truths though sensible are oftenest put in oblivion and this default of memory denotes that of knowledge He which museth upon his slightnesse undervalueth except God all things and vanity would never be able to surprise us during the interim of this meditation The remembrance of Death makes us forget the vanities of Life Man knows very well that he is Mortall but whilst he never thinks seriously of the necessity of dying this knowledge is forgot though he dye without cease and in loosing the remembrance of his condition looses the knowledge thereof Remember that you are a Man said his page every morning to Philip of Macedon The way to passe our days contentedly is to think every hour of the last This great Monarch made himself to be rouzed every day from sleep with the News of Death fearing to be charmed with the sweets of Life Greatnesses environ him on all parts to make him forget his humility but understand you not the delicate air which he causes to be sung to the tune of his miseries the pompe and Magnificence of his riches dazle his eyes with their lustre The remembrance of the poorness of Death is a potent charm to resist the memory of greatnesse of Birth that he might never consider the wretchednesse which is proper to him But you see how he makes himself to be awaked with the noyse of this truth ever to cherish its remembrance Sir remember that you are a Man oh how many Mysteries are comprised in these words behold the Allegory on 't Great Kings remember you are subject to many more Miseries then you have subjects in your Empire Great Monarchs remember that of all the great extention of your Territories there shall not remain you one onely foot If we be different in manner of life we are all equall in necessity of dying so jealous are the worms of your glory Great Princes remember that your Scepters and your Crowns are such feeble marks of greatnesse that fortune sports with them Time mocks at them and the Wind shall sweep away their Dust Soveraign Judges of the Life of Men remember that although you are above the Lawes This of Dying is inviolable The Fable is pretty of the resolution which the flowers and plants took to elect a King and Queen Cares and anxieties surpass in number the pleasure of Kings and as the number of Voyces gave the election the Marigold was declared to be the King of the Flowers and the Bryar Queen of Plants and under this toy lies hid serious verities Is there any thing fairer in all the borders of the Garden of Nature then the flower of the Marigold It s golden Tincture of the colour of the Sun at first view dazeleth so delightfully that the Eye amazedly gazing with admiration of its fresh-displayed beauty can hardly retire its regards from an object so agreeable But gather it and dight it on you and its sent produces a thousand disliks in the Mind for that one onely which you hold in your hand for hence of a sudda in the humours become dull and melancholly having been annoyed with so fair a fulsomnesse If Crowns Scepters were to be sould wise men would never buy thew Royalty is absolutely the same The Scepters are as fresh flowers of Marigold whose lustre and beauty equally ravishing attract at first glance to their admiration the Soul by the eyes but if a Man take them into his graspe or deck his head with them he shall find himself fill'd with anxious cares by this coverture If you doubt of this aske Seleucus he will answer That the first moment of his Raigne was the last of his Quietnesse The Sweet-bryar also bore away the Royalty for who would not love it with its Rose O how both together have powerfull attractives to tempt aqually both the heart to desire them and the hand to pluck them And 't is in vain that Nature hath given arms to the jealousie of its prickles Thorns are the Roses of Kings gardens to serve for the defence of its flowers since these sharps are as so many baits which irritate us rather with Desire then Fear All the world insert it in their nosegayes but the prickles remain the Rose withers Say we then also that Royalty is a fair Sweet-bryar accompanied with its Roses I mean many contentments of the same nature Both together have great charms to affect us both with love and desire Great miseries are destinated to great fortunes but the Bryars of the Crown remain the Rose of delights withers O how ponderons is the load of this greatnesse And if you beleeve not me enquire hereof of the puissant King Mithridates The felicity of Kings hath much more lustre then Reality he will often reiterate to you That he never sigh'd but for the ponderous burden of his Crowns SIR REMEMBER YOU ARE A MAN But what is there here to pride in May it be of the greatnesse of his Dominions This is but an alien good Kings may trouble themselves to conquer the earth it still triumphs over them which admits not to be possest but by vanity since its honours and pleasures have nothing else but meere in propriety To be an amply landed-man is to have miry soyl to sell and small profit to make thence Sir remember you are a Man What may be his ambition may it be to conquer the whole world what will he do with it after conquest since it is a Ball of snow which Time melts by little and little tumbling it without cessation Sir remember you are a Man What might be his designs He which makes himself to be adored is rather sit to be Deaths Victime then to be idolatrized Should he pretend to Altars and Temples what oblations can be made to a Victime whom Death holds continually at a bay can Incense be offered to a Dunghill or an Idoll made of a Sink the very thought shockes common sense Sir remember that you are a Man Man is so miserable that I am amazed he pities not himself What can he do with his absolute power A little stone makes him stumble a straw can blind him a shadow an Atome a thing of nothing are capable to reduce him to nothing at all And is not this an object of pity rather then of envy Great Kings these are truths too important for you to lose their remembrance Well you may out-brave the heavens with a birstling eye-brow the onely imagination of its Thunderclaps holds you already in alarm Boldly may you tread upon the Earth with a disdainfull foot the same whereof you are made shall shortly be so troden when the worms are glutted with it Remember that you are a Man and that all the objects of riches and honours which environ you I have said to corruption Thou art my father and to the worm thou art my mother and my sister Job 17.14 are of the same Nature as
other created things bear the same Title but if thy bounty hath been willing to advantage our nature with many graces proper and ordinated to it alone these are so many witnesses which convince us not to have deserv'd them since our very Ingratitude is yet a Recognizing of this Truth Insomuch that as our Life is nothing but sinne and sinne is a meer privation The mest just man sinneth seven times a day it may be maintained that we are nothing else and consequently nothing at all But how Proud am I O Lord every time I think thou hast ereated me of Earth for this is a Principall which drawes me alwaies to it selfe by a right of propriety from whence I cannot defend my selfe What is it for a man to triumph hereof the world the earth expects his spoile All things seek their repose in their element O how happy am I to search mine in that of Dust and Ashes whereof thou hast formed me The Earth demands my Earth and my body as a little Gullet separated from its source speeds by little and little to the same source from whence it had its beginning And this that which impeaches me from gathering up my self to take a higher flight I should do bravely to hoyse my selfe above my Center when the assay of my Vanity Pridehoyses up onely to gives a fall and the violence of my fall are but the same thing I give still downwards upon the side of my weaknesses and the weight of my miserie overbeares upon the arrogance of my Ambition A man no doubt may misknow himselfe yet the least hit of mishap teares the vaile of his hood winknesse O happy defect and yet more happy the condition which holds me alwaies enchained to the dunghill of my Originall since the links of this easie servitude are so many Mirrours which represent me that I am nothing whensoever I imagine my self to be something Let us change our Tone without changing subject Ladies Remember that you die every houre behold here a MIRROVR WHICH FLATTERS NOT It shewes you both what you are such as you shall be But if notwithstanding you still admire your selves under an other visage full of allurements and sweets This is but Death himself A strang thing that death is still as neare us at life and yet we never thinke on it who hides him under these faire apparences to the end you may not discern him It is true you have gracefull Tresses of haire which cover your heads and his is all Bald but doe not you heed how he pulls them off from yours by little every day and makes those which he leave you to turn White to the end you may pull them out your selves It is true your eyes have a sparkling lustre Time and Deathare the onely inexorables and beauty but of his is seen onely the hideous place where Nature had seated them But do you not consider how with continual action be Dusks the glory of this beauty and in conclusion puts to Eclipse these imaginary Pety-Suns It is true your hue is of Lillies and your mouth of Roses upon his face is seen onely the stubs of these flowers but call to mind that he blasts this Lilly-teint as well as Lillies themselves and that the vermillion of this Rosie-mouth lasts but as Roses and if yet you differ to day from him in something you may resemble him to morrow in all I leave you to meditate of these truths Man is a true mirrour which represents to the natural all things which are oppos'd unto it Man is as one picture with two faces and often the most naturall is falsest If you turn it downward to the Earth we can see within nothing but objects of Dust and Ashes but if you turn him to the Heavens-ward there is to be admired in it beauties and graces purely celestiall In effect if we consider man in his mortall and perishable condition hardly can one find any stay in this consieration since he is nothing else but a Chimera whose form every moment by little and little destroies to reduce it to its first nothing And indeed not to lie to ye man is but a Puffe of wind Man is nothing in himselfe yet compreheods al things since he lives by nothing else is filled with nothing else and dies onely by Privation of it But if you turn the Medall I would say the Mirrour of his Soule towards his Creator there are seen nothing but gifts of Immortality What though man be made of earth he is more divine than mortall but graces of a Soveraigne bounty but favours of an absolute will The heavens and the Stars appear in this Crystalline mirrour not by reflection of the object but by a divine vertue proceeding from the Nature of his cause Let us to the End Me thinks This Page returnes again to day within the Chamber of Philip of Macedon The slumber of vanities is a mortall malady to the soule and drawing the Curtain cries out according to his ordinary Sir Awake and Remember that you are a Man but why rouzes he him to think of Death since sleep is its image Alexander knew himselfe mortall by his sleeping and in effect those which have said that sleep was the Brother of Death have drawn their reason of it from their reciprocall resemblance Awake then Great Kings Not to ponder that you are mortall your sleep is a trance of this but rather that you are created for immortality Remember you are Men. A man should not forget his heavenly beginning having heaven for a daily object I will not say subject to all the miseries of the Earth but rather capable of all the felicities of heaven Remember that you are men I will no say the shittle-cock of Time and the But to all the shafts of Fortune but rather victors over ages and all sorts of miseries Remember that you are men I will not say any more conceiv'd in Corruption brought forth by it and also destroyed by it But rather I say If a man should consider his worth by that which he cost he would love himselfe perfectly born for the glory of God Living for to acquire it and Dying for to possesse it Remember that you are Men I will say no more slaves of Sin the Flesh and the World but rather free for resistance to the first strong enough to vanquish the next and more powerfull yet to give a Law to the third A man may doe every good thing which he desires since in his impuâ— issance his will is taken for the deed Remember that you are men I will no more say the pourtraict of Inconstancy the object of every sort of ill and the pasture of Wormes But rather the Image of God the subject of every sort of good and the sole aliment of eternity as created for it alone Remember that you are men Man is sure a thing something divine
world the noyse ceaseth the renowâ— passeth which redoubles a noyse to its own detriment to advertise those that doubt on it and this name so famous and dreadfull finding no memory here below to the proof of ages buries it self at last in the nothingnesse of its beginning Be it again that all the Gold of the Indies can be valued but to a part of your Estate and that all the world together possesse lesse treasure than you alone what advantage think you to bear away more than the most miserable of the world that in this you should be vain Enjoyes not he the same Sun which lights you The tranquillity of the mind and the health of body are the onely riches of the world hath not he the same usage of the Elements whereof you make use But if you have more than he a gloriousnesse of apparell and a thousand other superfluous things which are altogether estranged to vertue as being imaginary goods whose appearance alone is the onely foundation he may answer you with Seneca that with whatsoever coverture a man hides the shame of his nakednesse he shall passe for well-clothed among wise men And to come to the point a man hath alwaies enough where with to follow his way and to finish his voyage The surplus is but a burden of cares which are metamorphosed into so many bryars when Death would discharge us of them Besides Riches consist but in opinion though their treasures be palpable and sensible A man is Rich equall to that which he beleeves himself to be And though he hath nothing He is the most rich who is most content this grace wherewith he is treasured to find rest in his miseries is above all the Gold of the world What differrnce think you there is betwixt the Rich and the poore both the one and the other are equally pilgrims and travellers and goe alike to the same place Then if the rich passe through the fairer way they reencounter when they dye all the thorns of those roses which they have past upon All mortals together maze a dance of blind men who in dancing run to death without seeing the way they passe There is no arrivall to the Haven of the grave without being tempested sooner or later in the storm of those miseries which accompany uâ— And methinks it is a comfort to suffer in good time those evils which we cannot avoid Rich-ones how miserable doe I hold you if the goods of the earth be your onely treasures I Rich-ones how unhappy are you if your felicities be but of Gold and Silver Rich-ones The treasure of good workes onely enriches us eternally how you compell my pity of your greatnesses if you have no other titles than those of your Lord-ships Rich-ones how frightfull onely at the houre of Death are your names since the misery wherein you are born accompanyes you in the sepulchre True it is that the Ayr of the region where you dwell may be very temperate the seasons of it fair and the lands fertile but you consider not that while you live you often sigh back the air which you receive that this sweet time which smiles on you entraines you in flying to the season of teares and that very soon the dung-hill of your bodies shal perhaps render the lands yet more fertile The content of riches is like an odor serous fume but â— passes and so doth their enjoyment also and there is all The Rich Men of the world have done nought but passe away with the ages that gave them birth you are born in this and this very same goes away and leads you with it and all the rest of Men without skilling what you are or in what fashion you are vested well may you possesse an infinite number of treasures you must alwaies trot and rise as soon in the morning as others but if you play the slugs and sleep too long It is strange whether we shift place and seat or no weyet run incessantly to Death Death comes in the end to awake you and interrupt your repose with an eternall disquiet What will you say to this The fable of Midas comprehends in it important verities Apollo grants him all that he demands he satiates the appetite of his unmeasurable ambition by the vertue which he gives to his touch to be able to turn all things into gold See him now rich for a day his hands are as new philosophersstones which make the grossest and most impure metals change both nature and price To what purpose is it to be environed with riches they are a strange kind of good Whereof one can enjoy the usage but for a moment onely he sees himselfe enrounded in a moment with so great a number of treasures that he begins to apprehend the enjoyment of those goods which he desired with so much passion and from fear he comes to astonishment then when prest with hunger all the Viands which he touches with his hands lips or tongue are metamorphosed into Gold O inseparable amazement from a mortall griefe caused by a semblable regreet that he could not limit his ambition but to the desire of his own ruine Rich-men you are as so many Midasses since with all your treasures you never importune heaven for any other thing but to increase their number to which effect you destinate your cares your watching and your labours But make no more imploring vows behold your selves at last heard The glistering of your riches dazles me your greatnesses and magnificences give you cheerefull tincture yet let us see the reverse of the Medall After your so many strong wishes for Gold and Silver The covetous grow poor in measure as he growes rich since in encreasing his treasures encreases the famine of his insatiable avarice thus of what be possesseth he enjoies nothing their treasure remaines to you for to satiate at least in dying the unruled appetite of the ambition of your life Riches I say environ you on all sides after your so passionate covetize of them But in this last instant their possession is the saddest object which can be presented to your thoughts And notwithstanding 't is the onely nourishment which rests to you amid the hunger which torments you uncessantly as if for punishment of part of your crimes heaven did permit that the instruments of your pleasure should also be the same of your punishments considering the greatnesse of your miseries A Man carries away nothing with him at his death but either a regreet or else a satisfaction of an evill or a good life by that of your unprofitable treasures for after all you must die and though you carry with you this desire to bear away with you your riches into the tomb they remain in your coffers for to serve as witnesses to your heirs of the vanity of their enjoyment The Silke-wormes which have so much trouble to spin out their mouths their little golden threads
