water though it be boyled on burning coles returneth to its natural coldness honey assumeth not the nature of wormwood the Lion playeth not the Ape nor doth the Eagle become an Ostrich to trail her wings on the ground Now the nature of the spirit how much the more noble and elate it is so much the more it ought to transfer it self to the consideration of things divine to wit from whence it cometh whither it goeth what within it self it acteth This is saith the Oracle of Roman Philosophie an infallible Senec. praef l. 1. natur quaest Hoc habet argumentum Divinitatis suae quòd illum divina delectant nec ut alieniâ— interest sed us suis mark of a divine spirit when it pleaseth it self to discourse of things divine and is entertained in these contemplations as with her familiar and peculiar affairs Judge then what indignitie it is to bury this vigour and light of the spirit which God so freely hath communicated to you in frivolous employments and petty fopperies which discolour the lustre and honour of your name What a shame it is to say this Sovereign hand hath moulded man to be the King of creatures and he betraying his nature maketh himself the Comedian the mimike stage-player Man a Stage-player of the world of all creatures acting all sorts of personages but the good and that which his own excellency is obliged unto Which verily is the same the great Tertullian Tertul. de spect c. 2. Homo omnium flagitiorum actor non tantian opus Dei verumetiam imago est tamon corpore spiritu à suo discivit institutore deplored Man is the work and image of God who having apostatized from his Creatour as well in mind as bodie maketh himself an Actour of all the evil personages in the great Comedie of the world Yet that seemeth more tolerable in persons who are not eminent either in judgement learning or spirit but Great-ones whom God hath created advantageously to transcend all others and who should live and converse among men like Angels to play the Hogs and Monkeys abasing themselves to I know not what kind of childishness of spirit and to a life corrupted with the curious delights and voluptuousness of the bodie consider I pray whether this be not a thing as unreasonable in its own nature as prodigious in the effects Secondly It is to do a great wrong to ones self to live in such fashion yea it is a meer frenzy which is not made probable to any man but by the multitude of mad men See you not very well that to employ some rich and precious instrument to a base and sordid use is an act of a man who hath lost his wits If you see a great Monarch employ his purple A great indignitie in the abuse of the spirit robe to stop an oven with and his scepter to shake hay you would crie Out upon it and yet the soul which God hath given you incomparably more precious than the purple and scepter of Kings you suffer to wallow in the filths of flesh you apply it to perpetual idle discourses to vanities quarrels and revenges Is not this wholly to abuse the gifts of Almightie God It is said Nero took delight to dig Folly of Nero. the earth with a golden spade and when there was question about cutting the Isthmus of Corinth a design which long time troubled his brain he went thither led on with musical violins holding in his Mausonii dialog de Neronâ— hand the golden spade with which he began in the sight of the whole world to break the ground a matter which seemed ridiculous to the wisest living in that Age. For my own part I find it more strange that a noble spirit should amuse it self in things frivolous and impertinent For to dig the earth with gold was to bring back gold to its course since it first sprang from the entrails of the earth but for a heavenly spirit to delve in ordures stenches and dung-hils this is it which is wholly inexcusable especially in the Nobilitie In the third place I say that such manner of proceeding Sacriledge of fair souls is manifest sacriledge for two reasons the first is it retaineth wickedly and traiterously a thing sacred for a profane use S. Augustine in an Epistle Aug. Ep. ad Lucentium that he wrote to Licentius a young man of a noble spirit which a liltle too loosely he abused in the vanities of the world presseth this argument in these terms If by chance you had found a golden Chalice in Si calicâ—â— aurâ—m invenisses in terra denares illum Ecclesiae Dei. Accepisti à Deo ingenium spiritaliter cureâ—â— ministrâ—â— inde libidinibus in illo Satanâ— propinâ—â—â—eipsum the streets you would take it from the ground and give it to the Church otherwise it would be a sacriledge God hath given you a soul all of gold so excellent it is so delicately purified and you use it as an instrument of sensuality and make of it a vessel of abomination wherein you present your soul to Satan as a sacrifice Fear you not the anger of God The other reason is You not onely with-hold a vessel consecrated to the service of the Omnipotent but you attempt upon the image of God himself This fair spirit which he hath given you as the flower and quintessence of your soul is a true character of the Divinitie and you hasten to prostitute it to publick affections Remember I pray it hath Images of Emperours how much reverenced Senec. de benof l. 3. c. 26. heretofore been held a capital crime to carrie the Emperours picture into a place undecent or uncleanly and expresly Paulus a man of eminent qualitie as one who had been Pretour was accused and prosecuted as criminal under Tiberius for that he took a chamber-pot into his hand having a ring upon his finger graved with the Emperours form And can you think it will be lawful for you to carrie not a dead figure but the living Image of your Heavenly Father into the impurities and pollutions which your exorbitant passions extrude as the scummie froth of folly Is not the blame most formidable which God by the mouth of the Prophet Ezechiel pronounceth against an ungrateful Ezech. 16. 17. Et â—ulisti â—asa decoris tui de â—uro meo atque argento meo fecisti tibi imagines masculinâ—s fornicata es in eis olcum maâ—â—â— thymiama meum posuisti eoram eiâ— soul in such manner abandoning it self Ingrateful and wicked as thou art thou then hast dared to take away the most precious vessels framed of my gold and silver to make masculine idols and so to satisfie thy fornications Thou hast caused my oyl to burn and incense to smoke before their altars What ingratitude is like to this Alas what idols are daily made of the gold and silver of God when so many brave spirits
though too too late You that have made me so many times become red with bloud suffer me once to be ruddie with shame that I so lightly have been deceived to the end I may not blush to see my self converted with all the world And tell me not I pray that I am old Decrepitness is not in years but in manners It is never too late to learn ones salvation and it is ever seasonable to do good Shame is but for those who have neither power nor will to correct their vices Come learn a new warfare of Christians with me which Notable answers to the libertie of Symmachus in earth beareth arms and in Heaven its conquests From whom should I learn the mysteries of Heaven but from him that made it and not from man who doth not so much as know all that passeth in his own house Whom would you have me confide in the matter of belief we ought to have of God but God himself How shall I take you for a Master since in the seeking to teach me you confess your own ignorance You say God is a great secret and must be sought by many ways but he who once hath hit on the readie way why should he amuse himself with crooked turnings You seek him blindfold and we find him in the light You enquire him with suspicions and minds disturbance and we find him in the revelation of the wisdom and veritie of God himself It is a malicious stupiditie to think we can serve this sovereign Master in all sorts of Sects As there is but one sun in the world so is there but one truth It is a streight line which is to be made but one way All other superstitions are crooked lines that have as many semblances as defects How can we reconcile our Religions you adoring the works of your hands and we accounting it an injurie done to God to worship the works of men How shall we have one and the same God if you adore stocks and stones which our God instructeth us to trample under foot To whom shall we entrust this veritie in such a great diversitie of opinions but to a Man-God whose words were no other than prophesies wisdoms and verities his life innocencie sanctitie and virtue his actions power wonders miracles in all parts of the world What secret spirit set the Cross on the top of your Capitol You demand proofs of the Divinitie and I shew you the conquest of a world under the feet of one crucified the less this action hath of man the more you behold therein the work of God Then Symmachus you redemand the Altars of Idols of Grave words for the Emperour whom Of a Christian Emperour whose heart is in the hand of God arms are for the protection of faith Would you have him employ his chast and innocent hands which he never lifted up but to the living God to repair the monuments of a false Deitie In what Historie find you that the Pagan Emperours have built Chappels and Temples for us And think you our great Prince hath less zeal for truth than his Predecessours for falshood They have made all the parts of the world ruddie with our bloud for defence of their Idols but God hath blasted their purposes and overthrown by his power what they would have raised by their injustice Would you that a Christian Emperour should from the ruins of your Gods restore for you in contempt of his own Religion objects of sin on the Altars But let us a little further see the sequel hereof They demand A pertinent reply to the act of Vestals revenews for the Vestals for they cannot otherwise serve their God Behold how couragious the Gentiles are We have imbraced and maintained our faith in povertie injuries and persecutions and they crie out their ceremonies cannot subsist without their own interest It is a shamefull thing to sell virginitie and to fix themselves on profit through the despair of virtues What armies have these maids to maintain who have such care of their revenews Their number exceedeth not seven which they have chosen amongst so many thousands to guard a mercenary virginity that still reserves a night to make experience of marriage Is it for this they must be mytred for this scarletted for this endowed with a thousand priviledges and entertained in magnificent Caroches with a train of Princesses to brave it through the streets of a Citie Behold the holy virgins and poor maidens of Symmachus By my consent let him reflect the eye of his understanding and bodie on the state of our Religious women he shall see companies replenished with honour integritie shame-facedness who know how to use the gift of virginitie as it ought to be They wear no atyres nor pompeous myters on their heads but a poor veil which borroweth its worth from the lustre of their chastitie They know not what belongs to attractives of beautie for they have renounced all curiosities of the world Purple and superfluitie never dwels in their house but rather fasts and austerities It is not their custom to flatter or sell at the price of honour and priviledges the puritie of their bodies but much otherwise they do all as if their sufferings were to be the recompence of their virtues Never will they learn the trade of setting their flesh to sale to the best bidder sell the abstinence from pleasures to them that offer most well knowing the first victory of chastitie is to triumph over greediness of riches which are the most dangerous baits of sin If we should give great revenews to all the maids which are now readie to receive the veil what treasures would furnish out such an expence And if they dare affirm that none is due but to Vestals is it not an impudence to be desirous to deprive Christian virgins from goods given in favour of virginitie as if to be Christians were to be the less chast or as if the Religion they profess were on their foreheads a mark of infamie Who can endure under the reign of most Christian Emperours customs which are onely tollerable in the Empire of Nero's Symmachus demandeth moneys of the Common-wealth for entertainment of his Vestals we by certain modern laws have been bereft the successions which we might expect from particulars without making complaints so temperate we are in our proceedings Some Ecclesiasticks likewise have been made to renounce their patrimony to be freed from Court-obligations and enjoy the priviledges of the Church Were this done to the Pagans they would cast flames from their mouthes for how could it be but very troublesome to purchase the vacancy of a holy ministery with the prejudice of his means in consecrating himself to the safety of the whole world to have necessitie for recompence in his house Wils are valid in favour of the ministers of Idols Be they never so profane in superstition so abject in condition so prodigal of their honour they
lightening not touching the purse Others had inventions of quintessences Others traffiqued about stars and sold good fortune in little boxes of smoak Others had shops of the secrets of Arts made themselves able to give beauty youth health immortalltie to those that would buy them Others made dice and mathematicall cards Others lead Bears others extracted infamous coin from the planet of Venus others in the qualitie of mercenaries made Odes and love sonnets for the Pandora's of the time and which was most ridiculous certain young wits among all these were seen who laboured to patch up together rimes or prose very little to the purpose to whom Gold and incense was given with which they were so puffed up that they esteemed the most solid wisdom of the world to be but meer ignorance in comparison of their works One cannot tell all the tricks of this imposture and how many sleights the spirit watchfull for it's own interests found to come to the end of its intentions Conscience checked some but they answered one could not live in the world without these tricks and that they were as necessary as to breath In the second labyrinth I saw the corruptions of Cyprian epist ad Donatum Inter leges ipsu delinquitur inter jura peccatur justice described by S. Cyprian in the Epistle he addresseth to his friend Donatus when he speaketh of Rome the Idolatress All was replenished saith this Prelate with goodly Precepts excellent laws and sage ordinances but in the midst of so many lights God and men were offended with so much impudence as if these laws were made to no other end but to be transgressed Never is innocencie so ill intreated as in the place where profession is made to defend it The serpents of the desert have less gall and spleen than those Pleaders whom I saw turmoiled with a spirit of giddiness and dissevered with the sword of division Their clamours were so loud that they made the whole house of justice to eccho again as are the waves heard to rore on the shore of the Aegean sea I saw gibbets wheels and boyling Fures privatorum surtorum in compedibus publici in auro vitam agunt Cato cauldrons prepared for some miserable criminals because they were yet as it is said but little theeves but were they much greater their crimes had rather been crowned than chastised From thence I viewed fields weeping filled with standing waters which were said to be gathered together from the tears of Widdows Orphans and an infinite number of other persons who live under great oppression I saw some who were in the water up to the neck and some who lifted up an arm withall their strength to offer up some papers wherein were the laws of Charlemain and Lewis the twelfth which expresly command the causes of the poor may be handled before any other business but it was replied such ordinances were quite out of use These miserable creatures solicited their Attorneys and they betraied them complained to their advocates and they perplexed them implored the assistance of Judges and they sold them notwithstanding were esteemed honest men and still enemies to these corruptions I saw two great Registers whereof the one was called the Cabale of favour and the other the Cabale of monie where it is said there were mischiefs as black as the spirits of the abyss but they must not be divulged There was also a very great quantitie of Pleaders who sought to stretch out suits as Shoomakers a piece of leather with their teeth and mutter out propositions of errours reviews incompetencies rejections oppositions and compulsorie causes with so many other hideous words that I asked whether these men spake the language of the Canadas or Chinois Old Pettifoggers appeared all over worm-eaten with mischiefs who could scarce breath from their lips yet had strong apprehension of death through fear to leave the exercise of suits The like was found in souls already half damned who were very solicitous in manner of treachery one bare false witness another invented a contract another forged a Will another supposed a crime another had a shop of all sorts of slanders and diabolicall falsifications the audacious sale of a word prostituted to sin flew between Heaven and earth about twilight with the wings of an owl and to consummate the sublimitie of mischief right yielded to iniquitie It was to do wrong to the wicked not to imitate those Crimes said they were already sufficiently authorised by the great multitude of complices In the third Labyrinth I saw men who had little Rispelliones else of man in them but shape and skin They were near to an enchanted river which must be passed and repassed over seven times as it is said to become absolute in craft There were likewise others seen already transformed into unknown monsters and others who had no more but the little finger or tip of the nose of men I saw some who were like little Apes which pushed and scratched one another and brake through the throng with all their force to climb up to the top of a tree which was said to be the tree of Honour At the entrance there was I know not what kind Lylius Giraldus in pictura favoâ— is of fantasm of Divinity called Worldly favour It seemed in apparence to have a body and consistence but was in effect a true spectre of smoak cloathed with a mantle tissued with clouds and wind There stood about it Phylosophers who would undertake to derive the Genealogie and set the Horoscope of it One said she was the daughter of beautie the other of hazard the other of babble that fortune was her nursing-mother and that if she had her exaltation in the sign of the Ram she should find her declination in the Ballance Howsoever she then appeared very sprightfull and spruce Flatterie failed not to court her throwing roses and flower-de-luces upon her But at the same time envy slily stealing into the throng gnawed the border of her garment Riches disdain presumption and boldness did nothing but cry round about her Make place make place and to raise her the higher they sought to lay the great God of Justinian under her feet She was so disdainfull of knowledges she had formerly acquired that nothing was so cold as her discourse and if she had eys they were for no use but to behold her own interests When I saw she paced along in a way all shining with ice and that she danced on a rope I lost sight of her not troubling my self any further to follow this spirit but I understood that all those who promised themselves the seven wonders of the world had been paid in coin of leaves There likewise I viewed men whom you would Aquila Anserinae Stapl. have taken for geese so simple of countenance were they but they swam in Pactolus having but one foot onely of a goose for the other hidden under feathers was the tallon of
of this repose news came unto her very hastily that she must return to Court to appease the discord between her children who were ready to encounter one another and to embroil the Kingdom in the desperate desolations of Civil war The good woman did not as those who hold retirement from the vanities of the world as a punishment nor ever are with themselves unless necessity make them take the way which they cannot elect by reason So soon as she understood these importunities which called her back to the affairs of the world she hastened to prostrate her self at the sepulcher of S. Martin shedding forth bitter tears and saying My God you know my heart and that it is neither for fear of pain nor want of courage that I retired from the Court of my children but that seeing their deportments and affairs in such a condition that I could not think my self any ways able to profit them by my counsels I made choice of the means which I thought most likely to help them which are prayers And behold me here now humbled at the tomb of one of your great servants to beg of you by his merits and ashes to pacifie the differences of these unfortunate children and to behold with the eye of your accustomed mercies this poor people and Kingdom of France to which you have consigned and given so many pledges of your faithfull love My God if you think my presence may serve to sweeten the sharpness of these spirits I will neither have consideration of my age nor health but shall sacrifice my self in this voyage for the publick but if I may be of no other use but to stand as an unprofitable burden as I with much reason perswade my self I conjure you for your own goodness sake to receive my humble prayers and accommodate their affairs and ever to preserve unto me the honour which I have to serve you in this retirement A most miraculous thing it is observed that at the same time when the holy woman prayed at the tomb the Arms of the brothers now ready to encounter to pour forth a deluge of bloud suddenly stopped and these two Kings not knowing by what spirit they were moved mutually sent to each other an Embassage of peace which was concluded in the place to the admiration and contentment of the whole world Thus much confirmed Clotilda in her holy resolution wherein she lived to great decrepitness of age And in the end having had revelation of the day of her death she sent for her two sons Childebert and Clotharius whereof this who was the most harsh was in some sort become humble having undergone certain penances appointed him by Pope Agapetus to expiate many exorbitances which he had committed for such is the most common opinion These two Kings being come the mother spake to them in these terms I was as it were resolved to pass out of the world without seeing you not for the hatred of your persons which cannot fall into a soul such as mine but for the horrour of your deportments that cannot be justified but by repentance God knows I having beheld you so many times to abandon the respect you ow to my age and the authoritie which nature gave me over your breeding never have endeavoured to put off the heart of a mother towards you which I yet retain upon the brink of my tomb I begged you of God before your birth with desires which then seemed unto me reasonable but which perhaps were too vehement and if ever mother were passionate in the love of her children I most sensibly felt those stings yielding my soul as a prey to all cares and my bodie to travels to breed and bring you up with pains which are not so ordinarie with Queen-mothers I expected from your nature some correspondence to my charitable affections when you should arrive to the age of discretion I imagined after the death of your father my most honoured Lord that my age which began to decline should find some comfort in your pietie But you have done that which I will pass under silence For it seemed to me your spirits have as much horrour of it as mine which yet bleedeth at it nor do I know when time will stench the bloud of a wound so bydeous Out alas my children you perswaded your selves it was a goodly matter to unpeople the world to enlarge your power and to violate nature to establish your thrones with the bloud of your allies which is a most execrable frenzie For I protest at this hour wherein I go to render an account of mine actions before the living God that I should rather wish to have brought you into the world to be the vassals of peasants than to see the Scepter in your hands if it served you to no other use but to authorize your crimes Blind as you are who behold not that the diamonds of a Royal Crown sweat with horrour upon a head poisoned with ambition When you shall arrive to that period wherein I am now what will it help you to have worn purple if having defiled it with your ordures you must make an exchange with a habit of flames which shall no more wear out than eternitie Return my children to the fair way you have forsaken you might have seen by what paths the Providence of God led the King your father to the throne of his Monarchie you might have also observed the disasters of Kings our near allies for that they wandered from true pietie That little shadow which you yet retain of holy Religion hath suspended the hand of God and withheld the fatal blow which he would otherwise have let fall upon your state If you persist in evil you will provoke his justice by the contempt of his mercie Above all be united with a band of constant peace for by dividing your hearts you disunite your Kingdoms and desiring to build up your fortunes by your dissentions you will make desolate your houses Do justice to your poor people who lived under the reign of your father with so much tranquilitie and which your divisions have now covered all over with acerbities Is it not time to forget what is past and to begin to live then when you must begin to die My children I give you the last farewel and pray you to remember my poor soul and to lodge my bodie in the sepulcher of the King your father as I have ever desired The Saint speaking this saw that these children who had before been so obdurate were wholly dissolved into tears and kneeling about her bed kissed her hands having their speech so interrupted with sobs they could not answer one word Thereupon she drew the curtain over all worldly affairs to be onely entertained with God And her maladie daily encreasing she pronounced aloud the profession of the Catholick faith wherein she died then required the Sacraments of the Eucharist and extream Unction which were administred unto her and by her
