eternal Other acts of Religion such as are uncovering the head 〈◊〉 the knee falling upon our face stooping to the ground reciting praises are by the consent of Nations used as testimonies of civil or religious veneration and do not always pass for confessions of a Divinity and therefore may be without sin used to Angels or Kings or Governours or to persons in any sence more excellent than our selves provided they be intended to express an excellency no greater than is proper to their dignities and persons not in any sence given to an Idol or false Gods But the first sort are such which all the world hath consented to be actions of Divine and incommunicable Adoration and such which God also in several Religions hath reserved as his own appropriate regalities and are Idolatry if given to any Angel or man 9. The next Duties are 2. Love 3. and Obedience but they are united in the Gospel This is Love that we keep his Commandments and since we are for God's sake bound also to love others this Love is appropriate to God by the extension of parts and the intension of degrees The Extension signifies that we must serve God with all our Faculties for all division of parts is hypocrisie and a direct prevarication our Heart must think what our Tongue speaks our Hands act what we promise or purpose and God's enemies must have no share so much as in appearance or dissimulation Now no Creature can challenge this and if we do Justice to our neighbours though unwillingly we have done him no injury for in that case he only who sees the irregularity of our thoughts is the person injured And when we swear to him our heart must swear as well as our tongue and our hands must pay what our lips have promised or else we provoke him with an imperfect sacrifice we love him not with all our mind with all our strength and all our faculties 10. But the difficulty and question of this Commandment lies in the Intension For it is not enough to serve God with every Capacity Passion and Faculty but it must be every degree of every Faculty all the latitude of our Will all the whole intension of our Passions all the possibility and energy of our Senses and our Understanding which because it is to be understood according to that moderate sentence and account which God requires of us set in the midst of such a condition so attended and depressed and prejudiced the full sence of it I shall express in several Propositions 11. First The Intension of the Love to which we are obliged requires not the Degree which is absolutely the greatest and simply the most perfect For there are degrees of Grace every one of which is pleasing to God and is a state of Reconciliation and atonement and he that breaks not the bruised reed nor quenches the smoaking slax loves to cherish those endeavours which beginning from small principles pass through the variety of degrees and give demonstration that though it be our duty to contend for the best yet this contention is with an enemy and that enemy makes an abatement and that abatement being an imperfection rather than a sin is actually consistent with the state of Grace the endeavour being in our power and not the success the perfection is that which shall be our reward and therefore is not our present duty And indeed if to do the best action and to love God as we shall do in Heaven were a present obligation it would have been clearly taught us what is simply the best action whereas now that which is of it self better in certain circumstances is less perfect and sometimes not lawful and concerning those circumstances we have no rules nor any guide but prudence and probable inducements so that it is certain in our best endeavours we should only increase our scruples in stead of doing actions of the highest perfections we should crect a tyranny over our Consciences and no augmentation of any thing but the trouble And therefore in the Law of Moses when this Commandment was given in the same words yet that the sence of it might be clear the analogy of the Law declared that their duty had a latitude and that God was not so strict a task-master but that he left many instances of Piety to the voluntary Devotion of his servants that they might receive the reward of Free-will-offerings But if these words had obliged them to the greatest degree that is to all the degrees of our capacities in every instance every act of Religion had been duty and necessity 12. And thus also it was in the Gospel Ananias and Sapphira were killed by sentence from Heaven for not performing what was in their power at first not to have promised but because they brought an obligation upon themselves which God brought not and then prevaricated they paid the forfeiture of their lives S. Paul took no wages of the Corinthian Churches but wrought night and day with his own hand but himself says he had power to do otherwise There was laid upon him a necessity to preach but no necessity to preach without wages and support There is a good and a better in Virginity and Marriage and yet there is no command in either but that we abstain from sin we are left to our own election for the particular having no necessity but power in our will David prayed seven times a day and Daniel prayed three times and both were beloved of God The Christian masters were not bound to manumit their slaves and yet were commended if they did so Sometimes the Christians fled in Persecution S. Paul did so and S. Peter did so and S. Cyprian did so and S. Athanasius and many more But time was when some of these also chose to suffer death rather than to fly And if to fly be a permission and no duty there is certainly a difference of degrees in the choice to fly is not so great a suffering as to die and yet a man may innocently chuse the easier And our Blessed Lord himself who never failed of any degree of his obligations yet at some time prayed with more zeal and servour than at other times as a little before his Passion Since then at all times he did not do actions of that degree which is absolutely the greatest it is evident that God's goodness is so great as to be content with such a Love which parts no share between him and sin and leaves all the rest under such a liberty as is only encouraged by those extraordinary rewards and crowns proportioned to heroical endeavours It was a pretty Question which was moved in the Solitudes of Nitria concerning two Religious Brothers the one gave all his goods to the poor at once the other kept the inheritance and gave all the revenue None of all the Fathers knew which was absolutely the better at once to renounce all or by repetition of charitable acts
to divide it into portions one act of Charity in an heroical degree or an habitual Charity in the degree of Vertue This instance is probation enough that the opinion of such a necessity of doing the best action simply and indefinitely is impossible to be safely acted because it is impossible to be understood Two talents shall be rewarded and so shall five both in their proportions He that sows sparingly shall reap sparingly but he shall reap Every man as he purposes in his heart so let him give The best action shall have the best reward and though he is the happiest who rises highest yet he is not sasest that enters into the state of disproportion to his person I find in the Lives of the later reputed Saints that S. Teresa à Jesu made a vow to do every thing which she should judge to be the best I will not judge the person nor censure the action because possibly her intention and desires were of greatest Sanctity but whosoever considers the story of her Life and the strange repugnancies in the life of man to such undertakings must needs fear to imitate an action of such danger and singularity The advice which in this case is safest to be followed is That we employ our greatest industry that we fall not into sin and actions of forbidden nature and then strive by parts and steps and with much wariness in attempering our zeal to superadd degrees of eminency and observation of the more perfect instances of Sanctity that doing some excellencies which God hath not commanded he may be the rather moved to pardon our prevaricating so many parts of our necessary duty If Love transport us and carry us to actions sublime and heroical let us follow so good a guide and pass on with diligence and zeal and prudence as far as Love will carry us but let us not be carried to actions of great eminency and strictness and unequal severities by scruple and pretence of duty lest we charge our miscarriages upon God and call the yoak of the Gospel insupportable and Christ a hard Task-master But we shall pass from Vertue to Vertue with more fafety if a Spiritual guide take us by the hand only remembring that if the Angels themselves and the beatisied Souls do now and shall hereafter differ in degrees of love and glory it is impossible the state of imperfection should be confined to the highest Love and the greatest degree and such as admits no variety no increment or difference of parts and stations 13. Secondly Our Love to God consists not in any one determinate Degree but hath such a latitude as best agrees with the condition of men who are of variable natures different affectious and capacities changeable abilities and which receive their heightnings and declensions according to a thousand accidents of mortality For when a Law is regularly prescribed to perions whose varieties and different constitutions cannot be regular or uniform it is certain 〈◊〉 gives a great latitude of perfermance and binds not to just atomes and points The Laws of God are like universal objects received into the Faculty partly by choice partly by nature but the variety of perfection is by the variety of the instruments and disposition of the Recipient and are excelled by each other in several sences and by themselves at several times And so is the practice of our Obedience and the entertainments of the Divine Commandments For some are of malleable natures others are morese some are of healthful and temperate constitutions others are lustful full of fancy full of appetite some have excellent leisure and opportunities of retirement others are busie in an active life and cannot with advantages attend to the choice of the better part some are peaceable and timorous and some are in all instances serene others are of tumultuous and unquiet spirits and these become opportunities of Temptation on one side and on the other occasions of a Vertue But every change of faculty and variety of circumstance hath influence upon Morality and therefore their duties are personally altered and increase in obligation or are slackned by necessities according to the infinite alteration of exteriour accidents and interiour possibilities 14. Thirdly Our Love to God must be totally exclusive of any affection to sin and engage us upon a great assiduous and laborious care to resist all Temptations to subdue sin to acquire the habits of Vertues and live holily as it is already expressed in the Discourse of Repentance We must prefer God as the object of our hopes we must chuse to obey him rather than man to please him rather than satisfie our selves and we must do violence to our strongest Passions when they once contest against a Divine Commandment If our Passions are thus regulated let them be fixed upon any lawful object whatsoever if at the same time we prefer Heaven and heavenly things that is would rather chuse to lose our temporal love than our eternal hopes which we can best discern by our refusing to sin upon the solicitation or engagement of the temporal object then although we feel the transportation of a sensual love towards a Wife or Child or Friend actually more pungent and sensible than Passions of Religion are they are less perfect but they are not criminal Our love to God requires that we do his Commandments and that we do not sin but in other things we are permitted in the condition of our nature to be more sensitively moved by visible than by invisible and spiritual objects Only this we must ever have a disposition and a mind prepared to quit our sensitive and pleasant objects rather than quit a Grace or commit a sin Every act of sin is against the Love of God and every man does many single actions of hostility and provocation against him but the state of the Love of God is that which we actually call the state of Grace When Christ reigns in us and sin does not reign but the Spirit is quickned and the Lusts are mortified when we are habitually vertuous and do acts of Piety Temperance and Justice frequently easily chearfully and with a successive constant moral and humane industry according to the talent which God hath intrusted to us in the banks of Nature and Grace then we are in the love of God then we love him with all our heart But if Sin grows upon us and is committed more frequently or gets a victory with less difficulty or is obeyed more readily or entertained with a freer complacency then we love not God as he requires we divide between him and sin and God is not the Lord of all our faculties But the instances of Scripture are the best exposition of this Commandment For David followed God with all his heart to do that which was right in his eyes and Josiah turned to the Lord with all his heart and with all his soul and with all his might Both these Kings did it and
the griefs of a Christian whether they be instances of Repentance or parts of Persecution or exercises of Patience end in joy and endless comfort Thus Jesus like a Rainbow half made of the glories of light and half of the moisture of a cloud half triumph and half sorrow entred into that Town where he had done much good to others and to himself received nothing but affronts yet his tenderness encreased upon him and that very journey which was Christ's last solemn visit for their recovery he doubled all the instruments of his Mercy and their Conversion He rode in triumph the 〈◊〉 sang Hosannah to him he cured many diseased persons he wept for them and pitied them and sighed out the intimations of a Prayer and did penance for their ingratitude and stayed all day there looking about him towards evening and no man would invite him home but he was forced to go to Bethany where he was sure of an hospitable entertainment I think no Christian that reads this but will be full of indignation at the whole City who for malice or for fear would not or durst not receive their Saviour into their houses and yet we do worse for now that he is become our Lord with mightier demonstrations of his eternal power we suffer him to look round about upon us for months and years together and possibly never entertain him till our house is ready to rush upon our heads and we are going to unusual and stranger habitations And yet in the midst of a populous and mutinous City this great King had some good subjects persons that threw away their own garments and laid them at the feet of our Lord that being devested of their own they might be re-invested with a robe of his Righteousness wearing that till it were changed into a stole of glory the very ceremony of their reception of the Lord became symbolical to them and expressive of all our duties 7. But I consider that the Blessed Jesus had affections not less than infinite towards all mankind and he who wept upon Jerusalem who had done so great despight to him and within five days were to fill up the measure of their iniquities and do an act which all Ages of the world could never repeat in the same instance did also in the number of his tears reckon our sins as sad considerations and incentives of his sorrow And it would well become us to consider what great evil we do when our actions are such as for which our Blessed Lord did weep He who was seated in the bosom of Felicity yet he moistened his 〈◊〉 Lawrels upon the day of his Triumph with tears of love and bitter allay His day of Triumph was a day of Sorrow and if we would weep for our sins that instance of sorrow would be a day of triumph and 〈◊〉 8. From hence the Holy Jesus went to Pethany where he had another manner of reception than at the Holy City There he supped for his goodly day of Triumph had been with him a fasting-day And Mary Magdalen who had spent one box of Nard pistick upon our Lord's feet as a sacrifice of Eucharist for her Conversion now bestowed another in thankfulness for the restitution of her Brother Lazarus to life and consigned her Lord unto his Burial And here she met with an evil interpreter 〈◊〉 an Apostle one of the Lord 's own Family pretended it had been a better Religion to have given it to the poor but it was Malice and the spirit either of Envy or Avarice in him that passed that sentence for he that sees a pious action well done and seeks to undervalue it by telling how it might have been better reproves nothing but his own spirit For a man may do very well and God would accept it though to say he might have done better is to say only that action was not the most perfect and absolute in its kind but to be angry at a religious person and without any other pretence but that he might have done better is spiritual Envy for a pious person would have nourished up that infant action by love and praise till it had grown to the most perfect and intelligent Piety But the event of that man gave the interpretation of his present purpose and at the best it could be no other than a rash judgment of the action and intention of a religious thankful and holy person But she found her Lord who was her 〈◊〉 in this become her Patron and her Advocate And hereafter when we shall find the Devil the great Accuser of God's Saints object against the Piety and Religion of holy persons a cup of cold water shall be accepted unto reward and a good intention heightned to the value of an exteriour expression and a piece of gum to the equality of a 〈◊〉 and an action done with great zeal and an intense love be acquitted from all its adherent imperfections Christ receiving them into himself and being like the Altar of incense hallowing the very smoak and raising it into a flame and entertaining it into the embraces of the firmament and the bosom of Heaven Christ himself who is the Judge of our actions is also the entertainer and object of our Charity and Duty and the Advocate of our persons 9. Judas who declaimed against the woman made tacite reflexions upon his Lord for suffering it and indeed every obloquy against any of Christ's servants is looked on as an arrow shot into the heart of Christ himself And now a Persecution being begun against the Lord within his own Family another was raised against him from without For the chief Priests took crafty counsel against Jesus and called a Consistory to contrive how they might destroy him and here was the greatest representment of the goodness of God and the ingratitude of man that could be practised or understood How often had Jesus poured forth tears for them how many sleepless nights had he awaked to do them advantage how many days had he spent in Homilies and admirable visitations of Mercy and Charity in casting out Devils in curing their sick in correcting their delinquencies in reducing them to the ways of security and peace and that we may use the greatest expression in the world that is his own in gathering them as a Hen gathereth her Chickens under her wings to give them strength and warmth and life and ghostly nourishment And the chief Priests together with their faction use all arts and watch all opportunities to get Christ not that they might possess him but to destroy him little considering that they extinguish their own eyes and destroy that spring of life which was intended to them for a blissful immortality 10. And here it was that the Devil shewed his promptness to furnish every evil-intended person with apt instruments to act the very worst of his intentions the Devil knew their purposes and the aptness and proclivity of Judas and by bringing these together he
all measures and under the patronage of his name began to set up for a party he severely rebuked them told them that it was Christ not he that was crucified for them that they had not been baptized into his name which he was so far from that he did not remember that he had baptized 〈◊〉 three or four of them and was heartily glad he had baptized no more 〈◊〉 a foundation might have been laid for that suspicion that this Paul whom they so much extolled was no more than a minister of Christ whom our Lord had appointed to plant and build up his Church 4. GREAT was his temperance and sobriety so far from going beyond the bounds of regularity that he abridged himself of the conveniencies of lawful and necessary accommodations frequent his hungrings and thirstings not constrained only but voluntary it 's probably thought that he very rarely drank any Wine certain that by abstinence and mortification he kept under and subdued his body reducing the extravagancy of the sensual appetites to a perfect subjection to the laws of Reason By this means he easily got above the World and its charms and frowns had his mind continually conversant in Heaven his thoughts were fixed there his desires always ascending thither what he taught others he practised himself his conversation was in Heaven and his desires were to depart and to be with Christ this World did neither arrest his affections nor disturb his fears he was not taken with its applause nor frighted with its threatnings he studied not to please men nor valued the censures and judgments which they passed upon him he was not greedy of a great estate or titles of honour or rich presents from men not seeking theirs but them food and raiment was his bill of fare and more than this he never cared for accounting that the less he was clogged with these things the lighter he should march to Heaven especially travelling through a World over-run with troubles and persecutions Upon this account it 's probable he kept himself always within a single life though there want not some of the Ancients who expresly reckon him in the number of the married Apostles as Clemens Alexandrinus Ignatius and some others 'T is true that passage is not to be found in the genuine Epistle of Ignatius but yet is extant in all those that are owned and published by the Church of Rome though they have not been wanting to banish it out of the World having expunged S. Paul's name out of some ancient Manuscripts as the learned Bishop Usher has to their shame sufficiently discovered to the World But for the main of the question we can readily grant it the Scripture seeming most to favour it that though he asserted his power and liberty to marry as well as the rest yet that he lived always a single life 5. HIS kindness and charity was truly admirable he had a compassionate tenderness for the poor and a quick sense of the wants of others To what Church soever he came it was one of his first cares to make provision for the poor and to stir up the bounty of the rich and the wealthy nay himself worked often with his own hands not only to maintain himself but to help and relieve them But infinitely greater was his charity to the Souls of men fearing no dangers refusing no labours going through good and evil report that he might gain men over to the knowledge of the truth reduce them out of the crooked paths of vice and idolatry and set them in the right way to eternal life Nay so insatiable his thirst after the good of Souls that he affirms that rather than his Country-men the Jews should miscarry by not believing and entertaining the Gospel he could be content nay wished that himself might be accursed from Christ for their sake i. e. that he might be anathematized and cut off from the Church of Christ and not only lose the honour of the Apostolate but be reckoned in the number of the abject and execrable persons such as those are who are separated from the communion of the Church An instance of so large and passionate a charity that lest it might not find room in mens belief he ushered it in with this solemn appeal and attestation that he said the truth in Christ and lied not his conscience bearing him witness in the Holy Ghost And as he was infinitely solicitous to gain men over to the best Religion in the World so was he not less careful to keep them from being seduced from it ready to suspect every thing that might corrupt their minds from the simplicity that is in Christ. I am jealous over you with a godly jealousie as he told the Church of Corinth An affection of all others the most active and vigilant and which is wont to inspire men with the most passionate care and concernment for the good of those for whom we have the highest measures of love and kindness Nor was his charity to men greater than his zeal for God endeavouring with all his might to promote the honour of his Master Indeed zeal seems to have had a deep foundation in the natural forwardness of his temper How exceedingly zealous was he while in the Jews Religion of the Traditions of his Fathers how earnest to vindicate and assert the Divinity of the Mosaick dispensation and to persecute all of a contrary way even to rage and madness And when afterwards turned into a right 〈◊〉 it ran with as swift a current carrying him out against all opposition to ruine the kingdom and the powers of darkness to beat down idolatry and to plant the World with right apprehensions of God and the true notions of Religion When at Athens he saw them so much overgrown with the grossest superstition and idolatry giving the honour that was alone due to God to Statues and Images his zeal began to ferment and to boil up into 〈◊〉 of indignation and he could not but let them know the resentments of his mind and how much herein they dishonoured God the great Parent and Maker of the World 6. THIS zeal must needs put him upon a mighty diligence and industry in the execution of his office warning reproving intreating perswading preaching in season and out of season by night and by day by Sea and Land no pains too much to be taken no dangers too great to be overcome For five and thirty years after his Conversion he 〈◊〉 staid long in one place from Jerusalem through Arabia 〈◊〉 Greece round about to Illyricum to Rome and even to the utmost bounds of the Western-world fully preaching the Gospel of Christ Running says S. Hierom from Ocean to Ocean like the Sun in the Heavens of which 't is said His going forth is from the end of the Heaven and his circuit unto the ends of it sooner wanting ground to tread on than a desire to propagate the Faith of Christ.