formed and consequently you lodge upon yoâ—r buriall-places whose entrances will be open at all moments To say whoyou are I am ashamed in calling you by your proper names for to remembrance you your miseries Corruption conceaves you Horrour infants you Blood nourishes you infection accompanies you in the Coffin There is nothing so constantly present with us as our miseries since always we are miserable enough at best The treasures which you enjoy are but Chimeras of greatnesse and apparitions of glorie whereof living you make experiment and dying you perfectly know the truth on 't To what end then can stead you your present felicities since at present you scarce enjoy them at all for even at this veric instâ—â— another which is but newly upon passe robs you of part of them and even thus giving you hiâ—â— of the cosenage of his companions cheates you too as well as they and thus they do altogether to your lives as well as your contentments in ravishing these they intrain the others then what remonstrance can you exhibit of esteeming your selâ—es happy for past felicities and which you have not enjoyed but in way of depart And if this condition be agreeable unto you still there is a necessitie of setting up your rest at the end of the carreere and there it is where I attend to contribute to your vain waylings as manie resentments oâ— Pitie How much better it is to be so happy in fishing as to angle for grace in the tears of penitence Take we another track without losing our selves How ingenious was that famous Queen of Egypt to deceive with good grace her Lover Sâ—â— caused underhand dead fishes to be ensnared to the hook of Antonie as often as the toy took his to go a fishing to the end to make him some sport by those pleasant deceits May we not say that Ambition doth the same for when we cast our hooks into this vast Ocean of the vanities of the world we fish but Dead things without soul whose acquirement countervailes not a moment of the Time which we employ to attain it Had I all the goodliest fardles of the world laded on my back I mean had I acquir'd all the honours wherewith fortune can tickle an ambitious soul should I thence become greater of body my growing time is past 'T is to no purpose to be passiorate for such goods as a man may loose and the world can give no better would my Spirit thence become more excellent these objects are too weak to ennoble her Powers Should I thence become more vertuous Vertue looks for no saâ—isfaction out of it self Should I thence be more esteemed of the world This is but the glorie of a wind which doth but passe away What happinesse what contentment or what utilitie would remain me then that I might be at rest A Man must not suffer himself thus to be fool'd All honours can be but a burden to an innocent soul for so much as they are continuall objects oâ— vanitie which stir up the passion and onely serve but for nourishment to them in their violences to hurrie them into all sorts oâ— extremities And after all the necessitie of dying which makes an inseparable accident in our condition gloomes the glittering of all this vain glorie which environs us In the anguishes oâ— Death a man dreams not of the grandeurs of his life 'T is an irkssome remembrance of past happinesse being eveâ— and anon upon point to depart finds himself often afflicted mâ— with those good things which 〈◊〉 possesseth measuring alreadie the depth of the fall by the height 〈◊〉 the place whither he is exalted * Galba He which found Fortune at 〈◊〉 gate found no naile to stay he wheele But if Shee on the one 〈◊〉 takes a pleasure to ruine Empire to destroy realmes and to precipitate her favourites Death on 〈◊〉 other side pardons no body alters the temperament of all sorts of humours perverts the order of every kind of habitude and not content yet to beat down all these great Colosses of Vanity which would be taken for the worlds wonders calls to the sharing of their ruine the elements thus to bury their materials in their first abysses where she hath designed the place of their entombment What can a Mau then find constant in the world Al things passe away and by their way tell us that we must do so too where constancy doth no where reside Time Fortune Death our passions and a thousand other stumbling blocks shall never speak oher language to us but of our miseries and yet we will suffer our selves like ALEXANDER to be voyc'd â—mmortall Our prosperities our grandeurs our very delights themselves shall tell us as they passe a word in our ear that we ought not to trust them and yet for all this we will never sigh but after them Be it then at last for very regreet to have vented to the wind so many vain sighs for Chimeras of sweets whereof the remembrance cannot be but full of bitternesse Vain honours of the world No security of pleasure to enjoy such things as may every moment be lost tempt me no more your allurements are powerfull but too weak to vanquish me I deride your wreaths of Laurell there growes more on'â— in my garden then you can give me If you offer me esteem and reputation among men what should I doe with your presents Time devoures every day the like of them and yet more precious I undervalue all such Good-things as it can take away again from me Deceit full greatnesses of the Earth cease to pursue me you shall never catch me your charms have given some hits to my heart Worldly Greatnesses are but like Maskingâ— cloathes which serve him and the other but for that time but not to my soule your sweets have touch my senses but not my spirit what have you to offer me which can satisfie me Time and Fortune lend you all the Scepters and Crownes which you borrow and as you are not the owners they take them away again when they will and not when it pleaseth you So then I will have no Scepters for an hour nor no Crownes for a day If I have desire to raigne 't is beyond Time that I may thus be under shelter from the inconstancy of Ages Trouble not your selves to follow me This world is a masse of mire upon which a man may make impresse of all sorts of Characters but not hinder Time to deface the draught at any time Ambitious Spirits fair leave have you to draw the Stell of your designes upon this ready prim'd cloth Some few yeares wipe out all Some ages carry away all and the remembrance of your follies is onely immortall in your soules by the eternall regreet which remaines you of them SCIPIO made design to conquer Carthage and after he had cast the project thereof upon mould he afterwards took the body of this shadow and
full of ashes and what object more sensibly can be presented before our eyes to shew us the truth of our miseries then this of our selves From Earth is our production and the same serves us with nourishment and for sepulture also as if ashamed the Sun should afford his light to out wretchednesse Make we then every day Funerall processions or at least visit in meditation every hour our Tomb as the place where our bodies must take so long abode Celebrate we our selves our own Funerals The thought of our end is a soveraign remedy against our passions and invite to our exequies Ambition Avarice Pride Choller Luxury Gluttony and all the other Passions where with we may be attainted to the end to be Conquerours even by our own proper defeat For when a Man yeelds to the Meditation of Death then reason commands sense All obey to this apprehension of frailty and feeblenesse Pleasures by little and little abandon us the sweets of life seem sowr and we can find no other quiet but in the hope of that which Truth it self hath promised us after so much trouble Proud Spirits be ye Spectators of this Funeral Pomp which this great Monarch celebrates to day He invites the Heaven and the Earth to his Exequies since in their view he accompanies his pourtrayed Skeleton unto the Tomb his Body conducts thither its shadow the originall the painted figure in attendance till a Metamorphosis be made both of one and t'other O glorious action where the Living takes a pride to appear Dead as dying already by his own choice as well as necessity O glorious action where the Triumpher takes a glory in the appearance of his overthrow O glorious action where all the honour depends upon the contempt of the worlds honour O glorious action where Garlands of Cypresse dispute the preheminence with Laurell and Palme O glorious action where the Conquerour under-going the Laws of Nature elevates himself above it making his puissance to be admired in his voluntary weaknesse But I engage my self too far in 't Herodotus remarks that the Queen Semiramis made her Sepulcher be erected upon the entrances of the principall Gate of the * Babylon City to the end that this sad object of wretchednesse might serve for a Schoole-master to passengers to teach them the Art to know themselves O blessed Lesson is that which the Tombs can affoord us O gracions Science is that which they instruct us Strabo testifies No better Schoole then the Church-yard that the Persians made Pipes of dead-mens bones which they used at Festivals to the end that the sad harmony which issued thence might temper the excesse of joy But may not we say our Lungs to be to us such kind of Whistles and that our dolorus sighs which produce thence the harmony are capable to moderate the violence of our contentments A strange thing it is that all the animated objects which are affected by our senses bear the image of Death and yet we never think but of Life Let our eyes but fairly turn their regards on all sides All that lives they may see dies and what ha's no life passes away before ' em Our eares are tickled with the sweet harmony of Voices or Instruments or Tabors or Trumpets But these sonnds are but Organs spirited with blasts whose borrowed wind is lost when the motion ceaseth and there behold the Faile of their life And for Instruments The objest of our nothingnesse ha's a grace and allurement capable to ravish the best spirits 't is true they warble delightfully yet their melody is often dolefull to the mind when it considers that it proceeds from certain guts of dead beasts which Art hath so contrived Tabors being of the same nature must also necessary produce the same effects and Trumpets also do but sob in our ears since their clangor is forced onely by the violence of a blast of sighs Our Taste cannot satiate the hunger of its appetite but with dead and breathlesse things and all our other senses are subject to the same necessity Insomuch Death is ever present and at hand to our heart but still absent from our memory that Death environs us on all sides though we be always her own and yet we never think on 't but in extremities as if we were onely to learn at the last instant that we are Mortall and the hard experience which we make on 't were the onely Lesson which by Nature is given us LORD render me capable if it please thee of this Science which may effectually teach me the Art to know my self to the end that this knowledge may represent to me alwayes the reality of my wretchednesse Make me that I may see my self may understand and feel my self to die every moment but so that I may see it with the eyes of my heart perceive it with the eyes of my soul and feel it by the sense of my conscience therein to find my repose and safety I know well that Nature mourns uncessantly the death of its works which are devoured every hourby time and though no where thus can I see but Sadnesse it self yet ne'rethelesse remain I insensible of the horrour of these objects and though they be terrible my spirit not is afrighted Render me therefore if it please thee render me fearfull and make me even to tremble in thinking of it since the thought of it is so important suffer me not to live a kind of Death without meditating of that life which is exempt from Death and whereof Eternity is the Limit All my votes do terminate at this and all my wishes which I addresse to thy bounty that I may one day see the effects of my hopes Let us advance on our first proposition O how celebrious and glorious is the Triumph over our selves Let us leave the Laurels A Mnn hath no greater enemy than himselfe and Palmes to those famous Conquerours of Sea and Land Their Crownes are now metamorphosed into dust their renowne into wind themselves into corruption and for a surplusage of mishap after the conquest of the whole World they die in the miseries whereunto they were born Cyrus could not bound his ambition lesse than to the vast extention of the Universe and yet a * Tomyris simple woman onely prescrib'd him an allay and placed his head in the range of his owne Trophies Arthomides plaies Iupiter upon Earth his pourtraict is the onely Idoll of his subjects There is nothing more vain than Vaine-glory t is a body without soule or life having no subsistance but in imagination and yet one turne of the wheele casts him a sacrifice upon the same altar which he had erected to his glory his life glistering with triumphs but his death in such a ruine clouded even the memory of his name All those stately Triumphers of whom Antiquity trumpets-out wonders have had no other recompence of their labours but this vain conceipt that
but a Phantasie and Chimera to which your imaginations give that beauty which charms you and that delicacy which ravishes you What think you is it to be the greatest of the world 'T is an honour whereof misery and inconstancy are the foundations for all the felicities which can arrive us are of the same nature as we are and consequently as miserable as our condition and as changing This Earth whereon you live is the lodging of the dead what eternity believe you to find in it Eternity of honours riches and contentments there was never any but in imagination and this Idea which we have of them is but a reflection from the lightning of Truth wherewith heaven illuminates noble souls There is nothing eternall in this world but this scope of truth thus to guide them to the search of the true source of all by the aide of these small rivolets It is time to finish this work I have made appear to you in the first Chapter the particular study which a man ought to take Seneca to come to the * Hoc jubet illa Pythicis oraculis adscripta vox Nosce Te. Knowledge of himself wherein lyes the accomplishment of perfection And herein the precept is The Consideration of the miseries which are destinated to our Nature as being so many objects capable enough to force up the power of our reason to give credence to the resentments of frailty which are proper to us But this is not all to be meerely sensible of our wretchednesse Serious Consideration must often renew the Ideas of them in our souls more then the hard experience of them And this to the end that vanity to which we are too incident He that searches into himself shall not loose his labour may not surprize us during the intervals of a meditation so important We must often dive into our selves and seek in the truth of our nothingnesse some light to make us thus to know our selves Afterwards making a rise a little higher it is necessary to consider the End for which we were creaated and in this consideration to employ all the powers of the severall faculties of our souls to the generous design of getting possession of that glory Behold the Corollary of my first Argument or Chapter The second instructs us a new means to resist powerfully the hits of the vanities of the world from the example of the wretchednes of * Saladiae of one of the greatest Monarchs of the world Fortune had refused him nothing because she meant to take all from him Poverty and Riches depend upon opinion and a noble soul is above his fortune in what condition soever he be for in the height of his glory he finds himself reduced to the poornesse of his shirt onely which is all he carries with him into the grave And this makes us sensibly perceive that the greatnesses of the earth are Goods as good as estranged from human nature since in this mortall and perishing condition we can onely possesse their usance and the term of this possession is of so short endurance that we see as soon the end as the beginning Reader represent unto thy self how thou shalt be dealt with at thy death both by Fortune and the world Et quae veneraris quae despicis unus exaequabit cinis Sen. since the Minion of this blind Goddesse and the greatest of the Universe is exposed all naked in his shirt in sight of all his subjects to be given in prey to the worms as well as the most miserable of the Earth The Third Chapter where Life leads Death in Triumph teaches us the Art to vanquish this untamable The horrour of Death is purely in the we aknesse of imagination by considering its weaknesse for in effect if Death be but a privation 't is to be deprived of reason and judgement to give it a being since it cannot subsist but in our impaired imaginations The fantasme of an Idea is it whose very form is immateriall as having no other subsistence I say but that which the weaknesse of our spirit gives it And again to come to the most important point Let this be the close of the recapitulation Sen. that you may have means not to stand in fear on 't * Incertum est quo te loco mors expectet itaque tu illam om i loco expecta Muze on it alwayes looke for it in all places and overcoming your selves you shall triumph over it Never did an unblemisht life fear Death The last Chapter where the object of Caemiteries and Sepulchers is laid before your eyes may now again serve for the lact touch since it is a Theater where you must play the Tragedy of your lives All this great number of Actors Hodie mihi Cras tibi Think on that Reader it may be thy turn to morrow whose bones and ashes you see there have every one plaid their part and it may be that the hour will soon Knell that you must act yours Reader live ever in this providence a Man cannot too soon resolve to do that well which howsoever must be done of necessity God Grant that these last lines may once again reproach thee the bad estate of thy Conscience delay not too long this Check to thy self least too late the regreets be then in vain Momentum est unde pendet aeternitas Thy salvation is fastened to an instant consider the infinite number of them which are already slip't away when perhaps at that moment thou wert in estate if dying to incurre the punishment of a second Death and that eternall If thou trust to thy youth put thy head out of the window and thou shalt see carried to the grave some not so old as thy self If thou relye upon the health which thou now enjoyest Saepe optimus status corporis periculosissimus Hip. Sera nimis vita est crastina vive hodie 't is but a false-going dyall The calm of a perfect health hath oftentimes ushured the Tempest of a suddain Death What hop'st thou for hope is deceitfull what stayest thou for A wise man ought never to defer till to morrow what should he done to day Lastly what desirest thou The peace of conscience is the only desirable good Go on then right sorward thou canst not misse the way which I have chalk't thee FINIS PERLECTORI The TRANSLATOURS COROLLARIE SO Now 't is done although it be no Taske That did much Brains or toylesome Study aske The meaning I ' vouch good but Merit small In rendring English the French Principall It is but a Translation I confesse And yet the Rubs of Death in 't nerethelesse May trippe some capering Fancies of the Time That Domineere and Swagger it in Rime That Charge upon the Reader and give Fire On all that do not as they do admire Either their rugged Satyrs cruell vein Or puffe-paste Notes 'bove Ela in high strain Then in
THE DESIGN OF THE FRONTISPICE LOe DEATH invested in a Roab of Ermine Triumphant sits embellished with Vermine Upon a Pile of dead men's Skulls her Throne Pell mell sut duing all and sparing none A scrutinuous judgement will the Type ressent You may imagine 'T is DEATH'S Parliament Upon the World it 's pow'rful Foot doth tread For all the world or is or shall be dead One hand the Scepter t'other holds our Mirrour In courtesie to shew poor flesh its errour If men forget themselves It tells'em home They 're Dust and Ashes All to this must come To view their fate herein some will forbear Who wave all thought of Death as too severe But know Death though 't be unknown how nie A Point on which depends ETERNITIE Either to live Crown'd with peptetual Blisse Or howl tormented in Hell's dark Abysse With winged haste our brittle lives do pass As runs the gliding Sand l'th' Hour-Glass If more you would continue on your Look No more upon the Title but the Book THE MIRROVR which Flatters not O that they were Wise that they vnderstood This that they would Consider their latter End Deut 32.25 MORS sola fatetur Quantula sint hominum corpuscula Iuvenal THE MIRROUR WHICH FLATTERS NOT Concerning the contempt of the World or the Meditation of Death of Philip King of Macedon Saladine Adrian and Alexander the Great By Le Sieur de la SERRE Historiographer of FRANCE Transcribed ENGLISH from the FRENCH by T. Cary Esq Horat. Om nem crede Diem libi diluxisse Supremum LONDON Printed by E. T. for R. Thrale and are to be sold at his shop at the Sign of the Cross-Keyes at Pauls Gate 1658. TO THE KING of Great RITAIN SIR IF the Greatness of Kings derive its value and lustre from the number of Vertues which they possess I render you now the homage of my observance and submissions as to one of the greatest Monarchs of the World since you are the Majesty of all Vertues together What an agreeable compulsion is this to see a man's self powerfully forced to become the subject of a forain Prince by the soveraign authority of his merit To this point am I reduced Sir your all-royal perfections im pse upon me so absolutely such sweet lawes of servitude that I have no more liberty but to accept its yoak And in this my inclination and duty make a fresh injunction over me which dispute prebeminence with all the rest for who can keep himself from rendring homage to your Majesty the onely fame of whose Renown captivates through all the Universe instructing us that you are as absolute over your Passions as over your Subjects and that you reign as Soveraign in the esteem of men as in your Royal Estates And the Truth of this set your glory at so high a worth that the felicity on 't may perhaps be envied you but the like Merit not to be reacht by others because Nature is very sparing of the like gifts and Heaven does not every day such miracles For me I am but one of the Admirers not of the greatnesse of your Dominion although only the vast extent of the Ocean marks out its limites but of all the divine qualities which you only possess in proper as a Good Time Fate nor Death can take from you Nor is this the all in all to be Wise Valiant and Generous in the height of Native deduction All these Titles of Honour have degrees of eminence which mark out to us the gradations of their several perfections and whereof your Majesty shewes us now the onely pattern having in possession all admirable Vertues with so much purity and luster as dazles its very envyers and forces them to adore that in your Majesty which elsewhere they admire not And it is my belief that you stand thus unparalled even amongst your semblables since besides the Crowns of your Cradle you carry above them others and such as shall exempt you from the Grave I a vow that I have studied long time to speak condignely of your Majesty but although my pains and watchings are equally unprofitable my defect yet is still glorious howsomever that it is a shadow from your Light It sufficeth me to have taken Pen in hand to publish onely that I am SIR Your MAJESTIES Most humble and most obeisant Servant P. de la SERRE TO THE QUEEN Of Great BRITAIN MADAME I Could not approach but with a MIRROVR in my hand before your Majesty the splendour of whose magnificence dazles so powerfully all the world that I am not able to behold the immediate presence on it but by the reflection of its Rayes Without fiction MADAME your Glory is arrived to the point of rendring your perfections so unknown as being so above the commune that I believe most men honour you now by observance and example onely as not able otherwise to reach the depth of the just reasons they might have for it Nor is this All to say that you are solely fair and perfectly chaste but it is necessary beyond all this to intimate secretly in the Language of Thought all the divine qualities which you possess of Supereminence in all things since their purity cannot discend to the capacity of our discourse without suffering a kind of prophanation From hence is it that if I should call you The compleatly-perfect I might well say in effect that which you are but never thus should I represent the greatness of your merits since every of them in it self ha's such particular perfections as might challenge Altars from us if your humility could permit it These are such Truths MADAME as hinder me from praising your Majesty not knowing how to express my self condignely Well might I perhaps suggest it to remembrance that your particular inclinations are the publick Vertues which we adore and that of the same temperament of humour Nature composed heretofore the Sages of the World But of all these discourses notwithstanding I cannot frame one onely praise sufficiently adaequate to your worth seing it is elevated beyond all Eulogiums Insomuch that if Admiration it self teach not a new Language to posterity wherein to proclaim aloud the favours and graces wherewith Heaven hath accomplisht you it must content it self to reverence your Name and adore your Memory without presumption of speech of your actions as being ever above all valuation as well as imitation To instance the immortalitie of your AVGVSTICK Race although it be a pure Source of Honour which can never be dryed up yet all these Titles of a Kings Daughter Sister and VVife can never adde to your Renown which derives its value rather from the admirabilities of your Life then the greatness of your Birth Insomuch MADAME that the Scepters and Crowns of your Royalties are the meanest Ornaments wherewith your Majestie can deck it self since the least glymse of the least of your Actions duskes the luster of all the other magnificenceâ— which environ you And I believe had those Wonders
