Jeremy Taylor to John Evelyn. Aug. 29, 1657. SIR, I am very glad that your goodnature hath overcome your modesty, and that you have suffered yourself to be persuaded to benefit the world rather than humour your own retiredness. I have many reasons to encourage you, and the only one objection, which is the leaven of your author,' de providentia, you have so well answered, that I am confident, in imitation of your great Master, you will bring good out of evil: and, like those wise physicians, who, giving aλsixaxa, do not only expel the poison, but strengthen the stomach, I doubt not but you will take all opportunities, and give all advantages, to the reputation and great name of God; and will be glad and rejoice to employ your pen for Him who gave you fingers to write, and will to dictate. But, Sir, that which you check at is the immortality of the soul: that is, its being in the interval before the day of judgment: which you conceive is not agreeable to the Apostle's creed, or current of Scriptures, assigning (as you suppose) the felicity of Christians to the resurrection. Before I speak to the thing I must note this, that the parts which you oppose to each other may both be true. For the soul may be immortal, and yet not beatified till the resurrection. For to be, and to be happy or miserable, are not immediate or necessary consequents to each other. For the soul may be alive, and yet not feel; as it may be alive and not understand; so our soul, when we are fast asleep, and so Nebuchadnezzar's soul, when he had his lycanthropy. And the Socinians, that say the soul sleeps, do not suppose that she is mortal; but for want of her instrument cannot do any acts of her life. The soul returns to God; and that, in no sense is death. And I think the death of the soul cannot be defined; and there is no death to spirits but annihilation. I am sure there is none that we know of or can understand. For, if ceasing from its operations be death, then it dies sooner than the body: for oftentimes it does not work any of its nobler operations. In our sleep we neither 'Alluding to Evelyn's translation of Lucretius. feel nor understand. If you answer, and say it animates the body, and that is a sufficient indication of life: I reply, that if one act alone is sufficient to show the soul to be alive, then the soul cannot die; for in philosophy it is affirmed, that the soul desires to be re-united; and that which is dead desires not besides, that the soul can understand without the body is so certain (if there be any certainty in mystic theology), and so evident in actions which are reflected upon themselves-as a desire to desire, a will to will, a remembering that I did remember-that, if one act be enough to prove the soul to be alive, the state of separation cannot be a state of death to the soul; because she then can desire to be re-united, and she can understand: for nothing can hinder from doing those actions which depend not upon the body, and in which the operations of the soul are not organical. But to the thing. The felicity of Christians is not till the day of judgment, I do believe next to an article of my creed; and so far I consent with you: but then I cannot allow your consequent, that the soul is mortal. That the soul is a complete substance I am willing enough to allow in disputation: though, indeed, I believe the contrary; and I am sure no philosophy and no divinity can prove its being to be wholly relative and incomplete. But, suppose it: it will not follow that, therefore, it cannot live in separation. For the flame of a candle, which is your own similitude, will give light enough to this inquiry. The flame of a candle can consist or subsist, though the matter be extinct. I will not instance Licetus's lamps, whose flame had stood still 1500 years, viz. in Tully wife's vault. For, if it had spent any matter, the matter would have been exhausted long before that, and if it spends none, it is all one as if it had none; for what need is there of it, if there be no use for it, and what use, if no feeding the flame, and how can it feed but by spending itself? But the reason why the flame goes out when the matter is exhausted, is because that little particle of fire is soon overcome by the circumflant air and scattered, when it wants matter to keep it in unison and closeness; but then, as the flame continues not in the relation of a candle's flame when the matter is exhausted, yet fire can abide without matter to feed it; for itself is matter, it is a substance. And so is the soul; and as the element of fire, and the celestial globes of fire, eat nothing, but live of themselves; so can the soul when it is divested of its relative; and so would the candle's flame, if it could get to the regions of fire, as the soul does to the region of spirits. The places of Scripture you are pleased to urge, I shall reserve for our meeting or another letter; for they require particular pointing. But one thing only, because the answer is short, I shall reply to; why the Apostle, preaching Jesus and the resurrection, said nothing of the immortality of the soul? I answer, because the resurrection of the body included and supposed that. 2. And if it had not, yet what need he preach that to them, which in Athens was believed, by almost all their schools of learning? For besides that the immortality of the soul was believed by the Gymnosophists