Would you not choose your present loss or affliction as a thing extremely eligible, and a redemption to thee, if thou mightest exchange the other for this? Thou art quit from a thousand calamities, every one of which, if it were upon thee, would make thee insensible of thy present sorrow: and therefore let thy joy (which should be as great for thy freedom from them, as is thy sadness when thou feelest any of them) do the same cure upon thy discontent. For if we be not extremely foolish or vain, thankless or senseless, a great joy is more apt to cure sorrow and discontent than a great trouble is. I have known an affectionate wife, when she had been in fear of parting with her beloved husband, heartily desire of God his life or society upon any conditions that were not sinful; and choose to beg with him, rather than to feast without him and the same person : hath upon that consideration born poverty nobly, when God hath heard her prayer in the other matter. What wise man in the world is there, who does not prefer a small fortune with peace, before a great one with contention, and war and violence? and then he is no longer wise, if he alters his opinion, when he hath his wish.

7. If you will secure a contented spirit, you must measure your desires by your fortune and condition, not your fortunes by your desires: that is, be governed by your needs, not by your fancy; by nature, not by evil customs and ambitious principles. Is that beast better that hath two or three mountains to graze on, than a little bee that feeds on dew or manna, and lives upon what falls every morning from the storehouses of heaven, clouds and providence? Can a man quench his thirst better out of a river than a full urn; or drink better from the fountain when it is finely paved with marble, than when it swells over the green turf? Pride and artificial gluttonies do but adulterate nature, making our diet healthless, our appetites impatient and unsatisfiable, and the taste mixed, fantastic, and meretricious. But that which we

miscall poverty, is indeed nature: and its proportions are the just measures of a man, and the best instruments of content. But when we create needs, that God or nature never made, we have erected to ourselves an infinite stock of trouble that can have no

period. He that propounds to his fancy things greater than himself or his needs, and is discontent and troubled, when he fails of such purchases, ought not to accuse providence, or blame his fortune, but his folly. God and nature made no more needs than they mean to satisfy; and he that will make more, must look for satisfaction where he can.

8. In all troubles and sadder accidents let us take sanctuary in religion, and by innocence cast out anchors for our souls, to keep them from shipwreck, though they be not kept from storm. For what philosophy shall comfort a villain that is haled to the rack for murdering his prince, or that is broken upon the wheel for sacrilege? His cup is full of pure and unmingled sorrow: his body is rent with torment, his name with ignominy, his soul with shame and sorrow which are to last eternally. But when a man suffers in a good cause, or is afflicted, and yet walks not perversely with his God; then St. Paul's character is engraven in the forehead of our fortune; "We are troubled on every side, but not distressed; perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed 1.” “And who is he that will harm you, if ye be followers of that which is good??" For indeed every thing in the world is indifferent, but sin: and all the scorchings of the sun are very tolerable in respect of the burnings of a fever or a calenture 3. The greatest evils are from within us, and from ourselves also we must look for our greatest good; for God is the fountain of it, but

1 2 Cor. 4. 8, 9. 2 1 Pet. 3. 13; & 4. 15, 16. "The calenture" is the name of a fever to which persons at sea are supposed to be subject.

reaches it to us by our own hands: and when all things look sadly round about us, then only we shall find, how excellent a fortune it is to have God to our friend; and of all friendships that only is created to support us in our needs.

Let us not therefore be governed by external, and present, and seeming things; nor let us make the same judgment of things that common and weak understandings do; nor make other men, and they not the wisest, to be judges of our felicity, so that we be happy or miserable as they please to think us: but let reason, and experience, and religion, and hope, relying upon the Divine promises, be the measure of our judgment. No wise man did ever describe felicity without virtue; and no good man did ever think virtue could depend upon the variety of a good or bad fortune. It is no evil to be poor, but to be vicious

and impatient.

Means to obtain content by way of consideration.

To these exercises and spiritual instruments if we add the following considerations concerning the nature and circumstance of human chance, we may better secure our peace. For as to children, who are afraid of vain images, we use to persuade confidence by making them to handle and look near such things, that when in such a familiarity they perceive them innocent, they may overcome their fears: so must timorous, fantastical, sad and discontented persons be treated; they must be made to consider, and on all sides to look upon the accident, and to take all its dimensions, and consider its consequences, and to behold the purpose of God, and the common mistakes of men, and their evil sentences they usually pass upon them. For then we shall perceive, that like colts and unmanaged horses we start at dead bones and lifeless blocks, things that are unactive as they are innocent. But if we secure our hopes and ou irs, and make them moderate

and within government, we may the sooner overcome the evil of the accident: for nothing that we feel is so bad as what we fear.

1. Consider that the universal providence of God hath so ordered it, that the good things of nature and fortune are divided, that we may know how to bear our own and relieve each other's wants and imperfections. It is not for a man, but for a God, to have all excellencies and all felicities. He supports my poverty with his wealth; I counsel and instruct him with my learning and experience. He hath many friends, I many children: he hath no heir, I have no inheritance: and any one great blessing together with the common portions of nature and necessity is a fair fortune, if it be but health or strength.

This consideration is to be enlarged by adding to it, that there are some instances of fortune and a fair condition, that cannot stand with some others, but if you desire this, you must lose that, and unless you be content with one, you lose the comfort of both. If you covet learning, you must have leisure and a retired life: if to be a politician, you must go abroad and get experience, and do all businesses, and keep all company, and have no leisure at all. If you will be rich, you must be frugal: if you will be popular, you must be bountiful: if a philosopher, you must despise riches.

2. Consider how many excellent personages in all ages have suffered as great or greater calamities than this, which now tempts thee to impatience. Almost all the ages of the world have noted, that their most eminent scholars were most eminently poor, some by choice, but most by chance, and an inevitable decree of providence. And in the whole sex of women God hath decreed the sharpest pains of child-birth, to shew that there is no state exempt from sorrow, and yet that the weakest persons have strength more than enough to bear the greatest evil: and the greatest queens, and the mothers of saints and apostles, have

no character of exemption from this sad sentence. But the Lord of men and angels was also the King of sufferings, and if thy coarse robe trouble thee, remember the swaddling-clothes of Jesus; if thy bed be uneasy, yet is it not worse than his manger; and it is no sadness to have a thin table, if thou callest to mind that the King of heaven and earth was fed with a little breast-milk: and yet besides this he suffered all the sorrows which we deserved. We therefore have great reason to sit down upon our own hearths, and warm ourselves at our own fires, and feed upon content at home: for it were a strange pride to expect to be more gently treated by the Divine Providence than the best and wisest men, than apostles and saints, nay, the Son of the eternal God, the heir of both the worlds.

This consideration may be enlarged by surveying all the states and families of the world. In the most beauteous and splendid fortune there are many cares and proper interruptions and allays: in the fortune of a prince there is not the coarse robe of beggary; but there are infinite cares: and the judge sits upon the tribunal with great ceremony and ostentation of fortune, and yet at his house or in his breast there is something that causes him to sigh deeply. And if nothing else happens, yet sicknesses so often do embitter the fortune and content of a family, that a physician in a few years, and with the practice of a very few families, gets experience enough to administer to almost all diseases. And when thy little misfortune troubles thee, remember that thou hast known the best of kings, and the best of men put to death publickly by his own subjects'.

3. There are many accidents which are esteemed great calamities, and yet we have reason enough to

1 There is an allusion here to the death of King Charles I, who was beheaded in 1649, the year previous to the publication of the first edition of "The Holy Living."