of heart It is he that hath thundred and pronounced this sentence Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted naturall and powerfull words pronounced by the mouth of Truth Why should we seek further evidence how acceptable this is to God and how he rewardeth this truth and how necessary it is for him that will be a perfect Christian Let us no further demurre upon this subject but examine wherein it consists let us learn what humility is that is it we are most ignorant of Humility is truth to be humble is to walk in the spirit of truth I say humility is truth because true humility consists in this that God by his infinite bounty by his operations of love and grace infuses into the soul a light which makes it see the truth in all things more or less as it pleases God This light which brings with it knowledge abaseth annihilateth the soul in her self and causes that in all things she annihilate her self because this truth teacheth her what God is and what the creature is so that this grace which I call the light of truth gives not onely knowledge but also actually annihilates the soul and detains her in her lowness in her nothing and being in her nothing she is truly where she ought to be for hereby she is in the truth and acting in this state she walks in the spirit of truth which is the same as to act with humility Many will wonder hereat who thinking they have humility have it not who thinking to attain it by certain exercises of humiliation do but deceive themselves not but that their exercises are good and conduce to humility but if we pass no further if we possess not the spirit of truth acting by the same spirit which is the spirit of God and of simplicity we may make many acts of humility but we shall not have humility for humility in its formality and essence consisteth in the spirit of truth and simplicity the spirit of truth and simplicity is God To be humble then we must act in this spirit I will explicate and make this more intelligible Humility is a supernaturall light which I call the light of truth because it maketh us know things as they are On one side it drawes and advances us to the knowledge of the infinite goodness of God and other his divine perfections and by this knowledge forms in us an esteem of the supreme Majesty of God On the other side the same light causes us to see what we are our own meanness unworthiness impotency indigence the truth of our nothing and by consequence before God she makes us see the truth which consisteth in the knowledge of God and of our selves This truth so conceived possessing our spirit and and acting in our soul annihilates and debases us in all things in all our actions with so much facility that the soul can do no otherwise for she cannot but act according to her knowledge so that acting wholly according to this light and taking all things as she conceives them she walks in humility and as we say humbles her self and in effect she doth humble her self not knowing it for she hath no eyes but to see the truth no power but to act according to truth I call here humility a light and a light of truth for so in effect she is whence it follows that by humility we arrive to the knowledge of truth as by the light of the Sun we see the Sun so by the light of the truth wherein consists humility we see truth Thus we understand it when we say that God revealeth his divine secrets and greatness and teacheth the truths to humble souls Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes that is to the humble saith Iesus Christ to his Father Whence we infer that to understand the Catholique and supernaturall truths and to possess them we must go to them with humility not sufficiency nor capacity much less curiosity God is pleased with little ones so much reading so much curiosity so many Questions so many Reasons wherein men take pains are unprofitable labours and rather separate us from Christian truth then bring us neerer to it for God dwels with the humble spirit saith the Oracle of heaven so that retyring our selves from the truth is to make us uncapable of humility and without humility we cannot come to heaven whence we may imagine what danger the spirits of this Age run into Further we may learn from what hath been said that they who will acquire Christian humility must not stop at exteriour actions of meanness and humiliations nor at words of confusion and abasement nor at some submissions and accommodations although they be frequent and profitable but we must pass further and penetrate the centre of the spirit there to establish the throne of truth and to make our heart the treasury of the light of God To be humble we must endavour to know the truth we must possess it we must act by the Principle of truth which being done it will be easie to come to the exteriour and to produce infinite acts of humility and annihilation for we cannot have humility without doing all these actions but a man may do all these actions without having humility But we must now know how we may acquire the knowledge of truth CHAP. IX Of the knowledge of God and our selves THe knowledge of truth consists in knowing God and our selves a man may arrive at this knowledge two wayes by infusion by acquisition The first comes from God alone who communicates and infuses into our soul a light springing from truth which we call the spirit and light of faith This light brings and gives the knowledge of God and of our selves and this knowledge as well as the light is an operation of God who by this divine light which he spreads in us annihilates our soul and in all things detains it wholly in this annihilation wherein consists humility Thus is humility a grace infused and a pure operation of God alone this operation is greater or lesser according as God pleases who by the communication of this divine light consummateth and annihilateth the soul more or less as he pleases for his glory This first manner is for few persons because few are advanced to this way few render themselves worthy of such grace The second and more ordinary is acquired We propose divers means to acquire the knowledge of God and of our selves the most common and easie whereof is consideration and application assisted by grace without which nothing can be done We arrive to the knowledge of God not by sublime penetration of the Attributes of Divinity that is not necessary and few are capable of it but by faith When the soul considers God as he is simple proposed in the Creed to us according to the bare and simple signification of
Truly all vertues are good and suitable to the state of a perfect Christian the practise thereof profitable the acquisition usefull and necessary but his chief care and exercise must be piety for he adds godliness is profitable unto all things having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come The advice which the Apostle gives his Disciple we must here propose to our perfect Christian having already spoken of vertues the most profitable and necessary to the state of Christianity There remains then no more to commend unto him but a true and solid Christian Piety for this Piety is the Ornament or Mistriss of all other vertues I mean the Christian vertues dispose us assist us and put us into a capacity agreeable to God and to honour him they are necessary for us to make us worthy of God they shew us the way to God but Piety leads us to God and makes use of all vertues to conduct us thither and having no object but God teaches us the worship and honour that we must render to him and like a good Mistriss puts us into a ready and easie practise of true vertues and entertains us in the exercise of actions that honour God and are acceptable to him In brief she enables us to pay God what we owe him This Piety is the first use and exercise of a soul as the first motion the first instinct the first light we have from nature to know God so the first exercise she inspires us with is to honour the same God to render him that worship and service which the Creature owes its Creator This Piety teaches to this she incites us this she produces in us Whence we may apprehend how necessary it is to know wherein this true piety consisteth and to establish our selves therein For above all that we have said already which is very considerable it is evident that this true piety is one of the principall foundations whereby Christian perfection is supported In the conduct of men all actions and exercises of their life are ruled according to piety and as we commonly say according to the devotion they have If then their piety be not founded upon a solid foundation the rest of the Christian life will be unconstant and its exercises very uncertain superficiall and perhaps wholly unprofitable as we see in the devotions of many which is onely in the exteriour who as the Apostle saith having the form of godliness despise the power thereof In such souls we see nothing solid nothing but inconstancy in their lives imperfection in their actions disquiet disturbance and adherence to severall Creatures in their spirits a small blast of adversities overturns them If we consider all their life it is nothing but an appearance and shadow of piety counterfeit Pearls that make a fair glittering shew but are fully onely of wind Some fall into this evill by ignorance others by default it is our duty to direct both into the truth It concerns us therefore to examine wherein piety and true Christian devotion consists Severall persons speak of it severally every one adds to it and appropriates it to his own inclinations humour and particular affections But according to Catholick truth the foundation of solid and true Christian piety consisteth in the soul's being Iesus Christ's and belonging to him by a relation of love and charity True piety consisteth in the knowledge esteem adherence and subjection of our souls to Iesus Chrst from which esteem adherence and subjection all our exercises actions of devotion and piety must proceed as heat from the fire the effect from the cause This description of Piety may seem new but it will appear manifest if we weigh with patience the deduction thereof and consider that Iesus Christ is our Saviour our Mediator by whom we have access to God by whom we honour God render our duties to him and have a relation to the most high and most adorable Trinity and refer our life actions and our selves thereto Herein consisteth true piety for by Iesus Christ we are acceptable to him by him God who is all sufficient in himself vouchsafes to accept our wills to sanctifie our actions and recompense our good works St. Paul teacheth this when he sayes that Iesus Christ is all our glory It is by Iesus Christ and in him that we live in him we merit and satisfie by fruits worthy repentance it is in him that they are meritorious it is he that offers them to his Father consider these words and his Father accepts them and they are acceptable to him for his sake What more clear or more to our purpose Hence we conclude that devotion and Christian piety cannot be in a soul if that soul be not Iesus Christ's if it adhere not to him and be subject to his spirit For if we live not if we merit not nor can satisfie God but by Iesus Christ it necessarily follows we cannot live if we are not Iesus Christs He therefore saith Saint Iohn who hath not the Sonne hath not life implying he hath nothing and consequently he hath no capacity to honour and serve God wherein consisteth true piety Whence we may conclude that to acquire true devotion we must begin with this esteem of Iesus and by an adherence and subjection to his spirit and conduct Let us more particularly explain wherein this true piety consists To know it we must not stop at exteriour things or at actions which have nothing but appearance but we must enter into the bottom of the soul and regard true devotion onely in the centre of the heart The proper office and principall duty of true piety is to cause us to regard God to induce us to render to God what we owe him It is necessary that we enter into the knowledge of God not by speculation or sublime knowledge but by the light of Faith This knowledge leads us to esteem God by this esteem we enter into a propriety and a true and absolute subjection to his greatness and will all which is necessary to true devotion for as much as we cannot render to God the honour love and service we owe him but in as much as we esteem him and are subject to him Seeing then Piety consisteth in rendring to God the honour love and service we owe him and that we cannot otherwise honour or serve him then as we esteem him and depend of him and his divine will it followes that to be truly devout we must act according to the truths of faith and follow this supernaturall light we must conceive a great esteem of God and live in great subjection to his Law and divine conduct and so to live is to live in the true spirit of piety and to be truly devout But this is not all we must proceed further The Christian being in the bottom of his soul and heart disposed after the manner we mention feels a spirituall vivacity an easiness and promptitude which drives him to the practise of all vertues and incites him to shew outwardly in all sorts of actions the
name and ineffable greatness of Iesus Christ if all our actions be full of our own will and it were to little purpose to subject our selves by words to the Soveraignty of Iesus Christ to the conduct of his spirit and motions if in the management of our life we follow the spirit of the World living in a continuall desire to satisfie our selves and our own inclinations This were to say much and do nothing This we must be carefull in since many deceive themselves in this kind of piety which they so easily profess contenting themselves with the superficies and neglecting the rest Remember that he who sayes we must adore God in spirit said also we must adore him in Truth The second act of this piety is an act of Oblation whereby the soul offers her self wholly to Iesus Christ and renouncing her self resignes into his hand all that she is all the power that she hath over her self over all her actions over all things and to make her self the more a servant to Iesus in a perfect condition she renounces her own liberty and all the use she can make thereof giving it up into the hands of the Son of God of whom she received it granting him all the right that she had to dispose thereof to order it as he pleases that being so resigned to Iesus she may not have any thing more nor be any thing more but that he may be all have all and operate all in her This Obligation thus conceived is of great importance For if it be done after the manner it ought if the Son of God vouchsafe to accept it it puts us in the perfection of Christianity in as much as it drawes the soul from her self and all creatures to be Christ's to adhere to him to depend on him in all things wherein consisteth true perfection Moreover this Obligation is an effect of the esteem and belief we have of Iesus Christ and contains the spirit of Christian subjection For as according to Law the slave is no more his own nor hath any right over any thing but is wholly left to the power and pleasure of his Master so by this Obligation the Christian puts himself as nothing before Iesus Christ he gives place to all his rights of nature and grace to be onely the subject of his power and divine will And though we are all servants to Iesus Christ by right and purchase as we said elsewhere yet we will be such also out of good will and affection giving him by this Oblation a new power over us that we may be the Captives to his love as well as to his power and submit to the designs of the eternall Father who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us to the Kingdom of his dear Son Thus examining this Oblation we find that it is necessary for all those who seek true piety as containing the essence and grounds of devotion it puts the soul into a perfect denudation and makes her entirely dependant and resigned to Iesus Christ to be led according to his will They therefore who in their exercises of piety make ordinary use of this principle of devotion must weigh well what they say and consider with what sincerity and faithfulness they proceed with the Son of God For seeing they leave themselves wholly to him in the quality of servants and make profession mark the word to have nothing which is not his and of him and that by this Oblation they yeild up all to him even to the use of their own life and naturall liberty what have they more to think of but sincerely and faithfully to accomplish what they profess What have they more to do but to take care that their life be conformable to what they say otherwise they shall be constrained to condemn themselves and to confess that they have no devotion any further then the mouth that they deal not sincerely w th God and their own consciences It concerns them to take heed that that is not justly to be attributed to them which the Prophet said Cursed are they that do the work of the Lord negligently To these Exercises of interiour piety we may add a third act Purity of Intention By this intention the Christian who offers himself to God in the manner we have described begins to refer himself actually to him and to his glory protesting that in all things even to the least and in all his actions he will have no other intention then the will of the Son of God and live no longer nor act any thing but according to the intention of Iesus Christ. Having made this protestation he demands of him participation of his holy spirit and prayes him to inspire him with holy and pure dispositions whereby he may accomplish his actions This practice of piety is little known and perhaps little understood yet it is necessary for a perfect Christian. To conceive and affect it he is to remember that as we have said true piety contains a resignation of the soul to the conduct of grace and to the spirit of Iesus and that this resignation is more then a bare simple resignation for it includes annihilation and unity annihilation of our own spirit and conduct and unity with the spirit and conduct of Iesus Christ to which we resigne our selves By this act of intention the Christian annihilates all his desires and intentions to unite and subject himself onely to the intentions and desires of Iesus Christ in such sort as to admit no other Hence it may be inferr'd how necessary this intention is to all those souls that thirst after true piety but to make a fuller discovery thereof we are to reflect on our own infirmity and incapacity which is so great that we know not what is lawfull for us to desire and are ignorant of what we ought to demand of God as not understanding what designes Iesus Christ may have upon us We must therefore wait till he enlighten us and inspire us Now that we may be in a disposition to receive this grace and in a capacity to submit to the conduct of the spirit of God we must annihilate our own desires and particular intentions and give our selves up to those of Iesus which is that the Christian endeavors to do by the act of intention here proposed It is the Doctrine of the Apostle who says We know not how to pray as we ought but the spirit makes intercession for us by groans that cannot be uttered He who searches the heart knows what is the desire of the spirit he sueth for the Saints according to the will of God Here we are taught this practice which shews us that our prayers desires and intentions must be inspired by the spirit of Iesus Christ who knows what God demands of us Moreover there is not any thing so certain as that the Sonne of God hath those intentions and designes upon the life actions
effect of the grace of Christianity is to operate in us that which natural death doth By death the soul is separated from the body and all things in the world So grace should separate us from our selves from all things from sin that being wholly so separated we may be dead to our selves and to all things that we may live in God and of God This expression of the Apostle further shews all the properties of a Christian life the end whereof is that being separated from all we may be in Iesus Christ that is to say united by an indissoluble Vnion to Iesus Christ life of his life and be referred with him to the glory of the most holy Trinity The life of a Christian St. Paul saith is hid because it is indeed hid from the sight of the World which neither sees it as it is nor esteems it and because it is little humble and abject disdains to behold to take notice of it as unworthy the name and society of men They that will live Christianly will not subject themselves to the corruption of the men of this age so this life is hid from the sight and more from the power of this world for the soul that liveth christianly is above all humane power and insensible to all contempt and confusion and as the Diamond continues entire and strengthened by the violence of blowes so the perfect christian remains more content in the violence of Temptation more assured in the motions of disgrace more firm amidst the batteries of afflictions even Prosperity changeth not his spirit he is alike in all things for by grace and true Christian vertues the soul is raised above all things and lives in God Ye are dead and yet your life is hid with Iesus Christ in God Such is the life of a christian according to St. Paul a life that imitates that of Iesus Christ upon earth who according to the Oracles of the Prophets was despised and rejected of men a Man of sorrow and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him he was despised and we esteemed him not When Hell the World Devill sinners thought to triumph over him and ravish both his honour and life at the same time he triumphs over them shewing that he hath power as he saith to lay down his life and he hath power to take it again at his pleasure Thus the life of Iesus Christ is hid from the eyes of men who know him not and from their power seeing he triumphs over his Enemies over death and sin Such ought to be the life of a Christian. St. Paul saith the same in other termes when he exhorts the Ephesians that they put off concerning the former conversation the old Man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirits of their mind and that they put on the new Man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness This is the first Protestation we make in Baptisme in which solemn action before that we are consecrated to the holy Trinity received and made the children of God we make a particular protestation to renounce Adam and the World and adhere to Iesus Christ to separate our selves from the one to unite our selves to the other So in this action so holy and happy we uncloath our selves of the one to cloath us again with the other that is the first step we make into the state of Christianity according to St. Paul And if we believe his Doctrine we see that the perfection of a Christian and all his happinesse consists in adhering to Iesus Christ to be united to him and cloathed with him For as all the grandeur of humane nature which was chosen in the Mysterie of the Incarnation to be the nature of God consists in being united to the word which subsisteth in him and operates by him so all the perfection of a christian soul consists in dwelling in Iesus Christ in adhering to him and operating by him all the perfection of a christian soul consists in that it dwells in Christ that it adheares to him that it lives of his life and operates not but by his spirit Now this cannot be but when the Soul is divided from it self and from all creatures for according to St. Paul We are to put off the old man with his deeds and to put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the Image of him that created him Whence it followeth that abnegation and uncloathing is the principal point of christian perfection so necessary that St. Bernard saith It had been better for us never to have been then to dwell in our selves and to our selves for the greatest misfortune of the soul is to see it self separated from God But God comes not into neither dwells in the soul till such time as it goeth out of it self uncloathes and annihilates it self And the greater its annihilation is the more it makes place for God If it take but little away God fills it with little if it deprive it self of much God fills it much and without doubt he will take it up and dwell wholly in it if the soul do annihilate and wholly uncloath it self We see and adore this proceeding of God in the Mysterie of the Incarnation the cause and example of the life of our souls For the eternall word choosing humane nature to unite himself unto it and to operate in and by it our redemptions would uncloath it of its own substance and humane person to shew us that we are not acceptable to God if we do not abandon our selves and that if we divest our selves of our selves and deprive our selves of all created things God will fill us with divine things for Grace as well as Nature abhorres vacuity Let us learn then to deprive our selves of humane things that we may be inriched with divine Let us go out of our selves and quit the commerce that we have with the creatures to be in Iesus Christ to enter into society and communion with God Let us renounce our own spirits and government to leave our selves to that of Iesus Christ and suffer him to live and raign in us according to what he truly designed of us In brief let us divest our selves of our selves to re-invest our selves with the Sonne of God Herein consists the happiness of our souls and that Christian perfection that we ought to search for here upon earth The necessity and practise whereof are in the following Treatises THE SECOND PART Wherein are proposed the sundry Motives which oblige Christians to Perfection CHAP. I. The Obligation that we have to acquire true Vertues wherein consists the life of the Soul and the inward life of a Christian. MAN being in honour abideth not but is compared unto the Beasts that perish Thus David describing the deplorable estate of man after sin a sad condition a miserable fall which hath deprived man
this love which operates with great things in the souls of the Elect. Let us love him who loves us so much and let us live the life of him who lives in us If we reflect upon these truths justly may we be astonished at the obstinacy and blindness of those who make so many difficulties to resign themselves wholly both body and soul to the conduct of God and absolutely to abandon themselves to the providence love and wisdom of Iesus What can any man yet doubt of the bounty and love of God distrust his wisdom after so manifest a truth Is it possible a Christian can imagin that he is to take care of the creature that humane prudence is necessary where God vouchsafes by his bounty to apply and employ his care wisdom and infinite goodness But only to apply himself to the way of God that is to say with an application worthy of God perfect as God is perfect good as God is good accommodating himself notwithstanding to the commodity and feebleness of the creature If we adhere to these truths it is fit that as members of the Son of God we live subject to his will abandon our selves to his loving conduct endeavouring nothing so much as to please and satisfie him This God requires of us to this all Christians are obliged and therefore to profit by this third Motion let us go out of our selves let us quit the care of our selves a care that nourishes nothing but complacency and self-satisfaction which altogether confides in the disordinate love of our selves Let us resigne our selves wholly to his care and providence of him who uncessantly fixeth the eye of his infinite bounty upon us Let us trust in him who hath a heart all of love who onely thinks of us and be all to him and for him Let us endeavour to have no satisfaction nor complacency but in him seeing he alone according to the Prophet Loves us from eternity calls and draws us lovingly to come to him and to be his If you now require some forms for this Resignation I will propose them CHAP. VIII Practises to help a Christian to live in subjection to Grace and the spirit of Jesus THe Christian who would profit by the Motive we last proposed must weigh the quality he hath in being a member of Iesus Christ for Iesus being his head will unite himself to him appropriate himself to him possess him encline him infuse into him his own being and life guide him on the earth as well as redeem him on the Cross and by a particular bounty love him with the same love that he loves himself and as the head loveth his members 1. To make use of these thoughts the Christian seeing himself so chosen united and amorously drawn to Iesus Christ must make a particular profession and protestation to adhere to Iesus to renounce all humane prudence all care and conduct of himself leave himself wholly in all things to the power providence and conduct of Iesus Farther he must yeild up all the right that God his Creator hath given him to his liberty to his life to his actions and to all inferiour creatures putting it into the hands of Iesus Christ upon whom he must depend in all things protesting that he will use them no farther then as dependant on the conduct intentions and will of Iesus 2. The true Christian must make a strong resolution to rely onely on God all other things being indifferent unto him whence he will endeavour to follow and accept with tranquillity of spirit all that God ordains and to establish himself wholly in this confidence of God in this conformity and relyance on the conduct of Iesus He will study to bear in his heart and soul a contempt of all naturall prudence in making little account even of things that depend on his grace saying to himself that he will onely rely on Iesus who is his All and that whatever happen supernaturall grace which is the light of Heaven will never fail to give him as much knowledge and experience in all things as shall be necessary for him but far more profitably and more perfectly then humane prudence can do 3. As this manner of doing may have great and continuall oppositions so the Christian who desires to please God must endeavour to live with vigilancy over himself and particularly have a great care to mortifie the assaults of Nature the motions of the humane spirit and the applications and agitations of the wisdom of the flesh all which opposeth the spirit of God And because nature useth to insinuate amidst grace and disguising her self dissemble to be what she is not we not knowing it and even contrary to our own intentions to prevent this deceit and to assure our selves in a matter so dangerous yet hard to be discovered it is necessary that the Christian with a great humility and a desire full of efficacy renounce all the motions and effects of nature and give himself with all his heart to the spirit and grace of Iesus After all which he must yet have a great vigilancy upon the bottom and the dispositions of his soul that with a great fidelity he may live in the subjection he ought to the grace and conduct of Iesus To help us in this practise and to see how important it is we must consider that the effect of the grace of Christianity may be reduced to one point The designes of God upon our souls are reduced to one thing onely which it is their aim to effect in us This point which God will do in us is to establish his sanctification glory and Kingdom in our souls This is the end of his design whereto all the effects of his grace and divine operations tend Whence we may infer that if God requires nothing of us nor hath no other design on us but to establish in our souls his empire and the Kingdom of his spirit and grace we also must have no other care desire or application then to subject our selves to the Kingdom of God to live in the obedience and conduct of his spirit and grace And as all the designs of God unite themselves in this one point so the Christian must labour in this point that he may be in all even to the least of his thoughts and actions and smallest motions of his soul subjected to the Kingdom of God Hereby I mean that all the motions thoughts and actions of a Christian must be ruled and subjected to the love power will and conduct of God that with peace and inward content he must receive the effects of God and walk with fidelity in the wayes God requires that God may raign perfectly in him by his love and grace and that he may raign here in all those wayes and manners that is as gloriously as he raigns with the Saints in Heaven proportionably notwithstanding to our present estate and meanness I know not whether a true soul that hath true faith can
to sinfull Adam Finally by these Principles we learn and it is that I would most perswade that the way to obtain Christian vertues the most powerfull means to arrive to perfection is to adhere to Iesus to prostrate our selves frequently before the Throne of his greatness to subject our selves to his soveraignty to give our selves to him and to his vertues to endeavour to be replenished with his spirit to bear him in the bottom of our hearts that as the centre is in the midst of its circumference he may be in the midst of our hearts as the centre of our being and our souls We must look upon this practice as very important to the soul and adhering to Iesus and possessing him she shall possess all in him and easily obtain all from him a truth none can be ignorant of that do acquire vertues We must have them in Iesus and of Iesus their onely principle Object and Prototype upon whom we must mould our actions and form our life By him the eternall Father speaks to us by him he teacheth us In a word by him he giveth us this life the life of grace the life of perfection the life which is no other then Iesus living in us He that hath the Son hath life and he that hath not the Son hath not life saith the beloved Disciple What is there more cleer there onely remains to practise what we have said CHAP. IV. The means whereby we may arrive to the adherence of our souls with God and the obstacles which hinder it TO know truth and not practise it avails little God in the Gospel threatens many stripes to the servant that knoweth the will of his Lord and Master and doth not according to it To what purpose is it to love vertue and embrace vice to praise good and to follow evil is to be condemned out of our own mouths We say it is not enough to love to esteem and to know Christian vertues as others do but we must bear the effects of them and make use of them as God requires We are therefore now to shew how we must practise what hath bin already said To do a Christian action requireth not onely that it be good and done in grace but it must be done with the spirit of grace the spirit of Iesus Christ which he pours into us in such manner that all the vertue which is in us comes from him with such dependence that as the members receive of the Head so Iesus being our Head and we his members we can receive nothing but from him in the state of grace which is so true and necessary that he himself saith As the branch cannot bear fruit of it self except it abide in the Vine no no more can ye except ye abide with me our soul is barren and without the fruit of grace if she dwell not in Iesus Christ and take not from him all her juice life and true vertues To adhere to this holy spirit a man must be devested of himself severed from the creatures not onely by will and good intention but by effect also he must have a continuall recourse by grace with a spirit of submission and dependency upon grace that it may have power to act freely in him we must regard the vertue in Iesus Christ and imitate it especially those vertues which are most eminent in his life the bases and foundation of solid perfection as profound humility purity of heart contempt of the world and the like solid vertues onely appearing in the Son of God But we must take heed that in the practice and exercise of vertues we seek them not so much because of their excellency nor to become thereby better or more perfect nor for our own interests but chiefly and above all for the glory of God for the honour of Iesus Christ imitating him in our life and actions that we may live in a manner pleasing to him and since the end of our actions must be the glory of God it is convenient that we have no other design then to please and glorifie him If you desire a more express practise I propose it thus When we have formed some good resolution in prayer or that the doing of some act of vertue is in question we must presently give our selves up to the Sonne of God that we may accomplish this act of vertue according as he desires and according to the designs of his Crosse it not being necessary to form any particular intention or design as for example being to form a resolution to practise humility let us say in our heart I give my self to thee my Iesus to enter into thy spirit of humility I will passe with thee all the dayes of my life in this holy vertue I invoke the power of thy spirit upon me that it may abase my pride and I will keep my self with thee in humility I offer thee the opportunities of Humility which shall present themselves in my life blesse them if it so please thee I renounce my selfe and all things which may hinder me from having part in the grace of thy humility The like may be done in all other vertues or good intentions which we offer to God in this manner they shall be founded on Iesus Christ made in the spirit of grace not in our own spirit made truly christian Let us not contemn this practise neither as too much elevated nor as superfluous it is easie and necessary we speak not of humane action but a christian action perfect and worthy of God suitable to our condition and dignity whereto we are elevated by the grace of christianity which is so great that St. Peter calls us a chosen Generation a holy Nation a peculiar people and to crown all this St. Paul saith we are the members of Iesus Christ and as such we must live no other life then his not act but by his spirit and in his intentions Upon this foundation may be built all that can be said or thought of the perfections and excellencies of christianity all is said when we say Iesus is our head and we his members he is the principle of the grace necessary for us in all things we must take all of him he is the end of our life and actions we must refer them all to him and to his honour In fine he is the prototype and the exemplary cause we must all regard and continually contemplate him not onely to imitate him but to imprint his life and vertues in us This is the essence of christian perfection which St. Paul means in those words full of love My little children of whom I travel in birth again until Christ be formed in you He would have Iesus Christ formed in us great words which represent to the life the excellency of Christian vertues This it is which I demand of fouls and would cause it to be understood if possible as being of importance to remedy many abuses and
