to do so even with great Conviction and Sbame that God hath replenished my spirit with several most rare Graces and unknown Lights which will render me so much the more damnable before him if he have not Mercy on me I own that all the knowledges which God hath for so many years and does continue dayly to pour into my Soul as that of the new Jerusalem of the conversion of Jews and Pagans of the destruction of Antichrist of Satan reigning in all States and Conditions Sects and Religions under the name of Christ the vanity of human literature or that which they call Theologie whether studying or composing Books which I see by the Light of Faith to be meer delusions of Satan and so many other secrets which God speaks often in the ear of my Soul are all nothing in respect of the holiness it must be filled with that it may see God And that if it have not the last though it did divinely possess all these others Satan might well entertain it therein and even teach it more provided he might keep it always captive under one or more sins It was upon that very foundation that I did passionatly love and study human Literature in which Satan would willingly have nourished me and entertained my spirit all my life in detaining me thereby from the search and from the true adoration of God in the Soul So I was already in the profession of the Ministry even for some years that I had not any true knowledge of God and most ignorant of true Religion These things could get no entry into my Vnderstanding finding it so full of prejudices in favour of the reformed religion and against all other Sects as also addicted to Books and worldly Sciences This is it that made me leave the Romish Church in which I was born and lived to the age of 22. or 23. years apprehending that I should perish if I died in it believing also that the Reformed Church was altogether holy I was abused or imposed on therein From one Babylon which I left I 'm come into another If I were yet in that of my Nativity I would no more leave it but with my Soul and Spirit and would sanctifie my self there as well as in so many other Sects which I perceive now to be all but works or Idols of mens hands So many Pantings Prayers Studies and other things which I have employed to attain to the quality of Minister I had employed them to the sanctifying of my soul Also I know that the charge of Pastor which I have exercised more than these ten years is a charge meerly politique and human and that has nothing Divine nor of God but vain in the persons exercising it and in them that yield themselves the subjects of it And although for some years I have preached Truths unknown unto me and also which men cannot nor will not know to wit that God is a Spirit and that he is to be worshipped as such Yet I find it is a subtil Deceit to pretend to sanctifie men without being holy our selves and that these good wills do not always come from the holy Spirit hence I am perswaded that as long as Ministers are not holy God will not work any thing by them and that I do firmly believe that God hath at present in his Anger cursed the Ministers and Ministry of the Reformed Churches I say farther that it is impossible for a good man to exercise it after God without partaking with mens sins This is one of the reasons that oblige me to write to you and because I believe you give no counsel but after God's mind I desire your advice herein and wish God give me Grace to follow it namely the Ministry being both in me and in others such as I have just now described it if I should continue in it or not that is I desire to know by you what is Gods will concerning me many reasons oblige me to leave it off and I cannot tell what other points of conscience do yet retain me in it If it were God's will that I should forsake it it would be in the desire of coming as near unto you as I could especially if I were assured to be in the least usefull to aid you as much in the glorifying of God I mean in carrying that new and everlasting Gospel unto the World as I should hope you would be unto me for my souls welfare Another reason obliging me to write to you is that notwithstanding so many Graces that God hath put into my Soul yet I am not satisfied in my Conscience I am yet wrathful and am carnal in Marriage These two sins have very sore and often afflicted my Soul even I dare not promise unto God that I will not commit them any more for I have promised too often to him and have fallen therein too too often again My Soul has been in great sorrow for it and has learnt thereby to put it self below all gross sinners also God would so humble me thereby that I never reprove sin or sinners nor ever speak of them but I fall into greater my self It is in this and in other things that you shall judge proper that I desire you would give me some rules to lead my Life after God in the things of God and in the things of the World would to God it may be to my Salvation But there is enough said and asked for the first time I am in the bottom of my Soul and desire to be yet more Mrs Your most Humble most Obedient and most Obliged Servant ANTONI GRELLOT Minister of the French Church of Outreberg At Outreberg in the Electoral Palatine the 6-16 Novemb. 1677. She received a Letter from a Gentleman of London the stile and genius giving reason to expound the R. B. that subscribes it to be the famous and honourable Robert Boyle A Vowing her writings most praise-worthy and of so sweet an odour that he caused translate them into English with design to cause print them in that Language and signifying his most ardent desires to know of her State and her other writings so far as God should encline her heart and so rejoyce extremely his spirit because with her a Lover of the holy Truth and of the life of which she gives testimony unto others and to him wishing her all good and loving her in the Love which is life it self R. B. The Inscription To the most noble Virgin Antonia Bourignon in her Lodging Amsterdam See the veneration with bleeding regret of that just penetrating Spirit Sir George Makenzie Late Lord Avocat to his Majesty in a Treatise De imbellicitate ratiocinationis humanae published last year by Grevius at Vtrecht page 49. having said that we should employ our reason in warring against Vice and in attaining to Virtue and that there is nothing more just adds TAnta est ratiocinationis hujus efficacia ut etiam in aetatis diluculo infantes
Clouds agitated by the wind and representing such figures to our eyes It is even so with mens Sciences who fancy themselves wise when they are very ignorant For I do not believe that they have yet truly discovered one science even natural and how can they then in mystical or spiritual things That is what Jesus Christ said to his disciples He that seeth me seeth my father but you know neither me nor the father Notwithstanding we will often search curiously the profound Mysteries and divine Secrets and we know not natural things which we see and handle One will vaunt in being a Doctor of Medicine another in Theology another will be an Astronomer and so of other sciences although they be all alike ignorant of what they profess and think they know well And that proceeds from that airy Pride which the Devil hath inspired in to their Spirit perswading them that they are wise and worthy of honour and esteem though they be in effect ignorant and worthy of contempt We see that Physicians esteem themselves wise because they have read Medicinal Authors and these Authors are often as ignorant as they that read and follow them because all they have written is but vanishing figures which waver in the air of their imaginations and what the ancients have written is followed by their posterity And so they think to cure the sick by remedies coined in the air of mans imagination who seem to have divers Sciences and Remedies while they do but guess and hazard the lives of the sick and I believe the Physicians have killed many more than they 've cured to reckon the most common and ordinary and that because they have not discovered the Secrets of Nature and know not the constitution of man's body nor the origin of his diseases and consequently cannot exhibit proper remedies for them but often give what proves poison to kill men instead of curing them And therefore there is no subject of glorying for being called a Doctor in Medicine but rather of abasement and confusion for their great ignorance to the hurt of the Patient they take care of And as that ignorance is great in regard of bodily medicine it is yet greater in regard of the spiritual which is Theology for it kills many more souls than medicine does bodies and so th' one hath not subject of glorying of his skill more than th' other being they are equally ignorant which do not add nor pare the one from the other having each great ground of humility If Astrologers also knew how far short they are of the knowledge of the heavens they would be ashamed to bear the name and would acknowledge all their wisdom in that to be but folly and fancies of men who have not attained to the truth of that Science and what they have written are but imaginary suppositions far from being truths And upon like imaginations are founded also all other human Sciences which they learn by reading and study For when they are not founded 〈◊〉 the Truth of God they are altogether vain and false and are only fit to deceive men who by them deceive one another and hinder each other to come to the knowledge of the Truth of God and Wisdom of the Holy Spirit which is the only true wisdom and before which all the wisdom of men is but folly to blind our spirits that they should not come to the knowledge of themselves In which consists True Humility of Heart which Jesus Christ says we must learn of him which to do she prays you who loves the perfection of your soul Your Well-affectioned in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON In Holstein near Gottorp Castle Jan. 18. 1672. St. Vel. THE V. LETTER Humility is acquired by the Knowledge of ones Self To the same showing him that the true Knowledge even of things most esteemed by men ought to serve to humble them such as the Honours Riches and Pleasures of this life That all these are vain disquieting unsatisfying and hurtful My dear Child YOu have seen by my last what Humility is where I have shown you that it consists in the knowledge of our selves and that no person can ever be proud but for lack of knowing himself for in knowing themselves they will find subject enough to humble themselves by seeing their infirmities and miseries both of soul and body for he who will reflect seriously upon himself he shall not only discover his own nothingness but will judge himself much worse than nothing and consequently will be far from esteeming and magnifying himself unless he be altogether a fool and void of all reason and understanding For if he judge by an upright judgment what he is he shall see nothing but misery and infirmities in his nature and ignorance and Disorder in his spirit for a Beast knows more than he for the conduct of its life and is more moderate in eating and drinking and other natural things than man and we see him frequently exceed in these things which Beasts do not Thence is it that man is much more subject to diseases than the Beasts because they commit more excesses and Intemperances than they And when man finds himself more disorderly and foolish in the conduct of his life than the Beasts ought he not to humble himself before God and men as worthy of all confusion seeing God hath given him a Spirit more perfect than any Beast and yet he knows not to apply it to rule his passions and appetites which often causes to him great evils and sometimes death Which ought to be a great subject of humility and Contempt of himself he can never knowing that magnify and esteem himself if it is not because he is void of judgment and reason which he looses as soon as he gives entry to the vanities which the devil inspires into his spirit to esteem himself Then he goes from one error to another because fallen from the Light of the Truth and knows nothing but falshood which that evil Spirit makes him believe and inspires into his Spirit that he is worthy of Honour for his Wisdom or Riches or Virtue though he be contemptible even in all these very respects For his Wisdom is but folly before God and his riches are but weighty charges painful to be born and cause trouble and disquiet to preserve them and his Virtue cannot be other than feigned seeing it is not founded on the knowledge of his nothingness and truth of his miseries And Therefore vain-glory and esteem of our selves can never be other than meer folly which Satan inspires and foists into mens spirits seeing there is in them nothing esteemable as to the corrupted nature but aboundance of miseries worthy of Contempt and Scorn So that we may truly call a proud man a very Fool because he glories of his Miseries and judges his Ignorance Wisdom and his Troubles Riches For such are temporal Riches which create continual troubles and disquiet with a thousand cares both to acquire
