Observations, censures, and confutations of notorious errours in Mr. Hobbes his Leviathan and other his bookes to which are annexed occasionall anim-adversions on some writings of the Socinians and such hæreticks of the same opinion with him / by William Lucy ...

Sect. 7.

I have (I thank God) seen divers dye without any ap∣prehension of any great paines in them,* 1.1 yea like a sleep, so hath Death seized upon them, so like sleepe, as by the by-standers it could not be discerned from it, and hath made me often think that Death is to a dying man, as sleep to a sleepie, and as much desired; when the body hath been tyred out with long labour it hath so gone to his long rest, which to us who have assurance of the Re∣surrection, is no other; and to this purpose, I remember a Story related by Plutarch, that when Diogenes was to∣wards his death,* 1.2 having taken his Cicuta which was the sleepie medicine that he, and Socrates, and divers others used, his Physician raising him up even as he was about to die, and asking him whether he felt any trouble, Dio∣genes answered, no; for, saith he, the brother ushers in the sister, meaning he was asleep, as men seeme to us many times before their death. And I can second this Story with another, out of mine own family, of a Son of mine who was but two yeares old; and when death laid hands upon him, he still cryed out to goe to sleepe; now he would sleep in this mans arms, then on the Bed; sleepe is often called an Image of Death, but death came to him in the image of sleep; he had been oft acquainted with sleep, had never heard Death abused by those invectives

which sensual men use against it; and when Death came,* 1.3 he took it for sleepe; nay, so like (to many) is that repose of death to that of sleepe, that when they are forced from it by the importunate clamours,* 1.4 or halings and pullings of friends, it is just as a man awaked from sleep, and ma∣ny men have complained of it as of an unjust violence. It is therefore the ugly Sceletons and pictures of death which men see, and the abusive language and Rheto∣rique which hath been used towards it, which makes death so fearfull, as it is, amongst men; and therefore I could tell of some who having heard death in the com∣mon manner calumniated, when upon their death-bed they have been told of its approach, have wondred that that was death which had so little anguish and grief in it; I doe not here say that no men have paine in death, there are three periods of time into which death may be divi∣ded.

Notes

• * 1.1

  Death seiseth upon men like sleep.
• * 1.2

  Diogenes takes them for bro∣ther and Sister▪
• * 1.3

  A young child mistook one for the other.
• * 1.4

  Misrepresenta∣tions make it otherwise ap∣prehended.