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 Embleme For that Tree seeming dead will restore it self 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 Church-yards hold not its original from ancient Funeral-Rites or as an Embleme of Resurrection from its perpetual Verdure may also admit conjecture They made use of Musick to excite or quiet the Affections of their Friends according to different Harmonies But the secret and symbolical hint was the Harmonical nature of the Soul which delivered from the Body went again to enjoy the primitive Harmony of Heaven from whence it first descended which according to its progress traced by Antiquity came down by Cancer and ascended by Capricornus They burnt not Children before their Teeth appeared as apprehending their Bodies too tender a morsel for Fire and that their gristly Bones would scarce leave separable Reliques after the pyral Combustion That they kindled not Fire in their houses for some days after was a strict memorial of the late afflicting Fire And mourning without hope they had an happy fraud against excessive Lamentation by a common opinion that deep Sorrows disturbed their Ghosts That they buried their dead on their Backs or in a supine position seems agreeable unto profound Sleep and common posture of dying contrary to the most natural way of Birth nor unlike our pendulous posture in the doubtful state of the Womb. Diogenes was singular who preferred a prone situation in the Grave and some Christians like neither who declined the figure of Rest and made choice of an erect posture That they carried them out of the world with their Feet forward was not inconsonant unto Reason as contrary unto the native posture of Man and his production first into it and also agreeable unto their Opinions while they bid adieu unto the world not to look again upon it whereas Mahometans who think to return to a delightful life again are carried forth with their Heads forward and looking towards their houses They closed their Eyes as parts which first die or first discover the sad effects of Death But their iterated Clamations to excitate their dying or dead Friends or revoke them unto life again was a vanity of Affection as not presumably ignorant of the critical Tests of Death by apposition of Feathers Glasses and reflexion of Figures which dead Eyes represent not which how-ever not strictly verifiable in fresh and warm Cadavers could hardly elude the Test in Corps of four or five days That they sucked in the last Breath of their expiring Friends was surely a practice of no medical Institution but a loose opinion that the Soul passed out that way and a fondness of Affection from some Pythagorical foundation that the Spirit of one Body passed into another which they wished might be their own That they poured Oyl upon the Pyre was a tolerable practice while the intention rested in facilitating the Ascension But to place good Omens in the quick and speedy Burning to sacrifice unto the Winds for a dispatch in this office was a low form of Superstition The Archimime or Jester attending the Funeral Train and imitating the speeches gesture and manners of the deceased was too light for such Solemnities contradicting their funeral Orations and dolefull Rites of the Grave That they buried a piece of Money with them as a Fee of the Elysian Ferryman was a practice full of folly But the ancient custome of placing Coyns in considerable Urns and the present practice of burying Medals in the noble Foundations of Europe are laudable ways of Historical discoveries in Actions Persons Chronologies and posterity will applaud them We examine not the old Laws of Sepulture exempting certain persons from Burial or Burning But hereby we apprehend that these were not the Bones of persons Planet-struck or burnt with fire from Heaven no Reliques of Traitors to their Countrey Self-killers or Sacrilegious malefactors persons in old apprehension unworthy of the Earth condemned unto the Tartarus of Hell and bottomless pit of Pluto from whence there was no redemption Nor were onely many Customes questionable in order to their Obsequies but also sundry Practices Fictions and Conceptions discordant or obscure of their state and future beings Whether unto eight or ten Bodies of Men to adde one of a Woman as being more inflammable and unctuously constituted for the better pyrall Combustion were any rational practice or whether the complaint of Periander's Wife be tolerable that wanting her Funeral Burning she suffered intolerable cold in Hell according to the constitution of the Infernal house of Pluto wherein Cold makes a great part of their Tortures it cannot pass without some question Why the Female-Ghosts appear unto Ulysses before the Heroes and masculine spirits why the Psyche or Soul of Tiresias is of the masculine gender who being blinde on Earth sees more then all the rest in Hell why the Funeral Suppers consisted of Eggs Beans Smallage and Lettuce since the dead are made to eat Asphodels about the Elysian meadows why since there is no Sacrifice acceptable nor any Propitiation for the Covenant of the Grave men set up the Deity of Morta and fruitlesly adored Divinites without Ears it cannot escape some doubt The dead seem all alive in the humane Hades of Homer yet cannot they speak prophesie or know the living except they drink Bloud wherein is the Life of man And therefore the Souls of Penelope's Paramours conducted by Mercury chirped like Bats and those which followed Hercules made a noise but like a flock of Birds The departed Spirits know things past and to come yet are ignorant of things present Agamemnon foretells what should happen unto Ulysses yet ignorantly enquires what is become of his own Son The Ghosts are afraid of Swords in Homer yet Sibylla tells Aeneas in Virgil the thin habit of Spirits was beyond the force of Weapons The Spirits put off their Malice with their Bodies and Caesar and Pompey accord in Latine Hell yet Ajax in Homer endures not a Conference with Ulysses And Deiphobus appears all mangled in Virgil's Ghosts yet we meet with perfect Shadows among the wounded Ghosts of Homer Since Charon in Lucian applauds his condition among the dead whether is it handsomely said of Achilles that living contemner of Death that he had rather be a Plowman's servant then Emperour of the dead How is Hercules his Soul in Hell and yet in Heaven and Julius his Soul in a Star yet seen by Aeneas in Hell except the Ghosts were but Images and Shadows of the Soul received in higher mansions according to the ancient division of Body Soul and Image or Simulachrum of them both The particulars of future Beings must needs be dark unto ancient Theories which Christian Philosophy yet determines but
