probant ratio confirmat elementa loquuntur dâ—â—ones confitentur sed longè major insania si de veritate Evangelii non dubites vivere tamen quasi de ejus falsitate non dubitares Advise to cold Catholicks imitate them in their doctrine If they expect any other arguments it will appear their frenzie would have no other remedies but the searing-iron and fire As for other Catholicks who believe as the faithful and live as infidels pronouncing JESUS CHRIST with their mouth and renouncing him with their hands I pray them to ponder a saying of one of the rarest wits which the world hath a long time had it is Picus Mirandula expressed by him in these words to his nephew It is a prodigious folly not to believe the Gospel the truth whereof is sealed with the bloud of Martyrs innumerable testified by the Apostles proved by miracles confirmed by reason published and declared by the elements and creatures insensible confessed even by the devils But it is a much more notorious folly not to doubt at all of the verity of the Gospel which one professeth and yet to live as if he made no question of the falsitie thereof What a mockery it is to carrie the name of a poor SAVIOUR and to burn with enraged avarice of an humble SAVIOUR and suffer himself to be exposed to tempestuous winds of exorbitant ambition which breatheth nothing but breaches and ship-wracks of a crucified SAVIOUR and to live in a mass of flesh wholly effeminated with delights and curiosities even to the making their spittings to swim in gold of a meek SAVIOUR and to carry under the name of a Christian a Gorgons eye the anger of an Asp the heart of a Tyger a soul full of revenges of gall of bloud of Monsters of beastly bruitishness O God what Christianity is this Salvianus speaketh a word very remarkeable Salvian 4. de guber Dei Omnis Christianorum culpa Divinitatis injuria est Atrocius sub sancti nominis professione peccamus Ipsa errores nostros religio quam profitemur accusat We cannot sin without making our selves capable of spiritual treason in the highest degree the sins of Christians are sacriledges the name which they bear condemneth their life without any other form of process These colds of the north this yciness which some Catholicks shew in their belief is greatly scandalous and prejudicial to verity because the mis-believing which see them live in such exorbitancy cannot perswade themselves they firmly believe the Gospel which they profess but that all their religion is but an exteriour countenance and rather an idle amuzement of words than a true list of virtue This bringeth a horrible prejudice into the Church of God which should even rent our hearts if we yet retained one onely vein of that noble bloud the Martyrs profusely spent for the defence of the truth The remedies for these essential impediments Remedies in the act of Christianitie are to take away and cut off the causes of this infidelity 1. To prepare a conscience chaste and timerous which never wil make it self an hostess for mortal sin and if by chance it give harbor thereunto to dislodge it presently for sins heaped one upon another by a dissolute deadness of confession make a savage and bruitish soul which seeketh nothing but to be freed from God though it be a matter impossible 2. Not to tast the blessings contentments or honours of the world with too much ardour they easily ensnare our affections and make the forgetfulness of Heaven slide into an insensible soul 3. To eschew curiositie principally in matter of religion as the canker of faith We must resemble the Cuttle a very wise fish who during storms fixeth herself firmly upon the rocks without motion amongst the floating thoughts which a dark cloudy conscience may suggest always to hold ones foot on the rock of S. Peter fixed and stable to trust the direction of the Church and not to forsake our hold It is the most palpable folly which Non plus sapere quam oportet sapere sed sapere ad sobrietatem Rom. 1. can creep into the brain of man to desire wisdom contrary to the wisdom of Saints which is humility 4. To exercise your self diligently in good works as prayers abstinencies frequentation of Sacraments and alms-deeds Faith is given to you as an inheritance of Heaven whosoever endeavoureth not to husband it looseth it The second OBSTACLE * * * Cautè hoc caput non nisi cum delectu adhibito legendum Errour in Religion Friendly and wholesom counsel to the Nobilitie of the pretended Religion AN heresie discovered is a face unmasked S. Hieromn the letter to Ctesiphon Haereses ad originem suam revocasse canfutasse Haereticorum sententias prodidisse superassi est Take away the vizard you disarm her pull away this semblance painted with hypocrisie wherewith she hath plaistered her face you sufficiently refute her you need but to know her to overcome her and when the head of her arrows are bare they have no more force Catholick Doctours have hitherto couragiously endeavoured to take from her this veil and adulterated colours yea even she at this time hath so favourably for you unmasked her self that a man must pull out his eyes if he will not behold her deformity in her rebellion justly detested by the sage and moderate of her own side And I beseech them to consider that this egge which they abhor is laid by the Raven that broodeth in their bosom and it is a great blindness to break the egges of the Asp and cherish the serpent which hath laid them Good and generous souls which yet retain some sparks of a French spirit do well see these proceedings are not according to Scripture which so severely recommendeth the honour of Kings and therefore they sound a retreat they fould up their ensigns freely confessing they have erred as men and protesting not to persevere in mischief like devils There are none but enraged spirits that will be healed by the experience of their own ill and bury themselves in their ruin wise men always make a medicine Optimum est aliena insania frui for themselves of others folly Go to then you who after so many voices from Heaven do still stagger and advise if you ought to return to the Romane Church which is the womb of your beginning and bosom of your repose give me leave that I may take this film from your eyes grow not outragious to what purpose should you stand quaking in these frightful agonies Exercise a little patience I do not doubt but you will bless the hand which layeth hold on you when you shall come to see the light I come not with sword in hand to put a religion into your heads with main force I come to you full of compassion of your misery full of affection for your salvation full of the desire of your ease of your contentment of your
circumstances of his crime Behold you not saith he a bruitish stupiditie to conspire against your father having as yet the bloud of your brothers before your eyes and all the assurances of the scepter in your hands Needs must you perpetrate a parricide to make your self possessour of a Crown which was acquired for you by so solemn and authentical a Testament Look you after nothing but the bloud of your father to set a seal upon it yea of a father whose life is so dear to all bonest men and of nature so indulgent to love his children that have never so little merit An ingratitude able to make Heaven blush and earth tremble under your feet An ingratitude worthy that all the elements should conspire to punish it This man ceased not to discharge against him words of fire with a masculine eloquence and the miserable Antipater prostrated himself on the ground and prayed God to do a miracle in favour of him to make manifest his innocency since he found himself so oppressed by the malice of men It is wonder saith the Historian that those who during their life have believed no God would yet acknowledge him at their death This man lived as if there were neither Heaven God nor Angels and now seeing himself in the horrours of death prayed the Divinity to excuse his crime Varus saith unto him My friend expect not extraordinarie signs from Heaven in your favour but if you have any good reasons boldly produce them The King your father desireth nothing more than your justification Thereupon he stood confounded like a lost man Varus taking the poison that had been before represented to the Councel caused it to be given to an offender already condemned who instantly died and all the assembly arose as it is said with manifest condemnation of Antipater His father esteeming him absolutely convicted required of him his complices he onely named Antiphilus who brought the poison saying this wicked man was cause of all his unhappiness It was a great chance Herod at that time had not caused the sentence of death to be executed upon him but according to his ordinary proceeding he resolveth to inform Caesar of all that had passed and to send him the whole process formally drawn to order all at his pleasure In the mean time Antipater is streightly imprisoned expecting hourly as a miserable victim the stroke of death Herod at that time was about seventy years of age Horrible state of Herod in his lattâ—r days and already felt through imbecillity of body the approach of the last hour It was a very hard morsel for him to digest Never man better loved this present life Very freely would he have forsaken his part of the next world eternally to enjoy this though he in effect was therein most unhappy Towards the end of his days he grew so harsh so wayward then so collerick and furious that his houshold servants knew not how to come about him they handled him in his Palace as an old Lion chained with the fetters of an incurable malady He perswaded himself he was hated of all the world and was therein no whit deceived as having given too great occasion thereof The people almost forgot their duty with impatience and could no longer endure him As soon as his sickness was bruited abroad Judas The golden Eagle thrown down and Matthias the principal Doctours of the Jewish Law who had the youth at command perswaded the most valiant of their sect to undergo a bold adventure which was that Herod having re-edified and adorned the Temple of Jerusalem and as he had always shewed himself for the accommodation of his own estate to be an Idolater of Caesars fortune to set upon the principal gate the Romane Eagle all glittering in gold This much offended the sight of the Jews who could not endure any should place portraictures of men or beasts or any other figures in their Temples so much they abhorred such monsters which their fathers had seen adored in Aegypt Behold why this Judas and Matthias who were the chief thinking the sickness of Herod would help them began earnestly to exhort the most valiant of the young men who every day frequented their houses to take in hand the quarrel of God according to the spirit of their Ancestours and to beat down this abomination which they had fixed upon their Temple That the peril was not now so great Herod having enough to do to wrastle with his own pain but if it should happen they lost their lives to die in so glorious an act was to be buried in the midst of palms and triumphs There needed no more to encourage the youth Behold a troup of the most adventurous came forth about the midst of the day armed with axes and hatchets who climbed to the top of the Temple and hewed in pieces the Eagles in the sight of the whole world Judas and Matthias being there present and serving for trumpets in this exploit The noise hereof instantly came to the Palace and the Captain of the Guard ran thither with the most resolute souldiers He much feared some further plot and that this defacing of the Eagle might prove a preamble to some greater sedition But at the first as he began to charge the people retired which the more encouraged him for pursuit Fourty young men of those who had done the feat were taken in the place Judas and Matthias who accompanied them deeming it a thing unworthy to flie away and that at the least they ought to follow them in peril whom they had brought into danger Being presented to Herod and demanded from whence this boldness proceeded they freely answered Their plot had been fully agreed upon among themselves and if it were to do again they would be in readiness to put it in execution in regard they were more bound to Moses than Herod Herod amazed at this resolution and fearing greater commotions caused them to be secretly conveyed to Jerico whither himself after though crazy was carried and assembling the principal spake to them out of his litter making a long narration of the good offices he had done in favour of the whole Nation of the Temple he had built for them of the ornaments with which he had enriched it adding he had done in few years what their Asmonean Kings could not perform in six-score And for recompence of his piety at noon day they had hewed down with notable boldness a holy gift which he had raised in the Temple wherein God was more interessed than himself for which he required a reason These now fearing any further to incense him declined the danger and put him upon their companions leaving them to the pleasure of the King At that time the High-priesthood is taken from Matthias and another Matthias who was held to have been the authour of the sedition burned alive that night with his companions at which time an eclipse of the moon was seen that made this spectacle
Beware how you enter into the list among so many noble spirits there to discover your weaknesse and to adde nothing to the lustre of the honour of so many worthy Ancestours but to render your own crimes the more remarkable Shew your self herein a reasonable man and endeavour that all your actions may be as lines which grow from the centre of wisdome to be produced with all felicitie Remember things past rectifie the present foresee those to come Above all learn to set a true estimation upon every thing in the world and suffer not your self to be surprised by the illusions of so many objects which when they have charmed the eyes and overthrown reason leave nothing behind them but sorrow to have done ill and impotencie of doing well In conversation take the measure of your self and the like of those with whom you deal to husband and accommodate your self reasonably to all the world yielding to every one the respect which his merit seems to require The exercise of devotion will not hinder you from the endeavour how to become an able man in your profession from being honest civil discreet affable liberal obliging stout couragious patient which are the principal qualities of a Courtier It is not desired that to be devout you should have a spirit drowzie sluggish overwhelmed not that through overmuch simplicitie you make profusion of your self in an Age where bountie seemeth to be the prey of insolent spirits Wisdom will teach you neither to intrude nor pour out your self to dissemble through virtue that which ought to be concealed to adapt your self to companies and affairs to believe nothing lightly nor to promise nor decide any thing without consideration to persevere in certain things not ill because you have begun them not to be harsh nor too much complying since the one tasteth of brutishness the other inclines to flatterie To propose to your self good and evil which may arise from an affair to moderate the one and tollerate the other Above all honour the King next after God as the source of all greatness and the fountain of the most noble lights which reflect on Nobilitie Honour him with profound respect as the lively Image of God Love him sincerely serve him with all fidelitie If you be employed in affairs and governments endeavour to persist therein with conscience and honour which are the two mansions of a great soul If you have merit without employment and recompence say not therefore that all is lost It is a good business to be well at rest to manure your spirit to enable your self with reading and peaceable conversion to govern your house Learn nothing but what you ought to know Search that onely which you may profitably find desire nothing but what you may honourably wish for And be not conceited to run after a spectre of imaginarie favour nor to mount to a place where you cannot stay without fear nor fall without ruin So many great Monarchs so many Princes Lords and valorous men who are come from Courts and the profession of arms to enter into the Temple of pietie assure us this life is capable of Saints and that no man ought to despair of virtue but he who renounceth it If the brevitie of this Treatise would permit I would willingly set before you a David a Josias an Ezechias a Charlemaign a S. Lewis a Hermingildes a Henry a Stephen a Casimire a Godfrey of Bovillon a Wenceslaus an Edward an Elzear an Amideus I would make you see flourishing Squadrons of Martyrs drawn from warfare amongst which you would admire a Maurice an Exuperius a Sebastian a Marius a Mennas an Olympiades a Meliton a Leontius a Maximus a Julian an Abdon a Sennen a Valens a Priscus a Marcellus a Marcellinus a Severinus a Philoromus a Philoctemon and so many such like Finally I would shew in the latter Ages men worthy of all honour eminent in arms and enobled with singular pietie but I now content my self to draw from Eusebius Theodoret Nicephorus Zozimus Socrates Sozomenus Cedrenus and above all Cardinal Baronius the life of Great Constantine who hath been the very prime man amongst Christian princes and hath witnessed especially after his Baptism a masculine pietie and a great example of sanctitie IMP. CAES. FLAVIVS CONSTAN AVG. CONSTANTINE The first SECTION The Providence of God over Constantine I Will shew to Christian Nobilitie its source in the life of the prime Gentleman of Christianitie If we respect antiquitie greatness and dignitie we shall not find a Prince either more anciently noble than he who first of all among Emperours deserved the title of Christian or more truly great than he who so happily engraffed the empire of the universe on the tree of the Cross or more justly honourable than he who cemented his honour with the bloud of the Lamb. It is the admirable Constantine Greatness of Constantine who so perfectly allied valour to pietie Monarchy to humilitie the wisdom of the Cross to the government of the world the nails and thorns of the passion to the Diadem of Kings and delights of the Court that he hath left matter of meditation for the wise of profit for Religious of imitation for Monarchs and of wonder for those who admire nothing vulgar Behold a marvellous Theatre of the providence of Theatre of Divine Providence God whereunto I would willingly invite all those spirits repleat with humane policie and devested of heavenly Maxims who are onely great by the greatness of their ruin to see how the breath of God demolisheth the Towers of Babel to raise the walls of Sion how the subtil are surprized in their subtility how the science of men becometh blind in its proper lights how the vigour of the world is slain by its own hands how stabilitie is overturned by the supports it chooseth how the spirit of flesh at unawares contributeth to plant the Gross on the top of Capitols and heads of Monarchs by the same ways wherewith it promised to over-cloud them with darkness and abysses I here produce a Constantine beed up very young in the Court of Diocletian who had an intention to become a scourge to Christianitie but God surprized him therein as Moses in the Court of Pharaoh to stop the stream of persecution to calm the tempests of the time confound Idols and raise the Church on the ruins of Gentilism Reader stay a little on the frontispice of this history and behold how the Eternal Providence led this young Constantine by the hand like another Cyrus to humble the Great-ones of the earth before his face and to give him hidden treasures to take Isaiah 49. from him so many bars and impediments to open for him so many gates of iron and to cause so many Kings to turn their faces and afford him their place There was at that time twelve heads which alreadie either wore the diadem or thought themselves capable of it Diocletian and Maximian held the highest place
suitable to the greatness of this Mysterie Another having lived free from the bands of marriage caused to be set on his tomb Vixit sine impedimento Brisson for He lived without hinderance which was a phrase very obscure to express what he would say Notwithstanding it was found this hinderance whereof he spake was a woman This may well happen through the vice and misery wherein the state of this present life hath confined us but to speak generally we must affirm had it been the best way to frame the world without a woman God had done it never expecting the advise of these brave Cato's S. Zeno homil de continent Aut hostis publicus aut insanus and whosoever endeavoureth to condemn marriage as a thing not approved by God sheweth that he is either out of his wits or a publick enemy to mankind The great S. Peter in whose heart God locked up 1 Pet. 3. Vi qui non credunt Verbo per conversationem mulierum sine verbo lucriâ—iâ—nt the Maxims of the best policie of the world was of another opinion when he judged the good and laudable conversation of women rendered it self so necessary for Christianity that it was a singular mean to gain those to God who would not submit themselves to the Gospel Whereupon he affordeth an incomparable honour to the virtue of holy women disposing it in some sort into a much higher degree of force and utility than the preaching of the word of God and in effect it seemeth this glorious Apostle by a spirit of prophesie foresaw an admirable thing which afterward appeared in the revolution of many Ages which is that God hath made such use of the piety of Ladies for the advancement of Christianity that in all the most flourishing Kingdoms of Christendom there are observed still some Queens or Princesses who have the very first of all advanced the Standard of the Cross upon the ruins of Infidelity Helena planted true Religion in the Roman Empire Caesarea in Persia Theodelinda in Italie Clotilda in France Indegundis in Spain Margerite in England Gysellis in Hungarie Dambruca in Poland Olga in Russia Ethelberga in Germanie not speaking of an infinite number of others who have happily maintained and encreased that which was couragiously established Reason also favoureth my proposition for we must necessarily confess there is nothing so powerfull to perswade what ever it be as complacence and flattery since it was the smoothest attractiveâ— which the evil spirit made use of in the terrestrial Paradise to overthrow the first man setting before him the alluring pleasures of an Eve very newly issued out of the hands of God Now every one knows nature hath imparted to woman a very good portion of these innocent charms and it many by these priviled ges are also powerfull in actions so wicked why should not so many virtuous souls generoully employed in the service of the great God bear as much sway since he accustometh to communicate a grace wholly new to the good qualities that are aimed to his honour I conjure all Women and Ladies who shall read this Treatise to take from hence a generous spirit and never permit vice and curiosity may derive tribute from such ornaments as God hath conferred on them it being unfit to stuff Babylon with the gold and marbles of Sion The second SECTION That women are capable of good lights and solid instruments SInce I see my self obliged by my design to make a brief model of principal perfections which may be desired for the complishment of an excellent Ladie and that this discourse cannot be throughly perfected without observing vicious qualities which are blemishes opposite to the virtues we endeavour to establish I will make use of the clew of some notable invention in so great a labyrinth of thoughts the better to facilitate the way I remember to have heretofore read a very rare manuscript of Theodosius of Malta a Greek Authour touching the nuptials of Theophilus Emperour of Constantinople and his wife Theodora which will furnish us with a singular enterance into that which we now seek for so that we adde the embelishment of so many Oracles of wisdom to the foundations which this Historian hath layed He recounteth that this Theophilus being on the Anno 830. Zonoras saith that she was onely step-mother and relateth it somewhat otherwise but let us follow our Authour point to dispose himself for marriage the Empress his mother named Euphrosina who passionately desired the contentment of her son in an affair of so great importance dispatched her Embassadours through all the Provinces of the Empire to draw together the most accomplished maidens which might be found in the whole circuit of his Kingdom And for that purpose she shut up within the walls of Constantinople the rarest beauties of the whole world assembling a great number of Virgins into a chamber of his Palace called for curiositie The Pearl The day being come wherein the Emperour was to make choice of her to whom he would give his heart with the Crown of the Empire the Empress his mother spake to him in these terms MY LORD AND SON Needs must I confess that since the day nature bound me so streightly to your person next after God I neither have love fear care hope nor contentment but for you The day yieldeth up all my thoughts to you and the night which seemeth made to arrest the agitations of our spirit never razeth the rememberance of you from my heart I acknowledge my self doubly obliged to procure with all my endeavours what ere concerneth your good because I am your mother and that I see you charged with an Empire which is no small burden to them who have the discretion to understand what they undertake It seems to me since the death of the Emperour your father my most honoured Lord I have so many times newly been delivered of you as I have seen thorny affairs in the mannage of your State And at this time when I behold you upon terms to take a wife and that I know by experience to meet with one who is accomplished with all perfections necessary for your State is no less rare than the acquisition of a large Empire the care I have ever used in all concerns your glory and contentment is therefore now more sensible with me than at any other time heretofore It is true O most dear Son that the praise-worthy inclinations which I have observed in your Mujestie give me as much hope as may reasonably by conceived in the course of humane things yet notwithstanding the accidents we see to happen so contrary to their proceedings do also entertain my mind in some uncertaintie That you may take some resolution upon this matter behold in the Pearl of Constantinople I have made choice of the most exquisite maidens of your Empire to the end your Majestie may elect her whom you shall judge most worthie of your chaste affections I beseech God
for pretexts to cover their passions some saying It is a touch from heaven and an effect of their Horoscope which cannot be diverted Others Casus in culpam transit Velleius Pater culus complain they are bewitched and that they feel the power of magick Others cast all the blame upon devils who notwithstanding think not so much of them as they may imagine for love comes easily enough from naturall causes without going about to seek for it in the bottome of the Abysse I here remember what Pliny recounteth of one Cresin who manured a piece of ground which yielded him fruit in abundance while Plin. l. 18. c. 16. his neighbours lands were extreamly poor and barren for which cause he was accused to have enchanted them Otherwise said his accuser his inheritance could not raise such a revenue while others stand in so wretched a Condition But he pleading his cause did nothing else but bring forth a lusty daughter of his well Filiam validam bene curatam fed and well bred who took pains in his garden with strong carts and stout oxen vvhich ploughed his land and the vvhole equipage of his Tillage in very good order He then cryed out aloud before the Judges Behold the art magick and charms of Cresin vvilling to shew that we must not seek for hidden and extraordinary causes where ordinary are so evident So in the like case we may say it is a thing most ridiculous Haec sunt veneficia mea Quirites to see a body composed according to nature found and very strong which hath fire in the spirits and bloud in the veins which continually feeds high lies soft and perpetually converseth among women the most handsome to complain of celestiall influences or the sorseries of Venus Totall Nature especially since Interiour causes of love the corruption of sin conspireth to make love It sets Reason to sale if it carefully take not heed and insensibly draweth it to its side There is not almost a stone whereunder some scorpion lyeth not there is not a place where concupiscence spreadeth not out some net for us It fighteth against our selves makes use of our members as of the Instruments of its battels and the Organs of its wiles There is sedition within and warre without and never any repose but by the singular grace of God Tertullian writes the chastity Tertull. de Velandis Continentia majoris ardoris laboratior of men is the more painfull the fervour of concupiscence being the more fiery in their sex and one may justly say that such as persist all their life time in great resistances and notable victories are Martyrs of purity who having passed through fire and water hasten to a place of refreshment We have all one domestick enemy which is our own body that perpetually Rebellion of the flesh S. Climach de castita te grad 15. in fine Quomodo illum vinciam quam ut amem a natura suscepimus Est cooperator hostis adjutator atque adversarias auxiliator simul infidiator c. almost opposeth the dispositions of the spirit If I go about to fetter it saith S. John Climachus it gets out of my hands If I will judge it it grows into favour with me If I intend to punish it it flatters me If I will hate it Nature commandeth me to love it If I will fly from it it saith it is tyed to my soul for the whole time of my life If I will destroy it with one hand I repair it with another Is it too much cherished it the more violently assaults me Is it too much mortified it cannot almost creep watching withers it sleep on the other side fatteneth it whips torment it and dandlings corrupt it By treating it ill I endanger my life by pampering it I incurre death This sheweth how Saints fortified themselves with much precaution diligently observing the condition of Nature the causes of temptations and the maladies of the soul thereby the more successefully to practise the cure They who are most retired said the fore-alledged Authour fail not to feel domestick warres but such as indifferently expose themselves to objects are violently both within and without assaulted The beauty and handsomnesse of one sex is a sweet Beauty imperious Nomen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Psal 49. Alii reddunt fetam alii pulchâ—it udinem ut sept naginta Interpretes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 poison to the other which entreth in by the eyes and maketh strange havock And I wonder not at all that the Scripture compares it to a Panther a savage and cruel beast which with teeth teareth those she hath amuzed with the mirrour-like spots of her skin drawn to her by the sweet exhalation of her body It is more to be feared said an Ancient then the horns of the Bull the teeth of the Lion the gall of the Aspick yea then fire or flames and the holy Abbot of mount Sinai saith that had not God given woman shamefac'tnesse which is the scabbard wherein this sword is Climach de castreate kept there would be no salvation in the world The love of women caused Sampson's David's and Salomon's shipwracks It hath besotted Sages conquered the strong deceived the prudent corrupted saints humbled the mighty It hath walked on Sceptres The love of women dangerous parched the lawrels of victours thrown trouble into states schisme into Churches corruption among judges fury into arms It hath entered into places which seemed inaccessible but to spirits and lightnings And if beauty be so much to be dreaded when it hath no other companions how dangerous think we is it when it causeth to walk along with it pomp apparell attractives dalliances cunning wires liberty of conversation merriment Good chear Courting Idlenesse Night sollitude familiarity Need we to require any other charms then those to work the ruine of a soul Yet besides these open causes there are other secret ones to be found in the love of humour and fantasie which insensibly fetter a mind and suffer it not to find its chains A modern Authour hath of late written a treatise of the love of inclination wherein he speaks very pertinently of its originall and doth according to his saying Monsiur de la Chambre seem to draw it a second time out of its Chaos To understand his opinion we must presuppose that which S. Thomas saith That totall Nature loveth to present it self in the objects proposed unto it And as they continually proceed from all things coloured images S. Thom. l. 4. contra gentes c 11. The secret attractives of love and figures as it were wholly spirituall which make themselves to be seen as in looking-glasses and are received into the eies to contribute to the effect of sight so every body hath its projections and unperceivable influences as we find in the power of Amber and the Adamant which attract Iron and straw by the expiration they
