religious actions, is wisdom; without which to commit ourselves to the
flames is homicide, and, I fear, but to pass through one fire into
another.


_III.--THE HOPE OF IMMORTALITY_


I thank God I have not those strait ligaments or narrow obligations to
the world as to dote on life or tremble at the name of death. Not that I
am insensible of the horror thereof, or, by raking into the bowels of
the deceased and continual sight of anatomies, I have forgot the
apprehension of mortality; but that, marshalling all the horrors, I find
not anything therein able to daunt the courage of a man, much less a
well-resolved Christian. Were there not another life that I hope for,
all the vanities of this world should not entreat a moment's breath from
me. Those strange and mystical transmigrations that I have observed in
silkworms turned my philosophy into divinity. There is in these works of
Nature which seem to puzzle reason, something divine, that hath more in
it than the eye of a common spectator doth discover.

Some, upon the courage of a fruitful issue, wherein, as in the truest
chronicle, they seem to outlive themselves, can with greater patience
away with death. This seems to me a mere fallacy, unworthy the desires
of a man that can but conceive a thought of the next world; who, in a
nobler ambition, should desire to live in his substance in heaven rather
than his name and shadow in the earth. Were there any hopes to outlive
vice, or a point to be superannuated from sin, it were worthy our knees
to implore the days of Methuselah. But age doth not rectify but brings
on incurable vices, and the number of our days doth but make our sins