of sundry mutations But God being from all eternity a most pure Act as he hath not any thing but himself can have no difference with himself He hath nothing Non sui aliquia optimum hibet unun optimum totâ—â— S. Bernard l 5. de consider in himself better than himself He hath no part eminent one above another For he is without parts and all that agreeth to him under this title I am what I am 5. If you are not yet satisfied enough concerning the greatness of this sovereign Being and demand something more particular the Word will tell you in S. John what he learned in the bosom of his Father God is spirit All substance in the world or Deus spiritus est Joan. 4. Beauty of spirit above the world is spirit or body but as the body is base and abject so beauty strength power abideth in the power and jurisdiction of spirit It is the spirit which doeth all which animateth which acteth which quickeneth which governeth all the instruments of nature which worketh great miracles in little bodies and hath nothing so admirable as it self The better part in us is spirit and God is nothing Totus spiritus ennoia totus ratio totus lumen Iren. l. 2. c. 16. but spirit all spirit all intelligence all reason all light said S. Irenaeus But what spirit but God the Father and Creatour of spirits who is as much exalted above the highest Intelligences as spirits are above bodies Our spirits resemble the fire of this inferiour region a gross and material fire which cannot here live unless you put it to wood cole grease or such like But the spirit of God is like the fire near to the celestial globes which Philosophers hold to be tenfold more subtile than air and not to stand in need of any nourishment in its sphere but from its self If we consider the four perfections which give us Perfections of God Magnitudinis ejus non est futis Psal 145. Excesâ—uâ— iâ—mensus Baruc. 4. Intra omnia sed non inclusus extra omnia sed non exclusus Isodor de summo bono c. 2. a full Idaea of the divine Essence to wit infinity immensity immutability eternity this great Spirit possesseth them by title of essence Strive not to comprehend him for he is infinite Infinite not in a certain manner not by comparison of one thing with another not in possibility but absolutely actually infinite as an ample and most glorious treasure of all essences and perfections Assign him no limits for he is immeasurable extended through all measures without measure not by a local extent but an indivisibility of presence He is high and immense He is in the whole universe without confinement He is out of all the universe without any exclusion from it Represent him not to your self under many forms if you desire to figure him in his Nature for he is immutable Enquire not of his age for it exceedeth Non peragitur in to bodiernus dies tamen peragitur quia in co sunt ists omnia August 1. Confess c. 6. eternity such as you may imagine it The present day passeth not with him and yet he is in it since all things are in him But if we regard the three excellencies which in your opinion more concern divine manners to wit Wisdom Goodness and Sanctity I not onely affirm he is wise but I say he is the abyss which swalloweth all wisdoms I do not onely say he is good but the Sanctimonia magnificentis in sanctifiratione ejus Psal 95. 6. source of goodness nature bounty a source never emptied but into it self which continually streameth out of it self I do not onely say he is holy but the root the object the example form of all sanctities Finally if we behold the eminencies which illustrate him in repsect of the eye he hath over exteriour things as are power jurisdiction providence justice and mercy this Spirit is so powerful that he can all but impotency so predominate that there is not any thing from heaven to hell which boweth not under his Laws so provident that he hath a care of the least butterfly in the ayr as well as of the highest Cherubin of the Empyreal Heaven so just that his ballance propendeth neither to one side nor other so merciful that he pardoneth all O great God! Great Spirit How terrible art thou to our understandings and how amiable to our wils Thou commandest by words thou ordainest by reason thou accomplishest by virtue all which is and giving birth to all things onely reservest to thy self Eternity Let it not then be strange if strucken with those rays which dazeled the eyes of Seraphins we yield to thy greatness and rather choose to enter by love into thy knowledge than by knowledge into thy love 6. Let us also in conclusion reflect on this munificent Spirit who replenisheth all the world with his bounty spreading it over all creatures with incomparable sweetness Do you not think you behold the An excellent similitude of God with the Ocean great OceaÌ„ which incessantly furnisheth the air with vapours and waters for all the earth dividing himself to so many objects yet perpetually entire in his greatness and ever regular in the measure of his eternal passages He is singular in essence but very divers in his titles and effects and making his circuit round about the world every one gives him names after his own manner Some call him Indian others Persian some Arabick some Aethiopian and some Britanick others surname him with epithets quite different every one deviseth what he list and in the mean time he ceaseth not perpetually to pass on his way and not content to encompass the whole earth as with a girdle he cleaveth the mountains of Calpe from Arbyla those famous pillers of Hercules to enter thereinto and bedew the world with his pleasing streams He runs a long way he makes a great circuit he advanceth delivious Islands in the midst of his bosom one while he swelleth upon one side presently retireth back from another He is angry he is pacified He bears and swalâ—oweth vessels He engulphs earth he killeth flames he sometimes by long wandering passages goeth under the world and purifying his waters distilled through those large sources maketh fountains and rivers to moisten mortals And that nothing may be wanting to his greatness he mounts up to heaven there to beget clouds and entertain store-houses of waters as in Cobweb lawn to give afterward the spirit of life to trees to plants and all the productions of nature Oh how admirable is he Yet is all this but a silly drop of dew in coÌ„parison of the divine Essence God who is all in all things being not able to be sufficiently known by us in the simplicity of his Essence is called by many names signified by an infinite number of figures represented in divers attributes and
nature is to give and to do good as fire to heat and the sun to illuminate saith the eloquent Synesius And to speak unto you the richest word which ever came out of the mouth of a Paynim It is Plinie who after he had well wandred through all sects of Philosphers describing the essence of God pronounceth this goodly sentence That Deus est morteli juvare mortalem hoc ad aeternam gloriam via Plin. l. 2. c. 7. Cant. 5. Manus ejus globi aurei pleni mari Where our translation saith manus ejus tornatiles aureae plenae Hyacinthi HaÌ„ds of God a golden bowl full of the sea the greatest divinitie is to see a mortal man oblige his like and that it is the shortest way to arrive at eternal glorie We also see in the Canticles the hands of the Spouse compared to golden globes which in them hold the sea enclosed These hands are of gold to denote to us the munificence of God by this symbole of charity His hands are globes made round there is nothing rugged clammy or bowed nay they are smooth neat polite to pour his blessings incessantly upon men They always emptie themselves and are always replenished for they are filled with a sea of liberality which never will be exhausted God then having bounty so natural and intrinsecal in him will needs see it shine in his servants and therein establisheth salvation and perfection Which admitted who seeth not O you rich men you have a particular obligation above all others since God hath elected you to be the Stewards of his goods the messengers of his favours and the conduits of his liberality Religious men who have given the tree and the fruit all at once have nothing more to give The indifferently rich are ordinarily full of appetites and produce no effects You have power in your hands to discharge the duties of all the world you have met with the Philosophers stone you have the books of a heavenly alchimy in your coffers you have a golden rod which can turn the durty pelf of India into celestial substance Consider what greater ties of duty can you have what more pressing necessity to be perfect than to have the instrument of perfection in your full power Perswade your selves no longer that riches are impediments of glory and salvation for this unhappiness proceedeth not but from corruption and ill custom if you take them on a false byass they are of lead to drench and drown you if on a good they are feathers to bear and lift you up to Heaven Prophane Chariot of Sesostris applied to the rich Pharios currus regum cervicibus egiâ— Luc. l. 10. storie maketh mention of one Sesostris King of Aegypt who triumphantly rode in a chariot drawn by Kings he was so swoln with the success of his prosperities It was to take the way of hell in the chariot of pride so to triumph but you may in the chariot of charity all glittering with gold and silver harnessed out with poor men each person whereof representeth the Sovereign King who raiseth all Imperial scepters take the right way of Paradise August med Si ista terrena diligitis ut subjecta diligite ut famulantia diligite ut munera amici ut beneficia Domini ut arrham sponsi and that by the means of riches Then judge whether they lead to true felicity or no. If you love these terrene things you do well love them boldly but as the objects of your glorie as the instruments of your salvation as a gift of your friend as a benefit from your Master as the earnest-penny of your spouse as the pledge of your predestination The fifth REASON Drawn from perfections of the bodie IT is a lamentable misery to behold how sin hath so perverted the nature of things that it not onely giveth ill under the apparance of good but also sometimes evil effects to that which is good Behold for as much as concerneth the perfections of the bodie not speaking here of health or strength wherewith the Great-ones are not always the best provided beauty grace or garb which seem to be more connatural to them they are so cried down by the corruption of manners that one knoweth not what apt place to give them either among things good or evil S. Augustine speaketh with indifferency Lib. 15. cap. 21 de Civitat Dei Pulchritudo corporis bonum Dei domon sed proptereâ— etiam id largitur malis nè magnum bonum videatur bonis Beauty condemned by idolaters theÌ„selves Petrarch l. 6. de remed Dialog 2. Habes hostem tuum domi delectabilem blandum habos raptorem quietis tortoremque perpetuum Habes materiam laboris uberrimam discriminum causam fomentum libidinum nec minorem quaerendi odii quà m amoris aditum Habes laqueum pedibus velum oculis alis viscum super ficie tenus fulget decor multa faedà que tâ—gens horrenda levissimae cutis obtentu sensibus blanditur illudit in these tearms Beauty of bodie is a benign gift of God but he bestows it often on the bad that the good may not deem it a great good Not onely the writings of Saints and of most austere religious have made great invectives against beauty but even those who at other times have with passion praised it condemned it as soon as they became wise Petrarch that worthy spirit after he had adored a humane beauty doth suddenly cast down the Altars thereof under his feet and dis-avowed in ripe age that which foolish youth had made him vehemently commend For what saith he not in his book of the vanitie of the world which he entituleth the Remedies of Fortune You who establish your glorie in the beauty of the bodie know you have an enemie under your roof and which is worse a flaettering and with-delight-tempting enemie You harbour a thief who stealeth your repose and time two the most pretions things of the world You lodge an executioner who always will hold you to the rack and torture You entertain a subject of toil and affliction a motive of warfare and contention an incendiarie of sensual appetite which is no less capable of hatred than love This deceitful beauty putteth a snare on your feet a veil over your eyes and bird-lime on your wings It is a superficial grace which covereth with the smooth delicacie of the skin loathsom and horrible stenches so with her poison charming the drunken senses Another (a) (a) (a) Tab. d'inconst saith it is the nurse of love the spur of sin and that virtue lodged with beauty hath always a slippery foot as being in the house of a dangerous hostess S. Chrysostom (b) (b) (b) Chrysost homil de vanit pulchr musieb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Defence of beauty as the gift of God in an Homily which he made upon the vain beauty of women hath delicate observations not being able sufficiently to admire the sottishness
enriched you enameled you with so many perfections that justly we may call you the children of admiration Be you then to mankind that which the Rainbowe is to plants leave it to the odour of a good conversation which may become natural you shall reap here below true and solid glory contentments so tasteful that a man may more easily feel them than express them and in Heaven your recompence shall be equalled to the profit which your example shall have made on earth I know not what may be produced more pressing to a generous heart to oblige him to perfection The twelfth REASON Drawn from punishment CLemens Alexandrinus observeth that the belief Clemens Alex. Stromat 5. of one God and the faith of one judgement are in the soul of man by like consequence necessary and that the Heathens in the dead obscurity of infidelity were not able to shut their eyes against this veritie There is no soul in the world so barren which by force of the light of nature conceiveth not that if there be certain rays or reflections of virtue diffused through the actions of men the same ought to be in God as in their source with a radiant lustre of supereminence Wherefore Because as Dionysius Areopagita God a great Thesis 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Dionis de divin nomini c. 2. August de Trinit l. 8. c. 3. saith in the book of divine attributes God is a great Thesis which hath but one word for expression but this draweth along with it all essences verities and perfections And for the same cause S. Augustine calleth this Sovereign Majesty Bonum omnis boni Now so it is that we behold shining in men though otherwise very imperfect certain traces or draughts of Justice and we observe they are naturally addicted to the love of this virtue were it not that passion maketh them belie their hearts and betray their own nature We must then necessarily conclude that Justice is in God as water in the fountain lines in the center and beams in the Sun Justice and Mercy are the two arms of God Justice and mercy which embrace bear and govern the whole world they are the two engins of the great Archimedes which make Heaven descend upon earth and earth mount to Heaven It is the base and treble-string of this great lute of Heaven which make all the harmonies and tuneable symphonies of this Universe Now as Mercy is infinite so is Justice The divine Essence holdeth these two perfections as the two scales of the ballance always equally poized Judge hereupon O Noblemen if the favours and mercies of God are so eminent with you what part shall Justice have amongst you David who had felt the scourges cried out as in Psal 89. Quis novit potestatem irae tuae aut prae timore tuo iram tuam dinumerare Sap. 6. Horrendè citò apparebit vobis quoniam judicium durissonum his qui praesunt fiet Exiguo enim conceditur misericordia potentes autem potenter tormenta patientur Non enim subtrabet personam cujusquam Deus nec verebitur magnitudinem cujusquam a deep extasie Oh my God who can be able to know the force of thy anger Who can be able amongst so many perplexities and affrightments to recount the effects of thy indignation True it is thy Justice doth most extraordinarily appear on the rebellious heads of sinners but especially upon the Great-ones of the earth These words of the Wise-man are terrible to any that will maturely consider them You who hold the highest place amongst men and live without fear or aw of that Majestie which hath constituted you where you are know God will visit you and appear to you with speed and horrour A most rigorous judgement shall be executed on those who command over others Mercy is for the little ones and humble but if you persevere in your wicked life as being potent you shall powerfully be tormented God is not a man to sooth you to distinguish your persons and treat with you with observance of your qualities Beware The reasons why the chastisement of great men shall be most severe are clear and evident the principal whereof I will briefly here produce First by how much the more a sin is committed Knowledge of good and evil makes the sin the more foul with exact knowledge of good and ill so much the more punishable it is because it participateth the more of the venom of malice Ignorance unto many is part of their sanctitie others with open eyes run headlong to ruin Now can it be denied but that great men ordinarily being endowed with good spirits capable judgements and most happie memories and they instructed by so many Doctours both speaking and dumb should have much more light and knowledge than the ordinary sort of men Behold why degenerating it cannot be but they must needs break a thousand bonds that held them in their dutie blunt a thousand sharp points a thousand inspirations from Heaven that feelingly touch their conscience the which cannot be done without great and determinate malice which rendreth their sin the more enormous and their heads the more punishable This is the reason Divines give touching Why bad angels were punished without mercy the punishment of the Angel apostate A strange thing that God coming from Heaven upon earth to take human flesh to distend his imperial robe upon man who lay on a dung-hill drawing him out washing him guilding him over with grace the true seed of glory in the mean time left the bad Angel without mercy for a prey of punishment which shall not end no more than God himself Wherefore is this but that the Angel offended with an Ob perfectam cognitionem solutum animi impetum peccatum Angelorum incomparabiliter gravius Vide Gregor l. 4. Moral c. 9 Marvellous Justice absolute and deliberate malice as one much more illuminated and Adam suffered himself to slide into sin rather by surprizal by infirmitie by complacence to the humours of his wife as S. Augustine observeth than purposely or contemptuously Alas me thinks this horrid punishment of the contumacious Angel should make the bloud congeal in the veins of all the Great-ones of the earth who offend their Creatour with as much malice as they have knowledge Ask O Noblemen of the Divine Justice from whence it proceedeth that these evil spirits have been so roughly handled If beauty could mollifie the rigour of a Judge they were adorned with an incomparable beauty above all creatures If the excellency of nature be esteemed they were the most lively Images of the Divinity amongst all things created If the spirit contribute thereunto they penetrated by their active vivacity even from Heaven to the deepest abyss If the glory of God were in this act considerable they were creatures who could love bless and glorifie God eternally If evil had been to be prevented this great Judge saw there would arise
