perpetrated The tears of the disconsolate mother were not omitted in her absence Cleopatra made this whole Tragedie to be presented the combate was much enkindled and the battery was forcible Herod who wanted no eloquence in his own occasions replieth with a countenance very lowly and modest Prince and you Sirs who are of the Counsel I hold the Apologie of Herod full of craft scepter of Judea neither of Hircanus nor Alexandra never having had any purpose to flatter them for this end yea much less to fear them You know Most Illustrious Anthonie the Kingdom is in my hands I hold it of you from you all my greatness ariseth and in you all my hopes are concluded If you command I am at this present ready not onely to leave the scepter but my life also which never have I been desirous to preserve but for your service But it troubleth me the way of death being open to all the world the path of reputation which is more dear to me than life should be shut against my innocencie I am persecuted by women and much I wonder how the soul of Queen Cleopatra wholly celestial can nourish so much spleen against a King who never hath failed in any respect lawfully due to her merit For Alexandra it is not strange that she raise such a storm against me her fierce and haughty spirit hath always opposed my patience endeavoring by all means to disparage my government to pull a crown from me which a more puissant hand than her Ancestours hath placed on my head What apparence is there that being by the favour of the Romans a peaceable possessour of a Kingdom the which even by the consent of my adversaries I sought not so regular was my ambition I should attempt a horrible crime which cannot fall but into the mind of a monster No man will be wicked in chearfulness of heart the memorie of the recompence which man proposeth to himself ever beareth the torch before the crime To what purpose should I attempt upon the life of Aristobulus to settle my affairs They were already established your gracious favour most Noble Anthonie hath afforded me more than all their machinations can vanquish But I perpetually have kept back the bloud Royal from dignities What keeping back is it when I have cherished them in my own bosom as much as possible Every one knows Hircanus the prime man of this Royal family being held as a prisoner among the Parthians I bent all my spirits employed all my credit to have him set at libertie and to procure his return to Court where he now liveth in full tranquilitie enjoying all the priviledges of Royaltie but the carefull sollicitude of affairs It is known I have divided my crown and bed with his grand-child Mariamne making her both Queen of people and wife of a King I have given the High-Priesthood to her brother Aristobulus of my meer and free will not enforced by any constraint as being absolute in the mannage of my own affairs and if in ought I delayed him it was because the minority of his age ran not equal with my affections but in effect he hath been beheld High-Priest at eighteen years of age which is a favour very extraordinarie Alexandra his mother who maketh way to this business hath ever had all the libertie of my Court except the licence of ruining herself which she passionately pursueth For what reason had she to hide herself in a coffin and cause herself to be carried in the night as a dead bodie to steal from my Court and after she had wronged me in mine house to traduce me among strangers If she desired to make a voyage into Aegypt she needed to have spoken but one word it had been sufficient But she pleaseth herself in counterfeiting a false peril in a real safetie to thrust into the danger of life those who make her live in all reposed assurance I having discovered this practice did not let fall one word of bitterness against her desirous she should enjoy at her ease the sight of me as a spectacle of patience thinking all folly sufficiently punished with its own proper conscience Certain time after the death of this young Prince happened which draweth tears of compassion from me for I loved him and much it troubled me his mother perverted the sweetness of his exellent nature and cut more stuff out for his youth than he was able to stitch together He is dead not in my house but in the house of his mother dead by an accident which no man could prevent dead sporting in the water a faithless element where a thousand and a thousand have without any such purpose perished dead among the youth of the Court with whom daily be disported himself His own meer motion bare him into the water the bravery of his youth caused him to dally even in danger it self without any possibility to divert him and his own mishap hath drowned him It is to tie me to bard conditions if Alexandra will make me both accountable for the youthfull levities of her son as if I were his governour and of the frail inconstancy of elements as if I were Lord of them This pernicious spirit spake this with so much grace and probability that he gained many hearts So much force had eloquence even in the hands of iniquitie Behold him now on the shore out of peril remaining in Anthonie's Court in all liberty to attend the sentence of his justification In the mean time being as he was wise and liberal in all occasions by force of presents he purchased the hearts of the chief and made all the accusation of Cleopatra appear to be the passion of a woman ill advised Mark Anthony himself said to Cleopatra she did ill to intermeddle so much with forreign Kingdoms and that if she took this course she would raise enemies prejudicial to her estate That Herod being a King it was not fit to use him like a subject and that it would be her happiness rather to have him a friend than an enemie As these things were handled in Anthonie's Court the Queen Mariamne and her mother Alexandra ceased not to be observed by the sollicitous diligence of the mother and sister of Herod Joseph his uncle An act of great stupiditie in Joseph uncle of Herod played the Goaler and often visited Queen Mariamne sometime to treat some affairs with her sometime in the way of complement This man began to burn like a butterflie in the eyes of this incomparable beauty and much affected her although he saw himself far off from all manner of hope Notwithstanding he found some contentment to have fixed his affection in so eminent a place This passion made him foolish and full of babble having already rudeness enough of his own nature which made him utter strange extravagancies For one day there being occasion to speak of Herod's affection to Mariamne his wife Alexandra the mother mocked thereat in an exorbitant
much as businesses of that nature would permit But her mother Alexandra touched to the quick to behold her self amongst so many spies she who was ever desirous to converse and live with all royall liberty resolved to play at double or quit to break the guyves of specious servitude or yield her neck to Herods sword if it should come to pass her calamity transported her into such extremity What doth she Cleopatra that Queen who had filled the world with her fame was then in Aegypt and naturally hated Herod as well for his barbarous disposition as for particular interests of her own person For she knew he much had entermedled in her affairs and given Mark Anthony counsel to forsake her yea to kill her This Tyrant was so accustomed to say Kill that he easily advised others to use the same medicine which was with him to his own maladies frequent It is a strange thing that Cleopatra one day passing through Judea he resolved to send her into the other world thinking therewith to gratifie Mark Anthony but was disswaded by his friends saying it was too audacious to attempt and able for ever to ruin his fortune The design was never published But Cleopatra had cause enough besides to hate Herod which much emboldened Alexandra to write to her in such like terms ALEXANDRA to the Queen CLEOPATRA Health Madame SInce God hath given you leave to be born the most Letter of Alexandra to Cleopatra accomplished Queen in all qualities it is fit your Greatness serve as a sanctuary for the innocent and an Altar for the miserable The wretched Alexandra who hath much innocency void of support and too many calamities without comfort casteth her self into the arms of your Majesty not to give her a scepter but to secure the life of her and her son the most precious pledge which remaineth of heavens benignity Your Majesty is not ignorant that fortune having made me the daughter and mother of a King Herod hath reduced me to the condition of a servant I am not ambitious to recount my sufferings which I had rather dissemble but whatsoever a slave can endure in a gally I bear in a Kingdom through the violence of a son in law who having stoln the diadem from my children would also deprive them of life We are perpetually among spies sharp knives and black apprehensions of death which would less hurt us if it were more sudden Stretch out a hand of assistance to the afflicted and afford us some petty nook in your Kingdom till the storm be over-blown and that we may see some sparkles of hope to glimmer in your affairs Glory thereby shall abide with you and with us everlasting gratitude Cleopatra having received these letters made a ready answer and invited her to hasten speedily into Aegypt with her son protesting she should esteem it an unspeakable glory to serve as a sanctuary and refuge for the affliction of such a Princess Resolution of departure is taken but the execution is a hard task The poor Io knows not how to withdraw Enterprise of Alexandra her self from this many-eyed Argus In the end as the wit of woman is inventive especially in matters that concern their proper interests she without discovering ought to any one no not to her daughter Mariamne fearing least her nature too mild should advise her rarher to rest in the lists of patience than to attempt ways so perilous she I say onely advising with her own passion in this business caused two beers to be made a matter of ill presage to put her self and son into thinking by this means to elude the diligence of the Guard and so to be carried to the sea where a ship attended her and by this way save her life in the power of death But by ill hap a servant of hers named Aesop who was one of those that were appointed to carry the beers going to visit one called Sabbion a friend to the house of Alexandra let some words fall of the intention of his Mistress as thinking to to have spoken to a faithful and secret friend of hers The perfidious Sabbion had no sooner wrung the worm out of this servants nose but he hasteth to open all to Herod supposing it was a very fit opportunity to work his reconciliation he having a long time been suspected and accounted to be of Alexandras faction Herod after he heard this news wanted not spies and centinels The poor Lady with her son is surprised upon the beers drawn out of the sepulcher of the dead to return to the living ashamed and disgraced that her Comedy was no better acted little considering that after her personated part had failed she could nothing at all pretend to life Herod notwithstanding whether he feared the great credit Cleopatra had or whether he would not wholy affright Alexandra thereby with the more facility to oppress her contained himself in the ordinary dissimulation of his own nature without speaking one sole word unto her Although very well in the face of this painted hypocrisie was seen that the clouds were gathered together to make a loud Thunder-crack raise an unresistable tempest The caytive after he had given so many deaths Pitiful death of young Aristobulus in the horrour and affrightment of arms would inflict one even as it were in sport upon a fair sommers day Being at dinner at the house of the miserable Alexandra feigning to have buried in deep oblivion all what was past saith that in favour of youth he this day would play the young man and invite the High-Priest Aristobulus his brother in law to play at tennis with him or some other like exercise The sides were made the elumination was enkindled The young Prince hot and eager played not long but he became all on a water as at that time happened to many other Lords and Gentlemen Behold they all run to the rivers which were near this place of pleasure where they dined Herod who knew the custom of Aristobulus and well foresaw he would not fail to cast himself into these cold baths suborneth base villains who under the shew of pastime should force him to drink more than he would All succeeded as this traiterous wretch had premeditated Aristobulus seeing the other in the water uncloathed himself quickly and bare them company There was no cause why he should swim sport and dally upon this element ever dangerous although less faithless than Herod The poor sacrifice skipped up and down not knowing the unhappiness which attended him But the accursed executioners remembred it well For spying their time in this fatal sport they smothered the poor High-priest under the waters in the eighteenth year of his age and the first of his High-priesthood This bright Sun which rose with such splendour and applause did set in the waves never to appear again but with horrid wanness of death on his discoloured visage Humane hopes where are you True dreams of Vanity and
whereof the poor have too much been frustrated to establish thy vanities and fatten thee in pleasures Where is thy liberality Where are thy alms toward miserable creatures who die in affliction in the streets Observe justice and take example by my disasters Husband it is thy wife so beloved that speaks to thee saying Ah my dearest friends where is the faith plighted in the face of the Church Where are the faithful loves which should have no limit but eternity Death no sooner absented me from thy eyes but forgetfulness drew me out of thy heart I complain not thou livest happy and fortunate in thy new affections for I am in a condition wherein I can neither envy nor malice any but I complain that not onely after my death the children which are pledges of our love were distastful to thee but thou hast wholly lost the memory of one who was so precious to thee and whom thou as a Christian oughrest to love beyond a tomb Open yet once unto her the bowels of thy charity and comfort by thy alms and good works a soul which must expect that help from thee or some other The seventeenth EXAMPLE upon the seventeenth MAXIM Apparition of Souls in Purgatorie HIstories tell us the apparation of souls in Purgatory are so frequent that he who would keep an account may as soon number the stars in the sky or leaves on the trees But as it is not fit to be too credulous in all may be said thereupon so a man must be very impudent to deny all is spoken of it and to oppose as well the authority of so many great personages as the memory of all Ages He who believes nothing above nature will not believe a God of nature How many extraordinary things are there the experience whereof teacheth us the effects and of which God hideth the reasons from us The Philosopher Democritus disputing with Solinus Polyhistor the Sages of his time concerning the secret power of nature held commonly in his hand the stone called cathocita which insensibly sticketh to such as touch it and they being unable to give a reason of it he inferred there were many secrets which are rather to humble our spirits than to satisfie our curiosity Who Jul. Scal. A Porta Caâ—eraâ— can tell why the theamede which is a kind of adamant draweth iron on one side and repelleth it on the other Why do the forked branches of the nut-tree turn towards mines of gold and silver Why do bees often die in the hives after the death of the Master of the family unless they be else-where transported Why doth a dead body cast forth bloud in the presence of the murderer Why do certain fountains in the current of their waters and in their colour carry presages of seasons as that of Blomuza which waxeth red when the countrey is menaced with war Why have so many noble families Diâ—â—arus Petrus Albinus certain signs which never fail to happen when some one of the family is to die The commerce of the living with spirits of the dead is a matter very extraordinarie but not impossible to the Father of spirits who holdeth total nature between his hands Peter of Clugny surnamed the Venerable and esteemed in his time as the oracle of France was a man who proceeded in these affairs with much consideration not countenancing any thing either frivolous or light Behold the cause wherefore I willingly make use of his authority He telleth that in a village of Spain named the Star there was a man of quality called Peter of Engelbert much esteemed in the world for his excellent parts and abundant riches Notwithstanding the spirit of God having made him understand the vanity of all humane things being now far stepped into years he went into a Monastery of the Order of Clugny there the more piously to pass the remnant of his dayes as it is said the best incense cometh from old trees He often spake amongst the holy Fryers of a vision which he saw when he as yet was in the world and which he acknowledged to be no small motive to work his conversion This bruit came to the ears of Venerable Peter who was his General and who for the affairs of his Order was then gone into Spain Behold the cause why he never admitting any discourses to be entertained if they were not well verified took the pains to go into a little Monastery of Nazare where Engelbert was to question him upon it in the presence of the Bishops of Oleron and Osma conjuring him in the virtue of holy obedience to tell him punctually the truth touching the vision he had seen whilest he led a secular life This man being very grave and very circumspect in all he said spake the words which the Authour of the historie hath couched in his proper terms In the time that Alphonsus the younger heir of the great Alphonsus warred in Castile against certain factious dis-united from his obedience he made an Edict that every family in his Kingdom should be bound to furnish him with a souldier which was the cause that for obedience to the Kings commands I sent into his army one of my houshold-servants named Sancius The wars being ended and the troups discharged he returned to my house where having some time so journed he was seized by a sickness which in few dayes took him away into the other world We performed the obsequies usually observed towards the dead and four moneths were already past we hearing nought at all of the state of his soul when behold upon a winters night being in my bed throughly awake I perceived a man who stirring up the ashes of my hearth opened the burning coals which made him the more easily to be seen Although I found my self much terrified with the sight of this ghost God gave me courage to ask him who he was and for what purpose he came thither to lay my hearth abroad But he in a very low voice answered Master fear nothing I am your poor servant Sancius I go into Castile in the company of many souldiers to expiate my sins in the same place where I committed them I stoutly replied If the commandment of God call you thither to what purpose come you hither Sir saith he take it not amiss for it is not without the Divine permission I am in a state not desperate and wherein I may be helped by you if you bear any good will towards me Hereupon I required what his necessity was and what succour he expected from me You know Master said he that a little before my death you sent me into a place where ordinarily men are not sanctified Liberty ill example youth and temerity all conspire against the soul of a poor souldier who hath no government I committed many out-rages during the late war robbing and pillaging even to the goods of the Church for which I am at this present grievously tormented But good Master if you loved me
And if we must needs forsake this miserable body we then desire to leave it by some gentle and easie death This maketh us plainly see the generosity of our Saviour who being Master of life and death and having it in his power to chuse that manner of death which would be least hydeous being of it self full enough of horrour yet nevertheless to conform himself to the will of his heavenly Father and to confound our delicacies he would needs leave his life by the most dolorous and ignominious which was to be found among all the deaths of the whole world The Cross among the Gentiles was a punishment for slaves and the most desperate persons of the whole world The Cross amongst the Hebrews was accursed It was the ordinary curse which the most uncapable and most malicious mouthes did pronounce against their greatest enemies The death of a crucified man was the most continual languishing and tearing of a soul from the body with most excessive violence and agony And yet the Eternal Wisdom chose this kind of punishment and drank all the sorrows of a cup so bitter He should have died upon some Trophey and breathed out his last amongst flowers and left his soul in a moment and if he must needs have felt death to have had the least sense of it that might be But he would trie the rigour of all greatest sufferings he would fall to the very bottom of dishonour and having ever spared from himself all the pleasures of this life to make his death compleat he would spare none of those infinite dolours The devout Simon of Cassia asketh our Saviour going toward Mount Calvarie saying O Lord whither go you with the extream weight of this dry and barren piece of wood Whither do you carry it and why Where do you mean to set it Upon mount Calvary That place is most wild stony how will you plant it Who shall water it Jesus answers I bear upon my shoulders a piece of wood which must conquer him who must make a far greater conquest by the same piece of wood I carry it to mount Calvarie to plant it by my death and water it with my bloud This wood which I bear must bear me to bear the salvation of all the world and to draw all after me And then O faithfull soul wilt not thou suffer some confusion at thine own delicacies to be so fearfull of death by an ordinary disease in a doun-bed amongst such necessary services such favourable helps consolations and kindnesses of friends so sensible of thy condition We bemoan and complain our selves of heat cold distaste of disquiet of grief Let us allow some of this to Nature yet must it be confest that we lament our selves very much because we have never known how we should lament a Jesus Christ crucified Let us die as it shall please the Divine Providence If death come when we are old it is a haven If in youth it is a direct benefit antedated If by sickness it is the nature of our bodies If by external violence it is yet always the decree of Heaven It is no matter how many deaths there are we are sure there can be but one for us 2. Consider further the second condition of a good death which consists in the forsaking of all creatures and you shall find it most punctually observed by our Saviour at the time of his death Ferrara a great Divine who hath written a book of the hidden Word toucheth twelve things abandoned by our Saviour 1. His apparrel leaving himself naked 2. The marks of his dignitie 3. The Colledge of his Apostles 4. The sweetness of all comfort 5. His own proper will 6. The authority of virtues 7. The power of Angels 8. The perfect joys of his soul 9. The proper clarity of his body 10. The honors due to him 11. His own skin 12. All his bloud Now do but consider his abandoning the principal of those things how bitter it was First the abandoning of nearest and most faithfull friends is able to afflict any heart Behold him forsaken by all his so well-beloved Disciples of whom he had made choice amongst all mortal men to be the depositaries of his doctrine of his life of his bloud If Judas be at the mystery of his Passion it is to betray him If S. Peter be there assisting it is to deny him If his sorrowfull mother stand at the foot of the Cross it is to increase the grief of her Son and after he had been so ill handled by his cruel executioners to crucifie him again by the hands of Love The couragious Mother to triumph over her self by a magnanimous constancy was present at the execution of her dear Son She fixed her eyes upon all his wounds to engrave them deep in her heart She opened her soul wide to receive that sharp piercing sword with which she was threatened by that venerable old Simeon at her Purification And Jesus who saw her so afflicted for his sake felt himself doubly crucified upon the wood of the Cross and the heart of his dear Mother We know it by experience that when we love one tenderly his afflictions and disgraces will trouble us more than our own because he living in us by an affectionate life we live in him by a life of reason and election Jesus lived and reposed in the heart of his blessed Mother as upon a Throne of love and as within a Paradise of his most holy delights This heart was before as a bed covered with flowers But this same heart on the day of his Passion became like a scaffold hanged with mourning whereupon our Saviour entered to be tormented and crucified upon the cross of love which was the Cross of his Mother This admirable Merchant who descended from Heaven to accomplish the business of all Ages who took upon him our miseries to give us felicities was plunged within a sea of bloud and in this so precious shipwrack there remained one onely inestimable pearl which was his divine Mother and yet he abandons her and gives her into the hand of his Disciple After he had forsaken those nearest to him see what he does with his body Jesus did so abandon it a little before his death that not being content onely to deliver it as a prey to sorrow but he suffered it to be exposed naked to the view of the world And amongst his sharpest dolours after he had been refused the drink which they gave to malefactours to strengthen them in their torments he took for himself vinegar and gall O what a spectacle was it to see a body torn in pieces which rested it self upon its own wounds which was dying every moment but could not die because that life distilled by drops What Martyr did ever endure in a body so sensible and delicate having an imagination so lively and in such piercing dolours mixt with so few comforts And what Martyr did suffer for all the sins of the
trouble those spirits which have an inclination to mildnesse they say that Joab was his kinsman his faithfull servant the best of his Captains the chief Commander that had followed him from his youth accompanied him through infinite dangers and upheld the Crown a thousand times shaking upon his head He never medled in the factions that were raised against the King he was alwayes the first that dissipated them by the vigour of his spirit resolution counsell of his Arms and of his Sword If he slew Abner it was in revenge of his Brother which the other had slain If he stabbed Amasa it was the chief Captain of the Rebell Absolon whom they would have put in his place for to lay then great faults of the State upon him If he spoke freely to David it was alwayes for his good and for his glory in the mean time at his Death he recommended him to be punished after that in effect he had pardoned him all his life But to all this I say that the last actions of so great a King are more worthy of honour then censure The punishment of Joab proceeded not from a Passion but from a Justice inspired by God which would satisfie the voyce of blood the which cryed still against the murders committed by this Captain Further also there was a secret of State as saith Theodoret which is that this Joab shewed himself against the re-election of Solomon and was ready to trouble the peace of the Realm And as concerning Shimei to whom he had sworn that he would not cause him to dye he kept his promise to him faithfully abstaining from doing him any evil while he lived although he was in absolute power for to hurt him but as his oath was personall he would not extend it upon his sonne and tye his hands contenting himself to recommend unto him that he should do justice according as his wisedome and discretion should direct him It is very fitting that we should think highly of this Prophet and that we should rather search out the reason of many of his actions from the secret inspiration of God then from the weaknesse of humane judgement He lived near upon three-score and twelve years reigned fourty and dyed a thousand and thirty two years before the birth of our Saviour leaving infinite treasures for the building of the Temple and eternall monuments of his devotion and understanding It was a speciall favour to him that the Saviour would be born of his bloud and that his birth was revealed to him so many dayes before it was known to the world He hath often set it down upon the title of his Psalmes and was in an extasie in this contemplation by the fore-taste of that his happinesse Men are accustomed to take their nobility and their names from their Ancestours that go before them But David drew it from a Son which is the Father of Glory and Authour of Eternity The industrious hands of men have taken pains in vain to carve him out a Tomb Death hath no power over him seeing that he is the Primogenitour of life All things are great in his person but the heighth of all his greatnesse is that he hath given us a Jesus SOLOMON SOlomon was he that ordered the holinesse of the Temple and yet he can hardly find place in the Holy Court The love which gave Solomons entry into the Realm full of troubles him the Crown by the means of his mother Bathsheba hath taken from him his innocency The Gentiles might have made him one of their Gods if Women had not made him lesse then a man His entrance into the Throne of his father was bloudy his Reign peaceable his Life variable and his End uncertain One may observe great weaknesses at the Court at his coming to the Crown confused designs desperate hopes a Prophet upright at the Court a woman full of invention an old Courtier overthrown and little brotherhood where there is dispute of Royalty David was upon the fading of his Age and his Throne looked at by his Children which expected the dissolution of their father He had taken the authority upon him to decide this question by his commands not willing to be ruled therein by nature nor to preferre him whom she had first brought into the world but him which should be appointed by God and best fitted thereto by his favours Bathsheba a subtil woman Bathsheba fitly insinuares her self and procures the Crown for her son Solomon that had carried him away by violence of a great affection kept her self in her possession and had more power over the mind of the King then all his other associates Amidst the kindnesses of an affectionate husband which is not willing to deny any thing to her whom he loves she drew this promise from David that he would take her sonne Solomon to be successour in his Estates This was a little miracle of Nature in his Infancy Solomons infancy pleasing and it seemed that all the Graces had strove together to make a work so curiously polisht His mother loved him with infinite tendernesse and his father could not look upon him without amazednesse He was married at the age of nineteen years and David before he departed from the world saw himself multiplied by his son in a second which was Roboam Aristotle hath observed well that children which are married so young do seldome bring forth great men and this observation was verified in Roboam who caused as many confusions in his life as he had made rejoycings at his birth This strengthened Solomon at the beginning in his own and his mothers pretences But Adonijah his brother which immediately followed Absolon was before him in the right of Eldership and promised himself to have a good part of the Empire The example of that unfortunate brother which had Adonijah competitor of the Crown and his faction expired his life in the despair of his fortune was not strong enough for to stay him which treading as it were in the same steps went on infallibly unto his last mischance David endured too long for him and it seems to him that the greatest kindnesses that a rich father could do for his sonne when he is come to die is to suffer himself to die He had sufficiently well knitted his party together binding himself closely to the chief Priest Abiathar and to Joab It seemed to him that having on his side the Altars and Arms he was invincible But in that burning desire that he had to reign he The fault of Adonijah in his Counsel of State committed very great faults which put an end to his life by an event very tragicall He did not sufficiently consider the power of his father who governed himself by the orders of them in the disposition of their Royalty and saw not that to undertake to succeed him without his good will was to desire to climb to the top of the house vvithout going up by the stairs His
he should sway his Scepter or his life Cardan who was imployed no less than one hundred hours to make his Horoscope did easily observe in the stars the incommodities of his body and disasters of his person but he could no way attain to the period of his life which is of the secrets reserved in the knowledge and in the method of God All England was extreamly corrupted in her faith under the Regency of this Seimer and the Ladies of the Court were enveloped in the errours of the time He found none but the Lady Marie daughter to Henry the Eight and Katharine which continued in the Religion of their Grand-Fathers and though she was tempted and sollicited on all sides yet she would not suffer her self to be surprized with a new Faith but with a vigorous force did roar against all the torrents of Opinions and the overflowing disorders which reigned in that age It was for this that God did cause her to mount on the Throne of his own Tower and gave her the grace to be both the restorer of Religion and the State by the assistance of this Cardinal As soon as Edward was dead not without suspition Mary the lawfull heir is troubled and Jane is chosen Queen by Faction of poison Dudley Duke of Northumherland who was then most mighty in power and had newly married his Son to the Lady Jane issued from the bloud Royall conceived himself strong enough to begin the Regency of England the better afterwards to usurp the Crown He caused his Daughter-in-Law to be proclaimed Queen of England and seized on the Tower of London and gave order for the apprehending of Queen Mary But the generous Princess being advertised of the attempt did take horse in the time of night and secured her self in a place of strength and conjured all her good Servants to assemble themselves to defend her person and her right It is to be admired that persevering in the true Religion contrary to that of the great ones of the Kingdom at the same time when she conceived her self abandonned and her cause most deplorable that she should behold the principal of the Nobility and Gentry and Commonalty to fall down before her and to offer her their obedience and their Arms to take the possession of the Crown She marched immediately to London in the middle of her Army apparelled in a Gown of Velvet of a violet colour and mounted on a white horse She entered into the Citie with great applauses of her Subjects and surprized the Duke and caused him to deliver his Daughter in Law into her hands It was a spectacle worthy observation to consider the Inconstancy of these worldly affairs and to look on that person who but yesterday promised to himself to force the whole Kingdom under the power of his Laws to tremble now at the fear of death pronounced by his Judges who condemned him to be drawn upon a Hurdle to be hanged drawn and quartered The Queen sent him Catholick Divines to convert him to whom he gave ear and abjuring Heresie he imbraced the Catholick Religion which was the occasion that the Queen did moderate the Sentence of the Execution and was contented that his head onely should be cut off with his sons who was the husband of Jane This miserable Lady from a high Tower where she was prisoner beheld the body of her dear husband without a head at the sight whereof she fell down into a swoun and being a little recovered she melted into tears and did fetch from her heart so many and so deep sighs that they seemed to be able not onely to mollifie the hearts of men but to cleave the Rocks asunder There was a long Deliberation concerning her The Execution of the Lady Jane Fact because the Queen had an inclination to pardon her observing her to be both young fair knowing and of a delicate temper and one who had not offended but by the violent suggestions of her Father-in-law and of her Husband who had put the Crown upon her head But the Judges did remonstrate that it was of a most dangerous consequence to suffer that person to continue alive who had carried the Title of a Sovereign and that one day it might give a new fire to the enterprizes of the Remainder of her Faction On these Considerations the Sentence of Death was pronounced which she received with a Constancy admirable in her Sex and age A Doctour was sent unto her to reduce her to the Catholick Religion which at the first she refused alledging That she had too little time to think on an Affair of that importance Which being reported to the Queen she deferred the Execution for certain dayes to instruct her at more leisure so that she was gained to God and continued to the the last hour of her life in such tranquility of mind that a little before she came out of prison to go to her Execution she wrote divers Sentences in Greek Latine and English on the contempt of Death and when on the Scaffold it was represented to her that she should die by the sword which according to the custom of that Countrey is accounted a nobler kind of Execution than to die by the Axe she said That she would die by that Axe which was yet discoloured with her husbands bloud and couragiously she tendered her neck to the Hang-man drawing tears from her self and the hearts from all those that did behold her O most unfortunate Ambition that hast made so young a Princess a sacrifice of Death who for the excellency of her spirit might have been another Minerva or at least the tenth of the Muses Behold the strange Revolutions which did prepare the way to Cardinal Pool for the performance of those high Designs which God had committed to his Conduct Queen Marie did incontinently make void all the Sentences which had been pronounced against him and called him back into England to which place in a short time he came as if he had been carried on the shoulders of all honest men The Pope made him his Legate and gave him full power to ordain and execute all things which he should conceive necessary for the glory of God and the establishment of the true Religion He travelled to this Work with incomparable wisdom Pool travels to the Reducement of England to the ancient Faith and with a zeal invincible He well perceived that to restore Religion by arms was to undertake a most laborious if not an infinite work which would open all the veins in England and draw drie as well their purses as their bloud and cover the Kingdom with the calamities of civil wars which would continue for many Ages He resolved to put his good Counsels in execution with gentleness which others propounded to perform with all violence And in the first place he had recourse to Prayers The course he held to Mortifications to Vows and to Devotions which he performed in secret and which
