The prouerbes of the noble and woorthy souldier Sir Iames Lopez de Mendoza Marques of Santillana with the paraphrase of D. Peter Diaz of Toledo: wherin is contained whatsoeuer is necessarie to the leading of an honest and vertuous life. Translated out of Spanishe by Barnabe Googe.

The Paraphrase.

THis is the onely difference betwixt euerlasting thinges, and transitory things: The euerlasting things, endure for euer: the transitory thinges, as with time: they come, so with time they decay, & there∣fore in the proueth before, the Marques gi∣ueth vs aduice, and exhorteth vs to bee con∣formable to the time & season; And that rea∣son that maketh him so to say, is, that as a thing is in one time wrought & done, so is it in an other time vndone & destroied. For as Solomon in his Eccleastes saith, There is a time to be borne & a time to die, a time to build, & a time to pluck downe: neither ought we as y^e prouerb saith, to be offended, if things fal not out according to our desire, for when it pleaseth Fortune, such things as seeme displeasant vnto vs; shall redound to our commoditie. For the better vnderstan∣ding wherof, we must consider what is the true signification of this word (Fortune) of

which there be many & sundry opinions. For some, those y^t be heathen people, as Boetius in his first booke Of Consolation saith, will needs haue this Fortune to be a Lady, and a great goddesse, vnder whose gouernment and at whose dispositiō, are all the treasures and riches of the world: & farther they say, that shee hath all maner of persons in the, worlde vpon a wheele, & that her condition and nature (for she is a woman) is, neuer to be long of one minde, but somtime of great and honourable personages, to make poore and miserable creatures, & againe of poore & miserable caitiues, to make hye & migh∣tie Princes, stil whirling about her vnsted∣fast wheele, as pleaseth her. Aristotle hath also the like maner of speach in his Booke Of good Fortune, where he affirmeth, that there are diuerse and sundry opinions a∣boute Fortune. But all their opinions are farre differing from our Christian faith. For as Boetius in his firste Booke Of Consolation, And Saint Augustine in the fourth Booke Of the Citie of God, doe vnite, this Fortune & destinie, are no other things, then the prouidence of God, & ther∣fore to speake like a good Christian, that

which the Prouerbe heere saith: When as it pleaseth Fortune, &c. is as much to say, as when it pleaseth the prouidence of God, the thinges that bee hurtfull vnto vs, shall turne to our profit, and such things as are profitable, to our hurt and destruction. Whereof there is a very good example in the holie Scriptures, in the first Booke of Moses, where it is written, that the Chil∣dren of Iacob, for the malice that they bare to Ioseph their brother, threw him in∣to a deepe pitte, and after solde him to cer∣taine Merchants, who solde him to an offi∣cer of King Pharaoes, that vpon the vnfull accusation of his wife, kepte him a long time in Prison, from whence hee was sent for by King Pharao, and after that hee had declared the meaning of his dreame and foreshewed the comming of the deare and the barren yeares, he was made the greatest man aboute him, which was the cause that the patriarch Iacob with all his house escaped the great famine, & came to liue honourably in Aegypt and thus did it please fortune, that is to say, God, that the hurtfull things, that is, the imprisonment of Ioseph, and all the other harmes and mi∣series

that he sustained, should turne to the profite of himself, his father, and his bre∣thren. So likewise doe the things that appeare good and profitable, many times fall out to bee hurtfull and euill vnto vs, as to haue great store of monie, is a profita∣ble thing, and yet it often falleth, that their throates are cut for it, that haue it: and so do∣eth a profitable thing become hurtefull.