Selected quad for the lemma: death_n
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A43222
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Paradoxical assertions and philosophical problems full of delight and recreation for all ladies and youthful fancies by R.H.
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Heath, Robert, fl. 1636-1659.
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1659
(1659)
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Wing H1341; ESTC R20567
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44,671
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122
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to the best of their Heroick Off-spring the golden Hexameter But the truth is Pediculus could never stand well in Latin Verse or hang on those Romans Poets the Dutch and French and some of the Minor Water-Poets onely converse and are acquainted with him For his Gentility then there is no doubt his noble Extraction is already known his Pedegree may be drawn from before Tubal-Cainâ—… time since the universal heat which the Arabians supposed the Creator of all things first inspired him Nor need he reckon Legs for Arms since all the Welch Heralds will confess that the Lowses belongs to the most ancient Coats and the Royal Family of France powders their Coat with nothing else but Fleures de Lis to this day Since then this noble Creature sticks faster to the French Kings Coat then it can to a Peasants thread-bare one and of all the Creatures sticks closest to Man even to the very skin I may safely conclude That next to Man the Louse is the Noblest Creature Paradoxical Assertion 7. Nulla Ars inventa fuit Imprimendi Arte perniciosior That the famous Art of Printing is the worst that ever was invented VVHether the Germans first borrowed this Invention from the Chineses or whether amongst the Germans who undoubtedly lay best claim to it Iohn Gutenberg the Knight of Mentz or Iohn Fust a Moguntine was the first Inventor thereof it matters not this is certain that since the time it was first known experimentally which was Anno Salutis 1466 there has been more dissention in Learning and Religion throughout all Christendom and more Wars the necessary Sequels of those Jars then were known in the Primitive nay for all those fourteen hundred years before The multiplicity of these fire and tow Papers once inflamed have almost consumed the Church And it s scarce still visible were all occasioned either through the frequencies of the Press which speedy device to blazen Rebellion even propagates and adds wings to it or through the grand Mistakes and many Errata's in false Printing that have bred so many Animosities in the Refuting and Trouble in the Correcting 'T is confess'd by this Art alone all the rest are made more familiar and knowledge in some respects is acquired at less expence of time and money because I believe indeed few now a-dayes will give three hundred pounds for three Books of Philolaus as Plato did By these ingenuous means I grant also we are somewhat freed from those gross Errours which crept into the Text through the unskilful hands of either ignorant or negligent Writers But observe now on the other side how by Printing each Volumn begets another and they also swell with so many Errata's that the very Corrector of the Press stand in need sometimes of most Correction Observe how we are now forced to spend more time in cracking the shells in opening the knotty Languages of Latin Greek Hebrew c. to pick that Kernel of Knowledge thence which precious time the Ancients more cautiously spent in the study of things which were written for the most part in their own Mothers Tongue Each man was then a walking Library himself but now we have thousands of Vaticans and hardly a man walking in them they are so stuft with the variety of Books which doth delight indeed but hurts the Ingenie What an Ocean of Ob's and Sol's hath School-Divinity of late produc'd What a Labyrinth of inextricable nay unprofitable Questions full of Cavilling and Metaphysical Terms which if ever understood edifie not onely puzzle Again how many unnatural Controversies and bitter Reparties have filled the Heads and Pens of Modern Writers even to the making a Schism in Christs Church or a Rent at least in his once seamless Coat How have these undutiful sons of the Church as Cham did his Fathers so they laid open their Mothers Nakedness How have these seeds of Pertinacy propagated since the Infancy of Religion to these very times Nay how much bath this Controversal Obstinacy about Niceties and shadowie Ceremonies Cuneum in faâ—…â or Nodum in scirpo quaerendo hindred the progress of Learning and the advance of other