FOR Stoicism to rejoice at funerals, and lament at births of men, is more absonant to nature than to reason. Too self-indulgent nature would would preserve herself on any terms; but well-instructed reason holds a being but an ill pennyworth, purchased on condition of so long a misery. Who knows himself a man, needs seek no further for a cause to mourn for what is man but a sampler of weakness, the spoil of time, the may-game of fortune, the image of inconstancy, the balance of calamity, and what besides, but phlegm and choler? His birth is a painful coming into the world; his life, a sinful continuance in the world; his death, a dreadful going out of the world. His birth brings him into the shop of sin; his childhood binds him apprentice to sin; his youth makes him free in sin; his full age trades in sin; his old age breaks him; his last sickness arrests him; and death casts him into prison. The pleasure he takes is to displease his God; his business is to disturb his neighbour; his study is to destroy himself. His best labour is but vanity, and the fruits of that labour are vexation of spirit: his mirth is a short madness; his sorrow a long torment; his recreation is a formal antic; his devotion an antic formality; his course of life is a quotidian ague, whose cold fits are sloth and charity, whose hot fits are wrath and concupiscence; his pleasures are but airy shadows to beguile him; his honours are but frothy pleasures to betray him; his profit is but golden fetters to beslave him; the effect whereof is sin, the end whereof is death. In brief, he that would learn to be a mourner, let him remember that he is a man. O my soul, is this the pleasure that this world promises? Is this that happiness which the great promiser affords? Had man no hopes of greater happiness than earth can give, how more unhappy were he than a beast! What happiness can counterpoise his sorrow? what mirth can countervail his misery? what comfort is there in this house of mourning? Where then shall I repose my trust? on whom shall my crushed hopes rely? DAREST thou believe the word of truth? Hark what the word of truth has said: Blessed are they that mourn, for they shall be comforted. Matth. v. 4. Psal. cxix. 50. This is my comfort in my affliction, for thy word hath quickened me. Isaiah, lxi. 2. Proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord, and the day of vengeance to comfort all that mourn. Jer. xxxi. 13. I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow. Psal. lxxi. 20, 21. Thou which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth; thou shalt increase my greatness, and comfort me side. on every His Soliloquy. MISERY is the badge of mortality, and mortality the lot of man. He that views himself impartially, needs seek no subject for a tear. Yet, O my soul, hadst thou not seen thine own misery, how more miserable hadst thou been! Hadst thou been hoodwinked to thy corruptions, hadst thou been blind to thine infirmities, had thy filth been painted over with vanity, how had the way to thy redress been blocked up ! how hadst thou stumbled at thyself, and fallen at thine own destruction! O my soul, it is a great part of safety to see a danger; a good step towards health to discover the disease; a fair progress towards happiness to behold thine own misery. But evils discovered and no more, grow sharper by the discovery: he only uses a foreseen danger that endeavours to avoid it; he profits by a discovered disease that labours to amend it; he takes benefit by prevised misery that strives to eschew it. Being fairly warned, my soul, be thou as strongly armed. Dost thou plead weakness? be courageous, and thou shalt be victorious; does sadness cool thy courage? be S |