Christians have a new being a new life which honoureth and imitates the new life of Iesus in his holy humanity springing from this as its source and principle For as the word unites it self to our nature in the Mystery of the Incarnation replenisheth and dwells in it as in his proper body consecrates and elevates it to all the Grandeurs of his divine Filiation so the same Iesus unites himself not personally but by a new Grace and after a singular manner proper to the state of Christianity consecrates us dwels in us and advanceth us to the communication of the rights goods and greatnesse of his filiation and would have us O excesse of love to be that by grace which he is by nature which he would have not onely to be accomplished in glory but in grace not onely in Heaven but upon Earth where we are truly Sons of God and in that quality henceforward we enter into alliance with him we have right to his heritage and which is more O that we would consider it he gives us power to call God our Father to look up to him as such to relate to him in this quality in further assurance whereof he gives us his spirit This St. Paul teacheth when he saith Ye have received the spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father the same spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God It is an effect of the mystery of the Incarnation and priviledge and excellency of Christianity Let us deliberate further upon it St. Iohn summing up the graces received from God in the Mystery of the Incarnation ranks this the first for it is the foundation of the rest saying To them he gave power to become sons of God If you would comprehend some part of this great favour think that as there is nothing in Divinity greater then to be the Son of God by Nature so but to be God himselfe nothing is greater then to be the Son of God by grace St. Cyprian admiring in God the title of Father sayes It is an ineffable name containing the Mysteries and Secrets hid from our spirits incomprehensible by our understanding If then to be Father in the Deity be a thing the most mysterious and ineffable that our souls can imagine by consequence to be son of such a Father is a favour and dignity incomprehensible The beloved Disciple causeth us to admire at this great benefit when he says Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God and be such in effect St. Iohn Damascene speaks to this purpose That the eternall Father sent his Son into the world to produce Children that should be such to him by Grace as Christ is unto him by Nature and therefore in pursuit of this Commission the Son of God from the time that he became the son of man hath created by his power begotten by his love and acquired by his merits and given by his Spirit many children to his Father who can breath nothing but glory to his Father and no longer live then by his Spirit and Life But to search with greater admiration into this Truth we must consider the manner by which he creates in us so divine a work We must observe that in Baptisme we not only receive grace and faith by the habituall vertues and gifts of the holy Spirt but are also marked with the Character of God received and owned as his children The manner whereby God effects this is admirable for as the Father hath sealed Jesus Christ with his Seal and made him his Son communicating to him his Essence and making him altogether equall to himself so Jesus Christ doth comunicate to us what he himself is marketh us with his seal makes us and owns us as children and makes us as it were another himself Wonder saith Saint Augustine and rejoyce brethren we are made of Christ. In pursuite of this benefit the eternall Father hath given us the Spirit of his Son which dwels in us according to the Apostle What can we think to be greater If we go further herein we shall find that we are not advanced to this admirable estate of being the children of God by any simple acceptation or by bare ceremonies but by something more reall that passeth into our souls as Saint Paul implies by these mysticall terms Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us It is not for our works saith he that the washing of regeneration and renewing of the holy Ghost that the spirit is given us by Jesus Christ and that Jesus is sent upon this design by the eternall Father three circumstances worthy great consideration To conclude the greatness of this benefit let us observe with Dionysius the Areopagite that we are advanced to this divine estate by a new birth and divine regeneration which the Son of God operates in us in the bosom of the Church our Mother to the honour of God and in imitation of his eternall generation in the bosom of God the Father CHAP. IV. Of the uses the Christians ought to make of filiall adoption whereto they are advanced by Baptism THe Truths that we have treated of are high and would require a large Discourse but that our designe being to prescribe the practice of filiall Piety we will only represent as much as is necessary to manifest what we are and what our life ought to be in conformity to so eminent an estate First then we must take notice that in the Language of the Scripture a Christian is a new Creature in Iesus and according to the word of the Son of God a man if he be a Christian must be born again of God and consequently must have a new being worthy such a birth Now according to the order that God hath established in all things we say that the action and operation must be conformable to the being Whence it follows that the state of a Christian being a holy divine estate that makes him the Son of God as truly by Grace as Jesus Christ is by Nature his actions also and life ought to be wholly divine and conformable to the state of the Son of God This is the Doctrine of the Apostle who saith Be ye followers of God as dear children This Principle granted we must see what benefits we can derive from thence The first is a contempt of this World for it is the heritage of the children of Adam condemned by a determined sentence and a day of execution appointed when by the Justice of God it shall perish in a generall Conflagration Let us then despise this heritage of Adam and seek that of the children of God Heaven or to say better God himself Say with Jesus Christ with a sound heart My Kingdom is not of this world Remember that you must keep the rank of the Sons of God
then of grace The Christian therefore if he seek perfection must take heed hereto and in all things observe as a maxime in Catholique vertues that Christian vertue and true piety consist not in being conformable to reason and to a humane spirit but to the spirit and intention of Iesus Christ who is the infallible rule of our actions This advice is of importance We shall speak of it elswhere when we have convinced the more difficult spirits and made them see the right Iesus Christ hath to us CHAP. IV. The right which the Sonne of God hath to us Motives obliging us to be his and to adhere to him by true piety WHich way soever we consider our selves we belong unto the Sonne of God this is our happiness We belong unto him after a singular manner in the state of nature he hath a right to us all things being as the Evangelist saith made by him In the being of grace we belong to him in the being of glory we are his by him all are raised to glory by a grace springing from the Mystery of the Incarnation and proper to the state of Christianity he is our Head we his Members he is the Father we his Children he our spouse we his heart and delight he our Doctor we his Disciples he our Pastor we his sheep he our Redeemer we his Captives he our King we his subjects he the Sacrificer we his sacrifices in a word he is our All the way the life and the salvation of the World and as St. Paul saith he is our fulness and we are his by the price of his blood and possession of his spirit We are so much the Son 's that we cannot be God's without being first Iesus's who refers us to his Father If the Father accept us and behold us with the eyes of mercy it is in the Sonne in as much as we are his Members and united unto him This union whereby we belong to the Sonne of God is so necessary that as the eternall Father loves us not but for his Sonne 's sake nor regards us but in him so cannot our actions be acceptable to him nor all our exercises of piety please him if they be not done by the conduct of the spirit of his Sonne and by adherence and union to Iesus though they may otherwise seem good and perfect He that is not with me saith Christ is against me and he that gathereth not with me scattereth This property is grounded upon the principles of Faith which teach us that the Sonne of God onely became man not the Father nor the holy Ghost he alone performs the office of Mediator in the redemption of humane nature he alone is our Redeemer our Mediator and our Head In this quality we are his Captives and Members he is the Father of the Ages to come and we are his children for he alone begot us by his blood and death and as a Pelican he gives us life by the effusion of his blood and animates us by the spirit of his Crosse in the Crosse he begot us by his death he giveth us that life we lost by the envy of the Serpent Thus in all the Mysteries of Faith we adore the Sonne of God being of the divine persons the onely incarnate living and dying for us he onely redeeming us from the captivity of our sins being God became man that men might become Gods all the Mysteries of his life accomplished upon Earth were onely to sanctifie us his dying upon the crosse makes him the onely victime and holocaust of our propitiation Are not these motives sufficient to shew us that we are his in a singular manner belonging to him by extraordinary relations Is it not reason we should acknowledge him and by a particular fidelity profess our selves his and carefully endeavour to adhere to him and by true piety to render him the honour love and service that his benefits obliege us to This the greatest part of Christians think not of as being by reason of their impiety ignorant of their benefactor as the Ancients were through their Idolatry of their Creator It is a strange ingratitude that man should be so blind in these dayes as not know his Iesus and passing his life away carelesly neglect to acknowledge him in his greatness to adore him in his works and to honour him in his humane divine life Our business then must be to reform this ignorance and therefore we will propose the principall rights which he hath to us that we may learn with what piety and devotion we ought to follow and serve him and that those souls who neglect or despise this piety may re-enter into themselves and endeavour from henceforth to render to Jesus Christ the honour love and service whereto they are by so many just relations obliged The first right that Jesus Christ hath to man is derived from his Quality of being God-man for such is the Sonne of God not onely in regard of his Divinity but also according to his humanity In this quality Jesus Christ by a power of excellency ought to rule and command all that is and shall be created a power that the eternal Father gave him at the first minute of his Incarnation besides that by this Mystery the Son changing his condition for the glory of his Father and abasing himself to honour him the Father also will needs honour him constituting him from thenceforward the principle of life grace and glory proclaiming him Soveraign of the universe and replenishing his humane nature with all the effects of the Divinity and all the states of glory possibly communicable to him as God and man that as the Sonne honoured his Father in debasing himself so did the Father honour the Sonne in exalting him For this cause he makes him his equall in power greatness and Majesty and invests him from this first moment for evermore with all the power that he hath over his creatures This the beloved Apostle teaches when he saith The Father hath given him all things into his hand and St. Paul beginning to write the greatness of Iesus saith expresly speaking of his mission That the eternall Father appointed him Heire of all things by whom also he made the World Thus by this first Right and by the Mystery of the Incarnation Jesus hath the same power over souls that the Creator hath over his creatures and in relation to this power we give him all that we owe to God and consequently acknowledge in this Mystery Jesus to have a double power over us as God and man This consideration obliges us to adore and serve him acknowledging this power must doubly subject us to his conduct and divine will Heaven and Earth pay this duty and fidelity to this Iesus God and Man Let us hear with a resentment of love how St. Iohn describes the triumphs of our Iesus he tells us that he heard the Angels crying aloud The Lamb who hath been slain is
manner that we ought to observe in our actions springing from the son of God must by consequence be very like it So a Christian action should be that which is made in the spirit of God that Iesus Christ hath borne upon the Earth accomplished in the holy and perfect dispositions of the Son of God himself By this only Circumstance we may judge of the difference of our actions for all that we do without the spirit and without dispositions agreeable to an action worthy of God is to do nothing or very little such actions ordinarily proceed but from a naturrll inclination or which is worse from the instigation of our own Lusts and Love of our selves Let us farther consider this Truth which will seem hard or new to those who know not the excellency of Christianity who never regard the purposes of God who are ignorant of the mysteries of their salvation When the life and actions of a Christian are said to comprehend their perfection you must remember that the Sonne of God came into the world not onely to communicate to us his grace but to dwell in us and give us his spirit and life to give them to us not onely to justifie us and as we say to put us into the state of grace but to be in us to dwell there to be the beginning of a new life and new spirit in us and to give us dispositions proportionable to such an estate This the Apostle teaches when he sayes that the eternall Father hath put the spirit of his Sonne into our hearts and that the spirit it self beareth witness with our spirit that we are the children of God whereby we see that being justified by the state and grace of filiation and divine adoption we live in the life and spirit of God which is made our life and spirit which is in us dwells in us governs us inlivens us and is the Principle of our Actions makes them pleasing to God supernatural and worthy of Paradise Thus the life of a Christian according to the determination of God is far above all lives a being above all beings I leave you to judge what the Actions of Christians ought to be proceeding from a principle so holy and divine You will find all the very reasonable and admire the bounty and wisdom of God in this Conduct of our souls if we will consider that the eternal word was made man that by debasing himself he might render to his Father an honour worthy of God he came upon the Earth to establish by the merit and by the spirit of his Crosse the Kingdom of God in our souls and to make us worthy to serve and honour God after a manner worthy of God For this cause he advances unto himself he consecrates our lives and actions by his Death and blood and that they may be referred worthily to the honour and glory of his Father he unites himself to us communicates to us his life his spirit and dispositions to make us capable to praise God according to his greatness which we could never do if we did not take of him and from him this power and disposition This he gives us when he dwells in us by the grace of filiation and divine adoption whereto we are advanced when we are made Christians Hence we see that Christian Actions ought to be holy perfect and divine that a Christian Life ought to be the very life of Jesus Christ living and working in him by his spirit His actions his inward dispositions must be a lively image and perfect expression of the actions and holy intention of Iesus Christ. But alas we think no more of these Truths Christians are become so blind that we may well complain and say with the ancient Philosopher That the life of man is spent either in doing evil or in doing nothing or in doing preposterously what he ought to do To undeceive our selves of these common abuses to enter farther into the knowledge of the state of the grace of Christianity and to see more evidently what we ought to be let us further remember that as Christians we are members of the Sonne of God he is our head a head that infuses life in us In this quality he hath right to live and act in us as our souls act and live in our bodies This consider'd we must say that as the essence and excellency of a Christian consisteth in his being a member of Iesus Christ so the perfection of Christian duties is that they are operated by Iesus Christ living and operating in us as his members I say not onely that we must imitate the Son of God and do all our actions in Grace that thereby they may be called Christian but also that they ought to be with the same intentions and spirit wherewith Iesus Christ did act on Earth which he communicated to his Church and to all his Our Actions ought not only to be good and reasonable but to be worthy of the Son of God our head whose members we are Therefore they must be animated by his life guided by his motions and regulated by his intentions seeing that to this end he giveth us his spirit and life to be our spirit and life and that he gives us freely abundant grace in him and by him to accomplish all our actions This is of great importance for which we shall one day render a strict account when God shall judge the uprightness of men by so extraordinary a favour Certainly he will examine and punish the ignorance the contempt and abuse of so many graces which he hath acquired for us by his travells and cross and offereth us with so much love and bounty This will appear yet more evident if we consider the common belief of all the faithfull who acknowledge that the life and actions of a perfect Christian ought to be actions of grace Let us therefore examine what the Essence and Dignity of this grace is for supposing that the life of a Christian is a life of grace we must necessarily grant that our actions by consequence ought to be conformable and correspondent to the sanctity and dignity of the grace which gives them life sanctifies them and advances them since they must be proportionable and semblable to the cause We know that the grace which sanctifies and gives life to our actions is a grace made for the Son of God that from him it flows into us that we are not replenished and enriched but from his bounty This granted our life and actions must be holy and perfect by the same sanctity and perfection which is in Iesus Christ which is lovingly communicated to and engrafted in our souls sanctifying enlivening and perfecting our life and actions When we say that this Grace comes from Iesus Christ we express in this alone the excellency and dignity of it For to know the dignity and eminency of the grace of Christianity it suffices not to say as we commonly do that it
you cease to be all that you are Have a great desire to loose your self and to go out of your self and that your being be annihilated and consummated in that of Iesus who is in you This is the point whereto you must arrive if you will that God should possess you Thirdy Desire and require that Iesus Christ destroy in you all that is contrary to God that he establish in you the Kingdom of God that he take from you the dominion which self-love the vanity of your nature and your inclination usurp over you and the creatures Fourthly Resign your self to the will of Iesus Christ who by this adorable sacrament of Love will receive you into himself and place you in his life and his being Abandon then your self to the desire that he hath to possess you a desire as great and perfect as the Love wherewith he gives himself to you is infinite Pray him to destroy in this present life the being that you use and abuse that by the power of his spirit and love and by the vertue of this ineffable sacrament he may make you what he is that is to say Love Life and Truth Behold what God requires of you if we regard intentively the essence and the excellency of this mysterie if by the spirit of Faith we weigh the effects it produces in us it will be easie to acknowledge them and soon shall we be constrained to confess that this sacrament of Love doth appropriate us wholly to God draws us from our selves and the world and separates us from the commerce of creatures that we may be knit in heart and spirit to Iesus Christ despising all things for his love and glory so shall be verified the word of the Son of God to his Father in the excess of his Love speaking to him not onely of his Apostles but of all good Christians They are not of the world even as I am not of the world This is the spirit of Christianity the excellency of this divine estate That we may the better remember this you shall see in a little Picture First the grace and spirit of Christianity consecrates us to God and imprints in us a character of the power of Iesus Christ to whose Empire we must be subject for ever and must undergo to all eternity both in heaven and earth the state of service and subjection to the spirit grace and conduct of Iesus Secondly The grace of Christianity makes us the children of God by mercy and gives us right of inheritance to the greatness and true glory of Iesus Christ. By this grace we have no more part in the world because it is the heritage of the true children of Adam but we have right to the Possession of God who is himself the heritage of his children Thirdly This grace draws our spirits our hearts and our affections from our selves and all creatures to unite us to God it gives us right to enter into familiarity and alliance with the Son of God who making himself man by the Incarnation would be amongst us to the end that we might be with him He enters into society with men invests himself with our miseries infirmities to communicate to us his life his spirit and greatness Thus by the grace of this mysterie we go out of our own Interests to enter into the Interest of Jesus Christ whereof the Apostle speaking of the things of the world he saith I count them but dung that I may win Christ. Fourthly In brief by the state of Christianity we are advanced to the participation of God who will be all in us that we may be in him and Jesus Christ by his body and blood which he giveth us in the Eucharist doth elevate and unite us to God makes us live by his life communicates to us all that he is that he may be all things to us that the world may be nothing to us Thus the grace of Christianity unites us to Jesus Christ replenishes us with his life and spirit makes us another himself and therefore obliges us to go out of our selves and the world to be in Christ Jesus I know we must be in the world and make use of the world so long as it shall please God to continue us in this place of captivity but we must not be of the world we must live here as in a place of passage and make use of all in the world as of a winter garment ready to put it off when the Sun of righteousness shall come to his meridian when it shall please God Let us use all the creatures as a necessary medicine to the present state of our infirmities and occasions but let it be withall loathsom unto us as violating our Love which desires nothing but God which takes delight in nothing but God which aspires to nothing and hopes in nothing but God The conclusion of the first Part What the life of a Christian ought to be Behold here the Excellencies of Christianity which we have proposed in few words as having no further design nor intention in this volume then to shew that the life of a Christian ought to be conformable to the state of grace and dignity whereto he is advanced by Iesus Christ. Now to enter into this knowledge it suffices that we see what we are This is that which I design'd to demonstrate in this first part proposing as in a little Tablet the essence dignity and eminency of the grace of Christianity which I have done briefly expressing onely the principal Truth of this subject leaving the rest to the piety and consideration of those that would profit thereby Now if we look back with the eye of Faith upon that which hath been said we shall clearly see what a Christian life ought to be and shall know that the design of Iesus Christ informing his Church hath been to consecrate to appropriate to himself and to unite himself divinely to our souls and to separate them from themselves and from all creatures that by a happy revolution he may be in us and we in him we may live in him and of him as he lives in his Father of the life of his Father that so he may restore us to his Father and re-unite us to himself from whom we were separated by him by being our own and having relation to the Creature Herein is comprised the perfection of a Christian life whereof we cannot speak more then in the words of St. Paul ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God a passage which contains an apparent contradiction If we are dead how can our life be hid in God who is the true life If we are in God who is the life of our souls how are we dead The Apostle meanes that our life is life and death our life is a life of grace which is the true life of souls and much better then the soul is the life of our bodies and the proper
losses calls and associates him to his divine greatness By the grace of Christianity he is the child of God and member of Iesus Christ and capable of the life of his own Son and by consequence he will fill him with the spirit and perfections of God Thus the Apostle speaking of the Eternall Father saith that he hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into our hearts assuring us that by this spirit we are sons of God and he frequently calls Christians the members of Iesus Christ. This quality and motive is the foundation of the state and spirit of Christianity that shews what a Christian ought to be and how eminent and accomplished the perfection is whereto he must arrive Saint Paul tells us we are members of Iesus Christ the Church is a body the mysticall body of the Son of God whereof Iesus is the head and Christians the members Ye are the body of Iesus Christ and members of his members saith the Apostle Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ This Text is cleer which if we consider intentively it will furnish us with rich thoughts and lift us up to the knowledge of the dignity of a Christian. I leave it to the piety of the reader to insist upon this subject If according to the Doctrine of the Apostle we are members of Iesus Christ it must follow that we wholly belong to Iesus Christ and are to him in truth and by grace that which by nature the members are to their head By the head the members are enlivened the head hath the care and guidance of them all so in Iesus and by Iesus we are enlivened guided and advanced of his fulness have we all received saith Saint Iohn he is our life the soul of our souls saith Saint Austin and much more then the soul is the life of our body Now if the head and soul enliven guide animate and make the body to subsist if the body have a continuall dependance on the conduct and motions of the soul is it not also agreeable that a Christian be animated with the spirit of the Son of God which he possesseth and whereof he is wholly possessed that he be wholly left to the care and conduct and motions of Iesus Christ of whom he is a member These are the two Estates wherein a perfect Christian must be he must possess God and be resigned to the conduct of the spirit of God We have already shewed how much he is obliged to seek God and to possess him if he will arrive to the perfection to which he is called It remains that we know how he must resigne himself wholly to God As members of the Son of God we are necessarily and essentially if I may so speak left to the love care and conduct of the heavenly Father which love is the same love which he hath for his Son the same conduct that he hath over him For we are part of his Son being his members and as the Apostle saith his fulness The Church saith he is the body of Iesus and the fulness of him that filleth all in all wherein we see the happy estate of a Christian who by the grace of Christianity being made a member of Iesus Christ in pursuit of his state is left to the same care the same conduct the same love that the eternall Father hath for his Son Being then arrived to this happiness what remains but to live with great vigilancy to put our selves to leave our selves and to maintain our selves in this love of the eternall Father to abandon our selves soul and body to divine conduct to remain in this union and unity with his Son for he looks on us in his Son as members and part of his Son and also being united to Iesus to submit our selves to the disposall of his spirit and to the motions of his grace as the members are to the head It was the request of Iesus to his Father the last day of his life the eve before his death for this he made that prayer full of love repeated at large by Saint Iohn wherein he begs of his Father that he would have the same love for us that he had for him from eternity and that he would be by grace to us what he is to him by nature that the same unity of love that binds them together may be in us that we may not live but in this love in this uion and unity that we may live in him by his spirit and love as he lives in the unity of the spirit and love of his Father Words of love and of truth words of efficacy words which cleerly shew the designs Iesus hath over us what he hath merited for us and what ought to be the life of a Christian and in whom consisteth the spirit of Christianity If we proceed a little further in the consideration of the lights of Faith we shall find a new light which discovers this truth The Oeconomy and the works of God in the Mysterie of the Incarnation teach us that the whole conduct of the Church all the regency of the world and by consequence the government of all souls in generall and every one in particular is left to Iesus who is the way the truth and the life of our souls He is saith the Apostle our Fulness he is our All and that which raises the conduct of Christ and renders it admirable is that it is accompanied with wisdom power and infinite love For he employs his power wholly to furnish us to assist us in all things his wisdom leads us to God and establishes us in the state and perfection God requires of us and he employs his love to enrich us with his treasures to enlighten us with his spirit to guide by his light and to communicate to us by the excess of his bounty his being his life and his greatness Thus the quality whereto we are advanced by Christianity being made members of Iesus renders us worthy of the care and conduct of the eternall Father and binding us to Iesus makes us by grace one with him partakers of his greatness This expresseth the perfection whereto God hath called us These truths considered will cause us highly to esteem the grace and state of Christianity These motives are so powerfull that they seem not only to invite but to constrain us by amorous allurements to resign our selves wholly to God Let us adde a common Doctrine of Saint Bernard as the last draught of this admirable conduct The conduct saith he of Iesus in us is admirable in that he hath as much care of one single soul as well as of all his wisdom is employed for one soul as well as for all and he loves one soul with the same infinite love wherewith he loves all yea he loves his elect and Christians with the same love wherewith he loveth himself Here let us stop for more cannot be said Let us adore
