tribulation and the kingdome and patience in Jesus Christ Ego frater vester particeps in tribulatione in regno patientiâ in JESU CHRISTO For it is a deplorable sight to see our kindred and friends out of that state which as S. Paul saith Operatur tolerantiam earundem passionum quas nos patimur 2 Cor. 1.6 Which worketh the toleration of the same passions which we also suffer For which cause one of our greatest prayers ought to be that as they are partakers of the passion so they may be also of the consolations for Saint Austin saith One may cary all things with him out of the Catholike Church but charitie as baptisme the sacramēts and the resolution of suffering But we know how little comfort S. Paul giveth to those who have all the materiall parts of Christianity and want the formall and animating spirit thereof which is Charity 1 Cor. 13. How much then ought you to praise God in all your Covenants of sufferings to see your selves comprised in the infallible Covenant and contract of reward which is passed to his Catholike Church Rejoyce be exceeding glad wherefore I may properly say to you Gaudete exultate because you are under the best notion of the afflicted in these times when sufferings are so vniversall and the cause of them so little Catholike Upon those words of the Apostle S. Paul Col. l. 24 I accomplish those things that want of the passions of Christ in my flesh for his body which is the Church Adimpleoea quae desunt passionum Christi in carne meâ pro corpore ejus quod est Ecclesia S. Augustine asketh how there can any thing be said to be wanting to his passions who was God and Man and taking vineger for his last tast of this world declared giving up the Ghost that all things were consummate that had been written of him and answereth the question thus that all the passions were compleated that belonged to the head there remained the sufferings of the body which is the Church to render it sutable to the head and the Apostle as a principall member of that body might well say he was to fill up his share of what was required thereof So as it is not the insufficiency of Christs passions that needs a supplement of his Churches pressures but the order of God who hath designed the application of Christs passions and merits to his Church by this her conformity to his passive peregrination through this world And may we not say that to unite his Church the more firmly to him he hath left her fastned to the Crosse upon earth that this his body might seeme to be so much his owne as it might appear rather his naturall body crucified then onely a mysticall signification thereof For his passions being continually iterated upon reall flesh and bloud which have the honour to be called the Temples of the holy Ghost they may seem to have a more then ordinary representation of the passive body of Christ For if all the sacrificed bodies of the Synagogue and all the blood of irrationall creatures effused in the Temple were figures of his naturall body why may not those sacrificed bodies which are themselves Temples of God well be said now to be an admirable manner of somewhat more then representing Christs living body Therefore it seemeth that Christ to have a continuall view of the glory of his suffering body hath lest his Church in a bleeding posture to present God his Father with a perpetuall show not only of a picture or image but as it were a reall exhibition of himself suffering in his Church and no sight propitiateth God to the sonnes of men so much as this of seeing them as it were acting the sons of God under this notion of hoasts and sacrifices In the quotidian unbloody sacrifice of his now impassible body the offering is of more dignity but the object seemeth not so affecting and moving compassion as the torne and wounded figure of his Churches tribulations the body whereof seemeth to be designed to bleed continually for a lively memoriall of Christs merits in the sight of God and for a solicitor of an effusion of fresh graces upon the necessities of this body untill the bleeding and the beatify'd body be both united into one conformity of glory This is the order God seemes to have setled in the continuation of his Churches sufferings the which attract succours convenient at the same time that it may remaine a perfect image of Christs body alwayes grieving and alwayes glorying in a complyance with the designe of God and in the proclamation of the triumph of Christ who when he led captivity captive gave these gifts unto men whom he left to triumph by the same Armes wherewith he had overcome which are Crosses Sufferances and Passions Which consideration may easily induce us to acquiesce to the order of the sufferances of the Catholike Church since the pressures thereof are not only continued memories or imitations of that object which is so pleasing to God the passions of Christ but even accomplishments of what was wanting of his passions according to the meaning of S. Paul before related which was the finishing and consummating the effect of his sufferings by rendring the body so fit for the head as Christ may have glory by the perfection of this work as wel as the Church beatitude by this sutable incorporation Since S. Paul saith Heb. 2.10 That it became God to consummate the Author of our salvation by his passion we must needs conclude it necessary that we who are to be the matter which is to be saved and glorified should be purged and perfected by the same manner and we may well say that to answer to the single bloody sacrifice of such a head the perpetuall sanguinary immolation of the body during to the end of the world is but a decent conformity With good reason therefore as the head of the Catholike Church was once victimated and offered up in bloud to the glory of his head a 1. Cor. 11.4 who is God it is but just that the body should be continually immolated as a bleeding hoast to the glory of his head who is Christ Whereupon Saint Paul expressing the proper state of the Church 2. Cor. 4.11 saith We that live are alwayes delivered unto death for JESUS that the life of JESUS may be manifested in our mortall flesh so as the Church seems appointed a durable sacrifice to manifest and set forth the life of Christ to his Father and himselfe And upon this ground the Church may be said to be in some degree to Christ what he is to his Father that is as he is the mirrour which reflects to the Father his eternall life and being so the Church in her passions reflecteth to Christ his owne mortall life and existence Which figure of Christ upon earth when the Father contemplateth Heb. 1.3
pains as might produce this strange effect in our nature to make our root the lesse capable of bearing fruit by the excrescence and growth of these springs out of it For temporall affliction springeth cut of sinne as out of the root thereof and nothing drieth up and infecundateth so much the radicall fructifying vigor of this roote as the springing up of temporall miseries and distresses so as the fruit of sinne which is death is killed the soonest by the fertility of sufferings in this life Since Christ hath then by the vertue of his Crown of thornes imparted this faculty to the asperities of our life of taking off the growth as his did the guilt of sinne we need not wonder why he hath left all these temporall bitternesses upon our nature which he himselfe took expresly to taste of in our nature so as we may be said to become the more Christians the more we are called to be Patients Which Position we shall find the more cleerly demonstrated to us the farther we advance into the Principles of Christianity S. Paul when he wrote to the Romans in those times when in a parallel of your cases the Christians were partly immured up in prisons and partly expelled to the adjoyning fields thought it seemeth to sweeten their condition to them by representing that Mortification and Sufferance was their calling and profession For he asketh them as of a notorious thing Whether they knew not this to be the Constitution of Christianity saying Rom. 6.3 Are you ignorant that all we who are baptised in Christ Jesus in his death we are baptised An ignoratis quicunque baptizati sumus in Christo Jesu in morte ejus baptizati sumus Intimating that our first incorporation into the body of Christ is in effect an expiration to this world and a translation by the vertue of the death of Christ into such a sort of life as he had pattern'd to us by the inception progresse and consummation of his life And the Apostle presseth thus the proofe of this assertion Rom. 6.4 For we are buried together with him in baptisme into death Consepulti enim sumus cum illo per baptismum in mortem to evince this position that our mundanity is drowned and buryed in our Christening and that the life of Christ which was a continued part of mortification is to be as it were our breath and animation And while we are in this spirituall manner buryed in the life of Christ that is covered and inclosed with indignities oppressions we are acting that part we took upon us in Baptisme where we listed our selves into that Militia which was erected by him who killed death by dying and hath left the same Discipline to all his Souldiers to destroy death by dying to the world Mortifications therefore must needs be the proper duties of that service a Christian is upon and his pay is conditioned rather upon his suffering then his acting as the Apostle proceedeth to testifie For if we become complanted to the similitude of his death we shall be also of his resurrection Si enim complantati facti sumus similitudini mortis ejus simul resurrectionis erimus so as in a Christians case the wages of death is life for if he die here by a privation of the carnall life of this world he performeth the condition of his life everlasting For which reason S. Paul who was the great Commander of the Gentiles in this militancy where by this kind of dying death is swallowed up in victory hath left us his Discipline in Quotidie morior 1 Cor. 15. I die daily and he giveth us those orders to be the followers of him as he was of Christ whom he began not to follow untill he was overthrown in the command he had in this world was as it were resuscitated by the same hand that had killed him We may remember he was revived by what is distructive to this life by being almost famished and illuminated by this worlds darknes restored to corporall light only to see how much he was to suffer for that name for which all the sufferings he had in his head were to be imployed but in a manner farre differing from his designe for they were signed to be enjoyed by himselfe not to be dispensed to others by his hand so as this seemeth the gratification of his Christianity the having all that treasure of crosses he had prepared for other Christians appropriated to his owne use whereof he grew so sensible as in gratitude to this his preference he returned his Superabundo gaudio in omni tribulatione But let us look upon his Master I doe exceedingly abound in joy in all our tribulation and ours Christ Jesus in his owne time of tribulation and we may represent him to our selves in the first instant of his conception accepting this order from his Father which he gave to his follower S. Paul of Ostendam illi quanta oporteat eum pro nomine meopati Act. 9.15 I wil shew him how great things he must suffer for my name before the Gentiles and Kings and the children of Israel ut portet nomen meum coram gentibus regibus filiis Israel In which Commission he laboured three and thirty yeeres wherein all we are acquainted with of his life is either laborious or incommodious or in extremity dolorous and painfull It seemes the holy Ghost did not think any thing worthy to stand upon record for CHRIST that was not eminently suffering and therefore passed over in silence those parts of his life which we may suppose to have been the least distressefull If we look upon his way that is drawn out to us from his Cradle to his Crosse we shall finde that temporall honour and ease were so inconsistent with Gods designe upon him as he never had any proffers of them that did not speedily procure him some sharper vexation The Star that proclaimed him King at his birth presently proved his proscription to death and that the law of suffering might seem enacted in his first step into the world it was put in execution upon innocent babes whose blood as S. Augustine saith made the first tincture of Christian martyrdome so that the cryes of the mothers and the infants followed close the voyces of the Angells that glorified him When the people thought of making him King it put him presently to flye alone into the mountaines When the evill spirits proclaimed him the Son of God the Pharisees doubled their spies upon him to traduce him and sharpned their wits to ensnare him by captious questions His entring into Jerusalem with the acclamations of Hosanna hastned the persecutions of his enemies and within few dayes the voyces of the same Jerusalem strained higher in the Pharisees aire of Crucifige whereby we may conclude that hee had so entirely assigned himselfe to sufferances and passions in this life as he did not thinke it a sufficient discharge
