[3846]  ------“ut calceus olim
Si pede major erit, subvertet:  si minor, uret.”

“As a shoe too big or too little, one pincheth, the other sets the foot awry,” sed e malis minimum.  If adversity hath killed his thousand, prosperity hath killed his ten thousand:  therefore adversity is to be preferred; [3847]_haec froeno indiget, illa solatio:  illa fallit, haec instruit_:  the one deceives, the other instructs; the one miserably happy, the other happily miserable; and therefore many philosophers have voluntarily sought adversity, and so much commend it in their precepts.  Demetrius, in Seneca, esteemed it a great infelicity, that in his lifetime he had no misfortune, miserum cui nihil unquam accidisset, adversi.  Adversity then is not so heavily to be taken, and we ought not in such cases so much to macerate ourselves:  there is no such odds in poverty and riches.  To conclude in [3848]Hierom’s words, “I will ask our magnificoes that build with marble, and bestow a whole manor on a thread, what difference between them and Paul the Eremite, that bare old man?  They drink in jewels, he in his hand:  he is poor and goes to heaven, they are rich and go to hell.”

MEMB.  IV.
Against Servitude, Loss of Liberty, Imprisonment, Banishment.

Servitude, loss of liberty, imprisonment, are no such miseries as they are held to be:  we are slaves and servants the best of us all:  as we do reverence our masters, so do our masters their superiors:  gentlemen serve nobles, and nobles subordinate to kings, omne sub regno graviore regnum, princes themselves are God’s servants, reges in ipsos imperium est Jovis.  They are subject to their own laws, and as the kings of China endure more than slavish imprisonment, to maintain their state and greatness, they never come abroad.  Alexander was a slave to fear, Caesar of pride, Vespasian to his money (nihil enim refert, rerum sis servus an hominum), [3849] Heliogabalus to his gut, and so of the rest.  Lovers are slaves to their mistresses, rich men to their gold, courtiers generally to lust and ambition, and all slaves to our affections, as Evangelus well discourseth in [3850]Macrobius, and [3851]Seneca the philosopher, assiduam servitutem extremam et ineluctabilem he calls it, a continual slavery, to be so captivated by vices; and who is free?  Why then dost thou repine? Satis est potens, Hierom saith, qui servire non cogitur.  Thou carriest no burdens, thou art no prisoner, no drudge, and thousands want that liberty, those pleasures which thou hast.  Thou art not sick, and what wouldst thou have?  But nitimur in vetitum, we must all eat of the forbidden fruit.  Were we enjoined to go to such and such places, we would not willingly go:  but being barred of our liberty, this alone torments our wandering soul that we may not go.  A citizen of ours, saith [3852]Cardan, was sixty years of age, and had never been forth of the walls of the city of Milan; the prince hearing of it, commanded him not to stir out:  being now forbidden that which all his life he had neglected, he earnestly desired, and being denied, dolore confectus mortem, obiit, he died for grief.