best men must have, on the dreadful uncertainty of what was to succeed to
this life. 'Tis well observed, said I, by a poetical divine, who was an
excellent christian,* That

Death could not a more sad retinue find,
Sickness and pain before, and darkness all behind.


* The Rev Mr. Norris, of Bremerton.


About eight o'clock yesterday (Monday) morning, I found him a little
calmer. He asked me who was the author of the two lines I had repeated
to him; and made me speak them over again. A sad retinue, indeed! said
the poor man. And then expressing his hopelessness of life, and his
terrors at the thoughts of dying; and drawing from thence terrible
conclusions with regard to his future state; There is, said I, such a
natural aversion to death in human nature, that you are not to imagine,
that you, my dear Belton, are singular in the fear of it, and in the
apprehensions that fill the thoughtful mind upon its approach; but you
ought, as much as possible, to separate those natural fears which all men
must have on so solemn an occasion, from those particular ones which your
justly-apprehended unfitness fills you with. Mr. Pomfret, in his
Prospect of Death, which I dipped into last night from a collection in
your closet, which I put into my pocket, says, [and I turned to the
place]

Merely to die, no man of reason fears;
For certainly we must,
As we are born, return to dust;