those excellent authors, Drexelius, Bellarmine, Bona, Sherlock, &c. who have written upon the same subject; and, therefore, believe it will be acceptable to my readers, and thought worthy to be preserved from the injury of time in this collection.

NOSCE te ipsum is a lesson a man can never learn too late; and therefore, though hitherto I have lived so much a stranger to myself, that I have had little leisure, and less desire to think or contemplate (a studious and sedentary life having always been my aversion) yet the solitary condition I am now reduced to, and the melancholy circumstances under which I lie, do, methinks, call upon me to consider what I have been doing, and what I am further shortly to do. I am now under a close confinement, secluded from all conversation with the world, and denied the visits of my nearest and dearest relations; and all this seems to be but the sad prologue to that sadder tragedy in which I am to be the principal actor, before I go off the stage of this world. And, therefore, since death and I must shortly be better acquainted, it will certainly be my wisdom, as well as my interest, to familiarise it to me before hand; and I do not know how that can be better done, than by contemplating the miseries of life, in all its various changes and conditions; and then to look upon death as the great panpharmacon or remedy of all those evils that life subjects us to.

It is true indeed, we generally fly from death as our worst enemy, although it is in truth our greatest friend; and this, to a considering man, is very unaccountable. I must confess, it does seem strange to me, and is, methinks, a thing to be admired, that the poor labourer, to repose himself, longs for the setting sun; that the mariner rows with all his might to attain his wished-for port, and rejoices when he can discover land; that the traveller is never contented, till he be at the end of his journey; and that we, in the mean while, tied in this world to a perpetual task, tossed with continual tempests, and tired with a rough and thorny way, yet cannot see the end of our labour, but with grief; nor behold our port, but with tears; nor approach to our home, but with horror and trembling. This life is but a Penelope's web, in which we are always doing and undoing; a sea that lies open to all winds, which sometimes within, and sometimes without, never ceases to blow violently upon us; a weary journey thro' extreme heats and colds, over high mountains, steep rocks, and dangerous desarts; and thus we pass away our time in weaving at this web, in rowing at this oar, and in passing this miserable way; and yet, when death comes to end our work, and stretches out his arm to pull us into the port; when, after so many dangerous passages, and loathsome lodgings, he would conduct us to our true home and resting place; instead of rejoicing at the end of our labour, of taking comfort at the sight of our desired haven, and of singing at our approach to those happy mansions; we would fain begin our work again, hoist sail to the wind, and would willingly undertake our journey a-new. No more we then remember our weariness and

* Know thyself.

pains; our dangers and our shipwrecks are forgotten. We fear no more the tiresomeness of travel, nor the danger of desarts. But, on the contrary, we apprehend death as an extreme pain; we shun it as the fatal rock on which we are like to split; we fly it as a thief that comes to rob us of our treasure. We do as little children, who all the day complain of illness, and, when the medicine is brought them, are no longer sick: or, as they who all the week long run up and down the streets, complaining of the pain of their teeth, and yet, seeing the barber coming to pull them out, are rather willing still to endure the pain, than use the remedy. And as those tender and delicate bodies, who in a pricking pleurisy complain, and cry out, and cannot stay for a surgeon; and yet when they see him whetting his launcet, to cut the throat of the disease, pull in their arms and hide them in the bed, as if he were come to kill them. We fear more the cure than the disease; the surgeon, than the pain; the stroke, than the imposthume. We have more sense of the medicine's bitterness, soon gone, than of a bitter long-continued languishing: we have more feeling of death, the end of our miseries, than the endless misery of our life. And whence proceedeth this folly and simplicity? we neither know life nor death; we fear what we ought to hope for, and wish for what we ought to fear; we call life a continual death, and yet death is the entrance of a never-dying life.

Now what good, O my soul, is there in life, that thou shouldst so much desire it? Or what evil is there in death, that thou shouldst so much fear it? Nay, what evil is there not in life, and what good is there not in death?

