circumstances of his crime Behold you not saith he a bruitish stupiditie to conspire against your father having as yet the bloud of your brothers before your eyes and all the assurances of the scepter in your hands Needs must you perpetrate a parricide to make your self possessour of a Crown which was acquired for you by so solemn and authentical a Testament Look you after nothing but the bloud of your father to set a seal upon it yea of a father whose life is so dear to all bonest men and of nature so indulgent to love his children that have never so little merit An ingratitude able to make Heaven blush and earth tremble under your feet An ingratitude worthy that all the elements should conspire to punish it This man ceased not to discharge against him words of fire with a masculine eloquence and the miserable Antipater prostrated himself on the ground and prayed God to do a miracle in favour of him to make manifest his innocency since he found himself so oppressed by the malice of men It is wonder saith the Historian that those who during their life have believed no God would yet acknowledge him at their death This man lived as if there were neither Heaven God nor Angels and now seeing himself in the horrours of death prayed the Divinity to excuse his crime Varus saith unto him My friend expect not extraordinarie signs from Heaven in your favour but if you have any good reasons boldly produce them The King your father desireth nothing more than your justification Thereupon he stood confounded like a lost man Varus taking the poison that had been before represented to the Councel caused it to be given to an offender already condemned who instantly died and all the assembly arose as it is said with manifest condemnation of Antipater His father esteeming him absolutely convicted required of him his complices he onely named Antiphilus who brought the poison saying this wicked man was cause of all his unhappiness It was a great chance Herod at that time had not caused the sentence of death to be executed upon him but according to his ordinary proceeding he resolveth to inform Caesar of all that had passed and to send him the whole process formally drawn to order all at his pleasure In the mean time Antipater is streightly imprisoned expecting hourly as a miserable victim the stroke of death Herod at that time was about seventy years of age Horrible state of Herod in his lattâ—r days and already felt through imbecillity of body the approach of the last hour It was a very hard morsel for him to digest Never man better loved this present life Very freely would he have forsaken his part of the next world eternally to enjoy this though he in effect was therein most unhappy Towards the end of his days he grew so harsh so wayward then so collerick and furious that his houshold servants knew not how to come about him they handled him in his Palace as an old Lion chained with the fetters of an incurable malady He perswaded himself he was hated of all the world and was therein no whit deceived as having given too great occasion thereof The people almost forgot their duty with impatience and could no longer endure him As soon as his sickness was bruited abroad Judas The golden Eagle thrown down and Matthias the principal Doctours of the Jewish Law who had the youth at command perswaded the most valiant of their sect to undergo a bold adventure which was that Herod having re-edified and adorned the Temple of Jerusalem and as he had always shewed himself for the accommodation of his own estate to be an Idolater of Caesars fortune to set upon the principal gate the Romane Eagle all glittering in gold This much offended the sight of the Jews who could not endure any should place portraictures of men or beasts or any other figures in their Temples so much they abhorred such monsters which their fathers had seen adored in Aegypt Behold why this Judas and Matthias who were the chief thinking the sickness of Herod would help them began earnestly to exhort the most valiant of the young men who every day frequented their houses to take in hand the quarrel of God according to the spirit of their Ancestours and to beat down this abomination which they had fixed upon their Temple That the peril was not now so great Herod having enough to do to wrastle with his own pain but if it should happen they lost their lives to die in so glorious an act was to be buried in the midst of palms and triumphs There needed no more to encourage the youth Behold a troup of the most adventurous came forth about the midst of the day armed with axes and hatchets who climbed to the top of the Temple and hewed in pieces the Eagles in the sight of the whole world Judas and Matthias being there present and serving for trumpets in this exploit The noise hereof instantly came to the Palace and the Captain of the Guard ran thither with the most resolute souldiers He much feared some further plot and that this defacing of the Eagle might prove a preamble to some greater sedition But at the first as he began to charge the people retired which the more encouraged him for pursuit Fourty young men of those who had done the feat were taken in the place Judas and Matthias who accompanied them deeming it a thing unworthy to flie away and that at the least they ought to follow them in peril whom they had brought into danger Being presented to Herod and demanded from whence this boldness proceeded they freely answered Their plot had been fully agreed upon among themselves and if it were to do again they would be in readiness to put it in execution in regard they were more bound to Moses than Herod Herod amazed at this resolution and fearing greater commotions caused them to be secretly conveyed to Jerico whither himself after though crazy was carried and assembling the principal spake to them out of his litter making a long narration of the good offices he had done in favour of the whole Nation of the Temple he had built for them of the ornaments with which he had enriched it adding he had done in few years what their Asmonean Kings could not perform in six-score And for recompence of his piety at noon day they had hewed down with notable boldness a holy gift which he had raised in the Temple wherein God was more interessed than himself for which he required a reason These now fearing any further to incense him declined the danger and put him upon their companions leaving them to the pleasure of the King At that time the High-priesthood is taken from Matthias and another Matthias who was held to have been the authour of the sedition burned alive that night with his companions at which time an eclipse of the moon was seen that made this spectacle
Nero who by Anicetus the same man who before killed his mother did raise a horrible calumny against the honour of his wife and caused this instrument of the devil to affirm that he had played with the Empresse on which he caused her to be banished and poor Octavia as a guilty person did suffer under that wicked sentence and was banished into the Isle of Pandaluria and because Poppea could not sleep in quiet with Nero as long as Octavia was alive he filled up his cruelty and by a most unworthy death he sacrificed her to the appetite of that most bold woman whom afterwards he killed with a spum of his foot on the end of his life and of his Empire My pen is weary to describe so many horrours and doth go over them as on so many burning coals but my Reader it is to represent unto you that this pernicious caitiste causing the poyson of his evill actions to diffuse it self into the veins of all the city of Rome The world was in its heighth of iniquity when S. Paul and Seneca meeting together at one time did endeavour to cure the maladies of this wicked Court the one by Philosophy the other by the Gospel Behold here the manners learning abilities and the successe both of the one and of the other Who hath not Seneca in veneration a good Authour Johannes Sarisburiensis saith hath not the understanding of a reasonable man He is known by all knowing men in his Writings and mis-known by some in his Manners and his Life Suillius a Roman Advocate accused for corruption and banished by the counsell of Seneca at what time he was imployed in the government of Affairs did write a defaming Book against that great From whence proceeded the calumnies against Seneca personage which two Greek Historians but men of small judgement Dion and Xiphiline have followed and in many things have blamed him with as much passion as impertinence This Opinion hath infected divers spirits who either for want of capacity or application do discourse unto us of Seneca as of a man quite contrary to his Books which hath made me diligently to examine his Life to take away the abuse and to give you an Idaea of that puissant Genius with as much clearnesse as sincerity Know then that he was a Roman by his Extract His birth and Bloud He was born at Corduba a city in Spain which was then under the Empire of Rome and full of Italians who being born almost in all the parts of the world were yet born within the Circle of their Empire His father was of an ordinary family a Gentleman of no great account removed from the observation of the world and as farre from command as from ambition addicted above all things to the study of Eloquence reasonably learned but of an admirable memory for having but once heard them he would readily rehearse two thousand names and two hundred verses His mother was named Helvia one of the most beautifull women in the Empire full of understanding and judgement of a high virtue and a rare modesty she had some knowledge in letters and an extraordinary capacity to increase that knowledge if time and custome had given her leave to take an advantage of it His elder brother was called Novatus or Gallion and had a great command in the Empire His younger brother was named Mela a man farre from ambition who lived in the house and studied Eloquence with his Father who in that regard did preferre him in his own judgement above his brothers But Seneca was nourished and advanced in Rome His Education and Spirit in the time of Augustus Cesar he received his first elements of learning under the Discipline of his father and afterwards studied Philosophy under Attalus and Socion In his first years he made the vigour of his Spirit the force of Eloquence and the abundance of Learning to appear so fully in him that he was admired by the most knowing men But that great spirit did by degrees consume his body which was lean and thin and troubled with defluxions and the ptisick which would have brought him to his grave if the cruelty of Nero had not prevented it He was obliged to make an Oration in publick before The fury of Caligula against him Caligula the Emperour concerning which that monster in nature who could not endure any thing that was great and praisefull and by a malignity of manners envied all professours of Learning did pronounce aloud that he had too much spirit and that they must kill him which had presently been put in execution if one of the Mistresses of the Emperour who knew Seneca and favoured him for his Eloquence had not perswaded him that he was not worth killing a lean poor fellow and one whom death would suddenly of it self take away from the world Howbeit he lived many years afterwards and increased in knowledge as in age and as much in Eloquence as in them both attending a more favourable time to make a manifestation of it Claudius succeeded the Emperour Caligula who was not a man for Seneca and though he was indued with extraordinary qualities for a Courtier yet the favour of the times did not much smile upon them His clear spirit and his brave works made him to be known in the house of Germanicus a Prince of the Bloud who was poysoned in the flower of his age and left behind him children of great consideration namely two Princesses who made themselves diversly talked of in Rome the one was Julia the other Agrippina the mother of Nero. This Julia took an affection to Seneca being much pleased with the beauty Dion doth distinguish them in his 9. Book and Suetonius chap. 29. of his spirit and the grace of his discourse He daily frequented the house of Germanicus being no lesse in discretion then in favour and wisely judged that these two high-born Princesses might one day contribute to the making of his fortunes But the Court is an uncertain sea where sometime a tempest doth arise when a calm is expected The favour of Julia in the stead of advancing Seneca did suppresse him and did almost overwhelm him without any hope of rising again although in the end it was in effect the cause of all his reputation It came to passe that Messalina the wife to the Emperour Claudius the most insatiable woman in her lusts that Nature ever produced did conceive an enraged hatred against the house of Germanicus and especially against the Princesse Julia because she was highly esteemed for her rare beauty and the high spirit of Messalina could not endure that any Lady should be praised at Court for her beauty but her self Besides she perceived that her husband whom she absolutely governed did make very much of that young Princesse she therefore caused her to be falsly accused for prostituting her honour and procured her to be banished the Court. An inquiry was made after those who
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
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
do you call breed them well Behold another vice Some offend through negligence others with too much indulgence You term well-breeding the child to cramme him up to the throat and let him have all he asketh Senseless creature see you not first you do a great injury to God He hath trusted a child in your hand to be bred like a man and you have made a lump of flesh of it a bears whelp and think there is nothing to be done but to lick it that it may grow Secondly it is a base thing to say the Sovereign Creatour having made you a Father Master Directour and Governour over this infant you should forget the character God hath engraven on your face and make your self a slave of a gluttenous belly and an irregular concupiscence Besides you put spurs to his vices to make him run headlong into the precipice you nooze haulters to strangle him you light torches to consume him For what good can be hoped nay what evil not expected from a child bred up in pride and effeminacy Hear Disentienda sunt deliciae quarum mollitie fluxu fidei virtus effeminari solet Tertul. de cultu foemin Tertullian speak Take away the curiosities and superfluities It is not the life of a Christian He hath renounced faith who breedeth his children in riot Is it not a goodly thing to see Hercules spin silk with those hands which were made to vanquish monsters Know God hath put us into the world to hew monsters more pernicious than hydraes or Cerberus and not to make coronets of roses You cannot breed your children in voluptuousness and not thereby render their souls soft and effeminate which quite extinguisheth the flame of a generous spirit and yet you complain that coming to the degrees of maturity they are fit for nothing but to live lazily and pick quarrels But it is no whit to be wondered at It is the tincture you gave them from their most tender years You have made them al their life time to dance to the tune of their own proper wills light fond and childish and now you would put the bridle over their necks and make them lead a serious life Know you not what happened to the horses of the Sybarites an effeminate kind of people who were so intoxicated and addicted to dances and balls that not so much as their horses but learnt to dance In the mean time their enemies awakened them and so closely pursued them that they were enforced to take arms for the defence of their lives They drew into the field a brave squadron of Cavalry the flower and strength of the Citie but a fidler seeing them approch mounted on these dancing horses promised their Adversaries to deliver them into their hands whilest they were dancing And instantly he began to strike up his violin and the horses to bestir themselves in dancing to break all their ranks and put the Army into disorder which shame fully made them become a prey to their enemies Behold O indulgent parents what happeneth to your children You have always bred them in sottishness sports and liberty the fatal plagues of youth when they must come to combate to undertake some brave affair some thing important for the good of their Countrey for the honour of your house for the advancement of themselves they stand eclipsed Nay perhaps it might be tollerable to behold them benummed stupified in worldly affairs but they are deaf blind and dumb in matters concerning God so that whilest you seek to make great and powerfull Lords of them you ere aware have drawn the malediction Genes 3. 14. Supra pectus tuum ventrem tuum gradieris 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 70. Interpr of the serpent upon them and made them creep on their bellies as much as to say according to the interpretation of some Fathers to spend their thoughts study and affection upon the care and education of the body to the prejudice of the soul Yet you would have those creatures to be instructed in the law of God How can it be Do you not well know that Moses seeing the Israelites dance with full Exod. 32. Sciebat Dei sermonem non posse audire temulentos bellies about the golden calf brake the tables of the Law If you demand the reason S. Hierom will tell you he knew the Law of God was not for sporters dancers and drunkards and that in the Kingdom of intemperance an eclipse ensues not onely of the Divine law but of nature also I come to the second point which is instruction so much recommended in Scripture If you have Filii tibi sunt erudi illos cura illos à pueritiâ illorum Prov. 7. children saith the Wiseman instruct them and take great care of them from their childhood You must think your children be as Temples of God recommended unto you from the hand of God himself It is an intollerable thing to have good cooks good lacheys good grooms good horse-boys to serve the belly and stable and a father who sends his son to school many times ignorant whether the Master be black or white good or bad mild or harsh religious or wicked If kine or hogs are to be driven into the fields one is sought out who knows the business but to trayn up a child of a good family an idle fellow many times is trusted who hath in him no talent at all but malice and ignorance Fathers and Mothers fear you not God will say unto you My house is forsaken I freed it from evil spirits I withdrew it from the power of devils I purged decked and adorned it I put it into your protection I consigned it into your hands what have you done with it Why have you polluted it and why suffer you it still to lie drenched in ordure You have put the lamb into the wolfs keeping you have given the victim to the slaughter-man you are the cause of his unhappiness you have twisted the coard of his ruine so soon almost as the web of his life Fathers and mothers do well if they become as great Saints as are the Hermits of the desert but if they neglect their child they render themselves guiltie before God of one of the greatest injustices in the world The Scripture in praising the great Patriarch Noe Noë vir justus perfectus in generationibus suis doth not onely say he was a good man in his own person but in his whole race so far as his power extended As much honour and glory as it is to leave a good Citizen to the Common-wealth so much dishonour and infamy it is to afford it ungracious wretches to trouble its repose dis-unite peace and embroyl affairs They are such of whom the Scripture speaketh They shall be nayls in your eyes and launces in Erunt vobis clavi in oculis lâ—nceae in lateribus adversabuntur vobis in terrâ— habitationis vestrae Num. 31. your sides
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
of water God made his birth and education singularly to Extraction of Theodosius contribute to the sanctity of his life He was descended from Trajan called the good Emperour by supereminence of worth his Grand-father was the great Theodosius a man who in wariness had no superiour that preceded him and in piety no better second than his Grand-child The Emperour Arcadius was his father a most generous Prince who in the very beginning of the fifth Age to wit the year after the Nativity of our Saviour four hundred and one saw this infant rise as a bright star at that time when he ended the course of his life as the Poets feigned the Sun reareth himself from the bed of aged Tython to illustrate the world His nativity was foretold His birth foretold by the mouth of Saints his most tender infancy consecrated by the destruction of idols God at one and the same time putting him in the number of the living and in the rank of Protectours of the Church by a most remarkeable act of which behold the narration Saint Procopius an Hermit endowed with admirable Prophesie of S. Procopius sanctity illumined with the spirit of prophefie living in the Isle of Rhodes praying daily for the destruction of some remnants of idolatry which reigned in the Roman Empire when by good chance two holy Prelates Porphyrius and John the one Bishop of Gaza the other of Caesarea in Palestine sayling for that purpose to Constantinople went to lodge in the Hermitage of this holy man He having received them with all respect answerable to their qualities and entertained them according to the poverty of the Cell understanding they travelled to the capital Citie of the Eastern Empire of purpose to obtain an Edict from the Emperour absolutely to destroy the Temples of idols and bridle the insolencies of Pagans who stirred with so much the more boldness as the drouping faintness of the government of those times promised them impunity he was infinitly comforted to see so great personages undertake so worthy a work and God then prompting him these words he saith Courage Fathers the glory of this conquest is due to your pietie Go stoutly to Constantinople and acquaint the holy Bishop John Chrysostom with this design resolving to execute what he shall think fit For the rest know the Empress is nine moneths gone with child and that which is more she beareth an Emperour in her womb upon the mother and the son who is to be born depends the expedition of this affair They very glad of this prediction left the good Hermit Procopius and in ten days arrived at Constantinople where presently they visited S. John Chrysostom who received them with much respect and very great contentment The affair being put into deliberation the Bishop of Constantinople saw well that the Empress might therein much assist and that God ordinarily useth the pietie of women to advance the affairs of Religion Notwithstanding he durst not present these two Prelates to her fearing his recommendation might be prejudicial for he very lately had a sharp difference with the Empress It was Eudoxia a woman Eudoxia mother of Theodosius of a great spirit and who naturally loved virtue as milk in her infancy but she had a heart extreamly haughty and quickly would be offended if any thing of great consequence were undertaken against her authority Behold wherefore S. Chrysostom who was of no pleasing disposition as one who had a spirit alienated from ordinary complements sometimes towards those of his own coat reprehending her openly at many meetings in the point of glory wherein she most desired to be soothed raised her indignation to the clouds She was as yet in the height Her humour of her passion against him and therefore he judging it to no purpose for him to sollicite her caused the two Bishops to be presented by the means of one called Amantius an attendant of Eudoxia's chamber a very wise man and of great credit with his Lady She who knew her child-bed time at hand gave very free access to religious men as hoping all good success by help of their devotions and seeing these two Bishops Bishops treat with the Empress were very particularly recommended to her by Amantius in quality of persons endowed with a very eminent sanctity she was unsatisfied till she had seen them and having most courteously saluted them excusing her bigness with child to have hindered her passage to the door of their reception according to the usual practice towards persons of their worth she forbear not most affectionately to conjure them to employ their most fervent prayers to obtain of God a happy delivery for her The holy Bishops after they had wished her the child-birth of Sarah of Rebecca and Saint Elizabeth began to declare the cause of their voyage unfolding in very express terms the indignity of this Idolatrie the insolency of Pagans the contempt of things sacred the oppression of people the lamentable mischief it would be to behold the worshipping of idols still to flourish which to abolish the Saviour of the world had so much sweat so much wept and shed so much bloud and to see it predominate as it were in the eyes of a most magnificent Emperour and a most religious Empress who had all the means to extirpate it That in such a field the palms of eternal glory should be gathered and that better they could secure their estate than by destroying the work of Satan to erect the tropheys of Jesus Eudoxia taketh fire being thereto otherwise well Zeal of Eudoxia enough disposed and promiseth to recommend the business to the Emperour to obtain the dispatches they required for their better contentment The Bishops retired expecting the effect of this promise The Ladie faileth not to offer her requests and strike the stroke with her best dexteritie But Court affairs proceed not always on the same feet which the desires of the zealous move upon she findeth the Councel engaged in these retardations who think it to no purpose to roul such a stone That idolatrie should Judgement of Arcadius his Councel be left to bury it self and at leisure dress its own funerals That the means to ruin it is to remove the heads of the sect from all kind of honours and publick dignities to forbid the exercise of superstition and Conventicles which they make in private houses to subdue Idolaters and burn them as it is said with a soft fire That the demolishment which should be made of those great Temples of Idols which yet remained would make much noise and yield little fruit that this might thrust rebellious spirits into manifest despair and in a word it was feared it might be a means to turn the coyn of the Emperours coffers another way who drew a good round revenue from the Citie of Gaza which even at that time was in hand The consideration of interest which ever holdeth as Porphyrius unfoldeth the
