Of Ingratitude

Ingratitude is of all the crimes, that which we are to account the most venial in others, and the most unpardonable in ourselves. It is impious to the highest degree; for it makes us fight against our children and our altars. There are, there ever were, and there ever will be criminals of all sorts, as murderers, tyrants, thieves, adulterers, traitors, robbers and sacrilegious persons; but there is hardly any notorious crime without a mixture of ingratitude. It disunites mankind, and breaks the very pillars of society; and yet so far is this prodigious wickedness from being any wonder to us, that even thankfulness itself were much the greater of the two; for men are deterred from it by labor, expense, laziness, business; or else diverted from it by lust, envy, ambition, pride, levity, rashness, fear; nay, by the very shame of confessing what they have received. And the unthankful man has nothing to say for himself all this while, for there needs neither pains or fortune for the discharge of his duty, beside the inward anxiety and torment when a man’s conscience makes him afraid of his own thoughts.

To speak against the ungrateful is to rail against mankind, for even those that complain are guilty: nor do I speak only of those that do not live up to the strict rule of virtue; but mankind itself is degenerated and lost. We live unthankfully in this world, and we go struggling and murmuring out of it, dissatisfied with our lot, whereas we should be grateful for the blessings we have enjoyed, and account that sufficient which Providence has provided for us; a little more time may make our lives longer but not happier, and whensoever it is the pleasure of God to call us, we must obey; and yet all this while we go on quarreling at the world for what we find in ourselves, and we are yet more unthankful to Heaven than we are to one another. What benefit can be great now to that man that despises the bounties of his Maker? We would be as strong as elephants, as swift as bucks, as light as birds—and we complain that we have not the sagacity of dogs, the sight of eagles, the long life of ravens—nay, that we are not immortal, and endued with the knowledge of things to come: nay, we take it ill that we are not gods upon earth, never considering the advantages of our condition, or the benignity of Providence in the comforts that we enjoy.