of the gifts of God and the favours wherewith the powerful hand of the Divinity had so liberally inriched him and degraded him of all honour and put him into a condition of meanness impotence and error This goodly spirit of man or rather this man all spirit is now nothing but flesh this beautiful Soul which breath'd for nothing but Heaven entertained it self so deliciously in the knowledge of infallible Truths and was inriched with contemplation of the greatness of God as with Divine Dew and heavenly Manna after so deplorable a fall obstinately links himself to the perishable goods of this World believes in lies seeks after vanities and can no more elevate himself to God so miserable and impotent hath sinne made him O unhappiness which cannot sufficiently be bewailed Man who by the happiness of his creation had eyes to contemplate onely his Creator and converting himself wholly to him had no heart but to love him no spirit but to adhere to him after so fatall a cast wholly turn'd away from God regards nothing but himself is wholly converted to the Creature lives as a Beast onely upon the Earth and like a Beast without judgement The Apostle goes further for describing the estate whereto the sinner is reduced he declares him uncapable of the knowledge of things which are of the Spirit of God The natural man saith he receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness unto him neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned Hence I doubt least the wayes I intend to propose which are according to the Spirit of God appear too high or above the capacity of our spirits I confess they are so if we look upon man in the state of sin impotency and the corruption of his Nature But we shall find the contrary if we consider that the Sonne of God came into the World to relieve man after his fall to restore him those gifts with advantage which he lost to render him capable of God In brief he was made man to teach man the true way to love and serve God he gives the power having setled in his Church an inexhaustible Treasure of Graces whence all souls may draw strength in their weakness succour in their necessity and ability in the very impotency of their nature Here of Iesus man and God we are to learn the way to love and adore and to serve God from him we must have the grace to do it We must in and by Iesus operate above our strength above our being and natural power and nothing ought to seem difficult to us or impossible for him seeing he gives us his grace and spirit in abundance to accomplish it To believe this we must look back upon the designs of the Son of God in the Profusion of his gifts and graces and leasurely examine with the eye of Faith what he will operate in us by his grace and divine communications At the first view we shall see that Grace draws from us our impotency advances us above our nature gives us a new being a new life a life intire and wholly hid in God a life proper to the state of Christianity according to which all Christians ought to live The Son of God speaking to the Samaritan and in her to all the faithful makes a Discourse hereof worthy to be consider'd expressing an intention to establish his Church The houre shall come sayes he and now is wherein the true Worshippers shall worship the Father in Spirit and in Truth for the Father seeketh such to worship him The reason he adds God is a Spirit and they that worship him must worship him in Spirit and in Truth What more powerful and clear testimony of the will of God who tries and elects Souls that worship him in spirit and truth If he himself doth choose them and call them to this new life is it not necessary that in pursuit of this election he give them grace necessary to arrive at such an estate Let us consider this passage and ponder all the words of it 1. Iesus Christ shews us that our life must be holy and severed from the creature seeing that we must serve God in Truth without amusing our selves with the vanities and things of the Earth which are nothing but lying In truth that is to say conformable to the Greatness of God and to that principle whence the Soul takes power to serve God the grace spirit and dispositions of Jesus Christ the spirit of Truth We learn further that if perfection of this life is inward pure holy and absolutely divine seeing it is and subsists in the adoration of God who as he is a Spirit pure and holy will be served and adored in Spirit 2. Iesus Christ teaches that we must wait upon him for this Grace necessary to accomplish his Commands who requiring of us a life so pure and perfect obliges himself to give us necessary Graces to arrive unto it since that without him we can do nothing of that which he teaches In brief we see how much we are obliged to require this grace to search after it to submit our selves unto it and to endeavour to become worthy of it We must not in a matter so important as this of our salvation demurre in consideration of our impotency or experience of our own incapacity but raising our selves above our selves by the spirit of Faith we must hope in him who commands nothing impossible who giveth grace abundantly to accomplish what he demands These are the first dispositions of a Christian and which those souls that have any desire to live Christianly ought first of all to learn But it happens quite contrary the understanding of men is so corrupt that they desire not these internal solid vertues nor require them of God and which is worse many think it unnecessary to possess them and that such a life as we call interiour is for few persons as if Jesus Christ speaking to the Samaritan had spoken onely to Her and not to the whole Church Others perswade themselves that it is impossible to attain them as not believing the Apostle who saith I can do all things through Christ which strengthens me a manifest error wherein many lose themselves in not sufficiently considering what they daily see by common experience set before their eyes If weakest Women Virgins and Children have had strength sufficient notwithstanding their young and tender bodies to embrace tortures almost insupportable and have by Grace been strengthned to overcome those difficulties why should not we believe also that abandoning our selves to the power and conduct of Grace and becoming faithful to the designs of God we may have sufficient grace and capacity to acquire these vertues If by the help of grace they can attain strength of body to support the rigours of a penitent life wherefore by favour of the same grace may not we arrive to the possession of that true vertue wherein a
be deceived by this way our spirits being too feeble this way too eminent and that it occasions a perpetuall combate in the spirit As it is troublesome to a man to walk in darkness so it is hard for the soul to go this way of Faith which is obscure and hidden But if we would learn it well we must say the contrary all other wayes are uncertain and deceitfull vertue alone is infallible we shall never be deceived if we stick to it It were to have a mean esteem of Gods graces and to be ignorant of the Principles of our salvation to believe that the faith God hath given us to conduct us is capable of loosing us Let us remember that God hath given us the light of faith to guide our reason and that our reason must submit thereunto and in respect of Faith be annihilated as Saint Paul saith We walk by faith not by sight meaning that to live Christianly we must let our reason be guided by faith not faith by reason wherein we see the designes of God in the rule of our souls the necessity of our walking by the light of this torch or according to the ordinary manner of speech see how necessary it is for him that will live a perfect Christian to follow onely the light of faith and to learn to make use of Evangelicall truth If at any time the souls who take this way are deceived it is in that they go out of it and being perswaded by the Devil or self-love or the vanity of the humane spirit which esteems it self in every thing withdraw themselves from the conduct of faith to follow that of humane prudence choosing to be guided by the rules of the flesh and the spirit of worldly vanity rather then by the maxims of Iesus Christ and the spirit of heavenly truth Thus indeed they find themselves deceived and fall into misfortunes not for having taken this way of faith but for having quitted it and adhered to humane prudence and the light of reason which like an ignis fatuus will lead us out of the way unless we be aided by a supernaturall force and guided by a more sure light such as is this of faith But to the soul that is faithfull applying her self to the truths of Faith and Maxims of Christianity that seeks God with simplicity and humility there must necessarily arrive great profit and advantage in christian perfection We must not therefore condemn this way and reject it as too high too difficult and too painfull for it is the way that the Sonne of God himself hath left to his Church and commanded all his children But on the contrary we must teach it every one accommodating our selves to their several capacities and giving them all the means to pursue it without going out of it least they be deceived If we find here any difficulty it is in our selves There are two things in man which hinder his progress this way one is esteem of himself and of his own spirit the other is the Love that he bears himself and for his own sake to the Creatures To pursue this way and to make use of Faith he must go out of himself and renounce his own spirit and raise himself above all Creatures to adhere to truth to believe and to make use of what he did believe he must renounce his judgement his reason and his sense and annihilate them If our reason sense and judgement repugne the truth proposed to our belief we must quit our reason and our sense to unite our selves to the truth If for instance it is proposed that the uncreated eternall word become man that God died reason and sense oppose this truth Reason cannot comprehend that the eternall God should make himself subject to Time the immortall submit himself to Death yet to believe this our Will moved by grace notwithstanding the opposition of reason and sense must say I will believe and adhere to the truth proposed The will adhering hereto commands reason and judgement which obeying her believe what she proposes the understanding which useth to command and be free renders it self captive and obedient annihilating its own thoughts and reason that so it may adhere to the truth proposed and form an act of Faith Thus we are to understand that of Saint Paul bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ. By faith the understanding which useth to command is made captive and obedient to the Will therefore the soul in the practise of Faith goes out of her selfe and no more obeys her judgement or sense she no more regards her self but the truth onely which she embraces as her object adhering and uniting her self thereto Thus by Faith the soul is elevated above her self to be tyed and united to the eternall and infallible truth revealed and proposed to her This well considered will shew us the excellency and dignity of faith by which knowledge we shall learn how much we are to esteem the state of christianity in generall and the life of a christian in particular seeing that according to Gods designes and the grace of Iesus Christ the christian as christian must live and be guided onely by the spirit of truth and light of faith which being divine and supernaturall drawes us out of our selves to unite and tye us to God who is truth We shall moreover see by what hath been said that faith is not what we think it consists not in great learning in many reasons and severall Arguments on the contrary it is for the simple and for those who can go out of themselves who can annihilate themselves in their reason and quitting the regard of themselves and other creatures adhere and follow the truth of faith Therefore it is said commonly that the learned and wise of the world who have most prudence most reason the most solid judgement and capacity of spirit have likewise most opposition to faith for they are lesse able to go out of themselves to annihilate their own spirits and judgements Thus Iesus Christ after he had summed up the truths of Heaven and described the contentments of the glory of the just concludes with an Enthusiasme of truth I thank thee O Father saith he Lord of Heaven and Earth because thou hast hid these things these truths from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes to the humble and meek Which shews that the knowledge of truth and of the spirit of faith is a gift of God that God gives it to the humble and little ones that to adhere to it we must humble and abase our selves In a word to make use of the truth and faith conceived we must go out of our selves and out of esteem of our selves Let us practise this for it is our principall design To make use of faith and truths conceived we must first consider what faith proposes but we must consider it barely and simply without any discourse upon it we
souls to his Sonne he adds Every man that hath heard of the Father cometh unto me These words include the secrets of grace and are full of Mystery They teach us that the eternall Father by his grace drawes us and guides us to his Sonne he speaks to us by his inspirations in the interiour of our souls he shewes us that we are Iesus Christ's Is not this to say all that we have proposed That the design of God to save us is no other then to give us his Sonne to unite us to him by the powerfull attractions of his grace and to cause us to adhere to him by love and the exercises of a life truly christian herein doth true piety consist We must therefore continually elevate our hearts and spirits to this Iesus the onely happiness of our souls we must entreat him to accomplish in us the designs of his Father and to take an absolute power over us We must so offer our selves to him as to have no other intention will nor conduct but his that we may by a true relation verifie what Saint Paul said All is yours you are Christs and Christ is Gods Let us so think of him and so do that from henceforth our hearts and mouths may neither speak nor think but of him that all things else may be of no savour to us that nothing enter our spirit which resenteth not the spirit and odor of Iesus Christ and respires not his honour and glory In a word let us adhere to him and by an indissoluble and eternall union dwell in him that he may dwell in us that we may eternally bear the effect of his holy word He that is joyned unto the Lord is the one spirit O how happy is the soul that is called to this happiness and that is truly in the power of Iesus in the possession of his spirit and direction of his grace This is the state whereto Christian perfection must arrive the foundation of piety and true devotion But because many think not of it and many know it not we must treat of it more at large and propose the motives that most oblige us to this Devotion CHAP. III. Of Piety to Iesus Christ and its principall effects WHAT we have already said of the Sonne of God is sufficient to make us know what we owe unto him but the importance of this subject requires that for our better information we explain particularly the principles of this piety and the meanes necessary to attain it But before we enter into this subject we must consider that devotion to the Sonne of God wherein we are to imitate all Christians is not so to limit our souls as to withdraw them from what they owe to God but on the contrary the exercise of this piety is necessary to conduct us more worthily and holily to God because by piety to the Sonne of God we attain a capacity and power to honour God Iesus Christ is our way by him alone we go to God he is our life by him we live the life of grace a life which onely makes us worthy to honour God He is our Truth in him alone as the spirit of truth we know God we adore him and serve him in truth according to the Apostle he is our All in him and by him we have all things by the Son the Father gives us all and by the Son we render all to the Father This is the gift we receive of God and the gift we give to God for all is operated and subsists in the unity of Iesus Christ. The Church offers nothing to demands nothing of the blessed Trinity but by Iesus Christ. We must imitate the Church in pious customs Piety to Iesus Christ requires not so much exteriour exercises as interiour and permanent estate doth in our souls nor demands it any novelty of affection but a newness of spirit a new disposition enclining our souls to employ themselves in the thought of Iesus Christ to regard him to love him to honour him as the object and end of our life actions and devotions It requires that the actions of the religious should be devout those of the ordinary Christians vertuous those of a private person familiar in this object without changing his spirit but directing his intentions and dispositions to the pure regard of the Son of God For example let us do all that we do by the spirit of honour and love to Iesus Christ if we suffer let it be to imitate and render honour to his sufferings what ever happens to us let us receive it by a dependance on and submission to his power and conduct If we will insist upon any good thoughts let it be of Iesus Christ to consider his greatness the mysteries of his life his vertues his benefits and the power he hath over us By these sweet entertainments by these regards of honour and love the perfect Christian advances himself is confirm'd in the piety we speak of To know what this piety is and how we must apply our selves thereto let us consider that Iesus Christ is the principle the centre the end of all Christian souls for as faith teaches us he is the cause of all the good that is in us the spring of all the graces we possess Author of the life which we live in Christianity and being the principle he is also consequently the end thereof For according to the order established in nature that which is the principle of a thing is also its end and nature follows invariably the order God hath prefixt and by his well ordered motions gently leads and if not diverted infallibly conducts all things to the principle whence she draws them So the waters saith the Wise man return to the ocean as to their mothers womb and according to the mysteries of faith we say all things return to God because they all came out of God It is the same in the estate of grace If then Iesus Christ be the principle of the being life and state of Christianity he must be also the end so that our being life and estate regard the same Iesus Christ and are referred to him as the end and if the end the centre also of a Christian life In him our souls find their repose and perfection in him by him and of him are all things saith Saint Paul This Principle alone considered shews us that Iesus Christ hath full power over us that we are his not only in respect of his divine greatness and supreme power over all as God Saviour and Redeemer as purchaser of us with his most precious blood and his of life-giving death but also because he is the principle centre and end of the life and state of Christianity In this relation he hath soveraign power over us having given us being and grace consecrated us to his glory and honour in such absolute manner that the Christian cannot make use either of himself or any
to such a point that it was necessary the Son of God should be made man that God immortall should be clothed with our mortality to purchase for us by his blood and death a power to serve him to merit for us by his life and sufferings the graces necessary for us to produce good thoughts to obtain for us permission to present our selves to God and before him to re-instate us with a hope of pardon and trust in his Grace Man as a Sinner is so unprofitable and uncapable that without Gods particular grace without an effect of his divine mercy he can do no good work nor hope for any blessing or favour and if he receive any if he find himself replenished with love and hope or capable of any good it is onely by the bounty of God who though justly provoked stayes the effects of his Iustice that we might tast the fruits of his inexhaustible goodness Considering these motives and truths let us stand here before God as guilty of divinae Magistatis laesae Let us look upon our selves as sinners and we shall clearly see that by this estate we are left to Gods Iustice that we must of necessity leave our selves to his conduct and divine will For if for civil crimes men worthy of death are left to the Lawes of Iustice and the will of their Prince who will dispose of their life and goods as pleases him certainly man as a sinner worthy of death ought to be left to the will of his God to do with him according to the rigour of his Iustice or effects of his mercy This is the first practick to be learned from this Motive for the soul in the consideration of these truths ought to do that in love humility and choyce which she cannot avoid upon constraint A Christian as the child of Adam and so a sinner must put himself before God resign himself wholly to him and with an humble submission and contentment of spirit receive from his most wise hand all the effects of his divine conduct and accept with a resignation good and evill privation and enjoyment all that may happen unto him Above all he must be careful to continue in a profound humility before God exposing himself to the raies of his divine mercy to move him to pardon From this Principle we draw a second practise seeing the need we have of God For considering our selves to be so wretched and miserable we are obliged to seek a remedy for our evills Now as this cannot be found but in God the repairer of our faults the freer of our souls it will follow that by the knowledge of our miseries and the weight of the iniquities which oppress us we are driven to have recourse unto God even by the same exigence whereunto sinne hath reduced us and are obliged to seek out God Every way that man considers himself he finds himself in a want of God and consequently obliged to seek God as the onely happiness of his soul the onely remedy of his evils The better to understand this we must remember that by sinne man is equally miserable in two considerations the rigour and violence of sinne which oppress him and the evills and disorders whereinto sinne precipitates him from which two states he cannot get but by possessing of God For the first faith teaches us that man cannot get out of sin do whatsoever he can if God himself come not to relieve and deliver him Man of himself may lose himself may plunge himself may sell himself may enslave himself but he cannot free himself nor bestow himself but by the mercy of God who gave us his Son to re-establish all things in us as the Apostle affirms Now this re-establishment is done only by the spirit of love and charity which is the spirit of God in us given to us From whence we see that he that will avoid his miseries and shake off the yoke of sin must necessarily possess God who onely can free him Hence we may observe what a work the conversion of a soul to God is and the freeing of a sinner by what way soever it is wrought in man To apprehend properly the importance of this work of grace we must say that he that would be converted and delivered from sin must not onely go out of his sin but must also possess God and consequently by the same Motive that he desires to go out of his sin he is obliged to dispose himself to possess God and to become worthy of so holy an heritage for to confess his sin to turn to God to be delivered from his sin and to possess God is all one thing wherein appears the need we have to seek God and how seriously a Christian ought to labour in an affaire wherein his eternal safety doth consist The second state of our miseries doth no lesse oblige us to seek God then the former for by the effect of sinne and the Tyranny it exercises over us we are continually tossed about disorder'd made vagabonds and precipitated from imperfection to imperfection from sin to sin from trouble to trouble This evil hath no remedy what resolution soever the soul takes what diligence soever it useth what habit soever it assumes it will never find calme rest or deliverance till it hath found and possesses God and be possessed of him Never shall she be in true liberty Christian liberty the liberty of the children of God until she possesses the spirit of God wherein they deceive themselves who to acquire the peace of the soul and true liberty of the spirit use a thousand practises and a multitude of exercises peace and true Christian liberty being not to be found but in the possession of God Many things indeed that we speak and do serve to lessen our trouble and thraldom but not one can give true liberty or the peace of the spirit but the possession of God The reason is demonstrative nothing can have peace liberty and repose but in its proper Centre God is the Centre of the soul therefore in God alone is her peace liberty and repose and as long as she is with God and possesses him she is in liberty and repose no longer Whence we evidently conclude that while the soul is separated from God she is tyrannized over by the malice of sin continually drawn into circumstances terms and subversions And souls that make shew to search after the truth and to live in the purity of Christianity if they seek not God purely and seriously if he dwelleth not in the bottom of their hearts shall never live but in disquiet and in trouble in scruples and in Pannick terrours For it 's an infallible maxime That man can never rest but in the possession of God the contre of his soul. In this we see the strict Obligation that we have to seek God and to study Christian perfection which consists in the possession of God This is the resentment the desire and demand of the
losses calls and associates him to his divine greatness By the grace of Christianity he is the child of God and member of Iesus Christ and capable of the life of his own Son and by consequence he will fill him with the spirit and perfections of God Thus the Apostle speaking of the Eternall Father saith that he hath sent forth the spirit of his Son into our hearts assuring us that by this spirit we are sons of God and he frequently calls Christians the members of Iesus Christ. This quality and motive is the foundation of the state and spirit of Christianity that shews what a Christian ought to be and how eminent and accomplished the perfection is whereto he must arrive Saint Paul tells us we are members of Iesus Christ the Church is a body the mysticall body of the Son of God whereof Iesus is the head and Christians the members Ye are the body of Iesus Christ and members of his members saith the Apostle Know ye not that your bodies are the members of Christ This Text is cleer which if we consider intentively it will furnish us with rich thoughts and lift us up to the knowledge of the dignity of a Christian. I leave it to the piety of the reader to insist upon this subject If according to the Doctrine of the Apostle we are members of Iesus Christ it must follow that we wholly belong to Iesus Christ and are to him in truth and by grace that which by nature the members are to their head By the head the members are enlivened the head hath the care and guidance of them all so in Iesus and by Iesus we are enlivened guided and advanced of his fulness have we all received saith Saint Iohn he is our life the soul of our souls saith Saint Austin and much more then the soul is the life of our body Now if the head and soul enliven guide animate and make the body to subsist if the body have a continuall dependance on the conduct and motions of the soul is it not also agreeable that a Christian be animated with the spirit of the Son of God which he possesseth and whereof he is wholly possessed that he be wholly left to the care and conduct and motions of Iesus Christ of whom he is a member These are the two Estates wherein a perfect Christian must be he must possess God and be resigned to the conduct of the spirit of God We have already shewed how much he is obliged to seek God and to possess him if he will arrive to the perfection to which he is called It remains that we know how he must resigne himself wholly to God As members of the Son of God we are necessarily and essentially if I may so speak left to the love care and conduct of the heavenly Father which love is the same love which he hath for his Son the same conduct that he hath over him For we are part of his Son being his members and as the Apostle saith his fulness The Church saith he is the body of Iesus and the fulness of him that filleth all in all wherein we see the happy estate of a Christian who by the grace of Christianity being made a member of Iesus Christ in pursuit of his state is left to the same care the same conduct the same love that the eternall Father hath for his Son Being then arrived to this happiness what remains but to live with great vigilancy to put our selves to leave our selves and to maintain our selves in this love of the eternall Father to abandon our selves soul and body to divine conduct to remain in this union and unity with his Son for he looks on us in his Son as members and part of his Son and also being united to Iesus to submit our selves to the disposall of his spirit and to the motions of his grace as the members are to the head It was the request of Iesus to his Father the last day of his life the eve before his death for this he made that prayer full of love repeated at large by Saint Iohn wherein he begs of his Father that he would have the same love for us that he had for him from eternity and that he would be by grace to us what he is to him by nature that the same unity of love that binds them together may be in us that we may not live but in this love in this uion and unity that we may live in him by his spirit and love as he lives in the unity of the spirit and love of his Father Words of love and of truth words of efficacy words which cleerly shew the designs Iesus hath over us what he hath merited for us and what ought to be the life of a Christian and in whom consisteth the spirit of Christianity If we proceed a little further in the consideration of the lights of Faith we shall find a new light which discovers this truth The Oeconomy and the works of God in the Mysterie of the Incarnation teach us that the whole conduct of the Church all the regency of the world and by consequence the government of all souls in generall and every one in particular is left to Iesus who is the way the truth and the life of our souls He is saith the Apostle our Fulness he is our All and that which raises the conduct of Christ and renders it admirable is that it is accompanied with wisdom power and infinite love For he employs his power wholly to furnish us to assist us in all things his wisdom leads us to God and establishes us in the state and perfection God requires of us and he employs his love to enrich us with his treasures to enlighten us with his spirit to guide by his light and to communicate to us by the excess of his bounty his being his life and his greatness Thus the quality whereto we are advanced by Christianity being made members of Iesus renders us worthy of the care and conduct of the eternall Father and binding us to Iesus makes us by grace one with him partakers of his greatness This expresseth the perfection whereto God hath called us These truths considered will cause us highly to esteem the grace and state of Christianity These motives are so powerfull that they seem not only to invite but to constrain us by amorous allurements to resign our selves wholly to God Let us adde a common Doctrine of Saint Bernard as the last draught of this admirable conduct The conduct saith he of Iesus in us is admirable in that he hath as much care of one single soul as well as of all his wisdom is employed for one soul as well as for all and he loves one soul with the same infinite love wherewith he loves all yea he loves his elect and Christians with the same love wherewith he loveth himself Here let us stop for more cannot be said Let us adore