removed from Councel and manage of affairs deprived of the Imperial bed abandoned by all those who before adored her she was dead to the evil life and onely survived to see her own funerals It was thought Pulcheria who was desirous to make a sequestration fearing lest her Departure of Eudoxia presence might again enkindle the fire covered under ashes in the Emperours heart to possess it to the prejudice of affairs caused the counsel of undertaking the voyage of the holy land to be suggested to her under-hand But it is more credible far the good Empress took this resolution upon her own motion for the reason I will deliver A devout Roman Ladie of a noble house named Melania who filled the deserts Cities Provinces and Empires with her fame passing into Palestine there to wear out the rest of her days in peace went by Constantinople and was received at the Emperours Court where seeing Eudoxia endowed with an admirable spirit but yet untrained to the sweetness of things spiritual she endeavoured to give her a tast The Empress who at that time was in the prosperities and delights of a flourishing Court thought she should handle devotion as a Captain Philosophie and it was enough to tast it outwardly But when this sad accident like the steel began to strike on the flint it made the sparkles flie out in good earnest She was on fire to forsake the Court where she no longer was what she had been she sighed after those places of the holy land as the thirsty Hart for the streams of a fountain I well believe she took counsel at that time of Chrysaphius a powerfull Eunuch who had governed Theodosius from his infancy and was much reputed in Court closely countermyning the over-much authority which Pulcheria had according to his opinion in affairs but he took good heed openly to affront her satisfying himself to act his part by Eudoxia according to directions she gave him This man very understanding in businesses found it was to good purpose to retire back to come on the better that it was necessary the Empress should give way for a time and that her absence would make her the more desired and that he in the mean space would do all good offices for her with the Emperour and act his part in time and place Conclusions of the voyage are made leave was not hard to be obtained of the Emperour seeing his instrument Pulcheria was thereunto wholly disposed When it came to a separation which was a thing very sensible in minds so long time and with such ardour mutually loving the good Eudoxia could not refrain to say to her husband with tears in her eyes SACRED MAjESTY I am upon terms to see you no more in this world for which cause it is fit I discharge my Conscience Behold me ready to depart not onely from the Court but this life if you so ordain I sorrow not for greatness nor delights I have ever thought the prosperitie of the world was a current of fresh water which looketh not back on any thing and hasteneth to pour it self into the salt sea I onely grieve that having brought to your Court two inestimable Jewels virginity and the reputation of a child of honour the one which I ought rather to have given to God I dedicated to your bed and the other is taken from me by your suspition grounded upon a sudden surprizal of a word spoken from a heart perplexed to see you troubled You have caused the Prince Paulinus to be put to death and in doing this you have not bereft me of a lover but your self of a good and faithfull servant and God grant the voice of bloud accuse you not before the tribunal of the Sovereign Judge I hope God who is the Protectour of innocents wil one day take my cause in hand and when truth shall give light through your suspitions you at least will render me the honour which I ever onely have sought to be conveyed into the ashes of my tomb Theodosius knew not how to answer her but with the moist dew of his eyes which began to do the office of his lips a few such words were enough to turn his soul topsie-turvie Pulcheria readily made the stop saying that which was past could not be recalled over which God giveth us no other power but of forgetfulness That the Empress might in good time go to satisfie her devotion and that were she herself free from the bondage of affairs it would be one of her greatest contentments to bear her company Thus Eudoxia departed travelling directly to Jerusalem Voyage of Eudoxia into Palestine and with her the grace and alacrity of Court All Constantinople was filled with sadness at which time the plains of Palestine were already comforted with the first rays of this bright day-break Wheresoever she passed the people ran thither by heaps to behold her she was received with much applause with eloquent orations and all demonstrations of hearts affections and particularly her approach was much celebrated in the Citie of Antioch For it is said the Senate going out to receive her she replied at an instant as she was sitting in her golden Caroch to the Oration pronounced before her and undertook to praise this famous Citie with so much grace and judgement that the principal and most eminent of the Citie ravished with such courtesie dedicated two statues to her the one of gold in the Senate-house as to the Empress the other of brass in their Library as to the tenth Muse Entring into Jerusalem she was received as an Angel from Heaven but above all the Clergie rejoyced at the abode she meant to make there well knowing the Church should thence derive great succours in its necessities Some perswaded her David had prophesied she should re-edifie the walls of Jerusalem because in the fifteenth Psalm where these words are read In bonâ voluntate tuâ aedificentur muri Jerusalem the Septuagint have translated in 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 The interpretation was not amiss although it were not literal it had the effect For the pious Empress in process of time made many most worthy reparations There she began to live as in another world she seemed to herself to have cast from her shoulders the burden of a huge mountain she now breathed a far other air than that of Court she had another tast of things divine All her study was to pray meditate and hear exhortations and spiritual conferences to read and learn holy Scripture to sow charities that she might reap merits to visit the Cells of Anchorets to see how their garments and girdles were made to observe their manner of living to multiply Monasteries to cloath Virgins to heap up reliques together and such like things Theodosius understanding her carriage and the Chrysaphius laboureth the return of the Empress in the mean time seeking his own ends good entertainment she had every where thought it was the work of God who favoured
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
tractable with ease to dispose it self to inclinations of honesty Behold these two principal heads whereon this excellent nature of an inestimable price is established And first forasmuch as concerneth the tranquility of passions it is undoubted that every man being composed of four elements by consequence draweth along four roots of all the motions thereof which are Love Fear Pleasure Sorrow There is not a man which feeleth not some touch But as every sea hath his winds though Mariners observe that some are more tossed than others so though every soul have its passions we must confess there be some of them are mildly disposed and others more roughly distempered You see men who from their most tender age tast of strange extravagancies choller harshness rage despight which maketh them to be of a spirit fantastical uncivil and obstinate against which you must ever fight with an armed hand Others from their cradles are endued with a peaceable soul as a sea in the time that Halcyons build their nests on the trembling agitation of waters they have inclinations to virtue wholly Angelical in such sort that they seem to be as it were conveyed therein as fishes in their element From this repose from passions ariseth the second condition of good nature that is docibleness of spirit the beginning of education and happiness of life For as Divines require in those who receive faith a certain Religious affection to divine things discharged and purified from all spirit of contradiction so in matter of moral virtue and piety we stand in need of a tractable soul which fixeth it self on good instructions as the ivie cleaveth to trees and pillars Go not then about when you make choice of an Ecclesiastical man to tender some Esau some spirit of the field who is onely pleased with arms and slaughter of beasts Take rather a Jacob under the pavilions a sweet and temperate spirit that is wholly disposed to the sound of virtues But you Noble Spirits who have met with this excellent Ezech. 28. Omnis lapis pretiosus operimentum tuum foramina in die quâ conditus es preparata sunt nature I may speak the words of the Prophet unto you God hath given you a soul wholly covered with precious stones enriched with gifts and admirable talents he hath enchased it in a body endowed with a singular temperature as a diamond set in the head of a ring Much hath he given you and therefore much requireth at your hands The seventh SECTION Of Virtues requisite in the carriage of a Prelate The first is Wisdom DO you demand what God requireth from you I answer five principal virtues which were very wel represented in the ephod of the High-Priest of the old law as S. Gregorie the great (a) (a) (a) Greg. de Pastor p. 2. cap. 3. hath well observed This ephod was a certain mantle that covered the shoulders composed of four colours of hyacinth purple white and scarlet the whole wrought all over with threeds of gold enterlaced with curious work-manship Why this dressing why these colours To teach you seasonably to bear on your shoulders the conditions requisite to your profession The hyacinth or skie-colour signifieth the first thing you ought to do is to flie as the plague of virtues from these travantly and unworthy spirits who have no other object in the possession of the goods of the Church but flesh-pots and play you are to frame for your selves a soul totally noble wholly elate meerly celestial which conceiveth strong resolutions one day to dedicate it self to God not in a mercinary manner but with the utmost endeavour of its power Think not (b) (b) (b) Mediocre nè putes quod tibi commissum est Primùm ut alta Dei videas quod est sapientiae Deinde ut excubias pro populo Dei deferas quod est justitiae castra defendas tabernacula tucaris quod est fortitudinis Teipsum continentem ac sobrium praestes quod est temperantiae Amb. de Oâ—â—ic lib. 1. saith S. Ambrose that being called to an Ecclesiastical state you have a slight commission from God Wisdom requireth you consider the mysteries of Heaven and that you be highly raised above the ordinary strain Justice willeth you to stand centinel for the people who expect aid from your prayers Strength desireth you to defend the Tabernacle and Camp of the God of Hosts Temperance ordaineth you live with singular sobriety and continency You are said Saint Isidore of Damieta (c) (c) (c) Isido Polusiota lib. 3. ep 2 placed between divine and humane nature to honour the one with your sacrifices and edifie the other by your examples A Priest (d) (d) (d) Sacerdos debet esse Christi alumnus à peccatis segregatusrector non raptor speculator non spiculator dispensator non dissipator pius in judicio justus in consilio devotus in Choro stabilis in Ecclesiâ sobrius in mensâ prudens in letitiâ purus in conscientiâ assiduus in oratione patiens in adversitate lenis in prosperitate dives in virtutibus expeditus in actibus sapiens in sermone verax in predicatione Alphons Torrez ought to be as a young child issued out of the school and bosom of the son of God even as an Angel to govern the Church not to despoil it to treat with God in prayer not to handle a sword He should be entire in his judgements just in his resolutions devout in the Quire firm in the Church sober at table prudent in recreations pure in conscience serious in prayer patient in adversity affable in prosperitie rich in virtues sage in words upright in preaching and free in all good actions Great S. Denis the dreopagite (e) (e) (e) S. Dionys ep 3. ad Demophilum addeth a notable sentence saying That he who most especially seeketh to transcend others in holy Orders ought most nearly approach to God in all sorts of virtue For which cause your education should not be in the ordinary way If you have brothers that are to be bred for the world let them live in the practice and fashions of the world O how unworthy are you of the hopes to which God calleth you if you envie them the favour of the house and of those I know not what kind of petty trifles of their own profession Your condition is much other if you follow that spirit which guideth you (f) (f) (f) Bern. l. 4. de consid c. 6. Vbi de comitatu Episcopi inter mitratos discurrere calamistratos non decet Heretofore Monasteries were the chief schools of Kings and the Great-ones of the earth to cause them to suck in virtue with the milk your abode should be in places where you have engaged your heart and your faith which best can prepare and manure you for the life you have chosen It is truly a scandal to your profession if you be ashamed to wear a habit proper for an Ecclesiastical man and blush at the
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
profession he spake these words unto them My holy daughters It is not yet three years since I undertook Excellent speeches to virgins this charge and you know from whence I was drawn and the small time given to dispose me to so weighty a burden notwihstanding I afford you the fruits of my tongue since I have learned more in your manners than in books The flowers which grow in my discourses come from your garden It is not precepts for Virgins but examples drawn from the life of Virgins Your manners have breathed a certain grace into my soul I may say that all that which my endeavour hath of good odour in it is derived from your prayers For who am I but a barren thorn But God who heretofore spake to Moses among thorns will now to day speak by my mouth His Sermons and books had so much effect that Virgins came from the utmost limits of Christendom to be veiled at Milan which S. Ambrose seeing he could not wonder enough that he perswaded virginity where he was not it not being in his power sufficiently to multiply it according to his desire in places where he resided (f) (f) (f) Hic tracie alibi persuadeo si ita est alibi tractemus ut vobis persuadeamus L. 1 de virginibus He caused the Bishop of Bologna to come unto him led on by the same spirit as himself to assist in this design of whom he one day said in full assembly (g) (g) (g) Adest piscator Bononiensis aptus ad hoc piscandi genus Da Domine pisces qui dedisti adjutores Behold the fisher of the Church of Bologna fit for this sort of fish Lord afford fish since you have given us coadiutours And considering that some murmuted at these his proceedings as if the world should instantly fail by this means he shewed in a most eloquent Sermon that no one had cause of complaint either married or unmarried the married because they had wives not virgins the unmarried because they should find sufficient and that the carnal who opposed virginity under pretext of multiplication resisted by this means the chastity of marriages where continency is oftentimes exercised even by necessity as for the rest we are not to believe the world will be ruined through virginity For admit it should fail it would ever be a matter more honourable for it to decay by virtue than concupiscence But it is so much otherwise said he that we should lay hold of that which we see by experience in the Churches of Africa and Alexandria where there are most virgins they have the greatest number of men This employment nothing lessened the assistances which he afforded for the instruction of those who lived in an ordinary course (h) (h) (h) Su perstitions and excesses taken away Above all he endeavoured to root heresies out of their hearts and certain customs of Gentilism which easily stole in by contagion into the houses of the faithfull Among other things there was a Pagan-guise much practised at Milan and other places of Christendom which was to celebrate the first day of the year with riots and disorders a matter much resenting the Bacchanals He so cut off this abuse by his great authority that of a day prophaned with so much sensuality he in few years made it among Christians a day of penance and fasting which for some space afterward was observed in the Church until such time as the memory of the superstitions of Gentilism was wholly extinct Others entertained this foolish belief that when the moon was eclipsed she suffered much through the persecution of ill Angels who then endeavoured to exile her and therefore they went out of their houses with many pans and cauldrons making a loud noise to dissolve as they said the design which evil spirits had against the Moon The sage Pastour made an express homily against this superstition wherein he much confounded those who were infected herewithal Moreover it being a custom very ancient and introduced by the Apostles to make in Churches which then were the houses of the faithfull Agapes that is to say bankets of charity in favour of the poor this by little and little was changed into liberties unworthy of Christianity For sensuality had got such ground that stifling charity in this action it rather seemed a sacrifice to the belly than an act of piety S. Ambrose abolished all these rites and cut off such abuses even in the least root that it was never seen again to sprout in the Church S. Augustine in cited by his example practised the like in Africa and afterward caused the decree to be inserted in the third Councel of Carthage In the proportion that he extirpated vice he planted solid virtues in the hearts of the faithfull whom he ordinarily entertained with these ensuing instructions counselling other Bishops to do the like (i) (i) (i) Puritie of intention First he sought in all places to form in minds a strong imagination of the presence of God unwilling that Christian virtues should be petty hypocrisies guided by the natural extent of humane respect but rather intentions wholly celestial and for that cause he said (k) (k) (k) Si quis solus est seipsion prae caeteris erubescat If any man be alone let him regard himself more than any other in the world (l) (l) (l) Covetousnes opposed Secondly seeing the inordinate desire of riches was a petty apostacy of faith and root of all disorders he very often did beat on this anvile labouring by all sort of good endeavours to withdraw hearts from the love of earth that he might raise them to Heaven Among other things you have these excellent words in the epistle to Constantius (m) (m) (m) Multaoneri moderata usui Viatores sumus vitae hujus multi anbulant sedopus est ut quis benè transeat Saj ienti nihil alienum nisi quod virtuti incongruwn Quocunque accesserint sua omnia Totus mundus possessio ejus est quoniam eo toto quasi suo utitur Ep. ad Constantium To enjoy much is to have a great burden Great riches are a vain ostentation the indifferent for use We are all Pilgrims in this life all the business is not in going perfection consisteth in a ready passage To what purpose do you so torment your self with the desire of boarding Be wise and you shall have sufficient A virtuous man thinks nothing is without him but sin Wheresoever he sets his foot he finds a kingdom All the world belongeth to him because he useth all the world as his own In the third instance he made sharp war against the ambitions and vanities of the time disposing minds as much as he could to Christian humility by this Maxim (n) (n) (n) Ambition Nihil interesse in quo statu quis se probabilem praestaret sed illum esse sinem bonorum ut quocumque quis statu probaretur
