t-springing youth; overtake
it, when it is at a stand; and overtopped it utterly, when it begins
to wither: in so much as looking back from the very instant time, and
from our now being, the poor, diseased, and captive creature, hath as
little sense of all his former miseries and pains, as he, that is
most blessed in common opinions, hath of his fore-passed pleasure and
delights. For whatsoever is cast behind us, is just nothing: and what
is to come, deceitful hope hath it: "Omnia quae eventura sunt, in
incerto jacent."[19] Only those few black swans, I must except: who
having had the grace to value worldly vanities at no more than their
own price; do, by retaining the comfortable memory of a well acted
life, behold death without dread, and the grave without fear; and
embrace both, as necessary guides to endless glory.

For myself, this is my consolation, and all that I can offer to
others, that the sorrows of this life are but of two sorts: whereof
the one hath respect to God, the other, to the world. In the first we
complain to God against ourselves, for our offences against Him; and
confess, "Et Tu Justus es in omnibus quae venerunt super nos." "And
Thou, O Lord, are just in all that hath befallen us." In the second we
complain to ourselves against God: as if he had done us wrong, either
in not giving us worldly goods and honors, answering our appetites: or
for taking them again from us having had them; forgetting that humble
and just acknowledgment of Job, "the Lord hath given, and the Lord
hath taken." To the first of which St. Paul hath promised blessedness;
to the second, death. And out of doubt he is either a fool, or
ungrateful to God, or both, that doth not acknowledge, how mean soever
his estate be, that the same is yet far greater than that which God
oweth him: or doth not acknowledge, how sharp soever his afflictions
be, that the same are yet far less, than those which are due unto
him. And if an heathen wise man call the adversities of the world
but "tributa vivendi," "the tributes of living;" a wise Christian man
ought to know them, and bear them, but as the tributes of offending.
He ought to bear them manlike, and resolvedly; and not as those
whining soldiers do, "qui gementes sequuntur imperatorem."[20]

For seeing God, who is the author of all our tragedies, hath written
out for us and appointed us all the parts we are to play: and hath
not, in their distribution, been partial to the most mighty princ