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time away, and then weep because it is gone too foon. But fo the treasure of the Capitol is but a finall eftate when Cafar comes to finger it, and to pay with it all his Legions; and the revenue of all Egypt and the Eastern Provinces was but a little fum, when they were to fupport the luxury of Mark Antony, and feed the riot of Cleopatra. But a thousand crowns is a vast proportion to be spent in the cottage of a frugal perfon, or to feed an Ermit. Juft fo is our life: it is too fhort to ferve the ambition of a haughty Prince, or an ufurping Rebel; too little time to purchase great wealth, to fatisfie the pride of a vain-glorious fool, to trample upon all the enemies of our juft or unjuft intereft: but for the obtaining vertue, for the purchase of fobriety and modefty, for the actions of Religion, God gave us time fufficient, if we make the out-goings of the Morning and Evening, that is, our Infancy and Old age, to be taken into the computations of a Man. Which we may fee in the following particulars.

1. If our Childhood, being firft confecrated by a forward Baptifm, be feconded by a holy Education, and a complying obedience; if our Youth be chaft and temperate, modeft and induftrious, proceeding through a prudent Sed pores, Publi, geminare magnâ and fober Manhood to a religious Old age: then we have lived our whole duration, and fhall never die, but be changed in a just time to the preparations of a better and an immortal life.

Quem fui raptum gemuêre cives,
Hic diu vixit. Sibi quifque famam
Scribat hæredem: rapiunt avara

2. If befides the ordinary returns of our prayers, and periodical and feftival folemnities, and our feldom communions, we would allow to religion and the ftudies of wisdom thofe great shares that are trifled away upon vain forrow, foolish mirth, troublesome ambition, bufie covetoufnefs, watchful luft, and impertinent amours, and balls and revellings and banquets, all that which was spent viciously, and all that time that lay fallow and without employment, our life would quickly amount to a great fum. Toftatus Abulenfis

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was

Secula famâ.

Cætera Lune

was a very painful person, and a great Clerk, and in the days of his Manhood he wrote fo many books, and they not ill ones, that the world computed a sheet for every day of his life; I fuppofe they meant, after he came to the use of reafon and the state of a man: and John Scotus died about the two and thirtieth year of his age; and yet befides his publick Difputations, his daily Lectures of Divinity in publick and private, the Books that he wrote, being lately collected and Printed at Lions, do equal the number of Volumes of any two the most voluminous Fathers of the Latin Church. Every man is not enabled to fuch employments, but every man is called and enabled to the works of a fober and a religious life; and there are many Saints of God that can reckon as many volumes of religion and mountains of piety as thofe others did of good books. S. Ambrofe (and I think, from his example, S. Auguftine) divided every day into three tertia's of employment: eight hours he spent in the neceffities of nature and recreation; eight hours in charity and doing affiftance to others, difpatching their bufineffes, reconciling their enmities, reproving their vices, correcting their errours, inftructing their ig norances, tranfacting the affairs of his Diocefs; and the other eight hours he ípent in ftudy and prayer. If we were thus minute and curious in the spending our time, it is impoffible but our life would feem very long. For fo have I seen an amorous perfon tell the minutes of his abfence from his fanfied joy, and while he told the fands of his Hour-glafs, or the throbs and little beatings of his Watch, by dividing an hour into so many members, he fpun out his length by number, and fo tranflated a day into the tedioufnefs of a month. And it we tell our days by Canonical hours of Prayer, our weeks by a conftant revolution of Fafting-days or days of fpecial Devotion, and over all these draw a black Cypress, a veil of penitential forrow and fevere mortification, we fhall loon anfwer the calumny and objection of a fhort life. He that governs the day and divides the hours, haftens from the eyes and obfervation of a merry finner; but

loves to ftand still, and behold, and tell the fighs, and number the groans, and fadly-delicious accents of a grieved penitent. It is a valt work that any man may do, if he never be idle: and it is a huge way that a man may go in vertue, if he never goes out of his way by a vicious habit or a great crime; and he that perpetually reads good books, it his parts be anfwerable, will have a huge ftock of knowledge. It is fo in all things elfe. Strive not to forget your time, and suffer none of it to pass undifcerned; and then measure your life, and tell me how you find the meature of its abode. However, the time we live is worth the money we pay for it; and therefore it is not to be thrown away.