INDEGONDIS Issued from the bloud and house of Clotilda transporteth the Catholick faith into Spain ABout the year five hundred four-score and three Levigildus an Arian Prince reigned in Spain who seeing the house of France held supereminency amongst all the Kingdoms of the world sought the alliance thereof and obtained for wife to his eldest son called Hermingildus the daughter of Sigebert grand-child of Clotilda named in History Indegondis She was one of the most accomplished Princesses of that Age in whom beauty grace and virtue made together an admirable harmony to purchase her the hearts of all the world Every one lamented that this bright day-break which began to enlighten France with its rays went at her rising into a Countrey where the Sun setteth and that so many singular perfections were separated from that Kingdom which had given them birth The good virgin who had no other object but the obedience she ought to render those to whom nature had subjected her went well pleased besides was something satisfied with the title of a Queen which she might justly one day expect But little knew she the combats and difficulties that waited on her in the same place where she hoped to gather nothing else but flowers I do not think hell can ever produce a mischief like unto heresie which wholly perverting good affairs instantly hasteneth to drench all the contentments of this innocent soul in a deluge of tears Alas a million of tortures well deserve to be employed upon the criminal souls of those who were the first authours of this monster For it in all Ages hath disturbed States of Princes ruined so much generous Nobility and sowed division among the most settled amities The wise of that time much apprehended the sending of this young maid into Spain to marry her to an heretical Prince to place her in a Court wholly infected with heresie where no other objects should be presented unto her but errour and vice Behold said they a goodly vessel well rigged well furnished well guided which hath sails of linnen cordage of purple and oars of silver but they go about to expose it to a rough tempest Behold an excellent meadow all enamelled with most delicious beauties of nature but they endeavour to oppose it to cruel Northern blasts Behold a chrystal well polished smooth and delicate but they seek to hazard it to the strokes of the hammer Behold a statue all resplendent with gold and precious stones but they trample it under foot What will a child be able to do amongst so much malice An age so tender amongst so many heads grown hoary in sin A great simplicity amongst so many snares A maid which hath no recommendation but chastity and obedience amongst so many wicked commands Do we think that a father-in-law a husband a mother-in-law will have no power over her spirit That pleasures will not allure her That the dignity of a Kingdom will not move her That the lustre of a Diadem will not dazle her eyes and force prevail upon her If that should be given her which she deserveth it were fit to afford her all but the power to ruin her self Others said very temperately that we must not believe that by gaining a Kingdom she should loose religion that she was of bloud so illustrious it received no blemish that she would rather die than dishonour her birth that she would endure all the torments of Martyrs rather than betray her faith And that if needs she must make ship-wrack of all her fortunes that the last plank she would embrace should be a good conscience that she should be assisted by a good Councel that would never forsake her that there were as yet in Spain very many Catholicks whose tears she would wipe away and sweeten their acerbities That her husband a young Prince was not so obdurate but that she might hope one day to joyn him to the Catholick faith Women are infinitely powerful when they once have gained the heart of a man In the end that she must reflect on the example of her grand-mother who had converted her husband with all his Court and if then cold and timorous considerations had been used upon this marriage France might still have been Pagan If the mother overcame an Idolater the daughter may well prevail on an Arian Yet they which spake thus judged not the conversion of hereticks to be much more difficult than that of Pagans as well for the intolerable pride which ordinarily possesseth their spirits as for a certain malediction which seemeth to be tied to those who voluntarily withdraw themselves from the light and shake off the yoke of lawfull powers Yet notwithstanding considerations of State transported her and Indegondis would take her fortune promising her self so much assistance of God that not onely she should stand firm in the piety of her Ancestours but that if it were possible she would save her husband supposing to her self he was neither of marble nor iron not to be mollified with the attractives of her sex The couragious maid was waited on into Spain by a flourishing conduct of French Nobility where she was received with very great applauses for the reputation which the name of France had acquired in the opinion of all people The King Levigildus her father-in-law was married upon second Nuptials to an Arian wife named Goizintha who was as deformed of body as mind notwithstanding she had charmed the heart of this old man by I know not what kind of sleights that she held predominance upon affairs and bent as it were all his wills at her pleasure She shewed in the beginning an extraordinary affection to this marriage and went in person to the Princess giving her such fair entertainment that it seemed she went about to over-whelm her with courtesies Yet was it to behold night and Aurora in one and the same Chariot to see these two Princesses together For Goizintha besides other deformities of her person was become blind of one eye and Indegondis laying aside so many excellent parts which she had from nature appeared on that day in her attaires like unto those Goddesses which the Poets and Painters form according to the most advantagious idaeaes of their spirits Hermingildus her husband beholding her so accomplished easily felt the glances shot from her eyes were rays from her but arrows for his heart from whence he could receive nought but honourable wounds Never any man bound himself to a creature of the world with a love so forcible so honest and so innocent as did this Prince to this admirable virgin From the first arrival and first glance of the eye he felt his soul transported with a sweet violence and it seemed unto him this stranger came to negotiate with him a love much different from that of flesh and bloud It is a position which hath been sufficiently argued by ancient Sages touching the encounter of amities which are so diversly applied to objects sometimes by ordinary ways as
another nature and return into elements but I who have no matter subsist by necessity absolutely entire and wholly incorruptible without suffering these changes Ask likewise thy understanding and it will repeat Radix intellectualitatis est immaterialitas Avicenna apud Caprâ—ol Modus operandi sequitur modum essendi The operations of the soul are admirable the philosophical Axiom The workman is known by the work by the operation of every thing its nature is discovered from whence ensueth that if the manner which thy soul useth in its functions and operations be wholly spiritual we may truly say it is all spirit all indivisible and wholly incorruptible Now where is it that it worketh not with a tenderness and admirable spirituality First in the separations it maketh of universal natures in numbers relations proportions orders correspondencies harmonies in things eternal and divine Secondly in judgements discourses disputations comparisons applications which it maketh on every thing Thirdly in the considerations and reflections it hath on it self yea over all its actions almost in infinitum If it did not work spiritually how could it harbour in the memory so many seas rivers mountains valleys cities and castles How could it put so many places into one place not holding any place If it operated not spiritually and indivisibly how could it be whole in each of its actions The body because it is body and quantitative and divisible what it doth with one part it doth not necessarily with another what it toucheth with the hand it doth not necessarily touch with the foot but the soul is all in its action If the soul understand all the soul understandeth If the soul will all the soul willeth If the soul suffer all the soul suffereth For it is in an indivisible That August l. de spiritu anima c. 19. Anima in quibuscumque suis motibus tota est Manilius l. 4. Astron I am nusquam natura latet pervidimus omnem was it which S. Augustine judiciously spake The soul is all in each of its motions Mortal things can do nothing immortal But our soul to teach us its immortality doth wonderfull works which fear not the sithe of time the wheel of inconstancy nor power of death it our-lives stones mettals Aegyptian Pyramids and the worlds seven wonders It is a strange thing to see a humane spirit which taketh away the veil from nature and looketh into the bottom and penetrateth into the very marrow It entereth into these great labyrinths of essences it defineth divideth distinguisheth severeth it appropriateth maketh marvellous dissections mounteth above the tracts of the Sun and time scoreth out the course of the Heavens the periods of the Stars It deciphereth eclipses to an instant and foregoeth by understanding those great celestial bodies whose motions are more swift than wind or thunder From thence it expatiateth into the air there to hear the winds blow rain pour down tempests roar lightnings to flash rain-bowes and crowns arise It descendeth into the deep caverns of the earth there to meditate on the mettals It floateth on the sea it reckoneth the veins of the abyss it keeps a register of so many birds and fishes so many terrestrial creatures so many worms and serpents so many hearbs and plants All this great frame of nature passeth through its consideration from the cedars of Lybanus to the hyssop It createth sciences it inventeth arts it findeth out an infinite number of devices It governeth the great bodies of Kingdoms and Common-wealths with passages of incomparable prudence Arms and laws cures of maladies commerce navigations industries of mechanicks and finally a million of rarities are produced from the sources of the wit of man who cannot yet understand his own worth Besides what is more spiritual more independent on matter than the action of the will than free-will which beareth the beginning of its motion and elevation within it self not borrowing it from any What is more divine than to see a heart more capable than abysses which cannot be satiated with all the things in the world The plant is contented with a little dew the horse with a few oats and hay because animal and vegetative nature is limited to certain small quantities But the immaterial soul as it is in some sort infinite bendeth to infinitie (a) (a) (a) Omnibus fere ingenita est fame post mortem expido Et unde anima affectaret aliquid quod velit post mortem si ribil de postero sciret Tertul. de testim animae It speaketh of Heaven as of its mansion and of God as of the object of its felicity It desireth to live ever it taketh incomparable care for posteritie it interesseth it self in the future which it would never do were it not its hereditary possession Sleep which tameth Lions cannot overcome it It learns its immortality even in the image of death there it is where it incessantly worketh travelleth by sea and land negotiateth converseth sporteth rejoyceth suffereth hunteth after a thousand objects both good and bad and knoweth says Eusebius that having no end in its motion it hath none in its life And to conclude in a word what is there more admirable for the proof of our immortality than this synderesis this conscience which is in the body contrary to the body and a perpetual enemy of senfual nature which pleadeth which questioneth which strikes us with remorse upon the rememberance of sin What is there less corporal than a soul which can see its body burned flesh pulled off with pincers and members torn piece-meal one after another to maintain and preserve a belief which it judgeth to be true as did the Martyrs Never should we behold such a combat between the soul body were they not two pieces quite different the one whereof is sublime spiritual immortal the other low frail and mortal We likewise daily see how the soul wholly retired within it self as it happeneth in apprehensive speculations and raptures is more strong and knowing than ever being touched by some ray from commerce with Intelligencies to which it hath so much relation We find by experience that upon the declining Eaâ— decrescente corpore augeri maxime videmus Aenesius Illa sine hoc vinit melius hoc sine ista nee pejus Claudius Marcus l. 3. de statu animae c. 3. Manifest conviction age when the body shrinketh it hath much more vigour in counsels and judgements which giveth us assurance it cannot any way participate of the corruption of the flesh Who will consider the effects of the soul in three principal things which are Intelligence Sanctitie and Courage shall find all therein is divine And if the wicked smothering these gifts of God will put themselves willingly into the rank of bruit beasts do they not well deserve the place of devils 6. Finally we say we have a soul immortal because God both can and will make it such He can for he is Omnipotent and it is not
books of the Trinity S. Thomas of Canterbury rested between the arms of France whilest Henry of England thundered sentences and proscriptions of death against him If one countrey become a step-mother another proves a Mother and the Divine Providence the worlds great Harbinger ever findeth some petty work to entertain its elected But if there be no means to escape and that servitudes must be undergone prisons and chains and that scaffolds must be bloudied to satisfie the revenge of an enemy Then is the time when a spirit well habituated in the continuall exercises of virtue entreth into the centre of the soul and beholdeth as from a high fortresse the vicissitude of humane things which here below have in them nothing immovable but their proper unstedfastnesse Then it is when despising these veils of body composed of our inferiour elements it now entereth in thought into the region of Intelligencies then it is when it accosteth the legions of so many Martyrs who on their bodies have received as many wounds as they had members and have moistned the sacred palms of their victories in the effusion of their bloud All which is humane yieldeth to the Tyranny of persecutours but the immortall spirit makes it self a large way all bordered with lawrels in the Temple of glory and reputation and like to the dove of the Prophet whose wings were of silver taketh a high and exalted flight to declare to all ages the innocency of a great courage and to make its relicks survive in Cabinets and in the memory of all good men How many have we seen die on Scaffolds who with the sweetnesse of their countenances terrified the most terrible aspects of executioners They spake they did they suffered they ordered their deaths as matter of Triumph they comforted others in their suffering at a time when they had much to do not to complain themselves They acted together all the parts of wisdome and came off so well in every one as if they onely had undertaken this one It was a great thing for them to do but to do it so exactly is that which for ever makes them the more admirable and it was a matter incredible that speaking so well they yet suffered better in an occasion where words have no credit works no time violence no relaxation nor enmity Compassion The third Treatise Of DESIRE § 1. Whether we should desire any thing in the world The Nature the Diversity and description of Desire THe Sages make a question whether it be a thing to be wished to have no Desire And there are of them who Whether it be good to have no desire think that to live happy and contented we must banish all desires For they are amusements which perpetually entertain us with the time to come which put us on the Rack and burn us by our proper thoughts Desires are the Echoes of our loves which mock us and counterfeit certain voices essences and personages which ordinarily are made of nought else but wind But now say others to have no desires is to have no soul no sense no reason it is to be a fly not a man The Seraphins in Isaiah stand by Gods side yet cease not to clap their wings to signifie unto us there is no soul so perfect and contented which hath not the heart still excited with some generous desire Trees are purified by the winds agitation rivers are cleansed and purged in their perpetuall currents and the heart by desires If we would have no desires we must not talk any more of eating and drinking we must no longer have this young lover sigh after his beloved we must not then admit learned men to make love to wisdome That wrastlers burn with affection of prizes due to their valour and that the souldier covers himself with his wounds to embellish his garlands all ought to be indifferent to us and that is the way quickly to runne into the nature of rocks and stones We must here make a notable distinction of desires insomuch some are naturall given by God to man for the preservation of himself Others are artificiall which arising out of an exorbitant will are nothing but floud and ebb but agitations and tempests Desires are like number one cannot name any so great but that it is capable of addition Hence it proceedeth that the world is replenished The world replenished with desiring souls Psal 50 v. 12. Tabescere fecisti animam meam alia versio liquescere fecisti ut timeam desiderium ejus Eos felicitas ingrata subterfluit ut semper pleni spei vacui commodorum praesentibus caâ—eant dum furura prospectant In Psal 92. Richardâ—â— de S. Victore in Psal 80. An excellent picture of desire with desiring and suffering souls and that there is not almost any one who is not in expectation and breathes not the air of the Region of desires The most part of men resemble the moth which gnaws a garment and in gnawing eateth its own house For by the eagernesse of desiring the future they lose all the pleasure of the present and demolish their fortune by their greedinesse to raise it That is it which the Panegyrick wittily expressed pronounced before Constantine the sonne Felicity glideth by us as the water which streameth along under bridges when still full of hope we rest unfurnished of contentments Desiring hearts saith S Augustine are as those great-bellied women to whom the eternall word hath denounced a Curse in the Gospel All the world would be but a morsell in the mouth of mans heart saith Richardus de sancto Victore since its wishes are infinite and that it is evident that in Infinity what part soever you assigne you are still at the beginning If you desire that I make you a picture of the nature and perquisits of Desire I will tell you it is a strange countrey whereunto the prodigall Child sailed when he forsook his fathers house to undertake a banishment a Country where corn is still in grasse vines in the bud trees perpetually in blossome and birds alwayes in the shell You neither see corn fruit nor any thing fully shaped all is there onely in expectation It is a Countrey full of figures phantasmes illusions and hopes which are dreames without sleep a Countrey where the inhabitants are never without feavers one is no sooner gone but another cometh into its place There dwelleth Covetousnesse a great woman meagre lean starven having round about her a huge swarm of winged boyes of which some are altogether languishing others cast her a thousand smiles as she passeth along upon her self she hath an infinite number of horsleeches which suck upon her to the marrow Time looketh on her afarre off and never cometh near her shewing her an enchanted looking-glasse wherein she seeth a thousand and a thousand false colours which amuse her and when she hath sported enough she hath nothing to dinner but smoke Behold the table of Covetousnesse grounded upon The
with much impudence and yet it seem modestie The malediction pronounced by the Prophet Ezechiel Vae qui consuunt pulvillos sub omni cubito manus against those who have little pillows of all sorts for the nice to lean upon may now well be renewed never hath there been so many flatteries seen The children of great men are soothed by all kind Flattery inebriateth great men from their cradle of tongues and made drunk with their praises before they be throughly awakened and seeing they are always bred in curiosity it seemeth when any truth is proposed them a Phenix is brought from the other world Servile souls which bend themselves like the fishers angling-line seeing their preferment dependeth upon their impertinent prating and that the Altars of this false greatness will be served with such smoke spare it no more than one would water in a river You shall find few or none that will tell the ape he is an ape this liberty of speech is extant in histories but not at all in our manners The gout seeketh out the houses of rich voluptuous men and flatterie the mansions of the eminent that is it which the Wise-man would say in the Proverbs according to the original translation Prov. 30. Simia manibus nititur moratur in domibus Regis Apes in the Court of So lomon The Hebrews literally understand it by the apes which Solomon caused to be transported by sea with those apes came flatterers and buffons to the Court of this great King which was the beginning of his unhappiness Those which flatter and those which willingly are flattered are much of the nature of the ape and all this tattle of Court is indeed a meer apishness Behold why that learned Prelate Faius Faius in manipulo whose manuscripts have very lately been extracted out of libraries doth most natively represent this verity unto us under the veil of a fiction He feigneth two men the one an extream flatterer A prety tale of an ape the other just and a truth-speaker came to lodge in the house of an old ape at that time encompassed with a plentiful race The ape asked of the flatterer what opinion he had of him This man accommodating himself to the time gave him many specious praises saying he was a vermillion rose and those that environed him were the leaves that he was a Sun and those that were about him were the rays that he was as valiant as a Lion and all his ofspring was a race of young Lions Behold saith the ape it is well and commanded a present to be given him When it came to the truth-speakers turn to say some what he revolved with himself that he could not tell a lie that his nature was always to be true that if his companion had a reward for telling a lie by much more reason he should be wellcome delivering the truth He thereupon freely said to him he was an ape and all those that attended him were apes like himself for which cause the apes provoked assailed him fiercely with their teeth and nails Behold the condition of this Age we cannot brooke a truth our ears being always stopped with perfumed words entertained with false praises and servile complacences Truth findeth no admittance and if happily she hit upon it her words are thorns they tear the skin The most indissoluble friendships in apparence are dissolved by a little freedom of a friend Then it is nothing strange if prating and intemperance of tongue be in such force since the soft temper of spirits of this time cannot endure any the least libertie of speech As we are excessive in praises so we hold no measure in reprehension Those who are absolutely sensible of the touches of honour and cannot tolerate a truth think that all other are insensible so prodigal they are of another mans fame They cut carve chop with the tongue on every side and you may find a feast where more raw flesh is devoured than either boyled or roasted Calumny Calumny doth at this present resemble the tail of the scorpion which either stingeth or ever is ready to transfix it hath never been seen more fiercely enflamed It is the wound of frogs described in â—xodus Et ascenderunt ranae operueruntque terram Aegypti Slander the wound of frogs It was a great scourge to behold these ugly creatures issuing out of Nilus to go crawling up and down the silken furnitures and golden plate of Pharao as well as over the poor cottages of beggars And a greater punishment it is at this day to hear these slanderous tongues pour forth their venom upon all sorts of persons and to assail as well the Miters the Diadems and Scarlet as the russet coat Every one sheweth the stroaks of calumny every one demanding oyl and balm for his wounds doth notwithstanding covertly hold a sharp lancet to wound anothers estimation The honour of Magistrates of Fabius declamat Pessimum humanarum mentium malum est quod semper avidiùs nefanda finguntur affirmationem sumit ex homine quicquid non habet ex veritate Two devils breath out calumny Ladies of young virgins many times most innocent is not spared most faithful servitours are traduced by the wills of calumny men are bold to speak any thing since many are willing to believe all Verily behold the greatest malignity that can be in the minds of men which is that they are pleased to dissemble an evil and that which hath no foundation of verity findeth colour and countenance from the mouth of a calumniatour Two evil spirits ordinarily breath out calumny the one planteth himself in the tongue of the detractour the other in the ears of the hearer They are two sundry winds whereof the one cometh from the gate the other from the window When they toss this tennis-ball one to another you see terrible sport After calumny cometh likewise scoffing with immodest and wicked words which are also put into the mouths of little children to make them witty and pleasing The little creatures doe not yet Scoffing the harbinger of Atheism know whether they have a tongue or no and we perceive they already are initiated in the work of Satan This spirit of scoffing and impurity which pleaseth it self with uncleanness of language is a harbinger of Athiesm that marketh him out a lodging and as it is said that the sea-rat goeth before the whale in the same manner gross and senseless impiety such as it is maketh use I know not of what kind of silly scoffing spirits which are taken to be the wise of the world under the colour that they can compose some bald sonnet whilst they themselves readily give the word when to laugh at it These are Buffons the flies of Aegypt Exod. 8. 27. the curiosities the entertainments the Idols of meetings Aaron striking the dust with his rod madeflies to spring up the greatest scourge of Aegypt I cannot tell who
