OF FOREST-TREES. 



341 



from the enemy, as trophies ; as appears in the yet remaining stump of BOOK IV. 



f Marius at Rome, and the reverses of several medals. Famous for this ""-"'V'*^ 

 was the pregnant Oleaster which grew in the forum of Megara, on which 

 the heroes of old left their shields and bucklers, and other warlike har- 

 ness, till in process of time it had covered them with successive coats 

 of bark and timber, as it was afterwards found when Pericles sacked the 

 city, which the oracle predicted should be impregnable, till a tree should 

 bring forth armour *. We have already mentioned Rebekah, and read • Diod. sic. 

 of kings themselves that honoured such places with their sepulchres : ''''' 

 what else should be the meaning of 1 Chron. x. 12, when the valiant 

 men of Jabesh interred the bones of Saul and Jonathan under the Oak ? 

 famous was the Hyrnethian Coemetry where Diaphon lay. Ariadne's 

 tomb was in the Amathusian grove in Crete, now Candy ; for they 

 believed that the spirits and ghosts of men delighted to expatiate 

 and appear in such solemn places, as the learned Grotius notes from 

 Theophylact, speaking of the deemons, upon Matth. xvii. 18 ; for which 

 cause Plato gave permission, that trees should be planted over graves, 

 to obumbrate and refresh them. The most ancient cond'ttoria and 

 burying-places were in such nemorous solitudes. The hypogeum, in 

 Machpelah, purchased by the patriarch Abraham of the sons of Heth. 

 Gen. xxiii. for Sarah, his own dormitory, and family sepulchre, was 

 conveyed to him with particular mention of all the trees and groves 

 about it ; and this is the very first precedent I ever read of conveying 

 a purchase by a formal deed. 



Our blessed Saviour, as we shall shew, chose the garden sometimes for 

 his oratory — and dying, for the place of his sepulchre ; and we do 

 avouch, for many weighty causes, that there are no places more fit to bury 

 our dead in than our gardens and groves, or airy fields, sub dio, where our 

 beds may be decked and carpeted with verdant and fragrant flowers, 

 trees, and perennial plants, the most natural and instructive hieroglyphics 

 of our expected resurrection and immortality ; besides what they might 

 conduce to the meditation of the living, and the taking off our cogitations 

 from dwelling too intently upon more vain and sensual objects ; that 

 custom of burying in churches, and near about them, (especially in great 

 and populous cities,) being a novel presumption, indecent, sordid, and 

 very prejudicial to health ; for which I am sorry it is become so custom- 

 ary. Graves and sepulchres were, of old, made and erected by the 

 sides of the most frequented highways, which being many of them mag- 

 Volume II. X X 



