this is the design of God Or else if by humiliations and interiour or exteriour eversions God will annihilate us let us consent to this annihilation and applying our selves thereto co-operate with the work of God with all the extent and power of our soul and so let us do in all and according to the diversity of the objects This advice is not contrary to the pure regard of God which we must have in all sufferings for in the works of God and in all that he permits we must consider the end for which God does it and the cause that moves him either to permit it or do it The end of the works of God is his honour and glory but the cause that moves him in his operations and divine permissions is the salvation of our souls the establishment and communication of his spirit his graces and his vertues We must here do as before we must suffer having no end but the pure regard of God and of his glory But because God requires fidelity and will establish his Kingdom and power in our souls it is also our duty to co-operate with his intentions and to receive all things not onely because such is his good pleasure but also in the manner that he will and to make use thereof according to his pleasure The perfection therefore of the spirit of sufferance consisteth not in receiving all things indifferently a soul is not perfect though it be insensible of all accidents be they never so sad and miserable Perfection consists not in a Stoicall apathy but if there be a perfection and purity in suffering it is when we receive all things in the spirit and in the holy divine dispositions of Iesus and that we bear them after that manner that God wills and according to the designs and intentions of God And herein consists the first and noblest Disposition which must accompany our sufferings We come now to the second CHAP. XIII How we ought to suffer in the spirit of Christianity IF when you do well and suffer for it you take it patiently it is acceptable to God for hereunto were you called because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow his steps In these words full of efficacy and truth the Prince of the Apostles proposes the motives which obliege us to suffer patiently all adversities and afflictions which occur in all conditions of this life He saith that we are called thereto and that by consequence the proper condition and quality of a Christian binds us to the Crosse. It is not necessary to alledge proofs of this seeing we have said enough already For the spirit grace and conduct of God whereby he uses to save us is no other then that of annihilations and humiliations and afflictions God hath try'd them and found them worthy of him The Crosse and sufferings is then the lot of Christians it is their portion and they must make such use of it as to bear it Christianly But the most powerfull motive the Apostle makes use of to teach us patience is when he sayes that Iesus Christ suffered for us and that we must imitate him and follow his steps after this we cannot in reason find any thing hard If Iesus Christ from his birth to his death hath espoused the sufferings and embraced the Cross wherefore should we refuse being his Children to live and dye as he did we know that the Son of God came from Heaven to Earth to suffer the humiliations and pains due to sins and sinners and that He would by this low estate honour his Father but withall he left upon the Earth the same spirit to honour God that as in Heaven God is honoured by exaltation he might be honoured upon Earth by humiliation In pursuance of this design of Iesus Christ we must as Christians honour God by our lowness and annihilation On the other side seeing the Sonne of God dyed for us we must dye for him if he be the example of our life as the Apostle sayes we must imitate him and if he be born our head according to St. Paul we must as his members bear his spirit and follow his motions In a word if we raign with Iesus Christ we must suffer with him There remains then no more then to know the spirit and dispositions where with we must receive and bear sufferings We have said that the 2 d. Disposition necessary to a perfect Christian to live faithfully in the adversities of humane life is to bear them in a Christian way and according to the spirit of Christianity Now we suffer in Christan ways when we suffer what befalls us as an order of God and as an estate prepared for Christians and by which God will conduct us to the heritage of Christians so that according to this Disposition we make no reflection at all on our sufferings nor upon the estates and overturnings wherein we are our spirit onely remains settled and fastened upon the thought of this truth I am a Christian and as such I belong to Iesus Christ who puts me into what estate he pleases and because I am oblig'd to do his good pleasure I will have no other thought then to resign my self to Iesus Christ to do with me according to his good pleasure By adhering to this truth by this Disposition and interiour estate the soul is united to Iesus Christ as the members are to their head and she remains subject to his conduct without further care or thought then that she is God's because God wills it Herein consisteth the spirit of Christianity and the duty of a perfect Christian. This Disposition is pure and simple and produceth in the soul a perfect peace calm and repose the reason of it consisteth in that the sufferings humiliations and contempts are the centre of the Christian soul as things created have no repose but in their centre so the perfect Christian cannot have the true repose of the soul but in sufferings and in this Disposition they are the centre of Christianity because the eternall Word was pleased to place his estate and whole life in humiliation He was born in poverty he lived in contempt he died upon the cross all the passages of his way-faring life were in continuall sufferings and lowness and also when he was in Heaven in the bosom of the Father in the throne of the greatness of the Divinity he entertain'd thoughts of the cross he consents to death and prepares himself for sufferings when that from all eternity he resolv'd to be made man and to invest himself with the infirmities of our nature so true is it that all the conditions of the Son of God were in sufferings and lowness This also the centre repose and life of a perfect Christian ought to be in the estate and life of Iesus Christ and as the life of Iesus Christ and his estates are contained in adversities in lowness and in the thoughts of the cross it
then of grace The Christian therefore if he seek perfection must take heed hereto and in all things observe as a maxime in Catholique vertues that Christian vertue and true piety consist not in being conformable to reason and to a humane spirit but to the spirit and intention of Iesus Christ who is the infallible rule of our actions This advice is of importance We shall speak of it elswhere when we have convinced the more difficult spirits and made them see the right Iesus Christ hath to us CHAP. IV. The right which the Sonne of God hath to us Motives obliging us to be his and to adhere to him by true piety WHich way soever we consider our selves we belong unto the Sonne of God this is our happiness We belong unto him after a singular manner in the state of nature he hath a right to us all things being as the Evangelist saith made by him In the being of grace we belong to him in the being of glory we are his by him all are raised to glory by a grace springing from the Mystery of the Incarnation and proper to the state of Christianity he is our Head we his Members he is the Father we his Children he our spouse we his heart and delight he our Doctor we his Disciples he our Pastor we his sheep he our Redeemer we his Captives he our King we his subjects he the Sacrificer we his sacrifices in a word he is our All the way the life and the salvation of the World and as St. Paul saith he is our fulness and we are his by the price of his blood and possession of his spirit We are so much the Son 's that we cannot be God's without being first Iesus's who refers us to his Father If the Father accept us and behold us with the eyes of mercy it is in the Sonne in as much as we are his Members and united unto him This union whereby we belong to the Sonne of God is so necessary that as the eternall Father loves us not but for his Sonne 's sake nor regards us but in him so cannot our actions be acceptable to him nor all our exercises of piety please him if they be not done by the conduct of the spirit of his Sonne and by adherence and union to Iesus though they may otherwise seem good and perfect He that is not with me saith Christ is against me and he that gathereth not with me scattereth This property is grounded upon the principles of Faith which teach us that the Sonne of God onely became man not the Father nor the holy Ghost he alone performs the office of Mediator in the redemption of humane nature he alone is our Redeemer our Mediator and our Head In this quality we are his Captives and Members he is the Father of the Ages to come and we are his children for he alone begot us by his blood and death and as a Pelican he gives us life by the effusion of his blood and animates us by the spirit of his Crosse in the Crosse he begot us by his death he giveth us that life we lost by the envy of the Serpent Thus in all the Mysteries of Faith we adore the Sonne of God being of the divine persons the onely incarnate living and dying for us he onely redeeming us from the captivity of our sins being God became man that men might become Gods all the Mysteries of his life accomplished upon Earth were onely to sanctifie us his dying upon the crosse makes him the onely victime and holocaust of our propitiation Are not these motives sufficient to shew us that we are his in a singular manner belonging to him by extraordinary relations Is it not reason we should acknowledge him and by a particular fidelity profess our selves his and carefully endeavour to adhere to him and by true piety to render him the honour love and service that his benefits obliege us to This the greatest part of Christians think not of as being by reason of their impiety ignorant of their benefactor as the Ancients were through their Idolatry of their Creator It is a strange ingratitude that man should be so blind in these dayes as not know his Iesus and passing his life away carelesly neglect to acknowledge him in his greatness to adore him in his works and to honour him in his humane divine life Our business then must be to reform this ignorance and therefore we will propose the principall rights which he hath to us that we may learn with what piety and devotion we ought to follow and serve him and that those souls who neglect or despise this piety may re-enter into themselves and endeavour from henceforth to render to Jesus Christ the honour love and service whereto they are by so many just relations obliged The first right that Jesus Christ hath to man is derived from his Quality of being God-man for such is the Sonne of God not onely in regard of his Divinity but also according to his humanity In this quality Jesus Christ by a power of excellency ought to rule and command all that is and shall be created a power that the eternal Father gave him at the first minute of his Incarnation besides that by this Mystery the Son changing his condition for the glory of his Father and abasing himself to honour him the Father also will needs honour him constituting him from thenceforward the principle of life grace and glory proclaiming him Soveraign of the universe and replenishing his humane nature with all the effects of the Divinity and all the states of glory possibly communicable to him as God and man that as the Sonne honoured his Father in debasing himself so did the Father honour the Sonne in exalting him For this cause he makes him his equall in power greatness and Majesty and invests him from this first moment for evermore with all the power that he hath over his creatures This the beloved Apostle teaches when he saith The Father hath given him all things into his hand and St. Paul beginning to write the greatness of Iesus saith expresly speaking of his mission That the eternall Father appointed him Heire of all things by whom also he made the World Thus by this first Right and by the Mystery of the Incarnation Jesus hath the same power over souls that the Creator hath over his creatures and in relation to this power we give him all that we owe to God and consequently acknowledge in this Mystery Jesus to have a double power over us as God and man This consideration obliges us to adore and serve him acknowledging this power must doubly subject us to his conduct and divine will Heaven and Earth pay this duty and fidelity to this Iesus God and Man Let us hear with a resentment of love how St. Iohn describes the triumphs of our Iesus he tells us that he heard the Angels crying aloud The Lamb who hath been slain is
