"minated 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 same state, or "that is always the same thing. For, that it is so, "let this be the proof: if we are always one and "the same, how comes it to pass that we are now pleased with one thing, and by and by with ano"ther? How is it that we love or hate, praise or "condemn, contrary things? How comes it to pass "that we have different affections, and no more re"tain the same sentiment in the same thought? for "it is not likely, that, without mutation, we should "assume other passions; and that which suffers "mutation does not remain the same; and if it be "not the same, it is not therefore existing; but the "same that the being is, does, like it, change its 66 being, becoming evermore another from another thing; and, consequently, the natural senses abuse "and deceive themselves, taking that which seems, "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 say, that "never had beginning, nor never shall have ending, "and to which time never brings any mutation: "for time is a moving thing, and that appears as in Time a a shadow, with a matter evermore flowing and moving thing,with"running, without ever remaining stable and per- out perma"manent; and to which those words appertain be- nency. "fore, and after, has been, or shall be; which, at "the first sight, evidently show, that it is not a thing that is; for it were a great folly, and an apparent falsity, to say that that is, which is not yet "in being, or that has already ceased to be; and as to these words, Present, Instant, and Now, "by which it seems that we principally support "and found the intelligence of time, reason disco"vering it, does presently destroy it; for it imme"immediately divides and splits it into the future " and past; being, of necessity, to consider it di"vided in two. The same happens to nature that 66 " is measured, as to time that measures it; for she "has nothing that is subsisting and permanent, but "all things are either born, bearing, or dying. By "which means it were sinful to say of God, who is "he who only is, that he was, or that he shall be; "for those are terms of declension, passage, or vi "cissitude, 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 subject "to any declension; before whom nothing was, "and after whom nothing shall be, either more new "or more recent; but a real being, that with one "sole Now fills the For ever, and that there is no"thing that truly is, but he alone; without being "able to say, he has been or shall be, without beginning, and without end." 66 course, To this religious conclusion of a pagan I should only add this testimony of one of the same condition,* for the close of this long and tedious diswhich would furnish me with endless matter. "What a vile and abject thing," says he, " is man, "if he do not raise himself above humanity?" It is a fine sentence, and a profitable desire, but equally absurd; for to make a handful bigger than the hand, and the cubit longer than the arm, and to hope to stride further than the legs can reach, is both impossible and monstrous, or that man should rise above himself and humanity, for he cannot see but with his eyes, nor seize but with his power. He shall be exalted, if God will lend him his extraordinary hand; he shall exalt himself, by abandoning and renouncing his own proper means, and by suffering himself to be raised and elevated by means purely celestial: it belongs to our Christian faith, and not to Seneca's stoical virtues, to pretend to this divine and miraculous metamorphosis. Seneca, in his Natural Question, lib. i. in the preface. 12 CHAPTER IV. Of judging of the Death of another. WHEN we judge of another's courage in death, It surance at 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 assurance that it is their last hour, and there is nothing wherein the flattery of hope more deludes us. never ceases to whisper in our ears, "Others have No very re "been much sicker without dying; my condition solute as"is not so desperate as it is thought, and, at the the article worst, God has wrought other miracles." This of death, happens, by reason that we set too much value upon ourselves. It seems, to us, as if the universality of things were, in some measure, to suffer by our annihilation, and that it commiserated our condition; because our depraved sight represents things to itself after the same manner, and that we are of opinion, they stand in as much need of us, as we do of them; like people at sea, to whom mountains, fields, cities, heaven, and earth, are tossed at the same rate as they are: Provehimur portu, terræque urlesque recedunt.* Out of the port, with a brisk gale we speed, Who ever saw an old man that did not applaud the Jamque caput quassans grandis suspirat arator, Æneid, lib. iii. ver. 72. + Lucret. lib. ii. ver. 1164. Now the old ploughman sighs, and shakes his head, And the great piety of that old race. The impor- We draw all things along with us; whence it foltant conse- lows, that we consider our death as a very great men are apt thing, and that does not so easily pass, nor without to ascribe the solemn consultation of the stars: Tot circa unum quences to their death. 66 caput tumultuantes Deos; as if there was a rout among so many of the gods about the life of one man; and the more we value ourselves, the more we think so. "What! shall so much knowledge be "lost, with so much damage to the world, without a particular concern of the Destinies? Does so 66 rare and exemplary a soul cost no more the killing than one that is vulgar, and of no use to the public? This life that protects so many others, upon which so many other lives depend, that employs so vast a number of men in his service, and "that fills so many places; shall it drop off like one "that hangs but by its own single thread?" None of us lays it enough to heart that we are but one. Thence proceeded these words of Cæsar to his pilot, more tumid than the sea that threatened him : 66 Italiam si cælo authore recusas, Me pete: sola tibi causa hæc est justa timoris, If thou to sail for Italy decline Under the gods' protection, trust to mine; And these: Credit jam digna pericula Cæsar Lucan. lib. v. ver. 579. Idem, ibid, ver. 653, &c. These dangers, worthy of his destiny, And that idle fancy of the public, that the sun The sun's mourned for his death a whole year: Ille etiam extincto miseratus Cæsare Romam, and a thousand of the like kind, wherewith the world 66 mourning for the death of Cæsar. ought to tude of ma themselves Now to judge of the constancy and resolution of What we a man, that does not yet believe himself to be cer- judge of tainly in danger, though he really is, is no reason; the fortiand it is not enough that he dies in this proceeding, ny who unless he purposely put himself upon it for this end. have put. It commonly falls out, in most men, that they set a to death. good face upon the matter, and speak big, to acquire a reputation, which they hope also, whilst living, to enjoy. Of all that I have seen die, fortune has disposed their countenances and not their design; and even of those who, in ancient times, have dispatched themselves, it is much to be noticed, whether it were a sudden or a lingering death. That cruel Roman emperor would say of his prisoners, "That he would "make them feel death;" and if any one killed himself in prison, "That fellow," said he, "has |