the same perception as the prince himself; save only that Cæsar paid, for all that pleasure, vast sums of money, the blood and treasure of a province, which the poor man had for nothing.

Suppose a man lord of all the world (for still we are but in supposition), yet since every thing is received, not according to its own greatness and worth, but according to the capacity of the receiver, it signifies very little as to our content or to the riches of our possession. If any man should give to a lion a fair meadow full of hay, or a thousand quince trees; or should give to the goodly bull, the master and the fairest of the whole herd, a thousand fair stags; if a man should present to a child a ship laden with Persian carpets, and the ingredients of the rich scarlet, all these, being disproportionate either to the appetite or to the understanding, could add nothing of content, and might declare the freeness of the presenter, but they upbraid the incapacity of the receiver. And so it does if God should give the whole world to any man. He knows not what to do with it; he can use no more, but according to the capacities of a man; he can use nothing but meat, and drink, and clothes; and infinite riches, that can give him changes of raiment every day and a full table, do but give him a clean trencher every bit he eats; it signifies no more but wantonness and variety, to the same, not to any new purposes. He to whom the world can be given to any purpose greater than a private estate can minister, must have new capacities created in him: he needs the understanding of an angel, to take the accounts of his estate; he had need have a stomach like

fire or the grave, for else he can eat no more than one of his healthful subjects; and unless he hath an eye like the sun, and a motion like that of a thought, and a bulk as big as one of the orbs of heaven, the pleasures of his eye can be no greater than to behold the beauty of a little prospect from a hill, or to look upon the heap of gold packed up in a little room, or to dote upon a cabinet of jewels, better than which there is no man that sees at all, but sees every day. For, not to name the beauties and sparkling diamonds of heaven, a man's, or a woman's, or a hawk's eye, is more beauteous and excellent than all the jewels of his crown. And when we remember that a beast, who hath quicker senses than a man, yet hath not so great delight in the fruition of any object, because he wants understanding and the power to make reflex acts upon his perception; it will follow, that understanding and knowledge is the greatest instrument of pleasure, and he that is most knowing hath a capacity to become happy which a less knowing prince, or a rich person, hath not; and in this only a man's capacity is capable of enlargement. But then, although they only have power to relish any pleasure rightly, who rightly understand the nature, and degrees, and essences, and ends of things; yet they that do so, understand also the vanity and unsatisfyingness of the things of this world, so that the relish, which could not be great but in a great understanding, appears contemptible, because its vanity appears at the same time; the understanding sees all, and sees through

it.

VOL. I.

JEREMY TAYLOR,

BB

RELIANCE ON THE DEITY

THE

BEST SOURCE OF PATIENCE AND FORTITUDE.

THERE are few instances of particular virtue more engaging than those of this heroic cast, and if we may take the testimony of a heathen philosopher upon it, there is not an object in the world which God can be supposed to look down upon with greater pleasure than that of a good man involved in misfortunes, surrounded on all sides with difficulties,-yet cheerfully bearing up his head, and struggling against them with firmness and constancy of mind. Certainly, to our conceptions, such objects must be truly engaging, and the reason of so exalted an encomium from this hand is easily to be guessed: no doubt, the wisest of the heathen philosophers had found, from observation upon the life of man, that the many troubles and infirmities of his nature, the sicknesses, disappointments, sorrow for the loss of children or property, with the numberless other calamities and cross accidents to which the life of man is subject, were in themselves so great;—and so little solid comfort to be administered from the mere refinements of philosophy in such emergencies, that there was no virtue which required greater efforts, or which was found so difficult to be achieved upon moral principles,-upon moral principles, which had no foundation to sustain this great weight which the infirmities of our nature laid upon it :-and,

for this reason, it is observable that there is no subject upon which the moral writers of antiquity have exhausted so much of their eloquence, or where they have spent such time and pains, as in this of endeavouring to reconcile men to these evils; insomuch that from thence in most modern languages, the patient enduring of affliction has, by degrees, obtained the name of philosophy, and almost monopolized the word to itself, as if it was the chief end or compendium of all the wisdom which philosophy had to offer. And indeed, considering what lights they had, some of them wrote exceedingly well; yet, as what they said proceeded more from the head than the heart, it was generally more calculated to silence a man in his troubles than to convince and teach him how to bear them; and, therefore, however subtle and ingenious their arguments might appear in the reading, it is to be feared they lost much of their efficacy when tried in the application. If a man was thrust back in the world by disappointments, or, as was Job's case, had suffered a sudden change in his fortunes, and from an affluent condition was brought down by a train of cruel accidents, and pinched with poverty,philosophy would come in and exhort him to stand his ground;--it would tell him that the same greatness and strength of mind which enabled him to behave well in the days of his prosperity, should equally enable him to behave well in the days of his adversity;-that it was the property of only weak and base spirits, who were insolent in the one, to be dejected and overthrown by the other; whereas, great and generous souls

were at all times calm and equal: as they enjoyed the advantages of life with indifference, they were able to resign them with the same temper ;and, consequently, were out of the reach of fortune. All which, however fine, and likely to satisfy the fancy of a man at ease, could convey but little consolation to a heart already pierced with sorrow; nor is it to be conceived how an unfortunate creature should any more receive relief from such a lecture, however just, than a man racked with an acute fit of the gout or stone could be supposed to be set free from torture by hearing from his physicians a nice dissertation upon his case. The philosophic consolations in sickness, or in afflictions for the death of friends and kindred, were just as efficacious;—and were rather, in general, to be considered as good sayings than good remedies ;—so that, if a man was bereaved of a promising child, in whom all his hopes and expectations centred, or a wife was left destitute to mourn the loss and protection of a kind and tender husband; Seneca or Epictetus would tell the pensive parent and disconsolate widow, that tears and lamentations for the dead were fruitless and absurd!-that to die was the necessary and unavoidable debt of nature ;-and, as it could admit of no remedy, 'twas impious and foolish to grieve and fret themselves upon it. Upon such sage counsel, as well as many other lessons of the same stamp, the same reflection might be applied, which is said to have been made by one of the Roman emperors to one who administered the same consolations to him on a like occasion; to whom advising him to be com