that evil, which God calls good? Gen. xxv. 8. How often in scripture is it faid, A good old age, Judg. viii. 32. 1 Chron. xxix. 28. and counted as a privilege? I muft needs therefore here diftinguish of old age; and confider it in a threefold ftate. First, crude, green, and while it is yet in the beginning, while men are able to do bufinefs, and go about their employments, and this is but one little remove from manhood, and doth immediately border upon it. The second is, full, mature, or ripe age; when men begin to leave off their employments, and betake themselves to retiredness; when God hath no more work for them, and they have no more ftrength for him; or laftly, extream fickly, decrepit, overgrown old age; in which it may be truly said, Old age is perifhed, Fob. xxx. 2. when their breath is corrupt, when their days are extinct, and the grave is ready for them, Job xvii. 1. And this only is the state the wife man here fo rhetorically describes. And that age which is fo often called good, I take to be the fecond before mentioned state; and so much the rather, because in most places where it is faid, they died in a good old age, it is alfo added, and full of days; by which I understand, not a fulness of poffibility, that they lived fo long, as from the principles of their compofition, they could not have lived any longer; but a fulness, as I may fo fay, of fatiety; they had enough of living, they ived as long as living was good, they lived to

a full, ripe, and mature age; fuch an one as would force them to be of the mind with him in the fable, to refuse immortality in this prefent life; and earneftly to defire it in a better*. There is an excellent illuftration of this in the fpeech of Eliphaz, wherein he fets down the special providences of God towards them that fear him, and are bettered by correction; Thou fhalt come to thy grave in a full age, like a fhock of corn in its feafon, Job v. 26. Now if a fhock of corn ftand very long in the field, it sheds, and is spoiled, and the season of it is as well loft, as if it had been taken in too green. Jacob, most certain it is, died in this good old age as well as others; yet he himself faith unto the king, a little before he died, that the days of his years were few, and he had not attained the days of the years of his fathers in their pil grimage, Gen. xlvii. 9.

Had St. Paul departed when he had fought the good fight, finished his courfe, and kept the faith, 2 Tim. iv. 6, 7. and was ready to be offered; he had furely died in a good old age, although his pulfe had not then beaten above threescore years. Now, moft certain it is, that the arriving at this state is one of the greatest outward bleffings that man is capable of in this life. Nor dare I fay otherwife, if it should please the Lord to protract the life of man to the extreameft point it is capable of; if he fhould

*Tithonus.

fhould withhold his hand from pushing down the house which he hath made, and let it fall to decay upon its own principles, his forbearance would be the greater, its fall would be the leffer; however in the mean time, it would ftand most ruinate, deformed, ufelefs, and incumbred with infinite inconveniencies, that it was never liable to before;

Heu quàm continuis, & quantis, longa fenectus, · Plena malis.

But this is not all, it is not only an evil age, but there is no pleasure in it; as there is no condition that frail mortality is capable of fo good, that hath not a participation of evil; fo there is fearce any condition fo evil, that is not attempered with fome good; but this feems to be excluded from fuch a mercy as this, It is faid of a good companion, he will do a man good, and no harm all the days of her life Prov. xxxi. 12. But contrariwise, it may be inverted concerning this bad and morose companion, she will do a man evil, and no good, fo long as the continueth with him.

I have no pleasure in them.

I take pleasure here also in the best sense, not for any finful content whatsoever, not for the. lufts of the flesh, the lufts of the eyes, or the

pride of life, 1 John ii. 16. but for those lawful pleasures and repafts both of body and mind, that the nature of man, while able, might comfortably have folaced herself in. The mind of man busying itself, and taking contentment in the speculation of natural causes, the body of man in all its outward fenfes, in all its internal appetites, sporting and refreshing itself in all proper and peculiar objects; but no fuch refreshments as these in old age; which is a principle so well known to be true, and fo much rooted in the judgment of men; that the news to the contrary (though brought immediately from God himself) did, at the first, startle, and put a very hard stress too, upon the faith both of the mother and father of the faithful. Pleasure in old age, (and to fuch perfons who were as good as dead, and with whom it had ceased to be after the manner of men and women) was fuch an incredible thing, as both Sarah and Abraham laughed at the news, Gen. xvii. 15, 16, 17. which laughter as it might proceed partly from a confident affiance upon the word of God, and a contentation thereupon, (as is ufually faid) fo partly without all doubt, from that reluctancy they found in themselves, and those heart-rifings, and internal arguings againft the reception of those joyful tidings, Gen. xviii. II. the fpirit indeed was ready, but the flesh was weak. And this will fufficiently appear in the text, from the grounds of their laughing,

their reasoning thereupon, and from the Lord's answer to them both, and what pains he takes, and what arguments he useth further to per fuade them, that it should be fo indeed as he had promised.

There is a learned commentator * faith upon the word here translated pleasure: Hebraa vox non modo voluptatem, fed etiam negotium quodlibet opufve fignificat; the original word, faith he, fignifieth work and bufinefs, as well as pleasure, Eccl. iii. 1. And fo indeed it doth, and may very well do in this place. When decrepit age is come, a man's work is at an end, he is able to do no more. Solomon faith, there is no work, nor device, nor knowledge, nor wisdom in the grave whither thou art going, Eccl. ix. 10. Now old men are very near it ; our English proverb is, They have one foot in the grave; they have no more work to do, their courfe is finished, and their time of departure is at hand.

VERSE 2..

Thile the fun, or the light, or the moon, or the ftars be not darkened, nor the clouds return after the rain.

Aving before in general fhewed this state to be miserable, he now comes to tell us wherein these miseries particularly confist. I must here be neceffitated to go an untrodden path,

*Lorinus.