c. Et hi carnem quidem maculant dominationem autem spernunt majestatem autom blasphemant Hi sunt in epulis suis macule c. as are utterly impudent in words and Libertines in actions of whom the great S. Jude made a lively description Certain men are crept in among us reprobate and impious spirits who apply all talents of grace and nature to lust and to deny him that made them to wit our Lord Jesus Christ Master and sole Monarch of the whole world Then he addeth they are such as defile their flesh and revolt against lawfull powers such as blaspheme the Divine Majesty They are gluttenous cruel and arrogant who onely think to satiate themselves by others hunger clouds without water tossed with turbulent winds autumntrees barren trees trees twice dead trees rooted out of the territory of the Church They are waves of an enraged sea which foam nothing but confusions wandering commets to which God reserveth a tempest of darkness The Causes of Libertinism well observed by the Apostle S. Jude 3. NOte that this great Apostle doth here touch Jud. Epist Job 20. four sources of infidelity which are in this very considerable The chief and original of this corruption is a bruitish lust which with much infamie overfloweth as well in pleasures of the throat as sensuality which he was willing to express by these words when he said The impious not onely act impurities Hi sunt in epulis suis macula but are the impurities themselves For the Libertines are true Borborites so were certain hereticks called as one would say bemired because they naturally delighted in uncleanness they are dissolute people who have no other God but their belly good cheer and unbridled lust from whence it cometh their understandings clouded with bodily pleasures thicken and become wholly unable for things divine The people heretofore beloved is puffed up with Incrassatus est dilectus reâ—alcitravit deâ—eliquit Deum factorem suum Deut. 31. fat hath kicked against and forsaken its Creatour said Moses Tertullian very well termeth gourmandize the palsey of the understanding for as a body is deprived of sense and motion by the corporal palsey which obstructeth the nerves so the spirit oppressed by sensuality is wholly darkened without any feeling of Religion or any motion to works which concern salvation To live in fat is to shut up the gate of wisdom Opimitâ—â— sapientiam impedit exilitas expedit paralisis mentem prodigit pâ—isis servat Tertul. de anima c. 20. There is a palsey of corporal pleasures which wasteth the spirit and a ptissick which preserves it Nay Oecumenius discovereth somewhat more mysterious unto us when interpreting the word maculae according to the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he saith They are certain rocks hidden under the waves which surprize Saylours and cause hydeous shipwracks This very well agreeth to Libertines and one may call them according to another translation rough rocks bollow Confragosa in mari saxa cavernosaâ— rupes tenias stones and shelves which are the causes of so many falls They are in feasts as gulphs in the Ocean and overtake ere aware spirits already possessed with the vapours of wine and meats at which time they are most Bos ductus ad victimam agnus lasciviâ—â—s ignoram quod ad vincula stultus trahatur donec transfigat sagitta guttur ejus Prov. 7. 2â— open to sottish mirth Ah how many young men deceived by these impostures after they have made shipwrack of reason in a tavern have thereunto added the shipwrack of their faith He was led as an ox to the slaughter or as a skipping lamb not foreseeing his captivitie before the mortal arrow had transfixed his entrails saith the Wiseman The second cause of infidelity is a certain barrenness of wit of judgement discretion of Christian virtues and namely of humility of good works and worthy employments and consequently a swelling of presumption of imaginary ability of vanitie of idleness which is much supported by wicked nature effeminate education too free conversation access of evil company which render a man absolutely barren A matter excellently well signified by these words They are clouds without water such kind of trees as we see in Judea unfurnished Nubes sine â—qua of fruits in Autumn and despoiled of leaves twice dead that is to say quite rotten Faith will be manured by the exercises of piety by presence at Divine Service by keeping of fasts by alms and frequentation of Sacraments Now these wicked ones employed in sensual pleasures and evil company forsake all the characters of their Christianity which maketh them by little and little fall into a great forgetfulness of God into disdainfull pride insupportable neglects and into the maledictions uttered by our Saviours lips against the unfruitfull tree Of these is understood the decree of Heaven Earth Jer. 22. 29. Terra terra terra audi sermonem Domtni Haec dicit Dominus Scribe virum istum sterilem virum qui in diebus suis non prosterabitur Fluctus feri maris despumontes confusiones suas earth earth hearken to the word of God Our Lord hath said Write down this man as a man barren who shall never prosper during his life The third source is a tumult of enraged passions which are waves of the sea that vomit up their confusions for these kind of spirits are in perpetual disturbances nor hath the sea so many waves as they anxieties pride puffeth them ambition precipitateth them hatred gnaweth them delights conquer them choller burneth them fury transporteth them hardness of heart makes them untractable and impudence insupportable And being unable to restrain their passions within themselves they throw them abroad as the froath of waves and scum of confusions That is it which Saint Ambrose said Tunc videbitur ignominia tua adulterium hinnitus alienatio fornicationis tuae supra colles Ambr. l. de Abra. interpreting a passage of Jeremie Then is it thy ignominie thy adulterie thy neighing and strangeness of thy fornication shall be seen to all the world on the mountains Lastly the fourth root which rendereth their evil very desperate is a perpetual inconstancy excellently compated in the passage of the Apostle to flying fires formed in the air from exhalations of the earth This sort of men perhaps may have qualities which may give them some Iustre according to the world and make them appear as stars in the firmament of worldly honour causing some to reflect on them with admiration of their wit their eloquence and behaviour But they are to speak properly stars of earth and smoke like unto that S. John calleth the Apoc. 8. star of worm-wood which being not of the stars enchased by the hand of God in celestial globes but flying flames enkindled by some gross exhalations proceeding perhaps from a dung-hill fall back again Crinemque volantia sydera ducunt on earth from whence they came
meae fidem quà m formam irritamentum alienae libidinis esse malus in my face extinguishing with my bloud the flames of them that sought me For I loved better to seal my innocency as with the seal of voluntarie deformitie than to possess a beauty that served onely as a bait for anothers lust O thou Christian woman who dost paint thy self with an ill intention seeking to gain that by imposture which thou canst not attain by truth and not satisfying thy self with adulterating thy beauty sparest not to discover among company a scandalous nakedness to shew in thy breasts the impudence of thy forehead Consider a little what thou wilt answer to this Paynim with all thy curiosity when her bloud her wounds scars her beauty disfigured which served as a sacrifice to her chastity shall accuse thee before the inevitable tribunal Behold likewise Lycurgus is elected King of the Greatness of Lycurgus Lacedemonians if so his dead brother should leave no heir in his wives body The perfidious and unnatural Queen sendeth this message to the King new chosen SIR I am with child and according to the laws of the countrey it may fall out the fruit of my body may snatch the Scepter out of your hands I see the kingdom is a dainty morsel hard for them to disgorge who once have swallowed it If you will be wise in your own affair I know a means by a potion to put your crown in safetie and by anticipation taking away the life of this little creature settle your throne for ever Onely be mindful of me your faithful hand-maid who with loss of my own bloud tender this grateful office Hereupon Lycurgus detesting in his heart the treacherie of this ravenous she-wolf dissembleth and answereth MADAME Let the infant come into the world be it male or female it importeth not we alwayes shall find means enough whensoever we shall think good to dispatch it As soon as the child was born which proved a boy he took it in his arms he assembled the Magistrates and people and covering the little Creature with his royal Robe saith Sirs long live justice and loyaltie Behold your King I am but his vassal O Christian what sayest thou to this Pagan that would not purchase a Kingdom by the single sin of another Yet many times a little interest makes thee neglect all that which is divine in Faith Justice and Religion It is not required of thee thou shouldest be a S. Antony a Macarius an Angel of the desert It is demanded of thee that for Gods honour thou shew some small resistance of sin which these infidels have done for a shadow of virtue and it shall suffice Dost thou not behold that thou art enforced not onely for good fashion but for necessity to this Christian perfection which thou imaginest to be far separated from thy condition Conclude O ye Noble men out of this discourse that the obligation which you have to be perfect is most evident since you have JESUS CHRIST for a sharer the charges easie it consisting not but in loving a goodness which one cannot hate and which never any one can love if he offer not the homage of his proper interest to his divine Majesty Behold all perfection The second REASON Drawn from Nobilitie HAving in general declared the obligation all Christians have to become perfect let us in particular behold the reasons which invite Nobilitie to perfection I doubt not if you maturely ponder those which I have to propose you shall find them no less obliged to the solid eminencie of all Christian virtues than Hermits themselves and this by the right of their condition so as that which seemeth to enlarge their scope to a life of greater libertie rather serveth as a bound of their dutie and a bridle for their dissolutions Let us take the first reason which is their Nobilitie It is an argument that cannot proceed but from a low judgement or a spirit soothed with its own effeminacie to say he is Noble he is a Courtier he is a States-man his qualitie tieth him not to perfection his virtue must be measured by the ell of the world if he were over virtuous the excess of his sanctitie would be prejudicial to his fortune What an extravagant humour is it to fix ignominie upon the front of Nobilitie in the first beginning He is Noble he therefore should be the less devout and less virtuous Change the Gamuth and say He is Noble he hath therefore the more obligation to be perfect Nobilitie hath put the yoak of a happie necessitie upon him which he cannot shake off without much cowardize And to make you thereby behold that Nobilitie is a bond of Christian virtue in all eminencie no man will deny but that by how much the more God giveth powerful and effectual means to man to arrive at a good end so much more obligation he hath to carry himself with fervency of affection and in case of failing his neglect is made the more faultie The servant to whom the Master hath given five talents to negotiate with ought much more to profit and bring gain home than he that received but one single talent Who can deny Nobilitie first gift of God Mihi Deorum immortalium munus primum videtur maximum in lucem statim felicem venire Panegyr Constant this if he will not belie the light of nature Now so it is Great men have many more talents of God for the traffick of virtues than others have and behold the first of all which is the happiness of their birth An Oratour making a solemn Oration in the praise of Constantine the Great in the Citie of Trier let fall these words The first and greatest gift of heaven was to be born happy and as soon to be in the lists of felicitie as of nature The Scripture it self recommendeth Nobilitie in the persons of the three valiant children held in the Captivitie of Babylon in that of Eleazar and others It is a wonder how S. Hierome in the Epitaph of S. Paula hath not omitted that she was descended from Agamemnon Which would never have been mentioned were it not that Nobility is valued amongst the temporal goods which are distributed to us by the providence of Almighty God Now that Nobilitie is a good instrument to conduct to perfection appeareth by an irrefragable reason which I intend to express I will not say what might be proposed and fortified by experience that the bodies of Noble and Gentlemen are ordinarily better composed and as it were more delicately moulded by the artful hands of nature that they have their senses more subtile their spirits more agile their members better proportioned their garb more gentile and grace more accomplished and that all these prepare a fair shop for the soul to exercise her functions with greater liberty Let us rather Nobilitie not tied to bloud Omnis propemodum sanguis est concolor sicubi forte alter altero
with lightening flashes transpasseth through the abysses and maketh hell it self confess it hath not darkness enough to shadow it from his face Now so it is that God condemneth reproveth chastiseth with the particular indignation of his heart this plaistered life and therefore as the Lev. 11. 18. The swan and the Ostrich rejected by God Interpreters of the Scripture observe he rejected the swan notwithstanding the whiteness of her feathers and the sweetness of note which is ascribed to her nor would he ever admit her in the number of his victimes because under pure white feathers she hideth a black flesh For the same reason he never would have the Ostrich who hath onely the ostentuous boasts of wings and no flight so much he detesteth apparence fruitless and effectless First or last he will saith holy Job take away Job 18. 19. the mask so that the life of hypocrites shall be as the spiders web in the judgement of God they shall think they have sped well but even to have hidden themselves all shall be resolved into thing to make them appear what they are in a most ignominious nakedness They now are Panthers who have their skins spotted with mirrours that search out secret fountains to wash away the ordures and impressions of their crimes as it is related of this creature But the day of God will come when as the Prophet Waters of Panthers Isaiah 15. Aquae Nimrim siccabuntur Isaiah saith the Panthers waters shall wholly be dried and soaked up that is to say as Ailredus interpreteth it that all the counterfeitings and dissimulations of the world shall find no more water to whiten them We all naturally fear the publication of our vices so sensible we are in the touches of honour Those poor Milesian maids who moved with enraged despair ran to halters and steepie precipices could never be diverted from this fury either by the sweet admonishment of their parents or rigorous menaces of Judges but when by decree the naked bodies of those who had violated the law of nature by this most wicked attempt were cast upon the dung-hill the onely apprehension of nakedness and of the nakedness of a bodie bereaved of sense stayed the course of these execrable frenzies And without speaking of ancient Histories William Bishop of Lions relateth that a certain Damsel painted in an Age when simplicity was in great esteem as she went along in a procession behold by chance an Ape came Trick of an Ape out of a shop who leaped on her shoulders and took off her coif and made a little deformity appear covered under painting and dissimulation whereby she felt herself overwhelmed with dolour and confusion If the small affronts and disgraces which we receive in the world have so much force what will it be then when the Sovereign Judge shall take away the scarf and make a cauterized conscience appear What will it be when with as many torches and burning lights as there then shall be of Angels and of the elect by his side he shall penetrate even to the bottom of a lost soul Where then shall be his plaisterings where his dissimulations and hypocrisies in the abyss of this confusion It is a thing which we rather may meditate on in silence than express in words Upon these considerations resolve with your selves to build your salvation upon the firm rock of truth and not on a vain reputation upon the slippery moving sands of human apparences Imitate that good King father of S. Lewis who bare a scepter made like an obelisk in a ring with this devise Volo solidum Tipotius in Simbol perenne as who should say all his intentions aimed at heaven and eternity Make a determinate purpose as much as possibly you may to avoid in your apparel in your hair in your words in your actions all sorts of affectation of hypocrisie of folly as things base sottish ridiculous August l. 83. quaest Summa divina virtus est neminem decipere ultimum vitium est quemlibet decipere and wicked ever remembering this sentence of S. Augustine A great and divine virtue is to deceive no man The last and most mischievous of all vices is to deceive the whole world The sixth OBSTACLE Ill husbanding of time A Notable fable maketh the spider and the silk-worm A notable fable to speak together telling their fortune in a pretty pleasing manner and greatly replenished with moral instruction The poor spider complaineth she laboureth night and day to make her webs with so much fervour and diligence that she unbowelleth herself pouring forth her substance and strength to accomplish her work yet notwithstanding her endeavour so little prospereth as that after she hath brought this her web to perfection a silly servant comes with a broom and in an instant undoes what she could not produce perhaps scarcely in ten years But if it happen she escape from this persecution which seldom is seen in great mens houses yet all the fruit she may expect from so much toyl is but to take some wretched flie in her web Behold you not herein sufficient cause to bewail her misery The silk-worm quite contrary boasteth herself to be one of the most happy creatures which lives on the face of the earth For saith he I am sought after as if I were a precious diamond I am exported from forreign countries happy is he who best can lodge breed entertain and cherish me men bend all their industrie to serve my easeful repose and commodities If I travel my pain is well bestowed but be it how you will silly spider that you take flies I captivate Kings The greatest Monarchs of the earth are involved in my threeds Queens and great Ladies make of my works the entertainment of their beauties and the Potentates which will not depend upon any are dignified by a little worm The four corners of the earth divide my labours with admiration and not being able to go higher although I reach not to Heaven yet I behold the Altars glitter under the embellishments which issue from my entrails And verily there is great difference between the travel of the spider and pain of the silk-worm The industrie of these two little creatures do naturally figure unto us two sorts of persons whereof the one laboureth for vanity the other for verity All men coming into this life enter thereinto as into a shop of toyl which is as natural to them as flight for birds A great man after Adamus de Sancto Victore A worthy Epitaph Conceptio culpa nasci poena necesse mori he had well considered this sentence of Job caused these words to be inscribed on his tomb well worthy of ponderation that is to say Man entereth into being by the gate of not being as he who is as soon in sin as in nature his birth is a punishment his life a travel and his death a necessity And very well Tertullian observeth that