manner that we ought to observe in our actions springing from the son of God must by consequence be very like it So a Christian action should be that which is made in the spirit of God that Iesus Christ hath borne upon the Earth accomplished in the holy and perfect dispositions of the Son of God himself By this only Circumstance we may judge of the difference of our actions for all that we do without the spirit and without dispositions agreeable to an action worthy of God is to do nothing or very little such actions ordinarily proceed but from a naturrll inclination or which is worse from the instigation of our own Lusts and Love of our selves Let us farther consider this Truth which will seem hard or new to those who know not the excellency of Christianity who never regard the purposes of God who are ignorant of the mysteries of their salvation When the life and actions of a Christian are said to comprehend their perfection you must remember that the Sonne of God came into the world not onely to communicate to us his grace but to dwell in us and give us his spirit and life to give them to us not onely to justifie us and as we say to put us into the state of grace but to be in us to dwell there to be the beginning of a new life and new spirit in us and to give us dispositions proportionable to such an estate This the Apostle teaches when he sayes that the eternall Father hath put the spirit of his Sonne into our hearts and that the spirit it self beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God whereby we see that being justified by the state and grace of filiation and divine adoption we live in the life and spirit of God which is made our life and spirit which is in us dwells in us governs us inlivens us and is the Principle of our Actions makes them pleasing to God supernatural and worthy of Paradise Thus the life of a Christian according to the determination of God is far above all lives a being above all beings I leave you to judge what the Actions of Christians ought to be proceeding from a principle so holy and divine You will find all the very reasonable and admire the bounty and wisdom of God in this Conduct of our souls if we will consider that the eternal word was made man that by debasing himself he might render to his Father an honour worthy of God he came upon the Earth to establish by the merit and by the spirit of his Crosse the Kingdom of God in our souls and to make us worthy to serve and honour God after a manner worthy of God For this cause he advances unto himself he consecrates our lives and actions by his Death and blood and that they may be referred worthily to the honour and glory of his Father he unites himself to us communicates to us his life his spirit and dispositions to make us capable to praise God according to his greatness which we could never do if we did not take of him and from him this power and disposition This he gives us when he dwells in us by the grace of filiation and divine adoption whereto we are advanced when we are made Christians Hence we see that Christian Actions ought to be holy perfect and divine that a Christian Life ought to be the very life of Jesus Christ living and working in him by his spirit His actions his inward dispositions must be a lively image and perfect expression of the actions and holy intention of Iesus Christ. But alas we think no more of these Truths Christians are become so blind that we may well complain and say with the ancient Philosopher That the life of man is spent either in doing evil or in doing nothing or in doing preposterously what he ought to do To undeceive our selves of these common abuses to enter farther into the knowledge of the state of the grace of Christianity and to see more evidently what we ought to be let us further remember that as Christians we are members of the Sonne of God he is our head a head that infuses life in us In this quality he hath right to live and act in us as our souls act and live in our bodies This consider'd we must say that as the essence and excellency of a Christian consisteth in his being a member of Iesus Christ so the perfection of Christian duties is that they are operated by Iesus Christ living and operating in us as his members I say not onely that we must imitate the Son of God and do all our actions in Grace that thereby they may be called Christian but also that they ought to be with the same intentions and spirit wherewith Iesus Christ did act on Earth which he communicated to his Church and to all his Our Actions ought not only to be good and reasonable but to be worthy of the Son of God our head whose members we are Therefore they must be animated by his life guided by his motions and regulated by his intentions seeing that to this end he giveth us his spirit and life to be our spirit and life and that he gives us freely abundant grace in him and by him to accomplish all our actions This is of great importance for which we shall one day render a strict account when God shall judge the uprightness of men by so extraordinary a favour Certainly he will examine and punish the ignorance the contempt and abuse of so many graces which he hath acquired for us by his travells and cross and offereth us with so much love and bounty This will appear yet more evident if we consider the common belief of all the faithfull who acknowledge that the life and actions of a perfect Christian ought to be actions of grace Let us therefore examine what the Essence and Dignity of this grace is for supposing that the life of a Christian is a life of grace we must necessarily grant that our actions by consequence ought to be conformable and correspondent to the sanctity and dignity of the grace which gives them life sanctifies them and advances them since they must be proportionable and semblable to the cause We know that the grace which sanctifies and gives life to our actions is a grace made for the Son of God that from him it flows into us that we are not replenished and enriched but from his bounty This granted our life and actions must be holy and perfect by the same sanctity and perfection which is in Iesus Christ which is lovingly communicated to and engrafted in our souls sanctifying enlivening and perfecting our life and actions When we say that this Grace comes from Iesus Christ we express in this alone the excellency and dignity of it For to know the dignity and eminency of the grace of Christianity it suffices not to say as we commonly do that it
is supernaturall because in it there is nothing singular For the grace given to Angels and to man before his fall was also supernatural We must say that the grace of Christianity is a grace made for the Sonne of God and consequently worthy of the greatness of the Sanctity and divinity of the incarnate word this makes it the raiser of an Order and gives it a being much different from the first and from the order meerly supernaturall This gives it a being and order as different from the grace of the Angels as they are from Iesus Christ as the sonne from the servant Now applying what we have said that Actions ought to be conformable to their Principle we conclude that the actions of a Christian being sanctified and enlivened by the grace and spirit of Iesus ought also to be wholly conformable to Iesus Christ their principle being more then humane more then angelicall conformable to the purity and sanctity of the grace of the Sonne of God worthy the Labours of his Crosse and death To this end St. Paul adviseth that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called words that deserve to be considered since that God will demand an account of us of his favours and benefits and will judge our actions and lives according to the dignity of our vocation according to the perfection and sanctity of his Grace in brief according to the life of Iesus Christ which alone ought to be the rule and Law of Christians Furthermore we must consider the rule of God over our Soules wherin we may admire the wayes and meanes whereby the divine bounty and infinite wisdome of God uses to give us graces necessary to accomplish our actions in that perfection and sanctity that he requires I intend not to speak of the secret and unknowne means of the graces inspirations motions and speedy succours wherewith God is pleased to illuminate our Spirits to enflame our wills and to direct all the motions and actions of our life But I desire only to insist upon the consideration of the Sacraments that the sonne of God hath left in his Church as channells by which he continually powers out this grace into us Baptisme consecrates us to the most holy Trinity makes us the children of God members of Iesus Christ Temples of the Holy Ghost and holy Vessells which bear Iesus Christ who dwells in us And the Eucharist which is among the Sacraments as the Sun among the Stars gives God to us and with him all the greatness of heaven elevates us and unites us to God changes and makes us little gods What would ye more Why is God think you so profuse of his gifts of his graces of himself but to operate in you all that I have said to give you a life and actions conformable to the being whereto he hath elected you Let us weigh these truths at our leisure and study to attain to the perfection that God requires of us Let us take care that all our actions be holy and worthy of God and let us not be carryed away by the humour or rather by the infidelity of such as ignorantly despise these important truths and necessary exercises The third Prerogative CHAP. VI. Of the happy Commerce and Society that Iesus Christ will have with Christians by the Mystery of the Incarnation THe holy Trinity having consecrated the Christian by Baptisme adopted and received him as a son enters into a particular society with him and by divers Mysteries which the eternall Word hath operated upon earth God enters into a Communication with men lives and converses with them So Saint Paul speaking to new Christians Ye are no more strangers and forreigners but fellow-citizens with the Saints and of the houshold of God Let us stay here to contemplate this benefit Adam being fallen from the happy estate of grace by his rebellion against God no sooner tasted the Apple of disobedience but he felt the punishment of his sin and was at the same time driven out of Paradise and banished the happy commerce and holy familiarity which he had with God This exile was the greatest rigour wherewith the divine Iustice could take vengeance on his sin This separation made his estate miserable and the condition of his children most unhappy We should in this malediction and just divorse for ever have continued if the Son of God had not come to re-establish all things to return us to God and to restore us with much advantage all other happiness that we lost by sin So that as the Apostle saith where sin abounded grace did much more abound for we enter into a familiarity and communion with God far more holy and divine then that of Adam by Iesus Christ we converse with God go to him are with him worthy the Spirit and Grace of Christianity Few value this truth men who only follow their own wayes nourished with earth onely to whom the delicates of heaven are unsavory can never relish this grace nor be sensible how much the presence of God is necessary Therein appears the corrupt estate of this Age all creatures resent the presence of their Creator Nature it self hath engraven in the bottom of our essence a desire of the presence of God The most barbarous Nations forced only by this instinct in the blindness of their false Religion sought esteemed and desired some visible mark of the presence of those they call their gods None but those of this Age have an indifference to these truths forget God mind onely their own actions in this world and are ignorant of the happiness of Heaven and despise it To awaken and draw us forth of this darkness consider that Faith teaches us that the happiness of the Saints consists in seeing themselves to be in the company of God and the greatest recompense God promises to our travels is to make us partakers of his glory to raise us to his greatness to enter into an eternall communion with us I will saith Christ to his Father that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am implying the society and communion of God with us and promising that eternity shall never separate him from him that serves him Now if the happiness of the blessed in their estate of glory consists in the presence and familiarity of God we cannot doubt but the happiness of the just upon earth consists in knowing how to preserve themselves in this desireable familiarity and presence of God The intent of the Son of God at his coming into the world and becoming an Inhabitant thereof was to sanctifie it by his presence and establish his power therein and dwell with us to the end of the world as he promised at his death This is it that he wrought by the mysterie of the Incarnation making himself man to live among men For this cause in the Sacrament of the Eucharist he becomes the food of man communicates to his abundant graces inriches
