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Updated: May 14, 2025
For albeit the cutting the hair be a thing in itself indifferent, yet because the Gentiles did use it superstitiously, therefore, saith Calvin, albeit it was per se medium, Deus tamen noluit populo suo liberum esse, ut tanquam pueri discerent ex parvis rudimentis, se non aliter Deo fore gratos, nisi exteris et proeputiatis essent prorsus dissimiles, ac longissime abessent ab eorum exemplis, praesertim vero ritus omnes fugerent, quibus testata fuerit religio.
"Cujus regio ejus religio;" to the prince the choice of religion, to the subject conformity with the prince, as if that formula of shallow and selfish princelings, that insult to the dignity of mankind, were the grand result of a movement which was to go on centuries after they had all been forgotten in their tombs. For the time however it was a valid and mischievous maxim.
The Archdeacon took it up. "Sir Thomas Browne's Religio Medici and Urn Burial. On the flyleaf, 'Paul Savelli. An undergraduate, I should say, on a walking tour." Miss Winwood took the book from his hands a little cheap reprint. "I'm glad," she said. "Why, my dear Ursula?" "I'm very fond of Sir Thomas Browne, myself," she replied. Presently the doctor came and made his examination.
Taking Sir Thomas Browne all in all, Tertullian, Sir Thomas's favourite Father, has supplied us, as it seems to me, with his whole life and character in these so expressive and so comprehensive words of his, Anima naturaliter Christiana. In these three words, when well weighed and fully opened up, we have the whole author of the Religio Medici, the Christian Morals, and the Letter to a Friend.
A contemporary of Daudet's, who possessed a far finer spiritual insight, Coventry Patmore, the poet, in the essay on "Ancient and Modern Ideas of Purity" in his beautiful book, Religio Poetæ, had already finely protested against that "disease of impurity" which comes of "our modern undivine silences" for which Daudet pleaded.
"The 'Religio Medici," says Coleridge, "is a fine portrait of a handsome man in his best clothes." There is truth in the criticism, and if there is no color of a sneer in it, it is entirely true.
It is this difficulty, this primary dependence on others, which develops into the child's first religion, that perpetuates the infantile character of human creeds; and, what is worse, generates the hideous bigotry which justifies that sad reflection of Lucretius: 'Tantum Religio potuit suadere malorum! TO turn again to narrative, and to far less serious thoughts.
"I naturally love a soldier," says Sir Thomas Browne, in his Religio Medica, "and honor those tattered and contemptible regiments that will die at the command of a sergeant."
Hence Christianity was branded as a malignant superstition, and Christians spoken of as the enemies of the human race.... From the letter of Pliny to Trajan, it was evidently recorded as an religio illicita, and the mere fact of being a Christian was counted of itself a crime.... The exclusiveness of Christianity seemed also to place its disciples in a position of direct disloyalty to the emperors and the State.
Yes, it has all been expressed in the Religio; but it is no small matter that, in spite of Spencer, Karl Marx, Nietzsche, and Mr. Sidney Webb, there should still be a modern and a popular way of using the thoughts of Sir Thomas Browne. Mr. Chesterton has been driven into this apparent reaction by the scientific thinkers to whom he was introduced with the scantiest preparation.
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