surprized by King Ptolomey courting a Mistris of his for which contempt in that instant the Ladie was enforced to drink poison and the unfortunate Courtier was hanged before his own lodging Another minion of the Emperour Constantius after he had mannaged the Julius Capit. affairs wars revenues houshold and person of the Emperour was disgraced and put to death because he presented to his Master at that time incensed with choler a pen ill made for writing to sign certain dispatches withal Macrinus a hunter a fencer Eunapius in Aedes a scrivener became an Oratour then a Fiscal next Pretour of the Palace then Emperour and lastly was massacred with his son Piadumenus Ablavius most powerful under Constantine torn in pieces under Constantius as a victim What circumvolutions what comedies what tragedies what examples to those who in this world have no other aim but to become great casting under foot all laws both divine and humane Out alas It is said that Cambises King of Persia to teach Herod l. 5. justice to a certain President of his who newly then entered into office commanded him to cover the chair of judicature with the skin of Sesamnes his father put to death and flayed because he had been an ill Judge What should he do being seated on this Note woful Tribunal upon the bloud of his father but become wise by a dreadful experience An infinite number of ambitious men are in office and magistracie mounted upon the ruins and bloud of their Predecessours who have made most wicked and deplorable trials and have pursued the same ways without fearing the like event I. Learn O Noblemen that all the greatness of Instructions the world cannot make you great if not by contempt of it All therein is little and yet to despise that little is a great matter II. Know that your fortunes ought to be as the Sixtus in bibliotheca Patrum Non est minimum in humaenâ vitâ negligere minima halcyons nest which seemeth sowed to her bodie Matters most aptly proportioned to our nature are the best What face soever a man sets upon it he is little Much turmoyl of government and affairs may well hinder him but never make him happy III. You must use the honour which God hath Semper circumveniunt montem Sir nunquam ad terram promissionis perveniunt Petrus Blesensis p. 40 allotted you as the coyn of his coffers for which you in his last judgement are accountable and must limit your pretenses and desires with mediocrity otherwise you shall be as they who wandered perpetually about the mountain of Sir without ever arriving at the land of promise Conclusion of the Second Book That the life of a bad Courtier is a perpetual obstacle to virtue TO approve good by words and pursue evil in effect to condemn the world and adore it to desire heaven and be fixed to the earth to love ones self excessively and live perpetually contrary to the better part of our self to seek for peace and live in an everlasting warfare to lodge in one same heart fire and ice sickness and health joy and sorrow death life To command imperiously and obey faintly to be ever abroad and never out of prison to dream without sleep and sleep without repose to be divided to all the world and never within ones self To wish that which cannot be had and contemn what is possessed To seek after that which hath been despised and hourly to change resolution To exercise no piety but by constraint nor reason but by fits Not to avoid one sin but by another and to descend into the precipice with open eyes To take up the buckler after the wound received and to be cured by the overthrow of health To slake thirst with salt water and quench fire with sulphur To have no constancy but for evil nor amity for any thing but that which deserveth it not To have sottish actions and glorious pretexes as much faith as the ice and assurance as the wind To be the slave of a thousand false Deities and not to reflect on the true Divinity To prefer the fetters and onions of Aegypt before the liberty and palms of the heavenly Sion To leave Paradise to follow the gardens of Tantalus and those enchanted Islands which recoyl backward according to the proportion we think to approch them To carry under a smooth countenance a heart spotted as the skin of a panther To joyn a voluptuous life to a penurious avarice to prodigality servitude to predominance nobilitie to baseness pride to misery and envy to pitie To promise without faith swear without regard command without reason appoint without order affect without choise hate without cause walk without a path and to live perpetually banished from ones self so to become too much tyed to ones self This is the life of a Courtier who hath alienated himself from the life of God Adde hereunto that vice is commonly waited on with a most painful life wherein if endeavour be not used to sanctifie it by virtue there is found a hell anticipated where a Paradise is imagined Petrus Blesensis Chancellour to the Archbishop of Epist 4. Canterhury having some time attended in the Court of the King of England recounteth the evils he there found by experience in a letter which he addressed to the Chaplains of the same Prince There he complaineth the Courtiers many times suffer for hell all those pains which S. Paul endured for Heaven For they are exposed to dangers both of sea and land rivers and mountains thieves and false brothers to fasting and watching to weariness and to all the incommodities of human life He hath seen saith he bread and wine served up which one could not put into their mouthes without shutting their eyes such loathing it enforced and viands that killed men under the shew of nutriment He hath known Lords draw their swords for a cabbin which deserved not a battel among hogs He hath seen a Prince who delighted to be attended by officers suddenly surprized to whom he gave notice of his remove when they had physical drugs in their bellies and made them oftentimes run themselves out of breath through forrests and darkness and at other times to pine away in expectation of all that which would but frustrate their hope He hath seen harbingers troublesom before they received gifts and most ungrateful after they had them who made no scruple to put an honestman out of his lodging and to pull him both from table and bed that he might lie in the streets He hath seen at Court porters worse than Cerberus with whom the memory of a benefit lasted not three days and who took pleasure to make those stand in the durt and rain that had obliged them Buffons and jesters found ever free passage nothing but virtue and honesty had a wainscot face shewed them Finally all the plagues of Aegypt dwelt there frogs flies ulcers rivers of
fashion and indeed somewhat too bitter according to her custom Joseph who was desirous to entertain the Queen in the good favour of his Master were it out of folly or drunkenness said Madame your mother Alexandra may tell you what pleaseth her But to give you a clear and ample testimony of King Herod your husband his love know that in case he happen to be put to death he hath commanded me to kill you not being able to abide in the other world without your company At these words the poor Ladies looked pale with horrour Out alas the frantick man said Alexandra in her heart what will he do living if after death he intend to destroy those who are yet alive In the mean time many bruits the dreams of the credulous were spred through Jerusalem that Herod was dead that Mark Anthony had caused him to be executed he being convicted of the murder of Aristobulus whether these rumours were divulged by Herods enemies or whether himself caused them to be secretly buzzed to try the face and disposition of the times The wise Mariamne seemed to believe nothing Alexandra grew passionate and bated like a hawk on the pearch entreating Joseph with all possible supplications he would remove them from Court and conduct them to the Court of Guard of the Roman Legions disposing them into the hands of Colonel Julius from thence to pass to Mark Anthony for she vehemently desired this Prince might see her daughter perswading herself that so soon as he should behold her he would be taken with her beauty and doe any thing in her favour These intentions being oblique were unhappy in the success and all Alexandras pursuits served her for no other purpose but to vent her passion In the end Herod returneth victorious with authenticke Return of Herod testimonies of his justification and Anthonies amity notwithstanding the endeavours of Cleopatra God reserving this parricide for a life like Cain attended with a death most dreadful His mother and sister fayled not presently upon his arrival to serve him up a dish of their own dressing and to tell him the design which Alexandra had to put herself into the power of the Romans Salome envious against Mariamne even to fury steeping her serpentine tongue in the gall of black slander accused her of some secret familiarity with Joseph whereupon Herod who was extreamly jealous thought in that very instant to ruin her and so drawing Mariamne aside he demanded of her from whence this correspondence grew which she had contracted with Joseph The most chaste Queen who never went out of the lists of patience shewed her self both with eye visage countenance word to be so penetrated with this cursed calumny that well the trayterous wretch perceived how far she was alienated from such thoughts and verily being ashamed to have uttered such words he asked pardon of her bemoaning with scalding tears his credulity giving her many thanks for her fidelity and making a thousand protestations of an everlasting affection The good Ladie who was displeased to behold such hypocrisie said covertly to him That truly it was an argument of love to his wife to desire her company in the other world He who understood by half a word presently perceived what she would say and entered into such desperate fury that he seemed as a mad man tearing his beard and hair of his head and crying out Joseph had betrayed him and that it was apparent he had great correspondence with Mariamne otherwise so enormous bruitishness would never have escaped any man as to reveal such a secret Thereupon he commandeth Joseph should be killed in the place to serve as a victim at his return not consenting to see him nor hear one sole word of his justification It was a great chance he had not at that time finished the sacrifice of his intemperate cruelty and that to satisfie his chymerical humour he had not put Mariamne to death But the irrefragable proofs of her innocency and the impatient ardours of his love withheld the stroke onely to make the sparkles of his choller flie further off he discharged it upon Alexandra shutting her up for a time keeping her a part from the Queen her daughter and doubtlesly resolving with himself it was in her shop where all these counsels plotted for his ruin were forged and fyled Certain time after Herod saw himself embarqued Troublesom affairs of Hâ—rod in another business which he thought to be at least as perillous as the former Mark Anthony who always had lent his shoulders to underprop him after he had for a long time stroven against the fortune of Augustus Caesar fell to the ground in the Actiack battel ending his hopes and life with a most mournfull catastrophe This accident struck the Tyrant more than one would think seeing his support ruined his affairs which he supposed to have been so well established in one night dissolved and that he had him for an enemy who was in a fair way to become Emperour of the world His friends and enemies judged him as a lost man He who already had escaped so many ship-wracks despaireth not at all in this extremity but resolves to seek out Caesar who was then at Rhodes and prostrate himself at his feet But before he set a step forward he did an act wholly barbarous and inhumane Hircanus the true and lawful King who by his Most lamentable death of Hircanus sweetness and facility had first raised Antipater and afterward saved Herod's life seating him in the Regal throne to the prejudice of his own allies was as yet alive worn even with decrepitness for he now was past eightie years of age The Tyrant fearing lest he being the onely remainder of the bloud Royal should again be re-established in the throne by the suppliant request of the people who much affected his innocency seeing him already upon the brink of his grave threw him head-long into it tearing out his soul with bruitish violence which he was ready to yield up to nature Some held this was meer crueltie without any colour of justice wherewith this diabolical Prince was wont to palliate his actions Others write that Hircanus days were shortened upon this occasion Alexandra being not able to put off her ambition Ambition of Alexandra causeth the death of her father but with her skin seeing Herod gone upon a voyage from which it was likely he should never return sollicites her father Hircanus shews him the time is come wherein God will yet again make his venerable age flourish in Royal purple The Tyrant is involved in snares from which he can never free himself Fortune knocketh at the gate of Hircanus to restore the Diadem which is due to him by birth-right and taken away by tyranny It onely remaineth that he a little help himself and his good hap will accomplish the rest Hircanus answereth her Daughter the time is come wherein I should rather think of my grave than a Regal
her it was a thing in the judgement of all those who would truly weigh it very far from her thought since she had always more feared King Herods love than hatred Lastly that she made no reckoning of life wherein she had suffered too much sorrow yea much less of the Court from whence she never received any contentment and that if they would oppress her by false testimonies it was easie to gain victory of one who made no resistance more easie to take the Diadem from her head and her head from her shoulders but most hard to bereave her of the reputation of a Princess of honour which she had of her Ancestours and would carry to her tomb The poor creature was like a silly sheep in the Lions throat or among the paws of many wolves They proceeded to sentence all tended to baseness It was supposed the King was willing to be rid of her and that sufficed Never was any one to be found who had the courage to plead the cause of this innocent Queen or in any sort to mollifie the passion of Herod All those consciences were oppressed either with crimes or cowardise from whence it came to pass these false Judges did more for the Tyrant than he desired for they all resolved upon death He himself was surprized with horrour though he were wholly a bloudy man and commandeth she should be kept in a prison of the Palace with delay of execution thinking perhaps by that means to make her more plyant to his passion But the enraged Salome who had raised this storm not willing to do any business to halves approched to the King her brother and shewed him such birds were not to be kept in cages that his life and crown thereby ran into hazard that already all tended to a revolt and that if he delayed this execution he hastened the ruin of himself and his whole state Whereupon Herod let fall this word Let her be taken away And behold instantly an officer dispatched to the good Queen who brought her the news of the last hour of her life saluting her with a low reverence and saying Madame Invincible patience and very admirable the King commandeth you must presently die She without any disturbance said Let us then go my friend it cannot be so soon for King Herod but it will be as late for me and speaking this word she set forward and went directly to the place of execution without change of colour having a sweet aspect which drew tears from the whole world To crown her patience as she was ready to receive the stroke of death Alexandra her own mother the companion of her imprisonment the Guardian of her thoughts who had ever been one heart with her betraying bloud nature and all piety by a mischievous trick of state thereby avoiding the suspition of Herod as consenting to her daughters humour came to charge her with most bloudy injuries Barbarous act of Alexandra and it was a great chance she had not taken this poor Ladie by the hair to dreg her up and down the pavement saying to her with the foam of boyling choller That she was wicked and extreamly proud and well deserved to die in that manner by shewing herself refractory to so good a husband Behold verily the greatest indignity which could happen in such an accident There is no better honey nor worse sting than that of bees no better amities nor greater injuries than of allies The patient Mariamne onely made her this answer Mother let my soul pass in peace which already is upon my lips and trouble not the repose of my death and with a generous silence shutting her mouth up to further replies Heroick silence and opening her heart to God the onely witness of her innocency most unworthily used stretched out her neck to the executioner to seal with her bloud the last testimonies of her patience Josephus speaketh not expresly enough of the punishment she doubtless being executed in the manner at that time ordinary which was to behead offenders Most pitifull death of that quality This day-break which bare stil in the rays thereof joy refreshment to the poor afflicted souls through the horrible confusions of tyranny was then extinct in her bloud Yea the eyes of all the standers by bathed in tears beheld her in her eclipse when that fore-head full of Royal Majesty was seen couragiously to affront approaching death which maketh the most confident to tremble and when this alabaster neck was stretched out and bowed under the shining steel to be separated from this beauteous body a shivering horrour crept into the What horrour bones of all the beholders and there was no rock so hard which afforded not the water of tears before she poured out her bloud The head was separated from the body and the body from the soul But the soul never shall be divided from God raising to death such a trophey of patience The limbs lay all cold and stiff extended on the place and the voice of innocent bloud which already penetrated the clouds to ask vengeance of God was instantly heard as you shall understand onely I beseech you stay to behold the Pourtraict and Elogie of the good Queen by us here inserted MARIAMNE REGINA MARIAMNE REGINA MACHABAEORUM STIRPE INCLYTA HERODIS PESSIMI OMNIUM VIRI UXOR OPTIMA FORMA CORPORIS SUPRA CAETERAS EXIMIAANIMI ETIAM VIRTUTIBUS MAJOR INTEGERRIMAE PUDICITIAE ET INELUCTABILIS PATIENTIAE FOEMINA INIQUISSIMIS CALUMNIIS OPPRESSA MARITI GLADIO REGIAS CERVICES DEDIT ANNO ANTE CHRISTI NATALEM VIGESSIMO OCTAVO Upon the Picture of MARIAMNE FOrtune a heavenly beauty did engage To a fell husband who through boundless rage Practiz'd fierce tyranny and foul debate As well in love as in his Royal state She liv'd on gall upon the sword she dy'd Soon in the Lamb's bloud to be purifi'd The Cross so to prevent in pains pertake With patient God mishaps thrice-happy make Which after death immortalize her story And from her body take less bloud than glory Thus from the world this holy Queen remov'd Breaths forth affections to her God belov'd And her great soul to heav'n in silence rears Purg'd in her flame washed with her tears Who bravely so both lives and leaveth breath Makes of a dying life a living death THe disloyal husband who so inhumanely had treated a Ladie worthy of all honour as soon as she rendered up her soul as if he had been strucken by some invisible dart cried out with grief and said he had done an act worthy the wrath of Fury of Herod after the death of Mariamne God then dreadfully howling he ceaselesly invoked the memory and name of the poor dead creature to whom he by his sorrows could not again restore what had been taken from her by the sword of the executioner Wheresoever he went he still was accompanyed with the image of his crime still tormented and assailed with black furies
civil life which happeneth to them through depraved habits and inordinate idleness whereinto they have suffered themselves to slide from their tender years or by some other corruptions of a melancholy spirit which they soment to the prejudice of their repose These kind of natures are good neither in the countrey citie house-keeping nor in religion For we find that in all things we must use endeavour and that we came into the world as into a galley where if one cannot manage either the stern or oar he must at the least make a shew to stir his arms and imitate the Philosopher Diogenes who roled his tub up and down wherin it was said he inhabited to busie himself For my August l. â— de Civit. Dei Philo de sacri Abel Cain part I like well those people who banished all idle gods out of their walls and retained such as enjoyned travel For to live and take pains is but one and the same thing and that which the nourishment we take operateth for the preservation of life labour doth the like for accommodation thereof In the fifth station you have women of the sea who Non est ira super iram mulieris Eccles 15. much deceive the world by their fair semblances for they at first appear quiet and peaceable as a sea in the greatest calm having no want of grace or beauty which promiseth much good to those who know them not but one would not believe how they shift away upon the least wind of contradiction which is raised how they are puffed up and become unquiet with anger love avarice jealousie and other passions very active Such an one seeth the flower of the thorn who knoweth not the pricking thereof and such an one beholdeth with admiration those excellent beauties who cannot believe how many pricks and stings they cover under these imaginary sweetnesses You shall therein ordinarily observe very great levity and impatience which maketh them hourly to change their resolution in such sort that they think nothing so miserable as to remain still in one and the same condition I have seen young widows who had washed S. Zeno Hoâ— de continent the bodies of their husbands with their tears wiped them away with their hairs and as it were worn it by force of kisses and who not content with these ardent affections discharging the surplusage of their passion upon their own proper bodies tore their hair pulled their cheeks were rather covered with dust than apparel They died every hour saying they could not live one sole moment without their best-beloved and filled the air and earth with their complaints which was the cause why such as came to the funerals knew not whether they should bewail the dead or the dying Notwithstanding presently after these goodly counterfeitings they began again to reform their hair and change the dust of the pavement into the powder of Cypress to put painting upon their tears to adorn with a carcanet of pearl the neck which they seemed to destine to a halter to seek for Oracles from their looking-glass and to do all things as if death and love conspired to make their feast in one and the same Inn. I have observed others who being yet under the yoak were the best servants in the world but as soon as they saw themselves at liberty there were no worse mistresses than they There are noted to be in the heart of a woman the passions of a tyrant and should they continually have wheels and gibbets at their command the world would become a place of torture and execution Never have I seen passions more hard to vanquish for in the end the sea which threateneth the world to make but one element suffereth it self to be distinguished into ditches by little grains of sand which stayed it with the commission they received thereupon from God but when a woman letteth the reins of her passion go there is not as it were neither law divine or humane which can recal her spirit to reason Fair maids take ever from the modesty of your hearts the laws which may be given you by justice In the sixth degree are the natures of the Ape who Custodi te à muliere mâ—lâ— Prov. 6. have a certain malice spightfull and affected and such spirits may be found of this kind who day and night dream on nothing but mischief They are filled with false opinions sinister judgements disdains smothered choller discontents acerbities in such sort that the ray of the prosperity of a neighbour reflecting on their eyes makes them sigh and groan And as those Apes which sculck in the shop of a Trades-man mar his tools disturb his works scatter his labours and turn all topsie-turvie So these malicious creatures spie occasions to trouble a good affair to dissolve a purpose well intended to overthrow a counsel maturely diliberated to cause a retardation on the most just desires and frustrate the most harmless delights How many times do we behold the sun to rise chearful and resplendent in a bright morning and every one is abashed to see a mist arise which in this serenity doth that which blemishes on a fair body It is said it sometimes proceedeth from a sorceress which darkeneth that glorious eye of the day with her charms And how often have you observed prosperities more radiant than the clearest summers day which have been cloyed with duskie vapours by the secret practises of a woman who biteth the bridle in some nook of a chamber Fair maids malice is an ill trade It ever drinketh down at least the moity of the poison which it mingled for others In the seventh Region there are some kind of owls Mulicrum penus avarissimum or wild-cats certain creatures enemies of day of all conversation all civility and all decorum who having received from God many honest enablements to adorn life and to do good to persons necessitous so lock up their entrails that you may sooner extract honey and manna from flints than get a good turn out of their hands How is it possible they should be courteous to oblige their likes since they are many times cruel to themselves defrauding themselves of the necessities of life which are as it were as common as elements to satisfie a wicked passion of avarice that gnaweth them with a kind of fury For they endure in abundance part of that which the damned suffer in flames perpetually and fearing lest the earth may fail them they bewail what is past they complain of the present they apprehend the future they love life onely to hold money in prison and fear not death but for the expence must be made at their funerals Let us take heed we resemble not those fountains Fountain Garamant Holunicus S. Bonaventura in dieta which are so cold in the day that they cannot be drunk and so hot in the night that none dare come near them Let us do good both in life and death
I say O God how little is the world Is it for this we deceive we swear and make a divorce between God and us But admit we were not interessed in this action must we not rest on the law of God who maketh life and ordaineth death by the juridical power of his wisdom ever to be adored by our wills though little penetrable to understanding Will you I pronounce an excellent saying of Tertullian The world is the Vterus naturae An excellent coÌ„ceit drawn from the words of Tertullian belly of Nature and men are in it as children in the mothers womb the birth of men are the world 's child-bearings death its lying in and deliveries Would you not die to hinder the world from bringing forth and unburdening it self by the way the Sovereign Master hath appointed it We have seen Tyrants of all sorts some invented exquisite torments and tryals others forbade eating and drinking some to weep some caused children to be taken from the teat to strangle them and cut their throats as Pharaoh and Herod But never was there any amongst them who forbade women with child to be delivered The world hath for a long space been big with you and would not you have it to be delivered at the time God's counsels have ordained Were it a handsom thing think you to see an infant presently to have teeth and articulate speech and yet if it might be would stay in the mothers womb using no other reason but that there is warm being Judge now and take the even ballance if the world be the belly of nature if this good mother bare us the time Gods providence appointed if she now seek her deliverie that we may be born in the land of the living in a quite other climate another life another light are not we very simple to withstand it as little infants who crie when they issue out of bloud and ordure at the sight of day-light yet would not return thither from whence they came 4. Behold the Providence of God in that which Providence in the death of the vicious Boet. l. 4. de consol Cum supplicis carent inesâ— illis aliquid alteriuâ— mali ipsâ— impunitâ—s S. Eucher in paraenesi concerneth death in the generality of all men Let us see in this second point the like providence towards the wicked the vicious rich and proud Great-ones who spit against Heaven We must first establish a most undoubted maxim that there is nothing so unhappy as impunity of men abandoned to vice which is the cause the paternal providence of God arresteth them by the means of death dictating unto them an excellent lesson of their equality with other men Mortals circumvolve in life and death as Heaven on the pole artick and antartick from east to west the same day which lengtheneth our life in the morning shorteneth it in the evening and all Ages walk that way not any one being permitted to return back again Our fore-fathers passed on we pass and our posteritie follows us in the like course you may say they are waves of the sea where one wave drives another and in the end all come to break against a rock What a rock is death There are above five thousand years that it never ceaseth to crush the heads of so many mortals and yet we know it not I remember to this purpose a notable tradition of the Hebrews related by Masius upon Josuah to wit Masius in Josuah Notable action of Noah that Noah in the universal deluge which opened the flood-gates of Heaven to shake the columns of the world and bury the earth in waters in stead of gold silver and all sort of treasure carried the bones of Adam into the Ark and distributing them among his sons said Take children behold the most precious inheritance your father can leave you you shall share lands and seas as God shall appoint but suffer not your selves to be intangled in these vanities which are more brittle than glass more light than smoke and much swifter than the winds My children all glideth away here below and there is nothing which eternally subsisteth Time it self which made us devours and consumeth us Learn this lesson from these dumb Doctours the relicks of your grand-father which will serve you for a refuge in your adversities a bridle in your prosperities and a mirrour at all times Moreover I affirm death serves for a perfect lesson of justice to the wicked which they were never willing throughly to understand for it putteth into equality all that which hazard passion and iniquity had so ill divided into so many objects Birth maketh men equal since they receive nought else from their mothers womb but ignorance sin debility and nakedness but after they come out of the hands of the midwife some are put into purple and gold others into rags and russets some enter upon huge patrimonies where they stand in money up to the throat practise almost nothing else throughout their whole life but to get by rapine with one hand and profusely spend with the other Some live basely and miserably necessitous A brave spirit able to govern a large Common-wealth is set to cart by the condition of his poverty Another becomes a servant to a coxcomb who hath not the hundreth part of his capacity It is the great Comedie of the world played in sundry fashions for most secret reasons known to Divine Providence would you have it last to eternity See you not Comedians having played Kings and beggars on the stage return to their own habit unless they day and night desire to persist in the same sport And what disproportion is there if after every one have played his part in the world according to the measure of time prescribed him by Providence he resume his own habit I also adde it is a kind of happiness for the wicked to die quickly because it is unfit to act that long which is very ill done And since they so desperately use life it is expedient not being good it be short that shortness of time may render the malice of it less hurtfull If examples of their like who soon die make them apprehensive of the same way and how seasonably to prepare for death it is a singular blessing for them But if persisting in contempt they be punished it is God's goodness his justice be understood and that it commandeth even in hell 5. But if at this present you reflect on the death of the Just which you should desire I say God's Providence there brightly appeareth in three principal things which are cessation from travels and worldly miseries the sweet tranquility of departure and fruition of crowns and rewards promised First you must imagine what holy Job said That The sweetnes of the death of the just Iob 3. Qui expectant mortem quasi effodientes thesaurum Tert. de pallio Homo pellitus orbi quasi metallo datur this life is to the just as
best testimony of full satisfaction As he departed the King came in and then it appeared Love and Piety how Grace and Nature wrought their effects for the innocent Queen fashioning her countenance and her words to the most sensible passion spake thus unto him Alas and wherefore thus SIR Is this that I have deserved for loving you above all the men in the world Must I be forced from your friendship to adhere to my most cruel Enemies If I have deserved death for doing you all the good that lay in the possibility of my power what hath this little Innocent in my womb commited whom I do not preserve but onely to increase your power The Excess of these violent proceedings will tear away the life both from the Mother and the child and then I am afraid you will too late discover the violence and rage of those who perswade you to destroy that which you should hold most dear and to bury your self in my ruins As she spake these words and mixed them with The King reconciled with the Queen her tears the Kings heart was softened into compassion Upon his knees he demanded pardon breathing forth many sighs accompanied with groans and tears of love And having declared to her the conspiracy that was plotted for her ruine he told her That he now came either to live or to die with her This confidence did greatly rejoyce her and having exhorted him above all things to appease the anger of God and particularly to have recourse unto his mercy she gave him instructions necessary for him she counselled him to dissemble this their love and make not the least discovery of it to the Conspiratours but onely to represent unto them that he had found the Queen very ill and that the violence of her malady might be as strong as poison or steel to take her out of the world That there was now no more need of keeping any Guard upon her for in passing affairs according to their advice he would answer for her if God should not otherwise dispose of her This counsel was followed and after the King had perswaded the Rebels to what he had desired he returned to his dear wife and about midnight both of them saved themselves nine or ten thousand armed men being drawn together by the diligence of the Earl of Bothuel who in one morning made the whole rebellion to vanish with the Rebels Now the Earl of Murray had re-possest himself Choller and Vengeance Nejudicial of the favour and good opinion of the Queen but the King who well understood the pernicious counsels of which he was the Authour and that he made him serve to be his instrument at the death of the Secretary could by no means endure him and though the good Queen who would have nothing done violently had expresly charged the contrary he was resolved to seize upon him But Murray apprehending the ill intent of the King towards him did by a most detestable crime prevent it by drawing to him the Earl of Bothuel a man bold of spirit and of hand and prevailing on him to massacre the King assuring him that he should marry the Queen if ever he arrived to the end of his fatal Enterprize This miserable King whom Jealousie had transported to the cruel murder of the Secretary was now again fully reconciled to his wife and loved her most tenderly and conceived an extream pitie to see her youth intangled among such pernicious counsels of her enemies He was then at Glasco sick of the Small-pox which the Queen understanding she immediately repaired thither to bring him unto Edingborough where were better accommodations for him At the same time Horrible inventions of Envy and Vengeance the Conspiratours assembled themselves to accomplish their Design and moreover they had a desire to involve the Queen and her Son in the same ruin but they feared that it would be too apparent and it would be more expedient for them to bring all the Envy of the death of the husband upon the head of his wife whom they conceived to be still highly offended for his ill demeanour towards her To which purpose they undertook to torment her spirit and prompt her to thoughts of vengeance which they never could effect so strong was the new knot of their reconciled love They deliberated amongst themselves to put this miserable Prince to death by fire and because it was inconvenient to perform it in the Palace they entered into counsel amongst themselves to remove him into a fair house which was at the upper end of the Citie where they had prepared a fatal Myne for his destruction His sickness being such the Queen accorded to his removal and very innocently did take her husband by the hand and did conduct him to the Entery of his Lodging where with a singular prudence she disposed of every thing which concerned the recovery of his health And not contented with that she stayed with him without the apprehension of any danger of infection which put the Plotters of this delicate conspiracy into fear but she seemed to be nothing troubled at it and staying with him until midnight she entertained him with all the satisfaction that he could expect from so bountifull a Nature As soon as she was retired behold by the secret The death of Henry Stuart artifice of the powder to which fire was given under the lodging of the King the chamber was blown into the Air and the bed all on fire He found himself to be desperately in wrapped in this calamity and the Authours of the Mischief conspiring with the Elements did dispatch him outright having found him half dead in a Garden into which place the violence of the fire had thrown him The Queen hearing of it was possessed with a wonderfull amazement and lost in the depth of sorrow she feared every thing and knew not what to do or what to hope every hour attending to see the end of that Tragedy to be the beginning of another on her own life The malicious Earl of Murray who now had given the blow by the instrument of his wickedness as he had spoken a little before to those that were nearest to him that the King should die the same night did cunningly retire himself The people murmured and knew not what to take to but the clearest sighted amongst them perceived that it was a work of this pernicious Brother who had a desire utterly to destroy the Royal Family to mount himself upon the Throne And this is that which Cambden assureth us in the Cambden in the first part of his History in the year 1567. first part of his History who though by Religion he was a Calvinist and by profession the Historiographer to the Queen of England yet he hath not dissembled the truth in confirmation whereof he produceth proofs as clear as the day with the attestations of the Earls of Huntley and Argathel two principal Lords of Scotland who