the Apostle says He that is in Christ walks as he also walked But thus the actions of our life relate to him by way of Worship and Religion but the use is admirable and effectual when our actions refer to him as to our Copy and we transcribe the Original to the life He that considers with what affections and lancinations of spirit with what effusions of love Jesus prayed what fervors and assiduity what innocency of wish what modesty of posture what subordination to his Father and conformity to the Divine Pleasure were in all his Devotions is taught and excited to holy and religious Prayer The rare sweetness of his deportment in all Temptations and violences of his Passion his Charity to his enemies his sharp Reprehensions to the Scribes and Pharisees his Ingenuity toward all men are living and effectual Sermons to teach us Patience and Humility and Zeal and candid Simplicity and Justice in all our actions I add no more instances because all the following Discourses will be prosecutions of this intendment And the Life of Jesus is not described to be like a Picture in a chamber of Pleasure only for beauty and entertainment of the eye but like the Egyptian Hieroglyphicks whose every feature is a Precept and the Images converse with men by sense and signification of excellent 〈◊〉 16. It was not without great reason advised that every man should propound the example of a wise and vertuous personage as Cato or Socrates or Brutus and by a fiction of imagination to suppose him present as a witness and really to take his life as the direction of all our actions The best and most excellent of the old Law-givers and Philosophers among the Greeks had an allay of Viciousness and could not be exemplary all over Some were noted for Flatterers as Plato and Aristippus some for Incontinency as Aristotle Epicurus Zeno Theognis Plato and Aristippus again and Socrates whom their Oracle affirmed to be the wisest and most perfect man yet was by Porphyry noted for extreme intemperance of Anger both in words and actions And those Romans who were offered to them for Examples although they were great in reputation yet they had also great Vices Brutus dipt his hand in the bloud of Caesar his Prince and his Father by love endearments and adoption and Cato was but a wise man all day at night he was used to drink too liberally and both he and Socrates did give their Wives unto their friends the Philosopher and the Censor were procurers of their Wives Unchastity and yet these were the best among the Gentiles But how happy and richly furnished are Christians with precedents of Saints whose Faith and Revelations have been productive of more spiritual Graces and greater degrees of moral perfections And this I call the priviledge of a very great assistance that I might advance the reputation and account of the Life of the Glorious Jesu which is not abated by the imperfections of humane Nature as they were but receives great heightnings and perfection from the Divinity of his Person of which they were never capable 17. Let us therefore press after Jesus as 〈◊〉 did after his Master with an inseparable prosecution even whithersoever he goes that according to the reasonableness and proportion expressed in S. Paul's advice As we have born the image of the earthly we may also bear the image of the heavenly For in vain are we called Christians if we live not according to the example and discipline of Christ the Father of the Institution When S. Laurence was in the midst of the torments of the Grid-iron he made this to be the matter of his joy and Eucharist that he was admitted to the Gates through which Jesus had entred and therefore thrice happy are they who walk in his Courts all their days And it is yet a nearer union and vicinity to imprint his Life in our Souls and express it in our exterior converse and this is done by him only who as S. Prosper describes the duty despises all those gilded vanities which he despised that fears none of those sadnesses which he suffered that practises or also teaches those Doctrines which he taught and hopes for the accomplishment of all his Promises And this is truest Religion and the most solemn Adoration The PRAYER OEternal Holy and most glorious Jesu who hast united two Natures of distance infinite descending to the lownesses of Humane nature that thou mightest exalt Humane nature to a participation of the Divinity we thy people that sate in darkness and in the shadows of death have seen great light to entertain our Understandings and enlighten our Souls with its excellent influences for the excellency of thy Sanctity shining gloriously in every part of thy Life is like thy Angel the Pillar of Fire which called thy children from the darknesses of Egypt Lord open mine eyes and give me power to behold thy righteous Glories and let my Soul be so entertained with affections and holy ardours that I may never look back upon the flames of 〈◊〉 but may follow thy Light which recreates and enlightens and guides us to the mountains of Safety and Sanctuaries of Holiness Holy Jesu since thy 〈◊〉 is imprinted on our Nature by Creation let me also express thy Image by all the parts of a holy life 〈◊〉 my Will and Affections to thy holy Precepts submitting my Understanding to thy Dictates and Lessons of perfection imitating thy sweetnesses and Excellencies of Society thy Devotion in Prayer thy Conformity to God thy Zeal tempered with Meekness thy Patience heightned with Charity that Heart and Hands and Eyes and all my Faculties may grow up with the increase of God till I come to the full measure of the 〈◊〉 of Christ even to be a perfect man in Christ Jesus that at last in thy light I may see light and reap the fruits of Glory from the seeds of Sanctity in the 〈◊〉 of thy holy Life O Blessed and Holy Saviour Jesus Amen THE HISTORY OF THE Life and Death OF THE HOLY JESUS BEGINNING At the Annunciation to the Blessed Virgin MARY until his Baptism and Temptation inclusively WITH CONSIDERATIONS and DISCOURSES upon the several parts of the Story And PRAYERS fitted to the several MYSTERIES THE FIRST PART Qui sequitur me non ambulat in Tenebris LONDON Printed by R. Norton for R. Royston 1675. THE LIFE Of our Blessed Lord and Saviour JESUS CHRIST The Evangelical Prophet Behold a Virgin shall conceive beare a son and shall call his name Immanuel Isa 7 14. Mat 1 22 23 The Annunciation S. LUKE 1. 28 Haile thou that art highly favoured the Lord is with thee Blessed art thou among women SECT I. The History of the Conception of JESVS 1. WHen the fulness of time was come after the frequent repetition of Promises the expectation of the Jewish Nation the longings and tedious waitings of all holy persons the departure of the
but make it the more prudent and wary lest it intangle us in a vanity of spirit God having ordered that our spirits should be affected with dispositions in some degrees contrary to exteriour events that we be fearful in the affluence of prosperous things and joyful in adversity as knowing that this may produce benefit and advantage and the changes that are consequent to the other are sometimes full of mischiefs but always of danger But her Silence and Fear were her Guardians that to prevent excrescencies of Joy this of vainer complacency 9. And it is not altogether inconsiderable to observe that the holy Virgin came to a great perfection and state of Piety by a few and those modest and even exercises and external actions S. Paul travelled over the World preached to the Gentiles disputed against the Jews confounded Hereticks writ excellently-learned Letters suffered dangers injuries affronts and persecutions to the height of wonder and by these violences of life action and patience obtained the Crown of an excellent Religion and Devotion But the holy Virgin although she was ingaged sometimes in an active life and in the exercise of an ordinary and small oeconomy and government or ministeries of a Family yet she arrived to her Perfections by the means of a quiet and silent Piety the internal actions of Love Devotion and Contemplation and instructs us that not only those who have opportunity and powers of a magnificent Religion or a pompous Charity or miraculous Conversion of Souls or assiduous and effectual Preachings or exteriour demonstrations of corporal Mercy shall have the greatest crowns and the addition of degrees and accidental rewards but the silent affections the splendors of an internal Devotion the unions of Love Humility and Obedience the daily offices of Prayer and Praises sung to God the acts of Faith and Fear of Patience and Meekness of Hope and Reverence Repentance and Charity and those Graces which walk in a veil and silence make great ascents to God and as sure progress to favour and a Crown as the more ostentous and laborious exercises of a more solemn Religion No 〈◊〉 needs to complain of want of power or opportunities for Religious perfections a devout woman in her Closet praying with much zeal and affections for the conversion of Souls is in the same order to a shining like the stars in glory as he who by excellent discourses puts it into a more forward disposition to be actually performed And possibly her Prayers obtained energy and force to my Sermon and made the ground fruitful and the seed spring up to life eternal Many times God is present in the still voice and private retirements of a quiet Religion and the constant spiritualities of an ordinary life when the loud and impetuous winds and the shining fires of more laborious and expensive actions are profitable to others only like a tree of Balsam distilling precious liquor for others not for its own use The PRAYER O Eternal and Almighty God who didst send thy holy Angel in embassy to the Blessed Virgin-Mother of our Lord to manifest the actuating 〈◊〉 eternal Purpose of the 〈◊〉 of Mankind by the Incarnation of thine eternal Son put me by the 〈◊〉 of thy Divine Grace into such holy dispositions that I may never impede the event and effect of those mercies which in the counsels of thy Predestination thou didst design for me Give me a promptness to obey thee to the degree and semblance of Angelical alacrity give me holy Purity and Piety Prudence and Modesty like those Excellencies which thou didst create in the ever-blessed Virgin the Mother of God grant that my imployment be always holy unmixt with worldly affections and as much as my condition of life will bear retired from secular interests and disturbances that I may converse with Angels entertain the Holy JESUS conceive him in my Soul nourish him with the expresses of most innocent and holy affections and bring him forth and publish him in a life of Piety and Obedience that he may dwell in me for ever and I may for ever dwell with him in the house of eternal pleasures and glories world without end Amen SECT II. The Bearing of JESUS in the Womb of the Blessed Virgin MARY visiting ELIZABETH S. LUKE 1. 43. And whence is this to me that y e Mother of my LORD should come to me Josephs Dreame S MAT 1. 20. Joseph thou son of David Feare not to 〈◊〉 unto thee Marâ—â— thy wife for that 〈◊〉 is conceived in her is of the Holy 〈◊〉 1. ALthough the Blessed Virgin had a faith as prompt and ready as her Body was chast and her Soul pure yet God who uses to give full measure shaken together and running over did by way of confirmation and fixing the confidence of her assent give an instance of his Omnipotency in the very particular of an extraordinary Conception For the Angel said Behold thy Cousin Elizabeth hath also conceived a son in her old age and this is the sixth month with her that was called barren For with God nothing shall be impossible A less argument would have satisfied the necessity of a Faith which had no scruple and a greater would not have done it in the incredulity of an ungentle and pertinacious spirit But the Holy Maid had complacency enough in the Message and holy desires about her to carry her understanding as far as her affections even to the fruition of the Angel's Message which is such a sublimity of Faith that it is its utmost consummation and shall be its Crown when our Faith is turned into Vision our Hopes into actual Possessions and our Grace into Glory 2. And she who was now full of God bearing God in her Virgin-Womb and the Holy Spirit in her Heart who had also over-shadowed her enabling her to a supernatural and miraculous Conception arose with haste and gladness to communicate that joy which was designed for all the World and she found no breast to pour forth the first emanations of her over-joyed heart so fit as her Cousin Elizabeth's who had received testimony from God to have been righteous walking in all the Commandments of the Lord blameless who also had a special portion in this great honour for she was designed to be the Mother of the Baptist who was sent as a fore-runner to prepare the ways of the Lord and to make his paths straight And Mary arose in those days and went into the Hill-countrey with haste into a City of Judah 3. Her Haste was in proportion to her Joy and desires but yet went no greater pace than her Religion for as in her journey she came near to Jerusalem she turned in that she might visit His Temple whose Temple she her self was now and there not only to remember the pleasures of Religion which she had felt in continual descents and showers falling on her pious heart for the space of eleven years attendance there in her Childhood but also to pay the
sweetnesses which represent the glory of the reward by the Antepasts and refreshments dispensed even in the ruggedness of the way and incommodities of the journey All other delights are the pleasures of Beasts or the sports of Children these are the Antepasts and preventions of the full Feasts and overflowings of Eternity 10. When they came to Bethlehem and the Star pointed them to a Stable they entred in and being enlightned with a Divine Ray proceeding from the face of the Holy Child and seeing through the cloud and passing through the scandal of his mean Lodging and poor condition they bowed themselves to the earth first giving themselves an Oblation to this great King then they made offering of their Gifts for a man's person is first accepted then his Gift God first regarded Abel and then accepted his Offering which we are best taught to understand by the present instance for it means no more but that all outward Services and Oblations are made acceptable by the prior presentation of an inward Sacrifice If we have first presented our selves then our Gift is pleasant as coming but to express the truth of the first Sacrifice but if our Persons be not first made a Holocaust to God the lesser Oblations of outward Presents are like Sacrifices without Salt and Fire nothing to make them pleasant or religious For all other sences of this Proposition charge upon God the distinguishing and acceptation of Persons against which he solemnly protests God regards no man's Person but according to the doing of his Duty but then God is said first to accept the Person and then the Gist when the Person is first sanctified and given to God by the vows and habits of a holy life and then all the actions of his Religion are homogeneal to their principle and accepted by the acceptation of the man 11. These Magi presented to the Holy Babe Gold Frankincense and Myrrh protesting their Faith of three Articles by the symbolical Oblation By Gold that he was a King by Incense that he was a God by Myrrh that he was a Man And the Presents also were representative of interiour Vertues the Myrrh signifying Faith Mortification Chastity Compunction and all the actions of the Purgative way of Spiritual life the Incense signifying Hope Prayer Obedience good Intention and all the actions and Devotions of the Illuminative the giving the Gold representing Love to God and our Neighbours the Contempt of riches Poverty of spirit and all the eminencies and spiritual riches of the Unitive life And these Oblations if we present to the Holy Jesus both our Persons and our Gifts shall be accepted our Sins shall be purged our Understandings enlightned and our Wills united to this Holy Child and entitled to a communion of all his Glories 12. And thus in one view and two Instances God hath drawn all the world to himself by his Son Jesus in the Instance of the Shepherds and the Arabian Magi Jews and Gentiles Learned and Unlearned Rich and Poor Noble and Ignoble that in him all Nations and all Conditions and all Families and all persons might be blessed having called all by one Star or other by natural Reason or by the secrets of Philosophy by the Revelations of the Gospel or by the ministery of Angels by the Illuminations of the Spirit or by the Sermons and Dictates of spiritual Fathers and hath consigned this Lesson to us That we must never appear before the Lord empty offering Gifts to him by the expences or by the affections of Charity either the worshipping or the oblations of Religion either the riches of the World or the love of the Soul for if we cannot bring Gold with the rich Arabians we may with the poor Shepherds come and kiss the Son lest he be angry and in all cases come and serve him with fear and reverence and spiritual rejoycings The PRAYER MOst Holy Jesu Thou art the Glory of thy people Israel and a light to the Gentiles and wert pleased to call the Gentiles to the adoration and knowledge of thy sacred Person and Laws communicating the inestimable riches of thy holy Discipline to all with an universal undistinguishing Love give unto us spirits docible pious prudent and ductile that no motion or invitation of Grace be ineffectual but may produce excellent effects upon us and the secret whispers of thy Spirit may prevail upon our Affections in order to Piety and Obedience as certainly as the loudest and most clamorous Sermons of the Gospel Create in us such Excellencies as are fit to be presented to thy glorious Majesty accept of the Oblation of my self and my entire services but be thou pleased to verifie my Offering and secure the possession to thy self that the enemy may not pollute the Sacrifice or divide the Gift or question the Title but that I may be wholly thine and for ever clarifie my Understanding sanctifie my Will replenish my Memory with arguments of Piety then shall I present to thee an Oblation rich and precious as the treble gift of the Levantine Princes Lord I am thine reject me not from thy favour exclude me not from thy presence then shall I serve thee all the days of my life and partake of the glories of thy Kingdom in which thou reignest gloriously and eternally Amen SECT V. Of the Circumcision of JESUS and his Presentation in the Temple The Circumcision of Iesus S. LUKE 2. 21. And when eight daies were accomphshed for the circumcising of the Child his name was called Iesus which was so named of the angel before he was conceived in the Wombe The Purification and Presentation S. LUKE 2. 22. And when the dayes of her purification were accomplished they brought him to Ierusalem to present him to the Lord. 1. AND now the Blessed Saviour of the World began to do the work of his Mission and our Redemption and because Man had prevaricated all the Divine Commandments to which all humane nature respectively to the persons of several capacities was obliged and therefore the whole Nature was obnoxious to the just rewards of its demerits first Christ was to put that Nature he had assumed into a saveable condition by fulfilling his Father's preceptive will and then to reconcile it actually by suffering the just deservings of its Prevarications He therefore addresses himself to all the parts of an active Obedience and when eight days were accomplished for the circumcising of the Child he exposed his tender body to the sharpness of the circumcising stone and shed his bloud in drops giving an earnest of those rivers which he did afterwards pour out for the cleansing all Humane nature and extinguishing the wrath of God 2. He that had no sin nor was conceived by natural generation could have no adherences to his Soul or Body which needed to be pared away by a Rite and cleansed by a Mystery neither indeed do we find it expressed that Circumcision was ordained for abolition or pardon of original sin it
