within, sometime without neuer cease to torment vs:
a weary iorney through extreame heates, and coldes, ouer high
mountaynes, steepe rockes, and theeuish deserts. And so we terme
it in weauing at this web, in rowing at this oare, in passing
this miserable way. Yet loe when death comes to ende our worke,
when she stretcheth out her armes to pull vs into the porte,
when after so many dangerous passages, and lothsome lodgings she
would conduct vs to our true home and resting place: in steede
of reioycing at the ende of our labour, of taking comfort at the
sight of our land, of singing at the approch of our happie
mansion, we would faine, (who would beleeue it?) retake our
worke in hand, we would againe hoise saile to the winde, and
willinglie vndertake our iourney anew. No more then remember we
our paines, our shipwracks and dangers are forgotten: we feare
no more the trauailes nor the theeues. Contrarywise, we
apprehende death as an extreame payne, we doubt it as a rocke,
we flye it as a theefe. We doe as litle children, who all the
day complayne, and when the medicine is brought them, are no
longer sicke: as they who all the weeke long runne vp and downe
the streetes with payne of the teeth, and seeing the Barber
comming to pull them out, feele no more payne: as those tender
and delicate bodyes, who in a pricking pleurisie complaine, crie
out, and cannot stay for a Surgion, and when they see him
whetting his Launcet to cut the throate of the disease, pull in
their armes, and hide them in the bed, as, if he were come to
kill them. We feare more the cure then the disease, the surgion
then the paine, the stroke then the impostume. We haue more
sence of the medicins bitternes soone gone, then of a bitter
languishing long continued: more feeling of death the end of our
miseries, then the endlesse misery of our life. And whence
proceedeth this folly and simplicitie? we neyther knowe life,
nor death. We feare that we ought to hope for, and wish for that
we ought to feare. We call life a continuall death: and death
the issue of a liuing death, and the entrance of a neuer dying
life. Now what good, I pray you, is there in life, that we
should so much pursue it? or what euill is there in death, that
we should so much eschue it? Nay what euill is there not in
life? and what good is there not in death? Consider all the
periods of this life. We enter it in teares; we passe it in
sweate, we ende it in sorow. Great and litle, ritch