plague the world, God lets them have), such an one must expect all mischief that power and spite, lighting upon a base mind, can possibly do him.

As for men's employments and preferments, every man that sets forth into the world comes into a great lottery, and draws some one certain profession to act and live by, but knows not the fortune that will attend him in it.

One man, perhaps, proves miserable in the study of the law, who might have flourished in that of physic or divinity. Another runs his head against the pulpit, who might have been very serviceable to his country at the plough. And a third proves a very dull and heavy philosopher, who possibly would have made a good mechanic, and have done well enough at the useful philosophy of the spade or the anvil.

Now, let this man reflect upon the time when all these several callings and professions were equally offered to his choice, and consider how indifferent it was once for him to have fixed upon any one of them, and what little accidents and considerations cast the balance of his choice, rather one way than the other, and he will find how easily chance may throw a man upon a profession, which all his diligence cannot make him fit for.

And then for the preferments of the world. He that would reckon up all the accidents that they depended upon, may as well undertake to count the sands or to sum up infinity; so that greatness, as well as an estate, may, upon this account, be properly called a man's fortune, forasmuch as no man can state either the acquisition. or preservation of it upon any certain rules-every man, as well as the merchant, being here truly an adventurer. For the ways by which it is obtained are various, and frequently contrary: one man, by sneaking and flattering, comes to riches and honour (where it is in the power of fools to bestow them); upon observation whereof, another presently thinks to arrive to the same greatness by the very

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same means, but striving, like the ass, to court his master, just as the spaniel had done before him, instead of being stroked and made much of, he is only rated off and cudgelled for all his courtship.

The source of men's preferments is most commonly the will, humour, and fancy of persons in power; whereupon, when a prince or grandee manifests a liking to such a thing, such an art, or such a pleasure, men generally set about to make themselves considerable for such things, and thereby, through his favour, to advance themselves; and at length, when they have spent their whole time in them, and so are become fit for nothing else, that prince, or grandee, perhaps dies, and another succeeds him, quite of a different disposition, and inclining him to be pleased with quite different things. Whereupon these men's hopes, studies, and expectations, are wholly at an end. And besides, though the grandee whom they build upon should not die, or quit the stage, yet the same person does not always like the same things. For age may alter his constitution, humour, or appetite; or the circumstances of his affairs may put him upon different courses and counsels; every one of which accidents wholly alters the road to preferment. So that those who travel that road must be like highwaymen, very dexterous in shifting the way upon every turn and yet their very doing so sometimes proves the means of their being found out, understood, and abhorred; and for this very cause that they are ready to do anything, are justly thought fit to be preferred to nothing.

Cæsar Borgia, base son to Pope Alexander VI., used to boast to his friend Machiavel, that he had contrived his affairs and greatness into such a posture of firmness, that whether his holy father lived or died, they could not but be secure. If he lived, there could be no doubt of them; and if he died, he had laid his interest so as to overrule the next election as he pleased. But all this while the politician never thought or

considered that he might, in the meantime, fall dangerously sick, and that sickness necessitate his removal from the court, and during that his absence, his father die, and so his interest decay, and his mortal enemy be chosen to the Papacy; as, indeed, it fell out. So that, for all his exact plot, down was he cast from all his greatness, and forced to end his days in a mean condition; as it is pity but all such politic opiniators should.

Upon much the like account, we find it once said of an eminent cardinal, by reason of his great and apparent likelihood to step into St Peter's chair, that in two conclaves he went in pope and came out again cardinal.

So much has chance the casting voice in the disposal of all the great things of the world. That which men call merit is a mere nothing. For even when persons of the greatest worth and merit are preferred, it is not their merit but their fortune that prefers them. And then, for that other so much admired thing, called policy, it is but little better. For when men have busied themselves, and beat their brains never so much, the whole result, both of their counsels and their fortunes, is still at the mercy of an accident. And, therefore, whosoever that man was that said, that he had rather have a grain of fortune than a pound of wisdom, as to the things of this life spoke nothing but the voice of wisdom and great experience.

Christ's Friendship.

The second privilege of friendship is a favourable construction of all passages between friends, that are not of so high and so malign a nature as to dissolve the relation. "Love covers a multitude of sins," says the apostle (1 Pet. iv. 8). cannot be taken away, the next office is to hide never so blind as when it is to spy faults. It is like the painter who, being to draw the picture of a friend having a

When a scar it.

Love is

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blemish in one eye, would picture only the other side of his face. It is a noble and a great thing to cover the blemishes, and to excuse the failings of a friend; to draw a curtain before his stains, and to display his perfections; to bury his weakness in silence, but to proclaim his virtues upon the house-top. It is an imitation of the charities of Heaven, which, when the creature lies prostrate in the weakness of sleep and weariness, spreads the covering of night and darkness over it, to conceal it in that condition; but as soon as our spirits are refreshed and nature returns to its morning vigour, God then bids the sun rise and the day shine upon us, both to advance and to shew that activity.

It is the ennobling office of the understanding to correct the fallacious and mistaken reports of sense, and to assure us that the staff in the water is straight, though our eye would tell us it is crooked. So it is the excellency of friendship to rectify, or at least to qualify, the malignity of those surmises that would misrepresent a friend and traduce him in our thoughts. Am I told that my friend has done me an injury, or that he has committed any indecent action? why, the first debt that I both owe to his friendship, and that he may challenge from mine, is rather to question the truth of the report, than presently to believe my friend unworthy. Or if matter of fact break out and blazes with too great an evidence to be denied, or so much as doubted of, why, still there are other lenitives that friendship will apply before it will be brought to the decretory rigours of a condemning sentence. A friend will be sure to act the part of an advocate, before he will assume that of a judge. And there are few actions so ill (unless they are of a very deep and black tincture indeed), but will admit of some extenuation at least from those common topics of human frailty, such as are ignorance or inadvertency, passion or surprise, company or solicitation, with many other such things, which may go a great way towards an excusing

though they cannot absolutely justify the action. All which apologies for and alleviations of faults, though they are the heights of humanity, yet they are not the favours but the duties of friendship. Charity itself commands us, where we know no ill, to think well of all. But friendship, that always goes a pitch higher, gives a man a peculiar right and claim to the good opinion of his friend. And, if we justly look upon a proneness to find faults as a very ill and a mean thing, we are to remember that a proneness to believe them is next to it.

We have seen here the demeanour of friendship between man and man; but how is it, think we now, between Christ and the soul that depends upon Him? Is He anyways short in these offices of tenderness and mitigation? No, assuredly; but by infinite degrees superior. For where our heart does but relent, His melts; where our eye pities, His bowels yearn. How many frowardnesses of ours does He smother, how many indignities does He pass by, and how many affronts does He put up with at our hands, because His love is invincible and His friendship unchangeable! He rates every action, every sinful infirmity, with the allowances of mercy, and never weighs the sin, but together with it He weighs the force of the inducement; how much of it is to be attributed to choice, how much to the violence of the temptation, the stratagem of the occasion, and the yielding frailties of weak nature.

Should we try men at that rate that we try Christ, we should quickly find that the largest stock of human friendship would be too little for us to spend long upon. But His compassion follows us with an infinite supply. He is God in His friendship as well as in His nature, and therefore we sinful creatures are not took upon advantages nor consumed in our provocations.

See this exemplified in His behaviour to His disciples, while He was yet upon earth: how ready was He to excuse and cover their infirmities! At the last and bitterest scene of His life, when He was so full of agony and horror upon the approach