take our waters as out of a torrent and fudden fhower, which will quickly cease dropping from above, and quickly ceafe running in our channels here below: This inftant will never return again, and yet it may be this inftant will declare or fecure the fortune of a whole eternity. The old Greeks and Romans taught us the prudence of this rule : but Christianity teaches us the Religion of it. They fo feized upon the Ætate fruere, mobili present, that they would lose nocurfu fugit. Seneca. thing of the day's pleasure. Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we shall die, that was their Philofophy; and at their folemn feasts they would talk of death to heighten the present drinking, and that they might warm their veins with a fuller chalice, as knowing the drink that was poured upon their graves would be cold and without relish. Break the beds, drink

Martial. 1. 2. epig. 59.

Ecclef. 3. 22, & 2. 24.

your wine, crown your heads with rofes, and beSmear your curled locks with Nard; for God bids you to remember death: fo the Epigrammatist speaks the sense of their drunken Principles. Something towards this fignification is that of Solomon, There is nothing better for a man than that he should eat and drink, and that he Should make his foul enjoy good in his labour; for that is his portion; for who shall bring him to fee that which Shall be after him? But although he concludes all this to be vanity, yet because it was the best thing that was then commonly known, * that they should seize

* Amici, dum vivimus,

vivamus.

Πῖνε λέγει τὸ γλύμμα, καὶ ἔσθιε, καὶ περίκεισο

upon

the

"Area Toss you" ita- present with a temperate use of

πίνης.

Hoc etiam faciunt ubi

difcubuere, tenéntque

permitted pleasures, I had reason to say that Christianity taught us

Pocula fæpe homines, et

Ex

inumbrant ora coronis,

animo ut dicant, brevis

eft hic fructus homullis; Jam fuerit, neque pòft unquam revocare licebit. Lucret. lib. 3.

to turn this into religion. For he that by a present and a conftant holiness secures the present, and makes it useful to his nobleft poses, he turns his condition into his best advantage, by making his unavoidable fate become his necessary religion.

pur

To the purpose of this rule is that collect of Tufcan Hieroglyphics which we have from Gabriel Simeon. • Our life is very short, beauty is a cozenage,

money is falfe and fugitive; Empire is odious, and • hated by them that have it not, and uneafy to them that have; victory is always uncertain, and peace ' most commonly is but a fraudulent bargain, old 6 age is miserable, death is the period, and is a happy one, if it be not foured by the fins of our life: but nothing continues but the effects of that wisdom ' which employs the present time in the acts of a holy religion, and a peaceable confcience:' for they make us to live even beyond our funerals, embalmed in the fpices and odours of a good name, and entombed in the grave of the Holy Jefus, where we shall be dreffed for a blessed resurrection to the state of Angels and beatified Spirits.

5. Since we stay not here, being people but of a day's abode, and our age is like that of a fly, and contemporary with a gourd, we must look fomewhere else for an abiding city, a place in another country to fix our house in, whofe walls and foundation is God, where we must find reft, or else be restless for ever. For whatsoever ease we can have or fancy here, is Confidat fragili? dum lifhortly to be changed into fad

Quis fapiens bono

cet, utere:

Tempus fed tacitum fu

bruit, horáque

Semper præterita deterior

fubit. Senec. Hippol.

nefs, or tedioufnefs: it goes away

too foon, like the periods of our life; or ftays too long, like the forrows of a finner: its one wearinefs, or a contrary disturbance, is its load; or it is eased by its revolution into vanity and forgetfulness; and where either there is forrow or an end of joy, there can be no true felicity; which because it must be had by fome inftrument, and in fome period of our durations, we must carry up our affections to the mansions prepared for us above, where eternity is the measure, felicity is the state, Angels are the company, the Lamb is the light, and God is the portion and inheritance.

SECT. III.

Rules and Spiritual Arts of lengthening our Days, and to take off the Objection of a Short Life.

N the accounts of a man's life we do not reckon that portion of days in which we are shut up in the prison of the womb; we tell our years from the day of our Birth: and the same reason that makes our reckoning to stay so long, says also that then it begins too foon. For then we are beholden to others to make the account for us: for we know not of a long time whether we be alive or no, having but some little approaches and symptoms of a life. To feed, and fleep, and move a little, and imperfectly, is the ftate of an unborn child; and when he is born, he does no more for a good while; and what is it that fhall make him to

be esteemed to live the life of a man? and when shall that account begin? For we should be loth to have the accounts of our age taken by the measures of a beaft; and fools and diftracted perfons are reckoned as civilly dead; they are no parts of the Commonwealth, nor subject to Laws, but fecured by them in Charity, and kept from violence as a man keeps his Ox: and a third part of our life is spent before we enter into a higher order, into the state of a Man.

2. Neither must we think that the life of a man begins when he can feed himself, or walk alone, when he can fight, or beget his like; for fo he is contemporary with a camel or a cow; but he is firft a man when he comes to a certain, steady use of reafon, according to his proportion: and when that is, all the world of men cannot tell precisely. Some are called at age at fourteen, fome at one and twenty, fome never; but all men late enough; for the life of a man comes upon him slowly and infenfibly. But as when the Sun approaches towards the gates of the morning, he first opens a little eye of Heaven, and sends away the spirits of darkness, and gives light to a Cock, and calls up the Lark to Matins, and by and by gilds the fringes of a cloud, and peeps over the Eastern hills, thrusting out his golden horns, like those which decked the brows of Mofes when he was forced to wear a veil, because himself had seen the face of God; and still while a man tells the ftory, the Sun gets up higher, till he fhews a fair face and a full light, and then he shines one whole day, under a cloud often, and fometimes weeping great and little showers, and sets quickly: so is a man's reason and his life. He first begins to perceive himself to fee or taste, making little

reflections upon his actions of sense, and can discourse of flies and dogs, fhells and play, horses and liberty : but when he is strong enough to enter into arts and little institutions, he is at first entertained with trifles and impertinent things, not because he needs them, but because his understanding is no bigger, and little images of things are laid before him, like a cockboat to a whale, only to play withal: but before a man comes to be wife, he is half dead with gouts and confumptions, with catarrhs and aches, with fore eyes and a worn-out body. So that if we must not reckon the life of a man but by the accounts of his reason, he is long before his foul be dreffed; and he is not to be called a man without a wife and an adorned soul, a foul at least furnished with what is neceffary towards his well-being: but by that time his foul is thus furnished, his body is decayed; and then you can hardly reckon him to be alive, when his body is poffeffed by so many degrees of death.

3. But there is yet another arreft. At first he wants ftrength of body, and then he wants the use of reason, and when that is come, it is ten to one but he stops by the impediments of vice, and wants the strengths of the Spirit; and we know that Body and Soul and Spirit are the constituent parts of every Chriftian man. And now let us confider what that thing is which we call years of difcretion. The young man is paffed his Tutors, and arrived at the bondage of a caitive spirit; he is run from discipline, and is let loose to paffion; the man by this time hath wit enough to choose his vice, to act his luft, to court his mistress, to talk confidently and ignorantly and perpetually, to despise his betters, to deny nothing