but the smart of an instant; and still every portion of a minute feels but its proper share; and the last groan ended all the sorrow of its peculiar burden. And what minute can that be, which can pretend to be intolerable? and the next minute is but the same as the last, and the pain flows like the drops of a river, or the little shreds of time; and if we do but take care of the present minute, it cannot seem a great charge or a great burden; but that care will secure our duty, if we still but secure the present minute.

3. If we consider, how much men can suffer, if they list, and how much they do suffer for great and little causes, and that no causes are greater than the proper causes of patience in sickness (that is, necessity and religion,)we cannot, without huge shame to our nature, to our persons, and to our manners, complain of this tax and impost of nature. This experience added something to the old philosophy. When the gladiators were exposed naked to each other's short swords, and were to cut each other's souls away in portions of flesh, as if their forms had been as divisible as the life of worms, they did not sigh or groan, it was a shame to decline the blow, but according to the just measures of art. The women that saw the wound, shriek out; and he that receives it, holds his peace. He did not only stand bravely, but would also fall so; and when he was down, scorned to shrink his head, when the insolent conqueror came to lift it from his shoulders: and yet this man, in his first design, only aimed at liberty, and the reputation of a good fencer; and when he sunk down, he saw he could only receive the honour of a bold man, the noise of which he shall never hear, when his ashes are crammed in his narrow urn. And what can we complain of the weakness of our strength, or the pressures of diseases, when we see a poor soldier stand in a breach almost starved with cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be relieved only by the heats of anger, a fever, or a fired musket, and his hunger slackened by a greater pain and a huge fear? this man shall stand in his arms and wounds, patiens luminis atque solis, pale and faint, weary and watchful: and at night shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh, and shivers from his bones, and endure his mouth to be sewed up from a violent rent to its own dimension; and all this for a man whom he never saw, or if he did, was not noted by him; but one that shall condemn him to the gallows, if he runs

from all this misery. It is seldom that God sends such calamities upon men, as men bring upon themselves, and suffer willingly. But that, which is most considerable is, that any passion and violence upon the spirit of man makes him able to suffer huge calamities with a certain constancy and an unwearied patience. Scipio Africanus was wont to commend that saying in Xenophon, That the same labours of warfare were easier far to a general than to a common soldier; because he was supported by the huge appetites of honour, which made his hard marches nothing but stepping forward and reaching at a triumph. Did not the lady of Sabinus, for others' interest, bear twins privately and without groaning? Are not the labours and cares, the spare diet and the waking nights of covetous and adulterous, of ambitious and revengeful persons, greater sorrows and of more smart than a fever, or the short pains of child-birth? What will not tender women suffer to hide their shame? And if vice and passion, lust and inferior appetites, can supply to the tenderest persons strengths more than enough for the sufferance of the greatest natural violences, can we suppose that honesty and religion and the grace of God are more nice, tender, and effeminate?

4. Sickness is the more tolerable, because it cures very many evils, and takes away the sense of all the cross fortunes, which amaze the spirits of some men, and transport them certainly beyond all the limits of patience. Here all losses and disgraces, domestic cares and public evils, the apprehensions of pity and a sociable calamity, the fears of want and the troubles of ambition, lie down and rest upon the sick man's pillow. One fit of the stone takes away from the fancies of men all relations to the world and secular interests; at least they are made dull and flat, without sharpness and an edge.

And he, that shall observe the infinite variety of troubles, which afflict some busy persons, and almost all men in very busy times, will think it not much amiss, that those huge numbers were reduced to certainty, to method, and an order: and there is no better compendium for this, than that they be reduced to one. And a sick man seems so unconcerned in the things of the world, that, although this separation be done with violence, yet it is no otherwise than all noble contentions are, and all honours are purchased, and all virtues are acquired, and all vices mortified,

and all appetites chastised, and all rewards obtained: there is infallibly to all these a difficulty and a sharpness annexed, without which there could be no proportion between a work and a reward. To this add, that sickness does not take off the sense of secular troubles and worldly cares from us, by employing all the perceptions and apprehensions of men; by filling all faculties with sorrow, and leaving no room for the lesser instances of troubles, as little rivers are swallowed up in the sea; but sickness is a messenger of God, sent with purposes of abstraction and ́separation, with a secret power and a proper efficacy to draw us off from unprofitable and useless sorrows: and this is effected partly, by reason that it represents the uselessness of the things of this world, and that there is a portion of this life, in which honours and things of the world can. not serve us to many purposes; partly, by preparing us to death, and telling us, that a man shall descend thither, whence this world cannot redeem us, and where the goods of this world cannot serve us.

