Tranquillity is better than jollity, and to appease pain than to invent
pleasure. Our hard entrance into the world, our miserable going out of
it, our sicknesses, disturbances, and sad rencounters in it, do
clamorously tell us we came not into the world to run a race of delight,
but to perform the sober acts and serious purposes of man; which to omit
were foully to miscarry in the advantage of humanity, to play away an
uniterable life, and to have lived in vain. Forget not the capital end,
and frustrate not the opportunity of once living. Dream not of any kind
of metempsychosis or transanimation, but into thine own body, and that
after a long time; and then also unto wail or bliss, according to thy
first and fundamental life. Upon a curricle in this world depends a long
course of the next, and upon a narrow scene here an endless expansion
hereafter. In vain some think to have an end of their beings with their
lives. Things cannot get out of their natures, or be, or not be, in
despite of their constitutions. Rational existences in heaven perish not
at all, and but partially on earth; that which is thus once, will in
some way be always; the first living human soul is still alive, and all
Adam hath found no period.

Since the stars of heaven do differ in glory; since it hath pleased the
Almighty hand to honor the north pole with lights above the south; since
there are some stars so bright that they can hardly be looked upon, some
so dim that they can scarcely be seen, and vast numbers not to be seen
at all even by artificial eyes; read thou the earth in heaven and things
below from above. Look contentedly upon the scattered difference of
things, and expect not equality in lustre, dignity, or perfection, in
regions or persons below; where numerous numbers must be content to
stand like lacteous or nebulous stars, little taken notice of, or dim in
their generations. All which may be contentedly allowable in the affairs
and ends of this world, and in suspension unto what will be in the order
of things hereafter, and the new system of mankind which will be in the
world to come; when the last may be the first, and the first the last;
when Lazarus may sit above Caesar, and the just, obscure on earth, shall
shine like the sun in heaven; when personations shall cease, and
histrionism of happiness be over; when reality shall rule, and all shall
be as they shall be forever.

FROM 'HYDRIOTAPHIA, OR URN-BURIAL'

In the Jewish Hypog