to loved of those who ought to obey you Whatsoever name of Prince Lord or Magistrate that you bear in a Province or City believe this That you shall not have any power nor be really the Master of any thing but when you shall be the Master of Hearts But observe that to be beloved of the people the first lesson is in loving them love nothing but their persons seek nothing else by your goodness towards them but the pleasure of obliging them without interest and the honour of loving them sincerely and that without hope That of feigning love is a wicked trade and by acting the part of a friend on the stage of the World by promises and comical civilities A Man learns nothing but to deceive and betray himself In the art of gaining hearts the great secret is to love naturally and that without art without reflection it self and if I might so say without vertue Love is so much the more powerful over the will and so much the more vertuous and more admirable as it doth without vertue the good it doth and follow nothing but its instinct the nature Divine charity it self is not perfect but when it is transformed into the nature of the charitable person and that it is become his inclination and its weight Futhermore let clemency be inseparable from your person and let it enter into all your Councils Be severe in words and actions when you must be so but then have you another tongue and other hands besides your own Imploy not your hands but when you must distribute favours and let not your tongue serve you but to pronounce edicts of mercy and love Take not those for enemies who are sincerely afflicted for having displeased you And when its necessary to punish any guilty person do not give him time if possible to repent before your face and have recourse to your goodness If his tears and his grief prevent you believe that you have lost the rights of your anger and endeavour to imitate the Master of Kings and Judges who cannot punish sinners but in the time that they are proud and who doth not make the misery of any one to continue eternally but because they love eternally their malice II. MAXIM Keep thy heart with all diligence for out of it are the issues of life Prov. 4. PARAPHRASE LEt your greatest care and your chief business be to keep your Heart because it is the first spring of life When that finds it self in disorder the rest must necessarily be so also and nothing in your person nor your house can be happy whilst your heart is not Govern your passions and lusts and do not follow them Distrust your own will because it is your own enemy and that it seeks no other thing by its impatient desires and disorderly inclinations then to beget in you intestin wars and to see there confusion despair and death Keep all that in chains and let them be as so many rebellious prisonners committed to the Conduct of your reason REFLECTION THe Passions are a very wise invention of nature who was willing to give man extraordinary forces on occasions where he ought to act strongly for the repelling a dangerous evil or acquireing any good of which the conquest is painfull When these invisible fires are lighted in the veines a man is more then himselfe and he then does nothing but what seems miraculous There goes out of his heated bloud sparks and I know not what points of flame as stings which enter into the heart and by unforeseen motions push it on to bold attempts Hee runs where vehemency carries him finding nothing difficult being able to believe nothing to be invincible nor more powerfull and strong then the fire of which he feels him selfe animated The mischief is that these forces shut up in man are contrary to him These are seditious and cruel domesticks At least if they are not kept chained alwayes hee is lost if they are not his slaves he must of necessity be their victime The Passions knit to the heart of man by the eternall wisdome are as Lyons or as horses of great price fastned to the Chariot of a Conquerour When that our spirit exempt from crime without dependance on interest Master of its desires Conqueror of the world Image of the greatness and of the Majesty of God comes to appear there on drawn by them into glory and immortality there is not in nature a statelier spectacle nor more worthy to be contemplated nor admired by Angels But when it happens during the triumph that the horses break their bits they carry away their guides by force from their Master and there can be nothing seen more sad and disastrous they drag along with them all the triumph into precipices And this conqueror which the people gatherd together admired and contemplated is no more any thing but the sport of a Troop of furies and a sad example of the weakness of the vertues of the man and the vanity of his greatness The Passions are from God the excess which happens is of the sin of the first Man The work was holy pure when it went ouâ— from the hands of the Creator But the fire of hell is set thereto and our teares had not been able to quench it although wee had never ceased to weep since it was lighted The evil has lasted neer six hundred yeers already and continues to this very day and it is thence that all the mischiefs that betide us form themselves Our spirit sent from Heaven into this lower world Corpus mortis Caro peccati enters into an house built of earth into a body composed of a corruptible matter of dirt filled with the stings of sin and of