of his power in the misery of mortals but with the Scripture that he separateth light from darkness with a diamond to wit a most strong and resplendent knowledge of the merit and demerit of men What sense is Notable passage Adamante diserevit lucem tenebras Eccles 16. 14. Secundum 70 there to make a power which takes its glory from ignorance and is potent in contempt of reason Is not this to make all terrible even to its own favours What sense is it to appoint a Judge to satisfie the whole world according to desert and to make him sign Decrees irrevocable in favour of some one before knowledge of all merit Cannot we make him potent unless we make him unjust Adde also that in the feeling we have of Praedestination Goodness of God the mercy of the most mild Father shineth with visible marks For we do not make him to damn him through a negligence of thoughts and coldness of affection which cannot be in a God so active or a heart so loving but we believe his goodness extendeth to Cain and Judas and would they have endeavoured they had the means to gain beatitude which never fails any man if he want not correspondence In the end we likewise acknowledge in this point Si voluisset Esau cacurrisset Dei adjutorio pervenisset Aug. ad Simp. l. 4. 2. the most prudent government of God who will have nothing idle in nature nor grace He could enlighten us without the Sun and afford us fruit without the earth but he will his creatures operate and that one unfold the rays of his substance another supply with the juice of its bosom In like manner he is pleased we make his grace to profit us to raise our riches out of his favours and derive our glory from his bounty He will give a title of merit to our happiness to advance the quality of his gifts He will crown in us what comes from himself as if it were wholly ours Why shall we shut up the eyes of his wisdom why tie up the hands of his liberality An Ancient said He more esteemed the judgement of certain men than their proper benefits God will we value both in him that we enjoy his bounty by favour and his judgement by merit The actions of the Sovereign Monarch are free from controul as his gifts from repentance I will leave you now to conclude what quiet we Third point Repose of Conscience may have in our consciences upon the matter of Praedestination I leave you to think whether a good soul have not cause to say O be the Divine Providence praised for evermore since it so worthily hath provided for me I cannot adore its counsels unless I love its goodness It sweeteneth my pains it comforteth my cares when it teacheth me my eternal happiness depends on him and me on him who loveth me tenderly and on me who cannot hate my self unless I derogate from my essence after I have failed in all virtues Courage then we roul not under this fatality which writeth laws on diamonds and ties us to inevitable necessities The fodder is not cast we have yet the mettal boyling apace in hand we may appear on the mould of virtue we may make our selves such by the grace of God as to put our salvation in assurance our life into repose and death into crowns I cannot fear God with a slavish fear since he is nought but goodness but I will ever dread my works since I am frailty it self Let us hereafter live in such sort as we would be judged Let us consecrate our life to innocency and banish all sin Let us undertake piety humility obedience alms and devotion towards the Blessed Virgin which are most assured marks of Praedestination Let us not presume of our own forces nor despair likewise of Gods mercy If we stand upright let us still fear the declining of nature which easily bendeth to evil and if we stoop let us quickly raise our selves again making all avail to our salvation yea our proper falls We have a great Advocate in Heaven who openeth as many mouthes for us as we have inflicted wounds on his body We have inflicted them through cruelty and they will receive us through mercy serving us towards Heaven for a chariot of triumph as they were to us on earth a mirrour in life and a sepulcher in death The sixth EXAMPLE upon the sixth Drawn out of Simeon of Constantinoplâ— MAXIM Of the secret Power of Praedestination PROCOPIUS PRaedestination is an admirable secret wherein Marvellous secret of Praedestination experience teacheth us there is nothing which the happy ought not to fear nor any thing the miserable may not hope Stars fall from the firmament to be changed into dung-hills and dung-hills of the earth mount to Heaven to be metamorphosed into stars The graces of God insinuate themselves by secret ways and the impressions of the will are extreamly nice all that past is a dream and the future a cloud where thunders murmur in the dark We tremble when we read in the History of holy Historia Patrum orientis Raderus Fathers that an Hermit grown white in the austerities of Religion understanding a notable thief had gained Heaven by a sigh he cast forth in the instant of his death was much displeased and presently became nought because God was good blaming his mercy to trie his justice For one sole censure made him loose forty years of penance and drew his foot out of Paradise to deliver his soul to hell I purpose here consequently to produce a singular conversion that you may admire and fear the secret ways of God Simeon of Constantinople is the Authour of it who enlarged it with many words but I will abbreviate it into good proportion which shall render it no whit the less effectual The Emperour Diocletian having pacified Aegypt sojourned sometime in Antioch of purpose to destroy Actor 12. the name of Jesus Christ in the same place where the faithfull began to be called Christians Theodosia a Procopius presented to Dioclesian great Ladie came to him bringing her son along with her named Neanias in very good equipage with purpose to prefer him in Court and satisfie her ambition To make her self the more acceptable she freely protested her deceased husband died a Christian that she had often attempted to work him to forsake this superstition adverse to Gods and men and that being unable to prevail upon his inveterate obstinacy she had manured this young plant speaking of her son carefully training him in the service of the gods and Prince with infinite detestation against Christianitie Diocletian who was much delighted with such accidents loudly praised the Ladie and casting his eye on Neanias he found him of handsom shape good presence understanding and valiant whereof he conceived great hope he might prove hereafter a principal instrument of his desires That which also pleased him the more
Ambrose 207 His death 215 Ammon plotteth incest with his sister 407 He is counselled to this sin by Joadab ib. He dissembleth fickness ib. Thamars advise to him ib. He despiseth his dishonoured sister ib. He is slain 408 Anaâ—tatius fearing thunder is slain by a Thunder bolt 288 Angelical Aenigma's 56 Why bad Angels punished without mercy 23 Antipater his cunningness in geeting the kingdom of Judea 115 He calumniateth his brothers 130 He is thrown from the top of the wheel 132 His Conspiracy is discovered 133 His wofull event ib. His Accusation before his Father ib. His death 135 Wicked Antiothus punished 348 He is delivered Hostage to the Romanes 347 His manners 393 He warreth against Ptolomey ib. The war between them is ended by a marriage ib. Antonie's generous act 352 A trick of an Ape 43 Apes in the Court of Solomon 46 A pretty tale of an Ape ib. Intellectual Appetite faulty 37 Appetite of man infinite 436 Apple of discord 145 Arbogastus 210 Aristobulus taken prisoner by Pompey and Jerusalem become tributarie 115 His pitifull death 119 Arius and his qualities 251 Original of Arians ib. Their proceedings ib. Condemnation of Arius 154 End of Arius ib. Arts tributarie to Great-men 16 Astrologie the vanity thereof 360 Athanasius 254 Athenais her admirable adventure 141 She pleadeth her cause before Pulcheria 142 Her Conversion ib. She could not brook Pulcheria 145 Audas destroyeth a Pyraum 942 Sr. Augustine converted by Sr. Ambrose 188 His wit ib. His inclination ib. He studied Judicial Astrologie 189 His Religion ib. Curiositie Presumption and Love the three impediments in the conversion of Sr. Augustine 190 The Oeconomy of God in the conversion of S â— Augustine 193 He is baptized by Sr. Ambrose 198 B THe Bat employeth her eyes to make her wings 382 An excellent Act of Bayard the Cavalier 227 Opinion concerning Beatitude 435 The essential point of Beatitude is union with God 437 Three acts of Beatitude ib. Three effects of Beatitude 438 Excellency of Beatike science ib. Beautie of beatike love as it is compared to the weakness of worldly love ib. Beautie condemned by Idolaters 9 Defence of Beautie as the gift of God 10 Natural Beautie of men praised by Poets ib. Beautie an instrument of God ib. Beautie of our Saviour ib. Power of Beautie 11 Beautie of Constantine 16 Abuse of Beautie damnable ib. Vanitie of Beautie 93 Tyrannie of the Belly 52 Binet a Reverend Father of the Church 174 Boetius his Nobilitie 276 His eminent wisdom and learning 278 He was stiled the Father and Light of his Countrey 287 His opinion of the providence of God 291 His death ibid. Boleslaus his notable act 5 Boniface martyred 380 C CAligula a great scoffer 47 The devils busied about Calumny 46 From whence it proceedeth 47 Horrour of Calumny ibid. Calumny plotted against the sons of Mariamne 128 Calumny of Fausta against her son Crispus 244 Her rage turned into pitie ibid. Her Calumny discovered ibid. Her death ibid. Camerarius his observation concerning the Heron. 405 The excellency of a brave Captain 217 The delight of Histories to praise Captains 218 Singular commendation of Cato 13 The praise of the strength and courage of Cato ibid. The Stone Ceraunia 7 Charity excellently displayed 2 Charity towards God and our neighbour defined 469 Charity in Conversation defined ibid. Charity with the acts thereof 91 An excellent passage of Charity ibid. Charls of Anjou is taken and put to death 402 Charlemaign his goodness and indulgence 403 Chastity defined 468 Three sorts of Chastity with the acts thereof 85 86 A royal act of Chastity in a Souldier 230 S. Paul calleth Chastity Sanctification 304 Excellent Instructions for Children 343 Chrysaphius an heretical Eunuch projecteth ruin to Theodosius his Court. 147 He entangleth the Emperour and his Wife in the heresie of the Eutyches 148 Christians Warfare delicate 2 To do good and suffer wrong the true Character of a Christian 48 Virtue of the first Christians 53 The happiness to be born a Christian 339 Solitude of Christian Religion ibid. Clergy reformed 149 Clotilda 309 Her birth and education ibid. Clodovaeus requireth her in marriage ibid. An Embassadour is dispatched to the King of Burgundie concerning the Marriage 310 Her first Request to King Clodovaeus her husband 312 How she behaved her self in the Conversion of her husband 313 She converteth her husband 315 How Clodovaeus behaved himself after Baptism 316 Communion without preparation what it is 72 What ought to be done in the day of receiving the Communion 73 Considerations for Communions ibid. Fruits of Communions ibid. General Confession of sin the beginning of spiritual life 69 Practice of ordinary Confession 70 Three sorts of Conscience from whence Impiety doth spring 26 Horrible estate of a sinfull Conscience 27 Bruitish Conscience ibid. Curious Conscience ibid. Nothing so pleasing as the house of a good Conscience 48 Constancy in Tribulation doth manifestly appear in the death of Sosia and Eleonora 411 Constantia her exceeding Clemency to the Son of Charls of Anjou being condemned to death 403 Constantine's Law 12 His greatness 233 His Nobility 235 His notable Moderation ibid. He was bred up in the Court of Diocletian 237 His first battel against Lycinius 242 His great victory 243 His first Marriage 244 The beginning of his Conversion 246 His absolute Conversion ibid. His Baptism ibid. The History of his Baptism drawn from the acts of Saint Sylvester is more easie piously to be believed than effectually proved 247 His Oration ibid. The great alteration of the world by his Oration and Example 248 His Piety Devotion and Humility 249 He made an Oration in the Assembly of Bishops 253 His Successours 259 Constantinople built 254 His death 274 Divers degrees of Contemplation 384 Contrition what it is 71 Cross of Nature what it is 52 Honour of the Cross 251 The Court full of Envie 17 Comparison between a Courtier and a Religious man 18 A Courtier frustrated of his hope how he is afflicted 352 Courage compared to the River Tygris 13 Baseness of Courage in some Noble-men 14 Crispus his death 245 Curiosity and the Description thereof 188 The whole world an enemy of Curiosity 405 Impious Curiosity pulls out both its eyes 27 Dangerous Curiosity 28 D PAins of the Damned are eternal 431 Three Reasons to prove the eternity of the Damned ibid. An excellent Conceit of Picus Mirandula concerning the punishment of the Damned 432 Strange Narration of Palladius concerning the Damned ibid. Souls of the Damned tormented by their lights ibid. Daniel and his Companions bred at Court 16 Daniel the Hermite having seen a Vision went to Constantine and spake to Eulogius 364 David his remedy against a malevolent Tongue 48 Day is precious 94 Motives to pass the Day well ibid. Every Day a Table of Life ibid. To provide in the evening for the Day to come 95 Three parts of the Day ibid. Five things to be practised in the Day ibid. Desperate
their ends by unlawfull wayes 392 XI Maxim Of craft 394 XI Example Of craft 397 XII Maxim Of revenge 399 XII Example Of reconciliation 402 XIII Maxim Of the Epicurean life 404 XIII Example The dreadfull events of sensuality 470 XIV Maxim Of sufferings 408 That the Divine Providence excellently appeareth in the afflictions of the just ibid. XIV Example Of constancy in tribulation 411. The Third Part touching the State of the other World XV. Maxim OF death 413 XV. Example OF the manner how to die well drawn from the model of our Lady 416 XVI Maxim Of the immortality of the soul 419 XVI Example Of the return of souls 423 XVII Maxim Of Purgatorie 425 XVII Example Of the apparition of souls 428 XVIII Maxim Of eternal unhappiness 430 XVIII Example Of the Day of Judgement and pains of hell 434 XIX Maxim Of sovereign Beatitude 435 XIX Example Of contentments of Beatitude 438 XX. Maxim Of Resurrection 440 The condition of the glorified bodies 441 That the Resurrection of Jesus Christ is the foundation of ours and that we should behold the sweetness and glories of it as the sources of our eternity 442 XX. Example Divers observations on the length of Life and desire of Resurrection 445 Conclusion of the MAXIMS I. OBscuritie and persecution of truth 446 II. The definition of sensuality the description division and sundry sorts of Libertines 447 III. The causes of sensuality well described by the Apostle S. Jude 448 IV. The ignorance nullity of sensuality 449 V. The effects of sensuality and punishment of the wicked 450 VI. Hydeous usage of the wicked for the sin of impiety 451 VII Advice to youth and such as too easily give way to impiety 452 VIII That the remedy of our evil consisteth in zeal towards Faith  Division of the DIARY I. ACTS OF DEVOTION II. PRACTICE OF VIRTUE III. BUSINESSE IV. RECREATION A Table of the SECTIONS THE FIRST PART Concerning Devotion SECTION Page I. THe importance of well ordering every action of the day 456 II. At Waking ibid. III. Five good actions to begin the day 457 IV. Of Adoration the first Act of Devotion ibid. V. An example of Adoration 458 VI. Of Thanksgiving the second Act of Devotion ibid. VII A pattern of Thanksgiving ibid. VIII Of offering or oblation the third Act of Devotion ibid. IX The manner of offering our selves to God 459 X. Of Contrition the fourth Act of Devotion ibid. XI A Form of Contrition ibid. XII Of Petition or Request the fifth Act of Devotion 460 XIII A Form of Petition ibid. XIV Of the time proper for spiritual reading ibid. XV. An abstract of the Doctrine of Jesus Christ to be used at the Communion ibid. XVI What we are to do at the Celebration of the blessed Sacrament and other ensuing Acts 461 XVII Devotion for the dayes of the Week ibid. XVIII Devotion for the hours of the day 462 XIX Of Confession A very necessary Act of devotion and advice thereon 463 XX. An excellent prayer of S. Augustine for this exercise taken out of a Manuscript of Cardinal Sacripandus ibid. XXI Of Communion the chiefest of all acts of devotion with a brief Advice concerning the practice of it 464 THE SECOND PART Of the Practice of Virtues I. TWelve fundamental Considerations of Virtues 464 II. Seven paths of Eternity which lead the soul to great virtues 466 III. Perfection and wherein it consisteth 467 IV. Of Virtues and their degrees ibid. V. Four orders of those that aspire to perfection 470 VI. A short way to perfection practised by the Ancients ibid. VII The means to become perfect ibid. VIII How we ought to govern our selves against Temptations Afflictions and Hinderances which we meet with in the way of virtue ibid. IX Remedies against Passions and Temptations which proceed from every vice 472 THE THIRD PART Of Business I. BUsiness of what importance 473 II. Two heads to which all business is reduced ibid. III. Of the Government of a Family ibid. IV. Of Direction in Spiritual matters 474 V. Advice for such as are in office and government ibid. THE FOURTH PART Of Recreation I. REcreation how necessary 475 II. Of the pleasures of the Taste ibid. III. Of Gaming 476 IV. Of Dancing ibid. V. Of wanton songs and plays ibid. VI. Of walking and running ibid. VII The four conditions of Recreation 477 VIII Of vicious conversation and first of impertinent ibid. IX Of vain conversation ibid. X. Of evil conversation 478 XI The Conditions of a good conversation ibid. XII Conclusion of the DIARY ibid. EjACULATIONS for the Diary 479 PRAYERS for all Persons and occasions 480 A TABLE OF ALL THE Gospels and Particulars of our SAVIOUR'S Passion mentioned in the ENTERTAINMENTS of LENT with their Moralities and Aspirations UPon the words of Genesis cap. 3. Thou art dust and to dust thou shalt return page 481 Upon the Gospel of S. Matthew cap. 6. Of hypocritical fasting 482 Upon S. Matthew the 18. Of the Centurions words O Lord I am not worthy ibid. Upon S. Matthew the 5. Wherein we are directed to pray for our enemies 483 Upon S. Matthew the the 6. Of the Apostles danger at sea 484 Upon S. Matthew the 4. Of our Saviours being tempted in the desart 485 Upon S. Matthew the 25. Of the Judgement-day 486 Upon S. Matthew the 21. Jesus drove out the buyers and sellers out of the Temple ibid. Upon S. Matthew the 12. The Pharisees demand a sign of Jesus 487 Upon S. Matthew the 15. Of the woman of Canaan 488 Upon S. John the 15. Of the probatick pond 489. Upon S. Matthew the 17. Of the transfiguration of our Lord. ibid. Upon S. John the 8. Jesus said to the Jews Where I go ye cannot come 490 Upon S. Matthew the 23. Jesus said The Pharisees sit in Moses chair believe therefore what they say 491 Upon S. Matthew the 20. The request of the wife of Zebedee for her sons James and John 492 Upon S. Luke the 16. Of the rich Glutton and poor Lazarus ibid. Upon S. Matthew the 21. Of the Master of the Vineyard whose son was killed by his Farmers 493 Upon S. Luke the 15. Of the prodigal child 494 Upon S. Luke the 11. Jesus cast out the devil which was dumb 495 Upon S. Luke the 4. Jesus is required to do miracles in his own countrey 496 Upon S Matthew the 18. If thy brother offend thee tell him of it alone ibid. Upon S. Matthew the 15. The Pharisees asked Why do thy Disciples contradict ancient Traditions 497 Upon S. Luke the 4. Jesus cured the fever of Simons mother in law 498 Upon S. John the 4. Of the Samaritan woman at Jacobs Well near Sichar 499 Upon S. John the 8. Of the woman found in adultery 500 Upon S. John the 6. Of the five fishes and two barley loaves ibid. Upon S. John the 2. Of the whipping buyers and sellers out of the Temple 501 Upon S. John the 7. The Jews marvel at the
this after he had most particularly invoked the assistance of the God of hosts he put himself on the way to cast the lot of the worlds Empire Never was there a more prosperous war It seemed the Angels of Heaven led the Emperour by the hand and that the bloud of Gratian so traiterously shed raised Furies in the Camp of Maximus The encounter of the two Armies was at Sissia where those of the contrary party accounted themselves strong having the river for bulwark which separated them from approches terrible to their treachery But the brave souldiers of Theodosius nothing amazed although already much wearied and all dusty with the long journey they had taken laying hold of occasion by the forelock speedily passed the river and furiously charged the enemy These wicked men were so astonished to see themselves surprized by such an action of courage that so soon as they had taken a view of them they turned their backs Maximus hardy for a black Overthrow of Maximus mischief and remiss in a field of battel shamefully abandoned his Army instantly the earth was covered with bodies the river filled with bloud and good success reserved a part to the clemency of the victour Theodosius pursued his fortune and grapling with Marcellinus who was no abler man than his brother defeated him returning now very fresh from the victory he bare away in the first battel And as at the same time he had notice that Maximus was retired into Aquileia he who desired to cut away the root of war went thither with his army to besiege it The justice of God fought powerfully against this Cain and the time was come in which with his bloud he must wash the spots of his crime God who in punishments holdeth some conformity with the sin would that as this miserable creature had stirred the military men against his Prince he should be betrayed by the same souldiers in whom he had all his hopes reposed It is a strange thing that these people abhorring the wickedness of this man took seized and shamefully despoiled him of the very habiliments and marks of Emperour which he had arrogated to himself then tying and binding him like a Galley-slave they presented him to Theodosius It was the greatest extremity of unhappiness which might befal him to say that in stead of measuring with his dead body the place he should have defended living with his sword in hand he was used as a King disarrayed to let him be seen by all the world as a spectacle of infamy Theodosius beholding him so humbled had some pitie of him and reproching him with his treachery demanded who caused him to enterprize this tragedy He being a coward and a flatterer answered in so humble terms that he discovered to have had this belief that his design no whit displeased his Majesty in other things excusing himself with great submission and making it appear he was a true lover of life He never had so good an opinion of his wickedness as to hope for an ordinary death yet seeing the Emperour changed colour and spake to him in a sweeter tone he was in some hope to obtain life when the enraged souldiers haled him and tore him in pieces His death Inter innumeras manus fertur ad mortem Pacatus or as others have written delivered him to the hangman who cut off his head At the same time Theodosius dispatched Count Arbogastus to seize on his son who was a young child as yet bred under the wing of his mother whom Maximus caused to be called the Victorius and had already declared him Caesar when suddenly he was taken and massacred to accompany his father The Good man his Admiral understanding the general discomfiture of affairs voluntarily drowned himself preventing the hand of a hangman which would not have failed him but all the water in the sea was not sufficient to wash away the stain of his Masters bloud from his soul since the eternal flames never can free it Behold the issue of Maximus after the rapine of four or five years Behold to what the designs of the wicked tend who under pretext of Religion seek the advancement of their temporal affairs Behold to what hypocrisies and goodly humane policies which make use of God as a mask for their wickedness are finally reduced Behold a stroke of thunder which hath left nothing on earth behind it but noise and stench O bestial and bewitched men who having so good lessons of the justice of God written with the bloud and sweat of so many miserable Sacrifices pursue still the ranks to be companions of the like misfortune S. Ambrose is much glorified for treating with this man who deceived so many others as with one excommunicate unwilling to be so much as saluted by him who vowed so many services at his feet and freely fore-telling the misery should befall him if he appeased not the celestial vengeance with a sincere repentance The seventeenth SECTION The affliction of S. Ambrose upon the death of Valentinian WHosoever hath said that Scepters are made of glass Crowns of perfumed thorns and the ways of great men are all of ice bordered with precipices hath said no less than truth It is verily a thing most strange that the golden seelings of Palaces tremble over crowned heads and that in the heat of feasts the hand of Heaven visibly on the walls figureth the sentence of their death In the mean time we desperately love the vanities of the world nothing is thought on but to set our foot on mens throats that we may the more eminently be seen to draw the bloud of this universe out of its veins to cement up the ruins and tie our selves to a miserable world which daily falleth apieces even in our own hands The poor Valentinian was restored to the Throne by Theodosius after the death of Maximus and had onely past three or four years in peacefull tranquilitie disposing himself to good according to the latitude of his own heart and giving way to be wholly governed by the Counsels of Saint Ambrose whom he heretofore had persecuted When behold him taken away at the age of one and twenty years by a horrible treason which did as it were mingle his bloud with that of his brother Gratian. The good Prince passed into France being then at Vienna near Lions accompanied by the Count Arbogastus Arbogastus a French-man by Nation who had lived till then in singular good reputation for he was a man of worth having a well-composed body a quick spirit a generous behaviour and much practice in the exercise of arms which had so dignified him that he held the prime place in the Empire to the which he had rendered good services He was very well beloved by the souldiers for besides his excellent parts he bare an irreconciliable hatred to avarice and appeared so little curious to enrich himself that being so great a Captain as he was he would be Master of no
Heaven you have out-run me to live hereafter in the bosom of your grand-father But I sorrow for these Cains and these Herods whose treacherously have murdered you and who wheresoever they are I assure my self do carrie pincers and executioners in their hearts They ought at least to hear respect to the ashes of their father They ought to have compassion on the tenderness of your bodies They ought somewhat to regard my age and the care I have had to breed them since the death of the King And had they concluded upon this massacre when they took you from my house they should have executed you in my arms I at the least had closed up your dying eyes with my fingers I had wiped away the bloud from your faces I had encouraged you to death I had received your last sighs in my bosom Alas my prettie creatures little did I think the kisses I gave you at your departure were to be the last I should afford in your life Pure and innocent souls departed from these bodies in an age wherein you were ignorant of sins which never approched your knowledges much less defiled your bodies Behold from those Palaces of stars and light your afflicted mother whom God hath as yet left on earth to give burial to your bodies Speaking this she caused them to be carried away that she might bestow them in the tomb of their grand-father where being her self personally arrived nature evicted a huge tide of tears from her constancy and caused her to say My most honoured Lord and husband who so cordially loved me in this life will you not open unto me your sacred tomb to entertain me near you Behold here your grand-children which I bring unto you little blossoms cut off in the tenderness of their age by the hands of their uncles your children and mine Most dear husband I account you thrice happie to have been transported into the other world before you saw these lamentable tragedies Were there nought but their respect towards you it ought to have restrained them But my sins alone have deserved this desolate old age to which God hath reserved me to make trial of the most sensible dolours which might ever fall into my imagination I will endure them as long as it shall please the Divine Providence who will draw this satisfaction from my sins and I with sorrow will waste my bodie that hath almost nothing left but the bark to place it in short time with yours The holy woman daily poured her self out in tears near to this sepulchre remaining there day and night as if she had been some shadow of the dead but in the end to divert her self from this imagination which was too full of affliction and that she might the more freely enjoy God she resolved wholly to leave the Court and to pass the rest of her days in the Citie of Tours near to the sepulcher of S. Martin There it was where she began to lead a life wholly celestial as one who seemed to have nothing to do with the bodies and conversation of the living It is true that great prosperities do not easily corrupt souls which have taken a good temper in the fear of God yet notwithstanding they wound and in some sort change them A little Bee sometimes goeth so long upon her honey that by much walking there she entangleth her wings So a soul yea one of those which are the most devout being continually soothed by a long sequel of good successes of the affairs of the world taketh some small flight out of it self and seeketh recreation in a smiling and delicate air which affordeth it nothing but objects of delight but so soon as adversitie hath given its blow it re-entereth into it self it foldeth it self within it self it tasteth it self it knoweth it self it findeth God in the bottom of its heart afflicted and perplexed with the revolutions of the world it raiseth it self above the ways of the Moon and the tracks of the Sun to that goodly Temple of Eternity where spirits live despoiled from these masses of flesh and bones which we drag along with us in this mortal life This is the way which the wise Clotilda took so soon as she was alienated from the Court and disentangled from affairs which she never had used but for obligation of conscience she entered into a sweet retirement where it seemed unto her that nature had not displayed the mountains and valleys the forrests and rivers but to make her a theater of the works of God She relished this retreat as Manna from Paradise and tasted this deep silence with incredible delight after so many confused clamours of the embroylments of Court It seemed unto her that she then spake to God face to face and that she saw all the pride of the earth much lower than her feet Her soul was whitened with her tears was purified in her desires and vapoured out all into God as it were through the limbeck of her ardent charity The holy Ladie who had heretofore loved to behold her self shine in the majesty of sumptuous attire to render her self the more acceptable to her husband more illustrious in the eyes of her people was clothed so modestly that her History telleth she was seen to be covered with course cloth She who heretofore was altogether sparkling with precious stones appeared now in the liverie of penance She who had endeavoured temperately to entertain a mortal beauty for the contentment of her dear husband was wholly wasted with mortifications of the flesh She who after so many victories of one of the most valiantest husbands that ever was had been led along triumphant in the chariot of glory conversed now with widows and orphans going as it were perpetually on foot were it not that the weakness of her body dispensed with her therein by the counsel of those who undertook the care of her health She who had seen all the services of a great Monarchy at her feet was then continually prostrate at the feet of the poor whom she served as the living Images of God She who had taken some care to mannage revenues as the sinews of State despoiled her self as it were from things most necessary for life to succour the necessities of the people She who had delighted to build goodly Palaces had not any affection but for Monasterics and Churches which she caused to be erected every where with so much liberality as her means would permit This divine woman was as the moon in eclipse which appeareth wholly dark on the side towards the earth but faileth not to be most radiant on that part wherewith she looketh towards Heaven So those who beheld this Princess with carnal eyes in such a state said she was eclipsed but God who in this retirement darted on her rays of glory through the cloud of the body caused her to see with eyes of Angels as a soul wholly invested with the Sun of justice As she was in the sweetness
not if an enemy he hath done according to the world what he ought If he were wise he hath not done it without reason if simple he deserves compassion Who ever bit a dogg because he was bitten by a dogg Or who ever entered into a combat of kicking with a Mule If he did it in anger let us give him leisure to come to himself and he will correct himself without our trouble to give assistance If it be a superiour or man of eminent quality let us suffer that which God hath set over us if a person of base condition why by striving against him shall we make him our equal What pleasure hath a woman whose hands are so delicate to seek to foul them with crushing flies and catterpillars Let us reflect on the carriage of humane things we are all faulty and live among errours There is no wise man whom some indiscretions escape not We shall never live content if we learn not to excuse in another what our selves are Are we not ashamed to exercise in a life so short eternal enmities Be hold death comes to separate us although we forcibly hold one another by the throat let us give a little truce to our reason light to our understanding and rest to our ashes JESUS in his last words recommended forgiveness to us moistned with his tears and bloud Go we about to tear his Testament that we afterward may pull his Images in pieces The bloud of Just Abel still bubleth on the earth and is unrevenged shall we then seek to revenge it O my God we utterly renounce it with all our hearts and are ready to seal peace with our bloud that by thy bloud thou maist sign our mercy The twelfth EXAMPLE upon the twelfth MAXIM Of Reconciliation CONSTANTIA THere is nothing more certain than that he who seeks revenge shall find the God of revenge It followeth those who pursue it and when they think to exercise it on others they feel it falling on their own heads It is onely proper to base and infamous spirits to endeavour to glut themselves with bloud and to delight in the miseries of mortals but souls the most noble are ever beautified with the rays of clemency Theophilus one of the most bloudy Emperours that Zonar Theophilus a bloudy Emperour ever ware the diadem an enemy both of heaven and earth of Saints and men as he had lived on gall would end in bloud He felt his soul on his lips flying from him and saw death near at hand which he could not escape It was time he should now yield up life to others when it appeared he could no more take it from them But this wicked man holding at that time Thephobus one of his prime Captaines imprisoned in his own Palace upon certain jealousies conceiv'd he was too able a man and well worthy of Empire commanded a little before his death to have his head cut off and causing it to be brought to his bed side he took it by the hair held it a long time in his hands so much was he pleased with this massacre then seriously beholding it he cried out It is true I shall no langer be Theophilus nor art thou any more Theophobus And many times repeating these words he yielded up his damned ghost like a ravenous wolf which passed from bloud to infernal flames although certain revelations spake of his deliverance Behold how having taken in his youth evil habits of cruelty and revenge he persevered in them to his death being besides most unfortunate and infamous in all his enterprises But contrariwise it is observed all great-ones disposed to clemency have been very glorious and most happy before God and men I could here reherse very many yet pursuing our design I rest contented with relation of a notable pardon given by a Queen to a Prince on a Friday in memory of our Saviours Passion It cannot be said but so much the greater and more outragious injuries are so much the more difficult is their pardon especially when one hath full power of revenge in his hands Now the injury whereof we Conradinus speak was the death of poor Conradinus which well considered in all its circumstances rendereth this clemency whereof I intend to speak much more admirable Know then this Prince son of the Emperour Conradus went into Italy with a huge army to defend the inheritance of his Ancestours pretending it to be unjustly usurped by the wily practises of Charls of Anjou He stood at that time in the midst of his armies sparkling like a star full of fire courage when Pope Clement the fourth seeing him pass along with so much Nobility said Alas what goodly victims are led to the Altar His valour in the tenderness of his age was as yet more innocent than wary and he had to do with a Captain whom warlike experience had made more subtile in this profession Charls being ready to give him battel resolved it He gave battle to Charls of Anjou was best to weary out this young vigour to afford him the bait of some success in appearance the more easily to draw him into his snare He gave the leading of one part of his army to a Captain of his called Alardus commanding him to bear all the royal ensings as if he had been Charls of Anjou's person Conradinus thinking he had nothing to do but to conquer what he saw before his eyes for decision of the difference advanced his troups which falling like a tempest upon the enemies quickly dispatched Alardus who was slain in the battel as some histories record carrying from all this ostent of regallity a fatal glory into a tomb This young Mars supposing the war ended by the death of his Adversary presently proclaimed victory at which time Charls of Anjou who lay hidden in a trench with the activest troups as yet very fresh came suddenly upon him He did all that for his defence which a brave spirit might in an evil fortune But his army being cut in pieces he was enforced to save himself after the loss of twelve thousand dead in the place His calamity caused him to change the habit of a King into that of a horse-keeper for his greater security so much he feared to be known by those who would decide the dint of war by his bloud He embarked His taking with his cousin Frederick of Austria to pass unto Pisa committing himself in this disguised habit to a Pilot who much importuned him for his hire He had not then about him either bread or money so that he was constrained to pull off a ring and leave it in pledge to the Pilot to assure the debt He seeing these young men of a graceful garbe and considering this jewel was not a wealth suitable to their habit doubted some trick and gave notice to the Governour a crafty man who complying with the times laid hold of the Princes and put them into the hands of the Conquerour
veins and fill the most innocent pleasures of our life with bitter sorrows what have I more to do with you My children shall be what God will They shall be but too rich when they have virtue for their portion and but too high when they shall see a true contempt of the world under their feeet God forbid that I should go about any worldly throne upon the holy Lambs bloud or that I should talk of honours when there is mention made of the holy Cross O Jesus thou father of all true glories thou shalt from henceforth be my onely crown All greatness where thou art not shall to me be onely baseness I will mount up to thee by the stairs of humility since by those thou camest down to me I will kiss the paths of Mount Calvary which thou hast sprinkled with thy precious bloud esteem the Cross above all worldly things since thou hast consecrated it by thy cruel pains and brought us forth upon that dolorous bed to the day of thy eternity The Gospel upon Thursday the second week in Lent out of S. Luke 16. Of the rich Glutton and poor Lazarus Tâ—e was a certain rich man and he was clothed wâ—th purple and silk and he fared every day magnifically And there was a certain begger called Lazarus that lay at his gate full of sores desiring to be filled of the crums that fell from the rich mans table but the dogs also came and licked his sores And it came to pass that the begger died and was carried of the Angel into Abraham's bosom And the rich man also died and he was buried in hell and lifting up his eyes when he was in torments he saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom And he crying said Father Abraham have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger into water for to cool my tongue because I am tormented in this flame And Abraham said to him Son remember that thou didst receive good things in thy life time and Lazarus likewise evil but now he is comforted and thou tormented And besides all these things between us and you there is fixed a great Chaos that they which will pass from hence to you may not neither go from thence hither And he said Then father I beseech thee that thou wouldest send him unto my fathers house for I have five brethren for to testifie unto them lest they also come into this place of torments And Abraham said to him They have Moses and the Prophets let them hear them But he said No father Abraham but if some man shall go from the dead to them they will do penance And be said to him If they hear not Moses and the Prophets neither if one shall rise again from the dead will they believe Moralities 1. A Rich man and a poor meet in this world the one loaden with treasures the other with ulcers They both meet in the other world the one in a gulf of fire the other in Abyss of delights Their ends are as different as their lives were contrary to teach us that he which shall consider rightly the end of all worldly sins and vanities will have in horrour the desire of them And as there is nothing for which goodly poor men may not hope so is there nothing which wicked rich men should not fear He that is proud of riches is proud of his burdens and chains but if he unload them upon the poor he will be eased of his pain and secured in his way 2. The life of man is a marvellous Comedie wherein the greatest part of our actions are plaid under a curtain which the Divine Providence draws over them to cover us It concealed poor Lazarus and kept him in obscurity like the fish which we never see till it be dead But Jesus draws the curtain and makes himself the historian of this good poor man shewing us the state of his soul of his body of his life and death He makes him appear in Abrahams bosom as within the temple of rest and happiness and makes him known to the rich man as to the treasurer of hells riches Are we not unworthy the name which we carry when we despise the poor and hate poverty as the greatest misery since the Son of God having once consecrated it upon the throne of his manger made it serve for his spouse during life and his bride-maid at the time of his death 3. This rich glutton dreamed and at the end of his dream found himself buried in hell All those pomps of his life were scattered in an instant as so many nocturnal illusions and his heart filled with eternal grief and torment His first misery is a sudden unexpected and hydeous change from a huge sea of delicacies into an insufferable gulf of fire where he doth acknowledge that one of the greatest vexations in misery is to have been happy Another disaster which afflicts him is to see Lazarus in Abrahams bosom to teach us that the damned are tormented by Paradise even to the very lowest part of hell and and that the most grievous of their torments is they can never forget their loss of God So saith Theophylact that Adam was placed over against the terrestrial Paradise from whence he was banished that in his very punishment he might see the happiness he had lost by his soul fault Now you must adde to the rest of his sufferings the great Chaos which like a diamond wall is between hell and Paradise together with the privation of all comfort those losses without remedy that wheel of eternity where death lasteth for ever and the end begins again without ceasing and the torments can never fail or diminish 4. Do good with those goods which God hath given you and suffer them not to make you wicked but employ your riches by the hands of virtue If gold be a child of the Sun why do you hide him from his father God chose the bosom of rich Abraham to be the Paradise of poor Lazarus So may you make the needy feel happiness by your bounty your riches shall raise you up when they are trodden under feet The Prophet saith you must sow in the field of Alms if you desire to reap in the mouth of Mercy Aspirations O God of Justice I tremble at the terrour of thy judgements Great fortunes of the world full of honour and riches are fair trees oft-times the more ready for the ax Their weight makes them apt to fall and prove the more unhappy fuel for eternal flames O Jesus father of the poor and King of the rich I most humbly beseech thee never give my heart in prey to covetousness which by loading me with land may make me forget Heaven I know that death must consume me to the very bones and I shall then possess nothing but what I have given for thee Must I then live in this world like a Griffin to hoard up much gold and
