The crucifying of the world

HOW long can you say that you shall keep the Riches and Honours which you possess? Can you say that they shall be yours this time twelve-month? or to morrow? I know you cannot. You know not when you arise in the morning, whether ever you shall lie down again alive. Nor when you lie down at night, whether you shall rise alive. And is a state of such uncertain tenure so valuable? You glory in your Honours, and pleasures, and possessions, and for ought you know within this week, or hour, they may be none of yours? However, you are certain to be deprived of them ere long! Its a dull understanding indeed, that cannot foresee the day, when he must be stripped of all, and take his final farewell of the world! You know as sure as you shall live that you must die, and your corpse be laid in the common dust: And whose then shall all your pleasure be? When God calls you away, there's no resisting! Or if he call for any of your earthly comforts, there's no withholding. Then keep them if you can. The bones and dust of your fore-fathers will not say, This house and land is mine! Nor do they retain any impress of their former earthly pleasures and felicity! Alexander could not know his Father Philip's bones by the sight of them, nor find any print of the Crown upon his skull. If you open the Grave and Coffin of your Grandfathers, you shall find there no great signs of Riches or of Honour, or any delights. And should you not look on that which will be, even as if it were already? I cannot but take that which certainly will be, in a manner as if it were in being; and that which certainly will not be, as if it were not: For interposing time is such a Nothing, as makes the difference next to None. What if you might be the Emperor of the world to day, and must be as you are again to morrow, were it desirable, or worthy to be regarded? It disgraceth the greatest felicity on earth, to say, that It will have an end: The time is near when it will not be. As it extenuateth