rich oppressours of this World to have their Carkasses buried in the abundance of their treasures unlesse they mean by it to restore that unto the Earth which was digged out of her bowells Gold and Silver are no ransome for unrighteousnesse Virtue alone which survives death is the refreshment of the dead He cannot be affeard to dy who is assured of a better subsistance after death Their dissolution is onely fearful to those who lose all by it and their life to boot The Posthume Inheritance of man is his righteousnesse and integrity which death takes not from him but puts him in possession of them Thou maist gather that good or Virtuous works are proper and necessary to the Soul out of mans natural desire of fame and that innate appetite of immortality which is planted in his Spirit Nature desires nothing which is not rational and her perswasions even when they degenerate strain and point at some primitive delights and innocent priviledges which she was free to before her corruption All secular glories dye with the body goodnesse only is above the power of death That faire part of life is kin to the Supreme good and death cannot hurt it yea it is secured by death which kills envy and frees the virtuous both from the malice of their Enemies and the possibility of failing in themselves Therefore the best imployment for man if he will consider either his own benefit or the approbation and liking of nature which aimes also at immortality is the work of virtue yea far better then the work of reason Many while they study the reason of virtuous works passe by virtue it self By a fruitless study how to do good they lose their time and doe none at all Theorie is nothing so beneficial as Practice It is a true saying that Jamblichus cites out of Pythagoras Every good thing consists of substance and use and not of meer knowledge To be good is to doe good The knowledge of a skilfull Physitian profits not the sick unlesse he falls to practise and gives him something towards his cure Learned Aphorisms heal not the diseased but bitter Medicines That Soul which can reason subtilly and discourse elegantly is not saved but the Soul which doth good works Knowledge and Faith without actual Charity are both dead Neverthelesse there is amongst men a certain covetousnesse of Wisdome and Knowledge as well as of Money The acquisition pleaseth them but they will not set it out to use As Usurers hoard up their mony laying it out neither in pious works nor for their own necessities but suffer it to lye under rust and darknesse So some Learned men neither practise those excellent rules of Living which they have learnt nor will they impart them unto others They study stil more curiosities being in the mean time incurious of their salvation I will say of them as Anacharsis said of the Athenians They know no use of money but to count it There is no man poorer then the rich miser and none more unlearned then the unpractised Nature is contented with mediocrity The World hath many things in it which humane affairs have no need of Virtue also is perfected in few precepts Though we fill the world with our Writings it is not our Volumes that can make us good but a Will to be so Book-men write out of no other design but to reform and civilize Mankind They make several Assayes numerous attempts and then renew them The Dice run not well alwaies the last cast may carry more then all the former Therefore to stir up and incline the Will to goodnesse many things are necessarie but to be good there is nothing needfull but willingnesse We suffer our selves to be cheated by hope we trust that when we have gathered so much knowledge as we covet then we shall do all that we can dâ—sire O foolish and vain prâ—crastination Alchuvius terms it a Palsie I am sure it is a madnesse We stay like that foolish Beggar for a Mess from the Kings table and in the mean time starve We care not to use this present life which is our own but study the secrets of another which as yet is not ours We would learn Mysteries and some things that are either out of our way or else beyond it Christians should neither wander nor sit down but goe on What is that to thee follow thou me Content is a private sphere but wants nothing and is ever calme They that study the world are of the two the worst Speculators Popular politick persons live alwayes by events Their ambition and firienesse makes their lives uneven and uncertaine innocent and undisturbed habits are the companions of Humility Giant-spirits though they may flash sometimes with faire thoughts have alwaies dark and stormy affections Men or the most part of men are like Swans whose feet though ever in a living Bath are alwaies black but their wings and doune which keep above those streames are pure white That part of our lives which is ever padling with the current of Time is foul and defiled but that which soares above it is fair and holy Worldly businesse is the Soules Idlenesse Man ordained to be King of the Worlds Republick had been a meer Cypher if without Soul-imployment He had been created to no end without this Aime If he for whom all things were made will not endeavour to secure himself being made he was made in vain An ornament to the World he cannot be He was not made with any great gaity his decaies are both numerous and hastie If to be seen only were the duty of created things the Stars should have been onely fixt and not moving Stop if thou canst the course of the Sun his restlesse and vast circâ—mvolution As motion makes him bright and lively for hee rejoyceth to run his race so standing still and slothtfulnesse would make him sad and sullied the beauty of the Firmament would be darken'd the