before we die let us take order for our soul by repentance and a moderate care of our bodies burial Let us order our goods by a good and charitable Testament with a discreet direction for the poor for our children and kinred to be executed by fit persons Let us put our selves into the protection of the Divine providence with a most perfect confidence and how can we then fear death being in the arms of life Aspirations O Jesus fountain of all lives in whose bosom all things are living Jesus the fruit of the dead who hast destroyed the kingdom of death why should we fear a path which thou hast so terrified with thy steps honoured with thy bloud and sanctified by thy conquests Shall we never die to so many dying things All is dead here for us and we have no life if we do not seek it from thy heart What should I care for death though he come with all those grim hideous and antick faces which men put upon him for when I see him through thy wounds thy bloud and thy venerable death I find he hath no sting at all If I shall walk in the shadow of death and a thousand terrours shall conspire against me on every side to disturb my quiet I will fear nothing being placed in the arms of thy providence O my sweet Master do but once touch the winding sheet of my body which holds down my soul so often within the sleep of death and sin Command me to arise and speak and then the light of thy morning shall never set my discourses shall be always of thy praises and my life shall be onely a contemplation of thy beautifull countenance The Gospel upon Friday the fourth week in Lent S. John 11. Of the raising of Lazarus from death ANd there was a certain sick man Lazarus of Bethania of the Town of Mâ—ry and Martha her sister And Marie vvas she that anointed our Lord vvith ointment and vviped his feet vvith her hair vvhose brother Lazarus vvas sick his sisters therefore sent to him saying Lord behold he vvhom thou lovest is sick And Jesus hearing said to them This sickness is not to death but for the glorie of God that the Son may be glorified by it And Jesus loved Martha and her sister Marie and Lazarus As he heard therefore that he vvas sick then he tarried in the same place two dayes Then after this he saith to his Disciples Let us go into Jewry again The Disciples say to him Rabbi now the Jews sought to stone thee and goest thou thither again Jesus answered Are there not twelve hours of the day If a man vvalk in the day he stumbleth not because he seeth the light of this vvorld but if he vvalk in the night he stumbleth because the light is not in him These things he said and after this he saith to them Lazarus our friend sleepeth but I go that I may raise him from sleep His Disciples therefore said Lord if he sleep he shall be safe But Jesus spake of his death and they thought that he spake of the sleeping of sleep Then therefore Jesus said to them plainly Lazarus is dead and I am glad for your sake that you may believe because I vvas not there but let us go to him Thomas therefore vvho is called Didymus said to his condisciples Let us also go to die with him Jesus therefore came and found him now having been four dayes in the grave And Bethania vvas nigh to Jerusalem about fifteen furlongs And many of the Jews vvere come to Martha and Mary to comfort them concerning their brother Martha therefore vvhen she heard that Jesus vvas come vvent to meet him but Mary sate at home Martha therefore said to Jesus Lord if thou hadst been here my brother had not died But now also I know that vvhat things soever thou shalt ask of God God vvill give thee Jesus saith to her Thy brother shall rise again Martha saith to him I know that he shall rise again in the resurrection in the last day Jesus said to her I am the resurrection and the life he that believeth in me although he be dead shall live And every one that liveth and believeth in me shall not die for ever Believest thou this She said to him Yea Lord I have believed that thou art Christ the Son of God that art come into this vvorld Moralities 1. OUr Saviour Jesus makes here a strong assault upon death to cure our infirmities at the cost of his dearest friends He suffered Lazarus whom he loved tenderly to fall into a violent sickness to teach us that the bodies of Gods favourites are not free from infirmities and that to make men Saints they must not enjoy too much health A soul is never more worthy to be a house for God than when she raiseth up the greatness of her courage the body being cast down with sickness A soul which suffers is a sacred thing All the world did touch our Saviour before his Passion The throng of people pressed upon him but after his death he would not be touched by S. Mary Maudlin because he was consecrated by his dolours 2. The good sisters dispatch a messenger not to a strange God as they do who seek for health by remedies which are a thousand times worse than the disease But they addressed themselves to the living God the God of life and death to drive away death And to recover life they were content onely to shew the wound to the faithfull friendship of the Physician without prescribing any remedies for that is better left to his providence than committed to our passion 3. He defers his cure to raise from death The delay of Gods favours is not always a refusal but sometimes a double liberality The vows of good men are paid with usury It was expedient that Lazarus should die that he might triumph over death in the triumph of Jesus Christ It is here that we should always raise high our thoughts by considering our glory in the state of resurrection he would have us believe it not onely as it is a lesson of Nature imprinted above the skies upon the plants or elements of the world and as a doctrine which many ancient Philosophers had by the light of nature but also as a belief which is fast joyned to the faith we have in the Divine providence which keeps our bodies in trust under its seal within the bosom of the earth so that no prescription of time can make laws to restrain his power having passed his word and raised up Lazarus who was but as one grain of seed in respect of all posterity 4. Jesus wept over Lazarus thereby to weep over us all Our evils were lamentable and could never sufficiently be deplored without opening a fountain of tears within heaven and within the eyes of the Son of God This is justly the river which comes from that place of all pleasure to water Paradise How could those heavenly
you love binds you fast enough to the Cross without them But do thou O Lord hold me fast to thy self by the chain of thine immensity O Lance cruel Lance Why didst thou open that most precious side Thou didst think perhaps to find there the Sons life and yet thou foundest nothing but the Mothers heart But without so much as thinking what thou didst in playing the murderer thou hast made a Sepulcher wherein I will from henceforth bury my soul When I behold these wounds of my dear Saviour I do acknowledge the strokes of my own hand I will therefore likewise engrave there my repentance I will write my conversion with an eternal Character And if I must live I will never breathe any other life but that onely which shall be produced from the death of my Jesus crucified The Gospel for Easter-day S. Mark 16. ANd when the Sabbath was past Mary Magdalene and Mary of James and Salome bought spices that coming they might anoint Jesus And very early the first of the Sabbaths they come to the Monument the Sun being now risen And they say one to another who shall roll us back the stone from the door of the Monument And looking they saw the stone rolled back For it was very great And entering into the Monument they saw a young man sitting on the right hand covered with a white Robe and they were astonied Who saith to them Be not dismayed you seck Jesus of Nazareth that was crucified he is risen he is not here behold the place where they laid him But go tell his Disciples and Peter that be goeth before you into Galilee there you shall see him as he told you Moralities 1. THe Sepulcher of Jesus becomes a fountain of life which carries in power all the glories of the highest Heaven Our Saviour riseth from thence as day out of the East and appears as triumphant in the ornaments of his beauties as he had been humbled by the excess of his mercies The rage of the Jews looseth here its power death his sting Satan his kingdom the Tomb his corruption and hell his conquest Mortality is destroyed life is illuminated all is drowned in one day of glory which comes from the glorious light of our Redeemer It is now saith Tertullian that he is revested with his Robe of Honour and is acknowledged as the eternal Priest for all eternity It is now saith S. Gregory Nazianzen that he re-assembles humane kind which was scattered so many years by the sin of one man and placeth it between the arms of his Divinity This is the Master-piece of his profound humility and I dare boldly affirm saith S. Ambrose that God had lost the whole world if this Sacred Virtue which he made so clearly shine in his beloved Son had not put him into possession of his Conquests We should all languish after this Triumphant state of the Resurrection which will make an end of all our pains and make our Crowns everlasting 2. Let us love our Jesus as the Maries did that with them we may be honoured with his visits Their love is indefatigable couragious and insatiable They had all the day walkt round about the Judgement-Hall Mount Calvary the Cross and the Sepulcher They were not wearied with all that And night had no sleep to shut up their eyes They forsook the Image of death which is sleep to find death it self and never looked after any bed except the Sepulcher of their Master They travel amongst darkness pikes launces the affrights of Arms and of the night nothing makes them afraid If there appear a difficulty to remove the stones love gives them arms They spare nothing for their Master and Saviour They are above Nicodemus and Joseph they have more exquisite perfumes for they are ready to melt and distil their hearts upon the Tomb of their Master O faithfull lovers seek no more for the living amongst the dead That cannot die for love which is the root of life 3. The Angel in form of a young man covered with a white Robe shews us that all is young and white in immortality The Resurrection hath no old age it is an age which can neither grow nor diminish These holy Maries enter alive into the sepulcher where they thought to find death but they learn news of the chiefest of lives Their faith is there confirmed their piety satisfied their promises assured and their love receives consolation Aspirations I Do not this day look toward the East O my Jesus I consider the Sepulcher it is from thence this fair Sun is risen O that thou appearest amiable dear Spouse of my soul Thy head which was covered with thorns is now crowned with a Diadem of Stars and Lights and all the glory of the highest Heaven rests upon it Thine eyes which were eclipsed in bloud have enlightened them with fires and delicious brightness which melt my heart Thy feet and hands so far as I can see are enamel'd with Rubies which after they have been the objects of mens cruelty are now become eternal marks of thy bounty O Jesus no more my wounded but my glorified Jesus where am I What do I I see I flie I swound I die I revive my self with thee I do beseech thee my most Sacred Jesus by the most triumphant of thy glories let me no more fall into the image of death nor into those appetites of smoke and earth which have so many times buried the light of my soul What have I to do with the illusions of this world I am for Heaven for Glory and for the Resurrection which I will now make bud out of my thoughts that I may hereafter possess them with a full fruition The Gospel upon Munday in Easter-week S. Luke the 24. ANd behold two of them went the same day into a Town which was the space of sixty furlongs from Jerusalem named Emmaus And they talked betwixt themselves of all those things that had chanced And it came to pass while they talked and reasoned with themselves Jesus also himself approching went with them but their eyes were held that they might not know him And he faid to them What are these communications that you confer one with another walking and are sad And one whose name was Cleophas answering said to him Art thou onely a stranger in Jerusalem and hast not known the things that have been done in it these dayes To whom he said What things And they said Concerning Jesus of Nazareth who was a man a Prophet mighty in work and word before God and all the people And how our chief Priests and Princes delivered him into condemnation of death and crucified him But we hoped that it was he that should redeem Israel And now besides all this to day is the third day since these things were done But certain women also of ours made us afraid who before it was light were at the Monument and not finding his body came saying That they saw a vision also
care for affairs to cure their sadnesse It is the counsel which the Apostle gave to the Thessalonians We 1 Thes 4. entreat you my brethren to profit more and more and to endeavour to be peacefull and that attending your affairs you take pains with your hands as we have appointed you that you by your conversation may edific those who are none of ours and that you may need nothing The fore-alledged Authour notably deduceth this Text of Saint Paul with many other which he citeth shewing that a singular remedy for Sadnesse caused by Idlenesse is the occupation of the mind and body For my part I am perswaded that by this means The serupulous many scruples might be cured wherewith divers minds are now-adayes miserably turmoiled For they no sooner enter into the great representations of Gods judgement of sinnes and of the torments of the damned but they presently bear all Hell on their shoulders The thunders of the divine Justice roars not but for them and for them the lightning-slashes they build scaffolds in their heart whereon their imaginations walk they nail themselves on voluntary Crosses and bind themselves on racks making an executioner of their mind and a continuall punishment of their life All they think in their opinion is sin all they do nought but disorder and all they expect meer malediction They never have made a good Confession they have ever forgotten some circumstance they have not well summed up the number of their sinnes the Confessour hath not well comprised what they would say they must eternally begin again and for trifles of no value they must run and weary all the tribunals of Confession and employ more time then would be needfull for a man who should manage all the great affairs of France It is a pittifull thing and verily tyrants never invented so rigorous torments which superstition witty in the fruitfulnesse of its own tortures surpasseth not It so toileth the mind that the body is extremely weakned which is seen in a face discoloured and wan a brow heavy an eye troubled a heart sobbing a countenance ghastly a losse of sleep and appetite a forbearance of all recreations and pleasures of life To speak truly these poor souls are worthy of compassion for they are perpetually in most painfull Purgatories Remedies for scrupulous minds Efficaciously to comfort them they must be put into the hands of some prudent charitable and resolute man who may enter into their heart and may be as it were the soul of their soul They must be drawn from this indigested and too frequent devotion from all those generall confessions so often reiterated they must not be permitted to accuse themselves of all the vain imaginations of their interiour but of the transgressions which passe to their exteriour They must be made to account their doubtfull sinnes for not sinnes since ordinarily the scrupulous have a mind wakefull and adverse enough to themselves not to doubt of any grievous sinne great conceits must be put into them of the goodnesse and mercy of God their courage must be raised and they instead of sinnes caused to set down in writing or otherwise their good works and the favours they have received from God It is sometimes fit to change meditations into good broths to excite them with some generous thought to stirre them up some difference or suit if it be needfull to hold them in businesse interlaced with honest repose and convenient recreation to handle them sometimes a little severely to teach them to believe and to suffer themselves to be directed and to accustome them to brave this scrupulous conscience and to vaunt to have despised whatsoever it dictateth Lastly to perswade them there one is who hath answered for their soul before God and that if there be any ill in his direction he shall be damned for them and no hurt come to them thereby To commend them for their dociblenesse when they obey to let them see the fruit of their obedience in the consolation of their soul to exhilerate them to heighten them to take them from themselves and to turn them into other personages Many have been absolutely cured by these kinds of proceedings many much sweetned For there are of them who suffer all their life time their thoughts being as devils settled in some possession which never fully forsake them but they must be let to understand the crosses ordained them in this life and that undertaking a good resolution for patience they shall multiply their merits § 3. The remedy of Sadnesses which proceed from divers accidents of humane life HEnce I discover very long dilation of pleasures daily framed in so many divers occasions which makes it sufficiently appear unto us that as of all living creatures there is not any more delicate more sensible and which is waited on with such a train as man so there is none more exposed as a Butt for all accidents which are of power to occasion trouble then he Alas what is man who maketh a crime of his birth a slavery Miseries of Humane conditions of his life and an horrour of his death To salute day-light with his teares to come into the world to be instantly crucified his mouth open to cryes and hunger to bring a barren mind a frail body enraged concupiscences to be a beast so many years then an infant to feel his misery to see his poor liberty fettered to live under the fear of rods in a perpetuall restraint of will then to enter into adolescency followed by youth which causeth loud storms of passions to beare along with them the seeds of all his miseries After that a servitude of marriage an evill encounter of wives and husbands of affairs of cares of poverty of children of slanders of quarrels affronts of contumelies of bodily pains of faintnesse of spirit of ruines of families of poison of punishments of privation of all one loveth of vexations by all one hateth an old age contemptible sick and languishing Death a hundred times invoked to fly from the miserable and to lay hold of the fortunate With all this to see abysses of fire and torments prepared for sins ordinary in worldly life Who is it that trembleth not thinking upon all these objects and who saith not that one must be either well fortified with prudence to divert his evils or have patience to bear them Note that all which may afflict us is reduced to The subjects of our afflictions the losse of goods of credit of friends of incommodities of body or mind and that our miseries which we think to be infinite are confined within three small limits For all the Sadnesses which may arise from these five sources God hath given us five remedies Five remedies for all Sadnesses Sense Reason Time Necessity and Grace There are many dolouts which grow from the senses and are likewise cured by the senses We must not think all Sadnesses have ears patiently to hear the
the day of its own brightness to consider how Providence guarding her dear Pool as the apple of her eye did reserve him for a time which made him the true Peace-maker of that nation For this effect it came to pass that Henry the Eighth The Estate of England having reigned eighteen years in schism leading a life profuse in luxury ravenous in avarice impious in Sacriledge cruel in massacres covered over with ordures bloud and Infamy did fall sick of a languishing disease which gave him the leisure to have some thoughts on the other world It is true that the affrighting images of his Crimes The death of Henry the Eighth and the shades of the dead which seemed to besiege his bed and perpetually to trouble his repose did bring many pangs and remorses to him Insomuch that having called some Bishops to his assistance he testified a desire to reconcile himself unto the Church and sought after the means thereof But they who before were terrified with the fury of his actions which were more than barbarous fearing that he spoke not that but onely to sound them and that he would not seal to their Counsels which they should suggest unto him peradventure with the effusion of their bloud did gently advise him without shewing him the indeavours and the effects of true repentance and without declaring to him the satisfactions which he ought to God and to his Neighbours for the enormities of so many Crimes He was content to erect the Church of the Cardeleirs and commanded that Mass should there be publickly celebrated which was performed to the great joy of the Catholicks which yet remained in that horrible Havock To this Church he annexed an Hospital and some other appurtenances and left for all a thousand Crowns of yearly Revenue As he perceived that his life began to abandon him he demanded the Communion which he received making a show as if he would rise himself but the Bishop told him that his weakness did excuse him from that Ceremony he made answer That if he should prostrate himself on the Earth to receive so Divine a Majesty he should not humble himself according to his duty He by his Will ordained that his Son Edward who was born of Jane Seimer should succeed him and in the case of death that Marie the Daughter of Queen Katharine should be the inheritress of the Crown and if that she should fail that his Daughter Elizabeth although a Bastard should fill her place and possess the Kingdom On the approches of death he called for wine and those who were next unto his bed did conceive that he oftentimes did repeat the word Monks and that he said as in despair I have lost all This is that which most truly can be affirmed of him for it is a very bad sign to behold a man to die in the honour of his Royal dignity and by a peaceable death who had torn in pieces JESUS CHRIST who had divided the Church into schisms who of the six Queens that he espoused had killed four of them who had massacred two Cardinals three Archbishops eighteen Bishops twelve great Earls Priests and Religious Men without number and of his people without end who had robbed all the Churches of his Kingdom destroyed the Divine worship oppressed a million of innocents and in one word who had assasinated mercy it self Howsoever he wanted not flatterers who presumed to say and write that his wisdom had given a good order to his affairs and that he happily departed this world not considering what S. dustine doth affirm That all the penitencies of those who have lived in great disorders and who onely do convert themselves at the end of their life being pressed to it by the extreamity of their disease ought to be extreamly suspected because they do not forsake their sins but their sins do forsake them It was observed indeed that at his death this King did testifie a repentance of his savage and inordinate life but we cannot observe the great and exemplary satisfactions which were due to the expiation of so many abominable sins King Antiochus made submissions of another nature and ordered notable restitutions to recompense the dammages which he had caused to the people of the Jews nevertheless he was rejected of God by reason of his bloudy life and the Gates of the Temple of mercy were shut against him for all eternity The foundation of a small Hospital which Henry caused at his death was not sufficient to recompense the injuries of so many Churches which he had pillaged nor of so much goods of his Subjects as he had forced from them seeing we know by the words of the wise man That to make a benefit Eccles 34. of the substance of the poor is to sacrifice a Son before the eyes of his Father He had by his Testament ordained many tutors to The Reign of Edward His Uncle Seimer spoileth all his Son who were able to have made as many Tyrants but Seimer Uncle by the mothers side to the deceased King gaining the favour of the principal of the Lords of the realm whom he had corrupted with mony and great presents did cause himself to be proclaimed Protector and Regent He took a great possession on little Edward the Son of Henry heir to the Crown whom he brought up in schism and Heresie against the intentions of his Father This furious man immediately began his Regency with so much insolence that he almost made the reign of Henry the Eight to be forgotten he fomented the poison which he had conceived under him he did use the Catholicks most unworthily and did cut off the head of his own Brother by a jealousy of women But as he had made himself insupportable so it came to pass that the affairs of war which he had enterprized against the French did fall out unfortunately for him Dudley one of the chiefest of the Lords drawing a party to him did accuse him of Treason and caused his head to be cut off on the same Scaffold where before he had taken off the head of his own Brother This death was followed with great fears and horrible commotions for the Regency which presently after was extinguished by the death of the young King Edward This poor Prince was rather plucked with pincers The Qualities and death of King Edward from his mothers womb than born and he could not come into the world without giving death to her who conceived him He was said to have none of the comeliest bodies He spake seven languages at fifteen years of age and in his discourse did testifie a rare knowledge of all those sciences which were most worthy of a King It seemeth that death did advance it self to ravish his spirit from his body which did awake too early and was too foreward for his age for he died in his sixteen year having not had the time throughly to understand himself and to see by what course
learning of Jesus who was never taught 502 Upon S. John the 9. Of the blind man cured by clay and spittle 503 Upon S. Luke the 7. Of the widows son raised from death to life at Naim by our Saviour 504 Upon S. John the 11. Of the raising up Lazarus from death 505 Upon S. John the 8. Of our Saviours words I am the Light of the world ibid. Upon S. John the 8. Of these words Who can accuse me of sin 506 Upon S. John the 7. Jesus said to the Pharisees You shall seek and not find me and he that is thirsty let him come to me 507 Upon S. John the 7. Jesus went not into Jury because the Jews had a purpose to take away his life  Upon S. John the 10. The Jews said If thou be the Messias tell us plainly ibid. Upon S. John the 7. Of S. Mary Magdalen's washing our Saviours feet in the Pharisees house 509 Upon S. Mary Magdalen's great repentance 510 Upon S. John the 11. The Jews said What shall we do for this man doth many miracles ibid. Upon S. John the 12. The Chief Priests thought to kill Lazarus because the miracle upon him made many follow Jesus 511 Upon S. Matthew the 21. Our Saviour came in triumph to Jerusalem a little before his passion 512 Upon S. John the 12. Mary Magdalen anointed our Saviours feet with precious ointment at which Judas repined 513 Upon S. John the 13. Of our Saviours washing the feet of his Apostles ibid. Moralities upon the garden of Mount Olivet 514 Moralities of the apprehension of Jesus 515 Aspiration upon S. Peter's passionate tears ibid. Moralities upon the Pretorian or Judgement-Hall 516 Moralities for Good Friday upon the death of Jesus Christ ibid. The Gospel for Easter day S. Mark the 16. 518 The Gospel for Easter Munday S. Luke 24. 519 The Gospel on Tuesday S. Luke 24. 520 The Gospel on Low-Sunday John 20. 521 A TABLE Of the Treatises and Sections contained in this fourth Tome OF THE HOLY COURT The First TREATISE Of the necessity of Love SECTION Page 1 AGainst the Philosophers who teach Indifferency saying We must not Love any thing 1 2 Of Love in generall 3 3 Of Amity 5 4 Of Amity between persons of different sexes 7 5 Of the entertainment of Amities 11 6 Of Sensuall Love its Essence and Source 14 7 The effects of Sensuall Love 17 8 Remedies of evil Love by precaution 18 9 Other Remedies which nearer hand oppose this Passion 19 10 Of Celestiall Amities 22 11 Of the Nature of Divine Love Its Essence Qualities Effects and Degrees 25 12 The practise of Divine Love 27 13 A notable Example of Worldly Love changed into Divine Charity 29 The Second TREATISE Of Hatred 1 ITs Essence Degrees and Differencies 32 2 That the consideration of the goodnesse of the heart of God should dry up the root of the Hatred of a neighbour 33 3 That Jesus grounded all the greatest Mysteries of our Religion upon union to cure Hatred 34 4 Of three notable sources of Hatred and of politick remedies proper for its cure 35 5 Naturall and Morall Remedies against this passion 37 6 Of the profit may be drawn from Hatred and the course we must hold to be freed from the danger of being Hated ibid. The Third TREATISE Of Desire 1 WHether we should desire any thing in the world the Nature the Diversitie and Description of Desire 39 2 The Disorders which spring from inordinate Desires and namely from Curiosity and Inconstancy 40 3 The foure sources out of which are ill rectified Desires 42 4 That the tranquility of Divine Essence for which we are created ought to rule the unquietnesse of our Desires ibid. 5 That we should desire by the imitation of Jesus Christ 43 6 The Condemnation of the evil Desires of the World and the means how to divert them 44 THE FOURTH TREATISE Of Aversion SECTION Page 1 THe Nature and Qualities thereof 44 2 The Sweetnesses and Harmonies of the heart of God shew us the way how to cure our Aversions ibid. 3 The consideration of the indulgent favours of Jesus Christ towards humane nature is a powerfull remedy against the humour of disdain 47 4 The Conclusion against disdain ibid. THE FIFTH TREATISE Of Delectation 1 THat Delectation is the scope of Nature It s Essence Objects and differences 48 2 The basenesse and giddinesse of Sensuall voluptuousnesse 49 3 The Sublimity Beauty and Sweetnesse of heavenly delights ibid. 4 The Paradise and Joyes of our Lord when he was on earth 50 5 Against the stupidity and cruelty of worldly pleasures 51 6 The Art of Joy and the means how to live contented in this world ibid. THE SIXTH TREATISE Of Sadnesse 1 ITs Description Qualities and the diversity of those who are turmoiled with this Passion 54 2 Humane Remedies of Sadnesse and how that is to be cured which proceedeth from Melancholy and Pusillanimitie 55 3 The remedie of Sadnesses which proceeds from divers accidents of humane life 56 4 That the Contemplation of the Divine patience and tranquility serve for remedie for our temptations 58 5 That the great temper of our Saviours soul in most horrible sufferings is a powerfull lenitive against our dolours 59 6 Advise to impatient soules 60 THE SEVENTH TREATISE Of Hope 1 THe Description Essence and appurtenances thereof 61 2 That one cannot live in the world without Hope and what course is to be held for the well ordering of it ibid 3 That God not being capable of Hope serveth as an Eternall Basis to all good Hopes 63 THE EIGHTH TREATISE Of Despair 1 ITs Nature Composition and effects 65 2 The causes of Despair and the condition of those who are most subject to this Passion 66 3 Humane Remedies of Despair 67 4 Divine Remedies 68 5 The Examples which Jesus Christ gave us in the abysse of his sufferings are most efficacious against pusillanimity 69 6 Encouragement to good Hopes ibid. THE NINTH TREATISE Of Fear 1 THe Definition the Description the Causes and effects thereof 70 2 Of the vexations of Fear Its differences and Remedies 71 3 Against the Fear of the accidents of humane life 72 4 That the Contemplation of the power and the Bounty of God ought to take away all our Fears 73 5 That the Example of a God-man ought to instruct and assure us against affrightments of this life 74 THE TENTH TREATISE Of Boldnesse SECTION Page 2 THe Picture and Essence of it 76 2 The diversitie of Boldnesse ibid 3 Of laudable Boldnesse 77 4 That true Boldnesse is inspired by God and that we must wholly depend on him to become Bold 78 5 That Jesus hath given us many pledges of a sublime confidence to strengthen our Courage 79 THE ELEVENTH TREATISE Of Shamefactnesse 1 THe decencie of Shamefac'tnesse It s nature and definition 81 2 Divers kinds of Shamefac'tnesse ibid. 3 The Excellency of Shamefac'tnesse and the uglinesse of Impudency 83 4 Of Reverence
glory Do you refuse me A truth doth not gall your ears when you have understood and diligently considered it if it please you not you may reject it But I beseech God the Father of light and mercy may open your heart and eyes to resolve you herein accordingly Importance of the choise of religion matters very considerable to his holy will It is a matter of no small importance to handle the affairs of salvation We well know we have an immortal soul which shall survive to all eternity either in the bosom of the glory of Heaven or in the flames of the damned we well know by what gate it entered into this life and where it at this present sojourneth but we understand not by what passage when or how it shall issue out We have nothing here more certain than death nothing more uncertain than the hour and manner nothing so assured in the other world as to find there a judgement of God a Heaven for virtues a hell for sin nothing so doubtful as the determinate sentence of your process nothing so absolutely confirmed as that one cannot be saved without true Religion and Truth worthy to be embraced De fide ad petrum Diacon c. 48. Qui extra Ecclesiam Catholicam praesentem finiunt vitam in ignem aeternum ituros Quantascumquae elemosynas fecerint si pro Christi nomine etiam sanguinem fuderint nullatenus posse salvari nothing so controverted by the malice of Satan as the verity of religion Notwithstanding if you erre in the choice you make ship-wrack before you weigh anchour and so long as you remain in errour nothing can save nor deliver you from eternal damnation For it is a belief of all Christianitie witnessed by Saint Fulgentius in the book which he composed of faith that all those who shut up the course of their life out of the true Church although they have filled the world with hospitals and shed their bloud for the name of Jesus Christ cannot free themselves from the eternal torments of hel See wretched soul if at this dreadful hour of death and Gods judgement you find your self miserably deceived by your Ministers under the pretext of Scripture whither will you have recourse Verily whatsoever is said to you you well know in your conscience that dying in the faith of S. Lewis S Bernard S. Francis who have directly opposed yours you have all the possible assurance of a good religion nor do I thinke you have so laid downe all shame that you condemn so great and illustrious personages You are not ignorant that all innovation is dangerous Assurance of the Catholick but principally in matter of faith They that follow the main current and generality of a religion ancient and well-grounded cannot perish but by falling from heaven cannot stumble in their belief but by intombing themselves in the ruins of Christianitie which God neither can nor will suffer to be lost according to his promises They which adhere to novelties sail in a sea of monsters and tempests without pole-star without rudder without Pilot without any other guid than their own judgement which cannot choose but very easily deceive them If there be flames in hell employed in the punishment Danger of noveltie in religion of sinfull souls there is no doubt but they shall chiefly be inflicted on them who have laboured to rend the garment of Jesus Christ to break the connexions and seames of the Church to strike at the lawfull powers ordained by God to throw disorder fire and bloud into the state of their Prince What horrour will it be in this great and general day when you shall see your innocencie by association of religion engaged to the enormitie of so many disastrous crimes which you must expiate with paines which shall have no other limits but eternity Enter again into your self a little and afford so much patience as to know your self For if you desire to proceed with all security I advise you three things First to have a spirit throughly discharged of Three things necessary to dispose ones self in religion First to avoid prejudice Mirrour of Smyrna Pausanias anticipations bold animofities and apprehensions which raise mistes even among the most resplendent lights of truth It is said that heretofore at Smyrna a citie of Greece there was a false mirrour kept in the Temple which did represent the most beautiful and amiable faces with notable deformitie and on the contrary gave to creatures ugly and misshapen a lustre of borrowed and wholly imaginarie beautie Your Ministers in the false glasse of their Doctrine represent the Romane Church to you this lovely and chaste spouse of Heaven as a monster composed of all sorts of abominations you have your ears perpetually beaten with the seven hills of Rome with Antichrist with the horned beast with Idolatries and superstitions which they maliciously obtrude to us If you remaine fixed in these perswasions how can you doe other but hate that which you know not On the contrary you are made to behold a sect which you well know to have been begun by a general revolt from superiour powers by scandalous sonsualities and an infinite number of cruelties as a celestiall Doctrine beautifull radiant under the pretext of Scripture which is a meer subject to fancie and considering it under this veyle you love it and as Nero who through an emerald beheld the flames and bloud of his countrie and found it a pleasant mirrour so whilest you view the pretended Religion under a veyle all seemeth beautiful and goodly to you Take away for one hour at least this partiall prejudicate spirit drunke with passion and take another calme reposed settled which hath an indifferent care for each part The second thing is you must not too much Second disposition to avoid the sprâ—it of quarrels and eager contentions Indeflexo motis adversandi studium persistit ubi non rationi voluntas subijcitur sed his quae studemus dectrinam coaptamus Hilarius 10. de Tri. Truth in the calm Non in commotione Dominuâ— In sibilo aurae tenuis Reg. 3. 19. Omnes disputare malunt quam vivere Sence A singular axiom of Chrysol and Tertullian Qui sidem quaerit rationem non quaerit Quid A thenis Hierosolymis Quid Academiae Ecclesiae Nostra institutio de porticu Salomonis est quae monet Deum in simplicitate cordis querendum Chrys serm 58. Tertul. de prescrip stick upon petty curiosities of a thousand controversies and unprofitable disputations Truth ordinarily is therein ill handled under the shadow of cherishing it it is haled this way and that way with such boldnesse that it seemeth every one would dis-member it and each man take his share away with him After so many stabs and stocâ—adoes on this side and that side no other fruit is derived but yea and no and the soul oft-times findeth it selfe as much void of peace and reason as
hypocrisie its body a spunge of ordures its hands the tallons of harpies and finally it seemeth to have no other faith but infidelity no law but its passion no other God but its own belly What contentment can it be to live with such a monster VII If there be pleasures in life they do nothing 7 Quality of worldly pleasures but a little slightly overflow the heart with a superficial delectation Sadnesse diveth into the bottom of our soul and when it is there you will say it hath feet of lead never to forsake the place but pleasure doth sooth us onely in the outward parts of the skin all her sweet waters run down with full speed into the salt sea Behold wherefore S. Augustin August Conf. l. 6. cap. 5. said when any prosperity presented it self to his eyes he durst not touch it He looked upon pleasure as on a fleeting bird which seemeth as it were ready to be seyzed and flieth away as soon as ever she sees her self almost surprized VIII Pleasures are born in the senses and like 8 Their shortness abortives are consumed in their birth Their desires are full of disturbances their access is of violent forced and turbulent agitations Their satiety is farced with shame and repentance They pass away after they have wearied the body and leave it like a bunch of grapes the juice whereof is extracted by the press as saith S. Bernard They hold it a goodly Bern. Serm. 10. in Cantic Nulla maior voluptas quam voluptatis fastidium Turtul de syect 9. The end matter to extend their fulness They must end with life and it is a great hazard if during life it self they serve not their host for an executioner I see no greater pleasure in the world than the contempt of pleasure IX Man which wasteth his time in pleasures when they are slipped away much like waters engendred by a storm findeth himself abandoned as a pilgrim dispoiled by a thief So many golden harvests which time presented to him are passed and the rust of a heavy age furnisheth him with nothing but thorns sorrows to have done ill and inabilities of doing well what then remains to be said but that which the miserable King said who gave his scepter for a glass of water Alas must I for so short Lysimachus a pleasure loose so great a Kingdom X. Evil always beareth sorrow behind it but not 10. Difficulty of penance true penance It is a most particular favour of God to have time to bemoan the sins of our passed life and to take occasion by the fore-lock Many are packed away into the other world without ever having thought of their passage and such suppose they shall have many tears at their death who shall not have one good act of repentance They bewail the sins which forsake them and not God whom they have lost True contrition is a hard piece of work Facilius inveni qui innocentiam servarent quam qui congruè poenitentiam agerent Ambr. l. de unica poenitent c. 10. 11. Death How can he merit it who willingly hath ever demerited XI In the mean time death cometh apace it expecteth us at all hours in all places and you cannot attend it one sole minute so much this thought displeaseth you The decrees thereof are more clear and perspicuous than if they were written with the beams of the Sun and yet we cannot read them His trumpet soundeth perpetually more intelligibly than thunder and we understand it not It is no wonder that David in the 48. Psalm calleth it an Psal 48. 5. According to the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aenigma every one beholdeth the table and few knoweth the sense of it Notwithstanding it is a case concluded we must take a long fare-well from all things which appertain to life that can be extended no further than life it self and it is a case resolved that serpents and worms must be inherited in a house of darkness It is a goodly lesson whosoever can well learn it To know it well once it must every day be studied Nothing is seen every where but watches clocks and dyals some of gold some of silver and others enchased with precious stones They advertise us of all the hours but that which should be our last and since they cannot strike that hour we must make it sound in our conscience At the very instant when you read this a thousand and a thousand perhaps of souls unloosened from the body are presented before the Tribunal of God what would you do if you were presently to bear them company There is but one word Timely despise Diordorus apud S. Maximum serm Omnia ista contemnito quibus solutus corpore non indigebis 12. What followeth death Apoc. 14 Tertul. de anima c. 53. Hug. l. 4. de anima in your bodie the things of which you shall have no need out of your bodie XII Your soul shall go out and of all the attendants of life shall have none but good and bad by her sides If she be surprized in mortal sin hell shall be her share hell the great lake of the anger of God hell the common sewer of all the ordures of the world hell the store-house of eternal fire hell a depth without bottom where there is no evil but we may expect nor good which may be hoped Behold the twelve considerations which this most worthy man used to direct himself in the course of a virtuous life and they so far had prevailed upon his soul that he resolved after he had finished certain works which he then had in hand to distribute all his goods among the poor and go bare-foot through the cities towns and villages carrying a Crucifix in his hand to preach the cross the blessings of the other life employing his whole talent which God had given him to his service But death prevented him The seventh SECTION Twelve Maxims of Wisdom which arise from the twelve precedent Considerations FRom these Considerations twelve goodly Maxims Often examine your life by these maxims of wisdom arise greatly necessary for any who would enjoy true happiness I. The first is to give to every thing its estimation 1. Cood value since the beginning of our unhappiness proceedeth from a false value which we set upon creatures It marvellously importeth to estimate every thing according to its worth That good man Epictetus said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 more than one would think when he gave this advise My friend if thou lovest a pot remember thy self to be a pot For want of the knowledge of the price of what we love we put God under the Altar and vice above to allow it the best part of the incense II. For this cause it is necessary daily to endeavour 2. Light of mind in the choice Osee 12. Ballance of Chanaan to enfranchize our selves from the opinions of the world and to use
