SECT IV.

Consideration of the miseries of
Mans life.

AS our life is very short so it is very miserable,
and therefore it is well it is
short: God in pity to mankinde, left his
burden should be insupportable and his nature
an intolerable load, hath reduced our state
of misery to an abbreviature; and the greater
our misery is, the lesse while it is like to last;
the sorrows of a mans spirit being like ponderous
weights which by the greatnesse of
their burden make a swifter motion and descend
into the grave to rest and ease our wearied
limbs; for then onely we shall sleep
quietly when those fetters are knocked off
which not onely bound our souls in prison,
but also eat the flesh till the very bones open'd
the secret garments of their cartilages, discovering
their nakednesse and sorrow.
12. Here is no place to sit down in, but you
must rise as soon as you are set: for we have
gnats in our chambers, and worms in our
gardens, and spiders and flies in the palaces of
the greatest Kings. How few men in the world
are prosperous? what an infinite number of
slaves and beggers, of persecuted and oppressed
people fill all corners of the earth
with groans, and Heaven it self with weeping
prayers, and sad remembrances? how many
Provinces and Kingdoms are afflicted by a

C 6

violent war, or made desolate by popular diseases?
some whole countreyes are remarked
with fatal evils, or periodical sicknesses. Gran
Cairo in Egypt feels the plague every three
years, returning like a Quartan ague, and destroying
many thousands of persons. All the
inhabitants of Arabia the desert are in continuall
fear of being buried in huge heaps of
sand, and therefore dwell in tents and ambulatory
houses or retire to unfruitful mountains
to prolong an uneasy and wilder life: and all
the Countreyes round about the Adriatic
sea feel such violent convulsions by Tempests
and intolerable Earthquakes, that sometimes
whole cities find a Tombe, and every man
sinks with his own house made ready to become
his Monument, and his bed is crushed
into the disorders of a grave. Was not all the
world drowned at one deluge, and breach of
the Divine anger? and
shall not all the world again
be destroyed by fire?
Are there not many thousands
that die every night,
and that groan and weep
sadly every day? But what shall we think of
the great evil, which for the sins of men, God
hath suffered to possess the greatest part of
Mankinde? Most of the men that are now
alive, or that have been living for many ages,
are Jews, Heathens, or Turcs: and God was
pleased to suffer a base Epileptic person, a
villain and a vitious to set up a religion which
hath filled almost all Asia, and Africa, and some
parts of Europe; so that the greatest number
of men and women born in so many kingdoms
and provinces are infallibly made Mahumetans,

36

strangers and enemies to Christ,
by whom alone we can be saved. This consideration
is extremely sad, when we remember
how universal, and how great an evil it is, that
so many millions of sons and daughters are
born to enter into the possession of Devils to
eternal ages. These evils are the miseries of
great parts of mankinde, and we cannot easily
consider more particularly, the evils which
happen to us, being the inseparable affections,
or incidents to the whole nature of man.
2. We finde that all the women in the world
are either born for barrennesse or the pains of
Child-birth, and yet this is one of our greatest
blessings; but such indeed are the blessings of
this world: we cannot be well with, nor without
many things. Perfumes make our heads ake,
roses prick our fingers, and in our very blood
where our life dwells is the Scene under which
nature acts many sharp Feavers and heavy sicknesses.
It were too sad if I should tell how many
persons are afflicted with evil spirits, with spectres
and illusions of the night; and that huge
multitudes of men and women live upon mans
flesh: Nay worse yet, upon the sins of men, upon
the sins of their sons and of their daughters,
and they pay their souls down for the bread
they eat, buying this dayes meal with the price
of the last nights sin.
3. Or if you please in charity to visit an
Hospital, which is indeed a map of the whole
world, there you shall see the effects of Adams
sin and the ruines of humane nature, bodies
laid up in heaps like the bones of a destroyed
town, homines precarii spiritus & male haerentis,
men whose souls seem to be borrowed, and are
kept there by art and the force of Medicine;

