38. This is that dismall conquest we all deplore, that makes us so often cry (O) Adam, quid fecisti?236 I thanke God I have not those strait ligaments, or narrow obligations to the world, as to dote on life, or be convulst and tremble at the name of death: Not that I am insensible of the dread and horrour thereof, or by raking into the bowells of the deceased, continuall sight of Anatomies, Skeletons, or Cadaverous reliques, like Vespilloes, or Grave-makers, I am become stupid, or have forgot the apprehension of mortality, but that marshalling all the horrours, and contemplating the extremities thereof, I finde not any thing therein able to daunt the courage of a man, much lesse a well resolved Christian. And therefore am not angry at the errour of our first parents, or unwilling to beare a part of this common fate, and like the best of them to dye, that is, to cease to breathe, to take a farewell of the elements, to be a kinde of nothing for a moment, to be within one instant of a spirit. When I take a full view and circle of my selfe, without this reasonable moderator, and equall piece of justice, Death, I doe conceive my selfe the miserablest person extant; were there not another life that I hope for,237 all the vanities of this world should not intreat a moments breath from me; could the Devill worke my beliefe to imagine I could ever dye, I would not out-live that very thought; I have so abject a conceit of this common way of existence, this retaining to the Sunne and Elements, I cannot thinke this is to be a man, or to live according to the dignitie of humanity; in expectation of a better I can with patience embrace this life, yet in my best meditations doe often defie death;238 I honour any man that contemnes it, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it; this makes me naturally love a Souldier, and honour those tattered and contemptible Regiments that will die at the command of a Sergeant. For a Pagan there may be some motives to bee in love with life, but for a Christian to be amazed at death, I see not how hee can escape this Dilemma, that he is too sensible of this life, or hopelesse239 of the life to come.
39. Some Divines count Adam 30 yeares old at his creation, because they suppose him created in the perfect age and stature of man;240 and surely wee are all out of the computation of our age, and every man is some moneths elder than hee bethinkes him; for we live, move, have a being, and are subject to the actions of the elements, and the malice of diseases in that other world, the truest Microcosme, the wombe of our mother; for besides that generall and common existence wee are conceived to hold in our Chaos, and whilst wee sleepe within the bosome of our causes, wee enjoy a being and life in three distinct worlds, wherein we receive most manifest graduations: In that obscure world and wombe of our mother, our time is short, computed by the Moone; yet longer than the dayes of many creatures that behold the Sunne, our selves being not yet without life, sense, and reason,241 though for the manifestation of its actions, it awaits the opportunity of objects; and seemes to live there but in its roote and soule of vegetation: entring afterwards upon the scene of the world, wee arise up and become another creature, performing the reasonable actions of man, and obscurely manifesting that part of Divinity in us, but not in complement and perfection, till we have once more cast our secondine,242 that is, this slough of flesh, and are delivered into the last world, that is, that ineffable place of Paul, that proper ubi243 of spirits. The smattering I have of the Philosophers stone, (which is something more than the perfect exaltation of gold) 244 hath taught me a great deale of Divinity, and instructed my beliefe, how that immortall spirit and incorruptible substance of my soule may lye obscure, and sleepe a while within this house of flesh. Those strange and mysticall transmigrations that I have observed in Silkewormes, turn’d my Philosophy into Divinity. There is in these workes of nature, which seeme to puzle reason, something Divine, and hath more in it then the eye of a common spectator doth discover.245
40. I am naturally bashfull, nor hath conversation, age, or travell, beene able to effront, or enharden me,246 yet I have one part of modesty, which I have seldome discovered in another, that is (to speake truly) I am not so much afraid of death, as ashamed thereof; tis the very disgrace and ignominy of our natures, that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest friends, Wife, and Children stand afraid and start at us. The Birds and Beasts of the field that before in a naturall feare obeyed us, forgetting all allegiance begin to prey upon us. This very conceite hath in a tempest disposed and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abysse of waters; wherein I had perished, unseene, unpityed, without wondring eyes, teares of pity, Lectures of mortality, and none had said, quantum mutatus ab illo!247 Not that I am ashamed of the Anatomy of my parts, or can accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, or my owne vitious life for contracting any shamefull disease upon me, whereby I might not call my selfe as wholesome a morsell for the wormes as any.