death The vapours of this corruption form within us a thick dark and tempestuous cloud which covers us with horrour and obscurity Our passions wrapt up in this Cloud they heat themselves and there take fire and goe out thence like lightning and whirlwinds These turbulent fires drive on the Imagination the imagination being driven and carried away carries with it the thoughts and the will of the soul The immortal soul follows motion and goes where heat and fury leads it It takes dâ—signs and conceives blindly inconsiderate opinions foolish and deceitfull hopes and impetuous desires It runs and hazards it self and its headlong rashness stops not its selfe but when in the end it is arrived to its unhappyness lost in an abiss of crimes and teares The worst of it is that when it finds it selfe there it is ashamed to retire thence It falls there by folly and it abides there by Pride Man coverd with darkness and filled with errours plunged in filth and loaden with chains tyed by stubborness to his customes and his ignorance is a sad spectacle for Heaven who contemplateâ— with pitty this image of God in so deplorable a condition During the estate of innocence the passions raised not themselves but by the
Conscience FIRST MAXIM Of making many Books there is no end Let us hear the conclusion of the whole matter Fear God and keep his Commandmens this is the whole duty of Man Eccles 12. PARAPHARASE MUch is the Counsel that 's given and many are the Books that are written to help Man to become great and to render him perfect Wisdom has but one word thereupon and this word is the Compendium of all that wise Men have said the end of all that which its self said since the beginning of ages It hath never spoken nor ever writ but to make Men understand how to love God and obey his Will this is to be the whole duty of Man REFLECTION WHen the Creator formed the project of our nature and that he conceiv'd the Idaea of Man as he pretended that this was the chief and most excellent Piece he conceived not onely a Body and a Soul He saw well that as the Body separated from the Soul would be but rottenness even so the Soul seperated from God would be another deformity infinitely more frightfull and instead of the being chief of the work he contrived he should but make a monster Not to fail in his design at the same time that he joyned the Body with the Soul he judged that it was necessary to joyn the Soul with God by the means of Grace and he would that this Grace entred into his workmanship and that these three together were the whole Man Stop a moment and consider well the Wisdom of God when he proposed to himfelf the meeting of these three so different things and to form thereof the chief of his work How many marvels in Man when they are united How many misfortunes when they are seperated Grace repelled and withdrawn the Soul there 's reprobation and sin The Body separate from the Soul there 's death The Soul separated from the Body and from Grace there is Hell Three objects of horrour or of fear Rejoyn these and make but one they are three coelestial beauties and the three greatest miracles of divine power united together and that is Man Time Deum hoc est omnis Homo II. MAXIM Let thy glorying be in the fear of the Lord and all thy communication in the precepts of the most High Eccles 9. PARAPHRASE EStablish your Honour by fearing God and being faithful to him If you would that Men should look on you with respect and esteem and always see on your countenance that modesty and in your conduct that force and tranquility of spirit which raises a man above other men have always in your self some thought of the goodness of the Creator and his eternal perfections and accustome your heart not to relye but on him in all its designs and hopes REFLECTION DO not as the proud In timore Domini sit tibi gloriosio man who is ashamed to fear and to worship God because people fear and worship him and who establisheth his honour by making light of his duty Take you heed in forming your opinions and Maxims of taking for a man of nobility and greatness your being less wise then others And do not believe a folly that is particular to be more worth then Wisdom that 's common If because you are noble it 's painful to you to do what mean people do That which is good you ought to do better then they Do not imitate his devotion surpass it Do not follow him in the ways of falvation and in the exercise of righteousness and holiness have regard to your condition March first and serve as an example Keep your rank in the Churches permit not that any should be more devout nor more modest then you Since you are first in quality your place before the Altars and during the sacrifices is to be more near to God and the more raised by Prayer Remember that you have no surer means to put your self above this croud of little people then to abase your self more then they before this supream Majesty and to adore him more perfectly III. MAXIM Vanity of vanities all is vanity and vexation of spirit Eccles 1. PARAPHRASE YOu must love nothing but Universa vanitas God The true good and true pleasure is not to be found but in him alone The good which appears before our eyes deceives us it is nothing but illusion and vanity And this false and apparent good becomes a real evil as soon as it pleases us and that we begin to love it REFLECTION ALl the felicities of this life are vain and