consecrated by his life of relinquishing all temporalities and offering up your daily distresses as sacrifices to the glory of God and his Church And we who in all humility may say 2 Cor. 5.20 We are Legats for Christ Pro Christo Legationâ— fungimur being suspended by the violences of these times from the execution of our commission ought by all the meanes feisable seek to transport our discharges to you and since we cannot import our duties in specie I have desired by Gods motion to make thus over to you some little parcell of our debt Saint Paul when he was poorer then we gloryed that being needy he enriched many having nothing he possessed all things and the wealth he transmitted by his letter to the Corinthians 2 Cor. 6. was this coyn of the stamp of the holy Spirit much patience in tribulations in necessities in distresses in stripes in prisons these were the revenues of the Primitive Christians who let out all their estates to their persecutors for this Rent Saint Paul was so well paid in of superabundo gaudio in omni tribulatione I doe abound exceedingly in joy in all our tribulation We then who are Saint Pauls heires in his office though not of his personall estate of grace may likewise lawfully aspire to that benediction of enriching others while we our selves are needy and indigent To make then a convenient present for you in these your necessities I may open the tombes of the Martyrs and Primitive Christians where so much of this spirituall treasure is inclosed and draw out from their rich lives and examples a plentifull support for your vertues in all the oppressions of your fortunes for Gods providence is such towards the reliefe of his necessitous children as all the wealth which the vessells of election had in them when they were temporally cast away is not lost but rather reserved expresly for the succeeding exigences of other times descending upon the streame of the Churches traditions And thus out of the wrecks of Martyrs the chaines of Confessors and the Testaments of the Fathers the Church maketh a vast treasure of perswasion and exemplarity which duly considered I may our of this blessed store present you with sufficient exhortations to patience and longanimity in your present practices of true Christianity I is the nature of man in any private affliction presently to look over the single table-book of his own conscience to try if by the collation of his actions with his sufferings he can make a congruous connexion of the sense of Gods justice out of his faults and his penalty put together And in common calamities we straightwayes resort to all the Church and State-Books that lye open to our memory and revolve them studiously to make this coherence between the occasion and the imposition which lieth upon the publike And when we find nothing satisfactory upon this inquest then by busie retrospection into the Annals records of times we set our thoughts to find out a coherence in the present sentence of God with the precedent irritation and though a long Parenthesis might seem to break off the references between the one and the other we study to make a connexion of the sense of the antecedent causes with the emergent consequences and we are so fond to satisfie our reason in this which seemeth a propriety belonging to it as we are apt to admit great incongruities in the collations of times to make good our sorting of causes to their effects thereby to joyn any probable coherence between our provocations and our punishments because it is some recreation to the pride of man even in the time of his penance to be able as he presumeth to read the hand-writing on the wall though it be his owne sentence after the weighing of Gods provocation But there are some Psal 38. O Lord illuminate my darknesse that I may know what is wanting to me who it may be do sincerely make this enquiry with the Psalmist of Domine illumina tenebras meas ut sciam quid desit mihi and such a search sometimes findeth case in the disquisition of the reasons of Gods judgements when it enquireth not into the equity of them but pleadeth for some light to facilitate a correspondency to Gods designe upon us but when it is curiosity that rangeth to retrive the order and connexion of causes to events then commonly this agitation proveth the most laborious part of their perplexity when they are so earnest in the Pharisees Quousque animam nostram tollu dic nobis palam this desiring God to speak plainer to us is a familiar unmannerlynesse in our nature And thus we intricate our minds the more by this turning and winding our thoughts about in this maze of co-ordination of causes and consequences in the changes of times and dazle our selves very commonly in that inaccessible light where Gods providence resides inseparable from his essence And I may well presume there are of both these sorts of solicitudes amongst you and that some with a reverend zeale to Gods justice mixed with a naturall desire of some refrigeration in the ardours of these times do call with the holyest of Kings Psal 88.47 How long O Lord Job 10.2 Tell me who thou judgest me so Usque quo Domine and others in some more humane impatience and estuation of spirit doe cry out with Job Indica mihi cur me ita judicas The message sent to the Angel of the Church of Smyrna in this same exigence may be well divided into an answer to both these interrogations To the first which may be an humble solicitation of reliefe this part seemeth to belong Dicit primus novissimus scio tribulationem tuam Apoc. 2.9 I know thy tribulation and thy poverty but thou art rich Fear none of those things which thou shalt suffer be faithfull untill death and I will give thee the crown of life pau pertatem tuam sed dives es because patience and conformity to Gods order in all his imposures on us is a more reall treasure then any wee can be despoiled of by the worlds pillaging And to the last which may be a more anxious petition this other part seemes to be a pertinent reference Nihil horum time as quae passurus es esto fidelis usque ad mortem dabo tibi coronam vitae This may silence curiosity in the demand of the cause or the limits of our affliction since it setteth the terme of our fidelity in suffering no neerer then the end of our life so as being enjoyned not to seek an exemption untill our death we should enquire no more why we suffer then why we live In conformity to this principle God hath been pleased to suggest to me the presenting you this animadversion which may solve the difficulties of many controverted points in our weak nature concerning affliction namely that you are to state your case as entred into 3. Covenants of
sufferance out of any of which I hope in God there is not any of you would agree to be ejected even upon this contract of being raised from Josephs chaine up to his chariot and dominion in Aegypt The first is as you are men the second as you are Christians and the third as you are Catholikes A MISSIVE OF CONSOLATION CHAP. I. Of the Covenant of Suffering as Men the Sonnes of Adam TO the first Covenant of sufferance you know we all give our voice by a naturall instinct before we have scarce enjoyed so much as light for it and our eyes may be said to set their mark to it before we are able to set our hands to this article of eating in the sweat of our browes for our eyes pay their sweat which is their teares for what we taste even before we be able to receive bread for it and as we grow into a state to set our hands to the Covenant of labour we know there is scarce any thing we relish much that doth not cost us sweat and contention nay we are of such a constitution that we can have no kind of delectation the which some want and suffering must not precede to affect us with the gust of it So as we are sentenced to pay a great Fine of Pain before-hand for all those fleeting and transitory pleasures which at best doe but run over our senses and so passe away and leave them againe in their drouth and privation And most commonly the advance of all our paine and passion rendreth us nothing of what they negotiate So as a man when he looketh upon himselfe in the best reflexes his temporary wishes can make him shall find this brand and stigmate of Adam upon his forehead Gen. 3.10 Thou shalt eate in the sweat of thy brows In sudore vultûs tui vescêris pane And this is a mark which God stamped upon Adam of another kind of signification then that he set upon Cain for this directeth all things that occur to man in this life to strike him and wound his temporall estate in some kind or other insomuch as all the creatures do in their severall manners execute this sentence upon the sons of Adam not allowing themselves to be enjoyed by them without stinging them in some sort either with the anxietie of their appetite to them preceding fruition or the distaste of satiety following it or with the vexation of a deprivement of them during the ardour of their affections to them So as we may well say that every thing we finde now assaults our felicity in this life in some sort to kill it and to revive to us the memory of our Covenant of sufferance we entred into as soon as we entred into light For which reason the a Ecclesiasticus 40.1 Great travell is created to all men and a heavy yoke upon the children of Adam from the day of their coming forth of their mothers wombe untill the day of their burying in the mother of all their cogitations and fears of the heart imagination of things to come and the day of their ending from him that sitteth upon the glorious seat unto him that is humbled in earth and ashes Wiseman proclaimeth elegantly the tenour of it saying Occupatio magna creata est omnibus hominibus jugum grave super filios Adam à die exitus de ventre matris 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 usque in diem sepulturae in matrem omnium cogitationes corum timores cordis adinventio expectationis dies finitionis à residente super sedem gloriosam usque ad humiliatum in terrâ cinere Neither need we look back upon the defaced images of all conditions in the dead prints of story we have such living figures of them before our eyes as must needs imprint upon our thoughts a lively character of the deplorable state of all mortals Whereby out of the ruines of those houses whereof you lament the demolishments you may pick up some materials to build in your minds this frame of the instable constructure of the greatest strengths of humane happinesse Eccles 10. I have seen servants upon horses Princes walking on the ground as servants and thus your friends may in their fall some way support your vertue and your patience when you consider how incident it is to the vicissitudes of this world to expose unto us that changeable Scene whereof Solomon reporteth this to us Vidi servos in equis principes ambulantes super terram quasi servos And in such capitall Letters as these you may now read the articles of the Covenant of sufferance which man is engaged in whereof Job maketh a manifest is signed even by all the Princes of the earth for we find this under their hands in all records of them in some part of their lives Job 14.1 Man born of a woman and living a short time is replenishâ—d with many miseries Homo natus ex muliere vivens brevi tempore repletur multis miseriis In so much as after man by sinne had made misery for himselfe in this life it seemeth a mercy of God to have joyned death with it before which even the light of nature is sufficient to shew the Philosophers that none can be counted happy And in order to this proofe we may remarke that he who first abused death by imploying it to make sinne was thought worthy of no lesse a punishment then the protraction of life which he had made so afflicting by his fearing to dye and thus he was made his own torturer by the ignorance of the evill of life and of the good of death which he had so much demcrited the knowing of for his brothers goodnesse was thought worthy to be quickly relieved by death and his malice was adjudged to the paine of apprehending it and to the supplice of a long life With good cause then may this be well reflected on that the first vertuous and godly man was quickly removed out of this hedge of thornes his father had set and re-conveyed towards Paradise and the first impious murtherer was sentenced to live in the pungencie and asperity of these pricks and bryars of the earth But yet such is Gods Wisdome as he can extract medicines out of all the Brambles thistles our earth is over-run with and minister them to our infirmity for he applieth even those griefes and sorrowes which sinne introduced to the expulsion of sinne it selfe So as this is an operation worthy of Gods invention by the labour and exercising of the body to enlarge the freedome of the soule even by this unfortifying of her prison in which she is kept the closer the stronger the dolectation of our senses groweth upon us Therefore the distancing of the conveniencie of the flesh dilateth the commodities and freedome of the spirit so as it is a divine artifice which God useth by hanging weights of sufferings and pressures upon our senses to wind up rather