informed that Walsingham one amongst you who hath conspired my death and the death of my Son doth make use of such artifices and hath counterfeited a letter from me in answer to that of Babingtons which he intercepted The other innocently believed it and took his oath that it came from me but all this is no more than one simple conjecture There should be a million of witnesses more clear than the rays of the Sun to impeach a Sovereign Queen who comprehends within her Authority so many millions of lives And a man unknown a man half dead is believed against me who spake all that he knew and that he knew not to deliver himself from the horrible cruelties of his Examiners Let them produce but one letter of my hand one shadow of the crime and I will yield my self convinced I speak it in the sincerity of my heart and of the tears of my eyes I would not conquer a Kingdom with the bloud of the vilest person picked out of the scum of the people much less with the bloud of a Queen I will never make a shipwrack of my soul in conspiring the ruin of a person to whom I have vowed so much honour and friendship For my Secretaries I did alwayes take them for honest men if they do charge me and accuse me in their Depositions to have dictated an Answer to Babington's letter they have committed two great faults the first in violating the Oath which they have made to be secret and faithfull to their Mistress the second in inventing so detestable a Calumny against her to whom they ow all Reverence and Fidelity In a manner all the belief that you draw from them doth amount to more than that it comes form perfidious men O good God In what a desperate condition is the Majesty and the safety of Princes if they depend upon the writings and the witnesses of their Secretaries in affairs of so high a consequence How many are of them who prostitute themselves to the uncertainty of riches How many of them for fear onely do comply with the menaces of the great-ones They are men of Fortune who follow the ebb and flow of Inconstancy If those poor men have taken their Oaths as you say it was onely to deliver themselves from the horrour of your torments and put all upon the crowned head of a Queen which they thought was inaccessible to your Commissions But what Lawyers are you to put Babington to death without bringing him before me face to face To open his mouth by torments to tell a lie and then to shut it up for ever against the Truth If my Secretaries are yet alive let them come into my presence and I assure my self that they will not persist in that Deposition which you object against me Doth it not easily appear that you proceed here on a bad belief and that you borrow these poor Formalities to give some slight tincture to your prejudgings I never did dictate any thing to my servants but what Nature did suggest unto me for the recovering of my liberty This is the third Objection of your Proces And I demand of you if I have not committed a great crime to desire a benefit which every common voice doth teach us which the laws do approve which all men do practise which Nature prompts the Nightingales and every little Bird unto that are imprisoned in their Cages what can he do less that sees himself in irons but implore the assistances of his friends and desire that some strong hand of mercy might open the prison for him I confess I have had the desire of liberty but I deny that I sought the effect thereof by that means which you alledge It is a strange thing that a Prisoner all whose action are spied into and every step she treads is counted should do the affair which great Sovereigns though of a free and most absolute power could not remove So many years are now passed since I have been as it were in the chains of miserable captivity yet neither the offers which I have made nor the assurances which I have given nor the increase of my sickness nor the declining of my age could move my Sister to my inlargement Have I not offered to contract a strict Friendship with her to cherish her to respect her above all the Princes in Christendom to forget all offences to acknowledge her the true and legitimate Queen of England submitting all my Rights to the benefit of her peace neither to pretend to nor take any part of the Crown during her life and to remove both the Title and the Arms of the Kingdom of England which I did attribute to my self by the commandment of Henrie the Second King of France And yet all these submissions have prevailed nothing for my Deliverance Am I so much to be blamed if I have desired forreign Princes my Friends and my Allies to draw me out from the depth of these miseries And yet I neither have nor was ever willing to confirm into the hands of the King of Spain the Right which he pretended to the Crown of England although he hath been angry with me concerning it but I have given respect unto my Sister so far that I have neglected both my life and liberty to satisfie her interests and have delighted my self with the prayers of Esther and not with the sword of Judith But I now speak and declare that since England is inequitable and so unkind unto me that I neither ought nor will misprise the aid of other Kings I have here sincerely declared my thoughts and my counsels to you on this Accusation and if Right and Equity must give way to Power and Force must oppress the Truth amongst men I do appeal to the living God who hath an absolute Empire of command over Elizabeth and my self I swear unto you by God and protest unto you on my honour that for this long time I have had my thoughts on no Kingdom but onely that of Heaven which I look on as the haven after my long sufferings I believe I have now satisfied all your Objections And you know indeed in your own conscience that nothing doth charge me but my birth nor render me guilty but my Religion But I will not deny that to which by Gods goodness I am born nor remove the character which I received in the day of my Baptism I have lived and I will die a Catholick It is the crime alone for which I need no Advocate to defend me in which I desire all the world to be my witness and fear not the severest Judges The poor Princess did mingle these words with her tears fore-seeing the persecution of her friends and considering how barbarously her Royal Dignity was exposed to the Advocates of the Palace who did all seem to have sworn her death Howsoever in their consciences they were touched to the quick because that what she represented was most true even by the
with lightening flashes transpasseth through the abysses and maketh hell it self confess it hath not darkness enough to shadow it from his face Now so it is that God condemneth reproveth chastiseth with the particular indignation of his heart this plaistered life and therefore as the Lev. 11. 18. The swan and the Ostrich rejected by God Interpreters of the Scripture observe he rejected the swan notwithstanding the whiteness of her feathers and the sweetness of note which is ascribed to her nor would he ever admit her in the number of his victimes because under pure white feathers she hideth a black flesh For the same reason he never would have the Ostrich who hath onely the ostentuous boasts of wings and no flight so much he detesteth apparence fruitless and effectless First or last he will saith holy Job take away Job 18. 19. the mask so that the life of hypocrites shall be as the spiders web in the judgement of God they shall think they have sped well but even to have hidden themselves all shall be resolved into thing to make them appear what they are in a most ignominious nakedness They now are Panthers who have their skins spotted with mirrours that search out secret fountains to wash away the ordures and impressions of their crimes as it is related of this creature But the day of God will come when as the Prophet Waters of Panthers Isaiah 15. Aquae Nimrim siccabuntur Isaiah saith the Panthers waters shall wholly be dried and soaked up that is to say as Ailredus interpreteth it that all the counterfeitings and dissimulations of the world shall find no more water to whiten them We all naturally fear the publication of our vices so sensible we are in the touches of honour Those poor Milesian maids who moved with enraged despair ran to halters and steepie precipices could never be diverted from this fury either by the sweet admonishment of their parents or rigorous menaces of Judges but when by decree the naked bodies of those who had violated the law of nature by this most wicked attempt were cast upon the dung-hill the onely apprehension of nakedness and of the nakedness of a bodie bereaved of sense stayed the course of these execrable frenzies And without speaking of ancient Histories William Bishop of Lions relateth that a certain Damsel painted in an Age when simplicity was in great esteem as she went along in a procession behold by chance an Ape came Trick of an Ape out of a shop who leaped on her shoulders and took off her coif and made a little deformity appear covered under painting and dissimulation whereby she felt herself overwhelmed with dolour and confusion If the small affronts and disgraces which we receive in the world have so much force what will it be then when the Sovereign Judge shall take away the scarf and make a cauterized conscience appear What will it be when with as many torches and burning lights as there then shall be of Angels and of the elect by his side he shall penetrate even to the bottom of a lost soul Where then shall be his plaisterings where his dissimulations and hypocrisies in the abyss of this confusion It is a thing which we rather may meditate on in silence than express in words Upon these considerations resolve with your selves to build your salvation upon the firm rock of truth and not on a vain reputation upon the slippery moving sands of human apparences Imitate that good King father of S. Lewis who bare a scepter made like an obelisk in a ring with this devise Volo solidum Tipotius in Simbol perenne as who should say all his intentions aimed at heaven and eternity Make a determinate purpose as much as possibly you may to avoid in your apparel in your hair in your words in your actions all sorts of affectation of hypocrisie of folly as things base sottish ridiculous August l. 83. quaest Summa divina virtus est neminem decipere ultimum vitium est quemlibet decipere and wicked ever remembering this sentence of S. Augustine A great and divine virtue is to deceive no man The last and most mischievous of all vices is to deceive the whole world The sixth OBSTACLE Ill husbanding of time A Notable fable maketh the spider and the silk-worm A notable fable to speak together telling their fortune in a pretty pleasing manner and greatly replenished with moral instruction The poor spider complaineth she laboureth night and day to make her webs with so much fervour and diligence that she unbowelleth herself pouring forth her substance and strength to accomplish her work yet notwithstanding her endeavour so little prospereth as that after she hath brought this her web to perfection a silly servant comes with a broom and in an instant undoes what she could not produce perhaps scarcely in ten years But if it happen she escape from this persecution which seldom is seen in great mens houses yet all the fruit she may expect from so much toyl is but to take some wretched flie in her web Behold you not herein sufficient cause to bewail her misery The silk-worm quite contrary boasteth herself to be one of the most happy creatures which lives on the face of the earth For saith he I am sought after as if I were a precious diamond I am exported from forreign countries happy is he who best can lodge breed entertain and cherish me men bend all their industrie to serve my easeful repose and commodities If I travel my pain is well bestowed but be it how you will silly spider that you take flies I captivate Kings The greatest Monarchs of the earth are involved in my threeds Queens and great Ladies make of my works the entertainment of their beauties and the Potentates which will not depend upon any are dignified by a little worm The four corners of the earth divide my labours with admiration and not being able to go higher although I reach not to Heaven yet I behold the Altars glitter under the embellishments which issue from my entrails And verily there is great difference between the travel of the spider and pain of the silk-worm The industrie of these two little creatures do naturally figure unto us two sorts of persons whereof the one laboureth for vanity the other for verity All men coming into this life enter thereinto as into a shop of toyl which is as natural to them as flight for birds A great man after Adamus de Sancto Victore A worthy Epitaph Conceptio culpa nasci poena necesse mori he had well considered this sentence of Job caused these words to be inscribed on his tomb well worthy of ponderation that is to say Man entereth into being by the gate of not being as he who is as soon in sin as in nature his birth is a punishment his life a travel and his death a necessity And very well Tertullian observeth that
hypocrisie its body a spunge of ordures its hands the tallons of harpies and finally it seemeth to have no other faith but infidelity no law but its passion no other God but its own belly What contentment can it be to live with such a monster VII If there be pleasures in life they do nothing 7 Quality of worldly pleasures but a little slightly overflow the heart with a superficial delectation Sadnesse diveth into the bottom of our soul and when it is there you will say it hath feet of lead never to forsake the place but pleasure doth sooth us onely in the outward parts of the skin all her sweet waters run down with full speed into the salt sea Behold wherefore S. Augustin August Conf. l. 6. cap. 5. said when any prosperity presented it self to his eyes he durst not touch it He looked upon pleasure as on a fleeting bird which seemeth as it were ready to be seyzed and flieth away as soon as ever she sees her self almost surprized VIII Pleasures are born in the senses and like 8 Their shortness abortives are consumed in their birth Their desires are full of disturbances their access is of violent forced and turbulent agitations Their satiety is farced with shame and repentance They pass away after they have wearied the body and leave it like a bunch of grapes the juice whereof is extracted by the press as saith S. Bernard They hold it a goodly Bern. Serm. 10. in Cantic Nulla maior voluptas quam voluptatis fastidium Turtul de syect 9. The end matter to extend their fulness They must end with life and it is a great hazard if during life it self they serve not their host for an executioner I see no greater pleasure in the world than the contempt of pleasure IX Man which wasteth his time in pleasures when they are slipped away much like waters engendred by a storm findeth himself abandoned as a pilgrim dispoiled by a thief So many golden harvests which time presented to him are passed and the rust of a heavy age furnisheth him with nothing but thorns sorrows to have done ill and inabilities of doing well what then remains to be said but that which the miserable King said who gave his scepter for a glass of water Alas must I for so short Lysimachus a pleasure loose so great a Kingdom X. Evil always beareth sorrow behind it but not 10. Difficulty of penance true penance It is a most particular favour of God to have time to bemoan the sins of our passed life and to take occasion by the fore-lock Many are packed away into the other world without ever having thought of their passage and such suppose they shall have many tears at their death who shall not have one good act of repentance They bewail the sins which forsake them and not God whom they have lost True contrition is a hard piece of work Facilius inveni qui innocentiam servarent quam qui congruè poenitentiam agerent Ambr. l. de unica poenitent c. 10. 11. Death How can he merit it who willingly hath ever demerited XI In the mean time death cometh apace it expecteth us at all hours in all places and you cannot attend it one sole minute so much this thought displeaseth you The decrees thereof are more clear and perspicuous than if they were written with the beams of the Sun and yet we cannot read them His trumpet soundeth perpetually more intelligibly than thunder and we understand it not It is no wonder that David in the 48. Psalm calleth it an Psal 48. 5. According to the Hebrew 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 aenigma every one beholdeth the table and few knoweth the sense of it Notwithstanding it is a case concluded we must take a long fare-well from all things which appertain to life that can be extended no further than life it self and it is a case resolved that serpents and worms must be inherited in a house of darkness It is a goodly lesson whosoever can well learn it To know it well once it must every day be studied Nothing is seen every where but watches clocks and dyals some of gold some of silver and others enchased with precious stones They advertise us of all the hours but that which should be our last and since they cannot strike that hour we must make it sound in our conscience At the very instant when you read this a thousand and a thousand perhaps of souls unloosened from the body are presented before the Tribunal of God what would you do if you were presently to bear them company There is but one word Timely despise Diordorus apud S. Maximum serm Omnia ista contemnito quibus solutus corpore non indigebis 12. What followeth death Apoc. 14 Tertul. de anima c. 53. Hug. l. 4. de anima in your bodie the things of which you shall have no need out of your bodie XII Your soul shall go out and of all the attendants of life shall have none but good and bad by her sides If she be surprized in mortal sin hell shall be her share hell the great lake of the anger of God hell the common sewer of all the ordures of the world hell the store-house of eternal fire hell a depth without bottom where there is no evil but we may expect nor good which may be hoped Behold the twelve considerations which this most worthy man used to direct himself in the course of a virtuous life and they so far had prevailed upon his soul that he resolved after he had finished certain works which he then had in hand to distribute all his goods among the poor and go bare-foot through the cities towns and villages carrying a Crucifix in his hand to preach the cross the blessings of the other life employing his whole talent which God had given him to his service But death prevented him The seventh SECTION Twelve Maxims of Wisdom which arise from the twelve precedent Considerations FRom these Considerations twelve goodly Maxims Often examine your life by these maxims of wisdom arise greatly necessary for any who would enjoy true happiness I. The first is to give to every thing its estimation 1. Cood value since the beginning of our unhappiness proceedeth from a false value which we set upon creatures It marvellously importeth to estimate every thing according to its worth That good man Epictetus said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 more than one would think when he gave this advise My friend if thou lovest a pot remember thy self to be a pot For want of the knowledge of the price of what we love we put God under the Altar and vice above to allow it the best part of the incense II. For this cause it is necessary daily to endeavour 2. Light of mind in the choice Osee 12. Ballance of Chanaan to enfranchize our selves from the opinions of the world and to use
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
not the hope of her husbands libertie having at that time prepared a new battery to dispose her father in law to clemency heard the tidings of the death of Alexander and withal of her own widdow-hood She a good space remained in a trance then mute as a statue last of all a little recollecting her spirits and casting out a sigh from the bottom of her heart Wo is me saith she I thought not Herod would have proceeded thus far Tell him the sacrifice of his cruelty is not finished for behold one part of the Victim is yet alive Alexander my dear Alexander who for ever in my heart shall survive needs must you end your innocent life by this infamous punishment Must you have him for executioner whom nature allotted you for a father At the least I might have been called to receive the last groans of thy pensive soul to embosom thy final words and enchase them in my heart Then turning herself to two little children which she had by her sides Poor orphans what a father have they snatched from you Alas you are timely taught the trade of misery The poor Ladie night and day disconsolately afflicted herself and being no longer able to endure the Court of Judea no more than a Lyons den she was sent back into Cappadocia to the King her father Herod kept with him the two sons under colour of their education but in effect to establish himself fearing least their name should serve for a pretext of some revolt O the providence of God! It seemeth you much slacken to fall upon guilty heads These young Princes sons of so virtuous a mother so well bred so well educated accomplished with so many excellent parts declared lawfull successours to the Crown these Princes who had been seen not above five years before to return in triumph from Rome to Jerusalem like the two twin-stars who guilded all Palestine with their rays these Princes that promised so many Tropheys so many wonders behold them in the sweetness of their years in the flower of their hopes at the gate of the Temple of honour for a small liberty of speech unworthily massacred in stead of a Diadem on their heads a halter about their necks and caused to be strangled by two Sergeants that so they might breath out their Royal souls under the hand of a hangman Behold the brave apprentiship which Herod exercised three year together about the time of the birth of our Saviour to prepare himself for actions much more enormous It was said of Silla that if Mercy had come upon the earth in humane shape he had slain her But Herod did much worse There remained nothing for him after so many slaughters but to embrew himself in the bloud of fourteen thousand Innocents and attempt upon the Son of God himself which presently after happened and of which every one by relation of the Scripture taketh notice It is time to behold the recompence those wicked Antipater the son of Herod from the too of the wheel souls received for having dipped their fingers in so much bloud and so many tragedies to the end we therein may observe the proceedings of the Divine Providence which spareth not first sleightly to touch and assay by some visitation those which it afterwards reserveth for the eternal pains of hell The detestable Antipater who had directed all the passages of this wickedness seeing the two Heirs of the Kingdom removed quite away by his practises thought he had already a foot in the Throne He continueth his cunning and malice ever masking himself with the veyl of piety as if he had an unspeakable care of the life and state of his father while he in the mean time had no other aim but quickly to make himself absolute Master of all fearing lest the disposition of Herod which was very fleeting might alter and for this cause he went up and down daily practizing very great intelligences But he was hated by the people like a Tiger and the souldiers who saw him embrewed in the bloud of his brothers so beloved by all the Nobility could in no sort relish him Above all the people were extreamly touched with compassion when these little children of Alexander and Aristobulus were led through the streets who had been bred in Herods Court. All the world beheld these poor Orphans with a weeping eye and with sorrow remembred the disasters of their fathers Antipater well saw it was fit for him to withdraw himself and decline envy and not sindge his wings in the candle fearing his father in process of time who in such matters was subtile enough might discover his purposes Notwithstanding he was so secret that he avoided to ask leave of Herod to sequester himself for fear to minister matter of suspition to him But he caused letters closely to be written from Rome to his father by friends whom he had wrought for that purpose which imported all he desired to wit that it was necessary he should be sent to Rome to break the enterprizes which the Arabians plotted against the state of Judea Herod having received these letters instantly dispatched his son Antipater with a goodly train rich presents and above all the Will of Herod which declared him King after the death of his father Behold all he could desire in the world But as the eye of God never sleepeth and surprizeth the crafty in their own policies it happeneth the mischievous Pheroras who had acted his part as we have seen in this lamentable tragedy departed this life by a sudden death and poysoned as it is thought by the maid-servant whom he had married Herod being requested to come into the house of Conspiracy of Antipater discovered his brother to take examinations upon the fact unexpectedly learneth how his son Antipater had given poyson to the dead Pheroras at such time as he was out of favour to poyson the King his father whilest he was at Rome that he speedily might return into Palestine with a Crown on his head This was deposed even by the son of the Comptroller of Antipaters house and circumstanced with grounds and particulars so express that there was not any cause of doubt Herod demanded where this poyson was He answered it was in the hands of the widow of his brother Pheroras She being examined upon the fact goeth up into a higher chamber feigning to fetch it and being mounted to the top of the house she through despair fell down headlong with a purpose to kill herself But God suffered not the fall to be mortal they much heartned her and promised all impunity if she freely would deliver the truth She telleth that true it was her husband had received the poyson of Antipater and had some inclination to give the blow but that a little before his death he repented himself and detested such wickedness and with these words she drew out the poyson which afterwards was known in the death of delinquents to be very mortal At
much more dreadfull Herod in few days after he had tried in vain and worn out all humane remedies was reduced to that horrible state of maladie which is rightly described Fearful maladie of Herod by Josephus and Eusebius of Caesarea God would have him in this life tast in long draughts the cup of his justice wasting that caytife carkass with lingering torments Behold the cause why he was touched with a manifest wound from Heaven and assaulted with a furious squadron of remediless dolours He who from his young days had been enflamed with a desperate ambition felt at his death a fire which devoured his marrow and entrails with a secret and subtile flame He who all his life time had an enraged hunger to heap up treasures even to the opening of David's and Solomon's sepulchers to extract booty from thence was afflicted with dog-like hunger both horrible and shamefull which caused him day and night to crie out for meat yet never was satiated He who had made so many voyages and gone so many paces to make himself great saw then his feet swoln with bad and phlegmatick humours He who in his life had caused so many tortures to be inflicted felt outragious and intollerable collicks which racked him He who had taken life away from so many men was seized with an Asthma which hindered his breathing He who esteemed prudence and humane policy for the sinews of his estate felt in his body cramps and convulsions of sinews which gave him many shakes He who shed the bloud of the poor Mariamne who slew her sons to make the kids as saith the Scripture boyl in the milk of their damme briefly he who wallowed in the bloud of about fourteen thousand innocents of purpose to involve therein the Saviour of the world died in his own bloud afflicted with a cruel fluxe He who abused his body with prodidigious luxuries had dying his secret parts filled with lice and vermine with an ignominious Priapism a maladie not to be named Shall we then say the Divine Providence of God hath no eyes to be wakefull for the punishment of the wicked This desperate wretch in stead of adoring the justice of God at his death and kissing the rod which had chastised him dreameth of new slaughters publisheth an Edict by which he sendeth for the principal of the Jews of every Province to Jerico whither he caused himself to be carried and shutting them up in a Theater calleth his sister Salome and her husband Alexas and then speaketh to them in these words It troubleth me not to die and tender the tribute Notorious crueltie which so many Kings have paid before me but I am afflicted that my death shall not be lamented as I desire if you assist not Know then for this purpose I have sent for all the Nobilitie of Judea whom you have in your hands As soon as my eyes are closed put them all to the sword and let not my death be divulged till first the fortune of these same people be known to their friends by this means I hope to fill Judea with tears and sighs which shall make my soul leave my bodie with the more contentment The wretch in saying this with many scalding tears besought his sister by all that which she esteemed in the world most glorious most sacred as if he had asked Paradise of her and that necessarily she must promise it to content him at that instant with oath though afterward it were never executed In this act alone he well declared he had the spirit of a ravening wolf in the skin of a man and that the thirst of humane bloud was become natural to him As he was framing this notable Testament letters Death of Antipater were brought him from Rome written by Caesar's command which certified him that Aâ—me a Jewish Ladie of Livia's train the wife of Augustus had been condemned for sinister intelligence with Antipater and for that cause punished with death as concerning his son he wholly left him to his disposition This man in the very point of death still sucked vengeance with marvellous sweetness Vpon this news he taketh courage again and calls for an apple and a knife busying himself in the paring of it But in these employments as his pains redoubled he waxed weary of life which he so much had loved and at that instant one of his Grand-children named Achiabus who stood near to the bed perceiving he roled his eyes full of rage and made a shew as if he would have stabbed himself with the knife he had in his hand which much affrighted the young Prince held back his arm as well as he could and began to make a terrible out-crie as if his Grand-father had yielded up the Ghost whereupon the whole Palace was in an uproar Antipater who from the prison heard all this tumult supposing Herod was at the last cast his feet itched in his fetters and did not as yet despair of the Crown offering as one would say mountains of gold to his Keeper to set him at liberty But O the judgement of his God! his Goaler in stead of giving ear to all his rewards went directly to his Father and relateth to him how Antipater used all possible means to get out of prison and take possession of the Kingdom Herod houling and knocking his head How saith he will the parricide murther me in my bed I have yet life enough left to take away his Then lifting himself up and leaning on his pillow he calleth one of his Guard Go you immediately saith he to the prison and kill this parricide and let him be buried in Hircanus castle without funeral pomp This was incontinently executed and such was the end of this wicked wretch who had disturbed earth and hell to place himself in his fathers Throne according as certain Mathematicians had foretold him Few days after his death Herod having declared Archelaus for Successour of the Kingdom contrary to his first will which was disposed in the behalf of Antipater after he had accommodated his two other sons with such shares as seemed good to him and given End of a Politician most disastrous large legacies to Augustus Caesar yielded up his wicked soul in rage and despair in the LXX year of his age and XXXVII of his reign A Prince saith Josephus who all his life desired to be Master of his laws and a slave of his passions and who notwithstanding all his great felicities ought to be reputed the most miserable on the earth Behold in what tearms this Authour a great statist speaketh it to teach humane policie there is no prudence wisdom counsel greatness nor happines where God is not present For laying aside eternal torments of the other life wherewith this barbarous man dying in punishments was encompassed I assure my self there is neither peasant nor handi-crafts man if he be not mad would give one day of his life for the thirty seven years of Herods reign which
