after which caused an excellent wit to say that it drew life out of its blows and made a dug of its wounds Oh happy soul that resembleth this generous plant and which repleat with pious desires holy affections and sincere intentions produceth apprehensions and works a thousand times more precious than myrrhe when in the meditation the rays of Jesus Christ who is the true Sun of justice strikes the heart The practice of prayer consisteth in mental vocal Necessity and easiness of meditation and mixt Mental is that which is exercised in the heart vocal which is formed in the mouth mixt participateth of both Think it not to be a new thing not severed from your profession to meditate It were so if one would make your brain serve as a lymbeck for subtile and extravagant raptures disguised in new words and forms But when one speaketh of meditation he adviseth you to ponder and ruminate the points and maximes which concern your salvation with all sweetness that fruit most agreeable to your condition may be derived from thence The faintness weakness infidelity ignorance driness which reigneth in your souls cometh from no other source but the want of consideration Take this worthy exercise couragiously in hand and you shall feel your heart fattened with the unction of the Holy Ghost and your soul of a wilderness to become a little Paradise of God Be not affrighted hereat as if it were a thing impossible for you use a little method and you shall find nothing more easie and familiar What have you so natural in vital life as to breath And what more proper in the intellectual than to think Your soul hath no other operation for night and day it is employed in this exercise The Sun casteth forth beams and our soul thoughts Gather together onely those wandering thoughts which are scattered amongst so many objects into your center which is God Employ one part of the spitit industrie invention discourse which you are endowed withal for the mannaging of worldly affairs Employ them I say in the work of your salvation and you shall do wonders I undertake not here to raise you above the earth nor in the beginning to plunge you into the seven degrees of contemplation whereof S. Bonaventure speaketh in the treatise he composed thereof I speak not to you of fire unction extasie speculation tast of What you must understand to meditate well repose or glory but I speak that in few words which you may read more at large in the works of so many worthy men who have written upon that subject First know what meditation is secondly how it is ordered Meditation properly is a prayer of the heart by Definition of meditation which we humbly attentively and affectionately seek the truth which concerns our salvation thereby to guid us to the exercise of Christian virtues That you may meditate well you must know the causes degrees matter and form of meditation The Causes principal cause thereof is God who infuseth himself into our soul to frame a good thought as the Sun doth upon the earth to produce a flower It is a goodly thing to have the spirit subtile and fruitful It is to work without the Sun saith Origen to think to do any thing here without the grace of the Holy Ghost The first degree which leadeth to good and serious prayer is a good life and principally purity of heart tranquility of spirit desire to make your self an inward man Saint Augustine reciteth a saying of Porphyrius very remarkeable which he deriveth Aug. l. 9. de civit Dei c. 23. Deus omnium Pater nullius indiget sed nobis est benè cum cum adramus ipsam vitam precâ—m ad cum sacientes pâ—r inquisitionem imitationem de ipse from the mouth of this perfidious man as one should pull a thing stoln out of a thiefs coffer God the Creatour and Father of this whole Universe hath no need of our service but it is our good to serve him and adore him making of our life a perpetual prayer by a diligent enquiry of his perfections and imitation of his virtues Observe then the first degree of good prayer is good life The second as well this Authour hath noted is the perquisition to wit the search of verities by thinking on the things meditated which are the sundry considerations suggested to us by the spirit in the exercise of meditation The third is the affection which springeth from these considerations Our understanding is the steel and our will the flint As soon as they touch one another we see the sparkes of holy affections to flie out We must bray together the matters of prayer as Aromatick spices with the discussion of our understanding before we can extract good odours The fourth is the imitation and fruit of things we meditate on It is the mark at which our thoughts should aim otherwise if one should pretend nothing else but a vain business of the mind it would be to as much purpose to drive away butter-flies as to meditate Good meditation and good action ought to be entertained as two sisters holding one another by the robe As for the matter of meditation you must know Matter of meditation that all meditations are drawn from three books The first and most inferiour is the book of the great Three books of meditation world where one studieth to come by knowledge of the creature to the Creatour The second is the book of the little world where man studieth himself his beginning his end qualities habits faculties actions functions and the rest The third is the book of the Heavenly Father Jesus Christ our Saviour who verily is a guilded book limmed with the rays of the Divinity imprinted with all the characters of sanctity and from thence an infinitie of matter is drawn as those of benefits of four last things of the life death and passion of Jesus and of all the other mysteries You must digest every one in his time according to the opportunity tast and capacity of those who meditate Some appropriate meditations to every day of the week others make their circuit according to the moneth others follow the order of the mysteries and life of our Saviour as they are couched in so many books written of these matters The practice and form of meditation consisteth in six things The first to divide the subject you would Practise and form contained in six articles meditate on into certain points according to the appointment of some Directour or the help of a book Article 1 As if you meditate upon the knowledge of ones self to take for the first point what man is by nature For the second what he is by sin For the third what he may be by grace The second a little before the hour appointed for Article 2 meditation to call into memory the points which you would meditate on The third after you have implored the
with the excess thereof for fear that good Offices be turned into misprisions and Charity render it self too importunate But so it is that we must confess that Pieces well wrought are never seen in so great a number as to bring any fastidiousness to them who do know their merit Here do I stop my pen and if there appears any worth in this Volume I look upon it as on the Mirrour planted on the wall of a Temple in Arcadia where those that beheld it in stead of their own face saw the representation of the Divinity which they adored Even so in all this which may bring any profit to the Reader I see nothing of my own but I acknowledge the Father of lights who is the Beginning and the End of all which we do make praise-worthy And I beseech him if there be found any thing attractive in these Discourses that He will like the Load-stone draw up the Readers and carry them to the love of their Creatour to whom is due the tribute of all honour as to him who is the Beginning of all Perfection It is indeed the onely consolation which we can receive from our labours For not to dissemble the Truth he that cares more to write than to live flattering his pen and neglecting his conscience shall have work enough to defend himself from the Scurf the Rat and from Oblivion And when in a passionate life he shall carry with him the applauses of the world it shall be as a small sacrifice unto him of smoke abroad to lodge a fire and tempest in his own house It is reported that the Stars contribute their beams to enlighten the Infernals and I can affirm that all the lights of Understanding and Reputation shall serve onely to inflame the torments of a reprobate soul who shall shut his eyes against God to open them onely to let in Vanity In the end after many Editions of the HOLY COURT as I desired here to put the last hand to it I am now retired into the solitary place of Quinpercorentin for the love of the truth where the honesty of the Inhabitants have made me to find it as my Countrey which other men have taken for a place of banishment There on the banks of the Ocean at the feet of a Saint who is the Tutelar of the Village perceiving that God had sweetened to me all the bitterness both of men and of the times by the infusion of his Paternal Consolation I have composed more Treatises both of Doctrine and Piety to render in some sort my silence profitable to the publick of which one day I will give a good account unto my Readers if God shall grant me life Amongst other things I have digested into good order this Work of the HOLY COURT and I have enriched it with a remarkable Augmentation of the Lives and Elogies of the Illustrious Personages at Court as well in the Old as the New Testament Now I do produce it to the light after that by the singular favour of Heaven the obstacles are removed and Truth acknowledged on the Throne of Lights with which God hath round environed it THE TABLE OF THE Chief CONTENTS of the First Tome of the HOLY COURT FIRST BOOK Motives to stir up Persons of quality to Christian Perfection MOTIVE Page THat the Court and Devotion are not incompatible 1 I. Name of Christian. 2 II. Nobilitie 4 III. Eminent Dignitie 5 IV. Riches 8 V. Corporal endowments 9 VI. Endowments of the mind 11 VII Courage 13 VIII Education 15 IX Court a life of penance 17 X. Gratitude 19 XI Example 21 XII Punishment 22 XIII Reward 24 SECOND BOOK Hinderances that worldly ones have in the path of salvation OBSTACLE Page I. WEak faith 26 II. Errour in faith in Religion 30 III. To live according to opinion 37 IV. Inconstancie of manners 39 V. Masked life 41 VI. Ill mannage of time 43 VII Libertie of tongue 45 VIII Curiosity in bearing affronts 47 IX Carnal love 49 X. Superfluous Attire 51 XI Envie 54 XII Ambition and Avarice 56 Conclusion A bad Courtiers life is a perpetual Obstacle to virtue 58 THIRD BOOK Practice of VIRTUES SECTION Page I. DEvotion for Great-ones 60 II. Wherein consisteth all Devotion and Spiritual life 61 Character of the spiritual man ibid. Character of the carnal man ibid. III. First combat of a spiritual man against ignorance 62 IV. Practice of faith ibid. V. Four other lights to disperse ignorance 64 VI. Twelve Maxims of salvation ibid. VII Twelve Maxims of wisdom 66 VIII Practice of Devotion and Prayer 68 IX Necessitie of confession ibid. X. Practice of confession 69 XI Practice of examen of conscience 71 XII Practice of receiving 72 XIII Practice of hearing Mass 74 XIV Practice of meditation 75 XV. Practice of vocal prayer and spiritual reading and frequenting Sermons 77 XVI Second combat of the spiritual man against pusillanimitie 78 XVII Twelve Maxims to vanquish temptations 79 XVIII Remedies against the passions and temptations growing from every vice 81 XIX Shame in well doing 82 XX. Affection towards creatures ibid. XXI Indiscreet affliction of mind and sadness 83 XXII Third combat of the Spiritual man against impurity 85 XXIII Practise of chastity 85 XXIV Practise of temperance 86 XXV Practise of modesty 87 XXVI Practise of prudence and government in conversation ibid. XXVII Against another impurity to wit desire of having and first of poverty of the rich 89 XXVIII Practise of justice ibid. XXIX Practise of thankfulness 90 XXX Practise of charity 91 XXXI The practise of humility and magnanimity 92 XXXII Practise of patience 93 XXXIII Practise of daily actions 94 Instructions for Married XXXIV Misery of marriages ill managed 96 XXXV Evils of marriage grow from disorders therein committed 99 XXXVI Selected instructions for the married 101 XXXVII Instructions for Widdows 102 To Maids XXXVIII Praises of virginity and of the modesty they ought to observe in their carriage 104 To Fathers and Mothers XXXIX Concerning bringing up and instructing children 107 To Children XL. Of piety towards parents 110 The fourth Book treateth of Impiety of Courts and Unhappy Policie page 114 The fifth Book setteth forth Fortunate Pietie page 137 A TABLE OF THE TITLES and SECTIONS contained in the Second Tome of the HOLY COURT THE PRELATE SECT Page I. THat it is convenient the Nobilitie should govern the Church 165 II. That the Nobilitie should not aspire to Ecclesiastical offices but by lawfull ways 167 III. Of the Vocation or calling of a Prelate 168 IV. Virtues requisite in the carriage of a Prelate 169 V. The second virtue of a Prelate which is Fortitude of spirit against Avarice and Riot 170 VI. The third Qualitie of a good Prelate which is purity of life 171 VII The fourth perfection of a Prelate which is observed in Zeal and Charity 172 VIII The fifth excellency of a Prelate which is science and prudence ibid. IX The Motives which noble Prelates have to the duty of their
