turnes them into a story The Jesuits live awhile to be call'd Religious men and holy Fathers to frame a face to be very good and godly in the out-side to vex and disquiet Princes to slander all those whom they cannot or gaine or recover to their faction and the world at length finding them to be dissemblers dissembles with them also and looking friendly upon them passes by them The painted wall tumbles and then Woe to you Hypocrites Wee live a-while a little little while to put our cloathes on and off to shew our selves abroad to be hurried up and downe in Coaches and to be proud that wee passe with such a noise to heare newes and to talk vainly to heap sin upon sinne and the world weary of the burthen passeth by us and presently God heapeth punishment upon punishment Foolish men and women how we sweat and spend our selves we see the spade working and deep graves digg'd every day and yet live as if we did not beleeve we should dye In the streets one goes this way another in hast that way a third crosses the way turnes againe then looks behind him and would faine goe two wayes at once It is wonderfull How stirring and busie wee are about the present things of this world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so called by the Apostle because nothing is ours but what is present He is a fond and miserable man that pleaseth himselfe in the thought of any thing but God and Heaven Fix here my soule and thou shalt find more true and solid pleasure in one meditation of Heaven though it is absent then in all earthly things although present and before thee MEDITATION XI THe soule being creared for God and bearing his image or stamp God is the most proper end of the soule as the earth if it be lawfull to compare great things with little is the most proper place of a stone And therefore a stone being tossed from the earth as soone as it can shake off vim impressam the impression of the force which mov'd it that being out of breath and spent if there be no stop it presently returnes with all possible haste as it were glad being let goe and set at liberty to the earth which ownes it And so the just soul to God The soule in statu conjunctionis in the state of her conjunction with the body being wedded to it as to a fellow-helper sees by the eyes heares by the eares and in a manner feeles by the body Now the soule having beene created in the body and never yet us'd but to this kinde of knowing by the senses is so busied so kept in continuall work and so amused with the representations of the senses that shee is little urgent in the desire of her end as being tooke up with great diversity of other imployment which being alwayes new and therefore strange begets a zealous attention in the soule and so turnes her from God It is true if she listen to the whisper of an inspiration or heare a discourse of heavenly things she likes it well and feels a pleasant tickling of sweetnesse because it is agreeable with her end and then perhaps the desire of her end awakes sits up but other occurrences calling earnestly for admittance the soule gives way and the desire of the last end lyes fairely down and sleeps again But the soul being now in statu seperationis in her state of seperation from the body they having been newly divorced and missing her body and her accustomed way of knowing by the senses missing the former use of the world and the things she saw and heard in the body thinks presently where am I I am another kind of creature Then being freed from all hinderance she begins to stirre towards her end For now she is like a stone as farre in the ayre as it can goe vvhere it cannot rest but quit of the force gives back and furnished vvith Guides shee flyes vvith all readinesse to God in his Kingdome the place of installment as to her last end Here I have the reason why the Divines say that whereas there are two much different paines in Hell poena sensus the paine of sense caused by the fire of Hell and poena damni the pain of losse by the losse of God the paine of losse is the greatest For the reprobate soul being thrust out of the body and having received her doome in the very place of her expulsion is struck presently with a strong apprehension of her end and of the worth and excellency of it and of her miserable solitarinesse without it from which shee being turned the wound bleeds and shee suddenly cries out wanting a Comforter My end where is my end I misse something the best thing what God O where is God I misse my end And then shee catches at him and misses and missing cries out and catches again and still misses crying I want rest in my end in God Where is my end that is God and God that is my end There is no rest for a soul out of the body but in God as there was no true rest for a soule in the body but in God I have bin long at hard labour now in the end I would rest in my end For I cannot be at rest without my end O my end I while I continue without my end my torment will continue without end O what shall I do Where shall I begin How shall I end without my end And then catching at her end shee is caught her selfe away to hell fire and carried farther from her end Where she shall be alwayes catching and alwayes missing alwayes seeking and never finding alwayes complaining either of her paine or of her losse but most of her losse or of her losse of all but her paine and her losse which she would faine lose but cannot from which most wofull estate God deliver me But the just soule presently after the first apprehension of her end shal be joyned unseperably to it in which end shall be the end of all earthly motion and therefore all rest Blessed are the dead saith Revel 14. 13. Dionys Areop in ep ad Joan. in exilio agente Ver 11. St. Iohn whom Dionysius salutes by the name of Divine which dye in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the spirit that they may rest from their labours But of the damned hee sayes confidently in the same Chapter they have no rest day nor night Have I heard a malefactor appointed by judgement to be starved after the gnawing and devouring of his owne armes crying bread bread If I suppose he cryes rest rest it is the voyce of the damned person MEDITATION XII VVE see many times and most commonly men and women lying on their death-beds some little while before their passage or departure in wondrous traunces took away from their senses At which times some look very cheerefully smiling like Angels and send from them shoots of joy and gladnesse
And some looke frightfully and fill their death-chamber with shreeks and clamours We cannot in the generall give the causes of these different effects For the most part it is thus At such a time the soule heares her house crack and now threatning a fall And she sees that after the fall all the house will be so confus'd and out of order that shee will not be able to stirre about or doe any thing belonging to the keeping of a house and that then there will be no reason why shee should rather be in her house then in any other part of the world And in a manner rising to goe and likewise being call'd and also thrust forwards she puts on And going she holds by the heart and stands as it were with one legge in the house and one without and peeps abroad to discover whither she is going as never having been out of the house before And according to the sight of the place she must now take to she frames and alters the body in her departure And certainly in this point of time the man being shar'd betwixt life death betwixt this world and the next the soule sees either a breaking of day or a beginning of night And so turning againe to the body either to bid it farewell if she be happy or with a desire to catch hold againe and stay if unhappy works upon the body according to the apprehension she hath of the place shee goes to gained in the discoverie Here will I wish well to all persons O that they were wise that they understood this Deut. 32. 29. that they would consider the latter end The wise man will understand it and the understanding man will consider it Good Lord Lord God blesse us and give us grace at all times morning and evening day and night in all places abroad and at home in bed and at board to prepare for this dangerous passage When wee must be turn'd going one halfe of us and the halfe wee never saw and yet the better halfe and that alone and be posted out of dores from a fleshly Tabernacle from a house which of all houses of that kinde is onely knowne to us a house which was built for us and which falls when wee goe from it to a new kinde of being which as yet we cannot conceive nor know by any kinde of intelligence When wee shall goe from place to place wee know not how and see wee know not how and expresse our mindes to spirits like our selves wee know not how and receive their mindes meanings again we know not how and doe many other things we know not how nor can any man that never dyde tell certainly O what a joyfull time will it be when wee shall have put off our body and left it amongst our friends as Ioseph his garment in the hands of Potiphars wife and hee left his garment in her hand and fled and got Gen. 39 12 him out and shall have escaped out of this wicked world innocent when our sinnes shall not come crying after us as they do after the wicked soule I am thy drunkennesse I did often drowne thee and wash thee away from God but thou didst never drowne me and wash mee away from thy selfe with teares of Repentance Though I am thy drunkennesse I have found the way after thee I am thy sinne of swearing I was stay'd in the Porch of thy body in thy mouth to thy last houre in the world and I sweare thou shalt not cast me off now I am thy wantonnesse I was thy chamber-sin and I will not now be turn'd abroad I am thy covetousnesse and I did so farre covet to be with thee and thou with mee that Death could never part us I am thy Anger and I am not so angry but I know what I doe I will not be so base after all our great aquaintance to leave thee in my anger when thou hast more use of me For now thou shalt be most outragiously angry with God and all goodnesse I am thy Pride and now I have done my part in the world I am onely proud of thy company it is all my ambition to follow thee But the just soule goes away quietly joyfully and securely guarded with Angels and is troubled with no such noise MEDITATION XIII VVHen a man hath long dwelt in a strange Country divided yea far distant from his deare Father friends and now at length begins to travell homewards how often in his way does he fashion to himselfe in his thoughts the face of his beloved Father his words and gesture Indeed as hee goes hee takes many a weary step hee sweats often hee blowes and is sometimes ready to faint But hee cheeres and cleares up himselfe hee calls up a good heart and thinks when I come home and at the very name of home the poore man looks cheerfully they will run and tell my Father I am come And my Father will presently start rise up and say Are yee sure 't is he I shall heare him before I see him And not staying for an answer he will make hast towards me and seeing me change his countenance and run to me and embrace me with both his arms and if he be able to speak for joy cry aloud welcome childe and then his joy having gone through all the expressions of joy will borrow teares from sorrow and then hee will laugh and then cry againe and then again laugh and the good old man will be so merry And though I be a little wet and weary now this will have a quick end and I shall have warmth and ease enough then We are here poore banish'd creatures in a strange land very farre from our Country wee are travelling homewards or woe to us Wee stick oftentimes in the dirt and stumble in the stony way we are wet and weary wee sweat every bone of us akes heart and all But the comfort is All this will have an end suddenly and when we come home we shall see our Father whom we never yet saw For wee were tooke from him being very young And without the help of a Messenger to carrie the newes hee will know wee are come and rise up without stirring and be with us without running to us and embrace us and hugg us in his armes and cry to that man and to this vvoman vvelcome childe deare childe vvelcome Wee shall looke upon him and hee upon us and at the first sight we shall know him to be our Father though wee never saw him It is very strange but more true Should God conceale and hide himselfe from us vvhen vvee come to Heaven and leave us in his roome the most glorious Angell of them all to looke upon vvee should naturally know the Angell vvere not God The soul out of the body knowes naturally God to be God Angels to be Angels Devils to be Devils as vve naturally know and distinguish men and beasts and as Adam in his
and understanding Although I creepe in the dirt lick the dust of the earth and draw a long ugly traine after me though under variety of colours and a spotted skinne I shroud poyson it being observed that the Serpent with the brightest scales hideth the most dangerous venome though my life is wedded to such a body as the Devill first abused to appeare in though men are so farre from yeelding me any helpe that they runne speedily from me yet I have the same maker as they and derive the worth of my being from as high a descent as they doe and as they are sinfull I am more perfect and exceedingly more beautifull in the sight of God and all his Angels I doe not marvell now that the holy Psalmist spoke so heartily when he said Iniquitatem odio habui abominatus Ps 119. sum I hated iniquity and my soule had it in abomination Go sinne the Viper shall take place in our bosomes before thee For the Viper that eateth through the tender wombe of the mother never saw the mother before that blinde act of cruelty so that the Viper is onely cruell before he is borne and before he ever saw a gentle creature or this blessed light to which his mother brought him But the sinner sees God in his creatures And the Viper doth but defeate the body to bring a temporall death thou the soule to bring a death drawne out and lengthened with eternity CHAP. XVI TO sinne is to turne our backs with great contempt towards God Towards God standing in the midst of all his Angels and holding up Heaven with one hand and earth with another and to turne our faces and imbraces with great fondnesse to a vile Creature O that a true sight of this like a good Angell might alwayes appeare to us before we sinne As the proud man and woman turne from God the boundlesse treasure of all excellencie and sit brooding and swelling as upon empty shels upon the fraile and contemptible goods of minde body fortune The angry man and woman turne from God the sweetnesse of Heaven and Earth and side with their owne turbulent passions The Glutton and Drunkard turne from God to whom the eyes of all things doe looke up for their meate and drinke in due season and performe their devotions to their fat bodies and bellies quorum Deus venter est whose God is their belly Which Saint Paul spoke Phil. 3. 19. as it appeareth by the verse immediatly precedent even weeping The lascivious man and woman turne from God the Fountain of all true and solid comfort and take in exchange the pleasure of Beasts The covetous man and woman turne from God without whom the rich are very poore and dance about the golden Calfe making an Idoll of their money For Covetousnesse Coloss 3. 5. is Idolatry The envious man and woman turne from God from whom come both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not inward only but all outward gifts and stick to a repining at Gods liberality in others The sloathfull man and woman turn from God whose providence is in continuall action exercise and give flesh bones head heart and all to the pillow Judas had thirty pence for Christ but we have little or nought for him All the good gifts of the holy Ghost are struck to the heart by sinne S. John beheld in his Revelation a great red Dragon having seven heads and seven Rev. 12. 3. crownes upon his heads And againe a woman sitting upon a Scarlet-coloured beast having Rev. 17. 3. seven heads The seven heads are the seven deadly sinnes which the great red Dragon the Devill begetteth upon the woman the sinfull soule wherewith he resisteth and putteth to flight the seven choice gifts of the holy Ghost I remember the woman whom our Saviour dispossessed of seven Devils and the Leaper that by the Prophets appointment was dipped seven times in the river Jordane The Devill over-commeth the gift of feare The feare of the Lord is the brginning of wisdome with pride and presumption which utterly expell the feare of God With anger he smothereth the gift of knowledge For blinded with anger we judge not according to knowledge With envie he stifleth the gift of piety or godlinesse For by envie we bandy with our thoughts words and actions against our neighbours With lust and luxury he destroyeth the gift of wisedome by which we are made brutishly foolish With covetousnesse hee confoundeth the gift of counsell by which we are violently drawne from all good counsell in the pursuite of base but sweete lucre Covetousnesse being the roote of all evill With Gluttony and Drunkennesse he killeth the gift of understanding by which we are besotted and left altogether unfit to know or understand And with sloth he vanquisheth the gift of Fortitude by which we are made weake and infirme and benummed with feare and sorrow in the search of good things Here is a battell wherein the weake over-come the strong and all because the strong are fallen into the mischievous hands of a most barbarous Traitor a Traitor to God and his owne soule To sinne is to betray Christ and give him over to death and destruction that the sinne that is Barabas the murderer may live Here is a businesse O Lord And to sinne is to banish the holy Ghost with all his gifts to bid him goe go seeke a lodging amongst the rogues beggers And being unwilling to go as he is love it selfe and therefore struggling to stay to thrust him out of the soule by the head and shoulders as desirous in our anger to break a limbe of him if he had one O that we could remember at these times that we are the Devils officers And when sinne is not the privation of Grace because it comes where it is not it the more dimmeth and defaceth nature Sinne is the death and buriall of the soule which onely God can raise againe For as the body dyeth and falleth to the ground when the soule forsaketh it so the soule dyeth and falleth under the ground to Hell-gate when it is forsaken by God O Christian saith Saint Austin non sunt in te charitatis viscera si luges corpus a quo recessit anima animam vero a qua recessit Deus non luges O Christian there are no bowels of charity in thee if thou mournest for a body from which the soule is gone and doest not mourne for the wretched and forlorne estate of a soule from which God is departed One sinne is a greater evill greater above expression then all the evils of punishment that can be inflicted upon us by God himselfe in this world or in the world to come A greater evill beyond all measure then Hell-fire which shall never be quenched One sinne O what have I done many thousand times over It is the truth and nothing but the truth And therfore it is said of the sinne of evill speaking The death thereof is an evill
God whom they saw not And even amongst Christians the devill who in other matters is alwayes the wilde Authour of Confusion and Disorder hath yet opposed the Articles of the Creed in order For first Simon Magus Marcion and others strove against the title of God the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth Secondly Arius in the first generall Councell of Nice in Bithynia laboured against the Divinity of Jesus Christ his onely Sonne our Lord. Thirdly Macedonius planted his Engine against the Holy Ghost and was condemned in the Councell of Constantinople Which observation may be also made plain in the other Articles And because the Holy Ghost is the great directour of the Church and enemie to the devill in his oppositions of it hee still had a blow at the Holy Ghost first in Theodoret who denied the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son and now in the Grecians But we shall heare more of him anon CHAP. 7. VVHat mervaile now if greene in Age and shallow in experience I gave up my soule into the black hands of errour The causes of my closing with the Church of Rome were three First a consideration of the great sinnes of this Kingdome and especially of that open scandalous and horrible sinne of Drunkennesse which my soule hateth And I weakly argued from a blemish of manners in particular persons to a generall and over-spreading corruption of Faith My thoughts represented a drunkard to me sometimes in this manner What is a Drunkard but a beast like a man or something lower then a beast When he is in his fit no sense will performe his fit office Spectacles in all figures appeare to him hee thinks he sees more shapes then God ever made A cloud settles in his eyes and the whole body being overflowne they seeme to float in the floud The earth seemes to him to nod and hee nods againe to it trees to walk in the fields houses to rise from their places and leape into the Aire as if they would tumble upon his head and crush him to a Cake and therefore he makes hast to avoid the danger The Sea seemes to rore in his eares and the Guns to goe off and he strives to rore as loud as they The Beere begins to work for he foames at the mouth Hee speaks as if the greater part of his tongue were under water His tongue labours upon his words and the same word often repeated is a sentence You may discover a foole in every part of his face Hee gâ—â—â— like-like what nothing is vile enough to suit in comparison with him except I should say like himselfe or like another drunken man And at every slip he is faine to throw his wandring hand upon any thing to stay him with his body and face upwards as God made him Vmbras saepe S. Ambr. lib. de Elia jejunio cap. 10. transiliunt sicut foveas saith S. Ambrose Comming to a shadow of a post or other thing in his way hee leapes taking it for a ditch Canes si viderint leones arbitrantur Idem ibid. fugiunt sayes the same Father if he sees a dogge he thinks it to be a Lyon and runs with all possible hast till hee falls into a puddle where hee lyes wallowing and bathing his swinish body like a hogge in the mire And after all this being restored to himselfe he forgets because hee knew not perfectly what hee was and next day returnes againe to his vomit And thus he reeles from the Inn or Tavern to his house morning and evening night and day till after all his reeling not being able to goe hee is carried out of his House not into the Taverne alas hee cannot call for what hee wants but into his Grave Where being layd and his mouth stopt with dirt hee ceases to reele till at last hee shall reele body and soule into hell where notwithstanding all his former plenty variety of drinks hee shall never be so gracious as to obtaine a small drop of water to coole his tongue Then if it be true as it is very likely which many teach that the devils in hell shall mock the troubled imagination of the damned person with the counterfeit imitation of his sinnes the devils will reele in all formes before him to his eternall confusion In vain doth S. Paul cry out to this wretch Be not drunk with wine wherein is excesse but be filled with the spirit For the same vessell Eph. 5. 18. cannot be filled with wine and with the spirit at the same time In vaine doth hee tell him that wee should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Soâ—riè 2 Tit. 12. saith S. Bernard nobis justè proximis piè autem S. Bern. in Serm. sup Ecce nos reliquimus omnia Deo Soberly in our selves righteously or justly towards our neighbours and godly towards God alwayes remembring that we are in this present world and that it is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the present point of Time and but one instant that we enjoy at once And somtimes in this manner my thoughts shewed me a drunken man Hee is a most deformed creature one that lookes like the picture of a devill one who stands knocking at hell-gate and yet it is not able to speak a plaine word and call for mercy one that could stand and goe but now lyes all along in his owne filthinesse one that is loathed by the Court and all the Citizens of Heaven one that for the time doth not beleeve that there is a God or that Christ died for the sinnes of the world one that may be lawfully thought a man of little wit and lesse grace one who is the Owle of all that see him and the scorne and abomination even of his drunken companions one who if he should then dye would certainly be a companion of devils in hell fire for ever one that is ready to commit adultery murder treason to stab or hang himselfe to pull God out of Heaven or doe any thing that is not good And if it be a firme ground that putting our selves into the occasions of such and such sins we are as guilty of them as if wee had committed them although we did not formally and explicitely intend them how many great sins hath one act of drunkennesse to answer for Drunkennesse is most hatefull to God because it putteth out the light of Reason by which man is distinguished from a beast and all better lights with it and throwes a man beneath Gods creation and therefore drunkennesse is more or lesse grievous as it more or lesse impeacheth the light and sight of Reason Natura paucis contenta Nature is contented with a little quam si superfluis urgere velis saith Boetius Boet. which if you shall urge and load with superfluous things you will destroy And one over-chargeth his stomack and vainely casteth away that for want of which or the like another daily crieth
