and by and by another: but howsoeuer on the boord they
differ in their degree, yet when the game is ended, and they
are swept all into the bagge, there is none better than other,
the meanest lieth aboue, and the greatest is vnderneath. Thus
both the spirit of God, and the iudgement of wise men, by
significant similitudes would riuet it in into vs, and fasten it
as with a naile into our cogitations, that our daies are but va∣nitie,
our continuance heere but momentame, our abode
on earth but vncertaintie.
7 Now lest it should be said, that with some it may bee
thus, but with other otherwise, it is farther added, that All
flesh is grasse. Men are all of the same molde, and returne to
the same substance. The wise woman of Tecoah could speake
in generall to Dauid, We must needs die, and we are as water
spilt on the ground, which cannot be gathered vp againe. Heere
shee ioineth herselfe with Dauid, My Lord we needs must
die, you a man, and I a woman: you a Soueraigne, I a sub∣iect.
Dauid himselfe knew this, when lying in his death-bed,
he spake thus vnto Salomon, I go the way of all the earth.
Death is the way of all flesh. So holy Iob, I know that thou
wilt bring me to death, and to the house appointed for all the li∣uing.
So S. Paul to the Hebrewes, It is appointed vnto men
that they shall once die, and after that commeth the iudgement.
Where the indefinite proposition is equiualent to a generall.
Death, saith Seneca, is the hauen, whither euery ship must go:
some come sooner, and some come later, but there they all
must ariue. Perhaps when a ship is entring into the mouth of
the hauen, there commeth a blast of winde, and driueth it
out againe; but that will not serue the turne, it must backe
to the same place. The speech is true of all, Vitaperpetuo
auolat, neque potest retincri: mors quotidie ingruit, neque potest
resisti. Life alway flieth away, and cannot be held backe: and
death daily doth grow on, and cannot be resisted. In this one
point all conditions are alike. The yoong may, and the old
must. The difference is no more, but the one come vnto
death, and death commeth to the other. Death, saith Saint
Bernard, non miseratur inopiam, non diuitias reueretur, &c.