of water God made his birth and education singularly to Extraction of Theodosius contribute to the sanctity of his life He was descended from Trajan called the good Emperour by supereminence of worth his Grand-father was the great Theodosius a man who in wariness had no superiour that preceded him and in piety no better second than his Grand-child The Emperour Arcadius was his father a most generous Prince who in the very beginning of the fifth Age to wit the year after the Nativity of our Saviour four hundred and one saw this infant rise as a bright star at that time when he ended the course of his life as the Poets feigned the Sun reareth himself from the bed of aged Tython to illustrate the world His nativity was foretold His birth foretold by the mouth of Saints his most tender infancy consecrated by the destruction of idols God at one and the same time putting him in the number of the living and in the rank of Protectours of the Church by a most remarkeable act of which behold the narration Saint Procopius an Hermit endowed with admirable Prophesie of S. Procopius sanctity illumined with the spirit of prophefie living in the Isle of Rhodes praying daily for the destruction of some remnants of idolatry which reigned in the Roman Empire when by good chance two holy Prelates Porphyrius and John the one Bishop of Gaza the other of Caesarea in Palestine sayling for that purpose to Constantinople went to lodge in the Hermitage of this holy man He having received them with all respect answerable to their qualities and entertained them according to the poverty of the Cell understanding they travelled to the capital Citie of the Eastern Empire of purpose to obtain an Edict from the Emperour absolutely to destroy the Temples of idols and bridle the insolencies of Pagans who stirred with so much the more boldness as the drouping faintness of the government of those times promised them impunity he was infinitly comforted to see so great personages undertake so worthy a work and God then prompting him these words he saith Courage Fathers the glory of this conquest is due to your pietie Go stoutly to Constantinople and acquaint the holy Bishop John Chrysostom with this design resolving to execute what he shall think fit For the rest know the Empress is nine moneths gone with child and that which is more she beareth an Emperour in her womb upon the mother and the son who is to be born depends the expedition of this affair They very glad of this prediction left the good Hermit Procopius and in ten days arrived at Constantinople where presently they visited S. John Chrysostom who received them with much respect and very great contentment The affair being put into deliberation the Bishop of Constantinople saw well that the Empress might therein much assist and that God ordinarily useth the pietie of women to advance the affairs of Religion Notwithstanding he durst not present these two Prelates to her fearing his recommendation might be prejudicial for he very lately had a sharp difference with the Empress It was Eudoxia a woman Eudoxia mother of Theodosius of a great spirit and who naturally loved virtue as milk in her infancy but she had a heart extreamly haughty and quickly would be offended if any thing of great consequence were undertaken against her authority Behold wherefore S. Chrysostom who was of no pleasing disposition as one who had a spirit alienated from ordinary complements sometimes towards those of his own coat reprehending her openly at many meetings in the point of glory wherein she most desired to be soothed raised her indignation to the clouds She was as yet in the height Her humour of her passion against him and therefore he judging it to no purpose for him to sollicite her caused the two Bishops to be presented by the means of one called Amantius an attendant of Eudoxia's chamber a very wise man and of great credit with his Lady She who knew her child-bed time at hand gave very free access to religious men as hoping all good success by help of their devotions and seeing these two Bishops Bishops treat with the Empress were very particularly recommended to her by Amantius in quality of persons endowed with a very eminent sanctity she was unsatisfied till she had seen them and having most courteously saluted them excusing her bigness with child to have hindered her passage to the door of their reception according to the usual practice towards persons of their worth she forbear not most affectionately to conjure them to employ their most fervent prayers to obtain of God a happy delivery for her The holy Bishops after they had wished her the child-birth of Sarah of Rebecca and Saint Elizabeth began to declare the cause of their voyage unfolding in very express terms the indignity of this Idolatrie the insolency of Pagans the contempt of things sacred the oppression of people the lamentable mischief it would be to behold the worshipping of idols still to flourish which to abolish the Saviour of the world had so much sweat so much wept and shed so much bloud and to see it predominate as it were in the eyes of a most magnificent Emperour and a most religious Empress who had all the means to extirpate it That in such a field the palms of eternal glory should be gathered and that better they could secure their estate than by destroying the work of Satan to erect the tropheys of Jesus Eudoxia taketh fire being thereto otherwise well Zeal of Eudoxia enough disposed and promiseth to recommend the business to the Emperour to obtain the dispatches they required for their better contentment The Bishops retired expecting the effect of this promise The Ladie faileth not to offer her requests and strike the stroke with her best dexteritie But Court affairs proceed not always on the same feet which the desires of the zealous move upon she findeth the Councel engaged in these retardations who think it to no purpose to roul such a stone That idolatrie should Judgement of Arcadius his Councel be left to bury it self and at leisure dress its own funerals That the means to ruin it is to remove the heads of the sect from all kind of honours and publick dignities to forbid the exercise of superstition and Conventicles which they make in private houses to subdue Idolaters and burn them as it is said with a soft fire That the demolishment which should be made of those great Temples of Idols which yet remained would make much noise and yield little fruit that this might thrust rebellious spirits into manifest despair and in a word it was feared it might be a means to turn the coyn of the Emperours coffers another way who drew a good round revenue from the Citie of Gaza which even at that time was in hand The consideration of interest which ever holdeth as Porphyrius unfoldeth the
torch do you set on fire to burn and consume the house of God when blind with affection and benummed in judgement you so embrace your young apes that you strangle them with excess of indulgence To enkindle ambition in the veins of these yong sots almost at their coming out of the cradle to set them on the top of the house over mens heads with an arm and sling of silver be they vitious be they impious and dissolute be they stupid and heavy as earth so that they have the breath of favour and oars of silver as had the rowers of Queen Cleopatra needs must they be placed on the top of the Turret to be seen the further off Many times charges of great importance and superintendence over the heads of so many mortals are given to men to whom a silly farmers wife would not have committed the keeping of a cow The Idumeans enterprize upon the Sanctuary and these owls endeavour to drink up the Lamp-oyl of Churches by an ambition of so strong a flight that it will admit no limits but infinitie Have you no commiseration of the publick The Commonwealth is at this day an old song say you whereof little care is to be had we desire to know more than an air which is that of our own proper interest since it is an act of prudence well to accommodate ones affairs Yet are you no whit ashamed of your selves though silver furnish you with a brow of mettal to regard no man yet is it a shamefull thing to be desirous to erect in the world the tree of Nebuchadnezzar turned topsie-turvie where four-footed beasts are above and little birds beneath Were it not a goodly thing to see horses asses and bulls to neigh bray and bellow upon the branches of trees while the small birds of Heaven so many celestial spirits thrust from the rank which wisdom and virtue giveth go mourning up and down among the thorns of a necessitous life But we must prefer our children answer you Who says the contrary Raise them on the steps of actions Christian solid and illustrious cause them to pass through the Temple of virtue before they go to that of honour examine their talents their capacity their ability otherwise you do not advance but precipitate them into publick scorn into loss of reputation and danger of soul This benefice is not a benefice but a malefice but a golden snare a carcanet of Medea a Trojan horse which will produce arms You in procuring such an honour resemble those idolatrous parents who sacrificed their children to the God Moloch that is to Seldenus de Diis Syris pag. 78. say to the Sun and caused them to be burnt alive in the hollow statue of the Sun not caring to forgo their lives so they might loose them in those flames and lights which were the Hieroglyphicks of honour Oh meer madness for the life of a flie which we daily share with death to be willing to damme your self and posterity to stand on the brink of the abyss and not deign so much as onely open your eyes to behold the precipice The third SECTION Of vocation or calling IF you desire to know how you should proceed in the preferment of your children to Ecclesiastical degrees first understand it is true Mercury is not made of all wood If question be concerning a husbandman merchant artificer or shepheard we trie the nature of the children and endeavour to accommodate each one of them according to their dispositions and natural inclinations Suppose you it is onely fit for the Church to expose them at adventure without election or discretion What exorbitancy is it to think it lawfull to take the simplest and weakest for Priests and Religious What tyranny to divert some with all sorts of cunning and violence and thrust others on as it were with a fork To have in all your proceeding no other aim but the benefit of your family to force the Laws of Heaven to bow under the interests of your house to give that to God which you cannot settle else-where and if any accident happen to take that from God which you have given him Hereby it cometh to pass that after many years we behold birds which change both their plumage and kind upon some very slight cause not speaking of those who do so by way of counsel and conscience the scarlet Cloak succeeding the Church Cassock and the sword the Breviary wherein they do much worse than the wooers in the house of Ulysses who being not able to gain access to the Mistress made their address to the servants But these forsake the Ladie whom they have espoused to court the chamber-mayds professing all their life time the infidelity of their promises by the exchange of their habits Vocation is most necessary for admittance into the Church which appeareth in two points The one ordinary the other extraordinary Extraordinary calling hath marks and signs that draw near to a miracle So we see those who have been great and eminent in the Church have had some Genius which hath even in their infancy made the first glimmers of their greatness to appear drawing the whole world after them with astonishment So Moses though he were a little child tossed Pharaoh's Ioseph Antiq. lib. 2. cap. 5. Diadem like a shuttle-cock which gave a very ill presage to the Aegyptians of their approching ruin So Elias seemed from his mother to suck fire with milk which was a prediction his mouth should one day be as indeed it was the Arsenal of the God of hosts So the cradle of S. Epiphanius as Ennodius Epiph. de Prophetis Ennodius Anonymus in ejus vitâ Raderus Crantzius l. 4. relateth was seen all on fire A vine in a vision issued out of the mouth of little S. Ephraem A flaming pillar environed the head of S. Modestas And it is written that Gregorie the seventh who from a base extraction was born to the throne of S. Peter heaping together the chips he found in his fathers shop who was a Joyner and arranging them in divers figures innocently wrote without thinking thereon as a child in sport Dominabor à mari usque ad mare All these callings and many other of the like kind are known by extraordinary signs the rest take the ordinary way and are observed to be in the good nature of children fit to be dedicated to the Church which is a matter very considerable If you ask wherein this good nature consisteth I answer It is not in the influence of stars nor in the Genius as Pagans have placed it nor simply in the beauty of mind in the goodness of constitution health strength vigour of body though these may much contribute thereunto but it appeareth in two principal rays of which the one is tranquility from passions by making a reposed calm in a soul fit to entertain the spirit of God the other which ariseth from the first is the docibleness of a mind
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
to build a Citie else-where which he would equal to the majesty of Rome and fashion to his best liking as he afterward did changing the Citie of Bizantium into the royal Constantinople an eternal monument of his greatness The tenth SECTION The endeavour of good works with the virtues and laws of Constantine THis Monarch changed into another man lived not but by the fire of charity cleaving to the earth by very slender roots of the necessities of nature he began seriously to manure the practise His devotion of prayer discoursing familiarly with God with a tast so sensible that it surpassed all delights imaginable in nature and wit a diligence so great that being in Arms and under Pavilions he ever had his little oratory of retirement where like another Moses he consulted with the Divinity He hearkened to discourses of God with incomparable pleasure and when he spake of the mysteries of our faith which he as it were perpetually did it was with so great exercise that his heart seemed to melt with his words His zeal so transported him that of the prime Captain of the world he became a Doctour and Preacher to procure the conversion of his subjects He who so many times had carried in his hand the sword of the Empire to cut off rebellious powers bare then in his mouth the sword of the word to fill the world with wonders What he spake with his lips he taught by examples carrying under the purple a body worn out with abstinence and mortification He so trampled vanity under-foot to which he Humility formerly had some inclination that among a great number of Churches and edifices of piety which he caused to be built he would not have his name thereon engraven reputing himself unworthy that God should accept such offerings at his hands And as one day a Bishop a flatterer and an Arian put himself forward to tell him that after he had governed the world upon earth he should do the like in Heaven with the Son of God he felt himself so confounded with this word that he who ever treated with Ecclesiasticks with very much reverence could not contain himself but say Bishop let it not fall out you any more use such words concerning me for they are unto me most hatefull you shall do much better and more suitable to your profession to pray the living God I may be both in earth and heaven the least of his servants than to propose to your self Scepters and Empires for me His patience was equal to his humility whereof His patience S. Chrysostom hath observed an excellent passage in the oration of Bishop Flavianus to the Emperour Theodosius where he saith that as one day in a popular commotion they stoned the statues of Constantine there wanted not many about him who endeavoured to enflame him to the revenge of those outrages to which he smiling answered they had strucken a man of stone but the model remained entire Now being not ignorant that the vigour of Christianity consisted in works of charity he applied himself thereunto with so much fervour that it seemed his hands were that which the Hebrew text speaketh of in the Canticles Hands of the spouse vessels of gold replenished with a sea of bounty Before his Baptism great calamities had reduced miserable fathers to such necessity that