endowments, his universal scholarship, his philosophical depth, 'his
melancholy yet affable irony,' his professional and scientific
attainments, and his absolutely classical English style. And I shall
give myself up, in ending this discourse, to what is of much more
importance to him and to us all, than all these things taken
together,--for Sir Thomas Browne was a believing man, and a man of
unfainting and unrelaxing prayer. At the same time, and assuming, as he
does, and that without usurpation, as he says, the style of a Christian,
he is in reality a Theist rather than a Christian: he is a moral and a
religious writer rather than an evangelical and an experimental writer.
And in saying this, I do not forget his confession of his faith. 'But to
difference myself nearer,' he says, and 'to draw into a lesser circle,
there is no Church whose every part so squares unto my conscience: whose
Articles, Constitutions, and Customs seem so consonant unto reason, and
as it were framed to my particular Devotion, as this whereof I hold my
Belief, the Church of England: to whose faith I am a sworn subject, and
therefore in a double Obligation subscribe unto her Articles, and
endeavour to observe her Constitutions.' The author of the _Religio
Medici_ never writes a line out of joint, or out of tone or temper, with
that subscription. At the same time, his very best writings fall far
short of the best writings of the Church of England. Pater, in his fine
paper, says that 'Sir Thomas Browne is occupied with religion first and
last in all he writes, scarcely less so than Hooker himself,' and that is
the simple truth. Still, if the whole truth is to be told to those who
will not make an unfair use of it, Richard Hooker's religion is the whole
Christian religion, in all its height and depth, and grace and truth, and
doctrinal and evangelical fulness: all of which can never be said of Sir
Thomas Browne. I can well imagine Sir Thomas Browne recreating himself,
and that with an immense delectation, over Hooker's superb First Book.
How I wish that I could say as much about the central six chapters of