all your Fathers were before you occasioning Charities always in this employment meditating on some portion of Ecclesiastes Forbearing as much as may be the entertainment of any long and entangled designs so that you cannot so contentedly go off the stage of this world and say a Nunc dimittis in pace when God calleth for it Carefully from time to time discharging all debts 2. For your behaviour in sickness in doing the duties proper to it First when sickness comes not being ashamed to shew fear and imagining it always more dangerous than it is and preparing your self always though in likelihood it is not as if it were a sickness to death gladly then taking occasion to reconcile your self fully to God and to conclude with the world that your recovery may more perfectly begin a new and better life or your end not surprise you unprepared In this not fearing so much the harm which melancholy and sadness may do to your Body as the mischief which security may do to your Soul and knowing that such sadness through obtaining of God remission of sin c is the readiest way also to procure your health and in the time of your sickness also ends in more joy For making this reconciliation Examining your self by what sin it is likely you have lately most displeased God and doing repentance and humiliation for it as if it had caused your sickness Jo. 5.14 Matt. 9.2 Examining your self more specially concerning sins towards your neighbour those chiefly against the 5 6 7 8 9. Commandments in which man's laws also enjoyn reparation And making restitution satisfactions Asking forgiveness c. Forgiving and declaring your forgiveness towards any that have so trespassed against you Confessing all your sins to God and endeavouring to do this as particularly as if all confessed were presently to be pardoned and all forgot to be answered for at the day of judgment Sending early for the Priest and confessing your sins to him as it is recommended to your practice by the Church in case of a troubled conscience and if your Conscience be not troubled for your sin then know you have yet more need to do it Receiving absolution and the Communion making then a singular Confession and Thanksgiving to God for all the greater mercies received through your whole life Giving alms to some poor and desiring especially their prayers for you Making resolutions and vows but not rash ones and if it may be with the advice of your spiritual Father and with making your professions also to him as a witness of them concerning reformation upon your recovery Avoiding much especially secular conversation and removing company from you Entertaining an attendant that can read holy things to you such as you shall direct and have provided in your health at that time to be administred unto you Praying extraordinarily if your pains permit Using and in all things obeying the Physitian Offering up a contented patience of these sufferings to God in regard of the far greater desert of your sins and that to your Saviour in regard of his far greater sufferings for you §. 160. Digr 1. Of the many times great uncharitableness and mischief of encouraging sick persons with hopes of recovery at sometimes making them omit the necessary preparations for death and at other times loose the many great benefits of sickness in humiliations confessions c. Digr 2. Of some necessary questions to be proposed to the sick See Notes of Sick Digr 3. Of various admonitions necessary to be used to the sick as they happen to be found in an ignorant or a sensless or a presuming or a despairing condition Digr 4. Of Psalms and other Scriptures proper to be read to the Sick As Psal 6.22 23.32.38.57.86.88 90.102 103.107.130.142 143. Job 1 2. Ezech. 18. The passion of our Saviour in one of the Gospels beginning at his Prayer in the Garden Jo. 17. Rom. 8. 1. Cor. 15. 1. Thess 4. Rev. 21 22. Digr 5. Of short Scripture-Ejaculations proper to be used by them See Notes of Sick Digr 6. Directions for the behaviour of the Visitors of or Attendants upon the sick Non consolari eos spe recuperandae sanitatis See before § 161. n. 1. Non plorare Non ridere Non alienos sermones miscere Non multum loqui necsubtilia Sancto silentio Deum precari See Vita Camelli De Lellis §. 161. 2. Exercising Christian Fortitude 1. Joyfully entertaining all those temporal miseries which happen to you for your sin which many other servants of God have both earnestly begged of God and not obtaining this have voluntarily infliected upon themselves and desiring that you may suffer here yet more for them Hic ure seca c. and not seeking too passionately to diminish them and whilst much grieving and humbling your self for the cause thereof yet accepting and rejoycing in the punishment and hoping in the execution of some part of God's righteous justice upon you in this world to find through Christ's merits the more mercy in the next Lam. 33.9 Jer. 30.15 2. Joyfully embracing the favour Phil. 1.29 of all those afflictions which happen unto you for doing your duty and