Spina gratiam floris humanae speculum praefetens vitae quae suavitatem perfunctionis suae finitimis curaâ—si stimulis saepe compungit S. Ambr. l. 3. Hexameron Impatient of divers qualities not all the same liveries For the Kingdome of this Passion is an admirable Purgatory where punishments are divers and every one participates of them according to the quality of his apprehension and the diversity of objects Such saith S. Ambrose is the condition of our life Roses which before sin grew without thorns are afterward on all sides armed with sharp-pointed prickles to teach us that the most smiling fortunes take part in the cares and miseries of the condition of mortals I observe nice impatient ones who have been bred as it were between silk and cotton and who never beheld the miseries of the world but through shadows and clouds and therefore the use they have taken to be served from their childhood according to their humour causeth patience to be a matter very extraordinary with them So you see that upon the least occasion presented of suffering their weak spirit shrinks within it self and their tender flesh makes resistance These are they of whom the Prophet Baruch spake My nice ones have walked through hard and rough Delicati mei ambu laverunt vias difficiles Baruch 1. 26. wayes And of whom Seneca hath aptly said They are ulcers which are irritated when they are lightly touched or that you make but a shew to do it I on the other side observe suspicious Impatient ones who skirmish with flies and are tormented upon shadows of affronts which never were continually ruminating on some slight cold countenance not purposely shewed them or some word spoken meerly out of freedome of speech on the other side I see of them that are prompt and sharp whose bloud quickly comes into their faces whose eyes sparkle voice is shrill fashion turbulent and veins wholly bent upon revenge so that they do not long dispute with a yoke but break it and runne at randome where they oftentimes commit as many errours as they go steps I observe others who are more bitter then sharp in their Impatience and in this number I behold many wayward and prying old men who still have some accusations to make against the actions of youth I see many Courties discountenanced many entranced lovers many officers servants male and female dismissed many suitours rejected in their pursuits many envious who repine at the prosperity of their Neighbour on the other part I behold many persons afflicted in the world one with sicknesse another for the death of a friend one with contempt another with slander one with poverty another with deformity of body some with indispositions of mind and other temporall mishaps It is of this Sadnesse whereof the Wise-man speaketh when he saith that Even as the moth marreth a garment and a little worm gnaweth wood so Sadnesse insensibly eateth Prov. 25. Sicut tinea vestimento vermis ligno ita tristitia viri nocet cordi the heart of man Lastly I see many miserable creatures who cease not to find fault with their vocation and to complain of those who govern them to accuse the Age and seasons and oft-times to call God in question Some tell their evil to all the world like unto those sick persons who sought for remedies from all who passed by the gates of their Temples others hatch their discontent in the bottome of their heart and have much to doe that it be not seen in their faces others publickly drag their Crosse through Currents of water with murmures and imprecations of which the Scripture saith That the clamour and noise of Tumultus murmurationum non abscondetur Sap. 1. their exclamations openly brake forth Others cannot restin any place being weary of all manner of sports recreation and company others are vexed at themselves are dotish melancholick frightfull as if they had some evil spirit in their heart so much oppression of mind they feel they neglect all the offices of civill life yea and the functions of naturall life loth any longer to eat or drink as if they already were in their graves from thence proceed black fansies illusions despair and a thousand agitations of mind which cannot be sufficiently expressed It is Sadnesse which in Scripture is called a geuerall Plague Verily it is a lamentable thing to see how we are here Omnis plaga Eccl. 25. 17. handled by the unhappinesse of our passions I am not ignorant there are dolours so great and Sadnesses so deep that an extraordinary grace of God is necessary to free a soul from it which is touched with it and to set it at liberty but we must likewise say that we often betray our Repose and Conscience by suffering so many bad seeds to grow up in our hearts which we might kill with some resistance of virtue and some ordinary help of the grace of God § 2. Humane Remedies of Sadnesse and how that is to be cured which proceedeth from melancholy and pusillanimity WHilst the great Genius of Physick Hyppocrates drave away maladies by his precepts and almost snatched bodies out of the hands of death one Antiphon arose in Greece who envious of his glory promised to do upon souls what the other did on mortall members and proposed this sublime invention which Plutarch calleth the art of curing of all Sadnesses 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plutarch in vita 10. Rhetorum where we may truly say he used more vanity promises and ostent of words then he wrought good effects Certainly it were to be wished that our age which is so abundant in miseries should likewise arise great comforts to sweeten the acerbities of the times to pour oil on the peoples yoke as the Scripture speaketh Isa 10. 27. to enter into the interiour of so many poor souls beaten down with Sadnesse and wasted with cares to draw them out of the shadow of death with the first raies of some felicity Another Helena were needfull to mingle the divine Drug of Nepenthe in the meats of so many afflicted persons who moisten their bread with their tears before they eat it For my part I think that to apply a remedy to Sadnesse there must a diligent consideration be had of its nature kind and quality for fear that going about to give it comfort the evil be not exasperated or that a medicine be unprofitably applyed There are Sadnesses which come from humour Four kinds of Sadnesses there are which proceed from pusillamity others are caused by scruples others by an infinite many of irksome objects which happen in the chances of humane life As for those which grow from Melancholick humour they are deep rooted as being the inheritances of Nature and the effects of Temperature They may notwithstanding be greatly moderated by prudence discretion and study which one may use in overcoming them It were not to be desired to cut off all manner of Melancholy
they render themselves somewhat burthen some to their inferiours and authorize the saying of that ancient who affirmed an honest man was a great burthen There are Molesta sarcina vir bonus Apud Joan. Euscbium natures like to Caper-shrubs which grow worse by too much manuring and are much better being left to the goodnesse of their own nature § 3. Moderate Saverity is necessary in government but it ought to be free from Cruelty IT must of necessity be acknowledged that they who govern States and Commonwealths stand in need of severity in so great a corruption of mens manners there being almost nothing so pitifull as the goodnesse of a Prince disarmed who serves for a Butt to reproches and a sport for insolency The Senatour Fronton who had experience of many Kingdomes said it was a miserable kind of life to live under an Emperour who permitted nothing but much more wretched likewise was the estate of such as live under a Prince who permitted all as it happened in the time of Nerva who caused those men to fit near him that had conspired against Dion in Nerva him and presented them swords to give the blow and asked them whether they were sharp enough His over-faint goodnesse which could not engage it self to punish any made men almost to desire the rule of the most cruell good men being unable to endure to be equalized with the most dissolute Needs must Justice hold its place to cut off rotten members to represse the insolent and to make honest men live in the sweetnesse of repose But it being very hard to find this divine temperature which is between softnesse and too much severity it is alwayes farre better to lean towards Mildnesse then to incurre the least suspition of Cruelty Cardinall Petrus Damianus seeing himself one day Lib. 1. ep 16 very civilly entreated by the Pope and at the same time menaced by his Archdeacon Hildebrand who was a most severe Cardinall answered according to Plutarchs fable that Heat despoiled more then the North-wind These stormy spirits are not alwayes the most efficacious It is not sparkling flames but invisible heats which melt metals and sweetest influences are those which cause the greatest effects in totall Nature Our Saviour in the Prophet Esay is called a Rod and a Isai 11. flower to correct some and comfort others but never is he termed a sword to kill and destroy Power which is given by God ought to be managed according to his intentions and as we cannot but see on all sides the effects of his bounty so is it not lawfull for a man to defile the Character of the Divinity by rigours insupportable O what a brave thing it is to possesse a great Kingdome in the hearts of men by bounty and munificence to make ones self a Throne of peace to which love raiseth an eternall Basis on which God raineth from above with full hand an infinity of Benedictions A Prince which so liveth findeth Corps du gard in the The beauty and utility of Mildnesse most unfrequented wildernesses assurance in perils protection in battels good hap in affairs successe in his enterprises prosperity in his house veneration abroad admiration among forreign nations When he sleeps a million of eyes wake for him a million of mouths open at altars to carry thanksgivings to God for the favours he receiveth from heaven and were he not in his Throne all his subjects would make steps of their bodies for him to mount up unto it His joyes are pure his pleasures innocent his repasts without fear of poyson his repose dreadlesse his life a miracle and his Memory Horrour of Cruelty a Blessing But what a spectacle is it to see Tyrants close hidden like old Owls in perpetuall nights with a mind befet with horrid fantasies filled with suspicions seized by distrust for whom Thunders seem to roar and for whom Heaven seems to prepare all its Thunderbolts What a horrour is it to see them come in publick clothed with Iron and despoiled of the peoples affections To see them tear their members in the torments of their subjects to suck in bloud to break bones to make terrours to march before them and after them massacres What honour is it for them to be hated like plagues and poysons to make a Hell of their life a Tyranny of their manners and a publick vow of their death Lastly the divine Providence which sharpneth the sword of Justice with the tears of the miserable falls on their heads some have been consumed by strange maladies others have been abandoned to the fury of people massacred by a thousand hands punished with a thousand deaths dragged over lay stalls buried in dunghils even stones and metals have been punished which had no other crime but to be insculped with their features Their life had been a reproch their memory the But of all maledictions All this is not of power to teach us that there is not any thing so soveraign for the government of minds as Mildnesse and Compassion § 8. The goodnesse of God beateth down the rigour of men IF we be not fully convinced of this verity Let us behold our first Modell against the infamy of this unnaturall Remedies passion and let us first see the benignity of our heavenly Father in naturall and civil life thence we will consider the mercy of Jesus in the life of Grace God is soveraignly good as Theology noteth by three sorts of Goodnesses of Nature of Manners and of Bounty His Nature and his Manners make him to appear good in himself His bounty out of himself in so many communications as he imparteth to all Creatures The Platonists said he had the understanding of a father and the heart of a mother to provide for the great family of the world and one of them rapt with the Consideration of his Bounties cried out As for thee O God of stinctity Saviour and conservatour Tu quidem sancte humani generis sospitator perpeâ—â—e semper fovendis mortalibus mirificè dulcem matris affectionem miserorum casibus tribuis nec dies nec quies ulla ac nè quidem momentum tuis transcurrit benesiciis otiosum Apul. 11. Metamor Author Theolog. Aegypti l. 12 cap. 1. of all Man-kind thou hast the heart of a Mother admirably to comfort the calamities of so many miserable mortals and there is not a day a Rest nor a moment which is not replenished with thy benefits You would say he is perpetually bent upon the care of the very least creatures to give them the contentment and satisfaction they can derive from their condition He is in the feathers of the peacock to frame a mirrour unto himself of his train In the throat of Nightingales there to make Musick in the innocent theft of Bees to lade them with booty in the Husbandry of Ants to maintain them in their little Granaries The Authour of the Egyptian Theology saith that the Eternall
their Colours and that it was enough if they did but shew themselves to conquer The Rebels tormented with the affrightments of their conscience and which had not such entertainment as they were promised first were put into disorder after to flight and then to a rout It seemed that on the one part there were men that came to kill and on the other sheep that came to be slain As soon as they were mingled the one amongst the other the sword on the one side made great Massacres on the other the falls and tumblings headlong carried them away in such manner that there remained twenty thousand upon the place Absolon taken with a great astonishment is left by all the world and betaking himself to flight gets The death of Absolon up upon a Mule It hapned that passing through a Forrest his head was catched and wreathed within the branches of a Tree insomuch that his carryer having left him he remained hanging between heaven and earth where he made a very fitting amends both to the justice of God and the goodnesse of his Father Joab had notice thereof who neverthelesse although David had forbidden it stroke him through with three Darts and when as yet he seemed to have life ten young souldiers of the Troups of Joab ran to make an end of him he feared so much that if he should return into favour and authority lest he should take vengeance upon him because he would not follow his party The body was interred in a pit under a great heap of stones for to convince the vanity of him which had caused a stately monument to be built for himself which he called Absolons hand Behold an horrible end of an evil sonne and a rebellious subject which is sufficient to make posterity afraid throughout the revolution of all ages While all this was doing David inclosed in a little Town expected the event of the battell and when as the Posts brought him the news of the Victory he shewed not so much rejoycing as fear asking every moment in what estate his sonne Absolon was which caused that divers durst not bring him the news of his death seeing the trouble of his mind At last Cushi uttered the word and said That they should desire Absolon's end to all the Kings enemies He understood well what he would say and was pierced with so violent a grief that he could not be comforted losing all courage and crying every moment Absolon my sonne my sonne Absolon Oh that this favour had been done for me that I might have dyed for thee Every one cast down his eyes for pitty and the whole victory was turned into sorrow the Palms and Laurels were changed into Cypresse Joab alwayes bold and insolent towards his Master Joabs insolency instead of receiving reproches for his fault casts them upon David and thinks that the means to justifie himself was to speak the more stoutly He enters into the Chamber of his King and reproves him sharply saying to him That he would put to confusion all his good servants that had that day saved his life his house and all his estate That he was of a strange nature and seemed to have been made for nothing but to hate those that loved him and to love those that hated him That it was very clear that he bore no good affection to his Captains and good Souldiers and if they all had perished to save the life of one rebellious sonne he would have been very well satisfied Further he swore to him by the living God that if he did not rise and go forth to see and entertein those that returned from the battell that there should not remain one man onely with him before the morning which would prove a greater displeasure to him then ever he received in all his life He pressed him so vehemently that the King without daring to answer him one word rose up and did all that he would have him This great grief diminished by little and little and the rejoycings of those that came on every side to carry him back to Jerusalem in Triumph gave him no leasure to think upon his losse He endeavoured to draw to him again all those that had separated themselves pardoning all the world with an unspeakable meeknesse being ready even to give Joabs place to Davids mildenesse very great Amasa that was chief Captain for Absolon But Joab quickly hindred this and kild with his own hand him that they had purposed for his successour After that he began to pursue one Sheba a Captain of the Rebels who was retyred into Abela with some remainder of the mutinous and as he was about to besiege it and destroy the City for to take him a woman of discretion and great in credit amongst her people which had made composition with Joab caused him to be slain and threw his head over the walls to put an end to this whole bloodie warre After this re-establishment of his Estate David The last acts of Davids life reigned about eleven years in full peace in continuall exercises of Piety of Devotion of Justice and caused a generall Assembly of the States of his Realme where he made his sonne Solomon which he had chosen to be confirmed and encouraged him to build that great Temple which should be the marvell of the World whereof he shewed him the plat-form the beautifying and the orders in the Idea Two things do a little astonish those which do seek an exact sanctity in this Prince the first that he dyed having unto the last hour a maid of rare beauty by him and the other that he recommended to his son Solomon punishments and deaths by his Testament But there are that answer to those that may be offended with these actions That God hath permitted this to make us the better to relish and admire the perfections of his Evangelicall law whereof the Word Incarnate was made the Law-giver and bringet above all the excellencies of the presents and virtues of the Mosaicall law And that one ought not to expect from David the chastity of a Saint Lewis nor of a Casimire but that one ought to measure things according to the manner of the time according to the law and custome Neverthelesse I should rather say that the plurality of women was not an offence seeing that it was approved of God so that it caused not a weakning of the vigour of the spirits and mortifying their divine functions by too much commerce with the flesh David sinned not in causing the Shunamite to lye besides him seeing that she was in the place of a spouse and approched unto him not for the pleasure which his great age had totally extinguished but for the entertainment of his Royall person Lastly there are other actions that do set forth his virtue besides this which is more worthy of excuse then blame And forasmuch as he ordained by his testament the death of Joab and of Shimei this doth something
that if Baal were God they ought to follow him but if there were no other God but that of Israel called upon from all times by their Fathers it was he to whom they ought to adhere with an inviolable fidelity To this the assembly made no answer there being none that was willing to set himself forward upon an uncertainty Then Elijah taking the word again said Behold four hundred and fifty Prophets of Baal on one side and I a Prophet of the true God all alone on the other part in this place here To make a tryall of our Religion let there be two Oxen given us for each of the two parties let them be cut in pieces and the pieces put upon a pile of wood without puting any fire to them either on one side or on the other we will expect it from heaven and the Sacrifice upon which God shall make a flame appear from on high to kindle it shall carry away the testimony of the true Religion To this all the people answered with a confused voyce that it was a good Proposition The Victims were brought sacrificed and put upon the wood to be consumed The Priests of Baal began first to invoke the heavenly fire and to torment themselves with great cryes and a long time without any effect It was already mid-day and nothing had appeared to their advantage whereat being very much astonished they drew out their Razors and make voluntary incisions upon themselves according to their custome thinking that a prayer was never well heard if it were not accompanied with their blood which the evil Spirit made them shed in abundance to satiate his Rage This nothing advanced the effect of their Supplications which gave occasion to Elijah to mock at the vanity of their Gods saying that Baal that gave no answer was asleep or busie or on a journey or perhaps drinking at the Tavern He remained either with security amidst so many enraged Wolves covered with the protection of the God of Hosts and began to prepare his Sacrifice taking twelve stones in memory of the twelve Tribes of Israel to erect an Altar to the name of God after which he divided the Offering into divers parts put them all upon the pile and that none might have any suspition that there was fire hidden in some part of them he caused abundance of buckets of water to be thrown upon the Sacrifice and all about it and then began to say Great God God of Abraham of Isaac and of Israel shew now that thou art the God of this people and that I am thy servant I have obeyed thee in all this resting my self upon thy word Hear me my God my God hear me and let this assembly learn this day of thee that thou art the true God and the absolute Master of all the universe and that it is thou that art able to reduce their hearts to the true belief Scarce had he ended his prayer when the Sacred fire fell down from heaven upon his Sacrifice and devoured the Offering and the Altar to the admiration of all the People who prostrating themselves on the ground began to cry That the God of Israel was the true God Take then sayes he the false Prophets of Baal let not one sole man of them escape us The People convinced by the Miracle and the voyce of Elijah without expecting any other thing fall upon those false Prophets takes them and cuts them all in pieces Ahab amidst all this stood so astonished that he durst not speak one onely word nor any way resist the Divine Command The Prophet bad him take his refection and go into his Coach for the so much desired rain was near and having said so retired himself to the top of the Mount Carmel and sent his servant seven times to the sea to see whether he could discover any clouds but he saw nothing till the seaventh time and then he perceived a little cloud that exceeded not the measure of a hand and yet he sends him to tell Ahab that it was time to Harnesse if he would not be overtaken with the rain He mounted instantly into his Coach to get to the City of Jezrael and Elijah ran before as if he had wings In the mean time the Heavens grew black with darknesse the clouds collect themselves the wind blowes and the Rain falls in abundance Ahab failed not to relate to Jezabel all that had been done desiring to make the death of those Prophets passe for a decree of heaven for fear lest that imperious woman should upbraid him with the softnesse of his courage But she not moved with those great miracles of fire and water that were reported to her began to foam with wrath and to swear by all her Gods that she would cause Elijahs head to be laid at her feet by the morrow that time The Prophet is constrained to fly suddenly to save himself not knowing to whom to trust so that having brought with him but one young man to accompany him in the way he quitted him and went alone into the wildernesse wherein having travelled a day he entred into a great sadnesse and laid him down under a Juniper-tree to repose himself and there felt himself very weary of living any longer and said to God with an amorous heart My God it is enough take mee out of this life I am not better then my fathers It is a passion ordinary enough to good men to wish for death that they may be no more obliged to see so many sinnes and miseries as are in the World and to go to the place of rest to contemplate there the face of the living God But this desire ought to be moderated according to the will of God As he was in that thought sleep that easily surprises a melancholy spirit and wearied with raving on its pains slipt into his benummed members and gave some truce to his torments But that great God that had his eyes open to the protection of so dear a person dispatched to him his guardian Angell who awaked him and shewed him near his head a cruse of water and a loaf of bread baked under the ashes for such are the banquets that the nursing Father of all Nature makes his Prophets not loving them for the delights of the body but contenting himself to give them that which is necessary to life he saw well that it was a Providence that would yet prolong his life He drank and ate and at length being very heavy fell asleep again But the Angel that had undertaken the direction of his way waked him and told him that it behooved him to rise quickly by reason that he had yet a long way to go Elijah obeyed and being risen found that he had gained a merveilous strength so that he journied fourty dayes and fourty nights being fortified with that Angelicall bread till such time as he came to the Mountain Horeb. There he retired himself into the hollow of a Rock unknown
there left the sting If he slept upon roses the shadows of dead men approached to his downie bed to require an account of their bloud He scoffed at religion and feared it one while he despised sacred things and at another time they made him tremble with horrour He sought out waters of expiation to wash his sins and never opened his eyes to those which S. Peter and S. Paul presented to him His soul was torn with pincers within it self as on a perpetual scaffold of exquisite torments when it would issue out of it self it was like a wild colt coursed and chased by men and beasts or as a bull stung with a gad-flie who fain would run for himself yet still findeth himself with himself Judge O Atheists what a life this is The second cause of Atheism is the sensual love Bruitish conscience Clemens Alex. pedag Plotin apud Philo. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Irrâ—verens infrunitus animus of favours pleasures ease and delights of the world which oftentimes degenerate into the meer bruitishness of a soul which sleepeth in fat and grease so intricated and confounded in earth that it looseth all knowledge of Heaven Clemens Alexandrinus saith that it happeneth to souls which are great lovers of sensual pleasures to engross and thicken themselves in such sort that as Plotinus very learnedly writeth they live not but as a plant These spirits are much enclined to Atheism for as the Wise-man observeth after the concupiscences of the belly cometh unbrideled irreverence which serveth Eccl. 23. 6. Lev. 1. 16. Vesiculam gutturis projicies in loco quo cineres effundi solent â—â— 13. â—aturati sunt â—levaverunt â—â— suum oblâ—â—i sunt mei as a harbinger to impiety God desired not that in offering a bird as a sacrifice unto him the gorge should be presented which is the little magazin of the meat but commanded to cast it into the ashes which is to declare to us that carnal men are most uncapable of celestial things and very fit to be dragged to the dung-hil and ash-heap The more they are affected to things present so much the more yea even in deep draughts they drink down the forgetfulness of Heavenly things All those say with Esau To what use will this goodly prerogative Genes 25. Quid mihi prâ—derunt primogenita of primogeniture serve me this title of the children of God this happiness of future life If there be no sensual pleasures nor carnal contentments in Heaven I will have none They become the true disciples of Alcor Aazoara 2. Mahomet who in his Alcoran describing the Turks Paradise placeth there good water good fruits rings carcanets silken tapestrie hangings and such like All these things they would enjoy but the water which they willingly would change into wine What swine are these The third cause if not of formal Atheism at the â—â—rious conscâ—ence least of weakness and faintness in matter of faith is when a soul will proceed in matters of Religion by politick and humane ways and suffer it self greatly to be pleaâ—ed with curiositie which incessantly moveth it to draw the curtain of holy mysteries to enlighten them with the torch of reason and to behold all that passeth there Such spirits are not so malign nor stupid as the first and second notwithstanding they are weak and very ignorant since they fail in the first rule of wisdom which discovereth to us that it is an absolute folly of a discomposed judgement to be desirous to measure things divine by the rule of sense and humane experience They turmoyl themselves and bate like a hawk upon the perch and often say in their heart that which the Apostle S. Peter observeth in the person of infidels Where are these promises Where is the Pet. 2. 3. Vbi est promissio ubi est aâ—ventus ejus ex quo enim â—ermierunt patres omnia â—erseverant ab initio creaturae coming of the Son of God See you not that times revolve men come and go all things have their ordinary course and we must expect no other miracle They imagine that all the counsels of Heaven should turn and roul according to the projects of their understanding and that if God had his eye open as it is said upon the oeconomie of the world both this and that would succeed as they have contrived in their feeble brain which is a great illusion Such kind of men would willingly speak with spirits to hear them tell tales of the other life they would know as S. John Chrysostom saith what habit what clothing the Son of man weareth covered under the species of the Sacrament how the Angels are formed of what colour the devils are nothing would please them better than to talk with one really possessed to know things future to divulge predictions to behold prodigies and miracles Briefly it seemeth they have no other purpose but to believe in God by the devil Such kind of proceedings are very exorbitant and unfortunate for the reasons which I will presently produce First O you wretched souls who betake your â—easons to settle a soul Impious curiositie pulls out both its eyes selves to this way see you not that by this means you pull out the two eyes which God hath placed within your souls which are as the Sun and Moon in the firmament to wit the eye of faith and that of natural prudence You seem to your selves sharp and clear-sighted and are more blind than moles For tell me for as much as concerneth the light of nature can there be found a folly more gross and absurd than to behold men who are born and bred in Christianity as in their proper element after a thousand and a thousand witnesses of the truth of their religion which even the very marbles do speak and stones proclaim to make themselves so wise and able as to seek out other proofs than those which have won worlds to the Gospel An unworthy way to treat with God You would have a God that should give you new signs tokens to confirm you in faith a God which servilely will be captivated to please the ticklings of your curiositie Senseless men as you are this were not to have a God but a lame Idol Are you not Insuspicabilis secreti reverendaeque majestatis cognitio est deum nosse nisi deum Tert. Apol. 28 very blockish to treat with God much more wickedly than one would do with a mean man If you had passed your word to two friends you would praise him with all freeness that should rest satisfied therewith and would condemn the other whom you should find fearful inconstant and ever upon mistrust yet would you that God should favour your infidelity by extraordinary ways What apparency is there for this All curiosity is damnable Curiositie dangerous Curiositas reum efficit non peritum S. Zeno. Serm. 2. de silii gener Chrys de fato 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉
〈◊〉 Sixtus in Biblioth PP De Deo etiam vera loqui periculum est Hesychius in levitic it is an ulcer that ever itcheth and which without ceasing is iterated by continual scratching it is as a hors-leech which draweth out all the bad bloud and filleth till it burst It is a magpy a byting worm which taketh men by the ears as well as dogs But above all it is most pernicious in matter of Religion Sixtus an ancient Authour cited in the Bibliotheke of the Fathers hath spoken a thing very remarkable When a man speaketh of God yea with all veritie we must always therein proceed reservedly as if we trod upon thorns It were better saith S. John Chrysostom not to know him than to know him ill Hesychius teacheth us one must approach to him as to fire too great a distance maketh us quake with cold and over near approches burn us Secondly judge whether any bodie would not Perverse proceeding of the wicked say it were a great weakness of understanding to be desirous to proceed in matter of Religion by such knowledges as are common with bruit beasts and forsake those of men And yet this is it which you do when leaving the eye of understanding and the light of a rectified judgement which God hath given man by priviledge of excellency you will hear see and touch begging a truth from bruitish sense which is absolutely to raise them above their reach See you not how the Moon by her interposition eclipseth the Sun and when you in matter of faith interpose sense you obscure the light of judgement the true sun of your soul which dictateth to you that it is a thing most reasonable the creature should submit himself to the Creatour that it carefully keep it self from daring to comprehend him in the universality of his nature and shut up this vast Ocean in a little cockle-shel It is a pitiful thing to hear that these curious spirits should suffer themselves to be surprized by a quack-salving impostour who casteth mists afore their eyes by force of delusions and to contend with God who giveth them as many obligations and assurances of his promises as there are letters in the Scripture This Deus tot tantis voluminibus cavet debitor non tenetur Chrys serm 25. is not onely to crack the eye-string of a reasonable judgement but also to pull out the eye of faith all pure and celestial as it is You demand proofs of your Religion frantick man look back upon the birth the progress and state of the Church This is the great sign the Ladie clothed with the Sun Apocal. 12. which one cannot be ignorant of without a prodigious blindness Admit it were nothing to have for proof so great Invincible proofs of pietie so universal so constant consent of all the Prophets to presage many Ages before the effect the birth life death of the Messias the establishment of the Church the conversion of the Gentiles so determinately and punctually that even the most diabolical spirits who had from all times these Scriptures in their hands seeing this consequently to happen which succeeded in the oeconomie of Christianity were enforced to yield to truth That it were nothing to have seen through all Ages a thousand and a thousand miracles in Heaven in earth on the sea done in confirmation of Christianity in the sight of the most wittie and malicious who bent all their endeavour to censure reject and contradict them Notwithstanding the evidence was so palpable so strong so invincible that Tyrants yea the most enraged bloudy executioners convinced with the proofs thereof let fall the sword which they had taken in their hand for the slaughter of Martyrs and stretched out their necks to the persecutours to be beheaded That it were nothing to tell what a good Authour upon account taken hath observed that there hath been eleven millions of Martyrs of all sexes ages and conditions who have sealed the Religion which we profess by effusion of their bloud and in this list an infinite number of persons of eminent quality who considerately proceeded in the least occasions that have abandoned the easeful accommodations of their fortunes their estates dignities yea their scepters and diadems to deliver as a prey to most enormous and exquisite torments a most precious life which they might have led in honour in reputation according to the world in pleasures in delights in wonders That it were nothing to say that after persecutions there sprung up an infinitie of brave spirits intelligent clear-sighted furnished with all sorts of human knowledges as the Justins Tertullians Cyprians Augustines and so many other of the same profession who after they had seriously and judiciously examined the state of Christianity have embraced it professed it defended it some with their pen some with sweat and some with their bloud The Heavers are not enameled with so many stars as the Church hath had great men the prodigies and lights of the world who by their learned writings have illustrated the verities of our Religion I leave you to think if among so many great Suns which have garnished Heaven and earth with brightness one should behold a ridiculous reeremouse to creep out of a hole and say it is not day and that all these suns are but darkness whether he deserve not to be burnt and stampt to power That all this which I have said being very strong and specious enter not into the list of account what may one answer to two things which are Great force in two points very eminent in Christianitie the consideration whereof is of power to settle the most wavering spirit to wit the marvellous proceeding which hath been held in the establishment of our Religion and the most pure sanctitie of the doctrine thereof What is there humane in this law which is established against all humane ways by a success so strange and admirable that it engulfeth all spirits in wonder Where were in these beginnings eloquence favour of Princes their revenues their estate their arms their souldiers Where were the promises of honour reputation Establishment of the Church dignitie Where were the moving allurements of sense and all that which useth to feed and foment sects From whence cometh it that the Church Sola Ecclesia persecutionibut stetit marlyriis coronata est Crudelitas illecebra est sectae plures efficimur quoties metimur à vebis semen est sanguis Christianorum Hier. in vita Mala Tert. in Apol. c. 50. alone hath encreased under tempestuous storms in persecutions in the slaughters of three hundred years during which time there was no engine which hell used not no torment which the devil invented not no inventions which the Great-ones of the earth with powerful hand conspiring executed not All the plaistered pretended sects which have seemed desirous to take this away are quite vanished From whence it cometh to pass that the Church alone hath maintained
It is good oftentimes to consider how reasonable glorious and full of merit this act is Reasonable How acts of faith may be made easie to submit the creature to the Creatour glorious to see the Sovereign Lord so served and honoured that for the defence of one sole word but once pronounced by his mouth a thousand and a thousand good servants are ready to bestow their lives full of merit in as much as we give a free consent voluntary and pious and not being enforced by manifest evidence II. To be often confounded in the weakness and incapicity of our understanding which is found so short in the knowledge of many petty things There needeth no more but the foot of an Ant to stay it and a glass of water to drown it What stupidity then is like this to be desirous to make ones self over-wise and to judge that impossible which cannot be comprehended in matter of Religion III. To apply your mind to the consideration of motives which may form in your spirit a probability of that which is proposed unto you as are those I have noted before and which will give good enterances to the inspirations of God IV. To retire from the toyl of senses which do nothing but disturb when you consult with them in things spiritual and to raise your soul above flesh to be illuminated by the Sun of Intelligences V. To take away the obstacles of all sorts of impurity and namely of pride all disordinate affection VI. To strike at Heaven gate with prayer seeing faith cometh unto us from treasures of the Father of light Faith so planted fortified and manured by good works illuminateth a soul All the savage and cruel beasts all the bruitish passions chimaeraes dreams irresolutions which went roaming up and down in this great forrest of confusions amongst the shadows of night are scattered so soon as this radiant Sun beginneth to dissipate darkness with his divine rays Then is it that a soul wholly clad with Hope the clear lights of hope which causeth it to expect the blessings of the other life goeth on with a great and constant resolution as one who hath for support the infinite power of God who is as faithful in his promises as rich in rewards Behold how this monster ignorance is overthrown by the arms of light The fifth SECTION Of four other rays which serve to dissipate ignorance BEsides the torch of faith God also gives us the Beam of understanding light of understanding of counsel wisdom and prudence which are as unvaluable riches wholly replenishing the soul with splendour as saith the Prophet Isaiah The gift of understanding doth free us from a certain bruitishness which is the cause that men tying themselves onely to external and sensible things are perpetually out of themselves at which time understanding calls them back again and makes them to re-enter into their house to see the beginning progress and end of the life of man from whence he cometh whither he goeth what will become of him Counsel enlighteneth us in things doubtful to Of counsel take a good way Wisdom putteth us out of an apprentiship and Of wisdom draweth us from a certain childishness which maketh men as little ones and carnal mutually entertaining themselves with temporal things And the knowledge of God raiseth and causeth them to turn their faces directly towards Eternity Prudence considereth good and evil according to Of prudence the quality and quantity thereof It examineth the circumstances of actions and sheweth us what ought to be done in such a time such a place and such occasions The sixth SECTION Twelve fundamental Considerations of spiritual life partly drawn from that worthy man John Picus Mirandula FRom the five rays explicated before proceed Note that it is good often to meditate these maxims either one a day or all together great and goodly lights by direction of which a life wholly new is begun John Picus of Mirandula a great and remarkable man held for a prodigie of wit much tasting the content of spiritual life enlightened by the rays of a wisdom absolutely celestial establisheth twelve Considerations which we ought continually to meditate on for the practice of the knowledge of God I. The first the nature and dignity of man to wit 1. Consideration nature and dignity of man that the first and ceaseless endeavour of man should be of man himself to see what he hath been what he is and what he shall be What he hath been nothing what he is a reasonable creature what he shall be a guest of Paradise or of hell of an eternal felicity or of an everlasting unhappiness What he is according to nature a master-piece Greatness of the soul where many prerogatives meet together a body composed of a marvellous architecture a soul endowed with understanding reason spirit judgement will memory imaginations opinions A soul which flieth in an instant from one pole to the other descendeth even to the center of the world and mounteth to the top which is found in an instant in a thousand several places which embraceth the whole world without touching it which goeth which glittereth which shineth which diggeth into all the treasures and magazines of nature which findeth out all sorts of inventions which inventeth arts which governeth Common-wealths which disposeth worlds In the mean time she beholdeth about her self an infinite number of dogs that bark at her happiness and endeavour to bite her on every side Love fooleth her ambition turmoyleth her avarice Tyranny of passions rusteth her and lust enflameth her vain hopes sooth her pleasures melt her despair over-bears her choler burns her hatred filleth her with gall envie gnaweth her jealousie pricketh her revenge enrageth her cruelty maketh her savage fear frosteth her sorrow consumes her This poor soul shut up in the body as a bird of Paradise in a cage is altogether amazed to see her self assailed by all this mutinous multitude and though she have a scepter in her hand to rule she notwithstanding oft suffereth her self to be deceived ravished and dragged along into a miserable servitude From thence behold what man is through sin vanity weakness inconstancy misery malediction What he becometh by grace a child of light a terrestrial Angel the son of a celestial Father by adoption brother and coheir of Jesus Christ a vessel of election the temple of the Holy Ghost What he may arrive unto by glory to be an inhabitant of Heaven who shall see the stars under his feet which he hath over his head who shall be filled with the sight of God his beginning his end his true onely and original happiness II. The benefits received from God considered 2. Benefits of God in general as those of creation conservation redemption vocation and in particular the gifts of the body of the soul of nature of capacity ability industry dexterity wariness nobility offices authority means credit reputation
first practice and most ordinary to hear Mass for those who understand the words there spoken is to follow them with application of spirit and to accompany the silence of the Priest with some meditations or vocal prayers The second is to stay ones self upon the signification of all the parts of the Mass As at the Confiteor to represent to your self man banished from Paradise miserable suppliant confessing deploring his sin At the Introite the enflamed desires of all mankind expecting the Messias At the Hymn of Angels Glory be to God on high the Nativity At the Prayers thanksgiving for such a benefit At the Epistle the preaching of the Praecursour S. John At the Gospel truth preached by the Saviour of the world and so of the rest The third is to divide the Mass into certain parcels and behold a very considerable manner Represent to your self five great things in the mystery of the Mass from whence you ought to draw so many fruits These five things are representation praise Sacrifice instruction nourishment Representation because the Mass is a perfect image Five notable things in the mystery of the Mass Radicati superaedificati in ipso Col. 2. c. of the life and passion of our Saviour and therefore the first fruit you ought to gather from thence is daily to imprint more lively in your heart the actions and passions of the Son of God to conform your self thereunto Praise So many words as are in the Mass aim at this purpose to give praise unto God for this ineffable mystery of our redemption and to conform your self to this action you ought to bend all the endeavour of your heart to praise God whether it be by vocal or mental prayer Sacrifice It is a most singular act of Religion by which we reverence and adore God for the infinite glory of his souereign Being And the Mass is a Mass a Sacrifice true Sacrifice by eminency where the life and bloud of beasts is not offered but the life of a Saviour which is more worth than the life of all Angels and men Cedrenus recounteth that the Emperour Justinian Cedren in Compen hist Wonder of Justinian caused an Altar to be made in the Church of Saint Sophia wherein he used all sorts of mettal of precious stones of the richest materials which might be chosen out amongst all the magazins of nature to incorporate all the beauties of the world in onesole master-piece And verily this Sacrifice is the prime work of God in which he hath as it were locked up all that which is great or holy in all the mysteries of our Religion It was the custom daily to proportion the Sacrifices to the benefits of God When in the old law he gave the fat of the earth they offered the first-fruits to him But now that he hath granted to us the dew of Heaven so long expected his onely Son we must render to him his Son again which is done in the Sacrifice of the Mass And the fruit you should derive from this consideration is at the elevation of the host to offer Jesus Christ to God his Father by the ministery of the Priest and to offer it First for a supream and incomparable honour of the Divine Majesty Secondly for thanksgiving for all benefits received and to be received Thirdly to obtain protection direction and prosperity in all your works Besides offer up all your powers faculties functions actions in the union of the merits of Jesus Instruction Those who understand the words of Instruction 4. of Mass the Mass may draw goodly instructions from reading the Epistle the Gospel the Collects All in general teach us the virtues of honour and reverence towards the Divine Majesty seeing this Sacrifice is celebrated with so many holy sacred and profoundly dutiful ceremonies Of gratitude since God being once offered in the bloudy Sacrifice of the Cross will also be daily presented to God his Father in the title of gratitude And that ought to awaken in us the memory of observing every benefit of God with some remarkable act of devotion Of Charity towards our common Saviour and towards our neighbour since we see a life of God spent for our redemption and all faithful people Nourishment The eye liveth by light and colours Nourishment 5. the Bee by dew the Phenix by the most thin and subtile vapours and the soul of the faithful by the nourishment which it receiveth in the Blessed Sacrament which is purely spiritual This nourishment is not onely derived from the Sacramental Communion Spiritual Communion by the real presence of the body of our Saviour but also by the spiritual Communion which is made when in the Sacrifice of the Mass at the time of the Priest his communicating the same dispositions apprehensions and affections are entertained as if really and actually one did receive For this purpose it is fit to do three things First to excite anew in your self the acts of self-dislike and contrition for your wretchedness and imperfections The second to take spiritually the carbuncle of the Altar not with the pincers of the Seraphin but with acts of a most lively faith a most resolved hope and a charitie most ardent to open boldly the mouth of your heart and pray our Saviour to enter in as truly by the communication of his graces and favours which are the rays of this Sun as by the real imparting of his body and bloud he gives himself to those that communicate The third to conclude all your actions with a most hearty thanksgiving The fourteenth SECTION Practice of Meditation OF four worlds which are the Architype Intelligible Celestial and Elementary prayer imitateth the most perfect being a true image of the oeconomy of the holy Trinitie which according to the maxims of Divines cannot pray to any having no Superiour yet affordeth a model for all prayers For prayer as saith Tertullian is composed of reason words and spirit Of reason as we may interpret by the relation it hath to the Father of words as it is referred to the Word of spirit by the the direction it hath to the third Person Now this principally agreeth with meditation For it is that divine silence delicious ravishment of the soul which uniteth man to God and finite essence to Infinite It is that plenitude and that tear spoken of in Exodus according to an ancient translation Plenitude Exod. 22. 29. because it replenisheth the soul with the splendour of consolations and sources which distil from the Paradise of God Tear yea tear of myrrhe because it distilleth under the eyes of God as doth the tree which beareth myrrhe under the rays of the Sun It is a wonderful thing to behold this little shrub which doth not perpetually expect to be cut with iron that it may drop forth its pleasing liquor but the Sun reflecting on the branches thereof becomes as it were a mid-wife and maketh it bring forth what is sought
conduceth to inform the judgement And besides he that in all actions hath not memory when there is occasion to manage some affair oftentimes findeth he hath not well called to mind all particulars which putteth him into confusion Behold why as all men have not servants for memory as had the Kings the great men of Persia and Romans it is necessary to have recourse to registers records and table-books to help your self Some are of so happy memory that they go as it is said to gather mulberries without a hook to the well without a pitcher into the rain without a cloak Understanding II. To be intelligent and able to judge well and for this purpose he must endeavour to know the men with whom he converseth their nature humour their capacity intention and proceeding to penetrate affairs even to the marrow not contenting himself with the outward bark and superficies To Docibility consider them in all senses all semblances To put a tax upon things according to their worth not to run into innovations and cunning inventions which disguise objects To take counsel of the most understanding Choice saithful and disinteressed men to condescend to good counsels by docility of spirit after they are well examined ever to rest upon that which hath most honesty integrity security III. In every deliberation which one makes upon 4. Rocks of prudence any occasion to preserve ones self from four very dangerous rocks which are passion precipitation self-conceit and vanity Passion coloureth all businesses with the tincture it hath taken Precipitation goeth headlong downward into ruin Self-conceit not willing to forgo some hold gnaweth and consumeth it-self Vanity maketh all evaporate in smoke IV. To have a great circumspection and consideration Circumspection Pagulus Junius not to expose your self but to good purpose To doe like that sea-crevis which hideth himself till he hath a shell over his head and striketh no man To spie occasions out and mark how the little hedg-hog doth into what quarter the wind changeth to alter the entrance into his house To stand always upon your guard to discover the ambushes and obstacles which occurre in affairs To hold the trowel to build with one hand and the sword in the other to defend your self Well to observe these four precepts To have your face open but your thoughts covered from so many wiles which perplex our affairs To be sober in speech Not lightly nor easily to confide in all men nor on the other side to shew too much diffidence V. To be very vigilant in affairs to fore-see what Fore-sight vigilance may happen in occasions and prompt to find out means which may forward the execution of a good design You find yet to this day in some old medals for a Hierogliph of prudence a mulberry-tree Hierogliph of prudence having a crane upon his branches and on the stock thereof a Janus with two heads To teach us that one proceedeth in matter of prudence first by not precipitating no more than the mulberry the wifest of all trees which is the last that blossometh to enjoy them with the more security and thereby to avoid the pinching nips of frost In watching as the crane doth who abideth in an orderly centinel In casting the eye upon what is past and fore-seeing the future as this ancient King of Italy to whom for this cause is given a double face VI. To use dexterity promptitude and constancy Execution in the execution of things well resolved on that is the type and crown of prudence Many brave resolutions are seen without fruit or effect which are like egs full of wind All is but a shadow and a meer illusion of prudence Seasonable time must be taken for as Mithridates one of the greatest Captains of the world saith Occasion is the mother of all affairs Occasio omnium gerendarum rerum mater A notable medal and time being well taken you must execute warily effectually constantly Ferdinand Duke of Bavare seems to have made a recapitulation of the principal actions of this virtue upon a piece of coyn where was to be seen prudence like a wise virgin seated on the back of a Dolphin and holding in her hand a ballance with this motto in three words Know Choose Execute quickly The virgin bearing the Cognosce elige matura ensigns of wisdom said you must know The Ballance that you must ponder and elect with mature deliberation The Dolphin with his agility that you must set a seal upon your businesses by a prompt execution VII In the conclusion of the whole the best wisdom True prudence is to distrust your own judgement and to expect all from heaven often asking of God not a wisdom humane crafty and impious which is condemned but the wisdom of Saints which investeth Cogitationes mortalium timidae incer tae providentiae nostrae sensum autem tuum quis sciet nisi dederis sapientiam Sap. 9. us with the possession of a true felicity The thoughts of mortal men are fearful and their providence uncertain My God who is able to know thy meaning if thy self give him not wisdom Behold the virtues which guid the senses and conversation of man against the disorders of flesh and bloud the chief plagues of nature Let us now survey those which oppose the second impurity to wit covetousness Of the vritues which oppose the second impurity called covetousness to wit poverty justice charity The seven and twentieth SECTION Poverty of rich men THere are three sorts of poverty poverty of necessity poverty by profession poverty of Three sorts of poverty affection Poverty of necessity is that of the wretched a constrained needy and disastrous poverty Poverty by profession is that of Religious professed by their first vow which is meritorious and glorious Poverty of affection is an expropriation from the inordinate love of terrene goods We speak not here to you O Noble men of the poverty of rogues which is infamous nor of that of the Religious which to you would be insupportaable and to your condition unsutable but of the poverty of affection the practise whereof is necessary for you if you desire to be Cittizens of Heaven The practise is I. To acknowledge all the goods and possessions Practice of the poverty of affection you have are borrowed which you must infallibly restore but when you know not You live here like birds who are always hanging in the air where either fortune dispoileth or death moweth the meadow and then it never groweth again It is a great stupidity of spirit a great unthankfulness to God if you account that to be yours which you may dayly lose and which in the end you shall forgoe for ever Think not you have any thing yours but your self If August ep ad Armentar Paulinam Divitiae si diliguntur ibi serventur ubi perire non possunt Non sublime sapere nec sperare
passed Ages edified the present enlightened the future and upheld great fortunes by a much greater sanctitie All these will tell you we have nothing immortal in us but the riches of the mind and all this exteriour lustre of the world which charmeth the eyes of men is but a cloud in painting a petty vapour of water a fable of time a dyal which we then onely behold when the sun of honour reflecteth on it and which must in the end be buried in an eternal night of oblivion Let us now see the great S. Ambrose whom we among thousands have selected to serve as a model for this first discourse You therein shall observe a man of a most noble extraction endowed with admirable parts and who by necessity of duty and considerations of charity was conversant in the Courts of Emperours and in the infinite perplexity of many affairs which he with all manner of prudence and courage handled shewing in his deportments a vigorous sanctity chosen by the Divine Providence to make as it were the whole State of Christendom most eminent E C DOCTORIS AMBROSII St. AMBROSE The first SECTION His Calling THe first mark of perfection which we require in a good Prelate to wit Divine calling is in great S. Ambrose so manifest that were it written with the rays of the Sun it could not be made more perspicuous We may in some sort speak of him what he said (a) (a) (a) Amb. l. 1. Comment in Lucam cap. 1. Vngebatur quasi bonus athleta exercebatur in utero matris amplissimo enim virtus certamini parabatur of S. John Baptist That it seemeth God began to prepare him from his mothers womb to exercise his virtue one day in main battels First it is a thing remarkeable that seeing resolution was taken in Heaven to make this Prelate one of the most couragious and eloquent men of the world he should be extracted from the Nobility which is ordinarily full of generosity being derived from a father honoured with one of the chief charges of the Empire which was the Lieutenancy over the Gauls Besides he came into the world first breathing French air which hath been esteemed according to S. Hierom (b) (b) (b) Hieron adversus Vigilantium Sola Gallia monstra non habuit sed viris semper fortissimis eloquentissimis abundavit the Countrey of the most noble and learned spirits of the earth and Sidonius (c) (c) (c) Sidonius Apol. carm 1. Invicti perstantanimisque supersunt Jam prope post animam another Prelate hath said the valour of a French-man extendeth further than his life for he liveth even then when the soul and body are divided Secondly as we have observed before God many times declared the calling of infants by sundry presages It was a great sign of the eloquence of Saint Ambrose to behold a swarm of bees (d) (d) (d) The cradle of S. Ambrose all together settle on his cradle which was at that time brought out into a court of his fathers Palace that the child might thereby take a little fresh air The nurse seeing these little honey-creatures buzze about him much nearer than she could have wished coming and going to his lips was affrighted and thought to drive them away but the father who walking in the same place with his wife and daughter beheld this pretty sport made a sign she should hold her hands lest by exasperating these little creatures she might provoke their stings In the end they peaceably forsook the place and soared away so high that they lost sight of them At that time Ambrose father of our great Prelate spake aloud as with the spirit of prophesie This infant shall be great And verily these bees much better alluded to S. Ambrose than to Plato who is said to have had the like hap in his infancy For we must affirm the eloquence of Plato had honey in it and no sting but this of S. Ambrose besides the exceeding sweetness thereof in peaceable arguments had when there was occasion of combate stings that pierced to the quick We may well say he was the most elaborate in his style of all the Doctours of the Church especially if we speak of the Latins For many as S. Hierom and S. Augustine oftentimes dictated with much vehemency of spirit what came to their mind but S. Ambrose did not so much accustom himself to dictate to a writer for he in composing ever had his pen in hand (e) (e) (e) Ambros Epist 65. ad Sabinum Nobis autem quibus curae est similem sermenem familiari usu ad unguem distinguere lento quedam figere gradu aptus videtur propriam manum nostro effigere stylo c. to polish his works at leisure and as we say lick his own bear Adde hereunto another sign of his vocation in the childish sports he exercised without consideration as did heretofore Saint Athanasius being then as he an infant which was to cause his sister and the children which attended her to kiss his hand as the hand of a Bishop he therein taking much pleasure It seemeth God sometimes sheweth children as with his finger the way they should pursue It is an admirable thing that therâ— was in Paris found a young begger called Mauritius so far transported in his own fancy that he one day might become Bishop of Paris that many offers being jestingly made unto him in his infinite necessity to move him to renounce the right he pretended to the Bishoprick of this ample Citie it proved meerly impossible which a wealthy man perceiving he so furthered him in studie as in the end he came to the degree which to himself he had prefigured What shall we say God unlooseneth even the tongues of mothers to speak prophetically touching the state of their children Witness a most honourable Ladie named Ida mother of three sons Baldwin Godfrey Eustace who one day sporting with her and hiding themselves under her gown and many times shewing their heads with diverse pretty childish dalliances the father casually coming thither in the midst of their play as they were all covered with their mothers garment demanded Who have we there The Ladie readily answered not knowing what she should say It is a King a Duke and a Count. So it proved Baldwin was King of Jerusalem Godfrey succeeded in the Dutchy of Lorrain to his father the great Godfrey of Bouillon and Eustace was Earl of Boloigne God made use of this womans tongue as of the hand of a dyal which pointeth out the hours as the great wheel guids it leaving no memory where it touched Ambrose did the like at that time directed by the spirit of God He made himself Bishop in his own imagination but when he pursued the way of his proper reason and natural judgement he therein used all resistance not thinking he was called thereunto In the third place his calling was altogether extraordinary and miraculous in
