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. 8.

There is that tract of time when first a sicknesse gets such a head as it is deadly;* 1.1 there is secondly that interim in which man grows insensible; and there is, thirdly, that instant in which the soule of man is separated from the body: in regard of which last it was truly spoke of Seneca, when he said, Death should not be fearfull, which, when it comes, is not discerned; for Death taken in this last acceptation cannot be perceived, no not in the se∣cond, but taking Death in the first way, it is many times more, many times lesse painfull, of which I would dilate Physically, but avoyd tediousness; It is a thing as appa∣rent, as almost death its self, that sometimes in that tract of time there may be paine, and most oft is; but there are greater paines, I beleeve, to many people that out∣live their sicknesses, then those when diseases grow

deadly; and I am perswaded that the same disease, un∣less by wounds (and many times in them too) I say the same disease is most oft more painful when it is curable before it be deadly,* 1.2 then afterwards, because the spirits are quicker, & the man more sensible; & therefore I con∣clude, that it is not true, that there is a necessity of nature which maketh men in generall avoid death in generall, as the thing by which he must needs expect the greatest paine; for it often happens that there is little paine; and people that have dyed with a sense of deaths ugli∣ness, and so, with some impatience, I have found com∣plaining of common accidents, and such which had no participation of death in them, and no cooperation to the dissolution of soule and body by death, as Aches in par∣ticular parts, sometimes they were galled, and that troubled them; sometimes that there were clods or hardness in the Bed, &c. All which shewed that these paines, not those of Death, were more sensible then even death its selfe.

Notes

• * 1.1

  The three pe∣riods of death.
• * 1.2

  In which of them, and when other∣wise pain most affects the sick.