Seeing there be many things that increase vanity, what [is] man the better?
Ver. 11. Seeing there be many things that increase.] Seeing it is in vain to wrestle or wrangle with God, to seek to ward off his blow, to moat up one's self against his fire. Why should vain man contend with his Maker? Why should he beat himself to froth, as the surges of the sea do against the rock? Why should he, like the untamed heifer unaccustomed to the yoke, gall his neck by wriggling? - make his crosses heavier than God makes them, by crossness and impatience? The very heathen could tell him that,
“ Deus crudelius urit,
Quos videt invitos succubuisse sibi. ”
- Tibul. Eleg. 1.
God will have the better of those that contend with him: and his own reason will tell him that it is not fit that God should cast down the bucklers first: and that the deeper a man wades, the more he shall be wet.