consequently follows that the centre the repose of a Christian cannot be but in this estate of sufferings and in the same condition of suffering that Iesus Christ was here upon earth When we say that the centre and spirit of Christianity is no other then the cross annihilations and adversities we must conceive it in the highest and consider that the Son of God came into the World for the glory of his Father to satisfie his divine Iustice and for the sanctification of our souls These were his designes desires and thoughts Now the thoughts and intentions of the Son of God are eternall and permanent for they are divine and it is the property of the essence and of divine actions to be immutable and permanent Seeing then that the Son of God hath chosen the cross from all eternity lived upon earth in the spirit of sufferance he remains alwayes in the thoughts of the cross in the desires of humiliation and the rigour of death the zeal of the glory of his Father goes not from his heart but he preserves this spirit and offers himself to his Father to bear it eternally and to suffer the effects of it if it be his good pleasure This zeal ought not to be unfruitfull this offer is not to be refused and yet the estate of his greatness and the condition of his glory cannot permit it What remedy Love alwayes wise and inventive hath found out a means to satisfie the equity of his desires and divine affection and the Majesty of his glory for the eternall Father hath given his Son a mysticall body which is his Church he hath appointed him Head over all his Church which is his body all Christians are members of this body true members as the body is a true body though a mysticall body We are saith the Apostle members of his body of his flesh and of his bones Now to this body and these members the spirit and zeal of Iesus Christ communicates it self by the designe and speciall counsel of the blessed Trinity In pursuit of this divine counsel the Son of God pours into his Church and upon Christians the zeal of the glory of God the spirit of the cross and the love of justice he pours it out as he pleases distributing his gifts according to his holy will To some he communicates his spirit of sufferance and crosses to others that of death and to speak more generally he communicates his estates and spirit to whom he pleases and as he pleases So Saint Paul I fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh Reflecting on this truth we shall cleerly see that the spirit of Christianity is no other then the spirit of Iesus which he communicates to his Church being the head and to Christians his members And as this spirit is no other then a desire of the glory of God love of the cross and zeal of justice it follows they who will be good Christians must necessarily bear this spirit and be in this estate of annihilation and the cross and embrace all adversities that they meet with yea embrace them couragiously as an order of God established upon them and as an estate which is singularly proper for them In this Disposition they shall find the centre and repose of their souls and in this subjection to the cross they shall obtain the peace that Iesus Christ hath acquired for us by his cross We may also say that to suffer Christianly is to bear all things with cheerfulness of spirit doing like the Apostles who departed rejoycing that they were accounted worthy to suffer shame for his Names sake and like the first Christians who took joyfully the spoyling of their goods defied torments and the cruelty of beasts like Saint Ignatius the burning of fire as Saint Lawrence the violence of torments as Saint Agnes and in the Churches first beginning their zeal to suffer was so great that it made the Apostle Saint Iames to say Count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations This advice will seem hard for the rigours of the cross and pains of this life are too piercing but if we love all will be easie for where love is saith Saint Bernard there is nothing but sweetness and nothing is difficult to him that loves though thornes guard and encompass the Rose we gather it notwithstanding and enjoy its beauty and odour Iacob sayes he served seven years for Rachel and they seemed unto him but a few dayes because he loved her so much that he was insensible of the travail He also that will suffer Christianly must love for he that cannot love cannot suffer and he that can neither suffer nor love is no Christian seeing that love is the spirit of Christianity and sufferance the spirit of love This principle considered no rigours that we find in humane life can appear difficult and misfortunes and pains are onely irk some to us for want of love Let us then but love and they will all be easie by love the sufferings of Christians are distinguished from those of others For it is common to all men to suffer it is the condition of their being and portion of their life and the more they think themselves secure the more they are surprised with misfortunes but it belongs onely to Christians to suffer with love The sinner is drawn by the neck like a slave to do the will of God the good man willingly followes him and findes no pain in any thing but on the contrary he finds comfort in travail and repose in displeasure In this sense the Apostle cryes out upon sight of the wounds and scarrs he endured for Iesus Christ Henceforth let no man trouble me for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Iesus And elsewhere I will glory willingly in my infirmities that the power of Iesus Christ may dwell in me To suffer in this disposition is to suffer Christianly or else let us say that to suffer Christianly is to suffer with an esteem of sufferings There are divers reasons why we should take and well esteem them but the principall consisteth in that Iesus Christ hath chosen this manner of life as a way that honoureth more divinely the Majesty of God then any other estate and he hath chosen this way from all eternity and by consequence from all eternity he beares the thoughts and love of the Cross. He hath chosen the Cross saith St. Paul he hath embraced it from the first moment of his incarnation and by an excess of love he began to suffer as soon as he was born And that which is to be observed is that by the election of his divine wisdom which never fails he hath made choyce of confusion and contempt rather then greatness and contentment So saith the Apostle of him and we find it in his divine Mysteries And from hence comes the esteem that we ought to have thereof
souls to his Sonne he adds Every man that hath heard of the Father cometh unto me These words include the secrets of grace and are full of Mystery They teach us that the eternall Father by his grace drawes us and guides us to his Sonne he speaks to us by his inspirations in the interiour of our souls he shewes us that we are Iesus Christ's Is not this to say all that we have proposed That the design of God to save us is no other then to give us his Sonne to unite us to him by the powerfull attractions of his grace and to cause us to adhere to him by love and the exercises of a life truly christian herein doth true piety consist We must therefore continually elevate our hearts and spirits to this Iesus the onely happiness of our souls we must entreat him to accomplish in us the designs of his Father and to take an absolute power over us We must so offer our selves to him as to have no other intention will nor conduct but his that we may by a true relation verifie what Saint Paul said All is yours you are Christs and Christ is Gods Let us so think of him and so do that from henceforth our hearts and mouths may neither speak nor think but of him that all things else may be of no savour to us that nothing enter our spirit which resenteth not the spirit and odor of Iesus Christ and respires not his honour and glory In a word let us adhere to him and by an indissoluble and eternall union dwell in him that he may dwell in us that we may eternally bear the effect of his holy word He that is joyned unto the Lord is the one spirit O how happy is the soul that is called to this happiness and that is truly in the power of Iesus in the possession of his spirit and direction of his grace This is the state whereto Christian perfection must arrive the foundation of piety and true devotion But because many think not of it and many know it not we must treat of it more at large and propose the motives that most oblige us to this Devotion CHAP. III. Of Piety to Iesus Christ and its principall effects WHAT we have already said of the Sonne of God is sufficient to make us know what we owe unto him but the importance of this subject requires that for our better information we explain particularly the principles of this piety and the meanes necessary to attain it But before we enter into this subject we must consider that devotion to the Sonne of God wherein we are to imitate all Christians is not so to limit our souls as to withdraw them from what they owe to God but on the contrary the exercise of this piety is necessary to conduct us more worthily and holily to God because by piety to the Sonne of God we attain a capacity and power to honour God Iesus Christ is our way by him alone we go to God he is our life by him we live the life of grace a life which onely makes us worthy to honour God He is our Truth in him alone as the spirit of truth we know God we adore him and serve him in truth according to the Apostle he is our All in him and by him we have all things by the Son the Father gives us all and by the Son we render all to the Father This is the gift we receive of God and the gift we give to God for all is operated and subsists in the unity of Iesus Christ. The Church offers nothing to demands nothing of the blessed Trinity but by Iesus Christ. We must imitate the Church in pious customs Piety to Iesus Christ requires not so much exteriour exercises as interiour and permanent estate doth in our souls nor demands it any novelty of affection but a newness of spirit a new disposition enclining our souls to employ themselves in the thought of Iesus Christ to regard him to love him to honour him as the object and end of our life actions and devotions It requires that the actions of the religious should be devout those of the ordinary Christians vertuous those of a private person familiar in this object without changing his spirit but directing his intentions and dispositions to the pure regard of the Son of God For example let us do all that we do by the spirit of honour and love to Iesus Christ if we suffer let it be to imitate and render honour to his sufferings what ever happens to us let us receive it by a dependance on and submission to his power and conduct If we will insist upon any good thoughts let it be of Iesus Christ to consider his greatness the mysteries of his life his vertues his benefits and the power he hath over us By these sweet entertainments by these regards of honour and love the perfect Christian advances himself is confirm'd in the piety we speak of To know what this piety is and how we must apply our selves thereto let us consider that Iesus Christ is the principle the centre the end of all Christian souls for as faith teaches us he is the cause of all the good that is in us the spring of all the graces we possess Author of the life which we live in Christianity and being the principle he is also consequently the end thereof For according to the order established in nature that which is the principle of a thing is also its end and nature follows invariably the order God hath prefixt and by his well ordered motions gently leads and if not diverted infallibly conducts all things to the principle whence she draws them So the waters saith the Wise man return to the ocean as to their mothers womb and according to the mysteries of faith we say all things return to God because they all came out of God It is the same in the estate of grace If then Iesus Christ be the principle of the being life and state of Christianity he must be also the end so that our being life and estate regard the same Iesus Christ and are referred to him as the end and if the end the centre also of a Christian life In him our souls find their repose and perfection in him by him and of him are all things saith Saint Paul This Principle alone considered shews us that Iesus Christ hath full power over us that we are his not only in respect of his divine greatness and supreme power over all as God Saviour and Redeemer as purchaser of us with his most precious blood and his of life-giving death but also because he is the principle centre and end of the life and state of Christianity In this relation he hath soveraign power over us having given us being and grace consecrated us to his glory and honour in such absolute manner that the Christian cannot make use either of himself or any
as Princes of the Blood And as the Princes of this world do maintain themselves in their Estate and that greatness which their Birth allows them so do you couragiously maintain your selves in all rights due to you by this new divine Birth O how great and sublime is it if you behold it with the eye of Faith The rank you are to hold with the Creatures of heaven and earth is the same with Jesus Christ who accompanies you to his estate and greatness the grace of the Son of God which you receive as a Christian giveth you right to his heritage If children saith Saint Paul then heirs of God and joynt-heirs with Christ. Now the bosom of the eternall Father is the only heritage of Jesus Christ there is his eternall dwelling there his repose there the seat of his delight the Throne of his greatness Even this is the rank you ought to keep there ought to be your repose your delight in the fruition of this onely happiness Remember that the bosom of God is the place destin'd for your eternall dwelling a place of glory and permanent felicity God only is your heritage undervalue not him for transitory vanities of this world forsake him not for the whole world unless you would be for ever miserable Admit this truth farther into your heart believe it not an imagination of a new Piety 't is the foundation of Christianity the ground and principle of the state of Grace which considering intentively you will wonder to see Christians confess these truths and hope for so great a good yet become so blind as to suffer themselves to be deluded by deceitfull vanities and vain illusions of the creatures to sell their birth-right for a mess of pottage and whilest they pretend to be the children of God glorying in so divine a being to live like the children of men thinking of nothing but the earth The second benefit is a great desire of Paradise sighing daily thousands of times after our heritage Heaven bewailing the want of and demanding the liberty promised and due to the children of God In this thought of our Celestiall Sion our sweet Countrey we grieve to see our selves so long in a strange Land It is hard to attend with so great impatience a happy day a good hour an honour which we are made to hope for yet we are without sense in attaining it the true and ineffable joyes of Paradise Great God! can it be that the Manna of Heaven should not cause us to loath the Onyons of AEgypt How long children of men how long shall we have hearts of Adamant insensible toward the things of Heaven yet open for the transitory goods of this cursed earth to love lying to follow vanity to despise eternall truths There cannot be a folly more condemnable Let us open our eyes and grieve to see our selves so fastened to the creature so confident in vanity so little relishing and esteeming heavenly things Let us be ashamed to see the children of heaven eat the food of Swine in a strange land not remembering the abundance of all things in their Fathers House Thirdly we learn that we must live nobly like the children of God Let us take heed we dishonour not our extraction and degenerate from the place whence we came Let us keep the rank we have received in the House of God The Emperor was derided for it who past his time and life away in catching Flyes let not us do so amusing our selves about the creatures and only labouring here for earth since we know all in the world is of less value then a Fly and that in the sight of God the universe is less then the least Atome Let us rather imitate that other Prince who invited by honour and the greatness of his birth would never run nor play but among Kings his equalls Applying this to our Subject let us say that a Christian being the child of God and consequently Prince of Heaven ought to expect no heritage but Paradise to seek no other company but Saints and Angels to take no content but in Iesus Christ endeavouring to follow him in all to imitate him in all since he hopeth to raign with him These Truths deserve to be deliberately considered Saint Cyprian in a Discourse upon the Ascension raises them higher saying That Christians as children of God are obliged to be like God The same is the Doctrine of Saint Paul Be ye followers of God as dear children The reason of this Precept is evident for if as children of God we will enjoy his glory to eternity the possession and the heritage of Iesus Christ and become one with him must we not necessarily be like him in purity in perfection in sanctity If we will possess God in God and live eternally in the bosom of God must not our life be wonderfull our actions holy if we will merit an estate so perfect and holy Nothing is more just Herein appears the Christian estate so great divine and perfect in that making us children of God it gives us right to the heritage of God obliges us to lead a life worthy such an heritage By this principle we see how much they are deceived who think and speak meanly of Christianity or living a life common to the children of the world promise themselves the heritage of the children of Heaven Let us teach them how they ought to live and shew what the actions of their life ought to be who call themselves Christians CHAP. V. What the Actions of Christians ought to be SEeing the state of Christianity is so eminent that it advances the soul to a filiall being so divine it follows that the actions of Christians ought to be eminently devout and perfect This truth is proved not only by the common principles that the life and operations of every thing ought to be conformable to their being but likewise by another maxime of Christianity that a Christian receive all by Christ and in Christ and as the Apostle sayes of him and though him and to him In pursuit of this Principle all the actions of a Christian ought to be done in the Spirit of Iesus and in respect to God which makes them high perfect and holy High as proceeding from Christ its principle Holy as being wrought in him perfect and pure as being wrought for him such actions we truly call Christian. To explicate this more particularly we must observe that a true Christian action must be done in grace in the spirit in the dispositions wherewith Iesus Christ performed his actions during his wayfaring life yet in a different way for the son of God as God and man did act after a divine manner proportioned to the eminence of his estate To work after this manner is proper only to him to this we cannot arrive neither must we aspire unto it but we are obliged to act after a manner very near this and the highest that can be excepting this For the
is supernaturall because in it there is nothing singular For the grace given to Angels and to man before his fall was also supernatural We must say that the grace of Christianity is a grace made for the Sonne of God and consequently worthy of the greatness of the Sanctity and divinity of the incarnate word this makes it the raiser of an Order and gives it a being much different from the first and from the order meerly supernaturall This gives it a being and order as different from the grace of the Angels as they are from Iesus Christ as the sonne from the servant Now applying what we have said that Actions ought to be conformable to their Principle we conclude that the actions of a Christian being sanctified and enlivened by the grace and spirit of Iesus ought also to be wholly conformable to Iesus Christ their principle being more then humane more then angelicall conformable to the purity and sanctity of the grace of the Sonne of God worthy the Labours of his Crosse and death To this end St. Paul adviseth that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called words that deserve to be considered since that God will demand an account of us of his favours and benefits and will judge our actions and lives according to the dignity of our vocation according to the perfection and sanctity of his Grace in brief according to the life of Iesus Christ which alone ought to be the rule and Law of Christians Furthermore we must consider the rule of God over our Soules wherin we may admire the wayes and meanes whereby the divine bounty and infinite wisdome of God uses to give us graces necessary to accomplish our actions in that perfection and sanctity that he requires I intend not to speak of the secret and unknowne means of the graces inspirations motions and speedy succours wherewith God is pleased to illuminate our Spirits to enflame our wills and to direct all the motions and actions of our life But I desire only to insist upon the consideration of the Sacraments that the sonne of God hath left in his Church as channells by which he continually powers out this grace into us Baptisme consecrates us to the most holy Trinity makes us the children of God members of Iesus Christ Temples of the Holy Ghost and holy Vessells which bear Iesus Christ who dwells in us And the Eucharist which is among the Sacraments as the Sun among the Stars gives God to us and with him all the greatness of heaven elevates us and unites us to God changes and makes us little gods What would ye more Why is God think you so profuse of his gifts of his graces of himself but to operate in you all that I have said to give you a life and actions conformable to the being whereto he hath elected you Let us weigh these truths at our leisure and study to attain to the perfection that God requires of us Let us take care that all our actions be holy and worthy of God and let us not be carryed away by the humour or rather by the infidelity of such as ignorantly despise these important truths and necessary exercises The third Prerogative CHAP. VI. Of the happy Commerce and Society that Iesus Christ will have with Christians by the Mystery of the Incarnation THe holy Trinity having consecrated the Christian by Baptisme adopted and received him as a son enters into a particular society with him and by divers Mysteries which the eternall Word hath operated upon earth God enters into a Communication with men lives and converses with them So Saint Paul speaking to new Christians Ye are no more strangers and forreigners but fellow-citizens with the Saints and of the houshold of God Let us stay here to contemplate this benefit Adam being fallen from the happy estate of grace by his rebellion against God no sooner tasted the Apple of disobedience but he felt the punishment of his sin and was at the same time driven out of Paradise and banished the happy commerce and holy familiarity which he had with God This exile was the greatest rigour wherewith the divine Iustice could take vengeance on his sin This separation made his estate miserable and the condition of his children most unhappy We should in this malediction and just divorse for ever have continued if the Son of God had not come to re-establish all things to return us to God and to restore us with much advantage all other happiness that we lost by sin So that as the Apostle saith where sin abounded grace did much more abound for we enter into a familiarity and communion with God far more holy and divine then that of Adam by Iesus Christ we converse with God go to him are with him worthy the Spirit and Grace of Christianity Few value this truth men who only follow their own wayes nourished with earth onely to whom the delicates of heaven are unsavory can never relish this grace nor be sensible how much the presence of God is necessary Therein appears the corrupt estate of this Age all creatures resent the presence of their Creator Nature it self hath engraven in the bottom of our essence a desire of the presence of God The most barbarous Nations forced only by this instinct in the blindness of their false Religion sought esteemed and desired some visible mark of the presence of those they call their gods None but those of this Age have an indifference to these truths forget God mind onely their own actions in this world and are ignorant of the happiness of Heaven and despise it To awaken and draw us forth of this darkness consider that Faith teaches us that the happiness of the Saints consists in seeing themselves to be in the company of God and the greatest recompense God promises to our travels is to make us partakers of his glory to raise us to his greatness to enter into an eternall communion with us I will saith Christ to his Father that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am implying the society and communion of God with us and promising that eternity shall never separate him from him that serves him Now if the happiness of the blessed in their estate of glory consists in the presence and familiarity of God we cannot doubt but the happiness of the just upon earth consists in knowing how to preserve themselves in this desireable familiarity and presence of God The intent of the Son of God at his coming into the world and becoming an Inhabitant thereof was to sanctifie it by his presence and establish his power therein and dwell with us to the end of the world as he promised at his death This is it that he wrought by the mysterie of the Incarnation making himself man to live among men For this cause in the Sacrament of the Eucharist he becomes the food of man communicates to his abundant graces inriches
effect of the grace of Christianity is to operate in us that which natural death doth By death the soul is separated from the body and all things in the world So grace should separate us from our selves from all things from sin that being wholly so separated we may be dead to our selves and to all things that we may live in God and of God This expression of the Apostle further shews all the properties of a Christian life the end whereof is that being separated from all we may be in Iesus Christ that is to say united by an indissoluble Vnion to Iesus Christ life of his life and be referred with him to the glory of the most holy Trinity The life of a Christian St. Paul saith is hid because it is indeed hid from the sight of the World which neither sees it as it is nor esteems it and because it is little humble and abject disdains to behold to take notice of it as unworthy the name and society of men They that will live Christianly will not subject themselves to the corruption of the men of this age so this life is hid from the sight and more from the power of this world for the soul that liveth christianly is above all humane power and insensible to all contempt and confusion and as the Diamond continues entire and strengthened by the violence of blowes so the perfect christian remains more content in the violence of Temptation more assured in the motions of disgrace more firm amidst the batteries of afflictions even Prosperity changeth not his spirit he is alike in all things for by grace and true Christian vertues the soul is raised above all things and lives in God Ye are dead and yet your life is hid with Iesus Christ in God Such is the life of a christian according to St. Paul a life that imitates that of Iesus Christ upon earth who according to the Oracles of the Prophets was despised and rejected of men a Man of sorrow and acquainted with grief and we hid as it were our faces from him he was despised and we esteemed him not When Hell the World Devill sinners thought to triumph over him and ravish both his honour and life at the same time he triumphs over them shewing that he hath power as he saith to lay down his life and he hath power to take it again at his pleasure Thus the life of Iesus Christ is hid from the eyes of men who know him not and from their power seeing he triumphs over his Enemies over death and sin Such ought to be the life of a Christian. St. Paul saith the same in other termes when he exhorts the Ephesians that they put off concerning the former conversation the old Man which is corrupt according to the deceitful lusts and be renewed in the spirits of their mind and that they put on the new Man which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness This is the first Protestation we make in Baptisme in which solemn action before that we are consecrated to the holy Trinity received and made the children of God we make a particular protestation to renounce Adam and the World and adhere to Iesus Christ to separate our selves from the one to unite our selves to the other So in this action so holy and happy we uncloath our selves of the one to cloath us again with the other that is the first step we make into the state of Christianity according to St. Paul And if we believe his Doctrine we see that the perfection of a Christian and all his happinesse consists in adhering to Iesus Christ to be united to him and cloathed with him For as all the grandeur of humane nature which was chosen in the Mysterie of the Incarnation to be the nature of God consists in being united to the word which subsisteth in him and operates by him so all the perfection of a christian soul consists in dwelling in Iesus Christ in adhering to him and operating by him all the perfection of a christian soul consists in that it dwells in Christ that it adheares to him that it lives of his life and operates not but by his spirit Now this cannot be but when the Soul is divided from it self and from all creatures for according to St. Paul We are to put off the old man with his deeds and to put on the new man which is renewed in knowledge after the Image of him that created him Whence it followeth that abnegation and uncloathing is the principal point of christian perfection so necessary that St. Bernard saith It had been better for us never to have been then to dwell in our selves and to our selves for the greatest misfortune of the soul is to see it self separated from God But God comes not into neither dwells in the soul till such time as it goeth out of it self uncloathes and annihilates it self And the greater its annihilation is the more it makes place for God If it take but little away God fills it with little if it deprive it self of much God fills it much and without doubt he will take it up and dwell wholly in it if the soul do annihilate and wholly uncloath it self We see and adore this proceeding of God in the Mysterie of the Incarnation the cause and example of the life of our souls For the eternall word choosing humane nature to unite himself unto it and to operate in and by it our redemptions would uncloath it of its own substance and humane person to shew us that we are not acceptable to God if we do not abandon our selves and that if we divest our selves of our selves and deprive our selves of all created things God will fill us with divine things for Grace as well as Nature abhorres vacuity Let us learn then to deprive our selves of humane things that we may be inriched with divine Let us go out of our selves and quit the commerce that we have with the creatures to be in Iesus Christ to enter into society and communion with God Let us renounce our own spirits and government to leave our selves to that of Iesus Christ and suffer him to live and raign in us according to what he truly designed of us In brief let us divest our selves of our selves to re-invest our selves with the Sonne of God Herein consists the happiness of our souls and that Christian perfection that we ought to search for here upon earth The necessity and practise whereof are in the following Treatises THE SECOND PART Wherein are proposed the sundry Motives which oblige Christians to Perfection CHAP. I. The Obligation that we have to acquire true Vertues wherein consists the life of the Soul and the inward life of a Christian. MAN being in honour abideth not but is compared unto the Beasts that perish Thus David describing the deplorable estate of man after sin a sad condition a miserable fall which hath deprived man
