necessary belief, to credit what our eye and sense hath examined: I
believe He was dead and buried, and rose again; and desire to see Him in
His glory, rather than to contemplate Him in His cenotaph or sepulchre.
Nor is this much to believe; as we have reason, we owe this faith unto
history. They only had the advantage of a bold and noble faith, who
lived before His coming, who upon obscure prophecies and mystical types
could raise a belief and expect apparent impossibilities.

Now for my life, it is a miracle of thirty years, which to relate were
not a history but a piece of poetry, and would sound to common ears like
a fable; for the world, I count it not an inn but an hospital; and a
place not to live, but to die in. The world that I regard is myself; it
is the microcosm of my own frame that I cast mine eye on; for the other,
I use it but like my globe, and turn it round sometimes for my
recreation. Men that look upon my outside, perusing only my condition
and fortunes, do err in my altitude, for I am above Atlas's shoulders.
The earth is a point, not only in respect of the heavens above us, but of
that heavenly and celestial part within us; that mass of flesh that
circumscribes me limits not my mind; that surface that tells the heaven
it hath an end cannot persuade me I have any. I take my circle to be
above three hundred and sixty. Though the number of the arc do measure
my body it comprehendeth not my mind. Whilst I study to find how I am a
microcosm, or little world, I find myself something more than the great.
There is surely a piece of divinity in us, something that was before the
elements, and owes no homage unto the sun. Nature tells me I am the
image of God, as well as Scripture. He that understands not thus much
hath not his introduction, or first lesson, and is yet to begin the
alphabet of man.