affections and with the pleasures and entertainments of desires is the way of the more passionate and imperfect not in a man's power to chuse or to procure but comes by a thousand chances meeting with a soft nature credulous or weak easie or ignorant softned with fears or invited by forward desires 9. Those that did live amidst the fervours of the primitive Charity and were warmed by their fires grew inflamed by contact and vicinity to such burning and shining lights And they therefore grew to high degrees of Piety because then every man made judgment of his own actions by the proportions which he saw before him and believed all descents from those greater examples to be so many degrees from the Rule And he that lives in a College of devout persons will compare his own actions with the Devotion and customes of that Society and not with the remisness of persons he hears of in story but what he sees and lives with But if we live in an Age of Indevotion we think our selves well assoiled if we be warmer than their Ice every thing which is above our example being eminent and conspicuous though it be but like the light of a Gloworm or the sparkling of a Diamond yet if it be in the midst of darkness it is a goodly beauty This I call the way of serving God by desires and affections and this is altered by example by publick manners by external works by the assignment of 〈◊〉 by designation of conventions for prayer by periods and revolutions of times of duty by hours and solemnities so that a man shall owe his Piety to these chances which although they are graces of God and instruments of Devotion yet they are not always in our power and therefore they are but accidental ministeries of a good life and the 〈◊〉 constant or durable But when the principle of our Piety is a conformity of our Understanding to God's Laws when we are instructed what to do and therefore do it because we are satisfied it is most excellent to obey God this will support our Piety against objections lead it on in despight of disadvantages this chuses God with Reason and is not determined from without and as it is in some degree necessary for all times so it is the greatest security against the change of Laws and Princes and Religions and Ages when all the incentives of affection and exteriour determinations of our Piety shall cease and perhaps all external offices and the daily sacrifice and Piety it self shall fail from the face of the Land then the obedience founded in the Understanding is the only lasting strength is left us to make retreat to and to secure our conditions Thus from the composition of the Will and Affections with our exteriour acts of obedience to God our Obedience is made willing swift and chearful but from the composition of the Understanding our Obedience becomes strong sincere and persevering and this is that which S. Paul calls our reasonable service 10. Fourthly To which if we add that our Obedience be universal we have all the qualifications which make the duty to be pious and prudent The meaning is that we obey God in all his Sanctions though the matter be in common account small and inconsiderable and give no indulgence to our selves to recede from the Rule in any matter whatsoever For the veriest minute of Obedience is worth our attention as being by God esteemed the trial of our Obedience in a greater affair He that is unjust in a little will be unjust in a greater said our Blessed Saviour And since to God all matter is alike and no more accrues to him in an Hecatomb than in a piece of gumm in an Ascetick severity than in a secular life God regards not the matter of a precept but the Obedience which in all instances is the same and he that will prevaricate when the matter is 〈◊〉 and by consequence the temptations to it weak and impotent and soon confuted will think he may better be excused when the temptations are violent and importunate as it commonly happens in affairs of greater importance He that will lie to save sixpence will not stick at it when a thousand pound is the purchase and possibly there is more contempt and despite done to the Divine authority when we disobey it in such particulars wherein the Obedience is most easie and the temptations less troublesome I do not say there is more injustice or more malice in a small Disobedience than in a greater but there is either more contempt or more negligence and dissolution of discipline than in the other 11. And it is no small temptation of the Devil soliciting of us not to be curious of scruples and grains nor to disturb our peace for lighter Disobediences persuading us that something must be indulged to publick manners something to the civilities of society something to nature and to the approaches of our passions and the motions of our first desires but that we be not over-righteous And true it is that sometimes such surreptions and smaller undecencies are therefore pardoned and lessened almost to a nullity because they dwell in the confines of things lawful and honest and are not so notorious as to be separated from permissions by any publick certain and universal cognisance and therefore may pass upon a good man sometimes without observation But it is a temptation when we think of neglecting them by a predetermined incuriousness upon pretence they are small But this must be reduced to more regular Conclusions 12. First Although smaller Disobediences expressed in slight mis-becoming actions when they come by surprise and sudden invasion are through the mercies of God dashed in the very approach their bills of accusation are thrown out and they are not esteemed as competent instruments of separation from God's love yet when a smaller sin comes by design and is acted with knowledge and deliberation for then it is properly an act of Disobedience Malitia supplet defectum aetatis The malice of the agent heightens the smalness of the act and makes up the iniquity To drink liberally once and something more freely than the strict rules of Christian sobriety and temperance permit is pardoned the easier when without deliberation and by surprise the person was abused who intended not to transgress a minute but by little and little was mistaken in his proportions but if a man by design shall estimate his draughts and his good fellowship and shall resolve upon a little intemperance thinking because it is not very much it is therefore none at all that man hath mistaken himself into a crime and although a little wound upon the finger is very curable yet the smallest prick upon the heart is mortal So is a design and purpose of the smallest Disobedience in its formality as malicious and destructive as in its matter it was pardonable and excusable 13. Secondly Although every lesser Disobedience when it comes singly
who have acted Madness and pretended Inspirations and when these are destitute of a Prophetick spirit if they resolve to serve themselves upon the pretences of it they are disposed to the imitation if not to the sufferings of Madness and it would be a great folly to call such Dei plenos full of God who are no better than phantastick and mad People 23. This we are sure of that many Illusions have come in the likeness of Visions and absurd fancies under the pretence of Raptures and what some have called the spirit of Prophecy hath been the spirit of Lying and Contemplation hath been nothing but Melancholy and unnatural lengths and stilness of Prayer hath been a mere Dream and hypochondriacal devotion and hath ended in pride or despair or some sottish and dangerous temptation It is reported of Heron the Monk that having lived a retired mortified and religious life for many years together at last he came to that habit of austerity or singularity that he refused the festival refection and freer meals of Easter and other Solemnities that he might do more eminently than the rest and spend his time in greater abstractions and contemplations but the Devil taking advantage of the weakness of his melancholick and unsettled spirit gave him a transportation and an ecstasie in which he fansied himself to have attained so great perfection that he was as dear to God as a crowned Martyr and Angels would be his security for indemnity though he threw himself to the bottome of a Well He obeyed his fancy and temptation did so bruised himself to death and died possessed with a persuasion of the verity of that Ecstasie and transportation 24. I will not say that all violences and extravagancies of a religious fancy are Illusions but I say that they are all unnatural not hallowed by the warrant of a Revelation nothing reasonable nothing secure I am not sure that they ever consist with Humility but it is confessed that they are often produced by Self-love Arrogancy and the great opinion others have of us I will not judge the condition of those persons who are said to have suffered these extraordinaries for I know not the circumstances or causes or attendants or the effects or whether the stories be true that make report of them but I shall onely advise that we follow the intimation of our Blessed Saviour that we sit down in the lowest place till the Master of the Feast comes and bids us sit up higher If we entertain the inward Man in the purgative and illuminative way that is in actions of Repentance Vertue and precise Duty that is the surest way of uniting us to God whilest it is done by Faith and Obedience and that also is Love and in these peace and safety dwell And after we have done our work it is not discretion in a servant to hasten to his meal and snatch at the refreshment of Visions Unions and Abstractions but first we must gird our selves and wait upon the Master and not sit down our selves till we all be called at the great Supper of the Lamb. 25. It was therefore an excellent desire of St. Bernard who was as likely as any to have such altitudes of Speculation if God had really dispensed them to persons holy phantastick and Religious I pray God grant to me peace of spirit joy in the 〈◊〉 Ghost to compassionate others in the midst of my mirth to be charitable in simplicity to rejoyce with them that rejoyce and to mourn with them that mourn and with these I shall be content other Exaltations of Devotion I leave to Apostles and Apostolick men the high Hills are for the Harts and the climbing Goats the stony Rocks and the recesses of the earth for the Conies It is more healthful and nutritive to dig the earth and to eat of her fruits than to stare upon the greatest glories of the Heavens and live upon the beams of the Sun so unsatisfying a thing is Rapture and transportation to the Soul it often distracts the Faculties but seldome does advantage 〈◊〉 and is full of danger in the greatest of its lustre If ever a man be more in love with God by such instruments or more indeared to Vertue or made more severe and watchful in his Repentance it is an excellent grace and gift of God but then this is nothing but the joys and comfort of ordinary Meditation those extraordinary as they have no sense in them so are not pretended to be instruments of Vertue but are like Jonathan's arrows shot beyond it to signifie the danger the man is in towards whom such arrows are shot but if the person be made unquiet unconstant proud pusillanimous of high opinion pertinacious and confident in uncertain judgments or desperate it is certain they are temptations and illusions so that as all our duty consists in the ways of Repentance and acquist of Vertue so there rests all our safety and by consequence all our solid joys and this is the effect of ordinary pious and regular Meditations 26. If I mistake not there is a temptation like this under another name amongst persons whose Religion hath less discourse and more fancy and that is a Familiarity with God which indeed if it were rightly understood is an affection consequent to the Illuminative way that is an act or an effect of the vertue of Religion and Devotion which consists in Prayers and addresses to God Lauds and Eucharists and Hymns and confidence of coming to the throne of Grace upon assurance of God's veracity and goodness infinite so that Familiarity with God which is an affection of Friendship is the entercourse of giving and receiving blessings and graces respectively and it is produced by a holy life or the being in the state of Grace and is part of every man's inheritance that is a friend of God But when familiarity with God shall be esteemed a privilege of singular and eminent persons not communicated to all the faithful and is thought to be an admission to a nearer entercourse of secrecy with God it is an effect of Pride and a mistake in judgment concerning the very same thing which the old Divines call the Unitive way if themselves that claim it understood the terms of art and the consequents of their own intentions 27. Onely I shall observe one Circumstance That Familiarity with God is nothing else but an admission to be of God's Family the admission of a servant or a son in minority and implies Obedience Duty and Fear on our parts Care and Providence and Love on God's part And it is not the familiarity of Sons but the impudence of proud Equals to express this pretended privilege in 〈◊〉 unmannerly and unreverent addresses and discourses and it is a sure rule that whatsoever heights of Piety union or familiarity any man pretends to it is of the Devil unless the greater the pretence be the greater also be the Humility of the man The highest flames are the most
Ecclesiastical stories do frequently mention S. Lewis King of France wore Sack-cloth every day unless sickness hindred and S. Zenobius as long as he was a Bishop And when Severus Sulpitius sent a Sack-cloth to S. Panlinus Bishop of Nola he returned to him a letter of thanks and discoursed piously concerning the use of corporal Austerities And that I need not instance it was so general that this was by way of appropriation called the Garment of the Church because of the frequent use of such instruments of exteriour 〈◊〉 and so it was in other instances S. James neither are flesh nor drank wine S. Matthew lived upon acorns seeds and herbs and amongst the elder Christians some rolled themselves naked in snows some upon thorns some on burning coals some chewed bitter pills and masticated gumms and sipped frequently of horrid potions and wore iron upon their skin and bolts upon their legs and in witty torments excelled the cruelty of many of their persecutors whose rage determined quickly in death and had certainly less of torment than the tedious afflictions and rude penances of Simeon surnamed Stylites But as all great examples have excellencies above the ordinary Devotions of good people so have they some danger and much consideration 17. First therefore I consider that these Bodily and voluntary self 〈◊〉 can only be of use in carnal and natural Temptations of no use in spiritual for ascetick diet hard lodging and severe disciplines cannot be directly operative upon the spirit but only by mediation of the Body by abating its extravagancies by subtracting its maintenance by lessening its temptations these may help to preserve the Soul chaste or temperate because the scene of these sins lies in the Body and thence they have their maintenance and from thence also may receive their abatements But in actions which are less material such as Pride and Envy and Blasphemy and Impenitence and all the kinds and degrees of Malice external Mortifications do so little cooperate to their cure that oftentimes they are their greatest 〈◊〉 and incentives and are like Cordials given to cure a cold fit of an Ague they do their work but bring a hot fit in its place and besides that great Mortifiers have been soonest assaulted by the spirit of Pride we find that great Fasters are naturally angry and cholerick S. Hierom found it in himself and 〈◊〉 felt some of the effects of it And therefore this last part of corporal Mortification and the chusing such Afflictions by a voluntary imposition is at no hand to be applied in all cases but in cases of Lust only and Intemperance or natural Impatience or such crimes which dwell in the Senses and then it also would be considered whether or no rudeness to the Body applied for the obtaining Patience be not a direct temptation to Impatience a provoking the spirit and a running into that whither we pray that God would not suffer us to be led Possibly such Austerities if applied with great caution and wise circumstances may be an exercise of Patience when the Grace is by other means acquired and he that finds them so may use them if he dares trust himself but as they are dangerous before the Grace is obtained so when it is they are not necessary And still it may be enquired in the case of temptations to Lust whether any such Austerities which can consist with health will do the work So long as the Body is in health it will do its offices of nature if it is not in health it cannot do all offices of Grace nor many of our Calling And therefore although they may do some advantages to persons tempted with the lowest sins yet they will not do it all nor do it alone nor are they safe to all dispositions and where they are useful to these smaller and lower purposes yet we must be careful to observe that the Mortification of the spirit to the greatest and most perfect purposes is to be set upon by means spiritual and of immediate efficacy for they are the lowest operations of the Soul which are moved and produced by actions corporal the Soul may from those become lustful or chast chearful or sad timorous or confident but yet even in these the Soul receives but some dispositions thence and more forward inclinations but nothing from the Body can be operative in the begetting or increase of Charity or the Love of God or Devotion or in mortifying spiritual and 〈◊〉 Vices and therefore those greater perfections and heights of the Soul such as are designed in this highest degree of 〈◊〉 are not apt to be enkindled by corporal Austerities And Nigrinus in Lucian finds sault with those Philosophers who thought Vertue was to be purchased by cutting the skin with whips binding the nerves razing the 〈◊〉 with iron but he taught that 〈◊〉 is to be placed in the Mind by actions internal and immaterial and that from thence remedies are to be derived against perturbations and actions criminal And this is determined by the Apostle in fairest intimation Mortifie therefore your carthly members and he instances in carnal crimes fornication uncleanness inordinate affection evil concupiscence and covetousness which are things may be something abated by corporal Mortifications and that these are by distinct manner to be helped from other more spiritual Vices he adds But now therefore put off all these anger wrath malice blasphemy filthy communication and lying To both these sorts of sins Mortification being the general remedy particular applications are to be made and it must be only spiritual or also corporal in proportion to the nature of the sins he seems to distinguish the remedy by separation of the nature of the crimes and possibly also by the differing words of 〈◊〉 applied to carnal sins and put 〈◊〉 to crimes spiritual 18. Secondly But in the lesser degrees of Mortification in order to subduing of all Passions of the Sensitive appetite and the consequent and symbolical sins bodily Austerities are of good use if well understood and prudently undertaken To which purpose I also consider No acts of corporal Austerity or external Religion are of themselves to be esteemed holy or acceptable to God are no-where precisely commanded no instruments of union with Christ no immediate parts of Divine worship and therefore to suffer corporal Austerities with thoughts determining upon the external action or imaginations of Sanctity inherent in the action is against the purity the spirituality and simplicity of the Gospel And this is the meaning of S. Paul It is a good thing that the heart be established with Grace not with meats which have not profited them which have walked in them and The kingdom of God consists not in meat and drink but in righteousness and peace and joy in the holy Ghost and Bodily exercise profiteth little but Godliness is profitable unto all things Now if external Mortifications are not for themselves then they
