Let these be the things you think about regularly: What kind of person you should be in both soul and body when death comes suddenly. How short this life is. The vast stretch of time before you were born and after you die. How fragile all worldly things are. Think about all these clearly, stripped of their surface appearances.
Let these be the objects of thy ordinary meditation: to consider, what manner of men both for soul and body we ought to be, whensoever death shall surprise us: the shortness of this our mortal life: the immense vastness of the time that hath been before, and will he after us: the frailty of every worldly material object: all these things to consider, and behold clearly in themselves, all disguisement of external outside being removed and taken away.