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

In other things thou providest for what may be, and wilt thou not for that which must be. In Summer thou layest in fuel and food, because it may be thou mayst live to spend it in Winter. Thou workest early and late to increase thy heaps, and to add to thy hoards, because it may be thy Children may come to enjoy it. Where is thy reason then, to toil and moil for an uncertainty, and thus foolishly to neglect that which is of necessity?

In other things thou providest for what may be, and wilt thou not for that which must be. In Summer thou layest in fuel and food, because it may be thou mayst live to spend it in Winter. Thou workest early and late to encrease thy heaps, and to add to thy hoards, because it may be thy Children may come to enjoy it. Where is thy reason then, to toly and moyl for an uncertainty, and thus foolishly to neglect that which is of necessity?

¹Secondly, Dost thou know that death may come suddenly? Some diseases do no sooner appear, but we disappear. Death like a flash of lightning hath on a sudden burnt down many a body. It sometimes shoots white powder, doth execution without giving warning.

1. 1Secondly, Death may come suddenly.

Deiodorus dyed with sudden shame; Sophocles with sudden joy; Nabal with sudden fear; Pope Alexander was choked suddenly with a Fly; Anacreon the Poet with the Kernel of a Grape; Aeschylus was killed by the shell of a Tortoise, which the Eagle let fall on his bald head, mistaking it for a Rock; The Cardinal of Lorraine was lighted to the Chambers of death by a Poisoned Torch; A Duke of Brittany Pressed to death in a crowd; King Henry the second of France was killed at Tilting; Senecio Cornelius had his breath stopped by a Squinzy. I might name very many others, who took a short cut to their long homes, Belshazzar's carousing in his Bolls drunk his bane; Ammon, merry at his dainties, meets with Death; Zimri and Cozbi unload their lusts and their