f affliction leave but short smart
upon us. Sense endureth no extremities, and sorrows destroy us or
themselves. To weep into stones are fables. Afflictions induce
callosities; miseries are slippery, or fall like snow upon us, which
notwithstanding is no unhappy stupidity. To be ignorant of evils to
come, and forgetful of evils past, is a merciful provision in nature,
whereby we digest the mixture of our few and evil days, and our
delivered senses not relapsing into cutting remembrances, our sorrows
are not kept raw by the edge of repetitions. A great part of antiquity
contented their hopes of subsistency with a transmigration of their
souls; a good way to continue their memories, while, having the
advantage of plural successions, they could not but act something
remarkable in such variety of beings, and enjoying the fame of their
passed selves, making accumulation of glory unto their last durations.
Others, rather than be lost in the uncomfortable night of nothing, were
content to recede into the common being, and make one particle of the
public soul of all things, which was no more than to return into their
unknown and divine original again. Egyptian ingenuity was more
unsatisfied, contriving their bodies in sweet consistencies to attend
the return of their souls. But all was vanity, feeding the wind and
folly. The Egyptian mummies, which Cambyses or time hath spared, avarice
now consumeth. Mummy is become merchandise, Mizraim cures wounds, and
Pharaoh is sold for balsams....

There is nothing strictly immortal but immortality. Whatever hath no
beginning may be confident of no end, which is the peculiar of that
necessary essence that cannot destroy itself, and the highest strain of
omnipotency to be so powerfully constituted, as not to suffer even from
the power of itself. All others have a dependent being, and within the
reach of destruction. But the sufficiency of Christian immortality
frustrates all earthly glory, and the quality of either state after
death makes a folly of posthumous memory. God, who can only destroy our
souls, and hath assured our resurrection, either of our bodies or names
hath directly promised no duration. Wherein there is so much of chance,
that the boldest expectants have found unhappy frustration; and to hold
long subsistence seems but a scape in oblivion. But man is a noble
animal, splendid in ashes, and pompous in the grave, solemnizing
nativities and deaths with equal lustre, nor omittin