in a Cloud of Opinions A Dialogue between two Infants in the womb concerning the state of this world might handsomly illustrate our ignorance of the next whereof methinks we yet discourse in Plato's Den and are but Embryon Philosophers Pythagoras escape in the fabulous Hell of Dante among that swarm of Philosophers wherein whilest we meet with Plato and Socrates Cato is to be found in no lower place then Purgatory Among all the set Epicurus is most considerable whom men make honest without an Elysium who contemned life without encouragement of Immortality and making nothing after Death yet made nothing of the King of terrours Were the Happiness of the next World as closely apprehended as the Felicities of this it were a Martyrdome to live and unto such as consider none hereafter it must be more then 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 judgement of Machiavel that Christianity makes men Cowards or that with the confidence of bat half dying the despised Vertues of Patience and Humility have abased the spirits of men which Pagan Principles exalted but rather it hath 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 Martyrdomes 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 fearfull and complexionally superannuated from the bold and couragious thoughts of Youth and fervent years But the contempt of Death from corporal animosity promoteth not our Felicity They may sit in the Orchestra and noblest Seats of Heaven who have held up shaking hands in the Fire and humanely 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 vertuous Heathen who lived better then he spake or erring in the Principles of himself yet lived above Philosophers of more specious Maximes 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 Quere too sad to insist on But all or most apprehensions rested in Opinions of some future Being which ignorantly or coldly believed beget 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 mindes fell often upon doubtful Deaths and melancholick Dissolutions With these hopes Socrates warmed his doubtful spirits against that cold Potion and Cato before he durst give the fatal stroak 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 farther State to come unto which this seems progressional 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 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 inferiour 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 Wisedom of God hath necessitated their contentment But the superiour ingredient and obscured part of our selves whereunto all present Felicities afford no resting contentment will be able at last to tell us we are more then our present selves and evacuate such Hopes in the fruition of their own Accomplishments CHAP. V. NOW since these dead Bones have already out-lasted the living ones of Methuselah and in a yard under Ground and thin walls of Clay out-worn all the strong and specious Buildings above it and quietly rested under the Drums and Tramplings of three Conquests what Prince can promise such diuturnity unto his Reliques or might not gladly say Sic ego componi versus in oss a velim 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 became considerable and some old Philosophers would honour them whose Souls they conceived most pure which were thus snatched from their Bodies and to retain a stronger propension unto them whereas they weariedly left alanguishing Corps and with faint desires of Re-union If they fell by long and aged decay yet wrapt up in the bundle of Time they fell into indistinction and made 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 his name 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 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 when David grew politickly Cruel and Solomon could hardly be said to be the Wisest of men But many are too early old and before the date of age Adversity stretcheth our days Misery makes Almena's nights and Time hath no wings unto it But the most tedious being is that which can unwish it self content to be nothing or never to have been which was beyond the Male-content of Job who cursed not the day of his Life but his Nativity content to have so far been as to have a title to future being although he had lived here but in an hidden state of life and as it were an Abortion What Song the Sirens
common Being and make one particle of the publick Soul of all things which was no more then to return into their unknown and divine Original again Agyptian ingenuity was more unsatisfied contriving their Bodies in sweet Consistences to attend the return of their Souls But all was vanity feeding the winde and folly The Aegyptian Mummies which Cambyses or Time hath spared Avarice now consumeth Mummie is become Merchandise Mizraim cures Wounds and Pharaoh is sold for Balsams In vain do Individuals hope for Immortality or any patent from Oblivion in preservations below the Moon Men have been deceived even in their flatteries above the Sun and studied conceits to perpetuate their names in Heaven The various Cosmographie of that part hath already varied the names of contrived Constellations Nimrod is lost in Orion and Osiris in the Dog-star While we look for incorruption in the Heavens we finde they are but like the Earth durable in their main Bodies alterable in their Parts whereof beside Comets and new Stars Perspectives begin to tell tales and the Spots that wander about the Sun with Phaethon's favour would make clear conviction There is nothing strictly immortal but