being not able to maintain their children they sought to be discharged of them by ways most lamentable of which the good Prince being advertised he wrote to Ablavius his Lieutenant of the whole Politick government of the Empire to publish a Law through all the Cities of Italie in which was intimated to all necessitous fathers who were unable for the education of their children that they should present them at a place appointed there to receive apparrel and convenient sustentation adding he intended that not onely publick moneys should be employed to supply such wants but that he would despoil himself willingly of that which was proper and peculiar to himself for their comfort If he found any beggars in the streets he delighted to clothe them and to behold them in this new plight making of his Palace a mount Thabor where men were transfigured changing their miseries into felicities He most particularly enquired after the shamefac'd poor who had hertofore been wealthy learned from them their fortunes birth and want and as he found their qualities and merits he gave sometimes lands and entire possessions to those who were in very pressing necessities A poor widow who sighed in a corner of her house forsaken of all the world was much amazed that this Monarch of the world came as an Angel from Heaven to wipe away her tears and provide for her poor orphans A forlorn maid and even upon the brink of the precipice by the unhappiness of poverty found the Emperour had given order for her marriage and had himself taken the pain to know her future husband and recommend good husbandrie unto him on his part This man was as the Intelligence tyed to the government of the Primum Mobile which is never weary among so many concussions and motions afforded to total nature He was a sun who drew up and digested all the vapours of the lower world not intermitting any thing of its course or lights He was an Ocean who received drops of water as well as huge rivers and as there was nothing so high in the world as to be above his greatness so was there nothing so low which could withdraw it self from his charitable knowledge He ever had his eye open upon the necessities of mankind and not contenting himself to provide for them by the ordinary wayes of charitie he thereunto added the hand of justice making most wholesome laws for the tranquilitie of the whole world This good Father of the Universe sought out poor banished men who had been unjustly despoiled by the rigours of injustice and restored them to their professions He proposed to himself in his own repose the affliction of those who had wrongfully been transported into desert Islands where they still lived made slaves under the tyranny of men and in a worse condition than beasts He thought upon the miseries they endured who were condemned by unrighteous sentences to labour in mynes He reflected on the long services of military men who were absolute in arms yet oftentimes gained nothing but poverty and ignominy But above all these considerations as occasions required His Edicts he made most worthy Edicts for the comfort of so many persons as lived in the acerbities of the world And for as much as concerned justice which consisteth in the punishment of crimes and abuses he was a Hercules who had perpetually his club lifted up to quell monsters There was a custome in those times of Duels and Duels gladiatours which were much more tollerable than now-adays for then none were employed therein but slaves criminals and men of the sack and halter who were already condemned
away by the hand of a hang-man the life which he gave him Had his condition been capable of tears even Tygers themselves would have deplored him seeing so much piety such faith so much goodness such worth eclipsed in a bloud so precious in an Age so flourishing in a fortune so replenished with hope The news of his death hastened to find out Indegondis who was yet in Africa where she also received the last Letter which her husband wrote to her out of prison The servants that were about her person began to make hydeous lamentations as if they themselves had been condemned to death But the couragious Indegondis kissing the letter of her dear husband then opening it with singular reverence and reading the last words which he as it were had steeped in his bloud she cried out Alas Generous and faithfull heart you have done all that which a good man might you have manfully fought you are happily arrived at the Crown Nothing can be desired in you but the imitation of your constancy Servants Why do you weep This is the very day wherein I am a Queen and when I esteem my self the most triumphant woman in the world having my husband a Martyr in Heaven Give me roses and flower-de-luces that I may crown his Image and honour at the least with these testimonies a soul which hath left unto us such sweet odours of virtue She had with her her little Hermingildus almost dead with the wearisomness of travel on the way which indeed had been somewhat easie for the tenderness of his age The mother beholding him Go my son saith she follow your good father God hath given you a favour in your cradle that he doth not to all children which is to be banished for the faith and to take part in the Martyrdom of him who begot you Go little innocent and rejoyce with others before the Altar of the Lamb your mother shall not long stay behind you The child died shortly after and the good Princess Others say he was sent prisoner to the Emperour Mauritius but without ground having for a long time combatted in a brave manner against the apprehensions of nature poured forth on a sudden thick sobs and a main tyde of tears which distilled from her eyes against her will whereupon she mildly said Alas my tears what fitness can you find to bemoan a Martyr My God it is done the father and the son are alreadie at rest there remaineth nothing but to take the mother Behold two parts of the world Europe and Africk which I have filled with my miseries If you will that I yet pass into Asia your will be done But if I no longer be ought but an unprofitable burden to the earth what do I here I have spun out all the web which you gave me I have ended all the hopes of the world why stay you O my God to receive my soul which I bear on my lips She was heard For in few days being all wasted with love travel and desires after an exemplar death she found her tomb in Africk What shall I say here and what shall I do to shut up this discourse We have all certain natural softnesses in the bottom of our souls and some humane apprehensions which alter the force of our judgement My pen cannot almost pass over this history and not commix the waters of mine eyes with mine ink and perhaps also you my Reader cannot peruse it without compassion It seemeth unto you these chaste loves of Hermingildus and Indegondis are too unhappy that such virtues are cruelly handled that such noble courages have met with a fortune sinister hydeous and persecutive even to the tomb You would gladly see these brave spirits after so many tempests such thunder-claps and whirle-winds arrive at a Port of some large temporal felicity You would behold them with Crowns on their heads with Scepters in their hands with Provinces flourishing in revenues with prosperities perpetually smiling in their house with loves free from disturbance desires void oâ— denials affairs without trouble greatness without change pleasures without acerbities and a long posterity fully laden with honours It grieves you that this poor Prince hath passed away as a pearl parched up with lightening in its growth or as an eagle strangled in the shell You bewail this Princess that being born in France she died in Africk separated by the sword from a husband who loved her so tenderly deprived of a son who gave so many good hopes abandoned by all her allies but some poor waiting-women that buried her with sorrow so full of pitie that it was of power to move the monsters of Africk to commiseration Ah ignorant that we are of the works of God perpetually fixed to the earth and deprived of those sparkles of fire and light which burn under the most generous breasts Let us a little draw aside the curtain and see through so many clouds one sole ray of the Sanctuary What injury hath the Divine Providence done to Prince Hermingildus if for a Crown which is the weather-cock of winds if for a Scepter which is the reed of the times if for a life which is the harbinger of death it afford him virtues delights and glories which out-strip the flight of our thoughts which drie up our mouthes which out-run our desires which surmount all our imaginations What injury if it make a Saint of him whose name is couched in Martyrologes whose memory liveth in writing whose praise flourisheth in mouthes whose words are nought but honour and works but blessings whilest his step-mother Goizintha dies like a dog and is buried in the opprobrie of her name What injury if it have so handled the matter that his father touched with a lively repentance hath justified him as an innocent deplored him as a son invoked as a Martyr If it hath sanctified his setters consecrated the tower of his prison raised up his ashes above all the Crowns of the Kings of Spain If it hath given him Altars on earth and a Diadem of beatitudes in Heaven Is it to have despised his virtue neglected his sufferings disobliged his constancy and frustrated his travels What would you have God to have made the virtuous Indegondis A Queen delicate ambitious covetuous haughty which had not spit but in gold walked but on roses flown over the heads of men and putrified in delights How many such like are there who have defiled their names with reproach wearied the earth with their importunities astonished posterity with their deportments and peopled hell with their crimes But this Ladie having been purified with the burning coals of tribulation issued from the hands of God as a vessel of glory to make her lustre resplendent in the sight of all Ages Ah Ladies who read this piece and who many times flatter your selves with the title of virtue in some petty tracks of devotion which have nothing but outward semblance what example of piety see you here What
1. dist 41. Manifest reason the will of God could not be unjust and that praedestination proceeded besides the grace of God by most secret merits which were discovered to this divine eye that discerneth all the actions of men 4. Is there a soul so replenished with contradiction which averreth not That what God doth in a certain time he determined to do it in his eternity Now Faith teacheth us he in that time by him determined rendereth life eternal to the just for reward of their merit as himself pronounceth in S. Matthew (c) (c) (c) Matth. 25. Answer to objections And therefore it is necessary to confess God before all Ages was resolved to give the Crown of glory not indifferently but in consideration of good life and laudable virtues And for this it is to no purpose to say the end of our intentions goeth before the means whereby some infer God first decreed beatitude which is the end then considered good works which are the address to this end For I answer when the end possesseth the place of salary as this here doth the merit is always presupposed before the recompence And although the Master of a Tourneament wisheth the prize to one of his favourites yet his first intention is he shall deserve it by his valour God taketh the like inclinations in this great list of salvation he wisheth all the world palms but willeth it to them who well know how to make use of the helps of his grace Thus the most ancient and gravest Fathers of the The doctrine of the most ancient Fathers concerning praedestination Church thought this sentence they agreed on before the impostures of Pelagians in the golden Age of the Church through a most purified ray And to this purpose Tertullian said (d) (d) (d) Tertul. de resur carnis Deus de suo optimus de nostro justus God who is very good of his own was ever just of ours And S. Hilarie said most perspicuously (e) (e) (e) Hilar. in Psal 64. Non res indiscreti judicii electio est sed ex delectu meriti discretio est That Election was not an effect of judgement indiscreet but that from the choice of merit proceeded the distinction made for glorie S. Epiphanius expressed the like opinion That there was no exception of persons in the proceeding of God but that it passed according to the merit or demerit of every one Behold what we may gather from the soundest tradition of the Church (f) (f) (f) The second point of reasons That God is glorified in that he hath our works for praedestination to glory But if we now weigh the second Article whereon we insist which is the glory of God it is an easie matter to see this opinion which appropriateth a certain fatality of divine decrees without other knowledge of cause agreeth not with this immense bounty of God nor the sincere will he hath to save all the world It is not suitable to his justice nor to his promises or menaces he makes to virtues or vices besides it tormenteth minds weakens the zeal of souls and throweth liberty and despair into manners Why should not a miserable reprobate have cause The complaint a Reprobate may make hereupon to say Ah my Lord where are the bowels of goodness and mercy which all pens testifie all voices proclaim and laws establish Is it then of honey for others and of worm-wood for me How cometh it to pass without any knowledge of merit you drew this man from the great mass of corruption to make him a son of your adoption a coheir of your glory and have left me as a black victim marked with a character of Death What importeth it me that in this first choice you made you did not condemn me without knowledge of cause to think no good for me was to think ill enough for me Was I then able to row against the torrent of your power Could I intrude into your Paradise which you have fitly disposed like the Halcyons nest whereunto nothing can enter but its own bird You have built your Palace of a certain number of chosen pieces in such sort that the account thereof being made and proportions valued one small grain might not be added to encrease the number What could I do in this dreadfull exclusion but accuse your bounty and deplore my unhappiness Behold what a reprobate soul may object and Aug. de verbo Apost ser 11. Si posset loquipecus dicere Deo quare istum fecisti hominem me peculem Answer to objections Glossa in Danielem it were bootless to answer that a bruit beast might complain in this fashion that God had not made it a man or the like might be alledged for infants who die without Baptism For as concerning beasts nothing is taken from them rather much given when from nothing being and life is afforded them with contentments of nature and as for little infants they endure no evil and are no more disturbed to be deprived of the sight of God than was Nebuchadnezzar for the Scepter of Babylon when he in his infancy was bred among shepheards thinking himself the son of a Peasant and wholly ignorant of his Royal extraction But to say A man who dies at the age of discretion and is delivered over to eternal flames was condemned by God without any other fore-sight of his works is it not a cruelty not worthy of ought but Calvinism as if a father might be excusable in marrying one daughter richly and cutting the others throat to set her on a pyle He who would judge wisely must flie the very shadow of an opinion so damnable and all which may seem to favour it 6. Now as concerning the Doctrine which establisheth The fruits of Gods glory derived from our Maxim Praedestination upon grace and prevision of good works it seems to stretch far towards the point of Gods greatest glory It discovereth us his science in attributing unto him an infinite survey over all the actions of Adams children before all Ages by which it seasonably fore-saw all that was to be done by all particulars in so great a revolution of times It in an instant affordeth us this most innocent knowledge seeing we learn by the same way that the prescience which God hath of our works is no more the cause of our happiness than my memory of the fireing of Rome which happened under Nero or than mine eye of the whiteness of snow and fresh verdure of meadows by its simple aspects Nothing happeneth because God fore-saw Qui non est praescius omnium futurorum non est Deus Aug. de civit Dei l. 5. c. 9. it but God fore-saw it because it should so happen by motion of our free-will and not by the laws of necessity Moreover the Justice of the great Master is very eminent in this action for we do not say he works at random and seeks to make boast
