your good hap for it rather then to your merit presume not at all of your strength or integâ—ity but resolve with your self that the presumption of ones own power maketh up the moity of Impudency Learn how seasonably you may know your self by confidering your own temperature your humours Knowledge of ones self the inclinations of your mind your judgement your courage Behold the part wherein you are the most sensible and where you give most accesse to your enemy to tempt you Endeavour to fortifie your self that way and the more inability you therein find use the more precaution if you be weak fear nothing but your infirmity and if you be strong fear all yea even your own safety Disposition of ages Sometimes the seasons of age which might seem more to propend to lust are peacefull and calm enough In our bodies there is a spring-tide in winter to become afterward a winter in the spring-tide Youth transported by other purposes or withheld by a serious education is quiet enough and riper years fall into the most stormy part of the tempest It hath happened to divers to converse many years with a contrary sex and never to have felt any touch from which they have entered into a strong confidence that served for a bait in the perill which had spared them in a thousand occasions the more notable to ruine them in one sole accident Flight from occasions is the most assured bulwark Fly second occasions for chastity and who can carry himself well in this affair shall be much stronger by flying then were Conquerours in the bravest battels a retreat in this being Time videre unde possis cadere noli sitri perversâ simplicitate securus Aug. in Psa 50. The attractives of the world were never so urgent Tertul. in exhortatione ad castitatem Majus est vivere cum castitato quà m pro eaâ—mpri Complacence stronger then fire and sword as honourable as victory The world was never so beautifull so gentile nor so squarely disposed Bodies apparell garb civill behaviour complement wit merriment entertainments books songs airs voices playes bals races walkings Banquets Feasts liberty which at first seem innocent enough Conversation and great confidence lastly all we heard all we see all we smell all we taste all we touch in so great effeminacy of life seems to be made to persecute purity I am almost of Tertullians opinion who saith it is more easie to dy for chastity then to live with it Women were found in the world who suffered themselves to be martyred under Tyrants for the defence of chastity who had they long continued among pleasures Court-ships Curiosities and the importunities of men I should fear might have yielded that to a lover which they would have denyed to an Executioner There are a thousand and a thousand creatures infinitely much alienated from voluptuous pleasures They love the dispositions to love but hate the effects thereof and it seems to them they may do as it is read in Romances they will spend their time in the pleasing conversation of a friend and talk of nothing else but they perceive not that men seek them not but for what they should fly that they at length undermine them as a city besieged and desire not to afford them any peace but by the conquest of their honour which they ought more bravely to maintain then life We find an ancient Embleme of a Duke of Burgundy where was to be seen a pillar which two hands Joannes Dux Burgundiae in Simbolis Imperatorum Great cunning of men who go about to surprise chastitie sought to overthrow the one had wings and the other was figured with a Tortoise the word Vtcunque as much as to say which way soever I will have it There are Amourists who take the like course Some strike down the pillars of chastity by the sudden and impetuous violence of great promises offers unexpected presents pressing necessities Others proceed therein with a Tortoises pace with long patience daily assiduity faithfull services and profound submissions They are not all so sottish as to talke at first to an honest woman of her dishonour they onely entreat she will accept of a man who will live or die for her begging nought else but a remembrance They play not the rapt lovers by every moment declaring their fervours their torments and martyrdome They serve they soothe they continually frequent they spie out all occasions they silently practise all the wayes they can to come to the end of their designs and often it happeneth that as drops of water incessantly falling do hollow Rocks so ceaslesse complements soften the most inaccessible rigours What would not a man do who is so base as to waste ten years of service to kisse a womanr hand and suffer for a shamefull servitude that which others could not endure for an Empire It is evident that the persecutions of chastity being so manifest in all objects as I said before if you desire to be faithfull to God and charitably to preserve a precious treasure you must necessarily either live with singular modesty in the world or die out of it if you cannot be saved in it You Ladies who read this it is not required of you Advice to Ladies and Gentlewomen that for the love of chastity you should be reduced to an affected negligence to some ugly habits to fashions rough and barbarous as Roman women were when their husbands fed upon acorns as yet unaccustomed to the use of bread Some neatnesse some quaint trims must of necessity be admitted in a woman which seems to be bound with her body and is the cause why the wisest and most modest among them do not notwithstanding renounce civil decorum you must walk and converse modestly within your self remembring what the Apostle saith That your apparel alone 1 Tim. 8. Quod decet mulieres promittentes pietatem should make you be known for Ladies who make profession of piety Whom would you be thought to be in the day of judgement Would you be there accounted Christians when you have all the signs about you of women the most worldly that ever lived among Infidels To what purpose are those garments so pompous those stuffes so costly those guizes so sought after those colours so fantastick those jewels so sumptuous that painting so shamelesse those curls so extravagant those braveries those flies those patches and those robbers unlesse it be to cut the throat of chastity Is it not a reproach to Christianity to say that an infinite quantity of Hospitals might be founded out of the superfluities which so many Ladies unprofitably waste about their bodies Is is not a point of cruelty that there are so many lazars who breathe out the remnant of their dayes laid upon straw where they are onely covered with the putrefaction of their ulcers whiles there are bodies who drag at their heels the spoil of Elements and riches of the Universe to prank
unfold according to the succession of Ages the Elogies of great men who in the practice of the world flourished in all piety to cast confusion upon the foreheads of such who being heirs of their bloud and fortunes alienate themselves so far from their merit Yet cannot I absolutely promise any thing First because the exercise of preaching and other ministeries afford me little leisure to write and although I might have some time for this purpose yet have I some other labours upon the holy Scripture of a longer task which would require their season Secondly I see many worthy men who much more ably can perform it than my self my talent is small and my pen is slow it can hasten nothing I must ponder my works before I publish them though very imperfect They ever seem to me too soon to take flight and light I would as it were perpetually hold them by the wings Briefly it is no small labour to find so many Saints in Courts You know the Philosopher who searched for men with a candle at noon-tide and had much ado to find any How much more difficult think you is it to meet with Saints especially in the decrepitness of this Age wherein there is little vigour and many maladies If you require books of me I say give me Saints although verily I rather should endeavour to engrave sanctity in my manners than writings The time will come when books shall be gnawn by moths on earth and works in Heaven esteemed LAUS DEO THE HOLY COURT THE SECOND TOME TREATING OF The PRELATE The SOULDIER The STATES-MAN The LADIE Written in French by NICHOLAS CAUSSIN of the S. of JESUS Translated into English by Sr. T. H. DEUS EST NOBIS SOL ET SCUTUM LONDON Printed by WILLIAM BENTLEY and are to be sold by John Williams at the Crown in St. Pauls Church-yard 1650. To the RIGHT HONOURABLE EDWARD D'SACKVILE Earl of DORSET Baron of BUCKHURST Lord Chamberlain to the Queens Majestie Knight of the Noble Order of the Garter and of his Majesties most Honourable PRIVIE-COUNCEL RIGHT HONOURABLE THe eminent and well deserved place your Honor holds in the Court of her Majesty to whose gracious favour the first part of my Work was heretofore humbly consecrated emboldens me in the adventure of this present address to your Honour nor shall there I hope any notable disproportion appear to the eyes of the judicious that I thus purposely select your Honour to wait on her HIGHNES in a printed Dedication who at Court in so near a degree daily attend on her Sacred person The great and general applause with which France hath entertained the whole Work in the original gave encouragement to my pen to continue that first labour in the translation of this Second piece Here may be seen the Court of a great and glorious Prince standing conspicuous to all eyes like a goodly fabrick raised on four fundamental columns two of which the Souldier and the Sates-man may not improperly seem to reflect on your Honour The first when in the fair occasions of his Majesties fit employments his just reason shall at any time call you forth into action The second in the present and frequent use he hath of your well matured counsels Both which by masculine courage and sober wisdom aptly personated in CONSANTINE and BOETIUS are here presented to the life as strong patterns for imitation It is your Honours patronage that thus brings them with the rest into the fruition of English air and me by this opportunity into the grateful acknowledgement of many favours received from your Honour which since I cannot make known by more real demonstrations I offer this poor endeavour to supply the plentifull desires of him who resolves to persist The humble devoted servant of your Honour T. H. TO THE WISDOM of GOD INCARNATE ETernal WISDOM Supream INTELLIGENCE behold me prostrate before the abyss of your great and Divine lights to offer up the homage of my person and book acknowledging the nothing both of the one and other and protesting to have neither spirit nor pen which is not of You and for You who are the source of good thoughts and accomplishment of all praise-worthy discourses The Design and Order of this BOOK WE have to speak properly but two great Books Heaven and the Bible which shall never perish The rest bear some sway and have some lasting among men yet in conclusion we find their ends but the most part of those which are written in these days fall into the world as drops of rayn into the sea of which the Ocean neither feeleth the approach nor departure I exposed my first Tome of the HOLY COURT amidst such a throng of Writers as it were with this conceit thinking I carried a little dew into a great River and that when I had spoken some truths as it were passing along I should in my birth bury my self in the tomb of so many volumns which is excusable by the law of necessity and honourable for the multitude and quality of those which are there to be found Notwithstanding I see that God who guideth our lives and pens hath been pleased this work should gain some estimation and that as it hath exceeded the merits of its Authour so hath it surmounted his hope exposing it self with some fruit and comfort by an endeavour which I shall never think ill employed This hath again put the pen into my hand to continue what I had begun whereunto such Honourable personages have perswaded me with motives so reasonable that having small ability to undertake a second labour I had likewise less power to refuse it Such as complain my pen hath not soon enough satisfied their desires must remember that though tardiness be a mother somewhat unpleasing yet are not the children therefore deformed The production of good Books should not resemble that of certain birds which according to the saying of an Ancient issue from their mothers before they are born Symposius but we must a long time form and foment them in our minds that they may appear in publick for it is a very poor business by precipitation to be able to hope no other thing but through haste to fail that you may repent at leisure I rather fear the reproach of rashness than delay because in this mortal state wherein we live all our perfectest actions are no other than gross essays of perfection This may be spoken without extenuating the worth of some celestial wits who make expedition and goodness walk hand in hand it being absurd that those who are unable to imitate them should boast infirmities opposite to their abilities For my part I content my self to afford good liking and admiration to the Works of others reserving nothing else but labour for mine own And although notwithstanding my endeavour I never find sufficient satisfaction in this Book to please those Readers whom I have found so propitious yet doubt not but I have in some sort
become powerfull in the minds of subjects by strong hand whereas such as are of race noble and illustrious cannot have so few other parts but that they may easily enter into hearts as into a house which the virtue of Ancestours hath beforehand wholly purchased for them And though this seem expedient in all places yet is it much more necessary in a State where is a great number of noble men and generous spirits and where every one thinks himself sufficient enough to perform that which another doth Presumption equalleth them all in ability at the least according to their imaginations were it not that the uncontrolable supereminencie of houses makes them yield to reason And although base nobility be very shamefull yet is it much more tolerable than a servile spirit which hath power in its hands without any moderation There are four things saith the Wise-man which cause earth-quakes here below A servant imperious Proverâ— 30. a rich fool a woman scornfull when she is married and a maid-servant become the heir of her Mistress that is saith he the fourth thing which the world cannot endure Education maketh manners and every one is readily that which he hath learned in youth were it not that through a great strength of courage ill inclinations are resisted Boetius who in his excellent Nobility was endowed with so sweet a temper of spirit seemed to be created of God to govern men On the other part his family which was rich and powerfull gave also much increase to his command as that which alienated him from the corruptions that easily fasten on a necessitous fortune A man who feareth poverty is ever to be feared and a rich innocent cannot meet with any thing more dangerous than a hungry judge Saint Thomas hath said very well that a poverty Lib. 4. cap. 15. de rogim Princip virtuous and free from covetousness is an admirable quality for a States-man but where shall we now adays find such a poverty in a time when riot is so exorbitant that the greatest houses are therewith impeached The innocent riches of our great Consul fell out to be much to the purpose so that they might be employed for aid of the poor in a time which happened in one of the sickliest Ages of the world ruined by so many incursions of Barbarians not naming the other scourges which then fought against the sins of men The second SECTION The eminent wisdom and learning of Boetius EXperience the wisest Mistress of the world hath sometimes caused the saying of Plato to be questioned who thought Common-wealths happy when they fell into the hands of Philosophers or of men who sought to become Philosophers For in effect it is observed that those so knowing men meet not always with the bent of common understanding having their spirits more estranged from civil life They please themselves with great Ideaes as if they conversed in the Common-wealth of Plato with demy-gods not at all yielding to infirmities of nature And although they use some endeavour to render themselves conversable yet doth the sweetness of repose inebriate and withdraw them from affairs but if they force themselves to attend them noise amazeth them diversitie of humours not always suitable to their understanding distasteth them labour somewhat painfull overwhelmeth them and the heap of so many incident occasions confoundeth them Adde hereunto that there is much malice in the manners of men not found in books and that their actions being very innocent when they come to measure others by their own level they find themselves deceived Besides the sedentary and retired life spent in the entertainment of their books rendereth them very timorous and softeneth their brow which should always be as it were of brass to endure the shock of strong impudencies which may insinuate themselves into the corruptions of the times This may be confirmed by the example of Theodates King of the Goths who with all the Philosophy of Plato wherein he was exceedingly studious very ill mannaged his affairs As also by Michael the Emperour surnamed of the Grecians Parapanicius as who would say The Schollar for he perpetually had table-books and pens in his hand to compose Orations Verses and Histories resigning the whole government of his affairs to an Eunuch named Nicephorus who through his insatiable avarice drew much hatred upon the head of this Emperour I verily affirm if you take learning in these excesses one may very well say that it would not onely become unprofitable but also dangerous to principality It is not my intention to prove learned men are capable of the mannage of great affairs for the onely consideration of the advantage they have in letters for then Governours of Provinces were to be taken out of the Regencies of schools but I say that sciences well mannaged adde a marvellous lustre to one in government For first they vindicate him from stupidity and a savage life which maketh a man without sight or knowledge of virtue to be in a State as was Poliphemus made blind by Ulysses in his den Besides they cleanse refine and store the soul made to know great and divine lights Afterwards they open the understanding by the reading of so many excellent books and even unloose the tongue which is an instrument very necessary to mannage hearts Finally they make a man more mild civil and courteous and I could say also more awfull and worthy of credit For if some unhappy Princes were produced who being unfurnished of other talents have made ill use of letters by abusing them through want of judgement as one may all the best things in the world this nothing at all in substance lesseneth the truth of our proposition since we may oppose against them a large list of Law-makers Princes and Governours who have exceedingly well made use of the knowledge of learning For if we make account of the policie of God which is ever the most assured know we not that he having chosen Moses to constitute him the Governour of so great a State was willing he might have a good tast of all the sciences then in request among the Aegyptians And Philo saith that he there learned Arithmetick Geometrie Musick and all the greatest secrets of their Philosophie contained in their Hieroglyphicks Know we not that Solomon had a heart as large as the sea wherein God lodged so many knowledges of things both divine and humane that he penetrated whatsoever the understanding of man enlightened with rays from God might comprehend Are we so little versed in History that we cannot reckon up the names of all the greatest Princes who have been very learned as Alexander Julius Caesar Augustus Adrian Antoninus Constantine Theodosius Gratian Charlemaigne Alphonsus yea even Solyman the great Turk What a could of witnesses should we have did we now collect all the names and histories of learned States-men For if letters give ornament to such as are wholly eminent in military profession by a much stronger
love not to please any thing so much as their own sensuality and in these loose companies take fire and wind on all sides to the great prejudice of their reputation I leave it my Daughters to the repose of your recollected cogitations to think what Epitaph may be bestowed upon gentlewomen that lead such a life but that they have employed themselves in the customary actions of a beast nay which a beast daily performs better than they with this disparitie that they have been more inventive to season their sin Behold what honest women commonly most condemn in the carriage of the vitious and imperfect which I have abbreviated in few words being unwilling to enlarge any further upon the other imperfections whereof I have no experience having ordinarily so much entertainment with my books and employments that I have no leisure to study on the manners of this sex The fourth SECTION The tenth Order of Women full of Wisdom and Virtue THe young Emperour took great pleasure to hear the Empress his mother speak so freely concerning the nature of women and he prayed her to perform her promise touching the characters which might serve him in the choice he meant to make whereupon she replied The last and most excellent Order of women is that which heretofore was called the order of Bees women truly divine who seem to have been made upon Celestial globes by the hands of Angels so sweet is their nature their virtue so rare and price so unvaluable They are in houses as the sun in his Orb (a) (a) (a) Sicut sol oriens in mundo in altissimis Dei Eccles 26. and he that would equal their worth should he draw out all mettals and precious stones which the earth hideth in its veins would rather find insufficiency in his purpose than want of merit in his object Bees as said an (b) (b) (b) Nihil habet mortale nisi quod moritur apis nullus nisi artifex nascitur Quintil. Ancient having nothing mortal in them but death they perform actions worthy of immortality Bees are labourers from the day of their birth and it seemeth these are framed for the practice of virtues from their cradle Bees have their little wings these meditation and action Those have a sting these a point of vigour which is the instrument of all perfections Those live under a King and these consecrate themselves to the obedience of Laws both divine and humane Those are great enemies of ordure and these live in the delights of chastity Those travel incessantly and lose not a day unless heaven enforce it (c) (c) (c) Nullus cum per coelum licuit â—lio periit dies Plin. l. 1. these are perpetually in the exercise of good works and loose no time but to give it unto God Those never stay upon withered flowers and these set not their hearts upon any fading things which are under the Moon Those have their hives rubbed with bitter herbs to defend them from venemous creatures and these use mortification of flesh against the poison of pleasures Those make themselves counterpoises with certain little stones to flie the better and these make a counter-ballance with humility to soar the higher Those make honey which serves for nourishment and medicine these have ever charity in their hands to cure the wounds and acerbities of the life of the poor succouring their want by their liberalities Those make the Altars to shine by the help of wax which they produce these adorn and enrich all the Church with the travel of their hands or wealth of their Cabinets What would you to be more noble or divine Why then are you amazed if the Scripture (d) (d) (d) Prov. 19. Domus divitiae dantur à parentibus à Domino autem propriè uxor prudens hath said That houses and riches came from parents but a wise and a virtuous wife from the hand of God The fifth SECTION A brief Table of the excellent qualities of a Ladie and first of true Devotion THe Gentle-women that stood round about the Empress expressed much earnestness to know in few words the excellent qualities of a woman truly virtuous and Euphrosina not to frustrate their desire proceeded in these terms A Ladie well accomplished is like a star with five rays which are the five virtues of Devotion Modestie Chastitie Discretion and Charitie (a) (a) (a) These are the qualities which the Scripture giveth her in divers places Devotion formeth the interiour Modestie makes it appear in the exteriour with a requisite comeliness Chastitie perfecteth both the one and the other Discretion applieth it to the direction of others and Charitie crowneth all her actions (b) (b) (b) The first title of a woman which S. Paul observeth in the Epistle to Titus c. 2. when he calleth her by a Greek word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as one would say suitable to holy things A woman without Devotion were she composed as a Pandora and had she all the beauties which the heart can desire and the imaginations feign is a Bee without a sting which will make neither honey nor wax is a savage beast that nature hath lodged in a painted house is a case covered with precious stones to preserve a dung-hill is a Michol who appeared outwardly with a Crown and lived inwardly a slave to her passions is a piece of flesh already half rotten having not so much as one grain of salt in it Corruption will creep into her life disorder into her manners infamie into her reputation and despair into her salvation Devotion is a virtue hereditary to our sex it is the first portion which God hath granted us it is the title which the Church hath given us it is the most eminent mark of our Nobility If we loose this ornament I cannot see why we should pretend to live having renounced the honour of Christianity But to tell you my opinion Devotion being no other thing but a prompt and vigorous affection which disposeth us to all that which concerneth the service of God it seemeth to me that many among us have great illusions in this point and oftentimes court a fantasie thinking to entertain a truth There are of those who by over-much embracing Altars have overthrown them (c) (c) (c) Altaris dum venerantur evertunt S. Zeno hom de patientia and broken the Idol of Dagon to set their own judgement up in the place thereof I have seen very many who have a slight devotion of apish tricks which onely consisteth in a certain light and childish imitation of countenances and gestures having not any solidity in the interiour For my part I imagine when I think upon such apparences of piety without effect that if apes had a little studied our countenances they would much exceed us in Strabo lib. 1. Aelian de animal l. 7. this point For they are great and mischievous imitatours of all they see witness those who washed their
books of the Trinity S. Thomas of Canterbury rested between the arms of France whilest Henry of England thundered sentences and proscriptions of death against him If one countrey become a step-mother another proves a Mother and the Divine Providence the worlds great Harbinger ever findeth some petty work to entertain its elected But if there be no means to escape and that servitudes must be undergone prisons and chains and that scaffolds must be bloudied to satisfie the revenge of an enemy Then is the time when a spirit well habituated in the continuall exercises of virtue entreth into the centre of the soul and beholdeth as from a high fortresse the vicissitude of humane things which here below have in them nothing immovable but their proper unstedfastnesse Then it is when despising these veils of body composed of our inferiour elements it now entereth in thought into the region of Intelligencies then it is when it accosteth the legions of so many Martyrs who on their bodies have received as many wounds as they had members and have moistned the sacred palms of their victories in the effusion of their bloud All which is humane yieldeth to the Tyranny of persecutours but the immortall spirit makes it self a large way all bordered with lawrels in the Temple of glory and reputation and like to the dove of the Prophet whose wings were of silver taketh a high and exalted flight to declare to all ages the innocency of a great courage and to make its relicks survive in Cabinets and in the memory of all good men How many have we seen die on Scaffolds who with the sweetnesse of their countenances terrified the most terrible aspects of executioners They spake they did they suffered they ordered their deaths as matter of Triumph they comforted others in their suffering at a time when they had much to do not to complain themselves They acted together all the parts of wisdome and came off so well in every one as if they onely had undertaken this one It was a great thing for them to do but to do it so exactly is that which for ever makes them the more admirable and it was a matter incredible that speaking so well they yet suffered better in an occasion where words have no credit works no time violence no relaxation nor enmity Compassion The third Treatise Of DESIRE § 1. Whether we should desire any thing in the world The Nature the Diversity and description of Desire THe Sages make a question whether it be a thing to be wished to have no Desire And there are of them who Whether it be good to have no desire think that to live happy and contented we must banish all desires For they are amusements which perpetually entertain us with the time to come which put us on the Rack and burn us by our proper thoughts Desires are the Echoes of our loves which mock us and counterfeit certain voices essences and personages which ordinarily are made of nought else but wind But now say others to have no desires is to have no soul no sense no reason it is to be a fly not a man The Seraphins in Isaiah stand by Gods side yet cease not to clap their wings to signifie unto us there is no soul so perfect and contented which hath not the heart still excited with some generous desire Trees are purified by the winds agitation rivers are cleansed and purged in their perpetuall currents and the heart by desires If we would have no desires we must not talk any more of eating and drinking we must no longer have this young lover sigh after his beloved we must not then admit learned men to make love to wisdome That wrastlers burn with affection of prizes due to their valour and that the souldier covers himself with his wounds to embellish his garlands all ought to be indifferent to us and that is the way quickly to runne into the nature of rocks and stones We must here make a notable distinction of desires insomuch some are naturall given by God to man for the preservation of himself Others are artificiall which arising out of an exorbitant will are nothing but floud and ebb but agitations and tempests Desires are like number one cannot name any so great but that it is capable of addition Hence it proceedeth that the world is replenished The world replenished with desiring souls Psal 50 v. 12. Tabescere fecisti animam meam alia versio liquescere fecisti ut timeam desiderium ejus Eos felicitas ingrata subterfluit ut semper pleni spei vacui commodorum praesentibus caâ—eant dum furura prospectant In Psal 92. Richardâ—â— de S. Victore in Psal 80. An excellent picture of desire with desiring and suffering souls and that there is not almost any one who is not in expectation and breathes not the air of the Region of desires The most part of men resemble the moth which gnaws a garment and in gnawing eateth its own house For by the eagernesse of desiring the future they lose all the pleasure of the present and demolish their fortune by their greedinesse to raise it That is it which the Panegyrick wittily expressed pronounced before Constantine the sonne Felicity glideth by us as the water which streameth along under bridges when still full of hope we rest unfurnished of contentments Desiring hearts saith S Augustine are as those great-bellied women to whom the eternall word hath denounced a Curse in the Gospel All the world would be but a morsell in the mouth of mans heart saith Richardus de sancto Victore since its wishes are infinite and that it is evident that in Infinity what part soever you assigne you are still at the beginning If you desire that I make you a picture of the nature and perquisits of Desire I will tell you it is a strange countrey whereunto the prodigall Child sailed when he forsook his fathers house to undertake a banishment a Country where corn is still in grasse vines in the bud trees perpetually in blossome and birds alwayes in the shell You neither see corn fruit nor any thing fully shaped all is there onely in expectation It is a Countrey full of figures phantasmes illusions and hopes which are dreames without sleep a Countrey where the inhabitants are never without feavers one is no sooner gone but another cometh into its place There dwelleth Covetousnesse a great woman meagre lean starven having round about her a huge swarm of winged boyes of which some are altogether languishing others cast her a thousand smiles as she passeth along upon her self she hath an infinite number of horsleeches which suck upon her to the marrow Time looketh on her afarre off and never cometh near her shewing her an enchanted looking-glasse wherein she seeth a thousand and a thousand false colours which amuse her and when she hath sported enough she hath nothing to dinner but smoke Behold the table of Covetousnesse grounded upon The
little corner of the earth in which I am buried alive I have that hope that his Mercy will not come to me to go beyond me and to leave me to die in this place He knoweth the time in which he will relieve those whom he pleaseth and I must leave that to his Dispensation onely I shall endeavour not to render my self unworthy of his Benefits and I will provide in some sort that his Goodnesse shall not blush to have made its approaches to me How happy O Cesar is your Clemency under whom the Banished do live more contented then Kings did heretofore under your Predecessour Behold here the finest Complement that ever proceeded from the mouth of man and he who well observes it will find nothing of sordid flattery in it And that the Reign of Claudius compared to that of Caligula doth go so farre beyond it as silver surpasseth lead Yet for all those fair words Claudius did nothing for him as long as Messalina did manage the heighth of the Affairs and till after his Polybius who suffered himself to sink into that infamy as to be The revolution at Court and the return of the banished numbred in the List of the Adulterers with the Emperesse was disgraced and condemned to death not long after which this prostituted Woman having wearied both heaven and earth with her filthinesse did incense her husbands Patience into a Rage who caused her to passe under the edge of the sword Agrippina widow to Domitius the father of Nero returned then to the Court having absented her self long from it by reason of the misfortune of her sister Julia she knew so well to cajole the Emperour that he espoused her as I have mentioned before The first action she did and for which she was praised by all the world was her revoking of Seneca to Rome from the Isle of Corsica immediately afterwards she committed the charge of her son Nero into his hands who was then eleven years of age and finding him to be a man of a choice spirit she took a resolution to make one day use of his service in the management of Seneca returns into high repute the affairs of State To speak sincerely of the manners of Seneca he had a great and a gallant soul and dispositions to a The manners of Seneca high virtue he was neither guilefull nor wilfull nor malicious nor cruel nor voluptuous and I do strongly believe that of a Gentleman he was the best man of that Age. Also Cornelius Tacitus who concealeth no evil that he knows and oftentimes doth divine on that of the which he is not throughly informed doth never speak of Seneca but with honour as a wise and sober man and moderate in his passions And Saint Hierome himself doth witnesse that he was a most continent person which may suffice to disabuse those who suffer themselves to be amazed with the Rapsodies of Dion Without all doubt he had something in his soul as religious as it was great which did not contentent it self with words but did proceed to actions And this did easily appear in his youth for when so many gentlemen of Rome did resort to the Universities of the Philosophers some for the wantonnesse of sporr others to see fashions others to carry away some fine sentence in their table-Table-book and by that means to get some esteem in conversation Seneca addressed himself unto them to learn and to practise virtue When he intended to speak of Riches of Solitude of Chastity of Sobriety he found his heart inflamed and he would have lived altogether a retired life if the great qualities wherewith God had indued him had not imbarked him in the Affairs of the Court. It is a wonder that amongst so great a confluence at the Court he alwayes observed that austere life which he practised in his infancy He did never eat of any delicacies which do serve onely to flatter the appetite and did content himself with the most simple viands He never drank any wine he used altogether cold baths he did not care for perfumes he oftentimes would lie on the ground upon a poor matter as where no print of his body was to be seen so hard it was He also sometimes did abstain from food and he found it good for him and all his life time he had practised it if his father had not expresly commanded him to the contrary because in the Reign of Tyberius Epist 108. there was a sect of strangers condemned at Rome who made a profession of certain Abstinences Some are of opinion that he did speak of Christians but they were neither known nor persecuted under the Emperour Tyberius For the rest all his Train were carried in one caroach which oftentimes was out of order and instead of lovely Pages and Minions he was served by men onely and small was the retinue that attended on him He received all things that were given him with facility and complained not of any thing He took no offence at the reports and slanders of men and pardoned many other inconveniencies he had an honest heart and full of love to those to whom he professed love he was tender of compassion on the behalf of the poor and a hater of covetousnesse After he had satisfied the Affairs of the Empire he took no pleasures at all but in Contemplation and Study Books being unto him as necessary as his bread His table was moderate his discourse affable his life innocent and his conversation most attractive Amongst other things he would be angry with himself for not having professed Virtue openly enough and for reflecting his thoughts on the considerations of the world and in modesty he would say that he aspired alwayes to the heighth of Virtue and neverthelesse he still found himself to be in the centre of Vices Those who condemne him without knowing what he was would think that they themselves did great penance if they should live after the manner of Seneca He was with Nero five or six years before he was made Emperour and formed his Infancy with excellent Instructions in the mean time Agrippina did the fatall act as I have spoken and poisoned Claudius her husband to devolve the Empire on her son who was elected by the generall consent of all the States It is too true that Seneca found himself overcharged with joy at so great a change and at that time a little forgat the severity of a Philosopher when he composed a railing Book on the death of Claudius which he called Apocolocynthosis as if he should have said Divinity Seneca made a Libel against Claudius acquired by the means of a Drug alluding to that he was numbred in the catalogue of the Gods being preferred to heaven by poyson Some believe that he composed that Book as well to revenge himself for the death of his dear Benefactour Julia and for the affliction of his long banishment as to tejoyce his Scholar Nero who took great pleasure