your body by the most noble sense within you but by the help of a mirrour Nay you know so little of your self that scarcely have you observed the number of your teeth and being far from the particular distinction of the interiour parts of your body should you enter into the great labyrinths of the faculties of your soul you would quickly find out your own ignorance Compare now the science you have of your self with the great proofs which lead you to the knowledge of the Divinity First we are born to know God as the excellent Divine Alexander Alensis discourseth Alex. Alens quaest 2. de cognitione Dei A singular consideration of Aleâ— because if the sovereign Goodness be necessarily desired by our reasonable appetite we must affirm the supream truth is no less capable to be known by our understanding and as we are naturally inclined to the search of this sovereign Good which may take up al the agitatioÌ„s of our thoughts so we feel our soul almost without any other reflection stir'd up with a generous desire to be united to the first cause We behold it through so many creatures as through lattices and it seems to speak to us in as many objects as we see works of his Goodness It maketh us restless it scorcheth us with an honest flame which teacheth us there is a God and that we are created for him nor is there any other creature in all visible nature which laboureth in such inquisition but man This ardent inclination to this knowledge is not a slight facility of science and we see constant study is ordinarily recompenced with the fruition of its object 2. I likewise hold God of his part is very well to God most easie to be â—nown be known having all the conditions which may make a thing known as Essence immutability simplicity brightness and presence If you there look for Being which is a necessary object of the understanding as colour of sight God saith S. Gregorie of Nazianzen Naziâ—â—z Iâ—mbico 2. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Origenes homil in numer 23. Faustus de gratiâ l. 2. c. 7. Deus est quod habet Deâ— ubique est quis nullibi est is a creating Essence an Essence comprehending all things If immutability Origen teacheth the Divinity sitteth on the top of beatitude ever constant never changeable If brightness God is all light as the Scripture manifesteth in so many places If simplicity Faustus Bishop of Rhegium sheweth God is all what he hath If continual presence Porphyriâ— confesseth he is every where because he is not in any part as bodies are The Poet Orpheus in his mysterious poefie calleth him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as one would say lightsom and visible to teach us all the world is enfolded within his radiance I will not hereupon inferre that one may have in this world an absolute and perfect knowledge of God as of a thing finite but I say that amongst so many lights it is not admitted that any man should be ignorant there is a God Creatour of all things 3. What Epicurean can dis-involve himself from Reason of Mercury Trismegistus 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Trismegistus his reason who teacheth that were there not an Essence necessary and independent all we see all we touch all we feel in the world would have no being but this is meer illusion Wherefore Because the things which may be and not be indifferently like so many plants or transitory animals one while are and another while are not And we may truly say there hath been a certain time wherein they neither had being nor name in the world Now as nothing can actuate and produce it self must we not confess that had there not been from all eternity a first Agent which gave motion to so many causes enchained one to another whereof they are produced wherein we presently behold this great world all had been a nothing For of two we must grant one either that the world is created or not created If impiety transport a man so far as to say it is not created but hath been from all eternity he would ever be convinced by his own confession that there were such a Being as we seek for eternal necessary independent which is nothing else but God He would be reduced to this point that he no longer could deny the Divinity but was onely ignorant what this Divinity is and in stead of giving this title to a most pure Spirit as we do he 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 would attribute it to a body as to heaven water earth where he would instantly find himself ashamed of his folly to take for the Divinity a thing which hath no understanding and consequently is far less than himself In stead of a true God he would make a million of deities to become as many snares of his errour and witnesses of his bruitishness But if the world be created which it is not lawful to doubt of three things we must affirm one Either that it produced it self or that one piece made another or that there was one cause external supream not to be reckoned among the rest which made all the parts of the universe To say Author libri de triplici habitaculo apud Aug. tom 9. Nihil scipsum creat Quâ enim potentiâ qui omnino nâ—â— esset scipsâ—â— faceret Deâ—â— innatus infectus sine initiâ— sine fine in aternitate constitutus Tert. l. 3. advers Marcion c. 3. a thing made it self is to affirm it was before its being and to assever a proposition ridiculous to all humane understanding But if to evade this manifest contradiction one will maintain one piece made another still must he come to a last piece which was produced by it self and so fall again into the same difficulty Behold the reason why we must stick upon a general cause out of the main mass of all causes and which affording essence sense and intelligence to so many creatures according to the condition and qualities of every one remaineth eternal and immoveable Now he who says this affirmeth there is a God 4. But if some impious creature will notwithstanding Instance upon the infinite number of the wicked perplex the evidence of this proposition imitating Sorcerers who cast mists upon the brightest morning and say one thing produced another from father to son but that this still mounteth upward in infinitum and so think to make us loose our judgement and reason in the labyrinth of infinities First it is answered according to the doctrine of Philosophers There is Force of reason nothing in the world actually infinite and although an infinity of generations of men beasts and other creatures were admitted still must you confess this infinite mass of men was produced from a cause independent For that which agreeth to each part of a species and which is properly by it affected agreeth likewise to the main of the whole species as if it be proper
a love more fervent than their flames and the ax which separated the head from thy bodie placed a Crown on thy head I behold thee with an eye wholly rapt with the beauties of thy glorie I a thousand times kiss thy wounds and take part in thy tropheys and sanctifie my self by loving thee as a Martyr of Jesus Christ What then remains O blessed soul but that I imitate thee and though executioners forbear my bodie never to spare my pains That all my life may be but a martyrdom and that there be not any part in me which serves not as a victim to the sacrifice of my patience Aglae having performed her duties and caused a Church to be built dedicated to God in memory of the Martyr S. Boniface entered into a Monastery and perfected her self in the glorious travels of penance finishing her course near her well-beloved and entombing her ashes at his feet THE SECOND PART OF MAXIMS Of the HOLY COURT THE DESIGN WE have directly looked towards God in the first Part deducing Maxims which most nearly concern the Divinitie I now descend in this Second to those which touch the direction of this present life and consider them in three respects whereof one tendeth to the service of God the other to our neighbour and the last stayeth upon our selves In the first I treat of Pietie against all counterfeit devotion In the second I shew we must carry our selves towards our neighbours with justice sinceritie and sweetness excluding our own ends dissimulation and crueltie In the third I entertain what concerns the ordering of our selves in prosperitie against Epicureans and in adversitie against impatience upon accidents of humane life wherein I endeavour throughout effectually to observe the disorders which Plato and Aristotle noted were the causes of the destruction of Families Cities and Empires THE SECOND PART Touching the Direction of this present Life IX MAXIM Of DEVOTION THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT That if Devotion must be used we should embrace that which is in fashion accommodating it to our ends That we must be devout for God and that if Devotion be not solid it is no longer Devotion IT is a matter very considerable that Devotion is subject to many more illusions than all other virtues of which we have proof enough from our own experience although we could find no other foundation in reason But if the judicious Reader The cause wherefore Devotion is subject to so many illusions desire to know the cause I will tell him that as nothing hath been so much turmoiled and counterfeited as Religion which hath in all Ages been disfigured by such variety of Sects so it is no marvel if Devotion which is according to S. Thomas as the branch of this tree find the like contrarieties Bodies most delicate are soonest corrupted by extream impressions so this virtue which is of a temperature very subtile since it is as it were the cream of charity may easily be perverted by the evil mannage of it Adde that the wicked spirit seeing this exercise is very necessary for us seeks to envenom it in its sources to the end we may draw poison from those things which might be our remedy Besides men either through superabundance of idleness presumption of ability through love of their own conceits or desire of novelty multiply their inventions upon this matter and many make golden Goldē calves taken for Cherubins The practice of the Lacedemonians calves to themselves in Bethel in stead of the Cherubins of Jerusalem The Lacedemonians ever attired their gods according to the fashions and humours which then swayed in their Citie Every one delights to dress up devotion by the pattern of his passions I affirm one cannot worthily enough praise the practise of so many devout souls which live in singular purity either in Religious or Civil life And I may say it is an Host of the living God as terrible in his mildness as he is sweet in his terrours I honour all the bodies yea the particulars with the honour their deserts have acquired But as the strongest truths fail not to be invaded by some obscurities so it is no wonder if in the ordering of virtues some defects creep into the life of particulars which should no way prejudice the integrity of the general Of Dark Devotion THere is a dark Devotion which is rude and Gross and afflicting Devotion stupid another nice a third transcendent and a fourth sincere and solid I call a stupid devotion that which establisheth all virtue in indiscreet and immoderate austerities which very often kill the body and extinguish the total vigour of the mind that which without any obligation of the Church or of some particular Order or sage direction ties it self to straight and rigorous observations rather for satisfaction of self-will than through any other sense of piety and which placeth in this act all Christian perfection not minding so many other duties which strictly bind us to matters more considerable We have heard the Idolaters of the Eastern parts kill themselves with recital of a fearfull number of prayers to their Idols roul in the scorching sands clog themselves with fetters and slash themselves with razors thinking by these ways they may arrive to the top of sanctity Nor can we likewise be ignorant what is sufficiently declared unto us by holy Scripture that many of the Ancients were much enclined to these superstitious devotions establishing therein all the order of spiritual life in such sort that they perpetually afflicted their bodies and in the mean time suffered their hearts to sway in empty vanities burning avarice rigours and cruelties towards their neighbours wholly insupportable Such was the devotion of Pharisees so often rebuked and condemned herein by the lips of the eternal Truth For when you saw them walk in publick you beheld men lean and disfigured who bare scrowls of parchment on their heads wherein they wrote some sentence of the Law of God and tied thorns to the border of their gowns to prick and torment their heels whilest the heart uncontroulably committed all disorder Such also was the devotion of certain superstitious reproved by the Prophet Isaiah in the 58. Chapter where God speaketh Isaiah 58. saying unto them Who ever hath gone about to exact such fasts from you and such devotion as you practise to afflict the bodie a whole day together how the head lie on sackcloth and ashes Is this then that which you call fasting and can you think days and times spent in such actions are very acceptable to God I will teach you another kind of fast Break off those Dissoloe colligationes impietatis solve fasciculos deprimentes bargains you have made with such iniquity tear in pieces the bundles of unjust and insupportable obligations let the poor go at libertie who are overwhelmed with wants Take the yoke from them which they can no longer bear give food to the hungrie lodge pilgrims and
the power of God in his Saints caused a fair Church to be built to this most blessed woman and a Cross to be erected in the place where she left him which was called the Cross of the place Thus was God pleased to ratifie by so great miracles the pardon Constantia had given to Prince Charls I will shut up this discourse with a passage of so rare clemency of a Monarch offended in the honour of a daughter of his by a mean vassal as it seems could never have fallen but into the heart of a Charlemaigne It is to this purpose recounted that one Eginardus Curio l. 2. rerum Chronologicarum who was Secretary to the Prince having placed his affections much higher than his condition admitted made love to one of his daughters which was in mine opinion natural who seeing this man of a brave spirit and a grace suitable thought not him too low for her whom merit had so eminently raised above his birth She affected him and gave him too free access Goodness and in dulgence of Charlemaigne to her person so far as to suffer him to have recourse unto her to laugh and sport in her chamber on evenings which ought to have been kept as a sanctuary wherein relicks are preserved It happened upon a winters night these two amorous hearts having inwardly so much fire that they scarcely could think upon the cold Eginardus ever hastening his approches and being very negligent in his returns had somewhat too much slackened his departure The snow mean while raised a rampart which troubled them both when he thought to go out Time pressed him to leave her and heaven had stopped up the way of his passage It was not tolerable for him to go forward Eginardus feared to be known by his feet and the Lady thought it not any matter at all to see the prints of such steps about her door They being much perplexed love which taketh the diadem of majesty from Queens so soon as they submit to its tyranny made her do an act for a lover which had she done for a poor man it would have been the means to place her among the great Saints of her time She tooke this Gentleman upon her shoulders and carried him all the length of the Court to his chamber he never setting foot to the ground that so the next day no impression might be seen of his footing It is true which a holy Father saith that if hell lay on the shoulders of love love would find courage enough to bear it But it hath more facilitie to undertake than prudence to hide it self the eye of God not permitting these follies should either be concealed or unpunished Charlemaign who had not so much affection in store for women that he spent not some nights in studie watched this night and hearing a noise opened the window and perceived this prettie prank at which he could not tell whether he were best to be angrie or to laugh The next day in a great assembly of Lords and in the presence of his daughter and Eginardus he proposed the matter past in covert tearms asking what punishment might a servant seem worthie of who made use of a Kings daughter as of a Mule and caused himself to be carried on her shoulders in the midst of winter through night snow and all sharpness of the season Every one gave hereupon his opinion and there was not any who condemned not this insolent man to death The Princess and Secretarie changed colour thinking nothing remained for them but to be flayed alive But the Emperour looking on his Secretarie with a smooth brow said Eginardus hadst thou loved the Princess my daughter thou oughtest to have come freely to her father who should dispose of her libertie and not to play these pranks which have made thee worthy of death were not my clemency much greater than the respect thou hast born to my person I now at this present give thee two lives the one in preserving thine the other in delivering her to thee in whom thy soul more survives than in the body it animateth Take thy fair portress in marriage and both of you learn to fear God and to play the good husbands These lovers thought they were in an instant drawn out of the depth of Hell to ascend to heaven and all the Court stood infinitly in admiration of this judgement It appears by the narration what was the mild temper of Charlemaign in this point and that he followed the counsel of S. Ambrose who advised a Father named Epist l. 8. ep 64. Si bonam duxit acquisioit tibi gratiam Si erravit accipiendo meliores facies refutando deteriores Sisinnius to receive his son with a wife he had taken for love For receiving them both said he you will make them better rejecting them render them worse The goodness of these great hearts for all that justifieth not the errours of youth which grievously offendeth when it undertaketh resolutions in this kind not consulting with those to whom it oweth life XIII MAXIM Of the Epicurean life THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT That the flesh must be daintily used and all possible contentment given to the mind That life without crosses and flesh void of mortification is the sepulcher of a living man EXperience teacheth us there is in the World a sect of reformed Epicures who do not openly profess the bruitishness of those infamous spirits which are drenched in gourmandize and lust but take Maxims more refined that have as they say no other aim but to make a man truly contented For which purpose they promise themselves to drive all objects from their minds which may bring the least disgust and to afford the bodie all pleasures which may preserve it in a flourishing health accompanied with grace vigour and vivacity of senses Here may the judicious observe that such was the The Philosophie of Epicurus swayeth in the world doctrine of ancient Epicurus For although many make a monster of him all drowned in ordure and prodigious pleasure yet it is very easie to prove that he never went about to countenance those bruitish ones who through exorbitance of lusts ruin all the contentments of the mind and bodie But he wholly inclined to find out all the pleasures of nature and to banish any impediments which might make impression on the soul or bodie For which cause I think Thedor l. 2. Therap Nicet 2. Thesau c. 1. Tertul. apol c. 38. Hieron 2. in Jovin Laertius lib. 10. Senec. l. de vitâ beatâ Theodoret mistook him when he made him so gluttonous as to contend with Jupiter about a sop and that Nicetas who representeth him so licourish after honied tarts well understood him not For Tertullian S. Hierom Laertius and Seneca who better noted his doctrine assure us he was a very sober man and speaketh not in his writings but of pulse and fruits not for the honour he bare to
