A discourse concerning old-age tending to the instruction, caution and comfort of aged persons…

THE Seventh Privilege of Old-age ¹is, That they are Further from the World than younger persons are. These are in the midst of it, and of all its troubles, and temptations; but those have travelled through them, and are now almost past them. There are Two things in the World that make it uneasy, Sin and Suffering. Sin that makes ⟨p. 227⟩it uneasy to Good men, Suffering that makes it uneasy to All men. A good man hath contracted a deep hatred against sin, and yet he cannot be rid of it. He meets with it in every place; among the looser sort of people it swarms, he sees and hears that every day, which vexeth his righteous soul; and returning home he finds it in his own heart, and that grieves him most. He is chained to a body of death without any remedy; and the more knowledge and grace he hath, the more he hates it, and abhors himself by reason of it. It meets him in every Employment, in every Prayer, and vexeth him at the heart. He is like a man who lives by a bad Neighbour, or that is yoked to a froward Wife, that cannot live comfortably with them, and cannot live possibly without them: Hence he cries out, O wretched man that I am, who shall deliver me from the body of this Death? Now the young person, is in the midst of these Philistines; the corruption of his Nature meeting, as is said before, with the temptations of the World, is as tinder to the sparks, too easily set on fire with lust, anger, gluttony, and such like; wherewith he must be either in continual and sharp ⟨p. 228⟩conflict, or else miserably ruined. Now the Aged person hath gotten many victories in this spiritual warfare, whereby his enemies are grown weaker, and he bolder and stronger. He knows this bickering will not last long, and sees the reward of his victory, and so pleaseth himself with his Condition. This made the Apostle, when Aged, to say, 2 Tim. 4. 7, 8. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith, and henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness: And is not this a Privilege? would he accept a new lease to live over his life again? not for the whole world. Seneca could say, if some God would indulge me so far, as that I might return into my cradle again, I would earnestly refuse it: I would never yield, when I have almost run my whole race, to return quite back again