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where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery, where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time shall be no more; and where our kings have been crowned their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their grandsire's head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men. There is enough to cool the flames of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colours of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world that, when we die, our ashes shall be equal to kings', and our accounts easier, and our pains for our crowns shall be less.

[The Day of Judgment.]

rowful influence; grief being then strongly infectious, when there is no variety of state, but an entire kingdom of fear; and amazement is the king of all our passions, and all the world its subjects. And that shriek must needs be terrible, when millions of men and women, at the same instant, shall fearfully cry out, and the noise shall mingle with the trumpet of the archangel, with the thunders of the dying and groaning heavens, and the crack of the dissolving world, when the whole fabric of nature shall shake into dissolution and eternal ashes!

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Consider what an infinite multitude of angels, and men, and women, shall then appear! It is a huge assembly when the men of one kingdom, the men of one age in a single province are gathered together into heaps and confusion of disorder; but then, all kingdoms of all ages, all the armies that ever mustered, all that world that Augustus Cæsar taxed, all those hundreds of millions that were slain in all the Roman wars, from Numa's time till Italy was broken into principalities and small exarchates: all these, and all that can come into numbers, and that did descend Even you and I, and all the world, kings and from the loins of Adam, shall at once be represented; priests, nobles and learned, the crafty and the easy, to which account, if we add the armies of heaven, the the wise and the foolish, the rich and the poor, the nine orders of blessed spirits, and the infinite numprevailing tyrant and the oppressed party, shall all bers in every order, we may suppose the numbers fit appear to receive their symbol; and this is so far to express the majesty of that God, and the terror of from abating anything of its terror and our dear con- that Judge, who is the Lord and Father of all that cernment, that it much increases it. For although unimaginable multitude! The majesty of the concerning precepts and discourses we are apt to Judge, and the terrors of the judgment, shall be neglect in particular what is recommended in general, spoken aloud by the immediate forerunning accidents, and in incidences of mortality and sad events, the which shall be so great violences to the old constitusingularity of the chance heightens the apprehension tions of nature, that it shall break her very bones, of the evil; yet it is so by accident, and only in re- and disorder her till she be destroyed. Saint Jerome gard of our imperfection; it being an effect of self-relates out of the Jews' books, that their doctors used love, or some little creeping envy, which adheres too to account fifteen days of prodigy immediately before often to the unfortunate and miserable; or being ap- Christ's coming, and to every day assign a wonder, prehended to be in a rare case, and a singular unwor- any one of which, if we should chance to see in the thiness in him who is afflicted otherwise than is days of our flesh, it would affright us into the like common to the sons of men, companions of his sin, thoughts which the old world had, when they saw the and brethren of his nature, and partners of his usual countries round about them covered with water and accidents; yet in final and extreme events, the mul- the divine vengeance; or as these poor people near titude of sufferers does not lessen, but increase the Adria and the Mediterranean sea, when their houses sufferings; and when the first day of judgment hap- and cities were entering into graves, and the bowels of pened, that, I mean, of the universal deluge of waters the earth rent with convulsions and horrid tremblings. upon the old world, the calamity swelled like the The sea, they say, shall rise fifteen cubits above the flood, and every man saw his friend perish, and the highest mountains, and thence descend into hollowneighbours of his dwelling, and the relatives of his ness and a prodigious drought; and when they are house, and the sharers of his joys, and yesterday's reduced again to their usual proportions, then all the bride, and the new born heir, the priest of the family, beasts and creeping things, the monsters and the and the honour of the kindred, all dying or dead, usual inhabitants of the sea, shall be gathered todrenched in water and the divine vengeance; and then gether, and make fearful noises to distract mankind: they had no place to flee unto, no man cared for their the birds shall mourn and change their song into souls; they had none to go unto for counsel, no sanc-threnes and sad accents; rivers of fire shall rise from tuary high enough to keep them from the vengeance east to west, and the stars shall be rent into threads that rained down from heaven; and so it shall be at of light, and scatter like the beards of comets; then the day of judgment, when that world and this, and shall be fearful earthquakes, and the rocks shall rend all that shall be born hereafter, shall pass through the in pieces, the trees shall distil blood, and the mounsame Red Sea, and be all baptised with the same fire, tains and fairest structures shall return into their and be involved in the same cloud, in which shall be primitive dust; the wild beasts shall leave their dens, thunderings and terrors infinite. Every man's fear and shall come into the companies of men, so that shall be increased by his neighbour's shrieks, and the you shall hardly tell how to call them, herds of men amazement that all the world shall be in, shall unite or congregations of beasts; then shall the graves open as the sparks of a raging furnace into a globe of fire, and give up their dead, and those which are alive in and roll upon its own principle, and increase by direct nature and dead in fear shall be forced from the rocks appearances and intolerable reflections. He that whither they went to hide them, and from caverns of stands in a churchyard in the time of a great plague, the earth where they would fain have been concealed; and hears the passing bell perpetually telling the sad because their retirements are dismantled, and their stories of death, and sees crowds of infected bodies rocks are broken into wider ruptures, and admit a pressing to their graves, and others sick and tremulous, strange light into their secret bowels; and the men and death dressed up in all the images of sorrow being forced abroad into the theatre of mighty horrors, round about him, is not supported in his spirit by the shall run up and down distracted, and at their wits variety of his sorrow; and at doomsday, when the end; and then some shall die, and some shall be terrors are universal, besides that it is in itself so changed; and by this time the elect shall be gathered much greater, because it can affright the whole world, together from the four quarters of the world, and it is also made greater by communication and a sor-Christ shall come along with them to judgment.

