SECT. XVIII.* 1.1
9. COnsider, what a competent time the most of us have had: Some thirty, some fourty, some fifty or sixty yeers. How many come to the grave younger, for one that lives to the shortest of these? Christ himself, as is generally thought, lived but * 1.2 thirty three yeers on earth. If it were to come, as it is past, you would think thirty yeers a long time. Did you not long ago in your threatning sickness, think with your selves, O, if I might enjoy but one seven yeers more, or ten yeers more! And now you have en∣joyed perhaps more then you then begged; and are you neverthe∣less unwilling yet? Except you would not die at all, but desire an immortality here on Earth; which is a sin inconsistent with the truth of Grace. If your sorrow be meerly this, That you are mortal; you might as well have lamented it all your lives: For sure you could never be ignorant of this. Why should not a man that would dye at all, be as well willing at thirty or fourty, if God see it meet, as at seventy or eighty? nay, usually when the longest day is come, men are as loth to depart as ever. He that looseth so many yeers, hath more cause to bewail his own neglect, then to complain of the shortness of his time; and were better lament the wickedness of his life, then the brevity. Length of time doth not conquer corruption; it never withers, nor decayes through age. Except we receive an addition of Grace, as well as Time, we naturally grow the older the worse. Let us then be contented with our allotted proportion: And as we are convinced, that we should