trydom to live; and unto such as consider none hereafter, it must be more than death to die, which makes us amazed at those audacities, that durst be nothing, and return into their chaos again. Certainly such spirits as could contemn death, when they expected no better being after, would have scorned to live had they known any. And therefore we applaud not the judgment of Machiavelli, that Christianity makes men cowards, (149) or that with the confidence of but half dying, the despised virtues of patience and humility, have abased the spirits of men, which pagan principles exalted, but rather regulated the wildness of audacities, in the attempts, grounds, and eternal sequels of death; wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valour of ancient martyrs, who contemned death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives, and in their decrepit martrydoms did probably lose not many months of their days, or parted with life when it was scarce worth the living. For beside that long time past holds no consideration unto a slender time to come, they had no small disadvantage from the constitution of old age, which naturally makes men fearful; and complexionally superannuated from the bold and courageous thoughts of youth and fervent years. But the contempt of death from corporeal animosity promoteth not our felicity. They may sit in the orchestra, and no

(149) Machiavelli's contemporaries and countrymen were cowardly, but not because Christianity flourished among them. He had very little to complain of on that score.-ED.

blest seats of heaven, who have held up shaking hands in the fire, and humanly contended for glory.

Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante's hell, wherein we meet with tombs enclosing souls which denied their immortalities. But whether the virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spake, or erring in the principles of himself, yet lived above philosophers of more specious maxims, lie so deep as he is placed, at least so low as not to rise against Christians, who believing or knowing that truth, have lastingly denied it in their practice and conversation, were a query too sad to insist on.(150)

But all or most apprehensions rested in opinions of some future being, which ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted conceptions, ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they, which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little for futurity, but from reason; whereby the noblest minds fell often upon doubtful deaths, and melancholy dissolutions; with these hopes Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits, against that cold po

(150) The philosophical errors of Epicurus were errors of speculation, and, in his own person, produced none of those ill effects which, nevertheless, flow naturally, I might say necessarily, from them. For men who bound their views by the horizon of this life will never prove heroes or patriots, or soar above the ambition of those "fat choughs," commemorated by Falstaff, whom it would content to be "grand jurors." It is the spiritual philosophies, based upon the principle that our lives shall run parallel with that of eternity, which beget public spirit, and that excellent frame of mind in which great and glorious actions are felt to be their own reward.-ED.

tion; and Cato, before he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the animosity of that attempt.

It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no further state to come, unto which this seems progessional, and otherwise made in vain. Without this accomplishment the natural expectation and desire of such a state were but a fallacy in nature; unsatisfied considerators would quarrel with the justice of their constitutions, and rest content that Adam had fallen lower, whereby by knowing no other original and deeper ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of inferior creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as having not the apprehension to deplore their own natures. And being framed below the circumference of these hopes, or cognition of better being, the wisdom of God hath necessitated their contentment :(1) but the superior ingredient and obscured part of ourselves, whereto all present felicities afford no rest

(151) Montaigne, in his "Apologie de Raimond de Sebonde," draws a comparison between man and the inferior animals, and contends that they have greatly the advantage over us. He supposes that they despise us quite as much as we despise them; and observes, that when he played with his cat, as very frequently he did, puss very probably looked on him in the light of a toy no less than he did her. t. iv. p. 204. To this passage Butler alludes in the famous passage,

"As Montaigne, playing with his cat,
Complains she thought him but an ass,
Much more she would Sir Hudibras."-ED.

ing contentment, will be able at last to tell us we are more than our present selves; and evacuate such hopes in the fruition of their own accomplish

ments.

CHAPTER V.

Now, since these dead bones have already outlasted the living ones of Methesulah, and in a yard under ground, and thin walls of clay, out-worn all the strong and spacious buildings above it, and quietly rested under the drums and tramplings of three conquests, what prince can promise such diuturnity unto his relics, or might not gladly say,

Sic ego componi versus in ossa velim. (152)

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, when to be unknown was the means of their continuation, and obscurity their protection. If they died by violent hands, and were thrust into their urns, these bones become considerable, and some old

(152) Tibullus. III. 2.

philosophers would honour them, (153) whose souls they conceived most pure, which were thus snatched from their bodies;(154) and to retain a stronger propension unto them: whereas they wearedly left a languishing corpse, and with faint desires of reunion. If they fell by long and aged decay, yet wrapt up in the bundle of time, they fall into indistinction, 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 sum up the life of Moses's man. (155) Our days become considerable like petty sums by minute accumulations; where numerous fractions make up but small round numbers; and our days of a span long make not one little finger. (156)

If the nearness of our last necessity, brought a nearer conformity unto it, there were a happiness 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,

(153) Oracula Chaldaica cum scholiis Pselli et Phethonis Βίη λιπόντων σῶμα ψυχαὶ καθαρώτεταί. Vi corpus relinquentium animæ purissimæ.

(154) The ghost in Hamlet maintains a different theory, and complains of being thus snatched away, with "all his imperfections on his head, unhouselled, unanointed, unanealed!"-ED. (155) In the Psalm of Moses.

(156) According to the ancient arithmetic of the hand, wherein the little finger of the right hand contracted, signified an hundred. Pierius in Hieroglyph.