understanding be it true or false from hence there glide into the condition of humane life a thousand extravagant illusions It is even at this day that Semblanâ—es the children of opinion and lying truth hath lost her garment falshood is clothed with it and Opinion in this Court-like habit hath really and actually produced little monsters but such as yet holding and retaining the malice of their father and levity of their mother attire themselves with certain veils which make them seem beautiful they flie up and down like little Cupids they make a trade of deceiving and practice with so much subtility that they ensnare even the wisest Behold our unhappiness The world the Island of dreams Verar Hist l. 2. we are in this world as in the Island of dreams whereof Luctan speaketh We dream broad-waking and such dreams which are by so much the more perillous by how much we the less look into the danger A man who hath dreamed all the night as soon as he beginneth to open his eye-lids mocketh at his own fantasies and saith they were dreams we dream all the days of our life and say they are verities We run after the false imaginations as children after butter-flies When the great night of our death draweth near we begin to discharge our selves from this waking sleep and from this sleeping vigil we find we have death at hand And as for the butter-flies which we so eagerly followed after we have broken our heads and shins in their pursuit we neither have their legs nor wings in our hands Behold one of the greatest impediments of perfection Alas Noble spirit thou wouldst be truly noble if thou couldst shake off this golden yoak the opinion whereof hath so surcharged thee consecrating thy bondage thereunto by a precious imposture But who will do it Had not he anciently a notable subject Mercur. Tris Souls in the torrent of opinion hereon who said when he considered the estate of the world the souls of men seemed to him to be all thrown headlong from the Palace of verity into the torrent of opinion all of them tumbled into the mercy of the waves and few were to be found that would bravely settle themselves to row against the stream Seneca hath well observed and touched the true Senec. de beata vita Opinion the source of all corruptions source of the corruption which at this day reigneth upon the earth We live not according to reason but by relation to the life of another and from thence cometh Non ad rationew sedad similitudinem vivimus inde ista tanta coacervatio aliorum supraialos ruentium Against the life of opinion that we fall one upon another by heaps as blind men into a ditch To take away this confusion I produce onely three considerations which are very pressing and pregnant The first that this life which is so lead by opinion is very ridiculous The second that it is base and servile The third that it boweth under a cruel tyranny from whence it may with a little courage dis-infranchize it self And first I demand if it be agreeable to a noble and generous heart to forsake the gravity incident to his nature and to embrace idle toys and fopperies No man will consent hereunto but he that will betray his reason Now so it is that all the opinions which at this day intoxicate the world are not builded but upon the flying sand upon the giddy humours of windy brains upon the passions and affections of a debauched and corrupted multitude Where the sheep feedeth that goeth Cornel. Tac. hist 2. Multitudo vulgi more magis quam judicio post alius alium quasi prudentiorem sequitur Strange giddiness of opinion before they which follow must graze though they die for it Every one attendeth his companion as the wisest and he that venteth folly with the greatest confidence is the best welcom What monsters what prodigious fancies of scattered and uncollected spirits have not been received for laudable actions being favoured and authorized by opinion It is a thing ridiculous and almost incredible to see the chimerical conceits that it hath perswaded making them to be taken not by a particular man or one sole family but by a whole and entire Nation for maxims of wisdom The Mossins a people performed all the actions Apollonius 2. Argonaut vers 138. of most secrecy in publick yea even those which are ordained for the necessities of nature and treated the affairs of the Common-wealth in their houses constantly believing it was very requisite so to do The Tibarenes as soon as their wives were delivered Idem ibidem bound up their heads with a kercheff lay down on their bed and made themselves to be attended like the child-bed women The poor women in the mean time were up and about the house endeavouring to make ready bathes for their husbands and to dress and season their viands to tend and cherish them as if they had born all the pain of feminine travel Could you have any thing more ridiculous And yet opinion made it appear very reasonable There are such to be found who place all their honour and glory in drinking hard and eating freely to call a man a robber a thief an adulterer were in this Countrey nothing to say that such an one were not a great gourmandizer nor a great drinker would be to do him an unpardonable injurie Others placed all the excellency and dignity of man Aruncani Lips politic in carrying a huge log of wood a great distance and by this tryal chose their Kings The greatest burden-carriers and porters were there great Lords Others did kill and eat their aged parents for a ceremony of Religion And opinion made this good What also do not those people of India and other parts discovered in our days Some think it is honourable to turn their back to salute one Others thrust their finger to the earth and after lift it to heaven to do reverence Others gather up the spittle of their Prince and speak to him through a hollow trunk Others offer to their gods their old shoes in sacrifice A man would laugh when he heareth speech of it and yet we see that the proudest Monarchs of the world who supposed they had shut up all wisdom in their laws and customs trampled virtue under their feet and placed Dragons Bats and Quartan-agues on their Altars Behold what opinion can do These follies you will say are not now in practice He that would well examine all the fantastick humours of apparel all the giddy conceits of sports and pastimes the folly of complements which at this time reign amongst men should find things as ridiculous as these as it were to adore an humble poor crucified God and yet to be mad after greatness riches and curiosities To believe that one perpetually liveth under the eyes of God yet to behave himself like a wild colt at his own fantasie neither
forementioned Emperour Antoninus saith the wisdom of man consisteth in three points well to behave Antonin l. 5. de vita sua himself towards God which is done by Religion with himself which is done by mortification of his passions and with men which is effected by sparing and tolerating them every where doing good and after he hath done good to have his ears prepared to hear evil IX To govern his desires within the limits of his 9. Government of pretensions capacity and modesty It is a great note of folly to attempt all things and do nothing to be turmoyled with the present and to have always the throat of an enraged concupiscence gaping after the time to come to be vexed with himself and not to be of power to repose within himself to make the steps of honour the degrees of his ruin to raise a fortune like a huge Colossus to make it fall upon his Senec. ep â—â— Contemnere omnia quivis potest omnia habere nemâ— own shoulders and to leave no other witnesses of his greatness but the prints of his fall It is a thing very difficult to have much and impossible to have all but it is so easie a matter to despise all that it consisteth in nothing but in a bare refusal X. To procure such an equality of spirit so even 10. Tranquility so regular that he scarcely feel the approach of happiness and when it is lost not to make any shew of it To behold the good of another as his own and his own as another mans To hold riches and honours as a river that glideth to day for you to morrow for another It is the nature thereof always to run gently what wrong doth it to us When prosperity laugheth on you look back upon adversity which cometh in the rere and remember you have seen tall ships lost in the harbour even as it were in jest S. Augustine pleased to repeat that verse of Virgil Mene sali placidi vultum fluctusque quietos August ep 113. alibi Ignorare jubes desirous thereby to signifie to us that we should no more confide in the prosperities of the world than to a still sea which in his over-great calm oft-times presageth the near approaching tempest Brave and valorous Captains heretofore made a Sacrifice to war in the midst of peace and in the midst of war dressed Altars to Peace to declare that in good we should live in distrust of ill and in evil in hope of good but in both the one and the other ever in equality This verily is one of the master-pieces of wisdom which God imparteth to spirits greatly resigned and who have passed through the most thin and slender searces XI To behave ones self prudently in all kind of 11. Discretion in affairs occasions to examine the tenents and utmost bounds the original progress end Never to judge till you have seen the bottom of the business and therein to carry your self so that if success cannot wait on your desires you may not justly accuse either any crooked intention or want of discretion We are masters of our wils but God hath reserved to himself the command over events XII To be always ready to depart from hence 12. Meditation of death chearfully when death shall sound the retreat Saint Chrysostom saith finely This life is a nest framed of straw Chrys hom 2. in epist Pauli ad Coloss and morter we are the little birds shall we putrifie in the stench of this filthy nest If devotion hath made us wings why are we slothful Let us bravely mount and take that flight which our Eagle tracked out unto us in the day of his Ascension Remember the quintessence of al wisdom is the meditation of death It is a business we should learn all our life time to exercise it once The faults therein committed are irreparable and the loss without recovery This consisteth in three things resignation dis-engagement and union As for resignation be not too faint-hearted nor suffer your self to be called upon to pay a debt which so many millions of men have discharged before you and which so many millions shall likewise pay after you shew to those who visit you patience in your sickness resolution at your last hour and not to desire any thing but spiritual assistances As for your departure go out of the world as the chicken out of the shell I. Dispose of your temporal goods in time by making a just clear and perspicuous will 2. Restore the goods of another 3. Pay your debts as far as you can 4. Lay open your affairs 5. Give pious legacies to charge the Altars of mercy with the last victims 6. Reconcile your self and above all things beware you carry not with you too much confidence and inordinate affection into the other world 7. Take order for the education of your children 8. Dispose of offices if you have any with an upright conscience 9. Forget not the labours of your poor servants After this disengagement draw the curtain betwixt your self and all creatures By a good confession unite your self to your Creatour by the sacred viaticum extream unction by acts of faith hope and charitie by good suffrages of the Church good admonitions good purposes good remembrances of the death of our Saviour yielding your soul up upon a Crucifix as a child who sleepeth on the breast of his nurce The eigthth SECTION The Practice of Devotion and Prayer ONe of the shortest ways to gain wisdom is to be devout Devotion is as it were the flame and lightening-flash of charitie and it is properly a prompt and affectionate vivacitie in Voluntas quâ—dam prompta tradendi se ad ea quae pertinent ad Dei famulatum S. Th. 2. 2. quaest 82. S. Dionys de divin nomin cap. 3. Prayer in mount Tabor things which concern the service of God It principally shineth in prayer and in the exercise of the works of mercy Prayer as saith the great Saint Dionysius the Areopagite is as it were a chain of silver which from heaven hangeth downward to draw man up from earth and unite him to God It is the mount Tabor where an admirable transfiguration is made of the soul into God It is the spirit which speaketh to God which poureth it self on God in conclusion it is coloured by God even as Jacobs ews did denote their burden to be of Genes 30. the same colour of which those wands were that they stedfastly beheld It is it which the Apostle pleased to say Beholding the glory of God we are transfigured Corinth 2. 3. Gloriam Domini speculantes in eandem imaginem transformamur à claritate in claritatem tanquam à Domini spiritu into the same image from brightness to brightness as by the spirit of God Prayer is the conduit of grace It is as very well S. Ephraim hath said The standard of our warfare the conservation of our peace the bridle
after which caused an excellent wit to say that it drew life out of its blows and made a dug of its wounds Oh happy soul that resembleth this generous plant and which repleat with pious desires holy affections and sincere intentions produceth apprehensions and works a thousand times more precious than myrrhe when in the meditation the rays of Jesus Christ who is the true Sun of justice strikes the heart The practice of prayer consisteth in mental vocal Necessity and easiness of meditation and mixt Mental is that which is exercised in the heart vocal which is formed in the mouth mixt participateth of both Think it not to be a new thing not severed from your profession to meditate It were so if one would make your brain serve as a lymbeck for subtile and extravagant raptures disguised in new words and forms But when one speaketh of meditation he adviseth you to ponder and ruminate the points and maximes which concern your salvation with all sweetness that fruit most agreeable to your condition may be derived from thence The faintness weakness infidelity ignorance driness which reigneth in your souls cometh from no other source but the want of consideration Take this worthy exercise couragiously in hand and you shall feel your heart fattened with the unction of the Holy Ghost and your soul of a wilderness to become a little Paradise of God Be not affrighted hereat as if it were a thing impossible for you use a little method and you shall find nothing more easie and familiar What have you so natural in vital life as to breath And what more proper in the intellectual than to think Your soul hath no other operation for night and day it is employed in this exercise The Sun casteth forth beams and our soul thoughts Gather together onely those wandering thoughts which are scattered amongst so many objects into your center which is God Employ one part of the spitit industrie invention discourse which you are endowed withal for the mannaging of worldly affairs Employ them I say in the work of your salvation and you shall do wonders I undertake not here to raise you above the earth nor in the beginning to plunge you into the seven degrees of contemplation whereof S. Bonaventure speaketh in the treatise he composed thereof I speak not to you of fire unction extasie speculation tast of What you must understand to meditate well repose or glory but I speak that in few words which you may read more at large in the works of so many worthy men who have written upon that subject First know what meditation is secondly how it is ordered Meditation properly is a prayer of the heart by Definition of meditation which we humbly attentively and affectionately seek the truth which concerns our salvation thereby to guid us to the exercise of Christian virtues That you may meditate well you must know the causes degrees matter and form of meditation The Causes principal cause thereof is God who infuseth himself into our soul to frame a good thought as the Sun doth upon the earth to produce a flower It is a goodly thing to have the spirit subtile and fruitful It is to work without the Sun saith Origen to think to do any thing here without the grace of the Holy Ghost The first degree which leadeth to good and serious prayer is a good life and principally purity of heart tranquility of spirit desire to make your self an inward man Saint Augustine reciteth a saying of Porphyrius very remarkeable which he deriveth Aug. l. 9. de civit Dei c. 23. Deus omnium Pater nullius indiget sed nobis est benè cum cum adramus ipsam vitam precâ—m ad cum sacientes pâ—r inquisitionem imitationem de ipse from the mouth of this perfidious man as one should pull a thing stoln out of a thiefs coffer God the Creatour and Father of this whole Universe hath no need of our service but it is our good to serve him and adore him making of our life a perpetual prayer by a diligent enquiry of his perfections and imitation of his virtues Observe then the first degree of good prayer is good life The second as well this Authour hath noted is the perquisition to wit the search of verities by thinking on the things meditated which are the sundry considerations suggested to us by the spirit in the exercise of meditation The third is the affection which springeth from these considerations Our understanding is the steel and our will the flint As soon as they touch one another we see the sparkes of holy affections to flie out We must bray together the matters of prayer as Aromatick spices with the discussion of our understanding before we can extract good odours The fourth is the imitation and fruit of things we meditate on It is the mark at which our thoughts should aim otherwise if one should pretend nothing else but a vain business of the mind it would be to as much purpose to drive away butter-flies as to meditate Good meditation and good action ought to be entertained as two sisters holding one another by the robe As for the matter of meditation you must know Matter of meditation that all meditations are drawn from three books The first and most inferiour is the book of the great Three books of meditation world where one studieth to come by knowledge of the creature to the Creatour The second is the book of the little world where man studieth himself his beginning his end qualities habits faculties actions functions and the rest The third is the book of the Heavenly Father Jesus Christ our Saviour who verily is a guilded book limmed with the rays of the Divinity imprinted with all the characters of sanctity and from thence an infinitie of matter is drawn as those of benefits of four last things of the life death and passion of Jesus and of all the other mysteries You must digest every one in his time according to the opportunity tast and capacity of those who meditate Some appropriate meditations to every day of the week others make their circuit according to the moneth others follow the order of the mysteries and life of our Saviour as they are couched in so many books written of these matters The practice and form of meditation consisteth in six things The first to divide the subject you would Practise and form contained in six articles meditate on into certain points according to the appointment of some Directour or the help of a book Article 1 As if you meditate upon the knowledge of ones self to take for the first point what man is by nature For the second what he is by sin For the third what he may be by grace The second a little before the hour appointed for Article 2 meditation to call into memory the points which you would meditate on The third after you have implored the
To repress all the desires and concupiscences of flesh and if one have any feeling thereof not to give consent thereunto IV. Never to stay at all upon thoughts and imaginations of things dishonest but so soon as they present themselves to chase them away and extinguish them in your heart no otherwise than you should quench a burning hot iron in a fountain V. To mortifie your senses which are most commonly Eyes Oculi patellae luxuriae Isidor apud S. Bern. tom 1 serm de luxuria Salvian l. 3. de gubernat Oculi tui videbunt extranea cor tuum loquetur perversa Prov. 23. 3. the fore-runners of sin and above all to restrain your eyes which according to the opinion of S Isidore are as dishes wherein luxurie serveth up the viands of voluptuousness They are the windows the alurements the snares the conduits of love It buddeth in the eyes that it may at leasure blossome in the heart And therefore it is fit to stand upon your guard with so subtile and vigorous a sence which often filleth the soul with appetites and flames I do not say that one should look upon nothing and always live as if the soul were buried alive in the flesh but I affirm you must divert your sight from objects which dart a sting into a mind sensible of such penetrations As for the ears there is no doubt they may serve as handles for love and that it hath taken many that way An evil word hath fingers to incite the flesh He who heareth it and he that willingly speaketh it is not innocent before God Smelling blasteth chastitie and tast roughly assaulteth but kisses and unchast toucheâ— cut her throat VI. To flie idleness reading of love-books comedies stage-plays immodest pictures feasts private familiarities loose companie and all occasions of sin VII To have in detestation even the shadows of impuritie To speak to proclaim in every place the praises of chastitie and for this purpose to love penance mortification of the bodie labour rough and harsh apparel modestie even to the seeming somewhat wayward the Sacrament of the Eucharist the meditation of the four last things devotion towards the most blessed Virgin and all that may conduce to the maintenance of honestie VIII To remain firm in great and forcible temptations is verily the trophey of chastitie Since as Plato hath said the triumph of virtue is to have the power not the will to sin It was a notable act of Chastitie of Charls the 8. continencie in Charls the eigth ardently to love a maiden endowed with an exquisite beautie to have her at his dispose and yet to abstain for one sole word Lyps in monitis politic lib. 2. cap. 17. Exemplo 12. addit datos puellae 500. aureos which this poor creature spake to him brought even into his chamber For she by chance perceiving the picture of our Ladie cast her self at the Kings feet shewed him this image crying out with a face all bathed in tears Sir I beseech you for this Virgins sake preserve the honour of a silly maid At this word spoken for a young King enkindled with love and absolute in power to conquer the motions of lust is it not a matter that meriteth much applause IX To contemn great rewards and high advancements of fortune for the preservation of chastitie Johannes Moschus in prato A couragious Ladie As did that noble Lady of whom John Moschus speaketh who seeing her husband consume in perpetual prison for debt not able any way to relieve him was reduced to terms of extream and miserable want and besides pursued by a man of prime note with all sorts of allurements offers and accommodations which might shake and stagger an afflicted heart and enforce her to condescend to a sin which seemed to have necessity for a patroness she notwithstanding stood firm like a rock preferring chastitie poor and patient before a rich and delicate dishonour I could also nominate creatures as pure as strong adorned with most excellent natural parts more chaste more wise more fortunate than Lucrece who with as much industry as courage have refused powerful and passionate men that sought them with such excessive benefits as would have overwhelmed any inferiour chastitie But they not to commit one onely sin covered under the curtain of the night have despised treasures to guard another jewel in an earthen vessel who for this act deserve to be raised above the stars X. To withdraw the chastity of others from this sink with liberal alms great labour infinite incommodities As that worthy Hermit Abraham Abraham the Hermite did of whom Surius speaketh who loaden with years and merits went into a brothel-house in disguised habit to reduce a Niece of his that went astray as at this day many honest matrons worthy of eternal memory spare nothing to gain poor abused doves out of the faulcons tallons and dedicate them to Altars where soon after they work wonders in matter of virtue XI To suffer in your body great torments yea Hieron in vita Pauli Sabel l. 5. c. 6. death it self for the defence of chastity as many holy virgins have done As that youth reputed the son of a King of Nicomedia who fast tyed on a bed of flowers and wooed by a Courtizane with intention to corrupt him spit out his tongue like a dart of fire and bloud in the face of this she-wolf A tongue Lingua silet clamatque silens loquiturque pudorem sanguine quae pinxit sola pudicitiam A bold attempt of Didymus which in dumb eloquence speaketh to all posteritie and proclaimeth the honour of chastitie XII To expose your self to great sufferings for the preservation of others chastitie As that brave Didymus a young beardless Gentleman who beholding a poor Christian maid named Theodora thrown into a brothel caused her to escape by giving her the habit of a man and himself remained for pledge in the attires of a woman expecting the fury of executioners Ambr. lib. 2. de virgin Quasi adulter ingressus si vis Martyr â—grediar Vestimenta mutemus conveniunt mihi tua mea tibi sed utraque Christo Tua vestis me verum militem faciet mea te virginem Bené tu vestieris ego melius exuar who gave him the crown of Martyrdom Saint Ambrose makes him speak to the maid to this effect Sister I am come hither as an adulterer and if it please you I will go out a Martyr Let us change habits I pray you we are as I perceive both of one stature My apparrel very well fitteth you but yours will set much better upon me and both will agree in the service of Christ Jesus My attire shall make you a virgin and yours me a Martyr You shall be most fortunately clothed and I more happily despoiled It was so done Didymus was apprehended and Theodora understanding it run back like a lyoness amidst the swords to die with him The twenty
and they shall oppose you in the land of your abode Cruel father that thou art who quite dead and turned into ashes afflictest the Common-wealth by children ill instructed thou woundest and tearest Christianity Were it not justice thinkest thou to break up thy tomb and disturb thy ashes for having voluntarily bred a little viper for thy countrey to which thou art accountable for thy life And from hence it cometh to pass that fathers who have carried themselves so negligently and perfidiously in their childrens instruction are the first who drink down the poyson they mingled for others over-whelmed with toyls and miseries for the continual disorders of these extravagants O how often they make complaint like the Eagle in the Emblem of Julian when strucken by a mortal arrow partly framed out of her own wings she said Out alas wretched bird that I am must I breed feathers to serve as a swift chariot to the steel which transfixeth my body Must I bring forth children to give me the stroke of death What remedie then for this unhappiness which creeping into the bowels of the most flourishing Monarchies depopulates and deprives them of good subjects and furnisheth them with shadows of men What remedy but to observe three things in this matter First to give a good tincture of Religion to your children pious apprehensions of God and a filial fear of his judgements Secondly to manure them with arts suitable to their understanding and condition to settle them in the world upon some good employment lest having nought to do they become fit to act any evil Thirdly to accommodate them as much as possibly and reasonably may be with exteriour moveables called the blessings of fortune that necessity open not them the gate of iniquitie and then leave the rest to the providence of God whose eye is alwayes open over his work Behold the course most fit to be observed Pietie goeth foremost for as the eloquent Prelate of Cyrenes saith It Cynes ad Arcad is not onely the foundation of houses but of whole Monarchies Parents now adays seek to do quite contrary and set the cart before the horse they voluntarily imitate the stupidity of those Aegyptians who prepared Altars to a Reer-mouse for no other reason but that she is weak-sighted and is a friend of the night Now they preferred darkness before light by right of antiquity but these do much worse for putting Heaven and earth into one ballance they set an estimate upon terrene things to the villifying and confusion of celestial Nay there are mothers to be found so malicious as was one named Clotilda not the Saint but a mad woman who being put to her choice either to consent her sons should enter into a Monastery to become religious or resolve to see them loose their lives Kill kill said she I had rather behold them dead than Monks How many are there now adays who for a need would suffer their children to become Pages to Antichrist to make a fortune at the least would well endure to see them preferred to honour in the great Turks Court with ship-wrack of their Religion There are few Queen Blanches either in courage or worth who rather desired to behold her children in their grave than in sin They must now adays be either Caesars or nothing None fear to put them into infamous houses into scandalous places to give them most wicked Teachers to thrust them into snares and scandals under hope of some preferment Nay with how many travels and services crouchings and crimes do these miserable creatures purchase their chains All Non omnes curia admittet castra quos ad liborem pericula recipiant fastidiosè legunt bona mens omnibus patet Senec. Ep. 44. cannot find a fortune in Court Warfare picks out those with a kind of disdain whom it entertains for labours and hazards of life Onely virtue shuts not the gate against any yet it is daily despised Vnfortunate fathers and wretched mothers live on gall and tears rise and go to bed with gnawing care to set an ungratefull son on the top of fortunes wheel who quickly grows weary of them and after their deaths gluts himself with the delights they with so much industrie prepared for him mindless of those who obliged him Nay far otherwise he unfolds the riots of his unbridled youth even upon their tombs God grant this evil may pass no further and that the father and son do not one day reproach one another in the flames of hell that the one ministred matter of damnation and the other gave accomplishment William the learned Bishop of Guliel de Lugdun tract de avarit rubric 11. Lions relateth that a young Hermit retiring into a horrid wilderness to attend the exercise of penance saw his father and brother whom he had left in the world embroiled in ill causes at that time deceased and buried in everlasting fire who made hydeous complaints the son questioning his father as authour of his ruin by amassing unjust riches for him and the father answering the son was the source of all his calamities since to make him rich he had spent his miserable life in perpetual anxiety and now suffered eternal punishments in the other world for loving a disloyal son more than Almightie God Cursed blindness to buy tortures and gibbets with afflictions and crosses O fathers and mothers let your first care extend to those whom you begat to teach them virtue rather by your example than others instruction These young creatures are your shadows your ecchoes they turn and wind themselves easily to imitate those who gave them life and from whom they hope both wealth and honour Wo to the father and mother who make their children witnesses of their crimes and not content to be evil make their sin immortal in the immortality of their descent An infant though but two years old should be used with much regard as if it were an intelligence enchased in this little body It is a great sacriledge to impress the first tincture of vice on those who as yet rest in the innocency of baptism The good Eleazar being advised to dissemble his Religion to save his life or at least to make semblance of eating hogs-flesh beholding round about him many youths who expected the end of this combat pronounced these worthy words couched in S. Ambrose God forbid I should serve for an incentive Ambrose l. 2. de Jacob. Nequaquam contingat mihi ut sim senex incentivum ju venilis erroris qui esse debet forma salutaris instituti Adulterio delectatus aliqui◠Jovem respicit inde cupiditatis suae fomenta conquirit Julius Firm. de error profan to the vices of these young people who should rather be a pattern of wisdom God forbid I defile my gray hairs with this execration and that posterity may take notice I opened the gate to impiety by my example That is undoubted which Julius Firmicus spake Nothing hath
my sufferings in satisfaction and my patience for sacrifice THE FOVRTH BOOK Of the impietie of COURTS The unhappie Politician HItherto having proposed the motives and obstacles that men of qualitie find in the way of Christian perfection I have made a collection of the most wholesom instructions which may guid them to the wisdom of heaven Consequently I purpose according as time and leasure will permit to write the historie of the holy Courts pursuing the course which I proposed in the Preface But this volume being become big alreadie in the press requireth nothing but the seal upon it Behold the cause why I have been willing to affix it thereon with two books of grave and admirable histories which may serve as a scantling of the whole piece I intend The scope of all this work is to declare a most worthy saying of S. Augustine That nothing is so miserable as the prosperitie of the wicked nothing so happie as true and solid pietie To bring these two verities into their full lustre of light as well by example as precept I have chosen two Courts very different The one is the Court of Herod the other of Theodosius the younger In the one the disasters of impietie are beheld in the other the happiness of virtue Verily I have cast the eye of my consideration upon divers histories and have seen none which may make great men more sensibly apprehend how those who rule in Courts and places of dignitie by meere policie and humane prudence accommodating Religion to their own interest are deceived than the life and death of this unfortunate King of Judea He had an infinite natural judgement an admirable penetrating wit a courage unspeakably dauntless A man who derived from nothing advanced his fortune even to the Regal throne and established it amongst so many thornie affairs as to make himself admired by the wisest of the world But because he built upon this Maxim of impietie that Religion and Law must be made to serve our proper interests he led a life full of crimes and disturbances concluded with the most disastrous death that may be imagined That also which hath made me resolve upon this historie drawn from Josephus with some other little fragments and memorials dilating it according to the talent of my stile without using any other transcription is that besides the unhappie Polititian you shall read therein Innocencie persecuted in the life of a Lady who hath been a true mirrour of patience and whom I purpose to propose as one of the greatest ornaments of our holy Court It is from hence I may truly gather a most beautiful rose amongst the sharpest throns shew calmest serenitie in the roughest storms and seek the honey-comb in the lions throat since I in Herods Court endeavour to find out the patient and chast Mariamne the true Table of innocencie Mariamne wife of Herod the picture of patience unworthily used The sufferance of this poor Queen would deserve to be consecrated with a pen of Adamant in the Temple of Eternitie since she is able to dazle the eyes of the most hardie to replenish the mouthes of the most eloquent and ravish the minds of those who admire no vulgar things God who ever raiseth the glorie of his Elect as it were upon the depth of the greatest miseries seeing the soul of this Princess amongst the most eminent and illustrious thought he must give her a large field for encounter to reap the richest palms of patience and he gave her Herod a bad husband a barbarous persecutour an infamous executioner but ever more sutable to the patient Mariamne in the qualitie of a persecutour and a hang-man than in the office of a husband To conceive the strength of this anvil we must know the force of the hammer which beateth on it To speak sufficiently of the singular virtue of this Queen we must thereunto oppose the malice of Herod we necessarily must behold how this disloyal man holding his life scepter and crown from the house of Mariamne for recompēce therof took from her her scepter crown and life after he had drawn her bowels out causing her nearest of kin to be put to death before her eyes then casting her all bloudie upon the pyle where the bodies of her parents and brethren were burned as the last sacrifice of his furie yet never at all startling her invincible patience Every man speaketh of Herod as of a man of morter steeped in bloud as of a Tyrant who would murder mercie it self but every one knoweth not the wiles he used to possess himself both of the Queen Mariamne and scepter of David oppressing the one with all ingratitude and governing the other with unspeakable mischief About some fiftie years before the Nativity of our The estate of the Kingdom of Judea before Herod came to the crown Lord and Saviour the kingdom of Judea which had subsisted although amongst strange eclypses and horrible vicissitudes from King David almost a thousand years after it had so many times tottered and so often by many shocks and concussions been established in the end found its total ruin and tomb in the discord of two brothers At that time Hircanus Hircanus reigned a good man but a bad King who neither had fortitude valour nor courage He used as much remisness in his charge as he practiced innocencie in his manners His overmuch easiness made him degenerate into a certain stupiditie and being unapt to do ill he rendered himself capable to be an instrument of all kind of evils by being too easie for the impressions of another He acknowledging his own weakness freely resigned the dignitie and burden of rule to his brother Aristobulus a valiant and Aristobulus hardie man who had little success and many enterprises In the mean time Palestine during the inconstant Antipater the father of Herod affected the Kingdom of Judea wavering of this Royaltie was much courted by her neighbours but above all by Antipater father of Herod an Idumcan by Nation an Arabian in manners wealthie factious able to overturn a large Empire by his subtil wiles had for a long time a plot upon the Kingdom of Judea He well foresaw it would be a matter very difficult for him to force a passage for his wicked ends whilst this couragious lion Aristobulus bare sway but were he dismounted and Hircanus seated again in his throne all would be in his own power What doth this Arabian then he soweth in the souls and minds of the people seeds of revolt against Aristobulus saying They were very remiss and disloyal so to suffer Hircanus their lawful King to be dethroned to whom nature had granted Empire to transfer the Kingdom to a mutinous and turbulent spirit who quickly would with ill manage make them feel the ruin and desolation of all Palestine That they had forsaken a King blame-worthie in nothing but in surplusage of goodness to take another who having made entry into principality