removed from Councel and manage of affairs deprived of the Imperial bed abandoned by all those who before adored her she was dead to the evil life and onely survived to see her own funerals It was thought Pulcheria who was desirous to make a sequestration fearing lest her Departure of Eudoxia presence might again enkindle the fire covered under ashes in the Emperours heart to possess it to the prejudice of affairs caused the counsel of undertaking the voyage of the holy land to be suggested to her under-hand But it is more credible far the good Empress took this resolution upon her own motion for the reason I will deliver A devout Roman Ladie of a noble house named Melania who filled the deserts Cities Provinces and Empires with her fame passing into Palestine there to wear out the rest of her days in peace went by Constantinople and was received at the Emperours Court where seeing Eudoxia endowed with an admirable spirit but yet untrained to the sweetness of things spiritual she endeavoured to give her a tast The Empress who at that time was in the prosperities and delights of a flourishing Court thought she should handle devotion as a Captain Philosophie and it was enough to tast it outwardly But when this sad accident like the steel began to strike on the flint it made the sparkles flie out in good earnest She was on fire to forsake the Court where she no longer was what she had been she sighed after those places of the holy land as the thirsty Hart for the streams of a fountain I well believe she took counsel at that time of Chrysaphius a powerfull Eunuch who had governed Theodosius from his infancy and was much reputed in Court closely countermyning the over-much authority which Pulcheria had according to his opinion in affairs but he took good heed openly to affront her satisfying himself to act his part by Eudoxia according to directions she gave him This man very understanding in businesses found it was to good purpose to retire back to come on the better that it was necessary the Empress should give way for a time and that her absence would make her the more desired and that he in the mean space would do all good offices for her with the Emperour and act his part in time and place Conclusions of the voyage are made leave was not hard to be obtained of the Emperour seeing his instrument Pulcheria was thereunto wholly disposed When it came to a separation which was a thing very sensible in minds so long time and with such ardour mutually loving the good Eudoxia could not refrain to say to her husband with tears in her eyes SACRED MAjESTY I am upon terms to see you no more in this world for which cause it is fit I discharge my Conscience Behold me ready to depart not onely from the Court but this life if you so ordain I sorrow not for greatness nor delights I have ever thought the prosperitie of the world was a current of fresh water which looketh not back on any thing and hasteneth to pour it self into the salt sea I onely grieve that having brought to your Court two inestimable Jewels virginity and the reputation of a child of honour the one which I ought rather to have given to God I dedicated to your bed and the other is taken from me by your suspition grounded upon a sudden surprizal of a word spoken from a heart perplexed to see you troubled You have caused the Prince Paulinus to be put to death and in doing this you have not bereft me of a lover but your self of a good and faithfull servant and God grant the voice of bloud accuse you not before the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge I hope God who is the Protectour of innocents wil one day take my cause in hand and when truth shall give light through your suspitions you at least will render me the honour which I ever onely have sought to be conveyed into the ashes of my tomb Theodosius knew not how to answer her but with the moist dew of his eyes which began to do the office of his lips a few such words were enough to turn his soul topsie-turvie Pulcheria readily made the stop saying that which was past could not be recalled over which God giveth us no other power but of forgetfulness That the Empress might in good time go to satisfie her devotion and that were she herself free from the bondage of affairs it would be one of her greatest contentments to bear her company Thus Eudoxia departed travelling directly to Jerusalem Voyage of Eudoxia into Palestine and with her the grace and alacrity of Court All Constantinople was filled with sadness at which time the plains of Palestine were already comforted with the first rays of this bright day-break Wheresoever she passed the people ran thither by heaps to behold her she was received with much applause with eloquent orations and all demonstrations of hearts affections and particularly her approach was much celebrated in the Citie of Antioch For it is said the Senate going out to receive her she replied at an instant as she was sitting in her golden Caroch to the Oration pronounced before her and undertook to praise this famous Citie with so much grace and judgement that the principal and most eminent of the Citie ravished with such courtesie dedicated two statues to her the one of gold in the Senate-house as to the Empress the other of brass in their Library as to the tenth Muse Entring into Jerusalem she was received as an Angel from Heaven but above all the Clergie rejoyced at the abode she meant to make there well knowing the Church should thence derive great succours in its necessities Some perswaded her David had prophesied she should re-edifie the walls of Jerusalem because in the fifteenth Psalm where these words are read In bonâ voluntate tuâ aedificentur muri Jerusalem the Septuagint have translated in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The interpretation was not amiss although it were not literal it had the effect For the pious Empress in process of time made many most worthy reparations There she began to live as in another world she seemed to herself to have cast from her shoulders the burden of a huge mountain she now breathed a far other air than that of Court she had another tast of things divine All her study was to pray meditate and hear exhortations and spiritual conferences to read and learn holy Scripture to sow charities that she might reap merits to visit the Cells of Anchorets to see how their garments and girdles were made to observe their manner of living to multiply Monasteries to cloath Virgins to heap up reliques together and such like things Theodosius understanding her carriage and the Chrysaphius laboureth the return of the Empress in the mean time seeking his own ends good entertainment she had every where thought it was the work of God who favoured
coloured pretext Notwithstanding it cast most strong apprehensions into the soul of his Lady who too well knew the deportments of this Prince But considering this precious pledge of her husband held for an undoubted earnest-penny of his command she goeth and consecrateth all the difficulties which she conceived to the obedience towards her Lord. The poor Lady was no sooner arrived but was ravished and violated to satisfie the bruitish lust of a man more drunk with love than wine The Palace of a Christian Emperour which should be a Sanctuary for the chastity of Ladies is by an act black and villanous defiled The chaste turtle who would not survive her honour as soon as she returneth to her lodging exclaimeth against her husband with outragious words thinking he had consented to this disaster Go saith she to him ingratefull and unnatural man as thou are to prostitute the honour of thy wife to the bruitishness of a Prince abandoned by God and men dost thou not yet feel the executioners of thy conscience which reproach thee with thy crime Maximus much amazed at such words What is the matter or where have you been foolish woman saith he She shewing the ring Dost not thou yet acknowledge thy disloyaltie silly and perfidious man behold that which will accuse thee before God He as she began to unfold herself too soon found his own shame enjoyneth her to silence and dissimulation and hath no vein in him which tendeth not to vengeance Valentinian had a brave and valiant Captain who supported the whole Empire this was Aetius very lately adorned with the spoils of Attila whom he in a pitcht battel had vanquished Maximus thought he must ruinate this pillar to make the whole house to fall and therein was not deceived But being a man full of craft so dissembleth what was past concerning his wife as if it had never come to his knowledge onely he endeavoureth to gain the good opinion of a powerfull Eunuch named Heraclius who was the Emperours instrument and having already gotten him at his devotion suggesteth to him in great secret he had learned from a good hand that Aetius Lieutenant General of the Emperour was much puffed up with the victory he obtained against Attila and that he on all sides practised confederacies both within and without the Kingdom to make himself absolute Master of all that under the shadow of entertaining the French and Gothes in good correspondence with the Empire he purchased them for his own service with the Emperours revenues and that nothing remained for him but to set the Diadem upon his own head which quickly he would do were he not with all speed prevented Heraclius faileth not roundly to relate all this to his Master who was already stirred with jealousie towards Aetius seeing his fortune took so high a flight that it seemed to mount above wind and tempest Valentinian a hair-braind Prince perpetually drunk with lust and choller without any further inquisition sendeth for Aetius to the Palace and with enraged passion How saith he Traytour is it thou who undertakest to bereave me of the Crown and saying that taketh out a poinyard which he had in his bosom and killed him with his own hand An act both bold and barbarous The poor Aetius who had born the brunt of an Army of seven hundred thousand men who first confronted a man that shoke the pillars of all Empires who returned from the Gaules amply loaden with victorious Palms one of the most glorious Captains that ever was at that time shewed at Rome as a prodigy of valour fell dead as a sacrifice at the feet of his Master receiving by the just judgement of God that entertainment he before had given to Bonifacius the great Governour of Affrick Valentinian as if he had acted a Master-piece went presently to one of his wisest Counsellours to boast thereof asking of him if he had not well played his prize The other replieth Sacred Majesty if you had taken a hatchet with your right hand and cut off your left arm in stead of giving this accursed blow you had not done so ill And I believe you too soon will feel the loss you have received These words were not without effect for the death of Aetius being presently after divulged it put the souldiers into fury who loved him as a brave and valiant Captain under whose standard they had given so ample testimonies of their worth Two of the most hardy of them Ostias and Transtilas after they had massacred the Eunuch Heraclius assailed the person of the Emperour who was at that time in the field of Mars and desperately murdered him it being impossible to free himself from their hands God permitting this in revenge of the murder lately committed and so many adulteries wherewith this miserable Prince degenerating from the bloud of Theodosius was polluted Maximus who cast the stone and afterward withdrew his arm causing all this tragedy to be acted to his own advantage after the death of Valentinian as being most eminent obtained the Empire with little resistance and his wife during these enterprizes being dead perhaps through discontent for her own disaster seeketh the marriage of the Empress Eudoxia wife of Valentinian and daughter of our Athenais The poor Princess drenched in a deluge of sorrow for the death of the Emperour her husband shewed in the beginning to be deaf in this motion of marriage but as the spirits of women are mutable and soothed with glory in few days forgetting death she resolveth to live among the living and for accommodation of her affairs weddeth Maximus Behold him in a short time in the Throne and bed of his Master revenging himself of one wickedness by another much more execrable But vice in greatness hath ever a staggering foot Maximus was no sooner entred into the Palace but his head aked and the remorse of conscience distracted him His most trusty friends heard him sighing say he esteemed that ancient Damocles happy who was a King but the space of a dinner-while so much already was he disquieted with the Empire as if he had soreseen his own catastrophe It chanced one day this unhappy man familiarly discoursing with his new spouse let a word escape him which cost him his life for to give her a great token of his affection he confessed himself to have intermedled in the design of Valentinian his death not so much for the desire of the Empire as of her beauty Eudoxia was strucken with strange horrour at these words not supposing her first husband had been deprived of life and scepter by his practices and therefore resolving to be revenged she covereth her plot with dissimulation and bendeth all her powers to content his humour She saw how her mother had been used at Constantinople so that from thence probably she could expect no succour The fury of revenge transported her to an Wicked revenge of a woman act very hazardous which was to call Gensericus King of the
can ought avail me Ruffinus notwithstanding insisted protesting he would instantly perswade the Bishop what ever he pleased He failed not to find out the Bishop but the Saint gave him a very sharp reprehension advising him rather to dress his own wounds than intercede for others for he partly understood that he had a hand in this fatal counsel Ruffinus notwithstanding plyed it all he could and endeavoured to charm this man with fair words saying finally for conclusion he would immediately accompany the Emperour to the Church S Ambrose who was ever very serious answered If he come thither as a Tyrant I will stretch out my neek but if in quality of a Christian Emperour I am resolved to forbid him entrance Ruffinus well saw the Bishop was inflexible and went in haste to advise the Emperour not yet on this day to hazard his approach to the Church He found him on his way as a man distracted that had the arrow in his heart and hastened for remedy and he saying he had dealt with the Bishop It is no matter saith Theodosius let him do with me what he please but I am resolved to reconcile my self to the Church S. Ambrose advertised that Theodosius came went Aedicula jaculatoria out and expected him at the door of a little Cell seperated from the body of the Church where ordinarily salutations were made Then perceiving him environed with his Captains Come you oh Emperour saith he to force us No saith Theodosius I come in the quality of a most humble servant and beseech you that imitating the mercy of the Master whom you serve you would unloose my fetters otherwise my life will fail What penance replieth the holy man have you done for the expiation of so great a sin It is answereth Theodosius for you to appoint it and me to perform it Then was the time when to correct the precipitation of the Edict made against the Thessalonians he commanded him to suspend the execution of the sentence of death for the space of thirty days after which having brought him into the Church the faithfull Emperour prayed not standing on his feet nor kneeling but prostrated all along on the pavement which he watered with his tears tearing his Psal 118. Adhaesit pavimento anima mea vivisica me secundùm verbum tuum hair and pitifully pronouncing this versicle of David My soul is fastened to the pavement quicken me according to thy word When the time of Oblation was come he modestly lifted up himself having his eyes still bathed with tears and so went to present his offering then stayed within those rayls which seperated the Priests from the Laity attending in the same place to hear the rest of Mass Saint Ambrose asked him who set him there and whether he wanted any thing The Emperour answered He attended the holy Communion of which the sage Prelate being advertised he sent one of his chief Deacons which served at the Altar to let him understand that the Quire was the place of Priests and not of the Laicks that he instantly should go out to rank himself in his order adding the Purple might well make Emperours not Priests Theodosius obeyed and answered that what he had done was not on purpose but that such was the custom of the Church of Constantinople Yea it is also remarkable that returning afterward into the East and hearing Mass at Constantinople on a very solemn festival day after he had presented his offering he went out of the Quire whereat the Patriarch Nectarius amazed asked him why his Majesty retired in that manner He sighing answered I in the end have learned to my cost the difference between an Emperour and a Bishop To conclude I have found a Master of truth and to tell you mine opinion I do acknowledge amongst Bishops but one Ambrose worthy of that title Behold an incomparable authority which was as the rays of his great virtue and sanctity from whence distilled all that force and vigour which he had in treating with all men I imagine I hitherto have exposed the principal actions of S. Ambrose to the bright splendour of the day and so to have ordered them that all sorts of conditions may therein find matter of instruction It hath not been my intention to distend them by way of Annals but historical discourses proper to perswade virtue So likewise have I not been willing to charge this paper with other particular narrations which may be read in Paulinus Sozomen Ruffinus and which have exactly been sought out by Cardinal Baronius suitable to his purpose I conclude after I have told you that Paulinus his Secretary witnesseth he writing by him a little before his death saw a globe of fire which encompassed his head and in the end entered into his mouth making an admirable brightness reflect on his face which held him so rapt that whilest this vision continued it was impossible for him to write one word of those which Saint Ambrose dictated As for the rest having attained the threescore and Death of S. Ambrose fourth year of his age he was accounted as the Oracle of the world for they came from the utmost bounds of the earth to hear his wisdom as unto Solomon and after the death of Theodosius Stilicon who governed all held the presence of Saint Ambrose so necessary that he esteemed all the glory of the Roman Empire was tied to the life of this holy Prelate In effect when on the day of holy Saturday after his receiving the Communion he had sweetly rendered up his soul as Moses by the mouth of God a huge deluge of evils overflowed Italie which seemed not to be stayed but by the prayers of this Saint Let us I beseech you pass over his death in the manner of the Scripture which speaketh but one word of the end of so many great personages and let us never talk of death in a subject wholly replenished with immortality Oh what a life what a death to have born bees in his first birth on his lips and at his death globes of light in his mouth What a life to be framed from his tender age as a Samuel for the Tabernacle not knowing he was designed for the Tabernacle What a life to preserve himself in the corruption of the world in a most undefiled chastity as a fountain of fresh water in midst of the sea What a life to arrive to honour and dignities in flying them and to have enobled all his charges by the intefrity of his manners What a life not to have taught any virtue before he practised it and to become first learned in examples before he shewed himself eloquent in words What a life so to have governed a Church that it seemed a copy of Heaven and an eternal pattern of virtues What a life to have born on his shoulders the glory of Christendom and all the moveables of the house of God! What a life to have so many times trampled the head of
Dragons under-foot and rendered himself the Oracle of the world and the Doctour of Monarchs And what a death to die as in a field with palms planted by his hand manured by his industrie and watched with sweats What a death to have built himself before his death a tomb stuffed with precious stones of so many goodly virtues What a death which hath made it known that S. Ambrose was born for all the world and could not die without the tears of all the world since as every one had his interests in the life of this Prelate so he found in his death the subject of his sorrow What a death to die with these words in his mouth I am neither ashamed to have lived nor fear to die because we have a good Master What a death to return to Heaven as the dove of the deluge to his Ark bearing words of peace as an olive-branch in his mouth What a death to see vice trodden under his feet Heaven all in crowns over his head men in admiration the Angels in joy the Arms of God laden with recompences for his merits Prelates who please your selves with Myters and Croziers would to God this incomparable man as he is the ornament of your Order might be ever the model of your actions And if your dignities make you be as Mountains of Sinai wholly in lights flames and thunder-strokes let the innocency of your life render you by his imitation Mountains of Libanus to bear the whiteness of snow in the puritie of your conversation the odour of incense in your sacrifices and devotions and fountains in the doctrines and charities you shall distribute to the whole world THE SOVLDIER TO SOULDIERS O Brave and couragious Nobility whose Ancestours have fixed the Standards of the Cross upon the land of Infidels and cemented Monarchies with their bloud to you it is I address these lines for you it is my pen laboureth excited with a generous design in hath to honour your profession Here it is where I present the true figures of valour Here I display the palms and crowns which environed the head of your Fathers Here I do restore the value of fair and glorious actions reserved for your imitation Enter with a firm footing and a confident courage into this Temple of glory perswading your selves that there is nothing so great in the world as to tread false greatness under foot and deifie virtues Worldly honour is the feast of Gods said an Ancient where the ambitious are not invited but in quality of IXIONS and TANTALUSSES to serve there as buffons but that which consisteth in valour joyned to integrity of manners ought to be the object of your affections the recompence of your labours and trophey of your memorie Reflect onely with a favourable eye on this poor endeavour which I consecrate to your benefit and afford by your virtues effect to my prayers and accomplishment to my writings THE SOULDIER The first SECTION The excellency of Warlick Virtue IF the profession of arms were as well managed as it is excellent and necessary in civil life we could not have eyes enough to behold it nor tongues sufficient to praise it and although our spirit should arrive to the highest top of admiration it would ever find wonders in this subject not to be attained We seem to hear the Scripture speak that God God of hosts himself affecteth the glory of arms when he causeth himself to be surnamed the God of hosts and when the Prophets represent him unto us in a fiery Chariot all environed with burning Legions at which time the pillars of Heaven tremble under his feet the rocks are rent abysses frown and all the creatures of the universe shake under the insupportable splendour of his Majesty In effect this great Monarch of Town belieged by God Heaven and earth ceaseth not to make war and if we will consider his proceedings we shall find it is more than fifty Ages since he hath laid siege to a rebellious Citie which hath for ditches abysses of iniquity for walls and rampires obstinacy for towers and bulwarks mountains of pride for arms resistance against divine inspirations for artillery tumult and insolency for houses dens of hypocrisie for Palaces labyrinths of dissimulation for tribunal and bar impiety for Temple proper-will for Idol self-love for Captain blindness for souldiers exorbitant passions for counsel folly and for constancy perverse opinion This Citie in a word is the heart of man against The hurt of man which God daily wageth war to give us libertie by our captivitie advancement by our fall greatness by our abasing and life by death which maketh us die to all dead things to live for immortality God would that we fight by his example not onely with spiritual arms but sometimes with material and it is a thing very considerable that Abraham the first Father of all the faithfull was a warriour since S. Ambrose Ambros Offic. lib. 1. cap. 24. Fide primus justitiâ precipuus in praelio strenuus in victoriâ non avarus domi hospitalis uxori sedulus reckoning up all his titles according to the Scripture sheweth he was a good Religious man a good Justice a good Captain a good hoast and a good husband Yea also it is a passage much more admirable to say what Clemens Alexandrinus hath observed that the first Army of the faithfull which ever was marched not thinking thereon under the figure of the Cross and the name of Saviour although it were about two thousand years before the birth of the Messias The fourteenth Chapter of Genesis teacheth us that nine Kings came into the field with their troups to fight four against five Those of Sodom and Gomorrha were there in person who like effeminate Princes turned their back at the first encounter and in flying fell into pits of sulphure Their defeat gave leisure to the enemy to pillage all the Countrey where poor Lot the nephew of Abraham was taken having by mishap chosen his habitation in a Territory fertile in wealth and iniquities The news coming to the ears of Abraham he speedily armed his houshold-servants who were to the number of three hundred and eighten and with shepheards assaulted Kings whom he valorously vanquished bringing back his kinsman and all the booty which his enemies had taken Behold the first battel renowned in Scripture where this brave Doctour of Alexandria before alledged very well subtilizeth and saith that the number of Abrahamâ—s souldiers is represented by three Greek letters T. J. H whereof the first signifieth the Cross and the other two the name of Saviour God being desirous so to consecrate the first arms of believers by the Mysteries of his Greatness to declare that the warfare which is well managed is his work and glory Likewise we do not find that the name of Sun hath been given Warriours suns in holy Writ to a living man with so much lustre and applause as to a souldier and
Foix General of the Army come daily to visit him and that these men in a Citie of conquest spake of paying for all they had taken The good hostess waited on him as on an Angel of Heaven so much honour and virtue saw she to shine in him When he was cured and that he spake of dislodging to be present at the battel of Ravenna where his General passionately desired him the Ladie who accounted her self as his prisoner with her husband and children considering if her guest would rigorously use her he might draw ten or twelve thousand crowns from her resolved to give him a present and coming into his chamber with a servant of hers who carried a little steel box she presently threw her self at his feet but he readily raised her up again not suffering she should speak one word till she was seated by him at which time she made this speech well observed by the Secretary of Bayard SIR The favour which God hath afforded me in the taking of this Citie by sending you into this house which is wholly yours hath not been less than the preservation of the life of my husband mine own and that of my daughters with their honour which they ought to esteem more precious than life Besides your people have lived with such temper here in my house that being not able to complain of any injurie I have cause for ever to commend their modestie Sir I am not so ignorant of the condition whereunto the misery of war hath reduced us as not very well to see that my husband my self and children are your prisoners and that all the goods in the house are at your discretion to be disposed of to your liking But knowing the nobleness of your heart which is incomparable I am come most humbly to beseech you to take pitie on your poor captives and to use us according to your accustomed liberalitie Behold a poor present which we offer intreating it may be acceptable In speaking this she took the box out of the hands of her servant and opened it before the good Captain who saw it to be full of fair Duckets at which he smiled replying Madame how many Duckets are there in this box The poor woman who thought this smile proceeded from some discontentment answered There are in it but two thousand five hundred but if you be not satisfied we will find more Nay Madame replied the Captain I can well assure you that should you give me a hundred thousand crowns you could not do me so much good as you have done in the courteous entertainment I have here received In what place soever I shall remain while God gives me life you shall have a Gentleman ready at your command As for your Duckets I will none I render you thanks take them up again I have ever more esteemed people of honour than crowns and think not but I go as well satisfied from you as if this Citie were at your disposition and you thereof have made me a present She again prostrateth her self on her knees and the Captain lifting her up answered No Sir I should think my self for ever the most unhappy woman of the world if you accept not this present which is nothing in comparison of the infinite obligations I ow to your worth Well saith he since you give it with so good a will I accept it for your sake but cause your daughters to come hither for I will bid them fare well These good creatures had charitably assisted him during the time of his infirmity in the presence of their mother many times touching the lute whereon they played very well for his recreation They fell at his feet and the eldest made a short speech in her mother language to thank him for the preservation of their honour The Captain heard it as it were weeping for the sweetness and humility he therein observed and then said Ladies you do that which I ought to do which is to give you thanks for the many good helps you have afforded me for which I find my self infinitely obliged You know men of my profession are not readily furnished with handsom tokens to present fair maidens withal But behold your good Ladie mother hath given me two thousand five hundred Duckets take each of you a thousand as my gift for so I am resolved it shall be Then turning to his Hostess Madame saith he I will take these five hundred to my self to distribute them among poor religious women who have been ransacked and I recommend the charge thereof to you for you better than any other understand where there is necessity At this time the Ladie touched to the quick with so great a piety spake these words couched in the History in ancient language O flower of Chivalrie to whom no other may be compared our blessed Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ who for sinners suffered death and passion both here in this world and in the other reward you The Gentleman of the house who at that time heard the courtesie of his guest came to thank him with bended knee making offer of his person and his whole estate The young Gentlewomen who were skilfull at the needle made him a present of two bracelets woven with threed of gold and silver and a purse of crimson sattyn very richly wrought He very graciously receiving them Behold saith he I have more than ten thousand crowns and instantly he put the bracelets on his arms and the purse in his pocket assuring them whilest these gifts lasted he would wear them for their sakes Thereupon he mounted on horsback accompanied with his true friend the Lord D'Aubigny and about two or three thousand men the Lady of the house the daughters and the whole family as bitterly deploring his departure as if they should have been put to the sword I demād of you if the stars were to descend from heavē whether they might find more love and respect Where be these silly fencers who are as commets of fire and bloud to bear murder pestilence and poison into houses who make the pillars of buildings to tremble with the force of blasphemies who load whole families with injuries wounds and scars who pill and ravage like Harpies fed with humane bloud Should they do nothing else all their life but heap up mountains of gold and silver they could not arrive to the least part of the contentment which this good Captain enjoyed who sought no other recompence from his great actions but the satisfaction of his conscience and the glory to have done well Thus is it O Noblemen that hearts are gained to make a crown of immortality Thus is Heaven obliged and earth tributary to virtues The seventh SECTION Against sensual love and impuritie I May well say that among all the qualities of a Nobleman there is not any hath a sweeter odour than temperance which represseth the voluptuous pleasures of the body Let no man flatter you in the passion of love as if
impatience She to appease him excused herself upon the necessity of the accident happened but this notable Astrologer hearing speech of the birth of a child forsooke the pot and glass which he dearly loved and endeavoured to set the Horoscope of this Ablavius newly come into the world And thereupon said to the hostess Go tell your neighbour she hath brought forth a son to day who shall be all and have all but the dignity of an Emperour I think with Eunapius that such tales are rather made after events to give credit to judicial Astrology than to say they have any foundation upon truth It is not known by what means he was advanced but he came into so great an esteem that he governed the whole Empire under Constantine who freely made use of him as of a man discreet and vigilant in affairs though much displeased to see him too eager in his proper interests And it is said that walking one day with him he took a stick in his hand and drew the length of five or six foot on the earth then turning towards his creature Ablavius why so much sweat and travel In the end of all neither I nor thou shall have more than this nay thou dost not know whether thou shalt have it or no. He was the cause by his factions that Constantine almost caused one day three innocent Captains to be punished with death being ill inform'd had it not been that S. Nicholas then living appeared in a dream the same night to Constantine and Ablavius threatning if they proceeded any further God would chastise them which made them stay execution Ablavius notwithstanding was so tyed to the earth that the words and examples of his Master had small power over his soul in such sort that he had an unhappy end ordinary with those who abuse the favours of God For after the death of Constantine Constantius who succeeded in the Empire of his father taking this man as it were for a Pedagogue so much authority had he assumed unto himself and thinking he could not free himself of his minority but by the death of Ablavius caused him miserably to be butchered sending two for executours of this commission men suborned who saluted him with great submissions and knees bended to the earth in manner of Emperour He who before had married one of the daughters of the Emperour Constans brother of Constantius thinking they would raise him to the dignity of Caesar asked where the purple was They answered they had no commission to give it him but that those who should present it were at his chamber dore He commandeth them to be speedily brought in These were armed men who approaching near unto him instead of the purple inflicted a purple death transfixing him with their swords and renting him as a Sacrifice If the poor man following his Masters example had been willing to set limits upon his fortune and taken shelter at least in the storm to meditate upon the affairs of his conscience he would the less have been blamed but natural desires have this proper that they are bounded by nature which made them The fantasies of ambition which grew from our opinions have no end no more than opinion subsistence For what bounds will you give to the falsehood and lying of a miserable vanity which filleth the spirit with illusion and the conscience with crimes When one goeth the right way he findeth an end but when he wandereth a-cross the fields he makes steps without number errours without measure and miseries without remedy The thirteenth SECTION The death of Constantine IT seemeth great men who have lived so well should never die and that it were very fit they still did what they once have done so happily But as they entred not into life by any other way than that of birth as men so must they issue out from this ordinary residence of mortals as other men Constantine had already reigned thirty and one years and was in the threescore and third of his age living otherwise in a prosperous old age and having a body exceedingly well disposed to the functions of life for he incessantly travelled in the duty of his charge without any inconvenience ordering military matters in his mind instituting laws hearing embassages reading writing discoursing to the admiration of all the world This good Prince earnestly desired the conversion of all the great-ones of his Court. Behold why not satisfied with giving them example of a perfect life he inflamed them to good with powerful words which were to souls as thunder-claps to Hinds not for the delivery of a beast but the production of salvation A little before his death he pronounced in his Palace to those of his Court a very elegant Oration of the immortality of the soul of the success of good and evil of the providence of God in the recompence of pure souls of the terrour of his justice upon the incredulous and reprobate This divine man handled these discourses with so much fervour and devotion that he seemed to have his ear already in heaven to understand mysteries and enjoy an antipast of Paradise A while after he felt some little inequality of temperature in his body which was with him very extraordinary so sound and well composed he was Thereupon he was taken with a fever somewhat violent and causing himself to be carried to the baths he remained not long there for little regarding the health of his body in comparison of the contentment of his soul he was possessed with a great desire to go to Drepanum in Bythinia a Citie which he surnamed of his good mother where was the bodie of S. Lucian the Martyr to which he had a particular devotion He being transported into this desired place felt in this heart an alacrity wholly celestial and for a long time remained in the Church notwithstanding the indisposition of his body fervently praying for his own salvation and the universal repose of his Empire From thence he went directly to a Palace which he had in the suburbs of Nichomedia where feeling the approaches of death he disposed himself for his last hour with the marks of a piety truly Christian His Princes and Captains who heard him speak of death being desirous to divert his mind from this thought said He was become too necessary for all the world and that the prayers of all men would prolong his life But he Of what do you speak to me as if it were not true life to die to so many dead things to live with my Saviour No this heer is not a death but a passage to immortality If you love me hinder not my way one cannot go too soon to God This spoken he disposed of his last Will with a constant judgement and couragious resolution declaring in his Testament the estate of affairs he would establish even in the least particulars and very well remembring all his good servants for whom he ordained pensions and rewards for every one
