But
the contempt of death from corporal animosity, pro-
moteth not our felicity. They may sit in the orchestra,
and noblest seats of heaven, who have held up
shaking hands in the fire, and humanly contended
for glory.
Meanwhile Epicurus lies deep in Dante's hell, where-
in we meet with tombs enclosing souls which denied
their immortalities. But whether the virtuous heathen,
who lived better than he spake, or erring in the prin-
ciples of himself, yet lived above philosophers of more
specious maxims, lie so deep as he is placed, at least so
low as not to rise against Christians, who believing or
knowing that truth, have lastingly denied it in their
practice and conversation--were a query too sad to
insist on.
But all or most apprehensions rested in opinions of
some future being, which, ignorantly or coldly believed,
begat those perverted conceptions, ceremonies, sayings,
which Christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they
which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men
could say little for futurity, but from reason: whereby
the noblest minds fell often upon doubtful deaths, and
melancholy dissolutions.
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