41. Some upon the courage of a fruitfull issue, wherein, as in the truest Chronicle, they seem to outlive themselves, can with greater patience away with death. This conceit and counterfeit subsisting in our progenies248 seemes to mee a meere fallacy, unworthy the desires of a man, that can but conceive a thought of the next world; who, in a nobler ambition, should desire to live in his substance in Heaven rather than his name and shadow in the earth. And therefore at my death I meane to take a totall adieu of the world, not caring for a Monument, History, or Epitaph, not so much as the bare memory of my name to be found any where but in the universall Register of God:249 I am not yet so Cynicall, as to approve the Testament of Diogenes,250 nor doe I altogether allow that Rodomontado of Lucan;
Cælo tegitur, qui non babet urnam.
He that unburied lies wants not his Herse,
For unto him a tombe’s the Universe.251
But commend in my calmer judgement, those ingenuous intentions that desire to sleepe by the urnes of their Fathers, and strive to goe the nearest way unto corruption. I doe not envie the temper of Crowes and Dawes,252 nor the numerous and weary dayes of our Fathers before the Flood. If there bee any truth in Astrology, I may outlive a Jubilee,253 as yet I have not seene one revolution of Saturne,254 nor hath my pulse beate thirty yeares, and yet excepting one, have seene the Ashes, and left underground, all the Kings of Europe, have beene contemporary to three Emperours, foure Grand Signiours, and as many Popes;255 mee thinkes I have outlived my selfe, and begin to bee weary of the Sunne, I have shaked hands with delight in my warme blood and Canicular dayes,256 I perceive I doe Anticipate the vices of age, the world to mee is but a dreame, or mockshow, and wee all therein but Pantalones257 and Antickes to my severer contemplations.
42. It is not, I confesse, an unlawfull Prayer to desire to surpasse the dayes of our Saviour, or wish to out-live that age wherein he thought fittest to dye,258 yet, if (as Divinity affirmes) there shall be no gray hayres in Heaven, but all shall rise in the perfect state of men, we doe but out-live those perfections in this world, to be recalled unto them, by a greater miracle in the next, and run on here but to be retrograde hereafter. Were there any hopes to out-live vice, or a point to be super-annuated from sin, it were worthy our knees to implore the dayes of Methuselah. But age doth not rectifie, but incurvate259 our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits, and (like diseases) brings on incurable vices; for every day as we grow weaker in age, we grow stronger in sinne, and the number of our dayes doth but make our sinnes innumerable. The same vice committed at sixteene, is not the same, though it agree in all other circumstances, at forty, but swels and doubles from the circumstance of our ages, wherein besides the constant and inexcusable habit of transgressing, the maturity of our Judgement cuts off pretence unto excuse or pardon: every sin, the oftner it is committed, the more it acquireth in the quality of evill; as it succeeds in time, so it precedes in degrees of badnesse, for as they proceed they ever multiply, and like figures in Arithmeticke, the last stands for more than all that went before it:260 And though I thinke no man can live well once but hee that could live twice, yet for my owne part, I would not live over my houres past, or beginne againe the thred of my dayes: not upon Cicero’s ground, because I have
lived them well,261 but for feare I should live them worse: I find my growing Judgement dayly instruct me how to be better, but my untaimed affections and confirmed vitiosity makes mee dayly doe worse; I finde in my confirmed age the same sinnes I discovered in my youth, I committed many then because I was a child, and because I commit them still I am yet an Infant. Therefore I perceive a man may bee twice a child before the dayes of dotage, and stand in need of Æsons bath262 before threescore.
43. And truely there goes a great deale of providence to produce a mans life unto threescore; there is more required than an able temper for those yeeres; though the radicall humour containe in it sufficient oyle for seventie, yet I perceive in some it gives no light past thirtie; men assigne not all the causes of long life that write whole bookes thereof. They that found themselves on the radicall balsome or vitall sulphur263 of the parts, determine not why Abel liv’d not so long as Adam. There is therefore a secret glome or bottome264 of our dayes; ’twas his wisedome to determine them, but his perpetuall and waking providence that fulfils and accomplisheth them, wherein the spirits, our selves, and all the creatures of God in a secret and disputed way doe execute his will. Let them not therefore complaine of immaturitie that die about thirty, they fall but like the whole world, whose solid and well composed substance must not expect the duration and period of its constitution, when all things are compleated in it, its age is accomplished, and the last and generall fever may as naturally destroy it before six thousand,265 as me before forty, there is therfore some other hand that twines the thread of life than that of nature; wee are not onely ignorant in Antipathies and occult qualities, our ends are as obscure as our beginnings, the line of our dayes is drawne by night, and the various effects therein by a pencill that is invisible; wherein though wee confesse our ignorance, I am sure we doe not erre, if wee say, it is the hand of God.
