approching near the light love their own darkness They hate the light of their salvation as the shadow of death and think that if you give them eyes to see their blindness you take away their life If they seem Christians they yet have nothing but the name and 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 and adoring the Chimera's of their spirit think themselves full of knowledge just and happy that the sun riseth onely for them and that all the rest of the world is in darkness they conceive they have the fairest stars for conductours 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 ruin 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 and sciences they understand every thing but themselves they can find spots in the sun they can give new names to the stars they perswade themselves that God is all that they apprehend But after all this heap of knowledge they are found to be like the Sages of Pharaob and can produce nothing but bloud and frogs They 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 than have such light to carry fire 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 joyned with a good life is like a picture in the air 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 brightness before whom night can have no vail who seest the day spring out of thy bosom to spread it self over all nature will thou have no pitie upon my blindness will there be no medicine for my eyes which have so often grown dull heavy with earthly humours O Lord I want light being always so blind to my own sins So many years are past wherein I have dwelt with 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 and if thou send me any light I make so ill use of it that I dazle my self even in the brightness 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 onely 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 mystery 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 Gospel upon Thursday the fourth week in Lent S. Luke the 7. Of the widows son raised from death to life at Naim by our Saviour ANd it came to pass afterward he went into a Citie that is called Naim and there went with him his Disciples and a very great multitude And when he came nigh to the gate of the Citie behold a dead man was carried forth the onely son of his mother and she was a widow and a great multitude of the Citie 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 Coffin 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 Jewry of him and into all the Countrey about Moralities JEsus met at the Gates of Naim which is interpreted 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 always in the Gospels we touch him every day by our experiences and yet neither the Gospels make us sufficiently faithfull nor our experiences well advised 2. If we behold death by his natural face he seems a little strange to us because we have not seen him well acted We lay upon him sithes bows and arrows we put upon him ugly antick faces we compass him round about with terrours and illusions of all which he never so much as thought It is a profound sleep in which nature lets it self fail insensibly when she is tired with the disquiets of this life It is a cessation of all those services which the soul renders to the flesh It is an execution of Gods will and a decree common to all the world To be disquieted and drawn by the ears to pay a debt which so many millions of men of all conditions have paid before us is to do as a frog that would swim against a sharp stream of a forcible torrent We have been as it were dead to so many ages which went before us we die piece-meal every day we assay death so often in our sleep discreet men expect him fools despise him and the most disdainfull persons must entertain him Shall we not know and endeavour to do that one thing well which being once well performed will give us life for ever Me thinks it is rather a gift of God to die soon than to stay late amongst the occasions of sin 3. It is not death but a wicked life we have cause to fear That onely lies heavy and both troubles us and keeps us from understanding and tasting the sweets of death He that can die to so many little dead and dying things which makes us die every day by our unwillingness to forsake them shall find that death is nothing to him But we would fain in death carry the world with us upon our shoulders to the grave and that is a thing we cannot do We would avoid the judgement of a just God and that is a thing which we should not so much as think Let us clear our accounts
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
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
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
land of an enemy that the least disturbance should be given to Ecclesiasticks Behold you not here a life worthy of a French Cavalier Oh Nobilitie this man was not a petty Royster who makes boast to fight in a meadow but a souldier who during the wars with the English kept the field of battel three times thirty days together against those brave souldiers who would oppose him from whence he went out all sparkling with glory and wonders I would here willingly adde a Bertrand of Gueselin Count of Longuevil Constable of France whose life Monsieur Menard hath given us written by a pen of that ancient Age in old language you shall see a man who after he had solemnly dedicated in the offertory of a Mass his soul body and arms at the Altars fought six or seven times hand to hand exercised strange feats of battel and arms stood in the midst of combates bold and confident as in his chamber being otherwise furious strong and stout in the press You should see a man sage in counsels prompt in execution whom an enemy found near at hand when he thought him thirty leagues off A man in all things else free from fraud or dissimulation chearfull courteous obliging and liberal of his own employing his moveables and the jewels of his wife for relief of poor souldiers Then you may judge whether to be valiant you may live in the Court of a Christian Prince like a little Turk Where is your judgement and where your reason The fifth SECTION Against Duels I Do assure my self some will not forget to tell A condemnation of Rodomontadoes and Duels you that to be valiant men of the times you must be outragious in slanders in blasphemies in audacious words in duels challenges which are the mighty valours of this Age. Well then my souldier following this course you will learn to swear and blaspheme I speak not how great this crime is nor how much you render your â—â—ngue punishable in disposing it to this language of devils but I will say one thing which is very certain those which seek for glory out of vice have not alwayes been made eminently prosperous All you may doe in purchasing hell by these execrable oathes will bee to acquire the goodly qualities of a base clown And as concerning Duels I undoubtedly hold Authours of duels that if this infamous souldier who hath abused you were willing to speak the truth which his conscience will dictate to him he rather gives it you for an honest coverture of cowardice than for true valour The world is not so doltish as to measure courage by the model of Moors slaves and horse-boys who were the first executours of these but cheries How can you perswade us that a confused mass of these petty mutiners who have nothing else in their mouthes but these duels may be valiant men We are not so ignorant but that we well know courage never makes good alliance with servitude and effeminacy But the most part of this kind of men are servile spirits who submit to an infinite number of shamefull and tyrannical laws for a little smoak They are bodies withered with laziness who are Laziness many times entangled in their garters and stand in need to have rings for winter and summer to change according to the seasons They fear the lancet of Juvenal 1. l. 1 Satyr the Surgeon they crie out aloud for a sleight fever and will needs be tended like women in child-bed Imagine with your self what valour can be herein Were they beaten and stampt into powder in a morter a hundred of such like Rodomonts would not make up one half ounce of warlick fortitude But there is a little despair and rage which boyleth in a passionate heart to counterfeit virtue God forbid we should take chaff for gold hemlock for parsley or an Ape for a man We know valour by report of great Captains resteth in mature deliberation and coolness as in its true element When I behold one of these silly braggards who hasteneth to the field for a base fear of some shame or upon some liver-heat which tormenteth him I make as much reckoning of it as if I saw an angry hen Do you think Sichem was a couragious man for enduring to be circumcised for the love of Dinah My opinion is it was an act of much cowardice to permit himself to be cut with a razor in the most shamefull part of his body to please a silly female Jew who when it was done had great cause to turn this painfull sacrifice into scorn and laughter This poor Courtier to satisfie a wily wench for a foolish imagination of point of honour hasteneth to be cut in pieces in the field unhappy man he thinketh to marry Dinah and finds Proserpina he proposeth to himself a worldly glory that may rank him in the number of the valiant and meeteth a bloudy death which at one blow killeth body and soul Let me die if it be not the poorest thing to behold them in such adventures For if one did see them they would make those burst with laughing at their idleness who were willing to bemoan their misery I have drawn from this massacre such as were more amazed than a bridled goose and more ghastly than a dead man four days after his funeral taken from his sepulcher These silly creatures endured all this to make a wretched bruit run up and down in Paris that they were in the end beaten and had with so many cold sweats of deaths done that which their Lackeys who are somewhat more stupid would a hundred times with more willingness of heart have undertaken Behold you not who is worthy either of compassion or contempt Yet you flatter them with a pretext of courage which you enforce them to purchase at a costly rate When you applaud such actions and tell how brave a combate was performed behind the Charter-house and that both of them came thither with much resolution you are men guilty of bloud It should suffice you to have your judgements so dull in the estimation which ought to be made upon valour without rendering your tongues so tragical Their trembling swords would become very lazie to consummate the mysteries of furies if your words armed not despair to play out the rest of the game Perhaps you will say you know those who have fought duels who notwithstanding were valiant in Armies I deny not this I affirm not that a valiant man cannot fight a duel but I deny that he is valiant for fighting a duel David had been an adulterer and became a Saint but it is not for having been an adulterer that he was a Saint nor shall any one have the reputation of valour among understanding men for committing a crime For if this duel were ever an infallible mark of courage I demand wherefore have we seen those who have shewed themselves most importunate to provoke others to combat most fiery to hasten thither most
