Meditation on Mans Mortality, Verse 10
VERS. 10. The dayes of our yeares are seuentie yeares: and if by reason of strength they be eightie yeares, yet is their strength then labour and sorrow: for it is soone cut off, and we fly away.
IN these words the Prophet proues that which he sayd before, that wee spend our yeares as a tale that is told. The yeares of them which ordinarily liue the uttermost of their dayes is but threescore and ten, and if any liue till eightie through strength, yet is their strength then labour and sorrow, &c. Now if the longest period of dayes that men ordinarily liue, be so short a time, and the longest time flyeth so fast, then well might the Prophet say, That our dayes passe away as a tale that is tould. For those who by reason of their strength liue till 2 Sam. 19. 35.eightie yeares, either they are men that vnderunder-goe in this life many labours and trauels, and then their very strength brings nothing vntounto them but matter of labour and sorrow; For, the stronger a man hath beene, and the greater labours and trauels he hath vndergone, the more full of aches and paines is his old age wont to be: Or they liue merrily and chearefully, free from ordinary passions and grievances; And then their life flyeth away, and when they are brought to these yeares, their daies are but daies of sorrow, and that with them the rather, because they cannot follow those delights then, that formerly they hauehave done. Howsoeuer it be, there are none cōmonly whose dayes hauehave seemed to them to passe swifter away, then those that lived the longest; None are lesse weary of life, nor more unwilling to die commonly then they. The life therefore of such, though full of never so much sorrow and trouble flyes away. And such is the louelove that ordinarily we beare to this life, that though death come not till eightie yeares, yet it seemes then to fly vntounto us.
The Doctrine is plaine.
That our dayes are now but seventie yeares, that is to say; The time, that ordinarily man doe not passe in this life, is no more; or if more, their life after is but a Death, and Death comes flying.
1. This then should teach vsus also to remember Eccles. 12. 1.our Creator betimes in the dayes of our youth. Alas, not one of a hundred of us liue till sixtie or seuentie years, or if we liue longer, and hauehave spent that time in prophanenesse, except the Lord shew more then ordinary mercy, wee shall bee no more fit then to honour our Creator then so many dead men. The longest that wee can hope to liue and not be children againe is eightie yeares; and then commonly we are as children againe mewed vp, and our children are either Parents or Lords ouer vsus, vsing vsus as innocents.
2. It shewes the strange folly of so many of us as are come to the height and middle of our Age, yea, to be fistie and vpward, yea, to be sixtie, &c. Wee can talke of our dayes past, and of things we did fortie yeares since, as if they were done but yesterday; and for the time to come, though wee hauehave no reason to hope it should be as much as we hauehave spent, and though wee may presume it will flie as fast away as that which is past in the whole, though not in the parts; yet we liue as though we had a 100 yeares, yea a 1060 yeares to come. Yea, You shall hauehave many that are of 60. 70. yea, 80. years, that hauehave no more care to fit them to death, but put the houre thereof as farre from them, as if they were in their freshest youth. If some liued a 100. some 500. some a 1000. some 10000. yeares amongst vsus; as now they liue some 5. some 10. some 40. some 60. some 70. &c. there might bee some colour for this folly: but seeing one of 500. liues not til 60. one of 5000. til 80. one of 100000. till a hundred: None till 200. what madnesse it is then, especially in those that hauehave passed the greatest time they can expect, to hauehave no care of the houre of death, and of the account they shall then make, when their whole time is but short, as a tale that is told: As you shall hauehave old men in a tale of lesse then an houre long, runne over all their life.