aeum and subterranean cell at Rome was little
observable beside the variety of lamps and frequent draughts of the holy
candlestick. In authentic draughts of Antony and Jerome, we meet with
thigh bones and death's-heads; but the cemeterial cells of ancient
Christians and martyrs were filled with draughts of Scripture stories;
not declining the flourishes of cypress, palms, and olive, and the
mystical figures of peacocks, doves, and cocks; but literately affecting
the portraits of Enoch, Lazarus, Jonas, and the vision of Ezekiel, as
hopeful draughts and hinting imagery of the resurrection--which is the
life of the grave and sweetens our habitations in the land of moles
and pismires.

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 Plato's den, and are but
embryon 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 encouragement of immortality, and making
nothing after death, yet made nothing of the king of terrors.

Were the happiness of the next world as closely apprehended 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. Certainly, such spirits as could contemn death, when
they expected no better being after, would have scorned to live had they
known any. And therefore we applaud not the judgments of Machiavel that
Christianity makes men cowards, or that with the confidence of but half
dying, the despised virtues of patience and humility have abased the
spirits of men, which pagan principles exalted; but rather regulated the
wildness of audacities, in the attempts, grounds, and eternal sequels of
death, wherein men of the boldest spirits are often prodigiously
temerarious. Nor can we extenuate the valor of ancient martyrs, who
contemned death in the uncomfortable scene of their lives, and in their
decrepit mart