’Tis the Great Bus’ness of Life to fit our selves for our End; and no Man
can Live Well that has not Death in his Eye.
’Tis a strange Mixture of Madness and Folly in One Solecism, for People
to Say or Imagin that ever any Man was Taken out of This World without
time to Prepare himself for Death: But the Delay of Fitting our selves
is our Own Fault, and we turn the very Sin into an Excuse: Every Breath
we draw is not only a Step towards Death, but a Part of it. It was Born
with us, It goes along with us: It is the Only Constant Companion that we
have in This World, and yet we never think of it any more then if we knew
Nothing on’t. The Text is True to the very Letter, that _we Die Dayly_,
and yet we Feel it not. Every thing under the Sun reads a Lecture of
Mortality to us. Our Neighbours, our Friends, our Relations, that fall
Every where round about us, Admonish us of our Last Hour; and yet here’s
an Old Man on the Wrong-side of Fourscore perhaps, Complaining that he is
surpriz’d.