the advantage of his sufferings and compassion And we may observe that Poverty Predestination and Ambition are the three quivers from which the Devil drew his arrows which as the most likely to prevail he shot against Christ but now he shot in vain and gave probation that he might be overcome our Captain hath conquered for himself and us By these instances we see our danger and how we are provided of a remedy The PRAYER O Holy Jesus who didst fulfil all Righteousness and didst live a life of evenness and obedience and community submitting thy self to all Rites and Sanctions of Divine ordinance give me grace to live in the fellowship of thy holy Church a life of Piety and without singularity receiving the sweet influence of thy Sacraments and Rites and living in the purities and innocencies of my first Sanctification I adore thy goodness infinite that thou hast been pleased to wash my Soul in the Laver of Regeneration that thou hast consigned me to the participation of thy favours by the holy 〈◊〉 Let me not return to the infirmities of the Old Man whom thou hast crucified on thy Cross and who was buried with thee in Baptism nor 〈◊〉 the crimes of my sinsul years which were so many recessions from 〈◊〉 purities but let me ever receive the emissions of thy Divine Spirit and be a Son of God a partner of thine immortal inheritance and when thou seest it needful I may receive testimony from Heaven that I am thy servant and thy child And grant that I may so walk that I neither disrepute the honour of the Christian Institution nor stain the whitenesses of that Innocence which thou didst invest my Soul withall when I put on the Baptismal Robe nor break my holy Vow nor lose my right of inheritance which thou hast given me by promise and grace but that thou mayest love me with the love of a Father and a Brother and a Husband and a Lord and I serve thee in the communion of Saints in the susception of Sacraments in the actions of a holy life and in a never-failing love or uninterrupted Devotion to the glory of thy Name and the promotion of all those Ends of Religion which thou hast designed in the excellent Oeconomy of Christianity Grant this Holy Jesus for thy mercie 's sake and for the honour of thy Name which is and shall be adored for ever and ever Amen DISCOURSE V. Of Temptation 1. GOD who is the Fountain of good did chuse rather to bring good out of evil than not to suffer any evil to be not only because variety of accidents and natures do better entertain our affections and move our spirits who are transported and suffer great impressions by a circumstance by the very opposition and accidental lustre and eminency of contraries but also that the glory of the Divine Providence in turning the nature of things into the designs of God might be illustrious and that we may in a mixt condition have more observation and after our danger and our labour may obtain a greater reward for Temptation is the opportunity of Vertue and a Crown God having disposed us in such a condition that our Vertues must be difficult our inclinations 〈◊〉 and corrigible our avocations many our hostilities bitter our dangers proportionable that our labour might be great our inclinations suppressed and corrected our intentions be made actual our enemies be resisted and our dangers pass into security and honour after a contestation and a victory and a perseverance It is every man's case Trouble is as certainly the lot of our nature and inheritance and we are so sure to be tempted that in the deepest peace and silence of spirit oftentimes is our greatest danger not to be tempted is sometimes our most subtle Temptation It is certain then we cannot be secure when our Security is our enemy but therefore we must do as God himself does make the best of it and not be sad at that which is the publick portion and the case of all men but order it according to the intention place it in the eye of vertue that all its actions and motions may tend thither there to be changed into felicities But certain it is unless we first be cut and hewen in the mountains we shall not be fixed in the Temple of God but by incision and contusions our roughnesses may become plain or our sparks kindled and we may be either for the Temple or the Altar spiritual building or holy fire something that God shall delight in and then the Temptation was not amiss 2. And therefore we must not wonder that oftentimes it so happens that nothing will remove a Temptation no diligence no advices no labour no prayers not because these are ineffectual but because it is most fit the Temptation should abide for ends of God's designing and although S. Paul was a person whose prayers were likely to be prevalent and his industry of much prudence and efficacy toward the drawing out of his thorn yet God would not do it but continued his war only promising to send him succour My grace is sufficient for thee meaning he should have an enemy to try his spirit and improve it and he should also have God's grace to comfort and support it but as without God's grace the Enemy would spoil him so without an Enemy God's grace would never swell up into glory and crown him For the caresses of a pleasant Fortune are apt to swell into extravagancies of spirit and burst into the dissolution of manners and unmixt Joy is dangerous but if in our fairest Flowers we spie a Locust or feel the uneasiness of a Sackcloth under our fine Linen or our Purple be tied with an uneven and a rude Cord any little trouble but to correct our wildnesses though it be but a Death's-head served up at our Feasts it will make our Tables fuller of health and freer from snare it will allay our spirits making them to retire from the weakness of dispersion to the union and strength of a sober recollection 3. Since therefore it is no part of our imployment or our care to be free from all the attempts of an enemy but to be safe in despite of his hostility it now will concern us to inform our selves of the state of the War in general and then to make provisions and to put on Armour accordingly 4. First S. 〈◊〉 often observes and makes much of the discourse that the Devil when he intends a Battery first views the Strengths and Situation of the place His sence drawn out of the cloud of an Allegory is this The Devil first considers the Constitution and temper of the person he is to tempt and where he observes his natural inclination apt for a Vice he presents him with objects and opportunity and arguments 〈◊〉 to his caitive disposition from which he is likely to receive the smaller opposition since there is a party within that desires his
intromission Thus to Lustful natures he represents the softer 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the 〈◊〉 of Fornication to the Angry and revengeful he offers to consideration the satisfactions and content of a full Revenge and the emissions of anger to the Envious he makes Panegyricks of our Rivals and swells our fancies to opinion our opinion to self-love self-love to arrogance and these are supported by contempt of others and all determine upon Envy and expire in Malice Now in these cases when our natures are caitive and unhandsome it were good we were conscious of our own weaknesses and by special arts and strengths of Mortification fortifie that part where we are apt and exposed to danger we are sure enough to meet a Storm there and we also are likely to perish in it unless we correct those a versenesses and natural indispositions and reduce them to the evennesses of Vertue or the affections and moderation of a good nature Let us be sure that the Devil take not a helve from our own branches to 〈◊〉 his axe that so he may cut the tree down and certainly he that does violence to his nature will not be easie to the entertainment of affections preternatural and violent 5. Secondly But the Devil also observes all our exteriour Accidents Occasions and Opportunities of action he sees what Company we keep he observes what degrees of love we have to our Wives what looseness of affection towards Children how prevalent their perswasions how inconvenient their discourses how trifling their interests and to what degrees of determination they move us by their importunity or their power The Devil tempted Adam by his Wife because he saw his affections too pliant and encirling her with the entertainment of fondness joy wonder and amorous fancy It was her hand that made the fruit beauteous to Adam She saw it 〈◊〉 of it self and so she ate but Adam was not moved by that argument but The Woman gave it me and I did eat she gave vivacity to the Temptation and efficacy to the argument And the severity of the Man's understanding would have given a reasonable answer to the 〈◊〉 of the Serpent That was an ugly Beast and his arguments not being of themselves convincing to a wise person either must put on advantages of a fair insinuation and representment or they are returned with scorn But when the 〈◊〉 hands of his young Virgin Mistriss became the Orators the Temptation was an amorevolezza he kisses the presenter and hugs the ruine Here therefore it is our safest course to make a retrenchment of all those excrescences of Affections which like wild and irregular Suckers draw away nourishment from the Trunk making it as sterile as it self is unprofitable As we must restrain the inclinations of Nature so also of Society and Relation when they become inconvenient and let nothing of our Family be so adopted or naturalized into our affections as to create within us a new concupiscence and a second time spoil our nature What God intended to us for a Help let not our fondnesses convert into a Snare and he that is not ready to deny the importunities and to reject the interests of a Wife or Child or Friend when the question is for God deserves to miss the comforts of a good and to feel the troubles of an imperious woman 6. Thirdly We also have Ends and designs of our own some great purpose upon which the greatest part of our life turns it may be we are to raise a Family to recover a sunk Estate or else Ambition Honour or a great Imployment is the great hindge of all our greater actions and some men are apt to make haste to be rich or are to pass through a great many difficulties to be honourable and here the Devil will swell the hopes and obstruct the passages he will heighten the desire and multiply the business of access making the concupiscence more impatient and yet the way to the purchase of our purposes so full of imployment and variety that both the implacable desire and the multitude of changes and transactions may increase the danger and multiply the sin When the Enemy hath observed our Ends he makes his Temptations to reflect from that angle which is direct upon them provoking to malice and impatience against whomsoever we find standing in our way whether willingly or by accident then follow naturally all those sins which are instrumental to removing the impediments to facilitating the passage to endearing our friends to procuring more confidents to securing our hopes and entring upon possession Simon Magus had a desire to be accounted some great one and by that purpose he was tempted to Sorcery and Divination and with a new object he brought a new sin into the world adding Simony to his Sorcery and taught posterity that crime which till then had neither name nor being And those Ecclesiasticks who violently affect rich or pompous Prelacies pollute themselves with worldly Arts growing covetous as Syrian Merchants ambitious as the Levantine Princes factious as the people revengeful as 〈◊〉 and proud as Conquerors and Usurpers and by this means Beasts are brought into the Temple and the Temple it self is exposed to sale and the holy Rites as well as the beasts of Sacrifice are made venial To prevent the 〈◊〉 inconveniencies that thrust themselves into the common and great roads of our life the best course is to cut our great Chanel into little Rivulets making our Ends the more that we may be indifferent to any proposing nothing great that our desires may be little for so we shall be better able to digest the troubles of an Enemy the contradictions of an unhandsome accident the crossing of our hopes because our desires are even and our ends are less considerable and we can with much readiness divert upon another purpose having another ready with the 〈◊〉 proportion to our hopes and desires as the 〈◊〉 Thus 〈◊〉 we propound to our selves an honest imployment or a quiet retirement a work of Charity abroad or of Devotion at home if we miss in our first setting sorth we return to shoar where we can 〈◊〉 with content it being alike to us either to 〈◊〉 abroad with more gain or trade at home with more 〈◊〉 But when we once grow great in our desires fixing too earnestly upon one object we either grow 〈◊〉 as Rachel Give me children or I die or take ill courses and use 〈◊〉 means as Thamar chusing rather to lie with her Father than to die without issue or else are 〈◊〉 in the loss and frustration of our hopes like the Women of Ramah who would 〈◊〉 be comforted Let therefore our life be moderate our desires reasonable our hopes little our Ends none in eminency and 〈◊〉 above others for as the rays of Light passing through the thin air end in a small and undiscerned Pyramis but 〈◊〉 upon a wall are doubled and increase the warmth to a scorching and troublesome heat so the desires of
too apt to dash upon this rock of offence But the evil that I would note is that there are some conditions of men to whom a Vice is so accustomed that he that 〈◊〉 with them must handle the crime and touch the venome There are some Vices which are National there are some that are points of Honour some are Civilities of entertainment and they are therefore accounted unavoidable because the understandings of men are degenerous as their manners and it is accounted sottish and 〈◊〉 not to 〈◊〉 in their accustomed loosenesses Amongst some men all their first addresses are 〈◊〉 their entertainments intemperate beyond the permissions of Christian austerity their drink is humorous and their humours quarrellous and it is dishonourable not to engage in Duel and venture your Soul to 〈◊〉 an empty Reputation These inconveniences 〈◊〉 upon false opinions and vain fancies having no greater foundation than the sottish discourses of ignorant and 〈◊〉 persons and they have no peculiar and appropriate remedy but a 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of manners and a consideration what is required of us as Christians to 〈◊〉 against 〈◊〉 fonder customs and expectations from us as we engage in the puddles of the world and are blended in society 17. To which purposes we must be careful not to engage too freely in looser company never without business or unavoidable accidents and when we mingle in affairs it will concern our safety to watch lest multitude of talk 〈◊〉 and 〈◊〉 of nature the delight of company and the freedom and ill 〈◊〉 civilities do by degrees draw us away from our guards and 〈◊〉 of spirit For in these cases every degree of dissolution disarms us of our strengths and if we give way 〈◊〉 far as we think it tolerable we instantly and undiscernibly pass into unlawful and criminal But our best defences are deposited in a severe and prudent understanding and discerning the sottishness of such principles which represent Vice in civil 〈◊〉 and propound a crime to you under the cover of kindness which is just so much recompence as it is satisfaction to a condemned person that he was accused by a witty Oratour and sentenced by an eloquent Judge Remember always that the friendships of the world are enmity with God and that those Societies which are combined by relations of drink and wantonness and impertinency and crimes are either inconsiderable in civility or reason or reputation no wise man is moved by their testimony or discourses and they are so impotent rude and undiscerning a theatre that most commonly he is the best man who from thence is the worst reported and represented 18. But in all the instances of this great evil the very stating the question right is above half the victory For it is a question between mistaken Civility and certain Duty Piety on one side and the disguises of Humanity on the other God and Man are the parties interested and to counterpoise the influence of the sight and face of Man which being in a visible communication it is not in some natures to neglect or contradict there are all the Excellencies of God the effects of his Power his certain Presence and Omniscience the severities of his Judgment and the sweetness and invitation of his Mercies besides the prudence wisdom and satisfaction to the spirit when we wisely neglect such sottish and low abuses and temptations to conform to the rules of Reason and Duty in compliance with the purposes of God and our own 〈◊〉 19. Thirdly These ill-managed Principles are dangers as universal as an infected air yet there are some diseases more proper to the particular state of Religion First To young beginners in Religion he represents the Difficulties of Religion and propounds the greater Examples of holy persons and affrights them with those mountains of Piety observing where and upon what instance of Severity his fancy will be most apprehensive and 〈◊〉 and this he fails not often to represent with a purpose that by believing no Piety less than the greatest can be good he may despair of those heights and retire into the securities and indifferencies of a careless life But this is to be cured by all those instruments of Piety which in special are incentives of the love of God and endearments of spiritual and religious affections and particularly by consideration of the Divine goodness who knows whereof we are made and remembers that we are but dust and will require no more of us than according to our powers and present capacities But the subject matter of this Temptation is considered and refuted in the Discourse of the Love of God 20. But most commonly young beginners are zealous and high and not so easily tempted to a recession till after a long time by a revolution of affections they are abated by a defervescency in holy actions The Devil uses to prompt them on not that he loves the Piety and the progress but that he would engage the person in imprudences and such forwardness of expresses which either are in their own nature indiscretions or from which by reason of the incapacity of the person it is necessary for him to retire A new Convert is like a Bird newly entred into a Net through which possibly she might pass without danger if her fears and unreasonable strivings did not intangle her but when by busie and disturbed slutterings she discomposes the order of it she is intangled and unpenned and made a prey to her treacherous enemy Such are the undiscreet strivings and too 〈◊〉 enterprises of new Penitents whom we shall observe too often undertaking great Austerities making Vows and casting bands upon their liberty and snares upon their persons thinking nothing great enough to expiate their sin or to present to God or to endear their services or secure their perseverance and therefore they lay a load of fetters upon themselves or rather cut off their legs that they may never go back therefore laying an obligation of Vows and intolerable burthens on themselves that by these they may by a compendium of Piety redeem the time and by those make it impossible to prevaricate But the observation of the sad events and 〈◊〉 accidents of these men hath given probation of the indiscretion of such furious addresses and beginnings And it was prudently done of Mcletius of Antioch when he visited the Dioceses of Syria and the several Religious persons famous for severe undertakings espying that Simeon Stylites dwelt upon a Pillar and had bound his leg with a strong chain of iron he sent for a Smith causing it to be knocked off and said To 〈◊〉 man that loves God his Mind is a sufficient chain For the loads of voluntary Austerities rashly undertaken make Religion a burthen when their first heats expire and their Vows which are intended to secure the practice and perpetuate the Piety are but the occasions of an aggravate crime and the Vow does not secure the Piety but the weariness and satiety of the