preservation of a fool and sick man If Rom. 6. Great spirits enemies of the flesh you live according to the flesh you shall die said the Apostle to the Romans All great spirits who have a feeling of their extraction the beauty and nobility of their souls take not the necessities of life but with some shame and sorrow They regard the flesh as the prison of a spirit immortal and think to flatter it is to strangle the beâ—ter part of themselves which resteth in the understanding The Philosopher Plotinus who Plotin Porphiry upon his life was renowned as the worlds Oracle could not endure to have his picture taken saying he had trouble enough to suffer a wretched bodie without multiplying the figures thereof by the help of painting and you imagine it is a virtue of the times to adore it and afford it submissions which pass to the utmost period of servitude How much the more we profit in the libertie of God's children so much the more we proceed in disengagement from sense and enter as into the sanctuarie of souls there to consult on truths and understand reasons which vindicate us from the dregs of the world to give us passage into the societie of Angels It is a strange matter that the subtile Divine Scotus Discourse of Scotus concerning sense Scotus locis disquisit 1. indicatis thinks that to understand and know objects by sensible representations passing through the gate of our sense and striking our imagination is a punishment from original sin He finds it is a harsh subjection to make application to the bodie to derive colours odours and sounds from it which notwithstanding seemeth as innocent as the purchase of bees who suck honie out of flowers and shall we think there can be any felicitie to plunge our judgement into all the voluptuous pleasures of flesh Know we not it many times doth to the soul as the An observation of Camerarius concerning the heron heron to the faulcon He endeavoureth to flie above him and to wet his wings with his excrements to make his flight heavie and render his purpose unprofitable Alas how many times feel we the vigour of our reason enervated by the assaults of concupiscence which contracteth the like advantage from it's ordures for the enthralment of the spirit And why would we second it's violence by our weakness Instance upon the weakness and miserie in service of the body I moreover demand of you what can you hope from so punctually observing your bodie You are not a Geryon with three heads and three throats There needs but a little to fill you For though your concupiscence be infinite yet are your senses finite many times pleasure overwhelms them before they afford themselves the leisure of tasting them If you resolve so curiously to attend the search of pleasures you should desire the spirit of a horse to enjoy them with the more vigour and liberty But what sense is there to have the soul of a man and seek to be glutted with the mite of the earth as if one would feed a Phoenix with carrion on which ravens live when you have done all you can to make your self happie by diversity of worldly pleasures beasts will ever have more than you For their sensitive souls much sooner meet the height of nature and as their pleasures are free from shame so they drag not sorrow after them They are not gnawn with cares by desiring things needless they take what the elements afford them and what the industry of man manures for them know not what it is to find poisonous maladies in the most ardent pleasures sensuality may imagine But admit you were resolved to become a beast with the disciples of Epicurus yet ought you not for all that according to your own limits surpass the bruitishness of beasts And I pray tell me where is the beast which hath never so little generosity would not think it self most miserable if it were condemned to eat and drink perpetually and grow lazy in an idle life They frame themselves very willingly to the exercises nature appointed them for the service of man and a man thinks it a great Philosophy to consecrate all the parts of his bodie to sensuality no whit considering he is made for the contemplation of things Divine for the love and fruition of the first cause Avicen an excellent wit by the unhappiness of his Avicenna lib. de primâ Philosoph 9. c. 1. apud Javellum Notable saying of Avicen birth ranked in the sect of Mahomet coming to consider this false Prophet had placed the beatitude of the other life in the injoying sensual pleasures was so ashamed of it that he shrunk from his Prophet that he might not betray his reason The law saith he which Mahomet gave us considered beatitude and miserie within the limits of the bodie but there are promises and hopes of other blessings much more excellent and which cannot be conceived but by the force of a most purified understanding Which is the cause wise divines ever set their Foelicitas est conjunctio cum primâ Veritate love on the blessings of spirit without any account taken of those of sense in comparison of the felicitie we one day pretend to have in the union of our immortal spirit with the first Verity What can our worldlings answer to this Arabian Should they not blush with shame to see a man bred in the school of Epicurus gone out of it to teach us the Maxim of Christianity 4. Finally to conclude this discourse with a third Reason 3 reason although the service of the bodie were possible Tyranny of ryot and not shameful to you do you not well see it is tyrannical and that Epicurus himself wholly bent to pleasure cut off all he could from nature for this onely cause which made him think over-much care of the body was extreamly opposite to felicitie The Platonists Opinion of Platonists said our souls were of an extraction wholly celestial and sent from heaven to serve God on earth in imitation of the service Angels do to him in heaven but that many of those poor souls forgetting their original instead of going directly to the Temple of virtue stood amuzed in the house of a Magician which was the flesh that enchanted them with his charms had cast them into fetters where they were enforced to suffer a painful bondage from whence there were but two passages wisdom or death To this Synesius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Syness hym 3. made allusion in his Hymns complaining his soul from a servant of God was become a slave of matter which had bewitched it by wily practises And verily who can sufficiently express the servitude a soul suffers fast linked to flesh and which onely endeavours to dandle it hoping by this means to give true contentment to the mind First pleasures are not exposed now-adayes to all the world as the water of a
Empires and Kingdoms where they took beginning If I look upon all the Nations of the earth so far distant in climates so divided in commerce so different in dispositions so contrary in opinions they all agree in this ray of the light of nature that there is a life of separated souls that there are punishments and rewards at the going out of the body It is the belief of Hebrews Chaldeans Persians Medes Babylonians Aegyptians Arabians Ethiopians Scythians Grecians ancient Gauls Romans and that which is most admirable after one hath roamed over Europe Africk Asia let him enter into the new worlds which nature hath divided from us by so mighty a mass of seas shelves rocks and monsters he findeth the faith of the souls immortality began there so soon as men It is observed to have been so publick with the ancient that they carried the marks thereof on their garments and inscribed it on their tombs Men of the best quality of Rome had little croissants Plutar. probl 71. on their shoes saith Castor to signifie their souls came from Heaven and were to return to Heaven after the death of the body and therefore there was not any thing in them which ought not to be celestial The like also is found of tombs where open Camerar gates were engraven on them to shew that after death all was not shut up from the soul but that it had passages into eternity All the most eminent Philosophers following the bright splendour of natural light although distant by the course of Ages parted into sects divided into so many different Maxims agreed in this as Mercurie Trismegistus Pythagoras Plato Aristotle Xenocrates Seneca Plutarch Maximus Tyriensis Jamblicus Themistius Epictetus and Cicero as may be seen in so many excellent Treatises which I might mention at large were they well enough known But if sometimes doubtfull passages occurre in Aristotle and Seneca hereupon were it not much better to judge them by so many perspicuous and illustrious sentences which they have upon the life of the other world than to censure them by some words insensibly escaped in discourse In which if some thing repugnant to our doctrine may be discovered it is to be understood of the sensitive and vegetative soul not the reasonable and intelligent which these Authours ever set aside as being celestial and divine 3. Never saith Plotinus was there a man of good Enu l. 7. c. 10. Nec vult improbus animâ—m immortalem esse ne ad conspectum Judicis aequi torquenduâ— veniat understanding amongst so many Writers who strove not for the immortality of the soul But if any one among them hath impugned it even in the darkness of Gentilism it hath been observed there ever was some disorder and impurity in his life which made him controvert his opinion to divert the apprehension of punishments due to his crimes That was it which Minutius Felix said I well know many Malunt enim extingui penitus quà m ad supplicia reservari pressed with a conscience guiltie of crimes rather desire to be nothing after their death than to be perswaded of it for they wish rather wholly to perish than to be reserved for their punishment He should make an annotation not a discourse who would here alledge all the authorities of the ancients which are very ordinary I satisfie my self with a most excellent passage of wise Quintilian who in the case of an enchanted sepulcher comprized all the doctrine of Gentiles upon this Article when he said Our Soul came from the same place from whence proceeded Animam inde venire unde rerum omniâ—â— authorem parentem spiritum ducimus nec interire nec solvi nec ullo mortalitatis affici fato sed quoties humani corporis carcerem effregerit exonerata membris mortalibus leâ—i se igne lustrâ—verit petere sedem inter astra the Eternal Spirit Authour and Father of all things to wit the true God and that this soul could neither be corrupted die nay nor feel the least touch of mortalitie common to corruptible things But at the passage out of the prison of bodie it was purged by fire and after this purgation it ascended to Heaven there to live happie Which is to be understood of good souls for polluted and impious are delivered to eternal torments by the consent of the wisest Gentiles Behold a man who in few words heaped together the belief of more than fourty Ages which preceded him touching the immortality of the soul Paradise Purgatory hell and that within the limits of the light of nature (a) (a) (a) Plato 1. de Legib. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato saith the same That our soul wears the liveries of the eternal Father which make it incorruptible Algazel in the book of nature That our soul being separated from the body shall subsist with the first Intelligence Maximus Tyriensis That that which we call death was the beginning of immortalitie Dionysius the Geographer forgat not in the worlds description the white Island whereinto it was held the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 souls of Heroes were carried Lawyers were not ignorant of it for when there is any speech of legacies to be distributed on the birth-day of the Testatour they avouch them to be legacies which must be given in perpetuity every year on the birth-day by reason that by death we enter into another nativitie which is that of glory To the very same the law of sepulchers hath relation which Marcel in l. cum quidam l. 23. de annuis legatis Theodosiis valent Novella de sepulehris tit 5. Scimus nec vana sides est solutâ—s membris animas habere sensum in originem suam spiritum redire coelestem Tertul. de testim animae saith We know and our faith is not in vain that souls discharged from bodies have understanding and that the spirit which is celestial returneth to its original From whence comes this consent so great so universal so authentical in a thing so sublime so alienated from sense so eminent but from the spirit of God Let us say with Tertullian in the book of the souls testimonie From whence proceeds it that those who will neither see nor hear Christians have the language of Christians I much suspect the consent of words in so great a disagreement of conversation 4. I am condemned in this first Court of justice Sentence of God upon the immortalitie of the soul said the Libertine But let us go along to the Tribunal of supernatural light and see what the divine Wisdom will affirm Let us follow the counsel of S. Ambrose He who made heaven teacheth us the mysteries Ambros in Symmachus Coeli mysterium doceâ—t nos Deâ—â— ipse qui condidit Cui magis de Deo quam Deo cre dam Vide August ep 4. ad Vincent Cui veritas comperta sine Deos cui Deus cognitus sine Christo 3 Reg. 17. Revertatur
anima pueri ejus in viscera ejus Eccles 26. 23. Exaltavit vocem ejus de terra in prophetia Tob. 4. 11. of heaven Whom shall I believe touching the verities of God but God himself And verily behold the advise God giveth us to resolve us in doubtful cases which is to follow some great and powerfull authority that may draw our spirits with a strong hand out of so many labyrinths Without it saith S. Augustine there would neither be world rest light wisdom nor religion And if a decisive authority must be chosen where shall we find one more certain than that of a Man-God whose words were prophesies life sanctity actions miracles who by ways secret and incomprehensible advanced the Cross on Capitols and gave a new face to the whole world Now without speaking at this time of the Pentateuc where the Word with his own mouth drew reasons for the immortalitie of the soul against the Sadduces I might alledge the book of Kings where the soul of a little infant returneth into its body at the words of Elias I could produce the true soul of Samuel which returneth from Limbo and speaks to King Saul as the Wiseman rendereth this apparition undoubted which I will shew I might mention the book of Tobias which distinguisheth two places for souls in the other world one of darknes and the other of lights But let us hear Ecclesiastes since Infidels will make an arrow of it against us where after the propositions of the wicked rehearsed in this book to be refuted which must be well observed the Wiseman Eccles 12. 7. decideth and concludes That the body returneth into the earth from whence it came and the spirit to God who gave it Let us hear Wisdom where it is written That the soul of the Just are in the hands of God and Sap. 3. 1. shall not be touched with the torment of death Let us hear the Prophet Daniel who saith Daniel 12. 3. The true Sages shall shine as the brightness of the firmament and that such as instruct many to justice shall be as stars for ever Lastly let us hear our Saviour who speaketh to us clearly and intelligibly in the bloud of all Martyrs Fear not those who kill the bodie and cannot kill the Mat. 10. 28. soul Here will we hold this doctrine of the immortality from his own mouth more than from any other reason he caused us to make it an Article of faith he establisheth upon it all our beatitude why should we then argue and trie new conclusions after the decision of Gods Word 5. I knew well said the wicked man this second Court would condemn me but I am not yet satisfied After nature and faith I appeal to reason I Proofs drawn out of reason will enter into the bottom of my self to know some news of my self What a madness is it to appeal from the decrees of God to reason And yet was this wretch condemned likewise by this tribunal For asking his soul whither wilt thou go What will become of thee after the death of thy body Wilt thou not accompany it in death as thou didst during life I die replieth the soul It is as impossible the light of the Sun become night and fire ice as the soul of man which is the source of life and understanding should be subject to death For from whence should this death and corruption S. Thom. l. 2. contra Gentes c. 79. proceed If thou hast never so little reason thou well seest what the great S. Thomas and all the Sages of the world said A thing cannot die and be corrupted but by one of three ways either by action of its contrary so heat cold moisture and drought corrupt our bodies by their mutual counter-buffs and continual combates or by the want of subject which serves as a basis or foundation to it so the eye dieth when its organ is corrupted or by defect of the assistance of the cause which hath influence into it so the light faileth in the air when the Sun retireth In which of these three kinds wouldest thou corrupt Substantia intellectualis patitur tantum intelligibiliter qui motus potius est perfectivus quà m corruptivus S. Thom. l. 2. contra Gentes c. 55. me Should it be by the action of the contrary I am not subject to bodily impressions but to those onely of the mind which are rather to perfect than corrupt me I am not composed of elements I am not hot cold moist nor drie I admit no contrariety But when I (a) (a) (a) Anima parvo continetur corpore continetque res maximâ—s Aenesius platonicus comprehend in my understanding white black water fire life and death I accord all contraries Death saith (b) (b) (b) Lucr. l. 1. Mors coetum dissipat ollis Lucretius is onely made for the things which have a collection of parts and I am most simple Wilt thou rin me by defect of the body I am of a nature different from body It was sometime without me and I shall be a long time without it for I depend not on it but by accident and chance I take somewhat of it as an hostess in this life but I govern it as a mistress for eternity I make use of the organs of senses but I correct senses and when they tell me the Sun is but a foot broad I prove to them by lively reasons it is much greater than the globe of the earth If I borrow fantasies from imagination I make truths of them and in matter of understanding willing and judging which is my proper profession I have properly nothing to do with bodies as the Philosopher Arist l. 2. de anima l. 2. text 21. Aristotle hath well observed saying I could not be before body but I might remain after the death of body and be separated from it as things eternal from corruptible because I have an action dis-entangled from body which is contemplation All that which is idle perisheth in nature but I have no death because not idle I make it my profession to understand to will and to love which I now exercise in a body but which doth not absolutely depend on body I make use of my senses as of my windows when they shall be no more and that the panes of my prison shall be broken I shall not for all that loose sight but shall see the more easily Behold you not how even at this present I never am more knowing than when I sink into the bottom of my self and separate my self from commerce of sense For I am a Mistress said S. Augustine who see better by my own eyes than by those of my servant Wouldest thou destroy me by the want of an influent cause Needs must God fail if I should be so defective on that part since God having created a thing never reduceth the same to nothing Material creatures are corrupted by changing themselves into