more beneficial Sciences Did not the late Coal from the Altar blown up from a Spark to a Firebrand by one indeed set such a fire in the Church that it hath since burnt up almost all her Patrimony and God knowes when it will be quenched perhaps not so long as any Fuel is left This Salt spirit of Contradiction this Acrimonious and Scorbutick Humor rub'd and stir'd up by the Itch of Disputation and that in Print too hath as a Wise man observed bred the Churches Scab And where there is one such Mangie Bell-weather the Flock will all soon prove Scabby and Infected Paradoxical Assertion 8. Incarceratio Libertate potior That Imprisonment is better then Liberty I Have read of a Parisian that in sixty years stirred not out of the Walls of that famous City a Prison large and glorious enough I confess but when the King had confin'd him within that Circuit during Life then and not before the old man most desired to expatiate and thereupon with grief dyed So that it is not the Confinement but the imposed Restraint that makes Imprisonment so irksome The voluntary sequestration of the Anchoret sweetens his Solitude and close Immurement and it may be onely the forced Servitude and Restraint of more Volatile Spirits that makes their lives seem tedious 'T is true Robert Duke of Normandy imprison'd by Henry the First his younger Brother pined away for grief And Francis the French King taken by Charles the Fifth was as Guicciardine reports melancholly even to death and that in an instant And Iugurth that valiant Commander after a few dayes Imprisonment at Rome dyed I grant that to such high flying souls that have liv'd abroad at the height of jovial Exultation and Sensuality to be debarr'd on a sudden of their former career of Pleasures cannot but be irksome at first especially perhaps mortal No doubt but Valerian Bajazet our Edward and Richard the Second felt the smart of such tyrannous Confinements You may sooner tame a Lark or reclaim a Swallow then such high flying Fancies But to a Stoical temper to an austere stay'd and reserv'd person Imprisonment is Liberty Such a man being nunquam minus solus quà m cùm solus and never more at ease then when thus confin'd To a Schollar that can sit and travel all the world over in a Map nothing so pleasant as Retirement his Brains travel in Contemplation though he be fixt in his Cell he can behold the Chorographical and Typographical Delineations of the remotest parts and Cities turn over every stone and build Castles c. and never set foot over his Studies threshold How renowned is King Ptolomy for that learning he acquired whilst imprisoned by his Disease With what delight did our wise King Iames contemplate Bodley's fair Library at Oxford expressing his affection to learning in those Pathetick words
If I were to be a Prisoner said he and might have my wish I would desire no other Prison then that Library and to be Chained together with so many brave Authors and dead Instructours What shall I say of Caesars retirement to Capreae And of the Emperour Charles the fifth his quitting his Imperial Diadem to embrace the peaceable quiet of a Monastick life How are the Kings of China for States-sake Cloistered up that they never come abroad How are the Spanish Turkish Italian Dames lockt up in their Closets by their jealous Husbands and ours scarce suffering themselves to see the Sun onely to preserve their Beauties With what content are they mew'd up in Stoves in Muscovia and in Caves in Green-land and Island half the year together You 'l reply Their confinements are voluntary which sweetens and gilds the Pill of Bondage and Servitude But what unparallel'd Calamities do the Indian and Turky slaves in Mines and Gallies endure condemned perpetually to drudgery Hunger and Blows and chained to their misery â—…an's hope of Delivery All this I say is nothing to a chearful Heart and Patient The Ship the rich Merchant sails in is no less a Prison then the Captives Gally Set aside the Spanish Inquisition which tyrannizes over the Soul as well as over the Body and is therefore more injurious I see not I say that suggested misery in that or any other sort of imprisonment which a wise humble and patient spirit cannot overcome and lessen nay turn it to his advantage and content By Imprisonment how many lewd riotous men are brought home how many Vagrants settled how many dangers and tentations avoided it being the onely means to mortifie and master himself and his greatest enemies the World the Flesh and the Devil Our whole life is but a continued Incarceration Imprisoned we were in the Womb and then in our Mothers Arms and Cradles from thence translated to Schools or Shops under the tyrannous Lashes of severe Masters and Governours