Of Ghostes and Spirites, Walking by Night: And of Straunge Noyses, Crackes, and Sundrie Forewarnings, Which Commonly Happen Before the Death of Men: Great Slaughters, and Alterations of KingdomsLavater, Ludwig
Religion
Of Ghostes and Spirites, Walking by Night: And of Straunge Noyses, Crackes, and Sundrie Forewarnings, Which Commonly Happen Before the Death of Men: Great Slaughters, and Alterations of Kingdoms
Lavater, Ludwig
Apparitions -- Early works to 1800
Also other heathen and prophane writers say, they are heereby mooued
to thinke that the soules of men doo liue after death, for that it
is most cleare and euident, that many spirits wander and raunge
hither and thither, and are oft times heard and séene, and founde to
talke with men: for they suppose that most of these are mens soules.
=Tertullian= a very auncient writer, in his booke _De anima_, saith,
that the wise Heathens, which did define the soule to be immortall,
(for some of them, as namely the Epicures, thought that the soules
died with their bodies) thought that the soules of the wise, if they
departed from their bodies, hadde their abiding on high: but the rest
were throwne downe into Hell.
[Sidenote: Homer.]
[Sidenote: Virgil.]
Furthermore, the Heathen thought the Soules should stray continually
abroade before they founde rest, vnlesse the bodies from which they
were seuered, were rightly buried in the earth. Wherefore (as we may
reade in Poets) it was a gréeuous crime to caste foorth any bodie
vnburied. =Hector= in =Homere=, besought =Achilles= that he woulde
not cast foorth his carcasse to be deuoured of Dogs and birds, but
that he would deliuer the same to be enterred by olde =Priamus= his
father, and =Hecuba= his mother. =Patroclus= appeared in a vision
by night after his deathe vnto =Achilles=, and requested him to
bestowe vppon him all funeral solemnities. For otherwise he saide
the soules of those that were buried, woulde thrust him backe, that
he should not be able once to enter in at Hell gates. Which example
=Tertullian= aledgeth, and therwithal cōfuteth this vaine opinion
of the heathen. =Palinurus= in =Virgill=, besought =Æneas=, that he
woulde cast earth on him, when he was dead, and erect vnto him an
hearse, for so did they call those Monuments of the deade, in whiche
albeit no man was layde, yet were they vsed in the honour of the
deceassed. =Virgill= writeth, that =Deiphobus= his Ghost wandred
abroade, vnto the whiche =Æneas= erected an Horse.
[Sidenote: Plato.]
For the Gentiles were of suche an opinion in those dayes, that they
thought an emptie and counterfeyted buriall profitted very much.
Moreouer the heathen were perswaded that the soules which dyed before
their naturall time (especially of those whiche perished by violent
death, whom they call βιοθανάτους, as by hanging, drowning,
or beheading, &c.) did straie abroade so long time as they should
haue liued, if they had not bin slain by violent death. Which opinion
=Tertullian= also confuteth. =Plato= in his ninth booke _De legibus_,
writeth, that the soules of those which are slain, do pursue their
murtherers so farre, that they do hurt them: the which, except it be
vnderstood by way of a Metaphor, is likewise to be reiected.
[Sidenote: The Iewes opinion.]
[Sidenote: _Iob_.7.]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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