a forraign Nation separated from the sweetness of 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Synesius hymn 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 our dearest Country and lovely vision of the sovereign cause We are saith Synesius as little veins of water wandered from their fountains which desire nothing but to be re-united to their source should you afford them vessels of amber or chrystal to contain them they are never so well as in their origen We have a strong inclination that disposeth us to know love and admire this soveriegn Being which makes the world bring forth his great ide'as with more ease than the Sun could produce a ray Now here we must observe there are many sorts Diversity of unions of union The one of dependence which causeth the creature to depend on the Creatour as light on his star and heat on the fire which produced it The other of presence and most inward penetration by which God penetrateth all creatures by his admirable infusions by reason of his immensity and subtility The third of grace by which we are sanctified and in a sort made participant of Divine nature The fourth of glorie properly that which accomplisheth what grace had begun and setteth a seal upon the plentitude of all our felicities This being so divided it is evident that the union whereof we here speak is the glorified and ineffable union which disposeth the reasonable creature to the highest point of the commerce it may have with the divinity It is very hard to explicate how that is in our soul because of the weakness of our spirits which are now so tied to flesh Some Divines refuted by Chancellour Gerson and among others Doctour Almaricus and Henricus took this in a very high strain when they imagined that God coming to fall as a lightening-flash upon the soul of a blessed one filled it with his presence force and love and so possessed it that he wholly converted it into himself in such manner that from created Being it passed to increated Being returning to Anima perdit esse suum accipit esse divinum idea's of God and into the state it had before the worlds creation This opinion hath been rejected and condemned as a chymera for God will not beautifie us by ruining and destroying us but he will our felicitie be so wholly of him that it be notwithstanding wholly to us and there is no apparence our soul which is immortal and incorruptible should be annihilated by the approach of God from whom it must derive its being and conservation 5. We must then conceive this much otherwise Union of glorie what it is and believe the union of glorie that makes our beatitude consisteth in the vision love and joy of God which is the fruition termed by S. Thomas the ineffable kisses Imagine you see a needle which in presence of a diamond runs not to the adamant as being tied and fettered by the force of this obstacle but if you take away the diamond which captived it it goes stoutly and impetuously to its adamant which setteth it in the place of its repose by ordinarie charms I find something like in the state wherein we are Our poor spirit naturally tendeth to God as to the first cause and can take no contentment but in union with him yet is it here arrested by the poize of body by the bait of concupiscence and tie of sense but so soon as these obstacles are taken away and that it feeleth the vigorous infusions of this light of glorie which giveth it wings to raise it self to the Sovereign good above all the ways of nature it soareth as a feathered arrow unto the butt of its desires it sincks and plungeth it self into the bosom of God and there abideth contented with three acts which essentially compose its beatitude The first is vision the root of this so Sovereign happiness which causeth us to see with the eyes of a most purified understanding through the rayes of The three acts of beatitude the light of glorie the great God face to face with all the immensity of his essence the length of his eternity the height of his majesty the extent of all his excellencies and with the fecundity of his eternal emanations the productions of total nature and secrets of highest mysteries We shall see him saith Joan. 1. 3. August l. 9. de Trin. c. 10. Omnis secundum spiritum notitia similis est rei quam novit S. John as he is and thereupon S. Augustine addeth we shall necessarily derive a resemblance of God because knowledge here principally rendereth him who knoweth like to the thing known Of this vision necessarily is formed a great fire of love divinized when God like to a burning mirrour opposed to a glorified soul replenisheth it with his ardours ever by us to be adored And from this love proceedeth that excessive joy which is called the joy of God Vision causeth in us an expression of God love an inclination delicately violent to the presence of this Sovereign good joy a profound repose which seems to spread over our hearts a great river of peace benedictions and felicities Then this beatified soul not being able to be what God is by nature in some sort becometh such by favour So that 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Naz. Hymn S. Gregory durst boldly say our soul makes it self a little God which eternally triumphs in the bosom of the great God It is properly then when man by an amorous consumption wholly dissolves into his beginning and not loosing what he is becometh one same spirit with him not by nature but by apprehension and affection He not onely will what God willeth but he cannot will any thing but what God will He takes part in all his interest all his greatness and all his joys being so divinely incorporated into the family bosom of this Father of essences He rejoyceth at the beatitude of all the elect as of his own he is rapt with admiration sometimes at the beauty of the place sometimes at the delicious correspondence of that great company sometimes at the unchangeable continuance of his most blessed eternity sometimes at the garments of glorie his body must put on and he every where beholdeth sources of comfort to spring which can never drie 6. From this favour besides so many other wonders Three great effects of beatitude I see three excellent effects succeed The first is impeccability The second verity of our knowledges which shall admit no errour The third tranquillity of our love which shall not know what wound or interruption is And first consider what a good it is The great happiness to be impeccable to be impeccable since we not onely shall be without sin but out of all danger of sinning All that which here afflicteth the most purified souls is not to be exposed to so many miseries and persecutions for they know good men are here on earth like flower-de-luces begotten by their
own tears and that in the same manner they are produced to beatitude by Plin. 21. 5. Lilium lachrymâ suâ seritur their proper afflictions but it is to see themselves in a state of power to loose the grace of God and to be able to be separated from the first of lives by an action of death That is it which made Job being on the dunghil like to the dunghil it self as on the throne of patience to deplore his condition and say Why hast Quare me posuisti contrarium tibi sum mihimetipsi gravis thou made me seeing I am contrary to thy divine Majesty That is it which renders me in supportable to my self Now there shall be in beatitude an impotencie of sin because in full sight of Sovereign good it will be impossible to propend to the least evil or least disorder without which there can be no sin Moreover as our knowledges are here wretched Excellency of beatifick science and starven there is not a man so knowing in the world who for one drop of knowledge hath not a tun of ignorance and who in the little he knoweth hath not ever many errours which stick to science as the worm to the tree or the moath to the cloath Now there above the ray of increated light which shall appear in full lustre will dissipate all the weakness of understanding all inconsiderations all faults and shall fill us with a most resplendent verity So that our In lumine tuo videbimus lumen soul shall be like to that Aegyptian pyramid which perpendicularly reflected on by the Sun cast no shadow Lastly we see our love is ill guided in this way-faring Beauty of beatifick love compared to the weakness of wordly love life it sticks upon so many frivolous objects which are foolish fires that often lead it into precipices It is taken by the eys with blessings which have nothing more certain in them than their loss blessings which we ever shall leave by death if they forsake not us by misfortune Being surprized it tumbleth therein and perpetually bendeth to all which feedeth its dolours and drives away content All it least can do is that thing it most desires all it seeks is many times the good it escheweth It looseth labour to run after a flitting phantasm and if it stay it is not but through despair not to overtake all which kils it But if it come to possess what it loves it is instantly turmoiled with its happiness and not having need to labour any more in desires it grows mouldly in proper fruition It is willing to be resisted to enkindle its flame and resistance thrusts it into rage as possession into distast That is it which maketh me say the earth being made for us we are not made for the earth and that we should seek the place where love suffers neither offence nor interruption I say offence for it hath an object which contents all the world and offendeth none I say interruption for if we cease to love in Paradise it must proceed from God or from our selves If it be by the commandment of God we cease to love we shall cease in loving and in ceasing we shall incessantly love since we shall cease through love This cessation cannot come from us for we shall love without obstacle and of necessitie that Sovereign good which for its infinities will not be beloved but in infinitum O what pleasure to have but one pleasure and what joy to derive all joys from their source Why say we not with S. Augustine O fountain of life O vein of living waters when shall I come to thy delights and eternal sweetness I here on earth sigh after thy beauties O holy Hierusalem in a land scorched with fervours of sensuality O when will it be that I shall come before the face of my God! Think you I shall see that fortunate day that day of comfort and triumphs that day which God hath made and which takes its eastern rise from his eys O bright day which hath no evening nor knows what the setting Sun is When do you think I shall hear that word Enter into the joys of thy Master enter into a joy inaccessible to sorrow wherein is all good with an eternal banishment of all evil There it is where youth waxed not old where life hath no limits where beauty decays not where love knoweth not what it is to be cold nor health to impair O dear Citie With weeping eyes we behold thee afar off we thy poor exiles but yet thy children redeemed with his bloud who makes thee happie by his aspects Stretch out thy arms unto us O mild Saviour cast an eye on us from the haven in these storms of life and give us leave to walk in so undoubted paths that we may come to the place where thou livest and reignest for ever The nineteenth EXAMPLE upon the nineteenth MAXIM Of the Pleasures of beatitude THe joys of Paradise are without example and as they are here above our experience so they pass beyond our imagination Yet well may we conceive raised bodies shall have some manner of contentment in the perfect use of their senses and beauty of objects which shall satiate them with everlasting delights When after a long winter which covered us in darkness and buried us in snow we behold a new world arise under the benign favour of the spring and consequently the golden days of summer we feel our heart dilate seasonably taking in some antipast of the repose of the blessed What sweetness is it to enjoy delights in a body sound and a spirit well purified What contentment to behold those goodly Palaces where is seen an admirable consort of art and nature so many Hals so well furnished within such rich hangings such most exquisite pictures such marbles such gildings and without mountains which make a natural theater tapistred without art to surpass all workmanship forrests which seem born with the world hedges and knots curiously cut alleys and mazes where both eyes and feet are lost rivers which creep along with silver purlings about gardens enameled with most fragant flowers cavernes replenished with a sacred horrour grots and fountains which gently gliding contend with the warble of birds and so many other spectacles which at first sight astonish spirits and never satiate All this is but a little atome I do not say of the essential pleasure of the blessed which is ineffable but of the sole content of the senses of a glorious bodie which may in some sort be expressed S. John to accommodate himself to the weakness Apoc. 21. and 22. of our understanding hath made a description of it in the Apocalyps where he depainteth this goodly Cittie of the blessed with singular curiosity It is a pretty thing to consider how Lucian an excellent wit though a bad man intruding into our mysteries hath set out in his idea's to the imitation of it the life of
the fortunate Iland wherein he sayes all he can to represent unto us unspeakable delights but it is so far from what we would but cannot say as Heaven from earth When you approach saith he to this place you Lucian l. 2. verar. hist discover the walls extended in length all built with emeralds the lustre whereof is extreamly resplendent and pleasing The gates are of a precious and odoriferous wood which casteth forth at the enterance most delicious favours When you pass in you behold a pavement all of ivorie and houses all of gold set out with costly workmanships The Temples there are made of huge Berils precious stones of the colour of the sea and Altars of Amethist The whole Citie is environed with a goodly river which streameth all in balm three hundred cubits broad and as deep as is necessary to bathe in There are on either side stoves which are great houses of glass wherein are exquisite baths They never burn any other wood in them but cynnamon and in stead of water a certain dew is preserved sovereign for bodily health It is a pleasant thing to see the inhabitants of this fortunate Citie for you would say their bodies are no bodies but naked souls seen by the help of somethin veil Yet they stand upright and sit walk see hearken talk and answer but have nothing gross or terrestrial in them as we Their garments are of purple colour and of a silk as transparent as spiders webs No man complaineth there either of poverty maladies passions of the mind or miseries of the world no man waxeth old and all such as have the favour to enter into it remain there incorruptible They never have either winter or night but a temperate season and day which seems to go on with a perpetual morning There is no asking whether there be orchards gardens flowers or fruits for never were the like pleasures seen Their vines bear twelve times a year and some fruit-trees to thirteen Their corn is very fair and hath on the top of the ear little loaves of bread ready made very tastful I told in the Citie three hundred three-score and five fountains with chrystaline water as many with honey five hundred with sweet water seven rivers of milk and eight of most exquisite wine They make many feasts out of the Citie in a beautifull meadow properly called Elysium wholly replenished with the choicest beauties of nature and all round about it is crowned with a great wood which plentifully affordeth shadow They sit upon couches all composed of flowers which never wither and when they are at table the winds take care to bring them all the most precious viands except wine whereof they have no need for there are trees of Chrystal which bear fruits made as glasses and such cups as we use and so often as they gather them they find them filled with a plesant liquour Mean while Nightingales Linnets Gold-finches and Buntings flie over their heads and having wantonly thrown flowers on the table which they had gathered in the next meadows make them admirable musick The clouds also swoln with vapours drawn from those fragrant fountains afford a little dew for them to bathe in and recreate themselves Lastly that which is very commendable among them is they have two fountains one of joy the other of laughter which being once tasted they become impenetrable to all sorrow Behold all a curious wit may do to describe a life truly contented We know there is nothing of all this in Paradise but we are not likewise ignorant there is more than all this and that whosoever might have the favour onely one hour to be with the sun and stars should there find so brave sights that all these dalliances of wit so gaily set out by this man would seem to him no better than the slight verdure of cottage land-skips hanged out of the windows in comparison of the tuilleries The blessed shall have the pleasure of eyes in the aspect of the humanity of our Saviour of the most holy Virgin of so many bodies more lustrous than the sun of so many beauties which shall never cease to be beauties The recreation of ears in the mottets and canticles of triumph which shall be sung to the praise of the ever to be adored Trinity The contentment of smell in the good odour which shall proceed from glorified flesh The exercise of tast not in wine or viands but in a subtile humour wherewith the pallate shall be perpetually moistened by reason of the noble temperature of body The satisfaction of touch in conversation with celestial bodies All this may in some sort be conceived by the figure we have here presented But the joy of God and the essential beatitude whereof I speak in the discourse cannot fall under our sense Yet we may imagine the sense of joy a man hath who unexpectedly goeth out of a tedious and painfull imprisonment or he who prevails in a great and desperate suit or who enjoys a love infinitely affected and sees himself tied by chast mariage to a wife a thousand times desired or who is raised to some great office and eminent dignity which may advance him to some high esteem and bring him store of wealth or who suddenly and after many years meeteth a dear friend whom he thought long since dead The soul sometimes is so seized with joy that the bodie is no longer able to bear it and remains overwhelmed as it were under roses We know what happened to the good old man Gell. l. 9. Diagoras so famous in histories which tell us that in an assembly of Olympike games the Theater of all Greece he having seen three of his sons publickly crowned by the Magistrate took at first great comfort therein which multiplied in his heart as light by the break of day But so soon as these three young men came near to embrace him and had all joyntly put their Crowns on his head the good man sheading tears for joy said Children I am not to flie to heaven yet have concluded all my joys on earth seeing you to day all three together crowned in the bosom of glorie and the full accomplishment of my wishes It is time to die since life can adde nothing to my happiness And saying these or the like words he was so intranced with the consideration of good fortune that he died in the place An honourable Ladie of the Island of Naxos named Plutarch de clar mulieribus Polycrite was touched with the like passion which took away her life not bereaving her of glorie For the historie saith Her Citie being besieged by the Eythreens and menaced with all the calamities might be expected from a siege she was intreated by the prime men thereof to undertake an Embassage for the pacifying of troubles which she willingly did and being one of the most beautifull women of her time and a very good Oratress she had so much power upon the Prince Diognetes
sin but by resigning her self to death But on the contrarie you observe some of the Gentiles who professed the happiness of the soul in the other life and the resurrection even on their tombs We at this day read in Rome the Epitaph of Lucius and Flavius two friends who witnessed In caelo spiritus unus adest Vt in die censorio sine impedimento facilius resurgam Brisson They would have but one grave on earth since their souls make but one in Heaven And that of Aulus Egnatius who maketh mention That all his life-time he learned nothing but to live and die from whence he now deriveth the joys of beatitude And that of Felicianus who having led a solitarie life saith He did so to rise again with the more facility being freed from trouble at the day of Judgement Where the Interpreters under this word Trouble understand his wife What voice of nature is this What touch of God What impression of verity In the Evangelical law besides the passages of S. Matthew 22. of S. John 5. of S. Paul 1. to the Corinthians 15. the Saviour of the world remained fourty days upon earth after his resurrection that he might be seen reviewed touched handled and manifested to more than five hundred people assembled together as writeth S. Paul in the fore-alledged place of purpose most deeply to engraft the mysterie of resurrection in the hearts of the faithfull 2. And as for that which concerneth reason this belief was acknowledged to be so plausible and conform to humane understanding that never hath there been any who doubted it were it not some hereticks furious infamous and devillish as the Gnosticks Carpocratians Priscillianists Bardesanites Albigenses and such like enemies of God and nature or Epicures and Libertines who finding themselves guilty of many crimes have rather desired not to be perswaded of the end of souls and bodies to burie their punishments with their life For which cause they framed gross and sensual reasons touching this truth unworthily blaspheming that which their carnal spirit could not comprehend What impossibility should there be in resurrection Reason of possibility to an Omnipotent hand We must necessarily say it comes either from matter or form the final or efficient cause It cannot come from matter since our bodies being consumed by death the first matter still remaineth and after a thing is once created never is it meerly reduced into nothing Shall it be said that God who made thee of nothing cannot make thee again of the remainders of matter and that he hath less power over dust than over nothing The Philosopher Heraclitus saith birth is a river which never dries up because nature is in the world as a workman in his shop who with soft clay makes and unmakes what he list Think we the God of nature cannot have the like power over our flesh that nature hath over the worlds Proceeds the impediment from form It cannot since the soul which is the form of bodie remaineth incorruptible and hath a very strong inclinatiion to its re-union Proceeds it from the end No since Resurrection is so the end of man that without Leoin l. 2. de mirac c. 52. it he cannot obtain beatitude for which he is created perfect felicitie being not onely the good of the soul but of the whole man Will then impediment arise from the efficient Wonders of nature cause And is it not an indignity to deny to the Sovereign power of god the restauration of a body he made being we daily see so many wonders in nature whereof we can yield no reason Why doth a liquor extracted from herbs by a certain distillation never corrupt Why is water seven times purged not subject to corruption Why doth amber draw a straw along which other mettals repel Why do the lees of wine poured to the root of vines make them fruitfull How with so base ingredients are so goodly and admirable glasses made Why do men by the help of a fornace and a limbeck daily make of dead and putrified things so wonderous essences What prostitution of understanding to think that the great Architect having made our bodies to pass through this great fornace of the world and through all the searces his divine providence ordaineth cannot render them more beautifull and resplendent than ever What should hinder him Length of time There is no prescription for him Multitude of men That no more troubles him than millions of waves do the Ocean since all Nations before him are but one drop of dew The condition of glorions bodies COnsider I pray the state of glorified bodies and observe that there commonly are four things irksom to a mortal bodie sorrow weight weakness and deformity These four scourges of our mortality shall cease in the Resurrection being banished by gifts quite contrarie to their defects We may truly say among the miseries of bodie there is not almost any comparable to pains and maladies which are in number so divers in their continuance so tedious in their impressions so sharp that it is not without reason an Ancient said health was the chief of Divinities and an incomparable blessing For what is a soul inforced perpetually to inhabit a sickly bodie but a Queen in a tottering and ruinous house but a bird of Paradise in an evil cage and an Intelligence tied to attend on a sick man As the bodie very sound serves the soul for a house of pleasure so that which is continually crazy is a perpetual prison Now observe that against the encounters of all sorts of pains and maladies God communicateth to glorified bodies the chief gift which is impassibility wherewith they shall be exempt not onely Apoc. 21. Abstergeâ— Deus omnem lachrymain ab oculis eorum c. Isai 49. Non esurient neque sitient neque percutiet eos aestus from death but from hunger thirst infirmities and all the diseases of this frail and momentarie life O God what a favour is the banishment from so many stones gravels gouts nephreticks collicks sciaticks from so many pains of teeth head heart so many plagues and sundry symptoms of malladies which afflict a humane body This good if maturely weighed will be thought very great by such as have some experience of the incommodities of this life Adde also thereunto a singular Theological reason that this gift shall not be in us by a simple privation as the non-essence which the Epicureans imagined but by a flourishing quality communicated by God to our bodies and which shall have the force to exclude all whatsoever is contrarie and painful onely admitting the sweet impressions of light colours melodies odours and other things pleasing to sense Note I say quality Scot. in 4. distinct 49. q. 13. Durand d. 15. 