which in a greater measure and upon more variety of rules the Governours of Churches are obliged But that which Christian Simplicity prohibits is the mixing arts and unhandsome means for the purchase of our ends witty counsels that are underminings of our neighbour destroying his just interest to serve our own stratagems to deceive infinite and insignificant answers with fraudulent design unjust and unlawful concealment of our purposes fallacious promises and false pretences flattery and unjust and unreasonable praise saying one thing and meaning the contrary pretending Religion to secular designs breaking faith taking false oaths and such other instruments of humane purposes framed by the Devil and sent into the world to be perfected by man Christian Simplicity speaks nothing but its thoughts and when it concerns Prudence that a thought or purpose should be concealed it concerns Simplicity that silence be its cover and not a false vizor it rather suffers inconvenience than a lie it destroys no man's right though it be inconsistent with my advantages it reproves freely palliates no man's wickedness it intends what it ought and does what is bidden and uses courses regular and just sneaks not in corners and walks always in the eye of God and the face of the world 7. Jesus told Nathanael that he knew him when he saw him under the Fig-tree and Nathanael took that to be probation sufficient that he was the 〈◊〉 and believed rightly upon an insufficient motive which because Jesus did accept it gives testimony to us that however Faith be produced by means regular or by arguments incompetent whether it be proved or not proved whether by chance or deliberation whether wisely or by occasion so that Faith be produced by the instrument and love by Faith God's work is done and so is ours For if S. Paul rejoyced that Christ was preached though by the 〈◊〉 of peevish persons certainly God will not reject an excellent product because it came from a weak and sickly parent and he that brings good out of evil and rejoyces in that good having first triumphed upon the evil will certainly take delight in the Faith of the most ignorant persons which his own grace hath produced out of innocent though insufficient beginnings It was folly in Naaman to refuse to be cured because he was to recover only by washing in Jordan The more incompetent the means is the greater is the glory of God who hath produced waters from a rock and fire from the collision of a sponge and wool and it is certain the end unless it be in products merely natural does not take its estimate and degrees from the external means Grace does miracles and the productions of the Spirit in respect of its instruments are equivocal extraordinary and supernatural and ignorant persons believe as strongly though they know not why and love God as 〈◊〉 as greater spirits and more excellent understandings and when God pleases or if he sees it expedient he will do to others as to Nathanael give them greater arguments and better instruments for the confirmation and heightning of their 〈◊〉 than they had for the first production 8. When Jesus had chosen these few Disciples to be witnesses of succeeding accidents every one of which was to be a probation of his mission and Divinity he entred into the theatre of the world at a Marriage-feast which he now first hallowed to a Sacramental signification and made to become mysterious he now began to chuse his Spouse out from the communities of the world and did mean to endear her by unions ineffable and glorious and consign the Sacrament by his bloud which he first gave in a secret 〈◊〉 and afterwards in 〈◊〉 and apparent effusion And although the Holy Jesus did in his own person consecrate Coelibate and Abstinence and Chastity in his Mother's yet by his 〈◊〉 he also hallowed Marriage and made it honourable not only in civil account and the rites of Heraldry but in a spiritual sence he having new sublim'd it by making it a Sacramental representment of the union of Christ and his 〈◊〉 the Church And all married persons should do 〈◊〉 to remember what the conjugal society does represent and not break the matrimonial bond which is a 〈◊〉 ligament of Christ and his Church for whoever dissolves the sacredness of the Mystery and unhallows the Vow by violence and impurity he dissolves his relation to Christ. To break faith with a Wife or Husband is a divorce from Jesus and that is a separation from all possibilities of Felicity In the time of the 〈◊〉 Statutes to violate Marriage was to do injustice and dishonour and a breach to the sanctions of Nature or the first constitutions But two bands more are added in the Gospel to make Marriage more sacred For now our Bodies are made Temples of the Holy Ghost and the Rite of Marriage is made significant and Sacramental and every act of Adultery is Profanation and Irreligion it 〈◊〉 a Temple and deflours a Mystery 9. The Married pair were holy but poor and they wanted wine and the Blessed Virgin-Mother pitying the 〈◊〉 of the young man complained to Jesus of the want and 〈◊〉 gave her an answer which promised no satisfaction to her purposes For now that Jesus had lived thirty years and done in person nothing answerable to 〈◊〉 glorious Birth and the miraculous accidents of his Person she longed till the time 〈◊〉 in which he was to manifest himself by actions as miraculous as the Star of his Birth She knew by the rejecting of his Trade and his going abroad and probably by his own 〈◊〉 to her that the time was near and the forwardness of her love and holy desires 〈◊〉 might go some minutes before his own precise limit However 〈◊〉 answered to this purpose to shew that the work he was to do was done not to satisfie her importunity which is not occasion enough for a Miracle but to prosecute the great work of Divine designation For in works spiritual and religious all exteriour relation ceases The world's order and the manner of our nature and the infirmities of our person have produced Societies and they have been the parents of Relation and God hath tied them fast by the knots of duty and made the duty the occasion and opportunities of reward But in actions spiritual in which we relate to God our relations are sounded upon the Spirit and therefore we must do our duties upon considerations separate and spiritual but never suffer temporal relations to impede our Religious duties Christian Charity is a higher thing than to be confined within the terms of dependence and correlation and those endearments which leagues or nature or society have made pass into spiritual and like Stars in the presence of the Sun appear not when the heights of the Spirit are in place Where duty hath prepared special instances there we must for Religion's sake promote them but even to our Parents or our Children the charities
hand is heavy and his sword is sharp and pierces to the dividing the marrow and the bones and he that considers the infinite distance between God and us must tremble when he remembers that he is to feel the issues of that anger which he is not certain whether or no it will destroy him infinitely and eternally 4. But if the whip be given into our hands that we become executioners of the Divine wrath it is sometimes worse for we seldom strike our selves for emendation but add sin to sin till we perish miserably and inevitably God scourges us often into Repentance but when a Sin is the whip of another sin the rod is put into our hands who like blind men strike with a rude and undiscerning hand and because we love the punishment do it without intermission or choice and have no end but ruine 5. When the Holy Jesus had whipt the Merchants in the Temple they took away all the instruments of their sin For a Judgment is usually the commencement of Repentance Love is the last of Graces and 〈◊〉 at the beginning of a new life but is reserved to the perfections and ripeness of a Christian. We begin in Pear The fear of the Lord is the beginning of Wisdom 〈◊〉 hen he smote them then they turned and enquired early after God And afterwards the impresses of Fear continue like a hedge of thorns about us to restrain our dissolutions within the awfulness of the Divine Majesty that it may preserve what was from the same principle begun This principle of their emendation was from God and therefore innocent and holy and the very purpose of Divine Threatnings is that upon them as upon one of the great hindges the Piety of the greatest part of men should turn and the effect was answerable but so are not the actions of all those who follow this precedent in the tract of the letter For indeed there have been some reformations which have been so like this that the greatest alteration which hath been made was that they carried all things out of the Temple the Money and the Tables and the Sacrifice and the Temple it self went at last But these mens scourge is to follow after and Christ the Prince of the Catholick Church will provide one of his own contexture moresevere than the stripes which 〈◊〉 felt from the infliction of the exterminating Angel But the Holy Spirit of God by making provision against such a Reformation hath prophetically declared the aptnesses which are in pretences of religious alterations to degenerate into sacrilegious desires Thou that abhorrest Idols dost thou commit sacriledge In this case there is no amendment only one sin resigns to another and the person still remains under its power and the same dominion The PRAYER OEternal Jesu thou bright Image of thy Father's glories whose light did shine to all the world when thy heart was inflamed with zeal and love of God and of Religion let a coal from thine Altar fanned with the wings of the Holy Dove kindle in my Soul such holy flames that I may be zealous of thy honour and glory forward in Religious duties earnest in their pursuit prudent in their managing ingenuous in my purposes making my Religion to serve no end but of thy glories and the obtaining of thy promises and so sanctific my Soul and my Body that I may be a holy Temple fit and prepared for the inhabitation of thy ever-blessed Spirit whom grant that I may never grieve by admitting any impure thing to desecrate the place and unhallow the Courts of his abode but give me a pure Soul in a chaste and healthful 〈◊〉 a spirit full of holy simplicity and designs of great ingenuity and perfect Religion that I may intend what thou commandest and may with proper instruments 〈◊〉 what I so intend and by thy aids may obtain the end of my labours the rewards of obedience and holy living even the society and inheritance of Jesus in the participation of the joys of thy Temple where thou dwellest and reignest with the Father and the Holy Ghost O Eternal Jesus Amen DISCOURSE VIII Of the Religion of Holy Places 1. THE Holy Jesus brought a Divine warrant for his Zeal The selling Sacrifices and the exchange of Money and every Lay-employment did violence and dishonour to the Temple which was hallowed to Ecclesiastical ministeries and set apart for Offices of Religion for the use of holy things for it was God's House and so is every house by publick designation separate for Prayer or other uses of Religion it is God's House My house God had a propriety in it and had set his mark on it even his own Name And therefore it was in the Jews Idiome of speech called the Mountain of the Lord's House and the House of the Lord by David frequently God had put his Name into all places appointed for solemn Worship In all places where I record my Name I will come unto thee and bless thee For God who was never visible to mortal eye was pleased to make himself presential by substitution of his Name that is in certain places he hath appointed that his Name shall be called upon and by promising and imparting such Blessings which he hath made consequent to the invocation of his Name hath made such places to be a certain determination of some special manner of his Presence For God's Name is not a distinct thing from himself not an Idea and it cannot be put into a place in literal signification the expression is to be resolved into some other sence God's Name is that whereby he is known by which he is invocated that which is the most immediate publication of his Essence nearer than which we cannot go unto him and because God is essentially present in all places when he makes himself present in one place more than another it cannot be understood to any other purpose but that in such places he gives special Blessings and Graces or that in those places he appoints his Name that is himself specially to be invocated 2. So that when God puts his Name in any place by a special manner it signifies that there himself is in that manner But in separate and hallowed places God hath expressed that he puts his Name with a purpose it should be called upon therefore in plain signification it is thus In Consecrate places God himself is present to be invok'd that is there he is most delighted to hear the Prayers we make unto him For all the expressions of Scripture of God's 〈◊〉 the Tabernacle of God God's Dwellings putting his Name there his Sanctuary are resolved into that saying of God to Solomon who prayed that he would hear the Prayers of necessitous people in that place God granting the request expressed it thus I have sanctified the House which thou hast built that is the House which thou hast designed for my Worship I have designed for your Blessing what you have
them not to retain them or invite them but as objects of displeasure to avert them from us 2. To resist all lustful desires and extinguish them by their proper correctories and remedies 3. To resuse all occasions opportunities and temptations to Impurity denying to please a wanton 〈◊〉 or to use a 〈◊〉 gesture or to go into a danger or to converse with an improper unsafe object hating the garment spotted with the flesh so S. Jude calls it and not to look upon a maid so Job not to sit with a woman that is a singer so the son of Sirach 4. To be of a liberal soul not mingling with affections of mony and inclinations of covetousness not doing any act of violence rapine or injustice 5. To be ingenuous in our thoughts purposes and professions speaking nothing contrary to our intentions but being really what we 〈◊〉 6. To give all our faculties and affections to God without dividing interests between God and his enemies without entertaining of any one crime in society with our pretences for God 7. Not to lie in sin but instantly to repent of it and return purifying our Conscience from dead works 8. Not to dissemble our faith or belief when we are required to its confession pretending a perswasion complying with those from whom 〈◊〉 we differ Lust Covetousness and Hypocrisie are the three great enemies of this Grace they are the motes of our eyes and the spots of our Souls The reward of Purity is the vision beatifical If we are pure as God is pure we shall also see him as he is When we awake up after his likeness we shall 〈◊〉 hold his presence To which in this world we are consigned by freedom from the cares of Covetousness the shame of Lust the fear of discovery and the stings of an evil Conscience which are the portion of the several Impurities here forbidden 17. Seventhly Blessed are the Peace-makers for they shall be called the children of God The wisdome of God is first pure and then peaceable that 's the order of the Beatitudes As soon as Jesus was born the Angels sang a Hymn Glory be to God on high and on earth peace good will towards men signifying the two great 〈◊〉 upon which Christ was dispatched in his Legation from Heaven to earth He is the Prince of Peace Follow peace with all men and holiness without which no man ever shall see God The acts of this Grace are 1. To mortisie our Anger 〈◊〉 and fiery dispositions apt to enkindle upon every slight accident inadvertency or misfortune of a friend or servant 2. Not to be hasty rash provocative or upbraiding in our language 3. To live quietly and serenely in our families and neighbourhoods 4. Not to backbite slander misreport or undervalue any man carrying tales or sowing dissention between brethren 5. Not to interest our selves in the quarrels of others by abetting either part except where Charity calls us to rescue the oppressed and then also to do a work of charity without mixtures of uncharitableness 6. To avoid all suits of Law as much as is possible without intrenching upon any other collateral obligation towards a third interest or a necessary support for our selves or great conveniency for our families or if we be engaged in Law to pursue our just interests with just means and charitable maintenance 7. To endeavour by all means to reconcile disagreeing persons 8. To endeavour by affability and fair deportment to win the love of our neighbours 9. To offer satisfaction to all whom we have wronged or slandered and to remit the offences of others and in trials of right to find out the most charitable expedient to determine it as by indifferent arbitration or something like it 10. To be open free and ingenuous in reprehensions and fair expostulations with persons whom we conceive to have wronged us that no seed of malice or rancor may be latent in us and upon the breath of a new displeasure break out into a flame 11. To be modest in our arguings disputings and demands not laying great interest upon trifles 12. To moderate balance and temper our zeal by the rules of Prudence and the allay of Charity that we quarrel not for opinions nor intitle God in our impotent and mistaken fancies nor lose Charity for a pretence of an article of Faith 13. To pray heartily for our enemies real or imaginary always loving and being apt to benefit their persons and to cure their faults by charitable remedies 14. To abstain from doing all affronts disgraces slightings and 〈◊〉 jearings and mockings of our neighbour not giving him appellatives of scorn or irrision 15. To submit to all our Superiours in all things either doing what they command or suffering what they impose at no hand lifting our 〈◊〉 against those upon whom the characters of God and the marks of Jesus are imprinted in signal and eminent authority such as are principally the King and then the Bishops whom God hath set to watch over our Souls 16. Not to invade the possessions of our Neighbours or commence War but when we are bound by justice and legal trust to defend the rights of others or our own in order to our duty 17. Not to speak evil of dignities or undervalue their persons or publish their faults or upbraid the levities of our Governours knowing that they also are designed by God to be converted to us for castigation and amendment of us 18. Not to be busie in other mens affairs And then the peace of God will rest upon us The reward is no less than the adoption and inheritance of sons for he hath given unto us power to be called the sons of God for he is the Father of Peace and the Sons of Peace are the Sons of God and theresore have a title to the inheritance of Sons to be heirs with God and coheirs with Christ in the kingdom of Peace and essential and never-failing charity 18. Eightly Blessed are they which are Persecuted sor righteousness sake for theirs is the Kingdom of Heaven This being the hardest command in the whole Discipline of Jesus is fortified with a double Blessedness for it follows immediately Blessed are ye when men shall revile you and persecute you meaning that all Persecution for a cause of Righteousness though the affliction be instanced only in reproachful language shall be a title to the Blessedness Any suffering for any good or harmless action is a degree of Martyrdom It being the greatest testimony in the world of the greatest love to quit that for God which hath possessed our most natural regular and orderly affections It is a preferring God's cause before our own interest it is a loving of Vertue without secular ends it is the noblest the most resigned ingenuous valiant act in the world to die for 〈◊〉 whom we never have seen it is the crown of Faith the confidence of Hope and our greatest Charity The Primitive
