Whence can we take a better argument, a clearer demonstration, that all
the greatness of this world is built upon opinion of others and hath in
itself no real being, nor power of subsistence, than from the heart of
man? It is always in action and motion, still busy, still pretending to
do all, to furnish all the powers and faculties with all that they have;
but if an enemy dare rise up against it, it is the soonest endangered,
the soonest defeated of any part. The brain will hold out longer than
it, and the liver longer than that; they will endure a siege; but an
unnatural heat, a rebellious heat, will blow up the heart, like a mine,
in a minute. But howsoever, since the heart hath the birthright and
primogeniture, and that it is nature's eldest son in us, the part which
is first born to life in man, and that the other parts, as younger
brethren, and servants in his family, have a dependance upon it, it is
reason that the principal care be had of it, though it be not the
strongest part, as the eldest is oftentimes not the strongest of the
family. And since the brain, and liver, and heart hold not a triumvirate
in man, a sovereignty equally shed upon them all, for his well-being, as
the four elements do for his very being, but the heart alone is in the
principality, and in the throne, as king, the rest as subjects, though
in eminent place and office, must contribute to that, as children to
their parents, as all persons to all kinds of superiors, though
oftentimes those parents or those superiors be not of stronger parts
than themselves, that serve and obey them that are weaker. Neither doth
this obligation fall upon us, by second dictates of nature, by
consequences and conclusions arising out of nature, or derived from
nature by discourse (as many things bind us even by the law of nature,
and yet not by the primary law of nature; as all laws of propriety in
that which we possess are of the law of nature, which law is, to give
every one his own, and yet in the primary law of nature there was no
propriety, no _meum et tuum_, but an universal community overall; so the
obedience of superiors is of the law of nature, and yet in the primary
law of nature there was no superiority, no magistracy); but this
contribution of assistance of all to the sovereign, of all parts to the
heart, is from the very first dictates of nature, which is, in the first
place, to have care of our own preservation, to look first to
ourselves; for therefore doth the physician intermit the present care of
brain or liver, because there is a possibility that they may subsist,
though there be not a present and a particular care had of them, but
there is no possibility that they can subsist, if the heart perish: and
so, when we seem to begin with others, in such assistances, indeed, we
do begin with ourselves, and we ourselves are principally in our
contemplation; and so all these officious and mutual assistances are but
compliments towards others, and our true end is ourselves. And this is
the reward of the pains of kings; sometimes they need the power of law
to be obeyed; and when they seem to be obeyed voluntarily, they who do
it do it for their own sakes. O how little a thing is all the greatness
of man and through how false glasses doth he make shift to multiply it,
and magnify it to himself! And yet this is also another misery of this
king of man, the heart, which is also applicable to the kings of this
world, great men, that the venom and poison of every pestilential
disease directs itself to the heart, affects that (pernicious
affection), and the malignity of ill men is also directed upon the
greatest and the best; and not only greatness but goodness loses the
vigour of being an antidote or cordial against it. And as the noblest
and most generous cordials that nature or art afford, or can prepare, if
they be often taken and made familiar, become no cordials, nor have any
extraordinary operation, so the greatest cordial of the heart, patience,
if it be much exercised, exalts the venom and the malignity of the
enemy, and the more we suffer the more we are insulted upon. When God
had made this earth of nothing, it was but a little help that he had, to
make other things of this earth: nothing can be nearer nothing than this
earth; and yet how little of this earth is the greatest man! He thinks
he treads upon the earth, that all is under his feet, and the brain
that thinks so is but earth; his highest region, the flesh that covers
that, is but earth, and even the top of that, that wherein so many
Absaloms take so much pride, is but a bush growing upon that turf of
earth. How little of the world is the earth! And yet that is all that
man hath or is. How little of a man is the heart, and yet it is all by
which he is; and this continually subject not only to foreign poisons
conveyed by others, but to intestine poisons bred in ourselves by
pestilential sicknesses. O who, if before he had a being he could have
sense of this misery, would buy a being here upon these conditions?