out but what hand hath ever drawn a false opinion out of the brain of one presumptuous but that of God All seemeth green saith A istotle to those who look on the water and all is just and specious to such as behold themselves in proper love Better it were according to the counsels of the ancient fathers of the desert to have one foot in hell with docibilitie of spirit than an arm in Paradise with your own judgement Augustine not to acknowledge his fault would August I. deduabus animabus contra Manachaeos ever maintain it and thought it was to make a truth of an errour opinionatively to defend it He had that which Tertullian saith is familiar among hereticks swellings and ostentation of knowledge and his design was then to dispute not to live Himself confesseth two things long time made him to tumble in the snare the first whereof was a certain complacence of humour which easily adhered to vicious companies and the other an opinion he should ever have the upper hand in disputation He was as a little Marlin without hood or leashes catching all sorts of men with his sophisms and when he had overcome some simple Catholick who knew not the subtilities of Philosophie he thought he had raised a great trophey over our Religion In all things this Genius sought for supereminence for even in game where hazards stood not fair for him he freely made use of shifts and were he surprized he would be augry making them still believe he had gained as a certain wrestler who being overthrown undertook by force of eloquence to prove he was not fallen This appeared more in dispute than game For having now flattered himself upon the advantages of his wit he was apprehensive in this point of the least interest of his reputation and had rather violate the law of God than commit a barbarism in speaking thereby to break the law of Grammer to the prejudice of the opinion was had of him It was a crime to speak of virtue with a solecism and a virtue to reckon up vices in fair language When he was publickly to enterprize some action of importance the apprehension of success put him into a fever so that walking one day through the Citie of Milan with a long Oration in his head and meeting a rogue in the street who confidently flouted him he fetched a great sigh and said Behold this varlet hath gone beyond me in matter of happiness See he is satisfied and content whilest I drag an uneasie burden through the bryers and all to please a silly estimation The ardent desire he had to excel in all encounters alienated him very far from truth which wils that we sacrifice to its Altars all the interests of honour we may pretend unto and besides it was the cause that the wisest Catholicks feared to be engaged in battel with so polished a tongue and such unguided youth Witness this good Bishop whom holy S. Monica so earnestly solicited to enter into the list with her son to convert him for he prudently excused himself saying the better to content her That a son of such tears could never perish Besides the curiositie and presumption of Augustine 3. Impediment The passion of love the passion of love surprized him also to make up his miserie and to frame great oppositions in matter of his salvation But because this noble spirit hath been set by God as the mast of a ship broken on the edge of a rock to shew others his ship-wrack I think it a matter very behovefull to consider here the tyranny of an unfortunate passion which long time enthraled so great a soul to derive profit from his experience The fault of Augustine proceeded not simply from love but from ill managing it affoarding that to creatures which was made for the Creatour Love in it self is not a vice but the soul of all virtues when it is tied to its object which is the sovereign good and never shall a soul act any thing great if it contain not some fire in the veins The Philosopher Hegesippus said that all the great and goodliest natures are known by three things light heat and love The more light precious stones have the more lusture they reflect Heat raiseth eagles above serpents yea among Palms those are the noblest which have the most love and inclination to their fellows These three qualities were eminent in our Augustine His understanding was lightning his will fire and heart affection If all this had happily taken the right way to God it had been a miracle infinitely accomplished but the clock which is out of frame in the first wheel doth easily miscarry in all its motions and he who was already much unjoynted in the prime piece which makes up a man viz. judgement and knowledge suffered all his actions to slide into exorbitancy As there are two sorts of love whereof the one is most felt in the spirit the other predominateth in the flesh Augustine tried them both in several encounters First he was excessively passionate even in chast amities witness a school-fellow of his whom he so passionately affected He was a second Pylades that had always been bred and trained up with him in a mervellous correspondence of age humour spirit will life and condition which had so enkindled friendship in either part that it was transcendent and though it were in the lists of perfect honesty yet being as it was too sensual God who chastiseth those that are estranged from his love as fugitive slaves weaned his Augustine first touching this friend with a sharp fever in which he received baptism after which he was somewhat lightened Whereupon Augustine grew very glad as if he were now out of danger He visited him and forbare not to scoff at his baptism still pursuing the motions of his profane spirit but the other beholding him with an angry eye cut off his speech with an admirable and present liberty wishing him he would abstain from such discourse unless he meant to renounce all correspondence He seemed already in this change to feel the approaches of the other world for verily his malady augmenting quickly separated the soul from the body Augustine was much troubled at this loss insomuch that all he beheld from heaven to earth seemed to him filled with images of death The country was to him a place of darkness and gyddy fancies the house of his father a sepulcher the memory of his passed pleasures a hell All was distast being deprived of him for whom heloved all things It seemed to him all men he beheld were unworthy of life and that death would quickly carry away all the world since it took him away whom he prized above all the world These words escaped him which he afterwards retracted to wit That the soul of his companion and his were expreslie but one and the same surviving in two bodies and therefore he abhorred life because he was no more than halfe a man yet
the deluge which after it had born the whole world in the bowels thereof amongst so many storms and fatal convulsions of universal nature reposed on the mountains of Armenia So S. Monica when she so long time had carried in her entrails and heart a spirit as great as this universe among so many tears and dolours so soon as she was delivered of this painful burden went to take her rest on the mountains of Sion A little before her death beholding Heaven from a high window which opened on a garden she seemed there already to mark out her lodging so much she witnessed resentment and extasie towards her son Augustine who at that time made this admirable colloquie with her couched by him afterward in his Confessions The conclusion was that she said unto him My son I have now no more obligations to the world you have discharged all the promises of Heaven to me and I have consummated all the hopes I might have on earth seeing you a Catholick and which is more resolved to perfection of the life you have embraced When it shall please God to call me I am like fruit ripe and falling that holdeth on nothing Soon after she betook her to her bed being surprized with a feaver which she presently felt to be the messenger of her last hour Behold the cause why she being fortified with arms and assistances necessary for this combat took leave of Augustine and his brother there present affectionately entreating them to remember her soul at the Altar onely meditating on Heaven and neglecting the thought of the land of Africa which she had seemed at other times to desire for the sepulcher of her body And as her other son said unto her Madame my mother we as yet are not there we hope to close your eyes in our own countrey and burie you in the tomb of your husband this holy woman seeing this man would still tie her to the present life and divert her from cogitation of death which to her was most sweet beheld him with a severe eye and then turning her self towards her son Augustine Hearken saith she what he saith as if we absent from Africa must needs be further from God She often cast her dying eyes towards this son who was her precious conquest and who in her sickness served her with most particular assistances affirming that Augustine had ever been a good son towards her and though he had cost her many sorrows he never had forgotten the respect due to a mother Verily there was a great sympathie between the soul of such a mother and such a son which was infinitely augmented after this happy conversion and therefore we must give to nature that which belongs to it The child Adeodatus seeing his Grand-mother in the last agony as possessing the affections of his father threw out pitifull out-cries in which he could not be pacified And S. Augustine who endeavoured to comfort them all upon so happy a death withheld his tears for a time by violence but needs must he in the end give passage to plaints so reasonable The Saint died as a Phenix among Palms and they having rendered the last duties to her pursued the way begun directly for Africk Behold how the conversion of S. Augustine passed and though many cooperated therein yet next unto God S. Ambrose hath ever been reputed the principal Agent and for that cause his great disciple said of him (b) (b) (b) Aug. contra Julianum Pelagianum l. 1. c. 6. Excellens Dei dispensator quâ—m veneror ut patrem in Christo enim Jesu per Evangelium ipse me genuit eo Christi ministerio lavacrum Regenerationis accepi Ambrose is the excellent steward of the great father of the family whom I reverence as my true father for he hath begotten me in Jesus Christ by the virtue of the Gospel and God hath been pleased to make use of his service to regenerate me by Baptism Whilest stars and elements shall continue it will be an immortal glory to the Bishop Ambrose to have given the Church a S. Augustine of whom Volusianus spake one word worth a thousand (c) (c) (c) Volusian Epist 2. Vir est totius gloriae capax Augustinus In aliis sacerdotibus absque detrimento cultus divini toleratur inscitia at cum ad Antistitem Augustinum venitur Legi deest quicquid ab eo contigerit ignorari Augustine is a man capable of all the glorie of the world There is much difference between him and other Bishops The ignorance of one Church-man alone prejudiceth not Religion but when we come to Bishop Augustine if he be ignorant of any thing it is not he but the law which is defective because this man is as knowing as the law it self The eleventh SECTION The affairs of S. Ambrose with the Empeperours Valentinian the father and Gratian the son LEt us leave the particulars of the life of S. Ambrose to pursue our principal design which is to represent it in the great and couragious actions he enterprized with the Monarchs of the world Let us not behold this Eagle beating his wings in the lower region of the ayr but consider him among lightenings tempests and whirl-winds how he plays with thunder-claps and ever hath his eye where the day breaketh The state of Christianitie stood then in need of a The state of Christendom brave Prelate to establish it in the Court of Great-ones The memory of Jâ—lian the Apostata who endeavoured with all his power to restore Idols was yet very fresh it being not above ten years past since he died and yet lived in the minds of many Pagans of eminent quality who had strong desires to pursue his purpose On the other side the Arians who saw themselves so mightily supported by the Emperour Constans made a great party and incessantly embroyled the affairs of Religion Jovinian a most Catholick Emperour who succeeded Julian passed away as a lightening in a reign of seven moneths After him Valentinian swayed the Empire who had in truth good relishes of Religion but withal a warlick spirit and who to entertain himself in so great a diversitie of humours and sects whereon he saw this Empire to be built much propended to petty accommodations which for some time appeased the evil but took not away the root He made associate of the Empire his brother Valens who being a very good Catholick in the beginning of his reign suffered himself to be deceived by an Arian woman and did afterward exercise black cruelties against the faithfull till such time as defeated by the Goths and wounded in an encounter he was burnt alive by his enemies in a shepherds cottage whereunto he was retired so rendering up his soul in the bloud and flames where with he had filled the Church of God The association of this wicked brother caused much disorder in the affairs of Christendom and often slackened the good resolutions of Valentinian by coldness and
it were a prime virtue of your profession Believe me it is the worm which gnaweth all great actions the moth which eateth all the vigour of spirit the stain which defileth al the fairest ornaments of life the labyrinth which hindereth all generous designs the rock which wracketh all vessels the gulf which devoureth bodies and souls The wise Secretaries of nature have observed that Divers kinds of love all creatures which have the breath of fire have the tayl of a Dragon Nor likewise do we ever see carnal love vehemently enflamed but that it produceth some serpentine hydeous and disasterous issue I affirm fire penetrateth into the marrow of the total nature of the Universe but hath effects very different according to the subjects wherein it resideth It otherwise scorcheth in Heaven otherwise in hell otherwise in the bodies of beasts otherwise in sulphur and gun-powder and such like bodies able to receive its action It filleth the stars in Heaven with a flame full of lustre and honour It tormenteth the damned in hell it entertaineth the life of creatures it wasteth all bodies drie or oily to reduce them either into ashes or smoak Take my comparison and say with me there are lovers who burn as Heaven others as hell others as bodies well composed others as oyl and wood The first lovers have the ardours of Heaven who entertain chaste and spiritual love for things Divine These are pleasures which the jealous eye cannot espie the slanderous tongue cannot bite bad report is not accustomed to defame which equals have no cause to envie nor can Tyrants armed with horrour of so many torments find the means how to take it from Martyrs When we love God we find him every where we speak to him every where we serve him every where and every where we feel the services done to him have their recompence We talk to him as well in the whales belly as in the flaming furnace witness Jonas and the three children who found Chappels wholly built in the entrails of fishes and flames because the love of God the wisest architect of the world had framed such for them The second lovers burn as hell who live perpetually in stinking wicked and infamous concupiscences in dark extraordinary and desperate passions who are in sensuality as in an abyss fettered with a long chain of servitude never having any part of the air or light of the children of God The third are as bodies mixed who entertain conjugal honest and moderate amities such as are found in good marriages which are used according to God in all honour and sanctity Those of the fourth order enkindle one another as so many little bodies that daily minister fuel to the fire wasting spirit flesh and means in certain frivolous and giddly loves which after much use make men of vapour ashes and smoak You now adays shal find that affections purely conjugal are very rare and celestial loves much more but every where there are many men who burn like hell or pitch There are four sorts of love which have been great Four sorts of love enemies and still are to the reputation of a good souldier the one is the love of sensuality the other of fantasie the third of servitude and the fourth of fury On what side soever you turn your face assure your self Sir you shall find nothing beautifull in this ugly beast Love of sensuality which subsisteth onely in voluptousness Love of sensuality of body is a bruitish base and wandering love which is ever employed to spie out and trade for flesh having no other design but to satiate an unworthy concupiscence more unsatisfied than fire the abyss and hell If nature had created you some Mustapha to grow fat in a Seraglio that you had never heard speech of good or honour it were tollerable but to see a brave souldier well born and bred up to pass his life in laying snares for chastity to search out of both sexes such as make traffick of the sins of others to train up a wicked servant to be the messenger of your passions to promise swear forswear to seduce poor forsaken maids to cast them from necessity into disgrace and from disgrace into despair how can it be but abominable Think you the earth is made to be replenished with your sins and charities to be instituted to support your crimes It is idleness that serves as a store-house for your passions and it is your remisness which doth not so much as vouchsafe to seek out a remedy If you be resolved to lead such a life give up your sword for you dishonour it It is no reason that it alone should retain the virginity which all your other members have lost You cannot well serve two mistresses Venus and Bellona since they are so different And go not about to propose to your self that Sampson David and Caesar made them well accord together believe me when they came to be lascivious they ceased to be valiant It was neither with the looking-glass nor comb of Dalila that Sampson slew a thousand Philistines but with the jaw-bone of an Ass Whilest he preserved himself from women he was a sun and a thunder-blot a sun to enlighten his Nation a thunder-bolt to destroy the Philistines So soon as a woman had shaved him he of a sun became a coal of a thunder-bolt a vapour and of a man a lame jade who from the field of battel was sent to mill no longer having eyes but to deplore the disaster of his loves with tears of bloud When David in the list overthrew the Giant he had not then received the wound from Bath-sheba's eye But after he had seen her at the fountain his eyes ceased not to cast forth flouds and love dried up all his Laurels that they had very much ado to wax green again in the water of so many tears Hold it also for undoubted that Caesar being in the snows of the Gauls thought not of committing adulteries at Rome the business or war took from him all the taste of love and never did he submit to the imaginations of a beast till he retained no more designs worthy of a man Voluptuousness never acteth any thing great but hath destroyed all that is great And when God is pleased to overthrow Empires he chooseth souldiers who have chaste hands to chastise the effeminate So Arbaces vanquisheth Sardanapalus So Alexander who would not look upon Queens his prisoners but with an eye of chastity defeated the Persians bond-slaves to luxury So the Gothes gained the Empire of Rome as saith Salvianus God being willing to purge the earth which the Romans had defiled by the arms of a Nation more chaste than themselves it being reasonable that those should enjoy their goods who would have no share in their vices The love of fantasie is more sottish than malicious Love of fantasie or sordid There be Cavaliers who perswade themselves they are the bravest men of their Age
a Harpy which did onely attend to catch golden fish I saw also some plunged in a huge heap of pistolets so that neither heads nor bodies appeared but onely one tip of a toe made like the paw of a Griphon as a notable painter not long since delineated covetuousness Going somewhat further I discovered the Den of Bacchus where I saw fifes timbrels ivy and goat-skinns huge smoke of roasts feasts and men buried in wine and good cheer Beyond it they passed to the grots of Lust where crimes were done which would make the most innocent pens guiltie in writing them for as there must be an extream impudence to commit them so ought much shamefastness be used to conceal them Nothing so much astonished me as to see Ecclesiasticks without religion Ladies without shame young maids tainted who knew so much of that whereof they should be ignorant that the most prostituted could teach them nothing Afterward the sport turning into bloud I saw strange teacheries horrible circumventions execrable treasons which spake of nothing but of tying halters and mingling poisons I also saw some who made it their practise to kill men openly and said there was no safetie for them in innocency but much rather in the enormities of sacriledges I thought I had seen all when I afterwards perceived a chamber hideously black said to be the study of Lucifer and that the brave spirits of this time fludied there under the regency of Herod Tiberius and Pilate to find out the way how to believe in God no longer and to know all the refined policy of former ages I should be tedious and troublesome to decipher all the particulars of this prodigious Citie The painting hath told much of it but the greatest unhappiness which I saw there is that it is more true than I could wish For not to touch upon the honour of so many good men which are yet both in the body of justice and in all other companies I must tell you that among the sons of Seth there are many Children of Cain which make up this Babylon The third SECTION The destruction of Babylon and the government of the Divine Providence over the Estates of the World I Courteously beseech you O ingenious Politician to run your eyes over these lines which I have traced to stay a little your hast and to consider with me the knot of all this policy the source progresse issue and remedy of all these disorders perhaps you may find more reason in my discourses than your passion can expect Consult awhile with your heart sound your soul go to the bottom of your conscience I fear there may be some pits of the abyss and grashoppers of the Apocalyps which are those black vapours that have hitherto eclipsed all the lights of your understanding I will not conceal from you that there are three sorts of souls one virginal another already changed and somewhat corrupted the rest shameless such as those which are called in Scripture vast and giant-like-souls I Eccles 23. the Greek vers 5. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 do not think to find by your proceedings that you have a virgin-soul nor will I likewise perswade my self you have the soul of a giant which expecteth no other remedy but thunder I should rather believe you have a stomack depraved by some wicked principles whereinto either the unhappiness of your education the presumption of your ability or tickling-hope of good success in worldly affairs hath thrown you Wil you that I touch with a finger the begining of your disorder You have been too much flattered upon the excellency of your wit which is not to speak truly one of the shallowest of the time but there is much wanting of the singularity you imagine You have insensibly retired your self from that great judgement which S. Denys calleth the eternal Dionis c. 1. de divinis nominibus hearth of all the most purified lights and most chast affections and by withdrawing your self have taken a great quantity of false lights into your corrupt understanding and much coldness into your heart which have brought upon you a remisness in good manners and a notable disorder in all the parts of your soul You have seen heaven and all the hopes of the other life as Mathematicians make us to behold in a dark chamber whatsoever passeth abroad through a little cranny in such manner that all things we see appear like shadows and landskips turned topsy-turvy Behold what happeneth after you have stopped up all the windows and accesses of heavenly light you have made a little hole for the moon and all the blessings of the other life have seemed very slender to your distrustful spirit you have put on a resolution to make a fortune at what price soever and to build on earth like Cain after you have almost renounced the hopes of heaven In doing this you have played the unruly Ass thinking to escape from the bands of the dependance you have on God you have made your self your blessing your end your (a) (a) (a) Aug. l. 3. de libero arbit c. 24. Cui bonum non est Deus sibi ipsi vult esse bonum suum sicut sibi est Deus God Thereupon you have thought of the means you are to hold to arrive at this scope already framed in your imagination It seemeth to you all things succeeded according to your wit travel and industry used therein with some small help of fortune God no whit at all intermedling with affairs here below You have drawn absurd consequencies of the prosperity of some subtile spirits not looking into the bottom of the business The success of your affairs which seemed to you most prosperous notwithstanding your crimes and unlawfull proceedings have emboldened you mischievous spirits which dayly converse with you have confirmed you In the end behold your self reduced as it were to this point as to suppose you are to hold on a course in all affairs and governments of the world which may be craftie captious worldly and independent of divine laws if not for some popular apparence If this be so I demand of you why then in the Vide Lipsium in notis ad 3. lib. politic c. 4. p. 125. judgement of that great Politician Thucidides and all other well understanding men is it observed that these curious wits despoiled of the fear of God have alwayes been most turbulent and unhappy in the manage both of their own affairs and the publick also as on the contrary those who had not so much knowledge and invention but pursued the general instinct of God have held their estates better governed in simplicitie more prosperous in the ignorance of evil and much more firm in the lasting of their felicity Never was there a more refined wit than Achitophel of whom the Scripture said Consilium Achitophel quasi siquis consulerit Deum 2. Reg. 2. men consulted with him as with a God yet never was there any
become powerfull in the minds of subjects by strong hand whereas such as are of race noble and illustrious cannot have so few other parts but that they may easily enter into hearts as into a house which the virtue of Ancestours hath beforehand wholly purchased for them And though this seem expedient in all places yet is it much more necessary in a State where is a great number of noble men and generous spirits and where every one thinks himself sufficient enough to perform that which another doth Presumption equalleth them all in ability at the least according to their imaginations were it not that the uncontrolable supereminencie of houses makes them yield to reason And although base nobility be very shamefull yet is it much more tolerable than a servile spirit which hath power in its hands without any moderation There are four things saith the Wise-man which cause earth-quakes here below A servant imperious Proverâ— 30. a rich fool a woman scornfull when she is married and a maid-servant become the heir of her Mistress that is saith he the fourth thing which the world cannot endure Education maketh manners and every one is readily that which he hath learned in youth were it not that through a great strength of courage ill inclinations are resisted Boetius who in his excellent Nobility was endowed with so sweet a temper of spirit seemed to be created of God to govern men On the other part his family which was rich and powerfull gave also much increase to his command as that which alienated him from the corruptions that easily fasten on a necessitous fortune A man who feareth poverty is ever to be feared and a rich innocent cannot meet with any thing more dangerous than a hungry judge Saint Thomas hath said very well that a poverty Lib. 4. cap. 15. de rogim Princip virtuous and free from covetousness is an admirable quality for a States-man but where shall we now adays find such a poverty in a time when riot is so exorbitant that the greatest houses are therewith impeached The innocent riches of our great Consul fell out to be much to the purpose so that they might be employed for aid of the poor in a time which happened in one of the sickliest Ages of the world ruined by so many incursions of Barbarians not naming the other scourges which then fought against the sins of men The second SECTION The eminent wisdom and learning of Boetius EXperience the wisest Mistress of the world hath sometimes caused the saying of Plato to be questioned who thought Common-wealths happy when they fell into the hands of Philosophers or of men who sought to become Philosophers For in effect it is observed that those so knowing men meet not always with the bent of common understanding having their spirits more estranged from civil life They please themselves with great Ideaes as if they conversed in the Common-wealth of Plato with demy-gods not at all yielding to infirmities of nature And although they use some endeavour to render themselves conversable yet doth the sweetness of repose inebriate and withdraw them from affairs but if they force themselves to attend them noise amazeth them diversitie of humours not always suitable to their understanding distasteth them labour somewhat painfull overwhelmeth them and the heap of so many incident occasions confoundeth them Adde hereunto that there is much malice in the manners of men not found in books and that their actions being very innocent when they come to measure others by their own level they find themselves deceived Besides the sedentary and retired life spent in the entertainment of their books rendereth them very timorous and softeneth their brow which should always be as it were of brass to endure the shock of strong impudencies which may insinuate themselves into the corruptions of the times This may be confirmed by the example of Theodates King of the Goths who with all the Philosophy of Plato wherein he was exceedingly studious very ill mannaged his affairs As also by Michael the Emperour surnamed of the Grecians Parapanicius as who would say The Schollar for he perpetually had table-books and pens in his hand to compose Orations Verses and Histories resigning the whole government of his affairs to an Eunuch named Nicephorus who through his insatiable avarice drew much hatred upon the head of this Emperour I verily affirm if you take learning in these excesses one may very well say that it would not onely become unprofitable but also dangerous to principality It is not my intention to prove learned men are capable of the mannage of great affairs for the onely consideration of the advantage they have in letters for then Governours of Provinces were to be taken out of the Regencies of schools but I say that sciences well mannaged adde a marvellous lustre to one in government For first they vindicate him from stupidity and a savage life which maketh a man without sight or knowledge of virtue to be in a State as was Poliphemus made blind by Ulysses in his den Besides they cleanse refine and store the soul made to know great and divine lights Afterwards they open the understanding by the reading of so many excellent books and even unloose the tongue which is an instrument very necessary to mannage hearts Finally they make a man more mild civil and courteous and I could say also more awfull and worthy of credit For if some unhappy Princes were produced who being unfurnished of other talents have made ill use of letters by abusing them through want of judgement as one may all the best things in the world this nothing at all in substance lesseneth the truth of our proposition since we may oppose against them a large list of Law-makers Princes and Governours who have exceedingly well made use of the knowledge of learning For if we make account of the policie of God which is ever the most assured know we not that he having chosen Moses to constitute him the Governour of so great a State was willing he might have a good tast of all the sciences then in request among the Aegyptians And Philo saith that he there learned Arithmetick Geometrie Musick and all the greatest secrets of their Philosophie contained in their Hieroglyphicks Know we not that Solomon had a heart as large as the sea wherein God lodged so many knowledges of things both divine and humane that he penetrated whatsoever the understanding of man enlightened with rays from God might comprehend Are we so little versed in History that we cannot reckon up the names of all the greatest Princes who have been very learned as Alexander Julius Caesar Augustus Adrian Antoninus Constantine Theodosius Gratian Charlemaigne Alphonsus yea even Solyman the great Turk What a could of witnesses should we have did we now collect all the names and histories of learned States-men For if letters give ornament to such as are wholly eminent in military profession by a much stronger
sole body the enraged hunger of wolves the subtility of foxes the strength of Lions the cruelty of Tygers and Panthers the poison of Basilisks whether it may be more dangerous to man than himself when he is possessed with a mischievous ambition Oh how happy would the lives of men be were they not infected with these venemous passions which transform reasonable nature into more hideous monsters than those which Poets have set over the gates of hell We shall see in the sequel of this history how wickedness never escapeth the eye of God and that if he come with feet of lead to chastise it he notwithstanding hath an arm of iron to cut up treacheries by the root This murder divulged the Heruli took arms to revenge their Prince but the Centinels disposed in many places of the City hewed those in pieces who shewed themselves most forward Theodorick made a declaration very ample wherein he expressed that that which caused him to resolve on such an action was nothing but the security of his person against which Odoacer had a most evident design which would instantly have appeared in the deprivation of his life and estate had he not with all diligence prevented his enemy That he did what the law of nature ordained in so manifest a danger but that he will hence forward witness all manner of clemency to such as would throw themseves into his arms indifferently stretched out to accept the obedience of all the world The great distast of war every one had at that time the little hope the most mutinous conceived to revenge their quarrel and the authority of Zeno the Eastern Emperour who ceased not to support Theodorick caused a great silence in arms and afforded full liberty to this ambitious King of the Goths to become Master of Italy As for the rest he seeing Rome was then as it were like a great oake overthrown where every one hasteneth on all sides to get the spoil and that the French Visigoths and Burgundians might aspire as he to the conquest of Italy he made alliances with all those Princes and especially with Clodovaeus who at that time reigned whose sister he took in marriage Besides the Emperour Zeno that had ever upheld him happening to die as Anastatius his successour made shew to cause an alteration in affairs and would render himself absolute in the West this man knew so well how to play his part that he diverted his ambitions another way There is also a letter to be found in Cassiodorus which he wrote to this Anastasius deputing a solemn Embassage to him for the obtaining of peace where among other things he saith That it is good reason they should seek for peace who have no cause to make war and that the man wadeth far into wrong who giveth no testimony of any disposition to receive conditions suteable to justice As for himself he acknowledged the Emperour as the prime dignity raised above all other Kingdoms and to be the support of the whole world and that one of the greatest favours from God which he hath at any time received was to have learned in the Court of Constantinople how he ought to govern the Romans That he knows the authority of the Emperour is the onely model of all the policy in the world and that so much as God hath exalted him above other Princes so much would be humble himself under this Monarch from whom be requireth most glorious amitie that be may hereafter apply himself to all that which may appertaine to his honour and service The Emperour Anastasius who according to the humours of his turbulent spirit cut himself work enough out in the East not going to seek for it in the West seeing that he set himself into the conditions of a suppliant when his fortune might already put into his mouth words armed for command suffered him to gnaw his bone in secure peace The Romans considering that besides force of arms he had the consent of two Emperours of the East willingly received him under hope they had to see some tranquility succeed after so many storms which had afflicted their State Behold how from a Knight of fortune he arrived to the dignity of an Emperour he being notwithstanding resolved never to take upon him the Title of Emperour but contenting himself with the name of King thereby to decline the jealousie of those who were very capable of it He that would consider the qualities of his person which contributed to enthrone him in a place so eminent shall find that besides military virtue he had other parts very worthy to govern were it not that his spirit was drenched both in humane policy and long prosperities which served as disloyal nurses to sin It seemeth that Sidonius Appollinaris had studied him and summed him up even to the haires of his head when in the second Epistle of his first book he so curiously describeth him and saith among other things He had a body exceedingly well proportioned the top of his head well circled his eye-brows thick his hair long his nose hooked his lips soft his teeth of ivory his complexion white mingled with vermilion which quickly blushed more through shamefastness than choller his body very comely his arms strong his hands slender his breast full his leg plump his feet small to support a great body He addeth that concerning his manners he ordinarily prayed before break of day in the presence of his Bishops who were Arians without noise or attendance and that afterward he applied himself to affairs and gave audience to Embassages and petitions where he heard much and spake little ever shewing himself very intentive in resolutions and most prompt in the expedition of that which he had resolved on From thence he went to survey his Arsenal his Magazins his stables and his Treasures or he went on hunting being naturally so dexterous in shooting that infallibly he would not miss the mark After exercises he took his repast where he loved to be entertained with serious things and as for that which concerned his table there might be seen saith he The nativeness of Grecians the plenty of French the promptness of Italians and a discipline truly Royal. If after dinner he played at dice his custom was to be silent when he won to laugh when he lost and never to be angry but rather to take occasion to speak some good words and ever handled dice as manly as arms For the rest he was so good a gamester that not disquieting himself at all he rejoyced to see his subjects in humour against him and so despoiled himself in game of affected gravity that he seemed to have no other fear but to be feared It did him good then to be asked some favour and such a one oftentimes lost in game with him who won his suit About three of the clock the burden of affairs of the Kingdom had their turn wherein he rendered himself very serious till the time of supper