wherein he is of possessing all things he looseth the possession of himself and having too much dreamed on his pleasures his Life is past as a Dream without return I must tell you one of my meditations I shall never be able to comprehend the meaning of those who moan themselves against Fortune A man may well complain against Fortune these vain regréetes exempt him not from the pain the World all the pleasures of this life One forsooth will upbraid to this foolish Deity her deceipts without considering that he deceived himself in giving Trust to a Goddesse that near had any He yet will accuse her to have conducted him still through craggy ways and over-spread with thorns as if in following one that is blinde a man should not hazard to run this danger Another will make ye fresh complaints against the World detesting it's Sweets The world may well be the instrument of our destruction not the cause cursing it's charms and calling it a Thousand times deceiptfull but why one would say to hear these plaints that the world began but now to receive its birth I mean were but now newly created that no man knows it yet and that its first couzenages began but now to be discovered What follyl is not this to cheat ones self to have commerce with a cheater the world never yet bore any other name or title The number of those whom the world hath deceived is so great that they that still trust it are now no more excusable why then aym we to nourish our selves with its delights whose after-bitternes impoysons sensibly our souls But if its charms be powerful enough to tempt reason they are yet too feeble to vanquish it provided that the wil consent not so that a man remain convict of all the crimes whereof he may be accused What seeming ground then have we to be enraged against those pleasures which we have received The will is so free that it cannot suffer violence but from it self if our selves ' only give them both being and form the Fancies conceive these delights the will gives them birth they are the works whereof our imaginations form the Spices Pleasures are the greatest enemies of life for in casting flowers upon our heads they fill our hearts with thorns and our desires make the Metamorphosis changing them into objects palpable and sensible which are marks of the seal of our depravednesse Let a man then abhor pleasures instead of accusing them detest their vanity in lieu of complaining of deceitfulnesse But if they be criminall they onely bear the stain of their Fathers and if they be complices of our destruction t is we give them Birth to give us death Let men cease to lament of Fortune since the Mirror of its flying scarfe Fortune is still her self he which trusts her takes delight to be cheated and wings expresse to the life its lightnesse and our folly Let none Argue any more that the world is cause of our ruine since we cannot chuse but tread every hour over the dust and ashes of those who have too late repented to have followed it As for voluptuousnesse t is a vain Idaea to which our passions give a body to make it serve as a sensible object of their brutality insomuch that it can do nothing but by our first motions taking its vigour from our force Pleasure still takes its force from our volunt ary weakness 'T is more then folly when the folly of others serves us not for example and its power from our Soverainty and this renders us doubly culpable palleating our faults instead of acknowledging them since laments rather than excuses might absolve us them Is it not that St. John Chrysostome toucht with compassion of our miseries cries out in astonishment of our weaknes Oh World how many hast thou deceved but this is its trade and profession Oh Fortune how many hast thou made to fall but even yet still while I am speaking she gives employment to her treason and exercise to her Tyranny O Pleasures comfitted in Sweets and yet steeped in bittersnesse how many have ye poysoned but yet their venome is so common that the whole earth is infected with it What remedy then to all these ils No other then this to pry into ones self in the MIRROVR of his own Ashes We can no better contemplate any thing then in the Mirrour of our Nothing AMIRROUR always hanging at the Girdle and which flatters not AMIRROUR whose glasse though more brittle then one of Chrystall makes us yet to see that all the objects of the World are false All the Mirrours of the World flatter except this of our miseries but that of our Corruption a Mirrrour which represents us more lively in our pourtraict then in our selves A Mirrour whose kind of shadow and Chimera makes us see in effect that which we are in appearance A Mirrour all miraculous which preserves certain Species's of nothing to render them sensible to our knowledge A Mirrour all divine which metamorphosing our bodies into shadows yet expresses us so naturally that the most arrogant cannot mistake themselves A Mirrour lastly which Nature hath charmed with it's own proper spels to the end that viewing himself herein a Man may be able to resist the charms of the World's allurements I am greatly astonisht at those that preach us the Knowledge of our selves to be so troublesom difficult since at all times and in all places of all sides of all sorts of fashions we are nothing at all or if by an excesse of flattery and vanity I borrow some names to expresse truly what we are If a wan would still study himself he would become the wisest of the World it can be no other then those of dure and mire whose noysomnesse takes away all doubt on it from the most incredulous In what then consists this trouble of studying to know one's-self since the most ignorant may in this go out Doctors in the schoole of our miseries Self-knowledge onely difficile to the proud where lies the difficulty to arrive to this knowledge when the very wind of our sighs carries away every moment some of that polluted dust whereof we be made Where is this pain say I yet since our senses and spirits can have no other object then this of Inconstancy as unseparable to their nature as it is proper to our condition And what can be this difficulty when we are capable of no action more then to destroy our selves We must break this rinde farther Humility is a skilfull Schoole-master to ieach us to know our selvs I will beleeve that every one knows from whence he comes and whither he goes that his body is but a work of rottennesse and that the worms attend thereof the prey as a nourishment which to them is destinated A man knows no more then he remembers but it is important to consider that these
Ex. 38.8 to the end that those that should present themselves before his Altar might view themselves in thiâ— posture of Prayer O this excellent Mysterie Mortals it behooves you to view your selves in the Mirrour of your Ashes if you would have your vowes heard God hath taught us an excellent way of Prayer There is nothing assured in Life but its continuall Death Give us this day our daily bread But why O Lord teachest thou us not to ask thee our bread for to morrow as well as for to day O how good a reason is there hereof This is because that life hath no assurance of to morrow besides that it is an excesse of grace that we may be bold to crave of him the bread of our nourishment for all a whole day since every moment may be that of our Death Reader let this verity serve thee yet as a mirrour It is not sufficient to muse of the necessity of dying but to consider also that every hure may be our ast if thou would'st have thy praiers to pierce the heavens This is not all to know thy body is a Colosse of filth which is trail'd along from one place to another as it were by the last struggle of a Life alwaies languishing It behooves thee also to call to mind that every instant may terminate the course of thy troublesome carriere and that this sudden retreat constraines thee to bid Adieu for ever to all the things of the world which thou cherishedst most Thoughts only worthy of a noble spirit I have eaten Ashes as bread Psal 102.9 Cinerem tanquam panem manducabam saies the Royall Prophet but how is it possible I conceive his thought He entertained his soul with the remembrance of the Ashes of his body and this truth alone serv'd as object to his imagination for to satisfie the appetite of his Soul Lord give me both the same relish and desire to repast my selfe still thus A man to abase himselfe below that which he is being so poor a thing of nothing of dust and ashes in remembrancing my self alwaies that I am nothing else O sweet remembrance of my rottennesse since it steads me for eternall nourishment of my Soule O precious memorie of my Nothingnesse since able to satisfie the appetite of my heart Let this be the daily bread O Lord which thou hast taught me to ask thee to the end that all my desires together might be satiated with this dear nourishment I recollect my self in this digression Having diverse times mused of the imbecillity and weaknesse of man Si vitrei essemus minus casus timeremus S. Aug. I am constrain'd to cry out with St. Augustine What is there that can be more fraile in Nature If we were of Glasse pursues he our condition might therein be better for 2 Glasse carefully preserv'd There is nothing more brittle than glasse yet man is more may last long time and yet what pain soever man takes to preserve himself and under what shelter soever he shrowds himself for covert to the storm he breakes and is shattered of himself What reply you to these verities Great Princes Well may you now be atrogant The fragillity of glasse cannot admit of comparison with this of your nature what seat will you give to your greatnesse Man is fully miserable since his life is the source of his miseries and what foundation to your vanity when the wind alone of your sighs may shipwrack you upon the Sea of your own proper teares what surnames will you take upon you for to make you be mistaken That of Immortall would become you ill since every part of your body serves but as a But to the shafts of Death Invincible would also be no way proper A man may doe every thing with vertue without it nothing since upon the least touch of mishap you are more worthy of pity than capable of defence Would you be called Gods your Idolaters would immolate you to their own laughter Tread under foot your Crownes if rightly you will be crowned with them you only thus render your selves worthy of those honours Heaven cannot be acquired but by the misprize of earth which you misprize for Glory consists not in the possessing it but in the meriting and the onely means to obtain it is to pretend nothing at all to it How remarkeable is the custome of the Locrians at the Coronation of their Kings they burnt before them a handfull of Tow to represent unto them the instability of their grandeurs and the greedinesse of Time to destroy them In effect all the greatnesses of the Earth All the grandeur of Kings is but as the blaze of flaming tow are but as a bundlet of Tow and then when Darius would make of them his treasure Mis-hap set fire on them and reduced them into Cinders and when he had yet in his heart a desire to immortalize them a new fire seaz'd his intrals by the heat of thirst which burn'd him to the end to consume at once both the cause and the effect So true it is that the Glory of the world vanisheth away like Smoake Great Kings if you build a Throne of Majestie to the proof both against Time and Fortune He which esteems himselfe the least of all is the greatest lay its foundation upon that of your miseries Humility takes her rise in lowlinesse from the lowest footing when she makes her flight into the heavens O how admirable is the Humility of Saint Iohn Baptist They would give him titles of Soveraignty in taking him for the Messias but call to your Memory how with an ejaculation of Love and reverence he precipitates himself both with heart and thought into the Abysse of his own Nothingnesse Vox clamantis in deserto John 1.23 there to admire in all humility both Greatnesse Majesty in his Throne I am but a Voyce saies he which beat at the cares to enter into your hearts A Voyce which rustles in a moment and passes away at the same instant What Humility Is there any thing which is lesse any thing than a Voyce 'T is a puffe of wind which a fresh one carries I know not where since both lose themselves in the air after its never so little agitation Christus verbum Johannes vox with their gentle violence 'T is nothing in effect yet notwithstanding the proper name of this great Prophet They would elevate him John 1.27 and he abaseth himself so low that he would render himself invisible as a Voyce so much he feares to be taken for him whose shoe-latchet A Man is to be estimated in proportion to the under value he makes of himself he judgeth himself unworthy to unloose Lord what are we also but a little Wind enclosed in a handfull of Earth to what can one compare us without attributing us too much vanity True it is that we are the works of thy hands but all
in this world consists in the necessity of death but Mans reason is impaired in the course of Times Oh welcome impairement since Time ruines it but onely in an Anger knowing that it goes about to establish its Empire beyond both time and Ages In fine the Heavens may seem to wax old in their wandring course How happy is man in decaying evermore since he thus at last renders himselfe exempt from all the miseries which pursue him they yet appear the same still every day as they were a thousand yeares agon man from moment to moment differs from himselfe and every instant disrobes him somewhat of his Being Oh delightfull Inconstancy since all his changes make but so many lines which abut at the Center of his stability How mysterious is the Fable of Narcissus the Poets would perswade us that He became self-enamoured A long life is a heavy burthen to the soul since it muct ronder an account of all its moments viewing Himself in a Fountain But I am astonish't how one should become amorous of a dunghill though covered with Snow or Flowers A face cannot be formed without Eyes Nose and Mouth and yet every of these parts make but a body of Misery and Corruption as being all full of it This Fable intimates us the representment of a fairer truth since it invites a man to gaze himself in the Fountain of his tears thus to become amorous of himself If a man could contemplate the beauties of his soul in innocence he would alwais be surprized with its love If a man would often view himself in the tears of his repentance he would soon become a true self-lover not for the lineaments of dust and ashes whereof his countenance is shap's but rather of those beauties and graces wherewith his soul is ornamented and all these together make but a rivelet which leads him to the admiration of that source from whence they took their originall Oh how David was a wise Narcissus then when he made of his Tears a Mirrour so to become enamour'd of himself for he was so self-loving in his repentance that in this He spent both daies and nights with unparalled delights All the vain objects of the world are so many fountains of Narcissus wherin prying may shipwrack themselves But if Narcissus ship-wrack't himself in the fountain of his self-fondnesse This great King was upon point to Abysse himself in the Sea of his tears for their liquid Crystalline shewd him to himself so beautifull that he burned with desire thus to drown himself Ladies view your selves in this Mirrour since you are ordinatily slaves to your own self love You will be fair at what price soever see here is the means The Crystall Mirrour of your tears flatter not contemplate therein the beauty of this grace which God hath given you to bewail your vanities This is the onely ornament which can render you admirable Tears are the faithfullest Mirrours of penitents All those deceitfull Chrystals which you wear hang'd at your Girdles shew you but fained beauties whereof Art is the workmistrisse and cause rather then your visages Would ye be Idolaters of the Earth which vou tread on your bodies are but of Dirt but if you will have them endeared where shall I find tearms to expresse their Noysomnesse If Ladies would ake as much care of their souls as of their bodys they would not hazard the losse both of one and to'ther Leave to Death his Conquest and to the Worms their heritage and search your selves in that originall of Immortality from whence your souls proceed that your actions may correspond to the Noblenesse of that cause This is the most profitable counsell which I can give You It is time to end this Chapter Great Kings I serve you this Morning instead of a page to awake You and remembrance You that you are Men I mean Subjects to Death and consequently destinated to serve as a Prey to the Worms The meditation of our nothingness is a soveraign remedy against vanity a Shittle-cock to the sinds and matter for to form an object of horror and astonishment to you altogether Muze a little that your life passeth away as a Dream think a little that your thoughts are vain consider at the same time Men are so near of blood together hat all bear the same name that all that is yours passes and flies away You are great but this necessity of Dying equals you to the least of your subjects Your powers are dreadfull but a very hand-worm mocks at them your riches are without number but the most wretched of men carry as much into the grave as you In fine may all the pleasures of Life make a party in Yours yet they are but so many Roses whose prickles onely remain to you at the instant of Death The horror which environs You chaseth away your greatnesse Man hath nothing so proper to him as the misery to which he is born the weaknesse which possesseth you renders unprofitable your absolute powers and onely then in that shirt which rests upon your back are comprised all the treasures of your Coffers Are not these verities of importance enough to break your sleep I awake you then for to remembrance you this last time If the earth be our mother heaven is our father that you are Men but destined to possesse the place of those evill Angels whose Pride concaved the Abysses of Hell that you are Men but much more considerable for the government of your reason then your Kingdom That you are Men but capable to acquire all the felicities of Heaven if those of the Earth are by you disdained That you are Men but called to the inheritance of an eternall Glory if you have no pretence to any of this world Lastly Though the body and soul together make up the man there is yet as much difference between the one and the others as between the scabberd and the sword that you are Men but the living images of an infinite and omnipotent one Clear streames of immortality remount then to your eternall source fair rayes of a Sun without Eclipse rejoyn your selves then to the body of his celestiall light Perfect patterns of the divinity unite your selves then to it as to the independant cause of your Being Well may the Earth quake under your feet your wils are Keys to the gates of its abysses should the Water or'e-whelm again all Although the puissances of the soul work not but by the senses the effects in this point are more noble then the cause your hopes cannot be shipwrack'â— That the Aire fils all things may be but your expectations admit of some vacuum Though the Fire devour all things the object of your hopes is above its flames let the heavens pour down in a throng their malignant influences here below your souls are under covert from their affaults Let the Sun exhaling vapours make thereof thunders for your
