stately port, revels, triumphs of the feasting court? Why doth none of his gallant nobles revive the fainted courage of their lord with a new cup, or with some stirring jest shake him out of this unseasonable melancholy? O death, how imperious art thou to carnal minds! aggravating their misery, not only by expectation of future pain, but by the remembrance of the wonted causes of their joy; and not suffering them to see aught but what may torment them! Even that monster of the Cæsars,' that had been so well acquainted with blood, and never had found better sport than in cutting of throats, when now it came to his own turn, how effeminate, how desperately cowardous did he show himself! to the wonder of all readers, that he, which was ever so valliant in killing, should be so womanishly heartless in dying. SECTION XVI. The grounds of the Fear of Death. THERE are that fear not so much to be dead as to die; the very act of dissolution frightening them with a tormenting expectation of a short, but intolerable painfulness. Which let if the wisdom of God had not interposed to timorous nature, there would have been many more Lucretias, Cleopatras, Ahithophels; and good laws should have found little opportunity of execution, through the wilful funerals of malefactors. For the soul, that comes into the body without any, at least sensible, pleasure, departs not from it without an extremity of I Nero. pain; which, varying according to the manner and means of separation, yet, in all violent deaths especially, retaineth a violence not to be avoided, hard to be endured. And if diseases, which are destined toward death as their end, be so painful, what must the end and perfection of diseases be; since as diseases are the maladies of the body, so death is the malady of diseases ? There are, that fear not so much to die as to be dead. If the pang be bitter, yet it is but short: the comfortless state of the dead strikes some that could well resolve for the act of the passage. Not the worst of the heathen emperors' made that moanful ditty on his death-bed, wherein he bewrayeth, to all memory, much feeling pity of his soul, for her doubtful and impotent condition after her departure. How doth Plato's worldling bewail the misery of the grave; besides all respect of pain! "Woe is me, that I shall lie alone, rotting in the silent earth, amongst the crawling worms, not seeing aught above, not seen." But Very not-being is sufficiently abhorred of nature, if death had no more to make it fearful. those that have lived under light enough to show them the gates of hell, after their passage through the gates of death, and have learned that death is not only horrible for our not-being here, but for being infinitely, eternally miserable in a future world (nor so much for the dissolution of life, as the beginning of torment) those cannot, without the certain hope of their inmunity, but carnally fear to die, and hellishly fear to be dead. For, if it be Adrian. This emperor's address to his departing spirit, is beautifully adapted to the higher knowledge and assured hopes of Christianity, in Pope's admired ode-.“The Dying Christian to his Soul."-ED. such pain to die, what is it to be ever dying? And if the straining and luxation of one joint can so afflict us, what shall the racking of the whole body, and the torturing of the soul, whose animation alone makes the body to feel and complain of smart? And if men have devised such exquisite torments, what can spirits, more subtle, more malicious? And if our momentary sufferings seem long, how long shall that be that is eternal? And if the sorrows indifferently incident to God's dear ones upon earth be so extreme as sometimes to drive them within sight of despairing, what shall those be, that are reserved only for those that hate him, and that he hateth? None but those who have heard the desperate complaints of some guilty Spira, or whose souls have been a little scorched with these flames, can enough conceive of the horror of this estate: it being the policy of our common enemy to conceal it so long, that we may see and feel it at once, lest we should fear it before it be too late to be avoided. SECTION XVII. Remedy of the last and greatest breach of Peace, arising from Death. Now when this great adversary, like a proud giant, comes stalking out in his fearful shape, and insults over our frail mortality, daring the world to match him with an equal champion; while a whole host of worldlings show him their backs for fear, the true Christian, armed only with confidence and resolution of his future happiness, dares boldly en counter him, and can wound him in the forehead, the wonted seat of terror; and trampling upon him, can cut off his head with his own sword, and victoriously returning, can sing in triumph, ‘O death, where is thy sting? A happy victory! We die and are not foiled; yea, we are conquerors in dying; we could not overcome death if we died not. That dissolution is well bestowed that parts the soul from the body, that it may unite both to God. All our life here, as that heavenly doctor (Augustin) well terms it, is but a vital death. How advantageous is that death that determines this false and dying life, and begins a true one above all the titles of happiness! : : The Epicure or Sadducee dare not die, for fear of not being the guilty and loose worldling dares not die, for fear of being miserable: the distrustful and doubting semi-christian dares not die, because he knows not whether he shall be or miserable, or not be at all: the resolved Christian dares, and would die, because he knows he shall be happy; and looking merrily towards heaven, the place of his rest, can unfeignedly say, I desire to be dissolved I see thee, my home, I see thee, (a sweet and glorious home after a weary pilgrimage,) I see thee and now, after many lingering hopes, I aspire to thee. How oft have I looked up at thee, with admiration and ravishment of soul; and, by the goodly beams that I have seen, guessed at the glory that is above them! How oft have I scorned these dead and unpleasant pleasures of earth, in comparison of thine! I come now, my joys, I come to possess you: I come, through pain and death; yea, if hell itself were in the way betwixt you and me, I would pass through hell itself to enjoy you." : And, in truth, if that heathen Cleombrotus, a follower of the ancient academy, but upon only reading of his master Plato's Discourses of the Immortality of the Soul,' could cast down himself headlong from a high rock, and wilfully break his neck, that he might be possessed of that immortality which he believed to follow upon death, how contented should they be to die, that know they shall be more than immortal, glorious! He went, not in a hate of the flesh, as the patrician heretics of old, but in a blind love to his soul, out of bare opinion; we, upon a holy love, grounded upon assured knowledge: he, upon an opinion of future life; we, on knowledge of future glory: he went unsent for; we, called for by our Maker. Why should his courage exceed ours, since our ground, our estate, so far exceeds his ? Even this age, within the reach of our memory, bred that peremptory Italian, which, in imitation of the old Roman courage, lest in that degenerated nation there should be no step left of the qualities of their ancestors, entering upon his torment for killing a tyrant, cheered himself with this confidence: "My death is sharp: my fame shall be everlasting"-The voice of a Roman, not of a Christian. My fame shall be eternal: an idle comfort! My fame shall live; not my soul live to see it. What shall it avail thee to be talked of, while thou art not? Then fame only is precious when a man lives to enjoy it. The fame that survives the soul is bootless. Yet even this hope cheered him against the violence of his death. Tuscul. Cicero, Callimachus, Epigram. What 2 Augustine, de Hæres. Mors acerba : fama perpetua." |