unprofitable things which we meet with in the practise and ordinary exercises of Christians for want of taking hold of things in the beginning and not entring into the spirit of grace for want whereof do we not see many souls who keep most holy constitutions and very good rules others that do frequent actions of vertue many who follow and oblige themselves to spirituall exercises and practises yet nevertheless advance not towards perfection nor have any solid vertue They alwayes labour but never gain any they continually travail but never arrive at their journeys end Though all that they do seems to be done in grace and that as is believed they have not their conscience charged with any sinne yet they profit not in any manner all that can be said of such persons is that they are not the worst What is the cause of this evill whence comes it that they profit nothing amidst so much care and Travel The evill comes from this that such souls have not sufficient recourse nor submission to grace they are not tyed to Iesus Christ they scarce think that there is a Iesus Christ they have no distrust of themselves they seek not God but their self-satisfaction and their particular Interests and which is worse by a secret and dangerous consequence they rely upon their own courage upon their travel and exercises and promise to themselves too much of their own strength and tying themselves to divers practises whereof they make use they tye also their happiness thereto If you demand whence it comes that they have not solid vertues it is easily perceiv'd it is because they amuse themselves much in unprofitable things trifles and exteriour things they enter not into the practise of true and solid vertues they esteem them not and hardly know them if they do practise them it is but superficially they have but the appearance of vertue all that they possess thereof is like the grasse upon the house top which withers away of it self of which we must take heed and carefully remedy it least passing our life so we travel in vain and run without arriving to our end and that under those fair appearances in the most part of our actions we be not of the number of the foolish Virgins of them to whom God saith at the houre of death I know you not for God tells us not every one that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven And certainly there are an infinite number of christians who will find themselves deceived when God shall make manifest the secrets of hearts and judge the justice of men because that believing themselves rich in good works and charged with the fruits of christian penitence they shall find in their hands nothing but wind and shall see in their life nothing but appearances of Vertues And therefore in an affaire so important we must be vigilant to act christianly and to do works worthy of God which shall gain us the eternall possession of God This subject being of high enterprise I will propose the dispositions which seem to be most necessary The first Disposition CHAP. V. Of the spirit of Faith and the necessity thereof THE first and principall Disposition which the soul that will live Christianly must have is Faith He that cometh to God saith the Apostle must believe that he is and without Faith it is impossible to please him This Disposition is not onely the first but cause of all other what the root is to the tree the foundation to the building the mother to the infant the same is Faith to all vertues and to a Christian life Whence on the spirit of Faith depends all the happiness and perfection of a Christian soul or on the other side from littleness of Faith springs all the evil all the abominations in the life of man The soul that is guided by the spirit and light of faith knows what it is to love and what to detest for faith is nothing but truth the spirit of faith is properly the spirit of eternall truth wherein is seen the strength of faith He therefore that hath faith hath the spirit of truth and by this spirit of truth if he possess it and suffer it to guide him he easily discerns good from bad true from false the flesh from the spirit This faith this spirit of truth shews the soul what the God is that she adoreth from thence she is carried on to love him to fear him and to live in a continuall respect of his divine presence Faith saith God is the principle of all being the end and centre of all things that out of him all is but a dream that all creatures are vain that God is in all things that he gives life and being to all that all things depend on him This makes the soul know that she ought to esteem God alone and all that belongs to God that all the rest is nothing but vanity and lies This light and spirit of faith teacheth that God is eternall truth his works are truth his words and promises true and infallible This causes the soul which is guided by the spirit of faith constantly to adhere and strongly to relie on the truths and maxims of Christianity which are the works and the words of Iesus God and man she believes firmly that what he hath said will come to pass what he hath promised is certain the truth that the eternall Father hath revealed to us by his Son are infallible and eternally the Son of God who is the truth uncreated is a God which can neither deceive nor lye Hereupon the soul by this spirit of truth remains indissolubly tyed to all that God hath said and revealed by his Son so as she cannot taste nor understand any humane reason or object she will not hearken nor adhere to any thing but to the truth of faith she will only follow the maximes that Iesus Christ hath left us in his Gospel and imitate the example of his life divine vertues the rest she despises as unworthy a Christian soul which ought not to be guided by nor live but in the spirit of truth and certainly so the Christian must live All the world confesseth that God alone is truth that the onely spirit of God is the only spirit of truth whence it appears that all that is not God and according to the spirit of God is but vanity and lyes This granted how can they live who have any other object then God Here let us make reflection on the point we shall shew how much they are deceived who in matters of faith and in the conduct of their life separate themselves from this spirit of truth to seek humane reason wayes of prudence maximes of wise men who measure perfection and Christian vertues according to their proper sense according to their own spirits such souls cannot but fall into an abisse of errours and doubts or at least such persons
believe little doubt of all things live a life more like Philosophers then Christians and make no great account of a thousand good things which are usefull in Christianity To remedy this they must learn that faith the spirit of truth and the life of Christ must be the onely rule and guide of our actions and life in such manner that to go out of this rule and conduct either on the right hand or left is alwayes to erre from the right way 2. Considering what we have now said of truth we cleerly see how necessary it is to be established in the spirit of faith and to take truth for our object and conduct All other spirits are deceitfull and lying whence it followeth that souls that will live in Christian perfection must commence by this exercise and must necessarily lay the spirit of faith as the foundation of vertue if they would obtain any As faith is the door whereby we enter into the house of God and are made children of the Church so must she be the beginning of the life of a Christian and the spirit wherewith he lives and endeavours to acquire vertue Where we must mark in the conduct of souls how necessary it is to establish them in the spirit of faith and to accustom them to walk in the light of truth This is the first Lesson we must propose to them in this point wherein we must keep and exercise them as that which is onely profitable and without which nothing is stable or true not to entertain and amuse I dare not say to deceive them by so much prudence by the consideration of so many humane reasons and by the example and actions of men a hard case that the devout of this age take so much care to recommend and obtain morall and civil Vertues and mention not nor consider but superficially the divine and necessary Let us learn and say with Iesus Christ that Truth alone shall save us and that truth must be the foundation establishment of our life if we will live true Christians Hence the soul that will arrive to christian perfection must shut her eares divert her thoughts from all that the humane spirit reason and self-love can inwardly represent and must not hearken to them who regard not God purely but measure the greatness of Heaven with the eyes of flesh by the smallness of the earth and speak of vertues and christian perfection according to their own sense more like Philosophers then Christians Such persons by their discourse and conference study to destroy the maxims of Iesus Christ to establish humane prudence and use their uttermost to abase vertue and make it humane In a word they onely labour to make man reasonable not to make him a perfect christian Upon such occasions the soul that seeketh true perfection and will follow Iesus Christ must stand upon her guard and avoid such persons and with great care must prevent humane prudence from annihilating in her the spirit of faith and the esteem of the things of God If it happen that a soul see her self among such persons and shall understand their discourse to be such it will be good at that instant by a sweet elevation of spirit to give her self to God and renew if she can her esteem of Truth in a thought of God renouncing the perswasions of the humane spirit and protesting that she will receive no other conduct or light then that of Faith nor other interiour dispositions then those of Jesus Christ according to the truths that he hath left to his Church If notwithstanding all this the soul remain in fear or trouble of spirit or feel the spirit of faith to diminish in her then she shall give her self more strongly to God and recollecting her self she shall with an humble spirit stir up in the bottom of the heart a confidence in God alone and a diffidence of all things In fine she shall divert her self from all thoughts which trouble the repose of her spirit and captivate her judgement her reason and humane essence to the spirit of faith she shall undergo with an humble patience the pains which she feels contenting her self by an act of her will to subject her spirit to all that Iesus hath said without regarding any other thing and in this manner she shall keep her self united with Iesus Christ and in a secret silence shall imploy her self in him not about the business in question This act is heroick because his disposition is hard and strikes our senses rudely and sometimes it is painfull but it is withall certain and pleasing to God It is not painfull otherwise then as our reason our judgement and the love of our own interests is living in us If we would annihilate all that it would be easie for to overcome and to believe rather in Iesus Christ then in men and our own sense yet must we not whatsoever difficulty we meet with neglect this labour for as the soul hath nothing more assured then faith nothing more profitable or more powerfull then truth so the Devil fails not also all the wayes that he can to draw us from the conduct of faith and to annihilate in us the light and to force us from the adherence to truth if not all at once yet at least by little and little The soul therefore must take heed she be not here deceived seeing all her happiness consists in walking in the spirit of faith and with the light of the truth This exercise is important let us see how we are to behave our selves therein CHAP. VI. Of the use of Faith and how we may practise it THe soul may be guided two wayes by the naturall light of reason which is weak and deceitful ever fallible and by the light of faith which is infallible powerful certain proportioned to that state of glory whereat we aim it is a supernaturall light given by God to guide us to Heaven The first is common to the souls of the World by St. Paul stiled children of the flesh the second proper to souls which live perfect christians who resign themselves to the spirit of God and to his conduct who trust onely in God adhere to nothing but to the faith which they have in the words of Iesus Christ and the Maxims of the Gospel It is the property of a christian to live and guide himself according to the light and truths of Faith lights much above the naturall light of Reason to this end is he made a Christian. 'T is true the way of faith is hard because it captivates the judgement it is above our sense it combates humane reason it is hidden and very spirituall yet must we nevertheless follow and embrace it because Iesus Christ gives it because it is certain and infallible because it is suitable to the wayes of God who leads men in this world through obscurity having reserved knowledge and light for heaven There are who will think that the soul may
must adhere thereto and having adhered to it we must act and do all things in pursuit of this adherence Let us propose an example in common things to facilitate the practice I look upon God I consider his infinite essence I see that in respect of his divine Majesty all creatures are as nothing Having taken and imprinted this thought in my spirit I believe and immediately adhere thereunto saying it is true Then making use of this truth which I believe I despise all that is not of God and that belongs not to God for the act of faith which I performed teacheth me that all the rest is nothing all creatures are nothing before God In like manner amidst my actions making use of the truth that I profess and believe sometimes I despise one thing sometimes another esteeming God onely but accounting all the rest as nothing Thus I act in the spirit of Truth and make use of Faith Let us give an example more common I would form in my self the presence of God by the principles of Faith Hereupon I will rouse up in my spirit the thought of that truth which teaches me God is present every where and thence infer that consequently he is in my heart with the same greatness and Majesty that he is in Heaven amidst the Cherubims and Saints for it is the same God Having conceived this truth I adhere to it and say it is true then making use of it I find my self in the presence of God who is in my heart I hold my self before him in great reverence I walk with recollection of spirit and a sweet application of my soul to God who is present Now I look on him with love next I adore him doing all these actions by the principle of truth This is to make use of Truth The thing is not hard we must onely apply our selves heartily hereunto For according to the measure that we advance and perfectionate our selves in this exercise shall our actions be perfect and performed in the spirit of truth This is a point of much importance I wish I could perswade all christians to it for it is the foundation of true piety and the cause root and source of all good actions CHAP. VII Of the effects that Faith produceth in our souls and of the esteem of God WHen the Apostle saith Faith is the substance of things hoped for he would compare faith to substance and say that as substance is the support of all Accidents so faith is the support and basis of all Vertues and Graces Faith is the first gift of heaven and the eldest of the graces of God she contains and substains all the vertues of Christianity according to the faith in us and the use we make thereof are we vertuous and advanced in Christian perfection As this is the first of Gods gifts so the first care of a Christian must be to compass so fruitfull and profitable a grace This is a talent whereof God will demand a most exact account when we shall appear before the tribunall of his divine justice God gives us not so great a grace but to profit thereby and make use of it It belongs to God alone to give faith to move our will to illuminate our understanding but it is in man to make use of it and to shew by his works the faith he hath received of God In fine what advantage is it to possess faith which is an infused habit and to let it sleep in us to possess truth and to keep it under restraint Faith we say is a supernaturall habit a light of grace we must therefore put it in action and make use of this light to walk forward in the wayes of grace and path of vertue This is the designe of God evident in the mysteries of Christianity the eternall Father sent and gave us his Son the uncreated and essentiall truth to speak to us conduct us in the spirit of truth the Son conversed among men to bear witness as he himself saith unto the truth the same Son of God ascending into heaven sent to us the Holy Ghost the spirit of truth to enlighten us and teach us the truth And why hath God so great a care that we should know the truth but because the knowledge of that might save us and make us free that is that the light of the truth which is the spirit of faith might draw us from vice and sin to lead and confirm us in the acquisition and possession of vertues Look upon a soul guided by the spirit of faith you shall see that immediately she detests ill and embraceth good it is the property of it to engender and form acts of vertue If the soul knows the greatness of God making use of the knowledge of this truth she will presently be carried to a great esteem of God From this esteem springs reverence reverence operates love love brings the soul to God the soul so united by love fears to displease him This fear which is an effect of love brings into the soul a vigilancy not to offend him she loveth but it is to please him in all things This vigilancy forms a purity in the soul this purity renders us worthy to possess God Thus faith summons al the vertues embraces them and binds them all together and as she is mother so is she also nurse of them In brief she is the foundation of the Christian life the nourishment of all good actions This is the meaning of Saint Paul who said The just shall live by faith the reason is plain Faith is a light of truth he then that walks in the light of faith walketh in the truth and to walk in truth is to hate sin which is a lyer This is to live in the practice and possession of true vertue and in the terms of the Scripture to live in Iesus who is the way the truth and the life It therefore greatly importeth souls which will live good Christians and obtain true vertue to establish themselves in the spirit and use of faith to demand it of God and to referre all their good exercises thereunto which is truly the foundation of all the rest the principle the entertainer and supporter of Christian perfection this exercise is very large Faith and truth have effects almost innumerable He who applies himself thereto shall taste the fruits more or less according to his care therein But if we would know the most important where we must begin I answer it is the esteem of God wherein the soul must entertain it self much and lay a good foundation to arrive at this esteem It is not necessary to enter into a high and extraordinary knowledge of God but to make use of the Principles of faith and a frequent loving and affectionate consideration of God we must never speake of God or of any thing that concerns him but in words worthy of the subject with a sense full of respect and reverence
hope must sow in the spirit as the Apostle sayes and do actions worthy so great a recompence This is the way that this third part sheweth where are deduced and advanced those dispositions and vertues which lead us to this estate and to make us perfect Indeed many other vertues might be proposed but these contain all and infallibly guide to the estate God requires of us Faith makes us know and esteem of God it shews us the way to God and leads us to the knowledge of our selves this knowledge draws us to humility that humbles us and disposes us to receive God the good desire if it be efficacious draws us to God purity makes us worthy of God and self-deniall brings to the fulness of God He that hath God hath all he is perfect and he that hath not God is nothing and hath nothing Do what he can though he should do miracles as Iudas probably did he can do nothing that is perfect no work worthy of heaven for it is God onely that works in us the works of grace and who is the principle of our merits which must be well noted therefore he that will be saved and become a perfect Christian must aim only at this point All that we have proposed serve hereunto The first thing demanded is to endeavour to have a good foundation and a sincere uncorrupted interiour to conduct us according to the principles of Faith and the maximes of Christianity to regard God in all things to please him or at least not to displease him with particular care to annihilate the spirit of Adam and the spirit of the world for they are enemies to God they can no more dwell together then Iacob and Esau. After all these dispositions the soul must depend upon God and be wholly left to his operations and conduct and be very vigilant to shew her self faithfull to correspond with the graces and operations of God and not to withdraw her self from his conduct and the order he would take with her This last point is of great consequence and deserves to be a little more insisted upon for it is the last touch we shall give to the Image of a perfect Christian. We must observe that in the order of grace it is not as in the order of Nature In nature that which is most dependant on it's cause is the most imperfect as the sound and voice which is so dependant on its cause that it ceases to be when it ceases to be produced In nature that is esteemed most perfect which hath the least dependance It is otherwise in the state of grace that is most perfect which is neerest and the most dependant on its cause and principle God so that he that tends to perfection must be in a great dependance on God and not act but in this disposition and by a generall resignation of himself to God To put and establish himself in this estate he must have a pure regard of God that is he must hold all of God and have no other object but God in his thoughts or actions When he perceives any care desire motion c. arising in him which he believes not to be of God he must annihilate and renounce it protesting to will nothing but him and the accomplishment of his divine will A soul that would live in resignation and in a true dependance on God must live in the unity of the object that is having regard only to God herein consists the true dependance whereof we speak she must not go out of this disposition to regard what she doth or what she shall do not so much as what may happen to her upon any manner of occasion she shall have all care possibly that she enter not into these thoughts contradictions and afflictions wherein she is or which may happen to her but she must receive all from the hand of God with gentleness and patience regarding him as the Authour of all things and submiting her self in all and by all to his most amiable will saying with a fervent spirit What have I in heaven or what have I desired in the earth besides thee my Iesus It is not sufficient for her to be in this interiour disposition nor that in prayer or her good desire she remain in this nakedness but she must also walk in the spirit of simplicity by an exteriour conduct abandoning and remitting her actions and affairs and all manner of success to the good pleasure of God with a perfect confidence in the love and divine providence of Iesus not seeking in any thing either satisfaction or profit much less cansolation but desiring purely to please God and to be wholly to him according as he hath ordained her To make this disposition more perfect she must not onely submit her actions to the pure will of God but also all her secret and smallest motions as well of nature as of grace that so she may be wholly resigned to God and in a bare and simple dependance It is not necessary that she regard her progress and advantage nor that she desire to be perfect but onely that by esteem respect and confiding in the love of Iesus she abandon her self entirely and purely to the care and prudence that he hath for her To conclude as the soul most purely walks in the wayes wherein God will lead her so must she also endeavovr to follow the light of Faith and maximes of Iesus Christ which shall serve her as a guide thus shall her heart become pure and neat having no other intention nor other hope but to be to God and to please God caring for nothing else she shall fill her spirit with a great esteem of God and respect to his greatness and the infinite power of the divinity and sense of her own meanness and in the spirit of humility abandon her self to Iesus Christ to be wholly to him and to live altogether in a dependance on his holy will and divine Ordinances The soul living in these dispositions it will be easie to avoyd all sorts of disquiets she shall remain in a holy indifferency she shall not trouble her self with her ordinary imperfections neither take care to change or not to change to converse hold or be conducted by this or that She shall be so little sensible of parents her friends her desires yea the supernaturall graces and all things that her onely regard being to God on whom she depends and to whom she is wholly abandoned her only solace end and contentment shall be to please him and to leave her self to the perfect and pure submission of her will to the conduct of God and his divine wisdome For want of this disposition there are many alas too many who live in disquiet perplexity and agitations of spirit The want of this vertue causing so many complaints and repinings so many inward and outward difficulties among souls who follow devotion so many cares doubts desires and propositions which proceed not from the
perfection that we possess nor from solid vertue whereof we have not one grain but from self-love from adhering to our own wills from wamt of mortification and most commonly from secret vanity We fall not into these evils but because we have not sought God purely but our selves and our own satisfactions and for not endeavouring the possession of solid and Christian vertues The remedy of all this you shall find in the Image of a perfect Christian which I here present to your view Consider the vertues which imbellish him labour to attain them see the dispositions wherein he is how pure and solid they are endeavour to enter into them and concern your self therein and I am confident that you shall find a stable peace you shall put a Paradise into your heart you shall find in all that hath been said the foundation of this pourtraict and the interiour of a perfect Christian. THE FOURTH PART Sheweth how we must guide our selves in all occurrences and in all estates of humane life CHAP. I. Of the care a Christian ought to have to perfect his exteriour TO draw the last lines of our perfect Christian we must present likewise his outward appearance for therein also consisteth his perfection The interiour and the exteriour are two estates so conjoyned and dependant one upon another that the perfection of a man cannot be intire if those two estates are not in all things conformable One is the image of the other and as the ancient divine Philosopher said Beauty is a flash of goodness as all flowers and leaves take their beauty from the root so all that is outwardly fair in man is but a beam of his inward goodness the fruits and leaves of his perfect and vertuous actions are but the effects of the root of inward perfection Inward perfection begets the outward one cannot be without the other Good if it be perfect must be such in all parts if one fail this defect takes away its vertue and makes it vicious Man is a whole composed of parts neither all soul nor all body but consisting of both To be good he must be perfect in both in the soul the interiour in the body the exteriour in the actions of the one as the faculties of the other St. Ambrose speaking of the Mother of God the pattern of vertue saith that her exteriour Beauty her demeanour and the actions of her life were images of the vertues and incomparable perfections of her soul and although Iesus Christ by the Mystery of the Incarnation meant to hide the greatness of his Divinity in the lowness of our nature and hid himself thirty years in an obscure life yet it alwayes appeared from time to time nor could he avoid it but that his face his body and actions discover'd what he was Nor indeed could it be otherwise for the exteriour can have no good but what it borrows of the interiour as of its root and the interiour cannot be perfect but the exteriour will bear and manifest the effects thereof Vertue if it be true hath a lustre like the Emerald which sparkles in the obscurest night it can no more be hid then fire can be retain'd in the bosom of the Earth which will force a way to its centre or the light of the Sun be clouded by any shade so thick but its beams will break through So likewise is it impossible for a man to have a good vertuous interiour and the splendor of his vertues not appear to the eyes of men through the most secret of his actions This is the intention of God and a sign that the vertue we have is heavenly for it tends alwayes to its centre And as the needle touched by the Loadstone is in perpetuall motion till it hath found her North So the soul touched by the vertue of Heaven is alwayes in action seeking every where till she have found her God Men light not a Candle to put it under a Bushel God gives not vertue to smother it he will glorifie himself in his Elect. If our vertue be of God it will manifest the effects thereof causing it self to be honour'd and acknowledg'd For this reason they who have any sense of Heaven who love the truth and walk sincerely never approve those who dissemble in the World and appear evill or lesse good not regarding the exteriour so they have a good intention let the rest go as it will It is sufficient they say that God knowes them they alwayes condemn those who out of reasons of state or private considerations outwardly appear either evil or indifferent hide themselves when they pray dare not communicate in publick or do any act of vertue in view of their Neighbours We must not indeed endeavour to be seen much lesse to be esteemed or affect the sight of men but on the other side we must not fear them We are oblig'd to have an exteriour as well as an interiour and we must please and honour God as well by the exteriour as by the interiour Every one will grant that it is not allowed any to be good and to appear evill it is scandalous nay further it is impossible to be good and commit evill actions for a good Tree cannot bring forth evill fruit If we live in the spirit saith St. Paul let us also walk in the spirit he meanes our life is a life of God for spirit with St. Paul signifies God and if our interiour be truly perfect according to Christian perfection whereof we have sufficiently spoken our exteriour actions must also be in spirit and in a divine spirit and must bear the image of God who lives in us This may be more clearly understood by the advice of the same St. Paul we walk not saith he speaking of good Christians after the flesh but after the spirit He then that will be a good Christian must order his outward actions according to the spirit of God who lives in us not after the flesh and the World enemies to the spirit of God To be vertuous and to do acts of vice to have light in the heart and to do actions of darkness to be in the Temple of God and to sacrifice to Baal can neither be comprehended by man nor approved by reason To desire to please the World and to be circumcised and worship the Moon is to be a Samaritan God loves simplicity sincerity and curses the double heart He then that will be a perfect Christian must have his heart in his hands and his hands in his heart if he esteem God truly in his heart he must shew it in his works if he fear God in his soul why doth he not testifie it in his actions what can we love thee well O God of our souls yet make shew to hate thee Can we have thee in our hearts and thy enemy the World in our hands and mouth No no a Christian if he fear God at home in his own house will fear
conduct of God THe Creature by the condition of it's being subsisteth only in resigning it self to the conduct and will of God for as it belongs to God alone to give being to all things so is he alone the preserver and governour of them Whence as the creature bears God in its depth and its centre so it bears in the same depth a capacity all that he operates in and by it which capacity the Philosopher calls obedientiall power whereby all that is created is left to the power of its Creator and resigned to his conduct Man must be subject to this indispensable Law he cannot exempt himself from this subjection whereto he is bound by the necessity of being created a necessity so absolute in what estate soever he be in this world or the other in time or eternity that he must be subject to the power of his Creator whether in the rigour of his Iustice or in the sweetness of his Mercy and though his depraved nature cause him sometimes to separate himself from his God to live in the disorder of his own will contrary to the order of God yet he cannot absolutely withdraw himself from the order of his divine providence nor avoid the arm of God who comprehends all things disposes them and causes them to arrive to the end that he hath proposed them for this order and power is so generall that the malice of men cannot be exempted from it so much is the creature subject to the conduct of the Creator Necessity exacts it of us the Laws of love and acknowledgement oblige us thereto and that very strictly For God who hath a particular providence and an extraordinary care of man conducts him also and loving him excessively becomes his Father King and Prince his All that being all things to man man may the more willingly resigne himself to his loving conduct not by constraint or necessity but through a spirit of freedom by an esteem of his love by a holy and loving election These truths no man can be ignorant of yet we make no use of them for man despiseth the conduct of his God shuts his eyes to the light of grace neglects his most wholsome Laws his certain counsels his divine motions withdraws himself from the disposall and conduct of God to adhere wholly to himself to his own thoughts and inclinations to the suggestion of his own spirit to follow the false maximes of humane prudence the motions of his passions the alurement of self-love The perfect Christian must take heed that he do nothing inwardly or outwardly but according to the order and conduct of God Man in all his actions and motions must necessarily be either in the conduct of God or of himself if he adhere to one he is opposite to the other for those he conducts are in themselves absolutely contrary The conduct that man takes of himself is a turning from God a way that separates us from God and quite loseth us The reason of this is the state of man after his fall whose spirit is turned from God subject to the Law of sin bearing the seed of all faults and errors He is so engulfed in this state of misery that he cannot get out of it though he endeavour all he can if Iesus Christ draw him not out of it he cannot return to God if the Son of God do not lead him No man cometh unto the Father but by me Now man who follows his own conduct his own inclinations motions and will withdraws himself from the conduct of Iesus Christ and as his spirit is turned from his God by the law of sin so he withdraws himself from the conduct of Iesus Christ by his own will and actions How can he but turn from God and separate himself more and more from him and that so powerfully that so long as he remains in his humane condition he shall never be able to return to God nor do any thing that may lead him to God if he do not resigne himself to the conduct of Iesus Christ to be aided by his grace and mercy This is the meaning of the words of Saint Paul when he said The carnall mind is enmity with God for it is not subject to the Law of God neither indeed can be and that to be carnall minded is death since he loses himself who governs himself by his own spirit and onely follows his own conduct All the divine Oracles cry out to us and experience teacheth us that the greatest evil that can happen to man is to be left of God and abandoned to humane prudence to his own motions naturall inclinations and will For a man so abandoned of God lives a dangerous life and must expect a miserable fall Wo saith God to them when I shall be separated from them wo indeed yea a threefold wo seeing that when God leaves a soul to its own counsels motions inclinations and will she is at the same instant made captive dragg'd and led in triumph to her passions and appetite for the passions will and inclinations of men are rebellious and hurried by the Law of sin Now from the time that man is abandoned and the conduct of Gods grace withdrawn from him he can be no other then rebellious falling into a thousand errors and will infallibly lose himself if God have not pity on him and call him home Therefore for God to abandon us thus to our own conduct and will is the greatest evill that can arrive to man the greatest punishment whereby God can revenge himself of the sins of men My people would not hear my voyce saith God being angry and Israel would not obey me so I gave them up unto their own hearts lust and let them follow their own imaginations And St. Paul assures us that Gods most rigorous punishment of the ingratitude of men hath been to leave them to their own desires and appetites God gave them up saith the holy Apostle to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts It imports him therefore who would be a good Christian and make his salvation sure to forsake his own conduct to annihilate his inclinations passions appetites to confound his own will to withdraw himself from the conduct of humane prudence and from his own reason to follow the conduct of grace which is above reason and illuminates and guides that he do nothing but according to the spirit law and will of God To be guided by the spirit of God we must separate our selves renounce the conduct of humane prudence and annihilate our own wills Our prudence and reason is faulty in every point for in as much as it comes from us it separates us from God as much as it can Humane nature and the will of man in the corruption of sin regards onely it self not God its supernaturall end the will inclines to self-love and cannot advance it self to a true love of God if it be not guided and aided by
to advance them to perfection worthy of the purity and sanctity of Christianity and which may render them worthy of God and capable to enter into the glory that God hath prepared for them to all eternity This conduct must not be indifferent but the same with that of God The Director must not guide after one manner and God after another for so the poor soul were lost or tyranniz'd over He that giveth counsel must take heed that the matter he treats of have an immediate respect to the order and designs of God over our souls and consider that he is upon either the ruine or establishment of grace and works of God a point of great consequence which makes us see what they ought to be whom God hath established in so high an office and who enter into so sacred a ministry He that will conduct and counsel a soul must know the designes and conduct of God over this soul he must consider the order God keeps to govern it that it is great and hidden in God that it is a secret to us and that the soul cannot without much difficulty know it It is necessary that he who conducts and counsells be full of grace and light that he strongly adhere to God who is the Father of lights otherwise what knowledge or experience soever he may have he will be deceived in the conduct The more he shall be able and experienced the more he shall be in hazard to deceive souls for though knowledge and experience be necessary yet must we not confide therein much less presume thereupon for God abhors the presumptuous and forsakes those who are over-confident of themselves In the conduct of souls there must always be new succours from heaven and new lights He who would conduct or counsell another in that which concerns his conscience must remember himself that he is an Instrument of God that he must not either counsel or act in this soul but what God will establish therein Moreover he that conducts a soul and who giveth counsel must consider that in truth and in conscience he ought to have no other intention or desire then to follow the very truth to establish the Kingdom of God in the soul to lead the soul to God and to do in that soul the work of God according to the intention of God and to establish nothing therein but what God will For which reason he is obliged to labour much to the end that he may annihilate in the soul of any Christian whatsoever hinders the work of God and kingdom of grace and for his part he must have a right intention and pure regard of God not respecting or desiring any thing but his glory seeking neither honour nor esteem favour nor advantage of those whom he conducts And truly if we consider what it is to conduct a soul in the design of God and to conserve it in the order which God hath appointed it from all eternity we shall see that it is no indifferent business but the most noble and most important of all and that we must apply our selves thereto with exceeding great charity with purity of intentions and a zeal to Gods glory for it is for this that principally they who conduct shall render an account Hence proceed the evil which falls out when those who conduct lead and counsel souls negligently and with indifference without endeavouring to find out what God requires of them in what state or condition soever they be and without troubling themselves to establish therein the Kingdom of God and of his grace and we see in what danger souls are when they conduct them according to their own sense or lead them by those wayes give them the same exercises form them by their own spirit and which is worse mold them to their own humour We must proceed quite otherwise for souls have different wayes and are called to divers states of graces as they are predestinated to divers degrees of glory and consequently he must conduct them according to the designes of God which he must endeavour to know and according to their vocation and he must comport himself in the conduct of every soul in the same manner as if he did know from point to point the decrees which the eternall wisdom hath formed upon this soul and all the particular wayes whereby God leads them To know things so secret and so hidden it is needfull to have the spirit of God to use much prayer and to have a great purity of intention I say purity of intention For he who takes upon him the conduct of souls and will counsel and direct the consciences of men must take heed that he follow not his own spirit that he think not of his own interests that he seek not his own satisfaction and suffer not himself to be carried away with complacency and naturall motions and inclination For in such a case he may be assured that it is no longer God that conducts the soul nor the Spirit of God that governs it but it is the spirit of man and by this manner of conduct he shall not establish the grace or kingdom of God but the flesh the kingdom of sin He who conducts holds the place of God both in the soul and in the conduct so that this were to do great wrong to the grace power and Majesty of God If we say there is danger in the soul that conducts it self that follows her own spirit self-love inclinations humour and will which Saint Paul calls the desire of the flesh we must also affirm that the danger is greater when he who conducts suffers himself to be carried away with his own inclinations and onely follows his own will and spirit And if the Christian be obliged as we have shewed to seek nothing in all his actions but to please God if he must have a particular vigilancy to establish the Kingdom of God in his soul to cooperate with his work and to remain in the order wherein he conducts him with far greater reason he who conducts a Christian soul in any profession or condition is obliged to have the same vigilancy the same purity of intention and regard of God which he ought often to consider From all these truths we may easily comprehend how much they are deceived who are guided by their own nature according to the inclinations and motions of their own spirit without considering what Iesus Christ demands of them without any regard of the grace that God presents unto them yea without taking heed to the state whereto God hath called them As likewise their error who can bear nothing but what is pleasing to them nor agree with any but those that flatter them and suffer them to live at their own pleasure and who best accommodate them to their inclinations desires humours and such things which are but too too ordinary All this is dangerous and an evident mark that such souls seek not God nor true vertue but