44. I am much taken with two verses of Lucan, since I have beene able not onely, as we doe at Schoole, to construe, but understand:
Victurosque Dei celant ut vivere durent,
Felix esse mori.
We’re all deluded, vainely searching wayes,
To make us happy by the length of dayes;
For cunningly to make’s protract this breath,
The Gods conceale the happines of Death.
There be many excellent straines in that Poet, wherewith his Stoicall Genius hath liberally supplyed him; and truely there are singular pieces in the Philosophy of Zeno, and doctrine of the Stoickes, which I perceive, delivered in a Pulpit, passe for currant Divinity: yet herein are they in extreames, that can allow a man to be his owne Assassine, and so highly extoll the end and suicide of Cato; this is indeed not to feare death, but yet to bee afraid of life. It is a brave act of valour to contemne death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the truest valour to dare to live, and herein Religion hath taught us a noble example: For all the valiant acts of Curtius, Scevola or Codrus, do not parallel or match that one of Job;266 and sure there is no torture to267 the racke of a disease, nor any Poynyards in death it selfe like those in the way or prologue unto it. Emori nolo, sed me esse mortuum nihil curo, I would not die, but care not to be dead.268 Were I of Cæsars Religion I should be of his desires, and wish rather to goe off at one blow, then to be sawed in peeces by the grating torture of a disease.269 Men that looke no further than their outsides thinke health an appertinance unto life, and quarrell with their constitutions for being sick; but I that have examined the parts of man, and know upon what tender filaments that Fabrick hangs, doe wonder that we are not alwayes so; and considering the thousand dores that lead to death doe thanke my God that we can die but once. ’Tis not onely the mischiefe of diseases, and the villanie of poysons that make an end of us, we vainly accuse the fury of Gunnes, and the new inventions of death; ’tis in the power of every hand to destroy us, and wee are beholding unto every one wee meete hee doth not kill us. There is therefore but one comfort left, that though it be in the power of the weakest arme to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death: God would not exempt himselfe from that,270 the misery of immortality in the flesh, he undertooke not that was in it immortall. Certainly there is no happinesse within this circle of flesh, nor is it in the Opticks of these eyes to behold felicity; the first day of our Jubilee is death; the devill hath therefore fail’d of his desires; wee are happier with death than we should have beene without it: there is no misery but in himselfe where there is no end of misery; and so indeed in his own sense, the Stoick271 is in the right. Hee forgets that hee can die who complaines of misery, wee are in the power of no calamitie while death is in our owne.
45. Now besides this literall and positive kinde of death, there are others whereof Divines make mention, and those I thinke, not meerely Metaphoricall, as Mortification, dying unto sin and the world; therefore, I say, every man hath a double Horoscope, one of his humanity, his birth; another of his Christianity, his baptisme, and from this doe I compute or calculate my Nativitie, not reckoning those Horæ combustæ,272 and odde dayes, or esteeming my selfe any thing, before I was my Saviours, and inrolled in the Register of Christ: Whosoever enjoyes not this life, I count him but an apparition, though he weare about him the sensible affections of flesh. In these morall acceptions,273 the way to be immortall is to die daily, nor can I thinke I have the true Theory of death, when I contemplate a skull, or behold a Skeleton with those vulgar imaginations it casts upon us; I have therefore enlarged that common Memento mori,274 into a more Christian memorandum, Memento quatuor novissima,275 those foure inevitable points of us all, Death, Judgement, Heaven, and Hell. Neither did the contemplations of the Heathens rest in their graves, without a further thought of Radamanth or some judiciall proceeding after death, though in another way, and upon suggestion of their naturall reasons. I cannot but marvaile from what Sibyll or Oracle they stole the prophesy of the worlds destruction by fire, or whence Lucan learned to say,
Communis mundo superest rogus, ossibus astra
Misturus.
