"Above all things in the world, seek to obey and follow your Mother's will and pleasure; who as she hath been the best wife to me that ever man enjoyed, so can she not fail to shew her self equal to the best Mother, if you deserve not the contrary. If it please God to send her life (though you have nothing else), I shall leave you enough: and on the contrary, if I could leave you ten times more than my self ever had, yet she being taken from you, I should think you but poor. It is not (my Sons) abundance of riches that makes a man happy but a virtuous life; and as they are blessings from God, and cause of happiness to a man that useth them well, so are they cause of misery to most men even in this world. "You may read of divers men, who whiles they lived in private state, deserved the fame of all that knew them; but so soon as prosperous fortune, and higher degrees, had taken possession of them, they seemed not to be the same men, but grew into scorn of all the world. For example _Galba_ whiles he lived in _Spain_ as a private man, and, as it were, banished his Countrey, by a Charge that procured in him great pains and care; he was so well liked, that upon the death of _Nero_ the Emperor, he was Elected in his room but was no sooner in that Place, than he was plucked out of it again by violent death, as a man unfit for such a Charge, by reason of his alteration which that Dignity wrought in him. You may see also in _Otho_ who succeeded him, that all the while of his prosperity, he lived a most dissolute life and odious to all men; but he was no sooner touched with adversity, but he grew to a brave and worthy resolution, making choice rather (not out of desperation) of his own death, than that by his life the Common-weal should be disturbed. And though I cannot but disallow the manner of his death (by reason he knew not God truly) yet is it plain, that adversity brought him to that worthy mind, which contemned life in regard of his Countrey's good; and which was so contrary to that mind that prosperity had misled in him. If then adverse Fortune were so powerful more than prosperity on Pagans and Misbelievers, to procure in them worthy minds; what may we expect the force of it should be in Christians, whose first Captain (not out of necessity, but free choice) made manifest to the world, by his own painful foot steps that there is no other perfect and certain way to true happiness.