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stancy. For first there is a strong bond of affec- PART II. tion between us and our Parents; yet how easily dissolved! We betake our selves to a woman, forget our mother in a wife, and the womb that bare us, in that that shall bear our Image. This woman blessing us with children, our affection leaves the level it held before, and sinks from our bed unto our issue and picture of Posterity, where affection holds no steady mansion. They, growing up in years, desire our ends; or applying themselves to a woman, take a lawful way to love another better than our selves. Thus I perceive a man may be buried alive, and behold his grave in his own issue.

SECT. XV.

Our Physi

there is no

Eccl. ii. 26.

I conclude therefore, and say, there is no happiness under (or, as Copernicus will have it, cian con above) the Sun, nor any Crambe in that repeated cludeth that verity and burthen of all the wisdom of Solo- happiness mon, All is vanity and vexation of Spirit. There but in God. is no felicity in that the World adores. Aristotle, whilst he labours to refute the Idea's of Plato, falls upon one himself; for his summum bonum 42 is a Chimæra, and there is no such thing as his Felicity. That wherein GOD Himself is happy, the holy Angels are happy, in whose defect the Devils are unhappy, that dare I call happiness: whatsoever conduceth unto this, may with an easy Metaphor deserve that name; whatsoever else the World terms Happiness, is to me a story out of Pliny, a tale of Boccace or Malizspini, an apparition, or neat delusion, wherein there is no more of Happiness than the name. Bless

PART II. science, command of my affections, the love of Thy self and my dearest friends, and I shall be happy enough to pity Cæsar. These are, O LORD, the humble desires of my most reasonable ambition, and all I dare call happiness on earth; wherein I set no rule or limit to Thy Hand or Providence. Dispose of me according to

the wisdom of Thy plea

sure: Thy will be
done, though in

my own un-
doing.

FINIS.

A

LETTER

ΤΟ Α

FRIEND,

Upon occafion of the

DEATH

OF HIS

Intimate Friend.

By the Learned

Sir THOMAS BROWN, Knight,

Doctor of Phyfick, late of Norwich.

LONDON:

Printed for Charles Brome at the Gun at the West-End

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you should hear so little concerning your dearest Friend, and that I must make that unwilling Repetition to tell you,

Ad portam rigidos calces extendit,

that he is Dead and Buried, and by this time no Puny among the mighty Nations of the Dead ; for tho he left this World not very many days past, yet every hour you know largely addeth unto that dark Society; and considering the incessant Mortality of Mankind, you cannot conIceive there dieth in the whole Earth so few as a thousand an hour.

Altho at this distance you had no early Account or Particular of his Death, yet your Affection may cease to wonder that you had not some secret Sense or Intimation thereof by Dreams, thoughtful Whisperings, Mercurisms,

SECT. I.

Persius,
Sat. i. 105.

SECT. II.

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