her it was a thing in the judgement of all those who would truly weigh it very far from her thought since she had always more feared King Herods love than hatred Lastly that she made no reckoning of life wherein she had suffered too much sorrow yea much less of the Court from whence she never received any contentment and that if they would oppress her by false testimonies it was easie to gain victory of one who made no resistance more easie to take the Diadem from her head and her head from her shoulders but most hard to bereave her of the reputation of a Princess of honour which she had of her Ancestours and would carry to her tomb The poor creature was like a silly sheep in the Lions throat or among the paws of many wolves They proceeded to sentence all tended to baseness It was supposed the King was willing to be rid of her and that sufficed Never was any one to be found who had the courage to plead the cause of this innocent Queen or in any sort to mollifie the passion of Herod All those consciences were oppressed either with crimes or cowardise from whence it came to pass these false Judges did more for the Tyrant than he desired for they all resolved upon death He himself was surprized with horrour though he were wholly a bloudy man and commandeth she should be kept in a prison of the Palace with delay of execution thinking perhaps by that means to make her more plyant to his passion But the enraged Salome who had raised this storm not willing to do any business to halves approched to the King her brother and shewed him such birds were not to be kept in cages that his life and crown thereby ran into hazard that already all tended to a revolt and that if he delayed this execution he hastened the ruin of himself and his whole state Whereupon Herod let fall this word Let her be taken away And behold instantly an officer dispatched to the good Queen who brought her the news of the last hour of her life saluting her with a low reverence and saying Madame Invincible patience and very admirable the King commandeth you must presently die She without any disturbance said Let us then go my friend it cannot be so soon for King Herod but it will be as late for me and speaking this word she set forward and went directly to the place of execution without change of colour having a sweet aspect which drew tears from the whole world To crown her patience as she was ready to receive the stroke of death Alexandra her own mother the companion of her imprisonment the Guardian of her thoughts who had ever been one heart with her betraying bloud nature and all piety by a mischievous trick of state thereby avoiding the suspition of Herod as consenting to her daughters humour came to charge her with most bloudy injuries Barbarous act of Alexandra and it was a great chance she had not taken this poor Ladie by the hair to dreg her up and down the pavement saying to her with the foam of boyling choller That she was wicked and extreamly proud and well deserved to die in that manner by shewing herself refractory to so good a husband Behold verily the greatest indignity which could happen in such an accident There is no better honey nor worse sting than that of bees no better amities nor greater injuries than of allies The patient Mariamne onely made her this answer Mother let my soul pass in peace which already is upon my lips and trouble not the repose of my death and with a generous silence shutting her mouth up to further replies Heroick silence and opening her heart to God the onely witness of her innocency most unworthily used stretched out her neck to the executioner to seal with her bloud the last testimonies of her patience Josephus speaketh not expresly enough of the punishment she doubtless being executed in the manner at that time ordinary which was to behead offenders Most pitifull death of that quality This day-break which bare stil in the rays thereof joy refreshment to the poor afflicted souls through the horrible confusions of tyranny was then extinct in her bloud Yea the eyes of all the standers by bathed in tears beheld her in her eclipse when that fore-head full of Royal Majesty was seen couragiously to affront approaching death which maketh the most confident to tremble and when this alabaster neck was stretched out and bowed under the shining steel to be separated from this beauteous body a shivering horrour crept into the What horrour bones of all the beholders and there was no rock so hard which afforded not the water of tears before she poured out her bloud The head was separated from the body and the body from the soul But the soul never shall be divided from God raising to death such a trophey of patience The limbs lay all cold and stiff extended on the place and the voice of innocent bloud which already penetrated the clouds to ask vengeance of God was instantly heard as you shall understand onely I beseech you stay to behold the Pourtraict and Elogie of the good Queen by us here inserted MARIAMNE REGINA MARIAMNE REGINA MACHABAEORUM STIRPE INCLYTA HERODIS PESSIMI OMNIUM VIRI UXOR OPTIMA FORMA CORPORIS SUPRA CAETERAS EXIMIAANIMI ETIAM VIRTUTIBUS MAJOR INTEGERRIMAE PUDICITIAE ET INELUCTABILIS PATIENTIAE FOEMINA INIQUISSIMIS CALUMNIIS OPPRESSA MARITI GLADIO REGIAS CERVICES DEDIT ANNO ANTE CHRISTI NATALEM VIGESSIMO OCTAVO Upon the Picture of MARIAMNE FOrtune a heavenly beauty did engage To a fell husband who through boundless rage Practiz'd fierce tyranny and foul debate As well in love as in his Royal state She liv'd on gall upon the sword she dy'd Soon in the Lamb's bloud to be purifi'd The Cross so to prevent in pains pertake With patient God mishaps thrice-happy make Which after death immortalize her story And from her body take less bloud than glory Thus from the world this holy Queen remov'd Breaths forth affections to her God belov'd And her great soul to heav'n in silence rears Purg'd in her flame washed with her tears Who bravely so both lives and leaveth breath Makes of a dying life a living death THe disloyal husband who so inhumanely had treated a Ladie worthy of all honour as soon as she rendered up her soul as if he had been strucken by some invisible dart cried out with grief and said he had done an act worthy the wrath of Fury of Herod after the death of Mariamne God then dreadfully howling he ceaselesly invoked the memory and name of the poor dead creature to whom he by his sorrows could not again restore what had been taken from her by the sword of the executioner Wheresoever he went he still was accompanyed with the image of his crime still tormented and assailed with black furies
from the hand of Secretary Diaphantus a store-house of falsifications Herod would have no more proofs he caused his Alexander Aristobulus sons of Mariamne imprisoned two sons to be apprehended resolving to ruine them and verily every man at that time accounted them lost When these things were in hand Melas a Counsellour of the King of Cappadocia came into Judea to understand the knot of the business he found it much envenomed and desperate of remedy The wicked father caused his sons to be fetcht out of prison to examine them before Melas and to confront them with the depositions Alexander asketh where the accusers were it was answered they were alreddy dead He replieth It was an unjust proceeding to put them to death in the guilt of a lie drawn out by force of torments for ever to shut up their mouth from verity As for himself and his brother Aristobulus they never had any other purpose but to flie to Cappadocia and from thence to pass to Rome to free themselves from the unquietness of their father When Herod heard speech of the voyage of Cappadocia he entreated Melas to enquire particularly of Glaphyra if she more clearly would utter any thing touching this design Glaphyra then was sent for and when at her approch she beheld her husband in fetters it was a dreadful thing to see her afflictions Alas my dear husband said she are these the favours of your father is this the diadem be hath promised you And thereupon her heart oppressed with grief stopped up the rest of her words Tears stood in the eyes of the miserable Alexander who passionately loved her and all the company was so troubled with this spectacle of pitie that those there present to examine looked one upon another and forgat the formalities of justice Herod asketh Alexander if his wife were not partaker of all his secrets He answereth Such was her desert and discretion that he concealed nothing from her The poor Ladie was a little amazed at this word Notwithstanding with great simplicity she said she was ignorant of all that had passed as the child not yet born yet was very ready to tell a lie to save her husband and that she never would disavow it although he should charge her with some crime Alexander touched to the quick with this terderness said to her Madame be not astonished you very well know I never had any other plot but to carry you into Cappadocia to visit the King your father Behold all our offence This cured not Herod but made him extend his suspition upon King Archelaus taking it ill he should go about to withdraw his son without his privacy He commanded the prisoners to be set at liberty and in the mean time sendeth new Embassadours to Rome to purge himself from some slanders wherewith he was charged and to obtain of Caesar full liberty to dispose of his children according as justice should require which was assented unto The young Princes are disgraced and soyled with strange calumniations at Rome so that no man durst undertake their defence He very glad to have such Arraignment and death of the innocent dispatches being as he was a man precisely formal and ever giving colour of justice to his passion assembleth the Counsel to frame an Inditement against his sons admitting all those whom he saw mischievously bent to countenance his bad purpose and sequestring others who might cause some obstacle amongst the rest Archelaus expresly nominated by Caesar to examine this business Moreover that which was an act of great injustice he never would suffer his children to appear before the Judges to be heard in their justification but himself alone entereth into this Assembly full of gall and poyson Never was he seen to be so out of countenance passion having wholly transfigured him in such sort that he spake and acted things little consonant to his gravity His friends were to seek in him and he seemed rather a savage beast than a King Sometime he accused and lamented within himself sometime he stammered and cut himself short He produced letters of his sons that had no value in them as was those of their journey into Cappadocia and yet as if he had got a great victory he cryed out Sirs what say you to this Behold you not great malice O that I had been dead before I had known any such thing Sometime he said he referred himself to justice and that through passion he would do nothing passionately Sometime he published he had not summoned this Assembly to judge but to approve his opinion to the end posterity might the more abhor parricide Then he cited Deuteronomie which permitted fathers to stone their rebellious children to death and played the Scribe or the Divine then he shewed Caesar's letters of which he made more account than of his Deuteronomie and insisted thereupon as if the offenders had already been peremptorily condemned by the sentence of Augustus When they came to voices Saturninus the Roman a Consular man of great authority absolutely disswadeth this cruelty saying Himself was a father that he knew the price of children and that Herod would repent him of this precipitation This good man had three of his sons with him all gallant personages and well entertained in good employments who spake in favour of these poor Princes But to no purpose After them standeth up Volumnius a rude man who drew to his faction all those which practised to serve Herod's passion who altogether most unjustly concluded upon their deaths As soon as this decree was published an old souldier of Herods named Tyron very passionate for the innocents went directly to the Palace demandeth to speak to the King alone by himself which was granted him This honest man taking him aside gave him a sharp admonition even to the reproching him that he had lost his wits in commanding his true heirs to be put to death to advance a Viper who in the end would secretly sting him Herod hearkened to him in the beginning with great patience but speaking over-much he asked him Who are those that take exception at this judgement My self saith the good old man first and such and such men of quality whom he named Herod caused him to be cast into prison laid hold of the rest and condemneth them all to death Afterwards causeth his sons to be carried to Sebaste and directeth the most cruel of his Guard to strangle them in prison These unfortunate Princes who expected nothing less than such a sentence seeing the dreadfull faces of executioners and the fearfull image of death before their eyes looked pale with horrour and asked them Who brought you hither But they pulling them aside as sacrifices and discovering the instruments of their cruelty soon shewed wherefore they came for without making any other answer they took them by the throat and putting the fatal cord about their necks by main force strangled them devoid of mercy The poor Glaphyra who as yet lost
not the hope of her husbands libertie having at that time prepared a new battery to dispose her father in law to clemency heard the tidings of the death of Alexander and withal of her own widdow-hood She a good space remained in a trance then mute as a statue last of all a little recollecting her spirits and casting out a sigh from the bottom of her heart Wo is me saith she I thought not Herod would have proceeded thus far Tell him the sacrifice of his cruelty is not finished for behold one part of the Victim is yet alive Alexander my dear Alexander who for ever in my heart shall survive needs must you end your innocent life by this infamous punishment Must you have him for executioner whom nature allotted you for a father At the least I might have been called to receive the last groans of thy pensive soul to embosom thy final words and enchase them in my heart Then turning herself to two little children which she had by her sides Poor orphans what a father have they snatched from you Alas you are timely taught the trade of misery The poor Ladie night and day disconsolately afflicted herself and being no longer able to endure the Court of Judea no more than a Lyons den she was sent back into Cappadocia to the King her father Herod kept with him the two sons under colour of their education but in effect to establish himself fearing least their name should serve for a pretext of some revolt O the providence of God! It seemeth you much slacken to fall upon guilty heads These young Princes sons of so virtuous a mother so well bred so well educated accomplished with so many excellent parts declared lawfull successours to the Crown these Princes who had been seen not above five years before to return in triumph from Rome to Jerusalem like the two twin-stars who guilded all Palestine with their rays these Princes that promised so many Tropheys so many wonders behold them in the sweetness of their years in the flower of their hopes at the gate of the Temple of honour for a small liberty of speech unworthily massacred in stead of a Diadem on their heads a halter about their necks and caused to be strangled by two Sergeants that so they might breath out their Royal souls under the hand of a hangman Behold the brave apprentiship which Herod exercised three year together about the time of the birth of our Saviour to prepare himself for actions much more enormous It was said of Silla that if Mercy had come upon the earth in humane shape he had slain her But Herod did much worse There remained nothing for him after so many slaughters but to embrew himself in the bloud of fourteen thousand Innocents and attempt upon the Son of God himself which presently after happened and of which every one by relation of the Scripture taketh notice It is time to behold the recompence those wicked Antipater the son of Herod from the too of the wheel souls received for having dipped their fingers in so much bloud and so many tragedies to the end we therein may observe the proceedings of the Divine Providence which spareth not first sleightly to touch and assay by some visitation those which it afterwards reserveth for the eternal pains of hell The detestable Antipater who had directed all the passages of this wickedness seeing the two Heirs of the Kingdom removed quite away by his practises thought he had already a foot in the Throne He continueth his cunning and malice ever masking himself with the veyl of piety as if he had an unspeakable care of the life and state of his father while he in the mean time had no other aim but quickly to make himself absolute Master of all fearing lest the disposition of Herod which was very fleeting might alter and for this cause he went up and down daily practizing very great intelligences But he was hated by the people like a Tiger and the souldiers who saw him embrewed in the bloud of his brothers so beloved by all the Nobility could in no sort relish him Above all the people were extreamly touched with compassion when these little children of Alexander and Aristobulus were led through the streets who had been bred in Herods Court. All the world beheld these poor Orphans with a weeping eye and with sorrow remembred the disasters of their fathers Antipater well saw it was fit for him to withdraw himself and decline envy and not sindge his wings in the candle fearing his father in process of time who in such matters was subtile enough might discover his purposes Notwithstanding he was so secret that he avoided to ask leave of Herod to sequester himself for fear to minister matter of suspition to him But he caused letters closely to be written from Rome to his father by friends whom he had wrought for that purpose which imported all he desired to wit that it was necessary he should be sent to Rome to break the enterprizes which the Arabians plotted against the state of Judea Herod having received these letters instantly dispatched his son Antipater with a goodly train rich presents and above all the Will of Herod which declared him King after the death of his father Behold all he could desire in the world But as the eye of God never sleepeth and surprizeth the crafty in their own policies it happeneth the mischievous Pheroras who had acted his part as we have seen in this lamentable tragedy departed this life by a sudden death and poysoned as it is thought by the maid-servant whom he had married Herod being requested to come into the house of Conspiracy of Antipater discovered his brother to take examinations upon the fact unexpectedly learneth how his son Antipater had given poyson to the dead Pheroras at such time as he was out of favour to poyson the King his father whilest he was at Rome that he speedily might return into Palestine with a Crown on his head This was deposed even by the son of the Comptroller of Antipaters house and circumstanced with grounds and particulars so express that there was not any cause of doubt Herod demanded where this poyson was He answered it was in the hands of the widow of his brother Pheroras She being examined upon the fact goeth up into a higher chamber feigning to fetch it and being mounted to the top of the house she through despair fell down headlong with a purpose to kill herself But God suffered not the fall to be mortal they much heartned her and promised all impunity if she freely would deliver the truth She telleth that true it was her husband had received the poyson of Antipater and had some inclination to give the blow but that a little before his death he repented himself and detested such wickedness and with these words she drew out the poyson which afterwards was known in the death of delinquents to be very mortal At
circumstances of his crime Behold you not saith he a bruitish stupiditie to conspire against your father having as yet the bloud of your brothers before your eyes and all the assurances of the scepter in your hands Needs must you perpetrate a parricide to make your self possessour of a Crown which was acquired for you by so solemn and authentical a Testament Look you after nothing but the bloud of your father to set a seal upon it yea of a father whose life is so dear to all bonest men and of nature so indulgent to love his children that have never so little merit An ingratitude able to make Heaven blush and earth tremble under your feet An ingratitude worthy that all the elements should conspire to punish it This man ceased not to discharge against him words of fire with a masculine eloquence and the miserable Antipater prostrated himself on the ground and prayed God to do a miracle in favour of him to make manifest his innocency since he found himself so oppressed by the malice of men It is wonder saith the Historian that those who during their life have believed no God would yet acknowledge him at their death This man lived as if there were neither Heaven God nor Angels and now seeing himself in the horrours of death prayed the Divinity to excuse his crime Varus saith unto him My friend expect not extraordinarie signs from Heaven in your favour but if you have any good reasons boldly produce them The King your father desireth nothing more than your justification Thereupon he stood confounded like a lost man Varus taking the poison that had been before represented to the Councel caused it to be given to an offender already condemned who instantly died and all the assembly arose as it is said with manifest condemnation of Antipater His father esteeming him absolutely convicted required of him his complices he onely named Antiphilus who brought the poison saying this wicked man was cause of all his unhappiness It was a great chance Herod at that time had not caused the sentence of death to be executed upon him but according to his ordinary proceeding he resolveth to inform Caesar of all that had passed and to send him the whole process formally drawn to order all at his pleasure In the mean time Antipater is streightly imprisoned expecting hourly as a miserable victim the stroke of death Herod at that time was about seventy years of age Horrible state of Herod in his lattâ—r days and already felt through imbecillity of body the approach of the last hour It was a very hard morsel for him to digest Never man better loved this present life Very freely would he have forsaken his part of the next world eternally to enjoy this though he in effect was therein most unhappy Towards the end of his days he grew so harsh so wayward then so collerick and furious that his houshold servants knew not how to come about him they handled him in his Palace as an old Lion chained with the fetters of an incurable malady He perswaded himself he was hated of all the world and was therein no whit deceived as having given too great occasion thereof The people almost forgot their duty with impatience and could no longer endure him As soon as his sickness was bruited abroad Judas The golden Eagle thrown down and Matthias the principal Doctours of the Jewish Law who had the youth at command perswaded the most valiant of their sect to undergo a bold adventure which was that Herod having re-edified and adorned the Temple of Jerusalem and as he had always shewed himself for the accommodation of his own estate to be an Idolater of Caesars fortune to set upon the principal gate the Romane Eagle all glittering in gold This much offended the sight of the Jews who could not endure any should place portraictures of men or beasts or any other figures in their Temples so much they abhorred such monsters which their fathers had seen adored in Aegypt Behold why this Judas and Matthias who were the chief thinking the sickness of Herod would help them began earnestly to exhort the most valiant of the young men who every day frequented their houses to take in hand the quarrel of God according to the spirit of their Ancestours and to beat down this abomination which they had fixed upon their Temple That the peril was not now so great Herod having enough to do to wrastle with his own pain but if it should happen they lost their lives to die in so glorious an act was to be buried in the midst of palms and triumphs There needed no more to encourage the youth Behold a troup of the most adventurous came forth about the midst of the day armed with axes and hatchets who climbed to the top of the Temple and hewed in pieces the Eagles in the sight of the whole world Judas and Matthias being there present and serving for trumpets in this exploit The noise hereof instantly came to the Palace and the Captain of the Guard ran thither with the most resolute souldiers He much feared some further plot and that this defacing of the Eagle might prove a preamble to some greater sedition But at the first as he began to charge the people retired which the more encouraged him for pursuit Fourty young men of those who had done the feat were taken in the place Judas and Matthias who accompanied them deeming it a thing unworthy to flie away and that at the least they ought to follow them in peril whom they had brought into danger Being presented to Herod and demanded from whence this boldness proceeded they freely answered Their plot had been fully agreed upon among themselves and if it were to do again they would be in readiness to put it in execution in regard they were more bound to Moses than Herod Herod amazed at this resolution and fearing greater commotions caused them to be secretly conveyed to Jerico whither himself after though crazy was carried and assembling the principal spake to them out of his litter making a long narration of the good offices he had done in favour of the whole Nation of the Temple he had built for them of the ornaments with which he had enriched it adding he had done in few years what their Asmonean Kings could not perform in six-score And for recompence of his piety at noon day they had hewed down with notable boldness a holy gift which he had raised in the Temple wherein God was more interessed than himself for which he required a reason These now fearing any further to incense him declined the danger and put him upon their companions leaving them to the pleasure of the King At that time the High-priesthood is taken from Matthias and another Matthias who was held to have been the authour of the sedition burned alive that night with his companions at which time an eclipse of the moon was seen that made this spectacle
she had seen in his picture which commonly was painted with the horns of a bull on his fore-head it was not in my opinion his fair eyes nor goodly nose which made him sought after for he was one of the most deformed creatures of the world Yet he notwithstanding was reputed a great Captain and a puissant King This blind Princess so breathed the air of ambition that though he were wholly Pagan and hydeous she no whit was affrighted for verily her passion was so much enkindled that she secretly dispatched one of her Eunuches with express letters beseeching Attila he would demand her in marriage of the Emperour her brother and she should account it a great honour to be his wife This Scythian entered into a much greater estimation of his own worth than ever beholding himself sued unto by a Romane Ladie of noble extraction and thereupon grew so eager that he immediately addresseth an Embassadour to the Emperour Valentinian to require his sister of him in marriage and the moity of his Kingdom otherwise he was not gone back so far but he would return with his Army to enforce his obedience All the world was now strucken with terrour when by good chance he saw himself for some pressing occasions engaged to return into his Countrey where all these lightenings were quickly turned into a shower of bloud After he had sweat under harness like another Hannibal who in the end of his conquests was bruitishly besotted in the bosom of a Capuan Ladie this haughty King of Hunnes as soon as he came into his Countrey wholly engulphed himself in wine and love Besides a great rabble of creatures which he had to satisfie his lust he became in his old days passionately enamoured of a gentlewoman named Hildecon whom he married with sports feasts and excessive alacrity That evening after he had freely drunk according to his custom he retired into his nuptial chamber with his new spouse and the next morning was found dead in his bed floating in a river of bloud who had drawn bloud from all the veins of the world Some said it was an eruption of bloud which Death of Attila choaked him but others thought Hildecon lead thereunto one knoweth not by what spirit nor by whom sollicited handled her pretended husband as Judith did Holofernes Behold how God punisheth the proud A despicable dwarf who commanded over 700000. men who forraged every where environed as with a brazen wall who boasted in the lightenings of his puissant arms who razed Cities all smoking in bloud and flames who wasted Provinces who destroyed Empires who would not tread but on Crowns and Scepters behold him the very night of his nuptials full of drink massacred by a woman having not so much as the honour to die by the hand of a man The same night that Attila yielded up the ghost in his own bloud our Saviour appeared in a dream to the good Emperour Martianus and shewing him a great bowe all shivered in pieces saith Martianus behold the bowe of Attila which I have broken thou hast no further cause to fear thy Empire Thus you see how God fighteth for the pious even while they sleep This scourge being so fortunately diverted Martianus and Pulcheria attended with all their power to the consolation and ornament of the universal Church under the direction of the great Pope Saint Leo whom their Majesties most punctually obeyed At that time were seen the reliques to march in triumph into Constantinople of the good Patriarch Flavianus massacred by the practices of hereticks at that time the exiled Bishops were with honour re-established in their seats At that time the Councel of Chalcedon was celebrated where the Emperour Martianus though wholly a souldier made an Oration first in Latin for the honour of the Romane Church then in Greek his natural language At that time heresie was fully condemned and impudence surcharged with confusion At that time an infinite number of goodly Canons were confirmed by the Councel and strongly maintained by the authority of the Emperour At that time justice was fixed in the height of perfection Briefly at that time the whole world was infinitely comforted by the good order and liberalities of this holy Court It was an admirable Empire and a happy marriage and nothing could be desired more in this match but immortality But the holy Virgin Pulcheria being about fifty years of age not so much loaden with years as merits wearied out with continual travel and care which she had endured almost fourty years in the mannage of affairs found her repose in exchange of the Court of Constantinople for that of Paradise She died in a most pure virginity which she carefully had preserved all her life time leaving the poor for her heirs who were her delight after she had built in her own life time five Churches and among the rest one to the honour of the most Blessed Virgin Marie which surpasseth all the other in magnificence besides many hospitals and sepulchres for pilgrimes Torches made of aromatick wood cast out their odoriferous exhalations when they are almost wasted and the virtuous Pulcheria made all the good odours of her life evaporate in the last instant of her death She who had lived as the Bee in the tastfull sweetness of purity died as the Phenix in the Palms not of Arabia but of conquests which she had obtained over the enemies of our nature We have here annexed her Picture and Elogie AVGVSTA AEL PVLCHERIA PULCHERIA FLA. THEODOSII JUNIORIS SOROR AUGUSTA VIRGO ET CONJUX AUGUSTORUM FILIA SOROR NEPTIS UXOR PROPUGNATRIX PONTIFICUM MAGISTRA IMPERATORVM CVSTOS FIDEI MVNIMEN ORTHODOXORVM ECCLESIAE ET IMPERII DECVS NOVA HELENA NOVVM ORBIS MIRACVLVM ANNO CHRISTI CLIII AETATIS LV. IMPERII XXXIX AD COELESTEM AVLAM PROFICISCITVR Upon the picture of PULCHERIA A Golden Virgin in an iron Age Who trampled under foot infernal rage A barren wife a fruitfull maid unstain'd That all the world within her heart contain'd Mother of people Mistress over Kings brings And who 'twixt Church and Law firm union She in herself bright Scepters did behold Joyn'd to the Cross Altars to Crowns of gold The married life unto virginitie And glorious greatness to humilitie If virtue were a substance to be seen Well might we here suppose this happy Queen Should lend her body that it outward may Resplendent lustre to the world display GReat-ones may here behold the shortest way to the Temple of Honour is to pass by that of Virtue Never woman was more honoured in her life never woman more glorious in her death That great Pope S. Leo S. Cyril and all the excellent men both of the East and West have employed their pens in her honour So magnificent and noble acclamations were made to her in Councels that nothing would be wished more glorious A little before her death in the Councel of Chalcedon they cried out Long live the Empress most Sacred Long live
young-ones upon the nest All which the Empress Justina could do was speedily to save her self with her sons and daughters to set sayl on the sea and pass to Thessalonica a Citie of Greece much renowned were it but in S. Pauls Epistles Maximus finding no resistance flowed like a torrent over the fair fields of Italie and made furious havock though to take away the blemish of the bloud of the Emperour Gratian and to gain the reputation of a good Prince he shewed in the end some moderation It is verily a miracle of God that he having been treated with by S. Ambrose with so much liberty as we have said before holding still the bloudy sword in the ruins of Italie in a time when he might have done any thing which his passion dictated he so bridled himself that he not onely abstained from wronging the holy Prelate but for his sake used the whole Territory of Milan with the more humanity It seemed the Citie of Milan under the influences of its Pastour had the virtue of those sacred forrests which tamed wolves It tied up the throat of a ravenous wolf and made him court his prey Yet though she were without peril she was not void of fear seeing so many armed troups round about her and smelling the smoak of those fires which wasted her neighbours Then was the time when the admirable Bishop acted things likewise worthy of his person For all the Citizens wavering and almost ready to leave the Citie desolate to save their lives he by his eloquence and authority held them back so well that he seemed to have enchained them This scourge saith he proceedeth Ambros serm 99. Prudence and Charity of S. Ambrose from our disorders let us cease to sin and God will give over to afflict us It is a folly to flie from your countrey If you desire to be safe flie from your sins The arms of Maximus will have no power over bulwarks of sanctity Besides as it is said he is bad who is good for none but himself the charitable Prelate not content to consolate and confirm his own but seeing that all Italie was filled with extream miseries not onely spent all the means which he had to comfort them but employed therein the very gold and silver vessels of the Church for which cause the Arians sought occasion to calumniate him disposing themselves to condemn virtues since they could find no vice to lay hold on The holy man answered that which he afterward couched in his offices It is the effect of a most ardent Offic. lib. 1. cap. 18. charity to compassionate the miseries of our neighbours and to aid them according to our power yea above our power I rather choose herein to be accused of prodigality than inhumanity there is no fault more pardonable than that of bounty It is a strange thing to find men so cruel as to be troubled when they see a man redeemed from death an honest woman delivered from the violence of Barbarians which is worse than death or poor forsaken infants drawn from the contagion of Idols which they are forced to adore with menaces of death Let our enemies murmure as long as they please but I more affect to keep souls for God than to treasure up gold Whilest all this passed in Italie Theodosius came to Enterview of Theodosius Justina visit Justina and her children at Thessalonica who failed not to present all their complaints and solicite him to undertake the war against Maximus But he therein at first shewed himself very cold insomuch that not to disguise the truth partly touched in Zosimus although Theodosius was a very great Captain as one who arrived to the Empire by his own merit notwithstanding seeing his fortune now at the height he was pleased to tast the repose and delights of the Court under the shadow of his own palms and not contest again with any man fearing the hazard of wars and the slippery foot of felicitie Moreover Maximus who defied the force of all the world played the fawning dog before him and sent express Embassadours to draw him to some agreement This so wrought that when the offended Empress sounded an alarm Theodosius endeavoured to pacifie her with fair promises and good hopes saying Nothing must be precipitated that Maximus would become dutifull that it was better to give him some bone to gnaw on peaceably than enkindle a war which would never be extinguished but with rivers of humane bloud But the Ladie infinitely vexed pursued this affair with all extremity and was much displeased to see that he who held all his advancement from her husband her self and her children shewed some remisness in so urgent a necessity She bethought her self of an excellent stratagem which was to enflame the war with the fire of love The Emperour Theodosius had lost his wife Placilla and was much enclined to a second marriage Justina who heretofore had enjoyed the short tyranny of beauty making two Emperours Maxentius and Valentinian the Elder tributary thereunto was no longer in season to afford that which might very easily win Theodosius but she had a daughter named Galla then in the flower of her age and a perfect image of the mother she determined to pierce this man by the arrow of the eye of this Princess which was most easily done for she took her along with her to dissolve this heart of ice and casting her self at his feet humbly besought him by the service he heretofore had vowed to the house of great Valentinian by the ruin of her orphans and by the bloud of poor deceased Gratian whom he had associated in Empire to take the matter in hand In the same proportion as she uttered those words with great fervour the daughter composed her self to weep with a good grace and even as tears in such persons have a strong spur in them Theodosius beholding her felt the wound of Turnus when he beheld Lavinia in the like case He quickly took the Empress and her daughter up promising all assistance and from that time plainly discovering that he was powerfully touched He also failed not in few days to require Galla in marriage which the mother promised him as soon as she had irrevocably engaged him in the war she pretended The marriage was hastily enough solemnized and from the festival hall they passed into the field of Mars Maximus who saw Theodosius entertained his Embassadours with words not giving them any absolute answer much doubted the affair and bent his whole force upon defence He did all which humane prudence may that hath not the eyes of God He set his Goodman the furtherer of all his treacheries to sea commanding him to guard the Archi-pelagus with a great fleet On the other part he gave commission to his brother Marcellinus to keep passage of the Alps with a strong Army He himself with the most resolved troups descended into Sclavonia to prevent his enemy Theodosius advertised of all
