also must we dwell as little here but turn our eyes quickly in again upon our selves and upon our own miseries and frailties For if we stick upon the knowledge of the goodnes the mercy and liberality of God and forget what we are in our selves we shall run much hazard of presumption and pride and we shall grow to be too secure of our selves and to be over-bold and not so humble and carefull as were fit which is a dangerous course and hath been the foundation and root of many fearfull and great ruins O how many men who were very spiritual and who seemed to be exalted as high as Heaven in the exercise of prayer and contemplation have cast themselves down headlong by this precipice O how many who seemed to be Saints have come by this means to have most wretched fals Because they forgot themselves because they made themselves too sure through the favours which they had received from God They grew to be ful of confidence as if there had already been no more danger for them and so they came miserably to destruction We have books which are ful of such accidents Saint Basil saith that the cause of that miserable fal of King David both into adultery and murther was the presumption which once he had when he was visited by the hand of God with abundance of consolation so far as that he presumed to say I shall never be moved or altered from this state Psal 30. Wel stay a while God will a little take off his hand these extraordinary favours and graces shall cease and you shall see what will happen Thou turned away thy face from me and I was troubled God leaves you in your poverty then you wil be like your self you shal know to your cost whou you are once fallen that which you would not know whilst you were visited and favoured by Almighty God And Saint Basil also saith that the cause of the fal and denial of the Apostle Saint Peter was the confiding and presuming vainly in himself Because he said with arrogancy and presumption that though all men should be scandalized yet would not he be scandalized but would rather dye with Christ For this did God permit that he should fall that so he might be humbled and know himself We must never give way that our eyes may wander from our selves nor ever be secure in this life but considering what we are we must go ever on with great care of our selves and with great care and fear lest the enemy whom we carry still about us put some trick upon us and provide some snare into which he may procure us to fall So that as we must not stay upon the knowledge of our own misery and weaknes but passe instantly on to the knowledge of the goodnes of God so neither must we stay upon the knowledge of God and his mercies and favours but return with speed again to cast our eyes down upon our selves This is that Jacobs ladder whereof one end is fastened to the earth in our knowledg of our selves and the other reaches up to the very height of Heaven By this ladder must you ascend and descend as the Angels ascended and descended by that other Rise up by the knowledge of the goodnes of God but stay not there lest you grow into presumption but descend to the knowledge of your selves yet stay not also there lest you fall into despair but still return again to the knowledge of God that so you may have confidence in him In fine the busines consists in that you be still ascending and descending by this ladder We read of a certain devout Woman that did use this exercise to free her fell from severall temptations which the divel brought against her as she her self related when the devil would tempt her by way of confusion desiring to make her beleeve that her whole 〈◊〉 was nothing but sin error and abuses then she would raise her self up but yet sill with Humility by the consideration of the mercies of God and she would be saying to this effect I confesse O my creator that my whole life hath been led in darknes but yet I will hide my self in the wounds of Christ Jesus crucified and I will bath my self in his blood and so my wickednes shall be consumed and I will rejoice in my Creator my Lord Thou shalt wash me and I shall be whiter then snow And so also when the divel would offer to put her up to pride by tentations of a contrary kind seeking to make her think that she was perfect and pleasing to God and that there was no cause why she should any longer afflict her self and lament her sins then would she humble her self and make the devil this answer O wretched creature that I am Saint John Baptist was sanctified in his mothers womb and yet notwithstanding all that was continually exercised about repentance And I have committed so many defects and have never lamented them no nor even considered them as they deserved With this the devil not liking to endure so great Humility on the one side nor so great confidence in the other as we may imagine said thus to her Be thou accursed and he also who hath taught thee this for I know not how to make enterance here since if I abase thee by confusion thou raisest thy self up as high as Heaven by the considetation of the mercy of God and if I raise thee up towards presumption