lightening not touching the purse Others had inventions of quintessences Others traffiqued about stars and sold good fortune in little boxes of smoak Others had shops of the secrets of Arts made themselves able to give beauty youth health immortalltie to those that would buy them Others made dice and mathematicall cards Others lead Bears others extracted infamous coin from the planet of Venus others in the qualitie of mercenaries made Odes and love sonnets for the Pandora's of the time and which was most ridiculous certain young wits among all these were seen who laboured to patch up together rimes or prose very little to the purpose to whom Gold and incense was given with which they were so puffed up that they esteemed the most solid wisdom of the world to be but meer ignorance in comparison of their works One cannot tell all the tricks of this imposture and how many sleights the spirit watchfull for it's own interests found to come to the end of its intentions Conscience checked some but they answered one could not live in the world without these tricks and that they were as necessary as to breath In the second labyrinth I saw the corruptions of Cyprian epist ad Donatum Inter leges ipsu delinquitur inter jura peccatur justice described by S. Cyprian in the Epistle he addresseth to his friend Donatus when he speaketh of Rome the Idolatress All was replenished saith this Prelate with goodly Precepts excellent laws and sage ordinances but in the midst of so many lights God and men were offended with so much impudence as if these laws were made to no other end but to be transgressed Never is innocencie so ill intreated as in the place where profession is made to defend it The serpents of the desert have less gall and spleen than those Pleaders whom I saw turmoiled with a spirit of giddiness and dissevered with the sword of division Their clamours were so loud that they made the whole house of justice to eccho again as are the waves heard to rore on the shore of the Aegean sea I saw gibbets wheels and boyling Fures privatorum surtorum in compedibus publici in auro vitam agunt Cato cauldrons prepared for some miserable criminals because they were yet as it is said but little theeves but were they much greater their crimes had rather been crowned than chastised From thence I viewed fields weeping filled with standing waters which were said to be gathered together from the tears of Widdows Orphans and an infinite number of other persons who live under great oppression I saw some who were in the water up to the neck and some who lifted up an arm withall their strength to offer up some papers wherein were the laws of Charlemain and Lewis the twelfth which expresly command the causes of the poor may be handled before any other business but it was replied such ordinances were quite out of use These miserable creatures solicited their Attorneys and they betraied them complained to their advocates and they perplexed them implored the assistance of Judges and they sold them notwithstanding were esteemed honest men and still enemies to these corruptions I saw two great Registers whereof the one was called the Cabale of favour and the other the Cabale of monie where it is said there were mischiefs as black as the spirits of the abyss but they must not be divulged There was also a very great quantitie of Pleaders who sought to stretch out suits as Shoomakers a piece of leather with their teeth and mutter out propositions of errours reviews incompetencies rejections oppositions and compulsorie causes with so many other hideous words that I asked whether these men spake the language of the Canadas or Chinois Old Pettifoggers appeared all over worm-eaten with mischiefs who could scarce breath from their lips yet had strong apprehension of death through fear to leave the exercise of suits The like was found in souls already half damned who were very solicitous in manner of treachery one bare false witness another invented a contract another forged a Will another supposed a crime another had a shop of all sorts of slanders and diabolicall falsifications the audacious sale of a word prostituted to sin flew between Heaven and earth about twilight with the wings of an owl and to consummate the sublimitie of mischief right yielded to iniquitie It was to do wrong to the wicked not to imitate those Crimes said they were already sufficiently authorised by the great multitude of complices In the third Labyrinth I saw men who had little Rispelliones else of man in them but shape and skin They were near to an enchanted river which must be passed and repassed over seven times as it is said to become absolute in craft There were likewise others seen already transformed into unknown monsters and others who had no more but the little finger or tip of the nose of men I saw some who were like little Apes which pushed and scratched one another and brake through the throng with all their force to climb up to the top of a tree which was said to be the tree of Honour At the entrance there was I know not what kind Lylius Giraldus in pictura favoâ— is of fantasm of Divinity called Worldly favour It seemed in apparence to have a body and consistence but was in effect a true spectre of smoak cloathed with a mantle tissued with clouds and wind There stood about it Phylosophers who would undertake to derive the Genealogie and set the Horoscope of it One said she was the daughter of beautie the other of hazard the other of babble that fortune was her nursing-mother and that if she had her exaltation in the sign of the Ram she should find her declination in the Ballance Howsoever she then appeared very sprightfull and spruce Flatterie failed not to court her throwing roses and flower-de-luces upon her But at the same time envy slily stealing into the throng gnawed the border of her garment Riches disdain presumption and boldness did nothing but cry round about her Make place make place and to raise her the higher they sought to lay the great God of Justinian under her feet She was so disdainfull of knowledges she had formerly acquired that nothing was so cold as her discourse and if she had eys they were for no use but to behold her own interests When I saw she paced along in a way all shining with ice and that she danced on a rope I lost sight of her not troubling my self any further to follow this spirit but I understood that all those who promised themselves the seven wonders of the world had been paid in coin of leaves There likewise I viewed men whom you would Aquila Anserinae Stapl. have taken for geese so simple of countenance were they but they swam in Pactolus having but one foot onely of a goose for the other hidden under feathers was the tallon of
Empire and affections of Leo his father-in-law much esteemed this young man who arrived to maturity of age served him most couragiously in brave expeditions of war against the Gepides and Bulgarians sworn enemies of the Empire This occasion whereof we speak being offered Theodorick flyeth like a Merlin to his prey and leaving the Court of Constantinople came into Italy attended by gallant troups to decide the matter of Empire and life with Odoacer He being full of fire handled his adversary very roughly and defeated him in three battails making him forsake the field and inforcing him to immure himself in Ravenna where he besieged him for the space of three years resolved either to loose his head in Italy or encircle it with a Crown at Rome The father Theodomire being already deceased his mother the fair Aureliana who had reigned in affections entertained an insatiable desire to command over the most important part of the world and being then in the field she spared not to excite the souldiers and advance a spur of fire very far into the heart of her son whereupon it is recounted that Odoacer after so long a siege being reduced to an extream scarcity of victuals and seeing he could not any longer subsist resolved to seek in the hazard of arms the remedy which he could not find in his languishment He espied a time when the assailants tired out with so long a resistance seemed now to relent so that by the benefit of a fair night he made a sally with his whole army composed of people hungry as wolfs and resolved to conquer or die in this last battel Their sally was so furious and unexpected that Theodorick who was otherwise a great Captain seeing the astonishment and disorder of his souldiers betook himself timely to flight when this Aureliana his mother moved with an ardent ambition which gave her courage above her sex came before him and taking him by the hand had confidence to say My Son whither go you You must of two things do one either fight or return into the womb of your mother You have as far as I can perceive the enemy at your back and fear on your forehead turn your head against the one and you shall chase away the other If you persist in this flight I will rather make a wall of my body to stay you than render my self a confederate of such an obloquie It is a strange thing that the words of a woman were stronger than the sound of trumpets arms flight and the black apprehensions of death This young Prince changing his fear into a generous shame speedily rallyeth the troups that were best resolved and hasteneth to fall upon his enemy with such violence that his souldiers seemed so many flying Dragons who handled their matter so well that the valiant Odoacer notwithstanding his best endeavour was constrained to retire into Ravenna Some time after seeing his enemy was invincible he caused him to be sought unto for peace on such condition that they should between them divide the Kingdom of Italy to which Theodorick whether that he was wearied out with so long a war or that he hoped the more easily to joyn the skin of the fox to that of the Lion willingly consented to this counterfeit peace The agreement signed he entered into Ravenna and these Princes who were both very brave souldiers embraced before the face of two armies mutually preventing each other with all manner of courtesie But oh good God! what cement was ever found able enough to entertain ambition and amity in one constant state and what world hath at any time been wide enough to lodge too ambitious men without a quarrel Their conversation too frequent first sowed contempts and insolencies among souldiers of different Nations afterward jealousie crept into the hearts of the Captains and distrust into the souls of the Sovereigns who beheld and observed one another as expecting who should first begin Theodorick whether he sought for some pretext which ever is soon enough found out to colour the greatest mischiefs or whether he understood of a design intended on the part of his enemy imagined the earth was not large enough to give elbow-room to his ambition whilest Odoacer shared the Throne with him that there was but one sun necessary in heaven and one King in a Countrey that he could not endure a Crown made crescent-wise but that it was very fit he should furnish out the roundness of its circle and for the rest that man would soonest be King who first prevented his adversary Hereupon he resolved on a horrible assassinate for feigning all friendship and affection he invited Odoacer to a magnificent feast which he had prepared for him to be the last of his life It is a great matter that there must be a bait always to surprize men and birds and that the greatest disasters ordinarily happen in the sports and banquets when sensuality predominateth and reason is eclypsed This miserable Procopius saith that Theodorick took pretext and treacherously slew him at a banquet King of the Heruli made it well appear by his over-much confidence that he had not so much mischief in him as was afterward imputed to his ashes for he very joyfully went to this banquet accompanied with his son and all the principal of his Kingdom and walked along with great alacrity having no other intention but to make war against dishes and nothing less than at that time to entertain purposes of bloud and murder The resolution notwithstanding is taken to make them all pass by the dint of swords in a place the most delightful where pleasures seem to make men as it were newly born They entered into a great Sigonius l 5. Occidentali de Imperio in fine hall most magnificently furnished and sat down at the table there was no speech in the beginning but of mirth the spirit disbanded thinketh on nothing but objects of pleasure when instantly the signal was given and the Goths threw swords purposely out to offend the most sober patience of the Heruli They answered again what choller and wine suggested Theodorick stood up and taking his sword So an ancient manuscript observeth it found in a Library at Rome slew Odoacer with his own hand the rest fell upon his son and the Princes of the Kingdom Never was there seen banquet of Centaures and Lapithes more unfortunately expressed Tables and men were overwhelmed wine ran mixt with bloud the dreadful cries of the dying made those tremble who were far enough out of danger and gave matter of pity even to hang-men yet for all this not a man was spared the bodies mangled and bloudy were cast one upon another and the poor souls issued forth in the midst of massacres and surfets to yeild an account in the Court-hall of Heaven What horrours of the abyss and furies of Divels see you here I would know whether there be any beast in the world that had heaped together in one
mirrour what perfection My eyes dazle in beholding her actions and my pen fails in writing her praises What a courage that a young maid not above fifteen or sixteen years of age entereth into a Kingdom with intention to conquer it for God much otherwise than the Caesars who so many times have devoured it by ambition What a prudence to tolerate the conversation of a step-mother whilest she medled not with her Religion What liberty of spirit and what strength of words to defend her faith so soon as she saw her self assailed in this virtue which was more dear unto her than the apple of her eye What patience to endure to be dragged along upon the pavement by the hair to be beaten even to bloud to be thrown into the river to be used like the dust of the earth for the honour of Jâ—sus Christ not challenging any one not complaining not seeming offended nay not telling her husband into whose bosom she poured forth her most secret thoughts the affront she had received for fear to break peace with a creature who deserved the hatred of all the world What wisdom what grace what eloquence used she in the conversion of her husband What love for his soul what zeal for his salvation what care for his direction What authority to stop with a word the armies of the father and son instantly ready to encounter What resignation of her own will in this separation from her husband And what a heart of diamond against a thousand strokes of dolours to take thankfully a death so bloudy so tragical so pitifull To see her self at an instant bereaved of a son and a husband and of all things in the world offering up unto God in all her afflictions the obedience of her heart prayers of her lips and victims of all the parts of her body What triumph when after her death her brother-in-law who had participated of her good instructions in rememberance of her and her husband was absolutely converted to the Catholick faith and changing the whole face of the Kingdom repealed the banished restored the Bishops to their Sees Religion into force Laws into authority and the whole Province into peace What miracle to see sage Indegondis on the top of all her tropheys whereof she tendereth homage to God in the glory of Saints How ought we here to render to her the offerings of our most humble services Behold here the limits which I proposed to my self so to give an end at last to these Histories having thought it more fit and suitable to my employments to abbreviate my self in these four Models than unboundedly enlarge them yet it hath been somewhat difficult with me to make a resolution to put forth this second Volume among so many duties of our ordinary functions being thereunto sollicited by entreaties which held as it were the place of commands And I may well say I were stupid and ungratefull if I should not confess to have been much excited to prosecute this labour by the honourable invitations which my Lord Bishop of Bellay hath used towards me in his Works I cannot set too high a price upon his recommendation in such a subject For he is verily one of the most able and flourishing wits that ever handled a pen. To see the number of his books one might say he began to write so soon as to live and to consider their worth it is a wonder how so many graces and beauties which other attain not but with much labour encreased with him as in a soil natural for eloquence If there be any slight discourses who amuse themselves to argue upon some words of his writings it is not a matter unusual seeing we are now in an Age where there are some who revive the example of those corrupted Grecians that preferred a sauce made by the Cook Mithecus before the divine Works of Phidias If this piece have given you any contentment take the pains to read it over again sometimes at your leisure tasting the Maxims therein with an utilitie worthy of its subject For believe me the precipitation now adays used in slightly running over all sorts of books causeth a certain indigestion in the mind wherewith it is rather choaked than nourished Reading is never good if the understanding take not occasion thereby to negotiate by meditation and industrie that which concerneth the health and ornament thereof 1 TIM 1. To the King of Ages Immortal and Invisible to GOD alone be honour and glorie given for ever and evermore THE HOLY COURT MAXIMS OF CHRISTIANITIE AGAINST THE PROPHANE COVRT Divided into three Parts WHEREOF The I. Treateth of the Divinitie The II. Treateth of the Government of this life The III. Treateth of the State of the other World THE THIRD TOME Written in French by NICHOLAS CAUSSIN of the S. of JESUS and translated into English by Sr. T. H. DEUS EST NOBIS SOL ET SCUTUM LONDON Printed by William Bentley and are to be sold by JOHN WILLIAMS at the Crown in St. Pauls Church-yard 1650. TO THE RIGHT HONOURABLE LADIE FRANCES Countess of PORTLAND and Baroness WESTON RIGHT HONOURABLE THe excellent endowments of your soul acknowledged even by envie and admired by truth together with your known propension to the reading of pious Books invites me to this Dedication as proper for your sweet retirements and consonant to my intentions which onely aim in some measure to express my humblest respects to your Honour The matters herein handled are Instructions apt to inform the mind by way of Maxims learned discourses made familiar to less able understandings and choise Histories exemplifying both that so all sorts of Readers though of different capacitie disproportionable judgement may find somewhat to entertain their curiositie My scope Excellent LADIE in this Translation is through your Honours hand and under so noble a Patronage to convey the third Part of the HOLY COURT into English light which as the first breathed air under the benign aspect of her sacred Majestie may also hope in this latter piece with like happiness to be crowned with your Honors chearful acceptation The height of my ambition is by this poor way to serve you since more ample demonstrations are wanting to my weak abilities as likewise not to doubt your noble disposition will be satisfied with such my humble acknowledgements The advancement of virtue and depression of vice is my Authour's scope throughout the whole Work which he elegantly pursues and victoriously atchieveth Triumphs of that kind best become his grave and serious pen whilest my task is faithfully in our language to imitate his living figures though in dead and discoloured forms and confidently to tell your Honour that I will ever be The most Obsequious Servant of Your Commands T. H. TO MONSIEUR MONSIEUR THE PRINCE SIR THe excellency of the subject I handle in these discourses makes me reflect on that of your Greatness to offer you a Work which being conceived by your authority must needs seek for
there so ill intreated that he more hastily returned than came thither laden with confusion and in short time heard the discomfiture of his Armies and victory of the Jews whereupon he entered into so desperate sury that he resolved to retire hastily again to Jerusalem and to make of the whole Citie but one tomb But the hand of God had already designed his for Joseph Ben Gerion it happened being in his coach his horses frighted extraordinarily upon the meeting and roar of an Elephant gave him so boysterous a stroke that thrown on the ground he received a mortal wound the fire and venom whereof crept so far into his hurts that he seemed to burn alive like the damned feeling inexplicable dolours throughout all his body which became a nest of vermin and having his soul turmoyled with Specters and Furies that gave him no repose At which time the miserable Atheist coming to himself after a drunkenness of so many years spake these words JUSTUM EST SUBDITUM ESSE DEO ET MORTALEM NON PARIA DEO SENTIRE professing there was a Great God to whom we must submit and never with him contest when being in the bed of death he acknowledged impiety had been the original of al his evils and that should God restore him to his health he would fill Jerusalem with gifts and wonders even to the becoming a Jew and ever proclaim the glory of the Creatour But the gates of mercy were already shut up against this disloyal man who had no true repentance his hour was come which made him die all wasted with putrefaction insupportable to his Army who could not endure the stench troublesom to himself and execrable to the memory of all mankind The Prophets and holy Fathers mention him as a damned soul and the figure of Antichrist to teach the wicked out of the deportment of this man that there is not any one withdraws from God but flies from his mercy and falls into the hands of his justice which pursueth Libertines beyond the gates of hell III. MAXIM Of the Excellencie of the DIVINITIE THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT That Great men are Gods on earth whose favours we should adore That all greatness is wretched before the Majesty of God who alone is to be adored THere is not any thing hath more perplexed Divers opinions of the Divinity the minds of men since the beginning of the world than the diverse opinions of the Deitie since the wisest when they had spent all their abilities upon this question found nothing more certain than uncertainty One would wonder why the knowledge of the true God being so important for man hath been so many Ages obscured and covered in a great abyss of darkness even from those who thought themselves the most clear-sighted in the knowledge of total Nature But who sees not it is an evident punishment for sin and a most just effect of Gods vengeance who hath permitted truth to be hidden from man because man would conceal himself from truth even in the shadow of death and nothing They vanished in their thoughts said Evanuerunt in cogitationibus suis obscuratum est insipiens cor eâ—rum Rom. 1. God in this life handleth the wicked as the damned the Apostle and their senseless hearts were obscured But that which herein is very considerable is that God hath ever handled wicked men like the damned for the unhappy souls condemned to hell have an idaea of the beatitude they have lost which serves for an executioner And infidels after shipwrack of faith and truth which they abandoned fail not still to retain an opinion of the excellency of the Divinity not knowing what it is nor why they should stick to it It was that wherein Plinie esteemed men more miserable than beasts For creatures not made for the knowledge and fruition of a God are troubled at nothing nor make any question thereupon contenting themselves peaceably to enjoy innocent favours of Nature but the curiosity man hath had through all Ages to be informed of the state of the Sovereign cause is a strong conviction of his infidelity He findeth himself obliged to seek into the knowledge of God which as saith Tertullian is the first vesture of the soul but this knowledge flieth him so long as he renounceth faith innocency and reason the prime pieces of the intellectual life From thence grew the great diversity of gods heaped Diversity of Gods Plin. l. 2. c. 7. one upon another by the Gentiles For poor humane nature overwhelmed partly by the greatness of this sovereign Essence partly also clouded by its own ignorance misery and sin being unable to understand a God most Onely and Simple with one sole touch of the soul hath made an impertinent dissection of it dividing it into as many parts as there are errours on the Altars of Gentiles whilest every one sought to adore that which most flattered his imagination or sensuality They who were more spiritual have deified virtues as Chastity Concord Intelligence Hope Honour Clemency and Faith Other more absurd have tied themselves to the worship of creatures as the Aegyptians Some who questionless were sottish have framed gods in humane shape some old others young and many perpetually infants They have made them male and female black white winged and deformed They made some to rise out of a wind others from the sea and divers from rocks They who were more fearfull and superstitious adored the feaver and tempests not for esteem of their worth but through horrour of their malignity They ware their gods shut up in rings and many times submitted to monsters denying themselves repose and repast to satisfie their superstition It is the misery which S. Augustine deplored in his Citie of God after Plinie the Historian and other Authours who handled this subject But such as amidst this great obscurity of Sects God of flatterers thought themselves more gentile and refined in conversation taking other ways and leaving old superstitions began to canonize Emperours Princes and the Great-ones of the earth saying There were no Divinities more visible and propitious than these seeing they daily became the distributours of glory and worldly fortunes The Athenians who vaunted to Remarkeable punishment of flattery Senec. Suasor 1. have the most subtile wits of the earth quickly suffered themselves to fall into such like flatteries whereof we have a very notable passage in Seneca who telleth us that Mark Anthonie being a Prince extreamly dissolute was instantly called god Bacchus by his flatterers and soon came to such shameless impudence as to suffer this title to be engraven upon his statues Behold the cause why entering into the Citie of Athens all the men of quality marching before him and desirous to be acceptable with him both through humour and affection of favour they failed not to introduce him with the title of Bacchus nay willing to over-value him above other people they added the hearty offer of
humane and politick without Heavens direction For so doing you will build upon quick-silver phantasms of greatness which will afford you illusions in this life to drench you in the other into eternal confusions When you have done all which justice and conscience Nec consilio prudenti nec remedio sagaci divinâ— providentiae fatalis dispositio subverti vel reformari potest Apul. Metamor 9. Heâ— fatis superi certasse minores Sil. Ital. l. 5. dictate leave successes to God and know there are strokes from Heaven that cannot be vanquished either by prudence of counsels or any humane remedies We are to be answerable unto God with our good desires not powers the petty gods of the earth can do nothing against the Decrees of Heaven Take these words of S. Paul not as ordinary but as Oracles of an immutable Veritie (a) (a) (a) Rom. 8. Prudentia carnis mors est prudentia autem spiritus vita pax Prudence of flesh is death but prudence of spirit is peace and life If you have good success in ought you do thank God and look on him saith (b) (b) (b) Bernard de consider l. 5. Tob. 6. 3. S. Bernard as an Omnipotent Will a virtue full of affection an eternal light a sovereign beatitude which replenisheth all here below with the abundance of his ever-honoured bounty But if in doing all you can you find main oppositions and irksom afflictions in the world say as the chast Sara did seeing her self injured by her servant O God I turn my face to the Ad. te Deus faciem mâ—am converto ad te oculos meos dirigo Peto Domine ut de vinculo improperii hujus absolvos me aut certe desuper terram cripias me c. place whence I expect my consolation I fix mine eyes on thee because thou settlest all my hopes I beseech thee deliver me from the fetters of this disgrace or deliver me out of this world Thy counsels are impenetrable to the weakness of my understanding but I am wel assured of one thing that he who faithfully serves thee shall never be deceived If his life be assaulted with afflictions it shall reap Crowns If it be exposed to the ardour of tribulations thou wilt stretch out an assisting hand If thou exercisest it under thy chastisements it shall be to make it find out the path of thy mercies The fifth EXAMPLE upon the fifth MAXIM Of the Providence of GOD over states and riches of the world EULOGIUS THe Divine Providence is a marvellous workman Drawn from the observation of Paul a Greek Authour which ruleth here below over the heads of mortals it laboureth in this great mass of mankind it takes men of earth to make them of gold and of those men of gold makes men of earth It commixeth slaves and Kings and causeth the one not thinking of it to spring from the other in the revolution of times as Plato said But we who know not all its secrets sometimes blame the works of it which should rather stir up our admiration than be subject to our censure One complaineth the wealth of the world is not well divided and that the wicked have ever the greatest share Men who oftentimes know not how to part with a finger breadth of land but by dis-joyning most intimate charities would make themselves distributers of the worlds fortunes as if they looked more narrowly into the world than he that made it I will here set down a memorable history drawn out of a rare Grecian Authour named Paulus who Paul Syllegus l. 3. c. 48. compiled many Narrations learned from the best of his Age. He recounteth how in the time of the Emperour Justin the elder about the year 528. after the birth of Christ there was in Thebais one named Eulogius a stone-cutter by his trade of poor means but very rich in virtue Which maketh us say Poverty resembles the Island of Ithaca as said Archesilas which Poverty the Isle of Ithaca 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Stob. serm 93. though rough and bushie failed not to breed the bravest men of Greece whom she made use of as a school for all the exercises of virtues This man who at that time had no other wealth on earth but his hands spared not to store up treasures of good works as pledges in Heaven He feared Virtues of a good poor man God was devout chaste sober abstinent courteous peacefull charitable and embraced eminent virtues in a mean fortune It is a strange thing that notwithstanding his labour which was hard enough he fasted most part of his time even to Sun-set and with the little money he got by the sweat of his brows relieved the poor He walked like Abraham before pilgrims he washed their feet and received them into his little house with all possible charity Then seeking out needy persons of his own Parish to give them some refection according to his abilitie he extended his compassion even to beasts not suffering any thing to escape his bounty One would have said seeing all this poor trades-man did he had been some rich Lord such abundance appeared in so low a poverty It happened that a holy Hermit called Daniel who Daniel the Hermit made a rash demand lived in great reputation for the excellent endowments of his soul passing along that way so journed in the poor cottage of Eulogius who received him like an Angel descended from Heaven He who was a most spiritual man looking very far into the Mason's life found therein such eminent perfection that he well perceived devotion many times lodged with little noise in a secular life and that God who is a great Master had servants every where This so enflamed him to the love of those virtues he observed in his hoste that returning to the Monastery he exercised great devotion as fasting three whole weeks together with intention to obtain an ample estate from God for Eulogius Fervour so transported this good man that he considered not that God who preserveth us to health loveth us not to curiosity and that the banquets he made for his greatest servants as Elias and S. Paul the Hermit when he for them opened the treasures of Heaven were onely bread and clear water of fountains Notwithstanding 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he without intermission importuned Heaven by his prayers complaining God who was most just gave riches in excess to so many sinners to puff up their pride and foment riot when the poor Mason who deserved rivers should stream nothing but gold for him was invaded by harsh poverty which tied up his hands from virtue But he persisting day and night to beg the fruit of his request heard a voice from Heaven which commanded him to lay aside so indiscreet a request saying If his Eulogius left his poverty he would forsake his conscience But he pertinaciously persevering in the pursuit of his desire through a goodness wholly blind answered He well knew
Contemplation also is divided into divers degrees Divers degrees of contemplation For there is one ordinary which maketh use of imagination and of sensible species drawn from the sight of objects though it subtilize and purifie them by the help of the understanding There is another termed immediate and perfect which goes directly to God without any mixture of fantasies or aid of creatures but if it be much discharged from all things create it is called dark contemplation because the soul being in it wholly dazeled and as it were blinded with rays of the divine Essence frameth not to it self any sensible idaea of God but beholdeth him by the way of negation banishing all representations and resemblances of creatures the more firmly to adhere unto the simplicity of the first Being But if it proceed in a superiour manner then it mounteth S. Ambros l. 3. de virginibus Influentibus divinis corporeus peregrinatur affectus usus ille exterioris hominis exâ—lesâ—it to the contemplation termed the most eminent which is the whole-sister of the beatified vision and the last heaven whereunto S. Paul was rapt a sphere totally enflamed with seraphical love where the use of sense and exteriour man seems quite annihilated and the spirit transported to the ineffable conversation with the Divinity Now we must observe upon this discourse what S. Thomos in 3. dist 52. the learned S. Thomas said That whilest our life is shut up in this mortal body its manner of actuating proceedeth by simple and ordinary ways which conduct us to the Creatour by contemplation of creatures and if any one understand spiritual things in this sublime nakedness which is discharged of images it is an admirable way and surpasseth all humane things First it is necessary to have a pious affection The ordinary manner of proceeding in things divine to matters divine thence we pass to meditation from meditation to ordinary contemplation which is attended by admiration and admiration by a certain spiritual alacrity and this alacrity by a certain fear with reverence and fear by fervent charity diffused into the exercise of good works These are the most assured ways to walk in spiritual life But these transcendent souls will in the beginning Illusions of this transcendent devotion lift a man up from the earth and make a Seraphin of him from the first day of his apprentiship To meditate well is nothing else but to make a review of our self and actions to adapt them to the commandments of God and counsels of Jesus Christ You must flie fervently even to the third Heaven and remain there rapt without knowledge whether one be on this side or that side of the world But alas how many times happeneth it these Eagles descend from this false emperial heaven to fish some wretched frog in the marsh of this inferiour earth After all these large temples of prayers gilded with so goodly words we see in the Sanctuary a pourtraict of a Rat a soul faint and pusillanimous shut up in self-love tied to petty interests imperiously commanded by so many tumultuous passions which play their prize whilest the spirit slumbers in this mystical sleep and living death They will in the beginning go equal with the seraphical souls of Saints who arrived at this purity of prayer by great mortifications and most particular favours from God But they imitate them so ill that in stead of being suited with great and solid virtues they retain nought but ostentous forms and a vain boast of words What importeth it a devote who cannot tell how to govern her house to know the retire introversion extroversion simplification dark prayer mystical sleep spiritual drunkenness tast fire quiet the cloud of glory and so many other kinds which serve to disguise devotion Know we not many spirits of young women loose themselves herein and seeking too much to refine ancient piety have made it wholly to vapour out in smoke finding themselves as void of humility as they were puffed up with presumption From thence often proceeds the curiosity of matters ravishing and extraordinary to gain to themselves the reputation of great spiritual persons and to sooth themselves with the opinion of a false sanctity When one is once gained by a false pretext of errour it is no hard matter to be perswaded all we think on is a vision all we say is a prophesie and all we do is a miracle The evil spirit finding souls drunk with this self-love hath played strange pranks which may be read in Epiphanius and Cassianus and whereof it would be an easie matter to produce many examples were it not much better to deplore than recount them 8. This vanity not satisfied to harbour in the mind The word of God altered in chairs by the extravagant opinions of hearers which bred it extendeth to the chairs of Preachers where the curious and phanatical spirits of Auditours would willingly hatch chymaera's for such as are yet but young beginners in the mystery One will have that use be made of thoughts transcendent and extraordinary and many times extravagant entangled with a perplexity of periods which leave nothing but noise in the ear and arrogance in the mind the other who is most ignorant startles at this quaint Theologie and seeks to wrest mysteries and disjoynt mens judgements thereby to draw upon all sorts of people discourses of the Trinity and Incarnation involved in visionary imaginations and turned about on a counter-battery of affected antitheses and if this be not as ordinary in all sermons as was the Delphick sword which heretofore served for all purposes in sacrifices it is to be ignorant in the ways of souls elect The other delighteth in doctrines unheard-of in a vast recital of Authours and forreign tongues as if he went about to exercise devils and not instruct Christians some one boasts to alledge neither Scripture Fathers nor any passage whatsoever for fear of marring the plaits of his periods he makes trophey to take all within his own fancy and to borrow nothing of the Ancients as if Bees who rob flowers in the garden to make honey of them were not much better than spiders who spin their wretched webs out of their own substance There are of them who desire to bundle up an endless train of fantastical conceptions without Scripture or reason who seem to tell wonders and rarities most ravishing but if any man will weigh them in an equal ballance he shall find vanities onely big with noise and wind They who have the itch of ear Sapientiae atque facundiae caupones Tertul. l. de anima c. 3. are devoted to the beauty of language and bestir them rather to talk than speak in a sermon They adore discourses replenished with a youth full eloquence and devested of wisdom having no sinews for support and less sting to transfix a heart Good God! how knowing would Preachers be did they understand as saith S. Paul how to speak
