The Major Works (English Library) (33 page)

Mean while
Epicurus
lyes deep in
Dante
’s hell,
⁴²
wherein we meet with Tombs enclosing souls which denied their immortalities. But whether the virtuous heathen, who lived better then he spake, or erring in the principles of himself, yet lived above Philosophers of more specious Maximes, lye so deep as he is placed; at least so low as not to rise against Christians, who beleeving or knowing that truth, have lastingly denied it in their practise and conversation, were a quæry too sad to insist on.

But all or most apprehensions rested in Opinions of some future being, which ignorantly or coldly beleeved, 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 mindes fell often upon doubtfull deaths, and melancholly Dissolutions; With these hopes
Socrates
warmed his doubtfull spirits, against that cold potion, and
Cato
before he durst give the fatall stroak spent part of the night in reading the immortality of
Plato
,
⁴³
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 seemes progressionall, and otherwise made in vaine; Without this accomplishment the naturall expectation and desire of such a state, were but a fallacy in nature, unsatisfied Considerators would quarrell the justice of their constitutions, and rest content that
Adam
had fallen lower, whereby by knowing no other Originall, and deeper ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happinesse of inferiour Creatures; who in tranquility possesse 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 wisedom of God hath necessitated their Contentment: But the superiour ingredient and obscured part of our selves,
⁴⁴
whereto all present felicities afford no resting contentment, will be able at last to
tell us we are more then our present selves; and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their own accomplishments.

CHAPTER V

Now since these dead bones have already out-lasted the living ones of
Methuselah
, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, out-worn all the strong and specious buildings above it; and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests;
¹
What Prince can promise such diuturnity
²
unto his Reliques, or might not gladly say,

Time which antiquates Antiquities, and hath an art to make dust of all things, hath yet spared these
minor
Monuments. In vain we hope to be known by open and visible conservatories,
⁴
when to be unknown was the means of their continuation and obscurity their protection: If they dyed by violent hands, and were thrust into their Urnes, these bones become considerable, and some old Philosophers would honour them,
⁵
whose souls they conceived most pure, which were thus snatched from their bodies; and to retain a stranger propension
⁶
unto them: whereas they weariedly left a languishing corps, and with faint desires of re-union. If they fell by long and aged decay, yet wrapt up in the bundle of time, they fall into indistinction,
⁷
and make but one blot with Infants. If we begin to die when we live, and long life be but a prolongation of death; our life is a sad composition; We live with death, and die not in a moment.
How many pulses made up the life of
Methuselah
, were work for
Archimedes
: Common Counters summe up the life of
Moses
his man.
⁸
Our dayes become considerable like petty sums by minute accumulations; where numerous fractions make up but small round numbers; and our dayes of a span long make not one little finger.
⁹

If the nearnesse of our last necessity, brought a nearer conformity unto it, there were a happinesse in hoary hairs, and no calamity in half senses. But the long habit of living indisposeth us for dying; When Avarice makes us the sport of death; When even
David
grew politickly cruell; and
Solomon
could hardly be said to be the wisest of men.
¹⁰
But many are too early old, and before the date of age. Adversity stretcheth our dayes, misery makes
Alcmenas
nights,
¹¹
and time hath no wings unto it. But the most tedious being is that which can unwish it self, content to be nothing, or never to have been, which was beyond the
male
-content of
Job
, who cursed not the day of his life, but his Nativity: Content to have so farre been, as to have a Title to future being; Although he had lived here but in an hidden state of life, and as it were an abortion.
¹²

What Song the
Syrens
sang, or what name
Achilles
assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzling Questions
¹³
are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these Ossuaries entred the famous Nations of the dead,
¹⁴
and slept with Princes and Counsellours,
¹⁵
might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or
what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above Antiquarism. Not to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the Provinciall Guardians, or tutellary Observators.
¹⁶
Had they made as good provision for their names, as they have done for their Reliques, they had not so grosly erred in the art of perpetuation. But to subsist in bones, and be but Pyramidally extant, is a fallacy in duration. Vain ashes, which in the oblivion of names, persons, times, and sexes, have found unto themselves, a fruitlesse continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as Emblemes of mortall vanities; Antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and madding vices. Pagan vain-glories which thought the world might last for ever, had encouragement for ambition, and finding no
Atropos
unto the immortality of their Names, were never dampt with the necessity of oblivion. Even old ambitions had the advantage of ours, in the attempts of their vain-glories, who acting early, and before the probable Meridian of time,
¹⁷
have by this time found great accomplishment of their designes, whereby the ancient
Heroes
have already out-lasted their Monuments, and Mechanicall preservations. But in this latter Scene of time we cannot expect such Mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the Prophecy of
Elias
,
¹⁸
and
Charles
the fifth can never hope to live within two
Methusela’s
of
Hector
.
¹⁹

And therefore restlesse inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories unto present considerations, seems a vanity almost out of date, and superanuated peece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names, as some have done in their persons,
one face of
Janus
holds no proportion unto the other. ’Tis too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designes. To extend our memories by Monuments, whose death we dayly pray for,
²⁰
and whose duration we cannot hope, without injury to our expectations, in the advent of the last day, were a contradiction to our beliefs. We whose generations are ordained in this setting part of time, are providentially taken off from such imaginations. And being necessitated to eye the remaining particle of futurity, are naturally constituted unto thoughts of the next world, and cannot excusably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh Pyramids pillars of snow, and all that’s past a moment.

Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortall right-lined circle,
²¹
must conclude and shut up all. There is no antidote against the
Opium
of time, which temporally considereth all things; Our Fathers finde their graves in our short memories, and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our Survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce fourty years:
²²
Generations passe while some trees stand, and old Families last not three Oaks. To be read by bare Inscriptions like many in
Gruter
,
²³
to hope for Eternity by Ænigmaticall Epithetes, or first letters of our names, to be studied by Antiquaries, who we were, and have new Names given us like many of the Mummies,
²⁴
are cold consolations unto the Students of perpetuity, even by everlasting Languages.

To be content that times to come should only know there was such a man, not caring whether they knew more of him, was a
frigid ambition in
Cardan
:
²⁵
disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgement of himself, who cares to subsist like
Hippocrates
Patients, or
Achilles
horses in
Homer
,
²⁶
under naked nominations, without deserts and noble acts, which are the balsame of our memories, the
Entelechia
²⁷
and soul of our subsistences. To be namelesse in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The
Canaanitish
woman lives more happily without a name, then
Herodias
with one.
²⁸
And who had not rather have been the good theef, then
Pilate
?

But the iniquity of oblivion blindely 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?
Herostratus
lives that burnt the Temple of
Diana
, he is almost lost that built it;
²⁹
Time hath spared the Epitaph of
Adrians
horse, confounded that of himself. In vain we compute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, since bad have equall 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, then any that stand remembred in the known account of time? without the favour of the everlasting Register the first man had been as unknown as the last, and
Methuselahs
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,
³⁰
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 Æquinox?
³¹
Every houre addes unto that current Arithmetique, which scarce stands one moment. And since death must be the
Lucina
of life, and even Pagans
³²
could doubt whether thus to live, were to dye. Since our longest Sunne sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches,
³³
and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darknesse, and have our light in ashes.
³⁴
Since the brother of death
³⁵
daily haunts us with dying
memento
’s, and time that grows old it self, bids us hope no long duration: Diuturnity is a dream and folly of expectation.

Darknesse and light divide the course of time, and oblivion snares with memory, a great part even of our living beings; we slightly remember our felicities, and the smartest stroaks 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,
³⁶
miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to come, and forgetfull of evils past, is a mercifull provision in nature, whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil dayes, 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 plurall successions, they could not but act something remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their passed selves, make accumulation of glory unto their last durations. Others rather then be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were
content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the publick soul of all things, which was no more then to return into their unknown and divine Originall again. Ægyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied, contriving
³⁷
their bodies in sweet consistences, to attend the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the winde,
³⁸
and folly. The Ægyptian Mummies, which
Cambyses
or time hath spared, avarice now consumeth. Mummie
³⁹
is become Merchandise,
Mizraim
cures wounds, and
Pharaoh
is sold for balsoms.

In vain do individuals hope for Immortality, or any patent from oblivion, in preservations below the Moon: Men have been deceived even in their flatteries above the Sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in heaven. The various Cosmography of that part hath already varied the names of contrived constellations;
Nimrod
is lost in
Orion
, and
Osyris
in the Dogge-starre. While we look for incorruption in the heavens, we finde they are but like the Earth; Durable in their main bodies, alterable in their parts: whereof beside Comets and new Stars, perspectives begin to tell tales.
⁴⁰
And the spots that wander about the Sun, with
Phaetons
favour, would make clear conviction.

There is nothing strictly immortall, but immortality; whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no end. All others have a dependent being, and within the reach of destruction, which is the peculiar of that necessary essence that cannot destroy it self; And the highest strain of omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from the power of it self. 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 equall 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 precious pyres, and to burn like
Sardanapalus
, but the wisedom of funerall Laws
⁴¹
found the folly of prodigall blazes, and reduced undoing fires, unto the rule of sober obsequies, wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner, and an Urne.
⁴²

Five Languages secured not the Epitaph of
Gordianus
;
⁴³
The man of God lives longer without a Tomb then any by one, invisibly interred by Angels, and adjudged to obscurity, though not without some marks directing humane discovery.
Enoch
and
Elias
without either tomb or buriall, in an anomalous state of being, are the great Examples of perpetuity, in their long and living memory, in strict account being still on this side death, and having a late part yet to act upon this stage of earth.
⁴⁴
If in the decretory term of the world
⁴⁵
we shall not all dye but be changed, according to received translation; the last day will make but few graves; at least quick Resurrections will anticipate lasting Sepultures; Some Graves will be opened before they be quite closed, and
Lazarus
be no wonder. When many that feared to dye shall groane that they can dye but once, the dismall state is the second and living death,
⁴⁶
when life puts
despair on the damned; when men shall wish the coverings of Mountaines, not of Monuments, and annihilation shall be courted.