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SUppose our tongues faulter∣ing, our eye-strings broken, our limbs trembling, for fear of an arrest by this grim sergeant death; mingle the best ingredients the world can afford, it cannot make a cheering Cordial.
Honour is but a blast of Popu∣lar breath, and, like an eccho, va∣nisheth into silence.
The misers Angils are all wing∣ed, and fly away as an Eagle to∣wards heaven.
Doth any man lye the safer be∣cause
his bed posts are gilt, doth our meal relish the better because served up in gold? are our clothes more fit because more fashiona∣ble? what is gold and silver but di∣versified earth and shining clay? the entrails of the earth, the place of its birth, upbraid us for ac∣counting them so precious; the best perfumes are but the sweet of trees, or the mucous excre∣ment of a beast, the softest silks are but the workings of a vile worm, the most generous wines but puddle water straind through a vine; and our choisest dellica∣cies are but dirt Cook'd up in va∣rious forms. Why should we lay the foundation of our happi∣ness upon such phantacies? But sickness comes and gives us right notions of these things: and it teacheth us the right conduct of our Passions, to love these things as if we loved them not,
it is like wormwood, to wean us from the breasts of the creature. The most considerable design of sickness, is to prepare us for Death and Judgement; to make us listen to the strikings of the clock of time with the more at∣tention, to bring us to a more fa∣miliar acquaintance with that stinglesse Serpent, and makes us apprehensive of our pilgrime state: there is nothing in death to make it dreadfull to a good Christian; many times our bit∣ter cups are but as mornings draughts to eternity; by sickness we knock at the gates of the grave, every little accident stops our breath, the roughness of a grape stone, the reflections of a Sun beam, the dust of a wheele, the aspect of a star introduce death; let us therefore with Jo∣seph take a turn or two in our garden, and visit our Sepulchre.
Old age is but a young death,
and a man may read the sentence of death in some mens foreheads written in the lines of a lingring disease.