Deum pro cujus spiritu postules pro quâ oblationes annuas reddas 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Gifts for ransom of the soul answerable to what Tertullian writeth that it was the custom of the ancient Church to pray for the souls of the dead yea and to make annual offerings for them We must no longer say for evasion it is Plato it is Quintilian who speaketh but confess with Aristotle when we see an universal agreement in a proposition it is not one man speaks but the mouth of heaven which uttereth this verity When S. James telleth us God must be feared and proves it by example of the divels themselves he saith not we must fear God because Daemones credunt contremiscunt the divels do so but if any despise him he is therein worse than divels Likewise when the holy Fathers produce an example of Pagans it is not to instruct us by the Pagans but to shew that to waver in the belief of things they generally held by the sentence of nature is to be worse than a Pagan 3. I say for the second argument that so often as Second proof drawn from the light of faith Vnde haec quia ita facienda sunt disputare insolentissimae insania est a truth is proved to Catholicks by the universal consent of the Church and of all Ages if any one chance to make doubt of it it is an evident sign either that he hath a giddy spirit or is malicious in religion This proposition is grounded upon the axiom of S. Augustine who in his Epistle written to Januarius assureth us that when we find the tracks of a custom generally observed throughout the whole Church it is evident that it cometh from the Apostles or those to whom God hath given full Authority in the Church and that to go about to bely or question it is to pass from folly to insolency Now so it is the truth of purgatorie is established by the opinion practice sentence and decisions of all the Church in such sort that there is not any verity of our faith more fortified How is that Begin with our France Behold the Councel of Chalons upon Saone for prayers for the dead and the truth of purgatorie Go into Spain behold that of Braga into Germany behold that of Wormes into Italy behold the sixth Councel held at Rome under Pope Symmachus into Greece behold a number of Synods collected by Martius into Affrick behold the third of Carthage Lastly behold the three Oecumenical of Lateran Florence and Trent which say the same Doth not this suffice to establish a truth in the wit of a man who hath never so little understanding Our adversaries who still bark against this verity as dogs at the moons brightness when they have said Jesus made purgation of sins and that it was said to the good thief thou shalt to day be with me in Paradise or produced some other frivolous objections have shewed all their ability I leave you a little to ponder the goodly consequences Jesus purged sins there is then no purgatorie Should not we have cause to say in the same fashion Jesus prayed for remission of our sins then we no longer stand in need of prayer or pennance and in vain is that S. Luke saith that Jesus must suffer and Luc. 24. 47. that pennance was preached in his name As the prayers of our Saviour destroy not our prayers so his satisfaction overthroweth not ours He prayed that we might pray he satisfied to give strength and merit to our satisfaction which would be dead and unprofitable were they not quickened by his bloud To what purpose is it to say the good thief went directly to Paradise without feeling purgatorie As if we should say it was necessarie for all the world to pass that way Make your self a great Saint and you shall have nothing to do with it Purge all your sins by a love so fervent that the purifying flames may not find any thing to cleanse He who hath payed ows nothing and who hath satisfied in this world shall find unrestrained freedom in the other But think you in a life which contracteth so many stains a soul may be raised in an instant above the celestial orbs to the sight of God before it have passed by those purgations which the Divine justice ordaineth to every one according to his demerits Endeavour is used to deafen your ears with piety wranglings and unprofitable disputations to make you believe purgatory is an invention of interessed Priests it seems this doctrine came into the world but within these two dayes But read the Scripture and see the Fathers who interpret it you shall find proofs to fall upon you like a cloud for confirmation of this verity When S. Paul in the first to the Corinthians third Chapter said that the day of God to wit the day of judgement be it general or particular shall be manifested by fire which shall put every ones works upon trial and that he who upon the foundations of Jesus Basil in Isa c. 1. Non exterminium minatur sed purgationem innuit Ambros Hic ostendit paenas ignis passurum shall build with wood straw or hay to wit with vain and sleight works shall be saved as by fire he clearly declared the doctrine of purgatorie unless you be more illuminated than S. Basil and S. Ambrose who have judged it so for the first saith he threateneth the soul not with destruction but purgation and the other plainly expresseth he speaks of the pains of fire which God hath appointed to purify souls And it is a poor resistance to object he said as by fire and not by fire For it is a manner of expression in Scripture which nothing diminisheth the reality of things otherwise we should say when S. John wrote in the first Chapter of his Gospel that men saw Jesus as the onely Son of God that he were onely a figure of it not a truth And when S. Paul to the Philippians second Chapter witnesseth he was found as a man we might infer he were not man See you not how these silly curiosities of words directly invade the truth When S. Matthew in the twelfth Chapter makes mention of one sin which shall never be remitted either in this world or in the other S. Bernard in his three-score sixth homily upon the Canticles mainly insisteth upon this passage and takes it as an infallible proof of our doctrine When the Evangelist himself toucheth the discourse of the prisonner which shall be put into a place from whence be shall not come until he have paid the last penny Saint Cyprian Cyprian l. 4. ep 2. says plainly It is one thing to be a long time purged for sins by the torment of fire another by the purgation which is made by the passion of Jesus Christ When in the same Authour it is spoken of divers punishments of choller handled in the fift Chapter S. Augustine in
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
corruptible matter of Earth but after he became a Christian he lived upon the most pure influences of heaven S. Gregory Nazianzen saith he more breathed S. Basile then the aire it self and that all his absences were to him so many deaths S. Chrysostome in banishment was perpetually in spirit with those he most esteemed S. Jerome better loved to entertain his spirituall amities in little Bethelem then to be a Courtier in Rome where he might be chosen Pope And if we reflect on those who have lived in the light of nature Plato was nothing but love Aristotle had never spoken so excellently of friendship had he not been a good friend Seneca spent himself in this virtue being suspected by Nero for the affection he bare to Piso Alexander was so good that he carried between his arms a poor souldier frozen with cold up to his throne to warm him and to give him somewhat to eat from his royall hands Trajan brake his proper Diadem to bind up the wound of one of his servants Titus wept over the ruines of rebellious Jerusalem A man may as soon tell the starres in the heavens as make an enumeration of the brave spirits which have been sacrificed to amity Wherefore great hearts are the most loving If we seek out the causes we shall find it ordinarily proceedeth from a good temperature which hath fire and vigour and that comes from good humours and a perfect harmony of spirit little Courages are cold straightned and wholly tied to proper interests and the preservation of their own person They lock themselves up in their proprieties as certain fishes in their shell and still fear least elements should fail them But magnanimous hearts who more conform themselves to the perfections of God have sources of Bounty which seem not to be made but to stream and overflow such as come near them This likewise many times proceedeth from education for those who fall upon a breeding base wretched and extremely penurious having hands very hard to be ungrasped have likewise a heart shut up against amities still fearing lest acquaintance may oblige them to be more liberall then they would contrariwise such as have the good hap to be nobly bred hold it an honour to oblige and to purchase friends every where Add also that there is ever some gentilenesse of spirit among these loving souls who desiring to produce themselves in a sociable life and who understanding it is not given them to enlighten sands and serpents will have spectatours and subjects of its magnificence Which happens otherwise to low and sordid spirits for they voluntarily banish themselves from the conversation of men that they may not have so many eyes for witnesses of their faults So that we must conclude against the Philosophers of Indifferency that Grace Beauty strength and power of nature are on their side who naturally have love and affection §. 2. Of Love in generall LOve when it is well ordered is the soul of the universe Love the soul of the universe which penetrateth which animateth which tieth and maintaineth all things and so many millions of creatures as aspire and respire this love would be but a burden to Nature were they not quickned by the innocent flame which gives them lustre as to the burning Bush not doing them any hurt Fornacem custodiens in operibus ardoris Eccl. 43. at all I may say that of honest love which the wise man did of the Sunne That it is the superintendent of the great fornaces of the world which make all the most Love the superintendent of the great Fornace of the world Faber ferrarius sedens juxta in eodem considerans opus ferri vapor iguis uret carnes ejus in calore fornacis concertatur c. Eccl. 29 38. Pieces of work in Nature Have you ever beheld the Forge-master described by the same wise-man You see a man in his shirt all covered over with sweat greace and smoke who sporteth among the sparks of fire and seemeth to be grown familiar with the flames He burns gold and silver in the fornace then he battereth it on the Anvil with huge blows of the hammer he fashioneth it he polisheth it he beautifies it and of a rude and indigested substance makes a fair piece of plate to shine on the Cup-boards of the most noble houses So doth love in the world it taketh hearts which are as yet but of earth and morter it enkindleth them with a divine flame It beats them under the hammer of tribulations and sufferings to try them It filleth them by the assiduity of prayer It polisheth them by the exercise of virtues lastly it makes vessels of them worthy to be placed above the Empyreall heaven Thus did it with S. Paul and made him so perfect Act. 9. that the First verity saith of him that he is his vessel of election to carry his name among nations and the Kings of the Earth and that he will shew him how much he must suffer for his sake The whole nature of Pigri mortui oetestandi eritis si nihil ametis Amare sed quid ameris videte August in Psal 31. Hoc amet nec ametur ab ullo Juvenal Seven excellent things the world tendeth to true love every thing loves some of necessity other by inclination and other out of reason He who will love nothing saith S. Augustine is the most miserable and wretched man on earth nor is it without cause that in imprecations pronounced over the wicked it is said Let him not love nor be beloved by any The ancient Sages have observed in the light of Nature that there are seven excellent things to be esteemed as gifts from heaven which are clearnesse of senses vivacity of understanding grace to expresse ones thoughts ability to govern well Courage in great and difficult undertakings fruitfulnesse in the productions of the mind and the strength of love and forasmuch as concerneth the last Orpheus and Hesiodus have thought it so necessary that they make it the first thing that came out of the Chaos before the Creation of the world The Platonists revolving upon this conceit have built us three worlds which are the Angelicall nature Vide Marsilium Ficinum in convivium Platonis An exâ—ellent conceit of the Platonists the soul and the Frame of the universe All three as they say have their Chaos The Angel before the ray of God had his in the privation of lights Man in the darknesse of Ignorance and Sinne The materiall world in the confusion of all its parts But these three Chaoses were dissipated by love which was the cause that God gave to Angelicall spirits the knowledge of the most sublime verities to Man Reason and to the world Order All we see is a perpetuall circle of God to the world and of the world to God This circle beginning in God by inestimable perfections full of charms and attractives is properly called Beauty and
