our jubilee is death; the devil hath therefore failed of his defires; we are happier with death than we fhould be without it: There is no mifery but in himself where there is no end of mifery; and fo indeed in his own fenfe, the ftoick is in the right. He forgets that he can dye who complains of mifery, we are in the power of no calamity while death is in our own.

SECT. XLV.

Now befides this literal and pofitive kind of death, there are others wherein divines make mention, and thofe,. I think, not meerly metaphorical, as mortification, dying unto fin and the world; therefore, I fay, every man hath a double horofcope, one of his humanity, his birth; another of his christianity, his baptism; and from this do I compute or calculare my nativity, not reckoning thofe hore combufta,

combufte, and odd days, or esteeming myfelf any thing, before I was my Saviour's, and inrolled in the register of Chrift: whofoever enjoys not this life, I count him but an apparition, tho' he wear about him the fenfible affections of flesh. In these moral acceptations, the way to be immortal is to dye daily; nor can I think I have the true theory of death, when I contemplate a skull, or behold a skeleton with thofe vulgar imaginations it upon us; I have therefore enlarged that common memento mori, into a more Chriftian memorandum, memento quatuor noviffima: those four inevitable points of us all, death, judgment, heaven and hell. Neither did the contemplations of the Heathens reft in their graves, without a further thought of * Radamanthus, or fome judicial proceeding after death, tho' in another way, and upon fuggeftion of

cafts

their

their natural reasons. I cannot but. marvel from what fibyl or oracle they ftole the prophefy of the world's deftruction by

fire, or whence Lucan learned to fay,

Communis mundo fupereft rogus, offibus aftra Mifturus.----

There yet remains to th' world one common fire, Wherein aur bones with ftars fhall make one pyre.

I believe the world grows nearer its end, yet is neither old nor decayed, nor will ever perish upon the ruins of its own principles. As the work of creation was above nature, fo is its adverfary, annihilation; without which the world hath not its end, but its mutation. Now what force fhould be able to confume it thus far, without the breath of God, which is the trueft confuming flame, my philofophy cannot inform me. Some believe there went not a minute to the world's creation nor fhall there go to its е deftruction

t

destruction; thofe fix days, fo punEtually defcribed, make not to them one moment, but rather feem to manifeft the method and idea of the great work of the intellect of God, than the manner how he proceeded in its operation. I cannot dream that there fhould be at the last day any fuch judicial proceeding, or calling to the bar, as indeed the fcripture feems to imply, and the literal commentators do conceive for unfpeakable myfteries in the fcriptures are often delivered in a vulgar and illuftrative way; and being written unto man, are delivered, not as they truly are, but as they may be underftood; wherein notwithstanding, the different interpretations, according to different capacities, may ftand firm with our devotion, nor be any way prejudicial to the edification of each individual.

SECT

SECT. XLVI.

Now to determine the day and year of this inevitable time, is not only invincible and statute madness, evidenc but also manifest impiety; how beyond fhall we interpret Elias's * 6000 doubt years, or imagine the fecret communicated to a Rabbi which God hath denied unto his angels? It had been an excellent query to have pofed the devil of Delphos, and must needs have forced him to some strange amphibology; it hath not only mocked the predictions of fundry astrologers in ages past, but the prophefies of many melancholy heads in the prefent; who, neither understanding reasonably things paft or prefent, pretend a knowledge of things to come; heads ordained only to manifeft the incredible effects of melancholy, and fulfil old prophefies, rather than be the authors of new. [In those days there fhall come wars and ru

mours