Religio Medici: The Religion of a Doctor

Religio Medici The Religion of a Doctor Sir Thomas Browne Religio Medici (The Religion of a Doctor) by Sir Thomas Browne became a European best-seller which brought its author fame and respect throughout England and the continent. Browne's spiritual testament and early psychological self-portrait was finally published in 1643 after an unauthorized version was distributed and reproduced with added text the previous year. Structured upon the Christian virtues of Faith, Hope and Charity, Religio Medici while thematically upon the Christian faith is also a psychological self-portrait. Whilst discussing Church authority and religious ritualism, Browne rejects them in favour of Reason and The Bible. Browne expresses a belief in salvation "by faith alone", the existence of hell, the day of judgement, the resurrection and other tenets of Protestantism, rejecting the religious dictations of the Pope. There is no Church whose every part so squares unto my Conscience; whose Articles, Constitutions, and Customs seem so consonant unto reason, and as it were framed to my particular Devotion, as this whereof I hold my Belief, the Church of England; to whose Faith I am a sworn Subject, and therefore in a double Obligation subscribe unto her Articles, and endeavour to observe her Constitutions. Whatsoever is beyond, as points indifferent, I observe according to the rules of my private reason, or the humor and fashion of my Devotion; neither believing this, because Luther affirmed it, or disproving that, because Calvin hath disavouched it. I condemn not all things in the Council of Trent, nor approve all in the Synod of Dort. In brief, where the Scripture is silent, the Church is my Text; where that speaks, ’tis but my Comment: where there is a joynt silence of both, I borrow not the rules of my Religion from Rome or Geneva, but the dictates of my own reason.