way. This cryptic and involved method of his providence have I ever admired; nor can I relate the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, the escapes of dangers, and hits of chance, with a Bezo las Manos to fortune, or a bare Gramercy to my good stars. Abraham might have thought the ram in the thicket came thither by accident; human reason would have said that mere chance conveyed Moses in the ark to the sight of Pharaoh's daughter: what a labyrinth is there in the story of Joseph, able to convert a Stoic! Surely there are in every man's life certain rubs, doublings, and wrenches, which pass a while under the effects of chance, but at the last, well examined, prove the mere hand of God. 'Twas not dumb chance, that, to discover the fougade or powder-plot, contrived a miscarriage in the letter. I like the victory of '88 the better for that one occurrence, which our enemies imputed to our dishonor and the partiality of fortune, to wit, the tempests and contrariety of winds. King Philip did not detract from the nation, when he said, he sent his armado to fight with men, and not to combat with the winds. Where there is a manifest disproportion between the powers and forces of two several agents, upon a maxim of reason we may promise the victory to the superior; but when unexpected accidents slip in, and unthought-of occurrences intervene, these must proceed from a power that owes no obedience to those axioms; where, as in the writing upon the wall, we may behold the hand, but see not the spring that moves it. The success of that petty province of Holland (of which the Grand Seignor proudly said, if they should trouble him as they did the Spaniard, he would send his men with shovels and pick-axes, and throw it into the sea,), I cannot altogether ascribe to the ingenuity and industry of the people, but the mercy of

God, that hath disposed them to such a thriving genius; and to the will of his providence, that disposeth her favor to each country in their pre-ordinate season. All cannot be happy at once; for, because the glory of one state depends upon the ruin of another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their greatness, and must obey the swing of that wheel, not moved by intelligences, but by the hand of God, whereby all estates arise to their zenith and vertical points according to their predestinated periods. For the lives, not only of men, but of commonwealths, and the whole world, run not upon an helix that still enlargeth, but on a circle, where, arriving to their meridian, they decline in obscurity, and fall under the horizon again.

These must not therefore be named the effects of fortune, but in a relative way, and as we term the works of nature. It was the ignorance of man's reason that begat this very name, and by a careless term miscalled the Providence of God; for there is no liberty for causes to operate in a loose and straggling way; nor any effect whatsoever, but hath its warrant from some universal or superior cause. 'Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables; for even in sortilegies and matters of greatest uncertainty, there is a settled and pre-ordered course of effects. It is we that are blind, not fortune: because our eye is too dim to discover the mystery of her effects, we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the providence of the Almighty. I cannot justify that contemptible proverb, That fools only are fortunate, or that insolent paradox, That a wise man is out of the reach of fortune; much less those opprobrious epithets of poets, Whore, Bawd, and Strumpet. "Tis, I confess, the common fate of men of singular gifts of mind to be destitute of those of fortune, which doth not any way deject

more careless eye on It is a most unjust

the spirit of wiser judgments, who thoroughly understand the justice of this proceeding; and being enriched with higher donatives, cast a these vulgar parts of felicity. ambition to desire to engross the mercies of the Almighty, not to be content with the goods of mind, without a possession of those of body or fortune; and it is an error worse than heresy, to adore these complemental and circumstantial pieces of felicity, and undervalue those perfections and essential points of happiness wherein we resemble our maker. To wiser desires it is satisfaction enough to deserve, though not to enjoy, the favors of fortune: let Providence provide for fools. 'Tis not partiality, but equity in God, who deals with us but as our natural parents: those that are able of body and mind he leaves to their deserts; to those of weaker merits he imparts a larger portion, and pieces out the defect of one by the excess of the other. Thus have we no just quarrel with nature for leaving us naked; or to envy the horns, hoofs, skins, and furs of other creatures, being provided with reason, that can supply them all. We need not labor with so many arguments to confute judicial astrology; for, if there be a truth therein, it doth not injure divinity. If to be born under Mercury disposeth us to be witty, under Jupiter to be wealthy, I do not owe a Knee unto these, but unto that merciful hand that hath ordered my indifferent and uncertain nativity unto such benevolous aspects. Those that hold that all things are governed by fortune, had not erred, had they not persisted there. The Romans, that erected a temple to Fortune, acknowledged therein, though in a blinder way, somewhat of Divinity; for, in a wise supputation, all things begin and end in the Almighty. There is a nearer way to heaven than Homer's chain; an easy

logic may conjoin heaven and earth in one argument, and with less than a sorites resolve all things into God. For though we christen effects by their most sensible and nearest causes, yet is God the true and infallible cause of all; whose concourse, though it be general, yet doth it subdivide itself into the particular actions of every thing, and is that spirit, by which each singular essence not only subsists, but performs its operation.

[THOUGHTS ON THE DURATION OF LIFE]

(Religio Medici, Sections 37-43)

Now, for these walls of flesh, wherein the soul doth seem to be immured before the resurrection, it is nothing but an elemental composition, and a fabric that must fall to ashes. All flesh is grass,1 is not only metaphorically, but literally, true; for all those creatures we behold are but the herbs of the field, digested into flesh in them, or more remotely carnified in ourselves. Nay further, we are what we all abhor, anthropophagi and cannibals, devourers not only of men, but of ourselves; and that not in an allegory, but a positive truth; for all this mass of flesh which we behold, came in at our mouths; this frame we look upon, hath been upon our trenchers; in brief, we have devoured ourselves. I cannot believe the wisdom of Pythagoras did ever positively, and in a literal sense, affirm his metempsychosis, or impossible transmigration of the souls of men into beasts. Of all metamorphoses or transmigrations, I believe only one, that is of Lot's wife; for that of Nebuchodonosor proceeded not so far: in all others I conceive there is no further verity than is contained in their implicit sense and morality. I believe that the whole frame of a beast doth perish, and is left in the 1 Isaiah, xl, 6.

same state after death as before it was materialled unto life: that the souls of men know neither contrary nor corruption; that they subsist beyond the body, and outlive death by the privilege of their proper natures, and without a miracle; that the souls of the faithful, as they leave earth, take possession of heaven: that those apparitions and ghosts of departed persons are not the wandering souls of men, but the unquiet walks of devils, prompting and suggesting us unto mischief, blood, and villainy; instilling and stealing into our hearts that the blessed spirits are not at rest in their graves, but wander solicitous of the affairs of the world. But that those phantasms appear often, and do frequent cemeteries, charnel-houses, and churches, it is because those are the dormitories of the dead, where the devil, like an insolent champion, beholds with pride the spoils and trophies of his victory over Adam.

This is that dismal conquest we all deplore, that makes us so often cry, O Adam, quid fecisti?1 I thank God I have not those strait ligaments, or narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life, or be convulst and tremble at the name of death. Not that I am insensible of the dread and horror thereof; or by raking into the bowels of the deceased, continual sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous reliques, like vespilloes, or grave-makers, I am become stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality; but that, marshalling all the horrors, and contemplating the extremities thereof, I find not anything therein able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a well-resolved Christian; and therefore am not angry at the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a part of this common fate, and like the best of them to die, that is, to cease to breathe, to take a farewell of the elements, to be a 10 Adam, what hast thou done?