whose miseries are so great, that few people
have charity or humanity enough to visit
them, fewer have the heart to dresse them,
and we pity them in civility or with a transient
prayer, but we do not feel their sorrows by
the mercies of a religious pity, and therefore
as we leave their sorrows in many degrees unrelieved
and uneased, so we contract by our
unmercifulnesse a guilt by which our selves
become liable to the same calamities. Those
many that need pity, and those infinites of
people that refuse to pity are miserable upon
a several charge, but yet they almost make up
all mankinde.
4. All wicked men are in love with that
which intangles them in huge variety of troubles,
they are slaves to the worst of Masters,
to sin and to the Devil, to a passion, and to an
imperious woman. Good men are for ever
persecuted, and God chastises every son whom
he receives, and whatsoever is easy is trifling
and worth nothing, and whatsoever is excellent
is not to be obtained
without labour and sorrow;
and the conditions and
states of men that are free
from great cares, are such as
have in them nothing rich
and orderly, and those that
have are stuck full of thorns
and trouble. Kings are full
of care; and learned men
in all ages have been observed
to be very poor, &
honestas miserias accusant;
they complain of their honest
miseries.

5. But these evils are notorious and confessed;
even they also whose felicity men stare
at and admire, besides their splendour and
the sharpnesse of their light, will with their
appendant sorrows wring a tear from the most
resolved eye. For not only the winter quarter
is full of storms and cold and darknesse, but
the beauteous spring hath blasts and sharp
frosts, the fruitful teeming summer is melted
with heat, and burnt with the kisses of the
sun her friend, and choaked with dust,
and the rich Autumn is full of sicknesse, and
we are weary of that which we enjoy, because
sorrow is its biggest portion: and when we
remember that upon the fairest face is placed
one of the worst sinks of the body, the nose,
we may use it, not only as a mortification to
the pride of beauty, but as an allay to the
fairest outside of condition which any of the
sons and daughters of Adam do possesse. For
look upon Kings and conquerours: I will not
tell that many of them fall into the condition
of servants, and their subjects rule
over them, and stand upon the
ruines of their families, and that
to such persons, the sorrow is
bigger then usually happens in
smaller fortunes: but let us suppose
them still conquerers, and see
what a goodly purchase they get
by all their pains and amazing
fears, and continual dangers. They carry their
arms beyond Ister, and passe the Euphrates,
and binde the Germans with the bounds of
the river Rhyne: I speak in the stile of the
Roman greatnesse: for now adayes, the biggest
fortune swells not beyond the limits of a petty

39

province or two, and a hill confines the progresse
of their prosperity, or a river checks it:
But whatsoever tempts the pride and vanity of
ambitious persons is not so big as the smallest
star which we see scattered in disorder, and
unregarded upon the pavement and floor of
Heaven. And if we would suppose the pismires
had but our understandings, they also would
have the method of a Mans greatnesse, and
divide their little Mole-hils into Provinces
and Exarchats: and if they also grew as vitious
and as miserable, one of their princes
would lead an army out, and kill his neighbour
Ants that he might reign over the next
handfull of a Turse. But then if we consider
at what price, and with what felicity all this is
purchased, the sting of the painted snake will
quickly appear, and the fairest of their fortunes
will properly enter into this account of
humane infelicities.
We may guesse at it by the constitution of
Augustus fortune; who strugled for his power,
first with the Roman Citizens, then with
Brutus and Cassius and all the fortune of the
Republike; then with his Collegue Marc.
Anthony; then with his kinred and neerest
Relatives; and after he was wearied with
slaughter of the Romans, before he could sit
down and rest in his imperial chair he was
forced to carry armies into Macedonia, Galatia,
beyond Euphrates, Rhyne, and Danubius:
And when he dwelt at home in greatnesse and
within the circles of a mighty power, he hardly
escaped the sword of the Egnatii, of Lepidus,
Caepio, and Muraena: and after he had entirely
reduced the felicity and Grandeur into his own
family, his Daughter, his onely childe conspired