or temporal or for the good and edification of our Neighbour In all such cases the Devil will play the dumb and keep us silent when we should speak At another time hee 'l play the Orator making us speak and discourse what we ought to be silent of and so will draw from our words great sin For both good and evil persons are often offended at our words If we speak the Truth they are not capable to hear it For it is as a two-edged sword and so even pious persons themselves cannot support it while it reproves since correction is never agreeable in the time when it is administred but if we speak falshood or say any thing to please men the wicked as well as the good shall be thereby stumbled For our example will fortifie the wicked in their wickedness and falshood and the good shall be offended that we who profess Virtue are not true in every thing and will yet please the world and worldlings So that on every hand we give advantage to the Devil in speaking or keeping silence And that as long as we have not obtained spiritual Diligence to watch over all our words and actions For if you will my Child reflect upon your self you shall experience that you do or say nothing without sinning But because the Devil holds you yet in Spiritual negligence you perceive it not but by chance For he obscures your memory that you should not remember what 's necessary and represents to your mind what you ought to forget And by that makes you do his will as well in Spiritual as in temporal concerns for it is indifferent to him by what he ensnares you But he will be loath to tempt by evil actions such as seek to become Jesus Christ's Disciples He tempts them but by Omissions knowing that they will not follow his suggestions in evil things though readily in omissions and so he makes them forget or neglect the things that are for the Glory of God and the Salvation of their Souls or that of others Now he gains much more with good persons by these Omissions than he could do by actions seeing evil actions displease welmeaning persons and are reprehensible before men And therefore they would not commit them although the Devil did tempt them if it were only for avoiding a bad example or scandalizing their Neighbour But sins of omission are more secret and difficult to discover and consequently more dangerous for souls which have not spiritual diligence For they fall insensibly and without perceiving it in spiritual negligence And when they are fallen therein they often know not that they have sinned Attributing that neglect to the weakness of their Memory or infirmity of their Understanding without perceiving that the Devil occasions the forgetting of things necessary for the soul and body of man which is a subtil Snare of Satan So my Son you must watch well lest he surprise you ignorantly For it will not be enough before God to say I thought not of it or I forgot Seeing we are always bound to think of and remember the things that are necessary and salutary hence is the proverb He that sins ignorantly goes ignorantly to Hell And it is said somewhere That Ignorance does not excuse Sin To shew that spiritual Diligence is especially necessary for him that would work out his Salvation and that God admits no excuses in what man is oblieged to do I believe among men every one will be ready to justifie and excuse himself for being all frail and imperfect they flatter and excuse also such as are like themselves when they love them Then they attribute to fragility what proceeds from spiritual negligence but God who tryes the Reins and searches the Consciences makes another judgment of our actions and omissions He will condemn for sin whatever we have neglected to do for his glory and our Salvation or for the Salvation of others when it was in our power It will not be enough to say to God I have not found if you have not done necessary duty to search There are persons so imprudent to believe that God will not take an accompt of them for what they have not known In which they shall find themselves far deceived at Death For we are always oblieged to search what we need to find And we should absolutely know the means by which we may arrive at Salvation as are the Commandments of God and the Gospel Precepts And he that performs not what is there ordained cannot be saved It will not be enough for him to say I did not know what God required nor the Gospel-law seeing he is oblieged to know both and to do all possible diligence to learn them that he may do them If then we have not that spiritual Diligence for our Salvation we shall never obtain it For we are oblieged to know what is necessary to Salvation and the ignorance of these things will not excuse the sin So much the rather because Jesus Christ says Seek and you shall find pray and you shall receive knock and it shall be opened to you Which is not to say as many ignorants alledge that Jesus Christ hath satisfyed all for us seeing he exhorts us to seek the Kingdom of Heaven to pray to knock and to do all that we can to obtain it Teaching thereby that that spiritual diligence is necessary to Salvation And these perswade themselves that they shall obtain it by the diligence of another Which is but a flattery to Destroy us while the Apostle admonishes us so much To watch and pray that we enter not into Tentation For if the merits of Jesus Christ had satisfied all what need had we to watch and pray we needed but to remain in ease and quiet in expecting that Jesus Christ had satisfied all for us Then we needed not to do any thing For it should be in vain to knock pray and search if all were found and obtained by the merits of Jesus Christ Which may well let you see my Son that men are at present given up to a Spirit of Error and that they know not the truth of things for they make one another believe Falshoods for Truths and would by their glosses annul the Doctrine of Jesus Christ and his Apostles But that Doctrine excites always unto Spiritual Diligence for Jesus Christ says We must pray always and without ceasing That is to say that we must always be diligent to watch over all our words and actions Otherwise we shall not speak one word without committing sin nor do any action that shall not be defiled so long as we remain and live in corrupt nature wherein we are born For that corruption loving it self turns to its own glory and profit all that we do or say Which is a continual sin which we cannot evite but by Spiritual Diligence or continual Prayer which is the same thing For being continually attacqued by sin we must continually combat it or yield and
for Righteousness sake And by consequence the Doctrine of the learned now adays is altogether Antichristian that is to say contrary to that of Jesus Christ Not that their words are dissonant for they read the same Gospel which Jesus Christ and his Apostles taught but they gloss and explain so the words of the Gospel that they bring forth a quite perverse sence Notwithstanding they live in quiet though all their actions manners and desires be quite contrary to the Gospel Doctrine For every one now idolizes his own proper will And Jesus Christ said That we must renounce it Methinks all Christendom is become at present the people of Ephesus which adored the great Diana with this difference that Christians now adays adore the Corruption of the flesh whereas those adored a Statue of gold or Silver For we see these learned strive who can best find out subtil Inventions by which they may flatter men in their sins or perswade them that they may well follow the motions of their corrupt nature and withall attain to Salvation So that every one follows that Doctrine without perceiving that it is evil That is the reason why every one adores that Diana of corrupt nature as a Goddess And so they bestow all their time and goods to nourish honour and satisfie corrupted nature And more they think there is no evil in so doing while the ministers and learned do the same and promise Salvation to the people that live in that Idolatry But they ought to teach in effect the mortification of their senses the corruption of their natures how much it is ruined by sin and finally the necessity of denying our selves to be saved as Jesus Christ taught by word and works But these savage Pastors will not teach so unto their flocks and will yet less put it in practice themselves Yea nor will not suffer another to teach these Christian Truths It is for that they pursue me every where and would gladly exterminate me because I have written of true Virtue The same befel St. Paul by them of Ephesus who would exterminate him when he taught the truth Saying one to another That they should lose their gain if they suffered Paul to continue preaching Jesus Christ That he would ruin the worship of the great Diana and cause that the Goldsmiths should gain no more in the Workmanship of the Image of Diana It goes just so with these learned ones who are as the masters of the great Diana of corrupt nature which every one adores for his own particular But the Learned are the Masters to gain Money by the worship and adoration of corrupt nature So they speak and teach the people such things as please their corruption and endeavour to please men that they may receive advantages of them which they will not lose When then I begin to speak of true Virtue they are all allarmed against me as they of Ephesus were against St. Paul But these learned take also the Judges to their assistance and persecute me that I should be banisht or be discharged to write or speak of true Virtue Some wish me dead others burnt others that I were thrown in the midst of the Sea that I might speak no more of solid Virtue and so their gain and trade be not diminisht and their shops become unfrequented that is that they sell no more their frivolous Discourses to please men It is that which at last allarm'd them so at Flensburg whither I had gone about some business for the Ministers no sooner had any suspicion that I was in their Town but they preached in divers Churches that I am an arrant and pernicious person that I have a devilish Doctrine and finally no person should lodge me So that I behoved to come out secretly lest I should be massacreed by the Rable and Children whom the preachings of the Ministers had animated against me For they had spoken of me with great spite and horrours proclaming publickly that my Doctrine is worse than that of the Jews Adding beside that my doctrine is a mass of all the old Heresies that ever were in the world Yet I will not teach any thing by my Writings or Discourse but what Jesus Christ taught And if there is any thing contrary to that in them I detest and revoke it as I have often offered to revoke all that they would shew me to be contrary to the holy Scripture But it is not for Errors they persecute me or any evil in my Writings seeing they can shew me nothing such therein They persecute me then because I declare truely what is true Virtue and how a true Christian should live to be a Disciple of Jesus Christ I know well they mask these things saying that there are Errors in my Writings But no person shews me these errors They know not what to say to contemn the truths which I maintain For the Learned said first that I bring nothing of new and that they taught and preached tho same things twenty years agot But when they saw in the Book entituled The testimony of the Truth particulars and truths more clear in divine Mysteries than those they learnt in the Schools they say presently that they are Errors and that never any person wrote such things So that it behoved that God should regulate all according to their studies And should not give any new Graces to men now adays But that he should measure his Light by the rule of their scholastique doctrine and should not send the Holy spirit promised by Jesus Christ who shall teach all Truths Men then resist that Holy spirit and will not hear of other Truths but those they have learnt in the Schools It is every lamentable to see men such enemies of their eternal Happiness in rejecting the Light of the Truth which comes in this last time as the Prophets of God have fore-told That he will pour out his Spirit on all flesh and that your Sons and Daughters shall prophecy and the Old Men see Visions Now because I repeat the same things with many others from God they would kill me as was done to the ancient Prophets they think to hinder by that that true Virtue should be known and far more practised But though they should kill me the Spirit of God shall not die for that And rhe Truth shall always be true For if I should not speak it the Dead would speak or the Stones to declare it unto men And tho these Ministers put me to death God hath yet more than a hunderd millions of persons whom he can use to declare the same Truths which I advance And therefore my Son I exhort you to retain them well and put them in practice for though I were not in the world you must nevertheless save your own soul cost what it will if you will enjoy God to all eternity Which she wishes you with all her heart who loves your Happiness Husum Febr. 5. 1684. St. vet ANTONIA BOURIGNON The