of the gifts of God and the favours wherewith the powerful hand of the Divinity had so liberally inriched him and degraded him of all honour and put him into a condition of meanness impotence and error This goodly spirit of man or rather this man all spirit is now nothing but flesh this beautiful Soul which breath'd for nothing but Heaven entertained it self so deliciously in the knowledge of infallible Truths and was inriched with contemplation of the greatness of God as with Divine Dew and heavenly Manna after so deplorable a fall obstinately links himself to the perishable goods of this World believes in lies seeks after vanities and can no more elevate himself to God so miserable and impotent hath sinne made him O unhappiness which cannot sufficiently be bewailed Man who by the happiness of his creation had eyes to contemplate onely his Creator and converting himself wholly to him had no heart but to love him no spirit but to adhere to him after so fatall a cast wholly turn'd away from God regards nothing but himself is wholly converted to the Creature lives as a Beast onely upon the Earth and like a Beast without judgement The Apostle goes further for describing the estate whereto the sinner is reduced he declares him uncapable of the knowledge of things which are of the Spirit of God The natural man saith he receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned Hence I doubt least the wayes I intend to propose which are according to the Spirit of God appear too high or above the capacity of our spirits I confess they are so if we look upon man in the state of sin impotency and the corruption of his Nature But we shall find the contrary if we consider that the Sonne of God came into the World to relieve man after his fall to restore him those gifts with advantage which he lost to render him capable of God In brief he was made man to teach man the true way to love and serve God he gives the power having setled in his Church an inexhaustible Treasure of Graces whence all souls may draw strength in their weakness succour in their necessity and ability in the very impotency of their nature Here of Iesus man and God we are to learn the way to love and adore and to serve God from him we must have the grace to do it We must in and by Iesus operate above our strength above our being and natural power and nothing ought to seem difficult to us or impossible for him seeing he gives us his grace and spirit in abundance to accomplish it To believe this we must look back upon the designs of the Son of God in the Profusion of his gifts and graces and leasurely examine with the eye of Faith what he will operate in us by his grace and divine communications At the first view we shall see that Grace draws from us our impotency advances us above our nature gives us a new being a new life a life intire and wholly hid in God a life proper to the state of Christianity according to which all Christians ought to live The Son of God speaking to the Samaritan and in her to all the faithful makes a Discourse hereof worthy to be consider'd expressing an intention to establish his Church The houre shall come sayes he and now is wherein the true Worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth for the Father seeketh such to worship him The reason he adds God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth What more powerful and clear testimony of the will of God who tries and elects Souls that worship him in spirit and truth If he himself doth choose them and call them to this new life is it not necessary that in pursuit of this election he give them grace necessary to arrive at such an estate Let us consider this passage and ponder all the words of it 1. Iesus Christ shews us that our life must be holy and severed from the creature seeing that we must serve God in Truth without amusing our selves with the vanities and things of the Earth which are nothing but lying In truth that is to say conformable to the Greatness of God and to that principle whence the Soul takes power to serve God the grace spirit and dispositions of Jesus Christ the spirit of Truth We learn further that if perfection of this life is inward pure holy and absolutely divine seeing it is and subsists in the adoration of God who as he is a Spirit pure and holy will be served and adored in Spirit 2. Iesus Christ teaches that we must wait upon him for this Grace necessary to accomplish his Commands who requiring of us a life so pure and perfect obliges himself to give us necessary Graces to arrive unto it since that without him we can do nothing of that which he teaches In brief we see how much we are obliged to require this grace to search after it to submit our selves unto it and to endeavour to become worthy of it We must not in a matter so important as this of our salvation demurre in consideration of our impotency or experience of our own incapacity but raising our selves above our selves by the spirit of Faith we must hope in him who commands nothing impossible who giveth grace abundantly to accomplish what he demands These are the first dispositions of a Christian and which those souls that have any desire to live Christianly ought first of all to learn But it happens quite contrary the understanding of men is so corrupt that they desire not these internal solid vertues nor require them of God and which is worse many think it unnecessary to possess them and that such a life as we call interiour is for few persons as if Jesus Christ speaking to the Samaritan had spoken onely to Her and not to the whole Church Others perswade themselves that it is impossible to attain them as not believing the Apostle who saith I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me a manifest error wherein many lose themselves in not sufficiently considering what they daily see by common experience set before their eyes If weakest Women Virgins and Children have had strength sufficient notwithstanding their young and tender bodies to embrace tortures almost insupportable and have by Grace been strengthned to overcome those difficulties why should not we believe also that abandoning our selves to the power and conduct of Grace and becoming faithful to the designs of God we may have sufficient grace and capacity to acquire these vertues If by the help of grace they can attain strength of body to support the rigours of a penitent life wherefore by favour of the same grace may not we arrive to the possession of that true vertue wherein a
is nothing For notwithstanding all the good will and resolutions in the World we shall never put them in practise without grace and after all this perseverance in good is necessary for he onely shall be crowned who continues to the end Yet we cannot have nor merit it it is the gift onely of the mercy of God a pure effect of his bounty Herein appears the extream need that we have of God how necessary this grace is to us not onely to do well but also to persevere From these truths we learn that a Christian that will be saved must not onely have a good will or entertain a good intention but further he must seriously seek God adhere to him and possess him since in him alone consisteth the grace that is necessary to do well and to end well in a holy perseverance Salvation is not a thing so easie as we conceive for we have nothing at all in our selves as our selves that can help to save us On the contrary all that is in us is in opposition to grace and by sinne conspires our ruine He that will save himself must seek from without himself the way of his salvation the power to do works worthy of Paradise the power to serve God which he cannot find but in Iesus Christ there he must seek it of him alone he must have the power to serve God the merit of his good works the grace of perseverance and the conduct of his life consequently he must possess and adhere to him if he will attain his happiness nothing else is of advantage seeing Iesus Christ saith himself Without me ye can do nothing Rules and Constitutions may be given us Vses and Documents may be prescribed to practise Vertue and to attain to Christian perfection but all will be without profit and stability if we go not out of our selves to possess Iesus his spirit and grace to receive in him and of him true Vertue stability and perseverance For the grace of Iesus is wholly to have true Vertue and Christianity and perfectly to accomplish the actions and practises that are proposed to us If we examine these principles of truth we shall immediately find from whence arriveth an evill commonly observable in the Church of God that many souls live in a good observance labour much and exercise themselves in the practise of the number of the Vertues yet make little or no progress towards the perfection that they desire and never arrive at the end which they propose to themselves If a reason may be given for a misfortune so generall it appeareth that this cannot proceed from any thing but that such souls seek not God purely nor resign themselves to his conduct to follow with simplicity and fidelity the order which God hath established on them but with a respect to themselves desirous to rise and arrive to an estate whereunto God doth not call them or they refuse to labour with fidelity to attain that whereunto God calls them They regard not God they work not by grace nor seek it where it is but trust in their own strength and work not with submission to grace it self They seek not in Iesus Christ strength and power to work for they think not of it being so blind that they rely upon themselves and by secret esteem of their own actions and Labours easily perswade themselves that there is Vertue where none is and that they are in some estate of perfection when they are very far from it confiding in their own good will or in a simple intention which they think good Believing this enough for them they neglect or despise all the rest which is of greater importance Now to remedy this evil which is not to be neglected you must practise what I shall tell you 1. We must be in will and perpetuall desire of God in a resolution not to love or act but by grace and by the spirit of Iesus this desire is a disposition little known yet more important then it seems for God will be desired and takes pleasure to see a soul thirst and run after him We see that he deferred his great mercies and gave not his sonne to the world till 4000 years after man had desired him 2. We must demand his spirit with earnestness crying from the bottom of our hearts after Iesus the onely freer of our souls the true principle of grace 3. All our recourse must be to Iesus not relying or confiding in any thing but his power vertue and grace to love and act by his dispositions This is properly that we call acting by the spirit and by submission to grace Let us proceed to the consideration of truth to give our selves light and to let those that would be saved know the need they have of God and the rule they ought to observe in their actions to render themselves worthy of God Faith teacheth us that every good guift and every perfect guift is from above and cometh down from the Father of Lights that the eternal Father giveth us all by his Sonne and in his Sonne and consequently the Sonne of God is made all things to us in him we have all out of him we have nothing whence he is called the gift of God And St. Paul speaking of the eternall Father who gives us his Sonne saith that he is made all things unto us by him we are in Iesus Christ who becomes unto us by God Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption These words represent unto us two truths First That we are in Iesus which shews us the adherence we ought to have to Iesus Christ. The other that we have all in him as having the Sonne of God in whom is true love true wisdom and assured salvation By those truths we learn that Iesus Christ being the true gift of God we have nothing if we possess not him We must therefore labour to become fit to possess him with the effects that he will operate in us Herein consists the practise of Christian life to receive Iesus as a gift of God to possess him as a great treasure to offer him to God to refer him to his Father and with him our Being our life and actions Our soul must be continually employ'd in this double practise in these two continuall motions towards God one to receive Iesus Christ who is the grace of graces the other to offer him to his Father he being the gift of gifts and with him to refer our selves intirely to the glory of his Father and accomplishment of his holy will The third Motive CHAP. VII That a Christian is a Member of Jesus Christ and as such he must be ruled by the Spirit and live the life of Jesus Christ. THe most noble Quality man can have on earth the most happy condition whereto he may be advanced is that of a Christian. By this state God alwayes good and full of mercy relieves him in his faults repairs his
make this point hard to it self I cannot believe that a Christian will oppugne this Truth and lesse imagine that a soul it cannot arrive to the possession of a solid and Christian vertue if she walk not by the way and light of the truths proposed if she do not found her self upon this spirit For if we consider and believe that we are members of Iesus Christ true not imaginary members not of a man or Saint but of Iesus Son of the living God and that in this quality we are truly and immediately united to him if I say we consider our selves as such do we not at the same time see that we are united to God and that by such an union we must be animated by his spirit live by his life and be governed by his conduct This is the first condition whereunto we are raised by Christianity the first grace we receive in Baptisme What vertue and perfection can that soul have which lives not conformable to this estate what doth that soul learn which knowes not his truth To what end is the rest of our practise and this great fabrick of devotion which we propose to our selves if we lay not this first foundation which is so necessary that without it all the rest cannot subsist If we have God for us if we are united to him as members to the head yet if we are not resigned as we ought to his infinite wisdom and loving conduct why do we trouble our selves with all the rest To what end so much care so much prudence and humane providence To what end so many desires He is too covetous whom God sufficeth not What can a soul desire to whom its God and Creator is made all things And if it cannot find rest in this where can it find rest What can content him who is not content with God saith St. Prosper Certainly that soul is very blind and miserable which is not content with providence and the love of Iesus I demand all that you would have of humane prudence in all things we shall find but two many reasons to invite us but a soul brought up in the knowledge of the truths of Christianity and nourish'd in the esteem of God will say with a holy person of our time that the poor Doves are more pleasing to God then the Serpents Let us then raise our selves up to God trust in him adhere to his spirit and beg light of him to penetrate into these truths to bear the effects of them and grace to live faithfully in his wayes There remains one motive more to see the obligations we have to belong to God and to adhere to him if we will arrive at perfection The fourth Motive CHAP. IX That this Precept to love God doth oblige us to perfection and makes us to go out of our selves to be God's COntinuing the designes we have undertaken in this second Part to shew by divers Motives the Obligations all men have to be perfect and to adhere to God and live in subjection and submission to his conduct and grace It remains that we consider in this last Motive the essentiall and indispensable Obligations that we all have to the Precept of Love and consequently to perfection to which end we must consider the two estates in the Church of God the estate of the ordinary Christian and that of the more Religious not to examine them but to behold the abuse of the former too lightly believing that perfection and solid vertue is not for them and losing themselves in this Errour perswade themselves that a Christian as Christian is not at all obliged to interiour life and vertue but that it is a work of supererogation and an unnecessary labour to be busied in acquisition of Christian vertue and possession of inward perfection a manifest Errour the more damageable in that it derogates from the honour of God gives license to the world and blinding their souls looses them and makes them slothfull in the search of the right way to salvation To undeceive our selves then in a matter so important and to secure our salvation which otherwise would remain very doubtfull we must intentively observe the obligations of these two estates that by this knowledge we may know what we ought to be Saint Thomas Aquinas teacheth us that the soul that professeth Religion enters into a stable and permanent estate wherein she seeks after true and solid perfection devesting her self of all that may hinder her arrivall to this perfection By this solemn profession she renounces all things taking in this manner of life as saith Moses the Abbot the wayes instruments and means to attain certainly to this perfection so much commended and recommended by Iesus Christ. For this Reason she makes vowes to separate her self from her self and all other creatures to appropriate her self to God and if she take heed to all the circumstances which accompany this action or if lifting up her eyes to Heaven she considers the will of God towards her in her vocation she knows that by the estate of Religion she enters into a profession which must sever her from the world and whatsoever is in the world to unite her to her God and to place her if we may so say in the bosom of God to live upon earth the life that the Angels live in heaven to lead in a holy communion the life that God leads in his holiness that is to say the life of God in God For as God is busied wholly in the knowledge and love of himself so the soul which desireth to perfectionate her self is not busied in Religion but in a pure and continuall contemplation of God and in acts of love which she doth with great care and vigilancy For for the soul to be as God would have her and arrive to the eminent and divine estate whereto God hath called her must be accidentally and by grace that which God is substantially and by nature This is much in few words to extoll the Religious estate and makes us see how holy it is whereto they are called But we are to understand that what is said extends to all Christians for the estate of Christianity is an estate stable and permanent which calls and leads us to the participation of a divine life an estate permanent and indispensable for it is marked with the character of Baptisme which according to the Principles of our Faith can never be defaced an estate holy and of a particular sanctity which only appertains to Christianity since it is consecrated by the unction of the most holy Trinity confirmed by the grace of adoption and enriched with the fulness of the holy Ghost who is given us by confirmation and conserved by the sacraments an estate permanent seeing it is indispensable for no Christian can go out of or have a dispensation from the obligation he hath to his perfection a perfection not indifferent but Evangelicall and Christian which the Son of God mentions in the
regret that a great number of souls shut the door of their hearts to God oppose themselves to Iesus Christ and his grace and by consequence will never arrive to perfection what pains soever they take because they neglect and disesteem the practices of true vertue and slight them to adhere too much to their own sense to love themselves too much and to seek too greedily their proper interests This is that to speak properly which hinders them from resigning themselves to the conduct of God Hence it proceeds that by too much seeking after their own satistaction their profit and the contentment of their spirit they grieve the spirit of God captivate grace and lose themselves in seeking themselves and in stead of uniting themselves to God they separate themselves from him and which is more to be feared they go out of the ordinances of heaven and from the counsels of God to follow their own will their own desires and their own conduct to tye themselves to their own flattering affections It is they must give remedy to their own mishap Let us leave them to speak to souls who will quit themselves wholly to acquire the happy possession of vertues CHAP. II. Severall practises whereof we may make use to attain Christian Vertues SInce the life of a Christian must be a life of grace a life representing the life of God expressing in man the perfections of Divinity it followeth that the actions of a Christian proceeding from such a Principle be great and suitable to such an estate and worthy the spirit of God which dwels in it by the grace of adoption And if the vertues of a Christian are so worthy and rare certainly the dispositions must be also great the way to obtain them singular and the practice extraordinary For as there is great difference between the morall vertues of Philosophy and the supernaturall of a Christian so must the practice hereof be different and extraordinary The wisest of the times past gave Precepts to form man and instate him in the most perfect use of reason they prescribed Laws to overcome and subject the passions to the reasonable will the most noble part of the soul. But all this considered is no more then to make us perfect men that is very reasonable but our business is to make our selves perfect Christians and as it is much more to be Christians then to be men there being a great difference between them so the practises imposed for attaining these two estates are different one as much advanced above the other as the state of a Christian is above that of a man as grace is above nature We must now build upon this foundation and advance the edifice of Christian perfection upon the principles we intend to propose Therefore we must speak and act as Christians not as Philosophers I say then to attain Christian vertues we must before all things have a great desire of Christian perfection and a resolution to labour in the acquisition of true vertues as much as is necessary and as God requires of us This desire must be efficacious and permanent from the bottom of our heart It is good also to awaken if often and to form acts thereof with application of spirit The first means to obtain vertue is prayer The soul that applies her self with perseverance to prayer cannot fail of the possession of vertue Prayer is understood two wayes first as a demand as if we should say that if we demand vertue of God he will give it us If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally This Proposition is true in this sense but this demand must be accompanyed with these considerations true desire of vertue perseverance in prayer a vigilancy to become faithful to the grace that God communicates to us otherwise our demand will be without effect our prayer without fruit It is not sufficient for the soul that would be said to arrive at Christian perfection to nourish in it self vertuous desires and to demand them of God if she be not also careful to demand them as she ought and if she doth not with vigilancy labour in the practise and exercise of these vertues God will have us co-operate with his grace and put to our hand to do with him what he will operate in us so that to obtain vertues we must demand them of God but in demanding them we must labour therein Thus we must understand the acquisition of vertues by prayer This Proposition is built upon this truth That we cannot have vertue unless God give it and God gives it not but with an intent that we should co-operate therein and that we should labour on our parts shewing in this co-operation the fidelity of our souls For this end hath God given us free will There is yet another way of obtaining vertues by prayer understanding by prayer meditation or as we say ordinarily mentall prayer The soul which applies it self to this exercise considering the greatness of the Divinity the verities of Faith the beauty and stability of eternall things the inconstancy of temporall the vanity of all in the World easily apprehends the love of Truth and a contempt of vanity two foundations necessary to the perfections of a Christian life the soul by this exercise remaining united and tyed to God receives the rayes of this divine light which is the life and way of our souls and if she persevere with fidelity must at last be wounded with this love which she so contemplates By this means entring into the enjoyment of divine love which is alwayes liberall of Communications she will infallibly receive the Vertues necessary for her and be inriched with most pure gifts agreeable to the greatness of God who will give her more then sufficiently graces convenient for living in the perfection of Christian Vertues wherein appeares the necessity and profit of this manner of prayer which elevates us to God causes us to enter into a conversation with God unites us to him enlightens us transforms us and disposes us to the life of grace and leads us to the acquisition and possession of true Vertues Food is not so necessary to the life of the body as this manner of prayer to the life of the soul and the acquisition of Vertues The second meanes to acquire Christian vertues is mortification which is absolutely necessary to the soul that will live the life of grace that is to say Christianly We must remember and intentively consider that we are all the Children of Adam living his life following the inclinations of the being of Adam to be christian is to be the Child of Iesus Christ to live his life wholly to follow the spirit motions and holy inclinations of Iesus Christ into this state and new-being we are put by Baptisme As many of you saith St. Paul as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ meaning they are made like the Son of God
they are by grace that which Iesus Christ is by nature This truth granted it is easie to comprehend the necessity of mortification If to be christians we must be re-invested in Iesus Christ that is live of his spirit and follow his motions and inclinations then to arrive to this happiness we must uncloath our selves of the spirit and inclinations of Adam and we must to speak in the words of the Apostle Put off the old man and put on the new man this cannot be done but by mortification which is the more necessary in that the inclinations and spirit of Adam are as much different from those of Iesus Christ as the Heaven is distant from the Earth These two spirits are as contrary one to the other as the animal is to the spirituall according to the Apostle who saith The first man is of the earth earthy the second man is from Heaven and cannot accord together Now to argue by the rule of contraries we must say that to establish the one it is necessary to annihilate the other to plant good we must root out evill so he that would love christianity that is according to the spirit and vertue of Iesus Christ must take away and mortifie the spirit and inclinations of Adam which are in all alwayes contrary to Iesus Christ. The Son of God came into the world as Saint Iohn saith to destroy the works of the Devill The spirit of Adam is a sinner and his inclinations are but concupiscences works of the flesh therefore is the Sonne of God come to destroy them We must also labour and co-operate with him to destroy in us and to root out of us all that sin hath put in us wherein mortification assists us This that Divinity which we call mysticall teaches us which requires that a christian to arrive to that perfection whereto God calleth him passeth through the purgative life in the wayes of mortification annihilation and resignation that by this exercise the soul may purge and cleanse it self from all that is in her opposite to grace and the true possession of God This Doctrine is founded on a Truth which most know but consider not sufficiently That the whole nature and being of man is corrupt all his inclinations turned to evill carrying the centre the source and seed of all vice and imperfection in it Now to order it so as that this nature of Adam this being may be possessed of God replenished with vertuous inclinations and that he may have in himself true charity the seed and principle of all Christian vertues he must necessarily take from it the evill that is in it for the good and perfection cannot be there but in taking away and rooting out the corruption and imperfection which cannot be done without a serious and continuall mortification inward or outward Whence we learn that to acquire christian vertues it is not enough to demand them of God by prayer which we call a demand nor to consider them in mentall prayers and to make good resolutions thereon it is not enough to know them and desire them nor to do acts of them and to produce many practises of them but we must also root out of the foundation of our soul all that which is contrary to vertue The man who desires to live a good christian and aspires to true vertue as the onely way to Heaven must not so much busie himself in the acquisition of vertues by the practise of them as he must labour to root out of his heart and pull out of the foundation of his being all oppositions inclinations and customs contrary to true vertue For as soon as he hath emptied his heart of all that is displeasing to God and contrary to him God will from that moment replenish and possess his heart and liberally extend to him the graces and vertues necessary for him but withall according to the measure in which God gives them to him he must be faithfull on one side to correspond with the grace given him on the other he must labour to render himself more and more capable of the spirit and possession of God he endeavouring to cleanse and purify his heart and God continually replenishing and consecrating it for his own dwelling and sanctifying it by his grace By this amorous combate God always gives and is always augmenting his gifts man receives and in receiving disposes himself more and more to receive more abundantly the sweet bounties of God all which is done in the soul proportionably to her purifying and mortifying her self from all that is disagreeable and contrary to the spirit of God By mortification and the purgative life we not onely understand corporall austerities such as affect the sense as macerations fastings and other exercises which rob the sense of what is most agreeable to it which although they be good and profitable and sometimes necessary yet are they not principall but we apply this Doctrine first to interiour mortifications whereby the soul purifies her heart annihilates her sources therein and pulls away the roots of imperfections and of all that is displeasing to God By this exercise she stifles as much as she can the seeds of self-love though hid in every thing she strives to gain a perfect victory over her self her principall care is to annihilate her will her intentions her desires her thoughts and inclinations to those of God choosing in all things that which is most pure most conformable to the spirit of Iesus most opposite and contrary to her own inclinations and unruly affections Hereunto she wholly addicts her self herein she is very vigilant she knows it generally a maxime that the more the heart of man is filled with the creatures and the love and regard of himself the more she is separated from God voyd of his spirit and true vertue Therefore she endeavours to exercise her self in this interiour mortification Another Reason which obligeth us to the spirit and exercise of mortification is that the Devil makes use of our inclinations of our habits of our desires and of our self-love yea he makes use of our selves against our selves and of our nature subjected as well by the sin of Adam as our actuall sins he makes use I say thereof to cast us away and to separate us from God even in things most holy and the most interiour and therefore to avoid the perils and to take the weapons from the hands of our enemie whereof he makes use to undo us we must necessarily pass through the purgative life we must go out of our selves out of the life of Adam to be in Iesus Christ and to live of his life and we must mortifie our selves to make place for God and take from our heart all that may displease him that is opposite to his grace and by this exercise we shall easily arrive to the acquisition of Christian vertues CHAP. III. That the adherence of a Soul to Iesus Christ is the most perfect
