THE HISTORY OF LIFE AND DEATH. 



THE PREFACE. 



IT is an ancient saying and complaint, that life is short and 

 art long ; wherefore it behoveth us, who make it our chief- 

 est aim to perfect arts, to take upon us the consideration of 

 prolonging man s life, God, the author of all truth and life, 

 prospering our endeavours. For though the life of man be 

 nothing else but a mass and accumulation of sins and sor 

 rows, and they that look for an eternal life set but light by 

 a temporary: yet the continuation of works of charity 

 ought not to be contemned, even by us Christians. Be 

 sides, the beloved disciple of our Lord survived the other 

 disciples ; and many of the fathers of the church, especially 

 of the holy monks and hermits, were long lived ; which 

 shows, that this blessing of long life, so often promised in 

 the old law, had less abatement after our Saviour s days 

 than other earthly blessings had ; but to esteem of this as 

 the chiefest good, we are but too prone. Only the inquiry 

 is difficult how to attain the same, and so much the rather, 

 because it is corrupted with false opinions and vain reports : 

 for both those things, which the vulgar physicians talk of, 

 radical moisture and natural heat, are but mere fictions; 

 and the immoderate praises of chymical medicines first 

 puff up with vain hopes, and then fail their admirers. 



And as for that death which is caused by suffocation, 

 putrefaction, and several diseases, we speak not of it now, 

 for that pertains to a history of physick ; but only of that 

 death which comes by a total decay of the body, and the 

 inconcoction of old age. Nevertheless, the last act of 

 death, and the very extinguishing of life itself, which may 

 so many ways be wrought outwardly and inwardly (which 

 notwithstanding have, as it were, one common porch before 

 it comes to the point of death), will be pertinent to be 

 inquired of in this treatise ; but we reserve that for the last 

 place. 



That which may be repaired by degrees, without a total 