to accept the injuries of his maligners without converting all the dutifull offices of his adherents into seed of affliction This was the uneven and painfull way wherein Christ chose to passe through this life who is the way the truth and the life of Christians and since one drop of his blood had been a price sufficient for our redemption shall not the effusion of it all and the immensity of his griefs and labours be sufficient for our example It being especially notified unto us by the Apostle 1 Pet. 2.23 That he suffered for us to leave us an example that we might follow his steps wherein this print of sorrow seemeth unto me one of the most admirable markes of it that he suffered not so much by his passion as by his compassion He felt the torments of the Martyrs the miseries of the Confessors and the distresses and desolations of his Church which he foresaw in all ages more then the persons themselves who are under them can doe Vere labores dolores nostros ipse tulit He truly bore all our labors and our griefs All the anxieties and contristations that now oppresse you were in a sharper degree pressing upon his heart and since he was content to aggravate all his sufferings by taking on him the sense of your grievances may not you very easily alleviate all your heavinesses by taking into your mind the resentment of sufferings which were designed for your succor in your tentations by the reflection upon his precedent so that his example is not a simple injunction on you to suffer but a conferment of an ability to sustaine it and a meanes to improve and ameliorate your state in your coinheritance with him For the Apostle enforceth this Doctrine with this energy of 2 Tim. 2.12 A faithfull saying for if wee bee dead with him wee shall live also together if we sustain we shall also reign together Fidelis sermo si commortui sumus convivemus si sustinebimus conregnabimus This deserves well our contemplation that the fulnesse of the Divinity did inhabit in Christ and the cleere vision of God did alwayes illuminate him notwithstanding this it was so miraculously disposed by God that the affluence of joy springing from the Deity should not overflow his body and possesse the inferiour portions of his soule that there might be left room for paine and anguish the which was manifest in his Passion insomuch as stupendious miracles were requisite for an admittance of so much sorrow into his most sacred minde if God were pleased thus to multiply miracles that affliction might have accesse to his beloved Sonne in whom he was so well pleased shall we with whom he hath so much cause to be displeased wonder at any calamity or tribulation whereby he is pleased to correct us especially when it is a marke of our filiation and fraternity with Christ We who cannot be exempt from sufferings without a miracle as we are sons of Adam shall we be astonished at any imposition under this notion of Brothers nay even members of Christ In which respect S. Bernard saith excellently That delicate and tender members are not decent and becomming a head stuck full of thorns Therefore the pressures and pungencies of this life make the symmetry and proportion of the body of Christianity to the Head Christ Jesus who since he did not so much as speak one idle word all his praises and beatifications of the poore and the afflicted must needs verifie the good of adversity Mat. 5. And surely Christ did much lesse doe any idle deed and if the exemplary life of his labours and onerations had not been directed to our conformity therein there might seeme some supervacuousnesse and redundancy in his continuall hardnesse and asperity of life Would God have afflicted his onely Sonne so Rom. 8. if it were indifferent to doe or not to doe as he did or that it did not concerne those whom he had fore-known and predestinated to be conformable to the image of his Sonne in this point that he might be the first-born of many Brethren Our fraternity therefore is derived to us by this similitude Our sinnes might have been effaced not onely by a drop of Christs blood but even by a drop of his sweat wherefore this seemeth one of the chief reasons that did induce the atrocity of his passion and the austerity of his life the necessity of such a pattern for our imitation since our nature was grown so degenerous and effeminate as no lesse then Gods participation of all the sorts of grievances and injuries thereof would serve to forme in us a cheerfull disposition to the sufferings and infelicities of this life God therefore did not intend to vex us when he placed our salvation in difficulties and in our natures aversions for to sweeten the bitternesse of this strong necessity which was to work upon our nature to purge us from the love of this world he was so gracious as to infuse the company of Christ into this receipt that the tast of his society might make more pleasant to us the ill savour and acerbity of the remedy Well therefore may we say A greater then Elisha is here who hath mended these waters by but tasting of them and hath left neither death nor barrennesse in them for they are become rather waters springing up to life everlasting And we may observe that in conformity to Gods method with his Sonne Christ continued the same style to his Mother for she whom all generations were to call Blessed was not allowed any of what this world calls Blessings for She who had borne the Redeemer of the whole world was not able to go to the highest rate of the Temple for his Redemption her poor estate did not reach to pay so much as a Lambe for the Sonne of God and the Lambe who was to take away the sinnes of the world had not so much as a Lambe for his ransome The lowest price that was set for any of the Children of Israel was the rate her low condition was taxed at None was set at lesse then a paire of pigeons or a paire of turtles and the Mother of God was in this inferiour forme of the daughters of men This may serve to sweeten the bitterest waters of poverty When we ponder this that Christ would not allow his Mother to taste of any other spring and though he would not let her taste of the sowrenes of the forbidden fruit yet he fed her more then any other with these bitter leaves which grew out of the same root that is though he was pleased to exempt her from sinne yet he would not dispense with her in sufferings which we know are but the productions of sinne and so she whom we may suppose to have been excepted out of the rule of sinners was exalted above any in the state of sufferers And this seems to be very consonant that as she was Mother to the
obedient to death even the death of the crosse for the which thing God hath exalted him So that here Christs power is referred to his purchase of it by his passions Therefore a Christian that repineth at any affliction in this life seemeth to forget what he oweth the Crosse for his redemption from misery and to what he was sealed by it when it was laid upon him in water to ingage him even before he could beare it in a heavyer matter and to oblige him to serve under all those crosses of fire or water this life should passe through for after this comes a stronger baptisme of fire in the tryals of a Christian Those who are not Christned with the signe of the Crosse may have some pretence not to understand the use or obligations of it but you on whose heads it hath been laid in Baptisme and pressed as it were into them by Confirmation can have no colour to mis-conceive the use of Crosses and since it is a defence against evill spirits the making but the signe or figure of the Crosse with our hand it must needs be of greater efficacie against both the world and the devill the having of them made upon us by the hand of God who chastiseth every child he receives and so crosseth his children alwayes either to expel some evill spirit or to mark a lodging for the better reception of his holy mission into it In this signe thou shalt overcome Look up therefore to heaven and you shall see In hoc signo vinces ingraven upon all your Crosses I will close up this proofe of your second covenant as Christians with this advise to you how in all the shipwracks of your lives or fortunes in this storme you may save your selves by a right use of the Crosse The Fathers doe usually call the Crosse Tabulam naufragii that plank whereon humane nature was saved when all her goods were cast away and you must take the manner of saving your selves by your crosses from that conception of making them planks to beare you up and you know the same piece of wood lying upon you will sink you which would carry you if you lay upon it In like manner if the weight of your present crosses lye upon the sensitive part of your soules and you consider them meerly as sensible oppressions and gravations in this world flesh and blood will be dejected and sunk by them when that feeleth all the charge upon it the mind may easily be cast downe by the heavinesse of the senses but if you lay your minds upon your crosses that is extend your thoughts orderly upon the meditation of the Crosse of Christ from which all yours derive a vertue and efficacie to work upon you the image of the Sonne of God laying your minds in this posture upon your crosses they will beare up your hearts instead of sinking them and thus this storme shall but drowne your worldly and earthly affections and your crosses in this posture under your minds shall carry and land you in the land of the living Wherefore I beseech you to cast your thoughts in this posture upon the Crosse of Christ 2 Cor. 13. For although he was crucified of infirmity yet he liveth by the power of God for we also are weake in him but we shall live with him by the power of God resting upon it with confidence that it will support you and rest your minds upon your owne crosses as conceiving them to be rather carriages of your soules to spirituall aspirings then materiall onerations upon your bodies and then you may easily apply to your selves this comfort of S. Paul out of the crucifixion of Christ Nam etsicrucifixus ex infirmitate sed vivit ex virtute Dei nam nos infirmi sumus in illo sed vivemus cum eo ex virtute Dei CHAP. III. Of the Covenant of suffering as Catholiques the Champions or true Church of Christ IN my preceding discourse having I hope in God sufficiently proved this your second bond of sufferance by the two irrecusable witnesses of Christs life and his death I shall proceed to put the third in suit against any reluctant and querulous humor which flesh and blood may breed in you to plead against your spirituall conformity to your temporall condition that in poverty of spirit you may be suited to the penury of your fortunes when you consider seriously your selves bound by this triple cord to crosses adversities in this life The third of your Covenants I proposed to you was the being Catholiques which notion seemeth to be like the wheele in the middle of a wheele in EZekiels Vision for the Catholique Church is contained within the greater circle of Christianity