44. q. 4. num 13. for I am not ignorant Divines dispute concerning the true cause of the impassibility of a glorified bodie and that some place it in a virtue and external
hath arrived at this degree 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a little Deitie conversing in mortal flesh and addeth That as all good Oratours endeavour to be like Demosthenes so our whole employment in this life must be to beget in our selves a resemblance to God it is that wherein lies all our perfection The third SECTION Perfection and wherein it consisteth NOw lest this Doctrine which is something too sublime should dazle your sight and not enflame your courage I will lay before you a more familiar Divinity which is that there are two kinds of Perfection the one of Glory the other of Pilgrimage That of Glory is reserved for the next life that of Pilgrimage is our chiefest affair in this It is divided ordinarily into perfection of state and perfection of operation Perfection of state is as that of Ecclesiastical degrees and Magistrates who are obliged by the duty of their profession not onely to the common virtues but also to others more eminent Perfection of operation is that which consisteth in good habits Never trouble your self with the perfection of state but live contented with that condition wherein Gods Providence hath placed you assuring your self that the best philosophie is to discharge your office well It imports not upon what stuff you work so you work well for it is the manner and not the matter which shall bear the prize Great dignities are oftentimes great vizards behind which lies no brain and small fortunes may with little noise do such things as are of no small value with God Apply your self earnestly to the perfection of operation which consisteth in guiding the Heart Tongue and Hands in perfect charity Addict your self to the practise of good and solid virtues which produce all wonders on earth and receive all Crowns in Heaven The fourth SECTION Virtues and their degrees IF you desire to know their names qualities and degrees I will tell you a wise saying of Plato There are four kinds of Virtues the first Purgative the second Illuminative the third Civil the fourth Exemplary The Purgative serve to cleanse our hearts of vices and imperfections to which our depraved nature is subject The Illuminative settle the soul in a calm resulting from the victory we have gained over passions The Civil encline a man to the duty he oweth his neighbour every one according to his degree and to a good conversation amongst men The Exemplary are those which make the furthest progress into perfection and may be looked upon as models whereof the beholders are to take copy So order it that your virtues may arrive at such a height as that they may not onely purge your heart enlighten your soul and dispose you to good conversation but may be as a light also to others to manifest you in them by imitation of your good example I adde here in few words the definitions and acts of virtue by which you may direct your practise Prudence Prudence according to Aristotle is a virtue which ordereth and prepareth all things that concern the ordering of our life Richardus de Sancto Victore assigneth to it five parts that is Judgement Deliberation Disposition Discretion and Moderation Judgement discerneth the good from the bad Deliberation teacheth how to do all things advisedly Disposition sheweth what order we must observe Discretion instructeth how to give way sometimes to occasions and yield to humane infirmities not adhering obstinately to our own opinions Moderation holdeth the scales and measure of every affair The effects hereof according to Albertus Magnus are these To proceed to the knowledge of God by the knowledge of your self to see in every thing what is best and to embrace that to weigh the beginnings proceedings and events of affairs to take care your thoughts go not out of God your affections be not too much employed upon creatures your inrentions be without mixture your judgement diverted from evil and applied to good your words polished your actions measured all the motions of your body well ordered To avoid the four rocks that molest all good affairs which are Passion Precipitation Vanity and Self-opinion To keep secrets carefully to know to choose to execute Devotion Devotion is a readiness of mind to those things which concern the service of God the parts of it are Adoration Thanksgiving Oblation Repentance Prayer Mortification Union with God by contemplation Frequentation of the Sacrament Conformity of will to the Divine Providence and the zeal of souls Humilitie Humilitie according to Saint Bernard is a virtue which maketh a man disesteem himself out of a deep knowledge of himself the chief points thereof are To know our selves well to prize our selves little to flie humane applause to preserve our senses free from itch of honour to despise bravely all worldly things to affect a retired life to acknowledge and confess freely our faults to hearken willingly to advice to yield to others to submit your will and judgement to obedience to shun splendour and pomp in such things as concern our selves to converse freely with the poor Povertie Povertie is the moderation of covetousness respecting temporal things the parts whereof are To cut off superfluities to have no inordinate care of worldly things to bear the want of necessities patiently to enter into an absolute nakedness of spirit Obedience Obedience according to Bonaventure is a reasonable sacrifice of our own will and according to Climachus a life without curiositie a voluntary death a secure danger The points thereof are To perform what you are commanded readily stoutly humbly indefatigably though it be contrary to your own inclination to make an entire resignation of your own judgement opinion and will to be sent imperiously upon hard and troublesom employments and to undergo them chearfully without delay excuse or reply to be indifferent in all things to covet nothing nor refuse any thing to do nothing of your self nor to presume to have a greater inclination to such things as are mean and laborious than to such as are more splendid and less burdensom Chastitie Chastitie is an abstinence from impure pleasures Its parts are purity of mind and body vigilant guard of the senses shunning of occasions honesty of speech mortification of Curiositie exact decencie care of our self Modestie Modestie is a composure of your self consisting in government of the whole body gesture attire play recreation but especially of the tongue which is to be restrained from detraction contention boasting disclosing of secrets idleness imprudence importunitie irreverence affected silence Abstinence Abstinence is a virtue which moderates the concupiscence that relateth to delectation of sense The parts thereof are To have no rule but necessity in all which concerneth the pleasures of the body to fear the very least stains of all those things which reason counteth dishonest and to preserve your self in a holy bashfulness to observe the Fasts commanded and to adde some out of private devotion to put far from you all curiosity of diet apparel and sensual
in your sins They said therefore to him Who art thou Jesus said to them The beginning who also speak to you Many things I have to speak and judge of you but he that sent me is true and what I have heard of him these things I speak in the world And they knew not that he said to them that his Father was God Jesus therefore said to them When you shall have exalted the Son of man then you shall know that I am he and of my self I do nothing but as the Father hath taught me these things I speak and he that sent me is with me and he hath not left me alone because the things that please him I do alwayes Moralities 1. ONe of the greatest misfortunes of our life is that we never sufficiently know our own good till we lose it We flie from that we should seek we seek that we should avoid and never begin to bewail our losses but when they are not to be recovered Those Jews possessed an inestimable treasure by the presence and conversation of the Son of God But they set light by it and so at last they lamented amongst eternal flames what they would not see in so clear a light Let us take heed of despising holy things and avoid hardness of heart which is a gulf of unavoidable mischiefs 2. It is a strange thing that God is so near us and yet we so far from him That which hinders us from finding him is because he is above and we below We are too much for the world too fast nailed to the earth too much bound to our superfluous businesses and cares of this life and too much subject to our own appetites He must not be slave to his body that pretends to receive good from God who is a Spirit He must not embark himself deeply into worldly matters who desires the society of Angels He must pass from his sense to his reason from reason to grace from grace to glory If you desire to find God search for him as the three Kings did in the manger in his humility Look for him as the blessed Virgin did in the temple in his piety Seek him as the Maries did in his Sepulcher by the meditation of death But stay not there save onely to make a passage to life 3. When you have lifted me up to the Cross saith our Saviour you shall know that I am the true Son of God And indeed it is a great wonder that the infinite power of that Divinity would manifest it self in the infirmity of the Cross It was onely for God to perform this great design ascend up to his throne of glory by the basest disgraces of the world The good thief saw no other title or sign of his kingdom but onely his body covered over with bloud and oppressed with dolours He learned by that book of the Cross all the glory of Paradise he apprehended that none but God could endure with such patience so great torments If you will be children of God you must make it appear by participation of his cross and by suffering tribulation By that Sun our Eagle tries his young ones he who cannot abide that shining ray sprinkled with bloud shall never attain to beatitude It is not comely to see a head crowned with thorns sit in a rotten chair of delicacies Aspirations O Blessed Saviour who dost lift up all the earth with three fingers of thy power raise up a little this painfull mass of my body which weighs down it self so heavily Give me the wings of an Eagle to flie after thee for I am constantly resolved to follow thee whithersoever thou goest for though it should be within the shadow of death what can I fear being in the arms of life I am not of my self nor of the world which is so great a deceiver Since I am thine by so many titles which bind me to adoration I will be so in life in death in time and for all eternity I will take part of thy sufferings since they are the scarfs of our Christian warfare Tribulation is a most excellent engine the more a man is kept under the higher he mounts He descends by perfect humility that he may ascend to thee by the steps of glory The Gospel for Tuesday the second week in Lent S. Matthew 23. Jesus said The Pharisees sit in Moses 〈◊〉 believe therefore what they say THen Jesus spake to the multitudes and to his Disciples saying Upon the chair of Moses have sitten the Scribes Pharisees All things therefore whatsoever they shall say to you observe ye and do ye but according to their works do ye not for they say and do not for they bind heavy burdens and importable and put them upon mens shoulders but with a finger of their own they will not move them But they do all their works for to be seen of men for they make broad their Phylacteries and enlarge their fringes And they love the first places at suppers and the first chairs in the Synagogues and salutations in the market-place and to be called of men Rabbi But be not you called Rabbi for one is your Master and all you are brethren And call none father to your self upon earth for one is your Father he that is in Heaven neither be ye called Masters for one is your Master Christ he that is the greater of you shall be your servitour And he that exalteth himself shall be humble and he that humbleth himself shall be exalted Moralities 1. IT is a very dangerous errour to think that our Saviour in this Gospel had a purpose to introduce an Anarchy and to make all men equal He sheweth in many places that he would have Kings Princes Magistrates Fathers and Doctours But he would not have men to come to honours by a vain ambition nor others to honour them but onely as they have dependency upon the power of God Almighty Let every soul saith the Apostle be subject to higher Powers for there is no power but it cometh from God He gives us superiours not for us to judge but to obey them If a man cannot approve their manners he must at least reverence the character of their authority They should be good Christians for themselves but they are superiours for us He that resisteth their power doth resist God who ordained them And all the great evils happening by heresies and rebellions proceed from no other fountain but from contempt of powers established by the decree of heaven A man may pretend zeal but there is no better sacrifice than that of obedience If great persons abuse their offices God will find it out and as their dignities are great so their punishment shall be answerable 2. One of the greatest disorders of this life is that we go for the most part outwardly to please the world and are little careful of a good inward application of our selves to please God In stead of taking the way of Gods image
in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms of me Then he opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures And he said to them That so it is written and so it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise again from the dead the third day and penance to be preached in his Name and remission of sins unto all Nations Moralities 1. WE think sometimes that Jesus is far from us when he is in the midst of our heart he watches over us and stretches out his divine hands for our protection Let us live always as if we were actually in his presence before his eyes and in his bosom An ancient Tradition doth observe that after our Lords Ascension the Apostles did never eat together but they left the first napkin for their good Master conceiving that according to his promise he was always with them Let us accustom our selves to this exercise of Gods presence It is a happy necessity to make us do well to believe and apprehend that our Judge is always present If respect make him formidable love will teach us that he is the Father of all sweetness There can be no greater comfort in this world than to be present in heart and body with that which we love beast 2. Jesus is taken by his Apostles for a Spirit because after the Resurrection he pierced the walls and appeared suddenly as Spirits do S. Paul also saith in the second to the Corinthians that now we do no more know Christ according to the flesh that is to say by the passions of a mortal body as S. Epiphanius doth expound it We must make little use of our bodies to converse with our Jesus who hath taken upon him the rare qualities of a Spirit We must raise our selves above our senses when we go to the Father of light and the Creatour of sense He teaches us the life of Spirits and the commerce of Angels and makes assayes of our immortality by a body now immortal Why are we so tied to our sense and glued to the earth Must we suffer our selves to enter into a kingdom of death when we are told of the resurrection of him who is the Authour of all lives 3. Admire the condescending and bounties of our Lord to his dear Disciples He that was entered into the kingdom of spirits and immortal conversation suffers his feet and hands to be touched to prove in him the reality of a true body He eats in presence of his Apostles though he was not in more estate to digest meat than the Sun is to digest vapours He did no more nourish himself with our corruptible meats than the Stars do by the vapours of the earth And yet he took them to confirm our belief and to make us familiar with him It is the act of great and generous spirits to abase themselves and condescend to their inferiours So David being anointed King and inspired as a Prophet doth not shew his person terrible in the height of his great glory but still retained the mildness of a shepheard So Jesus the true Son of David by his condescending to us hath consecrated a certain degree whereby we may ascend to Heaven Are not we ashamed that we have so little humility or respect to our inferiours but are always so full of our selves since our Lord sitting in his Throne of glory and majesty doth yet abase himself to the actions of our mortal life Let it be seen by our hands whether we be resuscitated by doing good works and giving liberal alms Let it appear by our feet that they follow the paths of the most holy persons Let it be seen by our nourishment which should be most of honey that is of that celestial sweetness which is extracted from prayer And if we seem to refuse fish let us at least remain in the element of piety as fish is in water Aspirations THy love is most tender and thy cares most generous O mild Saviour Amongst all the torrents of thy Passion thou hast not tasted the waters of forgetfulness Thou returnest to thy children as a Nightingale to her little nest Thou dost comfort them with thy visits and makest them familiar with thy glorious life Thou eatest of a honey-comb by just right having first tasted the bitter gall of that unmercifull Cross It is thus that our sorrows should be turned into sweets Thou must always be most welcome to me in my troubles for I know well that thou onely canst pacifie and give them remedy I will govern my self toward thee as to the fire too much near familiarity will burn us and the want of it will let us freeze I will eat honey with thee in the blessed Sacrament I know that many there do chew but few receive thee worthily Make me O Lord I beseech thee capable of those which here on earth shall be the true Antepasts to our future glory The Gospel upon Low-Sunday S. John the 20. THerefore when it was late that day the first of the Sabbaths and the doors were shut where the Disciples were gathered together for fear of the Jews Jesus came and stood in the midst and saith to them Peace be to you And when he had said this he shewed them his hands and side The Disciples therefore were glad when they saw our Lord. He said therefore to them again Peace be to you As my Father hath sent me I also do send you When he had said this he breathed upon them and he said to them Receive ye the Holy Ghost Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them and whose you shall retain they are retained But Thomas one of the twelve who is called Didymus was not with them when Jesus came the other Disciples therefore said to him We have seen our Lord. But he said to them Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into his side I will not believe And after eight days again his Disciples were within and Thomas with them Jesus cometh the doors being shut and stood in the midst and said Peace be to you Then he saith to Thomas Put in thy finger hither and see my hands and bring hither thy hand and put it into my side and be not incredulous but faithfull Thomas answered and said to him My Lord and my God Jesus saith to him Because thou hast seen me Thomas thou hast believed Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed Moralities 1. JEsus the Father of all blessed harmonies after so many combats makes a general peace in all nature He pacifieth Limbo taking the holy Fathers out of darkness to enjoy an eternal light and sending the damned to the bottom of hell He pacifieth the earth making it from thenceforth to breathe the air of his mercies He pacifieth his Apostles by delivering them from that profound sadness which they conceived by the imaginary loss of their dear Master