Churches living under Persecution commenced many pretty opinions concerning the state and special dignity of Martyrs apportioning to them one of the three Coronets which themselves did knit and supposed as pendants to the great Crown of righteousness They made it suppletory of Baptism expiatory of sin satisfactory of publick 〈◊〉 they placed them in bliss immediately declared them to need no after-Prayer such as the Devotion of those times used to pour upon the graves of the faithful with great prudence they did endeavour to alleviate this burthen and sweeten the bitter chalice and they did it by such doctrines which did only remonstrate this great truth That since no love was greater than to lay down our lives nothing could be so great but God would indulge to them And indeed whatsoever they said in this had no inconvenience nor would it now unless men should think mere suffering to be sufficient to excuse a wicked life or that they be invited to dishonour an excellent patience with the mixture of an impure action There are many who would die for Christ if they were put to it and yet will not quit a Lust for him those are hardly to be esteemed Christ's Martyrs unless they be dead unto sin their dying for an Article or a good action will not pass the great scrutiny And it may be boldness of spirit or sullenness or an honourable gallantry of mind or something that is excellent in civil and political estimate moves the person and endears the suffering but that love only which keeps the Commandments will teach us to 〈◊〉 for love and from love to pass to blessedness through the red Sea of bloud And indeed it is more easie to die for Chastity than to live with it and many women have been found who suffered death under the violence of Tyrants for defence of their holy vows and purity who had they long continued amongst pleasures courtships curiosities and importunities of men might perchance have yielded that to a Lover which they denied to an Executioner S. Cyprian observes that our Blessed Lord in admitting the innocent Babes of Bethlehem first to die for him did to all generations of Christendom consign this Lesson That only persons holy and innocent were fit to be Christ's Martyrs And I remember that the Prince of the Latine Poets over against the region and seats of Infants places in the Shades below persons that suffered death wrongfully but adds that this their death was not enough to place them in such blessed mansions but the Judge first made inquiry into their lives and accordingly designed their station It is certain that such dyings or great sufferings are Heroical actions and of power to make great compensations and redemptions of time and of omissions and imperfections but if the Man be unholy so also are his Sufferings for Hereticks have died and vicious persons have suffered in a good cause and a dog's neck may be cut off in sacrifice and Swine's bloud may 〈◊〉 the trench about the Altar but God only accepts the Sacrifice which is pure and spotless first seasoned with salt then seasoned with fire The true Martyr must have all the preceding Graces and then he shall receive all the Beatitudes 19. The acts of this Duty are 1. Boldly to confess the Faith nobly to exercise publick vertues not to be ashamed of any thing that is honest and rather to quit our goods our liberty our health and life it self than to deny what we are bound to affirm or to omit what we are bound to do or to pretend contrary to our present perswasion 2. To rejoyce in Afflictions counting it honourable to be conformable to Christ and to wear the cognizance of Christianity whose certain lot it is to suffer the hostility and violence of enemies visible and invisible 3. Not to revile our Persecutors but to bear the Cross with evenness tranquillity patience and charity 4. To offer our sufferings to the glory of God and to joyn them with the Passions of Christ by doing it in love to God and obedience to his Sanctions and testimony of some part of his Religion and designing it as a part of duty The reward is the Kingdom of Heaven which can be no other but eternal Salvation in case the Martyrdom be consummate and they also shall be made perfect so the words of the reward were read in Clement's time If it be less it keeps its proportion all suffering persons are the combination of Saints they make the Church they are the people of the Kingdom and heirs of the Covenant For if they be but Confessors and confess Christ in prison though they never preach upon the rack or under the axe yet Christ will confess them before his heavenly Father and they shall have a portion where they shall never be persecuted any more The PRAYER O Blessed Jesus who art become to us the Fountain of Peace and Sanctity of Righteousness and Charity of Life and perpetual Benediction imprint in our spirits these glorious characterisms of Christianity that we by such excellent dispositions may be consigned to the infinity of Blessedness which thou camest to reveal and minister and exhibit to mankind Give us great Humility of spirit and deny us not when we beg Sorrow of thee the mourning and sadness of true Penitents that we may imitate thy excellencies and conform to thy sufferings Make us Meek patient indifferent and resigned in all accidents changes and issues of Divine Providence Mortifie all inordinate Anger in us all Wrath Strife Contention Murmurings Malice and Envy and interrupt and then blot out all peevish dispositions and morosities all disturbances and unevenness of spirit 〈◊〉 of habit that may hinder us in our duty Oh teach me so to hunger and thirst after the ways of Righteousness that it may be meat and drink to me to do thy Father's will Raise my affections to Heaven and heavenly things fix my heart there and prepare a treasure for me which I may receive in the great diffusions and communications of thy glory And in this sad interval of infirmity and temptations strengthen my hopes and 〈◊〉 my Faith by such emissions of light and grace from thy Spirit that I may relish those Blessings which thou preparest for thy Saints with so great appetite that I may despise the world and all its gilded vanities and may desire nothing but the crown of righteousness and the paths that lead thither 〈◊〉 graces of thy Kingdom and the glories of it that when I have served thee in holiness and strict obedience I may reign with thee in the glories of Eternity for thou O Holy Jesus art our hope and our life and glory our 〈◊〉 great reward Amen II. 〈◊〉 Jesu who art infinitely pleased in demonstrations of thy Mercy and didst descend into a state of misery suffering persecution and 〈◊〉 that thou mightest give us thy mercy and reconcile us to thy Father and make us
was a Law of Works that is especially and in its first intention But this being less perfect the Holy Jesus inverted the order 1. For very little of Christianity stands upon the outward action Christ having appointed but two Sacraments immediately and 2. a greater restraint is laid upon the passions desires and first motions of the spirit than under the severity of Moses and 3. they are threatned with the same curses of a sad eternity with the acts proceeding from them and 4. because the obedience of the spirit does in many things excuse the want of the outward act God always requiring at our hands what he hath put in our power and no more and 5. lastly because the spirit is the principle of all actions moral and spiritual and certainly productive of them when they are not impeded from without therefore the Holy Jesus hath secured the fountain as knowing that the current must needs be healthful and pure if it proceeds through pure chanels from a limpid and unpolluted principle 4. And certainly it is much for the glory of God to worship him with a Religion whose very design looks upon God as the searcher of our hearts and Lord of our spirits who judges the purposes as a God and does not only take his estimate from the outward action as a man And it is also a great reputation to the Institution it self that it purifies the Soul and secures the secret cogitations of the mind It punishes Covetouiness as it judges Rapine it condemns a Sacrilegious heart as soon as an Irreligious hand it detests hating of our Brother by the same aversation which it expresses against doing him 〈◊〉 He that curses in his heart shall die the death of an explicite and bold Blasphemer murmur and repining is against the Laws of Christianity but either by the remissness of Moses's Law or the gentler execution of it or the innovating or lessening glosses of the Pharisees he was esteemed innocent whose actions were according to the letter not whose spirit was conformed to the intention and more secret Sanctity of the Law So that our Righteousness must therefore exceed the Pharisaical standard because our spirits must be pure as our hands and the heart as regular as the action our purposes must be sanctified and our thoughts holy we must love our Neighbour as well as relieve him and chuse Justice with adhesion of the mind as well as carry her upon the palms of our hands And therefore the Prophets foretelling the Kingdom of the Gospel and the state of this Religion call it a writing the Laws of God in our hearts And S. Paul distinguishes the Gospel from the Law by this only measure We are all Israelites of the seed of Abraham heirs of the same inheritance only now we are not to be accounted Jews for the outward consormity to the Law but for the inward consent and obedience to those purities which were secretly signified by the types of Moses They of the Law were Jews outwardly their Circumcision was outward in the flesh their praise was of men We are Jews inwardly our Circumcision is that of the heart in the spirit and not in the letter and our praise is of God that is we are not judged by the outward act but by the mind and the intention and though the acts must sollow in all instances where we can and where they are required yet it is the less principal and rather significative than by its own strength and energy operative and accepted 5. S. Clemens of Alexandria saith the Pharisees righteousness consisted in the not doing evil and that Christ superadded this also that we must do the contrary good and so exceed the Pharisaical measure They would not wrong a Jew nor many times relieve him they reckoned their innocence by not giving offence by walking blameless by not being accused before the Judges sitting in the gates of their Cities But the balance in which the Judge of quick and dead weighs Christians is not only the avoiding evil but doing good the following peace with all men and holiness the proceeding from faith to faith the adding vertue to vertue the persevering in all holy conversation and godliness And therefore S. Paul commending the grace of universal Charity says that Love worketh no ill to his neighbour therefore Love is the fulfilling of the Law implying that the prime intention of the Law was that every man's right be secured that no man receive wrong And indeed all the Decalogue consisting of Prohibitions rather than Precepts saving that each Table hath one positive Commandment does not obscurely verifie the doctrine of S. Clement's interpretation Now because the Christian Charity abstains from doing all injury therefore it is the fulfilling of the Law but because it is also patient and liberal that it suffers long and is kind therefore the Charity commanded in Christ's Law exceeds that Charity which the Scribes and Pharisees reckoned as part of their Righteousness But Jesus himself does with great care in the particulars instance in what he would have the Disciples to be eminent above the most strict Sect of the Jewish Religion 1. in practising the moral Precepts of the Decalogue with a stricter interpretation 2. and in quitting the Permissions and licences which for the hardness of their heart Moses gave them as indulgences to their persons and securities against the contempt of too severe Laws 6. The severity of exposition was added but to three Commandments and in three indulgences the permission was taken away But because our great Law-giver repeated also other parts of the Decalogue in his after-Sermons I will represent in this one view all that he made to be Christian by adoption 7. The first Commandment Christ often repeated and enforced as being the basis of all Religion and the first endearment of all that relation whereby we are capable of being the sons of God as being the great Commandment of the Law and comprehensive of all that duty we owe to God in the relations of the vertue of Religion Hear O Israel the Lord thy God is one Lord and Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thine heart and with all thy soul and with all thy mind and with all thy strength This is the first Commandment that is this comprehends all that which is moral and eternal in the first Table of the 〈◊〉 8. The Duties of this Commandment are 1. To worship God alone with actions proper to him and 2. to love and 3. obey him with all our faculties 1. Concerning Worship The actions proper to the Honour of God are to offer Sacrifice Incense and Oblations making Vows to him Swearing by his Name as the instrument of secret testimony confessing his incommunicable Attributes and Praying to him for those Graces which are essentially annexed to his dispensation as Remission of sins Gifts of the Spirit and the grace of 〈◊〉 and Life
the flames of Hell that men may serve God without the incentives of hope and fear and purely for the love of God Whether the Woman were onely imaginative and sad or also zealous I know not But God knows he would have few Disciples if the arguments of invitation were not of greater promise than the labours of Vertue are of trouble And therefore the Spirit of God knowing to what we are inflexible and by what we are made most ductile and malleable hath propounded Vertue clothed and dressed with such advantages as may entertain even our Sensitive part and first desires that those also may be invited to Vertue who understand not what is just and reasonable but what is profitable who are more moved with advantage than justice And because emolument is more felt than innocence and a man may be poor for all his gift of 〈◊〉 the Holy Jesus to endear the practices of Religion hath represented Godliness unto us under the notion of gain and sin as unfruitful and yet besides all the natural and reasonable advantages every Vertue hath a supernatural reward a gracious promise attending and every Vice is not only naturally deformed but is made more ugly by a threatning and horrid by an appendent curse Henceforth therefore let no man complain that the Commandments of God are impossible for they are not onely possible but easie and they that say otherwise and do accordingly take more pains to carry the instruments of their own death than would serve to ascertain them of life And if we would do as much for Christ as we have done for Sin we should find the pains less and the pleasure more And therefore such complainers are without excuse for certain it is they that can go in foul ways must not say they cannot walk in fair they that march over rocks in despight of so many impediments can travel the even ways of Religion and Peace when the Holy Jesus is their Guide and the Spirit is their Guardian and infinite felicities are at their journey's end and all the reason of the world political oeconomical and personal do entertain and support them in the travel of the passage The PRAYER O Eternal Jesus who gavest Laws unto the world that man-kind being united to thee by the bands of Obedience might partake of all thy glories and felicities open our understanding give us the spirit of discerning and just apprehension of all the beauties with which thou hast enamelled Vertue to represent it beauteous and amiable in our eyes that by the allurements of exteriour decencies and appendent blessings our present desires may be entertained our hopes promoted our affections satisfied and Love entring in by these doors may dwell in the interiour regions of the Will O make us to love thee for thy self and Religion for thee and all the instruments of Religion in order to thy glory and our own felicities Pull off the visors of Sin and discover its deformities by the lantern of thy Word and the light of the Spirit that I may never be bewitched with sottish appetites Be pleased to build up all the contents I expect in this world upon the interests of a vertuous life and the support of Religion that I may be rich in Good works content in the issues of thy Providence my Health may be the result of Temperance and severity my Mirth in spiritual emanations my Rest in Hope my Peace in a good Conscience my Satisfaction and acquiescence in thee that from Content I may pass to an eternal Fulness from Health to Immortality from Grace to Glory walking in the paths of Righteousness by the waters of Comfort to the land of everlasting Rest to feast in the glorious communications of Eternity eternally adoring loving and enjoying the infinity of the ever-Blessed and mysterious Trinity to whom be glory and 〈◊〉 and dominion now and for ever Amen DISCOURSE XVI Of Certainty of Salvation 1. WHen the Holy Jesus took an account of the first Legation and voyage of his Apostles he found them rejoycing in priviledges and exteriour powers in their authority over unclean spirits but weighing it in his balance he found the cause too light and therefore diverted it upon the right object Rejoyce that your names are written in Heaven The revelation was confirmed and more personally applied in answer to S. Peter's Question We have for saken all and followed thee what shall we have therefore Their LORD answered Ye shall sit upon twelve thrones judging the twelve tribes of Israel Amongst these persons to whom Christ spake Judas was he was one of the Twelve and he had a throne allotted for him his name was described in the book of life and a Scepter and a Crown was deposited for him too For we must not judge of Christ's meaning by the event since he spake these words to produce in them Faith comfort and joy in the best objects it was a Sermon of duty as well as a Homily of comfort and therefore was equally intended to all the Colledge and since the number of Thrones is proportioned to the number of men it is certain there was no exception of any man there included and yet it is as certain Judas never came to sit upon the throne and his name was blotted out of the book of life Now if we put these ends together that in Scripture it was not revealed to any man concerning his final condition but to the dying penitent Thief and to the twelve Apostles that twelve thrones were designed for them and a promise made of their inthronization and yet that no man's final estate is so clearly declared miserable and lost as that of Judas one of the Twelve to whom a throne was promised the result will be that the election of holy persons is a condition allied to duty absolute and infallible in the general and supposing all the dispositions and requisites concurring but fallible in the particular if we fall off from the mercies of the Covenant and prevaricate the conditions But the thing which is most observable is that if in persons so eminent and priviledged and to whom a revelation of their Election was made as a particular grace their condition had one weak leg upon which because it did rely for one half of the interest it could be no stronger than its supporters the condition of lower persons to whom no revelation is made no priviledges are indulged no greatness of spiritual eminency is appendent as they have no greater certainty in the thing so they have less in person and are therefore to work out their salvation with great fears and tremblings of spirit 2. The purpose of this consideration is that we do not judge of our final condition by any discourses of our own relying upon God's secret Counsels and Predestination of Eternity This is a mountain upon which whosoever climbs like Moses to behold the land of Canaan at great distances may please his eyes or