this after he had most particularly invoked the assistance of the God of hosts he put himself on the way to cast the lot of the worlds Empire Never was there a more prosperous war It seemed the Angels of Heaven led the Emperour by the hand and that the bloud of Gratian so traiterously shed raised Furies in the Camp of Maximus The encounter of the two Armies was at Sissia where those of the contrary party accounted themselves strong having the river for bulwark which separated them from approches terrible to their treachery But the brave souldiers of Theodosius nothing amazed although already much wearied and all dusty with the long journey they had taken laying hold of occasion by the forelock speedily passed the river and furiously charged the enemy These wicked men were so astonished to see themselves surprized by such an action of courage that so soon as they had taken a view of them they turned their backs Maximus hardy for a black Overthrow of Maximus mischief and remiss in a field of battel shamefully abandoned his Army instantly the earth was covered with bodies the river filled with bloud and good success reserved a part to the clemency of the victour Theodosius pursued his fortune and grapling with Marcellinus who was no abler man than his brother defeated him returning now very fresh from the victory he bare away in the first battel And as at the same time he had notice that Maximus was retired into Aquileia he who desired to cut away the root of war went thither with his army to besiege it The justice of God fought powerfully against this Cain and the time was come in which with his bloud he must wash the spots of his crime God who in punishments holdeth some conformity with the sin would that as this miserable creature had stirred the military men against his Prince he should be betrayed by the same souldiers in whom he had all his hopes reposed It is a strange thing that these people abhorring the wickedness of this man took seized and shamefully despoiled him of the very habiliments and marks of Emperour which he had arrogated to himself then tying and binding him like a Galley-slave they presented him to Theodosius It was the greatest extremity of unhappiness which might befal him to say that in stead of measuring with his dead body the place he should have defended living with his sword in hand he was used as a King disarrayed to let him be seen by all the world as a spectacle of infamy Theodosius beholding him so humbled had some pitie of him and reproching him with his treachery demanded who caused him to enterprize this tragedy He being a coward and a flatterer answered in so humble terms that he discovered to have had this belief that his design no whit displeased his Majesty in other things excusing himself with great submission and making it appear he was a true lover of life He never had so good an opinion of his wickedness as to hope for an ordinary death yet seeing the Emperour changed colour and spake to him in a sweeter tone he was in some hope to obtain life when the enraged souldiers haled him and tore him in pieces His death Inter innumeras manus fertur ad mortem Pacatus or as others have written delivered him to the hangman who cut off his head At the same time Theodosius dispatched Count Arbogastus to seize on his son who was a young child as yet bred under the wing of his mother whom Maximus caused to be called the Victorius and had already declared him Caesar when suddenly he was taken and massacred to accompany his father The Good man his Admiral understanding the general discomfiture of affairs voluntarily drowned himself preventing the hand of a hangman which would not have failed him but all the water in the sea was not sufficient to wash away the stain of his Masters bloud from his soul since the eternal flames never can free it Behold the issue of Maximus after the rapine of four or five years Behold to what the designs of the wicked tend who under pretext of Religion seek the advancement of their temporal affairs Behold to what hypocrisies and goodly humane policies which make use of God as a mask for their wickedness are finally reduced Behold a stroke of thunder which hath left nothing on earth behind it but noise and stench O bestial and bewitched men who having so good lessons of the justice of God written with the bloud and sweat of so many miserable Sacrifices pursue still the ranks to be companions of the like misfortune S. Ambrose is much glorified for treating with this man who deceived so many others as with one excommunicate unwilling to be so much as saluted by him who vowed so many services at his feet and freely fore-telling the misery should befall him if he appeased not the celestial vengeance with a sincere repentance The seventeenth SECTION The affliction of S. Ambrose upon the death of Valentinian WHosoever hath said that Scepters are made of glass Crowns of perfumed thorns and the ways of great men are all of ice bordered with precipices hath said no less than truth It is verily a thing most strange that the golden seelings of Palaces tremble over crowned heads and that in the heat of feasts the hand of Heaven visibly on the walls figureth the sentence of their death In the mean time we desperately love the vanities of the world nothing is thought on but to set our foot on mens throats that we may the more eminently be seen to draw the bloud of this universe out of its veins to cement up the ruins and tie our selves to a miserable world which daily falleth apieces even in our own hands The poor Valentinian was restored to the Throne by Theodosius after the death of Maximus and had onely past three or four years in peacefull tranquilitie disposing himself to good according to the latitude of his own heart and giving way to be wholly governed by the Counsels of Saint Ambrose whom he heretofore had persecuted When behold him taken away at the age of one and twenty years by a horrible treason which did as it were mingle his bloud with that of his brother Gratian. The good Prince passed into France being then at Vienna near Lions accompanied by the Count Arbogastus Arbogastus a French-man by Nation who had lived till then in singular good reputation for he was a man of worth having a well-composed body a quick spirit a generous behaviour and much practice in the exercise of arms which had so dignified him that he held the prime place in the Empire to the which he had rendered good services He was very well beloved by the souldiers for besides his excellent parts he bare an irreconciliable hatred to avarice and appeared so little curious to enrich himself that being so great a Captain as he was he would be Master of no
sober that he gave an example to the most austere Monks so negligent in the neatness of his body that he much gloried to see vermine run up and down on his beard which he wore very long to play the Philosopher in all kinds so patient that he many times endured all sorts of affronts and sharp words from mean men no more moved thereby to anger than a stone If it must needs be according to the said Maxims that a Prince to procure estimation should perform great enterprizes this man was no sooner seated in his Throne but that he practised admirable policies and hastened to make war on the Persians to imitate Alexander the Great to whose virtues he aspired If needs some remarkable act must be done in the begining he at his entrance professing Paganism repealeth the Bishops which Constantius a Christian Prince had banished If liberallitie must be used this man gave all and said his treasures were better among his friends than with himself If excellent Masters in every art and science are to be cherished this man did it with much passion From whence then proceedeth it that with all those goodly parts of Machiavels Prince he hath so little prospered reigning but one year and seven months and dying strucken with a blow from heaven which the Pagans themselves confess to be ignorant from whence it came and dying in a frenzy which caused him to fill his hand with his own blood and cry Thou O Galilean hast overcome and leaving in his death a memory of his name so odious to all posterity The poor man forsaking the way already so happily beaten by Constantine unluckily hasteneth to joyn amity with those wise Politicians who had all Plato's Common-wealth who esteemed themselves the most accurate in the government of the World who promised him by these wiles he practised the absolute extirpation of Christianity and to make him the most awfull and most glorious of all the Emperours of the world And I beseech you what became in the end of all these promises but dreams illusions and vapours Constantius under the holy Philosophy of the cross reigned more than thirty years Constantine waged great wars had great victories great triumphs was attended by great Councels great Cities Constantine left a Religion so established that the malice of an Arian son nor the policy of a new Apostata could not extinguish it Constantine never entred into any battel where he came not off victorious And Julian in the first war he undertook upon the beginning of his empire confounded all his Army led his Captains to slaughter was himself slain as a victime And the sage Politicians which he ever had in his army instead of Priests and Bishops drew him to death to serve as a spectacle of confusion for the one and matter of mirth for the other May we not wel say O Nobilitie that these spirits who divert your hearts from the chast beliefs of your Ancestors from the puritie of faith the candor of a good conscience to invenom them with a doctrine of impietie policy and treachery under colour of humane wisedom are the plagues of States the ruins of houses and the fatal hands to annihilate greatness I will not infer for a necessary conclusion that all such as live in the fear of God and in integrity must ever have pleasing successes according to the world in the manage of temporal affairs this is not a thing absolutely promised to us by God We have not sold him our fidelity and Christianity upon such condition that he should still afford us the bread of dogs and favour us with felicities which he imparteth to Sarazens and Mores I know good Christian Princes may be afflicted sometime for the punishment of certain sins which they with too much indulgence have permitted sometime for a trial and spectacle of their virtue sometime to teach us there is another life for the children of God since they in this same are ill entreated sometime for causes which the providence of God involveth as in a cloud replenished with obscurity and darkness Yet shall you find in reading histories either divine or humane that all those who have progressed on with true feeling of God and with the lightenings of integrity and touches of a good conscience which nature provideth for every man have commonly been the most expected the best beloved the most happy and most permanent And to speak with S. Augustine would not they Aug. lib. 5. de civitate Dei cap. 24. ever be most happy if they had no other felicity but to be just in their commands moderate in their fortunes humble among services modest in praises and faithful servants of God in Empires Wherein consisteth the happiness of man if it be not to fear God so to fear nothing els If it be not to love a Kingdom where we no longer may dread to have companions If it be not to pardon injuries through clemency and not revenge crimes but by justice If it be not to be chast in the liberty of pleasures If it be not rather to command over our own passions than Cities and Provinces Behold the principal felicity of great Constantine which you ought O Noble Men to take for your model Do in your own houses what he acted in an Empire establish there constantly the fear and love of God Banish vices as he from his City of Constantinople the Temples and Victims of false Gods that the honour of the Cross may set a seal on all your thoughts all your counsels all your enterprizes that your examples may serve to God as amber and adamant to attract so many hearts of straw and iron as are now in the world to the love of virtue that these duels of gladiatours condemned by Constantine may be the horrour of your thoughts and detestation of your hearts that devotion chastity humility patience charity virtues so familiar to this great Monarch may make an honourable warfare which shall possess your heart and that all of them may there reign each one in particular with as ample Empire as all of them in general THE STATES-MAN TO STATES-MEN SIRS SInce God hath put the government of people justice and most important affairs into your hands he hath likewise raised you upon a high degree of honour to be looked on in offices no otherwise than as stars in the firmament Your dignities are obligations of conscience that bend like the chains of MEDAEA and scortch weak souls in purple and gold but which on the other part afford to generous spirits a perfect lustre of Divinitie The more light a bodie enjoyeth say the learned so much the more ought it to have of participation and favourable influences for objects which are in a much lower degree than it So likewise must we necessariely say that your qualities which grant you nearer approaches to the source of greatness and embellish you with the rays of the majestie of a Prince do most particularly oblige you
well observed this maxim that to Theodorus Anagnostes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 witness the zeal he bare to our Religion he caused the head of one of his officers to be cut off who having been bred in the Catholick Church became an Arian thinking by this means to be advanced into the good favour of his Master But this brave King My friend saith he since thou hast been disloyal to God I can never think thou wilt be faithful to thy Prince Thou shalt wash away the stain of thy treachery with thy bloud to teach posterity thou must not mingle the interests of God with the profane pretenses of thy fortunes He shewed himself very zealous to preserve peace in the Church in a most dangerous schism raised in his time For Pope Anastasius being deceased and they proceeding lawfully to the election of Symmachus there was a Senatour of an unquiet spirit who desirous to make a Pope at the devotion of the Emperour of Constantinople so to countenance his Extravagencies banded Altar against Altar and caused an Antipope to be chosen named Laurentius which rent both Senate and Clergy into great partialities But Theodorick very speedily quenched the fire and being well informed of the business seeing Symmachus was first elected and supported by the soundest part he mantained him with a strong hand against all the enterprises of adversaries who durst not in the end resist his authority Besides having published an Edict against the favourers of the Heruli who perplexed the Province of Genoa and Milan whither they were retired that fell out to be the cause of very many miseries and tears among the poor people who having no support so helpful unto them as the Bishops threw themselves into the arms of Epiphanes and Laurentius both great Saints and great Prelates the one of Pauta the other of Milan Epiphanes undertook to speak and said to the King Sir Should I here reckon up all the favours which you have received from God I might make you appear more sparing in your desires than he hath been in his liberalities since you have asked nothing of heaven which hath not ever surmounted your vows and hopes But not to speak at this time of so many prodigies is it not a very great wonder to see you do justice in the throne of your enemy and to behold us pleading the cause of your servants with such a confidence in a place which the terrour of arms had heretofore rendered so dreadful Sir it is the Saviour of the world who hath given into your hand this people which hath charged us with their requests Take good heed how you offend him by ill using the gift he hath afforded you Know how an invisible power hath led you by the hand into so many encounters and battels that the air rain and seasons have favoured your standards as if they had been to you engaged Now is the time you must acknowledge so many benefits by your piety not despising the tears of the afflicted which are the sacrifices of suppliants The examples of your Predecessours who have been cast out of the throne for their iniquity shew you cannot establish it but in your virtues Upon this consideration your Countrey prostrate at your feet most humbly beggeth you would be pleased to sweeten the rigour of your laws not onely by doing good to the innocent but by pardoning the culpable For very little would our clemency be if we did onely abstain to strike those who have given offence to none not considering mercy is not made for any but the miserable In revengeing your injuries you shall do like men of the earth and by pardoning share in glory with that great Monarch of heaven who daily maketh his sun to shine on criminal heads as well as the most innocent The King made a most courteous answer saying There was no reason that earthly powers should resist the prayers of Bishops who made heaven propitious and that he remitted to all in general the punishments of death ordained by laws but in so Vitia transmittit ad posteròs qui praesentibus culpis ignoscit much that the ulcer must be purged least by shewing himself too indulgent to vices he might make them pass into example for posterity the consideration of his state required the Authours of sedition should be removed to the end their presence might not foment the evil The reply was found very reasonable and letters of grace instantly dispatched by Urbicus who was one of the chiefest officers in the Court for expeditions He satisfied not himself with this favour but calling the good Bishop into his cabinet having highly commended him sent him among the Gauls to redeem the Italian prisoners there by reason the Burgundians in certain incursions had taken away very many and others over-whelmed with the miseries which proceed from civil wars were voluntarily stept aside The King gave commission to the Bishops to rally them to their troups liberally defraying the charges that were necessary There is also found one amongst his letters addressed Cassiodor l. 2. c. 2. 29. to Count Adela wherein he witnesseth that though he had a great desire to preserve his people in full peace and repose because the glory of a Prince consisteth in the tranquility of his subjects yet that he principally intended the Churches should enjoy this favour since in obliging them the mercies and blessings of God were drawn on his kingdom and pursuing this course he commanded Duke Ida to cause all the Ecclesiastical possessions to be restored which some had usurped in Languedoc after the death of Alarick Observe the good foundations of piety which he laid by the counsel of Boetius The second Maxim was to bend all his endeavours and imploy his best thoughts for the comfort of the people because there is not any way more powerful to gain the hearts of all the world than by sweetening the sharpness of the times present or the burdens of the passed We have seen said he by experience that those who are desirous to possess gold without the love of the people have been very unsafe that Kings differ not from other men but in being powerful to do good and that the common sort measure their greatness onely by their bounty that is it which heretofore made the Gods of Gentiles and which maintaineth Monarchies on the firm rock of constancy Theodorick imbraced this care most particularly Cassioder l. 4. ep 36. for he punctually enquired after the losses of his poor subjects and if he found any molested by the passage of some troups or other like he released them of taxes and ordinary subsidies as it may yet be seen in his letters and namely in one which he wrot to President Faustus wherein he commanded him to hold his hand in this business Because saith Lib. ◠Epis ◠he a body over-burdened sinketh to the ground and that it were better to despise a slight gain than to deprive himself
nor fetters may prejudice the libertie of your spirit The third reason which is very much at large deduced in this divine Work is drawn from the vanitie of all temporal goods where wisdom proveth by very good reasons That if the sorrows we have for the world might be measured at the rate of the things which contristate us as there is nothing great in this vale of tears so should there not be any thing capable of much disquiet Mourn we for mettals which are the nests of rust and the tinder of concupiscence for attires which are the nourishment of mothes for bodies which are the food of worms for houses which are the bones of the earth piled one upon another with cement and morter for precious stones which are the excrements of an enraged sea borrowing their worth from our illusion for honours which are golden masks and weather-cocks of inconstancie What a folly is it to hold retirement for a punishment which so many brave spirits have taken for a Paradise and to think our selves sharply punished when we no longer behold behind us great trains of servitours who burden us with their crimes and make us become answerable for their souls What an errour is it to desire to hold riches locked up which never are what they ought to be but when they are distributed For they resemble a dung-hill which stinketh when it is together heaped and fatteneth the fields when it is spread abroad We move Heaven and earth to flie from povertie and find it in our riches for great fortunes are now adays so hungrie and have so much ado to maintain themselves that although the needie are ever the most poor yet is there nothing more beggerly than the rich who have a thousand dependances and a thousand necessities whereunto their felicitie is fastened as with a chain What a charm is it to think then to be happie when you mannage the affairs of Great-ones where never is any thing done to please them if you make not your self a slave to all their passions where favours are granted of feathers and disgraces inflicted of lead Where your sleep your life and your faith is sold for a pleasing fantasm which lasteth no longer than the dream of one night Deserveth not a man to be strucken down as an enemie of reason when unloosened from this slaverie he withereth languisheth and sighs for his fetters ready prest a thousand times to kiss the hands of him who again would enchain him Prof. 6. l. 3. O gloria gloria millibus hominum mortalium nihil aliud nisi aurium in statio magna What a mockerie is it to affect greatness among men as if a rat would make himself a lord among mice and to feed himself with glorie which is nothing but a swelling of the ear Oh Boetius Seneca desired under Nero and Papinian under Antoninus the solitude which thou now enjoyest but whilst they endeavoured to break their bands leaned to a ruinous wall the mass of their greatness transported and buried them Behold thy self retired Dum ruitures moles ipsa trahit from affairs into a chamber of Pavia behold thy self in repose and among books the first entertainment of thy young days why dost thou not now presently make a virtue of the happiness which the providence of God offereth thee For a third point he considered the fruits that might be derived from tribulation when it is well mannaged Prosperitie saith this wisdom unto him is windie open slipperie and inconsiderate Adversitie quite otherwise is sober reserved prudent and circumspect the one under apparences of felicities bringeth unto us an infinitie of lies the other is ever grave and sincere the one deceiveth us the other instructeth us the one blindeth us the other enlighteneth us the one polluteth us the other purifieth us the one charmeth us and tieth up our understanding the other enfranchizeth us the one separateth us from our sovereign good and maketh us fall into a thousand sorts of vanities the other draweth us back as with a book to the consideration of eternitie the one createth for us many flatteries the other discovereth unto us many true friends Let us suffer a little Boetius and if this seem troublesom think that as thy prosperities have passed away so shall thy adversities The last day of thy life which cannot be far off will ever be the last of thy ill fortunes if thou leave not it it will forsake thee it is an ordinance of God that favours and disgraces cannot be of long continuance and that for mortals there is no evil immortal Finally for the last reason the holy man who had composed so learned books of the mysteries of our faith forsaking all the comforts of humane things drenched himself very far into the consideration of blessings in the other life of eternity and the excellency of God He considered it as an infinite sea of essence This is inserted in my Journâ—â— bounty beatitude which encloseth in it self all being all good all veritie He saw the whole Universe in this immensity of God as a spunge would be in the midst of the ocean an atom in the air and a little globe of glass enchased in the first Heaven He saw in his bosom all glory all dignities all riches all treasures all pleasures all consolations all delights all joys and all beatitudes he walked at ease in those fourteen abysses of greatness which are in God to wit infinitie immensitie immutabilitie eternitie omnipotencie wisdom perfection sanctitie benignitie power providence mercie justice and the end whereunto all things tend From thence he beheld the Word Incarnate the true King of the afflicted and all the Saints laden with crosses and persecutions thinking himself very happy to mingle his tears with the bloud of so many brave courages who had gained Heaven with violence This consolation overflowing his heart drowned all his acerbities and infinitely sweetened the sharpness of his captivity Behold the fruits which the wise Boetius gathered in his prison well shewing that virtue is an hostess tractable in every lodging and who looseth no part of her liberty in chains It onely appertaineth to huge mountains to bear snow and verdure at one and the same time and to great souls to retain a holy vigour in the strength of afflictions The seventh SECTION The death of Boetius IT is a loss that the Authours which have written of this death have cut off so short the last act of a life so eminent There is not any thing saith one so curious in a statue nor so hard to polish as the nails and nothing which more clearly maketh the perfection of a man accomplished in virtues to be seen as a good death I will here speak that which I have drawn from the most probable authours touching the death of Boetius It is certain he was very long in this prison since he complaineth in the Preface of a book which he composed during the time of
on with little noise through the meadows and in an instant turneth into a great river and this river into light and this light into a sun but a sun which affordeth lustre and water to all the world The powers of the world which glitter with so much pomp have this almost ever proper to them to be either unprofitable or malign What did those great Philosophers who framed worlds in their idaeas What did the Plato's Aristotoles and Zeno's Could they ever perswade any one silly hamlet to live under those goodly Common-wealths they instituted on paper What did the Alexanders Caesars and Pompeys with all their forces but tend to the destruction of mankind It is a strange thing that the last Plin. l. 7. c. 26. Cruel vanity of Pompey of them caused a Temple to be built to Minerva over the gate whereof he commanded to be engraven that he had taken routed and slain two millions one hundred four-score and three thousand men pillaged or sunk eight hundred forty six ships made desolate one thousand five hundred thirty eight Cities and towns Behold how the great-ones of the earth make themselves remarkable as dreadfull Comets by the ruin of the whole world But Jesus in establishing his Religion would not be powerfull but to do good since He is the Adamant saith Salvianus who hath drawn Salvian de provid l. 4. â—halyâ—em affectu quasi spirante 〈◊〉 â—â—cris sui manibus this mightie mass of Iron of all Ages with the hands of his love and lively affections towards mankind How can the tree be better known than by the fruits And upon what may one more reasonably ground the judgement made of Religion than upon the works thereof What have all other Religions taught but to cut the throats of children to embrue Altars of Idols with bloud but to create ordures and abominations to cover secret mischiefs with the veyl of hypocrisie to authorize fables and canonize vice But Christian Religion is that alone which brought piety into the world where it was before unknown It is that which hath crushed murderous and adulterous gods under the ruins of their Temples which demolished profane altars suppressed sacrifices of humane bloud destroyed Amphitheaters where they gloried to tear men in pieces which confounded witch-crafts tamed pride quailed convetousness stopped the inundations of luxury repressed extravagancies of ambition choaked enraged desires of avarice and turned a land of Tigers Leopards and fiery Serpents into a Paradise of delights It is that which drew from Heaven all the virtues whereof some had before been unheard of others contemned the rest persecuted It is that which taught humility chastity virginity modesty temperance justice and fortitude That which discovered true prudence which opened the sources of contemplation which furnished out the Hoast of religious Orders which brake so many chains of the world trampled under foot so many Idols of gold and silver seated poverty in the throne of glory erected statues of innocency established purity even in thoughts Is it not that which so many Martyrs Confessours Doctours Virgins have done whose triumphs we daily honour Is it not upon these that Jesus having vanquished so many monsters imprinted the rays of his sanctity which is preserved and maintained even in the corruption of Ages in the persons of so many as God hath reserved to himself Must we not confess that a life led according to the doctrine of Jesus Christ is a manifest conviction of all errours and a little miracle in the world 5. From thence when we consider by what means our Saviour hath wrought this establishment which are found so contrary to all humane ways and how he acteth in suffering how he draws to him in rejecting how he is exalted by his abasings glorified by his ignominie enriched by poverty how he doth raise by destroying how he lives by his death and is eternized by dying This is it which transporteth humane understanding into admiration of the greatness of our Religion 6. Finally if you also cast your eye on this last The repose which our faith promiseth perfection of Repose you shall well understand how Alexander after he had conquered the Persians being desirous to pass into the Indies those who thought they were at the worlds end disswaded him and said It was time for Alexander to rest where the sun Tempus est Alexandrum cum orbe sole desinere Senec. Suasor and the world ended But our Religion goes much further than the sun and this inferiour condition of the world It hath the total universe for object of its travel and the Kingdom of Heaven for its repose All other Sects proposed pleasures to themselves for object of their pretensions which might make them desire the body of a horse or a hog to enjoy it with the more advantage But God lifting us up to himself above the tracks of the sun and time promiseth the same delights which he hath for himself in the vision possession and fruition of that divine face which makes all the Happy (a) (a) (a) Scimus quoniam si terrestris domus nostrae habitationis hujus dissolvitur quòd aedisicationem a Deo habemus domum non manufactam aeternam in coelis 2 Cor. 5. Invisibilem tanquam videns sustinuit Heb. 11. 27. We know this house of morter and clay failing wherewith we are covered God hath prepared an eternal building for us in Heaven not made by the hand of man as the Apostle assureth us and as we shall deduce towards the end of these Treatises Thither it is our faith paceth roundly on beholding with a purified eye the lights of Heaven a God invisible as if he were already visible Unto this life it is we prepare our souls and begin on earth to make the first essays of Beatitude 7. I then demand of you O Noble men whether Errours of the times S. Hilarius l. 8. de Trinit Fidem potius ipsi constituunt quim accipiunt all this well considered you ought not to abhor these petty undertakers who seem to come into the world not to receive Rules of Faith in it but to prescribe them They who cannot reform a silly flie in the works of Nature will make themselves Monarchs in the belief of our faith and trick up a new this great work of Religion which derives its accomplishment from God They believe what pleaseth themselves to displease the prime Verity and create a new symbol in the chymaeraes of their wits to introduce an impiety into Christianity Needs must they have a fling at the Bible as if it were the book of a man labour about the fountain-heads of the four rivers of terrestrial Paradise the speaking serpent Noah's Ark the Tower of Babel the red Sea the jaw-bone and foxes of Sampson as if the Omnipotency of God were not a pledge sufficient enough against all these weaknesses and curiosities of wit which saith Tertullian Tert. de praescript Doctrinae
expence above his ability The mother was extreamly troubled at it and restrained what she might her sons purse but he ever found ways to open it again till such time as she dying and the son seeing himself at liberty he flew into exorbitant expences and became indebted a third or a fourth part more than he was worth This is it which ordinarily overthroweth young A pretty touch of Lewis the twelfth to Francis the first men who expect great fortunes and mighty favours They think to be presently in the midst of the City when they afar off see the band of the dyal They suppose they possess blessings which will never be had they promise are engaged much turmoyl and passionately hoping ruin all their hopes Behold a little the goodly support may be expected from men of the world Drusus the Emperours son who bare all glory in bloom is taken into the other world without making any mention at all of his favourite Agrippa falls from the chariot of favour and found there was nothing got by the service of his Master but debts and discontents He reflects on the father to see if any ray of compassion Affiction of a Courtier frustrated of his hopes will dart from his eyes But Tyberius commanded him to be gone from the Court saying for a full reason he could not endure to look on what his son had loved without renovation of his memory and grief The young Prince returneth into Judaea where though the grand-child of a great King he found himself so needy that he wished to die not having wherewith to live There is nothing more bitter to men of quality Poverty the chief scourge amongst all the scourges of the world than poverty which ever draweth along with it four evil companions dependence upon another contempt shame and misery This generous heart thought that death would better his condition But Cypre his wife a Loyalty of a wife to her husband good Princess chased away this melancholy humour and descending so low as the shame of begging for him procured some little money that he the more sweetly might pass this miserable life for verily he sometimes lived at Herod the Tetrarchs charge sometime upon Flaccus Lieutenant of Syria But this kind of life being beggarly waited on with much reproach he grew impatient and resolved to return to Rome to bury himself in the shadow of favour since he could not touch the body of it The poor Princess his wife seeing there was not any would lend him money unless she bound her self for him did it couragiously exposing her person to all the persecutions of creditours to help her husband But a man much indebted is like one possessed Miseries of a man indebted round beset with a Legion of devils no sooner went one out but ten tormented him Agrippa saw himself assaulted by creditours Provosts and Sergeants which more terrified him than arms or warlick Engines The most powerful of them all was a Controuler of the Emperours house who required a huge summe of money from him whereof he was accountable to Tyberius his Exchequer To this he answered very coldly he was ready to satisfie if he pleased to be patient but till the next day but that night he stole away and went towards Rome to draw more near to the flame must burn him Notwithstanding before his coming he wrote to Tyberius who was in his Island of Capreae to sound the likelyhood of his welcome The Emperour who long before had his wound throughly skinned for the death of his Son wrot back again very courteously giving him assurance of welcome and the truth is he found Tyberius who entertained him with extraordinary favour and lodged him in his palace All his businesses went well had it not been this Controuller whose shadow he still saw before his eyes wrote speedily to the Emperour That Agrippa was endebted to his Exchequer in great sums which he had promised to discharge presently but fled like a faithless man and discovered by his proceedings there was nothing but imposture in his actions This unlucky letter at the first destroyed all his Generous act of Antonia credit For the old man who for all his friendship was resolved not to loose a denier caused him shamefully to pack out of his palace and forbad his Guards to admit him any enterance before he had satisfied his creditours The miserable Agrippa seeking out a God of money to make his vows unto went directly without any fear to the Princess Antonia to acquaint her with his misfortune and beg her favour The Lady was so generous and bountiful towards him that she discharged the debt lending him money in remembrance of his dead mother and for that he had been bred with her son Claudius besides she took singular pleasure in his humour This man whose fortune ebbed and flowed saw himself suddenly raised so that entering into amity with Caesar he made a streight league with Caligula by the express commandements of Tyberius who appointed he should follow him These were two notable ramblers whom chance had so very well coupled together as well for conformity of their humours as the encounter of their hopes They began a life wholly sportive not thinking on the time to come but to hope well of it nor dreaming of any thing but that which might make them merry Agrippa persisting in his ordinary delights undertook Flattery of Agrippa one day as he went in coach with Caligula to speak of Tyberius saying That he was as old as the earth and that it seemed death had forgotten him That it was high time he payd tribute to nature as for himself he wished nothing else in the world but quickly to see Caligula Prince of the world in his place well knowing he should lay hold on a good portion of the felicities which all men were to have under his Empire He found not that Caligula although ardently desirous to see himself suddenly Maister shewed to take any pleasure in this discourse so much he feared the Emperour Tyberius He kept his thoughts in his heart not trusting his tongue with them least stones and bushes might have ears It happened by chance that Eutyches Agryppa's coachman heard all his Master said was some space of time without shewing any appearance of it but afterward being brought before the Provost of the City at his Master Agryppa's request for a pilfery committed by him in his house he said he had many other things to speak which concerned the Emperours life whereupon the Provost carried him to Capreae where Tyberius plunged in his in famous pleasures was sometime without seeing him Agrippa who would needs excuse himself before he was accused wholly forgetting the discourse he had held with Caligula earnestly pressed this servant might be heard so far as therein to employ the credit of Antonia who was very powerful with Tyberius The Emperour answered Agrippa need not fret himself so much in