effect of the grace of Christianity is to operate in us that which natural death doth By death the soul is separated from the body and all things in the world So grace should separate us from our selves from all things from sin that being wholly so separated we may be dead to our selves and to all things that we may live in God and of God This expression of the Apostle further shews all the properties of a Christian life the end whereof is that being separated from all we may be in Iesus Christ that is to say united by an indissoluble Vnion to Iesus Christ life of his life and be referred with him to the glory of the most holy Trinity The life of a Christian St. Paul saith is hid because it is indeed hid from the sight of the World which neither sees it as it is nor esteems it and because it is little humble and abject disdains to behold to take notice of it as unworthy the name and society of men They that will live Christianly will not subject themselves to the corruption of the men of this age so this life is hid from the sight and more from the power of this world for the soul that liveth christianly is above all humane power and insensible to all contempt and confusion and as the Diamond continues entire and strengthened by the violence of blowes so the perfect christian remains more content in the violence of Temptation more assured in the motions of disgrace more firm amidst the batteries of afflictions even Prosperity changeth not his spirit he is alike in all things for by grace and true Christian vertues the soul is raised above all things and lives in God Ye are dead and yet your life is hid with Iesus Christ in God Such is the life of a christian according to St. Paul a life that imitates that of Iesus Christ upon earth who according to the Oracles of the Prophets was despised and rejected of men a Man of sorrow and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him he was despised and we esteemed him not When Hell the World Devill sinners thought to triumph over him and ravish both his honour and life at the same time he triumphs over them shewing that he hath power as he saith to lay down his life and he hath power to take it again at his pleasure Thus the life of Iesus Christ is hid from the eyes of men who know him not and from their power seeing he triumphs over his Enemies over death and sin Such ought to be the life of a Christian. St. Paul saith the same in other termes when he exhorts the Ephesians that they put off concerning the former conversation the old Man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirits of their mind and that they put on the new Man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness This is the first Protestation we make in Baptisme in which solemn action before that we are consecrated to the holy Trinity received and made the children of God we make a particular protestation to renounce Adam and the World and adhere to Iesus Christ to separate our selves from the one to unite our selves to the other So in this action so holy and happy we uncloath our selves of the one to cloath us again with the other that is the first step we make into the state of Christianity according to St. Paul And if we believe his Doctrine we see that the perfection of a Christian and all his happinesse consists in adhering to Iesus Christ to be united to him and cloathed with him For as all the grandeur of humane nature which was chosen in the Mysterie of the Incarnation to be the nature of God consists in being united to the word which subsisteth in him and operates by him so all the perfection of a christian soul consists in dwelling in Iesus Christ in adhering to him and operating by him all the perfection of a christian soul consists in that it dwells in Christ that it adheares to him that it lives of his life and operates not but by his spirit Now this cannot be but when the Soul is divided from it self and from all creatures for according to St. Paul We are to put off the old man with his deeds and to put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the Image of him that created him Whence it followeth that abnegation and uncloathing is the principal point of christian perfection so necessary that St. Bernard saith It had been better for us never to have been then to dwell in our selves and to our selves for the greatest misfortune of the soul is to see it self separated from God But God comes not into neither dwells in the soul till such time as it goeth out of it self uncloathes and annihilates it self And the greater its annihilation is the more it makes place for God If it take but little away God fills it with little if it deprive it self of much God fills it much and without doubt he will take it up and dwell wholly in it if the soul do annihilate and wholly uncloath it self We see and adore this proceeding of God in the Mysterie of the Incarnation the cause and example of the life of our souls For the eternall word choosing humane nature to unite himself unto it and to operate in and by it our redemptions would uncloath it of its own substance and humane person to shew us that we are not acceptable to God if we do not abandon our selves and that if we divest our selves of our selves and deprive our selves of all created things God will fill us with divine things for Grace as well as Nature abhorres vacuity Let us learn then to deprive our selves of humane things that we may be inriched with divine Let us go out of our selves and quit the commerce that we have with the creatures to be in Iesus Christ to enter into society and communion with God Let us renounce our own spirits and government to leave our selves to that of Iesus Christ and suffer him to live and raign in us according to what he truly designed of us In brief let us divest our selves of our selves to re-invest our selves with the Sonne of God Herein consists the happiness of our souls and that Christian perfection that we ought to search for here upon earth The necessity and practise whereof are in the following Treatises THE SECOND PART Wherein are proposed the sundry Motives which oblige Christians to Perfection CHAP. I. The Obligation that we have to acquire true Vertues wherein consists the life of the Soul and the inward life of a Christian. MAN being in honour abideth not but is compared unto the Beasts that perish Thus David describing the deplorable estate of man after sin a sad condition a miserable fall which hath deprived man
Spouse when she runs after her God crying to him Tell me O thou whom my soul loveth where thou feedest where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions This holy Lover knows that as long as she is separated from her God she shall be subjected to error and to the tyrannicall usurpation of sin she knows by experience that he that is not with God in the pessession of his spirit shall alway be overwhelmed with all sorts of misfortunes led captive and dragged by his own lusts deceived and betrayed by the foolish love of the creatures and therefore she seeks her God with so much ardor and affection They that will withdraw themselves from these evils and assure repose to their consciences peace to their spirits and quiet to their passions must do the like they must seek God purely sincerely and with perseverance they must endeavour to possess him that they may find in him a perfect liberty and assured peace Saint Austin says all this in two words O Lord our heart is always unsettled and uquiet untill the time it shall repose in thee Then again addressing his speech to men Wherefore saith he O men of nothing do you wander in the search of many things Wherefore doth your covetousness make you unconstant vagabonds in your thoughts and desires seek seek him who is all things in him you shall have all there you shall find rest and remedy for your miseries This care we must have which cannot be sufficiently recommended to you therefore as it is of consequence we must proceed in discourse of it CHAP. VI. Of the state of Man after the Sin of Adam and of the need he hath of his God ALl the duties of the soul are comprised in these words of David Eschew evil and do good words that contain all Laws divine and humane for they onely forbid evil and command good words so absolute and generally true that he who keeps this Commandment shall certainly be perfect It is not needfull to explicate this Proposition it is a naturall Precept a Law God hath graven in the bottom of Reason that none might be ignorant of it that all might be without excuse before the Tribunall of God Notwithstanding O unhappiness of humane nature since the sin of Adam we are become so unworthy so criminall that we cannot without the favour of God either eschew evil or do good so evident is it that man hath need of God As children of Adam we are children of malediction begotten in a generall condemnation conceived in sin born children of wrath Adam indeed gave us nature and life but subject to the power and malice of sin which subjects us to the Devil confining us to his will and conduct From the womb we bear the yoke of sin as the Scripture saith we are in the Kingdom of death so far impotent and evil that without the grace of God we can do nothing but works of death and captivity wherein we see the need we have of God to avoid this misery For if from our birth we are subjected to the tyranny of sin doubtless we should be drawn to all sorts of vice there is no sin which man would not commit if God did not withold him Every imagination of the thought of his heart is onely evil continually sayes God of man so evil that he would lose and incessantly precipitate himself in desires of sins and abominations if God by his power did not with-hold him so true is it that we cannot fly evil without Gods help we are so much slaves to it that only God can free and draw us out of this captivity This it is Saint Austin means in his Confessions when he thanks God not onely for delivering him from the sins he committed but also for restraining him from all others I ascribe it unto thy grace saith he that thou hast dissolved my sins as the Sun doth Ice I refer to thy mercy all the sins which I have not committed I confess that all hath been forgiven me as well that which I did of my own will as that which I did not commit being prevented and aided by thy grace Where he teacheth us that without the grace of God we cannot shun evill thus is manifest the need we have of God If the