We have no communication with being; for every humane nature is ever in the middle betweene being borne and dying; giving nothing of it selfe but an obscure apparence and shadow, and an uncertaine and weake opinion. And if perhaps you fix your thought to take its being, it would be even as if one should go about to graspe the water: for, how much the more he shal close and presse that which by its owne nature is ever gliding, so much the more he shall loose what he would hold and fasten. Thus, seeing all things are subject to passe from one change to another, reason, which therein seeketh a reall subsistence, findes her selfe deceived as unable to apprehend any thing subsistent and permanent: forsomuch as each thing either commeth to a being, and is not yet altogether: or beginneth to dy before it be borne. Plato said that bodies had never an existence but indeed a birth, supposing that Homer made the Ocean Father, and Thetis Mother of the Gods, thereby to shew us that all things are in continuall motion, change and variation. As he sayeth, a common opinion amongst all the Philosophers before his time, only Parmenides excepted, who denied any motion to be in things of whose power he maketh no small accompt. Pythagoras that each thing or matter was ever gliding and labile. The Stoicks affirme there is no present time, and that which we call present is but conjoyning and assembling of future time and past. Heraclitus avereth that no man ever entered twice one same river; Epicharmus avoucheth that who ere while borrowed any money doth not now owe it; and that he who yesternight was bidden to dinner this day, commeth to day unbidden: since they are no more themselves, but are become others; and that one mortall substance could not twise be found in one self estate: for by the sodainesse and lightnesse of change sometimes it wasteth, and other times it assembleth; now it comes and now it goes; in some sort, that he who beginneth to be borne never comes to the perfection of being. For, this being borne commeth never to an end, nor ever stayeth as being at an end; but after the seed proceedeth continually in change and alteration from one to another. As of mans seed there is first made a shapelesse fruit in the Mothers Wombe, then a shapen Childe, then being out of the Wombe, a sucking babe, afterward he becometh a ladde, then consequently a stripling, then a full growne man, then an old man, and in the end an aged decrepite man. So that age and subsequent generation goeth ever undoing and wasting the precedent.
Mutat enim mundi naturam totius aetas,
Ex alioque alius status excipere omnia debet,
Nec manet vlla sui similis res, omnia migrant,
Omnia commutat natura et vertere cogit.
Of th'universall world, age doth the nature change,
And all things from one state must to another range,
No one thing like it selfe remaines, all things doe passe,
Nature doth change, and drive to change, each thing that was.
Lucretius, The Nature of Things, 1. v. 837.
And then we doe foolishly feare a kind of death, whenas we have already past and dayly passe to many others; for, not only (as Heraclitus said) the death of fire is a generation of ayre: and the death of ayre a generation of water: but also we may most evidently see it in our selves. The flower of age dieth, fadeth and fleeteth, when age comes upon us, and youth endeth in the flower of a full growne mans age: childhood in youth and the first age dieth in infancie: and yesterday endeth in this day, and to day shall die in to morrow. And nothing remaineth or ever continueth in one state. For to prove it, if we should ever continue one and the same, how is it then that now we rejoyce at one thing, and now at another? How comes it to passe we love things contrary, or we bath them, or we love them, or we blame them? How is it that we have different affections holding no more the same sense in the same thought? For it is not likely that without alteration we should take other passions, and what admitteth alterations continueth not the same; and if it be not one selfe same, then it is not: but rather with being all one, the simple being doth also change, ever becoming other from other. And by consequence Natures senses are deceived and lie falsly; taking what appeareth for what is, for want of truly knowing what it is that is. But then what is it that is indeed? That which is eternall, that is to say, that which never had birth, nor ever shall have end; and to which no time can bring change or cause alteration. For time is a fleeting thing, and which appeareth as in a shadow, with the matter ever gliding, alwaies fluent without ever being stable or permanent; to whom rightly belong these termes, Before and After, and it Hath beene, or Shall be. Which at first sight doth manifestly shew that it is not a thing which is: for it were great sottishnesse and apparent falsehood, to say that that is which is not yet in being, or that already hath ceased from being. And concerning these words, Present, Instant, Even now, by which it seemes that especially we uphold and principally ground the intelligence of time; reason discovering the same doth forthwith destroy it: for presently it severeth it asunder and divideth it into future and past times as willing to see it necessarily parted in two. As much hapneth unto nature which is measured according unto time, which measureth her: for no more is there any thing in her that remaineth or is subsistent; rather all things in her are either borne or ready to be borne or dying. By means whereof it were a sinne to say of God, who is the only that is, that he was or shall be: for these words are declinations, passages, or vicissitudes of that which cannot last nor continue in being. Wherefore we must conclude, that only God is, not according to any measure of time, but according to an immoveable and immutable eternity, not measured by time nor subject to any declination, before whom nothing is, nor nothing shall be after, nor more new nor more recent, but one really being: which by one onely Now or Present, filleth the Ever, and there is nothing that truly is but he alone: without saying he has bin or he shall be, without beginning and sans ending. To this so religious conclusion of a heathen man I will only add this word, taken from a testimony of the same condition, for an end of this long and tedious discourse, which might well furnish me with endlesse matter. 'Oh, what a vile and abject thing is man (saith he) unlesse he raise himselfe above humanity!' Observe here a notable speech and a profitable desire; but likewise absurd. For to make the handful] greater than the hand, and the embraced greater than the arme, and to hope to straddle more than our legs length, is impossible and monstrous: nor that man should mount over and above himselfe or humanity; for he cannot see but with his owne eyes, nor take hold but with his owne armes. He shall raise himself up, if it please God to lend him his helping hand. He may elevate himselfe by forsaking and renouncing his owne meanes, and suffering himseIfe to be elevated and raised by meere heavenly meanes. It is for our Christian faith, not for his Stoicke vertue, to pretend or aspire to this divine Metamorphosis, or miraculous transmutation.