her for love which she cannot have by nature It is a shadow of the goodness of God who ceaseth not to provide for our necessities to love us as his children Hosea 11. Et ego quasi nutritius Ephraim portabam eos in brachiis meis nescierunt quod curarem eos In funiculis Adam traham eos in vinculi◠charitatis Exod. 2. to defend us as the apple of his eye I was said he by his Prophet as the foster-father of my people I bare them all between my arms they never vouchsafing to open their eyes to my protection Yet will I draw them to me by the hands of Adam which are the chains of my charity Behold in Exodus the little Moses who floateth on Nilus in a cradle of reeds the mother for fear of the rigour of men abandoneth him to death the sister followeth him with her eyes to see what will become of him but her weakness could do nothing to warrant him from danger God in the mean space becomes the Pilot of this little bark he conducteth it without sails without rudder without oars he bears it upon the waves he makes it arrive at a good haven He draweth out this infant who was as a victim exposed to make of him a God of Pharaoh one day to drown in the red sea the posterity of those who would have drenched him in Nilus 8 Adde to this immenss goodness justice an inseparable His Justice virtue of the Divinity which seems to oblige God to preserve and direct what he created But it is to judge most abjectly of this divine understanding to say as did Averroes he abused his magnificence and soyled his dignity if he busied himself in the mannage of so many trifles S. Ambrose judged better when he said If God wrong himself in the government Amb. l. 1. offic c. 13. Si injuria est regere multò major injuria fecisse cum aliquid non fecisse nulla sit injustitia non curare quod feceris summa inclementia of the world did he not himself a greater injury in creating it For to do or not to do what one is not obliged unto hath no injustice in it but to abandon a creature after it is produced is a stain of inhumanity And if we regard the justice which appertaineth to the government of men what malignity and prostitution of mind were it to think souls the most caitive having some spark of justice yet God who must be sovereign perfection would suffer the world to be exposed to fortune or delivered over to tyrāny as a prey and a booty without any care of it or inquiry into injustices There is not any Age which could not furnish out a million of proofs against these mischievous beliefs if we would open our eyes to consider them but our distrusts and pusillanimities blind us and alienate us from knowledge of those truths which God reserveth for the most purified souls 9 To conclude the last colume which should settle His Power our faith in the verity of divine government is the magistral power God exerciseth over all the world which he ruleth tempereth and directeth with one sole thought much otherwise than did 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Arist l. de mundo heretofore those practick wits who vanted to animate statues because they by certain engines gave them motion Wretched and blind that we are ever bowed down to the earth perpetualy divested of those great lights of Saints We measure God by the ell of men we cloth him after our fashion and we hold impossible to the Divinity what our understanding cannot comprehend Shall we never say with the Prophet Jeremiah O most strong O onely great and Hier. 32 19. Fortissime magne potens Domine excercituum nomen tibi magnus consilio incomprehensibilis cogitatu cujus oculi aperti sunt super omnes vias filiorum Adam onely potent The God of bosts is thy name Thou art great in thy counsels incomprehensible in thy cogitations and thy eyes are upon all the waies of the children of Adam We daily see upon men who are but worms of the earth so many tokens of Gods power A King speaketh and a hundred thousand swords hasten out of scabbards at the sound of one syllable A master of a family builds and at one silly beck behold so many artificers so many mules and horses some draw materials out of the bottom of quarries others carry them in waggons some make morter and cement others hew stones some raise them aloft others lay them some play the carpenters and others polish marbles There are some who work in iron and others in brass all is done to the liking of one man who is possessed of a little money Do you never consider God as a great King in an army as a great father of a family in a house who by his sovereign power governs all he created not with a toilsome care but an incomparable facility He gave in the begining of the creation an instinct to all Guil. Par. de vnivers 1. p. par 3. c. 14. Nascitur aranea cum lege libro lucern◠living creatures and there is not any so little a spider which comming into the world bringeth not its rules its book its light it is presently instructed in all it should do God speaketh interiourly to all creatures in a double language with a powerfull impression a secret commandement he gives a signal into the world and every one doth his office every one laboureth regularly as in a ship and all things Deus ipse universa sinu perfectae magnitudinis potestatis includit intentus sempe operi suo vadens per omnia movens cuncta vivificans universa Tertul. l. de Trin. c. 2. agree to this great harmony of heaven The little Nightingal in the forrests makes an Organ of her throat sometimes breaking her notes into warbles sometime stretching them out at length The Swallow is busie in her masonrie the Bee toileth all the day in her innocent thefts the Spider furnisheth out the long train of her webs and makes more curious works with her feet than the most skilfull women can weave with their hands Fishes play their parts under the water beasts of service labour in their duty small grains of seed though dead and rotten give life to great trees which advance to the clouds There is nothing idle in all nature nothing disobedient but men and divels who employ their liberty to resist him whose power is as just as it is eternal 10 Let us then concluding this discourse adore the divine Providence which holdeth the helm of the universe Let us behold it as a watch-tower furnished with a thousand fires that abundantly enlighten this Ocean whereon we sail Let us behold it as a burning pillar in the wilderness of this life Let us behold it as our pole-star and never loose sight of it It is our support our sweetness our
1. dist 41. Manifest reason the will of God could not be unjust and that praedestination proceeded besides the grace of God by most secret merits which were discovered to this divine eye that discerneth all the actions of men 4. Is there a soul so replenished with contradiction which averreth not That what God doth in a certain time he determined to do it in his eternity Now Faith teacheth us he in that time by him determined rendereth life eternal to the just for reward of their merit as himself pronounceth in S. Matthew (c) (c) (c) Matth. 25. Answer to objections And therefore it is necessary to confess God before all Ages was resolved to give the Crown of glory not indifferently but in consideration of good life and laudable virtues And for this it is to no purpose to say the end of our intentions goeth before the means whereby some infer God first decreed beatitude which is the end then considered good works which are the address to this end For I answer when the end possesseth the place of salary as this here doth the merit is always presupposed before the recompence And although the Master of a Tourneament wisheth the prize to one of his favourites yet his first intention is he shall deserve it by his valour God taketh the like inclinations in this great list of salvation he wisheth all the world palms but willeth it to them who well know how to make use of the helps of his grace Thus the most ancient and gravest Fathers of the The doctrine of the most ancient Fathers concerning praedestination Church thought this sentence they agreed on before the impostures of Pelagians in the golden Age of the Church through a most purified ray And to this purpose Tertullian said (d) (d) (d) Tertul. de resur carnis Deus de suo optimus de nostro justus God who is very good of his own was ever just of ours And S. Hilarie said most perspicuously (e) (e) (e) Hilar. in Psal 64. Non res indiscreti judicii electio est sed ex delectu meriti discretio est That Election was not an effect of judgement indiscreet but that from the choice of merit proceeded the distinction made for glorie S. Epiphanius expressed the like opinion That there was no exception of persons in the proceeding of God but that it passed according to the merit or demerit of every one Behold what we may gather from the soundest tradition of the Church (f) (f) (f) The second point of reasons That God is glorified in that he hath our works for praedestination to glory But if we now weigh the second Article whereon we insist which is the glory of God it is an easie matter to see this opinion which appropriateth a certain fatality of divine decrees without other knowledge of cause agreeth not with this immense bounty of God nor the sincere will he hath to save all the world It is not suitable to his justice nor to his promises or menaces he makes to virtues or vices besides it tormenteth minds weakens the zeal of souls and throweth liberty and despair into manners Why should not a miserable reprobate have cause The complaint a Reprobate may make hereupon to say Ah my Lord where are the bowels of goodness and mercy which all pens testifie all voices proclaim and laws establish Is it then of honey for others and of worm-wood for me How cometh it to pass without any knowledge of merit you drew this man from the great mass of corruption to make him a son of your adoption a coheir of your glory and have left me as a black victim marked with a character of Death What importeth it me that in this first choice you made you did not condemn me without knowledge of cause to think no good for me was to think ill enough for me Was I then able to row against the torrent of your power Could I intrude into your Paradise which you have fitly disposed like the Halcyons nest whereunto nothing can enter but its own bird You have built your Palace of a certain number of chosen pieces in such sort that the account thereof being made and proportions valued one small grain might not be added to encrease the number What could I do in this dreadfull exclusion but accuse your bounty and deplore my unhappiness Behold what a reprobate soul may object and Aug. de verbo Apost ser 11. Si posset loquipecus dicere Deo quare istum fecisti hominem me peculem Answer to objections Glossa in Danielem it were bootless to answer that a bruit beast might complain in this fashion that God had not made it a man or the like might be alledged for infants who die without Baptism For as concerning beasts nothing is taken from them rather much given when from nothing being and life is afforded them with contentments of nature and as for little infants they endure no evil and are no more disturbed to be deprived of the sight of God than was Nebuchadnezzar for the Scepter of Babylon when he in his infancy was bred among shepheards thinking himself the son of a Peasant and wholly ignorant of his Royal extraction But to say A man who dies at the age of discretion and is delivered over to eternal flames was condemned by God without any other fore-sight of his works is it not a cruelty not worthy of ought but Calvinism as if a father might be excusable in marrying one daughter richly and cutting the others throat to set her on a pyle He who would judge wisely must flie the very shadow of an opinion so damnable and all which may seem to favour it 6. Now as concerning the Doctrine which establisheth The fruits of Gods glory derived from our Maxim Praedestination upon grace and prevision of good works it seems to stretch far towards the point of Gods greatest glory It discovereth us his science in attributing unto him an infinite survey over all the actions of Adams children before all Ages by which it seasonably fore-saw all that was to be done by all particulars in so great a revolution of times It in an instant affordeth us this most innocent knowledge seeing we learn by the same way that the prescience which God hath of our works is no more the cause of our happiness than my memory of the fireing of Rome which happened under Nero or than mine eye of the whiteness of snow and fresh verdure of meadows by its simple aspects Nothing happeneth because God fore-saw Qui non est praescius omnium futurorum non est Deus Aug. de civit Dei l. 5. c. 9. it but God fore-saw it because it should so happen by motion of our free-will and not by the laws of necessity Moreover the Justice of the great Master is very eminent in this action for we do not say he works at random and seeks to make boast
I say O God how little is the world Is it for this we deceive we swear and make a divorce between God and us But admit we were not interessed in this action must we not rest on the law of God who maketh life and ordaineth death by the juridical power of his wisdom ever to be adored by our wills though little penetrable to understanding Will you I pronounce an excellent saying of Tertullian The world is the Vterus naturae An excellent coÌ„ceit drawn from the words of Tertullian belly of Nature and men are in it as children in the mothers womb the birth of men are the world 's child-bearings death its lying in and deliveries Would you not die to hinder the world from bringing forth and unburdening it self by the way the Sovereign Master hath appointed it We have seen Tyrants of all sorts some invented exquisite torments and tryals others forbade eating and drinking some to weep some caused children to be taken from the teat to strangle them and cut their throats as Pharaoh and Herod But never was there any amongst them who forbade women with child to be delivered The world hath for a long space been big with you and would not you have it to be delivered at the time God's counsels have ordained Were it a handsom thing think you to see an infant presently to have teeth and articulate speech and yet if it might be would stay in the mothers womb using no other reason but that there is warm being Judge now and take the even ballance if the world be the belly of nature if this good mother bare us the time Gods providence appointed if she now seek her deliverie that we may be born in the land of the living in a quite other climate another life another light are not we very simple to withstand it as little infants who crie when they issue out of bloud and ordure at the sight of day-light yet would not return thither from whence they came 4. Behold the Providence of God in that which Providence in the death of the vicious Boet. l. 4. de consol Cum supplicis carent inesâ— illis aliquid alteriuâ— mali ipsâ— impunitâ—s S. Eucher in paraenesi concerneth death in the generality of all men Let us see in this second point the like providence towards the wicked the vicious rich and proud Great-ones who spit against Heaven We must first establish a most undoubted maxim that there is nothing so unhappy as impunity of men abandoned to vice which is the cause the paternal providence of God arresteth them by the means of death dictating unto them an excellent lesson of their equality with other men Mortals circumvolve in life and death as Heaven on the pole artick and antartick from east to west the same day which lengtheneth our life in the morning shorteneth it in the evening and all Ages walk that way not any one being permitted to return back again Our fore-fathers passed on we pass and our posteritie follows us in the like course you may say they are waves of the sea where one wave drives another and in the end all come to break against a rock What a rock is death There are above five thousand years that it never ceaseth to crush the heads of so many mortals and yet we know it not I remember to this purpose a notable tradition of the Hebrews related by Masius upon Josuah to wit Masius in Josuah Notable action of Noah that Noah in the universal deluge which opened the flood-gates of Heaven to shake the columns of the world and bury the earth in waters in stead of gold silver and all sort of treasure carried the bones of Adam into the Ark and distributing them among his sons said Take children behold the most precious inheritance your father can leave you you shall share lands and seas as God shall appoint but suffer not your selves to be intangled in these vanities which are more brittle than glass more light than smoke and much swifter than the winds My children all glideth away here below and there is nothing which eternally subsisteth Time it self which made us devours and consumeth us Learn this lesson from these dumb Doctours the relicks of your grand-father which will serve you for a refuge in your adversities a bridle in your prosperities and a mirrour at all times Moreover I affirm death serves for a perfect lesson of justice to the wicked which they were never willing throughly to understand for it putteth into equality all that which hazard passion and iniquity had so ill divided into so many objects Birth maketh men equal since they receive nought else from their mothers womb but ignorance sin debility and nakedness but after they come out of the hands of the midwife some are put into purple and gold others into rags and russets some enter upon huge patrimonies where they stand in money up to the throat practise almost nothing else throughout their whole life but to get by rapine with one hand and profusely spend with the other Some live basely and miserably necessitous A brave spirit able to govern a large Common-wealth is set to cart by the condition of his poverty Another becomes a servant to a coxcomb who hath not the hundreth part of his capacity It is the great Comedie of the world played in sundry fashions for most secret reasons known to Divine Providence would you have it last to eternity See you not Comedians having played Kings and beggars on the stage return to their own habit unless they day and night desire to persist in the same sport And what disproportion is there if after every one have played his part in the world according to the measure of time prescribed him by Providence he resume his own habit I also adde it is a kind of happiness for the wicked to die quickly because it is unfit to act that long which is very ill done And since they so desperately use life it is expedient not being good it be short that shortness of time may render the malice of it less hurtfull If examples of their like who soon die make them apprehensive of the same way and how seasonably to prepare for death it is a singular blessing for them But if persisting in contempt they be punished it is God's goodness his justice be understood and that it commandeth even in hell 5. But if at this present you reflect on the death of the Just which you should desire I say God's Providence there brightly appeareth in three principal things which are cessation from travels and worldly miseries the sweet tranquility of departure and fruition of crowns and rewards promised First you must imagine what holy Job said That The sweetnes of the death of the just Iob 3. Qui expectant mortem quasi effodientes thesaurum Tert. de pallio Homo pellitus orbi quasi metallo datur this life is to the just as
or other act of charity do it stoutly in such manner and disposition that were you eternal on earth you would eternally renounce evil and embrace good So do all the Just and so do they eternize all good and laudable actions But sinners Vellent sine fine vivere ut possint sine fine peccare Discretus autem judex corda pensaâ— affectus non facta who pass out of this life in mortal sin are so framed that might you enter into their hearts you there should find such marks of malice such characters of sin imprinted as with a hot iron that they wish to live eternally to sin everlastingly Their life is mortal but the affections they have towards sin are immortal for which cause Gods justice requires they never be without torment who would never live witout sin And say not to me behold that miserable sinner Admagnam justitiam judicantis pertinet ut nunquam carcanâ— supplicio qui in hac vita nunquam carere volunt peccato seized on by the Divine Justice in the heat of his crime it is not likely he would still persist in his enormous transgression the boyling of his passion would vapour away and his spirit be restored to the calm and reason to its throne Nay much otherwise a sinner who dieth in sin hath the root of affections which is the heart so envenomed that all the sprouts are nought but abomination And although he were to live an hundred thousand years should not some servile fear stop the torrent of his corruption he would spend them in these exorbitancies 3. The second reason is drawn from S. Thomas 2. Reason S. Thom. 1. 2. q. 87. who saith the nature of mortal sin is a privation of spiritual life as death is a privation of corporal Behold a tree which was heretofore thick spread with boughs and flourishing is now parched and drie without force and life Let it be in this state so will it remain still never returning to its first vigour Behold a man likewise who hath killed charity in his heart which is the root of spiritual life by some most grievous sin to die in this state It is the impossibility of impossibilities that in the other world not capable of merit or demerit he may change himself Death Semper puniri potest nunquam potest expiari S. Bernard de consid l. 5. An excellent conceit of Picus Mirandula Tui ipsius quasi arbitrarius honorariusque plastes sictor quam malueris tu tibi formam effinge poteris in inferiora quae sunt bruta degenerare poteris in superiora quae sunt divina ex animi tui sententiâ regenerari Picus Mirand de dignitate hom â— 208. ever reigns there where is trespass and trespass still reigning there deserves to be punished without intermission It is alwayes chastised and never expiated saith S. Bernard And that you may well understand this represent unto your self an excellent conceit of one of the greatest wits which ever flourished Picus Mirandula in the book he composed of the dignity of man We are in this world as in the shop of a Sculptour who laboureth on statues of mettal Behold the burning furnace behold the mettal all boiling behold many moulds ready at hand Say you unto him Sir make us some curious piece worthy of you make us a generous Lion make an Eagle make a triumphant King it is now in your power But if the workman through malice or incivility should say I will make nothing of it I am about to make of all this melted mettal vessels of ignominy and so he doth had not you cause to say unto him what hast thou done all is marr'd there is no time given for you to repent it the mettal is cast I say the like after this great man Behold us in this world as in the house of a plummer or graver our understanding is the enginer who laboureth upon the search of a thousand inventions our will is the Mistress who keeps the mettal still boyling and the mettal is our life and our soul indeterminate God saith unto us up friend be couragious thou may'st make thy self a little God perfectly framed to my likeness Behold take the mould cast it confidently I will make nothing of it saith the sinner I am about to make a hog an owl a serpent a hydeous monster and behold in effect all so made at the hour of death The mettall is cast repentance is unprofitable since hell vomiteth up good desires and affordeth no felicities thou hast made a monster and thou shalt remain a monster whilest thou art in this estate which is immoveable fire likewise shall be annexed to thee to gnaw thee which is the worm in the rotten wood Adde for a third instance that God who is wholly 3. Reason drawn from the right of God and from the nature of sin infinite hath right in him to oblige us to the keeping of the law under an infinite penalty considering the greatness of his perfection and benefits The continuance of the pain is not measured by the lasting of actions A man is hanged who still so remaineth for a theft done in a moment If this be done daily for the reparation of the honour and goods of another man who is offended although he be a captive and a miserable creature what shall we think of offences committed against the Divinity Must we not confess that sin of its own nature and by the onely consideration of its proper malice deserveth infinite punishment since it hath mischief in it respectively infinite And as it needed the Incarnation death and passion of a Word infinite to wash it on earth so it must have an eternal punishment to expiate it under earth What can you find strange in this proceeding I say it is not hell that should put these quaking Puniri non est malum sed fieri poenâ dignum Peccatum non potest residere ad perpetuum nisi in inferno Dionys c. 4. de divin nom Solidissâ—â—i quasi are fusi sunt Job 37. The grievousness of sin Num. 16. and icie fear into our bones It is not pain should be strange unto us but sin It is not an evil to be punished but to be worthy of punishment You complain sin is lodged in hell where would you place it In heaven Is it a fit thing I pray you to carry dirt into a Kings Palace The heavens according to Job are stronger than iron or brass and yet you see these celestial bodies able to carry all the glory of God cannot bear one single sinner so heavy so insupportable he is So soon as the rebellious Angels conceived a sin of pride heaven cried out murder and could not endure them behold them fall from the Palace of glory more thick than flakes of snow or hail on a winters day Where would you lodge this mortal sin On the earth See you not in the book of Numbers how after the
stept far into age bear the torch before youth Let women endeavour to establish piety which is the ornament of their sex Let children be well bred and trained within the laws of modesty Let the doctrine of Jesus Christ be sealed with the seal of good manners there is no Libertine but will be daunted at the sight of a life led according to the laws of Christianity For it is a mirrour which killeth basilisks by reverberation of their proper poison But if blasphemers continue still so impudent as to vomit forth unclean and injurious words against the Religion we profess have not laws which are in the power of the Sovereign Princes on earth and of their Ministers of State iron hands able to stay their most daring impudencies I call you hither O holy Prelates O Monarchs To the great-ones of all Christendom Princes and Potentates who are in the world as the great Intelligences who make the Heavens move and who by diversity of your aspects cause calms and storms in this inferiour region wherein we live I pray tell me where do you think hath glory which you naturally love placed its throne and state if not in the bosom of true piety By what degrees are those immortal spirits of your Ancestours mounted up to the joys and delights of God having replenished the earth with the veneration of their memory if it were not by making the honour of the Sovereign Master march in the front of all their designs and thinking nought their own but what was acquired for God Remember you are not altogether like the Angel Apo. 10. of the Apocalyps which beareth the Sun and Rainbows and all the garnishments of glory on feet of brass you enjoy dignities and supereminencies that draw the Great-ones into admiration astonish inferiours attract people evict honour and wonder from all the world But consider if so you please that all this is onely supported on feet of clay and morter Time changeth you cares consume you maladies assail you death takes and despoileth you They who adored you in thrones may one day trample on you in sepulchers Alas if it happen you carry all your own interests with violence of passion to the height of your pretensions and that you hold Religion and the glory of Jesus in a perpetual contempt what will your soul one day answer when it leaves the body unto the thundering voice of a living God saying to you as he did to Cyrus in Isaiah Assimilavi te non cognovisti Isaiah 45. me I called thee by thy name I created thee like unto my self I made thee a little God on earth and thou hast forgotten me I so many times marched before thy standards many times have I humbled the most glorious of the earth for thee I brake brazen gates pulled down iron bars to afford thee hiden treasures and the wealth of Ages which nature for thee preserved in her bosom The Sun seemed not to shine in the world but to enlighten thy greatness the seas surged for thee and for thee the earth was wholly bent to honour and obedience Admirer of thy self and ignorant of Gods works thou hast so ill husbanded my goods that thou hast changed them all into evils I gave thee rays and thou hast made arrows of them to shoot against me Did I seat thee on thrones that there thy passions might sway Did I imprint on thy forehead the character of my greatness that thou mightest authorize crimes Thou hadst a feeble pretext of Religion and hast neglected the effects Thy interests reigned and my honour suffered in thy house At what aimed thy ambition so strong of wing and so weak of brain which onely thought how to envy what was above the more to oppress any thing below it What did that burning avarice that profuse riot that spirit of bloud and flesh employed in the advancement of thine own house to the contempt of mine For an inch of land a wretched matter of profit the fantasie of an affront jealousie onely subsisting in a body of smoke all the elements must be troubled men and swords drawn forth for revenge and bloud of so many mortals shed but for my Name which is blasphemed it is sufficient to wag the finger to shew onely a cold countenance a slight touch of that great authority whilst I was neglected having done no other fault but to have paid ingratitudes with benefits O you Great-ones who sit at the stern of Churches and temporal Estates how far will you become accountable to Gods justice if you place not his honour in the first rank of all your intentions Alas Ought not you to entertain an ardent zeal towards the Religion which our Ancestours consigned unto us with so many examples of piety that Heaven hath not more stars than we lights before our eyes Can we well endure that the verities and maxims of God which the Prophets foretold us the Apostles pronounced the Confessours professed the Martyrs defended in the piece-meal mangling of their bodies amidst combs and iron hooks burning cauldrons wheels armed with keen razours should now adays be the sport of certain giddy spirits and the aim of profane lips who void of wit or shame dare invade holy things Is it not for this O France the beloved of God and orient pearl of the world thou hast seen in thy bosom so many hostilities such contagions famines monsters and devastations that had not the arm of God supported thee thou wouldst have been long since drenched in irrecoverable confusions O you who bear the sword of justice and have authority in your hands will you not one day say All Omnis qui zelum habet legis statuens testamentum suum exeat post me they who have the zeal of the law and the pietie of our Ancestours follow us couragiously for behold we are readie to revenge the quarrels of God and to account his glorie on earth in the same degree the Angels hold it in Heaven This was the conceit of the valiant Machabee the Prince of Gods people who having seen an Apostate of his Nation offer incense to an Idol slew him with his own hand on the very same Altar saying aloud He who hath the zeal of the law let him Vae mihi quis natus sum videre contritionem populi mei Sancts in manu extrantcrum facts sunt c. Nunc ergo silii aemulatores estote legis date animas vestras protestamento Patrum Moriamur in virtule propter fratres nostros non inferamus crimen gloriae nostre follow me Wo to me since I am born to behold the desolation of my people Holy things are in the hands of strangers The Temple hath been handled as the most wicked man on earth Our mysteries our beauties our glories are desolated To what purpose do I still lead a miserable life Fathers of families will you not say to your children what he did to his Children be ye emulatours
highest of all to go to meet crosses and afflictions and to embrace them as liveries of Jesus Christ In Mercy it is a high degree to give away temporal things a higher to forgive injuries the highest to oblige them who persecute us It is a high degree to pitie all bodily afflictions a higher to be zealous for souls and highest to compassionate the torments of our Saviour in remembering his Passion In the virtue of Fortitude it is a high degree to overcome the world a higher to subdue the flesh the highest to vanquish your self In Temperance it is a high degree to moderate your eating drinking sleeping watching gaming recreation your tongue words and all gestures of your body a higher to regulate your affections and highest to purifie throughly your thoughts and imaginations In Justice it is a high degree to give unto your Neighbour that which belongeth to him a higher to exact an account of your self and highest to offer up to God all satisfaction which is his due In the virtue of Faith it is a high degree to be well instructed in all that you are to believe a higher to make profession of it in your good works and highest to ratifie when there is necessitie with the loss of goods and life In the virtue of Hope it is a high degree to have good apprehensions of Gods power a higher to repose all your affairs upon his holy providence a higher than that to pray to him and serve him incessantly with fervour and purity but highest of all to trust in him in our most desperate affairs Lastly for the virtue of Charitie which is the accomplishment of all the other you must know there are three kinds of it The first the beginning Charitie The second the proficient The third the perfect Beginning Charitie hath five degrees 1. Dislike of offences past 2. Good resolution of amendment 3. Relish of Gods Word 4. Readiness to good works 5. Compassion of the ill and joy at the prosperity of others Proficient Charity hath five degrees more 1 An extraordinary puritie of Conscience which is cleansed by very frequent examination 2. Weakness of concupiscence 3. Vigorous exercise of the faculties of the inward man For as good operations of the exteriour senses are signs of bodily health so holy occupations of the understanding memory and will are signs of a spiritual life 4. Ready observance of Gods law 5. Relishing knowledge of Heavenly Truth and Maxims Perfect Charity reckoneth also five other degrees 1. To love your enemies 2. To receive contentedly and to suffer all adversities couragiously 3. Not to have any worldly ends but to measure all things by the fear of God 4. To be dis-entangled from all love to creatures 5. To resign your own life to save your neighbours The fifth SECTION Of four Orders of those who aspire to Perfection NOw consider what virtues and in what degree you would practise for there are four sorts of those who aspire to perfection The first are very innocent but little valiant in exercise of virtues The second have besides innocency courage enough to employ themselves in worldly actions but they are very sparing towards God and do measure their perfections by a certain Ell which they will upon no terms exceed like the ox of Susis that drew his usual number of buckets of water out of the Well very willingly but could by no means be brought to go beyond his ordinary proportion The third order is of the Fervent who are innocent couragious and virtuous without restriction but they will not take charge of others supposing they are troubled enough with their own bodies wherein they may be often deceived The fourth rank comprehends those who having with much care profited themselves do charitably refresh the necessities of their neighbour when they are called to his aid thinking that to be good onely to ones self is to be in some sort evil Observe what God requires of you and emulate the most abundant graces But if the multiplicity of these degrees of virtue perplex your mind I will shew you a shorter and easier way to perfection The sixth SECTION A short way to Perfection used by the Ancients THe Ancients were accustomed to reduce all virtue to certain heads and some addicted themselves with so much fervour and perfection to the exercise of one single virtue as possessing that in a supream degree by one link onely they drew insensibly the whole chain of great actions One dedicated all his lifes study to government of the tongue another to abstinence another to meekness another to obedience So that at the death of a holy man named Orus as Pelagius relates it was found he had never lied never sworn never slandered never but upon necessity spoken So Phasius in Cassian said upon his death-bed that the Sun had never seen him take his refection for he fasted every day until sun set So John the Abbot professeth that the Sun had never seen him angry that he had never done his own will nor ever had taught others any thing which he had not first practised himself To arrive at this requires much fortitude of spirit If you desire things more imitable be assured you shall lead a good life if you endeavour continually to practise these three words To abstain To suffer To go forward in well doing as S. Luke saith in the Acts of the Apostles of the Son of God To abstain 1. By refraining from all unlawful things and sometimes even from lawful pleasures through virtue 2. By mortifying concupiscence anger desire of esteem and wealth 3. By well ordering your senses your will your judgement and obtaining always some victory over your self by the mastery of your passions To suffer 1. By enduring the burdens of life with patience esteeming your self happy to partake of our Saviours sufferings which are the noblest marks of your Christianity 2. By endeavouring to use a singular meekness in bearing with the oppressions and imperfections of others 3. By undergoing with advice some bodily austerities 4. By keeping your foot firm in the good you have already begun For as old Marcus the Hermit said The wolf and sheep never couple together nor did change and dislike ever make up a good virtue To go forward in well-doing By becoming serviceable and obliging to all the world every one according to his degree but above all having a catalogue of the works of mercy as well spiritual as temporal continually before your eye as a lesson wherein you must be seriously examined either for life or death eternal And for this purpose some Saints had these words in stead of all books in their Libraries Visito Poto Cibo Redimo Tego Colligo Condo Consule Castiga Solare Remitte Fer Ora. To Visit Quench thirst Feed Redeem Cloath Lodge Bury To Teach Counsel Correct Comfort Pardon Suffer Pray Mans best knowledge is how to oblige man the time will come when death shall strip us to the very bones and
fall no lower but may contemplate all above him and meditate how to raise himself by the hand of God which pulls down the proud and exalts the humble Is a man tempted with pride The consideration of Ashes will humble him Is he burned with wanton love which is a direct fire But fire cannot consume Ashes Is he persecuted with covetousness Ashes do make the greatest Leeches and Bloud-Suckers cast their Gorges Every thing gives way to this unvalued thing because God is pleased to draw the instruments of his power out of the objects of our infirmities 3. If we knew how to use rightly the meditation of death we should there find the streams of life All the world together is of no estimation to him that rightly knows the true value of a just mans death It would be necessary that they who are taken with the curiosity of Tulips should set in their Gardens a Plant called Napel which carries a flower that most perfectly resembles a Deaths head And if the other Tulips do please their senses that will instruct their reason Before our last death we should die many other deaths by forsaking all those creatures and affections which lead us to sin We should resemble those creatures sacred to the Aegyptians called Cynocephales which died piece-meal and were buried long before their death So should we burie all our concupiscences before we go to the grave and strive to live so that when death comes he should find very little business with us Aspiration O Father of all Essences who givest beginning to all things and art without end This day I take Ashes upon my head thereby professing before thee my being nothing and to do thee homage for that which I am and for that I ought to be by thy great bounties Alas O Lord my poor soul is confounded to see so many sparkles of pride and covetousness arise from this caitiffe dust which I am so little do I yet learn how to live and so late do I know how to die O God of my life and death I most humbly beseech thee so to govern the first in me and so to sweeten the last for me that if I live I may live onely for thee and if I must die that I may enter into everlasting bliss by dying in thy blessed love and favour The Gospel for Ashwednesday S. Matthew 6. Of Hypocritical Fasting WHen you fast be not as the hypocrites sad for they disfigure their faces that they may appear unto men to fast Amen I say to you that they have received their reward But thou when thou doest fast anoint thy head and wash thy face that thou appear not to men to fast but to thy Father which is in secret and thy Father which seeth in secret will repay thee Heap not up to your selves treasures on the earth where the rust and moth do corrupt and where thieves dig through and steal But heap up to your selves treasures in heaven where neither the rust nor moth doth corrupt and where thieves do not dig through nor steal For where thy treasure is there is thy heart also Moralities 1. THat man goes to Hell by the way of Paradise who fasts and afflicts his body to draw the praise of Men. Sorrow and vanity together are not able to make one Christian Act. He deserves everlasting hunger who starves himself that he may swell and burst with vain glory He stands for a spectacle to others being the murderer of himself and by sowing vanity reaps nothing but wind Our intentions must be wholly directed to God and our examples for our neighbour The Father of all virtues is not to be served with counterfeit devotions such lies are abominations in his sight and Tertullian saith they are as many adulteries 2. It imports us much to begin Lent well entering into those lists in which so many holy souls have run their course with so great strictness have been glorious before God and honourable before men The difficulty of it is apprehended onely by those who have their understandings obstructed by a violent affection to kitchen-stuffe It is no more burdensom to a couragious spirit than feathers are to a bird The chearfulness which a man brings to a good action in the beginning does half the work Let us wash our faces by confession Let us perfume our Head who is Jesus Christ by alms-deeds Fasting is a most delicious feast to the conscience when it is accompanied with pureness and charity but it breeds great thirst when it is not nourished with devotion and watered with mercy 3. What great pain is taken to get treasure what care to preserve it what fear to loose it and what sorrow when it is lost Alas is there need of so great covetousness in life to encounter with such extream nakedness in death We have not the souls of Giants nor the body of a Whale If God will have me poor must I endeavour to reverse the decrees of heaven and earth that I may become rich To whom do we trust the safety of our treasures To rust to moths and thieves were it not better we should in our infirmities depend onely on God Almighty and comfort our poverty in him who is onely rich and so carrie our souls to heaven where Jesus on the day of his Ascension did place our Sovereign good Onely Serpents and covetous men desire to sleep among treasures as Saint Clement saith But the greatest riches of the world is poverty free from Covetousness Aspiration I Seek thee O invisible God within the Abyss of thy brightness and I see thee through the vail of thy creatures Wilt thou always be hidden from me Shall I never see thy face which with a glimpse of thy splendour canst make Paradise I work in secret but I know thou art able to reward me in the light A man can lose nothing by serving thee and yet nothing is valuable to thy service for the pain it self is a sufficient recompence Thou art the food of my fastings and the cure of my infirmities What have I to do with Moles to dig the earth like them and there to hide treasures Is it not time to close the earth when thou doest open heaven and to carrie my heart where thou art since all my riches is in thee Doth not he deserve to be everlastingly poor who cannot be content with a God so rich as thou art The Gospel for the first Thursday in Lent S. Matthew 18. of the Centurions words O Lord I am not worthy ANd when he was entered into Capharnaum there came to him a Centurion beseeching him and saying Lord my boy lieth at home sick of the palsie and is sore tormented And Jesus saith to him I will come and cure him And the Centurion making answer said Lord I am not worthy that thou shouldest enter under my roof but onely say the word and my boy shall be healed For I also am a man subject to Authority having under me