Lord of Sabboth saith St. Paul out of the Prophet had left us a seed we had been as Sodom and been made like unto Gomorrah This is not hard to conceive if by the way we consider that man as the Sonne of Adam is degraded from the justice and holiness of God deprived of grace despoyl'd of all his gifts cruelly wounded in his nature is separated from God hath wholly converted himself to the Creature and being reduced to and plunged in this deplorable condition is so impotent that he cannot raise himself according to his end and perfection up to God unless assisted by the grace of Iesus Christ who onely can draw us out of the abysse of sinne reinvest us in holiness and mercy as with new gifts merited by his death and sufferings he alone can lead us to God and as without him we separate our selves continually from God so with his assistance we approach unto him and by his grace we who were children of cursing are made children of God and of blessing Wherein on one side appeareth the miserable estate whereunto we are reduced as children of Adam on the other the great need we have of God and his assistance Now in considering these truths if we have any sense of salvation will we not immediately say that we are obliged to seek God to implore the power of his spirit and strongly to renounce the power of sinne the spirit of Adam and to resign our selves wholly to the grace and conduct of God protesting and acknowledging before the throne of his mercies the need we have of him to eschew evill which is man's first duty If we examine the need we have of God to do good and practise vertue we shall find our selves in the like indigence Faith teaches us that we cannot do any work of salvation if we be not joyned to God by grace and as Iesus Christ saith as the branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine no more can ye except ye abide in me We can do nothing of our selves as our selves because sinne hath brought us into such a condition that being dispoiled of the gifts of God and made unworthy of his grace we are reduced to such impotence that we can neither serve nor love God nor do any good work if we have not of him grace strength and merit to do it He alone gives us the thought of good nor is that sufficient he must give us also the will and resolution to accomplish it which when we have also received if God himself give us not the accomplishment of it it
these truths annihilating all the spirits and humbling all the Seraphims nothing but man shuts his eyes against so great a light Iesus Christ and these Seraphims humble themselves in the throne of their glory and men glorifie themselves sitting on the Dunghill of their vices O hardness and obstinacy of humane spirits O the power of the blind ambition of men who see and confess these truths who bear the marks of them who feel the violence of them yet remain insensible triumph in their wickedness and refuse to act by love and vertue what they shall be constrained to do by Iustice and rigour for those who exalt themselves shall be humbled but humbled by the revengefull hand of Almighty God Let us open our eyes and acknowledge let us descend into our selves and from the bottom of our nothing cry to God that he would give us that light of truth Let us adore this truth of Iesus Christ and let us resign our selves over to his power and invoke the force and spirit of his humility that it may consume in us the vanity and ambition of the spirit of Adam that lives in us and communicate to us so necessary a vertue The third Disposition CHAP. X. Of an effectuall desire to be GOD'S AS the spirit of Faith is great in us so let us make use thereof and esteem God according to the same proportion and enter into this Disposition absolutely necessary to all souls who go the wayes of grace and abandon themselves wholly to our Lord. This Disposition is a pure and perfect desire to belong to God at any price whatsoever and to be his purely without any other regard then of the greatness and soveraign Majesty of God who deserves to be loved served and adored because he is God and shutting the eye to all considerations to all hopes and all profit we must say and bear in heart this truth I will be Gods for his own sake This desire will not be so difficult as it appeares if faith be living in us and if we bear a true esteem of God But we must proceed further this desire must not be in the mouth onely but in the heart to be pure it must regard nothing but God to be perfect it must be infinite without limitation or restriction as if we should say I will be Gods in all that he wills and in sign of the perfection whereinto I desire to enter I will know nothing of all that he desireth of me I content my self to be in a bare abandoning of my self to all the thoughts all the designes all the Counsels he hath formed of me in the Cabinet of his eternall wisdom to all the thoughts Iesus Christ had of me on the Altar of his Crosse sacrificing himself to the glory of his Father and offering vvith himself the souls of his Elect. I offer my self to him to be all that he vvill and to leave all the effects of his divine pleasure be it of Iustice or of love of abandoning or enjoying of abundance or privation of fervour or of drought In brief I will have no other desire but to be Gods to be all that he will that I should be This is the adorable estate into which the soul of Iesus Christ entred the first instant of the Mystery of the Incarnation as soon as it was united to the Word for in the same moment his soul produced an act of obligation of him to be wholly Gods wholly obedient to his divine decrees in all the wayes which he ordained upon him and upon his life in the wayes of humiliation of sufferings of privation cross and death This is also the estate and first disposition whereinto the soul must enter that seeks God and will live Christianly but she must remain herein with such stability and constancy that she may render her self immutable in regard of his disposition For in whatsoever change she finds her self she must never quit this disposition on the contrary it is herein that she must establish and settle her self more and more and all her care must be to bear it not in her mouth nor in her will but in the bottom of her heart and centre of her soul. We have said that this desire to be God's must be pure simple naked and absolute therefore to forme this desire and make it perfect we must not receive into our spirit any reason any consideration any interest but onely say and say it truly I will be Gods for Gods sake according as God will have me and in such manner as shall please him This Disposition thus explained teaches us that they who seek Christian perfection and faithfully resign themselves to Iesus Christ to live in the state that pleaseth him must not desire to know or understand what God will do with them nor what he will say to all the motions which they think or in all that they understand nor in all the diverse estates spirituall or temporall wherein they find themselves that is neither necessary nor profitable on the contrary to desire to know and understand all that passeth and examine whence it comes and whither it tends this were to draw her self out of resignation and to go out of the purity of this Disposition it is onely necessary that the soul have a great vigilancy to recive all of God and to receive it in the manner that God requires of her and to bear it with the spirit as he will and to make use of it with the purity that it merits In this point consists the fidelity of the soul and the perfection of this estate To facilitate this it is good for the soul to present her self often before God exciting in her self an efficacious desire to do the pure will of God and to do it in the disposition and manner that he requires without knowing what he will and she shall often offer her self to God for this end Moreover it is very profitable to offer our selves to God and to form a generall will to practise all sorts of good though we have no light nor feeling contenting our selves with a resignation to God and taking care to follow him and to co-operate faithfully with the graces and motions we receive from him It is a Maxime in Piety that the soul must not seek any sense any light nothing of particular but keep and conserve it self in a pure estate to be Gods to do his divine will and to render her self faithfull to his graces remembering that we have nothing to do in this world but to submit to the will of God to receive his gifts and to render them again unto him The fourth Disposition CHAP. XI Of the Purity of the Heart WE proceed in our designe of drawing the picture of a perfect Christian which consists in representing the principal vertues wherewith he must be invested and the dispositions wherein he must be to become fit to bear God and to live onely upon the spirit and grace of God
to love God and not to suffer is impossible The spirit and the proper grace of the state of Christianity puts us into this necessity for the first and most inseparable effect of the grace of Christianity is to destroy in us the old man and to crucifie him there to make the new man to live who according to the Doctrine of the Apostle is no other then Iesus Christ and we know that grace must necessarily destroy our evill inclinations and Iesus Christ will purifie and consume after the manner that he pleases and as much as he will the being and life of Adam who is in us there to establish a being and a life of God Now this cannot be but by sufferings by subversions and by a long and painfull death and therefore the Master of Christians said to the Galatians Those that are of Iesus Christ have crucify'd the flesh the sins the passions and concupiscenses shewing that those who are Gods and in the Kingdom of grace are crucify'd and must necessarily be in the state of sufferings and subversions And immediately after he tells us that we are Christians and Children of God not onely to live in this estate but withall by a necessity so absolute that we may say that those who are belonging to Iesus Christ are known to be such because they have crucified and mortified their flesh and passions more then those who have not mortification and who avoid and neglect it and therefore belong long not to Iesus Christ. The conclusion is manifest in St. Paul who said If any of you have not the spirit of Iesus Christ he is none of his Now this spirit is no other then the spirit of sufferings subversions contrarieties oppositions and the Crosse and therefore he that will be Iesus Christ must resolve to suffer and though he be not oblig'd to demand it of God yet he must embrace it with esteem and receive it with love and courage when it befalls him for that it is necessary to establish him in vertue Hence we may see what deceipt is crept into Christians who making profession of some piety instead of profiting by sufferings and receiving them with esteem have no greater care then to exempt themselves from them seeking nothing but their own inward and outward content and labouring to live in a satisfaction and repose of spirit they fly all sorts of pains and remove themselves as much as they can from all trouble be it never so little and renounce and avoid all occupations and occasions that may mortifie them and if they cannot help themselves nor find any remedy then there is nothing but vexation of spirit murmuring in their hearts impatient in their words and excessive in their plaints suffering themselves to fall into a dulness and weakness unworthy a Christian To live so as to become uncapable of any solid vertues is the mark of a heart which is not Gods and of a soul which loves but it self Let us then hearken to the decree of Iesus Christ He that loves his life shall lose it and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternall CHAP. XI How the fear of suffering drawes us from the way of perfection HAving in describing the way to perfection shewed the obstacles therein it will not be necessary to speak farther of it were it not that the subject of sufferings obliges us thereto Hitherto we have seen how all that is of Adam and of the life of Adam hinders us from pleasing God for