Survival and insecurity.... Options

[dorischu]

When we are grown up, we are liable to a great many mischiefs and dangers, every moment of our lives. Without the providence of God, continually insecure, not only of the good things of this life, but even of life itself; so that when we come to be men, we cannot but wonder how ever we arrived at that state, and how we have continued in it so long, considering the infinite difficulties and dangers which have continually attended us; that in running the gantlet of a long life, when so many hands have been lifted up against us, and so many strokes levelled at us, we have escaped so free, and with so few marks and scars on us, that when we are besieged with so many dangers, and so many arrows of death are perpetually flying about us, to which we do so many ways lie open, we should yet hold our twenty, forty, sixty years, and some of us perhaps longer, and do still stand at the mark untouched, at least not dangerously wounded, by any of them; and, considering likewise this fearful and wonderful frame of a human body, this infinitely complicated engine; in which, to the due performance of several functions and offices of life. So many strings and springs, so many receptacles and channels, are necessary and all in their right form and order; and which is….besides the infinite imperceptible and secret ways of mortality, there are so many sluices and flood-gates to let death in, and life out. That it is next to a miracle, though we take but little notice of it, that every one of us did not die every day since we were born…