Page:The whole familiar colloquies of Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam.djvu/295

 THE FUNERAL. 291 Ma. Because you look so horridly sad, sour, and slovenly in short, you do not look at all like what you are called. Ph. If they that have been a long time in a smith's shop commonly have a dirty face, do you wonder that I that have been so many days with two friends that were sick, dying, and are now dead, should look a little more sad than I used to do, especially when they were both of them my very dear friends 1 Ma. Who are they that you talk of? Ph. I suppose you know George Balearicus, don't you I Ma. I know him by name, and that is all, I never saw his face. Ph. I know the other was wholly a stranger to you; his name was Cornelius Montius. They were both of them my particular friends, and had been so for many years. Ma. It was never my lot to be by where any one was dying. Ph. But it has been mine too often, if I might have had my wish. Ma. Well, but is death so terrible a thing as they make itl Ph. The way to it is worse than the thing itself, so that if a man could free his mind from the terror and apprehension of it, he would take away the worst part of it. And, in short, whatsoever is tormenting either in sickness or in death itself is rendered much more easy by resignation to the will of God ; for as to the sense of death, when the soul is departing from the body, I am of opinion they are either wholly insensible or the faculty is become very dull and stupid, because nature, before it comes to that point, lays asleep and stupefies all the sensible faculties. Ma. We are born without sense of pain as to ourselves. Ph. But we are not born without pain to our mother. Ma. Why might we not die so? why would God make death so full of pain? Ph. He was pleased to make birth painful and dangerous to the mother to make the child the dearer to her, and death formidable to mankind, to deter them from laying violent hands upon, themselves; for when we see so many make away themselves as the case stands, what do you think they would do if death had no terror in it ? As often as a servant or a son is corrected, or a woman is angry at her husband, anything is lost, or anything goes cross, men would presently repair to halters, swords, rivers, precipices, or poisons. Now the bitterness of death makes us put a greater value upon life, especially since the dead are out of the reach of the doctor. Although, as we are not all born alike, so we do not all die alike some die suddenly, others pine away with a languishing illness; those that are seized with a lethargy and such as are stung by an asp are, as it were, cast into a sound sleep, and die without any sense of pain. I have made this observation that there is no death so painful but a man may bear it by resolution. Ma. But which of them bore his death the most like a Christian ? Ph. Why, truly, in my opinion, Geoi'ge died the most like a mail of honour. Ma. Why, then, is there any sense of ambition when a man comes to that point 1 Ph. I never saw two people make such different ends. If you will give me the hearing I will tell you what end each of them made, and you shall judge which of them a Christian would choose to make. Ma. Give you the hearing ! Nay, I desire you will not think much of the trouble, for I have the greatest mind in the world to hear it. Ph. Well, then, you shall first hear how George died. As soon as ever the certain symptoms of death appeared the physicians who had attended upon him during his sickness, saying