Nempe et fugacem persequitur virum, Nec parcit imbellis juventae Poplitibus, timidoque tergo. [Footnote:  Hor. 1. iii.  Od. ii. 14.]

     Shee persecutes the man that flies,
     Shee spares not weake youth to surprise,
     But on their hammes and backe turn’d plies.

And that no temper of cuirace [Footnote:  Cuirass.] may shield or defend you,

     Ille licet ferro cauius se condat et aere,
     Mors tamen inclusum protraket inde caput.
     [Footnote:  Propert. 1. iii. et xvii. 5]

     Though he with yron and brasse his head empale,
     Yet death his head enclosed thence will hale.

Let us learne to stand, and combat her with a resolute minde.  And being to take the greatest advantage she hath upon us from her, let us take a cleane contrary way from the common, let us remove her strangenesse from her, let us converse, frequent, and acquaint our selves with her, let us have nothing so much in minde as death, let us at all times and seasons, and in the ugliest manner that may be, yea with all faces shapen and represent the same unto our imagination.  At the stumbling of a horse, at the fall of a stone, at the least prick with a pinne, let us presently ruminate and say with our selves, what if it were death it selfe? and thereupon let us take heart of grace, and call our wits together to confront her.  Amiddest our bankets, feasts, and pleasures, let us ever have this restraint or object before us, that is, the remembrance of our condition, and let not pleasure so much mislead or transport us, that we altogether neglect or forget, how many waies, our joyes, or our feastings, be subject unto death, and by how many hold-fasts shee threatens us and them.  So did the AEgyptians, who in the middest of their banquetings, and in the full of their greatest cheere, caused the anatomie [Footnote:  Skeleton] of a dead man to be brought before them, as a memorandum and warning to their guests.

     Omnem crede diem tibi diluxisse supremum,
     Grata superveniet; quae non sperabitur, hora?
     [Footnote:  Hor. 1. i.  Epist. iv. 13.]

     Thinke every day shines on thee as thy last,
     Welcome it will come, whereof hope was past.

It is uncertaine where death looks for us; let us expect her everie where:  the premeditation of death, is a forethinking of libertie.  He who hath learned to die, hath unlearned to serve.  There is no evill in life, for him that hath well conceived, how the privation of life is no evill.  To know how to die, doth free us from all subjection and constraint.  Paulus AEmilius answered one, whom that miserable king of Macedon his prisoner sent to entreat him he would not lead him in triumph, “Let him make that request unto himselfe.”  Verily, if Nature afford not some helpe in all things, it is very hard that art and industrie should goe farre before.  Of my selfe, I am not much given to melancholy, but rather to dreaming and sluggishness.  There is nothing wherewith I have ever more entertained my selfe, than with the imaginations of death, yea in the most licentious times of my age.