The Common Places

31 But some men might muse in their mind, ¹how it happened that the old Fathers before the flood, and a while after lived so long; and that this age afterward was shortened by little and little, until it was brought by a common course unto fourscore years? Many were the causes of that long life in the old time. ²[And it hath been the general opinion, as well among the philosophers as Divines, ³that those ancients lived all that while by nature, and not miraculously. §1And the first reason that moved them thereunto, was; that our first parents Adam and Eve were created immediately by the hand of God, without any ⟨p. 127⟩means of man, or of any other corruptible thing: wherefore it is presupposed, that he made them of an excellent complexion, of a perfect agreement, and proportion of humours: by which means the children proceeding from them, resembled their parents in sound and good complexion, until the third generation. §2Secondly, in those days they had no such cause to breed diseases and infirmities, as did afterward follow to their succession. §3Thirdly, their temperance in eating and drinking, as well in quantity as in quality, did much further them; because they were not acquainted with the eating of flesh, nor yet with the confection of so many dainty dishes, as we are in these days.