ll. 13-18. _Must businesse thee from hence remove, &c._ 'It is a good definition of ill-love, that St. Chrysostom gives, that it is _Animae vacantis passio_, a passion of an empty soul, of an idle mind. For fill a man with business, and he hath no room for such love.' _Sermons_ 26. 384.
l. 3. _The Sun itselfe, which makes times, as they passe_: i.e. which makes times and seasons as they pass.
Before the Sunne, the which fram'd daies, was fram'd. _The Second Anniversary_, l. 23.
The construction is somewhat of an anacoluthon, the sun alone being given the predicate, 'Is elder by a year,' which has to be supplied with all the other subjects in the first two lines. Chambers, inadvertently or from some copy of _1633_, reads 'time', and this makes 'they' refer back to 'Kings, favourites', &c. This does not improve the construction.
l. 22. _But wee no more, then all the rest._ The 'wee' of every MS. which I have consulted seems to me certainly the correct reading. The 'now' of all the printed editions is due to the editor of _1633_ imagining that he got thereby the right antithesis to 'then'. But he was too hasty, for the antithesis is between 'then' when we are in heaven, and now while we are 'here upon earth'. In heaven indeed we shall be 'throughly blest', but _all_ in heaven are equally happy, whereas here on earth,
we'are kings and none but we Can be such kings, nor of such subjects be.
The 'none but we' is the extreme antithesis to 'But we no more than all the rest'.
The Scholastic Philosophy held, not indeed that all in heaven are equally blest, but that all are equally content. Basing themselves on the verse, 'In domo Patris mei mansiones multae sunt,' John xiv. 2, they argued that the blessed have in varying degree according to their merit, the essential happiness of Heaven which is the vision of God:
Only who have enjoy'd The sight of God, in fulnesse, can think it; For it is both the object and the wit. This is essential joy, where neither hee Can suffer diminution, nor wee; 'Tis such a full, and such a filling good; Had th'Angells once look'd on him they had stood. _The Second Anniversary_, ll. 140-6 (p. 264).
But though not all equally dowered with the virtue and the wisdom to understand God, all are content, for each is full to his measure, and each is happy in the happiness of the other: 'Solet etiam quaeri an in gaudio dispares sint, sicut in claritate cognitionis differunt. De hoc August. ait in lib. de Civ. Dei: Multae mansiones in una domo erunt, scilicet, variae praemiorum dignitates: sed ubi Deus erit omnia in omnibus, erit etiam in dispari claritate par gaudium; ut quod habebunt singuli, commune sit omnibus, quia etiam gloria capitis omnium erit per vinculum charitatis. Ex his datur intelligi quod par gaudium omnes habebunt, etsi disparem cognitionis claritatem, quia per charitatem quae in singulis erit perfecta, tantum quisque gaudebit de bono alterius, quantum gauderet si in se ipso haberet. Sed si par erit cunctorum gaudium, videtur quod par sit omnium beatitudo; quod constat omnino non esse. Ad quod dici potest quod beatitudo par esset si ita esset par gaudium, ut etiam par esset cognitio; sed quia hoc non erit, non faciet paritas gaudii paritatem beatitudinis. Potest etiam sic accipi par gaudium, ut non referatur paritas ad intensionem affectionis gaudentium, sed ad universitatem rerum de quibus laetabitur: quia de omni re unde gaudebit unus, gaudebunt omnes.' Petri Lombardi ... _Sententiarum_ Lib. IV, Distinct. xlix. 4. Compare Aquinas, _Summa, Supplement._ Quaest. xciii.