any further discourse So S. Bonaventure in S. Bon. l. de Purit Conf. the Treatise he composed of the Purity of Confession saith The Amity of virtuous women is more to be feared and the testimonies of mutuall affections which one sex rendereth to another are infinitely able to enkindle love One who is not extremely exorbitant beginneth not the practice of vice on the top iniquity hath its apprentiships none comes in an instant to the utmost of impudency Above all heed must be had of the beginnings before vice take much predominance to our prejudice Have you observed what a stone doth thrown into a S. Basil de Virginitate pond it maketh at first a small circle which causeth another and the other a third the third out of that produceth a fourth and they are still infinitely upon A notable comparison of S. Basil Subtilties of the passion of love encrease so much that the water onely curled with a little pebble makes a long chain of circles which fill up the totall superficies This happeneth in love it falls into our heart not perceived nor foreseen and in the beginning causeth some slight touch which according as it is entertained distends it self and is in such sort multiplied that it replenisheth the whole capacity of our soul with arrows and chain-links which we cannot but with much labour dissolve and unloose A spirit which before rested in a generous liberty becomes captive This imperious visage perpetually knocks at the gate of his heart It enters into game study repose repast sleep and action It insinuateth it self into prayer with distractions pleasingly troublesome it busieth the thoughts it exerciseth the discourse it enflameth the desire to go to visit to speak it replenisheth the memory with what is past the imagination with the future and the present with disturbance A soul finds it is not well that it dissolves that it consumes by the senses and hath already dried up all its smiling beauties and weakned that vigour which is in devotion It notwithstanding flattereth it self with the colour of innocency it feigneth to it self that this is an act of charity that it is a duty of civility that it is an act of the soul that burns not but for virtue but the mischief is this soul is not an intelligence separated from matter and that in the guest thereof we passe by the veil of body which becometh a snare to chastity How many Bulls have we seen feeding in a pasture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 strong and sound who having heedlesly swallowed a little worm called by the Grecians The fire of Aelian de animal l. 6. cap. 35. Love compared to the fire of Oxen. Oxen become meagre and faint retaining nothing at all of their bodies but bones and figure And how many great spirits have we beheld which were in excellent state and in full vigour of the functions of intellectuall life who by approching over-near to this sex have entred into affections of fire and flames which like little creeping serpents have stoln into their hearts and destâ—oyed virtue I will not soil the purity of my Pen with the exorbitancies which both ancient and modern histories have observed upon this subject I passe over it as bees over hemlock without any stay it seeming unto me that many Authours had done better to have covered the stains of their mother then to have divulged them to maligne spirits who make use of poison and readily impute the disorders of particular to the generall body The opinion of Fathers concerning the Amity of women All I have said hereupon hath been to suit my self to the sense of Scripture and holy Fathers who so notably have condemned the over-much familiar conversation with women and if they seem sometimes to speak of it with too much rigour it is for that in great crimes the evil might be diverted by exaggeration of the peril to the end that since the fire is to be feared the very smoke might be avoided It is not to be wondered at what the Wise-man said Prov. 6. 27. That the too free familiarity with women was a firebrand in the bosome That S. Ephraim thought it was as easie to live among burning-coals as to converse with this sex and not to wound the soul That S. Bernard Bern. ser 64 in Cant. wrote that to be alwayes among women without hurt was to do more then to raise the dead That S. Cyp. de singular Cler. S. Hâ—ron ad Nepotian Cyprian imagined it was to erect a precipice to be addicted to such society That S. Jerome advised that we should either equally love them all or equally not know them We see many shipwracked fools standing on promontory Shipwracks happened by â—he love of women tops who tell us of the ruines which these passions haue caused Simon Magus was undone by a Hellen being more bewitched by her love then he enchanted others by his sorcery Appelles was corrupted Ex monoeis by Philumene Montanus by Prisca and Maximilla Donatus by Lucilia Elpidius by Agape Women have ended among all these what Magick and Heresie had but begun O good God! what man would not be astonished at the Roman Macarius who having overcome love in the world was surprised in the wildernesse by finding a womans shoe To conclude Heaven is most happy said Tertullian very wittily In coelo non Angelus Angela Tertul. adversus Val. because though it hath Angels it hath not Angelicals though it hath a God it hath no Goddesses and it might be feared if there were diversity of Sex there it would alter something of its tranquility So many great men who were much accomplished in sanctity have thought of women upon the brink of the grave and have found we must ever fear that we may never fall Besides I leave you to think with what conscience a spruce youth who hath a body full of bloud and a spirit replenished with flames can say He will love God in his works and that he findeth not any one better then a handsome woman He knoweth how to manage his love he will take in no more fire then he list and this fire shall not burn but at his discretion This beauty shall serve to raie him towards God he will passe from the creature to the Creatour without any difficulty It is a ladder of gold which God hath set for him to climb up into heaven by But it is to be doubted lest it prove Archimedes his engine whereon the higher they mounted the lower they descended Such an one by this way thinks to touch heaven with a finger who already hath a foot in hell But since I write this Treatise for Courtiers and for the well-ordering of divine and humane love I neither That there may be spirituall Amities between persons of different Sexes endowed with great virtue and rare prudence Nec inferorum reguum in terra Sap. 1. must nor will by
scatter in the air to serve as instruments and hands to their attractions This being common to other natures of plants metals and living creatures we must not think but that the body of man participateth therein by reason of its vivacity and the multitude of pores which give a more easie passage to such emissions There then cometh forth a spirituous substance which is according to Marsilius Ficinus a vapour of bloud pure subtil hot and clear more strong or weak according to the interiour agitation of spirits which carrieth along with it some quality of a temperate friendly and convenient which Marsilius Ficinus l. 1. de vita c. 2. insinuating it self into the heart and soul doth if it there find a disposition of conformity abide as a seed cast into the earth or as a Leaven which swelleth up a piece of dough and forms this love of correspondence with an admirable promptnesse and vigour From thence it cometh that brothers many times feel motions and affections of tendernesse one for another Surius without knowing each other as it happened to S. Justus who knew his brother Justinian among sundry slaves who were at the chain by this notice without any other fore-judgement Thence it comes that at first we are passionate for persons we never saw and that we wish them well though they alwayes have not so much grace nor beauty but there is some relation of humour which weaveth the web and tieth such affections All nature is full of such communications which are effects of Sympathy observed in the Corall which sensibly changeth according to his disposition who hath it about him as also in the flesh of beasts which boileth in the powdring-tub at the time of the fury of dogs because they have been bitten by a mad dog And in wine which seems to be sprinkled all over with certain white flowers when the vines are in blossome So it happeneth that the spirits which do in our bodies Modification of the opinion who place love onely in transpiration Species forma semel per oâ—ulos illigaâ—a vix magni luctaminis manu solviter Hieron in Threnos cap. 3. what the winds do in Nature being transpired from one body to another and carrying in their wings qualities consonant do infallibly excite and awaken the inclinations But it is not credible or at least ordinary that this manner of working should be as in things inanimate and that it hath nothing to do with the senses for it is principally the eyes which are interressed therein breathing thence the most thin spirits and darting forth the visuall rayes as the arrows of love which penetrate the heart are united confounded and lost one within another then heating the bloud they strike the Imagination and attract wills which are so linked one to another that one cannot perceive the knot which so fast tied them together If transpiration alone of spirit indifferently proceeding from all the parts of the body were able to enflame concupiscence we must then say that a blind man set at a certain distance from a perfect beauty would become enamoured with beholding it hearing it smelling it couching it or by any sense understanding it which notwithstanding happeneth not in that manner and if nature thus proceeded and that this passion were to be taken as a Contagion we might extreamly fear the approch of bodies and persist in continuall apprehensions to be infected by them It is certain that the senses being well guarded shut up all the gates against love A Guard over the senses since the Imagination it self stirreth not but upon their report but after they yield themselves up by a too familiar conversation and resign their defences a terrible havock is made in the mind for love entereth thereunto as a Conquerour into a surprized City and imprinteth that pleasing face in every drop of the masse of bloud It engraveth it on the Imagination It figureth it on every thought and there is nothing any longer entire in the mind which is not divided between slavery and frenzy § 7. The effects of Sensuall Love IT is a strange thing that this fury hath a thousand hands and a thousand attractives a thousand wayes of working quite different and many times opposite It takes by the eyes by the ears by the imagination by chance of purpose by flying pressing forward honouring insulting by complacence and by disdain Sometimes also it layes hold by tears by laughing by modesty by audacity by confidence by carelessenesse by wiles by simplicity by speech and by silence Sometimes it assaileth in company sometimes in solitude at windows at grates in Theatres and in Cabinets at Bals at sports in a feast at a Comedy sometimes at Church at prayers in acts of Penance And who can assure us against it without the protection of God Eustatius the Interpreter of Homer saith there are some who feign Love to be the sonne of the wind and the Rainbow in Heaven in my opinion to signifie unto us its Inconstancy and diversified colours and this beautifull Iris in the beginning appears all in Rubies in Diamonds and Emeralds over our heads afterward to cause rain and tempests So love shewing it self at first with such bright semblances to our senses occasioneth storms and corruption in our minds Observe one transfixed with violent love and you The miserable state of one passionately in love Insomnia aetumnae terror fuga stultitià que adeò temerâ—tas in cogitantia excors immodestia c. Plautus in Moâ—cat shall find he hath all that in his love which Divines have placed in Hell darkenesse Flames the worm of Conscience an ill Savour Banishment from the sight of God You shall see a man whose mind is bewitched brain dislocated and Reason eclipsed All he beholdeth all he meditateth on all he speaketh all he dreameth is the creature he loveth He hath her in his head and heart painted graved carved in all the most pleasing forms For her he sometimes entereth into quakings sometimes into faintings another while into fits of fire and Ice He flieth in the air and instantly is â—â—enged in the Abysse He attendeth he espieth He fears He hopes he despairs He groneth he sigheth He blusheth he waxeth pale He doteth in the best company He talks to woods and fountains He writeth He blots out He teareth He lives like a spectre estranged from the conversation of men Repast is irksome to him and Repose which charmeth all the cares of the world is not made for him Still this fair one still this cruell one tormenteth him and God maketh him a whip of the thing he most loveth Yet is this more strange in the other sex which hath naturally more inclimation to honesty A Lady chaste or a Virgin well-bred who begins to wax cold in the love of God and in the exercise of devotion and takes too much liberty in her conversation with men finds her self insensibly surprized by the eyes and ears by