with many of the young Nobility, and
being joyned with adulterous complications
as with an impious sacrament they affrighted
and destroyed the fortune of the old man,
and wrought him more sorrow then all the
troubles that were hatched in the baths and
beds of Egypt, between Anthony and Cleopatra.
This was the greatest fortune that the world
had then, or ever since, and therefore we cannot
expect it to be better in a lesse prosperity.
6. The prosperity of this world is so infinitely
sowred with the overflowing of evils,
that he is counted the most happy who hath
the fewest; all conditions being evil and
miserable, they are onely distinguished by the
Number of calamities. The Collector of the
Roman and forreign examples, when he had
reckoned two and twenty instances of great
fortunes every one of which had been allayed
with great variety of evils; in all his reading
or experience he could tell but of two who
had been famed for an intire prosperity;
Quintus Metellus, and Gyges the King of Lydia;
and yet concerning the one of them he tells
that his felicity was so inconsiderable (and
yet it was the bigger of the two) that the
Oracle said that Aglaus the Sophidius the poor Arcadian
Shepherd was more happy then he,
that is, he had fewer troubles; for so indeed
we are to reckon the pleasures of this life; the
limit of our joy is the absence of some degrees of
sorrow, and he that hath the least of this, is the
most prosperous person. But then we must look
for prosperity, not in Palaces or Courts of
Princes, not in the tents of Conquerers, or in
the gaieties of fortunate and prevailing sinners;
but something rather in the Cottages of

41

honest innocent and contented persons, whose
minde is no bigger then their fortune, nor
their vertue lesse then their security. As for
others whose fortune looks bigger, and allures
fools to follow it like the wandring fires of
the night, till they run into rivers or are broken
upon rocks with staring and running after
them, they are all in the condition of
Marius, then whose condition nothing was
more constant, and nothing more mutable; if
we reckon them amongst the happy, they are the
most happy men, if we reckon them amongst the
miserable, they are the most miserable. For just
as is a mans condition, great or little, so is
the state of his misery; All have their share;
but Kings and Princes, great Generals and
Consuls, Rich men and Mighty, as they have
the biggest businesse and the biggest charge,
and are answerable to God for the greatest
accounts, so they have the biggest trouble;
that the uneasinesse of their appendage may
divide the good and evil of the world,
making the poor mans fortune as eligible
as the Greatest; and also restraining
the vanity of mans spirit which a great
Fortune is apt to swell from a vapour to a bubble;
but God in mercy hath mingled wormwood
with their wine, and so restrained the
drunkennesse and follies of prosperity.
7. Man never hath one day to himself of entire
peace from the things of this world, but either
somthing troubles him, or nothing satisfies
him, or his very fulnesse swells him and makes
him breath short upon his bed. Mens joyes
are troublesome, and besides that the fear of
losing them takes away the present pleasure
(and a man had need of another felicity to

42

preserve this) they are also wavering and full
of trepidation, not onely from their inconstant
nature, but from their weak foundation:
They arise from vanity, and they dwell
upon ice, and they converse with the winde,
and they have the wings of a bird, and are
serious but as the resolutions of a childe, commenced
by chance, and managed by folly and
proceed by inadvertency, and end in vanity
and forgetfulnesse. So that, as Livius Drusus
said of himself, he never had any play dayes, or
dayes of quiet when he was a boy, for he was
troublesome and busie, a restlesse and unquiet
man, the same may every man observe to be
true of himself: he is alwayes restlesse and
uneasy, he dwells upon the waters and leans
upon thorns, and layes his head upon a sharp
stone.

SECT. V.

This Consideration reduced to
practice.

1. THe effect of this consideration is this,
That the sadnesses of this life help to
sweeten the bitter cup of Death. For let our
life be never so long, if our strength were
great as that of oxen and camels; if our sinews
were strong as the cordage at the foot of an
Oke, if we were as fighting and prosperous
people as Siccius Dentatus, who was on the prevailing
side in 120 battels, who had 312 publike
rewards assigned him by his Generals and
Princes for his valour, and conduct in sieges

and short encounters, and besides all this had
his share in nine triumphs, yet still the period
shall be, that all this shall end in death,
and the people shall talk of us a while,
good or bad, according as we deserve, or
as they please; and once it shall come to
passe, that concerning every one of us it shall
be told in the Neighbourhood that we are
dead. This we are apt to think a sad story;
but therefore let us help it with a sadder;
For we therefore need not be much
troubled that we shall die, because we are
not here in ease, nor do we dwell in a fair
condition. But our dayes are full of sorrow
and anguish, dishonoured and made
unhappy with many sins, with a frail and a
foolish spirit, intangled with difficult cases
of conscience, insnared with passions, amazed
with fears, full of cares, divided with
curiosities, and contradictory interests, made
aery and impertinent with vanities, abused
with ignorance and prodigious errours, made
ridiculous with a thousand weaknesses, worne
away with labours, loaden with diseases, daily
vexed with dangers and temptations, and
in love with misery; we are weakned with
delights, afflicted with want, with the evils
of my self, and of all my family, and with
the sadnesses of all my friends, and of all
good men, even of the whole Church; and
therefore me thinks we need not be troubled
that God is pleased to put an end to
all these troubles, and to let them sit down
in a natural period, which if we please, may
be to us the beginning of a better life.
When the Prince of Persia wept because his
army should all die in the revolution of an

