SIR THOMAS BROWNE. 65 Council of Trent, nor approve all in the Synod of Port. In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the Church is my text ; where that speaks, 'tis but my comment : where there is a joint-silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own rea- son. It is an unjust scandal of our adversaries, and a gross error in ourselves, to compute the nativity of our religion from Henry VIII. *, who, though he rejected the Pope, refused not the faith of Rome, &c." — Religio Medici, section 1, §5. Such is Browne's confession of his own faith ; and the opinion of one t who weighed well the ar- guments for and against his orthodoxy, was, " that all testimonies on the subject apparently concurred to prove, that he was a zealous adherent to the faith of Christ, that he lived in obedience to his laws, and died in confidence of his mercy." Of the novelty of the paradoxes with which this extraordinary book abounds, the reader may form some notion, from one or two extracts. " There are a bundle of curiosities, not only in philosophy, but in divinity, proposed and discussed by men of supposed ability, which, indeed, are not worthy our vacant hours, much less our serious studies. 'Tis ridiculous to put off, or down, the general flood of Noah, in that particular inunda- tion of Deucalion ; that there was a deluge, seems
- According to Buchanan, the Scottish historian, who, to escape
the fury of the Franciscans, fled into England, towards the latter end of Henry's reign, " Every thing was upon so precarious a footing, that those of both factions were burnt the same day, and with the same fire j Henry VIII. having more regard to his own security than to the purity of religion." t Johnson. P