5. And yet, after all this, sickness leaves in us appetites so strong, and apprehensions so sensible, and delights so many, and good things in so great a degree, that a healthless body and a sad disease do seldom make men weary of this world, but still they would fain find an excuse to live. The gout, the stone, and the tooth-ache, the sciatica, sore eyes, and an aching head, are evils indeed; but such, which, rather than die, most men are willing to suffer; and Mecænas added also a wish, rather to be crucified than to die and though his wish was low, timorous, and base, yet we find the same desires in most men, dressed up with better circumstances. It was a cruel mercy in Tamerlane, who commanded all the leprous persons to be put to death, as we knock some beasts quickly on their head, to put them out of pain, and lest they should live miserably: the poor men would rather have endured another leprosy, and have more willingly taken two diseases than one death. Therefore Cæsar wondered, that the old crazed soldier begged leave he might kill himself, and asked him, "Dost thou think then to be more alive, than now thou art?" We do not die suddenly, but we descend to death by steps and slow passages: and therefore men (so long as they are sick) are unwilling to proceed and go forward in the finishing that sad employment. Between a disease and death

there are many degrees, and all those are like the reserves of evil things, the declining of every one of which is justly reckoned amongst those good things, which alleviate the sickness and make it tolerable. Never account that sickness intolerable, in which thou hadst rather remain than die and yet if thou hadst rather die than suffer it, the worst of it that can be said is this, that the sickness is worse than death; that is, it is worse than that, which is the best of all evils, and the end of all troubles; and then you have said no great harm against it.

6. Remember, that thou art under a supervening necessity. Nothing is intolerable, that is necessary: and therefore when men are to suffer a sharp incision, or what they are pleased to call intolerable, tie the man down to it, and he endures it. Now God hath bound this sickness upon thee by the condition of nature; for every flower must wither and drop; it is also bound upon thee by special provi. dence, and with a design to try thee, and with purposes to reward and to crown thee. These cords thou canst not break; and therefore lie thou down gently, and suffer the hand of God to do what he please, that at least thou mayest swallow an advantage, which the care and severe mercies of God force down thy throat.

7. Remember, that all men have passed this way; the bravest the wisest, and the best men have been subject to sickness and sad diseases; and it is esteemed a prodigy, that a man should live to a long age, and not be sick and it is recorded for a wonder concerning Xenophilus the musician, that he lived to one hundred and six years of age, in a perfect and continual health. No story tells the like of a prince, or a great or a wise person; unless we have a mind to believe the tales concerning Nestor and the Eubœan Sybil, or reckon Cyrus of Persia, or Masinissa the Mauritanian to be rivals of old age, or that Argentonius the Tartesian king did really outstrip that age, according as his story tells, reporting him to have reigned eighty years, and to have lived one hundred and twenty. Old age and healthful bodies are seldom made the appendages to great fortunes: and under so great and so universal precedents, so common fate of men, he that will not suffer his portion, deserves to be something else than a man, but nothing that is better.

8. We find in story, that many Gentiles, who walked by

no light but that of reason, opinion, and human examples, did bear their sickness nobly, and with great contempt of pain, and with huge interests of virtue. When Pompey came from Syria, and called at Rhodes, to see Posidonius the philosopher, he found him hugely afflicted with the gout, and expressed his sorrow that he could not hear his lectures, from which by this pain he must needs be hindered. Posidonius told him, "But you may hear me for all this :" and he discoursed excellently in the midst of his tortures, even then, when the torches were put to his feet, "That nothing was good but what was honest;" and therefore "nothing could be an evil, if it were not criminal:" and summed up his lectures with this saying, "O pain, in vain dost thou attempt me; for I will never confess thee to be an evil, as long as I can honestly bear thee." And when Pompey himself was desperately sick at Naples, the Neapolitans wore crowns and triumphed, and the men of Puteoli came to congratulate his sickness, not because they loved him not, but because it was the custom of their country to have better opinions of sickness than we have. The boys of Sparta would, at their altars, endure whipping, till their very entrails saw the light through their torn flesh; and some of them to death, without crying or complaint. Cæsar would drink his portions of rhubarb rudely mixed, and unfitly allayed, with little sippings, and tasted the horror of the medicine, spreading the loathsomeness of his physic so, that all the parts of his tongue and palate might have an entire share; and when C. Marius suffered the veins of his leg to be cut out for the curing his gout, and yet shrunk not, he declared not only the rudeness of their physic, but the strength of a man's spirit, if it be contracted and united by the aids of a reason or religion, by resolution or any accidental harsh. ness, against a violent disease.

9. All impatience, howsoever expressed, is perfectly useless to all purposes of ease, but hugely effective to the multiplying the trouble; and the impatience and vexation is another, but the sharper disease of the two: it does mischief by itself, and mischief by the disease. For men grieve themselves, as much as they please; and when, by impatience, they put themselves into the retinue of sorrows, they become solemn mourners. For so have I seen the rays of the sun or moon dash upon a brasen vessel, whose lips kissed the face of those waters that lodged within its