might be greater, the narrow gate wider, and that, as many are called, so not a few might be chosen. XXVIII. That a greater number of angels remained in heaven than fell from it, the schoolmen will tell us; that the number of blessed souls will not come short of that vast number of fallen spirits, we have the favourable calculation of others. What age or century hath sent most souls unto heaven, he can tell who vouchsafeth that honour unto them. Though the number of the blessed must be complete before the world can pass away, yet since the world itself seems in the wane, and we have no such comfortable prognosticks of latter times, since a greater part of time is spun than is to come, and the blessed roll already much replenished; happy are those pieties which solicitously look about and hasten to make one of that already much filled and abbreviated list to come. XXIX. Think not thy time short in this world, since the world itself is not long. The created world is but a small parenthesis in eternity, and a short interposition, for a time, between such a state of duration as was before it and may be after it. And if we should allow of the old tradition that the world should last six thousand years, it could scarce have the name of old, since the first man lived near a sixth part thereof, and seven Methuselahs would exceed its whole duration. However to palliate the shortness of our lives, and somewhat to compensate our brief term in this world, it's good to know as much as we can of it, and also, so far as possibly in us lieth, to hold such a theory of He times past, as though we had seen the same. who hath thus considered the world, as also how therein things long past have been answered by things present, how matters in one age have been acted over in another, and how there is nothing new under the sun, may conceive himself in some manner to have lived from the beginning, and to be as old as the world; and if he should still live on, 'twould be but the same thing. XXX. Lastly, if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation. Reckon not upon long life; think every day the last, and live always beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his expectation lives many lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his days. Time past is gone like a shadow; make time to come present. Approximate thy latter times by present apprehensions of them; be like a neighbour unto I I the grave, and think there is but little to come. And since there is something of us that will still live on, join both lives together, and live in one but for the other. He who thus ordereth the purposes of this life will never be far from the next, and is in some manner already in it, by a happy conformity, and close apprehension of it. And if, as we have elsewhere declared, any have been so happy as personally to understand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exolution, transformation, the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the divine shadow, according to mystical theology; they have already had an handsome anticipation of heaven, the world is in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them. FINIS. |