First Sentence

"The Custom of former Ages and grieve and lament at the Birth of their Children, and to rejoice and make Festivals at their Burials, is not so much to be wondered at, when we reflect upon the surprizing Varieties of Fortune, and the Inconstancy of that fickle Goddess: And although Riches and Title seem, in the Opinion of the Vulgar, to have placed its Possessors farther from the Reach of her Disasters, she often frowns upon these, and we have many Precedents of Life to convince us, that she sometimes makes it her Pastime to humble the most haughty, rich, and aspiring, from the Possessions they imagined to enjoy with Security, into the most abject and contemned Condition."