INDEGONDIS Issued from the bloud and house of Clotilda transporteth the Catholick faith into Spain ABout the year five hundred four-score and three Levigildus an Arian Prince reigned in Spain who seeing the house of France held supereminency amongst all the Kingdoms of the world sought the alliance thereof and obtained for wife to his eldest son called Hermingildus the daughter of Sigebert grand-child of Clotilda named in History Indegondis She was one of the most accomplished Princesses of that Age in whom beauty grace and virtue made together an admirable harmony to purchase her the hearts of all the world Every one lamented that this bright day-break which began to enlighten France with its rays went at her rising into a Countrey where the Sun setteth and that so many singular perfections were separated from that Kingdom which had given them birth The good virgin who had no other object but the obedience she ought to render those to whom nature had subjected her went well pleased besides was something satisfied with the title of a Queen which she might justly one day expect But little knew she the combats and difficulties that waited on her in the same place where she hoped to gather nothing else but flowers I do not think hell can ever produce a mischief like unto heresie which wholly perverting good affairs instantly hasteneth to drench all the contentments of this innocent soul in a deluge of tears Alas a million of tortures well deserve to be employed upon the criminal souls of those who were the first authours of this monster For it in all Ages hath disturbed States of Princes ruined so much generous Nobility and sowed division among the most settled amities The wise of that time much apprehended the sending of this young maid into Spain to marry her to an heretical Prince to place her in a Court wholly infected with heresie where no other objects should be presented unto her but errour and vice Behold said they a goodly vessel well rigged well furnished well guided which hath sails of linnen cordage of purple and oars of silver but they go about to expose it to a rough tempest Behold an excellent meadow all enamelled with most delicious beauties of nature but they endeavour to oppose it to cruel Northern blasts Behold a chrystal well polished smooth and delicate but they seek to hazard it to the strokes of the hammer Behold a statue all resplendent with gold and precious stones but they trample it under foot What will a child be able to do amongst so much malice An age so tender amongst so many heads grown hoary in sin A great simplicity amongst so many snares A maid which hath no recommendation but chastity and obedience amongst so many wicked commands Do we think that a father-in-law a husband a mother-in-law will have no power over her spirit That pleasures will not allure her That the dignity of a Kingdom will not move her That the lustre of a Diadem will not dazle her eyes and force prevail upon her If that should be given her which she deserveth it were fit to afford her all but the power to ruin her self Others said very temperately that we must not believe that by gaining a Kingdom she should loose religion that she was of bloud so illustrious it received no blemish that she would rather die than dishonour her birth that she would endure all the torments of Martyrs rather than betray her faith And that if needs she must make ship-wrack of all her fortunes that the last plank she would embrace should be a good conscience that she should be assisted by a good Councel that would never forsake her that there were as yet in Spain very many Catholicks whose tears she would wipe away and sweeten their acerbities That her husband a young Prince was not so obdurate but that she might hope one day to joyn him to the Catholick faith Women are infinitely powerful when they once have gained the heart of a man In the end that she must reflect on the example of her grand-mother who had converted her husband with all his Court and if then cold and timorous considerations had been used upon this marriage France might still have been Pagan If the mother overcame an Idolater the daughter may well prevail on an Arian Yet they which spake thus judged not the conversion of hereticks to be much more difficult than that of Pagans as well for the intolerable pride which ordinarily possesseth their spirits as for a certain malediction which seemeth to be tied to those who voluntarily withdraw themselves from the light and shake off the yoke of lawfull powers Yet notwithstanding considerations of State transported her and Indegondis would take her fortune promising her self so much assistance of God that not onely she should stand firm in the piety of her Ancestours but that if it were possible she would save her husband supposing to her self he was neither of marble nor iron not to be mollified with the attractives of her sex The couragious maid was waited on into Spain by a flourishing conduct of French Nobility where she was received with very great applauses for the reputation which the name of France had acquired in the opinion of all people The King Levigildus her father-in-law was married upon second Nuptials to an Arian wife named Goizintha who was as deformed of body as mind notwithstanding she had charmed the heart of this old man by I know not what kind of sleights that she held predominance upon affairs and bent as it were all his wills at her pleasure She shewed in the beginning an extraordinary affection to this marriage and went in person to the Princess giving her such fair entertainment that it seemed she went about to over-whelm her with courtesies Yet was it to behold night and Aurora in one and the same Chariot to see these two Princesses together For Goizintha besides other deformities of her person was become blind of one eye and Indegondis laying aside so many excellent parts which she had from nature appeared on that day in her attaires like unto those Goddesses which the Poets and Painters form according to the most advantagious idaeaes of their spirits Hermingildus her husband beholding her so accomplished easily felt the glances shot from her eyes were rays from her but arrows for his heart from whence he could receive nought but honourable wounds Never any man bound himself to a creature of the world with a love so forcible so honest and so innocent as did this Prince to this admirable virgin From the first arrival and first glance of the eye he felt his soul transported with a sweet violence and it seemed unto him this stranger came to negotiate with him a love much different from that of flesh and bloud It is a position which hath been sufficiently argued by ancient Sages touching the encounter of amities which are so diversly applied to objects sometimes by ordinary ways as
see many women of quality who engross this second order and who being little interiour open themselves with profusion to all whatsoever hath in it exteriour ostent Some fall into it for satisfaction of their own wills others by servile imitation and complacence to the humour of powerfull persons who like the great Orbs of heaven draw along the lower planets some through interest of fortune others for colour of piety and the rest by amusement I know some who therein proceed sincerely and did the wicked and Libertines understand the purity excellency and sanctity of so many good souls who handle devotion as it should be of which the Church is at this present furnished with a good number they would be ravished with sight of the interiour and take their lives to be a perpetual miracle But we must confess there are many devotes who wander from these purer paths to run after a fantasm of piety and although I here note defects I would have virtuous souls know my censure no more toucheth them than thunder the stars in heaven The first endeavour of this sophisticate devotion All exteriourly consisteth in making an Oratory or little houshold Chappel in building a little magazin of relicks begged on all sides with more curiosity than Religion setting candlesticks and pictures in order in providing rich ornaments in inventing new fashions of crewets in weaving girdles and dressing up a little mercery of trinkets And though these actions which concern the care of Altars are very laudable yet are they often very much perverted both by the intention which is vain and execution most indiscreet We many times find in these cabinets so religious and curious a Venus with our Lady a Cupid near S. Michael and a pair of beads hanging on the toes of some little giddy marmouzet This is to renew the practise of that Lady named Marcellina of whom Saint Augustine speaketh in the book of heresies who mingled Aug. lib. de haeres c. 7. the pictures of our Saviour with those of Pythagoras Furthermore these places which seem dedicated to piety so follow the humour of their Mistress as they are accommodated to all and if they in the morning have seen a Priest celebrate Mass they will make no difficulty to entertain a Ball that very evening All this devotion is pompous and proud in The pomp and practises of it its furnitures there is not so much as hair-cloths and disciplines but are made of silver rather to see the bright lustre of it than feel the smartings It hath mysteries and marvellous intrications which many times look on the earth under a veil of skie-colour It seems to many the aim of piety is nothing else but to seek out all its petty accommodations and contentments in the world to have liberty to do all game-courtship costliness of apparrel a caroach to ones self to flutter through the streets whilst the essential parts of marriage are contemned affairs of the house neglected and a husband enforced to murmur who doth express more impatience in an hour than the other gaineth devotion in ten years If question be made of choosing a ghostly Father there are of them who much delight in change and if Seneca said that Roman Ladies in the time when Senec. lib. 3. de benefi cap. 16. divorces were permitted reckoned their husbands by the number of Consuls who altered every year one may more justly say that some devotes measure their Confessours by the course of moons by taking almost every moneth a new Other stick so close to one and set him in so high account above all humane things that according to their opinion he alone hath the grace Sacraments and bloud of Jesus Christ in his hands But if they must be deprived of him there is no more piety nor religion for them in the world the paths of Sion mourn Churches and Altars are but wildernesses and the hope of salvation hath lost its lustre Such services and diligence must be used to a slight conscience as if it were a huge Common-wealth After the tediousness of a confession which maketh those to loose patience who were most resolute to attend it you must give and receive frequent visits spin out discourses and eternal prattle one cannot suppose they are all of God who is more honoured by silence one would hardly believe a soul should need such polishing which appeareth not to be so much refined in the knowledge of things divine One thinks this devout creature through superabundance of charity beareth all the sins of the house another that she tells all the tales in the Citie and those who easily suspect what themselves do without difficulty imagine there are other ties which I had rather conceal This devotion is not foolish according to the world but having learnt to make an arrow of any wood to hit the mark of its interests she maketh use of a Confessour pliant and mercenary for this purpose If any be found in the world who stretch their conscience who teach to withhold goods ill gotten to sooth humours entertain libertines and lodge sin almost in the bosom of Theologie these are sanctified spirits and Prophets in fashion There is enough done if there be outward shew enough If some small alms be drawn out of those great treasuries of gold and silver and that she communicate often For since some Priests are satisfied with saying Mass but once a year it is come to pass that certain devotes as if they meant to supply their defects take almost so many Communions as there be days in the year God forbid I should blame an exercise so holy which cannot be too much recommended but it troubles me they go to it without any feeling of that awfull Majesty and seek access to God as unto fire to make it tractable Frequent Communions which ought not to be permitted but with great discretion as a reward for the most solid virtues are turned into pillage according to the greedy humour of a spirit giddy and inconstant There needeth but the want of some small circumstance to stay a Priest and hinder him from saying Mass but these devotists pass all over and some of them have found the way to accord the Communion and a Comedy upon one and the same day What will ensue of this but that such women may draw water from the fountains of our Saviour like the Danaides in the hell of Poets with a five They often bear profanation to Altars to bring back vengeance and know not the many evils which assail them proceed from the contempt of holy things After so many Communions these souls profit in Callipedes spiritual life as the little Cavalier shewed at Rome who laboured much in running in a wheel and at the end of his travel had gone no further than when he began When was it that a dozen of Communions have taken from them one hair of vanity Are they less pompous less powdered less frizled more reserved
raise an Altar against his preferring your ends to his prejudice what do you call it if not tyranny since it is to enterprize upon the goods of your Sovereign who hath not any thing indispensable from his laws no not so much as nothing it self Nay if you afforded God some honourable association Reason 2 though that were tyrannical it would be It is a great sacriledge to make a Divinity of proper interest more tolerable but you allow him a wicked petty interest of honour of gain for companion which you plant in your heart as on an Altar and daily present it the best part of the sacrifice It is to injury a superiour to compare an inferiour with him It is said the very feathers of the Eagle are so imperious Feathers of the Eagle imperious Plin. l. 1. c. 3. they will not mix with the plumage of other birds if they do they consume them with a dull file And think you to mingle God who is an incomparable Wisdom a riches inexhaustible a purity infinite with feeble pretensions which have frenzie for beginning misery for inheritance and impurity for ornament The most barbarous Tyrants as the Mezentiusses found out no greater cruelty than to tie a dead with a living body and you fasten thoughts of the world dead and languishing with God who is nothing but life This is not a simple tyranny but a sacriledge The Civil Law saith you must not appropriate to 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Authent Justinia Jus canonicum August ad Licentium your self sacred gold or silver nor transfer to prophane uses what hath been dedicated to God the like whereof is expressed in Laws Ecclesiastical According to which axioms S. Augustine said to Licentius if you had found a golden challice you would give it to the Church God hath granted you a spirit of gold and I may likewise say a heart of gold when he washed and regenerated you by the waters of Baptism and now so far are you from rendering to your Sovereign Master what is due to him that you make use of that heart as of a vessel of abomination to sacrifice your self to devils One Osea 5. Victimas declinâstis in profundum sacrificeth to love another to revenge a third to worldly vanity As for you behold you are altogether upon particular ends which take all the victims from God to throw them into the gulf of avarice A man who hath conceived this Maxim in his Lignuâ— offensionis est aurum sacrificantium Eccl. 31. 17. brain that his affairs must be dispatched at what rate soever hath nothing of God but for cremony he hath created a Temple to a little devil of silver who sits in the middle of his heart It is the object of all his thoughts the bayt of all his hopes and scope of his contentments there is his Tabernacle his Oracle his Propitiatory and all the marks of his Religion I wonder why in Ecclesiastes where the common Translation saith All obeyeth money another very 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Pecuniae obediunt omnia Pecuniae respondeÌ„t omnia Eccles 10. 19. ancient letter and derived from the Hebrew phrase hath Money rendereth all oracles for that is it which properly the word respondere signifieth But I cease to admire when I consider the course of the world for in truth I see money is like a familiar spirit such as heretofore Pagans and Sorcerers kept in secret places shut up in a casket or in some broken head or the body of a serpent when they became any thing irresolute they consulted with their Idol and the devil counterfeiting voices through wood and metal gave them answers Now adays the Devil money is in the coffer of the covetous as in a Chappel dedicated to his name and the Infidel if he have any business to perform in his family thinks not at all to take counsel of God upon it nor to appeal to conscience but refers all these enterprizes to the devil of silver who gives him forth crooked Oracles Shall I buy a Benefice for one of my sons who hath no propension to the Church but it must be provided in what sort soever The little devil answers Buy seeing you have money Shall I corrupt a faithless Judge whose soul I know to be saleable to gain an evil spirit Do so since you have money Shall I be revenged upon such a man whom I hate as death by suborning false witnesses and engaging them by strength of corruption in a bad cause Yea since money gives thee this power Shall I buy this Office whereof I am most incapable for never was I fit for any thing but to practise malice Yea since it is money which doth all Shall I take Naboth's vineyard by force and violence to build and enlarge my self further and further upon the lands of my neighbours without any limits of my purchases but the rules of my concupiscence Yea since thou mayest do it by force of money Shall I carry a port in my house-keeping which is onely fit for Lords sparing nothing from expence of the palate nor from bravery in such sort that my lackeys may daily jet up and down as well adorned as Altars on sundays Yea since thou hast the golden branch in thy hand Finally Parva loquor quidviâ— nummis praesentibut opta â—veniet clausum possidet arca Jovem Satyricon Pet. this is to say very little but if thou hast readie money desire all thou wilt it shall come to pass For thou hast Jupiter shut up in thy coffer said the Satyrist See you not much infidelity a great contempt of God plain Atheism Moreover that which likewise makes this manner of proceeding more detestable is Reason 3 that besides its Empire incompatible with God it insinuateth False pretext of interests with such subtilities and pretexts of religion as if it were most devout Black souls of sorcerers given over to all manner of execration make open war against God they say they are altogether for Beelzebub and keep the sabbath to yield him homage and have renounced all the functions of Christian piety in recompence whereof they raise mists in bright mornings by the power which the evil spirits gives them that hearbs and trees may die or such like for their witch-craft extends but to bodies But this furious passion of interests which now adays so powerfully swayeth besides that it sucketh the bloud and marrow of the people and bewitcheth souls which come near it with manifest contagion appears with semblances of religion and true Christianity although it be impossible to serve two Masters according to the words of the Saviour of the world and to accord the devil of proper interests with the Maxims of Jesus Enemies the most dangerous are ever the most covert it were better almost to fall absolutely into disorder than to be flesh and fish hot and cold to halt sometimes on Baal's side another while on the Temple of Solomon's part
preservation of a fool and sick man If Rom. 6. Great spirits enemies of the flesh you live according to the flesh you shall die said the Apostle to the Romans All great spirits who have a feeling of their extraction the beauty and nobility of their souls take not the necessities of life but with some shame and sorrow They regard the flesh as the prison of a spirit immortal and think to flatter it is to strangle the beâ—ter part of themselves which resteth in the understanding The Philosopher Plotinus who Plotin Porphiry upon his life was renowned as the worlds Oracle could not endure to have his picture taken saying he had trouble enough to suffer a wretched bodie without multiplying the figures thereof by the help of painting and you imagine it is a virtue of the times to adore it and afford it submissions which pass to the utmost period of servitude How much the more we profit in the libertie of God's children so much the more we proceed in disengagement from sense and enter as into the sanctuarie of souls there to consult on truths and understand reasons which vindicate us from the dregs of the world to give us passage into the societie of Angels It is a strange matter that the subtile Divine Scotus Discourse of Scotus concerning sense Scotus locis disquisit 1. indicatis thinks that to understand and know objects by sensible representations passing through the gate of our sense and striking our imagination is a punishment from original sin He finds it is a harsh subjection to make application to the bodie to derive colours odours and sounds from it which notwithstanding seemeth as innocent as the purchase of bees who suck honie out of flowers and shall we think there can be any felicitie to plunge our judgement into all the voluptuous pleasures of flesh Know we not it many times doth to the soul as the An observation of Camerarius concerning the heron heron to the faulcon He endeavoureth to flie above him and to wet his wings with his excrements to make his flight heavie and render his purpose unprofitable Alas how many times feel we the vigour of our reason enervated by the assaults of concupiscence which contracteth the like advantage from it's ordures for the enthralment of the spirit And why would we second it's violence by our weakness Instance upon the weakness and miserie in service of the body I moreover demand of you what can you hope from so punctually observing your bodie You are not a Geryon with three heads and three throats There needs but a little to fill you For though your concupiscence be infinite yet are your senses finite many times pleasure overwhelms them before they afford themselves the leisure of tasting them If you resolve so curiously to attend the search of pleasures you should desire the spirit of a horse to enjoy them with the more vigour and liberty But what sense is there to have the soul of a man and seek to be glutted with the mite of the earth as if one would feed a Phoenix with carrion on which ravens live when you have done all you can to make your self happie by diversity of worldly pleasures beasts will ever have more than you For their sensitive souls much sooner meet the height of nature and as their pleasures are free from shame so they drag not sorrow after them They are not gnawn with cares by desiring things needless they take what the elements afford them and what the industry of man manures for them know not what it is to find poisonous maladies in the most ardent pleasures sensuality may imagine But admit you were resolved to become a beast with the disciples of Epicurus yet ought you not for all that according to your own limits surpass the bruitishness of beasts And I pray tell me where is the beast which hath never so little generosity would not think it self most miserable if it were condemned to eat and drink perpetually and grow lazy in an idle life They frame themselves very willingly to the exercises nature appointed them for the service of man and a man thinks it a great Philosophy to consecrate all the parts of his bodie to sensuality no whit considering he is made for the contemplation of things Divine for the love and fruition of the first cause Avicen an excellent wit by the unhappiness of his Avicenna lib. de primâ Philosoph 9. c. 1. apud Javellum Notable saying of Avicen birth ranked in the sect of Mahomet coming to consider this false Prophet had placed the beatitude of the other life in the injoying sensual pleasures was so ashamed of it that he shrunk from his Prophet that he might not betray his reason The law saith he which Mahomet gave us considered beatitude and miserie within the limits of the bodie but there are promises and hopes of other blessings much more excellent and which cannot be conceived but by the force of a most purified understanding Which is the cause wise divines ever set their Foelicitas est conjunctio cum primâ Veritate love on the blessings of spirit without any account taken of those of sense in comparison of the felicitie we one day pretend to have in the union of our immortal spirit with the first Verity What can our worldlings answer to this Arabian Should they not blush with shame to see a man bred in the school of Epicurus gone out of it to teach us the Maxim of Christianity 4. Finally to conclude this discourse with a third Reason 3 reason although the service of the bodie were possible Tyranny of ryot and not shameful to you do you not well see it is tyrannical and that Epicurus himself wholly bent to pleasure cut off all he could from nature for this onely cause which made him think over-much care of the body was extreamly opposite to felicitie The Platonists Opinion of Platonists said our souls were of an extraction wholly celestial and sent from heaven to serve God on earth in imitation of the service Angels do to him in heaven but that many of those poor souls forgetting their original instead of going directly to the Temple of virtue stood amuzed in the house of a Magician which was the flesh that enchanted them with his charms had cast them into fetters where they were enforced to suffer a painful bondage from whence there were but two passages wisdom or death To this Synesius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Syness hym 3. made allusion in his Hymns complaining his soul from a servant of God was become a slave of matter which had bewitched it by wily practises And verily who can sufficiently express the servitude a soul suffers fast linked to flesh and which onely endeavours to dandle it hoping by this means to give true contentment to the mind First pleasures are not exposed now-adayes to all the world as the water of a
Libertine thou dost ask how this material fire burneth spiritual souls It is one of the most unfortunate sciences not to understand hell but by proper experience to dispute the activity of a fire as true as the mouth of God and unfaithfully deny on earth what must everlastingly be learned under earth Algazel the Arabian Avicen said a damned soul suffers no other pain but the object of its eternal perdition Algazel and Avicen behold two goodly Authours to oppose the wisdom of the eternal word I am of opinion we learn from devils how to believe in God and derive our Theology from the lips of the wicked and our belief from infidelity as if one should prostitute a Vestal to a lost man Alas wretched spirit how worthy art thou of compassion when not satisfied to play the Epicure in thy manners thou wilt divide thy Libertinism with Philosophy If this discourse which ought to be dedicated to holy horrour of Gods judgements Gulielm Paris de universo did permit farther question one might shew with the great Bishop of Paris that a damned soul kept in a prison of fire retains all the same senses as if it were with the bodie in the middest of flames since we feel in this life such vivacity onely from the imagination that it in us produceth the same effects which the presence of objects doth And this Doctour witnesseth he hath seen and known men who needed no other purgation but the sight of a medecine But if the sole idea do thus what will the real impression of fire work upon a soul which raised by the Divine power above its ordinarie force leaves a form and a character as if a hot-iron were stamped on the flesh We might deduce with S. Thomas Turrecremata Cajetan Isolam and Ocham all the exquisite dolours of a soul that feeleth it self imprisoned as in a cage of fire and stormeth seeing it self not onely deprived of sweet liberty but tormented by an imperious element destined by God for its punishment by extraordinary ways by a suppliment of the antipathy of senses and which shamefully wrack it as if a person of eminent quality were insolently abused by some slave come from the Moors or Arabia We should likewise set before you with other Divines See S. August 21. Citie of God S. Gregory in the 4. of his dialogues S. Thomas contra Gentes l. 4. c. 90. Suar. part 3. and the R. P. Theophilus Raynaud in his natural Theology where this question is excellently handled the quality of a prodigious deformity caused by fire raised above its condition which extreamly afflicteth an immortal spirit then especially when it understands the excellent gifts wherewith God had endowed it the favours and glories it might pretend unto this most blessed eternity One might say with many other modern Doctours that the soul being the root of sensitive qualities is no less tormented by objects dissenting from sense than as if sense were present and hath a spiritual sense by the help of which it trieth and feeleth the fire with an experimental knowledge wholly like the action of sense All these opinions might be argued with many instancies and reasons but it being not according to the scope of this design I say in one word with S. Gregory the Great There is made in the soul from a visible fire a heat and an invisible pain It is true the soul separated from the body hath not a natural antipathy and disagreement from fire but what this imperious element cannot have remaining within the limits of nature it obtaineth by a particular ordinance and disposition of God who chooseth and expresly deputeth it to serve him as an instrument and a sign in this action and to be as an eternal messenger of his anger against a damned soul Now as the Sovereign Judge of the world gave life to Cain for a punishment so according to S. Ambrose he engraved by the same means a disastrous mark on his person which continually set before the eyes of this fratricide the image of his crime and the Divine justice In such manner that oftentimes turmoyled during life in the miseries and confusions of his bruitish spirit so soon as he represented to himself this sign he acknowledged the decree of God who prolonged his life to lengthen his calamities So this Divine hand Omnipotent in its effects imprinteth fire on a damned soul as the true token of his justice the character of his anger the centinel and executioner of his eternal will who beareth the face of an incensed God with all his decrees in his own flames who presseth and lieth heavy on this miserable thing separated from the sight of God and resigned through an eternal malediction to the life of divels 2. Thou must here understand O Reader this Foundation of the eternity of the pains of the damned truth touching the eternity of the pains of the damned confirmed by express texts of holy Scripture and the decision of the universal Church and by all Ages is grounded upon the justice of God ever to be adored by our wills although impenetrable to the weakness of our understanding and for confirmation hereof I think we should not omit the reasons of S. Gregory S. Bernard and S. Thomas before we produce that which to me seems the most formal for although they are not all necessarie in their conclusions yet they fail not to furnish us with much light and to give matter of true piety which is the butt whereat we aim in this discourse You O sinner demand why is a deadly sin strucken and punished with an eternal pain I answer you first with S. Gregory 1. Reason of S. Gregory the Great that if an eternal malice be proved in sin justice by all reasonable ways requireth the chastizement of it to be eternal for an eternity of crimes Non transeunt opera nostra ut videantur sed temporalia quaeque velut aeternitatis semina jaciuntur must be counterballanced with an eternity of miseries Now sin in some sort is eternal and in some manner extends beyond our life which alone is capable of merit or demerit For tell me those stones and kernels of pomegranades and apple-trees and all other trees created in the first week of the world were they temporary or eternal Temporary you will say for they fell before the tree And yet behold they propagate to our time and live in as many trees as there are of their kind on earth for these five thousand years or thereabouts The like is it with the actions you do at this present For they seem to pass in a moment yet are they so many seeds of eternity Reader understand well what I say behold here a secret wherewith daily to acquire a rich treasure of merits make me all your virtues as eternal by the sincerity of your intentions as they in effect are such in their consequence When you do a good work be it prayer alms