age, Artabanus told him, that they should
all meet with evils so many and so great,
that every man of them should wish himself
dead long before that. Indeed it were
a sad thing to be cut of the stone; and we
that are in health tremble to think of it;
but the man that is wearied with the disease,
looks upon that sharpnesse as upon his
cure and remedie: and as none need to have
a tooth drawn, so none could well endure
it, but he that hath felt the pain of it in
his head: so is our life so full of evils, that
therefore death is no evil to them that have
felt the smart of this, or hope for the joyes
of a better.
2. But as it helps to ease a certain sorrow,
as a fire drawes out fire, and a nail
drives forth a nail; so it instructs us in a
present duty; that is; that we should not
be so fond of a perpetual storm, nor doat
upon the transient gaudes and gilded
thorns of this world. They are not worth
a passion, nor worth a sigh or a groan, not
of the price of one nights watching; and
therefore they are mistaken and miserable
persons who since Adam planted thorns round
about Paradise, are more in love with that
hedge, then with the fruits of the garden,
sottish admirers of things that hurt them, of
sweet poisons, gilded daggers and silken halters.
Tell them they have lost a bounteous friend,
a rich purchase, a fair farm, a wealthy donative,
and you dissolve their patience; It is an evil
bigger then their spirit can bear, it brings
sicknesse and death, they can neither eate
nor sleep with such a sorrow. But if you
represent to them the evils of a vitious habit,

and the dangers of a state of sin; if
you tell them they have displeased God, and
interrupted their hopes of heaven, it may be
they will be so civil as to hear it patiently,
and to treat you kindly, and first to commend, and
then to forget your story, because they prefer
this world with all its sorrowes, before the
pure unmingled felicities of heaven. But it is
strange that any man should be so passionately
in love with the thorns that grow on his own
ground, that he should wear them for armelets,
and knit them in his shirt, and prefer them
before a kingdom and immortality. No man
loves this world the better for his being poor;
but men that love it, because they have great
possessions, love it because it is troublesome
and chargeable, full of noise and temptation;
because it is unsafe and ungoverned, flattered
and abused: and he that considers the troubles
of an overlong garment, and of a crammed
stomach, a trailing gown and a loaden
Table, may justly understand that all that for
which men are so passionate, is their hurt and
their objection, that which a temperate man
would avoid, and a wise man cannot love.
He that is no fool, but can consider wisely;
if he be in love with this world; we need not
despair but that a witty man might reconcile
him with tortures, and make him think charitably
of the Rack, and be brought to dwell
with Vipers and Dragons, and entertain his
Guests with the shrikes of Mandrakes, Cats
and Scrich Owls, with the filing of iron, and
the harshnesse of rending silk; or to admire
the harmony that is made by a herd of Evening
wolves when they misse their draught
of blood in their midnight Revels. The groans

46

of a man in a fit of the stone are worse then
all these; and the distractions of a troubled
conscience are worse then those groans; and yet
a carelesse merry sinner is worse then all that.
But if we could from one of the battlements
of Heaven espie how many men and women
at this time lye fainting and dying for want of
bread, how many young men are hewen down
by the sword of war; how many poor Orphans
are now weeping over the graves of their
Father, by whose life they were enabled to eat.
If we could but hear how many Mariners,
and Passengers are at this present in a storm,
and shrike out because their keel dashes against
a Rock, or bulges under them; how
many people there are that weep with want,
and are mad with oppression, or are desperate
by too quick a sense of a constant infelicity,
in all reason we should be glad to be out of
the noise and participation of so many evils.
This is a place of sorrows and tears, of great
evils and a constant calamity; let us remove
from hence, at least in affections and preparation
of minde.

SECT. V.

