account of the ill fcent they might by that time have contracted. The mere laying those corrupted bodies in the grave could be nothing, compared with the carrying them along fo many miles. It might be to honour them; it might be to prevent any attempt of the Philistines to hang them up a fecond time. Answerable to this account of honouring the grave of Abraham, with burning perfumes in or near it, I know a gentleman of great ingenuity and learning, who is difpofed to believe, the odours the women carried to the fepulchre of our Lord' were defigned to perfume that fepulchral cave, which would be doing it honour; but it is to be remembered that the intention of them which the Evangelift gives an account of, was for the anointing him. To which may be added, that St. Luke exprefsly calls the things they prepared fpices and ointments, or fpices made into ointments. But ftill it may be enquired in what fenfe they propofed to anoint him: whether they meant to anoint the whole body; or only a part of it; or merely the linen vestment in which it was wrapped. The first cannot be admitted, as it is not agreeable to the rules of Eaftern decency for women to perform the office of purifying by washing, and confequently of anointing the body of one of the other fex. The Mark. 16. 1. 2 Ch. 23. 56. rules. rules now observed in Perfia, with regard to the doing for the dead, of which Sir John Chardin has given an account at large', demonftrate this. Which is confirmed by the obfervation, that these good women were in no wife concerned in the preparing the body of our Lord for interment; that appears to have been entirely in the hands of Jofeph of Arimathea and Nicodemus, with their attendants. The women were unconcerned. As to the fecond-the anointing a part of the body, the head or the feet, it could be of little or no confequence, when he was wrapped up in fuch a large quantity of spices, or at leaft laid in a bed of them, according to the Jewish mode of burial. The fame may be faid of the anointing the corpfe as it laid wrapped up, in which cafe it would not have been, rigidly fpeaking, the anointing of him, but of his winding-fheet. This however might be admitted, as to the sense of the words, which oftentimes are to be understood with confiderable degrees of latitude. So we find, in fome particular cafes, when none of the fame fex were to be had, a relation of the other fex, if pretty near to the deceased, may be permitted, according to the Perfian rules, to adminifter purification to a corpfe, provided it be clofely covered up, fo as no part of the flesh be touched. In that Tome 2, p. 367. See alfo Dean Addifon's account of the Jews of Barbary, p. 219, 220, who obferve the fame rules of decency. cafe it is the enveloping linen, ftrictly speaking, to which the purifying water is applied, and which is rubbed with the hand, yet still the dead body is confidered as purified'. The anointing then the winding-fheet of our Lord might have been called anointing him; but this, it fhould feem, would have been to very little purpose, when he was buried in fuch at quantity of myrrh and aloes. And if the anointing the linen cloth in which he was wrapped might be called the anointing him, the anointing his fepulchre might, in like manner, be called anointing him, as it was anointing the place in which he laid. And when we confider this was an ancient practice, and particularly performed by the women, in their mourning for the dead from time to time, it may probably be what was meant by St. Mark. It is certain the Greeks of thofe times, with whom the Jews then had confiderable connexions, anointed the grave-ftones of the dead; and it feems thofe that live farther East than Judæa till practife it. The good women of Judæa, the intermediate country, may naturally be fuppofed not to have neglected this teftimony of regard. So Archbishop Potter, in his antiquities of Greece, has shown, by appofite quotations, not only from poets, but hiftorians, that the ancient Greeks were wont to anoint the mo 1 Chardin, in the same page. numents numents of the dead with fragrant oils, or ointments, as well as to lay fweet-fmelling flowers upon them, and though I do not remember to have remarked the continuance of the custom, as to anointing tombs in those countries the Greeks formerly inhabited, yet it feems it is not loft in the East. For Inatulla, an Indian writer, reprefents this custom as exifting in the East still: and though his Tales are of the romantic kind, they appear to be founded on the real tice of thofe places, and the genuine occurrences of human life there. "Immediately "the fainted away, and when she recovered prac her fenfes again, the found herself seated upon a tombstone, 2 "The fad reflexion immediately recurred, "that he had loft her beloved father, fo drowning his lamp with her tears, the fat "in the fhades of horror, conscious that her "undutiful conduct had brought a virtuous 66 parent to an untimely end. "In a fhort time, fhe beheld her mother, "with a weeping train in the robes of mourning, carrying jars of perfumed oil, "and baskets of flowers to ftrew the tomb ; "fo joining their tears in one stream of affliction, the related her tale in the ears of "astonishment, &c.' 1 Tales, vol. 2, p. 101, 102. • The tranflator remarks, in note, that the "Mo "hammedans burn lamps to the dead." As a civil honour paid them, I prefume he means, not idolatrously. Here we see the modern Indian joins perfumed oil with flowers, in his description of the rites of bewailing the dead, as did the ancient Greeks. As to the Greeks, Potter gives us Cowley's tranflation of fome verfes of Anacreon in proof of this point: "Why do we precious ointments show'r, To which he adds from Plutarch, that Alexander arriving at Troy, honoured the memories of the heroes buried there with folemn libations, and that he anointed Achilles's stone'. grave In like manner these female difciples of our Lord might propose to begin those visits to the fepulchre of our Lord, which they defigned to continue from time to time, by anointing the nich in which he laid with fragrant ointments, which they could better apply than flowers, it may be; and which were often mingled with them, when flowers could be, and were, in fact, made ufe of. • Vol. 2, book 4, ch. 8. OBSER |