Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Of the End of This Life, Whether It is Material that It Be Long Delayed. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter 11.—Of the End of This
Life, Whether It is Material that It Be Long Delayed.
But, it is added, many Christians
were slaughtered, and were put to death in a hideous
variety of
cruel ways. Well, if this be hard to bear, it is assuredly the
common lot of all who are born into this life. Of this at least I
am certain, that no one has ever died who was not destined to die
some time. Now the end of life puts the longest life on a par
with the shortest. For of two things which have alike ceased to
be, the one is not better, the other worse—the one greater, the
other less.60
60
Much of a kindred nature might be gathered from
the Stoics. Antoninus says (ii. 14): “Though thou shouldest
be going to live 3000 years, and as many times 10,000 years, still
remember that no man loses any other life than this which he now
lives, nor lives any other than this which he now loses. The
longest and the shortest are thus brought to the
same.” | And of what
consequence is it what kind of death puts an end to life, since he
who has died once is not forced to go through the same ordeal a
second time? And as in the daily casualties of life every man is,
as it were, threatened with numberless deaths, so long as it
remains uncertain which of them is his fate, I would ask whether it
is not better to suffer one and die, than to live in fear of all?
I am not unaware of the poor-spirited fear which prompts us to
choose rather to live long in fear of so many deaths, than to die
once and so escape them all; but the weak and cowardly shrinking of
the flesh is one thing, and the well-considered and reasonable
persuasion of the soul quite another. That death is not to be
judged an evil which is the end of a good life; for death becomes
evil only by the retribution which follows it. They, then, who
are destined to die, need not be careful to inquire what death they
are to die, but into what place death will usher them. And since
Christians are well aware that the death of the godly pauper whose
sores the dogs licked was far better than of the wicked rich man
who lay in purple and fine linen, what harm could these terrific
deaths do to the dead who had lived well?E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|