Thomas Browne, the Quakers, and a Letter from a Judicious Friend

Abstract

Despite Sir Thomas Browne’s prominent (if complex) pronouncements of his commitment to the Church of England in Religio Medici, a Quaker named Samuel Duncon wrote a letter to Browne in which Duncon accentuates the sympathy between their respective spiritual tendencies. In his letter, Duncon looks past what he would consider the carnality and formality of Browne’s work and finds three seeds of spiritual wisdom that have convinced Duncon that Browne is ready to be a friend to the Friends. This essay explores the specific textual grounds for Duncon’s admiration of Religio’s complex meditations; contextualizes Duncon’s invitation to Browne for a conversation between friends; and addresses the question of whether Browne responded to this invitation. In celebrating Browne as ‘judicious’, Duncon’s letter complicates any simple understanding of the relations between orthodoxy and heresy in the mid seventeenth century, not least within the framework of an epistolary religious culture in which Browne’s own work participates.