not if an enemy he hath done according to the world what he ought If he were wise he hath not done it without reason if simple he deserves compassion Who ever bit a dogg because he was bitten by a dogg Or who ever entered into a combat of kicking with a Mule If he did it in anger let us give him leisure to come to himself and he will correct himself without our trouble to give assistance If it be a superiour or man of eminent quality let us suffer that which God hath set over us if a person of base condition why by striving against him shall we make him our equal What pleasure hath a woman whose hands are so delicate to seek to foul them with crushing flies and catterpillars Let us reflect on the carriage of humane things we are all faulty and live among errours There is no wise man whom some indiscretions escape not We shall never live content if we learn not to excuse in another what our selves are Are we not ashamed to exercise in a life so short eternal enmities Be hold death comes to separate us although we forcibly hold one another by the throat let us give a little truce to our reason light to our understanding and rest to our ashes JESUS in his last words recommended forgiveness to us moistned with his tears and bloud Go we about to tear his Testament that we afterward may pull his Images in pieces The bloud of Just Abel still bubleth on the earth and is unrevenged shall we then seek to revenge it O my God we utterly renounce it with all our hearts and are ready to seal peace with our bloud that by thy bloud thou maist sign our mercy The twelfth EXAMPLE upon the twelfth MAXIM Of Reconciliation CONSTANTIA THere is nothing more certain than that he who seeks revenge shall find the God of revenge It followeth those who pursue it and when they think to exercise it on others they feel it falling on their own heads It is onely proper to base and infamous spirits to endeavour to glut themselves with bloud and to delight in the miseries of mortals but souls the most noble are ever beautified with the rays of clemency Theophilus one of the most bloudy Emperours that Zonar Theophilus a bloudy Emperour ever ware the diadem an enemy both of heaven and earth of Saints and men as he had lived on gall would end in bloud He felt his soul on his lips flying from him and saw death near at hand which he could not escape It was time he should now yield up life to others when it appeared he could no more take it from them But this wicked man holding at that time Thephobus one of his prime Captaines imprisoned in his own Palace upon certain jealousies conceiv'd he was too able a man and well worthy of Empire commanded a little before his death to have his head cut off and causing it to be brought to his bed side he took it by the hair held it a long time in his hands so much was he pleased with this massacre then seriously beholding it he cried out It is true I shall no langer be Theophilus nor art thou any more Theophobus And many times repeating these words he yielded up his damned ghost like a ravenous wolf which passed from bloud to infernal flames although certain revelations spake of his deliverance Behold how having taken in his youth evil habits of cruelty and revenge he persevered in them to his death being besides most unfortunate and infamous in all his enterprises But contrariwise it is observed all great-ones disposed to clemency have been very glorious and most happy before God and men I could here reherse very many yet pursuing our design I rest contented with relation of a notable pardon given by a Queen to a Prince on a Friday in memory of our Saviours Passion It cannot be said but so much the greater and more outragious injuries are so much the more difficult is their pardon especially when one hath full power of revenge in his hands Now the injury whereof we Conradinus speak was the death of poor Conradinus which well considered in all its circumstances rendereth this clemency whereof I intend to speak much more admirable Know then this Prince son of the Emperour Conradus went into Italy with a huge army to defend the inheritance of his Ancestours pretending it to be unjustly usurped by the wily practises of Charls of Anjou He stood at that time in the midst of his armies sparkling like a star full of fire courage when Pope Clement the fourth seeing him pass along with so much Nobility said Alas what goodly victims are led to the Altar His valour in the tenderness of his age was as yet more innocent than wary and he had to do with a Captain whom warlike experience had made more subtile in this profession Charls being ready to give him battel resolved it He gave battle to Charls of Anjou was best to weary out this young vigour to afford him the bait of some success in appearance the more easily to draw him into his snare He gave the leading of one part of his army to a Captain of his called Alardus commanding him to bear all the royal ensings as if he had been Charls of Anjou's person Conradinus thinking he had nothing to do but to conquer what he saw before his eyes for decision of the difference advanced his troups which falling like a tempest upon the enemies quickly dispatched Alardus who was slain in the battel as some histories record carrying from all this ostent of regallity a fatal glory into a tomb This young Mars supposing the war ended by the death of his Adversary presently proclaimed victory at which time Charls of Anjou who lay hidden in a trench with the activest troups as yet very fresh came suddenly upon him He did all that for his defence which a brave spirit might in an evil fortune But his army being cut in pieces he was enforced to save himself after the loss of twelve thousand dead in the place His calamity caused him to change the habit of a King into that of a horse-keeper for his greater security so much he feared to be known by those who would decide the dint of war by his bloud He embarked His taking with his cousin Frederick of Austria to pass unto Pisa committing himself in this disguised habit to a Pilot who much importuned him for his hire He had not then about him either bread or money so that he was constrained to pull off a ring and leave it in pledge to the Pilot to assure the debt He seeing these young men of a graceful garbe and considering this jewel was not a wealth suitable to their habit doubted some trick and gave notice to the Governour a crafty man who complying with the times laid hold of the Princes and put them into the hands of the Conquerour
river which the other unwillingly did seeing the peril whereinto they hastened to fall They went there remaining not above six-score of five or six hundred men and having been five days on the river they landed at adventure rather constrained by night than invited by the commodiousness of place The next day they descried a squadron of about two hundred Aethiopians who came towards them which made them prepare for defence but troubled at their arms they shewing themselves peacefull enough the other by gesture and signs discovered their infinite miscries These people wholly practised in tricks of deceit and who would make benefit of this occasion let them with much ado understand they might pass along to the Kings Palace where they should be very well entertained which they attempted but approching to the Citie in arms the King of these Barbarians timorous and wicked forbade them enterance and confined them to a little wood where they remained certain days passing the time in a poor traffick of knives and trifles which they bartered for bread But this treacherous Prince who meant to catch them in the snare seeing they had some commodities sent word to Sosa he must excuse him that he denied enterance into the Citie and that two causes had put him from it The first whereof was the dearth of victual among his people and the other the fear his subjects had of the Portingales arms they never as yet being accustomed thereto But if they would deliver their weapons they should be received into his citie and his people consigned to the next towns to be well entertained This condition seemed somewhat harsh but necessity digested all They agreed with one consent to satisfie the King Eleonora onely excepted who never would consent to betray their defences in a place where they had so much need of them Behold them disarmed and separated some dispersed into several villages here and there Sosa with his wife his children and about twenty other brought to the regal Citie Scarcely was he arrived but all his company were robbed beaten with bastonadoes and used that very night like dogs whilest himself had little better entertainment For this Prince of savages took all his gold and jewels from him and drave him away as a Pyrate leaving him onely life and his poor garments As they went out of this calamity deploring their misery behold another troup of Cafres armed with javelins who set upon them and let them know they must leave their apparel if they meant not to forsake their skins They were so confoūded they neither had strength nor courage to defend themselves behold the cause why they yielded what was demanded as sheep their fleece There was none but Eleonora who preferring death before nakedness stood a long time disputing about a poor smock with these savages but in the end violence bereaved her of that which modesty sought by all means to keep The chast and honourable Lady seeing her self naked in the sight of her domesticks who cast down their eyes at the indignity of such a spectacle presently buried her self in sand up to the middle covering the rest of her body with her dissheveled hair and every moment having these words in her mouth Where is my husband then turning towards the Pilot and some of her Officers there present she said to them with a setled countenance My good friends you have hitherto afforded to my husband your Captain and to me your Mistress all the dutie may be expected from your fidelitie It is time you leave this bodie which hath alreadie paid to the earth the moitie of its tribute Go think upon saving your lives and pray for my poor soul But if any one of you return to our native Countrey be may recount to those who shall please to remember the unfortunate Eleonora to what my sins have reduced me Having spoken these words she stood immoveable in a deep silence some space of time then lifting her eyes to Heaven added My God behold the state wherein I came from my mothers womb and the condition whereunto I must quickly return on earth one part of me being already as among the dead My God I kiss and adore the rods of thy justice which so roughly though justly have chastised me Take between thy arms the soul of my most honoured husband if he be dead Take the souls of my poor children which are by my sides Take mine now on my lips and which I yield to thee as to my Lord and Father There is no place far distant from thee nor any succour impossible to thy power As she spake this Sosa her husband came having escaped out of the hands of these thieves who had robbed him and finding his wife in this state he stood by her not able to utter a word The Lady likewise spake onely with her eys which she sweetly fix'd upon him to give comfort in the violence of the insupportable afflictions But he feeling his heart wholly drenched in bitterness hastened into a wood of purpose to meet with some prey at least to feed his little childrē which were as yet by their mothers side Thence he ere long returned and found one of them already dead to which with his own hands he gave burial immediately after he went again into the forrest to hunt as he had accustomed finding no other comfort His heart was perpetually in Eleonora's where he survived more than in his own body coming to behold her once again or his last he perceived she was already deceased with his other child who died near her there being onely left two poor maids who bewailed their Lady and made the wilderness resound with their sad complaints He commanded them to retire a little aside then taking Eleonora by the hand he kissed it standing a long time with his lips fixed unto it nothing to be heard but some broken sighs That done with the help of the maids he buried her near his two children without any complaint or utterance of one word In a short space after he returned into the thickest of the forrest where it was thought he was devoured So joyning his soul at least to hers who had tied her heart to his in death with examples of her constancie THE THIRD PART OF MAXIMS Of the HOLY COURT THE DESIGN HAving in this Second Part deduced the principal Maxims which concern the direction of this present Life we enter into the other there to behold the power of death over mortal things and the immortalitie of our souls in the general dissolution of bodies We consider them in the several ways they take in their passage and then see them re-united to their bodies as in the Resurrection It is under thy eyes Eternal Wisdom and by thy favour we enter into these great labyrinths of thy Eternities therein hoping thy direction as we intend thy glorie THE THIRD PART Touching the State of the other World XV. MAXIM Of DEATH THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY
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
period of thy life having bid adieu to the world and drawn the curtain between thee and creatures endeavour to be united as perfectly as is possible to thy Creatour First by good and perfect confession of the principal actions of all thy life Secondly by a most religious participation of thy viaticum in presence of thy friends in a manner the most sober well ordered edificative thou maist In the third place seasonably receiving extream unction thy self answering if it be possible to the prayers of the Church and causing to be read in the approaches of this last combate some part of the passion Lastly by the acts of faith hope charity and contrition I approve not the manner of some who make studied remonstrances to dying men as if they were in a pulpit nor of those who blow incessantly in their ears unseasonable words and make as much noise with the tongue as heretofore Pagans with their kettles in the eclipse of the Moon We must let those good souls depart without any disturbance in the shades of death S. Augustine would die in great silence desiring not to be troubled with lamentations nor visits for ten days together where having hanged some versicles of Psalms about his bed he fixed his dying eyes upon them with a sweetness most peacefull and so gave up the ghost It is good to say My God I believe assist my incredulitie I know my Crâ—do Domine adjuva incredulitatem meam Marc. 9. Scio quod Redemptor meus vivit c. Job 9. Si ambulavero in medio umbrae mortis non timebo mala quoniam tu mecum es Psal 22. Quid mihi est in coelo c. Psal 72. Quare tristis es anima mea c. Psal 83. Redeemer is living and that I shall see him in the same flesh which I at this present disarray Though I must walk into the shades of death I will fear nothing because Oh my God thou art with me What have I to desire in heaven and what would I of thee on earth My flesh and my heart are entranced in thee O the God of my heart and my portion for all eternitie Wherefore art thou so sad O my soul and why dost thou trouble me Turn now to thy rest because God hath afforded thee mercie Behold how the Virgin our Ladie died behold how Saint Lewis died behold how Saint Paula departed of whom Saint Hierom (a) (a) (a) Hier. ep 27. ad Eustoc Digitum ad â— tenens crucis signum pingebat in labiis Anima erumpere gestiens ipsum stridorem quo mortalis vita finitur in laudes convertebat said The holy Lady rendering up her life put her finger on her mouth as desirous to imprint the sign of the Cross upon it turning the gasps of death and last breath of the soul into the praises of God whom she so faithfully had served XVI MAXIM Of the Immortalitie of the SOUL THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT Little care is to be had of the Soul after death so all be well with it in this life That we have an immortal Soul capable of happiness or unhappiness eternal 1. A Man who doubteth and questions the immortalitie of the Soul sheweth in the very beginning that he almost hath no soul that retaining nought but the substance of it to suffer he hath lost the lights and goodness which might crown it Never enter these thoughts into any man without making a tomb of flesh for his reason whilest he so flattering his body forgets all the excellencies of his soul We must here follow the counsel of ancient Sages when a Libertine will impugn a verity known by the onely light of nature it is not needfull to answer his absurdities but to lead him directly into the stall and to shut him up with beasts speaking unto him the sentence which the Prophet Daniel pronounced against Nebuchadnezzar Thou shalt hereafter be banished Sentence against the wicked Ejicient te ab hominibus cum bestiis ferisque erit habitatio tua Daniel 4. from the companie of men and thy abode shall be with beasts and savage creatures All speak and all dispute for the Maxim of the Holy Court and although we ought to have full obligation to faith which manifestly hath set this truth before us thereunto affixing all the order of our life and the principal felicity we hope for yet are we not a little enlightened with so many excellent conceits which learning furnisheth us withal upon it and which I will endeavour to abbreviate comprehending much in few words 2. I will then say for your comfort that it hath happened that an Heretick lost both of understanding and conscience having opposed the belief of Purgatory heresie being a beaten path to infidelity came to this point of folly as throughly to perswade himself that death ended all things and that these endeavours of prayers and ceremonies which we afford to the memory of the deceased were given to shadows He did all a wicked man might to tear himself from The belief of the immortalitie of the soul invincible Condemnation of impiety in the tribunal of nature himself and belie that which God made him but it was impossible for him as you shall see in considering the three chambers of justice wherein he was condemned First he entered into the Court before the tribunal of Nature and thought he saw a huge troup of all the learned men of the earth and all Nations of the universe who came to fall upon as a mighty cloud armed with fire and lightening My God said he what is this The great Tertullian Quod apud multos commune invenitur non est erratum sed traditum Tertul. said and it is true that verities which fall into the general understandings of all men as acknowledged avowed and confessed by all sorts of nations ought to be believed as by a decree of Nature The example thereof is evident For all men in the world believe that the whole is greater than a part that the superiour number exceedeth the inferiour That the father and mother should be honoured as the Authours of life That one must not do to another what he would not be done to himself And because every one understands and averreth this by the light of nature he would be thought a beast or a mad man who should contradict it Now from whence proceedeth it that the belief of the souls immortality holds the same place with these general Maxims although it be otherwise much transcendent above our sense If I regard the course of time and revolution Tertul. de testimonio animae of Ages from the beginning of the world one cannot assign any one wherein this faith hath not been published by words or actions correspondent to the life of the other world And if some depraved spirits have doubted it they were gain-said by publick voice by laws ceremonies customs protestations of Common-wealths of
the first book of the sermon made on the mountain interpreteth all that of punishments in the other life When in the fourth Chapter of Tobie it is written of bread to be put upon the graves of the dead S. Chrysostom Homily thirty two upon S. Matthew referreth this passage to the custom of the ancient Church which called both the Priests and the poor purposely to pray for the dead When mention is made in the fourth of Kings of a solemn fast made for Saul Bede makes no question but it was for the quiet of his soul For S. Paul sheweth in the first to the Corinthians fifteenth Chapter that it was the custom to mortifie and macerate ones self for the dead and the second of Machabees saith it is a holy and a wholesome thing to pray for them Who knew more and who saw more in all this than the great S. Augustine who on the thirty seventh Psalm hath these words My God make me such in my life that I may not Aug. in Psal 37. Talem me reddas cui emendatorio igne non sit opus need the fire of Purgatorie after my death Hath the Roman Church hired all these so ancient Fathers to write such texts in its behalf Is it not a shame that a brainless Libertine with the eyes of a bat should mock at all these lights 4. Doubtless will some say these reasons are forcible The manner of Purgatory but I understand not where this purgatorie is and how souls are there tormented To that I answer the Church which walketh reservedly in its ordinances ever grounded on the word of God onely obligeth us to hold as an article of faith a third place for the purgation of souls which is neither Paradise nor hel As for circumstances of the place and manner Nyss de anima resurrectione Chrysost homil de Beatorum premiis Beda l. 3. hist Angl. â—9 of sensible torments it hath decryed nothing thereof as an article of our belief School Divines ordinarily set purgatorie in a subterranean place which is very probable It may also be that souls may be purged in the air in the sphear of fire and in divers parts of the elementary world according to the opinion of S. Gregory Nyssen S. Chrysostom and S. Gregory the great It dependeth on the prerogative of Gods power and the ministery of Angels As for punishments it is most certain the first consisteth Miris sed veris modis August in suspension from the sight of God a matter very dolorous to a soul which being out of the body far absented from its source is as would the globe of the earth be were it out of its place or like unto fire shut up in the bowels of mount Aetna It naturally desireth to rejoyn it self to God and the least retardation it feels from such felicitie is most sensible unto it It mourneth to be deprived from an infinite comfort when the thirst is most ardent and to see it self bereaved by its own fault yea such an one as might easily have been avoided The second is the pain of sense which is exercised by fire the great executioner of Gods justice and sometimes also by other wayes known to his providence as S. Bonaventure and holy Bede teach us If you say you cannot comprehend how a material thing worketh on a spiritual I ask of you again this soul which is in your bodie is it of any other kind than those in purgatorie And yet see you not how it daily suffereth in the bodie See you not how all the dolours of mortal flesh rebound back again by an amorous simpathy and a counter-buff wholly necessarie to the bottom of our soul And yet you ask how it can suffer Is it not true our soul containeth in it the root of understanding all sensible knowledge framed and accomplished by the help of the bodies organs Is it not true that being in the bodie it understandeth and feeleth with dependance on the bodie But separated doth it loose this root of understanding and knowledge Verily no For it then understandeth with independence on the body To speak also according to the opinion of some it may feel out of the body not onely by a knowledge naked and intellectual but experimental in some sort not unlike the understanding exercised in the bodie But there is no more corporal organ which is as the chariot of feeling What importeth it God by his power cannot he supply the organ of bodie and necessitate the soul immediately to feel the sharpness of fire as if it were still in the bodie And which is more some Divines think there would be no inconvenience to say the soul were revested by God with a bodie of air as in a sheath wherewith it should have Corink de purgatorio p. 529. the same sympathy it had before with the bodie it informed and this bodie being incorruptibly burnt as that of the damned should cause a painful quality to arise to torment it which I notwithstanding think not so probable But I rather believe the fire not being contrarie of its nature to the spirit might for all that be chosen and appointed by the singular disposition of providence to be unto the soul an afflicting sign in that it representeth to it in its flames the anger of an offended God as it shall be said in the subsequent Maxim Alas O Christians God grant we may be ignorant of this eternal and temporal fire and may rather be purged in this life than expect it in the other 5. When I come to the second point of this discourse Against the dulness of those who understand it not I cannot wonder enough at our stupidity lethargy we believe purgatorie and bely our belief by our works What may we hope in the other life living so negligently and remislely God is mercifull Behold our ordinarie saying But see we not in Scriptures the hand of God armed with fiery tempests over the infamous Cities of Sodom and Gomorrha and the bodies which sacrificed themselves in the flames of prodigious luxurie roasted and broyled under the breath of the anger of the Omnipotent See we not a whole world buried in the waters of a deluge waves of the Ocean rushing as in a citie sacked on the heads of offenders the sea becoming altogether the executioner and tomb of sinners See we not those beautifull Angels so beloved of God and so worthy of favour which also came most resplendent out of his hands lost by one thought of pride scorched and precipitated into dungeons of eternal flames Think we to be more to God than those cities replenished with an infinite number of souls than a whole world than legions of Angels Let us not flatter our selves by a presumptuous confidence of a mercy not due to a negligence so faint and dissolute The truth is no uncleanness enetreth into Paradise The truth is the eyes of the supream Judge cannot endure pollution
I eat drink sleep when I do business when I am both in conversation and solitude Whither shall this poor soul go which thou hast thrown into a body so frail in a world so corrupt and amongst the assaults of so many pernicious enemies Open O Lord thine eyes for my guidance and compassionate my infirmities without thee I can do nothing and in thee I can do all that I ought Give me O Lord a piercing eye to see my danger and the wings of an Eagle to flie from it or the heart of a Lion to fight valiantly that I may never be wanting in my duty and fidelity to thee I ow all that I am or have to thy gracious favour and I will hope for my salvation not by any proportion of my own virtues which are weak and slender but by thy boundless liberalities which onely do crown all our good works The Gospel upon Munday the first week of Lent out of Saint Matthew 25. Of the Judgement-Day ANd when the Son of man shall come in his Majesty and all the Angels with him then shall be sit upon the seat of his Majesty And all Nations shall be gathered together before him and he shall separate them one from another as the Pastour separateth the sheep from the goats And shall set the sheep at his right hand but the goats at his left Then shall the King say to them that shall be at his right hand Come ye blessed of my Father possess you the Kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world For I was hungred and you gave me to eat I was athirst and you gave me to drink I was a stranger and you took me in naked and you covered me sick and you visited me I was in prison and you came to me Then shall the just answer him saying Lord when did we see thee an hungred and fed thee athirst and gave thee drink and when did we see thee a stranger and took thee in or naked and covered thee or when did we see thee sick or in prison and came to thee And the King answering shall say to them Amen I say to you as long as you did it to one of these my least brethren you did it to me Then shall he say to them also that shall be at his left hand Get you away from me you cursed into fire everlasting which was prepared for the Devil and his Angels For I was an hungred and you gave me not to eat I was athirst and you gave me not to drink I was a stranger and ye took me not in naked and you covered me not sick and in prison and you did not visit me Then they also shall answer him saying Lord when did we see thee an hungred or athirst or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison and did not minister to thee Then shall he answer them saying Amen I say to you as long as you did it not to one of these lesser neither did you it to me And these shall go into punishment everlasting but the just into life everlasting Moralities 1. BEhold here a Gospel of great terrour where our spirit like the Dove of Noah is placed upon the great deluge of Gods wrath and knows not where to find footing Every thing is most dreadfull But what can be more terrible than the certainty of Gods judgement joyned with the great uncertainty of the hour of our death It is an unchangeable decree that we must all be presented before the high Tribunal of the living God to render a just account of all which our soul hath done while it was joyned with our body as we are taught by S. Paul We must make an account of our time spent of our thoughts words actions of that we have done and that we have omitted of life death and of the bloud of Jesus Christ and thereupon receive a judgement of everlasting life or death All men know that this must certainly be done but no man knows the hour or moment when it shall be So many clocks strike about us every day and yet none can let us know the hour of our death 2. O how great is the solitude of a Soul in her separation from so many great enticements of the world wherein many men live and in an instant to see nothing but the good or ill we have done on either side us what an astonishment will it be for a man suddenly to see all the actions of his life as upon a piece of Tapistree spred befor his eyes where his sins will appear like so many thorns so many serpents so many venemous beasts Where will then be that cozening vail of reputation and reason of state which as yet cover so many wicked actions The soul shall in that day of God be shewed naked to all the world and her own eyes will most vex her by witnessing so plainly what she hath done 3. O what a parting water is Gods judgement which in a moment shall separate the mettals so different O what a division will then be made of some men which now live upon earth Some shall be made clear and bright like the stars of heaven others like coals burning in hell O what a dreadfull change will it be to a damned soul at her separation from this life to live onely in the company of devils in that piercing sense of torments and eternal punishment It is a very troublesom thing to be tied with silken strings in a bed of Roses for the space of eight days together What may we think of a damned soul which must dwell in a bed of flames so long as there shall be a God 4. Make use of the time given you to work your salvation and live such a life as may end with a happy death and so obtain that favourable judgement which shall say Come O thou soul blessed of God my Father possess the kingdom which is prepared for thee from the beginning of the world There is no better means to avoid the rigour of Gods judgements than to fear them continually Imitate the tree mentioned in an Emblem which being designed to make a ship and finding it self wind-shaken as it grew upon the land said What will become of me in the sea If we be already moved in this world by the bare consideration of the punishment due to sin think what it will be in that vast sea and dreadfull Abyss of Gods judgements Aspirations O King of dreadfull Majesty who doest justly damn and undeservedly save souls save me O Fountain of Mercy Remember thy self sweet Jesus that I was the cause of that great journey which thou tookest from God to man and do not destroy me in that dreadfull day which must decide the Question of my life or death for all eternity Take care of my last end since thou art the cause of my beginning and the onely cause of all that I am O Father of bounties wouldest thou stop a mouth
find the like to whom wouldst thou have me go but to thy self who doest not yet cease to call me The Gospel upon the third Sunday in Lent S. Luke 11. Jesus cast out the Devil which was dumb ANd he was casting out a devil and that was dumb And when he had cast out the devil the dumb spake and the multitudes marvelled And certain of them said in Belzebub the Prince of Devils he casteth out Devils And others tempting asked him a sign from Heaven But he seeing their cogitations said to them Every Kingdom divided against it self shall be made desolate and house upon house shall fall And if Satan also be divided against himself how shall his Kingdom stand because you say that in Belzebub I do cast out Devils And if I in Belzebub cast out Devils your children in whom do they cast out Therefore they shall be your judges But if I in the finger of God do cast out Devils surely the Kingdom of God is come upon you When the strong armed keepeth his court those things are in peace that he possesseth but if a stronger than he come upon him and overcome him he will take away his whole armour wherein he trusted and will distribute his spoils He that is not with me is against me and he that gathereth not with me scattereth When the unclean spirit shall depart out of a man he wandreth through places without water seeking rest and not finding he saith I will return into my house whence I departed And when he is come he findeth it swept with a besom and trimmed Then he goeth and taketh seven other spirits worse than himself and entering in they dwell there And the last of that man be made worse than the first And it came to pass when he said these things a certain woman lifting up her voice out of the multitude said to him Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that thou didst suck But he said Yea rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it Moralities 1. THe Almond-tree is the first which begins to flourish and it is often first nipt with frost The tongue is the first thing which moves in a mans body and is soonest caught with the snares of Satan That man deserves to be speechless all his life who never speaks a word better than silence 2. Jesus the eternal word of God came upon earth to reform the words of man his life was a lightening and his word a thunder which was powerfull in effect but always measured within his bounds He did fight against ill tongues in his life and conquered them all in his death The gall and vinegar which he took to expiate the sins of this unhappy tongue do shew how great the evil was since it did need so sharp a remedy He hath cured by suffering his dolours what it deserved by our committing sins Other vices are determined by one act the tongue goes to all it is a servant to all malitious actions and is generally confederate with the heart in all crimes 3. We have just so much Religion as we have government of our tongues A little thing serves to tame wild beasts and a small stern will serve to govern a ship Why then cannot a man rule so small a part of his body It is not sufficient to avoid lying perjuries quarrels injuries slanders and blasphemies such as the Scribes and Pharisees did vomit out in this Gospel against the purity of the Son of God We must also repress idle talk and other frivolous and unprofitable discourses There are some persons who have their hearts so loose that they cannot keep them within their brests but they will quickly swim upon their lips without thinking what they say and so make a shift to wound their souls 4. Imitate a holy Father called Sisus who prayed God thirty years together every day to deliver him from his tongue as from a capital enemy You shall never be very chaste of your body except you do very well bridle your tongue For loosness of the flesh proceeds sometimes from liberty of the tongue Remember your self that your heart should go like a clock with all the just and equal motions of his springs and that your tongue is the finger which shews how all the hours of the day pass When the heart goes of one side and the tongue of another it is a sure desolation of your spirits Kingdom If Jesus set it once at peace and quiet you must be very carefull to keep it so and be very fearfull of relapses For the multiplying of long continued sins brings at last hell it self upon a mans shoulders Aspirations O Word incarnate to whom all just tongues speak and after whom all hearts do thirst and languish chase from us all prating devils and also those which are dumb the first provoke and loose the tongue to speak wickedly and the other bind it when it should confess the truth O peace-making Solomon appease the divisions of my heart and unite all my powers to the love of thy service Destroy in me all the marks of Satans Empire and plant there thy Trophees and Standards that my spirit be never like those devils which seek for rest but shall never find it Make me preserve inviolable the house of my conscience which thou hast cleansed by repentance and clothed with thy graces that I may have perseverance to the end without relapses and so obtain happiness without more need of repentance The Gospel upon Munday the third week in Lent S. Luke 4. Jesus is required to do Miracles in his own Countrey ANd he said to them Certes you will say to me this similitude Physitian cure thy self as great things as we have heard done in Capharnaum do also here in thy Countrey And he said Amen I say to you that no Prophet is accepted in his own Country In truth I say to you there were many widows in the dayes of Elias in Israel when the heaven was shut three years and six moneths when there was a great famine made in the whole earth and to none of them was Elias sent but into Sarepta of Sidon to a widow woman And there were many Lepars in Israel under Elizeus the Prophet and none of them made clean but Naaman the Syrian And all in the Synagogue were filled with anger hearing these things And they rose and cast him out of the Citie and they brought him to the edge of the hill whereupon their Citie was built that they might throw him down headlong But he passing through the midst of them went his way Moralities 1. THe malignity of mans nature undervalueth all that which it hath in hand little esteems many necessary things because they are common The Sun is not counted rare because it shines every day and the elements are held contemptible since they are common to the poor as well as the rich Jesus was despised in his own Countrey because he
