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
him and examine what it is that God demands of us for the benefit of this regeneration Baptism Being consecrated to God by Baptism after so divine a manner we are no more now our own but belong wholly to him nor ought we to make use of our selves but for him If any profane thing being offered to God consecrated by ceremonies or dedicated to celebration of the divine office is by this means abstracted from common use and its particular end to be wholly employed in sacred things much more a Christian consecrated to the holy Trinity by Baptisme solemnly dedicated to Gods service and referred to his glory ought to be withdrawn from himself and such profane customs as of himself he may commit in his life and actions to be referred in whatsoever he doth to the service and glory of God From these proposed Truths it followeth that the grace of Christianity communicated by Baptisme whereto we have right by this Sacrament doth advance man above all creatures and withdraw him from this world to associate with God and to become his Temple and Throne of rest that being separated from care and love of the creature he may cleave to God only The soul may be compared to the woman in the Apocalypse cloathed with the Sun and having the Moon under her feet to tell us that our soules being replenished with the true sunne of Righteousnesse ought to raise themselves above all Creatures and possessing God contemn all that is not God of God or for God The learned Origen sayes That we ought to esteem as beyond and above the world all that is consecrated to God meaning only those who by the Ceremonies and ancient Customs of the Church resign themselves to Gods service If this be true in bare Ceremonies how much more is he whom God himself consecrates in this Sacrament beyond the world and above all things This is the effect of the words of Iesus Christ when speaking of the spirit of Christianity which he had infused into his Apostles he says recommending them and with them all the Elect unto his Father The world hates you because you are not of the world I likewise am not of the world where we see evidently that according to the designs of Iesus Christ a Christian must be no longer of this world nor pretend further to the creature then the Son of God did when he became man and liv'd upon earth We learn further that by this consecration and the state whereunto we are advanc'd by Baptism God assumes a second interest in us besides that of creation and in complyance with this new right we ought to be more his and live onely for him For he hath right to make in us and of us all that he pleases for his glory and the accomplishment of his divine will I need give no other reason hereof then that of the Apostle Know yee not that your body is the Temple of the holy Ghost which is in you which ye have of God And ye are not your own for ye are bought with a price therefore glorifie God in your body and in your spirit which are Gods Consider deliberately this Christian truth weigh all these words and ye shall see how much ye belong to God and ought to live for God Reject not this as a matter new or too high it much imports to your good If you cannot comprehend it at least admire it and since they are truths you ought to believe them by Faith you shall enter into an estimate of your estate and acknowledg it is so divine and eminent that you cannot comprehend it but can onely say that he that is all power will effect great things in you Now if you will endeavour to profit by these proposed verities First take heed you commit no sacriledge in serving any other but God since ye are consecrated for his glory be careful to refer your self unto him and to offer to him all your actions be they never so little for they all belong unto him and he knoweth how from the lowest meanest things to bring honour to himself Secondly seeing God hath separated you from the world consecrating you for his glory and that by Baptisme solemnly in the face of the Church you have renounced all its greatnesse and varieties Take heed you deceive not God or rather your selves adhering to the creature searching after and following the Vanities of the Time but see that in pursuit of this promise you have made to God you do disintangle your selfe all the days of your life as much as you can possible from these Creatures Thirdly take your affections off from them and if you will do well despise them all for God that your heart consecrated by an Vnction so holy may be only for God and love none but God The best foundation of Piety is to enter into a great esteem of God and what you are unto him so to contemn the world and all therein Fourthly Seeing you have no right to your selfe being marked with the character of Gods substance so Saint Cyprian calls the love of God and are wholly his let him make use of what is his go out of your self go out of your own Interest to God aim at nothing but the glory of God and therein place your principall care for there is nothing more important in the life of a Christian nothing more profitable or necessary then to leave wholly himself to God and to search diligently after God only This it is that God requires of you for this benefit whereunto you are obliged in the susception of Baptisme and by the state of Christianity The second Prerogative CHAP. III. Of the Filiall adoption of God whereto all Christians are called THe mystery of the Incarnation a work of Love and the Master-piece of God ought to be considered as the foundation of all the Mysteries of the Life of the Sonne of God From this they have their dignity and excellency from this they flow as from their source and principle this we ought to look upon and adore as the Cause of all our happinesse for in and by it we have all that we can-desire all the greatnesse all the priviledges and abundance of grace communicated to us in the state of Christianity flows from this ineffable Mystery as its spring It requires an eternity to consider so worthy an object to look into the excellencies and to contemplate the effects thereof Let us here make a pause to consider this grace the most advantageous of all we have received from the Son of God in this Mystery which gives us right and admission to all the rest the grace of Filiation which makes us children of God by adoption a grace given to men when the Son of God becoming man made men the sons of God By this benefit we are no longer the sons of Adam but of Iesus Christ who is God called by the Prophets The everlasting father By this grace
saw him but did not enjoy him few persons knew him he was not then seen but in his lowness as sayes the Apostle in the likeness of sinfull flesh In the Eucharist we see him by Faith a light as true and more infallible then that of the Sunne it self we do adore him in his greatness in the state of that glory which he hath in the bosom of his Father we handle him we touch him we eat him After this manner he is ours he will have us to be his he is in us and we in him we live of him and for him as he lives for us and the life that he lives in us is so divine that he composes it to the life that he leads in the bosom of his Father Now what more solid union what more intimate society what more divine commerce can be imagin'd what greater can we require of God Secondly During his life here he taught and redeemed Man-kind he dyed and merited for them but he gave nothing or if he gave it was little in comparison of the liberal profusions which he makes of himself in this ineffable Sacrament where he merits no more for it is not the time but gives himself to Christians and with himself all the treasures of grace and holiness This is a Sacrament of Communion and communication whereby the Sonne of God communicates to every one of us a life of grace the seed of glory In a word he communicates himself here as he communicates himself to the Saints in the state of Glory yet after a different manner and conformable to the diversity of the states of the Church militant and Tryumphant Add to this that in the time of the Incarnation Iesus Christ was upon the earth without power covered with our infirmities living in our weakness subject to the empire of death Now we possess and enjoy him in the bosom of his Father in the extent of his power having in his hand the conduct of Heaven and Earth Then he was in the World in poverty and privation but in this Sacrament of Love and communication he enjoyes the fulness of his greatness and is onely here that he may communicate them Thirdly Here on earth during his mortality he was seen but sometimes and that successively for some saw him in his infancy and no more others in his youth some felt the effects of his power in working of miracles many were witnesses of his death and sufferings All this past and was seen but in a small part of the World in Palestine in Ierusalem all the rest of the World was in darkness and saw not this beautiful Sun nor enjoy'd this agreeable light But in the Mystery and Sacrament of the Eucharist Iesus as given to all the World all the people of the Earth enjoy him from the East to the West from the North to the South there is no Nation where the Christians possess not Iesus Christ and in him all the estates and severall Mysteries of his life all that he is and shall be eternally Iesus in his life on Earth was in the quality of a servant as he saith of himself He came not into the World to be ministred unto but to minister also he was subject to Angels to men even to the very devills when he gave them power over his life in the time of his sufferings But in this divine Sacrament he is as in his Empire and in his Paradise we there adore him as our spouse governing his Church like the Sun enlightening our souls like a Prince establishing the Kingdom of his grace and the power of God in our spirits we there acknowledge him as a propitiation for humane kind rendring to the eternal Father the honour that is due to him In brief in this Mystery of Love we behold Iesus Christ as in the throne of his greatness where he receives throughout the World the adoration of his people and the duties of our souls In this manner the Earth is made a Heaven and we have our God with us and in us Let us consider these truths that so we may profit thereby and let us see what this divine bounty will work in us which makes such an abundant communication of it self in this Sacrament CHAP. IX The Design of Iesus Christ upon Christians in this most high Sacrament of the Eucharist WHat think we God requires of us for so powerfull a work of his Love What design can he have upon Christians in so divine a communication so generall a profusion of his gifts First he will change us a happy change for us for he changeth us into himself according to Saint Austin I shall be changed into thee but thou shalt not be changed into me Secondly he does thus change us not so much by a gift or created grace as by his holy humanity and the power of his divinity Thirdly the Son of God effecting this change out of the excess of love make use of this means to unite himself to us and to assume a new power over us as of a thing that belongs to him For having by his body taken possession of our member as his and made us members of his body flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone by his divine sacrament of union love and unity he assumes power over us by a right to him for ever When we shall consider these three Circumstances what can we think or say but that God will have us no longer men but gods He will have us to go out of our selves to be in him and cease to be that which we are to be what he is O how great is this How cleerly doth the holiness of the Christian estate appear seeing then this benefit is so heavenly and the communication so divine and wonderful in this ineffable sacrament we are by consequence obliged to make uses conformable to the thing it self and to the designs of God of which I shall propose some First That your sole contentment be to be with God who takes such pleasure to be with you that all things be unsavory to you that all the pleasures of the world be contrary to your heart renounce all lying and vanity Let even your smallest entertainments and ordinary actions be in him who is in the bottom of your heart who testifies such a singular love unto you This practice and affection will not be difficult if you be truly disposed to vertue for being vertuous it will be hard to take recreation in any created thing not in the least unprofitable word because a perfect Christian takes no pleasure but in God and that which is of God for being a member of Iesus Christ as such he is to act holily he must live of the spirit of Iesus Christ no way recreate himself but in him and in holy and vertuous things Secondly Recollect and form often in your soul a great and continuall desire that God be in you all that he ought to be and that
knows the power of God over her who can advance her to what degree of communications it shall please him and do in her and by her all that he pleases In this consideration man must adore the secret Iudgements will and designes of God over his Creature he must humble himself in his nothing annihilate himself in his humility and by his knowledge see into the little he is the need he hath of God and the misery of a Soul without grace He must not content himselfe with the bare Knowledge of these truthes without making use thereof the spirit of God can furnish him with severall ways to do it Behold here three Acts very profitable and necessary to be done as often as we can with serious application 1. The soul must resign it self to grace to all the designes and counsels of God over it with a desire to depend efficaciously upon the spirit and conduct of God to follow all the ways to undergo all the effects of the grace and dispensations of God 2. The soul must produce an act whereby offering her consent to God as much as is required she must protest that she consents then and alwayes to all the operations of Iesus Christ in her and to all the designes that he hath upon her of what kind estate and manner soever they be 3. She must renounce within her self fervently all her right over her self her inclinations interest obstruction and imperfections within her imploring the bounty of Jesus and the power of his spirit to annihilate in her all her imperfections to take from her all hindrances opposite to the spirit grace and conduct of God Lastly she must study the practice of vertues when occasion shall present them after the manner proposed whereof we now begin to treat CHAP. III. Of the practise and means whereby we may arrive to the possession of God of his grace and spirit IT much imports souls that seek after God and would live in the perfection of Christianity that they endeavour to enter and settle themselves in good and solid dispositions for that God chiefly regards in us and we are not ignorant that the operations of Grace are alwayes proportioned to the disposition she puts or finds in the soul. Now amongst all dispositions the most solid and necessary the chief path of the soul to true vertue is Love and knowledge of truth We must love truth and strongly adhere to it we must wholly study to fill our spirits with the knowledge of this Truth that it may be unto us a foundation to Christian life a light in the direction and conduct of our actions Therefore before I propose any practise I alwayes put Truth for a foundation of Exercises necessary to our subject Let us then consider as a certain Principle that the more we act for our selves and for the Principles of our being and nature to conduct our selves or our own spirit the more we estrange our selves from God and by consequence from the end for which we are created from the perfection whereto we are obliged The spirit which is in us is the spirit of Adam our nature the nature of Adam therefore is it a nature become damnable by sins a spirit infused into us by the Serpent possessing us in the consent of Adam This spirit and nature is subject to the power and malice of the Devill and sinne and consequently cannot act but according to the power and malice whereto it is a slave for operation followes essence As this being therefore is estranged from God and enemy to him for by nature we are born the children of wrath saith St. Paul so it cannot act but against God Now by this reducement man is drawn out of this Captivity freed from this bondage and made a new subject to Grace he acts no more according to the Principle of his own being but by the Principle of Grace which gives him a new being making him a new Creature in Iesus Christ. To arrive to this Liberty which we call the Liberty of Grace and of the children of God two things are requisite the mercy or grace of God and the consent and co-operation of the soul. The Christian therefore that will live vertuously must first give himself to God offer him his will and intire consent to all the designes he hath upon him and to all the effects which he will by his grace operate in him Then he must study and labour to withdraw himself from this bondage to shake off the yoak of sin which oppresses and drags him whither it will to free himself he must quit himself that is his imperfections his passions inclinations and much more sinne he must kill this spirit of Adam and pluck it up by the root that it may the better make room for the spirit of God that this holy spirit may live in him and act by him otherwise he can no way possess the true christian vertue nor attain the perfection whereto he is obliged nor the end whereto he is created the possession of God Whence it follows that the first exercises whereto the soul must apply it self is to place it self in the liberty of grace to draw it self out of the bondage of sin and to annihilate in it self the spirit of Adam which it carries in the very marrow of its bones Here it must begin all other exercises are but unprofitable without this and all it does will be to no purpose unless it arrive to this point For we must remember that the vertue to be truly Christian is the spirit of Iesus who acts in us and that the perfection of a Christian consists in love a love that is never without the possession of God it is easie then to conclude and believe that he that will be vertuous and a perfect Christian must make room for God in his heart there establish God there cause his spirit to rule and live He must root out and expel all that is contrary and in enmity to God even all that is not God for he that is not with me saith Jesus Christ is against me The true exercise and principall care of a Christian consists herein all others that abut not upon this we must despise saying with St. Paul in Iesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but faith which is by love Now the onely question is how we may arrive to this happiness herein is the difficulty We say it is by inward and outward mortification by the senses and by the spirit by vigilancy in all things that we neither receive consult nor do any thing contrary to God or that may displease him by prayer by discourse In fine it is by the grace of God for it belongs to God alone and Iesus Christ to make us free and draw us out of the captivity of our selves and sin If the Sonne shall make you free you shall be free indeed saith Iesus Christ. It is an effect onely of the
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
hope must sow in the spirit as the Apostle sayes and do actions worthy so great a recompence This is the way that this third part sheweth where are deduced and advanced those dispositions and vertues which lead us to this estate and to make us perfect Indeed many other vertues might be proposed but these contain all and infallibly guide to the estate God requires of us Faith makes us know and esteem of God it shews us the way to God and leads us to the knowledge of our selves this knowledge draws us to humility that humbles us and disposes us to receive God the good desire if it be efficacious draws us to God purity makes us worthy of God and self-deniall brings to the fulness of God He that hath God hath all he is perfect and he that hath not God is nothing and hath nothing Do what he can though he should do miracles as Iudas probably did he can do nothing that is perfect no work worthy of heaven for it is God onely that works in us the works of grace and who is the principle of our merits which must be well noted therefore he that will be saved and become a perfect Christian must aim only at this point All that we have proposed serve hereunto The first thing demanded is to endeavour to have a good foundation and a sincere uncorrupted interiour to conduct us according to the principles of Faith and the maximes of Christianity to regard God in all things to please him or at least not to displease him with particular care to annihilate the spirit of Adam and the spirit of the world for they are enemies to God they can no more dwell together then Iacob and Esau. After all these dispositions the soul must depend upon God and be wholly left to his operations and conduct and be very vigilant to shew her self faithfull to correspond with the graces and operations of God and not to withdraw her self from his conduct and the order he would take with her This last point is of great consequence and deserves to be a little more insisted upon for it is the last touch we shall give to the Image of a perfect Christian. We must observe that in the order of grace it is not as in the order of Nature In nature that which is most dependant on it's cause is the most imperfect as the sound and voice which is so dependant on its cause that it ceases to be when it ceases to be produced In nature that is esteemed most perfect which hath the least dependance It is otherwise in the state of grace that is most perfect which is neerest and the most dependant on its cause and principle God so that he that tends to perfection must be in a great dependance on God and not act but in this disposition and by a generall resignation of himself to God To put and establish himself in this estate he must have a pure regard of God that is he must hold all of God and have no other object but God in his thoughts or actions When he perceives any care desire motion c. arising in him which he believes not to be of God he must annihilate and renounce it protesting to will nothing but him and the accomplishment of his divine will A soul that would live in resignation and in a true dependance on God must live in the unity of the object that is having regard only to God herein consists the true dependance whereof we speak she must not go out of this disposition to regard what she doth or what she shall do not so much as what may happen to her upon any manner of occasion she shall have all care possibly that she enter not into these thoughts contradictions and afflictions wherein she is or which may happen to her but she must receive all from the hand of God with gentleness and patience regarding him as the Authour of all things and submiting her self in all and by all to his most amiable will saying with a fervent spirit What have I in heaven or what have I desired in the earth besides thee my Iesus It is not sufficient for her to be in this interiour disposition nor that in prayer or her good desire she remain in this nakedness but she must also walk in the spirit of simplicity by an exteriour conduct abandoning and remitting her actions and affairs and all manner of success to the good pleasure of God with a perfect confidence in the love and divine providence of Iesus not seeking in any thing either satisfaction or profit much less cansolation but desiring purely to please God and to be wholly to him according as he hath ordained her To make this disposition more perfect she must not onely submit her actions to the pure will of God but also all her secret and smallest motions as well of nature as of grace that so she may be wholly resigned to God and in a bare and simple dependance It is not necessary that she regard her progress and advantage nor that she desire to be perfect but onely that by esteem respect and confiding in the love of Iesus she abandon her self entirely and purely to the care and prudence that he hath for her To conclude as the soul most purely walks in the wayes wherein God will lead her so must she also endeavovr to follow the light of Faith and maximes of Iesus Christ which shall serve her as a guide thus shall her heart become pure and neat having no other intention nor other hope but to be to God and to please God caring for nothing else she shall fill her spirit with a great esteem of God and respect to his greatness and the infinite power of the divinity and sense of her own meanness and in the spirit of humility abandon her self to Iesus Christ to be wholly to him and to live altogether in a dependance on his holy will and divine Ordinances The soul living in these dispositions it will be easie to avoyd all sorts of disquiets she shall remain in a holy indifferency she shall not trouble her self with her ordinary imperfections neither take care to change or not to change to converse hold or be conducted by this or that She shall be so little sensible of parents her friends her desires yea the supernaturall graces and all things that her onely regard being to God on whom she depends and to whom she is wholly abandoned her only solace end and contentment shall be to please him and to leave her self to the perfect and pure submission of her will to the conduct of God and his divine wisdome For want of this disposition there are many alas too many who live in disquiet perplexity and agitations of spirit The want of this vertue causing so many complaints and repinings so many inward and outward difficulties among souls who follow devotion so many cares doubts desires and propositions which proceed not from the
him abroad in the Kings Palace The devout soul who beholds God in her heart and sees nothing but God there beholds him every where She knowes not that the World sees her she onely knowes her God beholds her and she her God that suffices her If a Christian love his God he will love him every where and not considering men he will say with the spouse my God is mine and I am his The Christian Master St. Paul gives us a good lesson upon this subject and in divers places furnishes us with reasons to perswade us to the care we ought to have of the outward man and of the actions that appear to the eyes of men he sayes that first we owe to God the care of perfecting our exteriour for God will be honoured by our actions This object we must have continually before our eyes this thought must never go out of our souls the reason that the Apostle gives is that we are not our own but Gods whether we live or die we are the Lords saith he and consequently in all our exteriour actions we must have a regard to God as if I should say whether at Court in publick or private in happiness or misfortune in what estate soever I am in of death or life what condition soever I live in I am Gods and therefore must so order my self that in all conditions and estates I may honour God by my actions that my exteriour may be as agreeable to him as my interiour Know you not saith the Apostle that your body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you which ye have of God and ye are not your own for ye are bought with a price therefore glorifie God in your Body By the first words he shewes the dignity of our bodies seeing that they possess the holy spirit by the rest the obligation we have to take care of our exteriour that it may give God the honour he expects This Doctrine stops the mouth of all the reasons or rather excuses of those who dissemble what they are and not esteeming the exteriour content themselves with good intentions We must say they live among the living we must accommodate our selves to men and a thousand such nicities to which there need no other answer then that of the Apostle you are not for your selves or your own Interests nor for your friends nor for the World give unto God what you owe unto God and to Caesar what you owe unto Caesar. If this reason be not sufficient Saint Paul gives you another taken from the condition of Christians and which they profess holy and perfect As a Gentleman is oblig'd to live like a Gentleman a Prince like a Prince every one according to his quality so a Christian must live according to the quality of a Christian his exteriour life must be conformable to the state of Christianity which he professeth I have shewed you saith St. Paul and prayed you to walk worthy of God who hath called you to his Kingdom and to his glory As the quality of a Christian is most noble that man can be advanced unto in which quality he must appear before the Tribunall of God to receive judgement and recompence of his actions it is but necessary his life and actions his government and conversation be conformable and worthy of so high and divine a quality whereto the same Apostle exhorts us I beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called This is all that is required of a Christian that in what estate condition or manner of life soever he be he live after a manner worthy of Christianity Let this be his first design the subject of his examen let all his care be to profess what he is by his actions The first thing that a Christian must regard in his actions and exteriour is not to see if he be conformable to the rank he holds among men and to his condition in the World but rather to be conformable to the state he professes before God herein consists the fidelity and courage of a Christian. This care of our exteriour is not an indifferent instruction but a Law from Heaven pronounced by Iesus Christ Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven He will have us concerned in our neighbours and for love of them strive to live well to be unto them a mirror of vertue This is not therefore an advice but an obligation to give good example and by our good actions to shew others what they ought to do Example by sweetness of attraction wins the heart binds the will captivates the affections if vertuous it makes vertue to be deified it constrains us to love it and by the rule it bears over our hearts innsinuates and instills the vertue which it exerciseth For men said the Morall Philosopher give more credit to their eyes then to their ears From this principle is derived our obligation to let our light shine before men to preserve a vertuous and exemplary exteriour We are a sweet savour of Christ saith Saint Paul teaching us that our exteriour should have the odour of the vertue of Iesus Christ and not only have the savour but be the very savour it self so much God desires the perfection of our works words recreation conversation employments affairs In brief all our actions must savor of Iesus Christ and bear the odor of his vertues we must not pervert this counsel to formall affectation True vertue is masculine and noble every where it rules with modesty the spirit of God walketh with Majesty in humility all that we require is to profess vertue every where not to be ashamed to shew that we are God's that we respect his divine Majesty that we fear his Iudgements He that hath a good interiour let him shew it by the exteriour let him dissemble nothing but walk alwayes in sincerity remembering that he is in the sight of God Angels and men who behold him and shall one day be his Iudges By the same reason that we labour to perfect our interiour we must endeavour to perfect the exteriour for common sense teaches us that by our exteriour we must please God and render him as much honour as by the interiour To recollect and profit by what is said let us learn to perfect our exteriour and have regard to God onely to conform our actions to the state and dignity of Christianity Let us remember that the rule whereby God will judge us at the hour of death will not be that of honour nor of men of the world much less that of our Interests but of his will and his honour we are only in the world for his honour to do his holy will we are his and for him and it is reason we should render to God what we owe him CHAP. II. That in all our Actions we must follow the
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
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