become powerfull in the minds of subjects by strong hand whereas such as are of race noble and illustrious cannot have so few other parts but that they may easily enter into hearts as into a house which the virtue of Ancestours hath beforehand wholly purchased for them And though this seem expedient in all places yet is it much more necessary in a State where is a great number of noble men and generous spirits and where every one thinks himself sufficient enough to perform that which another doth Presumption equalleth them all in ability at the least according to their imaginations were it not that the uncontrolable supereminencie of houses makes them yield to reason And although base nobility be very shamefull yet is it much more tolerable than a servile spirit which hath power in its hands without any moderation There are four things saith the Wise-man which cause earth-quakes here below A servant imperious Proverâ— 30. a rich fool a woman scornfull when she is married and a maid-servant become the heir of her Mistress that is saith he the fourth thing which the world cannot endure Education maketh manners and every one is readily that which he hath learned in youth were it not that through a great strength of courage ill inclinations are resisted Boetius who in his excellent Nobility was endowed with so sweet a temper of spirit seemed to be created of God to govern men On the other part his family which was rich and powerfull gave also much increase to his command as that which alienated him from the corruptions that easily fasten on a necessitous fortune A man who feareth poverty is ever to be feared and a rich innocent cannot meet with any thing more dangerous than a hungry judge Saint Thomas hath said very well that a poverty Lib. 4. cap. 15. de rogim Princip virtuous and free from covetousness is an admirable quality for a States-man but where shall we now adays find such a poverty in a time when riot is so exorbitant that the greatest houses are therewith impeached The innocent riches of our great Consul fell out to be much to the purpose so that they might be employed for aid of the poor in a time which happened in one of the sickliest Ages of the world ruined by so many incursions of Barbarians not naming the other scourges which then fought against the sins of men The second SECTION The eminent wisdom and learning of Boetius EXperience the wisest Mistress of the world hath sometimes caused the saying of Plato to be questioned who thought Common-wealths happy when they fell into the hands of Philosophers or of men who sought to become Philosophers For in effect it is observed that those so knowing men meet not always with the bent of common understanding having their spirits more estranged from civil life They please themselves with great Ideaes as if they conversed in the Common-wealth of Plato with demy-gods not at all yielding to infirmities of nature And although they use some endeavour to render themselves conversable yet doth the sweetness of repose inebriate and withdraw them from affairs but if they force themselves to attend them noise amazeth them diversitie of humours not always suitable to their understanding distasteth them labour somewhat painfull overwhelmeth them and the heap of so many incident occasions confoundeth them Adde hereunto that there is much malice in the manners of men not found in books and that their actions being very innocent when they come to measure others by their own level they find themselves deceived Besides the sedentary and retired life spent in the entertainment of their books rendereth them very timorous and softeneth their brow which should always be as it were of brass to endure the shock of strong impudencies which may insinuate themselves into the corruptions of the times This may be confirmed by the example of Theodates King of the Goths who with all the Philosophy of Plato wherein he was exceedingly studious very ill mannaged his affairs As also by Michael the Emperour surnamed of the Grecians Parapanicius as who would say The Schollar for he perpetually had table-books and pens in his hand to compose Orations Verses and Histories resigning the whole government of his affairs to an Eunuch named Nicephorus who through his insatiable avarice drew much hatred upon the head of this Emperour I verily affirm if you take learning in these excesses one may very well say that it would not onely become unprofitable but also dangerous to principality It is not my intention to prove learned men are capable of the mannage of great affairs for the onely consideration of the advantage they have in letters for then Governours of Provinces were to be taken out of the Regencies of schools but I say that sciences well mannaged adde a marvellous lustre to one in government For first they vindicate him from stupidity and a savage life which maketh a man without sight or knowledge of virtue to be in a State as was Poliphemus made blind by Ulysses in his den Besides they cleanse refine and store the soul made to know great and divine lights Afterwards they open the understanding by the reading of so many excellent books and even unloose the tongue which is an instrument very necessary to mannage hearts Finally they make a man more mild civil and courteous and I could say also more awfull and worthy of credit For if some unhappy Princes were produced who being unfurnished of other talents have made ill use of letters by abusing them through want of judgement as one may all the best things in the world this nothing at all in substance lesseneth the truth of our proposition since we may oppose against them a large list of Law-makers Princes and Governours who have exceedingly well made use of the knowledge of learning For if we make account of the policie of God which is ever the most assured know we not that he having chosen Moses to constitute him the Governour of so great a State was willing he might have a good tast of all the sciences then in request among the Aegyptians And Philo saith that he there learned Arithmetick Geometrie Musick and all the greatest secrets of their Philosophie contained in their Hieroglyphicks Know we not that Solomon had a heart as large as the sea wherein God lodged so many knowledges of things both divine and humane that he penetrated whatsoever the understanding of man enlightened with rays from God might comprehend Are we so little versed in History that we cannot reckon up the names of all the greatest Princes who have been very learned as Alexander Julius Caesar Augustus Adrian Antoninus Constantine Theodosius Gratian Charlemaigne Alphonsus yea even Solyman the great Turk What a could of witnesses should we have did we now collect all the names and histories of learned States-men For if letters give ornament to such as are wholly eminent in military profession by a much stronger
with the goods which God hath given us If men be ungrateful he will suffer us to reap reward even from his hands A covetous soul which in the prosperity of its affairs and superabundance of riches heareth not the clamours of the needy is as the hen which is said to be deaf in summer is like a bottle full of silver which affordeth nothing till it be broken is a mil-wheel which much laboureth and gaineth nothing a hog which never doth good but at his death It hath always folly for guid servitude for dowry and misery for recompence In the eighth are those which are said to be composed Inveni amarirem morte mulierâ—m Eccles 7. of a certain mixture of powders very different which causeth them to be of humours light giddy fantastical in such manner that they daily make an infinite number of metamorphoses and one knoweth not in what mould they must be cast to put them into a state of consistence You may there observe a spirit which is perpetually upon change which ceaseth not to jump from desire to desire like a bird from branch to branch A spirit which will and will not which saith and unsaith doth and undoeth and which continually hindereth it self in its thoughts All that which you think to be very firmly settled with such kind of persons is tied with a sliding knot and there needeth but the turn of a hand to overthrow what is thought to be best established One thing they retain very constantly in such an ebbe and floud of inconstancies which is obstinately to fix themselves upon their own opinions and no more to give way to reason than rocks to waves It is verily one of the greatest vices which may be in a woman as being the seminary of all disorders that grow in houses I have ever learned from Antiquity that the noblest Spirits are those which give good counsels and that such as willingly hearken unto them come nearest joyn with them in a laudable degree of goodness But such as neither can give good advise nor receive it from others are the very worst natures of the world Preserve your selves Maidens from this imperfection which is the blemish of a noble courage the worm of concord the poison of life the inseparable companion of folly Make it not your trophey to be refractory against the advises and remonstrances of those to whom nature justice and reason hath subjected us otherwise you would travel much and get nothing in recompence but the perfection of a mule I set in the ninth place maids who are of the nature Mulier compta Eccles 9. of those proud kind of creatures as of peacocks or little dogs which are glutted with curiosities whilest so many poor people die for hunger in the streets This order is now adays much spread over the world for it is filled with nice women who seem to be born for nought else but to make it appear how high the desires of exorbitant nature may mount when a great fortune supporteth them Many little fisking ghossips are seeÌ„ who are made up like puppits so curiously bred that they seem to be fed with potable gold between cotten and silk Those are the divinities of fathers and mothers who raise rain and fair weather in their houses at the onely aspect of their countenances The joy and sadness of the whole family waiteth on the condition of their humours they must no more be offended than those stars which are thought to send tempests upon such as have not saluted them What may one hope from a soul altogether drenched in these delicacies Follies attend the increase of age and multiply by infinit degrees Reason is trampled under foot and passion armed with a great power makes it self to be carried on the shoulders of men Desires are without measure wills without bridle passion without moderation and sensuality without resistance bravery tattle impertinent babble toyishness love afford no passage to truth and if there be any devotion it is altogether silken so coy and curious it is in the choice of persons Sacraments are good if they be not tied to hands where vanity seeketh its interests yea pride is planted upon the hair-cloth of penance and if God would chastise such creatures to their liking he must tie up his rods with silk or else they never would receive correction When they leave their parents to be delivered to husbands they go to change power and not nature A husband is ever uncivil according to their saying if they have not permission to do any thing And as Ptolom Almag 2. it is said the moon never agreeth in qualities with the sun but when she hath eclypsed him so they find not any concord in marriage but in the diminution of his authority whom God hath given them to be their head They carry along with their portion all the vices of their childhood which oftentimes accompany them even to the grave They have no eyes to see adversity no nor ears to hear it the miseries of the poor touch them so little as if they were made of marble and the care of their family shall never interrupt their pleasures What a life is it to behold a woman who although she rise in a time when the sun is near noon-tide notwithstanding as if she feared the vapours of the serain she is armed before she come out of her bed with a restorative from the kitchin to keep her colour the more fresh From that time she causeth her self to be attired and clothed like an Idol by three or four servants who have more ado to preserve her beauty than ever had the Vestals of Rome to maintain the sacred fire One presenteth her with red another with white one holds a looking-glass and another dares not tell her that the time of Mass is already past whilest my Lady taketh her head-dressings yet must the Canons of the Church be broken as easily as a glass to obey the humours of a woman and to celebrate then when it is to be doubted whether the sun begin not to bend already to his setting Mass is past over with making sowr faces and looking scornfull with a good grace with some slight ceremonies of devotion which go no further than the outward parts There it is where resolutions are made of entertainments of time to be chosen for the rest of the day Then follow the visits of child-bed women gaddings and coachings dancings and bankets where the prattle is so loud that a few women could suffice to make the noise of a mil. They much love to hear discourse upon all kind of affairs They that have not their spirits so subtile entertain themselves upon trifles and slight complements which they have studied for the space of ten years Others who can shew they have read a great quantity of love-pamphlets or such like would seem of ability so far as to give law to Poets and writers who have not this kind of relish
Heirs of this Royal Line to death to satisfie his ambition and content his tyranny Who dictated to the Prophet Daniel (a) (a) (a) Dan. 9. 26. that after the Edict of King Artaxerxes granted in favour of the re-establishment of the Temple there should be seventy weeks to the birth of Christ that is to say the space of 490. years which was found true by calculation of the best Historians Who made the Prophet Aggeus speak with this thundering majesty Agg. 2. and worthy the lips of the God of Hosts WITHIN A SHORT TIME I WILL MOVE HEAVEN EARTH AND SEA THE DESIRED BY AL NATIONS OF THE WORLD SHAL COME AND I WIL REPLENISH THIS HOUSE WITH GLORY Was it not the same Spirit which afterward wrought those great mysteries we see who then shewed them to his faithfull servants It is he who guided the pen of Isaiah when he proclaimed the Messias should Isaiah 7. be born of a Virgin he who revealed to the Prophet Micah this birth should happen in Bethlehem Micah 5. he who opened the eyes of Zacharie to see him in the Zach. 9. triumph he afterwards made in Jerusalem he who deciphered to David all the particularities of his passion Psal 2. in the second Psalm This great consent of Prophets without design or art astonished the Jews who had the Scriptures in their hands and could reckon up all the versicles of their Bible They well saw it was the uncontroulable voice of Prophets but their vanity had so blinded them that they rather wished to have no Messias than to acknowledge him poor according to the world although his very poverty had been reckoned by the Prophets in the number of his greatnesses 3. Perhaps it will appear to be less strange that the Strange testimony of Gentilism Hebrews who were a chosen people had so many revelations touching the Word of God But who will not be rapt with admiration to consider the words which the wisest the greatest and most glorious of Gentilism left to posterity concerning this mystery I speak not of Trismegistus of Pythagoras of Numenius nor of others whose writings may be called in question I speak of Plato Aristotle Cicero How came that into Plato's mind which he so eloquently afterward couched in the fourth book of his laws to wit (a) (a) (a) 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plato l. 4. de legibus That God should be to men the rule and measure of all things and principally if it were so or ought to be so in any part of the world that there were a Man-God From whence think you came it that Aristotle who proceeded so advisedly in all his Maxims let this word fall (b) (b) (b) Non esse Diis immortalibus indecorum hominis induere naturam quo ab erroribus sevocentur mortales Caelius refert l. 17. c. 34. That it was no unbeseeming thing for the Gods immortal to revest themselves with humane nature to destroy the errours which were crept into the world Who suggested to Cicero one of the wisest Politicians that ever was amongst men what he wrote in his Book of a Common-wealth (c) (c) (c) Cicer. l. 3. de Rep. Nec erit alia lex Romae alia Athenis alia nunc alia posthac sed apud omnes gentes omni tempore una lex Deus ille legis hujus inventor disceptator lator c. Jam nova progenies coelo dimittitur alâ—c Te duce siqua manent sceleris vestigia nostri irrita perpetua solvent formidine terras Virgil. That the time would come there should be no other law at Rome than at Athens but that amongst all Nations and in all times there should be one same eternal and immutable law one common Master and Emperour over all which should be God himself the inventour teacher and introducer of this law and that he who obeyed him not should flie from himself as a despiser of his own nature But in this alone that he would not obey he were grievously chastised although he might escape all other punishment It were a thing superfluous to alledge here the verses of the Sybils which it is known were so express that many of the principal of the Gentiles were converted to Christianity by reading the testimonies these divine women rendered of the Word Incarnate We all likewise know God to make this argument the more visible permitted a little before the Nativity of our Saviour that Virgil the most eminent of all Poets composed that his excellent work where he expresseth in Latin verse the conceptions of Sybilla Cumaea and speaketh plainly of a child which should be sent from Heaven to pardon the sins of men and fill the earth with blessings And to shew this was not alone in the minds of particulars we read that towards the reign of Augustus Julius Marathus foretold Nature should bring forth a King for the worlds Empire Which so amazed the Senate according to the relation of Suetonius (d) (d) (d) Sueton. in Aug. 54. the Historian that they forbade to breed up children which should be born within the time this South-sayer had prefixed Doth not Josephus (e) (e) (e) Joseph l. 7. c. 11. de bello Judaico also make mention of the prediction which said Nations come from Judea should become Masters of the universe The Romans understood not this language but applied it some to Augustus others to Vespasian until such time as truth drew aside the curtain and made the accomplishment of these predictions perspicuously appear in the Person of our Saviour Nay not so much as Porphirie yea Mahomet and Porphyrius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 devils but give some Elogie of honour to Jesus Porphirie in the Treatise he made of the blessings of Philosophie saith It is a great matter that devils themselves have spoken in favour of Jesus confessing him to be endowed with singular pietie for which cause he entered into possession of most happie immortalitie And Mahomet Alcoran Azoar 1. 4. 11. 13. That the spirit of God bare record to Christ the Son of Mary that the soul of God was given him that he is the Messenger Spirit and Word of God that his doctrine is perfect and enlighteneth the Old Testament O God of the universe how powerfull is verity to derive testimonies in favour of his Word from the very lips of the most prophane 4. Let us adde also some divine reasons in this brevitie Reasons of seemliness whereunto we have voluntarily confined our selves Who sees not that humane understanding constrained by the consideration of mysteries doth homage also to the Incarnation of the Son of God Where is that darkness which can hinder the bright day of faith What can Infidels say That this mystery is impossible Impossible how Either on Gods part or mans or from the repugnance of humane understanding with such like propositions because by their saying they involve contractions How would it
wayfarers in your house cloth the naked and disdain not your flesh 3. This dark Devotion hath three things which Three blemishes of anxious devotion make it much to be suspected and are the cause it is not well proportioned to the manner of life of solid spirits First when it is extreamly subject to novelties singularities and pride which proceed from foolish confidence in ones own judgement Many who The Bat employeth her eyes to make her wings are wise according to their own way resemble the Bat which employeth the christalline humour of his eyes to make large wings to himself but yet very useless so they consume all the lights and inspirations of God to create wings of pride and vanity which onely serve them to flie in the night and ignorance of themselves Now it is well known to all that the most fatal plague in matter of religion and devotion is the desire to seek direction from ones own opinion which the learned Gerson very well observed when he singularly well said (a) (a) (a) An excellent speech of Chancellour Gerson In vitis patrum libro de discretione littera S. fol. 171. citatus a Richardo Allo. Et quomodo vinum potantem decipit sic erit vir superbus Habac. 2. If you see one walk in the way of proper judgement although he had alreadie one foot in Paradise take this foot and withdraw it For it were better to walk in the shades of death under the conduct of humilitie than to have a Paradise in the pleasures of proper fantasie Drunkenness is taken by wine said the Prophet and pride by its own opinion Such there are who after infinite many pains passed over in religious Orders have miserably lost themselves following the cursed ignis fatuus of their own opinion Had pensive devotion no other blemish it were always much to be feared but besides I affirm that as fisher-men fish in a troubled water so the devil fisheth in the melancholy of a perplexed soul principally when it is tied to superiours which govern conscience We know by the Scripture and Fathers Ecce teâ—endiâ— ante pedes nostros laqueos infinitos omnes vias nostras variis replevit decipulis ad capiendas animas nâ—stras Ecquiâ— effugiet Laqueos posuit in divitiis c. Aug. solil the importunities and smooth practises of the evil spirit to undo us Satan every where hath laid his nets before us the whole earth is nought but a snare snares in riches snare in poverty snare in meat snare in drink snare in eating sleep words works in all our actions but we must confess there is no snare more miserable nor of greater force than sadness and melancholy because it is that which bloweth out the candle which puts out the light of the mind and by this means makes sport for the enemy of our felicity Doth not Cassianus observe that an Hermit named Cassian collat 2. de discretione Horrible issue of a hollow devotion Heron who had sweat for the space of fourty years under the habit of religion and grown white amongst so many glorious palms yet suffering himself to fall into a devotion dark anxious and solitary was so deceived by the subtility of Satan that at the latter end of his days he threw himself into a pit from whence he was drawn half dead nor was it possible to make him say he had done ill in this act so exorbitant and desperate proper judgement having so bewitched him in this sadness that all his own resolutions seemed oracles unto him And although a soul seldom falleth into such extremities notwithstanding for a third instance we may bring a proof taken out of S. Thomas who saith S. Thom. 1. 2. q. 37. art 4. That seeing sadness is the most venemous of all passions because it gnaweth the root of the heart which consisteth in a certain alacrity and largeness spreading it self from the fountain of life through all the members it is impossible that any man who ties himself to a pensive and melancholy devotion can long persevere in the way of virtue Gilbertus a great Doctour writing upon this sentence Glorificate portate Deum in corpore vestro Notable advise of Doctour Gilbertus Portari vult Christus non trahi non est faenum Christus sed flos campi fasciculus myrrhae inter â—bera sponsae Superstitio â—mandos timeâ— quos colit violat Senec. Epist 114. of S. Paul drawn out of the first to the Corinthians sixth Chapter Glorifie and bear God in your bodie hath these notable words You must bear Jesus Christ not drag him He draggeth him who is surcharged with him and who indiscreetly afflicteth himself in the service he doth to the Divine Majestie not considering Jesus is the flower of the field or the posie of myrrhe between the breasts of the spouse and not a load of hay under which you must needs groan like a wheel ill greazed 4. On these same grounds superstition is raised which through errour feareth all it should love by virtue and scarcely knoweth God but by violating his clemency through a false presumption of his severity What sense is there to enter into devotion as if one were lifted upon a rack to be tortured and to think there is no piety in the world if the bodie be not torn and the spirit beaten down One must be crucified in his thoughts by vain apprehensions infinite many scruples must be nourished sins imagined which never were sins and conceits fed that if one have walked on straws a-cross a great sacriledge is committed Some impose a thousand fantastical observations upon themselves some inflict voluntary tortures and you shall find of them who leading a life wholly innocent make themselves hells in their own consciences watchings wither them dreams terrifie them and if the leaf of a tree wag it is a spirit which comes to surprize them nay if some fatal bird croak in the obscurity of night it is the voice of a dead man who bids them prepare to pass into another world Out alas Is it possible a soul which hath never so little feeling of the Divinity can think God infinitely mercifull is as a Minos and Rhodamant mentioned in Fables who spitefully comes to prie into all our actions to number all our steps takes pleasure to prepare punishments for us and to raise his tropheys on our ruins Is it so hard a matter to believe a good directour who perswades the contrary as that for want of a little instruction labours in religion should be undertaken without relaxation disturbances without repose and miseries without comfort Affected Devotion EFfeminate and nice Devotion is of another strain Quaint Devotion For it hath not learned to kill the body for the life of the spirit but seeketh out witty ways to accord God and the world together and under pretext of piety to take those pleasures which may flatter the most refined sensuality We now adays
