The practice of piety directing a Christian how to walk, that he may please…

And the year of our Saviour Christ's birth, being the 3948 of the World, was at the end of a Sabbatical year, and the ^*564 Septenary of the World. Moses maketh the common age of all men, to be ten times seven, Psal. 90. and every seventh year commonly produceth some notable^† change or accident in Man's life: And no wonder, for as Hippocrates affirmeth, a Child in his Mother's womb, on the seventh day of his conception, hath all his members finished, and from that day groweth to the perfection of birth; ⟨p. 246⟩which is always either the ninth, or seventh month. At seven years old the Child casts his teeth, and receives new. And every seventh year after, there is some alteration or change in man's life, especially at nine times seven, the Climacteric year, which by experience is found to have been fatal to many of those learned^* men, who have been the chiefest Lights of the World. And if they escaped that year, yet most of them have departed this Life, in a septenary year. Lamech died in the year of his life 777. Methusalem, the longest liver of the Sons of Men, died when he began to enter his 900 and 70 year. Abraham died, when he had lived 25 times seven years. Jacob when he had lived 21 times seven years David, after he had lived ten times seven years. So did Galen, so did Petrarch, who (as Bodin noteth) died on the same day of the year that he was born: so did the Maiden Queen^† ELIZABETH, of blessed and never-dying Memory who came into this world on the Eve of the Nativity of the blessed Virgin Mary; and went out of this world on the Eve of the Annunciation of the blessed Virgin Mary. Hippocrates died in the 15th septenary. Hierom and Isocrates in their 13. Pliny, Bartolus, and Caesar in their 8 septenary. And Johannes de temporibus, ⁵who lived 361 years, died in the 53d septenary of his life. The like might be observed of innumerable others. And indeed