A16333:121
Mr. Bolton's last and learned work of the four last things death, judgement, hell,…Mr. Boltons last and learned worke of the foure last things death, iudgement, hell,…
Mr. Bolton's last and learned work of the four last things death, judgement, hell, and heaven. With an assizes-sermon, and notes on Justice Nicolls his funeral. Together with the life and death of the author. Published by E.B.Mr. Boltons last and learned worke of the foure last things death, iudgement, hell, and heauen. With an assises-sermon, and notes on Iustice Nicolls his funerall. Together with the life and death of the authour. Published by E.B.
London: printed by George Miller, 1632
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
And leave their now forlorn former favourites to the fury of a guilty conscience for their cursed forsaking the Fountain of living 1waters, all their life long, and hewing them out such cisterns, broken cisterns that could hold no water; nor help in the evil Day. We all stand at the door of eternity; if death but once open it naturally or violently, or by any of his thousand thousand ways, we are presently stripped of all, and immediately enter ⟨p. 43⟩upon it, either that of everlasting pleasures, or the other of everlasting pains. And therefore it will be our wisdom in the mean time to value worldly vanities at no more than their own price; and industriously to ply all means which may enrich us with heavenly treasures of that divine stamp and lasting temper, which may attend us through all eternity. And as all these things here below are thus mutable and fugitive, so thy self art mortal and frail. A creature as it were but of one days lasting, like that iFlower and Bird which as naturalists report, receive their being and birth in the morning; but wither and die at night. Thy abode upon earth is like a vanishing kvision of the night, a flying dream, the very dream of a shadow, &c. This ⟨p. 44⟩swift tide of mans life, after it once turneth and declineth, ever runneth with a perpetual ebb and falling stream, but never floweth again: Our leaf once fallen, springeth no more; neither doth the Sun or the Summer beautify us again with the garments of new leaves and flowers, or ever after revive or renew us with freshness of youth, and former strength. Not only Solomon (Eccles. 1.) makes us in this respect more miserable than the Sun and other soul-less creatures; but even the Poet also by the light of natural reason (whom I urge only to make Christians, mindless of their own mortality, ashamed, who have thoughts of heaven and earth, as though eternity were upon earth, and time only in heaven) tells us that, Soles occidere & redire possunt: Thus in English;