in the streets with a lamentable voyce Good Sir for Gods sake pitty these poore fatherlesse children ready to starve one is hungry and another 1 Cor. 11. 21. is drunken And the great end of the Creator was to supply necessity and the necessity of every creature And Sobriety and Temperance are faire vertues which even the Glutton and Drunkard doe praise and magnifie If wee turne aside into the Church-yard wee shall finde it a dry time there There are no merry meetings under ground no musick no dancing no songs no jesting company Every body sleepes there and therefore there is no noise at all Perhaps indeed as men passe to the Church or to their places in the Church they point to such a Grave and say There lyes a drunkard hee is sober enough now but much against his will And thus his memory is as loathsome to all good people and those who passe by his Grave to their devotions as his rottennesse These representations winned me to think that the Practitioners in this Art of Beastlinesse could not be of any Religion because S. James bindeth Religion downe to practice Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is Iam. 1. 27. this To visit the fatherlesse and widowes in their affliction and to keepe himselfe unspotted from the world But although I had learned in some sort to compound I had not yet learned to distinguish CHAP. 8. MY second Reason of joyning hands with the Church of Rome was because I framed to my selfe the imagination of an excellent Sanctity and a spotlesse Recollection of life in their Orders of Religion And my thoughts fed upon this and the like matter The last end of man and his Creation is Blessednesse being the vision or fruition of God which is an eternall Sabbath or an everlasting day of rest in him And therefore the soule of man which bendeth towards this end chiefly desireth rest For God would not I had almost said could not create man for an end and not imprint in him a strong desire of it Heavy things belonging to earth will not of themselves move towards Heaven nor yet stay loytering betwixt Heaven and Earth unlesse arrested and held by force but haste to the center of the world the earth their true place of being in which and in which onely they take their naturall rest And the nigher they come to the center their soft bed of rest if we may beleeve Philosophy the more hast they make The gentle Dove before the tumult of waters began to settle could finde no place to settle in no sure no solid rest for her foot and the silly thing had not learn'd to swim This tumult of waters in the world will never end till the world ends And therefore O that I had wings like a Dove for then would Psal 55. 6. I flie away and be at rest Not feet like a Dove but wings I have gone enough I have been treading and picking upon dunghills a long while And now I would faine be flying And not hanging upon the wing and hovering over dunghills but flying away And not flying away I know not whither but to the knowne place of rest For then would I flie away and be at rest And not wings like a Hawk or Eagle to help and assist me in the destruction of others but wings like a Dove by which I may secure to my selfe the continuance of a quiet and innocent life I would looke upon the earth as God does from above I would raise my thoughts above the colde and dampish earth and fly with the white and harmlesse Dove when the fury of the waters began to be asswaged to the top of a high mountaine the mountaine of contemplation standing above the reach of the swelling waves above the stroke of thunder and where little or no winde stirreth That as our dearly-beloved Master Christ Jesus prayed upon a mountain that is sent up his flaming heart to Heaven from a mountaine yet farther was transfigured upon a mountaine that is brought downe a glimpse of the glory of Heaven to the top of a mountaine and beyond either of these ascended himselfe to Heaven from a mountaine So I dwelling upon the mountaines of Cant. 8. 14. Spices as it is in the Canticles may enjoy a sweet Heaven upon Earth and sweeten the ayre in every step for the direction of others who shall follow drawne by the sweet savour of my example And standing over the world betwixt Heaven and earth I may draw out my life in the serious contemplation of both singing with Hezechiah I will mourne as a Dove Here will Is 38. 14. I rest my weary feet and wings and my body being at rest I wil set my soul a work I will mourne as a Dove my thoughts having put themselves out of all other service and now onely waiting upon my heavenly Mate and uttering themselves not in articulate and plaine speech but in grones And at last set all on fire from Heaven I may die the death of the Phoenix in the bright flames of love towards God and man and in the sweet and delicious odours of a good life Come my beloved let us goe forth Cant. 7. 11. into the field let us lodge in the Villages Sayes the Spouse to the Bridegroome Come then my beloved O come away let us goe forth there is no safe staying here we must goe forth And pry thee sweet whither into the field you and I alone The field where is not the least murmure of noise Or if any but onely a pleasant one such musick as Nature makes caused by the singing of Birds and the bleating of Lambs that talk much in their language and are alwayes doing and yet sinne not Or if we must of urgent necessity converse with sinners if the Sun will away and black Night must come if sleepe will presse upon us and we must retire to a lodging-place heare mee and by our sweet loves deny mee not let us lodge in the villages out of the sight and hearing of learned dissimulation and false bravery where sin is not so ripe as to be impudent and where plaine-fac'd simplicity knowes not what deceit signifies In the field we shall enjoy the full and open light of the Sun and securely communicate all our secrets of love And when the Body calls to bed and sayes hee hath serv'd the soule enough for one time we may withdraw to yonder Village and there we shall embrace and cling together quietly there wee shall rest arme in arme without disturbance And do'st thou heare when we wake wee will tell our dreames how we dreamt of Heaven and how you and I met there and how much you made of me and then up and to the field againe O did men and women know what an unspeakable sweetnesse arises from our intimacie and familiarity with God and from our daily conversation with Christ What inwardly passes betwixt God and a good
the world or some other inferiour thing provided for the use of man I wil remember the young-man that weeping at the sight of a Toad and being asked by certaine Bishops as they passed in the way where he was the cause of his griefe answered and softned every word with a teare that he wept because he had risen to such a bulk of body and heigth of yeares and never yet given thanks to God for not creating him so foule an object of contempt as the Toad when hee was to God his Maker as willing and easie clay in the hands of the Potter O Lord I thank thee for him and for my selfe and for us all MEDITATION III. ANd the Lord God formed man of the Gen. 2. 7. dust of the ground and breathed into his nostr hils the breath of life and man became a living soule For when the Angels enriched with such absolute gifts and dowries of nature by occasion of their shining and beautifull nature had lost and lost beyond recovery the fairest beauty under Heaven which is Grace God turning his Omnipotencie to the Creation of man made as if he feared the like inconvenience all that is visible in Him of Earth of base and foule earth Which lest it should continually provoke a loathing he hath changed into a more fine substance covered all over with a fair and fashionable skinne but with a condition of returning at a word and halfe a call from Heaven unto Earth and into Earth That although he might afterwards be lifted up in the scale of his soule hee might be depressed againe presently on the other side by the waight and heavinesse of his body and so might lay the deep and low foundation of humility requisite to the high and stately building of vertue If now God should turn a man busie in the commission of some haynous crime into his first earth that presently in steed of the man should appeare to us an Image of clay like the man and with the mans cloathes on standing in the posture in which the man stood when he was wholly tooke up in committing that high sinne against God Should we not all abominate so vile a man of clay lifting himselfe against the great God of Heaven and Earth And God breathed upon his face rather then upon any other part of his body because all the senses of man doe flourish in his face and because agreeably to his own ordinance in the face the operations of the soule should be most apparent as the signes of feare griefe joy and the like wherefore one calls the eyes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most exact and accurate images of the Damascenus in vita I sidori minde But stay I grant that God in the beginning first rais'd all things by a strange lift out of nothing And I confesse it is true not that which Pythagoras his Schollers had so often in their mouthes Ipse dixit and no farther but ipse dixit facta sunt as the Prophet David singeth God spake the word and all this gallant world rose presently out of nothing as if sencelesse nothing had heard his voyce and obeyed him And I am sufficiently convinced that God brought our first Father from cōmon earth that we cannot touch without defiling our fingers to earth of a finer making call'd flesh But how are we made by him wee come a naturall way into the world And it is not seene that God hath any extraordinary hand in the work Truly neither are the influences of the Sunne and Starres apparent to us in our composition yet are they necessary to it Sol homo generant Arist hominem sayes Aristotle The Sunne and a man betwixt them beget a child The reasonable soule is created by God in the body at the time when the little body now shapen is in a fit temper to entertaine it For the soule is so noble and excellent both in her substance and operations that shee cannot proceed originally from any inferiour cause nor be but by creation And if God should stay his hand when the body is fitly dressed and disposed for the soule the child would be borne but the meanest part of a man And doubtlesse God useth Parents like inferiour officers even in the framing of the Body For if the Parents were the true Authors and master builders of the body they should be endued naturally with a full and perfect knowledge of that which they make They should fully and perfectly know how all things are ordered and fitted in the building They should know in particular how many strings veins sinewes bones are dispensed through all the body in what secret Cabinet the braine is locked up in what posture the heart lyeth and what due motion it keepes what kinde of Cookery the stomack uses which way the rivers of the bloud turne and at what turning they meet what it is that gives to the eyes the principality of seeing to the eares of hearing to the nose of smelling to the mouth of censuring all that passes by the taste and to the skin and flesh the office of touching Nor is this all But also when the body is taken up and borded by a sicknesse or when a member withers or is cut off truly if the Parents were the only Authors of the body they might even by the same Art by which they first framed it restore it againe to it selfe As the maker of a clock or builder of a house if any parts be out of order can bring them home to their sit place and gather all againe to uniformity So that every man naturally should be so farre skill'd in Physick and Surgerie and have such an advantage of power that his Art should never faile him even in the extraordinary practice of either To this may be added that the joyning together of the soule and body which in a manner is the conjunction of Heaven and Earth of an Angell and a beast could not be compassed by any but a workman of an infinite power For by what limited art can aspirit be linked to flesh with so close a tye as to fill up one substance one person They are too much different things the one is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Gregory Nazianzen speaks a ray of the S. Greg. Naz Divinity the other a vile thing extracted from a dunghill Nor is there any shew of semblance or proportion betwixt them And therfore to make these two ends meet is a work which requires the hand and the onely hand of the Master Workman The Divines give three speciall reasons why God joyned a body to a soule First moved by his infinite goodnesse because he desired to admit a body as well as a spirit to the participation of himselfe and all creatures being spirituall or corporall a body could never have beene partaker of blessednesse had it not beene joyned to a spirit Secondly for the more generall exercise of vertue in the service of
encrease their blessednesse For where good and evill meet in combat as now after the dayes of Innocence there is opposition and resistance in the performance of good where is resistance there also is difficulty and where wee discover a difference and diversity as well in the measure as in the manner of resistance there occurre also degrees of difficulties and the greater the difficulty the more pretious the reward If wee are not sorry that he sinn'd wee are not sorry that God was abus'd and his very first command broken If we are sorry that he sinn'd wee are sorry that many faire vertues have entred upon our knowledge and practice which otherwise should never either have beene practised or knowne no patience of the best proofe but occasioned by an injury no injury guiltlesse of sinne the cleannest exercise of our Charity towards our neighbour supposes in our neighbour the want of a thing requisite and all want of that generation is the poore childe of sinne the most high and most elevated praxis or exercise of our charity towards God then flames out when we seale our beliefe with our blood in martyrdome no martyrdom but usherd with persecution no persecution free from sinne If we are not sorry that he sinn'd we are not sorry that millions of millions of soules shall now be lost eternally lost never to be found again which if Adam had stood upright had certainely shone with God in Heaven as long as hee And if we are sorry that he sinn'd wee are sorry that Christ joyn'd our flesh and soule to his Divinity expressed his true love to us by dying for us was seene by us here in the world and will feast even the corporall eye in Heaven with the most delightfull sight of his blessed body for ever And howsoever some think otherwise if Adam had not sinned Christ had not tooke our nature for he was not so much delighted with humane nature as hee was desirous to die for mankinde And if wee are not sorry that he sinn'd wee are not sorry that one sinne was the cause of all sinnes and all sinnes the cause of all punishments and that one punishment is behind and waits for us in another world with which all other punishments put together and made one punishment are in no kinde comparable and that I and my neighbours and he that is abroad and perhaps now little thinks of such a businesse are all ignorant how we shall dye now we are borne how wee shall end our lifes now wee are alive now wee are put on how we shall get off and when the Ax is laid to the root which way the Tree shall fall and what shall become of us everlastingly Be wee sorry or not sorry Adam sinned It being done God's will be done And yet because it was but his permissive will his will of sufferance and hee suffers many things against his will not of necessity but because he will I will be sorry that Adam sinn'd that is offended God God made the soule of man as uprightâ—â— his body and clothed it with the white garment of originall Justice God being the fountaine of all power grace and sufficiencie could have hindred 〈◊〉 but because he was not his neighbour nor obliged by any law for who should give a law to the first Law-giver and to demonstrate the full extent of his dominion over his creatures he would not and having left man in the hand of his owne counsell and set within the reach of his hand fire and water and man having wilfully plaid foule God strived to make the best of an ill game and therefore hee drew from the fall of Adam besides the former benefits a more ample demonstration of his power wisedome justice providence and chiefly of his charity the triall of reason the triumphs of vertue in all kindes and the greater splendour of his Church It is as plaine as if it were wrot by the finger of God with the Sun-beames which St. Austen saith speaking of God Non sineret malum nisi ex malo sciret Aug. de corrept et grat cap. 10. elicere bonum He would not suffer ill if he did not well know how to strain good out of ill and sweetnesse out of sowernesse O sweet God I have committed a great deale of sower evill come in thy goodnesse and draw good and sweetnesse out of it the good of Glory to thee and the sweetnesse of peace to mee both here and hereafter Thou hast held my hand in all my actions as well evill as good as a Master the hand of his Scholler whom he teacheth to write and in evill actions I have pulled thy hand thy power after mine to evill which was onely evill to me because I onely intended it in good actions thou didst alwayes pull hold and ove◠〈…〉 hand and truly speaking it was thy good for I of my selfe cannot write one faire letter And I know thou hast not suffered me to run so farre into evill but thou canst turne all to good An infinite wisedome joyn'd with an infinite goodnesse can joyne good in company with evill be it as evill as it can be MEDITATION VII ANd if now I clip away an odd end of ensuing time a little remnant of black and white of nights and dayes a small and contemptible number of evenings and mornings wee strong people that now can move and set to work our armes and leggs and bodies at our pleasure wee that look so high and big withall shall not be what now we are For now we live and pleasing thoughts passe through our heads We runne we ride we stay we sit downe we eat and drink and laugh We rise up and laugh againe and so dance then rest a while and drink and talk and laugh aloud then mingle words of complement and actions of curtesie to shew part of our breeding then muse and think of gathering wealth and what merry dayes we shall enjoy But the time will suddenly be here and it stands now at the dore and is comming in when every one of us from the King God blesse his Majesty to the Beggar God sweeten his Misery shall fall and break in two peeces a soule and a body And the soule be given up into the hands of new Companions that we never saw and be carried either upward or downward in a mourning weed or in a robe of joy to an everlasting day or a perpetuall night which we know there are but wee never saw to be nor heard described by any that saw them And when the body shall bee left behind being now no more a living body no more the busie body it was but a dumb deafe blind blockish unsensible carcasse and now after all the great doings not able to stirre in the least part or to answer to very meane and easie questions as how doe you are you hungry is it day or night and be cast out for carrion it begins to stink away with it for
