r living
bodies to thine own Spirit, and made us temples of the Holy Ghost, dost
also require a respect to be given to these temples, even when the
priest is gone out of them, to these bodies when the soul is departed
from them, I bless and glorify thy name, that as thou takest care in our
life of every hair of our head, so dost thou also of every grain of
ashes after our death. Neither dost thou only do good to us all in life
and death, but also wouldst have us do good to one another, as in a holy
life, so in those things which accompany our death. In that
contemplation I make account that I hear this dead brother of ours, who
is now carried out to his burial, to speak to me, and to preach my
funeral sermon in the voice of these bells. In him, O God, thou hast
accomplished to me even the request of Dives to Abraham; thou hast sent
one from the dead to speak unto me. He speaks to me aloud from that
steeple; he whispers to me at these curtains, and he speaks thy words:
_Blessed are the dead which die in the Lord from henceforth_.[240] Let
this prayer therefore, O my God, be as my last gasp, my expiring, my
dying in thee; that if this be the hour of my transmigration, I may die
the death of a sinner, drowned in my sins, in the blood of thy Son; and
if I live longer, yet I may now die the death of the righteous, die to
sin; which death is a resurrection to a new life. _Thou killest and thou
givest life_: whichsoever comes, it comes from thee; which way soever it
comes, let me come to thee.

FOOTNOTES:

[234] Magius.

[235] Antwerp.

[236] Roan.

[237] Roccha.

[238] Numb. x. 2.

[239] Exod. xviii. 33-4.

XVII. NUNC LENTO SONITU DICUNT, MORIERIS.

_Now, this bell tolling softly for another, says to me: Thou must die._

XVII. MEDITATION.

Perchance he for whom this bell tolls may be so ill, as that he knows
not it tolls for him; and perchance I may think myself so much better
than I am, as that they who are about me, and see my state, may have
caused it to toll for me, and I know not that. The church is Catholic,
universal, so are all her actions; all that she does belongs to all.
When she baptizes a child, that action concerns me; for that child is
thereby connected to that body which is my head too, and ingrafted into
that body whereof I am a member. And when she buries a man, that action
concerns me: all mankind is of one author, and is one volume; when one
man dies, one chapter is not torn out of