Selected quad for the lemma: death_n

Word A	Word B	Word C	Word D	Occurrence	Frequency Band	MI	MI Band	Prominent
death_n	day_n	die_v	end_n	4,289	5	5.3574	4	false

Text snippets containing the quad

ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A29860	Hydriotaphia, urn-burial, or, A discours of the sepulchral urns lately found in Norfolk together with the Garden of Cyrus, or, The quincuncial lozenge, or network of plantations of the ancients, artificially, naturally, mystically considered : with sundry observations / by Thomas Browne.	Browne, Thomas, Sir, 1605-1682.	1669 (1669)	Wing B5155; ESTC R35415	73,609	80

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

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

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 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