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 tiful woman which did draw after her whole troops of gallants in her youth, her face is now furrowed with deformed wrinkles, and she that before was a pleasure, is now ugly to behold.

Consider fifthly, how deceitful this life is, (which is the worst condition of all, deluding the lovers of this world with a miserable blindness,) for we think it amiable, when in itself it is ugly: we think it sweet, when it is full of gall and bitterness: when it is circumscribed within the shortest limits, we think it long. When it is full of misery, we think it so happy, that there is no danger, no hazard, that men will not expose themselves unto, for the conservation of it: yea, with the loss of eternal glory, when they do not fear to commit those sins which make them unworthy of so great felicity.

Consider sixthly, that besides the brevity, and other fore-mentioned conditions, that small time wherein we live, is subject to innumerable miseries, both spiritual and corporal: that it may well be called a torrent of tears, and ocean of infinite molestations. St. Jerome reporteth how Xerxes, that potent king, who overturned mountains, and made bridges over the seas, when, from a high place, he beheld that infinite multitude of men, and his innumerable army, he wept, to think that not one of those men there present, should be alive after a hundred years. And presently adding, O that we could but ascend into such a turret,