Valladolid where it stands over the high Altar with a cut face the skars yet remaining as marks of honour but dressed most richly and adorned with a pretious Crowne And this they call whatsoever they think our blessed Lady Shee hath a rich Wardrope and great change of Gownes one of white Sattin with gold lace another of red another of green Sattin and yet another of blew besides her cloth of gold for high dayes and the worst day in the week the Image goes in Sattin while the poore are naked and farther then all this is as brave in action as in clothes for it works a wondrous store of miracles but I had not the honour to see one of them Only one of the Jesuits came one day after dinner hastily to us Schollers and told us with much laughter how he had perswaded a good old wife that shee was cured of her infirmity by the Virgin Mary though she did not feele ease suddenly and that she must not faile to bring the figure in wax of the part cured and hang it up with other figures of that kind before the Image in honour of the Virgin Mary and to preserve the memory of the Miracle CHAP. 2. I Will not have to doe with Controversie but as it lyes in my way For if I turn my stile altogether from the sweet and peaceable comforts of the Spirit to the noise and loud alarums of Controversie I am a fish took out of the water And therefore I professe if they write a thousand times and I answer as often I will never stirre a foot from this very spirituall way of writing let them object a disability on my side or what they please The command of Christ to my soule is Goe and preach and every thing that comes from mee while I am I shall be if it be holy an act of obedience to that command But I lose time This Image-worship performed with much bending of the knee and body is a learned kinde of Idolatry Nicephorus entitled by them Scriptor Catholicus the Catholike Writer confesseth it was a custome introduced first in imitation of the Pagan Idolators But who can give a law of religious worship which took not beginning from Christ or his Apostles God forbiddeth all worship of this ugly stamp in those holy words of the law Thou shalt not bow downe thy selfe to them nor serve them We see that Exo. 20 5. the prohibition imposeth a tye upon the outward gesture And their answer will not hold together that we are onely commanded not to make or bow downe to an Image which wee make as well our God as our Image and bow to as to our God because God in his law immediatly addeth For I the Lord thy God am a jealous God Jealousie in us is a superfluity of love and being mingled with feare and suspition feareth every shadow and appearance of neglect and suspecteth every likenesse of evill And therefore howsoever they change the phrase and plead that the worship dwelleth not in the Image but lodging as it were at the signe of the Image goeth on her journey to God and to the Saint Yet God being still a jealous God his jealousie will be very fearefull and suspitious of all worship which is not directed the next way to him for though his love be cleane from all defect acting with us now his part is the jealous Lover And what a puzling is here of ignorant peoples brains with these ordinations and terminations And this holy parcell of holy Scripture Josephus the Jew with us maketh a part of the second Commandement But with what threats and promises God keeps us to the keeping of this Commandement Visiting the iniquity of the Fathers upon the children Ver. 6. unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keepe my commandements The iniquity of the Fathers shall be punished in the children if they be also children of their sinnes and idolatrous practises but hee will shew mercy unto thousands whose Fathers abhorred such odious wayes yea though their children are not inheritors of all their Fathers vertues because hee is more prone to mercy And as farre as thousands exceed in number the third and fourth generation so farre will his mercy be more active and operative then his Justice And this odd kinde of worship is exceedingly scandalous to all the heathenish world of unbeleevers and especially to the Jews who yet ake both in body and soule and know they doe so partly for their Fathers old sins of Idolatry There standeth a great woodden Image of the Crucifix in St. Pauls Church in Rome But why doe I say it standeth Alas it cannot stand Out of which they teach that Christ talked with St. Brigit And the Curtaine being drawne the people fall downe before it and sigh and knock their breasts and then the little beads drop I have seene an Image of the Sun through the mouth of which in the old time the devill spake to the people But while I am reasonable I shall not beleeve that God would ever speak out of an Image and tempt some to Idolatry and confirme others in it And it doth not suit with his greatnesse to come so neere the devill in his wayes who long deceived the world by a counterfeit way of speech in Oracles and who practised to speak in Images almost from the beginning of the world Indeed the great Doctors of the Church commonly call the devil Gods Ape because hee much labours to be like him that he may passe for him and deceive with more Authority But no good man hath ever said in expresse termes that God doth imitate the devill for when wee imitate another wee learne something of him And they will not deny if they be not brasse all over but as well their Priests tutored by the devill as the old Priests in imitation of the devill have spoke to the people from the mouths of Images And the dressing of Images in silks and velvets what is it but the baby-sport of children onely the little childe hath more wit then to worship his idle Baby I have seene an old worme-eaten Image of the virgin Mary in Rome carried with all earthly pomp and triumph in Procession to which the people kneeled where it came with as humble submission as they could have done to God himselfe if hee had there appeared with all his Court of Angels in his Glory And before this Image I because I was somewhat dexterous in observing the State of their Service was admitted even to the saying of Masse Shall man the living Image of God worship the senselesse Image of a man or woman being a more ignoble creature then himselfe As the perfections of all things joyne hands in God with an infinite accesse of excellence So the perfections of all things but God scattered in them embrace one another in man in a finite and bounded manner
had many Engl-Priests in thē but hee saith they came onely to mitigate and temper the severity of the Spaniards and to give the distinction betwixt Catholikes and Protestants It is very ordinary in Policie to give faire causes for foule ones Non causam pro causa That which was not the cause for the cause it selfe Every cunning man doth so My memory beares mee witnesse I have been told by them that either at the time of the Spanish fleet or of the Gunpowder Treason the Jesuits thought themselves so secure of a successe agreeable to their mindes That they had cast and written how all things should be ordred in Parliament for their advantage and for the prevention of differences betwixt them and the Monks concerning Houses Which was one of the Reasons why Leander Jones an English Monke wrote his Book concerning the Houses Lands in England due to his Order But now I speak of the Monks I must come to them anon for I came to thē Every wise and indifferent person and the person that is but indifferently wise will plainly see that I had reasonable motives and yet these were not halfe sufficient to induce a discoursing man to forsake the Jesuits if not the Popish Religion But though I had enough of the Jesuits I still desired to be seeing in the weighty matter of Religion And of my own accord I forsook the Jesuits and Spain and betook my selfe to the English Monastery at Doway in Artois For I thought if any where there was the beginning of the life of Saints and Angels I had a companion with me whom in the journey I found to have done amisse in his departure from the Colledge but hee is a private person and his fault is private let him goe and thank mee CHAP. 6. IT is too early to take my leave of Spain Every day came to our eares a new description of the abomination of desolation in the practices of the Spaniards Their sins were common talk and namely the fleshly commixtions of men with women of men with men can we bend our imagination farther Of men with beasts O most holy God! And I remember a Drunkard did fright me in England Their religious persons are much tainted with these abominable acts of Irreligion And these are not Spains sins onely but also the sins of Italie where the Pope dwels and of Rome it self where his best house is where he is to be seen for the most part Why now the holy Prophecie of the Reverend and godly Bishop Paphnutius in the Councell of Nice is come about and the branding of lawful Mariage in the Clergie hath put thē on to breake all the tyes and ligaments of Nature and Religion and to tread deep in the dark and dirty wayes of mischief They have pleased to give out here that I marry not because I judge it unlawfull and forecast a returne to them But let them know that I remayn free as from Marriage so from any tye pulling that way for two Reasons First to take off the sharpnesse of the scandall which they raised of mee that I changed my Religion for a Wife Secondly because as yet I lie dead and buried in an obscure Village where no man that is an Inhabitant except the Clerke bringeth a Booke to Church and where no man is able to judge of my Vocation or of the wonderfull things which God hath shewed to me and commanded me to tell upon the house-top But when GOD in his mercie shall make mee a fixed Star and settle me in a constant abode I shall not be ashamed to marry as many good servants of God as well ordered as I have done I was called to Orders to the sweet yoke of Christ to which the Pope had annexed a yoke of iron I could not where I was put on the one without the other The Church of Rome did not force mee upon Orders but shee forced mee to put on the iron yoke with Orders And because I put it on by enforcement and the enforcement was unlawfull I may lawfully shake it off and say of all Rules Scripture is the best A promise not regulated by the Word of God will never befound obligatory It will be much for me to promise to God or to my self and assurance of Chastity because Christ hath not bound himselfe to furnish us always with extraordinary Graces His intention is to bring us to salvation by the common rules of Christianitie and by Graces which ordinarily do gratos facere as the necessary Graces of Sanctification In higher matters as in Graces gratis datis those of Edification and the like he will be always at his own choice Onely this The condition was Antichristian the will was forced not absolutely but by a slight and the matter of the Promise was unlawful Some are Eunuches for the Kingdome of Heaven but these hang from day to day upon Gods extraordinary Grace which doth not forsake them they doe not promise so high a grace to themselves by vowing the performance of a duty which falls not within their power according to the ordinary processe and to which they are but Gods Tenants at will in all respects CHAP. 7. THe Spaniards are odiously proud and boasting both in their words and carriage But the Jesuits have a plaister for the deformity and say The pride of the Spaniard is onely the outward representation of pride and the acting of a proud man's part but the Englishman is proud in heart and the true Lucifer But what man can measure the abundance of the heart but by the out-side Their women paint till they are old and then their faces being corrupted as God will have it they are most ugly But the Jesuits cover this too saying they must paint to keepe their Husbands from other women and in due respect to them I remember a word which an old Monk and a deep one said to me speaking of Religion Nothing is so foule but words and S. Cypr. lib. de discipl habit Virginum discourse will white it over Saint Cyprian was not of their Religion who introduceth Christ saying in the Day of judgment of such a painted Sepulchre Opus hoc meum non est nec imago haec nostra est This is not my work nor is this my Image I do not like the Cruelty of the Spaniards who burned a man differing from them in opinions part after part limbe after limbe beginning at his toes with a slow and gentle fire till hee was driven into such horrible outrages of desperation that he cryed out with a lamentable tone and asked the people a hundred times over if they would send Letters to the Devill for hee was going he said and would carry them They say their intention was to convert him But Lord deliver my body and my soule from being converted by them All in God is most excellent but wee call that more then most excellent in him which We are best acquainted with his
crucified For the nature of the Deitie is not passible neither is glory lyable to pain As likewise it is said No man goeth up into heaven but he that came downe from Heaven the Sonne of Man And yet notwithstanding it was onely the Son of God that came down from Heaven for he was not yet the Son of Man In respect therefore of the personall Unitie in Christ the things which are proper to God are sometimes referred to man and the things which pertaine to man are ascribed to the Divinity It is a similitude much approved in the Councell of Chalcedon Conc. Chalc. As when the body of man suffereth the soule indeed knoweth that and what the body suffereth but in it self remayneth impassible So Christ suffering in whom the Godhead was the Godhead in him could not suffer with him If as in God there are three persons and one nature and three persons in one nature so in Christ we consider two natures in one person and lay them out to their proper acts all is easily perceived Excellently Cyril of Alexandria alleaged in the first generall Councell Cyr. Alex. in Conc. Ephes 1. of Ephesus Factus est homo remansit Deus servi formam accepit sed liber ut filius gloriam accepit gloriae Dominus in omnes accepit potestatem rex simul cum Deo rerum omnium He was made man but he continued God he took the forme of a servant but he remayned free as a sonne he received glory but was the Lord of glory hee received power over all but was King together with God of all things With what a ready finger the holy Evangelists touch every particular string in the dolorous discourse of our Saviours Passion They were not ordinary men drawn every way with carnall desires but extraordinary persons carried aloft upon the wings of a divine spirit For in the relation of those things which manifested the glory of Christ and pertained to the demonstration of his God-head they do not stay they give a naked declaration and passe to that which followeth But in the cloudy matters of his disgrace and especially in the Funerall Song of his Passion they are copious and full of matter Which if they had vainly affected the glory of the World they neither should nor would have done Thus evidently shewing they did not glory in any thing but with Saint Paul in the crosse of our Lord Iesus Christ Saint Luke opening the glory of Christs Nativitie openeth and shutteth all as it were with one action And suddenly Luk. 2. 13 14. there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly host praising God and saying Glory be to God in the highest and on earth peace good will towards men That strange comming of the Wisemen or Eastern Princes Saint Matthew comes as quickly over And fell down and worshipped him And Mat. 2. 11. when they had opened their treasures they presented unto him Gifts Gold Frankincense and Myrrhe In blazing the Transfiguration of Christ they put it off without any blazing figure without a transfiguration of words as willing onely to insinuate that Christ opened a chink of Heaven and gave a little glympse of his glory before his Passion to prepare and confirme his Disciples And forced at last upon his Ascension it fals from them in short Hee was received Mar. 16. 19 up into Heaven All which they might have amplisied by the help of their infused knowledge which virtually contained the inferiour art of speaking with glorious descriptions But in the dolefull Historie of his Passion wee have a large discourse of apprehending binding judging buffeting whipping scorning reviling condemning wounding killing and if any thing slip under the rehearsall it is to be a scarff over the face and to shew the griefe could not be expressed and moreover to stirre mens thoughts to expresse more in themselves to which wee may referre that of Saint Luke And many other things blasphemously Luk. 22 65 spake they against him These blessed Evangelists proved themselves to be the true Disciples of Christ For Saint Matthew saith Mat. 16. 21 From that time forth began Iesus to shew unto his Disciples how that he must goe to Hierusalem and suffer many things of the Elders and chiefe Priests and Scribes and be killed and be raised again the third day The Resurrection had but a very little roome and it should have had no roome had it not fitly served to sweeten the relation of his sufferings Hee did not much stirre his head in his passion without a Record without a Chronicle Saint Iohn saith hee bowed John 19. 30 his head And thus doth the flower when it beginneth to wither Hee bowed his head and gave up the ghost He bowed his head Stay there it is too soone to give up the ghost Father of Heaven wilt thou suffer this O all yee creatures help help your Creatour But they stir not because he hath bowed his head the most high and most majesticall part of his body Did hee bow his head Hee the great God of Heaven and of the World betrayed by his owne Disciple crucified by his owne people led by him to the knowledge of him when all the World was given into their own hands and brought by a strange and a strong hand out of Egypt the house of bondage the black figure of this World into the Land of Canaan the Land which flowed with milk and honey the beautifull Embleme of Heaven Did hee bow his head no instruments but his own creatures being used to his destruction when the weighty sins of the whole world were laid upon his guiltlesse back and when he could in one quick instant have turned all the World to a vain and foolish nothing And shall one of us dirty creatures frowne and be troubled lift up the head speak rashly and kick against the thorn moved by every small and easie occasion Shall we murmure and trouble all with the smoake and flames of angry words As thus for the deceits of the Devill are wonderfull If that Miscreant that shape of a man had not put my honour upon the hooke I had not beene troubled Such another man is not extant me thinks hee has not the face of an honest man The carriage of his body is most ridiculous God forgive me if I think amisse my heart gives mee hee never says his prayers Pray God he believe in Christ This makes the Devil sport What are we How soone we take fire how quickly we give fire how long we keep fire In what mists or rather fogs wee lose our selves Why did God send some of us now living into the World and not rather create us in glory if he did not mean we should passe through a field of thornes into a garden of flowers through the Temple of Vertue into the Temple of Honour by pain to pleasure MEDIT. 3. HE gave up the ghost They say men that die give up the ghost
the poore let him pitty the desolate nakednesse of Christ and in his absence cover the naked and let him say Sweet God I doe heere lay downe all my vain and boundlesse desires and wholly desire thee and nothing but thee and nothing with thee but thee Is a man a burning fire-brand of rage and anger let him understand that ira furor brevis anger is a short madnesse and a long vexation that it subverteth the whole work of Peace and all the fabrick of piety in the heart robbeth it moreover of the sweets of life and leaveth a man a silly man to be the daily subject of other mens laughter and scorne let him consider that the God of peace dwelleth not in a troubled discontented soul And let him now come hither the shedding of this bloud shal satisfie still his anger for the bloud of Christ will breake the Adamant of his heart and let out the passion hee hath crushed water out of a Rock For what Lion hearted man can be angry when hee calleth to mind how this innocent Lambe heaven and earth being moved above and beneath him remained calme in the midst and died in the fulnesse of content and patience and let him say come O come great example of sweetnesse open thy armes wide wider yet yet wider that I may run into the Circle of thy sweet imbraces O my beloved Lord I am a spotted Leopard and yet I am not for I am all black and one drop of thy cleane bloud will transform all into perfect beauty O God how beautifull are thy Tabernacles I will prayse thee in Jerusalem the holy Citie of peace Is a man a back-biter or a talkative person Let him seriously think that he hath out-done the Basiliske and killed where and when hee hath not seene let it sinke into him that hee scattereth coles and is able to set on fire a whole Kingdome for if all were known to all persons that is done and said the dearest friends would bate of their love and there would be little if any friendship amongst men let him observe that words which have flown out of one mouth flie from one mouth to another and never leave flying let him now come hither look upon him that opened his mouth in speech but seven times in three long houres upon the Crosse when happily another would have roared in the extremity and have declamed against the ravenous greedinesse of the Jewish cruelty let him here admire in silence for hee will see that which if hee would speak he could not speak worthily let him heere contemplate him that knew the darke hearts and secret sinnes of all the world and yet did not reveal them to his tongue And let him say Deare Lord and Master I perceive now that I am not master of my brother's good name and that I ought not to break silence and speak every true thing and though my neighbour hath stained his credit in one place yet if it be not wholly prostituted by him if it be not a general publike and over-spreading stain I may not recount his weaknesse in places where his good name is firme and entire or at least not bruised in that part O my blessednesse I will make a covenant with my lips and a branch of the covenant shall be My lips shall praise thee Is a man a lover of pleasure Let it enter into his heart that as money profiteth onely when it goeth from us so pleasure delighteth only when it passeth and that it passeth as it commeth and that never any earthly pleasure did please when it was past let him keepe in his minde that whosoever is overcome with the vain ticklings of pleasure is more busied in the exercise of those faculties which he hath common with beasts then of those in which he is like to Angels and in the inference is a man-beast and let him believe for it is certainly true that the greatest pain grief and torment which Christ suffered on the Crosse and all the time of his life rose from a fore-sight in which hee beheld how many would doat upon the short and lightning flashes of the World and how few would cleave to the great and ever-during benefit of his passion and let him now come hither and fix upon him whose whole life was a map of misery and a sad history of pain who as he hung upon the Crosse suffered most heavy pains in every small part of his body died in pain and left to his Church a large legacie of most painfull sufferings and let him say O thou true lover of souls I will henceforth pursue pain more then pleasure I will prove my selfe to be a naturall member and suffer with my head O goodnesse make me conformable to thee and though I weep and bleed and beare crosses and though I am born up my self from earth and all earthly pleasure on a Crosse I shall not repine at my condition because the servant is not more worthy then his Master Come all kinds of Sinners come on come neere the Crosse take a full view of this bloudy sacrifice offered once for all touch it lay your hands freely upon the wounds and bruises they belong to you Come let us fall down before him and tell him of what weake and glassie matter he hath made us how prone we are to slip what great enemies threaten our ruine that the quarrell is because wee beare his Image and that we are persecuted even to death only because wee are like to him and that in the matter it is his quarrell And then let us humbly dedicate our parts that have sinned to his service For doubtlesse hee that suffered Magdalene to wipe his feet with her hair so often kemb'd sweetned tied up in knots let downe in hooks and spread in Nets to catch the carelesse youth of Ierusalem and the Country will not reject you or mee or yours or mine Hee that hath feet which have beene swift to shed bloud and quicke in accomplishing the acts of sinne let him kisse these feet and beg part of the satisfaction which they have made for the sinnes of the feet hee that hath hands dipped in bloud and bathed in all the sinks of mischiefe let him kisse these hands and beg part of the satisfaction which they have made for the sins of the hands hee that hath set the casements of his curious eyes wide open to vanitie and never shut them against vaine and wanton sights let him kisse these eyes hee that hath eares blistred with slanders and blurred with foule discourses let him kisse these eares he that hath a mouth plenum amaritudine full of bitternesse delibutum mendaciis bedaub'd with lyes and besmear'd with oaths let him kisse this mouth and beg part of the satisfaction which this mouth hath made for the sins of the mouth he that hath a heart fraught with ill habits and alwayes at worke in â—â—mmering sinne let him kisse not with his