End of the First Part of the Treatise of Solid Virtue EXTRACTS OF SOME OF THE WORKS OF Mrs ANTONIA BOURIGNON Belonging to some Most Essential MATTERS of Christianism and Health LETTER I. Of Toleration That it ought never to go the length of communicating with Sin directly or indirectly Of the Essential and of the Perfection of Christianity Of Religions Worships and Ceremonies and their use This Letter was written to one of her Intimate's Mr. Van de Velde and is the second of Light arising in Darkness 3. part Sir 1. I Know you seek the Perfection of your Soul and that you aspire after God I know also that he hath imparted of his Grace to you and particularly taught you his will in some things but I know also that you have not yet received the Holy Spirit which should teach us all Truths seeing you discern not yet well Evil from good and love all indifferently by a natural goodness as did Adam who knew very well the Consolation and Quiet which a Soul finds in entertaining it self with God but knew not what Evil was because he had never proved it He was created in Pleasures and Delights and conversed with his God in peace without apprehending the Evil which might come upon him in abandoning God to please himself with the Creatures And therefore did he so easily fall into sin before he perceived the Mischiefs and Miseries it would cause him 2. And almost the same is befallen you my dear Brother for when you enjoyed sweet entertainment with God you remained in the sensualities of corrupted nature by which you have insensibly lost commerce with God because so soon as he sees one take pleasure in any thing else but himself he retires by little and little and leaves the Soul to live to it self which precipitates it self often into divers Evils because our proper will engenders death since it was corrupted by sin 3. You did love Good and do yet love it but you have not enough hated Evil because you did not well know it perswading your self that you did well enough when you supported it in others not perceiving that we can sin in another nine ways the First is in Consenting thereto 2d in Councelling it 3d. in Tolerating it 4th in Assisting it 5th in Defending Evil 6th in Commanding it 7th in Partaking with it 8th in not Hindering it when in our power 9th in Hiding it from him that would hinder it 4. All these are not enough considered and we easily fall into them without considering it Although we desire to please God the Devil often surprises us by sins without us when he perceives that he cannot prevail to get us to commit them in our selves for he hath as much power over us by the sins which we commit in another as by them we commit in our selves seeing they shall both alike be imputed to us and if I did not advertise you of it you might easily fall into them without perceiving it For example you converse with persons that are avaritious proud or stained with any other sins they ate subject and inferiour to you as your Wife and Children or your Men or Maid-servants or Hirelings or whoever they be over whom you have authority notwithstanding lest you should displease them or lose their friendship you consent to their committing of sin without Daring or willing to resist it All these sins which are committed with your consent shall assuredly be imputed as if you had committed them your self To councel to do evil that you will not so long as you fear God but for suffering it in others I doubt you do it sometimes because you have not enough of hatred to sin as when you see one deceive in selling to or labouring for you and yet continue to buy of him or employ him in labour that is assuredly to suffer the evil which he commits 5. It were better to be in necessity without dealing with them that sell or labour by Avarice Fraude or Deceit for the Soul is more precious than the Body which ought rather to endure its necessities than to supply them to the prejudice of its soul which is assuredly defiled by suffering the sins of another and yet more by assisting and helping evil as he that would give goods to one that is Avaricious Gluttonous Proud Slothful or a Drunkard would assist him to go on in his sins and commit more with the Gifs and assistances he affords him and if we defend or excuse the Evil of another we also become guilty of the same for we ought never to excuse or defend it lest we so maintain the Evil-doer in his sins to commit which our corrupt Nature needs no encouragment and whoever affords it is partaker of the sin of the other Although it is commonly said That we should excuse the Faults of other and assist Sinners that is a false Theologie very hurtful to the Upright who are often deceived by Evil for lack of knowing it 6. Also you are not in hazard to command Evil so long as you fear God neither would you ever partake with manifest sin as with Robbery for God hath delivered you by his Grace from Avarice Yet you must take care to hinder evil when in your power or else the omission would render you partaker of the Evil committed and even so when you do not declare it to them that would hinder it All these sins or part of them may be committed by good men who aspire after Perfection particularly when they are of a good disposition naturally they take all in good part I have sometimes slipt into some such Faults by too much natural goodness or human regard but after God shewed me clearly these sins which we commit in another which I impart to you because I love your perfection as much as my own by a true Christian Charity seeing that you aspire unto its perfection which I will also shew wherein it consists for the darkness of this world is at present so great that the souls that are well enclined know nor whither they walk in regard of perfection taking often the false for true and imperfect for perfect and that because they have now taught so many divers means to perfection that one knows not which to take for the surest One says we must go frequently to Church and frequent the Sacraments Another places Christian Perfection in entering into some Religious Fraternity or Convent Others in fastings and Macerating the Body All these things were Good if well used but these are not the end nor that wherein Christian perfection consists For these may be performed by them that shall never attain to salvation because no external thing perfects the soul nor can they defile it They are only the means whereby we more easily attain to virtue or by abuse fall more easily into sin 8. Every Soul in particular ought to use the external means which excites them most to Christian Virtue and evite also things
receiveth every thing which human wisdom hath diverted having found so many Studies and Arguments to favour our proper will that all men believe it to be lawful to follow it without offending him who pleased to reserve it for himself Sir these are all blind who lead the blind and all fall into the ditch Be you never of that band but believe in the Light which God sheweth you I have spoken TRUTH unto you not affecting to be believed or followed but only to tend and aim at your Salvation All that I have told you is necessary for you if you will use it well because we cannot love God without knowing him nor follow Virtue without comprehending it we cannot also evite the Deceit without discovering it nor escape the Paws of the Devil without turning away therefrom make good use of all these things and you shall be happy in this world and in the other I doubt not but my manner of speech may have given you pain and difficulty because they do not accord with your Philosophy Theology or other Scholastique Sciences But believe that I have never made profession of any human Sciences I love rather to be ignorant of than to know them and if I could learn in a quarter of an hour all the Sciences of the Schools I would not employ so little time thereto because I know that human Sciences are great Impediments unto the Holy Spirit and also that the time is come when God shall destroy the Wisdom of the Wise and bring to nothing the Prudence of the Prudent and so I cannot use fine Discourses but such only as make known the native Truth the words the terms may well be debated and controlled but never the true sense which is true I will not dispute with the Wise seeing God shall shortly overcome them by the effects of my words nor also polish my Language because the simple nativeness pleaseth God more than the rhetorical Eloquences subject unto vanity for he that speaks that he may speak elegantly is filled with vain-glory willing to renounce which I seek only simple words that may express my conceptions I believe Sir that you have sufficiently understood me and that I can say no more to you to co-operate unto your Salvation there remains no more but to put it in practice Which you shall do more easily in solitude or the desert than elsewhere because of the corruption of men which are great letts unto us and also the power which the Devil hath at present over their spirits to bewitch them that are yet sound and entire Flee then Sir that you may evite all these dangers lest you might be diverted from your good proposal and should look back as Lot's Wife who was changed into a Statue of Salt Yet a little Penitence and after God will deliver you to enter into the joy which shall never end That is it I wish unto you in giving you Adiew I was grieved to hear that she would leave me praying her not to withdraw seeing I would follow what she had taught me which was nothing else but Self-denial and Dependance upon God She said unto me Sir it shall be more pure that you remain alone for I am only a Creature as you are and we must cleave unto the Creator alone without interruption he shall conduct you at his pleasure provided you be abandoned unto his will you need no more instructions of any person I have told you more than sufficient to conduct you unto union with God It should be hereafter only repetitions of things foresaid which should bereave your time and mine which it is better to employ in the practice than in repetitions Leave me in my liberty and take you also yours God hath not created us together He shall save us though separated in body True Union consists in a conformity of will with God and not in particular Conferences I must confess I have often distracted my self from entertainments with God to speak to you of so many divers things but I judged them necessary for your Salvation therefore have they not been grievous unto me but now when you know the truth of many things it is not necessary to speak more unto you God shall always teach you enough provided you continue faithful unto him He hath never refused what men ask for their Salvation You must have no more any other pretensions Let the World be overturned Let the Romish Church perish Let the Elements be moved against sinners all that cannot touch you provided you keep you firmly united with God Leave willingly every thing to find that union If I be with you or not it is a small matter provided you be with God that should suffice because he alone can save you and none else There is always