betrayed chusing rather a becoming Neatness than affected Curiosity in her Dress and spending that Time in her Closet and the secret Retirements between God and her own Soul which others would more vainly consume inter pectinem speculum Nor ought you to wonder to see your Placidia in such a Philosophical Garb while she endeavoured after that which you and I labour for and which is not only the Top and Summity of Platonism but of Christian Philosophy it self For what else is this dying to the Animal and Corporeal Life in Platonism but only the Christian Mortisication of all our Earthly Lusts and Passions Or what other is the raising of the Soul to behold and unite with that First and Original Pulchritude but in the Christian Dialect a Participation of the Divine Nature And can you now over-lament that Death hath perfected that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 or 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Separation or Sejunction of the Soul from the Body which Placidia herself had so happily begun Especially when you consider that by this practical Meditation she daily made Death familiar to her and by dressing up afore-hand her Soul for Immortality verified what in the constant course of her Sickness she would frequently say that she was not afraid to die nor disturbed at the Name or Thoughts of that King of Terrors having already become dead to all the Blandishments and Inescations of Sense and by an early Piety shown her self only alive to God and Vertue For doubtless nothing more fatally threatens the utter Extinction of the Diviner Powers of the Soul and takes away all Care of a Future State than the luxuriant growth of the Animal Life And therefore those that addict themselves wholly to Sensuality they do as Cicero De Consalat speaks stertere potius quà m ullo pacto vivere snort rather than any way live or more fully according to the Apostle they are dead while they live that State only being worthy to be 1 Tim. 5 6. called Life when the Soul is united to and made one with the Divine Nature Moreover if you look upon Death in a Physical Sence you shall find it only the Consopition or laying asleep of some Faculties that others may awake and act in their stead And when the Terrestrial Congruity is either naturally unwound or violently broken asunder another and more large Capacity and Degree of Life immediately awakes For questionless the Soul of Man was made by the eternal Wisdom with a Capacity of being united with some other Matter beside Flesh and Blood as not only the Heavenly Body promised us at the Resurrection but the Place of our Habitation and Abode do evidently declare And that between Death and the Resurrection she should be utterly stript and unbared of all Matter is hard to conceive especially when both the Nature of the Thing it self and the Stories of Apparitions in all Ages so fairly invite us to think that an Aereal or Aethereal Body will naturally fall to her share so soon as she hath quitted the Terrestrial So that there is no fear of any ones being lost or that all Life is extinguished upon the Death of the Body but a higher Power which has indeed been laid asleep in this Earthly Body takes its turn and the Soul is so much the more happy by how much larger that Sphere of Life is into which she is awakened by her Disunion from the Terrestrial Body To go out of this Body is for the Soul to ascend to go forward to dispread herself and to have larger Faculties but to descend is to go backward and to pinion herself and fall into the most inert and sluggish Life of all Hence the learned Origen doubted not to say 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that our Terrestrial Nativity is really the beginning of Death Because when we come into these Bodies our nobler Faculties are then contracted and laid asleep and we sink down from a better and freer to a worse and narrower State of Life This was it which made that Royal Prophet bemoan himself Wo is me that I sojourn in Meseâ—â— Psal 120. 5. which the Septuagint thus renders 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 that my Pilgrimage is prolonged intimating that in this Earthly Body he was in a foreign Country and at a vast distance from his Native home And it was the weight and pressure of this cadaverous Body that made St. Paul cry out O wretched Man that I am who shall deliver Rom. 7. 24. me 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 from this Body of Death And lest we should think that this was spoken out of a sudden Fit of Discontent upon the Labours and Troubles he had and did daily undergo he positively affirms that we that are in this Tabernacle do groan being burdened namely 2 Cor. 5. 