they lie the most heavy
upon me; I hope to find death the same.

Let us but observe in the ordinary changes and declinations we daily
suffer, how nature deprives us of the light and sense of our bodily
decay. What remains to an old man of the vigour of his youth and better
days?

"Heu! senibus vitae portio quanta manet."

["Alas, to old men what portion of life remains!"---Maximian, vel
Pseudo-Gallus, i. 16.]

Caesar, to an old weather-beaten soldier of his guards, who came to ask
him leave that he might kill himself, taking notice of his withered body
and decrepit motion, pleasantly answered, "Thou fanciest, then, that thou
art yet alive."--[Seneca, Ep., 77.]--Should a man fall into this
condition on the sudden, I do not think humanity capable of enduring such
a change: but nature, leading us by the hand, an easy and, as it were, an
insensible pace, step by step conducts us to that miserable state, and by
that means makes it familiar to us, so that we are insensible of the
stroke when our youth dies in us, though it be really a harder death than
the final dissolution of a languishing body, than the death of old age;
forasmuch as the fall is not so great from an uneasy being to none at
all, as it is from a sprightly and flourishing being to one that is
troublesome and painful. The body, bent and bowed, has less force to
support a burden; and it is the same with the soul, and therefore it is,
that we are to raise her up firm and erect against the power of this
adversary. For, as it is impossible she should ever be at rest, whilst
she stands in fear of it; so, if she once can assure herself, she may
boast (which is a thing as it were surpassing human condition) that it is
impossible that disquiet, anxiety, or fear, or any other disturbance,
should inhabit or have any place in her:

"Non vulnus instants Tyranni
Mentha cadi solida, neque Auster
Dux inquieti turbidus Adriae,
Nec fulminantis magna Jovis manus."

["Not the menacing look of a tyrant shakes her well-settled soul,
nor turbulent Auster, the prince of the stormy Adriatic, nor yet the
strong hand of thundering Jove, such a temper moves."
--Hor., Od., iii. 3, 3.]

She is then become sovereign of all her lusts and passions, mistress of
necessity, shame, poverty, and all the other injuries of fortune. Let
us, therefore, as many of us as can, get this a