God is wise and just in sending him afflictions; that confesses his sins; and accuses himself, and justifies God; that expects God will turn this into good; that is civil to his physicians and his servants; that converses with the guides of souls, the ministers of religion; and, in all things, submits to God's will, and would use no indirect means for his recovery; but had rather be sick and die, than enter at all into God's displeasure. SECTION IV. Remedies against Impatience, by Way of Consideration. As it happens concerning death, so it is in sickness, which is death's handmaid. It hath the fate to suffer calumny and reproach, and hath a name worse than its nature. 1. For there is no sickness so great but children endure it, and have natural strengths to bear them out quite through the calamity, what period soever nature hath allotted it. Indeed they make no reflections upon their sufferings, and complain of sickness with an uneasy sigh or a natural groan, but consider not, what the sorrows of sickness mean; and so bear it by a direct sufferance, and as a pillar bears the weight of a roof. But then why cannot we bear it so too? For this which we call a reflection upon, or a considering of, our sickness, is nothing but a perfect instrument of trouble, and consequently a temptation to impatience. It serves no end of nature it may be avoided, and we may consider it only as an expression of God's anger, and an emissary or procurator of repentance. But all other considering it*, except where it serves the purposes of medicine and art, is nothing but, under the colour of reason, an unreasonable device to heighten the sickness and increase the torment. But then, as children want this act of reflex perception or reasonable sense, whereby their sickness becomes less pungent and dolorous; so also do they want the helps of reason, whereby they should be able to support it. For certain it is, reason x Prætulerim-delirus inérsque videri, Dam mea delectent mala me, vel denique fallant, was as well given us to harden our spirits, and stiffen them in passions and sad accidents, as to make us bending and apt for action: and if in men God hath heightened the faculties of apprehension, he hath increased the auxiliaries of reasonable strengths; that God's rod and God's staff might go together, and the beam of God's countenance may as well refresh us with its light, as scorch us with its heat. For poor children that endure so much, have not inward supports and refreshments to bear them through it: they never heard the sayings of old men, nor have been taught the principles of severe philosophy, nor are assisted with the results of a long experience, nor know they, how to turn a sickness into virtue, and a fever into a reward; nor have they any sense of favours, the remembrance of which may alleviate their burden; and yet nature hath in them teeth and nails enough to scratch, and fight against the sickness, and by such aids, as God is pleased to give them, they wade through the storm, and murmur not. And besides this, yet, although infants have not such brisk perceptions upon the stock of reason, they have a more tender feeling upon the accounts of sense, and their flesh is as uneasy by their natural softness and weak shoulders, as ours by too forward apprehensions. Therefore bear up': either you or I, or some man wiser, and many a woman weaker than us both, or the very children, have endured worse evil than this, that is upon thee now. That sorrow is hugely tolerable, which gives its smart but by instants and smallest proportions of time. No man at once feels the sickness of a week, or of a whole day; but the smart of an instant: and still every portion of a minute feels but its proper share; and the last groan ended all the sorrow of its peculiar burden. And what minute can that be, which can pretend to be intolerable? and the next minute is but the same as the last, and the pain flows like the drops of a river, or the little shreds of time; and if we do but take care of the present minute, it cannot seem a great charge or a great burden; but that care will secure our duty, if we still but secure the present minute. · Στῆθος δὲ πλήξας, κραδίην ηνίπαπε μύθων Ulysses apud Hom. Od. ú. 17. 3. If we consider, how much men can suffer, if they list, and how much they do suffer for greater and little causes, and that no causes are greater than the proper causes of patience in sickness (that is necessity and religion), we cannot, without huge shame to our nature, to our persons, and to our manners, complain of this tax and impost of nature. This experience added something to the old philosophy. When the gladiators were exposed naked to each other's short swords, and were to cut each other's souls away in portions of flesh, as if their forms had been as divisible as the life of worms, they did not sigh or groan, it was a shame to decline the blow, but according to the just measures of art. The women that saw the wound, shriek out; and he that receives it, holds his peace. He did not only stand bravely, but would also fall so; and when he was down, scorned to shrink his head, when the insolent conqueror came to lift it from his shoulders: and yet this man, in his first design, only aimed at liberty, and the reputation of a good fencer; and when he sunk down, he saw he could only receive the honour of a bold man, the noise of which he shall never hear, when his ashes are crammed in his narrow urn. And what can we complain of the weakness of our strengths, or the pressures of diseases, when we see a poor soldier stand in a breach almost starved with cold and hunger, and his cold apt to be relieved only by the heats of anger, a fever, or a fired musket, and his hunger