Of Adversity
IT WAS an high speech of Seneca (after the manner of the Stoics), that the good things, which belong to prosperity, are to be wished； but the good things, that belong to adversity, are to be admired. Bona rerum secundarum optabilia； adversarum mirabilia. Certainly if miracles be the command over nature, they appear most in adversity. It is yet a higher speech of his, than the other (much too high for a heathen), It is true greatness, to have in one the frailty of a man, and the security of a God. Vere magnum habere fragilitatem hominis, securitatem Dei. This would have done better in poesy, where transcendences are more allowed. And the poets indeed have been busy with it； for it is in effect the thing, which figured in that strange fiction of the ancient poets, which seemeth not to be without mystery； nay, and to have some approach to the state of a Christian； that Hercules, when he went to unbind Prometheus (by whom human nature is represented), sailed the leng

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