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    that which produces and nourished every thing excellent and beneficial to mankind ? ° There certainly , koweveri occurs verjr ancient mention ( indeed the passage itself rather insinuates it indirectly ) of sepulchral chests , or what

    we call coffins , In which the bodies ; being enclosed ^ were deposited so u& not to come into immediate contact with the earth . It is recorded specially of the patriarch Joseph , that , when dead , he was put into a coffin and embalmed ; both of them , perhaps ,

    marks of distinction to a person who had acquired other great and inerfled honours in that country . It is thought to be strongly intimated by several passages in the Sacred History , both Old and New , that the use of coffins , in our sense of that word , was made by the Jews . It is an opinion that in of

    they were ^ ot use two polished nations of antiquity . It is some proof that they were not , that there is perhaps hardly , in either of them , a word exactly synonymous to the word coffin ; the words in the Grecian language usually adduced , referring to the feretrum or bier on wh ^ h the body was conveyed , rather than to a chest in which it was

    enclosed and deposited ; and the Roman terms are either of the like signification , or are mere general words , chests or repositories for any purposes , { area and coeulus , &c ., ) without any funeral meaning , and without any final destfrnations of their deposition in the earth .

    The practice of the sepulture ha £ also varied Vvith respect to the places where performed . In ancient times , cave& were in high request ; mere private gardens or other demesnes of the

    families ; enclosed spaces out of the walte ^ f towns , or by the sides of roads ; and , finally , in Christian countries , churches and clrareh-yards , where the deceased cotild receive the pious wish of the faithful who resorted thither in

    the various calls of public worship . In our own country , the practice of burying in churches is said to be anterior to that of * bwrykig in what are now called church-yards , but was refc&nred for persons of pre-eminent sanctity of Ufe : men of less memorable merit were buried in enclosed places' »© t connected wfola the sacred edifices themselves . But a connexion , imported from Reft ** m ? 50 , by an Archbishop

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    Outhbert , took place at that time , ami churches were surrounded by churchyards , appropriated entirely td the burial of those who had in their lives

    continued to attend divine service id those churches , and who bow became entitled by law to render back into those places their remains into the earth , the common mother of mankind , without payment for the ground which they were to occupy , or for the pious offices which solemnized the acts

    of interment-In what way the mortal remains are to be conveyed to their last abode , and there deposited , I do ^ iot find any positive rule of law or of religion that prescribes . The authority under which they exist is to be found in our manners rather than in our laws ; they havfc

    their origin in sentiments and suggestions of public decency and private respect \ they are ratified by common usage and consent ; and , being attached to subjects of the gravest and most impressive kind , remain unaffected by

    private caprice and fancy , amidst all the giddy revolutions that are perpetually varying the modes and fashions that belong to lighter circumstances in human life . That a body should be carried in a state of naked exposure ,

    would be a real offence to the living , a& well as an apparent mdignity to the dead . Some coverings have been deemed necessary in all civilized and Christian countries ; b ** t chests containing the bodies , arid descending into the grave along with them , and tliere remaining in decay , don't plead the

    same degree of necessity , nor the same universal use . In the western part of Europe , the use of sepulchral chests has been pretty general . An attempt was made in our own time , by an European sovereign , to abolish their use in his Italian dominions ; much

    commended by some philosophers , on the physical ground that the dissolution of bodies would be accelerated , and the virulence of the fermentation disarmed by the speedy absorption of all

    noxious particles into the surrounding soil . Whatever might be the truth © J the theory , tlie me&Bure was enforced by regulations prescribing that bodies * , of etfery age attddf todth sexes , of all ranks and conditions , and of all Bpfecies of mortal disease , and every ftfnri of death , however hideous aim loathsome , should bfc i nightly tran--

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    Sir' W + S <^ tt s Judgment an Me Patent Ctiffi&JCaM . 69 f

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    VOL . XV . 4 X VOL . XV . 4 X

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), Dec. 2, 1820, page 697, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2495/page/9/