of Nevers Barbarous Anger of Bajazet caused almost two thousand Falconers to be killed for a hawk which had not flown well He well deserved to be shut up in a cage as he was afterward for sporting with such prodigality with humane blood It is much more intolerable when Christian Princes flie out as did Lewis the young who being offended by Theobald Count of Champaigne entred into his territory and made strange spoil even to the setting of the great Church of Vitry a fire and therein burning fifteen hundred men who fled into it as into a Sanctuary But this enraged passion knew no distinction between sacred and profane and the confusion of this fancy confounded heaven and earth Good French men abhorred an act so barbarous and S. Bernard who then flourished made the thunders of Gods Lewis the Young admonished by S. Bernard chastiseth himself for hiâ— aâ—ger by sadnesse and penance judgements to roar in the Kings ear wherewith he was so terrified that re-entring into himselfe he fell into a deep melancholy which caused his mind to make a divorce from all worldly joyes wherewith he became so dejected that he was like to die had not S. Bernard sought to cure the wound he gave shewing that the true penitent ought to be sad without discomfort humble without sottishnesse timorous without despair and that the grief of his fall should not exclude the hope of his rising again But they are more tolerable who punish themselves with their own choler as Henry King of England that bit his lips gnashed his teeth pulled off his hair threw his bed and clothes on the ground eat straw and hay to expresse his impetuous passion 5. They who are arrogant and given to contemne Danger of scoffing Polydor. Virg. l. 9. and flout others draw fire and poison on their heads when they assail impatient natures which have not learnt to feed themselves with affronts and injuries A word flying like a spark of fire raiseth flames William the Conquerour of England very suspicious which are not quenched but with great effusion of bloud Philip the first hearing that VVilliam the Conquerour who was very grosse would not suffer any man to see him by reason of a corporall infirmity It is no wonder saith he if this big man be in the end brought a bed This being told to the other who was of a capricious spirit he protested he would rise from his child-bed but with so many torches and lights that he would carry fire into the bosome of France And verily he failed not therein and in this fury so heated himselfe that he died in proper flames A man hath little to do to enkindle a War at the charge of so many lives for a jest a cold countenance a letter not written obsequiously enough for a word inconsiderate 6. The Flemings were to blame when revolted against History of Froissard Philip of Valois they out of derision called him The found King and advanced a great Cock on their principall standard the device whereof was that The scoffs of certain rebellious Flemings severely punished by the generosity of Philip of Valois when he should crow the found King should enter into their city This so exasperated his great Courage that he waged them a battel and with such fury defeated them that Froissard assureth that of a huge army of Rebels there was not one left who became not a victime of his vengeance Lewis Outre-mer was detained prisoner at Roan for having in his anger spoken injuriously against Richard the young Duke of Normandy And Francis the First ruined all his affairs for having handled Charles Duke of Bourbon with some manner of indignity therein complying with the humour of the Queen his Mother 7. The Anger of potent women is above all dreadfull when they are not with-held by considerations of Anger of women conscience because they have a certain appetite of revenge which exceedeth all may be imagined Queen Eleonor wife of Lewis the Young who had as violent Queen Eleonor an enemy of France a spirit as ever animated the body of a woman seeing her self repudiated by her husband albeit upon most just reason conceived such rage fury against France that being afterward remarried to Henry of England she incestantly stirred up all the powers of that Kingdome to our ruine and sowed the first seeds of Warre Dupleix which the continuance of three hundred years which an infinite number of fights and battels which the reverence due to Religion the knot of mutuall Alliances and Oath interposed in sixscore Treaties could not wholly extinguish 8. There are other anger 's free and simple which Annals of France proceed from an indiscreet goodnesse but which fail not to occasion much evil to themselves when they assail eminent and vindicative people It was the misery of poore Enguerrand of Marigny who having governed Anger our of simplicity many timâ—s cause hurt for a word too free witnesse that of Enguerrand the Finances under Philip the Pair and afterward seeing himself persecuted by Charles of Valois unkle of Lewis Hutin Heir of a Crown was transported with so much heat that it cost him his life For this Prince sharply asking an account of him of the treasures of the deceased King he freely answered It is to you Sir I have given a good part of them and the rest hath been employed in the Kings affaires Whereupon Charles giving him the lie the other transported with passion had the boldnesse to say unto him By God It is you your self Sir This reply being of it self very insolent and spoken at a time when all conspired to his ruine sent him to the Gallows of Montfaucon which he had caused to be built in his greatest authority Men cold and well acquainted with affairs who commonly think much never speak ill of them that can hurt them 9. All these extravagancies which we have produced have proceeded from fervour but there are others cold and malign as are Aversions and Hatred which are no other then inveterate and hardened angers so much the more dangerous as they proceed from a spirit more deep and are plotted with more time and preparation So did Lewis the Eleventh who had many Labyrinths in his heart wherein he kep his revenges and oftentimes took delight to send them abroad with ceremony and pomp to take the more pleasure in them So soon as he was King he set himself to revenge his injuries as if power given from heaven ought to be an instrument of passion He persecuted a good subject which was the Count of Dammartin for no other crime but for having obeyed and executed the order of Charls the Seventh who had sent him into Daulphine to stop Lewis who then turmoiled and perplexed the King his father He prevented this plot and fled into Flanders yet ceased he not afterward to hate this good servant and albeit he prostrated himself at his
fall from Heaven that since Egypt was in being there was never seen the like for it sustain'd it self upon the wings of the Lightning and the Fire and Ice agreed extraordinarily together for the punishment of those perfidious men He saw legions of Grashoppers that made an inundation upon the champains and made havock of the plants finishing to destroy that which the Hail had begun In fine all Egypt was covered with those palpable Darknesses that lasted for the space of three dayes during which the Egyptians remained as bound with the invisible chains of a night without repose which had nothing better in it then to take from them the sight of their disastre But that which terrified them above all the plagues was when the destroying Angel entring at midnight into all their houses killed the first-born from the child of the Millers wife to the Kings son and there was not an house wherein the first blossome of the Family was not lopped off by the pittilesse hook of Death The fathers were touched with a stupid grief the dissheveld mothers threw themselves down upon the bodies of their infants to gather from their mouths the remainders of their life the whole family sent out howlings rather then complaints and the evil was so universall and so pressing that there was neither consolation nor remedy Pharaoh sighed at every Plague and seemed to be willing to turn to God but as soon as he had the least release he returned to his obstinacy which was a mark of a Reprobate soul Yet his subjects sensibly touched with the last accident urged the Hebrews to be gone and would no longer oppose the counsels of God The day of departure is taken and the six hundred thousand combatants with an innumerable number of women and little children after the ceremony of the Paschall Lamb travell to the red-Sea loaden with gold with silver with suits of apparell and with all the richest spoiles of Egypt The pillar of cloud and of fire marched before them in the head of the Army to give signall to the twelve Tribes that beheld it visibly on all parts Notice is given in the mean time to King Pharaoh that those fugitives were already stoln away and gone enriched with the treasures of his People And although he had given some kind of consent to their going yet he enters again into his furies assembles his light-Charriots and all the flourishing Legions of Egypt to pursue the Israelities They failed not to overtake them quickly upon the Sea-shore so that the two Armies were in view of one another The one of which was filled with a great number of people badly prepared at that time for a combat valour forsaking their heart and their hands ready to throw away their arms The other was composed of sprightfull and well trained Regiments to whom choler and the hope of booty gave a new vigour The glittering of the Arms the Clouds of dust that were raised the shouts of the Souldiers mingled with the neighing of Horses gave mortall strokes to the hearts of that poor multitude which had now no other thought but to dye murmuring and to revenge their death on Moses by their murmures Alas said they What! were there no Graves in Egypt to bury our lives and miseries without leading us into the Wildernesse to deliver us for a prey to the sword of the Egyptians and to the Birds of rapine Did we not say well that we should have stayed peaceably in the bondage wherein God had ranged us without making these great provisions and shutting our selves all up as in a net to deliver our selves to the discretion of our enemies We have the sea on one side and on the other our incensed Masters that breathe nothing but fire and bloud on which hand soever we go we see nothing but images of death and infallible marks of the misery that threatens us All the Army was filled with fear and the sighs of the Wives and of the Children abated the courage of the Fathers and of the Husbands who expected nothing any more but to be the subject of an horrible butchery But the generous Moses although he had an heart pierced with grief to hear their blasphemies ran through the ranks of the Army encouraged the Captains animated the People and as long as he had any voyce or breath cried without ceasing Courage my friends ye are here assembled to see the wonders of the God of Hosts Behold them onely without troubling your selves and God shall fight for you See and consider those brave Egyptians your persecutours and believe that it is the last time that you shall see them for they shall be no more And after he had said this he spake to God with a silence that surpassed all clamours and therefore God answered him What hast thou to do any more to cry thus after me Lift up thy Rod stretch forth thine hand divide the floats of the Sea and make thine Army march through the fair middle on dry foot This was executed and all that great people of the Israelites animated by the spirit of God and the voyce of Moses that marched in the head of them descended with a firm footing and a secure countenance into those Abysles where the water of the sea retiring it self apart made them ramparts of Chrystall on each side and discovered to them in the middle a path that the hand of God seemed to have laid with tapistry for to make them passage The pillar of fire that was planted in the midst of the two armies furnished them with unparrallel'd lights to manifest the works of God and on that side which looked towards the Egyptians it was horrible and dark bearing already the presages of the funerals that attended them The Angel of God shut up in this engine of fire darted out Thunder-striking looks upon the Diadem of Pharaoh and upon all those that encompassed him Their courage failed them and nothing now was left them but a rage yet fuming after bloud They throw themselves desperately into the sea which they promised themselves to passe over on dry foot as advantageously as their adversaries But the waters returning into their bed with an impetuous course invelop'd those miserable men there was nothing now but a confusion of men and horses of Arms and Charriots of bodies pestering one another that disputed their life with the waves and dyed expiring out the remainders of their fury Pharaoh the King was drowned the assistance of his Captains had not the strength to save him whom the hand of God would destroy Nothing was to be seen but Bucklers and Turbans floating upon the water and death painted in a thousand faces that made a mervellous booty The Israelites being in an extasie at these wonders thundred out a song in the praise of God that hath since ravished the heart and ear of all Ages After that Moses had drawn his people out of the captivity of Egypt he imitated God that did not
the People with astonishment They removed themselves according to the Orders of their Legislatour to the foot of the Mountain Sinai with a prohibition to passe further All the Mountain smoaked as a great Fornace by reason that God was descended thither all in fire which made it extream terrible But Moses his dear favourite ascended to the highest top amidst the fires the darknesses and the flames in that Luminous obscurity where God presided that spake to him face to face as to his most intimate confident After all that thundering voyce of the Living God was heard that pronounced his Decrees and his Laws in that Chamber of Justice hung with fire and lights that trembled under the footsteps of his Majesty All this Law was set down in writing with a most exact care and is yet read every day in the five Books of the Law Now Religion being the Basis of all Policy without which great Kingdomes are but great Robbings This wise Law-giver applyed his whole care and travell to the rooting out of Idolatry and to the causing of the Adorable Majesty of God to be acknowledged in the condition of a worship truly Monarchicall and incommunicable to any other as appears in the punishment which he inflicted on those that had worshiped the golden Calf For the Scripture saith That when the Israelites perceived that Moses tarried a long time on the Mountain of Sinai in those amiable Colloquies that he had with God they grew weary of it and said to the high Priest Aaron That since that man that had brought them out of Egypt was lost they ought to dream no more of him but make in his place Gods that should march in the head of their Army Aaron that perperhaps had a mind to make them lose the relish of that design by the price to which it would amount demanded of them the Pendents of the ears of their Wives and of their Children to go to work about it but their madnesse was so great that they devested themselves freely of all that they had most precious to make a God to their own phansie Aaron accommodating himself to their humour through a great weaknesse made them a Statue that had some resemblance of the Ox Apis that was adored in Egypt As soon as they had perceived it they began to cry Courage Israel behold the God that hath drawn thee out of the slavery of Egypt Aaron accompanied him with an Altar and caused a solemn Feast to be bidden for the morrow after at which the people failed not to be present offering many sacrifices making good cheer and dancing about that Idol God advertised Moses of that disorder and commanded him to descend suddenly from the Mountain to remedy it although he intended to destroy them and had done it had he not been appeased by the most humble Remonstrances and Supplications of his servant He failed not to betake himself speedily to the Camp where he saw that Abomination and the Dances that were made about it which inflamed him so much with Choler that he brake the Tables of the Law written by the hand of God thinking that such a present was not seasonable for Idolaters and Drunkards He rebuked Aaron sharply who excused himself coldly enough and not intending that so abominable a crime should passe without an exemplary punishment