dition are strong as destiny, and immutable as the eternal laws of God.

I have conversed with some men who rejoiced in the death or calamity of others, and accounted it as a judgment upon them for being on the other side and against them in the contention; but within the revolution of a few months the same men met with a more uneasy and unhandsome death: which when I saw, I wept, din Zevs éléλn Texéσal. and was afraid; for I knew that

* Τέθναθι, κῆρα δ ̓ ἐγὼ τότε δέξομαι, ὁππότε κεν

Hom. I. xxii. 365.

it must be so with_all_men,* for we also shall die, and end our quarrels and contentions by passing to a final sentence.

SECT. II. The Consideration reduced to Practice.

T will be very material to our best and noblest

purposes if we represent this scene of change and sorrow a little more dressed up in circumstances, for so we shall be more apt to practise those rules, the doctrine of which is consequent to this consideration. It is a mighty change that is made by the death of every person, and it is visible to us who are alive. Reckon but from the sprightfulness of youth and the fair cheeks and the full eyes of childhood, from the vigorousness and strong flexure of the joints of five and twenty, to the hollowness and dead paleness, to the loathsomeness and horror of a three days' burial, and we shall perceive the distance to be very great and very strange. But so I

have seen a rose newly springing from the clefts of its hood, and at first it was fair as the morning, and full with the dew of heaven, as a lamb's fleece; but when a ruder breath had forced open its virgin modesty, and dismantled its too youthful and unripe retirements, it began to put on darkness, and to decline to softness and the symptoms of a sickly age; it bowed the head, and broke its stalk, and at night, having lost some of its leaves and all its beauty, it fell into the portion of weeds and outworn faces. The same is the portion of every man and every woman; the heritage of worms and serpents, rottenness and cold dishonor, and our beauty so changed, that our acquaintance quickly know us not; and that change mingled with so much horror, or else meets so with our fears and weak discoursings, that they who six hours ago tended upon us, either with charitable or ambitious services, cannot without some regret stay in the room alone where the body lies stripped of its life and honor. I have read of a fair young German gentleman, who, living, often refused to be pictured, but put off the importunity of his friends' desire by giving way that after a few days' burial they might send a painter to his vault, and if they saw cause for it, draw the image of his death unto the life. They did so, and found his face half eaten, and his midriff and back

Anceps forma bonum mortalibus,

Exigui donum breve tem

poris.

Ut fulgor teneris qui radiat

genis

Momento rapitur ! nullaque

non dies

Formosi spolium corporis ab

stulit.

Sen. Hippol. ii. 761.

bone full of serpents; and so he

stands pictured amongst his armed ancestors.

So

does the fairest beauty change, and it will be as bad with you and me; and then, what servants shall we have to wait upon us in the grave? what friends to visit us? what officious people to cleanse away the moist and unwholesome cloud reflected upon our faces from the sides of the weeping vaults, which are the longest weepers for our funeral?

This discourse will be useful, if we consider and practise by the following rules and considerations respectively:

1. All the rich and all the covetous men in the world will perceive, and all the world will perceive for them, that it is but an ill recompense for all their cares, that by this time all that

Rape, congere, aufer, pos

shall be left will be this, that side; relinquendum est.

the neighbors shall say, he died

Mart. Epig. viii. 44.

a rich man and yet his wealth will not profit him in the grave, but hugely swell the sad accounts of doomsday. And he that kills the Lord's people with unjust or ambitious wars, for an unrewarding interest,

Annos omnes prodegit, ut

ex eo annus unus numere

tur, et per mille indignitates laboravit in titulum sepul

chri.

See Sen. De Brev. Vit. c. 19. § 3.

shall have this character, that he threw away all the days of his life that one year might be reckoned with his name, and computed by his reign or consulship and many men by great labors and

affronts, many indignities and Jam eorum præbendas alii crimes, labor only for a pom- possident, et nescio utrum de pous epitaph, and a loud title

iis cogitent. Gerson.

-Me veterum frequens Memphis Pyramidum docet,

Me pressæ tumulo lacryma gloriæ,

Me projecta jacentium

upon

their marble; whilst those into whose possessions the heirs

or kindred are entered are for

Passim per populos busta gotten, and lie unregarded as

Quiritium,

Et vilis Zephyro jocus Jactati cineres, et procerum

rogi,

Fumantumque cadavera

their ashes, and without con

cernment or relation, as the turf

Regnorum, tacito, Rufe, si- upon the face of their

lentio,

Mæstum multa monent.

Sarbiev. Lyric. ii. 27.8.

grave. A

man may read a sermon, the best and most passionate that ever

man preached, if he shall but enter into the sepulchres of kings. In the same Escurial where the Spanish princes live in greatness and power, and decree war or peace, they have wisely placed a cemetery where their ashes and their glory shall sleep till time shall be no more: and where our kings have been crowned, their ancestors lie interred, and they must walk over their grandsire's head to take his crown. There is an acre sown with royal seed, the copy of the greatest change, from rich to naked, from ceiled roofs to arched coffins, from living like gods to die like men. There is enough to cool the flames of lust, to abate the heights of pride, to appease the itch of covetous desires, to sully and dash out the dissembling colors of a lustful, artificial, and imaginary beauty. There the warlike and the peaceful, the fortunate and the miserable, the beloved and the despised princes mingle their dust, and pay down their symbol of mortality, and tell all the world that, when we die, our ashes shall be equal to kings', and our accounts

easier, and our pains for our crowns shall be less. To my apprehension it is a sad record which is left by Athenæus concerning Ninus, the great Assyrian monarch, whose life and death is summed up in these words: "Ninus the Assy

Phoenix ap. Athen. Deipn.

rian had an ocean of gold, and xii. 40. other riches more than the sand in the Caspian sea; he never saw the stars, and perhaps he never desired it; he never stirred up the holy fire among the Magi, nor touched his god with the sacred rod according to the laws; he never offered sacrifice, nor worshipped the Deity, nor administered justice, nor spake to his people, nor numbered them: but he was most valiant to eat and drink, and having mingled his wines he threw the rest upon the stones. This man is dead: behold his sepulchre, and now hear where Ninus is. Sometimes I was Ninus, and drew the breath of a living man, but now am nothing but clay. I have nothing but what I did eat, and what I served to myself in lust; that was and is all my portion: the wealth with which I was esteemed blessed, my enemies meeting together shall bear away, as the mad Thyades carry a raw goat. I am gone to hell; and when I went thither, I neither carried gold, nor horse, nor silver chariot. I that wore a mitre, am now a little heap of dust." I

know not anything that can

̓Αθανασίας δ ̓ οὐκ ἔστιν, οὐδ ̓ ἂν συναγάγης

Tà Tavтáλov Táλavт' èkeî

να λεγόμενα, ̓Αλλ ̓ ἂν ἀποθανῇς, ταῦτα καταλείψεις τισίν. Menand. ap. Stob. Flor.

xxii. 19.

better represent the evil condition of a wicked