unprofitable things which we meet with in the practise and ordinary exercises of Christians for want of taking hold of things in the beginning and not entring into the spirit of grace for want whereof do we not see many souls who keep most holy constitutions and very good rules others that do frequent actions of vertue many who follow and oblige themselves to spirituall exercises and practises yet nevertheless advance not towards perfection nor have any solid vertue They alwayes labour but never gain any they continually travail but never arrive at their journeys end Though all that they do seems to be done in grace and that as is believed they have not their conscience charged with any sinne yet they profit not in any manner all that can be said of such persons is that they are not the worst What is the cause of this evill whence comes it that they profit nothing amidst so much care and Travel The evill comes from this that such souls have not sufficient recourse nor submission to grace they are not tyed to Iesus Christ they scarce think that there is a Iesus Christ they have no distrust of themselves they seek not God but their self-satisfaction and their particular Interests and which is worse by a secret and dangerous consequence they rely upon their own courage upon their travel and exercises and promise to themselves too much of their own strength and tying themselves to divers practises whereof they make use they tye also their happiness thereto If you demand whence it comes that they have not solid vertues it is easily perceiv'd it is because they amuse themselves much in unprofitable things trifles and exteriour things they enter not into the practise of true and solid vertues they esteem them not and hardly know them if they do practise them it is but superficially they have but the appearance of vertue all that they possess thereof is like the grasse upon the house top which withers away of it self of which we must take heed and carefully remedy it least passing our life so we travel in vain and run without arriving to our end and that under those fair appearances in the most part of our actions we be not of the number of the foolish Virgins of them to whom God saith at the houre of death I know you not for God tells us not every one that saith unto me Lord Lord shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven And certainly there are an infinite number of christians who will find themselves deceived when God shall make manifest the secrets of hearts and judge the justice of men because that believing themselves rich in good works and charged with the fruits of christian penitence they shall find in their hands nothing but wind and shall see in their life nothing but appearances of Vertues And therefore in an affaire so important we must be vigilant to act christianly and to do works worthy of God which shall gain us the eternall possession of God This subject being of high enterprise I will propose the dispositions which seem to be most necessary The first Disposition CHAP. V. Of the spirit of Faith and the necessity thereof THE first and principall Disposition which the soul that will live Christianly must have is Faith He that cometh to God saith the Apostle must believe that he is and without Faith it is impossible to please him This Disposition is not onely the first but cause of all other what the root is to the tree the foundation to the building the mother to the infant the same is Faith to all vertues and to a Christian life Whence on the spirit of Faith depends all the happiness and perfection of a Christian soul or on the other side from littleness of Faith springs all the evil all the abominations in the life of man The soul that is guided by the spirit and light of faith knows what it is to love and what to detest for faith is nothing but truth the spirit of faith is properly the spirit of eternall truth wherein is seen the strength of faith He therefore that hath faith hath the spirit of truth and by this spirit of truth if he possess it and suffer it to guide him he easily discerns good from bad true from false the flesh from the spirit This faith this spirit of truth shews the soul what the God is that she adoreth from thence she is carried on to love him to fear him and to live in a continuall respect of his divine presence Faith saith God is the principle of all being the end and centre of all things that out of him all is but a dream that all creatures are vain that God is in all things that he gives life and being to all that all things depend on him This makes the soul know that she ought to esteem God alone and all that belongs to God that all the rest is nothing but vanity and lies This light and spirit of faith teacheth that God is eternall truth his works are truth his words and promises true and infallible This causes the soul which is guided by the spirit of faith constantly to adhere and strongly to relie on the truths and maxims of Christianity which are the works and the words of Iesus God and man she believes firmly that what he hath said will come to pass what he hath promised is certain the truth that the eternall Father hath revealed to us by his Son are infallible and eternally the Son of God who is the truth uncreated is a God which can neither deceive nor lye Hereupon the soul by this spirit of truth remains indissolubly tyed to all that God hath said and revealed by his Son so as she cannot taste nor understand any humane reason or object she will not hearken nor adhere to any thing but to the truth of faith she will only follow the maximes that Iesus Christ hath left us in his Gospel and imitate the example of his life divine vertues the rest she despises as unworthy a Christian soul which ought not to be guided by nor live but in the spirit of truth and certainly so the Christian must live All the world confesseth that God alone is truth that the onely spirit of God is the only spirit of truth whence it appears that all that is not God and according to the spirit of God is but vanity and lyes This granted how can they live who have any other object then God Here let us make reflection on the point we shall shew how much they are deceived who in matters of faith and in the conduct of their life separate themselves from this spirit of truth to seek humane reason wayes of prudence maximes of wise men who measure perfection and Christian vertues according to their proper sense according to their own spirits such souls cannot but fall into an abisse of errours and doubts or at least such persons
believe little doubt of all things live a life more like Philosophers then Christians and make no great account of a thousand good things which are usefull in Christianity To remedy this they must learn that faith the spirit of truth and the life of Christ must be the onely rule and guide of our actions and life in such manner that to go out of this rule and conduct either on the right hand or left is alwayes to erre from the right way 2. Considering what we have now said of truth we cleerly see how necessary it is to be established in the spirit of faith and to take truth for our object and conduct All other spirits are deceitfull and lying whence it followeth that souls that will live in Christian perfection must commence by this exercise and must necessarily lay the spirit of faith as the foundation of vertue if they would obtain any As faith is the door whereby we enter into the house of God and are made children of the Church so must she be the beginning of the life of a Christian and the spirit wherewith he lives and endeavours to acquire vertue Where we must mark in the conduct of souls how necessary it is to establish them in the spirit of faith and to accustom them to walk in the light of truth This is the first Lesson we must propose to them in this point wherein we must keep and exercise them as that which is onely profitable and without which nothing is stable or true not to entertain and amuse I dare not say to deceive them by so much prudence by the consideration of so many humane reasons and by the example and actions of men a hard case that the devout of this age take so much care to recommend and obtain morall and civil Vertues and mention not nor consider but superficially the divine and necessary Let us learn and say with Iesus Christ that Truth alone shall save us and that truth must be the foundation establishment of our life if we will live true Christians Hence the soul that will arrive to christian perfection must shut her eares divert her thoughts from all that the humane spirit reason and self-love can inwardly represent and must not hearken to them who regard not God purely but measure the greatness of Heaven with the eyes of flesh by the smallness of the earth and speak of vertues and christian perfection according to their own sense more like Philosophers then Christians Such persons by their discourse and conference study to destroy the maxims of Iesus Christ to establish humane prudence and use their uttermost to abase vertue and make it humane In a word they onely labour to make man reasonable not to make him a perfect christian Upon such occasions the soul that seeketh true perfection and will follow Iesus Christ must stand upon her guard and avoid such persons and with great care must prevent humane prudence from annihilating in her the spirit of faith and the esteem of the things of God If it happen that a soul see her self among such persons and shall understand their discourse to be such it will be good at that instant by a sweet elevation of spirit to give her self to God and renew if she can her esteem of Truth in a thought of God renouncing the perswasions of the humane spirit and protesting that she will receive no other conduct or light then that of Faith nor other interiour dispositions then those of Jesus Christ according to the truths that he hath left to his Church If notwithstanding all this the soul remain in fear or trouble of spirit or feel the spirit of faith to diminish in her then she shall give her self more strongly to God and recollecting her self she shall with an humble spirit stir up in the bottom of the heart a confidence in God alone and a diffidence of all things In fine she shall divert her self from all thoughts which trouble the repose of her spirit and captivate her judgement her reason and humane essence to the spirit of faith she shall undergo with an humble patience the pains which she feels contenting her self by an act of her will to subject her spirit to all that Iesus hath said without regarding any other thing and in this manner she shall keep her self united with Iesus Christ and in a secret silence shall imploy her self in him not about the business in question This act is heroick because his disposition is hard and strikes our senses rudely and sometimes it is painfull but it is withall certain and pleasing to God It is not painfull otherwise then as our reason our judgement and the love of our own interests is living in us If we would annihilate all that it would be easie for to overcome and to believe rather in Iesus Christ then in men and our own sense yet must we not whatsoever difficulty we meet with neglect this labour for as the soul hath nothing more assured then faith nothing more profitable or more powerfull then truth so the Devil fails not also all the wayes that he can to draw us from the conduct of faith and to annihilate in us the light and to force us from the adherence to truth if not all at once yet at least by little and little The soul therefore must take heed she be not here deceived seeing all her happiness consists in walking in the spirit of faith and with the light of the truth This exercise is important let us see how we are to behave our selves therein CHAP. VI. Of the use of Faith and how we may practise it THe soul may be guided two wayes by the naturall light of reason which is weak and deceitful ever fallible and by the light of faith which is infallible powerful certain proportioned to that state of glory whereat we aim it is a supernaturall light given by God to guide us to Heaven The first is common to the souls of the World by St. Paul stiled children of the flesh the second proper to souls which live perfect christians who resign themselves to the spirit of God and to his conduct who trust onely in God adhere to nothing but to the faith which they have in the words of Iesus Christ and the Maxims of the Gospel It is the property of a christian to live and guide himself according to the light and truths of Faith lights much above the naturall light of Reason to this end is he made a Christian. 'T is true the way of faith is hard because it captivates the judgement it is above our sense it combates humane reason it is hidden and very spirituall yet must we nevertheless follow and embrace it because Iesus Christ gives it because it is certain and infallible because it is suitable to the wayes of God who leads men in this world through obscurity having reserved knowledge and light for heaven There are who will think that the soul may
must adhere thereto and having adhered to it we must act and do all things in pursuit of this adherence Let us propose an example in common things to facilitate the practice I look upon God I consider his infinite essence I see that in respect of his divine Majesty all creatures are as nothing Having taken and imprinted this thought in my spirit I believe and immediately adhere thereunto saying it is true Then making use of this truth which I believe I despise all that is not of God and that belongs not to God for the act of faith which I performed teacheth me that all the rest is nothing all creatures are nothing before God In like manner amidst my actions making use of the truth that I profess and believe sometimes I despise one thing sometimes another esteeming God onely but accounting all the rest as nothing Thus I act in the spirit of Truth and make use of Faith Let us give an example more common I would form in my self the presence of God by the principles of Faith Hereupon I will rouse up in my spirit the thought of that truth which teaches me God is present every where and thence infer that consequently he is in my heart with the same greatness and Majesty that he is in Heaven amidst the Cherubims and Saints for it is the same God Having conceived this truth I adhere to it and say it is true then making use of it I find my self in the presence of God who is in my heart I hold my self before him in great reverence I walk with recollection of spirit and a sweet application of my soul to God who is present Now I look on him with love next I adore him doing all these actions by the principle of truth This is to make use of Truth The thing is not hard we must onely apply our selves heartily hereunto For according to the measure that we advance and perfectionate our selves in this exercise shall our actions be perfect and performed in the spirit of truth This is a point of much importance I wish I could perswade all christians to it for it is the foundation of true piety and the cause root and source of all good actions CHAP. VII Of the effects that Faith produceth in our souls and of the esteem of God WHen the Apostle saith Faith is the substance of things hoped for he would compare faith to substance and say that as substance is the support of all Accidents so faith is the support and basis of all Vertues and Graces Faith is the first gift of heaven and the eldest of the graces of God she contains and substains all the vertues of Christianity according to the faith in us and the use we make thereof are we vertuous and advanced in Christian perfection As this is the first of Gods gifts so the first care of a Christian must be to compass so fruitfull and profitable a grace This is a talent whereof God will demand a most exact account when we shall appear before the tribunall of his divine justice God gives us not so great a grace but to profit thereby and make use of it It belongs to God alone to give faith to move our will to illuminate our understanding but it is in man to make use of it and to shew by his works the faith he hath received of God In fine what advantage is it to possess faith which is an infused habit and to let it sleep in us to possess truth and to keep it under restraint Faith we say is a supernaturall habit a light of grace we must therefore put it in action and make use of this light to walk forward in the wayes of grace and path of vertue This is the designe of God evident in the mysteries of Christianity the eternall Father sent and gave us his Son the uncreated and essentiall truth to speak to us conduct us in the spirit of truth the Son conversed among men to bear witness as he himself saith unto the truth the same Son of God ascending into heaven sent to us the Holy Ghost the spirit of truth to enlighten us and teach us the truth And why hath God so great a care that we should know the truth but because the knowledge of that might save us and make us free that is that the light of the truth which is the spirit of faith might draw us from vice and sin to lead and confirm us in the acquisition and possession of vertues Look upon a soul guided by the spirit of faith you shall see that immediately she detests ill and embraceth good it is the property of it to engender and form acts of vertue If the soul knows the greatness of God making use of the knowledge of this truth she will presently be carried to a great esteem of God From this esteem springs reverence reverence operates love love brings the soul to God the soul so united by love fears to displease him This fear which is an effect of love brings into the soul a vigilancy not to offend him she loveth but it is to please him in all things This vigilancy forms a purity in the soul this purity renders us worthy to possess God Thus faith summons al the vertues embraces them and binds them all together and as she is mother so is she also nurse of them In brief she is the foundation of the Christian life the nourishment of all good actions This is the meaning of Saint Paul who said The just shall live by faith the reason is plain Faith is a light of truth he then that walks in the light of faith walketh in the truth and to walk in truth is to hate sin which is a lyer This is to live in the practice and possession of true vertue and in the terms of the Scripture to live in Iesus who is the way the truth and the life It therefore greatly importeth souls which will live good Christians and obtain true vertue to establish themselves in the spirit and use of faith to demand it of God and to referre all their good exercises thereunto which is truly the foundation of all the rest the principle the entertainer and supporter of Christian perfection this exercise is very large Faith and truth have effects almost innumerable He who applies himself thereto shall taste the fruits more or less according to his care therein But if we would know the most important where we must begin I answer it is the esteem of God wherein the soul must entertain it self much and lay a good foundation to arrive at this esteem It is not necessary to enter into a high and extraordinary knowledge of God but to make use of the Principles of faith and a frequent loving and affectionate consideration of God we must never speake of God or of any thing that concerns him but in words worthy of the subject with a sense full of respect and reverence
when we speak or think of the things of heaven we must believe they are ineffahle far above all that we can think or speak We must not make small account of what concerns God but on the contrary we must have from the bottom of our souls a great esteem and belief of all that God hath done of all he hath said and of that which he hath left to his Church In God there is nothing little God is as adorable and estimable in the least as in the greatest Finally it is very profitable and necessary to the soul that giveth it self to this exercise to draw from all things and upon every subject an esteem of God and to form in heart solid and serious thoughts thereof To assist us in this practice and to advance us in this vertue we ordinarily make use of reading prayer and meditation But it is good to take heed how we are guided in this exercise of prayer how we make use of the thoughts the light and knowledge we receive herein Many seeking only their own satisfaction in it do nothing but busie their own spirit they seek and aim at nothing but relishes and resentments they leap from one subject to another they run from the first point to the second and apply themselves sometimes to one affection sometimes to another spending the whole time in a multiplicity and disturbance of thoughts To profit herein we must proceed otherwise for in these exercises and all other we must onely seek to know the will of God to esteem it and to make our selves worthy the graces necessary to accomplish his will and to please his divine Majesty and having put our selves in the presence of God by the Principle of faith we must lay hold upon truth we must rest therein nakedly and simply we must adhere thereunto and keep our selves firm in this first view with care quietly to leave our spirits to be replenished of God and bathing our selves as it were in this thought we must unite our selves to this knowledge imprinting by degrees in our hearts the light strength and knowledge of the proposed truth whether the knowledge be great or little we must always keep our heart and spirit open and free to receive the thoughts thereof These will put us into an esteem of God by this esteem we shall easily be carried to an humble respect and desire to serve and love so high a Majesty and we need not doubt but that many things will be done in the soul by Christ if she dispose her self thereto as she ought if she leave her self to be guided by his spirit and abandon her self to all the effects of grace attending them with an humble patience But Oh the misfortune of our self-love the soul seeking her self and her own satisfaction withdrawes and separates her self from God to follow her own inclinations to content her sense and to employ her self in what she pleases making her self hereby unworthy to feel the grace of the presence of God and to bear the effects of truth It were easie to deduce all into particulars if it were necessary but not to trouble my self with all the failings that happen in this exercise it suffices that I say that the first study of the soul must be to know God according to the lights and truths of faith to adhere strongly to this knowledge to enter into an esteem of his greatness and then to honour and adore him with an honour worthy of God These words express much and include the first duties of the soul and shew wherein she must employ her self with care before all things Hence we may learn that their practise is not good who as soon as they enter into some knowledge and esteem of God and receive some light in the consideration of the truths of faith whereby they feel themselves moved and as it were drawn by an humble respect and inward reverence before God instead of staying and receiving at leisure this little touch this sweet beam of Heaven following this little interiour light and annihilating themselves before the supreme Majesty of God they retire from it under pretence of a false humility to apply themselves to other thoughts and fearing evill on purpose to lose time and be deceived or to lose themselves in their estate they shut the eare to God and their eyes to the light to entertain themselves in their own conceptions and imaginations and in the consideration of themselves We see by experience that this way is ill we may easily observe that such souls never advance or if there appear some advancement it is but in appearance besides that it is alwayes in fear and in a spirit of self-love never in solid vertue the reason is manifest If prayer be an elevation and union of our heart a speaking of the soul to God it is hard to conceive how we may advise to quit this application of the soul to God to torment her imagination and cast her into the consideration of exteriour things into the examination of divers circumstances into a continual regard of what we are and what we ought to be But wherefore all this seeing it pertains to the matter of prayer let us leave it to them who treat thereof and content our selves to conclude with that which we would perswade that the first thing that he must practise who will live a perfect christian is to live in the spirit and to walk in the light of faith and by this light to enter into an esteem of God which is supported upon the knowledge of his greatness and of what he is What course we must take to obtain this knowledge we will proceed to speak of in the subject of Humility The second Disposition CHAP. VIII Of Humility and the meanes to obtain it THe design of this Discourse is to draw to the life the Picture of a true Christian describing one after another not all the vertues but those onely which are most necessary and the bases and foundations of Christianity the Mothers and Nurses of the rest Faith leads the way humility followeth for as much as we know and esteem of God so far are we humble Faith makes us know God humility leads us to God Faith disposes us and shews us true vertues humility acquires them and being acquired conserves them This is she that opens and makes plain the way to charity and who is as it were the Mistriss of Gods House she alone layes up and keeps safe the divine gifts St. Paul by way of excellency calls her the vertue of Iesus for besides that this vertue appertains to him more then to any and that the whole course of his life and the mysteries of his sufferings were ever accomplish'd in humility it is moreover his vertue in that he publish'd it and recommended it to the world and wills that his humility be the object and example of the life of men Learn of me saith he for I am meek and lowly
of heart It is he that hath thundred and pronounced this sentence Whosoever shall exalt himself shall be abased and he that shall humble himself shall be exalted naturall and powerfull words pronounced by the mouth of Truth Why should we seek further evidence how acceptable this is to God and how he rewardeth this truth and how necessary it is for him that will be a perfect Christian Let us no further demurre upon this subject but examine wherein it consists let us learn what humility is that is it we are most ignorant of Humility is truth to be humble is to walk in the spirit of truth I say humility is truth because true humility consists in this that God by his infinite bounty by his operations of love and grace infuses into the soul a light which makes it see the truth in all things more or less as it pleases God This light which brings with it knowledge abaseth annihilateth the soul in her self and causes that in all things she annihilate her self because this truth teacheth her what God is and what the creature is so that this grace which I call the light of truth gives not onely knowledge but also actually annihilates the soul and detains her in her lowness in her nothing and being in her nothing she is truly where she ought to be for hereby she is in the truth and acting in this state she walks in the spirit of truth which is the same as to act with humility Many will wonder hereat who thinking they have humility have it not who thinking to attain it by certain exercises of humiliation do but deceive themselves not but that their exercises are good and conduce to humility but if we pass no further if we possess not the spirit of truth acting by the same spirit which is the spirit of God and of simplicity we may make many acts of humility but we shall not have humility for humility in its formality and essence consisteth in the spirit of truth and simplicity the spirit of truth and simplicity is God To be humble then we must act in this spirit I will explicate and make this more intelligible Humility is a supernaturall light which I call the light of truth because it maketh us know things as they are On one side it drawes and advances us to the knowledge of the infinite goodness of God and other his divine perfections and by this knowledge forms in us an esteem of the supreme Majesty of God On the other side the same light causes us to see what we are our own meanness unworthiness impotency indigence the truth of our nothing and by consequence before God she makes us see the truth which consisteth in the knowledge of God and of our selves This truth so conceived possessing our spirit and and acting in our soul annihilates and debases us in all things in all our actions with so much facility that the soul can do no otherwise for she cannot but act according to her knowledge so that acting wholly according to this light and taking all things as she conceives them she walks in humility and as we say humbles her self and in effect she doth humble her self not knowing it for she hath no eyes but to see the truth no power but to act according to truth I call here humility a light and a light of truth for so in effect she is whence it follows that by humility we arrive to the knowledge of truth as by the light of the Sun we see the Sun so by the light of the truth wherein consists humility we see truth Thus we understand it when we say that God revealeth his divine secrets and greatness and teacheth the truths to humble souls Thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent and hast revealed them unto babes that is to the humble saith Iesus Christ to his Father Whence we infer that to understand the Catholique and supernaturall truths and to possess them we must go to them with humility not sufficiency nor capacity much less curiosity God is pleased with little ones so much reading so much curiosity so many Questions so many Reasons wherein men take pains are unprofitable labours and rather separate us from Christian truth then bring us neerer to it for God dwels with the humble spirit saith the Oracle of heaven so that retyring our selves from the truth is to make us uncapable of humility and without humility we cannot come to heaven whence we may imagine what danger the spirits of this Age run into Further we may learn from what hath been said that they who will acquire Christian humility must not stop at exteriour actions of meanness and humiliations nor at words of confusion and abasement nor at some submissions and accommodations although they be frequent and profitable but we must pass further and penetrate the centre of the spirit there to establish the throne of truth and to make our heart the treasury of the light of God To be humble we must endavour to know the truth we must possess it we must act by the Principle of truth which being done it will be easie to come to the exteriour and to produce infinite acts of humility and annihilation for we cannot have humility without doing all these actions but a man may do all these actions without having humility But we must now know how we may acquire the knowledge of truth CHAP. IX Of the knowledge of God and our selves THe knowledge of truth consists in knowing God and our selves a man may arrive at this knowledge two wayes by infusion by acquisition The first comes from God alone who communicates and infuses into our soul a light springing from truth which we call the spirit and light of faith This light brings and gives the knowledge of God and of our selves and this knowledge as well as the light is an operation of God who by this divine light which he spreads in us annihilates our soul and in all things detains it wholly in this annihilation wherein consists humility Thus is humility a grace infused and a pure operation of God alone this operation is greater or lesser according as God pleases who by the communication of this divine light consummateth and annihilateth the soul more or less as he pleases for his glory This first manner is for few persons because few are advanced to this way few render themselves worthy of such grace The second and more ordinary is acquired We propose divers means to acquire the knowledge of God and of our selves the most common and easie whereof is consideration and application assisted by grace without which nothing can be done We arrive to the knowledge of God not by sublime penetration of the Attributes of Divinity that is not necessary and few are capable of it but by faith When the soul considers God as he is simple proposed in the Creed to us according to the bare and simple signification of
The whole life of Iesus Christ the Mysteries of the Incarnation and the Crosse the preaching of the Apostles the propagation of the Faith and the Conquest of the World have been onely effected by the debasement of the Word into our humanity by annihilating of Iesus Christ in all his works and by the grace of Christianity which brings nothing but debasement as shall be said elsewhere Whence it comes that all Christians who would participate of this grace who subsist in the bosom of the Church and desire to live in the spirit of Christianity must resolve to enter into this way of abnegation and annihilation in regard that all the life and all the grace they can hope is in the life and grace flowing from Iesus Christ of whose fulness we have all received If this life and grace flow from Iesus Christ it must be consonant to his life it must bear his qualities and properties as the River hath no water but that of the source leaving the tast and qualities thereof So all our graces being of Iesus as their Fountain and Principle they must necessarily be all conformable and like to him Now no man can be ignorant that all the graces of the Son of God are in lowness and annihilation The Mystery of the Incarnation of the Word the foundation and first principle of christian grace was operated in stiled by Saint Paul The making himself of no Reputation exinanition The Word of God is in the silence of infancy his strength in feebleness the Throne of his greatness supported on lowness In brief what greater annihilation then that of the Crosse All the life of Christ and by consequence all his graces are in annihilation thence we derive all those graces whereby we are assisted and sanctified What then may this operate in us what can it require of us but that which it self is in its source and principle annihilation devesting and abnegation In a word it can operate nothing else for he that hath grace and its effects must be in abnegation and annihilation All the works of God in the soul are by annihilation little or much according to the measure of grace and faith in the soul that receives it Let us ascend to the source of this Truth Consider that as God hath created so many and so different creatures for the beauty of the materiall World so in the order of grace he hath made different wayes to come to him one grace for Angels another for man another for his Sonne who by the Mystery of the Incarnation became capable of grace but of a grace proportion'd to the order and state of his incarnation that of the Angels is not for us that of men was lost in Adam there resteth no other for us then that of Iesus Christ whereby he repaires and sanctifies us Now as this grace is superiour and neerer to God because made for Iesus Christ God and man not for men it followes that they who will participate of it must be elevated above their first capacity and be united to Iesus Christ to be by him united to God Thus the grace that sanctifies us is by a holy Iesus worthy and proportioned to the greatness of Iesus infinitely elevated above our being and capacity If then we would participate of this grace we must necessarily be elevated to an union with Iesus forced above our own capacities to be made capable to receive and bear this grace If I would arrive to this union and capacity I must go out of my self to be united to Iesus Christ I must die to my self to live in Iesus This is the work of self-denyall and annihilation this is the effect of grace for one is not without the other no more then the effect can be without the cause This is the point St. Paul speaks of when he calls christians Sacrifices to shew that the state of christianity brings death and self-deniall and that the christian must be continually before God as a living Sacrifice holy and acceptable to him So he speaks all along ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God and elsewhere that christians are dead and buried with Iesus Christ living in him and with him we are buried with him by Baptisme in whom also we are raised up again In brief this Oracle of Truth every where shewes that the spirit of christianity is a spirit of death of self-denyall and annihilation Whence we must conclude that he who would live according to christian grace and acquit himself of the Protestations and promises he made in Baptisme must be in self-denyal and annihilation CHAP. XIII What Abnegation is and the meanes to attain it THE precedent Discourse shewes the necessity of abnegation if we will be perfect that it is the Centre of christianity it followes that he who would embrace true vertue and solid piety and participate of christian grace must first exercise himself in this vertue and practise it without so much busying himself in other exercises lesse profitable It is hard to teach and to perswade many souls to this vertue who as the Apostle says traffique with piety and seek only themselves in all they do but more hard to convince those that are drown'd in worldly affairs or buried in their own lusts and perhaps what is said of this vertue though little in comparison of that which God merits and requires of us appears too high and speculative to those who already seem to boast of perfection and believe the way of heaven more easie then it is To all this nothing can be better opposed then the command of Iesus Christ Be you perfect as your Father is perfect Now if your perfection take it's aim so high 't is not so mean and common as some think it On the other side if we find this annihilation new and think it too difficult let us consider the words of the Son of God pronounced with much energie and efficacie Verily I say unto you except you be converted and become as little children ye shall not enter into the Kingdom of heaven What more cleer and greater annihilation can God require then to command the greatest and mightiest to become as children St. Paul wishes those that think themselves wise to become fools For the wisdom of this world is foolishness with God He that believes must captivate his judgement and according to the common saying annihilate his reason whereby we acknowledged that annihilation and self-deniall is a vertue recommended and necessary to all Christians to all that will be saved not an indifferent annihilation but proportioned to the grace and glory that a man would possess This supposed let us examine what it is and the means to attain it The first is an efficacious desire of this vertue we must desire it and look upon it as necessary for him that would be in grace proper and convenient for a Christian. We must often excite this desire in