He took the Golden Calf and beat it into dust which he steep'd in water to make all those drink of it that had defiled themselves with that sacrilege and to make them understand that sinne that seems at first to have some sweetnesse is extreamly bitter in its effects After which he commanded That all those that would be on Gods side should follow him and the Tribe of Levi as being the most interressed failed not to joyn with him whereupon seeing them all well animated he gave them order to passe through all the Camp from one door to the other with their swords in their hands and to slay all that they met without sparing their nearest kindred This was executed and all the Army was immediately filled with Massacres Rivers of blood ran on all sides accompanied with the sad howlings of a scared multitude that expected every minute the stroke of death God would have that this so severe a punishment be executed upon those miserable men to cause an eternall horrour of Idolatry which is the most capitall of all sins And to retein the worship of God a thousand pretty Ceremonies were practised after the structure of the Tabernacle of the Ark of Covenant of the Table of the Shew-bread of the Altars and after the institution of the Pontificall habits of the Offerings and of the Sacrifices that were celebrated with much order and a singular Majesty Moses also was indefatigable in rendring Justice sitting from the morning till the night on his Tribunall to hear the requests of all the particular men that came to him which Jethro his father in law that was come to visit him having perceived said to him that it was impossible for him to be long able to undergo so troublesome a labour and that he ought to choose amongst all the people some Puissant men fearing God true and enemies of covetousnesse to administer Justice and that it would be sufficient to reserve to himself the controversies that should be of greatest importance Moses believed his counsell and established an handsome order for the decision of the differences that should arise amongst the People He passed fourty years in the wildernesse in divers habitations partly in war against the enemies partly in preserving peace amongst his People and confirming all the laws which he established by the command of God In this exercise he lived to the age of an hundred and twenty years sepaparated himself from all things of the world and was so united to God that it seemed that even his Body it self passed into the nature and condition of an immortall Spirit In fine God having shewed him upon the mountain Nebo all the Land of Promise which he had got to by so many good counsells and so much pains he dyed in that view without entring into it was mourned for thirty dayes by the Israelites and interred of set purpose in a sepulchre unknown to the eyes of men for fear lest he should give an occasion of some Idolatry to that people that would have held him for a Deity Never had man a Birth more forlorn a Life more various or a Death more glorious of an exposed Infant he became a Kings son of a Kings son an Exile of an Exile a Shepheard of a Shepheard a Captain of a Captain a Prophet of a Prophet a Law-giver of a Law-giver a Sovereign the God of Kings and the King of all the Prophets Active at Court Devout in Solitude Victorious in War Happy in Peace Wise in his Laws Terrible in his Arms a man of Prodigies that opened Seas Manur'd Wildernesses Commanded things Sensible and Insensible and exercised an Empire on
who devoured them immediately and published an Edict in favour of the true Religion This King reigned seventeen years till such time as Cyrus by a most particular design of God seized upon the Monarchy and dealt favourably with the faithfull people Daniel remained alwayes very considerable having seen five Kings passe away and was at last honoured even by his enemies themselves for his rare virtues and for the wonders that God had placed in his person One may observe in his life abundance of Lineaments that adorn highly the conversation of a true Courtier as are his constancy in Religion his Devotion the tendernesse of his love to God his Charity towards his neighbour his modesty his sparingness to speak of himself his Moderation in Prosperity his Strength of spirit in Adversity his inviolable Firmnesse never to yield to sin his exact Faithfulnesse towards his Master his Conscience Science and Ability in the Administration of his Charges his Love to his Friends his Compassion to the Miserable his affability towards all the World his patient enduring of the humours of Strangers his Prudence in his Conduct and the blessing of God that made all his enterprises prosper THE RELIGIOUS MEN. ELIJAH ELISHA ELIIAH THE PROPHETTT ELISHA THE PROPHETT BEhold here an admirable Courtier that was never of the number of those flatterers of the Court that keep Truth in Iron-Chains and give to vices the colour of virtue Elijah was a Prophet that included the name of God and of the Sun in his Name and who all his life-time bare the perfections of them both as being a true child of Light of Fire and a visible image of the invisible beauties As he was yet hanging at his mothers breast his father had a vision by which it seemed to him that his son sucked fire in stead of Milk and nourished himself with a most pure flame which without offending him furnished him with an Aliment as delicious as possible So was he all his life a Man of Fire and as it seemed that that King of Elements followed the course of his words and will so he burnt also in the Interiour with that fire that kindles the heart of Angels He was the first of men that set up the Standart of Virginity that consecrated it upon his body when it was unknown and despised in the World who made an Angelicall order of the Mount Carmel to which he hath transmitted his spirit through a long and sweet posterity that hath found sources of contemplation which he derived to the world to water the barrennesse of the Earth that hath traced the Originals of all his virtues upon that fair Carmel upon that sacred solitude that was his first Terrestriall Paradise His Speech was Thunder and his Life Lightning his Example a School of great Actions his Zeal a Devouring fire his Negotiations the affairs of Eternity His Conversation an Idea of the Contemplative and Civil Life his Translation a Miracle without peer I leave to those that have undertaken to write his Life the retail of his Virtues and of his Miracles staying onely upon his Actions that he did at Court treating with the Kings Ahab Jehu Ahazias and the wicked Queen Jezabel He flourished nine hundred years before the Nativity of our Lord in the Kingdome of Israel which was then divided both by Religion and by Policy from that of Judah and Jerusalem Ahab the son of Amri an ill Crow of an ill Egge held then the Empire and being married to a Sidonian the daughter of the King of Sidon which was called Jezabel an haughty and malicious woman he was totally governed by her and to render himself complacent to her humours caused a Temple to be erected to the God Baal and near that Temple a Grove to be Planted where were committed all the Abominations ordinary to Idolaters Elijah that burned with the Zeal of the honour of God was touched with a most sensible grief by so scandalous an action and was stireed up by his great Master to destroy that Mystery of Iniquity Now he knowing that it was hard to Preach efficaciously the Truth to Spirits froliking it in the middest of the smiling prosperities of the world thought by the order of the God of the Universe that it was best to afflict that wicked people by a long famine and great adversities to make them reflect upon themselves and return to the worship of the true Religion He sware then aloud and publickly before Ahab for the punishment of his Idolatry that there should not be during three years either rain or dew upon the earth and that the Heavens should become Brasse to chastise that Age of Iron and that he should not expect that it should be opened during that time unlesse it were by the words of his mouth As soon as he had said this in the presence of witnesses he went away to the Eastern Coast and hid himself at the Brook of Carith over against Jordan where God nourished him by Ravens that brought him orderly every day his portion In the mean while the drought failed not to raise a great famine on the earth and chiefly in the Kingdome of Israel where one could see nothing but people crying with hunger But the Heavens took in hand to revenge the God of Heaven and the Clouds that are as the Breasts of the Earth had no water for a people that abused the Elements and all the Creatures to the prejudice of the Creatour In the mean while God that spares not alwayes the Lands and Goods of his Servants in a common havock that they may not amuse themselves on the vain prosperities of the World permitted that that Brook that furnished the Prophet with water should grow dry as well as the rest But as the Ocean which retires it self out of one River swells it self in another so this great Nursing-father of Elias that seemed to fail in matter of that little Rivulet recompensed it by the miraculous liberality of a poor widdow He forsook not that station that Providence had assigned him although barren before he had orders for it from God his Master who sent him to the Countrey of Sidon to Sarepta assuring him that he had already provided for his nourishment The Prophet arriving at the destined place found at the City-gate a poor Widow-woman the mother of a little sonne and forasmuch as he knew that the Famine was great every where that he might not astonish her at first he desired of her onely a glasse of water which she gave him with a good will after which he prayes her to add to it a morsell of bread but the good woman sware to him that she had but one handfull of Meal left in the great rigour of Famine and that she was going to gather two or three small sticks to make a little fire and to bake a Cake which would be the last that she and her sonne should eat in all their lives for after that repast they must
report of the Hereticks themselves as it appeareth in the Book of Cambden who hath wrote the Life of Cambden pag. 493. Elizabeth and who doth not deny but that Walsingham did open and make up the letters again which Gifford brought him counterfeiting in them what he thought good And he himself confesseth that it was the judgement of the most rational men that the Secretaries of the Queen of Scotland were seduced and corrupted with money And it is certain that Amanuensium absentium qui pretio corrupti videbantur testintonio oppressa est they demanded a Recompence of Walsingham who told them that they ought to content themselves with their lives And added that in condemning their Mistress without producing the Witnesses they had not proceeded according to the Rules of Justice Observe here the judgement of the Hugenots themselves her most cruel Enemies I speak of those who have some sparks of a good conscience and not of those Incendiaries who write Rapsodies full of ignorance and folly All this may serve for an invincible proof of her innocence but her evil Judges The unjust Judgement who had sold themselves to iniquity did not cease to proceed further even to the Sentence of Condemnation which they carried to the Queen of England and was presented to the Parliament for the publication of it Thither Elizabeth did come in person with a studied Speech where she gave thanks to God for the Deliverance from this danger and thanks to her Subjects for the affection to their Queen Afterwards coming to the work in hand she shewed her self to be extreamly afflicted for the Queen of Scotland that a Person of her Sex Estate and Bloud should be convicted to have conspired against her Adding that she was most willing to pardon her and to abandon her own life if it would render the affairs of England more flourishing but in this effect she would neither prejudice her self nor the good of her Kingdom In this action she came with a heart full of vengeance however she would put upon it the reputation of Sweetness and of Clemency imitating the Herods and Tyberius Caesar who never did worse than when they spake best and laughed in their hearts when they distilled the tears of Crocodiles from their eyes With joyned hands she desired that her Parliament would but demand that thing of her which most willingly she would not grant Sometimes she would flatter them with the Respects and cordial Affections they did bear her on purpose to incite them to pursue this business Sometimes she seemed to be weary of their too much zeal Sometimes she said she would preserve her self And sometimes she said she would abandon her own preservation to exercise her clemency Her spirit which was greatly given to dissimulation made never more leaps nor daunced more Rounds than in this business And to speak the truth she perplexed her self in her own labyrinth and endeavouring too much to hide her self she laid her self more open saying unto those who demanded the death of the Queen of Scotland I pray and conjure you to content your self with an Answer without an Answer I approve your judgement and comprehend the reasons but I pray you excuse the carefull and the doubtfull thought which doth torment me and take in good part the gracious affection which I bear you and this Answer if it be of that worth as you esteem it for an Answer If I say I will not do what you demand peradventure I shall say more than I think If that I will do it I shall precipitate my self to my ruin whom you are willing to preserve In the end the Sentence of Death was confirmed by the Authority of Parliament and Beal was sent to the Queen of Scotland to carry her the news of her mournfull Condemnation and to acquaint her that the Estates demanded the Execution to be dispatched for Justice Security and Necessity Her great heart was no way dejected at this so violent a Rigour and damnable Injustice but listing up her eyes and her hands to Heaven she gave thanks to God demanding immediately a Priest to administer to her the Sacrament and to dispose her to die Paulet Execrable indignity who had the guard of her did use her after this most barbarously commanding the Officers of her house to beat down the cloth of State that was in her chamber but when he observed that no man would touch it and that they onely answered him by tears and lamentations which would have softened the heart of any man he performed the Execution by the Guard and took from the poor Prisoner all the marks of Royalty to make her behold her Funeral alive and to make her heart to bleed with a mortal wound before the bloud were drawn from the veins of her body by the hands of the Hang-man But Elizabeth did yet deferre the Execution whether it were for the fear of sorreign Princes being not able to see clear enough into their power and protection or whether it were to gain the imaginary Reputation of Mercy or whether by degrees she would consume this poor sacrifice by a small fire prolonging the languors of her imprisonment The other was resolved to write unto her not in a base and begging stile to crave her life but to demand an honest Burial Behold her letters to that effect MADAM I Give thanks to God with all my heart who by the Sentence of Death hath been pleased to put an end to the tedious pilgrimage of my life I desire not that it may be prolonged having had too long a time to trie the bitterness of it I onely beseech your Majestie that since I am to expect no favour from some Zealous Ministers of State who hold the first place in your Councels I may receive from You onely and from no other these following favours In the first place I desire that since it is not allowed me to hope for a Burial in England according to the Solemnities of the Roman Church practised by the ancient Kings your Ancestours and mine and that in Scotland they have forced and violated the Ashes of my Grand-fathers that my Bodie when my Adversaries shall be satiated with my innocent bloud may be carried by my own servants into some holy Land and above all if it may be into France to be there interred where the Bones of the Queen my most honoured Mother are lodged to the end my poor Bodie which knew no rest whiles joyned to my soul might now find rest being separated from it Secondly I beseech Your Majestie in the apprehension which I have of the tyrannie of those to whose power You abandon me that I may not suffer in any private place but in the view of my servants and other people who may give a testimonie of my faith and of my obedience to the true Church and defend the remnant of my life and my last sighâ— against the false Reports which my Adversaries may contrive