it ordinarily is cherished lessened and lost it self Aglae began at first to be weary of the frequency of this infamous familiarity then recalled again into her heart the sense of honour next of virtue and lastly God more fully touching her soul set her in open view to her self and made her entertain a great distast of this inordinate life Boniface on the other side felt his conscience much galled and thought on nothing but to break his chain which he often begged of God giving many alms in the height of his uncleanness Aglae called him to her in this disposition and said She was was resolved Admirable conversion to make an end of the exorbitancies of her life that it was in conclusion to wearie heaven and earth too much by her sins and that if love had wounded her repentance would cure her God having left her no other remedie upon evils past than sorrow to have committed them As for the rest as he had followed her with so much facilitie in wickedness it was no reason he should forsake her in the way of repentance That she was a woman he a man that his sex obliged him to take at the least so much courage as her self in a matter which concerned eternal salvation and that desiring to equal him in this resolution she should have the happiness above him to have prevented him Boniface replied She might confidently do what she thought good he would ever account it his glorie to wait on her in so good a purpose and that God could not do him a greater favour than to change the commandments of his Mistress into precepts of salvation The Ladie answered She found nothing more necessary Devotion of Aglae in enquiry after Martyrs than to implore the mercy of God by the bloud of his Martyrs and therefore he should take a voyage into the Province of Cilicia where daily many such were made and bring her thence some relicks The Steward who could not forget his sweet nature said unto her Madame you would much wonder if from the Countrey of Martyrs I return a Martyr and that my body be brought back to serve you for relicks Aglae replied Mock not but do speedily what I tell you and think your self most happy to be at the feet of so many glorious Confessours He failed not to put himself quickly on the way with men and money handkerchiefs and perfumes for performance of his purpose and handled the matter so that he was speedily in the Citie of Tharsus at that time the Theater of Martyrs Scarcely was he arrived but he heard twenty Christians were led forth into a publick place to be martyred and being already changed into another man who breathed nothing at all but the glory of God he stole from his company and went presently into the open place where perceiving the Martyrs he brake through the throng Boniface martyred hastened to kiss their chains and wounds moistening his eyes with their bloud and earnestly beseeching them to pray unto God for him The President Simplicianus seeing this young stranger meddle so far in a matter whereunto he was not called commanded him to withdraw but he speaking with a generous confidence and publickly professing what he was he caused him to be apprehended and to be put to the torture where he was roughly handled for the executioners not content to have pulled off his skin with iron pincers thrust silvers of pointed reeds between the flesh and nails which caused most exquisite torments Notwithstanding the valorous Champion had no other words in his mouth in the extremity of his torments but My Saviour Jesus I give thee thanks for the favour thou hast done me to day by letting me suffer for thy sake It is good reason the bodie which hath so much offended thee bear somewhat for thee If executioners encrease my torments augment the assistance of thy grace and crown my combat with a faithfull perseverance He spake with so much fervour grace and devotion that those present were much moved thereat which the Judge perceiving commanded molten lead to be poured into his mouth to enforce him to a cruel silence but that not succeeding as he imagined the people mutined and brake down an Altar set up there for sacrifice to Idols whereat the Provost was somewhat astonished and thinking it not fit at that time any further to incense them he sent all the Martyrs back into prison The next day he went to the place with more violence and terrour and thinking to terrifie Boniface he shewed him a cauldron of hot scalding pitch threatening withal to burn him if he obeyed not the Emperours Edicts To which the Martyr answered There was neither fire sword nor any horrid torture able to separate him from Jesus Christ he then shewing himself very resolute without leisure given to say any more was plunged into the cauldron from whence he by miracle came forth entire to the admiration of all the world which began to work great conversions among the people Simplicianus fearing a second sedition caused his head speedily to be cut off with an ax and to consummate a glorious Martyrdom In the mean space they who were of his company sought round about for him at which time they heard there was a young Christian stranger to be executed who had shewed very much constancy in his punishment They thinking nothing less than of him said it was not their Boniface who ever would more readily be found among Courtisans than the executioners of Tharsus Yet coming to the place for curiositie they found his head upon one side his body on the other extreamly amazed at what was passed They bought his body for five hundred liures and having it in their hands they asked him mercy with weeping tears for the rash judgement they had given to the prejudice of his virtue Upon this they had nothing so much in their desires as to carry back the body to their Mistress Aglae supposing they could not give her any relicks either more undoubted or acceptable The holy woman had already had a revelation from the mouth of an Angel of the glory of Boniface and being on the way to encounter him so soon as she met him she prostrated her self before his body and said My dear Boniface I shed not tears over thee they Speech of Aglae to Boniface would fall too low to bewail such a death as thine Thou wentest out a penitent from me and returnest a Martyr thou art become a Master from the first day of thy apprentiship thou hast vanquished ere scarce seen the enemie yea the Crown wherewith thou soughtest to glorifie other Martyrs is fallen on thy own head Ah how many bloudie gates were to be opened to thy generous soul to afford a large passage to its triumphs Iron hooks which have dissevered thy holy members have united thy heart to Jesus Reeds thrust under thy nails have confirmed thy constancie Boyling cauldrons found in thy heart
quality of a good death is the ready and constant adieu given to the world as did the Blessed Virgin who was so disengaged from it towards death that she touched not earth at all but with the soles of her feet Philo saith God gave Moses leave to live very long perpetually in glorious actions in contemplations in lights so that his body was worn wasted and almost wholly vapoured out into the substance of his spirit By a much stronger reason may one say the like of the Mother of God For it is certain her life was nothing else but a divorce from the world But as Physitians observe that the breath of storks is purified and made sweet in the proportion as they increase in age in such sort that becoming old they yield forth most odoriferous exhalations So the life of this holy Mother which was ever hanging about the heart of her Son ever in the contemplation of the great mysteries of our salvation perpetually in the furnace of love wholly transformed it self into her well-beloved as one wax melted into another as a drop of water poured into a great vessel of wine as incense wasted into flames O what sweetness of breath what odour of virtues in her old age Her body seemed to be exhaled and to vapour out Harph. c. 49. libri de mystic Theol. all in soul the soul which is the knot of life and which possesseth in us the most inferiour part of spirituality dissolved wholly into spirit which is in the middle and the spirit melted entirely into the understanding which hath the highest rank in the soul and which bears the image of the most holy Trinitie Her memory in a silent repose was freed from all rememberances of the world her will resided in languishing fervours and her understanding was wholly engulfed in great abysses of lights there was not one small threed of imagination which tied her to earth O what an adieu to the world It is very well declared in the Canticles by these Cantic 1. 6. Quae est ista quae ascendit per desertum sicut virgula fumi ex aromatibus myrrhae thuris universâ— pulveris pigmentarii The three ties of the world Genes 12. Egredere de terra tua de cognationetua de domo patris tui words Who is it that ascendeth through the desert like a thin vapour composed of odours myrrb incense and all the most curious perfumes Which saith in a word the holy Virgin was wholly spiritualized wholly vapour all perfume all spirit and had as it were nothing of body massiness or earth O how many unreasonably fail in this second condition When death comes to sound his trumpet in our ears and saith to us Let us go thou must dislodge from thy lands inheritances never to return again from thy kinred from the house thy father gave thee to wit thy bodie how harsh that is to ill mortified spirits and which hold of the world by roots as deep as hell and as big as arms Go out of thy land O how hard is this first step to go out of the land to forsake the land not at all to pretend to the land to the gold to the silver to those jewels that inheritance to all that glorious glitter of fortune See the first torment of worldly spirits Such there have been who Desperate desire of worldly goods Joannes Nider seeing themselves in the last approaches of inevitable death have swallowed their gold like pills other to eternize themselves on earth have caused formidable sepulchers to be built wherein they put all their wealths as the Aegyptian King Cheopes who prostituted even his own daughter to raise unto himself a Pyramid for burial so enormous that it seemed the earth was too weak to bear it and Heaven too low to be freed from its importunity Besides he caused to be engraven upon it that the manufactures alone of this sepulcher had cost six millions of gold in coleworts and turneps Others caused to be buried with them dogs horses slaves apparrel dishes to serve them in the other world Yea it is not long ago since there was found in Anno 1544. Belforest Goodly monument of the Emperess Marie Rome a coffin of marble eight foot long and in it a robe embroidered with Gold-smiths work which yielded six and thirty pounds of gold besides fourty rings a cluster of emeralds a little mouse made of another precious stone and amongst all these precious magnificencies two leg-bones of a dead corps known by the inscription of the tomb to be the bones of the Emperess Marie daughter of Stilicon and wife of the Emperour Honorius who died before consummation of marriage About twelve hundred years were passed after she was buried with all these goodly toys which no doubt gave much ease to her soul My God how are we tied to earth Tell me not the like is not done now adays for it is worse since they were buried after death with their riches and you O mortals alive as you are build your sepulchers thereon We see men who having already one foot in the grave if you speak to them of the affairs of their consciences all the spirit yet remaining is perhaps for two or three hours besieged by an infinite number of thoughts of worldly wealth Death crieth out aloud in their ears saying Go from thy land and you pull it to you as with iron hooks After that cometh kinred allies table-frends friends for game buffons amourists and all the delights of former companies Some weep others make shew of tears the rest under a veil of sorrow make bones-fires in their hearts they seem all to appear about the bed and to sing this sad song of S. Augustine Aug. Confes 6. 11. Dimittis ne nos a momento illo non erimus tecum ultra in aeternum Et a momento isto non licebit hoc illud ultra in aeternum Alas do you leave us and shall we hereafter meet no more together Farewel pleasing amities Adieu feasts adieu sports adieu loves This nor that will any longer be permitted from this moment for ever Behold another very slipperie and dangerous step notwithstanding you must leave it Death hasteneth and says Go from thy kinred In the last the body and flesh is presented which seems to say Ah my soul whither goest thou My dear hostess whither goest thou Thou hast hitherto so tenderly pampered me so pompously clothed me so wantonly cherished me I was thy Idol thy Paradise thy little Goddess and where will you put me into a grave with serpents and worms what shall I do there and what will become of me Behold a hard task principally for such of both sexes as have dearly loved their bodies like the Dutchess of Venice Damian opusc in instit ad Blanch. c. 11. The prodigality of a Venetian Ladie and her punishnent of whom Cardinal Petrus Damianus speaketh who was plunged into sensuality
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
