ing, but what is to come. To live at the rate of the old world,
when some could scarce remember themselves young, may afford no better
digested death than a more moderate period. Many would have thought it
an happiness to have had their lot of life in some notable conjunctures
of ages past; but the uncertainty of future times hath tempted few to
make a part in ages to come. And surely, he that hath taken the true
altitude of things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this
age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less
three or four hundred years hence, when no man can comfortably imagine
what face this world will carry; and therefore, since every age makes a
step unto the end of all things, and the Scripture affords so hard a
character of the last times, quiet minds will be content with their
generations, and rather bless ages past than be ambitious of those
to come.

Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might clearly
discover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom is the gray
hair, and an unspotted life old age, although his years came short, he
might have been said to have held up with longer livers, and to have
been Solomon's old man. And surely if we deduct all those days of our
life which we might wish unlived, and which abate the comfort of those
we now live, if we reckon up only those days which God hath accepted of
our lives, a life of good years will hardly be a span long; the son in
this sense may outlive the father, and none be climacterically old. He
that early arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age is happily old
without the uncomfortable attendants of it; and 'tis superfluous to live
unto gray hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues
of them. In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old
man. He that hath early arrived unto the measure of a perfect stature in
Christ, hath already fulfilled the prime and longest intention of his
being; and one day lived after the perfect rule of piety is to be
preferred before sinning immortality.

Although he attained not unto the years of his predecessors, yet he
wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread of weaker
constitutions. _Cautelous_ chastity and _crafty_ sobriety were far from
him; those jewels were _paragon_, without flaw, hair, ice, or cloud in
him: which affords me a hint to proceed in these good wishes and few
mementos unto you.

S