she had seen in his picture which commonly was painted with the horns of a bull on his fore-head it was not in my opinion his fair eyes nor goodly nose which made him sought after for he was one of the most deformed creatures of the world Yet he notwithstanding was reputed a great Captain and a puissant King This blind Princess so breathed the air of ambition that though he were wholly Pagan and hydeous she no whit was affrighted for verily her passion was so much enkindled that she secretly dispatched one of her Eunuches with express letters beseeching Attila he would demand her in marriage of the Emperour her brother and she should account it a great honour to be his wife This Scythian entered into a much greater estimation of his own worth than ever beholding himself sued unto by a Romane Ladie of noble extraction and thereupon grew so eager that he immediately addresseth an Embassadour to the Emperour Valentinian to require his sister of him in marriage and the moity of his Kingdom otherwise he was not gone back so far but he would return with his Army to enforce his obedience All the world was now strucken with terrour when by good chance he saw himself for some pressing occasions engaged to return into his Countrey where all these lightenings were quickly turned into a shower of bloud After he had sweat under harness like another Hannibal who in the end of his conquests was bruitishly besotted in the bosom of a Capuan Ladie this haughty King of Hunnes as soon as he came into his Countrey wholly engulphed himself in wine and love Besides a great rabble of creatures which he had to satisfie his lust he became in his old days passionately enamoured of a gentlewoman named Hildecon whom he married with sports feasts and excessive alacrity That evening after he had freely drunk according to his custom he retired into his nuptial chamber with his new spouse and the next morning was found dead in his bed floating in a river of bloud who had drawn bloud from all the veins of the world Some said it was an eruption of bloud which Death of Attila choaked him but others thought Hildecon lead thereunto one knoweth not by what spirit nor by whom sollicited handled her pretended husband as Judith did Holofernes Behold how God punisheth the proud A despicable dwarf who commanded over 700000. men who forraged every where environed as with a brazen wall who boasted in the lightenings of his puissant arms who razed Cities all smoking in bloud and flames who wasted Provinces who destroyed Empires who would not tread but on Crowns and Scepters behold him the very night of his nuptials full of drink massacred by a woman having not so much as the honour to die by the hand of a man The same night that Attila yielded up the ghost in his own bloud our Saviour appeared in a dream to the good Emperour Martianus and shewing him a great bowe all shivered in pieces saith Martianus behold the bowe of Attila which I have broken thou hast no further cause to fear thy Empire Thus you see how God fighteth for the pious even while they sleep This scourge being so fortunately diverted Martianus and Pulcheria attended with all their power to the consolation and ornament of the universal Church under the direction of the great Pope Saint Leo whom their Majesties most punctually obeyed At that time were seen the reliques to march in triumph into Constantinople of the good Patriarch Flavianus massacred by the practices of hereticks at that time the exiled Bishops were with honour re-established in their seats At that time the Councel of Chalcedon was celebrated where the Emperour Martianus though wholly a souldier made an Oration first in Latin for the honour of the Romane Church then in Greek his natural language At that time heresie was fully condemned and impudence surcharged with confusion At that time an infinite number of goodly Canons were confirmed by the Councel and strongly maintained by the authority of the Emperour At that time justice was fixed in the height of perfection Briefly at that time the whole world was infinitely comforted by the good order and liberalities of this holy Court It was an admirable Empire and a happy marriage and nothing could be desired more in this match but immortality But the holy Virgin Pulcheria being about fifty years of age not so much loaden with years as merits wearied out with continual travel and care which she had endured almost fourty years in the mannage of affairs found her repose in exchange of the Court of Constantinople for that of Paradise She died in a most pure virginity which she carefully had preserved all her life time leaving the poor for her heirs who were her delight after she had built in her own life time five Churches and among the rest one to the honour of the most Blessed Virgin Marie which surpasseth all the other in magnificence besides many hospitals and sepulchres for pilgrimes Torches made of aromatick wood cast out their odoriferous exhalations when they are almost wasted and the virtuous Pulcheria made all the good odours of her life evaporate in the last instant of her death She who had lived as the Bee in the tastfull sweetness of purity died as the Phenix in the Palms not of Arabia but of conquests which she had obtained over the enemies of our nature We have here annexed her Picture and Elogie AVGVSTA AEL PVLCHERIA PULCHERIA FLA. THEODOSII JUNIORIS SOROR AUGUSTA VIRGO ET CONJUX AUGUSTORUM FILIA SOROR NEPTIS UXOR PROPUGNATRIX PONTIFICUM MAGISTRA IMPERATORVM CVSTOS FIDEI MVNIMEN ORTHODOXORVM ECCLESIAE ET IMPERII DECVS NOVA HELENA NOVVM ORBIS MIRACVLVM ANNO CHRISTI CLIII AETATIS LV. IMPERII XXXIX AD COELESTEM AVLAM PROFICISCITVR Upon the picture of PULCHERIA A Golden Virgin in an iron Age Who trampled under foot infernal rage A barren wife a fruitfull maid unstain'd That all the world within her heart contain'd Mother of people Mistress over Kings brings And who 'twixt Church and Law firm union She in herself bright Scepters did behold Joyn'd to the Cross Altars to Crowns of gold The married life unto virginitie And glorious greatness to humilitie If virtue were a substance to be seen Well might we here suppose this happy Queen Should lend her body that it outward may Resplendent lustre to the world display GReat-ones may here behold the shortest way to the Temple of Honour is to pass by that of Virtue Never woman was more honoured in her life never woman more glorious in her death That great Pope S. Leo S. Cyril and all the excellent men both of the East and West have employed their pens in her honour So magnificent and noble acclamations were made to her in Councels that nothing would be wished more glorious A little before her death in the Councel of Chalcedon they cried out Long live the Empress most Sacred Long live
not conceiving what he would say In a few days this Anastasius who so much feared thunder that he fled into a Cave so soon as at any time he heard the least notice thereof was slain by a thunder-stroke upon the very stairs of the place which he had chosen for a sanctuarie Justine derived from base birth and mounted through all the degrees of War to the dignitie of the Captain of the Guard was chosen Emperour of whom he being a valiant man and well beloved Theodorick began to cōceive a great jealousie still fearing he might take out of his hands the Empire he had usurped The beginning of the storm was that Justine an Emperour most Catholick treated the Arians of Constantinople who had been tolerated under Anastasius with the severitie ordained by laws despoiling them of Churches which they had boldly usurped They failed not to address their complaints and offer up their grievances to the ears of Theodorick who interpreting the disgrace of his sect to the contempt of his person entered into violences more fit for a Barbarian than a King who had been trained up to civilitie by such good counsels for he threatened to turn all Rome into fire and bloud if the Emperour Justine did him not right and for this purpose he sent Pope John commanding him to go speedily to Constantinople to cause the Churches to be rendered to the Arians supposing his dignitie would procure him full power with the Emperour The Pope answered he had made very ill choice of him for such an Embassage that the rank he held in the Church permitted him not to be a provider of Churches for the Arians and that if he had any bad design upon his person he was ready to stretch out his neck for the defence of the Church there being no need for him to pass the seas for this and undertake the voyage This made him enter into much greater extravagancie threatening the Citie with a deluge of bloud if it were not remedied Behold the cause why the Pope was intreated to go to Constantinople and to find some way how to sweeten affairs yet to let nothing pass to the prejudice of his conscience He yielded to the tears of the people and undertook the voyage of Constantinople accompanied with some of the principal Senatours where the Emperour Justine received him with much submission and unspeakable magnificence Theodorick expecting the issue of this great Embassage which was not so soon ended entered further and further into a vast labyrinth of suspicions and jealousies beginning to distrust Roman Senatours and to monopolize all affairs with his Goths which was the beginning of his ruine He at that time did four things which infinitely grieved all good men The first was he advanced two who appeared like two comets over the heads of mortals The one was called Congiastus and the other Trigilla both men of rapine and concussions who by their evil deportment did much disgrace the authoritie of their Prince The second was that he who heretofore used great moderation in matter of subsidies bare himself therein most inordinately by the perswasion of those two Goths who were prodigiously covetous and insariable in their avarice The third was that in a grert scarcitie of victuals he caused all the corn to be taken out of the fields near Rome enforcing every one by an express Edict to sell that little which he had upon a very low price for the Kings own granaries and the entertainment of souldiers which gave occasion of many tears the poor entering into despair if the force of this Edict should be of long continuance In the end for a fourth violence he fell upon the most eminent Senatours dispoiling them of their goods and threatening them banishment and death under suspitions of treasons Boetius endeavoured to cure Theodorick by all the sweetest ways but seeing his spirit was become very dark and much altered in all that which might be said reasonable not to loose honour and good conscience in the general ship-wrack he foresaw he began to roar like a Lion against the corruptions of this mercenary Court He stoutly set upon these two powerful favourites and resisted them in the greatest vigour of their credit with such liberty and constancy that it well from that time forward appeared this man had his soul in his hand being ever ready to resign it for the defence of justice Trigilla who was the Superintendent of the whole government of the Empire and the instrument of King Theodorick would fain seem an able man and to give colour of wisdom and reason to actions disproportionable namely in that Edict published concerning the great heaps of corn amassed together in the magazine of the Prince in the sharp wants and indigencies of the people Boetius loudly blamed this manner of proceeding and ceased not to declare the miseries of Provinces in words very effectual demanding audience of the King for the good of his State Theodorick whether he had not as yet altogether renounced the reputation of a righteous Prince or that he thought his great favourite Trigilla was grounded upon most pertinent reasons and strong encounters of affairs which made him stir up these novelties would needs in his cabinet hear a conference between Boetius Trigilla concerning the Decrees where Boetius defended the cause of the poor with such weight of reasons prudence and courage that he hindered the battery of Trigilla and prevailed so far with the Prince that he procured him to revoke his Edicts whereupon these two favourites with all the faction which followed them finding themselves immeasurably offended began more and more to cast into the soul of Theodorick already much changed infinite distrust against Boetius and the whole Senate And then Paulinus and Albinus two personages the best qualified in Rome who had run through all the most honourable charges of the Common-wealth were very ill intreated by suggestions and suspicions which these men had raised against them Boetius seeing the affairs reduced to such a pass where dissimulation could not repair them spake in the end to Theodorick in full Senate with all the libertie which his conscience dictated unto him saying SIR I am not ignorant that we are in a time wherein it is as it were much easier to flie than to speak of the State of this Empire without offence to any and that all discourse which at this present may be framed will ever be suspected by those who have made even our thoughts criminal to your Majestie Yet must I needs say it is a matter very hard to be silent in so great revolutions of affairs since nature hath not created us like crocodiles who are said to have eys to weep not a tongue to complain I perceive we loose as it were all that which we have of Romane in us and that in this universal disaster where all the world should strengthen their arms against violence men are contented to do as in a thunder
Commission with their own Names On which she demanded by what Law they would proceed against her the Canon Law or the civil Law and because she knew very well that they were no great Lawyers she conceived it would be requisite that some should be sent for from the Universities in Europe They replied That she should be tried by the civil Law of England in which they were sufficiently experienced But she who well observed that they would intangle her with a new Law on purpose against her made answer you are gallant Gentlemen and can make what Laws you please but I am not bound to submit unto them since you your selves in another case refuse to be subjected to the Salick Law of France Your Law hath no more of Example than your proceeding hath of Justice On this Hatton Vice-Chamberlain to the Queen of England advanced himself and said unto her you are accused for conspiring the ruin of our Mistress who is an anointed Queen Your degree is not exempted to answer for such a Crime neither by the Law of Nations nor of nature If you are innocent you are unjust to your Reputation to indeavour to evade the judgement The Queen will be very glad that you can justifie your self for she hath assured me that she never in the world received more discontent than to find you charged with this accusation Forbear this vain consideration of Royalty which at this present serves for nothing Cause the suspitions to cease and wipe away the stain which otherwise will cleave for ever to your reputation She replied I refuse not to answer before the States of the Realm being lawfully called because I have been acknowledged to be a presumed Heir of the Kingdom Then will I speak not as a subject but in another nature without submitting my self to the new Ordinance of your Commission which is known to be nothing else but a Malicious net made to inwrap my innocence The Treasurer on this did interrupt her and said we will then proceed to the contempt to which she made answer Examine your own consciences and provide for your Honours and so God render to you and your children as you shall do in the judgement The next morning she called one of the Commissioners and demanded if her Protestation were committed to writing And if it were she would justify her self without any prejudice to the Royal dignity Whereupon the Commissioners did presently assemble themselves in the Chamber of presence where they prepared a Scaffold on the upper end whereof was the seat Royal under a Cloath of State to represent the Majesty of Queen Elizabeth and on the one side of it a Chair of Crimson Velvet prepared for her The courageous Queen did enter with a modest and an assured countenance amongst the stern Lords thirsting after her bloud and took her place Bromley the Chancellour turning towards her did speak in these words The most Illustrius Queen of England being assured not without an extream Anguish of spirit that you have conspired the destruction of her of the Realm of England and of Religion to quit herself of her duty and not to be found wanting to God herself and her people hath without any malice of heart established those Commissioners to hear the things of which you are accused how you will resolve them and shew your innocency This Man who had spoken ill enough had the discretion to speak but little And immediately as he had given the signal the perverse Officers who were more than fourty in number did throw themselves upon her like so many mastives on a prey propounding a thousand captious questions to surprize her but the generous AMAZA did shake them off with an incredible vivacity In the end all things were reduced to the letter of Babington in which he gave her notice of the conspiracy and to the answer which she made to it exhorting him to pursue his design but most of all to the depositions of her own Secretaries who gave assurances that she did dictate the said letter as also other letters to forreign Princes to invade England with arms They did press her on these falsities which seemed to carrie some probability with them but she did answer invincibly to them as most clearly may appear by those terms which I have drawn from her several answers and tied them together to give more light to her Apology wherein the clearnes of her understanding and her judgement is most remarkable IF the Queen my Sister hath given you a Commission The invincible Apology of the Queen to see Justice done it is reasonable that you should begin it rather by the easing of my sufferings than by the oppressing of my innocence I came into England to implore succour against the Rebellion of my Subjects My bloud alliance Sex Neighbourhood and the Title which I bear of a Queen did promise me all satisfaction and here I have met with my greatest affliction This is the twentieth year that I have been detained Prisoner without cause without reason without mercy and which is more without hope I am no Subject of your Mistresses but a free and an absolute Queen and ought not to make answer but to God alone the Sovereign Judge of my Actions or bring any prejudice to the Character of Royal Majesty either in my Son the King of Scotland or his Successours nor other Sovereign Princes of the earth This is the Protestation which I have made and which I repeat again in your presence before I make any answer to the Crimes which are imposed on me The blackest of all the Calumnies do charge me for having conspired the Death of my most dear Cousin and after many circumventions all the proofs are reduced to the Letter of Babington the Deposition of my Secretaries and my sollicitations made to forreign Princes to invade England with Arms. I will answer effectually to all these Articles and make the justice of my Cause most clearly appear to those who shall without passion look upon it And in the first place I swear and protest that I never saw this Babington who is made the principal in this Charge I never received any letter from him neither had he any letter from me I have always abhorred these violent and black counsels which tended to the ruin of Queen Elizabeth and I am ready to produce letters from those who having had some evil enterprize have excused themselves that they have discovered nothing to me because they were assured that my spirit was opposite to such Designs I could not know what Babington or his accomplices have done being a Prisoner he might write what he pleased but I am certain that I never saw nor heard of any letter to me And if there be found any Answer written by me to those things which never so much as came into my imagination it is an abominable forgery We live not in an Age nor a Realm that is to learn the trade to deceive I am
to the same port It is that which maketh Kings to reign 1. Reg. 25. 29. and giveth them officers as members of their state and by this means frameth the Court of Great-ones But if after it hath so made and composed them as of the flower and choise of men it should abandon them in the tempest without pole-star without rudder without Pilot were not this with notable deformitie to fail in one of the prime pieces of its work-manship Judge your self For the second reason it is most evident that to further this impossibilitie of devotion in the course of Courtiers lives is to cast them through despair of all virtues which cannot subsist without piety into the libertie of all vices which they will hold not as extravagant fallies of frailtie but as the form of a necessary portion of their profession And as the rank they hold maketh them transcend other men who willingly tie themselves to the manners and affections of those on whom they see their fortunes depend that would be as it were by a necessary law to precipitate mankind into the gulf of corruption To conclude for the third reason this proposition is manifestly contradicted by an infinit number of examples of so many Kings and Princes of so many worthy Lords and Ladies who living in the Ocean of the world as the mother pearls by the dew of heaven have preserved and do yet still preserve themselves for ever in admirable puritie and in such heroick virtues that they cannot gain so much wonder on earth but they shall find in heaven much more recompence This is it which I intend to produce in this Treatise of the Holy Court after I have informed the mind with good and lively reasons which as I hope by the grace of the holy Spirit of God shall make all persons of quality to behold they do infinit wrong to take the splendour of their condition for a veil of their impieties and imperfections Virtue is a marvellous work woman who can make Mercury of any wood yea should the difficultie be great the victorie would be more glorious but all the easieness thereof is in their own hands and the obligations they have to tend to perfection are no less important than those of Hermits as I intend shall appear in the process of this discourse The first MOTIVE Of the obligation which secular men and especially persons of qualitie have to perfection grounded upon the name of Christian. A Great abuse is crept into the minds of secular persons who hold vice in predominance and virtue under controle It is in that they esteem Christian perfection as a bird out of their reach and a qualitie dis-proportionable to their estate As for my self saith one of these I have made provision of virtue according to my quality I pretend not to be a S. Francis nor to be rapt as a S. Paul to the third heaven I find there is no life but with the living and to hold time by the fore-lock while I can Let our pleasures take that scope which nature presenteth to them were we as wicked as Judas if we have the faith of S. Peter the mercy of God pardoneth all An impertinent discourse as I will hereafter declare On the other side there are women who chatter and say I will not be a S. Teresa it is not my intention to be canonized I love better to see my diamonds in my life glitter on my fingers than to carrie themafter my death on my statues I better love a little perfume whilst I yet breath air than all the Arabian odours after my death I will have no extasies nor raptures It is enough for me to wallow in the world I may as well go to Paradise by land as by water Such words are very impure in the mouth of a Christian nay so prejudicial to eternal salvation that through the liberty of speaking too much they take away all hope of doing well For pursuing the tender effeminacy of that spirit they take the measure of virtue very short and disproportionable their intentions being infirm the works are likewise the more feeble not squarely answering the model of knowledge from whence proceedeth a general corruption I affirm not all Christians ought to embrace the perfection of S. Francis and of S. Teresa No. There are some whom the Divine providence will direct by other aims But I say that every Christian is obliged to level at perfection and if he hath any other intention he is in danger to loose himself eternally A bold saying but it is the sentence of S. Austine You should always be displeased with your Aug. Serm. 11 of the Apostle Semper tibi displiceat quod es si viâ— pervenire ad id quod non es Si dixeris sufficit periisti A notable speech of S. Augustine self for that which you are if you desire to attain to that which you are not and if you chance to say it is enough you are undone And who are you that dare limit the gifts of God And who are you that say I will have but such or such degree of graces I satisfie my self with such a sanctity I have proceeded far enough in a spiritual life let us set up our staff here What wickedness is this Is not this to imitate that barbarous and senseless King who cast chains into the sea to tie the Ocean in fetters God hath given us a Xerxes heart of a larger latitude than the heavens which he will replenish with himself and you will straiten it like a snail to lodge him in narrow bounds whom the whole world cannot comprehend Judge if this proceeding be not very unreasonable and if you yet doubt weight two or three reasons which you shall find very forcible and by them you will conclude with me you have no less obligation to be perfect than the most retired Hermit that ever lived in the most horrid wilderness of Egypt The first reason I propose to underprop this assertion is drawn from the nature and essence of perfection At what mark think you should one aim to arrive to this scope If I should say will you be perfect bury your self alive in a sack put a halter about your neck go roast your self in the scorching beams of the Sun go roal your self in snow and thorns this would make you admire your hair stand an end and bloud congeal in your veins But if one tell you God Perfection engrafted upon love hath as it were engrafted perfection with his own hands upon the sweetest stock in the world what cause have you of refusal Now so it is as I say There is nothing so easie as to love the whole nature of the world is powred and dissolved into love there is nothing so worthy to be beloved as an object which incloseth in the extent thereof all beauties and bounties imaginable which are the strongest attractives of amity yea it forceth our affections with a sweet