mixture when a Creature cleaves to its like I have often despised them who hold themselves addicted to persons although it were under some pious pretext I will not do my self what I despise in others I said unto her That she had promised to explain to me the 24. Chapter of St. Matthew that she should at least give me it before she left me She said Sir I do not willingly fail of my Promise give me the text of that Chapter and I shall explain it unto you word by word wishing that all men of good-will might see it that they might discover that it is of this present time that that chapter speaks Every one reads it without understanding it notwithstanding there are pleasant advertisments to beware of this dangerous time wherein we live at present These are not Fables made at pleasure but Truths proceeded out of the mouth of Jesus Christ himself which every one ought well to apprehend and follow the councels which he gives They are most salutary and most proper for escaping the evils to come which hang over our heads I must give it in writing for an eternal remembrance that men may observe if all that it contains shall not be effected in our time Do not oppose what you shall find contrary to your studies or old impressions because the Holy Spirit shall give perfect and unheard of intelligences of the Holy Scriptures because we are arrived in the fulness of time If you will receive them with Humility of Heart you shall understand all things in perfection but you must become a Child and cease from being a Wise Man because God reveals his secrets only unto little ones and hides them from the great and wise of the earth We must not resist the Holy Spirit and say such a Father explaineth it so or otherwise because the fulness is always more than a part You shall find what I say more clear than whatever the Holy Fathers have said because the time of the fulfilling of every thing is come but we must render simple our understanding as little Children or otherwise we cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven I brought unto
knew it And they shewed at first to be touched but no sooner did she without designing any person discover the nature and properties of Hypocrisie and the general corruption even in the most devout and holy but they finding themselves pinched rose all up against her by the artifices descried in the Letters she wrote then in the 3. part of Light arisen in Darkness and 2. and 3. Part of the Funeral of False Theologie Mrs. B. in one of her Letters to them having written not considering when she sought after them that there were no more true Christians and God told her she should be the mother of true believers Lest that especially that mother of true believers should stumble these erudide heads she would score it out but God said to her what 's written let it stay written and indeed no sooner had they that in their hands but they made such a dirty hubub her Pride her Pride that though her after-writings satisfie any that have common sense on that head these men have not yet come to themselves Mr. Serrarius famous enough for his correspondencies and his Writings was of the first that knew and recommended her every where he would lead her every where as a living Gospel that should enlighten all the world he would cause print all her Writings and even of his Titles and Prefaces to them yet extant but seeing at length that she would not swerve from the pure Truth God revealed in her to second his particular Opinions of the restoring a Levitical Worship of the Jews and his esteem of a certain Seducer at that time arisen in Palestine he rejected her for his own Imaginations Mr. Comenius so famous among the Learned his Learning not having puft him up as it does ordinarily fell out with Mr. Serrarius because of his injustice against Mrs. Bourignon and retained a Veneration for her all the rest of his Life and on his Death-Bed desired a last visit of her saying O That Holy Maid where is she then may I be so happy as to see her yet once before I die all the Knowledge and Sciences I have attained are but productions of reason and of Human Spirit and Study but she has a Wisdom and Light that come only from God immediatly by the Holy Spirit After she had seen him and was gone he said of her with transports of joy to them that visited him I have seen an Angel of God! God has sent me his Angel to day God did also let her see how far the best cultivated human spirit is blind and far from the Kingdom of God by conferences she had with some Cartesians both Divines and meer Phylosophers she had a discourse with the Professors Heydan and Burmannus but Nicodemus was too great a Doctor to understand Christs Language or learn of him though so blind as to deny that the Spirit blows where he lists at present and his Voice to be heard to infer that we must not abandon our Vessel to the conduct of his divine Inspirations but steer by human spirit and reason She wrote to him on that occasion Letter 12. of the first part of the Funeral of false Theologie The Phylosophers would perswade her that she came near to their Principles but God shewed her their Nullity and errour She told them their disease that they would comprehend all by the activity of human Reason and not give place to the Illumination of divine Faith which requires a cessation of our Reason and Spirit that God may display that divine Light which gives the only true Knowledge of God but the mean pass that Reason with all its equipage of Ideas and clear and distinct Conceptions will be at to defend or regulate it self before God at Death felt a Cartesian gentleman even in this life who in the profound stupid security they are all leavened with after their once doubting to the full Scorned Mrs. Bourignons admonitions saying laughing You call your self the Mother of believers by the Truths you say you perswade and make them believe and I who have clear and evident demonstrations by which I can perswade reasonable spirits and make them believe much better I shall be the Father of believers But this poor Father of believers who was otherwise a man of spirit of a good beneficent nature and a person of quality being a little after in a deadly Disease in the flower of his age God opened his eyes to see his poor state and lament his error he began to cry with Tears night and day O my understanding my understanding whereto hast thou brought me Alas my Reason I relied so much on what assistance canst thou give me now Thou canst not now give me Salvation nor the hope of it I must be damned there can be no mercy for me A friend comforting him the best he could he wholly disconsolate asked continually Think you than there is yet any mercy to be hoped for my Soul and then looking and tossing about cryed again My understanding my understanding alass whereto hast thou led me Then to the first Friend Go tell desire that good soul Mrs Bourignon to pray to God for me that I may obtain pardon of that sin for otherwise I am damned or I must suffer a flul long Purgatory O! if I could recover from this Disease I would turn wholly to God and would follow altogether another way but when he told Mrs. Bourignon of it she answered he shall not recover but he shall die for if he did recover he would fall deeper in that pernicious Error As in effect he did in a good and sound Judgment in great contrition adoring Jesus Christ crucified God having shown her experimentally by that frequent conversation how little hope remains of converting the world by the little welcome and less Correspondence the Truth met with even with the best and wisest of all sorts he brought her with the two or three that seeing the means of purifying their souls to the Love of God and working out their salvation in her company would sell all for that Pearl of great Price maugre the tentation that lost the young man in the Gospel for they had great Riches and Reputation too I say he brought them from Holland to Holsatia And as from the beginning God did in all her after course unto himself serve himself of the manifold Malice and Persecutions of Satan against the Truth and Light of God to confound that blackfiend and all his Hellish Works of Darkness his violent Persecutions to extinguish it served but as wind to kindle it his Attempts to cut off the Messenger of it in one place served but to carry her further to more places and persons as with a general embassage his secret Blows God did more secretly often forewarn her of in spirit his outward open Violences he often no less wonderfully averted his calumnies and Accusations of Heresie did but bring the Truth to more admirable and dazling Evidence and bring to
light more and more divine and saving mysteries which ript up all his hellish Heresies and Mysteries of Iniquity to the gnawing of his malicious spirit and all the like instruments of his fury while the Bread of Life was aboundantly dispensed to hungry souls whom it shall nourish unto Eternal Life when all the Wicked shall be cut off and the Meek shall inherit the Earth For the more particular Account of her divine Pilgrimage see the History of her Life and take here a short Bill of that heavenly chear now dispensed in her Writings that took up the spare hours of her many diversions at Amsterdam The funerall of false Theologie in the first part of which she shews the Confusion the Ignorance Corruption Insensibility and foundamental Errors of Christians and even of Conductors and modern Divines In the second their Presumption Envy Pride Obstinacy and Head strongness In the third that all their Theorie and Practices are no more but Pharisaical without divine Faith In the fourth that the Devil has great power over men over the wicked and even over the best whom by these other he turns away from following God and engages them to co-operate to the Evil of others and makes them draw back after they have abandoned the World That is a work of singular efficacy and profit Scarce did ever man read it without being touched in his soul even the most wicked who became pale and as struck dead with it Upon occasion of some converse she had with some Cartesian Philosophers she composed The Holy Perspective wherein she shews that Men and particularly Christians have lost the Light of God which is true and divine Faith to be led by corrupt Reason and by a false or most faint Light they draw from nature so perverse brutish carnal and gross as it is become by sin that this is it that has destroyed all Christian-religion and brought it to the Blindness and Darkness wherein it is immersed and that God may restore it its first state there is no other way but to abandon that false Guide of Reason and to resign our selves to God that he may himself revive in us that divine Light of Faith which we have extinguished The New Heaven and New Earth in which is shewn in what Glory the World and Man were created how they have miserably faild from it how they entertain and even encrease their Misery and by what means they ought to return into the disposition God requires to restore them to their first Glory and renew all the world God showed her in Spirit the Glory and Beauty of the first World not supportable by corporal Eyes All was bright transparent shining with Light and unspeakable Glory God's last Mercy in which by a reason enlightened by Faith not perverted by human Studies and Prejudices she leads every man of good judgment to a conviction of the spiritual things which Faith discovers and unto which every man's Reason when conducted by a person that is illuminated by Faith renders so convincing Testimonies that they who will yield themselves to its Touch are moved and pressed to ask of God a saving and divine Knowledge of them by the Light of Faith With all these are intermixed many other divine Lights and profound Mysteries which God had reserved to this end of the last hour able to enlighten to quicken to inflame to strengthen to encourage and to ravish any that have not renounced all interest in heavenly things If any find difficulties in her Writings consider that she having no further human Learning than that having learnt it she did once read the New Testament and finding it the same with what God spake in her Soul she closed the Book to apply seriously to the doing of it seeking no more reading meditation conferring or other study than that of purifying her soul from earthly Affections and sins in following Jesus Christs Doctrine and Example She could