The Due Contemplation of Divine Providence Is the Certain Cure of All Misfortunes

Whoever observes the world, and the order of it, will find all the motions in it to be only vicissitudes of falling and rising; nothing extinguished, and even those things which seem to us to perish are in truth but changed. The seasons go and return, day and night follow in their courses, the heavens roll, and Nature goes on with her work: all things succeed in their turns, storms and calms; the law of Nature will have it so, which we must follow and obey, accounting all things that are done to be well done; so that what we cannot mend we must suffer, and wait upon Providence without repining. It is the part of a cowardly soldier to follow his commander groaning: but a generous man delivers himself up to God without struggling; and it is only for a narrow mind to condemn the order of the world, and to propound rather the mending of Nature than of himself. No man has any cause of complaint against Providence, if that which is right pleases him. Those glories that appear fair to the eye, their lustre is but false and superficial; and they are only vanity and delusion: they are rather the goods of a dream than a substantial possession: they may cozen us at a distance, but bring them once to the touch, they are rotten and counterfeit. There are no greater wretches in the world than many of those which the people take to be happy.

Those are the only true and incorruptible comforts that will abide all trials, and the more we turn and examine them, the more valuable we find them; and the greatest felicity of all is, not to stand in need of any. What is poverty? No man lives so poor as he was born. What is pain? It will either have an end itself, or make an end of us. In short, Fortune has no weapon that reaches the mind: but the bounties of Providence are certain and permanent blessings; and they are the greater and the better, the longer we consider them; that is to say, “the power of contemning things terrible, and despising what the common people covet.” In the very methods of Nature we cannot but observe the regard that Providence had to the good of mankind, even in the disposition of the world, in providing so amply for our maintenance and satisfaction. It is not possible for us to comprehend what the Power is which has made all things: some few sparks of that Divinity are discovered, but infinitely the greater part of it lies hid. We are all of us, however, thus far agreed, first, in the acknowledgement and belief of that almighty Being; and, secondly, that we are to ascribe to it all majesty and goodness.