purse carried the things that were put in it Iesus therefore said Let her alone that she may keep it for the day of my buriall for the poor you have alwayes with you but me you shall not have alwayes A great multitude therefore of the Iews know that he was there they come not for Iesus onely but that they might see Lazarus whom he raised from the dead Moralities 1. LAzarus being raised from his grave converseth familiarly with Iesus and to preserve the life which he had newly received he ties himself continually to the fountain of lives to teach us that since we have begun to make a strong conversion from sin to grace we must not be out of the sight of God we must live with him and of him with him by applying our spirit our prayers our fervour our passionate sighs toward him and live of him by often receiving the blessed Sacrament Happy they saith the Angel in the Apocalypse who are invited to the wedding supper of the Lamb. But note that he who invites us to this feast stands upright amids the sun to signifie that we should be as pure as the beams of light when we come unto the most holy Sacrament Lazarus did eat bread with his Lord but to speak with St. Augustine he did not then eat the bread of our Lord. And yet this great favour is reserved for you when you are admitted to that heavenly banket where God makes himself meat to give you an Antepâ—st of his Immortality 2. God will have us acknowledge his benefits by the faithfulnesse of our services St. Peters Mother in law as soon as she was healed of her Feaver presently served her Physician And observe that Martha served the Author of life who had redeemed her brother from the power of death The faithfull Mary who had shed tears gave what she had mo t precious and observes no measure in the worth because Iesus cannot be valued Cleopatra's pearl estimated to be worth two hundred thousand crowns which she made her friend swallow at a Banquet this holy woman thought too base She melts her heart in a sacred Limbeck of love distills it out by her eyes And Iesus makes so great account of her waters and perfumes that he would suffer no body to wash his feet when he instituted the blessed Sacrament as not being willing to deface the sacred characters of his sacred Lover 3. Iudas murmures and covers his villanous passion of Avarice under the colour of Charity and mercy toward the poor And just so do many cover their vices with a specious shew of virtue The proud man would be thought Magnanimous the prodigall would passe for liberall the covetous for a good husband the brainsick rash man would be reputed couragious the glutton a hospitable good fellow Sloth puts on the face of quietnesse timorousnesse of wisdome impudence of boldnesse insolence of liberty and over confident or sawcy prating would be taken for eloquence Many men for their own particular interests borrow some colours of the publick good and very many actions both unjust and unreasonable take upon them a semblance of piety Saint Ireneus saith that many give water coloured with sleckt whitelime or plaister instead of milk * A farse is a French Iig wherein the faces of all the actours are whited over with meal And all their life is but a farse where Blackamores are whited over with meal Poor truth suffers much amongst these couesnages But you must take notice that in the end wicked dissembling Iudas did burst and shew his damned soul stark naked Yet some think fairly to cover foul intentions who must needs know well that Hypocrisie hath no vail to couzen death Aspirations I See no altars in all the world more amiable then the feet of our Saviour I will go by his steps to find his feet and by the excellencies of the best of men I will go find out the God of gods Those feet are admirable and St. Iohn hath well described them to be made of metall burning in a furnace they are feet of metal by their constancy and feet of fire by the enflamed affections of their Master Let Indâ—s murmure at it what he will but if I had a sea of sweet odours and odoriferous perfumes I would empty them all upon an object so worthy of love Give O mine eyes Give at least tears to this precious Holocaust which goes to sacrifice it self for satisfaction of your libidinous concupiscences Wash it with your waters before it wash you with its bloud O my soul seek not after excrements of thy head to dry it Thy hairs are thy thoughts which must onely think of him who thought so kindly passionately of thee on the day of his Eternity The Gospel upon Monday Thursday S. Iohn the 13. Of our Saviours washing the feet of his Apostles ANd before the festivall day of the Paschâ— Iesus knowing that his hour was come that he should passe out of this world to his Father whereas he had loved his that were in the world unto the end he loved them And when supper was done whereas the devil now had put into the heart of Iudas Iscariot the son of Simon to betray him knowing that the Father gave him all things into his hands and that he came from God and goeth to God he riseth from supper and layeth aside his garments and having taken a towell girded himself After that he put water into a bason and began to wash thee feet of his Disciples and to wipe them with the towell wherewith he was girded He cometh therefore to Simon Peter and Peter saith to him Lord doest thou wash my feet Iesus answered and said to him That which I do thou knowest not now hereafter thou shalt know Peter saith to him Thou shalt not wash my feet for ever Iesus answered him if I wash thee not thou shalt not have part with me Simon Peter saith to him Lord not onely my feet but also hands and head Iesus saith to him He that is washed needeth not but to wash his feet but is clean wholly and you are clean but not all for he knew who he was that would betray him therefore he said You are not clean all Therefore after he had washed their feet and taken his garments being set down again he said to them Know you what I have done to you You call me Master and Lord and you say well for I am so If then I have washed your feet Lord and Master you also ought to wash one anothers feet For I have given you an example that as I have done to you so you do also Moralities 1. JEsus loves his servants for an end and till the full accomplishment of that end The world loves his creatures with a love which tends to concupisence but that is not the end for which they were made or should be loved There is a very great difference between them for the love of
