illed with dust, and the _worm shall feed, and feed sweetly_[369] upon
me; when the ambitious man shall have no satisfaction, if the poorest
alive tread upon him, nor the poorest receive any contentment in being
made equal to princes, for they shall be equal but in dust. _One dieth
at his full strength, being wholly at ease and in quiet; and another
dies in the bitterness of his soul, and never eats with pleasure_; but
_they lie down alike in the dust, and the worm covers them_.[370] In
Job and in Isaiah,[371] it covers them and is spread under them, _the
worm is spread under thee, and the worm covers thee_. There are the mats
and the carpets that lie under, and there are the state and the canopy
that hang over the greatest of the sons of men. Even those bodies that
were _the temples of the Holy Ghost_ come to this dilapidation, to ruin,
to rubbish, to dust; even the Israel of the Lord, and Jacob himself,
hath no other specification, no other denomination, but that _vermis
Jacob_, thou worm of Jacob. Truly the consideration of this posthume
death, this death after burial, that after God (with whom are the issues
of death) hath delivered me from the death of the womb, by bringing me
into the world, and from the manifold deaths of the world, by laying me
in the grave, I must die again in an incineration of this flesh, and in
a dispersion of that dust. That that monarch, who spread over many
nations alive, must in his dust lie in a corner of that sheet of lead,
and there but so long as that lead will last; and that private and
retired man, that thought himself his own for ever, and never came
forth, must in his dust of the grave be published, and (such are the
revolutions of the grave) be mingled with the dust of every highway and
of every dunghill, and swallowed in every puddle and pond. This is the
most inglorious and contemptible vilification, the most deadly and
peremptory nullification of man, that we can consider. God seems to have
carried the declaration of his power to a great height, when he sets the
prophet Ezekiel in the valley of dry bones, and says, _Son of man, can
these bones live?_ as though it had been impossible, and yet they did;
the Lord laid _sinews upon them, and flesh, and breathed into them, and
they did live_. But in that case there were bones to be seen, something
visible, of which it might be said, Can this thing live? But in this
death of incineration and dispersion of dust, we see nothing that we