blown up and cracked in a moment but the hell of envy is an admirable hell for it is a voluntary hell where nothing pleaseth and each thing tormenteth a hell which conteineth fire in it and affordeth no light a hell which always hath the worm present and never the remedy a hell which surprizeth by the eies and diveth even into the heart a hell which incessantly devoureth and never consumeth which hath mischiefs without hopes toyls void of repose and torments without mercy which is as the common fever of all the gall of this universe which exerciseth rage and fury which hath the wanness of death without dying and the cares of a disastrous life without life To divert the hearts of men from it I can propose but two reasons the first shall discover the malignity and the other the calamity thereof It is true that all vices are steeped in the venom of malice which should be a powerful motive for those to fly them who naturally love goodness but Greg. Thaum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Basil Seleuc. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Cyprian de◠zelo livore Greg. Niss in vita Mosis envy hath I know not what kind of particular influence which maketh it infinitely odious and execrable S. Gregory Thaumaturgus saith it is a wasp of Satan which stingeth men as the gad-flie doth oxen S. Basil of Seleucia calleth it the mother of murders S. Cyprian the moth of souls and S. Gregory Nyssen a disease of nature a poysoned gall the root of vices the mother of death and a voluntary Phthisical consumption All the ancient Fathers breath out fire flames when they discourse of it and indeed never can they speak enough of it Besides their authority which is of great value reason herein is very potent For we must needs affirm that by how much the more a vice participateth of the nature of Divels who are as it were the patrons of si by so much the more it is a vice and envy is of the same condition for it is the sin by singularity of denomination called the sin of the Divel As in heaven the first was the sin of pride so the first on earth was that of envy committed by the spirit of impurity and S. Augustine excellently saith envy is a vice Sap. 2. invidiâ diaholi mors introivit in orbem terrarum Aug. l. 2. de doct Christianâ meerly diabolical a sin which defileth the Divels and irrecoverably damneth them It shall not be said to Satan in the sentence of his damnation that he hath polluted the beds of men by his adulteries that he hath taken the goods of other men by his rapines that he hath seized on demains and possessions driving away the lawful owners but that he hath envied the felicity of man The same Authour saith on the Epistle to the Galatians that this vice Homini stanti invidisti Aug. in Epist ad Galat citatur in glossa In zelo invidiae tota sua viscera serpens concutit in haec imprimenda quasi pestem vomit hath the property to pour into the heart of men the poyson of the enemie Yea so it is that particularly the infernal serpent when he imprinteth the sin of envy in the heart of man doth turmoyl his very bowels and extreamly striveth as it were to vomit the blackest pestilence which hell conteineth Dicourse even with your self whether the envious be not tainted with a special malignity since that beyond all other sinners they transcendently suck in the breath of the serpent This black malice more easily discovereth it-self in this than in all the other mortal sins which are verily great exorbitancies of nature but they seem to have some pretext which mollifieth the evill The thief robbeth for his profit the carnal man seeketh out his unlawfull lusts to extinguish the fire of his passion the covetous man saith he is upon good husbandry the ambitious flattereth himself with the thirst of honour which hath heretofore born sway upon Altars and so of other sins their malice hath allways some heat of passion of apparence of good to excuse them But the envious what can he propose but a cold malignity a black cruelty a will determinately ill without sembleance of good Yea you shall find many that are in infinit abundanceas dogs couched on hay who will not eat thereof for it is not their custome nor are they willing other creatures for whom God hath ordained it should come neer it Many there are as Tantalus ever in the middest of fountains yet drink not and perpetually beholding him with a jealous eye that would tast therof The fable of the two envious men so celebrated is not feigned we too much approve it in our manners For it being permitted them to choose what each would aske on this condition that his request being allowed him his companions share be doubled the first who was extreamly covetous had all his desires fixed in the earnest demand of gold and silver but discoursing with himself that by asking he should doe a pleasure to another this onely consideration stayed him and never would he afterward open his mouth to make such a request the other made choise to loose one of his own eyes that his companion might have it doubled and be deprived of both How many are there at this day in the world who embarked with their enemies in the same vessel care not to perish so that they dying may glut their eyes with the death of those whom they hate A most strange malignity to forget the preservation of ones own person to which we are by nature streightly obliged to ruin another The eyes of Gorgons the hissing of serpents the aspect of basilisks are nothing in comparison of an enraged Courtier when he beholdeth him to be carried on the wings of favour whom he would gladly see utterly confounded without recovery Doe we not behold the eyes of a dog when the fortune of another is envied and the heart of a stag when question is made of the works of courage Where are not men to be seen who devour one another alive with mischievous aspects and carry even on their foreheads the gall of their envenomed hearts Where are not such malign spirits to be found who play at fast and loose thrusting him in an instant down to the lowest part of the wheel who was at the top At the Court all things most commonly fall short but malice and envy It is verily the extremity of misery when great ones doe with an open ear too much grace the designs of the envious making themselves as it were instruments of a furious pancher for the ruin of the innocent If we ought to stop our ears with wax among the songs of Syrens here we have need to have them all of diamond What can the envious man expect from this diabolical malice but the reward of Cain in the separation from the sight of God and perpetual affrightments O Cain
inability is vanquished by the grace of God and virtue of fortitude which warranteth courage to undertake and strengtheneth it to bear what reason dictateth And Sufferers more couragious than undertakers although to undertake seem a thing very glorious it is notwithstanding the hardest task to endure a temptation to oppose it with unmoved foot to wrastle with it to trample on it and in the end by virtue to erect tropheys over it Saint Thomas very judiciously yieldeth the reasons S. Thom. 1. 2. q. 123. 1. Because he who is assaulted seemeth ever in worse state than he that assaulteth for encountering he always presupposeth himself to be stronger Now it appeareth he who undergoeth some brave action of courage is the assailant and he who withstandeth a temptation is opposed and sometimes shaken without thinking thereof which is far more troublesom and hard and therefore draweth after it much more resolution in case a good and generous resistance be made against it 2. The assailant beholdeth the peril as future and he who is tempted seeth the temptation even almost within his gates in his heart in his bowels 3. The assailant often dischargeth his pistol like an harcubusier before he have leisure to know the danger and readily retireth The other who suffereth burneth as with a gentle fire and in the mean space if he be patient he long time stayeth with a reposed rest yet not striking at all which is a thing worthy of an eternal crown The Alexanders the Caesars who flew like Eagles to the conquest of worlds oftentimes yielded themselves up to the least temptation Their strength was disguised not real The seventeenth SECTION The arms against temptation contained in twelve Maxims THe means to resist temptations is not to frame The means to resist temptations to your self a spiritual insensibility which feeleth nothing It is hard to obtain it so sensible self-love is and when one hath it he rather is a stone than a man It is not to drive away one temptation by another and do one mischief to be freed of another For to pursue such courses is like washing ones self with ink It is not to hide one from all kind of encounters and never to do well for fear to have occasion of a combate against ill but to resist it couragiously in that sort as I will shew That great fore-mentioned John Picus Mirandula hath collected twelve notable maxims the practice whereof is most profitable to enable your self in spitual combate against impotency I. Maxim That you must be tempted on what Thesal In hoc posui sumus Temptation our trade side soever it happen It is our profession our trade our continual exercise The Eagle complaineth not of her wings nor the Nightingale of her song nor Peacock of her tayl because it is by kind and it is as natural for man to be tempted as for a bird to flie to sing to prune her feathers If you forsake not the way of spiritual life fearing to be tempted and turn head to worldly contentments hold it for an infallible verity you therein shall be much more engaged and which is worse without comfort honour merit or recompence you shall leave a paper-Cross which if you knew well how to mannage would load you no more than feathers do the bird you will forsake it say I to take another hard uneasie and bloudy which would invest you in the Confraternitie of the bad thief That great Prelate of France Sydonius Apollinaris relateth Sidon Apol. l. 2. c. 1. that a certain man called Maximus being arrived at the height of honour by unlawful and indirect ways much grived from the first day and breathing out a great sigh spake these words O Damocls I esteem thee most happy to have been a King onely A remarkable speech of Maximus Foelicem te Damocles qui non uno longius prandio regni necessitatem toleravisti Travel of worldlings the space of a dinner time It is now a whole day that I have been so and can no longer endure it II. Remember that in the affairs of the world we fight a longer time we travel more painfully we reap more fruitlesly The end of one toyl is the beginning of another In pains taking there is no hope but ever to labour A temporal toyl draweth after it an eternity of pain III. Is it not a meer folly to believe a Paradise an eternal life a Jesus Christ who made unto himself a ladder of the cross to ascend to the throne of his glorie and you in the mean while to be desirous to live here with arms a-cross To see the Master open Indignity of curiosity the way of Heaven through so many thorns and the servant not to be willing to tread but upon flowers To see under a head all wasted and worn with suffering delicate members as one should make to a Colossus of brass feet of flax IV. Were there no other fruit in temptation but Greatness of temptation conformity to Iesus Christ the conformity which we thereby have with Jesus Christ the sovereign Wisdom it would be highly recompenced A brave Captain said to a souldier who died with him Although thou hadst been unknown all thy life time it is no small honour for thee to die this day with thy Master And who would not hold it for a great glory to have the Son of God for Captain for companion for spectatour for theatre for guerdon in all his afflictions and tribulations Who would not account it a great dignity to be daily crucified with him To distend his hands and arms upon the Cross in withholding them from violences rapines ruins wherewith the spirit of lying transporteth us To fetter your feet and hinder them from running after the unbridied desires of your heart To make bitter your tongue in subduing the pleasures of tast To cover your body with wounds in suppressing the incitements of flesh by a holy mortification To lessen your self by the contempt of honour according to the example of him who being able always to walk upon the wings of Cherubins would creep amongst us like a little worm Galat. 9 Ego stigmata Domini Jesu in corpore meo porto Distrust of ones self of the earth What a glory were it to say what Saint Paul said I hear the marks of my Saviour Jesus on my body V. Not to confide in humane remedies when you undertake to overcome a temptation It is not a thing which dependeth meerly upon us It is necessary God go before and we thereto contribute our free will If he watch not over our heads it will be a hard matter for us to keep centinel No creature is so feeble as he who holdeth himself for strong being onely armed with his own confidence Many Concilium Arausicanum Multa in homine bona siunt quae non facit homo bona Nulla vero facit homo bona quae non Deus praesiet ut faciat
strangers have had an ill report raised by occasion of their houshold servants who ministred matter of suspition either through excess of their bravery or their gentle garb and handsomness of proportion too lovely either for their age proper to wantonness or the vanity of a haughty spirit or confidence in the favour of their Mistress All that by prudence should be prevented which the world through malice may imagine I desire not to see about you a houshold Steward so spruce nor any servant who may savour of an effeminate Comedian no wanton musician the true instrument of Satan to poison your ear with his warbling Have nothing remiss nothing which may smell of the stage in your family but rather Quires of widdows and virgins to be an honour to your sex and to serve as a recreation in your most innocent delights Let the reading of godly books never be laid aside and let your prayers be so frequent that they may serve as a buckler to repel the fiery arrowes of evil thoughts which ordinarily assail youth Let virtue consummate the good which intemperance had prepared for it self Redeem virgins to present them to the chamber of the spouse Take care of widdows to mingle them as violets amongst virgins and Martyrs It is a garland you shall give to God for his crown of thorns wherein he bare the sins of the world It is very hard and almost impossible to cut away all the seeds of passions which we may call avant-passions because concupiscence sootheth our senses and insinuateth it self very subtilely but it is in the power of the will to dismiss or entertain them The God of nature said in the Gospel evil thoughts homicides adulteries fornications thefts false witness-bearings blasphemies Matth. 15. proceeded from the heart The spirit of man is more propending to evil than good from the first cradle of infancy and in this battel of the spirit and the flesh whereof the Apostle speaketh our soul is almost Galat. 5. 1. wholly floating and knows not to what part to incline No man comes into the world without bringing vice and ill inclinations with him and he is the best who hath the least evil and can preserve a fair body amongst many little infirmities The Prophet said he was troubled and that thereupon Psal 76. he held his peace He tells you one may be angry without sin like Architas the Tarentine who said to his servant I would chastise thee were I not angry which sheweth it was no sin but a simple passion for otherwise anger puts not the Justice of God in execution That which is spoken of one passion may be understood of another It is proper to man to be moved with choller and for a Christian to overcome choller So the flesh desires carnal things and by the itch thereof draweth the soul to mortal pleasures But it is your part to quench the heat of lust by the love of Christ and to conquer the flesh when it seeks liberty by the help of abstinence in such sort that in eating it may search for nourishment not lust and bear about the spirit of God descending into it with a firm and even pace Every man may be subject to passions which are common to nature We are of one and the same clay of the same element Concupiscence may as well be found in silk as in wool It neither fears the purple of Kings nor contemns the poverty of beggers You were better have the disease of stomach than will Rather let the body obey than the spirit and if you must needs make a slippery step do it rather with the foot than modesty not flattering your self before sin with pretence of a future penance which is rather a remedy of misfortunes than an ornament to innocents For you must ever defend your self from wounds where sorrow serves for remedy To Maids The thirty eighth SECTION The praises of virginity and the modesty they ought to observe in their carriage THe great S. Basil calleth virginity the perfume S. Basil apud Melissam 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 of the living God and I note from the thirtieth chapter of Exodus this perfume of God which is spoken of was composed of four ingredients to wit of Galbanum Myrrhe Onyx and Incense Galbanum is the juice of an aromatick herb as white as milk and which borrowing its name from milk figureth unto us the whiteness and purity of virginity Myrrhe it is mortification Onyx a kind of little oyster from whence issued a most odoriferous savour signifies its constancy and Incense in flames its patience in tribulations But as for purity I say reasonable nature hath engraven on the hearts of all mortals and namely maids so particular a love of integrity that souls the most prostituted to sin have ever had some remorse and feeling of the honour they had forsaken Should I prove this by a passage of Scripture or a Father it were the less effectual because it may be said chastity ought to be praised by such lips I will evict this verity from the confession of a Pagan to let you understand it is a voice of nature Behold a passage of Seneca whom I have ever much admired Senec. natural quaestion l. 1. c. 16. Est aliqua etiam prostitutae modestia illa corpora publico objecta ludibrio aliquid quo infelix patientia lateat obtendunt adeò lupanar quoque verecunâ—um est It is a wonder saith he that prostituted women still retain some modesty and that those bodies which seem not to be made but to serve as an object for publick uncleanness have ever some veil for their unhappy patience The infamous place it self is in some sort bashfull See the cause why there never hath been any people so loose and exorbitant which afforded not some honour to chastity convinced by their own conscience But we must likewise affirm it was never known to be true purity until the standard was advanced by Jesus Christ and his most Blessed Mother We find even among those who lived in the law of nature some shadows of chastity We have from the relation of Tertullian that one Democritus voluntarily made himself blind by earnest looking on the Sun that he might not behold the corporal beauty of women shutting up two gates from love to open a thousand to wisdom But what chastity is this I pray since himself confesseth he did it not for any other purpose but to be freed from the importunities of lust seeking out therein his own peculiar ends not the honour of the Creatour A Christian Champion proceedeth much otherwise He hath eyes for the works of God and none for concupiscence He pulleth not out his Tertul. Apolog Christianus uxori suae sâ—li masculus nascitur animo adveraùs libidinem caâ—us est 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Meliss 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 a O continentiam gehennae sacerdotum diabolus praecipit auditur nihil apud eum refert
her the news thereof The Empress saluted him very courteously and disposed her heart to speak to him touching a certain sum of money she desired to give for the entertainment of his Monks but the good man divining the thoughts of her heart saith to her Madame trouble not your self for this money there are other affairs which more concern you know you very shortly must depart out of this world and now you ought to have but one care which is to entertain your soul in that state you desire it should part out of this life Eudoxia at the first was amazed at this discourse It seemeth souls as Plato saith go not but with grief out of fair bodies but this was too much disengaged to do in the end of those days any unresigned act After she had a long time talked to Euthymius as one would with Angels she gave him the last adieu full of hope to see him at the Rendez-vous of all good men Returning into Ierusalem she had no other care but to set a seal upon all her good works then distributing whatsoever she had to the poor she expected the stroke of death freely and resignedly her soul was taken out of her body throughly ripened for Heaven as fruit which onely expects the hand of the Master to gather it She was about threescore years of age having survived Theodosius her husband and Pulcheria Flaccilla Marina Arcadia for all of them went before her into the other world she was married at twenty years of age she spent twenty nine in Court and as it were eleven in Jerusalem she deceased in the year of our Lord 459. the 21. year of Pope Leo and the 4. of the Emperour Leo Successour of Martianus A woman very miraculous among women who seemeth so much to have transcended the ordinary of her sex as men surpass beasts More than an Age is required ere nature can produce such creatures They are born as the Phenix from five hundred to five hundred yeare yea much more rare A great beauty great wit great fortune a great virtue great combats great victories to be born in a poor cottage as a snail in his shell and issue out to shew it self upon the throne of an Empire and die in an hermitage all is great all is admirable in this Princess But nothing more great nothing more admirable than to behold a golden vessel with sails of linnen and cordage of silk counterbuffed by so many storms over whelmed and even accounted as lost in the end happily to arrive at the haven Behold her Potraicture and Elogie AVGVSTA EVDOXIA EUDOXIA AUGUSTA THEODOSII JUNIORIS CONJUX EX HUMILI FORTUNA IN MAGNUM IMPERIUM TRANSCRIPTA SCEPTRUM VIRTUTIBUS SUPERAVIT CELESTIS INSTAR PRODIGII FOEMINA INGENIO FORMA VITA SCRIPTIS ET RELIGIONE CLARISSIMA CUM VICENIS NUPTA ANNOS XXIX EGISSET IN IMPERIO ET UNDECIM FERME IN PALESTINA HIEROSOLIMIS RELIGIOSISSIMO EXITU VITAM CLAUSIT ANNO CHRISTI CDLX AETATIS LIX Upon the picture of EUDOXIA Fortune unparallel'd beauty her own A spirit that admits no Paragon Divine immense although it seem to be 'T was but the Temple of the Deitie HEr example drew an infinite number of great Ladies to contempt of pleasures and vanities of Court to seek the Temple of repose in the deserts of the holy Land Among others Queen Eudoxia her Grand-child who as we have said was married into Africk treading the world under foot with a generous resolution came with her Crown to do homage at the tomb of her Grand-mother kissed her ashes as of a holy Empress and was so ravished with the many monuments of virtue she had erected in the holy Land that there she would pass the residue of her days and choose her tomb at the foot of that from whence she derived her bloud and name It is a great loss to us that the learned books written by this Royal hand have been scattered for those varieties of Homer which are extant are not Eudoxia's Photius much more subtile than Zonaras to judge of the works of antiquity maketh no mention thereof in the recital of the writings of this divine spirit but of her Octoteuch which he witnesseth to be a worthy heroick and admirable piece Behold that which is most remarkeable in the Court of Theodosius And verily for as much as concerneth the person of the Emperour he did enough to make himself a Saint by living so mortified in his passions in the delights of a flourishing Court It is a meer bruitishness a very plague of mans soul to make no account of Princes but of certain braggards vain brain-sick and turbulent spirits who fill histories with vain-glorious bravadoes whoredoms murders and treacheries these are they of whom the spirit of flesh an enemy of God proclaimeth false praises and such an one seemeth to himself sufficiently great when there appeareth a power in him to do ill A calm spirit united docible temperate though he have not so many gifts of nature is a thousand times to be preferred before these vain-glorious and audacious who are onely wise in their own opinion valiant in rashness happy in vice and great in the imagination of fools It is good to have the piety of Theodosius and to let over-much facility work in praying and pray in working to have the beak and plumage of an Eagle and the mildness of a Dove to lay the hide of a Lion at the feet of the Stature of piety As for Pulcheria she was the mirrour of perfection among the great Princesses of the earth yet not without her spots but still giving water to wash them away And for Eudoxia you find in her what to take what to leave many things to imitate few to reject but an infinite number to admire Behold in the end the Fortunate Pietie which I have set before your eyes as a golden statue not onely to behold it in passing by but to guild your manners with the rays and adorn your greatness with the glory thereof Who will not admire the prosperity of the Empire of Constantinople in the manage of Theodosius of Pulcheria of Martianus under the rule of piety and not say Behold the world which trembleth in all the parts thereof under the prodigious armies of Barbarians who seem desirous to rend the earth and wholly carry it away in fire and bloud from the center Behold the Roman Empire which hath trodden under foot all Scepters and Crowns of the earth ruined dis-membred torn in a thousand pieces in the hands of a vitious Emperour who buried it under the shivers of his Scepter and behold on the other side God who preserveth his Theodosius his Pulcheria his Martianus among these formidable inundations which cast all the world into a deluge as heretofore he did Noe in the revengefull waters which poured down from Heaven to drown the impurities of the earth What nurse was ever so carefull to drive a flie from the face of her little infant while