tears come from any other than the place of all delight since they issued from a brain and from eyes which were united to the divinity And how should they not water Paradise since for so many ages they have flowed over the Church for producing the fruits of justice The balm of Egypt could not grow without water of that Well which was commonly called the fountain of Jesus because the blessed Virgin had there washed the clothes of her dear Son And we have no Odour of virtue nor good conversation which is not directly barren except it be endued with the merit of our Saviours tears Aspirations O Eyes of my Saviour from whence the sun receives his clearest light fair eyes which onely deserve eternal joyes and delights Why should you this day be moistened with tears Thou dost give me O onely love of my heart the bloud of thy soul before thou shedst that of thy body There are so many things to make me weep and I feel them so little that if they tears do not weep for me I shall always be miserable Water then O my sweet Master the barrenness of my soul from that fountain of blessing which I have opened within thine eyes and heart I have opened it by my sins and let it I beseech thee bless me by thine infinite mercies The Gospel upon Saturday the fourth week in Lent S. John 8. Upon our Saviours words I am the light of the world AGain therefore Jesus spake to them saying I am the light of the vvorld he that followeth me vvalketh not in darkness but shall have the light of life The Pharisees therefore said to him Thou givest testimonie of thy self thy testimonie is not true Jesus answered and said to them although I do give testimonie of my self my testimonie is true because I know vvhence I came and vvhither I go but you know not vvhence I came or vvhither I go You judge according to the flesh I do not judge any man And if I do judge my judgement is true because I am not alone but I and he that sent me the Father And in your law it is vvritten that the testimonie of two men is true I am he that give testimonie of my self and he that sent me the Father giveth testimonie of me They said therefore to him Where is thy Father Jesus answered Neither me do you know nor my Father if you did know me perhaps you might know my Father also These vvords Jesus spake in the Treasurie teaching in the Temple and no man apprehended him because his hour vvas not yet come Moralities 1. THere is in the blessed Trinity a communicating light to which nothing is communicated another light which is communicative and communicated and a third light which is communicated but not communicating The first is the heavenly Father who gives but takes nothing The second is that of the Son who takes from his Father and gives to the holy Ghost all that can be given The third is the holy Ghost which receives equally from the Father and the Son and doth produce nothing in the Trinity But Jesus illuminating from all eternity this state for ever to be adored did vouchsafe to descend into the countrey of our darkness to scatter it by his brightness It is he that hath thrown down the Crocodiles and Bats from prophane Altars who hath broken so many idols who hath overthrown so many Temples of the adulterers and murdering gods to plant the honours of his heavenly Father He hath invested the world during so many ages with the shining of his face He doth not cease to give light nor to kindle in our hearts many inspirations which are like so many stars to conduct us to the fountain of all our happiness You are very blind if you do not see this and much more miserable if you despise it 2. It is most dangerous to do as the Jews did to speak every day to the light and yet love their own darkness Screech-owls find holes and nights to keep themselves from day which they cannot abide But he that flies from the face of God where can he find darkness enough to hide himself When he shall be within the gulf of sin his own conscience will light up a thousand torches to see his punishments It is the worst of all mischiefs to pay for the contempt of the fountain of light by suffering eternal darkness 3. Let us behold the conversation of Jesus Christ as a sea mark stickt all over with lights his life gives Testimony of his Sanctity his miracles publish his power his law declares his infinite wisdâ—m his Sanctity gives us an example to imitate his power gives the strength of Authority to make him the more readily obeyed and from his wisdom faith is given us to regulate and govern our belief Aspirations O My Lord Jesus the spirit of all beauties and the most visible of all lights what do the eyes of my soul if they be not always busied in the contemplation of thy brightness When I find thou art departed from me me thinks I am buried within my self and that my soul is nothing else but a Sepulchre of terrours phantasms and deaths But when thou returnest by thy visits and consolations I am chearfully revived and my heart leaps in thy presence as a child rejoyceth at sight of his dear nurse O Light of lights which dost illuminate man coming into this world I will contemplate thee at the sun-rising above all creatures I will follow thee with mine eyes all the day long and I will not leave thee at sun-setting for there is nothing can be in value near like thee It belongs onely to thee O Sun of my Soul to arise at all hours and to give light at Mid-night as well as at Noon-day The Gospel upon Passion Sunday S. John the 8. upon these words Who can accuse me of sin WHich of you shall argue me of sin If I say the verity why do you not believe me He that is of God heareth the words of God therefore you hear not because you are not of God The Jews therefore answered and said to him Do not we say well that thou art a Samaritan and hast a Devil Jesus answered I have no Devil but I do honour my Father and you have dishonoured me But I seek not mine own glorie There is that seeketh and judgeth Amen Amen I say to you if any man keep my word he shall not see death for ever The Jews therefore said now we have known that thou hast a Devil Abraham is dead and the Prophets and thou sayest if any man keep my word he shall not taste death for ever Why art thou greater than our Father Abraham who is dead and the Prophets are dead Whom doest thou make thy self Jesus answered if I do glorifie my self my glorie is nothing It is my Father that glorifieth me whom you say that he is your God and you have not known him but I know him
you love binds you fast enough to the Cross without them But do thou O Lord hold me fast to thy self by the chain of thine immensity O Lance cruel Lance Why didst thou open that most precious side Thou didst think perhaps to find there the Sons life and yet thou foundest nothing but the Mothers heart But without so much as thinking what thou didst in playing the murderer thou hast made a Sepulcher wherein I will from henceforth bury my soul When I behold these wounds of my dear Saviour I do acknowledge the strokes of my own hand I will therefore likewise engrave there my repentance I will write my conversion with an eternal Character And if I must live I will never breathe any other life but that onely which shall be produced from the death of my Jesus crucified The Gospel for Easter-day S. Mark 16. ANd when the Sabbath was past Mary Magdalene and Mary of James and Salome bought spices that coming they might anoint Jesus And very early the first of the Sabbaths they come to the Monument the Sun being now risen And they say one to another who shall roll us back the stone from the door of the Monument And looking they saw the stone rolled back For it was very great And entering into the Monument they saw a young man sitting on the right hand covered with a white Robe and they were astonied Who saith to them Be not dismayed you seck Jesus of Nazareth that was crucified he is risen he is not here behold the place where they laid him But go tell his Disciples and Peter that be goeth before you into Galilee there you shall see him as he told you Moralities 1. THe Sepulcher of Jesus becomes a fountain of life which carries in power all the glories of the highest Heaven Our Saviour riseth from thence as day out of the East and appears as triumphant in the ornaments of his beauties as he had been humbled by the excess of his mercies The rage of the Jews looseth here its power death his sting Satan his kingdom the Tomb his corruption and hell his conquest Mortality is destroyed life is illuminated all is drowned in one day of glory which comes from the glorious light of our Redeemer It is now saith Tertullian that he is revested with his Robe of Honour and is acknowledged as the eternal Priest for all eternity It is now saith S. Gregory Nazianzen that he re-assembles humane kind which was scattered so many years by the sin of one man and placeth it between the arms of his Divinity This is the Master-piece of his profound humility and I dare boldly affirm saith S. Ambrose that God had lost the whole world if this Sacred Virtue which he made so clearly shine in his beloved Son had not put him into possession of his Conquests We should all languish after this Triumphant state of the Resurrection which will make an end of all our pains and make our Crowns everlasting 2. Let us love our Jesus as the Maries did that with them we may be honoured with his visits Their love is indefatigable couragious and insatiable They had all the day walkt round about the Judgement-Hall Mount Calvary the Cross and the Sepulcher They were not wearied with all that And night had no sleep to shut up their eyes They forsook the Image of death which is sleep to find death it self and never looked after any bed except the Sepulcher of their Master They travel amongst darkness pikes launces the affrights of Arms and of the night nothing makes them afraid If there appear a difficulty to remove the stones love gives them arms They spare nothing for their Master and Saviour They are above Nicodemus and Joseph they have more exquisite perfumes for they are ready to melt and distil their hearts upon the Tomb of their Master O faithfull lovers seek no more for the living amongst the dead That cannot die for love which is the root of life 3. The Angel in form of a young man covered with a white Robe shews us that all is young and white in immortality The Resurrection hath no old age it is an age which can neither grow nor diminish These holy Maries enter alive into the sepulcher where they thought to find death but they learn news of the chiefest of lives Their faith is there confirmed their piety satisfied their promises assured and their love receives consolation Aspirations I Do not this day look toward the East O my Jesus I consider the Sepulcher it is from thence this fair Sun is risen O that thou appearest amiable dear Spouse of my soul Thy head which was covered with thorns is now crowned with a Diadem of Stars and Lights and all the glory of the highest Heaven rests upon it Thine eyes which were eclipsed in bloud have enlightened them with fires and delicious brightness which melt my heart Thy feet and hands so far as I can see are enamel'd with Rubies which after they have been the objects of mens cruelty are now become eternal marks of thy bounty O Jesus no more my wounded but my glorified Jesus where am I What do I I see I flie I swound I die I revive my self with thee I do beseech thee my most Sacred Jesus by the most triumphant of thy glories let me no more fall into the image of death nor into those appetites of smoke and earth which have so many times buried the light of my soul What have I to do with the illusions of this world I am for Heaven for Glory and for the Resurrection which I will now make bud out of my thoughts that I may hereafter possess them with a full fruition The Gospel upon Munday in Easter-week S. Luke the 24. ANd behold two of them went the same day into a Town which was the space of sixty furlongs from Jerusalem named Emmaus And they talked betwixt themselves of all those things that had chanced And it came to pass while they talked and reasoned with themselves Jesus also himself approching went with them but their eyes were held that they might not know him And he faid to them What are these communications that you confer one with another walking and are sad And one whose name was Cleophas answering said to him Art thou onely a stranger in Jerusalem and hast not known the things that have been done in it these dayes To whom he said What things And they said Concerning Jesus of Nazareth who was a man a Prophet mighty in work and word before God and all the people And how our chief Priests and Princes delivered him into condemnation of death and crucified him But we hoped that it was he that should redeem Israel And now besides all this to day is the third day since these things were done But certain women also of ours made us afraid who before it was light were at the Monument and not finding his body came saying That they saw a vision also
Death 24 Its Attendants 66 Meditation of Death 67 Death of the Just is sweet 415 Quality of a good Death is the indifferency of time and manner 416 Worldly irresolutions of Death 417 The way how to be well provided for Death 418 A good Death must have Union with God 419 A notable Aenigma of Death 436 Devotion defined 467 That the great number of Devout men should settle men in Devotion 82 The adhering to creatures doth marre all in Devotion ib. Pretext of Devotion dangerous illustrated by the Fowler 203 Devotion subject to many illusions and the reason why 381 Gross and afflicting Devotion 382 Three blemishes of anxious Devotion ibid. Quaint Devotion 383 The pomp and practises of this Devotion ibid. Reasons of the nullity of this Devotion 284 Transcendent Devotion ibid. Illusions of this Transcendent Devotion 385 S. Lewis the true Table of Solid Devotion 387 State of the Church under Diocletian 234 His conditions ibid. He forsaketh the Empire 235 Dissimulation reigneth every where 394 Dissimulation doth ruin humane faith 395 Dissimulation shamefull to the Authour of it ibid. Dissimulation doth debase a man ibid. The horrours and hatred of Dissimulation 396 The troubles and miseries of Dissimulation ibid. The dreadfull Events of Dissemblers ibid. The power of the Divinity over Infidels 346 Different opinion of the Divinity 348 It is a sacriledge to make Divinity of proper Interest 390 How abominable vicious Domesticks are 17 Duels unlawfull 14 A Duel is no act of Courage ibid. Who anciently entered into Duels ibid. There is want of Generosity in Duels ibid. Authors of Duels 224 Courage of Duellers like to that of the possessed 22â— Dydimus his bold attempt 86 E EDucation its force 15 Defects of Education ibid. Moses educated in the Court. 16 Education of Children recommended by excellent passages of the holy Fathers 17 Eleazar his Combat 347 The Isle of Amber the felicity of Epicurus 40â— The Philosophie of Epicurus doth bear sway in the world 404 The foundation of Episcopal life 180 Eponina a rare example of Conjugal Piety 306 Errours of the Time 341 Eternity of nothing first humilation of man 349 Eucharist the foundation of Paradise 72 Greatness of the Eucharist ibid. Eusebius the Patron of Hereticks 252 Eustatius his Oration at the opening of the Councel 253 Evils generally proceed from ignorance and from the want of the knowledge of God 62 Evil alwayes beareth sorrow behind it but not true pennance 66 Eudoxia mother of Theodosius 138 Her humour ibid Bishops treat with her ibid. Her Zeal ibid. She goeth into Palestine 147 Her return is laboured by Chrysaphius ibid. She lived in the Holy Land in the Eutychian heresie 153 Her Conversion 155 Her worthy life and glorious death ibid. Remedies and reasons against Excess 52 Indignity of Excess in apparel ibid. Necessity of Examen 71 Six things in the Examen to employ the most perfect ibid. Ill Example the work of Antichrist 22 Exemplar crimes deserve Exemplar punishments 23 An Observation upon the Chariot of Ezechiel 451 F FAith what it is and the dignity thereof 62 Its Object and the manner of its working ibid. Touch-stone to know whether we have Faith 63 Heroick acts of Faith ibid. How acts of Faith may be made easie 64 What ought to be the Faith of good Communicants 72 To be Faithfull to the King one must be loyal to God 236 To be Faithfull is to be conformable to reason 340 The great Providence of God in the establishment of Faith ibid. The repose which our Faith promiseth 341 Constancy of Faith 417 Fathers and Mothers compared to Ostriches 16 Fantasies to gain honours 25 Conclusions against Fatalitie 36 Maxims of Fatalitie 365 Favorinus his excellent Observations 10 Excellency of Fidelity 395 Flattery punished 349 Flattery inebriateth Great-men from the Cradle 46 Great Spirits enemies to the Flesh 405 Immoderate love of health doth make a man become suppliant and servile to the Flesh 406 Plotinus a great enemy to his own Flesh 405 Instance upon the weakness and miserie of the Flesh ibid. Hierom his Observation upon the Flower of Box. 406 A notable Fable of the Flie and Silk-worm 43 Fortitude defined 486 Fantasies of Ancients upon the Names of Fortune 360 Fortune is in the power of Providence ibid. A Conclusion against those who curse Fortune 362 Manners are changed with Fortune 364 G GAramant the Fountain 301 GOd's hands a golden bowl full of the Sea 9 God named Obliging in the beginning of the World 19 God a great Thesis 22 God is better known to us than our selves 344 God most easie to be known ibid. All things contribute to the knowledge of God 345 God in this life handleth the wicked as the damned 348 God is who he is 349 Excellency of the Simplicity and Universality of God in comparison of the World 350 Perfections of God 351 God his Goodness 355 367 An excellent similitude of God with the Ocean 351 The God of Hosts besiegeth a Citie 217 Diversity of Gods 349 Gods pastime what it is 42 Why God admitted not the Ostrich and Swan into the number of Victims ibid. Knowledge of the Goodness Justice and Power of God 356 357 God governeth the world with two hands 430 God will replenish us with himself 437 Desperate desire of worldly Goods 418 Gratian the son of Valentinian 200 His excellent qualities 201 Affectionate words of S. Ambrose unto him ibid. His zeal and virtue by the direction of S. Ambrose ibid. His admirable Charity 202 Maximus rebellâ—th against him ibid. His pitifull death 204 Gratitude in the Law of God 20 Excellent proofs of natural Gratitude 19 Gratitude defined 488 The acts of Gratitude 90 Gratitude of the Hebrews ibid. Practise of S. Augustine to encourage himself to Gratitude 20 Greatness of God 437 Greatness of an honest man 48 Lives of Great-ones enlightened 6 The great virtue of Great-ones 7 Authority of Great-ones to strengthen Devotion 8 Great-ones heretofore have perverted the world 21 Great-ones that are vicious draw on themselves horrible execrations of God 23 Great-ones strangely punished 24 Three sorts of Great ones do make Fortune 25 True Devotion in Great-ones 60 Humility of Great-ones 92 A good Document for Great-ones 139 Plague of Great-ones 140 Great-ones are the flatterers of Gods 349 H HEart of man what it is 69 HEbrews horribly persecuted 347 Heliogabalus his wheel 57 Hell defined 432 How the fire of Hell burneth 430 Helena the Beauty and grace of her time 236 She is married to Constantius ibid. Her exceeding virtue ibid. Exceeding love of Constantius and Helena ibid. Effects of Heresie 35 Herod depresseth the Royal Stock 117 His deep Hypocrisie and Dissimulation 120 He is accused for the death of Aristobulus ibid. His Apologie for himself full of craft 121 His Oration against his Wife 125 His fury after the death of Mariamne 127 He advanceth Antipater his son whom he had by Doris 128 His horrible condition in his latter days 134 Herod's
he fell into an extasie of holy comfort to have found a man so conform to his humour and both of them wept so much out of love over this fountain that they seemed to go about to raise those streams by their tears If he wrote a letter he imagined love gave him the pen and that he dipped it in his tears and that the paper was all over filled with instruments of the passion and that he sent his thoughts and sighs as Courtiers to seek out the well-beloved of his heart When he saw an Epistle or a letter wherein the name of Jesus was not premised it sensibly tormented him saying Sarazins had more devotion for Mahomet a man of sin setting his name in the front of all their letters then Christians had for their Redeemer A holy occasion one day drew him to a Church to hear excellent musick but he perceiving the words were of God and the tune according to the world he could not forbear to cry out aloud Cease profane men Cease to cast pearls into mire Impure airs are not fit for the King of virgins Some took delight to ask him many questions and he answered them nothing but the word love which he had perpetually in his mouth To whom belongest thou To love whence comest thou from love whither goest thou To love who begat thee Love Of what dost thou live upon love where dwellest thou In love He accounted them unworthy to live who died of any other death then of love and beholding a sick-man in an agony who shewed no feeling of joy to go unto God but onely complained of his pain he lamented him as a man most miserable At his entrance into a great Citie he asked who were the friends of God and a poor man being shewed him who continually wept for the love of heaven and heavenly things he instantly ranne to him and embracing him they mingled their tears together with unspeakable joy God often visited him by many lights and most sweet consolations as it happened at that time when he thought he saw a huge cloud between his Beloved and him which hindred and much troubled him but presently it seemed to him that love put it self between them both and gilded the cloud with great and admirable splendours in such sort that through this radiant beauty he saw a ray of the face of his well-beloved and for a long space spake to him with profusions of heart and admirations not to be expressed From this obsequious love he passed to obliging love and made a strong resolution to become profitable to all the world For which purpose feeling every moment to be replenished with sublime and divine thoughts which God had communicated to him and that he had no insight in Grammer nor other slight school-notions he resolved to learn the Latine tongue being now full fourty years old He hit upon a teacher one Master Thomas who taught him words conjugations and concords but he rendred him back again elate conceptions unheard of discourses and harmonies wholly celestiall so much honouring his Master that he dedicated the most part of his books to him wherein for the dead letter he offered unto him the spirit of life Not satisfied with this he added the Arabick tongue of purpose to convert the Mahumetans and for this end he bought a slave for whom having no other employment but to teach him it and he having therein already well profited and endeavouring to convert this wretched servant who had been his teacher the other found him so knowing and eloquent that he had an apprehension that through this industry he was able to confound the Mahumetan-law which was the cause that the Traitour espying his opportunity took a knife and sought to kill his Master but he stopt the blow and onely received a wound which proved not mortall All the house ran at the noise and there was not any one who would not have knocked down the ungratefull creature but he hindered it with all his might and heartily pardoned him in the greatest sharpnesse of his dolours Instantly the officers seized on this compassion and put him into prison where he was strangled repenting himself of nothing but that he had not finished his mischief which caused extreme sorrow in Raymond who bewailed him with many tender tears of compassion After this he undertook divers journies into France Spain Italy Greece and Africk wandring continually over the world and not ceasing to preach write and teach to advance the salvation of his neighbours Paris many times received him with all courtesie in such sort that the Chancellour Bertand who was infinitely affected to knowledges permitted him to reade them publickly in his hall The reverend Charter-house Monks whose houses have so often been sanctuaries for Learning and Devotion were his hoasts and so much he confided in their integrtty and sincerity that he with them deposed all which he had most precious The love of God which is as lightning in a cloud still striving to break forth suffered him not to rest but disposed him to undertake somewhat for the glory of God It is true he had first of all that purpose which afterwards our father S. Ignatius so gloriously accomplished for he was desirous to make Seminaries of learned and courageous spirits who should spread themselves throughout the world to preach the Gospel and to sacrifice themselves for the propagation of Faith For this cause he multiplied his voyages to Rome to Lions to Paris to Avignon incessantly solliciting Popes and Kings to so excellent a work without successe He used fervour and zeal therein but our father thereunto contributed more order and prudence The one undertook it in a crosse time during the passage of the holy See from Rome to Avignon where the Popes more thought upon their own preservation then tha conquests of Christianity The other knew how to take occasion by the fore-lock and he interessed Rome and the Popes thereof in his design The one made his first triall under Pope Boniface the Eighth who having dispossessed a Hermite of S. Peters Chair held those for suspected who were of the same profession fearing they a second time might make a head of the Church The other happened upon Paul the Third who was a benign Pope and he gained his good opinion by his ready services and submissions which tended to nothing but the humility of Jesus Christ The one embroiled himself too much in Sciences even unto curiosity and made them walk like Ladies and Mistresses the other held them as faithfull servants of the Crosse subjected to holy Humility The one stood too much upon his own wit and needs would beat out wayes not hitherto printed with any foot-steps nor conferred enough with the Doctours of his times in matters of Opinion and Concord the other passed through the surges of Universities and followed an ordinary trackt in the progression of his studies The one was of a humour very haughty the other of a spirit
resemblance in Nature We have heretofore heard of a Prince who desirous to offer himself to death for rhe preservation of his subjects took the habit of a Peasant to steal himself from his greatnesse and facilitate his death All histories say he laid down his purple and crown and all the ensigns of Royalty retaining none but those of love which caused him to go into his enemies army where he left life to purchase an immortall trophey for his reputation But I must tell you he had a mortall life and in giving it he gave that tribute to nature which he owed to nature from the day of his birth and which of necessity he was to pay yea he gave it to buy the memory of posterity and to beg honour which is more esteemed by generous spirits then life But in what history have we read that a man glorious by birth immortall by condition necessarily happy hath espoused humility which all the world despiseth mortality which the most advised apprehend misery which the bravest detest for no other occasion but to have the opportunity to dy for a friend And this is it which Jesus Christ did He was by nature immortall impassible impregnable against all exteriour violencies he took not the habit of a peasant as Codrus nor a body of air as Abscondit purpuram sub miseri◠vestimentis ad lutum ubi jacebam inclinatur non mergitur the Angell-conductour of Tobias but a true body a flesh tender and virginall personally united to the word of God to quail it with toils to consume it with travails and lastly to resign it as a prey to a most dolourous death he casts tottered rags over his royall purple and takes pains to stoop down to pull me out of the mire where I lay and to take my miseries upon him not sullying himself in my sins My God! what a prodigie is this All ages have Abbas Guerricus observed a thousand and a thousand industries of men which they found out to avoid the pains and torments of life but never have we seen a man who sought to invent means and to offer violence to his own condition to become suffering and miserable according to the estimation of the world since there are day and night so many gates open to this path yet thou Oh God of Glory O mild Saviour hast done it Thou hast found a way how to accord infirmity with sovereign Mortem nec solus Deus sentire nec solus homo vincere poterat homo suscepit Deus vicit Faustus l. 1. de lib. arbitr The quality of the sufferings of our Saviour power honour with ignominy time with eternity and death with life It was not possible that sole God should endure death or that sole Man could vanquish it but man hath abided it and God hath overcome it As for the quality of pains it sufficeth to say that if men judged of the greatnesse of Gyants by one of their footsteps impressed on the sand and if we likewise measure the course of the sun by a small thread of shadow one may have some grosse knowledge of so great a mystery by the figures which forewent it Now all the sacrifices of the Mosaick law and so many travails and sufferings of the antient Patriarchs were but a rough draught of the passion of Jesus Christ from whence we may imagine what the originall was sith the Copies thereof were so numerous and different throughout the course of all Ages The perpetuall sacrifice which was evening and 3 Reg. 8. 63. 22000 bullocks and 120000 sheep sacrificed for the dedication of Solomon his Temple morning made in the Temple the twenty two thousand oxen and the hundred and twenty thousand sheep which were sacrificed by Solomon at one feast of the dedication of the Temple so much bloodshed that it seemed a red sea to those who beheld it was to no other end but to figure the blood of the immaculate Lamb and of all its members which have suffered after it But if so much preparation and profusion were needfull to expresse one sole shadow of his passion what may we conjecture of the body and the thing figured Besides if all the antient Patriarchs who were so persecuted in times past and all the Martyrs who since the death of our Saviour have endured torments almost infinite in number and prodigious in kinds made but an assay or tryall of the dolours of this King of the afflicted what an account shall we make of his pains which ever ought to be as much adored by our wills as they are incomprehensible to our understanding The Lamb was sacrificed from the beginning of the world saith Saint Apoc. 13. 8. Agnas accisus est ab origine mundi Our Saviour hath suffered in the person of all the just and the martyrs John He was massacred in Abel saith S. Paulinus tossed upon so many waves in the person of Noah wandring in that of Abraham offered up in Isaac persecuted in Jacob betraied in Joseph stoned in Moses bruised on a dunghill in the patience of Job blinded in Samson sawn in Esay flayed afterward in the person of S. Bartholmew roasted in that of Saint Laurence thrown out to Lions in that of Saint Ignatius burned in that of Saint Polycarp Confummatio abbreviata Isa 10 12. Unâ oblatione consummavit in sempiter num satisfactos Heb 10 14. Unigenitus Dei ad peragendum mort is suae sacramentum consummavit humanarum omne genus passionum Hilar. l. 10. de trinit pulled in picees by four horses and cast headlong into a ditch full of Serpents in that of Saint Tecla drowned in that of S. Clement exposed to wasps in that of many other Martyrs From whence it commeth that the passion of Jesus is called a short Consummation by the Prophet Esay and that Saint Paul hath said to the Hebrew That by one sole Sacrifice he hath consummated those which were to be sanctified for all eternity And S. Hilary clearly confesseth That Jesus Christ the onely Son of God desirous to fulfill this great and mysterious Sacrament of his pretious death did passe through all imaginable dolours which were as it were melted and distilled together to make of it a prodigious accomplishment Jesus is the stone with seven eyes whereof the Prephet Zachary speaketh which the heavenly Father says he hath cut and engraven with his own hand Zach. 39. thereon figuring all the most glorious characters of patience He is an Abysse of love of mercy of dolours of ignominies of blood of lowlinesse and greatnesse of excesse of admiration and amazement which swalloweth all thoughts dryeth up all mouths stayeth all pens and drencheth all conceptions Who now then will dare to complain that he suffereth too much that he doth too much that he is treated with lesse tendernesse then he deserveth O our coldnesse and remissnesse whence can it proceed but from not studying enough on this incomparable