Remedies against Impatience by
Way of exercise.

THe fittest instrument of esteeming sicknesse
easily tolerable, is to remember
that which indeed makes it so; and that is,
that God doth minister proper aids and supports
to every of his servants whom he visits
with his rod. He knows our needs, he pities our
sorrows, he relieves our miseries, he supports
our weaknesse, he bids us ask for help, and he
promises to give us all that, and he usually
gives us more, and indeed it is observable,
that no story tells of any godly man, who living
in the fear of God fell into a violent and
unpardoned impatience in his naturall sicknesse,
if he used those means which God and
his holy Church have appointed. We see almost
all men bear their last sicknesse with sorrowes
indeed, but without violent passions; and
unlesse they fear death violently, they suffer
the sicknesse with some indifferency; and it is

a rare thing to see a man who enjoyes his reason
in his sicknesse, to expresse the proper
signes of a direct and solemne impatience. For
when God layes a sicknesse upon us, he seizes
commonly on a mans spirits, which are the
instruments of action and businesse; and when
they are secured from being tumultuous, the
sufferance is much the easier; and therefore
sicknesse secures all that, which can do the
man mischief. It makes him tame and passive,
apt for suffering, and confines him to an unactive
condition. To which if we adde, that
God then commonly produces fear, and all
those passions which naturally tend to humility
and poverty of spirit, we shall soon perceive
by what instruments God verifies his promise
to us, (which is the great security for our patience,
and the easinesse of our condition)
that God will lay no more upon us then he will
make us able to bear, but together with the affliction
he will finde a way to escape: Nay, if any
thing can be more then this; we have two
or three promises, in which we may safely
lodge our selves, and roul from off our thorns,
and finde ease and rest: God hath promised to
be with us in our trouble, and to be with us in
our prayers, and to be with us in our hope and
confidence.
2. Prevent the violence and trouble of
thy spirit by an act of thanksgiving; for which
in the worst of sicknesses thou canst not want
cause, especially if thou remembrest that this
pain is not an eternall pain. Blesse God for that;
But take heed also lest you so order your affairs
that you passe from hence to an eternall
sorrow. If that be hard, this will be intolerable,
But as for the present evil, a few dayes will end
it.

F 2

3. Remember that thou art a man and a
Christian: as the Covenant of nature hath made
it necessary, so the covenant of grace hath made it
to be chosen by thee, to be a suffering person:
either you must renounce your religion, or
submit to the impositions of God, and thy
portion of sufferings. So that here we see our
advantages, and let us use them accordingly.
The barbarous and warlike nations of old,
could fight well and willingly, but could not
bear sicknesse manfully. The Greeks were
cowardly in their fights, as most wise men are,
but because they were learned and well
taught, they bore their sicknesse with patience
and severity. The Cimbrians and Celtiberians
rejoyce in battail like Gyants, but in
their diseases they weep like Women. These
according to their institution and designes
had unequal courages and accidental fortitude;
but since our Religion hath made a
covenant of sufferings; and the great businesse
of our lives is sufferings; and most of the vertues
of a Christian are passive graces, and all
the promises of the Gospel are passed upon us
through Christs crosse, we have a necessity upon
us to have an equal courage in all the variety
of our sufferings: for without an universal
fortitude we can do nothing of our
dutie.
4. Resolve to do as much as you can: for
certain it is, we can suffer very much, if we
list; and many men have afflicted themselves
unreasonably by not being skilful to consider
how much their strength and state could permit;
and our flesh is nice and imperious,
crafty to perswade reason that she hath more
necessities then indeed belong to her, and that