appointed him and that he necessarily must change the countrey whereat being much amazed yet still persisting in his design as not throughly satisfied upon the will of God it is held the tools and instruments of work-men were insensibly transported over the sea to the other shore and that an Eagle setling upon the Level of the Master-Architect took it up and hastened to bear it directly to Byzantium for that is the City whither Zonar Glycâ—â— Constantine forsaking the ruins of Troy transferred his great designs It had heretofore been a very fair City but as arms strike at all which is eminent so had it been infinitely ransacked by many wars happening in the revolution of affairs and Ages Yet it still supported it self with some manner of reputation when this great Prince determined to amplify enrich and perfect it throughly there to fix the seat of his Empire It is added that himself marched round about the wals holding in his hand a half-pike designing the circuit of his future Constantinople and as he still went measuring up and down by the aym of his eye one of his favourites said to him Emperour how long will it be ere you make an end I will finish saith he when he stayes that goeth before me Which made men think there was some heavenly intelligence that conducted his enterprize At the same time he thought he saw in sleep a very ancient Lady which in an instant was turned into a most beautiful virgin whom he adorned and attyred setting his Diadem on her head Observe what is said of the beginnings of Constantinople whether such things happened with all these circumstances or whether we naturally love to tell some strange tales in favour of antiquity as if these fictions were able to give it the more credit One thing is most undoubted which Zosimus although an enemy to Constantine is enforced to admire that the manage of this great design was so prosperous that in five or six years a goodly City was seen on foot which extended about one league in circuit beyond the walls of Byzantium Constantine who had a holy desire to equal it to ancient Rome spared nothing of all that which the invention of men might find out courage undertake and power execute He there built Palaces Theaters Amphitheaters Cirques Galleries and other edifices infinitely admirable so that S. Hierom had reason to say that Constantine to attyre his Constantinople despoiled all the other Provinces It is a Maxim among Great-ones that to make a huge Dragon it is fit he first devour many little serpents and to raise a great City many much less must be ruined to serve for food unto it The greatnesses of God are good deeds those of the world are naturally destructions for they eat and devour their neighbours as the tree which we call the Ivie which insensibly draweth the juice of plants growing near unto it It is not expedient there should be many greatnesses in the world they would drie rivers up as did the army of Xerxes and would impoverish each other by their mutual contestations Yet notwithstanding needs must there be Majesty in the civil world to the proportion of elementary And for this cause God made Kings taking a pattern from himself commandeth we honour them as his living images Kings make the greatnesses of the world which are the effects of their powers Needs must there be a Constantinople that posterity may see Constantine on the back side of the medal for I think his virtues have represented him on the other side very honourable At the least it is a thing exceeding laudable and well considered by S. Augustine that in this infinite store of Pagans which he must yet of necessity tolerate the Emperour permitted not either Temples of Idols Sacrifices or Pagan ceremonies Well might he be curious to cause from all parts to be brought ancient statues of marble brass and other matter which represented Jupiter Cybile Mercury Apollo Castor and Pollux and so many false Divinities which he set up in Theaters Amphitheaters or Races where the courses of horses were used and in other publick places Eusebius followed by Baronius holdeth it was to expose them to the scorn of the people which is very hard to believe for I should rather think that these pieces being the most exquisit workmanships of the world and that Constantine vehemently desiring the beauty of this City could not then resolve upon such a Jewish zeal as to break and deface them but contented himself with the distribution of them into profane places to give lustre to his enterprizes Yet must we say that though we at this present are out of the danger of Idolatry rich men of this Age have no reason to set up so readily in their Halls and cabiners Junâ—'s Venuses and Diana's and so many histories of the Tertul. l. de Idol cap. 6. Metamorphosis with scandalous nakedness Tertullian an eager spirit pursueth all this as a crime and proveth in the book he composed of Idolatry that all those who cooperate in such works do worse than if they sacrificed to Idols the bloud of beasts For they offer saith he their spirit their industry their travel and their estate to Sathan and though they have no intention of sin they minister matter to other of offending God Behold the cause why Constantine although he were in an Age wherein Paganism being still in much request it was very difficult to take away all these figures notwithstanding he disguised them as much as he could witness that a great statue of Apollo being brought to Constantinople one of the best pieces that ever had been seen in those elder times he caused a Constantine to be made of this Apollo changing it into his own image and commanding some parcels of the venerable nails of our Saviour to be enchased over his head It is in my opinion to this same image that he added a golden globe in the hand thereof and over it a Cross with this inscription Tibi Christe Urbem commendo Besides he made three Crosses to be erected the most magnificent that might then be imagined set in the midst of a publick place the statue of the Prophet Daniel among the Lions all covered over with plates of gold to represent a figure of the Resurrection And as for his Palace he caused to be pourtraid at the very entrance thereof the history of the Passion in a most exquisit work wrought and tissued with pretious stones very much resembling Mosayk work All of it being finished he made the dedication of the City on the tenth of May and as it is very probably supposed the five and twentieth of his Empire consecrating it to God in memory of the glorious Virgin Mary and doing great acts of liberty to the people which he commanded by his Edicts to be continued for perpetuity Codin addeth that he caused also sumptuous edifices there to be built for the Christians Senatours which he
applaudeth as not to hope to be paid for his praises They are subject to much credulity whether it be through some easiness of nature too weak or by overmuch presumption and self-love in such sort that they quickly esteem themselves fair and worthy to be beloved by those who feign affection not seeing that fishes are taken with nets and women with the credulity of their light belief They undertake designs to make servants who are not of the order of Arch-angels to serve them as Raphael did Tobie not pretending power over their hearts and honours They are infinitly delighted to see a man prostrate at their feet especially when he hath some qualities which put him into the estimation of the world It is a glory among the quaintest to have gained slaves who love their chains and who will no longer live nor die but for them This is the cause they counterfeit themselves to be little Idols and take many sacrifices of smoak and although they at that time have not any intention to offend God notwithstanding they suffer themselves to dissolve among so many offers of services complement and protestations and in the end feel it is a very hard matter to defend ones self from an enemy who onely assaulteth us with gold and incense Drops of rain are composed of nothing but water and do by their continual fall penetrate stones so much sweetness of words submissions and observances redoubled one upon another are able to make a rock rent in sunder how can they but transport a woman who issuing from a bone faileth not to retain all the softness of flesh Love sometimes hath wings to fall upon its prey with a full souce and sometimes it goeth along with a crooked pace That which it cannot obtain by a prompt heat it expecteth from a constant importunity From thence ensue private conversation and disorders which make tales in cities stage-plaies bloudy tragedies which being begun behind a curtain are many times ended at the gallows I do not find a better remedy to stop the beginnings of lust than to behold the end thereof A Lady who solicited in matter of dishonour in the first baits shall draw the curtain and behold a huge gulf of scandals injuries rages and despairs will as willingly descend into Hell alive as consent to this bruitish passion She will seasonably proceed to remedies and unfold her heart in the secret of Confession will discover the deceipt of it and by this means avoid an infinity of disasters Thrice yea four-fold happy is she who will take these words as an Oracle and enchace them in her heart to remember them eternally The eight SECTION Discretion in the mannage of affairs WHen we have begun to polish our selves by these virtues Discretion will regularly apply us to conversation and affairs every one A title which the Wiseman expresseth by the word Sensata Eccles 7. And S. Paul useth the word 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Tit. 2. much recōmending to women the care of houshold affairs according to her qualities A woman is a poor thing which hath no imployment nor discretion as there are many to be found who having lived to the age of ninety years have not learned any thing but to dress and undress themselves Why should we have a reasonable soul were it not to enrich it with knowledges which are necessary to us both for our selves the government of those which fall into our hands As we profess not to be wise so we have not made a vow of stupidity We should love as our eye-sight the reading of good books which teach us how to become better for they are wise companions and honest entertainments from whence we never behold jealousies nor scandals to arise It is not a very barren delight to behold women who as soon as they have made a silly complement have nothing else to say unless they talk of their ruffs or some such kind of trifles At the least I wish those who never have been willing to learn to speak would one day practise to hold their peace But they deafen the world with their prattle and daily deliver an Iliad of speeches wherein there is not so much as one good word Tell me not these maids so knowing are more subject to caution I would not have them I say unto you all learned as the Sybils and Muses but who will envy them an honest science of things which serve for the direction of manners There is none but spiders and such little creatures that turn flowers into poison We ought not to fear that a maid to whom good foundations of humility and devotion are given will abuse this celestial manna which is found in sage Writers I have learned from one full of wisdom and experience that for one young virgin instructed in learning which hath failed in her honour twenty other have been found of the ignorant who have so much the more grosly erred as they had the less knowledge of their fault I intend not by this counsel proposed which is to perfect them by reading that therefore we give liberty to the curiosity of reading of all sorts of books and namely those which treat of loves though in a very gentile manner for they have a little sting in them soft as silk which insensibly enters into the heart and when they describe this passion unto you with so many exquisite terms and honest inventions they create so beautifull loves that in seeking to imitate them we produce such as are deformed If we must become learned we ought to do it in that manner as the Saints Tecla Catharina Eudoxia Marcella Paula Fabiola Eustochium who with the spoils of Egypt furnished the Cross and Altars of our Saviour Nor would I advise a virgin to go and hide her self in a granary or cave to devour books It is fit she season her reading with works proper to her profession Let us never suffer her to be idle but so soon as age rendereth her capable let us give her some little direction and exercise in the house For why should we be ashamed to work with the needle since Augustius Caesar the founder of Empires reputed such kind of imploiments not unworthy of his daughters and that the Romans many years preserved as a relick the distaff of Queen Tanaquilla much more charily than the lance or sword of Romulus thinking it was more necessary to give women examples of industry than furnish men with idaeaes of war One would not believe how much the earnestness some have upon a good piece of work diverteth all other passions which may embroil the spirit but whosoever will make trial shall find that innocencie is never better lodged than at the sign of labour I leave you to think when a maid hath endeavoured to learn from her tender years matters fit for housewivery even to the kitchin what a goodly light is in that house whether it proceed from a father or from a husband for
Son of the Father celestial to bear the testimony of all creatures for the homage of his Divinity Of the revelation of the WORD INCARNATE and how all creatures bear witness of his Divinitie THe great God whom the Prophet Isaiah called the hidden God and who according to the saying of the Psalmist had spread round about his throne a veyl of darkness impenetrable to mortal eyes was unscarsed in the crib in the first of his days in such sort that you need lift up but simple clothes to know him The Word Incarnate so visibly replenisheth all the world with its knowledge that a man must be blind not to see its lights and stupid to resist its love We will content our selves at this time to express three proofs The one drawn from the voice of insensible nature the other from reasonable nature and the third from divine reasons It is an admirable thing to see that Heaven and the Voice of nature elements have been willing to bear a part in the great harmony which hath manifested the Word Eternal to the world involved in times and the increated Wisdom included in the body of an infant If we Oros. l. 6. c. 20. Suet. in Aug. c. 95. Senec. l. uat qq Dio. l. 45. will look into signs from Heaven I may say that at the approach of this Nativity the Sun appeared encompassed with a marvellous rainbow willing thereby to give notice the time of reconciliation was near and that the great Mediatour who should reunite all things in his Person came to sanctifie the world by a universal peace I might alledge what was witnessed by Eutropius Three suns in his sixth book and by Eusebius in his Chronicle how three Suns were seen to shine at one time afterward united and incorporated in one sole globe in my opinion so to denote three substances to wit of the Word the soul and flesh conjoyned in the sole person of our Saviour I could say how at that instant Plin. l. 2. c. 31. the Sun was environed with three circles the one whereof bare a coronet of ears of corn to testifie the plenty which the Word Incarnate should bring into the world I could adde what Albumazer the Chaldaean wrote in his Introduction sixth Treatise and first Definition touching the apparition of a Virgin in the first aspect of the sign Virgo But let us rest satisfied that Heaven spake aloud making use of a new star as of a tongue to declare the living God and that this apparition became so famous that even Infidels had authentick testimonies thereof as we may see in the narration of Chalcidius a Platonick Philosopher And it is strange that Plinie (a) (a) (a) Plin. c. 25. l. 2. â—it candidus coâ—etes argenteâ— crinerefulgens ut vix contâ—eri liceat specie humanâ Dei effigiem in se ostendens himself speaketh of a certain star with silver rays infinitely resplendent which shewed God in a humane figure If we speak of the air know we not it was illustrated with a great and divine light which S. Luke called (b) (b) (b) Gloriâ— Domini circumfulsit eos the glorie of God If we speak of waters tradition teacheth us a fountain was seen to spring in a poor stable which was honoured first with the birth of the Son of God (c) (c) (c) Baronius If we speak of the earth hath it not contributed to the revelation of the Word when it made some of its trees bow to adore the Saviour (d) (d) (d) Sozomen l. 5. c. Rovillius de plantis Joan. 1. 32. Matth. 17. 27. Agnovit bos possessorem suum asinus praesepe Domini sui Isaiah 1. Did it not bear flowers visibly imprinted with the most noble characters of the living God as Rovillius depainteth the Granadil The birds of the air have rendered their homage by the means of a dove which appeared in the Baptism fishes in that which served as a Steward and Cashmaster to Jesus Christ Four-footed beasts were remarkeable in the crib because we have learned from the Prophet Isaiah the Ox hath known his Master and the Ass the crib of his Lord. 2. (e) (e) (e) Voice of prophesie If we pass from the voice of nature to voices divinely humane as are predictions what is there more admirable than the universal consent of prophesies He who should tell us that a most beautifull statue of white marble had been seen in a Temple all framed of pieces laid together made by sundry artizans in divers Ages in such sort that one began the head of this statue having no other determinate design the other not seeing the head which was made nor knowing it to be done made a body another an arm another a hand another a leg another a foot in the end every one made his part pursuing the same course none of these excellent Masters knowing ought of his companions works Notwithstanding that all these pieces wrought in sundry Ages by so many several hands and in Provinces so far distant one from another being set together it was found every piece was so curiously composed and fitted to the entire body of the statue that it might be said All these Sculptours had long agreed together for the accomplishment of such a work If then this discourse in the Idaea's of men have any place in the truth of Histories as many have thought must we not say some Intelligence governed the minds of all these Artizans to cause them insensibly to consent in all the dimensions of this Master-piece so excellent and exact Let us here say the like when we behold the great model of the Word Incarnate which God placed in the frontis-piece of his works to be admired and adored by all intellectual Nature We find Prophets divided one from another the distance of many hundred years different in age humour condition style invention order and connexion who could neither see one another nor agree together in any kind as were David Daniel and Isaiah yet all without mutual knowledge laboured in the History of the great Saviour of men one speaketh of his birth another of his life another of his doctrine another of his manners another of his miracles another of his death another of his victories and triumphs When we take pains to gather together and consider all these pieces we find them measured and fitted with such proporrion that we are enforced to affirm it is not a work of mortal hands but an enterprize of the Spirit of God Who inspired the Patriarch Jacob that prophesied Excellent prophesies touching our Saviour 49. Genes Non auferetur sceptrum de Juda c. Donec veniat qui mittendus est so many years before all Prophets that the Messias who was the hope of all Nations should come when the Scepter of Judea was taken out of the hands of Judah's race which was fulfilled punctually in the time of Herod who put the true
a harder matter for him to preserve souls he created than to derive them from nothing He will because he engageth his Eternal word to give us this assurance yea he will because it is manifested to us by the light of nature One cannot believe a God unless he believe him just and it is impossible to think him just without the belief of an immortal soul as S. Clement reasoneth after Clemens 3. Recogn his Master the great S. Peter For what a stupdity is it to imagine this father of spirits who accommodated the most silly creatures with all the conveniencies of nature hath neglected man so far as to afford him a most lively knowledge and a most ardent thirst of immortality which principally appeareth in the most holy and worthy souls to hold a heart in torment never affording it any means to be satisfied since in all nature he never grants any inclination to any creature whatsoever but that he provideth for its accomplishment But which is more into what mind of a Tartarian can this imagination fall that a sovereign Cause most intelligent very good and Omnipotent should be pleased to burn virtue here with a slow fire to tear it among thorns to tie it on wheels afterward to equal the soul of the most virtuous man of the earth with that of murderers Sardanapaluses and Cyclopes Never should these base thoughts take possession of the heart of man if he had not villified his reason with great sins and drowned his soul in the confusion of bodie Put these prophane spirits a little upon the proof of their opinion and let them consider the reasons of Plinie of Lucretius of Panecus and Soranus they are not men who speak but hogs that grunt They tell you the soul is not seen at its passage out of the body as if the corporal eye were made to see a soul spiritual Doth one see the air the winds odours and the sphere of fire which our soul incomparably surpasseth in subtilitie They ask what doth this soul separated Plin. l. 7. c. 55. Vbi cogitatiâ— illi Quomodo visus auditus aut qued sine his bonum Quae deinde sedes Quae malum ista dementia iterari vitam worte where is its sight its hearing pleasure tast touching and what good can it have without the help of sense Spirits dulled with matter which never gave themselves leisure to find out the curious operations of the soul in the understanding and love whereupon it lives of its own wealth They curiously enquire where so many souls may abide as if hell were not big enough to contain all the Atheists Lastly they adde it is to tyrannize over a soul to make it survive after death Who sees not it is the fear they have of God's judgement causeth them to speak in this manner And are not they well worthy of all unhappiness since they so readily become the enemies of an eternal happiness Let us cut off the stream of so many other reasons and say at this present This should teach us to treat with the dead by way of much respect and most tender charity as with the living It should teach us to use our soul as an eternal substance What would it avail us to gain all the world and The care to be had of the soul loose that which God deigned to redeem by his death Let us forsake all these inferiour and frivolous thoughts which nail us to the earth and so basely fasten us to the inordinate care for our bodies Let us manure our soul let us trim it up as a plot fit to receive impressions of the divinity Let us prepare it for the great day of God which must make the separation of a part so divine from these mortal members Let all that die which may yield to death Let the contexture of humours and elements dissolve as weak works of nature But let us regard this victorious spirit which hath escaped the chains of time and laws of death Let us contemn the remainders of an age already so much tainted by corruption Let us enter into this universality of times and into the possession of Diet iste quem tanquam extremum reformidas aeterni natalis est Sen. ep 102. of eternity This day which we apprehend as the last of our life is the first of our felicities It is the birth of another eternal day which must draw aside the curtain and discover to us the secrets of nature It is the day that must produce us to these great and divine lights which we behold with the eye of faith in this vale of tears and miseries It is the day which must put us between the arms of the father after the course of a profuse life turmoyled with such storms and so many disturbances Let us daily dispose us to this passage as to the entrance into our happiness Let us not betray its honour Let us not wither up its glory Let us not deface the character which God hath given it We are at this present in the world as in the belly of nature little infants destitute of air and light which look towards and contemplate the blessed souls What a pleasure is it to go out of a dungeon so dark a prison so streight from such ordures and miseries to enter into those spacious Temples of eternal splendours where our being never shall have end our knowledge admit ignorance nor love suffer change The sixteenth EXAMPLE upon the sixteenth MAXIM Of the return of Souls GOd who boundeth Heaven and limiteth earth ordaineth also its place to each creature suitable to the nature and qualities thereof The body after death is committed to the earth from whence it came and the soul goes to the place appointed it according to its merit or demerit And as it is not lawful for the dead body to forsake the tomb to converse with the living so the soul is not permitted to go out of the lists Gods justice ordained for it to entermeddle in worldly affairs Notwithstanding as the divine power often causeth the resurrection of the dead for the confirmation of our faith so it appointeth sometimes the return of souls for proof of their immortality I would not any wise in this point favour all the shallow imaginations which entitle sottish apprehensions of the mind with the name of visions but it is undoubted there is no Country in the world nor time throughout Ages which hath not afforded some great example of apparition of spirits by known witnesses and the judgements of most eminent Mitte quoque advivus aliquâ—â— ex mortuit Scriptura lestatur De cura pro mortuis c. 15. c. c. 10. Luc 14. personages S. Augustine holds it is a doctrine grounded on Scripture experience and reason which cannot be gain-said without some note of impudence although he much deny that all the dreams we have of the dead are ever their souls which return again Such was the belief of
