The reasons of the Christian religion the first part, of godliness, proving by natural…

This is undeniable; that it is in God's choice whether he will take away his Being it self, or only all the Mercies which are necessary to his well-being: for he that had nothing before but by free gift, may be deprived of any thing which was none of his own, if he forfeit it by abuse. Nay, we live upon such a continued emanation from God, as the beams from the Sun, that it is but God's stopping of his streams of bounty, and we perish, without any other taking away of mercies from us.

§. 17. Nature teacheth men to choose a great deal of (tolerable) pain and misery, rather than not be at all: even so much as will not utterly weigh down the love of life, and of vital operations.

§. 17. Nature teacheth men to choose a great deal of (tollerable) pain and misery, rather than not be at all: even so much as will not utterly weigh down the love of life, and of vital operations.

I say not (as some) that the greatest torment or misery is more eligible (or less odious) than annihilation. But it is certain, that a great deal is. We see abundance (how ever the Roman and Greek Philosophers scorned it as baseness) who are blind, or lame, or in grievous pains of the Gout and Stone, and many that are in miserable poverty, begging their bread, or toiling from morning to night like horses, and yet seldom taste a pleasant bit, but join distracting cares with labours; and yet they are all unwilling to die: Custom hath made their misery tolerable, and they had rather continue so for ever than be annihilated. If then God may annihilate even the innocent, (supposing he had not promised the contrary) then may he lay all that pain, and care, and labour on them, which they would themselves prefer before annihilation. For its no wrong to one that hath his reason and liberty to give him his own choice.