There is nothing that God hath established in a constant course of nature, and which therefore is done every day, but would seem a Miracle, and exercise our admiration, if it were done but once.
Men are sponges, which, to pour out, receive;
Who know false play, rather than lose, deceive.
For in best understandings sin began,
Angels sinn'd first, then devils, and then man.
Only perchance beasts sin not ; wretched we
Are beasts in all but white integrity.
All mankind is one volume. When one man dies, a chapter is not torn out of the book, but translated into a better language. And every chapter must be translated. God employs several translators; some pieces are translated by age, some by sickness, some by war, some by justice. But God's hand shall bind up all our scattered leaves again for that library where every book shall live open to one another
The whole life of Christ was a continual Passion; others die martyrs but Christ was born a martyr. He found a Golgotha even in Bethlehem, where he was born; for to his tenderness then the straws were almost as sharp as the thorns after, and the manger as uneasy at first as his cross at last. His birth and his death were but one continual act, and his Christmas day and his Good Friday are but the evening and morning of one and the same day. And as even his birth is his death, so every action and passage that manifests Christ to us is his birth, for Epiphany is manifestation.
Up then, fair phoenix bride, frustrate the sun; Thyself from thine affection Takest warmth enough, and from thine eye All lesser birds will take their jollity. Up, up, fair bride, and call Thy stars from out their several boxes, take Thy rubies, pearls, and diamonds forth, and make Thyself a constellation of them all; And by their blazing signify That a great princess falls, but doth not die. Be thou a new star, that to us portends Ends of much wonder; and be thou those ends.
When God's hand is bent to strike, it is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God ; but to fall out of the hands of the living God is a horror beyond our expression, beyond our imagination.
I will not look upon the quickening sun, But straight her beauty to my sense shall run; The air shall note her soft, the fire most pure; Water suggest her clear, and the earth sure; Time shall not lose our passages.
A bride, before a "Good-night" could be said, Should vanish from her clothes into her bed, As souls from bodies steal, and are not spied. But now she's laid; what though she be? Yet there are more delays, for where is he? He comes and passeth through sphere after sphere; First her sheets, then her arms, then anywhere. Let not this day, then, but this night be thine; Thy day was but the eve to this, O Valentine.