To burn the bones of the king of Edom for lime,#
seems no irrational ferity; but to drink of the ashes
of dead relations,$ a passionate prodigality. He that
hath the ashes of his friend, hath an everlasting
treasure; where fire taketh leave, corruption slowly
enters. In bones well burnt, fire makes a wall against
itself; experimented in Copels,<3> and tests of metals,
which consist of such ingredients. What the sun com-
poundeth, fire analyzeth, not transmuteth. That de-
* [Greek omitted]
+ The Brain.
Hippocrates. # Amos ii. 1.
$ As Artemisia of her husband Mausolus.
vouring agent leaves almost always a morsel for the
earth, whereof all things are but a colony; and which,
if time permits, the mother element will have in their
primitive mass again.
He that looks for urns and old sepulchral relicks, must
not seek them in the ruins of temples, where no religion
anciently placed them. These were found in a field,
according to ancient custom, in noble or private burial;
the old practice of the Canaanites, the family of Abra-
ham, and the burying-place of Joshua, in the borders
of his possessions; and also agreeable unto Roman
practice to bury by highways, whereby their monu-
ments were under eye:--memorials of themselves, and
mementoes of mortality unto living passengers; whom
the epitaphs of great ones were fain to beg to stay and
look upon them,--a language though sometimes used,
not so proper in church inscriptions.
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