freshnesse of the earth would fade and the whole family of Nature missing those cherishing beames would pine and decay Rivers would fall asleep Minerals would prove abortive and the mourning world would wast away under darknesse and sterility But the Sunne though he should not move would not be uselesse his very sight is beneficial Hee is the created light of the visible world a marvellous vessel and an ornament in the high places of the Lord. But man for whom all these things were made without he bâ— active and serviceable to his own Soule is good for nothing There is nothing more pleasant nothing more peacefull nothing more needfull then an industrious Wise man and nothing more impertinent and uselesse then the sluggard The rest of the mind is the motion of Virtue and the idlenesse of the idle is the disturbance of his Spirit He that doth nothing is of lesse use and by much worse then nothing it selfe Wouldst thou be reduced into that unnaturall Vacuity of not being which is without form and void
fed for nine months with excrementitious obscenities to bear all the ignominies of Nature all the abuses of Fortune to resume the ignorance of Infancie the feares of Childhood the dangers of youth the cares of manhood and the miseries of old age I am of â—eliefe that no man did ever live so happily as to be pleased with a repetition of past life These Evills which with our owne consent wee would not have reiterated wee are driven into without our consent They are necessarily inferred that they may be willingly borne to shew the necessity of Patience Wee are born on condition that wee must dye Death is the price or reward of life It is the Statute-law of mankind and that ought to be born as a publick good which were it not already enacted would be the spontaneous petition of all men Certainly if life were without the Jubile of death it were just to refuse it as a servitude which hath no year of release Let us now clearly prove that death is not Evill out of her assimilation and conformity to those things which are most excellently good None leade a better life then those that live so as if they were dead Rom. Câ—ap 6. ver 7. For he that is dead is freed from Sinne. Therefore that which is the exemplar of goodnesse cannot be Evill The onely true praise of the living is to assimilate death He is the most commendable liver whose life is dead to the World and he is the most honest that lives the least to it whose Soul listens not to the body but is at a constant distance from it as if they were dissolved or though it sojournes in it yet is not defiled by it but is separated from sensuality and united to Divinity What is the reason thinkest thou that the Divine Secrets are revealed to men most commonly in their sleep because that similitude of death is most pleasing to God Life is a wild and various madnesse disturbed with passions and distracted with objects Sleepe like death settles them all it is the minds Sabbath in which the Spirit freed from the Senses is well disposed and fitted for Divine intimations The Soul is then alive to it selfe while the body reigns not and the affections are ecclipsed in that short Interlunium of the temporall life Philosophie or humane Knowledge is nothing else but a Contemplation of death not to astonish or discourage men but first to informe and then to reform them for the fruit of Philosophy is Virtue and Virtue is nothing else but an imitation of death or the Art of dying well by beginning to dye while we are alive Virtue is a certain Primrose a prolusion or Assay of dying Therefore that by which man becomes immortall and eternall is the preface and the Inchâ—ation of death This is the main drift of Philosophy to make life comfortable by conforming it unto death and to make death immortality by regulating life Death is intollerable to him only that hath not mortified his desires while he yet lives but expects to swallow up death and all the powers of it at once that is to say in the hour of death We cut our meate and feed on it by bits lest we should be choaked by swallowing it whole so death if it be assayed and practised by degrees will be both pleasant in the tast and wholsome in the digestion if we mortifie one affection to day and another to morrow Hee that cannot carry a great burthen at once may carry it all by portions Philosophy acts the part of death upon the Stage of life it kills sensuality and makes death most easie to be born by teaching us to dye dayly What can be more grievous then death unto him who together with his own feeles the paine of a thousand other dying cupidities We faile not to bewaile the losse of one thing whither honour pleasure or a friend How much more when we loose all at a blow and loose eternal life in one short minute The Soule of the wise man frees her selfe from the body in an acceptable time she casts off the delectations of the flesh and the cares of this World while it is day-light that shee may enjoy her self and be acquainted with God before the night comes She finds by experience that her forces are more vigorous and her light more discerning when she is not sullied with Earthly negotiations and the grossâ— affections of the body she finds that covetousnesse love and feare permit her not to see the truth and that the affaires of the body are the Remora's of the Spirit and therefore she concludes that he must neglect the cryes of the flesh and be attentive onely to the voyce of God and upon these considerations shee shakes off that Bondage she deserts the familiarity and consultations of blood that she may advise with and discerne the most clear light of truth she casts off pleasures by which even Spirits are made subject