eat them soon enough as if all this should say unto us What do we so long in the world since all things that must serve our use last so little Gold and silver continue long but last very little in our hands and though one keep them as well as he can they keep not ever one Master If there be creatures which live much longer they flie from us as Harts Crows and Swans you might say they are ashamed to participate in our frailty Great-ones of the earth have in all times done what they could with a purpose to prolong their days so naturally are we desirous of the state of Resurrection but they have many times abridged them seeking to lengthen them Garcias telleth us that a King of Zeilam having learned the adamant had the virtue to preserve life would neither eat nor drink but in a dish which he caused to be made of adamant through a strange giddiness of spirit but he failed not to find death in these imaginary vessels of immortality We make a great matter of it to see men very old they are beheld with admiration But if some desire to come to their age there is not any would have the miseries and troubles of it This Phlegon of whom we now speak who had been one of the most curious Authours of his Age made a book of long liv'd men wherein he confesseth he hath exactly looked into the Registers of the Roman Empire there to find old men and women of an hundred years and scarcely could he meet with a sufficient number of them to fill up a whole leaf of paper But if he would take the number of such as died before fifty which the Ancients called the exterminating death he had filled many huge volumes Pompey took pleasure at the dedication of Bâ—ro in historia vitae mortis his Theater to see a Comedianess act named Galeria Capiola who reckoned ninety nine years since her first enterance into a Theater It was a goodly play of life in a woman who danced on the brink of her grave But how many such like have there been people go into the tomb as drops of water into the sea not thinking on it Nay do but observe all which is Sovereign you will find among all the Emperours which were through so many ages there is not one to be found who attained to the age of a hundred years and four alone arrived to four-score or much thereabouts Gordian the elder came to this point but scarcely had he tasted of Empire but was over whelmed with a violent death Valerian at the age of seventy six years was taken by Sapor King of Persia and lived seven years in a shamefull captivity his enemy making use of his back as a foot-stool when he would mount on horse-back He was at first much greater in the estimation of men than he deserved and every one would have thought him worthy of Empire had he not been Emperour Anastasius a man of little worth and less courage who had more superstition than religion arrived to the age of four-score and eight years when he was blasted with lightening from heaven Justinim reckoned four-score and three which made him wax white in a vehement desire of glorie although being some-what contemptible in his person he was fortunate in Captains They speak of a King called Arganthon who heretofore reigned in Spain the space of four-score years and lived an hundred and fourty But this is rather in fables than authentical histories Of so many Popes as have been since S. Peter not any one hath possessed the See twenty five years scarcely find you four or five four-score years of age John the two and twentieth an unquiet and treasure-heaping spirit was about ninety years when death took off his triple Crown So many had Gregory the twelfth who was created before the schism but his papacy was as short as his life was long Paul the third attained to one above four-scor and was otherwise a man as peaceable of spirit as prudent in counsel Paul the fourth severe imperious and eloquent came to four-score and three Gregory the thirteenth lived as many a Prelate wise courteous prudent liberal who lived too little a while for the Churches good for which he could not end but too soon If we speak of the blessed S. John S. Luke S. Polycarp S. Denys S. Paul the Hermit S. Anthony S. Romuald so many other religious men they lived long And it seems there are many things in religion which further long life as contemplation of things Divine joys not sensual noble hopes wholesome fears sweet sadness repose sobriety and regularity in the order of all actions But all this is little in comparison of the Divine state wherein bodies shall not onely never end but live eternally impassible as Angels subtile as rayes of light quick as thought and bright as stars Conclusion of the MAXIMS by an advice against Libertinism where all men are exhorted to zeal of true Religion and the love of things eternal Of the obscurity and persecution of TRUTH INcredulity is an immortal disease which hath reigned from the beginning of the world and which will never end but with the worlds dissolution Dreams and lies are many times believed because they insinuate themselves into the heart by charms but truth which will never bely her self hath much ado to make her self understood and if she be once known she is beloved when she smiles and feared when she frowneth There are four things have ever been much unknown Four things much unknown in the world time wind terrestrial Paradise and truth Time is a marvellous creature which perpetually passeth over our heads which numbereth all our steps which measureth all our actions which inseparably runs along with our life and we have much business to know it as well in its nature as progression It is a very strange thing that there are such as promise themselves to reckon up the years of the world as of an old man of three-score and yet we know by the experience of so many ages it is a great labyrinth wherein we still begin never to end It was for this cause the Ancients placed the figures Hadrianus Junius of Trytons on high Towrs with tails crookedly winding to represent unto us the intrication of the foulds and compasses of time And for this also Isa 6. Hieron in Isa in the Prophet Esai the Seraphins covered the face and feet of God with their wings to teach us faith S. Hierome that we are very ignorant in things done before the world and in those which shall happen to Non est vestrum nosse tempora momenta quae Pater posuit in sua potestate Actor 1. the end of it If we on the other side consider the wind we cannot but sufficiently understand the commodities and discommodities of it which have made the wise to doubt whether it were expedient there should be
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
facil and sweet The one took the golden branch with violence the other gathered it gently as if the Providence of God had put it into his hands Now Raymond not satisfied with seminaries of students embraced the conquest of the Holy Land and stirred up many cities of Italy in this matter exhorting them to make contributions wherein he was so perswasive that the city of Pisa alone which is none of the greatest furnished him with devotists who made of one sole free gift twenty five thousand crowns which he would by no means handle leaving it to the dispose of the Pope who would not give ear to the erection of new Colledges so much were the affairs of the Papacy embroiled He more easily obtained one thing which was one of his three wishes to wit the suppression of the books of Averroes an enemy to Christianity which many with too much curiosity read in the Schools of Philosophy God many times grants good dispositions to his servants whereof he will not they have the accomplishment making them appear more eminent in sufferings then actions This great man was of the number of those for he made himself most remarkable in the love of suffering wandring over the world in extreme poverty great incommodities of heat cold nakednesse hunger scorns contempts dolours banishments dangers both by sea and land shipwracks treasons chains prisons and a thousand images of death One day travelling alone through a huge forrest he met two lions which caused some little fear of death in him as he witnesseth in his writings desirous to live that he might yet on earth serve his well-beloved but in this great surprisall be had a thought that love would put it self into the midst of this passage and make him endure death with the more contentment herewith he comforted himself and the lions drew near and licked his face bathed in tears of Devotion and kissed his feet and hands doing him no harm Men were more sharp and discourteous to him who ceased not to drag him before Tribunals to charge him with calumnies for his extraordinary wayes to give sentence against him but in all he appealed to his well-beloved who never forsook him Seeing himself destitute of all succour for the conversion of Sarazens he passed alone into the kingdome of Thunes where he freely disputed with the chief of the Mahometans concerning the greatnesse and excellency of our Faith against the impostures of Mahomet which was the cause that he was immediately cast into prison and condemned by the King himself to have his head cut off to which he disposed himself with an incomparable fervour of love At which time one of the prime men of State in the countrey who had conceived well of him out of the admiration of his wit perswaded the King to be satisfied with banishing him out of his kingdome and that by this way he should do all he was obliged unto for the preservation of his own law and should get the reputation of a mild Prince among Christians abstaining from the bloud of such a man which he did but he was thrust out of Thunes with so many blows and ignominies that he therein gained a noble participation in the Crosse of Jesus Christ The fervour which incessantly boiled in his veins suffered him not to be long at rest He went into the kingdome of Bugia as Jonas into Nineveh crying out aloud through the streets that there was in the world but one Religion and that was ours and that the law of Mahomet was a meer imposture and a fantasie He was instantly laid hands on as a mad-man and lead to the high Priest named Alguassin who asked him whether he knew not the Laws of the countrey which forbad him upon pain of death to speak against Mahometisme To which he answered he could not be ignorant of it but that a man who knew the truth of Christian Religion as he did could do no other but seal it with his blood This Alguassin proud of science perceiving him to be a man of a good wit entred farther into discourse with him where he found himself shamefully gravelled which made him forsake the Syllogismes of the School to have recourse to the arguments of tyrants which are arms and violence for he caused him to be presently taken as an Emissary Goat there being not any Mahometan hand so little which delighted not to hale and leade him with blows untill they brought him into the most hideous prison which was rather a retreat then a gaol where he endured a thousand miseries with an unshaken constancy The Genowayes his good friends who traffick in these parts moved with his affliction got with good round summes of money a more reasonable prison for him where he began again to dispute with the most learned of the sect and made himself to be so much admired by those his adversaries that they endeavoured to gain him to their Religion promising him wife family honours and riches as much as he could wish but he mocked at all their machinations and seeing them fervent to dispute he persisted therein with great strength of reason and courage They said words were lost in the air but they must take the pen in hand and write on both sides with which he was infinitely pleased and spent nights and dayes in prison to compose a great volumn for defence of our Religion But the King of Bugea coming into his capitall city dissipated all these counsels much fearing the touch of his Law which was gold of a base allay and caused him the second time to come out of prison From thence he sought to get something in Greece passing over into Cyprus where he disputed against the Nestorians and Jacobites who rendred him poison for the honey of his discourses whereof he was like to die had he not been preserved by divine Providence and the assistance of a good Angel The blessed man had already passed forty years in a thousand toils and crosses and spared not to suffer by reason of the flames of love which burnt his heart but he knew not whether he suffered or no so much he took to heart the cup which God had mingled for him Verily our Lord appearing one day unto him and asking him if he well knew what love was of which he so many years had made profession he very excellently answered If I do not well know what Love is I at least well understand what Patience is meaning that it was to suffer since nothing troubled him for the satisfaction he had in Gods causes And another time being asked whether he had Patience he said All pleased him and that he had no cause of impatience which onely belongs to them who keep the possession of their own will Lastly being about fourscore years of age he considered within himself what he said afterwards that love was a sea full tempests and storms where a port was not to be hoped for but with the losse of himself and
