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A29033
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Some motives and incentives to the love of God pathetically discours'd of, in a letter to a friend / by the Hon[ora]ble R.B., Esq.
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Boyle, Robert, 1627-1691.
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1659
(1659)
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Wing B4032; ESTC R11830
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73,891
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200
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Excellencies are capable to ennoble their whole Sex Yet their greatest accomplishments compar'd to his Perfections whose gifts they are are in that Eclipsing company as inconspicuous as the faint Qualities of more ordinary persons As when in a cleer Morning the rising-Sun vouchsafes to visit us as well those Bright Starrs that did Adorn our Hemisphere as those Dark Shades that did benight it vanish Consonantly whereunto give me leave to observe to you Lindamor that though divers of God's Attributes are through his goodnesse participated by his Creatures yet the Scripture makes so vast a disparity betwixt the excellencies that it ascribes to men and the same Perfections considered as they exist in God that it seems absolutely to exclude created Beeings from any Title to those Attributes because they possesse them but in a way so inferior to that transcendent peculiar and divine manner in which they belong to God Thus our Saviour sayes to him that taking him but for a man call'd him good Why callest thou me good Mat. 19.16 17. There is none good but One that is God Thus St. Paul 1 Tim. 6.15 calls God or Christ the onely Potentate 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 though the earth be shared by severall Potentates and even the Devout Evnuch in the Acts Act. 8.17 Luk. 1.52 and the deposed Grandees mentioned by the Blessed Virgin in her Canticle are in the Original styled Potentates Mat 25.5 Thus though there be wise Virgins as well as foolish and though our Saviour tells us Luk. 16.8 That the Children of this world are in their generation wiser than the Children of Light 1 Tim. 1.17 1 Tim. 6.16 Yet St. Paul scruples not to rearm his Maker The onely wise God and thus he elsewhere Paraphrases him He that onely hath immortalitie Though Angels and humane Souls be deathless In so incommunicable a manner does the Superiority of God's nature make him possesse those very Excellencies which the diffusivenesse of his goodnesse makes him pleased to communicate I am the more zealous Lindamor to transfigure your Love into Devotion which I must desire you to look upon but as a varied name for Seraphick Love because I have observ'd your passion to have been extreamly impatient of confinement and to have esteem'd whatever may be term'd Limits to be Prisons Few therefore can Need more or Deserve better an object for their love for which too immense a vastnesse were impossible And such a one is God whose soveraign Perfections render him so uncapable of being lov'd Too Much that the most aspiring passion can scarce arrive so much as to lessen its disproportion to the object Other passions like other Rivers are most lik'd when they calmly flow within their wonted Banks but of Seraphick Love as of Nilus the very Inundations might be desireable and his overflowings make him the more welcome For mortall beauties our passions are like our selves If our Stature chance to exceed a certain size or standart it make us monstrous but Devotion is like a flawless Diamond where the bignesse taxes the Value and the unusuall Bulke both rates and inhances the Lustre and the Price To give GOD All our Love is the greatest command both of the Law and Gospell in its capacious teeming womb both comprising and cherishing all the other services God requires and that there is not more exacted of us is not that an addition were Culpable but because it is Impossible So noble is the nature of Devotion that it admits of failings but by one of the extreams which is that of Defect For Mediocritie whose office 't is to restrain us from approaching the utmost Limits which in other passions is an Excellence is here an imperfection Or at least if Mediocrity be that which creates passions vertues the Mediocrity of this Love must consist in the Excesse of it since that is it which makes it most a vertue Psal 42.1 Cervina caro sicca est c. Sennert Insti De Alimenter facultatibus lib. 4. part 1. cap. 3. The man after God's own heart is not a fear'd to own even to his Maker an ardency of love for Him which must be exprest with the significant Metaphor of Thirst and that such a Thirst too as makes the panting Hart by Naturallists observ'd to be a very drie Creature bray as I remember the Hebrew hath it for those refreshing streams whose want distresses and reduces her to an almost gasping condition My very Soul saith he thirsteth for God vers 2. And we know that thirst is not only so violent an appetite that it lessens the wonder of that Monarch's Bargain whom History recoâ—ds to have parted with his Kingdome for a cup of water but thirst doth so confine our longings to what it craves that nothing else can satisfie them The wealth of both the Indies would not excuse the want of a needed Cup supposing their Possessor tormented with an Appetite which cannot be quench't but by Drink To which I must adde that the uneasinesse of unrelieved Thirst is not like that of other inconveniences â—essen'd by continuance but grows by lasting the more unsupportable The same inspired Poet scruples not also to professe so sensible and so active a Concern for Gods interests that the zeal of Gods house had eaten him up and hugely troubled he is that others are not affected with the same zeal Psal 119.158 I beheld sayes he the Transgressours and was grieved because they kept not thy Word Nay Rivers of waters sayes he run down mine eyes Ibidem v. 136. because they keep not thy Law and to manifest how much the tendernesse and unreserv'dnesse of his Love made him think those his friends or enemies that were so to God Ps 101.6 Mine eyes sayes he shall be upon the faithfull of the Land that they may dwell with me He that walketh perfect in the way he shall serve me Do not I hate them O Lord that hate Thee and am not I grieved with those Psal 139.21.22 that rise up against Thee I hate them with a perfect hatred I count them mine Enemies At this Rate did pious David love his Maker but he was so far from thinking this rate Excessive that transported by the sense of his personall disability to pay that Divine object all the Love that his perfections merited he is not content to rouze up all his owne faculties to praise God Ps 103.1 Blesse the Lord O my soul and all that is within me blesse His holy Name but he invites all the Godly to assist him in the payment of so vast a debt Ps 117.1 Love the Lord all ye Saints for c. And again Praise the Lord all ye Nations praise him all ye people And not content neither frequently to do this as may appear by very many passages of his sacred Poems Ps 138.2 he extends his Invitation to the Angells and all the other Hosts of God and concludes the book of Psalms with
