But the ancient martyrs were not encouraged by such fallacies, who, though they feared not death, were afraid to be their own executioners; and therefore thought it more wisdom to crucify their lusts than their bodies, to circumcise than stab their hearts, and to mortify than kill themselves.

His willingness to leave this world about that age when most men think they may best enjoy it, though paradoxical unto worldly ears, was not strange unto mine, who have so often observed that many, though old, oft stick fast unto the world, and seem to be drawn like Cacus’s oxen, backward with great struggling and reluctancy unto the grave.  The long habit of living makes mere men more hardly to part with life, and all to be nothing, but what is to come.  To live at the rate of the old world, when some could scarce remember themselves young, may afford no better digested death than a more moderate period.  Many would have thought it an happiness to have had their lot of life in some notable conjunctures of ages past; but the uncertainty of future times hath tempted few to make a part in ages to come.  And surely, he that hath taken the true altitude of things, and rightly calculated the degenerate state of this age, is not like to envy those that shall live in the next, much less three or four hundred years hence, when no man can comfortably imagine what face this world will carry; and therefore, since every age makes a step unto the end of all things, and the Scripture affords so hard a character of the last times, quiet minds will be content with their generations, and rather bless ages past than be ambitious of those to come.

Though age had set no seal upon his face, yet a dim eye might clearly discover fifty in his actions; and therefore, since wisdom is the gray hair, and an unspotted life old age, although his years came short, he might have been said to have held up with longer livers, and to have been Solomon’s old man.  And surely if we deduct all those days of our life which we might wish unlived, and which abate the comfort of those we now live, if we reckon up only those days which God hath accepted of our lives, a life of good years will hardly be a span long; the son in this sense may outlive the father, and none be climacterically old.  He that early arriveth unto the parts and prudence of age is happily old without the uncomfortable attendants of it; and ’tis superfluous to live unto gray hairs, when in a precocious temper we anticipate the virtues of them.  In brief, he cannot be accounted young who outliveth the old man.  He that hath early arrived unto the measure of a perfect stature in Christ, hath already fulfilled the prime and longest intention of his being; and one day lived after the perfect rule of piety is to be preferred before sinning immortality.

Although he attained not unto the years of his predecessors, yet he wanted not those preserving virtues which confirm the thread of weaker constitutions. Cautelous chastity and crafty sobriety were far from him; those jewels were paragon, without flaw, hair, ice, or cloud in him:  which affords me a hint to proceed in these good wishes and few mementos unto you.