this is the design of God Or else if by humiliations and interiour or exteriour eversions God will annihilate us let us consent to this annihilation and applying our selves thereto co-operate with the work of God with all the extent and power of our soul and so let us do in all and according to the diversity of the objects This advice is not contrary to the pure regard of God which we must have in all sufferings for in the works of God and in all that he permits we must consider the end for which God does it and the cause that moves him either to permit it or do it The end of the works of God is his honour and glory but the cause that moves him in his operations and divine permissions is the salvation of our souls the establishment and communication of his spirit his graces and his vertues We must here do as before we must suffer having no end but the pure regard of God and of his glory But because God requires fidelity and will establish his Kingdom and power in our souls it is also our duty to co-operate with his intentions and to receive all things not onely because such is his good pleasure but also in the manner that he will and to make use thereof according to his pleasure The perfection therefore of the spirit of sufferance consisteth not in receiving all things indifferently a soul is not perfect though it be insensible of all accidents be they never so sad and miserable Perfection consists not in a Stoicall apathy but if there be a perfection and purity in suffering it is when we receive all things in the spirit and in the holy divine dispositions of Iesus and that we bear them after that manner that God wills and according to the designs and intentions of God And herein consists the first and noblest Disposition which must accompany our sufferings We come now to the second CHAP. XIII How we ought to suffer in the spirit of Christianity IF when you do well and suffer for it you take it patiently it is acceptable to God for hereunto were you called because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow his steps In these words full of efficacy and truth the Prince of the Apostles proposes the motives which obliege us to suffer patiently all adversities and afflictions which occur in all conditions of this life He saith that we are called thereto and that by consequence the proper condition and quality of a Christian binds us to the Crosse. It is not necessary to alledge proofs of this seeing we have said enough already For the spirit grace and conduct of God whereby he uses to save us is no other then that of annihilations and humiliations and afflictions God hath try'd them and found them worthy of him The Crosse and sufferings is then the lot of Christians it is their portion and they must make such use of it as to bear it Christianly But the most powerfull motive the Apostle makes use of to teach us patience is when he sayes that Iesus Christ suffered for us and that we must imitate him and follow his steps after this we cannot in reason find any thing hard If Iesus Christ from his birth to his death hath espoused the sufferings and embraced the Cross wherefore should we refuse being his Children to live and dye as he did we know that the Son of God came from Heaven to Earth to suffer the humiliations and pains due to sins and sinners and that He would by this low estate honour his Father but withall he left upon the Earth the same spirit to honour God that as in Heaven God is honoured by exaltation he might be honoured upon Earth by humiliation In pursuance of this design of Iesus Christ we must as Christians honour God by our lowness and annihilation On the other side seeing the Sonne of God dyed for us we must dye for him if he be the example of our life as the Apostle sayes we must imitate him and if he be born our head according to St. Paul we must as his members bear his spirit and follow his motions In a word if we raign with Iesus Christ we must suffer with him There remains then no more then to know the spirit and dispositions where with we must receive and bear sufferings We have said that the 2 d. Disposition necessary to a perfect Christian to live faithfully in the adversities of humane life is to bear them in a Christian way and according to the spirit of Christianity Now we suffer in Christan ways when we suffer what befalls us as an order of God and as an estate prepared for Christians and by which God will conduct us to the heritage of Christians so that according to this Disposition we make no reflection at all on our sufferings nor upon the estates and overturnings wherein we are our spirit onely remains settled and fastened upon the thought of this truth I am a Christian and as such I belong to Iesus Christ who puts me into what estate he pleases and because I am oblig'd to do his good pleasure I will have no other thought then to resign my self to Iesus Christ to do with me according to his good pleasure By adhering to this truth by this Disposition and interiour estate the soul is united to Iesus Christ as the members are to their head and she remains subject to his conduct without further care or thought then that she is God's because God wills it Herein consisteth the spirit of Christianity and the duty of a perfect Christian. This Disposition is pure and simple and produceth in the soul a perfect peace calm and repose the reason of it consisteth in that the sufferings humiliations and contempts are the centre of the Christian soul as things created have no repose but in their centre so the perfect Christian cannot have the true repose of the soul but in sufferings and in this Disposition they are the centre of Christianity because the eternall Word was pleased to place his estate and whole life in humiliation He was born in poverty he lived in contempt he died upon the cross all the passages of his way-faring life were in continuall sufferings and lowness and also when he was in Heaven in the bosom of the Father in the throne of the greatness of the Divinity he entertain'd thoughts of the cross he consents to death and prepares himself for sufferings when that from all eternity he resolv'd to be made man and to invest himself with the infirmities of our nature so true is it that all the conditions of the Son of God were in sufferings and lowness This also the centre repose and life of a perfect Christian ought to be in the estate and life of Iesus Christ and as the life of Iesus Christ and his estates are contained in adversities in lowness and in the thoughts of the cross it
Truly all vertues are good and suitable to the state of a perfect Christian the practise thereof profitable the acquisition usefull and necessary but his chief care and exercise must be piety for he adds godliness is profitable unto all things having the promise of the life that now is and of that which is to come The advice which the Apostle gives his Disciple we must here propose to our perfect Christian having already spoken of vertues the most profitable and necessary to the state of Christianity There remains then no more to commend unto him but a true and solid Christian Piety for this Piety is the Ornament or Mistriss of all other vertues I mean the Christian vertues dispose us assist us and put us into a capacity agreeable to God and to honour him they are necessary for us to make us worthy of God they shew us the way to God but Piety leads us to God and makes use of all vertues to conduct us thither and having no object but God teaches us the worship and honour that we must render to him and like a good Mistriss puts us into a ready and easie practise of true vertues and entertains us in the exercise of actions that honour God and are acceptable to him In brief she enables us to pay God what we owe him This Piety is the first use and exercise of a soul as the first motion the first instinct the first light we have from nature to know God so the first exercise she inspires us with is to honour the same God to render him that worship and service which the Creature owes its Creator This Piety teaches to this she incites us this she produces in us Whence we may apprehend how necessary it is to know wherein this true piety consisteth and to establish our selves therein For above all that we have said already which is very considerable it is evident that this true piety is one of the principall foundations whereby Christian perfection is supported In the conduct of men all actions and exercises of their life are ruled according to piety and as we commonly say according to the devotion they have If then their piety be not founded upon a solid foundation the rest of the Christian life will be unconstant and its exercises very uncertain superficiall and perhaps wholly unprofitable as we see in the devotions of many which is onely in the exteriour who as the Apostle saith having the form of godliness despise the power thereof In such souls we see nothing solid nothing but inconstancy in their lives imperfection in their actions disquiet disturbance and adherence to severall Creatures in their spirits a small blast of adversities overturns them If we consider all their life it is nothing but an appearance and shadow of piety counterfeit Pearls that make a fair glittering shew but are fully onely of wind Some fall into this evill by ignorance others by default it is our duty to direct both into the truth It concerns us therefore to examine wherein piety and true Christian devotion consists Severall persons speak of it severally every one adds to it and appropriates it to his own inclinations humour and particular affections But according to Catholick truth the foundation of solid and true Christian piety consisteth in the soul's being Iesus Christ's and belonging to him by a relation of love and charity True piety consisteth in the knowledge esteem adherence and subjection of our souls to Iesus Chrst from which esteem adherence and subjection all our exercises actions of devotion and piety must proceed as heat from the fire the effect from the cause This description of Piety may seem new but it will appear manifest if we weigh with patience the deduction thereof and consider that Iesus Christ is our Saviour our Mediator by whom we have access to God by whom we honour God render our duties to him and have a relation to the most high and most adorable Trinity and refer our life actions and our selves thereto Herein consisteth true piety for by Iesus Christ we are acceptable to him by him God who is all sufficient in himself vouchsafes to accept our wills to sanctifie our actions and recompense our good works St. Paul teacheth this when he sayes that Iesus Christ is all our glory It is by Iesus Christ and in him that we live in him we merit and satisfie by fruits worthy repentance it is in him that they are meritorious it is he that offers them to his Father consider these words and his Father accepts them and they are acceptable to him for his sake What more clear or more to our purpose Hence we conclude that devotion and Christian piety cannot be in a soul if that soul be not Iesus Christ's if it adhere not to him and be subject to his spirit For if we live not if we merit not nor can satisfie God but by Iesus Christ it necessarily follows we cannot live if we are not Iesus Christs He therefore saith Saint Iohn who hath not the Sonne hath not life implying he hath nothing and consequently he hath no capacity to honour and serve God wherein consisteth true piety Whence we may conclude that to acquire true devotion we must begin with this esteem of Iesus and by an adherence and subjection to his spirit and conduct Let us more particularly explain wherein this true piety consists To know it we must not stop at exteriour things or at actions which have nothing but appearance but we must enter into the bottom of the soul and regard true devotion onely in the centre of the heart The proper office and principall duty of true piety is to cause us to regard God to induce us to render to God what we owe him It is necessary that we enter into the knowledge of God not by speculation or sublime knowledge but by the light of Faith This knowledge leads us to esteem God by this esteem we enter into a propriety and a true and absolute subjection to his greatness and will all which is necessary to true devotion for as much as we cannot render to God the honour love and service we owe him but in as much as we esteem him and are subject to him Seeing then Piety consisteth in rendring to God the honour love and service we owe him and that we cannot otherwise honour or serve him then as we esteem him and depend of him and his divine will it followes that to be truly devout we must act according to the truths of faith and follow this supernaturall light we must conceive a great esteem of God and live in great subjection to his Law and divine conduct and so to live is to live in the true spirit of piety and to be truly devout But this is not all we must proceed further The Christian being in the bottom of his soul and heart disposed after the manner we mention feels a spirituall vivacity an
is onely expected that Christians dispose themselves to participate of this happinesse and being called thereto endeavour to correspond faithfully therewith God doth the same in the regency of his Church the Sonne of God making use of his power hath established therein severall estates orders and societies separated from the common and from one another which he consecrates and appropriates to the severall estates and Mysteries of his life Some honour his solitude and hidden life others his penance others his poverty others his obedience all adorn and beautifie the body of his Church and in the diversity of their functions and estates honour adore and imitate the severall operations and Mysteries of the life of Iesus Christ who distributes his spirit and the grace of his Mysteries to all according to what manner he pleases He doth the same in the particular Government of souls he causes and calls them to elevate and establish them in such estate as pleaseth him sometimes by sufferings sometimes by privations one while by love another by simplicity and infancy In a word he estates them as he pleases to be honoured by them one and the same spirit according to St. Paul working all things dividing to every one severally as it pleaseth him The same Apostle represents this truth under the similitude of a humane body all are members of the same body animated enlivened with the same spirit and yet they have all their several offices and functions particular and different The case is the same saith this holy Apostle in the Government of the Church which is the body of Iesus Christ whereof all christians are members though all make up but one body and are the animated onely by the spirit of Iesus yet are they called and employed to particular estates and in all there is a difference of gifts and operations but it is but one spirit and one God who does all in all they are different effects of one and the same principall cause It is the same Iesus who chooseth the souls to communicate to them the graces and divers estates of his life How happy is that christian who is called to this happiness Herein consisteth the perfection of the soul as in things naturall we say that the Creature is most perfect when it most participates of the being life and perfections of God so in the state of graces that soul is most perfect which participates most of the graces of the divers estates and qualities of the Sonne of God This grace and favour is not for every one and farre above the ordinary The Sonne of God doth not call all souls to a participation of his life nor alwayes communicates to them the spirit and graces of his Mysteries Yet the christian who would live in a solid piety and adherence to Iesus Christ and would feel the effects of his divine communications must desire this favour and earnestly demand it He must often reverence and adore the life thoughts designes Mysteries and estates of the life of Iesus He must offer himself with all his heart to the power spirit and grace enclosed in those divine Mysteries In a word he must carefully remove from his soul all hinderances and inclinations opposite to the designes and operations of the Sonne of God But above all he must continue constant in subjecting his soul to the power and will of the Sonne of God He that will practise all this must make these uses following The first is that the soul always resigne her self to the power of the Son of God than he may make in her and by her all that he will for his glory This resignation to be perfect must be grounded upon a freedom of spirit a freedom which is the true spirit of the children of God and consisteth in an estate of indifferency and independency as to all things as well in the order of nature as of grace and being subject to God onely by this freedom all things in the world are indifferent the soul remaining in a pure capacity of submitting to whatsoever the Son of God will operate in her and by her giving her self up wholly to his divine power This liberty of spirit is the principall estate and first ground of Christianity for all Christians belong to the Son of God and are left to his power One died for all saith Saint Paul that they who live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him who died for them Teaching us that as the Son of God gave his life for us and by his excessive charity delivered himself to the ignominious death of the cross to do the will of his Father so he hath right and power to choose and consecrate us by his grace to offer us an Holocaust of sweetness and honour to the glory of his Father that as he hath been the victim of our sins we may be the victims of his love Hence it is evident that the Son of God hath power and right to put our souls into what estate it shall please him for his glory be it an estate of life or death of privation or abundance of confusion or honour and may choose out souls and advance them to the participation of the mysteries of his life to render to him particular homage and service We must then resigne our selves wholly in all things to Iesus Christ. To establish us in this disposition the liberty of spirit whereof we speak is absolutely necessary For when it hath separated us from all things nay even from our selves it puts us into an amplitude and capacity to be all that God will have us to be and to bear the effects of his grace and power And therefore the Christian who seeks to establish himself in true piety and live with fidelity must endeavour to conform himself in this liberty of spirit for it is difficult nay impossible to adhere to Iesus Christ to depend on him and faithfully to receive the operation of his grace if we are not in this liberty of spirit that is an independency as to all things This is the spirit and disposition that God requires in a Christian according to the Apostle That the spirit we have received be not a spirit of bondage but of liberty and adoption This first disposition leads us farther and advances us in the wayes of piety and puts us into a second disposition by which we accept with humility and submission all the estates and effects that the spirit of the grace of Iesus Christ shall operate in us and bear with patience and obedience whatsoever rigour and difficulty we meet with Having so received them we are also bound by this disposition to act according to the quality and extent of grace communicated to us and to live conformably to the estate whereinto the Son of God puts us We must remain firm in that subjection and liberty of spirit we speak of In this use consisteth the peace and liberty of the soul For
A SPIRITUAL TREASURE Containing Our OBLIGATIONS TO GOD AND THE VERTUES Necessary to A Perfect Christian. Author Written in French By Iohn Quarre Englished By Sir THOMAS STANLEY Kt. The Second Edition LONDON Printed by T. R. for Thomas Dring at the George in Fleet-street near Saint Dunstans Church 1664. To the LADY STANLEY MADAM WHAT You here receive is due onely to Your self it being the Product of that contemplative retirement to which my dear Father resign'd the two latest years of his life The Author is highly esteemed in his own Country and hath met with so good Reception in ours also that he already seeth a Second Impression which in this Age not a little commends a Treatise of this Nature Vpon this occasion I was sollicited by the Stationer to acquaint the Reader by whom it hath been so kindly entertained with the Name of the Person to whom he is indebted for the English Edition And having herein satisfied the Importunity of the One and the Curiosity of the Other it rests onely I present it to Your Ladiship together with the humble Duty of Madam Your Ladiships Obedient Son Thomas Stanley PREFACE UNder the name of Sprirituall Treasure behold the Image of a perfect Christian which I here present thee Devout Reader It hath taken the name of Treasure because it contains as in a hidden mine the highest divine truths of Christian Piety it is a Pourtract of Perfection the Image of a true Christian or all which the Sonne of God hath left to his Church And those which I propose to you in this Treasure represent a lively Image of that perfection whereto we are called and by the grace of Christianity conducted Perhaps you may remember that this Book hath heretofore appeared under the same name but it was upon another design For then it treated onely of some particular Vertues such onely as serve to subject the soul to the guidance of God and the spirit of grace It had then no other object but the resignation of the Creature to the will and work of the Creator Now it is universall and withdrawn from a limited subject speaks in generall explains the Principles of Christianity and describes the principall Vertues necessary for a perfect Christian. As for the stile it is concise confining it self to the truth which it exposes the most plainly that may be despising all Ornaments of words since truth hath so much lustre of it self as she need not borrow of others The World perhaps will not hearken to it or suffering it to speak will not understand it for its Doctrine is too divine its Principles too high That which it proposes is wholly contrary to what the World professeth And it is much to be feared that many will dispute it considering that falsehood and malice have taken such deep root in the greater part as loving nothing but vanity and unwilling to consent to truth We live in an age so corrupt that even Christians many times fear to be good least they should be persecuted and are ashamed to appear vertuous least they should be derided Hardly can it promise it self a better reception amongst them that make profession of Piety for there are many that seek nothing but their own satisfaction in the most holy things self-love hath such absolute power over souls that they flatter themselves in every thing believing all to be good which is agreeable to them and on the other side seeming Devotions have so much applause among men that it will be hard to perswade the contrary So that our perfect Christian who speaks here purely of Truth and truly of Piety cannot easily avoid the various censures of men For as he speaks Christianly for his stile is in the spirit so he condemns freely all that is not worthy of God in the purity of the spirit which may appear strange and those who confide too much in themselves esteeming nothing but their own actions will soon condemn this manner of Discourse But what remedy shall we therefore injure Truth no she will appear before the eyes of men in despight of the World and although she may meet with spirits little capable to receive her yet it is alwayes good to expose the Image to the view even of her greatest Enemies for by this meanes they will be forced seeing her to confess they have no vertue that they walk in the night of untruths and perhaps they will apprehend their own misery and be afraid to loose themselves And if there are any who think themselves already arrived at the highest point of perfection flattering themselves in their own esteem when they shall here consider the excellencies of Christianity the purity of the spirit of grace and admire the designs of God upon souls and see what is necessary for a perfect Christian they will open those eyes which self-love had bewitched and acknowledge that their actions come far short of their own esteem of them and then humbling themselves even to the centre of their nothing they will resolve to seek God to serve him in spirit and truth after a manner worthy of God However they who take the paines to read this little work will see that many deceive themselves to their great mischeif and will learn that it is not a small matter to gain Heaven for to such only is Paradise open and that there is required more purity and vertue then we ordinarily propose For if the life of a true Christian be a life of God in man if true perfection be an amorous possession of God what purity what vertue must there be in him who will possesse so rich a Treasure pretend to an estate of divine This is a point you must consider of friendly Reader as being that which ought to be the only object of your actions For if you will open your eyes to see what God requires of you if you will rest your thoughts upon the excellencies of the state of Christianity you will learn that your heart must be the Throne of the most holy Trinity who will establish his Kingdom therein your Soul a Heaven where God will glorifie himself your life the life of God who lives in you that you may raign with him To conclude you shall know that you are onely in the World to please God and to do his will in the purity of his spirit alwayes holy is not this an affaire of great importance If for your satisfaction and profit you desire to comprehend what I say and to know the motives and obligations that you have to love and serve God perfectly Read the two first parts of this Work the third and fourth shew you the way you must keep and the Truths that are necessary to live a good Christian the last gives you a pattern of true piety Read and you shall learn how to be a good Christian. A TABLE of the several Chapters treated of in this Book The FIRST PART Of the Divine Prerogatives whereunto man is
Christians have a new being a new life which honoureth and imitates the new life of Iesus in his holy humanity springing from this as its source and principle For as the word unites it self to our nature in the Mystery of the Incarnation replenisheth and dwells in it as in his proper body consecrates and elevates it to all the Grandeurs of his divine Filiation so the same Iesus unites himself not personally but by a new Grace and after a singular manner proper to the state of Christianity consecrates us dwels in us and advanceth us to the communication of the rights goods and greatnesse of his filiation and would have us O excesse of love to be that by grace which he is by nature which he would have not onely to be accomplished in glory but in grace not onely in Heaven but upon Earth where we are truly Sons of God and in that quality henceforward we enter into alliance with him we have right to his heritage and which is more O that we would consider it he gives us power to call God our Father to look up to him as such to relate to him in this quality in further assurance whereof he gives us his spirit This St. Paul teacheth when he saith Ye have received the spirit of Adoption whereby we cry Abba Father the same spirit it selfe beareth witnesse with our spirit that we are the children of God It is an effect of the mystery of the Incarnation and priviledge and excellency of Christianity Let us deliberate further upon it St. Iohn summing up the graces received from God in the Mystery of the Incarnation ranks this the first for it is the foundation of the rest saying To them he gave power to become sons of God If you would comprehend some part of this great favour think that as there is nothing in Divinity greater then to be the Son of God by Nature so but to be God himselfe nothing is greater then to be the Son of God by grace St. Cyprian admiring in God the title of Father sayes It is an ineffable name containing the Mysteries and Secrets hid from our spirits incomprehensible by our understanding If then to be Father in the Deity be a thing the most mysterious and ineffable that our souls can imagine by consequence to be son of such a Father is a favour and dignity incomprehensible The beloved Disciple causeth us to admire at this great benefit when he says Behold what manner of love the Father hath bestowed upon us that we should be called the sons of God and be such in effect St. Iohn Damascene speaks to this purpose That the eternall Father sent his Son into the world to produce Children that should be such to him by Grace as Christ is unto him by Nature and therefore in pursuit of this Commission the Son of God from the time that he became the son of man hath created by his power begotten by his love and acquired by his merits and given by his Spirit many children to his Father who can breath nothing but glory to his Father and no longer live then by his Spirit and Life But to search with greater admiration into this Truth we must consider the manner by which he creates in us so divine a work We must observe that in Baptisme we not only receive grace and faith by the habituall vertues and gifts of the holy Spirt but are also marked with the Character of God received and owned as his children The manner whereby God effects this is admirable for as the Father hath sealed Jesus Christ with his Seal and made him his Son communicating to him his Essence and making him altogether equall to himself so Jesus Christ doth comunicate to us what he himself is marketh us with his seal makes us and owns us as children and makes us as it were another himself Wonder saith Saint Augustine and rejoyce brethren we are made of Christ. In pursuite of this benefit the eternall Father hath given us the Spirit of his Son which dwels in us according to the Apostle What can we think to be greater If we go further herein we shall find that we are not advanced to this admirable estate of being the children of God by any simple acceptation or by bare ceremonies but by something more reall that passeth into our souls as Saint Paul implies by these mysticall terms Not by works of righteousness which we have done but according to his mercy he saved us It is not for our works saith he that the washing of regeneration and renewing of the holy Ghost that the spirit is given us by Jesus Christ and that Jesus is sent upon this design by the eternall Father three circumstances worthy great consideration To conclude the greatness of this benefit let us observe with Dionysius the Areopagite that we are advanced to this divine estate by a new birth and divine regeneration which the Son of God operates in us in the bosom of the Church our Mother to the honour of God and in imitation of his eternall generation in the bosom of God the Father CHAP. IV. Of the uses the Christians ought to make of filiall adoption whereto they are advanced by Baptism THe Truths that we have treated of are high and would require a large Discourse but that our designe being to prescribe the practice of filiall Piety we will only represent as much as is necessary to manifest what we are and what our life ought to be in conformity to so eminent an estate First then we must take notice that in the Language of the Scripture a Christian is a new Creature in Iesus and according to the word of the Son of God a man if he be a Christian must be born again of God and consequently must have a new being worthy such a birth Now according to the order that God hath established in all things we say that the action and operation must be conformable to the being Whence it follows that the state of a Christian being a holy divine estate that makes him the Son of God as truly by Grace as Jesus Christ is by Nature his actions also and life ought to be wholly divine and conformable to the state of the Son of God This is the Doctrine of the Apostle who saith Be ye followers of God as dear children This Principle granted we must see what benefits we can derive from thence The first is a contempt of this World for it is the heritage of the children of Adam condemned by a determined sentence and a day of execution appointed when by the Justice of God it shall perish in a generall Conflagration Let us then despise this heritage of Adam and seek that of the children of God Heaven or to say better God himself Say with Jesus Christ with a sound heart My Kingdom is not of this world Remember that you must keep the rank of the Sons of God
