My God, my God, as thy servant James, when he asks that question, _What is your life?_ provides me my answer, _It is even a vapour, that appeareth for a little time, and then vanisheth away_;[171] so, if he did ask me what is your death, I am provided of my answer, it is a vapour too; and why should it not be all one to me, whether I live or die, if life and death be all one, both a vapour? Thou hast made vapour so indifferent a thing as that thy blessings and thy judgments are equally expressed by it, and is made by thee the hieroglyphic of both. Why should not that be always good by which thou hast declared thy plentiful goodness to us? _A vapour went up from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground._[172] And that by which thou hast imputed a goodness to us, and wherein thou hast accepted our service to thee, sacrifices; for sacrifices were vapours;[173] and in them it is said, that a _thick cloud of incense went up to thee_.[174] So it is of that wherein thou comest to us, the dew of heaven, and of that wherein we come to thee, both are vapours; and he, in whom we have and are all that we are or have, temporally or spiritually, thy blessed Son, in the person of Wisdom, is called so too; _She is_ (that is, he is) _the vapour of the power of God, and the pure influence from the glory of the Almighty._[175] Hast thou, thou, O my God, perfumed vapour with thine own breath, with so many sweet acceptations in thine own word, and shall this vapour receive an ill and infectious sense? It must; for, since we have displeased thee with that which is but vapour (for what is sin but a vapour, but a smoke, though such a smoke as takes away our sight, and disables us from seeing our danger), it is just that thou punish us with vapours too. For so thou dost, as the wise man tells us, thou canst punish us by those things wherein we offend thee; as he hath expressed it there, _by beasts newly created, breathing vapours_.[176] Therefore that commination of thine, by thy prophet, _I will show wonders in the heaven, and in the earth, blood and fire, and pillars of smoke_;[177] thine apostle, who knew thy meaning best, calls _vapours of smoke_.[178] One prophet presents thee in thy terribleness so, _There went out a smoke at his nostrils_,[179] and another the effect of thine anger so, _The house was filled with smoke_;[180] and he that continues his prophecy as long as the world can continue, describes the miseries of the latter times so, _Out of the bottomless pit arose a smoke, that darkened the sun, and out of that smoke came locusts, who had the power of scorpions_.[181] Now all smokes begin in fire, and all these will end so too: the smoke of sin and of thy wrath will end in the fire of hell. But hast thou afforded us no means to evaporate these smokes, to withdraw these vapours? When thine angels fell from heaven, thou tookest into thy care the reparation of that place, and didst it by assuming, by