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Sir Kenelm Digby: A conference with a lady about choice of religion 1638
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938 Sir Kenelm Digby A conference with a lady about choice of religion 1638 Madam, My being conscious to myself how confusedly and intricately I have delivered my conceptions unto your Ladyship, upon the several occasions of discourse we have had together concerning that important subject of what faith and religion is the true one to bring us to eternal happiness (wherein your Ladyship is so wisely and worthily inquisitive and solicitous), hath begotten this following writing: in the which I will, as near as I can, sum up the heads of those considerations I have sometimes discussed unto you in conversation . And I will briefly and barely lay them before you without any long enlargement upon them, as having a better opinion of the reflections that your Ladyship’s great understanding and strong reasoning soul will by yourself make upon the naked subject sincerely proposed than of any commentary I can frame upon it. And indeed, such discourses as these are deeper looked into when they are pondered by a prudential judgment than when they are examined by scientifical speculations. But with your leave, I shall take the matter a little higher than where the chief difficulty seemeth to be at which your Ladyship sticketh: conceiving that if we begin at the root and proceed on step by step, we shall find our search the easier and the securer, and our assent to the conclusions we shall collect will be the more firm and vigorous. We will therefore begin with considering why faith and religion is needful to a man before we determine the means how to find out the right faith: for that being once settled in the understanding, we shall presently without further dispute reject what religion soever is but proposed that hath not those proprieties which are required to bring that to pass that religion in its own nature aimeth at. And this must be done by taking a survey of some of the operations of a human soul, and of the impressions made in it by the objects it is conversant withal. 1. Your Ladyship may be pleased then to consider, in the first place, that it is by nature engrafted in the souls of all mankind to desire beatitude (by which word I mean an entire, 939 Sir Kenelm Digby perfect, and secure fruition of all such objects as one hath vehement affections unto, without mixture of anything one hath aversion from). 2. In the next place, you may please to consider that this full beatitude which the soul thirsteth after cannot be enjoyed in this life. For it is apparent that intellectual goods, as science, contemplation, and fruition of spiritual objects and contentments, in their own nature are the chief goods of the soul, and affect her much more strongly and violently than corporal and sensual ones can do, for they are more agreeable to her nature and therefore move her more efficaciously when they are duly relished. But such intellectual goods cannot be perfectly relished and enjoyed as long as the soul is immersed in the body, by reason that the sensual appetite maketh continual war against the rational part of the soul, and in most men mastereth it; and in the perfectest, this earthly habitation doth so draw down and clog and benumb the noble inhabitant of it (which would always busy itself in sublime contemplations) as it may be said to be but in a jail whiles it resideth here. And experience confirmeth unto us that the sparks of knowledge we gain here are not pure but have the nature of salt water that increaseth the thirst in them who drink most of it; and we swallow the purest streams like men in a dropsy, who the more they drink are still the greedier of more. Therefore to have this greediness of knowing satisfied . . . we must have patience until she {the soul} arrive unto another state of life, wherein being separated from all corporal feces {dregs}, impediments, and contradictions, she may wholly give herself up to that which is her natural operation and from whence resulteth her true and perfect delight. Besides, even they who have attained to the greatest blessings (both inward and outward) that this world can afford yet are far from being completely happy. . . . The very fear of losing them . . . is such a spoonful of gall to make their whole draught bitter. . . . How little can any man relish the objects of delight which with never so great...