CHRISTIANS have handsomely glossed the deformity of death by
careful consideration of the body, and civil rites which take off
brutal terminations: and though they conceived all reparable by a
resurrection, cast not off all care of interment. And since the ashes
of sacrifices burnt upon the altar of God were carefully carried out
by the priests, and deposed in a clean field; since they acknowledged
their bodies to be the lodging of Christ, and temples of the Holy
Ghost, they devolved not all upon the sufficiency of soul-existence;
and therefore with long services and full solemnities, concluded their
last exequies, wherein to all distinctions the Greek devotion seems
most pathetically ceremonious.
Christian invention hath chiefly driven at rites, which speak hopes of
another life, and hints of a resurrection. And if the ancient Gentiles
held not the immortality of their better part, and some subsistence
after death, in several rites, customs, actions, and expressions, they
contradicted their own opinions: wherein Democritus went high, even to
the thought of a resurrection, as scoffingly recorded by Pliny.[BI]
What can be more express than the expression of Phocylides?[BJ] Or who
would expect from Lucretius[BK] a sentence of Ecclesiastes? Before
Plato could speak, the soul had wings in Homer, which fell not, but
flew out of the body into the mansions of the dead; who also observed
that handsome distinction of Demas and Soma, for the body conjoined
to the soul, and body separated from it. Lucian spoke much truth
in jest, when he said that part of Hercules which proceeded from
Alcmena perished, that from Jupiter remained immortal. Thus Socrates
was content that his friends should bury his body, so they would not
think they buried Socrates; and, regarding only his immortal part, was
indifferent to be burnt or buried. From such considerations, Diogenes
might contemn sepulture, and, being satisfied that the soul could not
perish, grow careless of corporal interment. The Stoicks, who thought
the souls of wise men had their habitation about the moon, might make
slight account of subterraneous deposition; whereas the Pythagoreans
and transcorporating philosophers, who were to be often buried, held
great care of their interment. And the Platonicks rejected not a
due care of the grave, though they put their ashes to unreasonable
expectations, in their tedious term of return and long set revolution.
[BI] “_Similis **** reviviscendi promissa Democrito vanitas, qui
non revixit ipse. Quæ (malum) ista dementia est iterari vitam
morte?_”--Plin. l. vii. c. 55.
[BJ] “Καὶ τάχα δ᾽ἐκ γαίης ἐλπίζομεν ἐς φάος ἐλθεῖν λεῖψαν ἀποιχομένων.”
[BK] “Cedit item retro de terra quod fuit ante in terras.”--_Luc._,
lib. ii. 998.
Men have lost their reason in nothing so much as their religion,
wherein stones and clouts make martyrs; and, since the religion of
one seems madness unto another, to afford an account or rational
of old rites requires no rigid reader. That they kindled the pyre
aversely, or turning their face from it, was an handsome symbol of
unwilling ministration. That they washed their bones with wine and
milk; that the mother wrapped them in linen, and dried them in her
bosom, the first fostering part and place of their nourishment; that
they opened their eyes toward heaven before they kindled the fire, as
the place of their hopes or original, were no improper ceremonies.
Their last valediction,[BL] thrice uttered by the attendants, was
also very solemn, and somewhat answered by Christians, who thought
it too little, if they threw not the earth thrice upon the interred
body. That, in strewing their tombs, the Romans affected the rose; the
Greeks amaranthus and myrtle: that the funeral pyre consisted of sweet
fuel, cypress, fir, larix, yew, and trees perpetually verdant, lay
silent expressions of their surviving hopes. Wherein Christians, who
deck their coffins with bays, have found a more elegant emblem; for
that it, seeming dead, will restore itself from the root, and its dry
and exsuccous leaves resume their verdure again; which, if we mistake
not, we have also observed in furze. Whether the planting of yew in
churchyards hold not its original from ancient funeral rites, or as
an emblem of resurrection, from its perpetual verdure, may also admit
conjecture.
[BL] “Vale, vale, nos te ordine quo natura permittet sequamur.”
They made use of musick to excite or quiet the affections of their
friends, according to different harmonies. But the secret and
symbolical hint was the harmonical nature of the soul; which, delivered
from the body, went again to enjoy the primitive harmony of heaven,
from whence it first descended; which, according to its progress traced
by antiquity, came down by Cancer, and ascended by Capricornus.