Master gave the same reward though the times of their working were different as their calling and employment had determined the opportunity of their labours DISCOURSE XVII Of Scandal or Giving and taking Offence 1. A Sad curse being threatned in the Gospel to them who offend any of Christ's little ones that is such as are novices and babes in Christianity it concerns us to learn our duty and perform it that we may avoid the curse for Woe to all them by whom offences come And although the duty is so plainly explicated and represented in gloss and case by the several Commentaries of S. Paul upon this menace of our Blessed Saviour yet because our English word Offence which is commonly used in this Question of Scandal is so large and equivocal that it hath made many pretences and intricated this article to some inconvenience it is not without good purpose to draw into one body those Propositions which the Masters of Spiritual life have described in the managing of this Question 2. First By whatsoever we do our duty to God we cannot directly do offence or give scandal to our Brother because in such cases where God hath obliged us he hath also obliged himself to reconcile our duty to the designs of God to the utility of Souls and the ends of Charity And this Proposition is to be extended to our Obedience to the lawful Constitutions of our competent Superiours in which cases we are to look upon the Commandment and leave the accidental events to the disposition of that Providence who reconciles dissonancies in nature and concentres all the variety of accidents into his own glory And whosoever is offended at me for obeying God or God's Vicegerent is offended at me for doing my duty and in this there is no more dispute but whether I shall displease God or my peevish neighbour These are such whom the Spirit of God complains of under other representments They think it strange we run not into the same excess of riot Their eye is evil because their Master's eye is good and the abounding of God's grace also may become to them an occasion of falling and the long-suffering of God the encouragement to sin In this there is no difficulty for in what case soever we are bound to obey God or Man in that case and in that conjunction of circumstances we have nothing permitted to our choice and have no authority to remit of the right of God or our Superiour And to comply with our neighbour in such Questions besides that it cannot serve any purposes of Piety if it declines from Duty in any instance it is like giving Alms out of the portion of Orphans or building Hospitals with the money and spoils of Sacriledge It is pusillanimity or hypocrisie or a denying to confess Christ before men to comply with any man and to offend God or omit a Duty Whatsoever is necessary to be done and is made so by God no weakness or peevishness of man can make necessary not to be done For the matter of Scandal is a duty beneath the prime obligations of Religion 3. Secondly But every thing which is used in Religion is not matter of precise Duty but there are some things which indeed are pious and religious but dispensable voluntary and commutable such as are voluntary Fasts exteriour acts of Discipline and Mortification not enjoyned great degrees of exteriour Worship Prostration long Prayers Vigils and in these things although there is not directly a matter of Scandal yet there may be some prudential considerations in order to Charity and Edification By pious actions I mean either particular pursuances of a general Duty which are uncommanded in the instance such as are the minutes and expresses of Alms or else they are commended but in the whole kind of them unenjoyned such as Divines call the Counsels of perfection In both these cases a man cannot be scandalous For the man doing in charity and the love of God such actions which are aptly expressive of love the man I say is not uncharitable in his purposes and the actions themselves being either attempts or proceedings toward Perfection or else actions of direct Duty are as innocent in their productions as in themselves and therefore without the malice of the recipient cannot induce him into sin and nothing else is Scandal To do any pious act proceeds from the Spirit of God and to give Scandal from the Spirit of Malice or Indiscretion and therefore a pious action whose fountain is love and 〈◊〉 cannot end in Uncharitableness or Imprudence But because when any man is offended at what I esteem Piety there is a question whether the action be pious or no therefore it concerns him that works to take care that his action be either an act of Duty though not determined to a certain particular or else be something 〈◊〉 in Scripture or practised by a holy person there recorded and no-where reproved or a practice warranted by such precedents which modest prudent and religious persons account a sufficient inducement of such particulars for he that proceeds upon such principles derives the warrant of his actions from beginnings which secure the particular and quits the Scandal 4. This I say is a security against the Uncharitableness and the Sin of Scandal because a zeal of doing pious actions is a zeal according to God but it is not always a security against the Indiscretion of the Scandal He that reproves a foolish person in such circumstances that provoke him or make him impudent or blasphemous does not give Scandal and brings no sin upon himself though he occasioned it in the other But if it was probable such effects would be consequent to the reprehension his zeal was imprudent and rash but so long as it was zeal for God and in its own matter lawful it could not be an active or guilty Scandal but if it be no zeal and be a design to entrap a man's unwariness or passion or shame and to disgrace the man by that means or any other to make him sin then it is directly the offending of our Brother They that preach'd Christ out of envy intended to do offence to the Apostles but because they were impregnable the sin rested in their own bosom and God wrought his own ends by it And in this sence they are Scandalous persons who fast for Strife who pray for Rebellion who intice simple persons into the snare by colours of Religion Those very exteriour acts of Piety become an Offence because they are done to evil purposes to abuse Proselytes and to draw away Disciples after them and make them love the sin and march under so splendid and fair colours They who out of strictness and severity of perswasion represent the conditions of the Gospel alike to every person that is nicer than Christ described them in all circumstances and deny such liberties of exteriour desires and complacency which may be reasonably permitted to some
himself to his house who received him with gladness and repentance of his crimes purging his Conscience and filling his heart and house with joy and sanctity for immediately upon the arrival of the Master at his house he offered restitution to all persons whom he had injured and satisfaction and half of his remanent estate he gave to the poor and so gave the fairest entertainment to Jesus who brought along with him Salvation to his house There it was that he spake the Parable of the King who concredited divers talents to his servants and having at his return exacted an account rewarded them who had improved their bank and been faithful in their trust with rewards proportionable to their capacity and improvement but the negligent servant who had not meliorated his stock was punished with ablegation and 〈◊〉 to outer darkness And from hence sprang up that dogmatical proposition which is mysterious and 〈◊〉 in Christianity To him that hath shall be given and from him that hath not shall be taken away even what he hath After this going forth of Jericho he cured two blind men upon the way 5. Six days before Easter Jesus came to Bethany where he was feasted by Martha and Mary and accompanied by Lazarus who sate at the table with Jesus But Mary brought a pound of Nard Pistick and as formerly she had done again anoints the feet of Jesus and fills the house with the odour till God himself smelt thence a savour of a sweet-smelling sacrifice But Judas Iscariot the Thief and the Traitor repined at the vanity of the expence as he pretended because it might have been sold for three hundred pence and have been given to the poor But Jesus in his reply taught us that there is an opportunity for actions of Religion as well as of Charity Mary did this against the Burial of Jesus and her Religion was accepted by him to whose honours the holocaust of love and the oblations of alms-deeds are in their proper seasons direct actions of worship and duty But at this meeting there came many Jews to see Lazarus who was raised from death as well as to see Jesus and because by occasion of his Resurrection many of them believed on Jesus therefore the Pharisees deliberated about putting him to death But God in his glorious providence was pleased to preserve him as a trumpet of his glories and a testimony of the Miracle thirty years after the death of Jesus 6. The next day being the fifth day before the Passeover Jesus came to the foot of the mount of Olives and sent his Disciples to Bethphage a village in the neighbourhood commanding them to unloose an asse and a colt and bring them to him and to tell the owners it was done for the Master's use and they did so and when they brought the Asse to Jesus he rides on him to Jerusalem and the People having notice of his approach took branches of Palm-trees and went out to meet him strewing branches and garments in the way crying out Hosanna to the son of David Which was a form of exclamation used to the honour of God and in great Solemnities and signifies Adoration to the Son of David by the rite of carrying branches which when they used in procession about their Altars they used to pray Lord save us Lord prosper us which hath occasioned the reddition of Hoschiannah to be amongst some that Prayer which they repeated at the carrying of the Hoschiannah as if it self did signifie Lord save us But this honour was so great and unusual to be done even to Kings that the Pharisees knowing this to be an appropriate manner of address to God said one to another by way of wonder Hear ye what these men say For they were troubled to hear the People revere him as a God 7. When Jesus from the mount of Olives beheld Jerusalem he wept over it and foretold great sadnesses and infelicities futurely contingent to it which not only happened in the sequel of the story according to the main issues and significations of this Prophecy but even to minutes and circumstances it was verified For in the mount of Olives where Jesus shed tears over perishing Jerusalem the Romans first pitched their Tents when they came to its final overthrow From thence descending to the City he went into the Temple and still the acclamations followed him till the Pharisees were ready to burst with the noises abroad and the tumults of envy and scorn within and by observing that all their endeavours to suppress his glories were but like clapping their hands to veil the Sun and that in despight of all their stratagems the whole Nation was become Disciple to the glorious Nazarene And there 〈◊〉 cured certain persons that were blind and lame 8. But whilest he abode at Jerusalem certain Greeks who came to the Feast to worship made their address to Philip that they might be brought to Jesus Philip tells Andrew and they both tell Jesus who having admitted them discoursed many things concerning his Passion and then prayed a petition which is the end of his own Sufferings and of all humane actions and the purpose of the whole Creation Father glorifie thy Name To which he was answered by a voice from Heaven I have both glorified it and will glorifie it again But this nor the whole series of Miracles that he did the Mercies the Cures nor the divine Discourses could gain the Faith of all the Jews who were determined by their humane interest for many of the Rulers who believed on him durst not confess him because they loved the praise of men more than the praise of God Then Jesus again exhorted all men to believe on him that so they might in the same act believe on God that they might approach unto the light and not abide in darkness that they might obey the commandments of the Father whose express charge it was that Jesus should preach this Gospel and that they might not be judged at the last Day by the Word which they have rejected which Word to all its observers is everlasting life After which Sermon retiring to Bethany he abode there all Night 9. On the morrow returning to Jerusalem on the way being hungry he passed by a Fig-tree where expecting fruit he found none and cursed the Fig-tree which by the next day was dried up and withered Upon occasion of which preternatural event Jesus discoursed of the power of Faith and its power to produce Miracles But upon this occasion others the Disciples of Jesus in after-Ages have pleased themselves with phancies and imperfect descants as that he cursed this Tree in mystery and secret intendment it having been the tree in the eating whose fruit Adam prevaricating the Divine Law made an inlet to sin which brought in death and the sadnesses of Jesus's Passion But Jesus having entred the City came into the Temple and preached the Gospel and the chief Priests and
and tyranny over Consciences 14. The duty of Preparation that I here discourse of is such a Preparation as is a disposition to life it is not a matter of convenience or advantage to repent of our sins before the Communion but it is of absolute necessity we perish if we neglect it for we cat 〈◊〉 and Satan enters into us not Christ. And this Preparation is not the act of a day or a week but it is a new state of life no man that is an habitual sinner must come to this Feast till he hath wholly changed his course of life And then according as the actions of infirmity have made 〈◊〉 or greater invasion upon his peace and health so are the acts of Repentance to be proportioned in which the greatness of the prevarications their neighbourhood to death or their frequent repetition and the conduct of a Spiritual man are to give us counsel and determination When a ravening and hungry Wolf is destitute of prey he 〈◊〉 the turf and loads his stomach with the glebe he treads on but as soon as he finds better food he vomits up his first load Our secular and sensual affections are loads of earth upon the Conscience and when we approach to the Table of the Lord to eat the bread of the elect and to drink the wine of Angels we must reject such impure adhesions that holy persons being nourished with holy Symbols may be sanctified and receive the eternal reward of Holiness 15. But as none must come hither but they that are in the state of Grace or Charity and the love of God and their Neighbours and that the abolition of the state of sin is the necessary preparation and is the action of years and was not accepted as sufficient till the expiration of divers years by the Primitive Discipline and in some cases not till the approach of Death so there is another Preparation which is of less necessity which supposes the state of Grace and that oil is burning in our lamps but yet it is a preparation of ornament a trimming up the Soul a dressing the spirit with degrees and instances of Piety and progresses of perfection and it consists in setting apart some portion of our time before the Communion that it be spent in Prayer in Meditations in renewing the vows of holy Obedience in Examining our Consciences in Mortifying our lesser irregularities in Devotions and actions of precise Religion in acts of Faith of Hope of Charity of Zeal and holy desires in acts of Eucharist or Thanksgiving of Joy at the approach of so blessed opportunity and all the acts of Vertue whatsoever which have indefinite relation to this and to other mysteries but yet are specially to be exercised upon this occasion because this is the most perfect of external 〈◊〉 and the most mysterious instrument of sanctification and perfection There is no time or degree to be determined in this Preparation but they to whom much is forgiven will love much and they who 〈◊〉 the excellence and holiness of the Mystery the glory of the Guest that comes to inhabit and the undecency of the closet of their Hearts by reason of the adherencies of impurity the infinite benefit then designed and the increase of degrees by the excellence of these previous acts of Holiness will not be too inquisitive into the necessity of circumstances and measures but do it heartily and devoutly and reverently and as much as they can ever esteeming it necessary that the actions of so great solemnity should by some actions of Piety attending like handmaids be distinguished from common imployments and remarked for the principal and most solemn of religious actions The Primitive Church gave the holy Sacrament to Infants immediately after Baptism and by that act transmitted this Proposition That nothing was of absolute necessity but Innocency and purity from sin and a being in the state of Grace other actions of Religion are excellent addition to the dignity of the person and honour of the mystery but they were such of which Infants were not capable The summ is this After the greatest consociation of religious duties for Preparation no man can be sufficiently worthy to communicate let us take care that we be not unworthy by bringing a guilt with us or the remanent affection to a sin Est gloriosus sanè convictus Die Sed illi qui invitatur non qui invisus est 16. When the happy hour is come in which the Lord vouchsafes to enter into us and dwell with us and be united with his servants we must then do the same acts over again with greater 〈◊〉 intension confess the glories of God and thy own unworthiness praise his mercy with ecstasie of thanksgiving and joy make oblation of thy self of all thy faculties and capacities pray and read and meditate and worship And that thou mayest more opportunely do all this rise early to meet the Bridegroom pray for special assistance enter into the assembly of faithful people chearfully attend there diligently demean thy self reverently and before any other meat or drink receive the Body of thy Saviour with pure hands with holy intention with a heart full of joy and faith and hope and wonder and Eucharist These things I therefore set down irregularly and without method because in these actions no rule can be given to all persons and only such a love and such a Religion in general is to be recommended which will over-run the banks and not 〈◊〉 stand confined within the margent of rules and artificial prescriptions Love and Religion are boundless and all acts of grace relating to the present Mystery are sit and proportioned entertainments of our Lord. This only remember that we are by the Mystery of one bread confederated into one body and the communion of Saints and that the 〈◊〉 which we then commemorate was designed by our Lord for the benefit of all his Church Let us be sure to draw all faithful people into the society of the present Blessing joyning with the holy Man that ministers in prayers and offerings of that Mystery for the 〈◊〉 of all sorts of men of Christ's Catholick Church And it were also an excellent act of Christian communion and agreeable to the practice of the Church in all Ages to make an Oblation to God for the poor that as we are 〈◊〉 by Christ's body so we also should 〈◊〉 Christ's body making such returns as we can a grain of Frankincense in exchange for a Province an act of duty and Christian Charity as Eucharistical for the present Grace that all the body may rejoyce and glory in the Salvation of the Lord. 17. After thou hast received that pledge of immortality and antepast of glory even the Lord's Body in a mystery leave not thy Saviour there alone but attend him with holy thoughts and colloquies of Prayer and Eucharist It was sometime counted infamous for a woman to entertain a second love till the body of her