the Apostles in S. Luke it not being corrected by our Saviour who was the rule of their faith Such the truth of the apparition of the soul of Moses upon Mount Thabor I insist not now upon proof Math. 17 but example contenting my self to produce one or two out of a great multitude recounted by Authours As for the first I hold the apparition of the soul Apparition of the soul of Samuel 1. Reg. 28. of Samuel is most formal in Scripture for any one who will consider the whole progress of the narration The history telleth us that King Saul after the death of Samuel was upon the point of giving battel to the Philistines and that having first addressed himself to God by ordinarie means to learn the way he should observe therein seeing he had no answer either by dream or the lively voice of Prophets he did what infidels and men desperate do who seek to get that from the devil they cannot obtain of God He commanded his servants to seek him out a forceress although himself had banished them by his Edicts out of his Kingdom The servants ever ready to observe their Masters in ill offices when their own interest concurreth found a famous Magician whom the Hebrews affirm to have been a woman of good place but out of a detestable curiosity had put her self into this profession Saul to cover his purpose and not to amaze her went thither by night in a disguized habit onely accompanied with two gentlemen where having saluted her he demanded the exercise of her profession But she being crafty and careful to keep her self from surprizes answered Sir go you about to undo me your self also Know you not the Edicts of King Saul Saul replied he knew all had passed but she might confidently proceed assuring her of his warranty and whereas she proposed punishments to her self she should meet with rewards But she still doubting and sticking on distrust usual in all mischiefs he engaged his word with great oaths protesting no ill should befal her for any thing might pass at that time between them Thereupon resolved to give him satisfaction she asked if it were not his desire to speak to the soul of a dead man as also whose it was It was very ordinary with these Negromancers to raise illusions and fantasms instead of true spirits of the dead S Apollonius made Achilles to be seen Philostr in Apoll. Zonaras Eunapius Sardianus appearing on his tomb as a giant of twelve cubits high so Santaberemus shewed to the Emperour Basilius the soul of his son Constantine so Jamblicus made to appear in certain baths of Syria two figures of little children like Cupids All this to speak properly had nothing real in it and it is no wonder if those who thought Samuel had been raised by a sorceress believed it was a specter But he who well will weigh the phrase of Scripture and consider that this spirit of Samuel suddenly appeared before the sorceress had used her ordinary spells plainly shewing he came meerly by the commandment of God and not by the charms of the Magician will easily change opinion Verily the Sorceress was much astonished seeing the dead came contrary to the manner of other and cried out aloud as one distracted Sir you have deceived me you are Saul much doubting it was to him Samuel came The miserable King who endeavoured by all means to assure her fear not saith he I will keep my promise what have you seen She answered DEOSVIDIASCENDENTES DE TERRA as who should say according to the Hebrews phrase she had seen a venerable person like an Angel or a God raised out of the earth In what shape replies the King It is an venerable old man saith she covered with the mantle of a Prophet Then Saul with much reverence prostrated on the ground and made a low obeysance to Samuel who spake to him and said QUARE ME INQUIETASTI UT SUSCITARER Why hast thou disquieted me to make me return into the world Necessitie hath constrained me answereth Saul I am plunged in a perplexity of affairs and cannot get any answer from heaven O man abandoned by God why doest thou ask of me that which I have foretold shall happen Thy army shall be defeated by the Philistins and thou with thy children shalt be to morrow with me that is to say among the dead as I am now which so fell out Now the Eccl. 46. Scripture upon this praiseth Samuel to have prophetized after his death if it were not the true Samuel but a specter who sees not it were to tell a lie and to applaud the work of the divel But to the end you may see this belief was held by Nations as by a decree of nature Josephus in the seventeenth book of his Judaical antiquities relateth the apparition of the spirit of Alexander son of the great Herod and Mariamne who was seen to his wife Glapphyra when she re-married again to the King of Mauritania to reproch her ingratitude and forgetfulness of her first husband which having amply deduced in the first Tome of the holy Court in the tenth edition upon an Instruction directed to widdows I forbear here to repeat it Philostratus in the eigth book of the life of Apollonius maketh likewise mention of a young man much troubled in mind concerning the state of souls in the other life and saith Apollonius appeared unto 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 him assuring him the soul was immortal and he need not to be troubled at all since it was rather the work of the Divine providence than of it I willingly passe over many other examples to tell you that Phlegon a good Authour who flourished about an hundred years after the nativity of our Saviour and was not of our religion to favour our opinions although honourably cited by Origen Eusebius and S. Hierom writeth a strange historie witnessed by the testimonie of a whole Citie wherein he then governed He saith that at Trayls a Citie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 in Phrygia there was a young maid named Philenion daughter of Democrates and Chariton who as her storie well declareth was an amorous piece became court-like loved bravery delighted in too free conversation and followed the foolish pleasures of the world true gardens of Adonis which in the beginning make shew of silly flowers and in conclusion afford nought but thorns God who followeth the voluptuous by the track even into the shades of death sent her a sickness which having cropped the flower of her beauty left her almost nothing but a living carcass to deliver her over as a prey to death The miserable maid suffered the boiling fervours of the feaver through all her bodie not loosing the flames of love which she cherished in her heart She burnt with two fires not being able either to quench the one or other and having but a little breath of life left on her lips she gave to love what already was
Emissenus The eternal nights of hell have been visited by the rays of God plaints and clamours ceased direful chains fell off executioners were amazed and the whole habitation condemned to eternal pains shook under the feet of this admirable Conquerour The Prophet pursueth (b) (b) (b) Parata sedes tua c. Elevaverunt flumina c. Mirabiles elationes maris The seat of glory O Saviour was prepared for thee from all eternity and thereinto thou makest a victorious triumphant entry after so great an inundation of sufferings All the waves of persecutions have roared over thy head and have buried thee in the acerbities of death How much the more this sea of passions immeasurably swelled so much the more thou appearedst resplendent in the supream eminency of thy glory and triumphs 6. (b) (b) (b) The sweetness of the repose of Jesus and all the elect in the state of the resurection Transfer your consideration from thence to the effect of our Saviours glorification which consisteth in repose and stability represented by the Angel which appeared at the resurrection sitting on a solid stone This verily is the great day which we may call the mystical Sabbaoth and the eternal repose of Jesus It is said in the mystery of the creation (c) (c) (c) Complevitque Deus die septimo opus suum quod fecerat requievit die septimo ab universo opere quod patrarat benedixit diei septimo sanctificavit illum Genes 2. 1. The relation of the resurrection to the creation that God rested on the seaventh day and casting his eye on all these great works which he drew out of nothing he thereupon took satisfaction in his spirit and impressed them all as with the seal of his approbation To speak according to our understanding it was an incomparable comfort to the heart of the Sovereign Creatour to behold in six days so goodly a world where before that time reigned an huge imaginary vacuum accompanied with a sad horrour of darkness And to consider how a Nothing in the hands of a great work-man was a mighty thing having been as the ground of the greatness beauty of the universe What contentment to see a heaven distended as a Pavilion over all creatures which already circumvolved with so much impetuousness and besides to see it enameled with so great a number of stars in the peaceable silence of the night and in the day to see it enlightened with a sun which is the visible Image of God invisible the eye of the world the heart of nature the treasury of heat light and influences that animate illustrate and quicken all the parts of this great work To see a moon to serve for a sun by night so constant in her in constancy so regular in her increasings and waynings so measured in all her course so effectual and fruitfull in the impressions she maketh on nature To see days and nights return into our hemisphere at a time prefixed to agree as brothers sisters to afford time one to another and to yield it one in winter another in summer with so much integrity that all therein goes in compass To see the order of seasons a delicious spring-tide strewed all over with flourishing beauties a summer with harvests an Autumn with its fruits and a winter which is as the depository of nature dies to live again with the first rays of renovation To see the Sea so spacious in its extents so fertile in its productions so concluded in its limits to see the floud and ebbe of the Ocean the tomb of curiosity the impetuous stream of rivers the eternal veins of fountains the height of mountains the depth of valleys the winding of hillocks the wideness of fields To see so prodigious a quantity of trees herbs flowers so curious in beauty so wholsom in their utility and so divers in their multiplicity To see so many speckled birds flying in the air which they fill with their natural musick so many fishes to swim in the chrystal of waters so strange a variety of beasts armed some with horns some with teeth some with spurs other with saws many with paws And lastly man who contracteth in himself all the draughts and works of the divine hand and epitomizeth the whole world in his perfections and beareth the most animated character of the living God Is it not true that God casting his eye on this had a certain delight therein as the Master of a family when he sees a house which he had long time designed to be raised in one night entirely perfect throughly furnished and in all kinds accommodated with whatsoever concerns necessity and beauty Here raise your thoughts above all that is mortal The joys of the heart of Iesus in the first instant of the resurrection and momentary Imagine with your self the ineffable joy of the heart of Jesus and the profound repose of his spirit when at the first instant of his resurrection he represented unto himself not creatures elements plants and a corruptible world but a world of wisdom understanding love beauty force and felicity A Church which was to take birth from his The goodly world he beheld in his Jdaea's at the day of his resurrection bloud life from his death and spirit from the most subtile spirits of his heart He then saw this Church as a great Temple divided into two parts whereof one made the Quire another the body In the Quire he beheld an infinite number of Angels who chanted a song of triumph in honour of his victories He saw in his idea the number of the elect who should accompany the magnificent legions of Intelligences He saw about him those sacred first-fruits of immortals whom he very lately had taken out of Limbo and himself he beheld in the front of so many clean and purified souls rejoycing to busie the earth in the memory of his triumphs and to make heaven happy by his sweet aspects He beheld himself as in a picture in that manner Ecce equus albus qui sedebat super cum vocabatur fidelis verax In capite ejus diademata multa vestitus erat veste aspersa sanguine c. Apoc. 19. wherein S. John presenteth him in his Apocalyps all laden with crowns clad in a white garment imbroidered with precious drops of his bloud which gave him a lustre a thousand times more honourable than that of diamonds and rubies and after him an infinite number of celestial Courtiers who waited on the triumph of his resurrection He heard acclamations which gave him the title of True and Faithful voices of trumpets of water and thunder which ceased not to resound Alleluja O what a source of joy did then over-flow the breast of God that treasury of chast delights From the Quire he cast his eyes on the body of his great Temple and saw in magnificent idea's all the state of the Church militant which is compared to
things not impossible That which is very hard to flesh and bloud become easie by the help of grace and reason Our blessed Saviour Jesus Christ being the Father of all harmony can and doth reconcile all contrarieties at his will and pleasure 2. If revenge seem sweet the gaining of it is most bitter But there is nothing in the world more profitable than to pardon an enemy by imitation of our Saviour For it is then that our conscience can assure us to be the children of God and inheritours of his glory We must not fear to be despised for esteeming virtue for such contempt can onely proceed from those who know not the true value of that glory which belongs to the just There is no better way to revenge than leave it to God who always doth his own business When David wept for Saul who was his enemy his Clemency did insensibly make degrees by which he mounted up to the throne of Judah A good work which comes from the spirit of vanity is like an emptied Mine good for nothing God who is invisible would have our aspects turned always toward him and blind toward the world Alms given by the sound of a Trumpet makes a great noise on earth but reaps little fruit in Heaven The flie of vanity is a mischievous thing which destroys all the perfumes of Charity What need we any spectatours of our good works every place is full where God is and where he is not there onely is Solitude Aspirations O God of all holy affections when shall I love all which thou lovest and have in horrour all that displeaseth thy divine Majesty If I cannot love in some person his defects and sins I will love in him thine Image and in that will I acknowledge thy mercies If he be a piece of broken glass in that little piece there will shine some lines of a God-Creatour and of a God-Redeemer If thou hast chosen him to exercise my patience why should I make him the object of my revenge since he gives me trouble to gain me a Crown He is a hammer to pollish and make me bright I will not hurt him but reverence the arm that strikes me I resign all vengeance into thy hands since it is a Right reserved for thy Almighty power And certainly the best revenge I can take is to gratifie my enemy Give unto me O most mercifull Prince the grace to suffer and let the sacrifice of my sufferings mount up to thy propitiatory Throne The Gospel for the first Saturday in Lent S. Matth. 6. Of the Apostles danger at Sea and relief by our SAVIOUR ANd when he had dismissed them he went into the mountain to pray and when it was late the boat was in the midst of the Sea and himself alone on the land And seeing them labouring in rowing for the wind was against them and about the fourth watch of the night he cometh to them walking upon the sea and he would have passed by them But they seeing him walking upon the sea thought it was a ghost and cried out for all saw him and were troubled And immediately he talked with them and said to them Have confidence it is I fear ye not And he went up to them into the ship and the wind ceased and they were far more astonied within themselves for they understood not concerning the loaves for their heart was blinded And when they had passed over they came into the land of Genesareth and set to the shore And when they were gone out of the boat incontinent they knew him and running through that whole Countrey they began to carry about in couches those that were ill at ease where they heard he was And whither soever he entered into towns or into villages or cities they laid the sick in the streets and besought him that they might touch but the hem of his garment and as many as touched him were made whole Moralities 1. WHat a painfull thing it is to row when Jesus is not in the boat all our travel is just nothing without Gods favour A little blast of wind is worth more than an hundred strokes of oars What troublesom businesses there are how many intricate families do labour much and yet advance nothing because God withdraws himself from their iniquities if he do not build the workman destroyes what he is building But all falls out right to those that embark themselves with Jesus They may pass to the Indies in a basket when others shall miscarry in a good ship well furnished 2. But how comes it about that the ship of the poor Apostles is beaten so furiously by the winds and tempests There are many ships with silver beaks with fine linnen sails and silken tackles upon which the sea seems to smile Do the waters reserve their choller onely to vent it upon that ship which carries just persons This is the course of mans life The brave and happy men of this world enjoy their wishes but their ship doth perish in the harbour as it is sporting whereas God by his infinite providence gives tempests to his elect that he may work a miraculous calm by his Almighty power Dangers are witnesses of their floting and Combats are causes of their merit Never think any man happy in his wickedness for he is just like a fish that playes with the bait when the hook sticks fast in his throat We must wait and attend for help from Heaven patiently without being tired even till the fourth which is the last watch of the night All which proceeds from the hand of God comes ever in fit time and that man is a great gainer by his patient attendance who thereby gets nothing but perseverance 3. They know Jesus very ill that take him for a Phantome or an illusion and crie out for fear of his presence which should make them most rejoyce So do those souls which are little acquainted with God who live in blindness and make much of their own darkness Let us learn to discern God from the illusions of the world The tempest ceaseth when he doth approach and the quietness of our heart is a sure mark of his presence which fills the soul with splendour and makes it a delicious garden He makes all good wheresoever he comes and the steps which his feet leave are the bounties of his heart To touch the Hem of his Garment cures all that are sick to teach us that the forms which cover the blessed Sacrament are the fringes of his holy humanity which cures our sins Aspiration O Lord my soul is in night and darkness and I feel that thou art far from me What billows of disquiet rise within my heart what idle thoughts which have been too much considered Alas most redoubted Lord and Father of mercy canst thou behold from firm land this poor vessel which labours so extreamly being deprived of thy most amiable presence I row strongly but can advance nothing except thou come into my soul
of my Father that is in Heaven be is my brother and sister and mother Moralities 1. IT is a very ill sign when we desire signs to make us believe in God The signs which we demand to fortifie our faith are oft-times marks of our infidelity There is not a more dangerous plague in the events of worldly affairs than to deal with the devil or to cast nativities All these things fill men with more faults than knowledge For divine Oracles have more need to be reverenced than interpreted He that will find God must seek him with simplicity and profess him with piety 2. Some require a sign and yet between Heaven and earth all is full of signs How many creatures soever they are they are all steps and characters of the Divinity What a happy thing it is to study what God is by the volume of time and by that great Book of the world There is not so small a flower of the meadows nor so little a creature upon earth which doth not tell us some news of him He speaks in our ears by all creatures which are so many Organ-pipes to convey his Spirit and voice to us But he hath no sign so great as the Word Incarnate which carries all the types of his glory and power About him onely should be all our curiosity our knowledge our admiration and our love because in him we can be sure to find all our repose and consolation 3. Are we not very miserable since we know not our own good but by the loss of it which makes us esteem so little of those things we have in our hands The Ninivites did hear old Jonas the Prophet The Queen of Sheba came from far to hear the wisdom of Solomon Jesus speaks to us usually from the Pulpits from the Altars in our conversations in our affairs and recreations And yet we do not sufficiently esteem his words nor inspirations A surfeited spirit mislikes honey and is distasted with Manna raving after the rotten pots of Aegypt But it is the last and worst of all ills to despise our own good Too much confidence is mother of an approching danger A man must keep himself from relapses which are worse than sins which are the greatest evils of the world he that loves danger shall perish in it The first sin brings with it one devil but the second brings seven There are some who vomit up rheir sins as the Sea doth cockles to swallow them again Their life is nothing but an ebbing and flowing of sins and their most innocent retreats are a disposition to iniquity For as boiled water doth soonest freeze because the cold works upon it with the greater force so those little fervours of Devotion which an unfaithfull soul feels in confessions and receiving if it be not resolute quite to forsake wickedness serve for nothing else but to provoke the wicked spirit to make a new impression upon her It is then we have most reason to fear Gods justice when we despise his mercie We become nearest of kin to him when his Ordinances are followed by our manners and our life by his precepts Aspirations O Word Incarnate the great sign of thy heavenly Father who carriest all the marks of his glory and all the characters of his powers It is thou alone whom I seek whom I esteem and honour All that I see all I understand all that I feel is nothing to me if it do not carry thy name and take colour from thy beauties nor be animated by thy Spirit Thy conversation hath no trouble and thy presence no distast O let me never lose by my negligence what I possess by thy bounty Keep me from relapses keep me from the second gulf and second hell of sin He is too blind that profits nothing by experience of his own wickedness and by a full knowledge of thy bounties The Gospel for Thursday the first week in Lent out of S. Matth 15. Of the Woman of Canaan ANd Jesus went forth from thence and retired into the quarters of Tyre and Sidon And behold a woman of Canaan came forth out of these coasts and crying out said to him Have mercy upon me O Lord the Son of David my daughter is sore vexed of a devil who answered her not a word And his Disciples came and besought him saying Dismiss her because she crieth out after us And he answering said I was not sent but to the sheep that are lost of the house of Israel But she came and adored him saying Lord help me who answering said It is not good to take the bread of children and to cast it to the dogs but she said Yea Lord for the dogs also eat of the crums that fall from the tables of their masters Then Jesus answering said to her O woman great is thy faith be it done to thee as thou wilt and her daughter was made whole from that hour Moralities 1. OUr Saviour Jesus Christ after his great and wondrous descent from heaven to earth from being infinite to be finite from being God to be man used many several means for salvation of the world And behold entering upon the frontiers of Tyre and Sidon he was pleased to conceal himself But it is very hard to avoid the curiosity of a woman who seeking his presence was thereby certain to find the full point of her felicity A very small beam of illumination reflecting upon her carried her out of her Countrey and a little spark of light brought her to find out the clear streams of truth We must not be tired with seeking God and when we have found him his presence should not diminish but encrease our desire to keep him still We are to make enterance into our happiness by taking fast hold of the first means offered for our salvation and we must not refuse or lose a good fortune which knocks at our door 2. Great is the power of a woman when she applies her self to virtue behold at one instant how one of that sex assails God and the devil prevailing with the one by submission and conquering the other by command And he which gave the wild Sea arms to contain all the world finds his own arms tied by the chains of a prayer which himself did inspire She draws unto her by a pious violence the God of all strength such was the fervency of her prayer such the wisdom of her answers and such the faith of her words As he passed away without speaking she hath the boldness to call him to her whiles he is silent she prays when he excuseth himself she adores him when he refuseth her suit she draws him to her To be short she is stronger than the Patriarch Jacob for when he did wrestle with the Angel he returned lame from the conflict but this woman after she had been so powerfull with God returns strait to her house there to see her victories and possess her conquests 3. Mark with what weapons she overcame the
