And when they burnt not their dead bodies, yet sometimes used great burnings near and about them, deducible from the expressions concerning Jehoram, Zedechiah, and the sumptuous pyre of Asia; and were so little averse from Pagan burning, that the Jews, lamenting the death of Cæsar, their friend and revenger on Pompey, frequented the place where his body was burnt, for many nights together.* And as they raised noble monuments and mausoleums for their own nation,† so they were not scrupulous in erecting some for others, according to the practice of Daniel, who left that lasting sepulchral pile in Ecbatana for the Median and Persian kings. ‡ But even in times of subjection and hottest use, they conformed not unto the Roman practice of burning; whereby the prophecy was secured concerning the body of Christ, that it should not see corruption, or a bone should not be broken; which we believe was also providentially prevented, from the soldier's spear and nails that past by the little bones both in his * Sueton in vitâ. Jul. Cæs. As that magnificent sepulchral monument erected by Simon. 1 Macc. xiii, 27. * Κατασκέυασμα θαυμασίως πεποιημένον, whereof a Jewish priest had always the custody unto Josephus's days Jos. b. 10, Antiq. hands and feet; not of ordinary contrivance, that it should not corrupt on the cross, according to the laws of Roman crucifixion, or a hair of his head perish, though observable in Jewish customs to cut the hairs of malefactors. Nor in their long cohabitation with Egyptians, crept into a custom of their exact embalming, wherein deeply slashing the muscles, and taking out the brains and entrails, they had broken the subject of so entire a resurrection, nor fully answered the types of Enoch, Elijah, or Jonah; which yet to prevent or restore, was of equal facility unto that rising power, able to break the fasciations and bands of death, to get clear out of the cerecloth and a hundred pounds of ointment, and out of the sepulchre before the stone was rolled from it. But though they embraced not this practice of burning, yet entertained they many ceremonies agreeable unto Greek and Roman obsequies. And he that observeth their funeral feasts, their lamentations at the grave, their music, and weeping mourners; how they closed the eyes of their friends; how they washed, anointed, and kissed the dead; may easily conclude these were not mere Pagan civilities. But whether that mournful burthen, and treble calling out after Absalom,* had any reference * O Absalom, Absalom, Absalom! 2 Sam. xviii. 33. unto the last conclamation and triple valediction used by other nations, we hold but a wavering conjecture. Civilians make sepulture but of the law of nations; others do naturally found it and discover it also in animals. They that are so thick-skinned as still to credit the story of the phenix, may say something for animal burning. More serious conjectures find some examples of sepulture in elephants, cranes, the sepulchral cells of pismires, and practice of bees; which civil society carrieth out their dead, and hath exequies, if not interments. CHAPTER II. THE solemnities, ceremonies, rites of their cremation or interment, so solemnly delivered by authors, we shall not disparage our reader to repeat. Only the last and lasting part in their urns, collected bones and ashes, we cannot wholly omit, or decline that subject, which occasion lately presented in some discovered among us. In a field of Old Walsingham, not many months past, were digged up between forty and fifty urns, deposited in a dry and sandy soil, not a yard deep, not far from one another; not all strictly of one figure, but most answering these described; * some containing two pounds of bones, distinguishable in skulls, ribs, jaws, thigh-bones, and teeth, with fresh impressions of their combustion; besides the extraneous substances, like pieces of small boxes, or combs, handsomely wrought, handles of small brass instruments, brazen nippers, and in one some kind of opal. Near the same plot of ground, for about six yards' compass, were digged up coals and incinerated substances, which begat conjecture that this was the Ustrina, or place of burning their bodies, or some sacrificing place unto the Manes, * On page 156. which was properly below the surface of the ground, as the aræ and altars unto the gods and heroes above it. That these were the urns of Romans, from the common custom and place where they were found, is no obscure conjecture; not far from a Roman garrison, and but five miles from Brancaster, set down by ancient record under the name of Brannodunum ; and where the adjoining town, containing seven parishes, in no very different sound, but Saxon termination, still retains the name of Burnham; which, being an early station, it is not improbable the neighbour parts were filled with habitations, either of Romans themselves, or Britons Romanized, which observed the Roman customs. Nor is it improbable that the Romans early possessed this country; for, though we meet not with such strict particulars of these parts, before the new institution of Constantine, and military charge of the Count of the Saxon shore, and that about the Saxon invasions, the Dalmatian horsemen were in the garrison of Brancaster; yet, in the time of Claudius, Vespasian, and Severus, we find no less than three legions dispersed through the province of Britain; and, as high as the reign of Claudius, a great overthrow was given unto the Iceni, by the Roman lieutenant Ostorius. Not |