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

He whose creative fancy could make him golden Mountains in a dream, create him a Prince of Nations, give him to enjoy the most delicious pleasures of the world in Idea; might, with some plausible show of reason, be deemed the happier man, than he that hath, and is all this indeed: for his toil is less, and his victories unbloody, his pleasures not so impure. However, one would think that to such whose utmost attainments end only in the pleasure of their sense, and have but this Epiphonema, Now, let us sit down, eat, drink, and be merry; A little time might suffice for business of no more weight; and that no man, after he hath once seen the course of the world, and tasted of its best delicacies, should greatly wish for a renewal, or long-continued repetition of so fulsome vanities.

He whose creative fancy could make him golden Mountains in a dream, create him a Prince of Nations, give him to enjoy the most delicious pleasures of the world in Idea; might, with some plausible shew of reason, be deem'd the happier man, than he that hath, and is all this indeed: for his toil is less, and his victories unbloody, his pleasures not so impure. However, one would think that to such whose utmost attainments end only in the pleasure of their sense, and have but this Epiphonema, Now, let us sit down, eat, drink, and be merry; A little time might suffice for business of no more weight; and that no man, after he hath once seen the course of the world, and tasted of its best delicacies, should greatly wish for a renewal, or long-continued repetition of so fulsome vanities.

But the most find not the world so kind; and are not so much exercised in the innovating of ⟨p. 145⟩pleasures, as miseries (changes being their only remedies, as the Moralist speaks); or in bearing (more sadly) the same every day's burden; and drawing out the series of their calamities in the same kind through the whole course of their time.