looking for the chirurgeon's knife; binding himself as fast with a resolved patience, as others with strongest cords; abiding his flesh carved, and his bowels rifled, and not stirring more than if he felt not, while others tremble to expect, and shrink to feel but the pricking of a vein. There can be no remedy for imaginary crosses, but wisdom; which shall teach us to esteem of all events as they are like a true glass representing all things to our minds in their due proportion; so as crosses may not seem that are not, nor little and gentle ones seem great and intolerable. Give thy body hellebore, thy mind good counsel, thine ear to thy friend; and these fantastical evils shall vanish away like themselves.

SECTION X.

Of true and real Crosses.

that

IT were idle advice, to bid men avoid evils. Nature hath by a secret instinct, taught brute creatures so much, whether wit or sagacity: and our self-love making the best advantage of reason, will easily make us so wise and careful. It is more worth our labour, since our life is so open to calamities, and nature to impatience, to teach men to bear what evils they cannot avoid; and how, by a well-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 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 commen

tary 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.

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 weilding their weapon for offence, for defence, against all comers: such universal precepts there are for crosses.

The

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? 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 practice upon a true adversary; so must 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 loath 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 any thing 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 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 wait upon strangers?" Thy prosperity is idle and ill spent, if it be not meddled with such fore-casting and 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 furnitures 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 conceit 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 who have been good at the foils, have proved cowardly at the sharp; yet, on the contrary, who ever 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? O fool, if I am ignorant whence my crosses come; a rebel, if I know it, and am 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 discharge the means: which as they could not have touched thee, but as from him; so from him they have afflicted thee justly, wrongfully perhaps as in themselves.

SECTION XIII.

The third Antidote of Crosses; from their Effect.

BUT neither seemeth it enough to be patient in crosses, if we be not thankful also. Good things challenge more than bare contentment. Crosses, unjustly termed evils, as they are sent of him, that is all goodness; so they are sent for good, and his end cannot be frustrated. What greater good can be to the diseased man, than fit and proper physic to recure him? Crosses are the only medicines of sick minds. Thy sound body carries within it a sick soul: thou feelest it not, perhaps so much more art thou sick, and so much more dangerously. Perhaps, thou labourest of some plethory of pride, or of some dropsy of covetousness, or the staggers of inconstancy, or some fever of luxury, or consumption of envy, or perhaps of the lethargy of idleness, or of the phrensy of anger: it is a rare soul, that hath not some notable disease: only crosses are thy remedies. What if they be unpleasant? they are physic: it is enough, if they be wholesome, Not pleasant taste, but the secret virtue commends medicines. If they cure thee, they shall please thee, even in displeasing; or else thou lovest thy