4. “But” (say I) “in
such a slaughter-heap of dead bodies, could they not even be
buried? not this, either, doth pious faith too greatly dread,
holding that which is foretold that not even consuming beasts will
be an hindrance to the rising again of bodies of which not a hair
of the head shall perish.2716
Nor in any
wise would
Truth say,
“
Fear not them which
kill the body, but cannot
kill the
soul;”
if it could at all
hinder the
life to come whatever
enemies might
choose to do with the bodies of the slain. Unless haply any is so
absurd as to
contend that they ought not to be
feared before
death,
lest they
kill the body, but ought to be
feared after
death, lest,
having
killed the body, they
suffer it not to be buried. Is that
then false which
Christ says, “Who
kill the body, and afterwards
have no more that they can do,” if they have so great things that
they can do on dead bodies?
Far be the thought, that that should be
false which
Truth hath said. For the thing said is, that they do
somewhat when they
kill, because in the body there is feeling while
it is in killing, but afterward they have nothing more that they
can do because there is no feeling in the body when
killed. Many
bodies, then, of
Christians the
earth hath not covered: but none of
them hath any separated from
heaven and
earth, the whole of which
He filleth with presence of Himself, Who knoweth whence to
resuscitate that which He
created. It is said indeed in the Psalm,
“The dead bodies of thy
servants have they given for
meat unto
the
fowls of the
heaven, the
flesh of thy
saints unto the
beasts of
the
earth: they have shed their
blood like
water round about
Jerusalem, and there was no man to bury them:”
2717
but more to heighten the
cruelty
of them who did these things, not to the
infelicity of them who
suffered them. For, however, in sight of men these things may seem
hard and dire, yet “precious in the sight of the
Lord is the
death of His
saints.”
2718
So, then, all these things, care
of funeral, bestowal in sepulture,
pomp of obsequies, are more for
comfort of the living, than for help to the dead. If it at all
profit the
ungodly to have costly sepulture, it shall harm the
godly to have
vile sepulture or none. Right handsome obsequies in
sight of men did that
rich man who was clad in
purple receive of
the
crowd of his housefolk; but
far more handsome did that
poor man
who was full of sores obtain of the ministry of
Angels; who bore
him not out into a
marble tomb, but into
Abraham’s
bosom bore him
on high.
2719
All this
they
laugh at, against whom we have undertaken to
defend the City
of
God: but for all that their own
philosophers, even, held care of
sepulture in contempt; and often whole
armies, while dying for
their earthly
country, cared not where they should after
lie, or to
what
beasts they should become
meat; and the
poets had leave to say
of this matter with applause
“though all unurn’d he
lie,
His cov’ring is the overarching
sky.”2720
| 2720 Lucan vii. 819, speaking of the
slain in the battle of Pharsalia, whose bodies Caesar forbad to
burn or inter. |
How much less ought they to make a vaunting
about unburied bodies of Christians, to whom the flesh itself with
all its members, re-fashioned, not only from the earth, but even
from the other elements, yea, from their most secret windings,
whereinto these evanished corpses have retired, is assured to be in
an instant of time rendered back and made entire as at the first,
according to His promise?
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