THE HOLY COURT IN FIVE TOMES The FIRST Treating of MOTIVES Which should excite men of Qualitie to CHRISTIAN PERFECTION The SECOND Of the PRELATE SOULDIER STATES-MAN and LADIE The THIRD Of MAXIMS of CHRISTIANITIE AGAINST PROPHANESSE Divided into Three Parts viz. DIVINITIE GOVERNMENT OF THIS LIFE STATE OF THE OTHER WORLD The FOURTH Containing the Command of REASON over the PASSIONS The FIFTH Now first published in English and much augmented according to the last Edition of the AUTHOUR Containing the LIVES of the most Famous and Illustrious COURTIERS taken both out of the OLD and NEW TESTAMENT and other Modern Authours Written in French by NICHOLAS CAUSSIN S. J. Translated into English by Sr. T. H. and others LONDON Printed by WILLIAM BENTLEY and are to be sold by JOHN WILLIAMS in Pauls Church-yard MDCL THE HOLY COURT DEUS EST NOBIS SOL ET SCUTUM Caeca Cupido ruit caecusque Cupido Via Regia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 THE HOLY COVRT dixi Dij estis et filij excelsi omnes 〈…〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈…〉 Solomon ex ad perfectum Vsque perduxit Reg. 3. G. G. sculp To the MOST EXCELLENT MAJESTY OF HENRIETTE-MARIA QUEEN OF GREAT BRITTAIN A COURT adorned with virtue and sanctified with pietie is here most EXCELLENT QUEEN to your view presented which having once already in pure and Native colours received light and life from the bright eye of your Royal BROTHER would gladly at this time in a harsher language and ruder garment adventure your gracious acceptance The subject is serious the discourse usefull and proper for those who in Court so serve Princes that they neglect not an humble acknowledgement to a more transcendent Greatness It hath pleased GOD as a singular favour to this Kingdom to affoard us in your MAjESTIE a pious Queen who exemplarly maketh good what diffusedly is here handled Let then lesser lights borrow beams of radiance from your greater Orbs and persist You Glorious Example of virtue to illuminate and heat our Northern Clime with celestiall ardours Adde to earthly Crowns heavenly Diadems of Piety Here shall a HOLY COURT be found fairly delineated nor can I see how it will be in the power of persons of best eminence to plead ignorance and pretend inability they having such a Book to direct them and such a Queen to follow Lead then with alacritie most Sacred MAJESTIE and may propitious Heaven so prosper your holy desires that the Greatest may have matter to imitate and the whole Nation to admire TO THE KING OF FRANCE SIR THis Treatise of the Holiness of Courts before it be published comes forth to behold the great and divine lights wherewith God hath environed your Majestie whom he hath chosen out to sanctifie the COURT by means of two reflections which are the Example of your virtues and the Authority of your Laws As for example You supply as much as in a Prince may be desired who hath brought innocency into the Throne of Majestie as an earnest-pennie of Royaltie and whitened the very Flower-de-luces by the puritie of your heart and hands This argument in my opinion should powerfully operate in the hearts of French-men For it would be a disorder in Nature to see bad subjects under a good Prince to plant vice in the Kingdom of Virtue and to have a bodie of morter and feet of clay affixed to a head of Gold It is fit impudence should be extreamly shameless not to blush when the sparkling lustre of a Crown casteth into the eyes the glimmering flashes of so great a Pietie Where example cannot reach Kings have Laws which are given them from Heaven as hands of gold and iron to recompence merits and chastise crimes And as your Majestie SIR from your most tender years hath shewed a singular propension to the detestation of Impietie and maintenance of Justice that causeth me to say Your Majestie hath great means to make the COURT essentially holy which the disabilitie of my pen cannot express but on paper It is a work worthy of a Christian King who standeth in the midst of Kings and Nations as heretofore the statue of the Sun in the midst of publick passages Royal hands cannot be better employed than to erect the Tropheys of Sanctity That is it which all the first have done CONSTANTINE in the Roman Empire CLODOVAEUS in France RICAREDUS in Spain ETHELBERT in England CANUTUS in Denmark WENCESLAUS in Poland All those who have taken that way have been glorious in the memory of men whilest others that have prepared Altars and Tables to Fortune as saith the Prophet Isaiah erecting Monarchie on humane Maxims have built on the quick-sands of imaginary greatness which hath served them to no other purpose but to measure their fall Vice and Voluptuousness cannot immortalize men since they have nothing lasting in them but the sorrow of their infancie and the infamie of their name All the greatness and happiness of a Prince is to make in his virtues a visible image of invisible Divinitie then to imprint the same on his subjects as the Sun doth his brightness on the Rain bowe SIR Your Majestie knoweth it by proper experience God hath made you to read the decrees of good success written as it were with the rayes of your pietie By how much the more you are affected to the service of the great Master so much the more the good success of affairs hath followed your desires You have seen your battels end in bays and the thorns of your travels to grow all up into Crowns And as we are ever in this world to merit so we ought to hope that so many worthy acts will also with time take their just increase and that you shall sow new virtues on earth to reap felicities in Heaven Lastly that he who hath given you the enterance of Solomon into the Kingdom will grant you the exit of David This is the vow which offereth to God SIR Of Your MAJESTY The most humble most faithfull and obedient Subject N. CAUSSIN TO THF NOBILITIE OF FRANCE SIRS THis Work as it is composed for your sakes offereth it self to your hands without bearing any other ornament on the brow but the reflection of Truth any other recommendation than the worth of the subject It is not the abundant store of sanctity in the Courts of our Age which maketh this stiled the HOLY COURT but this Frontis-piece onely carrieth the name because this Book beareth the model which verily with more ease is moulded on paper than printed on the manners of men Yet we may affirm that God who draweth the sons of Abraham from the midst of flints and rocks doth in all places reserve Saints for himself and he that will consider it well shall find that in all times the Courts of zealous Princes have had their Martyrs their Confessours their Virgins and Hermits I have a purpose when my leisure will permit to divulge the lives of Kings Princes Lords men of state and likewise also of
Queens Princesses and Ladies who in the course of the world have flourished in much sanctity beginning from the Court of David and then concluding in our Age to the end the multitude of examples may place the Sun in full splendour before their eyes who take the greatness of their condition for pretext of their remisness For the present because Reason should carry the torch before History I will satisfie my self with publishing this Christian Institution which treateth of the MOTIVES and OBSTACLES men of Qualitie have to Perfection with the practise of virtues most suitable to their condition the whole attended by two books of Histories that very amply contain the good and evil of Courts I consecrate this small labour at the feet of the Church among so many worthy Writers which make her wholly radiant in gold not unlike that Bird which as the Kings of Asia contributed great treasure to the building of a Temple she having no other wealth went thither to present her Feathers It remaineth SIRS that you make the COURT holy and you shall sanctifie the world your examples may do much therein when you shall advance the standard of piety a plentifull Train will follow Behold how all those that have framed their fortune upon vice have built on abysses they have sowed wind as saith the Prophet to reap tempests their hopes are crackt as clouds swoln with the vapours of the earth and their felicity like a golden statue hanged in the Air on a rotten cable hath melted upon their head Never any man hath had good fortune in impiety He that looseth his conscience hath nothing else to gain nor loose Nothing to gain for that nothing remaineth for him but unhappiness and nothing to loose because he hath lost himself So many crimes and impieties daily float on the face of this Age that you must stretch out your arms against iniquity If you have your hearts fixed where God planted them you shall place the confidence of well doing in the life of the most timorous and shame of ill doing upon the brow of the most impudent Your hands shall always be in a readiness to overthrow vice and your feet shall not walk but on Palms of victory The Church extendeth her hands out to you and imploreth the aid of your authoritie and good examples You are in the house of God as Joseph in that of the Lord of Egypt The Master hath put all into your hands defile not the honour of his bed since with his finger he hath imprinted the lustre of his glory on your fronts If you be among men as Mountains over valleys be Mountains of perfume of which Solomon speaketh in the Canticles and not those hills of the Prophet Osee which have nothing but snares and gins to serve for stumbling-blocks to those whom they should enlighten If you be elevated in the world as cliffs above the Sea be watch-towers not rocks If you be Stars be Suns to be the Chariots of light and life and not comets to pour malignity on the four quarters of the world Be ye assured that how much the more you are united to God so much the greater shall you be the more conformable you are to the will of the Sovereign Master so much shall you behold the earth in contempt under your feet and Heaven in Crowns over your heads The DESIGN and ORDER of the Book TO speak properly we have but two great Books the Heaven and the Bible which never perish The others have an Air and a certain continuance amongst men and at the last arrive unto their period But the most part of those who at this day do write do come into the world as drops of rain into the Sea of which the Ocean takes no notice neither of their coming in or their going out In so great a croud of Writers I have put forth my first Tome of the HOLY COURT as under that consideration esteeming that I brought but a little dew into a great River and having spoken some Truths by the way I should bury my self from my birth in the Tomb of so many Books which is excusable by the law of necessity and honourable by the multitude and the qualities of those that write Howsoever I see that GOD who governeth our lives and our pens hath been pleased that this Work should be had in some respect and having exceeded the merit of the Authour it should also exceed his hope producing some fruit and withal some comfort to my travels which I cannot now judge to be ill employed This hath again put my pen into my hand to follow the continuation of it to which so many personages of Honour have brought so many reasons to induce me that having but little leisure to undertake this second Work I have had the less boldness to refuse it Those who complain that my pen hath not swiftly enough followed their desires are to remember that though Slowness be a mother a little to be blamed yet her Children are not deformed The bringing forth of good Books ought not to resemble that of Birds concerning which an Ancient writeth that they come out of the Belly of their mother before they are born we ought to give them form and a long time to foster them in the Mind before they appear in publick For in precipitation it is a poor attempt to be able onely to hope for nothing but to erre hastily to repent at leisure I do more fear the Reproches of precipitation than deliberation for in this mortal condition wherein we live our most perfect Actions are but heavy assays and the most gross proofs of perfection This may be said without any diminution to the merit of some celestial Spirits who make promptitude and goodness to march together with an equal pace it being not expedient that those who cannot follow them should glory in the infirmities contrary to so great abilities For me I content my self with the approvement and admiration of other mens works reserving nothing but industry for my own And though for all my pains I cannot of my self find in my own work satisfaction enough to content the Readers whom I acknowledge so favourable to me yet so it is that I find I have brought something which bears some correspondence with their desires This I can assure them that the contraction of the precepts which I have drawn into so few words being able to stretch them into Volumes are not without their profit and that Histories are made most choice of in that nature where besides their majesty which lays forth the most specious affairs of the Estate of Empires since the beginning of their Christianism they have a certain sweetness with them which sound spirits will find to be so much advanced above all Fables and Romances as the pleasures of Truth do surpass all illusions of Sorcerers You shall here perpetually observe a great Theater of the Divine Providence where God knows I have no other Design than
to advance Virtue and to beat down vice without reflecting on any of the Personages of these times no more than if I wrote under the reign of Charlemaigne or S. Lewis I must intreat these spirits of Application which know not how to behold a work without making it subject to their own fancies imagining every letter to be the Ecchoes of their own thoughts that if they have any Commentary to produce they would rather make a gloss upon their own Dreams than on my Books We live not yet God be thanked in an Age so miserable that we dare not sacrifice to Truth without a disguise seeing it is the glory of our Grandees that we may openly make war against Vice as against an enemy and not of our party For to speak sincerely having laid my first Tome at the feet of the sacred person of our great King I considered what great and glistering lights there were in all their Orders within his Court which might serve as Models for my Treatise but to avoid the affectation of all compliance with this world I did expresly forbear it my own nature and my long Robe having so far estranged me from all worldly pretences that it would be a disease unto me but to salute a man if he had not Heaven and the Stars to return me for it As concerning the manner of writing which I have observed I shall easily confess unto my Reader that it proceeded rather from my Genius than from Art and though I have been curious enough to observe whatsoever the Greek or Romane Eloquence hath happily brought forth yet I must acknowledge that there is a Ray of God himself which entering into our spirit and mingling with our nature is more knowing and effectual than all precepts whatsoever And this I can affirm for the instruction of youth to those who have demanded my advice concerning the qualities and conditions of stiles It is true I have perused variety of Books written in all Ages and I have acknowledged that the most sensible amongst them have been raised both in their conceptions and their words above the common reach and alwayes without affectation Others have been passionately taken with some fine niceties which are the capital Enemies to perswasion and above all to be eschewed in the Discourses which are made of Piety whose nerves they do infeeble and whose lustres they do foil we may see that those who from the chair do speak unto us either by account or by writing although it be with terms discreet enough yet they leave a less impression on our hearts and sometimes are so violently carried away to serve their own reputation that they forget their engagements to the Truth We may observe some who through too much spirit seek out by-ways of conceptions of common sense and extravagant words and so strongly adore their own thoughts that they can suffer none but themselves on their own paper which is the cause they seldom meet with the right use of humane understanding being the true Citizens of Plato's Common-wealth capable to controul all things but to perform nothing Others there are who glory in a sterility and are willfully angry against God because in some part of the Heavens he placed so many stars These can endure nothing that is generous without snarling or biting at it They conceive Beauty and Light to be blemishes because they are above their capacities Lastly there are some who in their continual Allegations do so lay forth themselves in the praise of others that they make their Discourses like those pictures of Helena which are all of gold There is nothing but Drapery to be seen you cannot distinguish the foot from the hand nor the eye from the ear But I will enter no further into the consideration of our times having learned rather to respect than censure the indifferent Works of our Writers But to speak soundly I never thought it expedient either to perswade unto or to follow the same fashions And as in this work I have not altogether renounced the learning and the ornaments which I thought to be convenient but have inchased them in it so I would not fill my papers with Quotations and strange Languages this Labour being undertaken rather to perswade the Great-ones unto Virtue than to fill the Extracts and Annotations of the Students I have so moderated the style without letting my self loose to the empty language of Complements which had been beneath my Subject that I conceive I have rendered it easie to be understood even to those apprehensions which make no profession at all of learning It is the onely Design that I have to speak so as to be understood perswading my self according to the saying of Philo That Word and Thought are two Sister germanes and that the youngest is born onely to make the eldest known I study more for weight of sentences than for ornament of words pretending nothing to the glory of mundane Quills which we see every day appear amongst so many Authours of this Age who would be more perfect if they would apply themselves to more grave subjects and in some fashion imitate the Sun who being admired thoughout the whole world doth not know how to admire it self Nevertheless it often comes to pass but not to the more lofty Writers who are ordinarily indued with more modesty but to certain men extreamly profane to idolize their own inventions to condemn all Treatises of worth and to esteem that one cannot be eloquent in our tongue if he writes not Vanity or Impureness Certainly if a question were made to judge of the French eloquence the riches of Babylon are not so exquisite that they may stand in comparison with the beauties of Sion As long as letters and men shall continue there shall continue the praises of so many excellent Books which have come from the hands of so many Illustrious Prelates and other qualified persons nay and of the secular State who have exercised their style on chaste and honourable Arguments and worthy all commendation I speak this by the way having at this time no design to enlarge my self on the recital of the number of those able men who have now the pen in their hands nor praise those of my own Robe who have given their holy labours to the publick and who I know may be followed by a great number of excellent Spirits of the same society For that which concerns me I am acquitted of my promise and I conceive that I have sufficiently expressed in these two Volumes the whole reach of my Design for the rest I conceive that the Books of Devotion which are to be made publick ought to be rare and to be very well digested because there is already extant so great a number of them that the number of the Authours will suddenly exceed the number of the Readers Satiety will cast a cloud on the brightest Beauties and though a thing may be very good yet we ought not to surfet
nature is to give and to do good as fire to heat and the sun to illuminate saith the eloquent Synesius And to speak unto you the richest word which ever came out of the mouth of a Paynim It is Plinie who after he had well wandred through all sects of Philosphers describing the essence of God pronounceth this goodly sentence That Deus est morteli juvare mortalem hoc ad aeternam gloriam via Plin. l. 2. c. 7. Cant. 5. Manus ejus globi aurei pleni mari Where our translation saith manus ejus tornatiles aureae plenae Hyacinthi HaÌ„ds of God a golden bowl full of the sea the greatest divinitie is to see a mortal man oblige his like and that it is the shortest way to arrive at eternal glorie We also see in the Canticles the hands of the Spouse compared to golden globes which in them hold the sea enclosed These hands are of gold to denote to us the munificence of God by this symbole of charity His hands are globes made round there is nothing rugged clammy or bowed nay they are smooth neat polite to pour his blessings incessantly upon men They always emptie themselves and are always replenished for they are filled with a sea of liberality which never will be exhausted God then having bounty so natural and intrinsecal in him will needs see it shine in his servants and therein establisheth salvation and perfection Which admitted who seeth not O you rich men you have a particular obligation above all others since God hath elected you to be the Stewards of his goods the messengers of his favours and the conduits of his liberality Religious men who have given the tree and the fruit all at once have nothing more to give The indifferently rich are ordinarily full of appetites and produce no effects You have power in your hands to discharge the duties of all the world you have met with the Philosophers stone you have the books of a heavenly alchimy in your coffers you have a golden rod which can turn the durty pelf of India into celestial substance Consider what greater ties of duty can you have what more pressing necessity to be perfect than to have the instrument of perfection in your full power Perswade your selves no longer that riches are impediments of glory and salvation for this unhappiness proceedeth not but from corruption and ill custom if you take them on a false byass they are of lead to drench and drown you if on a good they are feathers to bear and lift you up to Heaven Prophane Chariot of Sesostris applied to the rich Pharios currus regum cervicibus egiâ— Luc. l. 10. storie maketh mention of one Sesostris King of Aegypt who triumphantly rode in a chariot drawn by Kings he was so swoln with the success of his prosperities It was to take the way of hell in the chariot of pride so to triumph but you may in the chariot of charity all glittering with gold and silver harnessed out with poor men each person whereof representeth the Sovereign King who raiseth all Imperial scepters take the right way of Paradise August med Si ista terrena diligitis ut subjecta diligite ut famulantia diligite ut munera amici ut beneficia Domini ut arrham sponsi and that by the means of riches Then judge whether they lead to true felicity or no. If you love these terrene things you do well love them boldly but as the objects of your glorie as the instruments of your salvation as a gift of your friend as a benefit from your Master as the earnest-penny of your spouse as the pledge of your predestination The fifth REASON Drawn from perfections of the bodie IT is a lamentable misery to behold how sin hath so perverted the nature of things that it not onely giveth ill under the apparance of good but also sometimes evil effects to that which is good Behold for as much as concerneth the perfections of the bodie not speaking here of health or strength wherewith the Great-ones are not always the best provided beauty grace or garb which seem to be more connatural to them they are so cried down by the corruption of manners that one knoweth not what apt place to give them either among things good or evil S. Augustine speaketh with indifferency Lib. 15. cap. 21 de Civitat Dei Pulchritudo corporis bonum Dei domon sed proptereâ— etiam id largitur malis nè magnum bonum videatur bonis Beauty condemned by idolaters theÌ„selves Petrarch l. 6. de remed Dialog 2. Habes hostem tuum domi delectabilem blandum habos raptorem quietis tortoremque perpetuum Habes materiam laboris uberrimam discriminum causam fomentum libidinum nec minorem quaerendi odii quà m amoris aditum Habes laqueum pedibus velum oculis alis viscum super ficie tenus fulget decor multa faedà que tâ—gens horrenda levissimae cutis obtentu sensibus blanditur illudit in these tearms Beauty of bodie is a benign gift of God but he bestows it often on the bad that the good may not deem it a great good Not onely the writings of Saints and of most austere religious have made great invectives against beauty but even those who at other times have with passion praised it condemned it as soon as they became wise Petrarch that worthy spirit after he had adored a humane beauty doth suddenly cast down the Altars thereof under his feet and dis-avowed in ripe age that which foolish youth had made him vehemently commend For what saith he not in his book of the vanitie of the world which he entituleth the Remedies of Fortune You who establish your glorie in the beauty of the bodie know you have an enemie under your roof and which is worse a flaettering and with-delight-tempting enemie You harbour a thief who stealeth your repose and time two the most pretions things of the world You lodge an executioner who always will hold you to the rack and torture You entertain a subject of toil and affliction a motive of warfare and contention an incendiarie of sensual appetite which is no less capable of hatred than love This deceitful beauty putteth a snare on your feet a veil over your eyes and bird-lime on your wings It is a superficial grace which covereth with the smooth delicacie of the skin loathsom and horrible stenches so with her poison charming the drunken senses Another (a) (a) (a) Tab. d'inconst saith it is the nurse of love the spur of sin and that virtue lodged with beauty hath always a slippery foot as being in the house of a dangerous hostess S. Chrysostom (b) (b) (b) Chrysost homil de vanit pulchr musieb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Defence of beauty as the gift of God in an Homily which he made upon the vain beauty of women hath delicate observations not being able sufficiently to admire the sottishness
enriched you enameled you with so many perfections that justly we may call you the children of admiration Be you then to mankind that which the Rainbowe is to plants leave it to the odour of a good conversation which may become natural you shall reap here below true and solid glory contentments so tasteful that a man may more easily feel them than express them and in Heaven your recompence shall be equalled to the profit which your example shall have made on earth I know not what may be produced more pressing to a generous heart to oblige him to perfection The twelfth REASON Drawn from punishment CLemens Alexandrinus observeth that the belief Clemens Alex. Stromat 5. of one God and the faith of one judgement are in the soul of man by like consequence necessary and that the Heathens in the dead obscurity of infidelity were not able to shut their eyes against this veritie There is no soul in the world so barren which by force of the light of nature conceiveth not that if there be certain rays or reflections of virtue diffused through the actions of men the same ought to be in God as in their source with a radiant lustre of supereminence Wherefore Because as Dionysius Areopagita God a great Thesis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Dionis de divin nomini c. 2. August de Trinit l. 8. c. 3. saith in the book of divine attributes God is a great Thesis which hath but one word for expression but this draweth along with it all essences verities and perfections And for the same cause S. Augustine calleth this Sovereign Majesty Bonum omnis boni Now so it is that we behold shining in men though otherwise very imperfect certain traces or draughts of Justice and we observe they are naturally addicted to the love of this virtue were it not that passion maketh them belie their hearts and betray their own nature We must then necessarily conclude that Justice is in God as water in the fountain lines in the center and beams in the Sun Justice and Mercy are the two arms of God Justice and mercy which embrace bear and govern the whole world they are the two engins of the great Archimedes which make Heaven descend upon earth and earth mount to Heaven It is the base and treble-string of this great lute of Heaven which make all the harmonies and tuneable symphonies of this Universe Now as Mercy is infinite so is Justice The divine Essence holdeth these two perfections as the two scales of the ballance always equally poized Judge hereupon O Noblemen if the favours and mercies of God are so eminent with you what part shall Justice have amongst you David who had felt the scourges cried out as in Psal 89. Quis novit potestatem irae tuae aut prae timore tuo iram tuam dinumerare Sap. 6. Horrendè citò apparebit vobis quoniam judicium durissonum his qui praesunt fiet Exiguo enim conceditur misericordia potentes autem potenter tormenta patientur Non enim subtrabet personam cujusquam Deus nec verebitur magnitudinem cujusquam a deep extasie Oh my God who can be able to know the force of thy anger Who can be able amongst so many perplexities and affrightments to recount the effects of thy indignation True it is thy Justice doth most extraordinarily appear on the rebellious heads of sinners but especially upon the Great-ones of the earth These words of the Wise-man are terrible to any that will maturely consider them You who hold the highest place amongst men and live without fear or aw of that Majestie which hath constituted you where you are know God will visit you and appear to you with speed and horrour A most rigorous judgement shall be executed on those who command over others Mercy is for the little ones and humble but if you persevere in your wicked life as being potent you shall powerfully be tormented God is not a man to sooth you to distinguish your persons and treat with you with observance of your qualities Beware The reasons why the chastisement of great men shall be most severe are clear and evident the principal whereof I will briefly here produce First by how much the more a sin is committed Knowledge of good and evil makes the sin the more foul with exact knowledge of good and ill so much the more punishable it is because it participateth the more of the venom of malice Ignorance unto many is part of their sanctitie others with open eyes run headlong to ruin Now can it be denied but that great men ordinarily being endowed with good spirits capable judgements and most happie memories and they instructed by so many Doctours both speaking and dumb should have much more light and knowledge than the ordinary sort of men Behold why degenerating it cannot be but they must needs break a thousand bonds that held them in their dutie blunt a thousand sharp points a thousand inspirations from Heaven that feelingly touch their conscience the which cannot be done without great and determinate malice which rendreth their sin the more enormous and their heads the more punishable This is the reason Divines give touching Why bad angels were punished without mercy the punishment of the Angel apostate A strange thing that God coming from Heaven upon earth to take human flesh to distend his imperial robe upon man who lay on a dung-hill drawing him out washing him guilding him over with grace the true seed of glory in the mean time left the bad Angel without mercy for a prey of punishment which shall not end no more than God himself Wherefore is this but that the Angel offended with an Ob perfectam cognitionem solutum animi impetum peccatum Angelorum incomparabiliter gravius Vide Gregor l. 4. Moral c. 9 Marvellous Justice absolute and deliberate malice as one much more illuminated and Adam suffered himself to slide into sin rather by surprizal by infirmitie by complacence to the humours of his wife as S. Augustine observeth than purposely or contemptuously Alas me thinks this horrid punishment of the contumacious Angel should make the bloud congeal in the veins of all the Great-ones of the earth who offend their Creatour with as much malice as they have knowledge Ask O Noblemen of the Divine Justice from whence it proceedeth that these evil spirits have been so roughly handled If beauty could mollifie the rigour of a Judge they were adorned with an incomparable beauty above all creatures If the excellency of nature be esteemed they were the most lively Images of the Divinity amongst all things created If the spirit contribute thereunto they penetrated by their active vivacity even from Heaven to the deepest abyss If the glory of God were in this act considerable they were creatures who could love bless and glorifie God eternally If evil had been to be prevented this great Judge saw there would arise
