The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume 1Browne, Thomas, Sir
Religion
The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, Volume 1
Browne, Thomas, Sir
Christianity; Ethics; Religion and medicine
determine these, and all things else; Who as he hath proposed the World
unto our disputation, so hath he reserved many things unto his own
resolution; whose determination we cannot hope from flesh, but must with
reverence suspend unto that great Day, whose justice shall either
condemn our curiosities, or resolve our disquisitions.
Lastly, Man was not only deceivable in his Integrity, but the Angels of
light in all their Clarity. He that said, He would be like the highest
did erre, if in some way he conceived himself so already: but in
attempting so high an effect from himself, he mis-understood the nature
of God, and held a false apprehension of his own; whereby vainly
attempting not only insolencies, but impossibilities, he deceived
himself as low as Hell. In brief, there is nothing infallible but GOD,
who cannot possibly erre. For things are really true as they correspond
unto his conception; and have so much verity as they hold of conformity
unto that Intellect, in whose _Idea_ they had their first
determinations. And therefore being the Rule, he cannot be Irregular;
nor, being Truth it self, conceaveably admit the impossible society of
Error.
CHAPTER II
A further Illustration of the same.
Being thus deluded before the Fall, it is no wonder if their conceptions
were deceitful, and could scarce speak without an Error after. For, what
is very remarkable (and no man that I know hath yet observed) in the
relations of Scripture before the Flood, there is but one speech
delivered by Man, wherein there is not an erroneous conception; and,
strictly examined, most hainously injurious unto truth. The pen of
_Moses_ is brief in the account before the Flood, and the speeches
recorded are but six. The first is that of _Adam_, when upon the
expostulation of God, he replied; _I heard thy voice in the Garden, and
because I was naked I hid my self_. In which reply, there was included a
very gross Mistake, and, if with pertinacity maintained, a high and
capital Error. For thinking by this retirement to obscure himself from
God, he infringed the omnisciency and essential Ubiquity of his Maker,
Who as he created all things, so is he beyond and in them all, not only
in power, as under his subjection, or in his presence, as being in his
cognition; but in his very Essence, as being the soul of their
causalities, and the essential cause of their existencies. Certainly,
his posterity at this distance and after so perpetuated an impairment,
cannot but condemn the poverty of his conception, that thought to
obscure himself from his Creator in the shade of the Garden, who had
beheld him before in the darkness of his Chaos, and the great obscurity
of Nothing; that thought to fly from God, which could not fly himself;
or imagined that one tree should conceal his nakedness from Gods eye, as
another had revealed it unto his own. Those tormented Spirits that wish
the mountains to cover them, have fallen upon desires of minor
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