And therefore it is very plain that with the belief
of immortality they take away the sweetest and greatest
hopes the vulgar sort have. And what shall we then
think they take away from the good and those that have
led pious and just lives, who expect no ill after death, but
on the contrary most glorious and divine things For,
in the first place, champions are not used to receive the
garland before they have performed their exercises, but
after they have contested and proved victorious; in like
manner is it with those that are persuaded that good men
have the prize of their conquests after this life is ended;
it is marvellous to think to what a pitch of grandeur their
virtue raises their spirits upon the contemplation of those
hopes, among the which this is one, that they shall one
day see those men that are now insolent by reason of their
wealth and power, and that foolishly flout at their betters,
undergo just punishment. In the next place, none of the
lovers of truth and the contemplation of being have here
their fill of them; they having but a watery and puddled
reason to speculate with, as it were, through the fog and
mist of the body; and yet they still look upwards like
birds, as ready to take their flight to the spacious and
bright region, and endeavor to make their souls expedite
and light from things mortal, using philosophy as a study
and preparation for death. Thus I account death a truly
great and accomplished good thing; the soul being to live
there a real life, which here lives not a waking life, but
suffers things most resembling dreams. If then (as Epicurus saith) the remembrance of a dead friend be a thing
every way complacent; we may easily from thence imagine how great a joy they deprive themselves of who
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think they do but embrace and pursue the phantoms and
shades of their deceased familiars, that have in them
neither knowledge nor sense, but who never expect to be
with them again, or to see their dear father and dear
mother and sweet wife, nor have any hopes of that familiarity and dear converse they have that think of the soul
with Pythagoras, Plato, and Homer. Now what their
sort of passion is like to was hinted at by Homer,
when he threw into the midst of the soldiers, as they
were engaged, the shade of Aeneas, as if he had been
dead, and afterwards again presented his friends with him
himself,
Coming alive and well, as brisk as ever;
at which, he saith,
They all were overjoyed.1
And should not we then,—when reason shows us that a
real converse with persons departed this life may be had,
and that he that loves may both feel and be with the
party that affects and loves him,—relinquish these men
that cannot so much as cast off all those airy shades and
outside barks for which they are all their time in lamentation and fresh afflictions?