whole world as he did proportioning his torments according to the fruits which were to proceed from his Cross Perhaps O faithfull soul thou lookest for a mans body in thy Jesus but thou findest nothing but the appearance of one crusted over with gore bloud Thou seekest for limbs and findest nothing but wounds Thou lookest for a Jesus which appeared glorious upon Mount Tabor as upon a Throne of Majestie with all the Ensigns of his Glory and thou findest onely a skin all bloudy fastened to a Cross between two thieves And if the consideration of this cannot bring drops of bloud from thy heart it must be more insensible than a diamond 3. To conclude observe the third quality of a good death which will declare it self by the exercise of great and heroick virtues Consider that incomparable mildness which hath astonished all Ages hath encouraged all virtues hath condemned all revenges hath instructed all Schools and crowned all good actions He was raised upon the Cross when his dolours were most sharp and piercing when his wounds did open on all sides when his precious bloud shed upon the earth and moistened it in great abundance when he saw his poor clothes torn in pieces and yet bloudy in the hands of those who crucified him He considered the extream malice of that cruel people how those which could not wound him with iron pierced him with the points of their accursed tongues He could quickly have made fire come down from Heaven upon those rebellious heads And yet forgetting all his pains to remember his mercies he opened his mouth and the first word he spake was in favour of his enemies to negotiate their reconciliation before his soul departed The learned Cardinal Hugues admiring this excessive charity of our Saviour toward his enemies applies excellent well that which is spoken of the Sun in Ecclesiasticus He brings news to all the world at his rising and at noon day he burns the earth and heats those furnaces of Nature which make it produce all her feats So Jesus the Sun of the intelligible world did manifest himself at his Nativity as in the morning But the Cross was his bed at noon from whence came those burning streams of Love which enflame the hearts of all blessed persons who are like furnaces of that eternal fire which burns in holy Sion On the other part admire that great magnanimity which held him so long upon the Cross as upon a throne of honour and power when he bestowed Paradise upon a man that was his companion in suffering I cannot tell whether in this action we should more admire the good fortune of the good thief or the greatness of Jesus The happiness of the good thief who is drawn for a cut-throat to prison from prison to the Judgement-hall from thence to the Cross and thence goes to Paradise without needing any other gate but the heart of Jesus On the other side what can be more admirable than to see a man crucified to do that act which must be performed by the living God when the world shall end To save some to make others reprobate and to judge from the heighth of his Cross as if he sate upon the chiefest throne of all Monarchs But we must needs affirm that the virtue of patience in this holds a chief place and teaches very admirable lessons He endures the torments of body and the pains of spirit in all the faculties of his soul in all the parts of his virgin flesh and by the cruelty and multiplicity of his wounds they all become one onely wound from the sole of his foot to the top of his head His delicate body suffers most innocently and all by most ingrate and hypocritical persons who would colour their vengeance with an apparance of holiness He suffers without any comfort at all and which is more without bemoaning himself he suffers whatsoever they would or could lay upon him to the very last gasp of his life Heaven wears mourning upon the Cross all the Citizens of Heaven weep over his torments the earth quakes stones rend themselves Sepulchers open the dead arise Onely Jesus dies unmoveable upon this throne of patience To conclude who would not be astonished at the tranquility of his spirit and amongst those great convulsions of the world which moved round about the Cross amongst such bloudy dolours insolent cries and insupportable blasphemies how he remained upon the Cross as in a Sanctuary at the foot of an Altar bleeding weeping and praying to mingle his prayers with his bloud and tears I do now understand why the Wiseman said He planted Isles within the Abyss since that in so great a Gulf of afflictions he shewed such a serenity of spirit thereby making a Paradise for his Father amongst so great pains by the sweet perfume of his virtues After he had prayed for his enemies given a promise of Paradise to the good thief and recommended his Mother to his Disciple he shut up his eyes from all humane things entertaining himself onely with prayers and sighs to his Heavenly Father O that at the time of our deaths we could imitate the death of Jesus and then we should be sure to find the streams of life Aspirations O Spectacles of horrour but Abyss of goodness and mercy I feel my heart divided by horrour pitie hate love execration and adoration But my admiration being ravished carries me beyond my self Is this then that bloudy sacrifice which hath been expected from all Ages This hidden mystery this profound knowledge of the Cross this dolorous Jesus which makes the honourable amends between Heaven and earth to the eternal Father for expiation of the sins of humane kind Alas poor Lord thou hadst but one life and I see a thousand instruments of death which have taken it away Was there need of opening so many bloudy doors to let out thine innocent soul Could it not part from thy body without making on all sides so many wounds which after they have served for the objects of mens cruelty serve now for those of thy mercy O my Jesus I know not to whom I speak for I do no more know thee in the state thou now art or if I do it is onely by thy miseries because they are so excessive that there was need of a God to suffer what thou hast endured I look upon thy disfigured countenance to find some part of thy resemblance and yet can find none but that of thy love Alas O beautifull head which dost carry all the glory of the highest Heaven divide with me this dolorous Crown of Thorns they were my sins which sowed them and it is thy pleasure that thine innocency should mow them Give me O Sacred mouth give me that Gall which I see upon thy lips suffer me to sprinkle all my pleasures with it since after a long continuance it did shut up and conclude all thy dolours Give me O Sacred hands and adored feet the Nails which have pierced
a Curiosity black and faulty as those who seek for a Master in matter of Religion and would gladly talk with a devil to learn news from Paradise or such as those who strain curious Sciences so hard that they sqeeze black and maligne vices out of them as Magick or the trick of coining false money or as those who are mad to hear to see to know the vices or mischiefs of others Others have a more innocent Curiosity one of medals another of Tulipaes some of voyages others of companies and indeed of all things which may serve for incentives to Concupiscence There are of them who are much disquieted with matters which little concern them they are curious to know all that passeth in the world in the Indies in Japonia how many elephants the great Mogull keeps who is to succeed the King of China in his Empire whether the great Turk armeth whether the Persian stirreth and what forces Prester John hath for the preservation of his State They think within themselves what a face they would set upon it if they were Kings or Popes They in their heads dispose of Kingdomes They raise Republicks they rig forth ships they pitch battels and after they have doated they find nought but nothing in their hands Others advance not their aims so high but rest satisfied with inferiour thoughts and petty cares as how to trot up and down the streets to visit houses and to ask of all they meet what news do you hear As also to observe post-dayes and to visit their friends round by a list-roll indifferently to heap together the bruits of the City to vent them again without any consideration There are some who make vows of pilgrimages not out of Devotion towards Saints but from a purpose to content their Curiosity They know all the Indulgencies which are throughout all the Churches of the Province and beyond all the houses that are built all the christnings every day all the weddings celebrated all the child-births of male or female all the merchandizes newly brought in all the strangers who arrive all the suits determinated all the charges given all the offices sold all the pamphlets cryed up and down the streets Their heads are wonderfull Fairs whither merchants come from all sides there is not a moment of repose and solitude with such is accounted a petty Hell This multiplicity of Desires is waited on by another In constancy followeth the multitude of Desires Malady of Inconstancy which is properly a levity and an irresolution of mind which sheweth it self in his manners actions and words who is touched with it To say truth this passion is a Devil who inhabiteth in The kingdome of Inconstancy a land of Quicksilver where Earthquakes are almost perpetuall winds blow on each side and blowing make many weather-cocks to turn to and fro and every moment change posture In this place an admirable Creature is to be seen who is not what she is and is that she is not so many faces and figures she hath She likewise is still upon transformations and seems to do nothing at all but to make and unmake her self One while she is great another while little one while grosse another while slender one while affable another while harsh one while serious another while gamesome but ever slippery and if you lay hold of her you catch nothing She goes forth of her lodging to appear in publick as if she came into a Theatre clothed one while in changeable Taffaty another while with different pieces set together out of a singular Fantastick addlenesse of wit She alone representeth all personages talks with all kind of voyces and in all manner of languages After her we behold a million of petty phantasmes imperfect in shape and which seem to be but pieces roughly begun which we may say are her works If you a little observe the men which inhabit this kingdome of Inconstancy you shall find they are people whose humours consist much of air and water for they are alwayes supple and pliant to all manner of objects they have a spirit which brooketh not businesses with a strong and solid penetration to see the bottome of it but onely scratch them with a little bodkin which is blunted and broken presently If you could see their heart and brain you should behold in the one huge squadrons of thoughts which scuffle together like Cadmus his souldiers in the other a mighty masse of desires and indigested purposes which renders them very unable to receive the impressions of the Divinity as S. Basil hath observed upon that Prophet Isaiah 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Basil Hom. 1. in Isaiam It seemeth all this kind of people have a will of wax and that any man may work it which way he list Their passions are sharp and ardent in the beginning so that they transport judgement which is either notably weak or much benummed but they last not for they instantly are troubled at things present and ever tum their face away from the future never as it were being where they are and still being where they neither are nor can be You shall see they every day begin to live yea when they should make an end and if they do any good they do it but by halves never allowing themselves leisure to lick their Bear as they say nor to finish their work so precipitate they are by contrariety of different desires which draw them this way and that way and destroy all the abilities of their wits You shall note in them a great greedinesse after novelties and continuall changes of manners study apparel of wearing their hair of their manner of living gate of voyce of conversation of sports exercises counsels loves of amities words and of mouths which at once breathe forth hot and cold To conclude their life is nought else but the floud and ebbe of a continuall Euripus it is replenished with shadows giddinesse and illusions which in effect make it miserable For commonly it is waited on by disesteem grief shame anxiety and great shipwracks of wit and renown § 3 The four sources out of which ill-rectified desires proceed YOu must know that those restlesse desires which toil us proceed from four sources the first and Four sources of Desires which toil us principall whereof is a Heart void of things Divine there being not saith S. Augustine a more manifest signe that a soul is not well with God then when it entertaineth a multiplicity of desires Moses pulled off his shoes before the burning bush where he saw his eyes cleared by the rayes of the Divine Majesty in my opinion to teach us that his heart was at an end of its journey since he had found the Centre of eternall Rest Whilst the soul of man is out of the limits which God assigned it well it may find Innes to lodge in but it never finds a home But he who knows the way how to accommodate himself in all things
after so exquisite torments so that in the one and twentieth Psalme which it is thought our Narr abo nomen tuum fratribus meis in medio Ecclesiae laudabo te Apud te laus mea in Ecclesia magna vota meareddam in conspectu timentium cum Psal 21 Saviour wholly recited when he hanged on the Crosse having reckoned up the dolours which invironed him on all sides he raised himself up as the Palme against the weight of his afflictions and said I will declare thy Name to my brethren in the midst of the whole assembly of the faithfull Yea my God all my praise shall be in thee and for thee I will pronounce thy marvels in thine own house and I will offer thee my vows and sacrifices before all those who make profession to honour thee 6. Encouragements to good Hopes ANd will we then in so great light of Examples in so eminent protection of divine Helps resign our selves over to sadnesse and despair among so many accidents of this transitory life Despair onely belongs to hearts gnawn with dull melancholy and to souls extremely in love with themselves and the commodities of the world or to maligne spirits who have lost all the sparks of good conscience or lastly to the damned Why should we deprive our selves of an inestimable treasure of good hopes which the eternall Father hath kept for us in his omnipotency of which the word Incarnate hath assured us on the Crosse with his bloud and the rest of his life Is it not a goodly thing to see people who bear the character of Christianity to lay down the bucklet and to throw away arms at the first approach of some affliction whatsoever to grumble and murmure against God and men to cruciate themselves like Prometheus on the rocks of Caucasus to torment themselves with a thousand imaginary evils Wo to you Apostate and fugitive children Vae filii desertores dicit Dominus ut faceretis consilium non ex me ordiremini telam non per Spiritum meum Isa 30. 1. Chrysost ad Theodorum who have made resolutions without me and who have weaved a web which was not warped by my spirit It is no extraordinary matter said S. Chrysostome to fall in wrestling but to be willing to lie still stretched out at length on the earth It is no dishonour to receive wounds in fight but to neglect them and to let the gangrene through lazinesse to creep in is a folly inexcusable We entred into this life as into a list to wrestle as into a field of battel to fight why are we amazed if God use us as he did his most valourous champions Let us look upon life on all sides and we shalll find it preserved by good Hopes and is totally ruined by Despair Behold men build after ruines and fires see others after they are come all naked from amidst waves rocks frothy rages of the sea gather together in the haven broken planks of their unfortunate vessels to commit their life to an element whose infidelity they know by experience and taste prosperous successe onely by very slight hopes Yet flie they like Eagles into dangers among all the images of death after they therein have been so ill treated When Alexander was ready to enter into the Indies one said unto him Whither wilt thou go Beyond the world where dying Nature is but a dull lump where darknesse robs men of heavens light and the water hath no acquaintance Aliena quid aequo ra remis sacras violamus aquas Divúmque quietas turbamus sedes Eamus inter has sedes Hercules coelum meruit Senec. suasorta 1. with the earth What shall you see but frozen seas prodigious monsters maligne stars and all the powers of life conspiring your death To what purpose is it to hasten to sail over new and unheard of seas Inconsiderately to interrupt the peacefull seat of the Gods But replyed he Let us courageously go on let us discover those forlorn Countreys Thus did great Hercules deserve to win heaven Hope caused Rome to set Armies on foot after the battel of Cannae and France to triumph over the English by the hands of a silly shepherdnesse wherefore will we despair of our salvation sith the mercy of God was never extinguished nor can he cease to be what he is what a thought of a devil is it to deliver ones self over to despair in the sight of a Jesus who beareth our reconciliation on his sacred members and pleadeth our cause before his eternall Fathet with as many mouths as our sins in him have opened wounds Know we not We have a Bishop who cannot but compassionate Non habemus Pontificem qui non possit compati infirmitatibus nostris tentatum per omnia Heb. 4. our infirmities seeing he himself hath pleased to passe through all those trials and to make experience thereof to his own cost and charges It is not the despair of our salvation which tempteth us but that of temporall goods this suit and that money is lost here is the thing which afflicteth this desolate soul and makes it hate its proper life O soul ignorant of the good and evil of thy life It is thy love and not thy despair alone which tormenteth thee Thou then hast fixed thy Beatitude on this gold this silver on thy profit by this suit and thou lookest on it as on a little Divinity Dost thou forget the words Perdix sovit quae non peperit secit divitias non in judicio in dimidio dierum suorum derelinquet eas Jer. 17. 11. of the Prophet Silly partridge thou broodest borrowed eggs thou hast hatched birds which were not thine let them flie sith thou canst not hold them That which thou esteemest a great losse shall be the beginning of thy happinesse thou shalt ever be rich enough if thou learnest to be satisfied with God But this person whom I more dearly loved then my self is dead and all my purposes are ruined by his death wherefore dost thou resolve with thy self to say now he is dead Began he not to die from the day of his birth Must he be looked on as a thing immortall since both thou and he have already received the Sentence of your deaths from your mothers wombs If thou onely grievest for his absence thou wilt quickly be content for thou daily goest on towards him as fast as the Sun which enlightneth us there is not a day which set thee not forward millions of leagues towards thy Tomb. I am content that they bewail the dead who Ruricius S. Hieron Fleant mortuos suos qui spem resurrectionis habere non possunt fleant mortuos suos quos in perpetuum aestimant interiisse in brevi visuri sumus quos dolemus absentes can have no hope of Resurrection they who believe they are dead never to live again Let them bemoan the losse of their friends as long as they will as
Univers When he undertook any businesse of importance he fasted and prayed extraordinarily and caused it to be recommended to the devotions of the good servants of God and when he had a good issue of it his thanksgivings were seen in all places on all occasions He neglected nothing and when men thought him overwhelm'd with the greatest businesses of war they were astonish'd that amidst them he took his time for some petty Ordinance of Policy He lov'd Learning especially Divinity and Law This was it that made him conceive a magnificent design to leave monuments of it to posterity that should last longer then the Temples and the Pyramids of Egypt And for this purpose being a man very judicious he made choyce of the mostable men in the whole Empire to collect all the laws of the Emperours his predecessours which he augmented and enriched with his own so that this book was called Justinians Code Afterward he gave a charge to Tribonian who was accomplish'd in that profession to compile all the Resolves of the antient Lawyers which he did with a most exact diligence and at length compos'd those famous Pandects or Digests divided into fifty Books He caus'd also the Institutions which contein the Principles of Law and are as it were the elements of that excellent doctrine to be added to them And for what concerns Divinity he published a certain work of the Incarnation and abundance of Ordinances for the government of Ecclesiasticall persons wherein Baronius finds fault that he entred sometimes a little too far into the Sanctuary He was not much advanced in the years of his reign when an horrible conspiracy was raised against him which was on the point to ruine all his affairs and although I have already touch'd it in my first volumn in the History of Eulogius yet I will decipher here more particularly the reasons and the remedies of it Many have attributed the totall cause of it to the new Subsidies that the Emperour imposed upon the people to maintein the war that he had already enterprised but there was yet more poyson and which sprang from an higher source which was that the house of the Emperour Anastasius which had preceded Justine the Unkle of our Justinian and which cherished alwayes the most violent passion to continue themselves in that Empire was not quite extinct but had two principall Chieftains Pompey and Hypatius who thought they had heads well enough made to wear a Diademe These men when they saw that the affairs of State were disposed to a commotion and that the Malignant Vapours were gathered together on all sides to make up clouds did as the Sorcerers do who mix the work of the Devil to assist the effects of nature They knew that the Emperour began to be ill-belov'd both for the imposts and for the rigid and inflexible severity that he used in the government of his Empire which seemed insupportable to the spirits of so many Libertines who would live according to their own discretion in the permission of all crimes They fail'd not to lay hold on this opportunity and underhand to sowe in the spirits of men the seeds of Division There was then in Constantinople two popular factions of men belonging to the Theatre which were called the Green and the Blew by reason of the Liveries by which they were distinguished State-Policy suffer'd them and chose rather to foment the one against the other then to extinguish them But the conspiratours for that time united them by artifices and by money to bandy them against Justinian The Chieftains ceas'd not to scatter venemous speeches amongst the people and to say What are we then made to suffer eternally the Empire of these Cow-keepers the Unkle is dead and the Nephue hath succeeded him which is a Crow hatched of an evil Egg. Was it not enough that he learned in governing beasts to handle us as a Shepheard but he must become a Butcher and be pleas'd with nothing but with the fleaing and the massacring of his people What have we any more to hope for under him since he hath put us in a condition of fearing every thing Do we expect that the Empresse which is the worst of Furies should give him counsels of mildnesse for us or that Bellisarius which is the fatall instrument of his cruelty should deliver us out of his hands All our safety is in our selves all our good is in our resistance Shall we doubt to obey necessity which constrains us and the justice of our cause which is our guide We ought to set upon this goodly Emperour while his state is yet tottering and ill-settled without staying till he fortifie himself to our ruine We have amongst us the blood of the true Cesars Pompey and Hypatius the Protectours of the people and the most accomplish'd of all Princes it is those that we ought to reverence and that we ought to carry upon our shoulders to the Empire These words at length enflamed the sedition which began by a small handfull of Mutiners which a Provost of the City endeavoured to suppresse and apprehended three that were the ringleaders of the Rebellion but the people ran suddenly in an huddle and plucked them out of his hands by violence The Alarm was given to the Palace and the Emperour dispatch'd instantly some souldiers to quell the Mutiners but they were beaten back for the number of the seditious grew greater every moment as a Ball of snow that rouls from the top of a mountain Behold in a little time the whole City in arms with a rage so violent and a sight so hideous that it seemed that Hell had opened it self that day to vomit out all its Furies upon the earth The men ran to fire and sword the women with their hair about their ears and howling like so many Megera's made themselves arms of what ere they met with There was not any even to the children that did not seem to be little devils flying athwart the flames The Regiments of the Herules which the King a little before had converted to Christianity were at that time quartered in the City of Constantinople who failed not according to the Orders of the Emperour to oppose themselves against the fury of the people These having been barbarous souldiers without all compassion made at first a great massacre The incensed Citizens fall upon them on all parts to beat them out their courts of Guard are burned by the hands of the seditious and their companies much worsted some were run through with Partisans others knock'd on the head with Leavers the affrighted women from the tops of the houses make themselves parties in the quarrell and cease not to throw down boyling water and stones upon them These wild-Boars thus chaffed seeing the blood of their companions run in rivers through the streets rally all their forces and take Torches to fire the Churches and houses which they performed with so much violence that one might see in an instant
out of the bottomelesse pit of Hell whither his enemy had precipitated him There were nothing then but Caresses but Dalliances and discourses upon the adventures of Theodosius But God whose just anger followes alwayes sinners at the heels waited till the Offering was fat to sacrifice it He permitted them to make so many Banquets so many Dancings and so many youthfull debaucheries for the return of that Minion that he suffering himself to be carryed to excesses above the ability of his body fell sick of the Bloody-flux by which he was carried within few dayes into the other World to render an account to the Sovereign Judge of his Unfaithfulnesse and Dissolute Life Antonina remained near the Corps as the Ghost of the Body but a Damned Ghost and deprived eternally of all she loved most God gave her a life long enough and prolonged her Hell among the living to anticipate that of the other life seeing that we know her crimes and know nothing of her Repentance In the mean while poor Photius was three years in a black Dungeon out of which having twice escaped and saved himself in Churches which served for a Sanctuary he was taken again and shut up close without being ever able to get forth but by a Miracle which discovered to him in a Vision the Prophet Zachary who drew him out of that deep pit wherein he was and conducted him to Jerusalem whither indeed he went and made himself a perfect Votary to accomplish the Vow that he had made if ever he did obtein his dear liberty Behold here the springs of Belizarius his misery which Procopius hath observed in his secret History It is believed that it is but a Fable to say that he had his eyes put out by the command of Justinian and was reduced to beggery but it is true that the Emperour had a jealousie of him as if he had aspired to the Empire and that Theodora who had a mind to persecute him to favour his wives wicked humour who yet cherished in her heart some poison against him for the businesse of Theodosius made him to be disgraced his offices were taken from him his goods confiscate the souldiers that he had trained up given to other Captains his friends interdicted with a prohibition to speak to him This brave Generall who before drew the whole world in throngs after him was forsaken and walked through the streets of Constantinople with two or three poor servants as a man that had outlived his Funerals to serve for a spectacle of Pity One day as he went to do his Courtship at the palace the Empresse shewed him a bad countenance whereat he was so affrighted that at his coming forth he expected nothing every hour but murderers to assassinate him He returns into his lodging being dismayed above all that can be imagined of so generous a man He presently throws himself upon his bed trembling and sweating with fear One comes to tell him that a Gentleman is at the gate with a message from Theodora he prepared himself already for death when the man gave him a Billet from the Empresse which imported thus Belizarius thy conscience tells thee that thou hast offended me and that thou deservest to be punished but I give thee to thy wife to whom I am obliged It is from her that in time to come thou shalt hold thy life thy goods and thy honour I shall know how thou shalt behave thy self towards her and with what submissions thou shalt acknowledge and thank her for her benefits He instantly kisses the Letter and in the presence of him that brought it to him enters into his wives chamber throws himself down at her feet kisses sometimes one sometimes the other professes that he ows to her his life and that he will no longer hold the rank of an Husband but of a Slave The Lady receives him into favour and goes and thanks the Empresse But is it possible that Belizarius that thunder-bolt of warre that had made the East the West and the South to tremble that had led two Kings in triumph that shaked not before armies of an hundred and fifty thousand men having but a little handfull Belizarius before whom the mighty Powers of the earth crawled along in dust was so basely subjugated by women Procopius assures us that it was a Charm that caused that perturbation of his mind and stole him from himself and needs must it be a work of the Devil that could quite change upside down and besot so great a personage Yet may we affâ—rm that it was not onely the wicked spirit of Antonina that made that Tragedy but that the person of the Popes violated by that General who was too basely obedient to the Empresse brought on him an infinite number of miseries that broke out at last upon Justinian and upon the whole Empire Here is a great Theatre of Providence where Princes may learn that it is very dangerous to be observant to womens wicked humours and to seize even on sacred persons to satisfie their Revenge Behold then the Prime and most capitall fury of the Empire Theodora who made her husband fall into Heresie who made the Popes be plucked out of their Sees to put therein her servants that turned topsie turvie all Divine and Humane Laws to content her Passion Procopius speaks shamefully of the originall of this woman and saith that she was the daughter of a Bear-keeper a Comedian by her trade a Prostitute by her publick profession and abandoned even to the little boyes of the Theatre from her infancy He addes also that she had a very good grace in puffing up her cheeks to receive boxes on them and to gain money by that pastime and that in her little youth she was debauched by one Ecebolus who kept her for a time and afterward was weary of her which made her having now nothing whereon to live run from place to place through the whole East in that shamefull prostitution and afterward returning to Constantinople Justinian made love to her as to a famous Courtisan and finding her to his liking married her in the life time of the Emperour his uncle It appears clearly that this Authour enraged against the memory of Justinian invented execrable lies that passe in the approbation of those that nourish themselves willingly with poison and that think that one cannot speak too much ill of great ones and that those are the best Historians that relate their most abominable vices But we ought to consider that this wicked man who appeared more a Pagan in his Writings then a Christian after he had highly praised his Master in publick when he had not the recompence he expected and was perhaps punished for his loosenesse and his demerits sets himself to write a secret History wherein he speaks fearfull things which never came into the thought of so many other Historians that wrote after him and in a time when they had a full liberty who would not have omitted
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
is a strange thing that a man of nothing found instantly Cities Armies and a Kingdome at his devotion It was now that Jonathan the brother and successour of Judas was sought after and sued to by those two adversary Kings with extreme earnestnesse Pompalus that took the name of Alexander wrote him letters full of honour offering him the Principality and Pontificate of his Nation qualifying him with the name of friend and sending him a purple Robe with a Crown of gold Demetrius whom necessity had rendred very courteous made him also on the other side a thousand fair promises to draw him to his party He exempted him from all Tributes he took away the Garrisons he gave him places of importance by a free gift he received the Jews to offices and governments he restored all those of their Nation that he held in Hostage He granted them an intire Liberty in their Religion and Policy and Revenues also for the Temple so that there was nothing more to be desired Yet Jonathan would never range himself under his Standards but as injuries being yet fresh smart more then old ones the Jews chose rather to give themselves to the son of their most cruel persecutour then to Demetrius that had taken from them their dear Maccabee and held yet their liberty under oppression The party already made against that miserable Prince fortified it self every day and although he took all the good order that his affairs seemed to require yet he could not divert his unhappinesse that dragged him to a precipice It is true that he got the better in some small encountres but when the great battle that was to decide the controversie of the Kingdome was to be given he saw himself very much forsaken and his enemy assisted with the best forces of all Asia He failed not for all that to fight with all possible valour and although his Army was scattered he would never fly but cast himself in the hottest of the mingling killing many of his enemies with his own hand His horse having taken a false step slipped himself into a slough whence he could not get out but he suddenly quitted him got himself on foot and made a great spectacle a King covered with dirt and bloud with his sword in his hand that laid about with a stiffe arm and without remission sustained the hail of arrows that the enemy let flie upon him standing inflexible against all those disastres of his evil fortune In fine he would not quit his Crown but with his life and buried himself in honour Every one bows under the happinesse of that false Alexander he mounts suddenly upon the Throne of his adversary where he receives the services and adorations of all the world Philometer the King of Egypt that had much upheld his party in which he sought his own interests gives him his daughter Cleopatra in marriage whose wedding was magnificently celebrated in the city of Ptolomais in the presence of the two Kings the father-in-law and the son-in-law where Jonathan was also present that was caressed of both the two by extraordinary favours and managed the businesses of his State with all possible advantages Alexander seeing himself in unexpected riches and amidst so many ornaments of a borrowed fortune could not contain himself but let himself flag in a sluggish and voluptuous life abandoning all the affairs of his Kingdome to the discretion of one Ammonius a young brainlesse fellow who carried himself most insolently and incensed the Queen Laodice and all the Nobles of the Court in such a manner as that he was at last set upon and slain in the habit of a woman which he had put on to secure himself God thus taking vengeance of his filthy and effeminate life The Antiochians were first weary of the dissolute life of their Prince that was alwayes in the midst of wine and women which made them believe that he was a supposititious King that had nothing in him of generous They began to regret Demetrius whom they had seen dic with so much courage and knowing that he had left two sons yet very young one of which bore his fathers name and the other was called Antiochus Sidetes They invited the elder of them giving him assurance that he should have the Crown Philometor that was ashamed of the deportments of his son-in-law and that under pretence of moderation desired nothing lesse then to adde the Diadem of Syria to that of Egypt well knowing that so many changes of Masters make a State shake and give fair advantages to those that would invade them upholds this Rebellion forsakes Alexander and by a notable affront takes away his daughter from him to give her to the young Demetrius And to colour his inconstancy he made a Manifest that published That his son-in-law by an execrable disloyalty had made an attempt upon his Kingdome and upon his life which made him break the friendship that he had sworn with him Under this pretence he seizes on some places which it was easie for him to keep whiles he made himself authour of the fortune of the new King The miserable Alexander awaking out of his surfeits saw the Egyptian and all his Subjects bandyed against him and a great army that was coming to fall upon his head which he resisted feebly and quickly forsook his party going to hide himself in the bottomes of Arabia where he was hunted after and entrapped by Zabdiel the Arabian who cut off his head and carried it to the King of Egypt who contemplated it a long time with a spirit more then salvage for which he was punished of God and dyed three dayes after of the wounds he had received by a fall from his horse at the defeating of his son-in-law Behold marvellous sports of fortune and great revolutions that ended not at this point yet Demetrius young of age and government was not a man to settle a Kingdome shaken with so great concussions He thought more of taking the pleasures of Royalty then of bearing the burden of it businesses were to him as many punishments and pastime a continuall exercise This was the cause of new factions and great seditions that were raised in his Kingdome The Maccabees whom he gained to his party rendred him very good offices although he was more ready to receive them then liberall to reward them In the weaknesse of this new Government started up the disloyall Tryphon who had been Captain of the Guard to the false Alexander and having seized himself of a little child that his Master had left behind him he had the boldnesse to propound him for King and true Successour of the Crown When he saw that Jonathan already obliged to Demetrius was able to oppose his designs and to unravel the web of his ambitions he surprised him by a detestable treachery and caused him to be assassinated with his children after he had received the money that he had demanded for his ransome The young King altogether astonished
This eternall high Priest prepared for his Altars a great sacrifice of Tribulation and of Patience which was to be honoured with so much Bloud and so many Tears of the Righteous and would invite thereto the Saints by the imitation of a Patriarch that consecrated himself by his own evils and mounted out of a deep pit to the triumphant chariot of the Pharaoh's I have proposed to my self to represent this to you my Reader not relating at large his History which is sufficiently known but by making some reflexions upon it able to make us admire the greatnesse of God and to fashion the manners of Courtiers affected to virtue by originalls that God hath placed as upon the frontispiece of his palace Let us observe then according to the pursuit which the Scripture makes us see in this narration his entrance into the Court his beginning his progresses his virtues his negotiations and his successes from which we shall draw great lights and infallible proofs of the work of God upon those whom he embraces by love and by a very particular conduct Ambitious spirits have studied in all times the means to make a fortune at the Court of Kings and have applied themselves strongly to this design as to the study of the Philosophers stone or to the conquest of the golden fleece But they have had work enough to find out the true principles and causes of the good will of great ones which is the reason that some seem to have the golden wings of fortune her self to flie to the palace of Honour without labour and without difficulty while others with indefatigable pains grow old in disgrace and in contempt Lilius Giraldus a learned man digged out of the ground in his searches an antient picture of the industrious Apelles wherein after he had painted Favour winged blind standing upon a rouling boul environned with riches honour disdain flattery and the impunity of all crimes he places at her feet some Philosophers that studied her Genealogy some making her the daughter of Beauty others of chance others of Industry others of Virtue but the ablest confessed that she was a bastard and not begotten of lawfull Parents but of an obscure and dark Confusion And indeed if we speak of the favour of Princes taken according to the world we must acknowledge that it is very uncertain having as many divers births as there are different humours in the mind of great ones who are ordinarily subject to many changes whether through an opinion of their greatnesse or whether through the delicatenesse of their breeding or whether through the diversity of those that approach them and so many fantasticall conceits that proceed from the perturbation of their own felicities Who is able to tell all the entrances into favour seeing there are some that have been promoted highly for having caused a little sucking pig to be roasted handsomely as it happened to a favourtie of Henry the Eighth's King of England It is true that there are some that insinuate themselves by beauty and by a good grace others by jeasting and delightfull pastimes others by understanding and the conduct of affairs others by valour others by science others by the invention of crimes and infamous wayes of magick by unseemly complacencies and unworthy services which they render to the revenges or to the pleasures of their masters But not to speak of other proceedings that are lesse clean those that give precepts of rising at the Court will tell us that he ought to be of a good birth of a pleasing behaviour very dextrous in all sorts of exercises fit for the Nobility of a gentle wit that hath some tincture of science of a polished conversation full of civility affability and prudence In a word he must be a man of conscience of understanding of courage of service and held up by some powerfull friend that will gain the good will of great ones and to open to himself a large way to the honours of the age This is said with much prudence but we must avouch that beside all these rare qualities there is a secret push of an invisible hand that thrusts forward the favourites which some have attributed to the stars others to destiny others to a good temper but which I think with reason to be an effect of the divine Providence and an operation of the Guardian Angels who in prosperous affairs procure often counsellours and officers to Kings by high and sublime wayes of exquisite gifts and profitable to second the good genius of the Prince and to advance by the same means the favourite This is that which may be observed clearly in the person of Joseph whose Elogy I have undertaken to give you There is required in a man of a secular State the birth of a gentleman to make a fortune at the Court and this man was the son of a shepherd a skilfulnesse at weapons he had never handled nor perhaps seen any a gentlenesse in the exercises of the body he knew no other but those of shepherds a grace of speech he was a stranger and a barbarian to the Egyptians Military valour he knew no other combates but those of the rammes and bulls politick prudence he came from a savage life where he had had no other conversation but that of trees and beasts What was it then that promoted him in the Court of Pharaoh and made him rise so high Must we not acknowledge with all submission of spirit that there is an heavenly hand that takes a charge of this businesse and that it is our Tutelar Angel to whom God having given Commission of our lives and fortunes it is no way credible that he neglects us in these great occurrences of exercises and of conversations that are to compose the happinesse or the miseries of our life Yet it is true that God destining a man to some great design fails not insensibly to furnish him with necessary qualities for that disposall though they are elevated above the opinion of the world and sometimes even contrary to the ordinary practises of Courtiers from thence it came that Providence had made Joseph of a good mind and of a grace fitting for conversation of a sweet and pleasing humour of a spirit capable of businesse She gave him a marvellous gift of Prophecy and of Interpretation of Dreams which wrought the principall effect of that high fortune in a King curious to know the things that were to come and a Nation much inclined to Divinations and to the knowledge of the secrets of Nature and above Nature Here is a point of Doctrine necessary to be observed as well for the Science as for the Conscience since the observation of Dreams which many make by Superstition was made by Mystery to the honour of the Interpretour and to the profit of all the Nation as the History will shew you clearly in its sequele We know that a Dream is a vision which is made in sleep caused by the remainders of
by causing him to be espoused to the daughter of an high Priest of the city of Heliopolis consecrated to the sun but he caused him to be called The Saviour of the world and commanded that he should be carryed through the capitall city upon his triumphant chariot and that the Herald of Arms should cause men to bend their knees before him that he might be acknowledged of all the people and that all the world might understand that nothing was done but by his orders Where are those admirers of the fortunes of glasse that happen to to the wicked where are those adorers of the Colussu's of dirt that appear by the help of some false guildings and are immediately reduced to dust Let them see and let them consider that the God of heaven and earth which we adore is the God of honour too whereof he gives a share to his when it pleases him with magnificences that surpasse all whatsoever one can imagine For a prison of three years Joseph is exalted to a principality of fourscore with an authority so absolute that it never yet had its equall since the foundation of the Monarchy of the Egyptians It now remains to observe for the instruction of Courtiers the deportments of Joseph in that Charge and although the Scripture sayes very little of that businesse enlarging it self principally upon the narration of his reconciliation with his brethren yet it omits not to give us something whereon to meditate and whereby to instruct our selves about his demeanour at the Court. In the first place he is greatly to be commended for having preserved through his whole life a piety inviolable in the Religion of his fathers without altering the service of the true God by any bad tincture of the superstition of the Egyptians Represent to your selves a child about seventeen years of age that was in a strange Nation as the Morning-star whereof the Scripture speaks in the midst of clouds without a father without a mother without a governour or a teacher without a Priest without a Sacrifice without a Law without Precepts and without example that saw himself allured and powerfully sollicited to quit his Religion by that complacency which he desired to give his Prince by the consideration of his fortune by the friendship of the great ones by the condition of his marriage and by the liking which he might aim at of a people extremely fastned to their errour that could not easily endure those that had any other opinion of their Gods then their madnesse did prescibe And yet in an age so tender he holds his own by constancy of mind against the mighty by reason against the sages of the countrey by warinesse against his own wife by sweetnesse and by prudence against the people He remains alone amongst so many millions of superstitious men an adorer of the truth in spirit without other sacrifices or ceremonies which were not lawful for him to use To speak truth he that shall weigh all these circumstances will find a marvellous weight of virtue and constancy in this holy personage We may see many of the young gentry sufficiently well educated at the first that coming to breathe the air of liberty amongst the Hereticks and having not the frequentation of the Sacraments so free as formerly easily forget their duty and without having any other corruptour to sollicite them corrupt themselves of themselves through the want of courage and wearisomnesse of virtue But if there be any baits of pleasure or of honour that allures them to the side of impiety they tread often times under foot all that there is of divine and humane for the satisfying of their sensuality But this young man that saw every day before his eyes a thousand stumbling-blocks in a Nation that was addicted to Idolatry above all the People of the World and that had often torn in pieces those that expressed any contempt of their Ceremonies preserves himself amidst these enticements and these furies as a fountain of fresh-water in the midst of the salt-Sea The true God alwayes returned into his thoughts when he was to combate against the passion of his Mistresse when he was to present himself to the King when he was to require an oath of his brethren it was by the true God and when he was ready to render up the Ghost he conjured his children not to let his bones rot in a land of Idolatry Yet some men may wonder that in so long a sojourning as he made in Egypt and in an authority so absolute he tooke care onely of the Politick affairs and advanced not the interests of his Religion Some may marvell at the alliance that he made with a daughter of a Priest of Idols which could not be without putting his conscience in great danger there being nothing more full of Artifice then superstition that is upheld with Love But to this I answer That all that he could do then was to preserve his Faith without pretending to ruine the contrary It was not expedient that the figure should incroach upon the Body and that Joseph should do the work of the Messias This demolition of the prophane Temples and this destruction of the Idols was not due but to Jesus Christ and to the Deifying operations of the Evangelicall Law after the coming of the Holy Spirit How should Joseph have been able to enterprise the conversion of the Gentiles seeing that our Lord would not permit no not his Disciples while he was yet on earth to make incursions and missions into the Countrey of the Heathens commanding them to stay for that spirit of fire and light that was to inflame the whole world with its ardours And as for that which touches his allyance there was not yet any Law that forbad the Mariages of the Jews with the Gentiles and he had but newly seen the example of his Father Jacob who had allyed himself with the house of Laban This was done indifferently enough in the Law of Nature by reason that God had not commanded any thing that was contrary to this practice and because that his People were yet but a little family in the middle of the world But this fashion was changed afterward as it is clear by the Scripture and those who produce the Examples of Abraham and of Jacob to perswade allyance with Infidels shew that they have little Reason and much Passion In the second Place I say that the Modesty of Joseph is of a rare Example and of a strength of mind almost incomparable Which will be easie enough to prove to those that know how seriously to weigh the change of humour and of spirit that honour ordinarily brings with it and especially when it is great and sudden and falls upon a person that is not accustomed to it There are some that are like the Thracians that make themselves Drunk standing about burning coals by the odour of a certain herb which they throw into the fire after which they dance