ruine Man needs fear nothing being alevated above all you are under the protection of him who ejaculates their flashes insomuch that instead of hurting you all things do you homage The Earth supports you the Water refresheth you the Air imbreaths you Man could not be more happy then he is since God is his last felicity To die is proper to man the Fire warms you the Sun lights you and Heaven attends you the Angels honour you the Devils fear you Nature obeyes you and God himself gives himself to you to oblidge you to the like reciprocation Is not this to possesse with advancement all the felicities which you can hope I dare you to wish more Awake thy self then Reader and let thy conscience and thy miserie each in its turn serve thee as a Page every morning to put thee in mind That thou art a Man I mean a pourtraict animated with Death rather then with Life since thou canst do nothing but die but in this continuall dying amid the throng of evils and pains which are enjoyned to thy condition Consider also that thou art created to possesse an Eternity both of life and happinesse How happy is man thus to be able to be as much as he desires and that all these infinite good things are exposed as an aim of honour and glory to the addresses of thy will for if thou wilt Paradise shall be thine though Hell gape at thee Heaven shall be thy share it's delights thy Succession and God alone thy Soveraign felicity A PROLUSIVEVpon the EMBLEME of the second Chapter SWell on unbounded Spirits whose vast hope Scorns the streight limits of all moderate Be Crescent still fix not i' th' Positive scope Graspe still at more reach the Superlative And beyond that too and beyond the Moon Yet ala's but vain and you shal find too soon These great acquists are bubbles for a spurt And Death will leave you nothing but your Shirt Be Richest Greatest Pow'rfullest and Split Flames Trumpet with the blast on 't ther 's it That 's all a Coffin and a Sheet and then You 're dead and buried like to Common men This Saladine foresaw and wisely stoopes Unto his Fate ' midst his triumphant troops A world of wealth and Asiaticke Spoyles Guerdon his glorious military toyles Ensigns and Banners shade his armies Eyes With flying Colours of fled enemies Yet humbly he doth his chief Standard reare Onely his Shirt displayd upon a Spear Mean while his valorous Colonels were clad In rich Coat-armours which they forced had From subdu'de foes and 't seem'd a glorious thing Each man to be apparreld like a King The very common Souldiers out-side spoke Commander now and did respect provoke Their former ornaments were cast aside Which 'fore the victory were all their pride To check their Pomp with clang'ring trumpet sound A Herald loud proclaim 's in Tone profound See what the Emperour doth present your Eye 'T is all that you must look for when you dye This Shirt is all even Saladine shall have Of all his Trophy's with him to the grave Then be not over-heightned with the splendour Of your rich brav'ries which you so much tender Nor let your honours puff you least you find The breath of Fame jade ye with broken wind This solemn passage of this Monarch story With greatest lustre doth advance his glory â—ALADINE Monarck of the 〈…〉 with him at his death nothing but this SHIRT Victorious SALADINE caus'd to be Proclaim'd to all his Armie that he carried nothing with him to the Graue but a SHIRT after all his Conquests THE MIRROUR WHICH FLATTERS NOT. CHAP. II. ARrogant spirits The horror and â— misery of the grave mkes the hair stand on end to the proudest ambitious Hearts be silent and lend an ear to the publick cry of this Herald who with a voice animated with horrour and affright as well as with compassion and truth proclaimeth aloud in the view of heaven and earth and in the presence of a world of people That this Great SALADINE magnificent Conquer â—ur of Asia and Monarch of the whole East carries away to the grave for fruit of his vistories but onely a shirt which covers the mould of his body and even this scarp of linnen too Fortune leaves him but to give the Worms Absolute Kings puissant Soveraigns what will you reply to these discourses for to you they are addrest I doubt well This necessity of dying serves for temperament to the vanity of the greatest Monarchs of the world that shame confusion and astonishment bar your speech and that this sensible object of your proper miseries affects you so with ruth to force from your bosomes a thousand sighs The greatest Monarch of the earth becomes at a clap so little as not to be found no not in his miseries for the wind begins already to carry away the dust whereof he was formed The powerfullest King of the world is reduc'd to such a point of weaknesse that he cannot resist the worms after vanquishment and subjugation of entire Nations The richest Prince of the East takes a glory of all his treasures to carry away but onely a shirt to his Sepulchre What can you answer to these verities This famous Saladine the terrour of men the valour of the earth and the wonder of the world esteems himself so happy and so advantaged by fortune in respect she leaves him this old ragge to cover his corruption Man cannot complain of the world since at his death he gives him a shirt which at his birth his mother Nature refused him that he makes this favour to be published with sound of trumpet in the midst of his Army that none might be in doubt on 't what beyond this can be your pretentions I grant you may be seated like Xerxes upon a Throne all of massie gold canopied with a glistering firmament of precious stones and that on what side soever you turn your menacing regards you see nothing but objects humbled before your Royall Majesties You never seat your selves upon these Thrones of magnificence but as it were to take leave of the assembly All the â— speeches of Men are but discourses of adieu and leave taking sinceâ— every day he marches straight forward toward Death continuing still to give your last God-bwyes like a man who is upon point to depart continually since he dies every moment Insomuch that all this Pompe which accompanies you and which gives shadow to the luster wherewith you are environed vanishes away with you and all those who are its admirers and idolaters run the same fortune being of the same nature Be it from me granted that the report of your glory admits no vacuity no more than the aire doe and that your name is as we known as the Sun and more redoubted than the thunder This voice of renown is but as the sound of a Bell To what purpose doth the renown of a Man make a noyse in the
saw the effect of his desires But may not one say that the Trophies of his valour have been cast in rubbidg within that masse of dirt whereof the world is composed since all the marks thereof are effaced Carthage it felfe though it never had life could not avoid its death Time hath buried it so deep under its own ruines that we seek in vain the place of its Tomb. I leave you to ruminate if its subduer were himself able to resist the assaults of this Tyrannie If ALEXANDER had sent his thoughts into heaven there to seek a new world as well as his desires on earth there to find one he had not lost his time but as he did amuze himself to engrave the history of his ambition and triumphs upon the same masse of clay There is more glory to despise the world than to conquer it for after its conquest a man knower not what to doe with it which he had conquered he writ upon water and all the characters on 't are defaced The Realms which he subdued have lost some of them their names of this Triumpher there remaines us but the Idea as of a dream since men are ready to require Security even of his Memory for the wonders which it preacheth to us of him May we not then again justly avow that of all the conditions to which a man may be advanced without the aid of vertue either by Nature or Fortune there is none more infortunate then to be to these a favorite norany more miserable than to a Great-one All those who engage themselvs to the service of fortune are ill paid and of this every day gives us experience This inconstant goddess hath a thousand favours to lend but to give none but haltars poysons pomards and precipices 'T is a fine thing to see Hannibal begging his bread even in view of Scipio after he had called in question the price of the worlds Empire-dome Is it not an object worthy of compassion to consider Nicias upon his knees before Gillippus to beg his own and the Athenians lives after he had in a manner commanded the winds at Sea and Fortune ashore in a government soveraignly absolute who will not have the same resentments of pity reading the history of Crassus then when by excesse of disaster he surviv'd both his glory and reputation constrained to assist at the funerals of his owne renowne All those who hound after fortune are well pleased to be deceived since her deceits are so wel knowne and undergoe the hard conditions of his enemies attending death to free him from servitude Will you have no regreet to see enslaved under the tyranny of the Kings of Egypt the great Agesilaus whose valour was the onely wonder of his Time What will you say to the deplorable Fate of Cumenes to whom Fortune having offered so often Empires gives him nothing in the end but chaines so to die in captivitie You see at what price Men have bought the favours of this Goddesse when manie times the severity of a happy life produceth the storm of an unfortunate Death You may judge also at the same time of what Nature are these heights of honour when often the Greatest at Sun-rise finds themselves at the end of the Day the most miserable And suppose Fortune meddle not with them to what extremity of misery think you is a man reduc't at the hour of his departure All his Grandeurs though yet present are but as past felicities he enjoys no more the goods which he possesses greess onely appertain to him in proper and of what magnificence so'ere he is environed I wonder not if rich men be afraid of death since to them it is more dreadfull then to any this object shows him but the image of a funerall pomp his bed already Emblemes the Sepulcher the Sheets his winding linnen wherein he must be inveloped So that if he yet conceit himself Great 't is onely in misery Since all that he seeâ— heares touches smells and tasts sensibly perswades him nothing else Give Resurrection in your thoughts to great Alexander and then again conceive him at last gaspe and now consider in this deplorable estate Fortune sells every day the gtory of the world to any that will but none but fools are her chapmen wherein he finds himself involv'd upon his funerall couch to what can stead him all the grandeurs of his life past they being also past with it I grant that all the Earth be his yet you see how the little load of that of his body weighs so heavy on his soul that it is upon point to fall groveling under the burden I grant that all the glorie of the world belongs to him in proper he enjoys nothing but his miseries I yeeld moreover that all Mankinde may be his subjects yet this absolute soveraignty is not exempt from the servitude of pain Be it that with the onely thunder of his voice he makes the Earth to tremble yet he himself cannot hold from shaking at the noise of his own sighs I grant in fine that all the Kings of the world render him homage yet he is still the tributary of Death O grandeurs since you flie away without cease what are you but a little wind and should I be an Idolater of a little tossed Ayre Omnis motus tendit ad quietem and which onely moves but to vanish to its repose O greatnesse since you do but passe away what name should I give you but that of a dream Alas why should I passe my life in your pursuite still dreaming after you O worldly greatnesses since you bid Adieu to all the world without being able to stay your selves one onely moment Adieu then your allurements have none for me your sweets are bitter to my taste and your pleasures afford me none I cannot run after that which flies I can have no love for things which passe away worldly Greatnesses are but childrens trifles every wise man despises them and fince the world hath nothing else 't is a long while that I have bidden adieu to it It had promised me much and though it had given me nothing yet cannot I reproach it finding my self yet too rich by reason of its hardnesse But I return to the point Men of the World would perswade us that it is impossible to find any quiet in it to say The onely means to be content is to settle the conscience in peace a firm setling of Spirit wherein a man may be content in his condition without ever wishing any other thing And for my part I judge nothing to be more easie if we leave to reason its absolute power What impossibility can there be to regulate a mans will to Gods And what contradiction in 't to live upon earth of the pure benedictions of heaven What greater riches can a man wish then this to be able to undergo the Decrees of his Fate without murmuring and
complaint If Riches consisted onely in Gold Diamonds Pearls or such like things of like raritie those which have not of them might count themselves miserable But every man carries his treasure in his conscience He which lives without just scandall lives happily and and who can complain of a happy life But if to have the hap of these felicities of this life Riches are of use to human life but not of necessity for without them a man may live content a man judge presently that he ought of nececessity to have a great number of riches This is to enslave himself to his own opinion abounding in his proper sense and condemning reason for being of the contrary part I know well that a man is naturally swayed to love himself more then all things of the world and that this love proceeds from the passion of our interest seeking with much care and pain all that may contribute to our contentments and whereas Riches seem to be Nurses of them this consequence is incident to be drawn that without them is no contented living But at first dash When Reason reigns the passions obey it is necessary to distinguish this love into Naturall and Brutall and believe that with the illumination of reason we may purifie the relishes of the first even to the point of rendring them innocent without departing from our interests and consequently the enjoyment of our pleasures giving them for object the establishment of our setled content in misprision of all those things of the world which may destroy it As for this brutish Love which estranging us from God separates us also from our selves the passion of it becomes so strong by our weaknesse that without a speciall grace we grow old in this malady of Spirit of contenting our Senses rather then obeying our Reason making a new God of the Treasures of the Earth But in conclusion these Gods abandon our bodies to the Worms and our souls to the Devils And for all their riches the greatest Great ones can onely purchase a glorious Sepulture Is not this a great advantage and a goodly consolation Maintain we boldly He whose will submits to Gods will lives ever content that a man may find quietnes of life in all sorts of conditions with the onely richnesse of a tractable Soul resign'd to take the time as it comes as God sends it without ever arguing with his providence There is no affliction whereto our Soul cannot give us asswage The Spirit of a Man will bear his infirmity There is no ill whereto it self is not capable to furnish us a remedy A man how miserable somever may find his contentment amidst his miseries if he lives for his soul more then for his bodies behalf God makes us to be born where he will and of what Parents he pleases if the poorness of our birth accompany us even to death he hath so ordained it what can else do but let him so do Can he be accounted miserable that obey's with good grace his soveraigns decrees O 'T is a greater danger to be very rich then viry poor for riches often makes men lose their way but poverty keeps 'em in the straight path how is it far more easie to undergo the burthen of much poverty then of great riches For a man extreamly poor is troubled with no thoughts more important then onely how to find means to passe his life in the austerities whereto he is already habituated without repining after other fortune as being estranged equally both from his knowledge and reach in which respects he may well be stil'd happy But a man very rich dreams of nothing but to eternize the continuance of his days although his fancy be in vain instead of letting them quietly slide away insomuch that being possest with no passion more then love of life he thinks alwaies to live and never to die But Death comes ere he thinks on 't and taking from him all to his very shirt Death cannot be said to deceive any body for it is infallible and yet the world complaint of it constrains him to confesse that riches are onely profitable by misprision since by the contempt a man makes of them he may become the richest of the world O what a sensible pleasure 't is to be Rich say worldly men alwaies but I would fain know in what consists this contentment what satisfaction can there be had to possesse much treasure knowing what an infinite number of our companions are reduc'd to the last point of poverty Some in Hospitals where they he in straw over whelmed with a thousand fresh griefs Others at the corner of a street where a piece of a Dung-hill serves them at once both for bed and board Some again in Dungeons where horrour and afright hunger and despair tyrannize equally over their unfortunate spirits And others in some Desert to which ill fate has confined them to make their ills remedilesse as being far removed from all sorts of succours How with the knowledge of these truths There is no emptinesse in nature for miseries fill al a man shall be able to relish greedily the vain sweets of worldly riches it must needs be for want of reason or pity and consequently to be altogether brutish or insensible I shall have suppose a hundred thousand crownes in rents and all this revenue shall serve but to nourish my body and its pleasures without considering that a hundred thousand poor soules sigh under the heavy burden of their miseries every Day and yet men shall esteem me happy in being rich in this fate O how dangerous are the treasures which produce these felicities Is it possible It is a brave generositie to be sensible of othermens miseries that the Great-ones of the world doe not thinke at all in the middle of their Feasts of the extream poverty of an infinite number of persons and that in themselves they do not reason secretly in this sort What in this instant that we satiate the appetite of our senses with all that nature hath produced most delicious for their entertain a million and many more poor soules are reduced to this extremitie as not to have one onely crumb of bread And in this serious thought what relish can they find in their best-cook'd cates and in their sweetest condiment does not this important consideration mingle a little bitternesse But if their spirits estrange themselves from these meditations and fasten to objects more agreeable O how hard of digestion is the second service of their collation He which cannot love his neighbour hath no love for himselfe To speak ingenuously every time when I consider in that condition exempt from want wherein God hath given me birth and wherein his goodnesse which is no other than himselfe keeps me still alive I say when I consider the misery to which the greatest part of the world is reduced I cannot be weary of blessing this adorable Providence which grants