unprofitable things which we meet with in the practise and ordinary exercises of Christians for want of taking hold of things in the beginning and not entring into the spirit of grace for want whereof do we not see many souls who keep most holy constitutions and very good rules others that do frequent actions of vertue many who follow and oblige themselves to spirituall exercises and practises yet nevertheless advance not towards perfection nor have any solid vertue They alwayes labour but never gain any they continually travail but never arrive at their journeys end Though all that they do seems to be done in grace and that as is believed they have not their conscience charged with any sinne yet they profit not in any manner all that can be said of such persons is that they are not the worst What is the cause of this evill whence comes it that they profit nothing amidst so much care and Travel The evill comes from this that such souls have not sufficient recourse nor submission to grace they are not tyed to Iesus Christ they scarce think that there is a Iesus Christ they have no distrust of themselves they seek not God but their self-satisfaction and their particular Interests and which is worse by a secret and dangerous consequence they rely upon their own courage upon their travel and exercises and promise to themselves too much of their own strength and tying themselves to divers practises whereof they make use they tye also their happiness thereto If you demand whence it comes that they have not solid vertues it is easily perceiv'd it is because they amuse themselves much in unprofitable things trifles and exteriour things they enter not into the practise of true and solid vertues they esteem them not and hardly know them if they do practise them it is but superficially they have but the appearance of vertue all that they possess thereof is like the grasse upon the house top which withers away of it self of which we must take heed and carefully remedy it least passing our life so we travel in vain and run without arriving to our end and that under those fair appearances in the most part of our actions we be not of the number of the foolish Virgins of them to whom God saith at the houre of death I know you not for God tells us not every one that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven And certainly there are an infinite number of christians who will find themselves deceived when God shall make manifest the secrets of hearts and judge the justice of men because that believing themselves rich in good works and charged with the fruits of christian penitence they shall find in their hands nothing but wind and shall see in their life nothing but appearances of Vertues And therefore in an affaire so important we must be vigilant to act christianly and to do works worthy of God which shall gain us the eternall possession of God This subject being of high enterprise I will propose the dispositions which seem to be most necessary The first Disposition CHAP. V. Of the spirit of Faith and the necessity thereof THE first and principall Disposition which the soul that will live Christianly must have is Faith He that cometh to God saith the Apostle must believe that he is and without Faith it is impossible to please him This Disposition is not onely the first but cause of all other what the root is to the tree the foundation to the building the mother to the infant the same is Faith to all vertues and to a Christian life Whence on the spirit of Faith depends all the happiness and perfection of a Christian soul or on the other side from littleness of Faith springs all the evil all the abominations in the life of man The soul that is guided by the spirit and light of faith knows what it is to love and what to detest for faith is nothing but truth the spirit of faith is properly the spirit of eternall truth wherein is seen the strength of faith He therefore that hath faith hath the spirit of truth and by this spirit of truth if he possess it and suffer it to guide him he easily discerns good from bad true from false the flesh from the spirit This faith this spirit of truth shews the soul what the God is that she adoreth from thence she is carried on to love him to fear him and to live in a continuall respect of his divine presence Faith saith God is the principle of all being the end and centre of all things that out of him all is but a dream that all creatures are vain that God is in all things that he gives life and being to all that all things depend on him This makes the soul know that she ought to esteem God alone and all that belongs to God that all the rest is nothing but vanity and lies This light and spirit of faith teacheth that God is eternall truth his works are truth his words and promises true and infallible This causes the soul which is guided by the spirit of faith constantly to adhere and strongly to relie on the truths and maxims of Christianity which are the works and the words of Iesus God and man she believes firmly that what he hath said will come to pass what he hath promised is certain the truth that the eternall Father hath revealed to us by his Son are infallible and eternally the Son of God who is the truth uncreated is a God which can neither deceive nor lye Hereupon the soul by this spirit of truth remains indissolubly tyed to all that God hath said and revealed by his Son so as she cannot taste nor understand any humane reason or object she will not hearken nor adhere to any thing but to the truth of faith she will only follow the maximes that Iesus Christ hath left us in his Gospel and imitate the example of his life divine vertues the rest she despises as unworthy a Christian soul which ought not to be guided by nor live but in the spirit of truth and certainly so the Christian must live All the world confesseth that God alone is truth that the onely spirit of God is the only spirit of truth whence it appears that all that is not God and according to the spirit of God is but vanity and lyes This granted how can they live who have any other object then God Here let us make reflection on the point we shall shew how much they are deceived who in matters of faith and in the conduct of their life separate themselves from this spirit of truth to seek humane reason wayes of prudence maximes of wise men who measure perfection and Christian vertues according to their proper sense according to their own spirits such souls cannot but fall into an abisse of errours and doubts or at least such persons
must adhere thereto and having adhered to it we must act and do all things in pursuit of this adherence Let us propose an example in common things to facilitate the practice I look upon God I consider his infinite essence I see that in respect of his divine Majesty all creatures are as nothing Having taken and imprinted this thought in my spirit I believe and immediately adhere thereunto saying it is true Then making use of this truth which I believe I despise all that is not of God and that belongs not to God for the act of faith which I performed teacheth me that all the rest is nothing all creatures are nothing before God In like manner amidst my actions making use of the truth that I profess and believe sometimes I despise one thing sometimes another esteeming God onely but accounting all the rest as nothing Thus I act in the spirit of Truth and make use of Faith Let us give an example more common I would form in my self the presence of God by the principles of Faith Hereupon I will rouse up in my spirit the thought of that truth which teaches me God is present every where and thence infer that consequently he is in my heart with the same greatness and Majesty that he is in Heaven amidst the Cherubims and Saints for it is the same God Having conceived this truth I adhere to it and say it is true then making use of it I find my self in the presence of God who is in my heart I hold my self before him in great reverence I walk with recollection of spirit and a sweet application of my soul to God who is present Now I look on him with love next I adore him doing all these actions by the principle of truth This is to make use of Truth The thing is not hard we must onely apply our selves heartily hereunto For according to the measure that we advance and perfectionate our selves in this exercise shall our actions be perfect and performed in the spirit of truth This is a point of much importance I wish I could perswade all christians to it for it is the foundation of true piety and the cause root and source of all good actions CHAP. VII Of the effects that Faith produceth in our souls and of the esteem of God WHen the Apostle saith Faith is the substance of things hoped for he would compare faith to substance and say that as substance is the support of all Accidents so faith is the support and basis of all Vertues and Graces Faith is the first gift of heaven and the eldest of the graces of God she contains and substains all the vertues of Christianity according to the faith in us and the use we make thereof are we vertuous and advanced in Christian perfection As this is the first of Gods gifts so the first care of a Christian must be to compass so fruitfull and profitable a grace This is a talent whereof God will demand a most exact account when we shall appear before the tribunall of his divine justice God gives us not so great a grace but to profit thereby and make use of it It belongs to God alone to give faith to move our will to illuminate our understanding but it is in man to make use of it and to shew by his works the faith he hath received of God In fine what advantage is it to possess faith which is an infused habit and to let it sleep in us to possess truth and to keep it under restraint Faith we say is a supernaturall habit a light of grace we must therefore put it in action and make use of this light to walk forward in the wayes of grace and path of vertue This is the designe of God evident in the mysteries of Christianity the eternall Father sent and gave us his Son the uncreated and essentiall truth to speak to us conduct us in the spirit of truth the Son conversed among men to bear witness as he himself saith unto the truth the same Son of God ascending into heaven sent to us the Holy Ghost the spirit of truth to enlighten us and teach us the truth And why hath God so great a care that we should know the truth but because the knowledge of that might save us and make us free that is that the light of the truth which is the spirit of faith might draw us from vice and sin to lead and confirm us in the acquisition and possession of vertues Look upon a soul guided by the spirit of faith you shall see that immediately she detests ill and embraceth good it is the property of it to engender and form acts of vertue If the soul knows the greatness of God making use of the knowledge of this truth she will presently be carried to a great esteem of God From this esteem springs reverence reverence operates love love brings the soul to God the soul so united by love fears to displease him This fear which is an effect of love brings into the soul a vigilancy not to offend him she loveth but it is to please him in all things This vigilancy forms a purity in the soul this purity renders us worthy to possess God Thus faith summons al the vertues embraces them and binds them all together and as she is mother so is she also nurse of them In brief she is the foundation of the Christian life the nourishment of all good actions This is the meaning of Saint Paul who said The just shall live by faith the reason is plain Faith is a light of truth he then that walks in the light of faith walketh in the truth and to walk in truth is to hate sin which is a lyer This is to live in the practice and possession of true vertue and in the terms of the Scripture to live in Iesus who is the way the truth and the life It therefore greatly importeth souls which will live good Christians and obtain true vertue to establish themselves in the spirit and use of faith to demand it of God and to referre all their good exercises thereunto which is truly the foundation of all the rest the principle the entertainer and supporter of Christian perfection this exercise is very large Faith and truth have effects almost innumerable He who applies himself thereto shall taste the fruits more or less according to his care therein But if we would know the most important where we must begin I answer it is the esteem of God wherein the soul must entertain it self much and lay a good foundation to arrive at this esteem It is not necessary to enter into a high and extraordinary knowledge of God but to make use of the Principles of faith and a frequent loving and affectionate consideration of God we must never speake of God or of any thing that concerns him but in words worthy of the subject with a sense full of respect and reverence
makes of them Iesus Christ wills his Apostles speaking to them of sufferings to receive them without fear and with esteem and wills that they be unto them sweet and pleasing Because saith he the hairs of your head are numbred and not one of them shall fall to the ground without the will of your Father He said that God is our Father to engrave in our hearts a respect confidence and love He sayes that our hairs are numbred and that he keeps an account of them to perswade us that Gods care of us is great and that he hath a care of us even to the least things In brief he saith that a hair shall not fall to the ground without his order to shew that all the losses privations sufferings all events loss of goods of honour of life happen not but by the order of God who is our Father What greater reason to esteem sufferings and to conduct our souls to peace and repose amidst the perplexities of the world then the assurance of Iesus Christ It is enough for a Christian if he be a Christian when Iesus Christ sayes to him Fear not for a hair shall not fall to the ground without your Father how full of love and consolation are the words of Saint Paul to the Ephesians I beseech you that you walk worthy the vocation wherewith ye are called The Reason he adds There is but one Lord one faith one Baptisme one God and Father of all who is above all and through all and in you all These words are sufficient to establish us christianly in the spirit of suffering and to make us to bear all with sweetness peace and tranquillity of spirit even with esteem and respect We need no other object for our eyes nor other thought in our heart but there is but one Lord this Lord is God this God is our Father this Father is above all In these words we shall learn in what respect subjection and esteem we ought to be in all the contrarieties and sufferings of humane life Secondly We may look upon the state of Christianity and examine what is the essence of the true spirit of piety we shall find that sufferings is the principall its life and its continuance and its maintenance My Son sayes the wise man going to the service of God keep thy self just and in fear and prepare thy soul to temptation adding Take all that shall be imposed on thee suffer pain with patience and humility St. Paul more clearly describes this when speaking of the persecutions he had suffered he adds And all those also who will live godly in Iesus Christ shall suffer persecution which must be understood of all sorts of sufferings both inward and outward For the life of a Christian is no other then the life of Iesus Christ the spirit of Christianity This is the spirit of Iesus or in the common phrase the spirit of grace Jesus was alwayes in humiliation and sufferings he loved from all eternity seeing that from all eternity he was resolved to be man he is reinvested therein becoming man humiliation and sufferings were the centre of his life It is enough to honour pains humiliation and sufferings to say that Iesus Christ hath born them and as the Christian must be the image of Iesus Christ so must he bear with Iesus Christ all sorts of commotions pains humiliations and sufferings As we have born the earthly Image of the earthly Adam let us also bear the image of the heavenly saith the Apostle meaning that we must reinvest us with his Vertues that our life may be an express image of his life which appearing alwayes in desertions lowness and sufferings so ours must be but the same state of sufferings What honour is it to a Christian to weare the Livery of Iesus Christ what happiness to follow his steps we are his members he is our Head were it not a shame to see the body decked with flowers bathed in delights and the head crowned with Thorns we are his Brethren and must possess one heritage with him is it not reason then that we should be like him and imitate his conflicts if we would participate of his Triumphs We are co-heires with Iesus Christ saith the Apostle if we suffer with him that we may be also glorified with him Whatsoever it be the Sonne of God hath so ordered it in Christianity that he that will follow him must renounce himself and take up his Crosse. They are deceived who think to attain true piety with delights who refuse all sorts of pains and mortifications who take care for peace repose and health who onely study to frame to themselves an easie life and seek for ease in their labours and quiet in their spirits and think thereby to make a great progress in perfection No no! vertue walks onely amongst the thorns and amidst the travails of the spirit of flesh and the vices of the world She must tame her self by watchings and mortifications and the happiness of a Christian is onely in the Crosse. It is the Livery of the Children of God the mark of their election the Plummet of their fidelity and the onely way of Heaven for saith St. Paul We must enter into the Kingdom of God through many tribulations The third reason is that the grace of Christianity can operate no other effect then annihilation and suffering for to be in grace is to be subject to graces and to be in the Kingdom of grace that is to be in the Crosse. For so much as the soul hath of grace so much she must have of the Crosse. The Fathers of the Church call the life of a perfect Christian a hidden Martyrdom which is easie to conceive if we consider that the spirit of Christianity consisteth in a crucifying love a love like that of the spouse who cryes I charge you O ye Daughters of Ierusalem if you find my beloved that you tell him that I am sick of love love which pierceth the soul which transports and transforms it into its object Iesus love which combates sufferings and triumphs over death Behold this combate of love God loves us gives us his love makes us suffer to prove the faithfulness of our love the soul that suffereth because she loves willingly throwes her self into sufferings and defies all labours that in her sufferings she may express her love Iesus did so at the evening of his death when he went to sacrifice himself upon the Altar of the Crosse when he said to his Apostles To the end the World may know that I love my Father and do as he hath commanded me arise and let us go hence whence he went to the Garden of Olives to deliver himself willingly into the hands of his enemies where he shewed that love was the cause of his sufferings his sufferings the marks of his love Howsoever it be to be a Christian and not to love God cannot stand together and
words which shew the pain and travel a Christian is obliged to undergo to root out of his heart and tear from his soul all that is contrary to the Law of God and vertue words which condemn our delicates and all that fear labour and sufferings excusing themselves by their weakness of nature To comprehend the importance of this advice Let us lift up our eyes to the contemplation of the truth and spirit of Christianity there we shall learn of the Son of God that the Kingdom of heaven is gained by violence that the grace of Christianity is grounded upon suffering that the perfection is in love in love crucifying that all the wayes of God and the operations of his spirit consist in privation and resignation and consequently in the cross Whence it necessarily follows that they who fly sufferings and humiliation seeking onely a sweet pleasant life fearing pains and travel do by this fear make themselves unworthy of God who reigneth on the cross and is onely found in the thorns of the fiery bush They withdraw themselves from the Kingdom of grace which agrees with annihilation they shut their heart against love and which is more to be lamented go out of the order of God and from the conformity they ought to have with Iesus Christ crucified who is the object the way and the life of perfect Christians and of Iesus Christ who cannot conduct our selves but in the way of annihilating of suffering and humiliation which is the way of Iesus Christ his life and essence Here may these delicate persons see how their faint-heartedness deceives them Let us then take heed and seriously consider the sentence that Iesus Christ pronounces against them He that takes not up his cross and follows me is not worthy of me To fear sufferings to fly humiliation to refuse the communication of God is to make our selves unworthy and uncapable of all his divine operations of grace for God cannot communicate himself to the soul in the wayes of grace but he will cause therein annihilation and humility All the operations of grace can have no effects in our souls but those of humility abnegation and death Grace must operate in the souls that which death doth in the body This is so known a truth that all that speak of grace unless that it 's proper and principall effect is to give us to God to make God live in us and to place therein his love and favour It is impossible for God to operate all that in us without annihilations subversions humiliations and death unless he pluck the love of our selves and the Creatures from our hearts he cannot plant his own therein If he kill not in us the old Adam never will Iesus Christ live in us God cannot dwell in us if he do not annihilate and consume the impurities and malice of our souls Thus Christian grace to produce its effects in us requires an estate of submission and death They therefore deceive themselves who think they are in grace yet bear no mark at all of this grace for if it be in a soul it will infallibly produce the effects proper to it if it produce nothing it is a sign it is not there Herein also appeares the wrong that the fear of suffering causeth to Christians How much do souls separate themselves from God who seek no other consolation satisfaction and enjoyment but their own and labour onely to put themselves into a certain repose thinking that perfection consists in this false rest and never to suffer any crosse affliction or temptation No no Earth is the place of combate Christian life is the death of man perfect love like the Phenix seeks death and findes life in the same flames the Crosse gave grace grace now giveth the crosse the sacred spouse saith she is fair but brown scorched with the burning beauty of divine love He that cannot suffer cannot love he that cannot love is not worthy of God or the name of a Christian. It is love that triumph'd over Iesus Christ annihilated him to the condition of our mortality it is love that humbled him even to our lowness and infirmities it is love that crucified him Christianity hath no other love or grace If then the Christian will love if he will be subject to the Kingdom of grace he must defie all sufferings and couragiously embrace all that shall befall him for love overthrowes all and triumphs over the soul. If she flatter it is to hurt if it hurt it is to kill so they who seek true and solid piety must not behold God but in the Crosse nor consider grace but in humility and sufferings My well-beloved saith the spouse in the Canticles is a bundle of myrrhe she confesses she fainted and dyed in the communications of love she received from her God For when the spouse had given her his love and ordained charity in her she instantly adds stay me with flaggons comfort me with apples for I am sick of love The greatness of God the infinity of his being his divine spirit are so powerful that if he never so little communicate himself to the soul by the purity of love and grace He is able to annihilate and consume her For if he apply himself to the Creature without proportioning himself to its capacity he cannot be supported for he overwhelms and ruines the created being by this power infinite and infinitely predominating over a being so small so subjected to his power In fine it would swallow up and consume it if he did not proportion his operation to our weakness and if he gave us not a capacity and force to bear it But whatsoever he doth if he communicate himself he alwayes annihilates if he giveth grace he changeth the man if he giveth light he humbles him if he make him to bear his love he wounds him Thus the soul that will love God must love sufferings he that will love the life of grace must lose himself and annihilate himself to receive divine operations He that will beare the light of truth must humble himself seeing God doth not manifest himself but to the humble of spirit and that all the works of God bear his Crosse in humility Hence we learn that it is necessary we esteem the Crosse and sufferings and embrace them with joy and fervour of spirit but we must further observe that sufferings subversions losses and humiliations and other misfortunes of humane life are necessary to a Christian to keep him steadfast amidst the deceits and blandishments of the World the subtleties and surprizes of the Devill By these wayes which we call rigorous God severs us from the world and takes us from kindness to the creatures he makes use of these losses and subversions as of gall and bitterness to mingle with the sweets that the creatures present to us He uses humiliation and affliction to abate our pride and if he do leave us for a time it is to
humble us and in all this he is most mercifull to us whereof they are unworthy who fear sufferings and for love of themselves oppose the love that God bears them and destroy what God would do for their good Moreover by these losses and eversions by sufferings and humiliations privations and abnegations God delivers us from the nets and snares of the Devil This enemy of our salvation seldom tempts us but in the Principles of nature and our own inclinations he makes use of the love of our selves against our selves Now he is unable to do us evil and is deceived in his malice When God vouchsafes to annihilate us and put us into the wayes of suffering of desertion of humiliations or when of our selves we give our selves to the study of mortifications to exercises of humility and to the practice of the spirit of repentance for through these mortifications we destroy in us whatsoever is evil and pluck from our selves that which serves as an instrument of the Devil to loose us and deceive us In fine by sufferings and humiliations we put our selves out of hazard and are shielded from the dangerous darts and most forcible temptations of the Devil because it is a thing so noble and so worthy to suffer and to suffer in the spirit of grace that it is above nature the common order Whence it comes to pass that the Devil who cannot tempt but according to the order of nature knows not how to take the soul that lives in the spirit of sufferance and of the cross But if he will assault her as he will not fail to do it will be against her sufferings endeavouring to destroy in the soul the spirit of the cross suggesting to her temptations of impatience of envy of vexation giving her occasion to make ill use thereof For he knows that the soul is in assurance and out of danger so long as she shall remain faithfull to her sufferings to her eversions and humiliations and to the state of the cross in as much as this evangelicall spirit is a wall of fire which invironeth the soul a cloud that covers her a huckler that protects her and humility is the foundation that upholds her Reflecting upon what we have said we see it is a great impediment to the way of perfection to decline sufferings and not to care to make advantage of all that happens to us to receive it and to bear all according to the spirit of the grace of Christianity And by these Principles we shall know how far pusillanimous and fearfull soules stray from solid vertue who fear all things who seek nothing but delight consolation and satisfaction To remedy these abuses let us see with what dispositions we must receive all the emergencies of humane life and in what spirit we must bear them CHAP. XII Of the Dispositions wherewith we must bear sufferings and all the adversities of humane life WHat way sover we look upon man we shall find him condemn'd to a thousand disturbances and evils his life is a perpetuall warfare his dwelling in the land of his enemies his estate consists in the adversities of the world which like a sea full of rocks and storms tosseth him perpetually up and down and holds him in continuall fear Dangers threaten him miseries sickness and death are the portion of his life sadness and sighes his ordinary entertainment in his greatest pleasures he finds a bitter sweet some misfurtune is always present or some apprehension seizes him which mingles the sweet of his pleasure with the gall of some misfortune it is common to all men none are exempt not Kings by their power nor the Learned by their prudence it was said by a King in his greatest and most just resentments Truly every man living is altogether vanity But if he be a Christian he is yet more subject to sufferings though in another respect as a member of Iesus Christ he must like his head bear thorns and the cross being by the state of Christianity and the grace flowing from the cross associated to the conditions crosses and sufferings of Iesus Christ he is united to him and partakes of his spirit and life In this sense is it that Saint Chrysostom expounds that passage of Saint Paul God is faithfull by whom you have been called to the fellowship of his son Iesus Christ our Lord. The holy Apostle teaches us that a Christian is associated to Iesus Christ and as such he must have no other portion in the world but temptations sufferings and desertions Let no man saith Saint Paul to his new convert be moved by these afflictions for your selves know that we are appointed thereunto Temptations adversities humiliations and eversions are the gifts of God to his elect tokens of his love and favour to which purpose Saint Mark furnishes us with a pertinent Text where the Son of God promising Apostles and all those that would follow him rewards worthy of God and proportionable to his Love reckons up many adding that he will give them crosses and persecutions as an additionall of his love and favour This is the way that God takes to lead us to heaven the means he uses to establish our salvation and makes us agreeable to his divine Majesty The Wise man speaking of the just saith he hath tried them like gold in the furnace and hath received them as a burnt-offering and pleasant victims sacrificed to the supreme Essence of God by crosses and humiliations God operates our sanctification conserves us confirms us in his divine mercies There needs no other witness then the Angel Raphael when he said to Tobit Because thou art pleasing to God it was necessary that temptation should try thee This is evident that the state of sufferings is necessary and how much it imports us to esteem of them to hear them with affection and make use of them with profit for God hath greater designes over souls by sufferings then by all other wayes of grace that we could represent it is the state that most purely and holily honours his divine being it is the spirit of Christianity in brief it is the life of man and therefore he must know how to drink of the cup of blessing he must learn to ascend the ladder that reacheth from earth to the arms of God And to apply our selves thereto with method and facility we will divide this matter into three dispositions which accompany our sufferings and the state of the soul in her crosses First We may suffer according to divine wayes Secondly By the spirit of Christianity Thirdly In the zeal of Iustice against sin In these three Dispositions we shall find all the rest To suffer according to divine ways belongs onely to souls who are truly Gods who adhere to him and are dissolved in his love To suffer this way is wholly divine he must be wholly God's love nothing but God and be in the pure regard of God To
