The Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Divided into three parts, dialogue wiseThe Christian disputations, by Master Peter Viret. Deuided into three partes, dialogue wise

De hath also provided in the funerals ¹of the dead, to that end that men do not celebrate sumptuous obsequies & burials, & that men do not bestow great & costly buildings of sepulchres, but hath commanded, ye the household servants of him which should be dead, should administer the necessary things, for to carry the dead to the grave. He hath also ordained, as a lawful thing that all those ye be a live should assemble themselves together, when ye any person should be dead, & should mourn & lament over him. He hath also commanded, ye the domesticall & those of his house should be purified after yt burying. Although that we read not all these words of Joseph, so expressed & placed in the books of Moses, yet nevertheless Joseph, which was himself a Jew, & a man of great knowledge. & well seen in the customs & Judaical things, was not ignorant of the manner of their burials & funerals, & the causes wherefore they did all those things. He maketh ²no mention, no more then Moses, ye one should not make sacrifice nor offering for the health and salvation of the dead, nor that one should sprinkle it with holy water, and with the consecrated water that they did heap mingled with the ashes of a young Heifer, for the purification of yt living, not of the dead, but witnesseth only, that the domestical or those of yt house which were assisting & helping at yt funerals & burials, or touched the body sh••ld be purified, by the ceremonies ordained of God, principally by yt consecrated water, with yt ashes of an Heifer the ⟨image 127⟩³which was a figure as witnesseth the Apostle, of the blood of Jesus Christ, by which we are purified: who hath done that which the water and the ashes of the Heifer, could not do. Wherefore we have no more need of such ceremonies, sith that they are accomplished and fulfilled by Jesus Christ: And yet much less of other new, invented by mans presumption. That then which the Israelites used certain ceremonies and mournings about the dead, had two respects. The first was, to the end that the people of God should not be like unto the barbarous and heathen people, as those of whom we have already spoken off, which did make less account of the bodies of yt dead men, yea of their own parents and friends, then of the carcasses of brute beasts.