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CHAP. I.

A General Preparation towards a Holy and
Bleffed Death, by way of Confideration.

SECT I.

Confideration of the Vanity and Shortness of
Man's Life.

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Man is a Bubble (faid the Greek Proverb) rousin which Lucian reprefents with Advantages and arg. its proper Circumftances, to this purpose,

faying All the World is a Storm, and Men rife up in their feveral Generations like Bubbles defcending à Jove pluvio, from God and the Dew of Heaven, from a tear and drop of Man, from Nature and Providence: And fome of thefe inftantly fink into the Deluge of their firft Parent, and are hidden in a Sheet of Water, having had no other Bufinefs in the World but to be born, that they might be able to die: Others float up and down two or three Turns, and fuddenly disappear and give their Place to others: And they that live longeft upon the Face of the Waters, are in perpetual Motion, reftlefs and uneafy, and being crufh'd with a great drop of a Cloud, fink into flatnefs and a froth: the Change not being great, it being hardly poffible it fhould be more a nothing, than it was before. So is every Man: He is born in Vanity and Sin; he comes into the World like Morning-Mushrooms, foon thrufting up their Heads into the Air, and converfing with their Kindred of the fame Production, and as foon they turn into Duft and Forgetfulness: fome of them without any other Interefts in the Affairs of the World, but that they made their Parents a B

little

Sect. 1. little glad, and very forrowful: Others ride longer in the Storm; 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 Nurfe, of drowning in a Pail of water, of being overlaid by a fleepy Servant, 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 crufhed by the preffure of a load of indigefted meat, or quenched by the diforder of 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 Mans condition with words fignifying his vanity and fhort abode. Homer calls a Man a leaf, the fmalleft, the weakest piece of a short-liv'd, unfteady plant. Pindar calls him, the dream of a shadow: Another, the dream of the fhadow of Smoak. But St. James (pake 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 virtue in itself, lifted up on high, or left below, according as it pleases the Son its Fofteruro. Father. But it is lighter yet. It is but appearing; a phantaftick vapour, an apparition, nothing real: It is not fo much as a mift, not the matter of a fhower, nor substantial enough to make a cloud; but it is like Caffiopeia's chair, or Pelops's fhoulder, or

ατμίς.

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the

the circles of Heaven, Davou, for which you cannot have a word that can fignify 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 disappears in a fmall time, like the fhadow that we's ini departeth, or like a tale that is told, or as a dream when yov. one awaketh. A Man is fo vain, fo unfixed, fo perifhing a Creature, that he cannot long laft in the sense of fancya Man goes off and is forgotten like the dream of a distracted perfon. The fum of all is this; That thou art a Man, than / whom there is not in the world any greater Inftance of height and declenfions, of lights and fhadows, of mifery and folly, of laughter and tears, of groans and death.

Τὸ ἢ κεφάλαιον του λόγων, ἄνθρωπο ε, μεταβολίω θάττον πρὸς ὕψω, ο πάλιν τας πεινότητα, ζῶν ἐδὲν λαμβάνει.

And because this Confideration is of great Ufefulhefs and great Neceffity to many purposes of Wisdom and the Spirit; all the Succeffion of Time, all the Changes in Nature, all the Varieties of Light and Darkness, the Thousand-thousands of Accidents in the World, and every Contingency to every Man, and to every Creature, doth preach our Funeral Sermon, and calls us to look and fee how the old Sexton Time throws up the Earth, and digs a Grave, where we muft lay our Sins or our Sorrows, and fow our Bodies till they arise again in a fair or in an intolerable Eternity. Every Revolution which the Sun makes about the World, Nihil fibi quifquam de futuro debet pros divides between Life and mittere, id quoq; quod tenetur per manus Death; and Death poffeffus incidit. Volvitur tempus ratâ quidem exit, & ipfam quam premimus horam cafes both thofe Portions by lege, fed per obfcuram. Seneca. the next Morrow; and we

are dead to all thofe Months which we have already lived, and we shall never live them over again: And ftill God makes little Periods of our Age. Firft we change our World, when we come from the Womb to feel the Warmth of the Sun. Then we Sleep and enter into the Image of Death, in which State we are unconcerned in all the Changes of the World; And if our Mothers