and ungentleness, wilfulness and fantastic opinions, morofity and incivility. Against it are oppofed Obedience, Tractability, Easiness of perfuafion, Aptness to take counsel. The acts of this part of Patience are, 1. To obey our Physicians; 2. To treat our perfons with respect to our present neceffities; 3. Not to Vide ch. 4. Sect. 1. be ungentle and uneafy to the minifters and nurses that attend us; but to take their diligent and kind offices as fweetly as we can, and to bear their indifcretions or unhandfome accidents contentedly and without disquietness within, or evil language or angry words without; 4. Not to use unlawful means for our recovery. If we secure these particulars, we are not lightly to be judged of by noises and postures, by colours and images of things, by paleness, or toffings from fide to fide. For it were a hard thing that those perfons who are loaden with the greatest of human calamities should be strictly tied to ceremonies and forms of things. He is patient that calls upon God, that hopes for health or Heaven, that believes God is wife and just in sending him afflictions, that confeffes his fins, and accufes himself, and juftifies God, that expects God will turn this into good, that is civil to his Physicians and his fervants, that converfes with the guides of Souls, the ministers of Religion, and in all things fubmits to God's will, and would use no indirect means for his recovery, but had rather be fick and die, than enter at all into God's difpleasure. SECT. IV. Remedies against Impatience, by way of Confideration. 1000 S it happens concerning Death, fo it is in hath the fate to fuffer calumny and reproach, and hath a name worse than its nature. 1. For there is no fickness fo great but Children endure it, and have natural ftrengths to bear them out quite through the calamity, what period foever Nature hath allotted it. Indeed they make no reflections upon their fufferings, and complain of fickness with an uneafy figh or a natural groan, but confider not what the forrows of fickness mean; and fo bear it by a direct fufferance, and as a pillar bears the weight of a roof. But then why cannot we bear it fo too? For this which we call a reflection upon or a confidering of our fickness, is nothing but a perfect inftrument of trouble, and confequently a temptation to Impatience. It ferves no end of Nature; it may be avoided, and we may confider it only as an expreffion of God's Anger, and an emiffary or procurator of Repentance. But all other confidering it, except where it ferves the poses of medicine and art, is nothing but, under the colour of reason, and unreasonable device to heighten the fickness and increase the torment. But then, as children want this act of reflex perception or reasonable fenfe, whereby their fickness becomes lefs pungent and dolorous; fo alfo do Prætulerim delirus inérique videri, Dum mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant, Quàm fapere et ringi. Horat. lib. 2. ep. 2. pur they want the helps of Reason whereby they should be able to support it. For certain it is, Reason was as well given us to harden our spirits, and stiffen them in paffions and fad accidents, as to make us bending and apt for action and if in men God hath heightened the faculties of apprehension, he hath increased the auxiliaries of reasonable strengths; that God's rod and God's staff might go together, and the beam of God's countenance may as well refresh us with its light as fcorch us with its heat. But poor Children that endure fo much, have not inward fupports and refreshments to bear them through it; they never heard the fayings of Old men, nor have been taught the principles of fevere Philofophy, nor are affifted with the refults of a long Experience, nor know they how to turn a fickness into virtue, and a Fever into a reward; nor have they any sense of favours, the remembrance of which may alleviate their brethren: and yet Nature hath in them teeth and nails enough to scratch, and fight against the sickness, and by fuch aids as God is pleased to give them they wade through the storm, and murmur not, And befides this, yet, although Infants have not fuch brisk perceptions upon the stock of Reason, they have a more tender feeling upon the accounts of Sense, and their flesh is as uneafy by their natural softness and weak shoulders, as ours by our too forward apprehenfions. Therefore bear up: either you dè wλúkas, xpadím mí Στῆθος πλήξας, κραδίην παπε μύθω, Τέτλαθι δὴ κραδίη, και, κύντε ρον ἄλλο ποτ ̓ ἔτλης. Ulyffes apud Hom.Od.ú. upon thee now. That forrow is hugely tolerable which gives its smart but by instants and smallest proportions of time. No man at once feels the fickness of a week, or of a whole day; but the smart of an instant: and still every portion of a minute feels but its proper share; and the last groan ended all the forrow of its peculiar burthen. And what minute can that be which can pretend to be intolerable? and the next minute is but the fame as the laft, and the pain flows like the drops of a river, or the little shreds of time: and if we do but take care of the prefent minute, it cannot seem a great charge or a great burthen; but that care will secure our duty, if we still but secure the present minute. 3. If we confider how much men can fuffer if they lift, and how much they do fuffer for greater and little causes, and that no caufes are greater than the proper causes of Patience in fickness, (that is, neceffity and Religion) we cannot without huge shame to our nature, to our persons, and to our manners, complain of this tax and impoft of Nature. This experience added something to the old Philofophy. When the Gladiators were exposed naked to each other's fhort fwords, and were to cut each other's fouls away in portions of flesh, as if their forms had been as divifible as the life of worms, they did not figh or groan, it was a shame to decline the blow, but according to the just measures of art. The *women that saw the wound shriek out, and he that receives it *Spectatores vociferantur, ictus tacet. Quis mediocris gladiator ingemuit? Quis vultum mutavit unquam? Quis non modò ́stetit, verum etiam decubuit turpiter? Tufc. 2. lib. 2. holds his peace. He did not only ftand bravely, but would alfo fall fo; and when he was down, scorned to fhrink his head, when the info lent conqueror came to lift it from his fhoulders: and yet this man in his firft defign only aimed at liberty, and the reputation of a good fencer; and when he funk down, he saw he could only receive the honour of a bold man, the noife of which he shall never hear when his afhes are crammed in his narrow Urn. And what can we complain of the weakness of our strengths, or the preffures of diseases, when we see a poor foldier ftand in a breach almost starved with cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be relieved only by the heats of Anger, a Fever, or a fired musket, and his hunger flacked by a greater pain and a huge fear? this man fhall ftand in his arms and wounds, patiens luminis atque Solis, pale and faint, weary and watchful; and at night shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh, and shivers from his bones, and endure his mouth to be fewed up from a violent rent to its own dimenfion, and all this for a man whom he never faw, or, if he did, was not noted by him, but one that shall condemn him to the gallows if he runs from all this misery. It is feldom that God sends fuch calamities upon men as men bring upon themfelves, and fuffer willingly. But that which is most confiderable is, that any paffion and violence upon the spirit of man makes him able to suffer huge calamities with a certain conftancy and an unwearied Patience. Scipio Africanus was wont to commend that faying in Xenophon, That the fame labours of warfare were easier far to a General than to a common foldier, because he was supported by the huge appetites of honour, which made his hard marches nothing but stepping forward and reaching at a triumph. Did not the Lady of Sabinus for other's |