with lawful and necessary circumstances touch the motive without extravagancies and the intention which hath excited us to do it and continuance of the sin to represent the state of the soul to the life Yet for all this you must not so much think upon this preparation nor the means to unfold your self that thereby the principal part of penance be neglected which is contrition This contrition is a sorrow to have offended God Contrition not principally for the deformity of sin and the fear of punishment for that is nothing but attrition but for that this sin is committed against God infinitely good and infinitely amiable and for that one maketh a firm resolution to be confessed and to preserve himself from sin in time to come Behold the point of contrition which to attain you must seriously and advisedly represent to your self the greatness goodness power wisdom justice love mercy benefits of God opposed to your malice weakness Hostility of sin baseness ignorance presumption misery ingratitude and well figure to your self the hostility of mortal sin to obtain an eternal detestation against it To consider how it ruineth riches honours credit reputation posterity and Empires That it soyleth the glory of an innocent life and leaveth a character of infamy That it overthroweth bodies health good grace that it openeth the gates of sudden and unexpected death That it maketh man blind dumb deaf wicked senseless stupid savage and many times furious and enraged by the remorse of conscience That it dispoileth a soul of all the graces beauties excellencies priviledges love favour of God hope of life and salvation That it killeth it and rendeth it more cruelly than a tiger or panther That a life of God was needful to take away such a blemish and that if a soul be spotted at the hour of death an eternity of flames cannot deliver it and such like In sins which seem least you shall always have great cause of contrition when the benefits of God shall be represented unto you which he particularly and personally hath conferred upon us opposed to our childishness of heart tepidity slackness infidelity negligence ingratitude As for the proceeding Proceeding in confession to confession the preparatives being well made it is needful to choose a Confessour who hath four qualities jurisdiction reputation knowledge discretion and after you have confessed to him entirely faithfully sincerely to accomplish the penance enjoyned you with obedience promptness and punctual diligence afterward to take a new spirit to resist temptations and to busie your self in good works with more courage than ever The eleventh SECTION The Practice of Examen THe practice of Confession is made more easie Necessity of examen by the examen of conscience as well general as particular Think not too much is required of your profession if there be speech used to you of the examen of conscience Not onely the Philosophers have made it as Pythagoras Seneca Plutarch but poor barbarous Indians by the relation of Apulejus took an account every evening of the good and evil they had done each day This is it which is required of you Prepare daily a little Consistory of justice in your conscience see what passeth within your self acknowledge your defects and amend them to prevent the justice of God It is said the eclipse of the Sun causeth the earthquake and the eclipse of reason by ignorance of the interiour man produceth great disorders in the Culielm Pariâ—iens c. 12. Sacro poenite In hoc Tribunali sedet misericordia assidet autem justitia ubi quicquid contra poenitentem inscribit justitia totum delet misericordia acumen styli velut â—igens in corde poenitentis soul For the wicked spirit saith Procopius upon the first of Kings endeavoureth to use us as did the Ammonites the inhabitants of Jabes They seek to pull out our right eye and to bereave us of the sight of our selves to bury us in great and deep confusions But let us make use of all the lights which God hath given us to cast reflections into the bottom of our thoughts The conscience is an admirable Tribunal where Justice pleadeth and Mercie sentenceth All that which the me writes the other blotteth out putting as it were the point of the pen upon the heart of the penitent A good Interpreter of the Scripture relateth the Delrio ser de Conscientia vision of a wise man who on a day sought for the house of conscience and it seemed to him he beheld a Citie built with goodly architecture beautified with five gates which had as many narrow paths ending in one larger way Upon this way stood a Register who took the names of all passengers to record them Beyond that he saw two Tribunes attended by a great concourse of the common people who governed the inferiour parts of the Citie above was beheld a Cittadel wherein a great Princess commanded who had a scepter in hand and crown on her head By her side was a Ladie very ancient and venerable who in one hand held a torch with which she lighted this Queen and in the other a goad wherewith she pricked her if she governed not according to her direction The wise man amazed asked in his heart what all this train meant and he heard a voice within which said unto him Behold thy self ere thou art aware arrived at the house of conscience which thou â—oughtest for These five gates thou seest are the five senses The way where they all meet is common sense All the people which enter in by heaps are the objects of the creatures of the world which first touch our senses before they pass into the soul This Register who writeth down the names is imagination that keeps record of all things These two Tribunes are the two appetites the one is called the appetite of concupiscence which is ever in search after its desires the other the appetite of anger extreamly striving to strike at all obstacles which oppose its good either real or pretended This mass of people thou seest are the passions which make ill work in the inferiour parts of the Citie This Princess in the Cittadel with crown and scepter is reason The ancient and venerable Ladie by her side is conscience She hath a torch to shew the good way and the goad to prick those that wander In a word if Dictamen rationis spiritus corrector paedagogus animae S. Thom. 1. p. q. 79. thou desirest to know what conscience is it is a sovereign notice of good and ill which God impresseth on our hearts as with a hot iron and is very hard to be taken off Happy he who often visiteth this interiour house God hath given him and pondereth all his thoughts his words and actions to adopt them to the measures of the eternal law You know a general examen hath five parts Parts Thanksgiving invocation discussion petition resolution In thanksgiving we thank God
Religion and justice according to their power and in case of corruption they wished upon themselves by way of execration the trembling of Cain the leaprosy of Gehezi the lot of Judas and all that which may astonishman V. To have ears always open and bowels of compassion ready to hear the complaints of widdows orphans afflicted and forlorn people who endure all the torments of the world to break through the press to manifest their miseries The Emperor Trajan hath done many brave and eminent Notable act of Trajan acts but none of his atchievements were so resplendent as the justice he readily afforded to a virtuous widdow Her son had been slain and she not being able to obtain justice had the courage to accost the Emperour in the midst of the Citty of Rome amongst an infinit number of people and flourishing legions which followed him to the wars he was then going to take in Valachia At her request Trajan notwithstanding he was much pressed with the affairs of a most urgent war alighted from his horse heard her comforted her and did her justice This afterward was represented on Trajans pillar as one of his greatest wonders And it is said he was highly commended and admired by S. Gregory the great VI. To doe good and to execute justice with expedition not stretching the leather with the teeth as said the good King Lewis the 12. taxing the delayes reverences and neglects of Judges The Chronicle Strange act of Theodorick Chron. Alexandrinum of Alexandria relateth an admirable passage of Theodor. King of the Romans to whom a widdow named Juvenalis made her complaint that a suit of hers in Court was drawn at length for the space of three years which might have been dispatched in few days The King demanded who were her Judges she named them they were sent unto and commanded to give all the speedy expedition that was possible to this womans cause which they did and in two days determined it to her good liking Which done Theodorick called them again they supposing it had been to applaud their excellent justice now done hastned thither full of joy Being come the King asked of them How commeth it to pass you have performed that in two days which had not been done in three years They answered The recommendation of your Majesty made us finish it How replieth the King When I put you into office did I not consign all pleas and proceedings to you and particularly those of widdows You deserve death so to have spun out a business in length three years space which required but two days dispatch And at that instant commanded their heads to be cut off The good Juvenalis was so strucken with admiration for such an act that she came to the King to render thanks and to offer candles to him as to a holy Saint And would to God Theodorick had still persevered in such integrity VII Not to be contented with conscience alone but to have science also well to examine matters and to observe the formes of right Not to cause any body to be punished or tormented by precipitation without sufficient poofs It is a lamentable thing when through a desperat hast an innocent is bereaved of that in a moment which never can be again restored although he should live an hundred years But it is to be wickedly unjust when that is also confirmed by malice and cruelty which Mad cruelty of Piso Senec. de ira lib. 1. c. 16. was begun by mistaking As happend to Piso who rashly condemned a poor soldier to death wrongfully suspected of the murder of his living companion As the innocent man had now his neck under the sword of his executioner this camerado of his supposed to be slain by him appeared living and in health The Centurion who attended the execution brought them both back again with much concourse of people to present them to Piso This furious judge enragedly ashamed of the first sentence which he overhastily had given commanded they should both be put to death and that also the Centurion should be added to them One because he was already condemned although guiltless another because he was thought to be dead and the third because he would preserve in the Judge wisedome and innocency This Barbarian shortly after paid for this fault joyned with many others by a merveilous turn of Fortune and a most shameful death VIII To be more inclining alwaies to mercy than severity yet notwithstanding well to take heed least this mercy degenerate into a softnesse very prejudicial to the maintainance of justice Also to visit prisons to see what is fit to be done and not suffer prisoners to consume in a tedious and irksome misery without true cause of delay IX To extend the hand that honest men may be maintained protected recompenced for services done to the Common-wealth and Malefactours punished and used according to their demerits since reward and punishment as Democritus said are the two Divinities of Weals-publike and the two poles on which the affairs of the world do move X. As for the justice of particular men it is to Justice of particulars obey Laws and Magistrates keep peace and concord among their neighbours To wrong no man in his honour body goods allies reputation nor any thing that appertaineth to another either by word deed or by sign XI To be true in words loyal in promises faithful in proceedings to handle the affaires which one manageth roundly and freely without dissimulation deceit treachery to avoid usury and all unjust gain to pay debts not to withhold servants or hirelings wages to be ready to satisfie those whom one hath offended often to beg of God that in the day of his great Assises we may appear in the robe of Justice to expect with all confidence the benigne breath of his mercies The twentie ninth SECTION Practise of Gratitude ONe Of the noblest acts of justice is the acknowledgement Benoficia pulveri si quid mali patimur marmori insculpimus A singular saying of Sir Thomas More Amb. l. 6. Hexan c. 4. Tolies dog of a benefit A virtue very rare in this Age where as well Sir Thomas More said good turns are written in sand and injuries and revenges on marble Saint Ambrose assureth us it was not without mystery young Toby took a dog for the companion of his voyage God would he should learn acknowledgement of benefits in the nature of this creature the Hierogliph of gratitude The acts of acknowledgement are I. Not to deny dissemble nor ever to forget a benefit Gratitude of Hebrews 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Joseph Anti. l. 4. but to acknowledge it retain it praise extol it as the ancient Hebrews did who set marks on their armes and ensigns at their gates for the remembrance and acknowledgement of a benefit received It is a great shame to be ashamed to owe a benefit and to avoid the sight of a benefactor as if his presence upbraided either
much as businesses of that nature would permit But her mother Alexandra touched to the quick to behold her self amongst so many spies she who was ever desirous to converse and live with all royall liberty resolved to play at double or quit to break the guyves of specious servitude or yield her neck to Herods sword if it should come to pass her calamity transported her into such extremity What doth she Cleopatra that Queen who had filled the world with her fame was then in Aegypt and naturally hated Herod as well for his barbarous disposition as for particular interests of her own person For she knew he much had entermedled in her affairs and given Mark Anthony counsel to forsake her yea to kill her This Tyrant was so accustomed to say Kill that he easily advised others to use the same medicine which was with him to his own maladies frequent It is a strange thing that Cleopatra one day passing through Judea he resolved to send her into the other world thinking therewith to gratifie Mark Anthony but was disswaded by his friends saying it was too audacious to attempt and able for ever to ruin his fortune The design was never published But Cleopatra had cause enough besides to hate Herod which much emboldened Alexandra to write to her in such like terms ALEXANDRA to the Queen CLEOPATRA Health Madame SInce God hath given you leave to be born the most Letter of Alexandra to Cleopatra accomplished Queen in all qualities it is fit your Greatness serve as a sanctuary for the innocent and an Altar for the miserable The wretched Alexandra who hath much innocency void of support and too many calamities without comfort casteth her self into the arms of your Majesty not to give her a scepter but to secure the life of her and her son the most precious pledge which remaineth of heavens benignity Your Majesty is not ignorant that fortune having made me the daughter and mother of a King Herod hath reduced me to the condition of a servant I am not ambitious to recount my sufferings which I had rather dissemble but whatsoever a slave can endure in a gally I bear in a Kingdom through the violence of a son in law who having stoln the diadem from my children would also deprive them of life We are perpetually among spies sharp knives and black apprehensions of death which would less hurt us if it were more sudden Stretch out a hand of assistance to the afflicted and afford us some petty nook in your Kingdom till the storm be over-blown and that we may see some sparkles of hope to glimmer in your affairs Glory thereby shall abide with you and with us everlasting gratitude Cleopatra having received these letters made a ready answer and invited her to hasten speedily into Aegypt with her son protesting she should esteem it an unspeakable glory to serve as a sanctuary and refuge for the affliction of such a Princess Resolution of departure is taken but the execution is a hard task The poor Io knows not how to withdraw Enterprise of Alexandra her self from this many-eyed Argus In the end as the wit of woman is inventive especially in matters that concern their proper interests she without discovering ought to any one no not to her daughter Mariamne fearing least her nature too mild should advise her rarher to rest in the lists of patience than to attempt ways so perilous she I say onely advising with her own passion in this business caused two beers to be made a matter of ill presage to put her self and son into thinking by this means to elude the diligence of the Guard and so to be carried to the sea where a ship attended her and by this way save her life in the power of death But by ill hap a servant of hers named Aesop who was one of those that were appointed to carry the beers going to visit one called Sabbion a friend to the house of Alexandra let some words fall of the intention of his Mistress as thinking to to have spoken to a faithful and secret friend of hers The perfidious Sabbion had no sooner wrung the worm out of this servants nose but he hasteth to open all to Herod supposing it was a very fit opportunity to work his reconciliation he having a long time been suspected and accounted to be of Alexandras faction Herod after he heard this news wanted not spies and centinels The poor Lady with her son is surprised upon the beers drawn out of the sepulcher of the dead to return to the living ashamed and disgraced that her Comedy was no better acted little considering that after her personated part had failed she could nothing at all pretend to life Herod notwithstanding whether he feared the great credit Cleopatra had or whether he would not wholy affright Alexandra thereby with the more facility to oppress her contained himself in the ordinary dissimulation of his own nature without speaking one sole word unto her Although very well in the face of this painted hypocrisie was seen that the clouds were gathered together to make a loud Thunder-crack raise an unresistable tempest The caytive after he had given so many deaths Pitiful death of young Aristobulus in the horrour and affrightment of arms would inflict one even as it were in sport upon a fair sommers day Being at dinner at the house of the miserable Alexandra feigning to have buried in deep oblivion all what was past saith that in favour of youth he this day would play the young man and invite the High-Priest Aristobulus his brother in law to play at tennis with him or some other like exercise The sides were made the elumination was enkindled The young Prince hot and eager played not long but he became all on a water as at that time happened to many other Lords and Gentlemen Behold they all run to the rivers which were near this place of pleasure where they dined Herod who knew the custom of Aristobulus and well foresaw he would not fail to cast himself into these cold baths suborneth base villains who under the shew of pastime should force him to drink more than he would All succeeded as this traiterous wretch had premeditated Aristobulus seeing the other in the water uncloathed himself quickly and bare them company There was no cause why he should swim sport and dally upon this element ever dangerous although less faithless than Herod The poor sacrifice skipped up and down not knowing the unhappiness which attended him But the accursed executioners remembred it well For spying their time in this fatal sport they smothered the poor High-priest under the waters in the eighteenth year of his age and the first of his High-priesthood This bright Sun which rose with such splendour and applause did set in the waves never to appear again but with horrid wanness of death on his discoloured visage Humane hopes where are you True dreams of Vanity and
trust to be planted by the hand of God to serve as a prop for the house of God to be the seat of glory for the Lord of Hosts to carry the moveables riches and greatness of the Church on his shoulders Finally for a third reason to conduct the Nobility to Ecclesiastical dignities is to bring it into its house All things willingly return to their source The waters cease not to glide along to render themselves to the Ocean The rays of the Sun touch the earth not forsaking their star the branches of the tree offer the homage of their verdure leaves and fruit to the root he goeth well that hasteneth to his beginning Now so it is that the greatest part of Church endowments came from the Nobility who then despoiled themselves to cover the Altars and now many unveil the Altars to cloath themselves If you O Noblemen desire to enjoy the patrimony which your Ancestours have left to the Church you ought not to seek it by unlawfull mischievous and tyrannical ways but by means proportionable to the intentions of those who laid those rich foundations And what intentions had they but to cut the trees Ezech. 17. Quercus Basan dolata in remos navis Tyri divites saeculi Ecclesiae appliciti Hieron super Ezech. of Basan to make oars for the vessel of S. Peter but to lay their wealth at the feet of God who according to the Prophet made himself a foot-step of Saphirs to serve as a ladder for glory but to entertain on earth an image of the Heavenly Jerusalem to grant to the Church men of science and conscience men of courage and fidelity for the ornament support and maintenance thereof If you approach thither with such an intention I am of opinion the gates ought to be opened unto you and that you should enter into your self to govern the house of Jesus Christ and not destroy it We have thanks be given to God a great King all whose inclinations dispose him to goodness as lines to the center as much love as he hath for justice so much zeal hath he for the glory of Altars As God is pleased to sow the stars on the azure of the firmament so hath he a sensible delight to furnish the Church with good Prelates because they are the stars of the earth Merit under him is in possession of good hopes and hope is not far distant to be consummate in fruition He is pleased to gratifie the Nobility with the goods of the Church but he will his intention be seconded by the merit of those that shall enjoy them Take the ways of wisdom and virtue to enter into your inheritance which ever are most assured and the most honourable The time hath been when one must as it were have done evil to receive good if now good be offered to those who do it who would willingly be vitious and sow crimes to reap miseries The second SECTION That the Nobility should not aspire to Ecclesiastical offices but by lawfull ways PRophane Lucian spake truer than he thought Lucian in Jov. Trag. when he feigned Gentilism was filled with gods whereof some were made of wood and stone subsisting by the prerogative of antiquity which age and time gave them the other much more lately formed were of gold and silver resenting the profuse prodigality of the latter Ages This caused a divorce in the Temples the gods of earth were still willing to hold their ranks shewing besides the antiquity of their original that they were framed by the confident hands of admirable work-men and had lineaments excellently polished The gods of gold and silver dignified by the riches of the stuff of which they were composed spake proudly and needs would have priority since the mettal whereof they were made transcended much in the estimation of men The matter was put into deliberation in the great Parliament of Olympus and the golden gods carried it not by merit but by authority of their riches Should this scoffing spirit be raised again in these our days to make a Satyre on the manners of these times he could not be better fitted For to speak not universally of all Ecclesiastical Nobles since thanks be to God there are many who most happily have linked to Nobility all the other qualities requisite to their condition but considering in gross the disorder and corruption we may well say the gods of gold at this day have the upper hand We heretofore saw divers spiritual men extracted from low condition who arrived to dignities by the degrees of labour integrity knowledge and were finally crozier'd and mytered by the strength of much merit These men appeared in the Church of God as those ancient Statues made by the hand of Policletes Phidias and Sysippus there was not a lineament in them which spake not But when gold and silver began to sway more than ever the rich allured with the wealth of the Church brake a way through by the help of contentions authority and command which silver gave them over the courses of human things they maugre industrie and virtue have made golden gods which banish as it were all the gods of the earth notwithstanding the excellent forms and all the gifts of nature and grace they could possibly acquire It seemeth for these men the Church is at this day become a great Oak over-turned where men hastily on every side run for prey there is not a hand so little that will not become outragious to bear away some spoil thereof But you noble and generous spirits who in your minorities dedicate your selves to the ministeries of the Church behold the first step you must tread Be carefull herein as your lives and salvation are dear unto you aim well your carrier enter by the gate of honour to free your self from the disturbances of life and troubles of death Be ye assured it is the abomination of the desolation foretold by the Prophet Daniel Daniel 9. 27. Act. 8. 27. the gall of bitterness and perplexity of sin declared by the Apostle S. Peter to enter into an Ecclesiastical benefice by unlawfull and strained ways without vocation The reasons hereof are evident First the Saints have called this vice the iniquity of Libanus alluding to these words of the Prophet Habacuck The Iniquity of Libanus shall cover thee Habac. 1. Iniquitas Libani operiet te where the text spake to those who despoiled the holy Land because the mount Libanus is a holy hill of Palestine all covered over with fair Cedars much renowned in the Scripture from whence it cometh it mystically signifieth the Church and those are truly covered with the iniquity of Libanus who surcharge themselves with the weight of inexorable justice for attempting on the highest pieces of the patrimony of God which are the offerings of the faithfull left for the maintenance of Ecclesiastical state This iniquity of Libanus is the sin of Zeb Zebeus and Salmana who are branded with perpetual infamy for
lightening not touching the purse Others had inventions of quintessences Others traffiqued about stars and sold good fortune in little boxes of smoak Others had shops of the secrets of Arts made themselves able to give beauty youth health immortalltie to those that would buy them Others made dice and mathematicall cards Others lead Bears others extracted infamous coin from the planet of Venus others in the qualitie of mercenaries made Odes and love sonnets for the Pandora's of the time and which was most ridiculous certain young wits among all these were seen who laboured to patch up together rimes or prose very little to the purpose to whom Gold and incense was given with which they were so puffed up that they esteemed the most solid wisdom of the world to be but meer ignorance in comparison of their works One cannot tell all the tricks of this imposture and how many sleights the spirit watchfull for it's own interests found to come to the end of its intentions Conscience checked some but they answered one could not live in the world without these tricks and that they were as necessary as to breath In the second labyrinth I saw the corruptions of Cyprian epist ad Donatum Inter leges ipsu delinquitur inter jura peccatur justice described by S. Cyprian in the Epistle he addresseth to his friend Donatus when he speaketh of Rome the Idolatress All was replenished saith this Prelate with goodly Precepts excellent laws and sage ordinances but in the midst of so many lights God and men were offended with so much impudence as if these laws were made to no other end but to be transgressed Never is innocencie so ill intreated as in the place where profession is made to defend it The serpents of the desert have less gall and spleen than those Pleaders whom I saw turmoiled with a spirit of giddiness and dissevered with the sword of division Their clamours were so loud that they made the whole house of justice to eccho again as are the waves heard to rore on the shore of the Aegean sea I saw gibbets wheels and boyling Fures privatorum surtorum in compedibus publici in auro vitam agunt Cato cauldrons prepared for some miserable criminals because they were yet as it is said but little theeves but were they much greater their crimes had rather been crowned than chastised From thence I viewed fields weeping filled with standing waters which were said to be gathered together from the tears of Widdows Orphans and an infinite number of other persons who live under great oppression I saw some who were in the water up to the neck and some who lifted up an arm withall their strength to offer up some papers wherein were the laws of Charlemain and Lewis the twelfth which expresly command the causes of the poor may be handled before any other business but it was replied such ordinances were quite out of use These miserable creatures solicited their Attorneys and they betraied them complained to their advocates and they perplexed them implored the assistance of Judges and they sold them notwithstanding were esteemed honest men and still enemies to these corruptions I saw two great Registers whereof the one was called the Cabale of favour and the other the Cabale of monie where it is said there were mischiefs as black as the spirits of the abyss but they must not be divulged There was also a very great quantitie of Pleaders who sought to stretch out suits as Shoomakers a piece of leather with their teeth and mutter out propositions of errours reviews incompetencies rejections oppositions and compulsorie causes with so many other hideous words that I asked whether these men spake the language of the Canadas or Chinois Old Pettifoggers appeared all over worm-eaten with mischiefs who could scarce breath from their lips yet had strong apprehension of death through fear to leave the exercise of suits The like was found in souls already half damned who were very solicitous in manner of treachery one bare false witness another invented a contract another forged a Will another supposed a crime another had a shop of all sorts of slanders and diabolicall falsifications the audacious sale of a word prostituted to sin flew between Heaven and earth about twilight with the wings of an owl and to consummate the sublimitie of mischief right yielded to iniquitie It was to do wrong to the wicked not to imitate those Crimes said they were already sufficiently authorised by the great multitude of complices In the third Labyrinth I saw men who had little Rispelliones else of man in them but shape and skin They were near to an enchanted river which must be passed and repassed over seven times as it is said to become absolute in craft There were likewise others seen already transformed into unknown monsters and others who had no more but the little finger or tip of the nose of men I saw some who were like little Apes which pushed and scratched one another and brake through the throng with all their force to climb up to the top of a tree which was said to be the tree of Honour At the entrance there was I know not what kind Lylius Giraldus in pictura favoâ— is of fantasm of Divinity called Worldly favour It seemed in apparence to have a body and consistence but was in effect a true spectre of smoak cloathed with a mantle tissued with clouds and wind There stood about it Phylosophers who would undertake to derive the Genealogie and set the Horoscope of it One said she was the daughter of beautie the other of hazard the other of babble that fortune was her nursing-mother and that if she had her exaltation in the sign of the Ram she should find her declination in the Ballance Howsoever she then appeared very sprightfull and spruce Flatterie failed not to court her throwing roses and flower-de-luces upon her But at the same time envy slily stealing into the throng gnawed the border of her garment Riches disdain presumption and boldness did nothing but cry round about her Make place make place and to raise her the higher they sought to lay the great God of Justinian under her feet She was so disdainfull of knowledges she had formerly acquired that nothing was so cold as her discourse and if she had eys they were for no use but to behold her own interests When I saw she paced along in a way all shining with ice and that she danced on a rope I lost sight of her not troubling my self any further to follow this spirit but I understood that all those who promised themselves the seven wonders of the world had been paid in coin of leaves There likewise I viewed men whom you would Aquila Anserinae Stapl. have taken for geese so simple of countenance were they but they swam in Pactolus having but one foot onely of a goose for the other hidden under feathers was the tallon of
Charls of Anjou much fearing this young Lion forgat His sentence and death all generosity to serve his own turn and did a most base act detested by all understandings that have any humanity which is that having kept Conradinus a whole year in a straight prison he assembled certain wicked Lawyers to decide the cause of one of the noblest spirits at that time under heaven who to second the passion of their Master rendered the laws criminal and served themselves with written right to kill a Prince contrary to the law of nature judging him worthy of death in that said they he disturbed the peace of the Church and aspired to Empire A scaffold was prepared in a publick place all hanged with red where Conradinus is brought with other Lords A Protonotary clothed after the ancient fashion mounteth into a chair set there for the purpose and aloud pronounceth the wicked sentence After which Conradinus raising himself casting an eye ful of fervour and flames on the Judge said Base and cruel slave as thou art to open thy mouth to condemn thy Sovereign It was a lamentable thing to see this great Prince on a scaffold in so tender years wise as an Apollo beautiful as an Amazon and valiant as an Achilles to leave his head under the sword of an Executioner in the place where he hoped to crown it â—e called heaven earth to bear witness of Charls his cruelty who unseen beheld this goodly spectacle froÌ„ an high turret He complained that his goods being taken from him they robbed him of his life as a thief that the blossom of his age was cut off by the hand of a hang-man taking away his head to bereave him of the Crown lastly throwing down his glove demanded an account of this inhumanity Then seeing his Cousin Frederick's head to fall before him he took it kissed it and laid it to his bosom asking pardon of it as if he had been the cause of his disaster in having been the companion of his valour This great heart wanting tears to deplore it self wept over a friend and finishing his sorrows with his life stretched out his neck to the Minister of justice Behold how Charls who had been treated with all humanity in the prisons of Sarazens used a Christian Prince so true it proves that ambition seemeth to blot out the character of Christianity to put in the place of it some thing worse than the Turbant This death lamented through all the world yea which maketh Theaters still mourn sensibly struck the heart of Queen Constantia his Aunt wife of Peter of Arragon She bewailed the poor Prince with tears which could never be dried up as one whom she dearly loved and then again representing to her self so many virtues and delights drowned in such generous bloud and so unworthily shed her heart dissolved into sorrow But as she was drenched in tears so her husband thundred in arms to revenge his death He rigged out a fleet of ships the charge whereof he Collenutius histor Neapol l. 5. c. 4. 5. recommended to Roger de Loria to assail Charls the second Prince of Salerno the onely son of Charls of Anjou who commanded in the absence of his father The admiral of the Arragonian failed not to encounter The son of Charls of Anjou taken him and sought so furiously with him that having sunck many of his ships he took him prisoner and brought him into Sicily where Queen Constantia was expecting the event of this battle She failed not to cause the heads of many Gentlemen to be cut off in revenge of Conradinus so to moisten his ashes with the bloud of his enemies Charls the Kings onely son was set apart with nine principal Lords of the Army and left to the discretion of Constantia Her wound was still all bloudy and the greatest of the Kingdom counselled her speedily to put to death the son of her capital enemy yea the people mutined for this execution which was the cause the Queen having taken order for his arraignment and he thereupon condemned to death she on a Friday morning sent him word it was now time to dispose himself for his last hour The Prince nephew to S. Lewis and who had some sense of his uncles piety very couragiously received these tidings saying That besides other courtesies he had received from the Queen in prison she did him a singular favour to appoint the day of his death on a Friday and that it was good reason he should die culpable on the day whereon Christ died innocent This speech was related to Queen Constantia who was therewith much moved and having some space bethought her self she replyed Tell Prince Charls if he take contentment to suffer An excellent passage of clemency death on a Friday I will likewise find out mine own satisfaction to forgive him on the same day that Jesus signed the pardon of his Executioners with his proper bloud God forbid I shed the bloud of a man on the day my Master poured out his for me Although time surprize me in the dolour of my wounds I will not rest upon the bitterness of revenge I freely pardon him and it shall not be my fault that he is not at this instant in full liberty This magnanimous heart caused the execution to be staied yet fearing if she left him to himself the people might tear him in pieces she sent him to the King her husband entreating by all which was most pretious unto him to save his life and send him back to his Father Peter of Arragon who sought his own accommodation in so good a prize freed him from danger of death yet enlarged him not suddenly For his deliverance must come from a hand wholly celestial Sylvester Pruere writes that lying long imprisoned in the City of Barcellon the day of S. Mary Magdalen aproaching who was his great Patroness he disposed himself to a singular devotion fasting confessing his sins communicating begging of her with tears to deliver him from this captivity Heaven was not deaf to his prayers Behold on the day of the feast he perceived a Lady full of Majesty who commanded him to follow her at which words he felt as it were a diffusion of extraordinary joy spread over his heart He followed her step by step as a man rapt and seeing all the gates flie open before her without resistance and finding himself so cheerful that his body seemed to have put on the nature of a spirit he well perceived heaven wrought wonders for him The Lady looking on him after she had gone some part of the way asked him where he thought he was to which he replied that he imagined himself to be yet in the Territory of Barcellon Charls you are deceived said she you are in the County of Provence a league from Narbon and thereupon she vanished Charls not at all doubting the miracle nor the protection of S. Mary Magdalen prostrated himself on the earth adoring