often observed that Noblemen who have established tyrannie in the world have neither been fruitful nor fortunate in their posteritie and as nature is scantie in the propagation of wolves designed for spoil which otherwise would bring all the world into desolation so Almightie God by a secret oeconomie of his divine Providence permitteth not that great men who have made themselves disturbers of publick peace and infringers of laws both divine and human whereof they ought to be protectours should make the bruitishness of their savage souls to survive them in their posterity But as for those who are arranged in the list of sanctitie and modesty God hath as it were immortalized their bloud in their posteritie as we see it happen in worthie and illustrious families But to what value amounteth all this which I have said in comparison of that crown of glorie which God placeth on the heads of Noblemen in the other life when they have virtuously governed in this mortal mansion O what a brave death it is to die under the shadow of the Palms of so many heroical virtues Oh it is the death of a Phoenix to die in the odours of a holy conversation to change his sepulchre into a cradle and even draw life out of the Tomb Oh what an immortalitie it is to survive eternally in the mouths of men but much more to live in Heaven enjoying the knowledge love life and felicitie of God! O Nobles betake your selves betimes and in a good hour to the way of this temple of honour by the exercise of holy virtues which are like Elias chariot all flaming with glory to carrie your purified souls even to the height of the Emperial Heaven THE SECOND BOOK Of Hinderances which worldly men have in the way of SALVATION and PERFECTION The first OBSTACLE Faintness and weakness of Faith Against Atheists HAving sufficiently proved the obligations which Great-ones and men of qualitie have to perfection let us now see the hinderances which may stop the increase thereof as well to take from them all pretext of false libertie as to denote the confusions very frequent in the corruptions of this Age. The first is a certain languor and debilitie of faith which openeth the way to all sorts of vices so that putting all the greatness of the world into a false seeming it beholdeth Paradise and all the blessings of the other life with blear-eyes and clouded with a perpetual eclipse And that you may well Two sects of men conceive this let us observe that in this Age greatly changed by heresie libertie and vice two sorts of men are to be seen whereof the one doth symbolize with just Abel and the other are of the sect of Cain These two brothers began to contend together even in the worlds cradle as Jacob and Esau in the bellie of Rebecca Abel had a soul impressed with a good stamp religious docile pure perpetually fixed in the chaste apprehensions of the Divinitie Cain quite contrary an impious soul greatly infected with the serpents breath black variable wavering in faith and in the virtue of the Divine providence He verily is the father of Atheists and S. Bernard hath properly Bern. serm 24 in Contic Fideicida antequam fratricida Procop. in Genes said He killed faith before he murdered his brother Procopius calleth him the son of the earth because this unfortunate creature perpetually looked downward having already as it were buried in the tomb of oblivion the lights and knowledges of heaven From thence proceeded the irreverence of his unbridled spirit his wicked sacrifices his envie against his brother afterward his furie murder and bloud and lastly a deluge of calamities The onely example of his disaster should suffice to terrifie those who following him in his impietie make themselves undoubtedly the companions of his misfortune but since it also is expedient we proceed herein by discourse and reason I observe the causes and remedies of this infidelitie Faintness and debilitie in Three sorts of consciences from which impiety springs faith and consequently atheism is formed in three sorts of consciences to wit the criminal the bruitish the curious Atheism proceedeth from a criminal conscience when a soul findeth it self involved in a long web of crimes and as it were overwhelmed in the habits of sin In the mean time God doth inwardly Horrible state of a sinful conscience torture prick forward and scourge it and then all bloudy and ulcerous as it is not able longer to remain within it self but tasting so many disturbances in its proper mansion it searcheth evasions and starting-holes expatiateth in the pleasures and delights of the world to dissolve her many griefs and findeth in every thing her gnawing worm She looketh back upon the path of virtue which she hath either forsaken or never trodden as an impossible track the spirit of lies representing it unto her all paved with thorns and briars she re-entereth into herself and saith in her heart that there is none but God who afflicteth her and that necessarily she must free herself from him for our felicities are measured by the ell of our opinion and no man is miserable but he that apprehendeth his own unhappiness Then soothing herself with these humane discourses she herein much laboureth to acquit herself from God from the belief of judgement of hell and the immortality of the soul Notwithstanding she cannot albeit these wicked spirits have scoffed at the mysteries of Religion with their companions as if they would put on a bold fore-head and an impudence strong enough to endure a stroke so dreadful but contend against the essence of God Care findeth them in their bed and is pinned to their silken curtains the thoughts of a Divinitie which they supposed to have totally banished from their hearts in pleasures upon Et ubi Deus non timetur nisi ubi non est Tert. de prescrip 41. Ponam eam possessionem Ericii Isaiah 14. 2. the least afflictions return and make themselves felt with very piercing points which head-long throw them into despair The Prophet Isaiah hath divinely prophesied of such a soul I will make her the inheritance and possession of hedge-hogs Verily the miserable caytif hatcheth in her entrails a thousand little hedge-hogs which as they encrease make their pricks and darts multiply a thousand gnawings a thousand apprehensions as uncapable of repose as apt to afflict a conscience Such heretofore was the state of Nero for this Condition of Nero. barbarous monster who so often had dipped his hand in bloud sought out a bath of delights to bath himself in he ran up and down to prie into all the inventions of the pleasures of the world to rid himself from the arrow which he had in his heart and to dispoil himself for ever of an opinion of the Divinitie This was a matter for him impossible When he was at feasts sports or Theatres the apprehension of God stung his heart as a Bee and
probant ratio confirmat elementa loquuntur dâ—â—ones confitentur sed longè major insania si de veritate Evangelii non dubites vivere tamen quasi de ejus falsitate non dubitares Advise to cold Catholicks imitate them in their doctrine If they expect any other arguments it will appear their frenzie would have no other remedies but the searing-iron and fire As for other Catholicks who believe as the faithful and live as infidels pronouncing JESUS CHRIST with their mouth and renouncing him with their hands I pray them to ponder a saying of one of the rarest wits which the world hath a long time had it is Picus Mirandula expressed by him in these words to his nephew It is a prodigious folly not to believe the Gospel the truth whereof is sealed with the bloud of Martyrs innumerable testified by the Apostles proved by miracles confirmed by reason published and declared by the elements and creatures insensible confessed even by the devils But it is a much more notorious folly not to doubt at all of the verity of the Gospel which one professeth and yet to live as if he made no question of the falsitie thereof What a mockery it is to carrie the name of a poor SAVIOUR and to burn with enraged avarice of an humble SAVIOUR and suffer himself to be exposed to tempestuous winds of exorbitant ambition which breatheth nothing but breaches and ship-wracks of a crucified SAVIOUR and to live in a mass of flesh wholly effeminated with delights and curiosities even to the making their spittings to swim in gold of a meek SAVIOUR and to carry under the name of a Christian a Gorgons eye the anger of an Asp the heart of a Tyger a soul full of revenges of gall of bloud of Monsters of beastly bruitishness O God what Christianity is this Salvianus speaketh a word very remarkeable Salvian 4. de guber Dei Omnis Christianorum culpa Divinitatis injuria est Atrocius sub sancti nominis professione peccamus Ipsa errores nostros religio quam profitemur accusat We cannot sin without making our selves capable of spiritual treason in the highest degree the sins of Christians are sacriledges the name which they bear condemneth their life without any other form of process These colds of the north this yciness which some Catholicks shew in their belief is greatly scandalous and prejudicial to verity because the mis-believing which see them live in such exorbitancy cannot perswade themselves they firmly believe the Gospel which they profess but that all their religion is but an exteriour countenance and rather an idle amuzement of words than a true list of virtue This bringeth a horrible prejudice into the Church of God which should even rent our hearts if we yet retained one onely vein of that noble bloud the Martyrs profusely spent for the defence of the truth The remedies for these essential impediments Remedies in the act of Christianitie are to take away and cut off the causes of this infidelity 1. To prepare a conscience chaste and timerous which never wil make it self an hostess for mortal sin and if by chance it give harbor thereunto to dislodge it presently for sins heaped one upon another by a dissolute deadness of confession make a savage and bruitish soul which seeketh nothing but to be freed from God though it be a matter impossible 2. Not to tast the blessings contentments or honours of the world with too much ardour they easily ensnare our affections and make the forgetfulness of Heaven slide into an insensible soul 3. To eschew curiositie principally in matter of religion as the canker of faith We must resemble the Cuttle a very wise fish who during storms fixeth herself firmly upon the rocks without motion amongst the floating thoughts which a dark cloudy conscience may suggest always to hold ones foot on the rock of S. Peter fixed and stable to trust the direction of the Church and not to forsake our hold It is the most palpable folly which Non plus sapere quam oportet sapere sed sapere ad sobrietatem Rom. 1. can creep into the brain of man to desire wisdom contrary to the wisdom of Saints which is humility 4. To exercise your self diligently in good works as prayers abstinencies frequentation of Sacraments and alms-deeds Faith is given to you as an inheritance of Heaven whosoever endeavoureth not to husband it looseth it The second OBSTACLE * * * Cautè hoc caput non nisi cum delectu adhibito legendum Errour in Religion Friendly and wholesom counsel to the Nobilitie of the pretended Religion AN heresie discovered is a face unmasked S. Hieromn the letter to Ctesiphon Haereses ad originem suam revocasse canfutasse Haereticorum sententias prodidisse superassi est Take away the vizard you disarm her pull away this semblance painted with hypocrisie wherewith she hath plaistered her face you sufficiently refute her you need but to know her to overcome her and when the head of her arrows are bare they have no more force Catholick Doctours have hitherto couragiously endeavoured to take from her this veil and adulterated colours yea even she at this time hath so favourably for you unmasked her self that a man must pull out his eyes if he will not behold her deformity in her rebellion justly detested by the sage and moderate of her own side And I beseech them to consider that this egge which they abhor is laid by the Raven that broodeth in their bosom and it is a great blindness to break the egges of the Asp and cherish the serpent which hath laid them Good and generous souls which yet retain some sparks of a French spirit do well see these proceedings are not according to Scripture which so severely recommendeth the honour of Kings and therefore they sound a retreat they fould up their ensigns freely confessing they have erred as men and protesting not to persevere in mischief like devils There are none but enraged spirits that will be healed by the experience of their own ill and bury themselves in their ruin wise men always make a medicine Optimum est aliena insania frui for themselves of others folly Go to then you who after so many voices from Heaven do still stagger and advise if you ought to return to the Romane Church which is the womb of your beginning and bosom of your repose give me leave that I may take this film from your eyes grow not outragious to what purpose should you stand quaking in these frightful agonies Exercise a little patience I do not doubt but you will bless the hand which layeth hold on you when you shall come to see the light I come not with sword in hand to put a religion into your heads with main force I come to you full of compassion of your misery full of affection for your salvation full of the desire of your ease of your contentment of your
in the hearts of men by a presumption of their salvation Christian discipline oppressed by liberty chastity trodden underfoot by unbridled luxury the standard of rebellion advanced against the sacred persons of Kings a million of French exposed to slaughter four thousand Church-vesteries Monsieur de Sainctes in his Book of saâ—cage pillaged five hundered Churches demolished France so many times given over as a prey to strangers corruptions so strange desolations so dreadful acts so barbarous that they make the hair stand an end on the heads of all good men which have never so little understanding A stile of fire were needful or a pen of a damant steeped in bloud to express them Ah poore France France the paradise of earth eye of the world pearl of all beauties How many times by the means of this heresie hast thou seen thy bosom heretofore crowned with ears of corn and guilded with harvests all bristled with battallions How many times hast thou seen the land covered with blades and the sea with ships How many times hast thou felt the arms of thy children to encounter in thy proper entrails How many times hast thou seen flames of brothers hostility flie through thy fat and fruitful fields When hast thou not sweat in all the parts of thy bodie When have not rivers of bloud been drawn from thy veins but such bloud as was able to cement together huge bulwarks for the defence of our Countrey or to serve for seed for flower-deluces to make them grow and be advanced in the plains of Palestine and they have been sacrificed to furies Innocency seemed to afford infants shelter from the tempest yet the sword of heresie found a passage into their tender bodies Age rendred old men venerable yet would no pardon be granted to their gray haits moistined with the massacre of their children Virgins were guarded in their mothers arms as a Temple of God yet have they been dishonoured So many personages of eminent quality have served as an aim for their impiety their pains have been sport for them and their deaths a spectacle What hair would not stand an end with horrour and what eye not weep forth bloud when we speak of these disasters which your selves detest Nor can you sufficiently wonder at the crueltie of those who have taken the liberty of such barbarous outrages and so bloudy tragadies I pass over this discourse as over coles covered with ashes and would willingly be silent were it not that as it was fit to expose massacred bodies to view thereby to cure the madness of the Milesian maids so must I discover some bloudy effects in the pretended Religion to raise a horrour against it in good souls Why also have you in this time renewed so many wounds which were not well closed and for want of a little obedience so lawfully due to the most just Prince of the world do you make a civil war to exhaust France of gold and bloud after such expence and so many bloud-lettings If these acts seem so base and inhumane to you why abhor you not the sect which produced them If God curse him who is the cause of scandals were it not fit if you have some beliefe stranged from common sense rather a thousand times to stiffle it in the bottom of your conscience than to divulge it with these disturbances divisions and spoil of a Countrey which you should love as men and honour as true Children Were there some stain in the house of our Mother which never was must you therefore call her whore drag her along by the hair and carry fire to burn her house in stead of providing water to quench the flames Is it not better to become patient to sweeten the acerbities of times spare wounds on ulcered bodies or at least to be satisfied with silence in a matter where you can pretend no right of correction What was that so exorbitant which the Church commanded for which you separated your selves and took arms to defend the wranglings of our Apostataes made afterward your Apostles What Maximes have we so rough and unreasonable that they must be taken away with the sword there to plant reformation Consider a little the notable corrections and admirable policies which Arch-hereticks have invented to introduce them into the Church I will here with all sincerity recite the Maximes of the Catholick and the Pretended Maximes of the chief Sectaries of which some have afterward affrighted you and you have disavowed them as you daily do by others God making you plainly see in the inconstancy and great diversitie of your Doctrine the little confidence you should put therein The Catholick Church teacheth that God would have all the world saved as the Apostle hath expressed in the Epistle to Timothie that he desireth good 1 Tim. 2. 4. of which he is the source and that he communicates himself to all his children The Pretended say that God absolutely desires evil yea doth it willingly predestinating men without any regard some to life others to eternal damnation as if a father who had daughters should cut the throat of one most innocent and marry the other wealthily having no reason for it but his will which is most execrable impiety pronounced by the authour of this sect in the book of his Institutions and chapter 21. where he saith Men are not all created to the like condition but that life eternal is pre-ordained for some and eternal damnation for others The Catholick Church speaks of our Saviour with most profound and religious reverence The Calvin in Evang Mat. 27. Institut 2. cap. 16. Authour of the Pretended makes him inferiour to his Father calling him the second King after God and attributing ignorance to him despair on the Cross and the pains of the damned which are things most horrible The Catholick Church holdeth Jesus Christ is the onely and sole Mediatour of redemption and that there is no other name either in heaven or earth in which and by which we can be saved and for that cause she honours it all she can extending and multiplying the fruits of honour and praise not onely in his own person but in his dear friends also which are the blessed Virgin and the Saints whom we pray unto as the fruits of his Cross and take them for Mediatours of intercession grounded therein on the word of God which commandeth the friends of Job to take him for intercessour Job 42. though he were in this transitory life and not at all doubting if the soul of the evil rich man prayed unto Abraham out of hell but we on earth Luc. 16. may be permitted to call to our aid souls so faithful so much honoured by God and whose praises he reckons his own greatness We likewise reverence holy images since it is an ancient custom in the Church the marks whereof we yet behold in Tertullian who might have conversed Tertul de pudicitia c. 7. with the Disciples of the
nec magna lequimur sed vivimus paper This is it which hath given me occasion having treated of motives obstacles and remedies which men of quality may have in the way of spiritual life briefly to prepare a little practice of virtues which more concerneth their condition to behold them afterwards appear in the history of Courts which I purpose to begin in this present volume It much importeth at the very first entrance to make a good idea of Devotion which many plaister over in their own manner and attire with their passion making that sometimes serve for vice which beareth the scepter of virtue Some imagine devotion to be nothing but an ordinary practice of unseemly gestures and motions such as little puppets would make if they were animated with some small quantity of quick-silver Others make use of devotion as Dionysius the Tyrant did of Philosophers not that he loved them but that folding himself in their clokes he thought he should be honored by the people So shall you find sometimes in the world those who for a vain interest of reputation will cloth themselves with the robe of false devotion as if one should seek to shelter himself under a wet sack I speak not here of devotion which concerneth Religious men nor that which is in the sweetness of contemplation but I affirm the virtue of devotion according to S. Thomas is nought else but a prompt will to the service of God Noblemen have cause to aspire thereunto I. A good devotion in Great men is to have a True devotion of Great men Sentite de Domino in bonitate Sap. 1. great and faithful feeling of the Majesty of God not serving him with exteriour semblances but sincerely cordially constantly holding all the maxims of state and condition under the rules of conscience and disposing themselves rather to hazard all than to loose God by one sole sin II. A good devotion to clip the wings of the covetousness Note these points and examine them often Animae irreverenti infraenatae nè tradas me Eccl. 23. 6. of riches and greatness covetousness which never findeth measure but in extremities nor other period than a precipice Take heed of a soul without bridle without reverence III. A good devotion not to reach at the goods of the Church by any false pretence represented in the Court of Rome by any black or covert deceits sowed together with white threed nor afterward to charge a man with titles like an old sepulchre and hold to himself the patrimonie of Jesus Christ therewith to fatten dogs and feed hawks or such other infamous creatures which live on the sins of others Finally these goods are Eagles feathers In felle amaritudinis in obligatione◠iniquitatis Actor 8. which eat and consume others whilest a soul is lodged there it remaineth in a bitterness replenished with gall and in the perplexed intrications of sin IV. A good devotion not to incroach upon the possessions of your neighbour nor enforce the good 3 Reg. 21. Naboth to sell his land for the accommodation and content of your Lordship but if he will leave it to Isaiah 5. 8. Vae qui conjungitis domum ad domum agrum agro copulatis usque ad terminum loci Nunquid habitabitis vos soli in medio terrae Dissolve colligationes impietatis solve fasciculos deprimentes Isaiah 58. 6. Salvian l. 5. de guber Quot Curiales tot Tyranni give him a good price a reasonablerate a full satisfaction Woe to you said Isaiah who annex house to house inheritance to inheritance as far as the land stretcheth Would you dwell alone in the midst of the earth V. A good devotion in things which one may rightfully exact to be staid just temperate not covetous no Harpy no Tyrant but to extend the bowels of compassion towards the poor who are our flesh and bloud to open the eyes not to invent new impositions that may draw the marrow from the people but to take away or lessen the old that necessity requireth no more Salvianus complaineth that in his time there were as many Tyrants as Lords and Courtiers And that is the cause why God gave the Roman Empire as a prey to Barbarians being Masters more mild than the covetousness of great ones VI. A good devotion to discharge his debts and Non morabitur opus mercenarii tui apud te usque ad mane Levit. 19. 13. Diligite justitiam qui judicatis terram Sap. 1. promises and never suffer the wages of the poor hireling to lie hid in his coffers VII A good devotion to attend publick charges which you are to undergo especially those that concern distribution of justice with understanding conscience and diligence understanding to know the affairs conscience to handle them faithfully diligence not to draw out the expedition of causes in languishing delays so prejudicial to the publick VIII A good devotion in banishing superfluitie Tertul. de cultu foeminar Discutiendae sunt deliciae quarum mollitie fluxis fidei virtus effaeminari potest of apparel and tast excesses curiosities houshold-vices To cause modestie frugalitie employment and virtue to reign and to be the first himself to light the torch to his familie You must necessarily expel delights for their tenderness and excesses weaken and enervate all religion IX A good devotion to make choise of servants to instruct or make them honest and to esteem no man faithfull in your service who is disloyal to God Not to be desirous to keep a bad servant for ones Attende tibi à pestifero fabricat enim mala Eccles 11. 35. own interest though the whole house would be changed into gold by his hands X. A good devotion to hinder disorders and sins which are committed in publick when you have authoritie in your hands without shewing your self insatiable to revenge your own proper injuries and more cold than ice in the quarrel of God When a In cujus manu est ut prohibeat jubet agi si non prohibet admitti Salvian l. 7. man hath the power in his hands to stay a sin to permit it is to commit it These are points of devotion which we must hereafter moreamply digest The second SECTION In what all Devotion and spiritual life consisteth YOu who aspire to spiritual life know there are three sorts of man in you alone the Vegetal Animal and Intellectual and that all your Three sorts of man in us perfection consisteth in putting the Vegetal and Animal man under the feet of the Intellectual A great number of men are now adays vegetals that is to say who so live as if they had no other soul but the vegetative as plants and lead the very life of the mushrome Others are animal who make their souls wholy evaporate in sensual love in choler rage in brutishness Few shall you find who are intellectual who work with reason and understanding And behold wherein consisteth our excellencie
