The custom evidently implies an opinion that though soul and body were disunited by death, they kept close company together till after the burial; otherwise a passport which the Soul was to present at Heaven's gate, would not have been placed in the hands of the corpse. In the superstitions of the Romish church a re-union is frequently supposed, but that there is an immediate separation upon death is an article of faith, and it is represented by Sir Thomas More as one of the punishments for a sinful soul to be brought from Purgatory and made to attend, an unseen spectator, at the funeral of its own body, and feel the mockery of all the pomps and vanities used upon that occasion. The passage is in his Supplycacyon of Soulys. One of the Supplicants from Purgatory speaks: “Some hath there of us, while we were in health, not so much studied how we might die penitent, and in good christian plight, as how we might solemnly be borne out to burying, have gay and goodly funerals, with heralds at our herses, and offering up our helmets, setting up our scutcheons and coat-armours on the wall, though there never came harness on our backs, nor never ancestor of ours ever bare arms before. Then devised we some Doctor to make a sermon at our mass in our month's mind, and then preach to our praise with some fond fantasy devised of our name; and after mass, much feasting, riotous and costly; and finally, like madmen, made men merry at our death, and take our burying for a brideale. For special punishment whereof, some of us have been by our Evil Angels brought forth full heavily, in full great despight to behold our own burying, and so, stand in great pain, invisible among the press, and made to look on our carrion corpse, carried out with great pomp, whereof our Lord knoweth we have taken heavy pleasure!” In opposition to this there is a Rabbinical story which shows that though the Jews did not attribute so much importance to the rights of sepulture as the ancient Greeks, they nevertheless thought that a parsimonious interment occasioned some uncomfortable consequences to the dead.