Contemplation also is divided into divers degrees Divers degrees of contemplation For there is one ordinary which maketh use of imagination and of sensible species drawn from the sight of objects though it subtilize and purifie them by the help of the understanding There is another termed immediate and perfect which goes directly to God without any mixture of fantasies or aid of creatures but if it be much discharged from all things create it is called dark contemplation because the soul being in it wholly dazeled and as it were blinded with rays of the divine Essence frameth not to it self any sensible idaea of God but beholdeth him by the way of negation banishing all representations and resemblances of creatures the more firmly to adhere unto the simplicity of the first Being But if it proceed in a superiour manner then it mounteth S. Ambros l. 3. de virginibus Influentibus divinis corporeus peregrinatur affectus usus ille exterioris hominis exâ—lesâ—it to the contemplation termed the most eminent which is the whole-sister of the beatified vision and the last heaven whereunto S. Paul was rapt a sphere totally enflamed with seraphical love where the use of sense and exteriour man seems quite annihilated and the spirit transported to the ineffable conversation with the Divinity Now we must observe upon this discourse what S. Thomos in 3. dist 52. the learned S. Thomas said That whilest our life is shut up in this mortal body its manner of actuating proceedeth by simple and ordinary ways which conduct us to the Creatour by contemplation of creatures and if any one understand spiritual things in this sublime nakedness which is discharged of images it is an admirable way and surpasseth all humane things First it is necessary to have a pious affection The ordinary manner of proceeding in things divine to matters divine thence we pass to meditation from meditation to ordinary contemplation which is attended by admiration and admiration by a certain spiritual alacrity and this alacrity by a certain fear with reverence and fear by fervent charity diffused into the exercise of good works These are the most assured ways to walk in spiritual life But these transcendent souls will in the beginning Illusions of this transcendent devotion lift a man up from the earth and make a Seraphin of him from the first day of his apprentiship To meditate well is nothing else but to make a review of our self and actions to adapt them to the commandments of God and counsels of Jesus Christ You must flie fervently even to the third Heaven and remain there rapt without knowledge whether one be on this side or that side of the world But alas how many times happeneth it these Eagles descend from this false emperial heaven to fish some wretched frog in the marsh of this inferiour earth After all these large temples of prayers gilded with so goodly words we see in the Sanctuary a pourtraict of a Rat a soul faint and pusillanimous shut up in self-love tied to petty interests imperiously commanded by so many tumultuous passions which play their prize whilest the spirit slumbers in this mystical sleep and living death They will in the beginning go equal with the seraphical souls of Saints who arrived at this purity of prayer by great mortifications and most particular favours from God But they imitate them so ill that in stead of being suited with great and solid virtues they retain nought but ostentous forms and a vain boast of words What importeth it a devote who cannot tell how to govern her house to know the retire introversion extroversion simplification dark prayer mystical sleep spiritual drunkenness tast fire quiet the cloud of glory and so many other kinds which serve to disguise devotion Know we not many spirits of young women loose themselves herein and seeking too much to refine ancient piety have made it wholly to vapour out in smoke finding themselves as void of humility as they were puffed up with presumption From thence often proceeds the curiosity of matters ravishing and extraordinary to gain to themselves the reputation of great spiritual persons and to sooth themselves with the opinion of a false sanctity When one is once gained by a false pretext of errour it is no hard matter to be perswaded all we think on is a vision all we say is a prophesie and all we do is a miracle The evil spirit finding souls drunk with this self-love hath played strange pranks which may be read in Epiphanius and Cassianus and whereof it would be an easie matter to produce many examples were it not much better to deplore than recount them 8. This vanity not satisfied to harbour in the mind The word of God altered in chairs by the extravagant opinions of hearers which bred it extendeth to the chairs of Preachers where the curious and phanatical spirits of Auditours would willingly hatch chymaera's for such as are yet but young beginners in the mystery One will have that use be made of thoughts transcendent and extraordinary and many times extravagant entangled with a perplexity of periods which leave nothing but noise in the ear and arrogance in the mind the other who is most ignorant startles at this quaint Theologie and seeks to wrest mysteries and disjoynt mens judgements thereby to draw upon all sorts of people discourses of the Trinity and Incarnation involved in visionary imaginations and turned about on a counter-battery of affected antitheses and if this be not as ordinary in all sermons as was the Delphick sword which heretofore served for all purposes in sacrifices it is to be ignorant in the ways of souls elect The other delighteth in doctrines unheard-of in a vast recital of Authours and forreign tongues as if he went about to exercise devils and not instruct Christians some one boasts to alledge neither Scripture Fathers nor any passage whatsoever for fear of marring the plaits of his periods he makes trophey to take all within his own fancy and to borrow nothing of the Ancients as if Bees who rob flowers in the garden to make honey of them were not much better than spiders who spin their wretched webs out of their own substance There are of them who desire to bundle up an endless train of fantastical conceptions without Scripture or reason who seem to tell wonders and rarities most ravishing but if any man will weigh them in an equal ballance he shall find vanities onely big with noise and wind They who have the itch of ear Sapientiae atque facundiae caupones Tertul. l. de anima c. 3. are devoted to the beauty of language and bestir them rather to talk than speak in a sermon They adore discourses replenished with a youth full eloquence and devested of wisdom having no sinews for support and less sting to transfix a heart Good God! how knowing would Preachers be did they understand as saith S. Paul how to speak
quality of a good death is the ready and constant adieu given to the world as did the Blessed Virgin who was so disengaged from it towards death that she touched not earth at all but with the soles of her feet Philo saith God gave Moses leave to live very long perpetually in glorious actions in contemplations in lights so that his body was worn wasted and almost wholly vapoured out into the substance of his spirit By a much stronger reason may one say the like of the Mother of God For it is certain her life was nothing else but a divorce from the world But as Physitians observe that the breath of storks is purified and made sweet in the proportion as they increase in age in such sort that becoming old they yield forth most odoriferous exhalations So the life of this holy Mother which was ever hanging about the heart of her Son ever in the contemplation of the great mysteries of our salvation perpetually in the furnace of love wholly transformed it self into her well-beloved as one wax melted into another as a drop of water poured into a great vessel of wine as incense wasted into flames O what sweetness of breath what odour of virtues in her old age Her body seemed to be exhaled and to vapour out Harph. c. 49. libri de mystic Theol. all in soul the soul which is the knot of life and which possesseth in us the most inferiour part of spirituality dissolved wholly into spirit which is in the middle and the spirit melted entirely into the understanding which hath the highest rank in the soul and which bears the image of the most holy Trinitie Her memory in a silent repose was freed from all rememberances of the world her will resided in languishing fervours and her understanding was wholly engulfed in great abysses of lights there was not one small threed of imagination which tied her to earth O what an adieu to the world It is very well declared in the Canticles by these Cantic 1. 6. Quae est ista quae ascendit per desertum sicut virgula fumi ex aromatibus myrrhae thuris universâ— pulveris pigmentarii The three ties of the world Genes 12. Egredere de terra tua de cognationetua de domo patris tui words Who is it that ascendeth through the desert like a thin vapour composed of odours myrrb incense and all the most curious perfumes Which saith in a word the holy Virgin was wholly spiritualized wholly vapour all perfume all spirit and had as it were nothing of body massiness or earth O how many unreasonably fail in this second condition When death comes to sound his trumpet in our ears and saith to us Let us go thou must dislodge from thy lands inheritances never to return again from thy kinred from the house thy father gave thee to wit thy bodie how harsh that is to ill mortified spirits and which hold of the world by roots as deep as hell and as big as arms Go out of thy land O how hard is this first step to go out of the land to forsake the land not at all to pretend to the land to the gold to the silver to those jewels that inheritance to all that glorious glitter of fortune See the first torment of worldly spirits Such there have been who Desperate desire of worldly goods Joannes Nider seeing themselves in the last approaches of inevitable death have swallowed their gold like pills other to eternize themselves on earth have caused formidable sepulchers to be built wherein they put all their wealths as the Aegyptian King Cheopes who prostituted even his own daughter to raise unto himself a Pyramid for burial so enormous that it seemed the earth was too weak to bear it and Heaven too low to be freed from its importunity Besides he caused to be engraven upon it that the manufactures alone of this sepulcher had cost six millions of gold in coleworts and turneps Others caused to be buried with them dogs horses slaves apparrel dishes to serve them in the other world Yea it is not long ago since there was found in Anno 1544. Belforest Goodly monument of the Emperess Marie Rome a coffin of marble eight foot long and in it a robe embroidered with Gold-smiths work which yielded six and thirty pounds of gold besides fourty rings a cluster of emeralds a little mouse made of another precious stone and amongst all these precious magnificencies two leg-bones of a dead corps known by the inscription of the tomb to be the bones of the Emperess Marie daughter of Stilicon and wife of the Emperour Honorius who died before consummation of marriage About twelve hundred years were passed after she was buried with all these goodly toys which no doubt gave much ease to her soul My God how are we tied to earth Tell me not the like is not done now adays for it is worse since they were buried after death with their riches and you O mortals alive as you are build your sepulchers thereon We see men who having already one foot in the grave if you speak to them of the affairs of their consciences all the spirit yet remaining is perhaps for two or three hours besieged by an infinite number of thoughts of worldly wealth Death crieth out aloud in their ears saying Go from thy land and you pull it to you as with iron hooks After that cometh kinred allies table-frends friends for game buffons amourists and all the delights of former companies Some weep others make shew of tears the rest under a veil of sorrow make bones-fires in their hearts they seem all to appear about the bed and to sing this sad song of S. Augustine Aug. Confes 6. 11. Dimittis ne nos a momento illo non erimus tecum ultra in aeternum Et a momento isto non licebit hoc illud ultra in aeternum Alas do you leave us and shall we hereafter meet no more together Farewel pleasing amities Adieu feasts adieu sports adieu loves This nor that will any longer be permitted from this moment for ever Behold another very slipperie and dangerous step notwithstanding you must leave it Death hasteneth and says Go from thy kinred In the last the body and flesh is presented which seems to say Ah my soul whither goest thou My dear hostess whither goest thou Thou hast hitherto so tenderly pampered me so pompously clothed me so wantonly cherished me I was thy Idol thy Paradise thy little Goddess and where will you put me into a grave with serpents and worms what shall I do there and what will become of me Behold a hard task principally for such of both sexes as have dearly loved their bodies like the Dutchess of Venice Damian opusc in instit ad Blanch. c. 11. The prodigality of a Venetian Ladie and her punishnent of whom Cardinal Petrus Damianus speaketh who was plunged into sensuality
wholly acquired to death sighing after a young Gentleman then absent and not daring fully to manifest her passion In the end death took away the spoils of her life with her pretences The father and mother bewailed her with inconsolable tears furnishing out very honourable obsequies And whereas she most ardently affected her dressings and little cabinet they buried with her all whatsoever she held most precious Six moneths were now past since her burial when the Gentleman she loved named Machates arriving at Trayls came to lodge in the house of his friend her father The spirit of the maid which was of the condition of those whom Plato called body-lovers retaining still the affections with which she went out of her bodie appeared one evening to this Machates with words of affection embraces and dalliances which plainly discovered it was a damned spirit and an instrument of the divel that tormented the one to burn the other The young man at the first was much affrighted with these proceedings notwithstanding becoming tractable by little and little he soon made this specter very familiar It happened during this time that an old servant sent by her Mistress to see what their guest did found Philenion sitting neer unto him with the same countenance and the same garments she ware in her life time whereat much amazed she ran to the father and the mother to tell them their daughter was alive They sharply reprehended her for a distracted and wicked woman as going about again to open their wound which still bled The servant justified her self and answered she had not lost her wits nor spake ought but truth Hereupon she so enkindled the curiositie of her Mistress that she secretly conveyed her self by night into the chamber yet perceived nothing at all able to resolve her The next day being vehemently excited with the curiositie of knowing what to believe of this apparition she threw her self at the feet of Machates and conjured him to tell her the name of the young maid who conversed with him The Gentleman in the beginning was much surprized and sought evasions to divert her but in conclusion either through compassion of the mother whom he saw in the posture of a suppliant or by vanity of his passion which easily unloosned his tongue he confessed he was married to Philenion that it was a business accomplished by the will of the Gods wherein nothing must be altered and speaking this he drew forth a little casket wherein he shewed her a gold ring her daughter had given him with a piece of linnen she ware about her neck protesting she was his wife so much was he seduced by the subtile practizes of the evil spirit The mother having acknowledged the tokens of the deceased fell down with astonishment and coming again to her self she a thousand times kissed one while the ring another while the linnen moistning them with her tears and moving the whole family to sorrow which ran to see this spectacle Then again embracing Machates she signified it would be an infinite favour from heaven to have him for a son in law but that she entreated as a courtesie one comfort he could not deny an afflicted mother which was once again to see her daughter whom she accounted dead The other promised to give her all satisfaction and as Phelenion came secretly according to custom to converse with him he closely sent his lackey to the mother who advertised her husband of it and both of them came into Machates his chamber where they surprized their daughter at which they were so rapt that being not able to utter a word they cast themselves about her neck straightly embracing and with tears bedewing her which fell from their eyes But the daughter with a sad and dejected countenance fetching a deep sigh out of her breast Alas saith she loving father and mother your curiosity will cost you dear for you will lament me the second time Thereupon she fell down dead leaving a horrible stinck in the chamber which filled the whole house with terrour groans and out-cries in such sort that the neighbours came in upon the noise and consequently the whole Citie ran thither to behold the corps The magistrates wondering at an accident so frightfull deputed some Cittizens neerest of kin to open the tomb where the body of Philenion could not be found but a cup a ring she had received from this Gentleman The carrion lying in the fathers chamber was by decree of the Senate thrown on the dunghil the Citie purged and as for Machates he was so overwhelmed with shame and confusion that he slew himself with his own hands Behold what an Authour recounteth onely illuminated by the light of nature who wrote this historie after he had been a spectatour of it of purpose to send a man immediately to the Emperour Hadrian to make a recital thereof unto him as he saith in a letter he directed to a friend of his I might have many things to say upon all circumstances which are not repugnant to that which Ecclesiastical Authours relate concerning other apparitions of the damned But I will not exceed the laws of Historians and it is enough for me here to let you see the belief of the Ancients and the punishment of God upon souls resigned to sin XVIII MAXIM Of Purgatorie THE PROPHANE COURT THE HOLY COURT That death is the remedy of all evils and that the soul separated from the body hath no more to suffer That the soul which hath not in this Ne dogmata de Pâ—râ—atorio pro saâ—â ecclesiae doctrinâ nobis obtrudant Pontificii cavendum est world satisfied Gods justice must pass in the other life through Purgatorie HAve you well considered in Genesis an Genes 2. Angel of fire who with a flaming sword keepeth the gate of terrestrial Paradise placed as an usher of the enterance into the delicious hall which prepared by God to entertain the first man of the world after it had been the theater of his glorie became the scaffold of his punishments Procopius Purgatorie compared to the Cherubins fiery sword observeth that poor Adam at the time of his banishment was placed just over against this Cherubin and that this centinel of the God of hosts no sooner lifted up his curtelaxe but he made a terrour and icie horrour creep into his bones and in that proportion the sparkles flew from the sword of justice fears and affrightments invaded the heart of this offender who being a murderer of his race before he was a progenitour had brought forth a thousand deaths by the sole bite of an apple Alas if the miserable Adam was so astonished at the steel of the Cherubin which dazled his eyes what ought our representments to be what our apprehensions when we think on the flames of purgatory enkindled by the breath of the love and wrath of God So many souls lie there now plunged having heretofore conversed amongst us in mortal abode and we
stept far into age bear the torch before youth Let women endeavour to establish piety which is the ornament of their sex Let children be well bred and trained within the laws of modesty Let the doctrine of Jesus Christ be sealed with the seal of good manners there is no Libertine but will be daunted at the sight of a life led according to the laws of Christianity For it is a mirrour which killeth basilisks by reverberation of their proper poison But if blasphemers continue still so impudent as to vomit forth unclean and injurious words against the Religion we profess have not laws which are in the power of the Sovereign Princes on earth and of their Ministers of State iron hands able to stay their most daring impudencies I call you hither O holy Prelates O Monarchs To the great-ones of all Christendom Princes and Potentates who are in the world as the great Intelligences who make the Heavens move and who by diversity of your aspects cause calms and storms in this inferiour region wherein we live I pray tell me where do you think hath glory which you naturally love placed its throne and state if not in the bosom of true piety By what degrees are those immortal spirits of your Ancestours mounted up to the joys and delights of God having replenished the earth with the veneration of their memory if it were not by making the honour of the Sovereign Master march in the front of all their designs and thinking nought their own but what was acquired for God Remember you are not altogether like the Angel Apo. 10. of the Apocalyps which beareth the Sun and Rainbows and all the garnishments of glory on feet of brass you enjoy dignities and supereminencies that draw the Great-ones into admiration astonish inferiours attract people evict honour and wonder from all the world But consider if so you please that all this is onely supported on feet of clay and morter Time changeth you cares consume you maladies assail you death takes and despoileth you They who adored you in thrones may one day trample on you in sepulchers Alas if it happen you carry all your own interests with violence of passion to the height of your pretensions and that you hold Religion and the glory of Jesus in a perpetual contempt what will your soul one day answer when it leaves the body unto the thundering voice of a living God saying to you as he did to Cyrus in Isaiah Assimilavi te non cognovisti Isaiah 45. me I called thee by thy name I created thee like unto my self I made thee a little God on earth and thou hast forgotten me I so many times marched before thy standards many times have I humbled the most glorious of the earth for thee I brake brazen gates pulled down iron bars to afford thee hiden treasures and the wealth of Ages which nature for thee preserved in her bosom The Sun seemed not to shine in the world but to enlighten thy greatness the seas surged for thee and for thee the earth was wholly bent to honour and obedience Admirer of thy self and ignorant of Gods works thou hast so ill husbanded my goods that thou hast changed them all into evils I gave thee rays and thou hast made arrows of them to shoot against me Did I seat thee on thrones that there thy passions might sway Did I imprint on thy forehead the character of my greatness that thou mightest authorize crimes Thou hadst a feeble pretext of Religion and hast neglected the effects Thy interests reigned and my honour suffered in thy house At what aimed thy ambition so strong of wing and so weak of brain which onely thought how to envy what was above the more to oppress any thing below it What did that burning avarice that profuse riot that spirit of bloud and flesh employed in the advancement of thine own house to the contempt of mine For an inch of land a wretched matter of profit the fantasie of an affront jealousie onely subsisting in a body of smoke all the elements must be troubled men and swords drawn forth for revenge and bloud of so many mortals shed but for my Name which is blasphemed it is sufficient to wag the finger to shew onely a cold countenance a slight touch of that great authority whilst I was neglected having done no other fault but to have paid ingratitudes with benefits O you Great-ones who sit at the stern of Churches and temporal Estates how far will you become accountable to Gods justice if you place not his honour in the first rank of all your intentions Alas Ought not you to entertain an ardent zeal towards the Religion which our Ancestours consigned unto us with so many examples of piety that Heaven hath not more stars than we lights before our eyes Can we well endure that the verities and maxims of God which the Prophets foretold us the Apostles pronounced the Confessours professed the Martyrs defended in the piece-meal mangling of their bodies amidst combs and iron hooks burning cauldrons wheels armed with keen razours should now adays be the sport of certain giddy spirits and the aim of profane lips who void of wit or shame dare invade holy things Is it not for this O France the beloved of God and orient pearl of the world thou hast seen in thy bosom so many hostilities such contagions famines monsters and devastations that had not the arm of God supported thee thou wouldst have been long since drenched in irrecoverable confusions O you who bear the sword of justice and have authority in your hands will you not one day say All Omnis qui zelum habet legis statuens testamentum suum exeat post me they who have the zeal of the law and the pietie of our Ancestours follow us couragiously for behold we are readie to revenge the quarrels of God and to account his glorie on earth in the same degree the Angels hold it in Heaven This was the conceit of the valiant Machabee the Prince of Gods people who having seen an Apostate of his Nation offer incense to an Idol slew him with his own hand on the very same Altar saying aloud He who hath the zeal of the law let him Vae mihi quis natus sum videre contritionem populi mei Sancts in manu extrantcrum facts sunt c. Nunc ergo silii aemulatores estote legis date animas vestras protestamento Patrum Moriamur in virtule propter fratres nostros non inferamus crimen gloriae nostre follow me Wo to me since I am born to behold the desolation of my people Holy things are in the hands of strangers The Temple hath been handled as the most wicked man on earth Our mysteries our beauties our glories are desolated To what purpose do I still lead a miserable life Fathers of families will you not say to your children what he did to his Children be ye emulatours