not speak after the Rules and with the Cautions of human Literature far less by the pedantry of the Schools it were then most cruel injustice to judge her by them Again we must not suppose when she treats of a matter what she does not mention in that place that she denies it nor require her to treat so fully more than her scope there requires as the Scholastiques who handling a matter at their tour adduce all they can relating to it In the Third place to understand her Writings as all others divinely inspired the Key is a good Will Humility and Prayer to a Malign a Corrupt Proud Self-wise and Self-powerful Reader no entry in them no favour from them but that of Death And the center end and aim of these Writings being the Love of God by renouncing our selves the Creatures and sin the Devil the World and the Flesh the farther we are from this the greater discord and contradiction between these Writings and our corrupt hearts and blind spirits and if ever we will be reconciled it must be by valuing loving esteeming and submitting to them as they are conducive to these ends and the difficulties will all quickly evanish this way the Disciples of Christ of Prophets and Apostles entered into their Masters Doctrine To conclude with the zealous and sincere Author of her Life LOrd thou hast yet manifested the words of eternal Life in these last days and our ears have heard and our hands have handled the word of life which thou hast put into her these words of Life which are originally in thee we have seen and heard them and we bear testimony that thou hast manifested them to us and our testimonie is most true before thee and before whosoever will open the eyes of his Conscience to consider it in thy divine Presence Yes Lord my God Creator and Inspector of my Heart who hast given me to love thy divine Truth more than the Sciences and the Advantages of Egypt thou knowest that I hate lying and falshood and that I would not for any consideration recommend untruth I cannot deny that I have obtained of thy Grace to discern the Truth from Falsehood and that I have done it in this Work thou knowest O Lord. Thou knowest my God that if after all possible application of spirit I could find in the intentions in the end the Writings and the Practice of Antonia Bourignon thy Creature any thing contrary to thy Glory that rendered thee less worthy of the infinite and eternal Adoration Love and Praises due unto thee if any thing favouring Corruption and Sin and that might contradict thy holy Image and the Doctrine and Life of thy Christ if any thing dangerous for mens Salvation thou knowest I would abhor that that I would detest it that I would curse it Is it not true O Searcher and Judge of my Thoughts that this disposition is most really in the bottom of my Soul Is it not in the deepest and final sincerity of my heart that I protest openly that the words of eternal
life were with incomparable Purity Evidence Clearness and Solidity in that Soul which thou didst sanctifie and are yet in her holy Writings In truth the way that is there recommended as necessary to Salvation is the only and the true way there is no danger to abandon our selves wholly and entirely in it for it is the very Truth it is the Truth it self It is the pure Truth There is none Lord there can be none other in Heaven nor in Earth There is none other way unto eternal life than that which thou hast put into the Mouth in the Writings and in the Life of thy most holy hand-maid Antonia Bourignon I praise and bless and thank thee O my God that thou gave me to know the same and hast opened and enclined the ear of my heart thereto Give me Grace to love to observe and to maintain that heavenly Truth unto Death Happy he that should lose a thousand lives for so worthy a subject Happy he who shall never for any consideration leave the practice of it Let me by thy divine Grace be of that number that after this short life of Tryal that most certain and most infallible mean make me enjoy my soveraign End which is to have the happiness ever to adore and praise thy great Majesty O Jesus eternal God Creator Saviour and redeemer of the World while with the Father and holy Spirit thou shalt reign Gloriously in all eternity Amen Revelation Ch. 3. He that hath Ears to hear Let him hear THE PREFACE OF THE PUBLISHER THis Treatise consists of two parts whereof the one may be called Extructive which builds or establishes and the other Destructive which destroys or everts For the first ten Letters are adapted to the planting of Virtue and all the rest to evert and root out what may hinder its increase To recommend Virtue is taken the precept of him who is the Master and Example of it by which is made an introduction shewing what Virtues we must in the first place embrace and by what meanstend to them which is by Obedience and renouncing our own will unto the Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart of Iesus Christ see Let. 1 2 3. the Nature of which Humility is explained and the means conducing to the attainment of it viz the knowledge of our Corruption and the Miseries which our Bodys and Souls ly under Let. 4 5 6. Which ought to produce in us the effect of renouncing our natural senses and being content with what is of meer necessity we should flee all Pleasure and proper Satisfaction Let. 7 8. which emptying of our selves will be accompanied with the Love of God which incontinently possesses the Heart from which vitious affections are expelled because of the near relation and sympathy between them as between the Creature and its natural Element In which Love consists the Essence and Complement of all Virtue and all Good Let. 8 9 10. Concerning the overturning and resisting the Impediments and Tentations of Satan is treated Let. 11. whether they be offered to our Imagination or Sensibility even spiritual Let. 12 13. or to the Understanding making us rest in the naked knowledge of the Truth Let. 14. Or exciting us to external acting or internal with Vain Glory or by Dejecting us through immoderate mortifications or in unseasonable good works spiritual or corporal toward our Neighbour Let. 15 16. Or in regard of the Devil accusing him too much or too little of our sins Let. 17 18. Whether these Tentations affect the will whose godly fervour Satan would extinguish by Grief Spiritual Negligence and Self-love as shew Let. 19 20 and to the end There is briefly represente the whole subject handled in this divine Treatise which is more specially noted at the beginning of each Letter that you may kind Reader view as in a Table and beter retain in your memory the divine Instructions therein delivered Moreover you may with us well admire the infamous audacity of some as the Church-men in Holsatia whereby some years ago they caused that these so wholsome instructions while under the Press in the German and Low Dutch Tongues were taken away by force and violence and rent While I consider these obscure enemies of the truth that Scripture offers it self to me that Every one that Doth and will do evil hateth the Light and cometh not to the Light lest his deeds be reproved and this is the Condemnation that Light is come into the world and men Love Darkness rather than Light because their Deeds are Evil. It is far otherwise with him who doth and will do the Truth for he cometh to the Light that his Deeds may be made manifest because they are wrought in God Joh. Ch. 3. I pray the God of Truth that he graciously please to instruct and lead you in the way of Truth that you never refuse to come to the Light Farewell TO THE READER Friendly Reader I Cannot abstain from imparting unto you these twenty four letters which I have written to one of my particular Friends where I shew him what Solid Virtue is because it is a matter so necessary for the present time when we see false virtue reign or such as is only apparent to the eyes of men and while so many persons deceive themselves perswading themselves that they have true Virtue whereas they have nothing but fine Speculations They think themselves Humble when they can talk well of Humility and think they have the Love of God when they desire to have it notwithstanding they have in effect only the Love of themselves and it is but Deceit and Falshood when they say they have the Love of God They do not so much as know the corruption of their Nature seeing they think they may follow that corruption without sinning provided they do no evil reproveable before men and have a will to do well and love God Which notwithstanding is not sufficient to be saved for good desires without effect are nothing before God They are indeed Foundation stones serving to the building of true Virtue For without good Desires we cannot do good Works We must first have the desire and after put it in execution which is wanting to many persons of a good will who content themselves to be of a good will and hope with that all shall go well without considering that the holy Scripture says to all in general Depart from evil and do Good Now the Evil is in our corrupt nature which no person ought to ignore yet few depart from that corruption and most love and follow it thinking they do well which is a great abuse and presumption of spirit for we cannot do good except we depart from evil and he that does not resist that corrupt Nature and renounce it cannot acquire true Virtue which few persons comprehend and thence is it that they have only apparent Virtues and no real ones Therefore is it that I have resolved to cause print these twenty four
better temperament For that nature is nothing as to Grace and sometimes he that hath more of Fire will be more Virtuous then he that hath more of Water seeing in case he serve himself of that natural heat to love God he will love him so much the more and if he employ his Anger to defend Justice and Virtue he will do much more good than a phlegmatick person who ordinarily loves only his ease It is the same with them that in the intemperature of their nature have contracted more Air than other Elements for they will always be more subtil to discover Evil and more prompt to do good when they will apply themselves to the search of true Virtue As he that hath more of Earth then other Elements will be more posed and grave and if he apply himself to the service of God he will be more constant and persevering in it than the other three And so every one may be agreeable to God in the state and condition wherein he is produced provided he apply the Talent which he hath received to the Glory of God and the Salvation of his Soul Therefore says David Let all spirits praise the Lord. That â—s not as if he would say that the Devils and wicked men praise the Lord seeing these blaspheme him but he gives to understand that all spirits that will become true Christians praise the Lord though they be all of divers natural complexions seeing God is no Respecter of Persons and does not regard whether we have more of Fire or of Water or Earth or Air in our natures but with what affection every one will love and serve him Which I regard also in writing of Solid Virtue I mean not to make it heavy and difficult I would only make it known to them that will follow and practise it because I love such So I cannot leave them in ignorance nor let them perish amidst their good will for want of knowing wherein true Virtue consists That is it which hath engaged me to deduce that matter at length lest these souls which are so dear to me should perish by ignorance as many have already who thought they had acquired true Virtue while they had only apparent ones or curious Speculations of Virtue not knowing that it consists in the overcoming of corrupt nature in true Humility and voluntary Poverty Though Jesus Christ hath so much taught it by Word and Works yet it is not followed in the practice for want of good Explication and the Light of the Truth Which God having given me I will willingly impart it to others in sending to light this first part of true Virtue And with time and opportunity I shall present more to the Glory of God and the Salvation of souls who aspire after true Virtue and Perfection What I offer them at present is with good heart as a Present come from heaven which shall shew them the light of the Truth and manifest the deceits of false Virtue as also the means to arrive at that which is solid and true This First Part discovers amongst other things how the Devil attempts always to divert Souls from