this is the design of God Or else if by humiliations and interiour or exteriour eversions God will annihilate us let us consent to this annihilation and applying our selves thereto co-operate with the work of God with all the extent and power of our soul and so let us do in all and according to the diversity of the objects This advice is not contrary to the pure regard of God which we must have in all sufferings for in the works of God and in all that he permits we must consider the end for which God does it and the cause that moves him either to permit it or do it The end of the works of God is his honour and glory but the cause that moves him in his operations and divine permissions is the salvation of our souls the establishment and communication of his spirit his graces and his vertues We must here do as before we must suffer having no end but the pure regard of God and of his glory But because God requires fidelity and will establish his Kingdom and power in our souls it is also our duty to co-operate with his intentions and to receive all things not onely because such is his good pleasure but also in the manner that he will and to make use thereof according to his pleasure The perfection therefore of the spirit of sufferance consisteth not in receiving all things indifferently a soul is not perfect though it be insensible of all accidents be they never so sad and miserable Perfection consists not in a Stoicall apathy but if there be a perfection and purity in suffering it is when we receive all things in the spirit and in the holy divine dispositions of Iesus and that we bear them after that manner that God wills and according to the designs and intentions of God And herein consists the first and noblest Disposition which must accompany our sufferings We come now to the second CHAP. XIII How we ought to suffer in the spirit of Christianity IF when you do well and suffer for it you take it patiently it is acceptable to God for hereunto were you called because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow his steps In these words full of efficacy and truth the Prince of the Apostles proposes the motives which obliege us to suffer patiently all adversities and afflictions which occur in all conditions of this life He saith that we are called thereto and that by consequence the proper condition and quality of a Christian binds us to the Crosse. It is not necessary to alledge proofs of this seeing we have said enough already For the spirit grace and conduct of God whereby he uses to save us is no other then that of annihilations and humiliations and afflictions God hath try'd them and found them worthy of him The Crosse and sufferings is then the lot of Christians it is their portion and they must make such use of it as to bear it Christianly But the most powerfull motive the Apostle makes use of to teach us patience is when he sayes that Iesus Christ suffered for us and that we must imitate him and follow his steps after this we cannot in reason find any thing hard If Iesus Christ from his birth to his death hath espoused the sufferings and embraced the Cross wherefore should we refuse being his Children to live and dye as he did we know that the Son of God came from Heaven to Earth to suffer the humiliations and pains due to sins and sinners and that He would by this low estate honour his Father but withall he left upon the Earth the same spirit to honour God that as in Heaven God is honoured by exaltation he might be honoured upon Earth by humiliation In pursuance of this design of Iesus Christ we must as Christians honour God by our lowness and annihilation On the other side seeing the Sonne of God dyed for us we must dye for him if he be the example of our life as the Apostle sayes we must imitate him and if he be born our head according to St. Paul we must as his members bear his spirit and follow his motions In a word if we raign with Iesus Christ we must suffer with him There remains then no more then to know the spirit and dispositions where with we must receive and bear sufferings We have said that the 2 d. Disposition necessary to a perfect Christian to live faithfully in the adversities of humane life is to bear them in a Christian way and according to the spirit of Christianity Now we suffer in Christan ways when we suffer what befalls us as an order of God and as an estate prepared for Christians and by which God will conduct us to the heritage of Christians so that according to this Disposition we make no reflection at all on our sufferings nor upon the estates and overturnings wherein we are our spirit onely remains settled and fastened upon the thought of this truth I am a Christian and as such I belong to Iesus Christ who puts me into what estate he pleases and because I am oblig'd to do his good pleasure I will have no other thought then to resign my self to Iesus Christ to do with me according to his good pleasure By adhering to this truth by this Disposition and interiour estate the soul is united to Iesus Christ as the members are to their head and she remains subject to his conduct without further care or thought then that she is God's because God wills it Herein consisteth the spirit of Christianity and the duty of a perfect Christian. This Disposition is pure and simple and produceth in the soul a perfect peace calm and repose the reason of it consisteth in that the sufferings humiliations and contempts are the centre of the Christian soul as things created have no repose but in their centre so the perfect Christian cannot have the true repose of the soul but in sufferings and in this Disposition they are the centre of Christianity because the eternall Word was pleased to place his estate and whole life in humiliation He was born in poverty he lived in contempt he died upon the cross all the passages of his way-faring life were in continuall sufferings and lowness and also when he was in Heaven in the bosom of the Father in the throne of the greatness of the Divinity he entertain'd thoughts of the cross he consents to death and prepares himself for sufferings when that from all eternity he resolv'd to be made man and to invest himself with the infirmities of our nature so true is it that all the conditions of the Son of God were in sufferings and lowness This also the centre repose and life of a perfect Christian ought to be in the estate and life of Iesus Christ and as the life of Iesus Christ and his estates are contained in adversities in lowness and in the thoughts of the cross it
displease him and as much as she hath displeased him by her offences she desires to glorifie him and this desire bears her to a zeal of Gods justice and finally this zeal animates her to support all things patiently and to embrace them freely Hence we learn that the true spirit of Repentance consisteth not onely in sorrow for sins committed and a hatred of all sins but also it contains a desire to glorifie God for we can no more enter into Paradise without this then without repentance Herein they must have a care who perform indeed some acts of mortification and suffer many things but with certain dissemblings or out of some private considerations or concernments and many times out of curiosity Let them take heed they build not with straw for true repentance hath no eyes but for God no other regard but to content God and to glorifie his divine justice The more love the soul hath the more ardent is her zeal so that if she love much she desires to sorrow much and believes she hath never done enough for true love is never satisfied Such a soul esteemeth all pains sweet injuries truth contempt honour and labours the enjoyments of her spirit O how good it is to suffer thus for who knows how to love knows how to suffer and transported with the love of sufferings cryes out with the penitent King Lord prove me and try me search my reins and heart To be throughly acquainted with true repentance we must further consider the effects of it for if it be true the effects of it shall be as certain and will be great and true True repentance annihilates us and destroys sin in us and the fountains of sin as also our evil inclinations and vicious habits it roots out of our hearts all that divides us from God all that displeaseth him it converts us to God it drawes us neer to him it gives us God and separates us from the creatures and our selves For the true penitent is crucified in all things and dead to himself of a death to sin which giveth him life in God and makes him lead a new life altered in himself and in his actions This is the true meaning of Saint Paul where he saith As you have yeilded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity even so now yeild your members servants to righteousness unto holiness Which shews the great change and conversion which repentance must operate in us seeing our members which have been servants to sin must now be onely servants to righteousness and to serve God after a manner which operates in us sanctification and serves as an instrument to our glory Further true repentance unites us to God and puts us into a new and particular relation to Iesus Christ. He acquires a new right over us when we participate of his mercies and applies to us the merits of his death and sufferings pardoning our sin He acquires a new right over us because he applies to us the price of his blood by the merits of his death He withdraws us from the empire of sin whereto we had subjected and sold our selves he delivers us from the captivity and slavery of vice to put us into the liberty of his children into the possession of his spirit so that from the time that he delivered us from the tyranny of sin we belong unto him and are his children his captives his heritage we are so many times his as he pardons our sins as many sins as he pardons so many times he offers himself to his eternall Father to pay the price of our misdeeds and offereth him the merit and satisfaction of his death for the redemption of offences Thus he purchaseth us anew as often as he pardoneth our sins Repentance if it be true gives the Son of God a new right in us and draws us from the right we have of our selves to put us into new propriety as to him whence it follows that the sins which separated us from God by our own default serve by the bands of repentance to unite us to God by the new right Iesus Christ hath to us by the band of love which we have to him Many sins are forgiven her for she loved much and he to whom less is pardoned loved less saith Iesus Christ. True repentance produceth two admirable effects one in relation to Iesus Christ which comprehends an abnegation from the creature and our selves to be God's and Iesus Christ's to whom we must be the more united the more he hath pardoned us The Father is an effect of love which issues from this union adherence He that is most united loves most and the more he loves the faster he ties himself Mary Magdalen is an example hereof who was no sooner converted but she fastened her self to Iesus Christ to crucifie her self in his love and to live no longer then with him and for him If we will examine what hath been said it will be easie to see that many persons deceive themselves in this business of so great concernment I mean Repentance who go so negligently and indifferently to this Sacrament that being they are sensible neither of the effect nor advantage of it and it is much to be feared lest they find at the hour of death rather the penitence of a perfidious Iudas of an impious Antiochus of a sensuall Esau then of a Saint Peter or a Mary Magdalen However if be let him apprehend the menaces of the Son of God If ye do not repent ye shall likewise perish He speaks of the true repentance which cannot be true if it have not the true effects else it is not repentance Herein the Christian must take heed as the most important thing of his salvation If we apply these principles of truth we shall find that it hath been no digression to speak of Repentance but that by the same principles which oblige us to bear the spirit of true penitence we have the grace and faculty to live patiently and Christianly amidst all contrarieties and disturbances of this life and in pursuit of that we may make use with profit of all accidents we meet with in the world He that lives in the spirit of repentance as a perfect Christian ought not onely to suffer with ease and cheerfulness but also to subject himself to the divine will and honour of God wherein consists the spirit of repentance In brief he makes his profit of all as a faithfull steward of God's gifts I say he makes profit knowing it is a favour received of Iesus Christ that all sufferings and adversities in this world are profitable to us being sanctified by the pretious sufferings of the Son of God and may serve to satisfie the justice of God which must be looked upon as a particular mercy and favour which Iesus the Son of God hath obtain'd for us by his incarnation and death For if we consider naturally the sufferings and afflictions of mans life they
can no way profit us because as men and sinners and the children of Adam we are subject to all the miseries of nature we are condemned to eat our bread in the sweat of our brows and undergo all the maledictions of God and we know that all the evils incident to nature and that happen to us in the course of our life are but the guerdon of our crimes the portion of man and the effect of sin wherein we are born So that these evills deserve not that God should regard them of themselves as being incapable to satisfie God's Iustice were it not that the Sonne of God making himself man and charging himself with our nature with all our infirmities hath sanctified them in his person and in his use of them So that bearing them in his spirit we bear them with blessing and happiness since that when he was made a sacrifice for our sins and became a propitiation to appease the wrath of God for our offences he suffered the pain of death due to sin whereby it was blessed and sanctified and by an effect worthy his bounty he would that the sufferings of men which were but the effects and punishments of sin should merit grace and find acceptation when we support them in his spirit and in his divine dispositions This St. Paul teaches saying Ye know the grace of our Lord Iesus Christ that though he was rich yet for our sakes he became poor that you through his poverty might be made rich For the Sonne of God making himself man is subject to our necessities and labours that in our labours and necessities we might be made rich in good works in patience and in the spirit of Repentance When therefore we consider the sufferrings of this life and all the humiliations and disgraces that may befall us we must look upon them two wayes First As an effect and punishment of sin Secondly As the spirit of Iesus and as sanctified and made divine in his sacred person The first are not profitable nor are they proper but for the wicked who are in chastisements and sufferings by way of Iustice suffering what they have merited But the second are full of blessedness and happiness for it is in them and by them that Iesus Christ sanctifies us that he dwells in us and establishes in our souls the works of grace If ye be reproached for the name of Christ happy are ye for the spirit of glory and of God resteth on you Words which tell us the spirit of Iesus Christ his grace and glory inhabit in souls who suffer for love of him The Christian therefore that suffers must take heed to this vertue that he suffer not as a criminall that is by necessity and force but as a Christian and in necessary dispositions For since God hath given a blessing to sufferings and by a mercy spring from these sufferings of Iesus Christ we may profit by the disadvantages of this World we must not unprofitably let slip the occasions nor indifferently passe over the necessity pains and severall estates of this life but make profit thereof seeing God will have it so and that he gives us power to do so For this reason must we endeavour to bear them in the spirit and in the blessing that Iesus Christ hath given them and according to the use he would have us to make of them The Christian that lives in this care and vigilance may hope for the recompence of Heaven and having gone through the combate of this life which to the good is but a continuall Martyrdom may say with Saint Paul I have fought a good fight I have finished my course I have kept the Faith henceforth there is laid up for me a Crown of righteousness which the Lord the righteous Iudge shall give me at that day In fine the most assured mark we have of the perfection of a soul is sufferings which are continual and abundant to the just and if it be lawfull to take any Argument of our salvation or any sign of our election it is in sufferings and in the manner of bearing them So the Sonne of God calls those happy that suffer for his sake and for his glory and we may say of such souls as Saul said of David when seeing him so patient in the greatest violence of his afflictions he cryed out with teares Now I know for certain that thou shalt be surely King and that the Kingdom of Israel shall be established in thy hand We may say the same of a patient Christian but let us leave him in this hope and propose to him some entertainments of Piety CHAP. XVI The Abridgement of the fourth part teaching of Christian grace CHrist saith we are all ingraffed in him as the scien is in the Vine-stock we are bone of his bone flesh of his flesh as the Apostle sayes for we are his body we are in him and with him This truth alone shews how much we are obliged to live holily and perfectly to be regulated in our actions in our exteriour modest and holy being united to Iesus Christ our life must be an expression of the life of Iesus and as Iesus being the Son of God by nature is the Image of his Father so a Christian being the child of God by grace must be the Image of the same Iesus Christ an Image so perfect and divine as cannot be fully expressed For on the one side the life of a perfect Christian is a life hid from the eyes of man spirituall and invisible and therefore infinitely remov'd from the capacity of the children of Adam who are materiall and as the Apostle saith carnall and animal On the other side this life is a life of grace a divine life a life of God in man a life full of secrets operated by God in the depth of the soul. Our weak nature hath not termes proportionable to the greatness and Majesty of divine things and therefore all that we can say of the state of Christianity of grace and of the life of a perfect Christian doth but derogate from and deface the value of this work which cannot appear in its lustre but to their eyes who have the true light of Heaven nor can be conceived or comprehended but by souls that are chosen of God We must notwithstanding draw the last lines of our Christian image and lightly passing over what hath been said to sweeten that which appeares either too high or too harsh that so we may benefit those who will see things in perspective and superficially we must also fix our eyes and thoughts upon Christian grace which will make us apprehend the truth of what hath been proposed and if we can understand it will cause us to admire the indulgence and communications of God who out of the excess of his love the more advanceth men and sinners the more they were debased by the greatness of their ingratitude that grace might superabound
where sin had abounded that love might triumph over us Let us then descend to the particularities of grace and examine the properties and effects thereof The grace which we receive and sanctifies us is the grace of Iesus Christ which flowes from his fulness and communicates to our souls grace which is not onely supernaturall but was made for Iesus and is proportioned to his Soveraignty and infinite dignity whence we are called Christians It hath all its being dignity and residence in Iesus it is above our nature and in the rank of supernaturall things in an order soveraign and particular worthy of the soveraignty of Iesus and proportioned to his Filiation order and grace very different from the originall Iustice which was given to the first man For though the grace of Adam were supernatural yet was it an order very inferiour to Christian grace being proportioned to his nature and inclinations in the state of innocency All men as well as Adam had been sanctified in the order and according to the order of nature and in the naturall uses thereof But it is not so in Christian grace for that is not proportioned to the nature of man but above it wholly in Iesus wholly for him it issues out of him and by an effect proper and particular to it drawes us from our selves to unite us to him as members to the head and being united sanctifies us in Him in such a manner as that we are no more in the quality of men and Children of Adam but as Children of God and members of the Sonne of God and by a grace proper to the Sonne of God of whose fulness we have all received Whence we infer that he who would be sanctified and partake of Christian grace must be united to Iesus Christ as the branch to the Tree the graft to the stock the members to the head and if united must also be one with him as the head and members make up but one body and consequently by reason of that unity must not onely partake of his grace but also his spirit and life in the same manner as we say the members move not themselves nor live but by the life of their head This being considered we see that to live Christianly it is not enough to say that we must be in grace but we must live in the spirit and life of Iesus for grace produceth this effect for as much as by the same principle whereby we are united to Iesus as members to their head we must live his life and be guided by his spirit And as it is the property of Christian grace to unite us to the Sonne of God so is it the effect of the same grace to rule us by his spirit and to make us live his life wherein appeares how perfect the life of a Christian in grace should be how exemplary and holy his actions must be how regular his motions and how pure his intentions seeing it is a life of grace which unites us to the Son of God which making us one with him causes us to live in his spirit and life Let us enter further into the consideration of grace and we shall see that according to the Apostle Grace is a participation of the divine nature These words contain the excellency of Christianity and describe all that can be said of grace The Apostle implies that we are accidentally what God is substantially and that which agrees with God and is proper to him according to his divine nature is appropriated to us and may be convenient for us according to the spirit of grace so that by grace we are elevated from our own baseness to the fellowship of Iesus Christ and we are put out of our selves to receive a new being in God Can any thing be said more admirable or great If we reflect on this truth we must needs confess that to live according to Christian grace and bear it's effects in our souls we must go out of our selves and be no more our own nor in our selves When we say we must go out of our selves we would intimate that the Christian to live like a perfect Christian must regard nothing but God mind no Interest but that of the glory of God please none but God have no desire but to accomplish the will of God In brief he must renounce himself and the love of all things to love none but God To live so as to go out of ones self is in two words all that we have proposed in the fourth Part. This is a Point may be thought hard and too high yet the practice thereof is necessary according to those words of the Son of God He that will follow me let him deny himself where we see how much a Christian is obliged to renounce all and to go out of himself after the manner we have declared which will appear more cleer if we consider the essence of the Precept of love for the love of Christianity is a love says Dionysius the Areopagite extatick that is to say it raiseth us to a contempt of our selves and all things to unite us to God who is essentially love and charity so that by the perfection of Christianity which is in the love of God we are drawn from the love of our selves and the creature to be onely God's and not to enjoy our selves in any thing but in God Thus which way soever we consider Christianity we find that both love and Christian grace causes us to go out of our selves to unite us to God and make us partakers of his divine Nature The SEQUELE FRom the Principle of Truth last explained we learn the great difference between the state of Innocency in Adam and the Christian righteousness in Iesus Christ for Adam had a power over all things it was permitted him to enjoy the whole world and to rejoyce therein Original righteousness and the grace of the first man was in that and in the lawfull use of all things but Christian grace is quite contrary for God wills not any more that man rejoyce and content himself in any thing but in him that he live not but for him that he alone be his possession and heritage Besides the state of Adam was in exaltation in the possession in the satisfaction and pleasure that he might lawfully take in the creatures that were subjected to him during the time that he remained in obedience to God But the state of Christianity is wholly opposite it consists altogether in privations in humiliations in dejections and in summ it devests man of all power even that which he hath of himself that he may be wholly Iesus Christ's that separating himself from the creatures and from himself Iesus Christ might be his All and his Fulness that by Christian grace he might enter into society with Iesus Christ and by him with his Father according to what the beloved Apostle promised us when he said That your fellowship be with the Father
Truly all vertues are good and suitable to the state of a perfect Christian the practise thereof profitable the acquisition usefull and necessary but his chief care and exercise must be piety for he adds godliness is profitable unto all things having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come The advice which the Apostle gives his Disciple we must here propose to our perfect Christian having already spoken of vertues the most profitable and necessary to the state of Christianity There remains then no more to commend unto him but a true and solid Christian Piety for this Piety is the Ornament or Mistriss of all other vertues I mean the Christian vertues dispose us assist us and put us into a capacity agreeable to God and to honour him they are necessary for us to make us worthy of God they shew us the way to God but Piety leads us to God and makes use of all vertues to conduct us thither and having no object but God teaches us the worship and honour that we must render to him and like a good Mistriss puts us into a ready and easie practise of true vertues and entertains us in the exercise of actions that honour God and are acceptable to him In brief she enables us to pay God what we owe him This Piety is the first use and exercise of a soul as the first motion the first instinct the first light we have from nature to know God so the first exercise she inspires us with is to honour the same God to render him that worship and service which the Creature owes its Creator This Piety teaches to this she incites us this she produces in us Whence we may apprehend how necessary it is to know wherein this true piety consisteth and to establish our selves therein For above all that we have said already which is very considerable it is evident that this true piety is one of the principall foundations whereby Christian perfection is supported In the conduct of men all actions and exercises of their life are ruled according to piety and as we commonly say according to the devotion they have If then their piety be not founded upon a solid foundation the rest of the Christian life will be unconstant and its exercises very uncertain superficiall and perhaps wholly unprofitable as we see in the devotions of many which is onely in the exteriour who as the Apostle saith having the form of godliness despise the power thereof In such souls we see nothing solid nothing but inconstancy in their lives imperfection in their actions disquiet disturbance and adherence to severall Creatures in their spirits a small blast of adversities overturns them If we consider all their life it is nothing but an appearance and shadow of piety counterfeit Pearls that make a fair glittering shew but are fully onely of wind Some fall into this evill by ignorance others by default it is our duty to direct both into the truth It concerns us therefore to examine wherein piety and true Christian devotion consists Severall persons speak of it severally every one adds to it and appropriates it to his own inclinations humour and particular affections But according to Catholick truth the foundation of solid and true Christian piety consisteth in the soul's being Iesus Christ's and belonging to him by a relation of love and charity True piety consisteth in the knowledge esteem adherence and subjection of our souls to Iesus Chrst from which esteem adherence and subjection all our exercises actions of devotion and piety must proceed as heat from the fire the effect from the cause This description of Piety may seem new but it will appear manifest if we weigh with patience the deduction thereof and consider that Iesus Christ is our Saviour our Mediator by whom we have access to God by whom we honour God render our duties to him and have a relation to the most high and most adorable Trinity and refer our life actions and our selves thereto Herein consisteth true piety for by Iesus Christ we are acceptable to him by him God who is all sufficient in himself vouchsafes to accept our wills to sanctifie our actions and recompense our good works St. Paul teacheth this when he sayes that Iesus Christ is all our glory It is by Iesus Christ and in him that we live in him we merit and satisfie by fruits worthy repentance it is in him that they are meritorious it is he that offers them to his Father consider these words and his Father accepts them and they are acceptable to him for his sake What more clear or more to our purpose Hence we conclude that devotion and Christian piety cannot be in a soul if that soul be not Iesus Christ's if it adhere not to him and be subject to his spirit For if we live not if we merit not nor can satisfie God but by Iesus Christ it necessarily follows we cannot live if we are not Iesus Christs He therefore saith Saint Iohn who hath not the Sonne hath not life implying he hath nothing and consequently he hath no capacity to honour and serve God wherein consisteth true piety Whence we may conclude that to acquire true devotion we must begin with this esteem of Iesus and by an adherence and subjection to his spirit and conduct Let us more particularly explain wherein this true piety consists To know it we must not stop at exteriour things or at actions which have nothing but appearance but we must enter into the bottom of the soul and regard true devotion onely in the centre of the heart The proper office and principall duty of true piety is to cause us to regard God to induce us to render to God what we owe him It is necessary that we enter into the knowledge of God not by speculation or sublime knowledge but by the light of Faith This knowledge leads us to esteem God by this esteem we enter into a propriety and a true and absolute subjection to his greatness and will all which is necessary to true devotion for as much as we cannot render to God the honour love and service we owe him but in as much as we esteem him and are subject to him Seeing then Piety consisteth in rendring to God the honour love and service we owe him and that we cannot otherwise honour or serve him then as we esteem him and depend of him and his divine will it followes that to be truly devout we must act according to the truths of faith and follow this supernaturall light we must conceive a great esteem of God and live in great subjection to his Law and divine conduct and so to live is to live in the true spirit of piety and to be truly devout But this is not all we must proceed further The Christian being in the bottom of his soul and heart disposed after the manner we mention feels a spirituall vivacity an
have said we are God's without whom we can neither honour God nor be acceptable to him It follows that the foundation of true piety consisteth in Iesus Christ that is in the adherence and relation of our souls to Iesus Christ and in the submission of our being and life to the conduct of his spirit and grace for by that adhering to him and being subjected to him we are pleasing to God and receive in him and by him the capacity of honouring and serving God which is the proper effect and chief duty of piety and devotion The truth would need no proof but that few persons think thereof and that many are ignorant of it therefore it seems to be to purpose to speak thereof more at large in the Principles of Christianity Without out going any further let us consider that to be a Christian we must put off the old man with his deeds and put on the new man Iesus Christ it is the Doctrine of the Apostle whereon we must found our Discourse If to be a Christian we must crucify and put off the old man to put on the new with much more reason to be a good and devout Christian we must crucify and put off the first to invest us with the second When we say that we must be clothed with Iesus Christ it is to shew we must be united to him adhere to him and as a garment adheres to the body and is united to it so must we be Iesus Christ's but much more perfectly then this comparison expresses Reason and Faith will easily convince us of this truth if we doubt of it for faith teaches us that it belongs to Iesus Christ to give us grace and strength to put off the old man that is to draw us from our imperfections to deliver us from our sins and annihilate our evil inclinations It is the same that Iesus Christ invests us with the new gives us his spirit grace and vertue for and according to Saint Paul Iesus Christ hath been to us wisdom and righteousness sanctification and redemption In a word Iesus Christ is all in all to us Now that the Son of God may operate in us all that we have said it is necessary that we be united to him adhere to him and be subjected to his designes his will and divine operations Who can deny so manifest a truth If Iesus annihilate our evill inclinations and root sin out of our hearts ought not we to be subject to his conduct and spirit and so receive his operations of mercy If we participate of his grace and vertue and live according to his Commandements is it not necessary we should be united to him And how should we be united to him but by a true relation and faithful adherence to him This deduction is easie and clearly shewes how true it is that the foundation of true piety consisteth in unity and in the adherence and dependance of the soul on Iesus Christ it is acknowledg'd by all that devotion cannot be true if we be not exempted from our vices and imperfections and filled with the spirit of Iesus Christ and assisted with his grace to make us worthy to honour and serve God We cannot perceive in that devotion nor practise the exercises thereof if the same Iesus Christ be not operating in us the will and perfecting according to his will This Iesus Christ said to his Apostles and in them to all Christians Abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine no more can ye except ye abide in me adding he that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for without me ye can do nothing O words of love words spoken the eve of his death to shew us the excess of his love that proceeded from his heart wholly divine and full of tenderness whereby being moved he further said unto them Abide in my love So infinitely was he desirous to possess our hearts and to triumph over us by his love whence he often repeats the same words to engrave and imprint this care in our souls and by the proceedings of his love oblige us to love him again This indeed is a thing we ought to have continually in our thoughts for all the happiness of a Christian consisteth in this relation and this amorous dwelling of our souls in Iesus All our good is in this union since that by it and the adherence we have to Iesus we become his and by him we receive a power and capacity to bear the fruits of good works to practise vertue and to passe our life in the exercises of true piety and Christian devotion which make us hope for the reward which God promises to those that serve him Without this relation and union we shall continue in our weakness and incapacity our life is unprofitable barren unfruitfull and in evident perill If any man abide not in me saith Jesus Christ he is cast forth as a branch and is withered and men gather them and cast them into the fire If we will come to the experience of what we have said let us examine God's conduct of such souls as he will save and we shall find that the first knowledge he gives them is that of Iesus Christ proposing to them his Crosse or some Mystery of his life the first motions the first thoughts of piety that he inspires them with are those of a certain compassion and sympathy with his Crosse and sufferings or those of love and tenderness in consideration of his benefits If on the other side we intentively consider souls even the most ignorant we shall easily know they have a secret resentment and an inclination to Iesus Christ though they know him not But God alwayes begins these divine Communications and effects of his mercy by this first grace The reason is manifest in Divinity which teaches us that the eternall Father doth nothing but by Iesus Christ operates nothing in our souls nor in the state of grace no more then in nature but by his Sonne The first favour therefore the elect soul chooses to receive of God is that the eternall Father hath given it to his Sonne and there Iesus Christ accepts of it and appropriates it to himself Now as God demands our co-operation which yet we cannot give without his grace and therefore inspires the soul with a resentment of Iesus Christ gently insinuating into it a certain attraction which sweetly drawes it to a knowledge and piety towards Iesus Christ so our soul begins to be Iesus Christs perfecting her self in the state of christianity according to the measure that he advances in this affection and in this relation to Iesus Christ. The Sonne of God speaking to the Iewes obstinate in their errours saith None can come unto me if the Father who hath sent me doth not draw him And to shew the manner that the eternall Father uses to lead our