in all things to bear the seeming scepter Then seeing him dayly become more weak than himself to secure this state upon his own sons he makes the eldest to wit Phaselus Governour of Jerusalem and giveth to Herod his Unhappy Politician youngest the Tetratchie of Galilee Some time after having sucked down all the wind which his ambition presented to him and not knowing what more to do he drank a cup of poyson which in a banquet was offered to him by the slie cunning of Malicus his enemie Behold the current of humane things These Spirits enragedly mad after greatness which they pursue with all manner of toyl and sinister practises are as those little bubbles that rise on the water in time of a tempest they encrease and crack in a moment Antipater being dead his two sons Phaselus and Beginning of Herod Herod divide the succession each one holdeth firmly his share and striveth to possess the heart of Hircanus making him always personate his own part Herod as soon as he was in office even in the life of his father being as yet but fifteen years of age well discovered what he would be by his natural inclinations which proceeded from him as flashing streaks from a cloud to be instantly turned into lightening He had a malign spirit craftie ambitious even to furie and whose fingers perpetually itched after bloud and slaughter And verily he defiled his tender years and first beginning of principalitie with effusion of humane bloud falling not onely upon one called Ezechias reputed a Pirat but he also cut in pieces with him many Jews without either warrant or knowledge of the cause which involved many innocents in this ruin The mothers of those people massacred by young Herod went out of the Temple disconsolate with their hair disheveled requiring justice of Hircanus who was no other than a meer idol of principalitie Notwithstanding much importuned by the cries and lamentations of these weeping women and incited by the Peers of his Kingdom he ordained that Herod should appear before a tribunal of justice In this action the young man sufficiently shewed the boldness of his spirit and fierceness of his courage The other who were accused came to this Parliament of Judea altogether in mourning habit he thither went as to a feast or a Theater waited on with a flourishing retinue clothed in scarlet frisled perfumed and besides with the recommendations of the Romans who sent nothing but armed words commanding the Judges to pardon without any other process He then being but fifteen years old so amazed the Judges and Advocates with his very fashion and countenance that of all those who were prepared for long pleadings against him there was not one to be found that had the heart to mutter in his presence One of the Judges called Sameas an honest man more hardie than Liberty of a judge the rest cried out aloud to King Hircanus there present Sir I wonder not this young Lord commeth in such equipage to this barr every one doth what he can for his own safeguard But I admire that you and your Councel suffer him thus to proceed as if he came hither not to be adjudged but to murther the Judges you presently through favour will enfranchise him but he one day by Justice will assail yours And verily of the whole Senat no one escaped whom Herod being come to the full mannage of the Kingdom put not to death except him who delivered his opinion with such libertie It is reported of Sameas that when afterward there was question moved to receive Herod for King the rest constantly opposing it he freely said he gave his voice to Herod and some amazed thereat Let it not seem strange unto you saith he God in his indignation Grave speech will give unto you a bad King and a worse he cannot find than Herod He is the scourge you stand in need of to chastice your infidelitie Hircanus then seeing the Judges animated by Sameas more inclining to the ballance of justice than mercy caused him secretly to be shifted away For he embosomed him with love and so hatched the serpents egge in his breast Herod nothing inferiour to his father in policie pursuing his plots and examples inseparably united himself to the Romans gayning them with all manner of services and entertaining Hircanus to serve his turns as a shadow with all manner of complacence and flatterie The Kingdom of Judea seemed as yet not to behold him but at distance his brother Phaselus as the eldest held the best part Aristobulus whom you have seen led in fetters to Rome had also two sons the eldest of which was called Alexander father of this chaste Mariamne whose patience we decipher The other was Antigonus with whom Herod had much occasion Or both he discharged himself in Great revolution in the Kingdom of Judea process of time For the unfortunate Alexander successour to the unhappiness of his father Aristobulus putting himself into the field with such troops as he could amass together in the disaster of his fortune was in favour of Herod oppressed by the Romans Antigonus having escaped out of captivitie wherein he was held at Rome with Aristobulus his father gave Herod matter enough to work on For putting himself into the Parthians power he wrought so much with promises and hopes that they undertook to establish him in his Royal throne And thereupon they arm both by sea and land and handle the matter so by force and policie that they stir up Hircanus and Phaselus Herod with much difficultie saved himself and though he had a courage of steel was so astonished with this surprise that it was a great chance he had not ended his life upon his own sword Hircanus unworthily used by the commandment of his nephew Antigonus had both his ears cut off and thereby made for ever uncapable of the High-priestood Phaselus the brother of Herod enraged with the turn of fortune voluntarily knocked out his own brains against the side of a rock Herod who always cleaved to the fortune of the Romans as ivy to a wall seeing his affairs reduced to an extremitie imploreth their assistance representeth the outrages of Antigonus the hostilitie of the Parthians signifieth the services of his father Antipater promiseth on his part all the world and so handleth the matter that beyond his expectation he is declared King and at that instant Antigonus enemie of the people of Rome as a fugitive and ally of the Parthians Herod pursueth him with might and main ayded by the Roman forces The miserable Antigonus after a very long resistance was imprisoned becoming the very first of Kings who by commandment of Mark Anthony was executed with a punishment most unfit for his qualitie and condition and among the Romans not usual leaving his head upon a scaffold in the Citie of Antioch for no other cause but for the defence of the inheritance of his Ancestours But Strabo saith Mark
misery of the world the waking aiery fantasies fleeting fires which shine not but to extinguish your selves and in being put out to bereave us of light leaving us the evil savour and sorrow of loosing it This Prince so accomplished that nature seemed to have framed him to be the object of thoughts the love of hearts the admiration of souls this Prince in whom was stored all the glory of the Royal house of the Asmoneans this Prince who was to marry the Miter with the Diadem and raise all the hopes of a lost race behold him by a most treasonable practise smothered in the water in an age in a beauty in an innocency which made this accident as full of pitie as it was unfurnished of remedies Vpon this news the whole City of Jerusalem was Sorrow upon this death in as great a confusion as if Nebuchadnezzar returning from the other world had been at the gates thereof In every place there was nothing to be seen but tears groans horrour astonishment yellings representations of death You would have said that every house bare their first-born to buryal as was seen heretofore to happen among the Aegyptians But above all Alexandra the disconsolate mother afflicted herself with uncurable sorrow sometime she wept prostrated on the body of her son and sought in his eclipsed eyes and dead lips the remnant of her life Sometime she rouled her eyes like a distracted lunatike calling for fire sword halters and precipices to find in them the catastrophe of life The sad Mariamne although infinitly patient had much ado to resist the impetuous violences of an incomparable sorrow She loved this brother of hers most dearly as her true image as the pledg-bearer of her heart as the hope of her house all rent in pieces All confounded as she was the good daughter reflected on the wound of her mother and stayed near the corps of her brother as if she had been the shadow of the same body Then turning herself to God she said to him with an affectionate heart My God behold me presently in Singular resignation that estate wherein I have nothing more to stand in fear of but your justice nothing more to hope but your mercie He for whom I feared for whom I hoped all that which one may fear or hope in the revolution of worldly occurrents is taken from me by a secret judgement of your providence ever to be adored by my obedient will although not to be penetrated at all by the weakness of my thoughts If I yet among so many acerbities suck some sweetness out of the world in the presence of delicious objects of which you have bereaved me behold me wholly weaned hereafter I will find therein nothing but wormwood to the end that renouncing the comforts of the earth I may learn to tast those which are proper to your children Behold how fair and reposed souls draw honey from the rock and convert all into merit yea even their tears The impatient like Alexandra afflict themselves without comfort torment themselves without remedy and many times become desperate without remission What shall we say Herod himself in this sad consort Extream hypocrisie of Herod of sorrow would needs play his part He maketh externally appear in a dissembled hypocrisie all the symptoms of a true sorrow He detesteth play he accuseth fortune he complaineth Heaven had sinisterly envied him an object on which he desired much to make all the love and respect appear he bare to the Royal bloud from whence he greatly derived his advancement He most ceremoniously goeth to visit the Queen and her mother and when he findeth them weeping about this dead body scalding tears flowed from his eyes whether it were he had them at command to make his dissimulation the more great or whether he verily had at that time some resentment of grief beholding on one side this little blossom so cruelly cropped under the sythe of death and so many celestial beauties which had for limit and horizon the instant of their birth and on the other side considering these poor Queens drenched in a sea of sorrow which had force to draw tears from rocks This trayterous creature had yet some humanity in him and I could well believe that nature had at this time wrung these tears by violence from his barbarous cruelty notwithstanding he feigned willingness to stop his passion with māliness afterwards turning himself to the Ladies he said He was not come so suddenly to wipe away their tears which had but too much cause to be shed as for himself he had enough to do to command his own Nature must be suffered to have her sway time must have his and would apply a plaister to this sorrow That he would perform for the memorie of the dead whatsoever an onely son might expect from a passionate father and a puissant King that hereafter he would be true son of Alexandra true husband and true brother of Mariamne since God was pleased to redouble these obligations in him by the loss they had suffered O the powerfull tyranny of the appetite of revenge Tyranny of revenge Alexandra whom one might have thought would burst into contumelies and reproches as well knowing Herod what face soever he set upon the matter was Authour and plotter of this death held herself constantly in the degrees of dissimulation not shewing to the King any discontent on her part and all for the hope she had to be opportunely revenged in time and place Herod retiring thought he had acted his part well free from any suspition of offence seeing Alexandra spake not a word who heretofore too frequently accustomed to complain in far less occasions To apply the last lenitive he caused the funerals of the dead to be celebrated with such pomp and magnificence that nothing could be added thereunto as well in the order of the equipage as in the curiosity of the perfumes with which the body was embalmed and the magnificent furnitures of sepulchre The most simple and ignorant supposed all this proceeded from a real and sincere affection but the wisest said they were the tears of the crocodile that Herod could not cordially deplore his death which had taken a straw out of his eye and put him in full possession of the Kingdom of Judea Alexandra Herod accused joyning the passion of her sorrow to her resolution of revenge immediately after the obsequies faileth not to give notice to Queen Cleopatra of all that had passed with so pathetical a letter that every word seemed to be steeped in tears of bloud Cleopatra who was apt enough for these impressions suddenly takes fire and affecteth the affair with that ardour she would her own cause she rowseth up her whole Court she storms she perpetually filleth Mark Anthonie's ears crying out it was a thing insupportable to see a stranger hold a scepter to which he could pretend no right to massacre the heir with so much barbarous cruelty to
removed from Councel and manage of affairs deprived of the Imperial bed abandoned by all those who before adored her she was dead to the evil life and onely survived to see her own funerals It was thought Pulcheria who was desirous to make a sequestration fearing lest her Departure of Eudoxia presence might again enkindle the fire covered under ashes in the Emperours heart to possess it to the prejudice of affairs caused the counsel of undertaking the voyage of the holy land to be suggested to her under-hand But it is more credible far the good Empress took this resolution upon her own motion for the reason I will deliver A devout Roman Ladie of a noble house named Melania who filled the deserts Cities Provinces and Empires with her fame passing into Palestine there to wear out the rest of her days in peace went by Constantinople and was received at the Emperours Court where seeing Eudoxia endowed with an admirable spirit but yet untrained to the sweetness of things spiritual she endeavoured to give her a tast The Empress who at that time was in the prosperities and delights of a flourishing Court thought she should handle devotion as a Captain Philosophie and it was enough to tast it outwardly But when this sad accident like the steel began to strike on the flint it made the sparkles flie out in good earnest She was on fire to forsake the Court where she no longer was what she had been she sighed after those places of the holy land as the thirsty Hart for the streams of a fountain I well believe she took counsel at that time of Chrysaphius a powerfull Eunuch who had governed Theodosius from his infancy and was much reputed in Court closely countermyning the over-much authority which Pulcheria had according to his opinion in affairs but he took good heed openly to affront her satisfying himself to act his part by Eudoxia according to directions she gave him This man very understanding in businesses found it was to good purpose to retire back to come on the better that it was necessary the Empress should give way for a time and that her absence would make her the more desired and that he in the mean space would do all good offices for her with the Emperour and act his part in time and place Conclusions of the voyage are made leave was not hard to be obtained of the Emperour seeing his instrument Pulcheria was thereunto wholly disposed When it came to a separation which was a thing very sensible in minds so long time and with such ardour mutually loving the good Eudoxia could not refrain to say to her husband with tears in her eyes SACRED MAjESTY I am upon terms to see you no more in this world for which cause it is fit I discharge my Conscience Behold me ready to depart not onely from the Court but this life if you so ordain I sorrow not for greatness nor delights I have ever thought the prosperitie of the world was a current of fresh water which looketh not back on any thing and hasteneth to pour it self into the salt sea I onely grieve that having brought to your Court two inestimable Jewels virginity and the reputation of a child of honour the one which I ought rather to have given to God I dedicated to your bed and the other is taken from me by your suspition grounded upon a sudden surprizal of a word spoken from a heart perplexed to see you troubled You have caused the Prince Paulinus to be put to death and in doing this you have not bereft me of a lover but your self of a good and faithfull servant and God grant the voice of bloud accuse you not before the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge I hope God who is the Protectour of innocents wil one day take my cause in hand and when truth shall give light through your suspitions you at least will render me the honour which I ever onely have sought to be conveyed into the ashes of my tomb Theodosius knew not how to answer her but with the moist dew of his eyes which began to do the office of his lips a few such words were enough to turn his soul topsie-turvie Pulcheria readily made the stop saying that which was past could not be recalled over which God giveth us no other power but of forgetfulness That the Empress might in good time go to satisfie her devotion and that were she herself free from the bondage of affairs it would be one of her greatest contentments to bear her company Thus Eudoxia departed travelling directly to Jerusalem Voyage of Eudoxia into Palestine and with her the grace and alacrity of Court All Constantinople was filled with sadness at which time the plains of Palestine were already comforted with the first rays of this bright day-break Wheresoever she passed the people ran thither by heaps to behold her she was received with much applause with eloquent orations and all demonstrations of hearts affections and particularly her approach was much celebrated in the Citie of Antioch For it is said the Senate going out to receive her she replied at an instant as she was sitting in her golden Caroch to the Oration pronounced before her and undertook to praise this famous Citie with so much grace and judgement that the principal and most eminent of the Citie ravished with such courtesie dedicated two statues to her the one of gold in the Senate-house as to the Empress the other of brass in their Library as to the tenth Muse Entring into Jerusalem she was received as an Angel from Heaven but above all the Clergie rejoyced at the abode she meant to make there well knowing the Church should thence derive great succours in its necessities Some perswaded her David had prophesied she should re-edifie the walls of Jerusalem because in the fifteenth Psalm where these words are read In bonâ voluntate tuâ aedificentur muri Jerusalem the Septuagint have translated in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The interpretation was not amiss although it were not literal it had the effect For the pious Empress in process of time made many most worthy reparations There she began to live as in another world she seemed to herself to have cast from her shoulders the burden of a huge mountain she now breathed a far other air than that of Court she had another tast of things divine All her study was to pray meditate and hear exhortations and spiritual conferences to read and learn holy Scripture to sow charities that she might reap merits to visit the Cells of Anchorets to see how their garments and girdles were made to observe their manner of living to multiply Monasteries to cloath Virgins to heap up reliques together and such like things Theodosius understanding her carriage and the Chrysaphius laboureth the return of the Empress in the mean time seeking his own ends good entertainment she had every where thought it was the work of God who favoured
merit who left faith as an inheritance for Princes of his posteritie This extremity then is an extremity either of troublesom affairs in which Constantine saw himself involved for having so long time deferred his Baptism or as others say an extremity of sickness wherewith he was surprized in the Citie of Rome and cured by Baptism The opinion of Eusebius being rejected I ask whether it be not much more probable to take that of a Councel entire and very ancient held under Pople Silvester about the year of our Lord Three hundred twenty four which is said expresly to have been assembled at the same time that the Emperour Constantine was baptized by Sylvester Bishop of Rome than to adhere to inventions of a passionate adversary As for other circumstances of this Baptism which are The history of the Baptism of ConstaÌ„tine drawn from the acts attributed to S. Sylvester is more easie piously to be believed than effectually proved drawn from the acts attributed to S. Sylvester we must affirm there are divers things very hard to believe if we proceed according to humane reason for we cannot so easily imagine what is expressed in those writings that Sylvester was hidden in the caverns of the mountain which afterward bare his name flying the persecution of Constantine of which other Authours make no mention as being contrary to the humour and Edicts of this Prince who after the victory gained against Maxentius ever favoured Christianitie Besides it is there said that Constantine demanded what Gods were S. Peter and Paul who had appeared to him in his sleep Which was not very likely in an Emperour that so many years before was instructed in the mysteries of Christian Religion Adde also the leaprousie of Constantine whereof no authour hath spoken before those acts and wherewith it is held that Constantius the son of this great Emperour was much offended complaining they attributed to his father counterfeit maladies to cure him in picture If we must pursue opinions humanely reasonable I would say that Constantine could no more be leaprous than our King Clodovaeus of most glorious memory of whom S. Gregory of Towers Gregor Turon hist l. 2. cap. 31. Prodit novus Constantinus ad lavacrum deleturus leprae veteris morbum hath said that on the day of his Baptism he was cured of an old leaprosie intending by that speech from sin It is true that Cardinal Baronius doth all which an able man may to clear these difficulties but there are certain things which it is more comely to believe piously than easily to establish by reason And therefore if the Reader here desire to know my conceit I hold it is a timorarious thing to go about to tax and turmoil old beliefs which though they pass not for articles of faith are notwithstanding received with edification in common opinions Varro saith that no Contra mulâ—os sapere desipere est desire to be wise contrary to common understanding is to rank ones self in the number of fools and the great S. Hilary hath said very worthily that the Sapientiae priâ—ae haec veritas est interdum sapere quoâ— nclit Hilar. l. 8. de Trinitate first verity of wisdom is sometime to believe what one would not submitting our judgement to men of the best understanding which if it were well conceived so many young heads would be ashamed to account themselves able men especially in matter of faith thereby inordinately taxing all the monuments of antiquity I say then for these acts which are accounted to be S. Sylvesters and namely for those reported by Pope Adrian as it is not my intention to engage my self upon the proof of them by a way of sleight human reasons so would I not in any sort impugn but rather believe them with a religious simplicity which is the science of Saints and ever the most assured These acts tell us that Constantine still deferring History of Baptism according to the acts of S. Sylvester his Baptism and living in much liberty was strucken with a leaprousie which was a manifest wound from Heaven wherewith greatly afflicted he consulted with Magicians to apply some remedie They gave him deadly counsel whereof the Kings of Aegypt had heretofore made use in the like maladie which was to make a bath of humane bloud This at the beginning seemed to him very strange but the infirmity which pressed him had no ears to hear reason little children were taken of the meanest condition in the Citie to cut their throats like sheep and consecrate their bloud to the health of the Emperour The mothers dissheveled and desperate ran after their tender infants even to the gates of the Palace and howled so dreadfully that Constantine hearing their cries and withal the cause of their sorrow commanded the infants to be restored to their mournfull mothers esteeming it more reasonable to tollerate his evil than to be cured with so cruel a remedy The night following S. Peter and S. Paul appeared to him in a dream and advised him to forsake all these Pagan superstitions to re-edifie the Churches of Christians and send for Pope Sylvester who was at that time hidden in the grots of Mount Soracte that would discover unto him a fish-pool which should heal his leaprousie As soon as he a wakened he recounted his dream to the Lords of his Court and sent to seek out the Pope who seeing these Gentlemen come disposed himself to Martyrdom thinking they came to lead him forth to slaughter but understanding from their own mouthes much other news he set forward towards the Emperour who most courteously received him and having made a long discourse of matters which had happened unto him concerning his calling to Christianity he demandeth of him what Gods were Peter and Paul who had appeared unto him in sleep and made overture of the fish-pool wherein he should be washed The Pope answered they were no Gods but Apostles and servants of God Thereupon he required to see their images which Sylvester sent for by a Deacon and having found them like to the faces he saw in sleep he cryed out aloud that he no longer must defer the fish-pool Sylvester seeing him resolved to be baptized commandeth a publick fast accompanied with ordinary prayers catechizeth the Emperour and counselleth him to take seven days of retirement to prepare himself for Baptism and which is more to lay aside for those days the purple and Imperial Diadem that he might be clothed with the habit of penance which he couragiously performed And the day of Baptism being come as soon as he was washed with these life-giving waters he was miraculously cured of his leprousie beholding a light from heaven and a hand stretched over him See what is in these ancient monuments and which Cardinal Baronius rendereth probable with reasons very consonant The ninth SECTION The acts of Constantine after his Baptism CONSTANTINE after his Baptism began a quite other course of life for
