a living
death, and either of these is worse than simple death or destruction of
being. The serious contemplation of the miseries of this life made wise
Solomon to praise the dead more than the living, contrary to the custom of
men, who rejoice at the birth of a man-child, and mourn at their death.
Yea, it pressed him further, to think them which have not at all been,
better than both, because they have not seen the evil under the sun. This
world is such a chaos, such a mass of miseries, that if men understood it
before they came into it, they would be far more loath to enter it, than
they are now afraid to go out of it. And truly we want not remembrances
and representations of our misery every day, in that children come weeping
into the world, as it were bewailing their own misfortune, that they were
brought forth to be sensible subjects of misery. And what is all our
life-time, but a repetition of sighs and groans, anxiety and satiety,
loathing and longing, dividing our spirits and our time between them? How
many deaths must we suffer before death come? For the absence or loss of
any thing much desired, is a separation no less grievous to the hearts of
men, than the parting of soul and body: for affection to temporal
perishing things, unites the soul so unto them, that there is no parting
without pain, no dissolution of that continuity without much vexation, and
yet the soul must suffer many such tortures in one day, because the things
are perishing in their own nature, and uncertain. What is sleep, which
devours the most part of our time, but the very image and picture of
death, a visible and daily representation of the long cessation of the
sensitive life in the grave? And yet, truly, it is the best and most
innocent part of our time, though we accuse it often. There is both less
sin and less misery in it, for it is almost the only lineament and
refreshment we get in all our miseries. Job sought to assuage his grief
and ease his body, but it was the extremity of his misery that he could
not find it. Now, my beloved, when you find that which is called life
subject to so much misery that you are constrained often to desire you had
never been born, you find it a valley of tears, a house of mourning from
whence all true delight and solid happiness is banished. Seeing the very
officers and serjeants of death are continually surrounding us and walk
alongst with us--though unpleasant company--in our greatest contentments