[Religious Toleration.]

The infinite variety of opinions in matters of religion, as they have troubled Christendom with interests, factions, and partialities, so have they caused great divisions of the heart, and variety of thoughts and designs, amongst pious and prudent men. For they all, seeing the inconveniences which the disunion of persuasions and opinions have produced, directly or accidentally, have thought themselves obliged to stop this inundation of mischiefs, and have made attempts accordingly. But it hath happened to most of them as to a mistaken physician, who gives excellent physic, but misapplies it, and so misses of his cure. So have these men; their attempts have, therefore, been ineffectual; for they put their help to a wrong part, or they have endeavoured to cure the symptoms, and have let the disease alone till it seemed incurable. Some have endeavoured to re-unite these fractions, by propounding such a guide which they were all bound to follow; hoping that the unity of a guide would have persuaded unity of minds; but who this guide should be, at last became such a question, that it was made part of the fire that was to be quenched, so far was it from extinguishing any part of the flame. Others thought of a rule, and this must be the means of union, or nothing could do it. But, supposing all the world had been agreed of this rule, yet the interpretation of it was so full of variety, that this also became part of the disease for which the cure was pretended. All men resolved upon this, that, though they yet had not hit upon the right, yet some way must be thought upon to reconcile differences in opinion; thinking, so long as this variety should last, Christ's kingdom was not advanced, and the work of the gospel went on but slowly. Few men, in the mean time, considered, that so long as men had such variety of principles, such several constitutions, educations, tempers, and distempers, hopes, interests, and weaknesses, degrees of light and degrees of understanding, it was impossible all should be of one mind. And what is impossible to be done, is not necessary it should be done. And, therefore, although variety of opinions was impossible to be cured, and they who attempted it did like him who claps his shoulder to the ground to stop an earthquake; yet the inconveniences arising from it might possibly be cured, not by uniting their beliefs, that was to be despaired of, but by curing that which caused these mischiefs, and accidental inconveniences, of their disagreeings. For although these inconveniences, which every man sees and feels, were consequent to this diversity of persuasions, yet it was but accidentally and by chance; inasmuch as we see that in many things, and they of great concernment, men allow to themselves and to each other a liberty of disagreeing, and no hurt neither. And certainly, if diversity of opinions were, of itself, the cause of mischiefs, it would be so ever; that is, regularly and universally. But that we see it is not. For there are disputes in Christendom concerning matters of greater concernment than most of those opinions that distinguish sects and make factions; and yet, because men are permitted to differ in those great matters, such evils are not consequent to such differences, as are to the uncharitable managing of smaller and more inconsiderable questions. Since, then, if men are quiet and charitable in some disagreeings, that then and there the inconvenience ceases; if they were so in all others where lawfully they might, and they may in most, Christendom should be no longer rent in pieces, but would be redintegrated in a new pentecost.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE.