with poyson This man is fortunate to drink in so rich a goblet And you yet daily say the same when you behold a man in the iniquitie of ill gotten goods covetous ungrateful disloyal perfidious to God and men you think him happie and see not that he twisteth his own ruin in threads of gold and silver Such riches are damnable It is true But who maketh them damnable The perverse disposition of men Take away vice which is not of the essence of riches you will find they are a great prop to virtue and a powerful motive to perfection for those that possess them It is to you Noblemen to whom S. Hierom a a a Hierom. Epist ad Demetriadem Vestri generis eâ—â— habere calcare diâ—â—ias addresseth this worthy saying To you it appertaineth to have riches to tread them under your feet and not carrie them on your head the more they are under you the more they raise you and the more they elevate you to perfection The reasons are manifest and pertinent First it is a matter very difficult to preserve a great virtue in a great povertie it being given but to very few souls yea and to those of the best temper The poorer sort ordinarily have so much employment to think how to live that little time remaineth for them to think how to live well The Difficulties â—f the poor in virtue bellie that hath no bread hath no ears and precepts of wisdom are found very short and insufficient among people perplexed and over-whelmed with want A father of a family who beholdeth poverty in his house besides a multitude of children ranked like Organ-pipes whom he must cloath feed and provide for who seeth creditours attending on him at their day sergeants dogging him processes that afflict him cattel casually to die on the one side his house utterly to sink on the other side his debts not payable but with bankrupting and rents to fail him at a need hath full enough to do to cast time as the proverb saith behind his back Necessitie many times is the mother of vice and when one hath no more goods he is in danger to do that which is not good Behold why the Wise-man asked of God Mendicitatem divitias nè dederis mihi tribue tantum victui meo necessaria nè necessitate compulsus furar perjurem nomen Dei mei Prov. 30. 8. if not great riches at the least exemption from povertie You who have be it great or indifferent means are not brought into this penury if you call not that a penury when you cannot satisfie an exorbitant concupiscence which hath no other pleasure than excess nor other bounds but infinitie You see in your house a settled estate far distant from the multitude of discontents under which so many mortal men do groan ought not this to serve you for some small motive to perfection See you not in Genesis how God willing to exercise Adam in a contemplative life caused him to find at his first coming house table bed and cloath laid If it had then behoved him to take pains to get his dinner and build himself a house as little birds do their nests then had he had pain and care but to the end he should have full liberty for his Masters affairs God took all obstacles from him that he might have no cause to accuse any man in his miserable misfortune but his own ingratitude O you Noblemen God Priviledges of Nobilitie useth you as Adam in terrestrial Paradise he suffereth you to eat the corn at ease which others have sowed and the wine which others pressed he causeth your meat to come to your tables as if it were born by certain invisible engines he holdeth the elements creatures and men in breath not onely to supply your necessities but your well-beseeming accommodation and can you then think he requireth a thing unreasonable of you if giving you all things above other men he would have you virtuous as other men Secondly I say poormen admit the case they be not so pressed with painful necessities of life and that time passeth with them a little more sweetly they may perhaps deafly attend devotion in the silence of a little family but their virtue is not strong enough in the wing to take a long and distant flight nor have they arm enough to undertake great enterprises Their little authority maketh their words not to have much weight nor their actions how laudable soever to be of power to draw others to imitate them Besides rich men sometimes have an aversion from doing well for fear they should have virtue common with the poor from whom they would if it were possible be separated even in elements but great men are ever powerful Authoritie oâ— great men to strengthen their devotion to authorize good works I leave you to think if many not through malice but by the servile slavery of complacencie do praise even their vices and imperfections what will they do with their virtues For we must not suppose as saith the Wise-man that the state of hell is wholly established upon earth and good conscience eternally banished many are vitious more through infirmitie as not being able to resist the tyrannie of opinion and custom than out of affection they bear to vice If it happen rich men advance the standard of piety all the world rangeth themselves under their banner some that were willing and not daring to do it others though unwilling were drawn along with a swinge of superiority which they would not contradict This is an argument which I will hereafter deduce more at large when I shall speak of example And from hence O you rich men judge if God giving you such a liberty and reputation to do well you make ill use thereof what neglect you fall into when you employ your authority to raise vice with a strong hand and put virtue in dis-estimation Anciently pearls were called ushers because they made way Pearls are ushers saith Seneca for Ladies who were adorned with them Rightly may now riches bear the like name every where they are obeyed every where they make place it is a good reason if all the world serve them for ushers they do the same office for piety without which all their goodly lustre will be but unjust pillage Then shall they potently reign when they have restored virtue to her throne Finally to conclude with a third and in my opinion the most formal reason which evidently declareth how riches are absolute obligations unto you of Christian perfection it is that God seemeth to have enchased all in the charity which is exercised towards our neighbour Give alms and behold Luc. 11. 41. Date Elemosynam ecce omnia munda sunt vobis Alms the works of God 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Synes in Epistol your selves wholly pure This practice of giving alms is so excellent that God hath chosen no other for himself His
nature is to give and to do good as fire to heat and the sun to illuminate saith the eloquent Synesius And to speak unto you the richest word which ever came out of the mouth of a Paynim It is Plinie who after he had well wandred through all sects of Philosphers describing the essence of God pronounceth this goodly sentence That Deus est morteli juvare mortalem hoc ad aeternam gloriam via Plin. l. 2. c. 7. Cant. 5. Manus ejus globi aurei pleni mari Where our translation saith manus ejus tornatiles aureae plenae Hyacinthi HaÌ„ds of God a golden bowl full of the sea the greatest divinitie is to see a mortal man oblige his like and that it is the shortest way to arrive at eternal glorie We also see in the Canticles the hands of the Spouse compared to golden globes which in them hold the sea enclosed These hands are of gold to denote to us the munificence of God by this symbole of charity His hands are globes made round there is nothing rugged clammy or bowed nay they are smooth neat polite to pour his blessings incessantly upon men They always emptie themselves and are always replenished for they are filled with a sea of liberality which never will be exhausted God then having bounty so natural and intrinsecal in him will needs see it shine in his servants and therein establisheth salvation and perfection Which admitted who seeth not O you rich men you have a particular obligation above all others since God hath elected you to be the Stewards of his goods the messengers of his favours and the conduits of his liberality Religious men who have given the tree and the fruit all at once have nothing more to give The indifferently rich are ordinarily full of appetites and produce no effects You have power in your hands to discharge the duties of all the world you have met with the Philosophers stone you have the books of a heavenly alchimy in your coffers you have a golden rod which can turn the durty pelf of India into celestial substance Consider what greater ties of duty can you have what more pressing necessity to be perfect than to have the instrument of perfection in your full power Perswade your selves no longer that riches are impediments of glory and salvation for this unhappiness proceedeth not but from corruption and ill custom if you take them on a false byass they are of lead to drench and drown you if on a good they are feathers to bear and lift you up to Heaven Prophane Chariot of Sesostris applied to the rich Pharios currus regum cervicibus egiâ— Luc. l. 10. storie maketh mention of one Sesostris King of Aegypt who triumphantly rode in a chariot drawn by Kings he was so swoln with the success of his prosperities It was to take the way of hell in the chariot of pride so to triumph but you may in the chariot of charity all glittering with gold and silver harnessed out with poor men each person whereof representeth the Sovereign King who raiseth all Imperial scepters take the right way of Paradise August med Si ista terrena diligitis ut subjecta diligite ut famulantia diligite ut munera amici ut beneficia Domini ut arrham sponsi and that by the means of riches Then judge whether they lead to true felicity or no. If you love these terrene things you do well love them boldly but as the objects of your glorie as the instruments of your salvation as a gift of your friend as a benefit from your Master as the earnest-penny of your spouse as the pledge of your predestination The fifth REASON Drawn from perfections of the bodie IT is a lamentable misery to behold how sin hath so perverted the nature of things that it not onely giveth ill under the apparance of good but also sometimes evil effects to that which is good Behold for as much as concerneth the perfections of the bodie not speaking here of health or strength wherewith the Great-ones are not always the best provided beauty grace or garb which seem to be more connatural to them they are so cried down by the corruption of manners that one knoweth not what apt place to give them either among things good or evil S. Augustine speaketh with indifferency Lib. 15. cap. 21 de Civitat Dei Pulchritudo corporis bonum Dei domon sed proptereâ— etiam id largitur malis nè magnum bonum videatur bonis Beauty condemned by idolaters theÌ„selves Petrarch l. 6. de remed Dialog 2. Habes hostem tuum domi delectabilem blandum habos raptorem quietis tortoremque perpetuum Habes materiam laboris uberrimam discriminum causam fomentum libidinum nec minorem quaerendi odii quà m amoris aditum Habes laqueum pedibus velum oculis alis viscum super ficie tenus fulget decor multa faedà que tâ—gens horrenda levissimae cutis obtentu sensibus blanditur illudit in these tearms Beauty of bodie is a benign gift of God but he bestows it often on the bad that the good may not deem it a great good Not onely the writings of Saints and of most austere religious have made great invectives against beauty but even those who at other times have with passion praised it condemned it as soon as they became wise Petrarch that worthy spirit after he had adored a humane beauty doth suddenly cast down the Altars thereof under his feet and dis-avowed in ripe age that which foolish youth had made him vehemently commend For what saith he not in his book of the vanitie of the world which he entituleth the Remedies of Fortune You who establish your glorie in the beauty of the bodie know you have an enemie under your roof and which is worse a flaettering and with-delight-tempting enemie You harbour a thief who stealeth your repose and time two the most pretions things of the world You lodge an executioner who always will hold you to the rack and torture You entertain a subject of toil and affliction a motive of warfare and contention an incendiarie of sensual appetite which is no less capable of hatred than love This deceitful beauty putteth a snare on your feet a veil over your eyes and bird-lime on your wings It is a superficial grace which covereth with the smooth delicacie of the skin loathsom and horrible stenches so with her poison charming the drunken senses Another (a) (a) (a) Tab. d'inconst saith it is the nurse of love the spur of sin and that virtue lodged with beauty hath always a slippery foot as being in the house of a dangerous hostess S. Chrysostom (b) (b) (b) Chrysost homil de vanit pulchr musieb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Defence of beauty as the gift of God in an Homily which he made upon the vain beauty of women hath delicate observations not being able sufficiently to admire the sottishness