appointed him and that he necessarily must change the countrey whereat being much amazed yet still persisting in his design as not throughly satisfied upon the will of God it is held the tools and instruments of work-men were insensibly transported over the sea to the other shore and that an Eagle setling upon the Level of the Master-Architect took it up and hastened to bear it directly to Byzantium for that is the City whither Zonar Glycâ—â— Constantine forsaking the ruins of Troy transferred his great designs It had heretofore been a very fair City but as arms strike at all which is eminent so had it been infinitely ransacked by many wars happening in the revolution of affairs and Ages Yet it still supported it self with some manner of reputation when this great Prince determined to amplify enrich and perfect it throughly there to fix the seat of his Empire It is added that himself marched round about the wals holding in his hand a half-pike designing the circuit of his future Constantinople and as he still went measuring up and down by the aym of his eye one of his favourites said to him Emperour how long will it be ere you make an end I will finish saith he when he stayes that goeth before me Which made men think there was some heavenly intelligence that conducted his enterprize At the same time he thought he saw in sleep a very ancient Lady which in an instant was turned into a most beautiful virgin whom he adorned and attyred setting his Diadem on her head Observe what is said of the beginnings of Constantinople whether such things happened with all these circumstances or whether we naturally love to tell some strange tales in favour of antiquity as if these fictions were able to give it the more credit One thing is most undoubted which Zosimus although an enemy to Constantine is enforced to admire that the manage of this great design was so prosperous that in five or six years a goodly City was seen on foot which extended about one league in circuit beyond the walls of Byzantium Constantine who had a holy desire to equal it to ancient Rome spared nothing of all that which the invention of men might find out courage undertake and power execute He there built Palaces Theaters Amphitheaters Cirques Galleries and other edifices infinitely admirable so that S. Hierom had reason to say that Constantine to attyre his Constantinople despoiled all the other Provinces It is a Maxim among Great-ones that to make a huge Dragon it is fit he first devour many little serpents and to raise a great City many much less must be ruined to serve for food unto it The greatnesses of God are good deeds those of the world are naturally destructions for they eat and devour their neighbours as the tree which we call the Ivie which insensibly draweth the juice of plants growing near unto it It is not expedient there should be many greatnesses in the world they would drie rivers up as did the army of Xerxes and would impoverish each other by their mutual contestations Yet notwithstanding needs must there be Majesty in the civil world to the proportion of elementary And for this cause God made Kings taking a pattern from himself commandeth we honour them as his living images Kings make the greatnesses of the world which are the effects of their powers Needs must there be a Constantinople that posterity may see Constantine on the back side of the medal for I think his virtues have represented him on the other side very honourable At the least it is a thing exceeding laudable and well considered by S. Augustine that in this infinite store of Pagans which he must yet of necessity tolerate the Emperour permitted not either Temples of Idols Sacrifices or Pagan ceremonies Well might he be curious to cause from all parts to be brought ancient statues of marble brass and other matter which represented Jupiter Cybile Mercury Apollo Castor and Pollux and so many false Divinities which he set up in Theaters Amphitheaters or Races where the courses of horses were used and in other publick places Eusebius followed by Baronius holdeth it was to expose them to the scorn of the people which is very hard to believe for I should rather think that these pieces being the most exquisit workmanships of the world and that Constantine vehemently desiring the beauty of this City could not then resolve upon such a Jewish zeal as to break and deface them but contented himself with the distribution of them into profane places to give lustre to his enterprizes Yet must we say that though we at this present are out of the danger of Idolatry rich men of this Age have no reason to set up so readily in their Halls and cabiners Junâ—'s Venuses and Diana's and so many histories of the Tertul. l. de Idol cap. 6. Metamorphosis with scandalous nakedness Tertullian an eager spirit pursueth all this as a crime and proveth in the book he composed of Idolatry that all those who cooperate in such works do worse than if they sacrificed to Idols the bloud of beasts For they offer saith he their spirit their industry their travel and their estate to Sathan and though they have no intention of sin they minister matter to other of offending God Behold the cause why Constantine although he were in an Age wherein Paganism being still in much request it was very difficult to take away all these figures notwithstanding he disguised them as much as he could witness that a great statue of Apollo being brought to Constantinople one of the best pieces that ever had been seen in those elder times he caused a Constantine to be made of this Apollo changing it into his own image and commanding some parcels of the venerable nails of our Saviour to be enchased over his head It is in my opinion to this same image that he added a golden globe in the hand thereof and over it a Cross with this inscription Tibi Christe Urbem commendo Besides he made three Crosses to be erected the most magnificent that might then be imagined set in the midst of a publick place the statue of the Prophet Daniel among the Lions all covered over with plates of gold to represent a figure of the Resurrection And as for his Palace he caused to be pourtraid at the very entrance thereof the history of the Passion in a most exquisit work wrought and tissued with pretious stones very much resembling Mosayk work All of it being finished he made the dedication of the City on the tenth of May and as it is very probably supposed the five and twentieth of his Empire consecrating it to God in memory of the glorious Virgin Mary and doing great acts of liberty to the people which he commanded by his Edicts to be continued for perpetuity Codin addeth that he caused also sumptuous edifices there to be built for the Christians Senatours which he
Sun stood still in the time of Josuah the Moon and all the Stars made the like pause Governours and Masters have this proper to themselves that in all they do they pour forth their spirits into such of their subjects who are for the most part neither good nor bad but by the relation they have to the life of those on whom their fortunes depend The second is not to suffer an evil since as said Peceare non cohibere peccantes juxta aestima Dostheus l. Italicorum Agapetus to the Emperour Justinian to commit and permit crimes when one hath full power to hinder them is as it were one and the same thing There are no flatteries so charming nor importunities so forcible which should ever make a well composed spirit to bend to the permission of a sin which he knoweth to be against the honour of God and the tranquilitie of his conscience Fabricianus a Roman Captain in ruining a Fortress of the Samnites kept their Venus which he sent to Rome for the beauty of the workmanship and it is thought the aspect of this statue was the first occasion of making his wife an adulteress and caused him afterward to serve as a victim to the loves of this unchaste woman by horrible massacre It happeneth oftentimes that Masters of families who seem very innocent in their persons retain scandals in their houses through a certain pusillanimity and dissimulation which draw upon them the chastisements of God and disasters very extraordinary The Scripture saith the High Priest Eli was the lamp of God before 1 Reg. 33. juxta 70. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was extinguished by a wicked toleration of the excesses of his children which rent his house and buried him in publick ruins Take good heed there be not some houshold servant raised by your indulgence who rendereth your favours odious and liberalities criminal by abuse of the power which you have put into his hands Alkabicius the Astrologer observeth there are stars of their own nature benign and which would ever behold us favourably were it not the neighbour-hood of some others malign altered their sweet inclinations And there are many Masters and Mistresses to be found in the world endued with a humour exceedingly good if the near approaches which bad servants make to their persons did not destroy this temper That man Qualities of an Officer is truly stout and happy who findeth or maketh men of honour well disposed faithfully affected industrious vigilant laborious indefatigable sober in speech prompt in execution patient and able in their charges for good souldiers make glorious Captains and good Officers great States-men The third condition of the zeal of justice is that you never be pleased an ill act be done under the shadow that you were not of counsel thereunto or that it never came to your knowledge You may very well rejoyce not to have at all contributed to evil yea not to the birth of evil for this were otherwise to betray your conscience which ought to have the same capacity to abhor all vices and embrace all virtues as faith inclineth to believe all verities revealed unto it I leave you to think what conscience Sextus Pompeius of elder time had to whom as he entertained Augustus and Mark Anthonie in his ship and being in the heat of his feast a servant came to tell him if so he pleased he quickly would put these two Princes into his power thereby to make him Monarch of the world He a little while thinking on this matter said to him who brought the news Thou shouldst have done it and never told me of it This well shewed he bare some respect to fidelity but was very far from that perfection which hateth evil yea even that which is out of the compass of ones own knowledge The fourth is that you must correct disorders as much as you possibly may declaring you have a natural horrour against all sins which resist laws both divine and humane and that the love of honesty hath made you to pass it as it were into your nature I do not see where the virtue of a great States-man may shew it self with more lustre than in the exercise of justice S. Gregorie the Great saith A Greg. in Job 29. Justitiâ— firmatur â—â—lium Prov. 16. mixture of oyl and wine must be made to heal the wounds of men in such sort that minds may not be ulcered with too much severity nor grow remiss by an excess of indulgence The rod must be used to touch and the staff to support love should not soften nor rigour transport matters into despair Moses the first States-man burned inwardly with the fire of charity and was outwardly wholly enkindled with the flames of the zeal of justice As a loving father he offered his soul to God even to the wish to be blotted out of the book of life to save his people as a Judge he took the sword and bathed it in the bloud of Idolaters He was in all kinds both a couragious Embassadour and an admirable mediatour pleading before God the cause of his people with prayers and before his people the cause of God with the sword It is to do all to execute good justice God Evectâ—s in exâ—â—lsum iâ—â—e magis â—itis despice Cassiod hath set you on high for no other cause but to behold vices beneath if you exalt them they will trample you under-foot you shall perpetually drink the greatest part of the poison you mingled for others and when you shall break down the hedge the snake as the Scripture threateneth will sting you Eccles 10. 8. the first When a good conscience hath accommodated you with this condition so that you have no other intention but to advance goodness in your own person and in those who belong to you you are not a little advanced in the perfections of a great Statesman yet it is fit Conscience Science and Capacity be had for the discharge of great employments and especially by him who makes profession to govern men sometimes as untractable as Hydra's of many heads Campanus Bishop of Terni of whom we have some Campanus Interamneâ—us Episcop Works in the Bibliotheca Patrum in the book which he composed of magistracy requireth four conditions in him A wit vigorous a carriage neither dejected nor unpleasing a prudence full of maturity when there is occasion to consult upon an affair and a promptness to take time in the instant to execute that which hath once been well resolved on He saith a vigorous wit for it is very fit the soul should be full of lights and flames which is to serve others for a guide and as there is no wit so great which hath not many defects so it is very necessary it be polished by good letters which unite and incorporate in one sole man the faculties of many others and by the conference of the wise which taketh away all that which excellent natures
derived from frail honours of the world he had cause enough to rejoice on that day when he saw his two sons carried in Pomp through the Citie in a triumphant Chariot accompanied with the whole Senate and attended by an infinite concourse of people who ceased not to congratulate the father and the children as the of-spring of a race born for the good of the Common-wealth The same day he made in full Senate an oration of thanks-giving to Theodorick for the large liberalities extended towards his house which was delivered with such a grace that in conclusion they presented him a Crown as to the King of eloquence He likewise gave notable largesses to all the people and appeared in the great Court of the Circus siting in the middest of his two Consuls in presence of the whole Citie having his heart replenished with content and tears of joy in his eys for the affections which the people witnessed To crown all those blessings of fortune he had married a wife held one of the most accomplished Ladies under heaven For which is very rare she injoyed a great spirit a singular modesty and an excellent chastitie of whom Boetius sufficiently to praise her said in one word She was the image of her father Symmachus who had given her to him in a most chast and happie marriage Now this Symmachus called the pearl and precious ornament of the whole world was a Senatour who seemed to be composed of nothing but wisdom and virtue for which cause he then lived in much reputation and all this family of Boetius was in Ennodius in epist ad Boetitan l. 8. epist 1. Venae purpurarum Purpurae possessoris luce crescentes such sort esteemed that Ennodius writeth it was a vein of purple signifing thereby it contained therein all great dignities no otherwise than as veins inclose the bloud He notwithstanding addeth those purples increased by the lustre of Boetius who possessed them and after when Rome became the prize of those who subdued it it being no longer lawfull for Consuls to reap Palms in the fields of battels he equalled the ancient triumphs by the greatness of his judgement Gerebert an Authour who wrote of those times calleth this Boetius the father and light of his Countrie who managing the reins of the Empire in the qualitie of a Consul spared not to diffuse by the force of his abilitie in good letters all the lustre they had equalling them with the wits of Greece Tu Pater Patriae lumen Severine Boeti Gerebertur l. 2. Epigt Pithae Consulis officio rerum disponis babenas Infundis lumen studijs cedere nescis Graecorum ingenijs Boetius thou father and Countreys-light Disposest Consuls office common right Giv'st studies radiant lustre and no whit In any thing submit'st to Graecian wit Verily we may see by that which followeth in this historie the little assurance may be had either in men or favours If men be vessels who do nothing all their life time but play with the winds favours are waves of glass which fail not to shiver themselves against the rocks We would think the moon much greater than all the stars were it not that the shadow of the earth which we make use of to measure it causeth the contrarie to appear and we might have some opinion these great dignities of the world had much eminencie above all that which is here below were it not that they dayly fall into shadows and fantasms of nothing which well approve we have much illusion in our eys since these greatnesses have taken such estimation in our hearts Jealousie a bad daughter born of a good house which is that of love and honour divideth beds and Empires and hath ever eys so bleared that it cannot endure a ray of the virtue or prosperitie of another And for that cause the lustre which proceeded from the house of Boetius in such manner as day progresseth froÌ„ the gates of the East failed not at all to give suspicions to King Theodorick who seeing himself a stranger and ignorant among Romans and men of so great counsel being not able to derive any other recommendation to himself but what the sword gave him envied so many heavenly riches as were contributed to the happiness of his Empire The change which then succeeded at Constantinople greatly fortified his distrusts for it is written that Anastasius an Emperour who had done nothing in the throne but create schisms beholding the Laurels of Caesar wholly withered on his head had some distast both of life which he had passionately loved and of the scepter possessed with so much ambition It is certain that being one day in the Circus as he espied a furious sedition whispered against him he voluntarily laid down his Crown and let the people know by his Heraulds he was willing to be rid of the Empire which for some time appeased the most passionate notwithstanding being greatly hated and foreseeing he could not make much longer aboad in the world he began to reflect on his Successours desiring to transfer to the Throne one of his three Nephews whom he had bred up having no male issue to succeed him There was difficultie Zacharias Rhetor M. S. Sirmuâ—di in the choice and he having a soul very superstitious put that to lot which he could not resolve by reason for he caused three beds to be prepared in the royal chamber and made his Crown to be hanged within the Tester of one of these beds called the Realm being resolved to give it to him who by lot should place himself under it This done he sent for his Nephews and after he had magnificently entertained them commanded them to repose themselves each one chusing one of the beds prepared for them The eldest accommodated himself according to his fancie and hit upon nothing the second did the same He then expected the youngest should go directly to the crowned bed but he prayed the Emperour he might be permitted to lie with one of his brothers and by this means not any of the three took the way of the Empire which was so easie to be had that it was not above a pace distant Anastasius much amazed well saw God would transfer the Diadem from his race and it is also added that he likewise knew by revelation that it was Justine who should succeed for he having determined to kill him with Justinian heard a voice which spake in his heart and said He should take good heed to touch those two personages because they should do each one in their turn good services to God Afterward as this Justine being ever near the person of the Emperour one day by chance set his foot on the train of his robe the Emperour looking back Thou holdest me said he by the gown and shalt follow me but stay a while your time is not yet come which much amazed all there present who thought him to speak like a man distracted
of God to which you have submitted your self It is he who governeth our lives our conditions our fortunes If you be resolved to give law to the policie of the Omnipotent from whom you ever ought to receive it what else will you gain but to make your self mutinous and to render your condition more troublesom by your impatience I pray you think with your self if you were embarqued in a vessel you must go according to the impulsion of winds and not the motion of your affections If you till and sow you shall have fruitful and barren years according to the diversitie of seasons and you would have a fortune ever equal and perpetually stable you would hold back by force of arms its chariot incessantly circumvolving Are not you very simple not to know that if she were not inconstant she could no longer be fortune Go not about here to question with me upon the afflictions of good men and the prosperities of evil What injurie doth God to an innocent if be allot him the share of all those great souls whom he will not entertain in the pleasures of an idle life but in the exercise of virtue Know you not there are fishes that die in standing waters and are delighted in the bubling of sluces Great spirits go all that way they no more loose themselves in tribulation than the sun in his eclipse which onely serveth to make him more resplendent And what advantage think you do the wicked derive Si miserum est voluisse prava potuisse miserius est Lib. 4. Prosa 4. from the benefits of this life Is there any thing more miserable than to be transformed into a beast by the enormitie of vices and to adde impunitie to so many crimes You say they do whatsoever they list and I say they are thereby so much the more miserable for if it be an unhappiness to desire an evil it is a double miserie to have the power to execute it If all offenders were punished according to their demerit they should have some benefit which they have not to wit the punishment of their misdeeds which being a work of justice cannot but be good they should have some bridle to stay their exorbitancy some apprehension of the judgements of God which being stoln from them by long prosperities what else remaineth for them but to pass to the extremitie of punishments by the extremitie of crimes For my part if I should throughly punish Lib. 3. Met. S. Quid dignâ—m stolidis mentibus improcer c. a depraved man I would ordain for him neither wheels flames nor tortures but I would burst him with honours gold silver and riches and when be were full up to the throat I would draw aside the curtain to let him see virtue and Paradise of which he had betrayed the one and lost the other by the disaster of his carriage The second question which Philosophie asked him was if he knew well who himself was And Boetius answering He was a man of honour reviving the memory of the great riches and dignities he had enjoyed heretofore Verily saith she to him I well see Vide Bern. Lib. 2. de Consideratione cap. 89. there is much forgetfulness of your condition and niceness in your complaints If God had put gold as well as bloud into your veins and given you leave to be born full stuffed with precious stones or laden with honours and dignities from your mothers womb you had some cause to deplore that the inheritances of your birth were taken from you but who are you or from whence come you I could tell you how many years it is since you were born a little infant all naked creeping on the earth and having a mouth open to cries and hunger which had not so much as one little hair on the bodie to cover it and now you take upon you the spirit of a Monarch and think you have nothing if you possess not all Verily are you not one of the most miserable if you do not know how to take contentment in that which is left you and not still to tie your self to sorrows for that which you have lost You have a father-in-law Symmachus one of the most excellent men in the world you have a wife the pearl of her sex you have children of great hope How many things would you buy at the price of your life if you had lost them and yet you think you are miserable when you possess them and when they are employed with all their endeavour for your deliverance Your vessel doth yet lie at anchor and is not altogether broken I see comfort in something for the present and hope for the future and happen whatsoever will I will save you by swimming But needs must I freely confess Lib. 2. Pros 4. that I find a little niceness in this your act when you deplore with so much bitterness and affliction the petty wants of your condition Tell me I pray you is there any man in the world who possesseth a felicitie so full and free as not to dispute with his fortunes to make his estate more happie The condition of worldly goods findeth every where thorns prosperities never come all together and although they arrived in heaps they ever would have a slippery place One is accommodated with honest means but is of base extraction which maketh him to blush in good company Another is very Noble but is so poor in his estate that it were much sitter for him to be unknown Another is born of good rank and hath no want of riches but he bewaileth that part which he hath lost consecrating himself to retirement with wilfull tears Another hath met with a goodmarriage but his barrenness maketh him amass riches for a stranger Another hath children to have cause of great miseries and to speak in a word you shall find very few who well agree with their condition Through all there are evils which give happiness to those who are ignorant of them and borrour to such as have tried them Adde also a reason that these men very fortunate are extreamly sensible upon the touch and as there needs not any thing but a pegge to stay a piece of artillerie upon the way so the least accident hindereth the glory of their greatness How many think you are there who would teach Heaven with a finger if they had but onely the surplusage of your fortune This place which you call your banishment is the countrey of so many honest men as inhabit it and if you reason well you shall find that there is as it were nothing miserable if not made so by opinion Finally I ask you whether ever you have had any thing in the world more precious than your self If you answer truly you will protest unto me assuredly no and yet notwithstanding behold you thanks be to God if you will to have so much and more for your self than ever you had and that neither prison
