It was a melancholy notion of the Stoics that the condition of the Soul, and even its individual immortality, might be affected by the circumstances of death: for example, that if any person were killed by a great mass of earth falling upon him, or the ruins of a building, the Soul as well as the body would be crushed, and not being able to extricate itself would be extinguished there: existimant animam hominis magno pondere extriti permeare non posse, et statim spargi, quia non fuerit illi exitus liber.
Upon this belief, the satirical epitaph on Sir John Vanbrugh would convey what might indeed be called a heavy curse.
Some of the Greenlanders, for even in Greenland there are sects, suppose the soul to be so corporeal that it can increase or decrease, is divisible, may lose part of its substance, and have it restored again. On its way to Heaven which is five days dreadful journey, all the way down a rugged rock, which is so steep that they must slide down it, and so rough that their way is tracked with blood, they are liable to be destroyed, and this destruction, which they call the second death, is final, and therefore justly deemed of all things the most terrible. It is beyond the power of their Angekoks to remedy this evil; but these impostors pretend to the art of repairing a maimed soul, bringing home a strayed or runaway one, and of changing away one that is sickly, for the sound and sprightly one of a hare, a rein deer, a bird, or an infant.
“This is the peevishness of our humane wisdom, yea, rather of our humane folly, to earn for tidings from the dead, as if a spirit departed could declare anything more evidently than the book of God, which is the sure oracle of life? This was Saul's practise,—neglect Samuel when he was alive, and seek after him when he was dead. What says the Prophet, Should not a people seek unto their God? Should the living repair to the dead? (Isai. viij. 19.) Among the works of Athanasius I find (though he be not the author of the questions to Antiochus,) a discourse full of reason, why God would not permit the soul of any of those that departed from hence to return back unto us again, and to declare the state of things in hell unto us. For what pestilent errors would arise from thence to seduce us? Devils would transform themselves into the shapes of men that were deceased, pretend that they were risen from the dead (for what will not the Father of lies feign?) and so spread in any false doctrines, or incite us to many barbarous actions, to our endless error and destruction. And admit they be not Phantasms, and delusions, but the very men, yet all men are liars, but God is truth. I told you what a Necromancer Saul was in the Old Testament, he would believe nothing unless a prophet rose from the grave to teach him. There is another as good as himself in the New Testament, and not another pattern in all the Scripture to my remembrance, Luke xvi. 27. The rich man in hell urged Abraham to send Lazarus to admonish his brethren of their wicked life; Abraham refers to Moses and the Prophets. He that could not teach himself when he was alive, would teach Abraham himself being in hell, Nay, Father Abraham, but if one went unto them from the dead, they will repent.
“The mind is composed with quietness to hear the living; the apparitions of dead men, beside the suspicion of delusion, would fill us with gastly horror, and it were impossible we should be fit scholars to learn if such strong perturbation of fear should be upon us. How much better hath God ordained for our security, and tranquillity, that the priest's lips should preserve knowledge? I know, if God shall see it fit to have us disciplined by such means, he can stir up the spirits of the faithful departed to come among us: So, after Christ's resurrection many dead bodies of the Saints which slept arose, and came out of their graves, and went into the Holy City, and appeared unto many. This was not upon a small matter, but upon a brave and renowned occasion: But for the Spirits of damnation, that are tied in chains of darkness, there is no repassage for them, and it makes more to strengthen our belief that never any did return from hell to tell us their woeful tale, than if any should return. It is among the severe penalties of damnation that there is no indulgence for the smallest respite to come out of it. The heathen put that truth into this fable. The Lion asked the Fox, why he never came to visit him when he was sick: Says the Fox, because I can trace many beasts by the print of their foot that have gone toward your den, Sir Lion, but I cannot see the print of one foot that ever came back:
Quia me vestigia terrent
Omnia te advorsum spectantia, nulla retrorsum.
So there is a beaten, and a broad road that leads the reprobate to hell, but you do not find the print of one hoof that ever came back. When I have given you my judgment about apparitions of the dead in their descending from Heaven, or ascending from hell, I must tell you in the third place, I have met with a thousand stories in Pontifician writings concerning some that have had repassage from Purgatory to their familiars upon earth. Notwithstanding the reverence I bear to Gregory the Great, I cannot refrain to say; He was much to blame to begin such fictions upon his credulity; others have been more to blame that have invented such Legends; and they are most to be derided that believe them. O miserable Theology! if, thy tenets must be confirmed by sick men's dreams, and dead men's phantastical apparitions!”
BP. HACKETT.
“It is a morose humour in some, even ministers, that they will not give a due commendation to the deceased: whereby they not only offer a seeming unkindness to the dead, but do a real injury to the living, by discouraging virtue, and depriving us of the great instruments of piety, good examples: which usually are far more effective methods of instruction, than any precepts: These commonly urging only the necessity of those duties, while the other shew the possibility and manner of performing.
“But then, 'tis a most unchristian and uncharitable mistake in those, that think it unlawful to commemorate the dead, and to celebrate their memories: whereas there is no one thing does so much uphold and keep up the honour and interest of religion amongst the multitude, as the due observance of those Anniversaries which the Church has, upon this account, scattered throughout the whole course of the year, would do: and indeed to our neglect of this in a great part the present decay of religion may rationally be imputed.