disputes. When his head was greener than it now is, he had a tendency to
two or three errors in religion, of which he proceeds to set down the
spiritual history. But at no time did he ever maintain his own opinions
with pertinacity: far less to inveigle or entangle any other man's faith;
and thus they soon died out, since they were only bare errors and single
lapses of his understanding, without a joint depravity of his will. The
truth to Sir Thomas Browne about all revealed religion is this, which he
sets forth in a deservedly famous passage:--'Methinks there be not
impossibilities enough in revealed religion for an active faith. I love
to lose myself in a mystery, and to pursue my reason to an _O altitudo_!
'Tis my solitary recreation to pose my apprehension with those involved
enigmas and riddles of the Trinity, with incarnation and resurrection. I
can answer all the objections of Satan and my rebellious reason with that
odd resolution I learned of Tertullian, _Certum est quia impossibile
est_. I desire to exercise my faith in the difficultest point; for
anything else is not faith but persuasion. I bless myself, and am
thankful that I never saw Christ nor His disciples. For then had my
faith been thrust upon me; nor should I have enjoyed that greater
blessing pronounced to all that believe and saw not. They only had the
advantage of a noble and a bold faith who lived before the coming of
Christ; and who, upon obscure prophecies and mystical types, could raise
a belief and expect apparent impossibilities. And since I was of
understanding enough to know that we know nothing, my reason hath been
more pliable to the will of faith. I am now content to understand a
mystery in an easy and Platonic way, and without a demonstration and a
rigid definition; and thus I teach my haggard and unreclaimed reason to
stoop unto the lure of faith.' The unreclaimed reader who is not already
allured by these specimens need go no further in Sir Thomas Browne's
autobiographic book. But he who feels the grace and the truth, the power
and the sweetness and the beauty of such writing, will be glad to know