sufferings and of his death to teach us that his crosse was the step by which he mounted up to beatitude Aspirations O Blessed Palace O Magnificent Tabor which this day didst hold upon thee the Prince of Glory I love and admire thee but I admire somewhat else above thee It is the heavenly Jerusalem that triumphant company that face of God where all those beauties are which shall never cease to be beauties It is for that I live for that I die for that I languish with a holy impatience O my Jesus my most benigne Lord transform me then into thee that I may thereby be transformed into God If I have carried the earthly Image of Adam why should I not also carry the form of Jesus Catch me O Lord within those tissued nets and golden toils of brightnesse which thou didst plant upon this sacred mountain It is there I would leave mine eyes it is there I resolve to breath out my soul I ask no tabernacles to be their built for me I have long since contemplated thy heart O Father of essences and all bounties as the most faithfull abode of my eternity The Gospell upon Munday the second week in Lent St. Iohn 8. Iesus said unto the Iews where I goe ye cannot come AGain therefore Iesus said to them I goe and you shall seek me and shall die in your sin Whither I go you cannot come The Iews therefore said why will he kill himself because he saith whither I go you cannot come And he said to them you are of this world I am not of this world Therefore I say to you that you shall die in your sins For if you believe not that I am he ye shall die in your sins They said therefore to him Who art thou Iesus said to them The beginning who also speak to you Many things I have to speak and judge of you but he that sent me is true and what I have heard of him these things I speak in the world And they knew not that he said to them that his Father was God Iesus therefore said to them when you sha l have exalted the Son of man then you shall know that I am he and of my self I do nothing but as the Father hath taught me these things I speak and he that sent me is with me and he hath not left me alone because the things that please him I do alwayes Moralities 1. ONe of the greatest misfortunes of our life is that we never sufficiently know our own good till we lose it We flie from that we should seek we seek that vve should avoid and never begin to bevvail our losses but vvhen they are not to be recovered Those Jevvs possessed an inestimable treasure by the presence conversation of the Son of God But they set light by it and so at last they lamented amongst eternal flames what they would not see in so clear a light Let us take heed of despising holy things and avoid hardnesse of heart which is a gulf of unavoidable mischiefs 2. It is a strange thing that God is so near us and yet we so far from him That which hinders us from finding him is because he is above and we below We are too much for the world too fast nailed to the earth too much bound to our superfluous businesses and cares of this life too much subject to our own appetites He must not be slave to his body that pretends to receive good from God who is a Spirit He must not embark himself deeply into worldly matters who desires the society of Angels He must pass from his sense to his reason from reason to grace from grace to glory If you desire to find God search for him as the three Kings did in the manger in his humility Look for him as the blessed Virgin did in the temple in his piety Seek him as the Maries did in his Sepulchre by the meditation of death But stay not there save onely to make a passage to life 3. When you have lifted me up to the Cross saith our Saviour you shall know that I am the true Son of God And indeed â—t is a great wonder that the infinite power of that Divinity would manifest it self in the infirmity of the Crosse It was onely for God to perform this great design and ascend up to his throne of Glory by the basest disgraces of the world The good thief saw no other title or sign of his kingdome but onely his body covered over with bloud and oppressed with dolours He learned by that book of the Crosse all the glory of Paradise and he apprehended that none but God could endure with such patience so great torments If you will be children of God you must make it appear by participation of his Cross by suffering tribulation By that Sun our Eagle tries his young ones he who cannot abide that shining ray sprinkled with bloud shall never attain to beatitude It is not comely to see t e members of a head crowned with thorn sit in a rotten chair of delicacies Aspirations O Blessed Saviour who dost lift up all the earth with three fingers of thy power raise up a little this sinfull mass of my body which weighs down it self so heavily Give me the wings of an Eagle to fly after thee for I am constantly resolved to follow thee whithersoever thou goest for though it should be within the shadow of death what can I fear being in the arms of life I am not of my self nor of the world which is so great a deceiver Since I am thine by so many titles which bind me to adoration I will be so in life in death in time and for all eternity I will take part of thy sufferings since they are the ensignes of our Christian warfare Tribulation is a most excellent engine the more a man is kept under the higher he mounts He descends by perfect humility that he may ascend to thee by the steps of glory The Gospel upon Tuesday the second week in Lent S. Matthew the 23. Iesus said the Pharisees sit in Moses chair believe therefore what they say THen Iesus speak to the multitudes and to his Disciples saying upon the chair of Moses have sitten the Scribes and Pharisees All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you observe ye and do ye but according to their works do ye not for they say and do not for they bind heavy burthens and importable and put them upon mens shoulders but with a finger of their own they will not move them But they do all their works for to be seen of men for they make broad their Phylacteries and enlarge their fringes And they love the first places at suppers and the first chairs in the Synagogues and salutations in the market place and to be called of men Rabbi But be not you called Rabbi for one is your Master and all you are brethren And call none father to your self upon
