but my head aches not for it, neither hath it broke my thigh, nor taken away my virtue, unless I lose my charity or my patience. Inquire therefore, what you are the worse, either in your soul, or in your body, for what hath happened; for upon this very stock many evils will disappear, since the body and the soul make up the whole man. And when the daughter of Stilpo proved a wanton, he said, it was none of his sin, and therefore there was no reason it should be his misery.* And if an enemy hath taken all that from a prince, whereby he was a king, he may refresh himself by considering all that is left him, whereby he is a man.

4. Consider that sad accidents, and a state of affliction is a school of virtue ; it reduces our spirits to soberness, and our counsels to moderation; it corrects levity, and interrupts the confidence of sinning. "It is good for me," said David, "that I have been afflicted, for thereby I have learned thy law." And, "I know, O Lord, that thou of very faithfulness hast caused me to be troubled," Psalm cxix, part 10, v. 3. For God, who in mercy and wisdom governs the world, would never have suffered so many sadnesses, and have sent. them especially to the most virtuous and the wisest men, but that he intends they should be the seminary of comfort, the nursery of virtue, the exercise of wis

* Si natus es, Trophime, solus omnium hâc lege,

Ut semper eant tibi res arbitrio tuo;

Felicitatem hanc si quis promisit Deus,

Irasceris jure, si malà is fide

dom, the trial of patience, the venturing for a crown, and the gate of glory.

5. Consider that afflictions are oftentimes the occasions of great temporal advantages; and we must not look upon them as they sit down heavily upon us, but as they serve some of God's ends, and the purposes of universal Providence. And when a prince fights justly, and yet unprosperously, if he could see all those reasons for which God hath so ordered it, he would think it the most unreasonable thing in the world, and that it would be very ill to have it otherwise. If a man could have opened one of the pages of the divine counsel, and could have seen the event of Joseph's being sold to the merchants of Amaleck, he might with much reason have dried up the young man's tears; and when God's purposes are opened in the events of things, as it was in the case of Joseph, when he sustained his father's family, and became lord of Egypt, then we see what ill judgment we made of things, and that we were passionate as children, and transported with sense and mistaken interest. The case of Themistocles was almost like that of Joseph, for, being banished into Egypt, he also grew in favor with the king, and told his wife, he had been undone, unless he had been undone. For God esteems it one of his glories, that he brings good out of evil; and therefore it were but reason we should trust God, to govern his own world as he pleases; and that we should patiently wait till the change cometh, or the reason be discovered.

And this consideration is also of great use to them,

who envy the prosperity of the wicked, and the success of the persecutors, and the baits of fishes, and the bread of dogs. God fails not to sow blessings in the long furrows, which the plowers plow upon the back of the Church; and this success, which troubles us, will be a great glory to God, and a great benefit to his saints and servants, and a great ruin to the persecutors, who shall have but the fortune of Theramenes, one of the thirty tyrants of Athens, who escaped when his house fell upon him, and was shortly after put to death with torments, by his colleagues in the tyranny.

To which also may be added, that the great evils, which happen to the best and wisest of men, are one of the great arguments, upon the strength of which we can expect felicity to our souls, and the joys of another world. And certainly they are then very tolerable and eligible, when with so great advantages they minister to the faith and hope of a Christian. But if we consider what unspeakable tortures are provided for the wicked to all eternity, we should not be troubled to see them prosperous here, but rather wonder that their portion in this life is not bigger, and that ever they should be sick, or crossed, or affronted, or troubled with the contradiction and disease of their own vices, since if they were fortunate beyond their own ambition, it could not make them recompense for one hour's torment in hell, which yet they shall have for their eternal portion.

After all these considerations, deriving from sense and experience, grace and reason, there are two remedies still remaining, and they are necessity and time,

6. For it is but reasonable to bear that accident patiently which God sends, since impatience does but entangle us, like the fluttering of a bird in a net, but cannot at all ease our trouble, or prevent the accident; it must be run through, and therefore it were better we compose ourselves to a patient, than to a troubled and miserable suffering.*

7. But however, if you will not otherwise be cured, time at last will do it alone; and then consider, do you mean to mourn always, or but for a time? If always, you are miserable and foolish. If for a time, then why will not you apply those reasons to your grief at first, with which you will cure it at last? Or if you will not cure it with reason, see how little of a man there is in you, that you suffer time to do no more with you than reason or religion. You suffer yourselves to be cured, just as a beast or a tree is; let it alone, and the thing will heal itself; but this is neither honourable to thy person, nor of reputation to thy religion. However, be content to bear thy calamity, because thou art sure in a little time, it will sit down gentle and easy; for to a mortal man, no evil is immortal. And here let the worst thing happen that can, it will end in death, and we commonly think that to be near enough.

8. Lastly, of those things which are reckoned amongst evils, some are better than their contraries ; and to a good man, the very worst is tolerable.

* Nemo recusat ferre quod necesse est pati,

THE

VANITY AND SHORTNESS

OF

HUMAN LIFE.

FROM THE RULE AND EXERCISES OF HOLY DYING.

A MAN is a bubble, said the Greek proverb, which Lucian represents with advantages, and its proper circumstances, to this purpose, saying, all the world is a storm, and men rise up in their several generations like bubbles descending à Jove pluvio, from God and the dew of heaven, from a tear and drop of rain, from nature and providence; and some of these instantly sink into the deluge of their first parent, and are hidden in a sheet of water, having had no other business in the world but to be born, that they might be able to die, others float up and down two or three turns, and suddenly disappear, and give their place to others; and they that live longest upon the face of the waters are in perpetual motion, restless and uneasy, and being crushed with a great drop of a cloud, sink into flatness and a