other thing without abuse of the gifts of God if not for Iesus Christ and according to his designe and intentions This is St. Pauls meaning when he says You are not your own and again you have no power on your selves This power obliges us to refer our selves wholly to Iesus Christ the first thought and thing to be done in Christian piety being to believe we have no right to our selves but are wholly Christ's and having conceived in the depth of our souls this belief to have a vigilant care that in our life and actions we draw not our selves from the power of the Son of God to make use of our selves and the creatures to our own content and particular interests For according to the principle of Christianity we have no right to appropriate any thing to our selves This belief is the ground of true piety to Iesus Christ which Saint Paul teacheth saying The Son of God died that those that live might live no longer to themselves but to him who died for them On this truth we ought often to reflect For as the foundation of it consisteth in a true dependance and love to Iesus Christ in respect of his soveraign power over us so the principall care of him who seeks true piety must be to continue in this dependance to live with such fidelity that he appropriate nothing to himself either as to his life or actions or yet of the creatures and assuredly he must make great account of this care and fidelity But whereto serves it To bear in his heart a sensible desire to belong to the Son of God and every day to renew his resolutions and good purposes What doth it profit our soul to have the knowledge of so high a truth if in the actions of humane life and exercises of piety we withdraw our selves from this dependance on the Son of God to apply us to our selves and seek in our own business and exercises our content and satisfaction This were by our own actions to belie the resentments of our soul to profess piety and follow impiety to bear a double heart to have vertue only in the mouth For if we are truly devout we can not but be Iesus Christ's and if we are his our principall care will certainly be to continue our dependance on him not onely in that which concerns our condition but in all the dispositions intentions actions and circumstances of our life The same Principle operates in our souls a second effect of piety in that our life and actions belonging properly to the Son of God as their beginning and end ought accordingly to be submitted to his divine conduct to be ordered after what manner he pleases according to the power of his spirit and the light of his loving communications It is but reason that all good depend on him from whom it proceeds and that we be ruled not according to our own wills which are blind and transported with affection and self-love but according to the intentions of Iesus Christ who is the cause and ought necessarily to be the rule thereof Thus the second interiour estate whereto the Christian who seeks true piety must arrive is a Resignation of himself to the conduct and direction of the grace and spirit of Iesus Christ that being so subjected he may perform all his actions in a pure regard to the Son of God according to his divine intentions This Resignation if true makes us bear with patience and inward peace all estates we may possibly arrive to it gives us liberty of spirit capacity and strength to follow and embrace that only which is of God and according to God it puts us into a great fidelity to the motions of grace in such manner that according to the measure of our increase in this resignation we advance in Christian piety and live with greater liberty and fidelity of soul. This indeed appears something difficult and many believing it an estate onely for the most perfect pass by it as a thing impossible for them But if we consider well we shall find it easie and acknowledge it common to all souls who live in grace To do an action of piety we must be aided by the grace of Iesus Christ which encourages assists us in all good works so necessary that without this grace we can neither think nor act any good He then that will be devout and live in the exercise of true piety must have this grace whence it follows he must cooperate with it and give himself up to be conducted by the spirit of Iesus Christ who will operate that good woâ—k in him otherwise it will be impossible for him to live well since that without grace we can do no good No man can say that Iesus is the Lord but by the holy Ghost saith Saint Paul for it is grace that doth all in all and therefore we say he that will live according to true piety must take care to resigne himself to the conduct of this grace and with great circumspection become faithfull therein The Principle of devotion consists in being faithfull to the graces and motions that Iesus offers and inspires us with Herein we must take great care every one according to his state and vocation Whence we easily learn that true and essentiall piety to Iesus Christ doth not consist barely in actions of homage and honour or in giving our selves to him by certain practices and employing us in severall exercises though in it self all be profitable but the true essence and ground of this devotion consists in the dependance of our soul on Iesus Christ and in a true subjecting of our life to his conduct by a faithfull cooperation with his grace and motions this is the ground and state of true piety to comprehend which we must consider that all we do is acceptable to Iesus Christ onely because we are his all our actions and exercises as good being derived from his grace inspired and conducted by his spirit We may do a thing two wayes according to naturall motions and inclinations of the old man or according to the motions and holy inclinations of the new man Iesus Christ if what we do though it seem good be according to the motions and inclinations of the old man it is but of little value being at the most but naturall and humane actions But if it issue from motions of grace then is it truly Christian Hence we say the foundation of true piety consists in the subjection of the soul to grace and the conduct of Iesus Christ for if Iesus Christ do not conduct the soul by grace nor direct her by his spirit she can do nothing considerable Hence it is that many deceive and flatter themselves in their imperfections passing their lives in the practice of many exercises neglecting the principall and thinking they do wonders when they do nothing because all their actions are rather effects of their own inclinations humours or self-love
worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing The Earth and all the creatures of the Universe do the like and present themselves before Iesus declare him their Soveraign and protest obedience and service to him I heard saith Saint Iohn every creature which is in Heaven and on the Earth and such as are in the Sea and all that are in them heard I saying Blessing honour glory and power be unto him that sits upon the Throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever Let us do the same and from the bottom of our hearts say Amen let us adore Iesus Christ in his greatness and acknowledging his Soveraignty live in true subjection to his divine conduct The Continuation CHAP. V. Of the Motives which oblige us to belong to Jesus and to serve him by true piety OF all the Mysteries of our salvation that which ought most humbly to subject us to the will and power of Iesus Christ is the work of our Redemption for in this Mystery of love and mercy Iesus is our Redeemer we are his Purchase and have no longer Right either to our selves or to any creature Ye are not your own saith St. Paul for ye are bought with a price meaning we are Christ's who hath bought us with his most ineffably precious blood But the better to understand this sublime mystery let us derive it from its very source We are then to consider that by the sin of our first parents we should all have perished in him as guilty with him all nature should have been extinct by his sin for from his first offence he ought to bear the execution of the Decree pronounced against him by the mouth of God in these words In the day that thou shalt eat thereof thou shalt surely die And doubtless divine Iustice had annihilated him and in him humane nature and all creatures had perished with the Sinner if the eternall Father beholding his Son designed for the reparation of this offence had not repress'd the rigour of his Iustice. The Father out of the love he bore his Son suspended the execution of this Decree he saved the offender mercy triumphed over justice he granted this sinful man life and the world to live in and consequently humane nature and the world it self which for this sin should have been destroyed were preserved onely in consideration of Iesus Christ for his sake the eternall Father took compassion on us From this first Consideration is easily inferr'd that we owe unto the Son of God all that we are and all that we have and therefore we are as often his as there are moments in our life and as often as we receive any benefit from this bountifull hand of God and therefore all these rights which are innumerable ought to be so many tyes to unite us indissolubly to Iesus Christ. But if we dive further into the contemplation of these truths we shall find that by sin we belong to the Devil we have granted him that right which God by Creation gave us over the creatures we have as it were by sin made over our selves to him Thus by voluntary offence Man who should have commanded the World becomes a slave to the Devill and sels himself to sin I am carnall sold under sin saith St. Paul in the name of all sinners In this quality the Devill hath all manner of right and power over us and assuredly would exercise his malice against us if the divine goodness did not restrain him He would make us even now feel the same rigours which he exerciseth over the damned and dispose of us at his pleasure as he doth of souls eternally cursed of God were it not that Iesus Christ by his death hath forc'd us out of this captivity and devested the Devill of all right and power over us He hath blotted out the hand-writing of Ordinances against us saith St. Paul and taken it out of the way nailing it to the Crosse. Thus the Sonne of God delivering us from this captivity makes us his Captives acquiring by his blood and death a new right and power over us which he will use not with rigour and justice but with love and mercy the state of grace and spirit of piety having nothing but sweetness and indulgence He hath delivered us saith the Apostle from the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of his dear Son For the power of Iesus is all in love and dissolves it self into dearness What Christian seeing so much sweetness will not resign himself to the excess of this goodness to the power of this love To conceive more fully the effects of the grace of the Sonne of God and his rights to us by redemption observe that by the conduct of God and according to the merit of our offences so soon as man is in sin and withdrawes himself from the order and end that God hath prefix'd and proposed to him he is nothing but the object of divine justice unworthy of any favour from Heaven Heaven Earth and Hell bandy against him God is obliged onely to promote the punishment of sin by malediction blasphemy damnation and hell If God stay the stroke of his Iustice if he hath yet some reserve of mercy for this miserable sinner if he suffer him to live and preserve him out of an expectation of his penitence that so he may escape hell it is by Iesus Christ and onely for his sake We must then acknowledge that a sinner owes to Iesus Christ all the motions of his life all the happiness of his soul all the good which may befall him in Heaven or Earth O how many obligations have we then even as many as there are moments as many as we have thoughts as many as we have received benefits from time to time so many rights hath Iesus Christ to our souls so many times do we belong to him Who can number these wonders Can there be any thing in nature able to break these bonds and separate us from Iesus Let us dive yet a little further into this consideration by an examination of particulars let us see how by daily sins we separate our selves from God and shaking off the obedience we owe him become slaves to sin He that sins is a slave to sin saith Iesus Christ so that the sinner by a deplorable blindness withdrawing himself from the sweetness of the Kingdom of the Sonne of God subjects himself to the power of sin which would infallibly exercise its rigour and Tyranny over him if Iesus Christ by his mercy did not suppress its malignity For as sin ruling over the rebellious Angels subjected them to its malice and rigour causing those Angels of light to be to all eternity Angels of darkness and malediction So the sinner from the time he offended should be abandoned to the same Tyranny and left to the fury of sinne which would precipitate him into
all manner of violence abhomination and misery had not Iesus Christ sustained the yoak of sin and stayd the power of its malevolence So that we are as many times Christ's as he hath preserved us by his divine mercy from severall sins and abhominations If on the other side we consider our actuall sins we must acknowledge that they also serve to bind us to I. Christ for as many sins as we commit so many times do we deprive our souls of the favours and grace which we have received of God by the only merit of Ie. Christ and when Ie. Christ shewes mercy to us or washes us with his blood and withdrawes us from our sins to restore us the graces which we have lost at the same time he takes a new power and acquires as many new rights over us as he pardons sinnes in us By this meanes the sins which God pardons in us oblige and bring us to Iesus Christ. Thus on what side soever we look on our selves we wholly belong to Iesus and consequently are obliged to live in a totall dependance and perpetuall subjection to the conduct spirit and power of Iesus Christ. But if now to what we have said should be added the merits of the Sonne of God we should find our selves infinitely obliged to be united and to appertain to the same Iesus Christ. For his merits being infinite in dignity acquire to him infinite rights over us nay if we consider them particularly we must needs nevertheless acknowledge that Iesus Christ acquires as many rights over us as there are moments in his life since in Iesus all is of infinite merit We are his by his Incarnation by his birth by his teares by his sufferings by his Crosse in a word we are as many times his as he lived moments upon earth as often as he did actions in the world during his life here But if we lift up our eyes to behold him in his glory we shall see him incessantly offering up himself for us to his Father he is entered into Heaven now to appear in the presence of God for us as Saint Paul saith where he by continuall benefits shed upon us forces our acknowledgements that there are so many rights and obligations to appropriate and unite us to him as there are moments in Eternity What remains then but that we consider by what meanes we may satisfie so many obligations to the Sonne of God It is a decree pronounced by him That of him to whom much hath been given much shall be required All our life then must be employ'd in true piety a piety which shall establish us in a supreme honour in a most powerful love and an intire and absolute dependance on Jesus Christ. We must continually begg that as the Sonne of God changed his condition and became man to testifie his love to us and to deliver us from the captivity of sinne and put us into the state of salvation so we may change our condition and disposition to be happily converted into a pure regard of honour and of imitation of his life who is all love all goodnesse If you would desire some practises upon this occasion I would advise the perfect Christian 1. To adore the power of Iesus Christ and all his rights to us accept them by a voluntary subjection and rejoyce therein praysing the Sonne of God in that he hath vouchsafed to assume those powers and rights over us 2. To offer himself to Iesus Christ to bear the effects of this power over us submitting our selves by a true resignation to all that it shall please him to operate in us and by us for his will and glory 3. To pray to Iesus Christ to use his right and power over us and over all that which is ours notwithstanding the opposition that we may have thereto as well by the inclinations and imperfections of our nature as by the effects of our proper malice 4. Being transported by a desire to be Christ's often and continually to implore if it may be done the power of his spirit to annihilate in us and to root out of our souls and from the bottom of our being whatever opposes his right over us and may hinder the effects of his divine will In fine if we have not a sense of the power of Iesus Christ let us at least have in our hearts a violent desire to be his a firm purpose never to be separated from him and a vigilancy to receive with faithfulness what he shall vouchsafe to operate by the influence of his infinite mercy All this reaches no further then the beginnings of piety to Jesus Christ we now proceed to the use and practise of it CHAP. VI. Of the state of Subjection to Iesus Christ considered as the principle of Christian piety IF we make application of what hath been said we shall find that as the Son of God hath infinite rights to us so we are infinitly his we depend on him we have infinite obligations to him which the shortness of our dayes will not give us leave sufficiently to admire nor the weakness of our spirits to comprehend Yet speaking suitably to our meanness we may reduce them to two principles the foundation and prop of all exercises of piety interiour and exteriour The first is an acknowledgement of the soveraignty of Iesus over all creatures and over us in particular confessing that he is our King and Soveraign The first use of piety to Iesus is to acknowledge and adore his supreme authority it is life and happiness to know and to serve Iesus Christ. Therefore the Apostle desires that the Ephesians should know the love of Iesus Christ which passeth all knowledge to the end that they might be filled with all the fulness of God teaching how profitable and necessary this knowledge is The other foundation of piety is a continuation of the first the Christian acknowledging the soveraignty of Iesus Christ enters into a state of relation to and a dependance on him and adoring his soveraignty submits to his power not out of constraint or necessity as Rebells but out of choice love and fidelity which he renders to him as his Prince and Iesus This dependance must not be indifferent but the lowest and most submiss that is possible so that a Christian in this state looks upon himself only as a servant to Iesus and acts in all things only in the spirit of subjection and humility This subjection is an effect of our knowledge of Iesus and that knowledge a fruit of the light of faith and a gift of grace This state of service is proper and essentiall to the creature in regard of God the creature is essentially dependant and subject to the Creator It is an indispensable estate the creature may as soon cease to be as cease to depend on the Creator It is a primitive estate in grace and essential to all Christians the first step of our entry into the Church into faith
name and ineffable greatness of Iesus Christ if all our actions be full of our own will and it were to little purpose to subject our selves by words to the Soveraignty of Iesus Christ to the conduct of his spirit and motions if in the management of our life we follow the spirit of the World living in a continuall desire to satisfie our selves and our own inclinations This were to say much and do nothing This we must be carefull in since many deceive themselves in this kind of piety which they so easily profess contenting themselves with the superficies and neglecting the rest Remember that he who sayes we must adore God in spirit said also we must adore him in Truth The second act of this piety is an act of Oblation whereby the soul offers her self wholly to Iesus Christ and renouncing her self resignes into his hand all that she is all the power that she hath over her self over all her actions over all things and to make her self the more a servant to Iesus in a perfect condition she renounces her own liberty and all the use she can make thereof giving it up into the hands of the Son of God of whom she received it granting him all the right that she had to dispose thereof to order it as he pleases that being so resigned to Iesus she may not have any thing more nor be any thing more but that he may be all have all and operate all in her This Obligation thus conceived is of great importance For if it be done after the manner it ought if the Son of God vouchsafe to accept it it puts us in the perfection of Christianity in as much as it drawes the soul from her self and all creatures to be Christ's to adhere to him to depend on him in all things wherein consisteth true perfection Moreover this Obligation is an effect of the esteem and belief we have of Iesus Christ and contains the spirit of Christian subjection For as according to Law the slave is no more his own nor hath any right over any thing but is wholly left to the power and pleasure of his Master so by this Obligation the Christian puts himself as nothing before Iesus Christ he gives place to all his rights of nature and grace to be onely the subject of his power and divine will And though we are all servants to Iesus Christ by right and purchase as we said elsewhere yet we will be such also out of good will and affection giving him by this Oblation a new power over us that we may be the Captives to his love as well as to his power and submit to the designs of the eternall Father who hath delivered us from the power of darkness and translated us to the Kingdom of his dear Son Thus examining this Oblation we find that it is necessary for all those who seek true piety as containing the essence and grounds of devotion it puts the soul into a perfect denudation and makes her entirely dependant and resigned to Iesus Christ to be led according to his will They therefore who in their exercises of piety make ordinary use of this principle of devotion must weigh well what they say and consider with what sincerity and faithfulness they proceed with the Son of God For seeing they leave themselves wholly to him in the quality of servants and make profession mark the word to have nothing which is not his and of him and that by this Oblation they yeild up all to him even to the use of their own life and naturall liberty what have they more to think of but sincerely and faithfully to accomplish what they profess What have they more to do but to take care that their life be conformable to what they say otherwise they shall be constrained to condemn themselves and to confess that they have no devotion any further then the mouth that they deal not sincerely w th God and their own consciences It concerns them to take heed that that is not justly to be attributed to them which the Prophet said Cursed are they that do the work of the Lord negligently To these Exercises of interiour piety we may add a third act Purity of Intention By this intention the Christian who offers himself to God in the manner we have described begins to refer himself actually to him and to his glory protesting that in all things even to the least and in all his actions he will have no other intention then the will of the Son of God and live no longer nor act any thing but according to the intention of Iesus Christ. Having made this protestation he demands of him participation of his holy spirit and prayes him to inspire him with holy and pure dispositions whereby he may accomplish his actions This practice of piety is little known and perhaps little understood yet it is necessary for a perfect Christian. To conceive and affect it he is to remember that as we have said true piety contains a resignation of the soul to the conduct of grace and to the spirit of Iesus and that this resignation is more then a bare simple resignation for it includes annihilation and unity annihilation of our own spirit and conduct and unity with the spirit and conduct of Iesus Christ to which we resigne our selves By this act of intention the Christian annihilates all his desires and intentions to unite and subject himself onely to the intentions and desires of Iesus Christ in such sort as to admit no other Hence it may be inferr'd how necessary this intention is to all those souls that thirst after true piety but to make a fuller discovery thereof we are to reflect on our own infirmity and incapacity which is so great that we know not what is lawfull for us to desire and are ignorant of what we ought to demand of God as not understanding what designes Iesus Christ may have upon us We must therefore wait till he enlighten us and inspire us Now that we may be in a disposition to receive this grace and in a capacity to submit to the conduct of the spirit of God we must annihilate our own desires and particular intentions and give our selves up to those of Iesus which is that the Christian endeavors to do by the act of intention here proposed It is the Doctrine of the Apostle who says We know not how to pray as we ought but the spirit makes intercession for us by groans that cannot be uttered He who searches the heart knows what is the desire of the spirit he sueth for the Saints according to the will of God Here we are taught this practice which shews us that our prayers desires and intentions must be inspired by the spirit of Iesus Christ who knows what God demands of us Moreover there is not any thing so certain as that the Sonne of God hath those intentions and designes upon the life actions
and heart of man which are great and worthy himself as being a creature he hath consecrated by his precious blood and redeemed by his death and Crosse. If there are intentions and designes upon us as we must not doubt but there are and such as are of great importance yet unknown to us is it not reason we follow them and consequently are we not obliged to annihilate all our own desires and intentions to bind and subject our selves solely to the desires and intentions of the Son of God who vouchsafes to think of us and entertain himself in forming designes upon us our actions and all the motions of our life This is it we endeavour to satisfie when we form this act of purity or unity of intention This also shewes how unprofitable and superfluous their employment is who fill their hearts with variety of intentions and perplex themselves with multiplicity of thoughts who conceive desires and form designes sometimes one way sometimes another though upon occasions in appearance good and profitable since they do onely what pleases themselves But according to the Principles of Christianity it were better they kept themselves to this unity and annihilated all that is of themselves to be onely in the intentions and designes of Iesus Christ. The Christian therefore ought often to renew this purity of intention he ought to adore all the designes of Iesus Christ upon him and all his divine intentions he must resign himself thereto and protest never to follow any other holding it for a maxime that we shall not arrive at perfection nor go to God by the strength of humane reason or following our own desires and inclinations but by submitting our spirit to the conduct of Iesus by a faithfull and sincere adherence to his designes and loving dispositions This considered we shall know more and more the truth of what was proposed from the beginning that true piety consisteth in adherence to and a resignation of the soul to Iesus But we are now to examine the effects of this adherence CHAP. VIII That an adherence to Jesus Christ by true Piety makes us partakers of the severall conditions of his life THe adherence and dependance of Christians upon the Sonne of God by the first grounds and principles of Christianity and by the first duty which they profess in the state of grace obliges them to a holy and pure life since that as the Apostle saith He that is joyned to the Lord is one spirit that is to say he must be of the same spirit with God and doubtless if they oppose not the designes of Iesus Christ upon them this adherence will advance them to a solid permanent estate of perfect piety and establish them in a true Christian perfection This may be reduced to three heads The first is a subjection of the soul to the designes spirit and operations of Iesus Christ a subjection that amounts to a capacity and amplitude and such as makes the soul capable to receive the communications of God to bear the effects of his grace and to enter into a participation of the Estates and Mysteries of the life of Iesus Christ. The second effect puts the soul into a purity of regard and love which makes her vigilant and faithfull to do and desire nothing but the honour of Iesus Christ to regard nothing but his pleasure and glory so as to have no eyes but for Iesus no more life but what is consecrated to the honour of his Soveraignty and divine actions This adherence to and dependance on the Sonne of God raiseth in a Christian a true imitation of his life and divine vertues to such a degree of perfection that he becomes a lively representation and image of Iesus Of these three effects we must speak particularly for herein consisteth the perfection of true and Christian piety We begin with the first The subjection which by this adherence to the Son of God is begotten in us represents two things the power he hath over us and the capacity we are in to bear the effects of his power The power which Iesus Christ hath over us is a particular power which he acquires by the mystery of the Incarnation and by all the states moments of his life a power that gives him a double right to do in us and with us what ever he pleases a power from which he imprints in the centre of our souls the time that we were first made Christians an eternall and indispensable power In a word it is a power which he establish'd by the Sacraments and left to the Church For if we consider them we shall find that besides the graces which they communicate to us they have other extraordinary effects expressing the power Christ assumes over us For instance Baptisme gives us grace and blots out all sin in us but withall put us into a condition of service to the Son of God and imprints in our souls a character of subjection to the divine power a character never to be defaced in honour of the estate of subjection and service which the Son of God underwent by the incarnation becoming man and a servant subjecting himself to the Father he was always and shall be for ever equal and coeternal with the Father and in honour of the gift which the eternall Father makes us of his Son by the incarnation and union of the Word with humanity and the life of God in man and of man in God The same Son of God instituted the Sacrament of the Eucharist wherein he gives and unites himself to us that he may live in us and we in him By this way of love and union he takes power over us to live and operate in us all that he pleases and shews the power that he hath over our souls to establish therein continually his designs to glorify himself thereby and please himself in them In pursuit of this power he puts us into an estate of subjection yet such as gives us a capacity to rceive and to bear in us the force of his love and of all the effects of the life grace and mysteries of Iesus Christ and to receive them according to what manner and time he shall please to communicate them The Son of God desireth nothing so much as to communicate to us liberally his graces and the many favours he hath obtained for us and merited by his life and sufferings his principall design being to advance us to a participation of the severall estates of his life All he did on earth all his operations in the world were for our sakes referring also to our good and advancement all the greatness of his being the power of his spirit and merits of his life so good is he and so full of mercy Now if the goodness and designs of the Son of God towards Christians be such is it not reason they continue in this subjection and be faithfull and vigilant to receive and bear the effects and estates of
