Some of our most eminent Divines have made use of this
Platonick
Notion, so far as it regards the Subsistence of our Passions after Death, with great Beauty and Strength of Reason.
Plato
indeed carries the Thought very far, when he grafts upon it his Opinion of Ghosts appearing in Places of Burial. Though, I must confess, if one did believe that the departed Souls of Men and Women wandered up and down these lower Regions, and entertained themselves with the Sight of their Species, one could not devise a more Proper Hell for an impure Spirit than that which
Plato
has touched upon.
The Ancients seem to have drawn such a State of Torments in the Description of
Tantalus
, who was punished with the Rage of an eternal Thirst, and set up to the Chin in Water that fled from his Lips whenever he attempted to drink it.