birth to the Soul and communicates unto her a new Being which is called Divine in that the Soul receives from it a resemblance unto God after a manner extraordinary whose more perfect knowledge is reserved for the light of glory which will make the discovery unto us All we can now say is that no sooner this divine gift inhabits our Souls but we are designed to eternal beatitude Almighty God beholds us with an Eye of satisfaction as his Children received into his Family as Solomon sayes by grace we contract an eternal alliance with God St. Thomas stiles Grace a participation of the Divine Nature for what the Divine Nature doth in God the same Grace by imitation doth in a Soul as the Divine Nature is in God the cause of his most transcending actions to wit love and union So Grace in a Soul is the spring of glory beatitude supernatural knowledge and heavenly affections by which she regulates all her works according to integrity and holiness Nay God obliges himself to give a Soul that can plead the title of Grace the Kingdom of Heaven and possession of eternal bliss No wonder then if after the sprinklings of Hysop that is penitential tears our Petitioner expects a Harmony of joy and gladness since the divine quality of Grace purchased by repentance is attended on by so many advantages What matter of joy to be spiritually regenerated the Son of God the Brother and Coheir with Jesus Christ wherefore St. Leo sayes this gift of being the Son of God to be authorized to call God Father exceeds all his other liberalities for by generation a Father communicates his Nature to his Son producing him in species alike So by Adoption he that adopts gives unto a stranger in desire and affection what he is in himself attributing unto him the prerogative of a Son entitling him to all his inheritance the same as if he were his Son by Nature now what Man doth to another out of affection God doth in effect For imprinting Grace in a Soul he gives himself and is really in her insomuch that were it possible God could be not immense Grace would render him afresh present to and in the Soul Certainly if ever that saying was verified where guilt hath raigned there grace did yet more powerfully sway it was in the person of our holy Petitioner his raptures and Enthusiastick throwes his prophetick notions Nay God's own Testimony of him that Repentance had moulded him even conformably to his own Heart sufficiently proved his Soul to float in floods of Grace and consequently must needs swell with a great portion of joy therefore with just reason he proclaims thou wilt give unto my hearing joy and gladness Again this possession of Grace is accompanied with the expectation of a Sovereign good For the understanding enlightned by Faith knowes that Mans's Beatitude is in God that this Beatitude is promised him as his final end and the means to attain unto this End is by Grace and acts of vertue So that he enjoyes it not but upon the terms of being one day eternally happy this certain expectation of Beatitude St. Bonaventure calls the Anchor and basis of Man in this life It keeps him from dejection placing still before his thoughts an infinite good and which is infallibly to be the abject of his future acquisition it choaks presumption casting him upon the mediums ordained to lead him to this end it draws his affections from terrene things and raises them to God as the supream object alone worthy to be loved and served What joy then to have our VVills carryed on by this gift of hope which sweetly entertains us in the contemplation of Eternity and this not as a thing doubtful for what would Cloud the severity of our comfort but as a reward to which we are entitled by grace and of which by this vertue of hope we have an earnest and pledge St. Paul to the Hebrews prescribes hope as a means to compass whatsoever we would have Let us approach with confidence to the Throne of Grace as if we needed only a firm hope to be able to scale the Throne of God and bear thence what so e're we desire St. Gregory observes there is no pleasure in this World which is not greater in the expectation than fruition by which we see what a strange Operation the very hope of some temporal object hath in us what ravishments then must needs proceed from a hope that is fixed on the source of perfections and to have this addition that after our imaginations have proposed all the delights that humane wit can frame yet they fall infinitely short of those joyes the Object of a supernatural hope will discover unto us Blame not then our Petitioner if he give himself the assurance of joy and gladness when once his Soul shall be enriched with Grace and divine hope inspired into him since their presence brings the highest satisfactions we are capable off in this World I observe after Christ had declared the remission of St. Mary Magdalens misdeeds he bids her go in peace to shew she is no more impious For as they are strangers to repose so rest and satisfaction are the natural effects of a