thou abasest thy self by the consideration of thy sins as low as hel by way of Humility Now after this very manner are we to use this exercise and so shall we on the one side be full of circumspection and fear and on the other ful of courage and joy Fearful in regard of our selves and joyfull through our hope in God These are those two lessons which God gives daily to his elect the one to make them see their defects and the other to make them see the goodnes of God who takes them from us with so much love CHAP. IX Of the great benefit and profit which grows by this exercise of a mans knowing himself TO the end ha◠we may yet be more animated to this exercise of the knowledge of our selves we will go on declaring some great benefits and advantages which are conteined therein One of the cheif thereof hath been shewed already namely that this is the foundation and root of Humility and the necessary means both for the purchase and preservation thereof One of those antient Fathers being asked how a man might do to obtain true humility made this answer If he consider only his own sins sounding digging deep into the knowledge of himself this man shall obtain true humility This alone were sufficient to make us attend much to this exercise since it imports us so very much towards the obtaining of this vertue But yet we may pass further on and say that the humble knowledge of
admiring him for them and her self remaining the while most unshaken intire in her own most profound Humility said My soul doth magnifie the Lord and my spirit hath rejoyced in God my Saviour for he hath regarded the lowlines of his Handmaid This is the very Humility of Heaven the saints possesse this humilitie And this saith St Gregory is that which St John saw in the Apocalipse of those four and twenty Elders who being prostrate before the throne of God adored him taking the Crovvns off from their heads and casting them down at the foot of the throne And the Saint saith that the casting off their crowns at the foot of the throne of God signifies the not atributing their victories to themselves but the ascribing all to God who gave them strength and power to overcom It is reason O Lord that we give the honour and glory of all to thee and that we take off the crowns from our heads and that we cast them at thy feet because al is thine and by thy wil it is made and if we have any thing good it is because thou wouldst have it so This is then the 3d degree of Humilitie when a man ascribes not these gifts and graces to himself which he hath received of God but to ascribe them and refer them al to him as to the author and giver of all good gifts But som man may say if Humility consists in this we al are humble for who is there who knows not that al good coms to us from God and that of our selves we have nothing but misery and sin Who is he that wil not say if God should take his hand off from me I were the most miserable man of the whole world On our part we have nothing but destruction and sin saith the Prophet Hosea Al the favour and al the good coms to us from the liberality of God and this is Catholick doctrine and so it may seem that we al have this Humility for we al beleeve this truth whereof the holy Scripture is ful The Apostle St James in his Canonical Epistle saith Al good and perfect gifts com to us from above from the Father of lights And the Apostle St Paul saith that we cannot work nor speak nor desire nor think nor begin nor finish any thing which may serve for our salvation without God from whom al our sufficiency proceeds And by what more clear comparison could it be given us to understand al this than by that which Christ our Lord himself declares Wil you see saith he the little or indeed the nothing which you can do without me the vine branch cannot give fruit of it self unless it be united to the vine so no man can perform any good work of himself unless he be united with me I am the vine ye are the branches He that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for without me ye can do nothing Joh. 15.5 What is more fruitful than the branch united to the vine and what more unprofitable and useless than the branch parted from the vine For what is it good God interrogates the Prophet Ezekiel What O Son of man shal be done with the branch of vine It is not timber which is fit for any Carpenters work nor yet for any stake or pin wher upon any thing may be hanged against a wal The branch severed from the vine is fit for nothing but the fire Now just so are we if we be nor united to the true vine which is Christ our Lord. If a man abide not in me he is cast forth as a branch and is withered and men gather them and cast them into the fire and they are burned Joh 15.6 We are good for nothing but the fire and if we be any thing it is by the grace of God as St Paul saith By the grace of God I am what I am 1 Cor 15.10 It seems we are al fully satisfied with the truth of this That al the good we have is of God and that we are to ascribe no good to our selves but al to God to whom the honor and glory of al is due It seems I say that this is