Penitens was a busy notable tradesman, and very prosperous in his dealings; but died in the thirty-fifth year of his age.
A little before his death, when the doctors had given him over, some of his neighbours came one evening to see him; at which time he spake thus to them.
I see, (says he) my friends, the tender concern you have for me, by the grief that appears in your countenances, and I know the thoughts that you now have of me. You think how melancholy a case it is, to see so young a man, and in such flourishing business, delivered up to death. And perhaps, had I visited any of you in my condition, I should have had the same thoughts of you. But now, my friends, my thoughts are no more like your thoughts, than my condition is like yours. It is no trouble to me now to think that I am to die young, or before I have raised an estate. These things are sunk into such mere nothings, that I have no name little enough to call them by. For if in a few days, or hours, I am to leave this carcase to be buried in the earth, and to find myself either for ever happy in the favour of God, or eternally separated from all light and peace; can any words sufficiently express the littleness of every thing else?
Is there any dream, like the dream of life, which amuses us with the neglect and disregard of these things? Is there any folly like the folly of our manly state, which is too wise and busy to be at leisure for these reflections?
When we consider death as a misery, we generally think of it as a miserable separation from the enjoyments of this life. We seldom mourn over an old man that dies rich, but we lament the young, that are taken away in the progress of their fortunes. You yourselves look upon me with pity, not that you think I am going unprepared to meet the Judge of quick and dead, but that I am to leave a prosperous trade in the flower of my life.
This is the wisdom of our manly thoughts. And yet what folly of the silliest children, is so great as this? For what is there miserable or dreadful in death, but the consequences of it? When a man is dead, what does any thing signify to him, but the state he is then in?
Our poor friend Lepidus, you know died as he was dressing himself for a feast; do you think it is now part of his trouble, that he did not live till that entertainment was over? Feasts, and business, and pleasures and enjoyments, seem great things to us, whilst we think of nothing else; but as soon as we add death to them, they all sink into littleness not to be expressed; and the soul that is separated from the body, no more laments the loss of business, than the losing of a feast.
If I am now going to the joys of God, could there be any reason to grieve, that this happened to me before I was forty years of age. Can it be a sad thing to go to heaven, before I have made a few more bargains, or stood a little longer behind a counter?
And if I am to go amongst lost spirits, could there be any reason to be content, that this did not happen to me till I was old and full of riches.
If good angels were ready to receive my soul, could it be any grief to me that I was dying on a poor bed in a garret?