a most irrefragable motive of detestation of any vice when the baseness and ignominie thereof is discovered for that is it which hath most power over generous spirits Now so it is this hypocrisie which maketh you O Noblemen always to live disguised is quite contrary to the condition of a brave and generously elated spirit Because if it be impressed with a good stamp it naturally loveth the liberty and freedom which unavoidably is oppressed in these palliations crouchings and counterfeitings They are the tricks of Apes and Foxes and in no sort are suitable to the nature of a generous Lion Besides seeing God openeth unto us the great Hypocrisie confuted in the great book of the world book of the world as a piece of parchment guilded and traced with his pencil for us therein to read that which is for our instruction if we will consider diligently the most sublime things we shall find they naturally strike at this vanity which maketh you to display apparences to the eyes of men outwardly having nothing solid within It seemeth that all the master-pieces of this celestial and elementary world as it were by a common consent do hide all what they have of most eminency and worth bearing for devise I hide the better part It is true Parte sui meliore latent that Heaven sheweth it self wholly relucent in stars and brightness but covereth his powerful influences which by their secret extent give motion to this great house of nature It is true the air maketh his meteors to appear to the view of the whole world but this secret virtue which doth penetrate us even to the heart and bringeth life and refreshment to us upon its wings who can tell me what colour it is of The fire unfoldeth his flames to us but this commanding heat which conquereth and softeneth the hardest mettals do we behold it The caim sea delighteth us with his smiling countenance at that time especially when it becometh as it were frizled and curled by some gracious and gentle gale and coloured with the beams of a bright Sun which beat upon it but this lustruous beauty what is it in comparison of the treasures which he concealeth in the store-houses of his abysses The earth it self likewise maketh her boast in the spring varied and enameled with her natural pieces of painting and sparkled with a thousand petty flowers which stand as the eyes of the meadows but these do eclipse each evening and morning Quite contrary the mettals which the earth encloseth and as it were engulfeth in the entrails after they are wrought and polished by the artful hands of Lapidaries retain a lustre of a long date which resplendently shine upon cup-boards of Kings and the Great men of the earth What lesson of nature is this to hide all which it hath of greatest value And what corruption of nature in man to hold in the bottom of his heart stench and dung-hills and to plaister it over with a vain hypocrisie God hath not onely imprinted this verity of Hypocrisie condemned by the laws of heaven Sport of God and what 1 Cor. 1. Quae stulta sunt mundi elegit Deus ut confundat sapientes infirma mundi elegit Deus ut confundat fortia ignobilia mundi contemptibilia elegit Deus ea quae non sunt ut ea quae sunt destruereâ— which I speak in the great book of nature but he hath as it were engraven and stampt it with his hand in the monuments of the old and new law The pastimes of Great men are Theaters Tilt-yards and Amphitheaters and the sport of the Divine wisdom in this Universe is to hide treasures under the bark and mantle of some persons base and abject in apparence In the old law a stammering shepheard is chosen to carrie the word to a Monarch to shake and overturn with a poor wand the pillars of his Empire to divide seas to calm billows to open the bowels of rocks to command all the elements and fill the world with wonders In the new law simple fisher-men almost as dumb and mute as the fishes themselves are chosen to catch in their nets Philosophers Kings Cities Provinces and Empires Behold the ordinary custom of God to hold pearls in shels sweet perfumes in very abject boxes The true mark of greatness in the judgement of God is at first blush externally not to appear great On the contrary it is the act of a flat ridiculous and benummed vanity to be desirous to furprize the eyes with a counterfeit and captious beauty which afterward appearing in its native colours makes the deformity thereof the more disfigured What a shameful thing it is to a heart which hath Deformity of hypocrisie never so little resentment of nobility to erect a resplendent sepulchre to boast exteriourly marbles guildings characters titles and to have nothing within but bones put refaction and ashes to cast a certain lustre through the ignorance and obscurity of an Age become bruitish and then to be in effect but a silly worm to live in the world as a snail to make long silver traces and to be nothing else but froth to have the back covered with velvet like a cushion and the belly stuffed with hay to make ostent of leaves and verdure like a wood and to be replenished with serpents Is it possible that a noble heart when it hath no other super-visour but its own conscience can suffer these shames A gentile spirit said to an old man who caused his grisly hairs to be painted with the lustre of green youth Poor fool although thou couldst deceive the whole world with thy hair yet death well knoweth they are gray So when Scit te Proserpina canum an hypocrite shall happen to conceal his jugling from all those who accompany him which indeed cannot be done men now being endued with penetrating eyes yet one cannot deceive the eye of his conscience quick-sighted to pierce such falshoods with bright reflection I say nothing of the shame and ignomie that must be undergone after it is discovered and taken with the manner like a cut-purse I speak nothing of the racks tortures affrightments and perplexities in which they live who desire to entertain these seemings A great wit hath well said that such Stephanus Edvensis in Reg. 3. 18. people are the oxen of Baal who are cut for sacrifice in little gobbets but notwithstanding receive not fire from Heaven these miserable creatures macerate and kill themselves to sacrifice themselves to the appetites of the world without ever tasting the consolations of God which they have renounced Let us lay their pains apart let us admit that with these laborious endeavours they might always live cloked always hidden from the eyes of the world yea even from the all-piercing eye of their own conscience It is most manifest and considerable for the second 2. Reason reason that it is impossible to deceive God whose eye replenished
after which caused an excellent wit to say that it drew life out of its blows and made a dug of its wounds Oh happy soul that resembleth this generous plant and which repleat with pious desires holy affections and sincere intentions produceth apprehensions and works a thousand times more precious than myrrhe when in the meditation the rays of Jesus Christ who is the true Sun of justice strikes the heart The practice of prayer consisteth in mental vocal Necessity and easiness of meditation and mixt Mental is that which is exercised in the heart vocal which is formed in the mouth mixt participateth of both Think it not to be a new thing not severed from your profession to meditate It were so if one would make your brain serve as a lymbeck for subtile and extravagant raptures disguised in new words and forms But when one speaketh of meditation he adviseth you to ponder and ruminate the points and maximes which concern your salvation with all sweetness that fruit most agreeable to your condition may be derived from thence The faintness weakness infidelity ignorance driness which reigneth in your souls cometh from no other source but the want of consideration Take this worthy exercise couragiously in hand and you shall feel your heart fattened with the unction of the Holy Ghost and your soul of a wilderness to become a little Paradise of God Be not affrighted hereat as if it were a thing impossible for you use a little method and you shall find nothing more easie and familiar What have you so natural in vital life as to breath And what more proper in the intellectual than to think Your soul hath no other operation for night and day it is employed in this exercise The Sun casteth forth beams and our soul thoughts Gather together onely those wandering thoughts which are scattered amongst so many objects into your center which is God Employ one part of the spitit industrie invention discourse which you are endowed withal for the mannaging of worldly affairs Employ them I say in the work of your salvation and you shall do wonders I undertake not here to raise you above the earth nor in the beginning to plunge you into the seven degrees of contemplation whereof S. Bonaventure speaketh in the treatise he composed thereof I speak not to you of fire unction extasie speculation tast of What you must understand to meditate well repose or glory but I speak that in few words which you may read more at large in the works of so many worthy men who have written upon that subject First know what meditation is secondly how it is ordered Meditation properly is a prayer of the heart by Definition of meditation which we humbly attentively and affectionately seek the truth which concerns our salvation thereby to guid us to the exercise of Christian virtues That you may meditate well you must know the causes degrees matter and form of meditation The Causes principal cause thereof is God who infuseth himself into our soul to frame a good thought as the Sun doth upon the earth to produce a flower It is a goodly thing to have the spirit subtile and fruitful It is to work without the Sun saith Origen to think to do any thing here without the grace of the Holy Ghost The first degree which leadeth to good and serious prayer is a good life and principally purity of heart tranquility of spirit desire to make your self an inward man Saint Augustine reciteth a saying of Porphyrius very remarkeable which he deriveth Aug. l. 9. de civit Dei c. 23. Deus omnium Pater nullius indiget sed nobis est benè cum cum adramus ipsam vitam precâ—m ad cum sacientes pâ—r inquisitionem imitationem de ipse from the mouth of this perfidious man as one should pull a thing stoln out of a thiefs coffer God the Creatour and Father of this whole Universe hath no need of our service but it is our good to serve him and adore him making of our life a perpetual prayer by a diligent enquiry of his perfections and imitation of his virtues Observe then the first degree of good prayer is good life The second as well this Authour hath noted is the perquisition to wit the search of verities by thinking on the things meditated which are the sundry considerations suggested to us by the spirit in the exercise of meditation The third is the affection which springeth from these considerations Our understanding is the steel and our will the flint As soon as they touch one another we see the sparkes of holy affections to flie out We must bray together the matters of prayer as Aromatick spices with the discussion of our understanding before we can extract good odours The fourth is the imitation and fruit of things we meditate on It is the mark at which our thoughts should aim otherwise if one should pretend nothing else but a vain business of the mind it would be to as much purpose to drive away butter-flies as to meditate Good meditation and good action ought to be entertained as two sisters holding one another by the robe As for the matter of meditation you must know Matter of meditation that all meditations are drawn from three books The first and most inferiour is the book of the great Three books of meditation world where one studieth to come by knowledge of the creature to the Creatour The second is the book of the little world where man studieth himself his beginning his end qualities habits faculties actions functions and the rest The third is the book of the Heavenly Father Jesus Christ our Saviour who verily is a guilded book limmed with the rays of the Divinity imprinted with all the characters of sanctity and from thence an infinitie of matter is drawn as those of benefits of four last things of the life death and passion of Jesus and of all the other mysteries You must digest every one in his time according to the opportunity tast and capacity of those who meditate Some appropriate meditations to every day of the week others make their circuit according to the moneth others follow the order of the mysteries and life of our Saviour as they are couched in so many books written of these matters The practice and form of meditation consisteth in six things The first to divide the subject you would Practise and form contained in six articles meditate on into certain points according to the appointment of some Directour or the help of a book Article 1 As if you meditate upon the knowledge of ones self to take for the first point what man is by nature For the second what he is by sin For the third what he may be by grace The second a little before the hour appointed for Article 2 meditation to call into memory the points which you would meditate on The third after you have implored the
willeth us to take moderate pleasure in creatures which he hath made for our content and ease that we may enjoy them in time and place every one according to his condition profession and rule of wisdom Synesius saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pleasure lays hold of the soul Somnus balnea dolorem mitigant S. Thom. 2. q. 138. Date siceram merentibus vinum iis qui amaro sunt animo Prov. 2. the Creatour hath given the feeling of pleasure to sense to serve as an arrest to the soul and to hold it in good quarter with the body Saint Thomas among the remedies of sadness prescribes sleep and bathing The Scripture it self counselleth us to give wine and other fitting draughts for them to drink who have their hearts oppressed with bitterness If one think to make a great sacrifice to God resting perpetually stretched and involved in a pensive austeritie of spirit as being desirous to avoid all pleasures of life he deceiveth himself It hath happened that many running in their own opinion to Paradise by this path according to peculiar fancie have found themselves on the borders of hell Fourthly to remember our life is a musick-book Our life is a musick-book seldom shall you find there many white notes together in the same line black are mixed among them and all together make an excellent harmonie God gives us a lesson in a little book which hath but two pages the one is called Consolation the other Desolation It is fit for each of them to take its turn In the day of adversity think of prosperity In the day of prosperity remember your self of adversity That great Prelate of Cyrenum Synes in hymno said that the Divine Providence hath mingled our life as one would do wine and water in a cup some drink the purest some the most compound but all tast a commixtion Fifthly if you exactly compare our condition to that of an infinite number of miserable creatures who groan in so many tedious and disastrous torments you will find your fardel but a dew But we have a certain malignity of spirit which ever looks back on the good it hath not to envy it and never considers the evil from whence it is freed to render thanks to God Behold some are in the bottom of a dungeon in fetters others are bowed in painful labours from the rising to the setting Sun to get their bred Some have the megrim in their head the gout in their feet and hands the stone in their kidneys Others are overwhelmed with business loss misfortunes strange and portentous accidents yet carry it out with courage Your heart is nipped with a little sadness and behold you despair what effeminacie of spirit is this It is said hares seeing themselves pursued on every side had one day resolved to drown themselves but coming to the brink of a river and beholding frighted frogs who cast themselves at all adventure in the water to escape Courage said they we are not yet the most miserable treatures of the world behold those who are more fearfull than we Ah how often should we say the same if we saw the miseries of others Sixthly is it not a goodly thing to behold a man Unworthines of sadness who probably speaking is in the favour of God who is here nourished with Sacraments with Christs body and bloud with the word of his Master who liveth among so many helps and comforts spiritual and temporal who expecteth a resurrection a Paradise a life eternally happy and happily eternal in so beautifull a societie of Saints to frame pensiveness and scruples to himself of his own head to afflict himself like a Pagan or a damned soul that hath no further hope It is related that God one day to give an antipast of beatitude to a holy man turmoiled with sundry cogitations caused an unknown little bird to chant in his ear in so melodious a manner that instantly his troubled spirit became clean and pure and held him rapt many years in the most tastfull delicacies may be imagined O if you often had strong imaginations of Paradise how your melancholy would melt and dissolve as snow before the Sun-beams Lastly sing spiritual canticles labour employ Noble tears your spirit without anxiety and if needs you will weep lament your imperfections bewail the miseries of the poor sorrow for your curiositie lament the passion of your spouse grieve and sigh at your impatience after this glory of Paradise weep over the deluge on the earth look back like a chast dove on Dulces lachrimae sunt ipsi fletus jucundi quibus restrintur ardor animi quasi relaxatus evaporat affectus the ark of your good father Noe the father of repose and consolation Then will I say of such tears with S. Ambrose O the delicious tears O the pleasing complaints which extinguish the fervours of our mind and make our affections sweetly to evaporate The two and twentieth SECTION The third combate of the spiritual man against impuritie ALl impuritie of life ariseth from three sources whereof S. John speaketh concupisence of Joan. 2. Three sources of impietie the flesh concupiscence of the eyes and pride of life Let us now see the practice of virtues which oppose these three sorts of impurities Against concupiscence of the flesh temperance chastitie modestie do wage war Against the concupiscence of eyes to wit the unbridled desires of temporal blessings povertie justice charitie mercie gratitude Against pride of life humilitie obedience magnanimitie patience clemencie The three and twentieth SECTION Practice of Chastitie CHastitie is a virtue which represseth the impure lust of the flesh a celestial virtue an Angelical virtue which maketh heaven and Angels descend upon the earth and in this kingdom of mortalitie planteth the image and titles of immortality Clemens Alexandrinus maketh mention of certain Clemen Alex. strommat enchanted mountains at the foot whereof was heard a voice as of people preparing themselves for battel a little further the encounter and conflict and on the top songs and triumphs Behold as it Three sorts of chastitie were the condition of three sorts of chastitie With some it beginneth with labour and uncertaintie there is at the first toil and resistance against lust but the even thereof is not known With others it is become more manly as being already practiced in combats With others it triumpheth after a long habit yet notwithstanding whilest here on earth it abideth it is never absolutely secured The acts thereof are Acts. I. To renounce all unlawfull voluptuousness of the flesh II. To abstain from carnal acts not onely those which are unlawfull but sometime such as are permitted among married folk upon just occasion or for some certain time which is very ordinarie or perpetually which is singular and remarkable in the lives of some Saints So Martianus lived with his wife Pulcheria and Henry the Emperour with the Empress Chunegundis III.
to give beginning to your Sacrifice IX This action should serve as a preparative to another more long and serious devotion which you are to make in your closet when first you come out of your bed If you have so gorgeous garments to put on that necessarily you must bestow some notable time to dress you it is a miserable servitude Observe you not it should be done to render your tribute to God Then cloath your self indifferently Exercise of the morning as much as shall be necessary for comlyness and health Afterward with bowed knees use five things Adoration Thanksgiving Oblation Contrition Five things to be practised and Petition Adoration in adoring God prostrated on the earth resounding like a little string of the worlds great harp and offering to the Creatour this whole universe as a votive-table hanged upon his Altar wholly resigning your self to his will For this act it is very expedient to use the Hymn of the three children in the fornace who called all creatures as by a check-roul to the praises of God Thanksgiving for all benefits in general and particularly for that you have happily passed over this night The Church furnisheth us with an excellent form of thanksgiving in the Hymn Te Deum laudamus Oblation of your faculties sences functions thoughts words works and of all that you are remembering the sentence of S. John Chrysostom That the worst avarice is to defraud God of the oblation of your self Offer to God the Father your memorie to replenish it with profitable and good things as a vessel of election to the Son your understanding to enlighten it with eternal verities to the Holy Ghost your will to heat it with his holy ardours Consign your bodie to the Blessed virgin to preserve it under the seal of puritie Contrition in general for all sins and particularly for some vices and imperfections which most surcharge you with a firm purpose to make war against them and extirpate them with Gods assistance Petition not to offend God mortally nor to fail with grace light and courage to resist those sins to which you are most inclined To practice those virtues which are most necessarie for you To be guided and governed this very day by the providence of God in all that may concern the weal of your soul bodie and things external To participate in all the good works which shall be done in the Christian world To obtain new graces and succours for the necessities of your neighbours whom you then may represent and this by the intercession of Saints wherewith your prayer should be seasoned Spiritual lesson It is then to very good purpose to spend some quarter of an hour at the least in reading some spiritual book imagining it as a letter sent from God to you for direction of your actions X. When you put on your apparel to acknowledge Cloathing your great servitude so to serve with much industry the most abject and brutish part of man To think you garnish a body which even this very day may be a putrified rottenness What time and diligence had Jesabel used in the last day of her life to adorn and deck a body that was trampled under the feet of horses and gnawn by dogs some few hours after Masse must be heard at a due hour in the manner Masse before related and that is a most especial act of devotion XI The second employment of the day is in Affairs the affairs which one mannageth whether it be for the publick or for your own particular in the government of your familie or discharge of some office A good business is a good devotion and nothing is so much to be feared as idleness which is a very antheap of sins He who taketh pains said the ancient Fathers of the desert is tempted but by one devil he that is idle by them all There is no person so noble or eminent that ought not to find out some employment If iron had the reason of understanding it would tell you it better loved to be used by much exercise than to rust and consume in the corner of a house XII In the practise of charges offices affairs to use knowledge conscience dexteritie diligence Knowledge in learning that which is profitable to be known for the discharge of dutie in informing ones self of that which cannot be guessed at in hearing counsel examining and weighing it with mature deliberation Conscience in administering all things with integritie according to laws both divine and humane Dexteritie in doing all things discreetly peaceably with more fruit than noyce In such manner that one shew not anxietie in affairs but like that Prince of whom in ancient time one said That in the most busie occupation he seemed ever to have the greatest vacation Diligence observing occasions well and performing every thing in time and place He that hath never so little spirit and good disposition shall always find wherein to employ himself principally in the works of mercy both spiritual and temporal amongst so many objects of our neighbours miseries XIII Time of repast recreations sports and visits Recreation should be very regular for fear nature be not dissolved in a lazy and bestial life greatly unworthy of a noble heart Away with gluttony play detraction curiosity scoffing babling Let the conversation be as a file to smooth and cleanse the spirit and ever to adapt it to its proper functions XIIII One should not in affairs recreations retirements omit at some times to elevate his heart to God by jaculatory prayers Happy are they who Elevation of heart to God in every hour of the day do make unperceivably some litle retrait in their hearts casting their eye like a lightning-flash upon the hour past and foreseeing the direction of the next Above all after dinner it is fit to reenter into ones self and to see the good order which hath been given for the execution of the mornings good purposes XV. In the evening before you go to bed you Evening are to use examen of conscience Lytanies and other vocal prayers with the preparation of the meditation of the next day happily to shut up the day with acts of contrition faith hope charity prayers for the living and dead Thereupon settle your self to sleep with some good thought to the end according to the Prophet your night may be lightned with the beauties of God If any interruption of sleep happen mark it out with jaculatory prayers and elevations of heart as anciently the Just did who for this cause were called the crickets of the night This doing you shall lead a life replenished with honour repose satisfaction towards your self and shall each day advance one step forward to eternity The marks which amongst others may give you a good hope of your predestination are principally twelve First A lively simple and firm faith 2. Purity of heart which ordinarily is free from grievous sins 3. Tribulation
Intelligence who had left the Heavenly Orbs to come to be enchased in this beauteous body and converse with men It was said her father well read in the knowledge of stars foretold the good fortune which should happen to her and that making his will he left all his wealth to two sons he had to wit Genas and Valerius making no mention of his daughter so much beloved whereat she being sad Let Heaven alone saith he dear daughter your fortune will be good more shall you have than your brothers Thus man is often pleased to mix the verity of histories with some fables to give reputation to predictions of Mathematicians as if the stars had some power upon that which absolutely dependeth on the pleasure of God or as if one must study much in the book of the planets to say that a maid bright as a star and wise as Minerva was to come to great fortune Howsoever it be as soon as her fathers eyes was shut the wicked brothers greedy as Griphons used their sister most inhumanely Interest had neither eyes for the beauty nor ears for the eloquence of Athenais behold her despoiled and driven from her fathers dwelling enforced to retire to the house of a poor Aunt she had in the Citie of Athens She must make this ship-wrack to arrive to a good haven she were lost had she not had such a loss This Aunt gave her notice of another kins-woman in Constantinople They both resolve to visit her and mediate something by her means Behold they are now in the capital Citie of the Empire not well knowing who brought them thither but God who was their guid secretly contrived this work The good kins-woman of Constantinople competently entertaineth and lodgeth them very glad she might exercise her charity on a creature so well deserving The Citie was much pleased with the gracious acceptance Pulcheria gave to all afflicted persons and the justice she rendered to those who were oppressed by violence The good women cousins of Athenais thought they should not do amiss to complain to the Princess of the wrong she had received from her brothers and espying their opportunity they both took her along with them It was not now needfull to beg much the favour of admittance the maiden bare her letters of recommendation on her forehead Pulcheria at her entrace was dazled with the brightness of her aspect and when she began to unloose her tongue never was Syren so attractive with songs as she with words Pulcheria not onely heard with patience but greediness still fearing she would make an end of her discourse such pleasure she took therein Many questions she asked her and above all very particularly enquired of her kindred how she had been bred and whether she were a virgin which having judiciously found according to her desire she put the business into suspense to hear it again another time by the course of audience ordinarily given and from that time she had a strange design in her heart to make her wife of the Emperour her brother Politicians who will measure all things by their own ell and penetrate into the purposes of the whole world judge this manner of proceeding was a great wisdom in Pulcheria ever desirous to sway and possess the spirit of her brother She foresaw if he married some great Princess she might bring with the titles and Crowns of her Ancestours pride and disdain into the house and that so many alliances as she might have might divert Theodosius his mind on many objects That she being of noble extraction would rule without a companion and therefore it was better still to hold the highest place in the government That she should make choice of some virtuous and handsom maid though of mean parentage to frame her as her creature dispose of her where she best pleased and then last of all conform her to her own will Thus many judge of others intentions by their own dispositions But it is much more likely Pulcheria a creature wholly celestial guided herself by other motives the honour of God pietie peace and her brothers contentment He already had signified to her he would not captivate himself in an enforced and ceremonious marriage and that he desired no other portion with the woman he should marry but virtue and beauty which was the cause the Princess supposed this maiden was fitly sent from Heaven in the time he was in treaty of marriage She failed not to make relation to her brother concerning an Athenian maid who was presented to her upon a suit in law which she commenced against her brothers who unworthily had used her and was indeed the most beautifull innocent and best spoken creature which might be found throughout the whole Empire She thereunto added no other thing at this time It is enough to put matches to the fire without commanding them to burn Theodosius upon the report his sister made of this incomparable beauty asked if there were no means to see her Pulcheria answereth she had given day to hear her cause The Emperour whether it were he used not to be present in such audiences or whether he would hear her speak to her own sex with the more natural propriety fearing he should give her too much respect if he presented himself in judgement made his sister to sit in the tribunal himself resolving to see all that should pass through a secret window prepared for this purpose Athenais faileth not to come on the day and hour assigned to plead her cause Then was plainly to be seen the Empire which humane beauty and an eloquent tongue have over earthly powers The confident maid having before broken the ice when first she spake to the Princess speaks now to her with much liberty MADAME I shall have cause to love my shipwrack Athenais pleadeth her cause all my life time since it hath given me opportunitie to arrive at your feet as to the port where all miseries are poured out to be changed into felicities Your Majesty may see the violence of my brothers is great since it hath constrained me to undertake this voyage with much toyl and now presently to trouble your ears with my complaints which the softness of my nature should cause me to smother were it not they are extorted by a powerfull hand which is that of necessitie Had my brothers granted me so much of my fathers goods which was mean enough yet for my enablement sufficient but one sole silly cottage I patiently would have satisfied my self without pressing their fortunes But they have not left me one inch of land and which is more have driven me from my fathers house where I ever have inhabited with exceeding much incivility which I had rather dissemble it being not my intention to accuse my own bloud to which I always have wished as much good as to my self By their own saying I have no other fault for which Lought to be banished and despoiled but certain priviledges of
answered their desires For in this second Volumn I treat of the Courts of Constantine the Great the two Valentinians Gratian Theodosius the Elder Theodorick in Boetius his cause Clodoveus Clotilda Levigildus Hermingildus and Indegondis in such sort that I have selected the principal sanctities of Great-ones in the first six Ages of Christianity which will not be sleightly valued by those who better love to finish a Work than unboundedly distend it Moreover also to be better than my promise in my first Volumn having taken the Court in general I here descend into particulars and there being four sorts of persons which compose the life of Great-ones that is to say the Prelate the Souldier the States-man and the Court-Ladie I have made a brief Table of the conditions necessary in every state couched in four discourses pursued with as many Books of Histories which contain excellent models of virtues proper to all orders and states of life in persons most eminent I can assure my Reader these Summaries of Precepts which I have so contracted in so few words it being in my power to enlarge them in divers Volumns are not unprofitable and the Histories are so chosen that besides their majesty which unfoldeth the goodliest affairs and passages of Empires in the beginning of their Christianity they have also a certain sweetness which solid spirits shall find as much to transcend fables and modern eloquence as the satisfaction of truth surpasseth the illusions of Sorcerers You shall perpetually therein observe a large Theater of the Divine providence wherein God himself knoweth I have no other aim but to dignifie virtue and depress vice without any reflection upon the persons of these times no more than if I wrote in the Reign of Charlemain or St. Lewis I heartily entreat all those spirits of application who cannot hold their nose over a piece of work unless they find it to suit with their own fantasies imagining that all literature is the eccho of their own thoughts that if they have any Commentary to produce they would rather make glosses upon their own dreams than my Books We are not as yet God be thanked in so miserable an Age that we dare not offer sacrifice to truth without a disguise since it is the glory of Great-ones openly to wage war against vices as their greatest enemies For to speak truly after I had presented my First Tome at the feet of the sacred person of our great King I likewise considered in his Court rich and resplendent lights in all orders which might serve as models for my Treatises but to avoid affectation of all worldly complacence I have purposely declined it my nature and habit having already so alienated me from all worldly pretences that it would prove painfull to me to court any man if he had not Heaven and the Stars to give me for reward For so much as concerneth the form of writing observed by me in this Second Volumn I will truly confess to my Reader that I have therein proceeded rather guided by my proper Genius than art or cunning And although I heretofore have been curious enough to read and observe all what ever Greek or Roman eloquence hath produced of worth yet I confess there is a certain ray of God which encountering with our spirit and mixing with nature is more knowing than all precepts and I may affirm this for the instruction of youth which hath asked my opinion concerning the qualities and conditions of stile True it is I have handled many books written in all Ages and have found the wisest of them to be elevated in conceits and words above the ordinary strain but always free from affectation Others are so passionately enamoured of certain petty courtships of language which are capital enemies of perswasion and which we most especially ought to avoid in discourses of piety the nerves whereof they weaken and blemish the lustre since even those who speak to us out of Chairs by word or writing although in terms discreetly modest make the less impressions on our hearts and many times so seek after their own reputations as they forget how much they are engaged to truth We see some who through over-much wit search out strange ways conceptions different from common understanding words extravagant and in all other things so vehemently adore their own imaginations that they cannot endure any but themselves in paper which is the cause they very seldom meet with the habit of humane understanding as being true Citizens of Plato's Commonwealth of ability to controle all and to do nothing Some glory in barrenness and would willingly be displeased with God that he hath more plentifully sown stars in some parts of the Heaven than in others They can brook nothing that is generous without snarling at it and taxing it supposing beauties and splendours are defects because they surpass their capacities Finally there are some who so furnish themselves with the worth of others ceaseless allegations that they frame discourses like to those Helena's all of gold where we can behold nothing but drapery not being able to distinguish the hand from the foot nor the eye from the face I enter not into the consideration of our times having learned rather to regard the Works of the meanest Writers than censure them But to speak sincerely I never thought it fit to advise or pursue such courses And as in this Work I have not wholly declined learning nor ornament of language which I supposed apt for the purpose endeavouring many times to enchase them with seemly accommodation so have I been unwilling to replenish my leaves with Authours and forreign tongues this being undertaken rather to perswade virtue among men eminent than to fill the common places of young Students I likewise have so intermingled my style that not descending into a petty language of complement which had been below my subject I thought to make it intelligible yea even unto those who make no profession of arts or study My onely aim is to speak and to be understood perswaded thereunto by the saying of Philo That speech and thought are two sisters they youngest whereof is created that the eldest may be known I have more laboured upon the weight of sentences than ornaments of words not at all pretending to the honour of earthly pens which we daily behold to grow in so many Authours of this Age who would be much more absolute did they apply themselves to graver subjects and in some sort imitate the Sun who affording admiration to the world hath none himself Notwithstanding it often happeneth not with the most eminent Writers who ordinarily are endowed with much modesty but certain extreamly profane wits to idolatrize their own inventions to condemn all treatises of worth and value that it is impossible to be eloquent in our language but in the expression of vanities and impurities Truly if question were made to judge of French eloquence the riches of Babylon are not so exquisite as
