it[73]. Wherefore as I have frequently read with pleasure, the very
elegant description of it, given by Solomon the wisest of kings; I
think it will not be foreign to my design, to attempt an explanation
and illustration thereof. For it contains some things not easy to be
understood, because the eloquent preacher thought proper to express
all the circumstances allegorically. But first I will lay the
discourse itself before my readers, which runs thus.

[73] _Terent. Phorm. Act. iv. Scen. i. v. 9._

"Remember thy Creator in the days of thy youth, before the evil times
come, and the years draw nigh, in which, thou shalt say, I find no
pleasure: before the sun, and the light, and the moon, and the stars
be darkened, and the clouds return after rain; when the keepers of the
house shall tremble, and the soldiers shall give way, and the
diminished grinders shall cease; and those that look out thro' holes
shall be darkened; and the doors shall be shut outwardly, with a low
sound of the mill, and they shall rise up at the voice of the bird;
and all the daughters of music shall be of no avail; also when they
shall be afraid of high places, and stumblings in the way; and the
almond tree shall flower, and the _Cicadae_ shall come together; and
the appetite shall be lost, man departing to his eternal habitation,
and the mourners going about in the street: before the silver chain
be broken asunder, and the golden ewer be dashed in pieces; and the
pitcher be broken at the fountain head; and the chariot be dashed in
pieces at the pit; and the dust return to the earth, such as it had
been; and the Spirit return to God, who gave it[74]."

[74] _Ecclesiastes, Chap. xii. Verse 1-7. translated from
Castalio's latin version._

The recital of evils (and infirmities) begins from the aberrations of
the mind. _The sun_, says Solomon, _and the light, and the moon, and
the stars are darkened_. Perceptions of the mind are less lively in
old men; the ideas and images of things are confounded, and the memory
decays: whence the intellectual faculties must necessarily lose their
strength or power by degrees. Wisdom and understanding are frequently
called _light_ in the sacred scriptures;[75] and privation of reason,
_darkness_ and blindness.[76] Cicero likewise says very justly, that
_reason is as it were, the light and splendor of life_.[77] Hence God
is stiled the _father of lights_.[78] Thus the virtues of the mind
decaying, may be