The bell rings out, the pulse thereof is changed; the tolling was a
faint and intermitting pulse, upon one side; this stronger, and argues
more and better life. His soul is gone out, and as a man who had a lease
of one thousand years after the expiration of a short one, or an
inheritance after the life of a man in a consumption, he is now entered
into the possession of his better estate. His soul is gone, whither? Who
saw it come in, or who saw it go out? Nobody; yet everybody is sure he
had one, and hath none. If I will ask mere philosophers what the soul
is, I shall find amongst them that will tell me, it is nothing but the
temperament and harmony, and just and equal composition of the elements
in the body, which produces all those faculties which we ascribe to the
soul; and so in itself is nothing, no separable substance that overlives
the body. They see the soul is nothing else in other creatures, and they
affect an impious humility to think as low of man. But if my soul were
no more than the soul of a beast, I could not think so; that soul that
can reflect upon itself, consider itself, is more than so. If I will
ask, not mere philosophers, but mixed men, philosophical divines, how
the soul, being a separate substance, enters into man, I shall find some
that will tell me, that it is by generation and procreation from
parents, because they think it hard to charge the soul with the
guiltiness of original sin if the soul were infused into a body in which
it must necessarily grow foul, and contract original sin whether it
will or no; and I shall find some that will tell me, that it is by
immediate infusion from God, because they think it hard to maintain an
immortality in such a soul, as should be begotten and derived with the
body from mortal parents. If I will ask, not a few men, but almost whole
bodies, whole churches, what becomes of the souls of the righteous at
the departing thereof from the body, I shall be told by some, that they
attend an expiation, a purification in a place of torment; by some, that
they attend the fruition of the sight of God in a place of rest, but yet
but of expectation; by some, that they pass to an immediate possession
of the presence of God. St. Augustine studied the nature of the soul as
much as any thing, but the salvation of the soul; and he sent an express
messenger to St. Hierome, to consult of some things concerning the soul;
but he satisfies himself with this: "Let the departure of my soul to
salvation be evident to my faith, and I care the less how dark the
entrance of my soul into my body be to my reason." It is the going out,
more than the coming in, that concerns us. This soul this bell tells me
is gone out, whither? Who shall tell me that? I know not who it is, much
less what he was, the condition of the man, and the course of his life,
which should tell me whither he is gone, I know not. I was not there in
his sickness, nor at his death; I saw not his way nor his end, nor can
ask them who did, thereby to conclude or argue whither he is gone. But
yet I have one nearer me than all these, mine own charity; I ask that,
and that tells me he is gone to everlasting rest, and joy, and glory. I
owe him a good opinion; it is but thankful charity in me, because I
received benefit and instruction from him when his bell tolled; and I,
being made the fitter to pray by that disposition, wherein I was
assisted by his occasion, did pray for him; and I pray not without
faith; so I do charitably, so I do faithfully believe, that that soul is
gone to everlasting rest, and joy, and glory. But for the body, how poor
a wretched thing is that? we cannot express it so fast, as it grows
worse and worse. That body, which scarce three minutes since was such a
house, as that that soul, which made but one step from thence to heaven,
was scarce thoroughly content to leave that for heaven; that body hath
lost the name of a dwelling-house, because none dwells in it, and is
making haste to lose the name of a body, and dissolve to putrefaction.
Who would not be affected to see a clear and sweet river in the morning,
grow a kennel of muddy land-water by noon, and condemned to the saltness
of the sea by night? and how lame a picture, how faint a representation
is that, of the precipitation of man's body to dissolution? Now all the
parts built up, and knit by a lovely soul, now but a statue of clay, and
now these limbs melted off, as if that clay were but snow; and now the
whole house is but a handful of sand, so much dust, and but a peck of
rubbish, so much bone. If he who, as this bell tells me, is gone now,
were some excellent artificer, who comes to him for a cloak or for a
garment now? or for counsel, if he were a lawyer? if a magistrate, for
justice? Man, before he hath his immortal soul, hath a soul of sense,
and a soul of vegetation before that: this immortal soul did not forbid
other souls to be in us before, but when this soul departs, it carries
all with it; no more vegetation, no more sense. Such a mother-in-law is
the earth, in respect of our natural mother; in her womb we grew, and
when she was delivered of us, we were planted in some place, in some
calling in the world; in the womb of the earth we diminish, and when she
is delivered of us, our grave opened for another; we are not
transplanted, but transported, our dust blown away with profane dust,
with every wind.