for refusing to sin especially of persecutions Matt. 5.10 11. saying such words as these This is painful to me but acceptable to God and he will love me for it This thy will I willingly suffer and much more for thy sake O my Saviour who sufferedst so much for me 3. Yet taking great care that you mistake not God's judgments upon your sins for tryals only of your holiness bringing forth presumption instead of humiliation Digr That there is required a holy life and purity of conscience not only for the particular cause for which we suffer but general to entertain our sufferings with true comfort and joy Else you ought to bear them with great sorrow not for them but for your sins as God's true judgments upon you in relation to them tho executed as 't is usual through man's injustice God ordinarily punishing our innocence in one thing for our guilt in another thus making his scourges more bitter unto us 4. Not shunning nor preventing any disgraces by foregoing the smallest duty Using no compliance no diffimulation no flattery no timidity modesty or being ashamed of good but rather provoking evil and exposing your self on all occasions in any thing for Christ's sake to scorn hate danger c. without fear in thus doing of seeming proud or contemptuous Rev. 21 8. But the fearful 5. Vndertaking voluntarily and with all alacrity such sufferings tho easily avoidable by the enduring of which you may any way do the more good which troubles though it is lawful to decline yet it is more expedient for benefitting others to entertain Such were our Saviour's such St. Paul's Sufferings so much gloried of 1. Cor. 9. 6. One degree higher Out of the pure imitation of our Saviour and to be made in all things here more conformable to him Phil. 3.10 that
much secrecy knowing that God and his Angels see you and thus you shall seldome do amiss for according to the praise we look after God's or Men's either not the same Actions will be done by us or not after the same manner 2. Upon some Good done by you suddainly diverting any thought of receiving praise from men for it least such a thought if long dwelt on stain the Purity of your good Deeds and this Praise be your empty reward thereof and you lose your reward with God consider Matt. 6.2.5.16 Faciunt ut honorificentur ab hominibus Amen dico vobis receperunt mercedem suam Luk. 14.12 Hindring it also as not indeed due to you but to God and only by their error it is if by men given to you and if your good works are to be seen of men Matt. 5.16 yet it is that they may glorify not you on earth but your Father in Heaven Again what Praise is brought to you against your Will immediately transmitting it entire to God with a Non nobis Domine sed nomini tuo For it is certain what you do any way Good all the good thereof is not from You but from God and so the praise thereof to be transferred without your retaining it at all to the right owner the rest that is yours are only the infirmities and defects joined with it and for these you ought to blush and not desire praise but pardon of God the only Author of all Good and very free and communicative of it yet in return of Praise for it stands much upon his Right and usually suffers his Rivals that rob him of it afterward to fall shamefully See Act. 12.23 3. Silently suffering causeless Infamy and meekly accepting and offering it to God as a deserved punishment for other faults especially practising thus where Malice seems unsatisfiable and more contention only likely to arise from a defence and where a just vindication bears shew of too much self-esteem Considering our Lord's behaviour to the admiration of the Judge at his Arraignment for Seditions Treason Blasphemy Matt. 26.63 27.12.14 Who saith St. Peter 1. Pet. 2.23 when he was reviled reviled not again when he suffered threatned not but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously And the Apostles 1. Cor. 4.12 Being defamed we intreat being reviled we bless being persecuted we suffer it knowing that God sooner undertakes for those the Justification of their Innocence who for Peace-sake and out of much humility leave it wholly to him and in his good time performs it much more convincingly than themselves could Recommendation of Self Contempt 4. Chearfully entertaining any Contempt Which is a breeder of Humility in the same manner as Honor is of Pride And which contempt of secular Reputation and also of secular Contempt out of an affection to things divine that are usually much disparaged by the world keeps men steddy in Goodness and cutts off most of the Sins of Discourse much of which Discourse is directed to vain Glory and Applause to be attained only in bad things from corrupt judgments or is spent in justifying our selves against Contradictors all which our love of Contempt avoids as also it cutts off all discord hate and envy arising from emulation for Precedency and Honor when every one striving to be uppermost and quarrelling with those that obstruct it he that can be content to be below is always