II., Scene vii. 3 Compare with this exquisite passage Beattie's "Hermit," stanza 4. "But when shall spring visit the mouldering urn? "The plants and trees made poor and old The spring-time bounteous So also Catullus says,― "The sun may set and rise; But we contrary wise, One everlasting night." For if there were any baiting-place, or rest, in the course or race of man's life, then, according to the doctrine of the Academics, the same might also perpetually be maintained; but as there is a continuance of motion in natural living things, and as the sap and juice, wherein the life of plants is preserved, doth evermore ascend or descend; so is it with the life of man, which is always either increasing towards ripeness and perfection, or declining and decreasing towards rottenness and dissolution. 2. OF THE PLEASANT HABITATIONS UNDER THE EQUINOCTIAL.— (BOOK I., CAP. III., SECT. VIII.) We find that these hottest regions of the world seated under the equinoctial line, or near it, are so refreshed with a daily gale of easterly wind (which the Spaniards call the brize), that doth evermore blow strongest in the heat of the day, as the downright beams of the sun cannot so much master it that there is any inconvenience or distemperate heat found thereby. Secondly, the nights are so cold, fresh, and equal, by reason of the entire interposition of the earth, as (for those places which myself have seen, near the line and under it) I know no other part of the world of better or equal temper; only there are some tracts, which by accident of high mountains are barred from this air and fresh wind, and some few sandy parts without trees, which are not therefore so well inhabited as the rest; and such difference of soils we find also in all other parts of the world. But (for the greatest part) those regions have so many goodly rivers, fountains, and little brooks, abundance of high cedars, and other stately trees casting shade, so many sorts of delicate fruits, ever bearing, and at all times beautified with blossom and fruit, both green and ripe, as it may of all other parts be best compared to the paradise of Eden: the boughs and branches are never unclothed and left naked; their sap creepeth not under ground into the root, fearing the injury of the frost; neither doth Pomona at any times despise her husband Vertumnus in his winter quarters OF THE INDIAN FIG-TREE. 89 and old age. Therefore are those countries called "vicious countries" for nature being liberal to all without labour, necessity imposing no industry or travel, idleness bringeth forth no other fruits than vain thoughts and licentious pleasures. 3. OF THE INDIAN FIG-TREE.—(" HISTORY," BOOK I., CAP. IV., SECT. II.) This tree beareth a fruit of the bigness of a great pea, or, as Pliny reporteth, somewhat bigger, and that it is a tree always planting itself; that it spreadeth itself so far abroad as that a troop of horsemen may hide themselves under it. Strabo saith that it hath branches bending downwards, and leaves no less than a shield. Aristobulus affirmeth that fifty horsemen may shadow themselves under one of these trees. Onesicritus raiseth this number to four hundred. This tree, saith Theophrastus, exceedeth all other in bigness, which also Pliny and Onesicritus confirm; to the trunk of which these authors give such a magnitude as I shame to repeat. But it may be that all speak by an ill-understood report. For this Indian fig-tree is not so rare a plant as Becanus conceiveth, who, because he found it nowhere else, would needs draw the garden of paradise to the tree, and set it by the river Acesines. But many parts of the world have them, and I myself have seen twenty thousand of them in one valley, not far from Paria in America. They grow in moist grounds, and in this manner after they are first shot up some twenty or thirty feet in length (some more, some less, according to the soil), they spread a very large top, having no bough nor twig in the trunk or stem; for, from the utmost end of the head-branches there issueth out a gummy juice which hangeth downward like a cord or sinew, and within a few months reacheth the ground, which it no sooner toucheth but it taketh root; and then, being filled both from the top boughs and from his own proper root, this cord maketh itself a tree exceeding hastily. From the utmost boughs of these young trees there fall again the like cords, which in one year and less (in that world of a perpetual spring) become also trees of the bigness of the nether part of a lance, and as straight as art or nature can make anything, casting such a shade, and making such a kind of grove, as no other tree in the world can do. Now one of these trees considered, with all his young ones, may indeed shroud four hundred or four thousand horsemen, if they please; for they cover whole valleys of ground where these trees grow near the sea bank, as they do by thousands in the inner part of Trinidado. The cords which fall down over the banks into the sea, shooting always downward to find root under water, are in those seas of the Indies, where oysters breed, entangled in their beds, so as, by pulling up one of these cords out of the sea, I have seen five hundred oysters hanging in a heap thereon; whereof the report came, that oysters grew on trees in India. But that they bear any such huge leaves, or any such delicate fruit, I could never find, and yet I have travelled a dozen miles together under them. 4. THE TRANSITORY NATURE OF HUMAN HAPPINESS.