and secret way. This cryptick and involved method of his providence have I ever admired, nor can I relate the history of my life, the occurrences of my days, the escapes of dangers and hits of chance, with a Bezo las Manos to fortune, or a bare gramercy to my good stars. Abraham might have thought the ram in the thicket came thither by accident; human reason would have said that mere chance conveyed Moses in the ark to the sight of Pharaoh's daughter; what a labyrinth is there in the story of Joseph, able to convert a stoick! Surely there are in every man's life certain rubs, doublings and wrenches, which pass awhile under the effects of chance, but at the last well examined prove the mere hand of God. "Twas not dumb chance, that to discover the fougade or powderplot, contrived a miscarriage in the letter. I like the victory of 88. the better for that one occurrence which our enemies imputed to our dishonour and the partiality of fortune, to wit, the tempests and contrariety of winds. King Philip did not detract from the nation when he said he sent his armado to fight with men, and not to combat with the winds. Where there is a manifest disproportion between the powers and forces of two several agents, upon a maxim of reason we may promise the victory to the superiour; but when unexpected accidents slip in and unthought-of occurrences intervene, these must proceed from a power that owes no obedience to those axioms; where, as in the writing upon the wall, we behold the hand but see not the spring that moves it. The success of that petty province of Holland (of which the grand Segniour proudly said that if they should trouble him as they did the Spaniard he would send his men with shovels and pickaxes and throw it into the sea) I cannot altogether ascribe to the inge- i nuity and industry of the people, but to the mercy of God that hath disposed them to such a thriving genius; and to the will of his providence that dispenseth her favour to each country in their preordinate season. All cannot be happy at once; for because the glory of one state depends upon the ruin of another, there is a revolution and vicissitude of their greatness, which must obey the swing of that wheel not moved by intelligences, but by the hand of God, whereby all estates arise to their zenith and vertical points, according to their predestinated periods. For the lives not only of men, but of commonweals and the whole world, run not upon an helix that still enlargeth, but on a circle; where arriving to their meridian, they decline in obscurity and fall under the horizon again. XVIII. These must not therefore be named the effects of fortune, but in a relative way, and as we term the works of nature. It was the ignorance of man's reason that begat this very name, and by a careless term miscalled the providence of God; for there is no liberty for causes to operate in a loose and straggling way, nor any effect whatsoever but hath its warrant from some universal or superiour cause. 'Tis not a ridiculous devotion to say a prayer before a game at tables; for even in sortilegies and matters of greatest uncertainty, there is a settled and preordered course of effects. It is we that are blind, not fortune; because our eye is too dim to discover the mystery of her effects we foolishly paint her blind, and hoodwink the provividence of the Almighty. I cannot justify that contemptible proverb, that fools only are fortunate; or that insolent paradox, that a wise man is out of the reach of fortune; much less those opprobrious epithets of poets, whore, bawd, and strumpet. 'Tis, I confess, the common fate of men of singular gifts of mind to be destitute of those of fortune; which doth not any way deject the spirit of wiser judgments, who throughly understand the justice of this proceeding, and being enriched with higher donatives cast a more careless eye on these vulgar parts of felicity. It is a most unjust ambition to desire to engross the mercies of the Almighty, nor to be content with the goods of mind without a possession of those of body or fortune: and it is an errour worse than heresy to adore these complemental and circumstantial pieces of felicity, and undervalue those perfections and essential points. of happiness wherein we resemble our Maker. To wiser desires it is satisfaction enough to deserve, though not to enjoy the favours of fortune; let providence provide for fools; 'tis not partiality but equity in God, who deals with us but as our natural parents; those that are able of body and mind, he leaves to their deserts; to those of weaker merits he imparts a larger portion, and pieces out the defect of one by the access of the other. Thus have we no just quarrel with nature for leaving us naked; or to envy the horns, hoofs, skins, and furs of other creatures, being provided with reason that can supply them all. We need not labour with so many arguments to confute judicial astrology, for F if there be a truth therein it doth not injure divinity; if to be born under Mercury disposeth us to be witty, under Jupiter to be wealthy, I do not owe a knee unto these, but unto that merciful hand that hath ordered my indifferent and uncertain nativity unto such benevolous aspects. Those that held that all things were governed by fortune, had not erred, had they not persisted there; the Romans that erected a temple to fortune acknowledged therein, though in a blinder way, somewhat of divinity; for in a wise supputation all things begin and end in the Almighty. There is a nearer way to heaven than Homer's chain; an easy logick may conjoin heaven and earth in one argument, and with less than a sorites resolve all things into God. For though we christen effects by their most sensible and nearest causes, yet is God the true and infallible cause of all; whose concourse though it be general, yet doth it subdivide itself into the particular actions of every thing, and is that spirit by which each singular essence not only subsists but performs its operation. XIX. The bad construction and perverse comment on these pair of second causes, or visible hands of God, have perverted the devotion of many |