of the good of his fellow and it was a matter as rare to see a quarrel as a monster brought from the utmost limits of Africk Needs must I confess I took a singular content when one day passing through a street I heard two old men who discoursed in their language of forreign Countreys and the one said to his companion that duels and quarrels were used there the other would not believe him at all thinking that two men who bare one and the same figure could not contend one with another but he persisted and said he knew it to be true and that the source of all their debates was to say It is mine It is not It is so Yea No. This narration so enkindled them that This narration is found in the lives of the holy Anchorets they resolved to imitate those of whom they spake and to have at least once in their lives a quarrel But what endeavour soever they used they would never confidently say Yea No. For as soon as one had pronounced Yea and began to make shew of contestation the other said Take it I yield it I leave you to think whether any thing might be seen more pure than these souls In their commerces they so much feared to wrong their neighbours that you would have said they studied to deceive themselves for fear to get from another and if any one had gained ought by some mis-reckoning he was half dead and rose oftentimes at midnight to hasten to make restitution it being otherwise impossible for him to enjoy any repose I saw their Palace which was a very beautifull piece but the manner of suits and processes were there very rare yet had I notwithstanding a vehement desire to hear them plead at which time it was told me that the next day a notable cause was to come to a hearing I failed not to be present thereat and saw two men of the same condition like those of whom S. Chrysostom wrote the history who pleaded for a treasure Chrys hom 30 ad Popul Antio The matter was the one had sold his land and the other had bought it The seller quickly laid hold of his money and the buyer being entered into possession had begun to till the field to have corn from thence but not thinking thereof he found gold in it for coming to plow the land he made discovery of a great treasure But he as much astonished as if he had found some venemous creature or some mischievous piece of witch-craft went directly to the seller to advertise him of what had passed and wished him to take his gold again but the other being unwilling to understand him in that kind caused him to be called before the Judges This was a business then handled with so much concourse of people that never have I seen a cause so notorious I had much ado to understand any thing of it but certain broken words The plaintive spake How Must men be used thus You have sold me a field and not given me notice there was a treasure hidden in it why have you deceived me why have you used such foul play with me The defendant lifted up his hands to Heaven and said I swear and protest unto you by the faith of an honest man that I did not this purposely I sold you my land in all simplicity not having the least suspition that there was any treasure Well Sir if you sold it with a sincere intention saith the other to him God pardon you but I pray you come and take away your treasure He again Why should I take it It belongs to you The other To me What injustice is this I bought land and not gold You purchased the land answered the defendant and all the appurtenances it is reason that you possess all The poor plaintif replied sighing Would you use me in this fashion and charge me with such unhappiness Rather take your land again I will not said his adversary it belongeth to you Good God deliver me from such an unfortunate chance I will have care how I engage my self in the like In the end the treasure was adjudged to him that bought the land whereat he was much troubled so that his friends had business enough to comfort him Oh Age Oh goodness Oh golden poverty How much art thou now estranged from our manners I saw not there the Tornielle nor criminal process for crimes were banished from thence both by great severity of laws and the excellent disposition of the people Every one was made to render an account very exactly of the means he had to live on And there was a certain girdle as that of which Nicholas Damascene speaketh in his Policie wherewith the just wideness of the wast was measured and if any one were grown too gross he had much ado to escape unless he brought good witness that this happened not to him through idleness or excess of diet If a detractour were found all his teeth were knocked out one after another If a thief melted gold was poured down his throat If an homicide he was put to be fed on by vulturs in an iron cage If a blasphemer his lips were seared with a hot iron and his mouth so wed up If a drunkard he was put into a sack and thrown into the water If one unchaste he was burnt with a soft fire such horrour had they of vice Great volumes would be necessary to recount all the wonders of this celestial Agathopolis which require some other scope than that which I have undertaken I will content my self to tell you for conclusion that I saw in the middest of the Citie a great Pyramis of white marble on which was set the statue of Justice clothed with a robe all embroidered with stars holding in one hand a book of laws and in the other an ear of corn about her were also pourtrayed in embossed work truth wisdom and the arts and somewhat lower were beheld the statues of all the great States-men with certain excellent precepts of Policie engraven in brass some copies whereof I have drawn out which I my Politician desire to impart unto you The fifth SECTION Sage Precepts drawn out of the Monuments of the divine Agathopolis HE is the greatest States-man who to himself seemeth the least Imagine not your greatness consisteth wholly to set up the Common-wealth of Plato and Xenophon in your own imagination nor to lay together a huge heap of precepts nor to know Cabales or mysteries nor to make profession of great subtilities and stratagems we have seen by the experience of all Ages that in affairs there is a certain stroke of the Divine Providence which dazeleth all the wise disarmeth the strong and blindeth all the most politick with their own proper lights Ordinarily the most unhappy in States have been those who have made the greatest shew of knowledge to deceive under humane Policie That is it which ruined Jeroboam which undid Saul which overthrew the
do as yet retain of terrestrial to make them appear in their best lustre A man saith this Authour who thinketh to know all and do all without having any need of the counsel of others is necessarily of two things the one either a God amongst mortals or a beast among men The Scripture speaking of the great sea of brass which Solomon made in the Temple saith in the book of Paralipomenon 2 Parol 45. that it contained three thousand measures and the third book of Kings affords it but two thousand 3 Reg. 7. 16. This seemeth to involve some contradiction which Tostatus cleareth in saying this great vessel in truth amounted to three thousand measures but that there was never poured out any more thereof than two thousand So is it with the wits of men how capable soever we are not to cloy them with charges and affairs so far as to exhaust them but to divide burdens in proportion since there is none but God alone of ability for all The presumption of those who will undertake above their forces so to leave nothing for others to do much more hurteth than would stupidity He addeth to wit the shape of body which is not Nigredo sanguineâ— regnantem discernit praestat humano generi ne de aspectu Principiâ— possit errari Cassiod Var. l. 1. Ep. 2. a little recommendable in the stature figure port gate age countenance speech and even in the very habit All this when it is eminent surprizeth minds and striketh its stroak to give estimation to a man before we enter into his interiour but if the house answer not to the frontispiece what may we else say but that nature hath built up a goodly mansion to lodge therein a handsom beast What he hath said in the third and fourth place of prudence natural and acquired which some have to deliberate and well resolve on an affair accompanied with a stout resolution and a very strict execution is verily most necessary in a great States-man There are ordinarily two great rocks in this sea of affairs which have in them oppositions very contrary in negotiation of things important The one is irresolution and the other obstinacy in opinion Irresolution ever holds men suspended in the air and tormenteth subjects who expect their dispatches and directions from the counsel of those who deliberate Obstinacy through a false presumption of ability will never forgo what hath been once proposed and resembleth a rude Portress which driveth all good advise from the house One would not believe the hurt this last plague draweth upon all good counsels and how hard it is to be cured Verily it is a prodigie that God who discovereth from the superiour vaults of Heaven to the bottom of the abyss the least atoms of the world and who is so clear-sighted that hell hath not darkness thick enough to hide it self before him notwithstanding all-wise as he is to dissolve our pride he feigneth Jer. 26. 13. some repentance in his actions but we whose thoughts are timorous fore-sights uncertain actions confused oftentimes have so much arrogance as to be desirous to make good our faults for fear to confess our errours A maxim of Politicians maintaineth it is to diminish Diminutio majestatis fecisse mutanda Seneca authority to do that which must be undone for ever it is better to stifle a monster in his birth which one hath begot than shortly after to foment and nourish it with humane bloud Ahasuer us revoking Esther 16. the cruel Edict which he made conceming the massacre of the Hebrews yieldeth a pertinent reason thereof saying This diversitie of decrees proceeded not from the levity of his spirit but from the alterations of times which make way for affairs that are treated As for execution which followeth deliberation it is verily the hardest piece for there are many to be found who deliberate as the rat in the fable to hang a little bell about the cats neck to fortifie their Common-wealth against surprizes Counsel is received by all with applause but when they come to execution every one turns his back It is not to be imagined how much a man who executeth affairs prudently resolved on either of himself or by such as are very trusty hath eminence above others in matter of government King Antigonus said his warfare was rather a warfare of times and occasions than arms and Polybius writeth that the least things which Polâ—b lib. 9. are done in war are those which are handled with sword and violence but the most eminent are executed by the knowledge how fitly to manage an occasion Behold in a nearer degree the qualities which form the capacity of a States-man not enlarging my self to speak here of others especially of those that are put into the number of blessings which the common sort attribute to fortune But a man may have all possible inclinations and might notwithstanding be ever like those musicians who performed all their musick in wardly no man hearing any of it outwardly if he produced not himself in direction which is the application of all the gifts of grace and nature that a man can have for the practise and course of affairs This direction will teach you a marvellous secret Nil vile nil cupidum Judices decet Claras suos maculas reddunt si illi ad quos multi respiciunt aliqud reprebensione sordescant Cassiodorus which is to proportion your self to time place persons affairs treated and to measure your self in such manner that your actions may be profitable for all the world It will bring you forth from behind the curtain and advance you on the Theater to see and to be seen reciprocally by all those who have eyes There it is where you are not to present any thing that is sordid dejected proud furious light fearfull nor passionate for great fortunes have this property to extrude all the blemishes of the heart into the forehead and although much art may be used to hide ones self they make a man appear naked who never is well clothed with habiliments of fortune if he have not true ornaments of virtue What think you if men be now adays so curious as to vaunt to see spots in the Sun where will they not find fault especially if they have a subject given them Great excuses serve for no other purpose but to cover vice which truth discovereth and same publisheth with as many trumpets as men have mouthes This sage advise will tell you that it is not necessary you shewing your self in publick must therefore make all your defects appear and what ever you bear upon your bea rt as if you had a breast of christal but also that the way well to cover your passions is to have none I say not you ought to be without resentments and inclinations for as those places where there is neither sound nor motion savour ill so souls thus deafened are not always the most purified
reason we are to think they are able to advance the lustre of an excellent Governour vowed to the Robe and to a life peaceable as Seneca and Cicero I have been the more willing purposely to use this Preface to the end that coming presently to speak of the great learning of our Boetius it might not diminish the credit we ought to have of his abilitie in state-affairs It is sometimes so dangerous to be Vide Boro Ann. 990. learned among gross spirits that the tenth Age which was very dull made as it were the good Pope Silvester the II. pass for a Magician because he understood Geometrie And it is not above four-score years ago that to know Greek and Negromancie were as it were one and the same thing in the opinion of the ignorant He that proceedeth by such bruitish ways would take Boetius for a Devil such knowledge had he for it must be confessed that in the revolution of so many ages there hath not been many seen who arrived to such a degree of science As our spirits are limited so every one freely taketh his share according as his inclination leadeth him his aim moveth him his understanding transporteth him his labour supporteth him and he that cannot prevail in one science applieth himself to another since the diversitie of arts is so great that it is able to satisfie the most curious allure the most nice and encourage the weakest But as for our Boetius he entred into the secrets of all sciences and as there was nothing too holy for his great virtue so might not any thing be found so elate as to exempt it self from the vivacitie of his spirit Julius Scaliger hath very well given testimonie of Scalig. in Hypercritiâ—o him according to his merit when he said the wit learning industry and wisdom of Severinus Boetius challenged all the Authors of the world as well Graecians as Latines not excepting any He addeth that all which he composed in Poesie was divine and that nothing might be found either more elegant or grave in such manner that the abundance of supereminent conceits choaked not the grace nor curiositie took any thing from the proprietie thereof And whereas he writeth that his prose seemed not equal to the verse but retained somewhat of the barbarism of that Age I assure my self Scaliger may have taken some works falsly attributed to Boetius as there are in the great Mass compiled under his name which have likewise deceived Cardinal Baronius who imputeth the book of the Discipline of Schollars to him which is one of the most silly pieces that could come from a man alienated from common sense Among other things this Author saith that he hath been in the Citie of Julius Caesar called Paris to take the air and that he there hath seen many bad schollers discoursing of Nations and giving a face to the Universitie as it had in later times which will seem ridiculous to every one who shall consider the life of Boetius and the times wherein he flourished It is no wonder if those who have admitted such works for pieces of Boetius not through want of judgement which hath been in these two personages whom I mention very great but for fault of giving time to examine them they there have found matters which with them have lessened the opinion of such an Author But this is very certain that all which is extant of this brave Writer hath in it vigour grace puritie spirit and excellent good consequence as appeareth in the books of Consolation As for the rest he hath not so confined himself in this great eloquence but that he entereth into the most profound questions of Philosophie and Theologie and should he have no other honour but to make Aristotle first speak Latine who was unknown in the West I should make much more account of him than if he had raised Orpheus up again with his Harp The great knowledge he had of Geography Arithmetick Musick and all which concern the Mathematicks was the cause when any one stood in need of some piece of wit they went presently to Boetius as the onely man of the Empire who was esteemed a true Library animated with the spirit of all Arts. It is a pleasant thing to read what the King Theodorick wrote to him in requiring a dial of him to present it to the King of Burgundy Behold the words of his great Secretarie Cassiodorus It is not reasonable to contemn the requests which Kings our neighbours with all confidence make unto us and especially when they require some slight things which they account in the number of great treasures It happeneth oftentimes that the dalliances and conceits of wit obtain that by sweetness which arms cannot gain by force If we needs must play let us so use the matter our sports may be made for the good of the publick and let us search for things serious even in pleasures The K. of Burgundie intreateth of me with much instance twodyals the one circumvolved with water the other with the sun and he prayeth me to send skilful masters to shew him this invention Let us afford entertainment to this Nation to the end they may hold those things for miracles which we here daily use for recreation I understand the report which their Embassadours have made of these the like workmanships which hath much amazed them as a thing very extraordinarie Now I know you are so accomplished in all sorts of sciences that you have tasted in the fountain of all the industries what others seek to practise by rote For you for this purpose remained in the Universitie of Athens and have so fairly allied together the Romane robe with the Grecian mantle that their doctrine by your means is become wholly Latine You are ignorant of nothing that is in the speculative nothing which is in the practick and all that which the Athenians would attribute to themselves of singularitie you have transported into our City of Rome Your translations have made Ptolomy the Astrologian Nichomachus the Arithmetician Euclid the Geometrician Plato the divine Aristotle the Logician Archimedes the Mathematician to speak Latine All sciences dispersed among so many men and so many wits through all ages are in you altogether united you have interpreted them all with such perspicuitie of discourse retaining the proprietie of language that should these Authours return to life again they would prefer your translation before their own originals Afterward he enlargeth himself upon the praise of Fugam solis aquiparat quod motum semper ignorat Inviderent talibus si astra sentirent Vbi est illud horarum de lumine venientium singulare miraculum si hos umbra demonstrat Cassiodorus l. variar Epist 45. the Mathematicks then returning to his diall he saith it is an admirable thing to see that a little immoveable steel every day performeth as much way as the sun and that if the stars had understanding they would
favoured by those to whom he hath given full power over me submitted the slenderness of my wit to the power of their wills perswading myself a silly nothing may become a matter important in their hands You know how having a purpose to frame a Christian Institution in the HOLY COVRT for men of qualitie I began with their obligation to Pietie and consequently shewed the Obstacles must be vanquished to arrive thither Then I gave precepts of the principal virtues most concern them which were waited on with the Histories of Courts abbreviated into four Models In this that the good Court may triumph I represent a combat of two Courts the Holy and Counterfeit the Religious and Prophane wherein I unsold the victories of the chief Maxims of Christianitie divided into three Parts whereof the one treateth of the Diviuitie the other of the Government of this present life and the third of the State of the other world You may behold how divine the subject is and that the other Books were onely to prepare you to these great lights the rays whereof I diffused I must needs tell you that being surpassed by so many excellent men who have worthily handled a pen I have in this seriously sought to go beyond my self I have contracted large subjects into little Tracts which hath been no small labour there being not a Maxim whereof I could not have compiled an ample Volume But imagining conceptions are like hairs which more easily may be filletted up than dissheveled I have endeavoured to give you more substance in this Book than words and amplifications And seeing all the subjects are very serious I have sweetened them with excellent Examples to afford fit nourishment both to Eagles and Doves All which I now offer you in this is more than my promise thinking it better to give without promise than to promise and not give Your affection sets an edge upon my industrie and if labour waste the bodie for your avail and reserve works of the wit for posteritie it shall be as a Cedar which causing the death of the living seems to give life to the dead This Tome being replenished with important considerations cannot be for him who cursorily reads it with those delicious loyterings which sleightly furnish out the titles of Books and thence derive nothing but wind Give me Gentle Reader the contentment that God may be glorified in your manners by reading this as I here seek to honour him in his works MAXIMS OF THE HOLY COURT AGAINST THE PROPHANE COVERT First Part touching the DIVINITIE The first MAXIM Of Religion PROPHANE COURT HOLY COURT That matters of faith being invisible and uncertain we must tie our selves to the world which is visible and certain That matters of faith being most certain and very excellent we should fix the whole order of our life unto it 1. THere is nothing so reasonable in nature as to desire good nothing so eminent as to know much nothing so absolute as to have the power of all but there is not any thing so profitable as to proceed to true wisdom by a mysterious ignorance and to be in in created light by blindness The soul becometh another world by the means of knowledge or rather as God createth a world in essence that frameth another in Idaea But if truth and love do not co-operate therein man tormenteth himself in his knowledges and createth evils without end from which he cannot free himself no not by issuing out of life The Prophane Court say you leads you into a visible world but it is to behold miseries in it To a world certain but it is to teach you that happiness being therein un certain loss is undoubted All we have in The happines to be born a Christian the world is base caityf and difficult without knowledge of the true God It is but a laboursom turmoyl of affairs an amazement of transitory pleasures an illusion of deceitfull blessings which trouble us and starve us in stead of satisfying our desires or nourishing our hopes But the knowledge of God is the root Scire justitiam virtutem tuam radix est immortalitatis Sap. c. 15. 3. of immortalitie I then require of you O Reader that in the beginning of this discourse you adore the wisdom of God over you who hath selected you out of the Mass of so many Infidels to inrole you in the number of his children and hath drawn you from the confusions of so great darkness to call you into the light of Christianity Behold so many people covered under the veil of shadie night born in errour to live in bruitishness and die in despair of eternal salvation and you are enlightened by the rays of God illuminated by his wisdom guided by his direction covered with his protection nourished with his bloud animated with his life are made participant of his felicity If you be desirous in some measure to observe the Three tokens of the perfection of a thing S. Thomas 1. p. q. 6. excellency of your Faith and Religion consider the perfection of any thing is known by three principal notes Essence Operation and Repose All which you have visible in the wisdom of Heaven you profess His Essence is of an infallible verity his Operations miraculous and his Repose an unchangeable happiness For what assurance more solid than to have a God Solidity of our religion Incarnate for Authour who is come to cast the seeds of a golden Age and adopt a new world in the bloud of an eternal Testament Who can better teach us the secrets of God than God himself I cannot account Varro apud Vincen. tom 2. Illum quidem eruditorem elige quem magis mireris in suis nihil magnisicum docebit qui à se nihil didicerit him said Varro a skilfull Master who learns nothing of himself And he hath understood all in the bosom of his Eternal Father and from his own wisdom which is no other than his Essence He was promised from the beginning of the world preached through all Ages given as a pledge to the memory of all mankind so long before his coming was appointed his time birth life and death He came at his prefixed time all environed with prodigies and miracles all composed of virtues making greatness to proceed out of the lowliness of his humble and painfull life as lightening-flashes break through the obscurity of night 2. What foundations think you hath he laid of The foundations of faith your faith Men believe men upon a little piece of paper yea very often upon the breath of a silly word And Jesus would not be believed but by writing his Law with the rays of an infinite number of Prophesies which were verified in his Person with the bloud of more than ten millions of Martyrs who suffered for his doctrine with miracles so visible and irreprochable that they changed even executioners into Confessours and Tyrants into Martyrs To speak plainly he
comfort It is that which cooleth our ardours drieth our tears breaketh our setters and dissipateth our annoys If we be in darkness it is the light if we be anxious it giveth counsel If we be in a labyrinth of errours it is the thread which guideth us if in danger of shipwrak it is the haven and if we be at the gates of death it is life Away with all curiosities southsayers sorceresses and superstitions unworthy the name of a Christian Fie upon despaire and minds affliction Let us learn in all things which appertain to us speedily and effectually to fix our selves on the will of the will of the omnipotent let us continually say God seeth this affair since nothing escapeth the quickness of his eye He loves me as his child because he is goodness it self He is just because he is the measure of all justice He is potent because there is not any thing can resist his will Let us expect awhile the trouble I endure is but a flying cloud and God will do all for the best Let us say with S. Augustine O Sovereign Father who governest the vast frame of heaven I submit to thy direction Lead me on the August de civit Dei c. 8. l. 8. Duc me summe pater vasti moderatorolympi quacumque placuit nulla parendi est mora Aasum impiger fac nolle comitabor gemens malusque patiar facere quod licuit bono right hand lead me on the left turn to what side thou pleasest I follow thee without reply or delay For what should I get by resistance but to be dragged weeping and to bear becoming evil what I might do sincerely becoming good Heaven earth and sea said Nicephorus Gregorius (a) (a) (a) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Niceph. Greg. l. 7. fight against a wicked man as a fugitive from Providence and a disturber of Justice Let us learn to sleep securely in this conformity to the will of God as a little infant on the teat of his nurse It is at the sight of this providence that Jonas buried in the belly of a whale and covered under the Oceans waves made a chappel of the devouring gulph which was to have been his punishment speaking affectionately to God (b) (b) (b) Jon. 2. 4. Omnes fluctus gurgites tui super me transierunt veruntamen rursus videbo templum sanctum tuum Behold all thy waves and abysses pass over my head yet I despaire not to behold thee in thy Temple It was in sight of this that the Patriarch Noe shut up in the Arke whilst wrathful heaven thundered over the earth the winds were unfettered the pillars of the world tottered with fatal convulsions whilst men and houses were torn in pieces to serve as a pastime for the Sea and that yels of beasts mingled with the cries of so many mortals ecchoed round about lastly when all the world swam he rested in an incomparable tranquillity adoring the counsels of Gods justice Sacred Providence we prostrate on the earth adore thee vindicate us from the bondage of our passions make us die to so many dead things of mortals that we hereafter may live in thy delight The fourth EXAMPLE upon the fourth MAXIM Divers observations upon Providence LEt us a little withdraw our minds from discourses to the consideration of examples like those who labouring on some curious works refresh their eyes with beholding the verdure of meadows or lustre of Emeralds Volumes might be compiled without end by him who would follow the foot-steps of divine Providence in so great a labyrinth of times and Histories so innumerable But it is not my purpose in these abbreviations where I endeavour to suppress much and well express a few things If you behold this Providence in nature there are eternal miracles which astonished the wise animated all voices gave matter to all pens and filled all the books in the world On what side soever we turn our eyes we meet this great Mistress with a hundred Providence of God in the ordinary works of nature arms and as many hands which incessantly travel to do us good It enlighteneth us in the beautie of stars and lights it warmeth us in flames it refresheth us in the air it delighteth us in the enamel of meadows it moisteneth us in the streaming of chrystal fountains it profiteth and enricheth in the fertility of fields so many trees and shrubs such diversity of fruits such wholesome hearbs such a great Vid. Senec. l. 4. de benef quantity of viands so well divided into all the seasons of the year so many living creatures some whereof come from the water others from the earth the rest from the air every part of the world bringing its tribute so many medicinable waters so many rivers which afford such delicious shores to the land for commerce and all humane accommodation I now let all this pass and coming to matters more particular demand of you who was the cause Particular providence over divers â—ountries Joannes Metellus that in the Canary Island called Ferro when it is roasted with droughts and heaven affordeth no succour by showers nor rivers by waters there is found a huge tree which seemes to change all the leaves thereof into as many petty fountains for every on distilleth water and all render it in such abundance that it sufficeth both men and their flocks Who doth all this good husbandry but the divine Providence And who is it supplies scarcity of rain in Egypt commandeth Nilus to over-flow the fields in his limited time to bear in his inundations the wealth of Pharos but it Who maketh Antidotes grow in places where poysons spring but its wisdom If Africk have many serpents there are Psylles which destroy them If other countries breed store of makes there are Ashen flowers which drive them away If Egypt hath a Crocodile â—istoria Sinarum part 4. it affords an Indian rat which bursteth it There are likewise trees to be found which having venemous roots upon one side yield a remedy on the other By what hand are framed so many wonders of nature which make books incessantly speak but by that of this great Work-man But if you on the other side will consider it in the Admirable â—rotection of â—en in rare accidents protection of men what doth it not by the ministery of its good Angels I see upon one side in histories the little King Mithridates involved in lightening-flashes whilst he innocently sleepeth in his infant cradle the flames consuming his clothes and linnens and not touching his body at all To whom think you should I attribute this On the other side I ponder the prodigie so loudly Philippus Anthologia Graec. l. 1. proclaim'd in the Greek Antholigie of a ship-wrack equally surprizing a father and a son which took away the life of the father and gave the son leave to arrive in a safe harbour having no other vessel but the corps of his deceased father