Consider all the periods of this life; we enter it in tears, we pass it in sweat, we end it in sorrow. Great and little, rich and poor, not one in the whole world that can plead immunity from this condition. Man in this point is worse than all other creatures; he is born unable to support himself; neither receiving in his first years any pleasure, nor giving to others any thing but trouble; and before the age of discretion passing infinite dangers. Only herein he is less unhappy than in other ages, because in this he hath no sense nor apprehension of his misery. Now can we think there is any so void of reason, that, if it were granted him to live always a child, would make choice of such a life?

So then it is evident, that not simply to live is desirable; but to live well and happy. But to proceed;

Grows he? His troubles likewise grow up with him. Scarcely is he come out of his nurse's hands, and scarce knows what it is to play, but he falls under the subjection of a schoolmaster; I speak but of those which have the best education, and are brought up with the greatest care and strictness. And then, if he studies, it is ever with repining; and, if he plays, it is never but with fear.

This whole age, while he is under the charge of another, is unto him no better than a prison; and therefore he longs for, and only aspires to that age, in which, freed from the tutelage of another, he may become master of himself; pushing time forward, as it

were, with his shoulder, that he may the sooner enjoy his hopedfor liberty. In short, he desires nothing more than to see the end of his age, which he looks upon as bondage and slavery, and enter upon the beginning of his youth.

And what is the beginning of youth, but the death of infancy? And the beginning of manhood, but the death of youth? Or what is the beginning of to-morrow, but the death of the present day? And thus he implicitly desires his death, and judges his life miserable; and therefore cannot be reputed in a state of happiness or contentment.

Behold him now, according to his wish, at liberty; in that age wherein he has his choice, to take the way of virtue or of vice, and either to choose reason or passion for his guide. His passion entertains him with a thousand delights, prepares for him a thousand baits, and presents him with a thousand worldly pleasures to surprise him; and these are so agreeable to headstrong and unbridled youth, that there are very few that are not taken and beguiled by them; of which my own example is too evident an instance.

But, when the reckoning comes to be made up, what pleasures are they? They are but vicious and polluted pleasures, which ever hold him in a restless fever; pleasures that at the best end in repentance, and, like sweet-meats, are of a hard digestion; pleasures that are bought with pain, and in a moment perish, but leave behind a lasting guilt, and long remorse of conscience; all which I wish my own too dear experience could not witness.

And yet this is the very nature (if they be well examined) of all the pleasures of this world. There is in none so much sweetness, but there is more bitterness; none so pleasant to the mouth, but it leaves an unsavory gusto after it. I will not speak here of the mischiefs, quarrels, debates, wounds, murders, banishments, sickness, and other dangers, whereinto sometimes the incontinency, and sometimes the insolency of this ill-guided age does plunge men; for the remembrance of my own follies, upon this occasion, stops my mouth, and fills me with remorse and shame.

But if those that seem pleasures be nothing else but displeasures, if the sweetness thereof be as an infusion of wormwood; what then must the displeasure be which they feel? And how great the bitterness that they taste?

Behold then, in short, the life of a young man, who, rid of the government of his parents and masters, abandons himself to all the exorbitancies of his unruly passion; which, like an unclean spirit possessing him, throws him sometimes into the water, and then into the fire; sometimes carries him clear over a rock, and at other times flings him headlong to the bottom.

But, if he follows reason for his guide; (which is much the better choice) yet, on this hand, there are wonderful difficulties: for he must resolve to fight in every part of the field, and at every step to be in conflict, as having his enemy in front, in flank, and on the rear, never leaving to assail him; and this enemy is all that can delight him, all that he sees near, or far off. In short, the greatest

enemy, in the world, is the world* itself, which he must therefore overcome. But, beside the world, he has a thousand treacherous enemies within him, among whom his passion is none of the least; which waits for an occasion to surprise him, and betray him to his lusts. It is God only that can make him choose the path of virtue, and it is God only that can keep him in it to the end, and make him victorious in all his combates. But, alas, how few they are that enter into it! And, of those few, how many that retire again! So that, let a man follow the one way or the other, he must either subject himself to a tyrannical passion, or undertake a weary and continual combate; wilfully throw himself into the arms of destruction, or fetter himself, as it were, in the stocks; easily carried away with the current of the water, or painfully stemming the impetuous tide.