which draw thence all thy vitall humour and make thee have a life which hath nothing lesse then life in it Temerarious soul who hast dared to think that forsaking thy Creatour thou elsewhere shouldst find a better match Go and see the obstacles which daily meet with those who hunt after honours favours and worldly wealth Go go behold and thou shalt see a thousand fishes swim in a pond after a rotten worm How many battails must thou wage how many sweats of death must thou sweat how many iron-gates must thou break through to content one onely of thy desires O how often will the Heavens and the Elements conspire against thy affections which thou so unworthily so disastrously hast placed O what bloudy sorrows at thy death when God shall draw aside the curtain of the city of peace and shall shew thee an infinite number of souls in the bosome of Beatitude for having well disposed their Desires and on the other side burning coals to expiate affections ill managed O what horrour what terrour and what despair if the Angels come and say with a voyce of thunder Foris Apoc. 22. 15 Canes and that we must wander up and down in affection with a hunger everlastingly enraged after a good we so many times have despised O Jesus the desire of Eternall mountains draw to thee all my desires since thou art the Adamant Jesus the love of all faithfull souls take all my affections since thou art the Centre of all hearts Jesus the Joy and Crown of all the Elect stay my floating hopes since thou art the haven of hearts stretch out an assisting hand to so many errours and set me in a place where I may desire nothing but let it be such a place wherein I may love that which is infinitely amiable The fourth Treatise Of AVERSION § 1. The Nature and Qualities thereof AVersion is a passion apprehensive disdainfull The essence and nature of Aversion of distastes which is shut up as a snail in its shell and hath no inclination to any thing in the world Covetousnesse presenteth it many objects to see if it can snare it with a bait but it doth nothing but fly away and turn the face to the other side and albeit it seems not to desire ought of all is offered unto it it neverthelesse coveteth good but goes towards it by by-paths and flight from all that which seems opposite to its felicity Well to understand the nature of this Passion we How Aversion is formed must know that as in motions of affections there is first made in the soul a love wholly simple which is an inclination and a complacence towards some object from thence Desire is created by which we consider the same object not onely as good and convenient but as a thing absent and out of us which we must endeavour to have and to bring within our power But if we have the good hap to possesse it from thence joy ariseth which is a perfect complacence raised upon the possession of the thing desired Likewise in passions which resist and oppose our heart first a simple hatred is created which onely importeth an Antipathy and a certain dissenting from the object which the understanding proposeth to the will as disagreeable or hurtfull Thence we come to consider this object either as farre distant and hard to be avoided and then Fear laies hold of our heart or we behold it more near at hand and very easie to be repelled being wholly unable to make any great or strong impressions upon us as Fear doth and then it is properly called Aversion but if the evil happen to be present it is a vexation and a trouble and when it is past there remains a horrour which we call Detestation We may say this passion which is disgusted withall The character and true image of a spirit subject to Aversion hath nothing so distastefull as it self There you behold a soul oppressed still apprehensive still retired and ever harsh and as nothing pleaseth it so easily it displeaseth all the world If there be cause to name one he will never call him by his name but will say of whom speak you of that wretch of that sluggard of that miser of that ignorant fellow Or if he hath some deformity of body of that crooked piece that crump-shoulder of that unfortunate caitiffe who is much duller then a winters-day or the snows of Scythia If a Book be to be censured there is nothing worth ought in it they are discourses and words ill placed If merchandize be to be bought the shop and store-houses of a merchant shall be turned over and over and nothing found that gives contentment If he be in his own house he makes himself insupportable to his domesticks this garment is ill made this chamber ill furnished this bed too hard these dishes unsavoury the wind at a door the creaking of a casement the crying of a child the barking of a dog all is troublesome to him If a man of this condition be to be married there is not a maid in the world worthy of him he must have one framed out of his own rib as God did for the first Man or suffer him to raise his love in imitation of Endymion and Caligula up to the sphere of the Moon But most especially women Humour of coy women of this humour are extremely troublesome They have no small businesse to do who are to find them out maid-servants and nurses this is too rusticall she hath nothing amiable in her eye she speaks too big her body is not slender enough the other is a piece of flesh not worth ought needs must she be perpetually upon change and out of too much curiosity to meet with a good service be the worst served of any woman in the world Behold one distasted with professions conditions and offices all displeaseth him Shall he become a Church-man that seems a slavery to him Shall he betake him to a sword It is hazardous To an office It costs too much To traffick Little is to be gotten To a Trade He cannot find a good one Lastly it troubleth him to be a man and would gladly entertain the invention of Ovids Metamorphosis to be transformed into some other kind of Creature There are young wenches who have much a-do with themselves Shall they marry There is not any match likes them this man is unhandsome that other is but simple this man too way-ward that too melancholly one too wild another hath not living enough nor that other good alliance an Angel must be fetched out of heaven to marry them In the mean time some amorist learneth to dance his cinque-pace and to powder and frizzle himself to please this coy piece whom nothing contenteth but her own distastes If one the other side this creature looks towards Religion she will multiply her paces and visits and will run over all the Monasteries and find none to content her one is
these serpents asleep which devour us but we must likewise confesse that if our griefs be short they deserve not so great complaints and if they be long their lasting fashioneth us to patience All is formidable to a body full of long health but the accustoming to things unpleasing causeth the contempt of them Nature hath destinated the most nice and tender to great dolours as women to that of child-bearing to teach us that what we fear most is not alwayes to be most feared When our courage faileth all torments insult over us but if it makes some resistance we much the lesse feel our pain There are who fight even to bloud out of bravery others receive wounds for a very little money others run to the burning chaps of cannons for a small salary there are others to be found who have jested at the gash and others who have played on a lute whilst their members have been flashed with keen rasors to shew that if there be an evil in nature there is much more in our opinion The Philosopher Zeno sought out torments to caste pleasures and said they were nohing if they were not thus seasoned Pain and pleasure interchangeably sway in us as do day and night in our Hemisphere If we must die it is but a moment of adversity to enter into a perpetuall repose Evill taketh up all the parts of our life but death hath onely one instant of time It is so conformed to the most part of the world oppressed with so many afflictions that as Zaleucus the Notable speech of Zaleucus Law-maker said an Edict should fitly have been made to die if God had not imposed a necessity upon it To be born maketh us tributaries to all miseries but death alone freeth us from all imposts Socrates saw his death coming whilst he was philosophising Anaxagoras in pleading Calanus braved it out of temerity and Canius jeasted at it out of merriment If your evil be in the mind is it chiefly sin or folly The evils of the mind which tormenteth you Why forbear you to chastise the one by penance and the other by the credit you will give to the judgement of the wise By this meanes you shall find that Reason will remedy almost all evils without much violence Where Reason is surprised and darkned by the violence Comforts which proceed from time of torments Time quits the medicine There is no evil immortall for the mortall let us make our selves tractable by not thinking on our evils and they cease to be evils according as time stealeth them away from us Think not to dry up the eyes of a mother who hath lost her son or of a wife from whom death Insensible comforts hath taken her husband on the day of the buriall suffer them to weep let the wound bleed and think how to cure it rather by prayers then by discourses The most pertinacious dolours disband with time and we are all amazed that we find our selves above our afflictions as if we had climbed up thither from out of the bottome of abysses He who should see the mount Aetna big with flames and thunders would not think there were any meanes to approach It but its furies passe away with time and we pursue little tracks which insensibly lead us to the top where we find verdant grasse and blooming flowers The like happeneth to us when we in the beginning consider our evil fortune it seemes our mind can never associate with its disasters but in the end the divine Providence discovereth wayes unto us which ere we think on 't bring us to the top of patience where we gather the fruit of our travels Who would not admire the goodnesse of God to say That time doth our businesse without our trouble and if we must be sad we find I know not what in our sadnesse that pleaseth us so that we preferre solitude and silence before the most eloquent consolations The friends of Job seeing these his deep miseries were seven dayes without speaking to him they let him discourse with his own thoughts and gather some case from his own dolour as we draw remedies Julianus Imperator in consola◠Ametil ep 37. out of scorpions I to this purpose observe an excellent invention in the Emperour Julian of the Philosopher Democritus where it is said That Darius King of Persia had lost An excellent observation of Julian the Queen his wife and that excessive melancholy made him disconsolate The wisest men of Greece were called to him to mitigate his torments but it was to play on a lute to the ears of Tygres and Panthers to go about to cure by words fitly applied a grief which had had more of futy then mediocrity in it The Philosopher let all these great comforters to passe on and put himself upon time to expect some disposition in the heart of this Monarch and seeing his mind tired out with his teares began to resent he promised to raise the Queen again