veins and fill the most innocent pleasures of our life with bitter sorrows what have I more to do with you My children shall be what God will They shall be but too rich when they have virtue for their portion and but too high when they shall see a true contempt of the world under their feeet God forbid that I should go about any worldly throne upon the holy Lambs bloud or that I should talk of honours when there is mention made of the holy Cross O Jesus thou father of all true glories thou shalt from henceforth be my onely crown All greatness where thou art not shall to me be onely baseness I will mount up to thee by the stairs of humility since by those thou camest down to me I will kiss the paths of Mount Calvary which thou hast sprinkled with thy precious bloud esteem the Cross above all worldly things since thou hast consecrated it by thy cruel pains and brought us forth upon that dolorous bed to the day of thy eternity The Gospel upon Thursday the second week in Lent out of S. Luke 16. Of the rich Glutton and poor Lazarus Tâ—e was a certain rich man and he was clothed wâ—th purple and silk and he fared every day magnifically And there was a certain begger called Lazarus that lay at his gate full of sores desiring to be filled of the crums that fell from the rich mans table but the dogs also came and licked his sores And it came to pass that the begger died and was carried of the Angel into Abraham's bosom And the rich man also died and he was buried in hell and lifting up his eyes when he was in torments he saw Abraham afar off and Lazarus in his bosom And he crying said Father Abraham have mercy on me and send Lazarus that he may dip the tip of his finger into water for to cool my tongue because I am tormented in this flame And Abraham said to him Son remember that thou didst receive good things in thy life time and Lazarus likewise evil but now he is comforted and thou tormented And besides all these things between us and you there is fixed a great Chaos that they which will pass from hence to you may not neither go from thence hither And he said Then father I beseech thee that thou wouldest send him unto my fathers house for I have five brethren for to testifie unto them lest they also come into this place of torments And Abraham said to him They have Moses and the Prophets let them hear them But he said No father Abraham but if some man shall go from the dead to them they will do penance And be said to him If they hear not Moses and the Prophets neither if one shall rise again from the dead will they believe Moralities 1. A Rich man and a poor meet in this world the one loaden with treasures the other with ulcers They both meet in the other world the one in a gulf of fire the other in Abyss of delights Their ends are as different as their lives were contrary to teach us that he which shall consider rightly the end of all worldly sins and vanities will have in horrour the desire of them And as there is nothing for which goodly poor men may not hope so is there nothing which wicked rich men should not fear He that is proud of riches is proud of his burdens and chains but if he unload them upon the poor he will be eased of his pain and secured in his way 2. The life of man is a marvellous Comedie wherein the greatest part of our actions are plaid under a curtain which the Divine Providence draws over them to cover us It concealed poor Lazarus and kept him in obscurity like the fish which we never see till it be dead But Jesus draws the curtain and makes himself the historian of this good poor man shewing us the state of his soul of his body of his life and death He makes him appear in Abrahams bosom as within the temple of rest and happiness and makes him known to the rich man as to the treasurer of hells riches Are we not unworthy the name which we carry when we despise the poor and hate poverty as the greatest misery since the Son of God having once consecrated it upon the throne of his manger made it serve for his spouse during life and his bride-maid at the time of his death 3. This rich glutton dreamed and at the end of his dream found himself buried in hell All those pomps of his life were scattered in an instant as so many nocturnal illusions and his heart filled with eternal grief and torment His first misery is a sudden unexpected and hydeous change from a huge sea of delicacies into an insufferable gulf of fire where he doth acknowledge that one of the greatest vexations in misery is to have been happy Another disaster which afflicts him is to see Lazarus in Abrahams bosom to teach us that the damned are tormented by Paradise even to the very lowest part of hell and and that the most grievous of their torments is they can never forget their loss of God So saith Theophylact that Adam was placed over against the terrestrial Paradise from whence he was banished that in his very punishment he might see the happiness he had lost by his soul fault Now you must adde to the rest of his sufferings the great Chaos which like a diamond wall is between hell and Paradise together with the privation of all comfort those losses without remedy that wheel of eternity where death lasteth for ever and the end begins again without ceasing and the torments can never fail or diminish 4. Do good with those goods which God hath given you and suffer them not to make you wicked but employ your riches by the hands of virtue If gold be a child of the Sun why do you hide him from his father God chose the bosom of rich Abraham to be the Paradise of poor Lazarus So may you make the needy feel happiness by your bounty your riches shall raise you up when they are trodden under feet The Prophet saith you must sow in the field of Alms if you desire to reap in the mouth of Mercy Aspirations O God of Justice I tremble at the terrour of thy judgements Great fortunes of the world full of honour and riches are fair trees oft-times the more ready for the ax Their weight makes them apt to fall and prove the more unhappy fuel for eternal flames O Jesus father of the poor and King of the rich I most humbly beseech thee never give my heart in prey to covetousness which by loading me with land may make me forget Heaven I know that death must consume me to the very bones and I shall then possess nothing but what I have given for thee Must I then live in this world like a Griffin to hoard up much gold and
time Jesus sanctified it by his sacred touch He took the Bason which being in his hands became greater and more full of Majesty than all the Ocean Our spots which eternity could not wash clean are taken away at Baptism by one onely drop of water sanctified by his blessing He prevents the bath of his bloud by the bath of an element which he doth expresly before his institution of the blessed Sacrament to teach us what purity of life of heart of faith of intentions and affections we must bring to the holy Eucharist It is necessary to chase away all strange gods which are sins and passions before we receive the God of Israel we must wash our selves in the waters of repentance and change our attire by a new conversation Is it too much for us to give flesh for flesh the body of a miserable man for that of Jesus Christ The consideration of our sins should bring up the bloud of blushing into our cheeks since they were the onely cause why he shed his most precious bloud upon the Cross for us Alas the Heavens are not pure before his most pure Spirit which purifies all nature Then how can we go to him with so many voluntary stains and deformities Is it not to cast flowers upon a dung-hill and to drive Swine to a clear fountain when we will go to Jesus the Authour of innocency carrying with us the steps and spots of our hanious sins 3. Jesus would not onely take upon himself the form of man but also of a base servant as S. Paul saith It was the office of slaves to carry water to wash bodies which made David say That Moah should be the Bason of his hope expressing thereby that he would humble the Moabites so low that they should serve onely to bring water to wash unclean houses Alas who would have said that the Messias was come amongst us to execute the office of a Moabite What force hath conquered him what arms have brought him under but onely love How can we then become proud and burn incense to that Idol called Point of honour when we see how our God humbled himself in this action Observe with what preparation the Evangelist said that his Heavenly Father had put all into his hands that he came from God and went to God yet in stead of taking the worlds Scepter he takes a Bason and humbles himself to the most servile offices And if the waters of this Bason cannot burst in us the foul impostume of vanity we must expect no other remedy but the eternal flames of hell fire Aspirations OKing of Lovers and Master of all holy Loves Thou lovest for an end and till the accomplishment of that end It appertains onely to thee to teach the Art of loving well since thou hast practised it so admirably Thou art none of those delicate friends who onely make love to beauties to gold and silk thou lovest our very poverty and our miseries because they serve for objects of thy charity Let proud Michol laugh while she list to see my dear David made as a water-bearer I honour him as much in that posture as I would sitting upon the throne of all the world I look upon him holding this Bason as upon him that holds the vast seas in his hands O my merciful Jesus I beseech thee wash wash again and make clean my most sinfull soul Be it as black as hell being in thy hands it may become more white than that Dove with silver wings of which the Prophet speaks I go I run to the fountain I burn with love amongst thy purifying waters I desire affectionately to humble my self but I know not where to find so low a place as thine when thou thus wast humbled before Judas to wash his traiterours feet Upon the Garden of Mount Olivet Moralities 1. JEsus enters into a Garden to expiate the sin committed in a Garden by the first man The first Adam stole the fruit and the second is ordained to make satisfaction It is a strange thing that he chose the places of our delights for suffering his pains and never lookt upon our most dainty sweets but to draw out of them most bitter sorrows Gardens are made for recreations but our Saviour finds there onely desolation The Olives which are tokens of peace denounce war unto him The plants there do groan the flowers are but flowers of death and those fountains are but fountains of sweat and bloud He that shall study well this Garden must needs be ashamed of all his pleasant Gardens and will forsake those refined curiosities of Tulips to make his heart become another manner of Garden where Jesus should be planted as the onely Tree of Life which brings forth the most perfect fruits of justice 2. It was there that the greatest Champion of the world undertook so great Combats which began with sweat and bloud but ended with the loss of his life There were three marvellous Agonies of God and Death of Joy and Sorrow of the Soul and Flesh of Jesus God and Death were two incomparable things since God is the first and the most universal of all lives who banisheth from him all the operations of death and yet his love finds means to unite them together for our redemption The joy of beatitude was a fruition of all celestial delights whereunto nothing which displeased could have access and yet Jesus suffered sorrow to give him a mortal blow even in the Sanctuary of his Divinity He afflicted himself for us because we knew not what it was to afflict our selves for him and he descended by our steps to the very anguishes of death to make us rise by his death to the greatest joyes of life To be short there was a great duel between the affectionate love and the virginal flesh of Jesus His soul did naturally love a body which was so obedient and his body followed wholly the inclinations of his soul There was so perfect an agreement between these two parties that their separation must needs be most dolorous Yet Jesus would have it so and signed the decree by sweating bloud And as if it had been too little to weep for our sins with two eyes he suffered as many eyes as he had veins to be made in his body to shed for us tears of his own bloud 3. Observe here how this soul of Jesus amongst those great anguishes continued always constant like the Needle of a Sea-compass in a storm He prays he exhorts he orders he reproves and he encourages he is like the Heavens which amongst so many motions and agitations lose no part of their measure or proportion Nature and obedience make great convulsions in his heart but he remains constantly obedient to the will of his Heavenly Father he tears himself from himself to make himself a voluntary sacrifice for death amongst all his inclinations to life to teach us that principal lesson of Christianity which is to desire onely what God will
the love with which he will be loved and who hath loved us even in disfavour to transport us to favour Whereby it appeareth that this fair love is nought else but a celestiall quality infused into the soul by which we love God above all and all for God Now I imagine with my self that he is born in our hearts in such a manner as pearls grow in their shells The mother of pearl is first pierced by a celestiall influence as with an arrow fiery and sharp which sollicits and importuneth it to dispose it self to this excellent production Which is the cause that it spreads openeth and dilates it self to receive the dew distilled into it from the air and having moistned it it digesteth concocteth and transfigureth it into this little miracle of nature which is with so much curiosity sought after Behold what passeth in a soul when it bringeth forth this precious love it is prevented by a speciall grace from the Divine Goodnesse which at first gives it a distaste of all things in the world and fixeth a generous spur in the heart to excite awaken and enflame it to the quest of so great a good Then it extendeth dilates and opens all its gates to the Holy Ghost who descendeth into it as the dew of Hermon by qualities and Donec Christus formetur in vobis Gal 4. 10. effects admirable which through free-will it embraceth and ties and habituateth it self therein conceiving and forming Jesus Christ as saith S. Paul Then is the time when this divine love is conceived which is no sooner born but it causeth a rejoycing in the heart of man like unto that which happened in the house of Abraham at Isaacs nativity It is a celestiall laughter The Empire and eminencies of Divine love an extraordinary jubilation an expansion of all the faculties and functions of the spirit and will This little Monarch is no sooner born but it begins to command and sits on the heart as in its Throne All powers do it Instructi in charitate in omnes divitias plenitudinis intellectûs Col. 2. 2. Ailredus tom 13. Bibliorum in speculo charitatis Excellent conceit of charity homage all passions render it service All the virtues applaud at its coronation and confesse they hold of it and are all in it He who is once well instructed in charity aboundeth with all riches and hath the full plenitude of the spirit according to the Apostles and is a Tree grafted with siens of all perfection and which fail not to bring forth their fruits Sciences and virtues are that to us which oars to vessels what the viaticum to travellers what light to blear-eyes what arms to souldiers but charity alone is the repose of the wearied the Countrey of Pilgrims the light of the blind the Crown of the victorious Faith and the knowledge of God carry us to our countrey Hope maintaineth us the other virtues defend us but where charity is perfect as it is in glory one no longer believes any thing because it seeth all one hopes for nought because he possesseth all Temperance combateth against Concupiscence Prudence against errour Fortitude against adversity Justice against inequality But in perfect charity there is a perfect chastity which standeth not in need of the arms of temperance having no blemish of impurity A perfect knowledge which expecteth not any help from ordinary Prudence since it hath no errours a perfect Beatitude which needeth not Fortitude to conquer adversities since to it nothing is uneasie a Sovereign peace which imploreth not the aid of Justice against inequality since all therein is equall For in a word what is charity but a temperate love without lust A prudent love without errour a strong love without impatience a just love without inequality Faith is the first day of our Creation which driveth away darknesse Hope is the second which makes a firmament for us and which divideth waters from waters things transitory from eternall Temperance is the third which arraungeth the waters and storms of passions in their proper element and causeth the land of our heart to appear which sendeth up vapours to God that are its sighs Prudence is the fourth which lighteth up in us the sun of understanding and the lights of knowledge Fortitude is the fifth which sustains us in the Ocean of adversities not suffering us to corrupt as fishes in salt-waters and as birds above the Tempest Justice the sixth for it gives us to command over our passions as Adam who on the same day he was created obtained it over all living creatures But charity is the seventh day The Symbole of Glory which contracteth all delights in the circle of its Septenary And how can it but abbridge all Theology since it abbridgeth God himself S. Zeno ser de fide spe charit Tu Deum in hominem demutatum voluisti tu Deum abbreviatum paulisper à majestatis suae immensitate peregrinari fecisti tu virginali carcere nove nâ—mensibus religasti tu mortem Deum mori docendo evacusti and that we have cause to speak to him in such terms as Saint Zeno did O love what hast thou done Thou hast changed God into Man Thou hast contracted him drawing him out of the lustre of his Majesty to make him a pilgrime on earth Thou hast shut him in the prison of a virginall womb the space of nine moneths Thou hast annihilated the empire of death when thou taughtest God to dy Love thus acknowledged by all the virtues mounteth as on a chariot of Glory maketh it self conspicuous with heroick and noble qualities It is pious since it employeth all its thoughts on God It is generous and magnanimous since it is ever disposed to great designs It is liberall as that which spareth nothing It is strong not yielding to any of all those obstacles which present themselves to divert the course of its intentions Qualities of divine love by which we may know whether it inhabit a soul It is just equally distributing rewards to merit It is temperate admitting no excesses but of love It is prudent having eyes alwayes upon its deportments It is witty to find out a thousand inventions It is violent without eagernesse active without participation sage without coldnesse good without remissnesse and calm without idlenesse But I must tell you though its perfections be without number you shall chiefly know it by three qualities Three principall marks of love which will make it appear unto you plyant obliging and patient I say plyant for there is nothing but fires desires sweetnesse affections joyes admirations extasies Plyantness pleasures transportments for its well-beloved This is the State which the great Origen figureth unto us Orig. Hom. de Magdal of S. Mary Magdalen when he saith that by the strength of love she was dead to all the objects of the world She had her thoughts so employed upon her Jesus that she was almost insensible she had
and Sanctity which is an eternal rule that looketh round about on every side condemneth and censureth the works of darknesse For as in things artificiall all the perfection of works consist in the conformity they have with the rule of the art which made them and all their imperfection proceedeth from their recesse from the same rule which without speech or motion declareth the defects of manufactures that depart from its direction so all the good and all the beauty of moral actions is in the correspondence they hold with Reason and the eternall Law As all their deformity and mishap comes from their departure from this same law which is the Justice the Holinesse and Essence of God himself who perpetually stands in opposition against iniquity It is it which he drenched in the waters of the deluge whic◠he burnt in the ashes of Sodom which he swallowed in the gulf of Core Dathan and Abiram which he tormented by the plagues of Pharaoh which he gnawed by worms in the person of Herod which he consumed by ordure and stenches in Antiochus which he punished with gibbets and tormenting wheels in so many offenders which he still tortureth to all eternity sunk down into the abysse of the damned and it is out of which he produceth his glory whence he raiseth his trophies and makes his triumphs to be by Essence and Nature a perpetuall enemy and a destroyer of sinne O magnificent hatred O glorious enemy O triumphant persecution Let us enter with God into this community of glory let us hate sinne as he doth by him and for him let us destroy it in our selves by penance let us destroy it out of our selves by our good examples let us destroy it by a good resolution since Jesus hath destroyed it with so much pain and bloud How can we love such a monster but by hating God And how can we hate God but by making our selves worse then devils For if they hate him they hate an avenging God a punishing God And we will hate a God that seeks us a loving God and hate him after so many execrable punishments of sinne which we nave before our eyes and hate him after he hath offered himself up for us in the great sacrifice of love and patience Is not this intollerable We will employ some part of our life to revenge an injury and to hate a man as if we had too much of it to hate sinne we make a shew to honour the Master and wee kill his servants we make profession to adore the Creatour and we tear his images asunder Where are we and what do we when we make a divorce between our likes to disunite our selves from the first Unity which draweth all to it self by union §. 3 That Jesus grounded all the greatest Mysteries of our Religion upon Vnion to cure Hatred LEt us also contemplate our second model let us behold our Jesus and we shall learn that all the greatest mysteries of his life and death are mysteries of Union to unite us to him to unite us to his Father to unite us to our selves with sacred and indissoluble bands First all creatures of this great Universe were made Heb. 1. ◠Locut us est nobis in Filio quem constituit haeredem universorum per quem fecit secula by the Word in the Unity of Beginning He spake to us by his Sonne whom he hath established the heir of the whole universe by whom likewise he created the worlds Secondly all the parts of this great All were so streightly tyed one to the other that they never have suffered the least disunion and although many seem to have antipathy and reciprocally to pursue each other yet they will not be separated but joyn together in a manner so adherent that he who should go about to disunite one Element from another all these great pieces of the world would infinitely strive beyond their quality to replenish its place worthily and to leave nothing void And it is a wonder that from the beginning of the Aeterno complectitur omnia nexu Tot retum mistique salus concordia mundi Lucan l. 4. Plin. l. 36. cap. 17. world all things are held together by this Divine Tie Concord which in its union causeth the happinesse of the world and those sacred influences of love hath woven eternall chains to tie indissolubly all the parts of the universe All this great body resembleth the stone Scyrus which floateth on the water while it is whole and sinks into the bottome so soon as it is broken This is the cause why all creatures have from all times conspired and do still daily conspire with inviolable inclinations in the maintenance of this concord that the celestiall and elementary world may subsist in a state unchangeable There is none but Angel and Man in the intellectuall world who have made false accords and have begun to sow division the one in Heaven the other in the terrestriall Paradise He who placed it in heaven is banished into the abysse without recovery Joh. 17. 21. Ut omnes unum sint sicut tu Pater in me ego in te the other is succoured by a Redeemer who came to restore the lost world and he in Saint John professeth he aimed at nothing but Unity to make this reparation For this cause saith S. Maximus he united himself S. Max. secunda cent 146. 147. to humane Nature not by a simple union of will of love and of correspondence but by the ineffable knot of Hypostaticall union conjoyning two Natures in one sole Person and by making a communication of all he is to his humane Nature transplanted into the Divine For this he likewise doth daily unite himself to us in the Sacrament of the Altar a true Sacrament of Love where if we will speak with S. Cyril we 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cyril in Johan say that God is dissolved into us as one piece of wax melted and poured together with another and if we will reason with S. John Chrysostome we say He Chrys hom 46. in Johan 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 giveth us his virginall flesh as a most sacred Leaven to season the whole masse of Humane nature It is that which in us should work that virtue which the great Areopagite calleth a Conformity of affections and manners drawing near to Divinity It is that which giveth the name of peace to the holy Eucharist with S. Cyprian and that which so united the Christians in Cyp. ep 10. 29. 30. Dare pacem lapsis the Primitive Church that they went from this mysterious Table as from a banquet of Love after which they breathed nothing but most pure flames of perfect Vide ut invicem se diligant vide ut pro alterutro moti sint parati Tertul. in Apol. amity whereat the Pagans who saw them cryed out See how they love one another Behold how ready they are to die one for another as we have
Spina gratiam floris humanae speculum praefetens vitae quae suavitatem perfunctionis suae finitimis curaâ—si stimulis saepe compungit S. Ambr. l. 3. Hexameron Impatient of divers qualities not all the same liveries For the Kingdome of this Passion is an admirable Purgatory where punishments are divers and every one participates of them according to the quality of his apprehension and the diversity of objects Such saith S. Ambrose is the condition of our life Roses which before sin grew without thorns are afterward on all sides armed with sharp-pointed prickles to teach us that the most smiling fortunes take part in the cares and miseries of the condition of mortals I observe nice impatient ones who have been bred as it were between silk and cotton and who never beheld the miseries of the world but through shadows and clouds and therefore the use they have taken to be served from their childhood according to their humour causeth patience to be a matter very extraordinary with them So you see that upon the least occasion presented of suffering their weak spirit shrinks within it self and their tender flesh makes resistance These are they of whom the Prophet Baruch spake My nice ones have walked through hard and rough Delicati mei ambu laverunt vias difficiles Baruch 1. 26. wayes And of whom Seneca hath aptly said They are ulcers which are irritated when they are lightly touched or that you make but a shew to do it I on the other side observe suspicious Impatient ones who skirmish with flies and are tormented upon shadows of affronts which never were continually ruminating on some slight cold countenance not purposely shewed them or some word spoken meerly out of freedome of speech on the other side I see of them that are prompt and sharp whose bloud quickly comes into their faces whose eyes sparkle voice is shrill fashion turbulent and veins wholly bent upon revenge so that they do not long dispute with a yoke but break it and runne at randome where they oftentimes commit as many errours as they go steps I observe others who are more bitter then sharp in their Impatience and in this number I behold many wayward and prying old men who still have some accusations to make against the actions of youth I see many Courties discountenanced many entranced lovers many officers servants male and female dismissed many suitours rejected in their pursuits many envious who repine at the prosperity of their Neighbour on the other part I behold many persons afflicted in the world one with sicknesse another for the death of a friend one with contempt another with slander one with poverty another with deformity of body some with indispositions of mind and other temporall mishaps It is of this Sadnesse whereof the Wise-man speaketh when he saith that Even as the moth marreth a garment and a little worm gnaweth wood so Sadnesse insensibly eateth Prov. 25. Sicut tinea vestimento vermis ligno ita tristitia viri nocet cordi the heart of man Lastly I see many miserable creatures who cease not to find fault with their vocation and to complain of those who govern them to accuse the Age and seasons and oft-times to call God in question Some tell their evil to all the world like unto those sick persons who sought for remedies from all who passed by the gates of their Temples others hatch their discontent in the bottome of their heart and have much to doe that it be not seen in their faces others publickly drag their Crosse through Currents of water with murmures and imprecations of which the Scripture saith That the clamour and noise of Tumultus murmurationum non abscondetur Sap. 1. their exclamations openly brake forth Others cannot restin any place being weary of all manner of sports recreation and company others are vexed at themselves are dotish melancholick frightfull as if they had some evil spirit in their heart so much oppression of mind they feel they neglect all the offices of civill life yea and the functions of naturall life loth any longer to eat or drink as if they already were in their graves from thence proceed black fansies illusions despair and a thousand agitations of mind which cannot be sufficiently expressed It is Sadnesse which in Scripture is called a geuerall Plague Verily it is a lamentable thing to see how we are here Omnis plaga Eccl. 25. 17. handled by the unhappinesse of our passions I am not ignorant there are dolours so great and Sadnesses so deep that an extraordinary grace of God is necessary to free a soul from it which is touched with it and to set it at liberty but we must likewise say that we often betray our Repose and Conscience by suffering so many bad seeds to grow up in our hearts which we might kill with some resistance of virtue and some ordinary help of the grace of God § 2. Humane Remedies of Sadnesse and how that is to be cured which proceedeth from melancholy and pusillanimity WHilst the great Genius of Physick Hyppocrates drave away maladies by his precepts and almost snatched bodies out of the hands of death one Antiphon arose in Greece who envious of his glory promised to do upon souls what the other did on mortall members and proposed this sublime invention which Plutarch calleth the art of curing of all Sadnesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plutarch in vita 10. Rhetorum where we may truly say he used more vanity promises and ostent of words then he wrought good effects Certainly it were to be wished that our age which is so abundant in miseries should likewise arise great comforts to sweeten the acerbities of the times to pour oil on the peoples yoke as the Scripture speaketh Isa 10. 27. to enter into the interiour of so many poor souls beaten down with Sadnesse and wasted with cares to draw them out of the shadow of death with the first raies of some felicity Another Helena were needfull to mingle the divine Drug of Nepenthe in the meats of so many afflicted persons who moisten their bread with their tears before they eat it For my part I think that to apply a remedy to Sadnesse there must a diligent consideration be had of its nature kind and quality for fear that going about to give it comfort the evil be not exasperated or that a medicine be unprofitably applyed There are Sadnesses which come from humour Four kinds of Sadnesses there are which proceed from pusillamity others are caused by scruples others by an infinite many of irksome objects which happen in the chances of humane life As for those which grow from Melancholick humour they are deep rooted as being the inheritances of Nature and the effects of Temperature They may notwithstanding be greatly moderated by prudence discretion and study which one may use in overcoming them It were not to be desired to cut off all manner of Melancholy
discourses of Philosophers There is question how to help the soul by the body hundred shillings are of more worth then a hundred reasons to a poor wretch who hath need of sustenance and refreshment to solace his pains A little good usage meat apparel a Crosse upon gold or silver remedieth many Crosses of needy people If they to whom God hath given worldly wealth took the pain to imitate so many honourable personages and to accustome themselves to visit the shamefaced poor they would dayly do miracles they would drive away the devils of Melancholy bad humors spectres despairs and maladies they would pull millions of souls out of the hands of their evil fortunes and would be more to men then were the demy-Gods of Antiquity How many herbs simples compositions of physick how many lenitives what powerfull effects of Chyrurgery being well ordered do cure strange infirmities and do pluck one from out of the gates of death But as the cure and easing of the senses is neither present nor efficacious with all the world what should a man do who hath never so little heart but try to cure himself by reason It is it which God hath given unto The comfort derived from reason man instead of so many offensive and defensive armes born with other creatures why should we not use its help It is it which teacheth us that grief is nothing else but an apprehension of division and that Aug. l. 3. de liber at bitr cap 23. Quid est enim aliud dolor nisi quidam sensus divisionis vel corruptionis impatiens as we are out of excesse tyed to all pleasing things in the world so the want of them becomes very sensible in such sort that our Sadnesses ordinarily proceed from our love Experience sufficiently shewing that all such spirits as most are in love with themselves are the most tormented but if we come to lessen thoser geat affections which straightly tie us to conceits and account as lost all which may be lost there is no doubt but we shall begin to find a wholesome medicine for all the afflictions of life A mother greeved for the death of her Amabam misera periturum We most ardently love the things we most lose sonne said in Quintilian That all her evil came from loving too much what she might lose and that our passions are insensibly most ardent for things which must quickly be taken from us as if our grief were to take revenge upon the exorbitancy of our love It is reason that weakneth the opinion of evils which many times torment us more then their effect It which giveth light to things obscure order to confused vigour to languishing and resolution to despair there is nothing for which it finds not a lenitive if poverty make How it remedieth all humane accidents you sad why complain you Ignorant of thy self saith it unto us it is not poverty it is thy fancy which tormenteth thee No man is ever so poor as he is born Hast thou brought gold in thy veins and pearls Poverty in thy entrails that thou complainest of the change of thy condition why dost thou set thy self upon the rack for a thing whereof Jesus made boast and so many wise-men make vows Expect a little Death will make thee as rich as Croesus If thou thinkest thou art poor for that thou hast not what thy covetousnesse desireth it is an Illusion If thou wantest necessaries for life after thou hast lived commodiously and happily it is somewhat pitifull but make thy self a good poor man since God will have thee such suffer a while without murmuring and the divine Providence will not fail to raise for thee the mercy of some rich man to become thy steward Pray be patient endeavour take paines live meanly thou shalt become A suit rich by learning to live contented If a suit be lost what cares what apprehensions what pains what toils are in the same instant lost If it be according to Justice endure it if angainst Justice those who have lost their conscience in making thee lose thy cauie have more cause to be sorry then thou If thou hast lost much in game it is a lesson of wisdome to cure a folly If thou Losse of money hast lost all give thanks to God that thou shalt never lose any more so basely and that thou hast meanes to purchase a little in this occasion If fire and water winds and tempests harpies and theeves take away thy goods what wilt thou do against chance violence and iniquity but preserve submission and innocency The whole masse of worldly wealth is a torrent which swellerh now upon one side and then upon another let that go with patience which thou canst not hold by force If slander assail thy renown and condemne thee perhaps it doth that thou oughtest to do hadst Slander thou more virtues Many by despising themselves have prevented all contempts Tongues cannot hurt thy conscience we stand before God such as we are and all the teeth of calumny take not from us one sole atome of perfection Others have but one tongue to say and thou hast two hands to do Perfect thy life since it hath censures verity will force light through those vapours of maligne spirits derive glory out of thy proper confusion If thou beest discountenanced by great ones put thy self into the good favour of Disgrace God who is above all greatnesse and after thou hast made thy self a slave to men live a while a master over thy self Thou shalt find envy will have consecrated thee and that thy punishments will make a part of thy felicities If thou enterest into sadnesse for being frustrated of some expected good wherefore art thou so earnest in thy desires and so credulous in thy hopes and wherefore makest thou crosses to thy self out of thy own thoughts If it be for the absence Absence of friends of a beloved friend thinkest thou he must continually be tied to thee as if he were a second body It is in absence where our imaginations oftentimes render all that we affect most present we enter into the bottome of our soul and there find the images of our friends despoiled of matter and body we practise the best amities in mind where the envious watch us not the jealous observe us not and the troublesome interrupt not our discourses If this good friend be gone into the other world we every moment run after him and each hour draw near to him Let us be satisfied that his death is the cause that death hath nothing Death terrible for us and that for him we begin to desire what we most fear If we in body must suffer chains imprisonment Bodily pains maladies sharp pains hunger thirst the sword fire and all the hostility of nature we must needs say all which toucheth the skin toucheth us very near and that there are few charming words that can well cast