sacriledge to live for our selves That we cannot have a worse Master than our own liberty and scope and such like things In the fifth place come the affections which are Article 5 flaming transportations of the will bent to pursue Affections and embrace the good it acknowledgeth as when S. Augustine having meditated upon the knowledge Aug. Solil 11. Serò te amavi pulchritudo tam antiqua tam nova Serò te amavi tu intus eras ego foris ibi te quaerebam in istâ forniosa quae fecisti ego deformis irruebam of God brake forth into these words Alas I have begun very late to love thee a beauty ever ancient a a beauty ever new Too late have I begun Thou wert within and I sought for thee without and have cast my self with such violence upon these created beauties without knowledge of the Creatour to defile and deform my self daily more and more To this it much availeth to have by heart many versicles of the most pathetical Psalms which serve as jaculatory prayers and as it were enflamed arrows to aim directly at the proposed mark For conclusion you have colloquies which are reverent Article 6 and amorous discourses with God by which Colloquies we ask of him to flie the evil or follow the good discovered in the meditation And of all that which I say discussion light affection a colloquie may be made upon every point but more particularly at the end of the prayer And note in every prayer especially in colloquies you must make acts of the praise of God in adoring him with all the Heavenly host and highly advancing his greatness and excellencies Of thanksgiving in thanking him for all benefits in general but particularly for these most eminent in the subject we meditate Of petition in asking some grace or favour Of obsecration in begging it by the force of holy things and agreeable to the Divine Majesty Of oblation in offering your soul body works words affections and intentions afterward shutting all up with the Pater Noster Behold briefly the practice of meditation If you Another manner of meditation more plain profitable yet desire one more plain more facile and greatly profitable often practice this same As the true meditation of a good man is according to the Prophet the law of God and the knowledge of ones self meditate the summary of your belief as sometimes the Creed of the Apostles sometimes the Pater noster sometimes the Commandments of God sometimes the deadly sins sometimes upon the powers of your soul and sometimes your five natural senses The manner shall be thus After you have chosen a place and time proper and a little sounded the retreat in your heart from temporal affairs First invoke the grace of God to obtain light and knowledge upon the subject you are to meditate Secondly if it be the Creed run over every Article briefly one after another considering three things what you ought to believe of this Article what you ought to hope what you ought to love How you hitherto have believed it hoped it loved it How you ought more firmly to believe it hereafter to hope for it more confidently to love it more ardently It if be the Pater Noster meditate upon every petition what you ask of God the manner how you ask it and the disposition you afford to obtain it If the Commandments of God what every Commandment meaneth how you have kept them and the course you will presently hold the better to observe them If the powers of your soul and five senses the great gift of God which is to have a good understanding a good will a happy memory to have the organs of eyes ears and all the senses well disposed for their several functions How you have hitherto employed all these endowments and how you will use them in time to come Thirdly you shall make oblation of all that you are to God and shall conclude with the Pater Noster and Ave Maria. Another manner very sweet for Another way those who are much affected to holy Scripture is mixed prayer consisting in three things The first to make prayer to obtain of God grace and direction in this action as it hath been said above The second to take the words of holy Scripture as a Psalm a text of S. John S. Paul and such like things to pronounce it affectionately pondering and ruminating the signification of each word and resting thereon with sweetness while our spirit furnisheth us with variety of considerations The third to make some resolution upon all these good considerations to practice them in such and such actions of virtue Lastly to end the meditation with some vocal prayer The fifteenth SECTION Practice of vocal prayer spiritual lection and the word of God THe practice of vocal prayer consisteth in Practice of vocal prayer three ways three things to observe whom we should pray unto what we ought to pray for and how to pray For the first we know what the Church teacheth us how next unto the Majesty of the most Blessed Trinitie incomparably raised above all creatures * * * Praemonitus praemunitus To whom to pray we pray to the Angels and Saints who are as it were the rays of this great and incomprehensible Sun from whom all glory reflecteth Above all creatures we reverence the most holy Mother of Praise of the Blessed Virgin God who hath been as a burning mirrour in the which all the beams of the Divinity are united Origen calleth her the treasure of the Trinitie Methodius the living Altar Saint Ignatius a Celestial prodigie Saint Cyril the Founderess of the Church Saint Fulgentius the Repairer of mankind Proclus of Cyzike the Paradise of the second Adam the shop of the great Union of two natures Saint Bernard the Firmament above all firmaments Andrew of Crete the image of the first Architype and the Epitome of the incomprehensible excellencies of God All that may be said redoundeth to the glory of the workman who made her and advanced her with so many preeminences yea that alone affordeth us a singular confidence in her protection The devotion towards this common Advocate of mankind is so sweet so sensible so full of consolation that a man must have no soul not to relish it Next we Angels honour those Angelical spirits who enamel Heaven with their beauty and shine as burning lamps before the Altar of this great God of hosts We have a particular obligation to our holy Angel Guardian whom God hath deputed to our conservation as a Celestial Centinel that perpetually watcheth for us We behold in Heaven with the eyes of faith an infinite number of chosen souls who read our necessities in the bosom of God written with the pen of his will and enlightened with the rays of their proper glory who apply this knowledge to their beatified understanding Behold the objects of our
would he not die for fear the part of his friend which yet lived in himself might perish All this well declared he had great dispositions to love and that to what side soever his affections tended they never would be with mediocrity It seemed now all things conspired against him to kindle a coal in his veins which the revolution of many years could not extinguish First as nothing is more dangerous to foment this passion than ill example he lived in a place as contagious for chastity as the North wind for plants Saluianus a great Writer speaking Salvian l. 7. de gubernat Tam novum est impudicum non esse Afrum quâ—m Afrum non esse Afrum of Africk which bred S. Augustine saith It was the Country of loves and that it was as strange a man should be an African without being an African as to be an African and not lascivious Secondly these dangers so frequent which seemed to require much retention found liberty enongh in the house for the tears of the blessed S. Monica were not as yet sufficient to stay the course of insolent youth since the father little cared for that he having one day beheld his son in the baths spake some free words which served rather as a spur for sensuality than a motive to continency In the third place as the eye must be open to direct occasions so he therein used so little study that having a soul as it were of sulphure so much was it disposed to take fire he hastened to throw himself into the midst of flames He haunted the company of Libertines who are the most dangerous enemies to chastity and being of a humour very gentile and pleasing gave love and reciprocally received and although he had none needs must he counterfeit When he came to Carthage about the sixteenth year of his age there was not a street where love spread not his nets He as yet knew not well what it was to love and yet desired to be beloved and grew weary of living in innocency He hated his liberty and sought a hand which captived him He went to Theaters there to behold loves represented where he servently was enamoured of the passions of imaginary lovers yea his very eyes hunted in the Church after objects of concupiscence by glances too too dissolute for which he confessed to have been very particularly chastised by the hand of God since he mingled the sanctity of the place with the enterainment of the profane actions This ulcered soul threw it-self out of its compass and took wind and fire on every side It seemed to him he must excel in vice as well as in science He made himself more vicious than he was to appear more gentile in the eyes of evil men and there remained for him nothing more as it were in this point but one shame not to have been sufficiently impudent In the end he fell into the snares he desired and was involved in admirable labyrinths where ever the end of one love was the beginning of another This life so carnal was a perpetual hinderance to the visitations of God For as Platonists say stars cannot exercise their virtue on the sphere of fire So all the light of good counsel had no force in the flames of such a passion His spirit was depraved by sensuality allured by the bait of worldly beauties and darkned with the obscurity of his blindness in such sort that the light of the spirit of God in him found no place If there be a vice in the world which tyeth the soul to flesh and makes it stupid to the feeling of God it is this foul sin and although it be not wholly incompatible with science yet never accorded in the wisdom of heaven which is more conversant in the tast of heavenly things than in knowledge The seventh SECTION Dispositions towards the conversion of Saint Augustine BEhold the principal impediments of the conversion of S. Augustine but God who insensibly wove this work and draws good even from the evil of his elect caused him to use the remedy of the scorpion that stung him For as he pursuing his ordinary curiosity plunged more and more into solid sciences he began by little and little to distast the doctrine of the Manichees finding it very strange that a man should make all kind of dreams and sottishness to pass for verities under the false seal of the holy Ghost Those of his faction who saw him waver oft lent their helping hands too weak to support him and knowing their own inability promised quickly to cause the prime man of their Sect to come from Carthage who should disengage his mind from so many doubts and afford him ample satisfaction They failed not in their promise for in few Faustus and his qualities Pretiosorum poculorum decentissimus ministrator Conf. 5. 6. days the false Bishop Faustus arrived who was as the sword and buckler of the Manichees He was a man of a fair presence had charms in his tongue and many attractives in his conversation able to ensnare the most subtile wits He instantly set himself to frame some studied discourses upon the maxims of his superstition which were heard with great applause by the whole faction For indeed he was an Eagle among Parrets These men supposing that Augustine was fully setled in all their apprehensions and approbations asked him what he thought of the Bishop Faustus and whether he were not an incomparable man He very coldly answered he was eloquent and throughly able to tickle an ear but his malady daily encreasing could not be cured by a man who perpetually speaketh and shuffles up the matter and threfore besides his goodly sermons there was need of a particular conference where he might fully discharge his mind Faustus endowed with a natural curtesie thinking he had to do with a young spirit whom he with words would amuse accepts the disputation where instead of finding a crane he encountred an eagle who handled him roughly from the beginning of the battel This man made him presently appear to be of base gold and that this tallent was no other than that he was an indifferent Grammarian had read some orations of Tully the memory whereof were very fresh in him some epistles also of Seneca with a mixture of poesy but in the books of his own Sect he had very little knowledge All that which made him esteemed in publick consisted in a grace of language which proceeding from a fair body was exposed with the more exteriour pomp Behold that which now throughout the world authorizeth an infinite number of men who are in the opinion of ignorant or the indifferently knowing as flying fires in the air When Augustine put him upon the solstices equinoctials eclypses the course and motion of stars wherewith the books of Manes are replenished this man then found himself in a new world but yet was wily for he was not as the sottish Manichees who promising evidence upon this
They had chosen for Successours Galerius and Constantius Clorus father of our Constantine Galerius had made two other Caesars Severus and Maximinus Maxentius son of Maximian violently drew upon himself the Purple by main force Lycinius furiously opposed him to gain it Constantius Dalmatius Hannibal brothers of Constantine by the fathers side beheld this goodly game and might well hope to have some part therein as being legitimate sons of Theodora whom Constantius Clorus had espoused when he rejected S. Helena Constantine saw himself the furthest off through the disgrace of his mother yet did the anointment of God make choice of him dispersing all the rest by such and so divers ways as we shall afterward behold to place him in the throne onely absolute and independent and to establish him with a long continuance of years and a large posterity had it pursued the way which he traced Consider what then was the state of the Church The state of the Church under Diocletian and view the wonders of the powerful hand of God Dioclesian had undertaken to raze from the memory of men the name of Christianity and being an imperious man who would as it were that the Heavens and elements should observe no other course but according to his will and engaged very far in this affair bare himself with such excess of cruelty that for about three hundred years that the Christians were persecuted there had nothing been like the persecution raised under his Empire Then was the time when in full assembly of publick games which ordinarily were presented at Rome the cries of an innumerable multitude were heard who to flatter the design of the Prince loudly proclaimed two and twenty times Christiani tollantur Auguste Christiani tollantur Let the Christians be taken away O Emperour let the Christians be rooted out Then was the time that dreadful Edicts of persecution were affixed on every place that the earth was covered with bloud and massacres and slaughters dispersed as it were in all the parts of the habitable world Christians were accounted as the dregs of mankind the scorn of the earth and object of all cruelties Some were shut up in caves not daring to appear in publick excluded from commerce and society of men deprived of necessities which nature would have to be common to all the world they not being permittted to draw water from wels or to buy a handful of herbs in the market unless they presented incense to Idols purposly fixed in publick places Others crept up and down in the deserts among wild beasts and sometimes roasted with heat of summer and sometimes congealed with cold of winter tearing up with their nails the grass which they mingled with their tears before they are it Others were led into Theaters Amphitheaters and Tribunals of Judges where old men of four-score and an hundred years of age were seen Ladies very honourable most tender maidens and little children brought into the flaying house there to die before they knew what it was to live All the tortures which the Busiris and Mezentiuses knew not were then invented and exercised on the bodies of Christians there was no speech but of racks combs of iron moulten lead boiling cauldrons but how to crush men under presses as in the time of vintage but of shutting bodies up in vessels armed within with counterpointed nails and rouling them in this moving prison down the descent of hils but of annointing them with oyl and honey and exposing them to wasps in the boiling ardours of the sun but of hanging women by the feet in their nakedness to serve as a spectacle for lustful eyes It is not credible such horrours could enter into the hearts of men without some particular impression of malign spirits yet Diocletian thought it was a great point of state and the true means irrecoverably to banish Chistianity Behold the cause why he spared none yea not pardoning even his neece Susanna nor his wife Serena whom he caused to feel the edge of the sword for professing Christianity It was desired the Martyrs should be numbred but this was impossible for when it appeared that one moneth reckoned up seventeen thousand and the rest carried the like proportion the Christians prepared themselves rather to die than to keep any further record of them The Emperour also caused all holy books to be exactly sought out to commit them to the flames thinking it was a singular policy to suppress our Religion but it is a thing extreamly prodigious and an invincible argument of the Divinitie of our faith that notwithstanding all these endeavours the Church was like the burning bush which derived glorie from its proper flames She increased under the sword of persecution borrowing her ornaments from ignominy her riches from losses and life from her tomb It seemed that every drop of bloud which distilled from the bodies of Martyrs was a grain of seed to make others spring which in the end wearied executioners blunted the edge of swords wore out all the instruments of torture yet was Diocletian for all this nothing mollified A man would wonder from whence he should Conditions of Diocletian conceive such hatred against Christianity but he that will consider his nature and ordinary proceedings shall find that besides the suggestions of Hell he had inclinations disposed to such cruelties He was born of very base birth nursed up in bloud addicted to the Religion of the Gentiles so far as to make himself the most superstitious Whilst he abode in France as yet a young souldier a Druid who much intermeddled with divination foretold him he should arive at the Empire when he had killed the fatal bore He being of a spirit ambitious and credulous went purposely a hunting and ordinarily chased bores to see if a Crown would spring from their bloud But that was not it which the evil spirit pretended There was at the Court a Lord named Aper as much as to say the bore father-in-law to the Emperour Numerianus a man powerful factious who after some years possessed himself of the Roman Empire by crime and treachery Diocletian adventured to kill him not so much for hatred as he said as for desire to fulfil the prophesie of the Druid and he having thrust his sword through his body being already arived to the highest degrees of warfar and well beloved of the souldiers was proclaimed Emperour This election made him greatly esteem the false Religion of Pagans and to take deep roots in his superstition which was much augmented by the Priests of Idols mortal enemies of Christians who perswaded him the Gods that had given the Empire demanded of him in requital the extirpation of Christianity and that his hand was fatal to cut and burn the heads of the Hydra which his Predecessours could never destroy This afforded him matter of vanity which he very easily apprehended and it being also softly whispered in his ears that the Christians had a plot upon his state and