any doth notwithstanding particularly bind himself to patience Let us conclude with four excellent instructions to be observed in adversity which are expressed in the book of Job (l) (l) (l) Job 1. Tunc surrexit seidis vestimenta sua tonse capite corruens in terram adoravit dixit Nudus egressus sum c. for it is said He rent his garments and having cut off his hair and prostrated himself on the earth adored and said Naked I came out of my mothers womb and naked I return into earth Note that rising up he rent his garments to shew he couragiously discharged himself of all exteriour blessings which are riches and possessions signified by garments He cut his hair which was a sign he put the whole bodie into the hands of God to dispose of it at his pleasure For as those Ancients sacrificing a victim first pulled off the hair and threw into the fire to testifie the whole bodie was already ordained to sacrifice so such as for ceremony gave their hair to temples protested they were dedicated to the service of the Divinity to whom the vow was made In the third instance he prostrated himself on the earth acknowledging his beginning by a most holy humility And for conclusion he prayed and adored with much reverence Behold all you should practise in tribulation well expressed in this mirrour of patience First are you afflicted with loss of goods either by some unexpected chance or by some tyranny and injustice Abate not your courage but considering the nullity of all earthly blessings and the greatness of eternal riches say My God although I have endeavoured hitherto to preserve the wealth thou gavest me as an instrument of many good deeds yet if thou hast ordained in the sacred counsel of thy providence that I must be deprived of them for my much greater spiritual avail I from this time renounce them with all my heart and am ready to be despoiled even to the last nakedness the more perfectly to enter into the imitation of thy poverty Say with S. Lewis Divitia mea Christus desixt caetera Omnis copia qua Deus meus non est mibi inopia est Archbishop of Tholouse Jesus is all my riches and with him I am content in the want of all other wealth All plenty which is not God is mere penurie to me If you be tormented with bodily pain by maladies by death of allies say My God to whom belongs this afflicted bodie Is it not to thee Is not this one of thy members It now endureth some pain since thou hast so appointed and it complains and groaneth under the scourge where are so many precepts of patience where is the love of suffering where conformity to the cross S. Olalla a Virgin Quam juvas bos apices le gere qui tus Christe trophea notant Prudent about thirteen or fourteen years of age as she was martyred and her bodie torn with iron hooks beheld her members all bloudy and said O my God what a brave thing is it to read these characters where I see thy trophies and monuments imprinted with iron on my bodie and written in my bloud A creature so tender so delicate shall she shew such courage in the midst of torments such transfixing pains and cannot I resolve to suffer a little evil with some manner of patience If be the death of an ally behold that bodie not in the state wherein it now appears but in the bright lustre of glorie wherewith you shall behold it in the day of the Resurrection wiping away your tears say what Ruricius did Let them bewail the dead who cannot have any hope of Resurrection Let the dead Fleant â—ntuos qui spom resurrectionis habere non possunt Flems mortui mortuos suos quos in perpetuim existimant interiisse lament their dead friends whom they account dead for ever In the third place arm your self with profound humility and looking on the earth from whence your body came say My God it is against my pride thy rod is lifted up in this tribulation Shall such a creature as I drawn out of the dust become proud against thy commandments and so often shake off the yoke of thy Law I now acknowledge from the bottom of my soul the abjectness of my nothing and protest with all resentments of heart my dependence on thee The little hearb called trefoyl foldeth up the three leaves it beareth when thunder roareth thereby willing to tell us it will not lift a creast nor raise a bristle against Heaven Lightening also which teareth huge trees asunder never falls upon it My God I hear thy hand murmuring over my head in this great affliction and I involve me within my self and behold the element whereinto I must be reduced to do the homage my mortality oweth thee Exercise not the power of thy thunders against a worm of the earth against a reed which serves for a sport to the wind Lastly take courage what you may in the accidents Factus in agonia prolixius erabat Domine quid multiplicati sunt qui tribulant me Multi insargunt adversum me multidicunt animae meâ— non est solus ipsi in Deo ejus Tu autem Domine susceptor meus c. that happen and by the imitation of our Saviour retire into the bosom of prayer which is a sovereign means to calm all storms Jesus prayed in his agony and the more his sadness encreased the more the multiplied his prayers Say in imitation of him My God why are my persecutours so encreased Many rise up against me Many say to my soul there is no salvation for it in God But Lord thou art my Protectour and my glorie thou art he who wilt make me exalt my head above all mine enemies The fourteenth EXAMPLE upon the fourteenth MAXIM Of Constancie in Tribulation ELEONORA WE are able to endure more than we think For there are none but slight evils which cause us readily to deplore and which raise a great noise like to those brooks that purl among pibbles whilest great-ones pass through a generous soul as huge rivers which drive their waves along with a peacefull majesty This manifestly appeareth in the death of Sosa and Maffaeus hist Indicar l. 16. Eleonora related by Maffaeus in the sixteenth book of his history of the Indies This Sosa was by Nation a Portingale a man of quality pious rich liberal and valiant married to one of the most virtuous women in the whole Kingdom They having been already some good time in the Indies and enflamed with the desire of seeing their dear Countrey again embarked at Cochin with their children very young some gentlemen and officers and with about six hundred men The beginning of their navigation was very prosperous but being arrived at Capo de bona speranza they there found the despair of their return A westerly wind beat them back with all violence clouds gathered thunders
I say O God how little is the world Is it for this we deceive we swear and make a divorce between God and us But admit we were not interessed in this action must we not rest on the law of God who maketh life and ordaineth death by the juridical power of his wisdom ever to be adored by our wills though little penetrable to understanding Will you I pronounce an excellent saying of Tertullian The world is the Vterus naturae An excellent coÌ„ceit drawn from the words of Tertullian belly of Nature and men are in it as children in the mothers womb the birth of men are the world 's child-bearings death its lying in and deliveries Would you not die to hinder the world from bringing forth and unburdening it self by the way the Sovereign Master hath appointed it We have seen Tyrants of all sorts some invented exquisite torments and tryals others forbade eating and drinking some to weep some caused children to be taken from the teat to strangle them and cut their throats as Pharaoh and Herod But never was there any amongst them who forbade women with child to be delivered The world hath for a long space been big with you and would not you have it to be delivered at the time God's counsels have ordained Were it a handsom thing think you to see an infant presently to have teeth and articulate speech and yet if it might be would stay in the mothers womb using no other reason but that there is warm being Judge now and take the even ballance if the world be the belly of nature if this good mother bare us the time Gods providence appointed if she now seek her deliverie that we may be born in the land of the living in a quite other climate another life another light are not we very simple to withstand it as little infants who crie when they issue out of bloud and ordure at the sight of day-light yet would not return thither from whence they came 4. Behold the Providence of God in that which Providence in the death of the vicious Boet. l. 4. de consol Cum supplicis carent inesâ— illis aliquid alteriuâ— mali ipsâ— impunitâ—s S. Eucher in paraenesi concerneth death in the generality of all men Let us see in this second point the like providence towards the wicked the vicious rich and proud Great-ones who spit against Heaven We must first establish a most undoubted maxim that there is nothing so unhappy as impunity of men abandoned to vice which is the cause the paternal providence of God arresteth them by the means of death dictating unto them an excellent lesson of their equality with other men Mortals circumvolve in life and death as Heaven on the pole artick and antartick from east to west the same day which lengtheneth our life in the morning shorteneth it in the evening and all Ages walk that way not any one being permitted to return back again Our fore-fathers passed on we pass and our posteritie follows us in the like course you may say they are waves of the sea where one wave drives another and in the end all come to break against a rock What a rock is death There are above five thousand years that it never ceaseth to crush the heads of so many mortals and yet we know it not I remember to this purpose a notable tradition of the Hebrews related by Masius upon Josuah to wit Masius in Josuah Notable action of Noah that Noah in the universal deluge which opened the flood-gates of Heaven to shake the columns of the world and bury the earth in waters in stead of gold silver and all sort of treasure carried the bones of Adam into the Ark and distributing them among his sons said Take children behold the most precious inheritance your father can leave you you shall share lands and seas as God shall appoint but suffer not your selves to be intangled in these vanities which are more brittle than glass more light than smoke and much swifter than the winds My children all glideth away here below and there is nothing which eternally subsisteth Time it self which made us devours and consumeth us Learn this lesson from these dumb Doctours the relicks of your grand-father which will serve you for a refuge in your adversities a bridle in your prosperities and a mirrour at all times Moreover I affirm death serves for a perfect lesson of justice to the wicked which they were never willing throughly to understand for it putteth into equality all that which hazard passion and iniquity had so ill divided into so many objects Birth maketh men equal since they receive nought else from their mothers womb but ignorance sin debility and nakedness but after they come out of the hands of the midwife some are put into purple and gold others into rags and russets some enter upon huge patrimonies where they stand in money up to the throat practise almost nothing else throughout their whole life but to get by rapine with one hand and profusely spend with the other Some live basely and miserably necessitous A brave spirit able to govern a large Common-wealth is set to cart by the condition of his poverty Another becomes a servant to a coxcomb who hath not the hundreth part of his capacity It is the great Comedie of the world played in sundry fashions for most secret reasons known to Divine Providence would you have it last to eternity See you not Comedians having played Kings and beggars on the stage return to their own habit unless they day and night desire to persist in the same sport And what disproportion is there if after every one have played his part in the world according to the measure of time prescribed him by Providence he resume his own habit I also adde it is a kind of happiness for the wicked to die quickly because it is unfit to act that long which is very ill done And since they so desperately use life it is expedient not being good it be short that shortness of time may render the malice of it less hurtfull If examples of their like who soon die make them apprehensive of the same way and how seasonably to prepare for death it is a singular blessing for them But if persisting in contempt they be punished it is God's goodness his justice be understood and that it commandeth even in hell 5. But if at this present you reflect on the death of the Just which you should desire I say God's Providence there brightly appeareth in three principal things which are cessation from travels and worldly miseries the sweet tranquility of departure and fruition of crowns and rewards promised First you must imagine what holy Job said That The sweetnes of the death of the just Iob 3. Qui expectant mortem quasi effodientes thesaurum Tert. de pallio Homo pellitus orbi quasi metallo datur this life is to the just as
all the fair riches of the earth The ambitious perish as spiders who present wretched threeds and some little flies in them such are also the snares pursuits and businesses of the world But the Just forsake us like the silk-worm For this little creature had it understanding would be well pleased issuing forth of her prison to become a butterflie to see the goodly halle of great men Churches and Altars to smile under her works What a contentment to the conscience of a just man in death to consider the Churches adorned Altars covered poor fed sins resisted virtues crowned like so many pieces of tapistry by the work of his hands Hath he not cause to say I entered into the list I valiantly 1 Tim. 4. Bonum certamen certavâ— cursum consummavi in reliquo reposita est mihi corona justitiae Exhortation to such nice people as fear death fought I have well ended my race there remains nothing more for me but to wear the Crown of Justice which God keeps for me as a pledge 6. I yet come again to thee worldly man who so much fearest this last hour Learn from this discourse to fortifie thy self against these vain apprehensions of death which have more disturbance for thee than the Sea surges Is it not a goodly thing to see thee tremble at thy enterance into so beaten a path wherein so many millions have passed along before thee and the most timorous of the earth have finished their course as well as the rest without any contradiction All that which seemeth most uneasie in this passage is much sweetened by two considerations the first whereof is That God made it so common that there is no living creature exempt and the other That to dispose us to a great death we every night find in our sleep a little death Wilt thou then still doubt to set thy foot-steps firmly in the paths which the worlds Saviour with his holy Mother imprinted with their tracks After thou hast slept so many years and so long passed through the pettie miseries of death shalt thou never come to the great Why art thou so apprehensive of death Sickness and miseries of the world will one day perhaps make thee desire that which thou now most fearest Were it not better to do by election what must be suffered by necessity Hast thou so little profited in the world that thou hast not yet some friend some one dearly beloved who passed into the other life Needs must thou have very little affection in store for him if thou fearest the day which should draw thee near to his company What is it maketh all these apprehensions arise in thy mind Is it so ill with thee to forsake a world so treacherous so miserable so corrupt If thou hast been therin perpetually happy which is very rare couragiously set a seal upon thy felicity and be not weary of thy good hap which may easily be changed into a great misfortune Many have lived too long by one year others by one day which made them see what they feared more than death But if thou be afflicted and persecuted in this life why art thou not ashamed when God calleth thee to go out faintly from a place where thou canst not stay without calamitie Deplorest thou thy gold silver costly attire houses and riches Thou goest into a Countrey where thou no longer shalt need any of that They were remedies given thee for the necessities of life now that thy wounds shall be cured wouldest thou still wear the plaisters Bewailest thou loss of friends There are some who expect thee above which are better than the worldly more wise more assured and who will never afford thee ought but comfort Thou perhaps laments the habit of body and pangs of this passage It is not death then which makes thee wax pale but life thou so dearly lovedst It hath been told thee in the last agonies of death the body feeleth great disturbances that it turns here and there that one rubs the bed-cloths with his hands hath convulsions shuts fast the teeth choaketh words hath a trembling lower lip pale visage sharp nose troubled memory speech fumbling cold sweat the white of the eye sunk and the aspect totally changed What need we fear all that which perhaps will never happen to us How many are there who die very sweetly and almost not thinking of it You would say they are not there when it happens Caesar the Pretour died putting on his shoes Lucius Lepidius striking with his foot against a gate the Rhodian Embassadour having made an Oration before the Senate of Rome Anacreon drinking Torquatus eating a cake Cardinal Colonna tasting figs Xeuxes the Painter laughing at the Picture of an old woman he was to finish and lastly Augustus the Monarch performing a complement But if something must be endured think you the hand of God is stretched out to torment you above your force or shortened to comfort you He will give you a winter according to your wool as it is said sufferings according to the strength of your body and a crown for your patience You fear nothing say you of all that I mention but you dread Judgement Who can better order that than your self Had you been the most desperate sinner in the world if you take a strong resolution to make hereafter an exact and effectual conversion the arms of God are open to receive you He will provide for your passage doubt it not as he took care for your birth He will accompany you with his Angels he will hold you under the veil of his face under the shadow of his protection if he must purge you by justice he will crown you by his mercy The fifteenth EXAMPLE upon the fifteenth MAXIM The manner of dying well drawn from the Model of our LADIE ONe of the most important mysteries in the world is to die well It is never done but once and if one fail to perform it well he is lost without recovery It is the last lineament of the table of our life the last blaze of the torch extinguished the last lustre of the setting Sun the end of the race which gives a period to the course the great seal which signeth all our actions One may in death correct all the defects of an ill life and all the virtues of a good are defaced and polluted by an evil death The art of dying well being of so great consequence it seems God permitted the death of his Mother to teach us what ours ought to be The death of the Virgin Mary is the death of a Phenix which hath three conditions resolution disengagement and union I begin with resolution of conformity to the will 1. Quality of good death is the indifferency of time and manner of God which is the first quality should be had to die well That is to hold life in your hands as a loan borrowed from Heaven ever ready to restore it at the least
with so much profusion that she could not endure to lodge but in chambers full of delicious perfumes of the East she would not wash her self but in the dew of Heaven which must be preserved for her with much skill Her garments were so pompous that nothing remainned but to seek for new stuffs in Heaven for she had exhausted the treasures of earth Her viands so dainty that all the mouthes of Kings tasted none so exquisite nor would she touch her meat but with golden forks and precious stones God to punish this cursed superfluity cast her on a bed and assailed her with a maladie so hydeous so stinking and frightfull that all her nearest kin were enforced to abandon her none staying about her but a poor old woman already throughly accustomed to stench and death yet could not this proud creature part with her infamous body but with sorrow She was of those souls that Plato calleth Phylosemates which tie themselves to flesh as much as they can and after death would gladly still walk round about their flesh to find a passage into it again Know you what is to be done to die well Cut off in good time the three chains which straightly bind foolish and sensual souls For the first passage that The way how to be well provided for death concerneth earthly goods seasonably dispose of your temporal Entangle not your hands for so short a time as you are to live in great affairs perilous and uncertain which will perplex you all your life and throw you down to death Do not like evil travellers who stay to reckon and contend with their hostess when it is already fair day-light and that the guid wrangles and sweareth at them Digest your little business that you may leave no trouble in your family after death Make a Will clear and perspicuous which draweth not suits after it Preserve your self carefully from imitating that wicked man who caused all his gold and silver to be melted into one mass to set his heirs together by the ears who killed one another sprinkling the apple of discord and the object of their avarice with their bloud Say to your self I brought nothing into the world nor will carry any thing away no not the desire of it Behold one part of my goods which must be restored to such and such these are true debts that must necessarily be discharged Behold another for pious legacies Another for alms to persons needy and indigent another for my servants male and female and my poor friends who have faithfully served me They have wasted their bodies and lives to contribute all they might to my will there is no reason I should forget them Nay I desire mine enemies have some part in my will As for my children and heirs the main shall go to them they will be rich enough if they be virtuous enough Behold how the temporal should be disposed And for so much as concerneth kinred give the benediction of God to your children and all your family leave worthy examples of contempt of the world of humility of patience of charity procure a full reconciliation with your enemies entertain your friends with sage discourses which may shew you gladly accept Gods visitations that you die full of resolutions to prepare them a place and that you expect from their charity prayers and satisfactions for your negligence and remisness If needs some small tribute must be paid to nature in two or three drops of tears it is tolerable But take away these whyning countenances these petty furies these mercenary weepers who weep not knowing why nor for what they mourn As for that which toucheth the state of your body it would be a goodly thing for you to be wail it after you have had so many troubles in it Go out of it like a Tennant from a ruinous house go from it as from a prison of earth and morter Go out of it as on the sea from a rotten leaky ship to leap on the shore and care not much what will become of it after death so it be on holy land Souls well mortified speak not of flesh considering the state of sin but with horrour Yea we find in the bequests of one of the sons of S. Lewis Count of Alencon these words I will Modesty of a son of S. Lewis the Tomb that shall cover my stinking flesh exceed not the charge of fiftie livres and that which encloseth my evil heart pass not thirty livres Behold how the son of one of the greatest Kings in the world speaketh of his body and would you idolatrize yours Lastly for the third condition of a good death it The third quality of a good death must have union with God whereof our Lady giveth us a perfect example For it being well verified by Theologie that there are three unions supernatural and as it were wholly ineffable the first whereof is the sacred knot of the most holy Trinitie which tieth three persons in one same Essence the second is the tie of the Word with humane nature which subsisteth by the hypostasis of the same Word and the third the intimate conjunction of a Son-God with a Mother-Virgin I affirm the Virgin being a pure creature cannot equal either the union of the Trinity or the hypostatical union yet notwithstanding hath the highest place of all created unions as she who was united to God when she lived in the world in the most sublime and sacred manner the spirits of the most exalted Seraphins might imagine which was most divinely expressed by S. Bernard She entered into a deep abyss of divine Profundissimam divinae sapientiae penetravit abyssum quantum sine personali unione creatur◠conditio patitur luci illi inaccesibili videatur immersa D. Bernard serm in signum magnum Mater mea quà m appellatis foelicem inde foelix quia verbum Dei custodit non quia in illa Verbum caro factum est c. Aug. tract 10 in Joan. wisdom so that she was united to light inaccessible so much as a creature might be permitted not arriving to the personal union of God But saying this I not onely speak of the union she had in quality of the Mother of God being one same flesh and one same substance with her Son but of the union of contemplation devotion and submission to the will of God which alone was the center of her felicity as witnesseth S. Augustine My Mother whom you call happie hath all her happiness not so much because the Word was made man in her as for that she kept the word of God who made her and who afterward allied himself to humane nature in her womb as he would say Our Lady was more happy to have conceived God in her heart and continually kept spiritual union with him than to have once brought him forth according to flesh We cannot arrive at this sublime union of the Mother of God but howsoever at least in the last
As soon as you have received the Sacrament say this prayer of S. Bernard in his Meditations upon the Passion O Heavenly Father look down from thy Sanctuary from the Throne of thy glory upon the blessed sacrifice which our High Priest Jesus thy most innocent and sacred Son doth offer unto thee for the sins of his Brethren Pardon the multitude of our offences and have compassion upon our miseries Hearken to the voice of the bloud of that immaculate Lamb which crieth out to thee and he himself standeth before thee at the right hand of thy Majestie crowned with honour and glory Behold O Lord the face of thy Messias who hath been obedient to thee even unto death and put not his blessed wounds out of thy sight nor the satisfaction he made for our sins out of thy rememberance O let every tongue praise and bless thee in commemoration of thy infinite goodness who didst deliver thy onely Son over to death upon Earth to make him our most prevalent Advocate in Heaven For Petition Immediately after you have recited the Lords Prayer say these words of the aforesaid Liturgie O God be mindfull of all Pastours and faithfull people dwelling in all parts of the habitable world in the union of the Catholick Faith and preserve them in thy holy peace O God bless our most gracious King and his whole Kingdom hear the prayers which we offer up at thy Altar O God remember all those that travel by sea or land and are exposed to so many dreadfull dangers Remember the many poor prisoners and exiles who groan under the miseries of the world O God remember the sick and all such as are in any discomfort of mind Remember the many poor souls opprest with bitterness who implore thy succour Remember also the conversion of so many Hereticks Infidels and sinners whom thou hast created after thine own image O God remember our Friends and Benefactours Accept this sacrifice for us sinners and let us all feel the effects of thy Mercy drive away scandal war and heresie and grant us thy peace and love And at the end of the Communion O God pour down thy graces upon us direct our steps in thy ways strengthen us in thy fear confirm us in thy love and give us at last the inheritance of thy children It is very expedient also to have our devotions ordered for every day of the week The seventeenth SECTION Devotion ordered for the days of the Week WE may derive an excellent practise of Devotion for every day of the Week from the Hymn of S. Ambrose used by the Church For therein we learn to give God thanks for every work of the Creation and to make the greater world correspond with the lesser Sunday which is the day wherein the light was created we should render thanks to God for having produced this temporal light which is the smile of Heaven and joy of the world spreading it like cloth of gold over the face of the air and earth and lighting it as a torch by which we might behold his works Then penetrating further we will give him thanks for having afforded us his Son called by the Fathers The Day-bringer to communicate unto us the great light of faith which is as saith S. Bernard a Copy of Eternity we will humbly beseech him that this light may never be eclipsed in our understandings but may replenish us every day more and more with the knowledge of his blessed will And for this purpose we must hear the word of God and be present at Divine Service with all fervour and purity Take great heed that you stain not this day which God hath set apart for himself with any disorder nor give the first fruits of the week to Dagon which you should offer up at the feet of the Ark of the Covenant Munday which is the day wherein the Firmanent was created to separate the celestial waters from the inferiour and terrestrial we will represent unto our selves that God hath given us Reason as a Firmament to separate divine cogitations from animal and we will pray unto him to mortifie anger and concupiscence in us and to grant us absolute sway over all passions which resist the eternal Law Thesday the day wherein the waters which before covered the whole element of Earth were ranked in their place and the earth appeared to become the dwelling nurse and grave of man we will figure unto our selves the great work of the justification of the world done by the Incarnate Word who took away a great heap of obstacâ—es as well of ignorance as of sin that covered the face of the whole world and made a Church which like a holy Land appears laden with fruit and beauties to raise us up in Faith and to bury us in the hope of the Resurrection We will beseech him to take away all hinderances to our soul so many ignorances sins imperfections fears sorrows cares which detain it as in an abyss and to replenish us with the fruits of justice Wednesday wherein the Sun Moon and Stars were created we will propose unto our selves for object the Beauty and Excellency of the Church of God adorned with the presence of the Saviour of the world as with a Sun and with so many Saints as with Stars of the Firmament and we will humbly beseech God to embellish our soul with light and virtue suitable to its condition Especially to give us the six qualities of the Sun Greatness Beauty Measure Feâ—vour Readiness and Fruitfulness Greatness in the elevation of our mind above all created things and in a capacity of heart which can never be filled with any thing but God Beauty in gifts of grace Measure to limit our passions Fervour in the exercise of charity Readiness in the obedience we ow to his Law Fruitfulness in bringing forth good works Toursday the day wherein God as S. Ambrose saith drew the birds and fishes out of the waters the birds to flie in the air and the fishes to dwell in this lower Element We will imagine the great separation which shall be made at the day of Gods judgement when so vast a number of men extracted from one and the same mass some shall be raised on high to people Heaven and enjoy the sight of God others shall be made a prey to hell and everlasting torments And in this great abyss and horrour of thought we will beseech God to hold us in the number of his elect and to be pleased to mark out our predestination in our good and commendable actions Friday wherein the other creatures were brought forth and man created who was then appointed to them for a King and Governour we will set before us the greatness excellency and beauty of this Man in the Talents which God hath given him as well of grace as of nature How much it cost to make him the hands of the Creatour being employed in his production Hands saith S. Basil which were to him as a
go under hatches to sleep like the out-casts and scorns of humane Nature The fifth the peace of a good conscience the inseparable companion of honest men which sugereth all their tears which sweeteneth all their sharpness which melteth all their bitterness a continual feast a portable theater a delicious torrent of unspeakable content which beginneth in this world and is often felt in this life even in chains prisons persecutions what then will it be when consummated in the other life when the curtain of the great Tabernacle shall be withdrawn when we shall see God face to face in a body impossible as an Angel subtile as a beam of light swift as the wings of thunder bright as the Sun and when we shall dwell among so goodly and flourishing a company in a palace of inestimable glory where we shall enjoy no life but the life of God the knowledge of God the love of God as long as God shall be God Nescio quid erit quod ista vita non erit ubi lucet quod non capiat locus ubi sonat quod non rapit tempus ubi olet quod non spargit flatus ubi sapit quod non minuit edacitas ubi haeret quod non divellit aeternitas said S. Augustine What will that life be or rather what will not that life be Since all good either is not at all or is in such a life Light which place cannot comprehend Voices and musick which time cannot ravish away Odours which are never dissipated a Feast which is never consumed a Blessing which Eternitie bestoweth but Eternity shall never see at an end The sixth is on the other side to consider the state of this present life A true dream which hath onely the disturbances but never the rest of sleep a childish sport a toil of burthensom and ever-relapsing actions where for one rose we meet with a thousand thorns for an ounce of hony a tun of gall for apparent good real evil The happiest here may number their years but not their cares The paths here to the highest honours are all of ice and often bordered onely by precipices Its felicities are floating Islands which always retire when we but offer to touch them they are the feast of Heliogabalus where are many invitations many ceremonies many complements many services and at the end of all this we find a table banquet of wax which melts at the fire whence we return more hungry than we came It is the enchanted egg of Oromazes in which that Impostour boasted that he had enclosed all the happines of the world but broken there was found nothing but wind Omnia haec conspectui nostro insidiosis coloribus lenocinantur vis illa occulorum attributa lumini non applicetur errori saith Eucherius All these prosperities flatter our senses with an imposture of false colours why do we suffer those eyes to be taken in the snares of errours which are given us by Heaven to behold the light and not to minister unto lying Besides another thing which should put us into an infinite dislike of this present life is that we live in a time as full of diseases as old age of indispositions we live in a world extreamly corrupt of which may be said it is a monster whose understanding is a pit of darkness his reason a shop of malice his will a hell where thousands of passions outragiously infest him his eyes are two Conduit-pipes of fire out of which flie sparkles of concupiscence his tongue an instrument of cursing his face a painted hypocrisie his body a spunge full of filth his hands harpies talons and to conclude he owns no faith but infidelity no Lord but his passion no God but his belly what content can there be in living with such a monster The seventh If there are any pleasures in this life they do nothing but overflow the heart slightly with a little superficial delectation Sadness dives into the bottom of my soul and when it is there you would think it hath leaden feet never to go thence but pleasure doth onely tickle us in the outside of the skin and then all those sweet waters run down with haste to discharge themselves into the sea of bitterness For this reason Saint Augustine said when any prosperity presented it self before his eyes he durst not touch it he beheld pleasure as a wandering bird that would deceive him and flie away as soon as he should offer to lay hold of it The eighth Pleasures are begot in the sense and like abortives die in their birth their desires are full of disquiet their access of violent forced and turbulent commotions their satiety is seasoned with shame and repentance they pass away as soon as they have wearied out the body and leave it like a bunch of grapes whose juice hath been pressed out as saith Saint Bernard They stretch themselves out at full length to much purpose when they must end with this life and it is a great chance if even during life they prove not executioner to him that entertains them I see no greater pleasure in this world than the contempt of pleasure Nulla major voluptas qâ—à m voluptatis fastidium saith Tertullian The ninth He that consumeth his time in pleasures when they slide away like waters occasioned by a storm findeth himself destitute and ashamed like a Pilgrim despoiled by a Thief so many golden harvests which time presented to him are passed away and the rust of a heavy age furnished him with nothing but sorrow for having done ill and impotence to do well what then remains but to say with that miserable King who gave away his scepter for a glass of water Alas Must I for so short a pleasure loose so great a Kingdom The tenth Sin always carrieth sorrow behind it but not always true repentance It is an extraordinary favour from God to have time to bewail the offences of our life past and to take that time by the foretop Many are sent into the other world without once thinking of their departure and some think of it at their death with many tears but not one good act of repentance they weep for the sins which forsake them and not for God whom they have lost True contrition is a hard work how can he obtain it who hath ever falsified it Faciliùs inveni qui innocentiam servarent quà m qui congruè poenitentiam agerent saith S. Ambrose The eleventh Death all this while is coming on a great pace he waits for you at all hours in all places and yet you cannot wait for him so much as one minute so displeasing is this thought unto you his sentence is more clear and perspicuous than if it were written with the Suns beams and yet cannot we read it his trumpet soundeth perpetually more audibly than thunder and yet we hear it not No wonder that David Psal 49. 4. calleth it according to the Hebrew a Riddle every one beholds the Tablet but
fall no lower but may contemplate all above him and meditate how to raise himself by the hand of God which pulls down the proud and exalts the humble Is a man tempted with pride The consideration of Ashes will humble him Is he burned with wanton love which is a direct fire But fire cannot consume Ashes Is he persecuted with covetousness Ashes do make the greatest Leeches and Bloud-Suckers cast their Gorges Every thing gives way to this unvalued thing because God is pleased to draw the instruments of his power out of the objects of our infirmities 3. If we knew how to use rightly the meditation of death we should there find the streams of life All the world together is of no estimation to him that rightly knows the true value of a just mans death It would be necessary that they who are taken with the curiosity of Tulips should set in their Gardens a Plant called Napel which carries a flower that most perfectly resembles a Deaths head And if the other Tulips do please their senses that will instruct their reason Before our last death we should die many other deaths by forsaking all those creatures and affections which lead us to sin We should resemble those creatures sacred to the Aegyptians called Cynocephales which died piece-meal and were buried long before their death So should we burie all our concupiscences before we go to the grave and strive to live so that when death comes he should find very little business with us Aspiration O Father of all Essences who givest beginning to all things and art without end This day I take Ashes upon my head thereby professing before thee my being nothing and to do thee homage for that which I am and for that I ought to be by thy great bounties Alas O Lord my poor soul is confounded to see so many sparkles of pride and covetousness arise from this caitiffe dust which I am so little do I yet learn how to live and so late do I know how to die O God of my life and death I most humbly beseech thee so to govern the first in me and so to sweeten the last for me that if I live I may live onely for thee and if I must die that I may enter into everlasting bliss by dying in thy blessed love and favour The Gospel for Ashwednesday S. Matthew 6. Of Hypocritical Fasting WHen you fast be not as the hypocrites sad for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast Amen I say to you that they have received their reward But thou when thou doest fast anoint thy head and wash thy face that thou appear not to men to fast but to thy Father which is in secret and thy Father which seeth in secret will repay thee Heap not up to your selves treasures on the earth where the rust and moth do corrupt and where thieves dig through and steal But heap up to your selves treasures in heaven where neither the rust nor moth doth corrupt and where thieves do not dig through nor steal For where thy treasure is there is thy heart also Moralities 1. THat man goes to Hell by the way of Paradise who fasts and afflicts his body to draw the praise of Men. Sorrow and vanity together are not able to make one Christian Act. He deserves everlasting hunger who starves himself that he may swell and burst with vain glory He stands for a spectacle to others being the murderer of himself and by sowing vanity reaps nothing but wind Our intentions must be wholly directed to God and our examples for our neighbour The Father of all virtues is not to be served with counterfeit devotions such lies are abominations in his sight and Tertullian saith they are as many adulteries 2. It imports us much to begin Lent well entering into those lists in which so many holy souls have run their course with so great strictness have been glorious before God and honourable before men The difficulty of it is apprehended onely by those who have their understandings obstructed by a violent affection to kitchen-stuffe It is no more burdensom to a couragious spirit than feathers are to a bird The chearfulness which a man brings to a good action in the beginning does half the work Let us wash our faces by confession Let us perfume our Head who is Jesus Christ by alms-deeds Fasting is a most delicious feast to the conscience when it is accompanied with pureness and charity but it breeds great thirst when it is not nourished with devotion and watered with mercy 3. What great pain is taken to get treasure what care to preserve it what fear to loose it and what sorrow when it is lost Alas is there need of so great covetousness in life to encounter with such extream nakedness in death We have not the souls of Giants nor the body of a Whale If God will have me poor must I endeavour to reverse the decrees of heaven and earth that I may become rich To whom do we trust the safety of our treasures To rust to moths and thieves were it not better we should in our infirmities depend onely on God Almighty and comfort our poverty in him who is onely rich and so carrie our souls to heaven where Jesus on the day of his Ascension did place our Sovereign good Onely Serpents and covetous men desire to sleep among treasures as Saint Clement saith But the greatest riches of the world is poverty free from Covetousness Aspiration I Seek thee O invisible God within the Abyss of thy brightness and I see thee through the vail of thy creatures Wilt thou always be hidden from me Shall I never see thy face which with a glimpse of thy splendour canst make Paradise I work in secret but I know thou art able to reward me in the light A man can lose nothing by serving thee and yet nothing is valuable to thy service for the pain it self is a sufficient recompence Thou art the food of my fastings and the cure of my infirmities What have I to do with Moles to dig the earth like them and there to hide treasures Is it not time to close the earth when thou doest open heaven and to carrie my heart where thou art since all my riches is in thee Doth not he deserve to be everlastingly poor who cannot be content with a God so rich as thou art The Gospel for the first Thursday in Lent S. Matthew 18. of the Centurions words O Lord I am not worthy ANd when he was entered into Capharnaum there came to him a Centurion beseeching him and saying Lord my boy lieth at home sick of the palsie and is sore tormented And Jesus saith to him I will come and cure him And the Centurion making answer said Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof but onely say the word and my boy shall be healed For I also am a man subject to Authority having under me
