A61390:307
A discourse concerning old-age tending to the instruction, caution and comfort of aged persons…
A discourse concerning old-age tending to the instruction, caution and comfort of aged persons / by Richard Steele ...
London: printed by J. Astwood for Tho. Parkhurst, 1688
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.
One would wonder what shift even the Heathen made to render Death desirable, who had such weak glimmerings of any other life. And yet even they would thus argue: Death, either it annihilates us, or else translates us: Annihilation will but reduce me into the State wherein I was; and if it translate me, it will put me into better lodgings; my Soul can be no where so penned up, as here it is in the Bodym. What boast would they have made of Death, had they but firmly believed everlasting life? For this it was which enabled the Apostle to make this expression, Phil. 1. 23.—Having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better. For where should the Spouse desire to be, but with her husband? or where the members, but with the head? And upon this account, ⟨p. 235⟩that good Lady Falkland would usually say, when she was going to bed, Now am I nearer Heaven by one day than ever I was. The Aged person sees a woeful wilderness behind him, and the blessed land of Promise before him, and therefore no wonder that, with Moses, he longs to be in it. And the nearer the holy Soul approacheth its perfection, the more earnest and almost impatient it is to attain it.
One would wonder what shift even the Heathen made to render Death desirable, who had such weak glimmerings of any other life. And yet even they would thus argue: Death, either it annihilates us, or else translates us: Annihilation will but reduce me into the State wherein I was; and if it translate me, it will put me into better lodgings; my Soul can be no where so pen'd up, as here it is in the Bodym. What boast would they have made of Death, had they but firmly believed everlasting life? For this it was which enabled the Apostle to make this expression, Phil. 1. 23.—Having a desire to depart, and to be with Christ, which is far better. For where should the Spouse desire to be, but with her husband? or where the members, but with the head? And upon this account, ⟨p. 235⟩