SIR THOMAS BROWNE, another of the eloquent and poetical writers of this great literary era, differs

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amiable and eccentric scholar, than of a man who takes an interest in the great concerns of humanity. Browne was born in London in 1605, and, after being educated at Winchester and Oxford, proceeded to travel, first in Ireland, and subsequently in France, Italy, and Holland. He belonged to the medical profession, and having obtained his doctor's degree at Leyden, settled finally as a practitioner at Nor wich. His first work, entitled Religio Medici-The Religion of a Physician'-was published in 1642, and immediately rendered him famous as a literary man. In this singular production, he gives a minute account of his opinions not only on religious, but on a variety of philosophical and fanciful points, besides affording the reader many glimpses into the eccentricities of his personal character. The language of that work is bold and poetical, adorned with picturesque ima gery, but frequently pedantic, rugged, and obscure. His next publication, entitled Pseudodoria Epidemica, It is much more philosophical in its character than or Treatise on Vulgar Errors, appeared in 1646. the Religio Medici,' and is considered the most solid and useful of his productions. The following enunie ration of some of the errors which he endeavours to dispel, will serve both to show the kind of matters he was fond of investigating, and to exemplify the notions which prevailed in the seventeenth century. That crystal is nothing else but ice strongly con gealed; that a diamond is softened or broken by the blood of a goat; that a pot full of ashes will contain as much water as it would without them; that bays preserve from the mischief of lightning and thunder; that an elephant hath no joints; that a wolf, first seeing a man, begets a dumbness in him; that moles are blind; that the flesh of peacocks corrupteth not; that storks will only live in republics and free states: that the chicken is made out of the yolk of the egg that men weigh heavier dead than alive, and before meat than after; that Jews stink; that the forbidden fruit was an apple; that there was no rainbow before the flood; that John the Baptist should not die.' He treats also of the ring-finger; saluting upon sneez ing; pigmies; the canicular, or dog-days; the pic ture of Moses with horns; the blackness of negroes;

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the river Nilus; gipsies; Methuselah; the food of John the Baptist; the cessation of oracles; Friar Bacon's brazen head that spoke; the poverty of Belisarius; and the wish of Philoxenus to have the neck of a crane. In 1658, Browne published his Hydriotaphia, or Urn Burial; a Discourse on the Sepulchral Urns Lately Found in Norfolk, a work not inferior, in ideality of style, to the Religio Medici.' Here the author's learning appears in the details which he gives concerning the modes in which the bodies of the dead have been disposed of in different ages and countries; while his reflections on death, oblivion, and immortality, are, for solemnity and grandeur, probably unsurpassed in English literature. The occasion would hardly have called forth a work from any less meditative mind. In a field at Walsingham were dug up between forty and fifty urns, containing the remains of human bones, some small brass instruments, boxes, and other fragmentary relics. Coals and burnt substances were found near the same plot of ground, and hence it was conjectured that this was the Ustrina, or place of burning, or the spot whereon the Druidical sacrifices were made. Furnished with a theme for his philosophic musings, Sir Thomas Browne then comments on that vast charnel-house, the earth.