sea where the tempest handled the vessels of Lycinius so ill that an hundred and thirty were lost and the rest put to flight Whilest these things were in doing Constantine very streightly besieged the Citie of Byzantium having raised plat-forms that were like huge mountains which at the least equalled in height the walls of the Citie from whence he battered it and endammaged it with much facility Lycinius seeing it was not the securest way for him gaineth Bithynia where he trieth his utmost endeavour making arrows of all wood but all succeeded so ill with him that of an Army which exceeded an hundred thousand men there scarce remained thirty thousand He who could not yet find in his heart to give over shuts himself up in the Citie of Nicomedia where Constantine furiously assaulteth him so that seeing himself upon the extream despair of his affairs he went out of the Citie and cast himself at the feet of Constantine laying aside the purple robe and Diadem and onely demanding a place of safety where he might pass the rest of his days which could not much longer continue for he was fully three-score years of age A certain Priest of Nicomedia who lived at that End of Lycinius time there and who set hand to this History saith that Constantine sent him into France to bewail his sins but the more probable opinion is that he put him to death being weary of his disturbances and having much distrust of his spirit notwithstanding that Constantia still lived and begged of her brother the life of her husband Constantine cannot be excused to have used most severe punishments even against his nearest kindred having still in his head the fire of war and ambition and not being reconciled but very late to the mildness of Christianitie Behold how so many Emperours being removed he remained sole Master of the world making afterwards divisions to his brothers the sons of Theodora as he thought good He that would attentively consider this arrival of Constantine to Monarchy and the reign of more than thirty years which God gave him shall see more clear than day that all these favours came not to him but by the virtue of true Religion whose Altars he the first of all Emperours exalted The seventh SECTION The vices and passions of Constantine before Baptism with the death of Crispus and Fausta I Will not here present unto you a Constantine in outward lineament as Eusebius hath done to cover his faults and onely expose beauties to view It is no wonder that he had vices before Baptism but it is the miracle of Christianity to change Lions into Lambs sinks into fountains and thorns into roses and tulipans The ice of winter makes the beauty of the spring darkness contributes to the lustre of light nor ever is the sun more bright than after an eclipse So grace which is the splendour of eternal light makes it self to be seen with more triumphs in arms where it hath subdued most iniquities It is certain that this warlike humour of Constantine transported him into vanities ambitions jealousies and in some sort into a bloudy disposition which was greatly fomented by the education he received in the Palace of Diocletian Behold a prodigious accident which happened in his house by a precipitation ill ordered the death of his poor son Crispus poisoned by the commandement of his father upon a wicked and sinister calumny raised upon him by his step-mother Verily my pen shaketh with humour being to touch upon this history and I know many Grecian flatterers either have passed it over in silence or been willing to disguise it in favour of Constantine but the holy Martyr Artemius freely avoweth before Julian the Apostata who reproched him with it forbearing to deny a fact which was very notorious yet desirous to sweeten it by intervening circumstances Cardinal Constant 19. Bar. Baronius is much displeased with Eusebius who hath spoken nothing of it as if it were a thing very strange that a man who wrote to the son the life of his father in form of a Panegirick should not charge his writings with crimes and furies which men then endeavoured to suppress by all means Great men have Alban animal Albertus their judgements too tender for such like histories and ordinarily resemble that creature which bears his gall in his ear They cannot hear a true Historie in any thing which toucheth them without offence they must sometimes understand their own lives in the rumours of people where the one unlimittedly takes the liberty of speaking all since the other takes licence of doing all The vices of Constantine about these times cannot be concealed But he having caused his son Crispus to be put to death and thereunto added the death of his wife Fausta who had raised the calumny against the innocent this distick was affixed to the gates of his Palace attributed afterward to Consul Ablavius Saturni aurea saecla quis requirat Sunt haec gemmea sed Neroniana It was an allusion to the humour of Constantine who much loved pearls and precious stones as also to that which passed in the matter of Crispus and Fausta the substance whereof is this Let us not seek any more for the golden Age of Saturn Behold one all of pearl but the Age of Nero. Let us speak what we think most probably to have happened in this affair We have already mentioned how Constantine in the prime of his youth was espoused in his first wedlock to Minervina upon The first marriage of Constantine which the Writers of his time have much praised him as a Prince very chaste who to avoid wandering and unlawfull pleasures willingly tyed himself to a legitimate marriage and from that time took upon him the spirit of a husband It is an easie matter to believe that this Minervina whom he married had taken the name of Minerva because of the Minervina wisdom grace and beauties resplendent in her person It seemeth these great perfections of mind and body ever draw along with them a certain fate which affordeth them no long continuance but rather the lives of roses that in the evening make a tomb of the scarlet whereof in the morning they made a cradle The poor Princess quickly died after she had brought forth to Constantine at one birth which was her first and last two twins to wit a son named Crispus and a daughter who from the name of her Grand-mother was called Helena and afterward married to Julian the Apostata This Crispus was verily the most accomplished Crispus and his qualities Prince of that Age for he at the very first sucked in piety with his milk having the most glorious S. Helena for his first Mistress in Christianity From thence being initiated in the study of good letters he had for Tutour that famous man Lactantius Firmianus one of the most eloquent and ancientest Authours of Christianity who being the instructour of Caesars notwithstanding lived in such
Sun stood still in the time of Josuah the Moon and all the Stars made the like pause Governours and Masters have this proper to themselves that in all they do they pour forth their spirits into such of their subjects who are for the most part neither good nor bad but by the relation they have to the life of those on whom their fortunes depend The second is not to suffer an evil since as said Peceare non cohibere peccantes juxta aestima Dostheus l. Italicorum Agapetus to the Emperour Justinian to commit and permit crimes when one hath full power to hinder them is as it were one and the same thing There are no flatteries so charming nor importunities so forcible which should ever make a well composed spirit to bend to the permission of a sin which he knoweth to be against the honour of God and the tranquilitie of his conscience Fabricianus a Roman Captain in ruining a Fortress of the Samnites kept their Venus which he sent to Rome for the beauty of the workmanship and it is thought the aspect of this statue was the first occasion of making his wife an adulteress and caused him afterward to serve as a victim to the loves of this unchaste woman by horrible massacre It happeneth oftentimes that Masters of families who seem very innocent in their persons retain scandals in their houses through a certain pusillanimity and dissimulation which draw upon them the chastisements of God and disasters very extraordinary The Scripture saith the High Priest Eli was the lamp of God before 1 Reg. 33. juxta 70. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he was extinguished by a wicked toleration of the excesses of his children which rent his house and buried him in publick ruins Take good heed there be not some houshold servant raised by your indulgence who rendereth your favours odious and liberalities criminal by abuse of the power which you have put into his hands Alkabicius the Astrologer observeth there are stars of their own nature benign and which would ever behold us favourably were it not the neighbour-hood of some others malign altered their sweet inclinations And there are many Masters and Mistresses to be found in the world endued with a humour exceedingly good if the near approaches which bad servants make to their persons did not destroy this temper That man Qualities of an Officer is truly stout and happy who findeth or maketh men of honour well disposed faithfully affected industrious vigilant laborious indefatigable sober in speech prompt in execution patient and able in their charges for good souldiers make glorious Captains and good Officers great States-men The third condition of the zeal of justice is that you never be pleased an ill act be done under the shadow that you were not of counsel thereunto or that it never came to your knowledge You may very well rejoyce not to have at all contributed to evil yea not to the birth of evil for this were otherwise to betray your conscience which ought to have the same capacity to abhor all vices and embrace all virtues as faith inclineth to believe all verities revealed unto it I leave you to think what conscience Sextus Pompeius of elder time had to whom as he entertained Augustus and Mark Anthonie in his ship and being in the heat of his feast a servant came to tell him if so he pleased he quickly would put these two Princes into his power thereby to make him Monarch of the world He a little while thinking on this matter said to him who brought the news Thou shouldst have done it and never told me of it This well shewed he bare some respect to fidelity but was very far from that perfection which hateth evil yea even that which is out of the compass of ones own knowledge The fourth is that you must correct disorders as much as you possibly may declaring you have a natural horrour against all sins which resist laws both divine and humane and that the love of honesty hath made you to pass it as it were into your nature I do not see where the virtue of a great States-man may shew it self with more lustre than in the exercise of justice S. Gregorie the Great saith A Greg. in Job 29. Justitiâ— firmatur â—â—lium Prov. 16. mixture of oyl and wine must be made to heal the wounds of men in such sort that minds may not be ulcered with too much severity nor grow remiss by an excess of indulgence The rod must be used to touch and the staff to support love should not soften nor rigour transport matters into despair Moses the first States-man burned inwardly with the fire of charity and was outwardly wholly enkindled with the flames of the zeal of justice As a loving father he offered his soul to God even to the wish to be blotted out of the book of life to save his people as a Judge he took the sword and bathed it in the bloud of Idolaters He was in all kinds both a couragious Embassadour and an admirable mediatour pleading before God the cause of his people with prayers and before his people the cause of God with the sword It is to do all to execute good justice God Evectâ—s in exâ—â—lsum iâ—â—e magis â—itis despice Cassiod hath set you on high for no other cause but to behold vices beneath if you exalt them they will trample you under-foot you shall perpetually drink the greatest part of the poison you mingled for others and when you shall break down the hedge the snake as the Scripture threateneth will sting you Eccles 10. 8. the first When a good conscience hath accommodated you with this condition so that you have no other intention but to advance goodness in your own person and in those who belong to you you are not a little advanced in the perfections of a great Statesman yet it is fit Conscience Science and Capacity be had for the discharge of great employments and especially by him who makes profession to govern men sometimes as untractable as Hydra's of many heads Campanus Bishop of Terni of whom we have some Campanus Interamneâ—us Episcop Works in the Bibliotheca Patrum in the book which he composed of magistracy requireth four conditions in him A wit vigorous a carriage neither dejected nor unpleasing a prudence full of maturity when there is occasion to consult upon an affair and a promptness to take time in the instant to execute that which hath once been well resolved on He saith a vigorous wit for it is very fit the soul should be full of lights and flames which is to serve others for a guide and as there is no wit so great which hath not many defects so it is very necessary it be polished by good letters which unite and incorporate in one sole man the faculties of many others and by the conference of the wise which taketh away all that which excellent natures
honour conferred protesting to be nothing the less pliant to his commands and that the period of his obedience should be the end of his life Constantius fell into such a fury upon this news that he deigned not so much as to see his Embassadour but sent him presently a letter of disclaim which he desired might be read to the Army commanding forthwith to lay down the title of Augustus unless he would leave his life Julian who already had passed the Rubicon hazardeth the business and advanced towards Italie with his troups wherewith the Emperour infinitely irritated made an Oration in the midst of his Army shewing to the souldiers the treason and wickedness of Julian in terms very pressing and saying He went to require a speedy satisfaction well knowing God condemneth the ungrateful Numen perenni suffragio damnat ingratos Death of Constantius with an everlasting judgement Hereupon every one cried out he must needs march on to fight with the traitour and rebel and verily the Emperour hastened thither by great journeys at which time he felt himself seized by a feaver so ardent that he burnt like an oven and was besides so troubled all night with dreams and horrible visions which told him his good Angel had forsaken him and that it was time to leave life and Empire which he did being chastised by God for his cruelty towards Catholicks and by his death left Julian in full possession of all He instantly pulled off the mask and caused the Temples of the gods to be opened persecuting Christians not so much by the bruitishness of Diocletian as with subtile wiles of a wise Politician But behold the invincible force of our Religion Punishment◠of Julian remarkable and how unhappiness is necessarily tied to all their designs who forsake the true God He was resolved to shut up the name of Christian within a narrow nook of the earth calling us by the name of Galileans But God limiting the enterprizes of this impious man and not confining his own name hath covered with the beams of his own glory and knowledge all the parts of the habitable world and contrariwise the name of this deplorable Prince is ignominious For although Emperours the most bloudy against our religion are named without addition never almost is Julian pronounced but that for a note of eternal infamy the Apostate is added He set out an Edict by which he deprived Christians of the knowledge of letters Yet God hath permitted millions of Writers to spring up in Christianity whilest other superstitions as Judaism Gentilism and Mahometism being now fallen into extream ignorance there is none but Christianism the mother of sciences and mistress of mankind He resolved to re-edifie the temple of Jerusalem and having given the commission thereof to Alipius bals of fire were seen to issue from the foundations as fast as they laid them which made the design as frivolous as the place was inaccessible He extreamly affected honour yet change of religion made him so contemptible that the most abject people mocked at him saying he must shave his beard to make halters and that he spent so much in sacrifices that he would unfurnish the world of sheep and oxen He sought to give himself authority yet were his laws spiders webs continually broken by his subjects In the end to imitate Alexander he would undertake a war against the Persians but after infinite many toils he was there strucken by a blow from Heaven which quickly concluded his life and shut up his mouth by the blasphemy we have heard when filling his hand with bloud which distilled from his body he threw it against heaven and said Thou O Galilean hast vanquished This miserable Prince who thought by the help of his false Gods to command the waves of the sea and to walk upon Stars being pulled from the Empire at the age of thirty and one year and the first of his reign was carried on a beer as a sad spectacle for all those who adored his fortune His death was waited on by the bone fires of Persians and joy of Christians whose chains this day were dissolved his memory was buried in execrations and horrours nor were there any yea of pens the most sacred who had not gall for him so true it proves that a man who hath defiled his sanctification and sets Jesus aside findeth hell every where as in all things he sought to oppose the Divinity VIII MAXIM Of the Perfections of JESUS which make him amiable THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT That we should love things visible not troubling our selves with invisible That all love is due to Jesus Christ by reason of his incomparable excellencies ALl the greatest evils in the world do ordinarily proceed from the ill manage of love which exceeding the limits prescribed by God causeth every where a deluge to occasion afterward disasters Sensual men perswade themselves one cannot love but by the eyes And verily they are those who according to the saying of Clemens Alexandrinus begin the skirmish in all the battels of worldly love And if 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Clem. Alex. Nutibus oculorum ibant Isaiah 3. 16. Baseness of worldly loves Astomorum Gens vestita frondium lanugine halitu tantum vivens we follow the opinion of the Prophet Isaiah we shall term them The feet of the heart since by them it goeth to objects of bodies to which it inclines But O good God how wretched are these loves of things visible since they idolatrize a little skin and resemble the people called Astomes who are clothed with leaves and live on smoke The carnal man who daily crucifieth himself upon so many crosses as he entertaineth thoughts for the creature he loveth is taken by the eye with a little exteriour skin called by the Physitians Epidermis Pull that a way from this body which gives him so many martyrdoms he would think that a monster he now adoreth for a Goddess Is not this a strange weakness of judgement and must we not confess the eyes so enflamed in their pursuits are very scanty in their fruition reserving to themselves no other object than thin colours which put upon them so many illusions to occasion so many flames I hold every judicious man will be enforced Love of invisible things most penetrating through the sole consideration of nature to affirm the most noble loves yea the greatest are employed on things invisible For behold a woman who with a most lively and fervent affection loved her husband be he taken away and carried to a tomb in the flower of his age and greatest splendour of his fortune she presently becomes passionate at it more through necessity than election It is not to speak truly the body she loveth for should that be left to her discretion it would in a short time become insupportable What is it then she esteemed most in this person The spirit which imprinted the character of its beauty and vigour upon this