object of my present dolours that thou maist after be the fountain of my everlasting joyes Moralities for Good Friday upon the death of Iesus Christ MOunt Calvary is a marvellous Scaffold where the chiefest Monarch of all the world loseth his life to restore our salvation which was lost and where he makes the Sun to be eclipsed over his head and stones to be cloven under his feet to teach us by insensible creatures the feeling which we should have of his sufferings This is the school where Iesus teacheth that great Lesson which is the way to do well we cannot better learn it then by his examples since he was pleased to make himself passible motal to overcome our passions and to be the Author of our immortality The qualities of a good death may be reduced to three points of which the first is to have a right conformity to the will of God for the manner the hour and circumstances of our death The second is to forsake as well the affections as the presence of all creatures of this base world The third is to unite our selves to God by the practise of great virtues which will serve as steps to glory Now these three conditions are to be seen in the death of the Prince of Glory upon mount Calvry which we will take as the purest Idea's whereby to regulate our passage out of this world 1. COnsider in the first place that every man living hath a naturall inclination to life because it hath some kind of divinity in it We love it when it smileth upon us as if it were our Paradise and if it be troublesom yet we strive to retain it though it be accompanied with very great miseries And if we must needs forsake this miserable body we then desire to leave it by some gentle and easie death This make thus 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 hideous being of it self full enough of horrour yet neverthelesse to conform himself to the will of his heavenly Father to confound our delicacies he would needs leave his life by the most dolorous and ignominious which was to be found amongst all the deaths of the whole world The Crosse amongst the Gentiles was a punishment for slaves and the most desperate persons of the whole world The Crosse amongst the Hebrews was accursed It was the ordinary curse which the most uncapable and most malicious mouths did pronounce against their greatest enemies The death of a crucified man was the most continuall languishings and tearing of a soul from the body with most excessive violence and agony And yet the eternall wisdome chose this kind of punishment and drank all the sorrows of a cup so bitter He should have died upon some Trophee and breathed out his last amongst flowers 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 try 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 oâ—r Saviour going toward mount Calvary saying O Lord whether go you with the extream weight of this dry and barten piece of wood Whether do you carry it and why Where do you mean to set it Upon mount Cavalry That place is most wild and stony Hovv vvill you plant it Who shall water it Iesus 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 Calvary to plant it by my death and vvater 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 delicaâ—ies to be so fearfull of death by an ordinary disease in a Down bed amongst such necessary services such favourable helps coÌ„solations 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 out 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 it a haven If in youth it is a direct benefit antedated If by sicknesse it is the nature of our bodies If by external violence it is yet alwaies 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 farther 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 Diâ—vine who hath written a book of the hidden Word toucheth twelve things abandoned by our Saviour 1. His apparell leaving himself naked 2. The marks of his dignity 3. The Colledge of his Apostles 4. The sweetnesse of all comfort 5. His own proper will 6. The authority of virtuos 7. The power of An Angells 8. The perfect joyes of his soul 9. The proper charity of his body 10. The honours 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 Iudas be at the mysterie of his passion it is to betray him If Saint Peter be there assisting it is to deny him If his sorrowfull mother stand at the foot of the cross it is to encrease 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 constancie 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 threatned by that venerable old Simeon at her purification And Iesus who saw her so afflicted for his sake felt himself doubly crucified upon the wood of the Cross and the heart of his deat Mother We know it by experience that when we love one tenderly his afflictions disgraces will trouble us more then our own because he living in