Immortality what-ever hath no Beginning may be confident of no End all others have a dependent Being and within the reach of destruction which is the peculiar of that necessary Essence that cannot destroy it self and the highest strain of Omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even from the power of it self But the sufficiency of Christian Immortality frustrates all earthly glory and the quality of either state after death makes a folly of posthumous memory God who can onely destroy our Souls and hath assured our Resurrection either of our Bodies or Names hath directly promised no duration wherein there is so much of Chance that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration and to hold long subsistence seems but a scape in Oblivion But man is a noble Animal splendid in Ashes and pompous in the Grave solemnizing Nativities and Deaths with equal Iustre nor omitting Ceremonies of Bravery in the infamy of his nature Life is a pure Flame and we live by an invisible Sun within us A small Fire sufficeth for life great Flames seemed too little after death while men vainly affected precious Pyres and to burn like Sardanapalus But the wisedom of Funeral Laws found the folly of prodigal Blazes and reduced undoing Fires unto the rule of sober Obsequies wherein few could be so mean as not to provide Wood Pitch a Mourner and an Urn. Five Languages secured not the Epitaph of Gordianus The man of God lives longer without a Tomb then any by one invisibly interred by Angels and adjudged to obscurity though not without some marks directing humane discovery Enoch and Elias without either Tomb or Burial in an anomalous state of being are the great examples of Perpetuity in their long and living Memory in strict account being still on this side Death and having a late Part yet to act upon this Stage of Earth If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all die but be changed according to received Translation the last Day will make but few Graves at least quick Resurrections will anticipate lasting Sepultures Some Graves will be opened before they be quite closed and Lazarus be no wonder when many that feared to die shall groan that they can die but once The dismall state is the second and living Death when Life puts despair on the damned when men shall wish the coverings of Mountains not of Monuments and Annihilation shall be courted While some have studied Monuments others have studiously declined them and some have been so vainly boisterous that they durst not acknowledge their Graves wherein Alaricus seems most subtile who had a River turned to hide his Bones at the bottom Even Sylla that thought himself safe in his Urn could not prevent revenging Tongues and Stones thrown at his Monument Happy are they whom Privacy makes innocent who deal so with men in this world that they are not afraid to meet them in the next who when they die make no commotion among the dead and are not touch'd with that poetical taunt of Isaiah Pyramids Arches Obelisks were but the irregularities of Vain-glory and wilde 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 spirts who pass their days in raptures of Futurity made little more of this world then the world that was before it while they lay obscure in the Chaos of Preordination and night of their Fore-beings And if any have been so happy as truely to understand Christian Annihilation Ecstasis Exsolution Liquefaction Transformation the Kiss of the Spouse Gustation of God and Ingression into the Divine shadow they have already had an handsome anticipation of Heaven the 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 Chimera's was large satisfaction unto old expectations and made one part of their Elyziums But all this is nothing in the Metaphysicks of true Belief To live indeed is to be again our selves which being not onely an hope but an evidence in noble Believers 't is all one to lie in St. Innocent's Church-yard as in the Sands of Aegypt ready to be any thing in the ecstasie of being ever and as content with six foot as the Moles of Adrianus Lucan Tabesne cadavera solvat An rogus haud refert THE Garden of Cyrus OR THE QUINCUNCIAL LOZENGE OR Net-work Plantations of the ANCIENTS Artificially Naturally Mystically considered By THO. BROWN D. of Physick LONDON Printed in the Year 1668. Quid Quincunce speciosius qui in quam cunque partem spectaueris rectus est Quintilian THE Garden of Cyrus OR THE QUINCUNCIAL LOZENGE OR Net-work Plantations of the Ancients Artificially Naturally Mystically considered CHAP. I. THAT Vulcan gave Arrows unto Apollo and Diana the fourth day after their Nativities according to Gentile Theology may pass for no blind apprehension of the Creation of the Sun and Moon in the work of the fourth day when the diffased Light contracted into the Orbs and shooting Rays of those Luminaries Plainer Descriptions there are from Pagan pens of the creatures of the Fourth day While the divine Philosopher unhappily omitteth the noblest part of the Third and Ovid whom many conceive to have borrowed his Description from Moses coldly deserting the remarkable account of the Text in three words describeth this work of the Third day the Vegetable creation and first ornamental Scene of Nature the primitive Food of Animals and first story of Physick in Dietetical conservation For though Physick