good conscience When the Thief on the Cross had obtained mercy immediately follow the glad tidings he should exchange that very day his Gibbet into a Paradise St. Austin had no sooner stepped into the Paths of pennance but he found himself overwhelmed with joy which he thus describes On a suddain sayes he it grew delightful to me to be weaned from trifling pleasures and what before I feared to loose now with joy I dismiss for thou O supream Diety didst tear them from me and supplyedst them by thy own presence who art in all honour beauty and pleasure excelling You see what he got in exchanging a few Worldly joyes for a life of pennance in quitting a Creature he came to the enjoyment of his Creatour in abandoning that we must needs once lose and which we still apprehend will be ravished from us he arrived to an inestimable and never perishing good Nay reason may tell us as happy experience hath informed Saints that if his mercy be so great and transforms it self into so many Shapes of vertues in reward to sinners it must needs be much more admirable in order to the just For it is but equitable that those who must love and honour him should have a more ample share in the Treasures of his mercies than such who injure and daily offend him If when we are Enemies he fails not to give Testimonies of his love being reconciled and readmitted to his favour what will he not do If he bestow a kiss upon a treacherous Judas with what overflowing sweetness will he visit a loyal heart which breaths forth nothing but love and a conformity to his will if a sound of his voice as Man was so charming that many of the Apostles at his first call abandoned
sin All other reasonable Creatures in this sense are mortal and if the blessed in heaven be impeccable it is not by their nature but by the power of glory communicated in which they were invested by God after they had given proof of their vertues whilest they were Viatours and under their Tryal Now as to Man the experience of his frailty helps him on to discern more clearly as the obscurity of the Night renders a fair Day the more resplendent and reverence this excellency in God Next he ought not to repine that he is not here glorious for this life is his place of Combat and the Crown is not given till the Victory be gained wherefore as long as he lives he enjoyes a liberty by which he may sin and be overcome and by which he may vanquish Lastly God decreed this liberty to Man and gave him a faculty by which he might with a full swinge of his Will be take himself to good or evil to the end he might be capable of merit or demerit for if he acted by the impulse of necessity he could merit no recompence for his vertue nor punishment for his sin no more than a tree which bears good or bad fruit and by this means the divine Justice could not be discerned either in the condemnation of the wicked or in the reward of the just Our great Penitent in the issue of this meditation hath reason to set his Tongue a work and spend it self in exalting this powerful and remunerating Iustice of God which happily converts to our advantage what at the first glance appears the Subject of our ruine and resign himself to those dangers wherein the perfection of his free will may involve him since by his grace which he implores he may embrace and practise what is pleasing to him And if to the end he carry on this noble resolution he hath an assurance to bless his Iustice for all Eternity And my Tongue shall exalt thy Iustice. St. Austin upon this place is of Opinion that our Penitent means the Messias whose Justice he will extoll in that by his merit both Men and Angels are rescued from the slavery of sin To which I agree nor do the premises any waies derogate from this interpretation for the merits of Jesus Christ are the source and cause of Sanctifying grace which grace dignifyes the works of the just and raises them to the degree of merit Now that which is cause of the cause is likewise cause of the effect and consequently the merits of Jesus Christ are cause of the merits of Saints as St. Paul to the Galatians Chap. 1. He hath blessed us with all spiritual benediction in Jesus Christ Next the merits of Jesus Christ contribute to the merits of Saints in that he hath obtained by his actions and sufferings a promise from God to accept the merits of Men in order to Heaven for it was in consideration of him and upon the score of his torments that this promise was made unto us It is this St. Peter in his Second Epistle Chap. 3. hints at when speaking of Christ he sayes by him he hath made us great and precious promises to the end we might by them be made partakers of the Divine Nature Now as Grace is the Fountain of the merits of Saints and God's promise the accomplishment both the one and the other proceeding from the merits of Jesus Christ it followes that the merits of Saints subsist not but by those of Christ Nor have they a dependency only by way of simple condition or necessary circumstance but they flow