They burnt not children before their teeth appeared, as apprehending
their bodies too tender a morsel for fire, and that their gristly bones
would scarce leave separable relicks after the pyral combustion. That
they kindled not fire in their houses for some days after was a strict
memorial of the late afflicting fire. And mourning without hope, they
had an happy fraud against excessive lamentation, by a common opinion
that deep sorrows disturb their ghosts.[BM]
[BM] “Tu manes ne lœde meos.”
That they buried their dead on their backs, or in a supine position,
seems agreeable unto profound sleep, and common posture of dying;
contrary to the most natural way of birth; nor unlike our pendulous
posture, in the doubtful state of the womb. Diogenes was singular, who
preferred a prone situation in the grave; and some Christians[BN] like
neither, who decline the figure of rest, and make choice of an erect
posture.
[BN] The Russians, &c.
That they carried them out of the world with their feet forward,
not inconsonant unto reason, as contrary unto the native posture of
man, and his production first into it; and also agreeable unto their
opinions, while they bid adieu unto the world, not to look again upon
it; whereas Mahometans who think to return to a delightful life again,
are carried forth with their heads forward, and looking toward their
houses.
They closed their eyes, as parts which first die, or first discover the
sad effects of death. But their iterated clamations to excitate their
dying or dead friends, or revoke them unto life again, was a vanity of
affection; as not presumably ignorant of the critical tests of death,
by apposition of feathers, glasses, and reflection of figures, which
dead eyes represent not: which, however not strictly verifiable in
fresh and warm _cadavers_, could hardly elude the test, in corpses of
four or five days.
That they sucked in the last breath of their expiring friends, was
surely a practice of no medical institution, but a loose opinion that
the soul passed out that way, and a fondness of affection, from some
Pythagorical foundation, that the spirit of one body passed into
another, which they wished might be their own.
That they poured oil upon the pyre, was a tolerable practice, while
the intention rested in facilitating the ascension. But to place good
omens in the quick and speedy burning, to sacrifice unto the winds for
a despatch in this office, was a low form of superstition.
The archimime, or jester, attending the funeral train, and imitating
the speeches, gesture, and manners of the deceased, was too light for
such solemnities, contradicting their funeral orations and doleful
rites of the grave.
That they buried a piece of money with them as a fee of the Elysian
ferryman, was a practice full of folly. But the ancient custom of
placing coins in considerable urns, and the present practice of
burying medals in the noble foundations of Europe, are laudable ways
of historical discoveries, in actions, persons, chronologies; and
posterity will applaud them.
We examine not the old laws of sepulture, exempting certain persons
from burial or burning. But hereby we apprehend that these were not
the bones of persons planet-struck or burnt with fire from heaven; no
relicks of traitors to their country, self-killers, or sacrilegious
malefactors; persons in old apprehension unworthy of the earth;
condemned unto the Tartarus of hell, and bottomless pit of Pluto, from
whence there was no redemption.
Nor were only many customs questionable in order to their obsequies,
but also sundry practices, fictions, and conceptions, discordant or
obscure, of their state and future beings. Whether unto eight or ten
bodies of men to add one of a woman, as being more inflammable and
unctuously constituted for the better pyral combustion, were any
rational practice; or whether the complaint of Periander’s wife be
tolerable, that wanting her funeral burning, she suffered intolerable
cold in hell, according to the constitution of the infernal house of
Pluto, wherein cold makes a great part of their tortures; it cannot
pass without some question.
Why the female ghosts appear unto Ulysses, before the heroes and
masculine spirits,--why the Psyche or soul of Tiresias is of the
masculine gender, who, being blind on earth, sees more than all the
rest in hell; why the funeral suppers consisted of eggs, beans,
smallage, and lettuce, since the dead are made to eat asphodels about
the Elysian meadows:--why, since there is no sacrifice acceptable, nor
any propitiation for the covenant of the grave, men set up the deity of
Morta, and fruitlessly adored divinities without ears, it cannot escape
some doubt.
The dead seem all alive in the human Hades of Homer, yet cannot well
speak, prophecy, or know the living, except they drink blood, wherein
is the life of man. And therefore the souls of Penelope’s paramours,
conducted by Mercury, chirped like bats, and those which followed
Hercules, made a noise but like a flock of birds.