France had not in former time seven thousand O insatiable avarice the Cerberus and gulf of mankind whither hast thou transported our manners and understanding No no there is not any man truly poor who is furnished for necessities without which life is into lerable to nature and that which affrighteth say you is the gnawing care of house-keeping which shorteneth your days and drencheth your life in gall and tears Weak and faithless that you are towards the Divine Against the pusillanimous Providence do you not yet behold your distrust your humane respects your impatience is the source of all the evils which engulf you Little birds that flie in the air and clouds silly butter-flies which flutter through the meadows painted with the ennamel of flowers and flowers themselves which are but hay repose with all sweet satisfaction under the royal mantle of the great Providence that covers all Birds by his help find grain fit for them Butter-flies suck out the dew and juice of flowers and flowers which live but one day unfold themselves with beauties that nothing yield to Solomon's magnificencies There is not any creature so little in the world which lifteth not up its eyes to the paternal hand of God distilling dew and Manna and is never frustrated of its hopes There is none but you O wretched creature who having a reasonable soul stamped with the image of God suffer your discretion to contribute to the excess of your miseries do you not well deserve to be poor since God is not rich enough for you Whose are the children which give you occasion of so much care Is it you O mothers who have stretched their sinews spun out their veins numbered and knit their bones in your entrails God hath made them God will direct them God will bear them on the wings of his providence God will dispose them where you imagine not But you would not have them suffer any thing why then did you produce them into the number of men if you be unwilling they should participate in the burdens of men If you and they falâ—ing from a flourishing estate Resolution of great courages in poverty should be reduced to beggery could you imagine you might be forsaken by the providence of God yea although you under-went the strokes of warfare which his beloved Son did here on earth What shame would it be for you if even those who have been in the world as great as Monarchs are come to this estate Belisarius who thunder-struck three parts of the world by the lightening of his arms who had possessed all which a great virtue might deserve all which a great fortune might give having seen himself engraven on gold silver almost equal to the Emperour Justinian his Master came to that pass through extream disfavour as to stretch out his hand for alms yea did it couragiously braving his unhappiness by an abundance of virtues And you who are much short of his quality deject your spirit in a slight humiliation befallen you Rusticiana wife of Boetius one of the most glittering beauties of Rome in publick miseries saw her self reduced to such poverty that she was clothed as a countrey woman no whit therewith dismayed yea appeared before the face of Kings in defence of her husband massacred you cannot endure to be seen at the Church in a modest habit or a plain neck-kercheff Alas your opinion and your curiosity is the greatest part of your evils Were it not better to undergo all the miseries of the world in the fidelity we offer to God than through disordinate love of proper interests to become a devil For what fitter title deserves he who doing all for himself looks on himself as a Divinity accounts other men who are under him as flies and catterpillers tyrannizeth over inferiours tormenteth equals striketh at superiours breaketh laws both divine and humane to hasten unto gain or honour and to anticipate his punishments makes to himself an hell in his own conscience If these truths perswade you not sufficiently the way of duty consider a man of interest in the following example and see by his success that there is no greater unhappiness in the world than to be fortunate contrary to the rules of a good conscience The tenth EXAMPLE upon the tenth MAXIM Of liberalitie and unhappiness of those who seek their own ends by unlawfull ways ANTIOCHUS the GOD. I Resolved to present unto you in this History Antiochus Drawn from the Prophet Daniel 11. S. Hierom upon Daniel Polyenus Appian the God who made a God of himself a man as much perplexed as unhappy in his aims to oppose him against Ptolomeus Philadelphus who was free and generous to the end these Princes as contrary in qualities as different in their successes may make you the more sensibly see the truth of this excellent Maxim When a great fortune and a prompt will meet together they produce excellent effects of liberality This Ptolomey of whom we speak had one by nature the other from love For he was naturally disposed to magnificence and the greatness of his condition seconded his purposes The revenue he received Magnificence of Ptolemey from Aegypt might then amount to fourteen thousand eight hundred talents which were the matter of his bounty but the form rested in his heart He thought nothing to be his but what he could give and was willing gold should be drawn from his treasures to relieve mens necessities as water out of the streams of his Nilus To know how to give well is a great science It belongs not to all said Socrates to mannage Socrat. apud Stobaeum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Graces well There are some who give so ill and to such as merit so little that the Graces being Virgins by condition are made prostitutes through the sottishness of their usage But this Prince was as wise in choice of persons as liberal to distribute favours He willingly did good to those who made profession It is very dangerous to disoblige pious and learned men of true piety and loved learning well knowing it was to sow seeds in a land not ungratefull It is observed in all times that Princes and men of quality who have disobliged the Religious and learned have had ill success in their affairs and given their reputation as a prey to posterity That is it which lost the miserable Antiochus surnamed the Illustrious for though his father had shewed him an example to oblige the Hebrews who then stood most eminent in religion and divine knowledges he unhappily engaged himself to torment them and by this means heaped after his life a thousand disturbances and darkened his name in an eternal History Much otherwise Ptolomey favoured the people of God with al sorts of courtesie For not satisfied to have graÌ„ted liberty to more than a hundred thousand Iews who were in his Territories even to the redeeming slaves at his own charge from Masters who possessed them he
preservation of a fool and sick man If Rom. 6. Great spirits enemies of the flesh you live according to the flesh you shall die said the Apostle to the Romans All great spirits who have a feeling of their extraction the beauty and nobility of their souls take not the necessities of life but with some shame and sorrow They regard the flesh as the prison of a spirit immortal and think to flatter it is to strangle the beâ—ter part of themselves which resteth in the understanding The Philosopher Plotinus who Plotin Porphiry upon his life was renowned as the worlds Oracle could not endure to have his picture taken saying he had trouble enough to suffer a wretched bodie without multiplying the figures thereof by the help of painting and you imagine it is a virtue of the times to adore it and afford it submissions which pass to the utmost period of servitude How much the more we profit in the libertie of God's children so much the more we proceed in disengagement from sense and enter as into the sanctuarie of souls there to consult on truths and understand reasons which vindicate us from the dregs of the world to give us passage into the societie of Angels It is a strange matter that the subtile Divine Scotus Discourse of Scotus concerning sense Scotus locis disquisit 1. indicatis thinks that to understand and know objects by sensible representations passing through the gate of our sense and striking our imagination is a punishment from original sin He finds it is a harsh subjection to make application to the bodie to derive colours odours and sounds from it which notwithstanding seemeth as innocent as the purchase of bees who suck honie out of flowers and shall we think there can be any felicitie to plunge our judgement into all the voluptuous pleasures of flesh Know we not it many times doth to the soul as the An observation of Camerarius concerning the heron heron to the faulcon He endeavoureth to flie above him and to wet his wings with his excrements to make his flight heavie and render his purpose unprofitable Alas how many times feel we the vigour of our reason enervated by the assaults of concupiscence which contracteth the like advantage from it's ordures for the enthralment of the spirit And why would we second it's violence by our weakness Instance upon the weakness and miserie in service of the body I moreover demand of you what can you hope from so punctually observing your bodie You are not a Geryon with three heads and three throats There needs but a little to fill you For though your concupiscence be infinite yet are your senses finite many times pleasure overwhelms them before they afford themselves the leisure of tasting them If you resolve so curiously to attend the search of pleasures you should desire the spirit of a horse to enjoy them with the more vigour and liberty But what sense is there to have the soul of a man and seek to be glutted with the mite of the earth as if one would feed a Phoenix with carrion on which ravens live when you have done all you can to make your self happie by diversity of worldly pleasures beasts will ever have more than you For their sensitive souls much sooner meet the height of nature and as their pleasures are free from shame so they drag not sorrow after them They are not gnawn with cares by desiring things needless they take what the elements afford them and what the industry of man manures for them know not what it is to find poisonous maladies in the most ardent pleasures sensuality may imagine But admit you were resolved to become a beast with the disciples of Epicurus yet ought you not for all that according to your own limits surpass the bruitishness of beasts And I pray tell me where is the beast which hath never so little generosity would not think it self most miserable if it were condemned to eat and drink perpetually and grow lazy in an idle life They frame themselves very willingly to the exercises nature appointed them for the service of man and a man thinks it a great Philosophy to consecrate all the parts of his bodie to sensuality no whit considering he is made for the contemplation of things Divine for the love and fruition of the first cause Avicen an excellent wit by the unhappiness of his Avicenna lib. de primâ Philosoph 9. c. 1. apud Javellum Notable saying of Avicen birth ranked in the sect of Mahomet coming to consider this false Prophet had placed the beatitude of the other life in the injoying sensual pleasures was so ashamed of it that he shrunk from his Prophet that he might not betray his reason The law saith he which Mahomet gave us considered beatitude and miserie within the limits of the bodie but there are promises and hopes of other blessings much more excellent and which cannot be conceived but by the force of a most purified understanding Which is the cause wise divines ever set their Foelicitas est conjunctio cum primâ Veritate love on the blessings of spirit without any account taken of those of sense in comparison of the felicitie we one day pretend to have in the union of our immortal spirit with the first Verity What can our worldlings answer to this Arabian Should they not blush with shame to see a man bred in the school of Epicurus gone out of it to teach us the Maxim of Christianity 4. Finally to conclude this discourse with a third Reason 3 reason although the service of the bodie were possible Tyranny of ryot and not shameful to you do you not well see it is tyrannical and that Epicurus himself wholly bent to pleasure cut off all he could from nature for this onely cause which made him think over-much care of the body was extreamly opposite to felicitie The Platonists Opinion of Platonists said our souls were of an extraction wholly celestial and sent from heaven to serve God on earth in imitation of the service Angels do to him in heaven but that many of those poor souls forgetting their original instead of going directly to the Temple of virtue stood amuzed in the house of a Magician which was the flesh that enchanted them with his charms had cast them into fetters where they were enforced to suffer a painful bondage from whence there were but two passages wisdom or death To this Synesius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Syness hym 3. made allusion in his Hymns complaining his soul from a servant of God was become a slave of matter which had bewitched it by wily practises And verily who can sufficiently express the servitude a soul suffers fast linked to flesh and which onely endeavours to dandle it hoping by this means to give true contentment to the mind First pleasures are not exposed now-adayes to all the world as the water of a
Emissenus The eternal nights of hell have been visited by the rays of God plaints and clamours ceased direful chains fell off executioners were amazed and the whole habitation condemned to eternal pains shook under the feet of this admirable Conquerour The Prophet pursueth (b) (b) (b) Parata sedes tua c. Elevaverunt flumina c. Mirabiles elationes maris The seat of glory O Saviour was prepared for thee from all eternity and thereinto thou makest a victorious triumphant entry after so great an inundation of sufferings All the waves of persecutions have roared over thy head and have buried thee in the acerbities of death How much the more this sea of passions immeasurably swelled so much the more thou appearedst resplendent in the supream eminency of thy glory and triumphs 6. (b) (b) (b) The sweetness of the repose of Jesus and all the elect in the state of the resurection Transfer your consideration from thence to the effect of our Saviours glorification which consisteth in repose and stability represented by the Angel which appeared at the resurrection sitting on a solid stone This verily is the great day which we may call the mystical Sabbaoth and the eternal repose of Jesus It is said in the mystery of the creation (c) (c) (c) Complevitque Deus die septimo opus suum quod fecerat requievit die septimo ab universo opere quod patrarat benedixit diei septimo sanctificavit illum Genes 2. 1. The relation of the resurrection to the creation that God rested on the seaventh day and casting his eye on all these great works which he drew out of nothing he thereupon took satisfaction in his spirit and impressed them all as with the seal of his approbation To speak according to our understanding it was an incomparable comfort to the heart of the Sovereign Creatour to behold in six days so goodly a world where before that time reigned an huge imaginary vacuum accompanied with a sad horrour of darkness And to consider how a Nothing in the hands of a great work-man was a mighty thing having been as the ground of the greatness beauty of the universe What contentment to see a heaven distended as a Pavilion over all creatures which already circumvolved with so much impetuousness and besides to see it enameled with so great a number of stars in the peaceable silence of the night and in the day to see it enlightened with a sun which is the visible Image of God invisible the eye of the world the heart of nature the treasury of heat light and influences that animate illustrate and quicken all the parts of this great work To see a moon to serve for a sun by night so constant in her in constancy so regular in her increasings and waynings so measured in all her course so effectual and fruitfull in the impressions she maketh on nature To see days and nights return into our hemisphere at a time prefixed to agree as brothers sisters to afford time one to another and to yield it one in winter another in summer with so much integrity that all therein goes in compass To see the order of seasons a delicious spring-tide strewed all over with flourishing beauties a summer with harvests an Autumn with its fruits and a winter which is as the depository of nature dies to live again with the first rays of renovation To see the Sea so spacious in its extents so fertile in its productions so concluded in its limits to see the floud and ebbe of the Ocean the tomb of curiosity the impetuous stream of rivers the eternal veins of fountains the height of mountains the depth of valleys the winding of hillocks the wideness of fields To see so prodigious a quantity of trees herbs flowers so curious in beauty so wholsom in their utility and so divers in their multiplicity To see so many speckled birds flying in the air which they fill with their natural musick so many fishes to swim in the chrystal of waters so strange a variety of beasts armed some with horns some with teeth some with spurs other with saws many with paws And lastly man who contracteth in himself all the draughts and works of the divine hand and epitomizeth the whole world in his perfections and beareth the most animated character of the living God Is it not true that God casting his eye on this had a certain delight therein as the Master of a family when he sees a house which he had long time designed to be raised in one night entirely perfect throughly furnished and in all kinds accommodated with whatsoever concerns necessity and beauty Here raise your thoughts above all that is mortal The joys of the heart of Iesus in the first instant of the resurrection and momentary Imagine with your self the ineffable joy of the heart of Jesus and the profound repose of his spirit when at the first instant of his resurrection he represented unto himself not creatures elements plants and a corruptible world but a world of wisdom understanding love beauty force and felicity A Church which was to take birth from his The goodly world he beheld in his Jdaea's at the day of his resurrection bloud life from his death and spirit from the most subtile spirits of his heart He then saw this Church as a great Temple divided into two parts whereof one made the Quire another the body In the Quire he beheld an infinite number of Angels who chanted a song of triumph in honour of his victories He saw in his idea the number of the elect who should accompany the magnificent legions of Intelligences He saw about him those sacred first-fruits of immortals whom he very lately had taken out of Limbo and himself he beheld in the front of so many clean and purified souls rejoycing to busie the earth in the memory of his triumphs and to make heaven happy by his sweet aspects He beheld himself as in a picture in that manner Ecce equus albus qui sedebat super cum vocabatur fidelis verax In capite ejus diademata multa vestitus erat veste aspersa sanguine c. Apoc. 19. wherein S. John presenteth him in his Apocalyps all laden with crowns clad in a white garment imbroidered with precious drops of his bloud which gave him a lustre a thousand times more honourable than that of diamonds and rubies and after him an infinite number of celestial Courtiers who waited on the triumph of his resurrection He heard acclamations which gave him the title of True and Faithful voices of trumpets of water and thunder which ceased not to resound Alleluja O what a source of joy did then over-flow the breast of God that treasury of chast delights From the Quire he cast his eyes on the body of his great Temple and saw in magnificent idea's all the state of the Church militant which is compared to