slackened by a greater pain and a huge fear? this man shall stand in his arms and wounds, patiens luminis atque solis, pale and faint, weary and watchful; and at night shall have a bullet pulled out of his flesh, and shivers from his bones, and endure his mouth to be sewed up from a violent rent to its own dimension; and all this for a man whom he never saw, or, if he did, was not noted by him; but one that shall condemn him to the gallows, if he runs from all this misery. It is seldom that God sends such calamities upon men, as men bring upon themselves, and suffer willingly. But that, which is most considerable is, that any passion and violence upon the spirit of man makes him able to suffer huge calamities with a certain constancy and an unwearied z Spectatores vociferantur, ictus tacet. Quis mediocris gladiator ingemuit, Quis vultum mutavit unquam? Quis non modò stetit, verùm etiam decubuit turpiter?-Tusc. Q. lib. ii. 16. patience. Scipio Africanus was wont to commend that saying in Xenophon, That the same labours of warfare were easier far to a general than to a common soldier; because he was supported by the huge appetites of honour, which made his hard marches nothing but stepping forward and reaching at a triumph. Did not the lady of Sabinus, for others' interest, bear twins privately and without groaning? Are not the labours and cares, the spare diet and the waking nights of covetous and adulterous, of ambitious and revengeful persons, greater sorrows and of more smart than a fever, or the short pains of child-birth? What will not tender women suffer to hide their shame? And if vice and passion, lust and inferior appetites can supply to the tenderest persons strengths more than enough for the sufferance of the greatest natural violences, can we suppose that honesty and religion and the grace of God are more nice, tender and effeminate? 4. Sickness is the more tolerable, because it cures very many evils, and takes away the sense of all the cross fortunes, which amaze the spirits of some men, and transport them certainly beyond all the limits of patience. Here all losses and disgraces, domestic cares and public evils, the apprehensions of pity and a sociable calamity, the fears of want and the troubles of ambition, lie down and rest upon the sick man's pillow. One fit of the stone takes away from the fancies of men all relations to the world and secular interests: at least they are made dull and flat, without sharpness and an edge. And he, that shall observe the infinite variety of troubles, which afflict some busy persons and almost all men in very busy times, will think it not much amiss, that those huge numbers were reduced to certainty, to method and an order : and there is no better compendium for this, than that they be reduced to one. And a sick man seems so unconcerned in the things of the world, that, although the separation be done with violence, yet it is no otherwise than all noble contentions are, and all honours are purchased, and all virtues are acquired, and all vices mortified, and all appetites chastised, and all rewards obtained: there is infallibly to all these a difficulty and a sharpness annexed, without which there could be no proportion between a work and a reward. To this add, that sickness does not take off the sense of se VOL. IV. cular troubles and worldly cares from us, by employing all the perceptions and apprehensions of men; by filling all faculties with sorrow, and leaving no room for the lesser instances of troubles, as little rivers are swallowed up in the sea: but sickness is a messenger of God, sent with purposes of abstraction and separation, with a secret power and a proper efficacy to draw us off from unprofitable and useless sorrows and this is effected partly, by reason that it represents the uselessness of the things of this world, and that there is a portion of this life, in which honours and things of the world cannot serve us to many purposes; partly, by preparing us to death, and telling us, that a man shall descend thither, whence this world cannot redeem us, and where the goods of this world cannot serve us. 5. And yet, after all this, sickness leaves in us appetites so strong, and apprehensions so sensible, and delights so many, and good things in so great a degree, that a healthless body and a sad disease do seldom make men weary of this world, but still they would fain find an excuse to live*. The gout, the stone, and the tooth-ache, the sciatica, sore eyes, and an aching head, are evils indeed; but such, which, rather than die, most men are willing to suffer; and Meconas added also a wish, rather to be crucified than to die : and though his wish was low, timorous and base, yet we find the same desires in most men, dressed up with better circumstances. It was a cruel mercy in Tamerlane, who commanded all the leprous persons to be put to death, as we knock some beasts quickly on their head, to put them out of pain, and lest they should live miserably: the poor men would rather have endured another leprosy, and have more willingly taken two diseases than one death. Therefore Cæsar wondered, that the old crazed soldier begged leave he might kill himself, and asked him, "Dost thou think then to be more alive, than now thou art?" We do not die suddenly, but we descend to death by steps and slow passages and therefore men (so long as they are sick) are unwilling to proceed and go forward in the finishing that sad employment. Between a disease and death there are many. degrees, and all those are like the reserves of evil things, the a Debilem facito manu, Débilem pede, coxâ: Lubricos quate dentes; Vita dum superest, bene est. Hanc mibi, vel acuta si sedeam cruce, sustine.--Sen. ep. 101. . |