disposedness of mind, we may correct the iniquity of all hard events. Wherein it is hardly credible how much good art and precepts of resolution may avail us. I have seen one man, by the help of a little engine, lift up that weight alone, which forty helping hands, by their clear strength, might have endeavoured in vain. We live here in an ocean of troubles, wherein we can see no firm land; one wave falling upon another, ere the former have wrought all his spite. Mischiefs strive for places, as if they feared to lose their room if they hasted not. So many good things as we have, so many evils arise from their privation; besides no fewer real and positive evils that afflict us. To prescribe and apply receipts to every particular cross, were to write a Salmeron-like Commentary upon Petrarch's Remedies; and I doubt whether so, the work would be perfect: a life would be too little to write it, and but enough to read it.

1

SECTION XI.

The first remedy of Crosses, before they come.

THE same medicines cannot help all diseases of the body; of the soul, they may. We see fencers give their scholars the same common rules of position, of warding and wielding their weapon for offence,

I Salmeron, one of the earliest of the Jesuits, wrote a voluminous Commentary on the Gospels, the Acts of the Apostles, and the Canonical Epistles.-Among the Latin works of Petrarch, at present so much and so undeservedly neglected, one of the principal is his treatise de Remediis utriusque Fortuna; "Concerning the Remedies of prosperous and adverse Fortune."-ED.

for defence, against all comers: such universal precepts there are for crosses

In the first whereof, I would prescribe expectation, that either killeth or abateth evils. For crosses, after the nature of the cockatrice, die if they be foreseen; whether this providence makes us more strong to resist, or by some secret power makes them more unable to assault us. It is not credible what a fore-resolved mind can do, can suffer. Could our English Milo, of whom Spain yet speaketh since their last peace, have overthrown that furious beast, made now more violent through the rage of his baiting, if he had not settled himself in his station, and expected? The frighted multitude ran away from that over-earnest sport, which begun in pleasure, ended in terror. If he had turned his back with the rest, where had been his safety, where his glory and reward? Now he stood still, expected, overcame; by one fact he at once preserved, honoured, enriched himself. Evils will come never the sooner, for that thou lookest for them: they will come the easier: it is a labour well lost if they come not; and well bestowed, if they do come. We are sure the worst may come; why should we be secure that it will not? Suddenness finds weak minds secure, makes them miserable, leaves them desperate. The best way therefore is, to make things present, in conceit, before they come; that they may be half past in their violence, when they do come: even as with wooden wasters,' we learn to play at the sharp. As, therefore, good soldiers exercise themselves long at the pale; and there use those activities, which afterwards they shall practise upon a true adversary; so must

1 A kind of cudgels.-ED.

o

we present to ourselves imaginary crosses, and manage them in our mind before God sends them in event. "Now I eat, sleep, digest all soundly, without complaint: what if a languishing disease should bereave me of my appetite and rest? that I should see dainties and loathe them; surfeiting of the very smell, of the thought of the best dishes? that I should count the lingering hours, and think Hezekiah's long day returned; wearying myself with changing sides, and wishing anything but what I am? How could I take this distemper? Now I have, if not what I would, yet what I need; as not abounding with idle superfluities, so not straitened with penury of necessary things: what if poverty should rush upon me, as an armed man; spoiling me of all my little that I had, and send me to the fountain for my best cellar-to the ground, for my bed-for my bread, to another's cupboard-for my clothes, to the broker's shop, or my friend's wardrobe? How could I brook this want? I am now at at home, walking in mine own grounds, looking on my young plants, the hope of posterity; considering the nature, advantages, or fears of my soil, enjoying the patrimony of my fathers: what if, for my religion, or the malicious sentence of some great one, I should be exiled from my country; wandering amongst those whose habit, language, fashion, my ignorance shall make me wonder at; where the solitude of places, and strangeness of persons shall make my life uncomfortable? How could I abide the smell of foreign smoke? How should I take the contempt and hard usage that waits upon strangers?" Thy prosperity is idle and ill spent, if it be not meddled' with such forecasting and

1 Mixed.-ED.

wisely suspicious thoughts; if it be wholly bestowed in enjoying, no whit in preventing: like unto a foolish city, which, notwithstanding a dangerous situation, spends all her wealth in rich furniture of chambers and state houses; while they bestow not one shovelful of earth on outward bulwarks, to their defence: this is but to make our enemies the happier, and ourselves the more readily miserable.

If thou wilt not, therefore, be oppressed with evils, EXPECT and EXERCISE : exercise thyself with conceits of evils; expect the evils themselves: yea, exercise thyself in expectation; so, while the mind pleaseth itself in thinking, "Yet I am not thus," it prepareth itself against it may be so. And if some, that have been good at the foils, have proved cowardly at the sharp; yet, on the contrary, whoever durst point a single combat in the field that hath not been somewhat trained in the fence-school?

SECTION XII.

The second remedy of Crosses, when they are come : from their Author.

NEITHER doth it a little blunt the edge of evils, to consider that they come from a Divine hand, whose Almighty power is guided by a most wise providence, and tempered with a fatherly love. Even the savage creatures will be smitten of their keeper, and repine not: if of a stranger, they tear him in pieces. He strikes me, that made me, that moderates the world: why struggle I with him; why, with myself? Am I a fool, or a rebel? A fool, if I be ignorant whence my crosses come: a rebel, if

I know it, and be impatient. My sufferings are from a God, from my God; he hath destined me every dram of sorrow that I feel: "Thus much thou shalt abide; and here shall thy miseries be stinted." All worldly helps cannot abate them; all powers of hell cannot add one scruple to their weight that he hath allotted me: I must, therefore, either blaspheme God in my heart, detracting from his infinite justice, wisdom, power, mercy, which all stand inviolable, when millions of such worms as I am, are gone to dust; or else confess that I ought to be patient. And if I profess I should be that I will not, I befool myself, and bewray miserable impotency. But (as impatience is full of excuse) it was thine own rash improvidence, or the spite of thine enemy, that impoverished, that defamed thee: it was the malignity of some unwholesome dish, or some gross corrupted air that hath distempered thee. Ah, foolish cur! why dost thou bite at the stone which could never have hurt thee, but from the hand that threw it? If I wound thee, what matters it, whether with mine own sword, or thine, or another's? God strikes some immediately from heaven, with his own arm, or with the arm of angels; others he buffets with their own hands; some by the revenging sword of an enemy; others with the fist of his dumb creatures. God strikes in all; his hand moves theirs. If thou see it not, blame thy carnal eyes. Why dost thou fault' the instrument while thou knowest the agent? Even the dying thief pardons the executioner; exclaims on his unjust judge, or his malicious accusers. Either, then, blame the first mover, or dis

Blame.-ED.