inclination thereto It is a fault ordinary enough and which we must avoid because our soul must be free and not tyed but to God onely and to his pure will For as we ought to do nothing but for God and by the Spirit of Iesus Christ which is the true and onely spirit of Christianity so we must not act by our own inclinations or passions Whence they are deceived who employ themselves in those actions which they are most inclin'd to and shun those they fear and embrace most willingly the occupations and exercises whereto their inclination carrries them Thus we see some have an inclination to exterior penitence others to compassion and some to penance one is prone to the love of things regulated another is pleased with solitude and the like And we know that ordinarily every man follows the motions and most willingly chooses the manner to live according to his inclination It is a great advantage and gift of God to have received a good soul as the Wise man saith but to embrace the good and do it's actions because the inclination or passion carries us thereto though they be good this is not to act Christianly on the contrary this is to live bruitishly for beasts follow their passions or at best to act but humanely when the inclination is conformable to reason He therefore that wil do a Christian action must take a supernaturall principle which is grace and never do his actions because passions and his inclinations carry him thereto but onely because it is the will and order of God upon him and because such actions are acceptable to God Thus he that will live Christianly must never undertake any thing which he believes is not the will of God if he do any good action he must do it for God if he choose a manner of life he shall regard God onely and strive to do only what is most perfect in him most conformable to the life and actions of Iesus Christ and most contrary to his own inclinations and naturall affections But if he find himself in doubt or perplexity and if he desire to judge his actions his resentments and intentions to know if they be good and truly Christian then shall he have recourse to Iesus Christ who is the chief truth and rule of our lives and actions he shall demand light of him and taking Iesus Christ for the object of his life and the truth for his rule he shall consider whether his intentions and actions be conformable to the truth whether they be like to those of the Son of God whether he act in the perfection and purity that God demands of him according to his vocation and conformable to the sanctity of the estate of Christianity The Christian living in this manner shall become acceptable to God shall arrive at the perfection which God requires of him and shall do all his actions with the purity he ought which is the Principall point of a Christian life CHAP. X. Of Sufferings and the esteem we ought to have of them TO act and to suffer are the two estates of the life of man and like two Pillars sustain him He that will live perfectly must know the use of the one as well as the other as he must act Christianly so must he suffer Christianly that is holily and in a manner worthy the estate of Christianity This is that which we have left to examine and is the last draught of the Picture of a perfect Christian. We have already spoken of his foundation of his interiour of the purity of his actions it remains that we treat now of his sufferings This is a point which we must look upon as the most essentiall in Christianity for suffering is the first state which a Christian must expect and wherein he is to continue We are born in sufferings we live in solitude among temptations and shall die in pain It is the portion of humane life the most ordinary food of our souls It behooves us therefore to know how to make use and profit thereof He hath made a great progress in perfection who can suffer and bear couragiously all that can befall him such a one God owns as a friend Fire tries gold and silver but men are tried in the Furnace of humiliation Here the fidelity of our soul appears for the Christian ought to follow Christ as willingly to mount Calvary as to mount Thabor In brief here the purity of our actions and intentions do best appear what we do of our selves be it in penitence good works or otherwise is for the most part full of our own spirit and evil it follows our inclinations it is in regard of our selves and our own Interests proportioned to self-love and for the most part concerns our selves But in all that happens to us we shall find nothing but God if we know how to lay hold of him when he puts forth his hand unto us To learn so good and profitable a Doctrine we must propose these truths for a foundation First if we consider God as soon as his wife providence embraced all the world his divine eyes surveigh'd all things his infinite wisdom ordained the whole and his wisdom sayes the Wise man stayes in his force from one end to the other and sweetly disposes all things and he not onely ordains and disposes all but he makes all the good and the evil life and death poverty and riches come from God Now the works of God are holy his will is just his decrces equitable his ordinances amiable and above all things we must adore and seek his good pleasure What remains then but that we receive all things from the fatherly and loving hand of God that we kiss the hand that strikes since it is the hand of God that we bear with an humble and quiet submission all events be they painfull or easie good or bad prejudiciall or profitable and we must entertain them not onely with an equality of spirit and inward peace but with respect and essence as coming from God nothing being done but by his order It is just we should esteem this conduct as the conduct of God and subject our selves to it not onely with patience but with respect and honour for all that comes from God must be highly esteemed Souls that live enlightened by faith and walk with the spirit of truth hold it a great honour and much esteem sufferings as being the work of God and the effects of his will which we ought to honour and esteem as well in sufferings as in quiet in privation as well as fruition in evil as in good for in all it is the will of God a will adorable to be esteemed above all the world a will more worthy then the life and salvation of all mankind We must not regard the evils and sufferings in themselves but we must consider them in the will of God There we shall see what they are and the esteem that God
have this Disposition perfect the soul in its sufferings eversions and humiliation and in all the contrarieties of humane life must have no other thought nor interiour state but to suffer because it is the pleasure of God she should suffer This I call a pure regard of God she suffers onely to praise God onely because God hath delight to see her suffer and wills that she should suffer This Dispositition is the state that the Wise man calls the Sacrifice of the Holocaust a sacrifice killed and layd whole on the Altar as the holocaust is all consumed and annihilated to the glory content and honour of God alone without the Creatures having any part therein so the soul suffering in this pure regard of God sacrifices her self wholly to God and is wholly consumed in the good pleasure of God without her bringing or receiving any other intention thought or state wherein her happiness doth consist For God seeing the soul suffer onely for his content and good pleasure gives her a sufficiency and capacity to suffer with so much liberty and amplitude that she no longer regards what she suffers nor thinks more of sufferings but only thinks to do the good pleasure of God So that she undergoes not sufferings with pain but with love and with a disposition that beares in it more of love then of sufferance in the suffering it self resigning her self wholly to God and to all the effects of his spirit and grace how vigorous soever they may be thinking no more of sufferings but believing and loving and in this disposition love is the life of sufferings and sufferings are the object of love of a love pure and perfect To suffer according to divine wayes may yet be understood in another manner when in sufferings mortifications and humiliations the soul is such to God and so firmly united that all things in the World are painfull to her all is unsupportable to her and her own body causes her to sigh and lament saying with the Apostle We groan within our selves waiting for the adoption to wit the redemption of our body Every where she findes contrariety and the more she lives in Iesus Christ the more she feels the weight of the Creature all her repose is to be Gods she seeks not nor findes any thing but pain and contrariety for she findes all her pleasure all her repose and content to be in the good pleasure of God In this disposition the soul must be really lost in God for she no more beares all the adversities of humane life but according to the spirit of God with a divine patience that is in the same manner that God beares them or if you will in the spirit wherewith Iesus Christ suffered our nature our sins and the Worlds a patience which we must adore and imitate in Iesus Christ for he did not onely beare them but also which is admirable in the excess of his love gave his life a divine life for our sins and by the same patience bearing the contrariety that his divine and infinite essence hath to all impure and limited creatures he acted with the creature laboured and died for it This patience of Iesus Christ is the beginning and cause of our happiness this patience is the cause that all the just and holy that ever were in the Church militant have born all adversities with peace and meekness this patience must alwayes make us to suffer all the rigours of this life but after a manner so much more perfect and divine as the soul hath received of grace and is advanced in the way of perfection according to the measure that the soul is possessed of the life of Iesus Christ to the same measure the spirit of sufferance must be pure in her and she must remain more resign'd to the designes of God more divided from all Creatures In this point consisteth the principall subject to be examined whereby to know the fidelity of the soul. He that would know the way to make use of this divine spirit must learn it of Iesus Christ who is the rule and example of our life and actions all that he did all that he suffered had relation to the glory of his Father to the exaltation of his name to the establishment of the Kingdom of God in our souls In a word he lived in the World and dyed upon the Crosse onely to do the good pleasure and will of his Father My meat said he to his Apostles is to do the will of him that sent me This was the end of his coming and of his incarnation Let us do the same and remember that as we must have purity of intention in all our actions so must we in all our suffering have a pure regard to the will and good pleasure of God When we shall suffer whatsoever it be let us suffer it because God permits it or so appoints it or because he will shew his power over us and will be glorified in our subjection Let us not regard our own interest but undervalue all things in respect of the glory of God Let us endure them onely in regard of God since it is his will since he takes pleasure to see us in sufferings and in the Crosse and that he will shew his power in our submission Let us reduce all our intentions hither they may be good but this includes all the rest In this disposition Iesus Christ prepared himself for the Crosse and presented himself to his Father to be the offering and the sacrifice of the holocaust a propitiation for our sins Thy will be done said he and no more let us say the same in all events let us settle the foundation of our soul in this estate and disposition To this we must add a remarkable admonition for those who will profit by sufferings humiliations and other adversities of humane life and bear them with faithfulness And that is this that in all conditions of life in all that may happen to us we must endeavour to find out if it be possible the designes which God hath over us in all that he does or permits to be done and we are to be very carefull to receive them and co-operate faithfully with them For as God in all he does or permits hath alwayes some design worthy of his greatness and goodness so is it the duty of the soul to submit her self thereto to subject her self according to all her capacity that with an intire consent she may act with God if need be and receive with fidelity all things according to the designes and intentions of God as for instance There happens losses and ruines we are to see if God by these losses would separate and sever us from the Creatures If it be so we must accept them with this disposition and make it our endeavour to sever and deprive our selves of the love of all things created because that by the losses and disgraces which befall us we see that
where sin had abounded that love might triumph over us Let us then descend to the particularities of grace and examine the properties and effects thereof The grace which we receive and sanctifies us is the grace of Iesus Christ which flowes from his fulness and communicates to our souls grace which is not onely supernaturall but was made for Iesus and is proportioned to his Soveraignty and infinite dignity whence we are called Christians It hath all its being dignity and residence in Iesus it is above our nature and in the rank of supernaturall things in an order soveraign and particular worthy of the soveraignty of Iesus and proportioned to his Filiation order and grace very different from the originall Iustice which was given to the first man For though the grace of Adam were supernatural yet was it an order very inferiour to Christian grace being proportioned to his nature and inclinations in the state of innocency All men as well as Adam had been sanctified in the order and according to the order of nature and in the naturall uses thereof But it is not so in Christian grace for that is not proportioned to the nature of man but above it wholly in Iesus wholly for him it issues out of him and by an effect proper and particular to it drawes us from our selves to unite us to him as members to the head and being united sanctifies us in Him in such a manner as that we are no more in the quality of men and Children of Adam but as Children of God and members of the Sonne of God and by a grace proper to the Sonne of God of whose fulness we have all received Whence we infer that he who would be sanctified and partake of Christian grace must be united to Iesus Christ as the branch to the Tree the graft to the stock the members to the head and if united must also be one with him as the head and members make up but one body and consequently by reason of that unity must not onely partake of his grace but also his spirit and life in the same manner as we say the members move not themselves nor live but by the life of their head This being considered we see that to live Christianly it is not enough to say that we must be in grace but we must live in the spirit and life of Iesus for grace produceth this effect for as much as by the same principle whereby we are united to Iesus as members to their head we must live his life and be guided by his spirit And as it is the property of Christian grace to unite us to the Sonne of God so is it the effect of the same grace to rule us by his spirit and to make us live his life wherein appeares how perfect the life of a Christian in grace should be how exemplary and holy his actions must be how regular his motions and how pure his intentions seeing it is a life of grace which unites us to the Son of God which making us one with him causes us to live in his spirit and life Let us enter further into the consideration of grace and we shall see that according to the Apostle Grace is a participation of the divine nature These words contain the excellency of Christianity and describe all that can be said of grace The Apostle implies that we are accidentally what God is substantially and that which agrees with God and is proper to him according to his divine nature is appropriated to us and may be convenient for us according to the spirit of grace so that by grace we are elevated from our own baseness to the fellowship of Iesus Christ and we are put out of our selves to receive a new being in God Can any thing be said more admirable or great If we reflect on this truth we must needs confess that to live according to Christian grace and bear it's effects in our souls we must go out of our selves and be no more our own nor in our selves When we say we must go out of our selves we would intimate that the Christian to live like a perfect Christian must regard nothing but God mind no Interest but that of the glory of God please none but God have no desire but to accomplish the will of God In brief he must renounce himself and the love of all things to love none but God To live so as to go out of ones self is in two words all that we have proposed in the fourth Part. This is a Point may be thought hard and too high yet the practice thereof is necessary according to those words of the Son of God He that will follow me let him deny himself where we see how much a Christian is obliged to renounce all and to go out of himself after the manner we have declared which will appear more cleer if we consider the essence of the Precept of love for the love of Christianity is a love says Dionysius the Areopagite extatick that is to say it raiseth us to a contempt of our selves and all things to unite us to God who is essentially love and charity so that by the perfection of Christianity which is in the love of God we are drawn from the love of our selves and the creature to be onely God's and not to enjoy our selves in any thing but in God Thus which way soever we consider Christianity we find that both love and Christian grace causes us to go out of our selves to unite us to God and make us partakers of his divine Nature The SEQUELE FRom the Principle of Truth last explained we learn the great difference between the state of Innocency in Adam and the Christian righteousness in Iesus Christ for Adam had a power over all things it was permitted him to enjoy the whole world and to rejoyce therein Original righteousness and the grace of the first man was in that and in the lawfull use of all things but Christian grace is quite contrary for God wills not any more that man rejoyce and content himself in any thing but in him that he live not but for him that he alone be his possession and heritage Besides the state of Adam was in exaltation in the possession in the satisfaction and pleasure that he might lawfully take in the creatures that were subjected to him during the time that he remained in obedience to God But the state of Christianity is wholly opposite it consists altogether in privations in humiliations in dejections and in summ it devests man of all power even that which he hath of himself that he may be wholly Iesus Christ's that separating himself from the creatures and from himself Iesus Christ might be his All and his Fulness that by Christian grace he might enter into society with Iesus Christ and by him with his Father according to what the beloved Apostle promised us when he said That your fellowship be with the Father
other thing without abuse of the gifts of God if not for Iesus Christ and according to his designe and intentions This is St. Pauls meaning when he says You are not your own and again you have no power on your selves This power obliges us to refer our selves wholly to Iesus Christ the first thought and thing to be done in Christian piety being to believe we have no right to our selves but are wholly Christ's and having conceived in the depth of our souls this belief to have a vigilant care that in our life and actions we draw not our selves from the power of the Son of God to make use of our selves and the creatures to our own content and particular interests For according to the principle of Christianity we have no right to appropriate any thing to our selves This belief is the ground of true piety to Iesus Christ which Saint Paul teacheth saying The Son of God died that those that live might live no longer to themselves but to him who died for them On this truth we ought often to reflect For as the foundation of it consisteth in a true dependance and love to Iesus Christ in respect of his soveraign power over us so the principall care of him who seeks true piety must be to continue in this dependance to live with such fidelity that he appropriate nothing to himself either as to his life or actions or yet of the creatures and assuredly he must make great account of this care and fidelity But whereto serves it To bear in his heart a sensible desire to belong to the Son of God and every day to renew his resolutions and good purposes What doth it profit our soul to have the knowledge of so high a truth if in the actions of humane life and exercises of piety we withdraw our selves from this dependance on the Son of God to apply us to our selves and seek in our own business and exercises our content and satisfaction This were by our own actions to belie the resentments of our soul to profess piety and follow impiety to bear a double heart to have vertue only in the mouth For if we are truly devout we can not but be Iesus Christ's and if we are his our principall care will certainly be to continue our dependance on him not onely in that which concerns our condition but in all the dispositions intentions actions and circumstances of our life The same Principle operates in our souls a second effect of piety in that our life and actions belonging properly to the Son of God as their beginning and end ought accordingly to be submitted to his divine conduct to be ordered after what manner he pleases according to the power of his spirit and the light of his loving communications It is but reason that all good depend on him from whom it proceeds and that we be ruled not according to our own wills which are blind and transported with affection and self-love but according to the intentions of Iesus Christ who is the cause and ought necessarily to be the rule thereof Thus the second interiour estate whereto the Christian who seeks true piety must arrive is a Resignation of himself to the conduct and direction of the grace and spirit of Iesus Christ that being so subjected he may perform all his actions in a pure regard to the Son of God according to his divine intentions This Resignation if true makes us bear with patience and inward peace all estates we may possibly arrive to it gives us liberty of spirit capacity and strength to follow and embrace that only which is of God and according to God it puts us into a great fidelity to the motions of grace in such manner that according to the measure of our increase in this resignation we advance in Christian piety and live with greater liberty and fidelity of soul. This indeed appears something difficult and many believing it an estate onely for the most perfect pass by it as a thing impossible for them But if we consider well we shall find it easie and acknowledge it common to all souls who live in grace To do an action of piety we must be aided by the grace of Iesus Christ which encourages assists us in all good works so necessary that without this grace we can neither think nor act any good He then that will be devout and live in the exercise of true piety must have this grace whence it follows he must cooperate with it and give himself up to be conducted by the spirit of Iesus Christ who will operate that good woâ—k in him otherwise it will be impossible for him to live well since that without grace we can do no good No man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost saith Saint Paul for it is grace that doth all in all and therefore we say he that will live according to true piety must take care to resigne himself to the conduct of this grace and with great circumspection become faithfull therein The Principle of devotion consists in being faithfull to the graces and motions that Iesus offers and inspires us with Herein we must take great care every one according to his state and vocation Whence we easily learn that true and essentiall piety to Iesus Christ doth not consist barely in actions of homage and honour or in giving our selves to him by certain practices and employing us in severall exercises though in it self all be profitable but the true essence and ground of this devotion consists in the dependance of our soul on Iesus Christ and in a true subjecting of our life to his conduct by a faithfull cooperation with his grace and motions this is the ground and state of true piety to comprehend which we must consider that all we do is acceptable to Iesus Christ onely because we are his all our actions and exercises as good being derived from his grace inspired and conducted by his spirit We may do a thing two wayes according to naturall motions and inclinations of the old man or according to the motions and holy inclinations of the new man Iesus Christ if what we do though it seem good be according to the motions and inclinations of the old man it is but of little value being at the most but naturall and humane actions But if it issue from motions of grace then is it truly Christian Hence we say the foundation of true piety consists in the subjection of the soul to grace and the conduct of Iesus Christ for if Iesus Christ do not conduct the soul by grace nor direct her by his spirit she can do nothing considerable Hence it is that many deceive and flatter themselves in their imperfections passing their lives in the practice of many exercises neglecting the principall and thinking they do wonders when they do nothing because all their actions are rather effects of their own inclinations humours or self-love
is onely expected that Christians dispose themselves to participate of this happinesse and being called thereto endeavour to correspond faithfully therewith God doth the same in the regency of his Church the Sonne of God making use of his power hath established therein severall estates orders and societies separated from the common and from one another which he consecrates and appropriates to the severall estates and Mysteries of his life Some honour his solitude and hidden life others his penance others his poverty others his obedience all adorn and beautifie the body of his Church and in the diversity of their functions and estates honour adore and imitate the severall operations and Mysteries of the life of Iesus Christ who distributes his spirit and the grace of his Mysteries to all according to what manner he pleases He doth the same in the particular Government of souls he causes and calls them to elevate and establish them in such estate as pleaseth him sometimes by sufferings sometimes by privations one while by love another by simplicity and infancy In a word he estates them as he pleases to be honoured by them one and the same spirit according to St. Paul working all things dividing to every one severally as it pleaseth him The same Apostle represents this truth under the similitude of a humane body all are members of the same body animated enlivened with the same spirit and yet they have all their several offices and functions particular and different The case is the same saith this holy Apostle in the Government of the Church which is the body of Iesus Christ whereof all christians are members though all make up but one body and are the animated onely by the spirit of Iesus yet are they called and employed to particular estates and in all there is a difference of gifts and operations but it is but one spirit and one God who does all in all they are different effects of one and the same principall cause It is the same Iesus who chooseth the souls to communicate to them the graces and divers estates of his life How happy is that christian who is called to this happiness Herein consisteth the perfection of the soul as in things naturall we say that the Creature is most perfect when it most participates of the being life and perfections of God so in the state of graces that soul is most perfect which participates most of the graces of the divers estates and qualities of the Sonne of God This grace and favour is not for every one and farre above the ordinary The Sonne of God doth not call all souls to a participation of his life nor alwayes communicates to them the spirit and graces of his Mysteries Yet the christian who would live in a solid piety and adherence to Iesus Christ and would feel the effects of his divine communications must desire this favour and earnestly demand it He must often reverence and adore the life thoughts designes Mysteries and estates of the life of Iesus He must offer himself with all his heart to the power spirit and grace enclosed in those divine Mysteries In a word he must carefully remove from his soul all hinderances and inclinations opposite to the designes and operations of the Sonne of God But above all he must continue constant in subjecting his soul to the power and will of the Sonne of God He that will practise all this must make these uses following The first is that the soul always resigne her self to the power of the Son of God than he may make in her and by her all that he will for his glory This resignation to be perfect must be grounded upon a freedom of spirit a freedom which is the true spirit of the children of God and consisteth in an estate of indifferency and independency as to all things as well in the order of nature as of grace and being subject to God onely by this freedom all things in the world are indifferent the soul remaining in a pure capacity of submitting to whatsoever the Son of God will operate in her and by her giving her self up wholly to his divine power This liberty of spirit is the principall estate and first ground of Christianity for all Christians belong to the Son of God and are left to his power One died for all saith Saint Paul that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him who died for them Teaching us that as the Son of God gave his life for us and by his excessive charity delivered himself to the ignominious death of the cross to do the will of his Father so he hath right and power to choose and consecrate us by his grace to offer us an Holocaust of sweetness and honour to the glory of his Father that as he hath been the victim of our sins we may be the victims of his love Hence it is evident that the Son of God hath power and right to put our souls into what estate it shall please him for his glory be it an estate of life or death of privation or abundance of confusion or honour and may choose out souls and advance them to the participation of the mysteries of his life to render to him particular homage and service We must then resigne our selves wholly in all things to Iesus Christ. To establish us in this disposition the liberty of spirit whereof we speak is absolutely necessary For when it hath separated us from all things nay even from our selves it puts us into an amplitude and capacity to be all that God will have us to be and to bear the effects of his grace and power And therefore the Christian who seeks to establish himself in true piety and live with fidelity must endeavour to conform himself in this liberty of spirit for it is difficult nay impossible to adhere to Iesus Christ to depend on him and faithfully to receive the operation of his grace if we are not in this liberty of spirit that is an independency as to all things This is the spirit and disposition that God requires in a Christian according to the Apostle That the spirit we have received be not a spirit of bondage but of liberty and adoption This first disposition leads us farther and advances us in the wayes of piety and puts us into a second disposition by which we accept with humility and submission all the estates and effects that the spirit of the grace of Iesus Christ shall operate in us and bear with patience and obedience whatsoever rigour and difficulty we meet with Having so received them we are also bound by this disposition to act according to the quality and extent of grace communicated to us and to live conformably to the estate whereinto the Son of God puts us We must remain firm in that subjection and liberty of spirit we speak of In this use consisteth the peace and liberty of the soul For
exercise of piety that we ought to perswade all Christians to and is grounded upon the principles of Christianity which teach us that all the effects of grace be it of God towards men or of men towards God relate to Iesus as their principall support prop and foundation for it is by him that the eternall Father gives us all in as much as he hath chosen the holy humanity of his onely Sonne as an instrument conjoyned to the Divinity to operate his works of grace in Heaven and upon Earth By him he receives the homage and adorations of his people and of all men in Heaven and Earth Hence it may be inferr'd that all is grounded upon Iesus all subsists by him that all may be united to him and by him to the Father Iesus must be the onely object of our thoughts resentments and obligations Upon this truth we ought to make often reflections for God hath subjected the World to our use and given us his Sonne the Sonne I say out of an excess of incomparable love becomes wholly ours that by a mutuall right we may be wholly his and by him the Father's that we may say to him in piety as he said to his Father in love All that is mine is thine and all that is thine is mine Yea my Iesus thou art mine by thy Incarnation thou art mine by the Mysteries of thy life mine thou gavest me thy spirit in Baptisme thy body in the Eucharist thy glory I shall have in Paradise and thou mayst say truly that what is thine is mine So order it then that I may say to thee with as much truth and fidelity as thou hast expressed affection in giving thy self to me that whatever is mine is also thine my being my life my actions my love all thine but much more truly then my own for it is in me but by thee and for thee I will then from this present and to all eternity be wholly thine and my being my life and my actions all that I am shall be ever referred to thy glory Hence we are to conclude that the first design and intention we are to have in our devotions is to refer all our actions to the glory and honour of the Sonne of God to remember him before we think of our selves to seek his glory before we look upon our own Interests or necessities Herein the greatest part of Christians at this day are deceived not onely those who in the exercises of piety seek the honour and esteem of men and aspire onely to vanity and a fleshly spirit but even those who seem to follow the exercises of piety with most love and purity For they believe they do much in seeking the occasions of merit and employing themselves in what promotes their spirituall advancement and taking some relish and enjoyment therein whenever there is occasion they make it their onely businesse their principall employment it takes up their chiefest thoughts and what is worse they often place their end therein and are perswaded that they have attained a high and perfect degree of piety imagining themselves rich in merits and far advanced in the wayes of perfection and that they may serve God with delight He is blind who sees not the danger those are in who live thus for while they think they serve God they principally mind their own profit and if the business be well examin'd you will find they change the glory of God into their own particular satisfaction the end of their exercises being their own content and interests of whom we may say with the Apostle They love and seek themselves and make a gain of Piety To reform this universall and dangerous abuse we must consider that as the esteem and spirit of true piety consisteth in loving honouring and serving of God in order to an adherence to him and a dependance on his divine will so the motive object and end we are to have in our devotions must onely be the honour love and service of God and a complyance with his amorous conduct The Christian therefore who would live in the exercise of true piety must first by a voluntary subjection adhere to the power and conduct of the Sonne of God as we have already shewed and further refer himself wholly to the honour and glory of Iesus in as much as we are his and by him God's and render to God the honour and service we owe him According to this advice the perfect Christian must have a continuall and vigilant care so to order it that his life and actions may be accounted worthy of Iesus Christ as being such as shall contribute to his glory after the manner he would have it which is to be done thus CHAP. XI The Use and Practice of what hath been proposed WE have elsewhere taught what was to be done to render our actions worthy of Iesus Christ it is not necessary to speak any further of it We are therefore only to remember that all our actions must be Christian to be worthy of the Son of God and consequently must be holy and to be holy they must be accomplished in the spirit and by the principle of grace the Holy Ghost the spirit of Iesus our actions to be Christian must be done in the spirit and dispositions of Iesus It remains onely that we see how we may honour him by our life by our actions and in all things whereof we propose two ways One is in regard of our selves when we live and act in a disposition of will wholly submitted and directed towards God and by right and pure intention referre our selves and all our actions to the Son of God offering our selves so to him as not to live or act any thing but for his honour and glory The other is in regard of the Son of God when he vouchsafes to apply and honour himself in us after what manner he pleaseth causing us to live and act in the power of his spirit making us to bear the effects of divine will in continuing the designs he hath over us to take in us his pleasure and glory According to this later way the soul acteth not but accepts and keeps her self in the regard of the Son of God as the subject of his divine operations and therefore must onely be attentive and faithfull to that which he doth in her and by her obliging her self by a submissive acquiescence to all he doth be it enjoyment or privation rest or pain change or destruction accepting his conduct and consenting to all the effects of his works in her out of a confidence that he will establish all in her for his glory This advice to souls who endeavour to live in the grace of God and seek Christian perfection is of so great consequence that to fail in this point is to fail in all God is in us by grace he is there to operate not onely by himself but by us for he is the common principle of life and