the Fire with Wine Manlius the Consul burnt the Body of his Son Numa by special clause of his Will was not burnt but buried and Remus was solemnly buried according to the description of Ovid Cornelius Sylla was not the first whose Body was burned in Rome but of the Cornelian Family which being indifferently not frequently used before from that time spread and became the prevalent practice not totally pursued in the highest run of Cremation for when even Crows were funerally burnt Poppaea the Wife of Nero found a peculiar Grave-interrment Now as all Customs were founded upon some bottom of Reason so there wanted not grounds for this according to several apprehensions of the most rational Dissolution Some being of the opinion of Thales that Water was the Original of all things thought it most equal to submit unto the Principle of Putrefaction and conclude in a moist Relentment Others conceived it most natural to end in Fire as due unto the Master-principle in the Composition according to the doctrine of Heraclitus and therefore heaped up large Piles more actively to waft them toward that Element whereby they also declined a visible degeneration into Worms and left a lasting parcel of their Composition Some apprehended a purifying virtue in Fire refining the grosser Commixture and firing out the Aethereal particles so deeply immersed in it And such as by Tradition or rational conjecture held any hint of the final Pyre of all things or that this Element at last must be too hard for all the rest might conceive most naturally of the Fiery dissolution Others pretending no natural grounds politickly declined the malice of Enemies upon their buried Bodies Which consideration led Sylla unto this practice who having thus served the Body of Marius could not but fear a Retaliation upon his own entertained after in the Civil Wars and revengefull Contentions of Rome But as many Nations embraced and many left it indifferent so others too much affected or strictly declined this practice The Indian Brachmans seemed too great friends unto Fire who burnt themselves alive and thought it the noblest way to end their days in Fire according to the expression of the Indian burning himself at Athens in his last words upon the Pyre unto the amazed Spectatours Thus I make my self immortal But the Chaldaeans the great Idolaters of Fire abhorred the Burning of their Carkasses as a pollution of that Deity The Persian Magi declined it upon the like scruple and being onely solicitous about their Bones exposed their Flesh to the prey of Birds and Dogs And the Persees now in India which expose their Bodies unto Vultures and endure not so much as Feretra or Beers of Wood the proper Fuell of Fire are led on with such niceties But whether the ancient Germans who buried their dead held any such fear to pollute their Deity of Herthus or the Earth we have no authentick conjecture The Aegyptians were afraid of Fire not as a Deity but a devouring Element mercilesly consuming their Bodies and leaving too little of them and therefore by precious Embalments Depositure in dry earths or handsome inclosure in Glasses contrived the notablest ways of integral Conservation And from such Aegyptian scruples imbibed by Pythagoras it may be conjectured that Numa and the Pythagorical Sect first waved the fiery Solution The Scythians who swore by Winde and Sword that is by Life and Death were so far from Burning their Bodies that they declined all Interrment and made their Graves in the Air And the Ichthyophagi or fish-eating Nations about Aegypt affected the Sea for their Grave thereby declining visible corruption and restoring the debt of their Bodies Whereas the old Heroes in Homer dreaded nothing more then Water or Drowning probably upon the old Opinion of the fiery substance of the Soul onely extinguishable by that Element And therefore the Poet emphatically implieth the total destruction in this kind of death which happened to Ajax Oileus The old Baleareans had a peculiar mode for they used great Urns and much Wood but no Fire in their Burials while they bruised the Flesh and Bones of the dead crowded them into Urns and laid heaps of Wood upon them And the Chinois without Cremation or urnal Interrment of their Bodies make use of Trees and much burning while they plant a Pine-tree by their Grave and burn great numbers of printed draughts of Slaves and Horses over it civilly content with their companies in effigie which barbarous Nations exact unto reality Christians abhorred this way of Obsequies and though they stick not to give their Bodies to be burnt in their lives detested that mode after death affecting rather a Depositure then Absumption and properly submitting unto the sentence of God to return not unto Ashes but unto Dust again conformable unto the practice of the Patriarchs the Interrment of our Saviour of Peter Paul and the ancient Martyrs and so far at last declining promiscuous Interrment with Pagans that some have suffered Ecclesiastical Censures for making no scruple thereof The Musselman-believers will never admit this Fiery resolution For they hold a present Trial from their black and white Angels in the Grave which they must have made so hollow that they may rise upon their knees The Jewish Nation though they entertained the old way of Inhumation yet sometimes admitted this practice for the men of Jabesh burnt the Body of Saul and by no prohibited practice to avoid Contagion or Pollution in time of Pestilence burnt the Bodies of their Friends And when they burnt not their dead Bodies yet sometimes they used great Burnings near and about them as is deducible from the expressions concerning Jehoram Sedechias and the sumptuous Pyre of Asa And they were so little averse from Pagan Burning that the Jews lamenting the death of Caesar 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 Pyle 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 Soludiers Spear and Nails that past by the little Bones both in his hands and feet not of ordinary contrivance that it should not corrupt on the Cross according to the Law of Roman Crucifixion or an hair of his head perish though observable in Jewish Customs to cut the Hairs of Malefactors Nor in their long Co-habitation with the Aegyptians crept they into a custome of their exact Embalming wherein deeply slashing the Muscles and taking out the Brains and Entrails they had