in India, by Trismegist in Egypt, by Job in Chaldea, by his friends in the East, it was also confessed by Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato, Thales of Miletus, and by Aristotle, as I am sure I can prove. I say nothing of Cicero, and all the Latins; and nothing of all the Christian schools of philosophy that ever were. But when you see it in Scripture, I know you will no way refuse it. To this purpose are those words of St. Paul, speaking of his rapture into heaven. He purposely and by design twice says, "whether in the body or out of the body I know not:" by which he plainly says, that it was no ways unlikely that his rapture was out of the body; and, therefore, it is very agreeable to the nature of the soul to operate in separation from the body. Sir, for your other question, how it appears that God made all things out of nothing? I answer it is demonstratively certain; or else there is no God. For if there be a God, he is the one principle: but, if he did not make the first thing, then there is something besides him that was never made and then there are two eternals. Now if God made the first thing, he made it of nothing. But, Sir, if I may have the honour to see your annotations before you publish them, I will give all the faithful and most friendly assistances that are in the power of, Dear Sir, Your most obliged and affectionate servant, John Evelyn to Sir Richard Browne. Sayes Court, 14 Feb. 1657-8. SIB, By the reverse of this medal, you will perceive how much reason I had to be afraid of my felicity, and greatly it did import to me to do all that I could to prevent what I have apprehended, what I have deserved, and what now I feel. God has taken from us that dear child, your grandson, your godson, and with him all the joy and satisfaction that could be derived from the greatest hopes. A loss, so much the more to be deplored, as our contentments were extraordinary, and the indications of his future perfections as fair and legible as, yet, I ever saw, or read of in one so very young: you have, Sir, heard so much of this, that I may say it with the less crime and suspicion. And indeed his whole life was from the beginning so great a miracle, that it were hard to exceed in the description of it; and which I should here yet attempt, by summing up all the prodigies of it, and what a child at five years old (for he was little more) is capable of, had I not given you so many minute and particular accounts of it, by several expresses, when I then mentioned those things with the greatest joy, which now I write with as much sorrow and amazement. But so it is, that has pleased God to dispose of him, and that blossom (fruit, rather I may say) is fallen; a six days quotidian having deprived us of him; an accident that has made so great a breach in all my contentments, as I do never hope to see repaired because we are not in this life to be fed with wonders: and that I know you will hardly be able to support the affliction and the loss, who bear so great a part in everything that concerns me. But thus we must be reduced when God sees good, and I submit; since I had, therefore, this blessing for a punishment, and that I might feel the effects of my great unworthiness. But I have begged of God that I might pay the fine here, and if to such belonged the kingdom of heaven, I have one depositum there. Dominus dedit, Dominus abstulit: blessed be his name: since without that consideration it were impossible to support it: for the stroke is so severe, that I find : 1 nothing in all philosophy capable to allay the impression of DEAR SIR, Jeremy Taylor to John Evelyn. Feb. 17, 1657-8. If dividing and sharing griefs were like the cutting of rivers, I dare say to you, you would find your stream much abated; for I account myself to have a great cause of sorrow not only in the diminution of the numbers of your joys and hopes, but in the loss of that pretty person, your strangely hopeful boy. I cannot tell all my own sorrows without adding to yours; and the causes of my real sadness in your loss are so just and so reasonable, that I can no otherwise comfort you but by telling you, that you have very great cause to mourn: So certain it is, that grief does propagate as fire does. You have enkindled my funeral torch, and by joining mine to yours, I do but increase the flame. Hoc me malè urit, is the best signification of my apprehensions of your sad story. But, Sir, I cannot choose but I must hold another and a brighter flame to you-it is already burning in your breast; and if I can but remove the dark side of the lanthorn, you have enough within you to warm yourself, and to shine to others. Remember, Sir, your two boys are two bright stars, and their innocence is secured, and you shall never hear evil of them again. Their state is safe, and heaven is given to them upon very easy terms; nothing but to be born and die. It will cost you more trouble to get where they are; and amongst other things one of the hardnesses will be, that you must overcome even this just and reasonable grief; and indeed, though the grief hath but too reasonable a cause, yet it is much more reasonable that you master it. For besides that they are no losers, but you are the person that complains, do but consider what you would have suffered for their interest: you [would] have suffered them to go from you, to be great Princes in a |