man as the Child of Adam is the child of wrath the object of divine Iustice degraded from all favours his fall is so deplorable that he is uncapable of raising himself up to God his supernaturall end if not aided by grace and if he were not engrafted in Iesus Christ as the stock into the vine and lived not his life which is a life of grace a life that the Apostle calls the life of the spirit for they that are in the flesh cannot please God and the works of the flesh are called in the Scripture dead works Now if we contemplate this world in the curse of sin we shall find that all creatures have conspired against us that the aire is full of our enemies that all things may be the instruments of our ruine wherefore our obstructions in the way of perfection are infinite but the greatest are in us and of our selves One of the greatest is a fear to suffer pains an apprehension of shame and confusion For commonly we stand in fear of crosses and travails self-love causing us to shun all that humbles us making us to fly what ever is low and hindring us from embracing any thing that is difficult This fear is a great obstacle to vertue which cannot be attain'd but by travel nor preserv'd but by viglancy nor perfected but in humility and privation it is the common resentment of all men We see also by experience that he who fears labour and suffering often fails of goodness and willingly renounces it when he finds any trouble to conserve it He easily quits the rudder when he sees the least storm of temptation or opposite action arise and rather then suffer humiliation he will quit vertue and if there be occasion renounce his portion of Paradise rather then the pleasure and content he takes in doing his own will rather then his own quiet and repose We see the greatest part of Christians dare not enter into consideration of their lives past nor reflect seriously on their sins nor think of death or future estate of the soul meerly by reason of fear to suffer sorrow for their sins That they may not be sensible of the apprehension they ought to have of God's Iudgements they will not so much as think thereon Hereupon they persevere in their malice and remain finally obstinate in their sins living in ignorance of things necessary to salvation so true it is that the least fear of pains withdraws them from vertue To see how much this fear is prejudiciall let us consider that to the acquisition and conservation of vertues two things are necessary which require both travel and pain First we must destroy ill habits next we must acquire vertuous habits We cannot ruine the evil without mortification and consequently pains and sufferings we cannot root them out without privation and resignation wherein is both travel and the cross But if we will obtain good habits and practise Christian vertues and all in grace then we must have a great care vigilancy and strength of courage to resist all oppositions that nature inclinations or occasions present unto us And although vertue be beautifull sweet and acceptable yet she finds contrarieties and then she needs resolution to use violence and to come to the point whereof Iesus Christ spake when he said If thy right eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it behind thee if thy right hand offend thee cut if off
words which shew the pain and travel a Christian is obliged to undergo to root out of his heart and tear from his soul all that is contrary to the Law of God and vertue words which condemn our delicates and all that fear labour and sufferings excusing themselves by their weakness of nature To comprehend the importance of this advice Let us lift up our eyes to the contemplation of the truth and spirit of Christianity there we shall learn of the Son of God that the Kingdom of heaven is gained by violence that the grace of Christianity is grounded upon suffering that the perfection is in love in love crucifying that all the wayes of God and the operations of his spirit consist in privation and resignation and consequently in the cross Whence it necessarily follows that they who fly sufferings and humiliation seeking onely a sweet pleasant life fearing pains and travel do by this fear make themselves unworthy of God who reigneth on the cross and is onely found in the thorns of the fiery bush They withdraw themselves from the Kingdom of grace which agrees with annihilation they shut their heart against love and which is more to be lamented go out of the order of God and from the conformity they ought to have with Iesus Christ crucified who is the object the way and the life of perfect Christians and of Iesus Christ who cannot conduct our selves but in the way of annihilating of suffering and humiliation which is the way of Iesus Christ his life and essence Here may these delicate persons see how their faint-heartedness deceives them Let us then take heed and seriously consider the sentence that Iesus Christ pronounces against them He that takes not up his cross and follows me is not worthy of me To fear sufferings to fly humiliation to refuse the communication of God is to make our selves unworthy and uncapable of all his divine operations of grace for God cannot communicate himself to the soul in the wayes of grace but he will cause therein annihilation and humility All the operations of grace can have no effects in our souls but those of humility abnegation and death Grace must operate in the souls that which death doth in the body This is so known a truth that all that speak of grace unless that it 's proper and principall effect is to give us to God to make God live in us and to place therein his love and favour It is impossible for God to operate all that in us without annihilations subversions humiliations and death unless he pluck the love of our selves and the Creatures from our hearts he cannot plant his own therein If he kill not in us the old Adam never will Iesus Christ live in us God cannot dwell in us if he do not annihilate and consume the impurities and malice of our souls Thus Christian grace to produce its effects in us requires an estate of submission and death They therefore deceive themselves who think they are in grace yet bear no mark at all of this grace for if it be in a soul it will infallibly produce the effects proper to it if it produce nothing it is a sign it is not there Herein also appeares the wrong that the fear of suffering causeth to Christians How much do souls separate themselves from God who seek no other consolation satisfaction and enjoyment but their own and labour onely to put themselves into a certain repose thinking that perfection consists in this false rest and never to suffer any crosse affliction or temptation No no Earth is the place of combate Christian life is the death of man perfect love like the Phenix seeks death and findes life in the same flames the Crosse gave grace grace now giveth the crosse the sacred spouse saith she is fair but brown scorched with the burning beauty of divine love He that cannot suffer cannot love he that cannot love is not worthy of God or the name of a Christian. It is love that triumph'd over Iesus Christ annihilated him to the condition of our mortality it is love that humbled him even to our lowness and infirmities it is love that crucified him Christianity hath no other love or grace If then the Christian will love if he will be subject to the Kingdom of grace he must defie all sufferings and couragiously embrace all that shall befall him for love overthrowes all and triumphs over the soul. If she flatter it is to hurt if it hurt it is to kill so they who seek true and solid piety must not behold God but in the Crosse nor consider grace but in humility and sufferings My well-beloved saith the spouse in the Canticles is a bundle of myrrhe she confesses she fainted and dyed in the communications of love she received from her God For when the spouse had given her his love and ordained charity in her she instantly adds stay me with flaggons comfort me with apples for I am sick of love The greatness of God the infinity of his being his divine spirit are so powerful that if he never so little communicate himself to the soul by the purity of love and grace He is able to annihilate and consume her For if he apply himself to the Creature without proportioning himself to its capacity he cannot be supported for he overwhelms and ruines the created being by this power infinite and infinitely predominating over a being so small so subjected to his power In fine it would swallow up and consume it if he did not proportion his operation to our weakness and if he gave us not a capacity and force to bear it But whatsoever he doth if he communicate himself he alwayes annihilates if he giveth grace he changeth the man if he giveth light he humbles him if he make him to bear his love he wounds him Thus the soul that will love God must love sufferings he that will love the life of grace must lose himself and annihilate himself to receive divine operations He that will beare the light of truth must humble himself seeing God doth not manifest himself but to the humble of spirit and that all the works of God bear his Crosse in humility Hence we learn that it is necessary we esteem the Crosse and sufferings and embrace them with joy and fervour of spirit but we must further observe that sufferings subversions losses and humiliations and other misfortunes of humane life are necessary to a Christian to keep him steadfast amidst the deceits and blandishments of the World the subtleties and surprizes of the Devill By these wayes which we call rigorous God severs us from the world and takes us from kindness to the creatures he makes use of these losses and subversions as of gall and bitterness to mingle with the sweets that the creatures present to us He uses humiliation and affliction to abate our pride and if he do leave us for a time it is to
consequently follows that the centre the repose of a Christian cannot be but in this estate of sufferings and in the same condition of suffering that Iesus Christ was here upon earth When we say that the centre and spirit of Christianity is no other then the cross annihilations and adversities we must conceive it in the highest and consider that the Son of God came into the World for the glory of his Father to satisfie his divine Iustice and for the sanctification of our souls These were his designes desires and thoughts Now the thoughts and intentions of the Son of God are eternall and permanent for they are divine and it is the property of the essence and of divine actions to be immutable and permanent Seeing then that the Son of God hath chosen the cross from all eternity lived upon earth in the spirit of sufferance he remains alwayes in the thoughts of the cross in the desires of humiliation and the rigour of death the zeal of the glory of his Father goes not from his heart but he preserves this spirit and offers himself to his Father to bear it eternally and to suffer the effects of it if it be his good pleasure This zeal ought not to be unfruitfull this offer is not to be refused and yet the estate of his greatness and the condition of his glory cannot permit it What remedy Love alwayes wise and inventive hath found out a means to satisfie the equity of his desires and divine affection and the Majesty of his glory for the eternall Father hath given his Son a mysticall body which is his Church he hath appointed him Head over all his Church which is his body all Christians are members of this body true members as the body is a true body though a mysticall body We are saith the Apostle members of his body of his flesh and of his bones Now to this body and these members the spirit and zeal of Iesus Christ communicates it self by the designe and speciall counsel of the blessed Trinity In pursuit of this divine counsel the Son of God pours into his Church and upon Christians the zeal of the glory of God the spirit of the cross and the love of justice he pours it out as he pleases distributing his gifts according to his holy will To some he communicates his spirit of sufferance and crosses to others that of death and to speak more generally he communicates his