find the like to whom wouldst thou have me go but to thy self who doest not yet cease to call me The Gospel upon the third Sunday in Lent S. Luke 11. Jesus cast out the Devil which was dumb ANd he was casting out a devil and that was dumb And when he had cast out the devil the dumb spake and the multitudes marvelled And certain of them said in Belzebub the Prince of Devils he casteth out Devils And others tempting asked him a sign from Heaven But he seeing their cogitations said to them Every Kingdom divided against it self shall be made desolate and house upon house shall fall And if Satan also be divided against himself how shall his Kingdom stand because you say that in Belzebub I do cast out Devils And if I in Belzebub cast out Devils your children in whom do they cast out Therefore they shall be your judges But if I in the finger of God do cast out Devils surely the Kingdom of God is come upon you When the strong armed keepeth his court those things are in peace that he possesseth but if a stronger than he come upon him and overcome him he will take away his whole armour wherein he trusted and will distribute his spoils He that is not with me is against me and he that gathereth not with me scattereth When the unclean spirit shall depart out of a man he wandreth through places without water seeking rest and not finding he saith I will return into my house whence I departed And when he is come he findeth it swept with a besom and trimmed Then he goeth and taketh seven other spirits worse than himself and entering in they dwell there And the last of that man be made worse than the first And it came to pass when he said these things a certain woman lifting up her voice out of the multitude said to him Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that thou didst suck But he said Yea rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it Moralities 1. THe Almond-tree is the first which begins to flourish and it is often first nipt with frost The tongue is the first thing which moves in a mans body and is soonest caught with the snares of Satan That man deserves to be speechless all his life who never speaks a word better than silence 2. Jesus the eternal word of God came upon earth to reform the words of man his life was a lightening and his word a thunder which was powerfull in effect but always measured within his bounds He did fight against ill tongues in his life and conquered them all in his death The gall and vinegar which he took to expiate the sins of this unhappy tongue do shew how great the evil was since it did need so sharp a remedy He hath cured by suffering his dolours what it deserved by our committing sins Other vices are determined by one act the tongue goes to all it is a servant to all malitious actions and is generally confederate with the heart in all crimes 3. We have just so much Religion as we have government of our tongues A little thing serves to tame wild beasts and a small stern will serve to govern a ship Why then cannot a man rule so small a part of his body It is not sufficient to avoid lying perjuries quarrels injuries slanders and blasphemies such as the Scribes and Pharisees did vomit out in this Gospel against the purity of the Son of God We must also repress idle talk and other frivolous and unprofitable discourses There are some persons who have their hearts so loose that they cannot keep them within their brests but they will quickly swim upon their lips without thinking what they say and so make a shift to wound their souls 4. Imitate a holy Father called Sisus who prayed God thirty years together every day to deliver him from his tongue as from a capital enemy You shall never be very chaste of your body except you do very well bridle your tongue For loosness of the flesh proceeds sometimes from liberty of the tongue Remember your self that your heart should go like a clock with all the just and equal motions of his springs and that your tongue is the finger which shews how all the hours of the day pass When the heart goes of one side and the tongue of another it is a sure desolation of your spirits Kingdom If Jesus set it once at peace and quiet you must be very carefull to keep it so and be very fearfull of relapses For the multiplying of long continued sins brings at last hell it self upon a mans shoulders Aspirations O Word incarnate to whom all just tongues speak and after whom all hearts do thirst and languish chase from us all prating devils and also those which are dumb the first provoke and loose the tongue to speak wickedly and the other bind it when it should confess the truth O peace-making Solomon appease the divisions of my heart and unite all my powers to the love of thy service Destroy in me all the marks of Satans Empire and plant there thy Trophees and Standards that my spirit be never like those devils which seek for rest but shall never find it Make me preserve inviolable the house of my conscience which thou hast cleansed by repentance and clothed with thy graces that I may have perseverance to the end without relapses and so obtain happiness without more need of repentance The Gospel upon Munday the third week in Lent S. Luke 4. Jesus is required to do Miracles in his own Countrey ANd he said to them Certes you will say to me this similitude Physitian cure thy self as great things as we have heard done in Capharnaum do also here in thy Countrey And he said Amen I say to you that no Prophet is accepted in his own Country In truth I say to you there were many widows in the dayes of Elias in Israel when the heaven was shut three years and six moneths when there was a great famine made in the whole earth and to none of them was Elias sent but into Sarepta of Sidon to a widow woman And there were many Lepars in Israel under Elizeus the Prophet and none of them made clean but Naaman the Syrian And all in the Synagogue were filled with anger hearing these things And they rose and cast him out of the Citie and they brought him to the edge of the hill whereupon their Citie was built that they might throw him down headlong But he passing through the midst of them went his way Moralities 1. THe malignity of mans nature undervalueth all that which it hath in hand little esteems many necessary things because they are common The Sun is not counted rare because it shines every day and the elements are held contemptible since they are common to the poor as well as the rich Jesus was despised in his own Countrey because he
apparencies O my God my Jesus make me keep the Law of thy love and nothing else It is a yoke which brings with it more honour than burden It is a yoke which hath wings but no heaviness Make me serve thee O my Master since thou beholdest the services of all the Angels under thy feet Make me imitate thee O my Redeemer since thou art the original of all perfections make me suffer for thee O King of the afflicted and that I may not know what it is to suffer by knowing what it is to love The Gospel upon Thursday the third week in Lent S. Luke 4. Jesus cured the Feaver of Simons Mother in Law ANd Jesus rising up out of the Synagogue entered into Simons house and Simons wives mother was holden with a great Feaver and they besought him for her And standing over her he commanded the Feaver and it left her And incontinent rising she ministred to them And when the Sun was down all that had diseased of sundry maladies brought them to him But he imposing hands upon every one cured them And Devils went out from many crying and saying that thou art the Son of God And rebuking them he suffered them not to speak that they knew he was Christ And when it was day going forth he went into a desart place and the multitudes sought him and came even unto him and they held him that he should not depart from them To whom he said That to other Cities also must I Evangelize the Kingdom of God because therefore I was sent And he was preaching in the Synagogues of Galilee Moralities 1. A Soul within a sick body is a Princess that dwels in a ruinous house Health is the best of all temporal goods without which all honours are as the beams of an eclipsed sun Riches are unpleasing and all pleasures are languishing All joy of the heart subsists naturally in the health of the body But yet it is true that the most healthfull persons are not always the most holy What profit is there in that health which serves for a provocation to sin for an inticement to worldly pleasure and a gate to death The best souls are never better nor stronger than when their bodies are sick their diseases are too hard for their mortal bodies but their courage is invincible It is a great knowledge to understand our own infirmities Prosperity keeps us from the view of them but adversity shews them to us We should hardly know what death is if so many diseases did not teach us every day that we are mortal Semiramis the proudest of all Queens had made a law whereby she was to be adored in stead of all the gods but being humbled by a great sickness she acknowledged her self to be but a woman 2. All the Apostles pray for this holy woman which was sick but she herself asked nothing nor did complain of any thing She leaves all to God who is onely Master of life and death She knew that he which gives his benefits with such bounty hath the wisdom to chuse those which are most fit for us How do we know whether we desiring to be delivered from a sickness do not ask of God to take away a gift which is very necessary to our salvation That malady or affliction which makes us distaste worldly pleasures gives us a disposition to taste the joyes of heaven 3. How many sick persons in the heat of a Feaver promise much and when they are well again perform nothing That body which carried all the marks of death in the face is no sooner grown strong by health which rejoyceth the heart and fils the veins with bloud but it becomes a slave to sin The gifts of God being abused serve for nothing but to make it wicked and so the soul is killed by recovery of the flesh But this pious woman is no sooner on foot but she serves the Authour of life and employes all those limbs which Jesus cured of the Feaver to prepare some provisions to refresh him He that will not use the treasures of heaven with acknowledgement deserveth never to keep them When a man is recovered from a great sickness as his body is renewed by health so on the other side he should renew his spirit by virtue The body saith Saint Maximus is the bed of the soul where it sleeps too easily in continual health and forgets it self in many things But a good round sickness doth not onely move but turn over this bed which maketh the soul awake to think on her salvation and make a total conversion Aspirations O Word Incarnate all Feavours and Devils flie before the beams of thy redoubted face Must nothing but the heat of thy passions always resist thy powers and bounties To what maladies and indispositions am I subject I have more diseases in my soul then limbs in my body My weakness bends under thy scourges and yet my sins continue still unmoveable Stay O benign Lord stay thy self near me Cast upon my dull and heavy eyes one beam from those thine eyes which make all storms clear and all disasters happie Command that my weakness leave me and that I may arise to perform my services due to thy greatness as I will for ever ow my salvation to thine infinite power and bounty The Gospel upon Friday the third week in Lent S. John 4. Of the Samatitan woman at Jacobs Well neer Sichar HE cometh therefore into a Citie of Samaria which is called Sichar beside the Mannor that Jacob gave to Joseph his son And there was there the fountain of Jacob. Jesus therefore wearied of his journey sate so upon the fountain It was about the sixth hour There cometh a woman of Samaria to draw water Jesus saith to her Give me to drink for his Disciples were gone into the Citie to buy meats therefore that Samaritan woman saith to him How dost thou being a Jew ask of me to drink which am a Samaritan woman for the Jews do not communicate with the Samaritanes Jesus answered and said to her If thou didst know the gift of God and vvho he is that saith unto thee Give me to drink thou perhâ—ps wouldst have asked of him and he would have given thee living vvater The woman saith to him Sir neither hast thou wherein to draw and the well is deep whence hast thou the living vvater Art thou greater than our father Jacob vvho gave us the well anâ— himself drank of it and his children and his cattel Jesus answered and said to her Every one that drinketh of this vvater shall thirst again but he that shall drink of the vvater that I will give him shall not thirst for ever but the vvater that I will give him shall become unto him a fountain of vvater springing up unto life everlasting The vvoman saith to him Lord give me this vvater that I may not thirst nor come hither to draw Jesus said to her Go call thy husband and come hither The
approching near the light love their own darkness They hate the light of their salvation as the shadow of death and think that if you give them eyes to see their blindness you take away their life If they seem Christians they yet have nothing but the name and the appearance the book of Jesus is shut from them or if they make a shew to read they may name the letters but never can produce one right good word 4. Others destroy themselves by false lights who being wedded to their own opinions and adoring the Chimera's of their spirit think themselves full of knowledge just and happy that the sun riseth onely for them and that all the rest of the world is in darkness they conceive they have the fairest stars for conductours but at the end of their career they find too late that this pretended light was but an Ignis fatuus which led them to a precipice of eternal flames It is the worst of all follies to be wise in our own eye-sight and the worst of all temptations is for a man to be a devil to himself 5. Those ruin themselves with too much light who have all Gods law by heart but never have any heart to that law They know the Scriptures all learning and sciences they understand every thing but themselves they can find spots in the sun they can give new names to the stars they perswade themselves that God is all that they apprehend But after all this heap of knowledge they are found to be like the Sages of Pharaob and can produce nothing but bloud and frogs They embroil and trouble the world they stain their own lives and at their deaths leave nothing to continue but the memory of their sins It would be more expedient for them rather than have such light to carry fire wherewith to be burning in the love of God and not to swell and burst with that kind of knowledge All learning which is not joyned with a good life is like a picture in the air which hath no table to make it subsist It is not sufficient to be elevated in spirit like the Prophets except a man do enter into some perfect imitation of their virtues Aspirations O Fountain of all brightness before whom night can have no vail who seest the day spring out of thy bosom to spread it self over all nature will thou have no pitie upon my blindness will there be no medicine for my eyes which have so often grown dull heavy with earthly humours O Lord I want light being always so blind to my own sins So many years are past wherein I have dwelt with my self and yet know not what I am Self-love maketh me sometimes apprehend imaginary virtues in great and see all my crimes in little I too often believe my own judgement and adore my own opinions as gods and goddesses and if thou send me any light I make so ill use of it that I dazle my self even in the brightness of thy day making little or no profit of that which would be so much to my advantage if I were so happy as to know it But henceforth I will have no eyes but for thee I will onely contemplate thee O life of all beauties and draw all the powers of my soul into my eyes that I may the better apprehend the mystery of thy bounties O cast upon me one beam of thy grace so powerfull that it may never forsake me till I may see the day of thy glory The Gospel upon Thursday the fourth week in Lent S. Luke the 7. Of the widows son raised from death to life at Naim by our Saviour ANd it came to pass afterward he went into a Citie that is called Naim and there went with him his Disciples and a very great multitude And when he came nigh to the gate of the Citie behold a dead man was carried forth the onely son of his mother and she was a widow and a great multitude of the Citie with her whom when our Lord had seen being moved with mercy upon her he said to her Weep not And he came near and touched the Coffin And they that carried it stood still and he said Young man I say to thee Arise And he that was dead sate up and began to speak And he gave him to his mother and fear took them all and they magnified God saying That a great Prophet is risen among us and that God hath visited his people And this saying went forth into all Jewry of him and into all the Countrey about Moralities JEsus met at the Gates of Naim which is interpreted the Town of Beauties a young man carried to burial to shew us that neither beauty nor youth are freed from the laws of death We fear death and there is almost nothing more immortal here below every thing dies but death it self We see him always in the Gospels we touch him every day by our experiences and yet neither the Gospels make us sufficiently faithfull nor our experiences well advised 2. If we behold death by his natural face he seems a little strange to us because we have not seen him well acted We lay upon him sithes bows and arrows we put upon him ugly antick faces we compass him round about with terrours and illusions of all which he never so much as thought It is a profound sleep in which nature lets it self fail insensibly when she is tired with the disquiets of this life It is a cessation of all those services which the soul renders to the flesh It is an execution of Gods will and a decree common to all the world To be disquieted and drawn by the ears to pay a debt which so many millions of men of all conditions have paid before us is to do as a frog that would swim against a sharp stream of a forcible torrent We have been as it were dead to so many ages which went before us we die piece-meal every day we assay death so often in our sleep discreet men expect him fools despise him and the most disdainfull persons must entertain him Shall we not know and endeavour to do that one thing well which being once well performed will give us life for ever Me thinks it is rather a gift of God to die soon than to stay late amongst the occasions of sin 3. It is not death but a wicked life we have cause to fear That onely lies heavy and both troubles us and keeps us from understanding and tasting the sweets of death He that can die to so many little dead and dying things which makes us die every day by our unwillingness to forsake them shall find that death is nothing to him But we would fain in death carry the world with us upon our shoulders to the grave and that is a thing we cannot do We would avoid the judgement of a just God and that is a thing which we should not so much as think Let us clear our accounts
as mine Mine eyes O mine eyes who have first received that fire which hath so passionately devoured my soul I will make you imitate the Pond of Hesebon and sooner shall those two fountains be dried up which serve the stream of Jordan than you shall want water to wash the steps of your Concupiscences I will have that neck which hath suffered it self to be embraced by unlawfull Arms held under the yoke of him that hath overcome me and so happily subjected me to to his Empire These arms and hands which have been the chains of wanton embracements shall henceforth for ever be lifted up to Heaven in prayer and they shall have no other Altars but the feet of my Lord and Master if I dare think my self worthy to kiss them This mouth which hath been the gate of unchastity shall now become a Temple of Gods praises And this heart which hath been a burning furnace of worldly love shall be a burning lamp of holy affections before God and shall have no other oyl to maintain it but that water which shall be drawn from mine eyes O my God since I have so betrayed my heart abused my youth spent prodigally thy Treasures and made crowns to Baal out of thy silver since I have forsaken thee who art eternal unchangeable and incomparable Goodness without whom all other goods are nothing to follow a wanton fire which hath brought me to the brim of everlasting precipice where shall I find sufficient tears to wash my offences where shall I find enow parts of my body to be continually offered up as the sacrifice of my repentance I would make my life immortal to have my pains so lasting and if thy mercy will not let me be the object of thy vengeance let me at least serve for a sacrifice at thy Altars The Gospel upon Friday the fifth week in Lent S. John 11. The Jews said What shall we do for this man doth many miracles THe chief Priests therefore and the Pharisees gathered a Councel and said What shall we do for this man doth many signs if we let him alone so all will believe in him and the Romans will come and take away our place and Nation But one of them named Caiaphas being the High Priest of that year said to them You know nothing neither do you consider that it is expedient for us that one man die for the people and the whole Nation perish not And this he said not of himself but being the High Priest of that year be prophesied that Jesus should die for the Nation and not onely for the Nation but to gather in one the children of God that were dispersed From that day therefore they devised to kill him Jesus therefore walked no more openly among the Jews but he went into the Countrey beside the Desart unto a Citie that is called Ephrem and there he abode with his Disciples Moralities 1. ONe of the greatest Tragedies acted in the life of man which makes curious persons to question wise men to wonder good men to groan and the wicked to rejoyce is to see an innocent man oppressed by colour of justice Now Jesus being resolved to espouse our miseries as far as they can reach was pleased to pass through those rigours and formalities of the wicked coloured with a pretext of equity He is not here condemned by a mean people without consideration without power without formality of process But by these chief Priests and principal men of that Nation assembled in Councel they informed themselves they reason and conclude his death The Lions of Solomons throne did anciently bear certain Writs of the Law to signifie that it was to be handled by couragious and clear-seeing Judges But here Foxes got it into their hands and did manage it by crafty deceits and wickedness Alas we are far from the Laws of God when we cannot abide the least word spoken against our reputation We are troubled to suffer for innocency as if it were a greater honour to suffer for a direct offence Shall we never think that the triumph of virtue consists in well doing and thereby sometimes receiving harm even from those who are esteemed good men 2. There are some difficulties in affairs where truth is shut up as within a cloud Wise men can hardly find out where the point lies but God doth so order it that falshood leaves always certain marks by which it may be known and the beauty of truth is ever like that lake of Affrick which early or late discovers all that is cast into it and makes all impostures plainly appear when we think they are most concealed And this appears by the proceeding of Caiaphas who chose to condemn Christ for those things which were the certain tokens that he was the true Messias He concluded his death by reason of his miracles and those gave him authority as to the Prince of life A troubled spirit makes darts of every thing which it can to fight against reason and kills it self not suspecting its own poison 3. The devil publisheth Jesus for the true Messias and so doth likewise Caiaphas prophesie the same It is not always a certain mark of goodness to speak that which is good but it is an assurance of virtue to avoid that which is ill There are many from whom good works do escape while they both think and do ill Truth makes use of their tongues when Devils command their hearts It is this which makes us to see our Saviours Empire and the extent of his conquests which is not limited by time he being already entered into possession of Eternity and it is not bounded by place because it contains all Immensity Night hath no power to cover it because it is light it self It cannot be shut up in any deceitfull shadow because it scatters and discovers all falshood It cannot be comprehended within our senses because it exceeds their Capacity and it is present in all places being omnipotent and eternal in all time Aspirations O Jesus Father of all blessed unions who hast suffered death to unite all the children of God together who are scattered over all the countreys of the world wilt thou have no pitie of my heart so many times torn in pieces strayed among a great multitude of objects which estrange and draw me from the first of all Unities My soul melts through all the Gates of my senses by running after so many creatures which do kindle covetousness but never serve to refresh or cool the heat of it Draw me O Lord from the great throng of so many exteriour things that I may retire into my own heart and from thence arise to thine where I may find that peace which thou hast cemented fast with thy most precious bloud When shall I see the first beams of that liberty which thou grantest to thy children When shall my thoughts return from wandering in those barren regions where thou art not acknowledged When shall I be re-united and so
and to execute all the decrees of his divine Providence as our chiefest helps to obtain perfection Aspirations OBeauteous garden of Olives which from henceforth shalt be the most delicious object of my heart I will lose my self in thy walks I will be lost with God that I may never be lost I will breathe onely thy air since it is made noble by the sighs of my dear Master I will gather thy flowers since Jesus hath marked them with his bloud I will wash my self in those fountains since they are sanctified by the sweat of my Jesus I will have no other joy but the sorrow of the Son of God nor any other will but his O my sweet Saviour Master and teacher of all humane kind wilt thou be abridged of thine own will which was so reasonable and pure to give me an example of mortifying my passions and shall I before thy face retain any wicked or disordinate appetites Is it possible I should desire to be Lord of my self who am so bad a Master when I see the Authour of all goodness separate himself from himself onely to make me and all mankind partakers of his merits Of the apprehension of JESUS IN that obscure and dolorous night wherein our Saviour was apprehended three sorts of darkness were cast upon the Jews upon Judas and upon Saint Peter A darkness of obduration upon the hearts of the Jews a darkness of ingratefull malignity upon Judas and a darkness of infirmity upon Saint Peter Was there ever any blindness like that of the Jews who sought for the shining Sun with lighted torches without knowing him by so many beams of power which shined from him They are strucken down with the voice of the Son of God as with lightening and they rise again upon the earth to arm themselves against Heaven They bind his hands to take away the use of his forces but they could not stop the course of his bounties To shew that he is totally good he is good and charitable even amongst his merciless executioners and he lost all he had saving his Godhead onely to gain patience When S. Peter stroke the high Priests servant the patience of our Lord Jesus received the blow and had no patience till he was healed If goodness did shew forth any one beam in the garden modesty sent forth another in the house of Anuas when his face was strucken by a servile hand his mouth opened it self as a Temple from whence nothing came but sweetness and light The God of Truth speaketh to Caiaphas and they spit upon his brightness and cover that face which must discover Heaven for us The mirrour of Angels is tarnisht with the spittle of infernal mouthes and wounded by most sacrilegious hands without any disturbance of his constancy That was invincible by his virtue as the willfulness of the Jews stood immoveable by their obduration There are souls which after they have filled the earth with crimes expect no cure of their diseases but by the hell of the reprobate 2. The second darkness appeareth by the black passion of Judas who falls down into hell with his eyes open and after he had sold his soul sold Jesus and both all he had and all he was to buy an infamous halter to hang himself A soul become passionate with wanton love with ambition or avarice is banished into it self as into a direct hell and delivered to her own passions as to the Furies The Poet Hydra had but seven heads but the spirit of Avarice S. Iohn Climacus saith hath ten thousand The conversation of Jesus which was so full of infinite attractions could never win the spirit of Iudas when it was once bewitched with covetousness The tinkling of silver kept him from rightly understanding Iesus He makes use of the most holy things to betray Holiness it self He employes the kiss of peace to begin war He carries poison in his heart and honey in his mouth he puts on the spirit of Iesus to betray him This shews us plainly that covetous and traiterous persons are farthest from God and nearest to the devils 3. The third power of darkness appeared in the infirmity of S. Peter who after so many protestations of fidelity for fear of death renounced the Authour of life One of the Ancients said The greatest frailty of Humanity was that the wisest men were not infallibly wise at all times And all men are astonished to see that the greatest spirits being left to themselves become barren and suffer eclipses which give examples to the wisest and terrour to all the world God hath suffered the fall of S. Peter to make us have in horrour all presumption of our own forces and to teach us that over-great assurance is oftentimes mother of an approching danger Besides it seemeth he would by this example consecrate the virtue of repentance in this fault of him whom he chose to be head of his Church to make us see that there is no dignity so high nor holiness so eminent which doth not ow Tribute to the mercy of God Aspirations Upon S. Peters tears IT is most true saith S. Peter that a proud felicity hath alwayes reeling feet Thou which didst defie the gates of hell hast yielded thy self to the voice of a simple woman All those conquests which thou didst promise to thy self are become the tropheys of so weak a hand Return to the combat and since she hath triumphed over thee do thou at least triumph over thy self Alas I am afraid even to behold the place of my fall and the weak snares of a simple woman appear to me as boisterous chains Yet what can he fear who is resolute to die If thou find death amongst these massacres thou shouldst rather embrace than decline it For what can it do but make thee companion of life it self Our soul is yet too foul to be a sacrifice for God let us first wash it with tears I fell down before the fire and I will rise by water I have walked upon the sea to come to Jesus and I will now return to him by the way of my tears I will speak now onely by my tears since I have lately talked so wickedly with my mouth Since that which should open to speak Oracles for the Church hath been employed to commit foul treason since we have nothing left free to us but sighs and groans let us make use of the last liberty which is left us and when all is spent return to the mercy of Jesus which all the sins of the world can never evacuate I will from henceforth be a perpetual example to the Church by my fall and rising again from death for the comfort of sinners and the fault of one night shall be lamented by me alll the days of my life Moralities upon the Pretorian or Judgement-Hall 1. IN the passion of our Saviour all things are divine and it seemeth they go as high as they could be raised by that Sovereign power joyned with
extream love Jesus the most supream and redoubted Judge who will come in his great Majesty to judge the world fire and lightening streaming from his face and all things trembling under his feet was pleased at this time to be judged as a criminal person Every thing is most admirable in this judgement The Accusers speak nothing of those things which they had resolved in their counsels but all spake against their consciences As soon as they are heard they are condemned justice forsaketh them and they are wholly possest with rage Pilate before he gave judgement upon Jesus pronounced it against himself for after he had so many times declared him innocēt he could not give judgement without protesting himself to be unjust The silence of Jesus is more admired by this infidel than the eloquence of all the world and Truth without speaking one word triumpheth over falshood A Pagan Lady the wife of Pilate is more knowing than all the Laws more religious than the Priests more zealous than the Apostles more couragious than the men of Arms when she sleepeth Jesus is in her sleep when she talketh Jesus is upon her tongue if she write Jesus is under her pen her letter defended him at the Judgement-Hall when all the world condemned him she calleth him holy when they used him like a thief She maketh her husband wash his hands before he touched that bloud the high price of which she proclaimed She was a Roman Lady by Nation called Claudia Procula and it was very fit she should defend this Jesus who was to plant the Seat of his Church in Rome All this while Jesus doth good amongst so many evils He had caused a place to be bought newly for the burial of Pilgrims at the price of his bloud he reconciles Herod and Pilate by the loss of his life He sets Barrabas at liberty by the loss of his honour he speaks not one word to him that had killed S. John the Baptist who was the voice And the other to revenge himself without thinking what he did shewed him as a King He appears before Pilate as the king of dolours that he might become for us the King of glories But what a horrour is it to consider that in this judgement he was used like a slave like a sorcerer like an accursed sacrifice Slavery made him subject to be whipped the crown of thorns was given onely to Enchanters and that made him appear as a Sorcerer And so many curses pronounced against him made him as the dismissive Goat mentioned in Leviticus which was a miserable beast upon which they cast all their execrations before they sent it to die in the desart He that bindeth the showers in clouds to make them water the earth is bound and drawn like a criminal person He that holds the vast seas in his fist and ballanceth Heaven with his fingers is strucken by servile hands He that enamels the bosom of the earth with a rare and pleasing diversity of flowers is most ignominiously crowned with a crown of thorns O hydeous prodigies which took away from us the light of the Sun and covered the Moon with a sorrowfull darkness Behold what a garland of flowers he hath taken upon his head to expiate the sins of both Sexes It was made of briars and thorns which the earth of our flesh had sowed for us and which the virtue of his Cross took away All the pricks of death were thrust upon this prodigious patience which planted her throne upon the head of our Lord. Consider how the Son of God would be used for our sins while we live in delicacies and one little offensive word goeth to our hearts to which though he that spake it gave the swiftness of wings yet we keep it so shut up in our hearts that it getteth leaden heels which make it continue there fixed Aspirations ALas what do I see here A crown of thorns grafted upon a man of thorns A man of dolours who burns between two fires the one of love the other of tribulation both which do inflame and devour him equally and yet never can consume him O thou the most pure of all beauties where have my sins placed thee Thou art no more a man but a bloudy skin taken from the teeth of Tigers and Leopards Alas what a spectacle is this to despoil this silk * * * Ego sum vermis non home Psalm 21. worm which at this day attires our Churches and Altars How could they make those men who looked upon thy chaste body strike and disfigure it O white Alabaster how hast thou been so changed into scarlet Every stroke hath made a wound and every wound a fountain of bloud And yet so many fountains of thy so precious bloud cannot draw from me one tear But O sacred Nightingale of the Cross who hath put thee within these thorns to make so great harmonies onely by thy silence O holy thorns I do not ask you where are your Roses I know well they are the bloud of Jesus and I am not ignorant that all roses would be thorns if they had any feeling of that which you have Jesus carried them upon his head but I will bear them at my heart and thou O Jesus shalt be the object of my present dolours that thou mayest after be the Fountain of my everlasting joys Moralities for Good Friday upon the death of JESUS CHRIST MOunt Calvarie is a marvellous scaffold where the chiefest Monarch of all the world loseth his life to restore our salvation which was lost and where he makes the Sun to be eclipsed over his head and stones to be cloven under his feet to teach us by insensible creatures the feeling which we should have of his sufferings This is the school where Jesus teacheth that great Lesson which is the way to do well And we cannot better learn it than by his examples since he was pleased to make himself passible and mortal to overcome our passions and to be the Authour of our immortality The qualities of a good death may be reduced to three points of which the first is to have a right conformity to the will of God for the manner the hour and circumstances of our death The second is to forsake as well the affections as the presence of all creatures of this base world The third is to unite our selves to God by the practise of great virtues which will serve as steps to glory Now these three conditions are to be seen in the death of the Prince of Glory upon Mount Calvarie which we will take as the purest Idea's whereby to regulate our passage out of this world 1. COnsider in the first place that every man living hath a natural inclination to life because it hath some kind of divinity in it We love it when it smileth upon us as if it were our Paradise and if it be troublesom yet we strive to retain it though it be accompanied with very great miseries
your self by the practise of retirement of penance of hair-cloth and fasting A holy maid of Alexandria was twelve years in a sepulchre Raderus to free her self from the importunities of concupiscence cannot you be there one hour so much as in thought Another had this stratagem to elude love for she seeing Speculum Anonymi a young man to be very much touched with her love who ceased not to importune her with all the violent pursuits which passion could suggest told him she had made a vow to fast forty dayes with bread and water of which she would discharge her self before she would think of any thing else and asked whether he pleased not to be a Party for the triall of his love which he accepted but in few dayes he was so weakned that he then more thought upon death then love Have not you courage to resist your enemy by the like arms your heart faileth you in all that is generous and you can better tell how to commit a sin then to do penance Then chuse out that which is most necessary and reasonable separation from that body so beloved which by Separation the first remedy its presence is the nourishment of your flames Consider you not that comets which as it is said are fed by vapours of the earth are maintained whilst their mother furnisheth them with food so love which shineth and burns like a false star in the bottome of your heart continually taketh its substance and sustenance from the face which you behold with so much admiration from the conversation which entertains you in an enchanted palace full of chains and charms Believe me unlose this charm stoutly take your felfe off dispute not any longer with your concupiscence fly away cut the cable weigh anchor spread sails set forward go fly Oh how a little care will quickly be passed over Oh how a thousand times will you blesse the hour of this resosolution Look for no more letters regard not pictures no longer preserve favours let all be to preserve your reason Ah! why argue you still with your own thoughts Take me then some Angel some Directour The counsel and assiduity of a good directour is an excellent antidote who is an able intelligent industrious couragious man resign your self wholly up to his advice he will draw you out from these fires of Gomorrha to place you in repose and safety on the mountain of the living God I adde also one advice which I think very essentiall which is infinitely to fear relapses after health and to avoid all that may re-enkindle the flame For Love oft-times resembleth a snake enchanted cast asleep and smothered which upon the first occasions awakeneth and becomes more stronger and more outragious then ever You must not onely fortifie your body against it but your heart for to what purpose is it to be chast in your members and be in thought an adulterer Many stick not to entertain love in their imagination with frequent desires without putting them in execution but they should consider that Love though imaginary makes not an imaginary hell and that for a transitory smoke they purchase an eternall fire § 10. Of Celestiall Amities BUt it is time we leave the giddy fancies of love to behold the beauties and lights of divine Charity which causeth peace in battails conquest in victories life in death admiration on earth and paradise in heaven it self It is a strange thing that this subject the most amiable of all proves somewhat dreadfull to me by the confluence of so many excellent Writers antient and modern who have handled it so worthily since thier riches hath impoverished their successions and their plenty maketh me in some sort to fear sterility They had much furtherance in their design they took as much stuffe as they thought good referring all that to the love of God which is in nature and above nature in grace and beyond grace They have enlarged themselves in great volumes the sight whereof alone seems to have much majesty and to please their own appetites they have said all they might possible But here forasmuch as concemeth my purpose I have reduced my self into contractions of great figures which will not prove troublesome if measures and proportions be therein observed and nothing forgotten of all that which is most essentiall to the matter we treat I find my self very often enforced to confine giants to Myrmecidia opera apud Aelianum the compasse of a ring and to cover ships under the wing of a fly drawing propositions out of a huge masse of thoughts and discourses to conclude them in a little Treatise not suffering sublimity to take ought away of their facility nativenesse of their majesty shadows of their lustre nor superficies of their dimensions Besides that which renders this my discourse the lesse pleasing is that speaking to men of the world I cannot disguise the matter in unknown habits splendid and pompous words conceptions extatick I cannot perswade them that a Seraphin hath penetrated rhe heart of one with a dart of fire and that another hath had his sides broken by the strength of the love of God I must pursue ordinary wayes and teach practises more nearly approching to our humanity I am then resolved to shew there are celestiall Amities which great souls contract with God that their condition is very excellent and most happy and that the practice of them must begin in this world to have a full fruition of them in the other Carnall spirits which onely follow animall wayes have much a-doe to conceive how a man can become passionate in the love of God and think there is no affection but for temporall and visible things It is a Love too high say they to transferre their affections into heaven It is a countrey wherein we have no commerce There comes neither letter nor message thence No ships arrive on that coast It is a world separated from ours by a great Chaos wholly impenetrable That there may be a celestiall amity by the commerce of man with God How would you I love God since he is all spirit and I a body He is Infinite I finite He so High and I so low It is a kind of insolency to go about to think of it Behold how spirits ignorant of heavens mysteries do talk But I maintain upon good grounds that we are made to place our love in the heart of God and that if we do not seasonably take this way well we may go on but never shall we arrive at repose First the Philosopher Plato hath worthily observed An exellent conceit of Plato Plato in Sympos Marlil Ficinus Amor memoria primi ac summi purissuni pulchri Appetitor artis desertor artificis amplectitur speciem eujus non miratur authorem S. Eucherius ep Paraenâ—t that the love we have here below is a remembrance of the first fair sovereign and most pure of all beauties which is