deceitful When they present themselves to us we take them for stable and immoveable things Our heart being drawn by this appearance stretcheth out its arms and blindly fastens its self unto them promising its self eternal pleasures in possessing them But it is to embrace running water from the hour that we begin to possess rhem they begin to run away from us During embracements and joys and amidst our mutual promises and hopes of an inseperable tye they escape from between our hands and continue their course we continue ours and we quit our selves we go each where our destiny calls us and where time leads us They to nothing we to death Time goes apace and the end is near it is not far between the pleasures of a moment and the tears of eternity These long years that we figure between the two are very often but a night Perhaps those who shall see us this evening settled in a high and powerful fortune will find us next morning buried in its ruines Today prosperity health riches and honours To morrow all these vanities in the air wind and smoak our Body in a Tomb our Soul in another World there to lament and to say eternally but too late Universa vanitas afflictio spiritus The justest reason we ought Vanitas vanitatum to contemne these runagate felicities for consists in this word Vanitas God alone is the true Good created goods are the productions and shadows of this essential and Infinite Good Consider and open your eyes You are rich but if God withdraws himself from your heart what remains and of what do you boast To be heir and master of the shadow of an house without having any right to the house and without being able to go into it what Patrimony and what sort of inheritance is this for a man To be Master of a Treasure or a Revenue Master of a Kingdom an Empire a part of the World the whole World all the appearances of good Possess all the shadows of God all his works all his gifts but without possessing of himself What a possession is this for a Soul who breaths after the true Good and who cannot be filled or satisfied but by him alone The worst of it is that these shadows of the Creator these Riches and Magnificences which are about us are not in us Gold and Silver enter into the Houses Pleasures enter into your eyes and senses
Compare them from hence forth and do at the feet of the Cross before your Redeemer and your Father what you will do that day before your Judge when that you shall see the truth written in the Book where all is written Consider that this is a Mercy which has out-run your merits Ingratitude which hath follow'd Mercy and which hath been conceived in the midst of favours Justice which examins the good and the evil which weighs the goodnesses of God and the sins of man and who in the one and the other sees nothing but Infinite In fine it is an eternity where sinners shall never cease to be sinners and proud and where the Judge shall never cease to be just where his Holiness shall be the measure of his anger his anger infinitely offended the measure of their pain and his infinite beauty which they shall never see the measure of their despair I say too much in a Subject where is least need of speaking The whole History of man needs but these four words His pleasures shall end His actions shall be judged His sins shall be punished His pains shall be eternal There is not only whereof to read but to contemplate and meditate What opinion so ever the World hath of an able man if he has not yet begun to meditate thereupon he has not yet begun to be wise Youth and Folly think only on the present time Avarice on time to come Prudence and Policy remembers often what passed yesterday and foresees what will happen to morrow true Wisdom looks on one side even to the beginning of time and the creation of man and on the other side to death and eternity and from these two distant extreams it makes its time present and gives them thoughts of this day V. MAXIME When the wicked man cometh then cometh also contempt Prov. 18. PARAPHRASE THat which hinders you from making serious on Christian truths and which makes you slight the business of your conversion as least of all the affairs of a Man of wit and quality is the custome that you have contracted of living disorderly and not refusing any thing to your passions This unhappy custome is the bottom of that Gulf from whence it is rare to see any sinner go out and to enter again into the ways of repentance and salvation It is nevertheless necessary to go out from thence The Holy Fathers and the fathers spiritual will tell you means One of the best is that which Solomon presents you in the following Maxime VI. MAXIM When I perceived that I could not otherwise obtain her except God gave her me I prayed unto the Lord and besought him with my whole heart Wisd 8. PARAPHRASE DEsiring to obtain grace to overcome my evil habits and to live holily I address my self to God and I have asked it of him with all my affection and with all thâ— endeavour that an ardent desire could produce Steep'd in tears and prostrate before His Altars where I heard his voice which called me to repentance I said unto him O Lord shed into me that Wisdom and Light which makes Man see that beauty of vertue which is in thee Thou commandest me to be chast and devout give me devotion and chastity and then command what thou pleasest REFLECTION HOpe not to receive these sorts of favors nor any other