fresh that they could feel no sindge from Fire These upon view were judged to be Wood but sinking in water and tried by the fire we found them to be Bone or Ivory In their hardness and yellow colour they most resembled Box which in old expressions found the Epithete of Eternal and perhaps in such Conservatories might have passed uncorrupted That Bay-leaves were found green in the Tomb of S. Humbert after an hundred and fifty years was looked upon as miraculous Remarkable it was unto old Spectators that the Cypress of the Temple of Diana lasted so many hundred years The Wood of the Ark and Olive-rod of Aaron were older at the Captivity But the Cypress of the Ark of Noah was the greatest vegetable Antiquity if Josephus were not deceived by some Fragments of it in his days To omit the Moor-logs and Firre-trees found under ground in many parts of England the undated ruines of Winds Flouds or Earthquakes and which in Flanders still shew from what Quarter they fell as generally lying in the North-East position But though we found not these pieces to be Wood according to first apprehension yet we missed not altogether of some woody substance for the Bones were not so clearly pick'd but some Coals were found amongst them A way to make Wood perpetual and a fit associate for Metall whereon was laid the foundation of the great Ephesian Temple and which were made the lasting Tests of old Boundaries and Land-marks Whilest we look on these we admire not observations of Coals found fresh after four hundred years In a long-deserted habitation even Egg-shels have been found fresh not tending to corruption In the Monument of King Childerick the iron Reliques were found all rusty and crumbling into pieces But our little Iron-pins which fastned the ivory works held well together and lost not their Magneticall quality though wanting a tenacious moisture for the firmer union of parts although it be hardly drawn into Fusion yet that metall soon submitteth unto rust and dissolution In the Brazen pieces we admired not the duration but the freedom from rust and ill savour upon the hardest attrition but now exposed unto the piercing Atoms of Air in the space of a few months they begin to spot and betray their green Entrals We conceive not these Urns to have descended thus naked as they appear or to have entred their Graves without the old habit of Flowers The Urn of Philopoemen was so laden with Flowers and Ribbands that it afforded no sight of it self The rigid Lycurgus allowed Olive and Myrtle The Athenians might fairly except against the practice of Democritus to be buried up in Honey as fearing to imbezzle a great Commodity of their Country and the best of that kinde in Europe But Plato seemed too frugally politick who allowed no larger Monument then would contain four Heroick verses and designed the most barren ground for Sepulture Though we cannot commend the goodness of that Sepulchral ground which was set at no higher rate then the mean Salary of Judas Though the Earth had confounded the Ashes of these Ossuaries yet the Bones were so smartly burnt that some thin Plates of Brass were found half melted among them whereby we apprehended they were not of the meanest Carkasses perfunctorily fired as sometimes in military and commonly in Pestilence-Burnings or after the manner of abject Corps huddled forth and carelesly burnt without the Esquiline Port at Rome which was an Affront continued upon Tiberius while they but half burnt his Body and in the Amphitheater according to the custome in notable Malefactors whereas Nero seemed not so much to fear his Death as that his Head should be cut off and his Body not burnt entire Some finding many fragments of Sculls in these Urns suspected a mixture of Bones In none we searched was there cause of such conjecture though sometimes they declined not that practice The Ashes of Domitian were mingled with those of Julia of Achilles with those of Patroclus All Urns contained not single Ashes without confused Burnings they affectionately compounded their Bones passionately endeavouring to continue their living Unions And when distance of death denied such Conjunctions unsatisfied affections conceived some satisfaction to be neighbours in the Grave to lie Urn by Urn and touch but in their names And many were so curious to continue their living Relations that they contrived large and Family-Urns wherein the Ashes of their nearest Friends and Kindred might successively be received at least some parcels thereof while their collateral memorials lay in minor Vessels about them Antiquity held too light thoughts from Objects of Mortality while some drew provocatives of Mirth from Anatomies and Jugglers shewed tricks with Skeletons when Fiddlers made not so pleasant mirth as Fencers and men could sit with quiet stomachs while Hanging was plaid before them Old considerations made few Memento's by Sculls and Bones upon their Monuments In the Aegyptian Obelisks and Hieroglyphical Figures it is not easie to meet with Bones The Sepulchral Lamps speak nothing less then Sepulture and in their literal draughts prove often obscene and antick pieces Where we finde D. M. it is obvious to meet with sacrificing Patera's and Vessels of Libation upon old Sepulchral Monuments In the Jewish Hypogaeum and subterranean Cell at Rome was little observable beside the variety of Lamps and frequent draughts of the holy Candlestick In authentick draughts of Antony and Jerome we meet with Thigh-bones and Death's-heads but the coemeterial Cells of ancient Christians and Martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture-Stories not declining the Flourishes of Cypress Palms and Olive and the mystical Figures of Peacocks Doves and Cocks but iterately affecting the Pourtraicts of Enoch Lazarus Jonas and the Vision of Ezekiel as hopefull draughts and hinting imagery of the Resurrection which is the life of the Grave and sweetens our habitations in the Land of Moles and Pismires Gentile Inscriptions precisely delivered the extent of mens Lives seldome the manner of their Deaths which History it self so often leaves obscure in the Records of memorable persons There is scarce any Philosopher but dies twice or thrice in Laertius nor almost any Life without two or three Deaths in Plutarch which makes the tragical Ends of noble Persons more favourably resented by compassionate Readers who finde some relief in the Election of such differences The certainty of Death is attended with uncertainties in Time Manner Places The variety of Monuments hath often obscured true Graves and Cenotaphs confounded Sepulchres For beside their real Tombs many have found honorary and empty Sepulchres The variety of Homer's Monuments made him of various Countries Euripides had his Tomb in Africa but his Sepulture in Macedonia And Severus found his real Sepulchre in Rome but his empty Grave in Gallia He that lay in a golden Urn eminently above the Earth was not like to finde the quiet