And thus they both satisfie for their sinnes which merited hell and by a surplussage of goodnesse merit Heaven And very often the roughnesse asperity with which God handles them is greater they tell us then the satisfaction due on their part which falling betwixt God and man drops into his Treasury of Indulgences whom they make halfe a God and halfe a man there to lye in the same roome with the copious redemption of Christ and be conferred when and to whom his Holinesse shall please who having two Treasuries seldome gives out of one but hee takes into the other They seeme to stand upon very even tearmes with God or rather to goe beyond him and yet he hath beene alwayes observed to reward above good and to punish beneath evill How does the Scripture hold that we are unprofitable servants if wee satisfie in a fit kinde for what wee have done and if wee satisfie both for our selves and others Here is a faire and rich harvest of profit If satisfaction can be wrought by a man why did not God spare his Sonne and send a creature to dye for us I doe not leane with my whole body upon this argument Here is the pillar it is one of Hercules his pillars beyond which we cannot goe That could not be effected by a creature because it was the great and generall payment of satisfaction and God required the satisfaction to be true and sufficient but this in their opinion can and therefore it cannot take the name of satisfaction without obligation to the satisfaction of Christ and to share the titles and immunities of Christs passion with him is a strange kind of pride from which Christ for ever hereafter defend my soule It is confessed that the merit of Christ is merit in the rigour of Justice because it â—â—keth it's worth and nobility from the dignity of the person and therefore stands not essentially and with both feet upon the favour of him that accepts it But the merit of man cannot oblige God to give a reward For God naturally hath no obligation to make retribution to a creature And whereas they say hee hath struck the stroke and made a bargaine by which hee hath bound himselfe to retribution and this bargaine standing in force our reward is due by Justice this truly is the pretious fruit of the divine liberality and the mercy of God in Christ Jesus whom Synesius calleth viscerum ingentium partam the birth of huge Synes in hymnis bowells who satisfying the infinite Justice of an infinite God for the commission of sinne an infinite evill the cause urged that the merit also should be infinite And if we compare his works being of infinite valour with our works betwixt finite and infinite there is a great some say an infinite distance all say no proportion Hath God took all the wayes that invention can possibly compasse to make up his full dominion over man and to hold and turne all his faculties by a little string at his pleasure to lay him low and make him supple to take the print of Humility and shall hee now merit in any sense not onely a particular blessing be it spirituall or temporall but all that which God professeth hee hath to give Heaven and happinesse and our found and sweet sleepe in his soft armes for evermore It would be a foolish passage of the worme and it would deserve to be trod upon if it should seeke to goe with it's long traine upwards and it is not sutable with earth to desire the high place of Heaven No pride is halfe so injurious to Gods highnesse as when wee are proud of spirituall Graces And the reason is good mettall The gifts of nature as health strength the readinesse of the senses although they are Gods gifts yet are they naturally due and proper to the body but the gifts of grace are by no law due to the soule for a man is compleat in the state of a man without Grace and Grace if not of free gift is not Grace and therefore to be proud of them is especially grievous because wee are proud of those things which are altogether heavenly and which wholly belong to the King himselfe and which hee bestoweth with his owne hands and which hee most freely giveth and which hee hath set his owne armes upon for the least degree of grace beares the likenesse of God and his holinesse to move in us an acknowledgement of him as the true and onely giver Let S. Austen speak for hee speaks to God Quisquis tibi numerat merita sua quid tibi numerat nisi munera tua Whosoever numbreth S. Aug. in Confes to thee his own merits what doth he number to thee but thy owne gifts In his time the bold use of the word merit taught vaine people to number their merits in the presence of God and to his very face And many hundreds of yeares after even the Councell of Trent forced to deny their owne word in the sense and power of it said of God Cujus tanta est erga omnes homines Concil Trid. sess 6. ca. 16 bonitas ut eorum velit esse merita quae sunt ipsius dona whose goodnesse runnes with such a great streame towards all mankinde that he permitteth his owne gifts to take the title of their merits Away then with the scandalous phrase of speaking It is a wise fish which presaging a storme fastneth it selfe upon a rock Christ crucified is the rock and upon him will I fix my soule and sing with S. Bernard Meritum meum miserationes Domini The mercies of S. Bern. the Lord are the whole substance of my merit Then let the Sunne be eclipsed the earth tremble let the veyle of the olde Temple teare it selfe and afterwards let the proud Jewes boast of their law and works I shall be secure There is no danger of Spiders under this Canopy he needs not feare a thunderbolt that sleepes in the shadow of a Lawrell CHAP. 9. 1. THe Nunneries in Spaine are not altogether so holy as they desire us to beleeve All the Nunns in one house seated in Madrill were as the Jesuits enformed us discovered to be Witches even when I studied there And yet they had gained such an estimation of sanctity that they were famous for it but all by impostures For they would hang betwixt heaven and earth in the sight of their Novices as if they were caught up from the ground in a rapture or extasie and so full fraught with heavenly thoughts that their soules putting themselves on with much vehemency towards heaven and assisted with Gods helping hand carried their bodies along with them And their holy Nun of Carion as I have bin enformed by a Traveller of worth is proved to have beene a Witch Their famous Nun of Lisbon in Portugall which gave her blessing to the old Spanish Fleet lying there at anchor dyed confessing she had lived a Witch and yet they
certainly they worship they know not what And it is a fearefull thing to draw the chiefe and most noble acts of Religion within the lists of such notable danger And the law of not administring the Sacrament in both kinds being one of the young handmaids which wait upon this doctrine took earnest first in the Councell of Constance And Pope Gelasius cursed all those who presumed to maime the divine ordinance and to receive it onely in one kinde And Transubstantiation the other feat waighting-maid was hired in the Councell of Lateran By little and little it was made a most huge Monster The bramble groweth but who can say now look you even now it encreaseth though hee may say it hath encreased since I saw it last CHAP. 11. ONe passage more from Spaine and then I my selfe passe from it that I may leave something to come by the next Post if they stirre mee farther By great chance there came to my hands a Booke called Regulae Societatis Iesu The Rules of the Jesuits which Booke they have not formerly suffered to be printed but onely in the Jesuits Colledge at Rome And this Book their Superiours alone make use of and are permitted to have It containeth in part a strange kinde of direction how to square and fashion their Novices in the time of their two yeares Noviship and especially how to sift them and search into their lifes and natures at their first entrance The quick and angry disposition most pleases them because in persons owing such dispositions all the passions are more lively and stirring How also to dispose of their young-men in the divers wayes of their naturall inclinations and how to deale with them according to their severall tempers and chiefely if they begin to look another way and to lean from them And how when they send Letters from house to house to mark them with private stamps in the inside lest the character going alone should bee counterfeit with many more cunning pleats of Jesuiticall government And it is one of their daily brags that they live under Rule we without Rule But were their Rules seasoned with more Christianity and lesse policie they would be more Christian My Reader shall have his Rules likewise and live under them if he please Thus much before I begin It is not obscure to mee that these irreligious orders of Religion fit and prepare their young subjects in their Noviships by turning and twining their wills with the sight of strange pictures and with the manifold acts of blind obedience for great businesse hereafter perhaps for the killing of Kings The Doway-Monk gave Pius quintus in my presence no better name then old doting Foole because he called in the Bull which he had published against Queen Elizabeth wherein notwithstanding hee did absolve her subjects from their Oath of Allegeance and from all obedience to her and expresly commanded them to take Arms against her RULE 1. LEt your understanding which is the first and superiour faculty of your soul stand not under but over all your other faculties and take a survay of your Nature And not this onely but also learne exactly the maine course and moreover the divers turnings of your owne secret disposition For knowing perfectly our owne natures wee can best direct them a proper way to God And the man that perceiveth himselfe to be jealous or angry or otherwise deficient by nature will upon occasion more easily suspect an errour in himselfe then in others and consequently discover acknowledge and suppresse with all readinesse the tumults of Passion and indeed will be more sound and able in the managing of all his affaires as well temporall as spirituall Every man is composed of a man and a beast and the beast is given to the man to be tamed and governed by him He that desireth to tame a beast desireth also chiefly to know the secrets of his nature and all the queint tricks of his inclination This distinction in man of man from himselfe riseth from the two parts or portions of the reasonable soule the intellectuall or superiour part and the inferiour otherwise called the sensuall part which though it may be said if you will say so a part of the reasonable soule while it continueth in the body is void of reason and it is hard to direct one void of reason This is all Be Master of your selfe The wise Master will know and by his knowledge governe RULE 2. ROot evill Habits out of your Soule and plant their contraries Decline from evill and doe good sayes the Royall Prophet For as a habit is gained and Psal 34. 14. strengthened by a frequent repetition and multiplication of Acts which are of the same stampe and colour with the habit as a habit of swearing is gained and strengthened by swearing often so it is abated by disturbing and abolished by destroying the course of such acts as a habit of swearing is abated and abolished by him that having often sworne now seldome or never sweareth It is not one or a few acts which generate a habit nor a small cessation from them which utterly corrupts it And therefore Children entring upon the first yeare of knowledge and discretion plant vertuous habits with great ease in their souls and with much more facilitie then people whose yeeres and sinnes are many though much enabled with knowledge wisdome and experience The Reason is open They are like faire paper ready to take any inscription these have much weedingworke before they can turn to a new Plantation Here I beseech thee learne to remember thy Creatour in the days of thy youth Eccl. 12. 1. It was a Law in the days of old that Manna should be gathered in the morning And the rich orient Pearle is begot of the morning dew God requireth of you the sweetnesse of the morning the breake of the day and the dawning of your life Note that we may sin grievously put on by custome though suddenly rashly and without reflexion because wee have not abandoned the custome and certain danger of sinning RULE 3. BEcause nothing can possibly stand without a Foundation the Foundation of the spirituall edifice and Temple of God in your soule can be no other but Humilitie Humilitie lyeth very low And the deeper the Foundation is laid the more strong will be the building and more able to beare the injuries of Time assaults of the weather And this as all other Foundations must be laid in the ground in a deep and profound consideration that you are all earth on the one side and on the other side all filth all barrennesse according to that of the Prophet Esay Wee are all as an unclean thing Esay 64. 6. and all our righteousnesses are as filthy rags Rags are of small use in themselves but filthy rags are abominable It little mattereth in whose name hee speaketh these words for every man may fit them to himselfe And according to that of our deare Saviour
praeelegit Nativitati S. Leo serm 1. de Epiph. Hierosolymam passioni Present thy selfe before the Babe and offer with the three Kings Gold Frankincense Myrrhe Gold as to a King Frankincense as to God Myrrhe as to a man liable to a bitter passion the gold of Charity the Frankincense of Devotion the Myrrhe of Sufferance Rise away travell into Egypt and help to carrie the childe and in the way talk of the Messias Up againe come back goe into the Temple Sit down and heare him dispute amongst the Doctors and observe God in a little Doctor triumphing over the greatest Doctors Thrust Judas out of Christs company then follow as one of his Disciples and make the number full With admiration heare his doctrine and be witnesse to his miracles Look upon him in his Transfiguration and admire the beautifull glimmerings of his Godhead Cast thy garments in the way and throw boughes before him strip thy selfe of all and submit both them and thy selfe to Christ Be present in the Chamber wait upon him at the great Supper and communicate in spirit with him and the Disciples And kneeling hold the Towell and Water in the washing of the poore Fisher-mens feet Follow into the Garden and conceive that as Adam and wee were made slaves in a Garden So Christ his Father having promised was took and arrested for the payment of the ransome in a Garden Chide the three Disciples for sleeping and say fie fie can you not watch one houre with your Saviour and then look with a pittifull eye upon him and wipe the sweat of bloud from his browes and cry Alas poore Saviour Go after him when almost all the Disciples flie Goe with him from Pilat to Herod and considering that hee speaks not to Herod even urged by a question Call to mind that Herod had killed his voyce Iohn the Baptist who said of himselfe I am the voyce of one crying in the wildernesse and think his voyce being gone how could he speak And from Herod back againe to Pilat Behold his purple robe his reed his crowne of thornes and ponder what gay robes indeed rich Scepters and crownes of gold and jewells that is robes scepters and crownes of glory and immortality he hath purchased for us Watch with him all the night and feare it will never be day he is so tormented And suppose that thou seest hearest feelest what he saw heard felt and that thou smellest and tastest the sweetnesse of his patience Accompany him the next day and help to carry his heavy crosse to mount Calvary And there as if thou hadst beene frozen hitherto thaw into teares Run with all thy might into his armes held out at their full length to receive thee whilest he hangeth as he did with his back towards the ungratefull Citie Ierusalem Think profoundly that he hath suffered his feet to be nail'd together to demonstrate that both the Jew and Gentile goe now in one path Waigh the matter Because sinne entreth by the senses therefore his Head in which the senses most flourish is crowned with searching thorns O marvailous what King is he or of what Country that weares a crowne of thornes Surely the King of all afflicted people wheresoever they dwell Because the hands and feet are the outward instruments of sin therefore his hands and feet are nail'd to the Crosse for satisfaction Because the heart is the inward Fountaine of ill thoughts therefore his tender heart is pierced for thee And hence learne if thou hast sinned more grievously in any part of thy body or faculty of thy soule with a speciall diligence to estrange that part or faculty from pleasure Wonder that the Thiefe confessed Christ on the Crosse when even the Apostles either doubted or altogether lost their Faith of his Divinity Here unburden thy heart of all the injuries ever offered to thee with a valiant purpose never to speak of them againe Lay downe all thy sinnes at the foot of the Crosse whither the bloud droppeth with a firme confidence never to heare of them againe and say from a good heart with S. Austen Ille solus diffidat qui S. Aug. lib. de vera falsae poenitentia c. 5. tantum peccare potest quantum Deus bonus est Let him onely be diffident who can sinne so much as God is good See him as farre as thou canst for weeping shaking and dying and mervaile that thy owne heart shakes not and dye with him by a most exact mortification Looke pale like him when hee was dead with sorrow for thy sinnes Behold him layed in the Sepulcher and though the Jewes hide him and binde him downe with a great stone and a strong chaine over it fastned in both ends to a rock as old History mentioneth and though the foolish Souldiers watch there in Armour yet doubt not but thou shalt see him again even in his body let him not shake thee off by dying Come running and having out-runne thy company finde white Angels in the Grave and pray that by thy Grave thou may'st passe to Angels Be with him even upon the mountaine where hee ascended and there kneele before him mark how his wounds are closed and be glad they are heal'd againe kisse the very print of his feet in the ground looke upon his face talk to him pray for a blessing upon thy selfe and the world confesse thy faults uncover thy weaknesse and say Lord I am very tender in this part begg the divine help then as it were dye for love and ascend with him crying O Lord leave me not hitherto I have followed thee now take me with thee to thy Kingdome and after this give thy selfe gently up into heaven and there see and heare those things which neither eye hath seene nor care hath heard and especially the things which concerne the entertainment of Christ RULE 8. THat you may proceed with more cheerefulnesse both in your speculations and in the part of practicall performance If you desire to know whether you now be in the grace and favour of God know it by this which is more easie to be knowne whether God be I dare not say in grace I hope I may say in favour with you If he be he can stirre and turne you as he pleaseth and it is your daily care to give him full content and satisfaction If you love God he loveth you for his love is alwayes the first Mover and it commeth from his love of you that you love him Indeed God loveth his Enemies as we likewise ought to doe but his enemies doe not love him neither doth he love his enemies intimately and familiarly as hee doth his friends For there is little commerce little communication which is both the exercise and recreation of love betwixt God and his enemies You love God truly if prompted by the love of him you preferre him and his law in all cases in all causes and when you rightly fit and order the acts of your election
pleasing Acts of Recreation as in the laborious and painfull exercise of solid vertue And the most precious Time which others vainly cast away in drinking feasting gaming sporting and in the pursuit of loose and idle vanities fastning upon earthly things because they are altogether estranged from things heavenly passe thou in feare and trembling in pious meditations and in the thoughts of Angels You must goe always holding up your clean garment that it be not defiled RULE 11. WHen you are put on by a strong and vehement desire towards an indifferent thing by force bow the will another way For in the full mastering of the powers and passions standeth absolute mortification and consequently true perfection And truly when wee desire or love a temporall thing above an ordinary manner GOD doth ordinarily and extraordinarily chastise us in it or by it or by the want of it because it breedeth a great expence of Time and the desire and love due to God are turned upon a creature When wee so love our children that wee look over or countenance vices in them we are commonly punished in them they bring our gray haires with sorrow to our graves And likewise when wee abhorre and are wholly averted from an indifferent thing God sendeth it in a full showre upon us with a purpose to kill and mortifie our wils and affections Some things although not evill in themselves may not be lawfully desired as our own praise and honour beyond the straine of our condition The love of God can never be immoderate because it can never be greater then the thing which is loved and the will in loving if it be carried directly to God can never be disordinate Fast often And if thy body be able to goe under the burthen let not thy Fast admit of any kind of nourishment And then aske the benefits thou most desirest And by the way remember that to fast as also to heare Sermons are not properly vertuous Acts but the ready wayes to verture And therefore if the Body be not laid under the Soule by fasting and the Soule farthered in the practice of vertues by hearing Sermons no good is done but harme in abundance God is tempted Time abused Holy dayes are prophaned The soul with God's Image defiled and these outward acts puff us up and wee contemne others as prophane persons The Soule is Mistris I say not absolute Mistris of the Body And therefore her end being supernaturall and transcending all other ends to comply with it shee may curbe and subdue the body as she in reason pleaseth The Soul of the Cōfessor giveth up his Body to punish ment and the Soul of the Martyr his body to death and dissolution in the pursuit of their end Zeno saith Remorabantur in luce detenti Zeno de S. Arcadio quorum membris pleni erant tumuli They remained alive and conversed with the living with whose members as tongues hands fingers feet the Tombs of the dead were replenished Yet break not your body by fasting for so you may cut it off from the fit exercise of Vertue and Gods service and hee that commands thee not to kill thy Neighbour will not suffer thee to be thy owne murderer Be not dejected because you are weak and cannot perfectly master your Bodie for God delighteth to manifest and shew his strength in your weaknesse Strength and weaknesse are best met together When you fall catch hold upon God and rise falling again again rise Indeed hee that goeth smoothly on when all things smile upon him and returneth backe when the winde bloweth in his face will never come to his own Countrey And here note that God dealeth with his Servants and with all people now by faire means and now again by foule But it is a very suspitious and doubtfull businesse when we have more faire and flowry way then foule and stonie and it is very likely that God hath now cast off the care of us The badge of Prosperity is one of Death's marks The Oxe is fed full and fat for the Shambles God punisheth his best Servants to wean them from the World and to better their waight of Glory Hee chastiseth every childe which he receiveth And therefore when wee sin and our sin is not followed with punishment but one sinne is punished with another that other with another it is a most fearful case for then God sheweth he hath a farther ayme then temporall punishment As likewise when wee have no sense or feeling of our sins no spirituall tribulation the soule is dangerously affected RULE 12. WHen thou art set on fire with a Temptation of the flesh apply thy selfe instantly to some kinde of employment saying Go Devill now I read your basenesse in a big letter Truly now you begin to be a meere Foole this is plaine filthines How strangely the Divell hath besotted yea bewitched men Some love women far inferiour both in body and minde to their wives whom they neglect damping and discountenancing their loves But God will perhaps punish them as his manner is with punishments like to their sins Other wives may succeed that will doat upon their Husbands Inferiours From love worse then hate and from false women that fry with love towards other men their Husbands yet breathing Good Lord deliver us For they are like faire strong and heavie Chests that appeare to the eye and hang upon the hand as if they were rich in money plate and jewels but are stuffed only with stones hay and browne paper As their gifts so they The sin of the flesh is now more hainous then it was before the Incarnation of Christ because it tainteth the flesh which he took which he hath already glorified Parce in te Christo saith one Spare Christ in thy selfe And fright away the Temptation with a loathing and execration of such Beastlinesse with contempt of so base and so quicke a pleasure accompanied with shame and with such a thought as this I am a Villain and followed with shame hate and sorrow much unlike Repentance After your Triumph over Temptation or your escape from danger run to God the onely disposer of your affaires when they turne to vertuous Good and give him humble thanks And reflect upon your misery if you had fallen under that Temptation or Danger Then search into the secret and learn whether you did not by some former offence pull the Temptation or danger upon your selfe which God now used as a warning And look with a neere eye into the deep craft of the Devill And for the present mark how painfully hee kindleth and bloweth the coals of emulation betwixt Brethren Sisters Scholers men of the same Trade people living in the same House Neighbours Families Countries How hee createth mistakes suspitions jealousies with a purpose to call up Anger I wil tel you A great Author is of opiniō that the devil doth oftentimes set Dogs together by the eares that hee may provoke men to quarrell
