Lastly; if length of days be thy portion, make it not thy expectation.
Reckon not upon long life: think every day the last, and live always
beyond thy account. He that so often surviveth his expectation lives
many lives, and will scarce complain of the shortness of his days. Time
past is gone like a shadow; make time to come present. Approximate thy
latter times by present apprehensions of them: be like a neighbour unto
the grave, and think there is but little to come. And since there is
something of us that will still live on, join both lives together, and
live in one but for the other. He who thus ordereth the purposes of this
life, will never be far from the next; and is in some manner already in
it, by a happy conformity and close apprehension of it. And if, as we
have elsewhere declared, any have been so happy, as personally to
understand Christian annihilation, ecstasy, exolution, transformation,
the kiss of the spouse, and ingression into the divine shadow, according
to mystical theology, they have already had an handsome anticipation of
heaven; the world is in a manner over, and the earth in ashes unto them.