Death meets us everywhere, and is procured by every instrument and in all chances, and enters in at many doors—by violence and secret influence, by the aspect of a star and the stink of a mist, by the emissions of a cloud and the meeting of a vapor, by the fall of a chariot and the stumbling at a stone, by a full meal or an empty stomach, by watching at the wine or by watching at prayers, by the sun or the moon, by a heat or a cold, by sleepless nights or sleeping days, by water frozen into the hardness and sharpness of a dagger, or water thawed into the floods of a river, by a hair or a razor, by violent motion or sitting still, by severity or dissolution, by God’s mercy or God’s anger, by everything in Providence and everything in manners, by everything in nature and everything in chance: we take pains to heap up things useful to our life, and get our death in the purchase; and the person is snatched away and the goods remain. And all this is the law and constitution of nature; it is a punishment to our sins, the unalterable event of Providence, and the decree of heaven; the chains that confine us to this condition are as strong as destiny, and immutable as the eternal laws of God.