adhere to silly inventions of their own spirit and you would almost say the Father the Holy Ghost and the Word of God it self were nothing with them in comparison of particular devotions of some Saints or some slight observances which they practise according to their own fancie But if one happen to reprove them upon it they are uncivilly offended therewith and think such as speak with reason are not within the compass of the upright judgement of faith I affirm these kind of proceedings are not according to the order of the Church the which honoureth all Saints yea and the blessed Virgin in a degree infinitely beneath the Divine Majesty nor doth it honour them but to honour God in them and by them But if some abuse mysteries must we therefore overthrow Altars If some popular spirits ill instructed grow superstitious must one therefore become a Libertine Must innocency be forsaken the more to hate the guilty It is a pittifull thing to see good spirits who make profession of Catholick Religion and have in some things good apprehensions of piety to take such liberty of words to themselves that we know not what to make of them Ought not they to consider that a popular errour is one thing and a position of the Church another If some particulars introduce exorbitant devotions let them reject blame and condemn them We neither undertake to defend nor justifie them But when we speak of the invocation of Saints of their Reliques Canonizations Indulgences of the authority of our Holy Father of the Institution of Religious Orders and so many such like which are authorized by general Councels and by the belief of all antiquity doth not a good judgement see that to go about to oppose these Maxims is to do that which S. Augustine speaketh To suffer ones self to run into a folly which hastneth to the height of insolencie He who admitteth a leak in a ship drowns it who divideth Religion hath none at all who resolves to believe this and reject that believes nothing All that which cometh from one same authority ought to be believed with like equality Our faith is not grounded upon natural judgement upon wit and discourse but on the submission we ow to God and the Church which is the Interpretess of his counsels He who abideth therein abides in true wisedom who goeth out of it shall find nothing but an Ocean of disturbances and the shipwrack of his faith The second order of Libertines is of Neuters wavering and distrustfull who are almost upon the indifferencie of Religions and hold their faith as a hawk without leashes It quickly flies a way and leaveth them to replenish more setled brains and more capable souls In this number you have many squeazy stomachs who affect to be Masters in matter of Religion and are extream greedy of all sorts of innovations And if there be some bold spirit who with sensual reason censureth the mysteries of our Religion that man is according to their tast a brave fellow and his books deserve to be bound up in gold and purple The Bible is not wise enough for them their spirit of rebellion findeth faults and contradictions therein They are in search of hidden mysteries as were the Argonautes who went out to win the golden fleece And could they lay hold on Mahomets Alcoran they will not spare to read it the more to confound themselves in the labyrinth of their errours After they have run all over sounded all quoted all they find themselves empty and have nothing so assured as incertainty nothing so undoubted as the loss of their faith which they have almost wholly transformed into a cursed Neutrality the head-long descent of a horrible precipice The third order comprehendeth idle loyterers and people of the throat and kitchen who bear in their ensign for devise that which is said to have been inscribed on Sardanapalus his tomb Drink eat fill thy 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 self in the ordures of flesh and think thou hast nothing but that which thou affordest to thy sensualitie They all say with Epicurus As for my self I cannot understand any felicitie unless it be in palates in lips in ears in the belly and all that which is common to us with beasts These kind of men have not so much to do as other they are not sollicitous concerning the secrets of nature curious books mystical Cabals the Gospel not Turkish Alcoran they have found their God in themselves and indeed will acknowledge no other but the belly Their continual employment is to furnish out tables for it which are its Altars and to offer unto it dishes and sauces in sacrifice The fourth region containeth the malign covert and narrow observers who yet still retain some fear of the smoke of the faggot behold the cause why they dare not declare themselves in open manner They enter into the fold as wolves clothed in a sheeps skin and tell the sheep they are much affected to their conservation but that the dogs must be taken away which do nothing but deafen their ears with barking both day and night These are such as sow propositions with a double meaning and have ever a back-shop to hide themselves in such as say Catholick religion is good if it were purged from so many superstitions such as deceive young men under colour of doctrine and when they have hit upon a curious spirit whom they esteem retentive of a secret recommended they draw the curtain aside and reveal the mysteries of iniquity to him They are such as make disguises and differences which no man imagined and make truth combat against A theism with so feeble arms that it were much better defended to be left to its own nakedness such as have a store-house of evil books more impure than the stable of Augaeus out of which they derive all their profanations cloying the ears of the simple with a thousand objections ever made in the name of a third person who never dreamt of them Lastly such as silently build the Babylon of execrable confusions The fifth rank comprehendeth all those who have sold their souls to ambition and particular interest and have nothing of religion but seeming and ceremonies They are such as would make no scruple to set a foot upon the throat of their best friends to raise their own fortune higher Such as live fattened up with the Altar being many times enemies of the Altar Such as lift their children aloft with an arm of silver through all the ways of injustice above the heads of men and make the Church a prey to their ambition Such as are present at Divine Service with postures of a puppet-player Such as go to Gods word as to a Comedy to see and to be seen more for Adonis than Jesus and who in conclusion turn all piety into scoffs retaining nothing of it but a fantasm to serve their own ends The sixth manner is of such Vt introierunt quidam homines
c. Et hi carnem quidem maculant dominationem autem spernunt majestatem autom blasphemant Hi sunt in epulis suis macule c. as are utterly impudent in words and Libertines in actions of whom the great S. Jude made a lively description Certain men are crept in among us reprobate and impious spirits who apply all talents of grace and nature to lust and to deny him that made them to wit our Lord Jesus Christ Master and sole Monarch of the whole world Then he addeth they are such as defile their flesh and revolt against lawfull powers such as blaspheme the Divine Majesty They are gluttenous cruel and arrogant who onely think to satiate themselves by others hunger clouds without water tossed with turbulent winds autumntrees barren trees trees twice dead trees rooted out of the territory of the Church They are waves of an enraged sea which foam nothing but confusions wandering commets to which God reserveth a tempest of darkness The Causes of Libertinism well observed by the Apostle S. Jude 3. NOte that this great Apostle doth here touch Jud. Epist Job 20. four sources of infidelity which are in this very considerable The chief and original of this corruption is a bruitish lust which with much infamie overfloweth as well in pleasures of the throat as sensuality which he was willing to express by these words when he said The impious not onely act impurities Hi sunt in epulis suis macula but are the impurities themselves For the Libertines are true Borborites so were certain hereticks called as one would say bemired because they naturally delighted in uncleanness they are dissolute people who have no other God but their belly good cheer and unbridled lust from whence it cometh their understandings clouded with bodily pleasures thicken and become wholly unable for things divine The people heretofore beloved is puffed up with Incrassatus est dilectus reâ—alcitravit deâ—eliquit Deum factorem suum Deut. 31. fat hath kicked against and forsaken its Creatour said Moses Tertullian very well termeth gourmandize the palsey of the understanding for as a body is deprived of sense and motion by the corporal palsey which obstructeth the nerves so the spirit oppressed by sensuality is wholly darkened without any feeling of Religion or any motion to works which concern salvation To live in fat is to shut up the gate of wisdom Opimitâ—â— sapientiam impedit exilitas expedit paralisis mentem prodigit pâ—isis servat Tertul. de anima c. 20. There is a palsey of corporal pleasures which wasteth the spirit and a ptissick which preserves it Nay Oecumenius discovereth somewhat more mysterious unto us when interpreting the word maculae according to the Greek 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he saith They are certain rocks hidden under the waves which surprize Saylours and cause hydeous shipwracks This very well agreeth to Libertines and one may call them according to another translation rough rocks bollow Confragosa in mari saxa cavernosaâ— rupes tenias stones and shelves which are the causes of so many falls They are in feasts as gulphs in the Ocean and overtake ere aware spirits already possessed with the vapours of wine and meats at which time they are most Bos ductus ad victimam agnus lasciviâ—â—s ignoram quod ad vincula stultus trahatur donec transfigat sagitta guttur ejus Prov. 7. 2â— open to sottish mirth Ah how many young men deceived by these impostures after they have made shipwrack of reason in a tavern have thereunto added the shipwrack of their faith He was led as an ox to the slaughter or as a skipping lamb not foreseeing his captivitie before the mortal arrow had transfixed his entrails saith the Wiseman The second cause of infidelity is a certain barrenness of wit of judgement discretion of Christian virtues and namely of humility of good works and worthy employments and consequently a swelling of presumption of imaginary ability of vanitie of idleness which is much supported by wicked nature effeminate education too free conversation access of evil company which render a man absolutely barren A matter excellently well signified by these words They are clouds without water such kind of trees as we see in Judea unfurnished Nubes sine â—qua of fruits in Autumn and despoiled of leaves twice dead that is to say quite rotten Faith will be manured by the exercises of piety by presence at Divine Service by keeping of fasts by alms and frequentation of Sacraments Now these wicked ones employed in sensual pleasures and evil company forsake all the characters of their Christianity which maketh them by little and little fall into a great forgetfulness of God into disdainfull pride insupportable neglects and into the maledictions uttered by our Saviours lips against the unfruitfull tree Of these is understood the decree of Heaven Earth Jer. 22. 29. Terra terra terra audi sermonem Domtni Haec dicit Dominus Scribe virum istum sterilem virum qui in diebus suis non prosterabitur Fluctus feri maris despumontes confusiones suas earth earth hearken to the word of God Our Lord hath said Write down this man as a man barren who shall never prosper during his life The third source is a tumult of enraged passions which are waves of the sea that vomit up their confusions for these kind of spirits are in perpetual disturbances nor hath the sea so many waves as they anxieties pride puffeth them ambition precipitateth them hatred gnaweth them delights conquer them choller burneth them fury transporteth them hardness of heart makes them untractable and impudence insupportable And being unable to restrain their passions within themselves they throw them abroad as the froath of waves and scum of confusions That is it which Saint Ambrose said Tunc videbitur ignominia tua adulterium hinnitus alienatio fornicationis tuae supra colles Ambr. l. de Abra. interpreting a passage of Jeremie Then is it thy ignominie thy adulterie thy neighing and strangeness of thy fornication shall be seen to all the world on the mountains Lastly the fourth root which rendereth their evil very desperate is a perpetual inconstancy excellently compated in the passage of the Apostle to flying fires formed in the air from exhalations of the earth This sort of men perhaps may have qualities which may give them some Iustre according to the world and make them appear as stars in the firmament of worldly honour causing some to reflect on them with admiration of their wit their eloquence and behaviour But they are to speak properly stars of earth and smoke like unto that S. John calleth the Apoc. 8. star of worm-wood which being not of the stars enchased by the hand of God in celestial globes but flying flames enkindled by some gross exhalations proceeding perhaps from a dung-hill fall back again Crinemque volantia sydera ducunt on earth from whence they came
be a King but a King of hearts who requires nothing of us but our selves onely to make us happy and contented in him He triumphs before the victory because none but he could be sure of the future certainty of his happiness But he watered his triumphs with tears to weep for our joys which were to proceed out of his sadness It is related by an ancient Oratour that when Constantine made his entery into great Brittany where he was born the people received him with so great applause that they kissed the Sails and Oars of the vessel which brought him and were ready to pave the streets with their bodies for him to tread on If they did so for a mortal man what should we not do for an eternal God who comes to buy us with his precious bloud and demands enterance into our hearts onely to give us Paradise 2. He walks towards his Cross amongst the cries of favours and joy to teach us with what chearfulness we should conform our selves to abide our own sufferings imitating the Apostles who received their first reproches as Manna from heaven He would have us prepared and resolved always to suffer death patiently whether it be a death which raiseth up our spirit to forsake sensuality or a natural death Whethersoever it be we should embrace it as the day which must bring us to our lodging after a troublesom pilgrimage Doth it not appear plainly that those who are loth to forsake the world are like herbs put into an earthen pot among straw and dung and yet would be unwilling to come forth of it The furniture of our worldly lodging grown rotten the roof is ready to fall upon our heads the foundation shakes under our feet and we fear that day which if we our selves will shall be the morning of our eternal happiness It is not death but onely the opinion of it which is terrible and every man considers it according to the disposition of his own spirit 3. The Palm-branches which we carry in our hands require from us the renewing of a life purified and cleansed in the bloud of the holy Lamb. In the beginning of Lent we take upon our heads the ashes of Palm branches to teach us that we do then enter as it were into the Sepulcher of repentance But now we carry green bows to make us know that now we come out of the tomb of Ashes to enter again into the strength of doing good works in imitation of the trees which having been covered with snow and buried in the sharpness of winter do again begin to bud out in the Spring time 4. The garments spred under the feet of Jesus declare that all our temporal goods should be employed toward his glory and that we must forsake our affections to all things which perish that we may be partakers of his kingdom No man can stand firm that is delighted with moveable things He that is subject to worldly affections binds himself to a wheel which turns about continually Jesus accepted this triumph onely to despise it he reserved the honour of it in his own hands to drown it in the floud of his tears and in the sea of his precious bloud If you be rich and wealthy do not publish it vainly but let the poor feel it You must live amongst all the greatness and jollity of this world as a man whose onely business must be to go to God Aspirations O Sovereign King of hearts after whom all chaste loves do languish I am filled with joy to see thee walk amongst the cries of joy and the Palms and garments of thy admirers which served for carpets I am ravished with thy honours and the delights of thy glory and I applaud thy triumphs Alas that all the earth is not obedient to thy laws and that the tongues of all people do not make one voice to acknowledge thee sole Monarch of Heaven and earth Triumph at least in the hearts of thy faithfull servants O my magnificent Master make a triumphal Ark composed of hearts Put fire to it with thy adored hand Pour out one spark of that heat which thou camest to spread upon the earth Let every thing burn for thee and consume it self in thy love I do irrevocably bind my heart to the magnificence of thy triumph and I love better to be thy slave than to be saluted King of the whole world The Gospel upon Munday in holy week S. John 12. Saint Marie Magdolen anointed our Saviour feet with precious Ointment at which Judas repined JEsus therefore six days before the Pasche came to Bethania where Lazarus was that had been dead whom Jesus raised and they made him a supper there and Martha ministered but Lazarus was one of them that sate at the table with him Marie therefore took a pound of Ointment of right Spikenard precious and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair and the house was filled of the odour of the Ointment One therefore of his Disciples Judas Iscariot he that was to betray him said Why was not this Ointment sold for three hundred pence and given to the poor And he said this not because he cared for the poor but because be was a thief and having the purse carried the things that were put in it Jesus therefore said Let her alone that she may keep it for the day of my burial for the poor you have always with you but me you shall not have always A great multitude of the Jews knew that he was there and they came not for Jesus onely but that they might see Lazarus whom he raised from the dead Moralities 1. LAzarus being raised from his grave converseth familiarly with Jesus and to preserve the life which he had newly received he ties himself continually to the fountain of lives to teach us that since we have begun to make a strong conversion from sin to grace we must not be out of the sight of God we must live with him and of him with him by applying our spirit our prayers our fervours our passionate sighs toward him and live of him by often receiving the blessed Sacrament Happy they saith the Angel in the Apocalyps who are invited to the wedding-supper of the Lamb. But note that he who invites us to this feast stands upright amidst the Sun to signifie that we should be as pure as the beams of light when we come unto the most holy Sacrament Lazarus did eat bread with his Lord but to speak with S. Augustine he did not then eat the bread of our Lord and yet this great favour is reserved for you when you are admitted to that heavenly banquet where God makes himself meat to give you an Antepast of his Immortality 2. God will have us acknowledge his benefits by the faithfulness of our services S. Peter's mother in law as soon as she was healed of her Feaver presently served her Physitian And observe that Martha served the Authour of life who
in the Law of Moses and the Prophets and the Psalms of me Then he opened their understanding that they might understand the Scriptures And he said to them That so it is written and so it behoved Christ to suffer and to rise again from the dead the third day and penance to be preached in his Name and remission of sins unto all Nations Moralities 1. WE think sometimes that Jesus is far from us when he is in the midst of our heart he watches over us and stretches out his divine hands for our protection Let us live always as if we were actually in his presence before his eyes and in his bosom An ancient Tradition doth observe that after our Lords Ascension the Apostles did never eat together but they left the first napkin for their good Master conceiving that according to his promise he was always with them Let us accustom our selves to this exercise of Gods presence It is a happy necessity to make us do well to believe and apprehend that our Judge is always present If respect make him formidable love will teach us that he is the Father of all sweetness There can be no greater comfort in this world than to be present in heart and body with that which we love beast 2. Jesus is taken by his Apostles for a Spirit because after the Resurrection he pierced the walls and appeared suddenly as Spirits do S. Paul also saith in the second to the Corinthians that now we do no more know Christ according to the flesh that is to say by the passions of a mortal body as S. Epiphanius doth expound it We must make little use of our bodies to converse with our Jesus who hath taken upon him the rare qualities of a Spirit We must raise our selves above our senses when we go to the Father of light and the Creatour of sense He teaches us the life of Spirits and the commerce of Angels and makes assayes of our immortality by a body now immortal Why are we so tied to our sense and glued to the earth Must we suffer our selves to enter into a kingdom of death when we are told of the resurrection of him who is the Authour of all lives 3. Admire the condescending and bounties of our Lord to his dear Disciples He that was entered into the kingdom of spirits and immortal conversation suffers his feet and hands to be touched to prove in him the reality of a true body He eats in presence of his Apostles though he was not in more estate to digest meat than the Sun is to digest vapours He did no more nourish himself with our corruptible meats than the Stars do by the vapours of the earth And yet he took them to confirm our belief and to make us familiar with him It is the act of great and generous spirits to abase themselves and condescend to their inferiours So David being anointed King and inspired as a Prophet doth not shew his person terrible in the height of his great glory but still retained the mildness of a shepheard So Jesus the true Son of David by his condescending to us hath consecrated a certain degree whereby we may ascend to Heaven Are not we ashamed that we have so little humility or respect to our inferiours but are always so full of our selves since our Lord sitting in his Throne of glory and majesty doth yet abase himself to the actions of our mortal life Let it be seen by our hands whether we be resuscitated by doing good works and giving liberal alms Let it appear by our feet that they follow the paths of the most holy persons Let it be seen by our nourishment which should be most of honey that is of that celestial sweetness which is extracted from prayer And if we seem to refuse fish let us at least remain in the element of piety as fish is in water Aspirations THy love is most tender and thy cares most generous O mild Saviour Amongst all the torrents of thy Passion thou hast not tasted the waters of forgetfulness Thou returnest to thy children as a Nightingale to her little nest Thou dost comfort them with thy visits and makest them familiar with thy glorious life Thou eatest of a honey-comb by just right having first tasted the bitter gall of that unmercifull Cross It is thus that our sorrows should be turned into sweets Thou must always be most welcome to me in my troubles for I know well that thou onely canst pacifie and give them remedy I will govern my self toward thee as to the fire too much near familiarity will burn us and the want of it will let us freeze I will eat honey with thee in the blessed Sacrament I know that many there do chew but few receive thee worthily Make me O Lord I beseech thee capable of those which here on earth shall be the true Antepasts to our future glory The Gospel upon Low-Sunday S. John the 20. THerefore when it was late that day the first of the Sabbaths and the doors were shut where the Disciples were gathered together for fear of the Jews Jesus came and stood in the midst and saith to them Peace be to you And when he had said this he shewed them his hands and side The Disciples therefore were glad when they saw our Lord. He said therefore to them again Peace be to you As my Father hath sent me I also do send you When he had said this he breathed upon them and he said to them Receive ye the Holy Ghost Whose sins you shall forgive they are forgiven them and whose you shall retain they are retained But Thomas one of the twelve who is called Didymus was not with them when Jesus came the other Disciples therefore said to him We have seen our Lord. But he said to them Unless I see in his hands the print of the nails and put my finger into the place of the nails and put my hand into his side I will not believe And after eight days again his Disciples were within and Thomas with them Jesus cometh the doors being shut and stood in the midst and said Peace be to you Then he saith to Thomas Put in thy finger hither and see my hands and bring hither thy hand and put it into my side and be not incredulous but faithfull Thomas answered and said to him My Lord and my God Jesus saith to him Because thou hast seen me Thomas thou hast believed Blessed are they that have not seen and have believed Moralities 1. JEsus the Father of all blessed harmonies after so many combats makes a general peace in all nature He pacifieth Limbo taking the holy Fathers out of darkness to enjoy an eternal light and sending the damned to the bottom of hell He pacifieth the earth making it from thenceforth to breathe the air of his mercies He pacifieth his Apostles by delivering them from that profound sadness which they conceived by the imaginary loss of their dear Master
any further discourse So S. Bonaventure in S. Bon. l. de Purit Conf. the Treatise he composed of the Purity of Confession saith The Amity of virtuous women is more to be feared and the testimonies of mutuall affections which one sex rendereth to another are infinitely able to enkindle love One who is not extremely exorbitant beginneth not the practice of vice on the top iniquity hath its apprentiships none comes in an instant to the utmost of impudency Above all heed must be had of the beginnings before vice take much predominance to our prejudice Have you observed what a stone doth thrown into a S. Basil de Virginitate pond it maketh at first a small circle which causeth another and the other a third the third out of that produceth a fourth and they are still infinitely upon A notable comparison of S. Basil Subtilties of the passion of love encrease so much that the water onely curled with a little pebble makes a long chain of circles which fill up the totall superficies This happeneth in love it falls into our heart not perceived nor foreseen and in the beginning causeth some slight touch which according as it is entertained distends it self and is in such sort multiplied that it replenisheth the whole capacity of our soul with arrows and chain-links which we cannot but with much labour dissolve and unloose A spirit which before rested in a generous liberty becomes captive This imperious visage perpetually knocks at the gate of his heart It enters into game study repose repast sleep and action It insinuateth it self into prayer with distractions pleasingly troublesome it busieth the thoughts it exerciseth the discourse it enflameth the desire to go to visit to speak it replenisheth the memory with what is past the imagination with the future and the present with disturbance A soul finds it is not well that it dissolves that it consumes by the senses and hath already dried up all its smiling beauties and weakned that vigour which is in devotion It notwithstanding flattereth it self with the colour of innocency it feigneth to it self that this is an act of charity that it is a duty of civility that it is an act of the soul that burns not but for virtue but the mischief is this soul is not an intelligence separated from matter and that in the guest thereof we passe by the veil of body which becometh a snare to chastity How many Bulls have we seen feeding in a pasture 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 strong and sound who having heedlesly swallowed a little worm called by the Grecians The fire of Aelian de animal l. 6. cap. 35. Love compared to the fire of Oxen. Oxen become meagre and faint retaining nothing at all of their bodies but bones and figure And how many great spirits have we beheld which were in excellent state and in full vigour of the functions of intellectuall life who by approching over-near to this sex have entred into affections of fire and flames which like little creeping serpents have stoln into their hearts and destâ—oyed virtue I will not soil the purity of my Pen with the exorbitancies which both ancient and modern histories have observed upon this subject I passe over it as bees over hemlock without any stay it seeming unto me that many Authours had done better to have covered the stains of their mother then to have divulged them to maligne spirits who make use of poison and readily impute the disorders of particular to the generall body The opinion of Fathers concerning the Amity of women All I have said hereupon hath been to suit my self to the sense of Scripture and holy Fathers who so notably have condemned the over-much familiar conversation with women and if they seem sometimes to speak of it with too much rigour it is for that in great crimes the evil might be diverted by exaggeration of the peril to the end that since the fire is to be feared the very smoke might be avoided It is not to be wondered at what the Wise-man said Prov. 6. 27. That the too free familiarity with women was a firebrand in the bosome That S. Ephraim thought it was as easie to live among burning-coals as to converse with this sex and not to wound the soul That S. Bernard Bern. ser 64 in Cant. wrote that to be alwayes among women without hurt was to do more then to raise the dead That S. Cyp. de singular Cler. S. Hâ—ron ad Nepotian Cyprian imagined it was to erect a precipice to be addicted to such society That S. Jerome advised that we should either equally love them all or equally not know them We see many shipwracked fools standing on promontory Shipwracks happened by â—he love of women tops who tell us of the ruines which these passions haue caused Simon Magus was undone by a Hellen being more bewitched by her love then he enchanted others by his sorcery Appelles was corrupted Ex monoeis by Philumene Montanus by Prisca and Maximilla Donatus by Lucilia Elpidius by Agape Women have ended among all these what Magick and Heresie had but begun O good God! what man would not be astonished at the Roman Macarius who having overcome love in the world was surprised in the wildernesse by finding a womans shoe To conclude Heaven is most happy said Tertullian very wittily In coelo non Angelus Angela Tertul. adversus Val. because though it hath Angels it hath not Angelicals though it hath a God it hath no Goddesses and it might be feared if there were diversity of Sex there it would alter something of its tranquility So many great men who were much accomplished in sanctity have thought of women upon the brink of the grave and have found we must ever fear that we may never fall Besides I leave you to think with what conscience a spruce youth who hath a body full of bloud and a spirit replenished with flames can say He will love God in his works and that he findeth not any one better then a handsome woman He knoweth how to manage his love he will take in no more fire then he list and this fire shall not burn but at his discretion This beauty shall serve to raie him towards God he will passe from the creature to the Creatour without any difficulty It is a ladder of gold which God hath set for him to climb up into heaven by But it is to be doubted lest it prove Archimedes his engine whereon the higher they mounted the lower they descended Such an one by this way thinks to touch heaven with a finger who already hath a foot in hell But since I write this Treatise for Courtiers and for the well-ordering of divine and humane love I neither That there may be spirituall Amities between persons of different Sexes endowed with great virtue and rare prudence Nec inferorum reguum in terra Sap. 1. must nor will by