the Sacraments of the Church for this last hour knowing the cause wherefore they came beheld them with a confident countenance and said Perform your Commission boldly It is long since I knew that death alone must open the gates of this prison for me And having spoken this he contained himself some while in a deep silence recommending to God this last act of his life and consigning to him his soul which during this imprisonment he had so often whitened with his tears and purified as in a precious limbeck of eternal charities wherein all great souls are deified This done he went forward with a settled pace to the place of execution which the King would have very secret not to excite the people where seeing himself Behold here saith he the Theater which I have long desired I protest before the face of the living God and his holy Saints that I have ever had most sincere intentions for the good of the State nor am I culpable of any of these crimes objected against me If my innocencie be now opprest there shall come a better posteritie which shall draw aside the curtain and entertain the rays of truth O Rome O Rome would to God thou mightest â—e purified by my bloud and I to be the last victim sacrificed for publick safetie I will not now accuse him who condemned me desiring God rather may open his eyes to see the justice of my cause and the plots practised upon his own soul Behold the recompence I gain for becoming hoarie in his service but God is the faithful witness of all my actions and in his bosom is it now where I lay down my life my bodie my soul and all my interests There was but one poor gentle-man waiter that accompanied him in this passage who as he poured out tears near unto him Boetius earnestly beholding him said Where is your resolution leave these tears for the miserable and tell my father-in-law my wife and children that I have done nothing here unworthie of their honour and that they act nothing unworthie of me by bewailing me with plaints which would be little honourable for the condition of my death but that they rather take this accident as a gift from Heaven They well know I have ever told them it is not here where we should expect repose but in the place where I hope to prepare them a room These words spoken they proceeded to execution by the barbarous commandment given by Theodorick I have read in a very ancient manuscript from whence I have drawn some particulars couched therein that a cruel torture was inflicted on this holy man long time streyning a coard about his fore-head in such sort that his eyes started out of his head and that in the end they knocked him down with a leaver which I cannot think to be probable seeing all other constantly affirm his head was cut off by the hand of a hangman and Martianus who most eloquently wrote his life addeth that by miracle he some space of time held his head in his own hands like another S. Denys until he gave up the ghost before the Altar of a Chappel very near to the place of his execution His bodie was interred in the Church of Saint Augustine to whom he had a particular devotion and his name put among the Martyrs as Baronius observeth because he died partly for the defence of the Catholick Church against the Arians The place of his imprisonment hath been preserved as a great monument of piety his tomb honoured with verses such as that time could afford where among other things this title is given him BOETIUS IN COELO MAGNUS ET OMNI PERSPECTUS MUNDO The King stayed not a whit after this to put Symmachus his father-in-law to death and to confiscate all the goods both of the one and other which was a very lamentable thing yet notwithstanding the couragious Rusticiana bare the death of her father and husband with so great constancy that she deserved to draw all succeeding Ages into admiration for she spake most freely to the King reproching him with his disloyalty and honoured these two eminent souls as Saints much offended with her self if at any time nature won tears from her eyes as judging them too base to be sacrificed to so flourishing a memory The vengeance of God slackened not long to fall Procop. lib. 4. upon the guiltie head of Theodorick for few days after this act as he continually lived in the representations of his crime his imagination was so troubled that being at the table when they came to serve up the great head of a fish he figured to himself it was the head of Symmachus the last of all butchered and although much endeavour was used to remove this fantasie from him it was impossible to give remedy but he rose from the table like a man affrighted crying out murder and felt instantly such a quaking over all his body and besides such convulsions in all his members that he must needs presently be carried to his bed where he was visited by his Phisitian to whom he complained with much horrour that he had shed bloud which would perpetually bleed against him The feaver and frenzie carried him hence into the other world where he had a marvellous account to make of whom we know no more particulars yet Saint Gregorie witnesseth that he learned from the mouth of a man Greg. l. 4. 30 worthy of credit that the same day he died at Rome certain honourable persons being at Lipari a little Island of Sicilie in the Cell of an Hermit who lived in the reputation of great sanctitie he said unto them Know ye that King Theodorick is no more They replying Nay not so we left him alive and in health Notwithstanding saith he I can well assure you he died to day in Rome and which is more is judged condemned and thrown into the store-houses of subterranean fire which we here call the Cauldron of Vulcan And it was a Olla Vulcani strange thing that they being returned to Rome understood the death of this wretched King to have been at that very time told by the Hermit which was held for a most manifest judgement of God and made all those to tremble who heard the relation thereof Athalaricus his grand-child by his daughter although an infant succeeded to his estates under the regency of his mother Amalazunta who restored all the goods had been confiseated to the widow that lived afterward until Justinian got the Empire from the Goths by the means of Bellasartus at which time she made all the images and statues of Theodorick to be broken causing also another process to be framed against him after his death Alas great God who governest the state of this Universe and makest the pillars of Heaven to shake under thy foot-steps what is man who will practise wiles in a matter of policie contrary to thy eternal Maxims How hath this wretch ended
who is Authour of Marriage to direct your spirit in this choice and dispose it to that which shall be to his greater glorie wherein you shall ever find your contentments When she had spoken this she drew out of a box a golden apple enameled with precious stones which she had purposely caused to be made that it might be presented to her who should be chosen out for the bed of her son and putting it into the Emperours hand Behold saith he the golden apple which I leave to your discretion to give it to the most absolute You have the Commission of Paris in your hands but you shall do well to dispose of it more discreetly than he The Emperour after he had most affectionately given thanks to his mother for so many excellent prooss of her affection asked of her by what note might one know a wife truly virtuous and so accomplished as she wished Euphrosina replied It is no sleight demand O Emperour nor can that so readily be resolved yet by your good favour I will roughly delineate this discourse with so much sinceritie as not to attribute any thing to my sex to the prejudice of truth There are three sorts of men who cannot speak well of us whereof the first are certain scoffers who to put themselves into an humour and to give scope to their wits have no discourse more familiar in their mouthes than the condemnation of women and God forbid these should be any other than Poets or Philosophers for they frame discourses of our nature and extravagances to no purpose I revenge my self commonly upon these kind of men by silence for it is to cast water on coals to hear them without reply and to punish their tattle by contempt Others are men wounded in sport and who have not well digested some disgraces they have received from women to whom either vice folly or malice hath engaged them more than was expedient for their quiet These are as if a dog hurt with a stone should run up and down to bite all the stones he finds in his way yea those which are laid by work-men in the buildings of Churches and houses They fall upon all women for having been deceived as they say by a woman and cease not to scratch the wound to renew the smart of it But who sees not it is a meer passion to blame the general for the deserts of particulars In the third rank are certain melancholly furious creatures or such as have something worse in them than furie who have not so much proclaimed war against our sex as denounced it against total nature which covereth us with its arms in this point and confirmeth us in our right by their silence Some of these who are strong in passion and discover their revenge with pretext of learning would perswade us that the meanest spirit of all the men in the world is more eminent than that of the most capable woman Verily I will not raise my sex above the merit thereof thinking we shall ever be high enough if we abide in the rank which God hath given us But whether we consider reason or whether we regard experience they very pertinently make void this chymera of conceit which hath taken birth from self-love and folly as from its two most suitable elements I would willingly demand of these discoursers whether Tertul. l. de animâ Animae non habent sexum they hold souls to have a sex Never will they avow this opinion unless they mean to renounce faith and reason And if our souls be indifferently created by God why do they thereupon go about to forge distinctions which have not any subsistence but in their depraved imaginations If some say this diversitie proceedeth from the bodies who knoweth not that the disposition of Organs from which it is thought the goodness of wit proceedeth is as advantagious in women as men See we not even at this day in all sorts of conditions men sometimes so abject in wit and capacitie that if one degree should be taken from them it seems they would have but sufficient to become beasts And have we not seen in all times women intelligent and capable some whereof have made themselves appear as miracles in arts and others shewed that if they were ignorant we could attribute it to no cause but to the modestie of their condition I should be too copious if I now went about to enlarge my self upon the goodly Works of Sophia Erinna Sosipatris Cleobulina Theomistoclea Telesilla Zenobia and Eudoxia Those who condemn in us the want of wit oftentimes wish we had less and would settle a good part of their contentment in our stupiditie We hold for an undoubted truth that God having created us with this equalitie of souls we have as much right in knowledges necessarie for us in matter of grace virtue and glorie as men can have One thing I may well say that the complexion of feminine bodies may distil into our souls inconstancies infirmities and passions which perhaps would take an irregular flight were they not repressed by pietie and reason For my part I think Simonides hath not very ill expressed the ten Orders which he hath made of the humours of women and this will much help you in the choice you are to make if your Majestie will take so much pain as to be informed thereof In saying this she caused her Virgins to draw near and as heretofore those of Sparta shewed drunken men to their children to make them to abhor drunkenness so framed she a description of the bad natures of women to procure a detestation thereof and exalt the merit of the virtuous by the counterpoize of their contrary The third SECTION The ten Orders of women and the vitious qualities which Ladies ought especially to avoid BEhold Maidens saith she and advise in good time to lay hold on the tenth rank for there are nine neither pleasing nor laudable In the first sphere are those which are of the nature Sus toto in volutabro Pet. 2. 2. of a hog creatures unworthy to be named who soil the honour of their sex by the disorder of their carriage for leaving all that which is either honest or generous in our manners they let themselves loose to all kind of infamous pleasures of gluttony and lust which ruineth them in conscience fortune and reputation They are whoups proud birds which have nothing but crest and naturally delight in ordure they are bats which cannot endure one little ray of light but seek to hide themselves under the mantle of night they are horse-leeches which draw bloud from the veins of a house and state where they exercise their power They are Syrens of the earth which cause ship-wracks without water They are Lamiae Vide Petrum Damianum in Gomorrheanis who have hosteries of Cut-throats that kill men under pretext of good usage They are harpies who surprize even from Altars and in the end become envenomed dypsades
so much confusion in habits Citizens wives will become Queens if we hereafter would be taken for Queens we must become Citizens wives Perhaps those who censure us in this point require too much of us and some are therein transported with so much zeal that if we would believe them we should make all the Maries of Egypt to be at Court Those who intend to treat with us in this manner by falling upon our hair and attires touch not our hearts for could any one truely perswade us to virtue we should cover our selves with a sack so that it might advance the glory of God and the profit of our neighbour yet do I think we have some right to comliness and propriety in our garments ever abiding within the limits of the most regular in such sort that the wise may not blame our superfluities nor those who are more favourable accuse our defects But to speak sincerely there is a kind of frenzy in our proceeding He who should see the stuffs taken up somtimes at the Mercers to cloth a little body whereof the worms will quickly make a dung-hill would say they had undertaken to cover some huge Whale and he who should reckon up all the furnitures of a Ladie as they lie on a table having never seen any woman would think it were a Mercery to furnish a little Citie we resemble those birds which have no body and are as it were nought else but feathers we use therein so many fashions disguizes and invention that we tire our spirits so much studie and affection that many of us make so much business about a ruff as if we had a Common-wealth of Athens to manage And that which is most horrible is these vanities are drawn from the bloud of the poor and in the same proportion as they are extracted they so impoverish as I fear posterity may have more cause to curse our dissolutions than cherish them Nay worse is done when they so vehemently affect to begin the adultery of their bodies by that of the face that it is insensibly eaten into with painting and poyson as if they would derive beauty from corruption Then certain fashions of apparel are found out which seem to be made rather to sell bodies than to cover them I do not know what may be reserved for the eyes of a chast husband when through all markets the secret parts of his wives body are exposed as open as if they were ready to be delivered over to the best bidders I cannot tell what husbands can be pleased with the publication of this nakedness if not certain Platonists who would approve the law this Philosopher made as it is said of community of beds than the doctrine of idaeaes which would be viands too empty to satiate the hunger of concupiscence Verily if we yet retain a vien of the perfect Christianity which swaied in the golden age we ought to stifle by a generous consent all these abuses and make of the spoils of superfluity a Sacrifice of mercy giving in part for the relief of the poor that which hitherto we have dedicated to the fantasies of our spirits Since we are born with some supereminencies of body and are the goodliest creatures of the world why should we go about to beg glory from poisons of the earth from worms and spoils of the dead If opinion have put us unto it it is now long since withered by the confusion of so many hands who incessantly gathered it The glory of the greatest Ladies shall not hereafter survive but in great modesty The seventh SECTION Chastitie THis is the shortest way we have to the preservation It is the qualitie S. Paul calleth sanctificatione 1 Tim. 2. Saluabitur perfiliorum generationem sapermanserit in fide dilectione sanctificatione cum sobrietate of Chastity an incomparable virtue and the richest jewel of our sex It ought to be as natural to us as flight to birds swimming to fishes beauty in flowers and rays in the sun You need not ask what may become of a maid or wife who is prodigal of a good which should be as firmly united to her body as her hearts She is capable of all sorts of crimes and were there question to open all the gates of hell incontinency alone would put the keys into her hands There is no beast in the world that is not better than a prostitute who by the dishonour of her bed hath charged her soul with sins her body with intemperance her renown with reproaches and her memory with execration We ought so to instruct our daughters in the virtue of purity that they may not know the least shadow of sins which are committed in the world I approve not those little Dynaes who will see and smell out so many customes of Countries and entertainments for they too soon learn that which they too late will forget and take so much fire in at the ears and eyes that water enough will not be found to extinguish it I do not wish a maid though very young should be delighted in the company of children which are not of her own sex I likewise fear those of her sex who are too curious their company is sometimes so much the more dangerous than that of men as we least take heed of a domestick enemy That Chastity is ever the most stable which knoweth not so much as what voluptuousness may pretend unto I will think crows might become nightingales when any one should Hierom. ad Laetam Securiâ—ris est continentiae nescire quod quaera make me believe that a creature of our sex which is delighted to hear or utter scoffs speeches of double sense which cover ordure under golden words either is chast or can any long time continue as she is Let us guard the eyes mouth and ears of those young maidens as Temples dedicated to Honour and let us do nothing in their presence which they cannot imitate without sin let us teach them not to addict themselves either to pleasures of the mouth or sleight desires to take and freely possess any petty favours A creature which much coveteth to have that which her condition cannot afford hath many enemies in her heart which will deliver her body over to dishonour and her soul to confusion Let us cut off as much as we may so many wanton songs idle books infamous pictures gossipings dancings and banquets never is a beast taken but with some bait nor chastity lost but that such attractives serve as fore-runners There are not so many lost spirits to be found among women well bred who in sin pretended nothing but sin but the love of divers Ladies proceedeth rather from vanities of the mind than weakness of the body They desire to be in some esteem and admiration of those who can neither esteem nor admire them but in the pretensions of their own interests they take delight to be commended for their beauties which never any man so profusely
spared to use many love-dalliances but the affection she bare to this good Queen was so great that it razed out of his heart all other love as the ray of the sun scattereth the shadows and phantasms of the night The holy Lady perceiving the spirit of her husband already moved in hers and that there was no need of power but example so composed her manners in her marriage that she made her self a perfect model of perfections requisite for this estate Royal Crowns loose their lustre on heads without brains and brows without Majesty But this Lady made it presently appear that although her birth had not made her worthy of a Crown nor her good fortune had afforded it her merit alone had been of power to make her wear the best diadem in the world She practised in the Court of a Pagan King a strong vigorous devotion which was not puffed up with outward shews and vapours but wholy replenished with wisdom For she had a fear of God so chast that she apprehended the least shadows of sin as death a love so tender that her heart was as a flaming lamp which perpetually burned before the Sanctuary of the living God Her faith had a bosom as large as that of Eternity her hope was a bow in Heaven all furnished with emeralds which never lost its force and her piety an eternal source of blessings She had made a little Oratory as Judith in the royal Palace where she attended as much as time would permit to prayers and mortifications of flesh abiding therein as in a fortunate Island which made the sweetness of her immortal perfumes to mount up to heaven Yet did she mannage all her actions with singular discretion that she might not seem too austere in the eyes of her Court for fear weak souls might be diverted from Christianity by observing in her carriage perfections transcendent above ordinary capacities But all that which most passed in a common life was done by her and her maids with much purity fervour majesty and constancy It was an Angelical spectacle to see her present at Mass and dispose her self to receive the blessed Sacrament which she very often frequented to draw grace and strength from its source She honoured Priests as Messengers descended from Heaven as well to discharge her conscience as to hold her Religion in much estimation among Pagans The zeal of the houses of God which are Churches enflamed her with so much fervour that she had no delights more precious than either to cause new to be raised or to adorn those which had been erected so far as to make them receive radiance from the works of her royal hands Her charity towards the poor was a sea which never dryed up and her heart so large that all the hearts of the miserable breathed in hers She composed and decked herself dayly before the eyes of God putting on all virtues as it were by nature and rich attire of Ladyes for necessity But the King her husband she honoured as if she had seen the Saviour of the world walking upon the earth and not staying alone on the body she penetrated even to the center of this infidel soul which she beheld with eyes of unspeakable compassion She most particularly endeavoured to observe all his humours and follow the motions of his heart as certain flowers wait on the sun All that which Clodovaeus affected took presently an honourable place in the soul of Clotilda if he delighted in arms in dogs in horses she for his sake praysed arms dogs and horses regarding even the objects of the honest pleasures of her husband as her best entertainments Her conversation was full of charms and attractives which ever carryed profit along with them Sometimes she sweetened the warlick humours of her husband with harmony of reason sometimes she comforted him upon occasion of troubles which might happen in the world sometime she withheld very soberly and with prudent modesty his spirit which took too much liberty sometime she repeated unto him certain precepts of wisdom and practices of the lives of Saints and worthy personages that he might love our Religion sometime she pleased him with an eloquent tongue and an entertainment so delicate that nothing might be said more accomplished She was magnificent and liberal towards her household servants most exactly taking notice of the faithful services they yielded to her husband and kept her house so well united within the bands of concord and charity that it seemed as it were a little Temple of peace Slander uncleaness idleness impudence were from thence eternally banished virtues industry and arts found there a mansion and the miseries of the world a safe Sanctuary For she embraced all pious affairs of the Realm and governed them with so much equality of spirit that she resembled Angels who move the Heavens not using in themselves the least agitation May we not very well say this divine woman was selected out by God to a set golden face on an entire Monarchy by the rays of her piety The fifth SECTION The prudence which the Queen used in the conversion of her husband THe holy Queen brought forth a King and a great Monarch to Jesus Christ bearing perpetually his Court and the whole Kingdom in the entrails of her charity She had her Centinels day and night before the Altars who ceased not to implore the assistance for Heaven of the salvation of her husband and she her self often in deep silence of darkness caused her weeping eye to speak to God and adressed many vows to all the elect for the conversion of this unbelieving soul She very well considered that that which oftentimes slackeneth these wavering spirits in their endeavour to find the way of eternal life is certain interests of flesh and bloud certain impediments of temporal affairs some inordinate passion which tortureth and tyrannizeth over the mind Behold the cause why she took great care to sweeten the dispositions of her husband calm his passions and through a certain moral goodness facilitate unto him the way of the mysteries of our faith This being done she took her opportunity with the more effect and found the King dayly disposed better and better for these impressions He alreadie had the arrow very deep in his heart and began to ask questions proposing conditions which shewed he would one day render himself He said to Clotilda Madam I should not be so far alienated from your Religion were it not that I saw therein matters very strange which you would have me believe by power and authotity not giving any other reason thereof You would have me believe that three are but one in your Trinity that I adore a Crucified man and that I crucifie my self in an enforced and ceremonious life wherein I was never bred My dearest had I your good inclinations all would be easie to me but you know that all my life time I have been trayned up in arms If I should to morrow receive
