CONSOLATIONS AGAINST DEATH, FROM THE PROVIDENCE AND THE NECESSITY OF IT.
This life is only a prelude to eternity, where we are to expect another
original, and another state of things; we have no prospect of heaven
here but at a distance; let us therefore expect our last and decretory
hour with courage. The last (I say) to our bodies, but not to our
minds: our luggage we leave behind us, and return as naked out of the
world as we came into it. The day which we fear as our last is but
the birth-day of our eternity; and it is the only way to it. So that
what we fear as a rock, proves to be but a port, in many cases to be
desired, never to be refused; and he that dies young has only made a
quick voyage of it. Some are becalmed, others cut it away before wind;
and we live just as we sail: first, we rub our childhood out of sight;
our youth next; and then our middle age: after that follows old age,
and brings us to the common end of mankind.
It is a great providence that we have more ways out of the world than
we have into it. Our security stands upon a point, the very article
of death. It draws a great many blessings into a very narrow compass:
and although the fruit of it does not seem to extend to the defunct,
yet the difficulty of it is more than balanced by the contemplation of
the future. Nay, suppose that all the business of this world should be
forgotten, or my memory, traduced, what is all this to me? “I have done
my duty.” Undoubtedly that which puts an end to all other evils, cannot
be a very great evil itself, and yet it is no easy thing for flesh and
blood to despise life. What if death comes? If it does not stay with us
why should we fear it? One hangs himself for a mistress; another leaps
the garret-window to avoid a choleric master; a third runs away and
stabs himself, rather than he will be brought back again. We see the
force even of our infirmities, and shall we not then do greater things
for the love of virtue? To suffer death is but the law of nature;
and it is a great comfort that it can be done but once; in the very
convulsions of it we have this consolation, that our pain is near an
end, and that it frees us from all the miseries of life.
What it is we know not, and it were rash to condemn what we do not
understand; but this we presume, either that we shall pass out of this
into a better life, where we shall live with tranquillity and splendor,
in diviner mansions, or else return to our first principles, free from
the sense of any inconvenience. There is nothing immortal, nor many
things lasting; by but divers ways everything comes to an end. What
an arrogance is it then, when the world itself stands condemned to a
dissolution, that man alone should expect to live forever! It is unjust
not to allow unto the giver the power of disposing of his own bounty,
and a folly only to value the present. Death is as much a debt as
money, and life is but a journey towards it: some dispatch it sooner,
others later, but we must all have the same period. The thunderbolt is
undoubtedly just that draws even from those that are struck with it a
veneration.
A great soul takes no delight in staying with the body: it considers
whence it came, and knows whither it is to go. The day will come that
shall separate this mixture of soul and body, of divine and human; my
body I will leave where I found it, my soul I will restore to heaven,
which would have been there already, but for the clog that keeps it
down: and beside, how many men have been the worse for longer living,
that might have died with reputation if they had been sooner taken
away! How many disappointments of hopeful youths, that have proved
dissolute men! Over and above the ruins, shipwrecks, torments, prisons,
that attend long life; a blessing so deceitful, that if a child were
in condition to judge of it, and at liberty to refuse it, he would not
take it.
What Providence has made necessary, human prudence should comply with
cheerfully: as there is a necessity of death, so that necessity is
equal and invincible. No man has cause of complaint for that which
every man must suffer as well as himself. When we _should_ die, we
_will not_, and when we _would not_ we _must_: but our fate is fixed,
and unavoidable is the decree. Why do we then stand trembling when
the time comes? Why do we not as well lament that we did not live a
thousand years ago, as that we shall not be alive a thousand years
hence? It is but traveling the great road, and to the place whither we
must all go at last. It is but submitting to the law of Nature, and to
that lot which the whole world has suffered that is gone before us; and
so must they too that are to come after us. Nay, how many thousands,
when our time comes, will expire in the same moment with us! He that
will not follow shall be drawn by force: and is it not much better now
to do that willingly which we shall otherwise be made to do in spite of
our hearts?
