Some, upon the courage of a fruitful issue, wherein, as in the truest chronicle, they seem to outlive themselves, can with greater patience away with death.  This seems to me a mere fallacy, unworthy the desires of a man that can but conceive a thought of the next world; who, in a nobler ambition, should desire to live in his substance in heaven rather than his name and shadow in the earth.  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 brings on incurable vices, and the number of our days doth but make our sins innumerable.  There is but one comfort left, that though it be in the power of the weakest arm to take away life, it is not in the strongest to deprive us of death.

There is no happiness within this circle of flesh, nor is it in the optics of these eyes to behold felicity.  But besides this literal and positive kind of death, there are others whereof divines make mention, as mortification, dying unto sin and the world.  In these moral acceptations, the way to be immortal is to die daily; and I have enlarged that common “Remember death” into a more Christian memorandum—­“Remember the four last things”—­death, judgment, heaven, and hell.  I believe that the world grows near its end; but that general opinion, that the world grows near its end, hath possessed all ages past as nearly as ours.

There is no road or ready way to virtue; it is not an easy point of art to disentangle ourselves from this riddle or web of sin.  To perfect virtue, as to religion, there is required a panoplia, or complete armour; that whilst we lie at close ward against one vice, we lie not open to the assault of another.  There go so many circumstances to piece up one good action that it is a lesson to be good, and we are forced to be virtuous by the book.

Insolent zeals that do decry good works, and rely only upon faith, take not away merit; for, depending upon the efficacy of their faith, they enforce the condition of God, and in a more sophistical way do seem to challenge heaven.  I do not deny but that true faith is not only a mark or token, but also a means, of our salvation; but, where to find this is as obscure to me as my last end.  If a faith to the quantity of a grain of mustard seed is able to remove mountains, surely that which we boast of is not anything, or, at the most, but a remove from nothing.

For that other virtue of charity, without which faith is a mere notion and of no existence, I have ever endeavoured to nourish the merciful disposition and humane inclination I borrowed from my parents, and regulate it to the written and prescribed laws of charity.  I give no alms to satisfy the hunger of my brother, but to fulfil the command of my God; I draw not my purse for his sake that demands it, but His that enjoined it.  Again, it is no greater charity to clothe his body than to apparel the nakedness of his soul; and to this, as calling myself a scholar, I am obliged by the duty of my condition.