Henry Craik, ed. English Prose. 1916.
Vol. I. Fourteenth to Sixteenth Century
Sir George Mackenzie (16361691)
T
Albeit the glass of my years hath not yet turned five and twenty, yet the curiosity I have to know the different limbos of departed souls, and to view the card of the region of death, would give me abundance of courage to encounter this king of terrors, though I were a pagan; but when I consider what joys are prepared for them who fear the Almighty; and what craziness attends such as sleep in Methusalem’s cradle, I pity them who make long life one of the oftest repeated petitions of their Paternoster; and yet those sure are the more advanced in folly, who desire to have their names enshrined, after death, in the airy monument of fame: whereas it is one of the promises made to the elect, that they shall rest from their labours, and their works shall follow them. Most men’s mouths are so foul, that it is a punishment to be much in them: for my own part, I desire the same good offices from my good name that I do from my clothes; which is to screen me from the violence of exterior accidents.
As those criminals might be judged distracted, who, being condemned to die, would spend their short reprival in disputing about the situation and fabric of their gibbets: so may I justly think those literati mad, who spend the short time allotted them for repentance, in debating about the seat of hell, and the torments of tortured spirits. To satisfy my curiosity, I was once resolved, with the Platonic, to take the promise of some dying friend, that he should return and satisfy me in all my private doubts, concerning hell and heaven; yet I was justly afraid that he might have returned me the same answer which Abraham returned to Dives, Have they not Moses and the Prophets? If they hear not them; wherefore will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead?