discerned? how many pleasures, how many pains hast thou passed
over with contempt? how many things eternally glorious hast thou
despised? towards how many perverse unreasonable men hast thou
carried thyself kindly, and discreetly?

XXVI. Why should imprudent unlearned souls trouble that which is
both learned, and prudent? And which is that that is so? she
that understandeth the beginning and the end, and hath the true
knowledge of that rational essence, that passeth through all
things subsisting, and through all ages being ever the same,
disposing and dispensing as it were this universe by certain
periods of time.

XXVII. Within a very little while, thou wilt be either ashes,
or a sceletum; and a name perchance; and perchance,
not so much as a name. And what is that but an empty sound,
and a rebounding echo? Those things which in this life are
dearest unto us, and of most account, they are in themselves
but vain, putrid, contemptible. The most weighty and serious,
if rightly esteemed, but as puppies, biting one another:
or untoward children, now laughing and then crying.
As for faith, and modesty, and justice, and truth,
they long since, as one of the poets hath it, have abandoned
this spacious earth, and retired themselves unto heaven.
What is it then that doth keep thee here, if things sensible
be so mutable and unsettled? and the senses so obscure,
and so fallible? and our souls nothing but an exhalation
of blood? and to be in credit among such, be but vanity?
What is it that thou dost stay for? an extinction, or a translation;
either of them with a propitious and contented mind.