a Let every thing that hath breath praise the Lord Hallelujah Nor does it invalidate what has now been delivered That some men have § 4 even by Devout Persons been blamed for too much Devotion for it was not an excesse of Love but a want of Discretion that was guilty of their faults The expressions of our Love to God ought to be regulated not by our blind and wild fancies but by his revealed will as Christ sayes If you Love me keep my Commandements and therefore it is very possible to be too devout not because any expression of Seraphick love can be made with too much Ardency whil'st 't is considered abstractedly in it selfe and irrelatively to the rest But because that there being severall duties of Love which require an Ardency of it 't is injurious to exercise all that in one alone or a few that belongs equally to the neglected others We must not as too many Professours are now wont to do of whose error you may receive a fuller accompt in some other papers dash in pieces the two Tables of the Law against one another But must so love GOD with all our hearts as to love our Neighbours as our selves You know what our Saviour saith to the Pharisees Mat. 23.23 that Tithed Mint and Cummin with a neglect of Judgement Mercy and Faith those weightier matters o◠the Law These ought you 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 t◠have done and not to leave the other undone And indeed this Partiality Lindamor which makes us display so much of the strength and vigour of our Spirits in some few favorite-Duties that we can but languidly and perfunctorily perform those others we are lesse fond of begets in Devotion a disease not unlike that new one in Children we call the Rickets which some Learned Physicians do not improbably conceive to arise from the unequall Nutrition of the parts for though none of them receive excessive Nourishment yet some of them receiving as much as is convenient for them and thereby growing up to their naturall bignesse whilst others are lesse nourished than were the Body healthfull they would be do grow so little that the sounder parts seem Overgrown and so the disproportion betwixt Them and the Ricketting ones makes the whole Body they compose mis-shapen and unweildy But Lindamor this proves not that we can love God too much but onely that we may imploy too much of that Love in this or that way of expressing it Whilst we are Job 4.19 as Job speaks Inhabitants of these houses of Clay there are many Duties which do as well challenge an intensity of our affections as those which relate more immediately to God As St. Paul tells us 1 Cor. 7.32 33 34. That there is difference betwixt married and single Persons the affections of the one being at liberty to devote themselves more undistractedly to God whereas those of the other are distracted as Adam's were betwixt his Maker and his Rib. But where a direct and immediate expression of Love to God defraudes not any other Duty there it is free from the danger of excesse Though Prayers may easily be too long and Fasts grow exorbitant yet Christ could spend the whole night in Prayer and fast forty dayes without immoderatenesse when the other expressions of his Love to his Father and the other exercises of his Mediatory Function were not thereby disturb'd 1 King 19.8 but furthered and promoted And so Elijah might inculpably fast long when that fasting did not disable him to prosecute his journey to the Mount of God and though just men here on Earth must expresse their Love to their Master by that busie distracting and remoter way of service Trading with his Talents trusted to them yet when their devesture of Mortality dispenses them from those laborious and avocating duties to distressed Christians and their owne secular Relations which were here requisite to be perform'd their glorified spirits may now without any immoderate devotion imploy I say not their Time but their Eternity it selfe in Conversing with God and following the Lamb whithersoever he goes And congruously I observe that the four mysterious Beasts Rev. 4.6 7. allow'd to approach neerest to the Throne of God though their many wings and more numerous eyes intimate them of a very active nature are represented to us in the Apocalypse as addicted but to one imployment vers 8. ceasing neither day nor night from saying Holy Holy Holy Lord God Almighty and from giving Glory and Honour and Thanks unto him And of those that have whitened their Robes in the blood of the Lamb this account is in the same book given us Rev. 7.14 15. that they are before the Throne of God and serve Him day and night in his Temple So true it is that no degree of Seraphick Love can be Excessive nay nor any expression of it Immoderate unlesse it be made so not by its Greatness but by its Usurpation whereby it either engrosses or invades what belongs to its injur'd and languishing associates Our Love unto the Creatures is a Present but unto God it is a Tribute and though we may easily play the Prodigalls in parting over-freely with our Guifts we can scarce be so in the payment of our Debts for be the Summes never so vast we pay away their being due in spite of their being great makes the disbursement too much an Act of Justice to be one of Profusenesse Seraphick Love whose Passionatenesse is its best Complexion has then most approach't its noblest measure when it can least be measured nor ought its extent to admit any other limits then an utter disability to exceed those that terminate it For he alone loves God as much as he Ought that loving Him as much as he Can strives to repaire the deplored imperfection of that love with an extream Regret to find it no greater Such a sublimity of love will best intitle you to the Consolation accruing from that memorable passage of St. John 1 Joh. 4.16 where he sayes that God is Love and he that dwelleth in Love dwelleth in God and God in him Which supplies me with a forcible inducement to invite you to an eager aspiring to a Transcendency in devotion since it may render selfe-deniall so easie that 't will at last almost devest that name For this sublimer love being by an intimate conjunction with its Object wholly devoted to it and throughly refined from all base drosse of selfishnesse and interest nobly begets a most strict Union of our wills with God's or rather a perfect submission of the one to the other And thus when it is become your will to obey His no dispensations of Providence will immoderately disquiet you for you possesse your wishes in the Generall and in Bulke though possibly not alwayes in Retaile for your chiefest desire being to see your Maker's will fulfilled your knowledge of his being the Soveraign and uncontrolled Disposer of Events