spiritual or temporal if you ask them not Without prayer there will be no change of life You would have Grace which gives the first power to be chast but according to the ordinary Laws of Wisdom you shall not have it but by the means of Prayer Grace gives the will to be and to accomplish effectually this good desire In like manner hope not for them if you ask them not strongly and with an ardent and sincere affection To pray to God feebly to have pitty on your miserable life is to pray him to defer punishing of you to the end that you might defer turning to him and this testifies that you fear that he hears you not because you fear to break the chains which tye you to the Creature and to love nothing more then it God would when we pray Deprecatus sum illum ex totis pracordiis to him that our bowels themselves should have a voyce and that there should be in us a Divine fire which should give to our groans the force to mount up to himself and to follow him as far as his justice would make him fly that he might not hear us God would be pursued solicited importuned Follow Him press Him be importunate and be constant Fear nothing but letting your self be overcome by his refusals and your not persevering Hope in his Word as the Etiamsi occideris me in ipso sperabo Saints have done against hope it self and in despight of despair Tell him when you see him with a sword in his hand to sacrifice you to his wrath and when you see the sword thrust into your Heart that from the bosom of Death even to the gates of Hell you will adore his goodness and that you will yet expect favour and you may be assured of his succours Say that the way to perish is to fly when he threatens That there is no place so sure during in wrath in the World as to be near him that it is the only way where the afflicted sinners and the dead can find safety Ad quem ibimus Verba vitae aeternae habes I am a sinner I am mortal where shall I go too but to thee Confess that he can do all that he is the Master but maintain that as all powerful as he is he cannot resist the Prayers of the humble and Indignum c. In te Domine speravi non confunda in aeternum afflicted and since all is put to trust before him desire him to regard you without pitty and to abandon a heart who sincerely confides in his protection and love Talk boldly and say with the Canaanitish Woman that he ought to be no more cruel nor more pittyless towards you then Masters towards the little Dogs of their houses that you ask not but the Crums of his table as the rest of the Saints Speak as this Woman who knew well how it was necessary to speak to a God Although he calls you an importunate Body although he push you back and bids you to get out Stay Fasten your self to his feet and declare to him there you will be so long as that he hath either punish'd importunity with death or heard you In fine do well by your holy violences as that you may draw from his heart the lovely word which hath comforted so many sinners and which may oblige you to say O Mulier magna est fides tua fiat tibi sicut vis Matt. 15. Thou astonisht me oh infidel Great is thy confidence be gone then in peace what thou wilt shall be done The glory of a mortal Prince is to prevent petitions and
when they shall not â—nd it True Philosophy is not to enquire and in questions where one must of necessity say I know nothing on 't those who say it soonest and who do not study twenty years to say it are the most wise and most happy IV. MAXIM Thou shalt not trust to thy own Prudence PARAPHRASE WHen you seek the truth believe not your own sentiments nor do not rely on your particular thoughts Fear what comes from you and which is new and take heed of making thereof rules of Philosophy and Maxims of Conduct Draw from your Prudence what Light you are able but try it by Lights more shining and sure then yours When it shall enlighten you have other Torches to enlighten that first and never go in the dark and near to praecipices with it alone REFLECTION NE innitaris prudentiae tuae A Lyar doth not always lye but it is always imprudence to trust to his word Although our reasoning somtimes doth not deceive us we never fail to be blame worthy when we hearken to it and that we take for certain truths What we know not but from it alone This particular reasoning is not in man but to betray him and to lead him to his ruine 'T is it that produces ignorances errors impieties false Religions false Philosophers and that forms these by paths and deceitful ways where we see many people to wander Some enter into these ways by simplicity but most by pride They believe that Wisdom Justice would that they went on that side because their own reasoning leads them there But they follow a strange guide Beasts are lead by their passion Fools by their arguing and wise Men by reason None will profit by the misfortunes of others Although each Philosopher during the disputes cry with all the endeavours of his voice to warn his friends that their reasoning deceives them each will believe that his will not deceive him and each hears it as his Master there is no authority that overweighs their own nay even of the Gospel nor experience The Proud respect nothing but this unhappy prudence and it happens more then once in an age that a little Philosopher undertakes to examine Religion or to reform the Elements and overturn the World because 't is the dictate of his reasoning so to