from them as from the root fountain and principal cause without which they would have no Being Our Holy Doctor therefore will praise and set forth the divine Justice under several Notions First as he is the Principium or Off-spring whence all remission of sin and collation of grace is derived and without which all Mankind had been eternally wrapt up in the darkness of sin so that the just and superabundant ransom he hath paid for us merits the Adorations and praises of all hearts and tongues Next he will extoll him under the title of a remunerating Iustice in that after he hath taught us how to fight put arms into our hands and hath stood by us to confirm our courage exacting only a firm will to overcome doth yet dispense his Crowns with applause as if we had done all our selves O who can then asperse and lay a charge upon this Opinion as if it injured Christs merits doth the fulness of a stream dishonour the source from whence it flowes or the excellency of any fruit injure the Root that gives birth to it so the merits of the just being only the rivulets and fruit of Christ's superabundant satisfaction cannot certainly in the least derogate from his they only serve in an inferiour degree to extol and do homage to the infinity of Christ's merit Wherefore Our Penitent will incessantly tune forth And my Tongue shall exalt thy Justice The Justice of God beholds Creatures in three several relations First it is distributive by which he allots unto every Creature faculties proportionable to carry them on to the End for which they were created To the Soul which he hath designed to contemplate and love him he hath given an understanding and will the Body doomed to labour he hath framed with Arms and Hands The Sun whose Office is to enlighten the World he hath vested with a lasting brightness which never fails to perform its task in fine every animal Tree Plant or what ever is existent in the World hath a vertue proper to the designment of its Creation Whence St. Dennis sayes that God is communicable in his Justice distributing to every one according to the dignity of its nature and bounding within limits most equitable the manner beauty order Ornament the inequalities and proportions of all Creatures accommodating every thing with that which is proper to it Our Penitent will not be silent in order to this his distributive Iustice he will admire the works of God give his approbation without the least Censure and confess that this wise Architect hath ballanced all things with equity and justice and if he may be so happy as to manage his individual Being conformably to those proprieties and qualities he hath received from his Creatour he will with confidence proclaim that his tongue shall exalt his justice In the second consideration his punitive justice hath place by which he inflicts a punishment on sinners the reason of this is that a sinner living contrary to the wil of God and disobedient to his order setling his contentment on things forbidden by his Sovereign doth by these his wayes throw a contempt upon him Wherefore it is most just reparation should be made and since he hath rebelled in breaking the Commands of his Creatour it is fit he should be afflicted with torments and enslaved by that will he hath so much scorned and set at naught
with sadness upon any rencontre since the effects do often prove far different from what they promise and this by the unresistable ordinations of Heaven which can draw riches out of poverty make us great by humility give us honour by contempts In fine who needs no previous dispositions in Creatures to frame his productions Now to lead us in this labyrinth that we may not erre Divines distinguish a twofold joy The one is temporal which hath for its Object riches honour sensual pleasures and the like So that when our joy reaches but to the petty interests of this World this is poor and argues a baseness of Spirit which is angustiated within the limits of flesh and blood and hopes or fears only what may prove distastful or pleasant to their present state of Being The other branch of joy is eternal taking its specification from the object which is God without end or beginning it only looks upon him and it is he alone that gives the rise to all its motions One part of this joy is proper for us here whilest we are in viâ as Divines term it or pilgrimes upon earth the completion of the other we must expect in patria when we shall attain to the mansion of the blessed it is this joy St. Bernard meant when he sayes O good Jesu if it be so sweet a thing to weep for thee what will it be to rejoyce with aâ—d in thee So that we are here by a compunctive sorrow to crucify our selves daily and by this means dispose our selves for that joy which is necessarily consequent to such acts Our Holy Penitent followes this method in his petition he knows the effects of a heart pierced with a vertuous sorrow and repentance is peace joy and the like So that though we labour here to steep our selves in