Still when we return to that meditation that man is a world, we find new
discoveries. Let him be a world, and himself will be the land, and
misery the sea. His misery (for misery is his, his own; of the happiness
even of this world, he is but tenant, but of misery the freeholder; of
happiness he is but the farmer, but the usufructuary, but of misery the
lord, the proprietary), his misery, as the sea, swells above all the
hills, and reaches to the remotest parts of this earth, man; who of
himself is but dust, and coagulated and kneaded into earth by tears; his
matter is earth, his form misery. In this world that is mankind, the
highest ground, the eminentest hills, are kings; and have they line and
lead enough to fathom this sea, and say, My misery is but this deep?
Scarce any misery equal to sickness, and they are subject to that
equally with their lowest subject. A glass is not the less brittle,
because a king's face is represented in it; nor a king the less brittle,
because God is represented in him. They have physicians continually
about them, and therefore sickness, or the worst of sicknesses,
continual fear of it. Are they gods? He that called them so cannot
flatter. They are gods, but sick gods; and God is presented to us under
many human affections, as far as infirmities: God is called angry, and
sorry, and weary, and heavy, but never a sick God; for then he might die
like men, as our gods do. The worst that they could say in reproach and
scorn of the gods of the heathen was, that perchance they were asleep;
but gods that are so sick as that they cannot sleep are in an infirmer
condition. A god, and need a physician? A Jupiter, and need an
Æsculapius? that must have rhubarb to purge his choler lest he be too
angry, and agarick to purge his phlegm lest he be too drowsy; that as
Tertullian says of the Egyptian gods, plants and herbs, that "God was
beholden to man for growing in his garden," so we must say of these
gods, their eternity (an eternity of threescore and ten years) is in the
apothecary's shop, and not in the metaphorical deity. But their deity is
better expressed in their humility than in their height; when abounding
and overflowing, as God, in means of doing good, they descend, as God,
to a communication of their abundances with men according to their
necessities, then they are gods. No man is well that understands not,
that values not his being well; that hath not a cheerfulness and a joy
in it; and whosoever hath this joy hath a desire to communicate, to
propagate that which occasions his happiness and his joy to others; for
every man loves witnesses of his happiness, and the best witnesses are
experimental witnesses; they who have tasted of that in themselves which
makes us happy. It consummates therefore, it perfects the happiness of
kings, to confer, to transfer, honour and riches, and (as they can)
health, upon those that need them.