IV. MEDITATION
IT is too little to call Man
a little
World; Except God, Man is a diminutive to nothing.
Man
consistes of more pieces, more parts, than the world; than the world
doeth,
nay than the world is. And if those pieces were extended, and stretched
out in Man, as they in the world, Man would bee the Gyant, and
the
Worlde the Dwarfe, the World but the Map, and the Man
the World.
If all the Veines in our bodies, were extended to Rivers,
and all the Sinewes, to Vaines of Mines, and all the Muscles,
that lye upon one another, to Hilles, and all the Bones
to Quarries of stones, and all the other pieces,
to the proportion
of those which correspond to them in the world, the Aire would
be
too litle for this Orbe of Man to move in, the firmament would
bee
but enough for this Starre; for, as the whole world hath
nothing,
to which something in man doth not answere, so hath man many pieces, of
which the whole world hath no representation. Inlarge this Meditation
upon
this great world, Man, so farr, as to consider the
immensitie
of the creatures this world produces; our creatures are our thoughts,
creatures
that are borne Gyants; that reach from East to West,
from Earth to Heaven, that doe not onely bestride all
the Sea, and Land, but span the Sunnand Firmament
at once; My thoughts reach all, comprehend all. Inexplicable mistery; I
their Creator am in a close prison, in a sicke bed, any where,
and
any one of my Creatures, my thoughts, is with the Sunne,
and beyond the Sunne, overtakes the Sunne, and overgoes
the Sunne in one pace, one steppe, everywhere. And
then as the other world produces Serpents, and Vipers,
malignant, and
venimous creatures, and Wormes, and Caterpillars, that
endeavour
to devoure that world which produces them, and Monsters
compiled
and complicated of divers parents, and kinds, so this world, our
selves,
produces all these in us, in producing diseases, and sicknesses,
of all those sort; venimous, and infectious diseases, feeding and
consuming
diseases, and manifold and entangled diseases, made up of many several
ones. And can the other world name so many venimous, so many
consuming,
so many monstrous creatures, as we can diseases, of all these kindes? O
miserable abundance, O beggarly riches! how much doe wee lacke of
having remedies
for everie disease, when as yet we have not names for them? But
wee have a Hercules against these Gyants, these Monsters;
that is, the Phisician; hee musters up al the forces of the
other
world, to succour this; all Nature to relieve Man. We have the Phisician,
but we are not the Phisician. Heere we shrinke in our
proportion,
sink in our dignitie, in respect of verie meane creatures, who are Phisicians
to themselves. The Hart that is pursued and wounded, they say,
knowes
an Herbe, which being eaten, throwes off the arrow: A strange kind of vomit.
The dog that pursues it, though hee bee subject to sicknes,
even proverbially, knowes his grasse that
recovers him. And it
may be true, that the Drugger is as neere to Man, as to
other creatures, it may be that obvious and present Simples,
easie
to be had, would cure him; but the Apothecary is not so neere
him,
nor the Phisician so neere him, as they two are to other
creatures;
Man hath not that innate instinct, to apply these naturall
medicines
to his present danger, as those inferiour creatures have; he is not his
owne Apothecary, his owne Phisician, as they are. Call
back
therefore thy Meditation again, and bring it downe; whats become of
mans
great extent and proportion, when himselfe shrinkes himselfe, and
consumes
himselfe to a handfull of dust? whats become of his soaring thoughts,
his
compassing thoughts, when himselfe brings himselfe to the ignorance, to
the thoughtlessnesse of the Grave? His diseases are his
owne,
but the Phisician is not; hee hath them at home, but hee must
send
for the Phisician.
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