Heritage for Serpents In carnal Sepulture Corruptions seem peculiar unto parts and some speak of Snakes out of the Spinal Marrow But while we suppose common Worms in Graves 't is not easie to finde any there few in Church-yards above a foot deep fewer or none in Churches though in fresh-decayed Bodies Teeth Bones and Hair give the most lasting defiance to Corruption In an Hydropical Body ten years buried in a Church-yard we met with a fat concretion where the Nitre of the Earth and the salt and lixivious Liquour of the Body had coagulated large lumps of Fat into the consistence of the hardest Castle-soap whereof part remaineth with us After a Battel with the Persians the Roman Corps decayed in few days while the Persian Bodies remained dry and uncorrupted Bodies in the same ground do not uniformly dissolve nor Bones equally moulder whereof in the opprobrious Disease we expect no long duration The Body of the Marquess of Dorset seemed sound and handsomely Cereclothed that after seventy eight years was found uncorrupted Common Tombs preserve not beyond Powder A firmer consistence and compage of parts might be expected from Arefaction deep Burial or Charcoal The greatest Antiquities of mortal Bodies may remain in petrified Bones whereof though we take not in the Pillar of Lot's wife or Metamorphosis of Ortelius some may be older then Pyramids in the petrified Reliques of the general Inundation When Alexander opened the Tomb of Cyrus the remaining Bones discovered his proportion whereof Urnal Fragments afford but a bad conjecture and have this disadvantage of Grave-Interrments that they leave us ignorant of most personal discoveries For since Bones afford not onely Rectitude and Stability but Figure unto the Body it is no impossible Physiognomy to conjecture at fleshly Appendences and after what shape the Muscles and Carnous parts might hang in their full consistences A fullspred Cariola shews a well-shaped Horse behinde handsome-formed Sculls give some Analogy of Flesh-resemblance a critical view of Bones makes a good distinction of Sexes Even Colour is not beyond conjecture since it is hard to be deceived in the distinction of Negro's Sculls Dante 's Characters are to be found in Sculls as well as Faces Hercules is not onely known by his Foot Other parts make out their comproportions and inferences upon whole or parts And since the dimensions of the Head measure the whole Body and the Figure thereof gives conjecture of the principal Faculties Physiognomy out-lives our selves and ends not in our Graves Severe Contemplators observing these lasting Reliques may think them good Monuments of persons past little advantage to future beings and considering that Power which subdueth all things unto it self that can resame the scattered Atomes or identifie out of any thing conceive it superfluous to expect a Resurrection out of Reliques But the Soul subsisting other matter clothed with due accidents may salve the Individuality Yet the Saints we observe arose from Graves and Monuments about the holy City Some think the ancient Patriarchs so earnestly desired to lay their Bones in Canaan as hoping to make a part of that Resurrection and though thirty miles from Mount Calvary at least to lie in that Region which should produce the first-fruits of the dead And if according to learned conjecture the Bodies of men shall rise where their greatest Reliques remain many are not like to erre in the Topography of their Resurrection though their Bones or Bodies be after translated by Angels into the field of Ezekiel's Vision or as some will order it into the Valley of Judgement or Jehosaphat CHAP. IV. CHristians have handsomely glossed the deformity of Death by carefull consideration of the Body and civil Rites which take off brutal terminations and though they conceived all repairable by a Resurrection cast not off all care of Interrment And since the Ashes of Sacrifices burnt upon the Altar of God were carefully carried out by the Priests and deposed in a clean field since they acknowledged their Bodies to be the Lodging of Christ and Temples of the Holy Ghost they devolved not all upon the sufficiency of Soul-existence and therefore with long Services and full Solemnities concluded their last Exequies wherein to all distinctions the Greek Devotion seems most pathetically ceremonious Christian invention hath chiefly driven at Rites which speak hopes of another life and hints of a Resurrection And if the ancient Gentiles held not the Immortality of their better part and some subsistence after Death in several Rites Customs actions and expressions they contradicted their own Opinions wherein Democritus went high even to the thought of a Resurrection as is scoffingly recorded by Pliny What can be more express then the expression of Phocylides Or who would expect from Lucretius a sentence of Ecclesiastes Before Plato could speak the Soul had wings in Homer which fell not but flew out of the Body into the mansions of the dead he also observed that handsome distinction of Demas and Soma for the Body conjoyned to the Soul and the Body separated from it Lucian spoke much truth in jest when he said that part of Hercules which proceeded from Alcmena perished that from Jupiter remained immortal Thus Socrates was content that his Friends should bury his Body so they would not think they buried Socrates and regarding onely his immortal part was indifferent to be burnt or buried From such considerations Diogenes might contemn Sepulture and being satisfied that the Soul could not perish grow careless of corporal Interrment The Stoicks who thought the Souls of wise men had their habitation about the Moon might make slight account of subterraneous deposition whereas the Pythagoreans and transcorporating Philosophers who were to be often