100

she demands nothing superfluous: suffer as
much in obedience to God as you can suffer
for necessity, or passion, fear, or desire. And
if you can for one thing, you can for another,
and there is nothing wanting but the minde.
Never say; I can do no more, I cannot endure this.
For God would not have sent it, if he had
not known thee strong enough to abide it;
onely he that knows thee well already, would
also take this occasion to make thee know thy
self. But it will be fit that you pray to God
to give you a discerning spirit, that you may
rightly distinguish just necessity from the flattery
and fondnesses of flesh and blood.
5. Propound to your eyes and heart the
example of the holy Jesus upon the crosse;
he endured more for thee then thou canst
either for thy self or him: and remember
that if we be put to suffer, and do suffer in a
good cause, or in a good manner, so that in any
sense your sufferings be conformable to his
sufferings, or can be capable of being united
to his, we shall reign together with him. The
high way of the Crosse which the King of sufferings
hath troden before us, is the way to ease,
to a kingdom, and to felicity.
6. The very suffering is a title to an excellent
inheritance: for, God chastens every son
whom he receives, and if we be not chastised,
we are bastards and not sons: and be confident,
that although God often sends pardon without
correction, yet he never sends correction without
pardon, unless it be thy fault: and therefore
take every or any affliction as an earnest
peny of thy pardon; and upon condition there
may be peace with God, let any thing be welcome
that he can send as its instrument or

F 3

condition. Suffer therefore God to choose his
own circumstances of adopting thee, and be
content to be under discipline when the reward
of that is, to become the son of God: and
by such inflictions he hewes and breaks thy
body, first dressing it to funeral, and then preparing
it for immortality: and if this be the
effect of the designe of Gods love to thee; let
it be occasion of thy love to him: and remember
that the truth of love is hardly known,
but by somewhat that puts us to pain.
7. Use this as a punishment for thy sins;
and so God intends it most commonly; that
is certain, if therefore thou submittest to it,
thou approvest of the divine judgement: and
no man can have cause to complain of any
thing, but of himself; if either he believes
God to be just, or himself to be a sinner: if
he either thinks he hath deserved Hell, or
that this little may be a means to prevent the
greater, and bring him to Heaven.
8. It may be that this may be the last instance,
and the last opportunity that ever
God will give thee to exercise any vertue, to
do him any service, or thy self any advantage;
be careful that thou losest not this; for to
eternal ages, this never shall return again.
9. Or if thou peradventure shalt be restored
to health, be carefull that in the day of
thy thanksgiving, thou mayest not be ashamed
of thy self, for having behaved thy self poorly
and weakly upon thy bed: it will be a sensible
and excellent comfort to thee, and double
upon thy spirit, if when thou shalt worship
God for restoring thee, thou shalt also remember
that thou didst do him service in thy suffering,
and tell that God was hugely gracious

to thee in giving thee the opportunity of a
vertue, at so easie a rate as a sicknesse, from
which thou didst recover.
10. Few men are so sick, but they believe
that they may recover; and we shal seldom see
a man lie down with a perfect persuasion that
it is his last hour; for many men have been
sicker, and yet have recovered; but whether
thou doest or no, thou hast a vertue to exercise,
which may be a handmaid to thy patience.
Epaphroditus was sick, sick unto death,
and yet God had mercy upon him; and he
hath done so to thousands, to whom he found
it useful in the great order of things, and the
events of universal providence. If therefore
thou desirest to recover, here is cause enough
of hope; and hope is designed in the arts of
God and of the Spirit, to support patience.
But if thou recoverest not, yet there is something
that is matter of joy naturally, and very
much Spiritually if thou belongest to God,
and joy is as certain a support to patience, as
hope; and it is no small cause of being pleased,
when we remember that if we recover not,
our sicknesse shall the sooner sit down in rest
and joy. For recovery by death, as it is easier
and better then the recovery by a sickly
health, so it is not so long in doing: it suffers
not the tediousnesse of a creeping restitution,
nor the inconvenience of Surgeons and Physitians,
watchfulnesse and care, keepings in,
and suffering trouble, fears of relapse and the
little reliques of a storm.
11. While we hear, or use, or think of these
remedies, part of the sicknesse is gone away,
and all of it is passing. And if by such instruments
we stand armed and ready dressed before

F 4

hand, we shall avoid
the mischiefs of amazements
and surprize; while
the accidents of sicknesse
are such as were expected,
and against which we stood
in readinesse with our spirits, contracted, instructed,
and put upon the defensive.
12. But our patience will be the better secured,
if we consider that it is not violently
tempted by the usual arrests of sicknesse; for
patience is with reason demanded while the
sicknesse is tolerable; that is, so long as the
evil is not too great; but if it be also eligible,
and have in it some degrees of good, our patience
will have in it the lesse difficulty, and
the greater necessity. This therefore will be a
new stock of consideration. Sicknesse is in many
degrees eligible to many men, and to many purposes.