your Baptism which blotteth out all sins according to your maxims I were no sooner washed but I should fear to plunge my self again into an infinity of occasions which might dayly present themselves to my understanding Then would you threaten me with the judgement-day and Hell with terrours able to over whelm my mind Consider whether it would not be more to the purpose to let me persevere in my Sect therein performing all the good I may Can you think that for all this I should be excluded from the mercy of God who will save all men The wise Clotilda replyed thereunto Sir I beseeth your Majesty not to flatter your self with this specious title of mercy for there will be none in the other world for those who have performed it in this without profit Now is the time that God spareth not to stretch out his arms for your obedience if you despise him you will loose him without recovery One can never do too much for eternall life and whatsoever we suffer Paradise may still be purchased at a good penny-worth Alas Sir why do you find so many difficulties in our Religion Think you God doth wrong in desiring to make you believe things which you cannot conceive by humane reason It is he who hath made the soul of man and who accommodateth all the wheels thereof nor is there any one of them which moveth not at his pleasure What marvel is it if man offer the homage of his understanding to God If weakness submit to strength littleness to greatness the finite to the infinite that which is nothing to him who is an abyss of essence goodness wisedom and light If you make a promise to any of your servants although it be unreasonable and almost incredible yet would you have him to believe it without reply and that he take no other ground for this belief but the greatness and infallible word of your Majesty One man exacteth faith of another though both of them are but earth and dust and you think the Sovereign Creatour of Heaven and earth is unjust to make us believe that which our bruitish senses cannot comprehend Is this the submission and obedience we ow Eternal Truth Why should not I believe that three are but one that is to say three persons one onely God since I dayly find my memory understanding and will make but one soul Wherefore should we scorn to adore a Crucified man The Cross is so far from weakening my belief that there is not any thing which more confirmeth it For if the Saviour of the world had come as your Majesty to the conquest of the universe with legions horses treasures and arms he should in my opinion retain that esteem which great Captains hold but when I consider that by the punishment of the Cross he hath reduced the whole world under his laws and planted the instrument of his excessive dolours even on the top of Capitols and the heads of Monarchs I affirm that all is of God in such an affair since there is nothing in it of man Alas Sir if you have a faithful servant who would suffer himself to be tormented and crucified to make you Master of a rebellious Fort would not you find more glory in his loyalty than ignominy in his torments And think you if the Eternal Wisdom having taken a humane body and voluntarily exposed it to extream rigour to wash our offences in his bloud and subdue the pride and curiosities of the earth to the power of Heaven it hath done ought therein reprehensible Have we not much more cause to adore the infinite plenty of his charities than to dispute upon honours which onely consist in the opinion of the world I beseech your Majesty figure not to your self our Religion as an irksome and austere Law when you have submitted to the yoak God will afford you so much grace that all these difficulties which you apprehend will no more burden you than feathers do birds And although it should happen you after Baptism fall into some sin which God by his grace will divert the bloud of Jesus Christ is a fountain which perpetually distilleth in the Sacraments of the Church to wash away all our iniquities Sir I fear least you too long defer to resign your self to the many advertisements which you have received from Heaven If you weigh the favours that God hath done to your Majesty having set a Crown on your head at the age of fifteen years having preserved you against so many factions defended you from so many perils adorned you with so much glory honoured you with so many prosperours successes you shall find he hath reason to require at this time from you what he demandeth of your by my mouth What know you whether he have chosen out yâ—â—r person to make you a pattern to all other Kings and constitute you such in France as Constantine hath been in the Roman Empire which will render you glorious in the memory of men and happy in Heaven to all eternity Verily Sir if you yield not your self up to my words you ought to submit to the bloud of so many worthy Martyrs who have already professed this faith in your Kingdom you ought to submit to so many great Confessours as knowing as Oracles of as good life as Angels who denounce truth unto you You ought to submit to miracles that are every day visibly done at the Sepulcher of great S. Martin which is an incomparable treasure in your Kingdom Sweet-heart answereth the King say no more you are too learned for me and I fear least you should perswade me to that which I have no desire to believe and although you had convinced my soul to dispose it to this belief think you it would be lawful for me so soon to make profession of your faith You see I am King of an infinite people and have ever at my commanda great Nobility who acknowledge no other Gods but those of the Country Do you believe that all spirits are so easy to be curbed and that when I shall go about to take a strange God will it not make them murmur and perhaps forge pretexts to embroil something in my Kingdom For Religion and the State are two pieces which mutually touch one another very near one cannot almost stir the one without the other the surest way is not to fall upon it and to let the world pass along as our predecessours found it Clotilda well saw this apprehension was one of the mainest obstacles of his salvation and she already had given good remedy thereunto practising the dispositions of all the greatest of the Court. Behold the cause why she most stoutly replyed thereunto Sir it is to apprehend fantasies to form to your self such imaginations You are a Prince too absolute and too well beloved to fear these commotions but rather much otherwise I assure you upon mine honour your people are already much disposed to receive our Religion and your Nobility
prepare a precipice for the despair of other Let us not in this article make God so liberal that he gives us blessings wherewith we may take occasion to be evil and think his mercy will countenance our sluggishness He sleepeth too much at ease who thinks to carry his happiness behind him (b) (b) (b) Note the danger that followeth if the consideration of good works be taken away What care would you have a man take of his salvation who thinks it depends not at all upon his care and what despair will not strike down a feeble brain who shall imagine all his travels do nothing for his avail towards beatitude since the conclusion of his good or ill hap were estimated without any consideration of his merit A labourer would not trouble himself to till the ground which were infallibly condemned to barrenness or to a certain proportion of fruit and his industry to be idle And who would care to pollish his soul if his glorie were confined without any regard to his free will All labours would seem nought but wretched accessories and good works but frivolous amusements 2. But when we fix our thoughts upon this verity True doctrine of Praedestination which says Praedestination to be a Divine Providence by which certain persons are mercifully drawn out of the mass of corruption and picked out to be exalted to eternal beatitude by ways infallible and that it is chiefly done by the mercy of God who decreeth in his eternal counsel to prevent us with his grace and that according to the correspondence we therein ought to use he judgeth of our good or ill hap we call it a proposition conform to the doctrine of the Church advantagious to the glory of God and infinitely available for repose of conscience These are the three points upon which we must Three points of reasons of this doctrine insist in this discourse And first there is no cause to become jealous upon the words of Saint Paul and Saint Augustine who S. Paul and S. Augustine interpreted in the matter of praedestination seem sometime to attribute all to the meer will of God without admitting any consideration of our good works For we must weigh with our selves these two great men like two huge seas that through impetuous power of water swell so upon one brink that they seem for a time to leave the other drie But as the Ocean after he hath largely dilated himself upon one side returns within the limits God prescribed him so these men falling upon contumacious spirits who rebel against truth return into a peacefull equality to build the house of God The one sought to overthrow a Judaical opinion which maintained the eternal happiness of Praedestination was of necessity tied to the bloud of Abraham to Circumcision to works and ceremonies of the old Law without observation of which the Jews acknowledged no salvation Behold the cause why the excellent Apostle who saw in this a contempt of grace and a manifest foil given to Gentilism which he had taken into his protection strongly insisteth and argueth with a torrent of reasons to confound this arrogance of the Hebrews who boasted the reliques of a dying law and ran after it with chymaeraes From whence it comes to pass that all the reasons he produceth have no other aim but to exalt the mysteries of redemption and to shew that the origin and beginning of our salvation consisteth in the grace of Jesus Christ who calleth us to Christianity of his meer mercy without consideration of the observation of the Mosaical Law or other works which preceded this calling And it is in this sense he saith grace is life eternal Rom. 6. 23. Ephes 1. 4. 6. Aug. l. de praedest Sanctor c. 19. because it is by its means we obtain beatitude and in this sense that he assureth us God chose us before the worlds creation to be Saints to wit according to the same interpretation of Saint Augustine we were selected in the idaeaes of God from all eternity to participate in the grace of the Gospel we thereto contributing nothing on our part For the first grace being the beginning of all merit cannot be produced by merit Finally it is in the same sense he maintaineth God loved Jacob and hated Esau before they Rom. 3. 11. had done good or evil For it is to be understood he gave temporal favours and spiritual graces likewise to Jacob which he gave not to Esau although he had bestowed on him favour sufficient for his accommodation Otherwise if one would bring this passage to the point of Praedestination to glory who seeth not we must conclude that as Jacob was praedestinated to eternal beatitude without any consideration of good works so Esau had been reprobated without any regard of his demerits which is most false and condemned by the Church Let us then undoubtedly hold that all passages of S. Paul which he alledgeth in this point have no other scope but to exalt the free gift of redemption and fruits of the Cross of Jesus above all legal ceremonies 3. And as for Saint Augustine he labours mainly S. Augustine onely pretendeth to ruin the opinion of Pelogians to ruin from the top to the bottom the opinion of Pelagians and Semipelagians whereof the one said we were chosen to glory immediately by the good works we do by our own natural forces and the other to exercise some corrective upon this opinion which seemed too rigid have written The works of nature dispose us to grace and grace to glory Now our eminent Doctour undertaking to humble this proud nature which they sought to raise to the prejudice of grace and the bloud of our Saviour gives many assaults wherein he hath no other aim but to teach us this Praedestination which he calleth preparation to grace is not due to the merits of our free-will but that God by his mercifull bounty poureth it into our hearts to be the beginning of good works to which he affordeth life eternal crowning the favours himself inspired and in this regard he with S. Paul exalteth good works which are productions of that seed of grace which the Holy Ghost sowed in our hearts Doth not the Apostle say (a) (a) (a) Quos praescivit pradestinavis conformes fieri imagini filii sui Rom. 8. Aug. l. de praedest Sanctor c. 3. Antequam faceret nos praescivit nos in ipsa nos praescientis cum nondum fecisset elogit Aug. l. 13. God praedestinated those he foresaw would be conformable to the Image of his Son where four of the most famous Fathers of the Church S. Cyril S. Ambrose S. Chrysostom and Theodoret no otherwise understand this passage but that praedestination to glory followeth the prescience of good works And what would S. Augustine affirm when he said (b) (b) (b) Quae voluntas Dei injusts esse non potest venit enim de occultissanis meritis Apud Mag. l.
eternal seed of so many sundry books as were hitherto published and which will encrease to the consummation of the world And although the most able Philosophers had they been persecuted by Tyrants would not willingly have lost a tooth for defence of their Maxims yet the wisdom of our Saviour is such that having possessed the heart and hands of those who profess it causeth them to pour out all the bloud of their veins and to use so much courage for preservation thereof as it afforded them lights in its establishment 5. From thence consider it is his absolute power over His power Data est mihi â—â—nis potestas in coelo in terrd Matth. 28. 18. all things and note if you please that it is manifested principally in three Articles First the facility of prodigies and miracles which appeared in Jesus Christ For this large house of nature which we call the world had no other motion but from his will and he therein commanded so universally that he seemed to hold the Heavens and elements under hire to be instruments of his wonders He lighted new stars at his birth he eclipsed the ancient Sun at his death he walked on waters as on marble pavements he caused the earth to cast up the dead four days after We find many of Pharaoh's Magicians have done false miracles but it was saith Saint Augustine by speedily applying active natural things to passive We find Saints have done true miracles but in the quality of Ministers It onely appertaineth to Jesus Christ to do them with an original power which hath its source in his bosom with an absolute command which receiveth not any modification in all nature with a simple will which needeth no other instruments It onely belongeth to him to do them for the full mannage of the worlds government and to transmit them into the person of Saints to the consummation of Ages In the second place I say this power marvellously shineth in the great Empire of the Church which his Heavenly Father hath put into his hands to build it raise it cement it with his bloud illuminate it with his lights nourish it with his substance to make laws in it establish Sacraments eternize sacrifices create Pastours and Priests and invisibly to rule in it by a visible head a power not to be shaken even unto the gates of hell to exercise a jurisdiction over souls to bind them to unloose them pardon sins change hearts ordain their predestination according to his will Finally this great power appears in that he first of all opened Paradise his soul being exalted from the first day of his creation to the vision of Gods Essence and afterward passing through all the Heavens to place himself at the right hand of his Father and put his Elect into the possession of the Kingdom he had purchased by his bloud Have not we cause to crie out thereupon and say O happy he Beatus quem elegisti assumpsisli habitabit in atriis tuis replebitur in bonis domus tuae â—ancium est templum tuum mirabile in aequitate Psal 64. Temple of Justinian whom you have chosen to raise him to the Hypostatical union He shall dwell in the Palace of the Divinity and we shall be filled with the blessings of thy house Thy Temple which is his sacred Hamanitie is infinitely holy It is said Justinian having finished the magnificent Church of S. Sophie which he built with so much industry and charge such numbers and such a general contribution of endeavour of riches and power of the whole Empire placed therein a statue of Solomon who seemed to be astonished and to hide himself through shame and confusion to see his Temple surpassed by that of the Emperour It was a vanity of a worldly Prince But we in verity would we represent what passeth here should paint both Moses and all the Prophets absorpt in a profound reverence in the consideration of the Temple of the Church and the wonders of Jesus Christ 6. Let us for conclusion of this discourse adore that which we cannot sufficiently comprehend and endeavour to bear an incomparable love to the Person of our Saviour for the excellencies we have expressed But if you require the practise of this I say Practise of the love of Jesus reduced to 3. heads 1. To adhere Conglutinata est anima 〈◊〉 cum ed. Gen. 34. 3. it is reduced to three heads which are to adhere to serve and suffer The first note of faithfull affection appears in a strong adherence to the thing beloved so as the Scripture speaking of love says it causeth one soul to clasp unto another If you begin heartily to love Jesus Christ you will find you shall think upon him almost insensibly every moment and as saith S. Gregorie every time you fetch your breath there will come a pleasing idea of God to fill your soul with splendours and affection You will feel a distast and unsavouriness of heart against all earthly things so that it will seem to you that the most pleasing objects of the world are mingled with gall and wormwood You will seek for your Jesus in all creatures you wil languish after him all which beareth his name Numquid quem diligit anima mea vidistis Cantic and memory will be delightsome to you you will speak of him in all companies you will have an earnest desire to see him honoured esteemed acknowledged by all the world And if you perceive any contempt of his Person which is so estimable you will think the apple of your eye is touched Your solitude will Suspiret ac â—eties se a summo bono anima nostra sentiaâ— recessisse quoties se ab illo intuitu deprehenderit separatim fornicationem judicans vel momentaneum a Christi contemplatione discessum be in Jesus your discourse of Jesus Jesus will be in your watchings and in your sleep in your affairs in your recreations and you will account it a kind of infidelity to loose sight of him but an hour Love is a great secret very well understood by Abbot Moses in Cassianus Let our soul saith he sigh and think it self sequestred from the sovereign goodness so soon as it looseth never so little sight of the divine presence accounting it a spiritual fornication to be separated one sole moment from beholding Jesus For the second degree as it is not enough in Siquis diligit me sermonem meum servabit Ioan. 14. worldly amities to have affections languors and curious lip-complements but you must necessarily come to some good effects and considerable offices which are the marks and cement of true affection so you must not think the love of Jesus consisteth in slight affectations of idle devotion He must serve who will love his will must be wedded his command entertained and executed his liveries put on and we wholly transformed into him by imitation of his examples S. Augustine to confound the weakness
a forraign Nation separated from the sweetness of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Synesius hymn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our dearest Country and lovely vision of the sovereign cause We are saith Synesius as little veins of water wandered from their fountains which desire nothing but to be re-united to their source should you afford them vessels of amber or chrystal to contain them they are never so well as in their origen We have a strong inclination that disposeth us to know love and admire this soveriegn Being which makes the world bring forth his great ide'as with more ease than the Sun could produce a ray Now here we must observe there are many sorts Diversity of unions of union The one of dependence which causeth the creature to depend on the Creatour as light on his star and heat on the fire which produced it The other of presence and most inward penetration by which God penetrateth all creatures by his admirable infusions by reason of his immensity and subtility The third of grace by which we are sanctified and in a sort made participant of Divine nature The fourth of glorie properly that which accomplisheth what grace had begun and setteth a seal upon the plentitude of all our felicities This being so divided it is evident that the union whereof we here speak is the glorified and ineffable union which disposeth the reasonable creature to the highest point of the commerce it may have with the divinity It is very hard to explicate how that is in our soul because of the weakness of our spirits which are now so tied to flesh Some Divines refuted by Chancellour Gerson and among others Doctour Almaricus and Henricus took this in a very high strain when they imagined that God coming to fall as a lightening-flash upon the soul of a blessed one filled it with his presence force and love and so possessed it that he wholly converted it into himself in such manner that from created Being it passed to increated Being returning to Anima perdit esse suum accipit esse divinum idea's of God and into the state it had before the worlds creation This opinion hath been rejected and condemned as a chymera for God will not beautifie us by ruining and destroying us but he will our felicitie be so wholly of him that it be notwithstanding wholly to us and there is no apparence our soul which is immortal and incorruptible should be annihilated by the approach of God from whom it must derive its being and conservation 5. We must then conceive this much otherwise Union of glorie what it is and believe the union of glorie that makes our beatitude consisteth in the vision love and joy of God which is the fruition termed by S. Thomas the ineffable kisses Imagine you see a needle which in presence of a diamond runs not to the adamant as being tied and fettered by the force of this obstacle but if you take away the diamond which captived it it goes stoutly and impetuously to its adamant which setteth it in the place of its repose by ordinarie charms I find something like in the state wherein we are Our poor spirit naturally tendeth to God as to the first cause and can take no contentment but in union with him yet is it here arrested by the poize of body by the bait of concupiscence and tie of sense but so soon as these obstacles are taken away and that it feeleth the vigorous infusions of this light of glorie which giveth it wings to raise it self to the Sovereign good above all the ways of nature it soareth as a feathered arrow unto the butt of its desires it sincks and plungeth it self into the bosom of God and there abideth contented with three acts which essentially compose its beatitude The first is vision the root of this so Sovereign happiness which causeth us to see with the eyes of a most purified understanding through the rayes of The three acts of beatitude the light of glorie the great God face to face with all the immensity of his essence the length of his eternity the height of his majesty the extent of all his excellencies and with the fecundity of his eternal emanations the productions of total nature and secrets of highest mysteries We shall see him saith Joan. 1. 3. August l. 9. de Trin. c. 10. Omnis secundum spiritum notitia similis est rei quam novit S. John as he is and thereupon S. Augustine addeth we shall necessarily derive a resemblance of God because knowledge here principally rendereth him who knoweth like to the thing known Of this vision necessarily is formed a great fire of love divinized when God like to a burning mirrour opposed to a glorified soul replenisheth it with his ardours ever by us to be adored And from this love proceedeth that excessive joy which is called the joy of God Vision causeth in us an expression of God love an inclination delicately violent to the presence of this Sovereign good joy a profound repose which seems to spread over our hearts a great river of peace benedictions and felicities Then this beatified soul not being able to be what God is by nature in some sort becometh such by favour So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Naz. Hymn S. Gregory durst boldly say our soul makes it self a little God which eternally triumphs in the bosom of the great God It is properly then when man by an amorous consumption wholly dissolves into his beginning and not loosing what he is becometh one same spirit with him not by nature but by apprehension and affection He not onely will what God willeth but he cannot will any thing but what God will He takes part in all his interest all his greatness and all his joys being so divinely incorporated into the family bosom of this Father of essences He rejoyceth at the beatitude of all the elect as of his own he is rapt with admiration sometimes at the beauty of the place sometimes at the delicious correspondence of that great company sometimes at the unchangeable continuance of his most blessed eternity sometimes at the garments of glorie his body must put on and he every where beholdeth sources of comfort to spring which can never drie 6. From this favour besides so many other wonders Three great effects of beatitude I see three excellent effects succeed The first is impeccability The second verity of our knowledges which shall admit no errour The third tranquillity of our love which shall not know what wound or interruption is And first consider what a good it is The great happiness to be impeccable to be impeccable since we not onely shall be without sin but out of all danger of sinning All that which here afflicteth the most purified souls is not to be exposed to so many miseries and persecutions for they know good men are here on earth like flower-de-luces begotten by their