not be possible to God he being Omnipotent Immense Infinite How according to the confession of ancient Philosophers can he replenish all the world with his Divnity and is not able to accommodate himself with enough of it to divinize his holy Humanity Is it because we say it is united to the Word in this mystery in a quite other fashion than the Spirit of God is with the world I admit it For the union of it is truely personal But must it not be confessed the Word in this divine Essence as under title of efficient cause it hath an influence infinite over all the effects of the world and as under title of final cause it hath a capacity to limit and measure all the inclinations of creatures so under title of substantial bound it may confine and accomplish by its personality all possible Essence Why shall we tie the hands of Divine bounty in its communications since it binds not our understanding in its conceptions Is it not a shamefull thing that man will estimate and set a value upon the Divine Essence If God please not man he shall not be God Should we say man is incapable of this communication And how is it that the holy Humanity resisted the Omnipotency of God to the prejudice of his own exaltation since it is found as soon in the union of the Word as in the possession of Essence See we not in nature that the rays of the Sun draw up vapours from the earth and incorporated with them do create Meteors in the air not any one making resistance to his exaltation What contradiction can there be in our understanding against such a maxim seeing it appears the most famous Philosopher said This union of God with man might be very fit and Plutarch also Plutarch in Numa 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 speaking of the communication of the Creatour with the creature pronounced these words That God was not a lover of birds nor other living creatures but a lover of men and that it is a very reasonable matter that be communicate himself to his loves and delights But this would seem to abase the Divinity Hear what Volusianus said I wonder that he to whom this whole Volusianus Miror si intra corpus vagientis infantiae latetâ— cui parva putatur universilas c. universe is so small can be shut up within the bodie of a little child having a mouth open to crie as others What uncomeliness is there if God be united to a little body Have not Plinie (a) (a) (a) Plin. Natura nusquam magis quà m in minimis tota est and Seneca (b) (b) (b) Servitus magnitudinis non posse fieri minorem Senec. Homo quippe ad Deum accessit Deus à se non decessit August said That nature was ever so admirable as in little bodies and that it was a slavery in Great-ones to be unable to be little I wonder the Sovereign Lord of all things is so long absent from Heaven and that all the government of the world is transferred to so little a creature From whence proceedeth this amazement but from the baseness of our thoughts If we said God being made man ceased to be God and were despoiled of his Empire Greatness Essence there would be somewhat wherewith to question this Mystery but when we say God came to Man by inclination of a Sovereign bounty and mercy not leaving himself when we say humane nature is received into the Word as a small source into a huge river and not loosing its Essence is fixed upon the personality of the Word it self is it not to honour the power majesty and wisdom of God 5. In what were the Divinity abased Can it be in doing a work so noble so singular so divine that it deserveth to entertain the thoughts of men and Angels through times and eternity What is more specious and more sweet than to represent to ones self the Person of our Saviour who in himself makes an alliance of all was most eminent in spiritual and corporal nature to wit of God and man verily say I one composed of an unheard-of composition to render the majesty of his father palbable and visible to the hands and eyes of mortals What dignity to behold in the world a Man-God become a part of the world to possess the Spirit of God from all eternity who proposed this person as the end of his communications the bound of his power the first-born of all creatures who held all Ages in breath for him all hearts in desires all minds in expectation all creatures in prophesies The Book of God hath written me In copite libri scriptum est de me Psal 39. 8. in the beginning of its first page said the Word with the Psalmist All creatures of this great universe all predictions and conceptions of these two great books the world and the Bible tended to the accomplishment and revelation of this God-Man who should set a golden head upon all nature intelligent sensitive and vegetative All creatures were but leaves and flowers that promised the great fruit which the Prophet calleth The fruit of earth sublime Isaiah 4. 20. We must religiously speak what deserveth to be heard Religiose dicendum reverentér audiendum est quis propter hunc hominon gloris honâ—re coronandum Deus omnis creavit Rupert l. 13. de glor Trinit proces Spi. Sancti with reverence It is for this incomparable man that God created the world and all creatures are but as silly rays from the Diadem of glory which covereth his head What a spectacle to see them all wound up as the strings of a harp to praise and declare unto men the Name of God to behold the nine Quires of Angels enter into this consort and every one of them to honour this first Essence by so many distinct perfections notwithstanding all to confess their ability cannot reach that degree which the Divine greatness meriteth And thereupon behold here the Word Incarnate which passing through all the spheres of nature grace and glory enter into the new sphere of the hypostatical union where it appears as a rainbow imprinted with all the beauties of the father he manifesteth them to men and making himself an adoring God a loving God an honouring God he adoreth he loveth he honoureth God so much as he is adorable amiable and honourable through all Ages for evermore Let us unfold our hearts in the knowledge and love of the Word revealed Let us adore this great sign this eternal character of the living God for whom all signs are Let us make a firm purpose not to pass over a day of our life wherein we afford him not three things due to him by titles so lawfull Homage Love Imitation Homage by adoring him and offering him some small service directed according to times in acknowledgement of the dependence we have of him by an entire comformity of our wils to his Love
Empires and Kingdoms where they took beginning If I look upon all the Nations of the earth so far distant in climates so divided in commerce so different in dispositions so contrary in opinions they all agree in this ray of the light of nature that there is a life of separated souls that there are punishments and rewards at the going out of the body It is the belief of Hebrews Chaldeans Persians Medes Babylonians Aegyptians Arabians Ethiopians Scythians Grecians ancient Gauls Romans and that which is most admirable after one hath roamed over Europe Africk Asia let him enter into the new worlds which nature hath divided from us by so mighty a mass of seas shelves rocks and monsters he findeth the faith of the souls immortality began there so soon as men It is observed to have been so publick with the ancient that they carried the marks thereof on their garments and inscribed it on their tombs Men of the best quality of Rome had little croissants Plutar. probl 71. on their shoes saith Castor to signifie their souls came from Heaven and were to return to Heaven after the death of the body and therefore there was not any thing in them which ought not to be celestial The like also is found of tombs where open Camerar gates were engraven on them to shew that after death all was not shut up from the soul but that it had passages into eternity All the most eminent Philosophers following the bright splendour of natural light although distant by the course of Ages parted into sects divided into so many different Maxims agreed in this as Mercurie Trismegistus Pythagoras Plato Aristotle Xenocrates Seneca Plutarch Maximus Tyriensis Jamblicus Themistius Epictetus and Cicero as may be seen in so many excellent Treatises which I might mention at large were they well enough known But if sometimes doubtfull passages occurre in Aristotle and Seneca hereupon were it not much better to judge them by so many perspicuous and illustrious sentences which they have upon the life of the other world than to censure them by some words insensibly escaped in discourse In which if some thing repugnant to our doctrine may be discovered it is to be understood of the sensitive and vegetative soul not the reasonable and intelligent which these Authours ever set aside as being celestial and divine 3. Never saith Plotinus was there a man of good Enu l. 7. c. 10. Nec vult improbus animâ—m immortalem esse ne ad conspectum Judicis aequi torquenduâ— veniat understanding amongst so many Writers who strove not for the immortality of the soul But if any one among them hath impugned it even in the darkness of Gentilism it hath been observed there ever was some disorder and impurity in his life which made him controvert his opinion to divert the apprehension of punishments due to his crimes That was it which Minutius Felix said I well know many Malunt enim extingui penitus quà m ad supplicia reservari pressed with a conscience guiltie of crimes rather desire to be nothing after their death than to be perswaded of it for they wish rather wholly to perish than to be reserved for their punishment He should make an annotation not a discourse who would here alledge all the authorities of the ancients which are very ordinary I satisfie my self with a most excellent passage of wise Quintilian who in the case of an enchanted sepulcher comprized all the doctrine of Gentiles upon this Article when he said Our Soul came from the same place from whence proceeded Animam inde venire unde rerum omniâ—â— authorem parentem spiritum ducimus nec interire nec solvi nec ullo mortalitatis affici fato sed quoties humani corporis carcerem effregerit exonerata membris mortalibus leâ—i se igne lustrâ—verit petere sedem inter astra the Eternal Spirit Authour and Father of all things to wit the true God and that this soul could neither be corrupted die nay nor feel the least touch of mortalitie common to corruptible things But at the passage out of the prison of bodie it was purged by fire and after this purgation it ascended to Heaven there to live happie Which is to be understood of good souls for polluted and impious are delivered to eternal torments by the consent of the wisest Gentiles Behold a man who in few words heaped together the belief of more than fourty Ages which preceded him touching the immortality of the soul Paradise Purgatory hell and that within the limits of the light of nature (a) (a) (a) Plato 1. de Legib. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato saith the same That our soul wears the liveries of the eternal Father which make it incorruptible Algazel in the book of nature That our soul being separated from the body shall subsist with the first Intelligence Maximus Tyriensis That that which we call death was the beginning of immortalitie Dionysius the Geographer forgat not in the worlds description the white Island whereinto it was held the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 souls of Heroes were carried Lawyers were not ignorant of it for when there is any speech of legacies to be distributed on the birth-day of the Testatour they avouch them to be legacies which must be given in perpetuity every year on the birth-day by reason that by death we enter into another nativitie which is that of glory To the very same the law of sepulchers hath relation which Marcel in l. cum quidam l. 23. de annuis legatis Theodosiis valent Novella de sepulehris tit 5. Scimus nec vana sides est solutâ—s membris animas habere sensum in originem suam spiritum redire coelestem Tertul. de testim animae saith We know and our faith is not in vain that souls discharged from bodies have understanding and that the spirit which is celestial returneth to its original From whence comes this consent so great so universal so authentical in a thing so sublime so alienated from sense so eminent but from the spirit of God Let us say with Tertullian in the book of the souls testimonie From whence proceeds it that those who will neither see nor hear Christians have the language of Christians I much suspect the consent of words in so great a disagreement of conversation 4. I am condemned in this first Court of justice Sentence of God upon the immortalitie of the soul said the Libertine But let us go along to the Tribunal of supernatural light and see what the divine Wisdom will affirm Let us follow the counsel of S. Ambrose He who made heaven teacheth us the mysteries Ambros in Symmachus Coeli mysterium doceâ—t nos Deâ—â— ipse qui condidit Cui magis de Deo quam Deo cre dam Vide August ep 4. ad Vincent Cui veritas comperta sine Deos cui Deus cognitus sine Christo 3 Reg. 17. Revertatur
the Apostles in S. Luke it not being corrected by our Saviour who was the rule of their faith Such the truth of the apparition of the soul of Moses upon Mount Thabor I insist not now upon proof Math. 17 but example contenting my self to produce one or two out of a great multitude recounted by Authours As for the first I hold the apparition of the soul Apparition of the soul of Samuel 1. Reg. 28. of Samuel is most formal in Scripture for any one who will consider the whole progress of the narration The history telleth us that King Saul after the death of Samuel was upon the point of giving battel to the Philistines and that having first addressed himself to God by ordinarie means to learn the way he should observe therein seeing he had no answer either by dream or the lively voice of Prophets he did what infidels and men desperate do who seek to get that from the devil they cannot obtain of God He commanded his servants to seek him out a forceress although himself had banished them by his Edicts out of his Kingdom The servants ever ready to observe their Masters in ill offices when their own interest concurreth found a famous Magician whom the Hebrews affirm to have been a woman of good place but out of a detestable curiosity had put her self into this profession Saul to cover his purpose and not to amaze her went thither by night in a disguized habit onely accompanied with two gentlemen where having saluted her he demanded the exercise of her profession But she being crafty and careful to keep her self from surprizes answered Sir go you about to undo me your self also Know you not the Edicts of King Saul Saul replied he knew all had passed but she might confidently proceed assuring her of his warranty and whereas she proposed punishments to her self she should meet with rewards But she still doubting and sticking on distrust usual in all mischiefs he engaged his word with great oaths protesting no ill should befal her for any thing might pass at that time between them Thereupon resolved to give him satisfaction she asked if it were not his desire to speak to the soul of a dead man as also whose it was It was very ordinary with these Negromancers to raise illusions and fantasms instead of true spirits of the dead S Apollonius made Achilles to be seen Philostr in Apoll. Zonaras Eunapius Sardianus appearing on his tomb as a giant of twelve cubits high so Santaberemus shewed to the Emperour Basilius the soul of his son Constantine so Jamblicus made to appear in certain baths of Syria two figures of little children like Cupids All this to speak properly had nothing real in it and it is no wonder if those who thought Samuel had been raised by a sorceress believed it was a specter But he who well will weigh the phrase of Scripture and consider that this spirit of Samuel suddenly appeared before the sorceress had used her ordinary spells plainly shewing he came meerly by the commandment of God and not by the charms of the Magician will easily change opinion Verily the Sorceress was much astonished seeing the dead came contrary to the manner of other and cried out aloud as one distracted Sir you have deceived me you are Saul much doubting it was to him Samuel came The miserable King who endeavoured by all means to assure her fear not saith he I will keep my promise what have you seen She answered DEOSVIDIASCENDENTES DE TERRA as who should say according to the Hebrews phrase she had seen a venerable person like an Angel or a God raised out of the earth In what shape replies the King It is an venerable old man saith she covered with the mantle of a Prophet Then Saul with much reverence prostrated on the ground and made a low obeysance to Samuel who spake to him and said QUARE ME INQUIETASTI UT SUSCITARER Why hast thou disquieted me to make me return into the world Necessitie hath constrained me answereth Saul I am plunged in a perplexity of affairs and cannot get any answer from heaven O man abandoned by God why doest thou ask of me that which I have foretold shall happen Thy army shall be defeated by the Philistins and thou with thy children shalt be to morrow with me that is to say among the dead as I am now which so fell out Now the Eccl. 46. Scripture upon this praiseth Samuel to have prophetized after his death if it were not the true Samuel but a specter who sees not it were to tell a lie and to applaud the work of the divel But to the end you may see this belief was held by Nations as by a decree of nature Josephus in the seventeenth book of his Judaical antiquities relateth the apparition of the spirit of Alexander son of the great Herod and Mariamne who was seen to his wife Glapphyra when she re-married again to the King of Mauritania to reproch her ingratitude and forgetfulness of her first husband which having amply deduced in the first Tome of the holy Court in the tenth edition upon an Instruction directed to widdows I forbear here to repeat it Philostratus in the eigth book of the life of Apollonius maketh likewise mention of a young man much troubled in mind concerning the state of souls in the other life and saith Apollonius appeared unto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him assuring him the soul was immortal and he need not to be troubled at all since it was rather the work of the Divine providence than of it I willingly passe over many other examples to tell you that Phlegon a good Authour who flourished about an hundred years after the nativity of our Saviour and was not of our religion to favour our opinions although honourably cited by Origen Eusebius and S. Hierom writeth a strange historie witnessed by the testimonie of a whole Citie wherein he then governed He saith that at Trayls a Citie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Phrygia there was a young maid named Philenion daughter of Democrates and Chariton who as her storie well declareth was an amorous piece became court-like loved bravery delighted in too free conversation and followed the foolish pleasures of the world true gardens of Adonis which in the beginning make shew of silly flowers and in conclusion afford nought but thorns God who followeth the voluptuous by the track even into the shades of death sent her a sickness which having cropped the flower of her beauty left her almost nothing but a living carcass to deliver her over as a prey to death The miserable maid suffered the boiling fervours of the feaver through all her bodie not loosing the flames of love which she cherished in her heart She burnt with two fires not being able either to quench the one or other and having but a little breath of life left on her lips she gave to love what already was
alive as one of yours forget me not after death I ask no part of your great riches but onely your prayers and some alms for my sake which will much assist to mitigate my pains My Mistress oweth me about eight franks upon a reckoning between her and me let her bestow it not for my body which hath no need of it but the comfort of my soul which expecteth it from your charities I know not how I found my self emboldened by these speeches but I had more desire to enterain it than fear of the apparition I demanded whether it could tell me news of one of my countrey-men named Peter Dejaca who died a while since To which he made answer I need not trouble my self with it for he was already in the number of the blessed since the great alms he gave in the last famine had purchased heaven for him From thence I fell upon another question and was curious to know what had happened to a certain Judge whom I very well knew and who lately passed into the other life To which he replied Sir speak not of that miserable man for hell possesseth him through the corruption of justice which he by damnable practice exercised having an honour and soul saleable to the prejudice of his conscience My curiosity carried me higher to enquire what became of King Alphonsus the Great at which time I heard another voice that came from a window behind me saying very distinctly It is not of Sancius you must demand that because he as yet can say nothing to the state of that Prince but I may have more experience thereof than he I deceasing five years ago and being present in an accident which gave me some light of it I was much surprized unexpectedly hearing this other voice and turning saw by the help of the Moons brightness which reflected into my chamber a man leaning on my window whom I intreated to tell me where then King Alphonsus was Whereto he replied he well knew that passing out of this life he had been much tormented and that the prayers of good religious men much helped him but he could not at this present say in what state he was Having spoken thus much he turned towards Sancius sitting neer the fire and said Let us go it is time we depart At which Sancius making no other answer speedily rose up and redoubled his complaints with a lamentable voice saying Sir I intreat you once again remember me and that my Mistress perform the request I made you The next day Engelbert understood from his wife what the spirit told him and with all observation disposed himself speedily and charitably to satisfie all was required What may we infer upon this but S. Augustine's conclusion which he left in a book of care for the dead fifteenth Chapter Holy Scriptures witness that the dead are sometimes sent to living men as on the contrarie S. Paul amongst the living was lifted up to heaven As we ordinarily know not what becomes of the persons of the dead so we must confess the dead know not all is done in the world at the time it is done but they afterwards learn it from those who pass out of this life into the other and converse with them Yet they understand not all sorts of affairs but those which may be told them and such as are permitted to remain in their memories that recount them to souls who must know them Angels who are present to actions here beneath may also discover to the dead what the Sovereign Arbiter to whom all things are subjected shall appoint to come to the knowledge of the one or other XVIII MAXIM Of Eternal unhappiness THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT That we cannot be miserable when we are no more That the wicked being no more for this present life are everlasting for the pains of the damned THat there is an inevitable judgement of Belief of a judgement most general God for the damned fire darkness eternal prisons O Libertine and prophane soul is not a proposition needs to be proved by many reasons and arguments It is the subject of all books the discourse of all tongues the confession of all people the great voice of nature which forgetfulness cannot obliterate Naturâ pleraque suggeruntur quasi de publico sensu Tertul. de animâ impiety extinguish nor an evil conscience take away The Hebrews Grecians Latins Chaldeans Persians Arabians Abissines Affricans Indians and not speaking of others all Nations most remote from our region most savage in manners most strange in customs have believed proclaimed protested do believe proclaim and protest this through all Ages and although different in condition all notwithstanding agree in the faith of a living God who knoweth seeth judgeth of the good and bad deeds of this life ordaineth rewards for virtue and punishments for vice It is the order of God who governeth the world The order of God with two hands which are justice and mercie If you take away one of them you maim him It is the condition of humane and Divine things where contraries are ever counter-ballanced by contraries say Notable speech of S. Thomas S. Thom. opus 63. Non est infernus peior coelo Sicut coelum syderibus sic infernus damnatis ornabitur The opinion of Philosophers 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Trismegist in Pimandro Cle. Alex. strom 5. Philosophers If there be a Paradise for virtues there must be a hell for crimes No less doth hell contribute to publish Gods omnipotencie than Paradise As heaven is furnished with stars hell shall be with the damned and the justice of the Sovereign will no less appear in the condemnation of the culpable than in the defence of innocents I knew not what made Doctour Tostatus say that Plato placed hell in the sphere of Mars since he very well mentions it in the concave of abysses in his Phedon Trismegistus in Pymander omitted not to speak of avenging flames due to impiety The Stoicks treat among their secrets of the general fiering of the world as witnesseth Clemens Alexandrinus in his stromata And other Philosophers according to Tertullian speak of secret fire which must serve as an instrument of Gods vengeance The most stupid have seen it the most insolent have frownd at it and the most forlorn are astonished with it And verily it is a hydeous thing to behold onely on paper what the Authour of the cardinal works of Jesus Christ writeth To burn in flames which wast not Inconsumptibilibus flammis corpus allambentibus ardere in proprio adipe frixâ—s libidines bullire c. How the fire of hell burneth nor shall ever be consumed to be scorched through the whole body with remediless fires to be broiled alive in his own grease and broiled with stains of his impurities not to be taken off To see nothing but pits of fire and flaming furnaces without ease relaxation remedy change or diminution of sentence Notwithstanding O
even to the deep and exalt thee above the heavens having my mind employed onely in thy praise O God let me die in my self and live in thy heart and let me receive all that comes from thy providence as gifts from Heaven O God let me persecute my self as an enemie and follow thee as an onely friend O God let me have no assurance but the fear of thy holy Name nor confidence but the diffidence of my self O God when will the day come when thou shalt take away the evil of the Temple that I may behold thee face to face to enjoy thee eternally THE SECOND PART of the CHRISTIAN DIARY The first SECTION Twelve fundamental Considerations of Virtue YOu must firmly believe that the chiefest Devotion consisteth in practise of virtues without which there is neither solid piety nor hope of salvation Paradise holds none but blessed souls and hell the wretched but the world wherein we live hath many kinds of merchants some traffick with Babylon others with Sion some through their ill trading and disorderly carriage go on insensibly to the last misery which is a banishment from the life of God into an eternity of punishment Others go on in a streight line to the first and sovereign happiness which is the vision fruition and possession of God in an eternity of inexplicable joys If you desire to take this latter course I would advise you to set often before you these twelve Considerations which I have inserted in my Book of the Holy Court for in my opinion they are twelve great motives to all actions of virtue The first is the nature and dignity of man that is to say the first and continual study of man ought to be man himself to behold what he was what he is and what he shall be What he was nothing what he is a reasonable creature what he shall be a guest either of Paradise or of hell of eternal happiness or of everlasting misery What he is by Nature a Master-piece in which there are a thousand several motions a Body framed with admirable Architecture a Soul endowed with Understanding Reason Wit Judgement Will Memory Imagination and Opinion a Soul which in an instant flieth from one Pole to the other descends to the centre and mounts up to the top of the world which in one instant is in a thousand several places which fathoms the Universe without touching it which goes glisters sparkles which ransacks all the treasures and magazins of Nature which finds out all sorts of inventions which frameth Arts which governeth States which ordereth worlds This soul in the mean time seeth her passions about her like an infinite company of dogs barking at her happiness and offering on every side to seize upon her with their teeth Love fools her Ambition racks her Covetousness rusts her Lust enflames her Hope tickles her Pleasure melts her Despair depresses her Anger burns her Hatred sowers her Envy gnaws her Jealousies prick her Revenge exasperates her Cruelty hardens her Fears freeze her and Sorrow consumes her This poor soul shut up in the body like a bird of Paradise in a cage is quite amazed to see her self assailed by all this mutinous multitude and although she holds in her hand the scepter of government yet she often suffers her self to be deceived ravished and dragged into a miserable slavery Consider also what man is by sin vanity weakness inconstancy misery and curse What he is made by Grace a child of light an earthly Angel son by adoption to the heavenly Father brother and coheir with Jesus Christ a vessel of election the temple of the Holy Ghost What he may be by Glory an inhabitant of Heaven beholding then those stars under his feet which are now over his head feasted with the sight of God his beginning his end his true onely and original happiness The second the benefits received from God considered in general as those of Creation Conversation Redemption Vocation and in particular the gifts of the body of the soul of nature of capacity ability industry discretion nobility offices authority means credit reputation good success in business and the like which are given us from Heaven as instruments to work out our salvation And sometimes one of the greatest benefits is that which few account a benefit to have none of all those helps which lead a presumptuous weak and worldly soul to ruin but on the contrary their better wants in the esteem of the world beget in him an esteem of heavenly things Man seeing what he was what he is and what he must be whence he cometh whither he goeth and that union with God his beginning is his scope mark and aim if he follow the dictates of his reason presently resolveth that no sinew nor vein he hath but shall tend to this end to subdue his passions and to serve creatures no further than he knows them available to attain to the Creatour Serva commissum expecta promissum cave prohibitum Every creature saith these three things to man O man preserve that which is committed to thee expect that which is promised thee and eschew that which is forbidden thee The third consideration is the Passion of the Son of God an Abyss of grief reproches annihilations love mercy wisdom humility patience charity the book of books the science of sciences the secret of secrets the shop where all good resolutions are forged where all virtues are refined where all knots of holy obligations are tied the school of all Martyrs Confessours and Saints Our weakness and saintness proceeds onely from want of contemplating this infinite tablet Who would once open his mouth to complain of doing too much of suffering too much of being thrown too low too much despised too much disquieted if he considered the life of God delivered over and resigned for his sake to so painful labour so horrible confusions so insupportable torments Nolo vivere sine vulnere cùmte video vulneratum Oh my God! as long as I see thy wounds I will never live without wound saith Bonaventure The fourth the examples of all the Saints who have followed the King in the high way of the Cross When we look upon the progress of Christianity and the succession of so many Ages wheresoever our consideration setteth foot it finds nothing but bloud of Martyrs combats of Virgins Prayers Tears Fastings Sack-cloth Hair-cloth Afflictions Persecutions of so many Saints who have taken Heaven as it were by violence Some there have been who having filled graves with their limbs torn off with engines and swords of persecution yet remained alive to endure and suffer in their bodies which had more wounds than parts Demorabantur in luce detenti quorum membris pleni erant tumuli saith Zeno. Is it not a shame to have the same name the same Baptism the same Profession and to desire ever to tread on Roses to be embarqued in this great ship of Christianity with so many brave spirits and to
beseech thee O blessed Saviour do thou command and by thy onely word my affairs will go well and receive a happy dispatch my body will become sound my soul innocent my heart at rest and my life an eternal glory The Gospel upon Saturday the first week in Lent and the Sunday following out of S. Matthew 17. Of the Transfiguration of our Lord. ANd after six days Jesus taketh unto him Peter and James and John his brother and bringeth them into a high mountain apart and he was transfigured before them And his face did shine as the Sun and his garments became white as snow And behold there appeared to them Moses and Elias talking with him And Peter answering said to Jesus Lord it is good for us to be here if thou wilt let us make here three Tabernacles one for thee one for Moses and one for Elias And as he was yet speaking behold a bright cloud over-shadowed them And lo a voice out of the cloud saying This is my well-beloved Son in whom I am well pleased hear ye him And the Disciples hearing it fell upon their face and were sore afraid And Jesus came and touched them and he said to them Arise and fear not And they lifting up their eyes saw no body but onely Jesus And as they descended from the Mount Jesus commanded them saying Tell the vision to no body till the Son of man be risen from the dead Moralities 1. THe words of the Prophet Osee are accomplished the nets and toils planted upon mount Tabor not to catch birds but hearts The mountain which before was a den for Tigers and Panthers according to the story is now beautified by our Saviour and becomes a place full of sweetness ravishments Jesus appears transfigured in the high robes of his glory The cloud made him a pavillion of gold and the Sun made his face shine like it self The heavenly Father doth acknowledge his Son as a true Prince of glory Moses and Elias both appear in brightness the one bearing the Tables of the Law and the other carried in a burning Chariot as Origen saith which made the Apostles know him For the Hebrews had certain figures of the most famous men of their Nation in books They both as Saint Luke saith were seen in glory and Majesty which fell upon them by reflection of the beams which came from the body of Jesus who is the true fountain of brightness The Apostles lose themselves in the deliciousness of this great spectacle and by seeing more than they ever did desired to lose their eyes O that the world is most contemptible to him that knows how to value God as he ought So many fine powders so many pendents and favours of Glass so many Towers and Columns of dirt plaistered over with gold are followed by a million of Idolaters To conclude so many worldly jewels are like the empty imaginations of a sick spirit not enlightened by the beams of truth Let us rely upon the word saith Saint Augustine which remains for ever while men pass like the water of a fountain which hides it self in the Spring shews it self in the stream and loseth it self at last in the Sea But God is always himself there needs no Tabernacle made by the hands of man to remain with him for in Paradise he is both the God and the Temple 2. Tabor is yet but a small pattern we must get all the piece we must go to the Palace of Angels and brightness where the Tabernacles are not made by the hands of men There we shall see the face of the living God clearly and at full There the beauties shall have no vails to hide them from us Our being shall have no end Our knowledges will not be subject to errour nor our loves and affections to displeasure O what a joy will it be to enjoy all and desire nothing to be a Magistrate without a successour to be a King without an enemy to be rich without covetousness to negotiate without money and to be ever-living without fear of death 3. But who can get up to this mountain except he of whom the Prophet speaks who hath innocent hands and a clean heart who hath not received his soul of God in vain to bury it in worldly pelf To follow Jesus we must transform our selves into him by hearing and following his doctrine since God the Father proposeth him for the teacher of mankind and commands us to hearken unto him Wee must follow his examples since those are the originals of all virtues The best trade we can practise in this world is that of transfiguration and we may do it by reducing our form to the form of our Lord and walking upon earth like men in Heaven Then will the Sun make us have shining faces when purity shall accompany all our actions and intentions Our clothes shall be as white as snow when we shall once become innocent in our conversations we shall then be ravished like the Apostles and after we have been at Mount Tabor we shall be blind to the rest of the world and see nothing but Jesus It is moreover to be noted that our Saviour did at that time entertain himself with discourse of his great future sufferings and of his death to teach us that his Cross was the step by which he mounted up to beatitude Aspirations O Blessed Palace O magnificent Tabor which this day didst hold upon thee the Prince of Glory I love and admire thee but I admire somewhat else above thee It is the Heavenly Jerusalem that triumphant company that face of God where all those beauties are which shall never cease to be beauties It is for that I live for that I die for that I languish with a holy impatience O my Jesus my most benign Lord transform me then into thee that I may thereby be transformed into God If I have carried the earthly Image of Adam why should I not also carry the form of Jesus Catch me O Lord within those tissued nets and golden toils of brightness which thou didst plant upon this sacred mountain It is there I would leave mine eyes it is there I resolve to breath out my soul I ask no Tabernacles to be there built for me I have long since contemplated thy heart O Father of essences and all bounties as the most faithfull abode of my eternity The Gospel upon Munday the second week in Lent S. John 8. Jesus said to the Jews Where I go ye cannot come AGain therefore Jesus said to them I go and you shall seek me and shall die in your sin Whither I go you cannot come The Jews therefore said Why will he kill himself because he saith Whither I go you cannot come And he said to them You are from beneath I am from above you are of this world I am not of this world Therefore I say to you That you shall die in your sins For if you believe not that I am he ye shall die
