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For time the nature of the world tranflates,
And from preceding gives all things new ftates;
Nought like itfelf remains, but all do range,
And nature forces ev'ry thing to change.

“And yet we foolishly fear one kind of death, whereas "we have already paft, and do daily pass so many other.” "For not only, as Heraclitus faid, the death of fire is "the generation of air, and the death of air the gene"ration of water." "But, moreover, we may more "clearly difcern it in ourselves: the prime of life dies, "and paffes away when old-age comes on and youth "is terminated in the prime of life; infancy in youth, " and the first age dies in infancy: yesterday died in to"day, and to-day will die in to-morrow; and there is "nothing that remains in the fame ftate, or that is al"ways the fame thing. For, that it is fo, let this be "the proof: if we are always one and the fame, how "comes it to pafs, that we are now pleafed with one thing, and by and by with another? How is it that "we love or hate, praife or condemn contrary things? "How comes it to pafs, that we have different affec❝tions, and no more retain the fame fentiment in the "fame thought? for it is not likely, that, without mu"tation, we fhould affume other paffions; and that "which fuffers mutation does not remain the fame, and "if be not the fame, it is not therefore exifting: but "the fame that the being is, does, like it, change its "being, becoming evermore another from another "thing; and, confequently, the natural fenfes abuse "and deceive themselves, taking that which feems, for "that which is, for want of well knowing what that "which is, is. But what is it then that truly is? That "which is eternal: that is to fay, that never had beginning, nor never fhall have ending, and to which "time never brings any mutation. For time is a mov❝ing thing, and that appears as in a fhaTime a moving "dow, with a matter evermore flowing thing, without "and running, without ever remaining permanency. "ftable and permanent: and to which thofe words ap

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pertain before, and after, has been, or fhall be; which, "at the first fight, evidently fhew, that it is not a thing "that is; for it were a great folly, and an apparent fal"fity, to fay, that that is, which is not yet in being, or "that has already ceafed to be: and as to thefe words, Prefent, Inftant, and Now, by which it feems, that "we principally fupport and found the intelligence of "time, reafon difcovering, it does prefently deftroy it; "for it immediately divides and fplits it into the future "and paft, being, of neceffity, to confider it divided in The fame happens to nature that is measured, "as to time that measures it; for fhe has nothing that is "fubfifting and permanent, but all things are either "born, bearing, or dying. By which means it were "finful to fay of God, who is he who only is, that he "was, or that he fhall be: for those are terms of declen"fion, paffage, or viciffitude, of what cannot continue, "or remain in being. Wherefore we are to conclude, "that God only is, not according to any measure of "time, but according to an immutable and an immove"able eternity, not measured by time, nor fubject to "any declenfion before whom nothing was, and after "whom nothing fhall be, either more new, or more re"cent; but a real being, that, with one fole Now, fills "the for ever, and that there is nothing that truly is, "but he alone; without being able to fay, he has been, "or fhall be, without beginning, and without end."

To this religious conclufion of a pagan I fhould only add this teftimony of one of the fame condition, for the clofe of this long and tedious difcourfe, which would furnish me with endless matter. "What a vile and ab"ject thing, (fays he), is man, if he do not raife himself "above humanity? It is a fine fentence, and a profitable defire, but equally abfurd; for, to make a handful bigger than the hand, and the cubit longer than the arm, and to hope to ftride further than the legs can reach, is both impoffible and monftrous, or that man fhould rise above himself and humanity, for he cannot fee but with his eyes, nor feize but with his power. He shall be

Seneca, in his Natural Question, lib. i. in the preface.

exalted, if God will lend him his extraordinary hand; he fhall exalt himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by fuffering himself to be raifed and elevated by means purely celeftial: it belongs to our Christian faith, and not to Seneca's ftoical virtues, to pretend to this divine and miraculous metamorphofis.

W

CHA P. XIII.

Of judging of the Death of another.