4. with the weight of our Earthly Bodies Here it is that the Soul is denied the sight of that Eternal Pulchritude which she once saw with open Face but now converses with it as it were in a Dream and the Obscurity of a Nocturnal Vision beholding but a glimpse of it through the Cranies of Mortality partly because the Place of her Abode and the Condition of her Life mix'd with the various Inquinations of Earth distract her Attention from that lovely Spectacle For that uniform Beauty descending from above must needs appear less and change its Nature when fallen among the foul Embraces and Twinings of Terrestrial Joys Like a River emptying its Channel into the brackish Sea retains a while its sweet Waters but when the rude Winds and Waves assault their weaker Force they are soon swallowed up and lose both their Name and Nature in the Bosom of their more potent Adversary Thus it is with us in our Earthly Bodies but when we are set at liberty and delivered from these Jails we enter upon a State of a more enlarged Life and new Scenes of Things present themselves to our View and our Souls begin to find their Wings to grow again whereby they soar aloft in the undisturbed Mansions of Blessedness where their Faces are never turned from that Intellectual Sun that shines with uninterrupted Beams upon them Think with your self now Sir that if departed Souls know any thing that is done here below and it were permitted to Placidia to give you a Visit whether she would not meekly and with a Filial Affection desire you to put a stop to your Sorrow and let you know that the blessed Genii have other Apprehensions of Things than we poor Mortals have and call them by other Names What we call Death they term Life and when we say we celebrate the Funerals of our Friends the Inhabitants of the upper World call it their Natalitia or Birth-days and therefore that you would not take her departure from you so heavily since it was the joyfullest Day that ever she saw before Thus the Indian Brachmans philosophized affirming the Life of Man to be like the State of
Veracity and Truth will secure our future State For he having so universally declared to all Men by the Voice of Nature but more fully by Christianity the Immortality and Personal Subsistence of the Soul after Death it would lie as an eternal Blot upon this most precious Attribute if there were really no such thing to be expected Nor is the Justice of God less concerned in this Affair a great part of which consists in a faithful Distribution of Rewards and Punishments all which were utterly lost unless the souls of Men subsist after Death and be capable of Pleasure and Pain And as for that extravagant Dream that the Soul sleeps with the Body in the Grave till the Day of the Resurrection I am bold to say That Sensuality is the Patroness of this heartless Opinion The Nature of the Soul of Man is such as makes it capable of Moral Good and Evil and for this Reason every Man fatally adjoyning himself either to Heaven or Hell in this Life it will inevitably fall to his share to be Happy or Miserable when departed out of it Which cannot be except the Memory and Sense of his past Actions return upon his Separation from the Body And that it does so is not only a probable but necessary Consequence from the Nature of the Soul Now the Pleasure and Pain resulting from Good and Evil Actions will not suffer the Soul to fall into such a Stupour and Lethargick Sleep God is not the God of the Dead but of the Living for all live unto him said our Lord. But if the Souls of Men fall into so permanent a Sleep they are dead or rather annihilated for not to Be and not to be conscious of ones Being are much one and their Recuperation to Life is to them as it were a new Creation neither know they why they are either Rewarded or Punished because Death and that Narcotick State which immediately follows it according to this sottish Fancy washes away the Memory of all past Actions whatever To this we may add the Apparition of Moses and Elias in their Celestial Robes to our Blessed Saviour at his Transfiguration upon Mount Tabor when his Face shone like the Sun and his Rayment became white as the Light and those two Divine Personages foretold the good Events of his Death and spake words of comfort to him under the Consideration of his Inglorious Passion Which is an evident proof that the Souls of Moses and Elias did not sleep when they left their Bodies but that they now live and act in the Felicities of Jesus to whom in the days of his Flesh they brought Relief and Comfort Nor can I see how the Soul of the Thief on the Cross could be with our Saviour in Paradise or if it were there what advantage it could reap if immediately upon its separation from the Body it fell into such a deep sleep as not to be awakened but by the sound of the last Trumpet And as little Reason can be given why the Apostles Affections should be carry'd out in such a longing desire to depart and to be with Christ if to be with Christ were to sleep till the Day of Judgment in the cold Sods of the Earth But to pass on to some other Considerations one or other of which may perchance be as a Word spoken in Season and prove subservient for the reviving a languishing and sorrowful Spirit Do we not see all Things in Nature hasten to a Decay The hoary Winter cuts off all the Summer's Pride and Glory and Trees