Father of the poore We are now rich now poore though indeed most rich when we are poore We are esteemed by the world and then contemned and condemned The care of catching after money more and more and still more takes up all the time of our life A man is born to a good estate with much care and many sinnes he doubles it and dyes But a prodigall heire comes after him in the first or second generation and turnes it all into vaine smoke and so the name failes the house fals and here is the goodly fruit of worldly care and of all the paines the old man tooke And yet riches cannot satisfie the heart of man Saint Austin hath the reason of it in his Meditations Domine feeistinos properte S. Aug. in confes irrequietum est cor nostrum donec pervenerit ad te Lord thou hast made us for thee and the heart of man cannot bee quiet till it come to thee and rest in thee And the Prophet speakes not besides the matter When I awake up after thy likenesse I shall be Ps 17. 15. satisfied with it There are holy meditations and vertuous exercises to which wee owe much time and therefore the Devill a cunning dealer keepes the richer part of women busie all the prime of the day in dressing their bodies and undressing their soules and in creating halfe-moones and stars in their faces in correcting Gods workmanship and making new faces as if they were somewhat wiser then God Quem S. Ambr. judicem mulier saith Saint Ambrose veriorem requirimus deformitatis tuae quam te ipsam quae videri times O woman what more true judge can we require of thy deformity that is thy uglinesse then thy selfe who fearest to be seene The Devill is alwayes more forward in seducing women because he knoweth that women are of a soft pliant and loving nature and that if they should love God they would love him tenderly The Devill whither can any of us men or women flie from the Devill Be sober be vigilant saith Saint Peter because 1 Pet. 5. 8. your adversary the Devill as a roaring Lion walketh about seeking whom he may devoure It is not enough to be sober nor enough to be vigilant He is not our friend but our adversary And he is a busie Devill he goes about an angry Devill he goes about like a roaring Lion a hungry Devill for hee does not roare onely but he comes roaring with a greedy purpose to devoure and hee walketh lest going with speede he should run over you and he keepes not one way but walketh about and does not onely devoure those who stand or meete him in his way but he seeketh whom he may devoure and he is alwayes the same alwayes a Devill for when he hath found his prey fed upon it and eate up all he is not satisfied he goes on still seeking whom hee may devoure God blesse every good man and woman from a roaring Lion Sixtus Sixt. II. the second in one of his Epistles directed to a certaine Bishop gives the Devill no good report Si in Paradiso hominem stravit quis locus extra Parad. esse potest in quo mentes hominum penetrare non valeat If he gave man a fall in Paradise what place can there be out of Paradise in which he may not insinuate and wind himselfe into the hearts of men Here is a picture of the life we so much love and so much desire to continue And in the last place an old house fals or an arrow goes out of the way or our feete slip or the Devill comes to us in the outside of a Saint it is his course with drooping and melancholy spirits and tels us religiously that we shall give glory to God or at least ease and comfort to our selves if we cut our owne throats or hang our selves and we are dead gone Perhaps we may leave our pictures behinde us with our friends but what are they a meerely a meere deceit of the Painter our pictures are no part of us neither doe they represent us as we are we are dead we see but one anothers faces when we are alive we are parted in substances we cannot mingle into one another as wine and water and therefore death puls one out of the others bosome And commonly when our hopes are now ripe and the things we long desired at the doore Death comes and overtakes and takes us And any man being wicked himselfe may send with Gods leave a wicked man to Hell in the turning of a hand and then what would he not give to bee with his friends in the world againe Here the reason fals open why never yet from the beginning of the world any wise man died but if he could speake in his last words he cryed out against the vanities of life and of the world My prayer shall be the prayer of one that knew what hee prayd for O spare me that I may recover strength before I Ps 39. 13. goe hence and be no more Meditation 5. IF I consider man in his death and after it He dyes that never dyed before Hee dyes that knowes not what it is to dye Which of us knowes what the pangs of death are and how going naked agrees with the soule It is as true as old Death is of all terribles the most terrible For howsoever the holy Spirit in holy Scripture is pleased to call it a sleep it is not a sleep to the wicked It is recorded of Lazarus Our friend Lazarus sleepeth and of Saint Io. 11. 11. Act. 7. 60. Stephen And when he had said this he fell asleep And of the Patriarchs and Kings of Judah that they slept with their Fathers But this was the death of the Saints so pretious in the sight of the Lord. And the soule of man now leaving the body carrieth no mortall friends with her they stay behind the brother and the sister and the wife and the pretty little children with the sweete babe in the cradle No temporall goods or evils rather nothing but good or evill Revel 14. 13. workes and their workes doe follow them All the fairest goods which made all people in all ages proud are stil extant in the world and will be after us even to the end of the world And although the living talke pleasantly of their dead friends and hope well while one looketh soberly and saith I doubt not but such a man or such a woman is with God another neither truely doe I a third he she there is no question of it if he or she be not in heaven what shall become of me Yet notwithstanding all this plausible and smooth discourse not one of these three tender hearted and charitable persons nor any one living here in the world knoweth certainly whither they were carried This we all know certainly Many of them are most heavily tormented in Hell and there curse the Father of mercies and the
God of all consolation and the world and all their occasions of sin and all their friends and themselves and all Gods creatures in the very span of time wherein their friends speake well and judge charitably of them while they distribute their words without the least change of countenance and little thinke of their most wofull and most lamentable condition And the Devill though it is open to him after this life yet cunningly keepeth from us who are saved and who damned If one of us were now in Hell but it is a darke and horrid place God keepe us from it hee would quickly thinke Had I my body and life againe whither would I not goe What would I not undergoe to shun this wofull extremity I would lye weeping upon the cold stones all covered with dust and ashes if it might be suffered a million of yeares for my sinnes I would begge my bread of hard-hearted people in a new world from one end of it to the other I would spend as many life 's in trembling feare and fearfull trembling if I had them as there bee lifes in living creatures I would doe any thing Now my soule doe not grieve that Hell is provided for sinners for such griefe stands so farre under the lowest degree of vertue that it is a sinne but give two teares at least from the eyes of thy body because thou hast sinned against thy good God Such teares are Pearles and rich ones and will in time make thee a rich man The holy Fathers call these teares the jewels of Heaven and the wine of Angels And as the world was a gallant world and there were such creatures and such doings as we now see before I was any thing so it will unlesse God please in the meane time to cut off all by his glorious and second comming remaine a very gallant world and there will againe be such creatures and such doings when I shall lye quietly under ground corrupt and putrifie and by little and little fall away to a few wretched bones and these shall remaine to mocke at what I have beene And he that is now so trim and so much talk'd of shall not be so much as remembred in the world his generation shall forget him and people will speake and behave themselves as if he had never beene CHAP. V. REader beware the Papists are crafty and profound in craft And they will object to relieve their cause one of these two things or both I have beene long trained in the knowledge of their wayes That I owe them thankes for many devout observations Something I have learned of them and I thanke them for it yet little if experience stand aside but what I might have learned in England My friends know that when I was a boy at Eton Colledge I began to scribble matters of devotion And I have seene much unworthinesse in them beyond the Seas not to be imitated which I could not have learned in England But the knowledge which they worke by shall lye dead in me Their other prop will be that my writings come not from the spirit of devotion but of oratorie I am short in these revelations that point at something in me who am nothing Reader thou hast the language of my spirit but I must digge farther into this veine of Meditation or Consideration Consideration 1. THe reasonable soule though now of composition is composed of three faculties the Understanding the Will the Memory All faculties being active have one most proper act or exercise to which they are most and most easily inclinable if not restrained The most proper act or operation of the Understanding is to see or know Truth Of the Will to will and love good Of the Memory to lay up and keepe in it selfe as in a Treasury all profitable occurrences By the sinne of Adam the Understanding is dazled in the sight or knowledge of Truth By the sinne of Adam the Will becomes chill and colde in the willing and loving of good so colde that it wants a fire And from the sin of Adam the Memore hath learn'd an ill tricke of treasuring up evill where it shall be sure to be found againe and of casting aside good where it may be lost with a great deale more ease then it was found Where one part is wounded and one well one part may succour and cherish the other the part well the wounded part In the soule all parts are wounded And therefore there is great neede of Grace and supernaturall helps that strengthened by them wee may recover health and partes deperditas the parts we have lost Lord assist my contemplation with thy Grace Wherefore the holy Apostle speaking of those who in all their adventures were guided onely by the weake directions of nature sayes they became vaine in their imaginations and their foolish Rom. 1. 21. heart was darkned First vaine and then more darke Saint Hieromes Translation speaketh after this manner in Genesis The earth was vaine and voide and darknesse was Gen. 1. 2. upon the face of the deepe What the Eye is in the body the Understanding is in the soule The Eye is the naturall guide of the body the Understanding is the naturall guide of the soule For when we beleeve as well as desire the things we doe not understand even then also we take a naturall direction from the Understanding which he holds a conveniencie of such things in respect of the motives with beliefe and desire though not with Understanding The Eye sees the outward shape of a thing the Understanding sees both outwardly and inwardly as being advanced more neerely in its degree and therefore also in its making to God The Eye discernes one thing from another the Understanding conceives as much The Eye judges of colours the Understanding judges of white and blacke of good and evill The Eye cannot see perfectly many things at once and such a one is the understanding For the more a power be it spirituall or corporall being finite is spread and divided in its operation the lesse power it hath in every particular The eye sees other things but I cannot turne it inward to see it selfe the Eye of the soule lookes forward but in the body it shall never obtaine a sight of it selfe in its owne essence Indeed the Understanding is a kinde of Eye and the Eye is a kinde of Understanding Such an excellent sweetnesse of agreement there is betwixt the soule and the body which moved to the marriage and union betwixt them Now this Understanding this Eye of the soule is not altogether blinded by the great mischance of originall sinne For omnia naturalia sunt integra as Dionysius sayes of Dionys Areop the fallen Angels all the naturall parts are sound How from being broken not from being bruised This Eye then although darke so farre sees that it sees it selfe lesse able to see somewhat darke in the sight of naturall things and much more then somewhat
of holy practise and heavenly contemplation The Devill standeth ready to dash out our braines to destroy the body and to devoure the soule to disturbe the peace of nature to confound the elements to mingle Heaven and Earth to trouble all wishing earnestly and earnestly entreating that God would turne away his milde face his gentle eyes and say Goe my Executioner revenge my cause upon the World And yet God will not O the delicacie of the Divine sweetnesse Learne the nature of the Devill In one thing especially the fall of the Angels was like the fall of man For as man was more weakened by his fall in his will and readinesse to doe good then in his understanding and knowledge of good so the Devill is farre more blunted in his will then blinded in his understanding As for his naturall knowledge it is rather dazled then darkned And by this notable signe you may know that his will is most malignant For although it is plaine to him that for every temptation he stirreth up in man the burden of punishment shall bee laid presently heape after heape upon his shoulders and though he knoweth exactly how many strong ties he breakes by offending perceives more throughly the quality of the offence and sees with a more cleare eye the greatnesse of the Divine majesty offended yet still the perversnesse and faction of his will carries him on through all to mischiefe And if the Devill remaineth yet so perfect in the intellectuall part by knowledge sans doubt he knowes and is versed in all the possible wayes how to invade us which way our inclinations leane which side is most weak and how he may plant his engine with returne of most profit to his owne cause and what will best follow the fashion of our fancie The enemy which we see before us in his owne and knowne shape sense teacheth us to feare and consequently to withstand or prevent him But the Devill we feare the lesse because we see him not because he has the art to goe invisible Thomas Aquinas is of opinion that every man being alwayes accompanied with a good Angel and a bad one some by reason of the foule enormity of their sinnes and desertion of God who never forsaketh before he is forsaken and left alone himselfe may be forsaken for a while or totally by their good Angel But I dare say that never any man was forsaken by his bad Angel the Devill If one of us were but a little while haunted with a Ghost how he would feare and tremble every one of us is haunted continually with a Devill and yet we feare not because we doe not see him No man goeth but the Devil goeth with him no man stayeth but the Devill stayeth with him no man sleepeth here his action changes but the Devill waketh by him And as he is alwayes with us so hee is also alwayes so vigilant about us that although he doth not know the thoughts of the heart in the heart and cannot reade them in that booke of Characters yet he doth oftentimes gather what they are by the language of outward signes and also by outward signes forestall and know even future occurrences depending upon the will of man He is a Tempter by his profession God also may be said to tempt us but how by scattering rubbs in our way to make vertue more bold and more laborious What made all the Conquerours famous but because they conquer'd what was not easily conquer'd But the Devill tempteth with a direct intention to sinne God tempteth with a strong desire of good and of our salvation the Devill with a furious desire of evill and of our damnation God tempteth us not above our strength the Devill would if God would suffer him And as the Roman Conquerour the Queene having escaped carried her image in triumph So because he cannot trample upon God who threw him downe from Heaven he labours to revenge himselfe upon his Image Suspect therefore all his proceedings Facilius illicita Tert. de cultu foeminarum timebit qui licita verebitur saith Tertullian He will more easily feare unlawfull things who will be afraid even of things lawfull Let this joy thy heart Nothing can happen or stirre or be in the world except sin without Gods approbation nor yet that without his permission Please God and you have him your friend that holds all chances all stirrings and the being of all things fast in his hands And lastly begge nothing of man before you first begge it of God Rule 2. DIsingage your selfe from the world mistake me not from the love of it Old Authors observe that the Apostles were all clad outwardly not with Friers coates but with mantles And the mantle is a loose garment which hangs to a man but by a loope If it prove troublesome if it hindereth in your journey put your finger to the loope and the mantle falleth away The Apostles taught even by their garments and the mantles served to demonstrate their neglect of worldly things and to give evidence by what tenure they held them If riches abound set not your heart upon them sayes he that was both Prince and Prophet If they creepe upon you keepe the infection from your heart if they breake in upon the heart they are mortall Except a man shall renounce all which Luke 14. 33. he possesseth he cannot be my Disciple sayes the Prince of Prophets Then O rich man either presently renounce all which thou possessest or else turne out-law and forbeare to thinke thy selfe the Disciple of Christ All. A tearme of universality shuts the doore against every particular This is heavy newes I feare the messenger will bee ill paid It is not My yoke is easie and my burden Matth. 11. 30. is light saith he under whose yoke we labour Renounce the will and affection to riches and thou hast fulfilled the Law The affection of a ragged poore creature may be more closely tyde to an old house and a pewter dish then the will of a great person to a Palace and the revenewes of a Prince And therefore our Saviour speaketh plainely Blessed are the poore in spirit for theirs is the Kingdome of Heaven For poverty Matth. 5. 3. of spirit even rich may have in a rich manner And because they are poore upon earth they shall be rich in Heaven for theirs is the Kingdome of Heaven And the Kingdome of Heaven is not promised to any kind of poverty but the poverty of spirit And to that it is promised wheresoever God finds it It is easier for a Cāel to go through Mat. 19. 24 the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter into the Kingdome of God that is for a rich man whose love and affection sit brooding upon his riches Some ancient expositors tell us upon this place that there was in Jerusalem a little gate which for its extraordinary straitnesse was called the Needle the passage through it being