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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, which 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.' Among the beauties of expression in Browne, may be quoted the following eloquent definition: Nature is not at variance with art, nor art with nature-they being both the servants of his providence. Art is the perfection of nature. Were the world now as it was the sixth day, there were yet a chaos. Nature hath made one world, and art another. In belief, all things are artificial, for nature is the art of God.' This seems the essence of true philosophy. To the 'Hydriotaphia' is appended a small treatise, called The Gurden of Cyrus; or the Quincuncial Lozenge, or Network Plantations of the Ancients, Artificially, Naturally, and Mystically Considered. Nature,' he says, hath furnished one part of This is written in a similar style, and displays much the earth, and man another. The treasures of time of the author's whimsical fancy and propensity to lie high, in urns, coins, and monuments, scarce be- laborious trifling. One of the most striking of these low the roots of some vegetables. Time hath end- fancies has been often quoted. Wishing to denote less rarities, and shows of all varieties; which re- that it is late, or that he was writing at a late hour, veals old things in heaven, makes new discoveries he says that the Hyades (the quincunx of heaven) in earth, and even earth itself a discovery. That run low-that we are unwilling to spin out our great antiquity, America, lay buried for a thousand awaking thoughts into the phantasms of sleep-that years; and a large part of the earth is still in the to keep our eyes open longer were but to act our urn unto us. Though, if Adam were made out of antipodes-that the huntsmen are up in Americaan extract of the earth, all parts might challenge a and that they are already past their first sleep in restitution, yet few have returned their bones far Persia.' This is fantastic, but it is the offspring of lower than they might receive them; not affecting genius. Browne lived in a world of ideal contemthe graves of giants, under hilly and heavy cover-plation, but before surrendering himself up to his ings, but content with less than their own depth, reveries, he had stored his mind with vast and mulhave wished their bones might lie soft, and the earth tifarious learning. In presenting its results to the be light upon them; even such as hope to rise again public, he painted to the eye and imagination more would not be content with central interment, or so than he conveyed to the understanding. Among his desperately to place their relics as to lie beyond dis-posthumous pieces is a collection of aphorisms, encovery, and in no way to be seen again; which titled Christian Morals, to which Dr Johnson prefixed happy contrivance hath made communication with a life of the author. He left, also, various essays, our forefathers, and left unto our view some parts on antiquarian and other subjects. Sir Thomas which they never beheld themselves.' Browne died in 1682, at the age of seventy-seven. He then successively describes and comments He was of a modest and cheerful disposition, retirupon the different modes of interment and decom-ing in his habits, and sympathised little with the position-whether by fire (some apprehending a pursuits and feelings of the busy multitude. His purifying virtue in fire, refining the grosser commix- opinions were, in some respects, tinged with the ture, and firing out the ethereal particles so deeply credulity of his age. He believed in witchcraft, immersed in it'); by making their graves in the air, apparitions, and diabolical illusions; and gravely like the Scythians, who swore by wind and sword:' observes, that to those who would attempt to teach or in the sea, like some of the nations about Egypt. animals the art of speech, the dogs and cats that Men,' he finely remarks, have lost their reason usually speak unto witches may afford some encourin nothing so much as their religion, wherein stones agement.' and clouts make martyrs; and since the religion of In the writings of Sir Thomas Browne, the pracone seems madness unto another, to afford an ac- tice of employing Latin words with English termicount or rational of old rights, requires no rigid nations is carried to such excess, that, to persons reader. That they kindled the pyre aversely, or acquainted only with their native tongue, many turning their face from it, was a handsome symbol of his sentences must be nearly unintelligible. Thus, of unwilling ministration; that they washed their speaking in his Vulgar Errors' of the nature of bones with wine and milk; that the mother wrapt ice, he says: Ice is only water congealed by the them in linen and dried them in her bosom, the first frigidity of the air, whereby it acquireth no new fostering part, and place of their nourishment; that form, but rather a consistence or determination of they opened their eyes towards heaven, before they its diffluency, and amitteth not its essence, but conkindled the fire, as the place of their hopes or origi- dition of fluidity. Neither doth there anything nal, were no improper ceremonies. Their last vale- properly conglaciate but water, or watery humidity; diction, thrice uttered by the attendants, was also for the determination of quicksilver is properly fixavery solemn, and somewhat answered by Christians, tion, that of milk coagulation, and that of oil and who thought it too little if they threw not the earth unctious bodies only incrassation.' He uses abunthrice upon the interred body. That, in strewing | dantly such words as dilucidate, ampliate, manu

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duction, indigitate, reminiscential evocation, farraginous, advenient, ariolation, lapifidical.

as some have done in their persons; one face of Janus holds no proportion unto the other. It is too late to be ambitious. The great mutations of the world are acted, or time may be too short for our designs. To extend our memories by monuments, whose death we daily pray for, 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 excus ably decline the consideration of that duration, which maketh pyramids pillars of snow, and all that is past a moment.