scatter in the air to serve as instruments and hands to their attractions This being common to other natures of plants metals and living creatures we must not think but that the body of man participateth therein by reason of its vivacity and the multitude of pores which give a more easie passage to such emissions There then cometh forth a spirituous substance which is according to Marsilius Ficinus a vapour of bloud pure subtil hot and clear more strong or weak according to the interiour agitation of spirits which carrieth along with it some quality of a temperate friendly and convenient which Marsilius Ficinus l. 1. de vita c. 2. insinuating it self into the heart and soul doth if it there find a disposition of conformity abide as a seed cast into the earth or as a Leaven which swelleth up a piece of dough and forms this love of correspondence with an admirable promptnesse and vigour From thence it cometh that brothers many times feel motions and affections of tendernesse one for another Surius without knowing each other as it happened to S. Justus who knew his brother Justinian among sundry slaves who were at the chain by this notice without any other fore-judgement Thence it comes that at first we are passionate for persons we never saw and that we wish them well though they alwayes have not so much grace nor beauty but there is some relation of humour which weaveth the web and tieth such affections All nature is full of such communications which are effects of Sympathy observed in the Corall which sensibly changeth according to his disposition who hath it about him as also in the flesh of beasts which boileth in the powdring-tub at the time of the fury of dogs because they have been bitten by a mad dog And in wine which seems to be sprinkled all over with certain white flowers when the vines are in blossome So it happeneth that the spirits which do in our bodies Modification of the opinion who place love onely in transpiration Species forma semel per oâ—ulos illigaâ—a vix magni luctaminis manu solviter Hieron in Threnos cap. 3. what the winds do in Nature being transpired from one body to another and carrying in their wings qualities consonant do infallibly excite and awaken the inclinations But it is not credible or at least ordinary that this manner of working should be as in things inanimate and that it hath nothing to do with the senses for it is principally the eyes which are interressed therein breathing thence the most thin spirits and darting forth the visuall rayes as the arrows of love which penetrate the heart are united confounded and lost one within another then heating the bloud they strike the Imagination and attract wills which are so linked one to another that one cannot perceive the knot which so fast tied them together If transpiration alone of spirit indifferently proceeding from all the parts of the body were able to enflame concupiscence we must then say that a blind man set at a certain distance from a perfect beauty would become enamoured with beholding it hearing it smelling it couching it or by any sense understanding it which notwithstanding happeneth not in that manner and if nature thus proceeded and that this passion were to be taken as a Contagion we might extreamly fear the approch of bodies and persist in continuall apprehensions to be infected by them It is certain that the senses being well guarded shut up all the gates against love A Guard over the senses since the Imagination it self stirreth not but upon their report but after they yield themselves up by a too familiar conversation and resign their defences a terrible havock is made in the mind for love entereth thereunto as a Conquerour into a surprized City and imprinteth that pleasing face in every drop of the masse of bloud It engraveth it on the Imagination It figureth it on every thought and there is nothing any longer entire in the mind which is not divided between slavery and frenzy § 7. The effects of Sensuall Love IT is a strange thing that this fury hath a thousand hands and a thousand attractives a thousand wayes of working quite different and many times opposite It takes by the eyes by the ears by the imagination by chance of purpose by flying pressing forward honouring insulting by complacence and by disdain Sometimes also it layes hold by tears by laughing by modesty by audacity by confidence by carelessenesse by wiles by simplicity by speech and by silence Sometimes it assaileth in company sometimes in solitude at windows at grates in Theatres and in Cabinets at Bals at sports in a feast at a Comedy sometimes at Church at prayers in acts of Penance And who can assure us against it without the protection of God Eustatius the Interpreter of Homer saith there are some who feign Love to be the sonne of the wind and the Rainbow in Heaven in my opinion to signifie unto us its Inconstancy and diversified colours and this beautifull Iris in the beginning appears all in Rubies in Diamonds and Emeralds over our heads afterward to cause rain and tempests So love shewing it self at first with such bright semblances to our senses occasioneth storms and corruption in our minds Observe one transfixed with violent love and you The miserable state of one passionately in love Insomnia aetumnae terror fuga stultitià que adeò temerâ—tas in cogitantia excors immodestia c. Plautus in Moâ—cat shall find he hath all that in his love which Divines have placed in Hell darkenesse Flames the worm of Conscience an ill Savour Banishment from the sight of God You shall see a man whose mind is bewitched brain dislocated and Reason eclipsed All he beholdeth all he meditateth on all he speaketh all he dreameth is the creature he loveth He hath her in his head and heart painted graved carved in all the most pleasing forms For her he sometimes entereth into quakings sometimes into faintings another while into fits of fire and Ice He flieth in the air and instantly is â—â—enged in the Abysse He attendeth he espieth He fears He hopes he despairs He groneth he sigheth He blusheth he waxeth pale He doteth in the best company He talks to woods and fountains He writeth He blots out He teareth He lives like a spectre estranged from the conversation of men Repast is irksome to him and Repose which charmeth all the cares of the world is not made for him Still this fair one still this cruell one tormenteth him and God maketh him a whip of the thing he most loveth Yet is this more strange in the other sex which hath naturally more inclimation to honesty A Lady chaste or a Virgin well-bred who begins to wax cold in the love of God and in the exercise of devotion and takes too much liberty in her conversation with men finds her self insensibly surprized by the eyes and ears by
the heart by the Garb the Humour the smiles the speech the silence the courage the discretion of a man layes a plot with her passion to betray her reason The poison of love by little and little spreads it self throughout all the veins the presence of the object begins to cause blushing palenesse unquietnesse disturbance of the mind so that she cannot tell what she desireth nor what she would have Absence awakeneth the Imagination which makes an Eccho of all the discourses of all the actions that past in presence This man is presented unto her in a thousand shapes there is not a lineament a word a gesture but is expressed The understanding quickly creates to it self too many ill lights the will too much fire and the soul wholly propendeth to the thing beloved Yet the fire of God awakeneth her and suffers her to have good respites which makes her ashamed to tell her own thoughts to her proper heart Conscience and Honour make some resistance and glimmering flashes and if there be found some good directour who may help them in this first battell they many times get the victory But if a soul be deprived of good counsel abandoned to it self and which is worse soothed in its malady by some soft and complying spirit it is an unhappinesse which cannot sufficiently be deplored Reason is weakned shamefac'tnesse flies away passion prevaileth there is nothing left but wandering of the soul a feaver a perpetuall Frenzy a neglect of works of affairs of functions sadnesse languour Impatience Confidence and affrightment Shall she say so shall she do so God forbids it the law menaceth it and honour cries vengeance The pleasure of a dream and beyond it nothing but Abysses Love notwithstanding urgeth and strikes at all considerations they impute to starres to destiny to Necessity what is nothing but folly They think businesse is done when it is but thought on that they must be audacious and that there are crimes which are sanctified in the worlds opinion by the good hap of their succestes They come Prosperum ac foelix seclus viâ—tus vocatur Senec. Diversities of Love to that passe that they no longer sinne by method but through exorbitancy In some Love is sharp and violent in others dull and impetuous in others toyish and wanton in others turbulent and cloudy in others brutish and unnaturall in others mute and shamefac't in others perplexed and captious in others light and tradsitory in others fast and retentive in others fantastick and inconstant in others weak and foppish in others stupid astonished in others distempted in some furious and desperate It enflameth the bloud it weakens the body it wanneth Moechia affinis Idololatriae Tertul. de pudicitia the colour it halloweth the eyes it overthrows the mind it hath somewhat of being possessed and witchcraft something of Idolatry For you behold in those who are entred farre into this passion flouds and Ebbs of thoughts Fits and Countenances of one possessed and it is in all of them to deifie the creature of whom they are so passionately enamoured and would willingly set it in the place where the Sun and starres are yea upon Altars All which proceeds from it is sacred chains and wounds are honourable with them if they come from this beloved-hand They would die a hundred times for it so it throw but so much as a handfull of flowers or distill but a poor tear on their Tombe It is to deceive to say that love excludeth all other passions it awakeneth them and garboileth them and makes them all wait on it it causeth Aversion Hatred Jealousie envie hope sadnesse despair anger mirth tears scorn grief songs and sighs and as it is thought that evil spirits shuffle in storms to stirre up lightning flasks and make the thunder-stroke the more terrible and pernicious So is it likewise true that the Evil Angels intermeddle in the great tempests of love angell of darknesse involveth himself in these great tempests of love many times making use of the abominable minestery of Magicians and acteth Treasons furies fierings poysonings murders and ransackings And how should it spare its enemie since it Cruelty of love on the persons of lovers is cruell to it self It maketh some to sink in the twinkling of an eye drinking their bloud and insensibly devouring their members It confineth others into regions of Hobgoblins and darknesse It kils and murdereth those who have the most constantly served it It sharpned the sword which transfixed Amnon It shaved and blinded Samson It gave a Halter to Phyllis A downfoll to Timagoras A gulph to Caleazo and caused Hemon to kill himself on the tomb of Antigone Volumes would not be sufficient for him who should write all the Tragedies which daily arise from this passion all pens would be weak words be dryed up and wits lost therein § 8. Remedies of evil Love by precaution I Leave you now dear Reader to argue within your self whether one who hath never so little humane judgement for his comportment and quiet ought not to bend all his endeavours to banish the fury which plungeth his whole life in so great acerbities and such horrible Distrust ofones self recourse to God calamities But if you desire to know the way the first thing I advise you while you are yet in perfect health is seriously to consider that one cannot be chaste but by a most singular gift from God as the wise-man saith and therefore it is necessary to have a particular recourse to the most blessed Trinity which according to S. Gregory Nazianxen is the first of virgins humbly beseeching it by the intercession of the most pure among creatures and by the mediation of your Angel-guardian to deliver you from the reproches of the spirit of impurity in such sort that you may passe Love is sometimes the punishment of pride Climachus de castitate your life innocently and it may become inaccessible to the pollutions of flesh If you feel your self free from this vice yet enter not into any vain complacence of your self as if it proceeded from your own forces and not from heavens benignity Above all take heed of pride for the most illuminated Fathers have observed that God oft-times permitteth arrogant spirits to fall into carnall sinnes to abate the fiercenesse of their courage by the sensible ignominy of the stains of luxury and this is so proper to quail the exorbitance of humane arrogance that God had not a better Counterpoise to make S. Paul humble in such heighth of revelations then the sting of the flesh Pardon not your Et ne magnitudo revelationis extollat me datus est mihi stimulus earnis meae Angeâ—us Satanae qui me colaphizet Cor. 2. 12. self any thing no not so much as the shadow of this sin but onely excuse such as fall through some notable surprisall or pitifull frailty Think if you have not experienced the like falls you are beholding to
Ecclesiam Ephes 5. 25. To seek by lawfull wayes ones petty accommodations is not a thing of it self to be alwayes condemned Servus vocarus â—es non fit tibi curae sed â— potes fieri liber magis utere 1 Cor. 7. 21. onely by the first Motives of Nature but also out of Election and Reason all that which is hurtful to the body and health No man saith the Apostle hateth his own flesh but cherisheth and entertaineth it as long as he can therein imitating the tendernesse of affection which Jesus Christ hath for his Church I adde that it is not also my intention to perswade that one should not seek in the care of his life things the most commodious so much as Justice and Reason will permit We must bear with servitude saith this fore-alledged Oracle if we be engaged in this condition but if one can become free I advise him rather to make choice of liberty Yet we are not ignorant but that there are many good men who by the power of virtue afflict their bodies and preferre contempt above all which the world esteemeth that they may conform themselves to the suffering of our Saviour But to rest within the limits of * * * One must take heed of being 〈◊〉 curious Civii life I say that although we may innocently use the blessings of God and put nature to its small pittances yet we must take heed of becoming too suspicious too nice and too apprehensive of those things which are not according to our appetites for otherwise there happen great disturbances and irksome confusions of mind which thrust the health of our soul into uncertainty First when a spirit is too much tied to its skin and It is a hard thing not to feel some incommodities life being so full of them too much bent to flie all the contrarieties of nature it is very beggarly and suppliant towards its body which is not done without much care For life being replenished with great and little incommodities from which Kings themselves cannot be wholly exempt If one apprehend them too much he must live like a man who would perpetually shut his eyes for fear of flies and imploy almost all his time which is so precious in the service of the flesh God himself permitteth it also Timor quem timebam evenit mihi quod verebar accidit Job 3. 25. Secondly God for punishment of this nicenesse will suffer that all we most fear shall happen to us a man many times falleth into mischiefs even by fearing them Death seems to be onely for cowards and when one seeks for liberty by unworthy wayes then he is involved in rhe greatest servitude Thirdly one is in danger to fall into much discouragement One puts himself upon the hazard to live alwayes in insupportable anxiety Debitores sumus non carâ—i ut socundum carnem viâ— vamus Rom. 8. Hier. in ep ad Aglas Non est de ficata in Deum secura confessio quotiâ— die eredent in Christum tollit Crucem suam negat scipsum Bern. ser 85. in Cant. Fuge ad illum qui adversatur per quem talis fias cui jam non adversetur and into sad despair when he sees himself slipped into matters troublesome and very vexing since he sought to avoid the lightest For which cause the Sages counsel us willingly to accustome our selves a little to evill and of our own accord to harden our selves to the end that when it shall come necessity may make that more supportable which we have already assayed by prudence We ow nothing to flesh to live according to flesh saith S. Paul and S. Hierome in the Epistle he wrote to Aglasius clearly giveth him to understand That the Profession of Christianity is not a Profession nice and lazy a true Christian every day beareth the Crosse and renounceth himself S. Bernard said as much in one of his Sermons upon the Canticles Fly saith he to your beloved persecutour that you may find the end of your persecutions in the accomplishment of his will It is a determination from heaven that we should see before our eyes so many great religious men and women most austere whom the divine Providence seems to propose unto us to extend and glorifie the Crosse of Jesus Christ and shew that all is possible to the love of God § 3. The Consideration of the indulgent favours of Jesus Christ towards Humane Nature is a powerfull remedy against the Humour of Disdain IF we be not yet throughly perswaded by these reasons The example of our Saviour serves for another strong remedy to sweeten our Aversions the example of our Saviour ought to make us ashamed For when we more nearly consider his life we find that he onely did not shew an Aversion from things despicable but chose the most abject and contrary to Nature I ask of you what attractive was there in humane nature to draw him from the highest parts of the heavens to its love What saw he in it but a brutish body a soul in the most inferiour order of Intelligencies all covered over with crimes wholly drenched in remedilesse miseries and yet laying aside those beautiful Angels who did shine as Aromatick lamps in his eternall Temple he came upon earth to seek for this lost creature prodigall of his substance a foe to his honour injurious to his glory and not content to reconcile it to Eras â—â—da confusione plena transivi perte vidi â—â— expandi amictum meum super te opeâ—uâ— Ignominram tuam Ezech. 16. Displicentes amati snmus ut fieret in nobis unde placeremus Concil Arausican Nee pereuntem perire patitur nec abaverso avertirur sed fugientem paternâ charitate insequitur revocat blanditur reâ—erso no◠〈…〉 ignoscit sed regnâ—â— promâ—â—it Fraâ—â—â— Abbâ—â— l. 5. de gratia The humours of the world are quite contrary to the designs of God Displicet avaris quòd non corpus aureum habuit displicet impudicis quia ex virgine natus est displicet superbis quòd contumelias â—apienter pertulit displicet delicatis quòd â—ruâ—iatus est displicet timidis quòd mortuus est ut non vitia sua videantur defendere unum in hoc dicunt sibi hoc displicere sed in filio Dei August de agone Christiano his father he espoused it and united it to himself with a band indissoluble putting it into the possession of all his greatnesse to surcharge himself with its miseries This is it which is so notably described by the Prophet Ezechiel when he sets before our eyes a miserable ungracious wretch cast forth upon the face of the earth wallowing in ordures abandoned to all sorts of injuries and scorns whom the Prince of glory looketh on with his eyes of mercy taketh him washeth clotheth adorneth and tyeth him to himself by the band of marriage We naturally have so much Aversion from persons misshapen nasty and infected
give a sergeant leave to bring him a summons in the midst of the pleasures of his Table The two most triumphant daies of his mortall life seem to be that of his Transfiguration and that whereon he made his magnificent entrance into Jerusalem And yet on this he wept as moistning his triumph with tears from his eyes and on rhe other Moses and Elias who appeared by his sides to serve as Oratours in his praises spake of that he was to fulfill in Jerusalem to wit of his excessive sufferings as if one had proclaimed to Cesar the sentence of his death at the instant when he entred into his Ivory chariot to be drawn by four white horses Jesus Christ was at that time in a body all resplendent with lights which was as a chariot to his soul and he would to be enterteined with his passion mingle the Cypresse with the lawrell I do not wonder the Fathers have applyed to him the passage of Genesis I will put my Bowe in the clouds This verily was the Rainbowe of the Celestiall Father Arcum meum ponaâ—â— in nubibes Gen. 9. which shone and showred both at one time For we see this goodly Meteor all composed of clouds of glory which serve as a Mirrour for the sun ceaseth not to pour down it self in rain upon our heads so the Saviour of the world in the pavillion of the Beatitude of his soul all covered over with fires and lights had eyes weeping over the sins and miseries of men Where think you were his joyes S. Augustine will tell you the soul of Jesus Christ was perpetually content because Aug. l. de Incarnatio ne Verbi it was drenched in God his father as a drop of dew in the Ocean It was ever in the place of pleasures which were born with it All it thought all it did all it aimed at was nothing but God and from this so perfect union waited on by immortall ardours of his love it derived its Immutability The soul besides these delicious Torrents of beatifick vision which overflowed it drew its consolations from the very sufferings it endured for the glory of the Divine Majesty It drew them from the destruction of Idols and from the confusion of devils which yelled being now despoiled under its feet from the exaltation of the Church in sufferings and persecutions from the glory of so many souls who sailed from the red sea of their bloud to eternall rewards from so many holy Virgins who were to follow the standard of the purity which his Mother did first of all place on his Altars from so many Doctours who should be born to beat down heresie in so many battels which were to be waged throughout the revolution of Ages from so many Confessours who should bedew themselves with tears of penance and burn themselves in a Holocaust of sweetnesse All was presented unto it as in a burning-glasse the rayes whereof reflected in diametre upon its heart to set it all on fire in such sort that it was then like to the great Angell of whom the Prophet Zachary Zach. 1. 8. speaketh who sat upon a red horse among gardens of Myrrhe which are the Hieroglyphes of love his red horse was the ardour of his celestiall affection and the branches of Myrrhe so many elect souls which were even then in the Book of Prescience wherein he took unspeakable delight § 5. Against the Stupidity and Cruelty of worldly pleasures ANd now O disloyall soul to be called to the society of the joyes of the celestiall Father and of the sonne of God and to despise them for a miserable fansie of pleasure Ah illusion Ah witchcraft What sense is there to feast perpetually and to live in the profuse excesse of Taste and gourmandize which you shall one day have more cause to curse then cherish whilst so many poor Widows so many little Orphans and people heretofore fortunate now necessitous even to the extremity of penury have not dry bread to moisten it with their tears before they eat it When have you enquired after their Calamities When have you opened an eye to behold them When have you so much as made a ray of mercy to reflect on so pressing and deplorable miseries Go O thou ungratefull to God traitour to thy own salvation enemy Ingrate Deo tibi ne quam hostis panperum divitum nota carcer naturae Chrysol serm 104. of the poore scorn of the rich and prison of humane Nature who keepest it shut up in thy bowels of brasse not suffering it so much as to behold its like What wilt thou answer to the voice of the bloud of so many poor who will plead against thee at the day of judgement if thou from this time resolvest not to cut off thy superfluities to comfort their afflictions where wilt thou find any to receive thee into those celestiall mansions if thou dost not visit the poor in their Hospitals and Cabbins abandoned by all the world Where wilt thou find rewards from heaven if thou sowest not liberalities on earth O thou nice wanton who wiltst perpetually be observed according to the giddy fancies of the exorbitant spirit and the many sufferings which have covered and swallowed up the third part of man-kind never to enter into thy thoughts Of what flesh of what bloud of what bones dost thou think thou art made to desire here to be served like a demy-God and to walk on the heads of men Ignorant of thy self nay Hangman of thy self who canst not live without so much prodigality superfluities and services not knowing that the first imitation of God is to depend little in the world on ought which concerneth the service of the body O thou old raven of the Deluge who still art tied with a long chain of servitude to a wretched piece of Carrion which hath exhausted the wealth of thy purse and brain Is it then infamous pleasure for which thou hast renounced the delights of heaven for which thou hast betrayed thy salvation and trampled under foot the bloud of the Testament and thou not yet so vouchsafe to open thy eyes to see the headlong ruine which threatneth thee Unhappy Bacchanalians who make Temples to be consecrated among Christians to Idolatrize you where will you find any place to lodge you in unlesse you mean to leap and skip upon the bloud of the lamb Hence with riot curiosity sports feasts and dissolute delights I pronounce it I publish it aloud They are the Apostacies of Christianity if you daily go about to countenance their libertismes Traiterous pleasures pleasures enemies of the Crosse Num. 11. 34 see see at the door of the house of these Syrens the sepulchres of Concupiscence which stink and smoke still with the disastrous carrions of those unsatiable bellies which made warre against heaven to have dainties which they no sooner received into their throats but the anger of God fell on their criminall heads and do you think that following
would be pleased to divert such a thought from thee lest thou become culpable of the anger of God which will fall on the whole Army if thou goest to this stranger It importeth not I will go Son if thou resolvest to sin then stay till night make a veil of darknesse further to cover thy wickednesse from the eyes of the world for fear lest thy example may serve for a rock of scandall to those who are yet novices in virtue Yet thou perversly sayest I will go in full day light I will enjoy my pleasures and who art thou that givest me a law Go Zimri Go impudent man thou in thy calamitie shalt know the salarie of thy sin You know the rest of the History he goes thither he accosteth the Madianite in sight of all the world At which time God raiseth a young Prince as courageous as a Lion grand-child of Aaron who followeth him armed with zeal and sword crying out aloud Ah Traytor Ah infamous man He finds him out in the throne of Lust in the bed of iniquitie in the heat of Crime and with his sword transfixeth him and the Madianite making the abominable Bed and their unchaste loves to float all in bloud O bloud horribly but justly shed which still cryeth out with a voyce of bloud and saith to all posteritie Men women children great little poor rich flie from Impudency flie from Impudency as the last of vices otherwise know there is a revenging sword and a Judgement of God inevitable to all the Shamelessnesse of Sinners The twelfth Treatise Of ANGER § 1. The origine of Anger its Nature Causes and Diversities FIre which is a Mean between Spirits and Bodies doth work very diversly according The marveilous effects of fire to the matter and disposition it meets withall In the heavens it enkindleth the stars with flames the most pure in totall Nature it diversifieth clouds with Gold and Rubies it maketh Bowes and Coronets in the air it enterteineth a heat of life in the bodie of living Creatures which being maintained in a good temperature cause all the harmonies of health but when it mounteth up into a tempestuous cloud when it boyleth in Fornaces and creeps into Canons which are as mouths of fire to pronounce war it maketh so strange devastations that it vanquisheth the most valiant beats down the most boysterous mollifieth the hardest and terrifieth the most daring In the same manner we may say heat which in our bodies is an admirable work-Mistresse multiplyeth its effects according to the diversitie of the stuffs and occasions it lights on it conspireth with our spirits to serve as an instrument for the soul in its great operations it exciteth the honourable flames of chaste loves it disposeth courage to generous resolutions it polisheth the mind to embrace worthy purposes It secondeth the Imagination in its apprehensions It makes it self the steward of the vegetatiue faculties for the generation and production of men But if it once meet with burnt blood and fuming Choler which is as it were in the hands of the imagination when it is touched with some displeasure it insinuateth it self thereinto as into a cloud swoln with storms and tempests which throws forth fires roareth with thunders shooteth with inflamed darts and practiseth nought but ruine This is it we call Anger which is properly an ardent What Anger is appetite of reuenge caused by an apprehension of contempt and injuries Now this opinion of Contempt springeth in some from disesteem or for that they are forgotten and neglected by those of whom they think they ought to be respected In others from being crossed in what they desire most as in their profession their ambition and especially their affections In others from being depressed in that wherin they imagine they excell and principally before such by whom they perswade themselves they are beloved and honoured In others from being derided for defects of nature aswel of body as of mind and extraction also In others from being injuriously disgraced and insolently outraged by base and abject people and such as they have obliged As the opinion of injury increaseth and as it meeteth with a nature disposed and matter prepared this ardour is inflamed and if it be accompanied with a great power it teareth down smoaking cities it desolateth Provinces it swims in massacres it raiseth scaffolds all sprinkled over with bloud and hung with black whereon it acteth horrible Tragedies The other passions are augmented by degrees but Dum incipit tota est Sen. de Ira. How Anger is formed this ariseth fully formed and appears perfect so soon as it beginneth The opinion of contempt no sooner entreth in by the eyes and eares but it striketh the imagination which promptly communicateth its influence to the irascible appetite and then as if fire were given to a Canon it becomes Thunder and Tempest which disfigureth the bravest bodies turmoileth the bloud and spirits and bendeth all the veins to vengeance You would say the heart is not at that time any other then Vulcans Forge where the thoughts like so many Cyclopes labour to make Hail-showrs Lightenings and Tempests It is not known in this countrey what kind of language Reason speaketh It is no better heard then words among the Catadupes of Nilus strength hath a hand lifted up to employ the sword and a thousand instruments of iniquity to commit outrages This passion resembleth the furious Martichora renowned among Indian wild beasts who teareth his members asunder to make of them the arrows of his vengeance It hath nothing so resolved on as to destroy all and to raise unto it self a Tombe in its own ruines Yet we cannot but say that there are Divers qualities of anger three very different sorts of Anger according to the offences and persons who either raise it or suffer it In some it is cold in apparence and more inward but these oftentimes have the aspect of Virgins who in conclusion throw forth the fire of dragons In others it is fervent and headlong In others haughty and scornfull In others dumb and malicious In others obstreperous and stormy In some it is frequent and sudden in others sticking and obstinate There are some who being offended for frivolous things cease not to persevere therein for fear some may think they began without reason in which the lesse the cause is the more passionate they become Others blame their greatest friends for having done them lesse good then they expected In some Anger is but yet in bloom in others it taketh great and deep root Some satisfie themselves with clamour and injuries others therein employ the hand others wood and Iron others would have lightening in their power for some time of purpose to prosecute their revenge with all advantage Lastly this passion thrusts forth Vir iracundus effodit peccata Caffiao de spirits irae c. 1. all that is hidden in the heart Which made Cassian according to the Septuagint to write that
