I CHAP. I. neral Preparation towards a holy and Ted Death, by way of Confideration. SECT. I. deration of the vanity and shortness of Man's Life. Man is a Bubble (faid the Greek Proverb) Πομφόλυξ which Lucian reprefents with advantages vega and its proper circumftances, to this purpose, G. faying, All the World is a Storm, and Men up in their feveral generations like Bubbles deling à Jove pluvio,from God and the dew of Heafrom a tear and drop of Man, from Nature and vidence: and fome of thefe inftantly fink into the ge of their first parent, and are hidden in a fheet water, having had no other business in the world to be born, that they might be able to die: others at up and down two or three turns, and fuddenly appear and give their place to others: and they at live longeft upon the face of the waters are in rpetual motion, reftlefs and uneafie, and being ushed with a great drop of a cloud, fink into flatnels d a froth; the change not being great, it being hardpoffible it fhould be more a nothing than it was efore. So is every man: he is born in vanity and fin; e comes into the world like Morning Mushromes, Jon thrufting up their heads into the air, and conerfing with their kindred of the fame production, nd as foon they turn into duft and forgetfulness: ome of them without any other intereft in the affairs of the world, but that they made their parents a B little little glad, and very forrowful: others ride longer in the ftorm; it may be until feven years of vanity be expired, and then peradventure the Sun fhines hot upon their heads, and they fall into the fhades below, into the cover of death and darkness of the grave to hide them. But if the Bubble ftands the fhock of a bigger drop and out-lives the chances of a child, of a careless nurse, of drowning in a pail of water, of being over-laid by a fleepy fervant, or fuch little accidents, then the young man dances, like a bubble, empty and gay, and fhines like a dove's neck, or the image of a rainbow, which hath no fubftance, and whofe very imagery and colours are phantaftical; and fo he dances out the gaiety of his youth, and is all the while in a ftorm, and endures, only because he is not knocked on the head by a drop of bigger rain, or crushed by the preffure of a load of indigefted meat, or quenched by the diforder of a an ill-placed humour: and to preferve a man alive in the midst of fo many chances and hoftilities is as great a miracle as to create him; to preferve him from rufhing into nothing, and at firft to draw him up from nothing, were equally the iffues of an Almighty Power. And therefore the wife men of the world have contended who fhall beft fit man's condition with words fignitying his vanity and fhort abode. Homer calls a man a leaf, the fmalleft, the weakeft piece of a fhort-liv'd, unfteady plant. Pindar calls him the dream of a shadow: Another, the dream of the shadow of fmoak. But St. James fpake by a more Jam. 4.14 excellent Spirit, faying, Our life is but a vapour] viz drawn from the earth by a celeftial influence, made of fmoak, or the lighter parts of water, toffed with every wind, moved by the motion of a fuperior body, without vertue in it felf, lifted up on high, or left below according as it pleafes the Sun its Fofter-Father. But it is lighter yet. It is but appea ring; a phantaftick vapour, an apparition, nothing real: it is not fo much as a mift, not the matter of a fhower, nor fubftantial enough to make a cloud; but it is like Caffiopeia's chair, or Pelop's fhoulder, or ατμίς. Φαινομένη. the πρὸς ὀλί Sect. I. the circles of Heaven, awa, for which you cannot have a word that can fignifie a verier nothing. And yet the expreffion is one degree more made diminutive: A vapour, and phantaftical, or a mere appearance, and this but for a little while neither; the very dream, the phantafm difappears in a small time, like the fhadow that departeth, or like a tale that is told, or as a dream when one awaketh. A man is fo vain, fo unfixed, fo perifhing a creature, that he cannot long laft in the fcene of fancy: a man goes off and is forgotten like the dream of a diftracted perfon. The fumm of all is this: That thou art a mar, than whom & μεταβολὴν θα τον πρὸς ὕψος, καὶ πάλιν Τὸ ἢ κεφάλαιον τ λόγων, ἄνθρωπο there is not in the world ταπεινότητα, ζῶον ἐδὲν λαμβάνει. any greater inftance of heights and declenfions, of lights and fhadows, of mifery Nihil fibi quifquam de futuro debet promittere. Id quoque quod tenetur per