Those who are acquainted with Dr Johnson's style, will at once perceive the resemblance, particularly in respect to the abundance of Latin words, which it bears to that of Sir Thomas Browne. Indeed there can be no doubt that the author of the 'Rambler' acquired much of his fondness for pompous and sounding expressions from the writings of the learned knight of Norwich. Coleridge, who was so well qualified to appreciate the writings of Browne, has numbered him among his first favourites. Rich in various knowledge, exuberant in conceptions and conceits; contemplative, imaginative, often truly great and magnificent in his style and diction, though, doubtless, too often big, stiff, and hyperLatinistic. He is a quiet and sublime enthusiast, Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, with a strong tinge of the fantast: the humorist and the mortal right-lined circlel must conclude and constantly mingling with, and flashing across, the shut up all. There is no antidote against the opium philosopher, as the darting colours in shot silk play of time, which temporally considereth all things. Our upon the main dye.' The same writer has pointed fathers find their graves in our short memories, and out the entireness of Browne in every subject before sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. him. He never wanders from it, and he has no Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years. Generaoccasion to wander; for whatever happens to be his tions pass while some trees stand, and old families subject, he metamorphoses all nature into it. We last not three oaks. To be read by bare inscriptions may add the complete originality of his mind. He like many in Gruter,2 to hope for eternity by enig seems like no other writer, and his vast and solitary matical epithets, or first letters of our names, to be abstractions, stamped with his peculiar style, like studied by antiquaries who we were, and have new the hieroglyphic characters of the East, carry the names given us, like many of the mummies, are cold imagination back into the primeval ages of the consolations unto the students of perpetuity, even by world, or forward into the depths of eternity. everlasting languages.

[Oblivion.]

What song the syrens sang, or what name Achilles assumed when he hid himself among women, though puzzling questions, are not beyond all conjecture. What time the persons of these ossuaries entered the famous nations of the dead, and slept with princes and counsellors, might admit a wide solution. But who were the proprietaries of these bones, or what bodies these ashes made up, were a question above antiquarianism; not to be resolved by man, nor easily perhaps by spirits, except we consult the provincial guardians, or tutelary observators. Had they made as good provision for their names as they have done for their relics, they had not so grossly 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 fruit

less continuation, and only arise unto late posterity, as emblems of mortal vanities, antidotes against pride, vain-glory, and maddening 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 damped 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, have by this time found great accomplishment of their designs, whereby the ancient heroes have already outlasted their monuments and mechanical preservations. But in this latter scene of time we cannot expect such mummies unto our memories, when ambition may fear the prophecy of Elias ; and Charles V. can never hope to live

within two Methuselahs of Hector.2

And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our memories unto present considerations, seems a vanity almost out of date, and superannuated piece of folly. We cannot hope to live so long in our names

1 That the world may last but six thousand years.

2 Hector's fame lasting above two lives of Methuselah, before that famous prince was extant.

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; disparaging his horoscopal inclination and judgment of himself, who cares to subsist, like Hippocrates' patients, tions, without deserts and noble acts, which are the or Achilles' horses in Homer, under naked nominabalsam of our memories, the entelechia and soul of our subsistences. To be nameless in worthy deeds exceeds an infamous history. The Canaanitish woman lives And who had not rather have been the good thief, more happily without a name than Herodias with one. than Pilate?

But the iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth ber Poppy, and deals with the memory of men without distinction to merit of perpetuity: who can but pity burnt the temple of Diana; he is almost lost that the founder of the pyramids? Herostratus lives that built it: time hath spared the epitaph of Adrian's horse; confounded that of himself. In vain we com since bad have equal durations; and Thersites is like pute our felicities by the advantage of our good names, to live as long as Agamemnon, without the favour of the everlasting register. Who knows whether the best of men be known? or whether there be not more remarkable persons forgot than any that stand remem bered in the known account of time! Without the favour of the everlasting register, the first man had been as unknown as the last, and Methuselah's long life had been his only chronicle.