Ordinary Means and Ministeries are to be used when they are to be had whereof the Star appearing to the Wise men was an emblem 33. 6. VVhat is signified by the Inheritance of the Earth in the reward of Meekness 224. 9. The Parts Actions and Reward of Meekness ibid. Mortification described its Parts Actions Rules Designs and Benefits 82. Master of the Feast his Office among the Jews 152. 5. Mercy a mark of Predestination 227. To be expressed in Affections and Actions ibid. Its Object Acts Reward ibid. Merope's answer to Polyphontes 254. 6. A Mason's withered hand cured by Jesus 290. 3. Members of Christ ought not to be soft and nice 393. 9. Miseries of this Life not always tokens of precedent Sin 325. 326. Miracles of Christ and his Apostles weakly imitated by the Devil 279. 〈◊〉 Greater than the pretences of their Enemies 280. 10. Which were done by Christ were primarily for conviction of the Jewes those by the Apostles for the Gentiles 279. 6. Vide 277. Were confirmed by Prophecies of Jesus ibid. Mount Olivet the place of the Romans first Incamping 347. 7. Mourning a duty its Acts Duty Reward 223. Multitudes fed by Christ 319. 321. 7. N. NAme of God put into H. places in what sence 172. 1. Name of Jesus its mysteriousness explicated 39. 8. It s excellency and efficacy ibid. Good Name to be sought after 367. Names of some of the LXXII 325. 24. Names of some that were supposed to rise after the Passion of Jesus 425. 3. Good Nature an Instrument of Vertue 91. 24. Nard pistick poured upon Jesus's Head and Feet 346. 5. 361. 11. Natural to love God when we understand him 296. 3. Natures of Christ communicated in Effects 387. 9. National Sins and Judgements 340. 8. Their Cure ibid. Necessity to Sin laid upon no Man 105. 9. Necessity to be obeyed before positive Constitutions 289. Necessity of Holy Living 204. 〈◊〉 Necessities of our selves and other men in several manner to be prayed for 265. 12. Nicodemus his 〈◊〉 with Jesus 167. New Creation at the Passion 431. Nero first among the Romans 〈◊〉 with Nard 291. 9. Nursing Children a duty of Mothers 19. O. OAths forbidden and how 240. Oaths 〈◊〉 Judicature if contradictory not to be admitted 241. Oaths promissory not to be exacted by Princes but in great necessity 240. Vide Swearing Obedience to God and Man its Parts Actions Necessity Definition and Constitution 41. 224. 205. Obedience in small instances stated 44. 12 13. Obedience to GOD our only security for defence and provisions 68. 3. Obedience of Jesus to his Parents 72. Obedience and Love 〈◊〉 in the holy Women and how reconciled 427. 9. Occasions of Sin to be avoided 110. 24. Offending Hand or Eye to be cut off or pull'd out 323. 17. Ordinary means of Salvation to be pursued 32. 5. Original Sin disputed to evil purposes 37. Considered and stated in order to Practice 38. 4. Opinion of our selves ought to be small and true 365. 5. It was the Duke of Candia's Harbinger 365. 6. In what mean opinion of our selves consists ibid. Oswy's Vow 270. 19. Outward 〈◊〉 addes reverence to Religion 177. 12. P. PAradise distinct from Heaven 424. 1. Place of GOD's special appearance in Paradise 175. 7. Patriarchs why desirous to be 〈◊〉 in the Land of Promise 425. 3. Pardon of Sins by Christ is most properly of Sins committed before Baptism 193. Pardon of Sins after Baptism how consigned 200. 201. It is more uncertain and difficult ibid. It is less and to fewer purposes 204. Alwayes imperfect after Baptism ibid. It is by Parts ibid. Possibility of Pardon hath a period in this life 210. Patrons to present able persons to their Benefices 194. 2. How far lawful to prefer their Kindred ibid. Parents in order of Nature next to God 244. 25. Duty to Parents the band of Republicks ibid. What it consists of ibid. Passion of Jesus 355. 412. Passions sanctified by Jesus 384. 3. Paschal Rites representative of moral Duties 364. Patience to be preserved by Innocents accused 393. And in Sickness 404. 17. Paul calling himself the greatest Sinner in what sence he understood it 264. 8. He hoped for Salvation more confidently towards his end 317. 9. Palms cut down for the Reception of Jesus 347. Persecution an earnest of future Bliss 229. 18. It is lawful to fly it 290. 69. 4. Not to fight against it 70. The Duty of Suffering explicated 229. 18. Peacefulness its Acts and Reward 228. 17. Peace 〈◊〉 from God by Christ 29. 5. Personal Priviledges not to be insisted upon so much as strict Duty 37. Personal Infirmity of Princes excuses not our Disobedience 46. Person of a Man first accepted and then his Gift in what sence true 33. Parental Piety of the Virgin Mary 15. Person of Christ of great excellency 15. Presentation of Jesus the only Present that was commensurate to God's excellency 52. Poverty of Christ's Birth in many circumstances 15. Christ chose his Portion among the poor of this World 52. 3. Poverty better than Riches ibid. 222. 3. No shame to be poor ibid. 29. 15. 4. Christ was revealed first to poor Men 29. Poverty of Spirit described 222. Its Parts Acts and Offices ibid. Peter for want of Faith ready to drown 320. Providence of God provides Bread for us It unites causes disparate in one event 13. Providence of GOD disposes evil Men to evil events 66. And good Men to good secretly but certainly ibid. It is wholly to be relied upon for provisions and defence 67. 71. 99. It supplies all our needs 358. 361. 371. Sometimes it shortens Man's life 264. 307. 22. S. Paphnutius converted a Harlot by the argument of the Divine Presence 113. 32. Plato's reproof of Diogenes 112. 30. Preachers ought to be of good Example 79. 2. Ambitious seeking of Prelacy hath been the Pest of the Church 96. 2. For liberty of Prophesying 187. 2. 233. 18. Presbyters have no power by Divine right to reject from the Communion those that present themselves and desire to receive it 376. 13. Passions if violent though for God are irregular 10. 270. Publick and private Devotions compared 75. 2. Presence of God an Antidote against Temptations 168. 29. Publication to be made of the Divine Excellencies 9. Prosperity dangerous how to be managed ibid. Podavivus his imitation of Wenceslaus 4. Exh. 10. Prodigies of Greatness and Goodness in Christ's Person 16. Prayer the easiest and most pleasant Duty and yet we are averse from it and why 83. A great Remedy against Temptation 115. 37. It must be joyned with our own endeavour ibid. Its Definition Conditions Matter Manner Efficacy Excellency Rules 267. Lord's Prayer explicated 267. Mental and Vocal Prayer compared 271. 23. Presumption in dying persons carefully to be distinguished from Confidence 403. 15. Means of curing it ibid. Presumption upon false Opinions in Religion how to be cured 402. Physicians to be obeyed
these impurities and vanities Jesus hath redeemed all his Disciples and not only thrown out of his Temples all the impure rites of Flora and Cybele but also the trifling and unprofitable ceremonies of the more sober Deities not only Vices but useless and unprofitable Speculations and hath consecrated our Head into a Temple our Understanding to Spirit our Reason to Religion our Study to Meditation and this is the first part of the Sanctification of our Spirit 6. And this was the cause Holy Scripture commands the duty of Meditation in proportion still to the excellencies of Piety and a holy life to which it is highly and aptly instrumental Blessed is the man that meditates in the Law of the Lord day and night And the reason of the Proposition and the use of the Duty is expressed to this purpose Thy words have I hid in my heart that I should not sin against thee The placing and fixing those divine Considerations in our understandings and hiding them there are designs of high Christian prudence that they with advantage may come forth in the expresses of a holy life For what in the world is more apt and natural to produce Humility than to meditate upon the low stoopings and descents of the Holy Jesus to the nature of a Man to the weaknesses of a Child to the poverties of a Stable to the ignobleness of a Servant to the shame of the Cross to the pains of Cruelty to the dust of Death to the title of a Sinner and to the wrath of God By this instance Poverty is made honourable and Humility is sanctified and made noble and the contradictions of nature are amiable and 〈◊〉 for a wise election Thus hatred of sin shame of our selves confusion at the sense of humane misery the love of God confidence in his Promises desires of Heaven holy resolutions resignation of our own appetites 〈◊〉 to Divine will oblations of our selves Repentance and mortification are the proper emanations from Meditation of the sordidness of sin our proneness to it our daily miseries as issues of Divine vengeance the glories of God his infinite unalterable Veracity the satisfactions in the vision of God the rewards of Piety the rectitude of the Laws of God and perfection of his Sanctions God's supreme and paternal Dominion and his certain malediction of sinners and when any one of these Considerations is taken to pieces and so placed in the rooms of application that a piece of duty is conjoyned to a piece of the mystery and the whole office to the purchase of a grace or the extermination of a vice it is like opening our windows to let in the Sun and the Wind and Holiness is as proportioned an effect to this practice as Glory is to a persevering Holiness by way of reward and moral causality 7. For all the Affections that are in Man are either natural or by chance or by the incitation of Reason and discourse Our natural affections are not worthy the entertainments of a Christian they must be supernatural and divine that put us into the hopes of Perfection and Felicities and these other that are good unless they come by Meditation they are but accidental and set with the evening Sun But if they be produced upon the strengths of pious Meditation they are as perpetual as they are reasonable and excellent in proportion to the Piety of the principle A Garden that is watered with short and sudden showrs is more uncertain in its fruits and beauties than if a Rivulet waters it with a perpetual distilling and constant humectation And just such are the short emissions and unpremeditated resolutions of Piety begotten by a dash of holy rain from Heaven whereby God sometimes uses to call the careless but to taste what excellencies of Piety they neglect but if they be not produced by the Reason of Religion and the Philosophy of Meditation they have but the life of a Fly or a tall Gourd they come into the World only to say they had a Being you could scarce know their length but by measuring the ground they cover in their fall 8. For since we are more moved by material and sensible objects than by things merely speculative and intellectual and generals even in spiritual things are less perceived and less motive than particulars Meditation frames the understanding part of Religion to the proportions of our nature and our weakness by making some things more circumstantiate and material and the more spiritual to be particular and therefore the more applicable and the mystery is made like the Gospel to the Apostles Our eyes do see and our ears do hear and our hands do handle thus much of the word of life as is prepared for us in the Meditation 9. First And therefore every wise person that intends to furnish himself with affections of Religion or detestation against a Vice or glorifications of a Mystery still will proportion the Mystery and fit it with such circumstances of fancy and application as by observation of himself he knows aptest to make impression It was a wise design of Mark Antony when he would stir up the people to revenge the death of Caesar he brought his body to the pleading-place he shewed his wounds held up the rent mantle and shewed them the garment that he put on that night in which he beat the Nervii that is in which he won a victory for which his memory was dear to them he shewed them that wound which pierced his heart in which they were placed by so dear a love that he made them his heirs and left to their publick use places of delight and pleasure and then it was natural when he had made those things present to them which had once moved their love and his honour that grief at the loss of so honourable and so lov'd a person should succeed and then they were Lords of all their sorrow and revenge seldom slept in two beds And thus holy Meditation produces the passions and desires it intends it makes the object present and almost sensible it renews the first passions by a fiction of imagination it passes from the Paschal Parlour to Cedron it tells the drops of sweat and measures them and finds them as big as drops of bloud and then conjectures at the greatness of our sins it fears in the midst of Christ's Agonies it hears his groans it spies Judas his Lantern afar off it follows Jesus to Gabbatha and wonders at his innocence and their malice and feels the strokes of the Whip and shrinks the head when the Crown of Thorns is thrust hard upon his holy brows and at last goes step by step with Jesus and carries part of the Cross and is nailed fast with sorrow and compassion and dies with love For if the Soul be principle of its own actions it can produce the same effects by reflex acts of the Understanding when it is assisted by the Imaginative part as when it sees the thing
acted only let the Meditation be as minute particular and circumstantiate as it may for a Widow by representing the caresses of her dead Husband's love produces sorrow and the new affections of a sad endearment It is too sure that the recalling the circumstances of a past impurity does re-inkindle the flame and entertain the fancy with the burnings of an impure fire And this happens not by any advantages of Vice but by the nature of the thing and the efficacy of Circumstances So does holy Meditation produce those impresses and signatures which are the proper effects of the Mystery if presented in a right line and direct representation 10. Secondly He that means to meditate in the best order to the productions of Piety must not be inquisitive for the highest Mysteries but the plainest Propositions are to him of the greatest use and evidence For Meditation is the duty of all and therefore God hath fitted such matter for it which is proportioned to every understanding and the greatest Mysteries of Christianity are plainest and yet most fruitful of Meditation and most useful to the production of Piety High Speculations are as barren as the tops of Cedars but the Fundamentals of Christianity are fruitful as the Valleys or the creeping Vine For know that it is no Meditation but it may be an Illusion when you consider Mysteries to become more learned without thoughts of improving Piety Let your affections be as high as they can climb towards God so your considerations be humble fruitful and practically mysterious Oh that I had the wings of a Dove that I might flie away and be at rest said David The wings of an Eagle would have carried him higher but yet the innocent Dove did furnish him with the better Embleme to represent his humble design and lower meditations might sooner bring him to rest in God It was a saying of AEgidius That an old and a simple woman if she loves Jesus may be greater than was Brother Bonaventure Want of Learning and disability to consider great secrets of Theology does not at all retard our progress to spiritual perfections Love to Jesus may be better promoted by the plainer understandings of honest and unlettered people than by the finer and more exalted speculations of great Clerks that have less Devotion For although the way of serving God by the Understanding be the best and most lasting yet it is not necessary the Understanding should be dressed with troublesom and laborious Notions the Reason that is in Religion is the surest principle to engage our services and more perpetual than the sweetnesses and the motives of Affection but every honest man's Understanding is then best furnished with the discourses and the reasonable parts of Religion when he knows those mysteries of Religion upon which Christ and his Apostles did build a holy life and the superstructures of Piety those are the best materials of his Meditation 11. So that Meditation is nothing else but the using of all those arguments motives and irradiations which God intended to be instrumental to Piety It is a composition of both ways for it stirs up our Affections by Reason and the way of Understanding that the wise Soul may be satisfied in the Reasonableness of the thing and the affectionate may be entertained with the sweetnesses of holy Passion that our Judgment be determined by discourse and our Appetites made active by the caresses of a religious fancy And therefore the use of Meditation is to consider any of the Mysteries of Religion with purposes to draw from it Rules of life or affections to Vertue or detestation of Vice and from hence the man rises to Devotion and mental Prayer and Entercourse with God and after that he rests himself in the bosom of Beatitude and is swallowed up with the comprehensions of Love and Contemplation These are the several degrees of Meditation But let us first understand that part of it which is Duty and then if any thing succeed of a middle condition between Duty and Reward we will consider also how that Duty is to be performed and how the Reward is to be managed that it may prove to be no Illusion Therefore I add also this Consideration 12. Thirdly Whatsoever pious purposes and deliberations are entertained in the act of Meditation they are carefully to be maintained and thrust forward to actual performances although they were indefinite and indeterminate and no other ways decreed but by resolutions and determinations of Reason and Judgment For God assists every pious action according to its exigence and capacity and therefore blesses holy Meditations with results of Reason and prepossessions dogmatically decreeing the necessity of Vertue and the convenience of certain exercises in order to the purchase of it He then that neglects to actuate such discourses loses the benefit of his Meditation he is gone no farther than when he first set out and neglects the inspirations of the Holy Spirit For if at any time it be certain what spirit it is that speaks within the Soul it is most certain that it is the good Spirit that moves us to an act of Vertue in order to acquisition of the habit and when God's grace hath assisted us so far in our Meditation that we understand our Duty and are moved with present arguments if we put not forth our hand and make use of them we do nothing towards our Duty and it is not certain that God will create Graces in us as he does the Soul Let every pious person think every conclusion of Reason in his Meditation to have passed an obligation upon him and if he hath decreed that Fasting so often and doing so many Religious acts is convenient and conducing to the production of a Grace he is in pursuit of let him know that every such decree and reasonable proposition is the Grace of God instrumental to Piety part of his assistance and therefore in no case to be extinguished 13. Fourthly In Meditation let the Understanding be restrained and under such prudent coercion and confinement that it wander not from one discourse to another till it hath perceived some fruit from the first either that his Soul be instructed in a Duty or moved by a new argument or confirmed in an old or determined to some exercise and intermedial action of Religion or hath broke out into some Prayers and intercourse with God in order to the production of a Vertue And this is the mystical design of the Spouse in the 〈◊〉 of Solomon I adjure you O you daughters of Jerusalem by the 〈◊〉 and by the Hinds of the field that you stir not up nor awake my love till he please For it is lightness of spirit to pass over a field of flowers and to fix no-where but to leave it without carrying some honey with us unless the subject be of it self barren and unfruitful and then why was it chosen or that it is made so by our indisposition and then indeed it is