[6622] ------“truditur dies die, Novaeque pergunt interire Lunae:”
[6623]They did eat and drink of old, marry, bury, bought, sold, planted, built, and will do still. [6624]"Our life is short and tedious, and in the death of a man there is no recovery, neither was any man known that hath returned from the grave; for we are born at all adventure, and we shall be hereafter as though we had never been; for the breath is as smoke in our nostrils, &c., and the spirit vanisheth as the soft air.” [6625]"Come let us enjoy the pleasures that are present, let us cheerfully use the creatures as in youth, let us fill ourselves with costly wine and ointments, let not the flower of our life pass by us, let us crown ourselves with rose-buds before they are withered,” &c. [6626]_Vivamus mea Lesbia et amemus_, &c. [6627] “Come let us take our fill of love, and pleasure in dalliance, for this is our portion, this is our lot.”
Tempora labuntur, tacitisque senescimus annis.[6628] For the rest of heaven and hell, let children and superstitious fools believe it: for their parts, they are so far from trembling at the dreadful day of judgment that they wish with Nero, Me vivo fiat, let it come in their times: so secure, so desperate, so immoderate in lust and pleasure, so prone to revenge that, as Paterculus said of some caitiffs in his time in Rome, Quod nequiter ausi, fortiter executi: it shall not be so wickedly attempted, but as desperately performed, whatever they take in hand. Were it not for God’s restraining grace, fear and shame, temporal punishment, and their own infamy, they would. Lycaon-like exenterate, as so many cannibals eat up, or Cadmus’ soldiers consume one another. These are most impious, and commonly professed atheists, that never use the name of God but to swear by it; that express nought else but epicurism in their carriage, or hypocrisy; with Pentheus they neglect and contemn these rites and religious ceremonies of the gods; they will be gods themselves, or at least socii deorum. Divisum imperium cum Jove Caesar habet. “Caesar divides the empire with Jove.” Aproyis, an Egyptian tyrant, grew, saith [6629]Herodotus, to that height of pride, insolency of impiety, to that contempt of Gods and men, that he held his kingdom so sure, ut a nemine deorum aut hominum sibi eripi posset, neither God nor men could take it from him. [6630]A certain blasphemous king of Spain (as [6631]Lansius reports) made an edict, that no subject of his, for ten years’ space, should believe in, call on, or worship any god. And as [6632]Jovius relates of “Mahomet the Second, that sacked Constantinople, he so behaved himself, that he believed neither Christ nor Mahomet; and thence it came to pass, that he kept his word and promise no farther than for his advantage, neither did he care to commit any offence to satisfy his lust.” I could say the like of many princes, many private men (our stories are full of them) in times past, this present