our immortal souls (while they are righteous) are by God himself beautified with the title of his own image and similitude."
But man is not in all things like nature: "For this tide of man's life, after it once turneth and declineth, ever runneth with a perpetual ebb and falling stream, but never floweth again, our leaf once fallen, springeth no more; neither doth the sun or the summer adorn us again with the garments of new leaves and flowers."
There is a flowing rhythm in some of these sentences like the rippling of rivers, hardly to be matched in any prose or verse. The following is his poem on the decay of Oracles and Pantheism:
"The fire which the Chaldeans worshipped for a god, is crept into every man's chimney, which the lack of fuel starveth, water quencheth, and want of air suffocateth: Jupiter is no more vexed with Juno's jealousies; death hath persuaded him to chastity, and her to patience; and that time which hath devoured it self, hath also eaten up both the bodies and images of him and his; yea, their stately temples of stone and
[ 65 ]
