Axiochus

whom evil might chance: so likewise when thou hast ended this state of mortality thou shalt no more be afflicted, for thou shalt not be in such case as that any evil can touch thee. Wherefore shake off and cast away all these trifles and worldly baggage, thus weighing in thy mind, that when the frame of this earthly building is dissolved, and the soul being singled, is restored to his natural place: this body which is then left an earthly mass and an unreasonable substance, is then no more a man. For we are a soul, that is to say, an immortal creature, being shut up and enclosed in an earthly dungeon. Wherewithal nature hath clothed us, and charged us with many miseries, so that even those things which seem pleasant to us and joyful, are indeed but vain and shadowed, being mingled and wrapped in many thousand sorrows, and those also which use to breed us sorrow and heaviness, are both sudden, and therefore more hardily avoided, and also perdurable, and therefore the more painful and wearisome. Such be diseases and inflammation of the senses: Such be inward griefs and sicknesses, through which it cannot choose but that the soul must be also diseased, since that being scattered and spread through the powers and passages of the body, it coveteth the use of that open and kind heaven out of which it was derived, and thirsteth