Perfecto odio oderaâ—â— illos Psal 138. is dangerous lest seeking to pull them away we be more passionate against the party who hath them then against all the most abominable iniquities We must not believe our selves when there is question of some important punishment nor such as are born to flatter our likings with too much servitude but those Angels for our counsellours if it be possible who are disintangled from the matter of Interests There are some who use to fortifie themselves in their resolutions by the deportments of those who are held for Saints in the Church and do readily alledge the examples of David who being upon his death-bed recommended to his son Solomon the punishment of Joab and Shimei But we must here consider that David is not a man impeceable to serve Question upon the act of David as a pattern for all our actions and that it is ever better to consecrate our dying lips with the words our Saviour spake a thousand years after on the crosse then with those he left in this instant as a Testament to his son The Jews had naturally great inclinations to revenge and many sought to perswade themselves it was by their laws permitted which is the cause this great King was not so perfectly free from all the seeds of Hatred in the whole course of his life But forasmuch as concerneth this last will of his one may excuse him for divers reasons nor can it be denyed an act of justice to put Joah to death who had defiled his hands with the bloud of two innocent Princes but it is strange that David reserved this so rough a punishment for him after fourty years of great and singular services when he was about threescore and ten years old Yet Theodoret brings a reason of state for it wherein he sheweth that Joah Theodoretin c. 2. l. 3. Regum citatus in Glossa Joah being in himself a great Captain was withall daring in his manners and tyrannicall in his undertakings and had already made it but too much appear that he meant to embroil the state after the death of his Master and to set Adonijah upon the throne to the prejudice of Solomon which was the cause that David who sought fixedly to establish the Kingdome upon his lawfull successour councelled him to take him away by a just punishment of other crimes which he had committed And as for Shimei who had surcharged him with injuries and curses when afterward he returned victorious into Hierusalem he came before him and craving pardon of his fault with lowly submission which stayed David and made him swear he should not dye for it which seemeth to convince him of perjury when he commanded his son Solomon to kill him I cannot approve Tostatus his distinction who saith When persons very different in the qualities of their rights treat together that he who hath justice on his side may promise things with an intention not to perform them as the other meaneth them For verily the permission of this manner of captious proceedings would throw a distrust upon all treaties But it is easie to see that David in this occasion beholding himself to be accomplished with joy and glory when Shimei came to cast himself at his feet and that Abishai counselled him instantly to put him to death he swore he should not dy and that the alacrity of a day so pleasing should not be purpled with humane bloud so that he had no further purpose but to assure Shimei for the time present and to promise him impunity in this conjunction of Kingdome and affairs but when he saw this spirit was insolent and like also to occasion trouble in the young King he did not absolutely command as Cajetan observeth to put him to death for what was past which had been pardoned but not to spare him in new occasions of commotion as actually Solomon following the intentions of the King his father troubled him not upon his slanders but upon another occurrent Now although one may alwayes give colour to the Hatred which is undertaken upon consideration and that it be sometimes necessary for the extirpation of the wicked yet must we more incline to clemency then justice in all which concerneth our selves For Hatreds of Interest which concern estates and Hatred of interest honour they many times in these dayes are incurable if they be not accompanied with some reasonable satisfaction It is a thing very remarkable that our Saviour Luc. 12. 14. who accordeth elements and pacifieth totall Nature would not undertake the agreement of two brothers upon the partition of their patrimony Nay there are some now a dayes so greedy and fleshed in prey that for a fingers breadth of land they would oppose Jesus Christ if he should visibly come to mediate their reconciliation After a thousand reasons which may be alledged for peace and good correspondence they derive but one conclusion out of it which is to have their will For which cause God chastiseth them and very often permitteth dissipation of goods ruine of families and many other accidents which stain their consciences and tarnish their reputation As on the contraty he blesseth the children of peace who forgo somewhat of their interest to acquire this inestimable treasure It is almost as hard to preserve charity in a great suit as to maintain fire in the water or under earth to keep inextinguible lamps He who will persist with a conscience indifferently Christian must never descend into suits Suits their nature and description but with a leaden pace and come out of them with the wings of an Eagle Suits are as the sons of Chaos and night there is nothing in them but confusion and darknesse It is a mixture of all evils which hath the heat of fire the threats the roaring thunders and tempests of the air the rocks of the sea the talons of birds of rapine and ravenous throat of fishes the gall of serpents the fury of salvage beasts and the malignity of poysons Before it ever walketh the desire of anothers goods by its side deceit revenge injustice falshood and treachery after it repentance poverty shame and infamy As war is made for peace so we sometimes undertake suits for justice and those are honest men who desire it but they who at this present do it with all sincerity are the greatest Saints of this age who seem to be given by God to mortifie civil hatreds and to establish minds in concord After suits Hatred brings forth another mischief Duell which is Duel a true Sacrifice of Moloch which hath cost France so much bloud mothers and wives so many tears which filleth families with sorrow friends with grief ages with horrour and hearts the most reasonable with the detestation of such a Crime The edicts of our most Christian King which have Means to use an efficacious remedy in Duell had more force then all other have served instead of a Jasper-stone to stanch
of his own accord and wholly melts himself as Incense in the fire in such sort that S. Gregory very well saith That he is the Amber of the Prophet Ezekiel enrobed with the heat of flames But better saith Origen who calleth him the Perfume which is annihilated Origen in Cant. unguentum exinanitum for us comparing the will of the Son of God to a viol filled with an aromatick liquor which one hath turned up-side down to empty it to the last drop so the desires and affections of Jesus are poured forth in the bosome of his heavenly Father But most espeally Hab. 3. Qui ascendis super equos tuos quadrigae tuae salvatio on the day of his Passion for then was the time when the Prophecy of Habakuk was accomplished It is thon who mountest upon the light-horses and who bearest salvation in thy mysterious chariot I now leave those who interpret this passage of the chariot of God triumphing in those ugly darknesses of Egypt I leave those who referre it to the second coming I follow the Interpretation which S. Ambrose Ambros in Luc. Patibulum triumphale 〈…〉 presenteth unto me who calleth the Crosse a gibbet of Triumph and others who term it the true chariot of the glory of the God of hostes I consequently say that the light-horses of our Saviour are his winged and flaming desires which bare him more gloriously then Elias unto the throne of Honour where he hath made a full consummation of himself by the separation of his bloud and soul in that great Sacrifice which put Heaven to mourning the Sunne into eclipse the Earth into quakings and men the most stupid into affrightment O with what obedience with what resignation did that dying Swan then appear when all the starres as Dydimus relateth about three of the clock afternoon were seen in the heavens to enlighten his death O with what union of his will to Gods will he spake these words O my God O my Father behold me on the Pile to be sacrificed to thy Divine Majesty My God I have desired it from the first moment of my conception Deus mens volvi le gem tuam in medio cordis mei I have had the law of Obedience engraven in my heart with a chizzel of fire and an eternall character and at this time O my celestiall Father I wish it I would it and will protest it whilst my soul shall be on my lip to have but one onely desire in the world which is to annihilate my self in accomplishing thy will § 6. The condemnation of the evil Desires of the world and the means how to divert them ANd yet thou O disloyall soul wilt in thy heart entertain a masse of Desires thou wilt Against evil desires rather live among feavers and burning coals then tie thy self to the will of God! Rebel thou hast In omni colle sublimi in omni ligno frondo so tu prosternebaris meretrix Jer. 2. 21. prostituted thy self on high and below upon the mountains and under trees under cedars and on the hysop so many great and little Desires have possessed thy heart Thou miserable man to have affection in store for a deceiving creature who hath put the sword of division into thy marriage to cut asunder a knot tied before the face of Angels and men Thou unfortunate maid unlucky victime to fill all the sails of thy Desires for a man more light then the wind and more faithlesse then ice whose words are but promises promises but perjuries perjuries but forsakings and forsakings but diastres and to have neither heart nor thought for God a Father so benigne a Saviour so affectionate a Lover so loyall Thou to burn alive with black and shamefull flames of ravenous avarice and to have no feeling for him who hath the beauty of fields the enamel of meadows the extent of seas the riches of metals and all the magazines of the Universe in his bosome Thou to run at randome after transitory honour which glisters like a worm in a piece of rotten wood and which pricketh like a thorn and not to hold sympathy with him who crowneth the heads of his Elect with eternall garlands Thou to live daily in fits of fire and ice for a slight toy for a gorget for a chopino for a little dog a parichito for all that which I neither can nor dare to expresse O what a shame is it that all creatures serve for snares and prisons to hearts moistned with the bloud of Jesus and they not to be softned by this venerable shower able to break rocks asunder and dissolve anvils You will ask me what you should do to be delivered from this tyranny First accustome your self to cut away all superfluities whether of apparel Desideria tua parvo redime hoc enim tantum curare debes ut desinant Sence diet vain company or other delights which fight against the law of God Reduce your appetites to a small cost and take more care how to end them then to cherish them Resolve with your self to lop off all your superfluities and to be contented with little holding it for a thing most assured that by how much the lesse you shall depend on your greedy desires which are most forward mistresses to whom you have prostituted your Christian liberty so much shall you be the more near to God Secondly if you feel in your heart some seeds of desires to sprout and disquiet you seasonably prevent them one while diverting them by some laudable employment another while by pulling them up with main strength in their first tendernesse and never to Non obtinebis ut desinat si incipere permiseris Sen. ep 116. let them get strength to your prejudice It is much more easie to defend ones self in the beginning from a passion then to moderate the violence of the exorbitancy when it is lodged in your heart Thirdly follow Aristotle's counsel and look Voluptates abeuntes specta fessas poenitentiâ plenas quò minus cupidè repetantur on all the objects of pleasure not such as they are when they at first soothe Sensuality but such as they be when they turn their backs to forsake us Lastly exercise your self continually in the desire of joyes eternall Behold all those things which environ you all those honours those riches those pomps as deceitfull and momentary things Behold them as a flitting company Each day undo a knot of your slavery Put your self into the liberty of Gods Children Place your self in such a nakednesse of spirit that you may say One and no more Blind soul how canst thou live one sole moment with so many desires which are as so many daughters to marry what a care must be had well to bestow them what a fear to bestow them ill what a grief that they are ill bestowed Stupid soul canst thou rest with so many bloud-suckers fastned to the marrow of thy bones
give a sergeant leave to bring him a summons in the midst of the pleasures of his Table The two most triumphant daies of his mortall life seem to be that of his Transfiguration and that whereon he made his magnificent entrance into Jerusalem And yet on this he wept as moistning his triumph with tears from his eyes and on rhe other Moses and Elias who appeared by his sides to serve as Oratours in his praises spake of that he was to fulfill in Jerusalem to wit of his excessive sufferings as if one had proclaimed to Cesar the sentence of his death at the instant when he entred into his Ivory chariot to be drawn by four white horses Jesus Christ was at that time in a body all resplendent with lights which was as a chariot to his soul and he would to be enterteined with his passion mingle the Cypresse with the lawrell I do not wonder the Fathers have applyed to him the passage of Genesis I will put my Bowe in the clouds This verily was the Rainbowe of the Celestiall Father Arcum meum ponaâ—â— in nubibes Gen. 9. which shone and showred both at one time For we see this goodly Meteor all composed of clouds of glory which serve as a Mirrour for the sun ceaseth not to pour down it self in rain upon our heads so the Saviour of the world in the pavillion of the Beatitude of his soul all covered over with fires and lights had eyes weeping over the sins and miseries of men Where think you were his joyes S. Augustine will tell you the soul of Jesus Christ was perpetually content because Aug. l. de Incarnatio ne Verbi it was drenched in God his father as a drop of dew in the Ocean It was ever in the place of pleasures which were born with it All it thought all it did all it aimed at was nothing but God and from this so perfect union waited on by immortall ardours of his love it derived its Immutability The soul besides these delicious Torrents of beatifick vision which overflowed it drew its consolations from the very sufferings it endured for the glory of the Divine Majesty It drew them from the destruction of Idols and from the confusion of devils which yelled being now despoiled under its feet from the exaltation of the Church in sufferings and persecutions from the glory of so many souls who sailed from the red sea of their bloud to eternall rewards from so many holy Virgins who were to follow the standard of the purity which his Mother did first of all place on his Altars from so many Doctours who should be born to beat down heresie in so many battels which were to be waged throughout the revolution of Ages from so many Confessours who should bedew themselves with tears of penance and burn themselves in a Holocaust of sweetnesse All was presented unto it as in a burning-glasse the rayes whereof reflected in diametre upon its heart to set it all on fire in such sort that it was then like to the great Angell of whom the Prophet Zachary Zach. 1. 8. speaketh who sat upon a red horse among gardens of Myrrhe which are the Hieroglyphes of love his red horse was the ardour of his celestiall affection and the branches of Myrrhe so many elect souls which were even then in the Book of Prescience wherein he took unspeakable delight § 5. Against the Stupidity and Cruelty of worldly pleasures ANd now O disloyall soul to be called to the society of the joyes of the celestiall Father and of the sonne of God and to despise them for a miserable fansie of pleasure Ah illusion Ah witchcraft What sense is there to feast perpetually and to live in the profuse excesse of Taste and gourmandize which you shall one day have more cause to curse then cherish whilst so many poor Widows so many little Orphans and people heretofore fortunate now necessitous even to the extremity of penury have not dry bread to moisten it with their tears before they eat it When have you enquired after their Calamities When have you opened an eye to behold them When have you so much as made a ray of mercy to reflect on so pressing and deplorable miseries Go O thou ungratefull to God traitour to thy own salvation enemy Ingrate Deo tibi ne quam hostis panperum divitum nota carcer naturae Chrysol serm 104. of the poore scorn of the rich and prison of humane Nature who keepest it shut up in thy bowels of brasse not suffering it so much as to behold its like What wilt thou answer to the voice of the bloud of so many poor who will plead against thee at the day of judgement if thou from this time resolvest not to cut off thy superfluities to comfort their afflictions where wilt thou find any to receive thee into those celestiall mansions if thou dost not visit the poor in their Hospitals and Cabbins abandoned by all the world Where wilt thou find rewards from heaven if thou sowest not liberalities on earth O thou nice wanton who wiltst perpetually be observed according to the giddy fancies of the exorbitant spirit and the many sufferings which have covered and swallowed up the third part of man-kind never to enter into thy thoughts Of what flesh of what bloud of what bones dost thou think thou art made to desire here to be served like a demy-God and to walk on the heads of men Ignorant of thy self nay Hangman of thy self who canst not live without so much prodigality superfluities and services not knowing that the first imitation of God is to depend little in the world on ought which concerneth the service of the body O thou old raven of the Deluge who still art tied with a long chain of servitude to a wretched piece of Carrion which hath exhausted the wealth of thy purse and brain Is it then infamous pleasure for which thou hast renounced the delights of heaven for which thou hast betrayed thy salvation and trampled under foot the bloud of the Testament and thou not yet so vouchsafe to open thy eyes to see the headlong ruine which threatneth thee Unhappy Bacchanalians who make Temples to be consecrated among Christians to Idolatrize you where will you find any place to lodge you in unlesse you mean to leap and skip upon the bloud of the lamb Hence with riot curiosity sports feasts and dissolute delights I pronounce it I publish it aloud They are the Apostacies of Christianity if you daily go about to countenance their libertismes Traiterous pleasures pleasures enemies of the Crosse Num. 11. 34 see see at the door of the house of these Syrens the sepulchres of Concupiscence which stink and smoke still with the disastrous carrions of those unsatiable bellies which made warre against heaven to have dainties which they no sooner received into their throats but the anger of God fell on their criminall heads and do you think that following
these serpents asleep which devour us but we must likewise confesse that if our griefs be short they deserve not so great complaints and if they be long their lasting fashioneth us to patience All is formidable to a body full of long health but the accustoming to things unpleasing causeth the contempt of them Nature hath destinated the most nice and tender to great dolours as women to that of child-bearing to teach us that what we fear most is not alwayes to be most feared When our courage faileth all torments insult over us but if it makes some resistance we much the lesse feel our pain There are who fight even to bloud out of bravery others receive wounds for a very little money others run to the burning chaps of cannons for a small salary there are others to be found who have jested at the gash and others who have played on a lute whilst their members have been flashed with keen rasors to shew that if there be an evil in nature there is much more in our opinion The Philosopher Zeno sought out torments to caste pleasures and said they were nohing if they were not thus seasoned Pain and pleasure interchangeably sway in us as do day and night in our Hemisphere If we must die it is but a moment of adversity to enter into a perpetuall repose Evill taketh up all the parts of our life but death hath onely one instant of time It is so conformed to the most part of the world oppressed with so many afflictions that as Zaleucus the Notable speech of Zaleucus Law-maker said an Edict should fitly have been made to die if God had not imposed a necessity upon it To be born maketh us tributaries to all miseries but death alone freeth us from all imposts Socrates saw his death coming whilst he was philosophising Anaxagoras in pleading Calanus braved it out of temerity and Canius jeasted at it out of merriment If your evil be in the mind is it chiefly sin or folly The evils of the mind which tormenteth you Why forbear you to chastise the one by penance and the other by the credit you will give to the judgement of the wise By this meanes you shall find that Reason will remedy almost all evils without much violence Where Reason is surprised and darkned by the violence Comforts which proceed from time of torments Time quits the medicine There is no evil immortall for the mortall let us make our selves tractable by not thinking on our evils and they cease to be evils according as time stealeth them away from us Think not to dry up the eyes of a mother who hath lost her son or of a wife from whom death Insensible comforts hath taken her husband on the day of the buriall suffer them to weep let the wound bleed and think how to cure it rather by prayers then by discourses The most pertinacious dolours disband with time and we are all amazed that we find our selves above our afflictions as if we had climbed up thither from out of the bottome of abysses He who should see the mount Aetna big with flames and thunders would not think there were any meanes to approach It but its furies passe away with time and we pursue little tracks which insensibly lead us to the top where we find verdant grasse and blooming flowers The like happeneth to us when we in the beginning consider our evil fortune it seemes our mind can never associate with its disasters but in the end the divine Providence discovereth wayes unto us which ere we think on 't bring us to the top of patience where we gather the fruit of our travels Who would not admire the goodnesse of God to say That time doth our businesse without our trouble and if we must be sad we find I know not what in our sadnesse that pleaseth us so that we preferre solitude and silence before the most eloquent consolations The friends of Job seeing these his deep miseries were seven dayes without speaking to him they let him discourse with his own thoughts and gather some case from his own dolour as we draw remedies Julianus Imperator in consola◠Ametil ep 37. out of scorpions I to this purpose observe an excellent invention in the Emperour Julian of the Philosopher Democritus where it is said That Darius King of Persia had lost An excellent observation of Julian the Queen his wife and that excessive melancholy made him disconsolate The wisest men of Greece were called to him to mitigate his torments but it was to play on a lute to the ears of Tygres and Panthers to go about to cure by words fitly applied a grief which had had more of futy then mediocrity in it The Philosopher let all these great comforters to passe on and put himself upon time to expect some disposition in the heart of this Monarch and seeing his mind tired out with his teares began to resent he promised to raise the Queen again if he he would furnish him with things necessary for his purpose the other extremely rapt with this proposition said he therein would employ all the riches of the world which were at his dispose but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Philosopher onely demanded of him three names of such as had never felt any grief or sadnesse to engrave them on the Queens Monument which could not in any sort be found after a long search throughout the whole kingdome of Persia Then Democritus taking his opportunity Alas Sir we may well say the rubies and diamonds of this diadem resplendent on your head dazle your eyes and hinder you from seeing the miseries of your poor subjects not to be able in so great and vast an Empire to meet with three happy men and yet you wonder though born under the condition of mortals that death is entred into your palace He added many grave sayings which the Emperour for his consolation liked very well Whereby we are taught that we must sometimes make use of time to remedy sadnesse If time doth nothing and that it be an evil necessary which we cannot remedy as it happeneth in death and in other accidents which those Ancients called the blows of Destiny why do we resist against heaven and censure the divine Decrees It is a goodly thing indeed to see a man to afflict himself with a fatall necessity Necessity forceth patience which indifferently involveth Monarches and peasants Must God revoke his laws and must he create a world apart to content a simple creature and serve it to its liking But is it not much better to go along with the stream of this water and follow the great current of the divine Providence which maketh all the harmony in the world § 4. That the Contemplation of the divine Patience and Tranquillity serves for Remedies for our temptations LAstly let us behold the assistances of Grace which is incomparably above Nature and let us from Remedies and
resemblance in Nature We have heretofore heard of a Prince who desirous to offer himself to death for rhe preservation of his subjects took the habit of a Peasant to steal himself from his greatnesse and facilitate his death All histories say he laid down his purple and crown and all the ensigns of Royalty retaining none but those of love which caused him to go into his enemies army where he left life to purchase an immortall trophey for his reputation But I must tell you he had a mortall life and in giving it he gave that tribute to nature which he owed to nature from the day of his birth and which of necessity he was to pay yea he gave it to buy the memory of posterity and to beg honour which is more esteemed by generous spirits then life But in what history have we read that a man glorious by birth immortall by condition necessarily happy hath espoused humility which all the world despiseth mortality which the most advised apprehend misery which the bravest detest for no other occasion but to have the opportunity to dy for a friend And this is it which Jesus Christ did He was by nature immortall impassible impregnable against all exteriour violencies he took not the habit of a peasant as Codrus nor a body of air as Abscondit purpuram sub miseri◠vestimentis ad lutum ubi jacebam inclinatur non mergitur the Angell-conductour of Tobias but a true body a flesh tender and virginall personally united to the word of God to quail it with toils to consume it with travails and lastly to resign it as a prey to a most dolourous death he casts tottered rags over his royall purple and takes pains to stoop down to pull me out of the mire where I lay and to take my miseries upon him not sullying himself in my sins My God! what a prodigie is this All ages have Abbas Guerricus observed a thousand and a thousand industries of men which they found out to avoid the pains and torments of life but never have we seen a man who sought to invent means and to offer violence to his own condition to become suffering and miserable according to the estimation of the world since there are day and night so many gates open to this path yet thou Oh God of Glory O mild Saviour hast done it Thou hast found a way how to accord infirmity with sovereign Mortem nec solus Deus sentire nec solus homo vincere poterat homo suscepit Deus vicit Faustus l. 1. de lib. arbitr The quality of the sufferings of our Saviour power honour with ignominy time with eternity and death with life It was not possible that sole God should endure death or that sole Man could vanquish it but man hath abided it and God hath overcome it As for the quality of pains it sufficeth to say that if men judged of the greatnesse of Gyants by one of their footsteps impressed on the sand and if we likewise measure the course of the sun by a small thread of shadow one may have some grosse knowledge of so great a mystery by the figures which forewent it Now all the sacrifices of the Mosaick law and so many travails and sufferings of the antient Patriarchs were but a rough draught of the passion of Jesus Christ from whence we may imagine what the originall was sith the Copies thereof were so numerous and different throughout the course of all Ages The perpetuall sacrifice which was evening and 3 Reg. 8. 63. 22000 bullocks and 120000 sheep sacrificed for the dedication of Solomon his Temple morning made in the Temple the twenty two thousand oxen and the hundred and twenty thousand sheep which were sacrificed by Solomon at one feast of the dedication of the Temple so much bloodshed that it seemed a red sea to those who beheld it was to no other end but to figure the blood of the immaculate Lamb and of all its members which have suffered after it But if so much preparation and profusion were needfull to expresse one sole shadow of his passion what may we conjecture of the body and the thing figured Besides if all the antient Patriarchs who were so persecuted in times past and all the Martyrs who since the death of our Saviour have endured torments almost infinite in number and prodigious in kinds made but an assay or tryall of the dolours of this King of the afflicted what an account shall we make of his pains which ever ought to be as much adored by our wills as they are incomprehensible to our understanding The Lamb was sacrificed from the beginning of the world saith Saint Apoc. 13. 8. Agnas accisus est ab origine mundi Our Saviour hath suffered in the person of all the just and the martyrs John He was massacred in Abel saith S. Paulinus tossed upon so many waves in the person of Noah wandring in that of Abraham offered up in Isaac persecuted in Jacob betraied in Joseph stoned in Moses bruised on a dunghill in the patience of Job blinded in Samson sawn in Esay flayed afterward in the person of S. Bartholmew roasted in that of Saint Laurence thrown out to Lions in that of Saint Ignatius burned in that of Saint Polycarp Confummatio abbreviata Isa 10 12. Unâ oblatione consummavit in sempiter num satisfactos Heb 10 14. Unigenitus Dei ad peragendum mort is suae sacramentum consummavit humanarum omne genus passionum Hilar. l. 10. de trinit pulled in picees by four horses and cast headlong into a ditch full of Serpents in that of Saint Tecla drowned in that of S. Clement exposed to wasps in that of many other Martyrs From whence it commeth that the passion of Jesus is called a short Consummation by the Prophet Esay and that Saint Paul hath said to the Hebrew That by one sole Sacrifice he hath consummated those which were to be sanctified for all eternity And S. Hilary clearly confesseth That Jesus Christ the onely Son of God desirous to fulfill this great and mysterious Sacrament of his pretious death did passe through all imaginable dolours which were as it were melted and distilled together to make of it a prodigious accomplishment Jesus is the stone with seven eyes whereof the Prephet Zachary speaketh which the heavenly Father says he hath cut and engraven with his own hand Zach. 39. thereon figuring all the most glorious characters of patience He is an Abysse of love of mercy of dolours of ignominies of blood of lowlinesse and greatnesse of excesse of admiration and amazement which swalloweth all thoughts dryeth up all mouths stayeth all pens and drencheth all conceptions Who now then will dare to complain that he suffereth too much that he doth too much that he is treated with lesse tendernesse then he deserveth O our coldnesse and remissnesse whence can it proceed but from not studying enough on this incomparable
of Flanders with him He being very subtil sought to prevent the Virgin and to accommodate her to his likings wherein he could not prevail according to his wicked purpose and it is likewise thought she let him see presumptions pregnant enough against La Brosse his kinsman But he surprizing her by way of conscience enjoyned her silence saying It was not fit for her to speak since her speech might peradventure be the cause of the death of a man whom she could not expose to this danger without mortall sin The Abbot being come to acquit himself of his Commission found her wholly reserved and could get nothing out of her which made him to suspect some deceit Both of them returned to the Court where the Bishop being questioned by the King concerning his proceedings saith the religious woman had told him things under the secret of Confession which was not fit for him to reveal To which Philip readily replied that he sent him not to hear her Confession but to know the revelations she had from God in the discharge of Innocents The Abbot said aloud he well perceived there was jugling in the Bishops proceeding and that he went not sincerely to work which was the cause that a second Embassage was appointed to this religious creature whereof Theobald Bishop of Dol and Arnulph a Knight of the Templers had the Commission and they so well understood how to handle the matter that she spake in these terms Tell the King If any one hath spoken to him in an ill sense of the Queen his wife let him not believe it for she is truly and sincerely good and cordially faithfull towards him and his her virtue cannot be obscured by the darknesse of Calumny This answer cured Philips mind in the matter of suspicion against Mary and turned it upon his bad servants although the want of proof permitted him not to hazard the punishment was due to them But God who draweth brightnesse out of the bosome of darknesse discovered the mischief of La Brosse by a notable accident One of his trusty friends passing by the Abbey of S. Peter at Melun is surprized by a sharp sicknesse which made him think upon his last passage by the assistance of good Religious men of that Monastery and finding himself touched to the quick with remorse of conscience he declared his crime and gave a little Casket to a Religious man who heard his Confession charging him to give it to the King with his own hands and to no other which he very faithfully did and when they had opened this box of Pandora there were discovered all the mischiefs and practices of La Brosse and his hopes to be dissolved For he was presently put in prison and brought to his triall which was followed by a Sentence that condemned him to be hanged and strangled on a gallows of Felons Here it was where the ambitious desires of this disloyall soul were to determine who found that worldly fortunes in which God is not are grosse smokes that produce nought but tempests 6. To conclude we find in the last order bloudy The French revengers of ambition and furious ambitions which cause revolutions of Empire and shake the pillars of the earth Nicetas observeth one very terrible wherein the French were witnesses arbitratours and revengers During the expedition they made in the Land under Philip Gods-guift there appeared a strange accident and a horrible confusion in the state of the Eastern Empire Isaac Comnenus who held the reins of the Empire is menaced much misery by his nearest allies and those whom he had advanced to the greatest dignities He thereupon consulteth with a South-sayer who among popular spirits was in great reputation but who according to the opinion of Nicetas was a cheating Imposter that sought to passe for a Prophet although his words consisted of a thousand falshoods The Emperour with much courtesie having saluted him he disposed himself to leap and to expresse postures which savoured more of a man possessed and frantick then of a prophet notwithstanding without saying any thing else he threw his staffe at the Emperours Image and for an ill presage put out the eyes of it Isaac Comnenus making no account here of contemneth the Southsayer and in few dayes is deprived of the Empire and of his eyes by a horrible conspiracy of Alexius his nearest kinsman and in this condition confined to a loathsome prison all the rest of his life The tyrant who had put out his eyes takes his bloudy spoil and finding no resistance possesseth himself of the throne of Constantinople Alexis son of the Emperour made blind escaped The furious ambition of Alexius the Tyrant of Greece punished by the valour and Justice of the French out of the chains and hand of the parricide his uncle and goes to the French Camp where he made a lamentable narration of his disasters He prayes he beseecheth he conjureth these brave Conquerours by all things the most sacred to take pity upon a miserable Emperour and to succour his father against the most execrable treachery that ever was practised in the world saying It onely belonged to them to trample dragons and monsters under-foot Besides the glory of this action he promiseth them wonders arms ships munition to advance the design they had for the conquest of the holy Land The French were divided in opinion upon this businesse some desiring to pursue their journey others judging this occasion well deserved to stay them there being not any actions in the world more glorious then to do Justice to the afflicted dispossesse bloudy usurpers of Empires and to restore true Kings into that rank which nature and the consent of people had given them This Faction carried it and ours using the advantage which their first fervours afforded them put themselves presently in a readinesse to take Constantinople One who should well weigh the exploits of arms they did in six dayes would think their army had consisted of Giants who bare Mountains and piled them one upon another to over-look the strongest Citadels in the world What they did exceedeth ordinary prodigies and will scarcely find credit with posterity Two thousand foot separated from the rest of the army aided onely by five hundred horse entred into a city wherein there were threescore thousand horse and four hundred thousand souls able to bear arms This so filled minds with terrour that the tyrant as timorous in warre as he had been violent in peace leaves his place without resistance and putting his richest treasures into covert he goes to sea in an instant to change a great Empire into Banishment He went out at one gate and young Alexis entred in by the other causing his troups to march in good order and was with applause received by the chief Citizens who had used much compassion in the afflictions of his Father There was then seen a strange alteration when they went to take this poor blind Emperour out of prison to
affrightment in the towns and as many sackings as quarterings Those which sit at the Stern of Empires and Common-wealths are greatly accountable to God for that which hath past in this businesse Kings ought not onely to maintain Justice by their Arms but to teach it by their behaviour and to consecrate it by their examples The Doctour Navarrus hath set down divers sins against Justice by the which Princes Common-wealths and Lords may offend against God mortally as to take unlawfully the goods that belong not to them and to keep them without restitution To govern loosely and negligently their Kingdomes and Principalities To suffer their Countreys to be unprovided of victualls and defence necessary which may bring their Subjects in danger of being spoiled To wast and consume in charges either evil or unnecessary the goods which are for the defence of their estates To burden excessively their subjects with Imposts and Subsidies without propounding any good intent therefore and without having any necessity not pretended but true and reall To suffer the poor to die with famine and not to sustain them with their Revenues in that extremity Not to hearken to reasonable conditions for a just Peace and to give occasion to the enemies of the Christian name to invade their Lands and root out our Religion To dispense either with the Law of God or Nature To give judgement in the suits of their Subjects according to their own affection To deceive their creditours to suppresse the Liberty and Rights of the people to compell them by threatnings or importunate intreaties to give their goods or to make marriages against their wills or to their disadvantage To make unjust Wars to hinder the service of the Church to sell offices and places of Charge so dear that they give occasion to those that buy them to make ill use thereof To present to Benefices with Cure of Souls persons unworthy and scandalous To give Commissions and Offices to corrupt and unfit officers To tolerate and permit vices filthinesse and robberies by their servants and to condemne to death and cause to be slain unjustly without due order of Law and to violate the marriage-beds of their Subjects All these things and others which this Doctour hath noted cause great sins of Injustice in the persons of great ones unto which they ought especially to take heed and to prevent the same it is most necessary that they be instructed in the duties of their charge and in the estate of their affairs bending themselves thereto as the most important point of their safety and seeing that the passion of Hatred or Love which one may bear to some person will trouble the judgement and pervert Justice S. Lewis counselled the King his son strongly to keep his heart in quiet and in the uncertainty of any differences alwayes to restrain his own affection and to keep under all movings of the spirit as the most capitall enemy to Reason Many Princes have often lost both their life and Sceptre for giving themselves to some unjust action and there is no cause more ordinary for which God translates Kingdomes from one hand to another then Injustice as on the contrary those Princes which have been great Justiciaries do shine as the stars of the first magnitude within Gods Eternity and even their ashes do seem as yet to exhale from their Tombs a certain savour which rejoyceth people and keeps their memory for ever blessed But one cannot believe the rare mixture that Justice Goodnesse its Excellency and Goodnesse make joyned together Goodnesse is an essence profitable and helpfull which serves as a Nurse to Love it hath its originall in the Deity and from thence disperseth it self by little veins into all created Beings and mixeth it self with every object as the light with every Colour It drives away and stops up evil on every side and there is no place even to the lowest hell where it causeth not some beam of its brightnesse to shine Beauty which amazeth all mortall eyes is but the flower of its essence but Goodnesse is the fruit thereof and its savour is the savour of God which all creatures do taste and relish God which as Casiodore saith is the cause of all Beings the life of the senses the wisdome of understandings the love and glory of Angels having from all eternity his happinesse complete in his own bosome hath created man that he might have to whom to do good as Gregory Nyssen writes and S. Cyprian saith that this eternall Spirit did move upon the waters from the beginning of the world to unite and appropriate the Creature to its self and to dispose it for the loving inspirations of its Goodnesse The Prince which according to the obligement of his Charge would make himself an imitatour of God ought to be exceedingly good with four sorts of Goodnesse of Behaviour of Affability of Bounty and of Clemency I say first of Behaviour for that there is small hope of any great one which is not good towards God which keeps not his Law and rules not his life thereby if he have any virtues they are all sophisticate and if he do any good it is by ebbing and flowing by fits and for some ends No person can be truly good towards others which doth not begin with himself he must needs have Christian Love without which no man shall ever see God if he possesse this virtue he will first have a love of honour to those which have begot him a conjugall love for his wife a cordiall love to those of his bloud and all his kindred from thence it will spread it self over his whole house and through all his estate and will cause him to love his Subjects with a certain tendernesse as his own goods and as the good shepherd cherisheth his flocks He will imitate our Lord which looked from the top of the mountain upon the poor people of Judea that followed him and his heart melted for them with singular compassion Herein doth truly consist the virtue of Piety which gives so great a lustre to the life of Princes Now according to the Goodnesse that is in his heart he must needs pour it forth upon all his by these three conduit-pipes that I have said of Affability of Liberality and of Clemency Affability which is a well ordered sweetnesse both in words and converse ought to increase together with a Prince from his tender age This is a virtue which costeth nothing and yet brings forth great fruit it procures treasuries of hearts and wills which do assist great ones when need requires A good word that cometh forth of the mouth of a King is like the Manna that came from heaven and fell upon the desert It nourisheth and delighteth his Subjects it hath hands to frame and fashion their hearts as it pleaseth him it carrieth with it chains of gold sweetly to captivate their wills The command that cometh with sweetness is performed with strength invincible and every
