their long and living memory, in strict account being
still on this side death, and having a late part yet to act upon this
stage of earth. If in the decretory term of the world we shall not all
die but be changed, according to received translation, the last day
will make but few graves; at least quick resurrections will anticipate
lasting sepultures. Some graves will be opened before they be quite
closed, and Lazarus be no wonder. When many that feared to die, shall
groan that they can die but once, the dismal state is the second and
living death, when life puts despair on the damned; when men shall
wish the coverings of mountains, not of monuments, and annihilations
shall be courted.

While some have studied monuments, others have studiously declined
them, and some have been so vainly boisterous, that they durst not
acknowledge their graves; wherein Alaric seems most subtle, who had a
river turned to hide his bones at the bottom. Even Sylla, that thought
himself safe in his urn, could not prevent revenging tongues, and
stones thrown at his monument. Happy are they whom privacy makes
innocent, who deal so with men in this world, that they are not afraid
to meet them in the next; who, when they die, make no commotion among
the dead, and are not touched with that poetical taunt of Isaiah.

Pyramids, arches, obelisks, were but the irregularities of vainglory,
and wild enormities of ancient magnanimity. But the most magnanimous
resolution rests in the Christian religion, which trampleth upon
pride, and sits on the neck of ambition, humbly pursuing that
infallible perpetuity, unto which all others must diminish their
diameters, and be poorly seen in angles of contingency.

Pious spirits who passed their days in raptures of futurity, made
little more of this world, than the world that was before it, while
they lay obscure in the chaos of pre-ordination, and night of their
fore-beings. And if any have been so happy as truly to understand
Christian annihilation, ecstasies, exolution, liquefaction,
transformation, the kiss of the spouse, gustation of God, and
ingression into the divine shadow, they have already had an handsome
anticipation of heaven; the glory of the world is surely over, and the
earth is ashes unto them.

To subsist in lasting monuments, to live in their productions, to
exist in their names and predicament of chimeras, was large
satisfaction unto old expectations, and made one part of their
elysiums. But