at rest and enjoys himself Joyfully also entertaining the being evil-entreated and evil-spoken of so it be not for evil which causlesly and patiently received with perseverance in that goodness for which you so suffer hath an exceeding reward hereafter for a small loss sustained here In such a case happy are yee saith St. Peter 1. Pet. 4.13 Count it all joy saith St. James Jam. 1.2 Jubilate exultate saith our Lord Luk. 6.23 Nor may any think themselves to stand obliged from that Text 1. Thes 5.22 To avoid all appearance of evil when to any Person good things appear evil Or obliged from that Text Col. 4.8 To do whatsoever things are of good report when the report of good is not such as it ought nor things of good report such things as are good But we are to avoid all appearance of evil when the things appearing evil are such as we may forbear i.e. are among things indifferent and we are to do all things of good report i.e. good report among the good §. 17. n. 1. 3. Of lawful sensual Pleasures 1. Forbearing sensual though lawful Pleasures 2. Avoiding at the first as much as may be any knowledge and experience of or skill in them for by this is cutt off the longing after them Digr How hardly such Pleasures can consist with Piety 3. Especially chusing rather if you can live continently a single life than Marriage To which the more to excite and encourage you §. 17. n. 2. 1. Consider The greater dignity of this than of a conjugal life For as Vncleanness is more especially opposite to Holiness than other vices See Rom. 6.19 Thes 4.7 Eph. 5.3 and hath a natural shame and guilt upon it which makes it seek privacy beyond any other Sin whatever See the shame of our first Parents upon the first appearance of Concupiscence Gen. 2.25 comp Gen. 3.10 And as there is a Purity and Holiness of the Body as well as of the Soul See 2. Cor. 7.1 1. Thes 4.4 Jud. 23. comp 8. And 2. Pet. 2.10.14 opposite to this Fornication and Vncleanness and enjoined to be observed in reference to Christ he being now the Husband of the Body and it his Spouse See 1. Cor. 6.20 compared with 13.18 c. So there seems to be a greater degree of this Purity of the Body opposite to Matrimony See 1. Cor. 7.34 and Rev. 14.4 where defilement with women is opposed to Virginity as another defilement with Harlots is opposed to Matrimony Heb. 13.14 The marriage bed is undefiled that is with Sin for this was appointed as for a means of propagation to Adam innocent so for a remedy against Fornication 1. Cor. 7.2 to man fallen and troubled with Concupiscence But the Virgins bed it seems is more undefiled more Angel-like in respect of corporeal Purity undefiled being opposed to an imperfection of Chastity Virginal as well as to the sin of Lust to the act of Concupiscence as well as to prohibited Copulations And therefore hereafter not to marry nor be given in marriage but to be like the Angels of God is reckoned as a thing more honorable for the Body Luk. 20.35 And Concupiscence one cause now of Marriage and which could it be remedied the Apostle would not advise so many to Marriage was not known by Adam when perfect and was a thing when appearing upon his fall which he was ashamed of and sought to hide as his Posterity ever since do those acts even of the lawful bed To a higher degree then of this primogeneal virginal Purity of the Body I suppose that
to give you or also by your own reflections upon them whilst you are performing this Action §. 28. 14. Suppressing evil thoughts first motions of Sin c. 1. Suppressing evil thoughts and first motions of Sin and all lesser sins that they lead you not into greater esteeming no sin to be little and the most to be the malicious suggestions of evil Spirits which will make you the more to abhor them 2. Since thoughts may arise in you from three several Causes 1 not only from your self but 2 from the holy or 3 from an evil Spirit Much observing and having a great reverence or jealousy of them according as they may seem to proceed from the one or the other of these external principles The one working more powerfully in all the Children of God the other in all the Children of Disobedience but both working less or more ordinarily in both good and bad men And therefore great care and circumspection to be used herein what degree of perfection soever you seem to your self to have attained Digr Of the sinfulness and great pollution of the Soul by evil thoughts when long dwelt on and not suddenly removed 3. Suppressing when we cannot the inward risings in the Soul at least the outward motions of passion in the Body and endeavouring to hide them which indeed all Passions being also bodily motions of the heart is quenching them 4. Suppressing after guilty thoughts betrayed by some external passion yet the outward action or any part thereof These outward sins being far greater than those of the heart only because by the longer space of our consideration they have still more of wilfulness and malice require a more intense act of the Soul to produce them do