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| All Kinds of Death a Violence to Nature, Arising from Sin.--Sin an Intrusion Upon Nature as God Created It.
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Chapter LII.—All Kinds of Death a Violence to Nature,
Arising from Sin.—Sin an Intrusion Upon Nature as God Created
It.
Such, then, is the work of death—the
separation of the soul from the body. Putting out of the question
fates and fortuitous circumstances, it has been, according to
men’s views, distinguished in a twofold form—the ordinary
and the extraordinary. The ordinary they ascribe to nature, exercising
its quiet influence in the case of each individual decease; the
extraordinary is said to be contrary to nature, happening in every
violent death. As for our own views, indeed, we know what was
man’s origin, and we boldly assert and persistently maintain that
death happens not by way of natural consequence to man, but owing to a
fault and defect which is not itself natural; although it is easy
enough, no doubt, to apply the term natural to faults and
circumstances which seem to have been (though from the emergence of an
external cause1792
) inseparable to us
from our very birth. If man had been directly appointed to die as
the condition of his creation,1793
| 1793 In mortem directo
institutus est. [See p. 227, supra.] | then of course
death must be imputed to nature. Now, that he was not thus
appointed to die, is proved by the very law which made his condition
depend on a warning, and death result from man’s arbitrary
choice. Indeed, if he had not sinned, he certainly would not have
died. That cannot be nature which happens by the exercise of
volition after an alternative has been proposed to it, and not by
necessity—the result of an inflexible and unalterable
condition. Consequently, although death has various issues,
inasmuch as its causes are manifold, we cannot say that the easiest
death is so gentle as not to happen by violence (to our nature). The
very law which produces death, simple though it be, is yet violence.
How can it be otherwise, when so close a companionship of soul and
body, so inseparable a growth together from their very conception of
two sister substances, is sundered and divided? For although a man may
breathe his last for joy, like the Spartan Chilon, while embracing his
son who had just conquered in the Olympic games; or for glory, like the
Athenian Clidemus, while receiving a crown of gold for the excellence
of his historical writings; or in a dream, like Plato; or in a fit of
laughter, like Publius Crassus,—yet death is much too violent,
coming as it does upon us by strange and alien means, expelling the
soul by a method all its own, calling on us to die at a moment when one
might live a jocund life in joy and honour, in peace and pleasure. That
is still a violence to ships: although far away from the Capharean
rocks, assailed by no storms, without a billow to shatter them, with
favouring gale, in gliding course, with merry crews, they founder
amidst entire security, suddenly, owing to some internal shock.
Not dissimilar are the shipwrecks of life,—the issues of even a
tranquil death. It matters not whether the vessel of the human body
goes with unbroken timbers or shattered with storms, if the navigation
of the soul be overthrown.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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