if he he would furnish him with things necessary for his purpose the other extremely rapt with this proposition said he therein would employ all the riches of the world which were at his dispose but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Philosopher onely demanded of him three names of such as had never felt any grief or sadnesse to engrave them on the Queens Monument which could not in any sort be found after a long search throughout the whole kingdome of Persia Then Democritus taking his opportunity Alas Sir we may well say the rubies and diamonds of this diadem resplendent on your head dazle your eyes and hinder you from seeing the miseries of your poor subjects not to be able in so great and vast an Empire to meet with three happy men and yet you wonder though born under the condition of mortals that death is entred into your palace He added many grave sayings which the Emperour for his consolation liked very well Whereby we are taught that we must sometimes make use of time to remedy sadnesse If time doth nothing and that it be an evil necessary which we cannot remedy as it happeneth in death and in other accidents which those Ancients called the blows of Destiny why do we resist against heaven and censure the divine Decrees It is a goodly thing indeed to see a man to afflict himself with a fatall necessity Necessity forceth patience which indifferently involveth Monarches and peasants Must God revoke his laws and must he create a world apart to content a simple creature and serve it to its liking But is it not much better to go along with the stream of this water and follow the great current of the divine Providence which maketh all the harmony in the world § 4. That the Contemplation of the divine Patience and Tranquillity serves for Remedies for our temptations LAstly let us behold the assistances of Grace which is incomparably above Nature and let us from Remedies and
considerable is self-love which is ever bent upon the preservation of it self and the exclusion of all things offensive from whence it cometh that all the greatest lovers of themselves are the most fearfull and the most reserved in the least occasions of perill as are ordinarily persons rich full of ease and nice who resemble the fish that hath gold on his scales and is Aelian l. 12. de animal 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most timorous creature of the sea The second wherein many particular causes meet is the evil to come namely when it is great near inevitable and that it tends to the privation of our being From thence arise a thousand spectres of terrour as are poverty outrages maladies thunder fire sword inundations violent deaths wild beasts and above all men powerfull cruell revengefull wicked especially when they are offended or that they have some interest in our ruine and that they can freely be revenged without any fear of laws or punishment Adde to these the envious corrivalls greedy heirs friends treacherous provoked or timorous mutinous quarrelsome violent and greedy The third motive of fear is the ignorance and little experience we have in the evils of the world for all that which is covert and hidden from us seems the more terrible as are solitudes abysses darknesses and persons disguised From thence cometh that women children and men bred in a soft and sedentary life are more timorous sith the knowledge of dangers whereof they are deprived is a great Mistresse of Fortitude The fourth source is coldnesse and consideration which is the cause that the wisest justly fear perils where hair-brain'd young-men fools and drunkards carelesly jeast and make sport and that was the cause why Sylla finding himself many times too considerate in the forefight of evils did endeavour to drown his apprehensions in wine The fifth is observed in a nature cold melancholick imaginative and distrustfull which sometimes happeneth to Hypocondriacks such as was that of the antient Artemon who caused a buckler continually to be carried over his head by two Lackeys fearing lest something falling from on high might hurt him or that of Pisander who feared to meet his own soul or that other frantick fellow who durst not walk for fear of breaking the world which he perswaded himself was wholly made of glasse The sixth lastly comes from an ill conscience For there Semper enim praesumit saeva perturbata conscientia Sap. 17. 11. Plutarch de sera numinis vindicta is not any thing so turmoiled so torn and so divided as a soul which hath alwayes before it the image of its own crimes This was it which made the Nero's and Domitians to tremble This which caused Apollodorus of whom Plutarch speaketh to have horrible visions so that it many times seemed to him in his nightly sleeps that the Scythians flaied him alive threw his chop'd members one after another into a boiling caldron and that he had nothing alive but his heart which said to him in the bottome of this caldron I am thy wicked heart It is I who am the source of all thy Disastres §. 2. Of the vexations of Fear its Differencies and Remedies WE may well say this passion is one of the most Fear a troublesome passion troublesome and vexing among all the motions of our mind because it is extremely ranging sith not content with the evils which are on the sea and land yea in Hell it forgeth new which have no subsistence but in the perplexity of an imagination quite confounded Besides this it more spiritually tormenteth us making our Judgement and Reason to contribute to our vexations and many times so long turmoileth us that it maketh us to fear half an age of time that which The ignorance of our evils is a stratagem of the divine Providence passeth in a moment For which cause I account it a loving clemency of God to hide from us the greatest part of the things which befall us the knowledge whereof would continually over-whelm our wretched life with sadnesse and affrightment and not give us leave nor leisure to breathe among the delicious objects of Nature If so many great and eminent personages who being mounted to the highest degrees of honour have been thrown down into abysses had continually beheld the change of their fortune and the bloudy ends of their life it is not credible but that the joyes of their triumphs would have been moistned with their tears and by a perpetuall fear of an inevitable necessity they would have lost all the moments of their felicity Now in some sort to remedy a plague so generall Three sorâ—â— of fear I find the troubles which come to us this way either are naturall timidities or fears of things very frequent in the condition of humane life or are affrightments upon some terrible and unusuall objects Forasmuch as concerneth timidities which we see in fearfull natures Timidity its causes and symptomes they proceed either from the disposition of body and melancholick humour or from the quantity of heart which is sometimes too great and hath little heat or from idlenesse and effeminacy of life or from a base birth and from a sedentary breeding or from small experience or from overmuch love of reputation and ease both of mind and body Some are timorous in conversation and fear to approach men of quality they dread the aspect of those whom they have not accustomed to see they quickly change colour they have no consequence in their speech no behaviour no discourse their words are broken the tone of their voyce is trembling and their countenance nothing confident which very often happeneth to young men timorously bred and little experienced Others fear all occasions of Ceremonies of pomp and splendour to see and to be seen and would willingly borrow the veil of night to cover themselves from them Others are very bad sollicitours of businesses daring not to say nor contradict any thing and if they must needs ask a question they do it so fearfully that in asking they shew how they should be denied There are who more fear to speak in publick then one would a battel which hath happened to many great wits as to Demosthenes Theophrastus and Cicero who protesteth Fearfull Oratours that being already of good years he still became pale and trembled in the beginning of his discourse which in my opinion proceeded from an excessive love of honour which these men seemed to hazard when they made Orations before Princes the Senate and people A block-head exposeth himself with much more confidence because he hath nothing to lose and is like a Pilot who steereth a ship fraught with hay But these were masters who guided vessels furnished with pearls such credit and authority they had purchased Aeschines Aelian l. 8. variae Hist a man well behaved a great talker and a huge flatterer triumphantly spake before King Philip and the Macedonians where poor
resembleth the Vulture whom carrions nourish and Greg. Nyss in vita Mosis perfumes kill All the evill it meeteth prepareth a refection of Serpents for its mind and all the good afflicteth it to death Accustome not your self likewise easily to believe those tale-tellers who to gain your good liking by base servitude relate the vices and disasters of the party whom you envie for that much avails to foment your Passion Prosper hath sagely said that the envious are ready to believe all the evils in the world which the Prosper l. 3. de contemplat c. 9. tongue of a complaining spirit telleth them touching the mishaps of such as they hate and if any one by chance not knowing the disease happen to speak good Omne malum quod mendax fama citaverie statim credunt feraliter el qui illud verum non esse probare volucrit contradicunt of them they sufficiently witnesse by their contradiction that they believe not what they say Secondly it is very behooffull incessantly to labour in the mortification of pride and the exorbitant appetite of ones own proper excellency as being the principall root of the passion of Envie as affirmeth the fore-alledged Authour saying that Sathan became envious out of pride and not proud through Envy we must inferre Pride is not the fruit of Envy but Envy a sprout Non superbia fructus invidiae fuit sed invidia de superbiae radice processit Prosper ib. of Pride The ambition you have every where to have the highest place to be in great esteem to possesse a petty sovereignty in all savours necessarily makes you envious and jealous so that one cannot praise any body in your presence but that this commendation instantly seems to tend to the diminution of your reputation Your heart bleeds at it the bloud flieth up into your face nature arms her self to beat back a good office which a charitable tongue would render a person of merit as if it were a great injury and a suit commenced against you It is a sign you deserve little praise since you cannot endure it in another How would you be esteemed since you first of all betray your own reputation shewing your self to be of so weak a judgement Multis abundar virtutibus qui alienas amat Vincen. Bel. 8. 