to sense and pollution The truth is most pure and will not be manifested but to the pure and the undefiled Therefore all the scope and the end of Virtue is to separate the Soul from the body and to come as near death as possibly may be while wee are yet alive This is the cause that wise men do so much love and long for death at least they fear it not How can he feare death who by dying passeth into the life of the blessed Who hath already delivered himselfe from more feares and inconveniences then death can free him from Yea from those dangers which make death fearfull Who before his dying day hath disarmed and overcome death Shall he that all his life-time desired to be separated from the body repine at the performance and fullfilling of it It were most ridiculous if hasting towards home thou wouldst refuse the helpe of another to convey thee thither with more speed and be angry at thy arrival in that Port whither thou didst bend thy course since the first day thou didst set forth There is no man that seeking for a friend will not rejoyce when he hath found him No man will be angry if another perfects what he did begin but was not able to finish Nature by death perfects that which Virtue had begun in life and the endeavour dies not but is continued and thrives by a necessary transplantation While he yet lived he denyed himselfe the use of the body because it hindrâ—d the course of the Soul and the body dying he doth but persist in the same just denyall It is a greater pleasure to want then not to use what wee doe not want This Correlation of Death and Virtue I shall exhibite or lay out to your view by a discussion of those honours which each of them procures As Virtue by the Consideration of death ordereth and preserves her Majesty so by imitating death she obtaines the reverence and admiration of all What more reverend thing can wee labour for then that which
body Wee should therefore as often as wee breath remember death when we shall breath our last when the Spirit shall returne unto him that gave it Our whole life is nothing else but a repeated resemblance of our last expiration by the emission of our breath we doe retaine it and as I may say spin it out God gave it not continual and even like fluent streames or the calme and unwearied Emanations of light but refracted and shifting to shew us that we are not permanent but transitory and that the Spirit of life is but a Celestial Gale lent us for a time that by using it well we may secure it Eternally Another Hermetist adviseth us Adorare relliquias ventorum to make much of and to honour our Soules which are the breathings and last dispensations of the still fruitful and liberal creator This we can never do but by a frequent study of our dissolution and the frailty of the body Of such an effectuall goodness is death that it makes men good before it comes and makes sure of Eternity by a virtuous disposing of time Thinke not that evill which sends from so far the beams of its goodnesse There is no good liver but is a debtor to death by whose lendings and premunitions we are furnished and fitted for another world The certainty of it and the incertainty of the time and manner which is the onely circumstance that seemes to offend us if it were seriously considered deserves to be the most pleasing acceptable for amongst all the wondrous Ordinances of Divine providence there is none more Excellent for the Government of man then death being so wisely disposed of that in the height of incertainty it comprehends and manifests an infallible certainty God would have us to be alwaies good to keepe in his likenesse and Image Therfore it is his will that we should be alwaies uncertaine of our most certain death Such is his care of us lest the knowledge of a long life and a late death should encourage us to multiply our transgressions as the notice of a swift dissolution might dishearten and astonish us But being left now in a possibility of either we are taught to live soberly and to expect the time of our change in all holynesse and watchfullnesse The possibility of dying shortly doth lessen the cares of life and makes the difficulties of Virtue easie Bondage and Slavery if it be but short is to those that suffer it the lighter by so much And a large allowance of time makes us slow to Virtue but a short portion quickens us and the incertainty of that very shortnesse makes us certaine to be good For who would weep and vexe himself for worldly provisions if he certainly knew that he should live but one month and how dares he laugh or be negligent of his Salvation that knowes not whither hee shall live to see one day more yea one hour The incertainty of death makes us suspect life and that suspition keepes us from sinning The world was never fouler nor more filled with abominations then when life was longest when abused Nature required an Expiation by waters and the generall submersion of her detestable defilers Theophrastus did unjustly to raile at Nature and condemne her of partiality when he envyed the long life of some plants and inferiour creatures as the Oake the Hart the Ravens some of which live to feed and flye up and down in the World above five hundred years He quarrelled with the wise dispensations of Divinity because a slight suite of feathers and a renew'd dresse of greene leaves could weare out a building that lodged a rationall Soul and the breath of the Almighty Both his wish and his reason were erroneous He erred in desiring long life and in judging happinesse to consist in the multitude of yeares and not the number of good workes The shortnesse of life is lengthned by living well When life was reckond by centuries the innumerable