Eye Port and Habit suitable to warriours make it sufficiently appear it is a virtue wholly Military and if it regard good environed with perils we may thence conclude it is the proper profession of Boldnesse to hasten to the conquest of a good but of a good very difficult For it will not gather palms and crowns but in a field watred all over with sweats All those virtues which are by its sides ordinarily shew us such as are the boldest as are those who have their conscience most clear who are not offensive and therefore lesse fear to be offended who are underpropped by some great favour and namely the protection of heaven who are well disposed both in mind and body who have experience of other hazards from which they successfully have vindicated themselves and the good hap which hath alwayes accompanied them Those aiery fantasies which fly from Boldnesse are fears and affrighâ—s which are scattered by the first ray of its eyes § 2. The Diversity of Boldnesses LEt us now more enlarge our thoughts to consider the differences causes effects qualities and appurtenances of this Passion It is hard enough to make a sound judgement of a man truly bold so many illusions there are of Boldnesse which present themselves to our eyes and would have us make that to passe for virtue which is meer crime and stupidity There are sottish and bestiall Boldnesses which proceed from the ignorance of dangers and which consider not what is good or bad hurtfull or innocent perilous or safe in humane life This is it which makes such as know not what sea-matters are to laugh many times and to take delight to scoffe in occasions which cause pilots the most experienced to become pale This makes little children sport and dally upon the brink of a precipice that drunkards and fools go together by the ears hastening to sword and perill and that those who walk and are active in sleep to scramble upon house-roofs passe over rivers and precipitate themselves into accidents able to make the most hardy to tremble The tree of the knowledge of good and evil costs us very dear It setteth before our eyes all the extent of our hazards and miseries it draweth our evils at length it frames in our thought that which shall never happen in effect it armeth our knowledges against our selves and as Basilisks kill themselves by the reverberation of the mirrours they behold so very often we cause the death of our selves by the reflexion of our lights There are in the world who have Turkish opinions A prima deseendit origine mundi causarum series aâ—que omnia fatal laboranâ—si quid quam mutasse velis Lucan l. 6. and who believe a fatality in our lives thinking the hour of our death is fixed and that the heighth of rocks the descent of precipices squadrons bristled with swords desarts full of serpents flames issuing out of the bellies of scorched mountains all poysons and contagions hasten it not one sole moment and that on the other side brazen walls centinels full of terrour fortresses and castles flights and coverts cannot deferre it one silly instant This opinion is very contrary to reason because it maketh from life all discourse and discretion and were it true we need not eat nor drink make use of arms of garments of munitions of counsel of industry of punishment or of reward but to let all our actions loose in a generall defection which is wholly impertinenr and yet those Maximes help Generals of armies and are the cause that Turks throw themselves with a brutish Boldnesse into the most dreadfull dangers and suffer themselves to be killed like flies out of perswasion of this Destiny It is very true that God knows the number of our dayes and that he likewise by his Providence stayeth the course of our years but on the other part he obliging us to a reasonable preservation of our selves if it happen that out of some temerity meerly extravagant we run into an evident danger of death and that we therein persist well is our death according to Gods calculation but the cause is an effect of our folly and presumption for which God reserveth a chastisement in the other life So that such blind Boldnesses being in no sort laudable cannot have any place among actions of virtue There are others which are absolutely impudent and which deserve the title of shamelesnesse as are those bold askers who offer up armed supplications and will have demands the most disadvantageous to be assented unto as are those also of deceivers and imposters who readily lie to ensnare the goods of another They invent a thousand crafty tricks and guilefull impostures which they distribute piece-meal as seriously as if they were the most confessed truths of all the world Some who are men of no account make themselves noble and illustrions even to the pretending of their being descended from Demy-gods others feign riches in picture and sirname themselves from Baronies and Marquisates which are no more in being then Chymera's and flying stags others seem valiant like unto Rhodomonts and would willingly say in the tone of Romances That they have had brave Combats with Rowland Oliver and the Knight of the burning sword Others are bablers offensive and seem to be onely born to affront men of worth There you find throats stretched wide affected countenances dissolute tongues crooked fingeâ—s hands exercised in thefts and robberies There are likewise some who go up the gallows with a countenance as confident as if they had learn'd no other trade all their life time but the practice of this kind of punishment others blush not at any crime whatsoever living in a strange prostitution of renown and pursuing this course frame to themselves other diabolicall Boldnesses of cut-throats who out of an overflow of enraged furies dare attempt upon the sacred persons of Kings and Bishops esteeming nothing to be safe from their mischief nor impossible to their daring All these manners of proceeding are most abominable and in no sort deserve the title whereof we treat in this discourse wherein I intend to speak of generous Boldnesses which are necessary for humane life and wherein there are some Military others Civil others Holy and Religious § 3. Of laudable Boldnesse IS it not a wonder to behold that which is so illustrious in combats and is the inseparable companion of true valour to which so many valiant men have in all times made love sacrificing themselves in so many members to the honour thereof to be glorified with such crowns by its liberality It is it which enkindled a brand of fire in the heart of Alexander and gave him wings to flie into the thickest squadrons of his adversaries It which Cesar looked on boldly swimming Olathus in vita Attilae amidst the roaring waves fearlesse of the hail-shot of his enemies arrows It which sparkled with ardent flames in Attila's eyes when at the siege of Aquileia seeing himself all
causeth heaven and beatitude Thus doth S. Augustine assure us that the science of God is the cause of all things which draweth Being from the Abysse of nothing and brings the shades of death into light The world is known by us because it is but it is insomuch as it is known by God so efficacious this knowledge is O what a goodly thing it had been to see this great world how it displayed it self in all its pieces and smiled in all its mansions under the eye of God! The Heavens were stretched forth like a Courtain the stars were inchased in the Heavens as Diamonds the clouds suspended in the air as floating bodies that air was diversified in meteors the eternal veins of fountains began to stream the earth to cover its bosome and liberally to afford us out of its entrails infinite many blessings from the benignity of his aspects Tell me not that which the naturall History mentioneth that the Ostrich hatcheth her little ones by the rayes of her eyes yet never shall she bring forth eggs by looking on the earth but the Eye that is to say the knowledge of God hath such virtue that it is the maker of all creatures O beauty O greatnesse O goodnesse Beauty to inhabit in the Idea of God as in a Paradise of Glory Greatnesse to have a capacitie infinite Goodnesse to rest in the bowels of the mercy of the Creatour See a little the difference that is between our knowledges The differencies of our knowledges from those of God and that of God you think it a goodly matter to know a man and to wish him well yet he thereby becomes neither white nor black hot nor cold good rich nor learned for our knowledges are small in their capacities limited in their effects and inefficacious in their operations How many brave Captains and learned Authours are there who are still well thought of in the opinion of men but whether they beliving or whether they be dead if their souls be in an ill state this knowledge and this love nothing contributeth to their felicities But so is it not with the knowledge of God I speak of an amourous knowledge It gives Being and Grace Being because all things known by God are in God in a more noble manner then in themselves Here we behold dying creatures who fade wither and shrink insensibly into nothing were they not supported by the divine hand but in the house of God in the palace of Essences the Summers are of Cypresse saith the holy Canticle insomuch as all therein Cant. 1. 17. is immortall vigorous perfect and incorruptible and there it is where the blessed who have not here seen the world but by two eyes of flesh and have seen it tottering Bearis pervium est omniforme illud divinitatis speculum in quo quicquid eorum interest illucescat Concil Sen nonse and altogether imperfect behold it in God fully stable equall and absolute in all its dimensions The Saints perpetually have before their eyes the incomprehensible mirrour of the Divinity in which they at case behold all that which concerneth them and may conduce to their greater contentment I add that this knowledge causeth Grace For what makes predestination but that preparation of Grace and Glory which God hath conceived from all Eternity in his understanding to communicate it to his elect See what God doth seeing and God seen what doth he else but actually make heaven and Beatitude which consisteth in the clear vision of God So soon as a soul predestinated to enjoy without delay the glory of heaven is gone from out the bands of its body it hath for guide this divine splendour which Divines call the light of Glory which is a quality infused into the understanding that so elevates and fortifies it beyond its condition that it is able to endure the lightning flash eternall Beatitude Is it not of this light holy Job spake when he said he hideth light in his hands Job 36. and faith to his friend it is his inheritance possession Then God all-good communicateth himself to this soul ennobled with such a qualitie not by some image or representation but by its very essence intimately united to the glorified understanding and from thence what followeth but an admirable transformation The soul is wholly absorpt in felicity and as a small drop of water poured into the sea instantly takes the colour and taste of the sea so the souls taste is fully inebriated and coloured with the Divinity It is almost no longer in its self but becometh wholly like to God not by nature but by participation We know saith S. John when we shall see him we shall be like him And S. Gregory Nazianzen dareth to call it God Joan. ep 1. and as we have two principall parts of the soul to content Greg. Naz. Hymn the understanding and the will so God all benigne abundantly satisfieth them making thither to stream as by two dugs of glory all the delights and contentments proportioned to their condition For the understanding which naturally desireth to know is illuminated by a most excellent knowledge of things the most hidden which it seeth in God as in an incomprehensible Mirrour and seeth them not in the manner of the wise men of the world who flutter round about sciences as little flies about lamps that findge their wings and make their tomb in the flames but it seeth them with a vision sublime calm and delicious which giveth to the will that is made to love amorous eagrenesse Avidi semper pleni quod habent desiderant Pet. Damis in Hymn de gloria Paradis ever desiring and ever having what it desireth O what miracles doth the eye of God enkindling with one sole aspect of many Divinities when maketh so many blessed ones like unto it self as if the sun rising should in the heavens createa million of little suns and on earth an infinitie of Diamonds all which should bear the image of this bright star All those blessed ones illustrated by this aspect albeit The blessed although unequall iâ— glory are not enviouâ— they shine diversly according to each ones merit are so far from envie receiving the flames of eternall Goodnesse that every one accounteth the felicity of his companion for the accomplishment of his own Non erit tibi aliqua invidia disparis claritatis ubi regnat unitas charitatis Aug. There you shall hear no speech of envie occasioned by inequalitie of felicity where the union of charity shall eternally reign Go to then O thou Envious O thou malign Man God hath made thee to his likenesse to carry as he in proportion raies of love and compassion in thy eyes towards men and thou there bearest gall bloud and poyson Nay so far art thou otherwise that if it were in thy power to make benefits to grow from thy aspects thou wouldest rather desire the eye of a Basilisk to poyson burn and
feet praying him to forget what was past yet he caused his processe to be made in Parliament upon accusations which did more manifest the Passion of the King then any crime in the life of the Count. Notwithstanding the close practise was so great that he was condemned to death and although Lewis terrified by his own Conscience and the generall opinion would not have it to proceed any further yet he confined him to the Bastile where he had spent the rest of his dayes if he had not found means to save himself But whom would he spare who put away and deprived of Office his best servants for having hindered him during his sicknesse to come near unto a Window out of the care they had of his health This passion was a Devil in the heart of this Prince which made him odious to many and filled his whole life with disturbance and acerbity 10. A revengefull spirit spares nothing to please it Aymonius l. 5. c. 39. self and oft-times openeth precipices to fill them with death and ruine It is a strange thing that one sole Wicked revenge of an Abbot and of John Prochytas against the French Abbot of Saint German de Prez named Gaulin had almost ruined the whole Kingdome of France for having been bereaved of an Abbacy He many years revolved his revenge and after the death of Lewis le Begue under whom he had received the injury which he proposed to himself he went to Lewis the German whom he enflamed with so much cunning to the conquest of the Kingdome of France that he set a huge army on foot to surprize the heir of the Crown in the Confusion of his Affairs and the trouble was so great that needs must Lorraigne be cut off from the Kingdome of France to give it to this Conquerour So did John Prochytas the Sicilian who having been deprived of his estate by Charles of Anjou conceived a mortall enmity against the French which made him contrive that bloudy Tragedy of Sicilian Vespres This unfortunate man disguising himself in the habit of a Franciscan went to Peter of Arragon to shew him the means how to invade Sicily and seeing that he and his wife Queen Constance bent all their endeavour thereto he ceased not to stir up the Countrey where he had much credit and used so many engines that in the end he caused one of the most horrible massactes which was ever projected On an Easter-day in the time of Vespres the French had all their throats cut throughout the Island of Sicily No age sex condition nobility nor religious were spared The black spirit of the Abysle drew men from the Altar to runne to the sword which they indifferently thrust into the bosome of their guests nor were so many cryes and lamentations nor such images of death flying before their eyes able to wound their hearts with one sole touch of compassion which useth to move the most unnaturall Rage blown by the breath of the most cruell furies of Hell made them to open the bellies of women and to dig into their entrails to tear thence little Infants conceived of French bloud It caused the most secret sanctuaries of nature to be violated to put those to death who had not as yet the first taste of life Shall we not then say that the passion of revenge which hath taken root in a soul half damned is the most fatall instrument that Hell can invent to overthrow the Empire of Christianity 11. All these accidents well considered are sufficient to moderate the passions which make so much noyse among mankind But let us consider before we go off this stage that Anger and Revenge are not creatures invincible to Courtiers who yet retein som Character of Christianity Robert one of the greatest Kings that ever ware the Crown of France saw his two sonnes bandied against Glaber him when provoked by the practises of the Queen Great moderation in Saint King Robert their mother who ceased not to insult over them they ran to the field with some tumultuary troops and began to exercise acts of hostility which made them very guilty The father incensed by their rebellion and forcibly urged by the sting of the mothers revenge speedily prepares an army and entreth into Burgundy to surprise and chastise them Thereupon William Abbot of S. Benigne of Dion goeth to him and shews that these disorders were an effect of the divine Providence which we should rather appease by penance then irritate by anger that if his Majesty would call to mind he should find that his youth was not exempt from errours committed by the inconsideration of age and the practise of evil counsels that he ought not to revenge with sword and fire that which he had suffered in his own person and that as he would not any should enterprise upon his hereditary possession so it was fit not to meddle with that which was Gods who had reserved vengeance to himself This speech had such power that the good King was instantly appeased caused his children to come embraced them with paternall affection and received them into favour tying their reconciliation with an indissoluble knot What can one answer to the mildnesse of a King accompanied with so much power and wisdome but confesse that pardon is not a thing impossible since this great Prince upon the words of a religious man layes down arms and dissipateth all his anger as waves break at the foot of rocks 12. We must confesse that Regality was never Helgandus in vita Roberti Regis seen allyed to a spirit more mild and peaceable and that his actions should rather be matter of admiration then example He pardoned twelve murtherers who had a purpose to attempt upon his life after he had caused them to confesse and communicate saying it was not reasonable to condemn those whom the Church had absolved and to afflict death upon such as had received the bread of life But what would not he have done who surprising a rogue which had cut away half of his cloke furred with Ermins said mildely to him Save thy self and leave the rest for another who may have need of it 13. This mildnesse is very like to that of Henry the First afterward King of England who seeing his Fathers body to be stayed in open street upon the instant of his obsequies and this by a mean Citizen who complained the soil of the land where the dead which was William the Conquerour was to be interred was his Ancestours inheritance he was nothing at all moved but presently commanded his Treasurer to satisfie the Creditour and to prosecute the pomp of his Funerals 14. Lewis the Eleventh did a King-like act towards Generous act of Lewis the Eleventh the ashes of the fair Agnes who had possessed the heart of his father Charls the Seventh and had persecuted him the son in her life-time At her death she gave threescore thousand crowns for a foundation to
all the miserable betook themselves unto him unto the number of 400. men which entrenched themselves in a fortresse going forth every day for to rob to maintain themselves thereby In the midst of all these misfortunes the good Prince kept alwayes in his heart a true love of his countrey and knowing that the Philistims had laid siege before Keilah he failed not to go to help it and to deliver it although this ungratefull city was intened to deliver him to Saul if he had enclosed himself therein the which he would not do having consulted with the Oracle of God but retired himself to the desert of Ziph whither Jonathan that The visit of Jonathan secret and and very profitable to David burned with a great desire to see him came to find him secretly and they were for some time together with unspeakable expansions of heart This good friend comforted him and assured him that he should be King after his father and for himself he would be content to be his second which sufficiently witnessed the wonderfull modesty of this Prince and the incomparable love that he bore to David But the Ziphims men for the time that would provide for their own safety sent their deputies to Saul to advertise him that David was retired into their quarters and if it pleased him to follow him they would deliver him into his hands At the which Saul was exceeding joyful and entred the chase to entrap him compassing him on every side and hunting him like a poor deer chased by men and dogs with great out cries The danger was very manifest and David in great hazard to be taken had it not been for a happy message it may be procured by Jonathan that advertised Saul that the Philistims had taken the field and made great waste upon his lands at which he returned to bring remedy thereto deferring his former design till another occasion In the mean while David ran from desert to desert The rudenesse of Nabal towards David with his troops and was hardly able to live which made him have recourse to Nabal a rich man and that had great means entreating him for some courtesie for to maintain his people which had used him with very great respect defending his house his flocks and all his family against the spoilings of robbers This Nabal that was clownish and covetous answered the deputies of David that he knew not the son of Jesse but that he was not ignorant that there were evil servants enough which were fled from their masters and that he was not in case to take the bread from his hired servants for to give it to high-way men This word being told to David incensed him so much that he was going to set upon his house for to rob and sack it But Abagail the The wisdome of Abigail his wife wife of Nabal better behaved and wiser without busying her self to discourse with her husband that was a fool and drunk caused presently mules to be loaden with provision necessary for the men of war and went to meet David to whom she spake with so great wisdome comelinesse and humility that she turned away the tempest and stayed the swords already drawn out of the scabbards for to make a great slaughter in her house David admiring the wisdom and goodnesse of this spirit of the woman married her after the death of her husband It is so true that a good deed bestowed on a high A good deed done to a great one afflicted is of much value person in time of his affliction and when he hath most leasure to consider it is a seed-sowing which in its time brings forth and bears fruits of blessednesse After that Saul had driven back the Philistims he returns to the pursuit of David accompanied with three thousand men with a purpose to take him although he should hide himself under ground or should fly through the air And indeed he crept up rocks unaccessible David furiously pursued by Saul which were not frequented by any but by wild goats and as he passed that way he entred into a cave for some naturall necessity where David was hid with a small number of his faithfullest servants which failed not to tell him that this was the hand of God which had this day delivered his deadly enemy into his hands and that he should not now lose time but to cut him off quickly whilst that he gave him so fair play and this would be the means to end all those bitternesses wherewith his life was filled by the rage of this barbarous Persecutour This was a strong temptation to a man so violently His generousnesse in pardoning his enemy very admirable persecuted and whose life was sought by so many outrages Neverthelesse David stopping all those motions of revenge resolved in his heart by a strong inspiration of God never to lay his hands upon him which was consecrated King and contenting himself with cutting off the skirts of his coat he went out of the cave after Saul and crying with a loud voice he worshipped him prostrate on the earth holding in his hand the piece of his casock and saying to him Behold my Lord my Father and my King the innocence of my hands and do not believe them any more which filled you with suspicions of poor David you cannot be ignorant at this time that God hath put you into my power and that I could have handled you ill by taking away your life have saved mine own But God hath kept me by his holy grace from this thought and hath preserved you from all evil I never yet had any intent to hurt your Majesty having alwayes reverenced and served it as your most humble servant and subject whiles that you cease not to pesecute me and to torment my poor life with a thousand afflictions Alas my Lord what is it that you desire Against whom are you come forth with so great furniture of Arms and Horses against a poor dead Dog a miserable little beast I beseech the living God to judge between us two and to make you to know the goodnesse of my cause One may avouch that great and glorious actions The greatnesse and benefit of clemency of Clemency do never hurt Princes but that often they do place or keep the Crown upon their heads God and Men concurring to favour that goodnesse that approches so near to the highest Saul was so amazed with this action that he ran to him and embraced him weeping and said to him This is a sure sign O David which I acknowledge at the present and whereby I know for certain that you must reign after me so great a goodnesse not being able to be rewarded but by an Empire I do pray and conjure you onely to have pity on my poor children after my death and not to revenge your injuries upon them hereupon he swore to him to deal with him afterwards peaceably But as this spirit was unequall
Bethulia said to her You are this day blessed my daughter and glorious above all women that are in the habitable world Praised be the Creatour of heaven and earth who hath so well guided your victorious hand to the ruine of the capitall of our enemies and who by the same means hath so glorified your name that he hath rendred your praise immortall in the mouth of men that shall have any sense of the wonderfull works of God Every one will remember how you have not spared your life to draw your people out of the ruines wherein they were almost buried Thereupon Achior was called and Judith shewing him the head of Holophernes sayes to him You have lost nothing by the testimonies you give to the power of our God for behold the head of the Collonel of the Unbelievers which God hath cut off this night by this hand of mine Behold him that threatned to make you die when he had taken Bethulia but sure now he will let you live in great quiet This man was in such an extasie at this news that he fell down in a swoon and when he was come to himself again he cast himself at the feet of Judith and gave her a reverence that was near to adoration And by her means was converted to the true Religion and rendred all glory to the God of Jerusalem Judith pursuing this her conquest counselled her people to make a shew of sallying out of the city in arms at the break of day as if they would give battel which would make the Assyrians hasten to the Pavilion of Holophernes to awake him and so seeing what had passed would be seized with so great a fear that they would sell their lives at a cheap rate This was executed and the Captains failed not to repair unto the Generall to receive orders It was already forward dayes and he was yet asleep with the sleep of death from whence there is no waking unlesse by an extraordinary power Every one was astonished that he appeared not but no body durst take the boldnesse to awake him so greatly was he feared They presse Vagoa to enter into the chamber who refuses at first to trouble the pleasures of his Master but when the time was drawn out in length he entred and made a noise not as by design but accident and seeing that no body stirred he went neer the bed thinking that he was yet with Judith At last when one told him that the enemy appeared in arms he drew the curtain very gently and saw the body of his Master weltering in his own bloud He therefore became so furious that he rent suddenly his clothes and ran to Judith's chamber to make her suffer a thousand deaths but when he could not find her he sent out frightfull cryes and spake aloud that that stranger-woman had filled the house of Nebuchadonozor with confusion and that she had assassinated their Generall who was now nothing but a trunk without an head plung'd in his own bloud All ran to this spectacle and the whole Camp was filled with astonishment with fears with despair with tears and with howlings At the same time appeared the head of Holophernes hanged up upon the walls of Bethulia and all the army of the Assyrians surpriz'd with a panick fear and as it were struck with a scourge from heaven began to scatter themselves every one seeking his safety in his flight The Israelites pursued them making a great noise as if they had drawn forth numerous troops and as if their squadrons had marched compacted and in good order It was easie for them to vanquish run-awayes who had already delivered up to fear all the hope of their life and fortune All the neighbouring cities came out to take a share of this glory and cast themselves into the fields on all parts to entrap their routed enemies of whom they made most horrible massacre All the Camp of Holophernes was pillaged where was found so great a quantity of booty that it was a thing prodigious The noise of this victory was spread unto Jerusalem the high Priest came to Bethulia with his other Priests to see Judith to whom every one gave a thousand blessings One could hear nothing but shouts of joy and acclamations that published her The Glory of Jerusalem the Joy of Israel the Honour of her People the gallant Woman the Chaste and Valiant Princesse the incomparable Lady whose Reputation should live as long as Eternity it self A moneth passed wherein there was nothing heard but joyes but consorts of musick but trophies amongst the people They gathered every day some new spoils whereof the most precious in gold in silver in purple in pearls and jewels were presented to the victorious Judith She composed a song of Triumph which was sung solemnly with the admiration of the whole world After all they went as it behoved them to Jerusalem to render to God the Vows of the whole people and to make great Offerings where three moneths more were spent in an incomparable chearfulnesse There was not a day that was not Festivall nor a face that did not wear the lineaments of the joyes of Paradise Judith offered in the Temple the Pavilion of Holophernes that the memory of it might never be defaced by oblivion At last all returned home to their own houses and the holy woman remained in her little city of Bethulia alwayes in her widow-hood honoured of all the world as the most glorious soul on earth She made her servant free and lived even to the age of 105 years amongst her people in a profound peace She appeared abroad the Festivall dayes in a magnificent glory spending the other dayes in her solitude and living with great examples of Virtues and Devotion The day of that happinesse was marked with white and reckoned in the number of the greatest Feasts of the Jews to all posterity God who is the worker of so many wonders hath taken a care also of this History It is an eternall monument of the virtue of his arm that shakes the mountains that cleaves the rocks and overthrows in a moment those sons of the Titans who make warre against heaven it self and would walk upon the wings of the winds A Generall of an Army that vaunted himself in the midst of an hundred thousand souldiers environed all about with steel with fires and lightnings who said I will go I will do I will level with the ground who held a fatall councel where he decreed the firing of Cities the sacking of Provinces where so many dragons drank up the tears of Nations without being touched with any sense of pity A Giant that heaped mountain upon mountain to ascend through fire and sword even to the throne of the most High behold now conquered slain massacred tumbled in his bloud by a woman that makes a play-game of his head and an army that cut their passage through the Rocks that drank up Rivers that shadowed the Sun by the multitude
He sayes that it was a design of God on which they should think no more unlesse to thank him These bad brethren after their fathers death finding themselves pricked with remorse of conscience and imagining that that pardon was but a dissembling cast themselves at his feet and beseech him to lay aside all the resentments of past wrongs but he raised them weeping and promised them a Charity totally fraternall and for ever inviolable And though he was so puissant and so absolute he never advanced his own children to the prejudice of his brothers observing them and respecting in every thing the right of Eldership which nature had given them over him Certainly a man that hath such a power over himself ought to be looked upon on earth as a Starre that should descend from heaven and as the liveliest image of the divine Goodnesse he merits not onely to triumph on Pharaoh's charrets but on the Heaven of heavens and so be beheld by Angels with admiration of his desert Finally that which was glorious in Joseph for the fulnesse of this perfection was the strength and equality of an incomparable spirit he was alwayes like himself and saw all the changes of his fortune without changing He descends into the deep pit with the same countenance as he mounts upon Pharaoh's charret He complains of nothing He accuses no body He stifles all the displeasures and all the resentment of nature in him He is loved of his Mistresse without condescending to her passion He is hated of her without accusing her cruelty He is accused without defending himself persecuted without resisting So many years roul over his head without writing one onely word to his father to the disadvantage of his inhumane brothers He suffers with silence He hides his evils with industry He does good without affectation He bears upon his shoulders all the cares of a great Government without groaning under his burden He communicates his glories and his pleasures He reserves to himself onely the toils He takes the bitter and the sweet the hard and the soft prosperities and adversities as the sea that receives all the rivers without changing either colour or savour All his life is but a picture that hath alwaies the same visage and as the Deâ—ty does continually one and the same action without altering or wearying it self he continues the exercises of his goodnes without remission even to the last article of his life MOSES WHat spectacle is this here A cradle of bulrushes floating upon the River Nile and in it a little abandoned Infant for whom his own mother is constrained to make a grave of water to avoid the fury of the murderers that came to pluck him from the breast His sister follows him with weeping eyes and sayes to him Go poor child whither fortune shall conduct thee go my dear brother upon the floats of a furious Element which perhaps will be more favourable to thee then those inhumane men that seek thy life when as thou knowest not yet what 't is to live This River will have pity on thee or if it swallows up thy cradle in its waves it will lodge thy bones in its bosome and cover thy death to sweeten the bitterest of our evils which is to have eyes to look upon our misery But while that this poor maid weeps upon the bank of Nilus and mingles her tears with the water of the River Providence takes the care of that cradle she makes her self as the Pilot of that little vessel which is without mast without rudder without cordage she supplies all and does all she shews how one may find life in death and an haven in a shipwrack The daughter of King Pharaoh comes with her female train and in it is her intention to bathe her self but in God's intention that she might be made the mother of that little Infant exposed to the mercy of the waters and that since she could not be so by Nature she might be by Adoption She discovers first of all that cradle which was on the waters side and dispatches one of her damsels to take it up and bring it her that she might see what was in it she finds a very fair child which pleads his case before her by the cloquence of his tears and of his cryes and implores her mercy against the fury of the Infant-slayers Her heart is melted in compassion towards it and she gives command that it should be kept and nourished his sister standing opportunely by sayes unto her that she knew where was a good Nurse that would well acquit her self of that duty if it pleased her Majesty that she might call her whereto she having shewed some inclination she causes the mother to come that nursed with all security her dear Infant which she had exposed through diffidence This little body drawn out of the bundle of rushes is he that God hath chosen to shake all Egypt to overthrow the pride of Pharaoh's and to draw his people out of Captivity The Hebrews were already multiplied exceedingly in the Kingdome of Egypt after the death of Joseph in the space of sixty five years and began to make themselves feared of their Masters The face of the Realm was changed and he that was then upon the Throne was a Prince that remembred not any longer the obligations that the Monarchy had to the Patriarch Joseph but blamed the counsels of his Predecessours for having permitted a stranger-people to have a dwelling in his Kingdome that seeming to him according to humane Policy of pernicious consequence and thinking that that waxing stronger as it did every day might be capable to make an attempt upon the State or be serviceable to those that had a design to make a commotion and to embroil the affairs of the Kingdome He judged not ill according to the rules of Politicians and for that purpose he resoved with himself to abate and to destroy them by what means soever it was done The first was to consume them amongst stones and mortar in the structure of those prodigious Pyramids that are to be seen in Egypt The second was to command the Midwives to kill all the Male-children which they did not execute through the fear which they had of God and the horrour of that command This made him advise upon a third means and ordain that all the Boyes from the day of their birth should be drowned in the River Nile But God that would teach Princes and State-Ministers that although one should have in Idea any just and lawfull design yet one never ought to seek to compasse it by unjust and violent means permitted not this unhappy Prince that gnawed himself with cares and unquietnesse and tormented his life by so many new inventions of malice and of fury ever to bring about what he projected and his successour after a thousand scourges and a thousand disastres of his Kingdome which he saw every day fall by pieces before his eyes was buried in the red