2. l. 4. c. 7. that one cannot speak a good word of another but it ministers matter of an evil thought in you Were you as rich in merits as your mind figureth to you you would no more be moved when a good word is spoken of another then a man infinitely wealthy to give a small piece of coin to a poor creature who were in want I add also a third remedy that many have found to be very efficacious which is to know and much to esteem the gifts that God hath given us to content our selves with what we are and with the state the divine Providence allotteth us without attempting on forreign hopes which would perhaps be great evils unto us S. Chrysologus saith that Envie once shut up Terrestriall Paradise with a sword of fire but I may say it Paradisi nobis amoena flammeo custode seclusit daily stoppeth from us the sources of many contentments which would plentifully moysten all the parts of our life that many would be happy if they could tell how to manure their fortune could content themselves with their own mediocrity and take the felicities which Nature presenteth them without being troubled at others Miserable that they are not knowing how to be happy unlesse another be unhappy unfortunate that they are to forsake Roses which grow in their gardens to hasten to reap thorns in their neighbours Tertullian writeth the Pagans in his time were so Tantinon est bonum quanti est odium Christianorum enraged against the Christians that all their comforts seemed nothing to them in comparison of the pleasure they took to hate and torment them This is the fury which many envious now-a-dayes practise All their prosperities fade all their joyes languish and all their good successes never are accomplished whilst they see those to flourish whom they persecute It grieves them they are what they are that God hath fixed them in a mean condition and that they are not born to be of those great Colosses which shrink and daily fall by the sole burthen of their weight If they knew the black phantasmes of cares which leap on the top of silver pillars and go athwart gilded marbles to find out those pompous lives who most commonly have but the bark of happinesse they would every day a thousand times blesse their condition but this maligne ignorance which sealeth up their eyes makes them complain of all that they should love and causeth them to love all they ought to complain of Lastly to remedy the bitings of Envie you must entertain a spirit of love and correspondence often representing unto your self that a man who loveth none but himself and wholly lives to himself not able to endure the prosperities of another is a piece unlosened from this great universe which altogether bendeth to the unity of our sovereign God who is one in Essence and who gathereth all creatures into the union of his heart What would this jealous man have who is so desperately passionate concerning this creature Doth he not well see that loving so inordinately he takes the course to be no longer loved by her and looseth all he desireth most by the violence of desiring it A woman out of a desire to be beloved would not be tyrannized over She wisheth love not fury fire of Seraphins not of devils These Courtships are offences to her these suspitions injuries these prohibitions rigours these solitudes imprisonments How can she love a man who loves not any but himself who will play a God in the world who will fetter the freedome of creatures which is the will for which God himself hath made neither bands nor chains How can she affect an Argus who observeth her who watcheth her who reckoneth up her words who questeth at her thoughts who prepareth racks of the mind for her in the most innocent pleasures The sole consideration of the ruines and miseries which envie and jealousie do cause to themselves were able to stay these exorbitancies were it once well considered but if these humane reasons seem yet too weak raise your self to divine § 5. Divine Remedies drawn from the Benignity of God O Man Behold for a first remedy among all the Remedy by the consideration of the first modell divine ones thy first modell and contemplate the benignity of God opposed to thy malice It is an excellent thing to consider against an envious eye that God who will reform us to his likenesse doth all the good to the world by simple seeing and by being seen God doth all by seeing and by being seen For by seeing he giveth Essence and grace and by being seen he
the People with astonishment They removed themselves according to the Orders of their Legislatour to the foot of the Mountain Sinai with a prohibition to passe further All the Mountain smoaked as a great Fornace by reason that God was descended thither all in fire which made it extream terrible But Moses his dear favourite ascended to the highest top amidst the fires the darknesses and the flames in that Luminous obscurity where God presided that spake to him face to face as to his most intimate confident After all that thundering voyce of the Living God was heard that pronounced his Decrees and his Laws in that Chamber of Justice hung with fire and lights that trembled under the footsteps of his Majesty All this Law was set down in writing with a most exact care and is yet read every day in the five Books of the Law Now Religion being the Basis of all Policy without which great Kingdomes are but great Robbings This wise Law-giver applyed his whole care and travell to the rooting out of Idolatry and to the causing of the Adorable Majesty of God to be acknowledged in the condition of a worship truly Monarchicall and incommunicable to any other as appears in the punishment which he inflicted on those that had worshiped the golden Calf For the Scripture saith That when the Israelites perceived that Moses tarried a long time on the Mountain of Sinai in those amiable Colloquies that he had with God they grew weary of it and said to the high Priest Aaron That since that man that had brought them out of Egypt was lost they ought to dream no more of him but make in his place Gods that should march in the head of their Army Aaron that perperhaps had a mind to make them lose the relish of that design by the price to which it would amount demanded of them the Pendents of the ears of their Wives and of their Children to go to work about it but their madnesse was so great that they devested themselves freely of all that they had most precious to make a God to their own phansie Aaron accommodating himself to their humour through a great weaknesse made them a Statue that had some resemblance of the Ox Apis that was adored in Egypt As soon as they had perceived it they began to cry Courage Israel behold the God that hath drawn thee out of the slavery of Egypt Aaron accompanied him with an Altar and caused a solemn Feast to be bidden for the morrow after at which the people failed not to be present offering many sacrifices making good cheer and dancing about that Idol God advertised Moses of that disorder and commanded him to descend suddenly from the Mountain to remedy it although he intended to destroy them and had done it had he not been appeased by the most humble Remonstrances and Supplications of his servant He failed not to betake himself speedily to the Camp where he saw that Abomination and the Dances that were made about it which inflamed him so much with Choler that he brake the Tables of the Law written by the hand of God thinking that such a present was not seasonable for Idolaters and Drunkards He rebuked Aaron sharply who excused himself coldly enough and not intending that so abominable a crime should passe without an exemplary punishment He took the Golden Calf and beat it into dust which he steep'd in water to make all those drink of it that had defiled themselves with that sacrilege and to make them understand that sinne that seems at first to have some sweetnesse is extreamly bitter in its effects After which he commanded That all those that would be on Gods side should follow him and the Tribe of Levi as being the most interressed failed not to joyn with him whereupon seeing them all well animated he gave them order to passe through all the Camp from one door to the other with their swords in their hands and to slay all that they met without sparing their nearest kindred This was executed and all the Army was immediately filled with Massacres Rivers of blood ran on all sides accompanied with the sad howlings of a scared multitude that expected every minute the stroke of death God would have that this so severe a punishment be executed upon those miserable men to cause an eternall horrour of Idolatry which is the most capitall of all sins And to retein the worship of God a thousand pretty Ceremonies were practised after the structure of the Tabernacle of the Ark of Covenant of the Table of the Shew-bread of the Altars and after the institution of the Pontificall habits of the Offerings and of the Sacrifices that were celebrated with much order and a singular Majesty Moses also was indefatigable in rendring Justice sitting from the morning till the night on his Tribunall to hear the requests of all the particular men that came to him which Jethro his father in law that was come to visit him having perceived said to him that it was impossible for him to be long able to undergo so troublesome a labour and that he ought to choose amongst all the people some Puissant men fearing God true and enemies of covetousnesse to administer Justice and that it would be sufficient to reserve to himself the controversies that should be of greatest importance Moses believed his counsell and established an handsome order for the decision of the differences that should arise amongst the People He passed fourty years in the wildernesse in divers habitations partly in war against the enemies partly in preserving peace amongst his People and confirming all the laws which he established by the command of God In this exercise he lived to the age of an hundred and twenty years sepaparated himself from all things of the world and was so united to God that it seemed that even his Body it self passed into the nature and condition of an immortall Spirit In fine God having shewed him upon the mountain Nebo all the Land of Promise which he had got to by so many good counsells and so much pains he dyed in that view without entring into it was mourned for thirty dayes by the Israelites and interred of set purpose in a sepulchre unknown to the eyes of men for fear lest he should give an occasion of some Idolatry to that people that would have held him for a Deity Never had man a Birth more forlorn a Life more various or a Death more glorious of an exposed Infant he became a Kings son of a Kings son an Exile of an Exile a Shepheard of a Shepheard a Captain of a Captain a Prophet of a Prophet a Law-giver of a Law-giver a Sovereign the God of Kings and the King of all the Prophets Active at Court Devout in Solitude Victorious in War Happy in Peace Wise in his Laws Terrible in his Arms a man of Prodigies that opened Seas Manur'd Wildernesses Commanded things Sensible and Insensible and exercised an Empire on
Syrians thought that he that engaged himself so boldly was the most interressed and that without doubt there was all likely hood that it was Ahab they fell upon him with ardour so that he thought he should have been hemmed in But when he betook himself to crying out aloud animating his souldiers to his defence the enemies that had a mind to spare him retired to fall on Ahab It happened that an Archer letting fly an arrow at randome stroke him with a mortal wound whereupon he commanded his Coach-man to turn about and to draw out of the mingling well perceiving that he was grievously hurt All the Army was immediately scattered and the Herald of Arms proclaimed that every man might return to his home King Ahab dyed the same day and his body was brought back to Samaria where it happened that as his Coach that was all bloody was a washing in a pool of the same City the Dogs ran thither and licked up his bloud according to Elijahs prophecy Ahaziah his sonne succeeded him inheriting the superstition and misery of his father for after he had reigned a very little while he fell out at a window of his house and grievously hurt himself without being ever able to find a remedy to his evill And having forsaken God sent messengers to the God of Ekron to know if he should recover from that sicknesse but the Prophet Elijah having met his Messengers upon the way rebuked them sharply for that they went to consult with Idols as if there were no God in Israel and commanded them to tell their Master that he should not be cured of his wound but should dye without ever rising out of the Bed wherein he lay This Prince offended at this truth causes the Prophet to be pursued and sends one of his Captains with fifty souldiers to apprehend him This man in mockery called him Man of God and prayed him to descend from the mountain whither he had retired himself but Elijah persisting alwayes in his spirit of rigour said that he would give him proofs that should make him know that he was not a Man of God through vanity and irrision and at the same instant he caused fire to descend from heaven which consumed him and all his company Ahaziah sends another of them for the same purpose which meets also with the same successe He charges again a third the Captain of which gained Elijah by submission and brought him to his Master to whom he spake constantly the truth and advertised him of his approaching death and the other durst not do him