There yet remaines to th’ world one common fire,
Wherein our bones with stars shall make one pyre.276
I beleeve the world growes neare its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruines of its owne principles.277 As the worke of Creation was above nature, so is its adversary, annihilation; without which the world hath not its end, but its mutation. Now what force should bee able to consume it thus farre, without the breath of God, which is the truest consuming flame, my Philosophy cannot informe me. Some278 beleeve there went not a minute to the worlds creation, nor shal there go to its destruction; those six dayes so punctually described, make not to them one moment, but rather seem to manifest the method and Idea of the great worke of the intellect of God,279 than the manner how hee proceeded in its operation. I cannot dreame that there should be at the last day any such Judiciall proceeding, or calling to the Barre, as indeed the Scripture seemes to imply,280 and the literall commentators doe conceive: for unspeakable mysteries in the Scriptures are often delivered in a vulgar and illustrative way, and being written unto man, are delivered, not as they truely are, but as they may bee understood;281 wherein notwithstanding the different interpretations according to different capacities may stand firme with our devotion, nor bee any way prejudiciall to each single edification.
46. Now to determine the day and yeare of this inevitable time, is not onely convincible282 and statute madnesse, but also manifest impiety; How shall we interpret Elias 6000. yeares, or imagine the secret communicated to a Rabbi, which God hath denyed unto his Angels?283 It had beene an excellent quære, to have posed the devill of Delphos,284 and must needs have forced him to some strange amphibology; it hath not onely mocked the predictions of sundry Astrologers in ages past, but the prophecies of many melancholy heads in these present, who neither understanding reasonably things past or present, pretend a knowledge of things to come, heads ordained onely to manifest the incredible effects of melancho
ly, and to fulfill old prophesies,285 rather than be the authors of new. ‘In those dayes there shall come warres and rumours of warres’,286 to me seemes no prophesie, but a constant truth, in all times verified since it was pronounced: There shall bee signes in the Moone and Starres, how comes he then like a theefe in the night,287 when he gives an item of his comming? That common signe drawne from the revelation of Antichrist288 is as obscure as any; in our common compute he hath beene come these many yeares,289 but for my owne part to speake freely, I am halfe of opinion that Antichrist is the Philosophers stone in Divinity, for the discovery and invention whereof, though there be prescribed rules, and probable inductions, yet hath hardly any man attained the perfect discovery thereof. That generall opinion that the world growes neere its end, hath possessed all ages past as neerely as ours; I am afraid that the Soules that now depart, cannot escape that lingring expostulation of the Saints under the Altar, Quousque Domine? How long, O Lord?290 and groane in the expectation of the great Jubile.291
47. This is the day that must make good that great attribute of God, his Justice, that must reconcile those unanswerable doubts that torment the wisest understandings, and reduce those seeming inequalities, and respective292 distributions in this world, to an equality and recompensive Justice in the next. This is that one day, that shall include and comprehend all that went before it, wherein as in the last scene, all the Actors must enter to compleate and make up the Catastrophe of this great peece. This is the day whose memory hath onely power to make us honest in the darke, and to bee vertuous without a witnesse. Ipsa sui pretium virtus sibi, that vertue is her owne reward,293 is but a cold principle, and not able to maintaine our variable resolutions in a constant and setled way of goodnesse. I have practised that honest artifice of Seneca, and in my retired and solitary imaginations, to detaine me from the foulenesse of vice, have fancyed to my selfe the presence of my deare and worthiest friends,294 before whom I should lose my head, rather than be vitious, yet herein I found that there was nought but morall honesty, and this was not to be vertuous for his sake who must reward us at the last. I have tryed if I could reach that great resolution of his,295 to be honest without a thought of Heaven or Hell; and indeed I found upon a naturall inclination, an inbred loyalty unto vertue, that I could serve her without a livery, yet not in that resolved and venerable way, but that the frailty of my nature, upon an easie temptation, might be induced to forget her. The life therefore and spirit of all our actions, is the resurrection, and stable apprehension, that our ashes shall enjoy the fruit of our pious endeavours; without this, all Religion is a Fallacy, and those impieties of Lucian, Euripedes,296 and Julian are no blasphemies, but subtile verities, and Atheists have beene the onely Philosophers.297
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