See here the happiness of the young man! Who, in his youth, having drunk his full draught of the world's vain and deceivable pleasures, is overtaken by them with such a dull heaviness and astonishment, as drunkards the morrow after a debauch, or gluttons after a plentiful feast; who are so over-pressed with the excesses of the former day, that the very remembrance of it creates their loathing. And even he, that has made the stoutest resistance, feels himself so weary, and with this continual conflict so bruised and broken, that he is either upon the point to yield, or die. And this is all the good, all the contentment, of this flourishing age, by children so earnestly desired, and, by those who have experienced it, so heartily lamented.

Next cometh that which is called 'perfect age,' in which men have no other thoughts, but to purchase themselves wisdom and rest. It is called perfect, indeed, but is herein only perfect, that all imperfections of human nature, hidden before under the simplicity of childhood, or the lightness of youth, appear at this age in their perfection. I speak of none in this place, but those that are esteemed the wisest and most happy, in the opinion of the world.

I have already shewed that we played in fear; and that our short pleasures were attended on with long repentance: But now Avarice and Ambition present themselves to us, promising, if we will adore them, to give us a perfect contentment with the goods and bonours of this world. And surely none but those, who are restrained by a divine hand, can escape the illusions of the one, or the other, and not cast themselves headlong from the top of the pinacle.

But let us see what this contentment is. The covetous man makes a thousand voyages by sea, and journies by land; runs a thousand hazards, escapes a thousand shipwrecks, and is in perpetual fear and travel; and yet oftentimes either loseth his time, or gains nothing but sickness, gouts, and oppilations. In the purchase of this goodly repose, he bestoweth his true rest; and, to gain

The corruptions of nature in those that he converseth with, &c.

wealth, loseth his life. But suppose he hath gained much, and that he hath spoiled the whole East of its pearls, and drawn dry all the mines of the West: Will he then be at quiet, and say, he is content? Nothing less: For, by all his acquisitions, he gains but more disquiet, both of mind and body; from one travel falling into another, never ending, but only changing his miseries. He desired to have them, and now fears to lose them; he got them with burning ardour, and possesses them in trembling cold; he adventured among thieves to get them, and now fears by thieves and robbers to be deprived of them again; he laboured to dig them out of the earth, and now, to secure them, he hides them therein. In short, coming from all his voyages, he comes into a prison: and the end of his bodily travels is but the beginning of the endless labour of his mind. Judge now what this man has gained, after so many miseries! This devil of covetousness persuades him he has some rare and excellent thing; and so it fares with him, as with those poor creatures whom the devil seduceth, under colour of relieving their poverty; who find their hands full of leaves, when they thought to find them full of crowns: he possesseth, or rather is possessed by, a thing wherein is neither power nor vertue, more base and unprofitable, than the least herb of the earth. Yet hath he heaped together this vile excrement, and so brutish is grown, as therewith to crown his head, when he ought to tread it under his feet.

Bat, however it be, is he therewith satisfied and contented? So far from that, that he is now more dissatisfied than ever. We commend most those drinks that breed an alteration, and soonest extinguish thirst; and those meats that in least quantity do longest resist hunger: but now, of this, the more a man drinks, the more he is a-thirst; the more he eats, the more he is an hungry: it is a dropsy, that swells him till he bursts before he can be satisfied. And, which is worse, in some so extravagant is this thirst, that it makes them dig the pits, and carefully draw the water, and, after all, won't suffer them to drink. In the midst of a river, they are dry with thirst; and, on a heap of corn, cry out of famine. They have goods, and dare not use them; garments, but dare not put them on: and, though they are possessed of that in which they joy, they don't enjoy it. The sum of all which is, that, of all which they have, they have nothing.'

Let us then return unto that, that the attaining of all these deceivable goods is nothing else but weariness of body, and the possession, for the most part, weariness of mind; which certainly is so much the greater evil, as the mind is more sensible than the body.

But the complement of all their misery is, when they come to lose them, either by shipwreck, fire, or any other accident, then they cry, weep, and torment themselves; like little children, that have lost their play game, which yet is nothing worth. One cannot persuade them that mortal men have any other good in this world, but that which is mortal. They are, in their own conceits,