the sexton that buries them, who buries them in
oblivion too! For they do but fill up the number of the dead in the
bill, but we shall never hear their names, till we read them in the book
of life with our own. How many are sicker (perchance) than I, and thrown
into hospitals, where (as a fish left upon the sand must stay the tide)
they must stay the physician's hour of visiting, and then can be but
visited! How many are sicker (perchance) than all we, and have not this
hospital to cover them, not this straw to lie in, to die in, but have
their gravestone under them, and breathe out their souls in the ears and
in the eyes of passengers, harder than their bed, the flint of the
street? that taste of no part of our physic, but a sparing diet, to whom
ordinary porridge would be julep enough, the refuse of our servants
bezoar enough, and the offscouring of our kitchen tables cordial enough.
O my soul, when thou art not enough awake to bless thy God enough for
his plentiful mercy in affording thee many helpers, remember how many
lack them, and help them to them or to those other things which they
lack as much as them.

VII. EXPOSTULATION.

My God, my God, thy blessed servant Augustine begged of thee that Moses
might come and tell him what he meant by some places of Genesis: may I
have leave to ask of that Spirit that writ that book, why, when David
expected news from Joab's army,[99] and that the watchman told him that
he saw a man running alone, David concluded out of that circumstance,
that if he came alone, he brought good news?[100] I see the grammar, the
word signifies so, and is so ever accepted, _good news_; but I see not
the logic nor the rhetoric, how David would prove or persuade that his
news was good because he was alone, except a greater company might have
made great impressions of danger, by imploring and importuning present
supplies. Howsoever that be, I am sure that that which thy apostle says
to Timothy, _Only Luke is with me_,[101] Luke, and nobody but Luke, hath
a taste of complaint and sorrow in it: though Luke want no testimony of
ability, of forwardness, of constancy, and perseverance, in assisting
that great building which St. Paul laboured in, yet St. Paul is affected
with that, that there was none but Luke to assist. We take St. Luke to
have been a physician, and it admits the application the better that in
the presence of one good physician we may be glad of more. It was not
only a civil spirit of