Page:King Alfred's Version of the Consolations of Boethius.djvu/216

 the ground; and so the least worthy men are in touch with the middle sort, and these with the best, and the best with God. Though the worst men turn their love towards this world they cannot abide therein, nor come to anything, if they be in no degree fastened to God, no more than the wheel's fellies can be in motion unless they be fastened to the spokes, and the spokes to the axle. The fellies are farthest from the axle, and therefore move least steadily. The nave moves nearest the axle, therefore is its motion the most sure. So do the best men; the nearer to God they set their love, and the more they despise earthly things, the less care is theirs, and the less they reck how Fate veers, or what she brings. So also the nave is ever sound, let the fellies strike on what they may; and nevertheless the nave is in some degree severed from the axle. Thereby thou mayest perceive that the waggon keeps far longer whole the less its distance from the axle, and so also those men are most free from care, both in this present life of tribulation and in the life to come, that are firmly fixed in God. But the farther they are sundered from God, the more sorely are they confounded and afflicted both in mind and in body.

'That which we call Fate is, compared to divine Providence, what reflexion and reason are when measured against perfect knowledge, and as things temporal compared with things eternal, or, again, like the wheel compared with axle, the axle governing all the waggon. So with the forethought of God; it governeth the firmament and the stars, and maketh the earth