Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a FriendBrowne, Thomas, Sir
Religion
Religio Medici, Hydriotaphia, and the Letter to a Friend
Browne, Thomas, Sir
Christian ethics; Christian life; Essays; Funeral rites and ceremonies; Medical ethics; Medicine -- History; Religion and medicine
unto the body, it is no impossible physiognomy to conjecture at fleshy
appendencies, and after what shape the muscles and carnous parts might
hang in their full consistencies. A full-spread _cariola_ shows a
well-shaped horse behind; handsome formed skulls give some analogy of
fleshy resemblance. A critical view of bones makes a good distinction
of sexes. Even colour is not beyond conjecture, since it is hard to be
deceived in the distinction of the Negroes’ skulls.[107] Dante’s[BH]
characters are to be found in skulls as well as faces. Hercules is not
only known by his foot. Other parts make out their comproportions and
inferences upon whole or parts. And since the dimensions of the head
measure the whole body, and the figure thereof gives conjecture of the
principal faculties: physiognomy outlives ourselves, and ends not in
our graves.
[BG] Who was buried in 1530, and dug up in 1608, and found perfect like
an ordinary corpse newly interred.
[BH] Purgat. xxiii. 31.
Severe contemplators, observing these lasting relicks, may think them
good monuments of persons past, little advantage to future beings;
and, considering that power which subdueth all things unto itself,
that can resume the scattered atoms, or identify out of anything,
conceive it superfluous to expect a resurrection out of relicks: but
the soul subsisting, other matter, clothed with due accidents, may
salve the individuality. Yet the saints, we observe, arose from graves
and monuments about the holy city. Some think the ancient patriarchs
so earnestly desired to lay their bones in Canaan, as hoping to make a
part of that resurrection; and, though thirty miles from Mount Calvary,
at least to lie in that region which should produce the first-fruits
of the dead. And if, according to learned conjecture, the bodies of
men shall rise where their greatest relicks remain, many are not like
to err in the topography of their resurrection, though their bones
or bodies be after translated by angels into the field of Ezekiel’s
vision, or as some will order it, into the valley of judgment, or
Jehosaphat.
CHAPTER IV.
CHRISTIANS have handsomely glossed the deformity of death by
careful consideration of the body, and civil rites which take off
brutal terminations: and though they conceived all reparable by a
resurrection, cast not off all care of interment. And since the ashes
of sacrifices burnt upon the altar of God were carefully carried out
by the priests, and deposed in a clean field; since they acknowledged
their bodies to be the lodging of Christ, and temples of the Holy
Ghost, they devolved not all upon the sufficiency of soul-existence;
and therefore with long services and full solemnities, concluded their
last exequies, wherein to all distinctions the Greek devotion seems
most pathetically ceremonious.
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