in sinnes and dost thou teach us And they did cast him forth Iesus heard that they câ—st him forth and when he had found him he said to him Dost thou believe in the Sonne of God He answered and said Who is the Lord that I may believe in him And Iesus said to him Both thou hast seen him and he that talketh with thee he it is But he said I believe Lord and falling down he adored him Moralities 1. JEsus the Father of all brightnesse who walked accompanied with his twelve Apostles as the Sun doth with the hours of the day gives eyes to a blind man and doth it by clay and spittle to teach us that none hath power to do works above nature but he that was the Authour of it On the other side a blind man becomes a King over persons of the clearest light being restored to light he renders again the same to the first fountain from vvhence it came He makes himself an Advocate to plead for the chiefest truth and of a poor beggar becomes a confessor after he had deplored his misery at the Temple gate teacheth all mankind the estate of its own felicities We should in imitation of him love the light by adoring the fountain of it and behave our selves as witnesses and defenders of the truth 2. God is a light and by his light draws all unto him he makes a break of day by his grace in this life which becomes afterward a perfect day for all eternity But many lose themselves in this world some for want of light some by a false light and some by having too much light 3. Those lose themselves for vvant of light vvho are not all instructed in the faith and maximes of Christian Religion and those instead of approching near the light love their ovvn darkness They hate the light of their salvation as the shadovv of death and think that if you give them eyes to see their blindnesse you take away their life If they seem Christians they yet have nothing but the name the appearance the book of Jesus is shut from them or if they make a shew to read they may name the letters but never can produce one right good word 4. Others destroy themselves by false lights who being wedded to their own opinions adoring the Chimeraes of their spirit think themselves full of knowledge just happy that the Sun riseth only for them and that all the rest of the world is in darkness they conceive they have the fairest stars for conductors but at the end of their career they find too late that this pretended light was but an Ignis fatuus which led them to a precipice of eternal flames It is the worst of all follies to be wise in our own eye sight and the worst of all temptations is for a man to be a devil to himself 5. Those ruine themselves with too much light who have all Gods law by heart but never have any heart to that law They know the Scriptures all learning sciences they understand every thing but themselves they can find spots in the Sun they can give new names to the stars they perswade themselvs that God is all that they apprehend But after all this heap of knowledge they are found to be like the Sages of Pharaoh and can produce nothing but bloud and frogs Thay embroil and trouble the world they stain their own lives and at their deaths leave nothing to continue but the memory of their sins It would be more expedient for them rather then have such light to carry fiâ—e wherewith to be burning in the love of God and not to swell and burst with that kind of knowledge All learning which is not joined with a good life is like a picture in the aire which hath no table to make it subsist It is not sufficient to be elevated in spirit like the Prophets except a man do enter into some perfect imitation of their virtues Aspirations O Fountain of all brightnesse before whom night can have no vail who seest the day spring out of thy bosome to spread it self over all nature wilt thou have no pity upon my blindness will there be no medicine for my eyes which have so often grown dull and heavy with earthly humours O Lord I want light being alwaies so blind to my own sinnes So many years are past wherein I have dwelt vvith my self and yet know not what I am Self-love maketh me sometimes apprehend imaginary virtues in great and see all my crimes in little I too often believe my own judgement and adore my own opinions as gods and goddesses if thou send me any light I make so ill use of it that I dazle my self even in the brightnesse of thy day making little or no profit of that which would be so much to my advantage if I were so happy as to know it But henceforth I will have no eyes but for thee I will only contemplate thee O life of all beauties and draw all the powers of my soul into my eyes that I may the better apprehend the mistery of thy bounties O cast upon me one beam of thy grace so powerfull that it may never forsake me till I may see the day of thy glory The Gospell upon Thursday the fourth week in Lent St Luke the 7. Of the Widows Son raised from death to life at Naim by our Saviour ANd it came to passe afterward he went into a City that is called Naim and there wâ—nt with him his Disciples and a very great multitude And when he came nigh to the gate of the City behold a dead man was carried forth the only Son of his Mother and she was a Widow and a great muâ—â—itude of the City with her whom when our Lord had seen being moved with mercy upon her he said to her Weep not And he came near and touched the Cossin And they that carried it stood still and he said Young man I say to thee Arise And he that was dead sate up and began to speak And he gave him to his Mother and fear took them all and they magnified God saying That a great Prophet is risen among us and that God hath visited his People And this saying went forth into all Iewry of him and into all the Countrey about Moralities JEsus met at the Gates of Naim which is interpâ—eted the Town of Beauties a young man carried to burial to shew us that neither beauty nor youth are freed from the Laws of death We fear death and there is almost nothing more immortal here below every thing dies but death it self We see him alwaies in the Gospells we touch him every day by our experiences and yet neither the Gospells make us sufficiently faithfull nor our experiences well advised 2. If we behold death by his natural face he seems a litle strange to us because we have not seen him well acted We lay upon him sithes bows and arrows we