Subsect. 10. Discontents, Cares, Miseries, &c. causes.

Discontents, cares, crosses, miseries, or whatsoever it is, that shall cause any molestation of spirits, grief, anguish, and perplexity, may well be reduced to this head, (preposterously placed here in some mens judgments they may seem) yet in that Aristotle in his Rhetorick defines these cares, as he doth Envy, Emulation, &c. still by grief, I think I may well rank them in this Irascible row; being that they are as the rest, both causes and Symptoms of this disease, producing the like inconveniences, and are most part accompanied with anguish and pain.

The common Etymology will evince it, Cura quasi cor uro, Dementes curæ, insomnes curæ, damnosæ curæ, tristes, mordaces, carnifices, &c. biting, eating, gnawing, cruel, bitter, sick, sad, unquiet, pale, tetrick, miserable, intolerable cares, as the Poets call them, worldly cares, and are as many in number as the Sea sands. Galen, Fernelius, Felix Plater, Valescus de Taranta, &c. reckon afflictions, miseries, even all these contentions, and vexations of the minde, as principal causes, in that they take away sleep, hinder concoction, dry up the body, and consume the substance of it.

They are not so many in number, but their causes be as divers, and not one of a thousand free from them, or that can vindicate himself, whom that Ate dea,

Per hominum capita molliter ambulans, Plantas pedum teneras habens: Over mens heads walking aloft, With tender feet treading so soft.

Homers Goddess Ate, hath not involved into this discontented rank, or plagued with some misery or other. Hyginus, fab. 220. to this purpose hath a pleasant tale. Dame Cura by chance went over a brook, and taking up some of the durty slime, made an Image of it; Jupiter eftsoons coming by, put life to it, but Cura and Jupiter could not agree what name to give him, or who should own him; the matter was referred to Saturn as Judg, he gave this arbitrement, His name shall be Homo ab humo, Cura eum possideat quamdiu vivat, Care shall have him whilst he lives, Iupiter his soul, and Tellus his body when he dies.

But to leave tales. A general cause, a continuate cause, an inseparable accident to all men, is discontent, care, misery; were there no other particular affliction (which who is free from?) to molest a man in this life, the very cogitation of that common misery, were enough to macerate, and make him weary of his life; to think that he can never be secure, but still in danger, sorrow, grief, and persecution.

For to begin at the hour of his birth, as Pliny doth elegantly describe it, He is born naked, and falls a whining at the very first, he is swadled and bound up like a prisoner, cannot help himself, and so he continues to his lives end. Cujusque feræ pabulum, saith Seneca, impatient of heat and cold, impatient of labor, impatient of idleness, exposed to Fortunes contumelies. To a naked Marriner, Lucretius compares him, cast on shore by shipwrack, cold and comfortless in an unknown Land:

No estate, age, sex, can secure himself from this common misery. A man that is born of a woman, is of short continuance, and full of trouble, Job 14.1, 22. and while his flesh is upon him, he shall be sorrowful, and while his soul is in him, it shall mourn. All his days are sorrow, and his travels griefs, his heart also taketh not rest in the night, Ecclus. 2.23. And 2. 11. All that is in it, is sorrow and vexation of spirit.

Ingress, progress, regress, egress, much alike: Blindness seizeth on us in the beginning, labor in the middle, grief in the end, error in all. What day ariseth to us, without some grief, care, or anguish? Or what so secure and pleasing a morning have we seen, that hath not been overcast before the evening? One is miserable, another ridiculous, a third odious. One complains of this grievance, another of that. Aliquando nervi, aliquando pedes vexant, (Seneca) nunc distillatio, nunc epatis morbus; nunc deest, nunc superest sanguis: Now the Head akes, then the Feet, now the Lungs, then the Liver, &c.

Huic sensus exuberat, sed est pudori degener sanguis, &c. He is rich, but base born; he is noble, but poor; a third hath means, but he wants health peradventure, or wit to manage his estate: Children vex one, Wife a second, &c. Nemo facile cum conditione sua concordat, no man is pleased with his fortune,

a pound of sorrow is familiarly mixt with a dram of content, little or no joy, little comfort, but every where danger, contention, anxiety in all places: Go where thou wilt, and thou shalt finde discontents, cares, woes, complaints, sickness, diseases, incumbrances, exclamations: If thou look into the Market, there (saith Chrysostom) is brawling and contention; if to the Court, there knavery and flattery, &c. if to a private mans house, there’s cark and care, heaviness, &c. As he said of old,

Nil homine in terrâ spirat miserum magis almâ:

No creature so miserable as man, so generally molested, in miseries of body, in miseries of minde, miseries of heart, in miseries asleep, in miseries awake, in miseries wheresoever he turns, as Bernard found, Nunquid tentatio est vita humana super terram? A meer temptation is our life, (Austin. confess. lib. 10. cap. 28.) catena perpetuorum malorum, & quis potest molestias & difficultates pati? Who can endure the miseries of it?

In prosperity we are insolent and intolerable, dejected in adversity, in all fortunes foolish and miserable. In adversity I wish for prosperity, and in prosperity I am afraid of adversity; What mediocrity may be found? where is no temptation? what condition of life is free? Wisdom hath labor annexed to it, glory envy; riches and cares, children and incumbrances, pleasure and diseases, rest and beggery go together: As if a man were therefore born, (as the Platonists hold) to be punished in this life, for some precedent sins.