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

Let no Aged person imagine, that they are to live to no purpose. The Levites, though at Fifty years of age, they were discharged from the most laborious service of the Temple, yet they were not left to be Idle, but to do the work of the Lord in some more easy employments. Tully brings in Cato telling how he learned Greek in his Old age, and that even at those years no body came to see him, but they found him employed^o: and he reports of Leontius Gorgias, who was an hundred and seven years old, and yet never was weary of his studies and labours. The truth is, sloth is a vice that accelerates Old age, as you heard before, and abets that languishment of the Spirits which furthers it. We shall not feel it so sensibly, while we are continually employed^p. How much knowledge and wisdom have we neglected, which we might have obtained, if our sloth had not beguiled us?

Let no Aged person imagine, that they are to live to no purpose. The Levites, though at Fifty years of age, they were discharged from the most laborious service of the Temple, yet they were not left to be Idle, but to do the work of the Lord in some more easie imployments. Tully brings in Cato telling how he learned Greek in his Oldage, and that even at those years no body came to see him, but they found him imployed^o: and he reports of Leontius Gorgias, who was an hundred and seven years old, and yet never was weary of his studies and labours. The truth is, sloth is a vice that accelerates Oldage, as you heard before, and abetts that languishment of the Spirits which furthers it. We shall not feel it so sensibly, while we are continually imployed^p. How much knowledge and wisdom have we neglected, which we might have obtained, if our sloth had not beguiled us?

1. oAnimus fuit victor annorum. as Bernard saith of Humbertus.
2. pSemp•r enim in iis studiis laboribusque viventi, non intelligitur quando obrepat sectus. Cicero.