have fastned to thy scale all the fishes of the waters wherein thou bearest sway I will drag thee from the midst of the Kingdome of waves and I will throw thee into a wildernesse thou shalt lie upon the dry land nor shall any one care to sae thy obsequies performed For I have abandoned thee to the beasts of the field ard to the birds of the air to be devoured This sentence of God was executed on the person of the Emperour Tyberius under whom our Saviour suffered that death which gave life to the world Verily he was a man who through the whole course of his Empire made himself the God of himself the slave of his passions and the hatred of mankind He lay close as an Owl in the retirement of his filthy lusts he was greedy as a Griphon in such sort that dying he had above three-score and six millions of gold in his coffers which he with the Empire left to an infamous nephew who as it is thought hastned his death tearing that sensuall soul out of the body which in the world breathed nothing but the love of it self How can a man so wretched so caitive behold himself as a Divinity seeing God in the heighth of glory riches and beauties which so happily entertains him within himself hath so affectionate bowels of mercy for man that he thinks of him from all eternity he presenteth himself unto him on all sides with hands replenished with benefits in so great a diversitie of Creatures and hath in generall so much care of all men and of every one in particular S. Tho opus de Beatit Quasi homo sâ—t Dei Deuâ— that he who were not well instructed by faith might have matter to imagine that Man were the God of God himself Let us besides produce another proof which more 2. Reason drawn from the communication of creatures evidently convinceth this obduratenesse of heart and this cruel rechlessnesse of the Philosophers who teach Indifferency which is that all creatures yea the most insensible are made by God to impart and to compassionate If the Sun hath light it is not for himself he clotheth the Air the Land and Sea with a golded net he imparteth it also as well to the little eyes of the Ant as to those of the mightiest Monarch in the world he soweth seeds of flames and vigour to warm and quicken totall nature If the Air hath Rain it keeps it not eternally within the treasurie of clouds but distilleth it as in a Limbeck to moysten the earth If the Sea have waters it so diveth them among all the Rivers as to bear men and victuall in Vessels and to make it self a knot of commerce from Land to Land from Countrey to Countrey from World Unaquaeque res cogitur dare â—eip â adeo exclusit Deus avaritiam à rebus humanis Guil. Paris l. de univers to World If the earth hath fruits it preserves them not for it self no more then the trees which bear them but plentifully opens its bosome profusely to communicate it self to all nature Every thing saith a great Bishop of Paris is bound by the Divine Providence to communicate it self so true it is that God hath banished avarice from humane things As each creature giveth it self by love so it suffers with others by conformity All the world is united and collected within it self as the parts of an Egg are tyed one within another All the members of the Universe mutually love and embrace and if they make warre it is but to establish their peace If there be want of an element as of Air the Water would mount to heaven or heaven descend to the water rather then not supply the defect of a neighbour It is a law which God hath engraven as with a toole of Adamont in the bosome of Nature It â—ath been observed that Palmes divided one from another by an arm of the Sea which had overflowed the countrey bowed their tops one towards another by a naturall inclination as witnessing their Amity and protesting against the fury of that element which had disunited them and if this sense be in plants what may we say of living creatures where we see cares troubles anxieties goings and comings combats yells neglect and losse of body repose and life with the sense they have of the detriment and dammage of their like And shall we not say then that a man who loveth nothing in the world and onely studieth the preservation of himself is a prodigie in Nature fit to be denyed the Air he breatheth the light which reflecteth on him the fire which warms him the viands which feed him and the earth which bears him I add for a third reason that pity and tendernesse 3. Reason of the tendernesse of great hearts of heart is not onely authorized by God and nature but it is established as by a common decree of nations Photius the learned Patriarch of Constantinople observeth in his Bibliotheque a wonderfull judgement A notable sentence of the Areopagites given in the City of Athens where he saith the Senate of Areopagites being assembled together upon a mountain without any roof but heaven the Senatours perceived a bird of prey which pursued a little Sparrow that came to save it self in the bosome of one of their company This man who naturally was harsh threw it from him so roughly that he killed it whereat the Court was offended and a Decree was made by which he was condemned and banished from the Senate Where the most judiciall observe That this company which was at that time one of the gravest in the world did it not for the care they had to make a law concerning Sparrows but it was to shew that clemency and mercifull inclination was a virtue so necessary in a State that a man destitute of it was not worthy to hold any Place in government he having as it were renounced Humanity We likewise see that the wisest and most courageous men in the world have been infinitely tender full of love zeal affection care anxiety and travel for the good of another David and Jonathan who were the bravest Princes over the people of God loved each other so much that the Scripture speaking of this Amity saith Their souls were tied together with an inseparable band S. Paul was so affectionate and jealous for the salvation of his Corinthians that he seemed to carry them all in his bowels and daily to bring them forth with convulsions and pains attended by joyes and delights not to be expressed Saint Ambrose bitterly bewailed the death of his brother Satyrus that to hear him speak one would think he meant to distill out his eyes and breathe out his soul on his Tombe So did S. Bernard at the decease of his brother Gerard. S. Augustine was a man all of fire before and after his conversion with onely this difference that this fire before the morn-tide of his salvation was nourished with
any further discourse So S. Bonaventure in S. Bon. l. de Purit Conf. the Treatise he composed of the Purity of Confession saith The Amity of virtuous women is more to be feared and the testimonies of mutuall affections which one sex rendereth to another are infinitely able to enkindle love One who is not extremely exorbitant beginneth not the practice of vice on the top iniquity hath its apprentiships none comes in an instant to the utmost of impudency Above all heed must be had of the beginnings before vice take much predominance to our prejudice Have you observed what a stone doth thrown into a S. Basil de Virginitate pond it maketh at first a small circle which causeth another and the other a third the third out of that produceth a fourth and they are still infinitely upon A notable comparison of S. Basil Subtilties of the passion of love encrease so much that the water onely curled with a little pebble makes a long chain of circles which fill up the totall superficies This happeneth in love it falls into our heart not perceived nor foreseen and in the beginning causeth some slight touch which according as it is entertained distends it self and is in such sort multiplied that it replenisheth the whole capacity of our soul with arrows and chain-links which we cannot but with much labour dissolve and unloose A spirit which before rested in a generous liberty becomes captive This imperious visage perpetually knocks at the gate of his heart It enters into game study repose repast sleep and action It insinuateth it self into prayer with distractions pleasingly troublesome it busieth the thoughts it exerciseth the discourse it enflameth the desire to go to visit to speak it replenisheth the memory with what is past the imagination with the future and the present with disturbance A soul finds it is not well that it dissolves that it consumes by the senses and hath already dried up all its smiling beauties and weakned that vigour which is in devotion It notwithstanding flattereth it self with the colour of innocency it feigneth to it self that this is an act of charity that it is a duty of civility that it is an act of the soul that burns not but for virtue but the mischief is this soul is not an intelligence separated from matter and that in the guest thereof we passe by the veil of body which becometh a snare to chastity How many Bulls have we seen feeding in a pasture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 strong and sound who having heedlesly swallowed a little worm called by the Grecians The fire of Aelian de animal l. 6. cap. 35. Love compared to the fire of Oxen. Oxen become meagre and faint retaining nothing at all of their bodies but bones and figure And how many great spirits have we beheld which were in excellent state and in full vigour of the functions of intellectuall life who by approching over-near to this sex have entred into affections of fire and flames which like little creeping serpents have stoln into their hearts and destâ—oyed virtue I will not soil the purity of my Pen with the exorbitancies which both ancient and modern histories have observed upon this subject I passe over it as bees over hemlock without any stay it seeming unto me that many Authours had done better to have covered the stains of their mother then to have divulged them to maligne spirits who make use of poison and readily impute the disorders of particular to the generall body The opinion of Fathers concerning the Amity of women All I have said hereupon hath been to suit my self to the sense of Scripture and holy Fathers who so notably have condemned the over-much familiar conversation with women and if they seem sometimes to speak of it with too much rigour it is for that in great crimes the evil might be diverted by exaggeration of the peril to the end that since the fire is to be feared the very smoke might be avoided It is not to be wondered at what the Wise-man said Prov. 6. 27. That the too free familiarity with women was a firebrand in the bosome That S. Ephraim thought it was as easie to live among burning-coals as to converse with this sex and not to wound the soul That S. Bernard Bern. ser 64 in Cant. wrote that to be alwayes among women without hurt was to do more then to raise the dead That S. Cyp. de singular Cler. S. Hâ—ron ad Nepotian Cyprian imagined it was to erect a precipice to be addicted to such society That S. Jerome advised that we should either equally love them all or equally not know them We see many shipwracked fools standing on promontory Shipwracks happened by â—he love of women tops who tell us of the ruines which these passions haue caused Simon Magus was undone by a Hellen being more bewitched by her love then he enchanted others by his sorcery Appelles was corrupted Ex monoeis by Philumene Montanus by Prisca and Maximilla Donatus by Lucilia Elpidius by Agape Women have ended among all these what Magick and Heresie had but begun O good God! what man would not be astonished at the Roman Macarius who having overcome love in the world was surprised in the wildernesse by finding a womans shoe To conclude Heaven is most happy said Tertullian very wittily In coelo non Angelus Angela Tertul. adversus Val. because though it hath Angels it hath not Angelicals though it hath a God it hath no Goddesses and it might be feared if there were diversity of Sex there it would alter something of its tranquility So many great men who were much accomplished in sanctity have thought of women upon the brink of the grave and have found we must ever fear that we may never fall Besides I leave you to think with what conscience a spruce youth who hath a body full of bloud and a spirit replenished with flames can say He will love God in his works and that he findeth not any one better then a handsome woman He knoweth how to manage his love he will take in no more fire then he list and this fire shall not burn but at his discretion This beauty shall serve to raie him towards God he will passe from the creature to the Creatour without any difficulty It is a ladder of gold which God hath set for him to climb up into heaven by But it is to be doubted lest it prove Archimedes his engine whereon the higher they mounted the lower they descended Such an one by this way thinks to touch heaven with a finger who already hath a foot in hell But since I write this Treatise for Courtiers and for the well-ordering of divine and humane love I neither That there may be spirituall Amities between persons of different Sexes endowed with great virtue and rare prudence Nec inferorum reguum in terra Sap. 1. must nor will by
scatter in the air to serve as instruments and hands to their attractions This being common to other natures of plants metals and living creatures we must not think but that the body of man participateth therein by reason of its vivacity and the multitude of pores which give a more easie passage to such emissions There then cometh forth a spirituous substance which is according to Marsilius Ficinus a vapour of bloud pure subtil hot and clear more strong or weak according to the interiour agitation of spirits which carrieth along with it some quality of a temperate friendly and convenient which Marsilius Ficinus l. 1. de vita c. 2. insinuating it self into the heart and soul doth if it there find a disposition of conformity abide as a seed cast into the earth or as a Leaven which swelleth up a piece of dough and forms this love of correspondence with an admirable promptnesse and vigour From thence it cometh that brothers many times feel motions and affections of tendernesse one for another Surius without knowing each other as it happened to S. Justus who knew his brother Justinian among sundry slaves who were at the chain by this notice without any other fore-judgement Thence it comes that at first we are passionate for persons we never saw and that we wish them well though they alwayes have not so much grace nor beauty but there is some relation of humour which weaveth the web and tieth such affections All nature is full of such communications which are effects of Sympathy observed in the Corall which sensibly changeth according to his disposition who hath it about him as also in the flesh of beasts which boileth in the powdring-tub at the time of the fury of dogs because they have been bitten by a mad dog And in wine which seems to be sprinkled all over with certain white flowers when the vines are in blossome So it happeneth that the spirits which do in our bodies Modification of the opinion who place love onely in transpiration Species forma semel per oâ—ulos illigaâ—a vix magni luctaminis manu solviter Hieron in Threnos cap. 3. what the winds do in Nature being transpired from one body to another and carrying in their wings qualities consonant do infallibly excite and awaken the inclinations But it is not credible or at least ordinary that this manner of working should be as in things inanimate and that it hath nothing to do with the senses for it is principally the eyes which are interressed therein breathing thence the most thin spirits and darting forth the visuall rayes as the arrows of love which penetrate the heart are united confounded and lost one within another then heating the bloud they strike the Imagination and attract wills which are so linked one to another that one cannot perceive the knot which so fast tied them together If transpiration alone of spirit indifferently proceeding from all the parts of the body were able to enflame concupiscence we must then say that a blind man set at a certain distance from a perfect beauty would become enamoured with beholding it hearing it smelling it couching it or by any sense understanding it which notwithstanding happeneth not in that manner and if nature thus proceeded and that this passion were to be taken as a Contagion we might extreamly fear the approch of bodies and persist in continuall apprehensions to be infected by them It is certain that the senses being well guarded shut up all the gates against love A Guard over the senses since the Imagination it self stirreth not but upon their report but after they yield themselves up by a too familiar conversation and resign their defences a terrible havock is made in the mind for love entereth thereunto as a Conquerour into a surprized City and imprinteth that pleasing face in every drop of the masse of bloud It engraveth it on the Imagination It figureth it on every thought and there is nothing any longer entire in the mind which is not divided between slavery and frenzy § 7. The effects of Sensuall Love IT is a strange thing that this fury hath a thousand hands and a thousand attractives a thousand wayes of working quite different and many times opposite It takes by the eyes by the ears by the imagination by chance of purpose by flying pressing forward honouring insulting by complacence and by disdain Sometimes also it layes hold by tears by laughing by modesty by audacity by confidence by carelessenesse by wiles by simplicity by speech and by silence Sometimes it assaileth in company sometimes in solitude at windows at grates in Theatres and in Cabinets at Bals at sports in a feast at a Comedy sometimes at Church at prayers in acts of Penance And who can assure us against it without the protection of God Eustatius the Interpreter of Homer saith there are some who feign Love to be the sonne of the wind and the Rainbow in Heaven in my opinion to signifie unto us its Inconstancy and diversified colours and this beautifull Iris in the beginning appears all in Rubies in Diamonds and Emeralds over our heads afterward to cause rain and tempests So love shewing it self at first with such bright semblances to our senses occasioneth storms and corruption in our minds Observe one transfixed with violent love and you The miserable state of one passionately in love Insomnia aetumnae terror fuga stultitià que adeò temerâ—tas in cogitantia excors immodestia c. Plautus in Moâ—cat shall find he hath all that in his love which Divines have placed in Hell darkenesse Flames the worm of Conscience an ill Savour Banishment from the sight of God You shall see a man whose mind is bewitched brain dislocated and Reason eclipsed All he beholdeth all he meditateth on all he speaketh all he dreameth is the creature he loveth He hath her in his head and heart painted graved carved in all the most pleasing forms For her he sometimes entereth into quakings sometimes into faintings another while into fits of fire and Ice He flieth in the air and instantly is â—â—enged in the Abysse He attendeth he espieth He fears He hopes he despairs He groneth he sigheth He blusheth he waxeth pale He doteth in the best company He talks to woods and fountains He writeth He blots out He teareth He lives like a spectre estranged from the conversation of men Repast is irksome to him and Repose which charmeth all the cares of the world is not made for him Still this fair one still this cruell one tormenteth him and God maketh him a whip of the thing he most loveth Yet is this more strange in the other sex which hath naturally more inclimation to honesty A Lady chaste or a Virgin well-bred who begins to wax cold in the love of God and in the exercise of devotion and takes too much liberty in her conversation with men finds her self insensibly surprized by the eyes and ears by