them were hereditary Ambition never elevates but to give a greater fall CAESAR had seen the death of Pompey and with him all the glory of his renown and Pompey had seen buried in the tomb of Time and Oblivion the renown of that great Scipio whose valour more redoubted then the thunder had made the Eearth tremble so oft Scipio in his turn might have read the Epitaph which despair shame and disaster had graven in letters of Gold upon the Sepulture of Hannibal and Hannibal might have learn't to know by the unconstancy of the Age wherein he liv'd before he made experiment of them the misfortunes and miseries which are inseparable to our condition And yet notwithstanding all of them stumbled one after other upon one and the same Stumbling-stone I am not come into Persia The richest of the world at last is found as poor as the poorest companion for the conquest of treasures said Alexander to Parmenio take thou all the riches and leave me all the glory but after good calculation neither of them both had any thing at all These riches remained in the world still to which they properly appertained and this vain-glory saw its lover die without it self being seen Insomuch that after so great conquests the worms have conquered this great Monarch and as the dunghill of his ashes ha's no sort of correspondence with this so samous name of Alexander which otherwhile he bore t is not to be said what he hath been seeing what he is now I mean his present wretchednesses efface every day the memory of his past greatnesses Ambitious spirits though you should conquer a thousand worlds as he did this one you should not be a whit richer for all these conquests The Earth is still as it was it never changes nature All her honours are not worth one tear of repentance all its glory is not to be prized with one sigh of contrition I grant that the noise of your renown may resound through the four corners of the Universe That of SALADINE which went round it all could not exempt him from the mishaps of life nor miseries of Death After he had encoffered all the riches of the East yet finds he himself so poor for all that hardly can he take along with him so much as a Shirt Embalm then the Air which you breath with a thousand Odours be Served in Plate of Gold Lie in Ivory Swim in Honours and lastly let all your actions glitter with magnificence 'T is the greatest horror of death to render account of all the moments of life the last moment of your life shall be judge of all those which have preceded it then shall you be able at your Death to tell me the worth of this vain glory whereof you have been Idolaters and after your Death you shall resent the pains of an eternall regreet having now no more opportunity to repent you to any effect Believe me all is but Vanity Honours Glory Riches Praise Esteem Reputation All this is but smoak during Life and after Death nothing at all The Grands of the world have made a little more noyse then others by the way But this Noyse is ceas'd their light is extinguish't their memory buried And if men speak of them sometimes the answer is returned with a shake of the head intimating no more words of them since such a Law of silence Time hath imposed hereon Seek your glory in God and your Honour in the contempt of this earthy Honour if you will enternize your renown in the perpesuity of Ages I have no more to say to you after these truths A PROLUSIVEVpon the EMBLEM of the third Chapter A Funerall Herse with wreaths of Cypres crested A Skeleton with Robes imperiall vested Dead march sad looks no glorious circumstance Of high Achievements and victorious Chance Are these fit Trophy's for a Conquerous These are the Triumphs of the Emperour ADRIAN who chose this Sable Heraldry Before the popular guilded Pegeantry ' Stead of Triumphall Atches he doth rear The Marble Columns of his Sepulcher * Moles Adriani nune Castrum S. Angeli No publick honours wave his strict intent To shrine his Triumph in his Morument The Conscript Fathers and Quirites all Intend his welcome to the Capitoll The vast expence one day's work would have cost He wiser far since t'ther had been lost To build a Mausolaeum doth bestow Which now at Rome is call'd Saint * Pont Aeliu Angelo ADRIAN Emperour of Rome Celebrates himselfe his Funeralls and causes his Coffin to be carried in Triumph before him Where to this Day from Aelius Adrian's Name The Aelian Bridge doth still revive his fame Now was the peoples expectation high For wonted pompe and glitt'ring Chevalry But lo their Emp'rour doth invite 'em all Not to a Shew but to his Funerall They look for Gew-Gaw-fancies his wise scorn Contemns those Vanities leaves their hope forlorn For since all 's smother'd in the Funerall Pile He will not dally with 'em for a while This was self-Victory and deserveth more Then all the Conquests he had won before What can Death do to such a man or Fate Whose Resolutions them anticipate For since the Grave must be the latter end Let our preventing thoughts first thither tend Bravely resolv'd it is knowing the worst What must be done at last as good at first THE MIRROUR WHICH FLATTERS NOT. CHAP. III. O How glorious is the Triumph over Death O how brave is the Vistory over a Mans life You see how this great * Adrian Monarch triumphs to day over that proud Triumpher Death after the happy vanquishment of his passions He enters into his Empire by the Port of his Tomb thus to raign during his life like a man that dies every moment he celebrates himself his own Funerals and is led in Triumph to his Sepulcher to learn to die generously What a glory 's this to over-awe That which commands the whole world what Courage is this to assail and combate That which none could ever yet resist and what a power is it to tame That which never yet yielded Echo her self hath not rebounds enow to resound aloud the wonders of this Victory This is not the Triumph of Alexander when he made his entry into Babylon mounted upon a Chariot as rich as the Indies and more glistering then the Sun In this we see no other riches but the rich contempt which ought to be made of them no other lustre but of Vertue This is not the Triumph of Caesar then when be was drawn unto the Capitoll by forty Elephants after he had won twenty four battels In this we see nought else but a funerall pomp but yet so glorious that Death her self serves for a Trophy to it This is not the Triumph of Epaminondas where the glorious lustre of the magnificence sham'd the splendour of the day which yet lent its light to it The marvels which appear'd in this here seem'd as celebrating in
black the Exequies of all the other braveries of the world since nothing can be seen more admirable then this This is not the Triumph of Aurelian where all the graces are led captive with Zenobia To triumph over vice is the noblest Trophie In this are to be seen no other captives but the world and all its vanities and their defeat is the richest Crown of the Victor This is not the Triumph of that pompous Queen of Egypt entring into Cilicia where she rays'd admiration to her self in a Galley of unutrerable value but in this we contemplate the more then human industry of a Pilote who from the mid'st of the storms and tempest of the world recovers happily to the Port the ship of his life though yet but in the way to approach to it In fine this is not the Triumph of Sesostris whose stately Chariot four Kings drew Passions are the onely slaves of this and Death being here vanquisht this honour remains immortall and the name of the Triumpher Say we then once again All the glory of men vanisheth away with them O how glorious a Triumph is this over Death O how brave is the victory over our selves and the onely means thus to vanquish a mans-self is to bury his ambition before his body be ensepulchred preparing neverthelesse the tomb of both to the end that the continuall remembrances of Death may serve for temperament and moderation to the delights of life We read of Paulus Aemilius that returning to Rome laden with wreaths of Laurell after the famous victory over the Persians he made his entrance of triumph with so great pomp and magnificence that the Sun seemed to rouz it self many times as if upon design to contemplate these wonders Pompy desirous to expose to the view of day all the magnificent presents which Fortune had given him in his last conquests entred now the third time in Triumph into the City of Rome where the noise of his valour made as many Idolaters as admirers gaining hearts and now conquering soules as well as before Realms and Provinces But it seems that the glory which accompanied him in this action had this defect not to be sufficiently worthily known even of those that were witnesles of it as surpassing by much all that they could possibly expresse of it There was seen advanced before his charriot Vanitie is a dangerous enemy it flatters onely to surprize in ostentation a Checker-worke composed of two sorts of precious stones whose beauty set them beyond all price But yet me thinks their sparkling might have in good time been a light to him if by a feeling of fore-sight touching the inconstancie of his fortune he had caused to have been graven thereon the history of his mishaps There was admired in sequell a Statue of the Moon all of Gold in form of a Crescent and I am astonisht that this Image of change and Vicissitude made him not foresee the deturning of the Wheele I mean the storme that was to succeed the calme of his happinesse He caused moreover to be carried before him a great number of Vessels of Gold never thinking that Death might soon replenish some part of them with his ashes There was seen to follow a mountain all of Gold upon which were all sorts of animals and many Trees of the same matter and this mountaine was enrounded with a Vine whose golden glittering dazled the eies of all that considered its wonders This proud Triumpher was the Orpheus which to the Lyrick sound of his renown Ambition is an incurable disease of the soule if in good time it be nor lookt too attracted this mountaine these Animals these Trees this Vine But as Orpheus so him also Fortune destinated a Prey to the fury of Bacchinals I mean the Eunuchs which put him to Death Three Statues of gold first Jupiters then Mars and then of Pallas came after These were his Gods and his Goddesse what succours could he expect from these Deities which had no subsistence but in statue and the copy of whose portraict had no principall There was had in admiration moreover thirty garlands all of gold A man had need to have an excellent memorie not to forget himselfe among his honours and Pearles but these Crownes were too weighty for his head from whence it came to passe that he tell under the burden A golden Chappell followed after dedicated to the Muses upon which was a great Horologe of the same materials And as the Index still turned ought not he to have considered that the houre of his triumphing began to passe away and that of his overthrow would presently sound being sequell to the Lawes of that vicissitude to which Face hath subjected all things His statue of gold enricht with diamonds and pearls whereof nor he himselfe nor he that enwrought them knew the value followed in its course and in fine this his shadow was more happy than the true body as having never been scuffled with but by time and the other was vanquisht with miserie Then appeared the great Pompey seated upon a throne where he and Fortune seemed to give lawes to the whole world â—or his triumphall Charriot was â—o richly glorious so magnificent â—n rarities so splendide in new and ne're-before-seen wonders that a ravishment surprized mens â—pirits elevating them at once â—rom admiration to extasie not giving them leasure to make relection upon the present realties Be it our constant meditation of the inconstancie to which all worldly things are subjected But this Triumphall Charriot still â—owled about and though the Triumpher remained seated in his place yet his Fortune turned about likewise Insomuch that in going to the Capitoll he approacht by little and little to the â—ank where his life and happinesse were equally interred In fine for the fulnesse of glory These proper names of the conquests which he had made were read in golden Characters See Pliny's Nat. Historie 7 Book 26 Chapter Pride is the passion of fooles for what a sense-lessenesse is it to be proud having so many miseries about us which are incident to mortal man The Kingdome of Pontus Armenia Cappadocia Paphlagonia Medea Colchis the Hiberians the Albanians Syria Cilicia Mesopotamia Phoenicia Palestina Judea Arabia and the Rovers of all the Seas Who can be comparable to this proud Conquerour and yet I say it having conquered and subjugated the greatest part of the Earth Fate permits him not so much as to expire upon it and the Sea yet more treacherous prepares him shipwrack in mid'st of the Port. What resemblance and what correspondence can there be now between this Triumph so sumptuous so stately and magnificent and that whose presentation show you How poor is the vanity of man having no other grounds but humane frailtie where lowlinesse humlity and misery hold the first rank and possesse the highest places Assuredly the difference is greaâ— but yet this inequalitie here is glorious since it brings
along with it the price of that vertue where of Pompey despised the conquest He in his Triumph raised wonder to the beauty of those two great precious stones But the Sepulchrall Marbles which appeared in this of ADRIAN were of another estimate because prudence values them above all price putting them to that employment to which she had destinated them Again if he expose to view in vessels of gold Mountaines Animals Trees Vines Statues of the same matter This Herse covered with black which serves for ornament to this Funerall Pomp containes yet much more treasure since the contempt of all together â—â— graven therein He makes ostentation of his statue of gold enricht with Pearles but our Monarch â—akes as much glory without â—hem shewing in his own bare Pourtraict the originall of his â—â—iseries Except the crown of vertue all other are subject to change That proud conquerour â—ad a thousand Garlands and â—olden Coronets as a novell Trophy But ours here crownes himselfe with Cypresse during his carreere of life to merit those palmes which await him in the end In fine Pompey is the Idoll of heatts and soules and his Triumphall Chariot serves as an Altar where he receives the vower and Sacrifices But this-Prince instead of causing Idolaters during the sway of his Majestie immolates himselfe up to the view of Heaven and Earth dying already in his own Funerals and suffering himselfe to be as it were buried by the continuall object which dwels with him of Death and his Tombe But if Pompey lastly boast himselfe to have conquered an infinite number of Realmes of all the world together * Adrian Thâ—â— Man having never had worse enemies than his passions hath sought no other glory but to overcome them and in their defeat a Maâ— may well be stil'd the conquerour of Conquerours for the Coroâ—â— wreaths of this Triumph fearâ— not the Suns extremity nor thâ— Ages inconstancie We must passer farther Isidore All the objests of Vanity are so many enemies against which we ought to be always in arms and Tranquillus do assure us that to carry away the glory of a Triumph it was necessarily required to vanquish five thousand enemies or gain five victories as it is reported of Caesar The consent of the Senate was also to be had And the Conquerour was to be clothed in Purple and Crowned with Laurell holding a Scepter in his hand and in this sort he was conducted to the Capitoll of Jupiter where some famous Orator made a Panegyricke of his prowesse What better Allegory can we draw from these prophane truths â—hen this of the Victory which we â—ught to have of our five Senses as of five thousand enemies whose defeat is necessary to our riumph These are the five Viâ—tories which he must gain that would acquire such Trophies Still to wage war against our passions is the way to live in peace whose glory is taken away neither by time nor Death This consent of the Senate is the Authority of our reason which alone gives value and esteem to our actions and 't is of her that we may learn the means in obeying her to command over ouâ— passions and by the conquest oâ— of this sway triumph over our selves which is the bravest Victory of the World These Scepters and Crownes are so many marks of Soveraignty which remain us in propriety after subjection of so many fierce enemies Heaven is the Capitoll whither our good works conduct us in triumph and where the voice of Angels serves for Oratours to publish the glory of our deeds whose renown remains eternall These great Roman Captains which made love to vertue though without perfect knowledge of it 'T is not all to love Virtue 'T is the practice have sought for honour and glory in the overthrow of their enemies but they could never find the shadows of solid Honour which thus they sought from whence it came to passe that they have fashioned to themselves diverse Chimera's for to repast their fancy too greedy of these cheating objects Nor that there is no glory in a Conquest but 't was their ambition led them along in Triumph amidst their own Triumphing What honour had Caesar born away if he had joyned to his Trophies the slavery of Cleopatra he had exposed to view a Captive Queen who otherwhile had subjected him to her Love-dominion He triumphs with an ill grace â—'rewhom his vice triumph But if the fortune of the war had delivered him this Princesse the fate of Love would have given even himself into her hands Insomuch that the Death of Cleopatra immortalliz'd the renown of Caesar Asdrubal according to Iustin triumphed four times in Carthage â—ut this famous Theater of honour where glory it self had appeared â—o often upon its Throne serves â—n conclusion for a Trophy to â— Conquerour insomuch that it â—uried at once the renown and â—emory even of those that had presented themselves triumphant personages To day Memphis is all-Triumphant and on the morrow this proud City is reduced to slavery To day the report of its glory makes the world shake and on the morrow Travellers seek for it upon its own site but finde it not O goodly triumph O fearfull overthrow What continuall revolution of the wheel Marcellus shews himself at point of day upon a magnificent Chariot of Triumph and at Sun-set his glory and his life finish equally their carreere I mean in the twinckling of an eye Fortune takes away from him all those Laurel-wreaths which she had given him and leaves him nothing at his death It may be some consolation in all our miseries to see all else have their changes as well as we hut the regreet of having liv'd too-long Marius triump hed diverse times but with what tempests was the Ship of his fortune entertained Behold him now elevated upon the highest Throne of Honour but if you turn but your head you shall see him all naked in his shirt half-buried under the mire of a common Sink where the light of the day troubles him not being able to endure the Sun a witnesse of his misfortunes Behold him first I say in all abundance of Greatnesse and Soveraignty whereof the splendour dazles the world but stay a little and you shall hear pronounc'd the sentence of his death being abandoned even of himself having no more hope of safety How pompeous and celebrious was the Triumph of Lucullus In which he rais'd admiration to the magnificence of an hundred Gallies all-armed in the Prow a thousand Chariots charged with Pikes Halbertsâ— and Corselets whose shocking rumbles sounded so high it frighted the admirers though they celebrated the Fetivall of the Victorie The number of Vessels of Gold and other Ornaments of the Triumph was without number The Statue of Mithridates also of Gold six foot high with the Target all covered with precious Stones serv'd anew to the Triumph And of this Glory all the world together was an adorer for the renown
