“Whether the heirs of the kingdom are, at their first admission, instated into a full possession of all their glory, and kept to that stint, I think may be a doubt. For if the faculty be perfected by the object, about which 'tis conversant; then the faculties of those blessed ones being continually employed upon an infinite object, must needs be infinitely perficible, and capable still of being more and more enlarged, and consequently of receiving still new and further additions of glory.
“Not only so, (this is in Heaven:) but even the influence of that example, they leave behind them on earth, drawing still more and more souls after them to God, will also add to those improvements to the end of the world, and bring in a revenue of accessory joys.
“And would it not be unjust in us then to deny them those glorious advantages, which our commemoration and inclination may and ought to give them.”3
ADAM LITTLETON.
3 “Five Sermons formerly printed,” p. 61., at the end of the volume. The one from which the above passage is extracted is that preached at the obsequies of the Right Honorable the Lady Jane Cheyne.
Circles and right lines limit and close all bodies, and the mortal right lined circle, must conclude to shut up all. There is no Antidote against the Opinion of Time, which, temporally considereth all things; Our Fathers find their Graves in our short memories and sadly tell us how we may be buried in our survivors. Grave-stones tell truth scarce forty years: Generations pass while some Trees stand, and old families last not three oaks. To be read by bare Inscriptions like many in Gruter, to hope for Eternity by Ænigmatical Epithetes, or first Letters of our names to be studied by Antiquaries, who we were, and have new names given us like many of the Mummies, are cold consolations unto the students of perpetuity even by everlasting Languages.
SIR T. BROWNE.
CHAPTER CCXXXVI.
CHARITY OF THE DOCTOR IN HIS OPINIONS.—MASON THE POET.—POLITICAL MEDICINE.—SIR WILLIAM TEMPLE.—CERVANTES.—STATE PHYSICIANS.—ADVANTAGE TO BE DERIVED FROM, WHETHER TO KING, CABINET, LORDS OR COMMONS.—EXAMPLES.—PHILOSOPHY OF POPULAR EXPRESSIONS.—COTTON MATHER.—CLAUDE PAJON AND BARNABAS OLEY.—TIMOTHY ROGERS AND MELANCHOLY.