be content to be as though they had not been; f Oblivion is not to be hired: the greatest part must be found in the register of God, not in the record of before the flood; and the recorded names ever since man. Twenty-seven names make up the first story befotain not one living century. The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live. The when was the equinox Every hour adds unto that night of time far surpasseth the day, and who knows fund since death must be the Lucina of life; and eren current arithmetic which scarce stands one moment. Pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die;

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since our longest sun sets at right descensions, and makes but winter arches, and therefore it cannot be long before we lie down in darkness, and have our light in ashes; since the brother of death daily haunts us with dying mementos, and time, that grows old in itself, bids us hope no long duration; diuturnity is a dream, and folly of expectation.

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, make 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.

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glory of the world is surely over, and the earth in ashes unto them.

To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to exist in their names, and predicament of chimeras, was large satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their elysiums. But all this is nothing in the metaphysics of true belief. To live indeed is to be again ourselves, which being not only a hope but an evidence in noble believers, 'tis all one to lie in St Innocent's churchyard, as in the sands of Egypt; ready to be anything in the ecstacy of being ever, and as content with six foot as the moles of Adrianus.

[Light the Shadow of God.]

Light that makes things seen makes some things invisible. Were it not for darkness, and the shadow of the earth, the noblest part of creation had remained unseen, and the stars in heaven as invisible as on the with the sun, and there was not an eye to behold them. fourth day, when they were created above the horizon The greatest mystery of religion is expressed by adumbration, and in the noblest part of Jewish types we find the cherubim shadowing the mercy-seat. Life itself is but the shadow of death, and souls departed but the shadows of the living. All things fall under The sun itself is but the dark Simulachrum, and light but the shadow of God.

this name.

[Toleration.]

I could never divide myself from any man upon the difference of an opinion, or be angry with his judgwithin a few days I should dissent myself. ment for not agreeing with me in that from which

[Death.]

I thank God I have not those strait ligaments There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality. or narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life, Whatever hath no beginning may be confident of no or be convulsed and tremble at the name of death. end, which is the peculiar of that necessary essence Not that I am insensible of the dread and horror that cannot destroy itself, and the highest strain of thereof, or, by raking into the bowels of the deceased, omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted as not to continual sight of anatomies, skeletons, or cadaverous suffer even from the power of itself; all others have a relics, like vespilloes, or grave-makers, I am become dependent being, and within the reach of destruction. stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality; But the sufficiency of Christian immortality frustrates but that, marshalling all the horrors, and contemplatall earthly glory, and the quality of either state after ing the extremities thereof, I find not anything therein death makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a wellwho can only destroy our souls, and hath assured our resolved Christian. And therefore am not angry at resurrection, either of our bodies or names hath the error of our first parents, or unwilling to bear a directly promised no duration; wherein there is so part of this common fate, and like the best of them much of chance, that the boldest expectants have to die, that is, to cease to breathe, to take a farewell found unhappy frustration, and to hold long subsist- of the elements, to be a kind of nothing for a moment, ence seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a to be within one instant of a spirit. When I take a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the full view and circle of myself, without this reasonable grave, solemnising nativities and deaths with equal moderator and equal piece of justice, death, I do conlustre, nor omitting ceremonies of bravery in the in-ceive myself the miserablest person extant. famy of his nature.

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Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vain-glory, 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 pre-ordination and night of their fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand Christian annihilation, ecstacies, 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

Were

there not another life that I hope for, all the vanities
of this world should not intreat a moment's breath
for me; could the devil work my belief to imagine I
could never die, I would not outlive that very thought;
I have so abject a conceit of this common way of ex-
istence, this retaining to the sun and elements, I can-
not think this is to be a man, or to live according
to the dignity of humanity. In expectation of a bet-
ter, I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my
best meditations do often desire death. I honour any
man that contemns it, nor can I highly love any that
is afraid of it: this makes me naturally love a soldier,
and honour those tattered and contemptible regiments,
that will die at the command of a sergeant.
Pagan there may be some motives to be in love with
life; but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see
not how he can escape this dilemma, that he is too
sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come. **

For a

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