A SPIRITUAL TREASURE Containing Our OBLIGATIONS TO GOD AND THE VERTUES Necessary to A Perfect Christian. Author Written in French By Iohn Quarre Englished By Sir THOMAS STANLEY Kt. The Second Edition LONDON Printed by T. R. for Thomas Dring at the George in Fleet-street near Saint Dunstans Church 1664. To the LADY STANLEY MADAM WHAT You here receive is due onely to Your self it being the Product of that contemplative retirement to which my dear Father resign'd the two latest years of his life The Author is highly esteemed in his own Country and hath met with so good Reception in ours also that he already seeth a Second Impression which in this Age not a little commends a Treatise of this Nature Vpon this occasion I was sollicited by the Stationer to acquaint the Reader by whom it hath been so kindly entertained with the Name of the Person to whom he is indebted for the English Edition And having herein satisfied the Importunity of the One and the Curiosity of the Other it rests onely I present it to Your Ladiship together with the humble Duty of Madam Your Ladiships Obedient Son Thomas Stanley PREFACE UNder the name of Sprirituall Treasure behold the Image of a perfect Christian which I here present thee Devout Reader It hath taken the name of Treasure because it contains as in a hidden mine the highest divine truths of Christian Piety it is a Pourtract of Perfection the Image of a true Christian or all which the Sonne of God hath left to his Church And those which I propose to you in this Treasure represent a lively Image of that perfection whereto we are called and by the grace of Christianity conducted Perhaps you may remember that this Book hath heretofore appeared under the same name but it was upon another design For then it treated onely of some particular Vertues such onely as serve to subject the soul to the guidance of God and the spirit of grace It had then no other object but the resignation of the Creature to the will and work of the Creator Now it is universall and withdrawn from a limited subject speaks in generall explains the Principles of Christianity and describes the principall Vertues necessary for a perfect Christian. As for the stile it is concise confining it self to the truth which it exposes the most plainly that may be despising all Ornaments of words since truth hath so much lustre of it self as she need not borrow of others The World perhaps will not hearken to it or suffering it to speak will not understand it for its Doctrine is too divine its Principles too high That which it proposes is wholly contrary to what the World professeth And it is much to be feared that many will dispute it considering that falsehood and malice have taken such deep root in the greater part as loving nothing but vanity and unwilling to consent to truth We live in an age so corrupt that even Christians many times fear to be good least they should be persecuted and are ashamed to appear vertuous least they should be derided Hardly can it promise it self a better reception amongst them that make profession of Piety for there are many that seek nothing but their own satisfaction in the most holy things self-love hath such absolute power over souls that they flatter themselves in every thing believing all to be good which is agreeable to them and on the other side seeming Devotions have so much applause among men that it will be hard to perswade the contrary So that our perfect Christian who speaks here purely of Truth and truly of Piety cannot easily avoid the various censures of men For as he speaks Christianly for his stile is in the spirit so he condemns freely all that is not worthy of God in the purity of the spirit which may appear strange and those who confide too much in themselves esteeming nothing but their own actions will soon condemn this manner of Discourse But what remedy shall we therefore injure Truth no she will appear before the eyes of men in despight of the World and although she may meet with spirits little capable to receive her yet it is alwayes good to expose the Image to the view even of her greatest Enemies for by this meanes they will be forced seeing her to confess they have no vertue that they walk in the night of untruths and perhaps they will apprehend their own misery and be afraid to loose themselves And if there are any who think themselves already arrived at the highest point of perfection flattering themselves in their own esteem when they shall here consider the excellencies of Christianity the purity of the spirit of grace and admire the designs of God upon souls and see what is necessary for a perfect Christian they will open those eyes which self-love had bewitched and acknowledge that their actions come far short of their own esteem of them and then humbling themselves even to the centre of their nothing they will resolve to seek God to serve him in spirit and truth after a manner worthy of God However they who take the paines to read this little work will see that many deceive themselves to their great mischeif and will learn that it is not a small matter to gain Heaven for to such only is Paradise open and that there is required more purity and vertue then we ordinarily propose For if the life of a true Christian be a life of God in man if true perfection be an amorous possession of God what purity what vertue must there be in him who will possesse so rich a Treasure pretend to an estate of divine This is a point you must consider of friendly Reader as being that which ought to be the only object of your actions For if you will open your eyes to see what God requires of you if you will rest your thoughts upon the excellencies of the state of Christianity you will learn that your heart must be the Throne of the most holy Trinity who will establish his Kingdom therein your Soul a Heaven where God will glorifie himself your life the life of God who lives in you that you may raign with him To conclude you shall know that you are onely in the World to please God and to do his will in the purity of his spirit alwayes holy is not this an affaire of great importance If for your satisfaction and profit you desire to comprehend what I say and to know the motives and obligations that you have to love and serve God perfectly Read the two first parts of this Work the third and fourth shew you the way you must keep and the Truths that are necessary to live a good Christian the last gives you a pattern of true piety Read and you shall learn how to be a good Christian. A TABLE of the several Chapters treated of in this Book The FIRST PART Of the Divine Prerogatives whereunto man is
Christians have a new being a new life which honoureth and imitates the new life of Iesus in his holy humanity springing from this as its source and principle For as the word unites it self to our nature in the Mystery of the Incarnation replenisheth and dwells in it as in his proper body consecrates and elevates it to all the Grandeurs of his divine Filiation so the same Iesus unites himself not personally but by a new Grace and after a singular manner proper to the state of Christianity consecrates us dwels in us and advanceth us to the communication of the rights goods and greatnesse of his filiation and would have us O excesse of love to be that by grace which he is by nature which he would have not onely to be accomplished in glory but in grace not onely in Heaven but upon Earth where we are truly Sons of God and in that quality henceforward we enter into alliance with him we have right to his heritage and which is more O that we would consider it he gives us power to call God our Father to look up to him as such to relate to him in this quality in further assurance whereof he gives us his spirit This St. Paul teacheth when he saith Ye have received the spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father the same spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God It is an effect of the mystery of the Incarnation and priviledge and excellency of Christianity Let us deliberate further upon it St. Iohn summing up the graces received from God in the Mystery of the Incarnation ranks this the first for it is the foundation of the rest saying To them he gave power to become sons of God If you would comprehend some part of this great favour think that as there is nothing in Divinity greater then to be the Son of God by Nature so but to be God himselfe nothing is greater then to be the Son of God by grace St. Cyprian admiring in God the title of Father sayes It is an ineffable name containing the Mysteries and Secrets hid from our spirits incomprehensible by our understanding If then to be Father in the Deity be a thing the most mysterious and ineffable that our souls can imagine by consequence to be son of such a Father is a favour and dignity incomprehensible The beloved Disciple causeth us to admire at this great benefit when he says Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God and be such in effect St. Iohn Damascene speaks to this purpose That the eternall Father sent his Son into the world to produce Children that should be such to him by Grace as Christ is unto him by Nature and therefore in pursuit of this Commission the Son of God from the time that he became the son of man hath created by his power begotten by his love and acquired by his merits and given by his Spirit many children to his Father who can breath nothing but glory to his Father and no longer live then by his Spirit and Life But to search with greater admiration into this Truth we must consider the manner by which he creates in us so divine a work We must observe that in Baptisme we not only receive grace and faith by the habituall vertues and gifts of the holy Spirt but are also marked with the Character of God received and owned as his children The manner whereby God effects this is admirable for as the Father hath sealed Jesus Christ with his Seal and made him his Son communicating to him his Essence and making him altogether equall to himself so Jesus Christ doth comunicate to us what he himself is marketh us with his seal makes us and owns us as children and makes us as it were another himself Wonder saith Saint Augustine and rejoyce brethren we are made of Christ. In pursuite of this benefit the eternall Father hath given us the Spirit of his Son which dwels in us according to the Apostle What can we think to be greater If we go further herein we shall find that we are not advanced to this admirable estate of being the children of God by any simple acceptation or by bare ceremonies but by something more reall that passeth into our souls as Saint Paul implies by these mysticall terms Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us It is not for our works saith he that the washing of regeneration and renewing of the holy Ghost that the spirit is given us by Jesus Christ and that Jesus is sent upon this design by the eternall Father three circumstances worthy great consideration To conclude the greatness of this benefit let us observe with Dionysius the Areopagite that we are advanced to this divine estate by a new birth and divine regeneration which the Son of God operates in us in the bosom of the Church our Mother to the honour of God and in imitation of his eternall generation in the bosom of God the Father CHAP. IV. Of the uses the Christians ought to make of filiall adoption whereto they are advanced by Baptism THe Truths that we have treated of are high and would require a large Discourse but that our designe being to prescribe the practice of filiall Piety we will only represent as much as is necessary to manifest what we are and what our life ought to be in conformity to so eminent an estate First then we must take notice that in the Language of the Scripture a Christian is a new Creature in Iesus and according to the word of the Son of God a man if he be a Christian must be born again of God and consequently must have a new being worthy such a birth Now according to the order that God hath established in all things we say that the action and operation must be conformable to the being Whence it follows that the state of a Christian being a holy divine estate that makes him the Son of God as truly by Grace as Jesus Christ is by Nature his actions also and life ought to be wholly divine and conformable to the state of the Son of God This is the Doctrine of the Apostle who saith Be ye followers of God as dear children This Principle granted we must see what benefits we can derive from thence The first is a contempt of this World for it is the heritage of the children of Adam condemned by a determined sentence and a day of execution appointed when by the Justice of God it shall perish in a generall Conflagration Let us then despise this heritage of Adam and seek that of the children of God Heaven or to say better God himself Say with Jesus Christ with a sound heart My Kingdom is not of this world Remember that you must keep the rank of the Sons of God
as Princes of the Blood And as the Princes of this world do maintain themselves in their Estate and that greatness which their Birth allows them so do you couragiously maintain your selves in all rights due to you by this new divine Birth O how great and sublime is it if you behold it with the eye of Faith The rank you are to hold with the Creatures of heaven and earth is the same with Jesus Christ who accompanies you to his estate and greatness the grace of the Son of God which you receive as a Christian giveth you right to his heritage If children saith Saint Paul then heirs of God and joynt-heirs with Christ. Now the bosom of the eternall Father is the only heritage of Jesus Christ there is his eternall dwelling there his repose there the seat of his delight the Throne of his greatness Even this is the rank you ought to keep there ought to be your repose your delight in the fruition of this onely happiness Remember that the bosom of God is the place destin'd for your eternall dwelling a place of glory and permanent felicity God only is your heritage undervalue not him for transitory vanities of this world forsake him not for the whole world unless you would be for ever miserable Admit this truth farther into your heart believe it not an imagination of a new Piety 't is the foundation of Christianity the ground and principle of the state of Grace which considering intentively you will wonder to see Christians confess these truths and hope for so great a good yet become so blind as to suffer themselves to be deluded by deceitfull vanities and vain illusions of the creatures to sell their birth-right for a mess of pottage and whilest they pretend to be the children of God glorying in so divine a being to live like the children of men thinking of nothing but the earth The second benefit is a great desire of Paradise sighing daily thousands of times after our heritage Heaven bewailing the want of and demanding the liberty promised and due to the children of God In this thought of our Celestiall Sion our sweet Countrey we grieve to see our selves so long in a strange Land It is hard to attend with so great impatience a happy day a good hour an honour which we are made to hope for yet we are without sense in attaining it the true and ineffable joyes of Paradise Great God! can it be that the Manna of Heaven should not cause us to loath the Onyons of AEgypt How long children of men how long shall we have hearts of Adamant insensible toward the things of Heaven yet open for the transitory goods of this cursed earth to love lying to follow vanity to despise eternall truths There cannot be a folly more condemnable Let us open our eyes and grieve to see our selves so fastened to the creature so confident in vanity so little relishing and esteeming heavenly things Let us be ashamed to see the children of heaven eat the food of Swine in a strange land not remembering the abundance of all things in their Fathers House Thirdly we learn that we must live nobly like the children of God Let us take heed we dishonour not our extraction and degenerate from the place whence we came Let us keep the rank we have received in the House of God The Emperor was derided for it who past his time and life away in catching Flyes let not us do so amusing our selves about the creatures and only labouring here for earth since we know all in the world is of less value then a Fly and that in the sight of God the universe is less then the least Atome Let us rather imitate that other Prince who invited by honour and the greatness of his birth would never run nor play but among Kings his equalls Applying this to our Subject let us say that a Christian being the child of God and consequently Prince of Heaven ought to expect no heritage but Paradise to seek no other company but Saints and Angels to take no content but in Iesus Christ endeavouring to follow him in all to imitate him in all since he hopeth to raign with him These Truths deserve to be deliberately considered Saint Cyprian in a Discourse upon the Ascension raises them higher saying That Christians as children of God are obliged to be like God The same is the Doctrine of Saint Paul Be ye followers of God as dear children The reason of this Precept is evident for if as children of God we will enjoy his glory to eternity the possession and the heritage of Iesus Christ and become one with him must we not necessarily be like him in purity in perfection in sanctity If we will possess God in God and live eternally in the bosom of God must not our life be wonderfull our actions holy if we will merit an estate so perfect and holy Nothing is more just Herein appears the Christian estate so great divine and perfect in that making us children of God it gives us right to the heritage of God obliges us to lead a life worthy such an heritage By this principle we see how much they are deceived who think and speak meanly of Christianity or living a life common to the children of the world promise themselves the heritage of the children of Heaven Let us teach them how they ought to live and shew what the actions of their life ought to be who call themselves Christians CHAP. V. What the Actions of Christians ought to be SEeing the state of Christianity is so eminent that it advances the soul to a filiall being so divine it follows that the actions of Christians ought to be eminently devout and perfect This truth is proved not only by the common principles that the life and operations of every thing ought to be conformable to their being but likewise by another maxime of Christianity that a Christian receive all by Christ and in Christ and as the Apostle sayes of him and though him and to him In pursuit of this Principle all the actions of a Christian ought to be done in the Spirit of Iesus and in respect to God which makes them high perfect and holy High as proceeding from Christ its principle Holy as being wrought in him perfect and pure as being wrought for him such actions we truly call Christian. To explicate this more particularly we must observe that a true Christian action must be done in grace in the spirit in the dispositions wherewith Iesus Christ performed his actions during his wayfaring life yet in a different way for the son of God as God and man did act after a divine manner proportioned to the eminence of his estate To work after this manner is proper only to him to this we cannot arrive neither must we aspire unto it but we are obliged to act after a manner very near this and the highest that can be excepting this For the
manner that we ought to observe in our actions springing from the son of God must by consequence be very like it So a Christian action should be that which is made in the spirit of God that Iesus Christ hath borne upon the Earth accomplished in the holy and perfect dispositions of the Son of God himself By this only Circumstance we may judge of the difference of our actions for all that we do without the spirit and without dispositions agreeable to an action worthy of God is to do nothing or very little such actions ordinarily proceed but from a naturrll inclination or which is worse from the instigation of our own Lusts and Love of our selves Let us farther consider this Truth which will seem hard or new to those who know not the excellency of Christianity who never regard the purposes of God who are ignorant of the mysteries of their salvation When the life and actions of a Christian are said to comprehend their perfection you must remember that the Sonne of God came into the world not onely to communicate to us his grace but to dwell in us and give us his spirit and life to give them to us not onely to justifie us and as we say to put us into the state of grace but to be in us to dwell there to be the beginning of a new life and new spirit in us and to give us dispositions proportionable to such an estate This the Apostle teaches when he sayes that the eternall Father hath put the spirit of his Sonne into our hearts and that the spirit it self beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God whereby we see that being justified by the state and grace of filiation and divine adoption we live in the life and spirit of God which is made our life and spirit which is in us dwells in us governs us inlivens us and is the Principle of our Actions makes them pleasing to God supernatural and worthy of Paradise Thus the life of a Christian according to the determination of God is far above all lives a being above all beings I leave you to judge what the Actions of Christians ought to be proceeding from a principle so holy and divine You will find all the very reasonable and admire the bounty and wisdom of God in this Conduct of our souls if we will consider that the eternal word was made man that by debasing himself he might render to his Father an honour worthy of God he came upon the Earth to establish by the merit and by the spirit of his Crosse the Kingdom of God in our souls and to make us worthy to serve and honour God after a manner worthy of God For this cause he advances unto himself he consecrates our lives and actions by his Death and blood and that they may be referred worthily to the honour and glory of his Father he unites himself to us communicates to us his life his spirit and dispositions to make us capable to praise God according to his greatness which we could never do if we did not take of him and from him this power and disposition This he gives us when he dwells in us by the grace of filiation and divine adoption whereto we are advanced when we are made Christians Hence we see that Christian Actions ought to be holy perfect and divine that a Christian Life ought to be the very life of Jesus Christ living and working in him by his spirit His actions his inward dispositions must be a lively image and perfect expression of the actions and holy intention of Iesus Christ. But alas we think no more of these Truths Christians are become so blind that we may well complain and say with the ancient Philosopher That the life of man is spent either in doing evil or in doing nothing or in doing preposterously what he ought to do To undeceive our selves of these common abuses to enter farther into the knowledge of the state of the grace of Christianity and to see more evidently what we ought to be let us further remember that as Christians we are members of the Sonne of God he is our head a head that infuses life in us In this quality he hath right to live and act in us as our souls act and live in our bodies This consider'd we must say that as the essence and excellency of a Christian consisteth in his being a member of Iesus Christ so the perfection of Christian duties is that they are operated by Iesus Christ living and operating in us as his members I say not onely that we must imitate the Son of God and do all our actions in Grace that thereby they may be called Christian but also that they ought to be with the same intentions and spirit wherewith Iesus Christ did act on Earth which he communicated to his Church and to all his Our Actions ought not only to be good and reasonable but to be worthy of the Son of God our head whose members we are Therefore they must be animated by his life guided by his motions and regulated by his intentions seeing that to this end he giveth us his spirit and life to be our spirit and life and that he gives us freely abundant grace in him and by him to accomplish all our actions This is of great importance for which we shall one day render a strict account when God shall judge the uprightness of men by so extraordinary a favour Certainly he will examine and punish the ignorance the contempt and abuse of so many graces which he hath acquired for us by his travells and cross and offereth us with so much love and bounty This will appear yet more evident if we consider the common belief of all the faithfull who acknowledge that the life and actions of a perfect Christian ought to be actions of grace Let us therefore examine what the Essence and Dignity of this grace is for supposing that the life of a Christian is a life of grace we must necessarily grant that our actions by consequence ought to be conformable and correspondent to the sanctity and dignity of the grace which gives them life sanctifies them and advances them since they must be proportionable and semblable to the cause We know that the grace which sanctifies and gives life to our actions is a grace made for the Son of God that from him it flows into us that we are not replenished and enriched but from his bounty This granted our life and actions must be holy and perfect by the same sanctity and perfection which is in Iesus Christ which is lovingly communicated to and engrafted in our souls sanctifying enlivening and perfecting our life and actions When we say that this Grace comes from Iesus Christ we express in this alone the excellency and dignity of it For to know the dignity and eminency of the grace of Christianity it suffices not to say as we commonly do that it
is supernaturall because in it there is nothing singular For the grace given to Angels and to man before his fall was also supernatural We must say that the grace of Christianity is a grace made for the Sonne of God and consequently worthy of the greatness of the Sanctity and divinity of the incarnate word this makes it the raiser of an Order and gives it a being much different from the first and from the order meerly supernaturall This gives it a being and order as different from the grace of the Angels as they are from Iesus Christ as the sonne from the servant Now applying what we have said that Actions ought to be conformable to their Principle we conclude that the actions of a Christian being sanctified and enlivened by the grace and spirit of Iesus ought also to be wholly conformable to Iesus Christ their principle being more then humane more then angelicall conformable to the purity and sanctity of the grace of the Sonne of God worthy the Labours of his Crosse and death To this end St. Paul adviseth that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called words that deserve to be considered since that God will demand an account of us of his favours and benefits and will judge our actions and lives according to the dignity of our vocation according to the perfection and sanctity of his Grace in brief according to the life of Iesus Christ which alone ought to be the rule and Law of Christians Furthermore we must consider the rule of God over our Soules wherin we may admire the wayes and meanes whereby the divine bounty and infinite wisdome of God uses to give us graces necessary to accomplish our actions in that perfection and sanctity that he requires I intend not to speak of the secret and unknowne means of the graces inspirations motions and speedy succours wherewith God is pleased to illuminate our Spirits to enflame our wills and to direct all the motions and actions of our life But I desire only to insist upon the consideration of the Sacraments that the sonne of God hath left in his Church as channells by which he continually powers out this grace into us Baptisme consecrates us to the most holy Trinity makes us the children of God members of Iesus Christ Temples of the Holy Ghost and holy Vessells which bear Iesus Christ who dwells in us And the Eucharist which is among the Sacraments as the Sun among the Stars gives God to us and with him all the greatness of heaven elevates us and unites us to God changes and makes us little gods What would ye more Why is God think you so profuse of his gifts of his graces of himself but to operate in you all that I have said to give you a life and actions conformable to the being whereto he hath elected you Let us weigh these truths at our leisure and study to attain to the perfection that God requires of us Let us take care that all our actions be holy and worthy of God and let us not be carryed away by the humour or rather by the infidelity of such as ignorantly despise these important truths and necessary exercises The third Prerogative CHAP. VI. Of the happy Commerce and Society that Iesus Christ will have with Christians by the Mystery of the Incarnation THe holy Trinity having consecrated the Christian by Baptisme adopted and received him as a son enters into a particular society with him and by divers Mysteries which the eternall Word hath operated upon earth God enters into a Communication with men lives and converses with them So Saint Paul speaking to new Christians Ye are no more strangers and forreigners but fellow-citizens with the Saints and of the houshold of God Let us stay here to contemplate this benefit Adam being fallen from the happy estate of grace by his rebellion against God no sooner tasted the Apple of disobedience but he felt the punishment of his sin and was at the same time driven out of Paradise and banished the happy commerce and holy familiarity which he had with God This exile was the greatest rigour wherewith the divine Iustice could take vengeance on his sin This separation made his estate miserable and the condition of his children most unhappy We should in this malediction and just divorse for ever have continued if the Son of God had not come to re-establish all things to return us to God and to restore us with much advantage all other happiness that we lost by sin So that as the Apostle saith where sin abounded grace did much more abound for we enter into a familiarity and communion with God far more holy and divine then that of Adam by Iesus Christ we converse with God go to him are with him worthy the Spirit and Grace of Christianity Few value this truth men who only follow their own wayes nourished with earth onely to whom the delicates of heaven are unsavory can never relish this grace nor be sensible how much the presence of God is necessary Therein appears the corrupt estate of this Age all creatures resent the presence of their Creator Nature it self hath engraven in the bottom of our essence a desire of the presence of God The most barbarous Nations forced only by this instinct in the blindness of their false Religion sought esteemed and desired some visible mark of the presence of those they call their gods None but those of this Age have an indifference to these truths forget God mind onely their own actions in this world and are ignorant of the happiness of Heaven and despise it To awaken and draw us forth of this darkness consider that Faith teaches us that the happiness of the Saints consists in seeing themselves to be in the company of God and the greatest recompense God promises to our travels is to make us partakers of his glory to raise us to his greatness to enter into an eternall communion with us I will saith Christ to his Father that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am implying the society and communion of God with us and promising that eternity shall never separate him from him that serves him Now if the happiness of the blessed in their estate of glory consists in the presence and familiarity of God we cannot doubt but the happiness of the just upon earth consists in knowing how to preserve themselves in this desireable familiarity and presence of God The intent of the Son of God at his coming into the world and becoming an Inhabitant thereof was to sanctifie it by his presence and establish his power therein and dwell with us to the end of the world as he promised at his death This is it that he wrought by the mysterie of the Incarnation making himself man to live among men For this cause in the Sacrament of the Eucharist he becomes the food of man communicates to his abundant graces inriches
us with his gifts that by all these endearments and singular favours he might separate us from the creatures and reduce us to a divine society and communication with him Let us consider these two mysteries of our Faith and Love mysteries which give God to us and cause us to dwell with God The last is the mysterie of the Incarnation a mysterie of Love an eternall mysterie for God shall be man and man God for ever a mysterie causing God to live the life of man and man the life of God which between God and man effects an union and society so divine and intimate that he could not do any thing more holy nor desire any more intimate since it is substantiall and personall and shall subsist eternally Entring further into the consideration of this Mystery we shall see evident signs of this holy Communion God makes here a new World as the Scripture calls it a World of Grace and of holiness a World which he governs by a new conduct and providence For whereas before God confining himself within himself spoke not to the World but by his Prophets now by the accomplishment of this Mystery he comes out of himself speaks to us and instructs us by his Sonne Four thousand years he guided the World and his Church onely by his Angels the Interpreters and Oracles of his divine will Now Iesus guides his Church by himself he infuses holy motions into our souls by his spirit alwayes holy he governs all is present with all and is found by all What presence or commerce with God would you desire greater what greater society then that of the word by the Mystery of the incarnation To know it more particularly consider these Circumstances First in this Mystery God lives the life of man and man the life of God a life of society a life humanely divine and divinely humane for Iesus is God and man in Iesus we adore and acknowledge two lives one of God in man another of man in God Secondly by this ineffable union God communicates himself to man and by this communication appropriates to himself all that is of man with such wonderful wisdom that not dishonouring his divine greatness he takes upon him all the lowness of man and subjects himself so really to our infirmities that we say God is dead God is born c. and man by a happy exchange is lifted up to all the greatness of God inthron'd in the bosom of the eternal Father where he eternally enjoyes the proper glory of God Let every tongue confess that in Iesus Christ by that hypostaticall union accomplished in the Mystery of the incarnation man enjoyes the glory of God his greatness light and life Thirdly As for the life and divine mysteries of the Sonne of God we see he presented it to us the space of thirty three years conversing with us as one of us was an Infant in his first appearing laboured in his youth did live and eat with sinners in his wayfaring life He disdained not to succour the infirm in his miraculous life In a word he resigned himself into the hands of sinners a Sacrifice and was offered a holy offering on the Crosse for the sins of the World O wonderfull he died between two Thieves in the company of men so much pleased with the society and commerce of men What Religion ever had the presence of its God so visible what being was ever advanced to so great an honour To none but the Christian is this great favour granted a Commerce so sacred that it makes man God and God man By the ineffable mystery of the incarnation God unites the Earth to Heaven and Heaven to Earth The God of Heaven dwells upon the Earth according to that of St. Iohn The word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us all nature rejoyced at this happiness St. Iohn transported with love and joy representing to the world the truth and excellency of this benefit saith It is the same God that we have heard that we have seen with our eyes which we have looked on and our hands have handled So true is it that God by the mystery of the incarnation is with us and converses amongst us after a society wholly divine and onely proper to the state of a Christian. CHAP. VII Of the uses Christians ought to make of Grace proceeding from the Mystery of the Incarnation IN pursuit of these proposed Truths what may we judge to be the intentions of God but that his will is that we should enter into a holy and divine society with him and that we should separate our selves from all that may hinder or prophane this holy conversation with him since that Iesus Christ thinks of us converses with us by his divine mysteries unites himself unto us and abaseth himself to be as one of us to be among us we ought likewise to think of none but him to love none but him to converse with none but him and like the Apostle dwelling upon Earth to have our Conversation in Heaven Iustin Martyr shewing what Christians ought to be saith Christians are in the body but they live not according to the body they dwell upon the Earth but their Conversation is in Heaven This God requires of us this we ought to be in the state of Christianity this is the use we ought to make of the spirit and grace flowing from the Mystery of the incarnation But alass it is pitty that Iesus being now revealed unto us living with us and amongst us we apply thereto so little of our selves of our thoughts and of our love and busie our selves in things so small prophane and mean even such as are unworthy of man Let us do like him Love made him forget himself to converse with us let us come out of our selves and forget all things that we may raise our selves to him that all our content may be in him Moreover the state of the Grace of this Mystery obliges us to be holy seeing Iesus Christ with whom we converse is holy The Apostle says as he that hath called you is holy be ye also holy in all manner of conversation speaking walking working and whatsoever you do He that lives after any other manner saith St. Cyprian then holily dishonours the title of a Christian and is a reproach to Iesus Christ. Let such as believe not sanctity necessary for all Christians as well as those who live included in Cloysters consider these words We see in the Mystery of the incarnation that the Sonne of God enters into Commerce and society with us dwells with us is cloathed with our humanity God is made man that man might be made God not by simple denomination as God said to Moses I have made thee a God to Pharaoh and Kings in the Scripture are stiled Gods but really and by a being which deifies them For as they are true Children of God by Grace and as truly children by Grace as Christ is
of the gifts of God and the favours wherewith the powerful hand of the Divinity had so liberally inriched him and degraded him of all honour and put him into a condition of meanness impotence and error This goodly spirit of man or rather this man all spirit is now nothing but flesh this beautiful Soul which breath'd for nothing but Heaven entertained it self so deliciously in the knowledge of infallible Truths and was inriched with contemplation of the greatness of God as with Divine Dew and heavenly Manna after so deplorable a fall obstinately links himself to the perishable goods of this World believes in lies seeks after vanities and can no more elevate himself to God so miserable and impotent hath sinne made him O unhappiness which cannot sufficiently be bewailed Man who by the happiness of his creation had eyes to contemplate onely his Creator and converting himself wholly to him had no heart but to love him no spirit but to adhere to him after so fatall a cast wholly turn'd away from God regards nothing but himself is wholly converted to the Creature lives as a Beast onely upon the Earth and like a Beast without judgement The Apostle goes further for describing the estate whereto the sinner is reduced he declares him uncapable of the knowledge of things which are of the Spirit of God The natural man saith he receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned Hence I doubt least the wayes I intend to propose which are according to the Spirit of God appear too high or above the capacity of our spirits I confess they are so if we look upon man in the state of sin impotency and the corruption of his Nature But we shall find the contrary if we consider that the Sonne of God came into the World to relieve man after his fall to restore him those gifts with advantage which he lost to render him capable of God In brief he was made man to teach man the true way to love and serve God he gives the power having setled in his Church an inexhaustible Treasure of Graces whence all souls may draw strength in their weakness succour in their necessity and ability in the very impotency of their nature Here of Iesus man and God we are to learn the way to love and adore and to serve God from him we must have the grace to do it We must in and by Iesus operate above our strength above our being and natural power and nothing ought to seem difficult to us or impossible for him seeing he gives us his grace and spirit in abundance to accomplish it To believe this we must look back upon the designs of the Son of God in the Profusion of his gifts and graces and leasurely examine with the eye of Faith what he will operate in us by his grace and divine communications At the first view we shall see that Grace draws from us our impotency advances us above our nature gives us a new being a new life a life intire and wholly hid in God a life proper to the state of Christianity according to which all Christians ought to live The Son of God speaking to the Samaritan and in her to all the faithful makes a Discourse hereof worthy to be consider'd expressing an intention to establish his Church The houre shall come sayes he and now is wherein the true Worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth for the Father seeketh such to worship him The reason he adds God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth What more powerful and clear testimony of the will of God who tries and elects Souls that worship him in spirit and truth If he himself doth choose them and call them to this new life is it not necessary that in pursuit of this election he give them grace necessary to arrive at such an estate Let us consider this passage and ponder all the words of it 1. Iesus Christ shews us that our life must be holy and severed from the creature seeing that we must serve God in Truth without amusing our selves with the vanities and things of the Earth which are nothing but lying In truth that is to say conformable to the Greatness of God and to that principle whence the Soul takes power to serve God the grace spirit and dispositions of Jesus Christ the spirit of Truth We learn further that if perfection of this life is inward pure holy and absolutely divine seeing it is and subsists in the adoration of God who as he is a Spirit pure and holy will be served and adored in Spirit 2. Iesus Christ teaches that we must wait upon him for this Grace necessary to accomplish his Commands who requiring of us a life so pure and perfect obliges himself to give us necessary Graces to arrive unto it since that without him we can do nothing of that which he teaches In brief we see how much we are obliged to require this grace to search after it to submit our selves unto it and to endeavour to become worthy of it We must not in a matter so important as this of our salvation demurre in consideration of our impotency or experience of our own incapacity but raising our selves above our selves by the spirit of Faith we must hope in him who commands nothing impossible who giveth grace abundantly to accomplish what he demands These are the first dispositions of a Christian and which those souls that have any desire to live Christianly ought first of all to learn But it happens quite contrary the understanding of men is so corrupt that they desire not these internal solid vertues nor require them of God and which is worse many think it unnecessary to possess them and that such a life as we call interiour is for few persons as if Jesus Christ speaking to the Samaritan had spoken onely to Her and not to the whole Church Others perswade themselves that it is impossible to attain them as not believing the Apostle who saith I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me a manifest error wherein many lose themselves in not sufficiently considering what they daily see by common experience set before their eyes If weakest Women Virgins and Children have had strength sufficient notwithstanding their young and tender bodies to embrace tortures almost insupportable and have by Grace been strengthned to overcome those difficulties why should not we believe also that abandoning our selves to the power and conduct of Grace and becoming faithful to the designs of God we may have sufficient grace and capacity to acquire these vertues If by the help of grace they can attain strength of body to support the rigours of a penitent life wherefore by favour of the same grace may not we arrive to the possession of that true vertue wherein a