If it be a last necessity which assaileth us we must put on the countenance of a Saint to receive it and confidently believe that if it take all Hope from us it will by little and little take away also all our Despair It is very dangerous at that time to trust our own thoughts and to entertain dotages of the mind rather we should seek by the comfort of a confident Confessour and by other good friends to strengthen our selves against the storm which most commonly onely threatneth us in the haven § 4 Divine Remedies IF our soul have leisure to take wings and to raise it self above it self let us look upon Divine Remedies Remedies for this Passion whereof we may make use to divert or vanquish this direfull Passion which is verily one of the most poisonous of reasonable nature And first of all let us consider how God being neither capable of Hope nor Despair faileth not to invite us to the one and to withdraw us from the other by the operations which he exerciseth on the visible world Venerable Bede saith excellently well in his Observations An excellent saying of venerable Bede that he hath three sorts of Habitations wherein he hath lodged six divers things In heaven he hath placed Verity and Eternity On earth Curiosity and Repentance In hell Misery and Despair Why should we then take to us a Passion of the damned which is not made for the world wherein we live It is a remarkable thing that God to make us hope hath oftentimes strained the laws of Nature doing things which seemed impossible to all humane judgements and in works of Grace he daily also produceth miracles drawing to salvation and glory people meerly desperate according to the opinion of the world How could we have one sole touch of Despair were we truly faithfull since God engageth even his goodnesse and power to make us hope all that which according to Non est impossibile apud Deum omne verbum Luc. 1. Ipse dixit facta sunt ipse manda vit creata sunt Psal 148. Man is desperate There is nothing impossible to the omnipotency of God He did but speak a word and it was sufficient to vindicate from nothing all this vast world of Creatures So soon as he ordained it so soon it was done And he hath indifferently let us know his greatnesse as well in the production of the least things as in the creation of the most noble and eminent There are three things which are opposite to admirable Magnus in magnâ— nec parvus in minimis Aug. serm de Temp. What hindereth the production of admirable works works First the weaknesse of the Agent created Secondly the indisposition of the subject Thirdly the frequency of things seen and used But God takes away these three obstacles to do miracles in Nature He gives to Active creatures a strength meerly particular and wholly Divine to work above their force He gives to Passive a power of submission and a capacity to receive the supernaturall impression of agents and brings forth effects which are not onely great but God when he pleaseth takes away all the obstacles which oppose thereunto wholly extraordinary And which is more we therein observe five Excellencies which are as five raies of their glory to wit Efficacy Durance Utility the End and the Means which render all these works of God infinitely recommendable It is by his command that burning pillars walk in the air to serve as a standard The wonders which God makeâ—h to appear in the â—ld Testaâ—eâ—â— by the help of his creatures for six hundred thousand fighting-men That the sea parts in sunder and divides it self into two banks of Chrystall to make a rampart for his people That the Clouds of heaven showr bread of Angels That Rocks open their sides to pour forth fountains That armies of Flies and Caterpillers destroy legions all of iron and steel That the Sun stands still in the midsts of his career That whales make a temple of their belly for a Prophet That Sepulchres yield forth the dead alive All this is done in nature by the ministery of Angels and the service of men but by the virtue of God alone to whom it belongeth to do miracles the soul of Jesus Christ it self having not been but the instrument S. Thom 3. q. 13. 2. of the World united to it in such like operation What is it we ought not to hope from a God from whom we can despair of nothing and who holdeth Totall Nature at his service to help our confidence But not content with it he passeth to miraculous works of Grace wherein he causeth unexpected productions I will give you an excellent consideration God indifferently treateth elect souls as reprobate during life without shewing that he despaireth of their salvation to encourage you never to despair either of your own salvation or that of other sinners It is that God albeit by his prescience he cannot be ignorant of the successe of souls which are out of the sweetnesse of his predestination and who are not reckoned in the number of his Elect yet whilst they are involved in bodies he treateth them as his own not shewing that he despaireth of their happinesse Divines teach us that there is not any one destitute God never faileth with necessary succours sufficient Grace to save us Psalme 18. August ibid. Non est qui se abscondat à calore ejus of the help of sufficient Grace to work his salvation not any one who is not visited with inspirations necessary for this purpose Thus doth S. Augustine interpret the passage of the 18. Psalme There is none who can hide himself from his heat The ardour of the Word Divine pierceth through the coldest shadows of death The Sunne is very generall and there is not a creature in the world so little which hears not news of him yet all night long he retireth from us And there are many people who are plunged in nights so tedious and irksome that they seem to be as it were eternall But this sun of Grace penetrateth into the Desperate people whom God visited to their end darkest obscurities It finds out men who have nothing of man but skin and figure and speaketh to them with its raies which are so many tongues from heaven It spake to Herod after the murder of fourteen thousand Innocents It spake to Nero in the agitations of a mind troubled with the image of his crimes It spake to the Emperour Theophilus when dying he held between his hands the head of Theophobus his Constable to satiate his revenge Lastly It makes us pronounce aloud the excellent saying of S. Clemens Alexandrinus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cleâ— Alex. protrept There are no Cimmerians for the Word of God He makes allusion to certain people whom we now call Georgians or else to those who antiently inhabited in the territory of Rome in
what necessity is there that for sparing a good word you must perpetually live either a sacrilegious or an excommunicate person Lastly you must think you are not immortall the very moment which is now in your hands you must divide The third remedy it with death even the sun which you to day have seen to rise out of his couch before his setting may see you in your Tomb. Moreouer know that should you all your life time have preserved an inviolable virginity should you have built a thousand hospitalls and spent your whole estate in entertaining of the poor should you have lived in Hair-cloth among thorns and in great abstinencies if you into the other world carry a dramme of resolved and determinate hatred of a neighbour with unwillingnesse to hear any words of reconciliation all which may be in you of virtue or merit will nothing avail you your lot shall be with reprobate souls devils O God! what a sentence what a Decree what a punishment is this and who would now purposely cherish hatred against his neighbour unlesse he had lost all Reason all sense and discretion Let us conclude with the third remedy against the furious and bloudy who are not content to fume but like unto Aeina do throw forth their all-enflamed bowels nor are ever satiated but with outrages and humane bloud This is it which makes us to behold the goodly duells which have at all times been the profession of servile souls of fools or mad-men There we see men bewitched with a cursed and damnable opinion seeking upon the least injury to require reparations sealed with humane bloud to engage seconds to make them complices of their crime and companions of their misery to send challenges many times by pages apparelled like women then to cut anothers throte with horrible fury to dragge a long chain of allies to make a pitchd battel of a single combat and mothers and wives in the mean time to tremble in expectation of the issue of this butchery Some slight fellow who hath a soul miserably shallow and base to cover his cowardise and acquire reputation will wash his impurity in humane bloud It is not courage which puts him forward he who would behold him a little in the buisinesse should see him ready to swoon to wax pale and tremble If he would follow his own nature he would fly a hundred leagues off and never look behind him but for a little vanity that Hacksters may praise him and say he hath fought a duell he tormenteth his mind and especially when he is among pots and glasses he shews himself valiant Ah Rodomont Is this your businesse you cannot speak but you must menace to slash a man Bloudy beast where have you learnt this but in the school of Furies and devils and do not say he hath put an affront upon me What affront a cold countenance a harsh word a piece of foppery which you would never have taken notice of had you not been void of the reason of an honest man None would affront you were not you your own affront behold the root of all these enflamed angers And he who will give remedy to them must cut them off in his imagined contempt where indeed there is none and therefore it is fit Multos absolvemus si coeperimus antè judicare quà m irasci Senec 3. de ira c. 29. Terminum etiam marinis fluctibus ac tempestatibus fabricator descripâ—â—â—â—arena maris exigua saepe inter duas acics inter capedo est si reprimere iram non potes memento quia indignabundum mare nil ultra spumam fluctuationem effert Simocaâ—â—â— he retire to the haven of silence and lessen what he may in his imagination the injury which he thinks he hath received when you shall have well weighed it you will find that you of a fly have made an elephant The true means to forgive all the world and to pardon it is to judge of offences before we be angry There are offences which we should laugh at others which we at least should deferre and some we should speedily pardon If this stay you not at least think upon the end and say Behold a quarrell which begins to be enkindled there is nothing wanting but a poor word fair and advised yea verily but meere silence to give remedy thereto If I augment it in stead of lessening it I do put fire to dry wood which will make a terrible havock to consume me first I must be a homicide or a sacrifice to death or live in brawls quarrels and eternall divisions which will involve parents children brothers cousins and a whole posterity Behold the goodly fruit which brutish anger bringeth Since I can prevent all this by a little discretion and patience am I such an enemy of my own good as willingly to seek my proper ruine The sea is tempestuous but there needs but a little sand to represse it and when it hath made all its menaces which seemed ready to swallow all the world it retires back contenting it self onely to leave froth and broken shells Behold if you have eyes the goodly gain which The direfull example of Haman a against the enraged who are at a little offended Haman made of his anger and how seeking to remedy an affront he transfixed himself with eternall misery Mardocheus whom he accounted a beggar had not saluted him at his entrance into the Kings palace for which he must be revenged His reason suggested to him he was a man of no worth why wilt thou take notice of him No I will destroy him What! for not saluting thee He is a Jew by nation and peradventure he hath seen on thy garments the figures of the Persian gods embroidered and dares not bend his knee lest it might be thought he gave this honour to thy gods and he should be esteemed an Idolater It is no matter I am resolved to ruine him If thou beest gone so farre take then the head of the culpable and pardon all the rest who are innocent No I will destroy him with all his race See I have in my hand the Kings Signet-ring and I go to dispatch letters throughout all the Provinces that all the Jews may be slain which shall be found on such a prefixed day O God! what a slaughter for the deniall of a silly salutation to make choler swim in the tears of so many widows and orphans in the murther of so many mortalls in the bloud of so many Provinces Dost thou think there is not a God in heaven to take vengeance upon such torturing cruelties God may do what he pleaseth But I must be revenged my wife and my friends advise me so Alas unhappy wretch He was then contriving his direfull designe when the vengeance of God fell upon his head Behold him disgraced lost and shamefully supplanted by a woman coming to the palace of the King his Master he heard the roaring of a lion which said Take
will if they might have had but the permission given them He saw that he subsisted not but by his favour which he abused so basely He resolved to pick a quarrell with him and asked him instantly What might a Great King do that would honour a Favourite to the highest Point Haman thinking that that Question was not made but in favour and Consideration of him Answers with an Immeasurable Impudence That to honour worthily a Favourite and to shew in his Person what a great Master can do that Loves with Passion He must clothe him with his Royall Cloak put the Kings Diadem upon his Head set him upon his own Horse and command the greatest Prince of the Court to hold his Stitrop and his Bridle and lead him through all places of the City and to Cause an Herald to Proclaime before him That it is thus that Ahasuerus honoureth his Favourites The Prince was astonished at this Insolence and to make him burst with spite said to him that his Opinion was very good and therefore he commanded him to render all those honours presently to Mordecai the Jew that was at the Palace Gate This Divel of Pride was seized with so great an amazement at that Speech that he had not so much as one word in his mouth to Reply and as he was Vain-glorious and Insupportable in his Prosperity so there was nothing more Amated or more Base in Adversity He extreamly racks his spirit to dissemble his discontent The fear of Death and Punishments due to his Crimes if he did resist the Pleasure of the King made him swallow all the bitternesse of that Cup. A strange thing Poor Mordecai that was all nasty covered with Sack-cloth and Ashes is fetched is washed is trimmed up and clad after the fashion of a King Haman presents himself to hold the Stirrop of the Horse and to lead him by the Bridle while his Enemy was shewed in Triumph to the eyes of the whole City of Shushan How much Resistance do we think he made not to accept this Honour What thoughts came into his head whether it was not a Trick of Haman that would give him a short Joy to deliver him to a long Punishment He could not believe his Eyes nor his Reason he thought that all this had been a Dream In the mean while the whole City of Shushan beheld that great Spectacle and could not be sufficiently amazed at so extraordinary a Change Haman after the Ceremony was over returns very sad unto his House deploring with his Wife and friends the sad sport of Fortune The Confusion of their troubled spirits suggests nothing to them but Counsels of despair and they say That since Mordecai hath begun sure he will make an end He was very loath to go to that Feast of the Queens he feared that it would prove a sacrifice and that he should be the offering Hester that saw that her sport was spoiled if he was not present caused him secretly to be engaged and pressed by the Eunuchs of the King who under colour of Civility conduct him to his finall Misery He enters into the Chamber of the Feast The King dissembles all that had been done there was nothing talked of at the first but of passing merrily the time away Every thing flourished every thing Laughed but Poyson was hid under the Laughter and Venome under the Flowers At the end of their Repast the King Conjures the Queen to tell him at last what it was that she desired of him because he was fully resolved to divide his Crown and Sceptre with her Then sending forth a great sigh she cryed Alas Sir I do not sue to your Majesty for any of all the Honours or the Riches of your Empire but I desire of you onely my own and my poore peoples Lives which some would overthrow Destroy and Massacree by an horrible and bloody Butchery Sir I ought no longer to disguise any thing to your Majesty God hath made me be born of that Nation which is given for a Prey under your Authority and destin'd to the Shambels It is me that they aime at If they had gone about onely to make me and my People Slaves I would have held my peace and stifled my groans But Sir what have I done that my Throat should be cut after I shall have seen the Bloud of my nearest Kindred shed before mine Eyes to be thrown as the last Sacrifice upon a great heap of Dead Bodies and Buried in the Ruines of my dear Countrey Alas Sir shew us Mercy You that are the Mildest of all Princes restore me my soul and the lives of my whole Nation The King entered into an Admiration of Extasie upon these Words and said to the Queen I know not to what this Discourse tends or where the Man or the Authority is that dares do this without my command Then she replyes He to whom your Majesty hath given your Seal that Traytor and perfidious Haman It is he that hath caused bloudy Letters to be written through all the Provinces to deliver me and my People up to Death and know Sir that his cruelty rebounds upon your head Haman quickly perceived that he was a lost man and the Palenesse of Death came at the same instant into his Face The King rises from the Table and walks into the Garden that was hard by to chew upon his Choler The Queen that had put her self into a Melancholy casts her self down upon the Bed Haman throwes himself at her feet and as a man that is drowning layes hold on what ere he meets with He beseeches her he Urges her he Conjures her to shew him Mercy and in saying so bowed himself down upon the Bed and approached very near unto her The King entring at the same time into the Chamber and finding him in that Posture How sayes he will he also violate the Queen my Wife in my Presence and in my House Let some body take him away Instantly they come and cover his Face as they were wont to do to those that were carried away to Punishment and one of the Eunuchs thought of saying That he had prepared a pair of Gallows of fifty Cubites high for Mordecai the Preserver of the Kings Life It is that which is his Due answered Ahasuerus and let him be hanged suddenly upon the Gibbet that he hath set up This was executed without delay there being no body that was not extream joyfull of his Ruine Mordecai was called to the Palace to take his Place and to Govern all the Houshold of the Queen that now acknowledged him in the presence of the King her husband for her Uncle Hester afterward beseech'd the King to command Dispatches to be sent through all the Provinces to countermand and to make void the Letters of Death which cruell Haman had caused already to be spread through all the Kingdome This was found very reasonable and they were forthwith Expedited in these Termes Artaxerxes the Soveraign Lord and King of
make him yield to some other man that which every one conferred on him But the consideration of the publick good carried him away and made him load upon his shoulders a burden that might tire the Gyants It is true that Hugues the King of France his brother held the first rang by the highnesse of his House but counsell execution of great designs and experience compleated in all sorts of accidents gave to Godfrey the Managing of the Arms. Our Army was found to be three hundred thousand Foot and an hundred thousand Horse that seemed to carry away the Masse of the earth yet the Sarazins were not discouraged but assembled themselves on all sides with so prodigious a Multitude that it might as it seemed equall the veins of the Abysse and the sands of the Sea-shore The controversie was for Religion Honour and goods between two Nations that aspired to the Domination of the World and that esteemed all sharing inconsistent with their Greatnesse The one came thither moved by their superstition that had gained a mervellous advantage over spirits possessed by errour and enchanted by the charmes of a false Prophet The other was carryed by the true Religion perswading themselves that they had all Justice to pluck the Sepulchre of their Master out of the hands of Infidels and that it would be an immortall Glory to them to lose their Bloud in the same place that Jesus had honoured with his Mans Spirit is overwhelmed with the Number of Wonders that are read in the History of this Warre The Historians cannot follow them and we must averr that the Brave Godfrey having farre surpassed the deeds of Achilles and of Hector hath had the misfortune to want an Homer He gave more then an hundred Battels before he saw himself at the end of his design He fought with two Nations that seemed Furies which Hell had vomited upon the Earth he combated with Hunger Thirst Sicknesse and all the damnable Artifices of Negromancers that opposed his Valour The eternall snow of the Mountain Taurus the inaccessible Rocks the Rivers dyed with bloud the Seas armed with Tempests and with Monsters did never abate his ardour He was ready to enter for the love of his Saviour into Regions where Nature is nothing but a benummed masle where the Sun hides it self and the night reigns without a Peer where the most salvage Barbarisme makes us believe that it is ranged even as far as the Gates of Hell The City of Nicea that bore the name of victory it self was the first that presented Palms to this our Conquerour It was there that Solyman one of the most Illustrious Generalls of the Barbarians was beaten and quite vanquished all his Army being put into a Rout with an exceeding Massacre that filled Asia with the terrour of the Christian Arms. It was there that the Valiant Godfrey killed with his own hand a Rabshakeh that braved it upon the wals of Nicea with an immeasurable presumption of his strength The City was wonne and the vigorous storms of the besiegers beat down before them all the resistances of the besieged The proud Antioch followed quickly after and although that Corbanes was come to its reliefe with innumerable troops of Parthians Medes Assyrians he could not stop the current of the prosperities of this invincible Generall but augmented by the losse of all his Legions the terrour of that victorious arm that overthrew smoaking Cities and made in all places a deluge of the bloud of the Barbarians The Caliphe of Egypt that was now advanced to divert the Fatall Day of his Sect saw himself involved in the same ruines that he thought to have repayred All their attempts now remained but for the City of Jerusalem which was the Object and Desire of our heavenly Argonauts It was assaulted and defended with a vigour that never yet had its equall But in the end it yielded to the Armes of the Christians It was here that the Illustrious Godfrey was seen to combat upon an Ingine of wood that he had caused to be raised to enter into the City He appeared that day not as a Man but as a Demi-God all flaming in the brightnesse of his Arms whiles the Hail of Arrows flew about his Head and his Arm mowing the Turbans of the Sarazins made way through fire and sword He entred first of all in bright day in the sight of the Army into Jerusalem and pitched the the Standard of the Crosse in the place where Jesus had consecrated it with his Bloud What Acclamations What Congratulations What Palms and Lawrels The Turks fled as the pale Ghosts of Hell and the Christians erected on all parts the Trophies of our Redeemer upon their ruines It was then that all the Princes proclaimed him King of the conquered Countrey thinking that there was not any one more worthy of it in the rest of the whole world seeing that he had joyned to that prodigious Valour the virtues of Religion Piety Justice Prudence Liberality Magnificence Goodnesse Clemency and affability They failed not to offer him a Royall Crown richly adorned with Pearls and precious stones but this good Prince filled with the zeal of Devotion said What! should I bear the name of King in the place where my Master hath been covered with Reproaches Should I take the Sceptre in my hand where he hath taken the Crosse upon his shoulders Should I suffer a Crown of Gold to be put upon my head where he hath received one of Thorns Sure I should then hold my self for vanquished if such a vanity should be victorious over my heart It is God that hath inspired into us these designs it is he that hath conducted them and that hath Crowned them I pretend to no other honour then to hang all honours at the feet of his Crosse He contented himself with the name of Duke and set himself presently about labouring in the Civil Govemment to purge the Citie of all its Infamies to pull down the Mosqueta's to build Churches to give a lustre to the Clergie to cause the Gospel to be preached to found Hospitals to Administer Justice to order the Militia for the defense of his Conquest and in a word to do all the duties of a most accomplished Monarch But can we speak it without a Groan his Reign lasted but a year and so many fair hopes were mowed down in their flower by the pitylesse sythe of Death O impenetrable secrets of Providence There was nothing beyond Jerusalem there was nothing beyond Godfrey but God and Paradise that could limit his designs and bound his Conquests GEORGE CASTRIOT OYe Tombs of the Grecians whose Ashes seem yet to exhale Valour rejoyce now and hide not the names you bear for fear they should shame Posterity that hath degenerated from their Virtues Brave Ancestours the Glory of your Nation is not yet extinguished It is raised again in one sole Man who hath recollected in his Person whatsoever generosity had sowen in so many Hearts and
whatsoever Honour had stuffed in so many Trophies I see in Castriot a certain object greater then Leonidas and Themistocles I see Pyrrhus I see Alexander and if his Enemies have been more stout then the Macedonians his Valour ought not for that to seem the lesse He was a Souldier as soon as he was born a Man Nature pleased to engrave a Sword upon his Body at the same time as she inspired Courage into his Heart That Stature so proper that Countenance so filled with Majesty those Limbs so strong and so Robustuous those Eyes that mingle the Rainbow with the Lightning those hands that seem to have been made for nothing but to bear the Thunder those Feet that move not one onely step that savours not of a King have told betimes that which fame hath afterward related to all ages Little Eaglet that begannest in thy most innocent years to play with Lightning thou oughtest not to have been so valiant or thou oughtest to have had a more happy Father Shall we say that fortune was unjust in that it prepared chains for this young virtue when she should have planted Laurels Let us rather say that Providence was very wise in that she found out matter for this great Heart that would have consumed it self in its own flames if it had not met with some obstacles to resist it It was meet that this Hercules should beginne to strangle Serpents from his Cradle It was meet that he should be bred in the middle of his enemies to Combate from his Infancy with that which he was to abate in his riper age His Father John Castriot who had little strength and much misery was constrained to give him for an Hostage to Amurath the Turk to be brought up at his Gate Moses now is in Pharohs house and Constantine in Dioclesians but the Path is here more dangerous because it leadeth to the ruine of Salvation and of Honour His proud Master that loves him with a Love worse then all the Hatred in the world would fit him for himself and for his infamous pleasures He aims at the one by the Circumcision that is imprinted on his flesh by an unhappy violence he pursues the other by shamefull courtings which are to the Gallant child farre bitterer then Death He had as 't is reported courage enough to take the sword in hand against him that Pursued him with nothing but with flowers He drew blood from him when nothing could be expected of him but Tears and put himself in danger of experimenting the horriblest Torments that the Cruelty of those inhumane people could invent rather then to deliver voluntarily his Soul to sinne and his Body to dishonour His cruell friend was astonished at so brave a Resolution and turned the furies that he had prepared for his Innocence into the admiration of his Valour The Seraglio Imposes on him the name of Scanderbeg that is the same as Alexander which he took by a good omen to fill up therewith the whole capacity of his brave exploits He was educated in all the exercises of Warre in the Academy of the Turks where he succeded with so much force Art Liking and Approbation that every one carried him in his eyes every one looked on him as a singular prop of Mahomets Empire But he bore alwayes Jesus in his heart he alwayes thought on the means that he might find to break his chain he felt in the bottome of his most generous soul flames that burned him incessantly with the zeal he had to raise again the levelled Altars of the Christians and to destroy the estate of the Ottomans Amurath saw some sparkles of it flying in his conversation although he endeavoured to cover his design with a great prudence The Master began to fear the Slave and was affraid to nourish in his Court a Lyon that might be able to shew him one day his Teeth He endeavoured to destroy him in various encountres making the Excesse of his courage contribute to the Hazard of his Person A resolute Scythian came to Amurath's Court challenging the boldest to fight all Naked with a Poniard in the inclosure of a perillous Circle where of necessity one must Dye or Conquer That man had carryed away already many bloody Palms and put so much confidence in his strength that they were according to his speech but the sacrifices of Death that dared to attend the Thunder of his Arm. Every one trembled for fear when as the valiant Castriot undertook him and putting his Thrust aside with one hand killed him with the other with the acclamations of joy of all those that envy hindred not from applauding Valour This Combat having not succeeded well for Amurath he raises at another time a Persian Cavalier that kept a stirre to fight on Horse-back with a Lance. He was a man accomplished in that Trade who with much chearfulnesse of heart transported himself into Cities and Provinces where he promised himself that he should find Adversaries to exercise his Arms and increase his Reputation He curvetted up and down in the List proudly Plum'd and his flaming Arms made him appear that day as the great Constellation of Orion amidst the lesser Starres A David was needfull for this Goliah our young Alexander assaults him falls upon him as an Eagle handles him very roughly and at length laid him on the sand where he vomited out his soul and bloud doing a sad homage to valour by a just punishment of his rashnesse But Amurath that played the part of Saul failed not to find out some new occasions to Exercise his David He gave him all the most hazardous Employments of the warre wherein he had still so good successe that he changed all the Subjects of his Ruine into Trophies and returned Crowned with Laurels even out of the Bottome of Abysses and out of the throat of Lyons The perfidious Sultan entertained him with good words but handled him with bad deeds He promised him to restore him his estates after his Father's Death but John Castriot's last hour made it appear that if his words were full of artifice his promises were but wind Scanderbeg impatient to stay for that which should never come payes himself by his own hands and seizes himself of his Kingdome of Albania playing the crafty fellow by a Countre-Craft The Alarm of it is in the Court and all Amuraths Passions tend to nothing but Revenge Haly Bassa is sent with an Army of Fourty thousand men to dispatch the Businesse But all his Troops are cut in pieces and he had nothing more honourable in his Expedition then that he was conquered by the brave Castriot Feria and Mustapha pursue the same design with new Forces that experiment the same fortune What shall we say more of Scanderbeg's Greatnesse Amurath besecches the Turban is humbled that visage of the Tyrant that was the same as that of Cruelty it self is mollified and takes the Lineaments of a supplyant after it had born during his whole
not of this present which is nothing in comparison of the infinite obligations I owe to your worth Well saith he sith you give it with so good a will I accept it for your sake but cause your daughters to come hither that I may bid them farewell These virtuous souls following their mothers presidency had also with her charitably assisted him during the time of his infirmities cure many times touching their Lute whereon they played very sweetly for his minds recreation Upon this summon of his into his presence they fell at his feet the elder of the daughters in the name of both made a short speech unto him in her mother language importing a thankfull form unto him for his just performed preservation of their honour The Captain heard it yet not without a weeping-joy and admiration at the sweetnesse and humility he therein observed and then said Ladies ye do that which I ought to do which is to give you thanks for the many good helps ye have afforded me for which I find my self infinitely obliged unto you Ye know men of my profession are not readily furnished with handsome tokens to present fair maidens withall But behold your good Lady-mother hath given me two thousand five hundred ducats take each of you a thousand of them as my gift for so I am resolved it shall be Then turning to his Hostesse Madam saith he I will take the five hundred to my self to distribute them among poor Religious women who have not had like happinesse with you to be preserved from the souldiers plundering pillage And as you better then any other may judge of the necessities which each one may by such accidents have befaln them so I am confident I can depute none a more faithfull steward for the disposing thereof then is your wise ingenious and charitable self unto whose sole disposall I freely recommend it The Lady touched to the quick with so rare and pious a disposition spake these words unto him O flower of Chevalry to whom none other can be compared Our blessed Saviour and Redeemer Jesus Christ who for us sinners suffered death and passion both here in this world and in the other reward you The Gentleman of the house who at that time heard the courtesie of his ghest came to thank him with a bended knee making him withall a surrender of his person and a sequestration of his whole estate but he most nobly left him master of himself and of his estate The young gentlewomen who amongst other their many accomplishing endowments were skilfull at the needle made him a present of a crimson-sattin purse very richly wrought and of two bracelets woven with thread of gold and silver He very graciously receiving them Behold saith he I esteem these more then ten thousand crowns and instantly he put the bracelets on his wrists and the purse into his pocket assuring them that while these their respective remembrances would last he would wear them for their sakes Which civil ceremonies ended he mounted on his horse accompanied thence with his true friend the Lord D' Aubigny and with about two or three thousand other gentlemen and souldiers the Lady of the house the daughters and the whole family as passionately lamenting his departure as if they should have been put to the sword although they had assurance from him by his undeniable Protection under which he left them and their possessions to be unmolested after his departure If the starres were to descend from heaven I would demand now whether they might find more love and respect then this heaven-born piece of generosity did both receive and return But be ye your own judges if your observations tell you not it farre otherwise befalls those silly fencers who in like times of advantages rush themselves into such well feathered nests no otherwise then as fatall Comets portending fire and the destroying sword who make the props of buildings tremble with their loud blasphemies who load whole families with injuries without the least regard of age sex or honour but make a sport at the bloud and wounds over whom they tyrannize pillaging them like ravenous harpies fatted with humane ruines However should they do nothing else all their life time but heap up mountains of gold and silver they could not arrive to the least part of the contentment which this good Captain enjoyed who sought no other recompence from his fair way'd actions but the satisfaction of his serene conscience and the glory to have done so well And thus it is O ye who would your selves to be indeed enobled that hearts are gained thus ye oblige if I may so say both earth and heaven to become due tributaries to your virtues with blessings round about you here and with a crown of immortality hereafter THE STATES-MEN JOSEPH MOSES IOSEPH MOSES I Begin the Elogies of holy States-men with the Patriarch Joseph who was the first of Gods chosen people that entred into the Court of an Infidel Prince to make of his life an example of virtue and of his demeanour a miracle Here is an high design of God who transports a young child out of the cabans and condition of shepherds to make him the second person of a great Kingdome to give him the heart and the treasures of his Master the friendship of the Nobles the veneration of the People and the admiration of all the world Those that look upon this history after a common manner observe ordinarily therein the changes of humane things the beginnings the progresses and the issues of worldly affairs But if we would penetrate farther we should find two great reasons and two admirable designs of Providence about the entrance and negotiation of Joseph in Egypt The first is that according to the saying of the great S. Leo it was reasonable that the eternall Word that was to come for the salvation of the whole world should be divided through all Ages and through all Nations shewing himself to some in figure to others in reality giving himself to some by Hope to others by Presence and to many by remembrance He insinuated himself into the antient Jews by Prophecies into the Gentiles by Oracles into the Learned by Riddles into the People by visible Figures into the Saints and the Religious by Mysteries into the Profane and Gentiles by Government and Politick Prudence This is the fashion that he held towards the Egyptians making them see the first rayes of the Birth-day of his coming in the person of Joseph that wore very advantageously the Lineaments of his Divine Perfections and merited to be called by advance The Saviour of the world The second reason is that God meaning to begin that Divine work of the persecutions and the wonders of his chosen People transports Joseph thither and makes of him a man of sufferings and of prodigies to be as a grain of seed out of which one should see spring that numerous posterity that should equall the starres of heaven