tears come from any other than the place of all delight since they issued from a brain and from eyes which were united to the divinity And how should they not water Paradise since for so many ages they have flowed over the Church for producing the fruits of justice The balm of Egypt could not grow without water of that Well which was commonly called the fountain of Jesus because the blessed Virgin had there washed the clothes of her dear Son And we have no Odour of virtue nor good conversation which is not directly barren except it be endued with the merit of our Saviours tears Aspirations O Eyes of my Saviour from whence the sun receives his clearest light fair eyes which onely deserve eternal joyes and delights Why should you this day be moistened with tears Thou dost give me O onely love of my heart the bloud of thy soul before thou shedst that of thy body There are so many things to make me weep and I feel them so little that if they tears do not weep for me I shall always be miserable Water then O my sweet Master the barrenness of my soul from that fountain of blessing which I have opened within thine eyes and heart I have opened it by my sins and let it I beseech thee bless me by thine infinite mercies The Gospel upon Saturday the fourth week in Lent S. John 8. Upon our Saviours words I am the light of the world AGain therefore Jesus spake to them saying I am the light of the vvorld he that followeth me vvalketh not in darkness but shall have the light of life The Pharisees therefore said to him Thou givest testimonie of thy self thy testimonie is not true Jesus answered and said to them although I do give testimonie of my self my testimonie is true because I know vvhence I came and vvhither I go but you know not vvhence I came or vvhither I go You judge according to the flesh I do not judge any man And if I do judge my judgement is true because I am not alone but I and he that sent me the Father And in your law it is vvritten that the testimonie of two men is true I am he that give testimonie of my self and he that sent me the Father giveth testimonie of me They said therefore to him Where is thy Father Jesus answered Neither me do you know nor my Father if you did know me perhaps you might know my Father also These vvords Jesus spake in the Treasurie teaching in the Temple and no man apprehended him because his hour vvas not yet come Moralities 1. THere is in the blessed Trinity a communicating light to which nothing is communicated another light which is communicative and communicated and a third light which is communicated but not communicating The first is the heavenly Father who gives but takes nothing The second is that of the Son who takes from his Father and gives to the holy Ghost all that can be given The third is the holy Ghost which receives equally from the Father and the Son and doth produce nothing in the Trinity But Jesus illuminating from all eternity this state for ever to be adored did vouchsafe to descend into the countrey of our darkness to scatter it by his brightness It is he that hath thrown down the Crocodiles and Bats from prophane Altars who hath broken so many idols who hath overthrown so many Temples of the adulterers and murdering gods to plant the honours of his heavenly Father He hath invested the world during so many ages with the shining of his face He doth not cease to give light nor to kindle in our hearts many inspirations which are like so many stars to conduct us to the fountain of all our happiness You are very blind if you do not see this and much more miserable if you despise it 2. It is most dangerous to do as the Jews did to speak every day to the light and yet love their own darkness Screech-owls find holes and nights to keep themselves from day which they cannot abide But he that flies from the face of God where can he find darkness enough to hide himself When he shall be within the gulf of sin his own conscience will light up a thousand torches to see his punishments It is the worst of all mischiefs to pay for the contempt of the fountain of light by suffering eternal darkness 3. Let us behold the conversation of Jesus Christ as a sea mark stickt all over with lights his life gives Testimony of his Sanctity his miracles publish his power his law declares his infinite wisdâ—m his Sanctity gives us an example to imitate his power gives the strength of Authority to make him the more readily obeyed and from his wisdom faith is given us to regulate and govern our belief Aspirations O My Lord Jesus the spirit of all beauties and the most visible of all lights what do the eyes of my soul if they be not always busied in the contemplation of thy brightness When I find thou art departed from me me thinks I am buried within my self and that my soul is nothing else but a Sepulchre of terrours phantasms and deaths But when thou returnest by thy visits and consolations I am chearfully revived and my heart leaps in thy presence as a child rejoyceth at sight of his dear nurse O Light of lights which dost illuminate man coming into this world I will contemplate thee at the sun-rising above all creatures I will follow thee with mine eyes all the day long and I will not leave thee at sun-setting for there is nothing can be in value near like thee It belongs onely to thee O Sun of my Soul to arise at all hours and to give light at Mid-night as well as at Noon-day The Gospel upon Passion Sunday S. John the 8. upon these words Who can accuse me of sin WHich of you shall argue me of sin If I say the verity why do you not believe me He that is of God heareth the words of God therefore you hear not because you are not of God The Jews therefore answered and said to him Do not we say well that thou art a Samaritan and hast a Devil Jesus answered I have no Devil but I do honour my Father and you have dishonoured me But I seek not mine own glorie There is that seeketh and judgeth Amen Amen I say to you if any man keep my word he shall not see death for ever The Jews therefore said now we have known that thou hast a Devil Abraham is dead and the Prophets and thou sayest if any man keep my word he shall not taste death for ever Why art thou greater than our Father Abraham who is dead and the Prophets are dead Whom doest thou make thy self Jesus answered if I do glorifie my self my glorie is nothing It is my Father that glorifieth me whom you say that he is your God and you have not known him but I know him
be a King but a King of hearts who requires nothing of us but our selves onely to make us happy and contented in him He triumphs before the victory because none but he could be sure of the future certainty of his happiness But he watered his triumphs with tears to weep for our joys which were to proceed out of his sadness It is related by an ancient Oratour that when Constantine made his entery into great Brittany where he was born the people received him with so great applause that they kissed the Sails and Oars of the vessel which brought him and were ready to pave the streets with their bodies for him to tread on If they did so for a mortal man what should we not do for an eternal God who comes to buy us with his precious bloud and demands enterance into our hearts onely to give us Paradise 2. He walks towards his Cross amongst the cries of favours and joy to teach us with what chearfulness we should conform our selves to abide our own sufferings imitating the Apostles who received their first reproches as Manna from heaven He would have us prepared and resolved always to suffer death patiently whether it be a death which raiseth up our spirit to forsake sensuality or a natural death Whethersoever it be we should embrace it as the day which must bring us to our lodging after a troublesom pilgrimage Doth it not appear plainly that those who are loth to forsake the world are like herbs put into an earthen pot among straw and dung and yet would be unwilling to come forth of it The furniture of our worldly lodging grown rotten the roof is ready to fall upon our heads the foundation shakes under our feet and we fear that day which if we our selves will shall be the morning of our eternal happiness It is not death but onely the opinion of it which is terrible and every man considers it according to the disposition of his own spirit 3. The Palm-branches which we carry in our hands require from us the renewing of a life purified and cleansed in the bloud of the holy Lamb. In the beginning of Lent we take upon our heads the ashes of Palm branches to teach us that we do then enter as it were into the Sepulcher of repentance But now we carry green bows to make us know that now we come out of the tomb of Ashes to enter again into the strength of doing good works in imitation of the trees which having been covered with snow and buried in the sharpness of winter do again begin to bud out in the Spring time 4. The garments spred under the feet of Jesus declare that all our temporal goods should be employed toward his glory and that we must forsake our affections to all things which perish that we may be partakers of his kingdom No man can stand firm that is delighted with moveable things He that is subject to worldly affections binds himself to a wheel which turns about continually Jesus accepted this triumph onely to despise it he reserved the honour of it in his own hands to drown it in the floud of his tears and in the sea of his precious bloud If you be rich and wealthy do not publish it vainly but let the poor feel it You must live amongst all the greatness and jollity of this world as a man whose onely business must be to go to God Aspirations O Sovereign King of hearts after whom all chaste loves do languish I am filled with joy to see thee walk amongst the cries of joy and the Palms and garments of thy admirers which served for carpets I am ravished with thy honours and the delights of thy glory and I applaud thy triumphs Alas that all the earth is not obedient to thy laws and that the tongues of all people do not make one voice to acknowledge thee sole Monarch of Heaven and earth Triumph at least in the hearts of thy faithfull servants O my magnificent Master make a triumphal Ark composed of hearts Put fire to it with thy adored hand Pour out one spark of that heat which thou camest to spread upon the earth Let every thing burn for thee and consume it self in thy love I do irrevocably bind my heart to the magnificence of thy triumph and I love better to be thy slave than to be saluted King of the whole world The Gospel upon Munday in holy week S. John 12. Saint Marie Magdolen anointed our Saviour feet with precious Ointment at which Judas repined JEsus therefore six days before the Pasche came to Bethania where Lazarus was that had been dead whom Jesus raised and they made him a supper there and Martha ministered but Lazarus was one of them that sate at the table with him Marie therefore took a pound of Ointment of right Spikenard precious and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair and the house was filled of the odour of the Ointment One therefore of his Disciples Judas Iscariot he that was to betray him said Why was not this Ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor And he said this not because he cared for the poor but because be was a thief and having the purse carried the things that were put in it Jesus therefore said Let her alone that she may keep it for the day of my burial for the poor you have always with you but me you shall not have always A great multitude of the Jews knew that he was there and they came not for Jesus onely but that they might see Lazarus whom he raised from the dead Moralities 1. LAzarus being raised from his grave converseth familiarly with Jesus and to preserve the life which he had newly received he ties himself continually to the fountain of lives to teach us that since we have begun to make a strong conversion from sin to grace we must not be out of the sight of God we must live with him and of him with him by applying our spirit our prayers our fervours our passionate sighs toward him and live of him by often receiving the blessed Sacrament Happy they saith the Angel in the Apocalyps who are invited to the wedding-supper of the Lamb. But note that he who invites us to this feast stands upright amidst the Sun to signifie that we should be as pure as the beams of light when we come unto the most holy Sacrament Lazarus did eat bread with his Lord but to speak with S. Augustine he did not then eat the bread of our Lord and yet this great favour is reserved for you when you are admitted to that heavenly banquet where God makes himself meat to give you an Antepast of his Immortality 2. God will have us acknowledge his benefits by the faithfulness of our services S. Peter's mother in law as soon as she was healed of her Feaver presently served her Physitian And observe that Martha served the Authour of life who
corruptible matter of Earth but after he became a Christian he lived upon the most pure influences of heaven S. Gregory Nazianzen saith he more breathed S. Basile then the aire it self and that all his absences were to him so many deaths S. Chrysostome in banishment was perpetually in spirit with those he most esteemed S. Jerome better loved to entertain his spirituall amities in little Bethelem then to be a Courtier in Rome where he might be chosen Pope And if we reflect on those who have lived in the light of nature Plato was nothing but love Aristotle had never spoken so excellently of friendship had he not been a good friend Seneca spent himself in this virtue being suspected by Nero for the affection he bare to Piso Alexander was so good that he carried between his arms a poor souldier frozen with cold up to his throne to warm him and to give him somewhat to eat from his royall hands Trajan brake his proper Diadem to bind up the wound of one of his servants Titus wept over the ruines of rebellious Jerusalem A man may as soon tell the starres in the heavens as make an enumeration of the brave spirits which have been sacrificed to amity Wherefore great hearts are the most loving If we seek out the causes we shall find it ordinarily proceedeth from a good temperature which hath fire and vigour and that comes from good humours and a perfect harmony of spirit little Courages are cold straightned and wholly tied to proper interests and the preservation of their own person They lock themselves up in their proprieties as certain fishes in their shell and still fear least elements should fail them But magnanimous hearts who more conform themselves to the perfections of God have sources of Bounty which seem not to be made but to stream and overflow such as come near them This likewise many times proceedeth from education for those who fall upon a breeding base wretched and extremely penurious having hands very hard to be ungrasped have likewise a heart shut up against amities still fearing lest acquaintance may oblige them to be more liberall then they would contrariwise such as have the good hap to be nobly bred hold it an honour to oblige and to purchase friends every where Add also that there is ever some gentilenesse of spirit among these loving souls who desiring to produce themselves in a sociable life and who understanding it is not given them to enlighten sands and serpents will have spectatours and subjects of its magnificence Which happens otherwise to low and sordid spirits for they voluntarily banish themselves from the conversation of men that they may not have so many eyes for witnesses of their faults So that we must conclude against the Philosophers of Indifferency that Grace Beauty strength and power of nature are on their side who naturally have love and affection §. 2. Of Love in generall LOve when it is well ordered is the soul of the universe Love the soul of the universe which penetrateth which animateth which tieth and maintaineth all things and so many millions of creatures as aspire and respire this love would be but a burden to Nature were they not quickned by the innocent flame which gives them lustre as to the burning Bush not doing them any hurt Fornacem custodiens in operibus ardoris Eccl. 43. at all I may say that of honest love which the wise man did of the Sunne That it is the superintendent of the great fornaces of the world which make all the most Love the superintendent of the great Fornace of the world Faber ferrarius sedens juxta in eodem considerans opus ferri vapor iguis uret carnes ejus in calore fornacis concertatur c. Eccl. 29 38. Pieces of work in Nature Have you ever beheld the Forge-master described by the same wise-man You see a man in his shirt all covered over with sweat greace and smoke who sporteth among the sparks of fire and seemeth to be grown familiar with the flames He burns gold and silver in the fornace then he battereth it on the Anvil with huge blows of the hammer he fashioneth it he polisheth it he beautifies it and of a rude and indigested substance makes a fair piece of plate to shine on the Cup-boards of the most noble houses So doth love in the world it taketh hearts which are as yet but of earth and morter it enkindleth them with a divine flame It beats them under the hammer of tribulations and sufferings to try them It filleth them by the assiduity of prayer It polisheth them by the exercise of virtues lastly it makes vessels of them worthy to be placed above the Empyreall heaven Thus did it with S. Paul and made him so perfect Act. 9. that the First verity saith of him that he is his vessel of election to carry his name among nations and the Kings of the Earth and that he will shew him how much he must suffer for his sake The whole nature of Pigri mortui oetestandi eritis si nihil ametis Amare sed quid ameris videte August in Psal 31. Hoc amet nec ametur ab ullo Juvenal Seven excellent things the world tendeth to true love every thing loves some of necessity other by inclination and other out of reason He who will love nothing saith S. Augustine is the most miserable and wretched man on earth nor is it without cause that in imprecations pronounced over the wicked it is said Let him not love nor be beloved by any The ancient Sages have observed in the light of Nature that there are seven excellent things to be esteemed as gifts from heaven which are clearnesse of senses vivacity of understanding grace to expresse ones thoughts ability to govern well Courage in great and difficult undertakings fruitfulnesse in the productions of the mind and the strength of love and forasmuch as concerneth the last Orpheus and Hesiodus have thought it so necessary that they make it the first thing that came out of the Chaos before the Creation of the world The Platonists revolving upon this conceit have built us three worlds which are the Angelicall nature Vide Marsilium Ficinum in convivium Platonis An exâ—ellent conceit of the Platonists the soul and the Frame of the universe All three as they say have their Chaos The Angel before the ray of God had his in the privation of lights Man in the darknesse of Ignorance and Sinne The materiall world in the confusion of all its parts But these three Chaoses were dissipated by love which was the cause that God gave to Angelicall spirits the knowledge of the most sublime verities to Man Reason and to the world Order All we see is a perpetuall circle of God to the world and of the world to God This circle beginning in God by inestimable perfections full of charms and attractives is properly called Beauty and
