8. We read in the
Ecclesiastical History which Eusebius wrote in Greek, and Ruffinus
turned into the Latin tongue, of Martyr’s bodies in Gaul exposed
to dogs, and how the leavings of those dogs and bones of the dead
were, even to uttermost consumption, by fire burned up; and the
ashes of the same scattered on the river Rhone, lest any thing
should be left for any sort whatever of memorial.2729
| 2729 Eusebius, H. E. book v. chap. i.
relates, that the bodies of these martyrs of Lyons lay exposed in
the open air for six days successively, and were then burned and
cast into the Rhone.—Ben. ed. |
Which
thing must be believed to have been to no other end divinely
permitted, but that
Christians should
learn in confessing
Christ,
while they
despise this
life, much more to
despise sepulture. For
this thing, which with savage
rage was done to the bodies of
Martyrs, if it could any whit hurt them, to impair the
blessed
resting of their most victorious spirits, would assuredly not have
been
suffered to be done. In very
deed therefore it was declared,
that the
Lord in saying, “
Fear not them which kill the body, and
afterward have no more that they can do,”
2730
did not mean that He would not
permit them to do any thing to the bodies of His followers when
dead; but that whatever they might be permitted to do, nothing
should be done that could lessen the Christian felicity of the
departed, nothing thereof reach to their consciousness while yet
living after death; nothing avail to the detriment, no, not even of
the bodies themselves, to diminish aught of their integrity when
they should rise again.
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