knows the power of God over her who can advance her to what degree of communications it shall please him and do in her and by her all that he pleases In this consideration man must adore the secret Iudgements will and designes of God over his Creature he must humble himself in his nothing annihilate himself in his humility and by his knowledge see into the little he is the need he hath of God and the misery of a Soul without grace He must not content himselfe with the bare Knowledge of these truthes without making use thereof the spirit of God can furnish him with severall ways to do it Behold here three Acts very profitable and necessary to be done as often as we can with serious application 1. The soul must resign it self to grace to all the designes and counsels of God over it with a desire to depend efficaciously upon the spirit and conduct of God to follow all the ways to undergo all the effects of the grace and dispensations of God 2. The soul must produce an act whereby offering her consent to God as much as is required she must protest that she consents then and alwayes to all the operations of Iesus Christ in her and to all the designes that he hath upon her of what kind estate and manner soever they be 3. She must renounce within her self fervently all her right over her self her inclinations interest obstruction and imperfections within her imploring the bounty of Jesus and the power of his spirit to annihilate in her all her imperfections to take from her all hindrances opposite to the spirit grace and conduct of God Lastly she must study the practice of vertues when occasion shall present them after the manner proposed whereof we now begin to treat CHAP. III. Of the practise and means whereby we may arrive to the possession of God of his grace and spirit IT much imports souls that seek after God and would live in the perfection of Christianity that they endeavour to enter and settle themselves in good and solid dispositions for that God chiefly regards in us and we are not ignorant that the operations of Grace are alwayes proportioned to the disposition she puts or finds in the soul. Now amongst all dispositions the most solid and necessary the chief path of the soul to true vertue is Love and knowledge of truth We must love truth and strongly adhere to it we must wholly study to fill our spirits with the knowledge of this Truth that it may be unto us a foundation to Christian life a light in the direction and conduct of our actions Therefore before I propose any practise I alwayes put Truth for a foundation of Exercises necessary to our subject Let us then consider as a certain Principle that the more we act for our selves and for the Principles of our being and nature to conduct our selves or our own spirit the more we estrange our selves from God and by consequence from the end for which we are created from the perfection whereto we are obliged The spirit which is in us is the spirit of Adam our nature the nature of Adam therefore is it a nature become damnable by sins a spirit infused into us by the Serpent possessing us in the consent of Adam This spirit and nature is subject to the power and malice of the Devill and sinne and consequently cannot act but according to the power and malice whereto it is a slave for operation followes essence As this being therefore is estranged from God and enemy to him for by nature we are born the children of wrath saith St. Paul so it cannot act but against God Now by this reducement man is drawn out of this Captivity freed from this bondage and made a new subject to Grace he acts no more according to the Principle of his own being but by the Principle of Grace which gives him a new being making him a new Creature in Iesus Christ. To arrive to this Liberty which we call the Liberty of Grace and of the children of God two things are requisite the mercy or grace of God and the consent and co-operation of the soul. The Christian therefore that will live vertuously must first give himself to God offer him his will and intire consent to all the designes he hath upon him and to all the effects which he will by his grace operate in him Then he must study and labour to withdraw himself from this bondage to shake off the yoak of sin which oppresses and drags him whither it will to free himself he must quit himself that is his imperfections his passions inclinations and much more sinne he must kill this spirit of Adam and pluck it up by the root that it may the better make room for the spirit of God that this holy spirit may live in him and act by him otherwise he can no way possess the true christian vertue nor attain the perfection whereto he is obliged nor the end whereto he is created the possession of God Whence it follows that the first exercises whereto the soul must apply it self is to place it self in the liberty of grace to draw it self out of the bondage of sin and to annihilate in it self the spirit of Adam which it carries in the very marrow of its bones Here it must begin all other exercises are but unprofitable without this and all it does will be to no purpose unless it arrive to this point For we must remember that the vertue to be truly Christian is the spirit of Iesus who acts in us and that the perfection of a Christian consists in love a love that is never without the possession of God it is easie then to conclude and believe that he that will be vertuous and a perfect Christian must make room for God in his heart there establish God there cause his spirit to rule and live He must root out and expel all that is contrary and in enmity to God even all that is not God for he that is not with me saith Jesus Christ is against me The true exercise and principall care of a Christian consists herein all others that abut not upon this we must despise saying with St. Paul in Iesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but faith which is by love Now the onely question is how we may arrive to this happiness herein is the difficulty We say it is by inward and outward mortification by the senses and by the spirit by vigilancy in all things that we neither receive consult nor do any thing contrary to God or that may displease him by prayer by discourse In fine it is by the grace of God for it belongs to God alone and Iesus Christ to make us free and draw us out of the captivity of our selves and sin If the Sonne shall make you free you shall be free indeed saith Iesus Christ. It is an effect onely of the
is nothing For notwithstanding all the good will and resolutions in the World we shall never put them in practise without grace and after all this perseverance in good is necessary for he onely shall be crowned who continues to the end Yet we cannot have nor merit it it is the gift onely of the mercy of God a pure effect of his bounty Herein appears the extream need that we have of God how necessary this grace is to us not onely to do well but also to persevere From these truths we learn that a Christian that will be saved must not onely have a good will or entertain a good intention but further he must seriously seek God adhere to him and possess him since in him alone consisteth the grace that is necessary to do well and to end well in a holy perseverance Salvation is not a thing so easie as we conceive for we have nothing at all in our selves as our selves that can help to save us On the contrary all that is in us is in opposition to grace and by sinne conspires our ruine He that will save himself must seek from without himself the way of his salvation the power to do works worthy of Paradise the power to serve God which he cannot find but in Iesus Christ there he must seek it of him alone he must have the power to serve God the merit of his good works the grace of perseverance and the conduct of his life consequently he must possess and adhere to him if he will attain his happiness nothing else is of advantage seeing Iesus Christ saith himself Without me ye can do nothing Rules and Constitutions may be given us Vses and Documents may be prescribed to practise Vertue and to attain to Christian perfection but all will be without profit and stability if we go not out of our selves to possess Iesus his spirit and grace to receive in him and of him true Vertue stability and perseverance For the grace of Iesus is wholly to have true Vertue and Christianity and perfectly to accomplish the actions and practises that are proposed to us If we examine these principles of truth we shall immediately find from whence arriveth an evill commonly observable in the Church of God that many souls live in a good observance labour much and exercise themselves in the practise of the number of the Vertues yet make little or no progress towards the perfection that they desire and never arrive at the end which they propose to themselves If a reason may be given for a misfortune so generall it appeareth that this cannot proceed from any thing but that such souls seek not God purely nor resign themselves to his conduct to follow with simplicity and fidelity the order which God hath established on them but with a respect to themselves desirous to rise and arrive to an estate whereunto God doth not call them or they refuse to labour with fidelity to attain that whereunto God calls them They regard not God they work not by grace nor seek it where it is but trust in their own strength and work not with submission to grace it self They seek not in Iesus Christ strength and power to work for they think not of it being so blind that they rely upon themselves and by secret esteem of their own actions and Labours easily perswade themselves that there is Vertue where none is and that they are in some estate of perfection when they are very far from it confiding in their own good will or in a simple intention which they think good Believing this enough for them they neglect or despise all the rest which is of greater importance Now to remedy this evil which is not to be neglected you must practise what I shall tell you 1. We must be in will and perpetuall desire of God in a resolution not to love or act but by grace and by the spirit of Iesus this desire is a disposition little known yet more important then it seems for God will be desired and takes pleasure to see a soul thirst and run after him We see that he deferred his great mercies and gave not his sonne to the world till 4000 years after man had desired him 2. We must demand his spirit with earnestness crying from the bottom of our hearts after Iesus the onely freer of our souls the true principle of grace 3. All our recourse must be to Iesus not relying or confiding in any thing but his power vertue and grace to love and act by his dispositions This is properly that we call acting by the spirit and by submission to grace Let us proceed to the consideration of truth to give our selves light and to let those that would be saved know the need they have of God and the rule they ought to observe in their actions to render themselves worthy of God Faith teacheth us that every good guift and every perfect guift is from above and cometh down from the Father of Lights that the eternal Father giveth us all by his Sonne and in his Sonne and consequently the Sonne of God is made all things to us in him we have all out of him we have nothing whence he is called the gift of God And St. Paul speaking of the eternall Father who gives us his Sonne saith that he is made all things unto us by him we are in Iesus Christ who becomes unto us by God Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption These words represent unto us two truths First That we are in Iesus which shews us the adherence we ought to have to Iesus Christ. The other that we have all in him as having the Sonne of God in whom is true love true wisdom and assured salvation By those truths we learn that Iesus Christ being the true gift of God we have nothing if we possess not him We must therefore labour to become fit to possess him with the effects that he will operate in us Herein consists the practise of Christian life to receive Iesus as a gift of God to possess him as a great treasure to offer him to God to refer him to his Father and with him our Being our life and actions Our soul must be continually employ'd in this double practise in these two continuall motions towards God one to receive Iesus Christ who is the grace of graces the other to offer him to his Father he being the gift of gifts and with him to refer our selves intirely to the glory of his Father and accomplishment of his holy will The third Motive CHAP. VII That a Christian is a Member of Jesus Christ and as such he must be ruled by the Spirit and live the life of Jesus Christ. THe most noble Quality man can have on earth the most happy condition whereto he may be advanced is that of a Christian. By this state God alwayes good and full of mercy relieves him in his faults repairs his
her own motions To dwell in our selves is to think of our selves to take care of our selves to have a continuall regard to our selves and our self-Interests to use the powers of our souls for our selves and our own satisfaction and not purely to please God To love thus is to wear the maske and false appearance of vertue but not to have the reality By these Principles of piety it is easie to see how dangerously they deceive themselves who speaking of Religious souls who are in a most pure and perfect estate and according to the eminency of their vocation say they ought to be night Christians as Stars in the Firmament and perswade others that they are not obliged to the perfection of inward vertues and that it is enough for them to become punctuall and to live with order and fidelity in their exteriour conduct making them believe that they are capable of no more that this self-desertion is above their strength nay that it were folly so to leave themselves to live in such a general manner of abandoning themselves This is a manifest errour for not onely the religious estate but even that of Christianity obligeth all Christians to the practise of these vertues seeing they are obliged to be perfect according to the Commandement of Iesus Christ as doth easily appear by all the Motives handled in this second Part. Now if all they who aim at perfection in any profession whatsoever must enter into this conduct of grace and subjection if they must live devesting themselves to obey God more perfectly and to live the life of God which is the life of a true christian the true life of grace what ought those souls to do who by particular graces and allurements of speciall favour are called by God cherished and inriched with his gifts O how great will these obligations appeare to those that consider them O how ought such souls to take care and be vigilant to co-operate with the designs of God upon them and to become faithful according to the estate and fulness of grace communicated to them This would require a long deduction for nothing is of more importance or needs a more ample discourse to content our spirits and satisfie our piety But it shall suffice that we shew the fundation and principles thereof of which we shall now speak The conclusion of the second Part. The care and vigilancy which a Soul must have which seeks perfection and would live in true subjection to the grace and conduct of Iesus Christ. WE have cleerly enough deduced and demonstrated by divers motives the obligation all Christans have to seek perfection and wholly to subject themselves to the spirit and conduct of God yet must we not understand this Doctrine so generally but that there is something more to be done and that we fail not in our care and vigilancy to cooporate with the work of God in us and to become faithfull to his conduct and here we will shew what this care and vigilancy ought to be Let us first enter into consideration of the excellencies of our soul that knowing it we may be ravished with its beauty elevated and excited to conserve it carefully in perfection according to the designe of God upon us This knowledge is not easie for the soul is such a lively Image of the Divinity and God hath invested her with so many lights that our spirits are too feeble to sustain the beams thereof and to penetrate the splendor of this beauty If we will speak of her we must say that she so perfectly represents her Prototype God that as we cannot better comprehend God then in averring he is incomprehensible so we cannot enter better into this knowledge of the perfect beauties of our soul then in saying she cannot be known For all that we can say of her is below her so neer doth she approach to the infinite greatness and ineffable perfections of her Creator The highest that we can say of her that seems to imply the last draught of her perfection is that she is a capacity of God an Image wherein the perfections of the Divinity are engraved so as we may compare it to a Seal wherein the Image of a Prince is perfectly and artificially cut As the Seal is capable of receiving the soft wax applied to it and imprints thereon a second Image so our soul which is the Image of God is capable of receiving God and receiving him once she bears a continuall Image of him his true resemblance The soul therefore in as much as she is the Image is also a capacity of God since as the Image she is capable of receiving God And this capacity is the ground of her being and containing in it all her perfections and beauty comprehending all that can be said of her It is not hard to penetrate this truth if we consider the designs of God in the creation of the soul for Faith teaches us that God alone is the end of our soul her fulness that he hath created her to enjoy his greatness to associate her into his glory to communicate to her his divine perfections In pursuit of this designe it was that he gave her so great an amplitude and capacity that she cannot be filled but with God which caused Saint Bernard to say that our soul may be occupated by all things in the world but that she cannot be filled with any but God who created her for himself alone to fill to live in her and to advance her to the enjoyment not of gifts not of grace onely but of glory and of the essence of Divinity All this begins upon earth and is consummated and perfected in heaven indeed it cannot be in heaven if it begin not upon earth since the soul after death enjoyes but what she hath merited in her life for we see that here below the soul receives her God by grace she receives him in his loving communication and she is filled of God by his Spirit which dwelleth in her and in Heaven she possesseth him fully by glory By this possession all her capacity is filled according to all Gods designes upon her Thus Saint Iohn We know that when he shall appear we shall be like to him we shall see him as he is Now we cannot see God and be like to him in glory which is a pemanent estate without possessing him and we cannot possess him but in this capacity which is given us by God which is the foundation of our being and all the perfection of our soul so great a perfection that we conceive it farther then we know the greatness of God For as God is great this capacity is great ample and admirable This deserves profound consideration and may serve to all men as a powerfull motive to sever themselves from all upon the earth and to seek God only for whom alone we are created who alone is our fulness This truth discovers the favour we receive from this infinite
goodness the soul being a capacity of God as also continually regarded by him who sees her yea he sees her and he regards her to raise her to himself to fill her and fully and perfectly to possess her in a manner worthy of God and conformable to his love He will be all things in this soul he will be her life her love her good her confidence her heart her spirit her power and her conduct briefly he will be her All her fulness upon earth by his graces and in heaven by his glory Hence therefore may we take occasion to admire and eternally adore this infinite and inexhaustible bounty which deigns to communicate himself with such an exstreme profusion of himself who by an incomprehensible counsell of his eternall Wisdom hath created man upon the earth onely capable of his divine communications who only is a pure capacity of God who gives him power to receive the abundance of his gifts and to bear the greatness of his Divinity Assoon as we reflect hereupon we shall see the duties of our soul what our care and vigilancy must be For the soul being a capacity of God what remains for her to do but to render her self worthy to possess him and to be filled with him and altogether to abandon her self to his conduct and grace She is obliged to esteem nothing but him to live onely for him being created onely for him and this being the end of her being and life she must have no care upon earth but to suffer her self to be filled with God to be possessed and ruled by his spirit and by his power Thus we are obliged to two things one to have a care and vigilancy to take all away that may separate us from God and make us unworthy of his divine and loving communications The other to have a like vigilancy over our selves over our motions over our desires over our intentions and over our actions that they depend on God and be wholly submitted to his loving conduct Let us yet say this more cleerly if it be possible in two words The soul ought to have no care but that God be in her repose in her dwell in the bottom of her heart fill and possess her according to all the designes that he hath on her This done and the soul living in this care with fidelity God reposing in her as in the Throne of his love will communicate to her what gifts and enrich her with what graces he pleaseth and in fine conduct her in the wayes that he desires the soul having no other desire then that God may be in her and she in God that is after the manner that God ought and will be according to the greatness and excess of his love This is the One thing that is necessary whereof Iesus speaks to Saint Martha the source of all happiness the top of all perfection which Iesus calleth in Magdalen the better part Let us pray to God to place us in this happy estate to make us penetrate his truths Let us give our selves to him to enter therein and banishing all care all thoughts all love let us onely regard Iesus Let us require nothing but Iesus Let us love none but him who loves us above his life Let us cast our selves at his feet like Mary Magdalen and there melt our hearts and consume the poyson that is in them with the beams of this Sun of love that he may replenish us with his grace with his love and with his spirit that we may live onely by Iesus and as another Magdalen seek nothing but Iesus Let us now propose the dispositions necessary to attain so happy and desireable a Being THE THIRD PART Proposing divers DISPOSITIONS and VERTUES necessary for a Christian to arrive to that perfection whereto he is obliged by Christianity CHAP. I. What those DISPOSITIONS are and how necessary they are to the practise of VERTVE IT is now time to enter into the practise of that vertue whereof we treat and that we set our selves on work to acquire the spirit to live the life that God requires of us whereto we were called from the first time that we became Christians To attain this happy estate there is need of continuall Application and travail for we must not think to arrive thereto at one leap but we must bring dispositions suitable to so worthy a subject and labour not onely to attain hereto but also to persevere therein which we must do the more willingly and couragiously in that we are certain this way is the foundation of all our happiness the true way to Christian perfection and makes us live the life of grace whereto we are called The first thing whereto we must bend our study is to know and acquire the inward dispositions necessary to lead us to Christian perfection and to make us live the life of grace which is the true life of a Christian this we are to learn in this third Part. And for as much as this Doctrine is proper for all sorts of vertues we will speak first of it in generall as well that we may the more easily come to the knowledge of the particular as because many seem to seek vertue and frequent the exercises of Christian piety yet think not upon a thing so necessary nor know what this disposition is or wherein the spirit of vertue doth consist which is the soul and form of action So that laying hold onely on the outside of vertue and considering it but as a body without a soul they are deceived in their imaginations and believing they do much they promise to themselves great profit rendring themselves punctuall and taking a great heed to some exteriour practises of vertues which they propose to themselves We see many with much vigilancy every day or week take some vertue to practice they watch if they are wanting to emergent occasions and carefully mark their defaults to accuse and if it be possible to amend themselves but after long practise we see they make small profit because they forget the interiour and put not themselves into the spirit of vertue to practise it with necessary and convenient dispositions To prevent therefore the inconveniences which occur in this subject we must observe that in a Christian life all estates wherein the Christian soul may find it self and all the vertues that she can practise have ordinarily the Dispositions which ought to accompany or precede her and vertue hath a spirit which is as its essence or rather as its soul which as a form doth enliven and perfectionate her The soul that will live the life of grace and will acquire solid and Christian vertues must carefully have regard to such dispositions that she may possess them to do the action which she doth perfectly seeing that in her vertue is exteriour and superficiall She must further acknowledge and seek out what is the spirit of vertue or as some say what is her essence that
practising that vertue she may effect it in her spirit that is beare inwardly the sense of that vertue as outwardly she produceth the action Thus shall she practise vertue in her heart inwardly as she does practise it by her hands outwardly This is founded upon generall principles that the exteriour is nothing without the interiour so that we must first labour to form and perfectionate our interiour which is to exteriour actions as the wheels of the Clock are to the weights or rather as the soul is to the body All the World holds this for truth yet we seem not to consider enough what the meaning of interiour is that onely the intention must be good as many think and believe that it suffices in all things to have a good intention and simple regard to the Action But when we speak of the interiour we mean the bottom of the soul which is to Christian actions life as the Earth is to the fruits she produceth and as the root is to the Tree which it nourisheth and enliveneth The bottom of the soul is the true principle and life of all our actions By the bottom of the soul we understand a true and reall goodness which is in the soul a pure intention that accompanies her grace that assists her necessary and suitable dispositions to the vertues which are in her all this I call the bottom of the soul. What will it profit a man to practise an action of outward humility and to do it with a good intention if in the bottom of his soul he hath a proud will what doth it serve for in a Christian to get the true vertue of charity outwardly to give alms and be liberall and in the bottom of his soul to bear a heart pitiless and covetous It is certain that after this manner he shall never acquire vertue though he had all the good intentions in the world because the foundation of his soul which is the true interiour is not good the first thing he must do is to perfectionate the bottom of his soul and to form his interiour after the manner proposed to know the essence and spirit of vertue Let us propose a particular example of some vertue as a rule for all the rest we will take humility which is necessary for all Christians If we would acquire this vertue and practise it we must first know wherein it consists that when we would produce the acts thereof we may form them in the interiour spirit of this vertue conformable to our knowledge of it For how can we practise a vertue if we know it not How shall we perform an act of humility if we know not what humility is We must then study to know the vertue that we would acquire unless God himself incited by his bounty give us the spirit of it without knowing it But speaking according to the ordinary wayes of the practise of vertues we must know them that when we would acquire them by practise we must endeavour to do the Acts and accompany them with a sense and thought of vertue We must further yet put our selves into dispositions interiour and convenient to the vertue we would acquire as in the vertue of humility it must be in an esteem of God alone in a mean opinion of our selves in a desire of confusion and contempt and to do this from the bottom of the soul. The soul being in these dispositions will endeavour to apply her thoughts thereto when it shall be time to do any outward actions thereof For example If she do an act of outward humility it will excite in her heart a thought and a sense of humility and awaken in her some disposition conformable to this vertue and so she will do this exteriour Act by an esteem and pure desire of humility with mean esteem of her self To do an action after this sort is that which I call to do it in the spirit and in the dispositions of vertue To see how necessary this is we need no other Witness then Experience no other Judge then Reason for how can we for example get the vertue of humility though we should perform infinite and extraordinary acts of it if we know not this vertue and if in practising it outwardly we reflect not upon it self How can we conceive that a man can attain this vertue by any extraordinary practice whatsoever if we bring contrary dispositions It is evidently impossible We must therefore take care to establish it in the dispositions of vertue and first labour to form her interiour for he that shall have an ill foundation in his soul cannot produce good fruits Can we acquire humility if at the same time that we produce exteriour acts of humility our soul is filled with esteem of our selves our spirit full of doubleness our sense given to curiosity our whole heart tyed to our proper interests It is cleer that in so doing it will be an impossible labour We must then confess that to attain true Christian vertues it is necessary to have inward care that is to say that the first thing we must study is to take care that the bottom of our souls be good If the root be holy so are the branches Then we must labour to acquire the dispositions necescessary to accompany vertue to do otherwise is to take the shadow and to leave the substance to bear the image of vertue and to have the reality of vice it is to pursue continually and to take nothing but flyes We see the experience in them who think only of the exteriour and have no care but of certain superficiall practices and rules that look not to the bottom of the interiour but very little or afar off such souls are void of God and without vertue having only a deceitful appearance like false pearls which are filled but with wind mountains in shew but touch them and you shall see come out of them nothing but smoke Vertue is an heritage too noble it must be bought with good money I mean it must be gain'd by practices suitable to her dignity Let us apply our particular subject to that we have said in generall We treat in the Discourse of the life of grace of Christian perfection and of the subjection wherein a soul ought to be towards God and it being proposed how to acquire true vertue it consequently treats of annihilating the spirit in our selves the care and conduct we have of our selves to resigne us to God and not to live but in subjection to his spirit onely and to his grace We have made the necessity of this estate sufficiently appear and the obligation that we have thereto there rests nothing but to shew the means whereby we may enter into these dispositions suitable to her without which we may truly say that the soul shall never attain the true and constant practice of vertue which yet is necessary to many who think not thereon For we may averr not without fears and
they are by grace that which Iesus Christ is by nature This truth granted it is easie to comprehend the necessity of mortification If to be christians we must be re-invested in Iesus Christ that is live of his spirit and follow his motions and inclinations then to arrive to this happiness we must uncloath our selves of the spirit and inclinations of Adam and we must to speak in the words of the Apostle Put off the old man and put on the new man this cannot be done but by mortification which is the more necessary in that the inclinations and spirit of Adam are as much different from those of Iesus Christ as the Heaven is distant from the Earth These two spirits are as contrary one to the other as the animal is to the spirituall according to the Apostle who saith The first man is of the earth earthy the second man is from Heaven and cannot accord together Now to argue by the rule of contraries we must say that to establish the one it is necessary to annihilate the other to plant good we must root out evill so he that would love christianity that is according to the spirit and vertue of Iesus Christ must take away and mortifie the spirit and inclinations of Adam which are in all alwayes contrary to Iesus Christ. The Son of God came into the world as Saint Iohn saith to destroy the works of the Devill The spirit of Adam is a sinner and his inclinations are but concupiscences works of the flesh therefore is the Sonne of God come to destroy them We must also labour and co-operate with him to destroy in us and to root out of us all that sin hath put in us wherein mortification assists us This that Divinity which we call mysticall teaches us which requires that a christian to arrive to that perfection whereto God calleth him passeth through the purgative life in the wayes of mortification annihilation and resignation that by this exercise the soul may purge and cleanse it self from all that is in her opposite to grace and the true possession of God This Doctrine is founded on a Truth which most know but consider not sufficiently That the whole nature and being of man is corrupt all his inclinations turned to evill carrying the centre the source and seed of all vice and imperfection in it Now to order it so as that this nature of Adam this being may be possessed of God replenished with vertuous inclinations and that he may have in himself true charity the seed and principle of all Christian vertues he must necessarily take from it the evill that is in it for the good and perfection cannot be there but in taking away and rooting out the corruption and imperfection which cannot be done without a serious and continuall mortification inward or outward Whence we learn that to acquire christian vertues it is not enough to demand them of God by prayer which we call a demand nor to consider them in mentall prayers and to make good resolutions thereon it is not enough to know them and desire them nor to do acts of them and to produce many practises of them but we must also root out of the foundation of our soul all that which is contrary to vertue The man who desires to live a good christian and aspires to true vertue as the onely way to Heaven must not so much busie himself in the acquisition of vertues by the practise of them as he must labour to root out of his heart and pull out of the foundation of his being all oppositions inclinations and customs contrary to true vertue For as soon as he hath emptied his heart of all that is displeasing to God and contrary to him God will from that moment replenish and possess his heart and liberally extend to him the graces and vertues necessary for him but withall according to the measure in which God gives them to him he must be faithfull on one side to correspond with the grace given him on the other he must labour to render himself more and more capable of the spirit and possession of God he endeavouring to cleanse and purify his heart and God continually replenishing and consecrating it for his own dwelling and sanctifying it by his grace By this amorous combate God always gives and is always augmenting his gifts man receives and in receiving disposes himself more and more to receive more abundantly the sweet bounties of God all which is done in the soul proportionably to her purifying and mortifying her self from all that is disagreeable and contrary to the spirit of God By mortification and the purgative life we not onely understand corporall austerities such as affect the sense as macerations fastings and other exercises which rob the sense of what is most agreeable to it which although they be good and profitable and sometimes necessary yet are they not principall but we apply this Doctrine first to interiour mortifications whereby the soul purifies her heart annihilates her sources therein and pulls away the roots of imperfections and of all that is displeasing to God By this exercise she stifles as much as she can the seeds of self-love though hid in every thing she strives to gain a perfect victory over her self her principall care is to annihilate her will her intentions her desires her thoughts and inclinations to those of God choosing in all things that which is most pure most conformable to the spirit of Iesus most opposite and contrary to her own inclinations and unruly affections Hereunto she wholly addicts her self herein she is very vigilant she knows it generally a maxime that the more the heart of man is filled with the creatures and the love and regard of himself the more she is separated from God voyd of his spirit and true vertue Therefore she endeavours to exercise her self in this interiour mortification Another Reason which obligeth us to the spirit and exercise of mortification is that the Devil makes use of our inclinations of our habits of our desires and of our self-love yea he makes use of our selves against our selves and of our nature subjected as well by the sin of Adam as our actuall sins he makes use I say thereof to cast us away and to separate us from God even in things most holy and the most interiour and therefore to avoid the perils and to take the weapons from the hands of our enemie whereof he makes use to undo us we must necessarily pass through the purgative life we must go out of our selves out of the life of Adam to be in Iesus Christ and to live of his life and we must mortifie our selves to make place for God and take from our heart all that may displease him that is opposite to his grace and by this exercise we shall easily arrive to the acquisition of Christian vertues CHAP. III. That the adherence of a Soul to Iesus Christ is the most perfect
