He that lay in a golden urn eminently above the earth,
was not like to find the quiet of his bones. Many of
these urns were broke by a vulgar discoverer in hope of
enclosed treasure. The ashes of Marcellus were lost
above ground, upon the like account. Where profit
hath prompted, no age hath wanted such miners. For
which the most barbarous expilators found the most
civil rhetorick. Gold once out of the earth is no more
due unto it; what was unreasonably committed to the
ground, is reasonably resumed from it; let monuments
and rich fabricks, not riches, adorn men's ashes. The
commerce of the living is not to be transferred unto the
dead; it is not injustice to take that which none com-
plains to lose, and no man is wronged where no man is
possessor.
What virtue yet sleeps in this
terra damnata and aged
cinders, were petty magic to experiment. These crumb-
ling relicks and long fired particles superannuate such
expectations; bones, hairs, nails, and teeth of the dead,
were the treasures of old sorcerers.
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