estates and spirit to whom he pleases and as he pleases So Saint Paul I fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh Reflecting on this truth we shall cleerly see that the spirit of Christianity is no other then the spirit of Iesus which he communicates to his Church being the head and to Christians his members And as this spirit is no other then a desire of the glory of God love of the cross and zeal of justice it follows they who will be good Christians must necessarily bear this spirit and be in this estate of annihilation and the cross and embrace all adversities that they meet with yea embrace them couragiously as an order of God established upon them and as an estate which is singularly proper for them In this Disposition they shall find the centre and repose of their souls and in this subjection to the cross they shall obtain the peace that Iesus Christ hath acquired for us by his cross We may also say that to suffer Christianly is to bear all things with cheerfulness of spirit doing like the Apostles who departed rejoycing that they were accounted worthy to suffer shame for his Names sake and like the first Christians who took joyfully the spoyling of their goods defied torments and the cruelty of beasts like Saint Ignatius the burning of fire as Saint Lawrence the violence of torments as Saint Agnes and in the Churches first beginning their zeal to suffer was so great that it made the Apostle Saint Iames to say Count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations This advice will seem hard for the rigours of the cross and pains of this life are too piercing but if we love all will be easie for where love is saith Saint Bernard there is nothing but sweetness and nothing is difficult to him that loves though thornes guard and encompass the Rose we gather it notwithstanding and enjoy its beauty and odour Iacob sayes he served seven years for Rachel and they seemed unto him but a few dayes because he loved her so much that he was insensible of the travail He also that will suffer Christianly must love for he that cannot love cannot suffer and he that can neither suffer nor love is no Christian seeing that love is the spirit of Christianity and sufferance the spirit of love This principle considered no rigours that we find in humane life can appear difficult and misfortunes and pains are onely irk some to us for want of love Let us then but love and they will all be easie by love the sufferings of Christians are distinguished from those of others For it is common to all men to suffer it is the condition of their being and portion of their life and the more they think themselves secure the more they are surprised with misfortunes but it belongs onely to Christians to suffer with love The sinner is drawn by the neck like a slave to do the will of God the good man willingly followes him and findes no pain in any thing but on the contrary he finds comfort in travail and repose in displeasure In this sense the Apostle cryes out upon sight of the wounds and scarrs he endured for Iesus Christ Henceforth let no man trouble me for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Iesus And elsewhere I will glory willingly in my infirmities that the power of Iesus Christ may dwell in me To suffer in this disposition is to suffer Christianly or else let us say that to suffer Christianly is to suffer with an esteem of sufferings There are divers reasons why we should take and well esteem them but the principall consisteth in that Iesus Christ hath chosen this manner of life as a way that honoureth more divinely the Majesty of God then any other estate and he hath chosen this way from all eternity and by consequence from all eternity he beares the thoughts and love of the Cross. He hath chosen the Cross saith St. Paul he hath embraced it from the first moment of his incarnation and by an excess of love he began to suffer as soon as he was born And that which is to be observed is that by the election of his divine wisdom which never fails he hath made choyce of confusion and contempt rather then greatness and contentment So saith the Apostle of him and we find it in his divine Mysteries And from hence comes the esteem that we ought to have thereof
displease him and as much as she hath displeased him by her offences she desires to glorifie him and this desire bears her to a zeal of Gods justice and finally this zeal animates her to support all things patiently and to embrace them freely Hence we learn that the true spirit of Repentance consisteth not onely in sorrow for sins committed and a hatred of all sins but also it contains a desire to glorifie God for we can no more enter into Paradise without this then without repentance Herein they must have a care who perform indeed some acts of mortification and suffer many things but with certain dissemblings or out of some private considerations or concernments and many times out of curiosity Let them take heed they build not with straw for true repentance hath no eyes but for God no other regard but to content God and to glorifie his divine justice The more love the soul hath the more ardent is her zeal so that if she love much she desires to sorrow much and believes she hath never done enough for true love is never satisfied Such a soul esteemeth all pains sweet injuries truth contempt honour and labours the enjoyments of her spirit O how good it is to suffer thus for who knows how to love knows how to suffer and transported with the love of sufferings cryes out with the penitent King Lord prove me and try me search my reins and heart To be throughly acquainted with true repentance we must further consider the effects of it for if it be true the effects of it shall be as certain and will be great and true True repentance annihilates us and destroys sin in us and the fountains of sin as also our evil inclinations and vicious habits it roots out of our hearts all that divides us from God all that displeaseth him it converts us to God it drawes us neer to him it gives us God and separates us from the creatures and our selves For the true penitent is crucified in all things and dead to himself of a death to sin which giveth him life in God and makes him lead a new life altered in himself and in his actions This is the true meaning of Saint Paul where he saith As you have yeilded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity even so now yeild your members servants to righteousness unto holiness Which shews the great change and conversion which repentance must operate in us seeing our members which have been servants to sin must now be onely servants to righteousness and to serve God after a manner which operates in us sanctification and serves as an instrument to our glory Further true repentance unites us to God and puts us into a new and particular relation to Iesus Christ. He acquires a new right over us when we participate of his mercies and applies to us the merits of his death and sufferings pardoning our sin He acquires a new right over us because he applies to us the price of his blood by the merits of his death He withdraws us from the empire of sin whereto we had subjected and sold our selves he delivers us from the captivity and slavery of vice to put us into the liberty of his children into the possession of his spirit so that from the time that he delivered us from the tyranny of sin we belong unto him and are his children his captives his heritage we are so many times his as he pardons our sins as many sins as he pardons so many times he offers himself to his eternall Father to pay the price of our misdeeds and offereth him the merit and satisfaction of his death for the redemption of offences Thus he purchaseth us anew as often as he pardoneth our sins Repentance if it be true gives the Son of God a new right in us and draws us from the right we have of our selves to put us into new propriety as to him whence it follows that the sins which separated us from God by our own default serve by the bands of repentance to unite us to God by the new right Iesus Christ hath to us by the band of love which we have to him Many sins are forgiven her for she loved much and he to whom less is pardoned loved less saith Iesus Christ. True repentance produceth two admirable effects one in relation to Iesus Christ which comprehends an abnegation from the creature and our selves to be God's and Iesus Christ's to whom we must be the more united the more he hath pardoned us The Father is an effect of love which issues from this union adherence He that is most united loves most and the more he loves the faster he ties himself Mary Magdalen is an example hereof who was no sooner converted but she fastened her self to Iesus Christ to crucifie her self in his love and to live no longer then with him and for him If we will examine what hath been said it will be easie to see that many persons deceive themselves in this business of so great concernment I mean Repentance who go so negligently and indifferently to this Sacrament that being they are sensible neither of the effect nor advantage of it and it is much to be feared lest they find at the hour of death rather the penitence of a perfidious Iudas of an impious Antiochus of a sensuall Esau then of a Saint Peter or a Mary Magdalen However if be let him apprehend the menaces of the Son of God If ye do not repent ye shall likewise perish He speaks of the true repentance which cannot be true if it have not the true effects else it is not repentance Herein the Christian must take heed as the most important thing of his salvation If we apply these principles of truth we shall find that it hath been no digression to speak of Repentance but that by the same principles which oblige us to bear the spirit of true penitence we have the grace and faculty to live patiently and Christianly amidst all contrarieties and disturbances of this life and in pursuit of that we may make use with profit of all accidents we meet with in the world He that lives in the spirit of repentance as a perfect Christian ought not onely to suffer with ease and cheerfulness but also to subject himself to the divine will and honour of God wherein consists the spirit of repentance In brief he makes his profit of all as a faithfull steward of God's gifts I say he makes profit knowing it is a favour received of Iesus Christ that all sufferings and adversities in this world are profitable to us being sanctified by the pretious sufferings of the Son of God and may serve to satisfie the justice of God which must be looked upon as a particular mercy and favour which Iesus the Son of God hath obtain'd for us by his incarnation and death For if we consider naturally the sufferings and afflictions of mans life they
