The Victory of Patience, Chapter 16
CHAP. 16. How it increaseth their patience.
13 BEcause the malice of our enemies makes for the increase of our patience, We rejoyce in tribulation, saith Paul, knowing that tribulation bringeth forth patience, Rom. 5.3. My brethren, saith S. Iames, count it exceeding joy when ye fall into divers temptations, knowing that the triall of your faith bringeth forth patience, Iames 1.2, 3. Thus the malice of our enemies doth both prove and improve our patience: see it exemplified in Iob and David, whose practise doth most excellently confirme this point; you know Iob was not so miserable in his afflictions, as happy in his patience, Iob 31.35, 36, 37. And David after he had been so many yeeres trained up in the Schoole of Affliction, and exe…cised with continuall sufferings from innumerable enemies of al sorts, became a wonder of patience to all succeeding Ages: as take but notice of his cariage towards Shimei, and you will say so; when this his impotent Subject cursed and cast stones at him and all his Men of war, called him Murderer, wicked man, &c. he was so far from revenging it, when he might so easily, or suffering others, that you shall heare him make that an argument of his patience which was the exercise of it, Behold, my sonne (saith he) which came forth of my bowels seeketh my life; how much more now may this Benjamite do it, 2 Sam. 16.11. The wickednesse of an Absolon may rob his Father of comfort, but shall helpe to adde to his Fathers goodnesse: …t is the advantage of great crosses, that they swallow up the lesser. One mans sin cannot be excused by anothers, the lesser by the greater: if Absolon be a Traitor, Shimei may not curse and rebell; but the passion conceived from the indignity of a stranger, may be abated by the harder measure of our owne. A weake heart faints with every addition of succeeding trouble, the strong recollects it selfe, and is grown so skilful that it beares off one mischiefe with another: as in the Fable, when the new and old Cart went together, the new made a creaking noise under the loade, and wondred at the silence of the old, which answered, I am accustomed to these burdens, therefore beare them, and am quiet. So, what a degree of patience have some men attained unto? What a load of injuries can some Christians digest, that have beene frequent in sufferings, and long exercised in the Schoole of Affliction? Not that they beare them out of basenesse or cowardlinesse because they dare not revenge, but out of Christian fortitude because they may not; they have so conquered themselves that wrongs cannot conquer them. Nay we reade of some Ethnicks that could say this of themselves. When Alcibiades told Socrates that he could not suffer the frowardnesse and scolding of Zantippe as he did, Socrates answered, but I can, for I am accustomed to it. And we reade, that Aristides after his exile, did not so much as note them that were the cause of his banishment, though he were now advanced above them. Yea Diogenes, rather than want exercise for his patience, would crave almes of dead mens statues; for being demanded why he did so, he answered, That I may learne to take denials from others the more patiently. Now if we can therefore suffer because we have suffered, we have well profited by our afflictions, otherwise not; to shew that there is nothing so hard and difficult but may be attained to by use and custome: give me leave to cleere it by some familiar instances. We know the custome of any hardship (whether it be labour, cold, or the like) makes it easie and familiar: you shall have a common Labourer worke all day, like a Horse, without once sweating or being weary. Let a Scholler or Gentleman but dig one quarter of an houre, you must give him leave to take breath all the day after. The face that is ever open, yea, the eye that is twice as much open as shut, is able perpetually to endure the coldest wind can blow, when as the rest of the parts would complaine of the least blast that is cold. Let him that is next neighbour to the Belfrey tell me, whether ringing doth so molest his silent sleepe now, as formerly. Yea, the fall of the River Nilus which makes a new commer stop his eares, to the naturall inhabitants is not so much as heard. At Milton neere Sittingborne in Kent, is (or lately was) one William Allen a Taylor, that eats betweene 30. and forty graines of Opium every day, the tythe whereof would kill him that is not accustomed thereunto, neither can he sleepe (no not live) without it; he began but with one graine, and so increased the quantity as the operation and quality of it decreased. If any question the truth of this, they need but repaire to the signe of the Rose in Bucklers Bury and be satisfied: but this is nothing, for you have slaves in the Turkish Gallies, that will eat neere an Ounce at a time as if it were bread. Neither, in my judgement, is it lesse rare for men to drink a Pottle or a Gallon of the richest old Canary every day, as is usuall with some of our Sack-drinkers and Goodfellowes, without the least inflammation; it hath no other operation in them then a cup of Six hath with me, or hath had with them in diebus illis.
To conclude, as that Maide which Plinie speakes of, by an accustomary picking Spiders off the Wall and eating them, digested them into nourishment: And as Mithridates by his accustomed eating of poyson, made his body unpoisonable. So the godly, notwithstanding they are by nature as a wilde As…e Colt, as Zophar speakes, Iob 11.22. Yet by their frequent and accustomary suffering of injuries these wilde Asses are made tame, & the ablest to carry burthens of any creature: yea, though they were once as fierce and cruell as Wolves, Leopards, Lions, & Beares, and as mischievous as Aspes, and Cockatrices; yet Christ will so change their natures, partly by his word, and partly by his rod of affliction, that they shall now be as apt to suffer evill as they have been to offer it: What else meanes the Prophet, when he tels us that the Wolfe shall dwell with the Lambe, and the Leopard with the Kid, and the Lion with the Calfe, so that a little childe shall leade them; that the Cow and the Beare, and the Lion and the Bullock, shall eat straw together; that the sucking childe shall play upon the hole of the Aspe, and the wained child shall put his hand upon the Cockatrice hole, Isay 11.6. and so forward. And so you see that according to the ancient proverbiall speech, Vse makes perfectnesse; and that custome is not unfitly called a second nature. Wouldest thou then attaine to an unconquerable patience, and be able to undergoe great trialls hereafter, accustome thy selfe to a silent suffering of thy present and smaller griefes, tongue provocations and the like. If with Milo thou shalt but take up a Calfe, some small crosse, and injoyne thy selfe to carry the like every day a little, in processe of time thou shalt be able to carry an Oxe, the strongest and biggest affliction can come.