1lCature's food-night. challenge fome proportion with fix thoufand years, becaufe it is a Chip or Drop of time, but fix thoufand years cannot pretend to any (hare or neigh- bourhood with Eternity Becaufe the Angel makes an Affidavit that time (hall be no more. Therefore David (though he did very foolifhly to number his people, fwelling the lift to hundredsof thoufands, that he might appear fom thing before men ; ) yet did he very wifely to number his days , thrinki.ng the account beneath the leafl article of cime, that he might be nothing before God. , (Aline age is ar nothing before thee, Pfal. 39. 5. Before God ! nay nothing before us. For the fon of David that lifted vanity even to the husks, lays, there is a time to be born, and a time todie, none it fermi to live, for that which is pall of our age, is dead in tranfabfion, and will not be recalled be- caufe it cannot return. Quicguid awls retr' elf mart tenet, that which is to come, is dead in uncertainty : fo chat nothing but the very prefenc is life, and that prefenc is fo near to nothing, that it will not flay with us whilft we can fay it is. It is gone before we can fayit ishere. Well faid thatOracle of God, Sorely ever, man walketh in a vain ¡hallow ; but nearer home to our frailty (poke that miracle of men, He [hall fly away at a dream, Job. ao. 8. the flow pace of Walking is improved into Flying, and the Shadow emptied into a Dream. Two Nothings, which can never make any one thing ; though they have been long fince married together by Finder , who calls life the Dream of a fhadow. Good God ! what vainer then a fhadow? which is nothing in it felt, being but a privation of Light framed by the oppoficion of a thick body to a luminous. Is any thing foempty asa Dream, whichhath no firbfif'eence, but in hollownefs of a fleepy brain? A Fairy-round of Chimerical Semblances, a dance of Phantafies Antiques, neither of them having any reality or true being in nature. So vain, fo frivolous a thing is man is (he=--that in the ftrength of youth may fall to duff, whole very noon may be cdipfed into a Shadow; nay fo highly uncertain, fo flippery our flation, that we cannot affure our (elves from falling, that lhort while wecan fay we Hand ; nor can I tell whiles I am fpeaking, whether I (hall have breath enough toend this period.. But grane our lives to be Digit/ á morte remota quatuor ant leptem, a (pan long, yet is that life but as a (pan forced from a gouty hand, the farther is reachech, the more it torments the owner. Spin we the thread of life to eighty, yet is it but labour and forrow, we are but as the 'is in the next con- fideration. A woman (that is) a miferable creature. She, theOcean where mifcry is in its original, andhillat home; the channel, through which it is conveyed, and walks abroad; forrow was not only invefled on her perfon Gen. 3.16. but generally intail'd on her pofteriry, Job. 14. 1. Every birth is heir to a new calamity, yob. 5.7. the forrows of women are fo many, fo comprehenfive, as that when they who (peak as moved by the Holy Ghofl, would cxprefs the multitude and grievance of chofe calamities which war, and ruine, and final defolation leave upon a people, they wrap up all in this, The farrows of a travailing woman /hall come upon him, Hof. 13. 13. Cheifl about to de(cribe that prodigy of vengeance on the Jews, that irre. fiftible fabverfion of their (late, burying their Temple in its own afhes; * cru- cifying their perfons, till their were no Croffes left to Beat Bodies, nor ground left to bear Crof(es; burning a thoufand in one fire, and (tattering the remainder into the flare of Slaves and Vagabonds upon the face of the earth by Titus, eacompa(fìng Jerufalem with Armies. The prologue to this woful Tragedy, he calls etrkl e;dirar, thebeginning of throws and pangs of a woman in travail. Titue having taken it (to pay the Jews in their own coyn) imprefled on his Medals (made for the celebrationof thisCon uef'e) a woman leaning her back to a Palm, wich this Infcripcion on the reverie, Judaa capta. Aaaaaz But a Sam. 14.10. EcdeC. ;.a. Pfel:39. 6. fevered. Pfal.39 g. Stem:
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