before the days of dotage, and stand in need of * Efon's bath before threefcore. SECT. XLIII. And truly there goes a great deal of providence to protract a man's life unto threefcore; there is more required than an able temperament for those years; tho' the radical humour contain in it sufficient oil for 70, yet I perceive in fome it gives no light paft thirty; men affign not all the causes of long life who write whole books thereon. They, that found themselves on the radical balfam or vital fulphur of the parts, determine not why Abel liv'd not fo long as Adam. There is therefore a fecret gloom or bottom of our days; 'twas his wisdom to determine them, but his perpetual and walking providence that fulfils and accomplisheth them; wherein the fpirits, ourselves, and all all the creatures of God, in a secret and disputed way, do execute his will. Let them not therefore complain of immaturity that dye about thirty; they fall but like the whole world, whofe folid and well compofed fubftance must not expect the duration and period of its conftitution; when all things are compleated in it, its age is accomplished, and the laft and general fever may as naturally destroy it before fix thoufand, as me before forty there is therefore fome other hand that twines the thread of of life than that of nature; we are not only ignorant in antipathies and occult qualities; our ends are as obfcure as our beginnings; the line of our days is drawn by night, and the various effects therein by a pencil that is invisible; wherein tho' we confefs our ignorance, I am fure we do not err, if we say, it is the hand of God. SECT. SECT. XLIV. I am much taken with two verfes of Lucan, fince I have been able not only, as we do at fchool, to conftrue, but understand. Victurofque Dei celant ut vivere durent, We're all deluded, vainly fearching ways, There be many excellent ftrains in that poet, wherewith his ftoical genius hath liberally supplyed him; and truly there are fingular pieces" in the philofophy of Zeno, and doctrine of the ftoicks, which I perceive, delivered in a pulpit, pass for current divinity; yet herein are they in extreams, that can allow a man to be his own Affaffine, and fo highly extol the end and fuicide of Cato, this is indeed not to fear death, but yet to be afraid of of life. It is a brave act of valour to contemn death, but where life is more terrible than death, it is then the trueft 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 X match that one of Job; and fure there is no torture to the rack of a disease, nor any poinyards in death itself like thofe in the way or prologue unto it. Emori nolo, fed me. effe mortuum nihil curo, I would not dye, but care not to be dead. Were I of Cæfar's religion I fhould be of his defires, and wifh rather to go off at one blow, than to be fawed in pieces by the grating torture of a disease. Men that look no further than their outfides think health an appurtinance unto life, and quarrel with their conftitutions for being fick; but I who have examined the parts of man, and know upon what what tender filaments that fabrick hangs, do wonder that we are not always fo; and confidering the thoufand doors that lead to death do thank my God that we can dye but once. 'Tis not only the mischief of difeafes, and the villany of poisons that make an end of us; we vainly accuse the fury of guns, and the new inventions of death; 'Tis in the power of every hand to deftroy us, and we are beholden unto every one we meet that he doth not kill us. There is therefore but one comfort left, that tho' it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death: God would not exempt himself from that: the mifery of immortality in the flesh, he undertook not what was in it immortal. Certainly there is no happiness within this circle of flesh, nor is it in the opticks of thefe eyes to behold felicity; the firft day of Our |