in your sins They said therefore to him Who art thou Jesus said to them The beginning who also speak to you Many things I have to speak and judge of you but he that sent me is true and what I have heard of him these things I speak in the world And they knew not that he said to them that his Father was God Jesus therefore said to them When you shall have exalted the Son of man then you shall know that I am he and of my self I do nothing but as the Father hath taught me these things I speak and he that sent me is with me and he hath not left me alone because the things that please him I do alwayes Moralities 1. ONe of the greatest misfortunes of our life is that we never sufficiently know our own good till we lose it We flie from that we should seek we seek that we should avoid and never begin to bewail our losses but when they are not to be recovered Those Jews possessed an inestimable treasure by the presence and conversation of the Son of God But they set light by it and so at last they lamented amongst eternal flames what they would not see in so clear a light Let us take heed of despising holy things and avoid hardness of heart which is a gulf of unavoidable mischiefs 2. It is a strange thing that God is so near us and yet we so far from him That which hinders us from finding him is because he is above and we below We are too much for the world too fast nailed to the earth too much bound to our superfluous businesses and cares of this life and too much subject to our own appetites He must not be slave to his body that pretends to receive good from God who is a Spirit He must not embark himself deeply into worldly matters who desires the society of Angels He must pass from his sense to his reason from reason to grace from grace to glory If you desire to find God search for him as the three Kings did in the manger in his humility Look for him as the blessed Virgin did in the temple in his piety Seek him as the Maries did in his Sepulcher by the meditation of death But stay not there save onely to make a passage to life 3. When you have lifted me up to the Cross saith our Saviour you shall know that I am the true Son of God And indeed it is a great wonder that the infinite power of that Divinity would manifest it self in the infirmity of the Cross It was onely for God to perform this great design ascend up to his throne of glory by the basest disgraces of the world The good thief saw no other title or sign of his kingdom but onely his body covered over with bloud and oppressed with dolours He learned by that book of the Cross all the glory of Paradise he apprehended that none but God could endure with such patience so great torments If you will be children of God you must make it appear by participation of his cross and by suffering tribulation By that Sun our Eagle tries his young ones he who cannot abide that shining ray sprinkled with bloud shall never attain to beatitude It is not comely to see a head crowned with thorns sit in a rotten chair of delicacies Aspirations O Blessed Saviour who dost lift up all the earth with three fingers of thy power raise up a little this painfull mass of my body which weighs down it self so heavily Give me the wings of an Eagle to flie after thee for I am constantly resolved to follow thee whithersoever thou goest for though it should be within the shadow of death what can I fear being in the arms of life I am not of my self nor of the world which is so great a deceiver Since I am thine by so many titles which bind me to adoration I will be so in life in death in time and for all eternity I will take part of thy sufferings since they are the scarfs of our Christian warfare Tribulation is a most excellent engine the more a man is kept under the higher he mounts He descends by perfect humility that he may ascend to thee by the steps of glory The Gospel for Tuesday the second week in Lent S. Matthew 23. Jesus said The Pharisees sit in Moses 〈◊〉 believe therefore what they say THen Jesus spake to the multitudes and to his Disciples saying Upon the chair of Moses have sitten the Scribes Pharisees All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you observe ye and do ye but according to their works do ye not for they say and do not for they bind heavy burdens and importable and put them upon mens shoulders but with a finger of their own they will not move them But they do all their works for to be seen of men for they make broad their Phylacteries and enlarge their fringes And they love the first places at suppers and the first chairs in the Synagogues and salutations in the market-place and to be called of men Rabbi But be not you called Rabbi for one is your Master and all you are brethren And call none father to your self upon earth for one is your Father he that is in Heaven neither be ye called Masters for one is your Master Christ he that is the greater of you shall be your servitour And he that exalteth himself shall be humble and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted Moralities 1. IT is a very dangerous errour to think that our Saviour in this Gospel had a purpose to introduce an Anarchy and to make all men equal He sheweth in many places that he would have Kings Princes Magistrates Fathers and Doctours But he would not have men to come to honours by a vain ambition nor others to honour them but onely as they have dependency upon the power of God Almighty Let every soul saith the Apostle be subject to higher Powers for there is no power but it cometh from God He gives us superiours not for us to judge but to obey them If a man cannot approve their manners he must at least reverence the character of their authority They should be good Christians for themselves but they are superiours for us He that resisteth their power doth resist God who ordained them And all the great evils happening by heresies and rebellions proceed from no other fountain but from contempt of powers established by the decree of heaven A man may pretend zeal but there is no better sacrifice than that of obedience If great persons abuse their offices God will find it out and as their dignities are great so their punishment shall be answerable 2. One of the greatest disorders of this life is that we go for the most part outwardly to please the world and are little careful of a good inward application of our selves to please God In stead of taking the way of Gods image
imitate your Graces profitable and well-seasoned retirements I wish excellent Lady there were any thing wherein I might better expresse the devoted service I ow to your eminent self and illustrious Family but since weak endeauours can produce but slender effects and noble dispositions do readily pardon incident imperfections I will rest in the cheerefull hope of Excuse and in the ardent Vow of a studious willingnesse to become worthy the Title of Your Graces humblest and most obsequious servant THOMAS HAWKINS To my Lord MY LORD THE DUKE OF ANGVIEN ELDEST SONNE OF MY LORD THE PRINCE MY LORD I Finish the Holy-Court in my Books when your age inviteth you to begin it in your manners and for your first exercise of arms I offer you the Combats and Empire over Passions which is greater then that of the world There it is where you shall know the industry of a warre which nature wageth and reason teacheth us which is never too soon learned and which is ordinarily but too late understood Princes in other battels speak with mouths of fire and make use of a million of hands but in this which I represent they are alone and therein employ but the moitie of themselves one part of Man being revolted against the other Besides all the honour of the uictory rests in themselves arms fortresses and Regiments not at all participating therein and if they prove fortunate in these encountres they stand in the esteem of wise men for Demy-Gods Their quality obligeth them to this duty more then other men since Passions are winds which in popular life raise but little waves but in them stir up mountains of water For which I am perswaded that as you so dearly have loved the labours of my Pen and sought for your instruction out of my Books I could not do a better service or more suitable to your age then by arming you against these plagues which have so often tarnished Diadems on the brow of Cesars and turned Conquerours into Slaves Sir I promise my self much from your Greatnesse in this Conquest seeing it already hath given testimonies to the world worthy of your eminent Birth which oblige you to virtue out of a necessity as strong as your disposition is sweet VVit which is as the principall Genius of your house hath in you cast forth glimmers that have flown throughout Europe when you publickly answered throughout all Philosophy in an age wherein other Princes begin to learn the first elements You have placed wisedome on the highest Throne of Glory and it by your mouth hath rendred Oracles to instruct the learned and astonish Doctours In the first season of life which so many other spend in delights you have heightned the lights of your understanding by the labour and industry of study living as certain Plants which bear the figure of Starres all invironed with Thorns It is time that all your Brightnesse change into Fire and since Sciences are but Colours which appeare not in the night-time if Virtue do not illuminate them they must be gilded with the rayes of your good life and enkindled with the ardours of your courage as you very happily have already begun Sir I do assure my self that of all those things you know you will onely approve the good and that of all such as you can you will do none but the just This is it you owe to the King to whom you have the honour to be so near This is it which the education of the most prudent of Fathers and the tender care of the best of mothers exact This is it that France which looketh on you as a Sien of its Lillies wisheth This is it which bloud the mostnoble on Earth breeding the most happy in the world and that face where Grace and Majesty make so sweet a commixion cease not to promise us As there is nothing little in you so we must not endure any thing imperfect and if that which we take to be spots in the Sun be Stars it plainly sheweth us that all must be splendour in your condition and that we must not expect years since the wit of Princes in much swifter then time Your great Vncle who gained the battel of Cerisoles said to those who upbraided him with his youth that he did not cut with his beard but with his sword and I am perswaded that you will imitate his valour to take part in his glory yea even in this your minority wherein the Kings colours being already to fly under your name My Lord remember the throne of the Sun among the Egyptians was supported by Lyons and that you must be all heart to support that of our most Christian King in imitation of the great Prince to whom you ow your Birth For whose sake I wish you as many blessings as Heaven promiseth you esteeming my self most happy to be able to contribute my labours and services to the glory of your education since I have the honour to call my self by just title SIR Your most humble and most affectionate servant in our Lord N. CAUSSIN A TASTE OF THE SEVERALL DISPOSITIONS OF MEN VVhich serves for a Foundation to the Discourse of PASSIONS THE HOLY COURT was not as yet sufficiently beautified with the eminent lustre of Glory wherein I represented it but it was necessary that taking possession of the Empire over passions it should wear a crown which it hath gained by its travell and wrought by its proper virtues In this last Tome dear Reader I present thee the absolute reformation of the soul by eternall principles and the victory over powers which oppose Reason Thou art not ignorant that Angels and bruit beasts are but of one piece the one being wholly Spirit and the other Flesh But Man a middle creature between Angels and bruit beasts participateth both of flesh and Spirit by an admirable tye which in him occasioneth continuall war of Passions which are properly commotions of animall and sensitive nature caused by the imagination of good and evil with some alteration of body They take their origen from two Appetites of which the Concupiscible causeth Love Hatred Desire Aversion Joy and Sadnesse The Irascible causeth Hope Despair Boldnesse Fear and Anger To this ordinary number I add Shamefastnesse Envy Jealousie and Compassion to accomplish our work in all its parts All Passions are generally in all men but all appear not in all There is a certain mixture in nature which is the cause that the worst have something of good and the best something of bad Now note that as the Platonists distinguish five sorts of divels to wit Fiery Airy Aquatick Terrestriall and Subterranean so humane spirits are divided into as many forms which produce merveilous diversities in every nature The Fiery are Spirits of fire whereof some seem to be enkindled with the purest flames of stars which are magnanimous pure vigorous bold intelligent active amiable and munâ—ficent And of this sort are the most illustrious of Kings and of Queens
and seeing this his well-beloved to go into a Church to do her devotions he spurred hard and in such manner entred into the holy place not minding Church Priest Altars or Sacraments He had no eyes but for this creature before whom he delighted to manage his horse with his usuall grace But instantly a lowd clamour was raised by the people who thrust him our of the Church and handled him like a mad-man The Lady was so much displeased and ashamed at his exorbitant importunities that she resolved to cure his love by a stratagem which she could not vanquish by flight She called this passionate amorist to her by her husbands permission and having shewed him the wrong he did to her reputation so to resign himself over to such a grosse indiscretion as also the disasters he might draw on his own person she bared her neck and discovered her bosome all eaten by a maligne Cancer which at first caused some aversion in him but the more to fortifie the act the Lady thereunto added prevalent words reproching him with simplicity to imploy so many hours to seek after an unhappy lothsomenesse and take away his love from God to conferre it on a Creature who so little deserved it Poor Raymond was astonished at this speech dividing his soul between the horrour of this ulcer and the admiration of the wisdome of the virtuous woman when instantly this cancer of the body cured that of the mind He in a moment found himself to be changed as if all his passion had expected this period of sinne and as if on a sudden his soul had been freed from a charm He could not wonder enough at his frenzy passed He deplored the losse of so much time he put forward for the future to consecrate the remainder of his dayes to penance It seemed to him he perpetually heard the voyce of the Crucifix which said unto him Raymond follow me and his heart burnt with a generous flame to augment the number of so many good servants of so worthy a Master He would not by halves perform so important a businesse he disposed of his whole estate for the benefit of the poor and threw himself all naked between the arms of the Crosse Behold how it importeth to begin the great work of the love of God by some remarkable Act and to give ones self freely to him who hath not for us spared his own sonne Thence he retired into a little Hermitage where attending to prayer fasts and contemplations he was so illuminated that being before unlearned in any science but in that of worldly love he became as knowing as the greatest Doctours yet still austere as the most rigorous Hermits His love towards God began first by great tendernesse All this is observed in Blaâ—uâ—rnas book and continuall familiarity adoring this most pure spirit throughout the great Theatre of nature If he looked on the rising sun he out of Extasie sung and said From the chaste bosome of the morning went forth the desire of eternall mountains wherein there are no more blemisheâ— then there is darknesse in the Sun If he considered the sea he took occasion to enter into the secret abysses of the judgements of God wherein he remained wholly absorpt If he cast his eye on the fields so many flowers as he there observed were as many little eyes of his well-beloved If he heard a bird sing in his conceit it spake to him of the love of his incomparable lover and he used to say there was a certain language of love which he understood in all creatures If he saw a butterfly flying and a little child running after it he thereon frames sublime meditations of the Philosophy of love His solitude seemed to him all environed with Intelligencies and when any one came to interrupt him and blamed him for being alone Nothing lesse answered he I was in good company but found my self alone after your coming He was so transported that he walked throughout the streets chanting the praises of his Jesus and when some who knew him while he was in high place demanded of him whether he had lost his wits verily you are in the right replyed he my well-beloved hath taken away my will and I have given him my understanding there is nothing left me but memory to remember him He many times caused his eyes and memory to dispute touching the possession of his Divine love to see who might vaunt the most right His eyes said sight surpassed all but memory answered remembrance was much stronger because it made water mount into the eyes and fire into the heart One while he caused his understanding and will to run after this his dear spouse and he found the understanding was the more able but the will better held what it embraced He was many times seen to be in such a manner that being ready to sleep he bitterly with scalding tears wailed that he in sleep had forgotten his Creatour having then no power over his dreams nor thoughts His passion became so violent when he to himself presented the state of this world wherein we are separated from the sight of God that he thereby fell into fainting fits and was sick of it almost to the death A Physician on a time visiting him in these fits and throughly understanding his grief held much troublesome and tedious discourse with him after which he said this man had cured him for that he had made him suffer throughly and that taking this punishment patiently for Gods sake he thereby was infinitely comforted He commonly said love was a Tree the fruit whereof was To love and that tribulations and languours were the flowers and leaves of it the proof whereof daily appeared in the motions of his soul wherein he felt most sensible afflictions when he within himself reflected on the contempt was done to his crucified love One day he had a revelation that of a thousand there were not a hundred who had any fear or but an indiffeâ—ent affection for their Saviour and that of those hundred ninety feared him out of their apprehension of the torments of Hell and that of those ninety there were not two who loved him for the hope of heaven and that of a thousand scareely could one be found who loved him for his goodness his nobleness and his worth whereat he powred forth so many tears that he was not to be comforted He was often heard to groan and sigh in the open fields as if he had lyen in an irksome prison and had sought to break his fetters when being in these agitations he came to a fountain-side where lay an Hermit asleep whom he awakned and asked if he could tell how one might get out of prison The other who was a man of God understood him and replyed he was in the same prison that he was as well sleeping as waking but it was a prison of love where his desires his thoughts his hopes his joyes were chains upon which
facil and sweet The one took the golden branch with violence the other gathered it gently as if the Providence of God had put it into his hands Now Raymond not satisfied with seminaries of students embraced the conquest of the Holy Land and stirred up many cities of Italy in this matter exhorting them to make contributions wherein he was so perswasive that the city of Pisa alone which is none of the greatest furnished him with devotists who made of one sole free gift twenty five thousand crowns which he would by no means handle leaving it to the dispose of the Pope who would not give ear to the erection of new Colledges so much were the affairs of the Papacy embroiled He more easily obtained one thing which was one of his three wishes to wit the suppression of the books of Averroes an enemy to Christianity which many with too much curiosity read in the Schools of Philosophy God many times grants good dispositions to his servants whereof he will not they have the accomplishment making them appear more eminent in sufferings then actions This great man was of the number of those for he made himself most remarkable in the love of suffering wandring over the world in extreme poverty great incommodities of heat cold nakednesse hunger scorns contempts dolours banishments dangers both by sea and land shipwracks treasons chains prisons and a thousand images of death One day travelling alone through a huge forrest he met two lions which caused some little fear of death in him as he witnesseth in his writings desirous to live that he might yet on earth serve his well-beloved but in this great surprisall be had a thought that love would put it self into the midst of this passage and make him endure death with the more contentment herewith he comforted himself and the lions drew near and licked his face bathed in tears of Devotion and kissed his feet and hands doing him no harm Men were more sharp and discourteous to him who ceased not to drag him before Tribunals to charge him with calumnies for his extraordinary wayes to give sentence against him but in all he appealed to his well-beloved who never forsook him Seeing himself destitute of all succour for the conversion of Sarazens he passed alone into the kingdome of Thunes where he freely disputed with the chief of the Mahometans concerning the greatnesse and excellency of our Faith against the impostures of Mahomet which was the cause that he was immediately cast into prison and condemned by the King himself to have his head cut off to which he disposed himself with an incomparable fervour of love At which time one of the prime men of State in the countrey who had conceived well of him out of the admiration of his wit perswaded the King to be satisfied with banishing him out of his kingdome and that by this way he should do all he was obliged unto for the preservation of his own law and should get the reputation of a mild Prince among Christians abstaining from the bloud of such a man which he did but he was thrust out of Thunes with so many blows and ignominies that he therein gained a noble participation in the Crosse of Jesus Christ The fervour which incessantly boiled in his veins suffered him not to be long at rest He went into the kingdome of Bugia as Jonas into Nineveh crying out aloud through the streets that there was in the world but one Religion and that was ours and that the law of Mahomet was a meer imposture and a fantasie He was instantly laid hands on as a mad-man and lead to the high Priest named Alguassin who asked him whether he knew not the Laws of the countrey which forbad him upon pain of death to speak against Mahometisme To which he answered he could not be ignorant of it but that a man who knew the truth of Christian Religion as he did could do no other but seal it with his blood This Alguassin proud of science perceiving him to be a man of a good wit entred farther into discourse with him where he found himself shamefully gravelled which made him forsake the Syllogismes of the School to have recourse to the arguments of tyrants which are arms and violence for he caused him to be presently taken as an Emissary Goat there being not any Mahometan hand so little which delighted not to hale and leade him with blows untill they brought him into the most hideous prison which was rather a retreat then a gaol where he endured a thousand miseries with an unshaken constancy The Genowayes his good friends who traffick in these parts moved with his affliction got with good round summes of money a more reasonable prison for him where he began again to dispute with the most learned of the sect and made himself to be so much admired by those his adversaries that they endeavoured to gain him to their Religion promising him wife family honours and riches as much as he could wish but he mocked at all their machinations and seeing them fervent to dispute he persisted therein with great strength of reason and courage They said words were lost in the air but they must take the pen in hand and write on both sides with which he was infinitely pleased and spent nights and dayes in prison to compose a great volumn for defence of our Religion But the King of Bugea coming into his capitall city dissipated all these counsels much fearing the touch of his Law which was gold of a base allay and caused him the second time to come out of prison From thence he sought to get something in Greece passing over into Cyprus where he disputed against the Nestorians and Jacobites who rendred him poison for the honey of his discourses whereof he was like to die had he not been preserved by divine Providence and the assistance of a good Angel The blessed man had already passed forty years in a thousand toils and crosses and spared not to suffer by reason of the flames of love which burnt his heart but he knew not whether he suffered or no so much he took to heart the cup which God had mingled for him Verily our Lord appearing one day unto him and asking him if he well knew what love was of which he so many years had made profession he very excellently answered If I do not well know what Love is I at least well understand what Patience is meaning that it was to suffer since nothing troubled him for the satisfaction he had in Gods causes And another time being asked whether he had Patience he said All pleased him and that he had no cause of impatience which onely belongs to them who keep the possession of their own will Lastly being about fourscore years of age he considered within himself what he said afterwards that love was a sea full tempests and storms where a port was not to be hoped for but with the losse of himself and
He is never damnified but alwayes equall to himself because he admitteth not Age but is one day composed of Eternity One may object here that to hope for any thing from another it is not alwayes necessary he be absolutely greater or more worthy then we We hope from artificers we hope likewise from our servants the performance of businesses which we put into their hands and therefore one might inferre that it is not a proposition contrary to reason to say that God can hope something from us as are the praises and service which we are bound to render to him as were likewise our conversion To that I answer it is true that the greatest Monarchs of the earth may hope from the meanest persons of their God is independent of all creatures and the source of his felicities proceedeth from the infinity of his persections kingdome because they are men and have dependence of men and in this God greatly humbleth great men when he makes them see that all this glorious pomp of their fortune which seems to afford matter of jealousie to heaven and of new laws to earth subsisteth not but by the commerce of merchants and by the labour and sweat of peasants all which makes no impression on the Divinity It exspecteth say you our praises as if God were not his owne praise to himself as if he stood in need of a mortall mouth to honour an Essence Tanquam momentum staterae sie est ante te orbis terrarum Sap. 11 3. Resoluto mundo diis in unum confusis cessante naturâ acquiesâ—â— sibi cogitati onibus suis traditus Sence ep 9. immortall Were all the lipps of men the most eloquent at this present covered under ashes what would it concern him All the world is before him no more then the turn of a ballance Hath not he the morning starres round about his awfull throne I mean those great Angels all replenished with lights and perfections who praise him incessantly And were the world annihilated and the very Angels confounded in the masse of starres and elements he would ever be God alwayes as great as himself and even left alone to his thoughts in his own thoughts he would find heaven But yet you will say he may expect our conversion which partly dependeth on our selves since he who made us without us will not save us without us It is easie to reply thereupon that God hath no need of the God hath no need of our conversion to encrease his glory Fasciculum suum super terram sundavit Amos 6. conversion of men to augment his glory but to establish their salvation and should he have need he continually hath his elect before him in the book of his prescience without blotting forth or thereunto adding any names Think you he expecteth till we have done to judge of our works He knoweth from all eternity what we must do in such or such an occasion his prescience not imposing any necessity upon our free-will This great God sitting in the highest part of heaven continually Manet spectator cunctorum Deus visionisque ejus praesens aeternitas cum nostrorum actuum qualitate concurrit Boet. l. 5. p. 6. beholdeth all the actions of men and the eternity of his vision perpetually present infallibly meeteth with the quality of our merits It letteth us go according to the current of the stream and the choice of our liberty but if he would proceed with absolute power there is no will so determinate upon evil which can resist him And therefore we must conclude his account is already made both within himself and without himself he not any whit depending on the future It is more clear then the day that God cannot hope God supporteth all good hopes by reason of the infinite capacity of his Essence Sperastis in Domino in seculis aeternis in Domino Deo forti in perpetuum Isa 16. 2. but it is likewise most manifest that he supporteth all good hopes by reason of the capacity of his Essence of his power and of his goodnesse and therefore Esay speaks very notably You have put your hope in our Lord who is in eternall ages In our Lord I say the true God whose strength is not limitted by length of time Men are weak and God is the God of the strong Men sometimes preserve for a time but God guardeth us eternally Men have their wills as changeable as their power is limitted but God besides that he is of a constancy unshaken exerciseth a power unbounded Where then may we better lodge our hopes then in the Divinity There it is where our second modell I meane the holy We must place our hopes in God by the example of the holy Humanity of Jesus Christ In te projectus sum ex uteâ—o spes mea ab ube ribus matrismeae For what reasons our Lord prayed humanity of Jesus placed all his hope My God my Hope I did cast my self between thy arms so soon as I began to be born in the world and at my going from my mothers bosome But one may here aske of theology If Jesus had the virtue of Hope what is it then he might hope I answer that if he might pray he might hope For prayer and namely a request is not made but with hope to obtein that we seek for Now who doubteth but that Jesus prayed on earth and doth he not also pray now in heaven He prayed saith Theology for four reasons First for the exercise of his virtue which is most excellent Secondly for our example Thirdly for the accomplishment of his commission and lastly for necessity I am not ignorant that S. John Damascen hath said that Christ prayed not but in appearance Damascen l. 4. de side insomuch as prayer being properly an ascension of the mind to God it could not be that the soul of Jesus Christ should mount anew into the Divinity since from the day of his Conception it was there as it were enchased not being able to be separated from it one sole moment But this question is satisfied by saying with Vazquez that it is true that our Lord in regard of the person of the Word could not pray having in this kind no superiour but by reason of the Humanity which might be wanting and indigent without the help of the Divinity therefore he mounted up to the source of the word not by vision and beatifick love which he already enjoyed but by the knowledge of science infused and by a new desire to impetrate something of his heavenly Father I say he already had Beatitude and that he was as it were engulfed in lights of glory he notwithstanding had not yet glorification of his body exaltation of his name extent of his Church from one pole to the other which made him pray and to say with S. John I beseech thee O Father make me glorious and resplendent before the face of all Creatures as I was from
torments no whit shaken blessing God for all these things and incessantly praying and forming some stuttering inarticulate sounds to instruct and exhort those who visited him A while after he is called again before this Tyrant who made a sport of his pains and sought to make him end his life by despair to kill the soul with the body But when he perceived his heart was of so strong a temper and that the dreadfull horrour of a poor body carried up and down among so many tortures made nothing for his reputation he gave order to Chrodobert to put him to death and instantly he was delivered to four executioners who led him forth into a forrest which retaineth the name of S. Leger The blessed blind man perceiving his hour approached said to them I see what you go about to do Trouble not your selves I am more ready to die then you to execute me Thereupon three of the murderers relenting prostrated themselves at his feet and craved pardon which he very freely granted and putting himself upon his knees prayed for his persecutours recommending his soul to the Father of souls at which time one of these four executioners persisting in his obduratenesse cut off his head The wife of Chrodobert took the body and interred it in a little Chappel where it did great miracles which have deserved the veneration of people Some time after the detestable Ebroin continuing the wickednesse of his bloudy life was slain in his bed like another Holophernes and suddenly taken out of the world not shewing any sign of repentance to be reserved for an eternall torment Behold all which Envy Jealousie and the Rage of a man abandoned by God can do which letteth us manifestly see that there are not any men in the world worse then those who degenerating from a religious profession return to the vices of the world And on the other side we may behold in the person of S. Leger that there is not any Passion which may not be overcome nor honour which may not be trodden underfoot nor torments which a man is not able to set at naught when he with strong confidence throws himself between the arms of the Crosse there to find those of Jesus Christ LAUS DEO FINIS THE HOLY COURT VVritten in French by N. CAUSSIN S. J. The Fifth Tome Containing the Lives and Elogies of Persons of the COURT most Illustrious both of the Old and New Testament c. divided into five ORDERS Monarchs and Princes Queens and Ladies Souldiers States-men Religious men Printed M.DC.L To the READER HAving employed my first Volumn in pious and profitable discourses I have purposed to set forth in this fifth Tome a sufficient large Court to serve for example Which I have done by uniting to the Histories which I have already published these which I have here added a new which are almost all taken out of the holy Scriptures and handled in a style more solid and contract then specious and enlarged If this Work hath somewhat delayed its coming forth into the light it hath been businesses other wayes coming upon me that hath staid it We have had adversaries to deal with very well known that have by their Requests and by their Libels exceedingly troubled themselves to molest us I have answered them in two Books after a long silence for that the necessity did seem so to require and Authority therein did expresly command my obedience I have done it with the greatest modesty and sincerity that I was able and I may with confidence say that it hath been to the satisfaction of people of quality and desert Since as I understand they have continued their Replies where they largely witnesse their sharpnesse against me But what offence have I committed if in a Cause so good and by order from my Superiours I have undertaken the Defence in generall of a Society in which I have lived near these fourty years and have never learned any thing therein but Wisdome and Virtue They have so little matter that they are compelled to use old News-books against me which have spoken nothing but what hath been interpreted to my honour I have served God the King the Queen and all France without ever offending any person they might be ashamed to reproach me with that which hath been so much for my credit and to imitate those people that threw their Gods at the heads of their enemies for want of arrows God keep me from losing so much time as to reade their Writings or any desire to answer them I should seem to have lost my understanding if I should busie my self in fighting against Shadows and Lies put into Rhetorick so fully refuted by our Justifications and so manifestly condemned by the judgement of the Queen Regent and the rest of the. Powers that have acknowledged and maintained the Innocency of this Society against all Accusations These Books of evil Language are intolerable to all honest people and even odious to those that are rationâ—ll of their own party in so much that I pity their Authours to whom the pains of so great a Volumn with so little successe hath already served for a large punishment Instead of Replies to all those slanders I do sincerely offer up Prayers to God for our Persecutours that he may please to kindle in their hearts his holy Love which may purge out this gall of bitternesse this carnall wisdome and cause them to bring forth the fruits of Truth Justice and Charity The which I have endeavoured to do in this Work wherein I conceive that I have acquitted my self of the promises that I made to the Publick by treating on the true Histories of great Personages and especially those whom the holy Scripture hath honoured by its style for the edification of all the world It is in these illustrious Representations that the mind contents it self it is here that it contemplates the Virtues of famous Persons like the beams of the first Magnitude it is here that it quickens it self to the imitation of their glorious deeds and that it fore-stalls the delights of its own immortality It is here that it learns to endure adversities without departing from the duties of its Calling and firmly to keep its Constancy like the shadow in the Quadrants that remains immoveable under the blasts of the most furious winds not forsaking the measures of the Sunne Receive therefore courteous Reader the fruits of this my labour sprung up in the midst of a tempest that is may find calmnesse in thy favourable acceptance THE MONARCHS THe wisest of Monarchs speaking in the holy Scripture unto the Princes of his age and proceeding at large to give a full warning to all those that should bear part in their honour and imitate their lives delivereth these words by way of Oracle Hearken O Kings not onely The words of the wiseman directed to the Kings of his time Sap. 6. with an ear of flesh but attend with that of the understanding and
