And if any hath been so happy as personally to
understand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exaltation, transformation,
the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the divine shadow, according
to mystical theology, they have already had an handsome anticipation of
heaven: the world is in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.'
'Prose,' says Friswell, 'that with very little transposition, might make
verse quite worthy of Shakespeare himself.'
* * * * *
The _Letter to a Friend_ is an account of the swift and inevitable
deathbed of one of Sir Thomas's patients: a young man who died of a
deceitful but a galloping consumption. There is enough of old medical
observation and opening science in the _Letter_, as well as of sweet old
literature, and still sweeter old religion, to make it a classic to every
well-read doctor in the language. 'To be dissolved and to be with Christ
was his dying ditty. He esteemed it enough to approach the years of his
Saviour, who so ordered His own human state, as not to be old upon earth.
He that early arriveth into the parts and prudence of age is happily old
without the uncomfortable attendants of it. And 'tis superfluous to live
unto grey hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues of
them.
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