The fading of the flesh and flourishing of faith, or, One cast for eternity…

Every part of thy life may mind thee of thy death.¹ The Moralist speaks true, Thou livest by deaths; thy food is the dead carcasses of birds, or fish, or beasts; ⟨p. 32⟩thy finest raiment is the worms grave before tis thy garment. Look to the Heavens, the Sun riseth and setteth, so that life which now shineth pleasantly on thee will set; how much doth it behove thee to work the work of him that sent thee into the world while day lasteth, that thou mayst not set in a cloud, which will certainly prognosticate thy foul weather in the other world. Look down to the Earth, there thou beholdest thy mother out of whose womb thou didst at first come, and in whose bowels thou shalt ere long be laid. The dust and graves of others cry aloud to thee, as Gideon to his Soldiers, Look on us, and do likewise; O trim thy soul against that time: If thou risest up, and walkest abroad in the streets, thou seest this house and that seat, where such a woman such a man dwelt, and lo, the place which knew them shall know them no more; they are gone, and have carried nothing with them but their godliness or ungodliness. If thou liest down thy sleep is the image of death, thou knowest not whether thou shalt awake in a bed of feathers, or in a bed of flames; but art certain, that shortly thy body shall lye down in the grave, and there remain till the resurrection. Look on thy companions, thou mayst see death siting on their countenances, its creeping on them in the deafness of their ears, in the dimness of their eyes; nay its posting towards them in the very height and Zenith of their natural perfections. Look on thy own house of clay, death possibly looks out at thy windows, however it looks in at thy windows; thou wearest it in thy face, thou bearest it in thy bones, and doth it not behove thee to prepare for it? Naturalists tell us, that smelling of earth is very wholesome ⟨p. 33⟩for consumptionate bodies. O Reader, a serious thought of thy death, that thou art but dust, would be very wholesome for thy declining and decaying soul.

Every part of thy life may mind thee of thy death.¹ The Moralist speaks true, Thou livest by deaths; thy food is the dead carkasses of birds, or fish, or beasts;