to tell the Governour of Egypt that they had yet another brother Whereupon they informed him that he himself had inquired particularly about the state of all the family and that they had no list to lye not being able to Divine that he would demand that child The necessitie of food and the love of a father combated at the same time in that afflicted heart and he knew not what to resolve on His sons seeing him a little stagger urge him eagerly as one does those that are slow and fearfull when one would wrest any thing from them Reuben offers him his two little sonnes in hostage and would have him kill them if he brings not back to him his Benjamin Judah engages himself for him upon his head and life The battery was too strong for him not to yield he orders them therefore to take some of the best fruits of their Land to make presents to that great Lord of Egypt and to carry their money double to restore that which had been put into their sacks lest it should have happened by an over sight and also to take their little brother seeing that such was the necessity When they came to a departure he felt great convulsions and said to them go then in an happy hour I pray my God the God Almighty which hath never yet forsaken me that he would render that great Governour of Egypt favourable to you and that you may quickly bring back that poor prisoner and my little Benjamin which I put now into your hands upon the promises which you have made to which I call heaven to witnesse Know furthermore that I am deprived of all my children and that I shall be as in the Grave till such time as the happy news of your return shall give me a Refurrection This being said they put themselves on the way arrive at Egypt and present themselves suddenly to their brother who perceived that Benjamin was there whereat he was wonderfully pleased and commanded his Steward to make ready a dinner because he would eat with those strangers They are brought into the house with much courtesie yet as an evil conscience is ever fearfull they perswade themselves that it is to put them in Prison and to keep them in servitude by reason of that money which they had found in their sacks They addresse themselves to the Cash-keeper of the house very much scared and beseech him to hear them they relate to him with great sincerity all that had happened to them protesting that that came not by their fault and offering all that they thought they were indebted to him The other made answer with great affability that he had received of them good money that he held himself satisfied and that if they had found any in their sacks it was their good luck and the God of their fathers that had a mind to gratifie them He gave them notice that they were to dine that day with their Lord who would suddenly return from his affairs to set himself at Table They order in the mean time their present and their brother Simeon is released who embraces them with a joy which was as the fore-runner of a greater They are made to wash and repose themselves and meat is also given to their Mules And when all this was dispatched Joseph enters to go to dinner they prostrate themselves before him with a profound reverence and offer him their presents He receives them with great courtesie and asks of them at first sight how their good Father did and whether he was yet alive To which they answered that God of his goodnesse had preserved to them that which they held most dear and that he was in a very good condition Then he fixt his eyes upon his brother Benjamin and said unto them Is this then your little brother of whom you have made mention to me To which they answer that they had brought him with them to obey his commands and to justifie the sincerity of their proceedings His heart was ravished at him and turning himself towards him My child sayes he to him I pray God to give your his holy Graces and to keep you in his protection Upon this speech he felt his heart very much moved and ran into his Closet not being able any longer to hold his tears and wept in secret so great an impression had bloud and nature and perhaps the remembrance of his Mother who had born them both made upon his Spirit When he had wiped his face he returns with a merry countenance he commands his men to wait He dined apart a little separated from his brethren and from another company of the Egyptians who were also at the Feast and had no communication with the Jews He gives charge above all that they use well the youngest of those eleven brothers which say that they are all the sons of one and the same father and that they should spare nothing on them After all he ordered that they should fill their sacks with Corn and that they should put again the money also in them as they had done at their first journey and spake to his Steward giving him charge to take the Cup in which he drank and to put it in the sack of little Benjamin which he did and after they had well dined they passed the rest of the day in all tranquility expecting the morrow to put themselves upon their way and to return to their father When the day began to dawn after they had bid their Adieus and given their thanks they depared from the City very joyfull for that they had had so happy Accidents But they were not very far before they see a man coming from Joseph that seems exceedingly to chase stops them and sayes to them that some body had stoln away his Masters Cup with which he serves himself to drink in and to Divine things hidden that this could not happen but from them and that they were very injurious after they had been enterteined in the house of the Governour of Egypt with so much courtesie to render him evil for good and to fly away after they had committed a Theft so base and so outrageous The brothers extreamly astonished answer that this cannot be and that they should be the wickedest men upon the earth if they had as much as dreamt of such an attempt That there was no likelihood that they that had brought back faithfully the money that had been put into their sacks would steal in the house of so high a Potentate Furthermore that there was no need of words but that he should come to proof and search every where and that if any one of them was culpable of that sacriledge they were content to deliver him up to death and to render themselves all the Governours slaves for reparation of that fault The condition is accepted with moderation that the faulty should be punished and that the innocent should go free They are all searched in order
years before his death which makes the truth more remarkable he speaketh clearly that the Soul returneth to heaven if it be well purified from its commerce with earth that heaven is its true Countrey and Element and that it is a great proof of its Divinity that it delighteth to hear of heavenly things as being the affairs proper to it self We must take care not here to judge and condemn Seneca on a doubtfull word as when in his Consolation to Martia he saith That all end by Death and by Death it self He onely there toucheth of Goods and Evils of Honours Riches Pleasures Troubles and the Cares of this present life It is most clear that there is nothing in that Sentence which derogates from the Immortality of the Soul because he concludes that Treatise with the joyes which a happy Soul receiveth in the other life And it is not from our purpose to consider that Seneca sometimes in disputing speaketh by supposition according to the Idaea of others and not according to his own We cannot know better the opinion of an Authour then by his Actions and his Practise and we observe that Seneca hath not onely professed the Immortality of the Soul by words but believeth the effect in secret for he reverenced the Souls of great Personages and did believe them to be in heaven which he testified before he received the Christian Faith when being in a countrey-house of Scipio of Africa he rendred divine honours to his Epist 86. Spirit prostrating himself at the Altar of his Sepulchre and perswading himself he said that his Soul was in heaven not because that he was Generall of the Army but because he lived an honest man and having infinitely obliged his ingratefull countrey he retired himself in a voluntary solitude to his own house to give no fears and jealousies of his greatnesse If we demand where he placed the sovereign good His opinion of the sovereign good and the end of Man we shall find that he established the felicity of this present life to live according to Reason and that of the life to come in the re-union of the Soul with its first beginning which is God From this foundation he hath drawn a rule and propositions which he hath dispersed over all his Books and these are to despise all the goods of the world Honours Empires Riches Reputation Pleasures gorgeous Habiliments stately Buildings great Possessions Gold Silver precious Stones Feasts Theatres Playes and to take all things as accessory and to regard them no more then the moveables of an Inne where we are not but as passengers And above all things to esteem of virtue of the mortification of loose desires of contemplation of eternall virtues of Justice Prudence Fortitude Temperance of Liberality Benignity of Friendship of Constancy in a good course of life of Patience in Tribulation of Courage to support injuries of Sicknesse Banishment Chains Reproaches of Punishments and of Death it self We may affirm that never any man spoke more worthily then he of all these subjects Never Conquerour did subdue Nations with more honour then this great Spirit with a magnificent glory at his feet hath levelled and spurned down all the Kingdomes of Fortune All that he speaketh is vigorons ardent lively His heart when he did write did inflame his style to inflame the hearts of all the world His words followed his thoughts He did speak in true Philosophy but as a king and not as a slave to words and periods His brevity is not without clearnesse His strength hath beauty his beauty hath no affectation he is polished smooth full and entire never languishing impetuous without confusion his discourse is tissued yet nothing unmasculine invincible in his reasoning and agreeable in all things Howsoever we ought not to conclude by his Books that he was a Christian because he wrote them all before he had any knowledge of Christianity and therefore it is not to be wondred at if sometimes he hath Sentences which are not conformable unto our Religion Some one will object that he is admirable in his Writings but his Works carry no correspondency with The answer to the calumniatours of Seneca his Pen. This indeed is the abuse of some spirits grounded on the calumnies of Dion and Suillius which those men may easily see confuted who without passion will open their eyes unto the truth He reproacheth him for his great Riches in lands in gold and silver and sumptuous moveables and layeth to his charge that he had five hundred beds of cedar with feet of ivory It seems that this slanderer was steward of Seneca's house so curious he was in decyphering his estate But all this is but a mere invention for how is it possible that he who according to Cornelius Tacitus did not live but onely on fruit and bread and water and who never had any but his wife to eat with him or two or three friends at most should have five hundred beds of cedar and ivory to serve him at his feasts It is true that he had goods enough but nothing unjustly gotten they were the gifts and largesses of the Emperour And because he had sometimes written that Goods were forbidden to Philosophers he therefore was content to hold them in servitude and not to be commanded by them He was overcome by Nero to carry some splendour in his house as being the chiefest of the Estate and it was put upon him as a sumptuous habit upon some statue We cannot find that he had ever any children but his Books or that he made it his study to enrich his Nephews or his Nieces or to raise a subsistence for his house from the charges greatnesse and riches of the Empire He had the smallest train and pomp that possibly could be and when he had the licence to be at liberty from the Court he lived in an admirable simplicity and which is more he besought Nero with much importunity to discharge him from the unprofitable burden of his riches and to put severall stewards into his houses to receive his revenues but he made answer to him that he did a wrong unto himself to demand that discharge for he had nothing too much and that he had in Rome many slaves enfranchized who were farre more rich then Seneca Yet for all this Reproach is proved to be unjust Dion proceeds further in his slander and alledgeth That he indeared Queens and Princes to him for he wrote their Papers and professed himself a friend to the richest Favourites What is this but to reproach a Courtier with his Trade his Discretion his Civility his Affability which this great personage made very worthily to comply with his Philosophy He married an illustrious Lady and of invaluable wealth What! should he being in that high dignity to please Suillus become suitor to some chamber-maid or for mortifications sake court some countrey girle ought he to bring such a reproach after him to the Court of the
Prince what sinne hath he committed to espouse the most honest Lady in Rome called Paulina and to have lived with her in the condition of a good husband and in a perfect intelligence But he made love to the mother of the Emperour This slander never came into the thought neither of Tacitus nor Suetotius nor any other Historian who was a man of judgement It was onely the invention of an Impostor infected with poyson that dreamed of any such thing Agrippina had other manner of gallants and servants then Sececa in her Court she sought not after bodies made thin with abstinence and manners quite removed from such commerce In a Court so clear-sighted there could never be discovered any familiarities which might give the least impression of such a thought and which would have removed both the one and the other no Seneca did rather encline too much unto severity then to give any allurements to Agrippina The Glosser yet goes further and saith That he was His falling off from Agrippinaâ— ungratefull to her What ingratitude he alwayes endeavoured to tie the spirits of the mother to the son in a perfect friendship and did not cease to redresse all breaches that might give occasion of offence But when he observed that Agrippina did mount upon the Throne of her son did give audience to the Ambassadours of the Nations did visit the Armies and when he heard her vaunt that the Empire came unto him by her means and that she would take it away from him when she thought good he could not digest it He preserved himself in that fidelity which he had sworn unto the Emperour but he never counselled him either to remove Agrippina or to displease her When Nero very warmly called him and Burrhus together and in a great fright told them that his mother had conspired against his life and that he was but a dead man if he did not prevent it Seneca remained so lost in amazement that in all his life he was never dumb but at that instant And Cornelius Tacitus makes no mention of the least word he did let fall that might witnesse his consent to so horrible a deed It is true that he composed the Declaration of Nero after his mothers He is excusable for making the Declaration death but it was by a rigorous necessity He found himself betwixt two desperate extremities either to leave the whole Empire at randome to forsake the Helm and the Vessel in the tempest and tender his neck to Nero or to find some lenitive to ease the calamities so full of virulence Some there are that do thus excuse him for it and say It was no marvel that he did deport himself in this fashion because he was near to Princes and that those who even make a profession of virtue do study their own preservation and oftentimes conceal those affairs which they cannot redresse For my own part I am of judgement that great men being in a place where they are obliged to speak if they should wilfully or timerously hold their peace do grievously offend God by their silence and that Seneca should rather have died then have adhered to Nero polluted with his mothers bloud and execrable to all the world He had before demanded leave to be gone from Court wisely foreseeing the tempests that follow but he could not obtain it nor resist Nero without putting himself in danger of his life You see there may be a time when an honest man should rather venter his life then give a scandall unto Virtue But his dissimulation could not help him from being made at last a sacrifice to his most cruel Scholar as we anon shall declare unto you But for the present let us demand and examine the Why Seneca having so many gallant qualities did perform so little in the reâ—ormation of Manners cause why Seneca with so much Power Authority Eloquence Philosophy and humane Wisdome did effect so little for the reformation of manners in the Court of Nero and in the City of Rome It is without all doubt that the wisdome of Books was too low for so high a design We must make use of the grace of Redemption and the Bloud and the Gospel of Jesus to redresse such lamentable confusions Let us then behold S. Paul who at the same time did come to plant the Faith in Rome and talked with Seneca and made him to behold more excellent Light in the purity of his Life and Doctrine It is not my intention in this place to write at large Serrar Baran Cornel. the life of S. Paul which is already sufficiently known but particularly to touch on those things which he did at Rome when Seneca was in the government of the Affairs of the Empire Neverthelesse it is expedient to make a short recapitulation of the Times and the Voyages of this great Apostle to understand the occasion that did bring him to Rome and what he there did practise for the advancement of the Faith S. Paul being born in the second or third year of S. Paul came to Rome our Saviour was miraculously converted to the Christian Religion in the three and thirtieth year of his age By his Extraction he was a Jew born in the city of Tarsus in the Province of Cilicia where was a flourishing University from which came Antipater Archidemus Artemidorus Diogenes and Diodorus But S. Paul although he took his birth in the air of the Philosophers and had some tincture of their Principles did not amuse himself on the Philosophy of the Gentiles but retiring to Jerusalem he studied at the feet of Gamaliel a great Doctour of the Mosaick Law The zeal which he had for his Religion made him furiously to persecute Christianity from his birth unto the time that he was subdued by the Spirit of God and of a ravening wolf was made a lamb of the Fold Saul fell saith S. Augustine and Paul did rise the Interpretation of which name according to Hesychius is admirable to shew unto us that all things are marvellous in him even his name it self After his Conversion he preached in Arabia and in S. Paul falsly accused Damascus for the space of three years and did powerfully convince the Jews on the verities of our Faith who to divert the course of his Ministery in the imbroilments which then were raised between the King of the Arabians and the Romans did accuse him for having moved in the favour of Rome against the Arabians and their King Aretas who at that time held the city of Damascus and had placed in it a Governour of his own faction This Barbarian made an exact inquisition and would have apprehended S. Paul Baron Christi Anno 39 Cornel. in 2. apud Corin. cap. 11. who was then in the same city But his brethren the Christians were very carefull to deliver the Innocent from the hands of the guilty and shewing themselves neither slothful nor fearful in a busines of
was called Jesus and that it was difficult for me to strike my heels against the sharps of the spurre And immediately as I lay in amazement prostrate on the ground with those that were with me he commanded me to rise and said unto me That he would make choice of me for his people and for the Nations of the earth to give a testimony of him and to draw them from the power of wicked Spirits to come unto the Light that they may obtain remission of sins and the inheritance of Saints by the means of Faith which subsisteth in Jesus Christ Sirs For this I was not rebellious to the heavenly Vision but incontinently I set my self to preach the Word of God and to exhort all the world to convert themselves unto him by the works of Penitence Behold all my fault having done not any thing against the Law the Temple or against Cesar having alwayes counselled all the Subjects that ever heard me in the Empire to render unto him perfect obedience Neverthelesse certain of the Jews caused me to be apprehended in the Temple and excited the people against me who had torn me in pieces if I had not been succoured by the Armies and the Legions of the Empire God hath preserved my life until this present to discharge the Ministery and the Commission that he hath given me which is to deliver to the Nations the news of eternall Salvation Sirs I do observe you to be great observers of the Religion of the Gentiles you have Idols and Temples most magnificent but we ought not to imagine that God who is a most pure Spirit the Creatour of heaven and earth is inclosed in Temples built by the hand of men or that he stands on need of their works for the accomplishment of his Glory It is he that giveth life breath wealth honour profit and all that we can hope for in this world It is he who from one man hath derived the vast multitude of the people who by a continuall succession do inhabite the roundnesse of the earth It is he who giveth measures unto Times and bounds unto Empires and who inhabiteth a Light unapproachable It is he who inspires us all with a generous curiosity to seek him and to do our endeavours to find him and to touch him with fingers if his condition render him palpable But he is not farre from every one of us For in him we live we move and have our being and to speak according to your own Poet We are of the generation of God It is not then permitted to vilifie the Divine nature beneath us and to make it like unto things insensible as to gold silver precious stones and other materials elabourate by art and by the invention of men And certainly God from on high hath with compassion beheld this ignorance of men and hath given them his Sonne the substantiall Image of his Beauties and the Character of his Glory true God and true Man who is dead for our sins to wash us and regenerate us in his Bloud whose Words are Truth and whose Life a miracle even to the triumphing over Death by his Resurrection It is by him that the eternall Father will judge at the last both the quick and the dead and we all shall be represented before the Throne of his Majesty to receive the salary of the Good or Evill which in our bodies we have done This sovereign Monarch of Angels and of Men suffers not himself to be taken by the flesh or the bloud of bullocks or by the perfumes of incense but by the exercise of Justice and by the purity of our bodies in all sanctification Therefore Sirs as he hath advanced you in Dignity above other men so he hath more particularly obliged you to acknowledge and serve him and to adore him in Spirit and Truth and to render Justice according to the Commission which you have received from Cesar which is to deliver the innocent from the persecution of the insolent that so being true imitatours of his Justice and Mercy you may be one day partakers of his Glory This Discourse was well received by divers of them The effect of his Oration and a day was appointed for another Appearance where he so much explained and enlarged himself that he was sent back and pronounced guiltlesse and permitted to preach the Gospel in Rome with all liberty which gave much encouragemt to all the faithfull and even those who had before forsaken him did now reassemble themselves preaching in the Name of Jesus Phil. 1. 13. and exhorting all the world to Repentance Cornelius reports the opinion of some men who affirm that Saint Paul was expresly delivered by the advice and the authority of Seneca who at that time began miraculously to delight in his conversation And although they could not see one another as often as they would by reason of the considerations of State yet they mutually did write to one another which hath given occasion to some weak men who have not their spirits to counterfeit their letters ill imitated and which all knowing men are assured to be not of the strain either of S. Paul or Seneca Howsoever the fiction of the style doth no way hinder the truth of the antient Deed seeing that S. Hierome doth cite the true Letters which were in his time and doth alledge the Texts which are not now to be found in the Libraries of the Fathers Saint Paul continued at Rome two years after his first voyage where he gained many Christians to the Faith and some of the Court of Nero as is declared in his Epistles Seneca was amazed at the Authority which he had and desired that he might enjoy amongst his the like opinion of Belief as S. Paul had amongst the Christians but there was a difference in their spirits and their proceedings were from divers Methods Seneca was a man and S. Paul The parallel betwixt S. Paul and Seneca a demy-God The one studied with Attalus and Socion the other had the Word for his Doctour and the Angels for his Disciples The one sought after Nature the other found out the God of Nature The one lahoured after Eloquence the other studied Silence which is the father of Conceptions The one pleaded the Causes of parties the other pleaded the Cause of God The one governed the Republick of men the other laid open before us the Hierarchy of Angels The one was in the porch of Zenon the other in the school of Jesus The one laid the world low at his feet with his golden words and when he pleased did carry it on his head the other subdued it with mortification and the arms of the Crosse The one was full of good Desires the other of great Effects The one sought for himself in himself the other found himself altogether in God The one was a Minister of State the other of Heaven The one promised much and performed little the other promised nothing of
was his condition of life assigned him from his nativity but by this most detestable murder he is now become the Regenet of a great Kingdom Who had a more labouring desire to see the King out of the world than he who daily expected from the hand of death the just reward of his disloyalty We are here ready to represent unto him a paper signed with his own hand and the hands of his Adherents where amongst them all they are obliged against all to defend that person who should attempt upon the person of the King That execrable writing was intrusted in the hands of Bolfou Captain of the Castle of Edinborough whom at the first they had drawn unto their side and being since incensed against some of the Conspiratours hath discovered all the business This is that which we now manifest with reasons more clear than the day and with assurances as strong as truth it self My Lords We demand what is that which the Rebels oppose against all these proofs nothing at all but frivolous conjectures which are not sufficient to condemn the vilest creature in the world although they are made use of to overthrow the person and Majesty of a Queen Ten thousand tongues such as Murrays are and his Accomplices ought not to serve to make half a proof against the honour of Mary and yet you have the patience to hear them rather than chastise them Her poor servants have bin examined again and again they have been torn to pieces and flead alive to accuse the Queen and could ever so much as one effectual word be racked from them to stain her innocence Have they not in the middle of their torments declared aloud and before all the people that she was ignorant of whatsoever was done and that they never heard the least word proceed from her which tended to the murder of the King All their Reasons are reduced into two Conjectures The first whereof is That the Queen committed the said Act in revenge of the death of her Secretary The second is Her Love and Marriage with the Earl of Bothuel the murderer of her husband these two are the inevitable charges against her But to answer to the first I demand If the Queen had any desires of revenge on whom should she exercise that vengeance Upon her husband whom she loved with incomparable affection whom in all companies she defended as a young man seduced by evil counsels to whom she had given a full forgetfulness and abolition of the murder of David Riccio for fear that one day he should be called to an account for it whom she very lately had received into favour and the strictest friendship to whom she had given the testimonies of a fervent love unto the last hour of his death Is it on him that she would discharge her choller or on those who were the Authours and Executioners of the act If she hath pardoned the Earls of Murray and Morton her sworn Enemies whom on a thousand occasions she could cut off here is it to be believed that a Lady who had ever a most tender conscience would destroy a husband so agreeable to her and whom she knew to have never offended but through the malice onely of these desperate spirits But why then hath she married him who made this attempt against the King her husband This is their second Objection and to speak the truth the onely one which they so much crie up For this it is that they have taken away her Rings and Jewels and put in the place of them infamous letters invented by Buchanan or some like unto him who treat of love not as in the person of a Princess but of a loose licentious woman And these Letters when they were produced did appear to be never made up or sealed but exposed to all the world as if so chaste and so wise a spirit as this Queen could be so stupid or so wicked as to publish her own infamy to the face of all the world But in the end they say the Marriage was accomplished And who did do it but these onely who now do make it a capital Crime These are they who did give advice to this match by reasons did sollicit it by pursuits did constrain it by force and did sign it by continuance Behold we are here ready in your presence to represent unto you the Contract which doth bear their names and seals of Arms which they cannot disprove The Queen hath protested before God and men that she had rather die ten thousand deaths than to have married Bothuel if she had thought he had been stained but with one drop of her husbands bloud and if he had not been proclaimed to be innocent And now judge My Lords with what impudence they dare appear before you and do believe that the Queen of England hath sent you hither to serve their passions and sacrifice so great a Princess to their vengeance We do hope all the contrary and do firmly perswade our selves that the great God the undoubted Judge of the living and the dead will inspire you with such counsels as shall give the Day to Truth for the glory of your own consciences and the comfort of the most afflicted of Queens who desireth not to breathe out the rest of her life that is left her but under the favour of your Goodness This in this manner being spoken the Agents and Deputies for the Queen having aloud protested that they here assembled not to acknowledge any power Superiour to the Crown of Scotland but onely to declare in the behalf of their Queen being unwilling to lose time in words they came to the proofs and did defend them with incredible vigour making in the first place the falsifications which were very ordinary with the Earl of Murray to appear in full Councel In the second place representing the Contract of the Marriage with Bothuel which he condemned to be signed by him and his Adherents Moreover producing the instrument of the Conspiracy against the King subscribed by their own hands and signed by their own Seals And lastly reporting the Depositions of John Hebron Paris and Daglis who being executed for this Act did fully discharge the Queen at the instant of their death before all the people After that the Commissioners had judged the Her justification Queen of Scots to be innocent of all the Cases and Crimes which falsely had been imposed on her by her traiterous and disloyal Accusers and that the proceedings which they made were for no other purpose but to exempt themselves from the crimes which they had committed and to cover the tyranny which they had exercised in the Kingdom of Scotland The Earl of Murray did flie away filled with The confusion of her Accusers fear and with confusion seeing that his life was in great danger if he had not been secretly protected by the Queen of England In the pursuit of this Sentence the most honest of the Councel did
the day of its own brightness to consider how Providence guarding her dear Pool as the apple of her eye did reserve him for a time which made him the true Peace-maker of that nation For this effect it came to pass that Henry the Eighth The Estate of England having reigned eighteen years in schism leading a life profuse in luxury ravenous in avarice impious in Sacriledge cruel in massacres covered over with ordures bloud and Infamy did fall sick of a languishing disease which gave him the leisure to have some thoughts on the other world It is true that the affrighting images of his Crimes The death of Henry the Eighth and the shades of the dead which seemed to besiege his bed and perpetually to trouble his repose did bring many pangs and remorses to him Insomuch that having called some Bishops to his assistance he testified a desire to reconcile himself unto the Church and sought after the means thereof But they who before were terrified with the fury of his actions which were more than barbarous fearing that he spoke not that but onely to sound them and that he would not seal to their Counsels which they should suggest unto him peradventure with the effusion of their bloud did gently advise him without shewing him the indeavours and the effects of true repentance and without declaring to him the satisfactions which he ought to God and to his Neighbours for the enormities of so many Crimes He was content to erect the Church of the Cardeleirs and commanded that Mass should there be publickly celebrated which was performed to the great joy of the Catholicks which yet remained in that horrible Havock To this Church he annexed an Hospital and some other appurtenances and left for all a thousand Crowns of yearly Revenue As he perceived that his life began to abandon him he demanded the Communion which he received making a show as if he would rise himself but the Bishop told him that his weakness did excuse him from that Ceremony he made answer That if he should prostrate himself on the Earth to receive so Divine a Majesty he should not humble himself according to his duty He by his Will ordained that his Son Edward who was born of Jane Seimer should succeed him and in the case of death that Marie the Daughter of Queen Katharine should be the inheritress of the Crown and if that she should fail that his Daughter Elizabeth although a Bastard should fill her place and possess the Kingdom On the approches of death he called for wine and those who were next unto his bed did conceive that he oftentimes did repeat the word Monks and that he said as in despair I have lost all This is that which most truly can be affirmed of him for it is a very bad sign to behold a man to die in the honour of his Royal dignity and by a peaceable death who had torn in pieces JESUS CHRIST who had divided the Church into schisms who of the six Queens that he espoused had killed four of them who had massacred two Cardinals three Archbishops eighteen Bishops twelve great Earls Priests and Religious Men without number and of his people without end who had robbed all the Churches of his Kingdom destroyed the Divine worship oppressed a million of innocents and in one word who had assasinated mercy it self Howsoever he wanted not flatterers who presumed to say and write that his wisdom had given a good order to his affairs and that he happily departed this world not considering what S. dustine doth affirm That all the penitencies of those who have lived in great disorders and who onely do convert themselves at the end of their life being pressed to it by the extreamity of their disease ought to be extreamly suspected because they do not forsake their sins but their sins do forsake them It was observed indeed that at his death this King did testifie a repentance of his savage and inordinate life but we cannot observe the great and exemplary satisfactions which were due to the expiation of so many abominable sins King Antiochus made submissions of another nature and ordered notable restitutions to recompense the dammages which he had caused to the people of the Jews nevertheless he was rejected of God by reason of his bloudy life and the Gates of the Temple of mercy were shut against him for all eternity The foundation of a small Hospital which Henry caused at his death was not sufficient to recompense the injuries of so many Churches which he had pillaged nor of so much goods of his Subjects as he had forced from them seeing we know by the words of the wise man That to make a benefit Eccles 34. of the substance of the poor is to sacrifice a Son before the eyes of his Father He had by his Testament ordained many tutors to The Reign of Edward His Uncle Seimer spoileth all his Son who were able to have made as many Tyrants but Seimer Uncle by the mothers side to the deceased King gaining the favour of the principal of the Lords of the realm whom he had corrupted with mony and great presents did cause himself to be proclaimed Protector and Regent He took a great possession on little Edward the Son of Henry heir to the Crown whom he brought up in schism and Heresie against the intentions of his Father This furious man immediately began his Regency with so much insolence that he almost made the reign of Henry the Eight to be forgotten he fomented the poison which he had conceived under him he did use the Catholicks most unworthily and did cut off the head of his own Brother by a jealousy of women But as he had made himself insupportable so it came to pass that the affairs of war which he had enterprized against the French did fall out unfortunately for him Dudley one of the chiefest of the Lords drawing a party to him did accuse him of Treason and caused his head to be cut off on the same Scaffold where before he had taken off the head of his own Brother This death was followed with great fears and horrible commotions for the Regency which presently after was extinguished by the death of the young King Edward This poor Prince was rather plucked with pincers The Qualities and death of King Edward from his mothers womb than born and he could not come into the world without giving death to her who conceived him He was said to have none of the comeliest bodies He spake seven languages at fifteen years of age and in his discourse did testifie a rare knowledge of all those sciences which were most worthy of a King It seemeth that death did advance it self to ravish his spirit from his body which did awake too early and was too foreward for his age for he died in his sixteen year having not had the time throughly to understand himself and to see by what course