Univers When he undertook any businesse of importance he fasted and prayed extraordinarily and caused it to be recommended to the devotions of the good servants of God and when he had a good issue of it his thanksgivings were seen in all places on all occasions He neglected nothing and when men thought him overwhelm'd with the greatest businesses of war they were astonish'd that amidst them he took his time for some petty Ordinance of Policy He lov'd Learning especially Divinity and Law This was it that made him conceive a magnificent design to leave monuments of it to posterity that should last longer then the Temples and the Pyramids of Egypt And for this purpose being a man very judicious he made choyce of the mostable men in the whole Empire to collect all the laws of the Emperours his predecessours which he augmented and enriched with his own so that this book was called Justinians Code Afterward he gave a charge to Tribonian who was accomplish'd in that profession to compile all the Resolves of the antient Lawyers which he did with a most exact diligence and at length compos'd those famous Pandects or Digests divided into fifty Books He caus'd also the Institutions which contein the Principles of Law and are as it were the elements of that excellent doctrine to be added to them And for what concerns Divinity he published a certain work of the Incarnation and abundance of Ordinances for the government of Ecclesiasticall persons wherein Baronius finds fault that he entred sometimes a little too far into the Sanctuary He was not much advanced in the years of his reign when an horrible conspiracy was raised against him which was on the point to ruine all his affairs and although I have already touch'd it in my first volumn in the History of Eulogius yet I will decipher here more particularly the reasons and the remedies of it Many have attributed the totall cause of it to the new Subsidies that the Emperour imposed upon the people to maintein the war that he had already enterprised but there was yet more poyson and which sprang from an higher source which was that the house of the Emperour Anastasius which had preceded Justine the Unkle of our Justinian and which cherished alwayes the most violent passion to continue themselves in that Empire was not quite extinct but had two principall Chieftains Pompey and Hypatius who thought they had heads well enough made to wear a Diademe These men when they saw that the affairs of State were disposed to a commotion and that the Malignant Vapours were gathered together on all sides to make up clouds did as the Sorcerers do who mix the work of the Devil to assist the effects of nature They knew that the Emperour began to be ill-belov'd both for the imposts and for the rigid and inflexible severity that he used in the government of his Empire which seemed insupportable to the spirits of so many Libertines who would live according to their own discretion in the permission of all crimes They fail'd not to lay hold on this opportunity and underhand to sowe in the spirits of men the seeds of Division There was then in Constantinople two popular factions of men belonging to the Theatre which were called the Green and the Blew by reason of the Liveries by which they were distinguished State-Policy suffer'd them and chose rather to foment the one against the other then to extinguish them But the conspiratours for that time united them by artifices and by money to bandy them against Justinian The Chieftains ceas'd not to scatter venemous speeches amongst the people and to say What are we then made to suffer eternally the Empire of these Cow-keepers the Unkle is dead and the Nephue hath succeeded him which is a Crow hatched of an evil Egg. Was it not enough that he learned in governing beasts to handle us as a Shepheard but he must become a Butcher and be pleas'd with nothing but with the fleaing and the massacring of his people What have we any more to hope for under him since he hath put us in a condition of fearing every thing Do we expect that the Empresse which is the worst of Furies should give him counsels of mildnesse for us or that Bellisarius which is the fatall instrument of his cruelty should deliver us out of his hands All our safety is in our selves all our good is in our resistance Shall we doubt to obey necessity which constrains us and the justice of our cause which is our guide We ought to set upon this goodly Emperour while his state is yet tottering and ill-settled without staying till he fortifie himself to our ruine We have amongst us the blood of the true Cesars Pompey and Hypatius the Protectours of the people and the most accomplish'd of all Princes it is those that we ought to reverence and that we ought to carry upon our shoulders to the Empire These words at length enflamed the sedition which began by a small handfull of Mutiners which a Provost of the City endeavoured to suppresse and apprehended three that were the ringleaders of the Rebellion but the people ran suddenly in an huddle and plucked them out of his hands by violence The Alarm was given to the Palace and the Emperour dispatch'd instantly some souldiers to quell the Mutiners but they were beaten back for the number of the seditious grew greater every moment as a Ball of snow that rouls from the top of a mountain Behold in a little time the whole City in arms with a rage so violent and a sight so hideous that it seemed that Hell had opened it self that day to vomit out all its Furies upon the earth The men ran to fire and sword the women with their hair about their ears and howling like so many Megera's made themselves arms of what ere they met with There was not any even to the children that did not seem to be little devils flying athwart the flames The Regiments of the Herules which the King a little before had converted to Christianity were at that time quartered in the City of Constantinople who failed not according to the Orders of the Emperour to oppose themselves against the fury of the people These having been barbarous souldiers without all compassion made at first a great massacre The incensed Citizens fall upon them on all parts to beat them out their courts of Guard are burned by the hands of the seditious and their companies much worsted some were run through with Partisans others knock'd on the head with Leavers the affrighted women from the tops of the houses make themselves parties in the quarrell and cease not to throw down boyling water and stones upon them These wild-Boars thus chaffed seeing the blood of their companions run in rivers through the streets rally all their forces and take Torches to fire the Churches and houses which they performed with so much violence that one might see in an instant
Life those of Rigour He desires Peace and it is denyed him and sues for an agreement and is slighted His arrogance being sorely pricked vomits out nothing but whirlwinds of fire and comes to fall before Croye the Capitall City of the Valiant Castriot with an Army of two hundred thousand men The other defends himself with six thousand One onely place bayes that great Deluge the Storm is scattered the Siege raised the shame of it remains on the face of the Sultan with so lively a Tincture that the Shadow of death must passe over it to blot it out He that had lived with Glory dyes with the sadnesse of his Ignominy and carries with him into the other World the unability to revenge himself and an eternall desire of vengeance Mahomet his sonne the Scourge and Terrour of the Universe that overthrew two Empires took two hundred Cities killed twenty Millions of Men comes to split against the same Rock Was there need of so much blood to write upon Castriot's Trophies the Title of Invincible Who would Imagine that a mortall man should have gone so farre who should believe that those exploits were the Actions of a slave Truly we must avow that he lent his Name to God in all this businesse and that God lent his Arm to him It is said of him that he never refused Battell never turned his back never was wounded but once very Lightly He slew two thousand Barbarians with his own hand which he cleft ordinarily with his Coutelax from the head down to the Girdle Mahomet desired to see that Thunder-bolt that he bore in his hands and had it in veneration although so many times bedewed with his Subjects blood He saw the Steel but he never saw the Arm that gave it Life O brave Castriot If the State of Christians could have been delivered from the Tyranny of the Sultans it should have been by thy hands We must now acknowledge that our wounds are irrecoverable seeing that our divisions hinder us from enjoying the succour of so Divine an hand The Feaver that took thee hence in the City of Lissa in the Climactericall of seven and nine the most to be feared by old men extinguished all our hopes by the same burnings that consumed thy Body After thou hadst lived the most Admirable of Captains thou dyedst like a truly Religious melting the hearts of all those that beheld thee by a most sensible Devotion Thy victorious spirit soared up to the Palace of the Beautifull Sion after it had performed in the Body all that was possible for a most eminent Virtue and an Happinesse to which nothing was wanting but imitatours The most barbarous thy Enemies have kissed thy Sepulchre have Reverenced thy Ashes and shared thy Bones as the dearest Reliques of Valour And now thou hast no more to do with a Tomb seeing that thy Memory hath found as many Monuments as there are Hearts in all ages BOUCICAUT BAYARD BOVCICAVD BAYARD WE need not search the Catalogue of Saints and Martyrs for a Souldier Furnished before God and men with great and Divine virtues Behold one among a thousand I mean the brave Marshal Boucicaut who flourished in France under Charles the Sixth Those petty Rodomonts who boast of their Duels but indeed meer cowardise varnished with a glossy colour of valour durst not behold this most excellent Cavalier without doing that which was antiently done to the Statues of the Sunne that is to put finger on the mouth and admire For not to mention his other acts of prowesse it is he who was present at that daring Battell which the Turkish Emperour Bajazet waged against the King of Hungary the Duke of Burgundy then called the Count of Nevers with many other of the French Gentry being there in person The History relateth that the Turkish Emperour coming to fight with dreadfull forces began so furious a charge the air being darkned with a black cloud of Arrows that the Hungarians who were alwayes reputed good Souldiers being much amazed with this fierce assault fled away The French who in all Battels had ever learned to conquer or dye not willing to hear so much as the least speech of the name of flight pierced into the Turkish army notwithstanding a field of Pikes and stakes fastned in the earth did hinder their approch and attended by some other Troops brake the Vangard of the Turks by the counsell and example of this brave Marshall whereat Bajazet much amazed was about to retire but that at the same time it was told him that it was but a very little handfull of Frenchmen that made the greatest resistance and that it was best for him to assault them The Turk who kept his Battalions very fresh returneth and fell like lightning upon these poor Souldiers now extreamly wearied Never did an angry Lyon exercise more violent force against the Hunters Javelins then this generous Cavalier shewed prowesse which shined in the midst of the adventurous Pagans For seeing himself at last negligently betraied he having no other purpose but to sell his own life and those of his companions at as dear a rate as he could he with the French Cavalry and some other people that stuck to him did such feats of Arms that it was thought twenty thousand Turks were slain in the place At last this prodigious multitude able to tire out the most hardy although it had been but to cut them in pieces did so nearly encompasse our French that the Count of Nevers with Marshall Boucicaut and other the most worthy Personages were taken Prisoners The next day after this dismall Battell the proud Bajazet sitting under a Pavillion spread for him in the field caused the prisoners to be brought before him to drench himself in blood and revenge which he alwayes most passionately loved Never was seen a spectacle more worthy of Compassion A sad spectacle The poor Lords who had wrought wonders in Arms able to move Tygers were led to the slaughter half naked straight bound with cords and fetters no regard being had either to their bloud which was noble or youth which was pitifull or their behaviour which was most ravishing These Saracens ugly and horrible as Devils set them before the face of the Tyrant who in the twinkling of an eye caused their throats to be cut at his feet as if he meant to carouse their bloud The Count of Nevers with the Count of Ewe and the Count of Marche had now their heads under the Symiter and their lives hung as it were by a thread when Bajazet who had heard by his interpreters that they were near Kinsmen to the King of France caused them to be reserved commanding them to sit at his feet on the ground where they were enforced to behold the lamentable butchery of their Nobility The valiant Boucicaut covered with a little linnen cloth in his turn was brought forth to be massacred over the bodies of so many valiant men He being wise and in this
instruments of the Justice that he exercised upon the sins of his people King Nebuchadonozor that reigned in that Monarchy six hundred years before the Nativity of our Lord fell upon Palestine with a mighty Army took and pillaged the city of Jerusalem carried away King Jehojakim with the richest vessels of the Temple and abundance of prisoners of the most noted men amongst which was Daniel accompanied with other young children of a good parentage The King gave charge to Ashpenaz chief Gentleman of his Chamber to chuse him Pages of Royall extraction well made without any blemish or disgrace as well of mind as body that should be versed in arts befitting the Nobility well learn'd in exercises docile and well-governed and that he should teach them the Chaldean Tongue which was the Language of the Kingdome that they might wait upon him in his Chamber Ashpenaz having proceeded in the businesse with much consideration resolved to take Daniel and his three companions Ananias Azarias and Misael From hence one may collect that this young child was endowed with most excellent qualities for the conversation of the world and the life of the Court Some have perswaded themselves that he was the son of King Hezekiah but it is without foundation and with ignorance of the Chronology seeing that if this opinion were true it must be inferred that Daniel that is here dealt with as a child and chosen for Nebuchadonozor's Page was at that time fourscore and ten years old which would be a great impertinency Yet it is credible that he was descended from some son or daughter of the same King but however one may assure that he was of the bloud Royall seeing the King had expresly ordered that the Children that were to appear before him for his service should be taken out of that quality Besides his eminent birth he was endowed with a very gentle fashion knowing according to his age dextrous in the exercises of the Court of a sweet and prudent spirit very different from the temper of him that we proposed in the precedent Elogy But to speak sincerely if a good man ought to be considered as a Temple these exteriour qualities make but the portall there are others in the understanding and in the will that compose the Mysteries of the Sanctuary This young child was endowed with a great intelligence in things of Faith and Religion and of a chaste fear of God and of rare virtues that surpassed farre the ability of his age Who can sufficiently commend that which he did at his entrance into the Court with his companions that took light from his spirit and strength from the imitation of his courage They were now come from the siege of an hunger-bitten city from a long voyage and abundance of wearisome toils they find themselves suddenly in the abundance and delicacies of a magnificent Court where they were to be sed as the other Pages with the viands that were served up to the Kings table Youth hath ordinarily a great inclination to a sensuall life and to content all its appetites so that there are some that seem not to eat to live but to live to eat Yet these young children made a firm resolution to abstain from all the delicious food that was served up to Nebuchadonozor's table whether for the fear that they had lest they should have been offered unto Idols or for the love of Temperance they earnestly beseeched the master of the Pages to entertain them with nothing but with pulse and when he feared lest that usage should make them lean and that the King should perceive it they prayed him to try them for the space of ten dayes assuring him that living in such a manner they should be full of health and vigour This was verified by experience and when they were to appear in the presence of the King they were found in good plight active and well instructed above all the rest The Prophet saith That the beauties of the desert Psal 64. Pinguescent speciosa deserti shall be fat and fruitfull so those bodies that are as deserts deprived of the fat and of the abundance that a voluptuous life ministers to the delicate have a certain blessing of God that infuses into them an health a grace and a beauty sutable to a good temper Do we not see that all those birds of prey that feed themselves with the flesh of beasts send forth an horrid cry but the Nightingales that live innocently by some little seeds of plants sing melodiously Daniel was made to charm the ear of a great King by his discourses to live in contemplations and in lights he would have nothing to do with the smoak and ill vapours of Nebuchadonozor's Kitchen He was full three years under this master of the Pages Praying Fasting keeping the Law of God learning the Language of the Countrey and the Modes of the Court This time being expired he was presented to the King amongst other children of divers Nations who liked him exceeding well with his companions and found that he eminently surpassed the capacity of all those of the Countrey and of the rest that were nourished with him When he was advanced in age and now approaching to thirty years it pleased God to render him very famous at the Court as another Joseph by the Interpretation of a Dream King Nebuchadonozor had a great Vision in his sleep which very much disquieted his mind for there remained in him an Idea that he had dreamt of some magnificent thing but his Dream was escaped from him and he could by no means unfold it whether he said true or whether he dissembled to try his Diviners and all those that undertook to foretell hidden things He makes a great Assembly of the Sages of the Countrey in his Palace to know of them what it was that he had dreamed whereat these men were very much astonished and told him with all humility that no man ever dealt so with the Interpreters of Dreams but that the extraordinary manner was to declare the Vision and then seek for the Interpretation This King that was of an impetuous and extravagant spirit said That he was not contented with that triviall fashion of telling his Dreams to give them matter of inventing afterward such an Interpretation as they would but that the true secret of the Science was to divine the Dream it self The Magicians reply'd That there was none but the Gods that could give a resolution of that and that their commerce was farre distant from ours The King thereupon sent them away with anger and without giving vent to his choler resolved to rid himself of all the Diviners in his Kingdome having already given command to his Captain of the Guard to put them all to death All of them fled and were exactly searched for Daniel that was thought to make profession of these extraordinary Sciences was involved in the same danger there being no want of wicked minded men that seeing him
much onely as would load two mules to build an Altar to the true God with holy ground and not profaned by Idolatry expressing by this request that he desired to worship the true God in spirit and in truth though he received not Circumcision nor the other Ceremonies of the Jews He aded to his former suit the permission to accompany his master to the Temple of the Idols through a pure civility without rendring any inward adoration to the Gods of Syria which the Prophet granted him and sent him away in peace all full of blessing But Gehazi Elisha's servant was like to spoil all by a wicked cozenage for he ran after Naaman who seeing him come alighted out of his chariot and received him with much honour asking what he desired of him The other feigned that two children of the Prophets were come to see his master and that he desired to gratifie them with a talent of silver and to give to each of them a change of raiment Naaman thought himself obliged by this request and instead of one talent gave him two with two handsome suits of clothes causing all of it to be carried by two of his servants by reason that a talent of silver was a good load for one man Gehazi thought that he had succeeded bravely in his cheat but when he presented himself to his master he told him that he had been present in spirit at all that had passed and that he was not ignorant that he had at present silver from Naaman enough to become a great Lord and to buy lands and servants but for punishment of his crime the leprosie of Naaman should stay on him and should passe as an inheritance to all his race and at that instant he was stricken with the leprosie and retired himself leaving an horrible example to all those that betray their conscience to satiate their covetousnesse It happens that these bad servants extremely black the reputation of their masters that have not alwayes their eyes on their shouldiers as Elisha had to see that which passes behind them but when they imagine that they live very innocently and that they discharge their consciences in their charges one may find that a crafty wife or a corrupted Committee sell them by a thousand practices and devour the marrow and the bloud of men under the favour of their name Sigismond the Emperour made one of his officers named Pithon that had betrayed his affairs through covetousnesse of money drink up a glasse of melted gold 'T was but a bad potion but sutable for the chastisement of an overflowing avarice that hath no longer eyes for heaven having already given all her heart to the earth It is credible that Naaman was advertised of the untrustinesse of Gehazi and that this nothing blemished the high reputation of Elisha that was spread through all Syria After the cure of this Naaman Benhadad that was his Master and his King fell into a mortall sicknesse and when he had learnt that the Prophet Elisha was come as farre as his city of Damascus he dispatched Hazael one of the prime men of his Kingdome with fourty camels laden with great riches to consult with him about the hope that he might have of his recovery and to desire his help The Prophet was not like Hyppocrates that would cure none but Greeks and refused to go into Persia though he was invited thither by letters and by the offers of that great and magnificent King Artaxerxes But quite contrary the man of God thought that one ought not to limit the gifts of heaven and that he that opens the treasures of nature to all the Nations of the earth would not have one detain the marks of his power without communicating them to those that bear in any fashion his Image He cleansed the leprosie of Naaman but yet for all that cured not Benhadad because it was a decree of Providence that he should die of that sicknesse The Scripture tells us not expresly what became of those great presents but it leaves us to think that Elisha refused them as he had done those of Naaman and did nothing that belyed his generosity Although one may also believe that he accepted them as well to diminish the levies of the enemies of his people as to spread them amongst the poor of his own countrey He spake onely to this Hazael the Kings Embassadours a very short speech which was that he should die of that sicknesse and should never rise out of his bed again and yet in appearance he commands him to tell him that he should escape it and recover again his health Which causes here a question to arise thorny enough touching the permission of a lie and which hath made Cassian and other antient Divines say that there are some profitable lies which one ought to make use of as one uses serpents to make treacle But this opinion is no way followed but is found condemned by S. Augustine and the most renowned Doctours So that when Elisha said to Prince Hazael touching his King He shall die but tell him he shall escape we ought to take it as a command that authorizes a lie but as a prophecy of that which should be done For the Prophet foresaw these two things with one and the same sight both that Benhadad should die and that Hazael to flatter him should promise him health and life And therefore he addes Tell him that he shall escape which in a Prophets terms is as much as a future and means that although I declare to you his death yet I know you well and am certain that according to your politick Maxims you will not fail to promise him a cure It is just as God commaaded the evil spirit to lie and to deceive Ahab foretelling what he would do and not commanding that which ought not to be done according to the laws of a good conscience As Elisha was foretelling of that Kings death he felt an extasie of spirit and changed countenance notably and began to weep whereat Hazael was much astonished and had a curiosity to know the reason of a change so sudden But the Prophet continuing in the trans-ports of his spirit said unto him I weep and I sigh bitterly for I know the evils that thou wilt make my poor people one day suffer Thou wilt burn down the fair cities thou wilt make the young men passe by the edge of the sword thou wilt dash out the brains of the little infants thou wilt inhumanely rip up women great with child thou wilt sack my dear countrey for which I now pour out my tears by way of advance The Embassadour was amazed at a discourse so strange and said Why What am I should do all these outrages God forbid that I should ever ever proceed so farre I have in all this no more belief then hath my dog But Elisha insisting told him I know by divine Revelation that thou shalt be King of Syria and that which I
from ruine 'T is a rash determination that bloweth off the victorious laurels of so many Christian Kings with such a blind and precipitate whirlwind of words Justly therefore are the Manichees obnoxious to a spirituall Outlawry from the Church whilst I know not whether they more impudently assert innocence or more blameably disarm it All Ages concurre in the justification of Warre against Infidels but the intermingled contentions of the Faithfull have been alwayes reprehended and never impartially tolerated Be pleased to take a review of an old instrument There were many and bitter discords among the Jews many tumults many warres but ever against those that had abandoned the true Religion and collapsed into foul Idolatry and the worship of the Gentiles The Israelites indeed upon the division of the Tribes fought against the Benjamites with a fierce warre and an infinite destruction but this was rather the fury of grief rushing into arms for the revenge of a woman violated with prodigious lust then any destinated opposition or just controversie for the enlargement of their territories The magnanimity of David could scarce be induced to a just resistance of his sonne Absolon forcing his way unto his Fathers Throne thorow the bloud and carkasses of many Citizens till Joab had obstinately dissipated that languidnesse of his gentle mind so detestable an undertaking was it for those who were brethren by the bonds of Nature and Religion to forfeit all civill respects to the rage of warre If you please to consult the first times of the Christian Emperours you shall find Constantine opposing his forces against Julian but not till he became the desertour of Christ and the Standard-bearer of impiety You shall also find Theodosius the Great levying his utmost strength against Maximus Eugenius and Arbogastus but his quarrel was with most perfidious Tyrants who under the veil of Religion laboured to hide flagitious and damnable excesses You shall scarce meet with any Prince in the more innocent times who took up arms to be embrewed in Christian bloud but upon the most deliberate and important causes And indeed Baronius doth excellently observe that the Crosse was first opposed to the Crosse in arms in the Warre which Constantius raised against Magnentius A horrible wickednesse saith he and not to be attempted but by a Christian Tyrant a dissembler of Religion and an Hereticall Emperour I am not ignorant that Augustine hath handled this subject and question against Faustus and that he hath established the equity of Christian arms upon the foundation of the Gospel because John in so exemplary a rigour of life perswaded not the souldiers enquiring after the means of their salvation to cast away their weapons but to be contented with their pay and to strike no man Because also the Apostle not without cause saith That Princes bear not the sword in vain But if it be lawfull to yield our assent to the approbation of his judgement we shall find that all those darts were ejaculated against the mad phrensies of the Manichees who would have Christians to abstain from the sword and to bear the most cruel injuries of treacherous Infidels unrepelled unrevenged He would not therefore either cherish the severity or irritate the power of Christian Princes in an unlawfull Warre against their brethren for in the same place he exclaimeth a defire of doing violence a cruel preparation of mind to revenge an implacable mind a barbarous lust to rebel a secret speculation of Lordly dominion and other such as these are the causes which are justly culpable in the Warres Now who are they according to the opinion of S. Austin that consociate themselves and their adherents in an unjust Warre First they that are hurried into Arms by a blind violence of spirit not so much for love of Justice as a greedinesse of revenge Who being provoked by some injury inhumanely and unmeasurably rave and rage abhorring all attonement and refusing by the authority of an incensed reason to chide out their Passions those petulant and contentious inmates In the second place they who endeavour a Rebellion against their lawfull Sovereigne and casting off the yoke of their Allegiance precipitate themselves into all licencious enormities Finally they who out of a sole desire of Ruling involve and mingle the Kingdomes of their neighbours in commotions and intestine discords and that they may extend their Empire open a passage to their ambitious expectations by all designes either violent or fraudulent Consider now best Princes what a proclivity there is in such to boil with indignation and displeasure to burn with paroxisms of envy and exacerbations of revenge yea and to be tickled with an apprehension of purchasing or amplifying a Kingdome How obvious it is the reins being let loose to transcend the just limits how easie a matter to counterfeit Justice to pretend necessity and now to trample upon those Laws which before were so much outwardly reverenced you will undoubtedly find it true that it is more easie to take up then to moderate and temper Arms. But that I may not detain you long Aquinas requireth three things to the justification or legitimation of a Warre the Authority of the Prince a just Cause and a right Intention whereunto other Divines have added warrantable Reasons to obtain the end it is absolutely unlawfull therefore for private men to appear in Arms for the prosecution of their own right though in judgement This God hath delegated unto Princes that that might happen seldome which must needs be violent To the Lords of the earth we may say with Seneca I am he that God hath chosen out of so many men that I might be his Vicegerent upon earth I am the supreme Arbiter of life and death unto the Nations It is in the hand of my power to dispose the lot of their conditions to all my people These millions of swords that guard my peace shall at the lest intimation of my pleasure be all unsheathed What Cities shall perish and which shall flourish is my jurisdiction To be able to put all these things in execution is indeed a great matter but to forbear the pursuance of them unlesse necessity require it is farre more divine It is a lawfull wish that he to whom all things are lawfull would confine his will to the practice onely of lawfull things The right of the Sword is not extended when it devolveth into the Protection of one but is rather restrained One hand is stretched forth that all may be bound affairs are managed by the wisdome of a paucity lest the temerity of the whole multitude should precipitate them into a promiscuous destruction The parsimony even of the meanest bloud is to be praised No man is more unjustly invested with a superiority over others then he that is prodigall of their lives though in a just emergence Those thunderbolts must be slowly shot which the wounded persons can reverence Let Kings therefore beware lest they glorifie themselves by that faculty