yrdoms did probably lose not many months of their days, or
parted with life when it was scarce worth the living; for (beside that
long time past holds no consideration unto a slender time to come) they
had no small disadvantage from the constitution of old age, which
naturally makes men fearful, and complexionally superannuated from the
bold and courageous thoughts of youth and fervent years. But the
contempt of death from corporal animosity promoteth not our felicity.
They may sit in the orchestra and noblest seats of heaven who have held
up shaking hands in the fire, and humanly contended for glory.

Meanwhile, Epicurus lies deep in Dante's hell, wherein we meet with
tombs inclosing souls which denied their immortalities. But whether the
virtuous heathen, who lived better than he spake, or, erring in the
principles of himself, yet lived above philosophers of more specious
maxims, lie so deep as he is placed; at least so low as not to rise
against Christians who, believing or knowing that truth, have lastingly
denied it in their practice and conversation--were a query too sad to
insist on.

But all or most apprehensions rested in opinions of some future being,
which, ignorantly or coldly believed, begat those perverted conceptions,
ceremonies, sayings, which Christians pity or laugh at. Happy are they
which live not in that disadvantage of time, when men could say little
for futurity but from reason; whereby the noblest minds fell often upon
doubtful deaths and melancholy dissolutions. With those hopes Socrates
warmed his doubtful spirits against that cold potion; and Cato, before
he durst give the fatal stroke, spent part of the night in reading the
immortality of Plato, thereby confirming his wavering hand unto the
animosity of that attempt.

It is the heaviest stone that melancholy can throw at a man, to tell him
he is at the end of his nature; or that there is no farther state to
come, unto which this seems progressional, and otherwise made in vain.
Without this accomplishment, the natural expectation and desire of such
a state were but a fallacy in nature. Unsatisfied considerators would
quarrel at the justice of their constitutions, and rest content that
Adam had fallen lower; whereby, by knowing no other original, and deeper
ignorance of themselves, they might have enjoyed the happiness of
inferior creatures, who in tranquillity possess their constitutions, as
having not the apprehension to deplore their own n