not very difficult to such as beleeve in Christ and therefore that it should not be set down for the last and most perfect degree of Humilitie since it is so clearly a point of Faith It seems so indeed at the first sight if we look superficially upon it but indeed it is not easie but very hard Cassian saith that to such as are but beginners it seems to be but an easie thing to attribute nothing to a mans self and not to rest or rely upon his own industry and diligence but to refer and ascribe al to God but indeed it is very hard For since we also contribute somwhat on our part towards good works as St Paul saith because we also work and concur joyntly with God we grow tacitly and even as it were without finding it to confide in our selves and a secret presumption and pride steals upon us which makes us think that this or that was done by our diligence and care and so by degrees we grow vain and look big and ascribe the works which we do to our selves as if we had performed them by our own strength and as if they had been wholly ours This is not so easie a business as we conceive And it may suffice for us that the saints set this down for the most perfect degree of Humilitie and they say this is the Humilitie of the great ones that we may so understand that there is more difficulty and perfection therein than one would think For a man to receive great gifts of God and to do great things and to give God al the glory of al as he ought without attributing any thing to himself and not to take any vain contentment therin is a point of great perfection To be honored and praised for a saint and that no part of such honor and estimation should stick at al to the heart any more than if he had done nothing is a very hard thing and there are few who attain to it and there is need of much virtue for the performance thereof St Chrisostome saith that to converse in the midst of honor not to be at al toucht thereby is like conversing much with beautiful women and yet never to look upon them with unchast eyes It is a difficult and a dangerous thing and a man had need of much vertue therein For a man to climbe so high and not to be giddy he had need be Master of a good head All men have not a head wherewith to walk on high The Angels of Heaven Luifer and his Consorts had it not and so they grew giddy and proud and fell down into the bottomless pit of Hell For this they say was the sin of Angels that when God created them so beautifull and had inriched them with
for my part I have no ability for so high a Ministery as that but you are able to make me sufficient you can put words into my mouth which will have a power to make a change in the hearts of men If you send me I may well go for going in your name I shall be able to perform the work Then God said to him Vade Go See here saith Saint Basil how the Prophet Esay took his degree for being a Preacher and an Apostle of God because he could answer very well in the Doctrine of Humility and attributed not his going to himself but acknovvledg his own insufficiency and weaknes he placed all his confidence in God beleeving he could do all things in him and that if God sent him he might go For this reason God gave him the charge and bad him go and so made him his Preacher Embassador and Apostle This is to be our strength and our magnanimity for the enterprising and undertaking great things Be not therefore disanimated or dismayed when you consider your own insufficiency and weakness Jer. 1.7.8 Say not I am a child saith God to the Prophet Jeremiah for thou shalt go to all that I shall send thee and whatsoever I command thee thou shalt speak Be not afraid of their faces for I am with thee So that for as much as concerns this part of Humility not only it is not contrary to magnanimity but rather it is the foundation and root thereof The second point which belongs to the magnanimous person is to desire to do great things and that in themselves they may be worthy of honour But this also is not contrary to Humility because as Aquinas saith very well although the magnanimous person desire to do such things yet he desires it not for humane honour nor is this his end He will take care indeed to deserve it but not either to procure or esteem it Nay rather he hath a heart which so truly despiseth both honour and dishonour that he holds nothing to be great but vertue and for love thereof he is moved to do great things despising the honour which men can give For vertue is a thing so high that it cannot be honoured or revvarded sufficiently by men and deserves to be honoured rewarded by Almighty God therfore the magnanimous person values not al the honours of the World at a straw It is a mean thing and of no price at al with him his flight is higher For the only love of God and vertue is he invited to do great things and he despises all the rest Now then for the having of a heart which is so great so generous such a despiser of the honour and dishonour of men such as the magnanimous person ought to have it is necessary that he have also much Humility To the end that a man may arrive to so great