more harm to others Ways to break ill Habits 5. To overcome ill habits contracted or to prevent prevent them feared rather assaulting them singly and bending all your force chiefly against one only at a time there being ordinarily in every man some Master-Sin which a many other serve and the rectifying of which helps much for all the rest In the morning resolving against it for that one day and diverting the occasions which that day may tempt you to it especially often in that day calling to mind how you have forborn it upon committing or rather about to commit it forcing your self and using some bodily gesture and saying some words of penitence As throwing your self down on your knees kissing the ground smiting your breast saying some part of the 51 Psalm or some other pious Ejaculations imploring God's help thinking on Death Hell Heaven setting down how many times you commit it c. for such taking notice of it is the first step to reformation Lastly making more special suit against it in your prayers 6. Often discoursing at times when free from the temptations of it of the sinfulness of the vice you are most subject to and of the excellencies of the contrary virtue For such discourse will not only outwardly engage you to others but by little and little inwardly incline you to hate and despise it When your Soul is more at rest and the temptations of the sin are not strong upon you strongly forcing your self with great courage to exercise some act of the contary virtue seeking out if you meet not with them some occasions for this purpose §. 29. 15. Cherishing all good motions in the Soul c 1. On the contrary cherishing and improving with recogitation upon them all good motions that arise in the Soul as inspirations of the divine Spirit without which we can think no good thing 2. Cor. 3.5 and therefore all good thoughts from it which Spirit the Apostle chargeth us not to quench 1. Thes 5.19 Not to grieve Eph. 4.30 Now if from it we derive our good thoughts then so often as we repel the one we grieve and quench the other Seeking any outward occasions that may excite good thoughts And when we cannot conquer our will praying against our will that God would make us able to will them And this wishing through the strength that God giveth will at last bring forth willing Per id quod homo potest venit ad id quod vult In things Spiritual doing our endeavour effects our desires to him that hath shall be given till at length he have abundance 2. Never neglecting or refusing to do a little Good as nothing valuable though it be but producing in your self or in another one single good thought or wish there being nothing little in God's service Nor to practice a small mortification as little profiting nor to forbear a little ill as no great hurt 3. Not suffering any though inconsiderable breach to be made upon a good custome nor any accrument as of little consequence to a bad Of the power of Custom Digr Of the great power of Customes Both of those of the affections and the will desires and appetites And of the intellect speculations and opinions inward habits restlesly inviting us as much as outward temptations Digr Of the great power of often remembrance 4. To introduce virtues and expel ill habits practising first in small matters rather than higher unless you perceive God to give great strength that you may not in the attempt be presently disheartned 5. Making hast and being speedy whilst you are well inclined in the execution of things well purposed and undoubtedly good For none hath continually the like fervour of the Spirit Si aliquando cur non modo Si non modo fortasse nunquam 6. Beginning a good action when not so well disposed to it without much consultation with the Flesh Quien siempre mira lo postrero nunca a comete gran trecho Et Incipere dat velle Beginning makes us willing The deliberation being as it were occupated by action Tutta la pena si senti un poco nel principio And Omnia inchoata tolerabilia facilia cito transeuntia magnam consolationem relinquentia §. 30. 16. Subjecting your self to another's conduct Subjecting your actions in all things not contrary to the law of God which things where is any doubt you are to learn from your spiritual Superiors to the conduct and guidance and commands of another And this according to some prescriptions of a rule or otherwise Or at least subjecting the most considerable or those more doubtful Whose reason if not of better judgment though such you may have if not faulty in your choice yet void of passion in another mans affairs can better guide you than your own some way or other partial affections §. 31. 17. Restraining your liberty with Resolutions and Vows 1. Restraining hurtful liberty with resolutions obligations vows to the forbearance of such a vice of such a temptation performance of such a duty or counsel at such hours on such occasions c. For by this we attain to some resemblance of the good Angels when binding up our former dangerous freedome we for the future necessitate our selves