true Virtue by so many Wiles and different means And finally it is a School where you may learn To deny your self take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ As he hath taught unto all that would be his Disciples in the perfect sense and true explication Receive it therefore with as good heart as I present it you by Christian Charity Who remain Friendly Reader Your well-affected in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON INDEX Of the Contents of the First Part. Letter I. WE must learn of Jesus Christ Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart Written to one desirous of True Virtue also all the following are addressed to the same shewing that to attain thereto we must have submission and Obedience by which we may begin to learn Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart Page 1. II. We must learn of Jesus Christ Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart Showing wherein Meekness and Lowliness consists which are fruits of the holy spirit and cannot be obtained unless we renounce our own will submitting to the Will of God p. 10. III. Men can sufficiently know the Will of God if they would perform it Shewing him that perswaded himself that the Will of God is not manifest in every thing that we might accomplish it denying our own that it may be known and is sufficiently manifested in the Commands of God which Jesus Christ proposes so clearly saying Learn of me for I am Meek and Lowly and humble of Heart p. 18. IV. Humility is acquired by the knowledge of our selves Shewing what Humility of Heart is what the Marks of it and how we should endeavour to attain it by the knowledge of the Infirmities and Miseries of our Souls and Bodys and blindness of our Minds p. 25. V. Humility is acquired by knowing Ones self Shewing that the true Knowledge even of things most esteemed by men ought to serve to humble them such as the Honours Riches and Pleasures of this Life That all these are vain disquieting unsatisfying and hurtful p. 32. VI. Humility is acquired by knowing Ones self Admonishing to Learn Humility by knowing the Truth of our corruption and Sin which is the disorder of our Five Natural Senses p. 40. VII He that serves the Lusts of his Senses thereby actually renounces the Love of God Exhorting to the Effects of Humility the renouncing of our Senses shewing that none can follow them but he thereby renounces the Love of God which is the End of our Creation and the Essence of true Virtue p. 47. VIII It is Easier to Love God than any thing else Shewing that we must renounce the abuse of our Senses and that the right use of them should be referred to God that it is possible reasonable and necessary to love God with all our Heart p. 57. IX It is easier to Love God than any thing beside him Shewing that it is most easie sweet profitable and honourable to love God and keep his Commands for him that will deny himself but that it is Blasphemy to say That it is impossible to love God with all our Heart p. 65. X. The Love of God is easie and renders all things easie Shewing that the Love of God is in it self most easie to be acquired whence the difficulties proceed which we find them and how they should be removed That this love admirably makes the inconveniences of this life and the keeping of the Commands of God and the Councels of the Gospel easie and pleasant p. 74. XI We must always proceed in Virtue whatever Impediments occur Giving encouragement in the Way of Virtue although the beginning be difficult because of the Tentations by which the Devil vexes them that have resolved to embrace true Virtue p. 83. XII The Devil the Enemy of True Virtue opposes it by all manner of Devices That it is necessary to know the
which it loves and would follow if it can escape the obligation of resisting it and so perswades it self that it does not know the will of God in every thing to do it The heart of man is even so deceitful that it perswades its proper understanding that we know not the will of God and consequently cannot follow it in every thing But that is a deceit invented by Satan to amuse us by false reasons and fine appearances of truth which are in effect but wicked falsities For all Christians can know the will of God if they take pains to inform themselves but for the most part they are willing to be ignorant of it because they have not a mind to accomplish it when they do know it And they do certainly beyond doubt know it but the love they bear to themselves and the little love they bear to God makes them say that they know not his will sometimes they have the confidence to say lying they would do it if they knew it For that is false but mans heart deceives sometimes it self so that it self does not know the deceit and gives it self to believe that its falshoods are truth which causes several to live in quiet believing themselves assured in the midst of perils of their Salvation Therefore we may well desire to discover the truth in a matter of so great concern on which depends our eternal happiness and never sleep upon a false bolster of Deceiving suppositions for he that sins ignorantly goes ignorantly to hell Seeing all Christians are obliged to know the will of God which is also clearly manifested to them by his commands and yet more particularly by the doctrine of J. Ch. for there be few Christians that know not that God hath commanded men to love him with all their heart and their neighbour as themselves and there are yet fewer that observe these commands and with that they say If I knew the will of God I would follow it and so they lie to God and to themselves perswading themselves they speak truth so great is the darkness in which men live at this day in regard of their Salvation We may truly say that it is at this day that they are abandoned to the Spirit of error and wickness and that the Scripture says with good reason that all men are liars seeing they now lie to themselves to the prejudice of their eternal salvation and that sometimes without knowing it For in that they say if they knew the will of God they would follow it is falshood both in the well-intentioned and in the wicked since we see in effect that neither the one nor the other do it in the first command viz. to love God with all our heart and our neighbour as our selves For to love God with all our heart we must love nothing else but him only otherwise our heart were divided and parted instead of being whole in the love of one God so that if we love riches and the pleasures of this life and honour c. we do not love God with all our heart though we know that to be his will And when we envy the happiness of our neighbour and do not assist him in his need we do not love him as our selves and we often do to him what we would not should be done to our selves Wherein we do not the will of God though we know assuredly that his will is that we love our neighbour as our selves and so we do not practice the will of God which we know but we seek beside that so clearly revealed a more particular will in things little needful and neglect to do his will in that which regards our eternal Salvation It is therefore much to be feared that we would not do the will of God in small things though we did know it seeing we do it not in things so great and so advantagious to our eternal salvation So that it were to tempt God to ask what is his will in all things while we do not fulfil it in the principal things as are his express commands and saving ordinances I hear sometimes said that it is a very sweet thing and great happiness to have the will of God discovered in every thing esteeming that a particular grace and extraordinary happiness And yet if that mercy were given them it is to be feared it would turn to their greater condemnation for he that knows the father's will and does it not shall be beaten with many stripes And the reason why God does not communicate himself to all Christians is because they are not ready nor disposed to perform his will when it shall be contrary to their own And therefore every one ought to endeavour to fulfil the will of God which he knows by his commands rather than go to and demand of God particular things so long as he does not perform the principal things as are the commands of God or the counsels of J. Ch. and these counsels explain yet more particularly the will of God than did the commands in general For J. Ch. deduces particularly all what we ought to do and leave to fulfil that command of loving God with all our heart and our neighbour as our selves Saying Learn of me for I am meek and Lowly which teaches the love of God and of our neighbour for the meekness signifies love of the goodness of God and lowliness the Love of our neighbour Meekness or goodness is one of the essential qualities of God which seems to surpass his other qualities it is like oyl among other liquors which swims always above for we see in aâ—l Gods works his goodness superabound over his other qualities though that goodness be never seperated from his justice and truth yet it excels over them For we see in many things where God hath stayed his wrath to give place to his mercy when men would turn as he did to the people of Nineveh who by their sins had justly merited that Gods justice should be executed against them Yea and the truth of God had foretold their destruction within forty days but as soon as that people returned to repentance the goodness of God gets uppermost and swims above his justice and truth and pardons them by his great meekness and goodness So that we may with truth say that the goodness of God is over his other qualities And seeing J. Ch. exhorts us to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect we must labour particularly for that virtue of meekness and lowliness which Jesus Christ teaches to learn of him that we may tend to that perfection of our heavenly father and when we have in the bottom of our soul justice and truth for a foundation to Christian perfection we must build upon that meekness and gentleness seeing that virtue will make us fulfil the command of Loving God with all our heart and our neighbour as our selves wherein the scripture says all the law and the Prophets are contained and
them and to conserve them Some of the Pagans having discover'd that threw all their Gold and Money into the sea to be freed from the care and disquiet of keeping it and live with liberty of Spirit Which should confound the Christian who employs all the force of his body and industry of his mind to acquire Riches so burthensom to have and troublesome to keep when the Pagans by the Light of nature have had them in contempt and thrown them from them which they did because they had a true knowledge of themselves and of natural things And thence also did they despise the Honours and Pleasures of this life and seeing them so miserable and of so short continuance one counted it not worth the pains to build a House to lodge in being content with a barrel to defend him from Sun and Rain Another seeing that he could conveniently enough carry Water into his Mouth in the hollow of his Hand would no more use a Cup. So firmly have these Pagans despised this present life that they would not take any pleasure therein nor use created things but for urgent necessity and the least that might be rejecting what 's more And so they did because they knew that all the pleasures and Honours of this World are vain false and deceitful that they might obtain true ones which are eternal they longed therefore to be delivered from this miserable life which they esteemed a Prison a Valley of Tears as in truth it is But men now adays discover not that they esteem themselves happy in their Miseries and rich in their Poverty they delight in their Chains and Bonds by blindness of spirit and for want of knowing themselves and the things they so prise and so they esteem him happy who can take his pleasure in eating and drinking recreations and other carnal satisfactions Yet such are abundantly more miserable than those that live soberly and chastly and in poverty He that can content himself with little hath no need of much and is more joyful in his retiredness of spirit than if he were in the midst of pleasant and divertising company Beside he needs not use much labour or trafique to gain money Also he that lives soberly is better content with his course fare than they that follow their appetites which are insatiable by all their