- (PREFACE TO "HISTORY.") If we truly examine the difference of both conditions,―to wit, of the rich and mighty, whom we call fortunate, and of the poor and oppressed, whom we count wretched, we shall find the happiness of the one, and the miserable estate of the other, so tied by God to the very instant, and both so subject to interchange (witness the sudden downfall of the greatest princes, and the speedy uprising of the meanest persons), as the one hath nothing so certain whereof to boast, nor the other so uncertain whereof to bewail itself. For there is no man so assured of his honour, of his riches, health, or life, but that he may be deprived of either, or all, the very next hour or day to come. And although the air which compasseth adversity be very obscure, yet therein we better discern God than in that shining light which environeth worldly glory; through which, for the clearness thereof, there is no vanity which escapeth our sight. And let adversity seem what it will; to happy men ridiculous, who make themselves merry at other men's misfortunes; and to those under the cross, grievous; yet this is true, that for all that is past, to the very instant, the portions remaining are equal to either. For, be it that we have lived many years, and in them all we have rejoiced;" or, be it that we have measured the same length of days, and therein have evermore sorrowed; yet, looking back from our present being, we find both the one and the other, to wit, the joy and the woe,-sailed out of sight; and death, which doth pursue us and hold us in chase from our infancy, hath gathered it. Whatsoever of our age is past, death holds it. So as, whosoever he be to whom fortune hath been a servant, and the time a friend, let him but take the account of his memory (for we have no other keeper of our pleasures past), and truly examine what it hath reserved, either of beauty and youth, or foregone delights; what it hath saved, that it might last, of his dearest affections, or of whatever else the amorous spring-time gave his thoughts of contentment, then invaluable, and he shall find, that all the art which his elder years have can draw no other vapour out of these dissolutions than heavy, secret, and sad sighs. He shall find nothing remaining but those sorrows which grow up after our fast-springing youth, overtake it when it is at a stand, and overtop it utterly when it begins to wither: insomuch as, looking back from the very instant time, and from our now being, the poor, diseased, and captive creature hath as little sense of all his former miseries and pains, as he that is most blessed, in common opinion, hath of his forepast pleasures and delights. For whatsoever is cast behind us, is just nothing; and what is to come, deceitful hope hath it. Only those few black swans' I must except who, 1 An allusion to an ancient proverb, "As rare as a black swan." The ancients supposed that no such bird was to be found; and hence they used the proverb to express anything very unusual. WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH. 91 having had the grace to value worldly vanities at no more than their own price, do, by retaining the comfortable memory of a wellacted life, behold death without dread, and the grave without fear, and embrace both as necessary guides to endless glory. IV. WILLIAM CHILLINGWORTH. CHILLING WORTH was born at Oxford in 1602, and received his education in the university there. He was distinguished by his skill in mathematics and logic; and acquired, from the very acuteness of his intellect, a habit of doubting, which prevented him having fixed opinions, even on the most important subjects, and led to his being, at one time, induced to join the Romish Church. This, however, was not a form of religion in which one given to doubting could remain; and in a short time Chillingworth returned to that faith of which he was destined to become so distinguished a defendant. His own habits of free inquiry led him to doubt the propriety of imposing tests on any one; and he himself, for some time, hesitated to sign the Thirty-nine Articles; but having at length done so, he was made Chancellor of Salisbury. During the civil war, he aided the cause of Charles with his pen, and accompanied his friend, Lord Hopton, to the field. In 1644 he was taken with the garrison in Arundel Castle, and, according to Clarendon, " as soon as his person was known, the clergy that attended that army prosecuted him with all the inhumanity imaginable; so that, by their barbarous usage, he died within few days." His chief work is his "Religion of Protestants, a safe way to salvation," written in opposition to a Roman Catholic attack on Protestantism. It embodies his opponent's work, which it answers, section by section; and though this somewhat interferes with the completeness of the book as a defence of Protestantism, it renders it all the more complete as a safeguard against Popery. In acuteness of reasoning, Chillingworth has never been surpassed; and it deserves to be recorded to his honour, that he is not less distinguished by moderation and opposition to all employment of force in religion, than by logical power. 1. THAT IT IS EASIER TO UNDERSTAND SCRIPTURE THAN THE COUNCILS OF THE CHURCH.-(" RELIGION OF PROTESTANTS," CHAPTER II., When you say "that unlearned and ignorant men cannot understand Scripture," I would desire you to come out of the clouds, and tell us what you mean; whether that they cannot understand all Scripture, or that they cannot understand any Scripture; or that they cannot understand so much as is sufficient for their direction to heaven. If the first, I believe the learned are in the same case; if the second, every man's experience will confute you, for who is there that is not capable of a sufficient 1 i.e., His Roman Catholic opponent. |