§ 11. 4. And alas! how should I bear with comfort the sufferings of this wretched life, without the hopes of a life with Christ? What should support and comfort me under my bodily languishings and pains? my weary hours, and my daily experience of the Vanity and Vexation of all things under the Sun, had I not a prospect of a comfortable end of all? I that have lived in the midst of great and precious mercies, have all my life had something to do, to overcome the temptation of wishing that I had never been born, and had never overcome it, but by the belief of a blessed Life hereafter. Solomon's sense of Vanity and Vexation, hath long made all the business, and wealth, and honour, and pleasure of this world (as such) appear such a dream and shadow to me, that were it not for the End, I could not have much differenced men's sleeping and their waking thoughts, nor have much more valued the waking than the sleeping part of life, but should have thought it a kind of happiness to have slept from the birth unto the death. Children cry when they come into the world; and I am often sorry when I am wakened out of a quiet sleep, especially to the business of an unquiet day. We should be strongly tempted in our considering state, to murmur at our Creator, as dealing much hardlier by us than by the Brutes; if we must have had all those cares, and griefs, and fears, by the knowledge of what we want, and the prospect of ⟨p. 7⟩death, and future evils, which they are exempted from, and had not withal had the hopes of a future felicity to support us. Seneca and his Stoics had no better Argument to silence such murmurers who believed not a better life, than to tell them, that if this life had more evil than good, and they thought God did them wrong, they might remedy themselves by ending it when they would: But that would not cure the repinings of a Nature, who found it self necessarily aweary of the miseries of life, and yet afraid of dying. And it is no great wonder that many thought that preexistent Souls were put into these bodies as a punishment of something done in a former life, while they foresaw not the hoped End of all our fears and sorrows. O how contemptible a thing is man! saith the same Seneca, unless he lift up himself above humane things? Therefore, saith Solomon, Eccles. 2. 17.
§ 11. 4. And alas! how should I bear with comfort the sufferings of this wretched life, without the hopes of a life with Christ? What should support and comfort me under my bodily languishings and pains? my weary hours, and my daily experience of the Vanity and Vexation of all things under the Sun, had I not a prospect of a comfortable end of all? I that have lived in the midst of great and precious mercies, have all my life had something to do, to overcome the temptation of wishing that I had never been born, and had never overcome it, but by the belief of a blessed Life hereafter. Solomon's sense of Vanity and Vexation, hath long made all the business, and wealth, and honour, and pleasure of this world (as such) appear such a dream and shadow to me, that were it not for the End, I could not have much differenced men's sleeping and their waking thoughts, nor have much more valued the waking than the sleeping part of life, but should have thought it a kind of happiness to have slept from the birth unto the death. Children cry when they come into the world; and I am often sorry when I am wakened out of a quiet sleep, especially to the business of an unquiet day. We should be strongly tempted in our considering state, to murmure at our Creator, as dealing much hardlier by us than by the Brutes; if we must have had all those cares, and griefs, and fears, by the knowledge of what we want, and the prospect of ⟨p. 7⟩death, and future evils, which they are exempted from, and had not withal had the hopes of a future felicity to support us. Seneca and his Stoicks had no better Argument to silence such murmurers who believed not a better life, than to tell them, that if this life had more evil than good, and they thought God did them wrong, they might remedy themselves by ending it when they would: But that would not cure the repinings of a Nature, who found it self necessarily aweary of the miseries of life, and yet afraid of dying. And it is no great wonder that many thought that preexistent Souls were put into these bodies as a punishment of something done in a former life, while they foresaw not the hoped End of all our fears and sorrows. O how contemptible a thing is man! saith the same Seneca, unless he lift up himself above humane things? Therefore, saith Solomon, Eccles. 2. 17.