of the Hypocondry the disturbances of the waking the stupidities of the Lethargie the fits of the falling sickness the faintness of the Phthisick the heavings of the passion of the heart the pangs of the collick the infections of the leprosie the venome of ulcers the malignity of the plague the putrefaction of the gangrene and all which is horrible in nature After all this it is made a God to whom Elogies Hymns Songs and victimes are offered Empire over the heart is given to it a soul not created but for him who hath saved it is subjected fetters are honoured and its Tyranny adored There are many millions of men in the world Disasters of evil love who would be most fortunate and flourishing if they knew how to avoid the mischievous power of this passion but having not used any consideration or endeavour they have abandoned their bodies to dishonour their reputation to infamy their estates to pillage and their lives to an infinity of disturbances and torments Hence it is that virgins of noble bloud are stolen away that families are desolated that parents are precipitated into their Tombs by ungratefull children that so many young widows are dishonoured in the world that so many miserable creatures after they have served for talk to a City die in an Hospitall that so many little innocents are made away by a death which preventeth their birth that so many Infants are thrown into life as froth of the sea exposed to poverty and vice by that condition which brought them forth Hence is it that chaste wedlocks are disturbed that poysons are mingled that Halters are noozed that swords are sharpned that Tragedies are begun under the Coverture of night and are ended in a full day-light upon a scaffold O God how happy might a soul be which would well consider all this and take what I am about to speak as a letter sent from heaven for the remedy of infinite many evils which in this passion environ our miserable life I invite hither every age each sex all conditions I entreat my Readers to peruse these lines with the same spirit wherewith I addresse them and although it befell me to treat of this subject in my other works notwithstanding never have I yet undertaken it with so much method vigour or force as at this present I will shew you the Essence the Causes the Symptomes and the effects of love as religiously as Vereenndiā periclitari malo quà m probationē l. 1. de anima c. 17. I can possibly supposing my self not bound to follow Tertullians opinion who though very chaste spared not to speak of this subject a little grosly saying for excuse that he had rather put himself upon the hazard of losing shame then a good argument I made you see in the beginning of this treatise that love considered in generall was properly an inclination to the good of Conformity which putteth on divers faces according to the sundry objects and wayes it pursues to arrive thither If it go directly towards God and reflect on a neighbour as his Image loving the one for himself and the other for his Authour this is charity If it diffuse it self upon divers creatures sensible and insensible which it pursueth for its pleasure and commodity it is an appetite and a simple affection as that which is towards hunting birds books pictures pearls and Tulips If it be applyed to humane creatures loving them withall integrity by a reciprocall well-wishing it is Amity If it regard the body for pleasures sake it is a love of venereall concupiscence which being immoderate even Tertull. in exhortatione ad castitatem Nec per aliud fit marita nisi per quod adultera in the intention of marriage fails not to be vitious which made Tertullian say that the same thing an Adulterer would do the married likewise did If it be chaste and guided within the Limits which the Law of God prescribeth it is conjugall love If it overflow to sensuall pleasures It is Luxury S. Denis saith It is not love but an idoll and a fall from true love And Plato Plato in convivio in his Banquet addeth that sober love is contentment of heart eyes and ears but when it will content it self by the other senses namely that of touching it is not love but a spirit of insolency a passion of a servile soul a rage of a triviall lust which maketh shew to love beauty but through its exorbitancy descended to the worst of deformities I know there are learned pens which here distinguish Division of Lone all love into two parts and say there is one of consideration and another of inclination They call it love of consideration when one is therein embarked with a full knowledge and a setled judgement love of inclination when one loveth not able to give any reason But I find this division is not exact enough insomuch as it confoundeth the Genus and Speeies and doth not clearly distinguish the members of this body since all love is nothing else but an inclination and since that which is made by consideration inclineth the loving to the thing loved Whence it appeareth that to mention a love of inclination is to say love is love without any further explication I had rather say there are two loves the one of Election which resulteth from Consideration and is formed when after one hath acknowledged a thing to be fair profitable and pleasing he out of reason affects it The other of humour when without consulting with reason one is suddenly surprized by some secret attractive in the thing loved without giving himself leasure to judge what it is and this properly is to love by humour and fantasie which is now adays the most ordinary love but not the best It is a kind Love of humour of love which quickly beginneth and which never ends slowly so full it is of inconstancy It seems to it self all its bands are silken although they be rough chains it will not take pains to consider them It thinks not it cherisheth the wound nor looks it back on the hand which gave it It is heedlessely engaged and signeth transactions without reading them that it may not be ashamed to abrogate what it made or to entertain that which kills it There are many miserable ones who daily marry upon the first sight and whose amities arise but from a glance which passeth away more swiftly then a shadow and then there must be a thousand repentances to redeem the pleasure of one moment It is ever better to preferre Election for though in the beginning it had not so much sweetnesse in the search it hath lesse sorrow in the possession But to enter farther into the knowledge of Carnall love it is good to penetrate the causes and effects thereof which will the more perspicuously enlighten us in the choice of remedies We see many people in the world who being tormented by this evil euen unto folly seek
for pretexts to cover their passions some saying It is a touch from heaven and an effect of their Horoscope which cannot be diverted Others Casus in culpam transit Velleius Pater culus complain they are bewitched and that they feel the power of magick Others cast all the blame upon devils who notwithstanding think not so much of them as they may imagine for love comes easily enough from naturall causes without going about to seek for it in the bottome of the Abysse I here remember what Pliny recounteth of one Cresin who manured a piece of ground which yielded him fruit in abundance while Plin. l. 18. c. 16. his neighbours lands were extreamly poor and barren for which cause he was accused to have enchanted them Otherwise said his accuser his inheritance could not raise such a revenue while others stand in so wretched a Condition But he pleading his cause did nothing else but bring forth a lusty daughter of his well Filiam validam bene curatam fed and well bred who took pains in his garden with strong carts and stout oxen vvhich ploughed his land and the vvhole equipage of his Tillage in very good order He then cryed out aloud before the Judges Behold the art magick and charms of Cresin vvilling to shew that we must not seek for hidden and extraordinary causes where ordinary are so evident So in the like case we may say it is a thing most ridiculous Haec sunt veneficia mea Quirites to see a body composed according to nature found and very strong which hath fire in the spirits and bloud in the veins which continually feeds high lies soft and perpetually converseth among women the most handsome to complain of celestiall influences or the sorseries of Venus Totall Nature especially since Interiour causes of love the corruption of sin conspireth to make love It sets Reason to sale if it carefully take not heed and insensibly draweth it to its side There is not almost a stone whereunder some scorpion lyeth not there is not a place where concupiscence spreadeth not out some net for us It fighteth against our selves makes use of our members as of the Instruments of its battels and the Organs of its wiles There is sedition within and warre without and never any repose but by the singular grace of God Tertullian writes the chastity Tertull. de Velandis Continentia majoris ardoris laboratior of men is the more painfull the fervour of concupiscence being the more fiery in their sex and one may justly say that such as persist all their life time in great resistances and notable victories are Martyrs of purity who having passed through fire and water hasten to a place of refreshment We have all one domestick enemy which is our own body that perpetually Rebellion of the flesh S. Climach de castita te grad 15. in fine Quomodo illum vinciam quam ut amem a natura suscepimus Est cooperator hostis adjutator atque adversarias auxiliator simul infidiator c. almost opposeth the dispositions of the spirit If I go about to fetter it saith S. John Climachus it gets out of my hands If I will judge it it grows into favour with me If I intend to punish it it flatters me If I will hate it Nature commandeth me to love it If I will fly from it it saith it is tyed to my soul for the whole time of my life If I will destroy it with one hand I repair it with another Is it too much cherished it the more violently assaults me Is it too much mortified it cannot almost creep watching withers it sleep on the other side fatteneth it whips torment it and dandlings corrupt it By treating it ill I endanger my life by pampering it I incurre death This sheweth how Saints fortified themselves with much precaution diligently observing the condition of Nature the causes of temptations and the maladies of the soul thereby the more successefully to practise the cure They who are most retired said the fore-alledged Authour fail not to feel domestick warres but such as indifferently expose themselves to objects are violently both within and without assaulted The beauty and handsomnesse of one sex is a sweet Beauty imperious Nomen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Psal 49. Alii reddunt fetam alii pulchâ—it udinem ut sept naginta Interpretes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 poison to the other which entreth in by the eyes and maketh strange havock And I wonder not at all that the Scripture compares it to a Panther a savage and cruel beast which with teeth teareth those she hath amuzed with the mirrour-like spots of her skin drawn to her by the sweet exhalation of her body It is more to be feared said an Ancient then the horns of the Bull the teeth of the Lion the gall of the Aspick yea then fire or flames and the holy Abbot of mount Sinai saith that had not God given woman shamefac'tnesse which is the scabbard wherein this sword is Climach de castreate kept there would be no salvation in the world The love of women caused Sampson's David's and Salomon's shipwracks It hath besotted Sages conquered the strong deceived the prudent corrupted saints humbled the mighty It hath walked on Sceptres The love of women dangerous parched the lawrels of victours thrown trouble into states schisme into Churches corruption among judges fury into arms It hath entered into places which seemed inaccessible but to spirits and lightnings And if beauty be so much to be dreaded when it hath no other companions how dangerous think we is it when it causeth to walk along with it pomp apparell attractives dalliances cunning wires liberty of conversation merriment Good chear Courting Idlenesse Night sollitude familiarity Need we to require any other charms then those to work the ruine of a soul Yet besides these open causes there are other secret ones to be found in the love of humour and fantasie which insensibly fetter a mind and suffer it not to find its chains A modern Authour hath of late written a treatise of the love of inclination wherein he speaks very pertinently of its originall and doth according to his saying Monsiur de la Chambre seem to draw it a second time out of its Chaos To understand his opinion we must presuppose that which S. Thomas saith That totall Nature loveth to present it self in the objects proposed unto it And as they continually proceed from all things coloured images S. Thom. l. 4. contra gentes c 11. The secret attractives of love and figures as it were wholly spirituall which make themselves to be seen as in looking-glasses and are received into the eies to contribute to the effect of sight so every body hath its projections and unperceivable influences as we find in the power of Amber and the Adamant which attract Iron and straw by the expiration they
scatter in the air to serve as instruments and hands to their attractions This being common to other natures of plants metals and living creatures we must not think but that the body of man participateth therein by reason of its vivacity and the multitude of pores which give a more easie passage to such emissions There then cometh forth a spirituous substance which is according to Marsilius Ficinus a vapour of bloud pure subtil hot and clear more strong or weak according to the interiour agitation of spirits which carrieth along with it some quality of a temperate friendly and convenient which Marsilius Ficinus l. 1. de vita c. 2. insinuating it self into the heart and soul doth if it there find a disposition of conformity abide as a seed cast into the earth or as a Leaven which swelleth up a piece of dough and forms this love of correspondence with an admirable promptnesse and vigour From thence it cometh that brothers many times feel motions and affections of tendernesse one for another Surius without knowing each other as it happened to S. Justus who knew his brother Justinian among sundry slaves who were at the chain by this notice without any other fore-judgement Thence it comes that at first we are passionate for persons we never saw and that we wish them well though they alwayes have not so much grace nor beauty but there is some relation of humour which weaveth the web and tieth such affections All nature is full of such communications which are effects of Sympathy observed in the Corall which sensibly changeth according to his disposition who hath it about him as also in the flesh of beasts which boileth in the powdring-tub at the time of the fury of dogs because they have been bitten by a mad dog And in wine which seems to be sprinkled all over with certain white flowers when the vines are in blossome So it happeneth that the spirits which do in our bodies Modification of the opinion who place love onely in transpiration Species forma semel per oâ—ulos illigaâ—a vix magni luctaminis manu solviter Hieron in Threnos cap. 3. what the winds do in Nature being transpired from one body to another and carrying in their wings qualities consonant do infallibly excite and awaken the inclinations But it is not credible or at least ordinary that this manner of working should be as in things inanimate and that it hath nothing to do with the senses for it is principally the eyes which are interressed therein breathing thence the most thin spirits and darting forth the visuall rayes as the arrows of love which penetrate the heart are united confounded and lost one within another then heating the bloud they strike the Imagination and attract wills which are so linked one to another that one cannot perceive the knot which so fast tied them together If transpiration alone of spirit indifferently proceeding from all the parts of the body were able to enflame concupiscence we must then say that a blind man set at a certain distance from a perfect beauty would become enamoured with beholding it hearing it smelling it couching it or by any sense understanding it which notwithstanding happeneth not in that manner and if nature thus proceeded and that this passion were to be taken as a Contagion we might extreamly fear the approch of bodies and persist in continuall apprehensions to be infected by them It is certain that the senses being well guarded shut up all the gates against love A Guard over the senses since the Imagination it self stirreth not but upon their report but after they yield themselves up by a too familiar conversation and resign their defences a terrible havock is made in the mind for love entereth thereunto as a Conquerour into a surprized City and imprinteth that pleasing face in every drop of the masse of bloud It engraveth it on the Imagination It figureth it on every thought and there is nothing any longer entire in the mind which is not divided between slavery and frenzy § 7. The effects of Sensuall Love IT is a strange thing that this fury hath a thousand hands and a thousand attractives a thousand wayes of working quite different and many times opposite It takes by the eyes by the ears by the imagination by chance of purpose by flying pressing forward honouring insulting by complacence and by disdain Sometimes also it layes hold by tears by laughing by modesty by audacity by confidence by carelessenesse by wiles by simplicity by speech and by silence Sometimes it assaileth in company sometimes in solitude at windows at grates in Theatres and in Cabinets at Bals at sports in a feast at a Comedy sometimes at Church at prayers in acts of Penance And who can assure us against it without the protection of God Eustatius the Interpreter of Homer saith there are some who feign Love to be the sonne of the wind and the Rainbow in Heaven in my opinion to signifie unto us its Inconstancy and diversified colours and this beautifull Iris in the beginning appears all in Rubies in Diamonds and Emeralds over our heads afterward to cause rain and tempests So love shewing it self at first with such bright semblances to our senses occasioneth storms and corruption in our minds Observe one transfixed with violent love and you The miserable state of one passionately in love Insomnia aetumnae terror fuga stultitià que adeò temerâ—tas in cogitantia excors immodestia c. Plautus in Moâ—cat shall find he hath all that in his love which Divines have placed in Hell darkenesse Flames the worm of Conscience an ill Savour Banishment from the sight of God You shall see a man whose mind is bewitched brain dislocated and Reason eclipsed All he beholdeth all he meditateth on all he speaketh all he dreameth is the creature he loveth He hath her in his head and heart painted graved carved in all the most pleasing forms For her he sometimes entereth into quakings sometimes into faintings another while into fits of fire and Ice He flieth in the air and instantly is â—â—enged in the Abysse He attendeth he espieth He fears He hopes he despairs He groneth he sigheth He blusheth he waxeth pale He doteth in the best company He talks to woods and fountains He writeth He blots out He teareth He lives like a spectre estranged from the conversation of men Repast is irksome to him and Repose which charmeth all the cares of the world is not made for him Still this fair one still this cruell one tormenteth him and God maketh him a whip of the thing he most loveth Yet is this more strange in the other sex which hath naturally more inclimation to honesty A Lady chaste or a Virgin well-bred who begins to wax cold in the love of God and in the exercise of devotion and takes too much liberty in her conversation with men finds her self insensibly surprized by the eyes and ears by