stay in his owne home in the inferiour part of the soule and not breake in upon the minde and that in all the stirring Reason should have her principall motion For if passion be first she will blinde Reason and then draw her into her faction change opinion alter judgement worke strangely upon the apprehension turne the discourse and make another man And as anger so love desire joy feare griefe and the rest are all to be wisely tempered Rule 5. KNow that when any thing is well and piously said or done in your presence God speakes to you And that when you see or heare of the miseries of other people God presents them to your eyes or eares as warnings to you and as copious Theames of his praise And that when your faults are objected against you even by furious and angry persons the objection commeth by way of permission from God intending your benefit And that which is more strange God many times speakes to you by your selfe as when you instruct others Yea by dumbe and unsensible creatures And therefore heare diligently what they say which you may fitly doe in this manner When you see a Lion looke up to the preserver the Lion of the tribe of Judah and downe to the destroyer the roaring Lion with an earnest and urging desire to follow the one and to flie from the other And thinke of the royall mercie and most noble sweetnesse of God couched under the terrour of his Majesty of which they plentifully share even when his justice rideth in triumph that lie prostrate before him by humility When you see a Beare cast your inward eye upon the Beares which devoured the undutifull children because their parents had not performed the very first and most common office of Beares and licked their young into forme Seeing a Hog looke downe upon the prodigal childe a very child lying all along by the trough amongst his fellow swine and take into your minde the base abjection of a sinner wallowing in the filth and mire of his owne lust and carnall desires When you heare a Cocke the bird of day and usher of the morning crowe take Saint Peter by the hand and goe out or in and weepe bitterly When you see a bird say in the private study of your heart It is God that giveth meat pullis corvorum invocantibus eum to the young of the crew calling upon him feeding the little gaping Crowes forsaken of their mother as borne white and which therefore shee doth not thinke to be of her colour with the dew of Heaven When you see a stirring and painefull Ant goe sluggard to the Ant and learne spirituall husbandry When you see a Lilly thinke of him who is the Lilly of the vallies and presently inferre that Gods grace is not confined to a narrow circle and tyde to a certaine sort of persons but open to all suppliants and if it growes any where chiefely it s most usuall place is in the Valleys Seeing all this faire wardrobe and furniture of creatures say heartily What will not he give us in our Countrey who heapeth upon us such plenty in our banishment How faire are the roomes of Heaven within if the outward parts are so gay and so richly deckt with starres We are removed a great way from Heaven and are very nigh to Hell we play as it were upon the tyles on the top of the house and if here we are blest sure if we land in Heaven wee shall make the land Sea and swimme in blessednesse If a haire doth not perish from our head the whole man shall be kept as a choyce peece Times ergo ne pereas saith Saint Austin to a timorous and diffident S. Aug. hom 14. tom 10. person cujus capillus non peribit Si sic tua custodiantur superflua in quanta seeuritate est anima tua Non perit capillus quem cum tondetur non sentis peribit anima per quam sentis Doe you feare therefore lest you should perish one of whose haires shall not perish If your superfluous things are kept so warily in what a sweete security is your soule Your haire perisheth not which being cut off when you are pold you feele not what hath passed and shall your soule perish by which you feele When you take a staffe in your hand say Thy rod and thy staffe they comfort me the one serving for Psal 23. 4. correction the other for direction Think at the sight of Bread upon your Table Through how many hands and fortunes hath God brought this good Bread safe to me It was Corne then sowed it dyed lived againe grew was greene washed with the raine brushed with the wind dryed with the Sunne then turned colour it lay abroad many a cold night was reaped threshed winnowed ground into meale and bolted kneaded and made into very good Bread and baked and all for me a sinner Such is the state of a righteous man And when thou art in company others wandering with other discourses let thy reason travell by it selfe and make strange discoveries in the view of some one standing by thee O man who framed that faire Globe of thy head the stupendious fountaine of all thy senses Who decked thy head with haire and a face wherein all parts conspire and meete in a beautifull proportion moving love and admiration Who drew a faire skin over thy flesh Who provided for every sense its proper object delightfull spectacles for the eyes pleasant sounds for the eares flowers for the smelling faculty dainties for the taste and soft things to please the touching power Who made the little bals of the eyes that rich and curious peece of worke to keepe watch and sentinell for the safety of the body and spread curtaines over them to shut out every shadow and shew of danger The eyes are little but see great things Who formed the eares to be the faithfull scouts of the soule and to lye out and lissen on both sides of the fort Who taught the tongue to speak so perfectly that all speech can never sufficiently expresse the excellencie of speaking Who gave a law to the stomacke to send nourishment to every part in a measure fit for the part to which it comes Who ranked the bones in order Who gave strength to the sinewes and confined the wandring bloud to the veines Who fitted the armes and hands for outward action Who shaped the feet to uphold the frame and maintaine it with the face looking towards our Countrey He growes upwards towards Heaven and he is going thither while earth lies under his feete God blesse him in his journey O the wisedome of him that sits upon the Throne in Heaven I will furnish you farther in this kinde afterwards Rule 6. EXercise these Acts as devotion of occasion shall call An Act of Faith Comming into the world as into a strange Countrey and finding people for the most part to beleeve as their Countrey and friends beleeve and
as other vaine tyes hold them I doe shake off all these idle obligations in imitation of the Primitive Church and of all holy men in succeeding Ages I firmely beleeve that the Scripture is the word of God and that all things revealed in it are true And I beleeve that as God made the world for himselfe and his glory So and more eminently he directeth his Church to himselfe and his glory That is therefore the pure Church of Christ which casteth all the glory upon God which leaneth and relieth wholly upon the most pretious merits and passion of Christ which cryeth to God onely for helpe which is throughly obedient for Gods sake to lawfull authority bee it amongst Heathens which doth not permit and countenance sinne by which onely God is dishonoured And she cannot be the cleane spouse of Christ which God and his Truth being infallible performeth the most high and most reverend Acts of Religion upon uncertainties As prayeth absolutely for a soule turned out of the body without a certaine knowledge of her being a determinate friend or enemy of God And worshipeth that with the worship of God for God which if the Priest be deficient in his intention or defective in his orders is in her owne opinion a creature And she is not the faire spouse which hath lost her attractive beauty and which all Jewes and Infidels hate and abhorre justly moved at least with a notorious shew of Idolatry And therefore I beleeve that the Church of England is the Spouse of Christ as being free from these blemishes and conformable to Scripture And in the defence of this Faith I stand ready to give up my sweete life and dearest bloud And if I die suddenly to this Faith I commend the state of my eternity An Act of hope in God I doe hope in God because hee is infinitely full of goodnesse and is like a nurse which suffereth pain in her brests till she be eased of her milke because hee is most able and most willing to helpe me because he hath sealed his love with most unbreakable promises and because hee knoweth the manifold changes and chances of the world the particular houre of my death and the generall day of judgement in all which I hope greatly this good and great God will deliver me An Act of the love of God I such a one in perfect health and memory able yet to revell in the world to enjoy wealth and pleasure to sacrifice my body and soule to sensuality doe contemne and lay under my feete all goe behinde me Satan sworne enemy of Mankinde and love God purely for himselfe For put the case he had not framed this world or beene the prime cause of any creature in it put the case hee had never beene the Author of any blessing to mee yet excellencie and perfection of themselves are worthy of love and duty and as the object of the understanding is truth so the object of the will is goodnesse and therefore my will shall cheerefully runne with a full career to the love of it Saint Austin S. Aug. hom 38. hath taught me Qui amicum propter commodum quodlibet amat non amicum convincitur amare sed commodum He that loves his friend for the profit he reapes by him is easily convinced not to love his friend but the profit Wherefore although I should see in the Propheticall booke of the divine Prescience my selfe not well using the divine helpes not rightly imploying the talents commended to my charge and to be damned for ever yet still I would love him away ill thoughts touch me not I would insomuch that if it were possible I would even compound and make to meet hands the love of God and damnation For although I were to be damned yet God could not be in the fault and though I should be exceedingly miserable by damnation he would yet remaine infinitely good and great by glory and though I did not partake so plentifully of his goodnesse yet many others would O Lord I love thee so truely that if I could possibly adde to thy perfection I freely would but because I cannot I am heartily glad and love thee againe because thou art so good and perfect that thou canst not be any way more perfect or good either to thy selfe or in thy self And I most humbly desire to enjoy thee that thy glory may shine in mee and that I may love thee for ever and ever It grieves me to thinke that if I should faile of thee in my death I should be deprived in Hell not onely of thee but also of the love of thee Note pray that other vertues either dispose us in a pious way towards our neighbour as justice or doe order the things which are ours and in us as many morall vertues or they looke upon those things which appertaine to God as Religion or they direct us to God himselfe but according onely to one Attribute or peculiar perfection As the vertue of Faith giveth us to beleeve the divine authority revealing to us Gods holy truth Hope to cast Anchor upon his helpe and promises But with charity or the love of God we fasten upon all God with respect to all his perfections we love his mercie justice power wisedome infinity immensity eternity And faith hope patience temperance and other vertues leaving us at the gate of Heaven charity enters with us and stayes in us for ever An Act of Humility O Lord if others had beene stored with the divers helpes the inspirations the good examples the good counsell the many loud cals from without and yet from thee which I have had they would have beene exceedingly more quicke more stirring in thy service Many Acts which I have thought vertues in me were onely deedes of my nature and complexion My nature is bespotted with many foolish humours I am unworthy dust and ashes and infinitely more unworthy then dust and ashes A Sinner I am not worthy to call thee Father or to depend in any kinde of thee to live or to be The foule Toade thy faire creature is farre more beautifull then I a Sinner-Toade Verily if men did know of me what thou knowest or what I know of my selfe I should be the rebuke and abomination of all the world An Act of resignation to the will of God Whither shall I flie but to thee O Lord the rich store-house of all true comfort The crosse which seemeth to me so bitter came from thy sweet will Can I be angry with thy good providence Is it not very good reason that thy royall will should be done in earth as it is in heaven And though perhaps it was not thy direct and resolute will that all my crosses should in this manner have rushed upon me yet the stroke of the crosse being given it is thy direct intention that I should beare it patiently I doe therefore with a most willing hand and heart take Gaule and Vineger delivered by thy sweete
the sinnes of the world give us peace Goe the wormes shall eate thee till they are poyson'd with corruption Wise men are madde Our feet slip we tumble and Lord have mercie upon us The gay flower withereth when the common grasse remaineth greene And man is the silly foole of his owne fancie God forgive him who said that he and three of his Cardinals were able to governe so many worlds if God should make them CHAP. V. HOw vaine is the Church of Rome in teaching that the Popes Throne doth so farre overlooke all other Thrones that he cannot be censured by an earthly Judge though ingulfed in the most horrible crimes that in all the extravagancies of the heart were ever committed Let him enter a Fox raigne as a Lion die like a Dog as Pope Boniface Let him commit whoredome upon Altars give Benefices to his Whores and golden Chalices consecrated to holy services which an honest Lay-man cannot touch breake open doores burne houses put out his God-fathers eyes cut off his fingers hands tongues and noses of his Cardinals not remembring what he said when he did first invest them in purple Ego te creo socium Regis I create thee to be the fellow of a King and moreover invocate the Devill and drinke to him as Pope John the twelfth Let him be a most notorious Conjurer and make himselfe over by compact body and soule to the Devill as Pope Silvester the second Let him be carried with the Whirle-winde of ambition and have poysoned sixe other Popes to hew out his owne way before him as Pope Hildebrand Yet he sits above the reach of censure he flies with the Eagle above the Thunderbolt That they may give sinewes to this doctrine they produce an Act of a Councell celebrated in Rome which saith Neque praesul summus a quoquam judicabitur Concil Rom. quoniam scriptum est non est discipulus supra Magistrum Neither shall the chiefe Bishop be judged of any because it is written the Disciple is not above his Master And that they may adde strength to this plausible falshood they bring in the reare an eminent example For when Bassus and Marinianus laid to the charge of Pope Sixtus the third that he had in the rage of his lust defiled a consecrated Virgin Maximus the Consul crie out Non licet adversus Pontificem dare sententiam It is not lawfull to give sentence against the chiefe Bishop Looke how they shuffle the matter and give it from one hand to another amongst themselves But is not this to encourage sinne to permit and flatter evill and to suffer it to grow out and openly spread it selfe when it may be easily beate downe in the blossome This doctrine hath so farre given heart to all kindes of wickednesse that if we search into every succession of Bishops scattered through the whole Christian world and examine every linke of every chaine we shall not meete in any Sea with sinnes that deserve to be called sinnes with relation to the foule enormities of Rome Are not these evill fruits of evill doctrine and yet no man almost doth name the Pope but under the sacred title of his Holinesse But though his Holinesse is not liable to reproofe a man would think his wickednesse should And how silly is the Church of Rome in teaching that although the most holy and most learned Bishops that ever lived should joyne their heads and hearts in a Councell and there using the pious helpe of holy Scriptures of other Councels and Fathers before them and of humble prayers for the powerfull assistance of the holy Ghost should with an unanimous consent decree what is to be preached the Pope notwithstanding might come in the upshot and though a most wicked and illiterate creature lawfully pronounce all the Decrees to be of no weight no effect no validity The generall Councell of Chalcedon upon sound premeditation made an absolute Decree that the Bishop of Constantinople should have equall power through all the great extent and latitude of his government with the Bishop of Rome which Canon Pope Leo and Pope Gelasius quickly rejected and the single authority of one man tooke place because our Saviour had said to Saint Peter I have prayed for thee that thy faith faile not But every prayer of Luk 22. 32 Christ was granted therefore the Pope cannot erre It must here follow that either the Decrees of Councels are fallible or the Popes sentence Is it not strange that God should communicate his holy Spirit to the contempt of Councell more fully to a private person for so he is in this matter being one though a publike sinner then to the whole Church the Spouse of Christ Let the Pope claime to himselfe all power in all affaires who now can chide his ambition or give the lie to his infallibility CHAP. VI. ONe of my great admirations concerning the Church of Rome is that whereas there are many Churches yet extant of great antiquity and some wherein Christ was almost if not altogether as soone heard of as in Rome she will not consort and comply with them in things which were wholly in use amongst the Primitive Christians If she desires with a Christian desire and not with a desire onely of her owne advancement to win them why doth she not come as neere to them as it is most evident they come to the Primitive Church This way of the Bishop of Rome was never Gods way Which I will demonstrate in a plaine discourse though not plaine to the plaine that I may a little ease my reader in his journey with various objects God as he was ever God so he was ever good For the most eminent Attribute of God saith Dyonysius is goodnesse The nature of goodnesse is to spread and diffuse it selfe And every good doth spread and diffuse it selfe according to the variety and greatnesse of goodnesse which it hath And therefore God the Father being infinitely good doth infinitely spread and diffuse himselfe upon the Son And the Father and Sonne being infinitely good doe infinitely spread and diffuse themselves upon the holy Ghost And if the Father Sonne and holy Ghost doe not in any kinde spread and diffuse themselves infinitely upon the Angels and us it is because we being creatures and by course of necessary consequence finite are not capable of an infinite diffusion The Charity by which a good man loves good might be infinite if the subject could be infinite Now as in the works of nature and first diffusion of his goodnesse upon his creatures God the first cause would first worke by himselfe and himselfe bring about the most weighty matter of making all these fine things of nothing and moreover of waking nature out of her dead sleepe in the Chaos that it might appeare to us who should afterwards heare the grave and strange story of the Creation that hee was all-sufficient and could not be at a fault for want of help Yet managing the
world by the books of Plato and other divine Philosophers by the strange agreement of the seventy Elders in the interpretation of the old Testament called into Egypt by one of the Ptolomies and by the cleare and clearely Propheticall writings of the Jewish Rabbines For whatsoever is well said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Just Apolog 1. saith Saint Justin belongeth to Christ and to us Christians The holy Ghost being the holy cause of all caused truth And certainely their eyes used to darknesse would hardly beare more then the small glimmerings of light And thus many why stay I there many thousands were saved of whom we never heard And the like hapned saith Saint Austin in the Deluge For many being convinced in their judgements by seeing the Prophecie of the Floud to become History repented of their sinnes against God whom Noah had taught to be the Author of the Prophecie and beleeving imbraced their present destruction as a just punishment for their sins and having been justified by a lively faith were saved God did not take al into the number of his people because his people had not beene so properly his without an exclusion of others and because hee would more endeare himselfe to those whom hee tooke as likewise his love is more glorious in his elect And after the comming of Christ if there be or hath beene a Countrey which hath not sufficiently heard of Christ and his workes the people have not sufficiently performed their duties to which they were bound by the Law of Nature From those that correspond with the light of Nature the light of Grace is never with-held neither was Christ ever nor ever shall be conceal'd but either is told or was foretold CHAP. XI BUt now at length sinne being very forward and by occasion of the Law growing stubborne and striving against the Law and the world groaning aloud under the judgements of God and the waight of the old Law and the Prophets and servants little prevailing and all earnestly desiring a Messias a Saviour the Redeemer of Israell Christ himselfe the Lord and Master of the family God knew in all Eternity that it was in his power and liberty to make other creatures some above the degrees of Angels some in the distance betwixt Angels and men with divers endowments and perfections to whom he might liberally and with a full hand communicate himselfe yet rejecting in the long and various catalogue all the rest being a rich God hee chose poore man intimating a great correspondence betwixt a rich Creatour and a poore Creature the one being very full and most able to give the other very empty and lying open to receive And also he knew that amongst all the severall kinds of communications none was so fit and firme as the joyning of himselfe to some created nature in such a rich and exquisite manner that the Creature might be as it were married to the Divinity and make one onely Person with it and therefore he joyned himselfe to man by the mediation of the Hypostaticall Union if the Schooles say true the most perfect Creature that ever God made as comming more neere to him not in being but in touch in this most excellent kinde of conjunction And as the Sunne turn'd face and ran backe in the same steps it came tenne degrees in the dayes of Ezechias so he descended under the nine Quires of Angels even to humane nature the tenth last least and lowest degree of reasonable Creatures taking it to have and to hold for all Eternity Quo altius carnem attolleret non babuit saith S. Aug. de praedest c. 15. Vide ibi plura Saint Austin He not onely raised humane nature as high as it possibly could rise or omnipotencie lift it but also he brought downe his Divinity as low as it could come It was fitly sung by a good musitian and the straine was very sweete Hee bowed the Heavens also and came downe and darknesse Ps 18. 9. was under his feete For they being high and we lowe they were bow'd downe by a strong hand to us and our condition the hand of him who bringing light trod darknesse under his feete And it is pretty to observe how God hath laboured to unite himselfe with man The water being hindered in one passage seeketh another For as likenesse is that from which love is taken so likewise Union is that to which love is carried First man was no sooner man but God fastned himselfe to him by Grace Which Union though it was not the Union of God with man but of his Grace yet Grace did present the person of God and while shee kept her Court in man performed the strict will of her Lord her selfe and so governed that all the powers where she was did the same Adam not falling sinfully before his fall But God seeing that this Union was quickly dissolved in Adams fall and that being a very unsettled Union it was in danger to breake at every turne and foreseeing what we now see he made another more sure and sacred cord of Union in the Incarnation whereby humane nature is tied to the Divinity and makes up the same Person with the second Person in Trinity without any danger of a divorce or breach of friendship But because this Union is not the joyning of God to every man but to the nature of man and to no mans nature in particular but his owne he sleepes not here but comes home to every one without exception in the Sacrament marrying himselfe by grace to the soule applyed in the resemblance of bodily nourishment to make the Union of Grace more strong with a double knot as labouring if it were possible to turne into the soule and be the same thing with it as bread becomes not one of the two in carne una in one flesh but una caro one and the same flesh with the body But because we are not yet come to that which by the Grecians is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and signifies both the end and perfection and because this Union also now is and now is not God hath ordained a settled state of Union by which the soule of man in Heaven is tyed with an eternall bond of peace to him humane understanding to the divine understanding the will of man to the will of God and by which all the powers of man are fixt in a firme and most neere connexion and subordination with and to him for ever How then ought we to stoope and comply if we sincerely desire a Union of all not onely with our selves for our owne ends but with the Primitive Church for Gods end CHAP. XII THe Apostles and Preachers of Christ following the tract and foot-steps of God and of their Master Christ who also conversed with Publicans and sinners though not in their sinnes and spake otherwise to his Apostles to whom it was given to know mysteries otherwise to the people were all things to all