any mischief well knowing that he was under Gods protection The truth of the Prophecyed was manifest soon after by the death of Ahaziah who had for successour his brother Joram who reigned twelve years and although Elijah was already translated from this life that is but a passage to another estate his Prophecy failed not to be accomplished particularly upon the house of Ahab and the wicked Jezabel For Elisha according to the order of God and the command received from his Master caused Jehu to be crowned to reign in Israel To this purpose he dispatched one of his Disciples put a violl in his hand wherein was the oyl destined for his unction giving him charge to go to Ramoth in Gilead where Jehu one of Jorams principall Captains commanded and besieged the city continuing the siege that Joram had laid before it whiles he went to Samaria to be dressed of some wounds that he had received in the warre against the Syrians Aboue all he recommended to him that the businesse should be kept very secret and that when he should be arrived he should call Jehu aside and withdraw into some chamber and there consecrate him King with that unction that he had in his hand making him know that God gave him his masters house and crown to revenge the bloud of the Prophets and servants of God upon the race of Ahab and on Jazabel This sonne of a Prophet sent by Elisha did all that was commanded him and arriving at the Camp found Jehu environed with other Captains and signified to him that he had a word or two to speak to him which made him quit the company and enter into a neighbouring chamber where the other powred out the sacred oyle upon his head said to him I have anointed you this day over the people of the God of Israel and consecrated you King to ruine from God the house of Ahab your Master and to revenge the bloud of the Prophets and servants of God upon Jezabel who shall be eaten up of Doggs and no body shall give her buriall As soon as he had said this he opens the door and flies Jehu comes forth and shews himself to his Captains who had a curiosity to know what had passed in that treaty and asked of him what that mad-man meant that came to him Jehu feigning that they well enough knew the cause of it and need not go about to inform themselves held them in expectation and in fine declared to them that it was one of Elisha's desciples that had brought him the news that he should reign in Israel and that such was the will of God It is a wonderfull thing that none of the chief men of the Army opposed themselves against it but that all at that very instant laid down their Cloaks under Jehu's feet as it were to raise him a throne and cryed out God save the King The conspiracy against Joram being framed he hinders any notice to be given him and marches with a strong hand to the City to surprise him and Ahaziah King of Judah together with him that was come to visite him in his sicknesse The sentinell that stood at the gate of the City told that he saw a body of Cavaliers coming in a right line to the City whereupon the King ordered that one of his men should go out to discover it This Scout was gained by Jehu and ranged himself on his side Another is sent out which doâ—s also the same whereat the King being much astonished takes his Coach and and Ahaziah his to see what the businesse was As soon as he perceived Jehu he said What are you not a man of peace Whereto Jehu replyed What peace while the fornications and poysonings of Jezabel your Mother are yet in full vigour Joram saw plainly by his countenance and by that answer that there was mischief and began to wheel about saying to Ahaziah his companion We are betrayed and seeing that he was no way prepared to make resistance to such a power betook himself to flight But Jehu bending his Bow le ts fly an Arrow at him that pierced him through and killed him in his Chariot At the same instant he caused his body to be taken up to cast it on the road in the field of Naboth and pursued Ahaziah who having received a mortall wound as he fled gave up the Ghost at Megiddo from whence he was carried to
when the Sun obtained the middle part of Virgo or Astraea for he was to govern the world with the moderation of Laws He ascended with Lyra being to make a harmony and consort of publick tranquillity And if Scorpio did at the same time shew forth his sting he threatned the Sarazens and promised the Idumean Palms to him that should be born so often dignified by the Valour of his Ancestours The heavenly habitations rejoyced at his birth and the whole world welcomed the new-born Babe with joy Now no man thought himself miserable at this happy birth now no man thought himself happy whom that birth did not make so Upon that day France wiped away all the foot of Warre and shined clearly with refulgent ensignes of Peace We had that day as many prosperities as bone-fires and as many bone-fires as there are starres O Lewis beloved of God whom he seemeth to have regenerated in his sonne that very moneth wherein he was born O Anne late indeed the mother of a sonne yet alwayes a fortunate mother in bringing forth a sonne not onely to her self nor so much to her self as to all France He hath much of his Father and much of his Mother and by this very confusion he maketh the image of them both more gratefull and more amiable This new Isaac will make thee laugh O France and whom thou canst scarce hear speaking hereafter thou shalt see comforting How many chains will those tender hands burst asunder How many prisons will they open How many obscurities will those little eyes enlighten How many monsters will the feet of this Infant subdue and trample on Be silent ye waves be silent ye tempests and rages of the sea at the beck of such a gentle Prince and restore unto the world that serenrty whereof you have deprived it Ye heavenly Powers lend him long unto the earth and whom you have made so healthfull to the Nation make him also lasting Ye Fates keep off your hands and touch not this child but to assist him Let him transcend the years and actions of his Ancestours and being born mortall may he apprehend nothing but what is immortall May he love and desire to be beloved ever fearing to be feared Let the oppressed find him a deliverer may the unjust feel him an avenger may his enemies know him to be of a warlike spirit and may his Subjects attest him to be of a peaceable mind This Nativity ravisheth all my senses which I foretell shall be the beginning of an eternall Peace unto us Look down from above O Lewis upon such a sonne Look upon him all ye Christian Kings as your little Nephew give rest to wearied things let arms be silent at the command of so great a Prince so potent an Oratour nor let the tumults of Warre rock this royall cradle To you again Great Princes I wholly turn my self by whatsoever is dear I ask by whatsoever is holy I beseech you give peace to them that beg it or must beg without it give tranquillity to the world sighing under so many feverish miseries Make it appear unto us that you chose rather to be the Pacificatours of the world then the Subverters of your own Kingdomes There is a story how in that fatall War between the English and the French continued with lasting contentions and horrible slaughters a pious Anachoret instigated thereunto by God came unto the Courts of the two Princes that he might compose these ferall discords between them But being slighted in the English Court and negligently repulsed this despised but not despicable Augur pronounced many direfull accidents that should befall that Nation But travelling to Charles of France and finding him to be a prince of a gentle wit and inclined to conditions of Peace he foretold that the Kingdome being recovered he should have the Dolphin to be his successour who as he was the child of many hearty desires so he should prove the instrument of many joyfull enterprises The prophecy is inpartpart fulfilled with a prosperous event so tenderly God loves the sons of Peace accumulated with affluence of all good things Whoe're he be let him beware that shall resist and strive against the peaceable wishes of all men some grievous hand will fall upon him and his from heaven he shall meet with unhappy events in all his undertakings his life shall be cer-tainly troublesome his death doubtfull Best and greatest Princes consider and think with your selves that what losse soever can be pretended to happen by this league of Peace whatsoever can detract from your Honour or your Empire is recompenced unto you in the most fortunate advantages of the whole Chri-stian world This is rich indeed this is magnificent this truly Royal and to be propagated to the memory of all Ages Remember that you are Christians and govern Christians be you propitious like Gods unto men if you desire that God should be propitious unto you Whatsoever you enjoy of life is slippery and uncertain and your Dignities are full of frailty it is your Justice that hath reference to your Felicity and it is your Virtue that links you to Eternity There is a great and conspicuous Tribunall that expects you there sits a Judge cloathed with purestlight to summon you unto whom the most secret things are revealed whom the most involved and disguised actions cannot deceive no can he be overcome by perversities Before him must appear the souls of Kings devested of body fortunes Empires and be they just or unjust they must be examined by a most clear light There you shall hear the Edicts of the supreme Deity and the King of kings thundering in your ears the groans of the oppressed shall cry against you the tears of the poor shall speak against you the tutelary Gods will plead for their Altars which you have broken down and all the heavenly Militia will rise together against the contumacious Endeavour ye pious and alwayes invincible Princes that those things which have been committed in prejudice of your wills by the uncontroulable licence of War may be corrected by your Equity that they may leave no aspersion upon your Reignes no stain upon Reputations no blot upon your Persons Bring to passe that Justice and Peace may meet in mutuall embracements let them be carried with triumphall pomp thorow your Kingdomes and thorow your Cities let them be born upon the shoulders of the whole world unto fixed and eternall seat that it perpetually may be lawfull for us to worship and reverence them at the monuments of your goodnesse and the pledges of our felicity Pax super Israel Dei. FINIS AN ALPHABETICALL TABLE Setting down the most observable Matters contained in the two last TOMES of the HOLY COURT ABiathar the high Priest deprived of his dignities by a violent action 152 The wisdome of Abigail 142 The insolence of Abner 144 He treateth with David 145 His death ibid. Absolon out of favour 147 His reconciliation by means of Joab ibid. Absolons
