The long habit of living
makes mere men more hardly to part with life, and all
to be nothing, 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 have 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 hun-
dred 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 genera-
tions, and rather bless ages past, than be ambitious of
those to come.
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