CHAP. I. in India, which expose their bodies unto vultures, and endure not so much as feretra or biers of wood, the proper fuel of fire, are led on with such niceties. But whether the ancient Germans, who burned their dead, held any such fear to pollute their deity of Herthus, or the 8 Earth, we have no authentic conjecture. [11] Egyptian tombs and mummies. [12] Savage cus toms of the Scythians. The Egyptians were afraid of fire, not as a deity, but a devouring element, mercilessly consuming their bodies, and leaving too little of them; and therefore by precious embalmments, depositure in dry earths, or handsome inclosure in glasses, contrived the notablest ways of integral conservation. And from such Egyptian scruples, imbibed by Pythagoras, it may be conjectured that Numa and the Pythagorical sect first waved the fiery solution. The Scythians, who swore by wind and sword, that is, by life and death, were so far from burning their bodies, that they declined all interment, and made their graves in the air: and the Ichthyophagi, or fish-eating nations about Egypt, 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 than water or drowning; probably upon the old opinion of the fiery substance of the soul, only extinguishable by that element; and therefore the poet 9 emphatically implieth the total destruction in this kind of death, which happened to Ajax Oileus 1. 1 Which Magius reads ἐξαπόλωλε. The old Balearians1 had a peculiar mode, for CHAP. I. they used great urns and much wood, but no [13] 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 Chinese 2 without cremation or urnal interment 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 effigy, which barbarous nations exact unto reality. Christians abhorred this way of obsequies, [14] and though they sticked not to give their bodies Practice of the early to be burned in their lives, detested that mode Christians. after death; affecting rather a depositure than absumption, and properly submitting unto the sentence of God, to return not unto ashes but unto dust again, conformable unto the practice 10 of the patriarchs, the interment of our Saviour, of Peter, Paul, and the ancient martyrs. And so far at last declining promiscuous interment with Pagans, that some have suffered ecclesiastical censures 3, for making no scruple thereof. The Musselman believers will never admit [15] 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 [16] the old way of inhumation, yet sometimes ad- But even in times of subjection and hottest 1 Amos vi. 10. 2 Sueton. Vita Jul. Cæs. [c. 841, 3 As that magnificent sepulchral monument erected by Simon, 1 Macc. xiii. [27, &c.]. 4 Κατασκεύασμα θαυμασίως πεποιημένοι, whereof a Jewish priest had always the custody, unto Josephus his days.-Jos. Antiq. lib. x. [c. 11. § 7]. not corrupt on the cross, according to the laws CHAP. I. Nor in their long cohabitation with Egyptians, [18] 713 But though they embraced not this practice [19] Civilians make sepulture but of the law of [20] nations, others do naturally found it and dis- Sepulture of 1 "O Absalom, Absalom, Absalom!"—2 Sam. xviii. 33. C animals. CHAP. I. cover it also in animals. They that are so thickskinned as still to credit the story of the Phonix, may say something for animal burning. More serious conjectures find some examples of sepulture in elephants, cranes, the sepulchral cells of pismires, and practice of bees, which civil society carrieth out their dead, and hath exequies, if not interments. I |