He conceived his thread long, in no long
course of years, and when he had scarce outlived the
second life of Lazarus;+ esteeming it enough to approach
the years of his Saviour, who so ordered his own human
state, as not to be old upon earth.
But to be content with death may be better than to
desire it; a miserable life may make us wish for death,
but a virtuous one to rest in it; which is the advantage
of those resolved Christians, who looking on death not
only as the sting, but the period and end of sin, the
horizon and isthmus between this life and a better, and
the death of this world but as a nativity of another,
do contentedly submit unto the common necessity, and
envy not Enoch or Elias.
Not to be content with life is the unsatisfactory state
of those who destroy themselves,# who being afraid to
live run blindly upon their own death, which no man
fears by experience: and the Stoics had a notable doc-
* Summum nec metuas diem nec optes.
+ Who upon some accounts, and tradition, is said to have
lived thirty years after he was raised by our Saviour.
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