m insensible of the horror thereof, or, by raking into the bowels of
the deceased and continual sight of anatomies, I have forgot the
apprehension of mortality; but that, marshalling all the horrors, I find
not anything therein able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a
well-resolved Christian. Were there not another life that I hope for,
all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath from
me. Those strange and mystical transmigrations that I have observed in
silkworms turned my philosophy into divinity. There is in these works of
Nature which seem to puzzle reason, something divine, that hath more in
it than the eye of a common spectator doth discover.

Some, upon the courage of a fruitful issue, wherein, as in the truest
chronicle, they seem to outlive themselves, can with greater patience
away with death. This seems to me a mere fallacy, unworthy the desires
of a man that can but conceive a thought of the next world; who, in a
nobler ambition, should desire to live in his substance in heaven rather
than his name and shadow in the earth. Were there any hopes to outlive
vice, or a point to be superannuated from sin, it were worthy our knees
to implore the days of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify but brings
on incurable vices, and the number of our days doth but make our sins
innumerable. There is but one comfort left, that though it be in the
power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest
to deprive us of death.

There is no happiness within this circle of flesh, nor is it in the
optics of these eyes to behold felicity. But besides this literal and
positive kind of death, there are others whereof divines make mention,
as mortification, dying unto sin and the world. In these moral
acceptations, the way to be immortal is to die daily; and I have
enlarged that common "Remember death" into a more Christian
memorandum--"Remember the four last things"--death, judgment, heaven,
and hell. I believe that the world grows near its end; but that general
opinion, that the world grows near its end, hath possessed all ages past
as nearly as ours.

There is no road or ready way to virtue; it is not an easy point of art
to disentangle ourselves from this riddle or web of sin. To perfect
virtue, as to religion, there is required a panoplia, or complete
armour; that whilst we lie at close ward against one vice, we lie not
open to the assault of another. There go so many circumstance