insipid pleasures of our decrepit Age as they themselves are surpassed by the quickness and height of those joyes wherein the Citizens of Jerusalem are eternally immersed It is impossible for me to declare the smallest part of the sweet delectations which they resent but to gratifie those longings which I discern I have already excited in you I shall run the adventure of describing a few of those pleasures that gush out of that full and ever-springing fountain of Good with whom they live and maintain an happy converse And because I believe you are desirous to know how they receive and take in those voluptuous injoyments I will indeavour with one labour to satisfie you in both You may conceive then if you please that such a spirit as your own being advanced and fortified much beyond the feeble narrowness of this present state doth continually imploy the highest and most Soveraign powers that it hath upon the highest and most supream Good That it is daily admiring his excellent nature loving and embracing his amiable perfections blessing and praising his bounteous disposition studying to conform it self to all his desires rejoycing in the full satisfaction which he communicates to its heart and in one word doing all those actions which a soul is capable to perform upon any other object in this world And then you will have a little Idea of that infinite delectation which such a conjunction of the very top and flour of the mind with the beginning and original of all good must needs produce Look how you are moved in the injoyment of any sensual good and that will tell you what they do who live at Jerusalem and wherein the pleasure of their life doth consist You see it or some way or other perceive it you apprehend and lay hold of it you feel it you cleave unto it you are tickled and delighted in it and just so will you and all they live and be happy in God who arrive at that blessed place Their life and felicity consists in a clear and distinct perception of him in a close union and conjunction of heart and will with him in a feeling of the pleasures that are in him in an ardent embracement of him that they may more feel him and in an high delight and ravishment of spirit in such injoyment of him Thither if we can but get we shall love as much as we are able and be able to love far more then we can now think The greatness of the object will intend the affection The vastness of the Good will force the will to desire and love more then else it would We shall injoy according to the wideness of our Capacit and all our Capacities will be so inlarged that they will exceed the extent of our present thoughts as much as our present thoughts exceed our present injoyments It is a life wherein we shall do nothing but what we desire and wherein all things shall be just as we will our selves and wherein we shall will nothing but that which is most to be chosen A life every act of which must needs be sweet and full of joy beyond all the measures of all our present wishes When we think we shall rejoyce when we love we shall rejoyce when we adore or praise we shall rejoyce Whatsoever we do it will have infinite delight and pleasure in it and when we have done it never so oft it will be eternally to be done again and we shall likewise have more power to do it and every repetition of such acts will be with a fresh addition of contentment in the doing of them There is no satiety nor loathing in the injoyment of that good no fainting nor growing weary but we shall alwayes think we have enough and yet still be injoying more we shall be in a perpetual youth and vigor and yet daily growing more strong and able to converse with God For that great Good cannot be known at once nor can all the sweetness of that life be instantly tasted nor the rivers of those pleasures be drunk up at one draught but fresh delights will continually entertain us new pleasures will be springing forth unto us and a flood of joy that we never knew before will over-flow us out of that full fountain who now issues forth in so many streams and diffuses himself in such great varieties in this world that our minds may be every moment imploy'd in some rarity of nature which till then did never affect their eyes A happy life sure this will be when we shall have before us such an inexhausted ocean of Good to fill us and such great appetites to be filled and such repeated satisfaction in the filling of them and such an increase of strength by their satisfaction and wider capacities also created by the continual flowing in of that good upon us which will distend and stretch our souls by its injoyment to make us more able to injoy it And now need I be at any pains to perswade you that this City is a place which abounds so much with a plenty of all good things that there can be no want at all but a perfect fulness of whatsoever may be an happiness to us It is apparent already that whatsoever we can desire there it is present and whatsoever is present is Good and whatsoever good there is it is all Good pure good without any evil and that pure Good is all in one Good GOD himself who can be nothing else but Good How much do the Good things of this world delight us which yet are not Good by themselves nor contain in them all that Good is nor are only Good neither but come with a great mixture of trouble to us Will not the injoyment then of him give us infinitely more pleasure and make us perfectly happy who is Good by himself and not by derivation from any other and so is perfectly Good and nothing else but Good without any thing at all to abate his sweetness These things here below saith an ancient Guide to Jerusalem whom I have met withall are something Good St. Aug. else how should they at all delight us but they could not be Good at all if it were not for him that is All Good and only Good who hath made them to be what Good they are For all Good was created by him and he is that Good which was created by none He is Good by his own Good and not by any participated Goodness He is Good from his Good self and not by adhering to any other Good As much therefore as he excells all other Good so much must our injoyment of him excell all other injoyment As he is a Good that is from none but himself so our happiness will be a Good that depends on none but his happiness When we are with him we shall but ask and we shall see we shall but see and we shall love we shall but love and we shall eternally rejoyce
it that our desires think to waft us as fast as they can unto it and growing continually in strength and swiftness by their own motion the gale proves so stiff that our hearts are swelled therewith and leave no room for any other thoughts nor can be at any rest till they be possessed of it Thus would this poor man have taught those who now beheld him though they had never read a word in their own souls for his mind was so impressed with the happiness which he heard dwelt at Jerusalem that he was not able to discharge his soul at any time of those thoughts and desires which lifted him up from the ground and told him they would carry him thither When he did eat or drink Jerusalem would still be in his mouth when he was in company Jerusalem stole away his heart from them nay in his very sleep it would not stay away but he was wont to dream fine things of Jerusalem But that which makes the story of this person the more remarkable is that it was toward the latter end of the year and in the decay of all things when these good thoughts began to spring up in his soul When the earth had removed it self a great way from the Sun when all the gallantry of the fields had resigned its place to Ice and Snow when charity grew cold and Christian virtue seemed to be gone back to its root when the waies were untrod and few or no Travellers upon the road then did these zealous desires begin to bud in the heart of this honest Country-man and he felt such a vehement heat urging and stimulating his breast that he could remain in no quiet for thinking of his journey to that fair place which had been so much commended to his love as the most flourishing and glorious that ever eye beheld CAP. II. The earnest desire of the Pilgrim to be at Jerusalem and what he expected to find there MUch time he spent in consultation with himself about the course which would be best to hold in his travel thither There was no cost spared no study omitted to get acquaintance with the nearest way to it nor did he cease to inquire of those who were reputed the most skilfull guides that he might obtain a true information of every passage in the journey which he seriously resolved to undertake For though the weather was cold the wayes dirty and dangerous and the journy he was told would be long and company little or none could be expected to deceive the tediousness of the Pilgrimage yet so great were the ardors which he felt within himself that he regarded none of these discouragements but only wished that he might be so happy as to find the right way though he went alone thither And that which made his desires the more forward was that he had often heard Jerusalem by interpretation was no meaner place than the VISION OF PEACE A sight that he had been long pursuing in several forms and shapes wherein it had often seemed to present it self before him but could never court it into his embraces O my beloved would he often sigh within himself O my hearts desire O thou joy of the whole earth in what corner of it dost thou hide thy self and lyest concealed from our eyes Where art thou to be found O heavenly good Who will bring me to the clear vision of thy face Art thou company only for the Coelestial spirits Art thou so reserved for the Angels food that we poor mortals may not presume to ask a tast of thy sweetness What would not I part withal to purchase a small acquaintance with thee and to know the place where thou makest thine abode Many a weary step have I taken in a vain chase of thy society The hours are not to be numbred which I have spent in wishing and labouring to lay hold on thee and still thou flyest away from me After all the sweat wherein I have bathed my self I can find nothing but only that thou art not here to be found Thou art retired it seems from this poor world and hast left us only a shaddow of thee for when we think to clasp thee hard in our arms the whole force and weight of our souls doth fall upon Nothing O my heart what ails thee what torments are these which so suddenly seize upon thee Ah cruel pains the remembrance of which prepares a new rack for me The arm of a Gyant would not ake more if with all his might he should strike a feather then my heart now doth but to think of the anguish it endured when all the strength and violence of its desires were met with emptiness and vanity O Jerusalem Jerusalem the only place that can ease us of this misery the place where the beloved of my soul dwelleth the vision of peace the seat of true tranquillity and repose how fain would I have the satisfaction of being in the sure way to thy felicity This is all the peace I wish for in the world No other happiness do I thirst after as every thing can testifie that hath been privy to my thoughts There is never a room in my house but hath been filled with the noise of my sighs and groans after thee O Jerusalem Every tree that grows in my ground hath thy sweet Name ingraven upon it The birds of the air if they can understand are witnesses how incessantly my soul pants and longs to fly unto thee O Jerusalem What charitable hand will guide me in the way to thy pleasures who will bring me into that strong City the retreat of my wearied mind the refuge to recruit my tired spirits the only place of my security my joy my life it self Wilt not thou O God who hast lead me to the knowledge of it who hast filled me with these desires and hast brought me into a disesteem and contempt of all other things O let not these desires prove the greatest torment of all unto me for want of their satisfaction O forsake not this soul that hath forsaken all other delights and taken its leave of every other comfort that it may go and seek for thee at Jerusalem CAP. III. The great trouble that he fell into because of the different wayes which he was told of to that place IN this manner the poor man was wont to sigh out his soul hoping that at last the heavens would please to hear him and favour him with the understanding of that which would make all his groans useless and render him as chearful as now he found himself disconsolate But that which made the fulfilling of his desires more difficult and his hopes to arrive more slow was the many controversies which were in those dayes fiercely agitated and the huge quarrels that men raised about the right way to Jerusalem There were no less than twenty and some say many more very different parties that contended sharply with each other and every one of them confidently
affirmed that they only were the people of Sion and that unless he joyned himself to their company in which alas there was no Peace at all he should never come to that City of God which he sought after The heads of these divisions made the world believe that they were the Torches which must light them through the darkness of errour the Pole-star to regulate their course in the search and discovery of truth and that unless men used their Clue which God knows was most wofully intangled they should never fail to be lost in the Labyrinths and Maeanders of Ignorance and Folly Nay to such a degree did they magnifie themselves as if Truth and they had been born at the same time or at least had come of Age together It seemed to be a secret till they appeared and to have been reserved from the beginning on purpose to discover it self to them in Markets and Camps if not in lewder places The most modest pretension was that Truth was but a stripling or rather went in side-coats till it came to their schools to be ripened into the wisdome of perfect men They spake of the affairs of Heaven as if they were Counsellors of State in that Kingdom and opened the secrets of Jesus Christ as if they were his Confidents St. John who lay in his bosom never delivered any thing with greater peremptoriness than these men did and had it not been that they wanted his charity they might have been thought by most as great Oracles as they thought themselves There seemed no difference between them and Prophets but only that they could not prove their mission else they had the gift of boldness and fell not short in their pretenses to inspiration In this conceit they thrust into the world a great number of books which were called the Word of the Lord and cryed up as the Maps of that heavenly Country and the exact Charts whereby men must steer their course if ever they meant to come safely thither Into huge Volumes these writings sometimes swelled and they were wont to collect and faggot together so many things and so vastly different that a man could not easily avoid to lose his way in this Wood while he was seeking his way to Jerusalem Especially since they never forgot to furnish these bundles with some lusty sticks wherewith to bang their adversaries and beat them down as low as hell For in the midst of such a fearful scuffle there was so great a dust raised that no man could tell where he was nor discern any thing but only this that he was not in the way to the Vision of Peace I need not relate how sorely it grieved the good mans heart to see so many different wayes every one of them laying so high a claim to truth and bitterly reproaching the rest as damnable Heresies He could bend his course to no quarter but he was in danger to be assaulted with some question or other and was put upon his desence against some man of brass who thought himself worthy to be one of the Champions of Truth The spirit of common Barretry did not seem a greater plague to him than these vexatious disputing people The fury of whom likewise was sometimes so violent that he thought he had made a good retreat if he were not bruised and almost beat in pieces by their rude blows whose opinions he adventured to thwart by any strong contradiction Nay they all taking distant paths and not going in streight and parallel lines but in oblique and crooked wayes which crossed each other very frequently they never met together but there was such justling and quarrelling about the road to Jerusalem that no man could be near them but they would ingage him to take the one or the other part in the Bloody conflict So I call it for they thought that they did God good service when they dispatched one of their enemies and that they made him a Sacrifice when they satisfied their own beastly fury And this indeed was the saddest thing of all to his thoughts that their heat and passion they had the confidence to Baptize into the name of holy zeal and that which was but the love of their own opinion they constantly miscalled the love of God and of his Truth Though those dayes as I have already said were very frozen and cold yet they cudgel'd one another so long till they grew not and then they cry'd the weather was very warm and the Sun in his highest elevation Gods enemies they thought they opposed in their own and they fancied themselves ingaged against sin while they were buffeting a contrary opinion There was no heat but they took it for divine though it were of their own kindling and so they were but all on fire they never doubted but it was from heaven For there was no sin in those dayes like Moderation and no vertue comparable to a furious and headlong zeal But yet he received this benefit by those unhappy feuds that they made him sometimes think it was no mean thing in the esteem of others as well as himself for which there was so many and so fiery contenders The Prize he hoped would prove glorious which had drawn into the field so many combatants and which with such zealous sticklings all sides sought to win The affliction also which he felt in his spirit when he beheld them so sharply ingaged had this good effect upon him that it made him more sensibly admire the goodness of God which had preserved him from listing himself in any of those angry parties and entring into those never enough to be lamented broils This put him likewise in some hopes that he would not suffer him likewise in some hopes that he would not suffer him to remain long without the knowledge of the Truth who had so gratiously prevented him from diverting into the paths of falshood This degree of understanding he had already acquired That Sweetness and Love Meekness and Peace were the Harbingers to Divine Knowledg and since they were become his Guests he hoped that would not be far behind But that any man who knows God to be Love should imagine that he will dwell in a mind where there is nothing but hatred to be found seemed a kind of Prodigy unto him And it did quite astonish him to see that so many men did dream that the way to The Vision of Peace lay through the field of strife and war and that we must come to live together in endless love hereafter by living in perpetual frays and brawls in the world where we now are CAP. IV. How he happily heard of a safe Guide unto it with a true Character of him AND he truly who is not wont to frustrate the expectations of such well minded souls did not use much delay before he gave him a sensible demonstration of that which he already believed He found that the God of peace could not make himself long a stranger to
cheap rate or rather have them for nothing but in the other they will not come so easily but cost no small pains to acquire them There is a kind of impatience also in some natures which is not able to suffer any delayes And this being joyned with a softness and delicacy which is a sworn enemy to all manner of trouble and pains it renders men very willing to spare themselves the length and tediousness of an enquiry together with all the difficulties of a choice Hence it comes to pass that they love at first sight and suffer others to chuse their belief for them and then afterwards they retain by custome and prescription that which they took but by chance and preoccupation Make an essay therefore of the patience which you promise in your whole journey at the very entrance of it and let your diligence to know the will of God be an earnest of that you mean to use in the doing of it And as I would have you free your self from this lazy credulous humour so let it be your next care to rid your mind of its opposite obstinate incredulity Let not the cure of one sickness be the cause of another nor that which takes away your softness and easiness to believe render you hard and impenetrable by all the impressions of truth Imploy the thoughts which I would have you spend in serious inquiry to possess your mind with a strong perswasion of the certainty of Christian Religion and with a right understanding of the true design of that glorious Revelation For that both gives you such a prospect of the Blessed place you are going to as no where else can be met withal and directs you to such a course of real piety as plainly leads unto it And the more confident you grow that Jesus is the Son of God as the voyce from Heaven witnessed that he is the Lord of Life and the King of Glory the surer will you tread all the way you go and the less danger there will be of stumbling The sounder also and more healthful will you grow so as not to faint much less to forsake the Christian course And next to this I beseech you use the greatest diligence to provide that your Faith which is to do all things in your journey be not it self infected with the common disease of sloth and idleness Be sure to purge your soul from all the drousie and phlegmatick opinions you may have about it which stifle and choak the very spirit and life of it Do not cease till you have freed it of all obstructions and rendred it so active and vigorous that you can be confident in its own nature it will necessarily produce an holy Life Suffer it not to rest no not in Christ himself till it animate you to a free and cheerful obedience to all his commands Let it give your soul a sense that the whole Religion is comprehended in this one powerful word Let it seem as a poynt from whence all the lines of your duty are drawn like a fire in the middle of a room sending out its heat on every side in an ardent love of God and of your Brethren Esteem it I mean such an hearty perswasion of the Truth and Goodness of all that Christ hath spoken that by the force and virtue of it you become obsequious to his will in all things And having effected this then search your Conscience very narrowly to find out all the sins whereof you stand guilty some of which may lurk so secretly or look so demurely that a Faith which is not very busie may either not espy them or let them pass for no offences These must all be purged out and left behind as things that can by no means be permitted to go along with you And for that end let me advise you to unload your soul of them all by humble confession and if any of them lye as an heavy burden upon you to repair to your spiritual Physician that he may help by his counsel and prescriptions to ease you of them And in the last place Let all these be attended with a strong Resolution that though your sins should follow and call after you and beg to have but one word with you they shall be so far from receiving any entertainment that you will not so much as enter into speech with them nor listen to the voice of any of their temptations I will not deny but that it is a difficult thing not to lend so much as a good look to an old acquaintance yet it will appear much otherwise to those who confess their sins so as to hate them and to purge themselves from all affection to them That therefore you must give me leave to subjoyn to this Advice That you do not content your self with such Physick as cleanseth only the first passages and carries away no more than the grosser humours out of the greater chanels of your life but that you administer such as will search into the furthest parts of your soul and cleanse the spirit from all its defilements You must not leave behind so much as a good opinion of any evil way Not the smallest kindness for it or if it be possible any inclination to it must be suffered to remain For this you know undid no less than six hundred thousand Travellers to Jerusalem in ancient times and left all their carkasses buried in the Desarts who left Egypt as you now are going to forsake the world but it was in their Bodies only and not in their hearts and affection Their mouths watred still at the remembrance of the Flesh and Coleworts the Garlick and Onyons and they had a secret inclination which could not be long concealed to return to those injoyments which they had abandoned They loved the Country from whence they were departed though they hated the bondage And it was not so much the evil customs as the cruelties of that Land which made them sigh for deliverance Which is but the type and picture of those persons now who leave their sinful waies and practices resolving never to return to them but yet they bear them a great good will and could be very well pleased if they could gain a permission to enjoy them and not be damn'd to the bargain They are often casting a kind and favourable look towards them it tickles them to think how happy they should be if they could sometimes keep them company and suffer nothing by it It is not their sins that they are fallen out withall but some of their followers that wait upon them their smiles and salutes they receive with joy and fear nothing but the sting which appears in the tail of them We are wont you know to compare such persons to those sick men who dare not taste of the salt meats and the raw fruit which they see their friends eat before them because the Physician assures them that Death lyes in ambush under every morsel
at the first as in a still quiet and loving admiration of the excellent Goodness Purity and Love of Jesus When you believe him to have the fulness of the Godhead dwelling in him bodily and especially when you are indued with a savoury feeling of his holiness and kindness this sight of him will beget in your soul a more pure spiritual and sweet Humility than the beholding of your self can possibly do which produces an Humility more gross boisterous and unquiet As there is a Love which is calm and quiet when not at all stirr'd with the passion we remain possessed of all the pleasure of it So is there an Humility of the same nature which silently sinks us down to the very bottom of our being without stirring and troubling of our souls as we are wont to do when we violently plunge our thoughts into them But both of these descend from above when our minds are fastned to caelestial objects which alwayes are in a serene tranquillity they will not spring from things beneath which are tossed in a perpetual and restless agitation We never seem less in our own eyes than when we look down from an high upon our selves and being then in peace we have less also of that vexation wherein our souls are apt to boil and rage when they are the nearest objects of our thoughts Our Humility will be the more when we admire Jesus and it will be of a temper more mild and gentle like him whom we admire It will not lose any thing of it self by taking its original from him but only lose that sowreness which is mingled with it when it hath its beginning from our selves You will plainly understand my meaning if you do but consider that by fixing your eyes upon your self you may indeed discern that you are a most wretched sinful creature but by fastning them upon him you will both see the same and that more clearly and moreover feel that you are a meer nothing This sense of your self which layes you lowest of all other you can never owe to any thing else but a sight of him who wants nothing His Fulness appearing so great your Emptiness will seem as vast and in compare with his Perfections you will think your self nothing but Imperfection When you consider that all is his at that thought you have lost your self by finding that you are not your own and when you think that he is the original of all you are lost again in a sense that you had been nothing without him So that in this way you will be as much cast down to the ground and rolled as much in the dust as by any other reflections All the difference is that you will not roll and tumble about in the turbulency of your own distracted thoughts and the violent commotion of your furious passions You will only lye at his feet in a lowly posture adoring of his Excellencies praising his surpassing Perfections confessing your own meanness beseeching him to pity a poor Soul that thinks it self nothing unless it may see him there and desiring him to take the opportunity of doing himself that honour and you that kindness as out of his fulness to impart a new spirit and a divine nature to you Nay this Humility will make you study to cast all other things out of your thoughts and labour only to be beloved of him without which you judge your self to be of all creatures most miserable It is not to be told what the benefits of this sort of Humility are but to let you see something of its great virtue reflect upon that which we lately discoursed concerning the force of a strong Resolution and hearty surrender of your self to God Which as it contains all things you are to do with in its comprehension so it is supported by nothing more than a profound Humility When we consider that we were made by God that we depend upon him every moment that we are infinitely ingaged to him for many millions of his favours when we think what a Soveraign Authority he hath over us how much he is superiour to us what a right he hath to all our services and how wise and good his will is it is impossible that we should avoid resolving to give him our hearts and to persist eternally in the abnegation of our own wills and desires which we can never suffer to be competitors with his This Humility will not be forward to cloathe you with shirts of hair to prescribe you no other dyet but the meanest you can procure to put a whip into your hand wherewith to let your self blood to rob you of your hose and shooes that you may go barefoot to Jerusalem It will not bid you strike your bare breast against the stones nor tell you that to be a Saint you must roll your naked body in the briers or tumble in the same manner in heaps of Winter Snow or plunge your self up to the neck in an Icy Pool But it will infallibly strip you of your self and starve all your carnal desires and break your will in pieces and lay you at the foot of the Cross of Christ and dispose you to all those rigours and a thousand more if your Lord did signifie that he would be pleased with such austerities How safe then and secure must you needs think your self under the conduct of such a Companion you cannot have a better Guard nor be put into a place of greater assurance if you seek over all the world for it than that to which Humility will lead you For making you distrustful of your own power and strength it will urge you to a continual dependance upon your Lord without whom you feel that nothing much less such an excellent thing as you design can be atchieved We accuse very much the weakness of our nature we complain heavily of the body of flesh and blood which continually betrayes us we conceit that we should do rare things were we but once quit of this load of earth and suffered to move in the free and yielding Air. But let me tell you and believe it for a truth though we had no society with a terrestrial nature nay though our minds were free and clear from all mortal concretion though we had no cloathes at all to hinder our motion yet our ruine might arise out of our spirits and by pride and self-confidence we might throw our selves down into utter destruction For what commerce I pray you had the Apostate Angels with our corporeal nature what familiarity with a body Do we not conceive them to have been pure spirits separated from all earthly contagion And yet by placing all in themselves by being puffed up in their own thoughts and not acknowledging their need of the Divine presence and assistance we conclude that they tumbled themselves into an Abysse of misery and woe irrecoverable Now they are in a worse condition then if they were spirits of a smaller size Now the torment
his goodness which you will feel him pouring out on every side and in one word you will behold so much of the Beauty of Jerusalem it self that you will travel with the better courage thither But that in which I would have you spend the greatest part of those private seasons is in thinking of your own estate and comparing your life with the life of Jesus Let him be your companion when you are alone look stedfastly on his face and observe what resemblance you bear to him Pray him to draw and describe himself more exactly upon your soul and to supply all the lines that are still wanting to render you an accomplished image of him Shew him how desirous you are to be conformed in all your thoughts words desires and actions to that excellent model of perfection which he hath given you in his own example Let him know how much you are in love with him and that you wish for this above all the world to be like to him It cannot be thought that he will deny your desires or let your indeavours want his help for the making you more compleat in him You will come out of these secret places with a greater lustre and issue forth with a greater force and power to follow the steps of your Saviour Your face will be indued with such a brightness and cast such a splendor round about that it will be seen by all that you have been with Jesus Who can express the pleasures that hide themselves in these retreats or tell the contentments that are locked up in those unfrequented closets Do but enter into the first of them that presents it self and there will need nothing more then the sensible delectation which you will find in it to invite you to seek such silent retirements These quiet places are the resemblances of the serene regions above and little models of heaven They are hung round about also with a great many Pictures of Jesus which will ravish your heart and draw it out of your body to snatch it up to himself In one corner you will see him pictured as the Lover of men and in another you will behold him in the greatest abasement and humility that ever was On this side you will see him dealing his Charity to the Poor and on that he will discover himself attending on the sick Here his Meekness there his Patience will be lively represented to your eyes In one place you will find him pouring out his Instructions and in another pouring out his Blood for the Good of men And from every one of these you will receive such touches and feel your heart so wounded that you will never be more inamoured of him then when you and he thus meet alone and he makes this private visit to your Soul There he will open his very heart to you and let you see how much you are in his favour There he will impart to you his consolations and fill you with his Spirit Your mind will there be illuminated your affections inflamed your resolutions strengthned and all your faculties invigorated with a greater chearfulness in obedience to his Will And therefore do not fail as oft as you can to get out of the dust and heat of this World into these close and cool walks which Jesus frequents For though the dews of the Divine grace fall every where yet they lye longest in the shade These sugar'd drops do love most to stay in the solitary places And when you can find no where else this milk of heaven wherewith all things are nourished and refreshed you will be sure to meet with plenty of it in these hidden recesses But then I must remember you That in the greatest most open and full manifestations of the Glory of God upon Jesus he was very private too and cared not for having it published and talkt of abroad in the world When he was transfigured in the Holy mount you read that he went aside privately with a few of his Disciples which may well commend unto you the love of retirement And that brightness also wherewith he was cloathed he commanded to be concealed as a great secret till a a fit season to divulge it which may well teach us to keep to our selves what passes between God and our souls till others may be concerned in it as much as our selves You may refer this perhaps to the Humility of his Spirit but yet I thought good to advise you of it alone because it deserves a particular consideration There is a vanity you may be guilty of if you heed not this of glorying when you come abroad again of the secret communication that you have had with Jesus in the time of your Solitude For I observe it is the Genius of some who profess acquaintance with Him when they feel any delitious joyes exceeding the common sort which perhaps are indulged only in favour of their weakness and intended meerly to cherish their present childish condition to blaze them every where and report them to others without any great occasion for it They think it a piece of Religion to communicate their experiences to the next passenger they meet withall They love that others should know how nobly they are treated and so they lay a double snare one for themselves by the high conceit which they may raise in others of their excellencies and a second for their neighbours by the discouragement they may feel for want of such elevations If your spirit therefore be at any time transported if God shine into your heart very brightly and darken all this world in your eyes by causing his glory to cover you I beseech you cast a cloud about it that no body else may see it unless the good of others make it necessary that it should be revealed Draw a vail over your face when it is so radiant least by shining too brightly upon others it hurt their eyes and the reflection of it prove dangerous to your self As when you are in the World you must not forget to be private with God so when you have been the most with God it is safest to keep it private from the World It may be seasonable here to add that while He maintained this delightful Converse with God for his own benefit his life was most profitable to others Prayer and Meditation did not hinder his labours but they were spurrs to industry and made him more careful to do his work for which he was sent into the world He was not only attent to his own spirit that it might be kept with God but he watcht for advantages of bringing the hearts of others to him Much less did he spend his time in pleasing amusements to think how much he was in the favour of Heaven but he issued out of these delicious thoughts and took as great a pleasure in introducing others into the same favour There was no hour passed but he did some good or other to the world The finishing of
an one as follows He is a person that relyes upon his Masters merits and depends only on the worth and sufficiency of his Lord. He trusts in his goodness for a pardon of all his faults and hopes he will esteem him a good servant because he is a good Master He leans upon his arm and clasps fast about him and is resolved not to let him go till he have paid him his wages He embraces him kindly and hopes he will account him righteous because he is so himself And in one word He applyes to himself all the good works that his Master hath performed and prayes to be excused if he do not his business because that his Lord can do it better Is not this a very ridiculous description or would you be content to be thus served Do not imagine then that God will be served after this fashion or that such an ill-favoured notion as this is the best that can be found to compose the definition of a true believer But first do all that you can and then acknowledge your self an unprofitable servant Let it be your care to follow your work and then rely only upon the goodness of our Lord to give you a reward Be sure that you be inwardly righteous and then no doubt the righteousness of Christ will procure you acceptance and bring you to that happiness which you can no wayes deserve CAP. XVII What place Prayer Hearing of Sermons Reading of Good Books Receiving the Sacrament have in the Religion of Jesus And of what use they are to Pilgrims AND that you may be able to make a better judgement of what I have said and I may also return to the occasion and beginning of this discourse let me intreat you to consider well the nature and ends of Prayer to God It is manifest from the life of Jesus that it is but a part of that duty and obedience that we owe to God and yet it is a powerful means to bring us to all the rest It is the converting and turning about of our minds and hearts to the original of our Being It is our reflecting and looking back upon him from whom we came It is our circling and winding about as Heathens themselves have well conceived to that point from which we took our beginning that we may be fast united to God and never be divided from him It is an acknowledgement of God in all his perfections An expression of our dependance and subjection an oblation of our selves both soul and body to him Think therefore to what purposes it most naturally serves for it being a thing of daily use you may judge thereby what the great business of Christianity or Believing is Doth it minister chiefly to our confidence of being saved and are we to swell our selves by this breath with great hopes that we are beloved of God Or rather is it not most properly subservient to the putting of us into a state of Salvation and the rendring us fit objects of the Divine Love It is not intended to inspire us with conceits that we are the children of God but to breathe into us the spirit of sons and to impress upon us the image of him upon whom we fix our eyes It is the elevation of our minds to him and the fastning of our eyes upon him in order to our being made more like him It is the oblation of our selves to his uses and service and not a giving of our selves to be saved by him Here we place our minds in the brightness of his heavenly light Here we expose our cold affections to the warmth and heat of the Sun of righteousness We behold our Lord most clearly in these devout Meditations and by the frequency of them we shall learn his carriage and gestures and conform all our actions to the excellent model of his I beseech you descend into your own heart and if you know what it is to pray tell me what Faith it is which you feel then most stirring in your heart Is it only a relyance on Christ and an application of his merits to your soul Or is it not rather a vigorous application of your mind to him that you may feel him more begetting and promoting his life in your heart Is it not a strong desire to be touched by him to be impressed with his likeness to be joyned to him and made one spirit with him and in one word that you may be made more ready and disposed to every good work I will evidently convince you that this is the great end of Prayer and consequently the main work of believing on the Son of God We are you know of kin to two Worlds and placed in the middle between Heaven and Earth With our Heads we touch the one and with our Feet we stand upon the other Man is the common term wherein these two meet and are combined By his superiour faculties he holds communion with the inward and spiritual world and by his lower he feels the outward and corporeal But there is a great difference between the correspondence which we hold with one and that which we maintain with the other For to this sensible World we lye open bare but between us and the invisible World there is a gross cloud and vail of flesh which interposes Or to speak more plainly Our senses have nothing that comes between them and their objects to hinder their free approach to them whereas our understanding hath those very objects wherewith they are prepossessed to interrupt the light of coelestial things which shine upon it The outward man is continually exposed to the strokes of the things of this outward World and without any difficulty or pains is moved by them but our Mind is not so patent to the things of the other nor is our Will so easily inclined by them For they being already impressed and engaged by sensible objects these lye between us and the higher Regions and they having enjoyed a long familiarity with them before we received notice of any thing else beside it will require some labour to bring us and those Nobler objects together In short the senses have nothing else to do but only to receive those things which present themselves before them nor are they solicited by any other enjoyments But our minds and wills are haled two waies and solicited by this World as well as by the other so that to perceive that which is Divine we must remove this out of the way and pull our souls from those thoughts and desires wherein these lower things have intangled our hearts Unless our Understanding draw her self aside to the contemplation of Divine Truths and thereby carry the Will to the taste of an higher Good it cannot be avoided but that we become meer men of this World and by being wholly carnal lose our acquaintance with the other caelestial Country We shall be altogether fraught with fleshly opinions and affections and have nothing remaining in us of
saying Alas poor Soul in what a vain and idle labour hast thou ingaged thy self what meanest thou thus to strain thy wings in aspiring to that which no creature on earth can reach Dost thou think to be like the Son of God To wish to be so good is the highest perfection of humane weakness But to go about it is only to make a more large discovery of that natural frailty It is a pattern too illustrious for thee to look upon much more to follow It belongs not to meer men to be such great undertakers Thou mayst as well think to work miracles as design to imitate his Vertues It lyes not within the compass of flesh and blood to become so spiritual and divine And if thou hadst not already forgotten thy falls thou couldst not dream of raising thy self to so high a pitch Can any heart put up such affronts with patience as thou meetest withall Who can indure such abstinence or exercise such Charity or practise such Meekness as thou seest in Jesus Sit down vain man and comfort thy self in this that He hath done so worthily It is enough to praise and extol such perfections but it is too much to arrive at them There is no man in his wits would trouble himself about a business though he apprehend his obligations never so great that press him to it when he hath so good an excuse as this at hand that is not possible to be effected I cannot stay to tell you the long speeches that they will detain you withall in this Argument Only you may know that there is no Theme more easie and plausible than this wherein to dilate themselves and therefore you may expect a world of specious reasons to induce you to believe that no man can obey the Commands of Christ or follow his great Example Which perswasion if they can by any means instill into your soul I must assure you before-hand that it will prove the most dangerous temptation that ever made an assault upon you It will cut as I may so speak the very sinews of your spirit and cramp your soul so that you will never be able to travel to Jerusalem This infusion will not only discourage you but perfectly benum you and make you languish in a perpetual lethargy The opinion of Necessity doth not more quicken and excite us than that of Impossibility doth deaden and dis-dis-spirit us in any undertaking And therefore now if ever you must run as fast as you can to the extract which I gave you You must take a good draught of those enlivening spirits which I commended and are inclosed in that sentence which you must carry along with you You must repeat it again and again I desire nothing but Jesus nothing but Jesus He hath filled my soul with a purpose to go to him He hath inspired me with strong resolutions to follow after him And sure He will not fail to be my help my strength and my salvation And here let me beseech you to consider diligently before-hand that they are his own words to his Disciples just before he left the world Joh. 13.15 I have given you an example that you should do as I have done to you And how that one of those persons hath also told us That he left us an example that we should follow his steps 1 Pet. 3.21 To what end I pray you did He give us that which we cannot take What are we the better for the Copy which he hath left if it be such as we cannot transcribe Did he intend to brave us rather than instruct us by his actions Were they meant to upbraid out imbecillity and not to inspire us with courage and strength Instead of provoking our spirits were they only designed to make our ambition despair And when he should have awakned our diligence did he only come to astonish us with wonders and cast our souls into a stupifying admiration These are base and leud supposals of which the ancient Pilgrims did never so much as dream They thought they saw in him what mortal men by the Grace of God might hope to attain They lookt upon him as the advancer of humane Nature not only in his own person but also in all those who would undertake to follow him They were incouraged and inflamed by beholding him to imitate his heavenly life and by his Grace have left us themselves as instances and examples of that excellent virtue which Believers on Jesus may come unto They imitated him so happily that they themselves are become Originals They cry out aloud unto us that we should be followers of them as they were of Christ 1 Cor 11.1 And must we now stand only gazing upon them and spend our time in commending the Piety of ancient dayes Must we think that those were priviledged Ages which were attended with such a Grace that doth not descend upon future successions Did the favours of Heaven dye with those great souls Must wee seek for Christians only under their ruines and in their Monuments Must we adore their reliques in Books and please our selves in Idaeas and Patterns of things which we cannot imitate Is it enough that we live in a profound sleep if it be but interrupted sometimes with pleasant visions Do they speak only to the first-born children of Christ when they say Brethren Phil. 3.13 be followers together of us and mark them which walk so as you have us for an ensample Was it the priviledge of their birth-right to be so good and must we be contented to remain bad Are we such puisnees that must expect no portion of Divine Grace Eph 5.1 or think of being followers of God as dear Children of his For the Love of God let us not think that his treasures are exhausted or that he is weary of his first munificence His arm is no shorter than it was nor are his hands less open He is still willing to dispense his largesses and to make us know that they did not end with those Ages Let us rouze up our selves therefore and not lose the benefits of Heaven by thinking we cannot have them Let us not impute to it such an unkindness of giving us so high an example that it might oblige us to an unprofitable trouble These are the old subtilties of the Serpent which the Heathen Divines have detected as well as we The Philosophers themselves were haunted with these clamours and the people rang this continually in their ears it is impossible to follow such examples as you propose But they set themselves stoutly against this sluggisness They pursued mens souls that made these excuses and ferretted them out of such pretenses wherein they sought to borrow and to make a Sanctuary for their laziness You imagine saith one of them that those things cannot be done which you do not You will needs have them far to surmount the nature of man because you will not be at the pains to acquire them How
hath deputed those who are in need to receive from us that which is due to him and imploy it to their own uses He hath communicated as I may say all his claim to them and bids them demand in his Name that which we cannot give much less forgive to him So that you exercise Justice and Charity both together when you do good to your Neighbour and there is a double Charity in it also one to Him and another to them They have good done them upon his account and he takes it so much as done to himself that he acknowledges an obligation and binds himself to pay us again Nay let me tell you that there is nothing in all the world can render you so divine and heavenly as to do much good This puts us in the place of God to our poor Brethren to whom he sends relief and help by our hands Is not this a very high honour And is not that a very noble quality which so differences us from all others that it makes us like to the Most High The Mechanical Christian will here find himself to be dead and void of God it being nothing but a Spirit of Life and that very Divine too which will carry us out of our selves and fill us with perpetual ardors of Love to others and instigate us to be doing of good to all This is the very Character of the Deity for God is Love and he that loveth dwelleth in God and God in him And therefore if you covet to excel all others study to be indued with the most profitable Gifts as the great Apostle adviseth and yet saith he I shew you a more excellent way and that is Charity For this causes us to make use of all those Gifts for the benefit of Mankind This is the rarest way of excelling others because it makes us excell our selves and likens us to God The Angels you know had the ambition of being like to God in Power and Majesty aspiring as is conceived to the Throne of the Most High Our first Parents were soon infected with the like vanity and they rubbed their Leprosie upon them for they affected to resemble God in wisdom and knowledge But by this means you know that both of them lost what they enjoyed instead of adding more unto it What must we do then who see their falls must we be content not to be like to our Creator Not so neither but we must indeavour to imitate him in Love and Goodness in which there is no danger This admits of no excess as wise men observe but only of error We cannot love too much though we may be imprudent in the communications of it Though Angels and Men suffered so much by the desire of other things in excess yet in Charity there can be none nor shall either of them suffer any damage by it And therefore it was that God sent his Son Jesus into the world that by looking on him we may know how to become Divine All his acts of power were acts of Love All his Miracles were Mercies to men He never imployed his Might but to do benefits To teach us that they are truly great who are little in themselves as he was and great in Charity That they are indued with most power who can do most good and that they are nearest to God and most highly exalted who are nearest to their neighbours and most deeply humbled You know that if a Circle be made and you draw lines from the circumference to the middle point or Center where they all meet the further these lines are in any place one from the other the farther they are from the Center and the nearer they come to that the nearer also and the clofer their approaches are to each other This may be a resemblance if you please of our condition here in this World where we are all in our way to God the Center of our Rest and travelling to Jerusalem where we hope to meet in him We are desirous now to draw as nigh to him as we can and many fancy that their musings meditations and prayers are the chiefest if not the only things that bring them near unto him But as I have told you heretofore so let me now repeat it again That God and our Brethren are so inseperable that we cannot touch the one but we must be joyned to the other also The further any of us is removed from his neighbour as you see in that similitude at the greater distance he is from God He cannot go away from the former but he goes away in the same proportions from the latter too And the nearer and closer he is joyned in the affection of Charity to his neighbour the nearer he is unto God the more doth he approach to his excellencies and to an union with him If you will be a follower of God then as a dear child of his Walk in love You cannot chuse sure to do otherwise when you have so glorious a pattern before you It is an honourable thing now you see to love since God himself is become a Lover You may have imagined perhaps that some offices of Charity are ignoble and disparage a person of honour As most men of condition think it below them to go into a poor mans house to come near the stinking wounds and the dirty beds of the meaner sort and there are very few who do not account it a sneaking quality to put up injuries and pass by affronts But you cannot be of this mind if you look upon God who by loving us hath also taught us how honourable and glorious all these things are They are not below us since they are not below himself There is no man so much our inferiour as we are all beneath Him And yet he condescended to them He comes and dwells in this perishing flesh of ours He despises not our poor cottages he dresses our wounds he takes care of our sores he heals our sicknesses he passes by our transgressions yea he prayes us to be friends and intreats us to be reconciled And that is a thing which men think to be so poor and mean that no great spirit can indure to submit unto it To go to others who have offended us and beseech them to lay aside their enmity is thought to savour of baseness and to be an argument of a low and cowardly mind But God will give us leave to think so no longer He hath shown us that it is the effect of a most generous and noble disposition and so far from being a blemish to us that we should glory in it to be the first in making peace and offering terms of reconciliation Others may think to give proofs of their gallantry by standing in defiance to all those who will not submit themselves and lye at their feet yea by trampling on them who shall in the least offend them but God teaches us by his own example that there is no greater height of
to follow their Vertues But I may rather wonder with what face men can speak against those who neglect the observance of these Dayes when they themselves are the chiefest cause of it or the best colour for it They dishonour all holy rites and bring a reproach upon holy times and if it had not been for such as them those dayes might have been in more credit even with those who now despise them What do we see say those scrupulous persons but riot and luxury at such seasons All places are full of vomit and men seem to be celebrating the Feast of Ceres and Bacchus i. e. of Bread and Wine of some heathenish drunken belly-god They fancy there is no restraint layd upon their appetite if they do but strictly forbear their ordinary labours They are like some bad Christians in the old times who made no doubt of being drunk so they did but take off their cups as they sate on the Martyrs Tombs It is easie indeed for these objectors to see something else They might behold some devout people who frequent the Worship of God and rejoyce most in remembring their Saviour and his great Grace in sending those that Preached the Gospel to the World But the number of the other are so great who never regard such things that by looking on them they are tempted to take no notice of all the rest The Taverns are fuller by far then our Churches and the Theatre is more frequented then the House of God And therefore it is for such as you to set your selves a work to take away this objection which they will not take away themselves Do you satisfie them that these dayes are no necessary cause of doing evil by your own example of doing good Leave their Argument no force at all for it is in your power to do it and let them see that the marriage between these Festivals and Profaneness is not so legitimate but they may be divorced Deprive them of this colour and leave their peevishness so naked that it may be exposed to the view of all Or if they have taken a real offence remove it out of their way and let all that they alledg have a full confutation in your holy life Answer them by your behaviour that there is no need to take away these dayes for you can take away all the wickedness and leave them still remaining Let them see that you can rest from your labours and yet not spend your whole time in sport and play Let them find the Bible or some good book in your hand oftner then they do the Cards Let your Spirit rejoyce in God your Saviour more then your body doth in meat and drink Feed your soul upon the Heavenly mysteries of our Religion and do not live as if the Saints were only good Purveyors for our Kitchins So will you both bring these dayes into esteem with others and your self into greater favour with God And I beseech you desire all you know that they would not sleight such admonitions as these I give you But that for the Honour of our Lord for the credit of his Church who hath appointed these solemnities for the love of their own souls who are intended to receive the benefit of them they would behave themselves soberly and religiously at such seasons That so the Church may not be forced to do with these as it hath done with the Feasts of Love and other rites used by the Apostles themselves i. e. abolish and banish them because of mens obstinate abuse of them For it is a very absurd thing as one of the ancient Guides saith to study to honour the Martyrs with too much fulness who we know pleased God by fasting and abstinence It is a prosperous way of doing honour to our Saviour by pampering and pleasing our selves who it is known did honour his Father by denying himself and despising all the pleasures of the flesh Therefore exhort every one to feast themselves with an holy fear Let them make Feasts of Charity and doing good to their poor neighbours Let them be Feasts of Love to make us friends one with another Feasts of the Spirit to put us in mind of the joyes of the Lord and the eternal Supper of the Lamb. And now I think I may have leave to conclude my directions having put you into the hands of better Guides then my self the sum whereof is briefly this Let your principal design ever be to knit your heart to the Love of Jesus and the ardent desire of being with him at Jerusalem Let this be your great business to set your Soul directly towards the place where he is and to stir up in it such longings as these O that I were with Jesus when shall I come to Jesus And since he is the Way to himself there is nothing more needful for the accomplishing your desire then to propose him before your eyes for your imitation As for Prayer Meditation and such like things they are to be designed to this end that your Love to him may be inflamed your Desire after him increased and your Resolution of doing his will and treading in his steps be made unmoveable Whatsoever therefore you find proper to advance that Love that Desire that Resolution be it Praying or Reading Discoursing or Solitude Walking or Reposing your self Visiting of others or Keeping at home make use of it for the time that your Soul rellishes it and as long as it quickens your Desire and indeavour of enjoying the love of Jesus and the blessed sight of him at Jerusalem But when any of these shall prove irksome to you be not troubled at it but try for that time some of the rest which may be then more useful because more pleasant to you And when any of those Enemies I have mentioned shall disturb your peace beat them off as soon as you can but be not troubled because they do not presently yield provided you do not yield to them neither And if after a Victory they rally in the same manner again be not affrighted at that neither as if now they had greater courage but endeavour only to beat them as before and by obtaining a new Victory to show that it is your courage which is increased And do not think you shall be in danger to lose the Victory over them if you suffer your Bow sometimes to be unbent Do not think a Pilgrim must be so severe as never to recreate himself in the way he goes By perpetual Watchings and labours your enemies may undo you as well as by any other means Take but heed that you fall not into their Quarters when you divert your self and let but your pleasures still lye in your way and you need not fear to make use of them Remember the Example of the Saints of God and stir up your self to imitate their zeal and their discretion both together And rest assured my Friend that this good Desire thus cherished thus augmented and
by the help of Heaven instantly to set forth in this way which you have described If I had been born your Son I could not have thought my obligations greater to you than now I feel them Nay I shall take the liberty to say That I stand more indebted to your Piety than I do to Nature For fancy oft-times makes Parents but it is only reason truth and goodness which have tyed my heart to you And therefore since I am the issue of your mind you may justly expect a greater reverence love and obedience to your commands than if I was the issue of your body I have heard your discourse Sir with great attention I have markt every particular passage of it with diligence and care and such a gust hath every word given me which dropt from your mouth that it hath seemed to me not many minutes long It is not to be expressed how your Golden Sentence pleaseth me which you have put into my mouth I am resolved to go along this Journey chaunting it continually with no less delight than the Birds are wont to do their Melodies Nay I cannot forbear and be not weary I beseech you Sir if I hold you longer than I thought but I must here before you renounce my own proper will and protest that I desire nothing but to be what Jesus would have me and to be where Jesus you say will bring me O thou enemy of God! my self-will that hast reigned so long come down from thy Throne I proclaim War against thee and am resolved from this day forward to oppose all thy desires I set my self here in open defiance to thee I will have no peace with thee for one moment because thou-art no friend of God to whom I now deliver my self Let him be pleased to come and reign in my heart for I am absolutely his May it be his will to accept of a poor Slave that devotes all his powers to his service This I will beg of him perpetually that he would vouchsafe to let me know what his will is and that shall be my Guide though my own will be never so desirous to hold a contrary course Let it pain me or let it please me I am resolved to bind my self fast to God that he may carry me not whither I would but whither himself thinks good Say the word O my God and it is enough I am prepared to be conducted by thee Lead me whither thou wilt O thou blessed Providence thou shalt have a faithful follower of thy wise Counsels I am no longer affraid of any dangers Those terrible Monsters Poverty Reproach and all the rest do strike no dread at all into me Farewell offices and honours if you must be the recompence of crimes Farewell my friends if I must be the companion of your sins Farewell all the world if it must be the price of my soul But as for you Sir I am loath to bid you farewell I must be snatched rather than go from your company For you are my Father my Oracle a Messenger sent from God to bring me to him And if you will go to Heaven without me I pray you once more to receive my acknowledgements which testifie that I would thank you if I were able both for your former Directions and for this Patience Truly replyed the Father I think my self rather obliged to thank you most heartily that you would come to me and being come that you would hear me not only with Patience but Acceptance For there is nothing I am so greedy of as to meet with a soul that is sincerely desirous to know the way to Jerusalem neither do I know any pleasure equal to that of pouring out my heart into such thirsty minds unless it be this of seeing them rellish those Waters of Life which flow from Wisdome's lips And that same Jesus who I see hath touched your heart already with his Love and excited you to take this Journey give you his Blessing and send his Spirit the Comforter to accompany you in your travels and assign you to some good Angel of his that may conduct you to that happy place the Heavenly Jerusalem where he lives In the way to which I am so desirous you should enter that I will not be your hinderance by any further discourses but shall be very glad as I told you to find you in safety arrived there where we shall never part more nor have any cause to say this sad word Farewell Must I part then with you said the Pilgrim Here he made a pause and tears spoke the rest of his mind for I could hear never a word he said till after a great many sighs hee thus proceeded Well let it be so It is part of my duty you say to be contented with every thing And therefore I now freely resume my former resolution and say in the words I hope in the Spirit also of Jesus Not my will O Lord but thy Will be done Onely let me again renew my desires that you would accompany me ever with your good Prayers for I hope it is not too great a gratification of my self to be pleased in your friendship and in the belief that you remember me Nor will it be accounted a crime that I am not willing to be left out of your thoughts especially when they are addressed in devout supplications to Jesus I have been long perswaded that I use to prosper the better in all my designes for the good wishes of pious persons and it hath been some support to me also when I have had no great store of good desires in my own heart or been but cold in those I had to think that the concerns of my soul were presented to God by some Friend or other in their more fervent Devotions And therefore it will be at the most but a pardonable error if I do with some Passion beg the prayers of such a person as you are and if I comfort my self sometimes with the interess I have in you and them Especially since I see by your charitable instructions and the patience you have used towards me that you have an heart so full of Love and Goodness that it will neither suffer you to remember me coldly nor to be weary in recommending me to the Grace of God The Father would not make any long reply to these words for fear they should never break off but be alwayes linkt together by the chains of this pleasing conversation and the delight which he perceived began to spring up in him by the interchanging so many expressions of their mutual Love But after he had assured him by a solemn promise that he would never fail to commend him to the love and care of Jesus they took their leave one of the other not without a great many embraces and hearty wishes to see each other again in peace at Jerusalem You may be sure the Pilgrim could not but often reflect with a sad heart upon this
dear person whose counsels he carried along with him in his breast And while the image of him was so fresh in his mind it did not a little wound him that he could enjoy no more then that shaddow of his friend Sometimes he complained Plained of the imperfections of this state and the miseries of the world that will not let those who love most be most together Sometimes he blamed his own unworthiness which made such a felicity as the constant company of so good a man too great for him to possess Sometimes he called him back and wished in his heart that he would return And by and by he was ready to follow after him and thought he could fly presently into his embraces so strong were the desires he felt of being with him But in the midst of these restless thoughts which for a little space were tossed up and down in his mind It pleased God to remember him of the Vow he had made of his will to him He put him in mind that he stood still all this while though he was in so great an agitation and that to follow his Friend would be to go back from his Resolution and that he had more then the image of his body to bear him company there being left behind the very picture of his soul described in those Directions which he had bestowed upon him Such thoughts as these put away that fit of passion wherein he was ingaged and caused the qualm that went over his heart to vanish So that now loosned from all the world as he thought he blessed himself and without any discomposure took his staff in his hand and said From this moment farewell all my former enjoyments Do not trouble me for I now begin my designed Pilgrimage I am nought I have nought I desire nought but to be with Jesus at Jerusalem CAP. XXVI Of sundry troubles which hapned to the Pilgrim in his Travels And how he was delivered out of them A Fine Sunshine-morning it was when he first went out of his doors The Air was perfumed with the sweet Odors which the Sun exhaled from the flowers the birds whistled and sung their Hymns to him that made that glorious Light and there was no hedge that he passed by but it welcomed him with some new Songs and pleasures nor any Traveller he met but wished him Good speed He was so much pleased in every thing that he saw and heard in all the Works of God in his Word which he bare in his Mind in the smoothness of the Way in the remembrance of the Father he left in the assurance he had of his Prayers and such like things that he never thought himself at home till now that he had no home at all but was seeking one He could do nothing but compose Praises to God nothing but laud the Name of Jesus that had brought him into so happy a condition and by his good will he would have made this the business of all the day to sing a certain Ditty the beginning and the end of which I remember was nothing but this Bless the Lord O my Soul Whether it was the novelty of those Objects that presented themselves or the Greatness and Beauty of them or the good Society he met withall or an immediate touch from that Spirit which the Good man pray'd might be his Companion or all these or any other thing that made him so merry I had not leisure to examine but he was never known in all his life to have expressed so much contentment in any condition as in this Pilgrimage wherein he was ingaged to Jerusalem Yet he had not passed many weeks in these rapturous joys for they were little less before he found them so much abated that he thought himself less happy then he imagined The wayes were grown a little more rugged the Heaven began to be overcast and the Country through which he went was more barren and yielded not those Fruits which he had before tasted which together with other things cast him into a damp and procured to his soul more sadness then he used to be acquainted withall At the first indeed he was only moved to some wonderment to find such an alteration and thought that in half a dayes travel or such a space he should recover more pleasant paths But when he found contrary to his expectation that they still continued uneasie and likewise chanced to see some of his old Companions who called to him at some distance and perswaded him to go back again he was much affrighted and began to feel wild imaginations roving about his Soul and strange desires of quitting a course which was like to prove so ungrateful to that part of him which was most concerned in the things of this World For it was represented to his thoughts that the ensuing part of the rode was very dangerous beset with Theeves and many Difficulties tedious and of a strange length and besides that he might be in a wrong way it was very doubtful whether there was such a place or no as he fancied seeing no body had been there From all which and many other considerations they told him it was most adviseable if he consulted his own peace to return with them to his former habitation and his ancient neighbours who were all very sorry to hear that he had quit his present possessions in they knew not what hopes of getting better at a place which neither he nor any of his friends had seen But though this Push by the unexpectedness of it made him reel and stagger a little yet he soon recollected himself and calling to mind what he had been taught and repeating that charm as I may call it which he alwayes had about him I am nought I have nought c. he found himself as firm in his resolution as if he had not been at all assaulted Shall I forsake my Lord said he to himself so soon as ever I have begun his service Is it handsome for me to recoil meerly from the noise and report of dangers What a Coward shall I for ever hold my self if I run away before my enemies be in view upon a rumour of their strength and power I will march up towards them and at least look them in the face I will not trust this Fame which all the world hath branded for a Lyar Since common observation also tells us that the Lyon is not so terrible as he is painted Much more he spake to this effect which moved him to a kind of indignation against himself that he should so much as shrink back thus early before sufficient tryal and upon such sleight information And yet it was not at all to his disadvantage that he had felt this shock but it rather had many happy effects upon him like a fit or two of an Ague which is thought rather wholesome then to deserve the name of a Disease For as it gave him more understanding in the nature of
be more observant of your words hereafter for if I should not preserve them I see I am lost my self and that in their safety is my security Here the good Father perceiving he had given him some satisfaction could not but interrupt his speech and being filled with pitty and love and joy and wonderment altogether burst out into these expressions of them Now blessed be Jesus who hath brought me to you so opportunely O magnifie the Lord with me and let us exalt his name together We can never admire thee enough O sweet Jesus who art wont so seasonably to interpose thy power to save us when we have lost our selves Whither should we stray didst not thou so gratiously seek us What would become of us didst not thou so lovingly hold us in thy hand and resolve that none shall pluck us from thee We are astonisht at the vastness of thy wisdom Thy Goodness is unfathomable else we should have sunk long before this beyond the depth of it When we wander thou followest us and callest us back When we fall thou runnest to us and liftest us up When we are discouraged thou art the strength of our fainting spirits and speakest comfortably to our hearts Tea by the rareness of thy heavenly arts thou turnest our deepest sorrows into the greatest occasions of excessive joyes And there where we thought to find nothing but trouble and heaviness thou makest gladness and light to spring up unto us O how unsearchable are thy wayes who meetest us when we are out of the Way O how unmeasurable is thy Mercy which cureth us by that which we love even when we are doing that which thou dost not love We cannot but present thee with the best of our acknowledgements who are so happily together here not by our own but thy Providence We cannot do less then bind our selves together to thine Altar and offer all we have as a sacrifice of Praise unto thee And have us still O Lord in thy care Let thy good Spirit alway go along with us as our Guide And let thy good Angels never fail to be our Guardians Uphold our goings in thy paths and suffer not our feet any more to slide Hold thou us up and we shall be safe and we will have respect continually unto thy Statutes So will we bless thy name at all times thy praise shall be continually in our mouths In the Courts of thine House will we praise thee yea in the midst of thee O Jerusalem will we sing eternal praises Hallelujah I thank you most heartily said the Pilgrim when the other had ended this acknowledgment for these good thoughts you have breathed into me I feel my self as if a new Soul did informe me and my Spirit doth not so much return as another more divine seems to enter into me and invigorate all my faculties with an higher degree of strength and courage Sure if you would be alwayes with me I should never miscarry no nor grow dull and lumpish any more May I not beg that favour of you to take me under your wings Is it too great an happiness for me to ask that you would become so much my Friend as to take a particular care of me and let me travel in your company I can never expect so much security and so much comfort both together as under your conduct and therefore if I shall not be too great a burden carry me along I beseech you with you and let me never be left as I was alone without your society You were pleased to compare me to another Hercules because of some resolution which you discerned in me But let me tell you Sir that together with the joy you have made to return I have recovered also the memory of so much of the small learning of my younger dayes as to know that while Hercules was cutting off the heads of Hydra there was one Iolaus ready at hand to apply fire to them to hinder their springing up again It seems this great person was not strong enough without one to back him He durst not travel through the World unless he took a companion with him I never heard of any Worthy that had not some Genius or other to assist him and the society also of some friend to second his undertakings Do not expect then from me that I should be more then a Miracle Do not blame me that I cannot be so hardy as to travel any further alone toward Jerusalem Though I should call for all the supports and aids that my courage can give me yet I must be beholden to the help of some associate in my labours And O that it might be my lot to fall into your company or custody rather for I shall acknowledge you for a kind of Tutelar Angel a good familiar spirit and receive you as the richest present that Heaven could have made me I do not beg you see a friendship of you that shall serve only to pass away the time and deceive the tediousness of being alone but such an one as with the pleasure will bring me in an inestimable gain Do not deny me therefore either that pleasure which I hope will not displease your self or that profit which will do you no hurt Make me rich since you will not thereby become the poorer Impart an happiness to me which will not abate any thing of your own repose And truly Sir I do not know whether Heaven have not designed you for that end and given you a frame of nature so fit for conjunction with mine that both together will make one perfect man You see how earnest and violent I am and I am very sensible of your great sobriety and discretion Now I have somewhere read that a friendship between two persons thus disposed is like the Marriage of Iron and Steel where the one gives toughness and the other edge Let us joyn then our hands and our hearts together if you do not think me unworthy of such an honour Let this be our Wedding-day and from henceforth take me for your inseparable Companion To this unexpected suit the good Father made a reply to this effect Though it be a great thing which you require yet I would have you think that Love esteems it a very small matter to give I have called you often My Friend already and since you will have it more than a term of civility or common affection I ought not to be less forward than your self to advance it unto a more noble signification I have no cause at all to suspect you of the vanity of Courtship and Complement and therefore I will be so presumptuous as to believe you have conceived for me an affection so high as that you express provided you will also acknowledge the great passion which I have for your service It seems so strong an obligation upon me for a person of your desert to think of giving me his heart that I cannot think it Justice to keep mine any
deceive and cheat you with its dissimulations while you are in this state endeavouring to slubber over negligence under the pretext of I cannot do any more It is true we are not tyed to that which we cannot do but yet the flesh will sometimes juggle and complain of impotence when there is nothing hinders us but only Sloth Here you must look upon your self with a great many eyes you must become your own spy and narrowly watch the most secret motions of your heart For this Eve that is within us is so desirous to be cherished and pleased to be walking up and down the Garden and to be eating of the forbidden fruit that she wants not a thousand inventions to make us believe that her demands do not extend to superfluities but only to things necessary for us that she doth not desire ease and pleasure so much as rest from hard labours and she is in a mighty chafe if we will not give a perfect credit to her She perswades us sometime that we are much weaker than in truth we can affirm our selves to be She tells us that we cannot with safety think of any thing else but her and is not willing to let us make a tryal She bids us attend only to her quiet and satisfaction and not suffer the mind to disturb her repose at all And the more we humour and gratifie her desires the more still she bemoans her self to move our pitty towards her It concerns us therefore to be careful in observing what good it is that we can then perform without a manifest prejudice to our health and to make provision that it be not neglected by means of the heavy complaints of laziness and sloth Look up unto Jesus as often as you can Tell him in the secrets of your soul that you heartily love him Open your very bosome to him and shew how desirous you are to be more conform'd unto him by this affliction Pray him to come and ransack your heart and to throw out of doors whatsoever is offensive to him Let him know that you had rather not only be sick but dye a thousand times than not be friends with him And so entreat him to take pitty upon you Promise him to do whatsoever he would have you And exhort all others of your acquaintance that they would love and serve him more than you can do And this let me add for your comfort that sometimes he bestows more favours upon sick men in their Beds who can pray in no other manner but by the humiliations and prostrate submissions of their Wills to him than he doth upon some others who spend many hours on their bended knees in that holy exercise And do not despair I beseech you of receiving this mercy though you think your self never so unworthy of it since it costs him no more but only his Will to bestow it With these and such like Discourses the Good man entertained his friend in this sickness for many dayes which put the time into a speedier pace than otherwise it would have pass'd away Though he kept his Bed for some weeks yet the hours did not seem at all tedious to him but rather fled away as fast as he used before to do himself So happy a thing it is to have a partner in our troubles and the assistance of another shoulder beside our own to bear our griefs Good Discourses are like the breath of Heaven which when the burdned Vessel feels she cuts her way through all the waves and never complains of the greatness of her burden Nay they proved to him like the cool Air which refreshes the gasping Traveller in a hot day making his very body feel its leggs the sooner by the delicate touches which they gave unto his Spirit All the Art of his Doctors and an whole Apothecaries shop had not been able to restore his consumed flesh so easily and in such a little space of time as these Soveraign Cordials which distilled from the Good mans lips and were drawn he felt from the very bottome of his heart I have wondred sometimes when I considered the suddenness of his recovery for though he lay some weeks in a feeble condition it was because he did not at first receive these Medicines which so soon as he tasted he became another man and seemed to have a New Essence infused into him It is no new piece of Philosophy but an Axiome older than Hippocrates and which calls Solomon that great Physician its Father Heaviness in the heart of man maketh it stoop Pro. 12.25 but a good word maketh it glad And in another place of his Aphorisms we read that A merry heart doth good to a Medicine Pro. 17.22 but a broken spirit dryeth the bones CAP. XXIX Of the trouble which the Pilgrim was in about some business which had layn neglected during his sickness Of his desires after a contemplative Life Of Solitude The Profit of it especially at the beginning of our Christian course And how they that enjoy it do not find all the satisfaction which they expected in it BEing able therefore by the good inspirations of his friend whose mouth he acknowledged was a Well of Life to go about the house Pro. 10.11 He spent as much time as he was able in praising God instructing the servants and doing good to all his neighbours not neglecting any duty which God or man required of him But so it was that having been long sick there were some necessary businesses in which both he and his friend were concerned that had layn as long as himself without any regard These called very importunately upon him for his attendance and being very weighty and requiring quick dispatch would not cease to sollicite more of his thoughts than he was willing to allow them It will be of no use to tell you what they were but it may be sufficient to let you know that they were of such moment that without a manifest wrong both to himself and others he could by no means put them off nor make them rest contented with a cold and slow management of them And yet from hence his mind took occasion to spring a new doubt which he had not power to remove himself till he had made it known to his Friend though his affairs were not so urgent but that they left him a little leisure to consider of that which might have given him some satisfaction For whensoever a crowd of little occasions throng'd in upon him and would not be denyed his company then he began to frown upon himself because he did not find so much vacancy as his heart desired for private Prayer and Recollection To this the Father said as soon as he had eased himself of the scruple by telling of it that for his part he was very glad to find he had such a vehement love for retired thoughts and secret converse with God and that he sighed so much after it as far more delightful to
terrible nothings wherewith they see the wayes of Piety are beset The Reproaches which tear our names in pieces like a Lyon the bitter words which mens tongues shoot like arrows in our faces nay that great Bear Poverty which turns so many out of the way What are they If you view them and all their fellows well you will find they are as innocent nay as profitable too as those peaceable creatures which you here behold They are but like those Bows which are made of Bayes and can do no hurt Or like those Guns which you see wrought in Rosemary and Sweet-Brier and such like things which shoot flowers and dart forth Musk Or like those Beasts of Hysop and Thyme which are very Medicinal to those who know how to use them From hence he fell into a very grave advice which he said could not be too often repeated that he should not fail to give God thanks for those things which went cross unto him as much as he was wont to do for those which were most conformable to his desires He shew'd him how we stand indebted to Divine Providence not only for our Food but for our Physick also He made him understand how the contempt we meet with from men doth purge out Pride how Poverty cures our Luxury and wanton desires and how nothing is so powerful as Sickness to deliver us from the great evil of Ingratitude it being seldom known that men consider the vast benefits of health till they be without it In short he convinced him plainly that a great fulness of all things is very apt to choak the sense of God That when men are in constant prosperity as they want not abilities and instruments to sin so they want the strong restraints of fear of modesty and of good counsel to keep them from it And though said he if they wanted the last only their condition would be sad enough yet it is seldom known that they have the benefit of it because there is either none to give it or they are not apt to receive it But adversity will flatter no man it self supplying the place of an hundred Monitors and being the only sober and trusty Counsellor which great men have in their retinue And if there were no other advantage that it brings we should have great reason to thank God that he would not let us dye without the company of a faithful friend CAP. XXX How the Pilgrim grew very dull and lazy By what means he was quickned to greater diligence How the Guide awakened some sluggish Pilgrims which they met withall moving them to a great care of their Souls and to prove their Sincerity in Religion by their being zealous of good works BUt as I may not be permitted to relate all the delightful discourse of this nature which passed between them in their travels so you must not think that our Pilgrim had now lest all trouble behind him never to overtake him more For having thus spent his time for some weeks he felt himself exceeding dull and through some indisposition the cause of which he could not discover he began to be so lazy listless to any good action which had formerly been his delight that it indangered to overwhelm him in a new affliction of mind But yet it pleased God so to order it that this cloud was cast about him without any showre and he cured himself of this restiffness of spirit by some common observations which he made as he went along For they had not travelled far before they found a great number of men digging in a Mine who were all bath'd in their own Sweat and in stead of the fresh air to cool them were in perpetual danger of Suffocation by infernal vapours And being askt For what they took such excessive pains they gave them to understand that the best of their wages was very small and that some were such slaves as laboured meerly for coarse food not so much as a grain of all the Silver Oar which they raked out of the earths bowels coming into their possession At the sight of which he was strangely awakned and falling into a mighty passion began to reproach himself to accuse his great folly and to condemn his sloth who was less concerned for a Soul then these men for a belly-full of meat or a few single-pennies What do we O my Soul said the good Pilgrim Why do we ly still and suffer our selves to perish Are there any pains like those to which these wretches are condemn'd Or are there any treasures that can equal those which we are seeking after O how disproportionable are their labours unto their gains And how much will our gains exceed the greatest of our pains Blush O my Soul at thy own neglects and be astonished either at their diligence or thy own sloth Or rather let the strageness of the one make thee marvel at the other And for very shame let it rouze thee to do that for thy self which they do for their bodies or to be but at half the labour to attain eternal Treasures which they take not for perishing Riches but for a morsel of meat which only prepares them to renew their labours In such Meditations as these he spent some time to the no small quickening of his Soul in well doing Which were also happily revived the next day by the fight of some ships which from a mountain that they passed over he espied riding on the Sea whose waves did then so work and boil that the face of it was all yesty and it foam'd with rage at the winds which spent their fury upon it From hence he took occasion to consider the hazzard which they run who trusted themselves to that treacherous Element how they were carryed sometimes to unseen regions of which they had no knowledge but by the uncertain reports of others How uncertain their Returns were and how the poor Marriners had no interest at all in the goods which they ventured their lives to bring home to other Owners This inspired his Soul and swell'd it with new resolutions more then a strong gale of wind doth the sails of a ship when she runs before it He despised all dangers He defied the lazy disposition wherein he lately found himself He applauded the reasonableness of Christian Piety which was carried by Faith to unknown Countries And he vowed never to quit the design wherein he was embarqued Especially since he had so good assurance at last to come to an happy Port. From whence he also knew that he should never lose any more to be thus tossed in doubts and fears to be exposed to the storms of an angry World and which was most troublesome to conflict with the great uncertainties of his own temper whereby he was sometimes lifted up as high as Heaven and then again depressed as low as Hell And truly after this I heard that he continued very fervent in Spirit serving the Lord. In so much that meeting a good
thy self a portion of Divinity Why then art thou so Ignorant of thy Nobility why dost thou forget so shamefully from whence thou art derived Is it fit for thee to seek thy happiness in meat and drink in money and lands in honour and applause Why dost thou disparage thy soul so much as to go for thy Good any farther then thy self There is God and there thou must enjoy thy Good It is not any thing in the World thou art to mind so much as thy soul for in that is to be found the satisfaction of thy desires Why dost thou not remember then when thou catest who thou art that catest and whom thou feedest When thou usest any thing in the World who thou art that usest it And when thou dost any thing who it is that doth it Art thou altogether insensible of the excellence of the person whom thou feedest and who is here sent into the world to be trained up by thee O wretch that thou art how comes it about that thou art so ignorant of this that thou carryest God about with thee Or dost thou think that I speak of a God without thee A god of Gold or Silver to be born on thy shoulders Thou carryest him in thy self man and yet regardest not though thou dost pollute him with filthy thoughts and besmear him with sordid and nasty actions If there be a Statue a liveless Image of God before thine eyes a picture of him in stone thou darest not to do any undecent thing before it But God himself being present within seeing all things and hearing all things thou blushest not O thou hated of God to think and do most unworthily being altogether insensible of thy own Nature If one could suppose thee to be a Statue made by Phidias Minerva for instance or Jupiter wouldst thou not if we could also suppose thee to have any sense be very mindful of thy self and of the workman and do nothing either unbecoming his Art or thy own Excellence And now that thou art made even by Heaven it self now that thou art the Workmanship of God what is the reason that thou carest not after what manner thou behavest thy self Is not that Image which is made by man of Stone or Brass or of Gold and Ivory at the best And where it is set up first there it stands for ever without stirring one foot of it self from the place But who can tell me of what that Image of God is made which he fashioned with his own hands What the price of it is it self cannot understand And yet it stirs and moves it hath a spirit and can go whither it will it ranges about the world and cannot be limitted by all that it sees it hath a knowledge of good and evil a reason and judgment whereby to estimate things And therefore since thou art the Fabrick of such an Artist since thou art such an excellent piece why dost thou disgrace why dost chou undervalue thy self Why I say Seeing thou art not only formed by him but he hath given thee credit above all other creatures he hath deposited many rare gifts in thy hands and intrusted thee alone with a great deal of his wealth Wilt thou not be mindful of this neither but betray thy trust and abuse and embezzle his goods which he hath committed to thy charge If one should commit an Orphan a poor Fatherless and Motherless child to thy care wouldst thou be so negligent of him Bethink thy self then He hath committed to thee thy self He hath judged none so faithful none so fit to be trusted as thee Keep me this saith he just as it is See that this be preserved in safety and delivered back again unto me modest and bashful honest and just sober and temperate heavenly and sublime strong and couragious peaceful and undisturbed contented and well pleased in one word such as I made it What a piece of infidelity then what dishonesty and falseness is it that thou wilt not at all guard and secure it What will he say unto thee when he sees it so horribly abused as we now behold the souls of men What canst thou expect to be the reward of such treachery which of all other is the greatest But I should tire you I doubt if I should proceed to the end of this mans Lecture and I have repeated enough of it to make all your souls blush at that gross and supine negligence which makes them obnoxious to the lash of Heathens And if you would deal freely and clearly can you say that you never heard your Souls complain that they are thus slighted Did they never quarrel with you for your forgetfulness and contempt of them Are they not apt to murmur and repine that they can receive no higher satisfaction than the Brutes enjoy And do they not remember you that they are of an heavenly descent of the kindred of Angels made after the likeness of God himself O that you would but listen to them They will fill your ears I am sure with such sad lamentations as will make them tingle They will tell you it is unsufferable that they should be thus neglected and disregarded They will chide you for bestowing the care that is due to them upon other inconsiderable things They will reproach to you most bitterly this sleepiness and carnal security wherein I find you And can you be so cruel to them as after so many complaints to let them have no redress must they still suffer these wrongs and abuses which have been long offer'd to them Will you harden your hearts against the cryes and clamours of your own Souls If there be any spark of good nature remaining in them they are mollified to the piteous whinings and the mournful accents of a poor Dog that is accidentally shut up and almost starv'd in a lonesome place and begs for a release How can they refuse then to relent at their own doleful cryes and miserable complaints How can they hear without some tenderness their own sad sighs and deep groans after a better good then this World affords Will you not suffer them to be set at liberty after so long restraint Will you not permit them to go to their own kindred to return to their native Country when they are so desirous of it Will you deny them the freedom to think continually of their own proper happiness and contrive a sure way wherein to attain it Be not so unnatural do not so forget your selves but let your Souls have free leave to pursue their desires Yea give them opportunity every day to look abroad beyond the Body and this present World Or rather invite them to take the freedom to go to God as oft as they please And when you find them so unmindful of themselves as now they seemed to be when they are so heavy that they begin to fall asleep awake them and stir them up again rouze them from their slumber and bid them remember their Dignity
And was you not glad to behold so many kind neighbours assembled at that decent entertainment To me there is not a more agreeable spectacle than a company of select friends vacant of business and full of chearfulness met together at one table And I cannot imagine that a man who understands pleasure can wish any equal to this that he might make one in such an happy society You may think indeed that it is sufficient to our delight if we can meet our friends any where But I am of the mind that the pleasure is redoubled when they refresh their bodies and their minds both together I hate indeed your great Feasts where persons that never saw one the other before nor ever shall perhaps again are mixt together where there is much talk and little or no discourse But these Love-feasts me-thinks do call to my mind the dayes of Innocence and make me wish for nothing when I enjoy them but only such another pleasure Here we know that we pledge an hearty Love when a man presents his kindness to us Our mind is entertained with a greater variety than the body enjoyes The very taste of our meat is exalted by the inward delight which we feel in our hearts And whatsoever satisfaction we then receive we impart as much to those that give it The weak and languishing appetite is excited by the sight of friends and the pleasure of their discourse and the discourse flows more freely by the moderate satisfaction of our appetite Our dull spirits are raised by communication with our friends and that Communication grows more lively by the exaltation of our spirits Or if you please so to consider it Friends never talk with greater wit and more freedom than when they take an innocent repast together and their meat never doth their bodies more good than when this sweet conversation is the sauce for it Indeed said the Pilgrim I had forgot to reflect upon that part of those good mens satisfaction which I take to be so great and yet so harmless withall that I shall ever be a friend of such pleasures and permit my self to be merry in such worthy company They have convinced me that I ought not to affect a sad brow and an heavy countenance They have reconciled me to smiles and mirth And provided they will keep within such bounds I will never quarrel with my passions any more But there is none that I have a greater kindness for than that of Love the pleasures of which as it self acquaints me withall so the usefulness of it those excellent men have also taught me And not to part so soon from so good a meeting I must let you know that they understood afterward a great part of the discourse at that Table was about friendship and the happiness of him that had found a faithful friend Which when it was repeated to him by one that was there it was a great means of confirming this affection in our Pilgrim and making him rejoyce in his advantageous choice My memory is not so good as to carry away all that I heard was said on this argument but it begun with a commendation of that saying of the Son of Sirach A faithful friend is a strong defence and he that hath found such an one Ecclus. 6 14 15 16 hath found a Treasure Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend and his excellency is unvaluable A faithful friend is the Medicine of Life and they that fear the Lordshall find him He speaks like an Oracle said one of the company for a friend me-thinks is the only universal Medicine against all the evils of this present life And with your permission I will make a Comment upon this Aphorism or rather I will recite you the words of a good Author who though I believe he never saw him hath glossed me-thinks most excellently on the Text of that wise Hebrew To which when they had all most willingly accorded he thus proceeded There is no Remedy in the World saith he Dion Prus 1. equal to that of a friend for other Medicines are profitable to the sick and superfluous to those who are in health but He is necessary to both He supplyes the wants of Poverty He adds a brightness to our glory and he obscures and hides our Ignominy This one things lessens the difficulty of those that are troublesome to us and increases the happiness which all our injoyments bring us It makes evil things little and good things great By this sweet society our griefs are divided and all our joyes are doubled What calamity is not intolerable without a friend and what felicity is not ungrateful if we have none to share with us in it We suffer not so much when we have some to condole and suffer with us And we rejoyce the more when our felicity gives a pleasure not only to our selves but to others also If Solitude and want of company be so horrid so dreadful a thing it is not to be understood of the want of men but of the want of friends For it is a good Solitude not to dwell with those that do not love us and a man would chuse such an Hermitage where he might not be troubled with them who bear no benevolous affection to him But for my part I cannot think it to be an happiness which hath no friend to participate in its pleasures A man may more easily bear the hardest Calamity with his Friend than the greatest felicity alone So that I judge him the most miserable who in his calamity hath many to insult over him and in his felicity none to taste of his joyes and rejoyce with him Who is there more speedy in his succours than a Friend Whose praise is sweeter to us than his And by whom is Truth spoken with less grief than by such a mouth What Castle what Bulwark what Arms and Weapons are more potent to secure us than the custody of those who are well-affected to us For in truth so many Friends as a man hath gained with so many eyes doth he see and with so many ears doth he hear and with so many understandings doth he think of that which is profitable for him It is all one as if God had given to a man in one body a great many Souls every one of which do tenderly consult and care for his good Nay if our eyes and our tongue and our hands are much to be prized not only for the delights of Life but that we may live Friends are not only as profitable but more necessary than these For your eyes can scarce see those things which are under your feet but by our Friends we may see those things which are in the furthermost parts of the earth By our eares we hear only the things that are very near us but by our Friends we hear them which are most remote The tongue signifies only to those who are present and with the hands the strongest man can do
service of his friend He hath a great and generous mind but omits not the trifles which will please him He will neglect his own business to do his He will receive a kindness as well as do it and is not more willing to oblige than to be obliged He is thankful and acknowledging for the smallest offices of love and studies to repay it with the greatest He is possessed of all the Vertues but makes a show of none He loves decency without affectation generosity without pride courtesie without ceremony and strictness without severity His morality is void of all rudeness his seriousness gives no disgust his silence is without sullenness and his humility without baseness and meanness of spirit He hath a World of good qualities and modesty is Superior to them all For he is shamefac'd without ignorance and blushes because you see he knows so much He delights not to praise that in others wherein he excells himself Nor is he sparing there of his commendations where his own defects will leave him no title to the application He can hide any thing better then his love He can do any thing better then deny your requests He can endure any thing with more ease then to be separated from your Society When you are with him you are still alone When you advise with him it is with your self He hath all things in common with you but chiefly adversity He and his friend have but one will though they may have different understandings And indeed this one quality is it which I like in a friend above all the rest viz. A sweet and innocent compliance which is the cement of love and the secret charm of Society This rare disposition makes him to please us without flattery and to tye himself to us without the loss of liberty If accords to our desires without opposing reason gives way to our weakness without increasing and cherishing of it accommodates it self to our humour under the generous profession of freedom serves us in all things it can without being captivated to any There is nothing baser indeed then compliance when it is separated from other Vertues Nothing more offensive to those on whom it is bestowed if they have any noble resentments in them then when it is so servile as to subject the understanding and enthrall the reason to their desires But being to attend upon those other good qualities which I have required in my friend and serving alwayes with a liberty of mind as there is nothing less offends any body else so nothing more sweetens a mans own disposition or more delights and gratifies that of his friends It bends it self to profit others and not only to please It studies to advantage them with the greatest civility It subdues their passions with the greatest quietness It reduces them to themselves without violence It stoops unto them that it may lift them up It condescends that they may be recovered It fashions it self to what they are that they may be what they ought It yields to their anger that it may disarm them of it It grants their desires that it may take them away It makes a man agree to others not that they may comply with him again but comply with reason In short therefore he must be a vertuous person we all grant whom we chuse for our friend For he is not capable to be a friend to us who is not a friend to himself He can never accord well with another who feels an intestine war continually in his own breast But yet all vertuous persons do not so resemble each the other as to joyn together in that strict Vnion which bears the name of Friendship And therefore he is fit to be received into this relation who besides the qualities common to all good men doth Symbolize with us in his humors and inclinations When you meet with such a man as answers this description make much of him and place a great confidence in him To distrust him is the highest sin you can commit against him To be suspicious of the truth of what he saith is the most notorious breach of the bond of your friendship And as soon as ever you begin to doubt it is certain you begin less to love To this effect was the discourse of him who took upon him to give the description of a worthy friend which was highly applauded by the whole Table and served for an excellent close of their feast And truly the repetition of it made a new feast for our Pilgrim who began upon this occasion to reflect on his own happiness who had met with a friend that answered in all points this great Character to the very life O Sir said he to the Father what a loss am I at for words to express my felicity who have found the best of men and the best of friends How gladly would they have admitted you into that loving Society from which we lately parted They would have ravished you from me and staid you there for ever if they had known your worth They would have thought it too much that I should enclose so great a good which is capable to serve a little World For besides the rest of those vertuous qualities which they remembred you are the most compassionate of all men living You cannot be merry I see if I be sad The least grief which I suffer penetrates to the bottom of your heart And if I mistake not I touch upon a truth of the greatest remark to distinguish a sleight from a substantial friend For I have heard wiser men then my self note that the World hath no great number of those people who are deeply wounded with the sense of the misery that befalls their friends or whose resentments of sorrow are of any long durance though they be never so passionately moved with the first sight or report of them Compassionate grief they observe is wont soon to slide away and make room for the entrance of any pleasure Most men can divert themselves delightfully if occasion serve though their friends sufferings be never so sad They have not made their concernments so much their own as that they should feel pain as long as their friends But yet I find you to be one of that little number who are infinitely tender and throughly touched with all the infirmities of those that they love How often have you charged your self with my cares and disquiets How many thorns have you drawn out of my mind How many expedients have you devised to succour and support me under all my burdens You have often tempered the heat of my passions You have sweetned the sharpness of my spirit You have healed my wounds when you could not prevent the blow You have brought me cordials when I was capable of no consolations but those which your company administred to me You have devided with me the labours which I am to undergo And taken a part of that duty upon you which I am to
or rather we need not ask at all for he will but present himself before us and force us to love and rejoyce without any measure And seeing it is a place of such full satisfaction you will not question its tranquillity and repose especially since it is as you heard before you came hither the very Vision of Peace The life which they lead there is so full of content that they are not disturbed by any passion nor disquieted by the violence and disorder of any unruly affection A life it is void of all sadness free from all grief quit of all care and rid of all anxiety of mind Where there is no adversary to assault no forbidden fruit to tempt no impetuous desire of the flesh to molest them and no fear neither that ever they shall be haunted with these enemies of their peace and contentment O how happy should we find our selves if we were but come to the top of that high Mountain which will seem the more clear and quiet because so many clouds have here so often overcast us and so many sudden blasts have ruffled and discomposed us There we shall not accuse one another of any injuries because we shall not do the least nor be troubled to pursue our right because we shall not be wronged There we shall live without jealousies and converse as I have told you without suspition and pass Eternity without any difference of opinion or debates and controversies in Religion which now are no small disease and bring no little burden upon our hearts Nay the very actions of Piety many of them will be of a different kind from what they now are unattended with those passions to which we are now moved which make us suffer evil while we do good Here as the forenamed person well observed to me we do good works when we deal our bread to the hungry and receive the distressed stranger and clothe the naked which is a kind of affliction and tribulation which we indure by our sympathy with them to whom we pay our Charity For we find miserable persons on whom to exercise our Mercy and the misery which we see they lye under makes us compassionate that is to suffer with them How much better then shall we be when we shall find no hungry mouth to feed no stranger to entertain no naked body to cast our garments over no sick men to attend no prisoner to visit no tormented person to commiserate no differences to compose no contenders to reconcile but our Love shall be of another sort all joy all pleasure in the good and in the perfect happiness of every one that we behold And if there were nothing else there to entertain us but the comforts of that friendship I told you of and the delights we shall interchange by a constant amity and good will to one another it were sufficient to recommend this life to any wise mans affection and make him willing to forsake this world to go to a place of such endless love and kindness And doth there now need any demonstration that this is a place of great safety and security environ'd on all sides with the power of God against the attempts of all the enemies of our happiness No sure for then we should be in danger of some disturbance If we should conceive indeed any forces could be gathered against it and that it were not impregnable in it self we might easily imagine that so many troops of illustrious friends so many bands of holy Lovers as here inhabit would perform strange things against the most puissant Invaders There is nothing I told you so strong as Love by the force of which in one single person incredible things have been atchieved and therefore much greater would the united power of it appear in so many hosts of noble spirits all inspired with the highest degree of this affection who would do their utmost for the service and safety of one another But yet we need not have recourse to such fancies as these for the assurance of our peace in that blessed place It is impossible that any thing should wound the quiet of such happy souls or make the least breach in any of their enjoyments There cannot be so much interruption given to them as the scratch of a pin among us amounts unto because they are out of the reach of the evil one and placed in such still and calm Regions where nothing breathes but only that love and dear affection for ever Upon which account also it is that there can be no intermission of their injoyments no more than there will be interruption and disturbance It being a full and perfect happiness there will no time pass wherein they will not be happy The dayes there have no nights The life hath no sleep which is but the Image of death There will not be so much diversion there from the proper exercises of that life as meat and drink now creates which are the present support of our infirm bodies Much less will there be any disease or decay of strength or the incumbrance of any of those imployments which ingage so great a part of our time and thoughts Our Love therefore shall never languish or stand in need of any refreshment our charity shall not cool and abate its heat our joy shall not exhaust our spirits and leave us dull by the excess of it as here it sometimes doth But as I said before we shall rather gather strength and grow more apt to receive an increase of joy by the greatness and force of that which we have already received I need but just remember you it being a thing you have heard no doubt an hundred times that this life of theirs is without any death An eternal life as the Holy Books call it where we shall not have so much sadness as the thoughts of its having an end would beget But we shall rejoyce first that we have so much and next of all that we shall never have less and then that we shall still injoy more and above all that what we do enjoy shall live as long as God who is the cause of it that is for ever I believe you are not weary of so delightful a discourse yet lest I should keep you too long from the rest of my Instructions I shall shorten it as much as I can and shut up this description with a meditation of that devoute person who as I told you long ago undertook the Guidance of men to Jerusalem How different saith he is the life of those in that place from that of ours here Here there is falshood there is truth Here is perturbation there is a faithful possession Here is bitterness and hatred there is dilection and eternal love Here is dangerous elation of mind there is secure exultation of spirit Here we are in doubt whether they that love us may not change their thoughts there is perpetual friendship and no possibility of being enemies Here
whatsoever is good we are afraid may perish there whatsoever we receive will be preserved by him that gave it Here there is death and there is nothing but life Here we enjoy what the eye and the ear and our thoughts present unto us but there we shall see what the eye hath not seen and hear what the ear hath never heard and understand what the heart cannot now comprehend And seeing hearing and knowing after that manner we shall rejoyce with joy unspeakable For what kind of joy must that be when thou seest thy self in the company of Angels a partner in the Kingdom of Heaven to raign with the King of the world desiring nothing to possess all things rich without covetousness charitable without mony triumphing without the fear of any barbarous Invaders and living this life without any death O sweet life the more I think of thee the more I love thee the more vehemently I desire thee the more I am pleased in the remembrance of thee I love to speak of thee I love to hear of thee I love to write of thee to confer of thee to read of thee that so I may refresh the pains and the sweat and the dangers of this tedious life by laying my weary head in the bosome of thy secure pleasures For this end I enter into the Garden of the Holy Scriptures I gather there the sweet flowers of Divine Sayings that which I gather I eat that which I eat I chew over again and that which I have tasted I lay up in mine heart that by such sweetness I may allay the bitterness and irksomeness of this miserable life O that my sins were done away O that laying aside the burden of this flesh I might enter into thy ease and quiet To receive the Crown of Life to be associated to the caelestial Singers to behold the face of Christ to see the uncircumscribed light and without fear of death to rejoyce without any end There is the goodly fellowship of the Prophets there are the glorious twelve Apostles there is an innumerable Army of Martyrs there is the holy Company of Pious Confessors there are the Divine Lovers of Solitude and Retirement there are the holy Women that have overcome the infirmities of their sex and the powers of the world there are the brave Youths and Virgins whose holy manners transcended their years there are the Sheep and the Lambs that have escaped the danger of glutting themselves with these earthly pleasures there perfect Charity reigns because God is there All in All. There they see without fear and love without measure and praise without ceasing There loving they praise and praising they love and it is their work to do so alwaies without any interruption But alas Who can tell what a Great Good God is as he proceeds in another place Who can declare how full he is or relate the happiness that he will give us We cannot tell it and yet we cannot hold our peace It is more than can be uttered and yet we cannot chuse but talk of it And if we cannot tell it because of our ignorance and yet cannot hold our tongues because of our joy for what we know in what condition are we which will neither let us speak nor yet be silent What shall we do with our selves if we can neither tell what it is nor yet cease to speak of it I le tell you in two or three words Let us rejoyce Let us praise God Let us keep a perpetual Jubilee here in our hearts thanking him very much that we know so much of this happiness and thanking him more that it is so great that we cannot know it all Here if the Guide had not made a little stop I think the Pilgrim had interrupted him for he had kept his silence thus long with great difficulty and now cryed out with a more than ordinary vehemence Blessed be God that he hath brought me to this place This is none other than the suburbs of Jerusalem this is the Gate of Heaven Happy was the day which let me see your face I heard something of Jerusalem before by the hearing of the ear but now mine eyes see it and I am all inamoured of it You have shown me a sight so glorious that it is beyond our thoughts and beyond our desires I was going to say beyond our Faith and beyond our hope Sure you are one of the Angels of God sent from Jerusalem to fetch me thither You had inflamed me with an high Degree of Love before but now you have put me in a fiery Chariot and methinks I am not upon the earth but ascending up to those heavenly Regions Nay you have transported me to the City of God already Methinks I see the Lord of Glory I behold the Thrones that are erected for all the Noble Travellers to that Holy Land I fancy my self in the dear embraces of those Glorious Lovers And I am apt to embrace you as one of the Seraphims that have fired my soul with the same Love I see the blessed Jesus preparing himself for his appearance and begin to think that I am triumphing with him Or if I am but in a dream of these things yet it is so pleasant that I could wish it might last for ever and that nothing might awake me out of such a delightful slumber Not so said his Guide interrupting his speech I love you better than to let you enjoy such a wish and I would rouze you up to demonstrate their reality if I thought you took these things for charming dreams and painted shadows You shall not make such a mean supposal nor content your self with such aiery pleasures for I will make you know at once both that there is such a blessed place as I have described and discover to you more perfectly the way unto it There is another dear name inclosed in those words which I told you must alwaies be sealed upon your heart and that is the Holy JUSUS On whom I do not intend that you should look only as he sits on his Throne of Glory at Jerusalem but as he walked up and down the world and was a Pilgrim like your self travelling to that place He published the Glory of it He brought life and immortality to light He set open the Gates of Jerusalem to all faithful Travellers He run the Race himself wherein you are to follow and for the joy that was set before him when he should come thither he was not ashamed of a poorer habit than the meanest Pilgrim wears If you take a view therefore of his life and trace his holy steps you cannot miss the Rode which I would have you take nor fail to be convinced that it can carry you to no other place but the City of God For Do you not remember that this person hath stiled himself the WAY There is nothing so necessary than in all that sentence as this one word Jesus to have alwaies in your mind whom
good design through rashness and hast It keeps us from tripping up our own heels by running too fast It keeps us from being tired while it keeps us from taking too long though continued Journeys It keeps us alwayes at our work by keeping us from over-working our selves It makes Religion easie and pleasant by making it free and unconstrain'd It brings Religion so much into our love that it will never fall into our hatred It preserves us from destroying the body while we are labouring to save the soul It feeds the soul without any gluttony and saves it from nauseating spiritual things by providing that it take no surfeit of them It conducts our affairs with more temper and less rumour with more effects and less show It makes us zealous without rashness and excites us to do good to our selves without prejudicing the good of others It quenches the furious heat which affrights the wicked and discourages the weak and upbraids the soberness of those who are strong It shews that it is possible at once to be Religious and yet Wise It adorns the Gospel and is a great grace and ornament to him that wears it It commends Piety to the World and doth not impair it in our selves It gives a lustre to all the Vertues and they borrow their beauty from it And in one word it is at least their Handmaid which must ever wait upon them or else they will dishonour themselves Our young Pilgrim you discern by this time was a man of so much wit that he could not but see the design of this story and think that it had an aim at himself And being very much cooled and refreshed by this charitable breath which the Father had spent upon him he instantly apprehended that he had contrived to give him a divertisement and an instruction both together For sometime he could do nothing else but commend this Vertue till at last he remembred there was some praise due to the Father who had given him now such an instance of it And having rendred him his thanks both for the lesson and the seasonableness of it he assured him that he would never travel without this Discretion about him No more you had need said his Companion for though I called her only the Handmaid of the Vertues yet in truth she seems to be a Mistress among them and to dispose them to their several duties For one Vertue you must know is in need of its neighbour and cannot live alone They must help one another continually or else they will be very lame and defective They must lend to each other a mutual support or else they will be in danger of falling to the ground Meekness must lend its hand to Zeal and Zeal must do as much for it again or else the one will be but Fire and the other will be but Phlegme Seriousness must be beholden to Chearfulness and chearfulness must call to be repayed by it or else we shall be either all earth or nothing but Air. Humility wants a little confidence an holy Faith must be joyned with some Fear an high Generosity and great courage is very imperfect without Modesty and a severe Justice must be acquainted with sweetness and complacence Or if the one should refuse the other this assistance it will feel such a want it self that it will be forced to beg that which it doth deny But what is it I beseech you that pairs and links them thus together and makes them do this mutual service unless it be the Discretion and Judgment which the Holy man recommended to you This superintends over all and issues forth her directions and orders to them which if they be not obeyed they do most hurt where we intended the greatest good and they run to the borders of Vice when we designed the highest degree of Vertue This makes a sweet mixture of Faith in God with fear of our selves of Godly Sorrow with Spiritual Joy of innocence with prudence of lowliness with greatness of mind of heavenly-mindedness with diligence in our Callings of delight in God with a pleasure in our friends and those who are good It teaches us to discourse and not be talkative to be silent but not melancholy to be content with what we have but not be idle to labour but not be impatient to bear a dear affection to our friends but not to their faults to reprove others and not incur a reproof our selves by undue severity towards them Enough said the Pilgrim I see such need of this Vertue that you may be confident I shall never be willing to be without its company But truly I think it must be your Discretion more than mine own that will be my security for I have been you see afflicted with such contrary passions that I am ready to wish that I had none at all There is not one of those that I have about me but it is sometimes such a trouble to me that I should think my self more happy if I were wholly deprived of them They are so strong and violent so boisterous and turbulent that if they do not overtop my reason yet I cannot overcome them without suffering a great tumult and disorder What should we do with things which it is so hard to rule Were it not better to discharge them all since there needs more discretion than I am Master of to keep them The Good man was a little troubled to hear him speak after this sort and askt him with a greater quickness than he was wont to use Would you then be well pleased if I should bring a Sythe and mow off your leggs Had you rather be carried than go upon your feet The poor man was amazed at this question and askt him what he meant My meaning said the Father is plain enough Your passions are nothing else but those motions of your soul whereby you go to that Good or run away from that Evil which your understanding presents to your heart You would be so far from being happy by being deprived of them that I maintain you could not be happy at all without them A Tree would be as happy as you if you had no desire nor love nor hope nor none of the rest of their company And therefore you may as well desire to have no feet or to have a Dead-Palsie smite your loyns and disable you to move as wish to have no passions or to have them so benummed and stupified that you shall not feel them We must not pluck out our eyes for fear they be abused with unworthy spectacles nor stand stock still for fear of falling nor alwayes stay at home because the weather may prove rainy Nay When did you see any excellent Vertue which was not accompanied with a plentiful portion of these Or When was there any love or courage or any such like thing in a noble degree but you might discern it edged with no small passionateness of spirit And do not think that our passions
are of little use for it is plain they are good for more purposes than one There is at least a double end for which they serve They first incite and dispose the Soul to seek those things which are good and necessary for us and then secondly they fortifie and conserve us in this disposition and make us to persist in our inclinations to those things which are profitable for us the thoughts of which else might easily be blotted out They stir you up and bring you to that good which objects it self to your mind and then they impress it there and cause it to stay with your Soul For you cannot but observe that those things which move you with any passion when you see or think of them do stick longest in your mind and those with which you are not affected are but little remembred All your business then is and in that you must bestow some pains to get better eyes to guide you in your goings and not to endeavour that you may not stir at all You must study I mean to understand the true difference between good and evil to be able to judge what is fit for you and what not what good can certainly be attained and what evil avoided and what is quite without the limits of our power and then how is it blameable if you be carried with a great passion to the one and from the other Do not think all things to be evil which the World calls by that name nor admire the goodness of any thing above its price nor follow that zealously which you are in doubt whether or no it can be attained and then your passions will be so far from being your Masters that in fear of that you will not refrain to use their Service And if you should chance to be surprised with a fancy of some evil or good before you can have liberty to discourse the true nature of it and your passions hereby become very strong and are raised to a greater height than you would have them there is no reason to be troubled for none can prevent these sudden assaults nor can they be quell'd without some scuffle within If you can conquer you have well acquitted your self And that will be attended with those triumphs which will more than recompence the trouble of those furious and rebellious commotions You will not think those things bad without which there could not be such a brave and noble thing as Victory is Be content then I beseech you to be of the race of Adam and do not affect some higher Original Go not about to destroy one half of your self by labouring to be free from all passion For they that undertake this as hath been well said by those before us instead of making a good Man do only raise a Statue In order to make a man wise and live in peace they turn him into a dead and insensible Image These kind of Images say they are more suitable for the ornaments of the Porch then for the uses of life And if we be not blind we may discern between hardness and softness a middle temperament which is called solidity and firmness The Pilgrim was so much pleased with these words that he could scarce forbear to hugg him when they were ended And his passions having found such a defendor to take their part were ready to serve themselves but too much of this friendly discourse in their behalf I love you infinitely said he clasping about his neck or to speak more moderately I love you above all earthly things There is no Musick can be so charming to me as your words They can both appease my raging humours and excite me out of my dull and phlegmatick inclinations You are my Intelligence my Tutelar Angel the good Genius of my soul without whom I think I should either have no Passions or Nothing else Go on I beseech you to oblige me and to make me if it be possible more in love with you Be not weary of the charge you have undertaken and do not despair neither but in your company I may learn more discretion to govern those passions which I see must not be rooted out When he had vented this passion of love as much as he pleased and was capable to attend to some new discourse the Father thought it not unseasonable to ask him if he did not begin already to repent of all those embraces which he had bestowed upon him Nay do not wonder pursued he at this demand for I do not intend to question the greatness of your love but by what I have observed I believe you may be afraid that it ought not to be so great I have long taken notice that you are so scrupulous as not to dare to trust your own soul nor rely upon the credit of your severest reason Though you think it is impossible but that there should be such motions as you feel and know your self to be of such a complexion that if you will love at all it must be with a passionateness and fervency of affection yet upon the next ebullition as I may call it in your soul you are ready to condemn your self and to quit those Maxims of reason which you took to be infallible I know my friend that there is in this a pardonable or rather commendable niceness of soul a delicacy and tenderness of conscience which would not in the least offend God but it must be confessed that there is something of weakness and unsetledness of mind in it also which dare not adhere to its own Conclusions We are not to let a sudden fancy shake that which is so well and rationally established Or rather we are to ponder those things so long and to settle our selves so strongly in our reasons which are the ballast of our souls that we shall never desert them upon the pretence of any pious fears lest we should displease God To suffer our selves to love any person that is amiable very much or put any such like case is it justifiable or is it not If not away with all these Passions and dig them up But if you will have them remain be not angry that they grow and blossome and bring forth fruit and produce it in abundance And a little the more to confirm your mind let me fay something to you of that tenderness of affection which I observe in you towards a vertuous friend that inclination which you have to be with him and especially of that pleasantness and mirth you are apt to yield unto in the company of those you love You think perhaps that this is too much and that you take too great a liberty of pleasing your self But I beseech you did you ever observe any great vertue in those cold creatures or rather in those morose and austere natures who judge it a crime to love their friends with any passion to feel a joy in their approach to talk pleasantly in their company and to use