dye,
Thou in thy scatter’d mystique body wouldst
In Abel dye, and ever since
In thine, let their blood come
To begge for us, a discreet patience
Of death, or of worse life: for Oh, to some
Not to be Martyrs, is a martyrdome.
XI.
The Confessors
Therefore with thee triumpheth there
A Virgin Squadron of white Confessors,
Whose bloods betroth’d, not marryed were;
Tender’d, not taken by those Ravishers:
They know, and pray, that wee may know,
In every Christian
Hourly tempestuous persecutions grow,
Tentations martyr us alive; A man
Is to himselfe a Dioclesian.
XII.
The Virgins
The cold white snowie Nunnery,
Which, as thy mother, their high Abbesse, sent
Their bodies backe againe to thee,
As thou hadst lent them, cleane and innocent,
Though they have not obtain’d of thee,
That or thy Church, or I,
Should keep, as they, our first integrity;
Divorce thou sinne in us, or bid it die,
And call chast widowhead Virginitie.
XIII.
The Doctors
Thy sacred Academie above
Of Doctors, whose paines have unclasp’d, and taught
Both bookes of life to us (for love
To know thy Scriptures tells us, we are wrought
In thy other booke) pray for us there
That what they have misdone
Or mis-said, wee to that may not adhere,
Their zeale may be our sinne. Lord let us runne
Meane waies, and call them stars, but not the Sunne.
PARADOXES AND PROBLEMS
Paradox 1: That All Things Kill Themselves
To affect, yea to effect their own deaths, all living are importuned. Not by nature only, which perfects them, but by art and education which perfects her. Plants, quickened and inhabited by the most unworthy soul, which therefore neither will nor work, affect an end, a perfection, a death. This they spend their spirits to attain; this attained, they languish and wither. And by how much more they are by man’s industry warmed and cherished and pampered, so much the more early they climb to this perfection, this death. And if, between men, not to defend be to kill, what a heinous self-murder is it not to defend the self. This defence because beasts neglect, they kill themselves: because they exceed us in number, strength, and lawless liberty. Yea, of horses, and so of other beasts, they which inherit most courage by being bred of gallantest parents, and by artificial nursing are bettered, will run to their own deaths, neither solicited by spurs, which they need not, nor by honour, which they apprehend not. If then the valiant kill himself, who can excuse the coward? Or how shall man be free from this, since the first man taught us this – except we cannot kill ourselves because he killed us all? Yet lest something should repair this common ruin, we kill daily our bodies with surfeits, and our minds with anguishes. Of our powers, remembering kills ourmemory. Of affections, lusting our lust. Of virtues, giving kills liberality. And if these things kill themselves, they do it in their best and supreme perfection, for after perfection immediately follows excess, which changes the natures and the names, and makes them not the same things. If then the best things kill themselves soonest (for no perfection endures) and all things labour to this perfection, all travail to their own death. Yea the frame of the whole world (if it were possible for God to be idle) yet because it begun must die. Then in this idleness imagined in God, what could kill the world but itself, since out of it nothing is?
Paradox 6: That the Gifts of the Body are Better than those of the Mind, or of Fortune
I say again that the body makes the mind. Not that it created it a mind, but forms it a good or bad mind. And this mind may be
Thou in thy scatter’d mystique body wouldst
In Abel dye, and ever since
In thine, let their blood come
To begge for us, a discreet patience
Of death, or of worse life: for Oh, to some
Not to be Martyrs, is a martyrdome.
XI.
The Confessors
Therefore with thee triumpheth there
A Virgin Squadron of white Confessors,
Whose bloods betroth’d, not marryed were;
Tender’d, not taken by those Ravishers:
They know, and pray, that wee may know,
In every Christian
Hourly tempestuous persecutions grow,
Tentations martyr us alive; A man
Is to himselfe a Dioclesian.
XII.
The Virgins
The cold white snowie Nunnery,
Which, as thy mother, their high Abbesse, sent
Their bodies backe againe to thee,
As thou hadst lent them, cleane and innocent,
Though they have not obtain’d of thee,
That or thy Church, or I,
Should keep, as they, our first integrity;
Divorce thou sinne in us, or bid it die,
And call chast widowhead Virginitie.
XIII.
The Doctors
Thy sacred Academie above
Of Doctors, whose paines have unclasp’d, and taught
Both bookes of life to us (for love
To know thy Scriptures tells us, we are wrought
In thy other booke) pray for us there
That what they have misdone
Or mis-said, wee to that may not adhere,
Their zeale may be our sinne. Lord let us runne
Meane waies, and call them stars, but not the Sunne.
PARADOXES AND PROBLEMS
Paradox 1: That All Things Kill Themselves
To affect, yea to effect their own deaths, all living are importuned. Not by nature only, which perfects them, but by art and education which perfects her. Plants, quickened and inhabited by the most unworthy soul, which therefore neither will nor work, affect an end, a perfection, a death. This they spend their spirits to attain; this attained, they languish and wither. And by how much more they are by man’s industry warmed and cherished and pampered, so much the more early they climb to this perfection, this death. And if, between men, not to defend be to kill, what a heinous self-murder is it not to defend the self. This defence because beasts neglect, they kill themselves: because they exceed us in number, strength, and lawless liberty. Yea, of horses, and so of other beasts, they which inherit most courage by being bred of gallantest parents, and by artificial nursing are bettered, will run to their own deaths, neither solicited by spurs, which they need not, nor by honour, which they apprehend not. If then the valiant kill himself, who can excuse the coward? Or how shall man be free from this, since the first man taught us this – except we cannot kill ourselves because he killed us all? Yet lest something should repair this common ruin, we kill daily our bodies with surfeits, and our minds with anguishes. Of our powers, remembering kills ourmemory. Of affections, lusting our lust. Of virtues, giving kills liberality. And if these things kill themselves, they do it in their best and supreme perfection, for after perfection immediately follows excess, which changes the natures and the names, and makes them not the same things. If then the best things kill themselves soonest (for no perfection endures) and all things labour to this perfection, all travail to their own death. Yea the frame of the whole world (if it were possible for God to be idle) yet because it begun must die. Then in this idleness imagined in God, what could kill the world but itself, since out of it nothing is?
Paradox 6: That the Gifts of the Body are Better than those of the Mind, or of Fortune
I say again that the body makes the mind. Not that it created it a mind, but forms it a good or bad mind. And this mind may be
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