as a lesser sphere within a larger and we may properly say that the spirit of life is in this smaller wheele for the being a Christian in the large acception of it will admit many stations of Religions without the inclosure of the Catholike Church wherein the Symbol of the Apostles incircleth the true Christian Faith and because this terme Catholike is now the notionall distinction of your true Religion from all other whose sects are comprehended in the amplitude of the terme Christian it will not be impertinent to explain unto you in a few words the Churches sense of this denomination Catholike We know the first followers of Christ were called Disciples It seemeth Christs humility would not admit so much honour in his life as the faming of his name by this celebration of it which men affect especially to set upon the front of their intellectuall edifices for Christ all his life endured the meannesse of his earthly habitation to be branded upon his Disciples who were called Nazareans or Galileans rather then the gloriousnesse of his office to be charactered upon them For his sirname of Christ which is Anointed hath a reference to the highest dignities of the world so as it was long after his death before he admitted his followers to that honourable name of Christians for you know it was at Antioch that the Disciples began first to be named Christians and he who never sleepeth was early up sowing tares for Simon Magus Act. 11.26 who was his first seeds-man sowed even in the same furrows the Apostles were plowing and his followers wore the badge of his name and many other Heresies sprang presently up all which covered themselves with this large cloake of Christian in so much as the name of Christian was justly odious in that apprehension the Gentiles had of it For the Heresies that were clothed with that upper garment were in their owne nakednesse foule and execrable in all sorts of pollutions For those we call now Simoneans and Gnosticks and Ebionites and many other which by the Authors of their Sects are now stigmatized in those times were all involved in the latitude of Christians Whereupon before the death of all the Apostles this denomination of Catholique was peculiarly affected
and at the same time seeth him to be the brightnesse of his glory and the figure of his owne substance this must needs propitiate God infinitely to that body which representeth to him such an honour he hath received from the head thereof who being equall with him did thus admirably subject himselfe for the exaltation of his glory Doth not then the suffering Church rememorate to God continually the highest point of all his glory For the holocausting or incineration of infinite worlds in honour of the Majesty of God would not have been an oblation equivalent to the least drop of blood drawne from the person of Christ and therefore Christs designe in leaving his mysticall body in a suffering posture is one of the highest straines of his divine providence both in order to the honouring of his Father Ephes 4.13 and the purifying of his Church till The body and the head meet in the perfect man in the age of the fulnesse of Christ It then we review the state of the Church even since the Empire of the world undertooke her protection and repose we shall finde her still continuing an image of the life of Christ who we know had divers intermixtures in his course through this world sometimes he was in want and hunger in the desart sometimes declared in the glory of his miracles feeding multitudes and curing all diseases and again sometimes we find him withdrawing and hiding himselfe from the fury of the people and then at other times we behold him in authority and magistracy expelling the prophaners of the Temple and casting out the evill spirits out of the images of God and converting them into the temples of the Holy Ghost These vicissitudes we finde also in the state of his Church sometimes prospering spreading and feeding those multitudes which sodainly after have risen against her and forced many of her members to fly out of their reach into desarts and more dispeopled places in some times again she hath propagated miraculously and established her doctrine and her jurisdiction among many unbeleeving nations in a wonderfull felicity and in sequence of time hath beene banished and eliminated out of these dominions These alternative mutations are evident in the progresse of her dispersion through the world and we know she shall extend her selfe at last to the ends of the world and if not cover the face yet leave some of her markes upon the whole face of the earth Wee see her now as it were shipped away almost quite from Africa where she was so firmly planted many ages before America was so much as knowne to be in the world and now shee spreads there to a good growth while her plantation in Africa lies waste and desolate and the good seed which is falne in that ground seemeth to answer for the semination of those tares which the Enemy hath cast into these territories of Christianity And we may note that all the ancient heresies which so much infested the Church in former ages are now almost eradicated according to the fate of them Sap. 4.3 Spuria vitulamina non dabunt radices altas and the new ones which are now so flowerd and full blowne will shed and fall away like Tulips which commonly vary their colours every yeare somewhat till the roote it selfe in a few yeares leaveth bearing and these varieties of vexations will successively spring up to the Church out of the ruines of some errors new wil be erected and thus she shall be exercised to the end of the world till the man of sin Antichrist shall come to purge her by a generall conflagration as it were of the whole world in the flames of his blasphemy which shal be the last perfecting fire of tribulation shall reduce the Church to the finenesse of that gold which must pave the heavenly Jerusalem This is Christs method and designation of the manner of his Churches passage through this world up to him in whom since there can be neither impotency nor severity to this his body for the Apostle tells us Ephe. 5.29 He nourisheth and cherisheth it as a man doth his owne flesh we must resolve that this order is in reference to the presenting his Father with a continuall intuition of his suffering body whereby he is the most eminently honoured Ephe. 5.27 Not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing but that it may be holy and unspotted and to refine this body to the most perfect degree of purity which this locall separation from the head can admit of to reduce it at last to that glorious estate Non habentem maculam aut rugam aut aliquid hujusmodi sed ut sit sancta immaculata Wherefore I may properly say to you as members of this suffering body 1. Pet. 4.12 from S. Peters mouth Thinke it not strange in the fervour which is to you for tentation as though some new thing happened unto you for all that you are exposed to is in consequence of that order wherein Christ conducts his Church through this transitory world TO clucidate farther this position That God is propitiated by the sight of Christs suffering body we may make this animadversion upon the constitution of the Catholike Church That soone after the issue of bloud was stenched so as the bodies of the Martyrs did no longer afford that object of passions the Holy Ghost who had charge to preserve the Church in the most acceptable condition to God presently infused a spirit of voluntary mortifications and sufferings into the Church whereby many holy persons were divinely inspired to congregate bodies and societies of sufferers which should be united by a vow of perpetuall afflicting and exercising their bodies and making themselves lively images of Jesus Christ crucified by the rules of selfe-abnegation and exhibition of a life intirely sacrificed in the toleration of all sorts of austerities This spirit wrought upon both sexes and hath produced those admirable orders of mortified and crucified Christians which are so eminent in the Catholike Church so that the strongest powers of flesh and blood have been subdued by the weakest portions of it Virgins in the succeeding times have been as sanctified by their civill death and spirituall mortification as they were by the violent destruction of their lives consecration of their bodies in martyrdome to this ministery of the Churches sufferings which were wanting to the passions of Christ and so this order of selfe-sacrificing seemeth to have succeeded in the Church to the vacancie of the Martyrs whereby God hath this spectacle continued to him in the passions of the body of Christ in bodies and societies expresly set apart from the world for that intendment which are all the religious orders of the Catholike Church whose lives are nayled to the Crosse by many vowes of austerity penance and self-crucifixion and these make such a propitiating sacrifice of their lives to God as we may be assured he smels it as an odour of sweetnesse
much their eternall blessednesse Well then and fitly may I say unto you in this your state of tryall 2 Cor. 13.5 Know you not your selves that Christ Jesus is in you unlesse perhaps you be reprobate For now you have that work in hand of interpretation of the word of God the word of the Crosse wherein you your selves are best expositors whether you finde in your hearts an humble understanding of the will of God upon you in these siftings and cribrations unto which the enemy hath now subjected you If you find this humble and patient conformity you may rightly conclude you have the right sense of the word of the Crosse Me thinks I may say now to you that you have as a mercy afforded to your offences your book given you and if you can reade in it your present burnings in the hands are far from being brands of infamy The stigmats of Christ they are rather stigmata Christi which are the characters in which your names are written in the Book of Life Your chiefe study therefore now must be to reade currantly Gods hand in this your book which you are put unto and by a right understanding of Gods mercy in this volume of your crosses you make it such an one as was given to Ezechiel Ezek. 3.3 you may finde it even as honey in your mouth Upon this ground Saint Augustine was wont often to aske his heart this question Is the word of the Crosse foolishnesse to thee 1 Cor. 1.18 He knew that was the infallible tryall of this adherence to the will of God the accounting the Crosse the wisdome of God and consequently the best mark of his predestination There may be many glorious externall shews of piety and sanctity which may be like the gift of Tongues Saint Paul speaketh of 1 Cor. 14.14 where the Spirit prayeth but the understanding is without fruit that may draw the eyes of the world upon the appearancies but not the eyes of God upon the interiour disposition but a patient and vertuous exemplarity in suffering is like prophecying in a knowne tongue it both bettereth our selves and edifyeth the Church of God Wherefore I may properly desire you now you are Ver. 4. 