thence confin'd to a Colledge or if abroad we live but in an Island or if put forth into the world that is but a larger Prison as it was to Great Alexander Our soul that 's imprisoned in a vile Body of sin and that body as St. Pauls was is often in misery and durance in which Bands he delighted as much as in the Rehersal and writ most of his Epistles Since then this life though but a perpetual slavery and imprisonment is yet sweet to us all and more desirable than death which is our onely liberty and frees us from all the Iron shakels and weighty chains of our Sins I may safely conclude That imprisonment is in many respects to a Christian better then Death or Liberty Paradoxical Assertion 9. Impar Regibus Monumentis inhumari That Kings ought not to have Monuments Marmoreo Licinus Tumulo jacet at Cato parvo Pompeius nullo credimus esse Deos THis was the Poets foolish complaint of old as if Pompey left not a name bigger than Licinus the freed man his Marble Tomb or as if the dust of Kings could be distinguished from a Peasants or were of more worth or more to be regarded Ramises his Obelisks Hadrian his Moles the Aegyptian Pyramids and tall Labyrinths the Roman Mansolea and stupend Monuments of Ninus which was nine Furlongs in Height and ten in Breadth of Porsena of Lais what do they all signifie but the pride and the vain glory of the Builders and the frailty of this world whilst they together with their rotten Carcases are all now hudled but into one confused heap of dust Monumenta fatiscunt Mors etiam saxis nominibúsque venit I finde none erected in Scripture for Patriarch King Prophet or Apostle besides that exemplary one of Lots Wife Iacob I grant was buried in high solemnity and Iosephs Bones after four hundred years preserving were transported into Canaan and I read that devout men carried St. Stephen to Burial but who knows of Moses the Prototype and Leader of the people his Sepulchre to this day whilst he lies Buried obscurely in the Valley lest the Israelites perhaps might have adored his Shrine And Christ himself the King of Kings and Son of God had not Ioseph of Arimathea bought him a Sepulchre and that but a plain one too onely for the miracles sake of his Resurrection doubtless had lien as meanly and as obscurely buried A heathenish superstition prompted some Nations to inter their friends bodies in their own by eating them accounting that humane inhumane Sepulchre the most honourable The Persians besmeared their Corps with wax as the Aegyptians Embalmed them with Gums and Spices the Magi buried none but such as had been torn by Beasts their whole bodies they did condite with Art to couzen the Worms as they thought and laid them up in Charnel Houses to perpetuity But what did Cyrus the Elder He gave express command that no Coffin of Gold or Silver should confine his body but that it should be without pomp laid into the Earth whence it received with all other Creatures both Birth and Nourishment It was the custom I confess to bury their Kings anciently on the tops of Hills and the Roman Princes statues were reverenced like so many Deities Nay Christian Kings have their Coemeteries the Vatican for the Popes the Aescurial for the Kings of Spain St. Dennis for those of France and Westminster for ours of England But Quorsum haec To what purpose is all this waste All this cost and state is needless when it often happens that the want of a Monument or Statue doth best preserve the memory of such as are memoratu dignissimi Id Cinerem Man's credis curare sepultos Iames the fourth King of the Scots by wanting a Tomb gain'd this never dying Epitaph Fama Orbem replet mortem sors occulit at tu Desine mirari quod tegit ossa solum Si mihi dent animo non impar fata Sepulchrum Angusta est tumulo Terra Britanna meo With no less ignoble an Epitaph sleeps that ever renowned Emperour Charles the fifth Carolus Quintus Hic jacet intus Ora pro eo bis aut ter Ave Maria Pater noster And is remembred with no better inscription then this Motto added Plus ultra So Saladine with all his Victories rested in a Grave ordering a Sheet to be advanced on a pike after his Death a Herald proclaiming before it Saladino Syriae Iudaeae Aegypti c. Regi Ex omnibus Victoriis Tropaeis Opibus Thesauris nihil nisi hoc reliquum mansit With what sacred pitty is King Stephen in our Chronicles remembred Whose Bones after four hundred years rest were laid naked by those unhallowed persons that plundred his Leaden Coffin and by them Barbarously thrown into a River Nor can the memory of William the Conquerour dye though his restless Bones also after-four hundred years entombing at Cane in Normandy lost it by the Barbarity of Chastillions Souldiers Thus the Mouse may