his flock and kill his brethren by your ill example Carnall love in what person soever is still ill situate said Epictetus In a maid it is a shame in a woman it is a fury in a man a lewdnesse in youth it is a rage in mans estate a blemish in old-age a disgrace worthy of scorn You will say all these considerations are very effectuall but that they cure not passion already enflamed and almost desperate of remedy Remedies for affections which come against our will To that I answer we must proceed with more efficacy and addresse among such as are surprised with vehement affection of which they would be free but they find all possible repugnancies I approve not the course of certain directours who think all maladies are healed by words as if they had ears To what purpose is it to hold long discourses and to appoint many meditations to a sharp feaver which is full of ravings and furious symptomes All the maladies of Love are not cured in one and Diversity of the maladies of love and their cures the same manner There are some who are engaged in the sense of the passion but not in the consent to the sinne which is expresly sent by God to persons very innocent but not entirely perfect to punish some negligencies or some slight liberties of conversation whereinto they have suffered themselves to slide by surprisall that they may feel the danger of sinne by the torment they suffer and may correct themselvs by the scent of the smoke before they be involved in the flame And this many times lasteth long being ordained as under a sentence of the divine Providence as a punishment to become afterward a bridle to negligence and a precaution against peril Some also are permitted by heaven and imposed upon certain souls who had a little too much rigour towards such as were tempted to the end they might learn by their experience more mildly to handle suffering hearts and not exasperate their wounds by the sharpnesse of the remedy Witnesse that old man of whom Cassian speaketh who having roughly entertained a young religious man that discovered his passion Cas Col. 2. de discret Intellige te vel ignotarum hactenus a dia bolo vel despectum to him was tempted so violently that he thereby became frantick and understood from the venerable Abbat Apollon this had befaln him by reason of his great harshnesse and that although he hitherto had not felt any rebellion against chastity it was because the devill either knew him not or contemned him There are some which like tertian and quartan agues have their accesses and recesses measured and what diligence soever be used therein well the pain may be mitigated but the root is not taken away till it arrive to a certain period of time wherein the sick man is insensibly cured There are some driven away by hunger and others overthrown by a reasonable usage as it happeneth to melancholy Lovers whose bodies are dry and brains hollow if you appoint them fasts and austerities ill ordered you kill them Some advise them recreation wine bathes honest and pleasing company necessary care of the body Some sweet and active entertainment which gives not leasure to the wild fancies of the mind but this must be taken with much moderation There are some who expect a good sicknesse and many bloud-lettings which may evacuate all the bloud imprinted with Images of the thing beloved to make a new body others are cured by a suit a quarrell ambition an ill businesse great successe a new state of life a voyage a marriage an office a wife There are now very few fools of Love to be found who neglect worth and honour to serve their passion There are nice and suspicious Loves which have more of vanity then concupiscence when one troubleth and hinders them from honestly seeing that which they love they are distempered and if one resist them not they vanish away as if they had not had so much intention to love as to vanish It were almost necessary for many if it may be done without sinne or scandall to converse continually for being somewhat of their own nature coy they still observe some defect in the thing beloved which weakneth their passion and find that the presence is much inferiour to their Idea which is the cause they easily desist from their enterprise having more shame to have begun it then purpose to continue it Some are enflamed by deniall others become totally cool by contempt as proud and predominate loves who have not learn'd to suffer the imperious carriage of a woman a disdain of their mistresse a cunning trick a coldnesse a frown makes them quickly break their chains One would not believe how many humane industries there are to cure the pain of Love but ever it is better to owe ones health to the fear of God to Penance to Deuotion then to all other inventions For which cause you must consider the glorious battails which so many heroick souls have waged to crush Solid remedies this serpent and to walk with noble steps in the liberty of the children of God Some have fought with it on thorns as S. Bennet others on flowers as the Martyr Nicetas who being Admirable examples of the combats of Saints against Love bound on a bed of roses with silken cords to resign himself to the love of a courtesan spit out his tongue in her face Others have thrust sharp pointed reeds under their nails as S. John the Good others have quenched it in snows as S. Francis others in flames as S. Martinian who being by an unchaste woman sollicited to sinne burnt his face and hands to over-throw the strongest passion by the most violent pain There are many of them in the new Christianity of Japonia who pursue the same wayes and run to their chimney-hearths to vanquish the temptations of the flesh thinking there is not a better remedy against this fire then fire it self Others have overcome this bruitishnesse by a savage life as S. Theoclista who being taken by Arabians stole from them and was thirty years hidden in the forrests living on grasse and clothing her self with leaves To say truly there is not any virtue hath cost mankind so much as invincible Chastity But since these manners of conquests are more admirable then imitable at least mortifie your body by some ordinary devotion Make use of the memory of death make use of assiduity of prayer of labour of care over the eyes ears heart and all the senses Humble your spirit and submit to obedience that your flesh may obey you Be not transported with extravagancies Ubi furoris insederit virus libidâ—niâ— quoque incendium nâ—cesse est peneâ— Casde spiritu fornic c. 23. animosity and revenge since Anger and Love according to the Ancients work upon one subject and that the same fervours of bloud which make men revengefull will make them unchaste fail not to heal
that its depth was his exaltation He went back again into the kingdome of Sarazens in Africk where being known he was suddenly stoned to death in a popular commotion and buried under a great heap of stones in which place his body long remained unknown to all the world but it pleased God that certain merchants his countrey-men sailing into that countrey saw in the night a Pyramis of fire to rise up over his tomb which caused a curiosity in them to see what it was and coming to dig into it they found this venerable old man who was so gloriously buried in his own triumph they brought him back into his own countrey where he is all this time reverenced out of an antient Devotion of the people which the holy See permitteth rather by way of toleration then expresse Canonization The second Treatise Of HATRED § 1. It s Essence Degrees and Differences WHat a Comet is among stars Hatred is Hatred a hidenus Comet among virtues It is a passion maligne cold pernicious deadly which ever broodeth some egge of the serpent out of which it produceth infinite disastres It is not content to vent its poison in certain places and times but it hateth to the worlds end yea as farre as eternity To set before your eyes the havock it maketh in a soul it is necessary to understand it in all the degrees and dimensions thereof For which purpose you shall observe that Hatred being properly an hostility of the appetite against those things which it apprehendeth to be contrary It s nature to its contentment It hath some similitude with Choler but there is much difference as between pieces engraven and painted which may easily be defaced Choler is more sudden more particular more ardent and more easie to be cured Hatred more radicall more generall more extended more sad and more remedilesse It hath two notable properties whereof the one Its properties consisteth in aversion and flight the other in persecution and dammage There is a Hatred of aversion which is satisfied to flie from all that is contrary to it There is another Enmity which pursueth and avengeth and tends to the destruction of all whatsoever The first property hateth the evill the second wisheth it to the authour of the evill and when it hath once possessed a black soul it maketh terrible progressions and is especially augmented by four very considerable degrees First it beginneth in certain subjects by a simple Its degrees aversion and a hatred of humour which is the cause we have an horrour at all those things that oppose naturall harmony which appears as well in the good constitution of body as in the correspondencies of senses and the faculties of the soul with their objects And although this contrariety be not alwayes evident enough unto us yet there is some feeling which in the beginning maketh us many times to have an aversion from some person whom we never saw and from whom we have never received the least suspicion of affront or dammage Be it out of some disproportion of body of speech of behaviour or whether it be there is some secret disaccord we often hate not well knowing the cause thereof which very easily happeneth to the femall sex For women being full of imaginations the vivacity of fancy furnisheth them with infinite many species of conveniences and inconveniences that cause a diversity of humours which very seldome make a good harmony but if they do it is ever easie enough to be disturbed There are loves and hatreds which cannot be put on and put off as easily as a man would do a shirt which teacheth us it is very hard to make one to love by commands as if we went about to introduce love by cannon-shots The first degree of Hatred is properly called Antipathy and is so generall in nature that it The natural antipathies passeth into things inanimate and into bruit beasts which are no sooner born but they exercise their enmities and warre in the world A little chicken which yet drags her shell after her hath no horrour at a horse nor at an elephant which would seem so terrible creatures to those that know not their qualities but it already feareth the kite and doth no sooner espy him but it hasteneth to be hidden under the wings of the hen Drums made of sheep-skins crack as it is said if another Jo. ◠Por a in Chao ther be strucken near them made of a wolfs hide and such as are made of the skin of a camel scare horses The lion is troubled at the crowing of a cock Cabbages and herb-grace cannot endure each others neighbour-hood such enmity they have and a thousand other such like things are observed in nature wherein there are such expresse and irreconciliable hatreds If man who should moderate his passions by reason suffers himself to run into Antipathies and naturall aversions and doth not represse them by virtue it falleth out they increase and are enflamed out of interest contempt slander ill manners outrages offences or out of simple imaginations of offence which then causeth a second degree of hatred which is a humane hatred consented to with deliberation which putteth Humane hatred it self into the field to exercise its hostilities here by injuries there by wrangling here by forgery there by violence and by all the wayes which passion inventeth to do hurt by Abject courages hate with a cold and cloudy hatred which they long hatch in their hearts through impotency of vindicative strength The haughty and proud do it with noise accompanied Its differences with disdains affronts and insolency All they who love themselves tenderly perpetually swarm in hatreds and aversions seeing themselves countre-buffed and crossed in a thousand objects which they passionately affect All the most violent hatreds come out of love Hatred of love and namely when lovers the most passionate see themselves to be despised despair of amity transporteth them to a◠outrageous hatred finding they have afforded love the most precious thing that is in our dispose to receive scorn There are likewise who without receiving any injury begin to hate out of wearisomnesse in love and coming to know the defects of such as they had the most ardently loved they take revenge upon the abuse of their own judgement by the evill disposition of their own will and do as those people who Quintil. decl 17. Non habent proximorum odia regressum quaecunque nexus accepere naturae quae sanguine visceribúsque constructa sunt non laxantur diducta sed percunt burnt the Gods they had adored Whether hatred arises out of a weary love or whether it proceeds from an irritated love it is ever to be feared and there are not any worse aversions in the world then those which come from the sources of amity Quintillian also hath observed That the Hatreds of neighbours are enmities irrecoverable and wounds which never are cured because bands
care for affairs to cure their sadnesse It is the counsel which the Apostle gave to the Thessalonians We 1 Thes 4. entreat you my brethren to profit more and more and to endeavour to be peacefull and that attending your affairs you take pains with your hands as we have appointed you that you by your conversation may edific those who are none of ours and that you may need nothing The fore-alledged Authour notably deduceth this Text of Saint Paul with many other which he citeth shewing that a singular remedy for Sadnesse caused by Idlenesse is the occupation of the mind and body For my part I am perswaded that by this means The serupulous many scruples might be cured wherewith divers minds are now-adayes miserably turmoiled For they no sooner enter into the great representations of Gods judgement of sinnes and of the torments of the damned but they presently bear all Hell on their shoulders The thunders of the divine Justice roars not but for them and for them the lightning-slashes they build scaffolds in their heart whereon their imaginations walk they nail themselves on voluntary Crosses and bind themselves on racks making an executioner of their mind and a continuall punishment of their life All they think in their opinion is sin all they do nought but disorder and all they expect meer malediction They never have made a good Confession they have ever forgotten some circumstance they have not well summed up the number of their sinnes the Confessour hath not well comprised what they would say they must eternally begin again and for trifles of no value they must run and weary all the tribunals of Confession and employ more time then would be needfull for a man who should manage all the great affairs of France It is a pittifull thing and verily tyrants never invented so rigorous torments which superstition witty in the fruitfulnesse of its own tortures surpasseth not It so toileth the mind that the body is extremely weakned which is seen in a face discoloured and wan a brow heavy an eye troubled a heart sobbing a countenance ghastly a losse of sleep and appetite a forbearance of all recreations and pleasures of life To speak truly these poor souls are worthy of compassion for they are perpetually in most painfull Purgatories Remedies for scrupulous minds Efficaciously to comfort them they must be put into the hands of some prudent charitable and resolute man who may enter into their heart and may be as it were the soul of their soul They must be drawn from this indigested and too frequent devotion from all those generall confessions so often reiterated they must not be permitted to accuse themselves of all the vain imaginations of their interiour but of the transgressions which passe to their exteriour They must be made to account their doubtfull sinnes for not sinnes since ordinarily the scrupulous have a mind wakefull and adverse enough to themselves not to doubt of any grievous sinne great conceits must be put into them of the goodnesse and mercy of God their courage must be raised and they instead of sinnes caused to set down in writing or otherwise their good works and the favours they have received from God It is sometimes fit to change meditations into good broths to excite them with some generous thought to stirre them up some difference or suit if it be needfull to hold them in businesse interlaced with honest repose and convenient recreation to handle them sometimes a little severely to teach them to believe and to suffer themselves to be directed and to accustome them to brave this scrupulous conscience and to vaunt to have despised whatsoever it dictateth Lastly to perswade them there one is who hath answered for their soul before God and that if there be any ill in his direction he shall be damned for them and no hurt come to them thereby To commend them for their dociblenesse when they obey to let them see the fruit of their obedience in the consolation of their soul to exhilerate them to heighten them to take them from themselves and to turn them into other personages Many have been absolutely cured by these kinds of proceedings many much sweetned For there are of them who suffer all their life time their thoughts being as devils settled in some possession which never fully forsake them but they must be let to understand the crosses ordained them in this life and that undertaking a good resolution for patience they shall multiply their merits § 3. The remedy of Sadnesses which proceed from divers accidents of humane life HEnce I discover very long dilation of pleasures daily framed in so many divers occasions which makes it sufficiently appear unto us that as of all living creatures there is not any more delicate more sensible and which is waited on with such a train as man so there is none more exposed as a Butt for all accidents which are of power to occasion trouble then he Alas what is man who maketh a crime of his birth a slavery Miseries of Humane conditions of his life and an horrour of his death To salute day-light with his teares to come into the world to be instantly crucified his mouth open to cryes and hunger to bring a barren mind a frail body enraged concupiscences to be a beast so many years then an infant to feel his misery to see his poor liberty fettered to live under the fear of rods in a perpetuall restraint of will then to enter into adolescency followed by youth which causeth loud storms of passions to beare along with them the seeds of all his miseries After that a servitude of marriage an evill encounter of wives and husbands of affairs of cares of poverty of children of slanders of quarrels affronts of contumelies of bodily pains of faintnesse of spirit of ruines of families of poison of punishments of privation of all one loveth of vexations by all one hateth an old age contemptible sick and languishing Death a hundred times invoked to fly from the miserable and to lay hold of the fortunate With all this to see abysses of fire and torments prepared for sins ordinary in worldly life Who is it that trembleth not thinking upon all these objects and who saith not that one must be either well fortified with prudence to divert his evils or have patience to bear them Note that all which may afflict us is reduced to The subjects of our afflictions the losse of goods of credit of friends of incommodities of body or mind and that our miseries which we think to be infinite are confined within three small limits For all the Sadnesses which may arise from these five sources God hath given us five remedies Five remedies for all Sadnesses Sense Reason Time Necessity and Grace There are many dolouts which grow from the senses and are likewise cured by the senses We must not think all Sadnesses have ears patiently to hear the