is onely expected that Christians dispose themselves to participate of this happinesse and being called thereto endeavour to correspond faithfully therewith God doth the same in the regency of his Church the Sonne of God making use of his power hath established therein severall estates orders and societies separated from the common and from one another which he consecrates and appropriates to the severall estates and Mysteries of his life Some honour his solitude and hidden life others his penance others his poverty others his obedience all adorn and beautifie the body of his Church and in the diversity of their functions and estates honour adore and imitate the severall operations and Mysteries of the life of Iesus Christ who distributes his spirit and the grace of his Mysteries to all according to what manner he pleases He doth the same in the particular Government of souls he causes and calls them to elevate and establish them in such estate as pleaseth him sometimes by sufferings sometimes by privations one while by love another by simplicity and infancy In a word he estates them as he pleases to be honoured by them one and the same spirit according to St. Paul working all things dividing to every one severally as it pleaseth him The same Apostle represents this truth under the similitude of a humane body all are members of the same body animated enlivened with the same spirit and yet they have all their several offices and functions particular and different The case is the same saith this holy Apostle in the Government of the Church which is the body of Iesus Christ whereof all christians are members though all make up but one body and are the animated onely by the spirit of Iesus yet are they called and employed to particular estates and in all there is a difference of gifts and operations but it is but one spirit and one God who does all in all they are different effects of one and the same principall cause It is the same Iesus who chooseth the souls to communicate to them the graces and divers estates of his life How happy is that christian who is called to this happiness Herein consisteth the perfection of the soul as in things naturall we say that the Creature is most perfect when it most participates of the being life and perfections of God so in the state of graces that soul is most perfect which participates most of the graces of the divers estates and qualities of the Sonne of God This grace and favour is not for every one and farre above the ordinary The Sonne of God doth not call all souls to a participation of his life nor alwayes communicates to them the spirit and graces of his Mysteries Yet the christian who would live in a solid piety and adherence to Iesus Christ and would feel the effects of his divine communications must desire this favour and earnestly demand it He must often reverence and adore the life thoughts designes Mysteries and estates of the life of Iesus He must offer himself with all his heart to the power spirit and grace enclosed in those divine Mysteries In a word he must carefully remove from his soul all hinderances and inclinations opposite to the designes and operations of the Sonne of God But above all he must continue constant in subjecting his soul to the power and will of the Sonne of God He that will practise all this must make these uses following The first is that the soul always resigne her self to the power of the Son of God than he may make in her and by her all that he will for his glory This resignation to be perfect must be grounded upon a freedom of spirit a freedom which is the true spirit of the children of God and consisteth in an estate of indifferency and independency as to all things as well in the order of nature as of grace and being subject to God onely by this freedom all things in the world are indifferent the soul remaining in a pure capacity of submitting to whatsoever the Son of God will operate in her and by her giving her self up wholly to his divine power This liberty of spirit is the principall estate and first ground of Christianity for all Christians belong to the Son of God and are left to his power One died for all saith Saint Paul that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him who died for them Teaching us that as the Son of God gave his life for us and by his excessive charity delivered himself to the ignominious death of the cross to do the will of his Father so he hath right and power to choose and consecrate us by his grace to offer us an Holocaust of sweetness and honour to the glory of his Father that as he hath been the victim of our sins we may be the victims of his love Hence it is evident that the Son of God hath power and right to put our souls into what estate it shall please him for his glory be it an estate of life or death of privation or abundance of confusion or honour and may choose out souls and advance them to the participation of the mysteries of his life to render to him particular homage and service We must then resigne our selves wholly in all things to Iesus Christ. To establish us in this disposition the liberty of spirit whereof we speak is absolutely necessary For when it hath separated us from all things nay even from our selves it puts us into an amplitude and capacity to be all that God will have us to be and to bear the effects of his grace and power And therefore the Christian who seeks to establish himself in true piety and live with fidelity must endeavour to conform himself in this liberty of spirit for it is difficult nay impossible to adhere to Iesus Christ to depend on him and faithfully to receive the operation of his grace if we are not in this liberty of spirit that is an independency as to all things This is the spirit and disposition that God requires in a Christian according to the Apostle That the spirit we have received be not a spirit of bondage but of liberty and adoption This first disposition leads us farther and advances us in the wayes of piety and puts us into a second disposition by which we accept with humility and submission all the estates and effects that the spirit of the grace of Iesus Christ shall operate in us and bear with patience and obedience whatsoever rigour and difficulty we meet with Having so received them we are also bound by this disposition to act according to the quality and extent of grace communicated to us and to live conformably to the estate whereinto the Son of God puts us We must remain firm in that subjection and liberty of spirit we speak of In this use consisteth the peace and liberty of the soul For
example If God put us into an estate of suffering we must accept it and continue therein with patience and submission of spirit not struggling with the good will and pleasure of God but act therein and persist with courage and fidelity We must do the same in privation barrenness and all other estates wherein the Son of God shall please to put us which if we do we shall remain in a true adherence and union with Iesus Christ depending upon him with fidelity which is all that piety aims at CHAP. X. That Christian piety obliges us to submit our life and actions to the honour of Christ. THere cannot any be ignorant that true piety consists in rendring honour to God it is our first exercise the duties of Religion and Love are of such a nature that they must necessarily be referred to God but that of piety obliges us to honour God and to referr our selves to him and consequently to the Son of God For he that honoureth not the Son honoureth not the Father but by an obligation more particular greater and more speciall in as much as by the grace of Christianity and Principles of true piety we are united to the Son of God and adhere to him as members to the Head This adherence doth not onely put us into a subjection to the power of Iesus but also produces in our souls a regard of love and honour a regard that purifies and directs our intentions and actions not to love or honour any thing but Iesus the Son of God by him to love honour and serve the Father Thus the first estate of piety which consisteth in this adherence obliges us to referr all to him and to honur him in all things This truly is clear in what manner soever we consider it whether in the Oeconomy of our salvation or in the regency of the Church all things invite and oblige us to honour the Son of God The first thing that the eternal Father requires of us in giving his Son to the world the first designe he hath upon his creature is to oblige them to render to his Son the same honour which we render to his infinite supreme Majesty This Obligation is so strict that even at his birth he would have the Angels acknowledge and adore him he sent them from Heaven to Bethlehem to reverence him not onely in the greatness of his divinity but in the lowness of our humanity when conceal'd in a stable and laid in a manger He called thither the Shepherds and the Kings that it might be as David sayes All kings shall fall before him and all nations shall serve him He was no sooner born in the world but the kings of the world came from the East to do him homage to lay their Crowns and Scepters at his feet confessing that all the greatness of the earth ought to serve and honour him The eternall Father sent Angels and men to render honour to his Son to adore his divinity humanized and his humanity deify'd All nations of the world shall assemble and all men shall come to judgement that all may honour the Son as they honour the Father This the Son demands of the Father as part of that fruit he expects of his labours it is one of the richest Iewells of that Crown which he received upon his triumph by the cross over the world sin and death Many think it was the meaning of that Prayer to his Father in the day of his sufferings Father glorifie thy Son to the end that thy Son may glorify thee We owe him this honour for if he humbled himself to our infirmities and the shame and ignominy due to our offences is it not reason that we render him the honour whereof he deprives himself for our sakes and that we serve and honour him in a manner wholly particular seeing he onely of the persons of the most holy Trinity suffered our contempts and confusions This exercise of piety which we here propose as the first obligation we have in the estate of Christianity holds forth one of the noblest most eminent vertues of the Catholique Religion and one of the highest actions of our soul. For if according to Thomas Aquinas we are obliged as soon as we arrive to the use of Reason to some acknowledgements of God and a submission to him as the Author of our nature and our good with much more reason ought we to say that the first thought we ought to have of the Son of God in relation to piety is to referr our selves to him as the principle of our being in the state of grace And if we would make use as we ought of the spirit of Christianity and of the gifts we receive of the Sonne of God we must employ them wholly to his honour and service in such sort that as Iesus is the Authour of our being life and actions he may also be their object and end This is an inseparable obligation and an indispensable duty For if the Christian and all that is in him proceed from the Sonne of God and is consecrated to him by his death it followes that he can neither make use of himself or any thing else but the Sonne of God otherwise he might refer his actions to some other then him to whom they are due and for whom they are consecrated which were to prophane the most holy things and to enjoy the gifts of Iesus Christ against his intentions which is a sacrilegious treason against the divine Majesty For as amongst men he is guilty of theft and deserves death who converts the treasure of his Prince to his private use to passe away his life in vanities and sports so is that Christian criminall who abuses the gifts of the Sonne of God and is prodigall of the Treasures of his bounty That we receive all from the Sonne of God no man can doubt for of him and for him life is given us as also motions sense reason repose health and sleep and in a word the use of all things These are the Treasures of his Court for he hath by his travels and sufferings acquired and by the price of his blood and life purchased our lives our actions our thoughts nay even the time which we enjoy Which having done his intention is that we acknowledging his love and liberality therein should love him serve him and in all things mind his honour and glory This being so what have we to do but to follow his intentions to refer our selves wholly to him to honour him in all things since we have all from him and that for this end he gives us also his speciall graces In what therefore ought we to employ our time our life our health our repose and all that we have but for the honour of the Sonne of God of whom we have received them and who continues them for that very purpose This manner of rendring honour and homage to the Sonne of God is an
exercise of piety that we ought to perswade all Christians to and is grounded upon the principles of Christianity which teach us that all the effects of grace be it of God towards men or of men towards God relate to Iesus as their principall support prop and foundation for it is by him that the eternall Father gives us all in as much as he hath chosen the holy humanity of his onely Sonne as an instrument conjoyned to the Divinity to operate his works of grace in Heaven and upon Earth By him he receives the homage and adorations of his people and of all men in Heaven and Earth Hence it may be inferr'd that all is grounded upon Iesus all subsists by him that all may be united to him and by him to the Father Iesus must be the onely object of our thoughts resentments and obligations Upon this truth we ought to make often reflections for God hath subjected the World to our use and given us his Sonne the Sonne I say out of an excess of incomparable love becomes wholly ours that by a mutuall right we may be wholly his and by him the Father's that we may say to him in piety as he said to his Father in love All that is mine is thine and all that is thine is mine Yea my Iesus thou art mine by thy Incarnation thou art mine by the Mysteries of thy life mine thou gavest me thy spirit in Baptisme thy body in the Eucharist thy glory I shall have in Paradise and thou mayst say truly that what is thine is mine So order it then that I may say to thee with as much truth and fidelity as thou hast expressed affection in giving thy self to me that whatever is mine is also thine my being my life my actions my love all thine but much more truly then my own for it is in me but by thee and for thee I will then from this present and to all eternity be wholly thine and my being my life and my actions all that I am shall be ever referred to thy glory Hence we are to conclude that the first design and intention we are to have in our devotions is to refer all our actions to the glory and honour of the Sonne of God to remember him before we think of our selves to seek his glory before we look upon our own Interests or necessities Herein the greatest part of Christians at this day are deceived not onely those who in the exercises of piety seek the honour and esteem of men and aspire onely to vanity and a fleshly spirit but even those who seem to follow the exercises of piety with most love and purity For they believe they do much in seeking the occasions of merit and employing themselves in what promotes their spirituall advancement and taking some relish and enjoyment therein whenever there is occasion they make it their onely businesse their principall employment it takes up their chiefest thoughts and what is worse they often place their end therein and are perswaded that they have attained a high and perfect degree of piety imagining themselves rich in merits and far advanced in the wayes of perfection and that they may serve God with delight He is blind who sees not the danger those are in who live thus for while they think they serve God they principally mind their own profit and if the business be well examin'd you will find they change the glory of God into their own particular satisfaction the end of their exercises being their own content and interests of whom we may say with the Apostle They love and seek themselves and make a gain of Piety To reform this universall and dangerous abuse we must consider that as the esteem and spirit of true piety consisteth in loving honouring and serving of God in order to an adherence to him and a dependance on his divine will so the motive object and end we are to have in our devotions must onely be the honour love and service of God and a complyance with his amorous conduct The Christian therefore who would live in the exercise of true piety must first by a voluntary subjection adhere to the power and conduct of the Sonne of God as we have already shewed and further refer himself wholly to the honour and glory of Iesus in as much as we are his and by him God's and render to God the honour and service we owe him According to this advice the perfect Christian must have a continuall and vigilant care so to order it that his life and actions may be accounted worthy of Iesus Christ as being such as shall contribute to his glory after the manner he would have it which is to be done thus CHAP. XI The Use and Practice of what hath been proposed WE have elsewhere taught what was to be done to render our actions worthy of Iesus Christ it is not necessary to speak any further of it We are therefore only to remember that all our actions must be Christian to be worthy of the Son of God and consequently must be holy and to be holy they must be accomplished in the spirit and by the principle of grace the Holy Ghost the spirit of Iesus our actions to be Christian must be done in the spirit and dispositions of Iesus It remains onely that we see how we may honour him by our life by our actions and in all things whereof we propose two ways One is in regard of our selves when we live and act in a disposition of will wholly submitted and directed towards God and by right and pure intention referre our selves and all our actions to the Son of God offering our selves so to him as not to live or act any thing but for his honour and glory The other is in regard of the Son of God when he vouchsafes to apply and honour himself in us after what manner he pleaseth causing us to live and act in the power of his spirit making us to bear the effects of divine will in continuing the designs he hath over us to take in us his pleasure and glory According to this later way the soul acteth not but accepts and keeps her self in the regard of the Son of God as the subject of his divine operations and therefore must onely be attentive and faithfull to that which he doth in her and by her obliging her self by a submissive acquiescence to all he doth be it enjoyment or privation rest or pain change or destruction accepting his conduct and consenting to all the effects of his works in her out of a confidence that he will establish all in her for his glory This advice to souls who endeavour to live in the grace of God and seek Christian perfection is of so great consequence that to fail in this point is to fail in all God is in us by grace he is there to operate not onely by himself but by us for he is the common principle of life and
operation in us it is he that operates there incessantly things great and worthy of himself This granted it follows that the Christian who desires to live in the grace of God must on the one side shun all manner of sin especially such as may ruine this grace in him on the other become very attentive and faithful to receive the effects of his grace and the operations of the Son of God that so he may cooperate therewith according to his intentions otherwise it is to be feared he may lose it or at least hinder it's effects and so destroy the honour of God and all that the Son of God hath established in his soul. This is grounded upon the very principles of faith For we can do nothing of our selves as of our selves but Iesus Christ doth all in us acting and referring all our actions to the glory of his Father We must then let him act and as we know not his divine intentions and designes over us neither know the grace or degree of grace whereto he would elevate us for his greater glory for it belongs to him to do all when and how he pleases It remains then that we oppose not our selves to his intentions and destroy not his works The Christian therefore who desireth to be God's and to live in true piety must not amuse himself in these unprofitable and superficiall things nor regard so much these exercises but purifie himself and make himself worthy of the grace of God taking great care to preserve himself therein and have a continuall attention to all that the spirit of grace operates in him for the glory of God that he destroy it not by a contrary application and want of co-operation Hereby we shall see how many false devotions there are and how many deceive themselves in the exercise of vertues and piety These two wayes of honouring the Sonne of God may be understood after two manners whereby we may honour Iesus Christ and he may honour himself in us two wayes one by action the other by estate The action is transient and is but for a little time and perhaps is but in one part of the soul but estate is a thing permanent which dwells in the whole capacity of the creature and is imprinted in the bottom of its being having no dependance on the actions of the understanding and will We may act well in the first manner and it is good but we must also endeavour to establish our selves in an estate which perfectly honours the Sonne of God as the Sonne of God For as the Sonne of God himself hath not onely honoured his Father by the actions of his transitory life but hath been pleased to become man and take upon him a nature which essentially is in a condition of servitude and remain perpetually and inviolably therein in regard of his Divinity so we must endeavour to honour the Sonne of God not onely by transitory actions but also by a permanent estate and condition such as may render him honour and perpetuall homage This we are obliged to do for our part to the utmost of our power as being one of the most essentiall exercises of piety But our attempts are feeble and all we can do is little in comparison of what we owe God The Sonne of God therefore who is our supplyer doth it sometimes himself by his grace by his divine and amorous attractions he calls us and puts us into the estate which he himself operates in us by which he satisfies his Father to his honour and glory It is a singular happiness a favour to obtain which all we can do is to continue disposed attentive to whatever the Sonne of God operates in us and carefully to take heed thereto and to co-operate faithfully therein and with the best disposition may be proposed The meaning hereof is to keep our selves in a simple submission of our spirit to that of the Sonne of God and this submission consisteth in not resisting it but leaving our selves wholly to the power of and a dependance on his holy spirit and conduct giving up offering and disposing our selves to the work and designes which he hath in and upon us renouncing all our own contrary inclinations The soul that lives in this submission is capable to bear effectually the effects of grace and to honour God in all things Now when it is said that we ought to refer all our actions to the glory of the Sonne of God we mean not onely the good and vertuous but even the common and naturall actions even to a moment of time for all belongs to God and must be referred to his honour and glory This truth we learn of the Church our Mother who in her rites and ceremonies doth not onely represent the Mysteries and actions of the Sonne of God but honours them in representing them and as such is her intention whence it may be observed that in all her ceremonies even to the least she intends to honour and acknowledge him Iesus Christ himself may be also an example to us in this exercise of piety for in that he hath taken the nature of man upon him he hath honoured his Father in all things and by all the concernments of humane nature doing to that end and intention not onely those actions which we call Religious and vertuous but even those which are naturall and purely humane and referring to his honour all the moments of his life We must carry our selves in the same manner what he did being done by him as a Master for our imitation The devout Christian therefore must refer all his exercises and actions both naturall and common little and great to the honour and glory of Iesus Christ. By this relation our actions are ennobled for what he hath sanctified is neither common nor inconsiderable whatsoever is consecrated and referred by his honour cannot but be great when his honour is so great There are a many that judge this practise of Piety to be too difficult whereas they will indifferently receive some others But if we consider it we shall find that it is an Obligation proper to the state of Christianity which cannot by any meanes be dispenced with For if the life of a Christian be a lively Image of the life of Iesus Christ and a life derived and flowing from his it must of necessity follow that as all things are sanctified and made divine in Iesus Christ so are they such in us by the same spirit of Iesus which is given us which dwells in us and operates in us From which reason we may infer that as in Iesus there is nothing mean or vile but all in him is elevated and referred to the glory of his Father so in Christian souls there ought to be no actions mean and object no not indifferent seeing they all belong to the Sonne of God who hath sanctified them in his spirit and in the conduct and direction of him it is that we are to operate
and accomplish them Besides we cannot doubt at all but that the Sonne of God hath his great designs and intentions worthy himself over our actions even to the smalled nay over all the moments of our life Which if it be so how we can say that our actions are indifferent On the contrary they belong all to Iesus Christ they must proceed from his spirit God will be honoured in all that is of man We shall render an account as well of the least as the greatest things and assuredly God will exercise his judgement as well for a moment of time and the least of our actions as for all the rest of our life We must therefore acknowledge there is nothing little nothing to be neglected in the state of Christianity but all therein ought to be worthy the blood and cross of the Son of God we must make use of all things conformably to the designs and spirit of Iesus who as he is always great even in the least things so also must we have great intentions even in the meanest of our actions and our first and principall must be to referr those to the glory and honour of the Son of God Iesus Christ in the time of his life upon earth did so living among us as one of us he made use of all things with a zeal to the honour of his Father and referred them to him as to his Father his principall being and life Let us do the like and by a zeal to the honour of Iesus out of a respect and homage to his greatness let us offer to him all our actions accomplish them all even to the least with a desire that they may be referred to him as to the principle of our being and life in the state of grace This he taught us by his death this disposition he inspires us with by grace this spirit he infuseth into us by the Sacraments which he hath left to his Church as himself said As the living Father hath sent me and I live by the Father so he that eateth me even he shall live by me which include in two words all that we would perswade that Christian to who seeks true piety CHAP. XII How the Christian that seeks true piety is obliged to imitate Jesus Christ. AS we are obliged to honour Iesus Christ by our life and all our actions so with much more reason are we obliged to imitate him as far as lies in our power The greatest honour we can give him is to conform our selves to his life and intentions This is the third effect which produces adherence to Iesus Christ and as this adherence is the first estate whereinto we are put when we are made Christians and the first foundation we must lay to acquire true piety so from this adherence as its centre and generall principle must be derived all the effects of grace which we bear in our souls Now that which remains to be treated of is this Imitation for our life ought to be a lively Image of the life of Iesus Christ and the first use a Christian is to make is to look upon the Son of God as the Prototype and exemplar of his life and actions not onely to imitate but to express and represent him as it were to the life As the Son of God is the Image and resemblance of his Father so must the Christian be of the Son Hence the Apostle assures us that none shall be saved or received into heaven in the number of the elect if he be not conformed to the Image of Iesus Christ. He predestined them says he to be made conformable to the Image of his Son In a word we must be by grace what Iesus is by nature It is a maxime in Christian piety that the Son of God is the true life and true model of our life it is the example shew'd us in the mountain as well as to Moses according to which we are commanded to operate Our interiour and exteriour life then must imitate and regard the exercises of the soul of Iesus Christ and the occupations of his sacred life For this reason the eternall Father gives us his Son in the mystery of the incarnation for giving his Son a new life in the mystery of love and giving it to be communicated to us he makes him thereby the principle of a new life in us and wils that as he is the principle of the life of his Son in eternall generation so his Son should be the principle of our life in the new temporall generation of our souls by Baptisme and Grace Saint Paul also teaches this when speaking of the reformation of Adam he says As we have born the image of the earthly so shall we also bear the image of the heavenly as if exhorting us to an imitation of the Son of God he should advise us that as we have born the image of Adam imitating him by sin and following him by our own inclinations we should also bear the image of Iesus Christ imitating his life and actions This Doctrine is wholly conformable to the Principles of Christianity The life of a Christian honours and regards God and imitates his life Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect saith Iesus Christ or to say better it is the life of God himself who lives in us by his Son Whence it follows that as the Father lives in the Son and the Son in the Father so we live in Iesus and Iesus in us according to that Prayer of the same Son of God to his Father full of love and affection I am in them and thou in me that they may be made perfect in one But how can we be one with the Son of God How can we adhere to him and be incorporated with him How can we conceive this reciprocall life of Iesus in us but in imitating him and not only imitating him but expressing and perfectly representing him since he lives in us and we in him in the mystery of the incarnation For the eternall Father giving us his Son to be man and to live with men a life common and conformable to the nature and condition of men he gives us in him a law rule and form of life and shews us in him the manner of conversation that we must follow to live Christianly that is to live a new life which the eternall Father gives us in his Son and by his Son a life singularly proper to the estate and perfection of Christianity We are then to look on the Son of God as our Law imitate and follow him as our rule which is to speak properly as the sacred Oracles foretold when speaking of the Messias and the time of his coming they said that God will make a Word abbridged upon the earth This Word is the Son of God who descending to the vile and mean estate of humane nature gives us his words and actions a model for ours This also