1 Cor. 14.39 Therefore brethren be earnest to Prophecy as I may say prohibited to speak with Tongues as this answereth to a publick exhibition of your devotions Itaque fratres amulamini prophetare that is to endeavour to edifie the Church of God by your patience longanimity and suavity in the holy Ghost Gods mercies are so much above all his works that even all his justices in this life are mercies as we may perceive in many things which to us seem severities and are truly indulgencies in Gods Order as many times when he findeth a dumbe and a deafe soule so possessed by the world as he will neither heare nor answer to the ordinary voice of Gods Ministers then God in mercy layeth violent hands upon him and as I may say puts his fingers into his eares Mar. 7.33 as Christ did to the man in this case as it were to force them open by some stronger operation then the ordinary ministry of his Churches medicines and applications and in this case the fire God applyeth is not rigour but medicinall compassion Besides there is commonly a speciall divine authority in Tribulation wherein the holy Ghost breathes himself out more efficaciously then by the Prophets or by the holy Scriptures for we often resist the Word of God and slight the admonition of the Fathers and Doctors of the Church when afflictions though they speake in a sharper and more unpleasant stile to us yet take our eares and bring us to answer more promptly speak Lord for thy servant heareth Whereupon the Psalmist expresseth thus both the nature of man and the virtue of tribulation Psal 15.4 Their infirmities were multiplied afterward they made haste Multiplicatae sunt infirmitates corum postea acceler averunt So as God oftentimes lameth us to make us mend our pace towards him the maimes given us by Gods hand prove like Jacobs lamenesse which made him the fitter for his journey And as it hath beene aptly accommodated to the credit of affliction that Jacob was flying and sunk with labour to the earth with his head upon the stones when God first appeared unto him and set his soule upon that ladder which reached to heaven while his body lay prostrate upon the earth so wee may well adde this that as soone as we wake out of the sleepe which the pleasures of our senses cast us into we shall confesse concerning crosses and tribulations as Jacob did after his dreame Verè dominus est in loco isto Gen 28.16 Indeed our Lord is in this place I knew it not ego nesciebam For though wee tremble at first and finde the place terrible yet we may truly say Non est hic aliud nisi domus Dei porta coeli 17 This is no other but the house of God the gate of heaven for the holy spirit seemeth to set this inscription of the gate of heaven upon tribulation advising us that by many tribulations we must enter into the Kingdome of heaven I have presented you with this draught of your owne states that you may see you are now in the elements of the Saints of both Testaments Wherefore the Apostle telleth the Christians in your conditions Behold Act. 14.21 now is the time acceptable now is the day of salvation But you must remember also what Christ said to those that are in this day 2 Cor. 6.2 Work while you have light lest the night overtake you For the day it selfe will but give you light not legs to carry you on your journey You must not lye downe under your burthens as if afflictions were vessels you had under you which will carry you on though you walke backward and forward in them between murmur desire of revenge and some intervals of conformity and resignation to Gods pleasure This tossing and estuation of spirit is a leake may endanger you if it be not stopped Necessarily therefore I must often rememorate this unto you that if you have faith to beleeve crosses to be the treasures of Christ you must negotiat with the talents you are trusted with for if you bury them in enmities maledictions of your enemies repinings and diffidences of Gods providence you will give so ill an account as you may chance after all your sufferings to be remitted thither for your rewards where affliction produceth nothing but curses and desperations For it may be fitly said of Tribulations They are the good odour of Christ 2 Cor. 1. but to some the odour of death unto death but to others the odour of life unto life Of which party that you may prove you must act this lesson of Saint Paul Colos 1.11.2 to walk worthy of God in all patience and longanimity
and what is joyned that he adored manifesteth that in all his sorrow he did not seek to reclaime or retract the judgement of his senteneer Therefore he was not moved lest he might offend by an excesse of resentment nor unmoved lest he might seeme to slight the corrector by insensiblenesse But as there are two precepts of charity the love of God and the love of our neighbour to the end that he might performe the dilection of his neighbour he did exhibit mourning and sorrow for his children and lest he might trespasse against the love of God even among his sighs he rendred his adoration and as he fell under the blow so he adored in the fall and thus compleated the offices of a son of man and a child of God Surely these words of S. Gregory doe fully regulate your case that you may sorrow and grieve in order to the expressing a sense of your chastisements and paying the duty of traternall charity But you must alwayes joyne the worshipping of God by an humble and cheerful conformity to his finall designâ—s even upon the publick as well as upon your personall sentences And being setled in this disposition Psal 65. My mouth hath spoken in my tribulation holocausts with marrow wil I offer thee you are in that state in which the Psalmists heart was setled when he said Locutum est os meum in tribulatione mea holocausta medullata offeram tibi wherein is the good odour of all offerings For in this feeling of our owne stripes and our fellow-feeling of the stripes of others and our sacrificing of both to the love of God we fulfill the two precepts of love which containe discharges of all the rest Now we have admitted sorrow with such due restrictions as the Apostle alloweth it contributary to salvation being 1 Cor. 7.10 A sorrow according to God which worketh pennance unto salvation there is another question very oovious in these conjunctures which requireth a solid resolution as how farre we are obliged to conform our wills to the declared wil of God in publike judgements and in cases of the prevalence of injustice and violence over right and equity This case is thus regulated in Divinity We know the Will is or ought to be carryed to the object thereof according to what is proposed by Reason and it hapneth often that the same thing may be diversly confidered by Reason so that which in some respect is good in another may be ill therefore when our will defireth any thing as it hath the nature of good our defire is licite and rectified and if another desireth the contrary in the same thing as it hath in his sense the nature of a good that opposite Will is also good and approvable As the will of a Judge is just when he voteth the death of a Malefactor and the desire of the wife or son of the condemned which opposeth the other as they apprehend the husbands life under the notion of a good is also lawfull and vertuous The Judge governeth his will by the common good of Justice and the wife by the private of her family and so both their wills are ordered respectively to their severall reasons Now it is the good of the whole Universe that is primarily in the apprehension and conception of God who is the Maker Pâ—eserver and Ruler thereof whereupon all that he willeth is in order to the common good which is his own goodnesse and that is it which is the good of the Universe But the nature of the creature is to apprehend good as it is particular and proportionate to her nature and there are matters which have the nature of particular goods which doe not hold so in an universal respect and the same holdeth convertibly Whereby it comes to passe that some will is good desiring a thing in order to a particular good which God doth not will because man wisheth according to the light he hath and his owne apprehension which cannot extend to the discernment how the particular he wisheth concordeth or discordeth with the universall benefit which he is obliged to prefer as far as he is informed onely So that to constitute a rectifyed will in the desire of a particular good the private may be wished materially but the common and divine good must be intended formally that is the thing we desire may be affected as the matter of it is a good to us and the end of our affecting it must be as we conceive it good and agreeable to the common order of God upon the world Therefore the wil of man is obliged to be conformable to that of God in the thing he wisheth in this respect of referring it to the fulfilling of the universall designe of his Creatour But he is not commanded to annex his will to every particular matter wherein Gods will is declared because he is not informed how that special course conduceth to the common good so as he may wish the accomplishment of Gods purposes by those wayes notified to his reason to be most equitable and consonant to the divine goodnesse And because we cannot judge how the ruine of a good cause doth contribute to the common good we may well dissent in that particular marter and yet still remaine resigned to the Universall Providence In this order many of the Saints have deprecated even Gods revealed judgements to them as Abraham in the case of Sodome and it is evident and frequent in all the Prophets when they appeal from Gods severity declared to his mercy which they solicited some so vehemently even after many prohibitions as God is faine to silence them as Samuel in the case of Saul and Jeremy in the behalfe of the captived people and many the like materiall inconformities we find in the Saints But this kind of discrepancy is better called a Velleity or wishing that Gods order were otherwise then a dissenting from it and this incomplete concurrence with the Divine will is dispensed with in this our imperfect light which we receive but through a dim glasse and till we come to be above all sense of sorrow we shall never be exempted from a defective perspection through the causes of all calamities in this world and so there is no more conformity exacted of us then there is illumination imparted The blessed who see many present acts and the sequences of the Divine providence in that light which showeth all satisfaction at first sight have their wills as intirely united as their understandings consummately informed Wherefore if we have a rectifide sense of the defective adherence of our wills to God even that resentment may be very supplymentall to the deficiency of our present condition It seemes cleere therefore that in all common calamities wherein the violations of justice are manifest our wills may safelyer be as I have explained unconformable to Gods will declared in those grievances remaining in a confession of our incapacity to conceive the reference they
little sortable to the temporal burthens of crosses and afflictions as they cannot be conceived to be the grievances we must first complain of Nothing but sin is to be found counter-marked with these notes upon it That then is the burthen you are first advised to bring in to be delivered of this weight which the world commonly laboureth and sweateth most to charge it selfe with and yet it is truly so strangely onerous as even God and Man Christ Jesus did sweat blood under the weight thereof although he carryed but the lighter halfe of it the paine onely not the pollution This is then the first oneration whereof you must intend the demission and deliverance For they who begin with calling to Christ for alleviation of temporall burthens or solicite him to transpose their loads upon their enemies setting these articles of ease and animosity before all the rest in their Petitions doe me thinks as if the Leper in the Gospel should have sued to Christ to have given him clothes to cover him onely For when we have the uncleannesse of any foule sinne upon us to intend any thing before the deliverie from that is but to beg a covering or palliation of our distresse And we know temporall commodities doe often hide and clothe the leprosie of sin but seldome contribute to the emundation and they who lift up their hands in the first place to draw down vengeance even from him to whom it belongeth doe me thinks as if the robbed and wounded Traveller in S. Luke should have desired the good Samaritan to have followed the theeves to apprehend them and deliver them to justice before he had thought of dressing his owne wound it is but such a preposterous application to pursue even Gods enemies while we have our own sins crying out and endangering our souls and crying for revenge against us under the same notion we prosecute our enemies We must all then retaine this principle that the first exoneration we must designe is to be this of the burthen of our sinnes and when we are delivered from them our crosses will prove rather our carriages then our burthens for as death is formidable in this face and aspect of the wages of sinne and that countenance may justly fright us but when we look upon it as a debt only we must pay nature before we can passe to eternall life in this view it seemeth rather officious then offensive to us in like manner when our afflictions and crosses are charged upon us as wages of our iniquities still growing in us as in the cases of Pharaoh and Antiochus then they have an intollerable heavinesse in them but when they are considered but as fees and duties we must pay in our passage through this miserable life unto a blisfull perpetuity and that all the Saints have paid them in their pilgrimage then they appear rather serviceable then formidable unto us So hereupon I may say that when our sinnes are heaped and accumulated on our crosses pressing and holding them upon us then the charge is unsufferably grievous but when our sufferings are imposed and charged upon our sinnes and that they presse our faults so hard upon our consciences as the pressure of our offences groweth intolerable and so forceth us to come creeping humbly under our loade to this promise of releefe which Christ exhibiteth to all such labourers and loaded soules then our affliction proveth an happy surcharge that hath sunke through our hearts that other sad portage of our sinnes which before peradventure did not disease us and then the heavinesse of our crosses which remaineth will comparatively with the other we are released of seeme very easie and portable as one that should rise from being bedrid with the Palsie or Sciatica after he were cured would find a little charge to carry his blankets upon his back There is such an analogy between the weight of sinne and of sufferance as between these two different heavinesses And sure the Paralitike who went back charged with his bed upon him found lesse heavinesse then when he was caryed upon his bed So when affliction that we finde hath partly contributed to our spirituall rising and recovering out of our bed-rid habits of sinne remaineth upon us we carry it so lightly as we handle it rather as a benefit then a burthen Then we find sensibly the verity of this assertion of Jugum meum suave est Mat. 11.30 My yoke is sweet and my burthen light Jere. 48.11 onus meum leve When we have found rest for our soules all other agitations are but as the Prophet saith powring us out from vessell into vessell to purge us of our dregs and faeces which we should settle in againe it may be if we were let stand And to evidence this principle that we must first begin our addresses to God with the Prodigals Pater peccavi before we sue for casting off our rags and being apparelled with conveniencies we may consider how God doth not account himselfe so much as spoken to by us even in all our clamours untill Jerem. Thren as the Prophet saith the cloud be removed that intercepted our prayer from passing For David affirmeth this experience saying Because I held my peace my bones are as it were waxen old while I cryed all the day So as you see all Davids clamours are but as dumnesse to the eares of God so long as his sinne sleepeth within his brest though his throat grow hoarse he doth but as it were strain to cry out under water while his iniquity like waters are gone over his head Hereby we see that all vociferation while our sinnes are quiet and tacent in our affections is no more audible then silence and on the contrary we may note that God accounted Moses to have made a loud exclamation when we finde he was silent his heart being not obstructed with sinne uttered a voice which penetrated the heavens while his tongue had no part in the conveyance of it Exod. 14. And Moses removed the whole red Sea more easily with this silence Psal 3. then David could draw back those few drops of iniquity he had drunk in all the ejaculations of his voyce did not pierce the cloud untill his sighes had broken through it and then after his heart had once strucke upon that key of confession of his fin in this note of I have made my sin known unto thee and mine iniquity I have not hid then every whisper of his to God is audible for we finde him professing this also Psal 55.10 In what day soever I shall invocate thee lo I have known that thou art my God In quacunque die invocavero te ecce cognovi quia Deus meus es So as here we see the divers effects of Prayer while our sins cry the louder for our silencing them no other vociferation is made but theirs which we do not utter when they have first lifted up their voice through the organ
the gate of our Lord the just shall enter into it Aperite mihi portas justitiae ingressus in eas confitebor Domino haec porta Domini justi intrabunt in eam Besides the obligation of this method which I have remonstrated to you there is a satisfaction resulting thereout which may be very agreeable to many who may be tempted to perplex themselves in search and investigation of the causes and irritations that have moved God to these severe examinations of you For when you recollect your comportments in the former times of more serenity if in the audit of your consciences you finde these old debts of an abuse and insensiblenesse of that calme you neede study no farther the matter of these meteors which was then exhaled out of the fatnesse of your earth Let every one therefore turne over his owne records and consider respectively to his condition what mundanities what riots excesses some can charge themselves withall others with what avarice worldly wisdome and over temporizing they can impeach themselves others of what indevotion tepidity or scandall they can endict themselves and they who find themselves standing convicted of these recusancies and inconformities to the Laws and Statutes of Catholike Religion let them not wonder to see these heavy fines set upon them for even the lightest of these misdemeanours deserveth a higher amercement then all your temporalities can be extended unto And truly I am afraid upon what I have heard of these latter times of moderation and indulgence that it may be too truly said as the Prophet Esay did Esa 26.15 Thou hast been favourable to the Nation O Lord thou hast been favourable to the Nation wast thou glorified in no unlike occasion Indulsisti genti Domine indulsisti genti nunquid glorificatus es And if you find your selves lyable to this impeachment you need enquire no farther for a cause of this judgement It is a harder taske of the two the giving a reason of Gods trusting you with this second mercy as I may well term it of paternall correction after your having abused your first trust of the indulgence benignity so that while you examine your cōsciences you may not only find a reason of your present afflictions but that reason may disclose to you this secret of their being such graces as you wanted most For surely if these infirmities which I may well call a spirituall scurvy were growing upon you ease repose and stilnesse would have much advanced this disease and now this revolution and exercise joyned with the grace of him that ministers them is very like to stay and cure this surreptitious infirmity which creeps in likely into the softnesse and conveniency of life and God knoweth when to work upon our nature with Simples and Benedicta as Physitians say and when to use Mineralls And we find by experience that this kind of steele is the proper key to this sort of obstructions and opilations in our minds of slacknesse desidiousnesse and indevotion Therefore you may well apprehend the hardnesse of your present conditions to be ministred to you as remedies of some indispositions breeding by the softer qualities of other times I beseech you therefore to conceive your selves in a course of Physick wherein nothing but your own ill diet can render it inefficacious as I hope I have before competently remonstrated unto you Upon these reflections I hope in God you wil confesse with the Psalmist Lord thou hast not dealt with us according to our iniquities Psal 102.10 and not fall under the censure of S. Ambrose upon the persecuted Catholikes of his time who complaines that Vidi multos humiliatos sed paucos humiles that he had seen many humiliated but few made humble But we confidently trust of you better things and neerer salvation although we speak thus and that you will resolve with S. Paul Phil. 1.19 That these things shall fall out unto your salvation by the subministration of the spirit of Jesus Christ and determining to rectifie all your former bendings and deflections from the straightnesse of your Religion every one of you may make his Catholike Protestation Phil. 1.20 Now Christ shall be magnified in my body whether it be by life or by death acknowledging to God this great toleration how that after your having been unfaithfull in the menaging of his indulgencies he would be pleased to give you occasions to redeeme that forfeited time by a virtuous correspondency to his present designe upon you in exhibiting patterns of constancy longanimity and fervour in all your tentations in order to the magnifying of the grace of Christ appropriated to the Catholike Church to the doctrines whereof you may peradventure sooner reconciliate your enemies by your practicall vertues of Patience meeknesse and charity then we by all our rationall evincements These your Apostolicall traditions of joy in tribulation longanimity suavity in the holy Ghost sincere dilection of enemies may work upon those that are never so averse and repugnant to tradition Therefore as I told you before you were all become Priests in one respect so now I may say to you in this relation you are now made Doctors to promulgate the Catholike Faith by the perswasions of your uncontroverted virtues For me thinks what S. Paul saith in comparison between the speaking with tongues and prophecying may be not unfitly applyed to your practicall parts and our speculative reasons towards the conversion of the unlearned 1 Cor. 14.27 and unbeleevers For they who hearing the arguments of the Schoole may be so uncapable of them as they may account them madnesse when they see all you Catholikes humbly and cheerfully accepting all your crosses rejoycing in your prisons singing Gods praises in the midst of the fornace wherein not so much as the garments of your minds your exteriour graciousnesse and composure are tainted by the flames and that your zeal and charity to your countrey and your enemies are onely the more inflamed in this your fiery tryall these evidences whereof the illiterate are capable may convince them so as falling on their faces they may adore God and not their private spirits pronouncing that God is in you indeed This is truly that sort of practicall reason which S. 1 Pet. 3.15 Peter saith every one should have ready to satisfie those that aske a reason of that hope which is in you not the arguing fencing with that sword of the Spirit which is so hard to weild even for the strongest hands and so we see how unhappily the children of this age cut and wound themselves when they are so bold with it You are not set by the providence of God so dangerous a taske as to wrastle with all arguments may be set upon you the Church hath her proper champions for that exercise your part is to exhibit demonstrations of the vertue of your faith by the practices of the verities you receive from a sure hand your Catholike Mother the
against them for if you bring an enemy to heaven he giveth you eternall satisfaction for all his joy shall be set upon your crowne as an enrichment of it and that improvement of your glory shall also be an addition to his joy These then are designes fit for the members of Christ Jesus and the temples of the holy Ghost to raise our enemies up to our owne joyes and to exalt our joyes by this elevation of our enemies This was the method of Christ Jesus our head Phil. 2.9 by humbling himselfe and preferring his enemies he heightned himselfe 1 Joh. 3. as the Apostle telleth us For the which thing God hath also exalted him and hath given him a name which is above all names And all these actions were designed by Jesus for the converting enemies into friends and they who pretend to be made like him when they see him must procure to looke like him now upon their enemies that having sanctified themselves as he is holy and being translated from death to life by this love of our brother 1 Thes 4.17 we may be thought worthy to sit together with him in heavenly places when his enemies are his foot-stoole when the destruction of enemies affordeth a joy perfecting our charity and untill then we must endeavour to accomplish our charity by procuring to our utmost power the lessening of the number of these enemies that remaining in charity in this life we may be admitted into that region of love where life everlasting is in eternall charity and where we shall never see an enemy enter nor a friend depart Wherefore I will hope in God that you endeavour by your charity to bring your present enemies into that eternall tabernacle and by this course though you should faile of drawing your brothers they cannot of carrying you unto more elevated mansions in your Fathers house CHAP. XII Motives of joy to all sorts of Religious Sufferers HAving giving you this Evangelicall safe convoy through your enâ—mies quarters Rom. 12.20 by shewing you how the danger of this passage consisteth in your acting not enduring hostility since Saint Pauls precept agreeth with Elishahs practice in this point of not striking but setting bread and water before enemies blinded with their passions now at the end of this narrow way I shall endeavour to shew you how the issue thereof openeth into the spacious place the Psalmist saith his feet were put into which is spirituall joy tranquility and enlargment of heart For upon faithfull compliances with these duties I have discoursed I may present respectively to each of your conditions this Evangelicall congratulation of Gaudete exultate Mat. 5.12 Be glad and rejoyce for your reward is great in heaven quia merces vestra copiosa est in coelis To those that contested the procession of Christs Doctrine from God he proposeth this cleare decision of the question the observing first the will of God whereby they should discern the verity of his asseveration If any Iohn 7.17 saith he will doe the will of him he shall understand of the Doctrine whether it be of God And I may in like manner boldly put this doctrine of the blessednesse of affliction upon the same triall affirming that whosoever shall doe the will of God Iam. 1.11 shall evidently perceive this to be a principle of Divine verity Blessed is the man that suffereth tentation Wherefore upon supposition of your conformities to the rules of Catholike doctrine which have been delivered you in the manner of your sufferings it is that I adjudge unto you this assignation of Christ Mat. 5.10 Blessed are they who suffer persecution for justice for theirs is the kingdome of heaven of Beati qui persecutionem patiuntur propter justitiam quia ipsorum est regnum coelorum So that you may convert all the Ordinances that dipossesse you of your transitory tenures in your country into evidences to entitle you to this Kingdome and make your enemies your best Stewards of your estates and consequently you may be accounted the only blessed party in this conjuncture What an advantage is it for those who are in this pious paine of the Psalmist of What shall I return to our Lord for all he hath bestowed to have God vouchsafe as I may say to serve himselfe and take from them that which is made more worthy of him by his taking then it could have beene by their giving For even in the sacrifice to God of all their estates they might peradventure have been mistaken in the application of it to the most acceptable designe of God upon theÌ„ but they who part cheerefully with what God taketh from them are sure it is disposed in the way of his choice and this is to give to God according to his owne election which is much securer then our owne designation I am not ignorant of the preference given to active Charity in this point in strict comparisons yet this seemeth an advantage which privation for Gods sake hath above action that we are certain of our vocation to that sort of service which God declareth to us by his imposition of it and we cannot be so secure in any project of our own for his glory that the time the manner and other circumstances are rightly consorted to Gods present purpose whereas in suffering religiously what is actually inflicted by God there can be no mis-judgement in these circumstances This is then an advantage every one may be assured to make in accepting piously their losses and deprivements to conclude their goods are more infallibly imployed according to Gods present will then their own hands could have addressed them to Gods purposes and so their devotions may be solaced in this desire of retributing somewhat to God even after their hands cease to be ministeriall in that office For they give him by this faithfull resignation all he resumeth and present him with their acceptance of the manner of his pleasure which is more valuable then the matter of any oblations Blessed are they to whom it is given to know these misteries of the kingdom of God for Afflictions seem not onely Parables but even Paradoxes to such as have not the key of the Crosse of Christ wherewith to open them 1 Cor. 1.18 for the Word of the Crosse to them that perish will be foolishnesse but to them that are saved that is to us it is the power of God and to finde the power of God in all your crosses I must desire every form of sufferers among you to examine it by this Principle That Crosses are not to be judged of according to the Praedicament of Quantitie but of relation that is you must not amuse your selves with thinking how much your are afflicted but apply your minds to finde how much you make of your afflictions The first is to stay with the Murmurers in the Gospell pondering the heat and burthen of the day the other is to weigh with S. Paul
and study and by them God doth commonly as from under the wings of the two Cherubims speak to us his design upon us This state of sufferance hath been much honoured by the persons of the Apostles the prisons seemed their Innes in their perambulation of the world Wherein we may remarke a speciall kindnesse of God to prisoners who being not in an estate of hearing the doctrine of Christ as it passed through their country was pleased to send the Apostles as it were so much out of their way to seeke prisoners and minister it to them For surely such lodgings may to human reason seem much out of the way to such as were to circuit the whole world And me thinks we cannot render a more apposite reason of Gods bestowing so much of the Apostles time upon prisons then his speciall grace and indulgence to this distressefull state of sufferers For in all other respects this immuring of the Apostles who were so few and had so long journeys set them might seem an impediment of their Commission and rather a putting that light under a bushell then a way to illuminate the darknesse of the whole world by the diffusion of it and yet we see how much of Saint Pauls time God alloweth to prisons two years in Casarea as many interpret it and certainly two whole yeares in his first bonds at Rome besides all those other interjections of those links of this chaine as at Philippi and other places in his progresse where we see him dissolving the bonds of his companions by touching them at his owne and fastning many to the Crosse of Christ whose irons he converted into nayles for that service And Ecclesiastical records deliver unto us eminent and numerous conversions wrought in prisons upon the same miracles which were effectlesse in the streets and the temples and this may well be impured to the congruity and simpathy there seemeth to be between the vocation of a Christian the estate of a prisoner for as the first is a dying to the world the last is a civil death unto the same so as this Sequestration from the world must needs be a congruous disposition to a spiritual departure from the life of the world And besides this literall analogy which there is between being buryed with Christ being intombed in the world this similitude is very operative as well as consonant for this state of separatiō from the objects of our worldly affections worketh much towards their extinction so that in many respects the state of imprisoment hath much consonancy with the requisitions of Christianity If then imprisonment being simply considered hath much report and analogie with the profession of a Christian that durance which respecteth directly the profession of true Christianity must needs be a state of very neere allyance to Christ and so may well be congratulated in those who should pursue nothing so seriously as this estate of their patron Saint Paul of being crucified to the world when they are crucified by it Wherefore I beseech you studiously to co-operate with the facilitation this your condition affordeth you to break prison and to dissolve more pernicious bonds then those which hang but on your out-sides such fetters as liberty and prosperity doe commonly frame within us binding our soules so subtilly in their prison as they perceive not their owne captivity This is a work for which you cannot wish a fitter time to file away by degrees these your chaines of all worldly cupidity which you will find hard enough when you come to work upon them though they are so soft and supple as you scarce feele them while they lie intire upon you And by this enlargement of your soules you may come to S. Pauls blessing as well as to his posture That your brethren may know that the things which have happened unto you are falne out rather to the furtherance of your Religion when considering your exemplary improvements every one may be edified by the grace and vertue of your faith And thus your chaines may in some proportion have the effects of those of the Apostle That many of your brethren in our Lord having confidence in your lands may be much more bold in the profession of their faith You may observe for the honour of your conditions Phil. 1. that S. Paul sometimes waveth the dignity of Apostle and pleadeth this of Prisoner of Jesus Christ as an equivalent preheminence Upon which chaine of S. Paul S. Chrysostome sticketh not to say That it is a more illustrious estate to be a prisoner for CHRIST then either Apostle Doctor or Evangelist and pursueth thus the endearement of this state Nothing can be more blessed then this chaine I doe not repute Paul so happy for his rapture into Paradise as for his restraint in those bonds It seemeth a greater favour for me to be ill treated for CHRIST then to be honoured by him And proceeding to blazon the coat of this noble condition he saith So Peter was bound and loosned by an Angel in this case if one should have asked me which I would choose to be either Peter inchained or the Angel striking off his irons I should have taken the place of Peter the grace of this bondage is a greater gift then to stay the sunne or to move the world or to command the devils Acts 16. The prison was shaken in pieces where Paul was bound and the bands of all the Prisoners were broken Mark the nature of these bands which dissolve the bands of others for as the death of our Lord killed death so Pauls chains unchained fetters shooke prisons in pieces and broke open doores So that Paul bound hath dominion over all bands nay more when he sailed in bands he stayes and bindeth up the storme freeth the ship wrecked and restraineth the venome of the viper These reflexions on the opinions of Saints may direct you in the sense of your condition for though you are not endowed with the gift of dissolving bands and opening prisons yet if you find in your selves the disposition of piously and cheerfully staying in them and a desire of improving this time towards the loosening the cords of Adam in your selves by acquiring contrary habits of the spirituall liberty of the second Adam you shall possesse your selves of the greater grace for it is an higher estate to be with S. Paul nailed to the Crosse with Christ then to be rending the foundations of prisons or shaking the vipers that are upon your hands into the fire For they are the rods wherewith S. Paul himselfe was strucken at Philippi which make new rayes of glory in his crowne not the chains which he struck off from his fellow prisoners Wherefore I beseech you all not to intend so much the loosening of your irons as the converting them into that gold wherewith the heavenly Jerusalem is paved which is celestiall charity Hoping therefore in God that you assigne this your time of civill death to