A SPIRITUAL TREASURE Containing Our OBLIGATIONS TO GOD AND THE VERTUES Necessary to A Perfect Christian. Author Written in French By Iohn Quarre Englished By Sir THOMAS STANLEY Kt. The Second Edition LONDON Printed by T. R. for Thomas Dring at the George in Fleet-street near Saint Dunstans Church 1664. To the LADY STANLEY MADAM WHAT You here receive is due onely to Your self it being the Product of that contemplative retirement to which my dear Father resign'd the two latest years of his life The Author is highly esteemed in his own Country and hath met with so good Reception in ours also that he already seeth a Second Impression which in this Age not a little commends a Treatise of this Nature Vpon this occasion I was sollicited by the Stationer to acquaint the Reader by whom it hath been so kindly entertained with the Name of the Person to whom he is indebted for the English Edition And having herein satisfied the Importunity of the One and the Curiosity of the Other it rests onely I present it to Your Ladiship together with the humble Duty of Madam Your Ladiships Obedient Son Thomas Stanley PREFACE UNder the name of Sprirituall Treasure behold the Image of a perfect Christian which I here present thee Devout Reader It hath taken the name of Treasure because it contains as in a hidden mine the highest divine truths of Christian Piety it is a Pourtract of Perfection the Image of a true Christian or all which the Sonne of God hath left to his Church And those which I propose to you in this Treasure represent a lively Image of that perfection whereto we are called and by the grace of Christianity conducted Perhaps you may remember that this Book hath heretofore appeared under the same name but it was upon another design For then it treated onely of some particular Vertues such onely as serve to subject the soul to the guidance of God and the spirit of grace It had then no other object but the resignation of the Creature to the will and work of the Creator Now it is universall and withdrawn from a limited subject speaks in generall explains the Principles of Christianity and describes the principall Vertues necessary for a perfect Christian. As for the stile it is concise confining it self to the truth which it exposes the most plainly that may be despising all Ornaments of words since truth hath so much lustre of it self as she need not borrow of others The World perhaps will not hearken to it or suffering it to speak will not understand it for its Doctrine is too divine its Principles too high That which it proposes is wholly contrary to what the World professeth And it is much to be feared that many will dispute it considering that falsehood and malice have taken such deep root in the greater part as loving nothing but vanity and unwilling to consent to truth We live in an age so corrupt that even Christians many times fear to be good least they should be persecuted and are ashamed to appear vertuous least they should be derided Hardly can it promise it self a better reception amongst them that make profession of Piety for there are many that seek nothing but their own satisfaction in the most holy things self-love hath such absolute power over souls that they flatter themselves in every thing believing all to be good which is agreeable to them and on the other side seeming Devotions have so much applause among men that it will be hard to perswade the contrary So that our perfect Christian who speaks here purely of Truth and truly of Piety cannot easily avoid the various censures of men For as he speaks Christianly for his stile is in the spirit so he condemns freely all that is not worthy of God in the purity of the spirit which may appear strange and those who confide too much in themselves esteeming nothing but their own actions will soon condemn this manner of Discourse But what remedy shall we therefore injure Truth no she will appear before the eyes of men in despight of the World and although she may meet with spirits little capable to receive her yet it is alwayes good to expose the Image to the view even of her greatest Enemies for by this meanes they will be forced seeing her to confess they have no vertue that they walk in the night of untruths and perhaps they will apprehend their own misery and be afraid to loose themselves And if there are any who think themselves already arrived at the highest point of perfection flattering themselves in their own esteem when they shall here consider the excellencies of Christianity the purity of the spirit of grace and admire the designs of God upon souls and see what is necessary for a perfect Christian they will open those eyes which self-love had bewitched and acknowledge that their actions come far short of their own esteem of them and then humbling themselves even to the centre of their nothing they will resolve to seek God to serve him in spirit and truth after a manner worthy of God However they who take the paines to read this little work will see that many deceive themselves to their great mischeif and will learn that it is not a small matter to gain Heaven for to such only is Paradise open and that there is required more purity and vertue then we ordinarily propose For if the life of a true Christian be a life of God in man if true perfection be an amorous possession of God what purity what vertue must there be in him who will possesse so rich a Treasure pretend to an estate of divine This is a point you must consider of friendly Reader as being that which ought to be the only object of your actions For if you will open your eyes to see what God requires of you if you will rest your thoughts upon the excellencies of the state of Christianity you will learn that your heart must be the Throne of the most holy Trinity who will establish his Kingdom therein your Soul a Heaven where God will glorifie himself your life the life of God who lives in you that you may raign with him To conclude you shall know that you are onely in the World to please God and to do his will in the purity of his spirit alwayes holy is not this an affaire of great importance If for your satisfaction and profit you desire to comprehend what I say and to know the motives and obligations that you have to love and serve God perfectly Read the two first parts of this Work the third and fourth shew you the way you must keep and the Truths that are necessary to live a good Christian the last gives you a pattern of true piety Read and you shall learn how to be a good Christian. A TABLE of the several Chapters treated of in this Book The FIRST PART Of the Divine Prerogatives whereunto man is
raised by the State and Grace of Christianity The first Prerogative CHAP. I. How by Baptism Man is appropriated to God and consecrated by the blessed Trinity Page 1 CHAP. II. How holy the life of a Christian ought to be consecrated to God by Baptism 10 The second Prerogative CHAP. III. Of the Filial adoption of God whereto all Christians are called 16 CHAP. IV. Of the uses that Christians ought to make of filial adoption whereto they are advanced by Baptism 21 CHAP. V. What the Actions of Christians ought to be 27 The third Prerogative CHAP. VI. Of the happy Commerce and Society that Iesus Christ will have with Christians by the Mystery of the Incarnation 36 CHAP. VII Of the uses Christians ought to make of Grace proceeding from the Mystery of the Incarnation 42 The fourth Prerogative CHAP. VIII Of another kind of Society and Union of Jesus Christ with Christians by the Sacrament of the Eucharist 47 CHAP. IX The Design of Iesus Christ upon Christians in this most high Sacrament of the Eucharist 53 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. 65 CHAP. II. That the possession of God is the end of a Christian life whereto we cannot arrive but by the grace of Iesus Christ. 73 CHAP. III. Of the practice and means whereby we may arrive to the possession of God of his grace and spirit 78 The first Motive CHAP. IV. That by Creation man is obliged to tend to this perfection and to resign himself to God 84 The second Motive CHAP. V. That Man in as much as he is a Sinner and the child of Adam is obliged to seek God as the only remedy to his evils 91 CHAP. VI. Of the state of Man after the sin of Adam and of the need he hath of his God 99 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. 108 CHAP. VIII Practices to help a Christian to live in subjection to Grace and the spirit of Jesus 115 The fourth Motive CHAP. IX That this Precept to love God doth oblige us to perfection and makes us go out of our selves to be God's 121 The conclusion of the second Part. The care and vigilancy which a Soul must have which seeks perfection and would live in true subjection to the grace and conduct of Iesus Christ. 131 The THIRD PART Proposing divers Dispositions and Vertues necessary for a Christian to arrive to that perfection whereto he is obliged by Christianity CHAP. I. What those Dispositons are and how necessary they are to be practice of Vertue 138 CHAP. II. Several practices whereof we may make use to attain Christian Vertues 147 CHAP. III. That the adherence of a Soul to Iesus Christ is the most perfect means to possess all Christian vertue 156 CHAP. IV. The means whereby we may arrive to the adherence of our souls with God and the obstacle which hinder it 163 The first Disposition CHAP. V. Of the spirit of Faith and the necessity thereof 169 CHAP. VI. Of the use of Faith and how we may practice it 176 CHAP. VII Of the effects that Faith produceth in our souls and of the esteem of God 184 The second Disposition CHAP. VIII Of Humility and the means to obtain it 192 CHAP. IX Of the knowledge of God and our Selves 197 The third Disposition CHAP. X. Of an effectual desire to be God's 204 The fourth Disposition CHAP. XI Of the purity of the Hearth 208 The fifth Disposition CHAP. XII Of Self-denial and the necessity thereof 220 CHAP. XIII What abnegation is and the means to attain it 227 The abridgment of the third Part. CHAP. XIV Treating of the dependance of the Soul upon God 237 The FOURTH PART Sheweth how we must guide our selves in all occurrences and in all estates of humane life CHAP. I. Of the care a Christian ought to have to perfect his exteriour 246 CHAP. II. That in all our Actions we must follow the conduct of God 256 CHAP. III. That a Christian must do all his Actions for love of God and for God 266 CHAP. IV. Of the complacency and self-satisfaction which draws us from the pure regard of God and of the purity of intentions which must be in our actions 274 CHAP. V. Of the care a Christian ought to have to do all his Actions according to his vocation and to maintain himself in the order and conduct of God 282 CHAP VI. What the Directors of souls ought to be 290 CHAP. VII Of the fidelity of the soul and of its necessity in the wayes of grace and the actions of a Christian. 298 CHAP. VIII Of Infidelity to grace and how a man ought to live in his Vocation 306 CH. IX How the Christian ought to comport himself in the exteriour use of all things 314 CHAP. X. Of Sufferings and the esteem we ought to have of them 260 CHAP. XI How the fear of Suffering draws us from the way of perfection 336 CHAP. XII Of the Dispositions wherewith we must bear Sufferings and all the adversities of humane life 346 CHAP. XIII How we ought to suffer in the spirit of Christianity 356 CHAP. XIV That we must suffer out of a zeal to the Iustice of God 367 CHAP. XV. The continuance of the precedent Chapter and of the spirit of repentance 274 CHAP. XVI The abridgment of the fourth Part treating of Christian grace 384 The SEQUELE 290 The FIFTH PART Treating of true Piety and he more particular Duties of a Christian towards Iesus Christ our Lord. CHAP. I. What Devotion is and wherein true Piety consisteth 396 CHAP. II. The necessity we have to be Iesus Christ's if we would attain true Devotion 406 CHAP. III. Of Piety to Iesus Christ and its principal effects 414 CHAP. IV. The right which the Son of God hath to us Motives obliging us to be his and to adhere to him by true piety 423 The Continuation CHAP. V. Of the Motives which oblige us to belong to Iesus and to serve him by true piety 428 CHAP. VI. Of the state of Subjection to Iesus Christ considered as the principle of Christian Piety 437 CHAP. VII Containing certain interiour acts for those souls who are desirous to be established and confirmed in true piety 442 CHAP. VIII That an adherence to Iesus Christ by true Piety makes us partakers of the several conditions of his life 450 CHAP. IX Certain dispositions necessary for the devout soul that would participate of the grace and estates of the life of Iesus Christ. 457 CHAP. X. That Christian piety obliges us to submit our life and actions to the honour of Christ. 465 CHAP. XI The Use and Practice of what hath been proposed 473 CHAP. XII How the Christian that seeks
true piety is obliged to imitate Jesus Christ. 481 CHAP. XIII The Practice of what hath been proposed in the imitation of Iesus Christ 489 CHAP. XIV Of Temptations and Oppositions happening in the way to perfection and the exercises of Piety 498 CHAP. XV. In what Disposition the Christian ought to be that he yield not to such temptations as occurr in the exercises of piety 507 CHAP. XVI Of Temptations and the advantages a Christian ought to make of them 512 CHAP. XVII Of Resignations in Temptation 519 CHAP. XVIII Divers Uses that may be made of Temptation 525 The End SPIRITUALL TREASURE The first Part. Of the Divine Prerogatives whereunto man is raised by the State and Grace of Christianity The first Prerogative CHAP. I. How by Baptisme Man is appropriated to God and consecrated by the blessed Trinity BE ye perfect even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect These are holy words words of truth pronunced by the Holy of holies the God of Truth words that import the beginning and eminency of the estate which we are to attain words worthy to be engraved not upon the fronts of our house as a celebrious Sentence of the Ancients nor printed in our foreheads in great Characters like the Law of the Iews But in the centre of our souls and bottom of our spirits For in these divine words we behold as in a table brought from heaven what we are and what we ought to be We see that we are the image of God by creation and ought to be his resemblance by sanctification Our soul bearing the image of God is capable of God himself and hath an essence so noble and divine that nothing can satisfie nothing can fill her but an infinite essence Besides we learn that our soul being called to the resemblance of God nothing can ennoble her nothing can perfect her but the greatness and very perfections of the Divinity And to this it is that Jesus Christ invites us when he says Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect This only is the subject of this little Work I would to God that they who are transported with the wonders in Nature who can admire her greatness rare varieties and perfections who willingly confine themselves to the contemplation of the motions of the heavens of the extent of the earth of the depth of the sea of the admirable secret properties of every thing would turn back their sight into themselves to take notice what they are and what they ought to be to contemplate the singular perfection inclosed within their own souls the greatness whereto God will raise them and eminency of that state to which they are called If other Creatures are objects able to ravish our spirits and oblige them to contemplation and admiration with how much more reason ought we to employ our selves in the consideration of our own soul for which all things were created If vertue saith Plato be so beautifull as that her luster is able to transform our hearts and force us to love her what then is the soul of which vertue is but the ornament O soul saith one of the Fathers thou lovest the world yet thou thy self art of more value then all the world Thou admirest the Sun and yet art more beautifull then all the Stars Thou dost contemplate heaven yet art exalted above the firmament Thy God onely is above thee all creatures are under thy feet Let us begin to prepare our hearts to these thoughts let us call back our distracted spirits from so many objects let us withdraw our wandering eyes from so many curiosities and undeceive our hearts charmed by so many vanities that we may apply or selves to the acquisition of this knowledge for in being ignorant of these truths man is estranged from God and himself serves the creatures who were made to serve him makes his vanity an ornament and advances above himself that which ought to be under his feet and farther loosing himself in the curious pursuit of creatures or pernicious affection to the world he no more thinks of himself and which is worse seems no longer to know his God Hence spring all evils which overflow the earth all vices and disorders in the life of man Nor is it strange for how can a Christian serve his God if he esteem not his greatness and be ignorant of his divine adorable perfections and how shall he know them if he seldome or never consider them Beside how is it possible for a Christian to render unto God what he ought and to live as God requires if he take no time to reflect upon himself if he know not what he is whence he comes whither he goes how he lives In this it is he ought to employ his thoughts and time The highest employment of man says Heraclitus is to seek himself and we say the most necessary yet we are not with Democritus to put out our eyes and deprive our selves of the sight of all creatures thereby with more ease and attention to apply our selves to the study of this high philosophy the knowledge of God and our selves we need not go to such an extremity On the contrary let us preserve our eyes and attention to contemplate at leisure the image which I am going to describe unto you It is the pourtracture of a true Christian in which shall be drawn in lively colours the Christian vertues and represented the dispositions actions and piety wherein all Christians ought to live To speak after this manner is proportionable to this subject He that would make a man to see what he ought to be must draw his picture that he may see and contemplate himself therein The soul like the eye sees all things yet not it self unlesse by reflection To make her know her selfe a glasse must be set before her wherein are represented the true beauties of the state of grace the excellencies of Christianity her obligation to perfection her capacity to possesse God that considering all these she may see what she is and what she ought to be to her God Thus seeing her selfe she knows her self knowing her helf she esteems accordingly of her own being life and condition and by these degrees arriving to this esteem she faithfully endeavours to render God the honour love and service due to him careful to lead a life suitable to the condition and dignity whereto God hath called her To represent to the life so great perfection and to acknowlege what the soul is before God to whom she is called and may arrive by the assistance of a supernaturall power We must consider the essence and grace of the Mysteries wrought by the Son of God upon the Earth and what he hath accomplished in Heaven because they are the beginning and source of all Graces wherewith we are inriched they make us know what God requires of us what he will operate in us and by us These then we must propose Behold three which we
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
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
us with his gifts that by all these endearments and singular favours he might separate us from the creatures and reduce us to a divine society and communication with him Let us consider these two mysteries of our Faith and Love mysteries which give God to us and cause us to dwell with God The last is the mysterie of the Incarnation a mysterie of Love an eternall mysterie for God shall be man and man God for ever a mysterie causing God to live the life of man and man the life of God which between God and man effects an union and society so divine and intimate that he could not do any thing more holy nor desire any more intimate since it is substantiall and personall and shall subsist eternally Entring further into the consideration of this Mystery we shall see evident signs of this holy Communion God makes here a new World as the Scripture calls it a World of Grace and of holiness a World which he governs by a new conduct and providence For whereas before God confining himself within himself spoke not to the World but by his Prophets now by the accomplishment of this Mystery he comes out of himself speaks to us and instructs us by his Sonne Four thousand years he guided the World and his Church onely by his Angels the Interpreters and Oracles of his divine will Now Iesus guides his Church by himself he infuses holy motions into our souls by his spirit alwayes holy he governs all is present with all and is found by all What presence or commerce with God would you desire greater what greater society then that of the word by the Mystery of the incarnation To know it more particularly consider these Circumstances First in this Mystery God lives the life of man and man the life of God a life of society a life humanely divine and divinely humane for Iesus is God and man in Iesus we adore and acknowledge two lives one of God in man another of man in God Secondly by this ineffable union God communicates himself to man and by this communication appropriates to himself all that is of man with such wonderful wisdom that not dishonouring his divine greatness he takes upon him all the lowness of man and subjects himself so really to our infirmities that we say God is dead God is born c. and man by a happy exchange is lifted up to all the greatness of God inthron'd in the bosom of the eternal Father where he eternally enjoyes the proper glory of God Let every tongue confess that in Iesus Christ by that hypostaticall union accomplished in the Mystery of the incarnation man enjoyes the glory of God his greatness light and life Thirdly As for the life and divine mysteries of the Sonne of God we see he presented it to us the space of thirty three years conversing with us as one of us was an Infant in his first appearing laboured in his youth did live and eat with sinners in his wayfaring life He disdained not to succour the infirm in his miraculous life In a word he resigned himself into the hands of sinners a Sacrifice and was offered a holy offering on the Crosse for the sins of the World O wonderfull he died between two Thieves in the company of men so much pleased with the society and commerce of men What Religion ever had the presence of its God so visible what being was ever advanced to so great an honour To none but the Christian is this great favour granted a Commerce so sacred that it makes man God and God man By the ineffable mystery of the incarnation God unites the Earth to Heaven and Heaven to Earth The God of Heaven dwells upon the Earth according to that of St. Iohn The word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us all nature rejoyced at this happiness St. Iohn transported with love and joy representing to the world the truth and excellency of this benefit saith It is the same God that we have heard that we have seen with our eyes which we have looked on and our hands have handled So true is it that God by the mystery of the incarnation is with us and converses amongst us after a society wholly divine and onely proper to the state of a Christian. CHAP. VII Of the uses Christians ought to make of Grace proceeding from the Mystery of the Incarnation IN pursuit of these proposed Truths what may we judge to be the intentions of God but that his will is that we should enter into a holy and divine society with him and that we should separate our selves from all that may hinder or prophane this holy conversation with him since that Iesus Christ thinks of us converses with us by his divine mysteries unites himself unto us and abaseth himself to be as one of us to be among us we ought likewise to think of none but him to love none but him to converse with none but him and like the Apostle dwelling upon Earth to have our Conversation in Heaven Iustin Martyr shewing what Christians ought to be saith Christians are in the body but they live not according to the body they dwell upon the Earth but their Conversation is in Heaven This God requires of us this we ought to be in the state of Christianity this is the use we ought to make of the spirit and grace flowing from the Mystery of the incarnation But alass it is pitty that Iesus being now revealed unto us living with us and amongst us we apply thereto so little of our selves of our thoughts and of our love and busie our selves in things so small prophane and mean even such as are unworthy of man Let us do like him Love made him forget himself to converse with us let us come out of our selves and forget all things that we may raise our selves to him that all our content may be in him Moreover the state of the Grace of this Mystery obliges us to be holy seeing Iesus Christ with whom we converse is holy The Apostle says as he that hath called you is holy be ye also holy in all manner of conversation speaking walking working and whatsoever you do He that lives after any other manner saith St. Cyprian then holily dishonours the title of a Christian and is a reproach to Iesus Christ. Let such as believe not sanctity necessary for all Christians as well as those who live included in Cloysters consider these words We see in the Mystery of the incarnation that the Sonne of God enters into Commerce and society with us dwells with us is cloathed with our humanity God is made man that man might be made God not by simple denomination as God said to Moses I have made thee a God to Pharaoh and Kings in the Scripture are stiled Gods but really and by a being which deifies them For as they are true Children of God by Grace and as truly children by Grace as Christ is
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
to such a point that it was necessary the Son of God should be made man that God immortall should be clothed with our mortality to purchase for us by his blood and death a power to serve him to merit for us by his life and sufferings the graces necessary for us to produce good thoughts to obtain for us permission to present our selves to God and before him to re-instate us with a hope of pardon and trust in his Grace Man as a Sinner is so unprofitable and uncapable that without Gods particular grace without an effect of his divine mercy he can do no good work nor hope for any blessing or favour and if he receive any if he find himself replenished with love and hope or capable of any good it is onely by the bounty of God who though justly provoked stayes the effects of his Iustice that we might tast the fruits of his inexhaustible goodness Considering these motives and truths let us stand here before God as guilty of divinae Magistatis laesae Let us look upon our selves as sinners and we shall clearly see that by this estate we are left to Gods Iustice that we must of necessity leave our selves to his conduct and divine will For if for civil crimes men worthy of death are left to the Lawes of Iustice and the will of their Prince who will dispose of their life and goods as pleases him certainly man as a sinner worthy of death ought to be left to the will of his God to do with him according to the rigour of his Iustice or effects of his mercy This is the first practick to be learned from this Motive for the soul in the consideration of these truths ought to do that in love humility and choyce which she cannot avoid upon constraint A Christian as the child of Adam and so a sinner must put himself before God resign himself wholly to him and with an humble submission and contentment of spirit receive from his most wise hand all the effects of his divine conduct and accept with a resignation good and evill privation and enjoyment all that may happen unto him Above all he must be careful to continue in a profound humility before God exposing himself to the raies of his divine mercy to move him to pardon From this Principle we draw a second practise seeing the need we have of God For considering our selves to be so wretched and miserable we are obliged to seek a remedy for our evills Now as this cannot be found but in God the repairer of our faults the freer of our souls it will follow that by the knowledge of our miseries and the weight of the iniquities which oppress us we are driven to have recourse unto God even by the same exigence whereunto sinne hath reduced us and are obliged to seek out God Every way that man considers himself he finds himself in a want of God and consequently obliged to seek God as the onely happiness of his soul the onely remedy of his evils The better to understand this we must remember that by sinne man is equally miserable in two considerations the rigour and violence of sinne which oppress him and the evills and disorders whereinto sinne precipitates him from which two states he cannot get but by possessing of God For the first faith teaches us that man cannot get out of sin do whatsoever he can if God himself come not to relieve and deliver him Man of himself may lose himself may plunge himself may sell himself may enslave himself but he cannot free himself nor bestow himself but by the mercy of God who gave us his Son to re-establish all things in us as the Apostle affirms Now this re-establishment is done only by the spirit of love and charity which is the spirit of God in us given to us From whence we see that he that will avoid his miseries and shake off the yoke of sin must necessarily possess God who onely can free him Hence we may observe what a work the conversion of a soul to God is and the freeing of a sinner by what way soever it is wrought in man To apprehend properly the importance of this work of grace we must say that he that would be converted and delivered from sin must not onely go out of his sin but must also possess God and consequently by the same Motive that he desires to go out of his sin he is obliged to dispose himself to possess God and to become worthy of so holy an heritage for to confess his sin to turn to God to be delivered from his sin and to possess God is all one thing wherein appears the need we have to seek God and how seriously a Christian ought to labour in an affaire wherein his eternal safety doth consist The second state of our miseries doth no lesse oblige us to seek God then the former for by the effect of sinne and the Tyranny it exercises over us we are continually tossed about disorder'd made vagabonds and precipitated from imperfection to imperfection from sin to sin from trouble to trouble This evil hath no remedy what resolution soever the soul takes what diligence soever it useth what habit soever it assumes it will never find calme rest or deliverance till it hath found and possesses God and be possessed of him Never shall she be in true liberty Christian liberty the liberty of the children of God until she possesses the spirit of God wherein they deceive themselves who to acquire the peace of the soul and true liberty of the spirit use a thousand practises and a multitude of exercises peace and true Christian liberty being not to be found but in the possession of God Many things indeed that we speak and do serve to lessen our trouble and thraldom but not one can give true liberty or the peace of the spirit but the possession of God The reason is demonstrative nothing can have peace liberty and repose but in its proper Centre God is the Centre of the soul therefore in God alone is her peace liberty and repose and as long as she is with God and possesses him she is in liberty and repose no longer Whence we evidently conclude that while the soul is separated from God she is tyrannized over by the malice of sin continually drawn into circumstances terms and subversions And souls that make shew to search after the truth and to live in the purity of Christianity if they seek not God purely and seriously if he dwelleth not in the bottom of their hearts shall never live but in disquiet and in trouble in scruples and in Pannick terrours For it 's an infallible maxime That man can never rest but in the possession of God the contre of his soul. In this we see the strict Obligation that we have to seek God and to study Christian perfection which consists in the possession of God This is the resentment the desire and demand of the