do A wise Man in reasoning with himself according to humane thoughts has never learnt any thing certain but that his arguing was blind and that he never drew any other profit thence then to say to himself Ne innitaris prudentiae tuae V. MAXIME Wisedom standeth in the top of the high places by the way in the places of the paths She crieth at the gates at the entry of the City Unto you O men I call and my voice is to the sons of men Proverb S. PARAPHRASE WIsdom speaks upon the Mountains and in the high ways at the gates of Cities in the midst of the streets and in all places where it finds most people There it infuseth it self on the tongues of the people and it makes use of their voices to the end it might make it's self heard afar off and to speak more strongly Supra viam in mediis semitis It is there that the curious who would learn it's Doctrine and who aspire to be the Oracles of their Nation and Masters of Science in particular Universities ought to go O viri ad vos clamito O Philosophers 't is to you that I direct my words if you will be truly wise come and hearken to me when I teach truth in the assembly of men REFLECTION WHat one calls here the People is not a heap of little folk but a mixture of all men who speak naturally without study and without artifice and without a Conduct of any acquired Science and of any reflection The voice of this People and the voice of Wisdom infused or to say better the voice of the instinct which is impeccable and which hath always been the true Master of Philosophers whereon consider the 3. following words 1. That our business during this life when God has given us the Wit is to study and to apply our selves to know the most hidden marvels of nature 2. That the business of the Creator from the day of our birth is to teach us himself and to engrave on the chiefest part of our Soul the first principles the chief and fundamental Truths os this natural Philosophy 3. That the business of the instinct is to make those so remote Truths to approach to our senses that we may be the better able to know them To put them on the tongue of people and to tell them to us by the general voice of all Nations What Nations say and what they have said by common consent in all ages they have said it being driven by this instinct and who makes it say nothing but what he finds written by the Spirit of God in the spirit of all Men. In one word it is the voice of the Holy Ghost in Christian Theology and the voice of the Conscience in the moral the voice of the instinct and of the people in the Physick 'T is it which pronounceth the decisions and decrees incontestible The people are ignorant and blind but well led It understands not what it says but it speaks Truth and our glory in studying or in teaching is not to correct it or to speak otherwise then it but to explain its words and to understand them better than it understands them it self It is on this public and universal voice that the wise Philosophers ought to support their Science Before arguing on any visible thing in the world they ought to interrogate this great Ignorant called The people and to hearken how they talk in the streets that they might know how they ought to speak in the Schools to the end that upon that Answer as on a Divine principle they might establish their propositions and the works of their particular Doctrine Follow this Council and stop at this Maxim whatsoever the bait may be that invites you to take others do not quit it If to be Author of a new invention instead of building on the Earth you would build in the Air you shall build nothing but follies and ruins If for the better setting of new thoughts in order that come to you and to form a wondrous Philosophy you think it necessary to give the people the lye and to say The fire has no heat nor the snow whiteness nor other quality That the Earth is not immovable That a Beast is no living Creature That the Soul of man is not immortal if you would that these should be the principles contained in the great Volumes of your marvellous Philosophy all your wonders shall be but dreams of impieties and ignorance VI. MAXIM There is a way that seemeth right unto a man but the end thereof are the ways of death Prov. 16 25. PARAPHRASE MIstrust your self and your own judgement but don't trust
all sorts of persons False Maxims and evil Councils enter easily and sweetly into the spirit Fear them and leave not your self to be lead by men who go out of the common way There are paths in the spiritual life which appear fair one sees therein many things that make men believe that they are shortest to arrive to holiness but it is dangerous to follow them and they are ordinarily those which lead soonest and most certainly unto death REFLECTION ONe ought not to be astonished at finding here below such paths as these since one finds there proud Men and Hypocrites The unavoidable blindness and common â—o all proud men is to perswade themselves â—hat they see spots in the Sun errours in the Doctrine of the Church and abuses in its Conduct And that which is yet worse is That driven by the zeal that the illusion inspires â—hem with they undertake to wipe out these spots and to correct those errours Nothing which the hand of God has made seem to them finisht but when they have changed somthing or that they have given the last stroaks thereto 'T is thence that all the changes in the exercise of