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 gloom or bottom of our days: 'twas
his wisdom to determine them: but his perpetual and
waking providence that fulfils and accomplisheth 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

* Ep. lib. xxiv. ep. 24.

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,<60> 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 begin-
nings; 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 not err if we say, it is the hand of God.

Sect. 44.--I am much taken with two verses of Lucan,
since I have been able not only, as we do at school, to
construe, but understand: