A30587:1052
Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and…
Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and evils of them : with cautions that we may not be hurt by them, and endeavours to heal them / by Jeremiah Burroughs.Irenicum, to the lovers of truth and peace heart-divisions opened in the causes and evils of them : with cautions that we may not be hurt by them, and endeavours to heal them / by Jeremiah Burroughes.
London: printed for Robert Dawlman, 1653
Title page typeset from the transcription.
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.
The thirteenth.
Let us consider our mortality.
IT is but a little time we have to live; shall the greater part of it, nay why should any part of it be ravelled out with contentions and quarrels? I have read of Pompey, that upon a time passing over divers hills, where there lived many people in caves, but their order was that the man lived in one cave and the wife in another; he asking the reason, they said, In those parts they live not long, therefore they desired that the little time they did live, they might have peace and quiet, which they had found by experience they could not have, if man and wife lived constantly together.1 Though the means they used for their quiet was sordid, yet the good use they made of the shortness of their lives was commendable. Virgil says, if swarms of Bees meet in the air, they will sometimes fight as it were in a set battle with great violence; but if you cast but a little dust upon them, they will all be presently quiet. Sprinkle upon your hearts the meditations of death, that within a while this flesh of yours will be turned to dust, this will quiet you.
IT is but a little time we have to live; shall the greater part of it, nay why should any part of it be ravel'd out with contentions and quarrels? I have read of Pompey, that upon a time passing over divers hils, where there lived many people in caves, but their order was that the man lived in one cave and the wife in another; he asking the reason, they said, In those parts they live not long, therefore they desired that the little time they did live, they might have peace and quiet, which they had found by experience they could not have, if man and wife lived constantly together.