'I had rather believe all the fables in the Legend, and the Talmud, and
the Alcoran, than that this universal frame is without a mind: and
therefore, God never wrought miracles to convince atheism, because His
ordinary works convince it. It is true, that a little philosophy
inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's
minds about to religion.' The old proverb, _Ubi tres medici, duo athei_,
cast an opprobrium on the medical profession that can never have been
just. At the same time, that proverb may be taken as proving how little
true philosophy there must have been at one time among the medical men of
Europe. Whereas, in Sir Thomas Browne at any rate, his philosophy was of
such a depth that to him, as he repeatedly tells us, atheism, or anything
like atheism, had always been absolutely impossible. 'Mine is that
mystical philosophy, from whence no true scholar becomes an atheist, but
from the visible effects of nature, grows up a real divine, and beholds,
not in a dream, as Ezekiel, but in an ocular and visible object, the
types of his resurrection.' Nor can he dedicate his _Urn-Burial_ to his
worthy and honoured friend without counselling him to 'run up his
thoughts upon the Ancient of Days, the antiquary's truest object'; so
continually does Browne's imagination in all his books pierce into and
terminate upon Divine Persons and upon unseen and eternal things.
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