us with his gifts that by all these endearments and singular favours he might separate us from the creatures and reduce us to a divine society and communication with him Let us consider these two mysteries of our Faith and Love mysteries which give God to us and cause us to dwell with God The last is the mysterie of the Incarnation a mysterie of Love an eternall mysterie for God shall be man and man God for ever a mysterie causing God to live the life of man and man the life of God which between God and man effects an union and society so divine and intimate that he could not do any thing more holy nor desire any more intimate since it is substantiall and personall and shall subsist eternally Entring further into the consideration of this Mystery we shall see evident signs of this holy Communion God makes here a new World as the Scripture calls it a World of Grace and of holiness a World which he governs by a new conduct and providence For whereas before God confining himself within himself spoke not to the World but by his Prophets now by the accomplishment of this Mystery he comes out of himself speaks to us and instructs us by his Sonne Four thousand years he guided the World and his Church onely by his Angels the Interpreters and Oracles of his divine will Now Iesus guides his Church by himself he infuses holy motions into our souls by his spirit alwayes holy he governs all is present with all and is found by all What presence or commerce with God would you desire greater what greater society then that of the word by the Mystery of the incarnation To know it more particularly consider these Circumstances First in this Mystery God lives the life of man and man the life of God a life of society a life humanely divine and divinely humane for Iesus is God and man in Iesus we adore and acknowledge two lives one of God in man another of man in God Secondly by this ineffable union God communicates himself to man and by this communication appropriates to himself all that is of man with such wonderful wisdom that not dishonouring his divine greatness he takes upon him all the lowness of man and subjects himself so really to our infirmities that we say God is dead God is born c. and man by a happy exchange is lifted up to all the greatness of God inthron'd in the bosom of the eternal Father where he eternally enjoyes the proper glory of God Let every tongue confess that in Iesus Christ by that hypostaticall union accomplished in the Mystery of the incarnation man enjoyes the glory of God his greatness light and life Thirdly As for the life and divine mysteries of the Sonne of God we see he presented it to us the space of thirty three years conversing with us as one of us was an Infant in his first appearing laboured in his youth did live and eat with sinners in his wayfaring life He disdained not to succour the infirm in his miraculous life In a word he resigned himself into the hands of sinners a Sacrifice and was offered a holy offering on the Crosse for the sins of the World O wonderfull he died between two Thieves in the company of men so much pleased with the society and commerce of men What Religion ever had the presence of its God so visible what being was ever advanced to so great an honour To none but the Christian is this great favour granted a Commerce so sacred that it makes man God and God man By the ineffable mystery of the incarnation God unites the Earth to Heaven and Heaven to Earth The God of Heaven dwells upon the Earth according to that of St. Iohn The word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us all nature rejoyced at this happiness St. Iohn transported with love and joy representing to the world the truth and excellency of this benefit saith It is the same God that we have heard that we have seen with our eyes which we have looked on and our hands have handled So true is it that God by the mystery of the incarnation is with us and converses amongst us after a society wholly divine and onely proper to the state of a Christian. CHAP. VII Of the uses Christians ought to make of Grace proceeding from the Mystery of the Incarnation IN pursuit of these proposed Truths what may we judge to be the intentions of God but that his will is that we should enter into a holy and divine society with him and that we should separate our selves from all that may hinder or prophane this holy conversation with him since that Iesus Christ thinks of us converses with us by his divine mysteries unites himself unto us and abaseth himself to be as one of us to be among us we ought likewise to think of none but him to love none but him to converse with none but him and like the Apostle dwelling upon Earth to have our Conversation in Heaven Iustin Martyr shewing what Christians ought to be saith Christians are in the body but they live not according to the body they dwell upon the Earth but their Conversation is in Heaven This God requires of us this we ought to be in the state of Christianity this is the use we ought to make of the spirit and grace flowing from the Mystery of the incarnation But alass it is pitty that Iesus being now revealed unto us living with us and amongst us we apply thereto so little of our selves of our thoughts and of our love and busie our selves in things so small prophane and mean even such as are unworthy of man Let us do like him Love made him forget himself to converse with us let us come out of our selves and forget all things that we may raise our selves to him that all our content may be in him Moreover the state of the Grace of this Mystery obliges us to be holy seeing Iesus Christ with whom we converse is holy The Apostle says as he that hath called you is holy be ye also holy in all manner of conversation speaking walking working and whatsoever you do He that lives after any other manner saith St. Cyprian then holily dishonours the title of a Christian and is a reproach to Iesus Christ. Let such as believe not sanctity necessary for all Christians as well as those who live included in Cloysters consider these words We see in the Mystery of the incarnation that the Sonne of God enters into Commerce and society with us dwells with us is cloathed with our humanity God is made man that man might be made God not by simple denomination as God said to Moses I have made thee a God to Pharaoh and Kings in the Scripture are stiled Gods but really and by a being which deifies them For as they are true Children of God by Grace and as truly children by Grace as Christ is
you cease to be all that you are Have a great desire to loose your self and to go out of your self and that your being be annihilated and consummated in that of Iesus who is in you This is the point whereto you must arrive if you will that God should possess you Thirdy Desire and require that Iesus Christ destroy in you all that is contrary to God that he establish in you the Kingdom of God that he take from you the dominion which self-love the vanity of your nature and your inclination usurp over you and the creatures Fourthly Resign your self to the will of Iesus Christ who by this adorable sacrament of Love will receive you into himself and place you in his life and his being Abandon then your self to the desire that he hath to possess you a desire as great and perfect as the Love wherewith he gives himself to you is infinite Pray him to destroy in this present life the being that you use and abuse that by the power of his spirit and love and by the vertue of this ineffable sacrament he may make you what he is that is to say Love Life and Truth Behold what God requires of you if we regard intentively the essence and the excellency of this mysterie if by the spirit of Faith we weigh the effects it produces in us it will be easie to acknowledge them and soon shall we be constrained to confess that this sacrament of Love doth appropriate us wholly to God draws us from our selves and the world and separates us from the commerce of creatures that we may be knit in heart and spirit to Iesus Christ despising all things for his love and glory so shall be verified the word of the Son of God to his Father in the excess of his Love speaking to him not onely of his Apostles but of all good Christians They are not of the world even as I am not of the world This is the spirit of Christianity the excellency of this divine estate That we may the better remember this you shall see in a little Picture First the grace and spirit of Christianity consecrates us to God and imprints in us a character of the power of Iesus Christ to whose Empire we must be subject for ever and must undergo to all eternity both in heaven and earth the state of service and subjection to the spirit grace and conduct of Iesus Secondly The grace of Christianity makes us the children of God by mercy and gives us right of inheritance to the greatness and true glory of Iesus Christ. By this grace we have no more part in the world because it is the heritage of the true children of Adam but we have right to the Possession of God who is himself the heritage of his children Thirdly This grace draws our spirits our hearts and our affections from our selves and all creatures to unite us to God it gives us right to enter into familiarity and alliance with the Son of God who making himself man by the Incarnation would be amongst us to the end that we might be with him He enters into society with men invests himself with our miseries infirmities to communicate to us his life his spirit and greatness Thus by the grace of this mysterie we go out of our own Interests to enter into the Interest of Jesus Christ whereof the Apostle speaking of the things of the world he saith I count them but dung that I may win Christ. Fourthly In brief by the state of Christianity we are advanced to the participation of God who will be all in us that we may be in him and Jesus Christ by his body and blood which he giveth us in the Eucharist doth elevate and unite us to God makes us live by his life communicates to us all that he is that he may be all things to us that the world may be nothing to us Thus the grace of Christianity unites us to Jesus Christ replenishes us with his life and spirit makes us another himself and therefore obliges us to go out of our selves and the world to be in Christ Jesus I know we must be in the world and make use of the world so long as it shall please God to continue us in this place of captivity but we must not be of the world we must live here as in a place of passage and make use of all in the world as of a winter garment ready to put it off when the Sun of righteousness shall come to his meridian when it shall please God Let us use all the creatures as a necessary medicine to the present state of our infirmities and occasions but let it be withall loathsom unto us as violating our Love which desires nothing but God which takes delight in nothing but God which aspires to nothing and hopes in nothing but God The conclusion of the first Part What the life of a Christian ought to be Behold here the Excellencies of Christianity which we have proposed in few words as having no further design nor intention in this volume then to shew that the life of a Christian ought to be conformable to the state of grace and dignity whereto he is advanced by Iesus Christ. Now to enter into this knowledge it suffices that we see what we are This is that which I design'd to demonstrate in this first part proposing as in a little Tablet the essence dignity and eminency of the grace of Christianity which I have done briefly expressing onely the principal Truth of this subject leaving the rest to the piety and consideration of those that would profit thereby Now if we look back with the eye of Faith upon that which hath been said we shall clearly see what a Christian life ought to be and shall know that the design of Iesus Christ informing his Church hath been to consecrate to appropriate to himself and to unite himself divinely to our souls and to separate them from themselves and from all creatures that by a happy revolution he may be in us and we in him we may live in him and of him as he lives in his Father of the life of his Father that so he may restore us to his Father and re-unite us to himself from whom we were separated by him by being our own and having relation to the Creature Herein is comprised the perfection of a Christian life whereof we cannot speak more then in the words of St. Paul ye are dead and your life is hid with Christ in God a passage which contains an apparent contradiction If we are dead how can our life be hid in God who is the true life If we are in God who is the life of our souls how are we dead The Apostle meanes that our life is life and death our life is a life of grace which is the true life of souls and much better then the soul is the life of our bodies and the proper
knows the power of God over her who can advance her to what degree of communications it shall please him and do in her and by her all that he pleases In this consideration man must adore the secret Iudgements will and designes of God over his Creature he must humble himself in his nothing annihilate himself in his humility and by his knowledge see into the little he is the need he hath of God and the misery of a Soul without grace He must not content himselfe with the bare Knowledge of these truthes without making use thereof the spirit of God can furnish him with severall ways to do it Behold here three Acts very profitable and necessary to be done as often as we can with serious application 1. The soul must resign it self to grace to all the designes and counsels of God over it with a desire to depend efficaciously upon the spirit and conduct of God to follow all the ways to undergo all the effects of the grace and dispensations of God 2. The soul must produce an act whereby offering her consent to God as much as is required she must protest that she consents then and alwayes to all the operations of Iesus Christ in her and to all the designes that he hath upon her of what kind estate and manner soever they be 3. She must renounce within her self fervently all her right over her self her inclinations interest obstruction and imperfections within her imploring the bounty of Jesus and the power of his spirit to annihilate in her all her imperfections to take from her all hindrances opposite to the spirit grace and conduct of God Lastly she must study the practice of vertues when occasion shall present them after the manner proposed whereof we now begin to treat CHAP. III. Of the practise and means whereby we may arrive to the possession of God of his grace and spirit IT much imports souls that seek after God and would live in the perfection of Christianity that they endeavour to enter and settle themselves in good and solid dispositions for that God chiefly regards in us and we are not ignorant that the operations of Grace are alwayes proportioned to the disposition she puts or finds in the soul. Now amongst all dispositions the most solid and necessary the chief path of the soul to true vertue is Love and knowledge of truth We must love truth and strongly adhere to it we must wholly study to fill our spirits with the knowledge of this Truth that it may be unto us a foundation to Christian life a light in the direction and conduct of our actions Therefore before I propose any practise I alwayes put Truth for a foundation of Exercises necessary to our subject Let us then consider as a certain Principle that the more we act for our selves and for the Principles of our being and nature to conduct our selves or our own spirit the more we estrange our selves from God and by consequence from the end for which we are created from the perfection whereto we are obliged The spirit which is in us is the spirit of Adam our nature the nature of Adam therefore is it a nature become damnable by sins a spirit infused into us by the Serpent possessing us in the consent of Adam This spirit and nature is subject to the power and malice of the Devill and sinne and consequently cannot act but according to the power and malice whereto it is a slave for operation followes essence As this being therefore is estranged from God and enemy to him for by nature we are born the children of wrath saith St. Paul so it cannot act but against God Now by this reducement man is drawn out of this Captivity freed from this bondage and made a new subject to Grace he acts no more according to the Principle of his own being but by the Principle of Grace which gives him a new being making him a new Creature in Iesus Christ. To arrive to this Liberty which we call the Liberty of Grace and of the children of God two things are requisite the mercy or grace of God and the consent and co-operation of the soul. The Christian therefore that will live vertuously must first give himself to God offer him his will and intire consent to all the designes he hath upon him and to all the effects which he will by his grace operate in him Then he must study and labour to withdraw himself from this bondage to shake off the yoak of sin which oppresses and drags him whither it will to free himself he must quit himself that is his imperfections his passions inclinations and much more sinne he must kill this spirit of Adam and pluck it up by the root that it may the better make room for the spirit of God that this holy spirit may live in him and act by him otherwise he can no way possess the true christian vertue nor attain the perfection whereto he is obliged nor the end whereto he is created the possession of God Whence it follows that the first exercises whereto the soul must apply it self is to place it self in the liberty of grace to draw it self out of the bondage of sin and to annihilate in it self the spirit of Adam which it carries in the very marrow of its bones Here it must begin all other exercises are but unprofitable without this and all it does will be to no purpose unless it arrive to this point For we must remember that the vertue to be truly Christian is the spirit of Iesus who acts in us and that the perfection of a Christian consists in love a love that is never without the possession of God it is easie then to conclude and believe that he that will be vertuous and a perfect Christian must make room for God in his heart there establish God there cause his spirit to rule and live He must root out and expel all that is contrary and in enmity to God even all that is not God for he that is not with me saith Jesus Christ is against me The true exercise and principall care of a Christian consists herein all others that abut not upon this we must despise saying with St. Paul in Iesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing nor uncircumcision but faith which is by love Now the onely question is how we may arrive to this happiness herein is the difficulty We say it is by inward and outward mortification by the senses and by the spirit by vigilancy in all things that we neither receive consult nor do any thing contrary to God or that may displease him by prayer by discourse In fine it is by the grace of God for it belongs to God alone and Iesus Christ to make us free and draw us out of the captivity of our selves and sin If the Sonne shall make you free you shall be free indeed saith Iesus Christ. It is an effect onely of the
end is no other then God whom man must possess Thus by Creation man is not onely in a capacity to love God a most singular favour but hath also for his end the possession of God himself Whence we must conclude that as every thing seeketh its perfection and by a naturall and necessary instinct runs to its last end to enjoy it and repose there so man being created to possess God his ultimate end carries an instinct that drawes him to God and by the same Law whereby he is naturally obliged to seek perfection he is obliged to love and seek God in love and possession in whom consists his perfection This instinct is naturall and proper to him as it is naturall to a stone to tend downward and to fire to mount upward whereby it is evident that we must promise our selves not onely in Heaven the fulfilling of this Law but we must begin it upon earth and from the first use of our reason observe this precept Indeed this capacity of Love is fulfilled and perfected in Heaven onely in the state of glory but we must begin to love here We must resign to God who is our end if in the end we will possess him for whatsoever a Man soweth that shall he also reap saith the Apostle To this God invited us by the benefit of Creation to this he obliges us by an eternall Law a Law which he hath engraved in the Center of our being a Law which can by no meanes be defaced during our life a Law indispenceable For man was onely created to love God and hath no capacity more naturall then that of Love his onely business both in Earth and Heaven is to love God and possess him wherein consisteth perfection Considering these truths it is impossible to conceive to what blindness the corruption of times have reduced the spirits of men who being born for Heaven onely spend all their thoughts on Earth and separating themselves from their God are so strongly fetter'd to the Creature that they know not what perfection is believing they have power to dispence with so holy a Law But can this Law of Love be blotted out of our hearts Can we despise it notwithstanding the many reasons that oblige us to it Is there any thing more reasonable then to love them that love us what greater love could God testifie to us then to make us capable to love him and to create us to possess him even nature obliges us hereto this benefit is an act of Love God loving us to be beloved again we can do no lesse in acknowledgement of this benefit of love but perfectly love him we can never deny we are obliged to this acknowledgement if we would not be convinced of ingratitude nor can we acknowledge it but by loving him God who is all fulness and self-sufficiency can receive nothing of us but love and therefore by the same Law whereby we are obliged to acknowledge him our Creator we are obliged to love and consequently to be perfect since perfection cannot be without love God himself hath engraved this design imprinted this Law of Love in the Center of our souls and bottom of our hearts Therefore as Thomas of Aquin observes the form of our heart beares the image of this Love it is large at the top and pointed at the bottom open to Heaven shut to Earth to shew us that we live onely for Heaven that our heart the seat of Love is open onely to receive and bear the influences of Heaven and not capable to have any besides him who reignes in the Heavens and the form of our body straight and tall tells us that Heaven onely is the object of our sight the subject of ous love The soul by its most sensible inclinations is carried on to this love By the same necessity that the part loves the whole the sonne his Father man is obliged to love his God by Creation his Father his all and were it not that the soul ruines these motions by strange love whereto she tyes her self she would feel her self so powerfully attracted thereby that she would not be able to restrain the violence or to stop the course thereof This is so true that do she what she can though she do suffer her self to be transported with the love of Creatures to the prejudice of the love of God yet can she not root out these resentments of God so deep this Law of acknowledging her God is engraved in her being For when she hath loved all but God she sees that she hath loved nothing she knowes that there is neither firm content assured repose nor true perfection but in the love of her Creator Now though we would disingage our selves from this Obligation yet is it impossible for God who wills that we love him maketh use of all things yea even of our self-love to attract us to his love In loving our selves we love naturally what is good our own good Now God is not onely the true Soveraign good but by creation he would be the onely good of our souls that we might love him in this quality for what is more to man then God The Lord is my heritage and my portion saith David If naturally every thing loves his particular good why should not a man be obliged to love his God who is his true his onely good and if he be obliged to love him he is by consequence obliged to possess him and in possessing him to be perfect which is the scope of this first Motive The second Motive CHAP. V. That Man in as much as he is a Sinner and the child of Adam is obliged to seek God as the only remedy to his evils WE are Criminals the children of death guilty Laesae Majstatis Divinae the World understood aright is but a Prison where we are detained during the excution of the Sentence pronounced against the children of Adam the Offender we being such have forfeited our right we are deprived and made unworthy of all sorts of graces forfeited our priviledges for as children of Adam as sinners as culpable before God we have no more any right our selves to our life to our actions to the world or to any creature but having lost all by Sin we are left wholly to the Iustice of God who by reason of our offence hath reason to dispoyl us of all the gifts of grace and nature and to do with us as pleases him according to the rigour of his equitable Iustice. Moreover as children of Adam we are so miserable that we may truly say there is nothing more unworthy more unprofitable more uncapable then man his unworthiness is so great that he cannot think one thought of God be it never so little if God of his mercy doth not infuse it into him he is unworthy to present himself before his Creator to appear before the Throne of his soveraign Majesty even to demand grace and pardon for his sins This unworthiness arrived
Spouse when she runs after her God crying to him Tell me O thou whom my soul loveth where thou feedest where thou makest thy flock to rest at noon for why should I be as one that turneth aside by the flocks of thy companions This holy Lover knows that as long as she is separated from her God she shall be subjected to error and to the tyrannicall usurpation of sin she knows by experience that he that is not with God in the pessession of his spirit shall alway be overwhelmed with all sorts of misfortunes led captive and dragged by his own lusts deceived and betrayed by the foolish love of the creatures and therefore she seeks her God with so much ardor and affection They that will withdraw themselves from these evils and assure repose to their consciences peace to their spirits and quiet to their passions must do the like they must seek God purely sincerely and with perseverance they must endeavour to possess him that they may find in him a perfect liberty and assured peace Saint Austin says all this in two words O Lord our heart is always unsettled and uquiet untill the time it shall repose in thee Then again addressing his speech to men Wherefore saith he O men of nothing do you wander in the search of many things Wherefore doth your covetousness make you unconstant vagabonds in your thoughts and desires seek seek him who is all things in him you shall have all there you shall find rest and remedy for your miseries This care we must have which cannot be sufficiently recommended to you therefore as it is of consequence we must proceed in discourse of it CHAP. VI. Of the state of Man after the Sin of Adam and of the need he hath of his God ALl the duties of the soul are comprised in these words of David Eschew evil and do good words that contain all Laws divine and humane for they onely forbid evil and command good words so absolute and generally true that he who keeps this Commandment shall certainly be perfect It is not needfull to explicate this Proposition it is a naturall Precept a Law God hath graven in the bottom of Reason that none might be ignorant of it that all might be without excuse before the Tribunall of God Notwithstanding O unhappiness of humane nature since the sin of Adam we are become so unworthy so criminall that we cannot without the favour of God either eschew evil or do good so evident is it that man hath need of God As children of Adam we are children of malediction begotten in a generall condemnation conceived in sin born children of wrath Adam indeed gave us nature and life but subject to the power and malice of sin which subjects us to the Devil confining us to his will and conduct From the womb we bear the yoke of sin as the Scripture saith we are in the Kingdom of death so far impotent and evil that without the grace of God we can do nothing but works of death and captivity wherein we see the need we have of God to avoid this misery For if from our birth we are subjected to the tyranny of sin doubtless we should be drawn to all sorts of vice there is no sin which man would not commit if God did not withold him Every imagination of the thought of his heart is onely evil continually sayes God of man so evil that he would lose and incessantly precipitate himself in desires of sins and abominations if God by his power did not with-hold him so true is it that we cannot fly evil without Gods help we are so much slaves to it that only God can free and draw us out of this captivity This it is Saint Austin means in his Confessions when he thanks God not onely for delivering him from the sins he committed but also for restraining him from all others I ascribe it unto thy grace saith he that thou hast dissolved my sins as the Sun doth Ice I refer to thy mercy all the sins which I have not committed I confess that all hath been forgiven me as well that which I did of my own will as that which I did not commit being prevented and aided by thy grace Where he teacheth us that without the grace of God we cannot shun evill thus is manifest the need we have of God If the Lord of Sabboth saith St. Paul out of the Prophet had left us a seed we had been as Sodom and been made like unto Gomorrah This is not hard to conceive if by the way we consider that man as the Sonne of Adam is degraded from the justice and holiness of God deprived of grace despoyl'd of all his gifts cruelly wounded in his nature is separated from God hath wholly converted himself to the Creature and being reduced to and plunged in this deplorable condition is so impotent that he cannot raise himself according to his end and perfection up to God unless assisted by the grace of Iesus Christ who onely can draw us out of the abysse of sinne reinvest us in holiness and mercy as with new gifts merited by his death and sufferings he alone can lead us to God and as without him we separate our selves continually from God so with his assistance we approach unto him and by his grace we who were children of cursing are made children of God and of blessing Wherein on one side appeareth the miserable estate whereunto we are reduced as children of Adam on the other the great need we have of God and his assistance Now in considering these truths if we have any sense of salvation will we not immediately say that we are obliged to seek God to implore the power of his spirit and strongly to renounce the power of sinne the spirit of Adam and to resign our selves wholly to the grace and conduct of God protesting and acknowledging before the throne of his mercies the need we have of him to eschew evill which is man's first duty If we examine the need we have of God to do good and practise vertue we shall find our selves in the like indigence Faith teaches us that we cannot do any work of salvation if we be not joyned to God by grace and as Iesus Christ saith as the branch cannot bear fruit except it abide in the vine no more can ye except ye abide in me We can do nothing of our selves as our selves because sinne hath brought us into such a condition that being dispoiled of the gifts of God and made unworthy of his grace we are reduced to such impotence that we can neither serve nor love God nor do any good work if we have not of him grace strength and merit to do it He alone gives us the thought of good nor is that sufficient he must give us also the will and resolution to accomplish it which when we have also received if God himself give us not the accomplishment of it it