then the frankincense to give it an odour of sweetnesse I shall therefore send my part of this work justified with this protestation of the Prophet Jeremy Jere. 17.16 I am not troubled following thee the Pastor and the day of man I have not desired thou knowest ego non sum turbatus to pastorem sequens diem hominis non desideravitu scis for they who have given all their dayes to God are ill advised if they pretend any part of the assignment of their exchange in the night of this Age or in the vapours of the breaths of Men and those of our function that affect much a returne of human praise from the offices of their vocation may be said to burn their own fingers while they are lighting the Candlestick of the Temple therefore my addresse of this Missive shall be Non nobis Domine non nobis sed nomini tuo da gloriam An Introduction to the following Discourse WHen Saint Paul our Christian Hercules had enumerated so many of his private labours 2 Cor. 11.13 Nothing beyond as one might have thought a non plus ultrà might have been set up upon them he seems as it were to slight all those so excellent works and to esteem all personall pressures Those things which are externall Who is weak and I am not weak who is scandalized and I am not burnt but as the out-works of charity and so quitting ea quae extrinsecus sunt when he will glory in the strength of his charity he setteth it out in his care and solicitude for the Churches distresses and so maketh Quis infirmatur ego non infirmor quis scandalizatur ego non uror the verticall point of the Pyramide of his suffering and acting charity which remaineth as an entire monument of his glory after the ruine of all theirs whose persecutions erected it and raised it to that sublimity of virtue And if our Charities have such an analogie with S. Pauls as our vocations have and our zeale beare as much similitude to his as the face of our present times doth to his dayes our part which seemeth off from the publike stage of persecution may be admitted as the most sorrowfull and distressing of all other for surely all exteriour burthens are lighter to our senses then an interiour solicitude in a publike concernment is to our spirit especially when it is in relation to the passions of the Church of Christ And this is our case Solicitude of the Church Cant. 8. who have solicitudinem Ecclesiae impressed upon our spirit in an indelible character so as there is none of your brethrens weaknesses that doth not make an impression as the Spouses seale upon our heart and upon our arme And it may be the larger our prison is the straiter the pressure of it proveth unto us as it is a restraint upon the exercise of our functions in consolating and ministring personally to you in this your fiery tryall Wherefore our hearts being exempt from this separation they take fire at the flame you are in and professe that none of you are scandalized with whom they doe not burne insomuch that the sparkles of that fornace you are in fly even through the sea upon us For every report of a fresh vexation falne upon you raiseth and sharpneth the ardour of our fellow-feeling of your tribulations Cant. 8.7 Many waters cannot quench charity nor shall floods overwhelm it so that we may say with the Spouse Aquae multae non potuerunt extinguere charitatem nec flumina obruent illam since the fire of your temptations and tryals in England passeth over seas and burneth us in Flanders and there is no matter so apt to take and entertaine this flame as our holy unction Desiring therefore much to write you some news for your comfort in these times wherein the want of Priests among you is none of your least afflictions I will tell you there is none of you which have not a kind of character of Priesthood upon you being all obliged to offer up spirituall hoasts of resignation and self-relinquishment and to lay all your naturall senses and apprehensions of your sufferings upon the Altar of the Crosse in adoration of Gods designe upon you and thus in conformity to Christ you are to become your selves both the Priests and the oblations For whiles your hearts offer up your selves and your substances to Gods holy judgements your soules exercise a kind of office of Priesthood upon your bodies and goods which are the materiall part of the oblation and by this consecrating of your sufferings they who would exterminate Priesthood in England shall consecrate as many of these Priests as they lay their persecuting hand upon and as they despoile you of your fortunes 1 Pet. 2.6 they furnish you with the fatter victimes in the function of this your holy Priesthood of offering up these spirituall hoasts acceptable to God by JESUS CHRIST Take therfore this order from the Psalmist Psal 4. Sacrifice ye the sacrifice of justice and hope in our Lord. Sacrificate sacrificium justitiae sperate in Domine and by this your meritorious exercise of Catholike Religion you shall find I hope lesse want of the Ministery of our reall Priesthood among you which may be thus supplyed even by your owne necessities while you make of all your deprivements matter of sanctification by your faithfull acceptance of them and by this disposition you enter into those holy Orders of Sacrificers which Saint Paul gave the Primitive Christians in your cases while you exhibit your bodies a living hoast holy Rom. 12.1 pleasing to God Nor doth this kind of spirituall sacrificature claime a lesse precedent then even the Sonne of God for these were part of the daily Sacrifices he offered his Father while he was upon the earth his privations incommodities and destitutions his not having so much as a house to put his head in was in this kind his daily evening sacrifice and these his quotidian sufferances did continually mediate and interpeale for our remissions You may therefore now be said to be successors of this Priesthood of Christs life which is as I may say a third kind of Priesthood Christ instituted by his life differing from the old of Aaron and that of the order of Melchisedec for it is an offering up to God the want of bread and wine for a sacrifice of selfe-resignation For why may not Christs hunger and thirst and his other wants and exigencies be fitly said to have instituted this holy order of self-sacrificing and offering up all our temporall distresses to Gods pleasure in conformity to this quotidian oblation of Christs life so as those of you who are not called to that sacerdotall function which Christ exercised in his death when he was both Priest and Sacrifice somewhat like whereunto many of us have happily by the grace of God been admitted by Martyrdome seem all called to this holy order
the study of a spirituall life I will set this blessed Epitaph upon your tombe for you to reade You are dead and your life is hidden with CHRIST in God when CHRIST shall appeare Colos 3.34 your life then shall you also appeare with him in glory The next visit I make shall be For the dispoyled to such as heretofore have practiced Christian medicine upon the distresses of others and now are patients themselves in this point of necessity Me thinks when I come into such families with the Angels message Toby 5.11 to give them joy I may well expect such an answer as old Toby gave in this case What joy can we have sitting in this darknesse of fortune seeing no light of any reliefe or restitution To such though I cannot answer as the Angel did to Toby Be of good cheere for your cure is neere at hand from God yet I have a message to them of no lesse comfort from the master of that Angel Thus saith the first Apoc. 2.12 and the last who was dead and liveth I know your tribulation and your poverty but you are rich What this riches meaneth they cannot mistake which know by experience that no materiall substances which may be so easily removed and alienated ought to be accounted the riches of a Christian Christ Jesus left no such moveables for Christians to reckon their estates upon as could be plundered or sequestred Your treasure then is this similitude with Christ 2 Cor. 8.9 who being rich became poore for you that by his poverty you might be rich You are advanced halfe way towards this compleat imitation of him for of rich you are made poore for his sake But in this part it may be there is little desert towards him because your wills have wrought little upon this part of the copy The other halfe then that remaineth to finish must be perfected by the acts of your owne wills which is to endeavour that Christ may be made rich by your poverty This may be done you being members of Christ by your becomming rich in all that spirituall treasure which may be digged out of this rock of poverty as patience humility contempt of the world and the love of God For every member of Christ that accumulateth such treasures of grace enricheth the body of Christ This is an honour that Poverty is allowed to enrich Christ by the same meanes whereby he hath made us rich to wit by our indigence and necessity to conferre treasure on his Church since all the opulency thereof is an addition to his estate You need not wonder then that I offer you joy in this your condition when your taking it shewing that you have it is the means of your enriching Christ by this your poverty For since you have not one of the hardest parts of poverty to contend with your nature in which is the dipossessing your selves of those eases which your senses have still hold of and strive to retaine you having but the acceptance of your privations left to obtaine of your nature may account your selves carryed by accident halfe way to the end of Christian perfection of relinquishing all for Christ And surely if you doe now joyfully embrace your wants and destitutions you may be said to recover the merit of having given to Christ all you have lost For they who give all away in preference of this state of the poverty of Christ doe not please God so much in resolving to want as in actually feeling the incommodities thereof and joying in that conformity to Christ so that your rejoycing in the present distresses of poverty is the point which valueth this condition and so bringeth you to the meritorious part of a voluntary donation of all your violent deprivements and on the other side if you repine and murmur at your losses you doe commit a kind of mentall sacriledge in desiring to take back what God seemeth to have applyed to the honouring the poverty of his Sonne which is the reducing the opulent to imbrace and rejoyce in indigence in order to an attendance upon the necessitous condition of Christ Therefore you may wel accept with alacrity this order of God and conclude that if you are conscient to your selves of Christian largenesse of heart in the abundance of your fortune that God out of mercy hath with his owne hand given you these last touches of the image of his Son that you might have both these resemblances of him the having been poore as well as bountifull In the first of which features you know God is so much delighted as he hath so disposed the world that it affordeth him much more of that object then of the other for there is far more poverty upon the earth then charity And it is so ordered as together with the act of charity there is alwayes extant the object of necessity and this latter is often existent single without the other so as you may account this state of poverty and passivenesse you are now in no lesse acceptable to God then that of abundance and dispensation to others from whence you are translated And surely you may conclude this your present estate of sufferance and purgation to be fitly ministred for the cure of some infirmity wherewith your selves were unacquainted For we have all sinnes which are secrets even to our owne sincerest inquisition We know David after his confession Psal 18.23 desired to be informed of God of his omissions and to be cleansed of his secret sinnes and Saint Augustine praiseth Gods mercy for the sins he had not committed by the grace of Gods prevention You may well then impute this change of your estate either to a mercifull purpose of God to draw out some worme growing imperceptibly in the full bodie of your temporall commodities or to keep out some snake which God foresaw would have insinuated it selfe into those covers of plenty and abundance were standing in your former conditions So as in either of these cases you may resolve this change to be a mercy veiled under this mysterie of your affliction Whereupon I may fitly present you with this comfort of the Evangelicall Prophet Isay 54.8 I hid my face from thee for a moment but with everlasting kindnesse I will have mercy on thee saith the Lord thy redeemer And if you may well take it for a favourable Composition the being taxed at some few dayes revenew in this life for a discharge of the least delinquency against your Creator and Redeemer how justly then ought you to rejoyce at this bargaine wherein there wanteth but your setting your heart to it to make it a valid conveyance of all your estates over to the land of the living and so to convert your momentany privations into an improvement of your eternall possessions when you may make this blessed clayme of the Psalmist Psal 38.8 Now what is my expectation is it not our Lord and my sustance is with thee