to the will of God hath found the industry of an Infinite good in the accomplishment of his desires It is to live like Cain in the region of Instability and to walk upon a quagmire daily to entertain so many fresh appetites Their multiplication witnesseth enough the barrennesse of their purchase but when one well tasteth God and finds him to comprehend all relishes he forsaketh all to follow him and the Heart hath no more to do but to please him who is the source of its Contentment The second cause of desires is a promptitude and a vivacity of the Mind which bends much to levity and is not at all balasted by solidity of judgement whereby the soul is set at liberty to flie after all manner of objects as bees do after flowers I will deliver unto you an excellent doctrine which will teach us that between a ship and the heart of a man if we consider them well there is much resemblance The ship is a house A comparison of a ship and the heart of man of the sea and the heart is the habitation of the soul whilst it is in the ocean of this mortall life The ship goes on the waters and the heart upon abysses The ship hath its sails and the heart its aims The ship is guided by the rudder and the heart by prudence The ship expecteth winds and the heart the divers motions of its thoughts The ship feeleth tempests and the heart passions the ship feareth rocks and the heart obstacles The ship suffers shipwrack under water and the heart under the gulf of iniquity The ship in the haven and the heart in tranquillity Now as in the Scripture there are three sorts of ships specified so there likewise are three manner of hearts Some compared to ships which carry fruit are such as Naves poma portantes Job 9. are replenished with affections and desires with pleasures and contentments of the world which are enemies of the present and perpetually sigh after the future Others are ships of traffick which are continually Navis institoris Prov. 31. full of affairs disturbances great and little cares that steal the repose of life from them The rest are the ships of Tharsus in the Mediterranean sea which carry Naves Tharsis Psal 47. great designs great earthly ambitions and are very often tossed by most impetuous winds The third source of our Appetites is a hot and sanguine Complexion which in our heart enkindleth many desires like unto a fire made with straw violent enough in the beginning but of no lasting as on the contrary cold people have fewer desires but are more pertinacious in the pursuit of them It is said we must beware of a man who hath but one thing to do because his thoughts being perpetually bent upon one and the same object he becomes extremely troublesome to those from whom he desireth the accomplishment of his designe so must we defend our selves from a man who hath but one desire especially when it is inordinate For we may easily escape from such as have many cares Time wasteth them as fast as he produceth them it is needlesse to oppose or much to contradict them let their minds rest and you shall find the purpose they had in the morning to be quite gone by the evening like the Ephemery which lives but one day Now as for those who have amassed together all the strength of their soul upon one desire they are immeasurably urgent and cease not to persecute you untill they have put their wish in execution The fourth is a certain crooked winding of a Heart which is as it were spungy and insatiable joyned to a debility of spirit which apprehendeth want and necessity and this makes it to fasten upon any thing to help it self Tertulliun saith that all these wandring souls have Interpellat ad desiderandum finis ipse desiderandi Tertul lib. de poenitâ—n no other profession in this life but to be in wish where they cannot be personally in presence The end of one desire provoketh them to begin another Their desires resemble fruits that passe away which in their latter season retain some beauty of their first vigour There are many who esteem it a bitter businesse to expect and who had rather see their hopes cut off then to find out the way how to prolong them but such are born to desire they are not pleased with a victory already gotten you do greatly wrong them instantly to give what they ask they love even things unlawfull because they are such and so soon as they are permitted them they lose that place which they had before in their heart § 4. That the tranquillity of Divine Essence for which we are created ought to rule the un-quietnesse of our desires AGainst this passion I have two remedies to propose Reason against vain desires drawn from the Divine tranquillity in two Reasons the first whereof is drawn from the first model which is the heavenly Father and the second from the second which is the Incarnate Word since in them are the most efficacious wayes for reformation of the table of the Soul As for the first I say that our soul being made to the Image of God and for the possession and fruition of God it will never rest but in the conformity of its understanding and will with the understanding and will of its Creatour Now what think you would God desire if he were capable of desire what would he wish to see to know and to have nothing but himself and insomuch as he is eternally and inseparably with himself he is not capable of any impression of desires whatsoever We cannot be like unto God without desires whilst we are in the world but we may and ought to have but one main desire which is God himself Imagine your heavenly Father to be a great sea of Nazian in Natalâ—tia 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Essences of perfections and of contentments a sea which hath neither bottome nor shore a sea wherein all the vessels of curious souls suffer shipwrack Imagine with your self an Exemplary world a vast world of wisdome of sanctity of intelligencies of lives of reasons and of forms There God inhabiteth within himself being to himself as saith Tertullian place palace Tertul. in Praxeum cap. 5. world there he is absorpt as in a huge abysse of delights not to be imagined He from all eternity hath his felicity purely perfect and concentred in his own bosome seeing he from all eternity hath his Sonne his great and onely Conception which emptieth him without his emptinesse which issueth from him without issuing forth which abideth in him without distinction of Essence or confusion of Persons He hath all his loves within himself since he hath Nec intelligentiam admittit solitudinâ—s 〈◊〉 diversitatem divinitaâ—is Magist â—ent lib. 1. d 3. his holy Spirit a substantiall flame of love enkindled in his heart by his proper will which is
Essence and appertenances thereof HOpe is the gate of a great Pallace replenished with riches It is in my opinion the place The Image and nature of Hope which Tertullian termeth when he calls it the portresse of Nature It looketh on and considers upon one side pearls which are as yet in the shell and Naturae jaâ—tricem on the other upon Roses in the midst of thorns which it thinks it may enjoy with some labour Such is the nature of Hope according to S. Thomas It is a motion of the S. Thom. 1. 2 q. 40. art 2. appetite which followeth the knowledge one hath of a good future possible and somewhat difficult It hath two arms with which it endeavoureth to pursue and embrace objects whereof the one is called Desire and the other Belief to be able to obtain what one desireth Thus doth learned Occham define it It is not sufficient Occham quodlibeto 3. q 9. to say that a thing is beautifull pleasing and profitable to create Hope unlesse it be shewed it is possible and that one may arrive thereunto by certain wayes which are not out of his power who hopeth So Hope if it be reasonable hath ordinarily wisdome strength eloquence amity and money for it for these are the things which raise its courage At the gates of passion we see huge heaps of people of all manner of dispositons who flatter it and behold it of one side lovers who seek for a mate For Philo said it was the virtue of lovers on â—hilo lib. Quod deterius c. the other side Courtiers who run after favour on the other aspirers who canvas for offices and dignities on the other Laborours and Merchants but above all there are many young-men bold and resolute who therein have a great share because as saith Aristotle they Arist l. 2. Rhet. c. 12. have little of the past and much of the future Or as S. Gregory Nazianzen affirmeth for that nothing is Nazian de vita sua 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hard to a fervent spirit Moreover it sitteth upon a Peacock and its face is encompassed with a Rainbowe by reason it infinitely charmeth and recreateth the minds of such as follow it by very pleasing semblances and as King Mithridates saith it hath I know not what kind Mithrid in epist Graecis of sweetnesse which pleaseth even then when it deceiveth but if you observe it you shall find it holdeth an Anchor in the right hand to fix the desire of the wise as on the contrary it carryeth in the left hand an enchanted mirrour wherein it letteth fools see a thousand slight trifles all which turn into smoke Pleasure waiteth on it whilst we hope for it is that which sweetneth all the labours of life and which serves for a spur to all great and generous actions But if it falls out that things happen not as they were figured in the imagination then are all these Courtiers delivered over to a furious Monster called Despair which drags them down to the foot of a mountain and oft-times drencheth them in gulphs and precipices Behold in few words the nature definition difference composition object subject the causes and the effects of hope Let us now see how we may govern this Motion § 2. That one cannot live in the world without Hope and what course is to be held for the well ordering of it THey are of too haughty a strain who never friendly entertein Hope and think there is no life for them if Felicity be not alwayes at their gate The condition of creatures is such that all their blessings never come to them all at one It were to go about to expresse a word without letters to compose a happinesse without joyes and contentments succeeding one another How can hope be banished from earth sith Heaven which is so well content hath not renounced it The blessed souls after the vision of God do yet hope something which is the Resurrection of their bodies to which they most ardently wish to be reunited those which are represented under the Altar in the Apocalypse who ask vengeance Apoc. 6. of their blood at the tribunall of the Divine Justice are instantly clothed with white garments in token of this most bright flesh which is to be joyned to their immortall spirits Heaven which expecteth nothing for the perfection of its beauties ceaseth not to revolve each moment of the day and night to diversifie them But we must confesse that earth is the place of Hopes which are as seeds of our Felicities from whence it cometh that what the Grecians call to some we name it to hope Our soul here resembleth the Sperare 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 First Matter which is perpetually enamoured of new forms and as the understanding of Angels according to the saying of a great Philosopher is all that which it ought to be from the beginning and becometh not Carolus Bovilus de intellectu humano Angelico new at all Contrariwise Humane understanding is nothing in the beginning and becomes all in processe of time So our will is like unto white Writing-tables wherein we easily write or blot out all we will The estate of perfection must be expected to imprint it with a lasting Character So many young plants so many little living creatures so many children so many imperfections so many wishes warn us that we may live here with hope we have so little of time present that we are enforced to dilate our selves upon the future This insensibly delighteth us and stirs us as Trees which seem to take pleasure to be rocked by the winds It being resolved that we necessarily must expect and hope The good husbanding of hopes whilst we are in the world It remaineth to consider how we may well employ this passion in hoping good things and hoping them by wayes very direct and in an orderly manner First It is a shamefull thing to say there are such who hope all that which is to be feared One promiseth himself the death of a Kinsman the other the confusion of a family another to seduce some silly maid another to debauch a married wife another to satisfie his revenge another to scrape together as much as his avarice can wish and so many other things which are most unhappy Hopes the successe whereof God sometimes permitteth when he will chastise wicked men What a horrour is it to hope for crimes and to feed ones self with anothers evils as if one sought nourishment from coals and serpents If our thoughts be not alwayes so high as the glory of heaven at least let us not abase them so low as Hell If they cannot be divine let them not be inhumane let them ty themselves to blessings permitted and not to objects so unworthy One may expect wealth children health knowledge honour an office a marriage and so many other things which are commodious for humane life without desiring disasters
these Motives and the felicity of others who have gloriously surmounted them And to add a pleasing variety to this last piece I will conclude with many short and remarkable Examples suited to those four mentioned Passions THE DISASTERS OF SUCH As have yielded to the Passion OF LOVE AND The Glory of Souls which have overcome it 1. LEt us begin with that Passion which is the Source of the rest and which in all times hath caused trouble among men to give a ground to our discourse The children of great Clodoveus became not so soon tractable to the severity of Christian manners but suffered themselves very often to be transported with very violent exorbitancies and particularly with unlawful loves which caused ill example in their house and great disorder throughout their Kingdome Gregory of Tours l. 4. Gregory of Tours observeth fordid and shamefull affections in the person of King Caribert grand-child of Clodoveus which cast an Eclipse upon the lights of the Diademe of this great King and could never be rooted out but by patience by prayers and by the effects of the puissant hand of God Queen Ingobergua who knew the humours of her The plot of Queen Ingobergna to cure her husbands passion succeedeth ill out of too much affectation husband to be addicted to inconsiderate love and who was jealous enough of her bed took not among her attendant Ladies those nymphs of the Court which are full of attractives and deserve admiration but purposely chose out base and despicable wayters thinking it was a singular remedy against the Kings malady She had at that time in her Court and service two daughters of a Clothworker the eldest of which was called Marcovessa and the youngest Mirefleur Caribert whose love was more lustfull then ambitious became desperately in love and courted them to the prejudice of his honour and wedlock which wounded the soul of the Queen with a very sensible arrow seeing the havock this passion made in the mind of this Monarch Jealousie suggesteth her a trick which seemed sufficient to divert him from his infamous servitude if this passion might be cured by another and that a jealous woman did not irritate the wounds of love by its proper remedies She calleth the Father of her two servants commanded him secretly to practise his trade in some corner of the Court whither she very cunningly brought his Majesty to make him see the base extraction of his Mistresses and to throw shame confusion upon him But he who at distance saw this wile coming towards him and the solemn preparation of it was displeased saying that if nothing were wanting but nobility to render these maids worthy of his love he would sufficiently ennoble them by his person and that it onely belonged to him to raise inferiour things by loving them and as great ones will rather be flattered in their passions then censured instantly he made a shamefull divorce with the Queen contrary to laws both divine and humane to take to wife the younger of these sisters which was Mirefleur But love which being of its nature a slave faiâ—eth not to be disdainfull quickly put a distaste of her unto him to make him look after the elder who seemed the more modest and wear a religious habit whether desirous to enflame love by this pretext which ordinarily is eagre to pursue all it can least obtein or whether she did it to give lesse advantage and suspicion to the jealous spirit of Queen Ingobergua The fire of Concupiscence which spareth not to enflame Linsey-wolsey as well as Satin continually blowed by the wind of ambition which promised this creature a giddy Fancy of a Crown burnt so strongly that this spirit which had more cunning then beauty caused so much madnesse to creep into the heart of this miserable king that he resolved to marry her which he did qualifying a prodigious whoredome with the title of wedlock The Queen was ready to dy and addresseth her complaints to God and men The Bishops who were assembled in the Councell of Tours in favour of her made Canons against incestuous marriages but the Canons at that time were not strong enough against the arrows of love S. German Bishop of Paris sent forth thunders of excommunication but passion armed with authority made no more account of them then of flying fires which are quenched in their birth God thereto put his hand by the prayers of the Church and took away this religious woman by a horrible and sudden death which affrighted the King and he in the end conceived shame and sorrow for his fault deriving his salvation out of necessity since he could not gain it from the glory of his refistance That which remained him of life was short and miserable and his passion having rendred him contemptible to his own subjects he quickly left Crown and Scepter to pay a tribute to his Tombe 2. Another kind of sottish love appeared in the government Gregory of Tours l. 5. of young Meraveus which I will here relate as being able to minister matter of terrour to youth which takes liberty in clandestine marriages King Chilperic his father happened to bear away the bloody spoil of his brother Sigebert who had been traiterously murthered by the subtile practises of Fredegond when he was come to the Eve of his triumph The famous Brunhault widow of the deceased King as yet very young was become a party of this miserable booty and saw her pretious liberty enthralled in the hands of her brother in law and sister who was born for vengeance and exercised in massacres Her fortune represented nothing unto her but a thousand images of terrour and the cruelty of her adversaries made her apprehend all that which notable mischievous wickednesse can do when it hath the sword of power in hand Yet her bloud was spared to consume her with languors sentence of her Captivity was pronounced by giving her the City of Roan for prison A trusty man A notable example of Merouevs to dievrt youth from licentious mariages was sought for to execute this Commission and the King cast his eye on his son Meroveus a young Prince of a nature sweet and facile endowed wiht excellent parts which made him to be beloved and beheld as a rising star by all the eyes of France This was to put fire too near to stubble not considering that the calme of such natures is ordinarily the most turmoiled with storms of love So soon as Brunhault who according to the relation of S. Gregory of Torus was a very beautyfull and well spoken Princesse began to unciel her eyes which had hitherto been drenched in a deluge of tears she appeared to Meroveus as a blushing Morn which raiseth the more fair after a shower and the arrow of love sharpned by compassion made such flames to sparkle in his heart that he was enforced to quench them with his bloud He saw himself the captive of his fair prisoner