sins of the living so offended God that it repented him to have made impenitent man Those that sinned out of confidence of life he punished with sudden destruction That long liv'd generation had made the world unclean and being polluted by their lives it was purged by their deaths He shorten'd afterwards the lease of life reducing it to an hundred and twenty years that by the diligence of frequent death he might reform the past disorders of long life and prevent them for the future teaching both sexes to amend their lives by giving them death for their next neighbours So beneficiall is death so much profits the certainty of it and as much the incertainty The ignorance of the day of death is in effect the same with the knowledge of it the first makes us watch lest it come upon us unawares and the last though it might name the day to us yet could it not arme us better against it perhaps not so well This incertainty of dying certainly secures us from many errors it makes us prudent provident and not evill Death therefore is a device of the Almighty and a wise instrument of divine policy Zaleucus so highly approved of it that he was about to enact and proclaime a Law for dying had he not found it already published by the edict of Nature And in his Preface to those Laws made for the Locrenses he warns them 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 c. To have alwayes before their eyes that time which is to every one the end of life because a hearty repentance for all former injuries seiseth upon all men that thinke of death and an earnest desire or wishing that all their actions in life had been just Wherefore it is expedient that in all our dealings and thoughts death should act a part and be our familiar counsellor ever present with us so shall we be carefull to doe all things virtuously and justly Death then is most necessary to govern mankinde because the memory of it keeps us in awe and conformable to virtue All Commonwealths that follow the method of Nature must approve of this Law of Zaleucus and death in all their consultations should guide their lives Certainly in the Government of the rebellious Generation of Man Death hath been the most awfull Engine of the Deity without this stern he guided them not When man was immortall God saw it necessary to preserve his immortality by death he injoyned the Law of Abstinence to Adam under the penalty of dying which is continued still by the same artifice of death lest iniquities should be immortall wickedness should escape punishment by the patience and submission of his only Son to death he restored dead men to life he conferred upon him all his lost honours renewd and confirmed his old prerogative and together with the salvation of his Soule gave him a sure promise that his body allso should be made Immortal but in all these favours and after full reconciliation he would not remove death but continued it
member cut off then hanging dead by thee Thou wouldst then onely wish for its company when it would be no hindrance to thee And canst thou endure the immortal Soul to be sick of death to be sick in his best part in the head wilt thou suffer thy mind to drowse to be paralytical and senselesse never thinking of God nor of doing good In such a liver the beauty of his immortal part is crusted over with an incurable leprosie and reason which is the Soules Countenance is most ingloriously ecclipsed The Task of life is to labour and the Sacrament of the Soule is to work rationally Idlenesse is a Parenthesis in the line of life When we do nothing wee do not live Slothfullnesse is a dead Existence a kind of sleep when we are awake That life is empty that is not filled with the care of living well It was truly said by Possidonius that one day of a learned mans life was more pleasant then all the years of the unlearned One houre one minute well spent is to be preferred before a sinfull voluptuous for-ever Time is a sacred thing it flowes from Heaven it is a thred spun from thence by the motion and circumvolution of the spheres It is an emanation from that place where eternity springs The right use of it is to reduce it to its Original If we follow time close it will bring us to its Fountain It is a clue cast down from Heaven to guide us thither It is the younger brother of eternity the one must be sought in the other It hath some assimilation to Divinity it is partly knowable and partly not Wee move in it and wee see it not It is then most invisible when most present If we be carefull of it the benefit is ours If wee neglect it we cast away our selves Hee lives not at all that lives not well And hee that lives ill shall dye worse Hee suffers a living and sensible death It is death because it wants the fruit of life and it is sensible because it is with losse and punishment Many ill livers comfort themselves with a vain conceir that the state of death is senselesse But Vice and Idlenesse are more malitious deaths they carry with them the penalty of sense They are fertill in evills and barren of good like a cursed ground that bringes forth nothing but thornes and thistles You expect grapes from your vines corn from your Fields but no Fruit at all from your selves Were you made to be good for nothing for shame be your own dressers Manure your selves and prune your vain and noxious affections Man himself is his own pretious Soile his own fruitfull field and thriving Plant let him that expects fruits from extraneous things tast first of his own Good workes are the apples of this Heavenly Plant. The Vine and the Field though they bear not for themselves pay their annual proventions If they had beene left to their first fruitfullnesse before