make this point hard to it self I cannot believe that a Christian will oppugne this Truth and lesse imagine that a soul it cannot arrive to the possession of a solid and Christian vertue if she walk not by the way and light of the truths proposed if she do not found her self upon this spirit For if we consider and believe that we are members of Iesus Christ true not imaginary members not of a man or Saint but of Iesus Son of the living God and that in this quality we are truly and immediately united to him if I say we consider our selves as such do we not at the same time see that we are united to God and that by such an union we must be animated by his spirit live by his life and be governed by his conduct This is the first condition whereunto we are raised by Christianity the first grace we receive in Baptisme What vertue and perfection can that soul have which lives not conformable to this estate what doth that soul learn which knowes not his truth To what end is the rest of our practise and this great fabrick of devotion which we propose to our selves if we lay not this first foundation which is so necessary that without it all the rest cannot subsist If we have God for us if we are united to him as members to the head yet if we are not resigned as we ought to his infinite wisdom and loving conduct why do we trouble our selves with all the rest To what end so much care so much prudence and humane providence To what end so many desires He is too covetous whom God sufficeth not What can a soul desire to whom its God and Creator is made all things And if it cannot find rest in this where can it find rest What can content him who is not content with God saith St. Prosper Certainly that soul is very blind and miserable which is not content with providence and the love of Iesus I demand all that you would have of humane prudence in all things we shall find but two many reasons to invite us but a soul brought up in the knowledge of the truths of Christianity and nourish'd in the esteem of God will say with a holy person of our time that the poor Doves are more pleasing to God then the Serpents Let us then raise our selves up to God trust in him adhere to his spirit and beg light of him to penetrate into these truths to bear the effects of them and grace to live faithfully in his wayes There remains one motive more to see the obligations we have to belong to God and to adhere to him if we will arrive at perfection The fourth Motive CHAP. IX That this Precept to love God doth oblige us to perfection and makes us to go out of our selves to be God's COntinuing the designes we have undertaken in this second Part to shew by divers Motives the Obligations all men have to be perfect and to adhere to God and live in subjection and submission to his conduct and grace It remains that we consider in this last Motive the essentiall and indispensable Obligations that we all have to the Precept of Love and consequently to perfection to which end we must consider the two estates in the Church of God the estate of the ordinary Christian and that of the more Religious not to examine them but to behold the abuse of the former too lightly believing that perfection and solid vertue is not for them and losing themselves in this Errour perswade themselves that a Christian as Christian is not at all obliged to interiour life and vertue but that it is a work of supererogation and an unnecessary labour to be busied in acquisition of Christian vertue and possession of inward perfection a manifest Errour the more damageable in that it derogates from the honour of God gives license to the world and blinding their souls looses them and makes them slothfull in the search of the right way to salvation To undeceive our selves then in a matter so important and to secure our salvation which otherwise would remain very doubtfull we must intentively observe the obligations of these two estates that by this knowledge we may know what we ought to be Saint Thomas Aquinas teacheth us that the soul that professeth Religion enters into a stable and permanent estate wherein she seeks after true and solid perfection devesting her self of all that may hinder her arrivall to this perfection By this solemn profession she renounces all things taking in this manner of life as saith Moses the Abbot the wayes instruments and means to attain certainly to this perfection so much commended and recommended by Iesus Christ. For this Reason she makes vowes to separate her self from her self and all other creatures to appropriate her self to God and if she take heed to all the circumstances which accompany this action or if lifting up her eyes to Heaven she considers the will of God towards her in her vocation she knows that by the estate of Religion she enters into a profession which must sever her from the world and whatsoever is in the world to unite her to her God and to place her if we may so say in the bosom of God to live upon earth the life that the Angels live in heaven to lead in a holy communion the life that God leads in his holiness that is to say the life of God in God For as God is busied wholly in the knowledge and love of himself so the soul which desireth to perfectionate her self is not busied in Religion but in a pure and continuall contemplation of God and in acts of love which she doth with great care and vigilancy For for the soul to be as God would have her and arrive to the eminent and divine estate whereto God hath called her must be accidentally and by grace that which God is substantially and by nature This is much in few words to extoll the Religious estate and makes us see how holy it is whereto they are called But we are to understand that what is said extends to all Christians for the estate of Christianity is an estate stable and permanent which calls and leads us to the participation of a divine life an estate permanent and indispensable for it is marked with the character of Baptisme which according to the Principles of our Faith can never be defaced an estate holy and of a particular sanctity which only appertains to Christianity since it is consecrated by the unction of the most holy Trinity confirmed by the grace of adoption and enriched with the fulness of the holy Ghost who is given us by confirmation and conserved by the sacraments an estate permanent seeing it is indispensable for no Christian can go out of or have a dispensation from the obligation he hath to his perfection a perfection not indifferent but Evangelicall and Christian which the Son of God mentions in the
they are by grace that which Iesus Christ is by nature This truth granted it is easie to comprehend the necessity of mortification If to be christians we must be re-invested in Iesus Christ that is live of his spirit and follow his motions and inclinations then to arrive to this happiness we must uncloath our selves of the spirit and inclinations of Adam and we must to speak in the words of the Apostle Put off the old man and put on the new man this cannot be done but by mortification which is the more necessary in that the inclinations and spirit of Adam are as much different from those of Iesus Christ as the Heaven is distant from the Earth These two spirits are as contrary one to the other as the animal is to the spirituall according to the Apostle who saith The first man is of the earth earthy the second man is from Heaven and cannot accord together Now to argue by the rule of contraries we must say that to establish the one it is necessary to annihilate the other to plant good we must root out evill so he that would love christianity that is according to the spirit and vertue of Iesus Christ must take away and mortifie the spirit and inclinations of Adam which are in all alwayes contrary to Iesus Christ. The Son of God came into the world as Saint Iohn saith to destroy the works of the Devill The spirit of Adam is a sinner and his inclinations are but concupiscences works of the flesh therefore is the Sonne of God come to destroy them We must also labour and co-operate with him to destroy in us and to root out of us all that sin hath put in us wherein mortification assists us This that Divinity which we call mysticall teaches us which requires that a christian to arrive to that perfection whereto God calleth him passeth through the purgative life in the wayes of mortification annihilation and resignation that by this exercise the soul may purge and cleanse it self from all that is in her opposite to grace and the true possession of God This Doctrine is founded on a Truth which most know but consider not sufficiently That the whole nature and being of man is corrupt all his inclinations turned to evill carrying the centre the source and seed of all vice and imperfection in it Now to order it so as that this nature of Adam this being may be possessed of God replenished with vertuous inclinations and that he may have in himself true charity the seed and principle of all Christian vertues he must necessarily take from it the evill that is in it for the good and perfection cannot be there but in taking away and rooting out the corruption and imperfection which cannot be done without a serious and continuall mortification inward or outward Whence we learn that to acquire christian vertues it is not enough to demand them of God by prayer which we call a demand nor to consider them in mentall prayers and to make good resolutions thereon it is not enough to know them and desire them nor to do acts of them and to produce many practises of them but we must also root out of the foundation of our soul all that which is contrary to vertue The man who desires to live a good christian and aspires to true vertue as the onely way to Heaven must not so much busie himself in the acquisition of vertues by the practise of them as he must labour to root out of his heart and pull out of the foundation of his being all oppositions inclinations and customs contrary to true vertue For as soon as he hath emptied his heart of all that is displeasing to God and contrary to him God will from that moment replenish and possess his heart and liberally extend to him the graces and vertues necessary for him but withall according to the measure in which God gives them to him he must be faithfull on one side to correspond with the grace given him on the other he must labour to render himself more and more capable of the spirit and possession of God he endeavouring to cleanse and purify his heart and God continually replenishing and consecrating it for his own dwelling and sanctifying it by his grace By this amorous combate God always gives and is always augmenting his gifts man receives and in receiving disposes himself more and more to receive more abundantly the sweet bounties of God all which is done in the soul proportionably to her purifying and mortifying her self from all that is disagreeable and contrary to the spirit of God By mortification and the purgative life we not onely understand corporall austerities such as affect the sense as macerations fastings and other exercises which rob the sense of what is most agreeable to it which although they be good and profitable and sometimes necessary yet are they not principall but we apply this Doctrine first to interiour mortifications whereby the soul purifies her heart annihilates her sources therein and pulls away the roots of imperfections and of all that is displeasing to God By this exercise she stifles as much as she can the seeds of self-love though hid in every thing she strives to gain a perfect victory over her self her principall care is to annihilate her will her intentions her desires her thoughts and inclinations to those of God choosing in all things that which is most pure most conformable to the spirit of Iesus most opposite and contrary to her own inclinations and unruly affections Hereunto she wholly addicts her self herein she is very vigilant she knows it generally a maxime that the more the heart of man is filled with the creatures and the love and regard of himself the more she is separated from God voyd of his spirit and true vertue Therefore she endeavours to exercise her self in this interiour mortification Another Reason which obligeth us to the spirit and exercise of mortification is that the Devil makes use of our inclinations of our habits of our desires and of our self-love yea he makes use of our selves against our selves and of our nature subjected as well by the sin of Adam as our actuall sins he makes use I say thereof to cast us away and to separate us from God even in things most holy and the most interiour and therefore to avoid the perils and to take the weapons from the hands of our enemie whereof he makes use to undo us we must necessarily pass through the purgative life we must go out of our selves out of the life of Adam to be in Iesus Christ and to live of his life and we must mortifie our selves to make place for God and take from our heart all that may displease him that is opposite to his grace and by this exercise we shall easily arrive to the acquisition of Christian vertues CHAP. III. That the adherence of a Soul to Iesus Christ is the most perfect
means to possess all Christian vertue THat vertue which we call Christian is a hidden treasure hid in God the very life of a Christian according to the Doctrine of the Apostle is such it is the Pearl in the Gospel which he who would obtain heaven must seek and buy he must seek it in God with all diligence and buy it at the price of all the world Nothing is more precious then true vertue which alone renders us like to God and worthy of Paradise all things else are nothing but vanity amuzement of spirit and unprofitable travell Of known and ordinary means to arrive at the possession of so rich a treasure there is one to be preferred before all others which though little considered and perhaps little known is most important without which all others are ineffectuall This is the adherence of our soul to Iesus Christ This puts us into possession of vertues He who adheres to Iesus Christ is one spirit with him possesses him and in him all vertues To comprehend this truth we must remember that we said that Iesus Christ is our All whence it followeth he is our humility our love our patience our vertue and he that shall possess him shall possess all in him He is the foundation the treasure and riches of the soul He is made unto us saith Saint Paul wisdom and righteousness and sanctification and redemption Who then would have wisdom righteousness and other vertues let him adhere to Iesus He that would acquire and possess perfection let him possess Iesus for in him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge The Apostle explains this further saying The eternall Father giveth us his Son and with him freely giveth us all things by which words he not onely implies that by his merits by his grace and for his love we have all but moreover that with Iesus Christ note the energy of this word with Iesus we have all possessing him we possess all we must add that if we do not possess nor adhere to Iesus Christ we cannot have true christian vertue This truth is not hard to conceive if we consider the essence of christian vertue and perfection which is the spirit of Iesus or Iesus himself living in us and working in us that which is well pleasing in his sight saith the Apostle Our ordinary manner of speaking teacheth us as much for we say vertue and christian perfection have their beginning in grace from whence they spring and what goes out of a just soul that we call grace Now the soul cannot be in grace nor just but by the habitation of the holy spirit living and acting in her So the Apostle The love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given to us whence we infer that if to live in christian vertue we must be in grace and if grace be no other then the holy spirit living in us and there acting seeing the holy spirit is no other then the very spirit of Iesus it followeth evidently that to live christianly we must possess true vertues and to possess them we must possess Iesus and adhere to him for grace and righteousness consists in this possession Let us rise higher and come to the source hereof Faith teaches us that in Adam we are devested of innocence fallen from the state of grace and perfection whereto we were destined by Creation and by the first designes of God By this fall we have lost for ever the vertues graces and supernaturall gifts wherewith the infinite goodness of God had inriched and cloathed the first man At the sight of this misfortune God being moved onely by his own goodness to be merciful to us would raise us from this fall and inrich us more then ever with his graces and heavenly favours where sinne abounded saith the Apostle grace did much more abound To raise us to this happiness he would give us a new beginning of life and grace his onely Sonne Iesus Christ who being made man by the mystery of the Incarnation is established Father and principle of that being and life of grace which should be in man As we participate in sin of the evil of Adam and are with him despoiled of all vertues and grace adhering to him as to our naturall principle and have with him his being and his nature So adhering to Iesus Christ as to our Head our new Principle we participate of his being of his spirit of his grace and of his vertues This witnesseth the Forerunner of the Messiah who saith Of his fulness we have all received and grace for grace From this being deliberately considered we may derive worthy documents to our subject First we see how much we ought to adhere to Iesus if we will live his life and participate his vertues which are the onely Christian vertues for in as much as we adhere to Adam we are not capable of any thing but to live the life of sinners we have no right to the life of grace to practise or possess any Chrstian vertue If we will live the life of grace and obtain power to practise and possess vertue we must lay hold of Iesus Christ and to receive it of him we must adhere to him for we cannot possess him but in adhering to him wherein appeareth also the necessity of this adherence From this truth we draw a second document how much they deceive themselves who speak meanly and indifferently of true Christans or of a thing proportioned to our reason and being For according to the Principles of Christianity and words of Saint Paul as Christians we must put on the Lord Iesus Christ that is the gifts of the graces and vertues of Iesus in such manner that we may be like unto him in such a degree of perfection that we may bear in us an expression and a lively image of the life and vertues of Iesus Christian vertue is not animitation of the life and vertues of a perfect man not of Adam considered in his Innocency and originall Iustice to have vertues after this manner were not much it is a lively Image of the vertues of Iesus Man-God or to say better it is the life and vertue it self of Iesus in man As men are distinguished by their habits so are true Christians from others by these vertues and these vertues are distinguished from all others if there be any by the spirit of Iesus Here then appears the divinity and perfection of Christian vertues they are the vertues of Iesus himself according to which the Apostle saith we are new creatures As creatures of Iesus we must bear his Image which is divine and celestiall not that of Adam which is humane and terrestriall that is our life and vertues must not be of a man but of God life and vertues as different according to the Doctrine of the Apostle as heaven is distant from the earth as unlike as Iesus is
the words as all good all wise all mighty this manner is sufficient Therefore we must accustom our selves to make use of that which Faith proposes and after excite in our selves the thought of God and entertain our selves therein not by speculation but by obedience and affection which is that we call an affective thought of God as if we should say in our hearts yea my God thou art wholly wise and wholly good I will leave my self to thy conduct I will submit my self to thy divine will By these frequent thoughts of God the soul unites it self to God adheres to his truths and by little and little ascends to the knowledge of God This manner is not hard neither requires it any rule we must onely be vigilant often to apply our selves thereto when any thing gives occasion thereof To arrive to the knowledge of our selves it suffices not to consider our own impotency our feebleness and our imperfections we see them and know them but too much we make a custom of it and this truth will never lead us to humility but we must elevate our thoughts and make use of the knowledge of God thus The soul must present it self before God and having conceived as well as she can the infinite being and soveraign Majesty of the Divinity before which she is she regards him she adores him then she begins to compare her being with that of God she entertains her self in this thought and in this regard and presently acknowledging the exaltation of the divine essence above her own she accounts her self as if she were not by reason of the infinite distance she sees betwixt God and her and in this view she regards her self rather in a not being and a nothing then in a being The soul filling her self with this thought and possessed with this truth humbles her self in the knowledge of her nothing and abases her self as much as she can For having conceived the greatness of God throughout she sees that she is a meer nothing This truth annihilates all creatures yea the most perfect upon earth and the Saints in Heaven forc'd by this principle humble themselves and make themselves as nothing before the supreme and incomprehensible Majesty of God in respect of whom all creatures together are not so much as one grain of Sand. The soul in the sight of this truth must say in her self If all creatures are nothing before God what am I who am the least And if I am nothing before God can I make my self any thing If before the Creator I find not my self by reason I am so much plung'd into nothing would I to the prejudice of truth appear to be something before the Creature In the consideration of this truth the spirit is vanquished the soul knowes what she is and is constrained to humble her self We must passe farther and enter into the consideration of the totall and absolute dependance wherein the soul is in regard of God a dependance so great that she holds onely of God she subsisteth not nor moveth but in God with so much necessity that the beames subsist not by nor depend more on the Sun then the soul doth on her God O happy dependance which gives us God and binds us to God! In considering this truth the soul finds that she is nothing and that she hath nothing either in the order of the essence created or in the order of grace for all is in God and depend on God in such manner that if God should wholly withdraw himself she should leave to be that which she is and should find her self in her nothing So that if she have any thing she sees that it is in God not in her self in him saith St. Paul we live and move and have our being Reflecting hereupon she saith in her heart If all that I have belong not to me nor is of me but of God and belongs to God then am I nothing nor have any thing Wherefore do I flatter my self and believe my self to be something when in truth I am nothing why do I glorifie my self and please my self in that which belongs not to me wherefore should I attribute to my self the honour contentment and glory which belongs onely to my Lord No no I will keep in my meanness I will hide my self in the abysse of my nothing and if God be merciful unto me and out of his bounty give me something I will hold it of him I will onely keep it for him and I resolve from this time and to all eternity I will live in the dependance that I owe to the regard of my Lord and God Let us not stay here but advance forward to the light of truth and let us cast our eyes upon the need we have of God and we shall find what we are and that we are nothing nor have nothing as having received all of God and we possess nothing either temporall or spirituall in nature or in grace but onely that which God reserves and if he should be pleased to withdraw his gifts or cease to preserve them we should find our selves like Adam naked and poor and should return to our nothing Let us behold our selves then so naked and devested and let us pause upon this thought and upon this consideration and we shall be ashamed to look upon our selves and we shall be forced whether we will or not to humble our selves but with a humility full of love and confidence which shall make us lift up our eyes to Heaven to behold him on whom we so absolutely depend from whose hands we have received all and must yet every moment receive influence conduct grace and stability and that so necessarily that if we happen to separate our selves from him and if he but stop his assistance and his concourse leaving us to our selves we assuredly shall fall and in an instant lose all in what state soever we are of Sanctity and grace O most powerful Truth to humble us if considered a truth that humbles the most holy and just upon earth and which annihilates the Angels and Seraphims in Heaven a truth which makes the glorious spirits Angels and Saints who enjoy God to acknowledge that they have nothing but of the mercy of God and that they have no stability but in God an acknowledgement so strong that it were able to pluck them and unite them to him indissolubly if otherwise they were not ty'd to him by the state of glory This is the very state of a soul of Iesus who knowing the greatness of God and seeing himself his Creature penetrating those truths by a light springing from the personall union of the word a light worthy of the glory of the Sonne of God humbles it self but with a humility that shall be eternall a humility more profound then that of all the Saints and Angels a humility which alone is worthy to honour and adore the infinite Essence and the supreme Majesty of God So that
these truths annihilating all the spirits and humbling all the Seraphims nothing but man shuts his eyes against so great a light Iesus Christ and these Seraphims humble themselves in the throne of their glory and men glorifie themselves sitting on the Dunghill of their vices O hardness and obstinacy of humane spirits O the power of the blind ambition of men who see and confess these truths who bear the marks of them who feel the violence of them yet remain insensible triumph in their wickedness and refuse to act by love and vertue what they shall be constrained to do by Iustice and rigour for those who exalt themselves shall be humbled but humbled by the revengefull hand of Almighty God Let us open our eyes and acknowledge let us descend into our selves and from the bottom of our nothing cry to God that he would give us that light of truth Let us adore this truth of Iesus Christ and let us resign our selves over to his power and invoke the force and spirit of his humility that it may consume in us the vanity and ambition of the spirit of Adam that lives in us and communicate to us so necessary a vertue The third Disposition CHAP. X. Of an effectuall desire to be GOD'S AS the spirit of Faith is great in us so let us make use thereof and esteem God according to the same proportion and enter into this Disposition absolutely necessary to all souls who go the wayes of grace and abandon themselves wholly to our Lord. This Disposition is a pure and perfect desire to belong to God at any price whatsoever and to be his purely without any other regard then of the greatness and soveraign Majesty of God who deserves to be loved served and adored because he is God and shutting the eye to all considerations to all hopes and all profit we must say and bear in heart this truth I will be Gods for his own sake This desire will not be so difficult as it appeares if faith be living in us and if we bear a true esteem of God But we must proceed further this desire must not be in the mouth onely but in the heart to be pure it must regard nothing but God to be perfect it must be infinite without limitation or restriction as if we should say I will be Gods in all that he wills and in sign of the perfection whereinto I desire to enter I will know nothing of all that he desireth of me I content my self to be in a bare abandoning of my self to all the thoughts all the designes all the Counsels he hath formed of me in the Cabinet of his eternall wisdom to all the thoughts Iesus Christ had of me on the Altar of his Crosse sacrificing himself to the glory of his Father and offering vvith himself the souls of his Elect. I offer my self to him to be all that he vvill and to leave all the effects of his divine pleasure be it of Iustice or of love of abandoning or enjoying of abundance or privation of fervour or of drought In brief I will have no other desire but to be Gods to be all that he will that I should be This is the adorable estate into which the soul of Iesus Christ entred the first instant of the Mystery of the Incarnation as soon as it was united to the Word for in the same moment his soul produced an act of obligation of him to be wholly Gods wholly obedient to his divine decrees in all the wayes which he ordained upon him and upon his life in the wayes of humiliation of sufferings of privation cross and death This is also the estate and first disposition whereinto the soul must enter that seeks God and will live Christianly but she must remain herein with such stability and constancy that she may render her self immutable in regard of his disposition For in whatsoever change she finds her self she must never quit this disposition on the contrary it is herein that she must establish and settle her self more and more and all her care must be to bear it not in her mouth nor in her will but in the bottom of her heart and centre of her soul. We have said that this desire to be God's must be pure simple naked and absolute therefore to forme this desire and make it perfect we must not receive into our spirit any reason any consideration any interest but onely say and say it truly I will be Gods for Gods sake according as God will have me and in such manner as shall please him This Disposition thus explained teaches us that they who seek Christian perfection and faithfully resign themselves to Iesus Christ to live in the state that pleaseth him must not desire to know or understand what God will do with them nor what he will say to all the motions which they think or in all that they understand nor in all the diverse estates spirituall or temporall wherein they find themselves that is neither necessary nor profitable on the contrary to desire to know and understand all that passeth and examine whence it comes and whither it tends this were to draw her self out of resignation and to go out of the purity of this Disposition it is onely necessary that the soul have a great vigilancy to recive all of God and to receive it in the manner that God requires of her and to bear it with the spirit as he will and to make use of it with the purity that it merits In this point consists the fidelity of the soul and the perfection of this estate To facilitate this it is good for the soul to present her self often before God exciting in her self an efficacious desire to do the pure will of God and to do it in the disposition and manner that he requires without knowing what he will and she shall often offer her self to God for this end Moreover it is very profitable to offer our selves to God and to form a generall will to practise all sorts of good though we have no light nor feeling contenting our selves with a resignation to God and taking care to follow him and to co-operate faithfully with the graces and motions we receive from him It is a Maxime in Piety that the soul must not seek any sense any light nothing of particular but keep and conserve it self in a pure estate to be Gods to do his divine will and to render her self faithfull to his graces remembering that we have nothing to do in this world but to submit to the will of God to receive his gifts and to render them again unto him The fourth Disposition CHAP. XI Of the Purity of the Heart WE proceed in our designe of drawing the picture of a perfect Christian which consists in representing the principal vertues wherewith he must be invested and the dispositions wherein he must be to become fit to bear God and to live onely upon the spirit and grace of God