buried held great care of their Interrment And the Platonicks rejected not a due care of the Grave though they put their Ashes to unreasonable expectations in their tedious term of Return and long-set Revolution Men have lost their Reason in nothing so much as their Religion wherein Stones and Clouts make Martyrs and since the Religion of one seems Madness unto another to afford an account or rational of old Rites requires no rigid Reader That they kindled the Pyre aversely or turning their face from it was an handsom Symbole of unwilling Ministration That they washed their Bones with Wine and Milk that the Mother wrapt them in Linen and dried them in her Bosome the first fostering part and place of their Nourishment that they opened their eyes towards Heaven before they kindled the Fire as the place of their hopes or original were no improper Ceremonies Their last Valediction thrice uttered by the Attendants was also very solemn and somewhat answered by Christians who thought it too little if they threw not the earth thrice upon the interred Body That in strewing their Tombs the Romans affected the Rose the Greeks Amaranthus and Myrtle that the Funeral Pyre consisted of sweet fewel Cypress Firre Larix
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 entred 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 Antiquarism 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 Reliques 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 fruitless Continuation and onely arise unto late Posterity as Emblems of mortal Vanities Antidotes against Pride Vain-glory and madding 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 dampt 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 out-lasted 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 Prophecie of Elias and Charles the fifth can never hope to live within two Methuselah's of Hector And therefore restless inquietude for the diuturnity of our Memories unto present considerations seems a Vanity almost out of date and a superannuated piece of Folly We cannot hope to live so long in our names as some have done in their persons one Face of Janus holds no proportion to the other 'T 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 excusably decline the consideration of that Duration which maketh Pyramids Pillars of snow and all that 's past a Moment Circles and Right lines limit and close all Bodies and the mortal right-lined Circle must conclude and shut up all There is no Antidote against the Opium of Time which temporally considereth all things Our Fathers finde their Graves in our short Memories and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our Survivors Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years Generations pass while some Trees stand and old Families last not three Oaks To be read by bare Inscriptions like many in Gruter to hope for Eternity by AEnigmatical Epithets or first letters of our Names to be studied by Antiquaries who we were and have new Names given us like many of the Mummies are cold Consolations unto the Students of Perpetuity even by everlasting Languages To be content that Times to come should onely 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 judgement of himself Who cares to subsist like Hippocrates's Patients or Achilles's Horses in Homer under naked Nominations without Deserts and noble acts which are the balsame of our Memories the Entelechia and Soul of our Subsistences To be nameless in worthy deed exceeds an infamous History The Canaanitish woman lives more happily without a name then Herodias with one And who had not rather have been the good Thief then Pilate But the iniquity of Oblivion blindly scattereth her Poppy and deals with the Memory of men without distinction to merit of Perpetuity Who can but pity the Founder of the Pyramids Herostratus lives that burnt the Temple of Diana he is almost lost that built it Time hath spared the Epitaph of Adrian's Horse confounded that of himself In vain we compute our Felicities by the advantage of our good Names since bad have equal durations and Thersites is like 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 then any that stand remembred in the known account of Time The first man had been as unknown as the last and Methuselah's long life had been his onely Chronicle Oblivion is not to be hired The greater part must be content to be as though they had not been to be found in the Register of God not in the Record of Man Twenty seven names make up the first Story and the recorded names ever since contain not one living Century The number of the dead long exceedeth all that shall live The Night of Time far surpasseth the Day and who knows when was the Aequinox Every hour adds unto that current Arithmetick which scarce stands one moment And since Death must be the Lucina of Life and even Pagans could doubt whether thus to live were to die 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 Memento's and Time that grows old it self 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 stroaks 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 Stupiditie To be ignorant of evils to come and forgetfull of evils past is mercifull 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 then be lost in the uncomfortable night of Nothing were content to recede into the
