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? 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.

Contentedness in all estates is a duty of religion; it is the great reasonableness of complying with the Divine Providence, which governs 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 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 the 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 howsoever 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 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 possessions.

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Never compare thy condition with those above thee; but to secure thy content, look upon those thousands with whom thou wouldst not for any interest change thy fortune or condition. A soldier must not think himself unprosperous, if he be not succcessful as the son of Philip, or cannot grasp a fortune as big as the Roman empire. Be content that thou art not lessened as was Pyrrhus : or, if thou beest, that thou art not routed like Crassus; and when that comes to thee, it is a great prosperity that thou art not caged, and made a spectacle like Bajazet, or thy eyes were not pulled out like Zedekiah's, or that thou wert not flayed alive like Valentinian. There are but few kings in mankind, but many thousands who are very miserable, if compared to thee. However,

it is a huge folly rather to grieve for the good of others, than to rejoice for that good which God hath given us of our own.

It conduces much to our content, if we pass by those things which happen to our trouble, and consider that which is pleasing and prosperous, that by the representation of the better, the worse may be blotted out and at the worst, you have enough to keep you alive, and to keep up and improve your hopes of heaven. If I be overthrown in my suit at law, yet my house is left me still and my land; or I have a virtuous wife, or hopeful children, or kind friends, or good hopes. If I have lost one child, it may be I have two or three still left me. Or else reckon the blessings which already you have received, and therefore be pleased in thy change and variety of affairs, to receive evil from the hand of God, as well as good. Antipater of Tarsus used this art to support his sorrows on his death-bed, and reckoned the good things of his past life, not forgetting to recount it as a blessing, an argument that God took care of him, that he had a prosperous journey from Cilicia to Athens. Or else please thyself with hopes of the future: for we were born with this sadness

upon us ; and it was a change which brought us into it; and a change may bring us out again. Harvest will come, and then every farmer is rich, at least for a month or two. It may be thou art entered into the cloud, which will bring a gentle shower to refresh thy sorrows.

Enjoy the present whatsoever it be, and be not solicitous for the future: for if you take your foot from the present standing, and thrust it forward toward to-morrow's event, you are in a restless condition; it is like refusing to quench your present thirst, by fearing you shall want drink the next day. If it be well to-day, it is madness to make the present miserable, by fearing it may be ill to-morrow for may be it will not, and then to what purpose was this day's affliction? But if to-morrow you shall want, your sorrow will come time enough, though you do not hasten it: let your trouble tarry till its own day comes. Enjoy the blessings of this day, if God sends them; and the evils of it bear patiently and sweetly for this day is only ours, we are dead to yesterday, and we are not yet born to to-morrow. He therefore that enjoys the present, if it be good, enjoys as much as is possible.

Sempronius complained of want of clothes, and was much troubled for a new suit, being ashamed to appear with his gown a little threadbare but when he got it and gave his old clothes to Codrus, the poor man was ravished with joy, and went and gave God thanks for his new purchase; and Codrus was made richly fine and cheerfully warm by that which Sempronius was ashamed to wear; and yet their natural needs were both alike: the difference only was, that Sempronius had some artificial and fantastical necessities superinduced, which Codrus had not; and was harder to be relieved, and could not have joy at so cheap a rate; because he only lived according to nature; the other by pride and ill-customs, and measures taken from other men's eyes and tongues, and artificial 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 pro