He shall hear rumble in his eares the thunder of Divine Justice by the continuall murmur of his sighs which advertize him of the approaches of Death What courage can he have to avenge himselfe being upon point himselfe to suffer the torment of eternall vengeance Thou that art Vindicative wilt thou then quench the ardour of thy Choller feele thine own pulse and consider that this pety slow feaver wherewith thou art stormed leads thee by little and little into the grave Who can be Ambitious It is more honour for a man to avenge himselfeâ— of his choler than of his enemie if musing of Death since he must quit all with his life Let us ponder a while the fate of those arrogant spirits which have mused themselves to conquer the vain greatnesses of the Earth What hath been in fine their share at the end of the carriere They have had nothing but unprofitable regreets to have so ill emploied their time finding themselves so poor with all their treasure as if they had been born the wretched'st of the world Thou Ambitious-one wilt thou be cured of the disease of thy Passion think each houre of the day that that which thou now hearest strike may be thy Last Who would sigh for prophane love Mortall frailtie brings blemish to the fairest visages and mightily takes from their opinion being well considered after these objects of dust and ashes if he often considered that he himselfe is made of nothing else and that this noysome and corruptive matter seeks nothing more than abysses of the grave there to hide within its loath somnesse in effect who would give his flesh a prey to pleasures if he would consider that the wormes do in expectation make their fees thereof already The meditation of Death serves for temperament to all sorts of delights And if a Man be capable of love in this muze it cannot be other than of his Salvation since this object is eternall but all others of the world perishable Infortunate Lovers search the solace of your immodest passions in the Anatomy of the subject whereof you are Idolarers Be assistant at that dead view Thinke of your own Death Behold you are cured What wretched rich man would be so much in love with his treasures He which considers of that wretchednesse which is adjunct to Death easily mispriseth the riches of this life if he would consider that Death robs him from them every day making him die continually and that at the end of the term of his life he carries along with him but the good or the evill which he hath done to be either recompenc'd or punish'd but with a glory or a punishment whereof Eternitie alone must terminate the continuance Covetous Misers the onely meanes for you to be so no more is to celebrate your own funerals by your Meditations and often to consider the Account not of your riches but that which you must render one day of their fruition since your Salvation depends thereon Who in fine would make a God of his Belly seeking with passion all the delights which may tickle the sense of Taste it he represented to himself the miseries of the body which he takes so much pains to nourish and the rigour of those inviolable decrees which destinate him a prey to the worms and the remains of their leavings to rottennesse This consideration would be capable to make him loose both appetite and desire at the same time to nourish so delicately his carkasse O souls all of flesh repasting your selves with nothing else there is no invention to make you change nature but this to Hear your selves dye by the noise of your sighs to See your selves dye by the wrinkles which furrow every day upon your visages and to Feele your selves dye by the beatings of your pulse which indexeth this your hectic feaver wherewith you are mortally attainted This is a Probatum-remedy the experience thereof is not dangerous May not a man then maintain with much reason If a man should forget all things else but the miseries of his condition this last were enough to exercise the vastest memory that the thought of Death alone is capable to cure our souls of the disease of their passions in doseing them both the means and the Vertue to triumph over them But if of this you desire an example call to minde that which I have proposed you in the beginning of the Chapter How marvellous is it that a great Mornarch who is able to maintain all manner of pleasure in his heart with all the delights which acompany it celebrates himselfe his Funeralls in midst of his carriere of life beginning to raign at the end of his raign since that last object is always present before his eyes His Passions do assail him but he vanquisheth them they give him combate but he leads them in triumph and buryes them altogether in the Tomb which he prepares himself Consider a little the glory which is relucent in this action We read of the Kings of Arabia that they triumphed upon Dromidaries the Kings of Persia upon Elephants of Croatia upon Bulls the Romans upon horses and yet 't is remarkt of Nero that be made himself be drawn in Triumph by four Hermaphrodite Mares Camillus by four white Horses Mark Antony by four Lions Aurelian by four Harts Caesar by forty Elephants Heliogabulus by four Doggs Moreover the Poets do assure us that the triumphant Charriot of Baccus was drawn by Tygers Neptunes by Fishes of Thetis by Dolphins Diana's This Vanity is a most contagious malady and the onely preservative is the remembrance of Death by Harts of Venus by Doves Iuno's by Peacocks All these objects of pomp and magnificence whereof histories and Fables would enternize the vanity have for all that done nothing but passe away and though a little remembrance of them stay with us 't is but the memoriall of a Chimera and of a fantasme since it preaches nothing else to us but the ruin and non-entity of that which hath been otherwhile O how glorious a Triumph is it These things ruminated on will make us wise when we our selves are encharioted over our passions now enslaved and subjected under the Empire of Reason There is nothing so glorious there ' is nothing so magnificent For these Dromidaries these Elephants these Bulis these Horses these Hermaphrodite Mares these Lyons Stags and Tygres afore-mentioned are but brute beasts which draw along in traine after them others as as bruitish as themselves as suffering themselves to be transported with vanity which onely reduceth them to this beastly-semblant vanity Let us turn our face unto another side SAâ—â—LLICâ—S in his ENNEADS actively peswades us to believe that the Christians of Aethiopia do carry in their processions great vessels full of ashes Let the fire of Divine Love glow upon our ashes to emblematize apparently the frailty of our nature But may not we say upon too much reason that we are earthen vessels
one day men would talke of them But what felicity is it to be praised in this world to which they are dead and tormented in the other wherin they live even yet and ever I care very little that men should talke of me after my Death the esteem of men is of so small importance that I would not buy it so deare as with a wish onely It behooves to search reputation in the puritie of the conscience if a man would have the glory of it last for ever The renown of a good man is much greater than that of Caesar or Alexander for this hath no other foundation than the soyle where it was sowed and where the goodliest things display themselves like flowers and like flowers also have but a morning-flourish But the other having for a firme stay Eternitie The renown of a good man onely lasts alwaies this object ennobleth it to perfection and thus desiring nothing else but heaven it remaines to us at the end for recompence Blondus in his Treatise of Rome in its triumphant glory reckons up three hundred and twenty triumphs all remarkable but where are now these pompes these magnificences this infinite number of Trophies and a thousand other ornaments which ratled out their glory Where are I say these conquerours where are their slaves their Idolaters their admirers These pomps have but flash't like lightning and so passed away with the day that accompanied their lustre These mngnificences have been but seen It is some comfort yet to a wise man though himselfe fade away to see that all things else do so too and so took their passage in flight These trophies being onely bravadoes of the time times inconstancy made them vanish in an instant and all those other ornaments made but ostentation of their continuall vicissitude as being an inseparable accident of their nature These vanquishers onely had the name on 't since Death led them away also in triumph for all their triumphings Their captives were rather slaves of the miseries whereunto they were born than so by the absolute power of him who captived them Their idolaters have been immolated to the fury of years which spare none and their admirerers have incurred the same fate with the subject which they admired Insomuch that of all together remains nothing but a faint remembrance which as it waxeth old is effac't by little and little out of memory and scarcely will it subsist so much in the imagination as to be in the end buried among fables Since Eternity onely triumphs over Time we should only strive to attain that Behold here the Anatomy of the glory of the world see the true portraict of its false Image Contemplate meditate you will avouch with me that All is full of vanity O how stately and magnificent is the Triumph of Ages what trophies may a man see at their ever-rowling Chariot what Conquerours are not in the number of their subjection what soveraign power can resist their violence what newer Triumph â—en this of years Who can give in account the number of their victories and lesse the captives which Death serves in for their trophies What newer triumph again evermore then of moneths of days of hours moments For consider to your self how many Kings Princes and Lords die in one age in all the places of the world All these vanquishers are vanquisht and led in triumph to the grave Every Year makes its conquest apart gives battell and carries away the victory over so many A righteous man onely stands exempt â—â— from the terror of death and so many men that hardly can one conceive so lamentable a truth Months Days Hours and Moments triumph in their courses who can number all those who died yesterday out-right or are dead to day Nay more how many die at this hour and at this very instant that I entertain you with this discourse And all these defeats of mortality mark out to us the Triumphs whereof time onely bears away the glory But let us not pretend to share in 't 't is not worthy our Ambition Let Ages A good conscience is ever under shelter from all the inconstant tempests of Age. Years Moneths Days Hours and Moments triumph over us Vertue always limits their puissance and with it we may prescribe a bound to all these Triumphants Fair leave may they take to ruinate out-ward beauty but that of innocence is of proof ' gainst all their strokes Well may they impair outward graces but those of heaven contemn their assaults No doubt they may change the visage of all the marvels of Art and miracles of Nature Our Resolution is a rock in midst of all their storms and may remain alwayes it self without undergoing other rules then its own So that thus we may lead Time it self along in triumph if we live for nothing more then for Eternity I scorn the Tyranny of Ages He which lives for eiernity dreads no death my aim is beyond 'em all I despise the power of years my Ambition raigns already out of their reach Let Months Days Hours and Moments entrail all things along with them I for my part franchise their carreere since my scope is much more farther yet Let them triumph fully my very defeat shall lead them in triumph at the end of their term for the eternity whither I aspire already assigns out their tomb Let us stay no longer in so cragged a way The Emperour Trajan caused his Sepulcher to be enfram'd in the midst of Rome's greatest place as upon a stately Theater on which his successors were to act their parts Every man dies for himself Serius aut citius metam properamus ad unam sooner or later we must arrive to the place to which uncessantly we walk Be it to morrow or to day at the end of the term all is equall Nor old nor yong can mark the difference in their course being arrived to the end of their carreere for a hundred Ages when past and one instant make but the same thing 'T is onely necessary to muze of our last gist in the grave since thither we run till we are out of breath from moment to moment The Trojans would have the burying-places of their Princes to be in the most remarkable places of the City Places of buriall are sad Theaters where every day are acted none but Tragedies to the end that this sad object might serve as a fixt Memento to remembrance them that the Tragedy which had been acted by these yesterday might again be represented by some other to day The Philosophers know that objects move the faculties and that according to the quality of their impressions they work upon the spirits which contemplate them Let us say now that of all the direfull objects which are presented to our eyes there is none more powerfull over our apprehensions then this of the Meditation of Death and the horrour of the grave The most couragious yeeld themselves
to these assaults the most valiant resist not their violences All droop at approach of an enemy so redoubtable But our defeat it rightly carried is more glorious then our Triumph What successe is this by being overcome to bear away the crown of victory such submission is a mark of Soveraignty Petrus Gregorius tells us of the Emperour Charls the fifth If the meditation of death make not a sinner change his life nothing will do it that he caused his winding head-kercher to be carried before him for a standard in all his Armies six years before he died to the end that the continuall object of his greatnesse might not be too powerfull to tempt him to misconceive himself We do the same every day without thinking on it for our shirts are in a manner as so many winding sheets which we carry always with us in all places where we go But if this sad object be not enough to moderate our ambition and rebate our vanity this voluntary is inseparable from pain we must needs undergo the Law 'T is best to let Death be welcome to us since 't is inevitable which we impose upon our selves LORD suffer me not if it please thee so far to mistake my self as never to come to the point of meditating of this blessed Decree which thou hast imposed on me to die one day But illuminate my spirit with the light of thy grace which may stead me as a Pharos to shew me the haven of the grave where the ship of my life must put ashore Make me also if it please thee to be ignorant of all things else but the knowledge to live well that I may also dye so and thus let the miseries which accompany me the mishaps that follow me and all the other afflictions which thy goodnesse hath subjected me to be the ordinay objects of my thoughts to the end that I stray not from the way of my salvation And now have I no other passion but to see the effects of these prayers Let us go to the end Those that have averred that the world is to us an hostile Army composed of so many Souldiers as there are objects in nature capable to agitate the power of our passions had very good reasons to defend the truth of their Thesis These objects of it make war against us continually with all the assaults inventions and stratagems of a cruel enemy Beauty that assaults our souls by the way of our eyes with as much cunning as force for at first view it amuseth the Sence with admiration by a slight of complacence to which its sweets and allurements insensibly engage it Afterwards the Sensus Communis receiving the fair Species of the Idea of this fair enemy presents them to the Fancy the Fancy to the Vnderstanding which after it hath examined them according to its capacity offers them to the Will which by a natural apprehension finds it self obliged to love the subject from whence these amiables do proceed And now then it is the Cue of Reason either to condemn or authorize this love but most often that becomes charmed it self and we vanquish't Not that Reason is not sufficiently strong and powerful Our passions are the flatteringest enemies of the world for they assault us with those semblant satisfactions to us as may seem most agreeable and thus they are most â—o be feared but whereas its force and vertue depends meerly upon grace the contempt which ordinarily it makes of this renders both alike unprofitable This is that which obliges us in all these conflicts to implore the help of heaven rather then to trust upon our strengths and evermore to have a jealous eye to this our subtile enemy which yet can never get other advantage upon us then that which our wretchlesness suffers it to acquire The very fairest objects of the world We cannot justly complain of our defeat since it is voluntary may well inforce admiration but not love since love cannot be formed in our hearts but by a powerful reflexion of the amiable qualities which are found in the subject and in this it is necessary that the understanding do operate and the will consent And this cannot be done without a free deliberation which we absolutely authorize Insomuch that we cannot be overcome if we rush not into it with desire of our own overthrow And this not so neither as if there were no trouble in the resistance but rather it is a way to acquire much more glory in the victory over beateous objects by the power of reason which is more troublesome and difficult then that which one gets over an enemy by force of armes But the honour also surpasseth always the difficulty The rewards which God hath prepared after all our troubles do infinitely surpass our deserts and what pain soever a man can possibly take the prize and crown at last can admit of no comparison We must then bravely combate those proud beauties which make publick profession to enchain our hearts in irons and put our souls upon the rack and let them see to their confusion that the natural Magick of their charmes is to us a new Art of Logick which informes us to make Arguments both to give for granted their power and yet destroy their force Fair leave have they to expose to view their blandishments and graces the light of Reason produceth a livelyer Day whose luster duskes the midday-splendour for by the aid of this light a man may see that all their quaintnesses are but dawbings their delicacies but artifice and their attractives but onely composed by distillatories And how can one Idolatrize them then after meditational presentment of these verities Behold the onely means to prescribe a rule over these Soveraigns who would impose it on the whole world He commands best that can obey reason Not that this kind of combate requires force of courage but rather of prudence after first a misprise of them to fly away and not to put the victory into hazard There are yet other enemies which render themselves as redoutable as the former such are Ambition riches c. what means is there to resist them or to speak better to vanquish them they have no less allurements and sweets then the beauties afore-spoken of and though the force of them be different they cease not nevertheless to excite and move the passions with all sort of violence Ambition ha's its particular delicacies and charmes to ravish mens hearts and soveraignize over their souls and I beleeve that its Empire extends it self far beyond that of Love for all the world is not capable of this latter passion but of the other every man has a smatch from that defect from our original where with a man is tainted Vanity is bred and born with us but it is in our choise whether to let it ever keep us company And this passion is so much the more to be seared as it is natural and
am now a Traytor both at once of his reputation and mine own conscience There is no fault more unpardonable then this of Obloquie and in regard that for a just expiation of the crime it is fitting that the tongue which did the hurt should give the remedy Thou Detractour if thou canst not moderate thy passion speak ill onely of thy self Study thine own vices Meditate thine own faults and Accuse thy self of them before Heaven which is already witness of thy crimes and by this way of reproching thou shalt obtain one day to be praised eternally Behold me now at the end of the Chapter After all these particular remedies with which a man may learn easily to resist the tyranny of the Passions He that often muzes of Death will every day learn to live well there is none more soveraign then this of the Meditation of Death All the rest abbut at this onely as the most authorized by daily experience Great Kings suffer your selves to be led in triumph by your own thoughts to the grave and by the way consider how your greatnesses your riches your delights and all the magnificence of your Court follow you step by step being brought along by the same fate whose absolute Tyranny spares none And since you may dye every hour think at the least sometimes of this truth to the end that that hour of your lifes dyall surprize you not Much good do it you to nourish up your selves deliciously yet all these Viands where with you repast your selves are empoisoned as containing in them the * Caliditas Frigiditas Humiditas Siccitas four contrary qualities whose discord puts into skirmish your humours and this battel is an infallible presage of your overthrow well may you chase away Melancholy by vertue of fresh pleasures these very contentments cheat away your life for though you think of nothing but how to pass away the time it passes ere you think on it and Death comes before you have forseen his arrival Well may you cocker up your bodies content your senses and satiate the appetite of your desires Pleasures make us grow old as well is griefs the Taper of your life has its limited course as well as that of the day Every man pursues his carreere according to the inviolable Lawes of Heaven which hath assigned them out at once both the way Fata volentem ducunt nolentem trahunt and the bounds Suffer Time to lead you by the hand to the Tomb for fear he hale you thither But in dying muze at least of that Life which never shall have end All the felicities which you have possest are vanished with the flower of your age and all those which you will yet enjoy will flye away with the rest What will remain with you then at the last instant of your life Those pleasures cost very dear which are worth nothing but repentance but an irksome remembrance to have tasted a thousand pleasures which are past and to have lost so many means of having had others which would have lasted eternally Disinvest your selves then for one hour every day of all your greatness and in the presence of your own selves meaning in review of all your miseries and mishaps which are proper to you confess the truth of your nullity and of your corruption by this search you shall recover your selves and by this confession thus shall you Triumph over your selves A PROLUSIONVpon the EMBLEM of the last Chapter VIewing the Ranges of a Librarie Of Dead men's bones pil'd in a Coemitarie Great Alexander finds Diogenes And thus they Dialogue Alex. Cynick among these Ruines of frail Mortality what do'st look Diog. For that wherein I fear to he mistook I seek thy Father Philip's Scull among This pell-mell undistinguishable Throng Alex. Let 's see which is it shew me Diog. Sure 't is that Whose nose is bridge-faln Alex. Dead men's all are flat Diog. Why then 't is that where shrowds perpetual night Cav'd in those hollow eye-holes void of sight Alex. Still all are so Diog. Why 't is yon' skinless brow Chap-faln lip sunk with teeth-disranked row Yond' peeled scalp Alex. Thus still are all alike Diog. So shall both You and I. and let this strike Thy knowledge Alexander and Thy sence 'Twixt King and slave once Dead's no difference L'envoy THere is no diff'rence Mors sceptra ligonibus aequat Her Death hath made Equall the Scepter and the Spade No dreader Majesty is now I' th' Royal Scalp then Rustick brow Fair NEREVS has no beateous grace More then Thersites ' ugly face Now both are dead odds there is none Betwixt the fair'st and fowlest One. Tell me among'st the hudled pile Of Dead mens bones which was ere while The subtil'st Lawyer 's or the Dull And Ignoramian Empty Skull Was yond' some valourous Samsons arm Or one that ne'er drew sword for harm Or wink and tell me which is which Irus the poor or Croesus rich What are they now who so much stood On Riches Honours and high Blood Ther 's now no Diff'rence with the Dead Distinctions all are buried Onely the Soul as Ill or Well Is Differenc't or in Heaven or Hell Alexander and Diogenes discoursing among thâ—â— Sepulchers of the Dead the Cynick tells the Kiâ—â— That in the Graue Monarchs and Meaner Mâ—â— are all alike THE MIRROUR WHICH FLATTERS NOT. CHAP. IV. WHat a horrid spectacle is this what a frightful object See you not this great number of Dead Mens sculls which heaped one upon another make a mountain of horrour and affright whose baleful and contagious umbrage insensibly invites our bodies on to the grave What a victory is this over these but what an inhumanity what a defeat but what a butchery May we not say that sury and rage have assassinated even Natures-self and that we now alone remain in the world to celebrate its funerals by our lamentations and regreets Fathers Mothers Children Nobles Death is a severe Iudge and pardons none and Plebeians Kings and their subjects are all pell-mell in this stacke of rotten wood which Time like a covert but burning fire consumes by little and little not able to suffer that ashes should be exalted above dust Proud Spirits behold here the dreadful reverse of the medall All these sad objects of mortality and yet actively animated with horrour and affright by their own silence enjoin the same to you thus to amuze your Spirits in the contemplation of their deplorable ruines If you be rich See here those who have possessed the greatest treasures of the world are not now worth the marrow of their own bones whereof the worms have already shared the spoil If you be happy The greatest savourities of fortune are reduced to the same noisomness as you see the filth that enrounds them If you be valiant Hector and Achilles are thus here overcome behold the shamefull marks of their overthrow If you be men of Science Here lyes the most learned