Devotion comes that we so often complain of and from thence all these particular ways of repentance and salvation where each one runs drawn by the splendor of novelty and where each seeks to wander and to perish There doth not appear presently in those ways but of footsteps holy and right seemingly marked by the rules of the Gospel and by the actions of the Apostles But Novissima ducunt ad mortem Novelty is a way that leads to the eldest sin thâ—t is Apostasy and to the last of evilâ— which is impenitence and despair The cause why so many fine people arâ— seen in this way so fatal is that the Devil haâ— always gone there first All Devil as he is he hath I know not what which pleases the Woman when he counterfeits the devout one although Heaveâ— and Earth could tell her she must run aftâ—â— him And when the Woman is seduced she hâ— I don't know what that bewitches the maâ— Each man does what Adam did The wise run after her And when wise Men begin to wander and to loose themselves there is then neither blind nor fool that follows them not and that believes not that it is Wisdom to imitate them and to perish with them One sees people run from far to enter into this dangerous way and to go where example and hypocrisy draws them Our Souls are tyed to one another by certain invisible chains and it is thereby That the poison of the Serpent without being able to be seen or stopt spreads it self in the hearts and that it carries throughout corruption and death All the new fashions of saving ones self are the inventions of him who would that the Saints should be damn'd Est via quae videtur homini recta novissima autem ejus ducunt ad mortem VII MAXIME Inquisition shall be made into the Councils of the ungodly Wisd 1. PARAPHRASE AS the ungodly fear Men although they fear not God When they have any doubts to propose on the mysteries of Religion they propose them to themselves they ask secretly their spirit from whence he knows that the World has been made by a Creator and that after Death there is a Judgement a future Life an Hell an Eternity c. REFLECTION THe little questions of worldly Philosophy are not far from great It is by these that one suddenly learns to render himself a Master in Impiety and to propose to his heart and to his disciples boldly doubts scandalous and against eternal truths The Maniche who askt his friend If it is God who made the Flyes is very near asking if it is God who hath made Man One Frederick who asks of the Societies and Philosophers of his Court if the Birds are living will quickly ask himself if the Angels are so and if there are immortal Souls It is fine in an assembly of the curious to do towards the souls of Bulls and Elephants what they do about stones when they bursâ— them and to shew that under the false appearance of the Unity they are but multitudeâ— of grains of sand and of heaps of dust Buâ— at the rebound of these academic conversations it is that the Democritus's and Metrodorus's have in their solitudes proposed their Conscience other prouder questions and to maintain to it That all the great things of the Earth and even those of Heaven dreaded so much by people are not great Bodies nor great Spirits nor great Divinities but great assemblies of little Nothings and that there are not in the universe three things truly united as those of Atoms and Nothings arrived to the last estate of an indivisible smallness Have a care dangers are pleasant to youth and folly Be Wise and follow not Masters who to go establish their School on the brink of praecipices Withdraw your self as far from thence as you can and although this brink seems firm remember there are none but blind men who will stay on a place where there needs but one puff of wind to drive them to the bottom of an abyss It is true that those who lead others into these dangers when they explain themselves publickly have expressions and terms which are like choice colours and proper to paint innocence and truth on the gate of a House where they are not But their Philosophy is no better To be wise and bold Philosophers or for us not to be Criminals is very little less then to speak correctly and not to speak any thing â—hat one can accuse the point is to do in â—uch sort as that our innocent and unreprovable propositions may not give cause to believe that our thoughts are worth nothing It is of Sciences as it is of words The most dangerous are the chastest and the most modest when that under the vail of their modesty they find themselves the properest to convey corruption into the heart and to make them understand that they may think well of things of which the Teacher durst not speak Have not the curiosity to know the way of your ruine and go not to School to learn to perish nor to learn there to forget what you have learnt and known from the Cradle Have the happiness to bear the evident mark of a Soul well made and of a Wit well brought up which is not to be pleased with any Doctrine but that which serves you to know God and helps you to love him VIII MAXIM The way of a Fool is right in his own eyes but he that hearkeneth to Council is wise Prov. 12. PARAPHRASE THe senseless Man believes that his Conduct is good and he will have no other Judge than himself The wise Man distrusts his own judgment As he learns what he ought to believe from the sentiments of the Church so he learns what he ought to do on each occasion by the council of