Dormiet in lucem scorto, postponet honestum
Officium———
Eutrapilus when he would hurt a knave,
Gave him gay clothes and wealth to make him brave:
Because now rich he would quite change his mind,
Keep whores, fly out, set honesty behind.
[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.”