the Curse they had exceeded in a most uberous spontaneous fertility if they should yeild nothing now they would be good for nothing Man bears fruit for himselfe and may bear as much as he pleaseth Wilt thou then keepe backe thy own provision Wilt thou pine thy selfe or by burying thy talent in the dust be an enemy to thy own soule and envious towards others Virtue in my opinion is like to Musick it pleaseth most of all the Virtuous man himself and it pleaseth also the vitious whose Conscience doth force him to admire that in others which he neglects in himselfe Musick delighteth both the Musician and the unskillfull Musick built the Walls of Thebes and Virtue must build the new Hierusalem Musick and Virtue are the performances of the hand and the Cordials of the mind Every lover of Virtue is Musical that is so say he is pleased with the suffrages of his own Conscience and solaced with the Celestiall flights of his pure Spirit Hee loves the works of Virtue not to gain the peoples applause but for Virtues sake whose beauty and power are best seene in her workes Honesty is one of the liberal Arts it is a trade of Conscience not of gaine Craftsmen shew their skill in their works The Sculptor in his Cuts the Painter in his limnings and the Goldsmith in his Plate To do something not the manner of doing it is their care Their worke may be well done though negligently and without much Art The Limner may give a stroke in hast or anger which neither Judgement nor curiosity can ever match Giotto's circle though drawn perfunctorily surpassed the most elaborate peeces of other Arâ—â—sts Virtue alone makes no use either of errour or chance and this she doth meerly to oppose Fortune In virtuous actions if wee erre in doing though we do good yet the worke of Virtue is not well done In other Arts one Exemplar or Act may serve to shew the Artificers skill though he should never work more But it is not so in Virtue As we cannot know a skillfull Musician unlesse he plaies upon some Instrument so Virtuous men are not manifested untill they Act He that will give any proofe of himselfe must needs be active but to be so once is not activity Virtue is a most usefull thing and the use of it dyeth not after it is used For allthough all the actions of man are transitory yet when they proceed from Virtue they are permanent I advise thee therefore to be permanent yea to be immortal Care not for those things which the World esteems to be enduring as Gold and the Wealth of Fortune those will make them wings and fly away when thou doest least look for it Care thou for those things which the people and their Hypocritital rulers value not because they believe them to proceed from a sheepish and rewardlesse tamenesse and not from grace and the secret dispensations of the God of peace Care I say for Righteousnesse and Innocence Care that thy Actions be upright These are the treasures which the World believing to be transient shall find one day to be truly solid and permanent Thou hast read somtimes that advice of the Apostle Redeem the times That is to say what thou doest well at one time thou shalt have it at all times Thy good Actions withâ—rsoever thou goest will bear thee company They are Companions of a most rare fidelity and will leave thee neither in the hour of death nor after death When our friends cannot follow us then do our good works travell with us they are then our best friends and overcome our foes Envy it selfe is appeased with death it falls off with the body Malice knowes no posthume persecution and the glory of Virtue in that state is above the reach of her Enemies though they may disturb our temporal rights they are too short to oppose our claime to immortality The onely peaceful possession of the dead is his good life and righteous dealings what wil it avail the
he that violates his own body and makes way for the Soul to flye out with his own hands is damned by the very Act but if another doth it to him it is both his Salvation and his Crown The heathens esteemed it no honour for Captives to have their bonds loosed It was their freedome but not their glory When the jugde himself did break off their Chaines that they accounted honorable By this Ceremony did Vespasian and Titus acknowledge the worth of Joseph the Jew This vindicated his integrity By cutting his bonds with their Imperial hand they freed him both from captivity and disgrace Titus said that if they would break off his fetters and not stay to take them off his honour would be so perfectly repaired by it as if he had been never bound nor overcome The same difference in point of honour is betwixt the naturall death and the violent betwixt dying when wee are full of daies and the death which Tyrants impose upon us when we are mangled and grinded by their fury This honour is then greatest when the body is not dissolved but distorted and broken into peeces Certainly the best men have ever perished by the violence of Tyrants nature to preserve her innocence being very backward and unwilling as it were to take away such great and needfull examples of goodnesse Treachery and violence were ordained for the just in the dâ—ath of Abel who dyed by the wicked This better sort of death was in him consecrated to the best men those persons whom Nature respects and is loath to medle with envy laies hands upon Whom the one labours to preferre the other plotteth to destroy Nor deals she thus with the good only but with the eminent and mighty too thus she served Hector Alexander and Caesar the goodliest object is alwaies her aim When Thrasybulus the Astrologer told Alexander the Roman that he should end his daies by a violent death he answered that he was very