Death unseasonable.
But others can well bear the death of infants; but when
they have spent some years of childhood or youth, and are entered into arts and
society, when they are hopeful and provided for, when the parents are to reap the
comfort of all their fears and cares, then it breaks the spirit to lose them. This
is true in many; but this is not love to the dead, but to themselves; for they miss
what they had flattered themselves into by hope and opinion; and if it were kindness
to the dead, they may consider, that since we hope he is gone to God and to rest,
it is an ill expression of our love to them that we weep for their good fortune.
For that life is not best which is longest: and when they are descended into the
grave it shall not be inquired how long they have lived, but how well: and yet this
shortening of their days is an evil wholly depending upon opinions.150150Juvenis relinquit vitam, quem Dii diligunt.—Menand.
Clerc. p. 46. For if men did naturally live but twenty
years, then we should be satisfied if they died about sixteen or eighteen; and yet
eighteen years now are as long as eighteen years would be then: and if a man were
but a day’s life, it is well if he lasts till even song, and then says his compline
an hour before the time — and we are pleased, and call not that death immature,
if he lives till seventy; and yet this age is as short of the old periods before
and since the flood, as this youth’s age (for whom you mourn) is of the present
fulness. Suppose, therefore, a decree passed upon this person, (as there have been
many upon all mankind,) and God hath set him a shorter period; and then we may as
well bear the immature death of the young man as the death of the oldest men; for
they also are immature and unseasonable in respect of the old periods of many generations.
And why are we troubled that he had arts and sciences before he died? or are we
troubled that he does not live to make use of them? The first is cause of joy, for
they are excellent in order to certain ends; and the second cannot be cause of sorrow,
because he hath no need to use them, as the case now stands, being provided for
with the provisions of an angel and the manner of eternity. However, the sons and
the parents, friends and relatives, are in the world like hours and minutes to a
day. The hour comes, and must pass; and some stay by minutes, and they also pass,
and shall never return again. But let it be considered, that from the time in which
a man is conceived, from that time forward to eternity he shall never cease to be;
and let him die young or old, still he hath an immortal soul, and hath laid down
his body only for a time, as that which was the instrument of his trouble and sorrows
and the scene of sicknesses and disease. But he is in a more noble manner of being
after death than he can be here; and the child may with more reason be allowed to
cry for leaving his mother’s womb for this world, than a man can for changing this
world for another.
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