be deceived by this way our spirits being too feeble this way too eminent and that it occasions a perpetuall combate in the spirit As it is troublesome to a man to walk in darkness so it is hard for the soul to go this way of Faith which is obscure and hidden But if we would learn it well we must say the contrary all other wayes are uncertain and deceitfull vertue alone is infallible we shall never be deceived if we stick to it It were to have a mean esteem of Gods graces and to be ignorant of the Principles of our salvation to believe that the faith God hath given us to conduct us is capable of loosing us Let us remember that God hath given us the light of faith to guide our reason and that our reason must submit thereunto and in respect of Faith be annihilated as Saint Paul saith We walk by faith not by sight meaning that to live Christianly we must let our reason be guided by faith not faith by reason wherein we see the designes of God in the rule of our souls the necessity of our walking by the light of this torch or according to the ordinary manner of speech see how necessary it is for him that will live a perfect Christian to follow onely the light of faith and to learn to make use of Evangelicall truth If at any time the souls who take this way are deceived it is in that they go out of it and being perswaded by the Devil or self-love or the vanity of the humane spirit which esteems it self in every thing withdraw themselves from the conduct of faith to follow that of humane prudence choosing to be guided by the rules of the flesh and the spirit of worldly vanity rather then by the maxims of Iesus Christ and the spirit of heavenly truth Thus indeed they find themselves deceived and fall into misfortunes not for having taken this way of faith but for having quitted it and adhered to humane prudence and the light of reason which like an ignis fatuus will lead us out of the way unless we be aided by a supernaturall force and guided by a more sure light such as is this of faith But to the soul that is faithfull applying her self to the truths of Faith and Maxims of Christianity that seeks God with simplicity and humility there must necessarily arrive great profit and advantage in christian perfection We must not therefore condemn this way and reject it as too high too difficult and too painfull for it is the way that the Sonne of God himself hath left to his Church and commanded all his children But on the contrary we must teach it every one accommodating our selves to their several capacities and giving them all the means to pursue it without going out of it least they be deceived If we find here any difficulty it is in our selves There are two things in man which hinder his progress this way one is esteem of himself and of his own spirit the other is the Love that he bears himself and for his own sake to the Creatures To pursue this way and to make use of Faith he must go out of himself and renounce his own spirit and raise himself above all Creatures to adhere to truth to believe and to make use of what he did believe he must renounce his judgement his reason and his sense and annihilate them If our reason sense and judgement repugne the truth proposed to our belief we must quit our reason and our sense to unite our selves to the truth If for instance it is proposed that the uncreated eternall word become man that God died reason and sense oppose this truth Reason cannot comprehend that the eternall God should make himself subject to Time the immortall submit himself to Death yet to believe this our Will moved by grace notwithstanding the opposition of reason and sense must say I will believe and adhere to the truth proposed The will adhering hereto commands reason and judgement which obeying her believe what she proposes the understanding which useth to command and be free renders it self captive and obedient annihilating its own thoughts and reason that so it may adhere to the truth proposed and form an act of Faith Thus we are to understand that of Saint Paul bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. By faith the understanding which useth to command is made captive and obedient to the Will therefore the soul in the practise of Faith goes out of her selfe and no more obeys her judgement or sense she no more regards her self but the truth onely which she embraces as her object adhering and uniting her self thereto Thus by Faith the soul is elevated above her self to be tyed and united to the eternall and infallible truth revealed and proposed to her This well considered will shew us the excellency and dignity of faith by which knowledge we shall learn how much we are to esteem the state of christianity in generall and the life of a christian in particular seeing that according to Gods designes and the grace of Iesus Christ the christian as christian must live and be guided onely by the spirit of truth and light of faith which being divine and supernaturall drawes us out of our selves to unite and tye us to God who is truth We shall moreover see by what hath been said that faith is not what we think it consists not in great learning in many reasons and severall Arguments on the contrary it is for the simple and for those who can go out of themselves who can annihilate themselves in their reason and quitting the regard of themselves and other creatures adhere and follow the truth of faith Therefore it is said commonly that the learned and wise of the world who have most prudence most reason the most solid judgement and capacity of spirit have likewise most opposition to faith for they are lesse able to go out of themselves to annihilate their own spirits and judgements Thus Iesus Christ after he had summed up the truths of Heaven and described the contentments of the glory of the just concludes with an Enthusiasme of truth I thank thee O Father saith he Lord of Heaven and Earth because thou hast hid these things these truths from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes to the humble and meek Which shews that the knowledge of truth and of the spirit of faith is a gift of God that God gives it to the humble and little ones that to adhere to it we must humble and abase our selves In a word to make use of the truth and faith conceived we must go out of our selves and out of esteem of our selves Let us practise this for it is our principall design To make use of faith and truths conceived we must first consider what faith proposes but we must consider it barely and simply without any discourse upon it we
the satisfaction of their own spirit You shall find their hearts void of God full of self-love their actions inconstant their thoughts in continuall changings In fine they are nothing but disquiets complaints and murmurings Look upon their life and actions it is but a pastime unprofitableness and the vanities of the age and having considered it all it will not be hard for you to know whether those souls have the fear of God and the knowledge of vertue yet in appearance they make a great shew we know not whether is to blame those who are conducted and directed or the Directors But how ever it be the Christian who would be saved must labour herein seriously and neither fear pains nor mortifications but seek to be conducted by the wayes that God hath ordained and passing above all considerations and all sorts of difficulties prove constant and complyant with the order that God hath established over him he must every day renew his good resolutions and pray to God to let him know and be acquainted with the designes he hath upon him and give him grace in every point to follow them and with fidelity to accomplish them And seeing that his fidelity is now in question and that it is altogether necessary to all Christians it were but necessary we made some discourse of it CHAP. VII Of the fidelity of the soul and of its necessity in the wayes of grace and the actions of a Christian. TO speak of Fidelity and to see how much it is necessary to all Christians we must reflect upon the truths already proposed and remember that man was created for God who is his end that God alone can conduct him to this end and that it is the same God who onely operates in him all the good works which are necessary to make him Gods and to arrive at this end which is God From these principles of truth we enter into our subject and presently see that we have not any thing more important in this World then to go to God to co-operate with the works which God does in us to save us and to accomplish with fidelity that which he requires of us and in the spirit and disposition that he desires every one applying himself faithfully to the way that God proposes and the works of his vocation that the Priest live according to the perfection of his estate the Christian as Christian in brief that all men live so as at the houre of death they may say with Iesus Christ My Father I have glorified thee upon the Earth I have finish'd the work thou hast ordained me to do This fidelity which is absolutely necessary must be in our soul from the time we were born Though there were neither Heaven nor Hell we are obliged to live according to the will of our Creator what aversness soever the creature may have it shall be allwayes subject to the order of God either in the way of justice or mercy If we would be saved it cannot be unless we co-operate with the works that God will do in us unless we become faithfull to his graces and follow the order that God hath prescrib'd wherein he will conduct us to salvation and therefore it concerns us more then we think to take heed to the designes that God hath over us and to the vocation whereto he hath called us to the motions and inspirations he gives us to make use with fidelity of the graces he offers least drawing our selves from the order and offer of his mercy we enter into that of his Iustice and one day he say to us in the rigour of his determined Decree as he said to his people I will choose their delusions and bring their feares upon them because when I called none did answer when I spake they did not hear but they did evill in my sight and chose that in which I delighted not Isa. 66.4 When we speak of the vocation and use we are to make of the graces and benefits of God we speak of Paradise to despise them is to neglect salvation Therefore the Christian must consider what he does as well in that which concerns the vocation he must choose as in the use of the graces and favours he receives of God seeing thereon depends all his happiness or misery we must take heed we chuse not what God would not have us nor despise what he would have us to embrace This point is the most important of all in a Christian life yet is it a mystery the most secret of any in Christianity The vocation of a soul is as much hidden as her election which none can know or easily discern by her conduct The wayes of God are as much elevated above ours as Heaven above Earth and yet O wonderfull God wills that we follow his wayes and none shall be saved but according to the vocation whereto God from all time hath called him What remedy seeing on the one side necessity constrains us and on the other the incertainty and obscurity deters us O just God God of all bounty who shall enlighten us in this darkness who shall resolve us in an affaire so doubtfull who shall assure us amidst so many doubts nothing but thy light O God the onely refuge of our souls can conduct us nothing but thy spirit can teach us but thy truth can assure us and but thy infinite mercy can protect us This lets us see in what danger they put themselves who so long neglect the motions graces and favours of God and make such ill use of his benefits From these truths we learn the esteem we ought to have of our vocation and with what circumspection we must make choice thereof and if we will make our selves worthy to receive of God the light and conduct necessary in an affaire of so great consequence for our salvation it will be very profitable to enter into these following dispositions First The Christian must have a pure desire of God and a resolution to do in every thing his divine will being from the bottom of his Heart wholly resigned to his will and conduct Secondly He must have a great sence of his weakness he must be in an estate of humility before God not esteeming himself worthy or capable of any thing for the humble shall never perish and as Esay saith God looketh to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at his word Thirdly He must renounce his own interests and all his particular concernments he must not regard his own safety that he may have no object but the pure will of God yet in such manner that he who resolves to remain so faithfully and constantly in the order and designes of God and proposes to make hereafter use of Gods gifts graces and benefits and regards not perfection advancement vertue not Heaven it self must not content himself with a thought to please God for alas who is worthy thereof but cleansing and purifying his intentions
we are divided from God the more we follow our own wills and inclinations and adhere to the creature the more we destroy in us the works of God and annihilate his gifts and graces This is an evil that cannot be sufficiently deplored since that for the regard of the creature we lose the regard of God to love a thing of nothing we ruine in us the love of God and for a wretched and miserable thing like our selves the brood of sin and the food of death we destroy in us the works of God and the effects of his love Briefly to adhere to our own wills inclinanations and sentiments Oh who can speak it without a torrent of tears we separate our selves from God and draw our selves from the order and designes of the eternall wisdom Truly we ought to weep and weep tears of blood when we consider the weak condition of man What this Man who is capable of God who hath right to possess God and to be by grace what God is by nature immortall eternall perfect and to possess an entire and eternall rest and a fulness of all good a true solid and permanent good for him I say O misfortune of humane nature and weakness of our spirits to renounce all his happiness and lose his God and in him all things to follow his own disorder'd inclinations to do his own corrupt will and to please and adhere to the creature which is nothing but vanity to enjoy a fleeting transitory good He must neither have heart nor faith that cannot grieve at this our blindness nor apprehend an evil so common and deplorable he must be more obstinate then Pharao that would not draw his soul out of this darkness and deliver it out of this captivity to set it at liberty to go to serve and adore the true God and quit the Leeks and Onions of AEgypt O that I had wings like a Dove for then would I fly away and be at rest lo then would I get me away afar off and remain in the wilderness O Iesus who art our Deliverer break these bonds that bind us and permit not the weakness of our wills and malice of our spirits to oppose the power of thy grace My Iesus the only light of our souls who camest into the world to enlighten those that walk in the shadow of death come and defer no longer to give life and liberty to those whom thou hast chosen to be thy children But let us put a stop to our zeal and not be transported with the motions and resentments of this just grief Let us rather remedy the evil and see what we must do to be faithfull to God and to do that which he would have us First the Christian must take his vocation of God and not of men for as we have formerly said God only hath power to ordain all things and it is the greatest mark of his Omnipotency for himself to choose and ordain the lives and actions of all men and principally to give to his Elect and to propose to them the way and light whereby he will perfect them in the state of grace and conduct them to the enjoyment of the glory he hath prepared for them So said Iesus Christ to his Apostles and Disciples Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain shewing it is he alone that calleth us and employs us in the actions for which we were created When therefore the Christan is at the point to make choice of his vocation he must ask it of God and regard only God in his desire and to render him capable of so important a grace he must make an entire true resignation and annihilation of his will and of the use of his liberty and neither have choice of liberty or will in any thing that concerns him as having no will but that of God leaving to God alone the power and care to choose ordain and establish all according to his holy wil considering nothing therein but the pure glory of God and reserving a desire to accomplish what God by his good pleasure hath ordained him proposing to do all that he should know to be the will of God Secondly when the Christian is in a settled estate and profession then he must live according to the spirit and grace of his estate and vocation and apply himself wholly to God in the use and wayes proportioned to his estate wherein consists the ground of the souls fidelity To comprehend this advice we must know that in the life of every one there are considerable two estates one generall which is common to all the state of Christianity the other particular which consists in the condition he professes in the world The perfect Christian who would be faithfull to God must first have a care to agree with the state and grace of Christianity the most noble of all professions of men and the ground whereon we must of necessity raise the whole edifice of Perfection in what condition soever a man be For what is a man the better for being a perfect and an accomplish'd Gentleman and a wicked Christian to what end serves it to be excellent in some condition and estate to seem good in some vocation to be esteemed of men and to satisfie ones own conscience if in truth and before God he be not perfect in the state of Christianity He must then be a perfect Christian before he seek or think to be perfect in any other condition or estate And therefore the first thing he ought to do who would be faithfull to God must be to live according to the Laws maxims and according to the grace of Christianity in such a manner that he may strive to accomplish and become faithfull in all that is taught and required in this estate with such purity and sincerity that he neglect nothing but make account of all that is in Christianity For as we say there is nothing little in Religion but all in it is great all is here to be esteemed and all is here of importance to him who will live perfectly in such an estate so in the state of Christiany we must esteem all and he that will be a perfect Christian must make account of all that is proposed in Christianity when he is in this estate he must study to perfect himself in the particular profession he takes upon himself be it in the world or out of the condition of seculars Thirdly the soul seeing her self in a profession and vocation must wholly apply her self thereto so as if there were no other and although she esteem of all other vocations of all the wayes whereby God guides his Church and Christians yet must she onely apply her self to her vocation and step onely in the way and conduct of God being without taste and voluntary knowledge of all others as not being willing to make use
pleasure and glory He that will examine the precept of love will ingeniously confess that which we say for we cannot love God with all our heart with all our soul and withall our strength but in seeking to please him in all things even the least much more in those which we call indifferent though in truth they are not so as we shall shew hereafter Secondly The Christian must avoid in his actions the multiplicity and confusion which occurs ordinarily in affaires even in those which are good and appear charitable and above all he must exempt himself from that which concerns him not and is not of his office nor suitable to his profession and vocation and especially those which are above his capacity and power This advice is to be weighed and cleared for the most serious may be deceived and the most zealous may lose themselves in their occupations by this way the Devill withdrawes away many souls from vertue and the purity of their vocation It is easie for us to be lost in this snare if we have not a pure regard of God and a continuall vigilancy we fall ordinarily into this evill Sometimes a false zeal of charity transports us sometimes we are seduced by complacency sometimes by curiosity and our own inclination which is much given to change and variety and takes pleasure in all that it employes it self in busies it self therein with much content fastens it self thereto insomuch that the soul becomes at last so disordered that she finds no more repose in her spirit no more attention in her self but feels her self wholly estranged from God even in the most holy exercises of her vocation Being in this condition she is disquieted and this disquiet causes a distaste and alienation from vertue whereupon losing the reins she more and more abandons her self to exteriour things and infallibly loseth her self if she have not a care to withdraw her self in good time and if God preserve her not and behold her with the eye of mercy The soul therefore that seeks perfection and the inward peace of the heart must be vigilant herein and not suffer her self to be inconsiderately transported under any pretence whatsoever for it concerns her salvation The state of true love and grace alwayes withdrawes the soul from all multiplicity and separates her from all things for so much as she hath of love and grace so far is she separated and estranged from the Creature and the more she is to God the more she flyes and detests all things else the more grace raigns in her the more it separates her from her self and the world Self-love drawes us to the Creature and involves us in a multiplicity on the contrary the love of God separates us from the Creature and puts us into unity This most true principle may serve us as a plummet to sound the depth and interiour of the soul He who is subject to grace and hath but any pure love needs not to be perswaded to this because the love of God and grace makes him hate fly and detest both the World and the affaires of it and assuredly he will shew it by the effects for he cannot do otherwise Whence it will be hard to approve the opinion of those who would be truly devout and perswade themselves they have true Christian piety yet charge themselves with cares with affaires and trouble perplexing themselves in thoughts desire and bringing about divers designes To convince and enlighten them if they be capable we must resume our principle and onely say to them that the love of God speaks unity and the love of our selves multiplicity Thirdly There are many actions necessary in many affaires wherewith we cannot dispense for that they are necessary and wherein our nature and spirit may be satisfied and content But we must renounce this pleasure and content for God must have all our actions and to do Christianly and purely we must do it onely for his good pleasure so that if we mingle with it other pretences or contentments it is not purely for God but we share with God and we rob him of all that part that we take therein But if the actions we do be naturall as to eat sleep and the like we must not fulfill them by the instinct and appetite of nature which forces us to satisfie both her necessity and pleasure but we must perform them out of a pure desire to do the will of God which obligeth us to this necessity this desire must be exclusive as to any other instinct and will For in actions naturall and necessary there is great difference between the rule and end of the action The rule is humane and naturall the end must alwayes be supernaturall as for example We do some necessary act as to eat sleep or the like the necessity is the rule but God must be the end of this action for he is the end of all the actions of man both free and necessary and we are obliged to direct all our actions to their supernaturall ends it is the advice of St. Paul Whether ye eat or drink or whatsoever ye do let all be done to the glory of God This truth is most evident for if God were not the end of such actions it must necessarily be that man himself is the end thereof which would be a kind of Idolatry and errour to affirm We must then conclude and say with the Apostle Whatsoever ye do in word or deed do all in the name of the Lord Iesus giving thanks to God and the Father by him In all lawfull actions therefore we must regard the rule and the end of necessity which must be no other then the good pleasure and pure will of God But if in these actions there should happen some displeasure as if they should be contrary to our Honour or if they be full of bitterness then we must couragiously embrace them and with an affection and love ready for the displeasure which might happen offering our selves to God to be filled with bitterness as often and as long as it shall please his divine Majesty So in all the actions of man wherein he may take pleasure or displeasure in what manner soever they are we may frame three acts The first is an act of obedience making such an action very naturall and necessary by submission and obedience to the pure will of God who hath ordained all things after the best manner that best pleaseth him The second is of abnegation renouncing the pleasure or accepting the displeasure which may be therein The third of resignation giving our selves up to the will of God to be in a continuall suffering of displeasure if it shall so happen and that for as long and in what manner it shall please God For the soul must have no will but to accept the will of God Fourthly we may fail yet in the use and research of things not onely lawfull but also vertuous by adherence and
humble us and in all this he is most mercifull to us whereof they are unworthy who fear sufferings and for love of themselves oppose the love that God bears them and destroy what God would do for their good Moreover by these losses and eversions by sufferings and humiliations privations and abnegations God delivers us from the nets and snares of the Devil This enemy of our salvation seldom tempts us but in the Principles of nature and our own inclinations he makes use of the love of our selves against our selves Now he is unable to do us evil and is deceived in his malice When God vouchsafes to annihilate us and put us into the wayes of suffering of desertion of humiliations or when of our selves we give our selves to the study of mortifications to exercises of humility and to the practice of the spirit of repentance for through these mortifications we destroy in us whatsoever is evil and pluck from our selves that which serves as an instrument of the Devil to loose us and deceive us In fine by sufferings and humiliations we put our selves out of hazard and are shielded from the dangerous darts and most forcible temptations of the Devil because it is a thing so noble and so worthy to suffer and to suffer in the spirit of grace that it is above nature the common order Whence it comes to pass that the Devil who cannot tempt but according to the order of nature knows not how to take the soul that lives in the spirit of sufferance and of the cross But if he will assault her as he will not fail to do it will be against her sufferings endeavouring to destroy in the soul the spirit of the cross suggesting to her temptations of impatience of envy of vexation giving her occasion to make ill use thereof For he knows that the soul is in assurance and out of danger so long as she shall remain faithfull to her sufferings to her eversions and humiliations and to the state of the cross in as much as this evangelicall spirit is a wall of fire which invironeth the soul a cloud that covers her a huckler that protects her and humility is the foundation that upholds her Reflecting upon what we have said we see it is a great impediment to the way of perfection to decline sufferings and not to care to make advantage of all that happens to us to receive it and to bear all according to the spirit of the grace of Christianity And by these Principles we shall know how far pusillanimous and fearfull soules stray from solid vertue who fear all things who seek nothing but delight consolation and satisfaction To remedy these abuses let us see with what dispositions we must receive all the emergencies of humane life and in what spirit we must bear them CHAP. XII Of the Dispositions wherewith we must bear sufferings and all the adversities of humane life WHat way sover we look upon man we shall find him condemn'd to a thousand disturbances and evils his life is a perpetuall warfare his dwelling in the land of his enemies his estate consists in the adversities of the world which like a sea full of rocks and storms tosseth him perpetually up and down and holds him in continuall fear Dangers threaten him miseries sickness and death are the portion of his life sadness and sighes his ordinary entertainment in his greatest pleasures he finds a bitter sweet some misfurtune is always present or some apprehension seizes him which mingles the sweet of his pleasure with the gall of some misfortune it is common to all men none are exempt not Kings by their power nor the Learned by their prudence it was said by a King in his greatest and most just resentments Truly every man living is altogether vanity But if he be a Christian he is yet more subject to sufferings though in another respect as a member of Iesus Christ he must like his head bear thorns and the cross being by the state of Christianity and the grace flowing from the cross associated to the conditions crosses and sufferings of Iesus Christ he is united to him and partakes of his spirit and life In this sense is it that Saint Chrysostom expounds that passage of Saint Paul God is faithfull by whom you have been called to the fellowship of his son Iesus Christ our Lord. The holy Apostle teaches us that a Christian is associated to Iesus Christ and as such he must have no other portion in the world but temptations sufferings and desertions Let no man saith Saint Paul to his new convert be moved by these afflictions for your selves know that we are appointed thereunto Temptations adversities humiliations and eversions are the gifts of God to his elect tokens of his love and favour to which purpose Saint Mark furnishes us with a pertinent Text where the Son of God promising Apostles and all those that would follow him rewards worthy of God and proportionable to his Love reckons up many adding that he will give them crosses and persecutions as an additionall of his love and favour This is the way that God takes to lead us to heaven the means he uses to establish our salvation and makes us agreeable to his divine Majesty The Wise man speaking of the just saith he hath tried them like gold in the furnace and hath received them as a burnt-offering and pleasant victims sacrificed to the supreme Essence of God by crosses and humiliations God operates our sanctification conserves us confirms us in his divine mercies There needs no other witness then the Angel Raphael when he said to Tobit Because thou art pleasing to God it was necessary that temptation should try thee This is evident that the state of sufferings is necessary and how much it imports us to esteem of them to hear them with affection and make use of them with profit for God hath greater designes over souls by sufferings then by all other wayes of grace that we could represent it is the state that most purely and holily honours his divine being it is the spirit of Christianity in brief it is the life of man and therefore he must know how to drink of the cup of blessing he must learn to ascend the ladder that reacheth from earth to the arms of God And to apply our selves thereto with method and facility we will divide this matter into three dispositions which accompany our sufferings and the state of the soul in her crosses First We may suffer according to divine wayes Secondly By the spirit of Christianity Thirdly In the zeal of Iustice against sin In these three Dispositions we shall find all the rest To suffer according to divine ways belongs onely to souls who are truly Gods who adhere to him and are dissolved in his love To suffer this way is wholly divine he must be wholly God's love nothing but God and be in the pure regard of God To
this is the design of God Or else if by humiliations and interiour or exteriour eversions God will annihilate us let us consent to this annihilation and applying our selves thereto co-operate with the work of God with all the extent and power of our soul and so let us do in all and according to the diversity of the objects This advice is not contrary to the pure regard of God which we must have in all sufferings for in the works of God and in all that he permits we must consider the end for which God does it and the cause that moves him either to permit it or do it The end of the works of God is his honour and glory but the cause that moves him in his operations and divine permissions is the salvation of our souls the establishment and communication of his spirit his graces and his vertues We must here do as before we must suffer having no end but the pure regard of God and of his glory But because God requires fidelity and will establish his Kingdom and power in our souls it is also our duty to co-operate with his intentions and to receive all things not onely because such is his good pleasure but also in the manner that he will and to make use thereof according to his pleasure The perfection therefore of the spirit of sufferance consisteth not in receiving all things indifferently a soul is not perfect though it be insensible of all accidents be they never so sad and miserable Perfection consists not in a Stoicall apathy but if there be a perfection and purity in suffering it is when we receive all things in the spirit and in the holy divine dispositions of Iesus and that we bear them after that manner that God wills and according to the designs and intentions of God And herein consists the first and noblest Disposition which must accompany our sufferings We come now to the second CHAP. XIII How we ought to suffer in the spirit of Christianity IF when you do well and suffer for it you take it patiently it is acceptable to God for hereunto were you called because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow his steps In these words full of efficacy and truth the Prince of the Apostles proposes the motives which obliege us to suffer patiently all adversities and afflictions which occur in all conditions of this life He saith that we are called thereto and that by consequence the proper condition and quality of a Christian binds us to the Crosse. It is not necessary to alledge proofs of this seeing we have said enough already For the spirit grace and conduct of God whereby he uses to save us is no other then that of annihilations and humiliations and afflictions God hath try'd them and found them worthy of him The Crosse and sufferings is then the lot of Christians it is their portion and they must make such use of it as to bear it Christianly But the most powerfull motive the Apostle makes use of to teach us patience is when he sayes that Iesus Christ suffered for us and that we must imitate him and follow his steps after this we cannot in reason find any thing hard If Iesus Christ from his birth to his death hath espoused the sufferings and embraced the Cross wherefore should we refuse being his Children to live and dye as he did we know that the Son of God came from Heaven to Earth to suffer the humiliations and pains due to sins and sinners and that He would by this low estate honour his Father but withall he left upon the Earth the same spirit to honour God that as in Heaven God is honoured by exaltation he might be honoured upon Earth by humiliation In pursuance of this design of Iesus Christ we must as Christians honour God by our lowness and annihilation On the other side seeing the Sonne of God dyed for us we must dye for him if he be the example of our life as the Apostle sayes we must imitate him and if he be born our head according to St. Paul we must as his members bear his spirit and follow his motions In a word if we raign with Iesus Christ we must suffer with him There remains then no more then to know the spirit and dispositions where with we must receive and bear sufferings We have said that the 2 d. Disposition necessary to a perfect Christian to live faithfully in the adversities of humane life is to bear them in a Christian way and according to the spirit of Christianity Now we suffer in Christan ways when we suffer what befalls us as an order of God and as an estate prepared for Christians and by which God will conduct us to the heritage of Christians so that according to this Disposition we make no reflection at all on our sufferings nor upon the estates and overturnings wherein we are our spirit onely remains settled and fastened upon the thought of this truth I am a Christian and as such I belong to Iesus Christ who puts me into what estate he pleases and because I am oblig'd to do his good pleasure I will have no other thought then to resign my self to Iesus Christ to do with me according to his good pleasure By adhering to this truth by this Disposition and interiour estate the soul is united to Iesus Christ as the members are to their head and she remains subject to his conduct without further care or thought then that she is God's because God wills it Herein consisteth the spirit of Christianity and the duty of a perfect Christian. This Disposition is pure and simple and produceth in the soul a perfect peace calm and repose the reason of it consisteth in that the sufferings humiliations and contempts are the centre of the Christian soul as things created have no repose but in their centre so the perfect Christian cannot have the true repose of the soul but in sufferings and in this Disposition they are the centre of Christianity because the eternall Word was pleased to place his estate and whole life in humiliation He was born in poverty he lived in contempt he died upon the cross all the passages of his way-faring life were in continuall sufferings and lowness and also when he was in Heaven in the bosom of the Father in the throne of the greatness of the Divinity he entertain'd thoughts of the cross he consents to death and prepares himself for sufferings when that from all eternity he resolv'd to be made man and to invest himself with the infirmities of our nature so true is it that all the conditions of the Son of God were in sufferings and lowness This also the centre repose and life of a perfect Christian ought to be in the estate and life of Iesus Christ and as the life of Iesus Christ and his estates are contained in adversities in lowness and in the thoughts of the cross it
consequently follows that the centre the repose of a Christian cannot be but in this estate of sufferings and in the same condition of suffering that Iesus Christ was here upon earth When we say that the centre and spirit of Christianity is no other then the cross annihilations and adversities we must conceive it in the highest and consider that the Son of God came into the World for the glory of his Father to satisfie his divine Iustice and for the sanctification of our souls These were his designes desires and thoughts Now the thoughts and intentions of the Son of God are eternall and permanent for they are divine and it is the property of the essence and of divine actions to be immutable and permanent Seeing then that the Son of God hath chosen the cross from all eternity lived upon earth in the spirit of sufferance he remains alwayes in the thoughts of the cross in the desires of humiliation and the rigour of death the zeal of the glory of his Father goes not from his heart but he preserves this spirit and offers himself to his Father to bear it eternally and to suffer the effects of it if it be his good pleasure This zeal ought not to be unfruitfull this offer is not to be refused and yet the estate of his greatness and the condition of his glory cannot permit it What remedy Love alwayes wise and inventive hath found out a means to satisfie the equity of his desires and divine affection and the Majesty of his glory for the eternall Father hath given his Son a mysticall body which is his Church he hath appointed him Head over all his Church which is his body all Christians are members of this body true members as the body is a true body though a mysticall body We are saith the Apostle members of his body of his flesh and of his bones Now to this body and these members the spirit and zeal of Iesus Christ communicates it self by the designe and speciall counsel of the blessed Trinity In pursuit of this divine counsel the Son of God pours into his Church and upon Christians the zeal of the glory of God the spirit of the cross and the love of justice he pours it out as he pleases distributing his gifts according to his holy will To some he communicates his spirit of sufferance and crosses to others that of death and to speak more generally he communicates his estates and spirit to whom he pleases and as he pleases So Saint Paul I fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh Reflecting on this truth we shall cleerly see that the spirit of Christianity is no other then the spirit of Iesus which he communicates to his Church being the head and to Christians his members And as this spirit is no other then a desire of the glory of God love of the cross and zeal of justice it follows they who will be good Christians must necessarily bear this spirit and be in this estate of annihilation and the cross and embrace all adversities that they meet with yea embrace them couragiously as an order of God established upon them and as an estate which is singularly proper for them In this Disposition they shall find the centre and repose of their souls and in this subjection to the cross they shall obtain the peace that Iesus Christ hath acquired for us by his cross We may also say that to suffer Christianly is to bear all things with cheerfulness of spirit doing like the Apostles who departed rejoycing that they were accounted worthy to suffer shame for his Names sake and like the first Christians who took joyfully the spoyling of their goods defied torments and the cruelty of beasts like Saint Ignatius the burning of fire as Saint Lawrence the violence of torments as Saint Agnes and in the Churches first beginning their zeal to suffer was so great that it made the Apostle Saint Iames to say Count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations This advice will seem hard for the rigours of the cross and pains of this life are too piercing but if we love all will be easie for where love is saith Saint Bernard there is nothing but sweetness and nothing is difficult to him that loves though thornes guard and encompass the Rose we gather it notwithstanding and enjoy its beauty and odour Iacob sayes he served seven years for Rachel and they seemed unto him but a few dayes because he loved her so much that he was insensible of the travail He also that will suffer Christianly must love for he that cannot love cannot suffer and he that can neither suffer nor love is no Christian seeing that love is the spirit of Christianity and sufferance the spirit of love This principle considered no rigours that we find in humane life can appear difficult and misfortunes and pains are onely irk some to us for want of love Let us then but love and they will all be easie by love the sufferings of Christians are distinguished from those of others For it is common to all men to suffer it is the condition of their being and portion of their life and the more they think themselves secure the more they are surprised with misfortunes but it belongs onely to Christians to suffer with love The sinner is drawn by the neck like a slave to do the will of God the good man willingly followes him and findes no pain in any thing but on the contrary he finds comfort in travail and repose in displeasure In this sense the Apostle cryes out upon sight of the wounds and scarrs he endured for Iesus Christ Henceforth let no man trouble me for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Iesus And elsewhere I will glory willingly in my infirmities that the power of Iesus Christ may dwell in me To suffer in this disposition is to suffer Christianly or else let us say that to suffer Christianly is to suffer with an esteem of sufferings There are divers reasons why we should take and well esteem them but the principall consisteth in that Iesus Christ hath chosen this manner of life as a way that honoureth more divinely the Majesty of God then any other estate and he hath chosen this way from all eternity and by consequence from all eternity he beares the thoughts and love of the Cross. He hath chosen the Cross saith St. Paul he hath embraced it from the first moment of his incarnation and by an excess of love he began to suffer as soon as he was born And that which is to be observed is that by the election of his divine wisdom which never fails he hath made choyce of confusion and contempt rather then greatness and contentment So saith the Apostle of him and we find it in his divine Mysteries And from hence comes the esteem that we ought to have thereof
