In the Jewish Hypogæum and subterranean cell at Rome was little
observable beside the variety of lamps and frequent draughts of the holy
candlestick. In authentic draughts of Antony and Jerome, we meet with
thigh bones and death's-heads; but the cemeterial cells of ancient
Christians and martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture stories;
not declining the flourishes of cypress, palms, and olive, and the
mystical figures of peacocks, doves, and cocks; but literately affecting
the portraits of Enoch, Lazarus, Jonas, and the vision of Ezekiel, as
hopeful draughts and hinting imagery of the resurrection--which is the
life of the grave and sweetens our habitations in the land of moles
and pismires.
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 Plato's den, and are but
embryon philosophers.
Pythagoras escapes, in the fabulous hell of Dante, 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.
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 judgments 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 valor 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 inclosing 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 those 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 farther 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 at 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....
But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy, and deals
with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity. Who
can but pity the founder of the pyramids? Erostratus lives that burnt
the Temple of Diana; he is almost lost that built it. Time hath spared
the epitaph of Adrian's horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we
compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad
have equal durations; and Thersites is like to live as long as
Agamemnon. Who knows whether the best of men be known, or whether there
be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remembered in
the known account of time? Without the favor of the everlasting
register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and
Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.
Oblivion is not to be hired. The greater part must be content to be as
though they had not been; to be found in the register of God, not in the
record of man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story, and the
recorded names ever since contain not one living century. The number of
the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The night of time far
surpasseth the day; and who knows when was the equinox? Every hour adds
unto that current arithmetic, which scarce stands one moment. And since
death must be the Lucina of life, and even pagans could doubt whether
thus to live were to die; since our longest sun sets at right
declensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be
long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes[4];
since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and
time, that grows old itself, bids us hope no long duration, diuturnity
is a dream and folly of expectation.
[Footnote 4: According to the custom of the Jews, who placed a lighted
wax candle in a pot of ashes by the corpse.]
Darkness and light divide the course of time, and oblivion shares with
memory a great part even of our living beings. We slightly remember our
felicities, and the smartest strokes of affliction leave but short smart
upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or
themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce
callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which
notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to
come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature,
whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our
delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows
are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity
contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their
souls; a good way to continue their memories, while, having the
advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something
remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their
passed selves, making accumulation of glory unto their last durations.
Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were
content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the
public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their
unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more
unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies to attend
the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind and
folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice
now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and
Pharaoh is sold for balsams....
There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality. Whatever hath no
beginning may be confident of no end, which is the peculiar of that
necessary essence that cannot destroy itself, and the highest strain of
omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from
the power of itself. All others have a dependent being, and within the
reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality
frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after
death makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who can only destroy our
souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names
hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance,
that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold
long subsistence seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble
animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing
nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omitting ceremonies of
bravery in the infamy of his nature....
Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sun within us. A small
fire sufficeth for life; great flames seemed too little after death,
while men vainly affected pyres, and to burn like Sardanapalus. But the
wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal blazes, and reduced
undoing fires into the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so
mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an urn....
While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined them;
and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not acknowledge
their graves; wherein Alaricus seems more subtle, who had a river turned
to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla, who thought himself safe in
his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and stones thrown at his
monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes innocent, who deal so with
men in this world that they are not afraid to meet them in the next; who
when they die make no commotion among the dead, and are not touched with
that poetical taunt of Isaiah.
Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vainglory and
wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous
resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon pride
and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that infallible
perpetuity unto which all others must diminish their diameters, and be
poorly seen in angles of contingency.
Pious spirits, who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made
little more of this world than the world that was before it, while they
lay obscure in the chaos of preordination and night of their forebeings.
And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian
annihilation, ecstasis, exolution, liquefaction, transformation, the
kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and ingression into the divine
shadow, they have already had a handsome anticipation of heaven; the
glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.