Dainties And he that lives chastly keeps his liberty and the repose of his Conscience And he that does not delight in company and divertisments does not fear displeasing men nor studies anxiously to be acceptable to them as others who take delight in them They must be cloathed and behave themselves after the fashion of the World and for that they must gain money that they may be well treated as others which requires a continual care to provide all that nothing be wanting that they may appear like others and that is a slavery from which we cannot be delivered but by quitting the World For he that will please the World hath lost his liliberty and cannot serve himself He is as a hired Servant subjected to all sorts of Vanities to the great ones and wise ones of the world whom he fears and respects more than God himself and withal that they reckon themselves happy to be so engaged and bound to the World and its vanities to which they willingly yield themselves Slaves For if they would retain their liberty they would disengage themselves from these human regards and withdraw from worldly creatures without yielding their spirit to be bewitched in thinking its Slavery to be a Liberty and its Fetters to be Chains of Gold for Ornament which is meer falshood and vanity for to serve God only is to reign and to serve the World is to be a Slave Which these wise Pagans knew well and therefore contemned the World and its honours and pleasures Yea some of them cared not to be visited by Kings and Emperors so that one of them desired and bid a King that came to visit him Stand by and be gone complaining That he kept from him what he could not give namely by interrupting from him the Sun-shine which he esteemed more valuable than all the Kingdoms of the World For which they had good reason for the greatest Charges afford also the greatest Troubles and he that is over others is servant of all for he must take care of them and rule and govern them as he will answer to God which may disquiet and vex him all the days of his life and puts in hazard his eternal Salvation For he must not only reckon for himself but also for all that have been under him and bear for and with them the punishment of all that they have done amiss by order sufferance or for want of instruction and correction according to the justice of God Therefore is it that a Superior is more miserable than another in time and in eternity which we may observe even in the Master of a Family who must take care and travail to entertain his Wife Children and servants while they are often without care knowing that their Master must feed and cloath them in due time that they want nothing in which they are much happier than their Masters for they have only one service to perform and their master is burthened with several Yet such is the blindness of men that every one desires Charges Estates Superiorities and Masterships which they could not desire if it were not by an air of pride which the Devil hath inspired into their minds otherways it were impossible that men should seek after Charges but do their utmost to evite them As several Saints have done formerly some lest they should be obliged to undertake the charge of Bishops that was offered to them retired privately to evite it and even one of the Popes considering the heavy burthen of his Charge exchanged his Popedom for a Desart So afflicting are Charges and Superiorities for them that have attained to know the truth of things and their own misery and frailty and so they have contemned them and thought it enough to see to themselves and desired not a Posterity to succeed to their Miseries which they knew too well to desire them for their Posterity They loved rather to live chastly than to procreate Children so miserable as themselves In which they were very wise being we see that in effect men wax worse every day and the Children are worse than their Fathers and Childrens Children yet worse because of the great corruption that is now among men which augments even visibly So that he that knows the Truth will be loath to multiply this perverse Generation but will expect that men resume a true Christian Life and so may multiply in the spirit of Jesus Christ a holy Generation Lo what they that are wise desire but the ignorant think it a happiness to produce Children Heirs of their Miseries because themselves do not know them and so glory in their shame without perceiving it
they would willingly be great and rich that they may have Means to please their Senses and these Pleasures ruin Soul and Body For since Nature was corrupted by sin all the senses of man are become brutish and insolent and know no more what is good or evil for them intemperate without order or measure and therefore the Scripture says that the Eye is never satisfied with seeing nor the Ear with hearing to show how our senses are disordered and insatiable the more the eye sees the more it would see and so the ear hear and they are never satisfied It is the same with the Feeling Smelling and Taste the other three senses For whenever a man gives himself to satisfie his senses he is never fully satisfied nor content For in every place he may find something that smells unpleasantly and though he carry about Musk and Civet that will not hinder that he breath not in the bad Exhalations and Vapours of the Air caused by the corruption and filth of the bodies of Men and Beasts although he had but the stink of his own body since all that proceeds out of it is nasty and putrid which cannot satisfie his smell which desires always good smells and agreeable and in loving that we can never be content nor satisfied And yet less can we satisfie the sense of feeling it being insatiable They would have fine Linnen Silks soft Beds smooth Coverings and other things agreeable to the touch which is not content with things that are sufficient But the sense of Taste exceeds all the others in disorder and intemperance For he that will satisfie his taste and delicacy renders himself miserable and in continual dissatisfaction For when he hath one food that is good he desires another as better the Wine is too sharp or stale for him the Beer is too sweet for his delicate taste he longs always for what he hath not and what he cannot get so insolent are mans natural senses that they often tyrannize over the spirit with a thousand tortures of Desires Intemperances Lusts Excess and Gluttony which bring Diseases Poverty and Death And yet they call him happy who hath the means to satisfie his senses without discovering that they are corrupted by sin and therefore they beget all sorts of Evils which she prays you to discover who wisheth your good Holstein near Gottorp Castle 15. Febr. 1672. St. vet ANTONIA BOURIGNON THE VI LETTER Humility is attained by Knowing our selves To the same who is admonished to learn Humility by knowing the truth of our Corruption and Sin which is the disorder of our natural senses My Dear Child I Cannot entertain you too much of the Corruption of man and the Miseries to which he is subject during this miserable life to prevent your ever placing your affections on it but that you may learn the Humility of Heart which Jesus Christ teaches which will follow upon the knowledge of your self but you shall never attain it unless you examin in retail the miseries and infirmities of your body and spirit since it is that knowledge which should teach you the Humility of Heart which Jesus Christ requires For if you remain in the general ignorance of men you shall never attain to it you will always think you deserve Honour and Esteem seeing others like your self honoured and esteemed and that they also take their pleasures and sensualities more than you do But trust me my Dear Child that conduct proceeds from the blindness of their minds and from the profound darkness in which they are without perceiving it and they blind one another still more by their practice for one thinks he is as good as the other and that he may do what another doth and so one follows another blindfoldly and thinks he doth but what is suitable for an honest man to do But however great the number of blind are that will not help you in particular and that broad way will always lead to perdition tho many tread it The great number of miserables will not lessen your condemnation on the contrary it will augment your pains and miseries far from any ways mitigating them Therefore is it that you must not regard if others be blind and know not themselves esteeming themselves and following their sensualities for you shall not give an accompt for them There shall only your own works follow you at Death and according to them shall you be judged God affords you now the occasion of Discovering the truth of all things beware of neglecting it but bless the Lord for it is a great mercy he shows you beyond so many thousands of persons who perish for want of knowing themselves and for having never discovered the truth of things as they are before God They amuse themselves to look one to another without penetrating into the state of man and what he is whence he is and whither he tends though it is a thing of so great import on which our eternal salvation depends Therefore I exhort you to lay to heart the knowledge of your self seeing that must rule all your actions and make you become humble of heart as Jesus Christ teaches us to be The truth of all things should deliver you from all evil that is also the mistress of virtues for if you possess the Truth of God that shall teach you all virtues and deliver you from all vice for the cause why man is vicious and not virtuous is because he knows not the truth of things and takes the Shadow for the Body the Bark for the Wood and so goes from evil to worse For if he knew truly what sin is and what virtue he would deliver himself from the one to attain the other since he would see clearly that sin is a meer Tyrant which tortures Soul and Body and that virtue is beautiful good sweet and pleasant And so he could not retain himself from hating sin and loving virtue seeing that is good and equitable but for lack of knowledge of things they love what they should hate and hate what is lovely and to show you what sin is know that in it self it is nothing but a disorder of corrupted nature For when God created man he was well ordered temperate and regular in all his natural functions and he might enjoy the pleasure of all his senses without doing evil because all that God made was good and he created beautiful things to please his sight and all the melodies of Beasts Men and all melodious things to afford pleasure to the hearing and all Flowers and pleasant smells for his smelling and all smooth and agreeable things for his feeling and all good and savory things to afford pleasure to his Taste so that he could allowably enjoy the Pleasures of all his five natural senses because all the other Creatures were created for the pleasure and recreation of Man who was so perfect that he used all these things only for his recreation with just order weight and measure
