An Eminent Man

SOME ACCOUNT OF AN EMINENT MAN.

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PHILIP

VERHEYEN, Doctor of Physic, in the University of Louvain, and Royal Professor of Anatomy and Surgery, was, towards the end of the last and in the beginning of the present century, one of the most eminent Physicians in Europe. He died at Louvain on the 28th of February, 1710, aged sixty-two. He was a man of eminent piety, wholly detached both from the goods and glory of this world. He gave orders not to bury him in the church, but in the churchyard; all the will which he left being in the following words: —

Philippus Verheyen, Medicinae Doctor et Professor, partem sui materialem hoc in coemeterio condi voluit; ne templum dehonestaret, aut nocivis halitibus inficeret. Requiescat in pace.

That is, — “Philip Verheyen, Doctor and Professor of Physic, ordered his body to be buried in this churchyard, that he might not lessen the honor of the church, or infect it with unwholesome vapors.”

What pity it is, that so few persons, even of sense and piety, feel the force of these considerations! I am so sensible of their weight, that I have likewise left orders to bury my remains, not in the New Chapel, but in the burying-ground adjoining to it.

JOHN WESLEY.

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