not all afflict the same person at the same time. subject at the same time. Thus lie who is poor is not at the same time sick; he who is sick is not publicly ridiculed and laughed at; he who is sorrowful has not to suffer hunger and thirst; he who is persecuted and tormented by one man is not therefore made the object of general execration. A pain in the head or eye does not affect the hand or foot; lameness in the, feet does not cause the chest to suffer; the body may be ill at ease while the mind remains quite vigorous, and so forth. There is always some part in man that remains free from pain. And although a sick person sometimes imagines that he is suffering all over, it still remains true that the same pain which afflicts one member cannot be at the same time in all the others. If the patient is suffering from heat he cannot be affected by cold; if he has a disgust for food he cannot be affected by hunger; he cannot have to-day the same pain that tormented him yesterday.
If it were possible for one man to suffer all together, he would be looked on as the most miserable of men.
But, my dear brethren, imagine a man who has to suffer all possible torments and pains in the highest degree in every member of his body inwardly and outwardly at the same time. Go into the hospitals and pest-houses in which there are hundreds of sick and wounded. Hear how the poor people sigh, and moan, and howl; one on account of pains in the head, another because he cannot bear the violent aching of ear, or eye, or tooth. The one burns with heat, the other shivers with cold; one is tortured by a perpetual pain in the side, another suffers from some gastric disease, a third from chest or heart, a fourth from gout in hands or feet, a fifth from pains in the limbs; others are affected with dropsy, phthisis, lung disease, jaundice, insomnia; others again can neither stand, nor walk, nor sit, nor lie down for pain. Look at the poor wounded; one has broken an arm, the other a leg, a third has a broken head, a fourth a wound in the body, a fifth has been shot through the shoulder, the sixth has his mouth and nose eaten away by cancer and mortification. The doctors stand round with their instruments in their hands; here they burn with hot irons, there they cut into the living flesh with sharp knives; in one case they cut off a hand, in another a foot from the body, etc. On all sides there is wailing and lamentation, and one can hardly witness such a spectacle without fainting. Go still farther in thought, and bring before your minds each and everyone of those torments ever invented by cruel tyrants, who, through hatred and diabolical anger, wished to take vengeance on their enemies, or on the martyrs of Christ. See the terrible racks