e, he does all the harm he can; so even these libellous and
licentious jesters utter the venom they have, though sometimes virtue,
and always power, be a good pigeon to draw this vapour from the head
and from doing any deadly harm there.

XII. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, as thy servant James, when he asks that question, _What
is your life?_ provides me my answer, _It is even a vapour, that
appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away_;[171] so, if he
did ask me what is your death, I am provided of my answer, it is a
vapour too; and why should it not be all one to me, whether I live or
die, if life and death be all one, both a vapour? Thou hast made vapour
so indifferent a thing as that thy blessings and thy judgments are
equally expressed by it, and is made by thee the hieroglyphic of both.
Why should not that be always good by which thou hast declared thy
plentiful goodness to us? _A vapour went up from the earth, and watered
the whole face of the ground._[172] And that by which thou hast imputed
a goodness to us, and wherein thou hast accepted our service to thee,
sacrifices; for sacrifices were vapours;[173] and in them it is said,
that a _thick cloud of incense went up to thee_.[174] So it is of that
wherein thou comest to us, the dew of heaven, and of that wherein we
come to thee, both are vapours; and he, in whom we have and are all that
we are or have, temporally or spiritually, thy blessed Son, in the
person of Wisdom, is called so too; _She is_ (that is, he is) _the
vapour of the power of God, and the pure influence from the glory of the
Almighty._[175] Hast thou, thou, O my God, perfumed vapour with thine
own breath, with so many sweet acceptations in thine own word, and shall
this vapour receive an ill and infectious sense? It must; for, since we
have displeased thee with that which is but vapour (for what is sin but
a vapour, but a smoke, though such a smoke as takes away our sight, and
disables us from seeing our danger), it is just that thou punish us with
vapours too. For so thou dost, as the wise man tells us, thou canst
punish us by those things wherein we offend thee; as he hath expressed
it there, _by beasts newly created, breathing vapours_.[176] Therefore
that commination of thine, by thy prophet, _I will show wonders in the
heaven, and in the earth, blood and fire, and pillars of smoke_;[177]
thine apostle, who knew thy meaning best, calls _vapours of smoke_.[178]
One prophet present