3. When vicious men are dying, and fcar'd with the affrighting truths of an evil confcience, they would give all the world for a year, for a month; nay, we read of fome that called out with amazement, inducias ufque ad manè, truce but till the morning and if that a year or fome few months were given, those men think they could do miracles in it. And let us a while fuppofe what Dives would have done, if he had been loofed from the pains of Hell, and permitted to live on earth one year: Would all the pleasures of the World have kept him one hour from the Temple? would he not perpetually have been under the hands of Priests, or at the feet of the Doctors, or by Mofes's chair, or attending as near the Altar as he could get, or relieving poor Lazarus, or praying to God, and crucifying all his fins? I have read of a melancholick person who faw Hell but in a dream or vifion, and the amazement was fuch, that he would have chosen ten times to die rather than to feel again fo much of that horrour: and fuch a perfon cannot be fanfied but that he would fpend a year in fuch holiness, that the religion of a few months would equal the devotion of many years, even of a good man. Let us but compute the proportions. If we fhould fpend all our years of reason fo as fuch a perfon would spend that one, can it be thought that life would be fhort and trifling in which he had performed fuch a re

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ligion

Sect. 3. ligion, ferved God with fo much holiness, mortified fin with fo great a labour, purchafed vertue at fuch a rate and fo rare an induftry? It must needs be that fuch a man muft die when he ought to die, and be like ripe and pleafant fruit falling from a fair tree, and gathered into baskets for the Planter's uie. He that hath done all his bufinefs, and is begotten to a glorious hope by the feed of an

(chrum,

Huic neque defungi visum eft, nec vivere pul- immortal Spirit, can never die too foon, nor live too long.

Cura fuit rectè vivere, ficque mori,

Xerxes wept fadly when he faw his Army of 1300000 men, because he confidered that within an hundred years all the youth of that Army fhould be duft and afhes: and yet, as Seneca well obferves of him, he was the man that fhould bring them to their graves, and he confumed all that Army in two years, for whom he feared and wept the death after an hundred. Just to we do all. We complain that within thirty or forty years, a little more, or a great deal lefs, we shall defcend again into the bowels of our Mother, and that our life is too fhort for any great employment; and yet we throw away five and thirty years of our forty, and the remaining five we divide between art and nature, civility and cuftoms, neceffity and convenience, prudent counfels and religion: but the portion of the laft is little and contemptible, and yet that little is all that we can prudently account of our lives. bring that fate and that death near us, of whofe approach we are fo fadly apprehensive.

We

4. In taking the accounts of your life do not reckon by great diftances, and by the periods of pleafure, or the fatisfaction of your hopes, or the ftarting your defires: but let every intermedial day and hour pafs with obfervation. He that reckons he hath lived but fo many harvefts, thinks they come not often enough, and that they go away too soon. Some lofe the day with longing for the night, and the night in waiting for the day. Hope and phantaftick expecta

In fpe viventibus proximum quodcunque tempus elabitur, fubtque aviditas temporis, & miferrimus, atque miferrima omnia

efficiens, metus mortis.

Ex hac autem indigentia timor

Mafcitur, & cupiditas futuri exedens

animum

Seneca.

tions spend much of our lives; and while with passion we look for a coronation, or the death of an enemy, or a day of joy, paffing from fancy to poffeffion without any intermedial notices, we throw away a precious year, and ufe it but as the burthen of our time, fit to be pared off and thrown away, that we may come at thofe little pleasures which firit fteal our hearts, and then steal our life.

*

Life of

5. Á ftrict courfe of Piety is the way to prolong our lives in the natural fence, and to add good portions to the number of our years: and fin is fometimes by natural cafualty, very often by the anger of God, and the Divine Judgment, a caufe of fudden and untimely death. Concerning which I fhall add nothing (to what I have fomewhere else faid of this Chrift, par. 3. article) but only the obfervation of Epiphanius; Difc. 14. "Lithat for 3332 years, even to the twentieth age 1. tom. 1.Pathere was not one example of a Son that died before nar. fect, 6. his Father, but the courfe of nature was kept, that he who was first-born in the defcending line did firft die, (I fpeak of natural death, and therefore Abel cannot be oppofed to this obfervation) till that Terah the Father of Abraham taught the People a new religion, to make images of clay and worship them; and concerning him it was firit remarked, that Haran died before his father Terah in the land of his nativity: God by an unheard-of judgment and rare accident punishing his newly-invented crime, by the untimely death of his Son.

6. But if I fhall defcribe a living man, a man that hath that life that diftinguishes him from a fool or a bird, that which gives him a capacity next to Angels; we fhall find that even a good man lives not long becaufe it is long before he is born to this life, and longer yet before he hath a man's growth. "He that can Seneca, de vilook upon Death, and fee its face with the fame ta beata cap. countenance with which he hears its ftory; that can endure all the labours of his life with his Soul fupporting his Body; that can equally defpife Riches "when he hath them, and when he hath them not; that is not fadder if they lie in his neighbours trunks,

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