Human nature in its fourfold state ... In several practical discourses

Secondly, Man's life is a short thing: it is not only a vanity but a short-lived vanity. Consider, First, How the life of man is reckoned in the scripture. It was indeed sometimes reckoned by hundreds of years: but no man ever arrived at a thousand, which yet ⟨p. 218⟩bears no proportion to eternity. Now, hundreds are brought down to scores, threescore and ten, or fourscore is its utmost length, Psal. xc 10. But few men arrive at that length of life. Death does but rarely wait, till men be bowing down, by reason of age, to meet the grave. Yet, as if years were too big a word, for such a small thing as the life of man on earth; we find it counted by months, Job xiv 5 "The number of his months are with thee." Our course, like that of the moon, is run in a little time; we are always waxing or waning, till we disappear. But frequently it is reckoned by days; and these but few, Job xiv 1. Man that is born of a woman is of few days. Nay, it is but one day in scripture account; and that a hireling's day, who will precisely observe when his day ends, and give over his work, ver. 6. Till he shall accomplish as an hireling his day. Yea, the scripture brings it down to the shortest space of time, and calls it a moment, 2 Cor. iv. 17. Our light affliction (though it last all our life long) is but for a moment. But elsewhere it is brought down to yet a lower pitch, farther than which one cannot carry it, Psal xxxix. 5. Mine age is nothing before thee. Agreeable to this, Solomon tells us, Eccles. iii. 2. There is a time to be born, and a time to die; but makes no mention of a time to live, as if our life were but a skip from the womb to the grave. Secondly, Consider the various similitudes by which the scripture represents the shortness of man's life. Hear Hezekiah, Isa. xxxviii. 12. "Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent; I have cut off, like a weaver, my life." The shepherd's tent is soon removed; for the flocks must not feed long in one place: such is a man's life on earth, quickly gone. It is a web, he is incessantly working; he is not idle so much as one moment, in a short time it is wrought, and then it is cut off. Every breathing is a thread in this web, when the last breath is drawn, the web is woven out, he expires and then it is cut off, he breathes no more. Man is like grass and like a flower,