can no way profit us because as men and sinners and the children of Adam we are subject to all the miseries of nature we are condemned to eat our bread in the sweat of our brows and undergo all the maledictions of God and we know that all the evils incident to nature and that happen to us in the course of our life are but the guerdon of our crimes the portion of man and the effect of sin wherein we are born So that these evills deserve not that God should regard them of themselves as being incapable to satisfie God's Iustice were it not that the Sonne of God making himself man and charging himself with our nature with all our infirmities hath sanctified them in his person and in his use of them So that bearing them in his spirit we bear them with blessing and happiness since that when he was made a sacrifice for our sins and became a propitiation to appease the wrath of God for our offences he suffered the pain of death due to sin whereby it was blessed and sanctified and by an effect worthy his bounty he would that the sufferings of men which were but the effects and punishments of sin should merit grace and find acceptation when we support them in his spirit and in his divine dispositions This St. Paul teaches saying Ye know the grace of our Lord Iesus Christ that though he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor that you through his poverty might be made rich For the Sonne of God making himself man is subject to our necessities and labours that in our labours and necessities we might be made rich in good works in patience and in the spirit of Repentance When therefore we consider the sufferrings of this life and all the humiliations and disgraces that may befall us we must look upon them two wayes First As an effect and punishment of sin Secondly As the spirit of Iesus and as sanctified and made divine in his sacred person The first are not profitable nor are they proper but for the wicked who are in chastisements and sufferings by way of Iustice suffering what they have merited But the second are full of blessedness and happiness for it is in them and by them that Iesus Christ sanctifies us that he dwells in us and establishes in our souls the works of grace If ye be reproached for the name of Christ happy are ye for the spirit of glory and of God resteth on you Words which tell us the spirit of Iesus Christ his grace and glory inhabit in souls who suffer for love of him The Christian therefore that suffers must take heed to this vertue that he suffer not as a criminall that is by necessity and force but as a Christian and in necessary dispositions For since God hath given a blessing to sufferings and by a mercy spring from these sufferings of Iesus Christ we may profit by the disadvantages of this World we must not unprofitably let slip the occasions nor indifferently passe over the necessity pains and severall estates of this life but make profit thereof seeing God will have it so and that he gives us power to do so For this reason must we endeavour to bear them in the spirit and in the blessing that Iesus Christ hath given them and according to the use he would have us to make of them The Christian that lives in this care and vigilance may hope for the recompence of Heaven and having gone through the combate of this life which to the good is but a continuall Martyrdom may say with Saint Paul I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the Faith henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous Iudge shall give me at that day In fine the most assured mark we have of the perfection of a soul is sufferings which are continual and abundant to the just and if it be lawfull to take any Argument of our salvation or any sign of our election it is in sufferings and in the manner of bearing them So the Sonne of God calls those happy that suffer for his sake and for his glory and we may say of such souls as Saul said of David when seeing him so patient in the greatest violence of his afflictions he cryed out with teares Now I know for certain that thou shalt be surely King and that the Kingdom of Israel shall be established in thy hand We may say the same of a patient Christian but let us leave him in this hope and propose to him some entertainments of Piety CHAP. XVI The Abridgement of the fourth part teaching of Christian grace CHrist saith we are all ingraffed in him as the scien is in the Vine-stock we are bone of his bone flesh of his flesh as the Apostle sayes for we are his body we are in him and with him This truth alone shews how much we are obliged to live holily and perfectly to be regulated in our actions in our exteriour modest and holy being united to Iesus Christ our life must be an expression of the life of Iesus and as Iesus being the Son of God by nature is the Image of his Father so a Christian being the child of God by grace must be the Image of the same Iesus Christ an Image so perfect and divine as cannot be fully expressed For on the one side the life of a perfect Christian is a life hid from the eyes of man spirituall and invisible and therefore infinitely remov'd from the capacity of the children of Adam who are materiall and as the Apostle saith carnall and animal On the other side this life is a life of grace a divine life a life of God in man a life full of secrets operated by God in the depth of the soul. Our weak nature hath not termes proportionable to the greatness and Majesty of divine things and therefore all that we can say of the state of Christianity of grace and of the life of a perfect Christian doth but derogate from and deface the value of this work which cannot appear in its lustre but to their eyes who have the true light of Heaven nor can be conceived or comprehended but by souls that are chosen of God We must notwithstanding draw the last lines of our Christian image and lightly passing over what hath been said to sweeten that which appeares either too high or too harsh that so we may benefit those who will see things in perspective and superficially we must also fix our eyes and thoughts upon Christian grace which will make us apprehend the truth of what hath been proposed and if we can understand it will cause us to admire the indulgence and communications of God who out of the excess of his love the more advanceth men and sinners the more they were debased by the greatness of their ingratitude that grace might superabound
is onely expected that Christians dispose themselves to participate of this happinesse and being called thereto endeavour to correspond faithfully therewith God doth the same in the regency of his Church the Sonne of God making use of his power hath established therein severall estates orders and societies separated from the common and from one another which he consecrates and appropriates to the severall estates and Mysteries of his life Some honour his solitude and hidden life others his penance others his poverty others his obedience all adorn and beautifie the body of his Church and in the diversity of their functions and estates honour adore and imitate the severall operations and Mysteries of the life of Iesus Christ who distributes his spirit and the grace of his Mysteries to all according to what manner he pleases He doth the same in the particular Government of souls he causes and calls them to elevate and establish them in such estate as pleaseth him sometimes by sufferings sometimes by privations one while by love another by simplicity and infancy In a word he estates them as he pleases to be honoured by them one and the same spirit according to St. Paul working all things dividing to every one severally as it pleaseth him The same Apostle represents this truth under the similitude of a humane body all are members of the same body animated enlivened with the same spirit and yet they have all their several offices and functions particular and different The case is the same saith this holy Apostle in the Government of the Church which is the body of Iesus Christ whereof all christians are members though all make up but one body and are the animated onely by the spirit of Iesus yet are they called and employed to particular estates and in all there is a difference of gifts and operations but it is but one spirit and one God who does all in all they are different effects of one and the same principall cause It is the same Iesus who chooseth the souls to communicate to them the graces and divers estates of his life How happy is that christian who is called to this happiness Herein consisteth the perfection of the soul as in things naturall we say that the Creature is most perfect when it most participates of the being life and perfections of God so in the state of graces that soul is most perfect which participates most of the graces of the divers estates and qualities of the Sonne of God This grace and favour is not for every one and farre above the ordinary The Sonne of God doth not call all souls to a participation of his life nor alwayes communicates to them the spirit and graces of his Mysteries Yet the christian who would live in a solid piety and adherence to Iesus Christ and would feel the effects of his divine communications must desire this favour and earnestly demand it He must often reverence and adore the life thoughts designes Mysteries and estates of the life of Iesus He must offer himself with all his heart to the power spirit and grace enclosed in those divine Mysteries In a word he must carefully remove from his soul all hinderances and inclinations opposite to the designes and operations of the Sonne of God But above all he must continue constant in subjecting his soul to the power and will of the Sonne of God He that will practise all this must make these uses following The first is that the soul always resigne her self to the power of the Son of God than he may make in her and by her all that he will for his glory This resignation to be perfect must be grounded upon a freedom of spirit a freedom which is the true spirit of the children of God and consisteth in an estate of indifferency and independency as to all things as well in the order of nature as of grace and being subject to God onely by this freedom all things in the world are indifferent the soul remaining in a pure capacity of submitting to whatsoever the Son of God will operate in her and by her giving her self up wholly to his divine power This liberty of spirit is the principall estate and first ground of Christianity for all Christians belong to the Son of God and are left to his power One died for all saith Saint Paul that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him who died for them Teaching us that as the Son of God gave his life for us and by his excessive charity delivered himself to the ignominious death of the cross to do the will of his Father so he hath right and power to choose and consecrate us by his grace to offer us an Holocaust of sweetness and honour to the glory of his Father that as he hath been the victim of our sins we may be the victims of his love Hence it is evident that the Son of God hath power and right to put our souls into what estate it shall please him for his glory be it an estate of life or death of privation or abundance of confusion or honour and may choose out souls and advance them to the participation of the mysteries of his life to render to him particular homage and service We must then resigne our selves wholly in all things to Iesus Christ. To establish us in this disposition the liberty of spirit whereof we speak is absolutely necessary For when it hath separated us from all things nay even from our selves it puts us into an amplitude and capacity to be all that God will have us to be and to bear the effects of his grace and power And therefore the Christian who seeks to establish himself in true piety and live with fidelity must endeavour to conform himself in this liberty of spirit for it is difficult nay impossible to adhere to Iesus Christ to depend on him and faithfully to receive the operation of his grace if we are not in this liberty of spirit that is an independency as to all things This is the spirit and disposition that God requires in a Christian according to the Apostle That the spirit we have received be not a spirit of bondage but of liberty and adoption This first disposition leads us farther and advances us in the wayes of piety and puts us into a second disposition by which we accept with humility and submission all the estates and effects that the spirit of the grace of Iesus Christ shall operate in us and bear with patience and obedience whatsoever rigour and difficulty we meet with Having so received them we are also bound by this disposition to act according to the quality and extent of grace communicated to us and to live conformably to the estate whereinto the Son of God puts us We must remain firm in that subjection and liberty of spirit we speak of In this use consisteth the peace and liberty of the soul For