as in the Church he is fed with the body and drinks the blood of Iesus Christ. Among the true vertus which we must possess that which is as the gold and enamel of all the rest is purity a vertue altogether necessary yet either despised or little known If we would see the necessity thereof let us onely consider what is the end of a Christian and wherein consists the perfection of the state of Christianity The perfect Christian must live the life of grace which is the life of Iesus Christ he must carry God he must possess God If any man love me saith Christ he will keep my words and my Father will love him and we will come into him and make our abode with him which we must not onely understand of justifying and inherent grace a gift created and given of God but of the reall true habitation and presence of God in our souls The soul of the just saith the Wise man is the Throne of God and the Apostle sayes often that our souls and bodies are Temples of God Know ye not that your body is the Temple of the holy Ghost Reflecting on this so manifest a truth we must say that to receive and possess God in our soul we must have the purity of God and in a word without flattering our selves with vain hopes and disguizing or covering the truth let us consider a little seriously what the place ought to be where the Majesty of a God will dwell for ever what ought his dwelling to be of whom David saith Thou dwelst in the sanctuary and in the holy of holies What ought the heart of a man to be where God hath made himself a seat which he hath chosen and consecrated to be the throne of his love We must believe God will require in us a purity worthy of God seeing he who is purity it self will dwell eternally in us This purity that God demands and whereof he is worthy is so divine that our strength cannot arrive unto it he must give it he must assist our importance there is nothing but the fire of his love the lightning of his light the force of his grace and the power of his spirit that can purge expiate and consume all in us that is contrary to this purity In brief it belongs to God alone to place us in the purity that he requires of us This shews how much those souls are deceived who think to possess God and be well with him yet are more remote from him then heaven is from earth We need not but to behold and judge by the effects what its cause is Now as this purity is altogether necessary to possess God so it is our part to desire and to demand it of him and our principall care must be to purify our heart to make it to bear God we must offer it to him that we may bring to our selves the effect of this saying of God to his Spouse and to all others My son give me thy heart we must give and resigne it to him alone it is his desire it is our duty and our happiness if he will vouchsafe to accept it it will be his when he pleaseth to make it such as he requires it This is not all we must co-operate herein and labour with care and vigilancy that we may employ our selves herein with courage and labour with profit let us therefore see wherein this purity consists The purity of the heart may be understood two wayes one that we must purifie our heart from all sorts of sins and voluntary imperfections God enters not into a malicious soul nor inhabits in a body enslav'd to sin we mean not only gross sins but ordinary failings even all faults be they never so little For God being purity it self cannot inhabit in a heart if he find not or put not therein this purity and being infinitely good he infinitly hates evil whatsoever it be and though the least faults drive not God out of our souls yet they make a division and unsettle the soul from God they make great spoil in the heart they undermine it they brand it they indispose it and being so it is disagreeable to God and becomes the object of his Iustice. The soul that knowes how to esteem of God and bears any impression of his purity will think more then I say and never consent to the least imperfection all is insupportable to her that she knows to be disacceptable to God she hath no consideration of estate honour her own good or of men where she sees there is any thing capable to offend the eyes and heart of her God all her care is to detest and extirpate not onely the least faults but to quit renounce and separate her self from whatsoever she knowes to be displeasing to God It is the chief advice of St. Augustine Before any work saith he be sure to purify the heart and take from it all that you observe displeasing to God When he would have us take from our hearts all that is displeasing to God he discovers a great secret he would have us go out of our selves and take out of us all that is of Adam he would have us annihilate our inclinations because whatsoever is of Adam is impure and opposite to Iesus Christ and ever contrary to him whence we conclude that he who would possess Iesus must do all he can possible to dispossess himself of and to drive away Adam this spirit of Adam and his inclinations can no more subsist in the soul with the spirit of God then the Idol Dagon could stand before the Ark of the Covenant All that is in us and is not of God is impure and unworthy of God and all that is out of God can produce no good nor any thing worthy of God these are great truths such as might transport our spirits yet let us not be astonish'd at this Proposition as too high and impossible and we shall see that therein is nothing too much but rather far less then so worthy a subject merits if we consider how pure that soul must be that would please God be in God and possess God and what purity it must have to be one with God for thereon the life of a Christian happily terminates O great God how many deceive themselves O God of adorable purity how few are fit to possess Thee By the light of these truths we may discover the abuse and deceits in christian devotion Some think that they hold God by the hand already and believe themselves well advanced in perfection in that they communicate in that they fast and pray every day and a thousand such like things wherein they exercise themselves they have the taste and sense of devotion they speak well of God and if you will believe them they say they are ravished in God But consider them well you shall find they live wholly according to their own inclinations they mind onely their own
Interest they care onely to satisfie themselves in a word they are but themselves and full of self-love you shall know these Trees by their fruits and the end will let you see that do but touch these Mountains and nothing will come out but smoke God dwells not with Baal let us not go two wayes the soul who will possess God who is purity must be pure must purge and take from it self all that displeases God for flesh and blood possess not God There is another deceit whereto we must take heed which is of those that believe they do much and think that God is endebted to them when their Conscience troubles them not with any deadly sin that is when they themselves say they avoid them all for that according to the truth of this proposition simply taken it is certain he who dies without mortall sin shall be a Saint But laying aside many things that may be said against this abuse I will onely make it appeare that they support themselves upon a Reed for I advise all those souls that speak so to acquaint themselves with their own state because that to know the state of our Consciences and our faults as they are we must know what they are before God and by the light of God We cannot have this knowledge but in as much as we are filled with the light of truth and as we esteem God and his greatness But if we did esteem God and acknowledge his greatness and if we did live in the light of the truth we would never speak thus On the contrary we should not onely shun mortall sin but even the least faults for knowing God and esteeming his greatness we love him loving him we fear to do any thing that may displease him be it never so triviall and they therefore who onely regard and fear the grossest sins and care not for the rest assuredly neither know nor esteem God They know him not for they cannot know the state of their Consciences and consequently they deceive themselves when they ground their assurance on a pretence that they are not troubled with mortall sins and that so much the more in that they care not for all the rest believing they are well assur'd of their salvation Alass who is he that can be assured he is worthy of love or hate what presumption is it in men of this age to assure themselves amidst so many dangers Saint Paul the mirrour of Sanctity said of himself I know nothing by my self yet I am not hereby justified and elsewhere he sayes that he runs and labours alwayes because he is not arrived to that perfection God requires of him We must say the same in what state soever we are Whence I conclude that to live in the purity that God requires of a Christian he must not onely shun all sin but further have a generall care and particular vigilance to do nothing which may displease God whatsoever it be and must neglect nothing conducing thereto and herein consisteth purity in the first sense Purity taken in the second manner implies no other thing then a pure regard of man to God be it for the soul or for the body This purity is greatly important and altogether necessary to those who would live as perfect Christians by this purity the soul regards onely God she doth nothing but in the sight of God she seeks nothing but his Will if she love it is onely God if she affect any thing else it is onely for God and according to God in every thing she seeks his glory and satisfaction all creatures are before her as if they were not in this consists the essence of this vertue Perhaps we shall make it better known by proposing the wayes and meanes whereby we may arrive to the acquisition of so divine a vertue The first I place in purity and simplicity of intention when the soul in all that she does annihilates all her intentions her desires her motions her thoughts and admits none but the pure desire of complying with God I call this intention simple because it must be clear and naked without consulting Reason in any thing This intention is simple because it is one wholly and alwayes equall in all things it regards God onely and him continually in brief this intention and regard is simple because it onely rests upon God the soul that seeks this vertue seeks onely God O how desirable is this vertue how happy is this manner of life This is that which unites the soul to God that which pleaseth God and is fit to bear God The second meanes to arrive at the possession of this vertue is by denying our selves when we renounce our selves and admit no resentment that beares impurity and respect to our selves or the creature as the esteem of our own merit of our capacity of our vocation the content of a Neighbour the profit of Friends the acquisition of Vertue and such other things that cause us to stray from God We must annihilate all these resentments and thoughts to persist in the unity and bare simplicity of the pure regard of God the pleasure of God his glory and his content is a thing more important and infinitely of more worth then can be imagin'd yea then the salvation of all men The soul therefore that seeks God and perfection for that is all one must carefully take heed to this manner of purity for to regard any thing but God and to love out of God is to love unworthily and to love any other thing with God whatsoever it be to think thereon to seek it and to care for it is to make too little account of God it is to esteem his love too meanly Men addicted to this World will passe over this lightly and perhaps with contempt but I wish all that heartily seek God and are in the number of those whom God holds in his hand and regards to all eternity with a regard of love and good will that they think of what worth this eternall regard of God is who regards us without ceasing that they consider what God deserves and demand of God that which he pleases for this regard of his love I am confident that these thoughts would lead them to true piety The third meanes to attain this Vertue is vigilancy whereby we take heed to that which God does in us to correspond faithfully with the designes he hath to purifie us for by this vertue he is infused and God by his operations incessantly purifies us It is the duty of the soul to watch the occasions that God giveth her I say to watch for the love of our selves is very cunning to separate us from God and to apply us to our senses under pretence of vertue and necessity The devout soul must seriously take heed least she destroy in her self the works of God This is the design of Satan they are his ordinary subtleties that deceive the most fervent by this meanes destroying
from all things without doubt if God operate you shall see all these effects and therefore the soul that will be perfect must narrowly look into all this and have an extraordinary vigilancy to become faithfull and attentive to the operations of God in her on one side to correspond thereto and to labour after the manner God inspires her with on the other to annihilate her self not the works of God for if we oppose not our selves to grace and the effects thereof if we do not annihilate the works of God in us God will certainly work great things in us But alas the wayes whereby we make use of devotion in this age are more capable to drive God away then to invite him into our hearts I shall describe them unto you The soul blinded with naturall love to her self desires to be brought up in the gifts of God she would enjoy him and would love what seems good and profitable to her she fills her self with divers desires she tyes her self thereto and will continually act and attain she puts her self into all employments and motions she seeks them she pleases her self with a satisfaction that her own love takes in things most holy and in the very operation of God she seeks her self therein she elevates her self thereto In this manner she opposes her self to the spirit of Iesus Christ and annihilateth the work of God who would onely live in her onely occupate her spirit onely possess her desiring by the power of his love to annihate in her all that is of her Iesus Christ would take away and this soul will add to God would dispossess and spoyl and she would acquire and possess Thus she hinders and destroyes the workes of God driving God out of her and out of her spirit to cause her own love to raign there her own satisfaction and will a vanity ordinary to such souls as are wholly consumed in the spirit of Adam They therefore who tend to perfection must go with all purity and simplicity they must seek nothing but God and to please God but above all they must be very circumspect and attentive to his inward operations having a great care and fidelity to leave the spirit to act by the grace of God in them As all this is very secret and interiour and often is in the very centre of the soul so must we take heed thereto and besides the vigilance necessary it is good from time to time to practise these ensuing acts First to give our selves to Iesus Christ to live in him and to bear the spirit and effects of this self-denyall after the manner that pleaseth him Secondly to renounce our selves our secret vanity and all that is in us opposite to grace and to the operations of God Thirdly to be attentive to the motions and operations of God in us especially when he acts by self-denyall and privation as well interiour as exteriour to co-operate therewith either by action if it be necessary or by consent of the soul giving her self to God to receive what God shall operate in her when the soul shall feel divers motions or meet several occasions to practise vertue she shall alwayes choose those where there shall be privation and self-denyall as the most assured way and the most acceptable to God most for the honour of Iesus Christ and most conformable to his humane life Fourthly she shall pray to Iesus Christ to vouchsafe to operate and put into her all that he wills and to annihilate in her all that he requireth to prevent in her by his light and love the time of death and judgement whereto he must annihilate the thoughts and judgements of men The abridgement of the third Part. CHAP. XIV Treating of the dependance of the Soul upon God IT is easie to see that amongst Christians even those who think they have vertue enough to fave them many deceive and altogether lose themselves taking the shadow of vertue for the substance apparence for truth like the Dog in the Fable who let go the good morsell he had hold of to catch a shadow these neglect the solid vertues and principall foundations of piety to insist on certain exteriour actions which have no substance but in the air of imagination they exercise themselves in morall vertues and despise the Christian they compose the exteriour and form their demeanour and neglect the interiour they fear to displease men and endeavour to satisfie their kindred and friends but care no more to please God then they fear to displease him they would seem good but care not to be so In a word in all things they choose the most beautifull and best and will have nothing but what is good but for their souls that which is least best contents them they seek but that which is necessary what gives them greatest liberty and satisfaction they embrace with all their heart God who is truth is not satisfied with these feignings and wills that we serve him in spirit and truth he detests a lye and curses those that serve him with the mouth onely if he love he will be beloved and as his love is most pure and perfect he will have ours to be such also Whence it is easie to comprehend that to be a perfect Christian and friend to God requires great qualities He must have a golden key that will enter into the Kings chamber he that will come to a royall feast must be clothed with a wedding garment lest he be bound hand and foot and cast into prison and utter darkness To be a perfect Christian is not so slight a business as some think it it belongs to God only to make a man just it is the work of his hand and greater then the creation of the world at least in this God shews himself more powerfull in his love and more admirable in his mercies Therefore when we speak of a good and perfect Christian we speak of Gods handy-work of a man worthy to be a Saint for to be saved and to be Saint is one and the same thing Now what ought the soul of a Saint to be who must one day see God live with God saith St. Bernard in his Meditations and be eternally in unity with God what must the perfection of a soul be that shall become worthy so infinite and incomprehensible a happiness whereto all aspire that would be saved I leave it to their thoughts who know how to esteem of the works of God and make account of the greatness of Paradise and shall onely tell those languishing and easie spirits with Saint Paul Be not deceived God is not mocked for whatsoever a man soweth that shall he reap also for he that soweth to the flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption but he that soweth to the spirit shall of the spirit reap life everlasting Whereupon we must reflect that Christians who are to reap the incorruption of the life everlasting if they will arrive to their
grace There is another principle of misfortune in us which is the love of our souls which lives of the substance of our souls raigning in our hearts and commanding our actions This love acts for it self not for God it is so opposite to God that as another Antichrist it labours onely to destroy the works of grace in us and to ruine his divine love spirit and conduct Hence we see what a misery it is what danger there is in being withdrawn from the conduct of God to live according to our own inclinations according to humane conduct which the Apostle calls the wisdom of this world For what must his life be who submits himself to this sworn enemy of God what must his actions be who hath no other principle nor conduct then his own will onely confident in self-love who onely followes the motions inclinations and thoughts of his reason a reason deprav'd and dim falls irrecoverably I will appeal to man himself how often his prudence reason and conduct have deceived him Into how many errours have his inclinations and his passions precipitated him let him but consult his own Conscience I beseech him to see whither he goes and that in good time he renounce humane wisdom and his feeble reason as much as God requires it to follow the foolishness of the Crosse the conduct of grace for there is no other way of perfection nor meanes to arrive at God but by the power and humility of the Crosse and by the conduct of Iesus Christ our way and our life If we would know what this conduct of God is wherein it consists we must consider it two wayes The first generall and common to all when all that a Christian does is according to the rule of the Law of God Thus we say the actions of men are all submitted to the conduct of God when they are done according to the Law and conformable to his will and the maxims of the Gospel So David lived when he said Thy word is a Lamp unto my feet and a light unto my paths For the Law of God proposeth the right end the just meanes and measure of every action in particular and of all in generall The true Christian must have no other conduct of his actions then this divine Law given by God to be the rule of mans life and principle of his actions he must follow the knowledge and maxims which Iesus Christ taught upon earth as a watch-tower and light to the spirits of men who being left to themselves walk in darkness and ignorance Counsel is mine equity is mine wisdom is mine saith the spirit of God He then that will live according to prudence according to equity and justice that will follow good counsels must have them from God for true prudence and true justice belongs to God It is true there ought to be prudence in the World but it must be the prudence of God which we cannot have but by observing the Law of God Lord thou hast made me wise by thy word said David who had try'd it We must take counsel for the difficulty of affaires perplexeth all things but this counsel must come from God and be conformable to his divine Lawes So did David alwayes in his affaires of greatest importance Thy Testimonies are my delight and my Counsellors We ought indeed to uphold our selves but it must be by the justice of God not that of men but that which concurs with the law of God for all the Commandments of God are righteousness saith David So the Christian doing all things with this respect and doing nothing against the Law and Maxims of Iesus Christ shall live in the perfect conduct of God a happy estate whereto all Christians ought to aspire and wherein they ought to continue professing even to death they have no other rule or conduct of their actions then the Law of God and spirit of the Gospel a rule wherein they must maintain themselves so powerfully and so inseparably that no creature friend or Interest can make them desire or do any thing contrary to this heavenly conduct There is another conduct of God more hidden and invisible when God vouchsafes by the motions of his grace his inspirations and loving communications to conduct souls to perfection and takes a particular care of them Here the soul must take a great and vigilant care that she quench not in her these lights and resist not this divine and amorous conduct This way is for souls who give themselves to God who are wholly out of themselves devested of and severed from the Creature who have annihilated their desires inclinations and passions who are wholly abandon'd to God professing to live no longer then under the conduct of this divine spirit They who are thus happy must take great care to maintain their spirits in a neere alliance and unity with the spirit of God to do nothing but by his conduct they must take heed they admit not any thing nor receive any other spirit which may separate them from that of God In brief they must annihilate all that is of the conduct of the Creature if they will live in a perfect conduct and an intire resignation to the spirit of God which is that which is desired in a perfect Christian as being the meanes to arrive at perfection When we consider these truths we shall find it hard to comprehend and impossible to approve the method of those who would get perfection attain true Christian vertues and possess God yet in all their conducts study nothing but humane wisdom act nothing but by humane respects speak not without equivocation are nothing but outward ceremonies regard nothing but outward formality aim at nothing but advancement Let them speak what they please humane wisdom is but foolishness before God and the spirit of grace and of Iesus is a spirit of truth simplicity and sincerity Those then that guide themselves by the spirit of Iesus Christ must live and act in the spirit of truth simplicity and sincerity for no other conduct is the conduct of God Let no man abuse himself saith St. Paul if any among you think to be wise in this world let him become a fool that he may be wise for the wisdom of this world is foolishness before God 1 Cor. 3.18 19. CHAP. III. That a Christian must do all his actions for love of God and for God THe perfect Christian must not so much consider what he does as the manner of doing for men consider the face God the heart It is a maxime in Morality that it suffices not to do good actions but we must do them well as the Philosopher saith it is not enough to do just things but they must be done justly meaning that an action to be good and just must be accomplished with all these circumstances which are so necessary that if this fail all the rest will be deficient good if it be true good must
be accomplished in every point Now our Question is not only of an action good and just but which is more of a Christian action suitable to the eminence and purity of the state of Christianity of an action worthy heaven and God If it be reall it must have circumstances onely pure and perfect and chiefly it is requisite they have a proportionate object for as actions are specified by their objects so is it necessary that the doing and denomination of a true Christian action be to consider what is it's object which must be proportioned to the dignity sanctity and purity of an action worthy God which being supposed this object can be no other then God himself and therefore we must say that as all the actions of Christians must be conformable to their state all worthy of God so must they have God only for their object and consequently a Christian to live Christianly must have respect onely to God in all his actions and to do nothing but with intention to please him This is the wish of Saint Paul when he prayed to God for the new Christians to whom he writ That you might walk saith he worthy of the Lord as unto all pleasing This counsell ought to be engraven in the memory of men for either they think not of it or are ignorant of it yet is it altogether necessary Let us then suppose this to our perfect Christian that to do acts truly Christian and worthy of God we must regard nothing but God and have no other intent then to please him The reason is from the commandment of love for by the same principle that we are oblieged to love God in all and above all we are obliged also to please him in all and to seek onely his honour glory and pleasure He that knows how to love will easily comprehend the truth of this counsell For love if it be true makes us quit our own Interests and respects to engage us in the interests and respects of the thing beloved Again to love according to the Angelical Doctor is to wish well Now what good what interest can God have in our action but the accomplishment of his will and pleasure God hath no need of us for he is all-sufficient of himself As by our sins we cannot diminish his glory or pleasure so neither can we augment them by the vertue of our actions and that he makes them meritorious worthy the possession of heaven that he receives them as acceptable to the eyes of his divine Majesty it is the effect of his bounty not the power of necessity it is by dignifying not by duty or obligation by love not by interest it is because he vouchsafes to regard them and to be pleased with them it is only because we do in them what his will is we employ our selves in his Ordinances and accomplish his designes This Deduction and Principle being considered we must say that seeing God receives nothing of us or of our actions but the accomplishment of his divine Will it follows that a Christian who will love his God cannot express this love but in performing the works of God in respect to God and employing himself in the duties that God proposes to him He that hath my commandments saith our Saviour and keepeth them he it is that loveth me and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father and I will love him and will manifest my self to him which shews that the duty of a Christian consists in doing the works which God proposes and puts into his hand according to his condition and estate to do it according to the good pleasure of God and with an intent to do the will of God In this the Christian shews his love to God this is the means whereby his actions become worthy to possess God To comprehend this truth we must observe that all the creatures are nothing in themselves they are as but a drop of water drawn up by the Sun Now if all creatures are nothing man is yet less and man being so small a thing his action can be no more but if the creatures if man and his actions are any thing before God it is onely in as much as they regard God and have relation to him For nothing is worthy of God but what is of God and for God Heaven the world the earth are nothing yet are they esteemed worthy of honour because heaven is the throne of God earth is his footstool We may say as much of man although he be nothing in himself or in his actions yet they are most worthy by this relation to God and regard of God For as mean and prophane things are respected being consecrated and dedicated to God so our actions though they be mean and unworthy of God yet being referred and dedicated to his honour and the accomplishment of his will they are raised up and become pleasing to God Whence we acknowledge that all is nothing not our actions if they regard not God in this purity and though they regard God yet they conferre nothing to God they are onely pleasing to him because he vouchsafes to regard them and to take pleasure in them he advanceth and sanctifieth them by this relation such is his good pleasure Herein appears the abuse of those who fill their hearts and perplex their thoughts with severall intentions By this Principle we see how much they separate themselves from their duty who in their actions and devotions seek any thing else but to please God for all our actions are onely worthy of God because they are onely pleasing to him and nothing is worthy of him nor pleasing to his divine eyes but what is of him and for him Therefore one of the greatest faults to be observed in piety which makes us most unworthy of God is want of this regard of God Many instead of referring all things to God seek nothing but themselves labour onely for themselves and in all that they do think onely of themselves and if they should examine themselves as they ought they would find that the end of their life and actions is nothing but their own Interest and going on in the Labyrinth of these confusions they will find that seeking to do their own will they do what God requires not and fail to do that which he commands By this abuse it appeares that such souls design their own health and profit to be their end and the object of their actions By so doing God is no more their ultimate end nor the centre of their life and actions but their own interests and profit take the place of God an errour so manifest that it is easie to perceive and necessary to condemn the same Let us remember a principle very common that teacheth us if there were neither Heaven nor Hell to recompence or punish yet we were obliged to devote our selves wholly to God to fulfill his designes and to render him honour in
the care a Christian ought to have to do all his actions according to his vocation and to maintain himself in the order and conduct of God NExt interiour dispositions necessary to Christian perfection it is convenient to speak of the exteriour to make our perfect Christian see how he must comport himself to be perfect in all things We have already spoken of the care we must have to appear vertuous and exemplary and to walk uprightly as the Apostle sayes according to the truth of the Gospel Next we have shewed how all his actions must be squared to the Law of God subject to his conduct which is the Law of his divine inspirations Lastly we have proved that to do actions worthy of God and conformable to his sanctity and the state of Christianity they must regard God and have no intention but to please him It remains that we shew what is the foundation of perfection the most considerable in Christian piety that is how all our actions should be done according to our vocation The life of man is a circle that comes forth from God and must return to God God alone is the Principle of our being of our life and of our action as he is the beginning of them so is he the end thereof He is the Principle does all in us he is our end and recalls us unto himself so that we have all of God and are recalled back to God for the creature bears a right capacity and inclination which can never be annihilated which causes it to subsist calls it back to it 's God there to adhere as to its repose and ultimate perfection Herein we find two things remarkable which belong to our subject one that God is the beginning of our actions the other that he is the end He is the beginning of our actions because there is no good in us which God does not of him we have the motion thought and will to do well he gives us the effect of it and not only gives us the power to do it but himself does it in us so truely that he is more the Authour of a good work then we our selves and according to the Prophet we should say to God Lord thou hast wrought all our works in us It is God saith Saint Paul that worketh in us both to will and to do of his good pleasure implying not onely that God gives us his grace and good motions which joyned with our consent effect the work but that by grace God is in us after a new and speciall manner united to our souls which adhere to him and by this union and adherence God fills the capacity which the soul hath to good and to vertue and operates in her and by her the action of vertue but so that it is he who operates more then we We operate saith Saint Augustine but it is God who operates in us this operation Thus is God the Author of our actions and the beginning of them whence it follows that he is also the end of our being and operations the end of our being because he is the Creator thereof for according to the order of nature that which is the beginning of a thing is also the end thereof and by the order that God holds in his loving operations he cannot act but he must be the end of his action and as he is the beginning of the being action and perfection of man so is he the end thereof This Principle teaches us that as God alone is the end of man so he alone gives the meanes and prescribes the order that he must keep to come to God his end For as the Creature hath not power to draw it self from nothing so hath it not the right to propose an end to it self nor to prescribe to it self the order way and meanes to come to this end that appertains to God who alone can give the being propose the end and prescribe the means And when God hath prescribed the end and ordained the meanes thereto yet cannot we follow the way nor keep this order if God himself doth not act in us conduct us and work in us what is necessary to attain our end for he alone is the beginning of all our actions he performs both the will and the deed We are his Workmanship saith St. Paul speaking of God created in Christ Iesus unto good works which God hath before ordained that we should walk in them Hereby the Apostle sheweth that God hath regulated the life of man ordained all his actions prepared all the good works wherein he wills that he should employ himself that it is God who does all in us and that we are his workmanship so all our safety consists in this that God is our end God alone hath ordained the meanes to arrive at our end God alone must conduct and operate in us works necessary to that end whereto we are called Herein consisteth all the happiness of a Christian all the duty of our souls whence all the piety all the care we must have consists in these three points which contain the foundation of all the rest to tend towards God continually to continue in the order and conduct of God and to entertain all the divine operations to let God act who conducts us in that order he hath established over us and operates in us incessantly the works which he prepared from all eternity In these three points consisteth all the perfection of the life and actions of Christianity Therefore we must take great care herein though they are unknown to us and their use appear difficult yet we must endeavour to know them and demand of God light and grace we must follow them with fidelity and embrace them with vigilancy in all things even in the very least for in what concerns God his glory and will nothing is little all is great and inestimable Here we must consider how we may be deceived in a subject so important that we may avoid the snares prepared for us on all sides All the evill that can befall us herein comes either from the Devill or from our selves and more from our selves then from the other for we are the principall instruments of our own ruine The Devill incited by his ordinary malice being crafty and having a thousand subtle wayes to annoy us continually considers the wayes of God over our souls and by the little knowledge he hath thereof can easily represent something of Gods Ordinance over us of his designes and wayes to save us Having considered these he goeth about he makes it his perpetuall business to persecute us and precipitate us The first effect of his malice is to ruine in us the works of God and to shut our heart against the motions of grace he particularly labours to divert us from the Ordinances of God and to make us go out of the order and conduct which he knowes God hath established over us He employes a thousand surprises
