We should consider that, though we are tied to the chains of fate, there are none but rational creatures have the privilege of moving freely, and making necessity a choice; all other things are forced onward, and dragged along to their doom.
A strict belief in fate is the worst of slavery, imposing upon our necks an everlasting lord or tyrant, whom we are to stand in awe of, night and day; on the other hand, there is some comfort that God will be moved by our prayers; but this imports an inexorable necessity.
Concerning fate or destiny, the opinions of those learned men that have written thereof may be safely received had they not thereunto annexed and fastened an inevitable necessity, and made it more general and universally powerful than it is.
As fate is inexorable, and not to be moved either with tears or reproaches an excess of sorrow is as foolish as profuse laughter; while, on the other hand, not to mourn at all is insensibility.
The Stoics held a fatality, and a fixed unalterable course of events; but then they held also that they fell out by a necessity emergent from and inherent in the things themselves, which God himself could not alter.
Others delude their trouble by a graver way of reasoning,that these things are fatal and necessary,it being in vain to be troubled at that which we cannot help.
It was a smart reply that Augustus made to one that ministered this comfort of the fatality of things: this was so far from giving any ease to his mind, that it was the very thing that troubled him.