and did oftentimes David goes out of the kingdome and retires himself among strangers easily depart from reason for long seasons David resolved to go out of the Kingdome and to betake himself to Achish King of the Philistims Some may seek occasion to blame his behaviour in this matter and may think it strange that he should retire himself to the Philistims the sworn enemies of the people of Israel especially after this reconciliation and oath passed between him and Saul But it must be considered that his life was no wayes assured within the Kingdome and that Saul at another time having given so solemn a promise to Jonathan for the safety of his friend yet would have kill'd him with his own hand and further that he was every day in danger to be set upon by arms from the other party with effusion of bloud both of the one and other and that it seemed better to him to avoid the occasion then to see himself perpetually obliged by so miserable a necessity to defend himself Further he considered that he brought his chiefest friends into danger not being able to retire himself amongst them without making them guilty of treason and exposing them to slaughter lastly he found not so much security amongst other Kings which having no war with Saul would have made some difficulty in enterteining him or might have delivered him up after they had received him for their own commodity This made him resolve to take his refuge amongst a Nation that bore an irreconcileable hatred against Saul But forasmuch as some have thought that he 1 King 27. bore arms for Achish against the people of God this is manifestly convinced of falshood by the Text of the Scripture where it is expressly said that David did invade the Amalekites and other people Infidels although that Achish perswaded himself that he would do the like to the Israelites after he had been so evilly used by his own Nation But he used dissimulation herein for to maintein himself in good favour with the King as the Doctour Tostatus hath very well noted And this was the cause that the great ones of the Kingdome which perceived this dissembling of David would never suffer him to be in the Army-Royall in the day that the battell joyned against the people of Israel saying openly to the King that he would betray the party and would reconcile himself with his own men by the price of the lives of the Philistims unto the great disadvantage of the whole Realm which was the cause that Achish gave him leave to depart fairly excusing it upon the suspicions which the Noble-men had taken of him At the last the fatall day of Saul drew near and he saw the Philistims which came thick and threefold upon him with the chiefest forces of their Empire he felt Saul being in great perplexitie consults with the soul of Samuel the remorse of conscience and the blood of so many Innocents undeservedly shed ceased not to leap up against his faulty head In these confusions of a troubled spirit by the representation of his crimes he sought unto the Divine Oracles to learn what he should do in so pressing a necessity But this unhappy Prince that had used Samuel so unworthily in his life and driven away as farre as he could all honest men from his councels for to let loose the raines of his fury sought after the dead in vain having trod under feet the admonitions of the living I have declared in the Maxime concerning the Immortality of the soul the whole discourse about his consulting with the Witch at Endor and it is not my purpose here to trouble again my Reader with the rehearsall of those things We may onely note that the soul of Samuel having appeared before that the Sorceresse could employ the charms of her profession rebuked Saul for having disquieted it and foretold him the routing of his Army his Death with that of his Children at which he was so affrighted that he fell down in a swound having eaten nothing all that day Whereat the Sorceresse having pity and having prepared somewhat to eat was urgent with him to take some little refreshment which he did and condescended to her intreaties and those of his servants After he went from her table he marched all night He marches against the Philistims in battell and is overthrown that he might come to the Army whether it were that he did not firmly believe that his last mishap or whether he would willingly sacrifice himself without any contrarying Gods appointment The next morning he perceived the Army of the Philistims wonderfully increased and with full resolution to fight and on the contrary the Israelites exceedingly weakned and which seemed already to carry the picture of their disastre printed in their faces The enemies gave the onset with very great violence and overthrew the van-gard in which Jonathan was with his two brethren all which sealed the last proofs of their valour with their blood and death The miserable father saw carryed away before he dyed all that might have obliged him to live and presently perceived that the whole body of the Army of the Philistims was falln upon him and yet for all that he had no desire to retire not willing to over-live those his misfortunes He was ill handled by those of the forlorn hope which ceased not to let fly their arrows very thick upon the Troops where he was and which fell with such violence and multitude that they seemed to imitate the hail in a great tempest which furiously beats down the hopes of a poor husbandman He saw his bravest Captains dy before his eyes which sacrificed themselves with despair of better fortune and although he were wounded with many wounds and that he had lost almost all his blood yet he stoutly upheld The end of Saul himself desiring nothing so much as to dye in the bed of honour But as forces failed him and the violence of his adversaries redoubled fearing lest they had a purpose to take him alive he commanded his Target-bearer to make an end of him and to give him his deaths-blow before he should fall into the hands of the Philistims The other excused himself wisely saying That he would never undertake that against his Majesty and upon so sacred a person and that one ought to expect the destiny and not to prevent it Then Saul seeing that he could not dye so soon as he desired neither by the hands of his friends nor of his enemies suffered himself to fall upon his sword and made it enter into him vomiting forth both his soul and blood with ragings and griefs unspeakable The Philistims having found his body amongst the dead corps took off his armour and cut off his head which they carried through the towns of Palestina for a pittifull spectacle making many thanksgivings in the Temple of their Idol for this victory And not content herewith they took the
heretofore found and pillaged in Rome were sent back again to the Place from whence they had been transported by Titus Vespatian This warre was finished in three moneths with an Army of six thousand men so easie it is to row when God conducts the vessell But that of the West was very long in its continuance Obstinate in its Resistance Malignant in its Designes and Lamentable in its Effects Theodoric King of the Goths as I have said in the life of Boetius had made himself Master of Rome and of all Italy where he reigned with great authority He left for Successour Athanaric sonne of his daughter Amalazunta at that time but nine years old under the Protection of his Mother She was the most accomplish'd Princesse of her age and most worthy to govern an Empire Neverthelesse since she saw her self invironed with those Goth Princes that were of an humour sufficiently cruell and that did not easily brook her domination She honoured with her confidence Theodate one of the principall of them because he was of the blood Royall and appeared the most moderate of all the rest playing rather the Philosopher then the Captain This ungratefull man after the death of the little Athanaric who was not of a long life was moved with so furious a State-jealousie that by the basest of Treasons he caused that poor Princesse to be strangled in a Bath fearing lest she as being farre more able then he in the managing of affairs and he holding the Sceptre onely by her favour might take too great a share in the Government But this unnaturall man that thought to settle his Crown by the death of that innocent Queen totally ruin'd his affairs and could not avoid the vengeance of God that pursues Traytours even to the gates of hell The Emperour Justinian that had already projected to recover his City of Rome and all Italy out of the hand of the Goths hearing the rehearsall of that horrible basenesse committed against the person of Amalazunta that had sought Alliance with him failed not to take the occasion and to declare a warre against Theodate thinking that it was then a good time to set upon an Empire when he that governs it begins to be forsaken of God for the enormity of his Crimes This cowardly King was so much astonished at this news that at first he humbled himself by very great submissions offering the Sovereignty to the Emperour of the East and contenting himself to reign under him But the other seeing him so wicked and so weak despised him and caused Belizarius to advance with his Army into his Territories who suddenly possessed himself of Sicily Theodate although an Arrian Heretick had recourse to the Pope and invited him as well by Intreaties as by Menaces to make a Voyage to Constantinople to Treat a Peace between the two Crowns Agapetus who was then seated on Saint Peters Chair was so Poor and Indigent that he had not wherewith to furnish himself with Provision for the Journey that he was fain to pawn the Sacred Vessels of Saint Peters Church to bear his charges by the way He failed not to transport himself into the East and was received by Justinian with all the respects due to so high a Dignity but when he came to touch upon the point of Peace the Emperour told him That the businesse was already too farre advanced That that Warre was an Holy Warre against the Enemies of God and his Church which ought not to be hindered by the Counsells of a Pope and that he need fear nothing that Theodate could do who was more able to threated then to hurt The Pope suffered himself easily to be perswaded and quitting the Interests of that King busied himself about the Government of his Church It is a wonder that he had so much Authority as to depose Anthimus Patriarch of Constantinople who had been brought in by Faction and to substitute Menas in his Place in spight of the Empresse Theodora who had not at that time all the power that is attributed to her over the spirit of her Husband The Good Shepheard after he had Courageously done the duty of his Charge dyed in Constantinople where he left a most sweet odour of his sanctity In the mean while Belizarius pursues the Conquest enters into Pou and takes Naples by night using a Stratagem of Warre that made him put on three hundred men through subterraneous places where there passed nothing but water The taking of so flourishing a City gave astonishment and rage to the Goths who Conspired against their King Theodate and substituted by Election Vitiges in his place who was not of so Noble a Family but who seemed to them Bold and Generous to repair the Ruines of the State As soon as he was chosen he suddenly caused Theodate to be slain who was surprised in his flight and washed away by his blood the murther of Amalazunta This Prince was agitated with two contrary Passions with the desire of solitude and with the motion of his ambition the one counselled him to quit the Empire the other to retain it while that he would content them both he contents no body and was surprised in his irresolution In this conjuncture of affairs the Grecian Generall advances and marches straight to Rome which receives him with open Arms some through love and others through impotence Vitiges desirous to make his Crown renowned by some illustrious Act and to confirm by his Valour the judgement of those that had chosen him assembles from all parts the Goths spurring them on both with the Glory of their Nation and the necessity of their affairs in such a manner that in a small time he lay siege to Rome with an Army of an hundred and fifty thousand men It is in this occasion that the Valour of Belizarius was made visible in all its advantages for with an Army of six thousand men he susteined that prodigious number of Barbarians amidst sicknesse hunger and a thousand other incommodities and when the Romans wanted Arms and Ammunitions of Warre he made Arrowes of the Statues of the Gods and of the Cesars to throw at the head of his enemies In the end having sollicited with diligence and expected with constancy the succours that came to him from the East he raised the siege and scattered all that thick Cloud of Armies that environed him Vitiges is constrained to retire into Ravenna where he besieges him and presses him so strictly that he forces him to deliver to him his City and even his own Person He was carried away Prisoner with his Wife and abundance of Lords to Constantinople presented to Justinian and served for a Pompous object in the Triumph of Belizarius who was received with the full satisfaction of all the Nobles with the admiration of the wisest and with the generall acclamation of all the World The Emperour alone began to be pricked with jealousie and to entertein him with coldnesse In the mean space the Goths make
not yet wicked but capable to become so he went not to seek sinne but sinne sought him and he wanted strength to resist it the respect of a woman took from him that of God he consented to evil that he might not offend her and betrayed his soule to content the heart of a woman past all regard of her honour and salvation A man ows not obedience in this case to the most qualified and the most beneficiall personages he ought to fly from them he ought to break off with them he must not think upon pleasing them in a thing that may displease God Both of them at last habituated themselves in their crime and at first acted it secretly enough but the impudence of Antonina and the great confidence she had of her husbands love took from her her shame and discovered her dishonour Belizarius began to be doubtfull of it but he feared his own thoughts and that he might not render his wife criminall he made himself stupid Behold at length a poore maid-servant a Macedonian by Nation comes to him and tells him My Master I put my life into your hands I have great things to tell you but I am a dead woman if you ever open your mouth of them Promise me upon your oath to keep my counsell and I wil tell you that which concerns the honour of your house The Master swears the servant speaks and accuses her Mistresse of an infamous conversation with Theodosius Belizarius that would not believe his shame and misery asked her if there were any other witnesses she produces two Grooms of the house that depose the same It is too much sayes he Ah Theodosius unfaithfull Theodosius Have I then made thee my sonne to become now my Torturer Have I put Thee into my house to defile my Bed Have I given thee Life to take away my Honour Deceitfull Man Where is that Modesty that was painted upon thy Countenance Where are those Artificiall words that thou hast so oft employed to seduce my Goodnesse Thou shalt now receive a Reward worthy of thy Wickednesse What do I say Kill my sonne of Adoption It is to condemn mine own Judgement and to tear out my heart But it is his Crimes that destroyes him and not I He must dye and there is no pardon for him Constantine his intimate friend perceived his sadnesse knew the cause of it and counselled him rather to rid himself of his wife that had seduced Theodosius and which was the Plague and fury of his House but he loved her passionately and would by no means hearken to it He called instantly a souldier of those that were most engaged and having greatly obliged him to secresie commanded him to kill Theodosius He knowing how well he was beloved of the Lady asked counsell of the businesse of a friend of his that told him that Belizarius was mutable in that matter and that Antonina was the Mistresse that it might happen that she might regain the spirit of her husband and might be a very bad enemy to him that should undertake to kill her Minion The Souldier was afraid and instead of doing the Act gave secret notice of it to Theodosius who fled to the City of Ephesus Troubles are in the House The Husband sad and pensive believing that the businesse commanded was already executed The Wife in fears and passions impossible to be related yet her pain was somewhat mitigated when she knew that Theodosius was yet alive But Belizarius that thought him dead and knew no way to content his wife endured a torment unspeakable Where is then your sonne saith she Where is mine Whence comes it that he is so long without appearing They are your suspicions that have destroyed him Is it This then that I have merited of you for having loved you more then my own self He trembled every joynt and durst not come to the point of the command that he had given To deny it appeared to him impossible and to confesse it seemed to him worse then Death The Lady takes up the discourse again Tell me What is become of him If you have caused him to be murthered let me cause his Body to be sought for to give it Buriall The poor Innocent is no longer in the World you have sacrificed him to your jealousie well knowing that the sword that passed through his Body hath brought a mortall wound into my Heart What advantage have I got by being faithfull to you if I have not been able to escape your suspicions which you have sprinkled with the blood of your dear Adopted But I will pardon you all on condition that you will tell me those that have brought this unhappinesse upon you either by their false reports or by their damnable counsells This wicked woman gave the Rack without ceasing to the spirit of her husband who with all Sampsons strength could not keep in a secret no more then he He named the Macedonian wench and the two Grooms Whereupon she had sport enough by reason of the persons saying That it was an horrible thing to put her honour to an arbitration upon the report of Slaves and used recrimination so cunningly that she made all their accusation passe for a calumny She seized instantly upon the poore maid and the two men which she delivered up to her Hangman and after she had caused their tongues to be cut off she commanded that they should be thrown in a sack into the water where they finished their life by the detestable hatred of that Megera She found out also the Counsel that Constantine had given and streightway caused him to be assassinated so great a desire had she and so much power to pursue her vengegeance Soon thereupon after it was published every where abroad that Theodosius was alive and he was suddenly called back to Court but he seemed to be cold in it making the wicked designes that some had undertaken to destroy him his excuse and feigning himself ignorant of the secret command that Belizarius had given of his death he layes all upon the head of Photius He was the sonne of Antonina born of her first bed a brave man and very accomplish'd who was in the chiefest offices of the Empire and had conceived an extream displeasure at the debaucheries of his mother not being able to endure that Amoretto to whom she made a profession of her goods and honour This unnaturall woman forgetting both her bloud and duty ceased not to raise calumnies and troubles against her own sonne in the favour of her Adulterer and to make use even of the most detestable inventions to take him out of the World in such a manner as that he not thinking his life safe enough against the sword and poyson was constrained to choose a voluntary exile to give place to Theodosius Belizarius by a most infamous observance that he rendred to his wife employed his credit and his Letters to compasse his return He comes now to seek his Mistresse
Bethulia said to her You are this day blessed my daughter and glorious above all women that are in the habitable world Praised be the Creatour of heaven and earth who hath so well guided your victorious hand to the ruine of the capitall of our enemies and who by the same means hath so glorified your name that he hath rendred your praise immortall in the mouth of men that shall have any sense of the wonderfull works of God Every one will remember how you have not spared your life to draw your people out of the ruines wherein they were almost buried Thereupon Achior was called and Judith shewing him the head of Holophernes sayes to him You have lost nothing by the testimonies you give to the power of our God for behold the head of the Collonel of the Unbelievers which God hath cut off this night by this hand of mine Behold him that threatned to make you die when he had taken Bethulia but sure now he will let you live in great quiet This man was in such an extasie at this news that he fell down in a swoon and when he was come to himself again he cast himself at the feet of Judith and gave her a reverence that was near to adoration And by her means was converted to the true Religion and rendred all glory to the God of Jerusalem Judith pursuing this her conquest counselled her people to make a shew of sallying out of the city in arms at the break of day as if they would give battel which would make the Assyrians hasten to the Pavilion of Holophernes to awake him and so seeing what had passed would be seized with so great a fear that they would sell their lives at a cheap rate This was executed and the Captains failed not to repair unto the Generall to receive orders It was already forward dayes and he was yet asleep with the sleep of death from whence there is no waking unlesse by an extraordinary power Every one was astonished that he appeared not but no body durst take the boldnesse to awake him so greatly was he feared They presse Vagoa to enter into the chamber who refuses at first to trouble the pleasures of his Master but when the time was drawn out in length he entred and made a noise not as by design but accident and seeing that no body stirred he went neer the bed thinking that he was yet with Judith At last when one told him that the enemy appeared in arms he drew the curtain very gently and saw the body of his Master weltering in his own bloud He therefore became so furious that he rent suddenly his clothes and ran to Judith's chamber to make her suffer a thousand deaths but when he could not find her he sent out frightfull cryes and spake aloud that that stranger-woman had filled the house of Nebuchadonozor with confusion and that she had assassinated their Generall who was now nothing but a trunk without an head plung'd in his own bloud All ran to this spectacle and the whole Camp was filled with astonishment with fears with despair with tears and with howlings At the same time appeared the head of Holophernes hanged up upon the walls of Bethulia and all the army of the Assyrians surpriz'd with a panick fear and as it were struck with a scourge from heaven began to scatter themselves every one seeking his safety in his flight The Israelites pursued them making a great noise as if they had drawn forth numerous troops and as if their squadrons had marched compacted and in good order It was easie for them to vanquish run-awayes who had already delivered up to fear all the hope of their life and fortune All the neighbouring cities came out to take a share of this glory and cast themselves into the fields on all parts to entrap their routed enemies of whom they made most horrible massacre All the Camp of Holophernes was pillaged where was found so great a quantity of booty that it was a thing prodigious The noise of this victory was spread unto Jerusalem the high Priest came to Bethulia with his other Priests to see Judith to whom every one gave a thousand blessings One could hear nothing but shouts of joy and acclamations that published her The Glory of Jerusalem the Joy of Israel the Honour of her People the gallant Woman the Chaste and Valiant Princesse the incomparable Lady whose Reputation should live as long as Eternity it self A moneth passed wherein there was nothing heard but joyes but consorts of musick but trophies amongst the people They gathered every day some new spoils whereof the most precious in gold in silver in purple in pearls and jewels were presented to the victorious Judith She composed a song of Triumph which was sung solemnly with the admiration of the whole world After all they went as it behoved them to Jerusalem to render to God the Vows of the whole people and to make great Offerings where three moneths more were spent in an incomparable chearfulnesse There was not a day that was not Festivall nor a face that did not wear the lineaments of the joyes of Paradise Judith offered in the Temple the Pavilion of Holophernes that the memory of it might never be defaced by oblivion At last all returned home to their own houses and the holy woman remained in her little city of Bethulia alwayes in her widow-hood honoured of all the world as the most glorious soul on earth She made her servant free and lived even to the age of 105 years amongst her people in a profound peace She appeared abroad the Festivall dayes in a magnificent glory spending the other dayes in her solitude and living with great examples of Virtues and Devotion The day of that happinesse was marked with white and reckoned in the number of the greatest Feasts of the Jews to all posterity God who is the worker of so many wonders hath taken a care also of this History It is an eternall monument of the virtue of his arm that shakes the mountains that cleaves the rocks and overthrows in a moment those sons of the Titans who make warre against heaven it self and would walk upon the wings of the winds A Generall of an Army that vaunted himself in the midst of an hundred thousand souldiers environed all about with steel with fires and lightnings who said I will go I will do I will level with the ground who held a fatall councel where he decreed the firing of Cities the sacking of Provinces where so many dragons drank up the tears of Nations without being touched with any sense of pity A Giant that heaped mountain upon mountain to ascend through fire and sword even to the throne of the most High behold now conquered slain massacred tumbled in his bloud by a woman that makes a play-game of his head and an army that cut their passage through the Rocks that drank up Rivers that shadowed the Sun by the multitude
of their flying arrows overthrown scattered torn into a thousand pieces by the enterprise of a Jewesse Judith gives not her self the praise of this work it was God that acted in her who was the direction of her hand the strength of her arm the spirit of her prudence the ardour of her courage and the soul of her soul O how great is this God of gods O how terrible is this Lord of hosts and who is there that fears not God but he that hath none at all What Colossus's of pride have faln and shall yet fall under his hands What giants beaten down and plunged even into hell for kindling fiery coals of concupiscence shall smoak in flames by an eternall sacrifice which their pains shall render to the Divine Justice HESTER THe holy Scripture sets before our eyes in this History Greatnesse falling into an eclipse and the lownesse of the earth elevated to the Starres Humility on the Throne and Ambition on the Gallows Might overthrown by Beauty Love sanctified and Revenge strangled by its own hands It teaches Kings to govern and People to obey great Ones not to relie on a fortune of ice Ladies to cherish Piety and Honour the Happy to fear every thing and the Miserable to despair of nothing All that we have to discourse of here happened in the Kingdome of Persia during the Captivity of the Jews in Babylon about four hundred and sixty years before the Nativity of our Lord and under the Reign of Ahasuerus But it is a great Riddle to divine who this Prince was to whom Hester was married and which is called here by a name that is not found in the History of the Persian Kings and which indeed may agree to all those high Monarchs signifying no other thing but The great Lord. Mercator sayes that it was Astyages grandfather of Cyrus and Cedrenus that it was Darius the Mede Genebrand is for Cambyses Scaliger for Xerxes Serrarius for Ochus Josephus and Saillan for Artaxerxes with the long hand The wise Hester that was so much in love with Chastity is found to have had fourteen husbands by the contestation of Authours every one would give her one of his own making she is married to all the Kings of Persia she is coursed up and down through all the Empire and her Espousals made to last above two hundred years But as it is easie enough to confute the Opinions of all those that speak of her so is it very hard to settle the truth of the Chronology amidst so great obscurities The Scripture sayes that Mordecai with Hester was carried away out of Judea into Babylon under the Reign of Nebuchadonozor and if we are of the opinion that marries her to Artaxerxes if we reckon well all the years that were between those two Kings we shall find that this young and ravishing beauty of Hester which caught so great a Monarch by the eyes was already an hundred and fifty years old which is an age too ripe for a maid that one would give for a wife to a King It is impossible to get out of this labyrinth if we do not say that Mordecai and Hester were not transported in their own but in the persons of their ancestours and that that passage means nothing else but that they issued from the race of those that were lead captives with King Jechonias destroyed by Nebuchadonozor so we will take Artaxerxes and not divide that amiable concord of Authours united in this point Represent then to your selves that from the time that the Jews were dispersed into Babylon into Persia into Medea and through all the States of those great Kings they ceased not to multiply in Captivity and that servitude which is wont to stifle great spirits produced sometimes amongst them gallant men Amongst others appeared upon the Theatre the excellent Mordecai a man of a good understanding and of a great courage who by his dexterity and valour delivered all his Nation from death and total ruine He then dwelt in Shushan the capitall city of all the Kingdome and bred up in his house a little Niece the daughter of his brother an orphan both by father and mother which was named in her first child-hood Edisla and after called Hester Now as those great spirits that are particularly governed by God have some tincture of Prophecie he had a wonderfull Dream and saw in his sleep a great tempest with thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake which was followed with a combate of two dragons who were fighting one against the other and sent forth horrible hissings whiles divers Nations assembled together stood and looked upon them expecting the issue of the combate thereupon he perceived a little fountain which became suddenly a great river which was changed into a Light and of a Light transformed it self into a Sun that both watcred and illuminated the earth He knew not what his Dream did mean but he learned the Interpretation of it in the great combates he had with Haman and in the exaltation of his little Niece that was promoted to so high a splendour as to give both evidence and refreshment to all the people of her Nation This Mordecai being a man of good behaviour and quality found means to advance himself to Court and to make his beginnings there in some inferiour office expecting some good occasion to make himself be known He had an eye alwayes open to discover all that passed without any bragging of it He considered the approaches of divers Nations that lived in that Court the humours the capacities the businesses the obligations the intricacies the credit the industry of every one omitting nothing of all that might advance the benefit of his Countrey-men He quickly discovered the spirit of Haman who was at that time a mean Cavalier of fortune but ambitious close crafty revengefull bloudy and capable to embroil a State He had an aversation from him although he had not yet been offended by him and began to distrust him fearing lest he be one day fatall to his people Neverthelesse Haman with the times took an high ascendant and Mordecai feared his greatnesse as one would do the apparition of a Comet It happened that two perfidious Subjects Thares and Bagathan ushers of the door made an abominable conspiracy against King Artaxerxes which Mordecai who was not a drowsie spirit soon perceived and began carefully to watch them observing their goings out and comings in their words and their countenances their plottings and their practices He gave notice of it very opportunely so that being taken arrested and put to the rack they acknowledged the crime and were led away to punishment The King gave hearty thanks to Mordecai commanded him to live in his Palace in a certain office which he bestowed upon him and caused the day to be set down in writing wherein he had been preserved from the conspiracy of those unhappy servants to recompence as opportunity should be offered the good services of his Deliverer
the People with astonishment They removed themselves according to the Orders of their Legislatour to the foot of the Mountain Sinai with a prohibition to passe further All the Mountain smoaked as a great Fornace by reason that God was descended thither all in fire which made it extream terrible But Moses his dear favourite ascended to the highest top amidst the fires the darknesses and the flames in that Luminous obscurity where God presided that spake to him face to face as to his most intimate confident After all that thundering voyce of the Living God was heard that pronounced his Decrees and his Laws in that Chamber of Justice hung with fire and lights that trembled under the footsteps of his Majesty All this Law was set down in writing with a most exact care and is yet read every day in the five Books of the Law Now Religion being the Basis of all Policy without which great Kingdomes are but great Robbings This wise Law-giver applyed his whole care and travell to the rooting out of Idolatry and to the causing of the Adorable Majesty of God to be acknowledged in the condition of a worship truly Monarchicall and incommunicable to any other as appears in the punishment which he inflicted on those that had worshiped the golden Calf For the Scripture saith That when the Israelites perceived that Moses tarried a long time on the Mountain of Sinai in those amiable Colloquies that he had with God they grew weary of it and said to the high Priest Aaron That since that man that had brought them out of Egypt was lost they ought to dream no more of him but make in his place Gods that should march in the head of their Army Aaron that perperhaps had a mind to make them lose the relish of that design by the price to which it would amount demanded of them the Pendents of the ears of their Wives and of their Children to go to work about it but their madnesse was so great that they devested themselves freely of all that they had most precious to make a God to their own phansie Aaron accommodating himself to their humour through a great weaknesse made them a Statue that had some resemblance of the Ox Apis that was adored in Egypt As soon as they had perceived it they began to cry Courage Israel behold the God that hath drawn thee out of the slavery of Egypt Aaron accompanied him with an Altar and caused a solemn Feast to be bidden for the morrow after at which the people failed not to be present offering many sacrifices making good cheer and dancing about that Idol God advertised Moses of that disorder and commanded him to descend suddenly from the Mountain to remedy it although he intended to destroy them and had done it had he not been appeased by the most humble Remonstrances and Supplications of his servant He failed not to betake himself speedily to the Camp where he saw that Abomination and the Dances that were made about it which inflamed him so much with Choler that he brake the Tables of the Law written by the hand of God thinking that such a present was not seasonable for Idolaters and Drunkards He rebuked Aaron sharply who excused himself coldly enough and not intending that so abominable a crime should passe without an exemplary punishment He took the Golden Calf and beat it into dust which he steep'd in water to make all those drink of it that had defiled themselves with that sacrilege and to make them understand that sinne that seems at first to have some sweetnesse is extreamly bitter in its effects After which he commanded That all those that would be on Gods side should follow him and the Tribe of Levi as being the most interressed failed not to joyn with him whereupon seeing them all well animated he gave them order to passe through all the Camp from one door to the other with their swords in their hands and to slay all that they met without sparing their nearest kindred This was executed and all the Army was immediately filled with Massacres Rivers of blood ran on all sides accompanied with the sad howlings of a scared multitude that expected every minute the stroke of death God would have that this so severe a punishment be executed upon those miserable men to cause an eternall horrour of Idolatry which is the most capitall of all sins And to retein the worship of God a thousand pretty Ceremonies were practised after the structure of the Tabernacle of the Ark of Covenant of the Table of the Shew-bread of the Altars and after the institution of the Pontificall habits of the Offerings and of the Sacrifices that were celebrated with much order and a singular Majesty Moses also was indefatigable in rendring Justice sitting from the morning till the night on his Tribunall to hear the requests of all the particular men that came to him which Jethro his father in law that was come to visit him having perceived said to him that it was impossible for him to be long able to undergo so troublesome a labour and that he ought to choose amongst all the people some Puissant men fearing God true and enemies of covetousnesse to administer Justice and that it would be sufficient to reserve to himself the controversies that should be of greatest importance Moses believed his counsell and established an handsome order for the decision of the differences that should arise amongst the People He passed fourty years in the wildernesse in divers habitations partly in war against the enemies partly in preserving peace amongst his People and confirming all the laws which he established by the command of God In this exercise he lived to the age of an hundred and twenty years sepaparated himself from all things of the world and was so united to God that it seemed that even his Body it self passed into the nature and condition of an immortall Spirit In fine God having shewed him upon the mountain Nebo all the Land of Promise which he had got to by so many good counsells and so much pains he dyed in that view without entring into it was mourned for thirty dayes by the Israelites and interred of set purpose in a sepulchre unknown to the eyes of men for fear lest he should give an occasion of some Idolatry to that people that would have held him for a Deity Never had man a Birth more forlorn a Life more various or a Death more glorious of an exposed Infant he became a Kings son of a Kings son an Exile of an Exile a Shepheard of a Shepheard a Captain of a Captain a Prophet of a Prophet a Law-giver of a Law-giver a Sovereign the God of Kings and the King of all the Prophets Active at Court Devout in Solitude Victorious in War Happy in Peace Wise in his Laws Terrible in his Arms a man of Prodigies that opened Seas Manur'd Wildernesses Commanded things Sensible and Insensible and exercised an Empire on
wherein their spirits being poured out into an excessive voluptuousnesse the King himself being full of wine and impiety commanded that the magnificent vessels which his grandfather had taken in the Temple of Jerusalem should be brought upon their cupboard which was readily performed and he put them into the hands of his wanton Courtiers and immodest women who mocked at the mysteries of the true Religion That banqueting-house seem'd nothing now but a repair of Bacchanals where Gluttony Love Sport Jeasting exercised all their power and the lascivious devils were unchain'd to induce the ghests to all sort of intemperance when behold a Prodigy comes that changes the dissolute merriments of that Court into an horrible tragedy An hand of a man without the body appeared upon a wall whose fingers seem'd to move and to write unknown characters whereat the King was so affrighted that all his body trembled and his countenance appeared laden with pale colours of Death which spoiled all the sport and caused a great silence in the banqueting-hall Immediately recourse was had to the Sages and Diviners of Chaldea to reade and interpret that writing but they were found alwayes weak in such mysteries as these The Queen Mother had a good soul and retained alwayes some impression of the true Religion she remembred Daniel that was at that time banished from the Court and had in esteem ' his great wisdome and good conversation and thefore as soon as she had heard of the accident that had happened and the great trouble of mind the King her son was in she entred into the hall and spake to him very advantageously of Daniel assuring him that he was a personage that was fill'd with the Deity and that under the Reign of his Grandfather he had given admirable interpretation of hidden things which made him be loved of that great King who fail'd not to declare him the Prince of the Council of the Sages of Chaldea but that the insolences of Evilmerodach insufferable to all the world had driven him from the Court though not from Babylon in which yet he was and that he was the onely man capable to resolve him in so strange a businesse The King received this advice with much joy and commanded instantly that Daniel should be caused to come to him who was retired in his little solitude He is sought for he is found he is brought to his Majesty who entertained him very courteously and asked of him the Interpretation of the words written on the wall promising him that if he would tell him the truth he would give him the purple robe and the collar of the Order But Daniel expressed to him that all these presents moved him nothing and that he aimed at no other honour at the Court then that of his Master whose will and decrees he would declare He puts the King in mind of his Grandfather of the Greatnesse and of the Majesty of his Empire of the absolute power that he exercised over men and how his heart being lifted up against God he was reduced to a brutall life in which he remained the space of seven years till such time as his chastisement giving him wisdome had rendred to him his health and Sceptre After he had prepared the spirit of Belshazzar by a domestick example he told him with a generous freedome that that which he had known to happen to the person of that great King was sufficient to humble him and yet he had exalted himself against the Sovereign Monarch and had caused with much mirth of heart the consecrated Vessels of his Temple to be profaned when he caused his Gods of gold and silver to be praised to the roproach of the true God and that in revenge of so bad an action that hand which he had seen on the wall was sent from heaven and had written three horrible words which are Mene Tekel Pheres that is to say Count Weigh Divide the first signifies that God hath counted the dayes of his reign and hath put a period to them the second that he had been put in the balance of the Sovereign Judge and that he had not been found weight the third that his kingdome should be divided and given for a prey to the Medes and Persians It is a strange thing that Daniel having made so dolefull a prediction King Belshazzar entred not into wrath against him but on the contrary commanded that the purple and collar of gold should be given him which he had promised to the Interpreter of his vision But there will be lesse cause to wonder if we consider that it was a Maxim amongst the Babylonians not to be angry with the Diviners and Astrologers when they foretold any evil to come no more then with the shadow of a Sun-diall that shews the hour or the weather-cock that declares the wind And furthermore this young Prince hearing his Prophet speak with so much judgement and sanctity had him in esteem for a man of God which he ought not to offend and besides that by entreating him with courtesie he hoped that being a friend of the true Gods he might have as much power to turn away the scourge wherewith he was threatned as he had understanding to know it and forced of spirit to foretell it One might also marvel that Daniel who at the the beginning testified that he made small account of the riches and greatnesse of the Court for all that accepted of the purple of the chain and of the dignity of the third person in the kingdome that was presented to him But we ought to observe that sometimes it is an infirmity of spirit not to be able to endure honour when it comes by a Divine disposall and a secret of Providence over us This wise Courtier considered that being of his own nature so farre from all these things they came to seek him out in his solitude and that it was a sign of God that would have it so not for him but for the benefit of his Nation which was much more favourably used in matter of the exercise of their Religion when he was in favour besides that the virtue and moderation which he made glitter in all his actions even in his highest prosperities contrary to the ordinary manner of all those that were then at Court gave more glory to God then if he had been perpetually hidden in an obscure life It was an indiscretion in Belshazzar to expresse so much astonishment and to disclose that prediction by reason that there was a secret conspiracy against him which was plotted amidst those publike dissolutions and the conspiratours were the more animated to the execution of that enterprise when they knew that that Prodigy threatned him The same night they performed their wicked design and outrageously murdered him after he had reigned but nine moneths since his fathers death The principall men of the Kingdome that were of the conspiracy chose one of their complices named Nabonidus who is called in Scripture
