Times Before You, When Even The Living

He Who Discommendeth Others Obliquely Commendeth Himself (christian Morals).

Men That Look No Further Than Their Outsides, Think Health An Appurtenance Unto Life, And Quarrel With Their Constitutions For Being Sick; But I That Have Examined The Parts Of Man, And Know Upon What Tender Filaments That Fabric Hangs, Do Wonder That We Are Not Always So; And Considering The Thousand Doors That Lead To Death, Do Thank My God That We Can Die But Once.

To Call Ourselves A Microcosme, Or Little World, I Thought It Onely A Pleasant Trope Of Rhetorick, Till My Neare Judgement And Second Thoughts Told Me There Was A Reall Truth Therein: For First Wee Are A Rude Masse, And In The Ranke Of Creatures, Which Only Are, And Have A Dull Kinde Of Being Not Yet Priviledged With Life, Or Preferred To Sense Or Reason; Next We Live The Life Of Plants, The Life Of Animals, The Life Of Men, And At Last The Life Of Spirits, Running On In One Mysterious Nature Those Five Kinds Of Existence, Which Comprehend The Creatures Not Onely Of World, But Of The Universe.

Men Have Lost Their Reason In Nothing So Much As Their Religion, Wherein Stones And Clouts Make Martyrs.

Times Before You, When Even The Living Men Were Antiquities; When The Living Might Exceed The Dead, And To Depart This World, Could Not Be Properly Said, To Go Unto The Greater Number.