DISCOURSE I. ALL CONTINGENCIES DIRECTED BY GOD'S PROVIDENCE. Prov. xvi. 33. MANY passages happen in the world, much like that little cloud (1 Kings xviii.), that appeared at first to Elijah's servant, no bigger than a man's hand, but presently after grew and spread, and blackened the face of the whole heaven, and then discharged itself in thunder and rain, and a mighty tempest. So these accidents, when they first happen, seem but small and contemptible; but by degrees they branch out into such a numerous train of mischievous consequences, one drawing after it another, by a continued dependence and multiplication, that the plague becomes universal, and personal miscarriage determines in a national calamity. For who, that should view the despicable beginnings of some things and persons at first, could imagine or prognosticate those stupendous increases of fortune, that have afterwards followed them? Who, that had looked upon Agathocles first handling the clay, and making pots under his father, and afterwards turning robber, could have thought, that from such a condition, he should come to be king of Sicily? Who, that had seen Massanello, a poor fisherman, with his red cap and his angle, could have reckoned it possible to see such a pitiful thing, within a week after, shining in his cloth of gold, and with a word, or a nod, absolutely commanding the whole city of Naples? And who, that had beheld such a bankrupt, beggarly fellow as Cromwell, first entering the parliamenthouse with a thread-bare, torn cloak and a greasy hat, (and perhaps neither of them paid for,) could have suspected, that, in the space of so few years, he should, by the murder of one king, and the banishment of another, ascend the throne, be invested in the royal robes, and want nothing of the state of a king, but the changing of his hat into a crown.* * * God has many ways to reap down the grandees of the earth; an arrow, a bullet, a tyle, a stone from an house, is an enough to do it: And besides all these ways, sometimes, when he intends to bereave the world of a prince, or an illustrious person, he may cast him upon a bold, self-opinioned physician, worse than his distemper, who shall dose and bleed, and kill him, secundùm artem, and make a shift to cure him into his grave. * * * Then also for men's reputation, and that either in point of wisdom, or of wit; there is hardly any thing which (for the most part) falls under a greater chance. If a man succeeds in any attempt, though undertook with never so much folly and rashness, his success shall vouch him a politician; and good luck shall pass for deep contrivance: For give any one fortune, and he shall be thought a wise man, in spite of his heart, nay, and of his head too. On the contrary, be a design never so artificially laid, and spun in the finest thread of policy, if it chances to be defeated by some cross accident, the man is then run down by an universal vogue. [*This sally of wit is reported to have caused such a fit of merriment in Charles II. before whom the discourse was delivered, that, turning to Lawrence Hyde, Earl of Rochester, he said, with his usual exclamation, "Ods fish, Lory, your chaplain must be made a bishop; so put me in mind of him at the next death."—ED.] Ahithophel was as great an oracle, and gave as good counsel to Absalom, as ever he had given to David; but not having the good luck to be believed, and thereupon losing his former repute, he thought it high time to hang himself. And, on the other side, there have been some, who for several years have been fools with tolerable good reputation, and never discovered themselves to be so, till at length they attempted to be knaves also, but wanted art and dexterity. And as the repute of wisdom, so that of wit also, is very casual. Sometimes a lucky saying, or a pertinent reply, has procured an esteem of wit, to persons no ways accustomed to utter such things by any standing ability of mind; so that if such an one should have the ill hap at any time to strike a man dead with a smart saying, it ought, in all reason, to be judged but a chance-medley; the poor man (God knows) being no way guilty of any design of wit. Nay, even where there is a real stock of wit, yet the wittiest sayings and sentences will be found in a great measure the issues of chance, and nothing else, but so many lucky hits of a roving fancy. For consult the acutest poets and speakers, and they will confess that their quickest and most admired conceptions, were such as darted into their minds like sudden flashes of lightning, they knew not how, nor whence; and not by any certain dependence of one thought upon another, as in matters of ratiocination. Moreover, sometimes a man's reputation rises or falls, as his memory serves him in a performance; and yet there is nothing more slippery, and less under command, than this faculty. So that many having used their utmost diligence to secure a faithful retention of the things or words committed to it, yet after all cannot certainly know where it will trip and fail them. Any sudden diversion of the spirits, or the justling in of a transient thought, is able to deface those little images of things; and so breaking the train that was |