to obey thy Commandments and also that by thee we being defended from the fear of our enemies may pass our time in rest and quietness through the merits of Jesus Christ our Saviour In the time of Plague LEt thy anger cease O Lod and be appeased for the iniquity of thy people as thou hast sworn by thy self O holy God holy and strong holy and immortal have mercy upon us For the Clergy ALmighty and everlasting God who by thy Spirit dost sanctifie and govern the whole body of the Church graciously hear our prayers for all those whom thou hast ordained and called to the publick service of thy Sanctuary that by the help of thy grace they may faithfully serve thee in their several degrees through Jesus Christ our Lord. For a Citie COmpass this Citie O Lord with thy protection and let thy holy Angels guard the walls thereof O Lord mercifully hear thy people For the sick O God the onely refuge of our infirmities by thy mighty power relieve thy sick servants that they with thy gracious assistance may be able to give thanks unto thee in thy holy Church through Jesus Christ For grace LOrd from whom all good things do come grant unto us thy humble servants that by thy holy inspiration we may think those things that be good and by thy merciful guiding may perform the same through our Lord Jesus Christ For the afflicted O Almighty God the afflicted soul the troubled spirit crieth unto thee Hear O Lord and have mercy for thou art a merciful God For friends I Beseech thee O Lord for all those to whom I am indebted for my birth education instruction promotion their necessities are known unto thee thou art rich in all things reward them for these benefits with blessings both temporal and eternal For enemies O God the lover and preserver of peace and charity give unto all our enemies thy true peace and love and remission of sins and mightily deliver us from their snares through Jesus Christ our Lord. For travellers ASsist us mercifully O Lord in our supplications and prayers and dispose the way of thy servants towards the attainment of everlasting salvation that among all the changes and chances of this mortal life they may ever be defended by thy most gracious and ready help through Christ our Lord. For a Family ALmighty and everlasting God send down thy holy Angel from heaven to visit protect and defend all that dwell in this house through Jesus Christ our Lord. For the dying FAther of spirits and God of all flesh receive the souls which thou hast redeemed with thy bloud returning unto thee For the fruits of the earth O God in whom we live and move and have our being open thy treasure in the due season and give a blessing to the works of thy hands For women in travel O Lord of thy goodness help thy servants who are in pains of child-birth that being delivered out of their present danger they may glorifie thy holy name blessed for ever Against temptation ALmighty God which dost see that we have no power of our selves to help our selves keep thou us both outwardly in our bodies and inwardly in our souls that we may be defended from all adversities which may happen to the body and from all evil thoughts which may assault and hurt the soul through Jesus Christ For misbelievers and sinners ALmighty and everliving God who desirest not the death of a sinner mercifully look upon all that are deceived by the subtility of Satan that all evil prejudice laid aside they may return to the unity of thy truth and love For Prisoners O God who didst deliver S. Peter from his chains and restoredst him to liberty have pitie upon thy servants in captivity release their bonds and grant them freedom and safety for his merits who liveth and reigneth with thee and the holy Ghost ever one God world without end For temporal necessaries REplenish those O Lord we beseech thee with temporal nourishment whom thou hast refreshed with thy blessed Sacraments Against tempests DRive spiritual wickedness from thy house O Lord and preserve it from the malignity of tempestuous weather A Prayer of Thomas Aquinas before study O Unspeakable Creatour who out of the treasure of thy wisdom hast ordained Hierarchies of Angels and hast placed them above the highest heaven in a wonderfull order and disposed them sweetly for all parts of the world Thou the true fountain and incomprehensible principle of light and wisdom vouchsafe to illuminate the darkness of my understanding with a beam of thy light remove the darkness wherein I was born sin and ignorance Thou who makest the tongues of infants eloquent loosen my tongue and pour forth the grace of thy spirit upon my lips give me acuteness to apprehend capacity to retain subtility to interpret aptness to learn readiness to speak direct my beginning further my progression and perfect my conclusion THE PENITENT OR ENTERTAINMENTS for LENT And for the first day upon the Consideration of Ashes THou art Dust and to Dust thou shalt return Genes 3. 1. It is an excellent way to begin Lent with the consideration of Dust whereby Nature gives us beginning and by the same Death shall put an end to all our worldly vanities There is no better way to abate and humble the proudest of all Creatures than to represent his beginning and his end The middle part of our life like a kind of Proteus takes upon it several shapes not understood by others but the first and last part of it deceive no man for they do both begin and end in Dust It is a strange thing that Man knowing well what he hath been and what he must be is not confounded in himself by observing the pride of his own life and the great disorder of his passions The end of all other creatures is less deformed than that of man Plants in their death retain some pleasing smell of their bodies The little rose buries it self in her natural sweetness and carnation colour Many Creatures at their death leave us their teeth horns feathers skins of which we make great use Others after death are served up in silver and golden dishes to feed the greatest persons of the world Onely mans dead carcase is good for nothing but to feed worms and yet he often retains the presumptuous pride of a Giant by the exorbitancie of his heart and the cruel nature of a murderer by the furious rage of his revenge Surely that man must either be stupid by nature or most wicked by his own election who will not correct and amend himself having still before his eyes Ashes for his Glass and Death for his Mistress 2. This consideration of Dust is an excellent remedy to cure vices and an assured Rampire against all temptations S. Paulinus saith excellently well That holy Job was free from all temptations when he was placed upon the smoke and dust of his humility He that lies upon the ground can
which desires so earnestly to praise and confess thee everlastingly Alas O eternal Sweetness wouldest thou damn a soul which hath cost thee so much sweat and bloud giving it for ever to those cruel and accursed powers of darkness Rather O Lord pierce my heart with such a fear of thy judgement that I may always dread and never feel them If I forget awake my memory if I flie from thee recal me again If I deferre my amendment stay for me If I return do not despise my soul but open those arms of mercy which thou didst spread upon the Cross with such rigorous justice against thy self for satisfaction of my sins The Gospel upon Tuesday the first week in Lent out of Saint Matthew 21. JESUS drove the Buyers and Sellers out of the Temple ANd when he was entered Jerusalem the whole City was moved saying Who is this And the people said This is Jesus the Prophet of Nazareth in Galilee And Jesus entered into the Temple of God and cast out all that sold and bought in the Temple and the tables of the bankers and the chairs of them that sold pigeons he overthrew and be saith to them It is written My house shall be called the house of prayer but you have made it a den of thieves And there came to him the blind and the lame in the Temple and he healed them And the chief Priests and Scribes seeing the marvellous things that he did and the children crying in the Temple and saying Hosanna to the Son of David they had indignation and said to him Hearest thou what these say And Jesus said to them Very well have you never read that out of the mouthes of infants and sucklings thou hast perfected praise and leaving them he went forth out of the Citie into Bethania and remained there Moralities 1. JEsus entering into Jerusalem went streight to the Temple as a good Son goes to his Fathers house as a High-Priest to the Sanctuary and as a sacrifice to the Altar He doth very lively interest himself in the goods of his Heavenly Father and chaseth out every prophane thing out of that sacred place to give thereby glory to the living God and to put all things in order It is a wicked stain to Religion when Ecclesiastical persons are vicious and when Churches are profaned Saint John Chrysostom saith That Priests are the heart of the Church but when they are wicked they turn all into sin A decaying tree hath always some ill quality about the root so when any people are without discipline the Pastours are without virtue The want of reverence in Churches begets the contempt of God they cannot have Jesus in their hearts when they give him affronts even in his own Temple 2. His house saith he is a house of Prayer but your heart should be the Sanctuary and your lips the door So long as you are without the exercise of prayer you shall be like a Bee without a sting which can make neither honey nor wax Prayer is the chiefest and most effectual means of that Angelical conversation to which God calls us by the merits of his passion and by the effects of his triumphant resurrection It is the sacred business which man hath with God and to speak with Saint Gregory Nazianzen it is the art to make our souls divine Before all things you must put into an order the number the time the place the manner of your prayers and be sure that you pay unto God this tribute with respect fervour and perseverance But if you desire to make a very good prayer learn betimes to make a prayer of all your life Incense hath no smell without fire and prayer is of no force without charity A man must converse innocently and purely with men that desire to treat worthily with God 3. Keep your person and your house clean from ill managing all holy things and from those irreverences which are sometimes committed in Churches It is a happy thing for a man to be ignorant of the trade of buying and selling benefices and to have no intercourse with the tribunals of iniquity Many other sins are written in sand and blown away with a small breath of Gods mercy But the faults of so great impiety are carved upon a corner of the Altar with a graver of steel or with a diamond point as the Prophet saith He deserves to be made eternally culpable who dries up the fountain which should waste himself or poisons the stream which he himself must drink or contanimates the Sacraments which are given him to purifie his soul Aspirations SPirit of God which by reason of thy eminent height canst pray to no body and yet by thy divine wisdom makest all the world pray to thee Give me the gift of prayer since it is the mother of wisdom the seal of virginity the sanctuary for our evils and fountain of all our goods Grant that I may adore thee in Spirit with reverence stedfastness and perseverance and if it be thy divine pleasure that I pray unto thee as I ought inspire into me by thy virtue such prayers as thou wilt hear by thy bountie The Gospel for Wednesday the first week of Lent S. Matth. 12. The Pharisees demand a Sign of JESUS THen answered him certain of the Scribes and Pharisees saying Master we would see a sign from thee who answered and said to them The wicked and adulterous generation seeketh a sign and a sign shall not be given it but the sign of Jonas the Prophet For as Jonas was in the Whales belly three days and three nights so shall the Son of man be in the heart of the earth three days and three nights The men of Nineveh shall rise in the judgement with this generation and shall condemn it because they did penance at the preaching of Jonas And behold more than Jonas here The Queen of the South shall rise in the judgement with this generation and shall condemn it because she come from the ends of the earth to hear the wisdom of Solomon and behold more than Solomon here And when an unclean spirit shall go out of a man he walketh through drie places seeking rest and findeth not Then he saith I will return into my house whence I came out And coming he findeth it vacant swept with besoms and trimmed then goeth he and taketh with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself and they enter in and dwell there and the last of that man be made worse than the first So shall it be also to this wicked generation As he was yet speaking to the multitudes behold his mother and his brethren stood without seeking to speak to him and one said unto him Behold thy mother and thy brethren stand without seeking thee But he answering him that told him said Who is my mother and who are my brethren And stretching forth his hand upon his Disciples he said Behold my mother and my brethren for whosoever shall do the will
find the like to whom wouldst thou have me go but to thy self who doest not yet cease to call me The Gospel upon the third Sunday in Lent S. Luke 11. Jesus cast out the Devil which was dumb ANd he was casting out a devil and that was dumb And when he had cast out the devil the dumb spake and the multitudes marvelled And certain of them said in Belzebub the Prince of Devils he casteth out Devils And others tempting asked him a sign from Heaven But he seeing their cogitations said to them Every Kingdom divided against it self shall be made desolate and house upon house shall fall And if Satan also be divided against himself how shall his Kingdom stand because you say that in Belzebub I do cast out Devils And if I in Belzebub cast out Devils your children in whom do they cast out Therefore they shall be your judges But if I in the finger of God do cast out Devils surely the Kingdom of God is come upon you When the strong armed keepeth his court those things are in peace that he possesseth but if a stronger than he come upon him and overcome him he will take away his whole armour wherein he trusted and will distribute his spoils He that is not with me is against me and he that gathereth not with me scattereth When the unclean spirit shall depart out of a man he wandreth through places without water seeking rest and not finding he saith I will return into my house whence I departed And when he is come he findeth it swept with a besom and trimmed Then he goeth and taketh seven other spirits worse than himself and entering in they dwell there And the last of that man be made worse than the first And it came to pass when he said these things a certain woman lifting up her voice out of the multitude said to him Blessed is the womb that bare thee and the paps that thou didst suck But he said Yea rather blessed are they that hear the word of God and keep it Moralities 1. THe Almond-tree is the first which begins to flourish and it is often first nipt with frost The tongue is the first thing which moves in a mans body and is soonest caught with the snares of Satan That man deserves to be speechless all his life who never speaks a word better than silence 2. Jesus the eternal word of God came upon earth to reform the words of man his life was a lightening and his word a thunder which was powerfull in effect but always measured within his bounds He did fight against ill tongues in his life and conquered them all in his death The gall and vinegar which he took to expiate the sins of this unhappy tongue do shew how great the evil was since it did need so sharp a remedy He hath cured by suffering his dolours what it deserved by our committing sins Other vices are determined by one act the tongue goes to all it is a servant to all malitious actions and is generally confederate with the heart in all crimes 3. We have just so much Religion as we have government of our tongues A little thing serves to tame wild beasts and a small stern will serve to govern a ship Why then cannot a man rule so small a part of his body It is not sufficient to avoid lying perjuries quarrels injuries slanders and blasphemies such as the Scribes and Pharisees did vomit out in this Gospel against the purity of the Son of God We must also repress idle talk and other frivolous and unprofitable discourses There are some persons who have their hearts so loose that they cannot keep them within their brests but they will quickly swim upon their lips without thinking what they say and so make a shift to wound their souls 4. Imitate a holy Father called Sisus who prayed God thirty years together every day to deliver him from his tongue as from a capital enemy You shall never be very chaste of your body except you do very well bridle your tongue For loosness of the flesh proceeds sometimes from liberty of the tongue Remember your self that your heart should go like a clock with all the just and equal motions of his springs and that your tongue is the finger which shews how all the hours of the day pass When the heart goes of one side and the tongue of another it is a sure desolation of your spirits Kingdom If Jesus set it once at peace and quiet you must be very carefull to keep it so and be very fearfull of relapses For the multiplying of long continued sins brings at last hell it self upon a mans shoulders Aspirations O Word incarnate to whom all just tongues speak and after whom all hearts do thirst and languish chase from us all prating devils and also those which are dumb the first provoke and loose the tongue to speak wickedly and the other bind it when it should confess the truth O peace-making Solomon appease the divisions of my heart and unite all my powers to the love of thy service Destroy in me all the marks of Satans Empire and plant there thy Trophees and Standards that my spirit be never like those devils which seek for rest but shall never find it Make me preserve inviolable the house of my conscience which thou hast cleansed by repentance and clothed with thy graces that I may have perseverance to the end without relapses and so obtain happiness without more need of repentance The Gospel upon Munday the third week in Lent S. Luke 4. Jesus is required to do Miracles in his own Countrey ANd he said to them Certes you will say to me this similitude Physitian cure thy self as great things as we have heard done in Capharnaum do also here in thy Countrey And he said Amen I say to you that no Prophet is accepted in his own Country In truth I say to you there were many widows in the dayes of Elias in Israel when the heaven was shut three years and six moneths when there was a great famine made in the whole earth and to none of them was Elias sent but into Sarepta of Sidon to a widow woman And there were many Lepars in Israel under Elizeus the Prophet and none of them made clean but Naaman the Syrian And all in the Synagogue were filled with anger hearing these things And they rose and cast him out of the Citie and they brought him to the edge of the hill whereupon their Citie was built that they might throw him down headlong But he passing through the midst of them went his way Moralities 1. THe malignity of mans nature undervalueth all that which it hath in hand little esteems many necessary things because they are common The Sun is not counted rare because it shines every day and the elements are held contemptible since they are common to the poor as well as the rich Jesus was despised in his own Countrey because he
the love with which he will be loved and who hath loved us even in disfavour to transport us to favour Whereby it appeareth that this fair love is nought else but a celestiall quality infused into the soul by which we love God above all and all for God Now I imagine with my self that he is born in our hearts in such a manner as pearls grow in their shells The mother of pearl is first pierced by a celestiall influence as with an arrow fiery and sharp which sollicits and importuneth it to dispose it self to this excellent production Which is the cause that it spreads openeth and dilates it self to receive the dew distilled into it from the air and having moistned it it digesteth concocteth and transfigureth it into this little miracle of nature which is with so much curiosity sought after Behold what passeth in a soul when it bringeth forth this precious love it is prevented by a speciall grace from the Divine Goodnesse which at first gives it a distaste of all things in the world and fixeth a generous spur in the heart to excite awaken and enflame it to the quest of so great a good Then it extendeth dilates and opens all its gates to the Holy Ghost who descendeth into it as the dew of Hermon by qualities and Donec Christus formetur in vobis Gal 4. 10. effects admirable which through free-will it embraceth and ties and habituateth it self therein conceiving and forming Jesus Christ as saith S. Paul Then is the time when this divine love is conceived which is no sooner born but it causeth a rejoycing in the heart of man like unto that which happened in the house of Abraham at Isaacs nativity It is a celestiall laughter The Empire and eminencies of Divine love an extraordinary jubilation an expansion of all the faculties and functions of the spirit and will This little Monarch is no sooner born but it begins to command and sits on the heart as in its Throne All powers do it Instructi in charitate in omnes divitias plenitudinis intellectûs Col. 2. 2. Ailredus tom 13. Bibliorum in speculo charitatis Excellent conceit of charity homage all passions render it service All the virtues applaud at its coronation and confesse they hold of it and are all in it He who is once well instructed in charity aboundeth with all riches and hath the full plenitude of the spirit according to the Apostles and is a Tree grafted with siens of all perfection and which fail not to bring forth their fruits Sciences and virtues are that to us which oars to vessels what the viaticum to travellers what light to blear-eyes what arms to souldiers but charity alone is the repose of the wearied the Countrey of Pilgrims the light of the blind the Crown of the victorious Faith and the knowledge of God carry us to our countrey Hope maintaineth us the other virtues defend us but where charity is perfect as it is in glory one no longer believes any thing because it seeth all one hopes for nought because he possesseth all Temperance combateth against Concupiscence Prudence against errour Fortitude against adversity Justice against inequality But in perfect charity there is a perfect chastity which standeth not in need of the arms of temperance having no blemish of impurity A perfect knowledge which expecteth not any help from ordinary Prudence since it hath no errours a perfect Beatitude which needeth not Fortitude to conquer adversities since to it nothing is uneasie a Sovereign peace which imploreth not the aid of Justice against inequality since all therein is equall For in a word what is charity but a temperate love without lust A prudent love without errour a strong love without impatience a just love without inequality Faith is the first day of our Creation which driveth away darknesse Hope is the second which makes a firmament for us and which divideth waters from waters things transitory from eternall Temperance is the third which arraungeth the waters and storms of passions in their proper element and causeth the land of our heart to appear which sendeth up vapours to God that are its sighs Prudence is the fourth which lighteth up in us the sun of understanding and the lights of knowledge Fortitude is the fifth which sustains us in the Ocean of adversities not suffering us to corrupt as fishes in salt-waters and as birds above the Tempest Justice the sixth for it gives us to command over our passions as Adam who on the same day he was created obtained it over all living creatures But charity is the seventh day The Symbole of Glory which contracteth all delights in the circle of its Septenary And how can it but abbridge all Theology since it abbridgeth God himself S. Zeno ser de fide spe charit Tu Deum in hominem demutatum voluisti tu Deum abbreviatum paulisper à majestatis suae immensitate peregrinari fecisti tu virginali carcere nove nâ—mensibus religasti tu mortem Deum mori docendo evacusti and that we have cause to speak to him in such terms as Saint Zeno did O love what hast thou done Thou hast changed God into Man Thou hast contracted him drawing him out of the lustre of his Majesty to make him a pilgrime on earth Thou hast shut him in the prison of a virginall womb the space of nine moneths Thou hast annihilated the empire of death when thou taughtest God to dy Love thus acknowledged by all the virtues mounteth as on a chariot of Glory maketh it self conspicuous with heroick and noble qualities It is pious since it employeth all its thoughts on God It is generous and magnanimous since it is ever disposed to great designs It is liberall as that which spareth nothing It is strong not yielding to any of all those obstacles which present themselves to divert the course of its intentions Qualities of divine love by which we may know whether it inhabit a soul It is just equally distributing rewards to merit It is temperate admitting no excesses but of love It is prudent having eyes alwayes upon its deportments It is witty to find out a thousand inventions It is violent without eagernesse active without participation sage without coldnesse good without remissnesse and calm without idlenesse But I must tell you though its perfections be without number you shall chiefly know it by three qualities Three principall marks of love which will make it appear unto you plyant obliging and patient I say plyant for there is nothing but fires desires sweetnesse affections joyes admirations extasies Plyantness pleasures transportments for its well-beloved This is the State which the great Origen figureth unto us Orig. Hom. de Magdal of S. Mary Magdalen when he saith that by the strength of love she was dead to all the objects of the world She had her thoughts so employed upon her Jesus that she was almost insensible she had