The sons of mortal parents must expect a mortal posterity—death is
the end of great and small. We are born helpless, and exposed to the
injuries of all creatures and of all weathers. The very necessaries
of life are deadly to us; we meet with our fate in our dishes, in
our cups, and in the very air we breathe; nay, our very birth is
inauspicious, for we come into the world weeping, and in the middle of
our designs, while we are meditating great matters, and stretching of
our thoughts to after ages, death cuts us off, and our longest date is
only the revolution of a few years. One man dies at the table; another
goes away in his sleep, a third in his mistress’s arms, a fourth is
stabbed, another is stung with an adder, or crushed with the fall of
a house. We have several ways to our end, but the end itself, which
is death, is still the same. Whether we die by a sword, by a halter,
by a potion, or by a disease, it is all but _death_. A child dies in
the swaddling-clouts, and an old man at a hundred—they are both mortal
alike, though the one goes sooner than the other. All that lies betwixt
the cradle and the grave is uncertain. If we compute the _troubles_,
the life even of a child is long: if the _sweetness_ of the _passage_,
that of an old man is short; the whole is slippery and deceitful, and
only death certain; and yet all people complain of that which never
deceived any man. Senecio raised himself from a small beginning to a
vast fortune, being very well skilled in the faculties both of getting
and of keeping, and either of them was sufficient for the doing of his
business. He was a man infinitely careful both of his patrimony and of
his body. He gave me a morning’s visit, (says our author,) and after
that visit he went away and spent the rest of the day with a friend of
his that was desperately sick. At night, he was merry at supper, and
seized immediately after with a quinsy which dispatched him in a few
hours. This man that had money at use in all places, and in the very
course and height of his prosperity was thus cut off. How foolish a
thing is it then for a man to flatter himself with long hopes, and to
pretend to dispose of the future: nay, the very present slips through
our fingers, and there is not that moment which we can call our own.
How vain a thing is it for us to enter upon projects, and to say to
ourselves, “Well, I will go build, purchase, discharge such offices,
settle my affairs, and then retire!” We are all of us born to the same
casualties—all equally frail and uncertain of to-morrow. At the very
altar where we pray for life, we learn to die, by seeing the sacrifices
killed before us. But there is no need of a wound, or searching the
heart for it, when the noose of a cord, or the smothering of a pillow
will do the work. All things have their seasons—they begin, they
increase, and they die. The heavens and the earth grow old, and are
appointed their periods.
That which we call _death_ is but a pause or suspension; and, in
truth, a progress to life, only our thoughts look downward upon the
body, and not forward upon things to come. All things under the sun
are mortal—cities—empires—and the time will come when it shall be a
question where they were, and, perchance, whether ever they had a
being or not. Some will be destroyed by war, others by luxury, fire,
inundations, earthquakes—why should it trouble me then to die, as a
forerunner of an universal dissolution? A great mind submits itself to
God, and suffers willingly what the law of the universe will otherwise
bring to pass upon necessity.
That good old man Bassus, (though with one foot in the grave,) how
cheerful a mind does he bear. He lives in the view of death, and
contemplates his own end with less concern of thought or countenance,
than he would do another man’s. It is a hard lesson, and we are a long
time a learning of it, to receive our death without trouble, especially
in the case of Bassus: in other deaths there is a mixture of hope—a
disease may be cured, a fire quenched, a falling house either propped
or avoided, the sea may swallow a man and throw him up again, a pardon
may interpose twixt the ax and the body—but in the case of old age
there is no place for either hope or intercession.
Let us live in our bodies, therefore, as if we were only to lodge
in them this night, and to leave them to-morrow. It is the frequent
thought of death that must fortify us against the necessity of it. He
that has armed himself against poverty, may, perhaps, come to live
in plenty. A man may strengthen himself against pain and yet live in
a state of health; against the loss of friends, and never lose any,
but he that fortifies himself against the fear of death shall most
certainly have occasion to employ that virtue. It is the care of a wise
and a good man to look to his manners and actions; and rather how well
he lives than how long, for to die sooner or later is not the business,
but to die well or ill, for “death brings us to immortality.”