can hardly reckon him to be alive, when his body is possessed by so many degrees of death. * * * * * But if I shall describe a living man, a man that hath that life which distinguishes him from a fool or a bird, that which gives him a capacity next to angels, we shall find that even a good man lives not long; because it is long before he is born to this life, and longer yet before he hath a man’s growth. “He that can look upon death, and see its face with the same countenance with which he hears its story; he that can endure all the labours of his life with his soul supporting his body; that can equally despise riches when he hath them, and when he hath them not; that is not sadder if they lie in his neighbour’s trunks, nor more brag if they shine round about his own walls; he that is neither moved with good fortune coming to him, nor going from him; that can look upon another man’s lands evenly and pleasantly as if they were his own, and yet look upon his own, and use them too, just as if they were another man’s; that neither spends his goods prodigally and like a fool, nor yet keeps them avariciously and like a wretch; that weighs not benefits by weight and number, but by the mind and circumstances of him that gives them; that never thinks his charity expensive if a worthy person be the receiver; he that does nothing for opinion sake, but every thing for conscience, being as curious of his thoughts as of his actings in markets and theatres, and is as much in awe of himself as of a whole assembly; he that knows God looks on, and contrives his secret affairs as if in the presence of God and his holy angels; that eats and drinks because he needs it, not that he may serve a lust or load his belly; he that is bountiful and cheerful to his friends, and charitable and apt to forgive his enemies; that loves his country, and obeys his prince, and desires and endeavours nothing more than that they may do honour to God:”[133] this person may reckon his life to be the life of a man, and compute his months not by the course of the sun, but the zodiac and circle of his virtues; because these are such things which fools and children and birds and beasts cannot have; these are therefore the actions of life, because they are the seeds of immortality. That day in which we have done some excellent thing, we may as truly reckon to be added to our life, as were the fifteen years to the days of Hezekiah.[134] --------------------- Footnote 133: Seneca, _De Vita Beata_. Footnote 134: Jeremy Taylor’s _Holy Dying_. ---------------------------- PREDICTIONS OF FLOWERS.