businesse fill'd them with such an amazement that their ranks being in disorder they killed one another without knowing their own party The people of Israel having received intelligence of that rout take heart again and get them out of the caves into which they had retired themselves to range themselves about Saul's person who was thereby transported with such an ardour that he conjur'd all his Army to follow the Philistims without drinking or eating till they were all destroyed This was a precipitation of his unequall spirit and a true Chimaera yet desiring to make that passe for Zeal which was a pure Passion he would needs cause his son Jonathan to be put to death for having sucked a little honey at the end of his rod but the people rescued him out of his hands and desisted to pursue the Philistims being not in a condition to fight with them Some time after Samuel exhorted him to enterprise a puissant Warre against the Amalekites sworn enemies of the people of God and conjur'd him to make every thing passe through the edge of the sword without sparing any body and above all to reserve nothing of the booty that should be made upon them that should not be consumed with fire To this Saul seem'd to be inclin'd with vigour and raised an Army of more then two hundred thousand men so great was the weight of the Authority when Samuel put himself into party He fell suddenly upon the Amalekites and defeated them with a generall rout so farre as to take their King prisoner but he contented himself with destroying and burning all that was caytiffe and unprofitable reserving Agag the King with the best flocks and herds and choicest moveables In the mean while he was so much puft up with this victory that he caused an Arch of Triumph to be erected to himself and spread himself in the vanities of his spirit while God was thinking of rejecting him and giving orders to Samuel to tell him his unhappinesse Yet Saul blind in his sin received the man of God into his Camp with an extraordinary joy vaunting himself for having efficaciously fulfilled the commandment of God and while he was speaking it the voyce of the Flocks that he had put aside was heard whereupon Samuel said What means this Cattle that strikes my ears with its bleatings To which he answered That he had reserved them expresly for an offering to the living God But Samuel replyed That there was no Sacrifice so pleasing to God as Obedience and that Sin which was contrary to him was a kind of Idolatry and that since he had despised the Word of God he should be cast off and deprived of the Kingdome whereat he being astonished confessed that he had offended hearkning more to the voyce of the People then to that of God and beseeched Samuel to excuse his sinne to bear with his infirmities and to go with him to the sacrifice to adore God in sign of reconciliation Whereto Samuel replyed that he would have no more any thing common with a man whom God had abandon'd and saying this steps forward and turns his back to him the other layes hold on the fringe of his robe which remained in his hands which when the Prophet saw Behold said he how your Kingdome shall be divided and given to a better then your self The Triumpher of Israel the true God of hosts is not as a man to change his purposes and repent him of his counsels The King humbled himself again acknowledging his fault and beseeching Samuel earnestly not to leave him but to render him the ordinary respect before the Princes of the people and to come and worship God with him Samuel fearing the disorder of the Army consented for that time but afterward never saw Saul any more to the day of his death He ceased not to weep bitterly for him considering that he that had been chosen by his hand had come to so little good and had carried himself with so much contempt of the commandments of God This wounded his heart and would not let him put an end to his mournings till his great Master comforted him and suggested David to him who should fill up worthily the place that Samuel was about to lose by his iniquity And indeed he performed then a bold enterprise going to Bethleem under colour of a Sacrifice and Anointing David King in Saul's life time although that design was secret that it might be managed with more successe After that time Saul was left visibly by God possessed with an evil spirit and gnawed perpetually with jealousies of State which the person of David caused in him by reason of his valour and great virtues as I shall declare in the following Elogy In the mean while Samuel lived retired from Court without meddling with Sate-affairs and Saul by his departure changed the sins of Vanity and of Fearfulnesse into Sacrilegies and Massacres letting loose the bridle to his fury to retain the phantasme of an Empire that flew out of his hands Good Samuel ceased not in his solitude to bewail two King that he had made looking upon one as an homicide and the other as a sacrifice of death He was afflicted inconsolably to hear of the deportments of that furious Saul that made of one wickednesse a degree to passe unto another inventing every day new butcheries to cement his Throne with the bloud of his brethren He melted himself with compassion for his poor David seeing Saul's sword hang but by a little thread alwayes ready to fall upon his innocent head He deplored the miseries of the poor people which he could not any longer remedy and passing over again in his remembrance all the vicissitudes of mans life and the treacheries of the Court he had an ardent thirst to depart out of this world to go to find Innocence in the bosome of his Fathers God heard him and drew him to himself by a peaceable death the seventy and seventh year of his age the eight and thirtieth of his Government and the seventh after his retreat from Court He was mourned and lamented for by all the people as the Father of his Countrey and magnificent Funeralls were made for him to render him a testimony at his death of the commendable actions of his holy and generous life Saul remained yet two years upon the Throne after him and the Even before his great overthrow the Soul of Samuel returned from Limbus not by the work of the Pythonesse but by the will of God and spake to him and told him of his disastre as I have said in the Maxim of the Immortality of Souls DANIEL DAniel entred into the Court by Captivity stayed there by Mortification made himself known by Prophecy and there also rendred himself renowned by great Virtues To comprehend this it is necessary to know that the little Kingdome of Judea was ordinarily very much exposed to the Armies of the Assyrians which God had chosen to be scourges and the
reveals to me nor speak any more in his name but then I selt a fire boiling in my heart that was shut up in the marrow of my bones and I fell into a swoon and could not endure the violence of my thoughts without unloading my self by the tongue and publishing that which you inspired into me And for this behold me reduced to irons And have I not good cause to say that which miserable men use to say That the day of my nativity in regard of originall sin and so many calamities that spring from that source is lamentable and cursed and that it were to be wished that the womb of my mother that bare me had been my sepulchre Wherefore did I come out of the bowels of a woman to be a spectatour of so many sorrows and so much confusion The Saints speak sometimes like men according to the sense of the inferiour part of the soul especially when they see themselves overwhelmed with great evils but God raises them up immediately and makes them resume the tongue of heaven As the Prophet was deploring his miseries in that dark prison God gave lights and remorses to his persecutour that came the next day to deliver him either through some compassion or because he had attempted that beyond the limits of his authority The prisoner instead of expressing some kind of weaknesse spake more boldly then before fore-telling even to Pashur that he should be led captive into Babylon and that he should die there the other not daring to enterprise any thing against him After that very time Jeremy betook himself to the Palace to speak with the King and with the Queen his wife to advertise them of the utmost misery that menaced their Crown if they did not make an entire conversion to God to give an example to their Subjects Besides this he gave some State-counsel and told the King that since God had permitted that he should be subdued by the Arms of the King of Babylon that had put him on the Throne and to whom he had promised Faith Homage and Tribute he should do well to keep his promises inviolable rather then to adhere to the King of Egypt and expect the assistance of his Arms. This was the most important point of State that concerned the safety of all the kingdome Neverthelesse King Zedekiah whose spirit was a little soft hearkned to the advice and took sometimes fire but it was but for a little time he being no way constant in his good resolves When he saw himself menaced with a siege by the King of the Babylonians he was affrighted and inclined a little to his side but assoon as he perceived that he diverted his arms another way he brake his promised faith being weary of the rigour of the Tributes that the other exacted of him Thereupon Jeremy ceased not to publish that it was an errour to expect that the army of Pharaoh King of Egypt which was reported to be upon its march to help Jerusalem should do any good that it should return upon its own steps without enterprising any thing that Nebuchadonozor was not so farre off but that in a small time he would render himself before the city to besiege and win it That it was a decree of God and although the Army of the Chaldeans should be defeated yet those that remained though wounded and sick should be sufficient to take Jerusalem abandoned of the Divine protection When he had spoken this publickly he resolved to retire himself for a time and to go into the countrey but he was taken at the gate of the city by Irijah that accused him falsly and said that he was going to render himself to the army of the Chaldeans whereupon he carried him under a good guard to the Magistates who having beaten and ill used him sent him to prison where he remained many dayes without consolation At last the King having heard of what had happen'd to him caused him to come secretly to him and spake to him to conjure him to tell the truth whether those Predictions that he ceased not to sow in the ears of all the world were Revelations from God whereof the Prophet assured him again and gave him some good incitement to incline to the most wholesome counsels Poor Jeremy seeing this Prince use him kindly said unto him Alas Sir what have I done and in what have I offended your Majesty to be used as a rogue by those that usurp your authority What crime have I committed by telling you the truth Where are your false Prophets that said that there was no need to fear the coming of Nebuchadonozor and that he had other businesse to dispatch is he not at length come to verifie my Prophecies Since you do me the honour at present to hear me My Lord and my Master hearken to my most humble request and grant me a courtesie that I desire of you in the Name of God which is that I may no more return into the prison out of which your Majesty hath caused me to be drawn for the continuation of the evils that I have suffered there is able suddenly to tear my soul from my body and it will be but a grief to you to deliver me to death for having given you counsels of life and safety The King was softned by the words of the Prophet but he was so timorous that he durst not take the boldnesse to cause a prisoner to be delivered by his absolute authority fearing the reproaches and out-cryes of those that would have the upper end in all affairs He caused onely the goaler to be bid to use him a little kindlier taking him out of the black dungeon to give him a place more reasonable and to have a care that in that great famine of the city he should not want bread This was executed and he staid some time at the entrance of the prison with a little more liberty during which he spake again to those that visited him and said freely That there was no way to escape the sacking of the city but by rendring themselves to the Chaldeans This made Pashur and his complices incensed again with a great wrath and speak insolently to the King that Jeremy might be delivered to them publishing that he was worthy of death that he was a seditious fellow that did nothing but make the people mutiny and separate them from their obedience to him The miserable Zedekiah that had let these men take too high an ascendent upon his person had not strength of spirit enough to resist them but against his conscience abandoned his poor Prophet to them although it was with some regret These wicked men having taken him let him down with cords into a deep pit of the prison which was full of mire and filth where he expired the remainder of his deplorable life and had dyed there of miseries if God had not raised him up a protectour of whom he never so much as dreamed There was in
observe that he never spake ill of the Christians although he hath violently inveighed against the Jews which testifieth that he was endued with some good thoughts in the favour of it His brother Gallio being Proconsul in Achaia would never judge S. Paul for any fact of Religion although the Jews did presse him to it with much importunity Adde to this that our Seneca two years before his death did live a retired life under the colour of indisposition of body and would no more frequent the Temples of the Heathen as also that he would not procure his own death before the Emperour expresly had commanded it as being then of the opinion of the Christians who did forbid self-murder and also that at last that he did forbid the vain pomp and the vain ceremonies at his Funerals These Reasons being weighed do draw unto this Conclusion That it is more beseeming our Religion to conceive well of the Salvation of Seneca then to condemne him The strongest Objection which can be made against this Opinion is That at his death Cornelius Tacitus doth make him to invoke on Jove the Liberatour But no esteem ought to be given to this Argument for Tacitus could not understand that which was altogether out of his knowledge seeing that Seneca did never make open profession of Christianity but kept that thought totally concealed from Nero and all the Heathen And we ought not to be amazed that he was not comprised in that search which was made for Christians it being sufficiently manifest that many illustrious Christians have lived in the Courts of the Heathen Emperours and dissembled their Religion they being not bound in conscience to declare it at all times to run wilfully into Martyrdome Moreover this Historian above named hath written divers things very lightly especially when he maketh mention of the Religion of the Jews and Christians which he describes rather according to his own Idaea then any wayes according to the truth insomuch that when Seneca at his death implored Jesus the Deliverer he did not forbear to translate Jesus into Jove As rashly as this he leaves recorded to posterity that the Jews are descended from the hill Ida the name of which he saith the Jews do bear and that they worship the head of an Asse as also that the Christians confessed that they were Incendiaries and that they burned the city of Rome under Nero. But we find by S. Paul himself in his Epistle written from Rome unto the Philippians that he had many Christians in the house of Nero and Linus the successour of S. Peter who was there present at that time doth rank Seneca amongst them with an high title of commendation and though his History hath been corrupted by the Hereticks and the Ignorant it is never the lesse received in those Points which are comformable to the other Fathers of the Church so that Tacitus in this ought not to be considered This Name then of Redeemer or Deliverer whereof Tacitus maketh mention and this sprinkling of the water which the Faithfull were accustomed to present to God in the manner of Libation doth imploy some secret of which he never heard And as for that Objection that there are some opinions in Seneca's Books which are not conformable to the Christian Religigion it is of no value seeing those Works were composed before his Christianity And to that which others do alledge that he himself was the authour of his own death it is most manifestly false seeing he did not suffer a vein to be opened before the expresse commandment of the Emperour who had pronounced against him the sentence of Death as I have said already which was afterwards executed according to the fashion of those times in which by the permission of Magistrates the houshold-servants of the party condemned performed that office which belonged to the publick executioner of Justice Besides this in the beginning of Christianity Seneca who had but a light tincture of it could not yet know that it was not allowable for him to assist his at his death seeing that many Christian Virgins have killed themselves to divert the violations by their designed ravishers and yet have not been condemned for it S. Paul returning to Rome according to the Calculation of Baronius did find that Seneca was dead and that he was deprived of a great help in the propagation of the Gospel Howsoever he desisted not with all his endeavour to advance with S. Peter the Christian Religion which by and by they shall both bedew with their bloud For Nero to fill up the horrour of his crimes did begin the first Persecution against the Christians And it is our glory saith Tertullian that he was in the head of our Persecutours The wicked Prince perceiving that he could not wipe away the evill reputation with which he was defamed for the burning of Rome did cause the Christians to be accused and did torment them with outrageous and inhumane punishments Some were nailed to Crosses distilling their bloud drop by drop in extremity of pain Others by cruel inventions were covered with the skins of savage beasts and exposed to bandogs who would fly upon them with a most violent rage and tear them in pieces Others being fastned to blocks were burned by degrees by fire with Diabolicall art and sport insomuch that in the Evening when the Sun made haste to bed to be no longer polluted with such horrible spectacles the bodies of the Faithfull being all on fire did serve as torches for the reprobate joyes of the Heathen Nero would be then in his gardens to glut his barbarous eyes with the Torments of those innocent Souls Happy ye Stars who in the combats of that laborious night did behold so many victorious Souls ascend from the midst of the flames to take possession of the Temple of eternall Lights The Infidels themselves had compassion on them knowing that it was an artifice of Nero's to sacrifice those poor Victims to his brutish cruelty Not long after S. Peter and S. Paul did find themselves to be involved in the same Persecution for as they endeavoured themselves to perswade Chastity to some Christian Ladies against the allurements and surprisals of the Emperour he grew enraged at it and commanded them to be locked up in close prison from whence some few dayes after they were taken forth to go to their Execution where S. Peter was crucified with his head downwards and S. Paul was beheaded after they had converted many Souls and even the Executioners themselves They kissed one another with tears of joy and with an assured pace they marched to their place of torment as to a garden inamelled with the most delightfull beauties of Nature At every minute their sacred mouths did call upon the name of their most beloved Master and the pleasures they resented to excommunicate with him in his Sufferings did not permit them to have the least fear of that which of all fears is the most horrible in
the day of its own brightness to consider how Providence guarding her dear Pool as the apple of her eye did reserve him for a time which made him the true Peace-maker of that nation For this effect it came to pass that Henry the Eighth The Estate of England having reigned eighteen years in schism leading a life profuse in luxury ravenous in avarice impious in Sacriledge cruel in massacres covered over with ordures bloud and Infamy did fall sick of a languishing disease which gave him the leisure to have some thoughts on the other world It is true that the affrighting images of his Crimes The death of Henry the Eighth and the shades of the dead which seemed to besiege his bed and perpetually to trouble his repose did bring many pangs and remorses to him Insomuch that having called some Bishops to his assistance he testified a desire to reconcile himself unto the Church and sought after the means thereof But they who before were terrified with the fury of his actions which were more than barbarous fearing that he spoke not that but onely to sound them and that he would not seal to their Counsels which they should suggest unto him peradventure with the effusion of their bloud did gently advise him without shewing him the indeavours and the effects of true repentance and without declaring to him the satisfactions which he ought to God and to his Neighbours for the enormities of so many Crimes He was content to erect the Church of the Cardeleirs and commanded that Mass should there be publickly celebrated which was performed to the great joy of the Catholicks which yet remained in that horrible Havock To this Church he annexed an Hospital and some other appurtenances and left for all a thousand Crowns of yearly Revenue As he perceived that his life began to abandon him he demanded the Communion which he received making a show as if he would rise himself but the Bishop told him that his weakness did excuse him from that Ceremony he made answer That if he should prostrate himself on the Earth to receive so Divine a Majesty he should not humble himself according to his duty He by his Will ordained that his Son Edward who was born of Jane Seimer should succeed him and in the case of death that Marie the Daughter of Queen Katharine should be the inheritress of the Crown and if that she should fail that his Daughter Elizabeth although a Bastard should fill her place and possess the Kingdom On the approches of death he called for wine and those who were next unto his bed did conceive that he oftentimes did repeat the word Monks and that he said as in despair I have lost all This is that which most truly can be affirmed of him for it is a very bad sign to behold a man to die in the honour of his Royal dignity and by a peaceable death who had torn in pieces JESUS CHRIST who had divided the Church into schisms who of the six Queens that he espoused had killed four of them who had massacred two Cardinals three Archbishops eighteen Bishops twelve great Earls Priests and Religious Men without number and of his people without end who had robbed all the Churches of his Kingdom destroyed the Divine worship oppressed a million of innocents and in one word who had assasinated mercy it self Howsoever he wanted not flatterers who presumed to say and write that his wisdom had given a good order to his affairs and that he happily departed this world not considering what S. dustine doth affirm That all the penitencies of those who have lived in great disorders and who onely do convert themselves at the end of their life being pressed to it by the extreamity of their disease ought to be extreamly suspected because they do not forsake their sins but their sins do forsake them It was observed indeed that at his death this King did testifie a repentance of his savage and inordinate life but we cannot observe the great and exemplary satisfactions which were due to the expiation of so many abominable sins King Antiochus made submissions of another nature and ordered notable restitutions to recompense the dammages which he had caused to the people of the Jews nevertheless he was rejected of God by reason of his bloudy life and the Gates of the Temple of mercy were shut against him for all eternity The foundation of a small Hospital which Henry caused at his death was not sufficient to recompense the injuries of so many Churches which he had pillaged nor of so much goods of his Subjects as he had forced from them seeing we know by the words of the wise man That to make a benefit Eccles 34. of the substance of the poor is to sacrifice a Son before the eyes of his Father He had by his Testament ordained many tutors to The Reign of Edward His Uncle Seimer spoileth all his Son who were able to have made as many Tyrants but Seimer Uncle by the mothers side to the deceased King gaining the favour of the principal of the Lords of the realm whom he had corrupted with mony and great presents did cause himself to be proclaimed Protector and Regent He took a great possession on little Edward the Son of Henry heir to the Crown whom he brought up in schism and Heresie against the intentions of his Father This furious man immediately began his Regency with so much insolence that he almost made the reign of Henry the Eight to be forgotten he fomented the poison which he had conceived under him he did use the Catholicks most unworthily and did cut off the head of his own Brother by a jealousy of women But as he had made himself insupportable so it came to pass that the affairs of war which he had enterprized against the French did fall out unfortunately for him Dudley one of the chiefest of the Lords drawing a party to him did accuse him of Treason and caused his head to be cut off on the same Scaffold where before he had taken off the head of his own Brother This death was followed with great fears and horrible commotions for the Regency which presently after was extinguished by the death of the young King Edward This poor Prince was rather plucked with pincers The Qualities and death of King Edward from his mothers womb than born and he could not come into the world without giving death to her who conceived him He was said to have none of the comeliest bodies He spake seven languages at fifteen years of age and in his discourse did testifie a rare knowledge of all those sciences which were most worthy of a King It seemeth that death did advance it self to ravish his spirit from his body which did awake too early and was too foreward for his age for he died in his sixteen year having not had the time throughly to understand himself and to see by what course
Divine Love ib Qualities of Divine Love by which we may know whether it inhabiteth a soul 26 Pliantnesse Liberality and Patience three principall marks of Love ibid. Twelve effects of Love ibid. Three orders of true Lovers in the world ib. Nine degrees of Seraphical Love for the conterplative ib. That it is good to be honestly Loved 38 We most ardently Love the things we most lose 58 The scandalous of the Emperour Lotharius and Valdrada 109 The Love of David and Jonathan 140 Excellent loyaltie of a Ladie 8 Lysias his speech before the raising of the siege of Hierusalem 203 Lysias is taken and slain by the souldiers ibid. M THe gallant resolution of Maccabeus who with a handfull of men gave battell to a great army wherein being over powered he lost not his honour but his life 204 Some Men are in the world as dislocated bones in the body 52 Man terrible above all terribles 72 Man as he is the most miserable of all creatures so he is the most Mercifull 98 Man hath no greater evil then himself ibid. An observation of Bernardine concerning Marriage 35 Mattathias the father of Judas Machabeus opposeth the tyranny of Antiochus 197 He refuseth to offer incense to Idols ibid. His courage for Religion 198 His glorious death ibid. Utility of Melancholy 55 A notable example of Meroven to divert youth from Marriage 106 The first Mervell in the life of S. Lewis is the joyning of the wisdome of State with the Gospell 177 The second is of the union of Humility and Greatnesse 179 The third is his devotion and courage ibid. Incomparable Mildnesse of Lewis the sonne of Charlemaign 120 Mildnesse of the first men 99 The beauty and utility of Mildnesse 100 Sin and Folly the chief evils of the Mind 58 Remedies for Minds full of scruple 56 Moderation of the Kings of France 117 Great Moderation in S. King Robert 119 Mordecai his excellent personage 187 His entertainment in the Court of Ahashuerus ib. He discovereth the treason which was plotted against Ahashuerus ib. Moses flooted in the river of Nile in a cradle of bull-rushes 227 His education 228 He killeth an Egyptian 229 He withdraweth into the countrey of Midian ib He talketh with God ibid. He dyeth having first seen the land of promise from mount Nebo 234 Gods judgement on wicked Murray 300 N NAaman the Assyrian commanded by Elisha to wash seven times in the river Jordan 257 His leprosie stayes upon Gehezi 258 Naboth unjustly condemned and slain 251 Nathan and Bathsheba's advice 151 Nature necessarily brings with it its sympathies and antipathies 46 Nebuchadonozar his dream 242 He worshippeth Daniel 241 He erecteth a statue of gold of sixty cubits high 243 He commandeth all his nobles to do homage to it ib. He commandeth the three children that disobeyed his command therein to be cast into the fornace 244 His second dream and the interpretation by Daniel ibid. His misfortune is bewailed by the whole Court 245 He is again found out and reinvested in his throne ib. The birth and education of Nero. 271 The perfidiousnesse of his mother ibid. His cruelty towards Britanicus 272 The love of his mother did degenerate to misprision ibid. His present to his mother ibid. His horrible attempt upon his mother ibid. The amazement of Nero. 273 Nero continueth his cruelties ibid. He falls in love with Poppea and doth estrange himself from his wife Octavia 274 Nero grows worse and worse 284 The conspiracy against him is detected ibid. The image of Nice-ones 49 Treason against the Duke of Norfolk and his ruine 299 The horrible Catastrophe of the Duke of Norfolk 300 O FLight from Occasions is the most assured bulwark for chastity 18 Octavia calumniated by Poppea 274 Ozias Prince of the people in the presence of Joachim appeaseth the people of Bethulia 182 P THe over-fond love of Parents to their children is chastised in them 272 The exercise of Patience what it is 37 Necessitie forceth Patience 58 S. Paul tender in holy affections 8 He came to Rome 279 He is falsly accused ibid. His conversation with Peter ib. He preacheth the Gospel ib. He is threatned and persecuted 280 He is condemned to the whip but diverted that punishment ib. He is committed to the hands of Felix ibid. He appears before the Tribunal of Felix ibid. Drusilla comes to hear him ib. S. Paul appeals to Rome 281 The young Agrippa king of Judea with his sister Bernice assist at the judgement of S. Paul ib. Festus is touched with his words ibid. He is imbarqued for Rome ibid. He arrives there and treateth with the Jews ibid. S. Paul is undoubtedly known by Seneca ibid. His Oration to the Senate of Rome 282 The effect of his Oration ibid. The paralel betwixt S. Paul and Seneca 283 The grace of Jesus and the Crosse are the two principles of S. Paul ibid. His perfection and high knowledge 284 He leaveth Rome ibid. The politick counsell of Pharaoh 227 He dreameth 222 He fails in his purposes 228 Marks of reprobation in Pharaoh 230 The plagues of Egypt ibid. An excellent conceit of Plato concerning terrestriall love 222 An excellent conceit of Platonists  The secrets of the Divine Policy of God 238 The birth and education of Cardinall Pool 313 His love of solitude ibid. His travels and return to England ibid. The combat in his spirit 314 He took part with God ibid. He is made Cardinall ib. He is considered on to be made Pope 315 He retireth again into solitude ibid. He travels to the reducement of England to the antient faith 317 His speech to the States 318 Princes the workmanship of God 132 What the wisdome of a Prince should be 133 Princes should not give too much authority to their subjects 144 Whether learning be fitting for Princes 153 That learning is fitting for Princes defended ibid. The favour of Princes is very uncertain 219 Procopius his extravagant fables of Justinian and Theodora disproved 168 The secrets of Providence 164 The great Providence of God in Josephs entring and negotiating in Egypt 218 R REason remedieth all humane actions 57 The love of Reputation is a strong spur 81 The wicked Revenge of an Abbot and of John Proclytas against the French 119 Rigour misbecometh persons Ecclesiasticall 99 The causes of differences of Rigour ibid. Elogy of the city of Rome 79 The estate of Rome and court of Nero when Paul came to it 271 The Practise of Romulus 131 The end o◠Royaltie 131 Royalty a glorious servitude 132 Royalty a mervellous profession ibid. S THe Essence and Image of Sadnesse 54 Four kinds of Sadnesse 55 The remedies against Sadnesse 57 The three Sadnesses of our Blessed Saviour 60 Samuel from his infancy was conversant in the Tabernacle 235 His zeal and other rare qualities 236 His speech to the people ibid. His wisdome in concluding a peace with the Philistims ibid. He dieth 240 The widow of Sarepta's oyl and meal fails not during the
their Colours and that it was enough if they did but shew themselves to conquer The Rebels tormented with the affrightments of their conscience and which had not such entertainment as they were promised first were put into disorder after to flight and then to a rout It seemed that on the one part there were men that came to kill and on the other sheep that came to be slain As soon as they were mingled the one amongst the other the sword on the one side made great Massacres on the other the falls and tumblings headlong carried them away in such manner that there remained twenty thousand upon the place Absolon taken with a great astonishment is left by all the world and betaking himself to flight gets The death of Absolon up upon a Mule It hapned that passing through a Forrest his head was catched and wreathed within the branches of a Tree insomuch that his carryer having left him he remained hanging between heaven and earth where he made a very fitting amends both to the justice of God and the goodnesse of his Father Joab had notice thereof who neverthelesse although David had forbidden it stroke him through with three Darts and when as yet he seemed to have life ten young souldiers of the Troups of Joab ran to make an end of him he feared so much that if he should return into favour and authority lest he should take vengeance upon him because he would not follow his party The body was interred in a pit under a great heap of stones for to convince the vanity of him which had caused a stately monument to be built for himself which he called Absolons hand Behold an horrible end of an evil sonne and a rebellious subject which is sufficient to make posterity afraid throughout the revolution of all ages While all this was doing David inclosed in a little Town expected the event of the battell and when as the Posts brought him the news of the Victory he shewed not so much rejoycing as fear asking every moment in what estate his sonne Absolon was which caused that divers durst not bring him the news of his death seeing the trouble of his mind At last Cushi uttered the word and said That they should desire Absolon's end to all the Kings enemies He understood well what he would say and was pierced with so violent a grief that he could not be comforted losing all courage and crying every moment Absolon my sonne my sonne Absolon Oh that this favour had been done for me that I might have dyed for thee Every one cast down his eyes for pitty and the whole victory was turned into sorrow the Palms and Laurels were changed into Cypresse Joab alwayes bold and insolent towards his Master Joabs insolency instead of receiving reproches for his fault casts them upon David and thinks that the means to justifie himself was to speak the more stoutly He enters into the Chamber of his King and reproves him sharply saying to him That he would put to confusion all his good servants that had that day saved his life his house and all his estate That he was of a strange nature and seemed to have been made for nothing but to hate those that loved him and to love those that hated him That it was very clear that he bore no good affection to his Captains and good Souldiers and if they all had perished to save the life of one rebellious sonne he would have been very well satisfied Further he swore to him by the living God that if he did not rise and go forth to see and entertein those that returned from the battell that there should not remain one man onely with him before the morning which would prove a greater displeasure to him then ever he received in all his life He pressed him so vehemently that the King without daring to answer him one word rose up and did all that he would have him This great grief diminished by little and little and the rejoycings of those that came on every side to carry him back to Jerusalem in Triumph gave him no leasure to think upon his losse He endeavoured to draw to him again all those that had separated themselves pardoning all the world with an unspeakable meeknesse being ready even to give Joabs place to Davids mildenesse very great Amasa that was chief Captain for Absolon But Joab quickly hindred this and kild with his own hand him that they had purposed for his successour After that he began to pursue one Sheba a Captain of the Rebels who was retyred into Abela with some remainder of the mutinous and as he was about to besiege it and destroy the City for to take him a woman of discretion and great in credit amongst her people which had made composition with Joab caused him to be slain and threw his head over the walls to put an end to this whole bloodie warre After this re-establishment of his Estate David The last acts of Davids life reigned about eleven years in full peace in continuall exercises of Piety of Devotion of Justice and caused a generall Assembly of the States of his Realme where he made his sonne Solomon which he had chosen to be confirmed and encouraged him to build that great Temple which should be the marvell of the World whereof he shewed him the plat-form the beautifying and the orders in the Idea Two things do a little astonish those which do seek an exact sanctity in this Prince the first that he dyed having unto the last hour a maid of rare beauty by him and the other that he recommended to his son Solomon punishments and deaths by his Testament But there are that answer to those that may be offended with these actions That God hath permitted this to make us the better to relish and admire the perfections of his Evangelicall law whereof the Word Incarnate was made the Law-giver and bringet above all the excellencies of the presents and virtues of the Mosaicall law And that one ought not to expect from David the chastity of a Saint Lewis nor of a Casimire but that one ought to measure things according to the manner of the time according to the law and custome Neverthelesse I should rather say that the plurality of women was not an offence seeing that it was approved of God so that it caused not a weakning of the vigour of the spirits and mortifying their divine functions by too much commerce with the flesh David sinned not in causing the Shunamite to lye besides him seeing that she was in the place of a spouse and approched unto him not for the pleasure which his great age had totally extinguished but for the entertainment of his Royall person Lastly there are other actions that do set forth his virtue besides this which is more worthy of excuse then blame And forasmuch as he ordained by his testament the death of Joab and of Shimei this doth something