nd have laid up in store for ourselves no
treasure for that life beyond, when of a sudden there standeth over us
the doom of death. Then, then at last do those evil and cruel citizens
of darkness, that received us, dispatch us stript of all worldly
goods,--for all our time has been wasted on their service--and carry us
off 'to a dark land and a gloomy, to a land of eternal darkness, where
there is no light, nor can one behold the life of men.' As for that
good counsellor, who made known all the truth and taught that sagacious
and wise king the way of salvation, understand thou that I, thy poor
and humble servant, am he, who am come hither for to shew thee the good
and infallible way to lead thee to things eternal and unending, and to
counsel thee to lay up all thy treasure there; and I am come to lead
thee away from the error of this world, which, to my woe, I also loved,
and clave to its pleasures and delights. But, when I perceived, with
the unerring eyes of my mind how all human life is wasted in these
things that come and go; when I saw that no man hath aught that is
stable and steadfast, neither the rich in his wealth, nor the mighty in
his strength, nor the wise in his wisdom, nor the prosperous in his
prosperity, nor the luxurious in his wantonness, nor he that dreameth
of security of life in that vain and feeble security of his dreams, nor
any man in any of those things that men on earth commend ('tis like the
boundless rush of torrents that discharge themselves into the deep sea,
thus fleeting and temporary are all present things); then, I say, I
understood that all such things are vanity, and that their enjoyment is
naught; and, that even as the past is all buried in oblivion, be it
past glory, or past kingship, or the splendour of rank, or amplitude of
power, or arrogance of tyranny, or aught else like them, so also
present things will vanish in the darkness of the days to come. And,
as I am myself of the present, I also shall doubtless be subject to its
accustomed change; and, even as my fathers before me were not allowed
to take delight for ever in the present world, so also shall it be with
me. For I have observed how this tyrannical and troublesome world
treateth mankind, shifting men hither and thither, from wealth to
poverty, and from poverty to honour, carrying some out of life and
bringing others in, rejecting some that are wise and understanding,
making the honourable and illustrious dishonoured a