perfection as to be able to saywith S. Paul I know both how to be abased and I know how to abound every where and in all things I am instructed both to be full and to be hungry both to abound and to suffer need Phil 4.12 By honour and dishonour by evill report and good report as deceivers and yet true 2 Cor 6.8.9 As unknown and yet well known as dying and behold we live To the end that so stiffe and so contrary winds as they of honour and dishonour of praise and murmuring of favours and persecutions may cause no change in us nor make us stumble or shrink but that we may still remain in our own being it is necessary to have a great foundation of Humility and of wisdom from Heaven I know not whether you will be able to keep your self free for the doing of all good works when you are in abundance like the Apostle Saint Paul As for suffering poverty and to be humble in the midst of dishonors and affronts this perhaps you will be able to do But to be humble in honours chairs pulpets and the higher sort of Ministeries I know not whether you will be able Alas those Angels once of Heaven knew not how to do this but they grew proud and fell Boetius saith Though both estates are to be feared yet prosperity more then adversity It is harder for a man to conserve himself in Humility in honour and estimation of the World and in high imployments and Ministeries then in dishonour and contempt and in the discharge of places which are mean and poor for these things draw humility after them and those others vanity and pride Scientia inflat knowledg and all other high things do naturally puff us up and make us giddy and therefore the Saints say that it is the humility of great and perfect men to know how to be humble and amongst the great gifts and graces which they receive from God and amongst the honours and estimations of the World We must therefore procure to arrive to this humility by the grace of our Lord we I say who are called not to the end that we should be shut up in corners or be hidden under a bushel but set up on high like a City upon a hil or like a taper upon a Candlestick to shine and give light to the World For which purpose it will be necessary for us to lay a very good foundation and for as much as is on our part to have great desire to be dis-esteemed and despised and that this may flow out of a profound knowledg of our own misery our basenes and our nothing CHAP. XXXIII Of the great benefits and advantages which are in this third degree of Humility AFter King David had prepared much gold and silver and many rich materials for the building of the Temple he offered them up to God and said these words All things O Lord are thine and that which we have received at thy hands that do we render return again This is that which we must do and say in all our good works O Lord all our good works are thine and so we return what thou hast given us Saint Augustine saith very well He who puts himself to recount the duties and the services which he hath done thee of what other thing doth he tell thee O Lord but of the benefits and gifts which he hath received from thy holy hand This is an effect of thy infinite mercy and goodnes towards us to qualifie thine own benefits and gifts to us to be as new vertues of ours and so when thou payest us for our services thou rewardest thine own benefits and for one grace of thine thou givest us another and for one favour another Gratiam pro gratia Our Lord is content to proceed with us like another Joseph by giving us not only corn but he will also give us the price and mony which it cost All is Gods gift and all must be ascribed and returned to him he giveth both grace and glory One of the great helps and benefits which is to be
pride and they have it so rooted and even wrought into the most intimous part of the heart that they themselves understand it not but are so wel pleased and confident of themselves as to think that God and they are al one As it happened to St. Peter the Apostle who conceived not that those words of his had flowed from pride when he said Though al men shal be offended because of thee yet wil I never be offended Matt. 26.33 but he thought that it had been courage in him and an extraordinary love which he carried to his Master Therefore to cure such pride as this which lyes so close and is so disguised as that a man is already faln though himself perceive it not our Lord permits somtimes that such persons fal into certain manifest exterior carnal filthy sins to the end that so they may know themselves better and look more exactly into their souls and may so com to perceive their pride which they beleeved not to be in them before and whereof they look for no remedy and would so have com to perish but now by means of such gross fals they know it and being humbled now in the sight of God they repent both for the one and the other and so meet with remedy for both their miseries at once as we see St. Peter did who by that visible and apparent fal of his came to know that pride which lay so secretly within and he grew to lament it and to repent for them both and thus was his