glad of it for then said he I shall dye like an Emperour like the best and the greatest of men and not sneak out of the World like a worthlesse obscure fellow But the death of these Glorioli was not truly glorious I have onely mentioned them because that a passive death though wanting religion hath made their honour permanent That death is the truly glorious which is seald with the joy of the sufferers spirit whose Conscience is ravished with the kisses of the Dove Who can look upon his tormentour with delight and grow up to Heaven without diminution though made shorter on Earth by the head This is the death which growes pretious by contempt and glorious by disgrace Whose sufferer runs the race set before him with patience and finisheth it with joy We are carefull that those things which are our own may be improved to the utmost and why care wee not for death what is more ours then mortality Death should not be feared because it is simply or of it self a great good and is evill to none but to those that by living ill make their death bad What ever evil is in death it is attracted from life If thou preservest a good Conscience while thou livest thou wilt have no feare when thou dyest thou wilt rejoyce and walke homeward singing It is life therefore that makes thee fear death If thou didst not fear life if life had not blasted the joyes of death thou wouldst never be afraid of the end of sorrowes Death therefore is of it self innocent sincere healthfull and desirable It frees us from the malignancie and malice of life from the sad necessities and dangerous errours we are subject to in the body That death whose leaders are Integrity and virtue whose cause is Religion is the Elixir which gives this life its true tincture and makes it immortal To dye is a common and trivial thing for the good and the bad dye and the bad most of all but to dye willingly to dye gloriously is the peculiar priviledge of good men It is better to leave life voluntarily then to be driven out of it forcibly let us willingly give place unto posterity Esteem not life for its own sake but for the use of it Love it not because thou wouldst live but because thou mayst do good works while thou livest Now the greatest work of life is a good death If life then ought to be lesse esteemed then good works who would not purchase a good death with the losse of life why should we be afeared of politick irreligious Tyrants and an arm of flesh though guarded with steele Nature it selfe threatens us with death and frailty attends us every hour Why will we refuse to dye in a good cause when 't is offered us who may dye ill the very next day after let us not promise our selves a short life when our death assures us of eternal glory But if it were granted that death were neither good nor honourable but evill and fearfull why will not we take care for that which we fear Why do we neglect that which we suspect Why if it be evill do not wee arme and defend our selves against it we provide against dangerous contingencies we labour against casuall losses and we neglect this great and enevitable perill To neglect death and to contemn death are two things none are more carefull of it then those that contemne it none feare it more then those that neglect it and which is strange they fear it not because they have neglected it but they neglect it when they fear it they dare not prepare for it for fear of thinking of it O the madnesse and Idlenesse of mankind to that which they adjudge to be most Evill they come not onely unprepared but unadvisedly and without so much as forethought What mean we what do we look for Death is still working and wee are still idle it is still travelling towards us and we are still slumbering and folding our hands Let us awake out of this darke and sleepy state of mind let us shake off these dreams and vain propositions of diverse lusts let us approve of truth and realities let us follow after those things which are good let us have true joy made sure unto us and a firm security in life in death Sickness and death you are but sluggish things And cannot reach a heart that hath got wings FINIS THE WORLD CONTEMNED IN A Parenetical Epistle written by the Reverend Father EVCHERIVS Bishop of Lyons to his Kinsman VALERIANVS Love not the VVorld neither the things that arâ— in the world If any man love the world the love of the Father is not in him 1 Ioh. 2.15 They are of the world therefore speake they of the world and the world heareth them Chap. 4. vers 5. If the world hate you ye know that it hated me before it hated you Ioh. 15. verse 18. If ye were of the world the world would love his own but because ye are not of the world out I
by our reverence of it makes the worst livers to be reputed not bad As those who are Evill are loath to believe themselves to be such because of an innate reverence due from every man to Virtue which makes them love the repute of Excellencie though not inherent and rejoyce to be accounted good of themselves or in their own esteem though they be evill taking pleasure in that self-deception So those who have beene vitious in their lives out of the reverence wee owe to death wee dare not speak evill of when they are once dead Nay it is not civil nor pious to mention the dead without commendation either by praise or else by prayer our Christian well wishes as if they had been most deserving in their lives So powerfull is the Majesty of death that it makes the most contemptible venerable Those we most envie while they live we speak well of when they are dead Excellent is that observation of Mimnermus Against the Virtuous man we all make head And hate him while he lives but praise him dead Envy