The particulars of future beings must
needs be dark unto ancient theories, which Christian
philosophy yet determines but in a cloud of opinions.
A dialogue between two infants in the womb concerning
the state of this world, might handsomely illustrate
our ignorance of the next, whereof methinks we
yet discourse in Pluto's den, and are but embryo
philosophers.
Pythagoras escapes in the fabulous hell of Dante,*
among that swarm of philosophers, wherein, whilst we
meet with Plato and Socrates, Cato is to be found in no
lower place than purgatory. Among all the set,
Epicurus is most considerable, whom men make honest
without an Elysium, who contemned life without en-
couragement of immortality, and making nothing after
death, yet made nothing of the king of terrors.
Were the happiness of the next world as closely appre-
hended as the felicities of this, it were a martyrdom to
live; and unto such as consider none hereafter, it must be
more than death to die, which makes us amazed at those
audacities that durst be nothing and return into their
chaos again.
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