and the reverence we should bear to this estate for the Sonne of God having chosen the Crosse and sufferings and having united to his divine person by his incarnation meanness and infirmities and adversities of humane life he hath made them divine and ennobled them So that we must regard them much more for the dignity which they receive from Iesus Christ and to speak properly they are the sufferings of Iesus Christ for we are united to him we are members of his body flesh of his flesh bone of his bone and by reason of this unity they are no more our sufferings then the sufferings of Iesus seeing they are more to Iesus then to our selves Whence Saint Paul saith as the sufferings of Christ abound in you so our consolation abounds by Iesus Christ. The Apostle highly advancing the sufferings of Christianity calls them the sufferings of Iesus St. Peter speaks in the same manner Rejoyce in as much as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings And therefore when we see all that is in this World all the adversities and vicissitudes we must not passe them over indifferently or as men without grace and vertue stop at our own resentments and loose our selves in our weakness and naturall passions but we must lift up our eyes and thoughts to the consideration of Catholick truths and making use of the light of Faith endeavour to use all things according to the manner God requires and to the power he hath given us If we suffer let us not suffer as slaves and criminalls but as the Children and true Servants of God Let us suffer with esteem and in the spirit of Christianity a spirit holy and divine a spirit powerfull and couragious and which onely belongs to the chosen of God and to his greatest friends Hence the Apostle summing up the graces that the new Christians had received of God puts sufferings in the first place and accounts them as a singular favour He hath given you saith he not onely to believe on him but to suffer for him thereby shewing that it is a benefit of God to be called to the state of sufferings and to know how to make use thereof In the view of these truths let us beg of the Sonne of God part of his spirit of the Crosse and sufferings and his grace to support us under them that we may bear them with the spirit with joy and the grace of Christianity let us say with Saint Paul and often repeat this Prayer in our heart That the Lord would prepare our hearts to the love of God and to the patience of Iesus Christ. CHAP. XIV That we must suffer out of a zeal to the Iustice of God WE suffer in the wayes of sinners and for the zeal of Iustice which is the third Disposition that we have proposed when we enter into the zeal of God which brings him to do justice upon sin and that in all things we exercise upon our selves the judgement that God exerciseth therein in bearing in our hearts a true desire and an effectuall will to submit to the justice of God before whom we are sinners before whom we have offended so many ways By this Disposition the perfect Christian must undergo all sorts of pains and sufferings and regard the adversities and inconveniencies of humane life as effects of God's Iustice on him as a sinner whereby he would destroy sin in him and root out imperfections With this spirit and Disposition he must endure all naturall incommodities as cold heat poverty sickness afflictions and such accidents which are the attendants of our life regarding and bearing them with this zeal to the Iustice of God upon sin This thought if it be solid and well settled in the soul of a perfect Christian will make all pain sweet and easie For what can we suffer but we deserve much more if we weigh our afflictions our sufferings travails and adversities with the number of our sins Who will not see the deformity and weight of our sins and how much they surpass the rigour and weight of our sufferings If we consider the hate God bears to sin and to sinners by reason of sin who will not confess that our crimes are much greater then our pains that amongst our afflictions and sufferings even the greatest and most insupportable the mercy of God appears more then his justice What more manifest example of Gods hatred against a sinner then the rigour wherewith the divine justice which is alwayes equitable punished sin in Iesus Christ And if the eternall Father as the Prophet saith so rigorously chastised his Son for the sins of his people what should he not do to us If the Son of God who is holiness it self sanctity uncreated and incarnate becoming a pledge and offering for our sins was subjected not onely to our miseries and naturall infirmities which are great but to adversities afflictions poverty contempt accusations ignominy even to the rigour of the cross what ought we to suffer who are sinners and objects of the hatred and justice of God If this be done to the green wood what will be done to the dry If the Sonne of God who is the eternall and true wisdom chose this estate voluntarily subjected himself to all miseries incited by zeal to the glory of his Father and to satisfie divine Iustice what ought not we to do what pains and rigours should not we embrace who are the guilty to appease this angry God to satisfie and allay his provoked wrath to restore to glory what we have ravish'd from him Let us enter into this disposition and zeal of submitting our selves to the stroke of Gods Iustice and we shall see all things will be easie to indure we shall not complain whatever befalls us whatsoever is done unto us we shall not take it as a wrong nothing will appear harsh unto us nothing insupportable the quality of sinners and multitude of our offences will tell us that we deserve more we shall bless God for the favour he does us in giving us the meanes to honour him by our sufferings The Christian therefore must have a care to bear all adversities all changes of this life all sorts of afflictions losses and misfortunes yea all incommodities and naturall vexations of humane life with an intention to glorifie God to submit to divine Iustice against sin O how great must be the courage of a Christian how invincible his constancy in all changes and misfortunes if he professeth this zeal of God if he be animated with the hatred God beares to sin How easie would all things appear if in them we had no intent but to act and suffer onely to please God with a full resignation of our selves in all things to his divine conduct To facilitate this disposition and make it more generall we must remember that the Wisdom of God rules all this great World and hath a generall and particular superintendency over all things Nothing
worship reverence and love interiour which he beares his God This motion is so powerfull this vivacity so efficacious that he cannot but outwardly express what he carries in the centre of his heart and soul as fire that cannot be hid but will break forth in flames This inward true piety cannot be concealed but will appear by its effects by the exercises of devotion and by severall actions of vertue according as occasion and time permits We must observe that these exercises of devotion are the more pure sincere and perfect the more the soul esteems God her vertues are the more solid and Christian the more she is subject to the soveraignty of God and submits her self to his divine will as much as she encreases in the light of faith and esteem of her God and establishes her self in this submission and subjection to the will of God so much doth she receive capacity motion and facility to all sorts of exercises of piety and the practise of all vertues The more this inward estate is augmented and perfected in her the more her inward and outward actions are pure holy and perfect not that she believes Devotion to be in outward things on the contrary she esteems them nothing but feels her self driven to these exercises and believes that she owes all that to God to render him the honour and service whereto she is obliged she regards not what she does it is impossible for her to consider or esteem of it she onely regards God whom she ought to honour and love with all her strength and serve as much as she can with purity and infinite perfection This advice is much to be considered for it is in this case that we can easily discover by what spirit the soul is guided in her devotions by this a man may truly judge of his state and of the progress he makes in Christian perfection To summe what hath been said we see that in true piety there are two things to be considered one the interiour and bottom of the soul the other the exteriour which consisteth in its actions The interiour we look upon as the principalll root and cause of true piety the exteriour is but as the blossome and fruit as the actions of devotion which appear to men are but the mark of piety and makes shew of it but true piety consisteth in the interiour as we have said They therefore who study onely the exteriour and have no care but to produce actions fair in appearance have the image and shadow of piety and are able to deceive our eyes and to delude the judgements of men who see but the outside and perhaps before the eyes of that divine spirit which penetrates the centre of our souls they are neither devout nor acceptable to him for all their great performances unless these actions of piety which appeare outwardly proceed from the very bottome from a good foundation from an interiour such as we have described A Christian who would be devout to acquire a solid and Christian piety must before all things bear an esteem of God and if he truly esteem God he will make account of all that is of God he will honour all that is in the Church of God and in any condition or estate will accept all the effects of the providence and conduct of God he will resigne himself to his divine will and above all endeavour to enter into an indissoluble relation to God and having obtained this interiour he easily practises vertue and feels a promptitude to embrace all sorts of exercises of devotion By this we know true piety When all these qualifications we have mentioned do not meet in the soul she is then far from devotion For what piety can there be in a soul which is not God's what resentment of devotion can be found in a Christian who lives in a state unworthy of God and displeasing to his goodness shall we call them devout who flatter haply glorify themselves in their fair appearances and only study the exteriour despising all the rest who honour God with their hands in some exercises whereto they oblige themselves praising him with the mouth by selected prayers and often affected and yet dishonour him in their life and blaspheme him in their hearts God may say of most Christians and of his Israel what he once said of the Iews This people draw nigh unto me with their mouth and honour me with their lips but their heart is far from me For which reason we must fear what Christ immediately adds saying but in vain do they worship me for God vouchsafes not to look upon these devotions and cannot but detest these Christians who like the Samaritans will on the one side adore vanity and idolatrize their own lusts and on the other side profess the worship of the true God who appear like sepulchres painted without but have nothing within but ashes and rottenness These Christ severely reprehends these we advise by this Discourse out of a desire to propose the remedy and show them the truth CHAP. II. The necessity we have to be Jesus Christ's if we would attain true devotion NO man cometh to the Father saith Iesus Christ but by me to shew us that no man hath access to God but by his inttercession By these words he shews us the need we have of him and the impotence wherein we all are The impotence appears in that we can do nothing without him and cannot return to God but by him For sin hath not onely separated us from God but also taken from us the power and right to return to God and in effect we would never have access to his Majesty justly provoked by our sins if the Son of God by his divine mercy did not conduct and bring us to receive grace and favour The eternall Father receives us not accepts not of our actions is not pleased with our devotions and homage otherwise then by his Son in him and by him God triumphs over us By him we speak to God by him we see God by him we offer our selves to God so true is it that without him we can do nothing we cannot have access to the throne of divine mercy nor be acceptable to God but by him Hence we must confess that the Christian who would acquire true vertue and desireth to live in the perfection of his estate as he is obliged must necessarily be Iesus Christ's He must adhere to him appertain to him be subjected to his spirit and conduct and much more particularly if he would have true devotion For seeing true piety consisteth principally in being God's and rendring to his most sacred and soveraign Majesty the worship honour and service due to him and that otherwise we are unworthy and uncapable to do all that without Iesus Christ by whom as we
souls to his Sonne he adds Every man that hath heard of the Father cometh unto me These words include the secrets of grace and are full of Mystery They teach us that the eternall Father by his grace drawes us and guides us to his Sonne he speaks to us by his inspirations in the interiour of our souls he shewes us that we are Iesus Christ's Is not this to say all that we have proposed That the design of God to save us is no other then to give us his Sonne to unite us to him by the powerfull attractions of his grace and to cause us to adhere to him by love and the exercises of a life truly christian herein doth true piety consist We must therefore continually elevate our hearts and spirits to this Iesus the onely happiness of our souls we must entreat him to accomplish in us the designs of his Father and to take an absolute power over us We must so offer our selves to him as to have no other intention will nor conduct but his that we may by a true relation verifie what Saint Paul said All is yours you are Christs and Christ is Gods Let us so think of him and so do that from henceforth our hearts and mouths may neither speak nor think but of him that all things else may be of no savour to us that nothing enter our spirit which resenteth not the spirit and odor of Iesus Christ and respires not his honour and glory In a word let us adhere to him and by an indissoluble and eternall union dwell in him that he may dwell in us that we may eternally bear the effect of his holy word He that is joyned unto the Lord is the one spirit O how happy is the soul that is called to this happiness and that is truly in the power of Iesus in the possession of his spirit and direction of his grace This is the state whereto Christian perfection must arrive the foundation of piety and true devotion But because many think not of it and many know it not we must treat of it more at large and propose the motives that most oblige us to this Devotion CHAP. III. Of Piety to Iesus Christ and its principall effects WHAT we have already said of the Sonne of God is sufficient to make us know what we owe unto him but the importance of this subject requires that for our better information we explain particularly the principles of this piety and the meanes necessary to attain it But before we enter into this subject we must consider that devotion to the Sonne of God wherein we are to imitate all Christians is not so to limit our souls as to withdraw them from what they owe to God but on the contrary the exercise of this piety is necessary to conduct us more worthily and holily to God because by piety to the Sonne of God we attain a capacity and power to honour God Iesus Christ is our way by him alone we go to God he is our life by him we live the life of grace a life which onely makes us worthy to honour God He is our Truth in him alone as the spirit of truth we know God we adore him and serve him in truth according to the Apostle he is our All in him and by him we have all things by the Son the Father gives us all and by the Son we render all to the Father This is the gift we receive of God and the gift we give to God for all is operated and subsists in the unity of Iesus Christ. The Church offers nothing to demands nothing of the blessed Trinity but by Iesus Christ. We must imitate the Church in pious customs Piety to Iesus Christ requires not so much exteriour exercises as interiour and permanent estate doth in our souls nor demands it any novelty of affection but a newness of spirit a new disposition enclining our souls to employ themselves in the thought of Iesus Christ to regard him to love him to honour him as the object and end of our life actions and devotions It requires that the actions of the religious should be devout those of the ordinary Christians vertuous those of a private person familiar in this object without changing his spirit but directing his intentions and dispositions to the pure regard of the Son of God For example let us do all that we do by the spirit of honour and love to Iesus Christ if we suffer let it be to imitate and render honour to his sufferings what ever happens to us let us receive it by a dependance on and submission to his power and conduct If we will insist upon any good thoughts let it be of Iesus Christ to consider his greatness the mysteries of his life his vertues his benefits and the power he hath over us By these sweet entertainments by these regards of honour and love the perfect Christian advances himself is confirm'd in the piety we speak of To know what this piety is and how we must apply our selves thereto let us consider that Iesus Christ is the principle the centre the end of all Christian souls for as faith teaches us he is the cause of all the good that is in us the spring of all the graces we possess Author of the life which we live in Christianity and being the principle he is also consequently the end thereof For according to the order established in nature that which is the principle of a thing is also its end and nature follows invariably the order God hath prefixt and by his well ordered motions gently leads and if not diverted infallibly conducts all things to the principle whence she draws them So the waters saith the Wise man return to the ocean as to their mothers womb and according to the mysteries of faith we say all things return to God because they all came out of God It is the same in the estate of grace If then Iesus Christ be the principle of the being life and state of Christianity he must be also the end so that our being life and estate regard the same Iesus Christ and are referred to him as the end and if the end the centre also of a Christian life In him our souls find their repose and perfection in him by him and of him are all things saith Saint Paul This Principle alone considered shews us that Iesus Christ hath full power over us that we are his not only in respect of his divine greatness and supreme power over all as God Saviour and Redeemer as purchaser of us with his most precious blood and his of life-giving death but also because he is the principle centre and end of the life and state of Christianity In this relation he hath soveraign power over us having given us being and grace consecrated us to his glory and honour in such absolute manner that the Christian cannot make use either of himself or any
then of grace The Christian therefore if he seek perfection must take heed hereto and in all things observe as a maxime in Catholique vertues that Christian vertue and true piety consist not in being conformable to reason and to a humane spirit but to the spirit and intention of Iesus Christ who is the infallible rule of our actions This advice is of importance We shall speak of it elswhere when we have convinced the more difficult spirits and made them see the right Iesus Christ hath to us CHAP. IV. The right which the Sonne of God hath to us Motives obliging us to be his and to adhere to him by true piety WHich way soever we consider our selves we belong unto the Sonne of God this is our happiness We belong unto him after a singular manner in the state of nature he hath a right to us all things being as the Evangelist saith made by him In the being of grace we belong to him in the being of glory we are his by him all are raised to glory by a grace springing from the Mystery of the Incarnation and proper to the state of Christianity he is our Head we his Members he is the Father we his Children he our spouse we his heart and delight he our Doctor we his Disciples he our Pastor we his sheep he our Redeemer we his Captives he our King we his subjects he the Sacrificer we his sacrifices in a word he is our All the way the life and the salvation of the World and as St. Paul saith he is our fulness and we are his by the price of his blood and possession of his spirit We are so much the Son 's that we cannot be God's without being first Iesus's who refers us to his Father If the Father accept us and behold us with the eyes of mercy it is in the Sonne in as much as we are his Members and united unto him This union whereby we belong to the Sonne of God is so necessary that as the eternall Father loves us not but for his Sonne 's sake nor regards us but in him so cannot our actions be acceptable to him nor all our exercises of piety please him if they be not done by the conduct of the spirit of his Sonne and by adherence and union to Iesus though they may otherwise seem good and perfect He that is not with me saith Christ is against me and he that gathereth not with me scattereth This property is grounded upon the principles of Faith which teach us that the Sonne of God onely became man not the Father nor the holy Ghost he alone performs the office of Mediator in the redemption of humane nature he alone is our Redeemer our Mediator and our Head In this quality we are his Captives and Members he is the Father of the Ages to come and we are his children for he alone begot us by his blood and death and as a Pelican he gives us life by the effusion of his blood and animates us by the spirit of his Crosse in the Crosse he begot us by his death he giveth us that life we lost by the envy of the Serpent Thus in all the Mysteries of Faith we adore the Sonne of God being of the divine persons the onely incarnate living and dying for us he onely redeeming us from the captivity of our sins being God became man that men might become Gods all the Mysteries of his life accomplished upon Earth were onely to sanctifie us his dying upon the crosse makes him the onely victime and holocaust of our propitiation Are not these motives sufficient to shew us that we are his in a singular manner belonging to him by extraordinary relations Is it not reason we should acknowledge him and by a particular fidelity profess our selves his and carefully endeavour to adhere to him and by true piety to render him the honour love and service that his benefits obliege us to This the greatest part of Christians think not of as being by reason of their impiety ignorant of their benefactor as the Ancients were through their Idolatry of their Creator It is a strange ingratitude that man should be so blind in these dayes as not know his Iesus and passing his life away carelesly neglect to acknowledge him in his greatness to adore him in his works and to honour him in his humane divine life Our business then must be to reform this ignorance and therefore we will propose the principall rights which he hath to us that we may learn with what piety and devotion we ought to follow and serve him and that those souls who neglect or despise this piety may re-enter into themselves and endeavour from henceforth to render to Jesus Christ the honour love and service whereto they are by so many just relations obliged The first right that Jesus Christ hath to man is derived from his Quality of being God-man for such is the Sonne of God not onely in regard of his Divinity but also according to his humanity In this quality Jesus Christ by a power of excellency ought to rule and command all that is and shall be created a power that the eternal Father gave him at the first minute of his Incarnation besides that by this Mystery the Son changing his condition for the glory of his Father and abasing himself to honour him the Father also will needs honour him constituting him from thenceforward the principle of life grace and glory proclaiming him Soveraign of the universe and replenishing his humane nature with all the effects of the Divinity and all the states of glory possibly communicable to him as God and man that as the Sonne honoured his Father in debasing himself so did the Father honour the Sonne in exalting him For this cause he makes him his equall in power greatness and Majesty and invests him from this first moment for evermore with all the power that he hath over his creatures This the beloved Apostle teaches when he saith The Father hath given him all things into his hand and St. Paul beginning to write the greatness of Iesus saith expresly speaking of his mission That the eternall Father appointed him Heire of all things by whom also he made the World Thus by this first Right and by the Mystery of the Incarnation Jesus hath the same power over souls that the Creator hath over his creatures and in relation to this power we give him all that we owe to God and consequently acknowledge in this Mystery Jesus to have a double power over us as God and man This consideration obliges us to adore and serve him acknowledging this power must doubly subject us to his conduct and divine will Heaven and Earth pay this duty and fidelity to this Iesus God and Man Let us hear with a resentment of love how St. Iohn describes the triumphs of our Iesus he tells us that he heard the Angels crying aloud The Lamb who hath been slain is
the first operation of grace in our souls is to become servants to Iesus Christ. This service is the first estate of Christianity the first promise that we make to God by a solemn publike profession in the Church by Baptisme There we devote our selves to Iesus Christ to belong to him to depend on him and at the same time we receive and aknowledge him as our Soveraigne we adore and reverence him as our Redeemer we are united to him as to our Head Thus this state of service brings grace yea singular grace which is the first thing that God gives in his Church by Baptisme a grace which he gives with a mark and impression of his power so deeply imprinted in our souls that nothing can deface it not Hell it self Whence we see that at the same time that Iesus Christ conceives us by Baptisme and receives us into his Church as his children we enter into the state of servants and vow our selves to Iesus Christ as such So that by one and the same Sacrament we are made children of God and received his servants and consequently we are in the House of God both as sons and servants yet so as that we are his children by grace his servants by nature Now as we say that the state of subjection is essentiall to the creature and to the Christian so the same state is essentiall to the piety of Christians and therefore they who would establish themselves in piety must begin their establishment in this subjection for we must bear a relation of love and inclinations to Iesus Christ as we do of purchase and necessity To be convinced of this truth we are to observe that this state of subjection consisteth in taking Iesus Christ for the end and object of our actions we serve him we contemplate him as our Soveraign and Redeemer we do all things by a spirit of love honour and dependance on him So that this state of dependance and service is a generall Disposition wherein we perform all our actions By this Disposition they are truly Christian accomplished in the spirit of true piety and though there appear nothing outwardly either new or extraordinary in our life yet by this disposition and state of service we are more neerly Christ's who looks on us as his own raising and uniting us to himself by a reall dependance wherein consists the true spirit of piety For by the state of service we acknowledge Christ our Soveraign and King and our selves his vassals we adore him as our Redeemer and confess our selves his servants In this quality we adhere inviolably to all his will In a word we see that he is our Head and we united to him as his members In this union we live by his spirit and follow his motions in which three points consisteth solid piety and the perfection of Christianity So that we are so much the more God's and consequently the more perfect by how much we are the more abased and devested of our selves entirely depending and faithfully operating under the power and will of him who makes himself ours that we may be his and hath purchased us to himself at an inestimable rate For this cause they who exercise themselves seriously in piety begin at the same time to look upon the Son of God as the object of their life and resign themselves up to him Hence springs the daily practice of certain acts of interiour devotion which is ordinarily proposed to them that seek true piety recommended to them because they are profitable and necessary drawing the soul from it self to elevate and unite it to Iesus Christ. We shall further explain it in the ensuing Chapter But before we enter into that Discourse we are to know that we must not conceive these acts of interiour devotion to be actions meerly transcient or a simple operation of our spirit for that would be little in comparison of what God requires But we must pass further and bear in the bottom of our hearts the state wherein we propose these interior acts that must be our principall end and intention For though God onely hath power and authority to put us into this estate when and how he pleases yet because in the wayes of grace God doth ordinarily expect our consent and cooperation it is for that very reason that the soul exerciseth her self in this practice of devotion and it is upon this account that she forms to her self these interiour Acts whereby she resignes and offers up to God her heart and will So that in this exercise the christian must not content himself to form this Act and to pronounce the words but he must demand of God the grace to bear a permanent estate thereof and for his part must do his utmost endeavour to attain it In the next Chapter you have them particularly explain'd CHAP. VII Containing certain interiour acts for those souls who are desirous to be established and confirmed in true piety THE first act of interiour piety to Iesus Christ which we are to practise frequently every day is an act of honour and adoration This I place first because it is the first employment of our soul and the first duty of the creature who is obliged to honour and adore its God with so much necessity that the very Devills and damned are forced to do it it is the first act that christian Religion proposeth To form this act we must acknowledge Iesus Christ Sonne of God both God and man we must regard him as our Soveraign Lord and Redeemer as cause and principle of all our happiness We must annihilate our selves before him and humble our selves even to the bottom of our soul willingly submitting to all that he is This is called an act of adoration It contains two effects of the powers of the soul one of the understanding employ'd in considering and acknowledging Iesus Christ in his greatness and Soveraignty looking on him as the principle of all good and of all the being of nature and grace and esteeming and honouring him as such Then followes an effect of the will which humbles it self before him receives and accepts him as her God King and all and with all its strength submits wholly to his power and greatness in an act of adoration Hence we may perceive that adoration consists not onely in an esteem of God be it never so highly elevated but requires also a voluntary submission of the soul with expressions of honour interiour and exteriour He therefore who practiseth as he ought an act of adoration desireth alwayes to shew his respect by the effects As the Sonne of God is infinitely adorable he who would adore him strives daily to increase in adoration and consequently endeavours with great fidelity to subject himself more and more in will and deed to the greatness and Soveraignty of Iesus Christ. I say in will and deed for it would avail but little to say it onely with the mouth and to have in thought the
example If God put us into an estate of suffering we must accept it and continue therein with patience and submission of spirit not struggling with the good will and pleasure of God but act therein and persist with courage and fidelity We must do the same in privation barrenness and all other estates wherein the Son of God shall please to put us which if we do we shall remain in a true adherence and union with Iesus Christ depending upon him with fidelity which is all that piety aims at CHAP. X. That Christian piety obliges us to submit our life and actions to the honour of Christ. THere cannot any be ignorant that true piety consists in rendring honour to God it is our first exercise the duties of Religion and Love are of such a nature that they must necessarily be referred to God but that of piety obliges us to honour God and to referr our selves to him and consequently to the Son of God For he that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father but by an obligation more particular greater and more speciall in as much as by the grace of Christianity and Principles of true piety we are united to the Son of God and adhere to him as members to the Head This adherence doth not onely put us into a subjection to the power of Iesus but also produces in our souls a regard of love and honour a regard that purifies and directs our intentions and actions not to love or honour any thing but Iesus the Son of God by him to love honour and serve the Father Thus the first estate of piety which consisteth in this adherence obliges us to referr all to him and to honur him in all things This truly is clear in what manner soever we consider it whether in the Oeconomy of our salvation or in the regency of the Church all things invite and oblige us to honour the Son of God The first thing that the eternal Father requires of us in giving his Son to the world the first designe he hath upon his creature is to oblige them to render to his Son the same honour which we render to his infinite supreme Majesty This Obligation is so strict that even at his birth he would have the Angels acknowledge and adore him he sent them from Heaven to Bethlehem to reverence him not onely in the greatness of his divinity but in the lowness of our humanity when conceal'd in a stable and laid in a manger He called thither the Shepherds and the Kings that it might be as David sayes All kings shall fall before him and all nations shall serve him He was no sooner born in the world but the kings of the world came from the East to do him homage to lay their Crowns and Scepters at his feet confessing that all the greatness of the earth ought to serve and honour him The eternall Father sent Angels and men to render honour to his Son to adore his divinity humanized and his humanity deify'd All nations of the world shall assemble and all men shall come to judgement that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father This the Son demands of the Father as part of that fruit he expects of his labours it is one of the richest Iewells of that Crown which he received upon his triumph by the cross over the world sin and death Many think it was the meaning of that Prayer to his Father in the day of his sufferings Father glorifie thy Son to the end that thy Son may glorify thee We owe him this honour for if he humbled himself to our infirmities and the shame and ignominy due to our offences is it not reason that we render him the honour whereof he deprives himself for our sakes and that we serve and honour him in a manner wholly particular seeing he onely of the persons of the most holy Trinity suffered our contempts and confusions This exercise of piety which we here propose as the first obligation we have in the estate of Christianity holds forth one of the noblest most eminent vertues of the Catholique Religion and one of the highest actions of our soul. For if according to Thomas Aquinas we are obliged as soon as we arrive to the use of Reason to some acknowledgements of God and a submission to him as the Author of our nature and our good with much more reason ought we to say that the first thought we ought to have of the Son of God in relation to piety is to referr our selves to him as the principle of our being in the state of grace And if we would make use as we ought of the spirit of Christianity and of the gifts we receive of the Sonne of God we must employ them wholly to his honour and service in such sort that as Iesus is the Authour of our being life and actions he may also be their object and end This is an inseparable obligation and an indispensable duty For if the Christian and all that is in him proceed from the Sonne of God and is consecrated to him by his death it followes that he can neither make use of himself or any thing else but the Sonne of God otherwise he might refer his actions to some other then him to whom they are due and for whom they are consecrated which were to prophane the most holy things and to enjoy the gifts of Iesus Christ against his intentions which is a sacrilegious treason against the divine Majesty For as amongst men he is guilty of theft and deserves death who converts the treasure of his Prince to his private use to passe away his life in vanities and sports so is that Christian criminall who abuses the gifts of the Sonne of God and is prodigall of the Treasures of his bounty That we receive all from the Sonne of God no man can doubt for of him and for him life is given us as also motions sense reason repose health and sleep and in a word the use of all things These are the Treasures of his Court for he hath by his travels and sufferings acquired and by the price of his blood and life purchased our lives our actions our thoughts nay even the time which we enjoy Which having done his intention is that we acknowledging his love and liberality therein should love him serve him and in all things mind his honour and glory This being so what have we to do but to follow his intentions to refer our selves wholly to him to honour him in all things since we have all from him and that for this end he gives us also his speciall graces In what therefore ought we to employ our time our life our health our repose and all that we have but for the honour of the Sonne of God of whom we have received them and who continues them for that very purpose This manner of rendring honour and homage to the Sonne of God is an
