*And if it be wise and happy to live piously, because we have not above a year to live, is it not being more wise, and making ourselves more happy, to live piously, because we may have more years to come? If one year of piety before we die, is so desirable, are not more years of piety much more desirable?
15. If a man had five fixed years to live, he could not possibly think at all, without intending to make the best use of them all. When he saw his stay so short in this world, he must needs think that this was not a world for him; and when he saw how near he was to another world, that was eternal, he must surely think it necessary to be very diligent in preparing for it.
Now as reasonable as piety appears in such a circumstance of life, it is yet more reasonable in every circumstance of life, to every thinking man.
For who but a madman can recount that he has five years certain to come?
*And if it be reasonable and necessary to deny our worldly tempers, and live wholly unto God, because we are certain that we are to die at the end of five years; surely it must be much more reasonable and necessary for us to live in the same spirit, because we have no certainty that we shall live five weeks.
16. *Again, if we are to add twenty years to the five, which is, in all probability, more than will be added to the lives of many people, who are at man’s estate; what a poor thing it is! How small a difference is there between five, and twenty-five years?
It is said, that a day is with God as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day; because, in regard to his eternity, this difference is as nothing.
*Now, as we are created to be eternal, to live an endless succession of ages upon ages, where thousands, and millions of thousands of years will have no proportion to our everlasting life in God; so with regard to his eternal state, which is our real state, twenty-five years is as poor a pittance as twenty-five days.
We can never make any true judgment of time as it relates to us, without considering the true state of our duration. If we are temporary beings, then a little time may justly be called a great deal in relation to us; but if we are eternal beings, then the difference of a few years is as nothing.
17. If we were to suppose three different sorts of rational beings, all of different, but fixed duration; one sort that lived certainly only a month, the other a year, and the third an hundred years.