time Jesus sanctified it by his sacred touch He took the Bason which being in his hands became greater and more full of Majesty than all the Ocean Our spots which eternity could not wash clean are taken away at Baptism by one onely drop of water sanctified by his blessing He prevents the bath of his bloud by the bath of an element which he doth expresly before his institution of the blessed Sacrament to teach us what purity of life of heart of faith of intentions and affections we must bring to the holy Eucharist It is necessary to chase away all strange gods which are sins and passions before we receive the God of Israel we must wash our selves in the waters of repentance and change our attire by a new conversation Is it too much for us to give flesh for flesh the body of a miserable man for that of Jesus Christ The consideration of our sins should bring up the bloud of blushing into our cheeks since they were the onely cause why he shed his most precious bloud upon the Cross for us Alas the Heavens are not pure before his most pure Spirit which purifies all nature Then how can we go to him with so many voluntary stains and deformities Is it not to cast flowers upon a dung-hill and to drive Swine to a clear fountain when we will go to Jesus the Authour of innocency carrying with us the steps and spots of our hanious sins 3. Jesus would not onely take upon himself the form of man but also of a base servant as S. Paul saith It was the office of slaves to carry water to wash bodies which made David say That Moah should be the Bason of his hope expressing thereby that he would humble the Moabites so low that they should serve onely to bring water to wash unclean houses Alas who would have said that the Messias was come amongst us to execute the office of a Moabite What force hath conquered him what arms have brought him under but onely love How can we then become proud and burn incense to that Idol called Point of honour when we see how our God humbled himself in this action Observe with what preparation the Evangelist said that his Heavenly Father had put all into his hands that he came from God and went to God yet in stead of taking the worlds Scepter he takes a Bason and humbles himself to the most servile offices And if the waters of this Bason cannot burst in us the foul impostume of vanity we must expect no other remedy but the eternal flames of hell fire Aspirations OKing of Lovers and Master of all holy Loves Thou lovest for an end and till the accomplishment of that end It appertains onely to thee to teach the Art of loving well since thou hast practised it so admirably Thou art none of those delicate friends who onely make love to beauties to gold and silk thou lovest our very poverty and our miseries because they serve for objects of thy charity Let proud Michol laugh while she list to see my dear David made as a water-bearer I honour him as much in that posture as I would sitting upon the throne of all the world I look upon him holding this Bason as upon him that holds the vast seas in his hands O my merciful Jesus I beseech thee wash wash again and make clean my most sinfull soul Be it as black as hell being in thy hands it may become more white than that Dove with silver wings of which the Prophet speaks I go I run to the fountain I burn with love amongst thy purifying waters I desire affectionately to humble my self but I know not where to find so low a place as thine when thou thus wast humbled before Judas to wash his traiterours feet Upon the Garden of Mount Olivet Moralities 1. JEsus enters into a Garden to expiate the sin committed in a Garden by the first man The first Adam stole the fruit and the second is ordained to make satisfaction It is a strange thing that he chose the places of our delights for suffering his pains and never lookt upon our most dainty sweets but to draw out of them most bitter sorrows Gardens are made for recreations but our Saviour finds there onely desolation The Olives which are tokens of peace denounce war unto him The plants there do groan the flowers are but flowers of death and those fountains are but fountains of sweat and bloud He that shall study well this Garden must needs be ashamed of all his pleasant Gardens and will forsake those refined curiosities of Tulips to make his heart become another manner of Garden where Jesus should be planted as the onely Tree of Life which brings forth the most perfect fruits of justice 2. It was there that the greatest Champion of the world undertook so great Combats which began with sweat and bloud but ended with the loss of his life There were three marvellous Agonies of God and Death of Joy and Sorrow of the Soul and Flesh of Jesus God and Death were two incomparable things since God is the first and the most universal of all lives who banisheth from him all the operations of death and yet his love finds means to unite them together for our redemption The joy of beatitude was a fruition of all celestial delights whereunto nothing which displeased could have access and yet Jesus suffered sorrow to give him a mortal blow even in the Sanctuary of his Divinity He afflicted himself for us because we knew not what it was to afflict our selves for him and he descended by our steps to the very anguishes of death to make us rise by his death to the greatest joyes of life To be short there was a great duel between the affectionate love and the virginal flesh of Jesus His soul did naturally love a body which was so obedient and his body followed wholly the inclinations of his soul There was so perfect an agreement between these two parties that their separation must needs be most dolorous Yet Jesus would have it so and signed the decree by sweating bloud And as if it had been too little to weep for our sins with two eyes he suffered as many eyes as he had veins to be made in his body to shed for us tears of his own bloud 3. Observe here how this soul of Jesus amongst those great anguishes continued always constant like the Needle of a Sea-compass in a storm He prays he exhorts he orders he reproves and he encourages he is like the Heavens which amongst so many motions and agitations lose no part of their measure or proportion Nature and obedience make great convulsions in his heart but he remains constantly obedient to the will of his Heavenly Father he tears himself from himself to make himself a voluntary sacrifice for death amongst all his inclinations to life to teach us that principal lesson of Christianity which is to desire onely what God will
when it comes to extend it self in the world and to draw it to it The natâ—â—e of love Lib. 1 de civit â—8 Amor inhians labere quâ—â— amatuâ— cupiditâ— est idem â—mor habens cóque fruenâ— letitia est fugiens quod adversatur el timor est quod si acciderit eitristitia est proinde mala sunt ista si malus est amor bona si bonus self it is called love But if you consider it in the condition wherein it gathereth together all Creatures to the first cause and makes its works re-ascend to God they say it then takes the name of Pleasure which is a most happy satisfaction of to all Nature in its Authour So love is a circle which turns from good to good by an everlasting revolution Now if you desire I should in few words explicate the nature thereof its origen progresse causes qualities and effects you must observe a notable doctrine of S. Augustine who saith That Love whilest it is in the search of what it loveth is called Desire and when it enjoyeth the thing beloved it is changed into joy But if it avoid that thing which is contrary to it either in effect or opinion it is Fear and if the Fear hath its effect by the arrivall of the evil it apprehendeth it turns into Sadnesse This love takes sundry countenances according to divers Circumstances I agree all this is said with good reason yet notwithstanding we must affirm with divines that this Oracle of Doctours hath in this difinition rather comprised the cause the effects and progresses of love then its essence and nature For to speak properly love is neither Desire Fear Joy nor Sadnesse but A Complacence of the Appetite or will in an object conveniont 5. Definition of love either according to verity or apparence But if we will speak more generally we say it is nothing but an inclination Richard de Medvill dist 27. l. 3. Art 1. q. 1. propending and moving to a good which is conform to it For by the definition we include all the kinds of love which are divided principallly into three branches to wit Naturall Animall and Reasonable It s division love Naturall love consisteth in things inanimate which have their sympathies and Antipathies As Palmes male and female Amber and straw Iron and the Adamant Animall love is that Beginning which giveth motion to the sensitive appetite of beasts to seek for that which is fit for them and to be pleased in the enjoying what they fought for Reasonable love is an Act which pursueth and accepteth the good represented by the understanding wherein we may also comprehend Angelicall and Divine love which S. Denis addeth to these three kinds whereof we speak Reasonable love is also divided into love of Amity and love of Concupiscence Love of Amity which wisheth good to the thing beloved for it self without enquiry into its own proper interesse As when it desired to one Health knowledge grace virtues wealth honours without pretence of any benefit to it self This Gabriel d. 27. q. 1. l. 3. is to affect with a love of amity which is very rare now a daies so mercenary are affections and when this love is not onely Affective as Divines speak contenting it self with bare desires but Effective by plentifully opening hauds to liberality it mounteth to a huge degree of Complacence Love of Concupiscence is an interessed love which causeth one to love a thing not for it self but for the pleasure and commodity derived from it or to be hoped in time to be dersved from it So the Horseman desireth beauty strength and courage in his horse and dog not for their sakes but his own contentment Such love is worldly love commonly defiled with base and animall consideration nor is ever purified but when it for God loveth that which cannot in it self be lovely Behold the nature and Essence of Love in its whole latitude Now to speak of the proceedings of the soul in its loves The first step it makes when it beginneth to love is the degree of the conformity of the will with The steps and progressions of â—ove the good is proposed The senses imagination understanding give it notice of some Beauty Goodnesse or Commoditie which it conceiveth to be fit for it Thereupon it beginneth to take fire and to have sparks of desires 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which make it to wish the good proposed unto it Thence it passeth to the second Degree which is that of Sharp-sweet Complacence which pleasingly each moment holds it fixed upon the thoughts of its object Sometimes between hope to possesse it another while between fear to lose it and many other passions which accompany this as yet suffering Complacence From this degree it goes to the third which is inqui +sitioâ— and motion where love putteth on wings to fly speedily into the bosome of its repose employing all possible means for its contentment and if it be favoured in its pursuit it advanceth to the fourth degree which is union esteemed the principall scope of Amities From this union ariseth another Complacence which is not painfull and dolorous but satisfied and pleased in the fruition of its object which is the heighth of love By the sides of love are lodged Beauty and Goodnesse for that as S. Denis saith they are the objects Its causes and motive of love which are so allied together that the Grecians call them by one self same name The Sages have ever sought for the true causes which dispose the wils of men to love and there are many different opinions upon this point Some hold it is a quality which God imprinteth on nature others imagine it comes from the aspect of starres and from divers constellations Others make it to proceed from Parents and education others from a certain Harmony and consonancy of hearts which meeting in accord upon the same Tone have a naturall correspondence Lastly the Maxime of Divines and Philosophers much swayeth which saith that Fair and Good make all loves I hold that to accord these opinions a notable distinction must be made of three loves which we have proposed in the beginning to wit Naturall Animall and Reasonable Forasmuch as concerneth Naturall or Animall love besides the order of nature it is God which giveth to each creature necessary inclinations to arrive at their end Well there may be influency of starres which bear sway over humours and bodies and with the starres bands of bloud temperature of Humours education and secret qualities which tie creatures with the knot of a certain love the cause whereof is not well known For how many are there who love things which are neither lovely nor good I not onely say in effect but in their own opinion and judgement yet are they thereunto fastned by some Tie nor can they free themselves from it but by the absolute power of Reason Do we not daily find by experience that a Man who is
for pretexts to cover their passions some saying It is a touch from heaven and an effect of their Horoscope which cannot be diverted Others Casus in culpam transit Velleius Pater culus complain they are bewitched and that they feel the power of magick Others cast all the blame upon devils who notwithstanding think not so much of them as they may imagine for love comes easily enough from naturall causes without going about to seek for it in the bottome of the Abysse I here remember what Pliny recounteth of one Cresin who manured a piece of ground which yielded him fruit in abundance while Plin. l. 18. c. 16. his neighbours lands were extreamly poor and barren for which cause he was accused to have enchanted them Otherwise said his accuser his inheritance could not raise such a revenue while others stand in so wretched a Condition But he pleading his cause did nothing else but bring forth a lusty daughter of his well Filiam validam bene curatam fed and well bred who took pains in his garden with strong carts and stout oxen vvhich ploughed his land and the vvhole equipage of his Tillage in very good order He then cryed out aloud before the Judges Behold the art magick and charms of Cresin vvilling to shew that we must not seek for hidden and extraordinary causes where ordinary are so evident So in the like case we may say it is a thing most ridiculous Haec sunt veneficia mea Quirites to see a body composed according to nature found and very strong which hath fire in the spirits and bloud in the veins which continually feeds high lies soft and perpetually converseth among women the most handsome to complain of celestiall influences or the sorseries of Venus Totall Nature especially since Interiour causes of love the corruption of sin conspireth to make love It sets Reason to sale if it carefully take not heed and insensibly draweth it to its side There is not almost a stone whereunder some scorpion lyeth not there is not a place where concupiscence spreadeth not out some net for us It fighteth against our selves makes use of our members as of the Instruments of its battels and the Organs of its wiles There is sedition within and warre without and never any repose but by the singular grace of God Tertullian writes the chastity Tertull. de Velandis Continentia majoris ardoris laboratior of men is the more painfull the fervour of concupiscence being the more fiery in their sex and one may justly say that such as persist all their life time in great resistances and notable victories are Martyrs of purity who having passed through fire and water hasten to a place of refreshment We have all one domestick enemy which is our own body that perpetually Rebellion of the flesh S. Climach de castita te grad 15. in fine Quomodo illum vinciam quam ut amem a natura suscepimus Est cooperator hostis adjutator atque adversarias auxiliator simul infidiator c. almost opposeth the dispositions of the spirit If I go about to fetter it saith S. John Climachus it gets out of my hands If I will judge it it grows into favour with me If I intend to punish it it flatters me If I will hate it Nature commandeth me to love it If I will fly from it it saith it is tyed to my soul for the whole time of my life If I will destroy it with one hand I repair it with another Is it too much cherished it the more violently assaults me Is it too much mortified it cannot almost creep watching withers it sleep on the other side fatteneth it whips torment it and dandlings corrupt it By treating it ill I endanger my life by pampering it I incurre death This sheweth how Saints fortified themselves with much precaution diligently observing the condition of Nature the causes of temptations and the maladies of the soul thereby the more successefully to practise the cure They who are most retired said the fore-alledged Authour fail not to feel domestick warres but such as indifferently expose themselves to objects are violently both within and without assaulted The beauty and handsomnesse of one sex is a sweet Beauty imperious Nomen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Psal 49. Alii reddunt fetam alii pulchâ—it udinem ut sept naginta Interpretes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 poison to the other which entreth in by the eyes and maketh strange havock And I wonder not at all that the Scripture compares it to a Panther a savage and cruel beast which with teeth teareth those she hath amuzed with the mirrour-like spots of her skin drawn to her by the sweet exhalation of her body It is more to be feared said an Ancient then the horns of the Bull the teeth of the Lion the gall of the Aspick yea then fire or flames and the holy Abbot of mount Sinai saith that had not God given woman shamefac'tnesse which is the scabbard wherein this sword is Climach de castreate kept there would be no salvation in the world The love of women caused Sampson's David's and Salomon's shipwracks It hath besotted Sages conquered the strong deceived the prudent corrupted saints humbled the mighty It hath walked on Sceptres The love of women dangerous parched the lawrels of victours thrown trouble into states schisme into Churches corruption among judges fury into arms It hath entered into places which seemed inaccessible but to spirits and lightnings And if beauty be so much to be dreaded when it hath no other companions how dangerous think we is it when it causeth to walk along with it pomp apparell attractives dalliances cunning wires liberty of conversation merriment Good chear Courting Idlenesse Night sollitude familiarity Need we to require any other charms then those to work the ruine of a soul Yet besides these open causes there are other secret ones to be found in the love of humour and fantasie which insensibly fetter a mind and suffer it not to find its chains A modern Authour hath of late written a treatise of the love of inclination wherein he speaks very pertinently of its originall and doth according to his saying Monsiur de la Chambre seem to draw it a second time out of its Chaos To understand his opinion we must presuppose that which S. Thomas saith That totall Nature loveth to present it self in the objects proposed unto it And as they continually proceed from all things coloured images S. Thom. l. 4. contra gentes c 11. The secret attractives of love and figures as it were wholly spirituall which make themselves to be seen as in looking-glasses and are received into the eies to contribute to the effect of sight so every body hath its projections and unperceivable influences as we find in the power of Amber and the Adamant which attract Iron and straw by the expiration they
the river of Silias wherein all sinks to the bottome and nothing floateth all passeth with them into the bottom of the soul nought stayes in the superficies which is the cause that the heart replenished with cares and apprehensions dischargeth it self what it may by the tongue Besides the materiall cause of Despair which is observed in Melancholy we find others efficient which ordinarily fasten upon great strong passions of Love of Ambition and of Avarice All histories are full of miserable people who having settled their affections upon objects whence they could not with reason expect any satisfaction after an infinite number of languors toils and pursuits have buried their love in Despair and drowned their ardour in the blood of their wounds Some have hanged themselves at the gate of their Mistresses others have thrown themselves headlong down into ruines others have been exposed to salvage beasts rather chusing to suffer the fury of tygers and lions then the rage of Love without fruition The Poet Virgil did her wrong to put Dido Queen Dido profâ—â—â— in alieno â—â—lo â—bi nuâ—â—ias regis 〈◊〉 optasâ—â— lebueratne tamen secundas experiretur maluitè contrario uri quà m nubere Tertul. in exhort ad castitatem of Carthage into the number of the Unhappy saying she sacrificed her self to the sword and flames out of a Despair conceived to see her self deprived of her Trojan Tertullian justified the Ashes of his Countrey-woman assuring us she was one of the most chaste Ladies in the world and did more in the matter of Chastity then S. Paul prescribeth For the Apostle having said That it is better to marry then to burn she rather chose to burn then to marry making her own funerall alive and rather entring upon the flaming pyle then to comply with the passion of a King who sought her in marriage after the death of her husband whom she had singularly loved The passion of Ambition is no lesse violent in proud and arrogant spirits who having been long born as on the wings of glory and seeing themselves on a sudden so unfortunate as to be trampled under foot by those who adored them cannot digest the change of their fortune anticipating that by violence which they ought rather to expect from mercy Such was Achitophel accounted to be one of the greatest States-men of 1 Reg. 17. 23 his time whose counsels were esteemed as of a Deitie when seeing himself faln from the great authority he had acquired after he had set the affairs of his house in order he took a halter with which he hanged himself And it is thought Pilate followed the like course Tantis irrogante Caio angâ—â—ibus coarctatus est ut se suâ transverberans manu malorum compendium mortis celeritate quaesierit Paul Oros l. 7. c. 4. when he saw himself to be discountenanced after the death of his master Tiberius and banished by Caius Caligula the successour to the Empire This calamity seemed unto him so intolerable that he sought to shorten his miseries by hastening his death which he gave himself by his own hand Yet Eusebius who seems to be the chief authour of this narration and who is followed by Paulus Orosius and others doth not assure it as a thing undoubtedly true but as a popular rumour For my part I think it not amisse to believe Pilatus jam tunc pro sua conscientia Christian Tertul. in Apoleg Tertullian who conceiveth that after the death of our Saviour Pilate was a Christian in his conscience when he in writing expressed to the Emperour Tiberius the things which occurred in the person of our Saviour with so much honour for our Religion that from that time the Emperour resolved to put Jesus Christ into the number of the Gods But if the opinion of this Author Yes that it might very well as many examples testifie were true It could not be credible that a man who had a tincture of Christianity should have ended his life by so furious a Despair Avarice in this point will nothing at all give place to Ambition for there are many to be found who seeing themselves unexpectedly deprived of treasures which they kept as the Griphons of Scythia would no longer behold the Sun after the Sun had seen the Gold which they hid in the bowels of the earth Witnesse that covetous man of the Greek Anthology who strangled himself with the same halter wherewith another man had determined to hang himself who by chance having found this caitiffs treasure was diverted from it This may very well teach us that it is very dangerous passionately to affect the objects of the world because as saith S. Gregory one cannot without immeasurable grief lose all that which with unlimitted love is possessed The evil spirit who soundeth each ones inclinations and discovereth their dispositions powerfully intermedleth in them and layeth snares for men in all the things wherein he observeth them to be with the most fervour busied To these occasions of Despair fear of pain and shame is added which is very ordinary and is the cause that many hasten their end before they fall into the hands of their enemies or are laid hold on by Justice which is as much as if one should die not to dye This was very common among Pagans who esteemed that a glory which we hold the worst of crimes and the like opinion crept very farre into the minds of the Hebrews who thought themselves to be sacred persons and imagined they did an act generous and profitable to the glory of God to kill themselves before the hands of Infidels were bathed in their bloud This is the cause if we believe the ordinary Glosse of the first Book of Kings and Glossa in 1 Reg. 31. Dicunt Hebraei aliqui etiam Christiani quod interficere seipsum inâ—uitu Divini honoris nè vituperium exerceatur in proprio corpore redundans in Dei vituperium sicut timebar Saul non esse illicitum the antient Interpreters of this Nation that we cannot conclude the damnation of Saul by an infallible demonstration for having strucken himself seeing that according to their opinion he was not sufficiently illuminated by the lights of the antient Law that it was a Mortall sin to hasten his death to save the honour of his Religion and to deliver himself from the scorn of Infidels Nay they assure us that he in this occasion ordered himself as a treasure of God refusing to deliver up unto enemies a Head honoured with sacred Unction to be alive defiled by their profane hands They add that he had before him the example of Samson who was admired by all his own Nation for being over-whelmed with the Philistims under the ruines of a house And that after him Razias esteemed a Saint Macch. 1. 12 and a courageous man gave himself the stroke of death and threw his bowels all bloudy from the top of a turret on the heads of his enemies But