of the world 'T is the Epitaph on their tomb Read it I grant more-over Death may be contemned but not avoided you may be the greatest Princes of the earth An infinite number of your companions are buried under these corrupted ruins Suppose in fine that your Soveraignty did extend it self over all the Empire of the world A thousand and a thousand too of your semblables have now nothing more their own then that corruption which devours even to the very bones Ambitious Heart see here a Mirrour which flatters not since it represents to the life the realty of thy miseries Well maist thou perhaps pretend the conquest of the Universe even those who have born away that universall Crown are now crowned but with dust and ashes Covetous wretch behold the book of thy accounts 'T is no wonder the Miser ne're thinks of Death his thoughts are onely taken up for this Life calculate all that is due to thee after payment of thy debts learn yet after all this that thy soul is already morgaged to devils thy body to worms and thus notwithstanding all thy treasures there will not abide with thee one hair upon thy head one tooth in thy chops nor one drop of blood in thy veynes nor ne're so little marrow in thy bones nay the very memory of thy being would be extinguish't if thy crimes did not render it eternall both here and in the torments of hell Proud arrogant man measure with thy bristled brows Pride is but like the nooneflourish of a flows or which at Sunset perisheth the dilatation of the earth Brave with thy menacing regards the heavens and the stars These mole-hills of rottennesse whereof thy carkasse is shap't prepare toward the tomb of thy vanity Seneca Epist Quotidie morimur quotidie enim demitur aliqua par vitae These are the shades of Death inseparable from thy body since it dies every hour If thou elevate thy self to day even to the clouds to morrow thou shalt be debased to nothing But if thou doubt of this truth behold here a thousand witnesses which have made experience of it Luxurious Wanton give thy body a prey to voluptuousnesse deny nothing to thy pleasures but yet consider the horrour and dreadfunesse of that Metamorphosis when thy flesh shall be turned to filth and even that to worms and those still to fresh ones which shall devour even thy coffin and so efface the very last marks of thy Sepulture How remarkable is the answer of Diogenes to Alexander What art thou musing on Cynicke says this Monarch to him one day having found him in a Charnell-yard I amuze my self here answers he in search of thy father Philips bones among this great number which thou see'st but my labour is in vain for one differs not from another Great Kings the discusse of this answer may serve you now as a fresh instruction to insinuate to you the knowledge of your selves You walk in triumph to the Tomb followed with all the train of your ordinary magnificences but by being arrived at this Port blown thither with the continuall gale of your sighs your pomp vanisheth away your Royall Majesty abandons you your greatnesse gives you the last Adieu and this your mortall fall equalls you now to all that were below you The dunghill of your body hath no preeminence above others unlesse it be in a worse degree of rottennesse of being of a matter more disposed to corruption But if you doubt of this truth Corruprio optimi pessima behold and contemplate the deplorable estate to which are reduced your semblables Their bald scalps have now no other Crown then the circle of horrour which environs them their disincarnated hands hold now no other Scepter but a pile of worms and all these wretchednesses together give them to see a strange change from what they were in all the glories of their Court The seriout meditation of his miserable condition 't is capable to make any man wise These palpable and sensible objects are witnesses not to be excepted against Let then your souls submit to the experiment of your senses But what a Prodigy of wonders here do I not see the great Army of Xerxes reduced and metamorphosed into a hand full of dust All that world of men in those days which with its umbragious body covered a great part of the earth shades not so much as a foot on 't with its presence Be never weary of thinking of these important truths Seneca in the Tragedy of Hercules brings in Alcmena In Hercule Oetaeo Ecce vix totam Hercules Complevit urnam quam leve est pondus mihi Câ—totus aether pondus incubuit leve with grievous lamentation bearing in an urn the ashes of that great Monster-Tamer And to this esfect makes her speak Behold how easily I carry him in my hand who bore the Heavens upon his shoulders The sense of these words ought to engage our spirits to a deep meditation upon the vanity of things which seem to us most durable All those great Monarchs who sought an immortality in their victories and triumphs have mist that and found Death at last the enjoyment of their Crownes and splendours being buried in the same Tomb with their bodies See here then a new subject of astonishment The Mathematicians give this Axiome The warld is a Game at Chesse where every of the Set haâ—s his particular Name and Place designed but the Game done all the pieces are pellmellâ—d into the Bagg and even so are all mortals into the grave All lines drawn from the Center to the Circumference are equall Kings and Princes abate your haughtinesse your subjects march fellow-like with you to the Center of the grave If life gave you preheminence Death gives them now equality There is now no place of affectation or range to be disputed the heap of your ashes and their dust make together but one hillock of mould whose infection is a horrour to me I am now of humour not to flatter you a whit We read of the Ethiopians that they buried their Kings in a kind of Lestall and I conceive thereof no other reason then according to the nature of the subject they joyned by this actiotion the shadow and the substance the effect with the cause the stream with its source for what other thing are we then a masse of mire dried and bak'd by the fire of life but scattered again and dissolv'd by the Winter of Death and in that last putrefaction to which Death reduceth us the filth of our bodies falls to the dirt of the earth as to its center for so being conceived incorruption let us not think strange to be buried in rottennesse Earth dust and ashes 'T is well men hide themselves after death in the Earth or the enclosure of Tombs their sulth and noysomnesse would else be too discovert remain still the same be it in a vessell of gold or in a coffin of wood
or in a Mausolean Tomb of marble Great Kings well may you cover your wretchednesse with a magnificent Sepulcher they will for all this not altar condition the noysomenesse of your bones is never without the abhorment and putrefaction proper to them And if suppose their masse be reduced into dust and the wind carry it away the very wings of the wind are laden with rottennesse and can scatter nothing else in a thousand places where ere they fall I will a little straggle out of the way without loosing my aim Fabius Paulus reports that upon the Tomb of Isocrates there was a Syren seated upon a Ram and holding a Harp in her hand And this gave to understand This famons Orator charmed mens souls through their ears by the sound of his admirable eloquence But whereas no melodious air was heard from the mute Harp of this Syren it was required of the Spectators How unsufferable is the vanity of men who even upon their Tombs will have the display of their vain-glory to take for granted in imagination the harmony of her sweet touches as embleme of the sweetnesse of this great Orators voice But Death imposeth silence on both and thus remained they a sad sight both in object and mysteries contained under since now of these passages remains no more but a weak remembrance and whereof Time by little and little effaceth even the Ideas Johannes Baptista Fontanus relates that upon the Sepulcher of Q. Martius there was ' graven a Ram supported upon the two fore-feet a Hare dead by its side The Ram represented the generosity of this great Captain in all combats and the dead Hare his vanquisht enemies But what honour now remains him after their defeat This vanquisher of an infinite number of miserable wretches is at the last overcome with his own miseries Though Triumphant in a thousand combats one marble stone now contains all his trophies and glory O deplorable fate to have but seven foot-earth after conquest of the greatest part of the earth Plutarch assures us that upon the Tomb of Alexander there was represented in Emblem Asia and Europe appearing vanquisht and in the chains of their captivity with this mot which served as a fresh Trophy The victory of Alexander O poor victory O sorry triumph for where are now its Laurels and Palms This great Monarch conquered the whole world but being never able to conquer his ambition This in the end hath taken away all the glory which it made him acquire Great Princes advance then on to the conquest of the Universe The misprise of the world is more glorious then all its honour but I advertise you one thing All those that are returned from the same action have much repented themselvs to have taken so great pains for so small a matter * Le jeu ne vant pas la chandelle The Game 's not worth the Candle as the Proverb But if you love to Conquer and triumph your passions will furnish you with such subjects every hour Let 's once see the end of our carriere We read of Cyrus that he caused to be engraven these words upon the stone of his Monument HERE LYES THE CONQVEROVR OF THE PERSIANS But what excesse of mishap could have reduced so great a Monarch to such an excesse of wretchednesse must it be said Here Lyes of one that lately stood so triumphant Would he have men admire his past glory in view of that vault where he was enterred would he have men adore the magnificences of his Life upon the same Altar where Death exhibits him as a victim Is not this a vanity more worthy of compassion than envy The History of the life of Themistocles was to be read upon the marble of his Sepulcher but 't was forgotten there to depaint also the story of his Death Behold the high deeds of Themistocles 'T is but a poor satisfaction to have for recompence of so much pains but the estentation of a glorious Sepulcher this was the inscription But to us it may be of importance to consider that although the wonders which he had done were onely graven upon the port of his Monument yet for all that they also made their entry into it and followed the fate of their authour so that now rests nothing of Themistocles but Name for of all that he hath done the wind hath carried away the glory and the small remembrance on 't which sticks by us is but a pourtraict of vanity There was represented upon the Tomb of Joshua the Sun with this inscription Sun stand thou still upon Gibeon Josh 10.12 True it is the Sun stood still in the mid'st of his carreere to give full Triumph to this great Captain over his enemies But after they were overthrown this Planet jealous of his glory conducts him also to his grave as not enduring to see any thing upon earth as durable as it self There is no course swister then that of Life to Death So true it is that all things here flit away with the swiftness of a Torrent though their flight to us seem much more slow The Epitaph which some * Sit fides penes Authorem writings report us of Adam has not so much splendour and magnificence as the others He is Dead sayes his Epitaph speaking onely of him O excellent Epitaph Men shall say no more of you one day Great Kings Well may you with Q. Martius come off victorious from all combats and enter in triumph into Cities with Alexander Well may you cause to be insculp't the History of your Acts upon the marble of your Sepulchers like as Themistocles well may you Subpoena the Sun for a witness of the reality of your triumphs like Joshuah Yet for all this men shall say no more of you then was said of ADAM HE IS DEAD They are dead and there is all The Epitaph of David composed by some from consequence of Scripture is worthy remark Here lyes the invincible Monarch who in his child-hood overcame Bears in his adolescency Lions in his youth Gyants and in his age himself Travellour envy not his repose for thou art in the way to it thy self These words are express in a neer regard to the sense of those which are couched in Scripture upon this subject and I thereto can add no more then this discourse of my astonishment and rapture What! so great a Prince as David favoured by heaven and redoubted upon earth and so endowed by Nature shall he glympse out a little but like a flash of lightning and pass away like a puffe of wind where then shall a man find constancy and assurance Inconstancy is the onely foundation of created things What can be the site and foundation of all these our new wonders of the world whose beauty seems to contest for luster with the very Sun O LORD to me it is a most agreeable consolation to see in my race to the tomb how all things
often at least in Meditation into Tombes visit to such effect the Church-yards and you shall find therein more riches then you wish for considering the horrour of that rorten earth wherein your semblables are enterred you will reason without doubt thus To what purpose at last will stead me all the treasures which I amass up in my coffers if the very richest of the world be but earth and ashes before my eyes What shall I do at the hour of my death with all the goods which I now possesse if even my body be a prey destinated to worms and rottennesse LORD I aime at nothing of this world but that glory alone which a man may acquire by the contempt of it but as it is a glory whereof the acquisition depends of thy grace All our hopes depend from grace nothing from our selves more then my force give me the Courage if it pease thee to surmount all the temptations which shall oppose themselves against my design of Victory to the end that my vows may be heard and my pains recompensed I return to my self When I consider that all the world together is but as it were a Caemitary or Church-yard wherein every hour of the day some wretchednesse or other brings to the grave those whom such their miserable condition hath destroyed I have no more passionate desire of life since evils and troubles are proprietaries of it rather then we He which meditates of anothers mans death puts himself in mind of his own since we are all slaves to to the same fate Who can keep account of the number of persons that expire at this very moment that I am now speaking to you or the different deaths which terminate the course of their carreere All is universally dreadfull and yet we quake not either in horrour or astonishment A Walke into Church-yards Charnels though it be sad and melancholly by reason of the dolefull objects there obvious hath yet neverthelesse something in it agreeable to content good souls In many of the Church-yards of France are thousands of dead mens skuls and bones piled up as at S. Innocents at Paris S. Croix at Orleans c. Meditation upon the vanities of life is a piece of serious felicitie before death in the contemplation of those very objects which they there finde How often have I taken pleasure to consider a great number of Deadmens sculls arranged one in pile upon another with this conceit of the vanity and arrogance wherewith otherwhile they have been filled Some have had no other care but of their Hair employing the greatest part of their time either to frizle or to empouder them and represent unto your selves by the way what recompence now betides them for all their pains Others all full of ambition had no other aims but at Coronall wreaths consider a little in this their misery the injustice of their pretentions I ha' remark't in sequell how a little worm did gnaw the arm of some late Samson reducing thus all his force to an object of compassion and wretchednesse since that arm heretofore so strong and dreadfull had not now force enough to resist a little worm Reader muze often of these truths and thou shalt finde therein more joy then sadnesse Typotius reports of Iohn Duke of Cleveland that to testifie the frailty of our nature and the miseries of our condition he had taken the Emblem of a Lilly with this device Hodie hoc cras nihil Hodie Lilium Cras Nihilum It flourishes to day to morrow 't is nothing Great Kings Even those things which seem most durable have in effest but a morning prime like flowers your life is like this Lily it appears like this flower at Sunrise with glittering and pomp but at noon its vivacity and lustre begin to fade and at the end of the day it vanisheth away with it and scarce its being is remembred We read in Apianus of Pompy that after he had triumphed over three parts of the world he carried nothing away with him to the grave but these words Hic situs est magnus Pompeius Pompey is here buried with all his pomp O World how poor art thou since thou hast but such a thing of nought to give O Fortune how miserable art thou when thy favorites are exposed to publick view as objects of compassion Let him trust in them who will a man shall never be able to escape their tromperies but by despiting their favours Here lyes Hannibal Behold all the honour which posterity rendred to the memory of so great a Captain Time is as inexionable as Death and neither of them spare any And Time even jealous of the glory of his name though not able to bury it in the Abysses of Oblivion hath yet devoured the very marble of his Sepulcher Are not these things truths worthy to raise astonishment 'T is remark't in Suetonius of one of the Roman Emperours that being now at last gaspe and as it were at a bay with Death he cryed out in excesse of astonishment Fui omnia sed nihil expedit I have been all in all but now it nothing helpeth me I have tasted all the pleasures of all the greatnesse of the world but the sweetes are changed into sowres and onely their bitter disgust stayes with me Experiment all the delights of the Earth Great Kings the distast will ever at last onely remain to your mouths and sorrowes to your hearts and if these do no good on you a thousand eternall punishments will possesse your souls Represent to your selves that all the felicities of Life are of the same nature as that is That decaies every moment and they flit away without cease Contentments cause in their privation as extreme discontents The contentments which men receive here below are like the pleasures of the Chace which are onely rellish't running I draw to an end Belon in his Monuments of the Kings of Egypt sayes that they were enterred with such a splendour of pomp and magnificence that even those who had diverse times before been admirers of it were for all that often in doubt whether the people went to place the corps in the Throne again rather then in their Sepulcher O how ill to the eyes is the lustre of this sad kind of honour For if vanity be insupportable barely of it self these excesses of it put the spirits upon the rack Diodorus Siculus speaking of the Tomb which Alexander caused to be erected for his favorite Ephestion assures that the magnificences which were there to be admired were beyond as well all value as example Marble Brasse Gold and Pearl were profusely offered to most cunning Artisans to frame thereof such works wherein sadnesse and compassion might be so naturally represented that they might affect the whole world with the like Diamonds Rubies and all other precious stones were there employed under the Image of a Sun A Man should never be angry with his hard
