II. I have done with the first point, Israel's death, with the necessity, reason, and use of it. The second follows; and that is, the time of Israel's death. The royal preacher, (Eccles. iii, 1.) saith, To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven; and then by way of induction sets down a large catalogue of things that have their time here below. I may call it his Fasciculus temporum, as an old author calls his book: all his instances are no other than the ordinary changes of an earthly life. And it is well noted by St. Ambrose upon the first verse, where he saith, that there is a time for every thing under the heaven: that all things under heaven are temporal, and by consequence, mutable. But the Psalmist saith, The heavens themselves shall be changed. Ps. cii, 26. He means those visible heavens: the sun itself, and the stars that are above it, as well as all things under it, shall be changed. But in the heaven of heavens there will be no change, because no such thing as time will be there: all is eternal in heaven: but under heaven all things have their time. lowest story of the heavens, by the philosophers' account, is that of the moon, which is the common emblem of mutability: and if you count the particulars of Solomon's changes in that chapter, you shall find just as many as are the days in a

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common lunary month, twenty-eight, and all of them like the changes of the moon, nothing but increasing and decreasing. The whole set of his changes is drawn chequerwise, by a just division of white and black, good and evil things, after the pattern that God gave when he first set the division of times, by dividing of light from darkness, and making each day to divide itself into an evening and a morning: and the first instance that Solomon gives of his temporalities, is that of the morning and evening of man's life: a time to be born, and a time to die. The primitive

Christians confounded the distinction of these two times, by calling the days of their martyr's deaths their Natalitia, or birth-days. And the holy preacher, (chap. vii, 1.) prefers the time of death before that of birth: the coffin before the cradle. And though that be a paradox, as some other things are, which he there adds, yet it is no Paralogy in reason; but so evidently true, as some mere naturalists have found reason to grant it; else would not the Thracians have wept at their births, and rejoiced at their funerals. have no leisure now to unriddle that paradox: but in the mean time it is certain there is a time to die, as sure as a time to be born; nay, more sure indeed; never man was born, but either is dead, or must die; except some one or two, Enoch and Elias, that were privileged by miracle;

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and that privilege, said Tertullian, was but a reprieve or a suspension for a time, till Antichrist comes, and then they must be slain for the two witnesses, spoken of by St. John, Rev. xi, 7. But St. Paul hath given us another exception; namely, of all those which shall be found alive at the resurrection, when the Lord Jesus shall come again to judge both the quick and the dead: that is, not the righteous that lived by faith, and the wicked that died in their sins, as Augustine and Chrysostome allegorize the words; nor yet the immortal soul, and the mortal body, as Theophylact glosseth the text: but as St. Paul interprets, those that are alive at his coming, and those that shall be dead before. 1 Thess. iv, 15, 17. For we shall not all sleep, but we all shall be changed. 1 Cor. xv, 52. The vulgar latin denies that change, and therefore hath strangely changed the text, as may be seen. The Pontificians will not admit their exemption from death: and we shall not now dispute the point. But with these exceptions, and possibly some few others not recorded in Scripture, it is certain never man was born, nor shall be, but had, or must have, a time to die. But many an one hath found a time to die that never was born: their time to die having prevented their time to be born. Many have been seen dead, that never were seen alive; and many are dead that never were seen at all. It is

too plain a point to spend time upon if Israel must die, he must have a time for it. But whether that time were certain and fixed, or not, is a solemn question;* large and learned debates are made about it, and strong contests between the physician and the divine. The question is not to be resolved from this text, and I have now no leisure to look into many others: but seeing the hairs of our head are numbered, it is more than probable so are the days, yea the hours, and minutes of our lives. A sparrow falls not to the ground without God's Providence, much less doth a man. The great world hath its last day set and certain to him that made it: so sure hath every little world; but of that day and hour knoweth no man. But certain it is, to God nothing is uncertain: the doctrine of his prescience (except with the Socinians, we will deny the universal extent of it) will demonstrate the truth in this question, in the affirmative: for that which is not certain, cannot be certainly foreseen. Yet will it not follow that this event, and all things else, are absolutely necessary, by a fatal connexion, or necessary operation and efficacy of their particular causes, according to the opinion of the new Stoic, to whom I can

* Beverovitius de termino vitæ,

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allow the name of a philosopher,* but not of a Christian, till he hath recanted his Leviathan of heresies: wherein he allows men the liberty of an express denial of Christ, if the infidel magistrate commands it:† so making all martyrs rebels to their princes, and murtherers of themselves. The man is no professed Turk, (thank a christian magistrate) but hath told us in effect he would be so, as well in other points as that of his fatality, if his prince would have him: for the Alcoran with the civil sanction, is by his doctrine as canonical as the Gospel. Whether it be certain which Cajetan and Alvarez have resolved, namely, that to comprehend how the decrees and concourse of God's will, doth agree with the liberty of man's will; (whereupon the time of death seems much to depend) is above the understanding of any man in this life, I well know not: but I am willing to confess it is above mine. Above my understanding I say it is, so are divers other mysteries of our religion, but I thank God not above my faith. For this I believe, that neither God's prescience, nor his decrees, do infer, much less cause any necessity in the manner of the production of their objects: because God hath decreed, and therefore foreseen that many things