example If God put us into an estate of suffering we must accept it and continue therein with patience and submission of spirit not struggling with the good will and pleasure of God but act therein and persist with courage and fidelity We must do the same in privation barrenness and all other estates wherein the Son of God shall please to put us which if we do we shall remain in a true adherence and union with Iesus Christ depending upon him with fidelity which is all that piety aims at CHAP. X. That Christian piety obliges us to submit our life and actions to the honour of Christ. THere cannot any be ignorant that true piety consists in rendring honour to God it is our first exercise the duties of Religion and Love are of such a nature that they must necessarily be referred to God but that of piety obliges us to honour God and to referr our selves to him and consequently to the Son of God For he that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father but by an obligation more particular greater and more speciall in as much as by the grace of Christianity and Principles of true piety we are united to the Son of God and adhere to him as members to the Head This adherence doth not onely put us into a subjection to the power of Iesus but also produces in our souls a regard of love and honour a regard that purifies and directs our intentions and actions not to love or honour any thing but Iesus the Son of God by him to love honour and serve the Father Thus the first estate of piety which consisteth in this adherence obliges us to referr all to him and to honur him in all things This truly is clear in what manner soever we consider it whether in the Oeconomy of our salvation or in the regency of the Church all things invite and oblige us to honour the Son of God The first thing that the eternal Father requires of us in giving his Son to the world the first designe he hath upon his creature is to oblige them to render to his Son the same honour which we render to his infinite supreme Majesty This Obligation is so strict that even at his birth he would have the Angels acknowledge and adore him he sent them from Heaven to Bethlehem to reverence him not onely in the greatness of his divinity but in the lowness of our humanity when conceal'd in a stable and laid in a manger He called thither the Shepherds and the Kings that it might be as David sayes All kings shall fall before him and all nations shall serve him He was no sooner born in the world but the kings of the world came from the East to do him homage to lay their Crowns and Scepters at his feet confessing that all the greatness of the earth ought to serve and honour him The eternall Father sent Angels and men to render honour to his Son to adore his divinity humanized and his humanity deify'd All nations of the world shall assemble and all men shall come to judgement that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father This the Son demands of the Father as part of that fruit he expects of his labours it is one of the richest Iewells of that Crown which he received upon his triumph by the cross over the world sin and death Many think it was the meaning of that Prayer to his Father in the day of his sufferings Father glorifie thy Son to the end that thy Son may glorify thee We owe him this honour for if he humbled himself to our infirmities and the shame and ignominy due to our offences is it not reason that we render him the honour whereof he deprives himself for our sakes and that we serve and honour him in a manner wholly particular seeing he onely of the persons of the most holy Trinity suffered our contempts and confusions This exercise of piety which we here propose as the first obligation we have in the estate of Christianity holds forth one of the noblest most eminent vertues of the Catholique Religion and one of the highest actions of our soul. For if according to Thomas Aquinas we are obliged as soon as we arrive to the use of Reason to some acknowledgements of God and a submission to him as the Author of our nature and our good with much more reason ought we to say that the first thought we ought to have of the Son of God in relation to piety is to referr our selves to him as the principle of our being in the state of grace And if we would make use as we ought of the spirit of Christianity and of the gifts we receive of the Sonne of God we must employ them wholly to his honour and service in such sort that as Iesus is the Authour of our being life and actions he may also be their object and end This is an inseparable obligation and an indispensable duty For if the Christian and all that is in him proceed from the Sonne of God and is consecrated to him by his death it followes that he can neither make use of himself or any thing else but the Sonne of God otherwise he might refer his actions to some other then him to whom they are due and for whom they are consecrated which were to prophane the most holy things and to enjoy the gifts of Iesus Christ against his intentions which is a sacrilegious treason against the divine Majesty For as amongst men he is guilty of theft and deserves death who converts the treasure of his Prince to his private use to passe away his life in vanities and sports so is that Christian criminall who abuses the gifts of the Sonne of God and is prodigall of the Treasures of his bounty That we receive all from the Sonne of God no man can doubt for of him and for him life is given us as also motions sense reason repose health and sleep and in a word the use of all things These are the Treasures of his Court for he hath by his travels and sufferings acquired and by the price of his blood and life purchased our lives our actions our thoughts nay even the time which we enjoy Which having done his intention is that we acknowledging his love and liberality therein should love him serve him and in all things mind his honour and glory This being so what have we to do but to follow his intentions to refer our selves wholly to him to honour him in all things since we have all from him and that for this end he gives us also his speciall graces In what therefore ought we to employ our time our life our health our repose and all that we have but for the honour of the Sonne of God of whom we have received them and who continues them for that very purpose This manner of rendring honour and homage to the Sonne of God is an
Saint Paul explains where he says that God spoke to the world four thousand years and conducted and taught men after divers manners and sent Angels he gave a Law writ with his own hand he prescribed many Ceremonies and in all ages caused Prophets to speak But in the Law of Grace he speaks to us by his Sonne who teacheth us supernaturall truths till then unknown to the World and reserved for the Excellency of the state of Christianity The Angels now guide us no more but attend us the written Law doth not oblige us the Ceremonies are now limited and the Prophets speak no longer It is Iesus the Word and the Sonne of the eternall Father who becoming man and conversing among men speaks to us and teaches us He is our Angel to inlighten us our Law to direct us our Prophet to speak to us and our Master to teach us He is the abridg'd word and by the condition that he hath made with his Father he conducts us by his spirit he illuminates us by his grace he directs us by his providence and he is the word of the Father so he teaches us not onely by his words but also by the holy and adorable actions of his life the rule the Law and modell of our life Now if Iesus be the rule and law of our life it is manifest that we ought to imitate him if we would live Christianly and if by the exercises of a solid piety we desire to attain a perfection suitable to the vocation and estate we profess we must choose none but those which imitate the Sonne of God holding it a maxime in all kindes of exercises that the Christian is so much the more devout and perfect the more conformable his life and actions are to those of Iesus Christ and that he is neither devout nor perfect but as far as he imitates the life and actions of Iesus Christ for true piety and Christian perfection if rightly understood consisteth onely in this point This Principle and Precept we have also from Iesus Christ where he sayes If any man serve me let him follow me and where I am there my servant shall be also the servant of God must imitate Iesus Christ. To serve is nothing else but to follow to follow according to St. Austine is to imitate so that the devotion whereby we should serve God is not devotion but illusion if it be not in the exercises which cause us to follow and imitate the life of Iesus Christ. Here we may see how much they are deceived who dare call him rash and accuse him of presumption that would imitate Iesus Christ who say it is to soar too high and that it is impossible man should imitate his God and blinded with this ignorance are content to employ themselves in some good morall exercises The Apostle condemns this errour saying Iesus Christ suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow his steps St. Paul confesses that his study and principall care was to imitate Iesus Christ to which end he writ to the Corinthians Be ye followers of me as I am of Iesus Christ. In a word we are not made Christians nor participate of the graces of the Sonne of God but to be put into a capacity and obligation to imitate him This is his intention when he sayes who doth not follow him is not worthy of him To say the contrary is to oppose the opinions of the Fathers a truth more manifest then day By these Principles we discover another blindness greater then the other a deceit more dangerous in many Christians who onely study to perfect their reason and think they do much to follow that in every point wherein they are much deceived For they believe it sufficient to live reasonably and Christianly and in this belief forget or neglect the rest thinking they are arrived to an estate perfect enough But is quite contrary for by the use of reason onely we live as perfect men or at most but as good Philosophers but if we would live and operate as good Christians and Children of God we must advance our selves above Reason to live not a humane but a divine life that is the life that the Sonne of God liv'd upon Earth and communicated to true Christians the life of the new man To live this life we make use not of reason but of grace which is farre above reason and must be the principle of Christian actions For onely grace can bring us to God and render us worthy of God that is of God considered as the object of our Faith and Religion The foundation of all consisteth in this that a humane spirit and reason is not our conduct nor the rule of our life as Christians Iesus Christ is the onely rule law and principle thereof wherefore in our exercises of piety we must have this continually before our eyes if we would be devout viz. we must follow him if we would be saved and we must imitate him if we will follow him Which we are now to consider how it is to be done CHAP. XIII The Practise of what hath been proposed in the imitation of Jesus Christ. WHen we speak of imitating the Sonne of God we mean not doing of miracles as he did we are not commanded to walk upon the Sea to raise up the dead to life and to give sight to the blind We mean not the being elevated to an intuitive knowledge of the secrets of the Divinity this is onely for Iesus these are the effects of his almighty power and the marks of his Mission We are not called to come into competition with him but as he was humbled to our meanness and was cloathed with our nature becoming man and taking a new being and estate so he takes also a new manner of life conformable to ours which we ought to imitate after which we are to form the interiour of our Consciences and the procedure of our actions He annihilated himself in the Incarnation saith the Apostle he humbled himself in all the Mysteries of his life he made himself poor in all his estates he was obedient even to the Crosse he suffered even to death he hath shewed his love in all his works In a word he practised all manner of vertues in the progress of his life Let us do the like he was born for our sakes and all that he did was onely that he might imitate him as the modell of our life For this reason he chose a kind of life full of various estates and practised severall actions that all sorts of persons in all manner of estates should find in him the Idaea of their actions and the prototype of their life Thus to imitate Iesus Christ is an Obligation belonging to the state of Christianity When we receive Baptisme we are incorporated into him as members this incorporation doth not onely bind us to adhere to him as members to their head but to be like