prevention quarrell like a curst Scold who being guilty yet will call Whore first When any dyes whose Muse was rich in Verse They claim Succession and prophane his Herse They onely are Heirs of his Brain-estate Others are base and illegitimate All but their own Abettors they defie And Lord it in their Wit Supremacy Others they say but Sculke as lye i th‘ lurch As we hold Schismaticks from the true Church So hold they all that do decline their way Nor swear by Heaven Al‘s excellent they say T were well they‘d see the fing‘ring on these frets Can neither save their Souls nor pay their Debts Or would they think of Death as they should do They would live better and more honourd too T is base to do base deeds yet for false fame To Keep a stir and bustle into Name Whilst each applauds his own contemns anothâ—rs Becons his own deserts but his he smothers They fear Fame's out of breath and therefore they Trumpet their own praises in their own way Or joyn in Trick of State Confederacy Call Quid pro Quo Claw me and I le Claw thee Marry at others Tooth and Naile they flye That do not tread their Path but would go by Farewell to these my ayme not here insists Leave we these wranglers unto equall lists To Nobler Natures I my brest expose The Good I bow to in an humble Cloze To such as knowing how vain this Life is Exalt their thoughts to one better then This. 'T is the best Method to be out of Love With things below and thence to soare above To which effect my souls integrity In L'envoy thus salutes each courteous eye Lenvoy INgenuous Reader thou do'st crown The Morall active course layd down By De. la â—erre what is pen'd If thy Actions tecommend Relating to the first EMBLEME WHen haughty thoughts impuff thee than Dictate thy self Thou art but Man A fabrick of commixed Dust That 's all the prop of humane trust How dares a Clod of mouldring Clay Be Proud decaying every day And yet there is a way beside Wherein may be a lawfull Pride When sly Tempatations stirre thee Than Again the World Thou art a Man Rouze up thy Spirits do not yeeld A brave resistance wins the Field Shall a soul of Heavenly breath Grovell so tarre its worth beneath Fouly to be pollute with slime Of any base an â— shamefull crime Thou art a Maâ— for Heaven born Reflect on Earth disdainfull scorn Be not abus'd since Life is short Squander it not away in sport Nor hazzard heavens eternall Joyes For a small spurt of worldly Toyes Do Something ere do thou bequeath To Worms thy flesh to Air thy breath Something that may when thou art dead With honour of thy name be read Something that may when thou art cold Thaw frozen Spirits when ‘ t is told Something that may the grave controule And shew thou hadst a noble Soul Do something to advance thy blisse Both in the other World and This. Relating to the second EMBLEME WEre both the Indies treasures Thine And thou Lord of every Mine Or hadst thou all the golden Ore On Tagus or Pactolus Shore And were thy Cabinet the Shrine Where thousand Pearls and Diamonds shine All must be left and thou allowd A little linnen for thy Shrowd Or if 't were so thy Testament Perhaps a goodly Monument What better is a golden Chase Or Marble then a Charnel place Charon hence no advantage makes A half penny a soul he takes Thy heirs will leave thee but a Shirt Enough to hide thy rotten Dirt. Then be not Greedy of much pelfe He that gets all may lose himself And Riches are of this Dilemne Or they leave us or we must them Death brings to Misers double Wo They lose their Cash and their souls too Change then thy scope to heavenly gains That wealth eternally remains Relatory to the third EMBLEME BE not curious to amaze With glitt'ring pomp the Vulgar gaze Strive not to chear with vain delight Those that are catcht with each brave sight How soon will any gawdy show Make their low Spirits overflow Whose Souls are ready to run-ore At any Toy nere seen before Rather thy better thought apply For to addresse thy self to dye Be ne're so glorious after all Thy latest pompe's thy Funerall Shall a dresse of Tyrian Dye Or Venice-gold Embroydery Or new-fash'on-varied Vest Tympanize thy out-strutting brest There 's none of these will hold thee tack But thy last colour shall be Black Be not deceiv'd There comes a Day Will sweep thy Glories all away Mean while the thought on 't may abate Th' Excesses of thy present ' state Death never can that Man surprize That watches for 't with wary Eyes Do So And thou shalt make thereby A Vertue of necessity And when thy Dying-day is come Go like a Man that 's walking home Heav'n Guard thee with Angelick pow‘r To be prepared for that hour When ev'ry Soul shal feel what 'T is To have liv'd Well or done Amisse Relating to the fourth EMBLEME LEt not the Splendour of high Birth Be all thy Glosse without true worth Let neither honour nor vast wealth Beauty nor Valour nor firm health Make thee bear up too high thy head All men alike are buried Stare not with Supercilious brow Poor folks are Dust and so art Thou Triumph not in thy worldy Odds They dye like men whom we count Gods And in the Grave it is all one Who enjoy‘d all or who had none Death cuts off all superfluous And makes the proudest One of us Nor shall there differ‘ence then between The dust of Lords or slaves be seen Together under ground they lye Without distinctive Heraldry Unlesse it be that some brave Tombe Do grace the Great-ones in Earths womb But better ‘ t is that Heaven's dore ls oft‘nest open to the poor When those whose backs and sides with sin Are bunch't and swoln cannot get in Beware the Bulk of thy Estate Shock thee from entrance at that Gate Give Earth to Earth but give thy Minde To Heaven where it 's seat's as sign'd If as it came from that bright Sphere Thither thou tend not fix it here Live that thy Soul may White return Leaving it‘s Partuer in the Urne Till a Blest Day shall reunite And beam them with Eternal Light Ainsi Souhaite Vostre treshumble Serviteur Thomas Cary. Tower-Hill Antepenultim â Augusti 1638. To my endeared Friend the Translatour Mr. Thomas Cary. 1. 'T Is Morall Magick and Wis Chymistry Out of Deaths Uglinesse T‘extract so trim a Dresse And to a Constellated Crystalt tie Such an imperious spell As who looks on it well By sprighty Apparitions to the the Eye Shall See he must and yet not fear to dye 2. No brittle toy but a tough monument Above steele marble Brasse Of Malleable Glasse Which also will while Wisdom is not spent Out-price th‘ adored wedge And blunt Times Sickle‘s edge Usher‘d with gracious safety in its vent For
to disfeaver Spirits fairly lent 3. Friend here remoulded by thy English hand To speak it is no fear Is now as slick and clear Nay when Thy own Minerva now doth stand On a Composing state ‘ T was curt‘sie to Translate But most thy Choice doth my applause command First for thy Self then for this crazie Land H. L. LECTURO COnspice quod vani undat tectoria Factus Et penetrabundi concipe vera Libri O falsis animose bon is Sirenane rerum Deductus vitreas exue delicias Interpres Genium quo vivax Author habebit Nec tantiem Archetypi claustra decora soni Tam bene Cinname â ping it feralia cannâ Phoenicis miro quae quasi rapta rogo E gemitu solatiolum è paedore venustas Eque cadavereo vita reculta situ Alter in arcanis sapiat subtile docendis Sublimique suus stet ratione liber Alter amet flores bibuli mulcedo popelli Sur descens tandem plausibus ipse suis Praesentem Libitina librum sibi vendicat illa Corripens artem Rhotoris illa Sophi H. I. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 HEN. IACOB Advertisement au Lecteur Generous READER 'T Was upon occasion of the Summer's sad effects generally over all England and some ressentments of mine own when the Reading and Copying English this Authour's French Originall seasonably engaged my thoughts and Pen. I think al 's not forgotten yet But in longer intervall and indeed alwayes there ought still to be a deep apprehension of our Mortality This our Author inculcates to us in Notions quick and pertinent though in some historicall allusions he may a little o're-trust his Memory Valebis Thomas Cary. Laudatus abundè Non fastiditus Imprimatur Lingua Vernacula SA BAKER BOOKS printed for and are to be sold by Richard Thrale at the sign of the Crosse-Keyes at St. Pauls gate going into Cheapside Anotations of all the Books of the Old and New Testament wherein various readings are observed Scripture Parallel'd doubts resolved by divers learned and eminent men fol. The Mirrour of Pure devotion or six excellent Sermons of the discovery of Hippocracy by that learned man Mr. Ball. 12. Contemplatio mortis Immortalitatis a Contemplation of Death and Immortality an excellent Book of Eternity and to teach men how to dye in this last Edition all the Latine sentences are put into English in 12. A short view of the long life and reign of Henry the fourth by that learned Antiquary Sr. Rob. Cotton lately deceased 4. A discourse of the whole Art of war by Mr. Cruso with divers figures of fortifications 8 The Psalmes of David in meeter by Mr. Barker in 12. The largest sort of Bibles used in Churches fol. A defence of Infant Baptism by Mr. Choute to convince his wife lately turned Anabaptist 4. Antiquities of Canterbury or a Survey of that ancient City Cathedral suburbs by Will. Summers 4. Arraignment of the whole Creature at the Bar of Religion Reason and Experience explained in the Parable of the Prodigall Son 4. Articles of peace between Spain and England in the year 1630. 4. Carminum Proverbialium totius humanae vitae statum delineantium nec non utile de moribus Doctrinam jacunde propentium loci communis in gratiam javentutis selecti 8. Compleat Gentleman fashioning him absolute in the most necessary and commendable qualities concerning mind and body that may be required in a noble Gendeman together with the Gentlemans exercise or an exquisite practise as well for the drawing of all manner of Beasts as also the making of all sorts of colours for limning painting c. by Henry Pecham Mâ— of Arts in 4. Summa moralis Theologiae Authori Johanni Dawson Draining of the Fenns 4 A Commentary on the Colossians delivered in sundry Sermons by Edward Elton fol Every daies Sacrifices a Prayer book made by Martin Luther a little before his death 12. Fraus honestae Authori Mr. Stubbe in 12. Fundament Graecae Linguae in 8 A vindication of the Annotations on Ieremiah 10. ch 2d v. against the scurrilous aspersion of that grand Impostor Will. Lilly by The. Gataker B. D. in 4 The Herbal or generall History of Plants gathered by Iohn Gerrard since inlarged by Thâ— Iâ—hnsen in fol. The life of Edward the sixth by Sr. John Hayward 4. Holy Table name and thing 4. History of Prince Arthur and the Knights of the round Table in 4. A return from Algear by Doctor Kellet in 4. A strange and dangerous voyage of Captain Tho. Iames in his intended discovery of the Northwest passage into the South Sea 4 A Treaty of pacification between God and man with divers considerations fit for those wofull times also 12. The Sum and substance of Christian Religion set down in Catechistical way by Mr. Henry Isackson 8 King James on the Lords-prayer 8. Inauguration 8 The English Catechism explained or a comment on the small Catechism in the book of the Common prayer by Iohn Mayer D. in D. 4. The Mirrour which flatters not concerning the Contempt of the world and meditation of Death a book very seasonable for these times with the lively Pourtraictures of four famous Emperours Philip King of Mecedon Saladine Adrian Emperour of Rome and Alexander the great Tran slated out of French into English by Tho. Cary Esq The institution of Christian Religion written in Lat. by I Calvin translated into English by T. Norton in folio Danes Orthoepia Anglicana a Book concerning the right pronunciation of the English tongue useful for strangers 4. A Spiritual Duel between a Christian and Satan about certainty of Salvation an excellent Book for those that are troubled in conscience by H. Isackson in 12. Paradici in soli Paradisus terrestis or a Garden of all sorts of the Rarest Flowers with their nature place of birth time of flowring usefull in Physick or admired for beauty to which is added a Kitchen-Garden furnished with all manner of fruites and roots and hearbs used with us for meat or sauce also the art of planting an Orchard with the right way of preserving and conserving of them with their select vertues by Iohn Perkinson fol. The works of that famous Physitian Dr. Alex. Read containing Chirurgical Lectures of Tumors and Ulcers and a Treatise of Wounds with a Treatise of all the Muscules in the body of man in 4. The Manuel of the Anatomy and dissections of the body of Man with sundry figures thereunto belonging by Dr. Alex. Read 12. A Treatise of all the Musculs of the body of man by Dr Read 120. Reformatio Legum 40. Scots Poems 80. Virgilii Evangelizantis Christiados libri 13 in utroque sunt ab Alex. Rosaeo 8. Dr. Davis Welch Dictionary fol. Dr. Webbs Puerilis Confab 4. An exposition on both the Epistles of St. Paul to the Thessalonians by Dr. Wil. Sclater 4. Posie of Godly Prayers an excellent Prayer-book with a discourse to forsake the world and not to fear Death the three and thirtieth Edition 12. Gods Statutes for general judgment by the man Christ Jesus a Sermon Preached at the Funeral of an honourable Lady by Iohn Brocket 4. Playes 4. Antipodes an excellent Comedy by Richard Brome concerning these times 4. Sparagus Garden by Richard Brome Miseries of Inforst marriages by G. Wilkins 4. Wit in a Constable by Slapthorne Ladies Priviledge by Slapthorne An excellent Comedy called a woman will have her will where likewise you may have many excellent Books of all sorts and most of the sorts of Playes FINIS
the Bible and the face of Heaven where all sorts of Sciences are in their source Death immortality are onely separated but with the length of an instant This also of our mortall and decaying nature since it instructs us the Art to pry our selves in our Corruptions that we may recover our selves in immortality When I consider that the Earth was created of nothing Man of nothing and Man made of this nothing and the greatnesses which environ him are nothing at all The world subsists not but upon the foundation of its continuall revolution and all the pleasures which he idolatrizeth are also of the same stuffe I remain all confused with astonishment nor ever able to conceive the subject of his vanity nor the reason of his arrogance poor corrupted Vapour with advancing it self A vapour Man elevating himself too high measures the depth of the A bysses of his Precipice is soon transformed into a Cloud to conceale its noysomnesse but yet by way of this elevation is resolved into Lightnings and Thunder and afterward retumbles into the ditches from whence first it had its beginning A puffe of wind which rumbles in its own violence A Blast angry perhaps that it cannot subsist but in flying and that the action of its concinuall flight is the beginning of its ruine Smoake A smoak which with a vain assault will needs scale the Heavens and yet hardly can one well distingnish the intervall between its first Being and extinction a poor glisteâ—ing Worm which dazies none but purblind spirits and gives light to those wormes which devoure it in private A worm We are al already but rottennesse since already wormes begin to devour us A stream Every thing corrupt the verys eye which now reads these truths shall not be exempt A stream alwaies murmuring alwaies trilling away And now why shall all these goodly nullities and all these pleasant Chimera's insinuate to us the vanity which they are of shall these cozening appearances be stablish'd here below with Soveraignty be it then only in desire or in dream for with what gilded rind so ere they be out-sided Corruption is their Form and Dust their Matter I am astonished that Man should be capable to mistake himself even to the point of forgetting what he was then when he yet was not what he is now whilst he enjoys the beauty of the day Nature exhibits us so many Mirrours of Inconstancy as she hath produced objecis and what he must one day be at the Sun-set of his life Assuredly yes I am astonisht at it since all created things may serve him for a Mirrour to contemplate therein apparently the verity of his miseries The Heavens though whirling about with a Motion alwayes equall in the same spaces of their carreere do not cease to wax old and even their age represents to us naturally our decay Since that Nature it self is mortall this second cause ceasing â— the ruine of these effects is infallible Though the Stars shine with a sparkling luster as clear as at the first Day of their creation yet as they are attached within those circles of Ages whose continuall motion is limited they approach by little and little to their last West where their light must be extinct and the pace of their course shews us the way of our life since time conducts us all together though diversly to our end The Fire so greedy that it devours it self when finding no more fuell to nourish it is it not a Mirrour of the Lamp of our life whose kindled week goes out when the Oyle of the Radicall moysture fails it The Air which corrupts continually is it not an Image of our corruption with out doubt the Waters transparent body represents us the fragility of ours and its liquid crystalline Every thing flees away from us and in running after â—em we tun to rdeath always rolling away makes us see in its gliding our flitting nature The earth could not have figured us better then she doth since we are to day of the same matter and to moroow of the like form The world is a Nosegay of flowers which by little and little wither all together What fairer Mirrour hen that of Flowers where we may see in one day the whole course of our life for at Sun-rise the buds resemble out Infancy at noone the same now full blown our youth and at Dayes-end themselves now quite withered our last age I will not speak of all the other Spices of creatures animates how every one in its self though living is an Image of death It sufficeth me to cherish this remembrance and leave to you thereof the meditation What shall I tell ye of Fortune of honours riches and all these glorious qualities of valour Fortune hath nothing more her own then her Inconstancy Beauty and a thousand other besides which vanish away with us This blinde Goddesse hath a Mirrour under her feet whose round figure shews us at once both her instability and our inconstancy as for greatnesse and riches the ashes of those which have possest them are as so many fresh Crystals of a Mirrour which flatters not wherein we may see the vanity both of their enjoyment and of their possessors Those other qualities of fair and valiant There is nothing immortal in man but vertue are of the fame nature as those sensitive and vegetable souls which die together with the subject which they animate without leaving ordinarily so much as one small memoriall for marke that they have had a being otherwise and in sequell to these truths Man is the Mirrour of Man so that by due contemplati of one part he may save the whole can you finde a truer Mirrour then this of our selves since every part nay what say I every action and every sigh is an animate pourtrait of Death Insomuch that we draw the breath of so many continuate Gaspes without ability of dispose of one onely instant to give intervall to this exercise How is it then possible that Man should miss know himself having such faithfull Mirrours before his eyes All the Objects of the world bâ—d us Adue while we but regard them since they are always fleeing away where at all times he may see apparently the Truth of his Nature kneaded in Corruption formed by it and destroyed also by the same Strange thing he can see nothing in the World but Images of inconstancy and yet will not apprehend his own change whatsoever shall smite upon his eare will resound nothing but the bruit of his flight To mus always of Death is the way of immortality yet he wil not think upon his retreat Lastly his other Sences and his fancy shall have no other object but this of the continuall vicissitude of all things and yet he will remain firm and stable in his vanity till death ruine its foundation Thus in the deceitfull opinion