and Herbs despoiled of their green and leavy Coverings lie as dead till the return of the Sun and the genital Heat of Nature raise them to a new and fresh Life again Are not Beasts and Fowls and Fishes and the whole Animal Kingdom in a perpetual Mutation and Succession Nay the Heavenly Bodies themselves are not exempted from Mortality and Corruption as is evidently seen in the appearing of new Stars unknown before and the sudden disappearing of old ones and in the Trajection of Comets those vast and ominous Bodies through the Skirts of the Sun 's Vortex above the Orb of Saturn The Sun himself the common Focus that imparts Life and Heat to so many Worlds which keep their constant Circulations about him yet seems to prognosticate his own Death and Extinction by those Maculae or Spots carried around his Face And can you think a tender Body of Flesh and Blood though fearfully and wonderfully made yet consisting of mortal Principles should not die and perish But though Death may prey upon and consume the Elements of our Terrestrial Composition yet the Soul remains safe and entire and when clothed upon with her Heavenly and Angelical Body will be perfectly out of the reach of Fate and secure in the Possession of that bright and glorious Life which is justly said to be eternal But you will say Placidia was taken away in the Flower of her Youth and you are bereaved of the Comfort of your Old Age. I acknowledge indeed that Children are one of the greatest Temporal Blessings Men are capable of in this Life and therefore the being deprived of them is one of the greatest Temporal Infelicities They are so many Images of our selves and by them we are in a sort kept from the devouring Jaws of Silence and Forgetfulness and have a kind of Immortality imparted to us in this World In them is contained the straitest and nearest Bond of Friendship and they are the greatest Comfort and Support of our Old Age. All living Creatures seem to acknowledge something of this Pleasure and Sweetness in bringing up their Young Ones But what then Is the loss of them an Evil never to be redrest Is it a Wound that is beyond all possibility of a Cure To send a Child in a Voyage to the remotest part of the Indies from whence perhaps he may never return is carried off more lightly than to follow him to his Grave when yet to my Apprehension there is no such great difference but what is made by a weak and impotent Imagination For though we see not our departed Friends with our bodily Eyes yet they and we and those Pure and Majestick Beings the Angels under God the Supreme Monarch make one Polity Society or Corporation that extends and reaches from Heaven to Earth and the distance is no more than that they according to their several Ranks and Qualities live above in the splendid and more Noble Buildings and we in the Suburbs the meanest and lowest Places of the City of the Great King In my Father's House are many Mansions says Christ And the Author to the Hebrews seems to intimate as much But ye Joh. 14. 2. are come unto Mount Sion and to the City of the Living God the Heb. 12. 22. Heavenly Jerusalem and to an innumerable Company of Angels to the General Assembly and Church of the First-born which are written in Heaven and to God the Judge of
A Consolatory Letter UPON THE DEATH OF A DAUGHTER Written after a Philosophical Manner By a Gentleman of the University to his Friend in the Country O Praeclarum Diem cùm ad illud Divinorum Animorum Concilium coetumque proficiscar cúmque ex hâc turbâ colluvione discedam Cic. de Senect Nostra quae dicitur vita Mors est nec unquam vivit Animus nisi compage solutus corporis Liber aeternitate potiatur Id. de Consolat London Printed for The. Bennet at the Half Moon in St. Paul's Church-yard 1698. A Consolatory Letter UPON THE DEATH of a DAVGHTER My Dear Friend NOt only our Education and the common Course of our Studies for many Years but much more the inward Frame and Agreement of Minds have by a secret Sympathy drawn our Souls into the sacred Tye of a firm and inviolable Friendship and I should dishonour and highly derogate from that Divine Vertue if I did not as well participate in your Sorrows as share in your Felicity When the last Post brought me the unfortunate News of the Death of your beloved Placidia I was equally concerned with your self for her immature Fate And because I find your great Sorrow makes you uncapable of giving your self that relief which you have frequently bestowed upon others from those several Arguments that both Religion and Philosophy furnish us withal suffer me at least now to refresh your disconsolate Mind with some of those Topicks which when sequestred from the Noise and Tumult of the World and locked in the pleasing Union of each others Soul we were wont to entertain our selves with upon such Spectacles of Mortality which I shall set down in a loose manner not being over-curious in ranking them in a distinct Order and Method The Platonists suppose the Descent of Humane Souls into Terrestrial Bodies not to be equal and alike