By John Donne.

Others at the Porches and entries of their Buildings set their Armes I, my picture; if any colours can deliver a minde so plaine, and flat, and through-light as mine. Naturally at a new Author, I doubt, and sticke, and doe not say quickly, good. I censure much and taxe; And this liberty costs mee more than others, by how much my owne things are worse than others. Yet I would not be so rebellious against my selfe, as not to doe it, since I love it; nor so unjust to others, to do it sine talione. As long as I give them as good hold upon mee, they must pardon mee my bitings. I forbid no reprehender, but him that like the Trent Councell forbids not bookes, but Authors, damning what ever such a name hath or shall write. None writes so ill, that he gives not some thing exemplary, to follow, or flie. Now when I beginne this booke, I have no purpose to come into any mans debt; how my stocke will hold out I know not; perchance waste perchance increase in use; if I doe borrow any thing, of Antiquitie, besides that I make account that I pay it to posterity, with as much and as good: You shall still finde mee to acknowledge it, and to thanke not him onely that hath digg'd out treasure for mee, but that hath lighted mee a candle to the place. All which I will bid you remember, (for I will have no such Readers as I can teach) as, that the Pithagorian doctrine doth not onely carry one soule from man to man, nor man to beast, but indifferently to plants also: and therefore you must not grudge to finde the same soule in an Emperour, in a Post-horse, and in a Mucheron, since no unreadinesse in the soule, but an indisposition in the organs workes this. And therefore though this soule could not move when it was a Melon, yet it may remember, and now tell mee, at what lascivious banquet it was serv'd. And though it could not speake, when it was a spider, yet it can remember and now tell me, who used it for poyson to attaine dignitie. How ever the bodies have dull'd her other faculties, her memory hath ever been her owne, which makes me so seriously deliver you by her relation all her passages from her first making when shee was that apple which Eve eate, to this time when shee is hee, whose life you shall finde in the end of this booke.

E*pis"tle (?), n. [OE. epistle, epistel, AS. epistol, pistol, L. epistola, fr. Gr. anything sent by a messenger, message, letter, fr. to send to, tell by letter or message; upon, to + to dispatch, send; cf. OF. epistle, epistre, F. 'epitre. See Stall.]

1.

A writing directed or sent to a person or persons; a written communication; a letter; -- applied usually to formal, didactic, or elegant letters.

A madman's epistles are no gospels. Shak.

2. Eccl.

One of the letters in the New Testament which were addressed to their Christian brethren by Apostles.

Epistle side, the right side of an altar or church to a person looking from the nave toward the chancel.

One sees the pulpit on the epistle side. R. Browning.

 

© Webster 1913.


E*pis"tle, v. t.

To write; to communicate in a letter or by writing.

[Obs.]

Milton.

 

© Webster 1913.

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