PP&NDIx. 'I99 beginning, posting towards their end, which is near and sure, and still in our eye. So short is time, that beings here are next to nothing; the bubble of worldly prosperity, pomp, and fleshly pleasure, ddth swell up, and break in so short a moment, as that it is, and is not, almost at once. But the heavenly substances, and their work, and joys, are crowned by duration, being assuredly everlasting. Such, O my soul, is the blessed change which God will make. The Reasons and Helps ofntyBelief and Hopeof this Perfection. I. Natural reason "assúretki me, that God made all creatures fitted to their intended use; even brutes are more fit to their several offices than man is. He giveth no creature its faculties in vain: whatever a wise man maketh, he fits it to the use which he made it for; but man's faculties are enabled to think of a God, of our relation, and our duty to him, of our hopes from him, and our fears of him of the state of our souls related to his judgment ; ofwhat will befa;ll us after death, reward, or punishment, and how to prepare for it. This nature and, its faculties and powers are not made in vain. II. Reason assureth me, that all men are bound by nature to prefer the least probability of a life of everlasting joy before all the prosperity of this world ; and' to 'suffer the loss of all this short vanity, to escape the rea'st possibility of endless misery ; and nature bath such notices of rewards and punishments after death, that no man can say that he is sure there is no such thing. From whence it followeth, that alfmen are bound by the very law of nature to be religious, and to seek first and most the salvation in the life to come. And ifso, it is certain that there is such a thing to be ob- tained; else God had made the very nature of man to be deceived by itself, and to spend the chief part, yea, all his life, through labor andsuffering, for that which is not ; and so made his greatest duty to be his greatest deceit and misery ; and the worst men should be least deceived. But all this is not to be imputed to our wise and good Creator. III. Theuniversal sense of moral good and evil, in all mankind, is a great evidence of another life. The vilestatheist cannot abide to be accounted a knave, a liar, and a bad man ; nor will equal a vicious servant with another. All would be thought good, who Will not be good. And Both not God make agreater difference thanMan ? and will he hot show it ? IV. The world is actually ruled much 'by the hopes and fears of another life, and cannot well be ruled without it, according to
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