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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? E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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