are those that dispute here though beyond their sight concerning the Learning of Solomon and would His Knowledge prove that he composed Comedies and Satyrs but although we cannot deny that he was filled with abundance of Learning yet we must affirm that his Politicall Science had the chiefest place and that all his knowledge of Naturall things tended but to that intent seeing that he specified it in his Prayer that the desire of Wisdome that he professed was onely for the Government of his Kingdome And hence we may gather that Learning is an Instrument very necessary for the accomplishment of Whether learning be profitable for Princes great Princes although that the ignorant may conceive otherwise They say that this makes them too lofty curious and self-conceited and that hence they take the boldnesse to rest upon their own belief and deifie all their opinions a great Authority being sufficiently able to raise up a little sufficiency They bring the examples of Nero and Julian the Apostate both which having so well studied they governed ill and came to an unhappy end But I shall avouch to them that knowledge and judgement without piety is an unprofitable commodity and sometimes pernicious to Kings Hence it is that they take occasion to move extravagant questions to undertake dangerous businesses to authorize their faults by apparent reasons and to be pricked forward with a conceit which causes them to despise all counsels Neverthelesse it is an insupportable abuse to blame The learning of a Prince defended good things in those which either have but the counterfeit thereof or which make an evil use of them I esteem not Nero nor Julian to have been very learned men because they had skill in Poetry and Rhetorick without ever well attaining the knowledge of their principall profession and if they having learned good precepts among humane Writers have abused them shall one say for that that they are naught and dangerous for a Prince By the same reason we might condemne the Sunne because that Phaeton burnt himself in those heats And take away the Water from amongst the Elements because that Aristotle as they say was drowned therein Lastly we might bring an accusation against Nature in generall and so find nothing to be good of all that God made because it may be corrupted by the wickednesse of men But for two or three Princes somwhat learned which have used their skill evilly how many ignorant ones shall we find which have done farre more cruel and barbarous things then these as Dioclesian Licinius Maximian Bajazet and Sclim Nature hath placed all the Senses which are the principles of our Knowledge in the Head to give us to understand that all the lights ought to be in a Prince which is the Head of his Realm The Soul is not more necessary for the Body then Understanding for a King He is as Philo reports to his people that which God is to the creature And what doth God but onely shed forth his clearnesse throughout the whole world visible and invisible and what ought a Monarch to do but to make himself the fountain of good counsels that should maintain his estate What can a Prince do which sees not but with others eyes which speaks not but by the mouth of another which hears not but with borrowed ears but onely lose his estimation in the minds of his Subjects and yield up his Authority as a prey unto those that knowing his insufficiency take the boldnesse to enterprise any thing without punishment I confesse there are those which having not studied have a very good understanding which they have polished by the experience of things in the world and by conversing with great personages but how can we say that those are ignorant which know as much as the books and might serve for examples to Philosophers their modesty doth yet make them affirm and acknowledge that if they had received a deeper tincture of good learning they should have drawn therefrom the more grace and advantage I would in no wise that a Prince should be like to Knowledge ought to be moderate the Emperour Michael Paripanatius which had alwayes table-Table-books in his hand and a pen composing of Verses or making Periods to run smooth I do not so much esteem such petty shews of superfluous knowledge and ill ordered in a great one but to see a man at the government of people which hath laid a deep foundation of true piety knows the secrets of Philosophy the best purified is no wayes ignorant of Divine and Humane Laws is skilfull in the Histories of all Nations with very diligent Observations and particular applications to his own government A man that can judge speak and act that can expresse himself with clearnesse and majesty of words fitting to his estate this is it which makes him appear as a God amongst men which gives him authority amongst his people which makes him esteemed by his equalls feared by his inferiours terrible to his enemies and honoured by all the world It is by these means that Augustus Cesar Trajan Vespatian Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and so man others whereof Tiraquel reckons up eight and thirty very famous in his Book of Nobility have attained to that heighth of reverence which hath made them honoured throughout all ages For a proof of this we see the great reputation The judgement of Solomon on the contention of the two women that Solomon got in judging of the two women which disputed whose the little infant should be Both of them said equally that she was the true mother the one acted it cunningly the other proceeded therein with truth It was needfull to know which spoke from the heart and which from the tongue onely There are counterfeits so well stuft out and neatly coloured that many able men cannot know nor are able to distinguish the true from the false Parmeno counterfeited so perfectly the cry of a young chicken that one would have thought that nature could not have set out out any thing better in comparison of him So many skilfull men so many gray heads were at that time in the Court of Solomon which lost themselves in this counterfeit without being able to discover it and when he commanded a sword to be brought and to divide the little infant all the world was amazed some thought his judgement was grosse that it was cruel and bloudy but Solomon had studied in the bosome of nature the affections of a true mother When he understood that the one approved of this command and was urgent that the infant should be divided in two he drove her away as an impudent one but when he saw that the other was moved and wounded deeply at her heart and that she cryed with a pitifull voyce that they should rather give the infant all whole to that wicked one then to make two pieces of it When he considered the affrightment on her face and all the veins of her body
forasmuch as he was most Catholick and that they feared lest the Chamberlain and his favourite held yet some of the leven of Anastasius that was an Heretick The Cow-herd being then set upon the Throne of Constantine Amantius that had merchandized the Empire seeing himself so shamefully faln from his pretensions plotted a mischievous conspiracy against the new Emperour but he succeeded in it so ill that his design being discovered he lost his life together with his complices after he had lost his honour and his money Justin that was endowed with a great goodnesse did not grow proud and scornful when he was arrived to the top of honours but having married a woman very mean in her first condition he caused her suddenly to be crowned Empresse changing her salvage name of Lupicia into Euphenica He consecrated the beginning of his reign by the return of the Bishops and of all the honest men which he caus'd to be call'd back from the exile to which the Heretick Emperour had condemn'd them He caus'd Religion to flourish again on all sides and express'd a most ardent zeal to render justice to his people without sparing himself in the toyles of war though he was already very aged He enjoy'd the Empire eight or nine years and being a man extreamly humble he lov'd his kindred though of base condition and seeing he had no children of his own he chose his sisters son to make him his Successour and gave him even the Crown before he quitted the Sceptre and the world after a reign of nine years Behold the originall of our Justinian of whom Histories speak very diversly seeing that the admirers of his actions give him high commendations and the enviers of his great fortune who might perhaps have experimented the effects of his severity have scatter'd imputations on him in their reviling Histories that have pass'd even to this age But the most understanding men having well examin'd every thing put him in the rank of the most illustrious Monarchs of all Christendome And indeed it is a wonder how a spirit extracted from the life and condition of a Shepherds took so high a flight in the Temple of glory that having taken in hand all the great designs that may fall into the spirit of a Monarch he prospered in all with a merveilous successe He maintein'd his dignity against the most horrible conspiracies that ever set upon an Empire in the revolution of so many Kingdomes He made wars in Asia in Europe and in Africa which he ended by most eminent victories He recovered Africa out of the hands of the Vandals he powerfully pluck'd the Capitall City of the World out of the tyranny of the Gothes he publish'd eternall Books he erected buildings that remain yet after they have passed more then ten ages He encountred the greatest Captains and the most able States-men that have been ever in the world in the person of Bellisarius and Tribonian And although that when he took the government of the Empire he was five and fourty years of age yet he reigned thirty nine years God crowning all his good actions with a long continuance which serves infinitely for the accomplishment of all great designs I will tell you in few words his Nature and his Manners before I come to his deeds of valour according to the most true relation that I have been able to extract out of Histories without passion and not according to the Idea's of Procopius who hath horribly difigur'd him by a manifest hatred in his railing History This Prince was a man that feared God and firm in the faith of Christianity and although he was at certain times surpriz'd with some errours by the artifices of his wife the Empresse yet the Learned men of the West and Pastours of the East that have so highly praised him after his death testifie sufficiently that his spirit was purged of all the wicked beliefs that his Doctours had endeavoured to infuse into his soul and which he had approved by an excesse of a too credulove zeal Hereticks and Libertines were the object of his hatred and his choler but good Churchmen caus'd in his soul a certain veneration and he studied by all wayes to assist and protect the Churches and the Hospitalls his Liberalities were extended every where in works of piety by great buildings and magnificent alms He was most chast contenting himself all his life with her that God had given him for a companion and his most violent enemies have not been able to tell us one onely womans name that hath possessed his heart to the prejucice of his Bed He could not endure wantonnesse and especially that that brings a shame to nature which he chastised with most rigorous punishments He detested and punished by his laws all those that laid snares to the modesty of Virgins and of Women to corrupt them His manner of life was extream austere and Procopius himself the most cruell of his revilers acknowledges that he was most sober and that he would cause the table to be taken away when he had scarce touched the victuals seeking nothing exquisite therein but denying oftentimes to nature even her necessities He hath seen him he sayes fast the Lents with such an austerity that the devoutest of all his people could not reach it for he would be eight and fourty hours without eating or drinking and at the end of that he drank nothing but water contenting himself with a little bread and a sallade yet he was endowed with a body so well composed and so happily temper'd that after his long abstinencies he appear'd yet ruddy from whence it came that that Calumniatour instead of acknowledging the blessing that God gives in this extraordinarily to some of his servants said That he was a Devil and not a Man Further yet he slept very little and the same man adds that often an hours repose suffised him and that he bewailed the time that he allowed his body He made long prayers night and day and employed the rest of his time in his affairs without admitting any other recreation Those that have publish'd that he could neither write nor reade have abus'd the belief of men taking the name of Justinian for that of his Uncle Justine for the Historian his persecutour confesses that he wrote his Breviats and all his dispatches without troubling his Secretaries He was of a most easie accesse to all the world and was not offended at the importunities no nor at the incivilities that those that were ignorant of the fashions of the Court committed in his presence He heard willingly the differences of his people and he himself pronounced the sentence to determine them his patience was extream he never was mov'd in handling any businesses and decreed even the most rigourous punishments with a cold visage and a tone of a moderated voyce He was a true observer of order who manag'd in his closet with incomparable justice what ere should be produc'd in the whole
glittering stones and of all the most magnificent rich materials that were then to be found in all the world It is he that had a most tender care of all the Churches of his Empire He that every where enriched the house of God The Purveyour for the Hospitals the refuge of all necessitous persons and the Sanctuary of the afflicted It is he that governed the whole world by most holy Laws who hath revenged persecuted and punished those crimes that tended to the infection of the Publick It is he that warred all his life time against Hereticks and that upheld the Glory of the Roman Empire which since Constantine was faln into an horrible decay It is he that displayed his Ensigns in Asia Europe and Africa under the Name of Jesus Christ with a force incomparable and successes that could not but come from heaven It is he that banished from Christian society Sorcerers Immodest and Infamous persons and that planted every where good manners It is he that made Learning flourish that rewarded men of Merit that eternized Laws that bore Arms to the heighth of Reputation It is he that alwayes shewed himself a most ardent administratour of the Justice of God giving audience very often in person to parties with an indesatigable toil It is he that pardon'd injuries and received even into Grace those that had attempted upon his life He that God preserved from a thousand dangers and a thousand ambushes He whom God crowned with great age and an infinite number of blessings CHARLEMAGNE OR CHARES the GREAT IT is not flattery that hath given to our Charles the name of Great since that truth it self may attribute to him the title of three-times-thrice Great for his Piety for his Arms and for his Laws All that Persia respected in Cyrus all that Greece vaunted in Alexander all that Rome honoured in Augustus and in Trajan all that Christians have commended in the persons of Constantine and Theodosius is found included in our Charlemagne Ptolomie said that great Personages are never born into the world without a conspiration of the Heavens which collect their best Constellations and most favourable Influences to salute them as soon as they salute the day We cannot know the quality of the stars that ruled over this happy birth but we know that Providence which infinitely out-passes the effects of all the celestiall Globes hath taken the care of forming this incomparable Prince and of making him a Master-piece of her hands to shew him to all Ages Nature was employed to build him a Body capable to sustain the Impressions of that divine Spirit that God would lodge therein She made him a stature so advantageous limbs so well composed so handsome and so strong she engraved so much Majesty upon his countenance she sowed so much lightning and attraction in his eyes that they triumphed over hearts before his valour had laid hand upon the Empire It is not alwayes that Felicity is so prodigall of her benefits she contents her self in some to adorn the house with troubling her self for the inhabitant and if there be a fair appearance on the out-side there is little Sense within But in our Charles every thing was Great and his Soul never belyed the beautifull spectacle of his Body His understanding was quick and piercing his memory most happy his judgement clean and solid that discerned exactly good from evill and truth from falshood He that saw him in Letters thought that they were made for none but him and he that contemplated him in Arms perceived that he would be one day the chief of Conquerours He studied Grammar Rhetorick Poetry Philosophy Law Astrology and the rest of the Mathematicks He learned the Latine the Greek the Hebrew the Syriack He had some taste even of Divinity it self and succeeded in all Sciences so advantageously that he might have held the Empire of Letters if God had not destined to him that of the World He respected his Tutours all his life time as the Fathers of his soul he made his Master of Peter the Deacon when the Law of Arms might have made him his Slave He drew Alcuin out of England to learn of him the secret of the Arts honoured him with great benefits and at last founded by his Counsel the University of Paris His meals were seasoned with the reading of some good book or with the conference of the ablest men of his whole kingdome loving to refresh himself from businesse in their discourses without taking any other directions in his pains then the change of one labour into another That which spoils many great ones is that they cannot endure any serious thing for a long time and yet this King made his Recreations even of that whereof others might have made an hard study and the grace of it was that he did all this without pain and that his spirit was no more disquietted with Sciences then the eye with the most delightfull colours This occupation that he took in Letters by the orders of the King his father served extremely to the fashioning of his manners because he saw in Books and especially in History as in a true mirrour all the stains that flattery dissembles unto Princes that heed not to be in a resolution to wash them off since they are not in a condition to know them It is a marveilous thing to see how nature seemed to sport her self in reproducing Martel and Pepin in the person of Charles she moderated the fierce valour of the Grandsire by the sweetnesse of the father and made in him an heavenly temper by the happiest of mixtures His Devotion was not soft nor feminine neither was it large or lukewarm but it gently spread its divine Lights in the soul of this Monarch without deading the fire of his courage He had most sublime knowledges of God and apprehensions very Religious he offered to him his duties both in publick and in private with a very sincere Piety He burnt with a great zeal to carry his name into all places whither he could extend his Arms. He was ardently affectionate to the holy See to which he gave respects and incomparable protections he honoured the Prelates and filled the Church with Benefits He held that Justice was the Rampart of Kingdomes the Peace of the people the policy of manners the joy of hearts and that neither the gentle temperature of the air nor the serenity of the sea nor the fruitfulnesse of the earth were any way equall to its sweetnesse He made a manifest profession of it in the inviolable verity of his words in the sincerity of his proceedings in the duties which he gendered to God to the authours of his birth to his kindred to his countrey and universally to all the world He gave audience often in person to the differences of his people and even at his rising out of his bed he caused the Provost of his house to enter into his chamber with the parties that pleaded to
that it was not to break the Sabboth but rather to sanctifie it Following these pathes he was the first of all the Jews that made a League with the Romans which hath seemed a little harsh to Rupertus and some other Divines But we must consider what Saint Paul saith That if all commerce with the Gentiles had been forbidden to the Jews and to the first Christians they should have been constrained rather to go out of the world then converse in it Never did this great Captain in his most pressing necessities cause the Roman souldiers to come into Palestine fearing lest their approach might bring some damage and profanation to an Holy Land But forasmuch as he saw himself environed all round with Kings that bowed under the puissance of the Roman Empire he thought that it would be convenient to endeavour to gain their friendship to obtain more easily Justice against the oppressions of his neighbours He employed the power of the Infidels not to torment the faithfull but to ruine infidelity He sought to those into whose hands God had put the Power to have the exercise of it to the glory of him that had communicated it to them this was not a crime but a most exquisite piece of prudence The false high Priest Alcimus Judas's adversary did not use the matter so who caused the Armies of Antiochus to come to the destruction of the Altars and to the massacre of his brethren which caused him to be smitten with a stroak from heaven and rendred him execrable to the memory of men But we must acknowledge that of all the great qualities that hath shined in this so famous man Valour hath alwayes held one of the upper ranks He was made for Military virtue and furnished with all the necessary conditions that make Generalls of Armies and Conquerours An elevated birth an happy beginning that he had made under his father science of Warre Authority Happinesse Vigilancy Activenesse Boldnesse Government and whatsoever is best in the profession of Arms had contributed to make of him the wonder of his age He was a Lion's heart that found security in dangers and would not have even Crowns themselves if he did not pluck them out of the midst of thorns One cannot read without admiration the two books of the Maccabees in considering the great progresses that he made in so little time and so many various encounters In the space of six years he sustained the great and prodigious forces of three Kings of Asia opposing himself with a little flying Camp against Armies of fourty sixty an hundred thousand men which he put into disorder and confusion He defeated in ranged battels and in divers combats nine Generalls of the Infidels killing some with his own hand and carrying away their spoils The first amongst them was Apollonius who was of an high repute in Antiochus his Reign because that he had been employed in the principall businesses of the Realm treating with the Romans and the Egyptians for his Master It is the very same that entred into Jerusalem with an army of two and twenty thousand men and under pretence of Peace made there an horrible spoil Assoon as he had heard that Judas Maccabeus had put himself into the field with a strength very little considerable he thought that being Governour of Syria and of Phenicia and at that time upon the place the businesse concerned him above all others and therefore he collects together great troops to stop the progresse of the Jews and to succeed with all security But the valorous Maccabeus prevented him so vigorously that he had not the leasure well to bethink himself he gave him battle wherein his men seeing the assaults of the faithfull people that seemed the assaults of giants began to stagger Whatsoever pains he took to rally them fear had so farre gained upon them that they destroyed themselves for fear of being destroyed Judas by Joseph Gorians report made that day the heads of his enemies to fall under his cuttle-ax as fast as the ears of corn-fall under the hook of the reaper He chose Apollonius out of the middle of his best souldiers and ran to him challenging him to a duel in which the other was overcom in the sight of a trembling army and Judas took away his sword which he used the rest of his dayes in so many glorious combats Seron that was Lieutenant under Apollonius pushed on with vengeance and with glory that made him long since seek out an occasion to make himself renowned thinking that Apollonius his defeat was but a stroke of Fortune and that he should quickly bring Judas into good order rallyed all his forces increasing his army as much as possibly he could which gave at first a great terrour to the Hebrews seeing that the heads of that Hydra which they thought had been cut off pushed forth so suddenly They had journied and fasted the very day of the combat and seemed all discouraged but Judas exhorted them with an ardent speech that put fire and spirit into all his Army It fell so opportunely upon the enemy that Seron thought he had to do rather with hungry wolves then men and although he came with a great deal of bravery to the encountre he quickly perceived that he had sung the Triumph before the Victory and had very much ado to retire with a whole skin contenting himself to run away after he had had the hope of conquering Lysias that was the Almighty under King Antiochus grew mad to see himself out-braved by so small an army of men contemptible and knew not what account to give the King his Master to whom he had promised to root out the remainders of the Jewish people so that there should not be any memory of them left behind He chose on divers occasions three of the best Generalls of all the Armies which were Ptolomy Gorgias and Nicanor Ptolomy made not any great brags Gorgias was vain enough to promise himself the victory and perswaded himself that he was very dreadfull But Judas though he had then but three thousand men badly armed defeated him and took his camp which was filled with great riches which gave a great temptation to the Jewish Army that desired nothing but readily to throw themselves upon the booty Yet their Conductour that knew the art of Warre and that many busying themselves about the spoils had lost their honour and their life gave a strict command that they should not touch that prey of the Infidels before the defeat was perfected and thereupon set himself to pursue his enemies that were in a disorder and after he had killed a good number of them put the rest to flight Nicanor that was the third of those Generalls after he had experimented the valour of Judas with the losse of his men resolved not to commit his reputation to the incertainty of combats but put off the Lions skin to take the Foxes endeavouring to surprise Judas by treachery seeing that he
the People with astonishment They removed themselves according to the Orders of their Legislatour to the foot of the Mountain Sinai with a prohibition to passe further All the Mountain smoaked as a great Fornace by reason that God was descended thither all in fire which made it extream terrible But Moses his dear favourite ascended to the highest top amidst the fires the darknesses and the flames in that Luminous obscurity where God presided that spake to him face to face as to his most intimate confident After all that thundering voyce of the Living God was heard that pronounced his Decrees and his Laws in that Chamber of Justice hung with fire and lights that trembled under the footsteps of his Majesty All this Law was set down in writing with a most exact care and is yet read every day in the five Books of the Law Now Religion being the Basis of all Policy without which great Kingdomes are but great Robbings This wise Law-giver applyed his whole care and travell to the rooting out of Idolatry and to the causing of the Adorable Majesty of God to be acknowledged in the condition of a worship truly Monarchicall and incommunicable to any other as appears in the punishment which he inflicted on those that had worshiped the golden Calf For the Scripture saith That when the Israelites perceived that Moses tarried a long time on the Mountain of Sinai in those amiable Colloquies that he had with God they grew weary of it and said to the high Priest Aaron That since that man that had brought them out of Egypt was lost they ought to dream no more of him but make in his place Gods that should march in the head of their Army Aaron that perperhaps had a mind to make them lose the relish of that design by the price to which it would amount demanded of them the Pendents of the ears of their Wives and of their Children to go to work about it but their madnesse was so great that they devested themselves freely of all that they had most precious to make a God to their own phansie Aaron accommodating himself to their humour through a great weaknesse made them a Statue that had some resemblance of the Ox Apis that was adored in Egypt As soon as they had perceived it they began to cry Courage Israel behold the God that hath drawn thee out of the slavery of Egypt Aaron accompanied him with an Altar and caused a solemn Feast to be bidden for the morrow after at which the people failed not to be present offering many sacrifices making good cheer and dancing about that Idol God advertised Moses of that disorder and commanded him to descend suddenly from the Mountain to remedy it although he intended to destroy them and had done it had he not been appeased by the most humble Remonstrances and Supplications of his servant He failed not to betake himself speedily to the Camp where he saw that Abomination and the Dances that were made about it which inflamed him so much with Choler that he brake the Tables of the Law written by the hand of God thinking that such a present was not seasonable for Idolaters and Drunkards He rebuked Aaron sharply who excused himself coldly enough and not intending that so abominable a crime should passe without an exemplary punishment He took the Golden Calf and beat it into dust which he steep'd in water to make all those drink of it that had defiled themselves with that sacrilege and to make them understand that sinne that seems at first to have some sweetnesse is extreamly bitter in its effects After which he commanded That all those that would be on Gods side should follow him and the Tribe of Levi as being the most interressed failed not to joyn with him whereupon seeing them all well animated he gave them order to passe through all the Camp from one door to the other with their swords in their hands and to slay all that they met without sparing their nearest kindred This was executed and all the Army was immediately filled with Massacres Rivers of blood ran on all sides accompanied with the sad howlings of a scared multitude that expected every minute the stroke of death God would have that this so severe a punishment be executed upon those miserable men to cause an eternall horrour of Idolatry which is the most capitall of all sins And to retein the worship of God a thousand pretty Ceremonies were practised after the structure of the Tabernacle of the Ark of Covenant of the Table of the Shew-bread of the Altars and after the institution of the Pontificall habits of the Offerings and of the Sacrifices that were celebrated with much order and a singular Majesty Moses also was indefatigable in rendring Justice sitting from the morning till the night on his Tribunall to hear the requests of all the particular men that came to him which Jethro his father in law that was come to visit him having perceived said to him that it was impossible for him to be long able to undergo so troublesome a labour and that he ought to choose amongst all the people some Puissant men fearing God true and enemies of covetousnesse to administer Justice and that it would be sufficient to reserve to himself the controversies that should be of greatest importance Moses believed his counsell and established an handsome order for the decision of the differences that should arise amongst the People He passed fourty years in the wildernesse in divers habitations partly in war against the enemies partly in preserving peace amongst his People and confirming all the laws which he established by the command of God In this exercise he lived to the age of an hundred and twenty years sepaparated himself from all things of the world and was so united to God that it seemed that even his Body it self passed into the nature and condition of an immortall Spirit In fine God having shewed him upon the mountain Nebo all the Land of Promise which he had got to by so many good counsells and so much pains he dyed in that view without entring into it was mourned for thirty dayes by the Israelites and interred of set purpose in a sepulchre unknown to the eyes of men for fear lest he should give an occasion of some Idolatry to that people that would have held him for a Deity Never had man a Birth more forlorn a Life more various or a Death more glorious of an exposed Infant he became a Kings son of a Kings son an Exile of an Exile a Shepheard of a Shepheard a Captain of a Captain a Prophet of a Prophet a Law-giver of a Law-giver a Sovereign the God of Kings and the King of all the Prophets Active at Court Devout in Solitude Victorious in War Happy in Peace Wise in his Laws Terrible in his Arms a man of Prodigies that opened Seas Manur'd Wildernesses Commanded things Sensible and Insensible and exercised an Empire on
