a jubilee;<56> as yet I have not seen one revolution of
Saturn,<57> nor hath my pulse beat thirty years, and yet,
excepting one,<58> have seen the ashes of, and left under
ground, all the kings of Europe; have been contem-
porary to three emperors, four grand signiors, and as
many popes: methinks I have outlived myself, and
begin to be weary of the sun; I have shaken hands with
delight in my warm blood and canicular days; I
perceive I do anticipate the vices of age; the world to
me is but a dream or mock-show, and we all therein but
pantaloons and anticks, to my severer contemplations.

Sect. 42.--It is not, I confess, an unlawful prayer to
desire to surpass the days of our Saviour, or wish to
outlive that age wherein he thought fittest to die; yet, if
(as divinity affirms) there shall be no grey hairs in heaven,
but all shall rise in the perfect state of men, we do
but outlive those perfections in this world, to be recalled
unto them by a greater miracle in the next, and run on
here but to be retrograde hereafter. Were there any
hopes to outlive vice, or a point to be superannuated
from sin, it were worthy our knees to implore the days
of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify, but incurvate
our natures, turning bad dispositions into worser habits,
and (like diseases) brings on incurable vices; for every
day, as we grow weaker in age, we grow stronger in sin,
and the number of our days doth but make our sins
innumerable. The same vice, committed at sixteen, is
not the same, though it agrees in all other circum-