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
all the miserable betook themselves unto him unto the number of 400. men which entrenched themselves in a fortresse going forth every day for to rob to maintain themselves thereby In the midst of all these misfortunes the good Prince kept alwayes in his heart a true love of his countrey and knowing that the Philistims had laid siege before Keilah he failed not to go to help it and to deliver it although this ungratefull city was intened to deliver him to Saul if he had enclosed himself therein the which he would not do having consulted with the Oracle of God but retired himself to the desert of Ziph whither Jonathan that The visit of Jonathan secret and and very profitable to David burned with a great desire to see him came to find him secretly and they were for some time together with unspeakable expansions of heart This good friend comforted him and assured him that he should be King after his father and for himself he would be content to be his second which sufficiently witnessed the wonderfull modesty of this Prince and the incomparable love that he bore to David But the Ziphims men for the time that would provide for their own safety sent their deputies to Saul to advertise him that David was retired into their quarters and if it pleased him to follow him they would deliver him into his hands At the which Saul was exceeding joyful and entred the chase to entrap him compassing him on every side and hunting him like a poor deer chased by men and dogs with great out cries The danger was very manifest and David in great hazard to be taken had it not been for a happy message it may be procured by Jonathan that advertised Saul that the Philistims had taken the field and made great waste upon his lands at which he returned to bring remedy thereto deferring his former design till another occasion In the mean while David ran from desert to desert The rudenesse of Nabal towards David with his troops and was hardly able to live which made him have recourse to Nabal a rich man and that had great means entreating him for some courtesie for to maintain his people which had used him with very great respect defending his house his flocks and all his family against the spoilings of robbers This Nabal that was clownish and covetous answered the deputies of David that he knew not the son of Jesse but that he was not ignorant that there were evil servants enough which were fled from their masters and that he was not in case to take the bread from his hired servants for to give it to high-way men This word being told to David incensed him so much that he was going to set upon his house for to rob and sack it But Abagail the The wisdome of Abigail his wife wife of Nabal better behaved and wiser without busying her self to discourse with her husband that was a fool and drunk caused presently mules to be loaden with provision necessary for the men of war and went to meet David to whom she spake with so great wisdome comelinesse and humility that she turned away the tempest and stayed the swords already drawn out of the scabbards for to make a great slaughter in her house David admiring the wisdom and goodnesse of this spirit of the woman married her after the death of her husband It is so true that a good deed bestowed on a high A good deed done to a great one afflicted is of much value person in time of his affliction and when he hath most leasure to consider it is a seed-sowing which in its time brings forth and bears fruits of blessednesse After that Saul had driven back the Philistims he returns to the pursuit of David accompanied with three thousand men with a purpose to take him although he should hide himself under ground or should fly through the air And indeed he crept up rocks unaccessible David furiously pursued by Saul which were not frequented by any but by wild goats and as he passed that way he entred into a cave for some naturall necessity where David was hid with a small number of his faithfullest servants which failed not to tell him that this was the hand of God which had this day delivered his deadly enemy into his hands and that he should not now lose time but to cut him off quickly whilst that he gave him so fair play and this would be the means to end all those bitternesses wherewith his life was filled by the rage of this barbarous Persecutour This was a strong temptation to a man so violently His generousnesse in pardoning his enemy very admirable persecuted and whose life was sought by so many outrages Neverthelesse David stopping all those motions of revenge resolved in his heart by a strong inspiration of God never to lay his hands upon him which was consecrated King and contenting himself with cutting off the skirts of his coat he went out of the cave after Saul and crying with a loud voice he worshipped him prostrate on the earth holding in his hand the piece of his casock and saying to him Behold my Lord my Father and my King the innocence of my hands and do not believe them any more which filled you with suspicions of poor David you cannot be ignorant at this time that God hath put you into my power and that I could have handled you ill by taking away your life have saved mine own But God hath kept me by his holy grace from this thought and hath preserved you from all evil I never yet had any intent to hurt your Majesty having alwayes reverenced and served it as your most humble servant and subject whiles that you cease not to pesecute me and to torment my poor life with a thousand afflictions Alas my Lord what is it that you desire Against whom are you come forth with so great furniture of Arms and Horses against a poor dead Dog a miserable little beast I beseech the living God to judge between us two and to make you to know the goodnesse of my cause One may avouch that great and glorious actions The greatnesse and benefit of clemency of Clemency do never hurt Princes but that often they do place or keep the Crown upon their heads God and Men concurring to favour that goodnesse that approches so near to the highest Saul was so amazed with this action that he ran to him and embraced him weeping and said to him This is a sure sign O David which I acknowledge at the present and whereby I know for certain that you must reign after me so great a goodnesse not being able to be rewarded but by an Empire I do pray and conjure you onely to have pity on my poor children after my death and not to revenge your injuries upon them hereupon he swore to him to deal with him afterwards peaceably But as this spirit was unequall
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
swelling at this design he pronounced with the voyce of an Oracle that she was the true mother which was avouched and acknowledged publickly All the assistants were so taken with this expedient that their King had invented that they extoll'd him to heaven and promised themselves all such a discerning and equity semblable in their differences Who doth not see then that Understanding is the Eye of a Prince and the light of his people This reputation of understanding and lofty knowledge of Solomon was spread abroad amongst strange Nations The Queen of Sheba and drew the Queen of Sheba unto Jerusalem This is a story which hath afforded recreation to divers that have exercised their pens thereupon and curiosity throughout the whole world Every one would baptize her and give her a name one calls her name Nicaula another Nitocrisse another Masseda and others will have her name to be Candaesse There is nothing more certain in all this then uncertainty and it is very hard to give her a name without making a lie thereby And yet can one lesse know that of her husband nor whether she were a maid or a widow or a married woman There is some appearance that if she were Her qualities within the bonds of marriage she was like unto those Dames that bear rule over their Husbands and do all that please them in their own house Her husband was very patient if it be true which Pineda saith that she stayed a whole year at Jerusalem in Pastimes and to propound Riddles But Claudian that assures us Claudian in Eutrop. that the Sabeans are governed by women will make Levibúsque Sabaeis imperat hic fexus Women amongst the Sabeans command over men us rather believe that she was free and without subjection She came from the countrey of the Sabeans which make a part of Arabia and are very rich in gold and perfumes This is the reason that she entred into Jerusalem with a great train and spared not the riches of her countrey for Solomon She propounded many questions whereof the Scripture doth not The questions of the Queen of Sheba touch one which hath given occasion to many to invent at their pleasure and divers have set down so ridiculous ones that if the Queen of Sheba should have come so farre to have learned so little there might be an appearance that coming loaden with so great riches she had forgot to put in a little Judgement amongst them That which Baronius saith is somewhat more credible that she was of a countrey where she might learn the prophecie of Balaam touching the birth of the Messias and that understanding afterwards the greatnesse of Solomon she had a desire to know if this were not he whom that prediction looked at And it is very true that she found the shadow of him in Solomon but not the body yet she was so much amazed beholding onely his figure and viewing the Temple of God which was now built after five and twenty years in considering the Palace the Officers and the order of the whole house of Solomon that she thought to leave her whole spirit behind her in Jerusalem having nothing elsewhere able to content her Those which do judge of the inclinations of Solomon do conceive that all these great discourses with a woman could not passe without strains of love and produced him a child by the Queen of Sheba named David from whom Prestor John is descended but they should have considered that Solomon was not yet so inclined to women and it was not likely that he should begin with her causing her to return as one forlorn which came thither with honest behaviour and of whom the Gospel speaks honourably There are many things in which the Scripture would not content our curiosity those which would learn more from thence then it hath taught them are like to those Painters which account themselves very brave men when they have the skill to go beyond nature And so much for that concerns the Wisdome of Solomon His zeal to the building of the Temple which caused a great part of his miracles But one cannot sufficiently commend the Zeal which he bore from the first year of his reign to the building of the house of God Herein it is that he hath testified a singular Piety and a great Wisdome of a States-man for to say the truth and to speak according unto the mind of Aristotle it doth much import that a Prince be religious for that he is thereby the more loved and feared by his people which do not so easily offend him whom they think to be under Gods protection Further also he was to content a Nation more religious then any other and greatly ceremonious which he could not better do then in causing them to behold so beautifull a Temple which should be the marvel of the whole universe All men are naturally stirred up with a resentment of a Divinity and they think that the means to testifie their affection and service thereto is to erect Temples and offer Sacrifice unto it Emulation doth often mingle it self with Religion and great ones do find their glory in lifting up that of the Divinity Pliny makes mention of the Temple Plin. l. 36. c. 14. The Temple of Ephesuâ— of Diana at Ephesus whose length was 425. foot and the bredth 220. with 137. Pillars made by as many Kings and saith that all Asia joyned together to build it and spent thereupon the space of two hundred anâ— twenty years before it was fully finished Whatsoeve he saith of this Temple we are obliged to believe that was not of value with this of Solomons which is recommended to us by him to whom it was dedicated The Living God which had not then upon earth any buse but this where he was acknowledged Further alsâ— it is to be prised by reason of its founders which were two great Princes for its greatnesse which is ompared in the Scripture to a city the number of offâ—â—es was so great Allies Porches Houses and Divisions was very great there and above all the numbâ—r of the attendants which did amount sometimes between seven and eight hundred ministers Adde hereunto the heighth which was upon the top of two high mountains the beauty and the riches which was found there you will avouch that it was greater then it is reported It is a prodigious thing which David saith of himself in the first of the Chronicles that he offer'd for this design out of his poverty a hundred thousand talents of gold and a thousand thousand talents of silver which make in all according to the supputation of our Villalpand two Villalp in Ezekiel 3. apparat Patal 1. 22. Tyrinus his mille quingentos aureorum ex eodem Vallalpando thousand one hundred twenty and three millions of gold without comprehending therein that which the people offered freely of their own which amounted to seventy one millions of gold eight hundred
of their flying arrows overthrown scattered torn into a thousand pieces by the enterprise of a Jewesse Judith gives not her self the praise of this work it was God that acted in her who was the direction of her hand the strength of her arm the spirit of her prudence the ardour of her courage and the soul of her soul O how great is this God of gods O how terrible is this Lord of hosts and who is there that fears not God but he that hath none at all What Colossus's of pride have faln and shall yet fall under his hands What giants beaten down and plunged even into hell for kindling fiery coals of concupiscence shall smoak in flames by an eternall sacrifice which their pains shall render to the Divine Justice HESTER THe holy Scripture sets before our eyes in this History Greatnesse falling into an eclipse and the lownesse of the earth elevated to the Starres Humility on the Throne and Ambition on the Gallows Might overthrown by Beauty Love sanctified and Revenge strangled by its own hands It teaches Kings to govern and People to obey great Ones not to relie on a fortune of ice Ladies to cherish Piety and Honour the Happy to fear every thing and the Miserable to despair of nothing All that we have to discourse of here happened in the Kingdome of Persia during the Captivity of the Jews in Babylon about four hundred and sixty years before the Nativity of our Lord and under the Reign of Ahasuerus But it is a great Riddle to divine who this Prince was to whom Hester was married and which is called here by a name that is not found in the History of the Persian Kings and which indeed may agree to all those high Monarchs signifying no other thing but The great Lord. Mercator sayes that it was Astyages grandfather of Cyrus and Cedrenus that it was Darius the Mede Genebrand is for Cambyses Scaliger for Xerxes Serrarius for Ochus Josephus and Saillan for Artaxerxes with the long hand The wise Hester that was so much in love with Chastity is found to have had fourteen husbands by the contestation of Authours every one would give her one of his own making she is married to all the Kings of Persia she is coursed up and down through all the Empire and her Espousals made to last above two hundred years But as it is easie enough to confute the Opinions of all those that speak of her so is it very hard to settle the truth of the Chronology amidst so great obscurities The Scripture sayes that Mordecai with Hester was carried away out of Judea into Babylon under the Reign of Nebuchadonozor and if we are of the opinion that marries her to Artaxerxes if we reckon well all the years that were between those two Kings we shall find that this young and ravishing beauty of Hester which caught so great a Monarch by the eyes was already an hundred and fifty years old which is an age too ripe for a maid that one would give for a wife to a King It is impossible to get out of this labyrinth if we do not say that Mordecai and Hester were not transported in their own but in the persons of their ancestours and that that passage means nothing else but that they issued from the race of those that were lead captives with King Jechonias destroyed by Nebuchadonozor so we will take Artaxerxes and not divide that amiable concord of Authours united in this point Represent then to your selves that from the time that the Jews were dispersed into Babylon into Persia into Medea and through all the States of those great Kings they ceased not to multiply in Captivity and that servitude which is wont to stifle great spirits produced sometimes amongst them gallant men Amongst others appeared upon the Theatre the excellent Mordecai a man of a good understanding and of a great courage who by his dexterity and valour delivered all his Nation from death and total ruine He then dwelt in Shushan the capitall city of all the Kingdome and bred up in his house a little Niece the daughter of his brother an orphan both by father and mother which was named in her first child-hood Edisla and after called Hester Now as those great spirits that are particularly governed by God have some tincture of Prophecie he had a wonderfull Dream and saw in his sleep a great tempest with thunderings and lightnings and an earthquake which was followed with a combate of two dragons who were fighting one against the other and sent forth horrible hissings whiles divers Nations assembled together stood and looked upon them expecting the issue of the combate thereupon he perceived a little fountain which became suddenly a great river which was changed into a Light and of a Light transformed it self into a Sun that both watcred and illuminated the earth He knew not what his Dream did mean but he learned the Interpretation of it in the great combates he had with Haman and in the exaltation of his little Niece that was promoted to so high a splendour as to give both evidence and refreshment to all the people of her Nation This Mordecai being a man of good behaviour and quality found means to advance himself to Court and to make his beginnings there in some inferiour office expecting some good occasion to make himself be known He had an eye alwayes open to discover all that passed without any bragging of it He considered the approaches of divers Nations that lived in that Court the humours the capacities the businesses the obligations the intricacies the credit the industry of every one omitting nothing of all that might advance the benefit of his Countrey-men He quickly discovered the spirit of Haman who was at that time a mean Cavalier of fortune but ambitious close crafty revengefull bloudy and capable to embroil a State He had an aversation from him although he had not yet been offended by him and began to distrust him fearing lest he be one day fatall to his people Neverthelesse Haman with the times took an high ascendant and Mordecai feared his greatnesse as one would do the apparition of a Comet It happened that two perfidious Subjects Thares and Bagathan ushers of the door made an abominable conspiracy against King Artaxerxes which Mordecai who was not a drowsie spirit soon perceived and began carefully to watch them observing their goings out and comings in their words and their countenances their plottings and their practices He gave notice of it very opportunely so that being taken arrested and put to the rack they acknowledged the crime and were led away to punishment The King gave hearty thanks to Mordecai commanded him to live in his Palace in a certain office which he bestowed upon him and caused the day to be set down in writing wherein he had been preserved from the conspiracy of those unhappy servants to recompence as opportunity should be offered the good services of his Deliverer
will if they might have had but the permission given them He saw that he subsisted not but by his favour which he abused so basely He resolved to pick a quarrell with him and asked him instantly What might a Great King do that would honour a Favourite to the highest Point Haman thinking that that Question was not made but in favour and Consideration of him Answers with an Immeasurable Impudence That to honour worthily a Favourite and to shew in his Person what a great Master can do that Loves with Passion He must clothe him with his Royall Cloak put the Kings Diadem upon his Head set him upon his own Horse and command the greatest Prince of the Court to hold his Stitrop and his Bridle and lead him through all places of the City and to Cause an Herald to Proclaime before him That it is thus that Ahasuerus honoureth his Favourites The Prince was astonished at this Insolence and to make him burst with spite said to him that his Opinion was very good and therefore he commanded him to render all those honours presently to Mordecai the Jew that was at the Palace Gate This Divel of Pride was seized with so great an amazement at that Speech that he had not so much as one word in his mouth to Reply and as he was Vain-glorious and Insupportable in his Prosperity so there was nothing more Amated or more Base in Adversity He extreamly racks his spirit to dissemble his discontent The fear of Death and Punishments due to his Crimes if he did resist the Pleasure of the King made him swallow all the bitternesse of that Cup. A strange thing Poor Mordecai that was all nasty covered with Sack-cloth and Ashes is fetched is washed is trimmed up and clad after the fashion of a King Haman presents himself to hold the Stirrop of the Horse and to lead him by the Bridle while his Enemy was shewed in Triumph to the eyes of the whole City of Shushan How much Resistance do we think he made not to accept this Honour What thoughts came into his head whether it was not a Trick of Haman that would give him a short Joy to deliver him to a long Punishment He could not believe his Eyes nor his Reason he thought that all this had been a Dream In the mean while the whole City of Shushan beheld that great Spectacle and could not be sufficiently amazed at so extraordinary a Change Haman after the Ceremony was over returns very sad unto his House deploring with his Wife and friends the sad sport of Fortune The Confusion of their troubled spirits suggests nothing to them but Counsels of despair and they say That since Mordecai hath begun sure he will make an end He was very loath to go to that Feast of the Queens he feared that it would prove a sacrifice and that he should be the offering Hester that saw that her sport was spoiled if he was not present caused him secretly to be engaged and pressed by the Eunuchs of the King who under colour of Civility conduct him to his finall Misery He enters into the Chamber of the Feast The King dissembles all that had been done there was nothing talked of at the first but of passing merrily the time away Every thing flourished every thing Laughed but Poyson was hid under the Laughter and Venome under the Flowers At the end of their Repast the King Conjures the Queen to tell him at last what it was that she desired of him because he was fully resolved to divide his Crown and Sceptre with her Then sending forth a great sigh she cryed Alas Sir I do not sue to your Majesty for any of all the Honours or the Riches of your Empire but I desire of you onely my own and my poore peoples Lives which some would overthrow Destroy and Massacree by an horrible and bloody Butchery Sir I ought no longer to disguise any thing to your Majesty God hath made me be born of that Nation which is given for a Prey under your Authority and destin'd to the Shambels It is me that they aime at If they had gone about onely to make me and my People Slaves I would have held my peace and stifled my groans But Sir what have I done that my Throat should be cut after I shall have seen the Bloud of my nearest Kindred shed before mine Eyes to be thrown as the last Sacrifice upon a great heap of Dead Bodies and Buried in the Ruines of my dear Countrey Alas Sir shew us Mercy You that are the Mildest of all Princes restore me my soul and the lives of my whole Nation The King entered into an Admiration of Extasie upon these Words and said to the Queen I know not to what this Discourse tends or where the Man or the Authority is that dares do this without my command Then she replyes He to whom your Majesty hath given your Seal that Traytor and perfidious Haman It is he that hath caused bloudy Letters to be written through all the Provinces to deliver me and my People up to Death and know Sir that his cruelty rebounds upon your head Haman quickly perceived that he was a lost man and the Palenesse of Death came at the same instant into his Face The King rises from the Table and walks into the Garden that was hard by to chew upon his Choler The Queen that had put her self into a Melancholy casts her self down upon the Bed Haman throwes himself at her feet and as a man that is drowning layes hold on what ere he meets with He beseeches her he Urges her he Conjures her to shew him Mercy and in saying so bowed himself down upon the Bed and approached very near unto her The King entring at the same time into the Chamber and finding him in that Posture How sayes he will he also violate the Queen my Wife in my Presence and in my House Let some body take him away Instantly they come and cover his Face as they were wont to do to those that were carried away to Punishment and one of the Eunuchs thought of saying That he had prepared a pair of Gallows of fifty Cubites high for Mordecai the Preserver of the Kings Life It is that which is his Due answered Ahasuerus and let him be hanged suddenly upon the Gibbet that he hath set up This was executed without delay there being no body that was not extream joyfull of his Ruine Mordecai was called to the Palace to take his Place and to Govern all the Houshold of the Queen that now acknowledged him in the presence of the King her husband for her Uncle Hester afterward beseech'd the King to command Dispatches to be sent through all the Provinces to countermand and to make void the Letters of Death which cruell Haman had caused already to be spread through all the Kingdome This was found very reasonable and they were forthwith Expedited in these Termes Artaxerxes the Soveraign Lord and King of
