Phocylydes. Sleep not in the dogmas of the Peripatus, Academy, or
Porticus. Be a moralist of the mount, an Epictetus in the faith, and
christianise thy notions.



ON PROVIDENCE


And truly there goes a great deal of providence to produce a man's life
unto threescore; there is more required than an able temper for those
years; though the radical humour contain in it sufficient oil for
seventy, yet I perceive in some it gives no light past thirty: men assign
not all the causes of long life, that write whole books thereof. They
that found themselves on the radical balsam, or vital sulphur of the
parts, determine not why Abel lived not so long as Adam. There is
therefore a secret glome or bottom of our days; it was his wisdom to
determine them, but his perpetual and waking providence that fulfils and
accomplishes them; wherein the spirits, ourselves, and all the creatures
of God in a secret and disputed way do execute His will. Let them not,
therefore, complain of immaturity that die about thirty: they fall but
like the whole world, whose solid and well-composed substance must not
expect the duration and period of its constitution; when all things are
completed in it, its age is accomplished; and the last and general fever
may as naturally destroy it before six thousand, as me before forty.
There is therefore some other hand that twines the thread of life than
that of nature; we are not only ignorant in antipathies and occult
qualities; our ends are as obscure as our beginnings; the line of our
days is drawn by night, and the various effects therein by a pencil that
is invisible; wherein, though we confess our ignorance, I am sure we do