Nero who by Anicetus the same man who before killed his mother did raise a horrible calumny against the honour of his wife and caused this instrument of the devil to affirm that he had played with the Empresse on which he caused her to be banished and poor Octavia as a guilty person did suffer under that wicked sentence and was banished into the Isle of Pandaluria and because Poppea could not sleep in quiet with Nero as long as Octavia was alive he filled up his cruelty and by a most unworthy death he sacrificed her to the appetite of that most bold woman whom afterwards he killed with a spum of his foot on the end of his life and of his Empire My pen is weary to describe so many horrours and doth go over them as on so many burning coals but my Reader it is to represent unto you that this pernicious caitiste causing the poyson of his evill actions to diffuse it self into the veins of all the city of Rome The world was in its heighth of iniquity when S. Paul and Seneca meeting together at one time did endeavour to cure the maladies of this wicked Court the one by Philosophy the other by the Gospel Behold here the manners learning abilities and the successe both of the one and of the other Who hath not Seneca in veneration a good Authour Johannes Sarisburiensis saith hath not the understanding of a reasonable man He is known by all knowing men in his Writings and mis-known by some in his Manners and his Life Suillius a Roman Advocate accused for corruption and banished by the counsell of Seneca at what time he was imployed in the government of Affairs did write a defaming Book against that great From whence proceeded the calumnies against Seneca personage which two Greek Historians but men of small judgement Dion and Xiphiline have followed and in many things have blamed him with as much passion as impertinence This Opinion hath infected divers spirits who either for want of capacity or application do discourse unto us of Seneca as of a man quite contrary to his Books which hath made me diligently to examine his Life to take away the abuse and to give you an Idaea of that puissant Genius with as much clearnesse as sincerity Know then that he was a Roman by his Extract His birth and Bloud He was born at Corduba a city in Spain which was then under the Empire of Rome and full of Italians who being born almost in all the parts of the world were yet born within the Circle of their Empire His father was of an ordinary family a Gentleman of no great account removed from the observation of the world and as farre from command as from ambition addicted above all things to the study of Eloquence reasonably learned but of an admirable memory for having but once heard them he would readily rehearse two thousand names and two hundred verses His mother was named Helvia one of the most beautifull women in the Empire full of understanding and judgement of a high virtue and a rare modesty she had some knowledge in letters and an extraordinary capacity to increase that knowledge if time and custome had given her leave to take an advantage of it His elder brother was called Novatus or Gallion and had a great command in the Empire His younger brother was named Mela a man farre from ambition who lived in the house and studied Eloquence with his Father who in that regard did preferre him in his own judgement above his brothers But Seneca was nourished and advanced in Rome His Education and Spirit in the time of Augustus Cesar he received his first elements of learning under the Discipline of his father and afterwards studied Philosophy under Attalus and Socion In his first years he made the vigour of his Spirit the force of Eloquence and the abundance of Learning to appear so fully in him that he was admired by the most knowing men But that great spirit did by degrees consume his body which was lean and thin and troubled with defluxions and the ptisick which would have brought him to his grave if the cruelty of Nero had not prevented it He was obliged to make an Oration in publick before The fury of Caligula against him Caligula the Emperour concerning which that monster in nature who could not endure any thing that was great and praisefull and by a malignity of manners envied all professours of Learning did pronounce aloud that he had too much spirit and that they must kill him which had presently been put in execution if one of the Mistresses of the Emperour who knew Seneca and favoured him for his Eloquence had not perswaded him that he was not worth killing a lean poor fellow and one whom death would suddenly of it self take away from the world Howbeit he lived many years afterwards and increased in knowledge as in age and as much in Eloquence as in them both attending a more favourable time to make a manifestation of it Claudius succeeded the Emperour Caligula who was not a man for Seneca and though he was indued with extraordinary qualities for a Courtier yet the favour of the times did not much smile upon them His clear spirit and his brave works made him to be known in the house of Germanicus a Prince of the Bloud who was poysoned in the flower of his age and left behind him children of great consideration namely two Princesses who made themselves diversly talked of in Rome the one was Julia the other Agrippina the mother of Nero. This Julia took an affection to Seneca being much pleased with the beauty Dion doth distinguish them in his 9. Book and Suetonius chap. 29. of his spirit and the grace of his discourse He daily frequented the house of Germanicus being no lesse in discretion then in favour and wisely judged that these two high-born Princesses might one day contribute to the making of his fortunes But the Court is an uncertain sea where sometime a tempest doth arise when a calm is expected The favour of Julia in the stead of advancing Seneca did suppresse him and did almost overwhelm him without any hope of rising again although in the end it was in effect the cause of all his reputation It came to passe that Messalina the wife to the Emperour Claudius the most insatiable woman in her lusts that Nature ever produced did conceive an enraged hatred against the house of Germanicus and especially against the Princesse Julia because she was highly esteemed for her rare beauty and the high spirit of Messalina could not endure that any Lady should be praised at Court for her beauty but her self Besides she perceived that her husband whom she absolutely governed did make very much of that young Princesse she therefore caused her to be falsly accused for prostituting her honour and procured her to be banished the Court. An inquiry was made after those who
of a licentious King and of a wanton mother whose head the King did cause to be cut off for her unchastness The one from five years of age was brought up in France with so much piety gravity and honour that nothing more could be added or desired The other had a licentious Education under the bad Example of her licentious parents The one had an excellent an active and a clear spirit resembling the quality of the Sun The other was of a crafty malignant and a sullen Nature resembling the condition of a Cornet The one was experienced in the knowledge of tongues and sciences as much as was necessary for an honest Lady who ought not to appear too learned The other gave her self to such a vanity of study that oftentimes she committed some extravagances as when she undertook to translate the five books of the Consolation of Boetius to comfort her self on the Conversion of Henrie the Fourth The one did speak and write with an extraordinary clearness and an accurate smoothness The other in her expressions was harsh and did much perplex her thoughts as may appear in a subscription of a Letter written with her own hand and directed to Henrie the Fourth after his Conversion Vostre saeur sice soit a la virille avec novelle Je n'ay que faire Elizabeth R. which is in English Your Sister if it be after the old fashion with the new I have nothing but to do Elizabeth R I leave to the most liberal Interpreter to divine what she meaneth by it The one had a generous free and a credulous heart The other was malicious obstinate and deceitfull The one loved honour to which her condition had obliged her The other had a furious and bloudy Ambition and spared none to improve the interest of her Greatness The one retained an admirable constancy in her ancient Religion by reason whereof though she was outragiously persecuted yet she omitted nothing in her devotion The other did put on Religion as she did her mask making her self a Heretick amongst Hereticks and a Catholick amongst Catholicks for when in the reign of her sister Mary she made a high and solemn profession of the Roman Faith she afterwards counterfeited her belief and betrayed that character to authorize heresie and rebellion against the Church The one feared God and finding her self the Relict of Francis the Second at seventeen years of age she had rather stoop to the marriage yoke to give life unto a King than to live inordinately and under the veil of widow-hood to conceal her secret wantonness The other who had not so strict a conscience did find a way to reconcile Ambition and Love and lived not married and not a maid and though I am unwilling to believe that she lived so salt and melting a life as some have affirmed yet I cannot deny but that she had her Favourites and her Minyons which Cambden her own Historiographer doth not conceal The one studied for the advancement of Virtue The other for the advancement onely of vain Reputation The one held forth a generous liberty in all her actions The other painted her life and covered her vices with great pretences she extreamly feared the censure of Posterity which made her with so much artifice to indeer unto her the ablest men of forreign Countreys and entertained mercenary quills to increase her glory thinking by that means to conceal her Defects and blind the eyes of mankind Wherefore we ought not to give too much belief to some Historians though otherwise men of esteem who deliver many and great praises having received many and great Presents Men of that quality are always credulous enough and are not accustomed to bark at those who do feed them with bread The one was very religious in her promises the other was captious and inconstant and this most visibly she made apparent to the Duke of Alencon Brother to Henrie the Third of France who was come into England to espouse her and though the Contract of the Marriage was confirmed both on the one side and the other and though the Marriage-Ring was given yet she broke all for the Caprichiousness of one night and to obey the cries of some Maids of Honour who besought her that she would not marry The one was full of bounty to her poor Subjects to whom she could not do all the good she desired by reason of the Rebellions that were stirred up in her Kingdom The other was carefull enough not to tax her Subjects with Imposts or with Subsidies which caused her to be beloved of her people who in all the virtues of a Prince do cherish nothing more than a moderation in their Subsidies The one was indued with an extream sweetness of disposition which sometimes did seem to lie too open and defenceless as when with out seeing justice done she pardoned great Crimes which tended to the diminution of her Authority The other was naturally cruel a lover of bloud and one who horribly tormented the Catholicks and too easily would bring the Heads of her Great-ones upon the Scaffold to obtain the honour and title of being just among popular Spirits To conclude one reigned like a Dove and the other like a Bird of prey It is a horrible thing to read the History of her Reign written by her Admirers where in stead of the Contemplation of Virtues and of Beauties you shall observe in every page the Rages of Accusers bloudy Judgements Proscriptions Massacres which I alledge not in any disparagement to the Nation which I love with a true Christian charity but to the ignominie and the shame of Heresie It seems to me when I read the Life of Elizabeth that I enter into the Countrey of the Anthropophagi where I behold nothing but men drawn upon Sledges Hang-men tearing out of bowels and dividing carkases into quarters which are still dropping bloud and hanging in the most remarkable places of the Citie as the tapestry of the ancient cruelty of the Puritans I assure my self that those who are now in authority under so gracious a Prince do reflect upon it with as much horrour as my self and by their moderation will endeavour to wipe away the stains of so bloudy a Time Who is he then that is not amazed to see Virtue so forsaken and the best Queen in the world to lead so tempestuous a life persecuted in her estate in her body in her honour in her own person in the person of her friends despoiled outraged dishonoured torn by bloudy calumines drawn to unjust Tribunals locked up in so many prisons abandoned by those most near unto her and sacrificed by her kinred to the vengeance of her enemies and that in so tragical a manner and by so barbarous a hand And how comes it to pass that the other being laden with crimes did mount on the Throne by ways unexpected and did continue there by uncontrouled power and reigned as if she had all good Fortune at her own
Great troubles at Rome appeased by him 175 Pope Leo caused him to be crowned Emperour of Rome 176 The great cunning of men who go about to surprise Chastity 18 Advise to Ladies and Gentlewomen concerning Chastity 19 The honour the French bore to the virtue of Chastity 110 The conjugall Chastity of S. Lewis 111 Weak spirits are ordinarily Cholerick 87 Malicious and covert souls are ranked in the second region of anger which is bitter Choler ib. Choler and vengeance are prejudiciall 294 Chrysostom mentioneth an excellent presage of a wise man 65 The greatnesse and beauty of Clemency 143 The generous anger of Clotharius 117 The Essence of Compassion 99 Complacence stronger then fire and sword 18 Miseries of humane Condition 56 Such as have a clear Conscience are most bold 79 Contentments are rather in the will then in the pleasing objects 48 True contentment is in God 49 God possessing himself injoyeth his Contentment ib. Our Lord passed all his life in Contentments which were necessarily due to him to give us an example to wean our selves from them 50 Conversation and its contentments 13 Conversation must be moderated ib. Courage is not lessened by study 78 Men of obscure birth raised to great preferments by their courage 8â— Compassion of great Courages 99 The rare endowments that are required in a Courtier 219 The Court of Pharaoh is compared to the Helmet-flower 228 The horrour of cruelty 100 A man must take heed of being too Curious 46 The wisdome of Cushi the servant of David in the counsel of Absolon 149 D A Witty Fable of John Damascen 2 Daniel is chosen for one of Nebuchadonozars pages 247 His noble extraction and rare parts ib. He is in great hazard of his life 242 He consulteth with God ib. He is made Vice-Roy of all the Provinces of the Kingdome 243 He is sought unto to give the interpretation of the hand-writing upon the wall 246 He refuseth to worship Bell. 247 He killeth the Dragon ib. He is cast into the Lions Den. ib. He is taken from thence and his accusers put into his roome who are immediately devoured ib. The question upon the act of David is resolved 35 The qualities of David 139 His entrance into the Court. ib. He is pursued and escapes ib. The losse of David in banishment ib. His arrivall at Nob causeth great disasters to the Priests ib David saves himself in the caves of the desart whither his father and mother go to seek him 142 His piety towards them ib. Banished men repair unto David ib. The visite of Jonathan secret and very profitable for David ib. Nabals rudenesse towards David ib. The admirable generousnesse of David in pardoning his enemies ib. David goeth out of the Kingdome and retireth himself among strangers 143 David receives the news of Sauls overthrow 144 David cannot be excused for the treaty made with Abner 145 He is absolute King by the death of Ishbosheth the son of Saul ibid. The royall qualities of David ib. His zeal to religion ib. His valour and his warres ib. His justice and good husbandry ib. His vices ib. The blindnesse of David 146 Davids repentance ib. Punishment upon the house of David ib. The patience of David towards Shimel 148 His great humility and his humble words ib. Davids mildnesse very great 149 The last acts of Davids life 150 God hath made all creatures to have delectation 48 Four things compose the solid Delectation of man ib. The Essence of Delectation 49 Demetrius his oration 203 He is engaged in a war against the Macchabees 204 Whether it be good to have a Desire 39 An excellent picture of Desire ib. The world is replenished with Desiring souls ib. The exposition of the picture of Desire ib. The passion of curiosity a kind of Desire ib. Inconstancy followeth the multitude of Desires 41 Four sources of Desires 42 A reason against vain Desires drawn from divine tranquility ib. Another reason against vain Desires is the onely desire which Jesus had in secking the glory of his heavenly Father 43 Marvellous effects of Desire 112 The image of Despair 65 Three sorts of acts in Despair ib. Remedies against Despair 68 The admirable conversion of some who seemed desperate ib. The sight of our Saviour teacheth us to persevere in our good hopes and not to Despair 69 A great secret of life is to undergo Destiny 139 Why Devils love not God whom they know to be so amiable 48 Disorder is fatall to the Court of great ones 174 Doeg accuseth the high Priest being innocent 141 Means to use an efficacious remedy in Duels 36 E THe reign of Edward 316 His qualities and his death 317 Divers causes of the ruine of Egypt 229 The children of Israel depart out of Egypt 231 Eleazer a Jewish Captain died valiantly having first pierced the Elephant whereon he did suppose that Eupator did combat 202 Queen Eleanor an enemy to France 118 Elijah includeth the name God and the Sun in his name 248 He hideth himself at the brook Carith over against Jordan ib. He restoreth to life the dead child of the woman of Sarepta 249. He is known to be the Prophet of God by fire coming down from heaven which consumed his sacrifice 250 He flies into the Wildernesse and is sustained by an Angel which furnished him with a cruise of oyl and a cake baked ib. He travelleth fourty dayes in the strength of that sustenance 251 His vision ibid. He foretelleth to Ahab that the dogs should lick his blood in the same place where Naboth was slain 252 He is translated and took a new life without loosing that he had in the world 254 The labyrinth of the hypocrisie of Queen Elizabeth 299 The fury of Elizabeth 200 Elisha leaveth his Plough and Oxen and followeth Elijah 251 He is heir of Elijahs spirit 255 His speech to Joram ib. Elisha besieged in Dothan is guarded by an host of heavenly Angels 256 Elisha conducteth his enemies stricken with blindnesse to Samaria the chief city of the adverse partie ib. Joram threateneth to take off his head ib. He dieth 259 The estate of England 315 The picture of Envie 91 The definition of Envie ibid. Humane remedies against Envie 94 The hlessed though unequall in glory are not envious 96 The lamentable Envie of Ebroin against S. Leger 121 Envie never sleepeth 140 The horrible Envie of Saul ib. Envie is easily learned at the Court. ib. The Temple of Ephesus 154 The courteous meeting of Erasmus and Oporinus 72 Evilmeredech son of Nebuchadonezar took upon him the regincie of the Empire his father leaving his kingdome to graze with the beasts 245 The ignorance of our Evils is a stratagem of divine Providence 71 F THe nature of Fear and the bad effects of it 70 Two sorts of Fear naturall and morall 71 The causes of Fear ibid. Fear is a troublesome passion ibid. Fear of accidents in the world 72 Remedies against accidentall Fear ib. Fear of poverty causeth most