revolt ibid. His designs ibid. His Ambition 148 He caused himself to be proclaimed King ibid. He giveth battell to his Father wherein he is overthrown and killed 149 We must not condemn him that by lawfull means seeks his own Accommodations 46 Achior his oration 182 It is pleasing to Holophernes and his souldiers ibid. The pernicious counsell of Achitophel 148 Adonijah competitour of the Crown and his faction 151 The fault of Adonijah in his Councell of State ibid. Adonijah desired the Shunamite which did complete his misfortune 152 Adonis an admirable fish 38 A good deed done to a great one in Afflictions is of much value 142 what are the subjects of Afflictions 57 The dispositions of Ages 19 The death of Agrippina 273 Ahab goeth to meet Elijah in person 249 He desireth Naboths Vineyard 251 His death 253 Ahashuerus his banquet which continued for the space of one hundred and fourscore dayes 188 Alcimus the false high Priest 199 Amantius plotteth against Justin ian 58 A notable observation of Clemens Alexandrinus 83 The courage we may derive from the Sacrament of the Altar 80 Shallow and fantastick Ambition 13 The Ambition of Ecclesiasticks and Religious men much more subtle then others ibid. Crodield daughter of king Caribert a religious woman raiseth great troubles by her Ambition ibid. Ambition which buddeth in hearts of base extraction is most insolent which is instanced in a Chirurgion of S. Lewis is wisely repressed and chastised by the prudence and justice of King Philip the third of France 115 The French revengers of Ambition ibid. The furious Ambition of Alexius the Tyrant of Greece punished by the valour and justice of the French 116 Ambition the beginning of all evils 292 The effects of Ambition and envie ibid. The fury and infidelity of Ambition 296 The inhumane cruelty of Ambition 297 What Amity is 5 Three sorts of Amity ibid. Naturall Amity and its foundation ib. Amity of demy-gods 6 Amity grounded upon honesty ib. Men too endearing uncapable of Amity ib. Men banished from the Temple of Amity ib. Reasons for which women do seem uncapable of Amity 7 Degeneration Amity 8 There may be spirituall Amities between persons of different sexes endowed with great virtue and rare prudence 9 Amity in S. John Chrysostome 10 The right stains of Amity are forgetfulnesse of friends negligence contempt dessention suspition distrust inequality impatience and infidelity 11 12 Six perfections which preserve Amity ib. Bounty a true note of Amity 13 The benefits of Amity ib. Patience most necessary in Amity 14 There may be a celestiall Amity by the commerce of man with God 22 What Anger is 86 Divers degrees of Anger ib. Three Regions of Anger the first of sharp choler the second of bitter choler the third of fury 87 Remedies against these three sorts of Anger ib. The propertie of the Yew-Tree like unto Anger ib. Anger is very prejudiciall in military art in a Generall 118 Philip of Valois a great and generous King looseth a battell out of a pievish humour of Anger ib. The barbarous Anger of Bajazet ib. Lewis the younger admonished by Bernard chastiseth himself for his Anger by sadnesse and penance ib. Anger of women ib. Anger out of simplicity many times causeth hurt for a word too free witnesse that of Enguerrand ib. The humility and wisdome of Queen Anne to overcome the passion of Anger 120 Addresse of Bavalon to appease the Anger of the Duke of Brittaign 121 Anastatius dying Amantius his high Chamberlain aimed at the Empire 158 Antonina wife of Belizarius prostiâ—uted herself to Theodosius whom she and her husband had made their adopted son 164 Antiochus his horrible cruelty 197 The death of Antiochus â—01 How we ought to govern our Antipathies 246 A notable sentence of the Areopagite 2 The notable practise of S. Athanasius 10 The Essence and nature of Aversion 45 How Aversion is formed ib. The character and true image of a spirit subject to Aversion ib. The consideration of the love which God bears to his creatures is a powerfull remedy to cure Aversion ib. The first motions of Aversion for the most part are inevitable ib. The example of our Saviour serveth for a strong remedy to sweeten our Aversions 47 It is a shame to have an Aversion against one for some defect of Body or some other deformity of nature when as we are bound to love him ib. A generous act of a Pagan who teacheth us powerfully to to command our Aversions ib. The death of Azael by his rashnesse 144 B THe Prophets of Baal are murthered 250 The Basilisk cannot be enchanted 10 The love of Batsheba 145 Bathsheba fitly insinuates her self and procures the crown for her sonne Solomon ib. The martiall virtues of Bayard 214 He is wounded at the taking of Bressin 216 Beautie imperious 16 An excellent saying of venerable Bede 68 Bees bear the sign of a Bull on their bodies 60 Belizasius is chosen generall against Gilimer who had usurped the crown from Hilderick 161 He marcheth to the gates of Carthage ib. A triumph after the manner of the Ancients was ordained in honour of Belizarius 162 The valour of Bellizarius 163 His rare qualities 164 The originall of the miseries of Belizarius ib. The cause why Belizarius was debased was because he had violated the persons of the Popes ib He is brought into disgrace and his offices taken from him 167. Belshassar makes a sumptuous banquet and the hand-writing upon the wall in unknown characters is discovered 246 He is murthered ib. Bethulia is besieged 282 The Bethalians murmure against the Priests ib. The picture of Boldnesse 76 The Essence of Boldnesse ib. The notable Boldnesse of Saints who have often defended the truth with the hazard of their lives against the rage and malice of cruell and bloudy tyrants 78 Why Boldnesse is not in God ib. The rash love of the Earle of Bothuel 295 Boucicaut is taken prisoner 211 By his wisdome he endeavoreth the liberty of himself and other Lords and obtaineth it 212 His whole course of life contrary to that of Souldiers generally was very religious 213 C CAligula her fury against Seneca 274 Calumny against Julian and Seneca 275 Divers degrees of Calumniatours 94 From whence the degree of Cardinall cometh  George Castriot was a souldier as soon as he was born a man 209 He died of a Feaver in the city of Lyssa 210 Presages of the generosity of Cesar 79 An excellent conceit of Charity 25 The source of Charity 102 The rare qualities of Charlemaign the Great 172 His great learning ib. His seriousnesse in his study ib. Martel and Pepin reproduced in the person of Charlemaign ib. His rare virtues ib. His brave exploits against the Infidels 173 His war with the Italians and his succouring the Church which did groan under the chains of the Lombards ib. His entrance into Rome in great pomp ib. He warreth against the Saracens ib. He was the first King of France 174
Saviour Jesus Christ to animate our constancy 80 The power of the name of Jesus ibid. The admirable effects of the Crosse of Jesus ibid. To know whether our Lord Jesus was subject to Anger 88 The eye of Jesus watching sparkling and weeping 96 Impatient men o◠divers qualities 54 The picture of Impudence 83 Divers spirits subject to impudencie ibid. The miserable end of an unhappy Impudent man 86 It is a hard thing not to feel some Incommodities life being so full of them 46 The kingdome of Inconstancy 24 Three sorts of Envious Indignation 93 The plot of Ingobergua to cure her husbands passion of love succeeded ill out of too much affectation 107 John Baptist apprehended 267 His rare qualities ibid. He is beheaded 269 Joab and Abner do strive for the government of Judah 144 Joab and Abner combat ib. Joab in his fault upon necessity is tolerated by David ib. Joabs insolency 149 The death of Joab 153 The courage and resolution of Joachim who executed the office both of a Priest and Captain 181 The good offices of Jonathan 141 Josiah slain 263 Joseph the son of a shepheard 219 His divine qualities 220 His brethren sell him ibid. Mervellous constancy of Joseph amidst those great temptations of the Court and of his Mistresse 221 He is accused for attempting to ravish that honour which he preserved ib. He is imprisoned ib. He is taken out of the prison and doth interpret Pharaohs dream 222 He is promoted to high preferment by Pharaoh ibid. Josephs deportment in Court a pattern for all Courtiers ibid. His singular piety and modesty 223 His fidelity to his Prince ibid. His demeanour in his government 224 His brethren came down to Egypt for food and their intertainment 225 He meeteth with his aged Father and apointeth him a place to live in 226 Josua his education 196 His familiarity with Moses ibid. He is made Generall of the Army of the Israelites ibid. His death 177 Three sorts of Joy 48 The art of Joy 51 The Israelites murmure against Moses 231 232 They have war with the Amalekites and worst them 233 The Israelites disrelish Samuel 236 A great famine in Israel which was caused by a very great drought 249 Judas Macchabeus the sonne of Mattathias made Generall over the Army of the Hebrews against the tyrannie of Antiochus 198 His piety for restoring the Temple ib. Particular favours which he received from God ib. He maketh peace with the Romans 199 He defeated nine Generals of Antiochus in pitched battell 200 Isaiah his vision 260 His eloquence as his birth is elevated ib. He is sawed alive 262 The kingdome of Judah divided by the ambition of favourites 144 The rare endowments of Judith 181 Her prayer to God 183 Her speech to Holophernes being brought before him 184 Her courteous entertainment ibid. Judith being conducted by Vagoa to Holophernes Pavillion in his sleep cut off his head 185 She returneth to the Bethulians with the head of Holophernes ibid. Her entertainment by the Citizens of Bethulia ibid. Her counsell to the people ibid. An excellent observation of Julian 58 Acts of Justice in punishment and reward  Justine who was born a Cow-heard mounted to the throne of the Emperours of Constantinople 158 The fidelity and goodnesse of Justinian ibid. His greatnesse 159 His nature and manners ibid. His manner of life was austere ib. Some abuse the belief of men in reporting that he could neither reade nor write mistaking Justinian for his uncle Justin ibid. His great love to learning but chiefly Law and Divinity ibid. A great conspiracy against him 160 A speech concerning the mutiny against him ibid. Justinian kept prisoner in his palace and Hypatius is proclaimed Emperour ibid. The stoutest men assail Justinian in his Palace 161 The sedition against Justinian is appeased ibid. The reflux of the affairs of Justinian 164 The defects of Justinian 168 Justinian in the latter end of his age fell into two great errours 169 K THe words of the Wise man directed to the Kings of the times Wisd 6. 131 Kings ought to professe the outward worship and service of God for the performance of his duty and the example of his people 133 Knowledge of ones self 18 Knowledge ought to be moderate 153 L THe prodigious victory which in the end Lotharius gained over himself after a great storm of the passion of love in becomming Religious 113 The cruell handling of Pope Leo. 175 Strange desire of Lewis the eleventh 113 Generous act of Lewis the eleventh 120 An excellent observation of Libanius 81 All happinesse included in Love 1 God the Father of Unions doth draw all to unitie by Love ibid. The sect of Philosophers of the indifferency of Love ibid. The first reason against the indifferency of Love is that thereby he maketh himself as chief end and the God of himself ibid. The second reason is drawn from the communication of creatures 2 A third real on against the indifferency of Love is drawn from the tenderness of great hearts ibid. Wherefore great hearts are most loving 3 Love is the soul of the universe ibid. Love is the superintendent of the great fornace of the world ibi The nature of Love ibid. The definition of Love with its division 4 The steps and progression of Love ibid. The causes of Love ibid. The means to make ones self to be worthily loved ibid. Notable effects of Love in three worlds ibid. Love includeth all blessings 5 There are miserable Lovers in the world ibid. Who loveth too much loveth too little 6 A notable comparison of S. Basil touching Love 9 Love is a strange malady 14 Disasters of evill Love 15 Division of Love ibid Love of humour ibid. Interiour causes of Love 16 The secret attractives of Love ibid. Modification of their opinion who place Love in transportation ib. The senses being well guarded shut up all the gates against Love 17 The miserable estate of one passionately in Love ib. The diversities of Love ib. Evill Angels intermeddle in the great tempests of Love 18 Cruelty of Love on the persons of Lovers ibid. Love is sometime the punishment of pride ib. Advices and remedies against Love in its full 19 The medall of Love hath two faces ib. An excellent conceit of Solomon concerning Love ibid. Disasters of Love in each age and condition 20 Advice to all sorts of persons concerning Love ibid. Diversitie of the maladies of Love and their cures 21 Remedies for the affection of Love which come against our wills ibid. Admirable example of the combate of Saints against Love ib. Separation the first remedie against Love 22 The counsell and assiduity of a good directour is an excellent antidote against Love ibid. The conversation of God with man by the mystery of the incarnation in the consummation of Love 24 The Eucharist the last degree of Love ibid. The Love of Saints towards Jesus ibid. The growth of Love like to pearls 25 The Empire and eminencies of
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
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