the tender Flowers and the Flowers themselves lie wrapt about the Seeds in their rudiment and first formations which being advanced the Flowers fall away and are therefore contrived in variety of Figures best satisfying the intention handsomely observable in hooded and gaping Flowers and the Butterfly-blooms of leguminous Plants the lower Leaf closely involving the rudimental Cod and the alary or wingy divisions embracing or hanging over it But Seeds themselves do lie in perpetual Shades either under the Leaf or shut up in Coverings and such as lie barest have their Husks Skins and Pulps about them wherein the Neb and generative particle lieth moist and secured from the injury of Air and Sun Darkness and Light hold interchangeable dominions and alternately rule the Seminal state of things Light unto Pluto is Darkness unto Jupiter Legions of seminal Idea's lie in their second Chaos and Orcus of Hippocrates till putting on the habits of their Forms they shew themselves upon the stage of the world and open dominion of Jove They that held the Stars of Heaven were but Rays and flashing glimpses of the Empyreal Light through holes and perforations of the upper Heaven took off the natural Shadows of Stars while according to better discovery the poor Inhabitants of the Moon have but a Polary life and must pass half their days in the shadow of that Luminary Light that makes things seen makes some things invisible Were it not for Darkness and the Shadow of the Earth the noblest part of the Creation had remained unseen and the Stars in Heaven as invisible as on the fourth day when they were created above the Horizon with the Sun or there was not an Eye to behold them The greatest Mystery of Religion is expressed by Adumbration and in the noblest parts of Jewish Types we finde the Cherubims shadowing the Mercy-seat Life it self is but the Shadow of Death and Souls departed but the Shadows of the living all things fall under this name The Sun it self is but the dark Simulachrum and Light but the Shadow of God Lastly It is no wonder that this Quincunciall Order was first and still affected as gratefull unto the Eye for all things are seen Quincuncially For at the Eye the Pyramidall Rays from the Object receive a Decussation and so strike a second Base upon the Retina or hinder Coat the proper organ of Vision wherein the Pictures from Objects are represented answerable to the Paper or Wall in the dark Chamber after the Decussation of the Rays at the hole of the Horny Coat and their Refraction upon the Crystalline Humour answering the Foramen of the Window and the Convex or Burning-glasses which refract the Rays that enter it And if ancient Anatomy would hold a like disposure there was of the Optick or Visual Nerves in the Brain wherein Antiquity conceived a concurrence by Decussation And this is not onely observable in the Laws of direct Vision but in some part also verified in the reflected Rays of sight For making the Angle of Incidence equal to that of Reflexion the Visual ray returneth Quincuncially and after the form of an V and the line of Reflexion being continued unto the place of Vision there ariseth a Semi-decussation which makes the Object seen in a perpendicular unto it self and as far below the reflectent as it is from it above observable in the Sun and Moon beheld in water And this is also the Law of Reflexion in moved Bodies and Sounds which though not made by Decussation observe the rule of equality between Incidence and Reflexion whereby whispering places are framed by Ellipticall Arches laid side-wise where the voice being delivered at the Focus of one extremity observing an equality unto the Angle of Incidence it will reflect unto the Focus of the other end and so escape the Ears of the standers in the middle A like rule is observed in the Reflexion of the vocal and sonorous line in Echoes which cannot therefore be heard in all stations but happening in Woody plantations by Waters and able to return some words if reach'd by a pleasant and well-dividing voice there may be heard the softest Notes in nature And this is not onely verified in the way of Sense but in animal and intellectual receptions things entring upon the Intellect by a Pyramid from without and thence into the Memory by another from within the common Decussation being in the Understanding as is delivered by Bovillus Whether the intellectual and phantasticall lines be not thus rightly disposed but magnified diminished distorted and ill-placed in the Mathematicks of some Brains whereby they have irregular apprehensions of things perverted Notions Conceptions and incurable Hallucinations were no unpleasant speculation And if Aegyptian Philosophy may obtain the Scale of Influences was thus disposed and the genial Spirits of both Worlds do trace their way in ascending and descending Pyramids mystically apprehended in the Letter X and the open Bill and straddling Legs of a Stork which was imitated by that Character Of this Figure Plato made choice to illustrate the Motion of the Soul both of the World and Man while he delivered that God divided the whole Conjunction length-wise according to the Figure of a Greek x and then turning it about reflected it into a Circle by the Circle implying the uniform Motion of the first Orb and by the Right lines the planetical and various Motions within it And this also with application unto the Soul of man which hath a double aspect one right whereby it beholdeth the Body and Objects without another circular and reciprocal whereby it beholdeth it self The Circle declaring the Motion of the indivisible Soul simple according to the divinity of its nature and returning into it self the Right lines respecting the Motion pertaining unto Sense and Vegetation and the central Decussation the wondrous connexion of the severall Faculties conjointly in one Substance And so he conjoyned the Unity and Duality of the Soul and made out the three Substances so much considered by him that is the indivisible or Divine the divisible or Corporeal and that third was the Systasis or Harmony of those two in the mystical Decussation And if that were clearly made out which Justin Martyr took for granted this Figure hath had the honour to characterize and notifie our Blessed Saviour as he delivereth in that borrowed expression from Plato Decussavit eum in universo the hint whereof he would have Plato derive from the Figure of the Brazen Serpent and to have mistaken the Letter X for T whereas it is not improbable he learned these and other mystical expressions in his learned Observations of Aegypt where he might obviously behold the Mercurial Characters the handed Crosses and other Mysteries not throughly understood in the sacred Letter X which being derivative from the Stork one of the ten sacred Animals might be originally Aegyptian and brought into Greece by Cadmus of that Country CHAP. V. TO inlarge this Centemplation unto