I will yet add a word or two for a Corollary. Many rich men, I dare boldly say it, that lye on down-beds, with delicacies pampered every day, in their well furnished houses, live at less hearts ease, with more anguish, more bodily pain, and through their intemperance more bitter hours, then many a prisoner or gally-slave; Mæcenas in plumâ, æque vigilat ac Regulus in dolio:

those poor starved Hollanders whom Bartison their Captain left in Nova Zembla, An. 1596. or those eight miserable Englishmen that were lately left behind, to winter in a stove in Greenland in 77. deg. of lat. 1630. so pitifully forsaken and forced to shift for themselves in a vast dark and desart place, to strive and struggle with hunger, cold, desperation, and death it self.

’Tis a patient and quiet minde (I say it again and again) gives true peace and content. So doth for all other things, they are as old Chremes told us, as we use them.

Parentes, patriam, amicos, genus, cognatos, divitias, Hæc perinde sunt ac illius animus qui ea possidet; Qui uti scit, ei bona; qui utitur non recte, mala.

Parents, friends, fortunes, country, birth, alliance, &c. ebbe and flow with our conceit; please or displease, as we accept and construe them, or apply them to our selves. Faber quisque fortunæ suæ, and in some sort I may truly say, prosperity and adversity are in our own hands. Nemo læditur nisi à seipso, and which Seneca confirms out of his judgement and experience, Every mans minde is stronger then fortune, and leads him to what side he will: a cause to himself each one is, of his good or bad life.

But will we, or nill we, make the worst of it, and suppose a man in the greatest extremity, ’tis a fortune which some indefinitely prefer before prosperity; of two extremes it is the best. Luxuriant animi rebus plerumque secundis, men in prosperity forget God and themselves, they are besotted with their wealth, as birds with henbane:

miserable if fortune forsake them, but more miserable if she tarry and overwhelm them: for when they come to be in great place, rich, they that were most temperate, sober and discreet in their private fortunes, as Nero, Otho, Vitellius, Heliogabalus (optimi imperatores nisi imperassent) degenerate on a sudden into brute beasts, so prodigious in lust, such tyrannicall oppressors, &c. they cannot moderate themselves, they become monsters, odious, harpies, what not?

cum triumphos, opes, honores adepti sunt, ad voluptatem & otium deinceps se convertunt: ’twas Cato’s note, they cannot contain. For that cause belike,

Eutrapilus cuicunque nocere volebat, Vestimenta dabat pretiosa: beatus enim jam, Cum pulchris tunicis sumet nova consilia & spes, Dormiet in lucem scorto, postponet honestum Officium ——

Eutrapilus when he would hurt a knave, Gave him gay clothes and wealth to make him brave: Because now rich he would quite change his minde, Keep whores, fly out, set honesty behinde.

On the other side, in adversity many mutter and repine, despair, &c. both bad I confess,

—— ut calceus olim Si pede major erit, subvertet: si minor, uret.

As a shoo too big or too little, one pincheth, the other sets the foot awry, sed è malis minimum. If Adversity hath killed his thousand, prosperity hath killed his ten thousand: therefore Adversity is to be preferred; hæc fræno indiget, illa solatio: illa fallit, hæc instruit: The one deceives, the other instructs; the one miserably happy, the other happily miserable: and therefore many Philosophers have voluntarily sought adversity, and so much commend it in their precepts.

Demetrius in Seneca esteemed it a great infelicity, that in his life time he had no misfortune, miserum cui nihil unquam accidisset adversi. Adversity then is not so heavily to be taken, & we ought not in such cases so much to macerate our selves: there is no such odds in poverty and riches.

To conclude in Hieroms words, I will ask our magnificoes that build with marble, and bestow a whole Manor on a thred, what difference betwixt them and Paul the Ermite, that bare old man: they drink in jewels, he in his hand: he is poor and goes to heaven, they are rich and go to hell.