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 aches, 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 mixed with a dram of content,
little or no joy, little comfort, but [1751]everywhere danger, contention,
anxiety, in all places: go where thou wilt, and thou shalt find
discontents, cares, woes, complaints, sickness, diseases, encumbrances,
exclamations: "If thou look into the market, there" (saith [1752]
Chrysostom) "is brawling and contention; if to the court, there knavery and
flattery, &c.; if to a private man's house, there's cark and care,
heaviness," &c. As he said of old,

[1753] "Nil homine in terra spirat miserum magis alma?"

No creature so miserable as man, so generally molested, [1754]"in miseries
of body, in miseries of mind, 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 mere temptation is our
life, (Austin, _confess. lib. 10. cap. 28_,) _catena perpetuorum malorum,
et quis potest molestias et difficultates pati_? Who can endure the
miseries of it? [1755]"In prosperity we are insolent and intolerable,
dejected in adversity, in all fortunes foolish and miserable." [1756]"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?" [1757]"Wisdom hath labour annexed to it, glory,
envy; riches and cares, children and encumbrances, pleasure and diseases,
rest and beggary, go together: as if a man were therefore born" (as the
Platonists hold) "to be punished in this life for some precedent sins." Or
that, as [1758]Pliny complains, "Nature may be rather accounted a
stepmother, than a mother unto