The riches of Gods love unto the vessels of mercy, consistent with his absolute…The riches of Gods love unto the vessells of mercy, consistent with his absolute…

The third thing which I oppose is common sense; which judgeth pains, when they are extreme to be worse then death. Hence it is that Job being tormented in his body by the Devil cursed his birth day, magnified ¹the condition of the dead, and wished himself in the grave, plainly preferring the loss of his being, before that miserable being which he then had. And hence it is that men even of stoutest and hardest spirits (as we see by daily experience) would (if they might enjoy their option) choose rather to have no bodies at all, then bodies tormented with the stone or gout, or any other sharp and sensible disease It is a known saying grounded on this judgement of sense. Praestat semel quàm semper mori, better it is to dye once then to be always dying. This the tyrant Tiberius knew very well, and therefore he would not suffer those, towards whom he purposed to exercise his cruelty, to be put to a speedy death, but by lingering torments. And Suetonius reporteth of him in that chapter, wherein he reckoneth up his barbarous and cruel practises; These, saith he, who would have dyed through the extremity of their torment, he used means to keep alive (nam mortem adeo leve supplicium putabat) For he accounted death so light a punishment; that when he heard that one Carnulius, a man appointed to torments, had prevented him, he cried out, Carnulius me evasit Carnulius hath escaped mine hands. To a prisoner entreating him to put him quickly to death he gave him this answer, Nondum tecum redii in gratiam, I am not yet friends with thee; accounting it a great kindness to put him quickly to death, whom he might have tortured. Many that were called into question did partly wound themselves in their own houses, Ad vexationem ignominiosam vitandam, to prevent that pain and ignominy, which they knew they should endure; And partly poisoned themselves in the midst of the Court, as they were going to their a••aingment for the same cause Seneca speaking of one Maecenas, who was so a frayd of being dead, that he said he would not refuse weakness, deformity, nec acutam crucem, no nor the sharpest crucifying, so that he might live still in these extremities, he calleth his desire. Turpissimum votum, a base, and most ignoble, and unnatural with, and censureth him for a most effeminate and contemptible man;

The third thing which I oppose is common sense; which judgeth paines, when they are extreame to be worse then death. Hence it is that Job being tormented in his body by the Devill cursed his birth day, magnified