bitterness and anguish there results out of these agonies a certain contentment in performing our duties to God and this so great as it surpasses all the delights of this World Many Heathen Philosophers have been of Opinion that vertue it self was a sufficient reward unto such as embraced it that is there springs from good actions such a satisfaction in conformity to the dictamens of reason as they have preferred it before riches honour or any sensual pleasure we have seen them endure torments of all kind the hardship of want the rough trial of disgraces and all this with smileing looks and meerly from this Principle they took their cause to be good and that vertue commanded it believing her Lawes to be more sutable to a reasonable Soul than all the glory and plenty of the World attended on by injustice and impiety Our Hoâ—y Penitent by his own experience had learnt that in works of Piety there is found something which sensibly affects the agent with delight and be they never so knotty yet they are still sweetned with this that reason is their guide that the whole intellectual part applauds the action which concurrence of the Souls faculties cannot but be followed with an universal dilatation of the spirits and what is this but the height of joy If then moral actions looked upon as apparallel'd in their simple natural colours that is meerly confined to the limits of what is good and just by the light of reason prove such an Antidote against adversity as to make them receive the most embittered Arrowes of fortune with cheerful looks What may we expect when these are directed to a supernatural end when they are enriched with the merits of Jesus Christ after which our Holy Petitioner languished and whose efficacy had influence upon his repentance at the distance of so many preceeding ages as now it hath on ours after so many subsequent revolutions It is then for the joy of this Salvation he makes instance and what a value must this addition set upon his smallest sufferings Whence I wonder not to contemplate much of serenity in the Fore-heads of afflicted persons crushed for vertues sake for the tempest wherein they are agitated doth only bluster about them within they enjoy a Harmony and full peace of Mind even tasting a kind of Antipast or fore-notion of Paradise I observe in the Gospel of St. Luke how Christ our Lord gave a check to his Disciples when returning from the exercise of their Apostolick Commissions they seemed to glory in their power of casting out Devils and when he had terrified them with a Memorandum of the Angel's fall he prescribes rules how they should lay the foundation of their joy and satisfaction amidst their transcending employments saying Rejoyce in this that your Names are written in Heaven First he disallowes not of their joy but rather animates them to it only he dislikes the motive or more properly to say sets down what they ought to lay hold on as the basis of their exultations Rejoyce because your Names are written in Heaven That they were zealous in God's service charitable had the gift of tongues of working miracles casting out Devils and the like these must not be the groundwork of their contentments but that they are by the efficacious Will of God transmitted to a supernatural end upon which foundation are built all the spirituall benefits of God towards them as their vocation justification and glorification From this Root springs their calling to be a Christian to be a member of Christ's true Church by means of which they obtain grace and by the right use of Grace eternal glorification This must give birth and life to their joy and no less to ours as it did to our Holy Penitent before his fall and now restored as he hopes to the wonted caresses of his Creatour he begins to breath after the assurance of his predestination which had often occasioned unto him abundant joy Wherefore he cryes restore unto me the joy of thy Salvation Yet whilest he petitioned for this solid contentment he was not ignorant that his Election must proceed from the merciful hand of God and the Collation of glory from the interest of his own merits God first puts us in an infallible condition to be happy and then so tempers the circumstances as we our selves may be a partial cause of our happiness he offers the occasions of merit this done he seconds our endeavours so powerfully as the effect to wit eternal glory cannot but follow So that the joy he sues for is an assurance to be in the state of grace and eternally predestinate that be his combats and assaults in this life never so furious he shall overcome Be his temptations never so vehement the issue will be glorious having his Eyes still fixt upon the Palms of Beatitude the assured guerdon of his conflicts in case I say he be in the number of the Predestinate But as to the infallible decrce of predestination our Holy Penitent knowes it is a secret shut up in the Cabinet of his great Councels the joy therefore he aims at here is that which arises from the