fal good for him The same hapned also to David Psal 119.71 who therefore saith O Lord it hath cost me dear I confess it but yet upon the whole matter it hath been good for me that I have been humbled that so hereafter I may learn to serve thee and know how to abase my self as I ought And as the wise Physitian when he is not able to cure the malady out right and when the peccant humor is so rebellious and maligne that he cannot make nature digest and overcom it procures to cal and draw it into the exterior parts of the body that so it may be the better cured just so for the cure of certain haughty and rebellious souls doth our Lord permit them to fal into grievous and exterior sins to the end that they may know and humble themselves and by means of that abasement which appears without the maligne and pestilent humor may be also cured which lay close within And this is a work vvhich God vvorks in Israel vvhich vvhosoever coms to hear his very ears shal even tingle for meer fear these I say are those great punishments of God the onely hearing vvhereof is able to make men tremble from head to foot But yet our Lord vvho is so ful of benignity and mercy doth never imploy this forigorous punishment nor this so lamentable and unhappy remedy but after having used other means which were most gentle and sweet He first sends us other occasions and other more gentle inducements that so we may humble our selves Sometimes sicknesse sometimes a contradiction sometimes a murmuration and sometimes a dishonour when a man is brought lower then he thought But when these temporall things will not serve the turn to humble us he passes on to the spirituall and first to things of lesse moment and afterward by permitting fierce and grievous temptations such as may bring us so within a hairs breadth and even perswade us or at least make us doubt whether we consented or no. That so a man may see and find by good experience that he cannot overcome them by himself but may experimentally understand his own misery and the precise need which he hath of help from heaven and so may come to distrust his own strength and may humble himself And when all this will not serve then comes that other so violent and so costly cure of suffering a man to fall into hainous sin and to be subdued by the temptation Then comes this Cautery which is made even by the very fire of hell to the end that after a man hath even as it were beaten out his brains he may fall at length upon the just examination and knowledge of what he is and may at length be content to humble himself by this means since he would not be brought to do it by any other By this time I hope we see well how mightily it imports us to be humble and not to confide or presume upon our selves and therefore let every one enter into account with his own heart and consider what profit he reaps by those occasions which God dayly sends for the making him humble in the quality of a tender-hearted Physician and of a father that so there may be no need of those other which are so violent Chastise me O Lord with the chastisement of a Father cure thou my pride with afflictions diseases dishonours and affronts and with as many humiliations as thou art pleased to send but suffer not O Lord that I should ever fall into deliberate and wilful sin O Lord let the Devil have power to touch me in point of honour and in my health and let him make another Job of me but permit not that he may ever touch my soul Upon condition that thou O Lord never part from me nor permit me ever to part from thee whatsoever tribulation may comâ— upon me shall be sure to do me no hurt but it shall rather turn to my good towards the obtaining of Humility which is so acceptable to thee Grant this O Lord for Jesus Christs sake our onely Saviour and Redeemer Amen FINIS A Prayer against PRIDE UNderstanding O my blessed Lord how displeasing pride is unto thee and how thou hatest self-conceit if I had indeed any understanding as I ought the consideration thereof would sufficiently perswade me that I should not onely dislike but abhorre it as a mortal and damnable thing since thou O Lord dost so abhor it that the Angels whom thou createdst with so many perfections and adornedst with such be auties gifts giving them the possession of thy inwardest heaven yet for this sin onely didst thou banish them thence into the infernal pit where they suffer the condigne punishment of their hainous offence and from that time till this present and from this time for ever to come the proud thou alwayes hast and ever wilt abhorre and they are they on whom it seems thou delightest to shew the power of thy mighty Arm humbling them casting them down and making them equal with the earth that they may understand themselves and not dare to lift up their heads against thee Thou abhorrest Pride in bodily strength as thou declaredst in Goliah giving him over into the hands of a young tender Lad as was David Thou detestest it in self-conceit and estimation as thou she wedst in abasing Haman making him serve for Page cryer of Mordecas's vertues whom he sought to destroy It