“Inasmuch,” says Bishop Reynolds in his commentary upon this passage, “as the dead neither know, nor enjoy any of these worldly blessings; and inasmuch as God gives them to his servants in love, and as comfortable refreshments unto them in the days of their vanity, therefore he exhorteth unto a cheerful fruition of them, while we have time and liberty so to do; that so the many other sorrows and bitterness which they shall meet with in this life, may be mitigated and sweetened unto them. He speaketh not of sensual, epicurean and brutish excess; but of an honest, decent, and cheerful enjoyment of blessings, with thankfulness, and in the fear of God.” “A _merry_ heart” the Bishop tells us might in this text have been rendered a _good_ one; as in other parts of scripture a _sad_ heart is called an _evil_ heart. “It is pleasing unto God,” says the Bishop, “that when thou hast in the fear of his name, and in obedience to his ordinance, laboured, and by his blessing gotten thee thine appointed portion, then thou shouldst, after an honest, cheerful, decent and liberal manner, without further anxiety or solicitousness, enjoy the same. This is the principal boundary of our outward pleasures and delights, still to keep ourselves within such rules of piety and moderation, as that our ways may be pleasing unto God. And this shows us the true way to find sweetness in the creature, and to feel joy in the fruition thereof; namely, when our persons and our ways are pleasing unto God: for piety doth not exclude, but only moderate earthly delights; and so moderate them, that though they be not so excessive as the luxurious and sensual pleasures of foolish epicures, yet they are far more pure, sweet and satisfactory, as having no guilt, no gall, no curse, nor inward sorrow and terrors attending on them.” Farther the Bishop observes, that food and raiment being the substantiall of outward blessings, Solomon has directed unto cheerfulness in the one, and unto decency and comeliness in the other. He hath advised us also to let the head lack no ointment, such perfumes being an expression of joy used in feasts; “the meaning is,” says the Bishop, “that we should lead our lives with as much freeness, cheerfulness and sweet delight, in the liberal use of the good blessings of God, as the quality of our degree, the decency of our condition, and the rules of religious wisdom, and the fear of God do allow us; not sordidly or frowardly denying ourselves the benefit of those good things which the bounty of God hath bestowed upon us.” It is the etiquette of the Chinese Court for the Emperor's physicians to apply the same epithet to his disease as to himself—so they talk of his most high and mighty diarrhœa.