to advance them to perfection worthy of the purity and sanctity of Christianity and which may render them worthy of God and capable to enter into the glory that God hath prepared for them to all eternity This conduct must not be indifferent but the same with that of God The Director must not guide after one manner and God after another for so the poor soul were lost or tyranniz'd over He that giveth counsel must take heed that the matter he treats of have an immediate respect to the order and designs of God over our souls and consider that he is upon either the ruine or establishment of grace and works of God a point of great consequence which makes us see what they ought to be whom God hath established in so high an office and who enter into so sacred a ministry He that will conduct and counsel a soul must know the designes and conduct of God over this soul he must consider the order God keeps to govern it that it is great and hidden in God that it is a secret to us and that the soul cannot without much difficulty know it It is necessary that he who conducts and counsells be full of grace and light that he strongly adhere to God who is the Father of lights otherwise what knowledge or experience soever he may have he will be deceived in the conduct The more he shall be able and experienced the more he shall be in hazard to deceive souls for though knowledge and experience be necessary yet must we not confide therein much less presume thereupon for God abhors the presumptuous and forsakes those who are over-confident of themselves In the conduct of souls there must always be new succours from heaven and new lights He who would conduct or counsell another in that which concerns his conscience must remember himself that he is an Instrument of God that he must not either counsel or act in this soul but what God will establish therein Moreover he that conducts a soul and who giveth counsel must consider that in truth and in conscience he ought to have no other intention or desire then to follow the very truth to establish the Kingdom of God in the soul to lead the soul to God and to do in that soul the work of God according to the intention of God and to establish nothing therein but what God will For which reason he is obliged to labour much to the end that he may annihilate in the soul of any Christian whatsoever hinders the work of God and kingdom of grace and for his part he must have a right intention and pure regard of God not respecting or desiring any thing but his glory seeking neither honour nor esteem favour nor advantage of those whom he conducts And truly if we consider what it is to conduct a soul in the design of God and to conserve it in the order which God hath appointed it from all eternity we shall see that it is no indifferent business but the most noble and most important of all and that we must apply our selves thereto with exceeding great charity with purity of intentions and a zeal to Gods glory for it is for this that principally they who conduct shall render an account Hence proceed the evil which falls out when those who conduct lead and counsel souls negligently and with indifference without endeavouring to find out what God requires of them in what state or condition soever they be and without troubling themselves to establish therein the Kingdom of God and of his grace and we see in what danger souls are when they conduct them according to their own sense or lead them by those wayes give them the same exercises form them by their own spirit and which is worse mold them to their own humour We must proceed quite otherwise for souls have different wayes and are called to divers states of graces as they are predestinated to divers degrees of glory and consequently he must conduct them according to the designes of God which he must endeavour to know and according to their vocation and he must comport himself in the conduct of every soul in the same manner as if he did know from point to point the decrees which the eternall wisdom hath formed upon this soul and all the particular wayes whereby God leads them To know things so secret and so hidden it is needfull to have the spirit of God to use much prayer and to have a great purity of intention I say purity of intention For he who takes upon him the conduct of souls and will counsel and direct the consciences of men must take heed that he follow not his own spirit that he think not of his own interests that he seek not his own satisfaction and suffer not himself to be carried away with complacency and naturall motions and inclination For in such a case he may be assured that it is no longer God that conducts the soul nor the Spirit of God that governs it but it is the spirit of man and by this manner of conduct he shall not establish the grace or kingdom of God but the flesh the kingdom of sin He who conducts holds the place of God both in the soul and in the conduct so that this were to do great wrong to the grace power and Majesty of God If we say there is danger in the soul that conducts it self that follows her own spirit self-love inclinations humour and will which Saint Paul calls the desire of the flesh we must also affirm that the danger is greater when he who conducts suffers himself to be carried away with his own inclinations and onely follows his own will and spirit And if the Christian be obliged as we have shewed to seek nothing in all his actions but to please God if he must have a particular vigilancy to establish the Kingdom of God in his soul to cooperate with his work and to remain in the order wherein he conducts him with far greater reason he who conducts a Christian soul in any profession or condition is obliged to have the same vigilancy the same purity of intention and regard of God which he ought often to consider From all these truths we may easily comprehend how much they are deceived who are guided by their own nature according to the inclinations and motions of their own spirit without considering what Iesus Christ demands of them without any regard of the grace that God presents unto them yea without taking heed to the state whereto God hath called them As likewise their error who can bear nothing but what is pleasing to them nor agree with any but those that flatter them and suffer them to live at their own pleasure and who best accommodate them to their inclinations desires humours and such things which are but too too ordinary All this is dangerous and an evident mark that such souls seek not God nor true vertue but
the satisfaction of their own spirit You shall find their hearts void of God full of self-love their actions inconstant their thoughts in continuall changings In fine they are nothing but disquiets complaints and murmurings Look upon their life and actions it is but a pastime unprofitableness and the vanities of the age and having considered it all it will not be hard for you to know whether those souls have the fear of God and the knowledge of vertue yet in appearance they make a great shew we know not whether is to blame those who are conducted and directed or the Directors But how ever it be the Christian who would be saved must labour herein seriously and neither fear pains nor mortifications but seek to be conducted by the wayes that God hath ordained and passing above all considerations and all sorts of difficulties prove constant and complyant with the order that God hath established over him he must every day renew his good resolutions and pray to God to let him know and be acquainted with the designes he hath upon him and give him grace in every point to follow them and with fidelity to accomplish them And seeing that his fidelity is now in question and that it is altogether necessary to all Christians it were but necessary we made some discourse of it CHAP. VII Of the fidelity of the soul and of its necessity in the wayes of grace and the actions of a Christian. TO speak of Fidelity and to see how much it is necessary to all Christians we must reflect upon the truths already proposed and remember that man was created for God who is his end that God alone can conduct him to this end and that it is the same God who onely operates in him all the good works which are necessary to make him Gods and to arrive at this end which is God From these principles of truth we enter into our subject and presently see that we have not any thing more important in this World then to go to God to co-operate with the works which God does in us to save us and to accomplish with fidelity that which he requires of us and in the spirit and disposition that he desires every one applying himself faithfully to the way that God proposes and the works of his vocation that the Priest live according to the perfection of his estate the Christian as Christian in brief that all men live so as at the houre of death they may say with Iesus Christ My Father I have glorified thee upon the Earth I have finish'd the work thou hast ordained me to do This fidelity which is absolutely necessary must be in our soul from the time we were born Though there were neither Heaven nor Hell we are obliged to live according to the will of our Creator what aversness soever the creature may have it shall be allwayes subject to the order of God either in the way of justice or mercy If we would be saved it cannot be unless we co-operate with the works that God will do in us unless we become faithfull to his graces and follow the order that God hath prescrib'd wherein he will conduct us to salvation and therefore it concerns us more then we think to take heed to the designes that God hath over us and to the vocation whereto he hath called us to the motions and inspirations he gives us to make use with fidelity of the graces he offers least drawing our selves from the order and offer of his mercy we enter into that of his Iustice and one day he say to us in the rigour of his determined Decree as he said to his people I will choose their delusions and bring their feares upon them because when I called none did answer when I spake they did not hear but they did evill in my sight and chose that in which I delighted not Isa. 66.4 When we speak of the vocation and use we are to make of the graces and benefits of God we speak of Paradise to despise them is to neglect salvation Therefore the Christian must consider what he does as well in that which concerns the vocation he must choose as in the use of the graces and favours he receives of God seeing thereon depends all his happiness or misery we must take heed we chuse not what God would not have us nor despise what he would have us to embrace This point is the most important of all in a Christian life yet is it a mystery the most secret of any in Christianity The vocation of a soul is as much hidden as her election which none can know or easily discern by her conduct The wayes of God are as much elevated above ours as Heaven above Earth and yet O wonderfull God wills that we follow his wayes and none shall be saved but according to the vocation whereto God from all time hath called him What remedy seeing on the one side necessity constrains us and on the other the incertainty and obscurity deters us O just God God of all bounty who shall enlighten us in this darkness who shall resolve us in an affaire so doubtfull who shall assure us amidst so many doubts nothing but thy light O God the onely refuge of our souls can conduct us nothing but thy spirit can teach us but thy truth can assure us and but thy infinite mercy can protect us This lets us see in what danger they put themselves who so long neglect the motions graces and favours of God and make such ill use of his benefits From these truths we learn the esteem we ought to have of our vocation and with what circumspection we must make choice thereof and if we will make our selves worthy to receive of God the light and conduct necessary in an affaire of so great consequence for our salvation it will be very profitable to enter into these following dispositions First The Christian must have a pure desire of God and a resolution to do in every thing his divine will being from the bottom of his Heart wholly resigned to his will and conduct Secondly He must have a great sence of his weakness he must be in an estate of humility before God not esteeming himself worthy or capable of any thing for the humble shall never perish and as Esay saith God looketh to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at his word Thirdly He must renounce his own interests and all his particular concernments he must not regard his own safety that he may have no object but the pure will of God yet in such manner that he who resolves to remain so faithfully and constantly in the order and designes of God and proposes to make hereafter use of Gods gifts graces and benefits and regards not perfection advancement vertue not Heaven it self must not content himself with a thought to please God for alas who is worthy thereof but cleansing and purifying his intentions
words which shew the pain and travel a Christian is obliged to undergo to root out of his heart and tear from his soul all that is contrary to the Law of God and vertue words which condemn our delicates and all that fear labour and sufferings excusing themselves by their weakness of nature To comprehend the importance of this advice Let us lift up our eyes to the contemplation of the truth and spirit of Christianity there we shall learn of the Son of God that the Kingdom of heaven is gained by violence that the grace of Christianity is grounded upon suffering that the perfection is in love in love crucifying that all the wayes of God and the operations of his spirit consist in privation and resignation and consequently in the cross Whence it necessarily follows that they who fly sufferings and humiliation seeking onely a sweet pleasant life fearing pains and travel do by this fear make themselves unworthy of God who reigneth on the cross and is onely found in the thorns of the fiery bush They withdraw themselves from the Kingdom of grace which agrees with annihilation they shut their heart against love and which is more to be lamented go out of the order of God and from the conformity they ought to have with Iesus Christ crucified who is the object the way and the life of perfect Christians and of Iesus Christ who cannot conduct our selves but in the way of annihilating of suffering and humiliation which is the way of Iesus Christ his life and essence Here may these delicate persons see how their faint-heartedness deceives them Let us then take heed and seriously consider the sentence that Iesus Christ pronounces against them He that takes not up his cross and follows me is not worthy of me To fear sufferings to fly humiliation to refuse the communication of God is to make our selves unworthy and uncapable of all his divine operations of grace for God cannot communicate himself to the soul in the wayes of grace but he will cause therein annihilation and humility All the operations of grace can have no effects in our souls but those of humility abnegation and death Grace must operate in the souls that which death doth in the body This is so known a truth that all that speak of grace unless that it 's proper and principall effect is to give us to God to make God live in us and to place therein his love and favour It is impossible for God to operate all that in us without annihilations subversions humiliations and death unless he pluck the love of our selves and the Creatures from our hearts he cannot plant his own therein If he kill not in us the old Adam never will Iesus Christ live in us God cannot dwell in us if he do not annihilate and consume the impurities and malice of our souls Thus Christian grace to produce its effects in us requires an estate of submission and death They therefore deceive themselves who think they are in grace yet bear no mark at all of this grace for if it be in a soul it will infallibly produce the effects proper to it if it produce nothing it is a sign it is not there Herein also appeares the wrong that the fear of suffering causeth to Christians How much do souls separate themselves from God who seek no other consolation satisfaction and enjoyment but their own and labour onely to put themselves into a certain repose thinking that perfection consists in this false rest and never to suffer any crosse affliction or temptation No no Earth is the place of combate Christian life is the death of man perfect love like the Phenix seeks death and findes life in the same flames the Crosse gave grace grace now giveth the crosse the sacred spouse saith she is fair but brown scorched with the burning beauty of divine love He that cannot suffer cannot love he that cannot love is not worthy of God or the name of a Christian. It is love that triumph'd over Iesus Christ annihilated him to the condition of our mortality it is love that humbled him even to our lowness and infirmities it is love that crucified him Christianity hath no other love or grace If then the Christian will love if he will be subject to the Kingdom of grace he must defie all sufferings and couragiously embrace all that shall befall him for love overthrowes all and triumphs over the soul. If she flatter it is to hurt if it hurt it is to kill so they who seek true and solid piety must not behold God but in the Crosse nor consider grace but in humility and sufferings My well-beloved saith the spouse in the Canticles is a bundle of myrrhe she confesses she fainted and dyed in the communications of love she received from her God For when the spouse had given her his love and ordained charity in her she instantly adds stay me with flaggons comfort me with apples for I am sick of love The greatness of God the infinity of his being his divine spirit are so powerful that if he never so little communicate himself to the soul by the purity of love and grace He is able to annihilate and consume her For if he apply himself to the Creature without proportioning himself to its capacity he cannot be supported for he overwhelms and ruines the created being by this power infinite and infinitely predominating over a being so small so subjected to his power In fine it would swallow up and consume it if he did not proportion his operation to our weakness and if he gave us not a capacity and force to bear it But whatsoever he doth if he communicate himself he alwayes annihilates if he giveth grace he changeth the man if he giveth light he humbles him if he make him to bear his love he wounds him Thus the soul that will love God must love sufferings he that will love the life of grace must lose himself and annihilate himself to receive divine operations He that will beare the light of truth must humble himself seeing God doth not manifest himself but to the humble of spirit and that all the works of God bear his Crosse in humility Hence we learn that it is necessary we esteem the Crosse and sufferings and embrace them with joy and fervour of spirit but we must further observe that sufferings subversions losses and humiliations and other misfortunes of humane life are necessary to a Christian to keep him steadfast amidst the deceits and blandishments of the World the subtleties and surprizes of the Devill By these wayes which we call rigorous God severs us from the world and takes us from kindness to the creatures he makes use of these losses and subversions as of gall and bitterness to mingle with the sweets that the creatures present to us He uses humiliation and affliction to abate our pride and if he do leave us for a time it is to
consequently follows that the centre the repose of a Christian cannot be but in this estate of sufferings and in the same condition of suffering that Iesus Christ was here upon earth When we say that the centre and spirit of Christianity is no other then the cross annihilations and adversities we must conceive it in the highest and consider that the Son of God came into the World for the glory of his Father to satisfie his divine Iustice and for the sanctification of our souls These were his designes desires and thoughts Now the thoughts and intentions of the Son of God are eternall and permanent for they are divine and it is the property of the essence and of divine actions to be immutable and permanent Seeing then that the Son of God hath chosen the cross from all eternity lived upon earth in the spirit of sufferance he remains alwayes in the thoughts of the cross in the desires of humiliation and the rigour of death the zeal of the glory of his Father goes not from his heart but he preserves this spirit and offers himself to his Father to bear it eternally and to suffer the effects of it if it be his good pleasure This zeal ought not to be unfruitfull this offer is not to be refused and yet the estate of his greatness and the condition of his glory cannot permit it What remedy Love alwayes wise and inventive hath found out a means to satisfie the equity of his desires and divine affection and the Majesty of his glory for the eternall Father hath given his Son a mysticall body which is his Church he hath appointed him Head over all his Church which is his body all Christians are members of this body true members as the body is a true body though a mysticall body We are saith the Apostle members of his body of his flesh and of his bones Now to this body and these members the spirit and zeal of Iesus Christ communicates it self by the designe and speciall counsel of the blessed Trinity In pursuit of this divine counsel the Son of God pours into his Church and upon Christians the zeal of the glory of God the spirit of the cross and the love of justice he pours it out as he pleases distributing his gifts according to his holy will To some he communicates his spirit of sufferance and crosses to others that of death and to speak more generally he communicates his estates and spirit to whom he pleases and as he pleases So Saint Paul I fill up that which is behind of the afflictions of Christ in my flesh Reflecting on this truth we shall cleerly see that the spirit of Christianity is no other then the spirit of Iesus which he communicates to his Church being the head and to Christians his members And as this spirit is no other then a desire of the glory of God love of the cross and zeal of justice it follows they who will be good Christians must necessarily bear this spirit and be in this estate of annihilation and the cross and embrace all adversities that they meet with yea embrace them couragiously as an order of God established upon them and as an estate which is singularly proper for them In this Disposition they shall find the centre and repose of their souls and in this subjection to the cross they shall obtain the peace that Iesus Christ hath acquired for us by his cross We may also say that to suffer Christianly is to bear all things with cheerfulness of spirit doing like the Apostles who departed rejoycing that they were accounted worthy to suffer shame for his Names sake and like the first Christians who took joyfully the spoyling of their goods defied torments and the cruelty of beasts like Saint Ignatius the burning of fire as Saint Lawrence the violence of torments as Saint Agnes and in the Churches first beginning their zeal to suffer was so great that it made the Apostle Saint Iames to say Count it all joy when you fall into divers temptations This advice will seem hard for the rigours of the cross and pains of this life are too piercing but if we love all will be easie for where love is saith Saint Bernard there is nothing but sweetness and nothing is difficult to him that loves though thornes guard and encompass the Rose we gather it notwithstanding and enjoy its beauty and odour Iacob sayes he served seven years for Rachel and they seemed unto him but a few dayes because he loved her so much that he was insensible of the travail He also that will suffer Christianly must love for he that cannot love cannot suffer and he that can neither suffer nor love is no Christian seeing that love is the spirit of Christianity and sufferance the spirit of love This principle considered no rigours that we find in humane life can appear difficult and misfortunes and pains are onely irk some to us for want of love Let us then but love and they will all be easie by love the sufferings of Christians are distinguished from those of others For it is common to all men to suffer it is the condition of their being and portion of their life and the more they think themselves secure the more they are surprised with misfortunes but it belongs onely to Christians to suffer with love The sinner is drawn by the neck like a slave to do the will of God the good man willingly followes him and findes no pain in any thing but on the contrary he finds comfort in travail and repose in displeasure In this sense the Apostle cryes out upon sight of the wounds and scarrs he endured for Iesus Christ Henceforth let no man trouble me for I bear in my body the marks of the Lord Iesus And elsewhere I will glory willingly in my infirmities that the power of Iesus Christ may dwell in me To suffer in this disposition is to suffer Christianly or else let us say that to suffer Christianly is to suffer with an esteem of sufferings There are divers reasons why we should take and well esteem them but the principall consisteth in that Iesus Christ hath chosen this manner of life as a way that honoureth more divinely the Majesty of God then any other estate and he hath chosen this way from all eternity and by consequence from all eternity he beares the thoughts and love of the Cross. He hath chosen the Cross saith St. Paul he hath embraced it from the first moment of his incarnation and by an excess of love he began to suffer as soon as he was born And that which is to be observed is that by the election of his divine wisdom which never fails he hath made choyce of confusion and contempt rather then greatness and contentment So saith the Apostle of him and we find it in his divine Mysteries And from hence comes the esteem that we ought to have thereof
and the reverence we should bear to this estate for the Sonne of God having chosen the Crosse and sufferings and having united to his divine person by his incarnation meanness and infirmities and adversities of humane life he hath made them divine and ennobled them So that we must regard them much more for the dignity which they receive from Iesus Christ and to speak properly they are the sufferings of Iesus Christ for we are united to him we are members of his body flesh of his flesh bone of his bone and by reason of this unity they are no more our sufferings then the sufferings of Iesus seeing they are more to Iesus then to our selves Whence Saint Paul saith as the sufferings of Christ abound in you so our consolation abounds by Iesus Christ. The Apostle highly advancing the sufferings of Christianity calls them the sufferings of Iesus St. Peter speaks in the same manner Rejoyce in as much as you are partakers of Christ's sufferings And therefore when we see all that is in this World all the adversities and vicissitudes we must not passe them over indifferently or as men without grace and vertue stop at our own resentments and loose our selves in our weakness and naturall passions but we must lift up our eyes and thoughts to the consideration of Catholick truths and making use of the light of Faith endeavour to use all things according to the manner God requires and to the power he hath given us If we suffer let us not suffer as slaves and criminalls but as the Children and true Servants of God Let us suffer with esteem and in the spirit of Christianity a spirit holy and divine a spirit powerfull and couragious and which onely belongs to the chosen of God and to his greatest friends Hence the Apostle summing up the graces that the new Christians had received of God puts sufferings in the first place and accounts them as a singular favour He hath given you saith he not onely to believe on him but to suffer for him thereby shewing that it is a benefit of God to be called to the state of sufferings and to know how to make use thereof In the view of these truths let us beg of the Sonne of God part of his spirit of the Crosse and sufferings and his grace to support us under them that we may bear them with the spirit with joy and the grace of Christianity let us say with Saint Paul and often repeat this Prayer in our heart That the Lord would prepare our hearts to the love of God and to the patience of Iesus Christ. CHAP. XIV That we must suffer out of a zeal to the Iustice of God WE suffer in the wayes of sinners and for the zeal of Iustice which is the third Disposition that we have proposed when we enter into the zeal of God which brings him to do justice upon sin and that in all things we exercise upon our selves the judgement that God exerciseth therein in bearing in our hearts a true desire and an effectuall will to submit to the justice of God before whom we are sinners before whom we have offended so many ways By this Disposition the perfect Christian must undergo all sorts of pains and sufferings and regard the adversities and inconveniencies of humane life as effects of God's Iustice on him as a sinner whereby he would destroy sin in him and root out imperfections With this spirit and Disposition he must endure all naturall incommodities as cold heat poverty sickness afflictions and such accidents which are the attendants of our life regarding and bearing them with this zeal to the Iustice of God upon sin This thought if it be solid and well settled in the soul of a perfect Christian will make all pain sweet and easie For what can we suffer but we deserve much more if we weigh our afflictions our sufferings travails and adversities with the number of our sins Who will not see the deformity and weight of our sins and how much they surpass the rigour and weight of our sufferings If we consider the hate God bears to sin and to sinners by reason of sin who will not confess that our crimes are much greater then our pains that amongst our afflictions and sufferings even the greatest and most insupportable the mercy of God appears more then his justice What more manifest example of Gods hatred against a sinner then the rigour wherewith the divine justice which is alwayes equitable punished sin in Iesus Christ And if the eternall Father as the Prophet saith so rigorously chastised his Son for the sins of his people what should he not do to us If the Son of God who is holiness it self sanctity uncreated and incarnate becoming a pledge and offering for our sins was subjected not onely to our miseries and naturall infirmities which are great but to adversities afflictions poverty contempt accusations ignominy even to the rigour of the cross what ought we to suffer who are sinners and objects of the hatred and justice of God If this be done to the green wood what will be done to the dry If the Sonne of God who is the eternall and true wisdom chose this estate voluntarily subjected himself to all miseries incited by zeal to the glory of his Father and to satisfie divine Iustice what ought not we to do what pains and rigours should not we embrace who are the guilty to appease this angry God to satisfie and allay his provoked wrath to restore to glory what we have ravish'd from him Let us enter into this disposition and zeal of submitting our selves to the stroke of Gods Iustice and we shall see all things will be easie to indure we shall not complain whatever befalls us whatsoever is done unto us we shall not take it as a wrong nothing will appear harsh unto us nothing insupportable the quality of sinners and multitude of our offences will tell us that we deserve more we shall bless God for the favour he does us in giving us the meanes to honour him by our sufferings The Christian therefore must have a care to bear all adversities all changes of this life all sorts of afflictions losses and misfortunes yea all incommodities and naturall vexations of humane life with an intention to glorifie God to submit to divine Iustice against sin O how great must be the courage of a Christian how invincible his constancy in all changes and misfortunes if he professeth this zeal of God if he be animated with the hatred God beares to sin How easie would all things appear if in them we had no intent but to act and suffer onely to please God with a full resignation of our selves in all things to his divine conduct To facilitate this disposition and make it more generall we must remember that the Wisdom of God rules all this great World and hath a generall and particular superintendency over all things Nothing
displease him and as much as she hath displeased him by her offences she desires to glorifie him and this desire bears her to a zeal of Gods justice and finally this zeal animates her to support all things patiently and to embrace them freely Hence we learn that the true spirit of Repentance consisteth not onely in sorrow for sins committed and a hatred of all sins but also it contains a desire to glorifie God for we can no more enter into Paradise without this then without repentance Herein they must have a care who perform indeed some acts of mortification and suffer many things but with certain dissemblings or out of some private considerations or concernments and many times out of curiosity Let them take heed they build not with straw for true repentance hath no eyes but for God no other regard but to content God and to glorifie his divine justice The more love the soul hath the more ardent is her zeal so that if she love much she desires to sorrow much and believes she hath never done enough for true love is never satisfied Such a soul esteemeth all pains sweet injuries truth contempt honour and labours the enjoyments of her spirit O how good it is to suffer thus for who knows how to love knows how to suffer and transported with the love of sufferings cryes out with the penitent King Lord prove me and try me search my reins and heart To be throughly acquainted with true repentance we must further consider the effects of it for if it be true the effects of it shall be as certain and will be great and true True repentance annihilates us and destroys sin in us and the fountains of sin as also our evil inclinations and vicious habits it roots out of our hearts all that divides us from God all that displeaseth him it converts us to God it drawes us neer to him it gives us God and separates us from the creatures and our selves For the true penitent is crucified in all things and dead to himself of a death to sin which giveth him life in God and makes him lead a new life altered in himself and in his actions This is the true meaning of Saint Paul where he saith As you have yeilded your members servants to uncleanness and to iniquity even so now yeild your members servants to righteousness unto holiness Which shews the great change and conversion which repentance must operate in us seeing our members which have been servants to sin must now be onely servants to righteousness and to serve God after a manner which operates in us sanctification and serves as an instrument to our glory Further true repentance unites us to God and puts us into a new and particular relation to Iesus Christ. He acquires a new right over us when we participate of his mercies and applies to us the merits of his death and sufferings pardoning our sin He acquires a new right over us because he applies to us the price of his blood by the merits of his death He withdraws us from the empire of sin whereto we had subjected and sold our selves he delivers us from the captivity and slavery of vice to put us into the liberty of his children into the possession of his spirit so that from the time that he delivered us from the tyranny of sin we belong unto him and are his children his captives his heritage we are so many times his as he pardons our sins as many sins as he pardons so many times he offers himself to his eternall Father to pay the price of our misdeeds and offereth him the merit and satisfaction of his death for the redemption of offences Thus he purchaseth us anew as often as he pardoneth our sins Repentance if it be true gives the Son of God a new right in us and draws us from the right we have of our selves to put us into new propriety as to him whence it follows that the sins which separated us from God by our own default serve by the bands of repentance to unite us to God by the new right Iesus Christ hath to us by the band of love which we have to him Many sins are forgiven her for she loved much and he to whom less is pardoned loved less saith Iesus Christ. True repentance produceth two admirable effects one in relation to Iesus Christ which comprehends an abnegation from the creature and our selves to be God's and Iesus Christ's to whom we must be the more united the more he hath pardoned us The Father is an effect of love which issues from this union adherence He that is most united loves most and the more he loves the faster he ties himself Mary Magdalen is an example hereof who was no sooner converted but she fastened her self to Iesus Christ to crucifie her self in his love and to live no longer then with him and for him If we will examine what hath been said it will be easie to see that many persons deceive themselves in this business of so great concernment I mean Repentance who go so negligently and indifferently to this Sacrament that being they are sensible neither of the effect nor advantage of it and it is much to be feared lest they find at the hour of death rather the penitence of a perfidious Iudas of an impious Antiochus of a sensuall Esau then of a Saint Peter or a Mary Magdalen However if be let him apprehend the menaces of the Son of God If ye do not repent ye shall likewise perish He speaks of the true repentance which cannot be true if it have not the true effects else it is not repentance Herein the Christian must take heed as the most important thing of his salvation If we apply these principles of truth we shall find that it hath been no digression to speak of Repentance but that by the same principles which oblige us to bear the spirit of true penitence we have the grace and faculty to live patiently and Christianly amidst all contrarieties and disturbances of this life and in pursuit of that we may make use with profit of all accidents we meet with in the world He that lives in the spirit of repentance as a perfect Christian ought not onely to suffer with ease and cheerfulness but also to subject himself to the divine will and honour of God wherein consists the spirit of repentance In brief he makes his profit of all as a faithfull steward of God's gifts I say he makes profit knowing it is a favour received of Iesus Christ that all sufferings and adversities in this world are profitable to us being sanctified by the pretious sufferings of the Son of God and may serve to satisfie the justice of God which must be looked upon as a particular mercy and favour which Iesus the Son of God hath obtain'd for us by his incarnation and death For if we consider naturally the sufferings and afflictions of mans life they
where sin had abounded that love might triumph over us Let us then descend to the particularities of grace and examine the properties and effects thereof The grace which we receive and sanctifies us is the grace of Iesus Christ which flowes from his fulness and communicates to our souls grace which is not onely supernaturall but was made for Iesus and is proportioned to his Soveraignty and infinite dignity whence we are called Christians It hath all its being dignity and residence in Iesus it is above our nature and in the rank of supernaturall things in an order soveraign and particular worthy of the soveraignty of Iesus and proportioned to his Filiation order and grace very different from the originall Iustice which was given to the first man For though the grace of Adam were supernatural yet was it an order very inferiour to Christian grace being proportioned to his nature and inclinations in the state of innocency All men as well as Adam had been sanctified in the order and according to the order of nature and in the naturall uses thereof But it is not so in Christian grace for that is not proportioned to the nature of man but above it wholly in Iesus wholly for him it issues out of him and by an effect proper and particular to it drawes us from our selves to unite us to him as members to the head and being united sanctifies us in Him in such a manner as that we are no more in the quality of men and Children of Adam but as Children of God and members of the Sonne of God and by a grace proper to the Sonne of God of whose fulness we have all received Whence we infer that he who would be sanctified and partake of Christian grace must be united to Iesus Christ as the branch to the Tree the graft to the stock the members to the head and if united must also be one with him as the head and members make up but one body and consequently by reason of that unity must not onely partake of his grace but also his spirit and life in the same manner as we say the members move not themselves nor live but by the life of their head This being considered we see that to live Christianly it is not enough to say that we must be in grace but we must live in the spirit and life of Iesus for grace produceth this effect for as much as by the same principle whereby we are united to Iesus as members to their head we must live his life and be guided by his spirit And as it is the property of Christian grace to unite us to the Sonne of God so is it the effect of the same grace to rule us by his spirit and to make us live his life wherein appeares how perfect the life of a Christian in grace should be how exemplary and holy his actions must be how regular his motions and how pure his intentions seeing it is a life of grace which unites us to the Son of God which making us one with him causes us to live in his spirit and life Let us enter further into the consideration of grace and we shall see that according to the Apostle Grace is a participation of the divine nature These words contain the excellency of Christianity and describe all that can be said of grace The Apostle implies that we are accidentally what God is substantially and that which agrees with God and is proper to him according to his divine nature is appropriated to us and may be convenient for us according to the spirit of grace so that by grace we are elevated from our own baseness to the fellowship of Iesus Christ and we are put out of our selves to receive a new being in God Can any thing be said more admirable or great If we reflect on this truth we must needs confess that to live according to Christian grace and bear it's effects in our souls we must go out of our selves and be no more our own nor in our selves When we say we must go out of our selves we would intimate that the Christian to live like a perfect Christian must regard nothing but God mind no Interest but that of the glory of God please none but God have no desire but to accomplish the will of God In brief he must renounce himself and the love of all things to love none but God To live so as to go out of ones self is in two words all that we have proposed in the fourth Part. This is a Point may be thought hard and too high yet the practice thereof is necessary according to those words of the Son of God He that will follow me let him deny himself where we see how much a Christian is obliged to renounce all and to go out of himself after the manner we have declared which will appear more cleer if we consider the essence of the Precept of love for the love of Christianity is a love says Dionysius the Areopagite extatick that is to say it raiseth us to a contempt of our selves and all things to unite us to God who is essentially love and charity so that by the perfection of Christianity which is in the love of God we are drawn from the love of our selves and the creature to be onely God's and not to enjoy our selves in any thing but in God Thus which way soever we consider Christianity we find that both love and Christian grace causes us to go out of our selves to unite us to God and make us partakers of his divine Nature The SEQUELE FRom the Principle of Truth last explained we learn the great difference between the state of Innocency in Adam and the Christian righteousness in Iesus Christ for Adam had a power over all things it was permitted him to enjoy the whole world and to rejoyce therein Original righteousness and the grace of the first man was in that and in the lawfull use of all things but Christian grace is quite contrary for God wills not any more that man rejoyce and content himself in any thing but in him that he live not but for him that he alone be his possession and heritage Besides the state of Adam was in exaltation in the possession in the satisfaction and pleasure that he might lawfully take in the creatures that were subjected to him during the time that he remained in obedience to God But the state of Christianity is wholly opposite it consists altogether in privations in humiliations in dejections and in summ it devests man of all power even that which he hath of himself that he may be wholly Iesus Christ's that separating himself from the creatures and from himself Iesus Christ might be his All and his Fulness that by Christian grace he might enter into society with Iesus Christ and by him with his Father according to what the beloved Apostle promised us when he said That your fellowship be with the Father
have said we are God's without whom we can neither honour God nor be acceptable to him It follows that the foundation of true piety consisteth in Iesus Christ that is in the adherence and relation of our souls to Iesus Christ and in the submission of our being and life to the conduct of his spirit and grace for by that adhering to him and being subjected to him we are pleasing to God and receive in him and by him the capacity of honouring and serving God which is the proper effect and chief duty of piety and devotion The truth would need no proof but that few persons think thereof and that many are ignorant of it therefore it seems to be to purpose to speak thereof more at large in the Principles of Christianity Without out going any further let us consider that to be a Christian we must put off the old man with his deeds and put on the new man Iesus Christ it is the Doctrine of the Apostle whereon we must found our Discourse If to be a Christian we must crucify and put off the old man to put on the new with much more reason to be a good and devout Christian we must crucify and put off the first to invest us with the second When we say that we must be clothed with Iesus Christ it is to shew we must be united to him adhere to him and as a garment adheres to the body and is united to it so must we be Iesus Christ's but much more perfectly then this comparison expresses Reason and Faith will easily convince us of this truth if we doubt of it for faith teaches us that it belongs to Iesus Christ to give us grace and strength to put off the old man that is to draw us from our imperfections to deliver us from our sins and annihilate our evil inclinations It is the same that Iesus Christ invests us with the new gives us his spirit grace and vertue for and according to Saint Paul Iesus Christ hath been to us wisdom and righteousness sanctification and redemption In a word Iesus Christ is all in all to us Now that the Son of God may operate in us all that we have said it is necessary that we be united to him adhere to him and be subjected to his designes his will and divine operations Who can deny so manifest a truth If Iesus annihilate our evill inclinations and root sin out of our hearts ought not we to be subject to his conduct and spirit and so receive his operations of mercy If we participate of his grace and vertue and live according to his Commandements is it not necessary we should be united to him And how should we be united to him but by a true relation and faithful adherence to him This deduction is easie and clearly shewes how true it is that the foundation of true piety consisteth in unity and in the adherence and dependance of the soul on Iesus Christ it is acknowledg'd by all that devotion cannot be true if we be not exempted from our vices and imperfections and filled with the spirit of Iesus Christ and assisted with his grace to make us worthy to honour and serve God We cannot perceive in that devotion nor practise the exercises thereof if the same Iesus Christ be not operating in us the will and perfecting according to his will This Iesus Christ said to his Apostles and in them to all Christians Abide in me and I in you as the branch cannot bear fruit of itself except it abide in the vine no more can ye except ye abide in me adding he that abideth in me and I in him the same bringeth forth much fruit for without me ye can do nothing O words of love words spoken the eve of his death to shew us the excess of his love that proceeded from his heart wholly divine and full of tenderness whereby being moved he further said unto them Abide in my love So infinitely was he desirous to possess our hearts and to triumph over us by his love whence he often repeats the same words to engrave and imprint this care in our souls and by the proceedings of his love oblige us to love him again This indeed is a thing we ought to have continually in our thoughts for all the happiness of a Christian consisteth in this relation and this amorous dwelling of our souls in Iesus All our good is in this union since that by it and the adherence we have to Iesus we become his and by him we receive a power and capacity to bear the fruits of good works to practise vertue and to passe our life in the exercises of true piety and Christian devotion which make us hope for the reward which God promises to those that serve him Without this relation and union we shall continue in our weakness and incapacity our life is unprofitable barren unfruitfull and in evident perill If any man abide not in me saith Jesus Christ he is cast forth as a branch and is withered and men gather them and cast them into the fire If we will come to the experience of what we have said let us examine God's conduct of such souls as he will save and we shall find that the first knowledge he gives them is that of Iesus Christ proposing to them his Crosse or some Mystery of his life the first motions the first thoughts of piety that he inspires them with are those of a certain compassion and sympathy with his Crosse and sufferings or those of love and tenderness in consideration of his benefits If on the other side we intentively consider souls even the most ignorant we shall easily know they have a secret resentment and an inclination to Iesus Christ though they know him not But God alwayes begins these divine Communications and effects of his mercy by this first grace The reason is manifest in Divinity which teaches us that the eternall Father doth nothing but by Iesus Christ operates nothing in our souls nor in the state of grace no more then in nature but by his Sonne The first favour therefore the elect soul chooses to receive of God is that the eternall Father hath given it to his Sonne and there Iesus Christ accepts of it and appropriates it to himself Now as God demands our co-operation which yet we cannot give without his grace and therefore inspires the soul with a resentment of Iesus Christ gently insinuating into it a certain attraction which sweetly drawes it to a knowledge and piety towards Iesus Christ so our soul begins to be Iesus Christs perfecting her self in the state of christianity according to the measure that he advances in this affection and in this relation to Iesus Christ. The Sonne of God speaking to the Iewes obstinate in their errours saith None can come unto me if the Father who hath sent me doth not draw him And to shew the manner that the eternall Father uses to lead our
the first operation of grace in our souls is to become servants to Iesus Christ. This service is the first estate of Christianity the first promise that we make to God by a solemn publike profession in the Church by Baptisme There we devote our selves to Iesus Christ to belong to him to depend on him and at the same time we receive and aknowledge him as our Soveraigne we adore and reverence him as our Redeemer we are united to him as to our Head Thus this state of service brings grace yea singular grace which is the first thing that God gives in his Church by Baptisme a grace which he gives with a mark and impression of his power so deeply imprinted in our souls that nothing can deface it not Hell it self Whence we see that at the same time that Iesus Christ conceives us by Baptisme and receives us into his Church as his children we enter into the state of servants and vow our selves to Iesus Christ as such So that by one and the same Sacrament we are made children of God and received his servants and consequently we are in the House of God both as sons and servants yet so as that we are his children by grace his servants by nature Now as we say that the state of subjection is essentiall to the creature and to the Christian so the same state is essentiall to the piety of Christians and therefore they who would establish themselves in piety must begin their establishment in this subjection for we must bear a relation of love and inclinations to Iesus Christ as we do of purchase and necessity To be convinced of this truth we are to observe that this state of subjection consisteth in taking Iesus Christ for the end and object of our actions we serve him we contemplate him as our Soveraign and Redeemer we do all things by a spirit of love honour and dependance on him So that this state of dependance and service is a generall Disposition wherein we perform all our actions By this Disposition they are truly Christian accomplished in the spirit of true piety and though there appear nothing outwardly either new or extraordinary in our life yet by this disposition and state of service we are more neerly Christ's who looks on us as his own raising and uniting us to himself by a reall dependance wherein consists the true spirit of piety For by the state of service we acknowledge Christ our Soveraign and King and our selves his vassals we adore him as our Redeemer and confess our selves his servants In this quality we adhere inviolably to all his will In a word we see that he is our Head and we united to him as his members In this union we live by his spirit and follow his motions in which three points consisteth solid piety and the perfection of Christianity So that we are so much the more God's and consequently the more perfect by how much we are the more abased and devested of our selves entirely depending and faithfully operating under the power and will of him who makes himself ours that we may be his and hath purchased us to himself at an inestimable rate For this cause they who exercise themselves seriously in piety begin at the same time to look upon the Son of God as the object of their life and resign themselves up to him Hence springs the daily practice of certain acts of interiour devotion which is ordinarily proposed to them that seek true piety recommended to them because they are profitable and necessary drawing the soul from it self to elevate and unite it to Iesus Christ. We shall further explain it in the ensuing Chapter But before we enter into that Discourse we are to know that we must not conceive these acts of interiour devotion to be actions meerly transcient or a simple operation of our spirit for that would be little in comparison of what God requires But we must pass further and bear in the bottom of our hearts the state wherein we propose these interior acts that must be our principall end and intention For though God onely hath power and authority to put us into this estate when and how he pleases yet because in the wayes of grace God doth ordinarily expect our consent and cooperation it is for that very reason that the soul exerciseth her self in this practice of devotion and it is upon this account that she forms to her self these interiour Acts whereby she resignes and offers up to God her heart and will So that in this exercise the christian must not content himself to form this Act and to pronounce the words but he must demand of God the grace to bear a permanent estate thereof and for his part must do his utmost endeavour to attain it In the next Chapter you have them particularly explain'd CHAP. VII Containing certain interiour acts for those souls who are desirous to be established and confirmed in true piety THE first act of interiour piety to Iesus Christ which we are to practise frequently every day is an act of honour and adoration This I place first because it is the first employment of our soul and the first duty of the creature who is obliged to honour and adore its God with so much necessity that the very Devills and damned are forced to do it it is the first act that christian Religion proposeth To form this act we must acknowledge Iesus Christ Sonne of God both God and man we must regard him as our Soveraign Lord and Redeemer as cause and principle of all our happiness We must annihilate our selves before him and humble our selves even to the bottom of our soul willingly submitting to all that he is This is called an act of adoration It contains two effects of the powers of the soul one of the understanding employ'd in considering and acknowledging Iesus Christ in his greatness and Soveraignty looking on him as the principle of all good and of all the being of nature and grace and esteeming and honouring him as such Then followes an effect of the will which humbles it self before him receives and accepts him as her God King and all and with all its strength submits wholly to his power and greatness in an act of adoration Hence we may perceive that adoration consists not onely in an esteem of God be it never so highly elevated but requires also a voluntary submission of the soul with expressions of honour interiour and exteriour He therefore who practiseth as he ought an act of adoration desireth alwayes to shew his respect by the effects As the Sonne of God is infinitely adorable he who would adore him strives daily to increase in adoration and consequently endeavours with great fidelity to subject himself more and more in will and deed to the greatness and Soveraignty of Iesus Christ. I say in will and deed for it would avail but little to say it onely with the mouth and to have in thought the
him and to have as much conformity in our actions to those of Iesus as there is between the head and the members of the same body So that this imitation must not be indifferent but most holy and perfect All as many of you saith the Apostle as are baptized into Ie. Christ have put on Christ that is ye bear his Livery and as the Doctors interpret it ye are made like unto him ye imitate his vertues and are followers of his life and actions For it is but reason that where the head is there the members should also be and that there be a resemblance and conformity of the one to the other To imitate then the Sonne of God implies two things the one is that we do what he hath done the other that we do it with the same spirit and dispositions wherewith he did it He was humbled for us he shewed his love and clemency towards us Let us also learn of him to be gentle and humble of heart He was obedient even to death the death of the Crosse let us imitate his obedience preferring the accomplishment of his divine Ordinances and holy will before all things even our own life He was born in a stable layd in a manger he took poverty for the companion of his life he condemned the World and despised its pride shewing us that all is vanity and a meer nothing in the eyes of God Let us do the same and though we are in the World condemn its vanity in a word so use it that all our life interiour and exteriour may be a continuall imitation of the life of Iesus This is the true piety that a Christian must exercise the onely meanes to be perfect In this imitation and resemblance consisteth the perfection of the soul as well in the state of grace as of glory We know that when we appear we shall be like him we shall see him as he is saith Saint Iohn If then we shall be like him in glory we must also be like him in grace for glory is nothing but grace consummated grace glory commenced But we must not rest here it is not enough to do barely what the Son of God hath done we may deceive our selves herein believing we do much when we do nothing of value because Iesus Christ being man as we are and conversing amongst us no doubt but we may find some conformity and resemblance to him even among the wicked in the common states of men many suffer and are oppressed many poor and humbled many sequester themselves from the pomp of the Court and live in the obscurity of a solitary life many fast and pray and do almost all the exteriour actions that the Son of God exercised upon earth He was man as we are we are men as he was but this does not perfect us this is no imitation of him the reason is because it is not enough to do as he did but we must do it with the spirit in the dispositions and by the principle that he operates which few persons mind It is not enough to do but we must do it by a principle of grace not of generall grace comprised under the common and generall name we give to all the gifts of God which is an usuall way of speaking but of grace which giveth us Iesus Christ communicateth to us his spirit and puts us into the holy dispositions of his soul. So that doing all things by this principle we perfectly imitate the Son of God so far that our naturall common actions are withdrawn from their meanness and elevated and united to those of the Son of God after a particular manner as being operated by the same principle and with the same dispositions This manner of acting is peculiar to the state of Christianity and in all circumstances conformable to the state of grace for by Christian grace we are new creatures creatures in Iesus Christ as the Apostle saith and consequently we have a new being and life Which if we have we must also have new inclinations another goodness and all our actions must be conformable to this new estate seeing that according to the ordinary maxims the work is according to the being Now as the being we have by Christian grace is wholy divine elevated and entirely in Iesus Christ it followes that all our actions must be elevated and done in Iesus For this the Son of God humbled himself to all practices and exercises to ennoble and sanctify them for according to the Fathers Iesus entring into the waters in the day of his Baptisme by his touching them he sanctifies the waters of our Baptisme and as Saint Augustine saith he sanctified the world and blessed it by his conversation So by the use he hath made of humane nature wherewith he hath clothed himself and of all the exercises and functions proper thereto he sanctify'd ours shewing that we may imitate him seeing he became man to be the rule law and model of our actions and not onely imitate him but express and represent him to the life and be so many Christ's as members of the Son of God We must be one with him and consequently must not operate but with him and in his person not in our own For this cause he gives us his spirit whereby we act or to say better he acts all in us It follows that they are not so much our vertues as those of Iesus in us Herein appears the great difference between Christian vertues and morall or humane For instance The love God requires of a Christian must not be that of a Pagan who loves them that love him nor that of a Politician who loves according to his humour or interest much less that of a Iew who loves not but out of an hope of reward promised or a fear of Iudgments The love of a Christian must be the same with that of Iesus that is he must love with the same love wherewith Iesus loves he must love with the love of Iesus as he must live the life of Iesus Walk in charity saith Saint Paul as Iesus Christ hath loved you The Son of God himself in the Eve of his passion speaks thus to his Apostles I give you a new Commandment that ye love one another as I have loved you To love is no new Commandment this law was imprinted in our hearts from the beginning of the world but the manner of loving is new we must love by the same love wherewith Iesus loved us his love must be in us O how great is this love how pure how free from self-interest how strong and powerfull since according to the Apostle it is the same love which made Iesus to be born and die for us even then when we were his enemies and sin raigning in us The Son of God gives us a cleer testimony of this truth speaking to his Father I have declared to them thy Name and will declare it that the love