comfort they threaten us, miscall,
scoff at us, to aggravate our misery, give us bad language, or if they do
give good words, what's that to relieve us? According to that of Thales,
_Facile est alios monere_; who cannot give good counsel? 'tis cheap, it
costs them nothing. It is an easy matter when one's belly is full to
declaim against fasting, _Qui satur est pleno laudat jejunia ventre_; "Doth
the wild ass bray when he hath grass, or loweth the ox when he hath
fodder?" Job vi. 5. [3783]_Neque enim populo Romano quidquam potest esse
laetius_, no man living so jocund, so merry as the people of Rome when they
had plenty; but when they came to want, to be hunger-starved, "neither
shame, nor laws, nor arms, nor magistrates could keep them in obedience."
Seneca pleadeth hard for poverty, and so did those lazy philosophers: but
in the meantime [3784]he was rich, they had wherewithal to maintain
themselves; but doth any poor man extol it? "There are those" (saith [3785]
Bernard) "that approve of a mean estate, but on that condition they never
want themselves: and some again are meek so long as they may say or do what
they list; but if occasion be offered, how far are they from all patience?"
I would to God (as he said) [3786]"No man should commend poverty, but he
that is poor," or he that so much admires it, would relieve, help, or ease
others.

[3787] "Nunc si nos audis, atque es divinus Apollo,
Dic mihi, qui nummos non habet, unde petat:"

"Now if thou hear'st us, and art a good man,
Tell him that wants, to get means, if you can."

But no man hears us, we are most miserably dejected, the scum of the world.
[3788]_Vix habet in nobis jam nova plaga locum_. We can get no relief, no
comfort, no succour, [3789]_Et nihil inveni quod mihi ferret opem_. We have
tried all means, yet find no remedy: no man living can express the anguish
and bitterness of our souls, but we that endure it; we are distressed,
forsaken, in torture of body and mind, in another hell: and what shall we
do? When [3790]Crassus the Roman consul warred against the Parthians, after
an unlucky battle fought, he fled away in the night, and left four thousand
men, sore, sick, and wounded in his tents, to the fury of the enemy, which,
when the poor men perceived, _clamoribus et ululatibus omnia complerunt_,
they made lamentable moan, and roared downright, as loud as Homer's Mars
when he was hurt, which the noise of 10,000 men could not drown,