that if Baal were God they ought to follow him but if there were no other God but that of Israel called upon from all times by their Fathers it was he to whom they ought to adhere with an inviolable fidelity To this the assembly made no answer there being none that was willing to set himself forward upon an uncertainty Then Elijah taking the word again said Behold four hundred and fifty Prophets of Baal on one side and I a Prophet of the true God all alone on the other part in this place here To make a tryall of our Religion let there be two Oxen given us for each of the two parties let them be cut in pieces and the pieces put upon a pile of wood without puting any fire to them either on one side or on the other we will expect it from heaven and the Sacrifice upon which God shall make a flame appear from on high to kindle it shall carry away the testimony of the true Religion To this all the people answered with a confused voyce that it was a good Proposition The Victims were brought sacrificed and put upon the wood to be consumed The Priests of Baal began first to invoke the heavenly fire and to torment themselves with great cryes and a long time without any effect It was already mid-day and nothing had appeared to their advantage whereat being very much astonished they drew out their Razors and make voluntary incisions upon themselves according to their custome thinking that a prayer was never well heard if it were not accompanied with their blood which the evil Spirit made them shed in abundance to satiate his Rage This nothing advanced the effect of their Supplications which gave occasion to Elijah to mock at the vanity of their Gods saying that Baal that gave no answer was asleep or busie or on a journey or perhaps drinking at the Tavern He remained either with security amidst so many enraged Wolves covered with the protection of the God of Hosts and began to prepare his Sacrifice taking twelve stones in memory of the twelve Tribes of Israel to erect an Altar to the name of God after which he divided the Offering into divers parts put them all upon the pile and that none might have any suspition that there was fire hidden in some part of them he caused abundance of buckets of water to be thrown upon the Sacrifice and all about it and then began to say Great God God of Abraham of Isaac and of Israel shew now that thou art the God of this people and that I am thy servant I have obeyed thee in all this resting my self upon thy word Hear me my God my God hear me and let this assembly learn this day of thee that thou art the true God and the absolute Master of all the universe and that it is thou that art able to reduce their hearts to the true belief Scarce had he ended his prayer when the Sacred fire fell down from heaven upon his Sacrifice and devoured the Offering and the Altar to the admiration of all the People who prostrating themselves on the ground began to cry That the God of Israel was the true God Take then sayes he the false Prophets of Baal let not one sole man of them escape us The People convinced by the Miracle and the voyce of Elijah without expecting any other thing fall upon those false Prophets takes them and cuts them all in pieces Ahab amidst all this stood so astonished that he durst not speak one onely word nor any way resist the Divine Command The Prophet bad him take his refection and go into his Coach for the so much desired rain was near and having said so retired himself to the top of the Mount Carmel and sent his servant seven times to the sea to see whether he could discover any clouds but he saw nothing till the seaventh time and then he perceived a little cloud that exceeded not the measure of a hand and yet he sends him to tell Ahab that it was time to Harnesse if he would not be overtaken with the rain He mounted instantly into his Coach to get to the City of Jezrael and Elijah ran before as if he had wings In the mean time the Heavens grew black with darknesse the clouds collect themselves the wind blowes and the Rain falls in abundance Ahab failed not to relate to Jezabel all that had been done desiring to make the death of those Prophets passe for a decree of heaven for fear lest that imperious woman should upbraid him with the softnesse of his courage But she not moved with those great miracles of fire and water that were reported to her began to foam with wrath and to swear by all her Gods that she would cause Elijahs head to be laid at her feet by the morrow that time The Prophet is constrained to fly suddenly to save himself not knowing to whom to trust so that having brought with him but one young man to accompany him in the way he quitted him and went alone into the wildernesse wherein having travelled a day he entred into a great sadnesse and laid him down under a Juniper-tree to repose himself and there felt himself very weary of living any longer and said to God with an amorous heart My God it is enough take mee out of this life I am not better then my fathers It is a passion ordinary enough to good men to wish for death that they may be no more obliged to see so many sinnes and miseries as are in the World and to go to the place of rest to contemplate there the face of the living God But this desire ought to be moderated according to the will of God As he was in that thought sleep that easily surprises a melancholy spirit and wearied with raving on its pains slipt into his benummed members and gave some truce to his torments But that great God that had his eyes open to the protection of so dear a person dispatched to him his guardian Angell who awaked him and shewed him near his head a cruse of water and a loaf of bread baked under the ashes for such are the banquets that the nursing Father of all Nature makes his Prophets not loving them for the delights of the body but contenting himself to give them that which is necessary to life he saw well that it was a Providence that would yet prolong his life He drank and ate and at length being very heavy fell asleep again But the Angel that had undertaken the direction of his way waked him and told him that it behooved him to rise quickly by reason that he had yet a long way to go Elijah obeyed and being risen found that he had gained a merveilous strength so that he journied fourty dayes and fourty nights being fortified with that Angelicall bread till such time as he came to the Mountain Horeb. There he retired himself into the hollow of a Rock unknown
the Kings house a famous officer an Ethiopian by Nation and a man of heart who hearing of the cruelty that was used against the Prophet took pity on him and said boldly to the King What Sir can your Majesty well approve of the rigours that poor Jeremy is made to suffer for doing the function of a Prophet It well appears that his enemies would have his skin for they have let him down with ropes into a deep dungeon where it is almost impossible to breathe There is danger if this good man dyes by this ill usage that you are guilty of his death and that this may draw some wrath of God upon your Majesty He spake this with so good an accent that the King was moved and gave him charge to take thirty souldiers and to draw him thence which he did quickly casting down to him old linnen raggs to put under him that he might not be galled by the cords when they should make him ascend out of the bottome of that hideous prison When he was plucked up again the King had another time the curiosity to see him not in his Palace but in some secret place of the Temple where Jeremy spake to him with much fervency and tendernesse telling him that the onely means to save his person his house and all the City was to render up himself to Nabuchodonosor and that if he refused to do it he and all his would be destroyed The King answered that he was afraid to commit himself to the King of Babylon lest he should deliver him to his rebellious subjects that had fallen from him to the enemy Jeremy replyed That he need not fear any such thing and affectionately beseech'd him to have pity on his own soul on his wife and on his children for otherwise there would happen a great misery This poor Prince feared to attempt this against the opinion of those that governed him and to scatter them by this means from his party Nay he was afraid even to be seen with Jeremy and recommended to him very much to keep secret that discourse and to tell no body that he had spoken to him about State affairs He was sent back to Prison that he might not make the seditious mutiny and all that he could obtein was not to be plunged again in that pit from whence he had been delivered In the mean while Nabuchodonosor after a long siege carryed the city of Jerusalem which was taken about mid-night the enemies being entred by a breach that no body perceived Zedekiah much amazed betakes himself to flight with his wife and children and a few men of war about him taking his way through night darknesse affrights fear and a thousand images of death The Chaldeans had notice of his retreat and caught him on the plains of Jericho where he was immediately forsaken of his men and left with his wives and little children that sent out pitifull cryes through the apprehension of servitude and death He was carried away from thence to Riblah where Nabuchodonosor was expecting the issue of that siege This unfortunate Prince was constrained to present himself before the frightfull countenance of a barbarous King puffed up with his victories and prosperities who loaded him with reproaches and confusions upbraiding him with his rebellion his ingratitude and unfaithfulnesse he would willingly have been ten foot under ground before he suffered such indignities thinking himself sufficiently punished by having lost his crown and liberty But this cruell Conquerour would give other satisfactions to his revenge for after he had a long time digested his gall and thought on the means that he would use to punish him he causes his children to come before him and commands the Hangmen to murther them in the fathers sight These poor little ones seeing the glittering sword now ready to be plunged in their bloud cryed out for mercy and called pitifully upon the sad name of their father that had no other power but to suffer his calamity The sword passes throught the bodies of his children to find his heart who dyed as many deaths as nature had given him gages of his marriage He expected that the sword stained with the bloud of his dear progeny should have ended his life and griefs but this inhumane Tyrant having left him as much light as was needfull to illuminate his misery after that he had filled himself with this lamentable spectacle caused his eyes to be plucked out by an execrable cruelty and having commanded him to be put in great and heavie chains caused him to be carried into Babylon where he ended his miserable life and in his Person ended the Kingdome of Judea that had subsisted since Saul four hundred and fourscore years Nabuchodonosor having heard the narration that was made of Jeremy and the good counsell that he had given to his King esteemed him highly and gave charge to Nebuzaradan the Generall of his Army to give him content whether he had a mind to go to Babylon or whether he would stay in his own countrey But to shew he sought not the splendour of greatnesses he chose to make his abode amidst poor Labourers and Vine-dresses that were left after the sacking of the City the better sort being transported into Babylon He was recommended to Gedaliah who was settled Governour of those miserable Reliques of the people by Nebuzaradan but when this Gedaliah was murthered seven moneths after his creation Johanan that was one of the principall men counselled the Jews to quit that miserable land and to follow him into Egypt Jeremy opposed it and foretold misery to all those that should go thither but instead of believing him they dragged him along by force either to afflict him or to prevail over his Prophecyes He failed not to prophesy the desolation of Egypt that was to bend under the arms of Nabuchodonosor whereat his countreymen found themselves incensed and fearing lest he should draw some envy on them stoned him in a sedition The Egyptians hearing talk of the life and predictions of this great personage made account of him and set him up a Tomb where God to honour his servant did great miracles chasing away by his ashes the Crocodiles and serpents Alexander that flourished two hundred years after him admiring those wonders caused his reliques to be transported into Alexandria where he caused a magnificent Sepulchre to be erected for him as the Alexandrian Chronicle reports Behold how virtue persecuted in its own house finds a prop with strangers and even veneration amongst the Infidels God using all sorts of instruments to honour the merits of those that have rendered him proofs of a perfect faithfulnesse S. JOHN Baptist S. PAUL St. IOHN BAPTIST St. PAVL APOSTLE WHat makes an Hermit at the Court a Solitary man in a Tumult a Sacred amongst Prophane a Saint in the house of Herod He was far more secure amongst Wolves amongst Foxes and Tygers then amongst those wicked Courtiers He was more contented with his little
of all Interests to procure her death In stead of coming to the Court to be received there according to her birth and merit she found her self to be confined into a corner of a desart Island where in a new captivity she most unworthily was detained Her disloyal Brother the Vice-roy seeing her escaped from his bloudy hands did promise to himself to oppress with much ease by the circumventions of the Protestant Judges He laid anew for her the nets of his old Accusations and made use of all the falsities which had been invented to eclipse her honour Queen Elizabeth in stead of suppressing the unnatural insolence of her subjects gave them Commissions and an Order that a Process should be made against her The Puritans and the Lutherans the mortal Enemies of Queen Mary are now her Accusers her Judges and her Witnesses The number of honest men was here very few and the apprehension of the danger did stop the mouthes of those men which understood the truth but had not the courage to defend it Nevertheless amongst others there was a Scotch Gentleman the Viscount Herrin worthy of eternal Memory who presented himself to Elizabeth for the defence of his own Queen and said unto her MADAM THe Queen my Mistress who is nothing subject to A generous Compassion you but by misfortune doth desire you to consider that it is a work of an evil Example and most pernicious Consequence to give way that her rebellious Subjects should be heard against her who being not able to destroy her by arms do promise themselves to assassinate her even in your own breast under the colour of Justice Madam Consider the estate of worldly affairs and bear some compassion to the calamities of your poor Suppliant After the most horrid attempt on the King her husband the murder of her servants the cruel Designs on her sacred Person After so many prisons and chains the subjects are heard against their Queen the Rebels against their lawfull Mistress the guilty against the Innocent and the felons against their Judge Where are we or what do we do Though Nature hath planted us in the further parts and the extremities of all the earth yet she hath not taken the sense of humanity from us Consider she is your own bloud your nearest kins-woman she is one of the best Queens in the world for whom your Majestie is preparing bloudy Scaffolds in a place where she was promised and expected greatest favours I want words to express so barbarous a deed but I am ready to come to the Effects and to justifie the innocence of my Queen by witnesses unreproveable and by papers written and subscribed by the hands of the Accusers If this will not suffice I offer my self by your Majesties permission to fight hand to hand for the honour of my Queen against the most hardy and most resolute of those who are her Accusers In this I do assure my self of your Equitie that you will not deny that favour unto her who will acknowledge her self obliged to your bounty Elizabeth who found her advantages in the misfortunes of Mary made no account of these remonstrances and commanded the Commissioners who were the Dukes of Norfolk and of Sussex to proceed unto the Charge But there is a God who rules the Assemblies of men and oftentimes doth turn their Advice against their own consciences The greatest part of this Court were so transported that they had a Resolution to destroy Queen Mary Murray Morton the infamous Bishop of Orcades and the pernicious Buchanan with divers other Enemies of the Queen were now come and brought with them the most execrable inventions and blackest calumnies that ever were fetcht from hell to charge the Queen with the death of the King her husband nay Letters of love were produced which had been invented by some Puritans who with an insupportable impudence affirmed that they found them in a silver coffer of the Queens The Earl of Murray who in the beginning pretended The inhumane cruelty of ambition to wish better to no man than to Bothuel doth now declare himself the chief of this Accusation outragiously pursuing the death of his Sister alledgeing That she was the occasion of her husband's death in revenge of the murder of her Secretary that she never loved him afterwards that she never lamented his loss nor repented of her own sin That she altogether abandoned her self to the love of the Earl of Bothuel whom afterwards she married although he was the murderer of her husband Lesley the Bishop of Rosse Gordon Gauvin Baron and others who were there on the behalf of the Queen for she was present her self in person knowing the whole truth of the business and being incensed at the heart to see the foul treasons of this Judas did handle him according to his desert and did answer him by a very strong Apologie which was afterward presented to the Judges to consider of it at their leisure I will in this place insert the substance of it having some years since found it amongst the Acts of the Queen of Scotland MY LORDS IT is a great favour of Heaven to us that the Earl of Murray is an Accuser in this Cause since his name is able to justifie the greatest crimes much more to accuse the Innocent before persons so approved for their justice and their wisdom It is sufficiently known that by the ignominie of his mother he was the son of a Crime as soon as a son of Nature that he hath ever since lived by wickedness and is grown great by insolence The Queen his Sister hath but one fault which is that she hath advanced him against the intentions of the King her father who designed to him no Crown but what when he was to take Religious Orders the Barber should give him and now he hath usurped the Crown of the Realm His desire and endeavours are that the Diadem should be taken from the head of Mary in recompence to him for having cried her down by his calumnies dishonoured her by his outrages imprisoned her by his fury and dispossessed her by his tyranny Murray doth accuse the Innocent for having contrived her husbands death and he doth accuse her in a Court where there are Witnesses unreproveable that will presently be deposed upon Oath that having plotted this horrible murder he being in a Boat did say That the King should that night be cured of all his maladies And surely it was easie for him to presage it when he and his Accomplices had before decreed it and he had assigned them the place the time and the manner of the execution Murray hath made himself an Accuser to ravish the Kingdom and sway the Scepter imbrued with the bloud of the Queen his sister And we are not so much amazed at this for he hath sold his soul to work wickedness at a far cheaper rate Who had a deeper interest in the death of the King than a Monk for so
against me In the third place I require that my servants who have attended on me with great fidelitie during so many afflictions may have free leave to retire where they please and enjoy those small Legacies which in my last Will my povertie hath bequeathed to them I conjure You Madam by the Bloud of Jesus Christ by the nearness of our consanguinitie by the Memorie of Henrie the Seventh our common Father and by the title of a Queen which I carrie to my Grave not to denie me these reasonable Demands but by one word under Your hand to grant me an assurance of them and I shall die as I have lived Your most affectionate Sister and Prisoner QUEEN MARY It is uncertain whether this Letter came to the hands of Elizabeth because no Answer can be found unto it whether it were that those next unto her did conceal it from her or whether through the hardness of her heart she did dissemble it In the mean time King James employed himself for The vain endeavour to delay her death the Deliverance of his Mother the Ambassadours from France Monsieur de la Mote Aigron and Monsieur del Aubispene were commanded thither upon that and other occasions and Monsieur de Belieurs did there also carry himself with great wisdom courage and fidelity as may appear by his grave Remonstrance which is to be read in the History of France Howsoever the Arrest of Death was suspended for there moneths until such time that the clamours of the Lutherans and Puritans did cause the Thunder to fall down upon that hand which desired nothing more than to strike home the blow The more advised did remonstrate unto her That it was without example to commit a Ladie the Queen of France and Scotland and the nearest Kinswoman she had in the world into the hands of a Hang-man A Queen which was not her prisoner of War but her Guest whom she had called and invited into her Kingdom and sent unto her assurances of her fidelitie That she ought to consider that what was done proceeded from her Secretaries and not from her And if that after twenty years imprisonment she should have consented to be taken from it by force it did not deserve to be punished with Death That if she should cause her to die it would open a wound from whence there would issue such abundance of bloud that many Ages could not stanch it That Italie France and Spain and all the Christian Kingdoms of the world would be offended at it and that she should bring upon her Kingdom the Arms of Christendom who would be glad of that pretence to invade her Kingdom That it would be a most remarkable affront to her Son James and all his Race who could not but be mindfull of it That it would incense the Spirits of her Kingdom and render them unreconcileable to her And in the end that it was to be feared that Heaven would arm it self against so bloudy a Design That she should use the miserable and especially a Queen who came into her Countrey for protection with more Reverence That she should hazard much in her death but could lose nothing by her life seeing she had so many Guards Prisons Bars and Walls to secure her if she had an intent to enterprize against the State But the insolent Ministers did incessantly crie out That she must put an end to her Imprisonment by putting an end unto her Life That the Queen ought to remember that she had usurped her Titles and her Name and sometimes caused her self to be proclaimed Queen of England and of Scotland and that Sovereigns never pardoned those who did so far intrench upon their Authority That the life of Elizabeth and Mary were incompatible That the onely means to take away all pretences from the Catholicks was to cut off this Root which would make all their hopes to perish That King James was instructed in their Religion and would rather look after the advancement of his own State than take vengeance for the Death of his Mother That forreign Princes were too much perplexed with the difficulties of their own Affairs and took care rather to defend their own than to invade her Kingdom That her Cousin the Duke of Guise was in a bad condition in France and that Henrie the Third would be very carefull how he did espouse her quarrels And if other Princes were so hardy to undertake it they were to understand that England had a deep ditch about it That Queen Elizabeth was mortal and if she should die there was not that calamitie to be conceived which both Religion and the State would not suffer under the reign of Marie in the revenge of her Imprisonment and other injuries she had received That she could not but remember that great personages did write things well done on the sand but did engrave their Discontents in brass The Preachers made it to be a work of Religion with their absurd Allegations out of the Bible which they did corrupt to their bloudy meaning And the Lawyers as ignorant as the Ministers were absurd did produce some Histories for the punishment of Kings which were altogether impertinent But there needed not so much labour to perswade a Woman who had in her so much vanity as once in her life to make a Princess head to fly upon a Scaffold and who did not remember that in the Reign of Queen Mary being her self accused of offending the Estate and expecting her sentence of death she did so much fear the Axes of the Hang-men in England that she was resolved to petition to her Sister to send for an Executioner to France to cut off her head Now was the Commandment given for her death and it was signified to the poor Victim who for a long time was prepared for this Sacrifice Some passionate writers do indeavour to divert this Crime from the reputation of Elizabeth taking their ground on a Letter which she wrote to the Queen of Scotland in which by a shamefull perfidiousness she doth write That her spirit was tormented with an incomparable Sorrow by reason of the lamentable Event which was arrived against her will and that she had not a soul so base as either by terrour to fear to do what was just or by cowardice to denie it after it was done But who doth not see that this is to mock and to Elizabeth entirely culpable of the death of Queen Mary traduce the Story and the belief of mankind Davison her Secretary who mannaged this sad affair as the true instrument of her malice doth express in his Attestation reported in the most faithfull Memorials of England by Cambden that after the departure of the French Ambassadour sent to prevent the Execution she commanded him to shew the Instrument for putting the Queen of Scotland to death which being done she most readily signed it with her own hand and commanded him to see it sealed with the Great Seal and
smiling she added some few words that she blamed Paulet and Deurey who guarded the Prisoner for not delivering her from that pain It is true that in the morning she sent one named Killigrew to Davison to forbid to put that command in Execution whether it were that her Remorse of Conscience had put her into some frights her sleeps being ordinarily disturbed with horrible Dreams which did represent unto her the images of her Crimes or whether it were an artifice to procure her the reputation of being mercifull in killing with so much treachery The Secretary came to her in the field and declared to her that the Order for the Queen of Scotland's death was now finished and sealed on which she put on the countenance of displeasure and told him that by the Counsel of wise men one might find out other expedients by which it is believed that she intended poison Nevertheless she now was commanded that the Execution should be delayed And as Davison presented himself to her three dayes afterward demanding of her if her Majesty had changed her advice she answered No and was angry with Paulet for not enterprising boldly enough the last of the Crimes And said moreover That she would find others who would do it for the love they did bear unto her On which the other did remonstrate that she must think well of him for otherwise she would ruin Men of great Merit with their posterity She still persisted and on the very same day of the Execution she did chide the Secretary for being so slow in advancing her Commands who as soon as he had discovered the affair the evil Counsellours did pursue the expedition with incredible heat for they sent Beal a Capital Enemy of the Catholicks with letters directed to certain Lords in which power was given them to proceed unto the Massacre who immediately repairing to the Castle of Fotheringhey where the Queen was prisoner they caused her to rise from her bed where the Indisposition of her body had laid her and having read unto her their Commission they did advertise her that she must die on the morning following 16. She received this without changing of her countenance and said That she did not think that the Queen her Sister Her death and miraculous constancy would have brought it to that extremity But since such was her pleasure death was most agreeable to her and that a Soul was not worthy of celestial and eternal joys whose body could not endure the stroke of the Hang-man For the rest she appealed to Heaven and Earth who were the witnesses of her Innocence adding that the onely Consolation which she received in a spectacle so ignominious was that she died for the Religion of her Fathers she beseeched God to increase her constancy to the measure of her afflictions and to welcome the death she was to suffer for the expiation of her sins After she spake these words she besought the Commissioners to permit her to conser with her Confessor which by a barbarous cruelty was refused a cruelty which is not exercised on the worst of all offendours and in the place for a Director of her conscience they gave her for her comforters the Bishop and the Dean of Peterborough whom with horrour she rejected saying That God should be her Comforter The Earl of Kent who was one of the Commissioners and most hot in the persecution of her told her Your life will he the death and your death will be the life of our Religion Declaring in that sufficiently the cause of her death whereupon she gave thanks to God that she was judged by her Enemies themselves to be judged an instrument capable to restore the ancient Religion in England In this particular she desired that the Protestants had rather blamed her effects than her designs After the Lords were retired she began to provide for her last day as if she had deliberated on some voyage and this she did with so much devotion prudence and courage that a Religious man who hath had all his Meditations on death for thirty years together could not have performed it with greater Justice And in the first place she commanded that supper should be dispatched to advise of her affairs and according to her custom supping very soberly she entertained her self on a good discourse with a marvellous tranquillity of mind And amongst other things turning her self to Burgon her Physitian she demanded of him if he did not observe how great was the power of the Truth seeing the sentence of her death did import that she was condemned for having conspired against Elizabeth and the Earl of Kent did signifie that she died for the apprehension which they had that she should be the death of the false Religion which would be rather her glory than a punishment At the end of supper she drank to all her Servants with a grave and modest chearfulness on which they all kneeled down and mingled so many tears with their wine that it was lamentable to behold As soon as their sobs had given liberty to their words they asked her pardon for not performing those services which her Majesty did merit and she although she was the best Mistress that ever was under heaven desired all the world to pardon her defects She comforted them with an invincible courage and commanded them to wipe away their tears and to rejoyce because she should now depart from an abyss of misery and assured them that she never would forget them neither before God nor men After supper she wrote three letters one to the King of France one to the Duke of Guise and the third unto her Confessor Behold the letter in its own terms which she wrote unto King Henry the Third SIR GOD as with all humility I am bound to believe A Letter unto Henry the Third having permitted that for the expiation of my sins I should cast my self into the Arms of this Queen my Cousin having endured for above twenty years the afflictions of imprisonment I am in the end by her and her Estates condemned unto death I have demanded that they should restore the papers which they have taken from me the better to perfect my last Will and Testament and that according to my desire my body should be transported into your Kingdom where I have had the Honour to be a Queen your Sister and ancient Allie but as my sufferings are without comfort so my requests are without answer This day after dinner they signified unto me the sentence to be executed on the next day about seven of the clock in the morning as the most guilty offendor in the world I cannot give you the discourse at large of what is passed It shall please your Majesty to believe my Physitian and my servants whom I conceive to be worthy of credence I am wholly disposed unto death which in this Innocence I shall receive with as much misprision as I have attended it with patience The
it not these poor miserable creatures desire nothing more than to give me my last Farewel and I am confident my Sister Elizabeth would not have refused me so small a courtesie seeing the Honour of my Sex demandeth that my Servants should be present I am her near kinswoman Grandchild to Henry the eight and Queen Dowager of France besides I have received the Unction of Queen of Scotland if you will not grant this courtesie to one of my quality let me have it at least for the tenderness of the heart of men On this consideration five or six of her ordinary Servants were permitted to accompany her to the place of Execution to which she now was going This Divine Queen whom France had seen to walk in such state and Triumph at the pomp of her marriage when she was followed with all the glory of that Kingdom doth now alas go with this poor train to render her neck unto the Hangman She came into the Hall hung round about with blacks and ascended the Scaffold which was covered with the same livery to accomplish this last Act of her long Tragedy What eyes of furies were not struck blind at the aspect of this face in which the dying Graces did shoot for the last light of their shining Glories As soon as she was sate in a chair prepared for that purpose one Beal did read the Command and the outragious Sentence of her death which she heard very peaceably suppressing all the strugglings of Nature to abandon her self to Grace in the imitation of her Saviour At last Fletcher the Dean of Peterborough one of her evil Counsellours did present himself before her and made a Pedantical Discourse on the condition of the life passed the life present and the life to come undertaking according to his power to pervert her in this her last conflict This was the most sensible to her of all her afflictions at the last minute of her life to hear the studied speech of an impertinent and audacious Minister wherefore she oftentimes interrupted him and besought him not to importune her assuring him that she was confirmed in the saith of the ancient Catholick and Roman Church and was ready to shed her last bloud for it Nevertheless this infamous Doctour did not cease to persecute her with his Remonstrances unto the shades of Death She looked round about the Hall if she could discover her Confessor to demand of him the absolution of her sins but he was so busie that he could not be found A poor Maid belonging to her having thrust her self with all her force into the Croud as soon as she was got through them and beheld her Mistress between two Hang-men did break forth into a loud crie which troubled those who were about the Queen to assist her But the Queen who had a spirit present on all occasions made a sign unto her with her hand that she should hold her peace if she had not a mind to be forced thence The Lords then made a semblance as if they would pray for her but she thanked them heartily for their good will saying that it would be taken as a crime to communicate in prayers with them Then turning to the multitude who were about three hundred persons she thus expressed her self It is a new spectacle to behold a Queen brought to die upon a Scaffold I have not learned to undress to unveil my self and to put off the Royal Ornaments in so great a Companie and to have two Hang-men in the place of the Grooms of my Chamber But we must submit to what Heaven is pleased to have done and obey the Decrees of the Divine Providence I protest before the face of the living God that I never attempted against the Life or Estate of my Cousin neither have I committed any thing worthie of this usage If it be imputed to my Religion I esteem my self most happie to shed even the last drop of my life for it I put all my confidence in him whom I see represented in this Cross which I hold in my hand and I promise and assure my self that this temporal Death suffered for his Name shall be a beginning to me of eternal Life with the Angels and most happie Souls who shall receive my bloud and represent it before the face of God in the Remission of all my Offences There was now a floud in every eye and amongst all her Enemies there were not above four who were able to contain their tears The Hang-man clothed in black velvet fell down on his knees and did demand her pardon which she most willingly granted and not to him onely but to all her persecutours After these words she kneeled down her self praying aloud in Latin and invoked the most holy Mother of God and the triumphant Company of Saints to assist her She repeated her most servent prayers for the Church for her Kingdom for France for her Son for her cruel murtherers for England for her Judges and for her Executioner recommending into the hands of the Saviour of the world her spirit purified as well by love as by affliction The last words of her Pravers were these As thy arms Lord Jesus were stretched forth on the Cross so receive me into the stretched forth arms of thy mercie She uncessantly kissed a Crucifix which she had in her hand whereat one that stood by being offended at the honour which she gave unto the Cross told her That she should carry it in her heart to whom she suddenly made answer Both in my heart and in my hand After this she disposed her self to the Block The Executioner would have taken off her Gown but she repelled him and desired that that office might be performed for her by her own maids who approched to her to prepare her for the stroke of Death And she her self did accommodate them in it as diligently as she could and laid open her neck and throat more white than Alabaster and too much alas discovered for so lamentable a Subject This being done she signed her own Attendants with the sign of the Cross kissing them and with a short smile did bid them farewel to shew that she died as comfortably as constantly making no more resistance than the flower doth against the hand that doth gather it Those poor creatures did weep most bitterly and with their sighs and sobs could have cleaved the rocks when the Queen reproved them saying Nay What do you mean Have I answered for your constancie and that your grief should not be importunate and do you suffer your selves to be thus transported with lamentation when I am going to exchange a temporal Kingdom full of miserie for an everlasting Empire filled with fellcitie It was discovered that she had a Cross about her of great value which she intended to have bestowed on one of her nearest friends promising the Executioner to recompence him some other way but this enemy of the Cross did force it from her to satisfie
famine 249 The qualities of the sufferings of our Saviour 60 Our Saviour hath suffered in all the persons of the just and Martyrs ibid. An excellent observation upon the terming our Saviour a Lamb. 88 The prudence of Saul 63 He found a Kingdome seeking his Fathers Asses 238 The excellency and defects that were in Saul 239 The resolute valour of Saul in relieving the men of Jabish ib. Saul being in great perplexity consulteth with the soul of Samuel 143 Saul cleared for a while again returns to his evil spirit 141 Saul marcheth against the Philistims and is overthrown in battell ibid. Sauls end ib. The shame of scoffing 82 The danger of Scoffing 118 The scoffs of certain rebellious Flemings severely punished by the generosity of Philip de Valois ib. Seneca by a lesse evil diverts a greater 272 From whence proceed the calumnies of Seneca 274 His birth ib. His education and spirit ib. He is banished to Corsica where he composed excellent works 275 His excellent complement ibid. He is in great repute 276 His manners ibid. He made a Libel against Claudius 277 His judgement on Nero. ibid. He is made minister of State ibid. He put the State in good order ib. His Maxims ibid. His opinion of the Soveraign good 278 His falling off from Agrippina ibid. Why Seneca having so many brave qualities did perform so little in reformation of manners 283 His constant and famous death 284 Sin corrupteth the goodnesse of Essence in intellectuall creatures 45 A civill shame doth hinder good designs 297 Shamefac'tness a reasonable passion 81 Its sources honour and conscience ibid. Three kinds of Shamefac'tness ib. The esteem the antients had of Shamefac'tness 83 The Queen of Sheba 154 Her quality ibid. The picture of Slander 94 There would be no Slander if it were not made Slander by thinking thereon ibid. Solomons entry into the Realm full of trouble 151 He is declared King ib. The bloudy entrance of Solomon after the death of David 152 Solomons rigour ibid. He cannot well be justified for the bloud of his brother ibid. The just punishment of God upon Solomon ibid. A wonderfull dream of Solomon 153 His knowledge ibid. The judgement of Solomon in the contention of the two women 154 Solomon his zeal to the building of the Temple ib. The fall of Solomon 155 The beginning of his debauchednesse ibid. Solomon is perverted in Religion 156 The estate of Solomon in the other world ibid. The prodigious course of some Stars 74 The evil opinion of the Stoicks to trust altogether to themselves without acknowledging the grace and assistance of God 283 The birth and education of Queen Mary Stuart 291 Her return into Scotland ibid. The death of Henry Stuart 294 Persecution of the Queen Mary Stuart by the Protestants 295 She comforts her self in prison and hopeth against hope 296 She escaped out of prison ibid. Her languishment in her imprisonment in England 301 Elizabeths hatred to her 304 The Processe against the Queen of Scotland ibid. Her invincible Apology 305 The unjust judgement given against her 307 The vain endeavour to delay her death 308 Queen Elizabeth chiefly to be charged for her death ibid. Her death and miraculous constancy 309 The Sunne is an hundred and fourty times bigger then the earth and in twenty four hours goeth more then twelve millions of leagues 74 T TWenty two thousand Bullocks and one hundred and twenty thousand sheep sacrificed for the dedication of Solomons Temple 3 Reg. 8. 63 Mervelsous Temples where Lions are tractable 46 The generosity of Theodora wife of Justinian 161 Procopius speaketh shamefully of Theodora but undeservingly 167 Her death 169 Theodat honoured by Amalazunta 162 His perfidiousness ib. He causeth Amalazunta to be strangled in a Bath ib. Theodat is put to death and Vitiges is chosen in his stead 163 Time stealeth away from us the sense of Evils 58 Timidity its causes and Symptomes 71 Remedies for Timidity in declaiming 72 Timidity sometimes turneth into insolency ibid. Remedies against accidentall fear or Timidity 64 Totilas is chosen king of the Goths 163 The carriage of Truth doth cost dear at Court 146 V VAlour of Charles the simple 117 Vagoa Chamberlain to Holophernes 185 Vashâ—â— wise of Ahashuerus doth make a banquet for the women answerable to the King her husband 188 She is degraded and divorced ibid. The burning of Vesuvius in the year 1631. 73 Vigilius shamefully used 169 The slights of Vigilius to get the Popedome from Sylverius 168 He is again received into favour and afterwards dyed of the stone in Sicily ibid. The death of Uriah 146 W THe greatnesse of Wisdome 133 Humane Wisdome overthrown by the power of Heaven 140 Reasons for the modest love of women 7 Rare Amities of Women ibid. Modest amitie with women should alwayes be handled with much precaution 8 Observation of Jamblicus applyed to the amity of Women ibid. The opinion of Fathers concerning the Amity of Women 9 Shipwracks happening by the love of Women ibid. The love of Women dangerous 16 Hatred of Women 38 Humour of Women 45 Women among the Sabeans command over men 154 The artifice of Women 156 It s very dangerous to be observant to wicked Womenâ— humours 167 What hindereth the production of admirable works 68 The attractives of the world are not very urgent 18 Z A notable speech of Zaleuchus 58 FINIS