← Back to the beginning of V.75. Of the rites of Burial.

For the comfort15 of them whose minds are through natural affection pensive in such cases no man can justly mislike the custom which the Jews had to end their burials with funeral banquets16, in reference whereunto the prophet Jeremy spake concerning the people whom God had appointed unto a grievous manner of destruction, saying17 that men should not “give them the cup of consolation to drink for their father or for their mother,” because it should not be now with them as in peaceable times with others, who bringing their ancestors unto the grave with weeping eyes have notwithstanding means wherewith to be recomforted. “Give wine,” said Salomon, “unto them that have grief of heart18.” Surely he that ministereth unto them comfortable speech19 doth much more than give them wine.

But the greatest thing of all other about this duty of Christian burial is an outward testification of the hope which we have touching the resurrection of the dead. For which purpose let any man of reasonable judgment examine, whether it be more convenient for a company of men as it were in a dumb show20 to bring a corse to the place of burial, there to leave it covered with earth, and so end, or else to have the exequies devoutly performed with solemn recital of such lectures, psalms and prayers, as are purposely framed for the stirring up of men’s minds unto a careful consideration of their estate both here and hereafter.

Whereas therefore it is objected that neither the people of God under the Law, nor the Church in the Apostles’ times did use any form of service in burial of their dead, and therefore that this order is taken up without any good example or precedent followed therein21: first while the world doth stand they shall never be able to prove that all things which either the one or the other did use at burial are set down in holy Scripture, which doth not any where of purpose deliver the whole manner and form thereof, but toucheth only sometime one thing and sometime another which was in use, as special occasions require any of them to be either mentioned or insinuated. Again if it might be proved that no such thing was usual amongst them, hath Christ so deprived his Church of judgment that what rites and orders soever the later ages thereof have devised the same must needs be inconvenient?

Furthermore, that the Jews before our Saviour’s coming had any such form of service although in scripture it be not affirmed, yet neither is it there denied; (for the forbidding of priests to be present at burials22 letteth not but that others might discharge that duty, seeing all were not priests which had rooms of public function in their synagogues;) and if any man be of opinion that they had no such form of service, thus much there is to make the contrary more probable. The Jews at this day have, as appeareth in their form of funeral prayers23 and in certain of their funeral sermons published24, neither are they so affected towards Christians, as to borrow that order from us, besides that the form thereof is such as hath in it sundry things which the very words of the Scripture itself do seem to allude unto, as namely after departure from the sepulchre unto the house whence the dead was brought it sheweth the manner of their burial feast25, and a consolatory form of prayers appointed for the master of the synagogue thereat to utter26, albeit I may not deny but it hath also some things which are not perhaps so ancient as the Law and the Prophets.

But whatsoever the Jews’ custom was before the days of our Saviour Christ, hath it once at any time been heard of that either church or Christian man of sound belief did ever judge this a thing unmeet, undecent, unfit for Christianity, till these miserable days, wherein under the colour of removing superstitious abuses the most effectual means both to testify and to strengthen true religion are plucked at, and in some places even pulled up by the very roots? Take away this which was ordained to show at burials the peculiar hope of the Church of God concerning the dead, and in the manner of those dumb funerals what one thing is there whereby the world may perceive we are Christian men?

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Footnotes

  1. T. C. lib. iii. p. 236. [In the table of contents this head is thus referred to: “Of the inconvenience, not of the unlawfulness, of the ceremonies in burial.”] ↩

  2. [Adm. ap. Whitg. Def. 727. “They appoint a prescript kind of service to bury the dead: and that which is the duty of every Christian they tie alone to the minister, whereby prayer for the dead is maintained, and partly gathered out of some of the prayers, where we pray that we with this our brother, and all other departed in the true faith of thy holy name, may have our perfect consummation and bliss, both in body and soul. We say nothing of the threefold peal, because that it is rather licenced by injunction,” (see Injunctions, 1564; in Sparrow’s Collection, 125.) “than commanded in the book, nor of their strange mourning by changing their garments, which if it be not hypocritical, yet it is superstitious and heathenish, because it is used only of custom; nor of burial sermons, which are put in the place of trentals, whereout spring many abuses, and therefore in the best reformed churches are removed.”] ↩