Grace yee are saved through Faith and that not of your selves it 2 Ephes 89 is the gift of God Not of workes lest any man should boast Amongst the Papists their good men all merit and to make the matter sure one meriteth for another And yet as no man can direct an intention to an end but hee must also intend the meanes requisite to the end So no man can truly merit salvation unlesse he likewise merit the meanes necessary to salvation the thing necessary to salvation was the death of Christ therefore if they merit salvation they merited S. Aug. Serm. 8. de verbis Apost likewise the death of Christ But Saint Austin saith Neque enim illum ad nos merita nostra bona sed peccata duxerunt our merits did not draw him to us but our sinnes The Protestants have onely two Sacraments because Christ intended to give life and to maintaine it They have Baptisme to give spirituall life and the Sacrament of the Eucharist or the Lords Supper to keepe and cherish it The Papists have seven Sacraments as there are seven Planets and because there are seven deadly sinnes And yet if every visible signe of an invisible gift be a Sacrament the old Law was exceedingly stored with Sacraments The Protestants give Christ to be eaten by faith the Papists wholly and carnally and in the same manner as he is in Heaven And therefore the sacred institution is maimed and the poore Laity deprived of the Cup because they are beleeved to take all Christ his body ex vi verborum and his bloud soule Divinity and the blessed Trinity it selfe per concomitantiam in regard that Christ cannot be parted The Protestants teach according to S. Paul that a Bishop may be the husband of one wife which the Papists 1. Tim. 3. 2 would faine turn to one Bishoprick or Benefice but S. Paul cuts them off having his children in subjection with all gravity Both the Verse 4. Bishop and Priest with the Papists professe to live a most Angelicall life and to carry with them out of the world an unspotted robe of chastity And yet while they bring glory to their Church by a compulsive restraint of the Clergy from an honest and lawfull act they ruine the precious soules of many thousands of thousands as appeareth by the great and grievous complaints of many devout persons in the Councell of Trent and by the beaten and ordinary practise of their Priests who by force turned from the true channell runne over all bankes into all beastlinesse And I have from their owne mouths two matters of notable importance First that indeed marriage had beene granted to Priests in the Councell of Trent had they not upon the suggestion of the Jesuits feared poverty and contempt By which it is as cleere as Gods Sunne that they more aime in their adventures at the glory of the Church their visible Mother then of God their invisible Father Secondly that the Jesuits hewed the Councell into this conceit for this end lest because the Jesuits can throw off their habit at their pleasure all their able men should have left them and runne a wiving And it is a great reason of a great rule they have that no Jesuit may be a Bishop or Cardinall without an extraordinary command and dispensation from the Pope because their houses would then be deplumed of Schollers I feare the religious persons of the Church of Rome clad so meanely in the greater part thinke themselves as great as the greatest Tertullian saith of Diogenes Superbos Platonis thoros alia superbia deculcat he kicks the pride of Plato being altogether Tert. Apol. cap. 46. as proud as he The Protestants are alwaies humble suppliants to God for the remission of their sinnes and still laying open before him and recounting the sins of their youth And the uncertainty holds them alwayes in a feare and trembling and in a meeke submission to God The Priest in Confession will give to the Papists a full and absolute forgivenesse of all their sinnes whensoever they please to read or tell them over And yet nothing is more dangerous to an ignorant soule then a deceitfull security they beleeve their sinnes are forgiven and the care is past Confession cannot be necessary necessitate absoluta that is necessary to salvation or in the list of Sacraments For why did the Greeke Church the most devout and most learned Church in the world and the Nursery of our greatest Doctors moved onely with one abuse ushered by Confession abolish it Can the abuse of a Sacrament amongst reasonable creatures and sensible of their owne condition deface the use of it And therefore doubtlesse they held it by the title of a good and pious custome not in the name of a Sacrament Turne another way God who commandeth every servant of his to keepe the dores of his senses and by all honest violence to prevent the entrance of sinne upon the soule will he give a Sacrament wherein the soule shal under the pretty color of sanctity stand open to all kindes of uncleannesse And he that commandeth me to shut my eares against lewd discourses will he now out-goe himselfe and command me to heare them They reply the relations are now in mourning and delivered in a dolorous and humble manner But the disease being catching we cannot be too cautious and it is not likely that God would linke a holy Sacrament with a knowne temptation It is a knowne truth that these confessions and especially of women when they relate the Acts and circumstances of their fleshly sinnes doe make strange motions not onely in the minds but also in the bodies of their Priests which their Authors confesse even out of Confession Confession as they use it is an optick instrument through which they looke neerely upon the soule that according to that sight they may governe And therefore it is one of the private rules amongst the Jesuits that in all their consultations which are many the Bell having rung them together the Ghostly Father especially shall be present and his counsell most observed And although the Generals of their Orders checked by the Popes have given publike commands to the contrary yet they are all but a face and a flourish Confession thought a Sacrament is to many the bane of perfection For leaning heavie upon the pretended strength and efficacie of the absolution they bate much of the sorrow which is the principall part of true repentance The Protestants keepe one day in the weeke holy in obedience to the Commandement given with a Memento Remember the Sabbath day to keepe it holy and other speciall dayes according to an appointment Euod 20. 8. squared by the rule of the ancient Church The Papists have many Holy-dayes and yet doe not seriously observe the Sabbath insomuch that the Jesuits boast their Founder to have complained much of Sabbath-breaking A Councell held under Guntranus Concil sub Guntrano complaines too
Shepheard to feede and preserve not a Wolfe to teare and devoure Give me leave Did the world know how poore my beginnings were I am not ashamed of them in what small helpes I have rejoyced when the Papists vaunted they doubted not to live and see me begge mournfully at their dores for a morsell of bread that my fortunes were carried on the top of the flowing and ebbing waters two yeares from banke to banke before I was fixed and then but weakly setled in a dark nooke Did men know how I have beene used abused forced threatned reviled discomforted they would not be angry that I desired to subsist and to preach the good Gospell of Christ But I will not preach this doctrine till I am call'd CHAP. V. ANd now I thanke the Papists for my unconquerable resolution growing from the grossenesse of their scandals Josephs Brethren were very malicious against him they sold him to slavery the Scene beganne to bee tragicall God came to act his part turned the wheele and made all this malice and misery end in the great benefit not onely of the malicious and undeserving Brethren but of Joseph himselfe his old Father and the whole Kingdome of Egypt Judas sold his Master his Master and the Master of all things for thirty pence the money would goe but a little way he had an ill bargaine When his part was done God entred upon the Stage and by the execrable perfidiousnesse of the Traitour Judas brought about the redemption of mankinde the salvation of the whole world and in effect all the shining that is and ever shall be made by glorious soules and bodies in Heaven I doe not except the soule and body of our Mediatour and Advocate Christ Jesus who though he did not redeeme himselfe because he was not in captivity yet came to be betraied and to redeeme his Betrayer if he would have bin redeemed By this law a prudent Mr. of a family turnes the rough nature of an angry Dog to the benefit and peace of himselfe and his family and a wise Physitian the eager thirst of a bloud-thirsty horseleach to the health of a sick person although indeed these unreasonable creatures of themselves aime at nothing but to satiate their owne wilde natures Saint Austin speaking of evill men saith Ne igitur putes gratis malos esse in hoc mundo nihil boni ex illis metere Deum quia omnis malus aut ideo vivit ut corrigatur aut ideo vivit ut per illum bonus exerceatur Doe not therefore thinke that evill men are suffered to be evill in this world for no good purpose and that God reapes no benefit by them For every evill man either therefore lives that in time he may decline from evill and incline to good or therefore lives that the good man may be exercised and farthered in the practise of goodnesse by him otherwise he should no live There is a course of things within the generall course of this world pertaining to the order to which God brings all straggling chances in the last act of the play which if we did examine as they come and beget experience we should enlighten and enrich the understanding with heavenly matters exceedingly We behold how admirably at this day moved by the sinfull occasion of Heresie and Superstition the Church doth watch and pray and we know that a multitude of soules now crowned in Heaven hath learned to avoid sinne by observing others punished for sinne which could not in justice have beene punished if it had not beene committed and how murderers doe open the gate of Heaven for Martyrs and that the bloud of Martyrs hath beene the seed of the Church for if they had not died bodily many had not lived spiritually And to goe as high as may be Good comes to God by the worst of evils the good of glory by sinne For to speake with Cassiodore Materia est gloriae principalis delinquentis reatus quia nisi culparum Cassio Var. 3. 46. occasiones emergerent locum pietas non haberet The guilt of a Delinquent person is a principall matter that nourisheth glory For if there were no sinne there would be no place for the exercise of mercie which supposeth misery which misery supposeth sinne And though I gather good from the evill of the Church of Rome yet the evill of the Church is to me a sound argument against the Church That rule of Christ Yee shall know them by their fruits Mat 7. 16. is as true a marke as a signe from Heaven For as the Church of Rome was first known by her workes so now likewise shee is knowne by her workes and the workes of her age not being of the same birth and education with the workes of her youth shew her to bee different from her selfe when workes doe alwayes answer in some proportion to Faith and the Tree cannot be good if the fruit be generally evill And as Saint Justine writeth to the Grecians S. Justin Cohort ad Graec. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the solid fruit of pious workes gives testimony to the true Religion I came from the last Popish Colledge of which I was a member as I did from all others fairely and respectfully on both sides Their testimony of me is yet in my hands made strong and authenticall with their owne Seale I will give it here word for word Thomas Fitzherbertus societatis Jesu Collegii Anglorum de urbe Rector OMnibus in quorum manus praesentes venerint salutem in Domino sempiternam Fidem facimus atque his literis attestamur latorem praesentium Reverendum Patrem Franciscum Dakerum for this was the last name by which I was knowne amongst them Anglum Sacerdotem esse nec ullo impedimento Canonico prohiberi quo minus sacrosanctum Missae Sacrificium ubique celebrare possit Cum vero etiam in hoc nostro Collegio sedis Apostolicae Alumnus fuerit modo absolutis studiis in Angliam ad luerandas Deo animas proficiscatur nos quo illum affectu nobiscum morantem complexi sumus eodem discedentem paterne prosequimur omnibus ad quos in itinere devenerit quantum valemus in Domino commendamus In quorum fidem caet Romae ex Collegio Anglorum die 9. Septemb. 1635. Thomas Fitzherbertus manu propria Those with whose understandings this will suite are able to understand it without a translation The Faculties annexed by the Pope to the exercise of my Priestly function were these I have them under their owne hands Ordinariae Facultates Alumnorum Collegii Anglicani 1. FAcultas absolvendi ab omnibus casibus Censuris in Bulla Caenae Domini reservatis in Regnis Angliae Scotiae Hiberniae 2. Vt possint illis quos reconciliaverint dare Apostolicam benedictionem cum plenaria Indulgentia prima vice Catholicis vero congregatis ad Concionem vel ad sacrum in Festis solennioribus Apostolicam benedictionem sine plenaria Indulgentia
give up the Ghost when he dies but may live and be in good and perfect health he being dead and which it selfe being dead may be rais'd againe without a miracle For when he is dead and all other worldly titles are buried with him still in his soule and his ashes he reserves a title to his good-name Where I am deficient by reason of disability in making the satisfaction compleate and absolute in all numbers I will satisfie to the utmost limits of my power and what is wanting make up full and running over with my prayers If I am altogether unable my spirituall satisfaction shall be the more ample If for an injury in matter of goods no temporall satisfaction be required my satisfaction shall have two feete or two wings and I will satisfie both for the wrong and the curtesie with love prayers and Christian observance Indeed I will be singularly carefull to restore my selfe to God in watching fasting prayer and all that is mine or placed under my care and any way subordinate to mee every thing in its proper way And to make even with my neighbours wheresoever the least shadow or semblance of obligation shall appeare It is the good counsell of Saint Gregory Quales vires habuisti ad mundum tales habeas ad artificem mundi With the strength and courage with which you did pursue the world when you were of the world looking now above the world you must apply your selfe to the Creatour of the world in whom you may see the world without the vanity of the world And Lord give strength and age to the good thou hast begot in me CHAP. X. ANd I am most heartily sorry that I I vile wretch the child of a weake Woman a base clod of earth that having got to live and be a little warme hath learn'd to to goe and speake and to put on cloaths and as soone as it could sinne to sinne have so greatly so grieviously offended a God infinitely more faire then the Sunne in all his glory infinitely more pure then the pure Angels that having stood fast when their companions fell not for want of strength to stand but with a desire to fall because with a will to quit their standing and rise above the firme place where they stood were presently confirmed in all their admirable endowments of Nature and Grace and also beautified with a new and that a compleate and everlasting purity infinitely more good then he that is most good under him I have more to say infinitely more faire pure and good then God with all his art and ability can make a creature By whom the Sunne was taught to runne and commanded not to rest with a promise that hee should never be weary whose powerfull voice the dull and senselesse yet obedient stones borrow eares to heare By whose indulgence the little worme without seete creepe joyfully and the small flies are carried strangely above ground and make very pretty sport in the Sun-shine The first and originall cause of all the Good that ever was is shall be or can be and after all this and infinitely more then I or all the Angels of Heaven can utter my last end O good Prophet and great King lend me thy words and thy heart I have sinned against the Lord. 2 Sam. 12. 13. CHAP. XI DIonysius Areopagita Saint Pauls Scholler and his onely convert at Athens to whom he imparted the knowledge of the third Heaven describes the God of Heaven as well as he can 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Dionys Areop de divin nom c. 1 he is a supersubstantiall substance an understanding not to be understood a word never to be spokē Against what a sublime and high thing have I offended in a most high manner Against a substance above substance I have opposed a substance of no substance Against an understanding that for its excellencie cannot be understood I have opposed an understanding that for its weaknesse cannot understand And against a word that can never be spoken I have spok words which having spoke I can never speake how bad they were and which I most heartily wish had never beene spoken John Damascen sayes Johan Damasc lib. 3. de fide orthodox c. 24 In deo quid est dicere impossibible est In God to say what he is is a thing impossible I have done I cannot say what against I cannot say whom Onely this I can say Father I have sinned against Heaven and Luke 15. 5. 18. 19. before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy sonne make me as one of thy hired servants Because we have Fathers in the world from whom we come and we come from God I can looke up to him and say Father And because by sinne I have forfeited all the joyes of Heaven I can say I have sinned against Heaven and because I cannot sinne or be where God is not I can say and before thee And because I that did once love God with the love of a sonne for himselfe flew wretchedly out of his house both from his children and his servants and now hoping to come into favour againe must stand aloofe off with beginners that first enter into his service and have all their minde upon their wages I can say And am no more worthy to be called thy sonne make mee as one of thy hired servants If God should appeare to me in the meanest robe of his beauty But I speake vainely for his fairenesse is one of the Attributes which equally bestowes it selfe upon all the other all being equally good equally faire But if he should appeare to me in a robe agreeable with our eyes he would be so faire that aided with a gentle gale of his Grace I could not possibly hold from running immediately with all swiftnesse and with all humblenesse into his most delightfull imbraces For it is most true of God which Tully speakes out of Plato concerning Philosophy if it could be seene mirabiles amores excitaret sui The sight of him would stirre up in the beholders a most wonderfull love of him not onely in respect of his beauty but also in regard of the secret conveniencie and agreement betwixt the soule and its last end O Lord what have I done CHAP. XII I and what am I a little creature compos'd of a weak sickly body and a soule and there is all I. A body not taken out of the substance of Heaven lest I should seeme more heavenly then I am nor out of any shining starre lest I should take a starre for my heavenly Father nor from bright fire lest I should be too fiery nor yet from the goodly mines of gold lest my minde should be altogether upon gold nor compacted of precious jewels lest I should thinke my selfe a precious jewell but of earth a dirty filthy foule thing that we and all the beasts of the field go upon and which I wipe carefully every day from my shooes O man of earth
