prescribed rules, and probable inductions, yet hath
hardly any man attained the perfect discovery thereof.
That general opinion, that the world grows near its
end, hath possessed all ages past as nearly as ours. I
am afraid that the souls that now depart cannot escape
that lingering expostulation of the saints under the
altar, "quousque, Domine?" how long, O Lord? and groan
in the expectation of the great jubilee.

Sect. 47.--This is the day that must make good that
great attribute of God, his justice; that must reconcile
those unanswerable doubts that torment the wisest
understandings; and reduce those seeming inequalities
and respective distributions in this world, to an equality
and recompensive justice in the next. This is that one
day, that shall include and comprehend all that went
before it; wherein, as in the last scene, all the actors
must enter, to complete and make up the catastrophe of

* "In those days there shall come liars and false prophets."

this great piece. This is the day whose memory hath,
only, power to make us honest in the dark, and to be
virtuous without a witness. "Ipsa sui pretium virtus sibi,"
that virtue is her own reward, is but a cold principle,
and not able to maintain our variable resolutions in a
constant and settled way of goodness. I have practised
that honest artifice of Seneca,<66> and, in my retired and
solitary imaginations to detain me from the foulness of
vice, have fancied to myself the presence of my dear and