they preferred a flint before a pearl The first unhappinesse of his conduct was that he had not an heart for God but for his own interest and that he did not unite himself close enough to Samuel that had made him King and that was the Oracle from which he should have learned the divine Will The second was a furious State-jealousie his capitall devil that put his Reason into a disorder and infected all the pleasures and contentments of his life He was but weak to hold an Empire and govern with love and yet he loved passionately all that he could least compasse and would do every thing of his own head thinking that the assistance of a good Councel was the diminution of his Authority Sometimes he was sensible of his defects but instead of amending them he desired to take away the eyes of those men that perceived them His Spirit was little in a great body his Reason barren in a multitude of businesse his Passions violent with small reservednesse his Breakin gs out impetuous his Counsels sudden and his Life full of inequalities Samuel had prudently perceived that the Philistims were dangerous enemies to the State of Judea because they knew its weaknesse and kept it in subjection a long time depriving it of the means of thinking fully upon its liberty And therefore he maintained a peace with them and used them courteously gaining all that he could by good Treaties and would not precipitate a Warre which was to weaken the Israelites without recovery But Saul thought not himself an able man if he had not spoiled all and without making any other provision of necessary things he made a great levy of Souldiers and a mighty Army to go against the enemies in which there was but two swords It was a plot that permitted not the Hebrews to have Armorers nor other men that laboured in Iron totally to disarm them and at the least motion that they should make expose them for a pâ—ey These assaulted Philistims found him businesse enough through the whole course of his Government and Life and in the end buried him with his children in the ruines of his State But God that would give some credit to Samuel's choice sent at first prosperities to Gods people under the conduct of that new King wherein that which served for a glory to that holy man was a vain bait to Saul to make him enterprise things that could give him no other ability but to destroy himself About a moneth after his election Nahash the Ammonite raised an Army to fall upon the Jabites that were in league with the people of Israel and those seeing that they were not strong enough to resist so terrible an enemy dispatched an Embassage to him to treat about a Peace But that insolent Prince made answer to their Embassadours that he would not make any treaty of Peace with them on any other condition then by plucking out their right Eyes and covering them with a perpetuall ignominy These poor people that were reduc'd almost to a despair implored on all sides the assistance of their neighbours and failed not to supplicate to the Israelites their friends to do something in their favour Their Messengers being arriv'd at Gibeah related the sad news of the cruelty of Nahash that filled the people with fear and tears Saul returning from the fields was driving his oxen when hearing the groans of his Subjects demanded the cause of it and having been informed entred into so great a rage at the pitilesse extremities of that fierce Ammonite that he instantly tore in pieces his two oxen and sent the pieces of them through all the cities and villages of his Dominion commanding every one to follow him to revenge that injury otherwise their cattle should be dealt with as he had done with his two oxen The Israelites mov'd partly by compassion and partly also by fear of those menaces poured out themselves from all parts to this Warre in such a sort that he had got together three hundred thousand men He divided them into three Battalions and went to meet the Ammonite whom he set upon so vigorously and combated so valiantly that he totally defeated his Army and humbled that proud Giant that thought on nothing but putting out mens eyes making him know that pride goes before reproach as the lightning before the thunder All the great people that compos'd that Army returned unto their houses and Saul retained onely three thousand men whereof he gave one thousand to his son Jonathan that was a man full of spirit and generosity and farre better liked then his father Saul This Militia was too little considerable for so great enemies yet he had a courage to assault a place of the Philistims and routed their Garrison whereat they being pricked beyond measure betake themselves into the field with an Army in which there were thirty thousand chariots of warre and people without end whereat the Israelites were so affrighted that all scatter'd themselves and went to hide themselves in caves so that there remained but about six hundred men with Saul who marched with a small noise and durst not appear before his adversaries Samuel had promised to see him within seven dayes to sacrifice to God and encourage the people But Saul seeing that the seventh day was come without having any tidings of him takes himself the burnt offering offers the Sacrifice and playes the Priest without having any Mission either ordinary or extraordinary As soon as he had made an end of burning the Holocaust Samuel arrives to whom he related how that seeing all the people debauch themselves and quit the Army and how that being pressed by his enemies in a time wherein it behoved them to have recourse to prayer before they gave battle he was perswaded that God would like well enough that in the necessity and long absence of Samuel he should perform the office of a Priest by presenting the burnt offering which he had done with a good intention without pretending to usurp any thing upon his office Samuel rebuked him sharply for that action to shew that there is no pretense nor necessity that is able to justifie a sin and that it no way belongs to Lay-people to meddle with the Censer and to do the Functions that regard the Priests Then Samuel fore-told him that his Kingdome should not be stable and that God would provide himself another that should be a more religious observer of his Law thereupon he left him for a time and Saul having recollected all the people that he could endeavoured to oppose the enemy The brave Jonathan accompanied with his armour-bearer found a way to climb over rocks and to surprise a court-of-Guard of the Philistims which they thought had been inaccessible which put them in a terrible fright imagining that those that had got so farre had great forces though they did not yet appear This brought their Army into a confusion and God also putting his hand farre into the
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
was wished him on the birth of his son did make answer that there needed not such acclamations for nothing could be born from him and Agrippina but what should be pernicious to the Empire Not long after this unfortunate man did die consumed with diseases that attended his filthy life and left behind him his son three years of age who saw his mother banished and being destitute of means was brought up in the house of his Aunt Lepida under the discipline of a dancer and a barber who did corrupt his spirit with the first impressions of vice which from his birth he was too much disposed to receive The times changing his mother returned into favour and by her charms prevailed upon the spirit of the Emperour Claudius the successour of Caligula a simple and The perfidiousnesse of his mother a stupid man who espoused this dangerous woman who afterwards poisoned him by a potion and so placed her own son on the Throne of the Cesars And although the Astrologians had fore-told her that he should be Emperour and withall the murderer of his mother she made nothing of it and thought it no hard bargain to buy the Empire with her own bloud saying Let him reign and let him kill me By the artifice of this wicked woman Nero was saluted Emperour in the seventeenth year of his age with a marvellous applause and in the publick acclamations honoured with all great Names and specious Titles all which he received saving onely that of Father of his Countrey saying He was too young to have so many children He was very tractable in his youth upright gentle discreet well-spoken and demean'd himself for the first five years very worthily under the conduct of Seneca But when he approached to the one and twentieth year of his age the ingredients of vice which with his birth he brought into the world the base education in his infancy the heat of his youth the delights of the Court and which is the greatest of all temptations the Power to do all did weigh down the Philosophy and the Instructions of Seneca who proved by experience That there is nothing more difficult then to perswade those to virtue whom too much Power had put in the possession of all vices His deboistnesse began by the ill examples which he learned in his infancy which were altogether unbeseeming his person he became a Tumbler a Puppet-player a Comedian a Waggoner a Songster and a Minstrel not for Recreation but to make a publick Profession of it to dispute with the Masters of those Faculties and to abandon all the affairs of Peace and Warre to be vacant to those exercises insomuch that he made it more to out-act a Comedian on the stage then to gain a Battle in the field He was also a night-walker and gave and sometimes received many sore blows which did not permit him to passe unknown From hence he laid himself open to most extravagant profusenesse insomuch that he gave to Tumblers the patrimonies of Consuls and made the funeralls of some inconsiderable men to equall the Magnificence of the Obsequies of Kings he never did wear the most gorgeous garments longer then one day He did build his Palaces with so much cost as if he would dispend on them onely all the wealth of Rome When he travelled he would be followed with a thousand caroaches and his mules were all shod with silver He made his halls after the form of the firmament where the vault being of gold intermingled with azure and illuminated with counterfeit starres did roul continually over his head and rained on him showers of flowers and waters of a most exquisite smell There would he dine from noon till midnight in the riot of execrable services He had a touch in his tender age of the vices of wantonnesse luxury avarice and cruelty but being in the beginning it was with some shame concealed in private But in the end he took off that mask by an open and inordinate dissolutenesse which knew no restraint He was of belief that there was not one chaste person in the world and took great pleasures in those who did repeat their filthinesse to him There was never man more abandoned to all manner of uncleannesse without distinction of kindred sex time place or man-hood There was not one part in all his body that was not sacrificed to dishonesty his polluted spirit made him invent those abominations which are not to be indured by chaste ears and with which I will not defile my paper The excesse of his insolencies did at last render him odious to those who were most near unto him and when they gently told him of his extravagancies he would leap into a fury and made a crime of their virtue who did best advise him He filled up the apprenticeship of his enormities with the death of Britannicus a young Prince the sonne of the Emperour His cruelty towards Britannicus Claudius and brother to his wife Octavia in which he imployed the most famous Sorceresse of Rome named Locusta who prepared the poyson and made an assay of it before him on a sucking pig who died immediately now finding it for his turn caused it to be served to his brother as he dined at the table with him The malignity of the poyson was so piercing that in an hour after he fell dead at the feet of his mother and his sister who were both present at this tragick spectacle Nero to excuse himself said That it was the effect of a great sicknesse to which he had been subject from his cradle and that they ought to be of comfort But the Princesses concealing their imagination for fear of provoking his rage did manifestly perceive that he sowed those seeds of his murder which he would afterwards continue in his Family It is almost impossible to believe the tender affection The love to his mother degenerated to misprision with which he prosecuted his mother Agrippina He sometimes did give to the souldiers that did guard his body for their word The good Mother He could not live without her He did put into her hands the most delicate interests of all his Affairs and desired that all things should stoop to her Authority The mother also did indeavour by all possible artifices to tie her self unto his person even unto the using of Charms for it is most certain that she gave him the skin of a serpent inclosed in a bracelet of gold which he carried ordinarily about him and afterwards in despite did lay it by and did look for it not long before his death but could not find it The endearments of this Agrippina were too fond and her kisses more hot then belonged to a mother Seneca was amazed at the horrour of it and to Seneca by a lesse evil diverts a greater avoid a greater evil he procured a young maiden named Acta who otherwise was a slave that came from Asia but very beautifull to serve as a
Acroceraunia beholding her self in that danger cryed out that she was the mother of the Emperour and that they should make haste to preserve her which was the occasion of her death for immediately on those words she was killed with the blows of the poles and oars Agrippina beholding this goodly pageant and being most assured that it was a design of her sonnes had yet such a command over her passion that she spake not one word and was saved by the swimming of one of those who were not of the Conspiracy The Frigots made haste to receive her and to convey her to her own house which was not farre off The amazement of the accident did not so abate her spirits but she sent to Nero to acquaint him That the Gods and the good Fortune of her Sonne had delivered her from a great danger but she desired him not to take the pains to visit her nor to send any of his servants to her because she desired to take her rest The dismall Prince who every moment attended The amazement of Nero. the issue of this most execrable enterprise was much amazed to understand that she had escaped the danger and counterfeited that the messenger whom his mother had sent was an Assassinate imployed to murder him He awaked Seneca and Burrus to demand their counsel and did remonstrate to them the danger in which he was if he should not throughly accomplish what he had so ill begun These two great personages did look on one another being unwilling to disswade him without effect or to consent unto it by reason of the horrour of it Seneca to whom the fluencies of Language were never before wanting held his eyes fixed on Burrus Captain of the Life-guard as if without speaking to him he would ask him if he had not souldiers enough of his company to execute that which should be conceived to be expedient but Burrus did prevent him and told the Emperour that the men under his command were too much affectionated to the Bloud of the Cesars to undertake so hardy an enterprise They both had a desire to divert him from so bad a deed for the want of an undertaker But the detestable Anicetas Admirall of the Fleet The death of Agrippina did again present himself to put the last hand unto the massacre He immediately with some souldiers did transport himself to Agrippina's castle he broke open the gates and found her in bed forsaken of all the world Assoon as she beheld three frightfull faces to enter her chamber she spake courageously to them and told them if they came to give her a complement that she had no need of it and if they had any other design she believed her son was not so wicked as to command her murder These villains without answering one word did begin the assassinate one struct her with a truncheon another had his sword at her bleeding breast to whom she cryed out and onely said The Belly Souldier the Belly that did bear the monster after which she gave up the ghost her body being hacked with many wounds Her corps was burned that very night and one of her servants killed her self before the funerall pile either for fear of the sonne or for grief of the mother Howsoever Nero caused a Declaration to be published in which not without horrour to the Readers he laid all the fault upon his Mother and after this he had never any rest for he dreamed almost every night that he saw his mother calling him down to hell and beheld unnumbred Furies tormenting him in the flames thereof For all this he desisted not from the nature of a Nero continueth his cruelties Tygre but to the massacre of his mother he added the murder of his wife Octavia the most innocent Princesse on earth The cause of it was one Otho a companion of his deboistnesse had taken from Crispus a man of quality his wife Poppea and in a fury such as Nero's himself had espoused her He told Nero so many wonders of the pleasures of his marriage that he gave him a desire to taste them thinking it would be a means to raise him to a higher dignity but the event was that the Lady perceiving her self to be beloved of the Emperour did totally devote her self unto him and did advise him to send her husband into Portugall under the colour of Ambassadour This cunning woman had a commanding beauty He salls in love with poppea and estrangeth himself from his wise Octavia a sweet and pleasing voyce and incomparable attractions and allurements She did leade Nero as a child and observing him so violently inamoured of her she would be his Mistresse without a Paramour and would not permit his own wife to partake of his bed For which purpose she contrived a detestable plot and caused the virtuous Empresse to be accused for prostituting her self to a player on the Flute who by his birth was an Alexandrian an accusation which could not be spoken without the absolute dislike of all good men nor believed by any but ignorant and depraved persons Neverthelesse Tigillinus the most intimate with Nero who was a great stickler in the marriage with Poppea caused the men and maid-servants of the Princesse to be examined some of whom being torn upon the rack did in the extremity of the torment let fall some untruths to deliver themselves from the intollerable pain others continued constant and there was a maid-servant of that courage that being in the midst of all her torments she said to infamous Tigellinus Know Executioner that there is not one part in all the body of my Mistresse but is more chaste then thy mouth There being not proofs sufficient to destroy her Nero was content to send her away into one of his houses and to be divorced from her under the pretence of barrennesse Not long after she was removed thence and kept under guard and was afterwards called back to Rome to appease the trouble which the absence of so illustrious and so virtuous a Lady had caused She was received with great applause of all the City which so alarm'd the spirit of Poppea that she threw her self at Nero's feet and did remonstrate to him That he should take no more care for his loves but for his life and that this return did tend to nothing else but to ruine him with her self and to make them both fall under the fury of the people That this was not it which she had deserved of his friendship and if he had rather advance in his palace the child of a player on the Flute then to have from her a legitimate heir that would give her leave to depart in a good hour and that she would look out her husband Otho in whatsoever place of the world she could find him She used such and so many attractions so many A hottible calumny counterfeit tears such sweetnesses and such rigours of love that she prevailed with detestable
