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

¹Secondly, It is comfortable against thy own death. God is thy Portion, and at death thou shalt take possession of thy vast estate. Now thou hast a freehold in law, a right to it; but then thou shalt have a freehold in deed, make thy entry on it, and be really seized of it: Its much that heathens who were purblind and could not see afar off into the joys and pleasures of the other world (the hopes of which alone can make death truly desirable) should with less fear meet this foe then many Christians. Nay 'twas more difficult to persuade several of those Pagans to live out all their days, then 'tis to persuade some amongst us to be willing to die when God calls them. Codrus could throw himself into a pit,² that his Country might live by his death. Cato could against the entreaty of all his friends with his own hands open the door at which his life went out. Plotinus the Philosopher held mortality a mercy, that we might not always be liable to the miseries of this life. When the Persian King wept that all his army should die in the revolution of an Age, Artabanus told him, that they should all meet with so many and such great evils, that they should wish themselves dead long before. ⟨p. 183⟩Lysimachus threatened to kill Theodorus, but he stoutly answered the King, that was no great matter; the Cantharides a little fly could do as much. Cleombrotus having read Plato of the Souls immortality, did presently send his own Soul out of his body to try and taste it. The bare opinion of the Druids that the Soul had a continuance after death made them hardy in all dangers (saith Cesar) and fearless of death.³

¹Secondly, It is comfortable against thy own death. God is thy Portion, and at death thou shalt take possession of thy vast estate. Now thou hast a freehold in law, a right to it; but then thou shalt have a freehold in deed, make thy entry on it, and be really seised of it: Its much that heathens who were purblind and could not see afar off into the joys and plesures of the other world (the hopes of which alone can make death truly desireable) should with less fear meet this foe then many Christians. Nay 'twas more difficult to perswade several of those Pagans to live out all their daies, then 'tis to perswade some amonst us to be willing to die when God calls them. Codrus could throw himself into a pit,