Affliction makes People Honest and Wise. Every Man Living has his Weak
Side, and no Mortal was ever yet so much at Ease, but his Shoe Wrung him
some where or Other, or he Fancy’d so at least, and Then it did so. The
_Shepherd_ would needs be a _Merchant_; and the _Merchant_, if he had
succeeded, would still have been Hankering after something else. His
Levity was a Fault, and his Miscarriage was a Judgment upon him for’t.
The saving of his Person after the Loss of his Goods was a Providential
Mercy to him; and the bringing of Him home to Himself again, was to
Convince him of His Error, and to shew him, that he was well at First,
if he would have kept so. He was in a State of Ease, Peace, Innocence,
and Safety: And he that will Sacrifice all Those Blessings to a Restless
Appetite, deserves to be Miserable. Our _Shepherd’s_ Case, in short here,
is every Man’s Case that Quits a Moral Certainty for an Uncertainty, and
Leaps from the Honest Bus’ness he was brought up to, into a Trade he has
no Skill in.