say shall come to passe under thy Reign Behold a strange Prophecy and some body may wonder that Elisha did not cause that wicked man to be strangled that was to make all those tragedies for how many mothers are there that would have choaked their own children at their breast if they had foreseen that after they had sucked their milk they would one day assume the spirit of an hangmand to tyrannize over mankind Yet Elisha rejects not that Hazael but consecrates him King by his speech because that he knew that it was a disposition of God who would make use of him as of the rod of his fury to chastise the Idolatries of his Kings and the sins of his People All men of God have this property to submit themselves exceedingly to Gods will although it seems to will and permit things strangely lamentable In conclusion as Predictions are very ticklish and flatter the intention of those that promise themselves Empires and wonders they animate also the heart of those that have wicked undertakings and one ought never to permit any one to take consulations with Astrologers and Southsayers about the life and fortune of great men This Embassadour returning to the Court deceived his King giving him all hopes of a life and when he doubted least of death strangled him with a wet napkin paying himself with a Kingdome for a recompence of his wickednesse And although it was a disposition of God that Benhadad should be deprived of his Sceptre yet it failed not to be a crime in Hazael The last rancounter that Elisha had at Court was with King Joash who went to see him a little before his death and this Prince foreseeing that he would quickly depart out of this world said to him weeping that he was the Father the Chariot and the Conductour of his Kingdome and of all his People expressing that he was afflicted with the regret of his losse above all the things of the world But Elisha to comfort him made him take his bow and arrows and put his hand upon the Kings hand as to guide it after that he commanded the window to be set open towards Syria and caused the King to let flie an arrow which he accompanied with Propheticall words saying That it was the arrow of salvation whose feathers God himself did guide and that it was a messenger that prophesied to him that he should combate and destroy the Syrians enemies of his people After that he bad Joash again strike the ground with the point of a dart that he had in his hand which he did three times and the Prophet told him that he should carry away as many victories over the King of Syria but if he had stricken till seven times he should have ruined him even to the utmost consummation A little while after Elisha dyed with an high reputation of sanctity and an extreme regret of all the orders of the kingdome and was interred in a place where he raised afterward a dead man by the touching of his bones God rendring every thing wonderfull in him even to his very ashes It appears by all this discourse that this personage had not a Piety idle and fearfull amorous of its own small preservation without caring for the publick good but he had an heart filled with generous flames for the protection of his people and an incomparable security to shew to Princes the estate of their conscience He supported all the Realm by his prayers by his exhortations by his heroick actions and the losse of one such man was the overthrow of the prime Pillar of the State ISAIAH JEREMIAH ISAIAH THE PROPHET IEREMIAH THE PROPHET THe Prophet Isaiah hath engraved his spirit in his Book and cannot be commended more advantageously then by his works He that would make him great Elogies after so sublime a Prophecy would seem to intend to shew the Sun with a torch The things that are most excellent make themselves known by themselves as God and the Light and I may say all the words that this divine Personage hath left us are as many characters of his Immortality It is with a very just title that we put him amongst the holy Courtiers for he was born at the Court of Judea and some hold that he was the nephew of King Amasiah This birth so elevated and so many fair hopes which might flatter him to make him follow the course of the great ambitions of the world did no way shake the force of his spirit It was a soul consecrated to things Divine that sacrificed the first fires of his youth by the most pure flames of Angels Never did Prophet enter into that Ministery with more authority and disposition of heaven He had a sublime vision in which he saw the Majesty of God seated upon a Throne of Glory environ'd with Seraphims that were transported through the admiration of his greatnesse God in person created him his Prophet the Seraphim a messenger of the sovereign power purified his lips with a Carbuncle from whence proceeded a celestiall fire that if he had got any pollutions at the Court where tongues are so free they might be taken away by that sacred touch He offered himself to God with an heart full of chearfulnesse to carry his word before Kings and Subjects without fearing their menaces or their furies And he acquitted himself all his life time worthily of that duty and prophesied more then fourscore and ten years not ceasing to exhort to counsel to rebuke to instruct to comfort and to perform all the exercises of his charge His Eloquence is as elevated as his birth he speaks every where like a King with a speech firm lofty and thundering that passes all the inventions of man When he threatens and fore-tells the calamities of Nations it is so much lightning kindled by the breath of Seraphims that proceeds out of this Divine mouth that pierces the rocks that shakes the mountains that crushes the highest cedars into dust the nations into fear and the Kings into respect When he comforts they are rivers of milk and honey that flow from his tongue and spread themselves with incomparable sweetnesses into afflicted hearts When he describes the perfections and the reign of the Messias they are the amorous extasies of a spirit melted by the heats of Jesus that strikes burns and penetrates him more then seven hundred years before his Birth The holinesse of his Life marched alwayes hand in hand with his Doctrine He was a man dead to all worldly things that lived but by the raptures of his deified spirit He loved singularly the poor and comforted them in all their necessities He spake to Kings and reproved their sins with an heroick constancy worthy of his Bloud and Ministery At the same time as Romulus began the Court of Rome Isaiah saw that of Judea where he experimented great changes and strange diversities according to the revolutions of humane things He passed his youth under his uncle Amasiah who
Nero who by Anicetus the same man who before killed his mother did raise a horrible calumny against the honour of his wife and caused this instrument of the devil to affirm that he had played with the Empresse on which he caused her to be banished and poor Octavia as a guilty person did suffer under that wicked sentence and was banished into the Isle of Pandaluria and because Poppea could not sleep in quiet with Nero as long as Octavia was alive he filled up his cruelty and by a most unworthy death he sacrificed her to the appetite of that most bold woman whom afterwards he killed with a spum of his foot on the end of his life and of his Empire My pen is weary to describe so many horrours and doth go over them as on so many burning coals but my Reader it is to represent unto you that this pernicious caitiste causing the poyson of his evill actions to diffuse it self into the veins of all the city of Rome The world was in its heighth of iniquity when S. Paul and Seneca meeting together at one time did endeavour to cure the maladies of this wicked Court the one by Philosophy the other by the Gospel Behold here the manners learning abilities and the successe both of the one and of the other Who hath not Seneca in veneration a good Authour Johannes Sarisburiensis saith hath not the understanding of a reasonable man He is known by all knowing men in his Writings and mis-known by some in his Manners and his Life Suillius a Roman Advocate accused for corruption and banished by the counsell of Seneca at what time he was imployed in the government of Affairs did write a defaming Book against that great From whence proceeded the calumnies against Seneca personage which two Greek Historians but men of small judgement Dion and Xiphiline have followed and in many things have blamed him with as much passion as impertinence This Opinion hath infected divers spirits who either for want of capacity or application do discourse unto us of Seneca as of a man quite contrary to his Books which hath made me diligently to examine his Life to take away the abuse and to give you an Idaea of that puissant Genius with as much clearnesse as sincerity Know then that he was a Roman by his Extract His birth and Bloud He was born at Corduba a city in Spain which was then under the Empire of Rome and full of Italians who being born almost in all the parts of the world were yet born within the Circle of their Empire His father was of an ordinary family a Gentleman of no great account removed from the observation of the world and as farre from command as from ambition addicted above all things to the study of Eloquence reasonably learned but of an admirable memory for having but once heard them he would readily rehearse two thousand names and two hundred verses His mother was named Helvia one of the most beautifull women in the Empire full of understanding and judgement of a high virtue and a rare modesty she had some knowledge in letters and an extraordinary capacity to increase that knowledge if time and custome had given her leave to take an advantage of it His elder brother was called Novatus or Gallion and had a great command in the Empire His younger brother was named Mela a man farre from ambition who lived in the house and studied Eloquence with his Father who in that regard did preferre him in his own judgement above his brothers But Seneca was nourished and advanced in Rome His Education and Spirit in the time of Augustus Cesar he received his first elements of learning under the Discipline of his father and afterwards studied Philosophy under Attalus and Socion In his first years he made the vigour of his Spirit the force of Eloquence and the abundance of Learning to appear so fully in him that he was admired by the most knowing men But that great spirit did by degrees consume his body which was lean and thin and troubled with defluxions and the ptisick which would have brought him to his grave if the cruelty of Nero had not prevented it He was obliged to make an Oration in publick before The fury of Caligula against him Caligula the Emperour concerning which that monster in nature who could not endure any thing that was great and praisefull and by a malignity of manners envied all professours of Learning did pronounce aloud that he had too much spirit and that they must kill him which had presently been put in execution if one of the Mistresses of the Emperour who knew Seneca and favoured him for his Eloquence had not perswaded him that he was not worth killing a lean poor fellow and one whom death would suddenly of it self take away from the world Howbeit he lived many years afterwards and increased in knowledge as in age and as much in Eloquence as in them both attending a more favourable time to make a manifestation of it Claudius succeeded the Emperour Caligula who was not a man for Seneca and though he was indued with extraordinary qualities for a Courtier yet the favour of the times did not much smile upon them His clear spirit and his brave works made him to be known in the house of Germanicus a Prince of the Bloud who was poysoned in the flower of his age and left behind him children of great consideration namely two Princesses who made themselves diversly talked of in Rome the one was Julia the other Agrippina the mother of Nero. This Julia took an affection to Seneca being much pleased with the beauty Dion doth distinguish them in his 9. Book and Suetonius chap. 29. of his spirit and the grace of his discourse He daily frequented the house of Germanicus being no lesse in discretion then in favour and wisely judged that these two high-born Princesses might one day contribute to the making of his fortunes But the Court is an uncertain sea where sometime a tempest doth arise when a calm is expected The favour of Julia in the stead of advancing Seneca did suppresse him and did almost overwhelm him without any hope of rising again although in the end it was in effect the cause of all his reputation It came to passe that Messalina the wife to the Emperour Claudius the most insatiable woman in her lusts that Nature ever produced did conceive an enraged hatred against the house of Germanicus and especially against the Princesse Julia because she was highly esteemed for her rare beauty and the high spirit of Messalina could not endure that any Lady should be praised at Court for her beauty but her self Besides she perceived that her husband whom she absolutely governed did make very much of that young Princesse she therefore caused her to be falsly accused for prostituting her honour and procured her to be banished the Court. An inquiry was made after those who
years before his death which makes the truth more remarkable he speaketh clearly that the Soul returneth to heaven if it be well purified from its commerce with earth that heaven is its true Countrey and Element and that it is a great proof of its Divinity that it delighteth to hear of heavenly things as being the affairs proper to it self We must take care not here to judge and condemn Seneca on a doubtfull word as when in his Consolation to Martia he saith That all end by Death and by Death it self He onely there toucheth of Goods and Evils of Honours Riches Pleasures Troubles and the Cares of this present life It is most clear that there is nothing in that Sentence which derogates from the Immortality of the Soul because he concludes that Treatise with the joyes which a happy Soul receiveth in the other life And it is not from our purpose to consider that Seneca sometimes in disputing speaketh by supposition according to the Idaea of others and not according to his own We cannot know better the opinion of an Authour then by his Actions and his Practise and we observe that Seneca hath not onely professed the Immortality of the Soul by words but believeth the effect in secret for he reverenced the Souls of great Personages and did believe them to be in heaven which he testified before he received the Christian Faith when being in a countrey-house of Scipio of Africa he rendred divine honours to his Epist 86. Spirit prostrating himself at the Altar of his Sepulchre and perswading himself he said that his Soul was in heaven not because that he was Generall of the Army but because he lived an honest man and having infinitely obliged his ingratefull countrey he retired himself in a voluntary solitude to his own house to give no fears and jealousies of his greatnesse If we demand where he placed the sovereign good His opinion of the sovereign good and the end of Man we shall find that he established the felicity of this present life to live according to Reason and that of the life to come in the re-union of the Soul with its first beginning which is God From this foundation he hath drawn a rule and propositions which he hath dispersed over all his Books and these are to despise all the goods of the world Honours Empires Riches Reputation Pleasures gorgeous Habiliments stately Buildings great Possessions Gold Silver precious Stones Feasts Theatres Playes and to take all things as accessory and to regard them no more then the moveables of an Inne where we are not but as passengers And above all things to esteem of virtue of the mortification of loose desires of contemplation of eternall virtues of Justice Prudence Fortitude Temperance of Liberality Benignity of Friendship of Constancy in a good course of life of Patience in Tribulation of Courage to support injuries of Sicknesse Banishment Chains Reproaches of Punishments and of Death it self We may affirm that never any man spoke more worthily then he of all these subjects Never Conquerour did subdue Nations with more honour then this great Spirit with a magnificent glory at his feet hath levelled and spurned down all the Kingdomes of Fortune All that he speaketh is vigorons ardent lively His heart when he did write did inflame his style to inflame the hearts of all the world His words followed his thoughts He did speak in true Philosophy but as a king and not as a slave to words and periods His brevity is not without clearnesse His strength hath beauty his beauty hath no affectation he is polished smooth full and entire never languishing impetuous without confusion his discourse is tissued yet nothing unmasculine invincible in his reasoning and agreeable in all things Howsoever we ought not to conclude by his Books that he was a Christian because he wrote them all before he had any knowledge of Christianity and therefore it is not to be wondred at if sometimes he hath Sentences which are not conformable unto our Religion Some one will object that he is admirable in his Writings but his Works carry no correspondency with The answer to the calumniatours of Seneca his Pen. This indeed is the abuse of some spirits grounded on the calumnies of Dion and Suillius which those men may easily see confuted who without passion will open their eyes unto the truth He reproacheth him for his great Riches in lands in gold and silver and sumptuous moveables and layeth to his charge that he had five hundred beds of cedar with feet of ivory It seems that this slanderer was steward of Seneca's house so curious he was in decyphering his estate But all this is but a mere invention for how is it possible that he who according to Cornelius Tacitus did not live but onely on fruit and bread and water and who never had any but his wife to eat with him or two or three friends at most should have five hundred beds of cedar and ivory to serve him at his feasts It is true that he had goods enough but nothing unjustly gotten they were the gifts and largesses of the Emperour And because he had sometimes written that Goods were forbidden to Philosophers he therefore was content to hold them in servitude and not to be commanded by them He was overcome by Nero to carry some splendour in his house as being the chiefest of the Estate and it was put upon him as a sumptuous habit upon some statue We cannot find that he had ever any children but his Books or that he made it his study to enrich his Nephews or his Nieces or to raise a subsistence for his house from the charges greatnesse and riches of the Empire He had the smallest train and pomp that possibly could be and when he had the licence to be at liberty from the Court he lived in an admirable simplicity and which is more he besought Nero with much importunity to discharge him from the unprofitable burden of his riches and to put severall stewards into his houses to receive his revenues but he made answer to him that he did a wrong unto himself to demand that discharge for he had nothing too much and that he had in Rome many slaves enfranchized who were farre more rich then Seneca Yet for all this Reproach is proved to be unjust Dion proceeds further in his slander and alledgeth That he indeared Queens and Princes to him for he wrote their Papers and professed himself a friend to the richest Favourites What is this but to reproach a Courtier with his Trade his Discretion his Civility his Affability which this great personage made very worthily to comply with his Philosophy He married an illustrious Lady and of invaluable wealth What! should he being in that high dignity to please Suillus become suitor to some chamber-maid or for mortifications sake court some countrey girle ought he to bring such a reproach after him to the Court of the
makes them and that they have no need of our Sacrifices but that they would have our Heart The King ought to acknowledge God with a very deep sense of Piety as the chiefest essence the chiefest light a Trinity within an Unity infinite an Eternall Spirit whose Power is Almightinesse whose Will is the highest Reason and whose Nature is nothing but Holinesse That he is a Mysterious Silence a Lovely Terriblenesse an Immensnesse of Glory which Sees all and Knows all from whom all Beings have their rising which gives and takes away Empires before whom the World and all its Kingdomes and all its Monarchs are but as it were small atoms moving within that immovable Beam This sense will cause the Prince to tender his Crown and Person at the feet of God with a perfect humility and whole dependance on him in all things he will learn the mysteries of our faith and all the great maximes of Religion not for disputation but to believe and adore them In prosecution of this deep sense it behooves him The service of God to professe the outward worship and service for the performance of his duty and the example of his people as by his assisting at divine Service with great reverence honouring the holy Sacrament shewing himself exceeding devout towards the most holy mother of God towards the Angels and Saints frequenting confession and the Eucharist hearkening willingly to the word of God and regulating his prayers and daily devotions by the advice of those that direct his conscience and above all accounting it the chiefest devotion to be carefull of his people just in his Government and full of compassion towards the afflicted It is also expedient to take heed that the Prince in this do neither too much nor too little it is not fitting that he take upon him the devotion of a Priest or Religious man which might a little diminish the credit of his profession nor that he should likewise become too carelesse and negligent in Divine matters for fear lest he fall into Libertinism which is the gulf of all misfortunes True Piety in a Monarch shineth forth most of Zeal all in zeal which is a mostardent love of the honour of God and to attein to this he ought above all to keep the Law of God avoiding all grievous and scandalous sins and he ought continually to take care that God be served in his own house and throughout his whole Realm That Blasphemies Sacriledges Heresies Simonie and all impicties be scattered and vanish by the beams of his power That the Pope which is the Father and chief Shepheard of all Christendome be respected with a holy Reverence That the Bishops be honoured and mainteined That the Church be provided of good Pastours That the Clergy live under Rule and comelinesse and that it be mainteined in its rights That Hospitals Monasteries and Religious-houses be protected and preserved in their estates He ought not to suffer in any manner whatsoever according to the order of Lewis that sacred placed be violated in the Warrs which may happen between Christian Princes He ought to have an earnest zeal and indefatigable for the advancement of the Faith and Religion and according as the times and occasions shall permit to employ his arms and person to subdue the pride of Infidels and set up the Standard of the Crosse This is the portion which God reserves for Christian Princes which should never partake of true honour but that which is enclosed within the glory of Jesus Christ saith Julius Firmicus to the children of Constantine Neverthelesse in designs of war against the Insidels nothing should be too fervently hasted under pretence of zeal to the prejudice of the Realm but to attend the coming in of God which knowes the times and opportunities and that sometimes gives in without much labour which men at other times undertake without good advice and with little successe Wisedome doth very excellently agree with Piety as being a science of Divine and Humane things not idle but with an active relish and skill for the directing of our life If a Prince do not study to get this wisedome he is ignorant of his profession and makes himself contemptible to his subjects He is given by God to his Kingdome as the Soul to the Body and how can he then subsist without understanding He is given as the Eye what can he do without Light He ought himself to be the Light and would it not be a shame for him to be covered with perpetuall darknesse The Jer. 23. 5. King shall reign and shall be wise saith the holy Scripture this is the onely thing that Solomon desired of God at the beginning of his reign and he gave him this request in such a manner that he replenisht him with a wonderfull ability Wisedome maketh a man more worth then a thousand The greatnesse of Wisdome it multiplies it self into many heads and gathers together the riches of the Universe into one onely heart The Wiseman draws an harmlesse Tribute from the Learning of all ages he learns the lives of all for to husband well his own he enters into those great labyrinths of time past as into his own house he makes use of so many rare inventions of the best wits of the World as of his own Patrimony You may say that the Soul of a learned Prince hath run through many Ages in divers Bodies Wisedome maketh him to passe through long wayes with small charges and to discover the whole World without going out of his Closet He learns he discourseth he judgeth he approveth he condemneth that which is past makes him profit by that which is to come Good Counsels do enlighten him and even the follyes of others erect him a Theatre for Wisdome Yet he must take heed lest of a Prince becoming What the wisdome of a Prince should be a Philosopher he cease not to be a King he ought not to study onely to know and dispute but to have the knowledge and practise of Excellent things To think to become wise by the reading of Books onely is like thinking to be hot by the remembrance of fire He must of necessity traffick with his own understanding with his own experience and that he may profit by Teachers he must be a teacher to himself I would not that all Princes should be such Philosophers as Marcus Aurelius the Emperour nor so Eloquent as Julian the Apostate nor so curious in every Art as Hadrian It is a Science which comes very near to ignorance to studie for that which will profit nothing and to take the pains to learn that which would be better unlearned Seeing that the Scripture is the Book of books and that the Antients called the Bible the Crown a Hielel Autor Hebraeus excercet se in Corona 1. Lege King ought not to be ignorant thereof yet not to make himself a Divine but thereby to learn his duty Naturall Phylosophy which sets before us the
great spectacle of the Creatures thereby to ascend to the Creatour is not unprofitable for a good understanding that which teaches to reason and discourse is good for every occasion but the Morall Politicall and History make up the best part of a Kings Library and if hee make a little digression into Musick and Painting it cannot but be commendable Promote that knowledge that puffs not up vain spirits but that rather which humbles the solid ones for by learning that which we know not we understand our Ignorance and know by experience that one might make a great Library of that which is beyond the knowledge of the most learned in the World There are none but those that know little and which know ill who take upon them to have a sufficiency of knowledge they crackle like little Rivulets whereas the greater Rivers run quietly That Prince which by reason that he hath studied will carry all his counsell in his own head shews that he hath little profited by his study for in this mortall life a man is so far wise as he seeks still to become so but after that he thinks that he hath atteined it and hath no more need of others help then he begins to be out of the way The use of wisedome is to become wise as that of the eye is to see The wisedome of a King may be seen by a reasonable tincture of Learning by the knowledge that he hath of himself and the frail flourishing of all humane things by the discreetnesse of his words by his modesty in prosperity by his constancy in adversity It will shew it self by a Greatnesse without Affectation a Majesty without Pride an Humimity without Contempt a Comelinesse without Striving where every thing declares a King without any shew of making him seem so it will shew it self by its Temperance by the moderating of his passions and by Prudence in the government of his life and estate This is to have deeply studied to be able to overcome his Anger to disarm Revenge to moderate a Victory to overcome Concupiscence to regulate his Affection to keep under Ambition to restrain his Tongue to over-rule his Delights to asswage his Discontents to live like a Saint and speak like an Oracle This is exceedingly to have profited in wisedome to be able to proceed in all affairs according to the laws of true prudence But the false maketh that its principall which is but the accessary it takes Greatnesse and Pleasures for the chief ayme of a Kings life it consults little it judgeth ill it decreeth nothing But the true Prudence can look unto the end can take a right mark in all businesses it doth all things with advice it brings Judgement without Passion in all occurrences and gives an effectuall order for the performance of all that which hath been wisely concluded the remembrance of that past the understanding of the present and foreseeing of that to come makes up its whole perfection a quick apprehension prepares an accutenesse works it good advice orders foreseeing confirms and performance crowns it It is by these steps that a Prince ascends to the Throne of wisdome which is an unestimable Gift and the true favour of the Deity Saint Lewis whose life might have been the school of the ablest Philosophers although he bore in his mind the best maximes of Empires yet ceased not to reade good Books and as he had seen in the time of his imprisonment in the East that a Sarazen Prince had a Library of the Books of his Law he caused the like to be made at his return in his Palace where he spent many hours and would converse freely with men of learning and desert Demetrius Phalereus advised Kings to instruct themselves often by reading for that there one may learn of the dead which they cannot know by the living The next to Wisedome followeth Justice which performs in a manner the chief duty that is required of a Prince and Royalty seems to be nothing else but an excellent science of Justice as Justice is taken for that habit of virtue by which we render to every one the right that belongs to him Tertullian said That Goodnesse had created the World but that Justice had made the Concords thereof This wise mother of Harmonies ceaseth not to open an ear to the dissents that are made in the World to correct the disagreeing Voices by its own love and to bring all to its own end Ambition inventeth extravagant sounds Covetousnesse sends forth enraged cries tyranny makes an infernall Musick but Justice corrects all these excesses and if it meet with valiant and incorrupt souls to serve it as an instrument it sends forth incomparable Melodies which delight the ears of God and rejoyce the whole fabrick of Nature There are two great Virtues which make all the equalities of mans life Truth equals the understanding to all the objects and Justice the hearts to that which is right Lying and Injustice make every where great inequalities which fill Kingdomes with Disorder Consciences with Crimes and the World with Confusion But Truth and Justice render light to dark things strength to feeble certainty to doubtfull and order to the confused We naturally take a delight to behold the fair bow in heaven which compasseth the air with a crown of glory but Alcuin the School-master of Charlemagne writes That that which makes it the more admired is for that amongst its other beauties it carrieth the ensigns of Justice It shews the fire and the water in its red and blew colours to instruct us that Justice holds the fire in its power to consume the wicked and the water to bring refreshment to those scorching heats of calamities that trouble the miserable Justice is Gods profession and an Antient said that his continuall exercise was to weigh the hearts and the works of men and to distribute rewards and ordain chastisements according to the good and ill deserving of every one in particular The Scripture saith that he is glorious and magnificent but that these magnificences are chiefly seen upon the mountains of wounds and robberies when he beats down with an invincible arm the great ones of the earth loaden with the spoils of iniquitie The Hebrews said that Good took such delight in Justice that he had bestowed even the Saphires of his own Throne to engrave the Law thereon The Saviour of the world is named the Just by the holy Ghost in the writings of his Apostles not in dissimulation but by his Essence All the great Imitatours of God have honoured this quality and have held it in the number of their dearest delights Job maketh it his crown and his garment David his virtue Solomon his wisdome Josias his love Augustus his exercise and Trajan his honour The memory of so many Conflicts Sieges Battels Conquests Triumphs whereby the life of this great Emperour was so famous are found but in the record of a few lines but that which remaineth engraven
in it But in my opinion it is unworthy the gravity of so great a personage and I know not to what purpose it is to revile the Ashes of the Dead although it is not forbidden to write a true History to leave a horrour to posterity in recording the lives of the wicked This howsoever may serve for instruction not to play with wasps or incense those who have the pen in their hand and can eternally proscribe their Adversaries After this sport he was imployed upon the Earnest He is made Minister of State and Agrippina mother of the young Emperour desiring to confirm her self in the Monarchy and to govern by her son did supply him with two creatures men of gteat capacity and fidelity Burrus for Arms and Seneca for Laws The first was severe in his conversation the other was of a mild and pleasing disposition They both agreed even to their deaths in the government of the Affairs of State Then it was that Seneca did enter into those great imployments and exercised that high wisdome which he had acquired for the Government of the Empire He began with his Prince who was the first and the most amiable object of all his troubles and although at the first he did expresse himself very tractable and agreeable to all the world yet Seneca perceived in his infancy the His judgement on Nero. marks of a cruel and bloudy nature and told to his intimate friends that he nourished a young lion whom he endeavoured to make tractable but if he should taste once of the bloud of men he would return to his first nature And this was the occasion that at that time he did write for him the two Divine Books of Clemency where with variety of remarkable proofs he doth establish the Excellency the Beauty and the Profit of candor of Spirit and the advantage which redounds unto a Prince to govern his Subjects with Bounty and Love On the contrary he remonstrates the horrour and disastres of Tyrants who would prevail by Cruelty in the management of their Estates All his endeavour tended that way wisely foreseeing that Nero would fall into extreme Cruelties and for that cause he did willingly give way that he should delight himself in Comedies in Musick and such Exercises of softnesse hoping that in some manner it would make more civil his savage nature He also composed for him many eloquent Orations which the young Emperour would pronounce with great grace to the generall admiration both of the Senate and the people He made also many excellent Ordinances some He put his State in good order whereof by the report of Dion were engraved upon a pillar of silver and were read every year at the renewing of the Senate He hated all the inventions the deceits and tricks of State as a trade of iniquity and did ground himself on the eternall principles of Justice by which he kept the Empire in a profound peace in great abundance and a sure felicity So that in a manner Frontine makes a true narration he saith that Seneca had so redressed all abuses that it seems he had brought goodnesse into the Empire and called the Gods from heaven to be conversant again with men In which he made use of the Philosophy of the Stoicks not that which is so rigid and so sullen but that which he had tryed and seasoned for that designe to give to the world a taste thereof His opinions for the The Maximes of Seneca most part are Rationall Sacred and Divine If he speaks of God it is in the same sense as the Of God Saviour of the world did discover to the Samaritan He professeth openly that God is a Spirit and that the difference betwixt God and us is that the better part of us is Spirit but that God is all Spirit most Pure Eternall Infinite the Creatour of the great works of Nature which we behold with our eyes If he speaketh of true Worship and the most sincere Of Religion Religion which we ought to imploy to honour and adore the sovereign King of the Universe he doth sufficiently declare that the worship of God ought to be in Spirit and in Truth as our Saviour hath prescribed When you figure God saith he represent a great Spirit but peaceable and reverend by the sweetnesse of his Majesty a friend to men and who is alwayes present with them who is not pleased with bloudy Sacrifices for what delight can he take in the butchery of so many innocent creatures The true Sacrifice of the great God is a pure Spirit an upright understanding of him and a good Conscience We ought not to heap stones upon stones to raise a Temple to him for what need hath he of it the most agreeable Temple that we can build for God is to consecrate him in our hearts Lactantius hath so much Lactan. div Instit lib. â— cap. 25. esteemed of this passage that in the sixth Book of his Institutions he doth oppose it to the Gentiles as a buckler of our Christianity If there be a question about the Presence of God Of the divine presence Epist 83. which above all things the masters of spirituall life do commend in their Instructions he saith That it is to no purpose to conceal ones self from man and that there is nothing hid from God who is present in our hearts and in our most secret thoughts If we rest in the Contemplation of the Divine Providence Of Providence which is the foundation of our life he believeth a Providence which reacheth over all And in a Tract which he hath composed he pertinently doth answer those who are amazed why Evil arriveth to good people since so great and so good a God hath a care of their wayes He saith That it is the chastisement of a Father an exercise of Virtue and that what we take to be a great Evil is oftentimes the occasion of a great Good that such is the course and order of the world according to the Divine dispensation to which we ought to submit our selves If we consider the Immorrality of the Soul which Of the Immorrality of the Soul Juvâ—e de 〈◊〉 animaâ—â—â— qâ—â—rere â—mò credere Epist 102. is the foundatton of our Faith and of all virtuous actions it is certain that he had a good opinion of it and professerh in his 102. Epistle That he delightneth not onely according to Reason to search after the Eâ—ernity of the Soul but to believe it and he complaineth that a letter received from a friend did interrupt him in that Contemplation which seemed to him so palpable that it was rather to him an agreeable Vision that he had in a Dream then any Discourse in Philosophy And in the end of the Epistle he speaketh of wonders of the originall of the Soul and the return of it to God And in the Preface of the first Book of Naturall Questions which he did write some few