No very refolute affurance at the article of death, wrought other

HEN we judge of another's courage in death, which, without doubt, is the most remarkable action of human life, we are to take notice of one thing, which, is, that men very hardly believe themselves to be arrived to that period. Few men die with an asfurance that it is their laft hour, and there is nothing wherein the flattery of hope more deludes us. It never ceases to whisper in our ears, " Others have been much ficker without dying; "my condition is not fo defperate as it is thought, and, at the worst, God has "miracles." This happens, by reafon that we set too much value upon ourselves. It seems, to us, as if the univerfality of things were, in fome measure, to fuffer by our annihilation, and that it commiferated our condition. Because our depraved fight reprefents things to itself after the fame manner, and that we are of opinion, they stand in as much need of us, as we do of them; like people at fea, to whom mountains, fields, cities, heaven and earth are toffed at the fame rate as they are:

Provebimur portu, terræque urbefque recedunt *.

Out of the port, with a brifk gale we speed,
Advancing, while the fhores and towns recede.

Æneid. lib. iii, ver. 72.

Who

Who ever faw an old man, that did not applaud the past, and condemn the prefent time, laying the fault of his mifery and discontent upon the world, and the manners of men?

Famque caput quassans grandis fufpirat arator,
Et cum tempora, temporibus præfentia confert
Præteritis, laudat fortunas fæpe parentis,

Et crepat antiquum genus ut pietate repletum *

Now the old ploughman fighs, and fhakes his head,
And, prefent times comparing with those fled,
His predeceffors happiness does praife,

And the great piety of that old race.

We draw all things along with us; whence it follows, that we confider our death as a very great thing, and that does not fo eafily pafs,

The important

confequences

men are apt to afcribe to their death.

nor without the folemn confultation of the ftars: Tot circa unum caput tumultuantes Deos; as if there was a rout among fo many of the gods about life of one man, and the more we value ourselves, the more we think fo. "What! fhall fo much knowledge be loft, with so much "damage to the world, without a particular concern of the "Deftinies? Does fo rare and exemplary a foul coft no "more the killing, than one that is vulgar, and of no

ufe to the public? This life that protects fo many "others, upon which fo many other lives depend, that *employs fo vaft a number of men in his fervice, and "that fills fo many places ; fhall it drop off like one

that hangs but by its own fingle thread?" None of us lays it enough to heart, that we are but one. Thence proceeded thefe words of Cæfar to his pilot, more tumid than the fea that threatened him.

Italiam fi cælo authore recufas,

Me pele: fola tibi caufa hac eft jufta timoris,
Vectorem non noffe tuum, perrampe procellas

Tutela fecure mei

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• Lucret. lib. ii. ver. 1164:

Lucan. lib. v. ver. 579

If thou to fail for Italy decline
Under the gods' protection, truft to mine;
The only just cause that thou haft to fear,
Is that thou doft not know thy paffenger;
But I being now aboard, tho' Nepture raves,
Fear not to cut thro' the tempeftuous waves.
And these,

-credit jam digna pericula Cafar

Fatis effe fuis: tantufque evertere (dixit)
Me fuper labor eft, parvâ quem puppe fedentem,
Tam magno petiere mari

Thefe dangers, worthy of his destiny,
Cæfar did now believe, and then did cry,
What, is it for the gods a tafk fo great
To overthrow me, that, to do the feat,
In a poor little bark they must be fain
Here to furprise me on the fwelling main?

And that idle fancy of the public, that
the fun mourned for his death a whole
year;

The fun's mourning for the death of Cæfar.

Ille etiam extinto miferatus Cæfare Romam,
Cùm caput obfcurâ nitidum ferrugine texit +.

The fun, when Cæfar fell, was touch'd for Rome
With tender pity, and bewailed its doom.

and a thousand of the like kind, wherewith the world. fuffers itself to be fo eafily impofed upon, believing that our interefts alter the heavens, and that they are concerned at our minute actions. Non tanta calo focietas nobiscum eft, ut noftro fato mortalis fit illi quoque fiderum fulgor; "there is no fuch connection betwixt us and hea66 ven, that the brightness of the ftars fhould decay by "our death."

Lucan. lib. v. ver. 653, &c.
Plin. Nat. Hift. lib. ii. cap. §.

+ Virg, Georg. lib. i. ver. 460, &c.

Now,

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