Such a portion of time will afford a large prospect backward, and authentick reflections how far he hath performed the great intention of his being, in the honour of his Maker; whether he hath made good the principles of his nature, and what he was made to be; what characteristick and special mark he hath left, to be observable in his generation; whether he hath lived to purpose or in vain, and what he hath added, acted, or performed, that might considerably speak him a man.

In such an age delights will be undelightful and pleasures grow stale unto him; antiquated theorems will revive, and Solomon's maxims be demonstrations unto him; hopes or presumptions be over, and despair grow up of any satisfaction below. And having been long tossed in the ocean of this world, he will by that time feel the in-draught of another, unto which this seems but preparatory, and without it of no high value. He will experimentally find the emptiness of all things, and the nothing of what is past; and wisely grounding upon true Christian expectations, finding so much past, will wholly fix upon what is to come. He will long for perpetuity, and live as though he made haste to be happy. The last may prove the prime part of his

life, and those his best days which he lived nearest heaven.

XXIII. Live happy in the Elysium of a virtuously composed mind, and let intellectual contents exceed the delights wherein mere pleasurists place their paradise. Bear not too slack reins upon pleasure, nor let complexion or contagion betray thee unto the exorbitancy of delight. Make pleasure thy recreation or intermissive relaxation, not thy Diana, life and profession. Voluptuousness is as insatiable as covetousness. Tranquillity is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent pleasure. Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going out of it, our sicknessess, disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do clamorously tell us we come not into the world to run a race of delight, but to perform the sober acts and serious purposes of man; which to omit were foully to miscarry in the advantage of humanity, to play away an uniterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the capital end, and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Dream not of any kind of metempsuchosis or transanimation, but into thine own body, and that after a long time, and then also unto wail or bliss, according to thy first

H H

and fundamental life. Upon a curricle in this world depends a long course of the next, and upon a narrow scene here an endless expansion hereafter. In vain some think to have an end of their beings with their lives. Things cannot get out of their natures, or be or not be in despight of their constitutions. Rational existences in heaven perish not at all, and but partially on earth; that which is thus once will in some way be always; the first living human soul is still alive, and all Adam hath found no period.

XXIV. Since the stars of heaven do differ in glory; since it hath pleased the Almighty hand to honour the north pole with lights above the south; since there are some stars so bright that they can hardly be looked on, some so dim that they can scarce be seen, and vast numbers not to be seen at all, even by artificial eyes; read thou the earth in heaven, and things below from above. Look contentedly upon the scattered difference of things, and expect not equality, in lustre, dignity, or perfection, in regions or persons below; where numerous numbers must be content to stand like lacteous or nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim in their generations. All which may be con

tentedly allowable in the affairs and ends of this world, and in suspension unto what will be in the order of things hereafter, and the new system of mankind which will be in the world to come; when the last may be the first and the first the last; when Lazarus may sit above Cæsar, and the just obscure on earth shall shine like the sun in heaven; when personations shall cease, and histrionism of happiness be over; when reality shall rule, and all shall be as they shall be for ever.

XXV. When the stoick said that life would not be accepted, if it were offered unto such as

*

knew it, he spoke too meanly of that state of being which placeth us in the form of men. It more depreciates the value of this life, that men would not live it over again; for although they would still live on, yet few or none can endure to think of being twice the same men upon earth, and some had rather never have lived than to tread over their days once more. Cicero in a prosperous state had not the patience to think of beginning in a cradle again. Job would not only curse the day of his nativity, but also of his renascency, if he were to act over his disasters, and the miseries of

* Vitam nemo acciperet, si daretur scientibus.-Seneca.

the dunghill. But the greatest underweening of this life is to undervalue that, unto which this is but exordial or a passage leading unto it. The great advantage of this mean life is thereby to stand in a capacity of a better; for the colonies of heaven must be drawn from earth, and the sons of the first Adam are only heirs unto the second. Thus Adam came into this world with the power also of another nor only to replenish the earth, but the everlasting mansions of heaven. Where we were when the foundations of the earth were laid, when the morning stars sang together and all the sons of God shouted for joy,* he must answer who asked it; who understands entities of preordination, and beings yet unbeing; who hath in his intellect the ideal existences of things, and entities before their extances. Though it looks but like an imaginary kind of existency to be before we are, yet since we are under the decree or prescience of a sure and omnipotent Power, it may be somewhat more than a non-entity to be in that mind unto which all things are present.

XXVI. If the end of the world shall have the same foregoing signs, as the period of empires,

*Job xxxviii, 17.