The vanity of this mortal life, or, Of man, considered only in his present…

Therefore, though now we behold a dark Cloud of Mortality hanging over the whole Humane Race; Though we see the grave still devouring, and still unsatisfied, and that all are successively drawn down into it; and we puzzle our selves to assign a reason why such a Creature was made a reasonable Being, capable of an everlasting duration, to visit the world only, and vanish; to converse a short space with objects and affairs so far beneath it, and retire we know not whither. If yet our eye follow him through the darker paths of the Region of Death, till at the next appearance we behold him clothed with immortality, ⟨p. 79⟩and fitted to an endless state, the wonder is over, and our amusement quickly ceases.

Therefore, though now we behold a dark Cloud of Mortality hanging over the whole Humane Race; Though we see the grave still devouring, and still unsatisfied, and that all are successively drawn down into it; and we puzzle our selves to assign a reason why such a Creature was made a reasonable Being, capable of an everlasting duration, to visit the world only, and vanish; to converse a short space with objects and affairs so far beneath it, and retire we know not whither. If yet our eye follow him through the darker paths of the Region of Death, till at the next appearance we behold him cloathed with immortality, ⟨p. 79⟩and fitted to an endless state, the wonder is over, and our amusement quickly ceases.

Wherefore l•t us thus bethink our selves, and consider: Surely he that m•••e this great Universe, and disposed all the sorts, stations, and motions o• Creatures in it, in so exquisite order and method, cannot but be a most perfectly wise and intellectual Agent, and therefore cannot be supposed to have done any thing to no purpose; much less when all the inferior Creatures have Ends visibly answering the exigency of their natures, to have made so excellent a Creature as Man (the nobler part of his lower Creation) in vain; that He only should be without his proportionable end, and after a short continuance in being, return to nothing, without leaving it conjecturable what he was made for. This were so intolerable an incongruity, and so unlike the footsteps that every where else appear of the Divine