bee not so rough wipe it off gently remember thy Creation and part of it perhaps was once part of as tall a body as thine owne And for my soule it was made of nothing and if God should step aside and forsake it one posting minute of time it would presently give backe and fall to nothing and nothing can be so vile as nothing Conservatio say the Philosophers est continuata generatio Conservation is a continued generation and therefore where the continuance of generation is interrupted conservation ceaseth The fire in the furnace did not burne the three children because God as he is the worker of miracles ascending as it were above himselfe as he is the Author of Nature denyed the continuance of generation to the power of burning in the fire and so the conservation of it ceasing it perished for a time but the three children being removed God quickly remembred that he was the Authour of Nature and the fire burnt againe And here was another miracle For God having suspended his concourse and held it from that part of the fire where the children walked doubled it above Nature upon that part of the fire which destroyed the Persecutors which now was elevated above the ordinary condition of fire And thus it is evident that my soule now something once nothing hath offended the best thing in the worst manner upon which it and all things hang both in being and operations and by which onely it is the hopefull thing it is as if some good and mercifull man should hold me up from being swallowed into a gulfe or a deepe Well and in the meane time I should enrage him with foule words and stab at him It is part of the first massage which God sent by Moses to the children of Israel I AM hath sent me unto you He Exod 3. 14. cals himselfe I AM because he onely is ens per se subsistens a thing subsistent by himselfe he is the fountaine of all kindes of being he onely stands without a prop. And I AM is Gods most ancient name because Being is the first thing conceiveable in him And I AM had best authority to send because his power cannot be derivative or ministeriall I AM could not be deputed as a Delegate to the office of sending The quality of the injury is alwaies proportion'd to the quality of the person injured and alwayes measured by it with reference to the condition of him who offers the injury It was said long agoe by Aristotle injuria crescit ex indignitate personae Arist lib. 5. Ethic. c. 5. illam inferentis the injury is more great when it is offered by an inferiour person And I a person of no account have injured most highly three most high persons what high persons the three greatest highest persons in one God whereof all are so great that all being most great one is not greater then the other Lord helpe me CHAP. XIII BUt how have I injured God by sin the onely meanes by which he can be injured Now to aske what a kind of thing sinne is is to pose all kindes of learning Logick from which we require the nature of a thing by a definition confesses that she is altogether ignorant how to define it Divinity stands amaz'd and is troubled at the sight of she knowes not what breaking within her holy bounds it is so blacke so deformed such a monster as being halfe something and halfe nothing and wanting due parts not to it selfe but to a good thing and being imperfect beneath all comparison It is no easie taske exactly to tell what is darknesse blindnesse lamenesse sicknesse death But to tell what sinne is is so hard how hard so hard that it cannot be done For as the worthinesse of God cannot be sufficiently expressed for its singular prerogative of excellence so neither sinne by reason of its particular unworthinesse It hath a title or a short description rather and that is malum infinitum It is an infinite evill because extreamly opposite to an infinite good 'T is a thing not a thing which God who is omnipotent and made all things we ever saw and a great deale more and who is able to make more perfect creatures then we have yet seene yea then the Angels cannot with all his heavenly power be the cause of For although impotencie which includeth weaknesse may not touch him that is omnipotent yet some things God cannot doe either because he followes the ordinary law to which he hath obliged himselfe from all eternity or because he is tyed by a Decree or by a promise or because himselfe hath necessarily bound himselfe to himselfe to doe nothing contrary to the perfection of his Attributes and the commission of evill would be most contrary to the perfection of his goodnesse Nam quid saith Saint Ambrose impossibile est Deo non S. Ambro. annot in c. 23. Num. quod virtuti arduum sed quod naturae ejus contrarium Impossibile istud non infirmitatis est sed virtutis majestatis What is impossible to God not that which is simply hard with relation to his power but that which is contrary to his nature This impossibility is not an argument of his weaknesse but of his most perfect power and most high Majesty Mali nulla natura est saith Saint Austin disputing against the Manichees The evill of sinne hath no S. Aug. lib. 11. de civit Dei cap. 9. nature for had it had a nature God had made it Sinne is a mischiefe so malitiously grievous and so grievously malitious that no man not the greatest Doctor that ever flourished in the Church of Christ that no Angell no not the greatest Seraphin of them all notwithstanding all their deepe and searching knowledge sufficiently ever knew the malice and grievousnesse of one sinne And yet I desperately commit many sins and many sorts of sinnes every day O good Lord what doe I when I sinne God onely knowes how venemous a thing sinne is And the reason is as plain as the doctrine is strange God onely knowes knowes perfectly his owne infinite goodnesse and therefore God onely perfectly knowes all extreme opposition to his owne infinite goodnesse For how can we or any power under God made or possible to be made exactly know the nature of a contrary as contrary or that we call the nature of it when wee cannot fully graspe the perfection of that to which the contrary is contrary But sinne is only and wholly contrary to God and in the first place to his infinite goodnesse and that which is contrary to all an infinite must be infinitely contrary to it Hence it is not deduced but runs of it selfe that all Gods Attributes of which every one is all his Essence his Goodnesse Wisedome Providence Mercie Justice Power Purity Infinity Immensity Eternity and all are exceedingly struck at in every sinne Struck at struck beaten buffeted so that no little part as I may say of the
death the grave Ecclesiasticus 28. 21. were better then it The words will beare another sense utilis potius infernus quam illa Hell were more profitable then it And this is proved as easily as written or spokē For the evils of punishment bereave us only of limited and finite goods as sicknesse depriveth us of health death of life But sinne depriveth us of God the onely Good that is infinite And the privation is alwayes by so much the more grievous by how much the good is more good of which we are deprived The evils of punishment come from God flow naturally from him as from their true source cause Go aske the Prophet Amos he will say as much Amos 3. 6. Shall there be evill in a City and the Lord hath not done it God hath nothing to doe with sinne but foure wayes in all which he stands off and comes not neere it In the hindrance in the sufferance in turning it to good ends and in appointing the punishment And all the evils of punishment which God ever heaped upon man on earth and in Hell or is able to heape are not fit punishment my drift is not equall to the mischiefe of one sinne though the Papists thinke otherwise of their veniall sinnes God alwayes punishing under the desert of sinne as he alwayes rewards above vertue as being more prone to the acts of mercie then of justice And neither all Gods Creatures nor God himselfe be it spoken with due reverence and respect to his omnipotencie can shower downe so great evils upon man as he daily pulleth upon himselfe For they can onely sting his body with the evils of punishment he staineth his owne soule with the evill of sin And therefore Saint Chrysostomes Paradox out of which he hath dreined a most learned Homily is not a Paradox Nemo laeditur nisi a seipso No man is hurt but by himselfe For it is plaine that matters of punishment may be turned to vertue which doth not hurt but alwayes from sinne comes dammage and hurt because more is lost then gain'd though all the world bee gain'd it being sure that by sinne God is lost and cannot be gain'd Sinne to speak gently is the sleepe of the soule For as he that sleepeth feares oftentimes what is not to be feared As to be drowned in deepe waters to fall from the top of a high rock into the Sea to be devoured by a Beare or a Lion or some such vaine thing of which he dreames but the Thiefe who comes now in earnest to cut his throat he feares not So the sinner feares some few shadowes of danger but not the sinne that kils him O foolish Horse that starts at the shadow of a tree and when the Drums and Trumpets sound runs gladly among the Pikes thrusting himselfe upon true danger And as he that sleepeth beleeves oftentimes that he is in full possession of that which hee hath not He dreames of gold and of a Palace and in the act the cobwebs of his poore Cottage drop upon his face and wake him The sinner being in danger dreames of safety and wakes environed with danger And lastly as he that sleepeth performes oftentimes the worke of a waking man but imperfectly He speakes but brokenly and with little sense He rises and walkes but seldome without a fall So the habits of vertues being destroyed in a sinner have left a warmth and facility behinde them which seeme vertuous when they are not and therefore delude exceedingly both the person and all the witnesses of his carriage And such a person is more dangerously sicke then the Hypocrite who knoweth his errour or may be soone convinced of it by the light of nature Phoenix in Homer under whose government Achilles was brought up to that great height and perfection of knowledge was directed by the rules of naturall prudence to be two Masters to him For the Poet describes him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a director not onely of his words but of his deeds also But he that is warmed with such a heate when the fire is gone beleeves that he is hot rejoyceth in it and little thinkes what kinde of warmth it is wherewith he is heated From these promises I gather what I had lost I had lost the princely robe of justice the rich garment of needle-worke wherewith the Kings daughter was adorned after the losse of which my soule was not the Kings daughter I had lost the name dignity and credit of Gods good childe the speciall providence and protection with which he shrouds as a Hen her Chickens covers and spreads himselfe over the just O t is warme being under his wings and all the more speciall helpes which imparting to them he denies to sinners I had lost I had lost faith and except hope all infused vertues which are the strength veines and sinewes of the soule by which she is enabled to doe well and orderly in order to salvation and which are as it were the faire pearles with which she is beautified I had lost O I had lost the most unvaluable benefit of Christs merits Christ could not say then to his Father of me Father give him me I have bought him I had lost God and therefore was robbed of all good He that is every where was gone from me He was out of my reach out of my call and hee would not heare me but called by earnest repentance a hard taske and not possibly to bee compassed without his powerfull assistance that was farre from me And which is the top of admiration I had lost my selfe and could by no meanes learne whither I was gone Had I gone out into the streets and asked all passengers if any good man or woman could tell where I was Had I said neighbour pray have you found me I am lost Whatsoever my neighbours had said all sound Christians would have answered that I was lost and so lost that I could never be found but by an infinite power and that for their parts they knew not where I was Indeed I neither know nor shall ever know fully what I had lost Go now all Merchants and Tradesmen henceforth hold your peace speak no more of your losses by Sea or Land I had lost more thou Land and Sea themselves And having lost all good I staid not there but also was over-whelmed with all evill It is a great evill of disgrace to be the childe of a wicked man or willing to serve him Sin had made me the childe of the Devill and more subject then a childe a slave to him and sinne And therefore Christ said to sinners Yee are of your Father the Devill He said likewise Verily verily I say unto you whosoever committeth sinne is the servant of sinne Sin then being all over evill and all the evill that is and I having committed sinne and so being the willing servant of sinne what a strange kinde of evill was I that served so great an evill when
to hurt him Or did he ever fight and at last went not away conquerour As God hath furnished you with gifts of nature which you by his helpe have bettered with labour so he requires the imployment of them in his owne service And if the imployment or use be not reasonably paid a severe account must be rendered Can you without a pressure of conscience call that a Church in which you are a thing so torne and distracted Can your soule which hath hungred after heavenly things feede now with the swine upon such huskes God for his Christs sake open your eyes that you may see and know him and his Church and also your selfe Which he prayes day and night that loves you night and day The Answer Sir VVHereas you stile your selfe my old Acquaintance without any farther illustration I have greater reason to feare and to flie then to hope and pursue because amongst my old Acquaintance more have beene evill then good And by the sequell it appeares that you stand in the ranke of the evill ones And that you are my old Acquaintance in the same construction as the World is old of which one sayes Mundus qui ob antiquitatem sapere deberet c. The World which because it is so old ought to be wise growes every day more unwise as it is more old A hand I have received and a good one but that as good a heart came with it will not sinke into my heart The hand is faire but how shall I know the heart is not foule Indeed Aristotle sayes that speech is the picture or image of the minde But hee meanes when the speech is the mindes true Interpreter You cannot be ignorant that it is a received though a close principle amongst the Jesuits We may be free of faire words because they goe not from us as drops of bloud or money with losse or expence O the riches of experience Both the Indies are poore compared with them That you dare not trust me with your name or person gives evidence for me that I am more true to my Superiours then to you And good reason Because I conceive there mediates no reall tie betwixt you and me but the worne and old tie of old Acquaintance And I never learned that God obliging a man to his old Acquaintance joyned them with the bonds of extraordinary love in the least degree or bound them to a performance of the acts depending upon it But I am glewed to my Superiours by the firme tyes of extraordinary love and subjection and therefore of duty and obedience I am in reference to them as an inferiour part in respect of the head and shoulders And therefore if my old Acquaintance shall strike at the head or annoy the body of which I am a foote I shall kick him down if I can even to the ground and say there lies my old Acquaintance The man whom you propose to me under the title of an innocent man and a lover of me and of my soule would have beene more truely described if you had said A wilde Priest a swaggarer a lover and haunter of the Taverne even when the sword of death hung by a small haire over his head It was my chance to meete him in the Kings high-way attired like a Knight or Lord travelling alone in a faire Coach drawne with foure great Horses towards the house of a Lady whose Priests have beene the pernicious cause of many grievous disorders in the Countrey where I live and this in a most dangerous and suspected time And having there endeavoured to pervert me and breake the bonds and ligaments of my duty to God and of my Allegiance to the King besides the concealement of such a treason in regard of the Law how should I have answered such a concealement in foro interno in the inward court of my heart and at the Bench of my conscience Occisio Animarum the murder of soules is the highest breach of the Commandement Thou shalt doe no murder Was not this a murderous attempt in the Kings high-way And pray does he that attempts to murder the soule of a man love the man If he lov'd me hee lov'd all me or he lov'd not me I confesse we argue differently because our arguments proceed upon different grounds and suppositions If my grounds stand fast my discourse will prove irrefragable You call me poore man And I am so or I am sure was so when you knew me And you pitie me and your pitie is baptized the childe of your love Saint Gregory Nazianzen hath a pretty phrase when he sayes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Many speake golden words but their speech though it points at the practique and the object be some practicable thing is both in the act and in effect all speculative that is both the intention and execution end and vanish away in speculation It seemes then that your love is not unlike the water of Aesculapius his Well which no commixtion or approximation can urge to putrifie Let those beleeve it to be sweete that have not tasted of it The bitternesse is scarce yet out of my mouth I am going in hast and you call after me whither so fast And shall I tell you whither Shall I in good earnest I will then I am going and my businesse requires hast to see if I can finde any Priests or Jesuits lurking in the secret corners adjoyning or neighbouring to the Parliament house I know that their life though it be mixt hath so much of action in it that they must alwayes bee doing You desire me to look back At your entreaty I do so And looking back I still finde that every where there are whole swarmes of waspish and turbulent Papists For that which followes God is a Father still and so forth I learned all that lesson in my conversion to the Church of England And I hope I shall never forget it You tell me that I seemed to your people a man of a good nature and religiously enclined Here is a plaine Jesuiticall flattery with a sharpe sting in the taile of it Why now you seeme too seeme to praise when you dishonour But how will you make it seeme that I did onely seeme It is very naturall and proper that bonum reale a reall good should be also bonum apparens should appeare to be good For otherwise it would not trahere in amorem sui draw men to love it But it is an Ethicall observation that men used to foule sinnes are so conscious of them and yet so desirous to disavow them that their guiltinesse still hammering upon their sinnes their obstinacie helped with their cunning presently takes their tongues off from acknowledging them to bee in themselves and because if they be being accidents they must be in convenient subjects fastens them upon others You remember one thing and you understand another I remember likewise that being a young stripling I was active in bestowing my service upon your Church
God for a soule could not have acted many vertues without the aide of a body as the vertues of temperance and chastity For the Devils are not delighted with the sinnes contrary to these vertues but for our guilt Thirdly the perfection of the universe For as there are creatures only spirits as Angels and creatures onely bodily as beasts and trees so it was a great perfection that there should also be creatures both spirits and bodies By which it is evident that God placed man in a middle condition betwixt Angels and beasts to the end he might rise even in this life with Elias to the sublime and superiour state of Angels not descend with Nabuchodonosor to that inferiour and low rank of beasts And by the more frequent operations of the spirit in high things we become more spirituall and indeed Angelicall By the more frequent exercise of the body and the bodily powers in the acts of sensuality we become more bodily and bestiall MEDITATION 4. ANd God gave us a being so perfect in all points and lineaments that lest we should fondly spend our whole lifes in admiration of our selves and at the looking-glasse hee wrought his owne image in us that guided by it as by a finger pointing upwards wee might not rest in the work but look up presently to the workman The image consisteth in this God is one the soule is one God is one in Essence and three in persons the Father the Sonne and the holy Ghost The soule is one in Essence and three in faculties the understanding the will the memory The Father is the first person and begets the Son the understanding is the first faculty and begets the will I meane the acts of willing by the representation of something which it sheweth amiable The Holy Ghost is the third person and proceeds from the Father and the Son the memory is the third faculty and is put into action and being in a manner joyntly by the understanding and will But here is a strange businesse The Sonne the second person came downe into the world and yet stay'd in Heaven The will the second faculty and she onely goes as it were out of the soule into outward action that we may see the soule of a man in the execution of his will and yet remaines in the soule God is a spirit the soule is a spirit God is all in all the world and all in every part of the world The soule is all in all the body and all in every part of the body Phidias a famous Graver desiring to leave in Athens a perpetuall memorie of himselfe and an everlasting monument of his Art made a curious image of Minerva the matter being pretious Jvorie and in her buckler upon which in a faire diversitie hee cut the battails of the Amazons and Giants hee couched his owne picture with such a rare singularity of Art that it could not any way be defaced without an utter dissolutioÌ„ of the Bucklar This did God before Phidias was ever heard of or his fore-fathers through many generations in the soule of man the image of God though not his likenesse remaining in the soule as long as the soule remaineth even in the damned To this image God hath annexed a desire of him which in the world lifts up our hearts to God in Hell begets and maintaines the most grievous paine of losse And to shew that this desire of God is the greatest and best of all desires nothing which any other desire longs after will satisfie the gaping heart but onely the object of this great desire Ad imaginem Dei facta anima rationalis saith S Ber. Ser. de divinis S. Bernard caeteris omnibus occupari potest repleri non potest capax enim Dei quicquid minus Deo est non replebit The reasonable soule being made after the image of God may be held back and stay'd a little dallying with other things but it can never be fully pleas'd and fill'd with them for the thing that is capable of God cannot be filled with any thing that is lesse then God The heart is carved into the forme of a Triangle and a Triangle having three angles or corners cannot be filled with a round thing as the world is For put the world being sphaericall or circular into the triangle of the heart and still the three angles will be empty and wait for a thing which is most perfectly one and three And that wee might know with what fervour of charity and heat of zeale God endeavoureth that we should be like to him he became like to us For although God cannot properly be said like to us as God as a man is not said like to his picture but the picture to him yet as man he may And therefore as hee formed us with conformity to his image in the Creation so hee formed himselfe according to our image and likenesse in his Incarnation So much he seeketh to perfect likenesse betwixt us in all parts that there may be the more firme ground for love to build upon when commonly similitude allureth to love and likenesse is a speciall cause of liking It is the phrase of S. Paul who saith of Christ that he was made in the likenesse of man 2 Phil. 7. MEDITATION V. ANd woman being made not as man of earth but of man and made in Paradise was not taken out of the head that she might stand over her husband nor out of the feet that she might be kickt and trod upon nor out of any fore-part that shee might be encouraged to go before her husband nor yet out of a hinder part lest her place should be thought amongst the servants farre behind her husband but out of the side that shee might remaine in some kinde 〈◊〉 â—quality with him And from his heart side and a place very neere the heart that his love towards her might be hearty And from under his left arme that he might hold her with his left arme close to his heart and fight for her with his best arme as he would fight to defend his heart It is one of the great blessings which the Prophet pronounceth to him that feareth the Lord Thy wife shall be as a fruitfull vine by Psal 128. 3 the sides of thine house The vine branch may be gently bended any way and being cut it often bleeds to death And the wife is a vine by the sides of the house her place is not on the floore of the house nor on the roofe shee must never be on the top of the house But there is a difference the woman must be a Vine by the insides of the House But now begins a Tragedy It is not without a secret that the Devill in his first exploit borrowed the shape of a serpent of which Moyses Now the serpent was more Gen. 3. 1. subtill then any beast of the field The knowledge of the Angels is more cleare compared with the knowledge