is nothing For notwithstanding all the good will and resolutions in the World we shall never put them in practise without grace and after all this perseverance in good is necessary for he onely shall be crowned who continues to the end Yet we cannot have nor merit it it is the gift onely of the mercy of God a pure effect of his bounty Herein appears the extream need that we have of God how necessary this grace is to us not onely to do well but also to persevere From these truths we learn that a Christian that will be saved must not onely have a good will or entertain a good intention but further he must seriously seek God adhere to him and possess him since in him alone consisteth the grace that is necessary to do well and to end well in a holy perseverance Salvation is not a thing so easie as we conceive for we have nothing at all in our selves as our selves that can help to save us On the contrary all that is in us is in opposition to grace and by sinne conspires our ruine He that will save himself must seek from without himself the way of his salvation the power to do works worthy of Paradise the power to serve God which he cannot find but in Iesus Christ there he must seek it of him alone he must have the power to serve God the merit of his good works the grace of perseverance and the conduct of his life consequently he must possess and adhere to him if he will attain his happiness nothing else is of advantage seeing Iesus Christ saith himself Without me ye can do nothing Rules and Constitutions may be given us Vses and Documents may be prescribed to practise Vertue and to attain to Christian perfection but all will be without profit and stability if we go not out of our selves to possess Iesus his spirit and grace to receive in him and of him true Vertue stability and perseverance For the grace of Iesus is wholly to have true Vertue and Christianity and perfectly to accomplish the actions and practises that are proposed to us If we examine these principles of truth we shall immediately find from whence arriveth an evill commonly observable in the Church of God that many souls live in a good observance labour much and exercise themselves in the practise of the number of the Vertues yet make little or no progress towards the perfection that they desire and never arrive at the end which they propose to themselves If a reason may be given for a misfortune so generall it appeareth that this cannot proceed from any thing but that such souls seek not God purely nor resign themselves to his conduct to follow with simplicity and fidelity the order which God hath established on them but with a respect to themselves desirous to rise and arrive to an estate whereunto God doth not call them or they refuse to labour with fidelity to attain that whereunto God calls them They regard not God they work not by grace nor seek it where it is but trust in their own strength and work not with submission to grace it self They seek not in Iesus Christ strength and power to work for they think not of it being so blind that they rely upon themselves and by secret esteem of their own actions and Labours easily perswade themselves that there is Vertue where none is and that they are in some estate of perfection when they are very far from it confiding in their own good will or in a simple intention which they think good Believing this enough for them they neglect or despise all the rest which is of greater importance Now to remedy this evil which is not to be neglected you must practise what I shall tell you 1. We must be in will and perpetuall desire of God in a resolution not to love or act but by grace and by the spirit of Iesus this desire is a disposition little known yet more important then it seems for God will be desired and takes pleasure to see a soul thirst and run after him We see that he deferred his great mercies and gave not his sonne to the world till 4000 years after man had desired him 2. We must demand his spirit with earnestness crying from the bottom of our hearts after Iesus the onely freer of our souls the true principle of grace 3. All our recourse must be to Iesus not relying or confiding in any thing but his power vertue and grace to love and act by his dispositions This is properly that we call acting by the spirit and by submission to grace Let us proceed to the consideration of truth to give our selves light and to let those that would be saved know the need they have of God and the rule they ought to observe in their actions to render themselves worthy of God Faith teacheth us that every good guift and every perfect guift is from above and cometh down from the Father of Lights that the eternal Father giveth us all by his Sonne and in his Sonne and consequently the Sonne of God is made all things to us in him we have all out of him we have nothing whence he is called the gift of God And St. Paul speaking of the eternall Father who gives us his Sonne saith that he is made all things unto us by him we are in Iesus Christ who becomes unto us by God Wisdom and Righteousness and Sanctification and Redemption These words represent unto us two truths First That we are in Iesus which shews us the adherence we ought to have to Iesus Christ. The other that we have all in him as having the Sonne of God in whom is true love true wisdom and assured salvation By those truths we learn that Iesus Christ being the true gift of God we have nothing if we possess not him We must therefore labour to become fit to possess him with the effects that he will operate in us Herein consists the practise of Christian life to receive Iesus as a gift of God to possess him as a great treasure to offer him to God to refer him to his Father and with him our Being our life and actions Our soul must be continually employ'd in this double practise in these two continuall motions towards God one to receive Iesus Christ who is the grace of graces the other to offer him to his Father he being the gift of gifts and with him to refer our selves intirely to the glory of his Father and accomplishment of his holy will The third Motive CHAP. VII That a Christian is a Member of Jesus Christ and as such he must be ruled by the Spirit and live the life of Jesus Christ. THe most noble Quality man can have on earth the most happy condition whereto he may be advanced is that of a Christian. By this state God alwayes good and full of mercy relieves him in his faults repairs his
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
this love which operates with great things in the souls of the Elect. Let us love him who loves us so much and let us live the life of him who lives in us If we reflect upon these truths justly may we be astonished at the obstinacy and blindness of those who make so many difficulties to resign themselves wholly both body and soul to the conduct of God and absolutely to abandon themselves to the providence love and wisdom of Iesus What can any man yet doubt of the bounty and love of God distrust his wisdom after so manifest a truth Is it possible a Christian can imagin that he is to take care of the creature that humane prudence is necessary where God vouchsafes by his bounty to apply and employ his care wisdom and infinite goodness But only to apply himself to the way of God that is to say with an application worthy of God perfect as God is perfect good as God is good accommodating himself notwithstanding to the commodity and feebleness of the creature If we adhere to these truths it is fit that as members of the Son of God we live subject to his will abandon our selves to his loving conduct endeavouring nothing so much as to please and satisfie him This God requires of us to this all Christians are obliged and therefore to profit by this third Motion let us go out of our selves let us quit the care of our selves a care that nourishes nothing but complacency and self-satisfaction which altogether confides in the disordinate love of our selves Let us resigne our selves wholly to his care and providence of him who uncessantly fixeth the eye of his infinite bounty upon us Let us trust in him who hath a heart all of love who onely thinks of us and be all to him and for him Let us endeavour to have no satisfaction nor complacency but in him seeing he alone according to the Prophet Loves us from eternity calls and draws us lovingly to come to him and to be his If you now require some forms for this Resignation I will propose them CHAP. VIII Practises to help a Christian to live in subjection to Grace and the spirit of Jesus THe Christian who would profit by the Motive we last proposed must weigh the quality he hath in being a member of Iesus Christ for Iesus being his head will unite himself to him appropriate himself to him possess him encline him infuse into him his own being and life guide him on the earth as well as redeem him on the Cross and by a particular bounty love him with the same love that he loves himself and as the head loveth his members 1. To make use of these thoughts the Christian seeing himself so chosen united and amorously drawn to Iesus Christ must make a particular profession and protestation to adhere to Iesus to renounce all humane prudence all care and conduct of himself leave himself wholly in all things to the power providence and conduct of Iesus Farther he must yeild up all the right that God his Creator hath given him to his liberty to his life to his actions and to all inferiour creatures putting it into the hands of Iesus Christ upon whom he must depend in all things protesting that he will use them no farther then as dependant on the conduct intentions and will of Iesus 2. The true Christian must make a strong resolution to rely onely on God all other things being indifferent unto him whence he will endeavour to follow and accept with tranquillity of spirit all that God ordains and to establish himself wholly in this confidence of God in this conformity and relyance on the conduct of Iesus He will study to bear in his heart and soul a contempt of all naturall prudence in making little account even of things that depend on his grace saying to himself that he will onely rely on Iesus who is his All and that whatever happen supernaturall grace which is the light of Heaven will never fail to give him as much knowledge and experience in all things as shall be necessary for him but far more profitably and more perfectly then humane prudence can do 3. As this manner of doing may have great and continuall oppositions so the Christian who desires to please God must endeavour to live with vigilancy over himself and particularly have a great care to mortifie the assaults of Nature the motions of the humane spirit and the applications and agitations of the wisdom of the flesh all which opposeth the spirit of God And because nature useth to insinuate amidst grace and disguising her self dissemble to be what she is not we not knowing it and even contrary to our own intentions to prevent this deceit and to assure our selves in a matter so dangerous yet hard to be discovered it is necessary that the Christian with a great humility and a desire full of efficacy renounce all the motions and effects of nature and give himself with all his heart to the spirit and grace of Iesus After all which he must yet have a great vigilancy upon the bottom and the dispositions of his soul that with a great fidelity he may live in the subjection he ought to the grace and conduct of Iesus To help us in this practise and to see how important it is we must consider that the effect of the grace of Christianity may be reduced to one point The designes of God upon our souls are reduced to one thing onely which it is their aim to effect in us This point which God will do in us is to establish his sanctification glory and Kingdom in our souls This is the end of his design whereto all the effects of his grace and divine operations tend Whence we may infer that if God requires nothing of us nor hath no other design on us but to establish in our souls his empire and the Kingdom of his spirit and grace we also must have no other care desire or application then to subject our selves to the Kingdom of God to live in the obedience and conduct of his spirit and grace And as all the designs of God unite themselves in this one point so the Christian must labour in this point that he may be in all even to the least of his thoughts and actions and smallest motions of his soul subjected to the Kingdom of God Hereby I mean that all the motions thoughts and actions of a Christian must be ruled and subjected to the love power will and conduct of God that with peace and inward content he must receive the effects of God and walk with fidelity in the wayes God requires that God may raign perfectly in him by his love and grace and that he may raign here in all those wayes and manners that is as gloriously as he raigns with the Saints in Heaven proportionably notwithstanding to our present estate and meanness I know not whether a true soul that hath true faith can
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
Gospel with such high and divine words words not of counsel as many think but of command in cleer and express terms testifying his will words addressed not onely to the Religious but to all Christians Be ye perfect saith he even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect What can be said more or spoke in more express terms How would we have more cleerly expressed what this perfection ought to be then to say you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect This perfection consists in the union of the soul with God and this union is made and accomplished by pure and perfect love the love of God coming from God above which alone hath power to give God to us and to unite us to God All Christians in generall are called to the union which is made on earth by grace and in heaven by glory Whence I first infer that as all christians are called to this union of the soul with God so are all obliged to that love which makes this union that is to say to a love pure holy and worthy of God a love express'd and lively represented by the mouth of God in these words Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart his words so express it that they speak all the perfection of love so generall that they oblige all to this love I infer secondly that the perfection whereunto the Religious are called is not different from that whereto all christians are obliged wherein many deceive themselves The reason is clear and the deduction of it is easie For if perfection consists in the unity of the soul with God an union wrought by true love and all christians as well as the Religious are called to this union made by grace upon earth and in Heaven by his glory Finally if it be commanded to all christians and to all men as well as the Religious to love God with all their heart that is perfectly and as much as they can in this mortall life by the ayd of grace it followeth evidently that these two estates which appear so unlike are alike in the same obligation of seeking perfection though by different wayes In fine who can doubt so manifest a truth no man can be ignorant that the Commandement of Love is common to all men of what estate soever they be No man can deny but that Love is the bond of perfection so St. Paul calleth it There is no difference then but in the way and means that we are to take to arrive to this perfection There are divers and we must esteem all and regard them with respect But if it be a question to make choice of some way to arrive to this love and if we must have Lawes and Maxims to conduct us thereunto and to conserve us therein it is certain we cannot find them more pure more divine and more assured then in the Gospel where the Son of God himself as Authour of Christianity showes us the way gives us the rule and proposes to us the maxims which we ought to keep to guide us to this love which he commandeth to live in this union and to arrive to this perfection whereto we are called and therefore Christians living according to the rules of the Gospel shall infallibly arrive to this high perfection and enjoy this most desirable union So St. Paul speaking of Christianity In Iesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing nor incircumcision but a new Creature and as many as follow this rule grace be unto them and mercy Under the name of Circumcision he teacheth us that nothing in the World no estate is worthy to be esteemed but that of a new Creature Christianity onely giveth us the grace and power thereof wherefore that is the rule whereof the Apostle here speaks Whence we learn the eminency of the state of christianity above all others We see then how true it is that we are all without exception obliged and called of God to love and to perfection This and more which might be said on this subject is true and yet notwithstanding it is certain that christian perfection is as the Sun proposed to all christians in generall the Precept of Love is equally given to all men and consequently all are obliged to the same perfection which is all the Argument wherewith I would undeceive such christians as would exempt themselves from both This granted it rests onely to consider the qualities of love it must be pure perfect and indissoluble the three properties of love in Christianity Pure for it regards nothing but God if it regard any thing else it is not for God nor according to God whence it comes that that which regards pure love doth separate us from our selves from all our interests and alienates us from all creatures as far as they obstruct our love to God This love makes us regard nothing but in the belief that God is there present by his immensity we neither tast nor feel them further then as they bear the presence of God for God being in all things the soul that loveth him enclines to him seeks him and finds him every where This love must also be perfect God saith so expresly We must love him with all our soul and with all our strength There is no need of explicating these words they are too cleer and evidently shew us that God will have us love him with all that which we are that is perfectly This love must lastly be indissoluble no force must separate us from God no violence must tear this love from our hearts no creature in heaven or earth no fear of death or of the loss of all we enjoy no good either present or future must separate us from this love which must be in us more powerfull then death more indissoluble then unity Now making use of all that we have said and reducing to practise all the proposed truths we shall find what we sought in this tract we shall see that by a necessary consequence we are all obliged to divorce and separate our selves truly and strongly from all that hinders us from loving God perfectly We are obliged to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect this perfection is not without the true love of God this love cannot be in us but in as much as we are separated from our selves the world and all Creatures Whence we learn that a Christian obliged to the love of God and to perfection cannot arrive to this estate which he seeks and is commanded him if on the one side he be not wholly subjected to God and on the other altogether separated in spirit conduct and love from all the Creatures Therefore he must apply himself earnestly to this exercise of subjecting himself to God and devesting himself of himself for it is certain the soul can never acquire this divine spirit nor arrive to Evangelicall perfection if she stay in her selfe obey her own will and follow
her own motions To dwell in our selves is to think of our selves to take care of our selves to have a continuall regard to our selves and our self-Interests to use the powers of our souls for our selves and our own satisfaction and not purely to please God To love thus is to wear the maske and false appearance of vertue but not to have the reality By these Principles of piety it is easie to see how dangerously they deceive themselves who speaking of Religious souls who are in a most pure and perfect estate and according to the eminency of their vocation say they ought to be night Christians as Stars in the Firmament and perswade others that they are not obliged to the perfection of inward vertues and that it is enough for them to become punctuall and to live with order and fidelity in their exteriour conduct making them believe that they are capable of no more that this self-desertion is above their strength nay that it were folly so to leave themselves to live in such a general manner of abandoning themselves This is a manifest errour for not onely the religious estate but even that of Christianity obligeth all Christians to the practise of these vertues seeing they are obliged to be perfect according to the Commandement of Iesus Christ as doth easily appear by all the Motives handled in this second Part. Now if all they who aim at perfection in any profession whatsoever must enter into this conduct of grace and subjection if they must live devesting themselves to obey God more perfectly and to live the life of God which is the life of a true christian the true life of grace what ought those souls to do who by particular graces and allurements of speciall favour are called by God cherished and inriched with his gifts O how great will these obligations appeare to those that consider them O how ought such souls to take care and be vigilant to co-operate with the designs of God upon them and to become faithful according to the estate and fulness of grace communicated to them This would require a long deduction for nothing is of more importance or needs a more ample discourse to content our spirits and satisfie our piety But it shall suffice that we shew the fundation and principles thereof of which we shall now speak The conclusion of the second Part. The care and vigilancy which a Soul must have which seeks perfection and would live in true subjection to the grace and conduct of Iesus Christ. WE have cleerly enough deduced and demonstrated by divers motives the obligation all Christans have to seek perfection and wholly to subject themselves to the spirit and conduct of God yet must we not understand this Doctrine so generally but that there is something more to be done and that we fail not in our care and vigilancy to cooporate with the work of God in us and to become faithfull to his conduct and here we will shew what this care and vigilancy ought to be Let us first enter into consideration of the excellencies of our soul that knowing it we may be ravished with its beauty elevated and excited to conserve it carefully in perfection according to the designe of God upon us This knowledge is not easie for the soul is such a lively Image of the Divinity and God hath invested her with so many lights that our spirits are too feeble to sustain the beams thereof and to penetrate the splendor of this beauty If we will speak of her we must say that she so perfectly represents her Prototype God that as we cannot better comprehend God then in averring he is incomprehensible so we cannot enter better into this knowledge of the perfect beauties of our soul then in saying she cannot be known For all that we can say of her is below her so neer doth she approach to the infinite greatness and ineffable perfections of her Creator The highest that we can say of her that seems to imply the last draught of her perfection is that she is a capacity of God an Image wherein the perfections of the Divinity are engraved so as we may compare it to a Seal wherein the Image of a Prince is perfectly and artificially cut As the Seal is capable of receiving the soft wax applied to it and imprints thereon a second Image so our soul which is the Image of God is capable of receiving God and receiving him once she bears a continuall Image of him his true resemblance The soul therefore in as much as she is the Image is also a capacity of God since as the Image she is capable of receiving God And this capacity is the ground of her being and containing in it all her perfections and beauty comprehending all that can be said of her It is not hard to penetrate this truth if we consider the designs of God in the creation of the soul for Faith teaches us that God alone is the end of our soul her fulness that he hath created her to enjoy his greatness to associate her into his glory to communicate to her his divine perfections In pursuit of this designe it was that he gave her so great an amplitude and capacity that she cannot be filled but with God which caused Saint Bernard to say that our soul may be occupated by all things in the world but that she cannot be filled with any but God who created her for himself alone to fill to live in her and to advance her to the enjoyment not of gifts not of grace onely but of glory and of the essence of Divinity All this begins upon earth and is consummated and perfected in heaven indeed it cannot be in heaven if it begin not upon earth since the soul after death enjoyes but what she hath merited in her life for we see that here below the soul receives her God by grace she receives him in his loving communication and she is filled of God by his Spirit which dwelleth in her and in Heaven she possesseth him fully by glory By this possession all her capacity is filled according to all Gods designes upon her Thus Saint Iohn We know that when he shall appear we shall be like to him we shall see him as he is Now we cannot see God and be like to him in glory which is a pemanent estate without possessing him and we cannot possess him but in this capacity which is given us by God which is the foundation of our being and all the perfection of our soul so great a perfection that we conceive it farther then we know the greatness of God For as God is great this capacity is great ample and admirable This deserves profound consideration and may serve to all men as a powerfull motive to sever themselves from all upon the earth and to seek God only for whom alone we are created who alone is our fulness This truth discovers the favour we receive from this infinite
goodness the soul being a capacity of God as also continually regarded by him who sees her yea he sees her and he regards her to raise her to himself to fill her and fully and perfectly to possess her in a manner worthy of God and conformable to his love He will be all things in this soul he will be her life her love her good her confidence her heart her spirit her power and her conduct briefly he will be her All her fulness upon earth by his graces and in heaven by his glory Hence therefore may we take occasion to admire and eternally adore this infinite and inexhaustible bounty which deigns to communicate himself with such an exstreme profusion of himself who by an incomprehensible counsell of his eternall Wisdom hath created man upon the earth onely capable of his divine communications who only is a pure capacity of God who gives him power to receive the abundance of his gifts and to bear the greatness of his Divinity Assoon as we reflect hereupon we shall see the duties of our soul what our care and vigilancy must be For the soul being a capacity of God what remains for her to do but to render her self worthy to possess him and to be filled with him and altogether to abandon her self to his conduct and grace She is obliged to esteem nothing but him to live onely for him being created onely for him and this being the end of her being and life she must have no care upon earth but to suffer her self to be filled with God to be possessed and ruled by his spirit and by his power Thus we are obliged to two things one to have a care and vigilancy to take all away that may separate us from God and make us unworthy of his divine and loving communications The other to have a like vigilancy over our selves over our motions over our desires over our intentions and over our actions that they depend on God and be wholly submitted to his loving conduct Let us yet say this more cleerly if it be possible in two words The soul ought to have no care but that God be in her repose in her dwell in the bottom of her heart fill and possess her according to all the designes that he hath on her This done and the soul living in this care with fidelity God reposing in her as in the Throne of his love will communicate to her what gifts and enrich her with what graces he pleaseth and in fine conduct her in the wayes that he desires the soul having no other desire then that God may be in her and she in God that is after the manner that God ought and will be according to the greatness and excess of his love This is the One thing that is necessary whereof Iesus speaks to Saint Martha the source of all happiness the top of all perfection which Iesus calleth in Magdalen the better part Let us pray to God to place us in this happy estate to make us penetrate his truths Let us give our selves to him to enter therein and banishing all care all thoughts all love let us onely regard Iesus Let us require nothing but Iesus Let us love none but him who loves us above his life Let us cast our selves at his feet like Mary Magdalen and there melt our hearts and consume the poyson that is in them with the beams of this Sun of love that he may replenish us with his grace with his love and with his spirit that we may live onely by Iesus and as another Magdalen seek nothing but Iesus Let us now propose the dispositions necessary to attain so happy and desireable a Being THE THIRD PART Proposing divers DISPOSITIONS and VERTUES necessary for a Christian to arrive to that perfection whereto he is obliged by Christianity CHAP. I. What those DISPOSITIONS are and how necessary they are to the practise of VERTVE IT is now time to enter into the practise of that vertue whereof we treat and that we set our selves on work to acquire the spirit to live the life that God requires of us whereto we were called from the first time that we became Christians To attain this happy estate there is need of continuall Application and travail for we must not think to arrive thereto at one leap but we must bring dispositions suitable to so worthy a subject and labour not onely to attain hereto but also to persevere therein which we must do the more willingly and couragiously in that we are certain this way is the foundation of all our happiness the true way to Christian perfection and makes us live the life of grace whereto we are called The first thing whereto we must bend our study is to know and acquire the inward dispositions necessary to lead us to Christian perfection and to make us live the life of grace which is the true life of a Christian this we are to learn in this third Part. And for as much as this Doctrine is proper for all sorts of vertues we will speak first of it in generall as well that we may the more easily come to the knowledge of the particular as because many seem to seek vertue and frequent the exercises of Christian piety yet think not upon a thing so necessary nor know what this disposition is or wherein the spirit of vertue doth consist which is the soul and form of action So that laying hold onely on the outside of vertue and considering it but as a body without a soul they are deceived in their imaginations and believing they do much they promise to themselves great profit rendring themselves punctuall and taking a great heed to some exteriour practises of vertues which they propose to themselves We see many with much vigilancy every day or week take some vertue to practice they watch if they are wanting to emergent occasions and carefully mark their defaults to accuse and if it be possible to amend themselves but after long practise we see they make small profit because they forget the interiour and put not themselves into the spirit of vertue to practise it with necessary and convenient dispositions To prevent therefore the inconveniences which occur in this subject we must observe that in a Christian life all estates wherein the Christian soul may find it self and all the vertues that she can practise have ordinarily the Dispositions which ought to accompany or precede her and vertue hath a spirit which is as its essence or rather as its soul which as a form doth enliven and perfectionate her The soul that will live the life of grace and will acquire solid and Christian vertues must carefully have regard to such dispositions that she may possess them to do the action which she doth perfectly seeing that in her vertue is exteriour and superficiall She must further acknowledge and seek out what is the spirit of vertue or as some say what is her essence that
practising that vertue she may effect it in her spirit that is beare inwardly the sense of that vertue as outwardly she produceth the action Thus shall she practise vertue in her heart inwardly as she does practise it by her hands outwardly This is founded upon generall principles that the exteriour is nothing without the interiour so that we must first labour to form and perfectionate our interiour which is to exteriour actions as the wheels of the Clock are to the weights or rather as the soul is to the body All the World holds this for truth yet we seem not to consider enough what the meaning of interiour is that onely the intention must be good as many think and believe that it suffices in all things to have a good intention and simple regard to the Action But when we speak of the interiour we mean the bottom of the soul which is to Christian actions life as the Earth is to the fruits she produceth and as the root is to the Tree which it nourisheth and enliveneth The bottom of the soul is the true principle and life of all our actions By the bottom of the soul we understand a true and reall goodness which is in the soul a pure intention that accompanies her grace that assists her necessary and suitable dispositions to the vertues which are in her all this I call the bottom of the soul. What will it profit a man to practise an action of outward humility and to do it with a good intention if in the bottom of his soul he hath a proud will what doth it serve for in a Christian to get the true vertue of charity outwardly to give alms and be liberall and in the bottom of his soul to bear a heart pitiless and covetous It is certain that after this manner he shall never acquire vertue though he had all the good intentions in the world because the foundation of his soul which is the true interiour is not good the first thing he must do is to perfectionate the bottom of his soul and to form his interiour after the manner proposed to know the essence and spirit of vertue Let us propose a particular example of some vertue as a rule for all the rest we will take humility which is necessary for all Christians If we would acquire this vertue and practise it we must first know wherein it consists that when we would produce the acts thereof we may form them in the interiour spirit of this vertue conformable to our knowledge of it For how can we practise a vertue if we know it not How shall we perform an act of humility if we know not what humility is We must then study to know the vertue that we would acquire unless God himself incited by his bounty give us the spirit of it without knowing it But speaking according to the ordinary wayes of the practise of vertues we must know them that when we would acquire them by practise we must endeavour to do the Acts and accompany them with a sense and thought of vertue We must further yet put our selves into dispositions interiour and convenient to the vertue we would acquire as in the vertue of humility it must be in an esteem of God alone in a mean opinion of our selves in a desire of confusion and contempt and to do this from the bottom of the soul. The soul being in these dispositions will endeavour to apply her thoughts thereto when it shall be time to do any outward actions thereof For example If she do an act of outward humility it will excite in her heart a thought and a sense of humility and awaken in her some disposition conformable to this vertue and so she will do this exteriour Act by an esteem and pure desire of humility with mean esteem of her self To do an action after this sort is that which I call to do it in the spirit and in the dispositions of vertue To see how necessary this is we need no other Witness then Experience no other Judge then Reason for how can we for example get the vertue of humility though we should perform infinite and extraordinary acts of it if we know not this vertue and if in practising it outwardly we reflect not upon it self How can we conceive that a man can attain this vertue by any extraordinary practice whatsoever if we bring contrary dispositions It is evidently impossible We must therefore take care to establish it in the dispositions of vertue and first labour to form her interiour for he that shall have an ill foundation in his soul cannot produce good fruits Can we acquire humility if at the same time that we produce exteriour acts of humility our soul is filled with esteem of our selves our spirit full of doubleness our sense given to curiosity our whole heart tyed to our proper interests It is cleer that in so doing it will be an impossible labour We must then confess that to attain true Christian vertues it is necessary to have inward care that is to say that the first thing we must study is to take care that the bottom of our souls be good If the root be holy so are the branches Then we must labour to acquire the dispositions necescessary to accompany vertue to do otherwise is to take the shadow and to leave the substance to bear the image of vertue and to have the reality of vice it is to pursue continually and to take nothing but flyes We see the experience in them who think only of the exteriour and have no care but of certain superficiall practices and rules that look not to the bottom of the interiour but very little or afar off such souls are void of God and without vertue having only a deceitful appearance like false pearls which are filled but with wind mountains in shew but touch them and you shall see come out of them nothing but smoke Vertue is an heritage too noble it must be bought with good money I mean it must be gain'd by practices suitable to her dignity Let us apply our particular subject to that we have said in generall We treat in the Discourse of the life of grace of Christian perfection and of the subjection wherein a soul ought to be towards God and it being proposed how to acquire true vertue it consequently treats of annihilating the spirit in our selves the care and conduct we have of our selves to resigne us to God and not to live but in subjection to his spirit onely and to his grace We have made the necessity of this estate sufficiently appear and the obligation that we have thereto there rests nothing but to shew the means whereby we may enter into these dispositions suitable to her without which we may truly say that the soul shall never attain the true and constant practice of vertue which yet is necessary to many who think not thereon For we may averr not without fears and
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
means to possess all Christian vertue THat vertue which we call Christian is a hidden treasure hid in God the very life of a Christian according to the Doctrine of the Apostle is such it is the Pearl in the Gospel which he who would obtain heaven must seek and buy he must seek it in God with all diligence and buy it at the price of all the world Nothing is more precious then true vertue which alone renders us like to God and worthy of Paradise all things else are nothing but vanity amuzement of spirit and unprofitable travell Of known and ordinary means to arrive at the possession of so rich a treasure there is one to be preferred before all others which though little considered and perhaps little known is most important without which all others are ineffectuall This is the adherence of our soul to Iesus Christ This puts us into possession of vertues He who adheres to Iesus Christ is one spirit with him possesses him and in him all vertues To comprehend this truth we must remember that we said that Iesus Christ is our All whence it followeth he is our humility our love our patience our vertue and he that shall possess him shall possess all in him He is the foundation the treasure and riches of the soul He is made unto us saith Saint Paul wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption Who then would have wisdom righteousness and other vertues let him adhere to Iesus He that would acquire and possess perfection let him possess Iesus for in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge The Apostle explains this further saying The eternall Father giveth us his Son and with him freely giveth us all things by which words he not onely implies that by his merits by his grace and for his love we have all but moreover that with Iesus Christ note the energy of this word with Iesus we have all possessing him we possess all we must add that if we do not possess nor adhere to Iesus Christ we cannot have true christian vertue This truth is not hard to conceive if we consider the essence of christian vertue and perfection which is the spirit of Iesus or Iesus himself living in us and working in us that which is well pleasing in his sight saith the Apostle Our ordinary manner of speaking teacheth us as much for we say vertue and christian perfection have their beginning in grace from whence they spring and what goes out of a just soul that we call grace Now the soul cannot be in grace nor just but by the habitation of the holy spirit living and acting in her So the Apostle The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us whence we infer that if to live in christian vertue we must be in grace and if grace be no other then the holy spirit living in us and there acting seeing the holy spirit is no other then the very spirit of Iesus it followeth evidently that to live christianly we must possess true vertues and to possess them we must possess Iesus and adhere to him for grace and righteousness consists in this possession Let us rise higher and come to the source hereof Faith teaches us that in Adam we are devested of innocence fallen from the state of grace and perfection whereto we were destined by Creation and by the first designes of God By this fall we have lost for ever the vertues graces and supernaturall gifts wherewith the infinite goodness of God had inriched and cloathed the first man At the sight of this misfortune God being moved onely by his own goodness to be merciful to us would raise us from this fall and inrich us more then ever with his graces and heavenly favours where sinne abounded saith the Apostle grace did much more abound To raise us to this happiness he would give us a new beginning of life and grace his onely Sonne Iesus Christ who being made man by the mystery of the Incarnation is established Father and principle of that being and life of grace which should be in man As we participate in sin of the evil of Adam and are with him despoiled of all vertues and grace adhering to him as to our naturall principle and have with him his being and his nature So adhering to Iesus Christ as to our Head our new Principle we participate of his being of his spirit of his grace and of his vertues This witnesseth the Forerunner of the Messiah who saith Of his fulness we have all received and grace for grace From this being deliberately considered we may derive worthy documents to our subject First we see how much we ought to adhere to Iesus if we will live his life and participate his vertues which are the onely Christian vertues for in as much as we adhere to Adam we are not capable of any thing but to live the life of sinners we have no right to the life of grace to practise or possess any Chrstian vertue If we will live the life of grace and obtain power to practise and possess vertue we must lay hold of Iesus Christ and to receive it of him we must adhere to him for we cannot possess him but in adhering to him wherein appeareth also the necessity of this adherence From this truth we draw a second document how much they deceive themselves who speak meanly and indifferently of true Christans or of a thing proportioned to our reason and being For according to the Principles of Christianity and words of Saint Paul as Christians we must put on the Lord Iesus Christ that is the gifts of the graces and vertues of Iesus in such manner that we may be like unto him in such a degree of perfection that we may bear in us an expression and a lively image of the life and vertues of Iesus Christian vertue is not animitation of the life and vertues of a perfect man not of Adam considered in his Innocency and originall Iustice to have vertues after this manner were not much it is a lively Image of the vertues of Iesus Man-God or to say better it is the life and vertue it self of Iesus in man As men are distinguished by their habits so are true Christians from others by these vertues and these vertues are distinguished from all others if there be any by the spirit of Iesus Here then appears the divinity and perfection of Christian vertues they are the vertues of Iesus himself according to which the Apostle saith we are new creatures As creatures of Iesus we must bear his Image which is divine and celestiall not that of Adam which is humane and terrestriall that is our life and vertues must not be of a man but of God life and vertues as different according to the Doctrine of the Apostle as heaven is distant from the earth as unlike as Iesus is
to sinfull Adam Finally by these Principles we learn and it is that I would most perswade that the way to obtain Christian vertues the most powerfull means to arrive to perfection is to adhere to Iesus to prostrate our selves frequently before the Throne of his greatness to subject our selves to his soveraignty to give our selves to him and to his vertues to endeavour to be replenished with his spirit to bear him in the bottom of our hearts that as the centre is in the midst of its circumference he may be in the midst of our hearts as the centre of our being and our souls We must look upon this practice as very important to the soul and adhering to Iesus and possessing him she shall possess all in him and easily obtain all from him a truth none can be ignorant of that do acquire vertues We must have them in Iesus and of Iesus their onely principle Object and Prototype upon whom we must mould our actions and form our life By him the eternall Father speaks to us by him he teacheth us In a word by him he giveth us this life the life of grace the life of perfection the life which is no other then Iesus living in us He that hath the Son hath life and he that hath not the Son hath not life saith the beloved Disciple What is there more cleer there onely remains to practise what we have said CHAP. IV. The means whereby we may arrive to the adherence of our souls with God and the obstacles which hinder it TO know truth and not practise it avails little God in the Gospel threatens many stripes to the servant that knoweth the will of his Lord and Master and doth not according to it To what purpose is it to love vertue and embrace vice to praise good and to follow evil is to be condemned out of our own mouths We say it is not enough to love to esteem and to know Christian vertues as others do but we must bear the effects of them and make use of them as God requires We are therefore now to shew how we must practise what hath bin already said To do a Christian action requireth not onely that it be good and done in grace but it must be done with the spirit of grace the spirit of Iesus Christ which he pours into us in such manner that all the vertue which is in us comes from him with such dependence that as the members receive of the Head so Iesus being our Head and we his members we can receive nothing but from him in the state of grace which is so true and necessary that he himself saith As the branch cannot bear fruit of it self except it abide in the Vine no no more can ye except ye abide with me our soul is barren and without the fruit of grace if she dwell not in Iesus Christ and take not from him all her juice life and true vertues To adhere to this holy spirit a man must be devested of himself severed from the creatures not onely by will and good intention but by effect also he must have a continuall recourse by grace with a spirit of submission and dependency upon grace that it may have power to act freely in him we must regard the vertue in Iesus Christ and imitate it especially those vertues which are most eminent in his life the bases and foundation of solid perfection as profound humility purity of heart contempt of the world and the like solid vertues onely appearing in the Son of God But we must take heed that in the practice and exercise of vertues we seek them not so much because of their excellency nor to become thereby better or more perfect nor for our own interests but chiefly and above all for the glory of God for the honour of Iesus Christ imitating him in our life and actions that we may live in a manner pleasing to him and since the end of our actions must be the glory of God it is convenient that we have no other design then to please and glorifie him If you desire a more express practise I propose it thus When we have formed some good resolution in prayer or that the doing of some act of vertue is in question we must presently give our selves up to the Sonne of God that we may accomplish this act of vertue according as he desires and according to the designs of his Crosse it not being necessary to form any particular intention or design as for example being to form a resolution to practise humility let us say in our heart I give my self to thee my Iesus to enter into thy spirit of humility I will passe with thee all the dayes of my life in this holy vertue I invoke the power of thy spirit upon me that it may abase my pride and I will keep my self with thee in humility I offer thee the opportunities of Humility which shall present themselves in my life blesse them if it so please thee I renounce my selfe and all things which may hinder me from having part in the grace of thy humility The like may be done in all other vertues or good intentions which we offer to God in this manner they shall be founded on Iesus Christ made in the spirit of grace not in our own spirit made truly christian Let us not contemn this practise neither as too much elevated nor as superfluous it is easie and necessary we speak not of humane action but a christian action perfect and worthy of God suitable to our condition and dignity whereto we are elevated by the grace of christianity which is so great that St. Peter calls us a chosen Generation a holy Nation a peculiar people and to crown all this St. Paul saith we are the members of Iesus Christ and as such we must live no other life then his not act but by his spirit and in his intentions Upon this foundation may be built all that can be said or thought of the perfections and excellencies of christianity all is said when we say Iesus is our head and we his members he is the principle of the grace necessary for us in all things we must take all of him he is the end of our life and actions we must refer them all to him and to his honour In fine he is the prototype and the exemplary cause we must all regard and continually contemplate him not onely to imitate him but to imprint his life and vertues in us This is the essence of christian perfection which St. Paul means in those words full of love My little children of whom I travel in birth again until Christ be formed in you He would have Iesus Christ formed in us great words which represent to the life the excellency of Christian vertues This it is which I demand of fouls and would cause it to be understood if possible as being of importance to remedy many abuses and
believe little doubt of all things live a life more like Philosophers then Christians and make no great account of a thousand good things which are usefull in Christianity To remedy this they must learn that faith the spirit of truth and the life of Christ must be the onely rule and guide of our actions and life in such manner that to go out of this rule and conduct either on the right hand or left is alwayes to erre from the right way 2. Considering what we have now said of truth we cleerly see how necessary it is to be established in the spirit of faith and to take truth for our object and conduct All other spirits are deceitfull and lying whence it followeth that souls that will live in Christian perfection must commence by this exercise and must necessarily lay the spirit of faith as the foundation of vertue if they would obtain any As faith is the door whereby we enter into the house of God and are made children of the Church so must she be the beginning of the life of a Christian and the spirit wherewith he lives and endeavours to acquire vertue Where we must mark in the conduct of souls how necessary it is to establish them in the spirit of faith and to accustom them to walk in the light of truth This is the first Lesson we must propose to them in this point wherein we must keep and exercise them as that which is onely profitable and without which nothing is stable or true not to entertain and amuse I dare not say to deceive them by so much prudence by the consideration of so many humane reasons and by the example and actions of men a hard case that the devout of this age take so much care to recommend and obtain morall and civil Vertues and mention not nor consider but superficially the divine and necessary Let us learn and say with Iesus Christ that Truth alone shall save us and that truth must be the foundation establishment of our life if we will live true Christians Hence the soul that will arrive to christian perfection must shut her eares divert her thoughts from all that the humane spirit reason and self-love can inwardly represent and must not hearken to them who regard not God purely but measure the greatness of Heaven with the eyes of flesh by the smallness of the earth and speak of vertues and christian perfection according to their own sense more like Philosophers then Christians Such persons by their discourse and conference study to destroy the maxims of Iesus Christ to establish humane prudence and use their uttermost to abase vertue and make it humane In a word they onely labour to make man reasonable not to make him a perfect christian Upon such occasions the soul that seeketh true perfection and will follow Iesus Christ must stand upon her guard and avoid such persons and with great care must prevent humane prudence from annihilating in her the spirit of faith and the esteem of the things of God If it happen that a soul see her self among such persons and shall understand their discourse to be such it will be good at that instant by a sweet elevation of spirit to give her self to God and renew if she can her esteem of Truth in a thought of God renouncing the perswasions of the humane spirit and protesting that she will receive no other conduct or light then that of Faith nor other interiour dispositions then those of Jesus Christ according to the truths that he hath left to his Church If notwithstanding all this the soul remain in fear or trouble of spirit or feel the spirit of faith to diminish in her then she shall give her self more strongly to God and recollecting her self she shall with an humble spirit stir up in the bottom of the heart a confidence in God alone and a diffidence of all things In fine she shall divert her self from all thoughts which trouble the repose of her spirit and captivate her judgement her reason and humane essence to the spirit of faith she shall undergo with an humble patience the pains which she feels contenting her self by an act of her will to subject her spirit to all that Iesus hath said without regarding any other thing and in this manner she shall keep her self united with Iesus Christ and in a secret silence shall imploy her self in him not about the business in question This act is heroick because his disposition is hard and strikes our senses rudely and sometimes it is painfull but it is withall certain and pleasing to God It is not painfull otherwise then as our reason our judgement and the love of our own interests is living in us If we would annihilate all that it would be easie for to overcome and to believe rather in Iesus Christ then in men and our own sense yet must we not whatsoever difficulty we meet with neglect this labour for as the soul hath nothing more assured then faith nothing more profitable or more powerfull then truth so the Devil fails not also all the wayes that he can to draw us from the conduct of faith and to annihilate in us the light and to force us from the adherence to truth if not all at once yet at least by little and little The soul therefore must take heed she be not here deceived seeing all her happiness consists in walking in the spirit of faith and with the light of the truth This exercise is important let us see how we are to behave our selves therein CHAP. VI. Of the use of Faith and how we may practise it THe soul may be guided two wayes by the naturall light of reason which is weak and deceitful ever fallible and by the light of faith which is infallible powerful certain proportioned to that state of glory whereat we aim it is a supernaturall light given by God to guide us to Heaven The first is common to the souls of the World by St. Paul stiled children of the flesh the second proper to souls which live perfect christians who resign themselves to the spirit of God and to his conduct who trust onely in God adhere to nothing but to the faith which they have in the words of Iesus Christ and the Maxims of the Gospel It is the property of a christian to live and guide himself according to the light and truths of Faith lights much above the naturall light of Reason to this end is he made a Christian. 'T is true the way of faith is hard because it captivates the judgement it is above our sense it combates humane reason it is hidden and very spirituall yet must we nevertheless follow and embrace it because Iesus Christ gives it because it is certain and infallible because it is suitable to the wayes of God who leads men in this world through obscurity having reserved knowledge and light for heaven There are who will think that the soul may
be deceived by this way our spirits being too feeble this way too eminent and that it occasions a perpetuall combate in the spirit As it is troublesome to a man to walk in darkness so it is hard for the soul to go this way of Faith which is obscure and hidden But if we would learn it well we must say the contrary all other wayes are uncertain and deceitfull vertue alone is infallible we shall never be deceived if we stick to it It were to have a mean esteem of Gods graces and to be ignorant of the Principles of our salvation to believe that the faith God hath given us to conduct us is capable of loosing us Let us remember that God hath given us the light of faith to guide our reason and that our reason must submit thereunto and in respect of Faith be annihilated as Saint Paul saith We walk by faith not by sight meaning that to live Christianly we must let our reason be guided by faith not faith by reason wherein we see the designes of God in the rule of our souls the necessity of our walking by the light of this torch or according to the ordinary manner of speech see how necessary it is for him that will live a perfect Christian to follow onely the light of faith and to learn to make use of Evangelicall truth If at any time the souls who take this way are deceived it is in that they go out of it and being perswaded by the Devil or self-love or the vanity of the humane spirit which esteems it self in every thing withdraw themselves from the conduct of faith to follow that of humane prudence choosing to be guided by the rules of the flesh and the spirit of worldly vanity rather then by the maxims of Iesus Christ and the spirit of heavenly truth Thus indeed they find themselves deceived and fall into misfortunes not for having taken this way of faith but for having quitted it and adhered to humane prudence and the light of reason which like an ignis fatuus will lead us out of the way unless we be aided by a supernaturall force and guided by a more sure light such as is this of faith But to the soul that is faithfull applying her self to the truths of Faith and Maxims of Christianity that seeks God with simplicity and humility there must necessarily arrive great profit and advantage in christian perfection We must not therefore condemn this way and reject it as too high too difficult and too painfull for it is the way that the Sonne of God himself hath left to his Church and commanded all his children But on the contrary we must teach it every one accommodating our selves to their several capacities and giving them all the means to pursue it without going out of it least they be deceived If we find here any difficulty it is in our selves There are two things in man which hinder his progress this way one is esteem of himself and of his own spirit the other is the Love that he bears himself and for his own sake to the Creatures To pursue this way and to make use of Faith he must go out of himself and renounce his own spirit and raise himself above all Creatures to adhere to truth to believe and to make use of what he did believe he must renounce his judgement his reason and his sense and annihilate them If our reason sense and judgement repugne the truth proposed to our belief we must quit our reason and our sense to unite our selves to the truth If for instance it is proposed that the uncreated eternall word become man that God died reason and sense oppose this truth Reason cannot comprehend that the eternall God should make himself subject to Time the immortall submit himself to Death yet to believe this our Will moved by grace notwithstanding the opposition of reason and sense must say I will believe and adhere to the truth proposed The will adhering hereto commands reason and judgement which obeying her believe what she proposes the understanding which useth to command and be free renders it self captive and obedient annihilating its own thoughts and reason that so it may adhere to the truth proposed and form an act of Faith Thus we are to understand that of Saint Paul bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. By faith the understanding which useth to command is made captive and obedient to the Will therefore the soul in the practise of Faith goes out of her selfe and no more obeys her judgement or sense she no more regards her self but the truth onely which she embraces as her object adhering and uniting her self thereto Thus by Faith the soul is elevated above her self to be tyed and united to the eternall and infallible truth revealed and proposed to her This well considered will shew us the excellency and dignity of faith by which knowledge we shall learn how much we are to esteem the state of christianity in generall and the life of a christian in particular seeing that according to Gods designes and the grace of Iesus Christ the christian as christian must live and be guided onely by the spirit of truth and light of faith which being divine and supernaturall drawes us out of our selves to unite and tye us to God who is truth We shall moreover see by what hath been said that faith is not what we think it consists not in great learning in many reasons and severall Arguments on the contrary it is for the simple and for those who can go out of themselves who can annihilate themselves in their reason and quitting the regard of themselves and other creatures adhere and follow the truth of faith Therefore it is said commonly that the learned and wise of the world who have most prudence most reason the most solid judgement and capacity of spirit have likewise most opposition to faith for they are lesse able to go out of themselves to annihilate their own spirits and judgements Thus Iesus Christ after he had summed up the truths of Heaven and described the contentments of the glory of the just concludes with an Enthusiasme of truth I thank thee O Father saith he Lord of Heaven and Earth because thou hast hid these things these truths from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes to the humble and meek Which shews that the knowledge of truth and of the spirit of faith is a gift of God that God gives it to the humble and little ones that to adhere to it we must humble and abase our selves In a word to make use of the truth and faith conceived we must go out of our selves and out of esteem of our selves Let us practise this for it is our principall design To make use of faith and truths conceived we must first consider what faith proposes but we must consider it barely and simply without any discourse upon it we
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
when we speak or think of the things of heaven we must believe they are ineffahle far above all that we can think or speak We must not make small account of what concerns God but on the contrary we must have from the bottom of our souls a great esteem and belief of all that God hath done of all he hath said and of that which he hath left to his Church In God there is nothing little God is as adorable and estimable in the least as in the greatest Finally it is very profitable and necessary to the soul that giveth it self to this exercise to draw from all things and upon every subject an esteem of God and to form in heart solid and serious thoughts thereof To assist us in this practice and to advance us in this vertue we ordinarily make use of reading prayer and meditation But it is good to take heed how we are guided in this exercise of prayer how we make use of the thoughts the light and knowledge we receive herein Many seeking only their own satisfaction in it do nothing but busie their own spirit they seek and aim at nothing but relishes and resentments they leap from one subject to another they run from the first point to the second and apply themselves sometimes to one affection sometimes to another spending the whole time in a multiplicity and disturbance of thoughts To profit herein we must proceed otherwise for in these exercises and all other we must onely seek to know the will of God to esteem it and to make our selves worthy the graces necessary to accomplish his will and to please his divine Majesty and having put our selves in the presence of God by the Principle of faith we must lay hold upon truth we must rest therein nakedly and simply we must adhere thereunto and keep our selves firm in this first view with care quietly to leave our spirits to be replenished of God and bathing our selves as it were in this thought we must unite our selves to this knowledge imprinting by degrees in our hearts the light strength and knowledge of the proposed truth whether the knowledge be great or little we must always keep our heart and spirit open and free to receive the thoughts thereof These will put us into an esteem of God by this esteem we shall easily be carried to an humble respect and desire to serve and love so high a Majesty and we need not doubt but that many things will be done in the soul by Christ if she dispose her self thereto as she ought if she leave her self to be guided by his spirit and abandon her self to all the effects of grace attending them with an humble patience But Oh the misfortune of our self-love the soul seeking her self and her own satisfaction withdrawes and separates her self from God to follow her own inclinations to content her sense and to employ her self in what she pleases making her self hereby unworthy to feel the grace of the presence of God and to bear the effects of truth It were easie to deduce all into particulars if it were necessary but not to trouble my self with all the failings that happen in this exercise it suffices that I say that the first study of the soul must be to know God according to the lights and truths of faith to adhere strongly to this knowledge to enter into an esteem of his greatness and then to honour and adore him with an honour worthy of God These words express much and include the first duties of the soul and shew wherein she must employ her self with care before all things Hence we may learn that their practise is not good who as soon as they enter into some knowledge and esteem of God and receive some light in the consideration of the truths of faith whereby they feel themselves moved and as it were drawn by an humble respect and inward reverence before God instead of staying and receiving at leisure this little touch this sweet beam of Heaven following this little interiour light and annihilating themselves before the supreme Majesty of God they retire from it under pretence of a false humility to apply themselves to other thoughts and fearing evill on purpose to lose time and be deceived or to lose themselves in their estate they shut the eare to God and their eyes to the light to entertain themselves in their own conceptions and imaginations and in the consideration of themselves We see by experience that this way is ill we may easily observe that such souls never advance or if there appear some advancement it is but in appearance besides that it is alwayes in fear and in a spirit of self-love never in solid vertue the reason is manifest If prayer be an elevation and union of our heart a speaking of the soul to God it is hard to conceive how we may advise to quit this application of the soul to God to torment her imagination and cast her into the consideration of exteriour things into the examination of divers circumstances into a continual regard of what we are and what we ought to be But wherefore all this seeing it pertains to the matter of prayer let us leave it to them who treat thereof and content our selves to conclude with that which we would perswade that the first thing that he must practise who will live a perfect christian is to live in the spirit and to walk in the light of faith and by this light to enter into an esteem of God which is supported upon the knowledge of his greatness and of what he is What course we must take to obtain this knowledge we will proceed to speak of in the subject of Humility The second Disposition CHAP. VIII Of Humility and the meanes to obtain it THe design of this Discourse is to draw to the life the Picture of a true Christian describing one after another not all the vertues but those onely which are most necessary and the bases and foundations of Christianity the Mothers and Nurses of the rest Faith leads the way humility followeth for as much as we know and esteem of God so far are we humble Faith makes us know God humility leads us to God Faith disposes us and shews us true vertues humility acquires them and being acquired conserves them This is she that opens and makes plain the way to charity and who is as it were the Mistriss of Gods House she alone layes up and keeps safe the divine gifts St. Paul by way of excellency calls her the vertue of Iesus for besides that this vertue appertains to him more then to any and that the whole course of his life and the mysteries of his sufferings were ever accomplish'd in humility it is moreover his vertue in that he publish'd it and recommended it to the world and wills that his humility be the object and example of the life of men Learn of me saith he for I am meek and lowly
of heart It is he that hath thundred and pronounced this sentence Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted naturall and powerfull words pronounced by the mouth of Truth Why should we seek further evidence how acceptable this is to God and how he rewardeth this truth and how necessary it is for him that will be a perfect Christian Let us no further demurre upon this subject but examine wherein it consists let us learn what humility is that is it we are most ignorant of Humility is truth to be humble is to walk in the spirit of truth I say humility is truth because true humility consists in this that God by his infinite bounty by his operations of love and grace infuses into the soul a light which makes it see the truth in all things more or less as it pleases God This light which brings with it knowledge abaseth annihilateth the soul in her self and causes that in all things she annihilate her self because this truth teacheth her what God is and what the creature is so that this grace which I call the light of truth gives not onely knowledge but also actually annihilates the soul and detains her in her lowness in her nothing and being in her nothing she is truly where she ought to be for hereby she is in the truth and acting in this state she walks in the spirit of truth which is the same as to act with humility Many will wonder hereat who thinking they have humility have it not who thinking to attain it by certain exercises of humiliation do but deceive themselves not but that their exercises are good and conduce to humility but if we pass no further if we possess not the spirit of truth acting by the same spirit which is the spirit of God and of simplicity we may make many acts of humility but we shall not have humility for humility in its formality and essence consisteth in the spirit of truth and simplicity the spirit of truth and simplicity is God To be humble then we must act in this spirit I will explicate and make this more intelligible Humility is a supernaturall light which I call the light of truth because it maketh us know things as they are On one side it drawes and advances us to the knowledge of the infinite goodness of God and other his divine perfections and by this knowledge forms in us an esteem of the supreme Majesty of God On the other side the same light causes us to see what we are our own meanness unworthiness impotency indigence the truth of our nothing and by consequence before God she makes us see the truth which consisteth in the knowledge of God and of our selves This truth so conceived possessing our spirit and and acting in our soul annihilates and debases us in all things in all our actions with so much facility that the soul can do no otherwise for she cannot but act according to her knowledge so that acting wholly according to this light and taking all things as she conceives them she walks in humility and as we say humbles her self and in effect she doth humble her self not knowing it for she hath no eyes but to see the truth no power but to act according to truth I call here humility a light and a light of truth for so in effect she is whence it follows that by humility we arrive to the knowledge of truth as by the light of the Sun we see the Sun so by the light of the truth wherein consists humility we see truth Thus we understand it when we say that God revealeth his divine secrets and greatness and teacheth the truths to humble souls Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes that is to the humble saith Iesus Christ to his Father Whence we infer that to understand the Catholique and supernaturall truths and to possess them we must go to them with humility not sufficiency nor capacity much less curiosity God is pleased with little ones so much reading so much curiosity so many Questions so many Reasons wherein men take pains are unprofitable labours and rather separate us from Christian truth then bring us neerer to it for God dwels with the humble spirit saith the Oracle of heaven so that retyring our selves from the truth is to make us uncapable of humility and without humility we cannot come to heaven whence we may imagine what danger the spirits of this Age run into Further we may learn from what hath been said that they who will acquire Christian humility must not stop at exteriour actions of meanness and humiliations nor at words of confusion and abasement nor at some submissions and accommodations although they be frequent and profitable but we must pass further and penetrate the centre of the spirit there to establish the throne of truth and to make our heart the treasury of the light of God To be humble we must endavour to know the truth we must possess it we must act by the Principle of truth which being done it will be easie to come to the exteriour and to produce infinite acts of humility and annihilation for we cannot have humility without doing all these actions but a man may do all these actions without having humility But we must now know how we may acquire the knowledge of truth CHAP. IX Of the knowledge of God and our selves THe knowledge of truth consists in knowing God and our selves a man may arrive at this knowledge two wayes by infusion by acquisition The first comes from God alone who communicates and infuses into our soul a light springing from truth which we call the spirit and light of faith This light brings and gives the knowledge of God and of our selves and this knowledge as well as the light is an operation of God who by this divine light which he spreads in us annihilates our soul and in all things detains it wholly in this annihilation wherein consists humility Thus is humility a grace infused and a pure operation of God alone this operation is greater or lesser according as God pleases who by the communication of this divine light consummateth and annihilateth the soul more or less as he pleases for his glory This first manner is for few persons because few are advanced to this way few render themselves worthy of such grace The second and more ordinary is acquired We propose divers means to acquire the knowledge of God and of our selves the most common and easie whereof is consideration and application assisted by grace without which nothing can be done We arrive to the knowledge of God not by sublime penetration of the Attributes of Divinity that is not necessary and few are capable of it but by faith When the soul considers God as he is simple proposed in the Creed to us according to the bare and simple signification of
the words as all good all wise all mighty this manner is sufficient Therefore we must accustom our selves to make use of that which Faith proposes and after excite in our selves the thought of God and entertain our selves therein not by speculation but by obedience and affection which is that we call an affective thought of God as if we should say in our hearts yea my God thou art wholly wise and wholly good I will leave my self to thy conduct I will submit my self to thy divine will By these frequent thoughts of God the soul unites it self to God adheres to his truths and by little and little ascends to the knowledge of God This manner is not hard neither requires it any rule we must onely be vigilant often to apply our selves thereto when any thing gives occasion thereof To arrive to the knowledge of our selves it suffices not to consider our own impotency our feebleness and our imperfections we see them and know them but too much we make a custom of it and this truth will never lead us to humility but we must elevate our thoughts and make use of the knowledge of God thus The soul must present it self before God and having conceived as well as she can the infinite being and soveraign Majesty of the Divinity before which she is she regards him she adores him then she begins to compare her being with that of God she entertains her self in this thought and in this regard and presently acknowledging the exaltation of the divine essence above her own she accounts her self as if she were not by reason of the infinite distance she sees betwixt God and her and in this view she regards her self rather in a not being and a nothing then in a being The soul filling her self with this thought and possessed with this truth humbles her self in the knowledge of her nothing and abases her self as much as she can For having conceived the greatness of God throughout she sees that she is a meer nothing This truth annihilates all creatures yea the most perfect upon earth and the Saints in Heaven forc'd by this principle humble themselves and make themselves as nothing before the supreme and incomprehensible Majesty of God in respect of whom all creatures together are not so much as one grain of Sand. The soul in the sight of this truth must say in her self If all creatures are nothing before God what am I who am the least And if I am nothing before God can I make my self any thing If before the Creator I find not my self by reason I am so much plung'd into nothing would I to the prejudice of truth appear to be something before the Creature In the consideration of this truth the spirit is vanquished the soul knowes what she is and is constrained to humble her self We must passe farther and enter into the consideration of the totall and absolute dependance wherein the soul is in regard of God a dependance so great that she holds onely of God she subsisteth not nor moveth but in God with so much necessity that the beames subsist not by nor depend more on the Sun then the soul doth on her God O happy dependance which gives us God and binds us to God! In considering this truth the soul finds that she is nothing and that she hath nothing either in the order of the essence created or in the order of grace for all is in God and depend on God in such manner that if God should wholly withdraw himself she should leave to be that which she is and should find her self in her nothing So that if she have any thing she sees that it is in God not in her self in him saith St. Paul we live and move and have our being Reflecting hereupon she saith in her heart If all that I have belong not to me nor is of me but of God and belongs to God then am I nothing nor have any thing Wherefore do I flatter my self and believe my self to be something when in truth I am nothing why do I glorifie my self and please my self in that which belongs not to me wherefore should I attribute to my self the honour contentment and glory which belongs onely to my Lord No no I will keep in my meanness I will hide my self in the abysse of my nothing and if God be merciful unto me and out of his bounty give me something I will hold it of him I will onely keep it for him and I resolve from this time and to all eternity I will live in the dependance that I owe to the regard of my Lord and God Let us not stay here but advance forward to the light of truth and let us cast our eyes upon the need we have of God and we shall find what we are and that we are nothing nor have nothing as having received all of God and we possess nothing either temporall or spirituall in nature or in grace but onely that which God reserves and if he should be pleased to withdraw his gifts or cease to preserve them we should find our selves like Adam naked and poor and should return to our nothing Let us behold our selves then so naked and devested and let us pause upon this thought and upon this consideration and we shall be ashamed to look upon our selves and we shall be forced whether we will or not to humble our selves but with a humility full of love and confidence which shall make us lift up our eyes to Heaven to behold him on whom we so absolutely depend from whose hands we have received all and must yet every moment receive influence conduct grace and stability and that so necessarily that if we happen to separate our selves from him and if he but stop his assistance and his concourse leaving us to our selves we assuredly shall fall and in an instant lose all in what state soever we are of Sanctity and grace O most powerful Truth to humble us if considered a truth that humbles the most holy and just upon earth and which annihilates the Angels and Seraphims in Heaven a truth which makes the glorious spirits Angels and Saints who enjoy God to acknowledge that they have nothing but of the mercy of God and that they have no stability but in God an acknowledgement so strong that it were able to pluck them and unite them to him indissolubly if otherwise they were not ty'd to him by the state of glory This is the very state of a soul of Iesus who knowing the greatness of God and seeing himself his Creature penetrating those truths by a light springing from the personall union of the word a light worthy of the glory of the Sonne of God humbles it self but with a humility that shall be eternall a humility more profound then that of all the Saints and Angels a humility which alone is worthy to honour and adore the infinite Essence and the supreme Majesty of God So that
these truths annihilating all the spirits and humbling all the Seraphims nothing but man shuts his eyes against so great a light Iesus Christ and these Seraphims humble themselves in the throne of their glory and men glorifie themselves sitting on the Dunghill of their vices O hardness and obstinacy of humane spirits O the power of the blind ambition of men who see and confess these truths who bear the marks of them who feel the violence of them yet remain insensible triumph in their wickedness and refuse to act by love and vertue what they shall be constrained to do by Iustice and rigour for those who exalt themselves shall be humbled but humbled by the revengefull hand of Almighty God Let us open our eyes and acknowledge let us descend into our selves and from the bottom of our nothing cry to God that he would give us that light of truth Let us adore this truth of Iesus Christ and let us resign our selves over to his power and invoke the force and spirit of his humility that it may consume in us the vanity and ambition of the spirit of Adam that lives in us and communicate to us so necessary a vertue The third Disposition CHAP. X. Of an effectuall desire to be GOD'S AS the spirit of Faith is great in us so let us make use thereof and esteem God according to the same proportion and enter into this Disposition absolutely necessary to all souls who go the wayes of grace and abandon themselves wholly to our Lord. This Disposition is a pure and perfect desire to belong to God at any price whatsoever and to be his purely without any other regard then of the greatness and soveraign Majesty of God who deserves to be loved served and adored because he is God and shutting the eye to all considerations to all hopes and all profit we must say and bear in heart this truth I will be Gods for his own sake This desire will not be so difficult as it appeares if faith be living in us and if we bear a true esteem of God But we must proceed further this desire must not be in the mouth onely but in the heart to be pure it must regard nothing but God to be perfect it must be infinite without limitation or restriction as if we should say I will be Gods in all that he wills and in sign of the perfection whereinto I desire to enter I will know nothing of all that he desireth of me I content my self to be in a bare abandoning of my self to all the thoughts all the designes all the Counsels he hath formed of me in the Cabinet of his eternall wisdom to all the thoughts Iesus Christ had of me on the Altar of his Crosse sacrificing himself to the glory of his Father and offering vvith himself the souls of his Elect. I offer my self to him to be all that he vvill and to leave all the effects of his divine pleasure be it of Iustice or of love of abandoning or enjoying of abundance or privation of fervour or of drought In brief I will have no other desire but to be Gods to be all that he will that I should be This is the adorable estate into which the soul of Iesus Christ entred the first instant of the Mystery of the Incarnation as soon as it was united to the Word for in the same moment his soul produced an act of obligation of him to be wholly Gods wholly obedient to his divine decrees in all the wayes which he ordained upon him and upon his life in the wayes of humiliation of sufferings of privation cross and death This is also the estate and first disposition whereinto the soul must enter that seeks God and will live Christianly but she must remain herein with such stability and constancy that she may render her self immutable in regard of his disposition For in whatsoever change she finds her self she must never quit this disposition on the contrary it is herein that she must establish and settle her self more and more and all her care must be to bear it not in her mouth nor in her will but in the bottom of her heart and centre of her soul. We have said that this desire to be God's must be pure simple naked and absolute therefore to forme this desire and make it perfect we must not receive into our spirit any reason any consideration any interest but onely say and say it truly I will be Gods for Gods sake according as God will have me and in such manner as shall please him This Disposition thus explained teaches us that they who seek Christian perfection and faithfully resign themselves to Iesus Christ to live in the state that pleaseth him must not desire to know or understand what God will do with them nor what he will say to all the motions which they think or in all that they understand nor in all the diverse estates spirituall or temporall wherein they find themselves that is neither necessary nor profitable on the contrary to desire to know and understand all that passeth and examine whence it comes and whither it tends this were to draw her self out of resignation and to go out of the purity of this Disposition it is onely necessary that the soul have a great vigilancy to recive all of God and to receive it in the manner that God requires of her and to bear it with the spirit as he will and to make use of it with the purity that it merits In this point consists the fidelity of the soul and the perfection of this estate To facilitate this it is good for the soul to present her self often before God exciting in her self an efficacious desire to do the pure will of God and to do it in the disposition and manner that he requires without knowing what he will and she shall often offer her self to God for this end Moreover it is very profitable to offer our selves to God and to form a generall will to practise all sorts of good though we have no light nor feeling contenting our selves with a resignation to God and taking care to follow him and to co-operate faithfully with the graces and motions we receive from him It is a Maxime in Piety that the soul must not seek any sense any light nothing of particular but keep and conserve it self in a pure estate to be Gods to do his divine will and to render her self faithfull to his graces remembering that we have nothing to do in this world but to submit to the will of God to receive his gifts and to render them again unto him The fourth Disposition CHAP. XI Of the Purity of the Heart WE proceed in our designe of drawing the picture of a perfect Christian which consists in representing the principal vertues wherewith he must be invested and the dispositions wherein he must be to become fit to bear God and to live onely upon the spirit and grace of God
as in the Church he is fed with the body and drinks the blood of Iesus Christ. Among the true vertus which we must possess that which is as the gold and enamel of all the rest is purity a vertue altogether necessary yet either despised or little known If we would see the necessity thereof let us onely consider what is the end of a Christian and wherein consists the perfection of the state of Christianity The perfect Christian must live the life of grace which is the life of Iesus Christ he must carry God he must possess God If any man love me saith Christ he will keep my words and my Father will love him and we will come into him and make our abode with him which we must not onely understand of justifying and inherent grace a gift created and given of God but of the reall true habitation and presence of God in our souls The soul of the just saith the Wise man is the Throne of God and the Apostle sayes often that our souls and bodies are Temples of God Know ye not that your body is the Temple of the holy Ghost Reflecting on this so manifest a truth we must say that to receive and possess God in our soul we must have the purity of God and in a word without flattering our selves with vain hopes and disguizing or covering the truth let us consider a little seriously what the place ought to be where the Majesty of a God will dwell for ever what ought his dwelling to be of whom David saith Thou dwelst in the sanctuary and in the holy of holies What ought the heart of a man to be where God hath made himself a seat which he hath chosen and consecrated to be the throne of his love We must believe God will require in us a purity worthy of God seeing he who is purity it self will dwell eternally in us This purity that God demands and whereof he is worthy is so divine that our strength cannot arrive unto it he must give it he must assist our importance there is nothing but the fire of his love the lightning of his light the force of his grace and the power of his spirit that can purge expiate and consume all in us that is contrary to this purity In brief it belongs to God alone to place us in the purity that he requires of us This shews how much those souls are deceived who think to possess God and be well with him yet are more remote from him then heaven is from earth We need not but to behold and judge by the effects what its cause is Now as this purity is altogether necessary to possess God so it is our part to desire and to demand it of him and our principall care must be to purify our heart to make it to bear God we must offer it to him that we may bring to our selves the effect of this saying of God to his Spouse and to all others My son give me thy heart we must give and resigne it to him alone it is his desire it is our duty and our happiness if he will vouchsafe to accept it it will be his when he pleaseth to make it such as he requires it This is not all we must co-operate herein and labour with care and vigilancy that we may employ our selves herein with courage and labour with profit let us therefore see wherein this purity consists The purity of the heart may be understood two wayes one that we must purifie our heart from all sorts of sins and voluntary imperfections God enters not into a malicious soul nor inhabits in a body enslav'd to sin we mean not only gross sins but ordinary failings even all faults be they never so little For God being purity it self cannot inhabit in a heart if he find not or put not therein this purity and being infinitely good he infinitly hates evil whatsoever it be and though the least faults drive not God out of our souls yet they make a division and unsettle the soul from God they make great spoil in the heart they undermine it they brand it they indispose it and being so it is disagreeable to God and becomes the object of his Iustice. The soul that knowes how to esteem of God and bears any impression of his purity will think more then I say and never consent to the least imperfection all is insupportable to her that she knows to be disacceptable to God she hath no consideration of estate honour her own good or of men where she sees there is any thing capable to offend the eyes and heart of her God all her care is to detest and extirpate not onely the least faults but to quit renounce and separate her self from whatsoever she knowes to be displeasing to God It is the chief advice of St. Augustine Before any work saith he be sure to purify the heart and take from it all that you observe displeasing to God When he would have us take from our hearts all that is displeasing to God he discovers a great secret he would have us go out of our selves and take out of us all that is of Adam he would have us annihilate our inclinations because whatsoever is of Adam is impure and opposite to Iesus Christ and ever contrary to him whence we conclude that he who would possess Iesus must do all he can possible to dispossess himself of and to drive away Adam this spirit of Adam and his inclinations can no more subsist in the soul with the spirit of God then the Idol Dagon could stand before the Ark of the Covenant All that is in us and is not of God is impure and unworthy of God and all that is out of God can produce no good nor any thing worthy of God these are great truths such as might transport our spirits yet let us not be astonish'd at this Proposition as too high and impossible and we shall see that therein is nothing too much but rather far less then so worthy a subject merits if we consider how pure that soul must be that would please God be in God and possess God and what purity it must have to be one with God for thereon the life of a Christian happily terminates O great God how many deceive themselves O God of adorable purity how few are fit to possess Thee By the light of these truths we may discover the abuse and deceits in christian devotion Some think that they hold God by the hand already and believe themselves well advanced in perfection in that they communicate in that they fast and pray every day and a thousand such like things wherein they exercise themselves they have the taste and sense of devotion they speak well of God and if you will believe them they say they are ravished in God But consider them well you shall find they live wholly according to their own inclinations they mind onely their own