in all For as there were some who let themselves loose without bounds or measures to all the irregular and exorbitant Motions of their congenite Bodies and in whom the Plastick Life became so infinitely invigorated as quite to suppress and silence that better Principle to whose Inspirations while they carefully attended they remained happy in the free Exertions of a higher and more intellectual Life And by this means taking their full swinge and drowning themselves in Corporeal Joys they became perfectly unfit for any other degree of Vitality but the Terrestrial and must have lain in a State of Inactivity for ever had not a Gracious Providence sent them down upon Earth to try their Fortunes once more So there are others who descended indeed somewhat from the height and summity of the Aethereal Life and experienced the Joys and Pleasures of the lower Life yet still within such bounds and limits as did not utterly incapacitate them for a Return but thereby they contracted a nearer Aptitude and Fitness of actuating a Terrestrial Body Now as the first of these are observed in these their Earthly Bodies to have a strong Proclivity to Vice and are carried headlong to all manner of Gratifications of Sense be they never so feculent and course in spight of all better Perswasions to the contrary and are very hardly and difficultly reclaimed So the other coming into the World with a good Measure of that Divine Life still awakened in them notwithstanding the Encumbrances of Flesh and Blood they make more easie Returns and more happily recover that Blessed Life to which they have a Congruity yet remaining upon their Departure from their Mortal Bodies And if this Hypothesis of theirs be true your Placidia may well be thought to be one of this latter sort there appearing even in her blooming Years such an Angelical Temper which discovered it self in a quick and lively Sense of Goodness a firm and radicated Love of Vertue of Sanctity and Purity of Innocency and a hearty Benignity Kindness and Readiness of Mind to do all the good Offices she could to all the World And for you now to bewail her Death it is to be sorry for her Return to the Possession of that blessed Life the full Enjoyment of which was greatly interrupted by her stay and continuance in this her Earthly Prison And the Scripture seems to call the Departure of a Holy Soul from its Earthly Tenement by the Name of a Return as Phil. 1. 23. having a desire 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to depart but is more fitly rendred to return viz. to a Man 's own House or Native Home as the Word is used Luke 12. 36. And to this may be imputed her hasty flight from this Earthly Region it being a merciful Providence to her that that Divine Life which shone so bright through the Veil of Mortality might not be in danger to be extinguished and oppressed by a longer Continuance under the weight and pressure of sluggish and dull Flesh and Blood Give me leave farther to repeat not as if you were ignorant of it but that I may attempt something to break and dispel that Cloud of Sorrow which seems to sit heavy upon your Brows what the Divine Plato tells us that true Philosophy is nothing but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a Meditation of Death i. e. the Separation of the Soul from its close adhesion to the Body that in that abstracted and silent State it might more freely contemplate Truth and the bright Idea's of the incorporeal World And there is great Reason for this For as the same contemplative Philosopher informs us when the Body with all its Train of Lusts and Affections shall by a kind of Magical Devocation draw the Animadversion after it the Mind is filled with a kind of Tumult and struck with Amazement 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and by this means is rendred unable and uncapable to discern the Face of Truth Wherefore he that would philosophize aright and attain the Height and Perfection of Humane Nature must learn to die to the Body and separate himself from all Contagion of the Animal Life and have no farther Communication with it than pure Necessity requires For this Disjunction and Separation of the Soul from Sense and Corporeity is a Prelude to her Immortality and the raising her from this obscure Life she leads in the Body to a Capacity of conversing with the Root and Centre of all Life in more pure and defecate Regions And now in this Philosophy Placidia was an excellent and early Proficient having rarely well learned the Art of subjugating all Corporeal Motions Affections and Desires to the Imperium and Rule of the Intellectual Life never suffering any youthful Pleasures or Delights to betray her to an Action of Ignominy or Shame but using such innocent Diversions as only served for the unbending and Relaxation of the Mind for a while that it might return with fresh Alacrity and Vigour to a press Observance of the great End of her Creation She never was taken with any of those Fooleries and secular Vanities with which her Sex is the most easily