t contemns
it, nor can I highly love any that is afraid of it: this makes me
naturally love a soldier, and honor those tattered and contemptible
regiments that will die at the command of a sergeant. For a pagan there
may be some motives to be in love with life; but for a Christian to be
amazed at death, I see not how he can escape this dilemma--that he is
too sensible of this life, or hopeless of the life to come.

* * * * *

I am naturally bashful; nor hath conversation, age, or travel been able
to effront or enharden me: yet I have one part of modesty which I have
seldom discovered in another, that is (to speak truly) I am not so much
afraid of death, as ashamed thereof: 'tis the very disgrace and ignominy
of our natures that in a moment can so disfigure us that our nearest
friends, wife, and children, stand afraid and start at us. The birds and
beasts of the field, that before in a natural fear obeyed us, forgetting
all allegiance, begin to prey upon us. This very conceit hath in a
tempest disposed and left me willing to be swallowed up in the abyss of
waters, wherein I had perished unseen, unpitied, without wondering eyes,
tears of pity, lectures of mortality, and none had said, "Quantum
mutatus ab illo!" Not that I am ashamed of the anatomy of my parts, or
can accuse nature for playing the bungler in any part of me, or my own
vicious life for contracting any shameful disease upon me, whereby I
might not call myself as wholesome a morsel for the worms as any.

* * * * *

Men commonly set forth the torments of hell by fire and the extremity of
corporal afflictions, and describe hell in the same method that Mahomet
doth heaven. This indeed makes a noise, and drums in popular ears: but
if this be the terrible piece thereof, it is not worthy to stand in
diameter with heaven, whose happiness consists in that part that is best
able to comprehend it--that immortal essence, that translated divinity
and colony of God, the soul. Surely, though we place hell under earth,
the Devil's walk and purlieu is about it; men speak too popularly who
place it in those flaming mountains which to grosser apprehensions
represent hell. The heart of man is the place the Devil dwells in: I
feel sometimes a hell within myself; Lucifer keeps his court in my
breast; Legion is revived in me. There are as many hells as Anaxarchus
conceited worlds: there was more than one hell in Magda