was not therefore the first murderer, but Adam, who
brought in death; whereof he beheld the practice and
example in his own son Abel; and saw that verified in
the experience of another which faith could not per-
suade him in the theory of himself.

Sect. 5.--There is, I think, no man that apprehends
his own miseries less than myself; and no man that so
nearly apprehends another's. I could lose an arm
without a tear, and with few groans, methinks, be
quartered into pieces; yet can I weep most seriously
at a play, and receive with a true passion the counter-
feit griefs of those known and professed impostures. It
is a barbarous part of inhumanity to add unto any
afflicted parties misery, or endeavour to multiply in
any man a passion whose single nature is already above
his patience. This was the greatest affliction of Job,
and those oblique expostulations of his friends a deeper
injury than the down-right blows of the devil. It is
not the tears of our own eyes only, but of our friends
also, that do exhaust the current of our sorrows; which,
falling into many streams, runs more peaceably, and is
contented with a narrower channel. It is an act within
the power of charity, to translate a passion out of one
breast into another, and to divide a sorrow almost out
of itself; for an affliction, like a dimension, may be so
divided as, if not indivisible, at least to become in-
sensible. Now with my friend I desire not to share or
participate, but to engross, his sorrows; that, by mak-
ing them mine own, I may more easily discuss them: