was your enemie you were his but he never yours For hostilitie comes from an usurper and defence from a lawfull Prince You do well to justifie your self upon this attempt but there is not a man will believe your justifications Who sees not you hated his life whose burial you hinder Paulinus addeth that for conclusion he dealt with him as one excommunicate and seriously adviseth him to expiate the bloud he had shed by a sharp penance This liberty of our admirable Prelate amazed all the Councel and Maximus who never thought that a Priest in the heart of his State in the midst of his Legions in the presence of his Court could have the courage to tell him that which he would never endure to hear in his Cabinet commanded him speedily to depart from the Court All those who were friends of the holy man advised him to be watchfull upon the ambushes and treason of Maximus who found himself much galled but he full of confidence in God put himself on the way and wished Valentinian to treat no otherwise with Maximus but as with a covert enemy which did afterward appear most true But Justina the Empress thinking S. Ambrose had been over-violent sent upon a third Embassage Domnin one of her Counsellours who desirous to smooth the affairs with servile sweetness thrust them upon despair of remedie The fourteenth SECTION The persecution of S. Ambrose raised by the Empress Justina WE may well say there is some Furie which bewitcheth the spirits of men in these lamentable innovations of pretended Religions since we behold effects to arise which pass into humane passions not by an ordinary way Scarcely could Justina the Empress freely breath air being as she thought delivered from the sword of Maximus which hung over her head tyed to a silken threed when forthwith she despoiled her self furiously to persecute the authour of her liberty O God what a dangerous beast is the spirit of a woman when it is unfurnished of reason and armed with power It is able to create as many monsters in essence as fantasie can form in painting Momus desired the savage bull should have eyes over his horns and not borns over his eyes but Justina at that time had brazen horns to goar a Prelate having eyes neither above nor beneath to consider whom she struck Authority served as a Sergeant to her passion and the sword of Monarchs was employed to satisfie the desperate humours of a woman surprized with errour and inebriated with vengeance Saint Ambrose like a sun darted rays on her and she as the Atlantes who draw their bowe against this bright star the heart of the world shot back again arrows of obloquie As women well instructed and zealous in matter Herod lib. 4. Solem orientem execrantur of Religion are powerfull to advance the Christian cause so when they once have sucked in any pestilent doctrine they are caprichious to preserve their own chymeraes The mistresses of Solomon after they had caused their beauties to be adored made their idols to be worshipped so Justina when she had gained credit as the mother of the Emperour and Regent in his minority endeavoured to countenance the Arian Sect wherein she was passionate that the sword Sect of Ariant of division might pass through the sides of her own son into the heart of the Empire The Arians had in the Eastern parts been ill intreated under the Empire of Theodosius and many of them were fled to Milan under the conduct of a false Bishop a Scythian by Nation and named Auxentius as their head but who for the hatred the people of Milan bore to this name of Auxentius caused himself to be called Mercurinus He was a crafty and confident man who having insinuated himself into the opinion of the Empress failed not to procure by all possible means the advancement of his Sect and did among other things very impudently demand a Church in the Citie of Milan for the exercise of Arianism Justina who in her own hands held the soul of Justina an Arian demandeth a Church in Milan her son Valentinian as a soft piece of wax gave it such figure as best pleased her and being very cunning there was not any thing so unreasonable which she did not ever colour with some fair pretext to dazle the eyes of a child She declared unto him that the place she possessed near his persō wel deserved to have a Church in Milan wherein she might serve God according to the Religion which she had professed from her younger days and that it was the good of his State peacefully to entertain every one in the Religion he should chose since it was the proceeding of his father Valentinian which she by experience knew had well succeeded with him To this she added the blandishments of a mother which ever have much power over a young spirit so that the Emperour perswaded by this Syren sent to seek S. Ambrose and declared unto him that for the good of his State and peace of his people it was in agitation to accommodate his thrice-honoured mother and those of her Sect with a Church in Milan At this word S. Ambrose roared like a Lion which made it appear he never would yield to the execution of such requests The people of Milan who honoured their Prelate as the lively image of the worlds Saviour when they once perceived that Valentinian had suddenly called him and that some ill affair was in hand they left their houses and came thundering from all parts to the Palace whereat Justina was somewhat astonished fearing there was some plot in it and so instantly commanded the Captain of the Guard to go out and disperse the rude multitude which he did and presenting himself with the most resolute souldiers he found no armed hands to resist him but huge troups of people which stretched out their necks and cried aloud They would die for the defence of their faith and Pastour These out-cries proceeding as from men affrighted terrified the young Emperour and seeing the Captain of his Guards could use no other remedie he besought S. Ambrose to shew himself to the people to mollifie them and promise that for the business now treated which was to allow a Church to the Hereticks never had those conclusions been decreed nor would he ever permit them S. Ambrose appeared and as soon as he began to open his mouth the people were appeased as if they had been charmed with his words whereupon the Empress grew very jealous seeing with the arms of sanctity doctrine and eloquence he predominated over this multitude as the winds over the waves of the sea A while after to lessen the great reputation of S. Ambrose Strange conference pretended by the Empress she determined to oppose her Auxentius against him in a publick reputation and though she in her own conscience wel understood that he in knowledge was much inferiour to S. Ambrose notwithstanding she reputed him impudent
demonum prurientibus auribus nâ—tâ— are doctrines of devils grown up to please the itch of incredulous ears We must believe one Article and leave another believe the Trinity and doubt of the Sacrament Invocation of Saints Purgatory Images and Ceremonies of the Church as if it were not evident that whosoever divideth faith hath none at all It is not much to the purpose to dispute of Religion after the sweat of Confessours bloud of Martyrs and so many millions of miracles Never would belief be so sick were it not preceded by the death of virtue all will be unhappy for them who loose piety the root of happiness But what repose hath a Catholick who may dying say I trust to God for a gift which The notable assurance of a Catholick cannot proceed but from God I die in the faith of Constantine Theodosius Clodovaeus S. Lewis and so many millions of Saints I go where all the wisest and most entire part of mankind doth go I follow the authoritie of eighteen General Councels wherein all Ages assembled together the wisest men of the world I die in the belief of the Church which is professed throughout all the habitable world The living and the dead The stones and marbles of the Tombs of mine Ancestours speak for me The stars will fall from the Heavens before my faith can be shaken And therefore O Catholicks strike at Heaven That zeal ought to be had towards Religion gate by continual prayer ask of the Father of lights a lively Faith a most sincere zeal towards your Religion suffer not your judgement to change in the massie composition of body plunge it not in sensuality polish it for the great fruition of God entertain it with consideration of his beauty nourish it with antipasts of his glory It onely appertaineth to sensual souls black and distrustfull to suffer themselves to fall into pusillanimities and faintness which lessen the esteem we should have of our vocation towards Christianity It onely appertaineth to carnal spirits and who want faith in the house of faith to set the riches and affairs of the world above Religion But Hoc est sidem in domo fidei non habere Cyprian de mortalitate you O Great-men learn hereafter to value your selves not by these frail and perishable blessings which environ you by that skin which covers you by those false ornaments of life which disguise you by all those beauties which never are nearer ruin than when they most sparkle with lustre Learn to behold all humane things from the top of the Palace of Eternity and you shall see them like rotten pieces which possess a nothing of times infinitie Why do we here entertain our selves with earthly considerations as fire which absented from its sphere is fed with fat and coals Let us open our bosoms to these fair hopes wherewith the Religion we profess sweerly replenisheth our hearts We no longer are pilgrims Ephes 2. and vagabonds nor strangers of the Testaments but Citizens of Saints and the domesticks of God built on the foundation of Apostles and Prophets on the fundamental stone which is Jesus Christ Let us enter into this goodly train of Ages into this admirable fellowship of Patriarchs Martyrs and Virgins Let us hasten to the sources of light and never end but in infinitie The first EXAMPLE upon the first MAXIM Of the esteem one ought to make of his Faith and Religion The PERSIAN CONSTANCY IF the estimation of things eternal do not as yet Drawn out of Theodoret Cassiodorus Epiphanes Theod. l. 5. c. 38. Epiph. Scolasticus Cassiod histor tripart l. 10. c. 32. Baro. tom 5. anno 4201. alii sufficiently penetrate your heart reflect on that which so many valiant Champions have done to preserve a blessing which you presently possess by grace and which you often dis-esteem through ingratitude I will produce one example amongst a thousand able to invite the imitation of the most virtuous and admiration of all the world In the time when Theodosius the younger swayed the Eastern Empire the Persians who had been much gained by the industry of the Emperour Arcadius his father and afterward entertained by his infinite sweetness and courtesie lived in good correspondence of amity with the Christians so that many of our Religion adventured themselves in their Territory some to make a fortune in the Court others for pleasure many for commerce and the rest there to establish true piety Matters of Religion proceeded then very prosperously and the most eminent men of the Kingdom shut up their eyes against the Sun which this Nation adored to open them to the bright Aurora of Christianity But as there are some who never enjoy any thing so there are others who never have enough Some Indiscreet zeal Christians not contented with their progressions which were well worthy of praise thought they lost all out of the desire they had to leave nothing undone Which is the cause I much approve those Ancients Helinandus apud Vincent who placed the images of wisdom over the gates of great houses with this inscription Experience is my Vsns me genuit mother So the wisest and most experienced thought nothing was to be precipated that mean advancements accompanied with safety were more to be valued than great splendours which drew precipices and ruins after them On the contrary young and fiery spirits thrust all upon extremitie supposing their power extended to the measure of their passion Nothing is more dangerous in any affair than when indiscreet fervour takes the mask of zeal or that a feaver of Reason passeth for a virtue All his thoughts are deified his foot-steps sanctified and although nothing be done for God it is said all is for him Bishop Audas a man endowed with great and singular virtues but extreamly ardent and unable to adapt his zeal to the occasion of times needs would countenance the humour of the blind multitude and went Audes destroyeth a Pyraeum Commotions for matters of Religion Others Baranaves or Goronaves Judgement of Theodoret upon this action out in the midst of the day to destroy a Pyraeum which was a Temple wherein the Persians kept fire to adore it Men quickly enflamed in matters of Religion fail not to raise a great sedition which came to the notice of King Ildegerdes Audas is sent for to give an account of this act He defendeth himself with much courage and little success for the Christians benefit for the King turning his proper justification into crime condemns him upon pain of death to re-edifie the Temple he had demolished which he refusing to do was presently sacrificed to the fury of Pagans Theodoret blames him that he unseasonably ruined the Temple and convinceth him by the example of S. Paul who seeing in Athens many Altars dedicated to false God contented himself with refuting the error without making use of the hammer to destroy it as well fore-seeing the time was
War they are the Gods of Loves and battels who pronounce Edicts assemble Councels levy Arms raise fortifications correct Kingdomes move the earth and in their own imagination change the face of the Vniverse Others are so diligent that they tire all the world with their unreasonable activities others use afflicting delayes and stir so little in all their designs that they seem to be in a perpetuall Solstice You see some extreamly open breasted who tell all their thoughts and as if their heart were a sieve it keeps nothing which it sends not instantly out by the lips Some proceed to a simplicity next door to sottishnesse which makes them do many extravagancies and when it hath a mixture of vanity men of mean condition imitate the actions of the great and silly Citizens wives say my Lord and Husband as well as Sarah or the greatest Ladies There are among these some subtile Coxcombs and fortunate fools who duily deceive themselves to their own gain They who have a Magistrall aspect are much more odious when with a countenance supercilious and Tone of a voyce affected they make speeches and usurp a personage which neither age quality nor merit alloweth them Dreamers and pensive are heavie in conversation and the squeamish who make their good aspects and fair countenances to be bought are insupportable but the apprehensive who deplore all things multiply what they can the miseries of the times and ceasing not to blame the actions of those who govern raise more mischiefs then remedies Good God! what an alteration do passions make in us but it is a gift from heaven that they may be changed and that by Grace and the practice of good instructions we can despoil our selves as well of an evil habit as of an old garment It is not expedient to be without passion nor is it possible to humane nature but it is much to obtein by discretion the moderation of a thing of which we by necessity have the experience These motions are given us with our bodies they are little spirits which are born and die with us some find them more mild others more wayward but every one hath his part howbeit there are very few who well understand their own portion Young people who shew no desire no affection no feeling are commonly abject spirits unlesse this come to them by grace or some notable constraint which in the end is the cause that of a young Angel an old Devil is often made we must not lose humanity saith Saint Augustine to acquire tranquility of mind nor think that that which is hard and boistrous is alwayes right or that one hath much health when he is come to the highest degree of stupidity All good spirits have delicate apprehensions and resemble the burning bush which had thorns among lights but they are none of the best who to follow nature abandon reason I assirm the Starres contribute much to our inclinations and Birth much more Education maketh another nature Bloud choler melancholy and flegme do in our passions what the elements do in our bodies Yea stature it self conduceth spirit goodnesse grace full garb and courage is very often in little bodies which have their heat moderated and well digested But if great bodies be destitute of it they are very lazy and if they have too much of it they are flaming fornaces full of violence which made S. Cyril say that greatnesse was given to Gyants for a punishment of their wickednesse But this must be understood without any prejudice to well-composed tall statures which have much Majesty There are humours so sticking that what care soever be used there is somewhat still remains behind which according to Job sleeps with us in our graves I have heard that a good Religious man having been bred with the milk of a Goat was very modest in publick by a great reflection he made on his actions But he ever had some hour in secret wherein he had his frisks and his capers Neverthelesse one cannot believe how much one gaineth upon his own nature when he will take the pain to manure it but for want of using industry therein one makes to himself a turbulent life a continuall torment a hasty death and his salvation to be doubtfull There are some who drive away one devil by another curing one passion with another and tyring them all that they may have none which was the cause that Theodosian said that they are as that possessed man who had a legion of devils in his body Some by the counsell of certain Directours would break them all at once as that souldier who thought to pull off a horses tail by strength of arm and not by drawing one hair after another Others expect remedy from time from affairs from change of life and condition and are rather cured by wearinesse then prudence Others continually flatter themselves and think they have got great victories when they have lessened their fits and left the root of the Feaver But they who will therein proceed seriously endeavour first of all to find out the enemy and as we all have one passion which predominateth in our heart above the rest and which most entertaineth our thoughts they principally assail that waging to rough battels by prayer fasting alms consideration reading of good books continuall examen of conscience flight from occasions diversion upon some better thing good company imitation of holy personages counsel of sage directours and by a thousand stratagems which the spirit of God furnisheth them with in the fruitfulnesse of their inventions After they have pulled down their chief adversary they easily prevail against the rest and continuing their progression in the list of generous souls they come in the end to a great tranquility This is it I intend to shew in this last volume wherein I treat of Passions in a new tone my purpose being rather to shew their remedies then their pictures I know Monsiour Coeseteau the eloquent Bishop of Marseilles who hath afforded immortall lights to French eloquence hath set forth the Table of humane passions I lay not my pencil upon the line of this Apelles I begin where he ends and if he be content to paint them I endeavour to cure them For this purpose having briefly explicated the nature proprieties effects and symptomes of every passion I set against it two remedies the first whereof is drawn from some divine perfection contrary to the disorder of the same Passion and because that is yet too sharp and dazling by the quicknesse of its lights I shew it sweetned and tempered in the virtues of Jesus Christ In the end of the Book I bring the examples of those who have overcome their Passions and of such as have sunk under their violence deriving profit out of all for the scope which I aim at There are certain Flies which live on Monks-hood a venemous herb and who make use of an antidote against its poyson So they who have tried the malice
to advance Virtue and to beat down vice without reflecting on any of the Personages of these times no more than if I wrote under the reign of Charlemaigne or S. Lewis I must intreat these spirits of Application which know not how to behold a work without making it subject to their own fancies imagining every letter to be the Ecchoes of their own thoughts that if they have any Commentary to produce they would rather make a gloss upon their own Dreams than on my Books We live not yet God be thanked in an Age so miserable that we dare not sacrifice to Truth without a disguise seeing it is the glory of our Grandees that we may openly make war against Vice as against an enemy and not of our party For to speak sincerely having laid my first Tome at the feet of the sacred person of our great King I considered what great and glistering lights there were in all their Orders within his Court which might serve as Models for my Treatise but to avoid the affectation of all compliance with this world I did expresly forbear it my own nature and my long Robe having so far estranged me from all worldly pretences that it would be a disease unto me but to salute a man if he had not Heaven and the Stars to return me for it As concerning the manner of writing which I have observed I shall easily confess unto my Reader that it proceeded rather from my Genius than from Art and though I have been curious enough to observe whatsoever the Greek or Romane Eloquence hath happily brought forth yet I must acknowledge that there is a Ray of God himself which entering into our spirit and mingling with our nature is more knowing and effectual than all precepts whatsoever And this I can affirm for the instruction of youth to those who have demanded my advice concerning the qualities and conditions of stiles It is true I have perused variety of Books written in all Ages and I have acknowledged that the most sensible amongst them have been raised both in their conceptions and their words above the common reach and alwayes without affectation Others have been passionately taken with some fine niceties which are the capital Enemies to perswasion and above all to be eschewed in the Discourses which are made of Piety whose nerves they do infeeble and whose lustres they do foil we may see that those who from the chair do speak unto us either by account or by writing although it be with terms discreet enough yet they leave a less impression on our hearts and sometimes are so violently carried away to serve their own reputation that they forget their engagements to the Truth We may observe some who through too much spirit seek out by-ways of conceptions of common sense and extravagant words and so strongly adore their own thoughts that they can suffer none but themselves on their own paper which is the cause they seldom meet with the right use of humane understanding being the true Citizens of Plato's Common-wealth capable to controul all things but to perform nothing Others there are who glory in a sterility and are willfully angry against God because in some part of the Heavens he placed so many stars These can endure nothing that is generous without snarling or biting at it They conceive Beauty and Light to be blemishes because they are above their capacities Lastly there are some who in their continual Allegations do so lay forth themselves in the praise of others that they make their Discourses like those pictures of Helena which are all of gold There is nothing but Drapery to be seen you cannot distinguish the foot from the hand nor the eye from the ear But I will enter no further into the consideration of our times having learned rather to respect than censure the indifferent Works of our Writers But to speak soundly I never thought it expedient either to perswade unto or to follow the same fashions And as in this work I have not altogether renounced the learning and the ornaments which I thought to be convenient but have inchased them in it so I would not fill my papers with Quotations and strange Languages this Labour being undertaken rather to perswade the Great-ones unto Virtue than to fill the Extracts and Annotations of the Students I have so moderated the style without letting my self loose to the empty language of Complements which had been beneath my Subject that I conceive I have rendered it easie to be understood even to those apprehensions which make no profession at all of learning It is the onely Design that I have to speak so as to be understood perswading my self according to the saying of Philo That Word and Thought are two Sister germanes and that the youngest is born onely to make the eldest known I study more for weight of sentences than for ornament of words pretending nothing to the glory of mundane Quills which we see every day appear amongst so many Authours of this Age who would be more perfect if they would apply themselves to more grave subjects and in some fashion imitate the Sun who being admired thoughout the whole world doth not know how to admire it self Nevertheless it often comes to pass but not to the more lofty Writers who are ordinarily indued with more modesty but to certain men extreamly profane to idolize their own inventions to condemn all Treatises of worth and to esteem that one cannot be eloquent in our tongue if he writes not Vanity or Impureness Certainly if a question were made to judge of the French eloquence the riches of Babylon are not so exquisite that they may stand in comparison with the beauties of Sion As long as letters and men shall continue there shall continue the praises of so many excellent Books which have come from the hands of so many Illustrious Prelates and other qualified persons nay and of the secular State who have exercised their style on chaste and honourable Arguments and worthy all commendation I speak this by the way having at this time no design to enlarge my self on the recital of the number of those able men who have now the pen in their hands nor praise those of my own Robe who have given their holy labours to the publick and who I know may be followed by a great number of excellent Spirits of the same society For that which concerns me I am acquitted of my promise and I conceive that I have sufficiently expressed in these two Volumes the whole reach of my Design for the rest I conceive that the Books of Devotion which are to be made publick ought to be rare and to be very well digested because there is already extant so great a number of them that the number of the Authours will suddenly exceed the number of the Readers Satiety will cast a cloud on the brightest Beauties and though a thing may be very good yet we ought not to surfet
meae fidem quà m formam irritamentum alienae libidinis esse malus in my face extinguishing with my bloud the flames of them that sought me For I loved better to seal my innocency as with the seal of voluntarie deformitie than to possess a beauty that served onely as a bait for anothers lust O thou Christian woman who dost paint thy self with an ill intention seeking to gain that by imposture which thou canst not attain by truth and not satisfying thy self with adulterating thy beauty sparest not to discover among company a scandalous nakedness to shew in thy breasts the impudence of thy forehead Consider a little what thou wilt answer to this Paynim with all thy curiosity when her bloud her wounds scars her beauty disfigured which served as a sacrifice to her chastity shall accuse thee before the inevitable tribunal Behold likewise Lycurgus is elected King of the Greatness of Lycurgus Lacedemonians if so his dead brother should leave no heir in his wives body The perfidious and unnatural Queen sendeth this message to the King new chosen SIR I am with child and according to the laws of the countrey it may fall out the fruit of my body may snatch the Scepter out of your hands I see the kingdom is a dainty morsel hard for them to disgorge who once have swallowed it If you will be wise in your own affair I know a means by a potion to put your crown in safetie and by anticipation taking away the life of this little creature settle your throne for ever Onely be mindful of me your faithful hand-maid who with loss of my own bloud tender this grateful office Hereupon Lycurgus detesting in his heart the treacherie of this ravenous she-wolf dissembleth and answereth MADAME Let the infant come into the world be it male or female it importeth not we alwayes shall find means enough whensoever we shall think good to dispatch it As soon as the child was born which proved a boy he took it in his arms he assembled the Magistrates and people and covering the little Creature with his royal Robe saith Sirs long live justice and loyaltie Behold your King I am but his vassal O Christian what sayest thou to this Pagan that would not purchase a Kingdom by the single sin of another Yet many times a little interest makes thee neglect all that which is divine in Faith Justice and Religion It is not required of thee thou shouldest be a S. Antony a Macarius an Angel of the desert It is demanded of thee that for Gods honour thou shew some small resistance of sin which these infidels have done for a shadow of virtue and it shall suffice Dost thou not behold that thou art enforced not onely for good fashion but for necessity to this Christian perfection which thou imaginest to be far separated from thy condition Conclude O ye Noble men out of this discourse that the obligation which you have to be perfect is most evident since you have JESUS CHRIST for a sharer the charges easie it consisting not but in loving a goodness which one cannot hate and which never any one can love if he offer not the homage of his proper interest to his divine Majesty Behold all perfection The second REASON Drawn from Nobilitie HAving in general declared the obligation all Christians have to become perfect let us in particular behold the reasons which invite Nobilitie to perfection I doubt not if you maturely ponder those which I have to propose you shall find them no less obliged to the solid eminencie of all Christian virtues than Hermits themselves and this by the right of their condition so as that which seemeth to enlarge their scope to a life of greater libertie rather serveth as a bound of their dutie and a bridle for their dissolutions Let us take the first reason which is their Nobilitie It is an argument that cannot proceed but from a low judgement or a spirit soothed with its own effeminacie to say he is Noble he is a Courtier he is a States-man his qualitie tieth him not to perfection his virtue must be measured by the ell of the world if he were over virtuous the excess of his sanctitie would be prejudicial to his fortune What an extravagant humour is it to fix ignominie upon the front of Nobilitie in the first beginning He is Noble he therefore should be the less devout and less virtuous Change the Gamuth and say He is Noble he hath therefore the more obligation to be perfect Nobilitie hath put the yoak of a happie necessitie upon him which he cannot shake off without much cowardize And to make you thereby behold that Nobilitie is a bond of Christian virtue in all eminencie no man will deny but that by how much the more God giveth powerful and effectual means to man to arrive at a good end so much more obligation he hath to carry himself with fervency of affection and in case of failing his neglect is made the more faultie The servant to whom the Master hath given five talents to negotiate with ought much more to profit and bring gain home than he that received but one single talent Who can deny Nobilitie first gift of God Mihi Deorum immortalium munus primum videtur maximum in lucem statim felicem venire Panegyr Constant this if he will not belie the light of nature Now so it is Great men have many more talents of God for the traffick of virtues than others have and behold the first of all which is the happiness of their birth An Oratour making a solemn Oration in the praise of Constantine the Great in the Citie of Trier let fall these words The first and greatest gift of heaven was to be born happy and as soon to be in the lists of felicitie as of nature The Scripture it self recommendeth Nobilitie in the persons of the three valiant children held in the Captivitie of Babylon in that of Eleazar and others It is a wonder how S. Hierome in the Epitaph of S. Paula hath not omitted that she was descended from Agamemnon Which would never have been mentioned were it not that Nobility is valued amongst the temporal goods which are distributed to us by the providence of Almighty God Now that Nobilitie is a good instrument to conduct to perfection appeareth by an irrefragable reason which I intend to express I will not say what might be proposed and fortified by experience that the bodies of Noble and Gentlemen are ordinarily better composed and as it were more delicately moulded by the artful hands of nature that they have their senses more subtile their spirits more agile their members better proportioned their garb more gentile and grace more accomplished and that all these prepare a fair shop for the soul to exercise her functions with greater liberty Let us rather Nobilitie not tied to bloud Omnis propemodum sanguis est concolor sicubi forte alter altero
nature is to give and to do good as fire to heat and the sun to illuminate saith the eloquent Synesius And to speak unto you the richest word which ever came out of the mouth of a Paynim It is Plinie who after he had well wandred through all sects of Philosphers describing the essence of God pronounceth this goodly sentence That Deus est morteli juvare mortalem hoc ad aeternam gloriam via Plin. l. 2. c. 7. Cant. 5. Manus ejus globi aurei pleni mari Where our translation saith manus ejus tornatiles aureae plenae Hyacinthi HaÌ„ds of God a golden bowl full of the sea the greatest divinitie is to see a mortal man oblige his like and that it is the shortest way to arrive at eternal glorie We also see in the Canticles the hands of the Spouse compared to golden globes which in them hold the sea enclosed These hands are of gold to denote to us the munificence of God by this symbole of charity His hands are globes made round there is nothing rugged clammy or bowed nay they are smooth neat polite to pour his blessings incessantly upon men They always emptie themselves and are always replenished for they are filled with a sea of liberality which never will be exhausted God then having bounty so natural and intrinsecal in him will needs see it shine in his servants and therein establisheth salvation and perfection Which admitted who seeth not O you rich men you have a particular obligation above all others since God hath elected you to be the Stewards of his goods the messengers of his favours and the conduits of his liberality Religious men who have given the tree and the fruit all at once have nothing more to give The indifferently rich are ordinarily full of appetites and produce no effects You have power in your hands to discharge the duties of all the world you have met with the Philosophers stone you have the books of a heavenly alchimy in your coffers you have a golden rod which can turn the durty pelf of India into celestial substance Consider what greater ties of duty can you have what more pressing necessity to be perfect than to have the instrument of perfection in your full power Perswade your selves no longer that riches are impediments of glory and salvation for this unhappiness proceedeth not but from corruption and ill custom if you take them on a false byass they are of lead to drench and drown you if on a good they are feathers to bear and lift you up to Heaven Prophane Chariot of Sesostris applied to the rich Pharios currus regum cervicibus egiâ— Luc. l. 10. storie maketh mention of one Sesostris King of Aegypt who triumphantly rode in a chariot drawn by Kings he was so swoln with the success of his prosperities It was to take the way of hell in the chariot of pride so to triumph but you may in the chariot of charity all glittering with gold and silver harnessed out with poor men each person whereof representeth the Sovereign King who raiseth all Imperial scepters take the right way of Paradise August med Si ista terrena diligitis ut subjecta diligite ut famulantia diligite ut munera amici ut beneficia Domini ut arrham sponsi and that by the means of riches Then judge whether they lead to true felicity or no. If you love these terrene things you do well love them boldly but as the objects of your glorie as the instruments of your salvation as a gift of your friend as a benefit from your Master as the earnest-penny of your spouse as the pledge of your predestination The fifth REASON Drawn from perfections of the bodie IT is a lamentable misery to behold how sin hath so perverted the nature of things that it not onely giveth ill under the apparance of good but also sometimes evil effects to that which is good Behold for as much as concerneth the perfections of the bodie not speaking here of health or strength wherewith the Great-ones are not always the best provided beauty grace or garb which seem to be more connatural to them they are so cried down by the corruption of manners that one knoweth not what apt place to give them either among things good or evil S. Augustine speaketh with indifferency Lib. 15. cap. 21 de Civitat Dei Pulchritudo corporis bonum Dei domon sed proptereâ— etiam id largitur malis nè magnum bonum videatur bonis Beauty condemned by idolaters theÌ„selves Petrarch l. 6. de remed Dialog 2. Habes hostem tuum domi delectabilem blandum habos raptorem quietis tortoremque perpetuum Habes materiam laboris uberrimam discriminum causam fomentum libidinum nec minorem quaerendi odii quà m amoris aditum Habes laqueum pedibus velum oculis alis viscum super ficie tenus fulget decor multa faedà que tâ—gens horrenda levissimae cutis obtentu sensibus blanditur illudit in these tearms Beauty of bodie is a benign gift of God but he bestows it often on the bad that the good may not deem it a great good Not onely the writings of Saints and of most austere religious have made great invectives against beauty but even those who at other times have with passion praised it condemned it as soon as they became wise Petrarch that worthy spirit after he had adored a humane beauty doth suddenly cast down the Altars thereof under his feet and dis-avowed in ripe age that which foolish youth had made him vehemently commend For what saith he not in his book of the vanitie of the world which he entituleth the Remedies of Fortune You who establish your glorie in the beauty of the bodie know you have an enemie under your roof and which is worse a flaettering and with-delight-tempting enemie You harbour a thief who stealeth your repose and time two the most pretions things of the world You lodge an executioner who always will hold you to the rack and torture You entertain a subject of toil and affliction a motive of warfare and contention an incendiarie of sensual appetite which is no less capable of hatred than love This deceitful beauty putteth a snare on your feet a veil over your eyes and bird-lime on your wings It is a superficial grace which covereth with the smooth delicacie of the skin loathsom and horrible stenches so with her poison charming the drunken senses Another (a) (a) (a) Tab. d'inconst saith it is the nurse of love the spur of sin and that virtue lodged with beauty hath always a slippery foot as being in the house of a dangerous hostess S. Chrysostom (b) (b) (b) Chrysost homil de vanit pulchr musieb 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Defence of beauty as the gift of God in an Homily which he made upon the vain beauty of women hath delicate observations not being able sufficiently to admire the sottishness
a most irrefragable motive of detestation of any vice when the baseness and ignominie thereof is discovered for that is it which hath most power over generous spirits Now so it is this hypocrisie which maketh you O Noblemen always to live disguised is quite contrary to the condition of a brave and generously elated spirit Because if it be impressed with a good stamp it naturally loveth the liberty and freedom which unavoidably is oppressed in these palliations crouchings and counterfeitings They are the tricks of Apes and Foxes and in no sort are suitable to the nature of a generous Lion Besides seeing God openeth unto us the great Hypocrisie confuted in the great book of the world book of the world as a piece of parchment guilded and traced with his pencil for us therein to read that which is for our instruction if we will consider diligently the most sublime things we shall find they naturally strike at this vanity which maketh you to display apparences to the eyes of men outwardly having nothing solid within It seemeth that all the master-pieces of this celestial and elementary world as it were by a common consent do hide all what they have of most eminency and worth bearing for devise I hide the better part It is true Parte sui meliore latent that Heaven sheweth it self wholly relucent in stars and brightness but covereth his powerful influences which by their secret extent give motion to this great house of nature It is true the air maketh his meteors to appear to the view of the whole world but this secret virtue which doth penetrate us even to the heart and bringeth life and refreshment to us upon its wings who can tell me what colour it is of The fire unfoldeth his flames to us but this commanding heat which conquereth and softeneth the hardest mettals do we behold it The caim sea delighteth us with his smiling countenance at that time especially when it becometh as it were frizled and curled by some gracious and gentle gale and coloured with the beams of a bright Sun which beat upon it but this lustruous beauty what is it in comparison of the treasures which he concealeth in the store-houses of his abysses The earth it self likewise maketh her boast in the spring varied and enameled with her natural pieces of painting and sparkled with a thousand petty flowers which stand as the eyes of the meadows but these do eclipse each evening and morning Quite contrary the mettals which the earth encloseth and as it were engulfeth in the entrails after they are wrought and polished by the artful hands of Lapidaries retain a lustre of a long date which resplendently shine upon cup-boards of Kings and the Great men of the earth What lesson of nature is this to hide all which it hath of greatest value And what corruption of nature in man to hold in the bottom of his heart stench and dung-hills and to plaister it over with a vain hypocrisie God hath not onely imprinted this verity of Hypocrisie condemned by the laws of heaven Sport of God and what 1 Cor. 1. Quae stulta sunt mundi elegit Deus ut confundat sapientes infirma mundi elegit Deus ut confundat fortia ignobilia mundi contemptibilia elegit Deus ea quae non sunt ut ea quae sunt destruereâ— which I speak in the great book of nature but he hath as it were engraven and stampt it with his hand in the monuments of the old and new law The pastimes of Great men are Theaters Tilt-yards and Amphitheaters and the sport of the Divine wisdom in this Universe is to hide treasures under the bark and mantle of some persons base and abject in apparence In the old law a stammering shepheard is chosen to carrie the word to a Monarch to shake and overturn with a poor wand the pillars of his Empire to divide seas to calm billows to open the bowels of rocks to command all the elements and fill the world with wonders In the new law simple fisher-men almost as dumb and mute as the fishes themselves are chosen to catch in their nets Philosophers Kings Cities Provinces and Empires Behold the ordinary custom of God to hold pearls in shels sweet perfumes in very abject boxes The true mark of greatness in the judgement of God is at first blush externally not to appear great On the contrary it is the act of a flat ridiculous and benummed vanity to be desirous to furprize the eyes with a counterfeit and captious beauty which afterward appearing in its native colours makes the deformity thereof the more disfigured What a shameful thing it is to a heart which hath Deformity of hypocrisie never so little resentment of nobility to erect a resplendent sepulchre to boast exteriourly marbles guildings characters titles and to have nothing within but bones put refaction and ashes to cast a certain lustre through the ignorance and obscurity of an Age become bruitish and then to be in effect but a silly worm to live in the world as a snail to make long silver traces and to be nothing else but froth to have the back covered with velvet like a cushion and the belly stuffed with hay to make ostent of leaves and verdure like a wood and to be replenished with serpents Is it possible that a noble heart when it hath no other super-visour but its own conscience can suffer these shames A gentile spirit said to an old man who caused his grisly hairs to be painted with the lustre of green youth Poor fool although thou couldst deceive the whole world with thy hair yet death well knoweth they are gray So when Scit te Proserpina canum an hypocrite shall happen to conceal his jugling from all those who accompany him which indeed cannot be done men now being endued with penetrating eyes yet one cannot deceive the eye of his conscience quick-sighted to pierce such falshoods with bright reflection I say nothing of the shame and ignomie that must be undergone after it is discovered and taken with the manner like a cut-purse I speak nothing of the racks tortures affrightments and perplexities in which they live who desire to entertain these seemings A great wit hath well said that such Stephanus Edvensis in Reg. 3. 18. people are the oxen of Baal who are cut for sacrifice in little gobbets but notwithstanding receive not fire from Heaven these miserable creatures macerate and kill themselves to sacrifice themselves to the appetites of the world without ever tasting the consolations of God which they have renounced Let us lay their pains apart let us admit that with these laborious endeavours they might always live cloked always hidden from the eyes of the world yea even from the all-piercing eye of their own conscience It is most manifest and considerable for the second 2. Reason reason that it is impossible to deceive God whose eye replenished
so much advanced the power of Satan as the making of sinfull gods The young man looking on the statue of Jupiter soothed his own lust and drew the nourishment of his sin even from Altars So doth the son who beholds himself in the vices of his father and takes paternal authority for pledg of his wickedness I leave you to think if in Exodus 22. He who unawares suffered a silly spark to flie into his neighbours corn be guilty of the fires hurt as we heretofore told you what will it be with a father who in his house shall enkindle the torch of iniquity to enflame his whole family First then lay the foundation of piety and consequently find employments for your children lest they consume in idleness which is the seminary of all vices Charlemain soon put his sons to exercises and commanded his daughters to sow or spin that the gate might be shut up against lazy sluggishness of spirit wherewith the soul suffers it-self insensibly to slide into all sorts of corruptions Yea great discretion must beused in this point not to enforce children to undertake vocations wholy disproportionable to their humours and qualities to make them thereby row all the rest of their life against the stream Saint Basil in the Epistle to Eudoxus praiseth the Athenians who tried the nature of their children before they put them to any profession proposing unto them sundry instruments of all kind of arts and easily admitting that to which they most inclined As for accommodation you must therein reasonably provide according to your estate and not according to the extrauagant ideas of this insatiable Age. It is an admirable thing to see to what a height these offices and huge marriages are mounted I think they will flie into the Kingdom of the Moon The time hath been when a man was thought rich who had fifty crowns of yearly rent We find when the marriages of the daughters of France exceeded not six thousand crowns payd down Nay which is more daughters were bought and now they purchase husbands with prodigious sums This is it which wasteth spirits which renders instructions unprofitable and throws all our evils into the despaire of remedy If you knew well how to order this matter you would find repose and facility in the rest of the government of youth and when you have done that which belongs to you leave the rest in the hands of the divine providence who well understands how to handle the web of our lives and to apply every one to what is fittest for his salvation If all I have said O fathers and mothers be not sufficient to instruct and perswade you I would draw hither out of the other world Hely the High-Priest severely punished by the revengeful hand of God for negligences committed in the education of his children He would cry aloud unto you I am that Hely heretofore the prime man amongst the people of God that Hely from whose lips passed so many brave oracles that Hely who with the winck of an eye made the people obedient that Hely who shined as a pharos in the Tabernacle of God and in the mean space for permitting youthful follies and indiscreet libertie to my children see me become the object of the most enflamed anger of God which may be imagined against one of my profession Behold me cast from the High-Priest hood as a rotten member my house everlastingly deprived of that honourable dignity all my posterity condemned to die under the scourge of God and not any one of them ever to attain to mans estate another enriched with my spoils which my Nephews shall never see but to wither with grief in consideration of the felicity of their rival my two sons sensual and voluptuous slain in one day my daughter in Law dead in child-bed but above all through my sin the Ark of God taken away by enemies and dishonoured by Infidels and lastly my self buried under the ruins of my countrey as the last victim of Gods justice O Sovereign Creatour of Heaven and earth how terrible thou art nay how just nay how severe to chastise parents for the sins of their children but how reasonable in this their punishment Fathers and mothers fear fathers and mothers shake under the hand of the Omnipotent fathers and mothers be satisfied with your own sins and carry not your childrens into the other world instruct them so that in their education you may find the discharge of your consciences they good doctrine and you rest and comfort to have well bred them The fourtieth SECTION Advice to children concerning the duty they should render to their fathers and mothers contrary to the contumacy of irregular youth THe Wiseman said it was a hard matter to Funiculus â—â—plex difficile rumpitur break a triple coard A triple law divine natural and civil hath straightly bound children to the honour and duty they ordinarily yield to parents He is forsaken of God an enemy of nature and an infringer of publick tranquility who would be exempted First I say nature distilleth with the soul those amorous infusions of amity which children have towards their fathers and mothers The beam belongeth to its sun the river to its fountain the branch to its tree and the child to his progenitours They are not Storks alone who have taught us the law of reciprocal love Lions though of nature untractable of life savage even in their roring moods which make woods and mountains tremble give us a lesson of this charity Lions whelps whose paws itch and bloud boileth in their veins go chearfully a hunting to seek out food for their fire now worn with age And hunters have often observed an old Lion lying in the entrance of a cave and a young one to come laden with booty putting it into the paws of the other who expected it He received the prey making shew of a thousand thanks to his whelp which freely divided the prize according to the law of nature These inclinations are found even in birds of rapine who pull the prey one from another to feed those with it who begat them Albertus Magnus noteth that fowlers seeking for goshawks found one in a vast wilderness perched upon a tree not offering to stir from them but seeming wholly immoveable They wondring why this bird flew not away at the sight of men as well as others of her kind perceived she was weak blind lame and wasted with decrepit age whereupon they hid themselves expecting the coming of other goshawks when instantly behold two hastened thither laden with meat which they pulled in pieces and thrust into the beak of the poor old one They made no doubt but these were the young who fed the dam. O what charms of nature Nay rather what providence of God! Is not he an Apostata to the great Law of the world who violateth charity due to fathers and mothers As for humane Laws what have they in them more noble or Religious than the
answered their desires For in this second Volumn I treat of the Courts of Constantine the Great the two Valentinians Gratian Theodosius the Elder Theodorick in Boetius his cause Clodoveus Clotilda Levigildus Hermingildus and Indegondis in such sort that I have selected the principal sanctities of Great-ones in the first six Ages of Christianity which will not be sleightly valued by those who better love to finish a Work than unboundedly distend it Moreover also to be better than my promise in my first Volumn having taken the Court in general I here descend into particulars and there being four sorts of persons which compose the life of Great-ones that is to say the Prelate the Souldier the States-man and the Court-Ladie I have made a brief Table of the conditions necessary in every state couched in four discourses pursued with as many Books of Histories which contain excellent models of virtues proper to all orders and states of life in persons most eminent I can assure my Reader these Summaries of Precepts which I have so contracted in so few words it being in my power to enlarge them in divers Volumns are not unprofitable and the Histories are so chosen that besides their majesty which unfoldeth the goodliest affairs and passages of Empires in the beginning of their Christianity they have also a certain sweetness which solid spirits shall find as much to transcend fables and modern eloquence as the satisfaction of truth surpasseth the illusions of Sorcerers You shall perpetually therein observe a large Theater of the Divine providence wherein God himself knoweth I have no other aim but to dignifie virtue and depress vice without any reflection upon the persons of these times no more than if I wrote in the Reign of Charlemain or St. Lewis I heartily entreat all those spirits of application who cannot hold their nose over a piece of work unless they find it to suit with their own fantasies imagining that all literature is the eccho of their own thoughts that if they have any Commentary to produce they would rather make glosses upon their own dreams than my Books We are not as yet God be thanked in so miserable an Age that we dare not offer sacrifice to truth without a disguise since it is the glory of Great-ones openly to wage war against vices as their greatest enemies For to speak truly after I had presented my First Tome at the feet of the sacred person of our great King I likewise considered in his Court rich and resplendent lights in all orders which might serve as models for my Treatises but to avoid affectation of all worldly complacence I have purposely declined it my nature and habit having already so alienated me from all worldly pretences that it would prove painfull to me to court any man if he had not Heaven and the Stars to give me for reward For so much as concerneth the form of writing observed by me in this Second Volumn I will truly confess to my Reader that I have therein proceeded rather guided by my proper Genius than art or cunning And although I heretofore have been curious enough to read and observe all what ever Greek or Roman eloquence hath produced of worth yet I confess there is a certain ray of God which encountering with our spirit and mixing with nature is more knowing than all precepts and I may affirm this for the instruction of youth which hath asked my opinion concerning the qualities and conditions of stile True it is I have handled many books written in all Ages and have found the wisest of them to be elevated in conceits and words above the ordinary strain but always free from affectation Others are so passionately enamoured of certain petty courtships of language which are capital enemies of perswasion and which we most especially ought to avoid in discourses of piety the nerves whereof they weaken and blemish the lustre since even those who speak to us out of Chairs by word or writing although in terms discreetly modest make the less impressions on our hearts and many times so seek after their own reputations as they forget how much they are engaged to truth We see some who through over-much wit search out strange ways conceptions different from common understanding words extravagant and in all other things so vehemently adore their own imaginations that they cannot endure any but themselves in paper which is the cause they very seldom meet with the habit of humane understanding as being true Citizens of Plato's Commonwealth of ability to controle all and to do nothing Some glory in barrenness and would willingly be displeased with God that he hath more plentifully sown stars in some parts of the Heaven than in others They can brook nothing that is generous without snarling at it and taxing it supposing beauties and splendours are defects because they surpass their capacities Finally there are some who so furnish themselves with the worth of others ceaseless allegations that they frame discourses like to those Helena's all of gold where we can behold nothing but drapery not being able to distinguish the hand from the foot nor the eye from the face I enter not into the consideration of our times having learned rather to regard the Works of the meanest Writers than censure them But to speak sincerely I never thought it fit to advise or pursue such courses And as in this Work I have not wholly declined learning nor ornament of language which I supposed apt for the purpose endeavouring many times to enchase them with seemly accommodation so have I been unwilling to replenish my leaves with Authours and forreign tongues this being undertaken rather to perswade virtue among men eminent than to fill the common places of young Students I likewise have so intermingled my style that not descending into a petty language of complement which had been below my subject I thought to make it intelligible yea even unto those who make no profession of arts or study My onely aim is to speak and to be understood perswaded thereunto by the saying of Philo That speech and thought are two sisters they youngest whereof is created that the eldest may be known I have more laboured upon the weight of sentences than ornaments of words not at all pretending to the honour of earthly pens which we daily behold to grow in so many Authours of this Age who would be much more absolute did they apply themselves to graver subjects and in some sort imitate the Sun who affording admiration to the world hath none himself Notwithstanding it often happeneth not with the most eminent Writers who ordinarily are endowed with much modesty but certain extreamly profane wits to idolatrize their own inventions to condemn all treatises of worth and value that it is impossible to be eloquent in our language but in the expression of vanities and impurities Truly if question were made to judge of French eloquence the riches of Babylon are not so exquisite as
in good works in the Church in the hospital with the sick at a Sermon who was most exact in not giving orders nor benefices but to persons very capable and of good life who never did any matter important without communicating it to the Pope and his Cardinals whom he as an Oracle honoured These are the words of this fore-mentioned Authour which seem to have very little bulk but much weight Is it not sufficient to make you undertake by necessity that which you cannot refuse without crime No longer think upon piety as a thing impossible and do not like ill Physitians who make the sick despair of health because they cannot cure them These latter Ages are not so barren of good men who are most excellent plants in the orchard of Almighty God but that it hath born and doth still produce plenty of good Prelates who honour their profession by the merit of their virtues If you cast your eye upon those whom the nearness of time doth make us as it were almost to touch you shall behold a Cardinal George of Amboyse who was marvellously potent but employed all his power to the maintenance of the Church and State and never sought to be great but to oblige inferiours nor approach to the Court but there most gloriously to serve his Prince A Zimenes Archbishop of Toledo who amidst the magnificence of Court retained the austerity of a Religious man who was such an enemy of pomp and ostentation that he hath been seen to visit his Diocess on foot without train or attendance who employed his ample revenues to make war against Sarazens build Monasteries found Universities imprint those admirable Bibles in many languages which are the treasures of all the Libraries in the world A Pool who was not onely free from the ambitions and avarice of the world but made as small an account of his body as of his shirt since he being violently persecuted by King Henry the Eight plainly said that for defence of the faith he would as willingly disarray himself of life as of his habit and would ever be as ready to enter into his tomb as into his bed to sleep You shall there behold the four Cardinals of Bourbon who have equalled their virtues to the bloud of Kings and the purple of their sacred Colledge The great Cardinal of Lorain who hath had the honour to anoint three of our Kings with his own hands to assist in their Councels to enlighten them with the rays of his spirit to defend them by his fidelity fortifying his hand from his tendrest youth for the conservation of the State In all these pomps he wore austerity under scarlet he preached and ardently cathechized the most simple of his Diocess he supported as an adamantine pillar the faith which was both in France and Germanie so shaken by the unspeakable disorder of the times he received the remannts of the English shipwrack with most pious liberality he instituted Religious Orders he raised Seminaries he on every side armed against impiety A Cardinal of Tournon who served four Kings to wit Francis the First Henry the Second Francis the Second Charles the Ninth and that in France and Rome in all the most important affairs being likewise Arbitratour of the great Potentates of the earth with a most remarkeable loyalty a prudence inestimable a courage invincible A Baronius who hath eternized himself by the endeavour of his hands a thousand times more honourable than all the Monarchs of Aegypt in their rich Marbles Pyramids and Obelisks But from whence think you have the large blessings of his labours proceeded but from a most innocent life which was as the Sun without blemish but from a most ardent charity which caused him for the space of nine whole years to visit hospitals morning and evening to help the necessities of the poor but from a most singular piety which wasting his life in the fervour of his prayers consumed also his revenues with good works in most sacred liberalities A Tolet a Religious man out of Order who raised to the dignity of a Cardinal employed the most part of the hours of day and night in prayer living on nothing almost but herbs and pulse fasting the saturdays with bread and water and adding a particular Lent besides the ordinary to the honour of the most glorious Virgin Mary as the Reverend Father Hilarian de Costa observeth in the Treatise of his life Cardinal D'Ossat writing to Monsieur Villeroy affordeth him the titles of sanctity learning prudence integrity worth fidelity and saith it is an admirable thing to see the handy-work of God in raising this great man for advancement of the affairs of France and absolution of the late King of most famous memory And the great Cardinal Peron in a letter he wrote to this triumphant Monarch dated the second of September in the year 1595. saith among other things speaking of the negotiation of Tolet upon this affair Besides that he hath renounced all worldly respects to embrace the equity and justice of your cause that he hath shut up his eyes from the natural obligation of his Prince Countrey Parents that he hath trampled under foot all sorts of menaces promises and temptations he hath also taken so much pain both of body and mind upon this treaty that we much wonder he shrunk not under the burden combating sometimes by writing sometime by conference with those who were opposite removing and animating such as were stupid and in sum carrying this business with such zeal and constancy that your Majesty could not hope for so many trials not to say so many master-pieces yea miracles from the most affectionate and couragious of all your servants Behold the testimony of a most untainted Prelate I say nothing of the excellent Bellarmine nor of that prime man among the learned the most illustrious Peron nor of the great light of sanctity my Lord Bishop of Geneva whose lives are printed I likewise behold most eminent personages on the Theater of France who as celestial bodies have sufficient height and lustre and are of ability to exercise a pen more powerfull than mine but since I have put my self upon limits not to speak here of any man now living I better love to resemble those who being not of stature able to affix crowns on the head of the Suns statue burnt flowers to it to make their odour mount to the Heavens So since I cannot crown their merit with humane praise I will offer up prayers and vows for their prosperities with all submission due to their eminent qualities As it is not my humour profusely to enlarge upon the panegyricks of the living so is it not my intention to insert all the dead in this little Treatise If you seek for those who speak and write purposely Greg. pastoral curae lib. c. 4. you will be overwhelmed with a main cloud of witnesses which will shew you men who have been greater than Kingdoms who have parallel'd the
birth under your favour It is the third Part of a Court absolutely holy which not unlike the Citie S. John saw in his profound comtemplations cannot ascend from our manners to Heaven unless it descend from Heaven into our manners I likewise endeavour to fashion it in Books by the model of things celestial to imprint it on lives and I now undertake the defence of truth which constituting your salvation and composing your happiness well deserve to be the most serious employments of your mind It is true Sir all Maxims of State that depend not on the Maxims of God are effects of carnal prudence which end in flesh and all fortunes that rest not on him who with three fingers supporteth the globe of the earth rather pursue the way of precipices than the path of exaltation The wisdom of the world loves nothing so much as that whereof it is most ignorant it runs after honour not knowing what honour is ever hungry and still needy nor having any other aim but to make it self a Mistress over giddie spirits to become the slave of all passions Which maketh me say there are none but the blind who seek after it the miserable who find it the sottish who serve it and the forlorn who tie themselves to its principles But the wisdom of Heaven which I in these Maxims present you is so transcendently sublime above all humane inventions as the light of stars surpasseth the petty sparklings and slitting fires of the earth It is that which leisurely marcheth by holy paths to the sources of day-light and as being present before the throne of God beholdeth glory and felicitie unfolded in his hands It is the element of great souls such as yours and when they once are throughly settled therein they find tastfulness which turneth into nutriment and nutriment which passeth to immortalitie Your prudence may read in your own experience what I express in my Treatises nor need you go any further than your own life to meet with the proofs of these excellent verities You know Sir how the Divine Providence in the first flower of your age drew you from ill ways and snatched you out of the hands of infidelity as a Constantine from the palace of Diocletian to serve as a Buckler for the Church whereof impietie would have made you a persecutour This Providence knew so well how to separate bloud from manners that it caused you to demolish what your Ancestours had raised and preserving their dignity without touching their errours to make of the unhappiness of their judgement the beginning of your felicity From thence you see with what success the hand of God hath conducted you to the height of this most eminent glory wherein France at this present beholds you as a Prince accomplished in the experience of affairs and times the Father of good counsels the undertaker of great actions endowed with a spirit which seems an eternal fire and to be parallel'd by nothing but the goodness of your own heart You live peaceable as in the right sphere of true greatness where you perpetually reflect on two Poles God and the King You seek for the one in the other and you walk to the God of life by the most lively of his Images His Arms are beheld to prosper in your hands as well as his Edicts in your mouth You have born thunder and Olives throughout France under your protection awfull at one time and amiable at another but ever prosperous in both Yea fully to crown your happiness the Divine goodness hath afforded you a house flourishing in riches and honours which comprehendeth in its latitude two Princes of the bloud to serve as pillars for the State It gave you a wife who hath made of her fruitfulness the trophey of her virtues and entered by love into an eclipse to become the Mother of lights and bring forth children to bear the hope of Flower-de-luces The eldest Son whom your Excellency hath committed as a sacred pledge to our Colledge at Bourges would trouble us to tell you from whence he hath taken such and so many splendours and sparkling flames of wit which dazle the eyes of those who have the honour to be near him were not you his Father He is a Pearl who maketh it appear by the equality of his Orient that if Nature have equalled his birth to the greatest on earth he will equal his virtues to his extraction SIR I speak this ingeniously that you may both behold in your own Person what I treat in my books as also understand that true piety soweth the seeds of the most solid greatness But besides the relation this Design seems to have to the pleasure of God over you I find much obligation to offer it you as a slender testimony of a singular gratitude in our Superiours and our whole Societie which would willingly suffer their affections to pass through my pen if it had as much eloquence as the main body tenders respect and zeal to your service You have been pleased to make it known by your good purposes to love it by election defend it by justice honour it with your opinion encrease it with your liberalities and if your benefits be ornaments unto it your judgement serve for Apologies I received a notable portion in your favours whilest you resided in Bourges where your Excellency called me to deliver the Word of God and to confess your virtues in my discourses as I must acknowledge my discourses to proceed from your virtues It was by your conversation I perceived that as there is nothing too high for your understanding so there is not any thing too low for your bounty God hath bestowed on you the gift which the Scripture attributeth to the Patriarch Joseph to oblige hearts with sweetness not unlike the Engines of Archimedes which made water mount in descending so yours causeth not your humility to descend but to make it re-ascend to the source of the prime sublimity Which done not presuming any thing in regard of your Excellency but daring all through your courtesie I present these MAXIMS of the Holy Court of which many will make their reading others their precepts but you will I hope frame your virtues of them on earth to make them your Crowns in Heaven So wisheth SIR Your most humble and most obsequious servant in our Lord N. CAUSSIN S. J. The Design and Order of the BOOK I Find Courteous Reader my Works do insensibly encrease under the savour of thy good opinion as plants sprout under the aspect of the most benign stars I had confined my self to that which concerneth the Historie of Courts and still rest in the same resolution But saw a piece verie necessarie in these times wanting in my Work which was the Treatise of MAXIMS and majestie of our Religion I almost durst not undertake it so much the subject seemed to require judgement preparation and abilitie But God having inspired me with a strong conceit I might be
likewise constrain any man to virtue (b) (b) (b) Plato l. 2. de republicâ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato in his Common-wealth detesteth all opinions which seek to introduce into the beliefs of people propositions unworthy of Gods goodness namely those which make him authour of sin adding we must not endure to hear it spoken or written by any man in a well rectified Common-wealth Who knoweth not that such are the causes such the effects If the causes be necessary the effects likewise are enchained within the limits of necessity If they be contingent they are all in indifferency Now the prescience of God to speak properly is not the cause of our actions unless it be by meer accident and occasion then it cannot make them necessary Is it not true that the great eye of God equally beholdeth things past present and future And as our eye maketh not things present by beholding them since a wall is neither white nor black by force of my sight and as our memory makes not things past by repassing them by their species so the prescience of God makes not things future by forseeing them they are not because God hath foreseen them but he foresaw them because they so should happen O man if thou beholdest him who made thee thou Faust Reg. de gratia c. 2. l. 2. Si ad factorem homo respicis bonus esse potuisti Si ad praecognitorem tu me progestorum tuorum ordine ut de te malum praenoscerem compulisti mayest have been good But if thou contemplatest him as him who knew thee before the beginning of Ages thou hast enforced him to make an evil judgement upon thee because thou hast made thy self evil Our action although it be not the first dated in execution at the least in the Idaea and order of nature it always foregoeth the divine prescience if we regard its first intentions we may all be honest men if we consider our proceedings we constrain him to foresee of us what is in us If prescience imported any necessity we might conclude God were necessited in all the actions he doth throughout the world because he eternally hath foreseen them all which were most impious Let us not then say But if God hath so foreseen it it will happen by an inevitable necessity for there are three sorts of necessities one most absolute as that of the Essence of God the other natural as light in the sun heat in fire the third is a necessity conditional as is that If God foreseeth such or such a thing it shall happen I say it is a necessity of supposition for you presuppose he foresaw it but instantly you learn he foresaw it not but because it should be and that his prescience is no more the cause of our actions than our memory of the taking of Rochel and wars with the Huguenots 4. After this brain-sick band another riseth 3. Squadron of nice ones according to humane prudence which comprehendeth the subtile and more refined wits according to the judgement of the world who suppose all good success proceeds from prudence and humane industry without the helping hand of God They are such as according to the saying Habac. 1. 16. of the Prophet sacrifice to their nets who kiss their hand as an independent worker of great actions who savourly tast all they do like Bears said to lick their paws when they have eaten honey Greek Authours tell us Mercury was bred by the An observation of the Grecians upon the dependence we have from on high Mentem tunc hominibus adimit supera illa mens quae cujuscumque fortunam mutare constituit consilia corrumpit Velleius l. 2. howers to teach us all wisdom and humane eloquence not guided nor supported by the measures of heaven can neither have nourishment nor subsistence There is no one more blind than he who thinks himself clear-sighted in affairs without the prudence of Heaven all succeeds ill with him and he findeth by experience that God begins the change of fortunes by the corruption of counsels The reason thereof is very manifest since we know all created spirits work not but by the dependence they have upon the increated Essence as also that all Intelligencies have so much excellency as they have relation to the first Intelligence which is the Word of God If we consult with our own thoughts and knowledge Weakness of humane wisdom as being near of kin to us we shall find they have three ill properties which is they are heavy timorous and uncertain as heavy they creep on the earth as timorous they glance at all objects and resolve on nothing as uncertain they are perpetually floating There is none but God who raiseth them by his exaltation setleth them by his stability and staieth them by his immutability All they who disunited from the eternal Wisdom Vanity of Politicians without Gods direction think to prosper in governments honours wordly affairs are Icaruses that seek to counterfeit birds with waxen wings the least ray proceeding from the throne of the Lamb will burn them and make their height serve for no other use but to render their falls the more remarkeable If they be lettered Nicephorus Gregoras l. 7. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 they shall stead them as forrests do thieves to cover their crimes and if they have dignities they shall be unto them as the golden and silver precipices of the Emperour Heliogabalus which were not devised but to make his ruin the more memorable Doth not the Apostle proclaim aloud with a voice of thunder to the posterity of all Ages I will pull down the wisdom of the wisest according to the Perdam sapientiam sapientum 1. Cor. 1. Adducit Consiliarios in stultum finem judices in stuporem Job 12. 17. world I will rebuke the prudence of the most subtile And did not holy Job repeat the like Oracles upon the dunghill saying God oftentimes giveth success of affairs most shamefull to the most able Counsellours and he reduceth Judges to a certain stupidity of understanding Hath not the experience of Ages shewed so often in the histories of Pharaobs Herods and all such like that there is no greater wisdom in the world than to be an honest man To be Senec. ep 118. Sapere sapientiae usus est sicut oculorum videre 1. Conclusion against those who curse fortune wise is to use wisdom and to make it serve for direction as the eye for sight 5. Let us draw three concusions from these three propositions we have deduced The first whereof shall be never to do like those vulgar abject souls which is to curse and detest our condition and fortune as it were an effect of some false Divinity and not a Divine Providence Remember daily within your self those words Nothing is done one the earth without cause God hath disposed all with weight and measure Nihil in terrá sine causâ
the power of God in his Saints caused a fair Church to be built to this most blessed woman and a Cross to be erected in the place where she left him which was called the Cross of the place Thus was God pleased to ratifie by so great miracles the pardon Constantia had given to Prince Charls I will shut up this discourse with a passage of so rare clemency of a Monarch offended in the honour of a daughter of his by a mean vassal as it seems could never have fallen but into the heart of a Charlemaigne It is to this purpose recounted that one Eginardus Curio l. 2. rerum Chronologicarum who was Secretary to the Prince having placed his affections much higher than his condition admitted made love to one of his daughters which was in mine opinion natural who seeing this man of a brave spirit and a grace suitable thought not him too low for her whom merit had so eminently raised above his birth She affected him and gave him too free access Goodness and in dulgence of Charlemaigne to her person so far as to suffer him to have recourse unto her to laugh and sport in her chamber on evenings which ought to have been kept as a sanctuary wherein relicks are preserved It happened upon a winters night these two amorous hearts having inwardly so much fire that they scarcely could think upon the cold Eginardus ever hastening his approches and being very negligent in his returns had somewhat too much slackened his departure The snow mean while raised a rampart which troubled them both when he thought to go out Time pressed him to leave her and heaven had stopped up the way of his passage It was not tolerable for him to go forward Eginardus feared to be known by his feet and the Lady thought it not any matter at all to see the prints of such steps about her door They being much perplexed love which taketh the diadem of majesty from Queens so soon as they submit to its tyranny made her do an act for a lover which had she done for a poor man it would have been the means to place her among the great Saints of her time She tooke this Gentleman upon her shoulders and carried him all the length of the Court to his chamber he never setting foot to the ground that so the next day no impression might be seen of his footing It is true which a holy Father saith that if hell lay on the shoulders of love love would find courage enough to bear it But it hath more facilitie to undertake than prudence to hide it self the eye of God not permitting these follies should either be concealed or unpunished Charlemaign who had not so much affection in store for women that he spent not some nights in studie watched this night and hearing a noise opened the window and perceived this prettie prank at which he could not tell whether he were best to be angrie or to laugh The next day in a great assembly of Lords and in the presence of his daughter and Eginardus he proposed the matter past in covert tearms asking what punishment might a servant seem worthie of who made use of a Kings daughter as of a Mule and caused himself to be carried on her shoulders in the midst of winter through night snow and all sharpness of the season Every one gave hereupon his opinion and there was not any who condemned not this insolent man to death The Princess and Secretarie changed colour thinking nothing remained for them but to be flayed alive But the Emperour looking on his Secretarie with a smooth brow said Eginardus hadst thou loved the Princess my daughter thou oughtest to have come freely to her father who should dispose of her libertie and not to play these pranks which have made thee worthy of death were not my clemency much greater than the respect thou hast born to my person I now at this present give thee two lives the one in preserving thine the other in delivering her to thee in whom thy soul more survives than in the body it animateth Take thy fair portress in marriage and both of you learn to fear God and to play the good husbands These lovers thought they were in an instant drawn out of the depth of Hell to ascend to heaven and all the Court stood infinitly in admiration of this judgement It appears by the narration what was the mild temper of Charlemaign in this point and that he followed the counsel of S. Ambrose who advised a Father named Epist l. 8. ep 64. Si bonam duxit acquisioit tibi gratiam Si erravit accipiendo meliores facies refutando deteriores Sisinnius to receive his son with a wife he had taken for love For receiving them both said he you will make them better rejecting them render them worse The goodness of these great hearts for all that justifieth not the errours of youth which grievously offendeth when it undertaketh resolutions in this kind not consulting with those to whom it oweth life XIII MAXIM Of the Epicurean life THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT That the flesh must be daintily used and all possible contentment given to the mind That life without crosses and flesh void of mortification is the sepulcher of a living man EXperience teacheth us there is in the World a sect of reformed Epicures who do not openly profess the bruitishness of those infamous spirits which are drenched in gourmandize and lust but take Maxims more refined that have as they say no other aim but to make a man truly contented For which purpose they promise themselves to drive all objects from their minds which may bring the least disgust and to afford the bodie all pleasures which may preserve it in a flourishing health accompanied with grace vigour and vivacity of senses Here may the judicious observe that such was the The Philosophie of Epicurus swayeth in the world doctrine of ancient Epicurus For although many make a monster of him all drowned in ordure and prodigious pleasure yet it is very easie to prove that he never went about to countenance those bruitish ones who through exorbitance of lusts ruin all the contentments of the mind and bodie But he wholly inclined to find out all the pleasures of nature and to banish any impediments which might make impression on the soul or bodie For which cause I think Thedor l. 2. Therap Nicet 2. Thesau c. 1. Tertul. apol c. 38. Hieron 2. in Jovin Laertius lib. 10. Senec. l. de vitâ beatâ Theodoret mistook him when he made him so gluttonous as to contend with Jupiter about a sop and that Nicetas who representeth him so licourish after honied tarts well understood him not For Tertullian S. Hierom Laertius and Seneca who better noted his doctrine assure us he was a very sober man and speaketh not in his writings but of pulse and fruits not for the honour he bare to
COURT That it is to no purpose to think upon death so far off and that it always cometh soon enough without thinking on it That the best employment of life is to bewel prepared for death and that good thoughts of death are the seeds of immortalitie 1. IT is a strange thing that men being all made out of one and the same mass are so different in beliefs in reasons in customs and actions as the Proteus in Poetical fables Our manners daily Diversitie of men teach us a truth which says There is not any thing so mutable upon earth as the heart of man Yet we see in the world many honourable personages and good men who travel apace to this triumphant Citie of God this Heavenly Jerusalem looking on the blessings of the other life with an eye purified by the rays of faith and expecting them with a hope for which all Heaven is in bloom But there Opinion concerning the other life are an infinite number of black souls marked with the stamp of Cain who consider all is said of the state of the other world as if it were some imaginary Island feigned to be in the Ocean to amuze credulous spirits and fill them partly with pleasing dreams partly with irksom visions If these people could find some apparent proofs they would easily perswade themselves there were no death but their senses convinced of the contrary from experience of all Ages they believe that which they dare not think on and commonly die after so bruitish a fashion that a man may say They had converted the lights of an immortal spirit wholly into flesh But you generous souls whom at this present I intend to guid through the hopes and terrours of the other life observe this first step you must make to enter into a new world with constancy not unworthy a soul sensible of its immortality 2. Life and death are two poles on the which all Life death the two poles of the world creatures rowl life is the first act moveable and continual of the living thing death the cessation of the same act And as there are three notable actions in things animated the one whereof tendeth to nourishment and increase the other to sense the third to understanding so there are three sorts of lives Divers kinds of life the vegetative the sensitive and the intellectual the vegetative in plants sensitive in beasts the intellectual which onely appertaineth to God Angels and men The intellectual life is divided into two other which are the life of grace and glory In Heaven the place of things eternal reign those great and divine lives which never die and which are in a perpetual vigour being applied to the first source of lives which is God But in the more inferiour rank of the world are dying lives of which we daily see the beginning progress and end Here properly is the dominion of death and our onely mystery is to die well Some do it of necessity others every day anticipate it by virtue Now it is my desire here to shew you That death in the state wherein the world is at this present is a singular invention of Divine Providence whether we consider the generality of men whether we look on the vicious or fix our thoughts on the just 3. Some complain of death but you would see Providence of God concerning the sentence of death in the generality of men much other complaints if in such a life as we live there were no death You would see men worn with years and cares daily to charge altars with vows and prayers men insupportable to all the world irksom to life inexpugnable to death men old as the earth incessantly calling upon the hour of death and almost eating one another with despair God hath herein saith Plato well provided for seeing the soul was to be Plato in Timaeo Pater misericors illis mortalia vincula faciebat shut up in the body as in a prison he hath at least made it chains mortal What makes you so much desire life I find saith the worldling it is a pleasure to behold the light the star elements and seasons There will be much more delight to see them one day under your feet than there is now to behold them over your head Are there now so many years you have been upon the earth and have you not yet sufficiently looked upon the elements There were certain people among the Pagans who by laws forbade a man of fifty years to make use of the Physitian saying It discovered too much love of life and yet with Christians you may find at the age of four-score who will not endure a word of the other world as if they had not yet one days leisure to look into it But I must still Ambr. l. 2. de Abel Cain Non advertitis senectutem hanc aerumnarum esse veteranam processionibusque aetatis miseriarum crescere stipendia Scyllâ—o quodam usu circumsonari nos quotidianis naufragiis perform the actions of life Have you not done them enough See you not that to live long is to be long in the entertainment of travel and misery which extend their power over our heads according as the web of our life lengtheneth Do you not consider we are in this life as fish in the sea perpetually in fear of nets or hooks Will you not say we live here in the midst of misery and envie as between Scylla and Charybdis and that to decline once perishing we daily make ship wrack Notwithstanding we are pleased with life as if man were not so much a mortal creature as an immortal misery Do you not know life was given by God to Cain Revolution troublesom the most wicked man on earth for a punishment of his crime and will it rest with you as a title of reward There is great cause to desire life Were there no other miseries which are but too frequent this anxiety and turmoil of relapsing actions would tyre us What is life but clothing and unclothing rising and down-lying drinking eating sleeping gaming scoffing negotiating buying selling masonry carpentery quarreling cozening rowling in a labyrinth of actions which perpetually turn and return filling and emptying the tub of the Danaïdes and to be continually tied to a body as to the tending of an infant a fool or a sick man That is not it which withdraweth me say you But I must see the world and live with the living Had you been all your life Baseness of the world time shut up in a prison and not seen the world but through a little grate you had seen enough of it What behold you in the streets but men houses horses mules coaches and people who tumble up and down like fishes in the sea who have many times no other trade but to devour one another and besides some pedling trifles hanged out on stals When I have seen all this but for half an hour
be therein sufficiently informed The Jews were heretofore the chosen people and are become the reprobate God for them drave back the waves of the read sea and suffered them to walk drie-foot between two waters as between two chrystal vaults and afterward why did he drown them so many times in rivers of their bloud with so horrible slaughters that in the whole siege of Jerusalem under Titus and Vespasian were reckoned according to Josephus his calculation eleven hundred thousand Vide Iosephum Hegesippum Thraenos dead God opened to them the sides of rocks to quench their thirst and afterward why dried he up the dugs of women who saw their little ones die between their arms they unable to give them one drop of milk God for them made Manna and clouds of Quails to showt and why afterward did he so afflict them with such cruel and enraged a famine that the hands of mercifull mothers slew and roasted on coals their own proper children and eat them to satisfie their hunger God carried them through deserts as upon eagles wings and wherefore afterward did he abandon them to eagles and vultures which so many times made carrion of the bodies of his children God had given them a land so fat and fruitful that it streamed altogether milk and honey and wherefore afterward had it entrails of iron denying food to the living yea burial to the dead God gave them strength as a devouring fire before which all Nations were but as straw and why afterwards became it the shuttle-cock of the arms of Infidels God gave them liberty for an inheritance and why afterward obtained they not so much as an honourable servitude Why at the siege of Jerusalem among so many thousand prisoners did they so much disdain to make use of a Jew that there being never a a Cross to crucifie them they were reserved for beasts to devour them rather than derive any service from them God gave them knowledge and wherefore afterwards became they blockish idle and stupid in all learning God ordained for them the assistance and protection of Angels and why afterward forsook they their Temple crying out aloud Let us depart let us depart from hence God destined to them Royalty and Empire over neighbouring Nations and why afterward had they not one inch of land at their own dispose and especially of land where formerly Jerusalem was built unless they purchased it with money onely to enjoy it one hour or two in the year and weep over it and bedew it with the water of their eyes after they had so often moistened it with their bloud God established priest-hood to them and afterwards what became of Jerusalem the Holy What became of Solomon's Temple the miracle of the world Where is the Propitiatory the Table of Proposition-bread the Rational which was before the peoples oracle Where is the majesty of High-priests the comeliness of Prelates the perpetuity of Sacrifices From whence comes it that it is above fifteen hundred years ago since this miserable Nation goes wandering through the Regions of the earth as abandoned into an eternal exile without Priests without Temple without Sacrifice without Prince King or government O eternal God how hast thou thrown down thy foot-stool O God of justice how hast thou made desolate thy royal Priesthood O God of vengeance how hast thou suffered thy Sanctuary to be profaned Who hath ever heard speech of such a punishment There have been adulteries rapines concussions gluttonies yea and idolatries which God hath not revenged in this manner A captivity of three-score and ten years expiated all these sins but this after fifteen hundred years to what sin may we attribute it but to the neglect of the essence of the Word Incarnate After the time that the Son of God shut his eyes steeped in tears and bloud over the miserable Jerusalem he never hath opened them to afford them mercy A Lord so sweet so mild so clement as that he raised thieves almost from bloud and robbery in an instant to thrones of glory for having acknowledged and confessed his name so roughly to chastise the neglect of his authority for the space of so many Ages what meaneth this but to prove the opposing of the divine Essence of God is a crime of all the most hydeous and unspeakable Run over the Histories of antiquity as long as you Tragical events of the wicked please revolve in your memory all the experiences which your Age may afford and if you see the impious come to a good end say There is no cause of fear Cain their Patriarch banished from the sight of God lived long like a melancholy spirit among forrests with a perpetual affrightment until Lamech took away his life The Cainists were all drenched in the waters of the deluge Pharaoh drowned in the Red-sea Nebuchadnezzar turned into a beast Holofernes slain in his bed by the hand of a woman Senacherib lost one hundred four-score and five thousand men for a blasphemy Antiochus strucken with a horrible maladie Birds did eat the tongue of Nicanor and his hand was hanged up over against the Temple Heliodorus was visibly chastised by Angels Herodes Agrippa born from the Theater to the bed of death The President Saturninus strucken blind Hermianus eaten by worms in his Pretourship Leo the fourth all covered over with botches and carbuncles Bamba crowned with a diadem of pitch after his eyes were pulled out Julian the Apostate strucken with a dart from Heaven Michael the Emperour who had in his train a heap of young scoffers that in scorn counterfeited the ceremonies of the Church was torn in pieces as a victim by his own servants Olympius strucken with thunder in a bath And if we observe times more near Rogero dragged to a laystall Vanin burnt at Tholouse Alsan Calefat divided between fire and water and slain by his own hand Great eye of God which art ever open upon the sins of the earth who can steal himself from the lightning-flashes Great hand of God who thunderest and lightenest perpetually over rebellious heads who is able to resist thy justice Advice to Youth and such as too easily give way to impietie O Unfortunate youth who having received the first tincture of good instruction after thou wert bred with so much care and honour by those to whom thou owedst thy birth betrayest the tears of thy parents the travels of thy teachers and the whole hopes of the publick How canst thou embark thy self among these treacherous and ignominious associates How canst thou walk among so many shelves and precipices not so much as once opening thy eyes to behold the abyss thou hast under thy feet So many heads crushed in pieces under the Divine vengeance are as broken masts and shivers of a shipwrack advanced on the promontory of rocks to give notice of the deplorable events they have found whose examples thou still pursuest yet thou lookest on them with arms across and dallyest in
who restored his grand-father to his estate and was the honour of his family O good God! A man of the world to speak and do all this for worldly amity to command over himself in all the great aversions of nature to content a friend To act all these admirable prodigies in fight of all the world for the satisfaction of a morall virtue And can it become us to play the nicelings and so much to give way to our aversions to forsake the law of God Nature and our own salvation Will we never understand the saying of Saint Justine That to live according to the propensions of Nature is not to live like a Christian The fifth Treatise Of DELECTATION § 1. That Delectation is the scope of all Nature Its Essence Objects and Differences GOd seemed to have made all things for Delectation since even Creatures which have no God hath made all creatures to have Delectation soul nor reason have a dead Delectation applyed to the place and end for which they were made Had fire sense it would triumph for joy to see it self in an eminent place and a stone would receive contentment to be below the Iron would smile to feel it self enchained by the charms of the Adamant and a straw to behold it self caught by the Amber Now for as much as these things are without judgement all their joy consisteth onely in the cessation of their motion which is done when they are arrived at their proper elements Creatures the most eminent have a sensitive knowledge of things agreeable to them and do infinitely rejoyce in their possession and fruition But man who worketh by more powerfull and exalted engines of reason is created to participate in Joy not by a dead Action but by an understanding and a reasonable fruition And that you may the better conceive wherein the joy of a reall Man consisteth you must know it is composed of four things the first whereof is that to receive one must have an object Four things compose the solid delectation of man pleasing and delightfull which is as the basis of rejoycing and secondly a facultie capable to conceive and know this object which in it self naturally disposeth to Delectation from whence it cometh to passe that a Beast will hear the bravest and best Lutenist in France without any pleasure because it hath not ears to judge of it thence we must go to a third degree which is an affection toward this object otherwise had it all the perfections in the world there is no contentment taken therein from whence it cometh that devils albeit they have a certain presence of the sovereign of all objects which is God and have a certain knowledge of him they cannot find any repose therein because they love him not To conclude the accomplishment of pleasure is the presence possession and fruition of the good which is known to us and which we love For from thence proceedeth a sweetnesse vitall lively and delicious which poureth it self forth into the bottome Why devils love not God whom they know to be so amiable of our souls and diffuseth it self upon our senses as a gentle dew falling on plants See what joy doth if you have never well tryed it which is indeed nought else but a satisfaction of the soul in the enjoying what it loves But now at this present to expresse all the objects and particular causes thereof is a discourse which rather Three sorts of joy extendeth in length then establisheth any solid verity Yet I think one may undertake to affirm there are three sorts of joy some are wholly divine and inspired as those of holy Confessours Virgins and Martyrs who rejoyce in the practice of virtues in austerities and torments others are indifferent partly humane and civill as are the pleasures we take in the beauty and diversitie of naturall things honest amities and sciences in honour and estimation in the successe and prosperity of affairs and in the exercise of great charges Others come from the Base Court and from animall nature as are the pleasures of eating and drinking of feasts of banquets of love of dancing of sports of playes and of jeasting Every one measureth his likings by his own nature Contentments â—â— rather in the will then in pleasing objects and condition and one may truly say that pleasure is not properly in things exteriour but in the interiour of our wills and appetites See we not that all colours have no lustre in the night-time and that necessarily light must awaken and put them in possession of being coloured so all objects in the world are of the same nature they are dumb dead and insensible unlesse the ray of our will reflects on them to actuate them to set them a-work and of them to make matter of our delight If pleasure sprang from the quality of creatures it would be alike in all hearts and never would any thing which is pleasing to one be irksome or distastfull to another but sith we see so many diversities in the contentments of particulars and that one self-same man is sometimes displeased with that he hath most affected we may well say there is some secret in joy which is not derived from any thing else then it self Chiron could not endure to be a feigned God because he daily saw the same things Polycrates was impatient to have Felicity fixed upon him and sought of his own accord to become unfortunate as one glutted with his own happinesse There are a thousand fantasticall tricks in a spirit over-much contented with worldly blessings needs must our appetite in the same tone meet with objects to accomplish our felicity Wherefore it much importeth to habituate it in delight which ariseth from things good and laudable to purchase its joyes at a low rate to have them continually within ones self without begging them from elsewhere which will never happen but by flight from unlawfull lusts and by the application of our minds to things divine For which purpose I will here represent unto you the reproach of evil pleasure that you may adapt your selves to the sources of the delights of God § 2. The Basenesse and Giddinesse of sensuall Voluptuousnesse VVIcked pleasure is an inordinate delight in The essence of this Passion sensuall things proceeding from a soft nice and effeminate soul which adhereth to its flesh and excessively loveth it and which also oft proceedeth from a spirit become cold in the love of God and darkned in the knowldge of the blessings of the other life from bad education and from many vitious habits contracted in youth strange is the dominion of flesh and admirable the sway of pleasures Figure unto your self that you in a Table see that Delubrum voluptatis Isa 13. 21. Edifice which the Prophet Esay calleth The temple of pleasure It is a house of delight where one entrethin by five gates which are all crowned with Roses and carry the badge of youth and
trouble those spirits which have an inclination to mildnesse they say that Joab was his kinsman his faithfull servant the best of his Captains the chief Commander that had followed him from his youth accompanied him through infinite dangers and upheld the Crown a thousand times shaking upon his head He never medled in the factions that were raised against the King he was alwayes the first that dissipated them by the vigour of his spirit resolution counsell of his Arms and of his Sword If he slew Abner it was in revenge of his Brother which the other had slain If he stabbed Amasa it was the chief Captain of the Rebell Absolon whom they would have put in his place for to lay then great faults of the State upon him If he spoke freely to David it was alwayes for his good and for his glory in the mean time at his Death he recommended him to be punished after that in effect he had pardoned him all his life But to all this I say that the last actions of so great a King are more worthy of honour then censure The punishment of Joab proceeded not from a Passion but from a Justice inspired by God which would satisfie the voyce of blood the which cryed still against the murders committed by this Captain Further also there was a secret of State as saith Theodoret which is that this Joab shewed himself against the re-election of Solomon and was ready to trouble the peace of the Realm And as concerning Shimei to whom he had sworn that he would not cause him to dye he kept his promise to him faithfully abstaining from doing him any evil while he lived although he was in absolute power for to hurt him but as his oath was personall he would not extend it upon his sonne and tye his hands contenting himself to recommend unto him that he should do justice according as his wisedome and discretion should direct him It is very fitting that we should think highly of this Prophet and that we should rather search out the reason of many of his actions from the secret inspiration of God then from the weaknesse of humane judgement He lived near upon three-score and twelve years reigned fourty and dyed a thousand and thirty two years before the birth of our Saviour leaving infinite treasures for the building of the Temple and eternall monuments of his devotion and understanding It was a speciall favour to him that the Saviour would be born of his bloud and that his birth was revealed to him so many dayes before it was known to the world He hath often set it down upon the title of his Psalmes and was in an extasie in this contemplation by the fore-taste of that his happinesse Men are accustomed to take their nobility and their names from their Ancestours that go before them But David drew it from a Son which is the Father of Glory and Authour of Eternity The industrious hands of men have taken pains in vain to carve him out a Tomb Death hath no power over him seeing that he is the Primogenitour of life All things are great in his person but the heighth of all his greatnesse is that he hath given us a Jesus SOLOMON SOlomon was he that ordered the holinesse of the Temple and yet he can hardly find place in the Holy Court The love which gave Solomons entry into the Realm full of troubles him the Crown by the means of his mother Bathsheba hath taken from him his innocency The Gentiles might have made him one of their Gods if Women had not made him lesse then a man His entrance into the Throne of his father was bloudy his Reign peaceable his Life variable and his End uncertain One may observe great weaknesses at the Court at his coming to the Crown confused designs desperate hopes a Prophet upright at the Court a woman full of invention an old Courtier overthrown and little brotherhood where there is dispute of Royalty David was upon the fading of his Age and his Throne looked at by his Children which expected the dissolution of their father He had taken the authority upon him to decide this question by his commands not willing to be ruled therein by nature nor to preferre him whom she had first brought into the world but him which should be appointed by God and best fitted thereto by his favours Bathsheba a subtil woman Bathsheba fitly insinuares her self and procures the Crown for her son Solomon that had carried him away by violence of a great affection kept her self in her possession and had more power over the mind of the King then all his other associates Amidst the kindnesses of an affectionate husband which is not willing to deny any thing to her whom he loves she drew this promise from David that he would take her sonne Solomon to be successour in his Estates This was a little miracle of Nature in his Infancy Solomons infancy pleasing and it seemed that all the Graces had strove together to make a work so curiously polisht His mother loved him with infinite tendernesse and his father could not look upon him without amazednesse He was married at the age of nineteen years and David before he departed from the world saw himself multiplied by his son in a second which was Roboam Aristotle hath observed well that children which are married so young do seldome bring forth great men and this observation was verified in Roboam who caused as many confusions in his life as he had made rejoycings at his birth This strengthened Solomon at the beginning in his own and his mothers pretences But Adonijah his brother which immediately followed Absolon was before him in the right of Eldership and promised himself to have a good part of the Empire The example of that unfortunate brother which had Adonijah competitor of the Crown and his faction expired his life in the despair of his fortune was not strong enough for to stay him which treading as it were in the same steps went on infallibly unto his last mischance David endured too long for him and it seems to him that the greatest kindnesses that a rich father could do for his sonne when he is come to die is to suffer himself to die He had sufficiently well knitted his party together binding himself closely to the chief Priest Abiathar and to Joab It seemed to him that having on his side the Altars and Arms he was invincible But in that burning desire that he had to reign he The fault of Adonijah in his Counsel of State committed very great faults which put an end to his life by an event very tragicall He did not sufficiently consider the power of his father who governed himself by the orders of them in the disposition of their Royalty and saw not that to undertake to succeed him without his good will was to desire to climb to the top of the house vvithout going up by the stairs His
say shall come to passe under thy Reign Behold a strange Prophecy and some body may wonder that Elisha did not cause that wicked man to be strangled that was to make all those tragedies for how many mothers are there that would have choaked their own children at their breast if they had foreseen that after they had sucked their milk they would one day assume the spirit of an hangmand to tyrannize over mankind Yet Elisha rejects not that Hazael but consecrates him King by his speech because that he knew that it was a disposition of God who would make use of him as of the rod of his fury to chastise the Idolatries of his Kings and the sins of his People All men of God have this property to submit themselves exceedingly to Gods will although it seems to will and permit things strangely lamentable In conclusion as Predictions are very ticklish and flatter the intention of those that promise themselves Empires and wonders they animate also the heart of those that have wicked undertakings and one ought never to permit any one to take consulations with Astrologers and Southsayers about the life and fortune of great men This Embassadour returning to the Court deceived his King giving him all hopes of a life and when he doubted least of death strangled him with a wet napkin paying himself with a Kingdome for a recompence of his wickednesse And although it was a disposition of God that Benhadad should be deprived of his Sceptre yet it failed not to be a crime in Hazael The last rancounter that Elisha had at Court was with King Joash who went to see him a little before his death and this Prince foreseeing that he would quickly depart out of this world said to him weeping that he was the Father the Chariot and the Conductour of his Kingdome and of all his People expressing that he was afflicted with the regret of his losse above all the things of the world But Elisha to comfort him made him take his bow and arrows and put his hand upon the Kings hand as to guide it after that he commanded the window to be set open towards Syria and caused the King to let flie an arrow which he accompanied with Propheticall words saying That it was the arrow of salvation whose feathers God himself did guide and that it was a messenger that prophesied to him that he should combate and destroy the Syrians enemies of his people After that he bad Joash again strike the ground with the point of a dart that he had in his hand which he did three times and the Prophet told him that he should carry away as many victories over the King of Syria but if he had stricken till seven times he should have ruined him even to the utmost consummation A little while after Elisha dyed with an high reputation of sanctity and an extreme regret of all the orders of the kingdome and was interred in a place where he raised afterward a dead man by the touching of his bones God rendring every thing wonderfull in him even to his very ashes It appears by all this discourse that this personage had not a Piety idle and fearfull amorous of its own small preservation without caring for the publick good but he had an heart filled with generous flames for the protection of his people and an incomparable security to shew to Princes the estate of their conscience He supported all the Realm by his prayers by his exhortations by his heroick actions and the losse of one such man was the overthrow of the prime Pillar of the State ISAIAH JEREMIAH ISAIAH THE PROPHET IEREMIAH THE PROPHET THe Prophet Isaiah hath engraved his spirit in his Book and cannot be commended more advantageously then by his works He that would make him great Elogies after so sublime a Prophecy would seem to intend to shew the Sun with a torch The things that are most excellent make themselves known by themselves as God and the Light and I may say all the words that this divine Personage hath left us are as many characters of his Immortality It is with a very just title that we put him amongst the holy Courtiers for he was born at the Court of Judea and some hold that he was the nephew of King Amasiah This birth so elevated and so many fair hopes which might flatter him to make him follow the course of the great ambitions of the world did no way shake the force of his spirit It was a soul consecrated to things Divine that sacrificed the first fires of his youth by the most pure flames of Angels Never did Prophet enter into that Ministery with more authority and disposition of heaven He had a sublime vision in which he saw the Majesty of God seated upon a Throne of Glory environ'd with Seraphims that were transported through the admiration of his greatnesse God in person created him his Prophet the Seraphim a messenger of the sovereign power purified his lips with a Carbuncle from whence proceeded a celestiall fire that if he had got any pollutions at the Court where tongues are so free they might be taken away by that sacred touch He offered himself to God with an heart full of chearfulnesse to carry his word before Kings and Subjects without fearing their menaces or their furies And he acquitted himself all his life time worthily of that duty and prophesied more then fourscore and ten years not ceasing to exhort to counsel to rebuke to instruct to comfort and to perform all the exercises of his charge His Eloquence is as elevated as his birth he speaks every where like a King with a speech firm lofty and thundering that passes all the inventions of man When he threatens and fore-tells the calamities of Nations it is so much lightning kindled by the breath of Seraphims that proceeds out of this Divine mouth that pierces the rocks that shakes the mountains that crushes the highest cedars into dust the nations into fear and the Kings into respect When he comforts they are rivers of milk and honey that flow from his tongue and spread themselves with incomparable sweetnesses into afflicted hearts When he describes the perfections and the reign of the Messias they are the amorous extasies of a spirit melted by the heats of Jesus that strikes burns and penetrates him more then seven hundred years before his Birth The holinesse of his Life marched alwayes hand in hand with his Doctrine He was a man dead to all worldly things that lived but by the raptures of his deified spirit He loved singularly the poor and comforted them in all their necessities He spake to Kings and reproved their sins with an heroick constancy worthy of his Bloud and Ministery At the same time as Romulus began the Court of Rome Isaiah saw that of Judea where he experimented great changes and strange diversities according to the revolutions of humane things He passed his youth under his uncle Amasiah who