sicknesses, or the worst of sicknesses, continual fear of it. Are they gods? He that called them so cannot flatter. They are gods, but sick gods; and God is presented to us under many human affections, as far as infirmities: God is called angry, and sorry, and weary, and heavy, but never a sick God; for then he might die like men, as our gods do. The worst that they could say in reproach and scorn of the gods of the heathen was, that perchance they were asleep; but gods that are so sick as that they cannot sleep, are in an infirmer condition. A god, and need a physician? A Jupiter, and need an sculapius? that must have rhubarb to purge his choler, lest he be too angry, and agarick to purge his phlegm, lest he be too drowsy; that as Tertullian says of the Egyptian gods, plants and herbs, that " God was beholden to man for growing in his garden," so we must say of these gods, their eternity (an eternity of threescore and ten years) is in the apothecary's shop, and not in the metaphorical deity. Jut their deity is better expressed in their humility than in their height; when abounding and overflowing, as God, in means of doing good, they descend, as God, to a communication of their abundances with men, according to their necessities, then they are gods. No man is well that understands not, that values not his being well; that hath not a cheertulness and a joy in it; and whosoever hath this joy, hath a desire to communicate, to propagate that which occasions his happiness and his joy to others; for every man loves witnesses of his happiness, and the best witnesses arc experimental witnesses; they who have tasted of that in themselves which makes us happy: it consummates therefove, it perfects the happiness of kings, to confer, to transfer, honour and riches, and (as they can) health, upon those that need them.
