In vain do individuals hope for immortality, or any patent from
oblivion, in preservations below the moon; men have been deceived even
in their flatteries, above the sun, and studied conceits to perpetuate
their names in heaven. The various cosmography of that part hath
already varied the names contrived constellations; Nimrod is lost in
Orion, and Osiris in the Dog-star. While we look for incorruption in
the heavens, we find they are like the earth--durable in their main
bodies, alterable in their parts; whereof, beside comets and new
stars, perspective begin to tell tales, and the spots that wander
about the sun, with Phaeton's favor, would make clear conviction.

There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality. Whatever hath no
beginning, may be confident of no end--which is the peculiar of that
necessary essence that can not destroy itself--and the highest strain
of omnipotency, to be so powerfully constituted as not to suffer even
from power of itself; all others have a dependent being and within the
reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality
frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either states after
death, makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who can only destroy
our souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or
names, hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of
chance, that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration;
and to hold long subsistences, seems but a scape in oblivion. But man
is a noble animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave,
solemnizing nativities and deaths with equal luster, nor omitting
ceremonies of bravery in the infamy of nature.

Life is a pure flame, and we live by an invisible sum within us. A
small fire sufficeth for life, great flames seemed too little after
death, while men vainly affected precious pyres, and to burn like
Sardanapalus; but wisdom of funeral laws found the folly of prodigal
blazes, and reduced undoing fires unto the rule of sober obsequies,
wherein few could be so mean as not to provide wood, pitch, a mourner,
and an urn.

Five languages secured not the epitaph of Gordianus.[73] The man of
God lives longer without a tomb than any by one, invisibly interred by
angels, and adjudged to obscurity, tho not without some marks
directing human discovery. Enoch and Elias, without either tomb or
burial, in an anomalous state of being, are the great examples of
perpetuity, in