If they fell by
long and aged decay, yet wrapt up in the bundle of
time, they fall into indistinction, and make but one
blot with infants. If we begin to die when we live,
and long life be but a prolongation of death, our life is
a sad composition; we live with death, and die not in
a moment. How many pulses made up the life of
Methuselah, were work for Archimedes: common
counters sum up the life of Moses his man. Our days
become considerable, like petty sums, by minute ac-
cumulations: where numerous fractions make up but
small round numbers; and our days of a span long,
make not one little finger.+
If the nearness of our last necessity brought a nearer
conformity into it, there were a happiness in hoary
*
Tibullus, lib. iii. el. 2, 26.
+ According to the ancient arithmetick of the hand, wherein
the little finger of the right hand contracted, signified an
hundred.--
Pierius in Hieroglyph.
hairs, and no calamity in half-senses. But the long
habit of living indisposeth us for dying; when avarice
makes us the sport of death, when even David grew
politickly cruel, and Solomon could hardly be said to
be the wisest of men.
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