Page:Three Books of Occult Philosophy (De Occulta Philosophia) (1651).djvu/497

 and power, as Sampson, David and Daniel over the Lions, Elisha over the Bear, Paul over the Viper; and many Anchorites lived in the deserts, in Caves and Dens of wild beasts, not fearing, nor receiving any hurt; for as by sin that divine Character is obscured, so sin being purged and expiated, it again more and more shineth forth.

Chapter xli. What concerning man after death, diverse Opinions.

In generall it is appointed for all men once to dye; death is fatall to all; but one is naturall, another violent, another voluntarily received, another inflicted by humane lawes for offences, or by God for sin, that they seem not to have rendred a due to nature, but a punishment for sins; which (as the Hebrew Masters saith) God remitteth to none; Whence the Assembly delivered to Ezechiah, that after the house of the Sanctuary was pulled down, although there remained not any order of judiciary execution, yet there should be a four-fold kind of punishment by the which they might he condemned, that no man guilty of death should escape without retaliation; for he which had deserved to he stoned to death, was, God dispensing, either cast down headlong from the house, or trodden in peeces by wild beasts, or overwhelmed by ruine or fall; but he which had deserved to be burned, was either consumed by burnings, or finished he life either by venemous bitings, or stings of a serpent, or by poyson; but he which should dye by the sword, was killed either by the violence of the jurisdiction, or by the tumult of the people or faction, or by the treachery of thieves; he that ought to be hanged, was suffocated either in the waters, or extinguished by some other strangling punishment; and by the ground of this doctrine, that great Origen supposed the Gospel of Christ to be declared, He who useth the sword shall perrish by sword. Moreover the Ethnick Philosophers pronounced that retaliation