  3. John xi. 35, 36. ↩

  4. 2 Sam. xv. 30. ↩

  5. Eccles. ix. 8. ↩

  6. [T. C. i. 201. al. 161. “For the mourning apparel, the Admonition saith not simply it is evil, because it is done of custom, but proveth that it is hypocritical oftentimes, for that it proceedeth not from any sadness of mind, which it doth pretend, but worn only of custom, there being under a mourning gown oftentimes a merry heart. And considering that where there is sorrow indeed for the dead, there it is very hard for a man to keep a measure, that he do not lament too much; we ought not to use these means whereby we might be further provoked to sorrow, and so a great way beyond the measure which the Apostle appointeth in mourning: (1 Thess. iv.) any more than it was lawful for the Jews in the Gospel (S. Matt. ix. 23, 24.) to provoke weeping and sorrow for their dead by some doleful noise, or sound of instrument, or than it was lawful for Mary Lazarus’ sister to go to her brother’s grave, thereby to set the print of her sorrow deeper in her mind. Seeing therefore if there be no sorrow it is hypocritical to pretend it, and if there be, it is very dangerous to provoke it, or to carry the notes of remembrance of it, it appeareth that this use of mourning apparel were much better laid away than kept.” See Whitg. Def. 731. T. C. iii. 238.] ↩

  7. [T. C. quotes S. Cyprian de Mortal. c. xiv (= 20.) for the contrary sentiment. “Nobis quoque ipsis minimis et extremis quoties revelatum est, quam frequenter atque manifeste de Dei dignatione præceptum est, ut contestarer assidue et publice prædicarem fratres nostros non esse lugendos accersitione Dominica de sæculo liberatos… . nec accipiendas esse hic atras vestes, quando illi ibi indumenta alba jam sumpserint: occasionem dandam non esse gentilibus ut nos merito ac jure reprehendant, quod quos vivere apud Deum dicimus, ut extinctos et perditos lugeamus.” Would it not seem that he speaks rather with an eye to that trying time in particular, than as censuring universally the custom of wearing mourning? But see Bingham, Antiq. xxiii. 3. 21.] ↩

  8. Luke vii. 12. ↩

  9. Psalm lxxix. 3. ↩

  10. John xix. 40. ↩

  11. Matt. xxiii. 27. ↩

  12. 2 Sam. i. 19. ↩

  13. [Funeral orations, at least for illustrious persons, were usual in the fourth century, and so were set forms of funeral psalmody and prayer. Bingham (xxiii. 3. 8, 11-13.) gives instances from the Apostolical Constitutions, vi. 30; and from Dionysius de Eccles. Hierarch. c. vii.] ↩

  14. [Namely, first, that the funeral sermon “nourisheth an opinion that the dead are the better for it, which doth appear in that there are none more desirous of funeral sermons than the papists.” Secondly, “forasmuch as the minister is driven oftentimes by this means to preach upon a sudden, the word of God thereby is negligently handled.” Thirdly, “considering that these funeral sermons are at the request of rich men, and those which are in authority, and are very seldom at the burial of the poor, there is brought into the church contrary to the word of God, an acceptation of persons, which ought not to be.”] ↩

  15. [This seems to refer to a complaint of T. C. (i. 162) that “this device of man’s brain … driveth quite away a necessary duty of the minister, which is to comfort with the word of God the parties which be grieved at the death of their friends.” See Def. 735; T. C. iii. 240.] ↩

  16. [See Buxtorf, Synag. Judaic. c. 35. p. 504; from which it appears that the materials of the funeral banquet must all be presents from friends: it being unlawful during so many days for the mourner to taste any thing of his own.] ↩