him and to have as much conformity in our actions to those of Iesus as there is between the head and the members of the same body So that this imitation must not be indifferent but most holy and perfect All as many of you saith the Apostle as are baptized into Ie. Christ have put on Christ that is ye bear his Livery and as the Doctors interpret it ye are made like unto him ye imitate his vertues and are followers of his life and actions For it is but reason that where the head is there the members should also be and that there be a resemblance and conformity of the one to the other To imitate then the Sonne of God implies two things the one is that we do what he hath done the other that we do it with the same spirit and dispositions wherewith he did it He was humbled for us he shewed his love and clemency towards us Let us also learn of him to be gentle and humble of heart He was obedient even to death the death of the Crosse let us imitate his obedience preferring the accomplishment of his divine Ordinances and holy will before all things even our own life He was born in a stable layd in a manger he took poverty for the companion of his life he condemned the World and despised its pride shewing us that all is vanity and a meer nothing in the eyes of God Let us do the same and though we are in the World condemn its vanity in a word so use it that all our life interiour and exteriour may be a continuall imitation of the life of Iesus This is the true piety that a Christian must exercise the onely meanes to be perfect In this imitation and resemblance consisteth the perfection of the soul as well in the state of grace as of glory We know that when we appear we shall be like him we shall see him as he is saith Saint Iohn If then we shall be like him in glory we must also be like him in grace for glory is nothing but grace consummated grace glory commenced But we must not rest here it is not enough to do barely what the Son of God hath done we may deceive our selves herein believing we do much when we do nothing of value because Iesus Christ being man as we are and conversing amongst us no doubt but we may find some conformity and resemblance to him even among the wicked in the common states of men many suffer and are oppressed many poor and humbled many sequester themselves from the pomp of the Court and live in the obscurity of a solitary life many fast and pray and do almost all the exteriour actions that the Son of God exercised upon earth He was man as we are we are men as he was but this does not perfect us this is no imitation of him the reason is because it is not enough to do as he did but we must do it with the spirit in the dispositions and by the principle that he operates which few persons mind It is not enough to do but we must do it by a principle of grace not of generall grace comprised under the common and generall name we give to all the gifts of God which is an usuall way of speaking but of grace which giveth us Iesus Christ communicateth to us his spirit and puts us into the holy dispositions of his soul. So that doing all things by this principle we perfectly imitate the Son of God so far that our naturall common actions are withdrawn from their meanness and elevated and united to those of the Son of God after a particular manner as being operated by the same principle and with the same dispositions This manner of acting is peculiar to the state of Christianity and in all circumstances conformable to the state of grace for by Christian grace we are new creatures creatures in Iesus Christ as the Apostle saith and consequently we have a new being and life Which if we have we must also have new inclinations another goodness and all our actions must be conformable to this new estate seeing that according to the ordinary maxims the work is according to the being Now as the being we have by Christian grace is wholy divine elevated and entirely in Iesus Christ it followes that all our actions must be elevated and done in Iesus For this the Son of God humbled himself to all practices and exercises to ennoble and sanctify them for according to the Fathers Iesus entring into the waters in the day of his Baptisme by his touching them he sanctifies the waters of our Baptisme and as Saint Augustine saith he sanctified the world and blessed it by his conversation So by the use he hath made of humane nature wherewith he hath clothed himself and of all the exercises and functions proper thereto he sanctify'd ours shewing that we may imitate him seeing he became man to be the rule law and model of our actions and not onely imitate him but express and represent him to the life and be so many Christ's as members of the Son of God We must be one with him and consequently must not operate but with him and in his person not in our own For this cause he gives us his spirit whereby we act or to say better he acts all in us It follows that they are not so much our vertues as those of Iesus in us Herein appears the great difference between Christian vertues and morall or humane For instance The love God requires of a Christian must not be that of a Pagan who loves them that love him nor that of a Politician who loves according to his humour or interest much less that of a Iew who loves not but out of an hope of reward promised or a fear of Iudgments The love of a Christian must be the same with that of Iesus that is he must love with the same love wherewith Iesus loves he must love with the love of Iesus as he must live the life of Iesus Walk in charity saith Saint Paul as Iesus Christ hath loved you The Son of God himself in the Eve of his passion speaks thus to his Apostles I give you a new Commandment that ye love one another as I have loved you To love is no new Commandment this law was imprinted in our hearts from the beginning of the world but the manner of loving is new we must love by the same love wherewith Iesus loved us his love must be in us O how great is this love how pure how free from self-interest how strong and powerfull since according to the Apostle it is the same love which made Iesus to be born and die for us even then when we were his enemies and sin raigning in us The Son of God gives us a cleer testimony of this truth speaking to his Father I have declared to them thy Name and will declare it that the love
wherewith thou lovedst me may be in them and I in them Expound as you please these words you shall always find it most true that Christian love must be the same love with that of Iesus Christ and that what we say here of love we must judge the like of all other Christian vertues for as we have alwayes said Iesus is our vertue our strength our life and our All. To possess this vertue in an eminent degree as Christianity obliges us we must acknowledge that this favour is not for all and that it 's not enough to have grace in the manner we commonly speak but we must have Iesus Christ in us we must have his spirit and holy dispositions that we may imitate Christianity and express his vertues and life The Christian therefore who would acquire true devotion and do the exercises thereof must first of all purify his heart and conserve it in that purity and subject the motions and thoughts of his soul that Iesus may dwell and act in him To dispose him to this favour he must often elevate his thoughts and heart to the Son of God and demand of him part of his spirit and holy dispositions to accomplish Christianly and perfectly all things And because the actions of the Son of God are so many springs and principles of grace a grace which he merited and communicateth to us we must bind our selves to this grace we must adore it we must desire it and demand it of him in all things and in all our exercises that our actions may be done in him by him and for him according to his designes This advice is further to be observed that in the practice of vertues that we desire them not principally and onely for the love of them nor acquire them because they are conformable to Reason or because they bring some excellency or benefit to the soul. For though vertue be seemly and profitable and of it self much to be desired yet it it not enough to desire to be vertuous upon these grounds and principles since this seems to savour of the covetousness of Adam to live in his spirit which onely aimed at elevation and to make himself a little god or to fall into the corruption of self-love which follows only it 's own interests profit and satisfaction To act purely and live in the exercise of Christian piety all must be done in the regard of God for love of him and for his honour We must seek and practise every vertue and exercise of devotion chiefly to render our selves conformable to the Son of God to imitate and please him And as the first grace that God gives us in the Church by Baptisme is to make us his children to incorporate us in Iesus Christ as members and to put us into an adherence to him so the first principall care of a Christian must be to conserve and perfect himself in his adherence and to submit to the effects thereof Herein consists the happiness of our souls and essence of true piety which is all we have to propose in this subject But as all things have their contraries and man is in a land of hostility so he must expect to meet with great opposition in the way of vertue and encounter enemies on all sides and dangers at every step we shall direct how to defend himself against them CHAP. XIV Of Temptations and Oppositions happening in the way to perfection and the exercises of Piety WE belong unto God by the power of his divine essence we are obliged to him by reason of our indigence we depend on him by the condition of our being his omnipotency gives him an absolute power over us and the immensity of his divine essence makes him present in us more intimately then light in transparent bodies which it penetrates and illuminates more then the soul is in the body which it animates and governs Our wants oblige us to a dependance on him and union with him because we cannot be without his continuall influence and consequently we must more absolutely depend on his conduct then the beam doth on the Sun from whom if it be but a moment separated it loseth it's being So is our estate inseparable from God it must he always dependant on alwayes adhering to him according to Saint Paul In him we live move and have our being which words represent our intimate union with God In the like manner in the estate of grace we are obliged to be God's and depend on him we cannot operate any work of salvation but by him and unless he be united to our souls by grace that is unless his holy spirit dwell in us operating in us all the good works which may contribute to our salvation Without grace we can do nothing by Christian grace God dwells in us according to the promise of the Son of God we come to him and make our dwelling with him By grace God enforceth himself into the soul working an immediate union with her and dwelling in her as his sanctuary and empire whence he diffuseth amorous effects and operates in her according to his divine will with so much bounty as if the infinite love of Iesus had no other thing to do but to procure and further our salvation by infinite ways But besides this of grace there is yet another union whereby we are united to God and incorporated into Iesus Christ and by him have a relation to God namely that which is wrought by the Sacraments in which he preserves us by his love and by the power of his spirit For this reason he gave his life and shed his blood on the cross to give us a new generation in Baptisme he bestows on us his body in the Eucharist that by so many favours and obligations this union might remain perfect and solid and we by so powerfull and legitimate a Title might be his in an indispensable unalterable manner For when we are by so many graces and such divine and effectuall means united to God it should seem impossible that any thing could be strong enough to break so many tyes and divide that which the power and love of God had joyned together But O deplorable condition the creatures and the Devil are strong enough to separate us from Iesus Christ and to extinguish in us his holy spirit and grace and which is worse the malice and depraved will of man is of it self strong enough to obstruct the influences of this liberall love to frustrate it's works to make us retire from our dependance on this conduct The perfect Christian must therefore have a vigilant eye and not suffer himself to be deceived in an affair that concerns his eternall salvation which that he may do we will discover the snares laid for him that he may avoid them There are four things which continually separate us from the Son of God and force us to ruine if his grace prevent us not The first is our own nature
prone to evil being taken out of nothing it hath an inclination to that nothing whence it came to re-enter thereinto and would infallibly return thereto if the arm of God who created it did not withhold and sustain it Nay this evill inclination of our being would not onely return to nothing but to a nothing that is rebellious against God that is to sin which hath no other Originall but if we may so express it the meanness of our being which annihilateth all that God puts into us The creature being drawn from nothing inclines to evill if grace stay him not saith St. Gregory This is evident in the fall of Angels and the first man which can onely be attributed to this nothing whence they were drawn and which by a secret power attracts them to it self For before sin there was not in these two natures any perverse inclination But if this were in two natures so perfectly accomplish'd what ought not we to fear who are not onely in this nothing but after a manner much more miserable without light without grace in a depraved nature by the evill inclinations of our being we have in us the source of all evills The senses and thoughts of the heart of man as the holy Text saith are inclined to evill continually which ought continually to humble us at the feet of the Sonne of God calling upon him to sustain and preserve us and never to suffer us to be separated from him The inclinations and evill habits that are in us the effects and estates of originall sinne which are fixt to our nature and self-love therein are the second enemies which continually endeavour our ruine and separation from God The reason is that our own inclinations and nature are easily fix'd on created things as being of the same order and condition These applications are defective and divide us from God but the greatest evill proceeds from this that our nature is subject to the Law of sin and tyrannicall concupiscence as long as we live upon earth it is subject to the curse and power of sin as being the nature of Adam a cursed rebellious nature wholly opposite to Iesus Christ. What therefore proceeds from so bad a beginning which of itself can produce no good is not onely to be suspected such but partaking of the quality of its fountain separates us from God so that those who follow the motions and inclinations of the flesh are immediately divided from God Those that are in the flesh saith St. Paul cannot please God and doubtless the more they follow their own inclinations and desires the more they are separated The Christian therefore who would be perfect and begins to live in the exercises of true Christian piety must oppose and annihilate his motions and inclinations or at least not follow them for they are the inclinations of the man Adam but must comply with the inclinations of Iesus Christ that is resign himself to his divine conduct who rules us by his providence assists us with his grace and acts in us by his spirit Where the best remedy against this danger is to preserve our selves in an adherence and dependance upon Iesus Christ who by the mercy and power of his spirit can suppress the tyranny of sin and preserve us from the dominion it usurpeth over us as over a nature it hath a right unto Hence the holy Scriptures call the Son of God him that easily taketh off the yoke of sin he alone by his grace fortifies our souls making them able to resist without being engaged therein the power of sin to defend them from its violence By this it appeares how much it concerns those who exercise themselves in true Christian actions to acquire solid piety that they may depend on and adhere to Iesus Christ seeing that if they do not they are the slaves of sin and chain'd to their own inclinations which separate them from God The third of our enemies is the World which conspires our ruine and by the hate it beares to Iesus Christ continually endeavours to separate us from him either deceiving us by its allurements or discouraging us by derision and opposition or forcing us from our duties by persecution for hating Iesus Christ it consequently persecutes all his The World hateth me sayes the Son of God because I testifie of it that the works thereof are evill And if the World hate him with an irreconcileable hatred it can do nothing lesse then separate us from him and disswade us from all that may be pleasing to him The Apostle assures us that all who will live godly in Christ Iesus must suffer persecution This they must all look for who desire to serve God and exercise themselves in true piety assuredly the World will arm it self against them using all manner of insinuations allurements and importunities that may be and practising all the artifices it can to separate them from Iesus Christ. This persecution can never cease for the hate shall endure for ever which should engage the Christian to look upon himself in this World as exposed to the malice and surprises of his mortall enemies He must therefore prepare himself for danger wherever he is or shall be while he lives and following the Counsel of the Son of God he must watch and pray least he be overcome by these assaults and surprised by those many dangerous temptations When we speak of the World we include all the creatures whereof it consists they all separate us from Iesus Christ not onely by the ill use we may make of them but in some manner by the lawfull This is manifest for the more the soul is united to and employed in the Creature the greater distance is there between her and her Creator The creature hath an attractive power to withdraw us and we have an inclination which carries us thereto whence we may easily be deceived by it even in the lawfull use thereof either by adherence or engagement by complacency or satisfaction and a thousand other wayes Besides that every Creature being subject to change and vanity they are the words of the Apostle himself it must necessarily imprint in our souls inconstancy and vanity which is much to be considered especially by those who seek perfection We must therefore hold it a certain Maxime that the more commerce we have with the World and the Creatures the more we are separated from Iesus Christ the more we are taken up with the creatures and our selves the lesse we are with Iesus Christ. Which if it be so may we not justly say the Earth is covered with our enemies and that we are in a place of combat and temptations and that every where is danger It concerns us then to walk with great vigilancy and continuall humility for on every side we see nothing but ambushes to surprise us every where snares to entrap us Adam was tempted even by an Apple we have all objects of temptation his was
resist To obtain this favour the Apostle particularly recommends Prayer to us saying Pray alwayes with all prayer and supplication in the spirit and watch with all perseverance These words are to shew with what importunity devotion and fervour we are to pray And truly we have need when the perills are so great our enemies so powerfull and our forces so small In the time of temptation it is not requisite to fight hand to hand much less to dispute with it to reason with or examine it or to force it away by violence this were to attribute too much to our selves for many times to examine it is to entertain it and to strive to oppose it too neerly is to become fastened to it and by disputing with it we are overcome It is more to purpose that as soon as we see the temptation we turn our thought some other way and look upon it with contempt and derision We must neither hearken to the Devil nor speak to him nothing puts him into greater fury then to see himself slighted nothing pleases him more then to heed and regard him for so we give him access and in a manner enter into acquaintance with him This is one of his ordinary subtilties whereby he deceives even the most wary yet we take no heed of it The devils intention in all this is to amuse and entertain us the objects he lays before us are not always evil it is sufficient for him if he but see us hearken to him that he may by little and little enter into discourse with us which once done he will soon instill his poyson into us Which way sover it is his drift is to turn us from God that he may have the disposall of our hearts and spirits that is enough to deceive even those who make profession of solid piety and much faithfulness in the ways of God It is no small evil to turn away from God to regard and examine a suggestion and conference that the devil would have with our spirits although we should do it to a good end with an intent to drive him away For it is to heed the devil to hearken to him and by a strict examination of his suggestions to conferre with him it is to withdraw our hearts and thoughts from God to employ them in what the devil proposes To avoyd all these impurities and to keep our selves from danger we must bear the temptation without enclining to it we must spit at the devil slight all his assaults and above all withdraw our eyes and thoughts from all he proposes This is the shortest and most easie way in all kinds of temptations For we shall find that temptations stay in us because we entertain them under pretence of driving them away and examining them It is enough we be watchfull and as soon as we have discovered the temptation or suggestion of the devil to renounce and despise it But there are some temptations that arise from objects or occasions in which case we must onely avoyd them and from all that may divide us from God There are others that are urgent and make lively impressions upon our spirits upon divers matters which would be long to explain In these cases we must not regard the temptation but God in it as Iob did when he was most tempted and afflicted The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away so we when pressed must cast our selves at the feet of Iesus Christ and offer our selves to him that he may annihilate the temptation in us if it be for his glory or keep us from consenting thereto We must implore his mercy for there are such pressing temptatirns that there is need of the greatest mercy of God to deliver us from them We must therefore cry out with humility and as much as we can enter into some conference and application of spirit with the Son of God acording to the state and strength of our soul. CHAP. XVII Of Resignations in Temptation BUT if we have not the power to elevate our selves to God if the soul be so bound by his secret conduct that we are sensible of our being forsaken to a generall impotency we must cast our selves upon God and having done what we can though ever so little employ the rest of our forces in offering our selves to the designes of God over us resigning our selves absolutely to his conduct and with a spirit of confidence be content to bear and patiently suffer the estate wherein we are Or if our soul can apply her self to any object she shall honour the weaknesses and temptations that the Sonne of God vouchsafed to sustain upon earth and shall implore his spirit and grace that she do nothing in this estate of weakness and temptation that may displease him But if our souls be reduc'd to an absolute impotency she must remain therein with dependance and humility of spirit there is nothing else required then to take care that we never regard the temptation but bear it with humility and patience Observe that it must be born with humility for though we consent not to the evill or temptation though assisted by the grace of God we bear it with much patience and with a spirit of sufferance yet we ought to annihilate and humble our selves because the evill is in us and we are joyned to the temptation This point is the more to be considered because herein the Devill deceives many and by a malicious dangerous deceit runs them out of patience and brings them into much evill whence they cannot withdraw themselves without a particular mercy of God To comprehend this secret we must note that the spirit of sufferance and temptation is an Evangelicall and Divine Estate and we say ordinarily that it is a mark of God's Elect an effect of the residence of Iesus Christ in us an infallible fruit of love the last draught of Christian perfection Hence the soul that is arrived at this estate is looked on as a chief work of Grace Now the Devill who watcheth us every where and circumvents even the best fails not to spit his poyson here if he can and will if such souls do not annihilate themselves by profound humility infallibly deceive them He makes them easily enter into an esteem of the estate wherein they are and insinuateth a vain confidence thereof he applies them to a regard of themselves makes them believe they are well advanced in Vertue and much in Gods favour since he numbers them among his friends and treats them as those he loveth best Thus by degrees he brings them into an esteem of themselves and their vertue and having infused this poyson into the heart and put the soul into this belief it is easie for him to ruine it to do what he will with it to deceive it as he pleases The Devill hath another sleight more dangerous and lesse known which is when he changes himself into an Angel of comfort and spirit of consolation even he who
we must hold our selves content if he will humble us we must annihilate our selves if by temptation he will use his justice and punish us why should we be troubled thereat Yea though he should leave us to be swallowed up by the temptation which can never fall out but through our own fault let us accept of his judgments and adore his justice saying with Eli when he heard from the mouth of little Samuel the decree of Gods justice against him Dominus est quod bonus est in oculis suis faciat Let us say the same let us receive all from the hand of God with great humility This is the first use we are to make of temptation Another is to receive it with subjection of soul to the Will of God Temptation is the conduct of God over us We must not therefore consider him that tempteth us nor yet the temptation we groan under but the order of God and the designs he hath upon us in that temptation Nothing can happen to us but by his permission though the Devil make it his constant business to hurt molest and destroy us if he could yet he hath no power but what he receives from God all his power is limited We must not therefore regard the Devil that tempteth us nor the temptation or malice of our enemies but the will and order of God in the temptation To comprehend this well we must remember that temptation is not onely a permission of God but one of his ordinary ways of proceeding over us to conduct us to him Whence it followes that it is not enough to suffer and to submit to temptations but we must do it purely and holily For seeing temptations and afflictions are the ordinary ways of God to conduct us to him we must not in temptation make any pause or think it sufficient to bear them patiently or to fight against them but we must pass further and go even to God to whom they will conduct us if we make such use of them as we ought Thus in temptation we must rather regard God then the temptation that binds us to God It is true we may fear to be overcome but if we be left to God he will not fail us in our necessity he promised to be with us in our agonies and temptations Let us be but faithfull in our duties and actions and without doubt he will be faithfull in his promises A third use of temptations is to refer them to the glory of God and to offer to him the state that we bear and all that passeth in us This is grounded both upon our duties and the designes of God who wills that we referr to him all the estates of our soul and all the actions and moments of our life that is all that is in us and all that we are This use is also grounded on the condition of all things which are opposite to honour and pay homage to God but principally the Christian who is called to the state of Christianity only to serve and honour God and particularly such as make profession of piety since true devotion requires much fidelity and wills us to make use of all things to unite us to God and to render to him the honours and homages due to his divine and supreme Majesty If we reflect upon all that hath been said from the beginning to this instant we shall see that we end where we began and that we have done nothing but shewn the Christian who would be perfect that true piety consists in purifying the heart and making it worthy to bear and possess God that he is truly devout who lives according to the spirit and grace of Christianity that to arrive at this happiness we must adhere to Iesus Christ our way and means to bring us to God that the principall care we ought to have in these exercises is to preserve our selves therein which indeed brings us to an adherence to the Son of God and to live with great fidelity and vigilancy subject to the conduct of Iesus and dependant upon his holy Ordinances These are the foundations we must lay if we would acquire true piety and when we come to the Consideration of Works and to express the externall worship love and service which we would render to God we have said that it is not enough to do good things but we must accomplish them by the conduct of his holy spirit according to his intentions and in holy dispositions We have already proposed the method it suffices to know that therein consists the essence and nature of a Christian for which we render to God the honour and service due to him This is all we mean to shew in this Discourse which we will conclude with the words and prayer of Saint Paul The God of peace make you perfect in every good work to do his will working in you that which is acceptable in his sight through Iesus Christ to whom be glory for ever and ever Amen FINIS Books Printed for Tho. Dring and are to be sold at the George in Fleet-street neer Saint Dunstans Church THe Pleader containing perfect precedents and forms of Declarations pleadings issues judgements and proceedings in all kind of actions both reall and personall by Mr. Brownlow Mr. Moyle Mr. Gulston and Mr. Conye published by John Herne Gent. in folio The Law of Conveyances shewing the nature kinds and effects of all manner of Assurances also directions to issue out and prosecute all manner of Writs a Warrant to summon a Court of Survey and the Articles to be given in charge and inquired of in that Court by John Herne in octavo The Reports of that Reverend and Learned Iudge Sir Richard Hutton in folio The twelfth Part of the Reports of Sir Edward Coke in folio the second impression The Reports of the Reverend and Learned Iudge Owen in folio The Reading upon the Statute of the thirteenth of Elizabeth Chapt. 7. touching Bankrupts by John Stove of Grays-Inn Esquire An Abridgement of the Common Law with the Cases thereof drawn out of the old and new books of Law for the benefit of all Practisers and Students by William Hughs of Gray-Inn Esq. in quarto An excellent Abridgement of all the Acts and Ordinances of Parliament from 1640. to 1647. by William Hughs Esq. in quarto The Reports of Serjeant Bridgeman in folio The ground of the Laws of England extracted out of the fountains of all Learning and fitted for all Students and Practitioners in large octavo An exact Abridgement of that excellent Book called Doctor and Student in octavo A profitable Book of Mr. John Perkins treating of the Laws of England in octavo The Interpreter or Book containing the signification of all the words of the Law by Joh. 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