manus exit, & ipfam quam premimus horam cafus incidit. Volvitur tem pus ratâ quidem lege, fed per obfcurum. Senec Sect. 1. or our Nurfes die, or a wild boar destroy our Vineyards, or our King be fick, we regard it not, but during that ftate, are as difintereft as if our eyes were clofed with the clay that weeps in the bowels of the earth. At the end of feven years, our teeth fall and die before us, representing a formal Prologue to the Tragedy; and ftill every feven years it is odds but we shall finish the last scene: and when Nature, or Chance, or Vice, takes our body in pieces, weakening fome parts and loofing others, we taste the grave and the folemnities of our own Funerals, first, in thofe parts that minister to vice, and next, in them that ferved for Ornament; and in a fhort time even they that ferved for neceffity become useless, and entangled like the wheels of a broken Clock. Bald Ut mortem citiùs venire credas, nefs is but a dreffing to our funerals, the proper ornament of mourning and of a perfon entred very far into the regions and poffeffion of Death: And we have many more of the fame fignification; Gray hairs, rotten teeth, dim eyes, trembling joints, fhort breath, ftiff limbs, wrinkled skin, fhort memory, decayed appetite. Every day's neceffity calls for a reparation of that portion which death fed on all night when we lay in his lap, and flept in his outer chambers. The very fpirits of a man prey upon the daily portion of bread and flesh, and every meal is a rescue from one death, and lays up for another and while we think a thought we die; and the clock strikes, and reckons on our portion of Eternity; we form our words with the breath of our noftrils, we have the lefs to live upon for every word we speak. Thus Nature calls us to meditate of death by thofe things which are the inftruments of acting it: and God by all the variety of his Providence makes us fee death every-where, in all variety of circumstances, and dresfed up for all the fancies, and the expectation of every fingle perfon. Nature hath given us one harveft every year, but death hath two: and the fpring and the Autumn fend throngs of men and women to charnel houfes ; Sect. 1. houfes; and all the Summer long men are recovering from their evils of the Spring, till the Dog-days come, and then the Syrian Star makes the Summer deadly; and the fruits of Autumn are laid up for all the year's provifion, and the man that gathers them eats and furfeits, and dies and needs them not, and himself is laid up for Eternity; and he that escapes till Winter, only flays for another opportunity, which the di Efempers of that quarter minister to him with great variety. Thus death reigns in all the portions of our time. The Autumn with its fruits provides diforders for us, and the Winter's cold turns them into fharp difeafes, and the Spring brings flowers to ftrew our herfe, and the Summer gives green turf and brambles to bind upon our Graves. Calentures and Surfeit, Cold and Agues, are the four quarters of the year, and all minister to Death; and you can go no whither, but you tread upon a dead Man's bones. The wild fellow in Petronius that efcaped upon a broken table from the furies of a fhipwreck, as he was funning himself upon the rocky fhore, efpied a man rolled upon his floating bed of waves, ballafted with fand in the folds of his garment, and carried by his civil enemy the fea towards the fhore to find a grave: and it caft him into fome fad thoughts; That peradventure this man's wife in fome part of the Continent, fafe and warm, looks next month for the good man's return; or it may be his Son knows nothing of the Tempeft; or his Father thinks of that affectionate kifs which still is warm upon the good old man's cheek ever fince he took a kind farewel, and he weeps with joy to think how bleffed he fhall be when his beloved boy returns into the circle of his Father's Arms. Thefe are the thoughts of Mortals, this the end and fum of all their defigns: a dark night and an ill Guide, a boisterous Sea and a broken Cable, an hard rock and a rough wind dafh'd in pieces the fortune Navigationes longas, &, pererratis li toribus alienis, feros in patriam reditus borum tarda manu pretia, procurationes, proponimus, militiam, & caftrenfium laofficiorúmque per officia proceffus, cùm niam nunquam cogitatur nifi aliena, fubinde nobis ingerantur mortalitatis exempla, not diutiùs quàm miramur he. interim ad latus mors eft; quæ quo fura, Seneca |