  17. Jer. xvi. 7. ↩

  18. Prov. xxxi. 6. ↩

  19. 1 Chron. xix. 2; Job ii. 11. ↩

  20. [Form of Common Prayer used by the English at Geneva (in Phœnix i. 257). “The corpse is reverently brought to the grave, accompanied by the congregation, without any further ceremonies; which being buried, the minister, if he be present and required, goeth to the church, if it be not far off, and maketh some comfortable exhortation to the people touching death and resurrection.”] ↩

  21. [T. C. i. 200. al. 161. “Another general fault, that these ceremonies are taken up without any example either of the churches under the Law, or of the purest churches under the Gospel … For when the Scripture describeth the ceremonies or rites of burial amongst the people of God so diligently, that it maketh mention of the smallest things, there is no doubt but the Holy Ghost doth thereby shew us a pattern, whereby we should also frame our burials. And therefore for so much as neither the Church under the Law nor under the Gospel, when it was in the greatest purity, did ever use any prescript form of service in the burial of their dead, it could not be but dangerous to take up any such custom; and in the time of the law it was not only not used but utterly forbidden; for when the law did forbid that the priest should not be at the burial, which ought to say or conceive the prayers there, it is clear that the Jews might not have any such prescript form.”] ↩

  22. [Lev. xxi. 1. “Speak unto the priests the sons of Aaron, and say unto them, There shall none be defiled for the dead among his people.” ap. T. C. i. 161.] ↩

  23. [Of which a specimen was translated into Latin by Genebrard, from the Machazor or Prayer Book of the Roman Jews, and published 1575. It may be found among the Opuscula at the end of his Chronographia, Paris, 1600, p. 77-81.] ↩

  24. [Leo of Modena, (al. R. Jehuda Arje,) published in 1598, at Venice, several funeral orations and some elegies and epitaphs, under the title of “the Desert of Judah.” The same writer in 1637 published in Italian a History of the Customs of the Jews of his time, from the translation of which, Lond. 1650, c. ix. p. 242, the following is taken: “At the month’s or year’s end, if he were a rabbin that is dead, or a person of quality, they then have sermons or funeral orations, which they call הֶסְםֶד made for him.” Cf. Wolf. Bibl. Hebr. i. 414, 15, and iv. 1170.] ↩

  25. [Buxtorf. Synag. Jud. 504.] ↩

  26. [“Hascaba, (a שָׁכַב jacuit, dormiit,) i. e. Oratio pro defunctis, quam Hazan sive Minister Synagogæ recitat ad sepulcrum, itemque in synagogis … Hanc sæpiuscule minister repetit prout rogatur a diversis flagitantibus sibi dari Hascaba pro anima N. Sic enim loquuntur. Unde posset juxta ecclesiasticam loquendi formulam appellari ‘Requiem’ vel ‘Libera’ Hebræorum.“ ‘Melius est ire in domum luctus, quam in domum convivii; in qua est finis omnium hominum. Quod vivens in cor inducat suum. Finem verbi omnes audiamus; Deum time et mandata ejus serva. Nam istud est omnis hominis.“ ‘Requies firma in superna habitatione sub alis Numinis, in gradu sanctorum et purorum, tanquam splendor firmamenti, collucentium fulgentiumque; permutatio ossium, propitiatio delictorum, remotio prævaricationis, accessio salutis, indulgentia et miseratio a conspectu inhabitantis cæleste domicilium, pars denique bona in vita venturi sæculi ibi sit portio, tectumque ac habitatio celebris animæ sapientis hujus, intelligentia præditi, gloriæ magistri, vel domini.“ ‘Spiritus Domini quiescere faciat eum in horto Eden, et societur ei pax, quemadmodum scribitur in Esaia: veniat pax, quiescat in cubilibus suis ambulans ante ipsam, ipse acomnes defuncti Israelis ipsius misericordia et propitiatione. Amen.’ ” Genebrard, p. 80. See Bp. Taylor, Pref. to Rule of Holy Dying.] ↩

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