The departed spirits know things past and to come; yet are ignorant of
things present. Agamemnon foretells what should happen unto Ulysses;
yet ignorantly inquires what is become of his own son. The ghosts are
afraid of swords in Homer; yet Sibylla tells Æneas in Virgil, the thin
habit of spirits was beyond the force of weapons. The spirits put off
their malice with their bodies, and Cæsar and Pompey accord in Latin
hell; yet Ajax, in Homer, endures not a conference with Ulysses; and
Deiphobus appears all mangled in Virgil’s ghosts, yet we meet with
perfect shadows among the wounded ghosts of Homer.
Since Charon in Lucian applauds his condition among the dead, whether
it be handsomely said of Achilles, that living contemner of death, that
he had rather be a ploughman’s servant, than emperor of the dead? How
Hercules his soul is in hell, and yet in heaven; and Julius his soul in
a star, yet seen by Æneas in hell?--except the ghosts were but images
and shadows of the soul, received in higher mansions, according to the
ancient division of body, soul, and image, or _simulachrum_ of them
both. The particulars of future beings must needs be dark unto ancient
theories, which Christian philosophy yet determines but in a cloud of
opinions. A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning the
state of this world, might handsomely illustrate our ignorance of the
next, whereof methinks we yet discourse in Pluto’s den, and are but
embryo philosophers.
Pythagoras escapes in the fabulous hell of Dante,[BO] among that swarm
of philosophers, wherein, whilst we meet with Plato and Socrates, Cato
is to be found in no lower place than purgatory. Among all the set,
Epicurus is most considerable, whom men make honest without an Elysium,
who contemned life without encouragement of immortality, and making
nothing after death, yet made nothing of the king of terrors.
[BO] _Del Inferno_, cant. 4.
Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended as the
felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to live; and unto such as
consider none hereafter, it must be more than death to die, which makes
us amazed at those audacities that durst be nothing and return into
their chaos again. Certainly such spirits as could contemn death, when
they expected no better being after, would have scorned to live, had
they known any. And therefore we applaud not the judgment of Machiavel,
that Christianity makes men cowards, or that with the confidence of
but half-dying, the despised virtues of patience and humility have
abased the spirits of men, which Pagan principles exalted; but rather
regulated the wildness of audacities in the attempts, grounds, and
eternal sequels of death; wherein men of the boldest spirits are often
prodigiously temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valour of ancient
martyrs, who contemned death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives,
and in their decrepit martyrdoms did probably lose not many months of
their days, or parted with life when it was scarce worth the living.
For (beside that long time past holds no consideration unto a slender
time to come) they had no small disadvantage from the constitution
of old age, which naturally makes men fearful, and complexionally
superannuated from the bold and courageous thoughts of youth and
fervent years. But the contempt of death from corporal animosity,
promoteth not our felicity. They may sit in the orchestra, and noblest
seats of heaven, who have held up shaking hands in the fire, and
humanly contended for glory.
Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante’s hell, wherein we meet with
tombs enclosing souls which denied their immortalities. But whether
the virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spake, or erring in the
principles of himself, yet lived above philosophers of more specious
maxims, lie so deep as he is placed, at least so low as not to rise
against Christians, who believing or knowing that truth, have lastingly
denied it in their practice and conversation--were a query too sad to
insist on.
But all or most apprehensions rested in opinions of some future
being, which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted
conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity or laugh at.
Happy are they which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men
could say little for futurity, but from reason: whereby the noblest
minds fell often upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions.
With these hopes, Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits against that
cold potion; and Cato, before he durst give the fatal stroke, spent
part of the night in reading the Immortality of Plato, thereby
confirming his wavering hand unto the animosity of that attempt.
It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell
him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state
to come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made
in vain. Without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and
desire of such a state, were but a fallacy in nature; unsatisfied
considerators would quarrel the justice of their constitutions, and
rest content that Adam had fallen lower; whereby, by knowing no other
original, and deeper ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed
the happiness of inferior creatures, who in tranquillity possess their
constitutions, as having not the apprehension to deplore their own
natures, and, being framed below the circumference of these hopes,
or cognition of better being, the wisdom of God hath necessitated
their contentment: but the superior ingredient and obscured part
of ourselves, whereto all present felicities afford no resting
contentment, will be able at last to tell us, we are more than our
present selves, and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their own
accomplishments.