of devils to draw life drop after drop out of a miserable body But not speaking at this present of these extremities of Cruelty which arise out of Hell it is evident that the Hardnesse of heart and the harshnesse of a nature devoid of Compassion is a monster in humane nature All great souls have I know not what tincture of good nesse which rendreth them pliant to the afflictions of such as suffer It is a feeling which God hath poured into the masse of mankind and which he would have communicated by the prime men of the world to all posterity The tradition of the Hebrews holdeth that the Mildnesse of the first men Patriarch Noah recommendeth mildnesse even among beasts accounting it a capitall crime to tear off a member of a living beast And the most sage common-wealths Fab. Quintilian l 5. cap. 9. have walked in the same wayes since that of Athens condemned to death a young child who took delight to prick out the eyes of crows and having made them blind let them fly for his pastime It judged this heart was base and bloudy and practised its first apprentiship of crueltie upon birds to exercise it one day upon men The Carthaginians publickly condemned Plin. l. 8. c. 16. a very industrious Citizen for no other cause but for having made a lion tractable supposing that a man who had so great conversation among wild beasts would lose all he had humane in him and put on the manners of a tyrant What can those answer to this call of Nature who are ashamed to compassionate their neighbours seeing pity extends it self even to beasts They fear that by shewing compassion it may be thought their courage thereby is greatly effeminate and see not that to seem valiant they cease to be men Conquerours have wept over their Laurels as yet Compassion of great courages all verdant blaming the just rigour of their arms albeit they could not hate the glory Marcellus desired to quench the coals of the city Syracusa with his tears Titus seeing the city of Jerusalem all covered with dead bodies found his heart much softned therewith protesting it was an act of Heaven and not an effect of his own disposition There is some touch of Divinity in good natures and God hath alwayes been pleased that they who nearest approach to him should be the most humane The first Images of the Saviour of the world were ordinarily painted in the form of a Lamb and it was likewise a Lamb of God which represented him in Great Constantine's Font and which poured forth the water of Baptism to shew us that the fountains of his Bounty ran throughout the whole Church The holy Ghost hath never been seen Concil 6. in Teul can 82 Damasus in Pontifieibus qui est potius Anastafius Bibliothecarius in the form of an Eagle or of a Hawk but of a Dove to stamp on our manners the impressions of his bounty It is an insupportable thing when there is observed even among those who approach nearest to Altars and who consecrate the Lamb of God in their hands some to be of imperious spirits and wills inflexible who torment poor subjects and make them groan under Non dominantes in Cleris sed forma facti◠gregis ex animo 1 Pet. 5. 3. their Commands They resemble Semiramis who on her Banners bare a Dove which in its beak held a bloudy sword as meaning to say that under a vvomans face she had the courage and stem violence of tyrants So their name theircharacter and degree testifieth Revertamur ad populum nostrum à facie gladii columbae Hier. 46. 16 nought but mildnesse but their manners are full of rigour and acerbity which wound hearts even to bloud This happeneth to many out of a certain stupidity in such sort that it seems they entering into office at that instant drink of the water of forgetfulnesse which Rigour misbecometh persons Ecclesiasticall Its causes and differences in them blotteth out the memory of all they were to become that which they ought never to be They forget their inferiours are men who put their precious liberty to wit a good inestimable into their hands as a pledge and that they must very skilfully handle them there being not a creature in all nature more tender or more sensible then the King of creatures They consider not that the power of one man over another is a thing which is alwayes somewhat suspected by nature on what side soever it come and that it must be practised insensibly so that the flesh be rather cast into a slumber then irritated To others it comes from a most refined pride which being under the subjection of a superiour kept it self close in the interiour of the soul a serpent enchanted and fast asleep but so soon as he sees himself armed with a sword of authority he cuts with both edges not sparing any one as if the great mystery of making a dignity valuable were to encompasse it with all the ensignes of terrour Some are not Porta in Chao of a bad nature and do resemble the sea which is not by nature salt but the sunne stirreth up unto it vapours cold dry and terrestriall which being burnt by heat spread themselves on the superficies of the water and cause saltnesse so these lights of authority which environ a man raise smokes in him which being not wel tempered by prudence leave a bitter impression on manners communicating some haughtinesse to words and conversation It is gotten in others by a long assiduity of superiority which is the cause that beholding themselves perpetually with a head of gold and a breast of silver they consider not that being in some sort like to Nabuchodonozors statue they yet have feet of clay Others come thereunto by an indiscreet zeal and out of small experience of humane things who are no sooner raised unto some degree but they talk of reformation of correction of chastisements and to see them you would say they were so many Archimedes who seek for a place out of the world to set foot in of purpose to turn the world to psie-turvey Their power is not alwayes answerable to their purpose which makes them sad and dejected in their courage causing them to fall back to the other extremity from whence it cometh that they are one while harsh and another time gentle and by inequality in their manners thrust all into disorder That is it which Saint Gregory the great observed Gregor M. in epist ola ad Utbicum in Abbot Vrbicus saying that his Monastery was in distemper because he made himself unequall one while flattering some and another while reprehending the rest with immeasurable anger Lastly there are others who have a very good conscience and whose manners are rigid and they be not imprudent but they have such a desire to frame the whole world to their humour that out of the assiduity of their admonitions
the night putting in his place an image in his bed The house failed not to be set upon the next morning and the Guard of Saul entring by force passed on unto the bed and found there the counterfeit Michol vvas accused hereof and chidden by Saul but she excused her self saying That her husband had compelled her to do this threatning to kill her if she would not obey and that the presence of so manifest a danger had forced her to procure this invention He ceased not to encrease his anger and to invent every day new means to destroy him whom he ought to have preserved above all men In the mean time David knew not whither to retire The life of David in banishment himself and saw himself every day amongst the nets hunted like a poor beast which caused him to passe a life so worthy to be esteemed by the whole world in very many bitternesses He would have taken the boldnesse to have gone to Samuel who was yet alive but this his interview would have been prejudicial both to the one and the other in the the mind of Saul which turned all its suspicions into fury He removed himself from thence unto the town of His arrivall at Nob causeth great disastre to the high Priest Nob to the high Priest Ahimelech who seeing him in very small equipage was somewhat amazed at his arrivall but David for to confirm him told him that he went about a certain urgent businesse which the King had given him in chaâ—ge and that it was necessary that it should be done without noise the which had compelled him to take but few people with him which were come forth very suddenly without having leasure to take order for necessary things for their journey whereby he should do him a great pleasure to give him some bread and to help him to some weapons which the haste of the businesse would not suffer him to take The Priest answered that he had no other loaves then those of the shew-bread which were consecrated but that they might make use of them if they were purified and especially if they abstained from all converse with women of which David having assured him he gave them those and having no other sword then that of Goliah which was kept in the Tabernacle for a Monument he presented it to him wherewith he was very well contented judgeing it the best of all and so went forward in his way Saul having heard a report that David had appeared entred into great forrests and going through a wood with a lance in his hand being compassed by his Captains and Officers sharply complained of the unfaithfulnesse of his servants asking them with reproach What it was that David had promised them and whether he would give them every one Lordships or make them Captains or Camp-masters that they had thus forsaken their Prince That it was a pitifull thing to behold him betrayed of his own children for to uphold a rebel which sought nothing but an occasion to get his Crown from him Hereupon Doeg master of the shepherds of Saul and Doeg accuseth the high Priest being innocent Idumean by nation and of barbarous behaviour having been at Nob when David passed by there and desirous to get favour with his Master accused Ahimelech the Priest with all his company for having helped David with weapons and Provision and having testified a good affection to his party which caused Saul to send for him presently and handle him with great anger reproaching him with villany and suspecting him of treason The other answered very wisely That he being retired from the knowledge of business at the Court and of the Bed-chamber he could not know the intents of David but knowing very assuredly the good-will that the King had testified towards him the great charges and commissions wherewith he had honoured him the favour that he had shewed to him by so neerly allying him to his house he could not nor he ought not to drive him away from his lodging having received no command from the King and not being able to understand by any the offence that David had incurred This excuse was very just and lawful But the violent Bloudy effects of the jealousie of Saul are never contented with reasons intending to be masters of the Laws although they are slaves to their brutish passions Saul commanded without any other form of proceedings to kill him with those of his company which the souldiers did very much abhorre and there was not found one that durst lift up his hand against those sacred persons But Doeg that villanous butcher which had a long time been bred up in slaying beasts having gathered together the small rable of his servants set upon the high Priest and the Priests which accompanied him to the number of 85. which were all murdered in one day and this cursed servant stretching further yet the command of his master drave on his murderers to the sacking of the town of Nob which they filled with fire and bloud What will not the jealousie of State do what will not tyranny rage and fury when they are seconded by evil servants which blow the coal able to devour both men and towns Saul the plain countrey-fellow the cordiall man the child of one year after he had suckt the breath of this serpent kills the high Priest and the Priests buries the smoking towns in the bloud of the miserable citizens A thousand poor bloudy sacrifices stretched out upon the cart pleaded sufficiently before God with the voyce of their bloud for to pull down this in humane Tyrant for whom all the furies prepared their pincers and torches Poor David having understood by Abiathar the son of the high Priest all that was past was pierced with a most bitter grief accusing himself as the cause of the death of those unhappy ones and took along with him him that brought him this sad news using him as his own brother He perceived well that the spirit of Saul David saves himself in the caves of the desert whither father and mother go to seek him was wholly envenomed and in despair of remedy he saved himself in the cave of Adulla where he thought he had been hid from the eyes of the whole world But his father and his brethren flying the persecution ceased not till they had found him therein and did wonderfully pierce his tender heart lamenting for the change of his fortune because they perceive not any more in him a David triumphant the object of all the thoughts and discourses of all tongues But he comforted them promising not to forsake them and recommended all that was dearest unto him which was the person of his father His piety towards them with that of his mother to the King of Moab until that he knew what it would please God to do with him At the same time all the banished all that fled for Banished men repaired to him safety
from ruine 'T is a rash determination that bloweth off the victorious laurels of so many Christian Kings with such a blind and precipitate whirlwind of words Justly therefore are the Manichees obnoxious to a spirituall Outlawry from the Church whilst I know not whether they more impudently assert innocence or more blameably disarm it All Ages concurre in the justification of Warre against Infidels but the intermingled contentions of the Faithfull have been alwayes reprehended and never impartially tolerated Be pleased to take a review of an old instrument There were many and bitter discords among the Jews many tumults many warres but ever against those that had abandoned the true Religion and collapsed into foul Idolatry and the worship of the Gentiles The Israelites indeed upon the division of the Tribes fought against the Benjamites with a fierce warre and an infinite destruction but this was rather the fury of grief rushing into arms for the revenge of a woman violated with prodigious lust then any destinated opposition or just controversie for the enlargement of their territories The magnanimity of David could scarce be induced to a just resistance of his sonne Absolon forcing his way unto his Fathers Throne thorow the bloud and carkasses of many Citizens till Joab had obstinately dissipated that languidnesse of his gentle mind so detestable an undertaking was it for those who were brethren by the bonds of Nature and Religion to forfeit all civill respects to the rage of warre If you please to consult the first times of the Christian Emperours you shall find Constantine opposing his forces against Julian but not till he became the desertour of Christ and the Standard-bearer of impiety You shall also find Theodosius the Great levying his utmost strength against Maximus Eugenius and Arbogastus but his quarrel was with most perfidious Tyrants who under the veil of Religion laboured to hide flagitious and damnable excesses You shall scarce meet with any Prince in the more innocent times who took up arms to be embrewed in Christian bloud but upon the most deliberate and important causes And indeed Baronius doth excellently observe that the Crosse was first opposed to the Crosse in arms in the Warre which Constantius raised against Magnentius A horrible wickednesse saith he and not to be attempted but by a Christian Tyrant a dissembler of Religion and an Hereticall Emperour I am not ignorant that Augustine hath handled this subject and question against Faustus and that he hath established the equity of Christian arms upon the foundation of the Gospel because John in so exemplary a rigour of life perswaded not the souldiers enquiring after the means of their salvation to cast away their weapons but to be contented with their pay and to strike no man Because also the Apostle not without cause saith That Princes bear not the sword in vain But if it be lawfull to yield our assent to the approbation of his judgement we shall find that all those darts were ejaculated against the mad phrensies of the Manichees who would have Christians to abstain from the sword and to bear the most cruel injuries of treacherous Infidels unrepelled unrevenged He would not therefore either cherish the severity or irritate the power of Christian Princes in an unlawfull Warre against their brethren for in the same place he exclaimeth a defire of doing violence a cruel preparation of mind to revenge an implacable mind a barbarous lust to rebel a secret speculation of Lordly dominion and other such as these are the causes which are justly culpable in the Warres Now who are they according to the opinion of S. Austin that consociate themselves and their adherents in an unjust Warre First they that are hurried into Arms by a blind violence of spirit not so much for love of Justice as a greedinesse of revenge Who being provoked by some injury inhumanely and unmeasurably rave and rage abhorring all attonement and refusing by the authority of an incensed reason to chide out their Passions those petulant and contentious inmates In the second place they who endeavour a Rebellion against their lawfull Sovereigne and casting off the yoke of their Allegiance precipitate themselves into all licencious enormities Finally they who out of a sole desire of Ruling involve and mingle the Kingdomes of their neighbours in commotions and intestine discords and that they may extend their Empire open a passage to their ambitious expectations by all designes either violent or fraudulent Consider now best Princes what a proclivity there is in such to boil with indignation and displeasure to burn with paroxisms of envy and exacerbations of revenge yea and to be tickled with an apprehension of purchasing or amplifying a Kingdome How obvious it is the reins being let loose to transcend the just limits how easie a matter to counterfeit Justice to pretend necessity and now to trample upon those Laws which before were so much outwardly reverenced you will undoubtedly find it true that it is more easie to take up then to moderate and temper Arms. But that I may not detain you long Aquinas requireth three things to the justification or legitimation of a Warre the Authority of the Prince a just Cause and a right Intention whereunto other Divines have added warrantable Reasons to obtain the end it is absolutely unlawfull therefore for private men to appear in Arms for the prosecution of their own right though in judgement This God hath delegated unto Princes that that might happen seldome which must needs be violent To the Lords of the earth we may say with Seneca I am he that God hath chosen out of so many men that I might be his Vicegerent upon earth I am the supreme Arbiter of life and death unto the Nations It is in the hand of my power to dispose the lot of their conditions to all my people These millions of swords that guard my peace shall at the lest intimation of my pleasure be all unsheathed What Cities shall perish and which shall flourish is my jurisdiction To be able to put all these things in execution is indeed a great matter but to forbear the pursuance of them unlesse necessity require it is farre more divine It is a lawfull wish that he to whom all things are lawfull would confine his will to the practice onely of lawfull things The right of the Sword is not extended when it devolveth into the Protection of one but is rather restrained One hand is stretched forth that all may be bound affairs are managed by the wisdome of a paucity lest the temerity of the whole multitude should precipitate them into a promiscuous destruction The parsimony even of the meanest bloud is to be praised No man is more unjustly invested with a superiority over others then he that is prodigall of their lives though in a just emergence Those thunderbolts must be slowly shot which the wounded persons can reverence Let Kings therefore beware lest they glorifie themselves by that faculty
wherewith God hath entrusted them and abuse it to outward pomp rather then exercise it to the advantage of good men Let the fear of misdemeanours and obliquities banish all fiercenesse from them and let them esteem it the greatest impotence to boast a Priviledge of Injustice or a Power to hurt The cause of the Warre must first be balanced by an accurate examination lest the affections obtain precedence over Equity and Reason lest iniquity be predominant in the better part and force and fury comply to cheat the world under the specious title of Injustice I am both sad and ashamed to consider with my self what frivolous occasions have prevailed with many whereon to ground a Warre The Trojan Warre that common Sepulchre of Asia and Europe flamed out from the impetuous flagrancies of a noble Whore By a thousand ships she was re-demanded and for her that had lost all modesty vast numbers of gallant Hero's lost their neglected lives So many chaste lay open to the lust of the enemies that an unchaste might be restored Alexander being yet a child was reprehended by his Tutour for his profusion of Frankincense in his Sacrifices to the Gods but being arrived to mans estate that he might wash away this admonition of his master he invadeth Arabia and there the second time offereth up Sacrifice for the conquest of the Countrey The Egyptians for a slain Cat rose up in arms against the Romans and fourty destroyed many thousand men Caligula with a mighty noise of armed men and a great preparation of all Military ornaments hasteneth to the Ocean there to gather cockles The Romans being contumeliously upbraided with this ridiculous Expedition conspired and almost effected the utter ruine of the scoffing Tarentians The people of Alexandria rebelled against Galienus because of a sottish contention between the Master and the Servant concerning the elegancy and neatnesse of a pair of shoes And to omit many examples which I could commemorate William of England sirnamed the Conquerour who was victorious over all men but himself revenged a pleasant conceit of Maximus the Prince with innumerable destructions The Conquerour was of a corpulent habit and his belly was somewhat prominent thorow a plenty of Hydropick humours wherefore when Philip the King of France heard of the nature of his disease We will allow him time saith he to provide for his lying in which by the bulk of his belly appeareth to be near at hand The Conquerour being mad with fury replyed That he would rise up after his delivery and kindle five hundred fires in France to adorn his up-sitting Nor was he unmindfull of his resolution for presently upon his recovery he entred France with a stupendious army wholly addicting himself by fire famine and horrible slaughters to the satisfaction of his revenge Shall we suppose that he playes and trifles with the bloud of men who upon such slight provocations can enterprize such mournfull Tragedies May we suppose those people miserable with whom the scoffs of furious men must be expiated with such a direfull destruction No man ought to believe himself or another concerning the cause of a Warre but let him weigh it with the exquisite prudence of the principall men whose advices are the more fruitfull of truth the lesse they are espoused to affection A right intention must necessarily be coveted to a just Cause and all these things are estimated by a sober and moderate conclusion or a justifiable end Be such a thought eternally banished from the head and heart of a Christian Prince that he should array himself in a Military posture to oblige some light affections of a luxuriant mind that he should run on slaughters command the burning of towns prosecute and seem to rejoyce in devastations that he should destroy he should extinguish and bury his own glory in the overthrow of others This is the indelible ignominy of Centaures and the Lapathae who in warring seek nothing but Warre The wisest Kings thorow tumults and intestine jarres have made a progresse unto Justice Equity and Concord and being themselves in Arms have sacrificed undefeigning vows to Peace They think of an Enemy as a Physician sometimes of his Patient that he must be recovered by corrosives and sharp remedies Oh that he would have been cured with a diet or asswaged with fomentations But when against the Law and Right of Nations he hath persisted in his obstinacy and contemned the reiterated offers of composing the present differences then you must bind then you must cut then you must burn him yet all this to restore not to exterminate him And all things composed behold like the scourge of a deadly and destructive Warre a Northern tempest rageth in the miseries of Germany there they wallow in bloud and in their night-marches they are conducted by the hideous light of burning Cities some few making a resistance and all men being astonished at the ferall prodigy The Altars are polluted with sacrifice Virgins with rapes the chains of Church-men are heard louder and further then the drums of their persecutours holy things are profaned and the abomination of desolation is consummated their very King who had appointed them thither being either ignorant of those outrages or unconsenting Now can any man conceive that this was devised by a Christian mind Can it be imagined that he who hath any reverence unto or sense of Religion can give such directions It is not credible such a monster could not have been brought forth had not hell conceived the bottomelesse-pit exhaling the fuliginous vapours and the devils themselves torturing mens minds into such uncouth diversities All things cannot properly have a reflected reference unto men The Privado's and Ministers of Princes are not at all times to be accused as though they had cast off all humaniry and covered themselves with brutish cruelty There are certain vagabond and deceitfull spirits destinated to revenge who being themselves lost in misery cease not to comfort their malice by driving others into a participation of those miseries which reason greatest Princes ought so much the more to invite yea to admonish you to leagues of Peace because our Omnipotent God in his secret counsel hath determined to subdue Satan by your hands and to cast him under your feet The highest circumspection and vigilancy are therefore requisite least matter be suppeditated to the Devil who altogether watcheth for destruction from the affections and vices of men Jealousie that tinder of Kingdomes and Nations easily taketh fire if it be fomented onely with an animal wisdome and be not mixed with the prudence of the Saints They who are addicted to one part say that the Spaniards do too much expose their power to Envy that it is hatefull unto equalls terrible to inferiours and if not prevented destructive unto all There is amongst them say they such an epidemicall itch after domination such intentive and indefatigable cares of their ambition such a luxurious wit to enlarge their Empire so vast a