OR THE BURNING OF THE DEAD. 95 



Sylla, contrary to the custom which had hitherto been religi- 

 ously observed in the Cornelian family, ordered his body to be 

 committed to the flames, lest the dishonour done by him to 

 Marius might be retaliated. For a similar reason, undoubted- 

 ly, the valiant inhabitants of Jabesh-gilead " arose, and went 

 " all night, and took the body of Saul, and the bodies of his 

 M sons, from the wall of Beth-shan, and came to Jabesh and 

 " burnt them there *." They deeply felt the dishonour that 

 had been already done to their deceased sovereign and his gal- 

 lant sons, whose bodies had been " fastened to the wall of 

 " Beth-shan," one of the cities of the Philistines, that they 

 might be exposed to every species of outrage from their re- 

 morseless adversaries. They, therefore, carried them off and 

 burned them % not with the intention of giving them the fune- 

 ral honours of cremation, but merely to prevent the possibility 

 of their being hung up as before. This, they had every reason 

 to suspect, would have been the case, had they interred them 

 in the usual way, because the land of Palestine was at this time 

 completely under the power of their enemies, and circumstan- 

 ces did not permit them to carry the bodies across Jordan. 

 They gave them, as far as possible, the common rites of se- 

 pulture, by interring their remains ; but not till they had done 

 what seemed previously necessary for guarding against a repe- 

 tition of similar indignities. 



5. Some of the ancients preferred this mode, because, accord- 

 ing to their ideas (whether well or ill founded, it is not our bu- 

 siness here to inquire), it most speedily reduced the body to its 

 first principles. Thales, and his followers, viewed water as 

 the origin of all things ; and therefore reckoned it most fit that 

 the body should, by putrefaction, be reduced to its original ele- 

 ment. Hippon, as we learn from Tertullian, taught the same 



doctrine. 



* 1 Sam. xxxi. 10,-13. 