pursues us not beyond the grave and our honour is not free and secure til we are layd in it That humble and quiet dust stops the lying and malicious mouth Socrates foresaw that his draught of hemlock would after his death make his very enemies his worshippers He saw his Statues erected by the same decree that did cast him downe And what was the motive thinkst thou that made his enemies worship him dead whom they persecuted living There is amongst the people a secret tradition that whispers to them that those who are freed from the miseries of this life live happily in another world Now happinesse even in their opinion is worthy of honour therefore the honour or veneration which death exacts is a certain tribute or a debt rather that is due to happinesse and if for this thou wilt advise with thy Aristotle he will not deny it The Lacedemonians bestowed the Olympick palms and honours which whosoever won in his life time he was accounted most happy upon all that dyed without exception or extenuation adorning the statutes of some and the tombes of all with the green and flourishing Laurel esteeming every one of the dead as happy as the most fortunate Victor that lived The antient Romans held the greatest honour of the living to consist in the renown of their dead Ancestors They judged him to be highly honoured that was enjoyned by any dying persons to perform some extraordinary service for them as an Embassie or some other weighty negotiation And Callistratus in his first book of Questions affirmes That Embassadors so employed are the most honourable because that the suffrages and election of dying men is most venerable as being then upon the borders of immortality and discerning more then those who are yet in the midst of life and more in the clouds of thick-sighted humanity That honour is the greatest which is done us by the honourable Nor is this glory of death a Relative of the Soul only Looke well upon the body that provision of the worms a frail and perishing objects but ful of Majesty We are nothing so moved nor doe we so gravely compose our selves at the presence of a King as at the sight of a dead body With how much awfulnesse doth it lye along with what a secret mysterious command doth it check all about it It is a silent abstruse Philosopher and makes others so too Nor is it onely venerable but sacred and the Depositum and Index of an almighty Restauratour The honour of Sepulture is a part of Religion Now if it be argued that goodnesse consists onely in utility or benefits it follows that nothing is good but that which profiteth Death then is the best and the greatest subordinate good of all for the death of others benefits those that see it and their own death is most profitable to those that mind it The Lamae who are the Priests of the Tehitenses are in this point the most excellent Philosophers in the world When they prepare to celebrate prayers they summon the people together with the hollow whispering sounds of certain Pipes made of the bones of dead men they have also Rosaries or Beads made of them which they carry alwayes about them and they drink constantly out of a Skull Being asked the reason of this Ceremony by Antonie Andrada who first found them out one that was the chiefest amongst them told him that they did it Ad Fatorum memoriam They did therefore pipe with the bones of dead men that those sad whispers might warn the people of the swift and invisible approach of death whose Musick they termed it and affirmed it to be the most effectuall of any That the Beads they wore did put them in minde of the fraile estate of their bodies and did in prayer-time regulate and humble their thoughts That a constant commemoration of death was as beneficial to the Soul as devotion therefore they carryed them alwaies about them as the powefull Momento's of their approaching departure out of the Land of the living To this he added that their drinking in a skull did mortifie their affections represse pleasures and imbitter their tast lest they should relish too much the delights of life Lastly he added that this constant representation of death was an Antidote against all the sinfull Excesses and deviations of man With the same Medicine they secured themselves from other iniquities When they were to swear concerning any thing they laid their hands upon certain Images set with the bones of dead men by which ceremony they were put in mind of the last Judgement and the Account which the dead and the Quick must give in that great that impartiall and censorious day Certainly this was no barbarous but a very humane and elegant Philosophy which taught men to season and redeeme all the daies of their lives with the memory of the one day of their death Admirable was the memory of Mithridatés who was master of two and twenty Languages and could readily discourse in every one of them and no lesse happy was that of Cyrus Themistâ—cles and Seneca but a constant memory of mans miseries and his death exceeds them all As the rootes of the tree in the I le of Malega upon that side which lookes towards the East are an Antidote or preservative but those which spread Westward are poysonous and deadly So the Cogitations of a Christian which are the Roots by which hee stickes to Heaven for every Christian is a Trâ—e reversed when they look towards the West or setting point of life are healing and salutiferous but those which reflect still upon temporall things and his abode in this World are destructive and deadly Nature doth every minute commend unto us this memoriall of death Hermes in his sacred book contends that respiration was given to man as a sign of that last efflation in which the Soul parts from the