a King in Name onely and that the Queen signed The pernicious language of an Incendiary first in all the Declarations and did not permit that any Effigies should be stamped on the moneys but her own That of necessity he must discharge himself from the tutelage of that Imperious woman and teach her to submit to the law of Nature which allows not that Sex to command their husbands On the other side this Forger of iniquity heating two furnaces with one fagot ceased not by his complaints to set on fire the heart of the Queen telling her That she must chastise the rash young Man and retain the Sovereignty entire on her own side otherwise his unruly passions attempting to part the Crown betwixt them would take it away from them both and put all things into a confusion This was the occasion that Mary arming her heart with a manly courage would enjoy the Rights and Prerogatives of her birth and did afterwards reign in full authority 4. This young Husband who of a Subject was become The jealousie of King Henry Stuart Darley a Master could not with moderation endure his change of fortune but daily endeavoured to hold more of command than of compliance The Queen also who desired to be known the sole efficient Cause of his preferment being unwilling to lose the name of Mistress in taking that of wife did distast his importunity deferred his Coronation and did allow him but a little part in the affairs of the Kingdom She ordinarily did confer much with David Riccius her Secretary an old and a discreet man who with great honour possessed her ear and her good opinion for she cherished him rather for the necessity of her affairs than for any attractive qualities that were in him for he was but of a deformed body as they who have seen him do affirm But the calumny of the The Book of the death of the Queen of Scots printed in the year 1587. Puritans who know of every wood how to make an arrow did not forbear in their bold discourses to reflect upon the honour of Queen Mary concerning that subject although it was the most incredible and the most ridiculous thing in the world Cambden also the most sincere of all Historians of the pretended Religion and Monsieur de Castelnau have disdained to speak of it as being an out-rage which had no foundation at all of truth although the Earls of Morton and Lindsey two execrable Incendiaries who had undertaken the divorce of the Royal House following the spirit of Heresie most impudently to breathe forth the greatest lies did work a great alteration on the King in the cooling of his affections to his wife The spirit of Henrie now became furious and A spirit tormented with two great devils did perceive it self to be possessed on by two fiends The one the Jealousie of Love the other of Estate which both at one time did commit a prodigious Ravishment on his heart They made him believe that he passed for a King in fansie onely and that his Throne was no more than a meer picture whilest another was made a Partner in his bed In effect the excellent Beauties of the Queen which had given him such heats of love did now raise his jealousie to the height of those flames He was all on fire perpetually night and day and being tormented with shadows suspitions and rages with choller frenzies and with terrours he lived as on the wheel not knowing which way to turn himself His passion did suggest unto him a bloudy remedy A tragick remedy by the death of the Secretary of the Queen which was to draw the Secretary from the Cabinet of the Queen at the hour of supper and under colour of communicating some affair unto him to stab him with a ponyard in the Presence-Chamber The body being all bloudy by threescore wounds which it received fell down just at the door of his Mistress imploring Heaven and earth against those who by so black a treason had ravished his life from him in the flower of his hopes The Queen being frighted at the noise did run to the door and with his bloud received the last breathings of his soul some drops of the bloud falling on her outward garment She startled at the horrour of the sight and believed that some sprinklings of the bloud had painted on her face the opprobriousness of the act But as she made her complaint the Murderers The passion of divelish fury presented a pistol to her without any regard to the brightness of her Majesty or the bigness of her womb desiring nothing more than at one blow to destroy both the Tree and the fruit They locked her up in a chamber of the Palace taking from her all her ordinary servants and putting a Guard on her of four-score souldiers On this the Estates met and the pestilent Councel were assembled where with mouthes full of fire the Hereticks ceased not to breathe forth Rebellion Bloud and Butcheries They gave it out aloud That they ought not by halfs to do a work of so great importance and since the Queen who was a Pillar of the Papists Religion in Scotland was already shaken they ought to lay her low as the earth and utterly destroy her in giving allowance to the Libels and the Calumnies which were published against her They had attempted to have seduced the The horrible attempt of Heresie spirit of the young King promising him to put the Crown in peace upon his Head if he would maintain and support their Design to which as he shewed an inclination they began to weave an horrible conspiracy to take from him all the most eminent persons of the State and imbarque the innocence of the Queen in the common shipwrack The Earl of Murray who fled into England for having raised Arms against their Majesties returned back and came into Scotland rathers as a Triumpher than a guilty person They made him an overture of their pernicious counsels which he entertained with horrour for as yet he was unwilling that the Affairs should be carried on with such an extremity of violence wherefore in private he repaired to the Queen demanding pardon for his offences past and promising all obedience for the time to come He counselled her to recollect and rouze up her spirits and pardon the injuries passed and to take away from the Conspiratours all the apprehensions of Despair The Queen bending her spirit to the necessity of the time and her present affairs did receive him with all courtesie and told him that she was ready to perform all as he pleased She assured him that he was not ignorant that her heart was without gall having always pardoned offences even to her own destruction by her too much clemency And though she had been used by him with too much rigour for a Brother that she would not cease to cherish him and to gratifie him above all other to give him the
is as the Wise-man said as the rain-bowe that is bright in the fair clouds This is he whom after so many storms so many tempests and such a deluge of Christian bloud God seems to exhibit as a restorer of things a Peace-maker to the world an avenger of evils and a bestower of blessings And indeed this is not done by humane counsel but by the gubernative reason of God which is his Providence that he might demonstrate to the world by no vain auguries that to this man as to the Patriarch Noah the tops of the mountains should appear the waters of strife and the flouds of contention being dried up This I suppose is that dove with silver wings and whose hinder parts glittered as the purest gold whereof the Prophet spake Innocentius hath ever shined brighter then silver by the candour and uprightnesse of his mind but now the latter parts of his life promise a golden Age unto the world He doth not sit idle amidst the complaints and mournings of the Church he doth not revel in an uncircumspect and lazy greatnesse but with unwearied pains and a mind alwayes vigilant he is intent upon illustrious cares for Christ and aimeth at the consolation of mankind The amiable name of Pamphilius is delightfull unto all men and delightfull is the name of Innocentius so often consecrated to the salvation of men Innocentius the first extinguished Alaricus boasting himself in the prey of the Roman Empire with his prayers and by his splendour re-beautified the face of the eternall City when it was infuscated with the sooty vapours of a brutish Warre Innocentius the second dissipated the Schism of the counterfeit Anacletus and with the co-assistance of S. Bernard composed the Christian world when it was disunited with great discords A pure white dove fore-shewed the inauguration of Innocent the third by flying to his side without doubt designing the solicitous endeavours whereby he laboured to consociate all Christian Princes by firm Leagues one with another and to exasperate them against the common enemy of Religion Innocentius the fourth came to Lyons that he might reconcile the irregular tumults in the Church and that by his authority he might remove Frederick the Emperour that fomented many things and disturbed all things Innocentius the fifth was no sooner crowned but presently he addicteth his mind to pacifie the Cities of Italy and being by such pious determinations immortall in glory he spent his short Pontificate in a fatherly care of his people Innocentius the sixth when the flame of a destructive warre devoured France and England stood stoutly for the House of God and with a great spirit laboured for Peace with John and Edward at that time the Kings of the Nations Innocentius the seventh mounted not otherwise to this pitch of supreme Dignity but by a faithfull endeavour constantly transacted to reconcile the Princes and appease the cities of Italy which a malignant force of discord had precipitated into imminent destruction Innocentius the eighth was most desirous of Peace among Christian Princes and could not without some motions of impatience see any go to warre but upon the most important and importunate causes Innocentius the ninth when before his Pontificate he was the Aposticall Nuntio of Gregory the fourteenth staying six years among the Venetians conjoyned them both in Arms and Armies with the Pope and Philip the second King of Spain and irritated them against the Turk whereupon that most famous victory of Naupactus broke the boldnesse of the Sarazens and after a wonderfull manner improved the conduct of Christian Affairs Oh how is the name of the Innocents born and consecrated unto Peace Oh joyful appellation unto Christians The Tenth will accomplish what the nine have attempted so much the greater as this number is the more noble Go on thou dove of Innocence display thy silver wings flie over both earth and sea view the world shew forth in all places the celestiall olive give Peace so ambitiously desired and by such constant expectations wished give Peace I say so often called for and to be implored of thee the Anointed of the Lord or else at this time it must be despaired of What remaineth Greatest Princes but that you grant that to our Petitions which you have hitherto denied to our Reasons Whatsoever restraineth passion whatsoever can appease an armed man in fury doth now run towards you in one troop that so it may be honourable for you to be thus intreated and shamefull for you not to yield to these intreaties Behold the Pope the Pastour and Parent of the whole Church stretcheth out friendly hands unto you and when he might command intreats you almost forgetting that he is the Pope he becomes an humble suppliant A man dear to heaven and born for great enterprises Worthy in all places to bear the felicities of the world about him amidst all his exalted prosperities is your Petitioner that Divine wit equall to his heighth feels a colluctation with these burdens and in a vigorous and circumspect old age is grieved by you The bowels of a Father are urged who is as often fruitfull in the generation of children as he desires those children to be reconciled to Peace Be ashamed not to hear him whose predecessour Attila would hear He is full of dayes honour his grey hairs he is a Father acknowledge his Charity he is the Pope be observant of his Dignity God forbid that he like meek Jacob should be compelled to say Simeon and Levi are brethren in iniquity Let not my soul participate of their counsels and in their company let not my glory come Cursed be their fury because it is obstinate and their indignation because it is cruel The whole Church lamenteth with her Pope in times past triumphing now deformed full of filth now bedewed and almost drowned in tears and tired under cares and sorrows He beseecheth you that you would not suffer the Ammorites and the Moabites to insult in your destructions Prevent the petulancy of such an objection that even Barbarians did reverence him and yet he had Parricides to his sonnes How often have we seen the Priests at Jubilees prostrate in the Sanctuary with ejulations How often have we beheld Religious persons wearying the Altars with unwearied prayers How often have we seen the well-disposed Virgins imploring the aid of heaven by frequent sighs How often have we gladly beheld the Devout multitude crouding the Church to pour forth their wishes Of what quality and complexion is that rigour that which God a vert will not hear the whole world How is the metall of their souls compounded that would make heaven iron unto us and almost noxious whilst it either seemeth not to hear or what it heareth to contemne To be never free from Warres they think is either for the publick profit or for their own if for the publick let them hear S. Augustine crying out That felicity acquired by Martiall exploits is alwayes a brittle perishable beauty
shamefull they always carry along with them the confusion misery and ruin of those who embrace them Who diggeth a pit saith the Wise-man Qui sodit foveam incidet in eam qui voloit lapidem revolvetur â—d eum Prov. 26. 27. shall fall into it and the stone shall return back on his head who threw it The reputation of honesty is so necessary in the mannage of affairs that such as lost integrity of manners sought to retain the bark to cherish a renown amongst men swoln up with smoke and imposture A deceiver fears nothing so much as to be discovered and to lay open the face of designs which he closely worketh for the ruin of others Judge now how hard a matter it is to practise at this present in the world with such proceedings in an Age most vigilant and where little children are almost grown wise What a trouble is it to hide Troubles miseries of dissimulation your jugling in a Court where are so many Argus eyes who perpetually watch upon all actions If one be surprized before the act he must expect to be flouted even by foot-boys and used like one who cannot hit upon it to be wicked although this trade be very easie and who having sold his conscience to devils knows not how to evict payment unless he plead it in hell But if a man some one time come to the point of what he projected which he can hardly keep from breaking through the ears of others they who are deceived seldom wanting eloquence either in themselves or their own ashes were they dead to decrie treachery yet must he hereafter for one trick of craft loose reputation and credit two pillars of discretion All the world will avoid you as a rock or a monster what ever you do you have but one heart and one tongue to invent and tell lies but you shall raise a thousand against you by it For all those who know you practise this trade and that you make it your endeavour to deceive will bend all their sinews and strength to entrap you in the same snares you laid for other in such sort that you shall become a prey aimed at if it were possible by all the world Where have we ever seen a deceiver to prosper in Dreadfull events of deceivers all his enterprizes to the very end You may as well number the waves of the sea and leaves of trees as recount the lamentable and tragical events of all these common cheaters who never had the power to avoid God's vengeance The pernicious Machiavel who taught the art to deceive produceth the example of an infamous Prince whose impostures succeeded so ill that by mistaking he drank the poison prepared by himself for another in a banquet and ended his detestable life Is not this man abandoned by religion wit and reason to seek to perswade treachery with so weak examples If he will work this way let us oppose both against him and the like experience of passed Ages to set as it is said the Sun in full splendour before their eyes The eleventh EXAMPLE upon the eleventh MAXIM Of Craft VIce many times hath a shop near unto Virtue as said Origen and deceives Merchants under colour of selling good commodities Craft readily counterfeiteth wisdom and some there are also who make the wise to pass for subtile But there is so much difference between them as between glass and diamond Craft is a false prudence which maketh use of subtilities against right and justice but true wisdom though it be subtile is never crafty For it pretends nothing at all against equity and good conscience If you desire to know wary wisdom and to distinguish The wittie conceit of Theodora Zonaras in Theophilo it from craft look upon what the Emperess Theodora did one of the worthiest women of her Age. She was married to the Emperour Theophilus an Heretick and a capital enemy to the honour of Images which he forbade to be kept or esteemed upon pain of death Notwithstanding this pious Princess who maintained Religion in the Empire what she might and sweetened with much wisdom the wild humours of her husband spared not to have in private pictures and holy Images affording them singular veneration It happened one day that Dender the Emperour's fool who played this part at Court rather through natural blockishness than dissimulation came as he was roaming up and down into the Emperesse's chamber and found her reverencing those Images He failed not in dinner-while to give the Emperour notice of it at which time he used to entertain him with a thousand merriments saying aloud He found Manna so he called the Emperess with her babies and that she was suddenly surprized with it Theophilus presently doubted it was Images his wife honoured and at the rising from the Table he sought her out all foaming with anger and asked where those puppets were she adored in the presence of Dender Truly we must consess devout women have sometimes a marvellous dexterity to excuse a business for she suddenly hit upon a handsom evasion which freed her from the importunity of her husband For in stead of seeming troubled and overtaken she smiled very sweetly having therein an excellent grace Behold Sir saith she verily one of the prettiest knacks happened in your Court of a long time This fool Dender who still doth somewhat worthy his name came into my chamber as I stood before my looking-glass with my women and confusedly saw our faces represented in the glass he thought they were images so subtile wittied he is Is not this an excellent jest Then causing the fool to be taken by the arm they set him before the looking-glass saying How now Dender are not these thy habits The Emperour was so surprized with the wittie conceit of a discreet Princess that he believed she had reason and all the matter was instantly turned into laughter I term not this example a piece of craft but a prudence Stratagem of Chares Polyenus l. 2. as the stratagem of a Captain called Chares who enjoyning his souldiers some labour upon his fortifications and seeing they undertook it coldly because they feared to marre their garments which were handsome enough he presently commanded every one should uncloth and take the apparrel of his fellow That done and all the souldiers being perswaded their cassocks would not be spared by those who put them on they wrought in good earnest and very quickly performed the task imposed upon them This ought to be stiled with the name of wisdom rather than any other title But if we observe what passeth in the world we shall find there are two sorts of crafts Some are politick addresses and subtilities which proceed not fully to injustice but which notwithstanding aim at interest at reputation and glory by ways not sincere So there are men who resemble those houses which Baro. de astutiâ Craft of the world have goodly gates and most magnificent stair-cases
but never a fair chamber they have some sweetness of spirit some readiness and prattle which is never wanting but no depth nor capacity yet will seem able among company which is the cause that not daring to examine or solidly debate a point of doctrine or a business they presently flie to the conclusion and find handsom evasions Others have admirable tricks to seem wise by making use of another mans labour and like droans eating the honey which the Bees gathered Other in handling affairs and seeking to get dispatches amuze and dazzle with variety of discourse such as they negotiate with to the end to entrap them Other to cross a business cause it to be proposed in the beginning by a man who understands nothing thereof of purpose to give some ill impression of it Other break off a discourse they began upon some matter to draw on the more appetite Others make a shew to have nothing less in their thoughts than what they most desire and let their main texts creep in the manner of a gloss Other have tales and histories in store wherein they can enfold in covert terms what they will not openly affirm Other in things important cause the foord to be sounded by men of less note and many as it is said pull the chest-nuts out of the fire with the cats foot These are sleight merchandizes taken from the shop of worldly policie which proceed not so far as to great injustice But there are black and hydeous subtilities which tend to the subversion of humane society and deserve to be abhorred by all living men Such were those of Tryphon of whom it is spoken in the Book of Macchabees which were most 1 Macch. 12. fatal to the people of God This wicked man being the Tutour of young Antiochus shewed himself in the beginning very zealous in al which concerned the good of his service and having a design to subdue Syria he would first have surprized the Macchabees who were then very eminent in arms But when he saw Jonathas come towards him with an Armie of fourty thousand men the fox played his ordinary pranks he received him with a pleasing countenance and overwhelmed him with heaps of courtesies He told him he desired to live with him as a faithfull brother and that he accounted it too heavie a charge to keep so great an Army on foot in full peace which could not but be prejudicial to the repose of the people That he might walk confidently every where how he pleased without any other armour than the amitie of King Antiochus which was an assured buckler for all those who would make trial of his protection This crafty companion not content with meer complements carried Jonathas into all the places of his charge with such honour and respect that he caused him to be attended as himself making shew that wheresoever he set foot there roses and lillies sprang Never doth any man take with a snare until he have some bayt suitable to the appetite of him who catcheth at it Jonathas a little loved honour and his senses were dazeled with the lustre of pomps and charmed with the sweetnesses of conversation in this subtile fellow He believed he trusted his whole Army was cashiered by the perswasion of a man who wished him not well He onely kept a thousand men with him to be as a Guard and entered with Tryphon into the Citie of Ptolemais where he presently saw himself arrested and his souldiers cut in pieces The Impostour desirous to extend his plot further wrote to Symon brother of Jonathas that he should not be troubled at what was past and that his brother was onely detained for some money due to the King which being satisfied he should have liberty onely let him send him a hundred talents of silver with the two sons of Jonathas in hostage to bring the business to the period he desired The poor Symon who doubted the plot had more wisdom to know him than force to avoid him For fearing lest the people might murmur if he accepted not the ways of accommodation proposed he sent the money and children whereof the one was despoiled the other massacred with their father by the command of the treacherous Tryphon This factious and cruel man pursued his plot to the usurpation of the Diadem and dispatch of his pupil But in the end after a reign of two years Heaven elements and men conspiring against him he was knocked down like a ravenous beast and buried in ruins and publick desolations I would willingly know to whom hath treachery ever been fortunate Was it to Saul who after he had so many times promised David the safety of his person yet not ceasing to persecute him was reduced to such necessity of affairs that he slew himself with his own hands leaving finally his spoils to him whom he meant to beguile Was it to the unhappie 2 Reg. 12. Ammon who using treachery to draw his sister Thamar into his chamber and dishonour her was afterward murdered at the table by his brother Absolom Was it to Joab who moistened with his bloud the Altar whereunto he fled after he had slain Amasa in saluting him Was it to Amasis King of Aegypt Herod l. 2. who lost both Kingdom and life for having foisted in another daughter than his own whom he feigned to give in marriage to Cambyses King of Persia So many Impostours there have been who in all Impostours surprized times sought to usurp Scepters and Crowns by admirable inventions were they not all shamefully ruined in the rashness of their enterprizes Smerdes the Magician who had possessed the Kingdom of Persia by tricks and incomparable sleights was he not torn in pieces as a victim by Darius and other Princes The false Alexander who rebelled under Demetrius Soter after some success was he not vanquished under Nicanor and slain in Arabia Archelaus who called himself the son of great Mithridates overcome by Gabinius Anduscus a man of no worth who falsely boasting himself to be descended from Perseus King of Macedonia and durft confront the Romans arms was he not subdued by Metellus Ariarathres who affected the Kingdom of Cappadocia Vol. l. 9. c. 16. by the same ways sent to punishment by Caesar The false Alexius who durst aspire to the Empire of Nicet l. 3. Constantinople slain by a Priest with his own sword under the reign of Isaacus Angelus Josephus relateth that pursuing the same ways False Alexander discovered there was a young Jew who had been bred at Sydon with the freed-man of a Roman Citizen who having some resemblance of Alexander the son of Herod whom the father had cruelly put to death feigned he was the same Alexander saying Those to whom Herod had recommended this so barbarous an execution conceived such horrour at it that they resolved to save him yet to secure their own lives upon the command imposed they promised to conceal him till after the death of his