and accomplish them Besides we cannot doubt at all but that the Sonne of God hath his great designs and intentions worthy himself over our actions even to the smalled nay over all the moments of our life Which if it be so how we can say that our actions are indifferent On the contrary they belong all to Iesus Christ they must proceed from his spirit God will be honoured in all that is of man We shall render an account as well of the least as the greatest things and assuredly God will exercise his judgement as well for a moment of time and the least of our actions as for all the rest of our life We must therefore acknowledge there is nothing little nothing to be neglected in the state of Christianity but all therein ought to be worthy the blood and cross of the Son of God we must make use of all things conformably to the designs and spirit of Iesus who as he is always great even in the least things so also must we have great intentions even in the meanest of our actions and our first and principall must be to referr those to the glory and honour of the Son of God Iesus Christ in the time of his life upon earth did so living among us as one of us he made use of all things with a zeal to the honour of his Father and referred them to him as to his Father his principall being and life Let us do the like and by a zeal to the honour of Iesus out of a respect and homage to his greatness let us offer to him all our actions accomplish them all even to the least with a desire that they may be referred to him as to the principle of our being and life in the state of grace This he taught us by his death this disposition he inspires us with by grace this spirit he infuseth into us by the Sacraments which he hath left to his Church as himself said As the living Father hath sent me and I live by the Father so he that eateth me even he shall live by me which include in two words all that we would perswade that Christian to who seeks true piety CHAP. XII How the Christian that seeks true piety is obliged to imitate Jesus Christ. AS we are obliged to honour Iesus Christ by our life and all our actions so with much more reason are we obliged to imitate him as far as lies in our power The greatest honour we can give him is to conform our selves to his life and intentions This is the third effect which produces adherence to Iesus Christ and as this adherence is the first estate whereinto we are put when we are made Christians and the first foundation we must lay to acquire true piety so from this adherence as its centre and generall principle must be derived all the effects of grace which we bear in our souls Now that which remains to be treated of is this Imitation for our life ought to be a lively Image of the life of Iesus Christ and the first use a Christian is to make is to look upon the Son of God as the Prototype and exemplar of his life and actions not onely to imitate but to express and represent him as it were to the life As the Son of God is the Image and resemblance of his Father so must the Christian be of the Son Hence the Apostle assures us that none shall be saved or received into heaven in the number of the elect if he be not conformed to the Image of Iesus Christ. He predestined them says he to be made conformable to the Image of his Son In a word we must be by grace what Iesus is by nature It is a maxime in Christian piety that the Son of God is the true life and true model of our life it is the example shew'd us in the mountain as well as to Moses according to which we are commanded to operate Our interiour and exteriour life then must imitate and regard the exercises of the soul of Iesus Christ and the occupations of his sacred life For this reason the eternall Father gives us his Son in the mystery of the incarnation for giving his Son a new life in the mystery of love and giving it to be communicated to us he makes him thereby the principle of a new life in us and wils that as he is the principle of the life of his Son in eternall generation so his Son should be the principle of our life in the new temporall generation of our souls by Baptisme and Grace Saint Paul also teaches this when speaking of the reformation of Adam he says As we have born the image of the earthly so shall we also bear the image of the heavenly as if exhorting us to an imitation of the Son of God he should advise us that as we have born the image of Adam imitating him by sin and following him by our own inclinations we should also bear the image of Iesus Christ imitating his life and actions This Doctrine is wholly conformable to the Principles of Christianity The life of a Christian honours and regards God and imitates his life Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect saith Iesus Christ or to say better it is the life of God himself who lives in us by his Son Whence it follows that as the Father lives in the Son and the Son in the Father so we live in Iesus and Iesus in us according to that Prayer of the same Son of God to his Father full of love and affection I am in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one But how can we be one with the Son of God How can we adhere to him and be incorporated with him How can we conceive this reciprocall life of Iesus in us but in imitating him and not only imitating him but expressing and perfectly representing him since he lives in us and we in him in the mystery of the incarnation For the eternall Father giving us his Son to be man and to live with men a life common and conformable to the nature and condition of men he gives us in him a law rule and form of life and shews us in him the manner of conversation that we must follow to live Christianly that is to live a new life which the eternall Father gives us in his Son and by his Son a life singularly proper to the estate and perfection of Christianity We are then to look on the Son of God as our Law imitate and follow him as our rule which is to speak properly as the sacred Oracles foretold when speaking of the Messias and the time of his coming they said that God will make a Word abbridged upon the earth This Word is the Son of God who descending to the vile and mean estate of humane nature gives us his words and actions a model for ours This also
Saint Paul explains where he says that God spoke to the world four thousand years and conducted and taught men after divers manners and sent Angels he gave a Law writ with his own hand he prescribed many Ceremonies and in all ages caused Prophets to speak But in the Law of Grace he speaks to us by his Sonne who teacheth us supernaturall truths till then unknown to the World and reserved for the Excellency of the state of Christianity The Angels now guide us no more but attend us the written Law doth not oblige us the Ceremonies are now limited and the Prophets speak no longer It is Iesus the Word and the Sonne of the eternall Father who becoming man and conversing among men speaks to us and teaches us He is our Angel to inlighten us our Law to direct us our Prophet to speak to us and our Master to teach us He is the abridg'd word and by the condition that he hath made with his Father he conducts us by his spirit he illuminates us by his grace he directs us by his providence and he is the word of the Father so he teaches us not onely by his words but also by the holy and adorable actions of his life the rule the Law and modell of our life Now if Iesus be the rule and law of our life it is manifest that we ought to imitate him if we would live Christianly and if by the exercises of a solid piety we desire to attain a perfection suitable to the vocation and estate we profess we must choose none but those which imitate the Sonne of God holding it a maxime in all kindes of exercises that the Christian is so much the more devout and perfect the more conformable his life and actions are to those of Iesus Christ and that he is neither devout nor perfect but as far as he imitates the life and actions of Iesus Christ for true piety and Christian perfection if rightly understood consisteth onely in this point This Principle and Precept we have also from Iesus Christ where he sayes If any man serve me let him follow me and where I am there my servant shall be also the servant of God must imitate Iesus Christ. To serve is nothing else but to follow to follow according to St. Austine is to imitate so that the devotion whereby we should serve God is not devotion but illusion if it be not in the exercises which cause us to follow and imitate the life of Iesus Christ. Here we may see how much they are deceived who dare call him rash and accuse him of presumption that would imitate Iesus Christ who say it is to soar too high and that it is impossible man should imitate his God and blinded with this ignorance are content to employ themselves in some good morall exercises The Apostle condemns this errour saying Iesus Christ suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow his steps St. Paul confesses that his study and principall care was to imitate Iesus Christ to which end he writ to the Corinthians Be ye followers of me as I am of Iesus Christ. In a word we are not made Christians nor participate of the graces of the Sonne of God but to be put into a capacity and obligation to imitate him This is his intention when he sayes who doth not follow him is not worthy of him To say the contrary is to oppose the opinions of the Fathers a truth more manifest then day By these Principles we discover another blindness greater then the other a deceit more dangerous in many Christians who onely study to perfect their reason and think they do much to follow that in every point wherein they are much deceived For they believe it sufficient to live reasonably and Christianly and in this belief forget or neglect the rest thinking they are arrived to an estate perfect enough But is quite contrary for by the use of reason onely we live as perfect men or at most but as good Philosophers but if we would live and operate as good Christians and Children of God we must advance our selves above Reason to live not a humane but a divine life that is the life that the Sonne of God liv'd upon Earth and communicated to true Christians the life of the new man To live this life we make use not of reason but of grace which is farre above reason and must be the principle of Christian actions For onely grace can bring us to God and render us worthy of God that is of God considered as the object of our Faith and Religion The foundation of all consisteth in this that a humane spirit and reason is not our conduct nor the rule of our life as Christians Iesus Christ is the onely rule law and principle thereof wherefore in our exercises of piety we must have this continually before our eyes if we would be devout viz. we must follow him if we would be saved and we must imitate him if we will follow him Which we are now to consider how it is to be done CHAP. XIII The Practise of what hath been proposed in the imitation of Jesus Christ. WHen we speak of imitating the Sonne of God we mean not doing of miracles as he did we are not commanded to walk upon the Sea to raise up the dead to life and to give sight to the blind We mean not the being elevated to an intuitive knowledge of the secrets of the Divinity this is onely for Iesus these are the effects of his almighty power and the marks of his Mission We are not called to come into competition with him but as he was humbled to our meanness and was cloathed with our nature becoming man and taking a new being and estate so he takes also a new manner of life conformable to ours which we ought to imitate after which we are to form the interiour of our Consciences and the procedure of our actions He annihilated himself in the Incarnation saith the Apostle he humbled himself in all the Mysteries of his life he made himself poor in all his estates he was obedient even to the Crosse he suffered even to death he hath shewed his love in all his works In a word he practised all manner of vertues in the progress of his life Let us do the like he was born for our sakes and all that he did was onely that he might imitate him as the modell of our life For this reason he chose a kind of life full of various estates and practised severall actions that all sorts of persons in all manner of estates should find in him the Idaea of their actions and the prototype of their life Thus to imitate Iesus Christ is an Obligation belonging to the state of Christianity When we receive Baptisme we are incorporated into him as members this incorporation doth not onely bind us to adhere to him as members to their head but to be like
him and to have as much conformity in our actions to those of Iesus as there is between the head and the members of the same body So that this imitation must not be indifferent but most holy and perfect All as many of you saith the Apostle as are baptized into Ie. Christ have put on Christ that is ye bear his Livery and as the Doctors interpret it ye are made like unto him ye imitate his vertues and are followers of his life and actions For it is but reason that where the head is there the members should also be and that there be a resemblance and conformity of the one to the other To imitate then the Sonne of God implies two things the one is that we do what he hath done the other that we do it with the same spirit and dispositions wherewith he did it He was humbled for us he shewed his love and clemency towards us Let us also learn of him to be gentle and humble of heart He was obedient even to death the death of the Crosse let us imitate his obedience preferring the accomplishment of his divine Ordinances and holy will before all things even our own life He was born in a stable layd in a manger he took poverty for the companion of his life he condemned the World and despised its pride shewing us that all is vanity and a meer nothing in the eyes of God Let us do the same and though we are in the World condemn its vanity in a word so use it that all our life interiour and exteriour may be a continuall imitation of the life of Iesus This is the true piety that a Christian must exercise the onely meanes to be perfect In this imitation and resemblance consisteth the perfection of the soul as well in the state of grace as of glory We know that when we appear we shall be like him we shall see him as he is saith Saint Iohn If then we shall be like him in glory we must also be like him in grace for glory is nothing but grace consummated grace glory commenced But we must not rest here it is not enough to do barely what the Son of God hath done we may deceive our selves herein believing we do much when we do nothing of value because Iesus Christ being man as we are and conversing amongst us no doubt but we may find some conformity and resemblance to him even among the wicked in the common states of men many suffer and are oppressed many poor and humbled many sequester themselves from the pomp of the Court and live in the obscurity of a solitary life many fast and pray and do almost all the exteriour actions that the Son of God exercised upon earth He was man as we are we are men as he was but this does not perfect us this is no imitation of him the reason is because it is not enough to do as he did but we must do it with the spirit in the dispositions and by the principle that he operates which few persons mind It is not enough to do but we must do it by a principle of grace not of generall grace comprised under the common and generall name we give to all the gifts of God which is an usuall way of speaking but of grace which giveth us Iesus Christ communicateth to us his spirit and puts us into the holy dispositions of his soul. So that doing all things by this principle we perfectly imitate the Son of God so far that our naturall common actions are withdrawn from their meanness and elevated and united to those of the Son of God after a particular manner as being operated by the same principle and with the same dispositions This manner of acting is peculiar to the state of Christianity and in all circumstances conformable to the state of grace for by Christian grace we are new creatures creatures in Iesus Christ as the Apostle saith and consequently we have a new being and life Which if we have we must also have new inclinations another goodness and all our actions must be conformable to this new estate seeing that according to the ordinary maxims the work is according to the being Now as the being we have by Christian grace is wholy divine elevated and entirely in Iesus Christ it followes that all our actions must be elevated and done in Iesus For this the Son of God humbled himself to all practices and exercises to ennoble and sanctify them for according to the Fathers Iesus entring into the waters in the day of his Baptisme by his touching them he sanctifies the waters of our Baptisme and as Saint Augustine saith he sanctified the world and blessed it by his conversation So by the use he hath made of humane nature wherewith he hath clothed himself and of all the exercises and functions proper thereto he sanctify'd ours shewing that we may imitate him seeing he became man to be the rule law and model of our actions and not onely imitate him but express and represent him to the life and be so many Christ's as members of the Son of God We must be one with him and consequently must not operate but with him and in his person not in our own For this cause he gives us his spirit whereby we act or to say better he acts all in us It follows that they are not so much our vertues as those of Iesus in us Herein appears the great difference between Christian vertues and morall or humane For instance The love God requires of a Christian must not be that of a Pagan who loves them that love him nor that of a Politician who loves according to his humour or interest much less that of a Iew who loves not but out of an hope of reward promised or a fear of Iudgments The love of a Christian must be the same with that of Iesus that is he must love with the same love wherewith Iesus loves he must love with the love of Iesus as he must live the life of Iesus Walk in charity saith Saint Paul as Iesus Christ hath loved you The Son of God himself in the Eve of his passion speaks thus to his Apostles I give you a new Commandment that ye love one another as I have loved you To love is no new Commandment this law was imprinted in our hearts from the beginning of the world but the manner of loving is new we must love by the same love wherewith Iesus loved us his love must be in us O how great is this love how pure how free from self-interest how strong and powerfull since according to the Apostle it is the same love which made Iesus to be born and die for us even then when we were his enemies and sin raigning in us The Son of God gives us a cleer testimony of this truth speaking to his Father I have declared to them thy Name and will declare it that the love
wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them and I in them Expound as you please these words you shall always find it most true that Christian love must be the same love with that of Iesus Christ and that what we say here of love we must judge the like of all other Christian vertues for as we have alwayes said Iesus is our vertue our strength our life and our All. To possess this vertue in an eminent degree as Christianity obliges us we must acknowledge that this favour is not for all and that it 's not enough to have grace in the manner we commonly speak but we must have Iesus Christ in us we must have his spirit and holy dispositions that we may imitate Christianity and express his vertues and life The Christian therefore who would acquire true devotion and do the exercises thereof must first of all purify his heart and conserve it in that purity and subject the motions and thoughts of his soul that Iesus may dwell and act in him To dispose him to this favour he must often elevate his thoughts and heart to the Son of God and demand of him part of his spirit and holy dispositions to accomplish Christianly and perfectly all things And because the actions of the Son of God are so many springs and principles of grace a grace which he merited and communicateth to us we must bind our selves to this grace we must adore it we must desire it and demand it of him in all things and in all our exercises that our actions may be done in him by him and for him according to his designes This advice is further to be observed that in the practice of vertues that we desire them not principally and onely for the love of them nor acquire them because they are conformable to Reason or because they bring some excellency or benefit to the soul. For though vertue be seemly and profitable and of it self much to be desired yet it it not enough to desire to be vertuous upon these grounds and principles since this seems to savour of the covetousness of Adam to live in his spirit which onely aimed at elevation and to make himself a little god or to fall into the corruption of self-love which follows only it 's own interests profit and satisfaction To act purely and live in the exercise of Christian piety all must be done in the regard of God for love of him and for his honour We must seek and practise every vertue and exercise of devotion chiefly to render our selves conformable to the Son of God to imitate and please him And as the first grace that God gives us in the Church by Baptisme is to make us his children to incorporate us in Iesus Christ as members and to put us into an adherence to him so the first principall care of a Christian must be to conserve and perfect himself in his adherence and to submit to the effects thereof Herein consists the happiness of our souls and essence of true piety which is all we have to propose in this subject But as all things have their contraries and man is in a land of hostility so he must expect to meet with great opposition in the way of vertue and encounter enemies on all sides and dangers at every step we shall direct how to defend himself against them CHAP. XIV Of Temptations and Oppositions happening in the way to perfection and the exercises of Piety WE belong unto God by the power of his divine essence we are obliged to him by reason of our indigence we depend on him by the condition of our being his omnipotency gives him an absolute power over us and the immensity of his divine essence makes him present in us more intimately then light in transparent bodies which it penetrates and illuminates more then the soul is in the body which it animates and governs Our wants oblige us to a dependance on him and union with him because we cannot be without his continuall influence and consequently we must more absolutely depend on his conduct then the beam doth on the Sun from whom if it be but a moment separated it loseth it's being So is our estate inseparable from God it must he always dependant on alwayes adhering to him according to Saint Paul In him we live move and have our being which words represent our intimate union with God In the like manner in the estate of grace we are obliged to be God's and depend on him we cannot operate any work of salvation but by him and unless he be united to our souls by grace that is unless his holy spirit dwell in us operating in us all the good works which may contribute to our salvation Without grace we can do nothing by Christian grace God dwells in us according to the promise of the Son of God we come to him and make our dwelling with him By grace God enforceth himself into the soul working an immediate union with her and dwelling in her as his sanctuary and empire whence he diffuseth amorous effects and operates in her according to his divine will with so much bounty as if the infinite love of Iesus had no other thing to do but to procure and further our salvation by infinite ways But besides this of grace there is yet another union whereby we are united to God and incorporated into Iesus Christ and by him have a relation to God namely that which is wrought by the Sacraments in which he preserves us by his love and by the power of his spirit For this reason he gave his life and shed his blood on the cross to give us a new generation in Baptisme he bestows on us his body in the Eucharist that by so many favours and obligations this union might remain perfect and solid and we by so powerfull and legitimate a Title might be his in an indispensable unalterable manner For when we are by so many graces and such divine and effectuall means united to God it should seem impossible that any thing could be strong enough to break so many tyes and divide that which the power and love of God had joyned together But O deplorable condition the creatures and the Devil are strong enough to separate us from Iesus Christ and to extinguish in us his holy spirit and grace and which is worse the malice and depraved will of man is of it self strong enough to obstruct the influences of this liberall love to frustrate it's works to make us retire from our dependance on this conduct The perfect Christian must therefore have a vigilant eye and not suffer himself to be deceived in an affair that concerns his eternall salvation which that he may do we will discover the snares laid for him that he may avoid them There are four things which continually separate us from the Son of God and force us to ruine if his grace prevent us not The first is our own nature
we must hold our selves content if he will humble us we must annihilate our selves if by temptation he will use his justice and punish us why should we be troubled thereat Yea though he should leave us to be swallowed up by the temptation which can never fall out but through our own fault let us accept of his judgments and adore his justice saying with Eli when he heard from the mouth of little Samuel the decree of Gods justice against him Dominus est quod bonus est in oculis suis faciat Let us say the same let us receive all from the hand of God with great humility This is the first use we are to make of temptation Another is to receive it with subjection of soul to the Will of God Temptation is the conduct of God over us We must not therefore consider him that tempteth us nor yet the temptation we groan under but the order of God and the designs he hath upon us in that temptation Nothing can happen to us but by his permission though the Devil make it his constant business to hurt molest and destroy us if he could yet he hath no power but what he receives from God all his power is limited We must not therefore regard the Devil that tempteth us nor the temptation or malice of our enemies but the will and order of God in the temptation To comprehend this well we must remember that temptation is not onely a permission of God but one of his ordinary ways of proceeding over us to conduct us to him Whence it followes that it is not enough to suffer and to submit to temptations but we must do it purely and holily For seeing temptations and afflictions are the ordinary ways of God to conduct us to him we must not in temptation make any pause or think it sufficient to bear them patiently or to fight against them but we must pass further and go even to God to whom they will conduct us if we make such use of them as we ought Thus in temptation we must rather regard God then the temptation that binds us to God It is true we may fear to be overcome but if we be left to God he will not fail us in our necessity he promised to be with us in our agonies and temptations Let us be but faithfull in our duties and actions and without doubt he will be faithfull in his promises A third use of temptations is to refer them to the glory of God and to offer to him the state that we bear and all that passeth in us This is grounded both upon our duties and the designes of God who wills that we referr to him all the estates of our soul and all the actions and moments of our life that is all that is in us and all that we are This use is also grounded on the condition of all things which are opposite to honour and pay homage to God but principally the Christian who is called to the state of Christianity only to serve and honour God and particularly such as make profession of piety since true devotion requires much fidelity and wills us to make use of all things to unite us to God and to render to him the honours and homages due to his divine and supreme Majesty If we reflect upon all that hath been said from the beginning to this instant we shall see that we end where we began and that we have done nothing but shewn the Christian who would be perfect that true piety consists in purifying the heart and making it worthy to bear and possess God that he is truly devout who lives according to the spirit and grace of Christianity that to arrive at this happiness we must adhere to Iesus Christ our way and means to bring us to God that the principall care we ought to have in these exercises is to preserve our selves therein which indeed brings us to an adherence to the Son of God and to live with great fidelity and vigilancy subject to the conduct of Iesus and dependant upon his holy Ordinances These are the foundations we must lay if we would acquire true piety and when we come to the Consideration of Works and to express the externall worship love and service which we would render to God we have said that it is not enough to do good things but we must accomplish them by the conduct of his holy spirit according to his intentions and in holy dispositions We have already proposed the method it suffices to know that therein consists the essence and nature of a Christian for which we render to God the honour and service due to him This is all we mean to shew in this Discourse which we will conclude with the words and prayer of Saint Paul The God of peace make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is acceptable in his sight through Iesus Christ to whom be glory for ever and ever Amen FINIS Books Printed for Tho. Dring and are to be sold at the George in Fleet-street neer Saint Dunstans Church THe Pleader containing perfect precedents and forms of Declarations pleadings issues judgements and proceedings in all kind of actions both reall and personall by Mr. Brownlow Mr. Moyle Mr. Gulston and Mr. Conye published by John Herne Gent. in folio The Law of Conveyances shewing the nature kinds and effects of all manner of Assurances also directions to issue out and prosecute all manner of Writs a Warrant to summon a Court of Survey and the Articles to be given in charge and inquired of in that Court by John Herne in octavo The Reports of that Reverend and Learned Iudge Sir Richard Hutton in folio The twelfth Part of the Reports of Sir Edward Coke in folio the second impression The Reports of the Reverend and Learned Iudge Owen in folio The Reading upon the Statute of the thirteenth of Elizabeth Chapt. 7. touching Bankrupts by John Stove of Grays-Inn Esquire An Abridgement of the Common Law with the Cases thereof drawn out of the old and new books of Law for the benefit of all Practisers and Students by William Hughs of Gray-Inn Esq. in quarto An excellent Abridgement of all the Acts and Ordinances of Parliament from 1640. to 1647. by William Hughs Esq. in quarto The Reports of Serjeant Bridgeman in folio The ground of the Laws of England extracted out of the fountains of all Learning and fitted for all Students and Practitioners in large octavo An exact Abridgement of that excellent Book called Doctor and Student in octavo A profitable Book of Mr. John Perkins treating of the Laws of England in octavo The Interpreter or Book containing the signification of all the words of the Law by Joh. Cowel in folio The Maximes of Reasons or the Rule of the Common Law by Edmond Wingate Esq. in folio An exact Abridgment of all the Statutes in force and use upon the fourth of Jan.
from all things without doubt if God operate you shall see all these effects and therefore the soul that will be perfect must narrowly look into all this and have an extraordinary vigilancy to become faithfull and attentive to the operations of God in her on one side to correspond thereto and to labour after the manner God inspires her with on the other to annihilate her self not the works of God for if we oppose not our selves to grace and the effects thereof if we do not annihilate the works of God in us God will certainly work great things in us But alas the wayes whereby we make use of devotion in this age are more capable to drive God away then to invite him into our hearts I shall describe them unto you The soul blinded with naturall love to her self desires to be brought up in the gifts of God she would enjoy him and would love what seems good and profitable to her she fills her self with divers desires she tyes her self thereto and will continually act and attain she puts her self into all employments and motions she seeks them she pleases her self with a satisfaction that her own love takes in things most holy and in the very operation of God she seeks her self therein she elevates her self thereto In this manner she opposes her self to the spirit of Iesus Christ and annihilateth the work of God who would onely live in her onely occupate her spirit onely possess her desiring by the power of his love to annihate in her all that is of her Iesus Christ would take away and this soul will add to God would dispossess and spoyl and she would acquire and possess Thus she hinders and destroyes the workes of God driving God out of her and out of her spirit to cause her own love to raign there her own satisfaction and will a vanity ordinary to such souls as are wholly consumed in the spirit of Adam They therefore who tend to perfection must go with all purity and simplicity they must seek nothing but God and to please God but above all they must be very circumspect and attentive to his inward operations having a great care and fidelity to leave the spirit to act by the grace of God in them As all this is very secret and interiour and often is in the very centre of the soul so must we take heed thereto and besides the vigilance necessary it is good from time to time to practise these ensuing acts First to give our selves to Iesus Christ to live in him and to bear the spirit and effects of this self-denyall after the manner that pleaseth him Secondly to renounce our selves our secret vanity and all that is in us opposite to grace and to the operations of God Thirdly to be attentive to the motions and operations of God in us especially when he acts by self-denyall and privation as well interiour as exteriour to co-operate therewith either by action if it be necessary or by consent of the soul giving her self to God to receive what God shall operate in her when the soul shall feel divers motions or meet several occasions to practise vertue she shall alwayes choose those where there shall be privation and self-denyall as the most assured way and the most acceptable to God most for the honour of Iesus Christ and most conformable to his humane life Fourthly she shall pray to Iesus Christ to vouchsafe to operate and put into her all that he wills and to annihilate in her all that he requireth to prevent in her by his light and love the time of death and judgement whereto he must annihilate the thoughts and judgements of men The abridgement of the third Part. CHAP. XIV Treating of the dependance of the Soul upon God IT is easie to see that amongst Christians even those who think they have vertue enough to fave them many deceive and altogether lose themselves taking the shadow of vertue for the substance apparence for truth like the Dog in the Fable who let go the good morsell he had hold of to catch a shadow these neglect the solid vertues and principall foundations of piety to insist on certain exteriour actions which have no substance but in the air of imagination they exercise themselves in morall vertues and despise the Christian they compose the exteriour and form their demeanour and neglect the interiour they fear to displease men and endeavour to satisfie their kindred and friends but care no more to please God then they fear to displease him they would seem good but care not to be so In a word in all things they choose the most beautifull and best and will have nothing but what is good but for their souls that which is least best contents them they seek but that which is necessary what gives them greatest liberty and satisfaction they embrace with all their heart God who is truth is not satisfied with these feignings and wills that we serve him in spirit and truth he detests a lye and curses those that serve him with the mouth onely if he love he will be beloved and as his love is most pure and perfect he will have ours to be such also Whence it is easie to comprehend that to be a perfect Christian and friend to God requires great qualities He must have a golden key that will enter into the Kings chamber he that will come to a royall feast must be clothed with a wedding garment lest he be bound hand and foot and cast into prison and utter darkness To be a perfect Christian is not so slight a business as some think it it belongs to God only to make a man just it is the work of his hand and greater then the creation of the world at least in this God shews himself more powerfull in his love and more admirable in his mercies Therefore when we speak of a good and perfect Christian we speak of Gods handy-work of a man worthy to be a Saint for to be saved and to be Saint is one and the same thing Now what ought the soul of a Saint to be who must one day see God live with God saith St. Bernard in his Meditations and be eternally in unity with God what must the perfection of a soul be that shall become worthy so infinite and incomprehensible a happiness whereto all aspire that would be saved I leave it to their thoughts who know how to esteem of the works of God and make account of the greatness of Paradise and shall onely tell those languishing and easie spirits with Saint Paul Be not deceived God is not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap also for he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting Whereupon we must reflect that Christians who are to reap the incorruption of the life everlasting if they will arrive to their
operation in us it is he that operates there incessantly things great and worthy of himself This granted it follows that the Christian who desires to live in the grace of God must on the one side shun all manner of sin especially such as may ruine this grace in him on the other become very attentive and faithful to receive the effects of his grace and the operations of the Son of God that so he may cooperate therewith according to his intentions otherwise it is to be feared he may lose it or at least hinder it's effects and so destroy the honour of God and all that the Son of God hath established in his soul. This is grounded upon the very principles of faith For we can do nothing of our selves as of our selves but Iesus Christ doth all in us acting and referring all our actions to the glory of his Father We must then let him act and as we know not his divine intentions and designes over us neither know the grace or degree of grace whereto he would elevate us for his greater glory for it belongs to him to do all when and how he pleases It remains then that we oppose not our selves to his intentions and destroy not his works The Christian therefore who desireth to be God's and to live in true piety must not amuse himself in these unprofitable and superficiall things nor regard so much these exercises but purifie himself and make himself worthy of the grace of God taking great care to preserve himself therein and have a continuall attention to all that the spirit of grace operates in him for the glory of God that he destroy it not by a contrary application and want of co-operation Hereby we shall see how many false devotions there are and how many deceive themselves in the exercise of vertues and piety These two wayes of honouring the Sonne of God may be understood after two manners whereby we may honour Iesus Christ and he may honour himself in us two wayes one by action the other by estate The action is transient and is but for a little time and perhaps is but in one part of the soul but estate is a thing permanent which dwells in the whole capacity of the creature and is imprinted in the bottom of its being having no dependance on the actions of the understanding and will We may act well in the first manner and it is good but we must also endeavour to establish our selves in an estate which perfectly honours the Sonne of God as the Sonne of God For as the Sonne of God himself hath not onely honoured his Father by the actions of his transitory life but hath been pleased to become man and take upon him a nature which essentially is in a condition of servitude and remain perpetually and inviolably therein in regard of his Divinity so we must endeavour to honour the Sonne of God not onely by transitory actions but also by a permanent estate and condition such as may render him honour and perpetuall homage This we are obliged to do for our part to the utmost of our power as being one of the most essentiall exercises of piety But our attempts are feeble and all we can do is little in comparison of what we owe God The Sonne of God therefore who is our supplyer doth it sometimes himself by his grace by his divine and amorous attractions he calls us and puts us into the estate which he himself operates in us by which he satisfies his Father to his honour and glory It is a singular happiness a favour to obtain which all we can do is to continue disposed attentive to whatever the Sonne of God operates in us and carefully to take heed thereto and to co-operate faithfully therein and with the best disposition may be proposed The meaning hereof is to keep our selves in a simple submission of our spirit to that of the Sonne of God and this submission consisteth in not resisting it but leaving our selves wholly to the power of and a dependance on his holy spirit and conduct giving up offering and disposing our selves to the work and designes which he hath in and upon us renouncing all our own contrary inclinations The soul that lives in this submission is capable to bear effectually the effects of grace and to honour God in all things Now when it is said that we ought to refer all our actions to the glory of the Sonne of God we mean not onely the good and vertuous but even the common and naturall actions even to a moment of time for all belongs to God and must be referred to his honour and glory This truth we learn of the Church our Mother who in her rites and ceremonies doth not onely represent the Mysteries and actions of the Sonne of God but honours them in representing them and as such is her intention whence it may be observed that in all her ceremonies even to the least she intends to honour and acknowledge him Iesus Christ himself may be also an example to us in this exercise of piety for in that he hath taken the nature of man upon him he hath honoured his Father in all things and by all the concernments of humane nature doing to that end and intention not onely those actions which we call Religious and vertuous but even those which are naturall and purely humane and referring to his honour all the moments of his life We must carry our selves in the same manner what he did being done by him as a Master for our imitation The devout Christian therefore must refer all his exercises and actions both naturall and common little and great to the honour and glory of Iesus Christ. By this relation our actions are ennobled for what he hath sanctified is neither common nor inconsiderable whatsoever is consecrated and referred by his honour cannot but be great when his honour is so great There are a many that judge this practise of Piety to be too difficult whereas they will indifferently receive some others But if we consider it we shall find that it is an Obligation proper to the state of Christianity which cannot by any meanes be dispenced with For if the life of a Christian be a lively Image of the life of Iesus Christ and a life derived and flowing from his it must of necessity follow that as all things are sanctified and made divine in Iesus Christ so are they such in us by the same spirit of Iesus which is given us which dwells in us and operates in us From which reason we may infer that as in Iesus there is nothing mean or vile but all in him is elevated and referred to the glory of his Father so in Christian souls there ought to be no actions mean and object no not indifferent seeing they all belong to the Sonne of God who hath sanctified them in his spirit and in the conduct and direction of him it is that we are to operate