helps of grace by the contemptation contemptations of things Divinie the example of the Divinity take instruction how to demean our selves Let us look on our first model and consider a strange thing able to make our impatiencies was red not with anger but with shame to say that God all impassible as he is of his own nature not obnoxious to the sword fire sicknesse or any other exteriour violence would in all times suffer men more violent then the sword more ardent then fire more irksome then sicknesse and many times more cruel then salvage beasts It is said there were heretofore made very goodly mirrours of saphyr which were for Princes and Monarchs let us not covet those which cannot much avail us but let us contemplate the admirable saphyr enchased in the Throne of the living God in the Prophet Ezek. 1. 26. Quasi aspectus lapidis sapphiri similirudo Throni Ezekiel and let us therein see and compare our impatiencies with the mildnesse of the Creatour It seemes that by how much the more a dignity is sovereign by so much the lesse ought it to be exposed to injuries because the fear which is had of its power should stamp in hearts rhat respect which love weak cannot imprint yet God a sovereign Majesty a supream Greatnesse an absolute Justice hath endured and doth daily endure so many contradictions of men that it seems Plures idcirco Dominum non credunt quia seculo iratum ram diu nesciunt Tert de patient 〈◊〉 that to give credit to his mercy he occasioneth some prejudice to the terrour of his Divinity Many men saith Tertullian believe not in God because they cannot perswade themselves he is angry with the world since they see it in so peacefull a state What is there more important for God and men then the knowledge of his Divine nature then the fear of his Justice then the much to be adored reverence of his sovereignty Notwithstanding as if he preferred the glory of his patience before his own Being he rather chose patiently to suffer so many faithlesse so many wicked ones so many sinners and that the lips of Blasphemers might dare to say there is no God then that taking revenge in the heat of crimes by punishing every sin it should be said of him Verily there is a God but he is perpetually armed with lightning and terrours ever inaccessible to the prayers of men as those mountains which throw forth their enflamed bowels Nay much otherwise he would be simamed the God of mercy and the Father of goodnesse whereupon Saint Gregory hath judiciously said that his patience walks Pater misericordiarum Dominator Dominus Deus misericors clemens patiens mule◠miserationis c. Deut. 5. Quantum lata mens fuerit per amorem rantum erit patiens Ionganimitatem Totius geniturae tributa dignis indignis patitur simul occurtere Tertul. de patient c. 2 still hand in hand with his charity Wherefote as the love of God towards men is incomparable so his patience to indure the faults and infirmities of sinners admits no comparison How wany Pirates are there daily for whom God openeth seas How many Idolaters for whom he causeth stars to shine fountains to stream plants to sprout harvests to wax yealow and vines to ripen as well as for the faithfull How many ungratefull and rebellious children are there who every day receiving so many benefits from him take them as Hogs do Acorns still grunting towards the ground and never casting an eye towards heaven How many spirits enemies of truth and light disturbers of publick repose transgressours of laws both Divine and Humane do daily frame obstacles against the will of their sovereign Master and yet he fuffers them as if he had no other businesse in the world but patiently to bare and vanquish by benefits the malice and ingratitude of men Hierusalem is the stone of burthen said the Prophet which layeth a burthen upon God himself What will this Oracle of God say but the same conceits which Saint Hierom suggesteth unto us Hierusalem lapis on eris Zachar. 12. upon this passage when he writes that there were seen in places where the Antient wrastlers did exercise huge stones or certain bowls of Iron or Copper with which they made tryall of their strength and he witnesseth that he in a list saw one of those bowls which was so heavie that he could not lift it up from the ground although others robustuous of body and eminent in those exercises could easily carry it Now mark my conceit and say that as those champions of antiquity God is busied about the world as his stone of burden had for object of their strength those weighty bulks on which they daily exercised themselves So likewise God that strong Gyant and great Wrastler as if he stood in need of exercise takes the sphere of this great Universe which he beareth lifterh it up with all facility He takes the Masse of so many mortals whom heaven covers and the earth beareth and there he findeth much resistance he takes his people which he hath chosen and sanctified above all the nations of the world and hence oft-times very many sensible displeasures come A true stone of burden is that Christian that Ecclesiastick that Priest that Religious who belyes his profession who throws disorder and scandall among the people by his ill example yet God tolerateth him God protecteth him God continually obligeth him and if needs he must draw the sword of Justice out of the scabbard it is with delayes consideration and excessive Clemency O infinite Goodnesse And who is that man now that will not bear with a man and who is he that seeing God of nature impassible busie in the world as about his stone of burden from the beginning of Ages cannot bear a small burden whereto he finds himself tyed by duty by condition and by nature § 5. That the great temper of our Saviours soul in most horrible sufferings is a powerfull lenitive against our Dolours AS for the second Modell which is the Word Incarnate the true mirrour of Patience and onely reward of the Patient It is a very strange thing that all nature being so bent upon its conservation as to suffer nothing Jesus Christ did miracles incomprehensible to the spirit of Angels onely of purpose to suffer for man For how could dolour have laid hold on a God of his own nature impassible if it had not passed through all the heavens to take the divine word in the sanctuary of the Trinity which otherwise was meerly impossible but the son of God considering this Impossibility and being fixed in the desire to sustein for us took the body of man to suffer all that which the most cruell could invent and all whatsoever the most miserable might undergo Verily it is an effect of so prodigious a love that it found no belief in senses perswasion in minds example in manners nor
suum bonum erubescendum est Tertul. de Velandis Virginibus cap. 3. Virgins should blush even at the good they possessed meaning that albeit their virginall body bear nothing upon it but the characters of honour yet ought they not to permit the view of their beauty as a pillage to curious eyes fearing lest any glance might steal away some tender blossome of amiable Virginity There are some who easily blush at the approach of another sex and at words too freely spoken not that they feel themselves guilty of any thing but of a naturall Shamefac'tnesse which cannot suffer the least thought of things reproachfull and many times also out of the fear they have to be suspected in matters of which they in conscience have no remorse This is a sign of a good soul and it is necessary for such an one as will preserve a Chastity inviolable to avoid the least approaches and all which may prejudice Decorum Libanius an excellent Oratour observeth that a Painter one day An excellent observation of Libanius desirous to paint Apollo upon a board of Laurel the colours seemed to be rejected and could not be laid thereon Out of which this curious wit invented an excellent rarity saying That the chaste Daphne who according to the fiction of Poets was turned into a Laurel-tree flying from Apollo who would dishonour her could not endure him yea even in painting although she now was nought else but a piece of insensible wood Whereupon we may inferre that chaste bodies fear the least images and resemblances of impurity and do even beyond a Tomb preserve some sense of Integrity It is read in the life of S. Ephiphanius Simeon Constantin in Epiphan that he gave a kick with his foot after his death at a curious man who looked too near upon him And we also see many who expresly by their will forbid themselves to be opened and to have their entrails pried into by dissections which somewhat savours of inhumanity We must not be too curious in these matters when we make no profession of them For sometimes many maids are more knowing before marriage then is requisite for Chastity Marcia daughter of Fulgosus l. 6 Varro who was one of the rarest wits of her time was skilfull in all arts yea even in Painting but never would she paint naked men lest she might offend modesty Is it not a brave sight to behold a Christian whose bloud flyeth up into his face when he heareth blasphemies vomited forth against God as a good son would blush when the Ashes of his father were defamed What a goodly thing is it to see a vice rejected which a dissolute brazen-face or a confident corrupt spirit suggesteth to a young tender soul of an Angelicall Shamefac'tnesse that draweth bloud from the face and makes use of this vermillion as of mysterious ink to write down the comdemnation of dishonour The second kind of Shamefac'tnesse is much more Humane interessed shamefac'tnesse humane and more interessed which is daily observed in a thousand occasions in the world when one blusheth out of an apprehension of incurring some blemish of a good reputation in what concerneth Extraction Body Wit Profession Integrity Virtue Condition and Estate Some are much vexed at their own birth and when they see themselves raised to some degree of honour they are ashamed that their enemies reproach them with the basenesse of their beginning but they should remember that Birth is a businesse whereunto they are not called that it is no more in our power then are the stars and the winds and that many great personages have boasted they have mounted higher by Virtue then their ancestours had descended by the obscurity of their Extraction Porus the Monarch of the Indies was the son of a Obscurity of birth in great personages Barber Bradyllus Prince of the Sclavonians of a Collier Ortagoras Duke of the Sicyonians of a Cook Agathocles King of Sicily of a Potter and yet they gloried to have made a large way to greatnesse for themselves from the recommendation of their valour Primislaus come from the condition of a peasant to principality caused his old homely rags to be kept that he might sometimes look on them The Archbishop Villegesius son of a Carter commanded wheels to be painted all over his Scutcheons of Arms. There are none but inferiour hearts which are offended with Gods counsels who is the distributour of Glory Others are confounded for deformities of body as he Senec. de constantia sapienâ—is of whom Chrysippus speaketh who was extremely discontented that he was called Sea-Ram and Cornelius who wept in full Senate for being compared to a bald Shame of scoffing Ostritch but this tendernesse of apprehension proceeded from over-much prizing the body which is but a dunghill even in those who are most resplendent in beauty We should prevent such a scoffe upon so slight occasions and to take the word out of their mouth as Vatinius a man much mishapen who mocked so long at his own throat and legs that he in conclusion left nothing for Cicero to declaim against Others love not to have their age talked of as if that which is to be desired were a crime Others must not be seen in a mean habit as if they were much greater then Adam and Eve who in the beginning of the world were cloathed onely with leaves and skinnes Others are infinitely apprehensive to seem poor not confidering that by hiding poverty they reproch themselves and condemne Jesus Christ who spread it over the Crib as on a Throne of Honour Others are dejected with deep melancholy to see themselves despised in parts of Wit Judgement Understanding Capacity Industry and Dexterity in matters whereof they make profession and wherein they think to excell namely when this contempt is offered in company before men of reputation whose good opinion they affect before their competitours their corrivalls their enemies who take a direfull comfort in their confusion Then is the time when one sinketh into the bottome of dishonour and when shamefac'tnesse The strange shame of contempt Laertius covers all the face over Cronus was so abashed that he was not able to solve a Sophisme at King Ptolomy's Table that he died with discontent A Polonian Prince strangled himself upon an oppression of Cromerus lib. 6. Ignominy seeing Bolestaus the Third who was his King had sent him a Hares-skin with a distaffe to upbraid him with his Cowardise in a battel against the Muscovites But we must say truly that all this proceedeth from an enraged desire of punctilio's of Honour which ought never to such extremity take root in the soul of a Christian Lastly there be who are touched with some shame for vices not those which they know do displease God but for such as are accounted ignominious in the opinion of men as to be a Villain a Miser a Liar a Traitour a Falsifier an Impostour a Thief Unjust
the images of the things which we have received in our senses and in our imagination when we were awake and is as the Eccho which brings a repetition of the actions of the day Our soul hath this mark of its immortality that it is in a perpetuall motion without any interruption after the manner of the heavenly Globes and of the intelligences When the body is laid fast by the charming sweetnesses of sleep and the night makes a league with all the actions of the day the soul makes not any with its operations it meditates it reasons it speaks it is in action it negotiates and without parting from its body flies beyond all lands and seas to enjoy a friend She opens her self with joy pricks her self with sorrow interesses her self in businesses and not being able to use the members of her body serves her self with her own members and her own faculties for the satisfaction of her desire And as sword-players cease not sometimes to fence without arms and to use gestures as if there passed a reall combate so our spirit whiles we sleep carries her self away and does every thing in Idea as if it were seconded by the body Such is the state and naturall condition of Dreams as Tertullian hath well explained it in his Book concerning the Soul But beyond this it is expedient to note that there is something in them of extraordinary and Divine which made the Stoicks say that Providence carefull of our preservation gave us Dreaming as a domestick Oracle to inform us of our good and evils This cannot be understood commonly of all Dreams the truth being such that there are five sorts of them which Macrobius following the Antients names the Phantasme the Raving the Vision the Oracle and the figurative Dream we ought not to relie much upon Phantasmes which are as shadows which present themselves to our imagination in the very first cloud of sleep nor of Ravings which follow ordinarily the state of the passions and affections of our soul and of our body as Artemidorus reasons in the beginning of his work but much on Vision which without following the paths trodden the day before by our senses make us see and discover things in our sleep which we experiment when we are awake to be the self same which we saw when we were asleep And as for Oracle which expresses to us apparitions of God and Angels or certain grave persons that seem to speak to us and to advertise us of what we have to do or not to do it cannot be but very considerable as also the Figurative Dream which shews us under Figures and Symbols the divers accidents of things profitable either to the common good or to our particular conduct I have been willing to clear this with more day to make us know the excellent gifts of the divine Goodnesse communicated to our Patriarch in that interpretation which he gave to Dreams To speak truth it was a kind of Prophecy which being properly a manifestation of Truths elevated above the ordinary knowledge of man clearly discovered it self in Joseph in the declaration which he made of things so hidden and so little penetrable to the understanding of the most learned men of Egypt Saint Thomas disputes touching the excellency of Prophecies and sayes That those are more sublime that are purely intellectuall then others that are made by similitudes But although those of our Joseph were revealed by Riddles and by Figures yet they mount for all that to an high point of excellency forasmuch as they were by this means more proportioned to the capacity of a Nation that loved them more when they were involved in the shadows and in the clouds of those Figures then if they had been naked and totally unmixt with corporall Idea's And I think that the great excellency of a master and of a teacher is to accommodate himself to the spirit of those to whom he would perswade the verities of his Doctrine Now it discovers to us at present that this first Courtier of the chosen people had something of Divine that prepared him to great actions inasmuch as from his little child-hood he was exercised by those mysterious Dreams and amorous of Heaven and of the Startes that enlightned him in the silence of a delicious night and brought him the presages of his future greatnesse God hath often spoken to his most faithfull servants by the means of Dreams as to Mordecai to the Wise-men of the East to Saint Joseph the spouse of the most holy Virgin and the observation of them is not bad when one perceives in them some extraordinary thing and which tends to a good end by lawful and commendable means It is true that Aristotle thought that Dreams came not from God because if that had any likelihood that favour would be for none but for the Philosophers and for eminent persons but we must pardon a wise worldly man if he knew not the admirable commerce and the sweet discourses that the Spirit of God is pleased to make with simple and innocent souls which being empty of themselves are filled advantageously with the Deity Such was little Joseph when he saw in a Dream his sheaf of corn that exalted it self above those of his brethren and when he beheld the Sun and the Moon with the eleven Stars that came to worship him and do him reverence This probably seemed to him a presage of a great happinesse seeing that according to the Maximes of Astrampsychus in his book of Dreams it is a mark of felicity to see the stars in ones sleep He had not been then refined at Court when he boasted of that Dream by a childish innocence and related it to his brothers who conceived so much jealousie from it that they resolved upon his destruction Here is a second work of Providence which pleases her self in doing the works of her trade and in conducting to the haven those whom she hath taken in charge by turning her back to them His brothers saith S. Gregory sold him for fear lest he should be worshipped according to his Dream and he was worshipped because he was sold Envy which is properly a sadnesse for the honour and welfare of another forasmuch as that it seems to us to tend to the diminution of ours finds objects in all places it enters into Jacobs family a family of Saints to teach us saith Saint Ambrose that the servants of God have not escaped Passions but conquered them He that in the Government of all Egypt found nothing but admiration amongst strangers meets with envy amongst his brethren and amongst those of whom charity should have been adored though she had been persecuted in all the habitable world There is not a more subtil poyson then that of asps nor a more deadly envy then that of brothers and especially of those that make profession of wisdome and of holinesse This animall Passion that makes at length a sinne of the spirit feels her self most conveniently