our heart and form in our soul an alienation and displeasure of too great a love born to our selves and of that adherence and fastning which we have for the creature And for as much as one of the greatest hindrances to vertue is to think tacitely or actually that we have vertue we must believe that we are at a great distance from the purity and perfection God demands of us and are filled with our selves the affection of the creature and voyd of God Hence we proceed and raise in our selves a continuall hunger after God a desire and a firm purpose to approach unto him to love him to please him and to separate our selves from our selves and from all creatures We must think upon these words Thou sayest I am rich and encreased with goods and have need of nothing and knowest not thou art wretched and miserable and poor and blind and naked In fine as all Evangelick perfection practised and preached by Iesus Christ consisteth in two points in love of God only and in hate of our selves we must study to establish and advance our selves in these two Principles we must vigilantly seek God in all occurrences in all things at all times and annihilate our selves upon all occasions and objects presented to us The second Practise must be actuall abnegation we must study to annihilate and go out of our selves This may be done two wayes One when we seek occasions to practise self-deniall or choose some exercise upon this subject This is for those who have courage and a great desire to be God's and to live good Christians But many belive not that they ought to renounce and have not sufficient courage to seek occasions to annihilate themselves There is another manner whereby they may profit by this exercise which is to receive with a spirit of self-deniall whatever happens to them and to entertain it as from the hands of God without which nothing can happen unto us and to whom all the powers of the earth are subject Here the soul must have a care to be faithfull to God when any occasions occurre to practise the interiour or exteriour self-deniall to make good use of it as God shall give him power and according to the objects God shall cause them to be presented to him It is a Lesson that all Christians ought to learn that we are obliged and it must be our continuall endeavour to destroy in us the old man even in the least things if we will have the new Adam Iesus Christ to live in us If it be demanded what self-deniall is since it concerns us so much to practise it I answer to practise self-deniall is to go out of our selves and to sever our selves from the creature to employ our heart and make our selves fit to bear God for our heart is God's and he created it by his power he consecrated it by his grace to dwell there and be there as a Father in his family the Sun in the heavens a King in his kingdom Sin drives him from thence the love of our selves and the creature holds the place of God and hath the boldness and rashness to seat it self in the Throne of God This love of our selves and of the creature reignes tyrannically in us usurps the right of divinity does all there that God ought to do The duty of a Christian is to establish God in his Throne to re-place him in his heart and to let him raign in his soul. To do this we must necessarily drive away this love of our selves and extirpate our affection to the creature This is the office of self-denyall which annihilates us and makes us go out of our selves and clear our heart to replace therein the fulness of God To practise self-denyall and for a man to go out of himself is to have no other desire then purely to please God to have no other will then his to have nothing but God before his eyes and to quit all considerations of the World onely to seek the glory of God To go out of our selves is to lose the care of our selves either of the soul or body to commit our selves wholly to the will of God to abandon our selves wholly to his conduct and the order he hath established from all eternity over our life It is to think no more of that which concerns us and to desire no more that any love us or esteem us no more to seek our own interests or satisfaction but onely the pure will of God So to live is to go out of and to annihilate our selves for the soul by these practises renounces and annihilates in her self all affections all respects all care of the Creature all that is not God or of God and so renders her self capable to possess God To attain this practise of this vertue besides the meanes already supposed a third may be added which is when God himself operates in the soul the annihilation he would have there and there are two ordinary wayes that he makes use of herein one by christian and justifying grace which cannot be in the soul till he drive thence and annihilates what is contrary to him and as far as it reigns herein and possesses the heart it proportionably annihilates in us this love of our selves and of the Creature so truly that we may say there is as much of the one as there is little of the other for grace and the love of our selves cannot reign together one drives away the other Besides grace God makes use of divers favours and communications secret and interiour as lights motions and other divine and loving operations whereby he infallibly operates self-denyall and annihilation in us It is a true principle that God never operates any effects which bring not purity self-denyall and annihilation into the soule where these effects meet not it is a certain mark that it is not the work of God for God who is purity cannot operate but purely he is alwayes like himself If there be an operation of God there is purity and consequently annihilation for purity annihilates impurity If in the operation which the soul bears there is not the effect of purity and annihilation 't is not an operation of God or an effect of grace but an effect of proper or naturall love or else of the Devill who can transform himself into an Angel of light but he cannot give the soul the effects of light which is to be observed thereby to know how to discern naturall operations from those of grace This truth will appear most clear if we consider the designs of God in his divine and loving communications We know that God doth not communicate himself nor work in our souls but to prepare and render them worthy and capable to receive him being therein received he will possess and fill them with his fulness How can all this be done in the soul if God at first by his operations doth not purifie the soul and separate it
from all things without doubt if God operate you shall see all these effects and therefore the soul that will be perfect must narrowly look into all this and have an extraordinary vigilancy to become faithfull and attentive to the operations of God in her on one side to correspond thereto and to labour after the manner God inspires her with on the other to annihilate her self not the works of God for if we oppose not our selves to grace and the effects thereof if we do not annihilate the works of God in us God will certainly work great things in us But alas the wayes whereby we make use of devotion in this age are more capable to drive God away then to invite him into our hearts I shall describe them unto you The soul blinded with naturall love to her self desires to be brought up in the gifts of God she would enjoy him and would love what seems good and profitable to her she fills her self with divers desires she tyes her self thereto and will continually act and attain she puts her self into all employments and motions she seeks them she pleases her self with a satisfaction that her own love takes in things most holy and in the very operation of God she seeks her self therein she elevates her self thereto In this manner she opposes her self to the spirit of Iesus Christ and annihilateth the work of God who would onely live in her onely occupate her spirit onely possess her desiring by the power of his love to annihate in her all that is of her Iesus Christ would take away and this soul will add to God would dispossess and spoyl and she would acquire and possess Thus she hinders and destroyes the workes of God driving God out of her and out of her spirit to cause her own love to raign there her own satisfaction and will a vanity ordinary to such souls as are wholly consumed in the spirit of Adam They therefore who tend to perfection must go with all purity and simplicity they must seek nothing but God and to please God but above all they must be very circumspect and attentive to his inward operations having a great care and fidelity to leave the spirit to act by the grace of God in them As all this is very secret and interiour and often is in the very centre of the soul so must we take heed thereto and besides the vigilance necessary it is good from time to time to practise these ensuing acts First to give our selves to Iesus Christ to live in him and to bear the spirit and effects of this self-denyall after the manner that pleaseth him Secondly to renounce our selves our secret vanity and all that is in us opposite to grace and to the operations of God Thirdly to be attentive to the motions and operations of God in us especially when he acts by self-denyall and privation as well interiour as exteriour to co-operate therewith either by action if it be necessary or by consent of the soul giving her self to God to receive what God shall operate in her when the soul shall feel divers motions or meet several occasions to practise vertue she shall alwayes choose those where there shall be privation and self-denyall as the most assured way and the most acceptable to God most for the honour of Iesus Christ and most conformable to his humane life Fourthly she shall pray to Iesus Christ to vouchsafe to operate and put into her all that he wills and to annihilate in her all that he requireth to prevent in her by his light and love the time of death and judgement whereto he must annihilate the thoughts and judgements of men The abridgement of the third Part. CHAP. XIV Treating of the dependance of the Soul upon God IT is easie to see that amongst Christians even those who think they have vertue enough to fave them many deceive and altogether lose themselves taking the shadow of vertue for the substance apparence for truth like the Dog in the Fable who let go the good morsell he had hold of to catch a shadow these neglect the solid vertues and principall foundations of piety to insist on certain exteriour actions which have no substance but in the air of imagination they exercise themselves in morall vertues and despise the Christian they compose the exteriour and form their demeanour and neglect the interiour they fear to displease men and endeavour to satisfie their kindred and friends but care no more to please God then they fear to displease him they would seem good but care not to be so In a word in all things they choose the most beautifull and best and will have nothing but what is good but for their souls that which is least best contents them they seek but that which is necessary what gives them greatest liberty and satisfaction they embrace with all their heart God who is truth is not satisfied with these feignings and wills that we serve him in spirit and truth he detests a lye and curses those that serve him with the mouth onely if he love he will be beloved and as his love is most pure and perfect he will have ours to be such also Whence it is easie to comprehend that to be a perfect Christian and friend to God requires great qualities He must have a golden key that will enter into the Kings chamber he that will come to a royall feast must be clothed with a wedding garment lest he be bound hand and foot and cast into prison and utter darkness To be a perfect Christian is not so slight a business as some think it it belongs to God only to make a man just it is the work of his hand and greater then the creation of the world at least in this God shews himself more powerfull in his love and more admirable in his mercies Therefore when we speak of a good and perfect Christian we speak of Gods handy-work of a man worthy to be a Saint for to be saved and to be Saint is one and the same thing Now what ought the soul of a Saint to be who must one day see God live with God saith St. Bernard in his Meditations and be eternally in unity with God what must the perfection of a soul be that shall become worthy so infinite and incomprehensible a happiness whereto all aspire that would be saved I leave it to their thoughts who know how to esteem of the works of God and make account of the greatness of Paradise and shall onely tell those languishing and easie spirits with Saint Paul Be not deceived God is not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap also for he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting Whereupon we must reflect that Christians who are to reap the incorruption of the life everlasting if they will arrive to their
to further his treachery he makes use of our selves of all the Creatures which are as the wise man sayes snares for the feet of fools he offers us pleasure In brief his malice omits nothing that he can make use of to ruine us To those souls that have a little desire of good some fear of God and who have made some progress in vertue he redoubles his circumventions and concealing his aim does not represent to them either sin the World or pleasure for that would advantage him nothing but he proposes change he gives them divers desires he inflames their hearts with fervours and transported Devotions he inspires them with other actions with other exercises with some other manner of living which in appearance carry's some great perfection but look'd into narrowly all their motions and manners will prove to be nothing but deceit and that the Devill strives but to engage the soul in a labyrinth and disorder Those who ordinarily consent to this temptation we find to be rash inconstant and easily drawn aside to quit their vocation self-wil'd adhearing much to their own judgement disturbed in spirit unquiet in brief they are full of perpetuall agitations the marks and effects of a malignant spirit and temptation By these effects we know that the Devill with all his subtleties onely seeks to separate the soul from God and from the peace of the spirit and to draw it from the order and conduct of God that he might lead it as he would knowing the soul being out of the order and conduct of God is in danger and altogether loseth her self or else for some long time estrangeth her self from God For it is a generall maxime that we are nothing but what we are in God and that going out of the order and conduct of God we cannot but fall into evident danger and pernicious disorder And therefore one of the greatest cares the soul must have is to beware of these secret crafts of the Devill to keep her self in the conduct and order of God in what condition or vocation soever she be For as the Devill labours onely to separate us from God our end and perfection seeking continually to annihilate in us as much as may be the works of grace and to draw us from the order of God so must we be very vigilant to please God to receive the effects of his grace his divine operations and to live in the order of God according to our vocation and estate Not onely the Devill deceives us and separates us from God but also the love of our own selves and our own Inclinations This seed of sin which remains in us is the principall Authour of our harm and that which most violently drawes us from the order of God The experience is but too ordinary the reason evident for the order that we ought to follow is an order of grace that advances us above our selves to God Self-love depresseth man and converts him wholly to himself the order of God conducts him to unity for God is unity Self-love leads us into a Labyrinth the works of God are alwayes pure holy and perfect for God is alwayes like to himself he operates in us purity and sanctity for he hath chosen us that we should be holy and without blame before him in love saith Saint Paul The love of our selves destroyes the work of God instills nothing into us but impurity and imperfection By this love Adam went out of the order of God and forfeited the grace which God had given him We do the same and worse for by sin we are enclin'd to our selves and the Creature we are brought to take that in our selves and in the Creature which we ought to take onely in God Our pleasure repose abundance and all other good that we are capable of which we ought to seek in God and receive at his hands we seek in our selves and in the Creatures separating our selves from God who is our end we draw our selves from his conduct we annihilate in our selves all his divine communications and operations of grace to turn to our selves and the Creatures Grace and all the motions of God have no effect in our souls but to unite us to God to draw us from our selves and to separate us from all the Creatures that we might no more love or regard them then according to God and as much as they are in God And the operation of God in us drawes us so to God as it makes us leave and hate as much as is needfull both our selves and the Creatures so that we regard them not but as they are Gods and use them not but as if we had forsaken them according to our Saviour's words If any man come to me and hateth not his Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brethren and Sisters yea and his own life also he cannot be my Disciple CHAP. VI. What the Directors of souls ought to be FRom all that we have said may be drawn two very considerable documents for those that seek their salvation The first that we must not willingly fill the soul with a multiplicity of desires nor seek to do sometimes one thing sometimes another for all that is well and all that is good is not proper to every person and although it seem good yet is it not alwayes desirable Some will say we must have prudence to make choice but we must express our selves more christianly or clearly and say that when any good is presented us to practise we must lift up our eyes to Heaven and demand of God that he would be pleased to let us know what we should do for to speak properly there is not any good which is pleasing unto God further then in that he takes pleasure that we should do his will and suffer him to act and that we persevere in the order whereto he hath predestin'd us The Christian therefore who would assure his salvation must be disposed to do all sorts of good works His heart must be open to God to receive all divine operations and holy communications but when it is question'd to fettle him in the one exercise or the other he must regard that which is conformable to his vocation and above all consider what is consonant to the state of Christianity for he must more satisfie and regard himself as a Christian then as a Gentleman or Merchant c. he must offer himself to God and do his will and finally receive the motions God shall operate in his soul and accordingly seek alwayes the glory of God never minding his own particular advantage And in as much as great difficulties ordinarily happen herein we take for a second document the necessity we have to ask counsel and to take a Director for this is an affair of very great consequence seeing it acts towards the salvation of the soul. And the chief of this affair consists in conducting Christians in the wayes which God hath established
to advance them to perfection worthy of the purity and sanctity of Christianity and which may render them worthy of God and capable to enter into the glory that God hath prepared for them to all eternity This conduct must not be indifferent but the same with that of God The Director must not guide after one manner and God after another for so the poor soul were lost or tyranniz'd over He that giveth counsel must take heed that the matter he treats of have an immediate respect to the order and designs of God over our souls and consider that he is upon either the ruine or establishment of grace and works of God a point of great consequence which makes us see what they ought to be whom God hath established in so high an office and who enter into so sacred a ministry He that will conduct and counsel a soul must know the designes and conduct of God over this soul he must consider the order God keeps to govern it that it is great and hidden in God that it is a secret to us and that the soul cannot without much difficulty know it It is necessary that he who conducts and counsells be full of grace and light that he strongly adhere to God who is the Father of lights otherwise what knowledge or experience soever he may have he will be deceived in the conduct The more he shall be able and experienced the more he shall be in hazard to deceive souls for though knowledge and experience be necessary yet must we not confide therein much less presume thereupon for God abhors the presumptuous and forsakes those who are over-confident of themselves In the conduct of souls there must always be new succours from heaven and new lights He who would conduct or counsell another in that which concerns his conscience must remember himself that he is an Instrument of God that he must not either counsel or act in this soul but what God will establish therein Moreover he that conducts a soul and who giveth counsel must consider that in truth and in conscience he ought to have no other intention or desire then to follow the very truth to establish the Kingdom of God in the soul to lead the soul to God and to do in that soul the work of God according to the intention of God and to establish nothing therein but what God will For which reason he is obliged to labour much to the end that he may annihilate in the soul of any Christian whatsoever hinders the work of God and kingdom of grace and for his part he must have a right intention and pure regard of God not respecting or desiring any thing but his glory seeking neither honour nor esteem favour nor advantage of those whom he conducts And truly if we consider what it is to conduct a soul in the design of God and to conserve it in the order which God hath appointed it from all eternity we shall see that it is no indifferent business but the most noble and most important of all and that we must apply our selves thereto with exceeding great charity with purity of intentions and a zeal to Gods glory for it is for this that principally they who conduct shall render an account Hence proceed the evil which falls out when those who conduct lead and counsel souls negligently and with indifference without endeavouring to find out what God requires of them in what state or condition soever they be and without troubling themselves to establish therein the Kingdom of God and of his grace and we see in what danger souls are when they conduct them according to their own sense or lead them by those wayes give them the same exercises form them by their own spirit and which is worse mold them to their own humour We must proceed quite otherwise for souls have different wayes and are called to divers states of graces as they are predestinated to divers degrees of glory and consequently he must conduct them according to the designes of God which he must endeavour to know and according to their vocation and he must comport himself in the conduct of every soul in the same manner as if he did know from point to point the decrees which the eternall wisdom hath formed upon this soul and all the particular wayes whereby God leads them To know things so secret and so hidden it is needfull to have the spirit of God to use much prayer and to have a great purity of intention I say purity of intention For he who takes upon him the conduct of souls and will counsel and direct the consciences of men must take heed that he follow not his own spirit that he think not of his own interests that he seek not his own satisfaction and suffer not himself to be carried away with complacency and naturall motions and inclination For in such a case he may be assured that it is no longer God that conducts the soul nor the Spirit of God that governs it but it is the spirit of man and by this manner of conduct he shall not establish the grace or kingdom of God but the flesh the kingdom of sin He who conducts holds the place of God both in the soul and in the conduct so that this were to do great wrong to the grace power and Majesty of God If we say there is danger in the soul that conducts it self that follows her own spirit self-love inclinations humour and will which Saint Paul calls the desire of the flesh we must also affirm that the danger is greater when he who conducts suffers himself to be carried away with his own inclinations and onely follows his own will and spirit And if the Christian be obliged as we have shewed to seek nothing in all his actions but to please God if he must have a particular vigilancy to establish the Kingdom of God in his soul to cooperate with his work and to remain in the order wherein he conducts him with far greater reason he who conducts a Christian soul in any profession or condition is obliged to have the same vigilancy the same purity of intention and regard of God which he ought often to consider From all these truths we may easily comprehend how much they are deceived who are guided by their own nature according to the inclinations and motions of their own spirit without considering what Iesus Christ demands of them without any regard of the grace that God presents unto them yea without taking heed to the state whereto God hath called them As likewise their error who can bear nothing but what is pleasing to them nor agree with any but those that flatter them and suffer them to live at their own pleasure and who best accommodate them to their inclinations desires humours and such things which are but too too ordinary All this is dangerous and an evident mark that such souls seek not God nor true vertue but
thoughts and dispositions he must onely regard God and have a desire to be in the accomplishment of the will of God in him without having other interest or intention then the good pleasure of God In this disposition which is pure and Christian the soul will never fail to feel the help of her God for those who seek God with purity of heart shall be worthy to possess him In fine we must pray to God continually and in an affaire so important as is fidelity to grace and the employment of our life we must demand of God and that instantly his light to know what he would of us his grace to accomplish it his mercy and particular assistance to persevere in it for he alone who perseveres to the end shall be saved and we know that without the favour and assistance of God we can do nothing After this the Christian who will proceed further and live Christianly must be very vigilant to root up take away and annihilate all that may alienate him from God and draw him from his divine conduct He must alwayes have a watchfull regard of God to make use with purity and fidelity of the graces and gifts he receives of him I say fidelity not one or other but according to the amplitude and state of grace that God communicates to him and with purity of love and esteem of God For we are obliged not onely to be faithfull to grace but also to the manner of grace and to the extent of the operation of God in us So that our fidelity and co-operation must be correspondent and proportionable to the designes of God We may fail in fidelity and destroy the work of God in us three wayes in absolutely refusing the grace God offers as when he said I have called and ye refused I have stretched out my hand and no man regarded or being unfaithfull repressing all the grace we have of God like him in the Parable who hid his Masters Talent under ground or lastly we are unfaithful not running out all the race of God but onely a part straying from him to apply our selves to our selves or the Creature like him who desired he might take leave of his friends at home and see them before he followed Christ. These three states of infidelities God severely punishes He abandons the first and leaves them to their own conduct and counsels protesting that he will mock them in the day of their affliction that is of their death From the second he takes away the Talent and throwes them from before his face confines them to that place of darkness whereof the holy Scripture makes mention a place full of horrour and lamentation Of the third Christ saith no man having put his hand to the Plough and looking back is fit for the Kingdom of God Whence we may learn how much the Christian must suffer who leads a life which we call common who endeavours onely to recreate himself to deceive the time and hath no care or leasure to consider what he does or what may befall him for the small esteem he makes of God and his graces He is assured that such souls must apprehend some great evill for whosoever hath to him shall be given and he shall have more abundance but whosoever hath not from him shall be taken away even that he hath These words shew the wrath of God to Christians who make so little account of his Love and receive his graces so indifferently who as the Apostle saith count the blood of the Covenant wherewith they were sanctified an unholy thing and have done despight unto the spirit of grace words that shew the need we have to be faithfull to God and what a high crime it is to injure in us the spirit of God to destroy his works to annihilate his graces and to prophane his gifts and benefits CHAP. VIII Of Infidelity to grace and how a man ought to live in his Vocation THe consideration of this great evil which draws along with it the peril of our souls obliges us to find out by what way and after what manner we come to ruine and extinguish the operations of God in us and what the principall subject or object is that causes us to refuse his grace and despise his love who loves us more then his own life seeing that Infidelity to the graces of God is the onely evil of our soul this must be a point of which we ought to advise hereunto we must apply the greatest vigilancy of our life To understand so necessary a Doctrine we are onely to consider grace in it's essence and regard what God intends to do in us by his gifts and operations we have spoken of it elsewhere but we will briefly repeat it upon the present subject God by his love operations and grace gives himself to us and possesseth us he wills that we be wholly his as he is ours he is in us and lives in us that we may live in him and by an excessive bounty elevates us to the participation of his divine essence and associates us to all his divine greatness For this he created us and hath given us the capacity to love him and in loving him to possess him and all that he doth in us all the graces that he gives are to no other end but to accomplish all this in us This therefore being granted we shall find that all the motions of grace and operations of God must produce two things in us one to draw us from our selves and separate us from the creature the other to draw us to God to give us to God and to make us one with him Behold in few words the being of grace and designs of God This being considered it will be easie for us to see and know that we annihilate the graces of God and his works when we remain to our selves and adhere to our selves and embrace the creature for in this doctrine of piety we must say that as grace separates us from our selves and the creatures and unites us onely to God so we separate our selves from God and destroy his work when we are our selves and adhere to the creature and consequently we are less Gods the more we are our own so that to ruine the work of God and annihilate his grace is nothing else but to be our selves to adhere to the creature to follow our own inclinations in a word to love our selves This is a powerfull truth which should beget in our hearts hate and horror of our selves and detestation of all creatures seeing the only cause of our loss and love of our selves is the onely Instrument of our ruine This truth we should have alwayes before our eye to put us in mind of the danger it is to follow our own appetites inclinations and wills to adhere to the complacency esteem and love of the creature For it is certain the more we love our selves the more
we are divided from God the more we follow our own wills and inclinations and adhere to the creature the more we destroy in us the works of God and annihilate his gifts and graces This is an evil that cannot be sufficiently deplored since that for the regard of the creature we lose the regard of God to love a thing of nothing we ruine in us the love of God and for a wretched and miserable thing like our selves the brood of sin and the food of death we destroy in us the works of God and the effects of his love Briefly to adhere to our own wills inclinanations and sentiments Oh who can speak it without a torrent of tears we separate our selves from God and draw our selves from the order and designes of the eternall wisdom Truly we ought to weep and weep tears of blood when we consider the weak condition of man What this Man who is capable of God who hath right to possess God and to be by grace what God is by nature immortall eternall perfect and to possess an entire and eternall rest and a fulness of all good a true solid and permanent good for him I say O misfortune of humane nature and weakness of our spirits to renounce all his happiness and lose his God and in him all things to follow his own disorder'd inclinations to do his own corrupt will and to please and adhere to the creature which is nothing but vanity to enjoy a fleeting transitory good He must neither have heart nor faith that cannot grieve at this our blindness nor apprehend an evil so common and deplorable he must be more obstinate then Pharao that would not draw his soul out of this darkness and deliver it out of this captivity to set it at liberty to go to serve and adore the true God and quit the Leeks and Onions of AEgypt O that I had wings like a Dove for then would I fly away and be at rest lo then would I get me away afar off and remain in the wilderness O Iesus who art our Deliverer break these bonds that bind us and permit not the weakness of our wills and malice of our spirits to oppose the power of thy grace My Iesus the only light of our souls who camest into the world to enlighten those that walk in the shadow of death come and defer no longer to give life and liberty to those whom thou hast chosen to be thy children But let us put a stop to our zeal and not be transported with the motions and resentments of this just grief Let us rather remedy the evil and see what we must do to be faithfull to God and to do that which he would have us First the Christian must take his vocation of God and not of men for as we have formerly said God only hath power to ordain all things and it is the greatest mark of his Omnipotency for himself to choose and ordain the lives and actions of all men and principally to give to his Elect and to propose to them the way and light whereby he will perfect them in the state of grace and conduct them to the enjoyment of the glory he hath prepared for them So said Iesus Christ to his Apostles and Disciples Ye have not chosen me but I have chosen you and ordained you that you should go and bring forth fruit and that your fruit should remain shewing it is he alone that calleth us and employs us in the actions for which we were created When therefore the Christan is at the point to make choice of his vocation he must ask it of God and regard only God in his desire and to render him capable of so important a grace he must make an entire true resignation and annihilation of his will and of the use of his liberty and neither have choice of liberty or will in any thing that concerns him as having no will but that of God leaving to God alone the power and care to choose ordain and establish all according to his holy wil considering nothing therein but the pure glory of God and reserving a desire to accomplish what God by his good pleasure hath ordained him proposing to do all that he should know to be the will of God Secondly when the Christian is in a settled estate and profession then he must live according to the spirit and grace of his estate and vocation and apply himself wholly to God in the use and wayes proportioned to his estate wherein consists the ground of the souls fidelity To comprehend this advice we must know that in the life of every one there are considerable two estates one generall which is common to all the state of Christianity the other particular which consists in the condition he professes in the world The perfect Christian who would be faithfull to God must first have a care to agree with the state and grace of Christianity the most noble of all professions of men and the ground whereon we must of necessity raise the whole edifice of Perfection in what condition soever a man be For what is a man the better for being a perfect and an accomplish'd Gentleman and a wicked Christian to what end serves it to be excellent in some condition and estate to seem good in some vocation to be esteemed of men and to satisfie ones own conscience if in truth and before God he be not perfect in the state of Christianity He must then be a perfect Christian before he seek or think to be perfect in any other condition or estate And therefore the first thing he ought to do who would be faithfull to God must be to live according to the Laws maxims and according to the grace of Christianity in such a manner that he may strive to accomplish and become faithfull in all that is taught and required in this estate with such purity and sincerity that he neglect nothing but make account of all that is in Christianity For as we say there is nothing little in Religion but all in it is great all is here to be esteemed and all is here of importance to him who will live perfectly in such an estate so in the state of Christiany we must esteem all and he that will be a perfect Christian must make account of all that is proposed in Christianity when he is in this estate he must study to perfect himself in the particular profession he takes upon himself be it in the world or out of the condition of seculars Thirdly the soul seeing her self in a profession and vocation must wholly apply her self thereto so as if there were no other and although she esteem of all other vocations of all the wayes whereby God guides his Church and Christians yet must she onely apply her self to her vocation and step onely in the way and conduct of God being without taste and voluntary knowledge of all others as not being willing to make use
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
to love God and not to suffer is impossible The spirit and the proper grace of the state of Christianity puts us into this necessity for the first and most inseparable effect of the grace of Christianity is to destroy in us the old man and to crucifie him there to make the new man to live who according to the Doctrine of the Apostle is no other then Iesus Christ and we know that grace must necessarily destroy our evill inclinations and Iesus Christ will purifie and consume after the manner that he pleases and as much as he will the being and life of Adam who is in us there to establish a being and a life of God Now this cannot be but by sufferings by subversions and by a long and painfull death and therefore the Master of Christians said to the Galatians Those that are of Iesus Christ have crucify'd the flesh the sins the passions and concupiscenses shewing that those who are Gods and in the Kingdom of grace are crucify'd and must necessarily be in the state of sufferings and subversions And immediately after he tells us that we are Christians and Children of God not onely to live in this estate but withall by a necessity so absolute that we may say that those who are belonging to Iesus Christ are known to be such because they have crucified and mortified their flesh and passions more then those who have not mortification and who avoid and neglect it and therefore belong long not to Iesus Christ. The conclusion is manifest in St. Paul who said If any of you have not the spirit of Iesus Christ he is none of his Now this spirit is no other then the spirit of sufferings subversions contrarieties oppositions and the Crosse and therefore he that will be Iesus Christ must resolve to suffer and though he be not oblig'd to demand it of God yet he must embrace it with esteem and receive it with love and courage when it befalls him for that it is necessary to establish him in vertue Hence we may see what deceipt is crept into Christians who making profession of some piety instead of profiting by sufferings and receiving them with esteem have no greater care then to exempt themselves from them seeking nothing but their own inward and outward content and labouring to live in a satisfaction and repose of spirit they fly all sorts of pains and remove themselves as much as they can from all trouble be it never so little and renounce and avoid all occupations and occasions that may mortifie them and if they cannot help themselves nor find any remedy then there is nothing but vexation of spirit murmuring in their hearts impatient in their words and excessive in their plaints suffering themselves to fall into a dulness and weakness unworthy a Christian To live so as to become uncapable of any solid vertues is the mark of a heart which is not Gods and of a soul which loves but it self Let us then hearken to the decree of Iesus Christ He that loves his life shall lose it and he that hates his life in this world shall keep it unto life eternall CHAP. XI How the fear of suffering drawes us from the way of perfection HAving in describing the way to perfection shewed the obstacles therein it will not be necessary to speak farther of it were it not that the subject of sufferings obliges us thereto Hitherto we have seen how all that is of Adam and of the life of Adam hinders us from pleasing God for man as the Child of Adam is the child of wrath the object of divine Iustice degraded from all favours his fall is so deplorable that he is uncapable of raising himself up to God his supernaturall end if not aided by grace and if he were not engrafted in Iesus Christ as the stock into the vine and lived not his life which is a life of grace a life that the Apostle calls the life of the spirit for they that are in the flesh cannot please God and the works of the flesh are called in the Scripture dead works Now if we contemplate this world in the curse of sin we shall find that all creatures have conspired against us that the aire is full of our enemies that all things may be the instruments of our ruine wherefore our obstructions in the way of perfection are infinite but the greatest are in us and of our selves One of the greatest is a fear to suffer pains an apprehension of shame and confusion For commonly we stand in fear of crosses and travails self-love causing us to shun all that humbles us making us to fly what ever is low and hindring us from embracing any thing that is difficult This fear is a great obstacle to vertue which cannot be attain'd but by travel nor preserv'd but by viglancy nor perfected but in humility and privation it is the common resentment of all men We see also by experience that he who fears labour and suffering often fails of goodness and willingly renounces it when he finds any trouble to conserve it He easily quits the rudder when he sees the least storm of temptation or opposite action arise and rather then suffer humiliation he will quit vertue and if there be occasion renounce his portion of Paradise rather then the pleasure and content he takes in doing his own will rather then his own quiet and repose We see the greatest part of Christians dare not enter into consideration of their lives past nor reflect seriously on their sins nor think of death or future estate of the soul meerly by reason of fear to suffer sorrow for their sins That they may not be sensible of the apprehension they ought to have of God's Iudgements they will not so much as think thereon Hereupon they persevere in their malice and remain finally obstinate in their sins living in ignorance of things necessary to salvation so true it is that the least fear of pains withdraws them from vertue To see how much this fear is prejudiciall let us consider that to the acquisition and conservation of vertues two things are necessary which require both travel and pain First we must destroy ill habits next we must acquire vertuous habits We cannot ruine the evil without mortification and consequently pains and sufferings we cannot root them out without privation and resignation wherein is both travel and the cross But if we will obtain good habits and practise Christian vertues and all in grace then we must have a great care vigilancy and strength of courage to resist all oppositions that nature inclinations or occasions present unto us And although vertue be beautifull sweet and acceptable yet she finds contrarieties and then she needs resolution to use violence and to come to the point whereof Iesus Christ spake when he said If thy right eye offend thee pluck it out and cast it behind thee if thy right hand offend thee cut if off
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
have this Disposition perfect the soul in its sufferings eversions and humiliation and in all the contrarieties of humane life must have no other thought nor interiour state but to suffer because it is the pleasure of God she should suffer This I call a pure regard of God she suffers onely to praise God onely because God hath delight to see her suffer and wills that she should suffer This Dispositition is the state that the Wise man calls the Sacrifice of the Holocaust a sacrifice killed and layd whole on the Altar as the holocaust is all consumed and annihilated to the glory content and honour of God alone without the Creatures having any part therein so the soul suffering in this pure regard of God sacrifices her self wholly to God and is wholly consumed in the good pleasure of God without her bringing or receiving any other intention thought or state wherein her happiness doth consist For God seeing the soul suffer onely for his content and good pleasure gives her a sufficiency and capacity to suffer with so much liberty and amplitude that she no longer regards what she suffers nor thinks more of sufferings but only thinks to do the good pleasure of God So that she undergoes not sufferings with pain but with love and with a disposition that beares in it more of love then of sufferance in the suffering it self resigning her self wholly to God and to all the effects of his spirit and grace how vigorous soever they may be thinking no more of sufferings but believing and loving and in this disposition love is the life of sufferings and sufferings are the object of love of a love pure and perfect To suffer according to divine wayes may yet be understood in another manner when in sufferings mortifications and humiliations the soul is such to God and so firmly united that all things in the World are painfull to her all is unsupportable to her and her own body causes her to sigh and lament saying with the Apostle We groan within our selves waiting for the adoption to wit the redemption of our body Every where she findes contrariety and the more she lives in Iesus Christ the more she feels the weight of the Creature all her repose is to be Gods she seeks not nor findes any thing but pain and contrariety for she findes all her pleasure all her repose and content to be in the good pleasure of God In this disposition the soul must be really lost in God for she no more beares all the adversities of humane life but according to the spirit of God with a divine patience that is in the same manner that God beares them or if you will in the spirit wherewith Iesus Christ suffered our nature our sins and the Worlds a patience which we must adore and imitate in Iesus Christ for he did not onely beare them but also which is admirable in the excess of his love gave his life a divine life for our sins and by the same patience bearing the contrariety that his divine and infinite essence hath to all impure and limited creatures he acted with the creature laboured and died for it This patience of Iesus Christ is the beginning and cause of our happiness this patience is the cause that all the just and holy that ever were in the Church militant have born all adversities with peace and meekness this patience must alwayes make us to suffer all the rigours of this life but after a manner so much more perfect and divine as the soul hath received of grace and is advanced in the way of perfection according to the measure that the soul is possessed of the life of Iesus Christ to the same measure the spirit of sufferance must be pure in her and she must remain more resign'd to the designes of God more divided from all Creatures In this point consisteth the principall subject to be examined whereby to know the fidelity of the soul. He that would know the way to make use of this divine spirit must learn it of Iesus Christ who is the rule and example of our life and actions all that he did all that he suffered had relation to the glory of his Father to the exaltation of his name to the establishment of the Kingdom of God in our souls In a word he lived in the World and dyed upon the Crosse onely to do the good pleasure and will of his Father My meat said he to his Apostles is to do the will of him that sent me This was the end of his coming and of his incarnation Let us do the same and remember that as we must have purity of intention in all our actions so must we in all our suffering have a pure regard to the will and good pleasure of God When we shall suffer whatsoever it be let us suffer it because God permits it or so appoints it or because he will shew his power over us and will be glorified in our subjection Let us not regard our own interest but undervalue all things in respect of the glory of God Let us endure them onely in regard of God since it is his will since he takes pleasure to see us in sufferings and in the Crosse and that he will shew his power in our submission Let us reduce all our intentions hither they may be good but this includes all the rest In this disposition Iesus Christ prepared himself for the Crosse and presented himself to his Father to be the offering and the sacrifice of the holocaust a propitiation for our sins Thy will be done said he and no more let us say the same in all events let us settle the foundation of our soul in this estate and disposition To this we must add a remarkable admonition for those who will profit by sufferings humiliations and other adversities of humane life and bear them with faithfulness And that is this that in all conditions of life in all that may happen to us we must endeavour to find out if it be possible the designes which God hath over us in all that he does or permits to be done and we are to be very carefull to receive them and co-operate faithfully with them For as God in all he does or permits hath alwayes some design worthy of his greatness and goodness so is it the duty of the soul to submit her self thereto to subject her self according to all her capacity that with an intire consent she may act with God if need be and receive with fidelity all things according to the designes and intentions of God as for instance There happens losses and ruines we are to see if God by these losses would separate and sever us from the Creatures If it be so we must accept them with this disposition and make it our endeavour to sever and deprive our selves of the love of all things created because that by the losses and disgraces which befall us we see that
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
and the reverence we should bear to this estate for the Sonne of God having chosen the Crosse and sufferings and having united to his divine person by his incarnation meanness and infirmities and adversities of humane life he hath made them divine and ennobled them So that we must regard them much more for the dignity which they receive from Iesus Christ and to speak properly they are the sufferings of Iesus Christ for we are united to him we are members of his body flesh of his flesh bone of his bone and by reason of this unity they are no more our sufferings then the sufferings of Iesus seeing they are more to Iesus then to our selves Whence Saint Paul saith as the sufferings of Christ abound in you so our consolation abounds by Iesus Christ. The Apostle highly advancing the sufferings of Christianity calls them the sufferings of Iesus St. Peter speaks in the same manner Rejoyce in as much as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings And therefore when we see all that is in this World all the adversities and vicissitudes we must not passe them over indifferently or as men without grace and vertue stop at our own resentments and loose our selves in our weakness and naturall passions but we must lift up our eyes and thoughts to the consideration of Catholick truths and making use of the light of Faith endeavour to use all things according to the manner God requires and to the power he hath given us If we suffer let us not suffer as slaves and criminalls but as the Children and true Servants of God Let us suffer with esteem and in the spirit of Christianity a spirit holy and divine a spirit powerfull and couragious and which onely belongs to the chosen of God and to his greatest friends Hence the Apostle summing up the graces that the new Christians had received of God puts sufferings in the first place and accounts them as a singular favour He hath given you saith he not onely to believe on him but to suffer for him thereby shewing that it is a benefit of God to be called to the state of sufferings and to know how to make use thereof In the view of these truths let us beg of the Sonne of God part of his spirit of the Crosse and sufferings and his grace to support us under them that we may bear them with the spirit with joy and the grace of Christianity let us say with Saint Paul and often repeat this Prayer in our heart That the Lord would prepare our hearts to the love of God and to the patience of Iesus Christ. CHAP. XIV That we must suffer out of a zeal to the Iustice of God WE suffer in the wayes of sinners and for the zeal of Iustice which is the third Disposition that we have proposed when we enter into the zeal of God which brings him to do justice upon sin and that in all things we exercise upon our selves the judgement that God exerciseth therein in bearing in our hearts a true desire and an effectuall will to submit to the justice of God before whom we are sinners before whom we have offended so many ways By this Disposition the perfect Christian must undergo all sorts of pains and sufferings and regard the adversities and inconveniencies of humane life as effects of God's Iustice on him as a sinner whereby he would destroy sin in him and root out imperfections With this spirit and Disposition he must endure all naturall incommodities as cold heat poverty sickness afflictions and such accidents which are the attendants of our life regarding and bearing them with this zeal to the Iustice of God upon sin This thought if it be solid and well settled in the soul of a perfect Christian will make all pain sweet and easie For what can we suffer but we deserve much more if we weigh our afflictions our sufferings travails and adversities with the number of our sins Who will not see the deformity and weight of our sins and how much they surpass the rigour and weight of our sufferings If we consider the hate God bears to sin and to sinners by reason of sin who will not confess that our crimes are much greater then our pains that amongst our afflictions and sufferings even the greatest and most insupportable the mercy of God appears more then his justice What more manifest example of Gods hatred against a sinner then the rigour wherewith the divine justice which is alwayes equitable punished sin in Iesus Christ And if the eternall Father as the Prophet saith so rigorously chastised his Son for the sins of his people what should he not do to us If the Son of God who is holiness it self sanctity uncreated and incarnate becoming a pledge and offering for our sins was subjected not onely to our miseries and naturall infirmities which are great but to adversities afflictions poverty contempt accusations ignominy even to the rigour of the cross what ought we to suffer who are sinners and objects of the hatred and justice of God If this be done to the green wood what will be done to the dry If the Sonne of God who is the eternall and true wisdom chose this estate voluntarily subjected himself to all miseries incited by zeal to the glory of his Father and to satisfie divine Iustice what ought not we to do what pains and rigours should not we embrace who are the guilty to appease this angry God to satisfie and allay his provoked wrath to restore to glory what we have ravish'd from him Let us enter into this disposition and zeal of submitting our selves to the stroke of Gods Iustice and we shall see all things will be easie to indure we shall not complain whatever befalls us whatsoever is done unto us we shall not take it as a wrong nothing will appear harsh unto us nothing insupportable the quality of sinners and multitude of our offences will tell us that we deserve more we shall bless God for the favour he does us in giving us the meanes to honour him by our sufferings The Christian therefore must have a care to bear all adversities all changes of this life all sorts of afflictions losses and misfortunes yea all incommodities and naturall vexations of humane life with an intention to glorifie God to submit to divine Iustice against sin O how great must be the courage of a Christian how invincible his constancy in all changes and misfortunes if he professeth this zeal of God if he be animated with the hatred God beares to sin How easie would all things appear if in them we had no intent but to act and suffer onely to please God with a full resignation of our selves in all things to his divine conduct To facilitate this disposition and make it more generall we must remember that the Wisdom of God rules all this great World and hath a generall and particular superintendency over all things Nothing
happens by chance to God all is foreseen by his praescience and ruled by his providence In this wise conduct he is Soveraign and meanes to shew his power and subject men to his will and as Soveraign he disposes all and as wise he ordains all it belongs to him to ruine or build up to advance or debase and to us to entertain So that in disgraces and misfortunes we must regard God as our Soveraign and Master and therefore must receive them with the greatest submission and zeal of Iustice which will that God dispose of all as he pleases and that we receive all according to his dispensation This is the zeal and submission that God requires of us whereby the most just and holy embrace all manner of accidents acknowledging the Soveraignty of God and confessing their dependance I call this disposition zeal to Iustice because it is just that God should do in us and with us all that he pleases and that we should be content in all things This is so essentiall to man so just in the disposall of the Universe that we shall easily see in the works of God that that Soveraign Majesty will be acknowledged and adored in afflictions with so much necessity that he never stops the course of his Iustice nor withholds sufferings and other pains till the soul submit and freely render her self to God and untill she do so submit her self she will still be under the rod. So said Daniel threatning the great Nebuchadnezar God will humble thee till thou know that the most high ruleth in the Kingdom of men The impious Antiochus made a publick confession which the chastisement of God as a Rack extorted from his guilty mouth That truly it was a just thing to submit himself to God The first disposition then wherein a Christian ought to be in all sufferings and adversities in all sorts of estates and chances is to subject himself to God because he is God Upon this subjection he must ground his desire and zeal to abandon himself wholly to the divine justice seeing all that is miserable and painful in this World is an effect of his justice and the reward of sin and we see that all the chances that happen in this World are the effects of his power and conduct This being supposed we are obliged to bear them and receive them with a zeal and desire to appease that Iustice which requires that we be subject to God and suffer for our sins Herein consists the disposition we speak of If we would practise this disposition it is thus First the Christian must accept of all adversities and afflictions which are or may be in the life of man as a mark of the will of God and an effect of his Iustice upon him he must them embrace and bear them in this sense and with a desire to please God and submit to his divine Iustice who vouchsafes to manifest himself in these painfull and laborious wayes he must regard them as naturall and necessary not considering whence they come and who is the immediate cause thereof but shutting his eyes to all considerations he must look up towards God and accept them of his fatherly hands If there happen any motion contrary to the disposition he must say with the penitent and afflicted King Righteous art thou O Lord and upright are thy Iudgements Nor must he content himself with this but passing farther he must offer himself to God to bear all his chastisements after the manner that God wills and as long as shall please him And since the true Christian always distrusts his own strength he must beg grace of the Sonne of God to sustain them according to the intention of God and fidelity to make such use of them as he requires For as it suffices not a perfect Christian to conform himself to the will of God and to do what God wills but he must accomplish it after the manner that God wills and according to the vocation and grace wherein God hath established him so in suffering which is an estate more noble and certain it is not sufficient to suffer patiently for Philosophy and generosity can produce this effect and make the greatest rigours embraceable but we must suffer Christianly after the manner that God wills according to his designes conformable to the grace the soul receives of him which ought to be seriously considered by those who are most advanced in the wayes of grace and who owe a great fidelity to God And since to discern this is difficult and that the soul may commit in it great impurities and much infidelity it suffices to be exempted of the miscarriages which may happen that he who seriously looks after Christian perfection and endeavours to please God above all things be carefull to preserve himself in an absolute resignation of himself to the power and will of God in which estate if it be firmly setled there is nothing to be feared but all these will prove easie in regard that patience in suffering and purity ought to be proportionable to the state of grace wherein the soul is and it must needs be of a great purity when the grace is singular and transcendent CHAP. XV. The continuance of the precedent Chapter and of the spirit of repentance TO suffer all things out of zeal to God's justice is not onely a Disposition but a spirit of penitence necessary to all since all have sinned and need the grace of God as profitable to a Christian as repentance is necessary True penitence hath no end but God no regard but to satisfie God To repent is to enter into a regard of our selves in zeal to God's justice who will punish sin in us We must take heed that the true spirit of repentance operate in us a resentment of the state whereto we are reduced by sin a state which displeases God and draws us from the amity presence and grace of God a state whereinto we put our selves through our own fault to satisfie our own inclinations and passions The soul seeing her self so estranged from God and being sensible of this misfortune is grieved extremely and enters into a desire to be reveng'd of her self and to please God whom she hath offended she doth protest to love him above all things for if she could not love him she could not desire to please him This love elevates her into an esteem by this esteem and love she finds it easie to bear all pains rigours or difficulties whatsoever she overcomes them couragiously she onely minds to please God whom she hath offended so that by this zeal to his justice all things are easie to her the contrarieties of this present life and the unexpected rigours and disgrace are light In brief animated with this zeal she willingly embraces all that may happen unto her and receives it as a speciall favour The reason is because such a soul loves God loving God she esteems him esteeming him she will not
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
and Iesus Christ his Son Thus all the fruition satisfaction pleasure and exaltation that man took in the creature by originall righteousness he takes in God making a happy change and possessing the Creator for the creature wherein is verified the word of Saint Paul where sin did abound grace did superabound By Christian grace we are drawn from the creature and from our selves to be in Iesus Christ to possess God and to take no content or satisfaction but in God The Christian by this grace takes all in God lives not but for God and lives the life of Iesus the Son of God In this sense the Apostle fill'd with this grace saith I live but it is no more I that live but Iesus Christ who liveth in me We should all say the same for Christian grace makes us to live of the life of Iesus which is so true that we see the life of a Christian hath for it's sole conservation and food the very body and blood of Iesus Christ for if according to the ordinary maximes of things naturall we say that every thing draws it's nutriment from whence it draws its being since the food of a Christian is no other then Iesus Christ it followes by a necessary consequence that his being and life must be the same Iesus Christ. A truth great and admirable which shewes us the excellencies of the state of Christianity and teaches us how holy and perfect the life of a Christian ought to be If we further consider the same grace we shall discover a new secret in Christian life for having said that grace makes us live the life of Iesus we ought to know what his life is The life of Iesus is divinely-humane and humanely-divine He is God and man and therefore lives a life divine and a life humane As God he lives the life of God in the bosom of his Father a life of Glory Power and Majesty as man he lives the life of man in lowness humiliation in impotence in sufferings So that at the same time he is living in the bosom of his Father and dying on the Arms of the Crosse. There he raigns and governs and judges all the World here he is accused condemned and crucified At the same instant he is in the exaltation and greatness of his Majesty and in the lowness and humiliation of our humanity Such also ought the Christian life to be on the one side it is great seeing grace makes us the Children of God elevates and unites us to God makes us partakers of the proprieties and qualities of God in a word deifies us and makes us as little gods On the other side the same life is obscured dejected wholly in the spirit of humiliation and privation for grace cannot reign in the soul without operating therein annihilation death and humility Moreover the life of a Christian is exposed to temptations derided by men condemned by the world and in the greatest cherishing of God it is agitated by the cross of love God enlightens the soul by grace it is granted but it is in annihilation he upholds her but it is in confounding her he unites her to him but it is in separating her and the love it self which she enjoys unites her to God she remains separated from God as long as she remains upon earth While we are in the body we are absent from the Lord so is she at once united and separated This is the conduct of God over his Church nay if we reflect upon the highest works we shall find he puts not the ornament of grace and the foundation of her estate but in lowness his grace his gifts his spirit and his communication we are but in humiliation when he established the Sacraments which are conduit pipes whereby he conveighs his graces to his Church and into our souls He hath chosen bread water and such things as are mean little or nothing esteemed among men In the birth of the Church he took the cross for the throne of his Empire a Calvary for his seat-royall he rejected an estate by poverty sufferings and martyrdom and at this day he does the same in the regency of his Church It is true that this littleness is not now known this martyrdom is within all this holiness is hidden it appears no more to the eyes of the world as it did of old by the triumphs of Saints who became victorious and glorious in the effusion of their blood and yet notwithwanding she cannot be exempted from undergoing her humiliations her heresies and persecutions According to the proceedings of God in the conduct of his Church is likewise his carriage in the sanctification and government of our souls he leads them by the cross he retires from them he hides himself he leaves them in privations he humbles them annihilates them smites them overthrows them The perfect Christian must resolve to fight with and bear his sufferings in such manner as we have said but sufferings that are hidden to men are known to God which do glorifie him only in the sight of Angels Wherin is discovered how they are deceived who in their devotions and exercises seek resentment enjoyments content and satisfaction and would know and feel the excellency and elevations of grace I call it a deceit for Christian grace consists chiefly in privations in lowness in rigours and that is it they stand most in fear of and avoid Now as the life of Iesus begun in poverty and ended on the cross so a perfect Christian who would live a life of grace must resolve to walk amongst thornes to bear privations and sustain desertions for the cross and thornes are things proper to Christian grace and to the love of Iesus To abridge therefore the life of a Christian and all that hath been proposed let us say that the Christian to live and walk worthily according to the vocation whereto he is called must go out of himself to live in Iesus Christ his centre must be the bosome of God his life a hidden martyrdom and all his actions and sufferings must be pure and referred to the glory of God his intentions must look onely upon God his desires must be onely to please God his care onely to follow God his contentment wholly in God In brief his thoughts his designes his works must bear the Image of Iesus Christ the foundation of his being must be onely of God all to God and all for God that he may say with the Master of Christians To me to live is Christ and to die is gain THE FIFTH PART Treating of true Piety and the more particular Duties of a Christian towards Jesus Christ our Lord. CHAP. I. What Devotion is and wherein true Piety consisteth SAINT Paul proposes to his young Timothy divers admonitions to be used in the particular conduct of himself and government of his Church The first which he most recommends is piety saying Exercise thy self unto godliness as if he should say
Truly all vertues are good and suitable to the state of a perfect Christian the practise thereof profitable the acquisition usefull and necessary but his chief care and exercise must be piety for he adds godliness is profitable unto all things having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come The advice which the Apostle gives his Disciple we must here propose to our perfect Christian having already spoken of vertues the most profitable and necessary to the state of Christianity There remains then no more to commend unto him but a true and solid Christian Piety for this Piety is the Ornament or Mistriss of all other vertues I mean the Christian vertues dispose us assist us and put us into a capacity agreeable to God and to honour him they are necessary for us to make us worthy of God they shew us the way to God but Piety leads us to God and makes use of all vertues to conduct us thither and having no object but God teaches us the worship and honour that we must render to him and like a good Mistriss puts us into a ready and easie practise of true vertues and entertains us in the exercise of actions that honour God and are acceptable to him In brief she enables us to pay God what we owe him This Piety is the first use and exercise of a soul as the first motion the first instinct the first light we have from nature to know God so the first exercise she inspires us with is to honour the same God to render him that worship and service which the Creature owes its Creator This Piety teaches to this she incites us this she produces in us Whence we may apprehend how necessary it is to know wherein this true piety consisteth and to establish our selves therein For above all that we have said already which is very considerable it is evident that this true piety is one of the principall foundations whereby Christian perfection is supported In the conduct of men all actions and exercises of their life are ruled according to piety and as we commonly say according to the devotion they have If then their piety be not founded upon a solid foundation the rest of the Christian life will be unconstant and its exercises very uncertain superficiall and perhaps wholly unprofitable as we see in the devotions of many which is onely in the exteriour who as the Apostle saith having the form of godliness despise the power thereof In such souls we see nothing solid nothing but inconstancy in their lives imperfection in their actions disquiet disturbance and adherence to severall Creatures in their spirits a small blast of adversities overturns them If we consider all their life it is nothing but an appearance and shadow of piety counterfeit Pearls that make a fair glittering shew but are fully onely of wind Some fall into this evill by ignorance others by default it is our duty to direct both into the truth It concerns us therefore to examine wherein piety and true Christian devotion consists Severall persons speak of it severally every one adds to it and appropriates it to his own inclinations humour and particular affections But according to Catholick truth the foundation of solid and true Christian piety consisteth in the soul's being Iesus Christ's and belonging to him by a relation of love and charity True piety consisteth in the knowledge esteem adherence and subjection of our souls to Iesus Chrst from which esteem adherence and subjection all our exercises actions of devotion and piety must proceed as heat from the fire the effect from the cause This description of Piety may seem new but it will appear manifest if we weigh with patience the deduction thereof and consider that Iesus Christ is our Saviour our Mediator by whom we have access to God by whom we honour God render our duties to him and have a relation to the most high and most adorable Trinity and refer our life actions and our selves thereto Herein consisteth true piety for by Iesus Christ we are acceptable to him by him God who is all sufficient in himself vouchsafes to accept our wills to sanctifie our actions and recompense our good works St. Paul teacheth this when he sayes that Iesus Christ is all our glory It is by Iesus Christ and in him that we live in him we merit and satisfie by fruits worthy repentance it is in him that they are meritorious it is he that offers them to his Father consider these words and his Father accepts them and they are acceptable to him for his sake What more clear or more to our purpose Hence we conclude that devotion and Christian piety cannot be in a soul if that soul be not Iesus Christ's if it adhere not to him and be subject to his spirit For if we live not if we merit not nor can satisfie God but by Iesus Christ it necessarily follows we cannot live if we are not Iesus Christs He therefore saith Saint Iohn who hath not the Sonne hath not life implying he hath nothing and consequently he hath no capacity to honour and serve God wherein consisteth true piety Whence we may conclude that to acquire true devotion we must begin with this esteem of Iesus and by an adherence and subjection to his spirit and conduct Let us more particularly explain wherein this true piety consists To know it we must not stop at exteriour things or at actions which have nothing but appearance but we must enter into the bottom of the soul and regard true devotion onely in the centre of the heart The proper office and principall duty of true piety is to cause us to regard God to induce us to render to God what we owe him It is necessary that we enter into the knowledge of God not by speculation or sublime knowledge but by the light of Faith This knowledge leads us to esteem God by this esteem we enter into a propriety and a true and absolute subjection to his greatness and will all which is necessary to true devotion for as much as we cannot render to God the honour love and service we owe him but in as much as we esteem him and are subject to him Seeing then Piety consisteth in rendring to God the honour love and service we owe him and that we cannot otherwise honour or serve him then as we esteem him and depend of him and his divine will it followes that to be truly devout we must act according to the truths of faith and follow this supernaturall light we must conceive a great esteem of God and live in great subjection to his Law and divine conduct and so to live is to live in the true spirit of piety and to be truly devout But this is not all we must proceed further The Christian being in the bottom of his soul and heart disposed after the manner we mention feels a spirituall vivacity an
easiness and promptitude which drives him to the practise of all vertues and incites him to shew outwardly in all sorts of actions the worship reverence and love interiour which he beares his God This motion is so powerfull this vivacity so efficacious that he cannot but outwardly express what he carries in the centre of his heart and soul as fire that cannot be hid but will break forth in flames This inward true piety cannot be concealed but will appear by its effects by the exercises of devotion and by severall actions of vertue according as occasion and time permits We must observe that these exercises of devotion are the more pure sincere and perfect the more the soul esteems God her vertues are the more solid and Christian the more she is subject to the soveraignty of God and submits her self to his divine will as much as she encreases in the light of faith and esteem of her God and establishes her self in this submission and subjection to the will of God so much doth she receive capacity motion and facility to all sorts of exercises of piety and the practise of all vertues The more this inward estate is augmented and perfected in her the more her inward and outward actions are pure holy and perfect not that she believes Devotion to be in outward things on the contrary she esteems them nothing but feels her self driven to these exercises and believes that she owes all that to God to render him the honour and service whereto she is obliged she regards not what she does it is impossible for her to consider or esteem of it she onely regards God whom she ought to honour and love with all her strength and serve as much as she can with purity and infinite perfection This advice is much to be considered for it is in this case that we can easily discover by what spirit the soul is guided in her devotions by this a man may truly judge of his state and of the progress he makes in Christian perfection To summe what hath been said we see that in true piety there are two things to be considered one the interiour and bottom of the soul the other the exteriour which consisteth in its actions The interiour we look upon as the principalll root and cause of true piety the exteriour is but as the blossome and fruit as the actions of devotion which appear to men are but the mark of piety and makes shew of it but true piety consisteth in the interiour as we have said They therefore who study onely the exteriour and have no care but to produce actions fair in appearance have the image and shadow of piety and are able to deceive our eyes and to delude the judgements of men who see but the outside and perhaps before the eyes of that divine spirit which penetrates the centre of our souls they are neither devout nor acceptable to him for all their great performances unless these actions of piety which appeare outwardly proceed from the very bottome from a good foundation from an interiour such as we have described A Christian who would be devout to acquire a solid and Christian piety must before all things bear an esteem of God and if he truly esteem God he will make account of all that is of God he will honour all that is in the Church of God and in any condition or estate will accept all the effects of the providence and conduct of God he will resigne himself to his divine will and above all endeavour to enter into an indissoluble relation to God and having obtained this interiour he easily practises vertue and feels a promptitude to embrace all sorts of exercises of devotion By this we know true piety When all these qualifications we have mentioned do not meet in the soul she is then far from devotion For what piety can there be in a soul which is not God's what resentment of devotion can be found in a Christian who lives in a state unworthy of God and displeasing to his goodness shall we call them devout who flatter haply glorify themselves in their fair appearances and only study the exteriour despising all the rest who honour God with their hands in some exercises whereto they oblige themselves praising him with the mouth by selected prayers and often affected and yet dishonour him in their life and blaspheme him in their hearts God may say of most Christians and of his Israel what he once said of the Iews This people draw nigh unto me with their mouth and honour me with their lips but their heart is far from me For which reason we must fear what Christ immediately adds saying but in vain do they worship me for God vouchsafes not to look upon these devotions and cannot but detest these Christians who like the Samaritans will on the one side adore vanity and idolatrize their own lusts and on the other side profess the worship of the true God who appear like sepulchres painted without but have nothing within but ashes and rottenness These Christ severely reprehends these we advise by this Discourse out of a desire to propose the remedy and show them the truth CHAP. II. The necessity we have to be Jesus Christ's if we would attain true devotion NO man cometh to the Father saith Iesus Christ but by me to shew us that no man hath access to God but by his inttercession By these words he shews us the need we have of him and the impotence wherein we all are The impotence appears in that we can do nothing without him and cannot return to God but by him For sin hath not onely separated us from God but also taken from us the power and right to return to God and in effect we would never have access to his Majesty justly provoked by our sins if the Son of God by his divine mercy did not conduct and bring us to receive grace and favour The eternall Father receives us not accepts not of our actions is not pleased with our devotions and homage otherwise then by his Son in him and by him God triumphs over us By him we speak to God by him we see God by him we offer our selves to God so true is it that without him we can do nothing we cannot have access to the throne of divine mercy nor be acceptable to God but by him Hence we must confess that the Christian who would acquire true vertue and desireth to live in the perfection of his estate as he is obliged must necessarily be Iesus Christ's He must adhere to him appertain to him be subjected to his spirit and conduct and much more particularly if he would have true devotion For seeing true piety consisteth principally in being God's and rendring to his most sacred and soveraign Majesty the worship honour and service due to him and that otherwise we are unworthy and uncapable to do all that without Iesus Christ by whom as we
souls to his Sonne he adds Every man that hath heard of the Father cometh unto me These words include the secrets of grace and are full of Mystery They teach us that the eternall Father by his grace drawes us and guides us to his Sonne he speaks to us by his inspirations in the interiour of our souls he shewes us that we are Iesus Christ's Is not this to say all that we have proposed That the design of God to save us is no other then to give us his Sonne to unite us to him by the powerfull attractions of his grace and to cause us to adhere to him by love and the exercises of a life truly christian herein doth true piety consist We must therefore continually elevate our hearts and spirits to this Iesus the onely happiness of our souls we must entreat him to accomplish in us the designs of his Father and to take an absolute power over us We must so offer our selves to him as to have no other intention will nor conduct but his that we may by a true relation verifie what Saint Paul said All is yours you are Christs and Christ is Gods Let us so think of him and so do that from henceforth our hearts and mouths may neither speak nor think but of him that all things else may be of no savour to us that nothing enter our spirit which resenteth not the spirit and odor of Iesus Christ and respires not his honour and glory In a word let us adhere to him and by an indissoluble and eternall union dwell in him that he may dwell in us that we may eternally bear the effect of his holy word He that is joyned unto the Lord is the one spirit O how happy is the soul that is called to this happiness and that is truly in the power of Iesus in the possession of his spirit and direction of his grace This is the state whereto Christian perfection must arrive the foundation of piety and true devotion But because many think not of it and many know it not we must treat of it more at large and propose the motives that most oblige us to this Devotion CHAP. III. Of Piety to Iesus Christ and its principall effects WHAT we have already said of the Sonne of God is sufficient to make us know what we owe unto him but the importance of this subject requires that for our better information we explain particularly the principles of this piety and the meanes necessary to attain it But before we enter into this subject we must consider that devotion to the Sonne of God wherein we are to imitate all Christians is not so to limit our souls as to withdraw them from what they owe to God but on the contrary the exercise of this piety is necessary to conduct us more worthily and holily to God because by piety to the Sonne of God we attain a capacity and power to honour God Iesus Christ is our way by him alone we go to God he is our life by him we live the life of grace a life which onely makes us worthy to honour God He is our Truth in him alone as the spirit of truth we know God we adore him and serve him in truth according to the Apostle he is our All in him and by him we have all things by the Son the Father gives us all and by the Son we render all to the Father This is the gift we receive of God and the gift we give to God for all is operated and subsists in the unity of Iesus Christ. The Church offers nothing to demands nothing of the blessed Trinity but by Iesus Christ. We must imitate the Church in pious customs Piety to Iesus Christ requires not so much exteriour exercises as interiour and permanent estate doth in our souls nor demands it any novelty of affection but a newness of spirit a new disposition enclining our souls to employ themselves in the thought of Iesus Christ to regard him to love him to honour him as the object and end of our life actions and devotions It requires that the actions of the religious should be devout those of the ordinary Christians vertuous those of a private person familiar in this object without changing his spirit but directing his intentions and dispositions to the pure regard of the Son of God For example let us do all that we do by the spirit of honour and love to Iesus Christ if we suffer let it be to imitate and render honour to his sufferings what ever happens to us let us receive it by a dependance on and submission to his power and conduct If we will insist upon any good thoughts let it be of Iesus Christ to consider his greatness the mysteries of his life his vertues his benefits and the power he hath over us By these sweet entertainments by these regards of honour and love the perfect Christian advances himself is confirm'd in the piety we speak of To know what this piety is and how we must apply our selves thereto let us consider that Iesus Christ is the principle the centre the end of all Christian souls for as faith teaches us he is the cause of all the good that is in us the spring of all the graces we possess Author of the life which we live in Christianity and being the principle he is also consequently the end thereof For according to the order established in nature that which is the principle of a thing is also its end and nature follows invariably the order God hath prefixt and by his well ordered motions gently leads and if not diverted infallibly conducts all things to the principle whence she draws them So the waters saith the Wise man return to the ocean as to their mothers womb and according to the mysteries of faith we say all things return to God because they all came out of God It is the same in the estate of grace If then Iesus Christ be the principle of the being life and state of Christianity he must be also the end so that our being life and estate regard the same Iesus Christ and are referred to him as the end and if the end the centre also of a Christian life In him our souls find their repose and perfection in him by him and of him are all things saith Saint Paul This Principle alone considered shews us that Iesus Christ hath full power over us that we are his not only in respect of his divine greatness and supreme power over all as God Saviour and Redeemer as purchaser of us with his most precious blood and his of life-giving death but also because he is the principle centre and end of the life and state of Christianity In this relation he hath soveraign power over us having given us being and grace consecrated us to his glory and honour in such absolute manner that the Christian cannot make use either of himself or any
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
the life of Iesus after what manner he pleaseth This is a principall point of Christian piety The very mysteries of our faith acquaint us with this truth and discover unto us the designes whereby the Son of God would advance us to a participation of his Mysteries and the severall estates of his life The Son of God becoming man by incarnation takes possession of the nature of man of our bodies and of our souls by which he acquires a right to his nature to advance and appropriate it to himself after what manner he pleases as by this work of love he took humane nature upon him assuming body and soul which he appropriated to himself and elevated to all the greatness of the divinity communicating to it for ever the person being life and nature of God In like manner in the works of grace whereby his divine mysteries are honoured Iesus chooseth such souls as he may dwell in by love or after what manner he pleaseth otherwise he appropriates them to himself by his grace he advances them to adherence and union of spirit with him and by a particular indulgence establisheth them in a communication of his greatness To this end he applies and employes his power to which a Christian ought to be most vigilant and attentive that he may alwayes continue in the subjection he owes to Iesus Christ to accept receive and bear the effects of his power This Principle of truth and piety is grounded upon the common doctrine that all that Iesus Christ did he did for us and all that he is he is for us He saith the Apostle became poor for our sakes although he were rich that by his poverty we might be made rich meaning that Iesus being God became man and took upon him our meanness infirmities sufferings death the severall conditions of our life to withdraw us from our meanness enrich us with his divine graces and advance us to a participation of the severall estates of his life blessedness sanctification and salvation Hence we may take occasion to consider the greatness of Iesus he is our fulness in his annihilation in his poverty he sufficeth all for God gathereth together in one all things in Christ both which are in heaven and which are on earth It is the greatness of his mysteries that they are capable of communication to us and can admit the sanctification of our souls as it is our glory and happiness to be able to participate of the grace estate and mysteries of the life of Iesus Christ. This is the first designe God hath upon us when the Son of God living an immortal and eternal life in the bosome of his Father took a new and mortall life in the womb of the Virgin his Mother He desired nothing so much as to give us his immortall life and to abase himself to our estate to elevate us to a participation of his greatness and the rather because as he honoured his Father by the several estates of his new life his hidden life his suffering poverty death cross obedience subjection in all the estates and mysteries of his life so he will have us to honour him in participating of the estate spirit and grace of the same mysteries For this reason in his Church and of all qualities and vocations he chooses souls and calls them to an establishment in the participation of his spirit and a communication of his new life a life of grace such as is wholly singular and proportioned to the eminence dignity and sanctity of a Christian calling All this is an effect of his divine mercies the fruit of his sufferings it is our glory to be called and elevated to this happiness as it is our duty to keep our selves in a disposition and capacity to receive and bear them according to the designes and intentions of the Son of God All those then who are desirous to live according to Christian piety must make it their main business to continue faithfull and humble in this subjection that they may be ready to go when they are called and to receive when they shall be rewarded We come now to the Dispositions whereby this estate may be attâ—ined CHAP. IX Certain dispositions necessary for the devout soul that would participate of the grace and estates of the life of Jesus Christ. THis estate of interiour piety which puts the soul into a subjection to the power of Iesus Christ and a capacity to receive and bear the graces and estates of the life of Iesus is altogether suitable and necessary for those who seek perfection as being proportioned and conformable to the designes and order that God hath established in his creatures In the creation of the visible World adorned and embellished with so many severall creatures God hath created Angels and man to contemplate so perfect a work to admire the excellencies and to honour the Authour of such miraculous productions He hath done the like in the creation of the new World that is the establishment of his Church wherein Iesus Christ chooseth souls and formeth spirits who are employed in considering the works of love operated by him upon the Earth for the salvation of mankind and honouring the Authour of so many Graces As God hath created a great number of Angels different in perfection and order and as some conceive in species also to whom he hath given severall gifts and graces as well as severall ranks in Heaven that they may honour by these diversities of estates perfections the divine qualities and severall perfections of God for the Seraphims as Thomas Aquinas affirmeth adore by estate and by grace and contemplate by the light of glory the uncreated love of God the Cherubims his wisdom the Thrones his Stability and so of the rest The eternall Word having accomplished the ineffable and adorable work of his Incarnation having finished that of our Redemption and created in this naturall World a new World that is the Church puts souls into it who by the conduct of grace are employed in consideration of the works which Iesus Christ operated on Earth And amongst the rest he hath chosen many who by their severall estates and perfections continually honour the severall estates of his life and adore his actions and perfections humanely-divine and divinely-humane This must needs be an undeniable truth for if the Angels and the Church triumphant are continually and eternally employed in admiring and adoring the life estates and Mysteries of Iesus Christ shall not her Sister in the Church Militant have the same rights employments and duties It is not to be doubted and certainly seeing that love hath obliged the Sonne of God to these lownesses and makes him ours for ever for he shall be man eternally and eternally our Iesus our head and our All it is but reason that we be alwayes his and render him perpetuall honour and homage This is he that operates in our souls this is the estate whereto many are called It
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
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