an ox for the space of seven years this had been enough to have made him been declared an Impostour and been banished from the Court Neverthelesse it is a strange thing that Nebuchadonozor makes no reply thereto but hears patiently the counsel that he gives him to expiate his sinnes by Alms and by good Works He was seized with a great fear of God with an affright that took from his mouth all manner of reply to think by what means he might appease the menaces of heaven But we must averre that this great King had something in him very wild and a spirit that had no more subsistence then the clouds and winds He passed often from one extremity of the passions to the other without lighting upon the middle and sometimes he appeared humbled to the abysse and sometimes also clave to the air and clouds and planted his Throne by extravagant imaginations even above the stars This Dream of the Tree kept him in his wits a pretty while but scarce were twelve moneths expired but being one day in his Palace he entred into a mad vanity about the city of Babylon which he said he had builded by the strength of his wit and of his arm and for the high magnificences of his glory The word was yet in his mouth when the anger of God fell upon his head as a sudden flash of lightning and he was changed into a beast not that he lost his humane soul nor the ordinary figure of his body but he entred into so violent and so extraordinary a frenzy that he perswaded himself that he was an ox and instantly forsook his Palace and his Throne ran up and down the fields and fed on grasse with the beasts and although endeavour was used to cure him by all sorts of remedies yet experience shewed that this evill was a wound from heaven for which no case was to be found He became so mad that they were fain to bind and chain him and yet he brake his chains and tore his clothes and exposed himself all naked to the rain to the winds and to all the rigours that the seasons brought His hair increased horribly and his nails so crooked that they would make one believe that he was some bird of rapine All the Court was in mourning and sadnesse for this so terrible an accident and although his burnt bloud and his violent passions had much contributed to his malady yet so was it that the blindest saw that there was in it a manifest punishment of God Evilmerodach his son took the government of the Empire in quality of Regent during the indisposition of the King his father and although he appeared to be much moved at that change yet there was more shew in it then reality But in fine this miserable frantick having passed seven years in a pitifull condition came again to his right senses and the first thing that he did was to lift up his eyes to heaven to blesse God to acknowledge that his might was without limits that his kingdome was an everlasting kingdome that all men of the habitable earth were but nothing before him that he disposed of all as well amongst the heavenly virtues as amongst the creatures of this lower world that nothing could resist his power without experimenting his Justice His good Subjects touched with a great compassion sought him out again and re-placed him upon his Throne where he reign'd with a great modesty and lived in the knowledge of the true God as so farre as to work out his own salvation as S. Augustine assures us together with other Fathers of the Church So every thing was restored to him with more splendour and Majesty then before his accident bringing no diminution to his Authority This gave incomparable joyes to holy Daniel who amidst all the Grandeurs of the Court wished for nothing but the conversion of his Master Evilmerodach that had taken some liking to the Regency was not contented at this change but expressed so much despight at it that the King his father distrusting him kept him in prison which was very bitter unto him seeing himself descended from the Throne in a moment to the condition of a captive It is held that Nebuchadonozor reigned after his re-establishment the space of six or seven years and that the successour of his Empire was this Evilmerodach his prisoner who remained a long time in the languor of his captivity He found in that prison Jehojakim King of the Jews and as men in misery have a kind of obligation to love the like he looked upon him with a good eye and recreated himself often with him having no other company at all The memory of this friendship accompanied him to the Throne and he caused his companion to be delivered out of prison using him honourably and giving him even Offices of importance in his Court The new King passing from one extremity to another in such a sudden behaved himself but ill for it is said that he caused the body of his father to be torn in pieces for fear he should return again from the gates of death to resume his Sceptre and that he reigned with much insolence taking a pride to trample under-foot all that his predecessours had exalted And therefore that eclipse that Daniel was in at Court as it appears from the sacred Text might have happened at this time since that the Jews were retir'd and had little credit in the kingdome This holy Prophet seeing himself discharged of the businesses of the Court and ranged in a solitude was in his element and recollected all his thoughts to give to his heart the joyes of God which good souls find in a retirement It was then that he entred farther into the commerce of the intelligences that he was visited by Angels with more favour that he learn'd the secret of Empires and saw all the glory of the world at his feet yet he could not belie his good heart nor avoid but that the contempt of the true Religion and the affliction of his poor people that suffered much in this alteration was very sensible to him Evilmerodach was never the happier for leaving the pathes of Piety which his father had trod out for him for after a short and wicked Reign he was suppressed by his brother-in-law Neriglossor who having a child by his wife named Belshazzar the grandchild of the great Nebuchadonozor put him forward to succed in the Empire In the mean while the father governed the kingdome in quality of a Regent and when Belshazzar was of age he remitted all the power into his hands which he used moderately during his fathers life but as soon as he was dead he laid aside his vizard and grew dissolute in the quantity of excesses and of debauches shamefull to a Prince of his extraction The heighth of his fatall pleasures was in the most sumptuous banquet that he made to which he invited a thousand persons of the best quality in his kingdome
in it But in my opinion it is unworthy the gravity of so great a personage and I know not to what purpose it is to revile the Ashes of the Dead although it is not forbidden to write a true History to leave a horrour to posterity in recording the lives of the wicked This howsoever may serve for instruction not to play with wasps or incense those who have the pen in their hand and can eternally proscribe their Adversaries After this sport he was imployed upon the Earnest He is made Minister of State and Agrippina mother of the young Emperour desiring to confirm her self in the Monarchy and to govern by her son did supply him with two creatures men of gteat capacity and fidelity Burrus for Arms and Seneca for Laws The first was severe in his conversation the other was of a mild and pleasing disposition They both agreed even to their deaths in the government of the Affairs of State Then it was that Seneca did enter into those great imployments and exercised that high wisdome which he had acquired for the Government of the Empire He began with his Prince who was the first and the most amiable object of all his troubles and although at the first he did expresse himself very tractable and agreeable to all the world yet Seneca perceived in his infancy the His judgement on Nero. marks of a cruel and bloudy nature and told to his intimate friends that he nourished a young lion whom he endeavoured to make tractable but if he should taste once of the bloud of men he would return to his first nature And this was the occasion that at that time he did write for him the two Divine Books of Clemency where with variety of remarkable proofs he doth establish the Excellency the Beauty and the Profit of candor of Spirit and the advantage which redounds unto a Prince to govern his Subjects with Bounty and Love On the contrary he remonstrates the horrour and disastres of Tyrants who would prevail by Cruelty in the management of their Estates All his endeavour tended that way wisely foreseeing that Nero would fall into extreme Cruelties and for that cause he did willingly give way that he should delight himself in Comedies in Musick and such Exercises of softnesse hoping that in some manner it would make more civil his savage nature He also composed for him many eloquent Orations which the young Emperour would pronounce with great grace to the generall admiration both of the Senate and the people He made also many excellent Ordinances some He put his State in good order whereof by the report of Dion were engraved upon a pillar of silver and were read every year at the renewing of the Senate He hated all the inventions the deceits and tricks of State as a trade of iniquity and did ground himself on the eternall principles of Justice by which he kept the Empire in a profound peace in great abundance and a sure felicity So that in a manner Frontine makes a true narration he saith that Seneca had so redressed all abuses that it seems he had brought goodnesse into the Empire and called the Gods from heaven to be conversant again with men In which he made use of the Philosophy of the Stoicks not that which is so rigid and so sullen but that which he had tryed and seasoned for that designe to give to the world a taste thereof His opinions for the The Maximes of Seneca most part are Rationall Sacred and Divine If he speaks of God it is in the same sense as the Of God Saviour of the world did discover to the Samaritan He professeth openly that God is a Spirit and that the difference betwixt God and us is that the better part of us is Spirit but that God is all Spirit most Pure Eternall Infinite the Creatour of the great works of Nature which we behold with our eyes If he speaketh of true Worship and the most sincere Of Religion Religion which we ought to imploy to honour and adore the sovereign King of the Universe he doth sufficiently declare that the worship of God ought to be in Spirit and in Truth as our Saviour hath prescribed When you figure God saith he represent a great Spirit but peaceable and reverend by the sweetnesse of his Majesty a friend to men and who is alwayes present with them who is not pleased with bloudy Sacrifices for what delight can he take in the butchery of so many innocent creatures The true Sacrifice of the great God is a pure Spirit an upright understanding of him and a good Conscience We ought not to heap stones upon stones to raise a Temple to him for what need hath he of it the most agreeable Temple that we can build for God is to consecrate him in our hearts Lactantius hath so much Lactan. div Instit lib. â— cap. 25. esteemed of this passage that in the sixth Book of his Institutions he doth oppose it to the Gentiles as a buckler of our Christianity If there be a question about the Presence of God Of the divine presence Epist 83. which above all things the masters of spirituall life do commend in their Instructions he saith That it is to no purpose to conceal ones self from man and that there is nothing hid from God who is present in our hearts and in our most secret thoughts If we rest in the Contemplation of the Divine Providence Of Providence which is the foundation of our life he believeth a Providence which reacheth over all And in a Tract which he hath composed he pertinently doth answer those who are amazed why Evil arriveth to good people since so great and so good a God hath a care of their wayes He saith That it is the chastisement of a Father an exercise of Virtue and that what we take to be a great Evil is oftentimes the occasion of a great Good that such is the course and order of the world according to the Divine dispensation to which we ought to submit our selves If we consider the Immorrality of the Soul which Of the Immorrality of the Soul Juvâ—e de 〈◊〉 animaâ—â—â— qâ—â—rere â—mò credere Epist 102. is the foundatton of our Faith and of all virtuous actions it is certain that he had a good opinion of it and professerh in his 102. Epistle That he delightneth not onely according to Reason to search after the Eâ—ernity of the Soul but to believe it and he complaineth that a letter received from a friend did interrupt him in that Contemplation which seemed to him so palpable that it was rather to him an agreeable Vision that he had in a Dream then any Discourse in Philosophy And in the end of the Epistle he speaketh of wonders of the originall of the Soul and the return of it to God And in the Preface of the first Book of Naturall Questions which he did write some few
years before his death which makes the truth more remarkable he speaketh clearly that the Soul returneth to heaven if it be well purified from its commerce with earth that heaven is its true Countrey and Element and that it is a great proof of its Divinity that it delighteth to hear of heavenly things as being the affairs proper to it self We must take care not here to judge and condemn Seneca on a doubtfull word as when in his Consolation to Martia he saith That all end by Death and by Death it self He onely there toucheth of Goods and Evils of Honours Riches Pleasures Troubles and the Cares of this present life It is most clear that there is nothing in that Sentence which derogates from the Immortality of the Soul because he concludes that Treatise with the joyes which a happy Soul receiveth in the other life And it is not from our purpose to consider that Seneca sometimes in disputing speaketh by supposition according to the Idaea of others and not according to his own We cannot know better the opinion of an Authour then by his Actions and his Practise and we observe that Seneca hath not onely professed the Immortality of the Soul by words but believeth the effect in secret for he reverenced the Souls of great Personages and did believe them to be in heaven which he testified before he received the Christian Faith when being in a countrey-house of Scipio of Africa he rendred divine honours to his Epist 86. Spirit prostrating himself at the Altar of his Sepulchre and perswading himself he said that his Soul was in heaven not because that he was Generall of the Army but because he lived an honest man and having infinitely obliged his ingratefull countrey he retired himself in a voluntary solitude to his own house to give no fears and jealousies of his greatnesse If we demand where he placed the sovereign good His opinion of the sovereign good and the end of Man we shall find that he established the felicity of this present life to live according to Reason and that of the life to come in the re-union of the Soul with its first beginning which is God From this foundation he hath drawn a rule and propositions which he hath dispersed over all his Books and these are to despise all the goods of the world Honours Empires Riches Reputation Pleasures gorgeous Habiliments stately Buildings great Possessions Gold Silver precious Stones Feasts Theatres Playes and to take all things as accessory and to regard them no more then the moveables of an Inne where we are not but as passengers And above all things to esteem of virtue of the mortification of loose desires of contemplation of eternall virtues of Justice Prudence Fortitude Temperance of Liberality Benignity of Friendship of Constancy in a good course of life of Patience in Tribulation of Courage to support injuries of Sicknesse Banishment Chains Reproaches of Punishments and of Death it self We may affirm that never any man spoke more worthily then he of all these subjects Never Conquerour did subdue Nations with more honour then this great Spirit with a magnificent glory at his feet hath levelled and spurned down all the Kingdomes of Fortune All that he speaketh is vigorons ardent lively His heart when he did write did inflame his style to inflame the hearts of all the world His words followed his thoughts He did speak in true Philosophy but as a king and not as a slave to words and periods His brevity is not without clearnesse His strength hath beauty his beauty hath no affectation he is polished smooth full and entire never languishing impetuous without confusion his discourse is tissued yet nothing unmasculine invincible in his reasoning and agreeable in all things Howsoever we ought not to conclude by his Books that he was a Christian because he wrote them all before he had any knowledge of Christianity and therefore it is not to be wondred at if sometimes he hath Sentences which are not conformable unto our Religion Some one will object that he is admirable in his Writings but his Works carry no correspondency with The answer to the calumniatours of Seneca his Pen. This indeed is the abuse of some spirits grounded on the calumnies of Dion and Suillius which those men may easily see confuted who without passion will open their eyes unto the truth He reproacheth him for his great Riches in lands in gold and silver and sumptuous moveables and layeth to his charge that he had five hundred beds of cedar with feet of ivory It seems that this slanderer was steward of Seneca's house so curious he was in decyphering his estate But all this is but a mere invention for how is it possible that he who according to Cornelius Tacitus did not live but onely on fruit and bread and water and who never had any but his wife to eat with him or two or three friends at most should have five hundred beds of cedar and ivory to serve him at his feasts It is true that he had goods enough but nothing unjustly gotten they were the gifts and largesses of the Emperour And because he had sometimes written that Goods were forbidden to Philosophers he therefore was content to hold them in servitude and not to be commanded by them He was overcome by Nero to carry some splendour in his house as being the chiefest of the Estate and it was put upon him as a sumptuous habit upon some statue We cannot find that he had ever any children but his Books or that he made it his study to enrich his Nephews or his Nieces or to raise a subsistence for his house from the charges greatnesse and riches of the Empire He had the smallest train and pomp that possibly could be and when he had the licence to be at liberty from the Court he lived in an admirable simplicity and which is more he besought Nero with much importunity to discharge him from the unprofitable burden of his riches and to put severall stewards into his houses to receive his revenues but he made answer to him that he did a wrong unto himself to demand that discharge for he had nothing too much and that he had in Rome many slaves enfranchized who were farre more rich then Seneca Yet for all this Reproach is proved to be unjust Dion proceeds further in his slander and alledgeth That he indeared Queens and Princes to him for he wrote their Papers and professed himself a friend to the richest Favourites What is this but to reproach a Courtier with his Trade his Discretion his Civility his Affability which this great personage made very worthily to comply with his Philosophy He married an illustrious Lady and of invaluable wealth What! should he being in that high dignity to please Suillus become suitor to some chamber-maid or for mortifications sake court some countrey girle ought he to bring such a reproach after him to the Court of the
he particularly recommended to all holy minds who breathed after the restoring of the ancient Religion In the second place he entered into the heart and possessed himself with the inclinations of Queen Marie whom he found throughly disposed and animated by a generous spur for the glory of God and the felicity of her Kingdom which kept her alwayes exercised on that high thought and comprehended in it the safety of all that Nation In the last he more and more encouraged all the Catholicks by the desires of their repose of conscience and by the liberty of their functions in the exercise of spiritual things In the third place he treated with those who were in an errour with the Spirit of Compassion of Sweetness and of Bounty complying with them in what he could in civil affairs and endeavouring to take from them the apprehension which they had conceived to themselves that the Change of Religion would ruin their fortunes and the establishment of their houses He caused a report to be spread by many remarkeable and grave Personages that he came not to take away their temporal goods but to give them spiritual blessings And as concerning the Goods of the Church which many Great men had usurped in that general Confusion of Affairs he said he would compose it in the best way that Love and Candor could prescribe him Fourthly He did wisely fore-see that with sweetness he should also bring in Authority which might ruin the resistences of those men if any should appear to oppose so saving a work On which he had recourse to the greatest Potentates in Europe whom he secretly affected to this Enterprize He had been before employed on the Peace between Francis the First and Charls the Fifth He did apprehend and attract the spirits of them both with wonderfull dexterity for having dived into the heart of the Emperour and finding the seeds of the Design which afterwards did discover themselves having been dismissed of the Empire and embraced a solitary life he wrought upon him with the recital of his great actions and the Conquests he had obtained and told him That all those strong agitations of his spirit were but as so many lines which ought to tend to the center of Rest that he ought not to weary and torment his good fortune That it was a great gift of God to confine his thoughts on true glory without attending the tide of the Affairs of the world That it was the duty of an Emperour to endeavour the Peace of Christendom and an incomparable honour to accomplish it He touched his heart so directly with these Demonstrations that he opened it and the Emperour declared to him That he had a great desire to that divine Peace and would embrace all reasonable Conditions that should conduce unto it After that he had effected this he made no delay to address himself to the Most Christian King and knowing that he was puissantly generous he wrought upon him by the glory of the great Wars he had sustained and the immortal actions of valour which he produced that by his invincible courage he had at the last wearied the most puissant Potentate in Europe who had him in admiration and desired nothing more than to hold a fair correspondence with him That a fair Peace should be an inestimable benefit to them both which should give rest unto their Consciences and pull down a blessing from on high upon their persons and be a great comfort to their Subjects who were overcharged with the continuation of the war In the end he did demonstrate to him how extraordâ—narily he was beloved of his people who did attend this Effect of his goodness by which he should crown his Valour with all happiness and abundance in his Kingdom The King took fire at this Discourse and the Cardinal most vigorously did blow it up and did remonstrate That two so great Monarchs who were made for Heaven ought not so greedily to hold unto their interests on earth and that they had nothing now to wish but to part their affairs and to save their honour And this indeed they afterwards performed restoring willingly on both sides all that they had conquered since the ordinance of Reconciliation made by Paul the third who some years before did transport himself to Marseilles although he was of a very great age to pacifie the Affairs of Christendom This Accord being so happily atchieved by Cardinal Pool he gained by it the approbation and applause of all Princes who favoured the Catholick cause He observed that the Emperour had his son Philip to marry and that there was nothing more expedient for the advancement of Religion than to allie him to Queen Marie He carried this affair with such secresie and dexterity that the King of Spain was in England and the Marriage published before the plot was discovered By the counsel of Charls Cardinal Pool did deferre his entery into the Realm until the Marriage was concluded and then he entered with all assurances The King himself came to meet him and Queen Marie with all her people received him with extasies of joy He incontinently did draw unto him the affection of all the principal Lords and not long after he counselled the King and Queen to call an Assembly of the most remarkable persons in the Kingdom to whom he spake thus in presence of their Majesties MADAM SInce it hath pleased God after the Confusions of the His speech to the States late times to shine upon us with his eyes of Mercie and at last to place upon the Throne the true and faithfull Inheritress of the Crown who is so worthily espoused to one of the greatest Princes in all Christendom we have a great subject to satisfie our Discontents and advance our hopes This Realm at this day doth imitate the Creation of the world coming forth from its Chaos and dark Abyss to receive the favourable influences of the light The day which by all good men hath been so passionately desired so suspected by the wicked so unlookt for by the incredulous and so attended by the afflicted is at length arrived to destroy our death and to make us new born in the life of the children of God Behold the true Religion which entereth with triumph into all the Cities of this Kingdom from which Impietie and Furie had dispossessed her she holds out her arms unto you adorned with the Palms and the Crowns with which your Ancestours have honoured her she demands again the place which from the first conversion until the furie of these later times she hold with so much honour and satisfaction Will you yet banish her Will you yet continue to persecute her Can you endure that she should present before God her torn and her bloudie Robe and complain again of the outrages of her children My Brethren There is neither life nor salvation but in this Faith which shineth and speaketh in S. Peters Chair It is that which God hath given us