burnings near and about them erecting a Pyre. The curious reader will find much original and very interesting matter on Cremation in Sir Thomas Brown's works, under the head of Hydriotaphia.'

Christians, indeed, have given their bodies to be burnt in their lives, but properly submitted to the sentence of God, that they should return again unto dust comformably to the practice of the Patriarchs, the interment of our Saviour, of Peter, Paul, and the ancient martyrs.

All civilized nations have agreed in performing some funeral rites or other; the most ancient manner of burying was in the earth, and some Heathens have by

1 The Author, since this short Exposition went to press, understands, though he has not himself seen the work, that an interesting account of the modes and places of sepulture, among ancient nations, and among the early Christians, together with a Commentary on the Office for the Burial of the Dead, has been very recently published by the Rev. W. Greswell, in 2 vols. 8vo.

the light of nature, called it being hid in our mother's lap. Interment, or inclosing the dead body in the grave, was used anciently by the Egyptians and other nations of the East; so also was embalming, and mummies are frequently found to this day, though some of them have lain three thousand years in their graves. The same practice of burying was used by the Patriarchs, and their successors the Jews. Sepulchres were provided, and funerals performed with an officious piety; the burning of odours and spices about the bodies was sometimes adopted by the latter, and also in after times by the Christian Church.Without enlarging upon the ancient manner of burial in other particulars, it may be here noted, that the body of the deceased Christian was first washed, (Acts ix. 37) and sometimes embalmed, with

great cost and care, and being decently wrapped in fine linen, and dressed for the grave, it was put into a coffin, and brought forth by the friends; and if the person was of great sanctity, it was carried on the shoulders of priests or bishops towards the church, or cemetery, where it was to be laid. The ceremony should always be performed with due solemnity, though expensive pomp is unseemly, yet should we give all the expressions of a decent respect the everlasting commendation of her who spent three hundred pennyworth of spikenard to anoint our blessed Saviour's body to the burial, has ever been thought sufficient ground and encouragement for the careful and decent sepulture of Christians. As our bodies are one day to be awakened from the sleep of death, and the partakers of immortal glory are to be fashioned like to

the glorious body of Christ, and even in the state of death are under the care and protection of a divine providence, they must be worthy our most reverential regard. Distinct and sacred places also have usually been set apart for burial. The Jews, being forbid to touch or come near any dead body, had their sepulchres without the city; and from them it is probable the Greeks and Romans derived the law of burying without the walls. For this reason the Christians, so long as the law was in force throughout the Roman Empire, were obliged, in compliance with it, to bury their dead without the gates of the city, a custom which prevailed here in England till about the middle of the eighth century, when a dispensation was obtained for making church-yards within the walls. After churches were built, no bodies were suf

fered to be buried in them, but contiguous places were appropriated to this use, which, from the metaphor of sleep, by which death in the sacred scriptures is so often described, were called cemeteries, or sleeping-places. The first that we read of as buried anywhere else was Constantine the Great, to whom it was indulged, as a singular honour, to be buried in the church-porch; nor were any of the eastern emperors, for several centuries afterwards, admitted to be buried any nearer to the church; and even in our own church an Archbishop of Canterbury was only buried within the church because the porch was full with six of his predecessors that had been buried there before. In later times, the practice has been allowed to those who can pay for it, and a faculty or licence from the Judge of the ordinary court has,