giving, love or fear, moderation or humility, charity or contentedness, and they are every one of them equally in order to his great end and immortal felicity; and beauty is not made by white or red, by black eyes, and a round face, by a straight body and a smooth skin; but by a proportion to the fancy. No rules can make amability, our minds and apprehensions make that; and so is our felicity and we may be reconciled to poverty and a low fortune, if we suffer contentedness and the grace of God to make the proportion. For no man is poor that doth not think himself so. But if in a full fortune with impatience he desires more, he proclaims his wants and his beggarly condition. But because this grace of contentedness was the sum of all the old moral philosophy, and a great duty in Christianity, and of most universal use in the whole course of our lives, and the only instrument to ease the burdens of the world and the enmities of sad chances, it will not be amiss to press it by the proper arguments by which God hath bound it upon our spirits, it being fastened by reason and religion, by duty and interest, by necessity and conveniency, by example, and by the proposition of excellent rewards, no less than peace and felicity. Contentedness in all estates is a duty of religion; it is the great reasonableness of complying with the Divine providence which governs all the world, and hath so ordered us in the administration of his great family. He were a strange fool that should be angry because dogs and sheep need no shoes, and yet himself is full of care to get some. God hath supplied those needs to them by natural provisions, and to thee by an artificial: for he hath given thee reason to learn a trade, or some means to make or buy them, so that it only differs in the manner of our provision and which had you rather want, shoes or reason? And my patron that hath given me a farm, is freer to me than if he gives a loaf ready baked. But however all these gifts come from him, and therefore it is fit he should dispense them as he pleases; and if we murmur here, we may at the next melancholy be troubled that God did not make us to be angels or stars. For if that which we are or have do not content us, we may be troubled for every thing in the world, which is besides our being or our possessions. God is the Master of the scenes: we must not choose what part we shall act; it concerns us only to be careful that we do it well, always saying, If this please God, let it be as it is and we who pray that God's will may be done in earth as it is in heaven, must remember, that the angels do whatsoever is commanded them, and go wherever they are sent, and refuse no circumstances; and if their employment be crossed by a higher degree, they sit down in peace, and rejoice in the event. Here therefore is the wisdom of the contented man, to let God choose for him : for when we have given up our wills to him, and stand in that station of the battle where our great General hath placed us, our spirits must needs rest, while our conditions have for their security the power, the wisdom, and the charity of God. Contentedness in all accidents brings great peace of spirit, and is the great and only instrument of temporal felicity. It removes the sting from the accident, and makes a man not to depend upon chance and the uncertain dispositions of men for his well-being, but only on God and his own spirit. We ourselves make our fortunes good or bad; and when God lets loose a tyrant upon us, or a sickness, or scorn, or a lessened fortune, if we fear to die, or know not to be patient, or are proud, or covetous, then the calamity sits heavy on us. But if we know how to manage a noble principle, and fear not death so much as a dishonest action, and think impatience a worse evil than a fever, and pride to be the biggest disgrace, and poverty to be infinitely desirable before the torments of covetousness; then we, who now think vice to be so easy, and make it so familiar, and think the cure so impossible, shall quickly be of another mind, and reckon these accidents amongst things eligible. But no man can be happy that hath great hopes and great fears of things without, and events depending upon other men, or upon the chances of fortune. The rewards of virtue are certain, and our provisions for our natural support are certain, or if we want meat till we die, then we die of that disease, and there are many worse than to die with an atrophy or consumption, or unapt and coarser nourishment. But he that suffers a transporting passion concerning things within the power of others, is free from sorrow and amazement no longer than his enemy shall give him leave; and it is ten to one but he shall be smit ten then and there where it shall most trouble him: for so the adder teaches us where to strike, by her curious and fearful defending of her head. We are in the world like men playing at tables, the chance is not in our power, but to play it is; and when it is fallen we must manage it as we can, and let nothing trouble us, but when we do a base action, or speak like a fool, or think wickedly these things God hath put into our powers; but concerning those things which are wholly in the choice of another, they cannot fall under our deliberation, and therefore neither are they fit for our passions. My fear may make me miserable, but it cannot prevent what another hath in his power and purpose: and prosperities can only be enjoyed by them who fear not at all to lose them, since the amazement and passion concerning the future takes off all the pleasure of the present possession. Therefore if thou hast lost thy land, do not also lose thy constancy: and if thou must die a little sooner, yet do not die impatiently. For no chance is evil to him that is content, and to a man nothing is miserable, unless it be unreasonable. No man can make another man to be his slave, unless he hath first enslaved himself to life and death, to pleasure or pain, to hope or fear : command these passions, and you are freer than the Parthian kings. When any thing happens to our displeasure, let us endeavor to take off its trouble by turning it into spiritual or artificial advantage, and handle it on that side in which it may be useful to the designs of reason. For there is nothing but hath a double handle, or at least we have two hands to apprehend it. When an enemy reproaches us, let us look on him as an impartial relater of our faults, for he will tell thee truer than thy fondest friend will; and thou mayest call them precious balms, though they break thy head, and forgive his anger while thou makest use of the plainness of his declamation. The ox when he is weary treads surest and if there be nothing else in the disgrace but that it makes us to walk warily and tread sure for fear of our enemies, that is better than to be flattered into pride and carelessness. : Never compare thy condition with those above thee; but to secure thy content, look upon those thousands with whom thou wouldest not for any interest change thy fortune and condition. And yet there is no wise or good man that would change persons or conditions entirely with any man in the world. It may be he would have one man's wealth added to himself, or the power of a second, or the learning of a third; but still he would receive these into his own person, because he loves that best, and therefore esteems it best, and therefore overvalues all that which he is, before all that which any other man in the world can be. For every man hath desires of his own, and objects just fitted to them, without which he cannot be, unless he were not himself. And let every man that loves himself so well as to love himself before all the world, consider if he have not something for which in the whole he values himself |