in praising his and their God and in that state he could not be disagreeable to him But after that he would abandon his dependance on God and become wise in himself he hath overturned all that beautiful order establish't by God and hath brought into his nature all sorts of evil disorder and corruption and that is called sin which is nothing else but a disorder of the five senses which man can no more satisfie without sinning they being corrupted and disordered for if the eye please it self now in looking on beautiful and pleasant things it is only to satisfie it self and not to refer them to God their Author as he did before sin and if he hears melodious Sounds and Harmonies it is only to delight and recreate himself and that in this valley of miseries where he ought rather to mourn in embracing the chastisements of God because of sin and if he will satisfie his Smell by good odours it is to repel the putridity which sin hath brought upon nature and if he will satisfie his Feeling it is but to defile his Soul by unlawful pleasures which he takes in feeling for it is not allowable for him to take pleasure in any of his senses after by sin he hath overturned the order which God established And if he will satisfie his Taste he will fall into all sorts of evils for giving up himself to his palate that brings Intemperance Gluttony Poverty Sickness and Death as also Avarice Deceit Riot and other Sins which proceed from the pleasure in Taste which is as a Mother which engenders all sorts of evil For a glutton must needs covet Riches to satisfie his appetite and if he hath them not of his own he endeavours to get them by any means he can if it should be Falsehood or Robbery For the Taste is insatiable and is not content with a few things I have known persons addicted to the pleasure of Taste who spent upon dainties great Riches which they possessed and yet were never content but continually desired what they had not and having gotten what they desired perhaps would not taste it but send again to seek some other thing and so consumed and ended their life in poverty and without satisfaction I have known others that would come that length to take the goods of others to satisfie their delicacies and said to me That their Tongues could not be deprived of the pleasures of Taste and they must needs satisfie it I suppose there are more such though not known by me for the appetite of Taste is so bound up with the flesh that it is hardly overcome having once got entrance and being accustomed to please their taste And this pleasing the Taste begets Lust also by the affinity of the Belly with the genital parts which are stimulated according as the Belly is well pack't Moreover the Appetite breeds Gluttony for when it find's food agreeable it devours to excess and intemperance which causes several diseases and sometimes Death For we see by experience that several have become sick and even died by too much eating or drinking or gluttonously eating things contrary to their health which falls out but too frequently And notwithstanding all this we see so many follow this sense of taste which begets so many evils in prejudice of soul and body and that because they know not the truth of things and have imagined a pleasure and contentment where there is nothing but displeasure and miseries For if they knew truly what is in the five natural senses of man they would see nothing there but vanity and misery since they were corrupted by sin and consequently would never follow them but resist them in every thing seeing they are truly vain which they may see that will examin them narrowly for what is in the sense of seeing but a pleasure which is past in a moment If for example looking on a beautiful thing you shut your eyes in that instant you see it no more and in your regard it is no more and if after by opening your eyes you see it again that sight adds nothing to your soul or body which cannot be nourisht by sights if you should continue them from morning till evening all that cannot nourish nor fill us nor give any thing but an airy pleasure to our eyes which also will not be refresht by these sights for the more they see the more they would see Wherefore the Scripture says The Eye is never wearied with seeing nor the Ear with hearing for these two senses are insatiable and never satisfied for the hearing is as vain as the sight and seems even of less consideration because it hath less impression upon the mind and passes as a blast of wind which we neither see nor feel more when it is gone It is even so with Harmony and Sounds for it is but a body of wind formed in the air and dissipated in it and leaves nothing in him that hath heard it No more does also the sense of Smell yielding only a small satisfaction to the Nostrils and flys away with the wind without leaving any thing in him that felt it who is as ready to be filled again with stink as he was with perfume So that we may see by experience that the five senses are truly vain and unworthy to be followed and affected by persons of judgment and that would come to the knowledge of the truth for one must be a fool and blind to place his affections in things so unworthy of man as are the pleasures of his senses which pass like smoak and cause so great evils to them that follow them both spiritual and temporal for he that will give his senses their pleasure wounds body and soul and renders himself miserable in all his life for he cannot have satisfaction and compleat contentment by all the world and he wasts his goods to please his senses wounding his health by intemperance and killing his soul by sin which is the disorder of his natural senses For since they were corrupted they have engendred death bodily and spiritually in man who cannot love his sensualities without turning away from God and consequently deprive themselves of all good and subject themselves to all sorts of evil for there can be no good without God but all sorts of evil And it is that my Child which I entreat you to consider that you may never place your affections but in God and may renounce your senses seeing they are corrupted and contrary to the will of God and in themselves evil and vanity For what is in feeling but a sensual softness which adds nothing to man and is so mean and unworthy of a man that he would never seek pleasure therein if the devil did not perswade him that there is something in it it is so frail and contemptible that it is not worthy a man's notice or that he should account it pleasure since it is but imaginary not real The sense of taste
seems to have some pleasure in it seeing there are persons that have no greater pleasure in the world than to eat and drink well and that sense adds somewhat to mans body Yet it is more replenisht with miseries than the other four because it hurts more both the soul and body of man seeing it causes so many diseases and even death by its excesses and also so many souls damn themselves in striving to satisfie the pleasure of Taste which leads them to several other sins and withdraws them assuredly from the love of God who requires to have our affections alone For he is a jealous God and notwithstanding we place them in things vile and corruptible as are meat and drink For what is more naughty than meat and drink They have scarce past the throat but they become putrid and corrupt and especially the more fine and delicate corrupt more than the courser And for all that people love them bestowing pains and travail to attain them which is a gross blindness of mind from which I pray God preserve you that your love may remain in God only and you may know the truth of all salutary things in the desire whereof I remain Your Well-wisher in Jesus Christ ANTONIO BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle 17. Febr. 1672. St. vet THE VII LETTER He that serves the Lusts of his Senses by that same Renounces the Love of God To the same exhorting him to the effects of Humility by the Renouncing of his senses showing him that no man can follow them unless thereby he renounce the Love of God which is the end of our Creation and the essence of true Virtue My Dear Child I Deduced to you in my last how vain and miserable are the Pleasures of the Senses and have shewed you the truth of several things that you might arrive to the Humility of heart which Jesus Christ requires It is much to understand well these things but also you must set about the practice and embrace in good earnest the mortification of your senses following the truths you have known otherways it s a small matter to know the Truth if you put it not in practice knowledge is very good for you cannot practise what you know not but if that knowledge be not fruitful it cannot serve for our Salvation We must needs put to our hand and war against our corrupt nature otherways we must die the eternal Death after the temporal Which may easily be conceived since mans nature is corrupted by Adams sin and hath quitted dependance on God to depend of it self It must then of necessity remain in that corruption and sin until every man for his own particular have overcome that corruption and disobedience which he hath contracted against God or else he abideth in death and dies damned eternally For although Adam had not sinned all men in general and every one in particular could have sinned and corrupted his way by leaving dependance on his God and that because all the men that were or shall be are all created free and can continue in the dependance of God and also recede from it if they please for God forces no person So that he that is arrived to the use of Reason hath the same liberty to sin and retire from dependance on God that Adam had before his sin yet with this difference that Adam at the beginning had not in his nature that frailty and inclination to sin and evil which men have who proceeded from him after his sin for they have contracted that frailty and inclination to evil from their first father and also the infirmities of body which we see in all men and feel in our selves for no person is exempt from the evils which sin hath caused in man's nature Though it is free to all men to follow that inclination to evil which they feel in themselves as also they can by the Grace of God overcome their infirmities and the corruption of their five senses in not following them but fighting against them And it is in that that Jesus Christ says we must take the Kingdom of Heaven by Force and the Violent take it so That is not that we should fight by force to gain the Kingdom for God created it for us and he gives it us freely but it is that we must resist with force the corruption of our nature that we may enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and so that we approve not in us the sin which Adam committed and do not of our own proper will retire from dependance on God Therefore it is the Scripture says Our Life is a continual Warfare For we must continually combat the corruption of our senses without that we can never return to dependance on God from which Adam's sin hath withdrawn us seeing our senses being corrupted beget all sorts of evil and there needs no more but to follow them and their inclination to turn us away from God and remain in the way of damnation For no sooner loose we the reins to our Sight but it pleases it self to behold beautiful or curious things and no sooner have we considered them but we covet them And if we yield to the sense of Hearing the Heart delights in it and the Affection is drawn to it It is even so with Smelling where the sensitive part takes pleasure And if we please our selves in Taste all our care and study are put to search means to satisfie it and that sense is more insatiable than any other and precipitates into all sorts of sins Moreover it excites the sense of feeling for he that pleases his taste seeks also to satisfie his feeling with pleasure and satisfaction Even all the five senses are moved only by the love we carry to our selves and desire of affording our selves pleasure All these things with-draw us assuredly from God and dependance on him and he hath commanded us to love him with all our heart So that he wills not that we fix our heart on things so frail and vile as are the Sight Hearing Smelling Taste and Feeling For it is unworthy of a divine Soul which God hath given us capable of loving an eternal God who desires and commands that we love him with all our heart So that the man that hath affection for his senses quits voluntarily the dependance of God seeing he does not submit himself to his will who demands that we should love him with all our heart And that is from the disorder which the devil hath caused in man's nature when he made it turn the affection upon the creatures which is due to God alone In which consisted the first sin which man committed and thence all other sins draw their origin For nothing can be evil or sin but what is committed against the will of God and there is nothing but that can be evil as nothing can be good but what is done by his will So the Devil laboured violently from the beginning of the world to pervert
man from the will of God who had created him to delight himself with him and willed for that that he should love him with all his heart There cannot be delight but with what is beloved and therefore will God be loved of man with all his heart and that he place his affections in nothing else but in him only The Devil no sooner perceived that but he enticed him by the five natural senses which are as the five windows of our heart to withdraw his heart and affections from God and to place them on visible and sensible things The Devil then first moved Adam's heart to regard the beautiful Creatures which God had created for him he moved also his sense of hearing to give attention to the false perswasions of that old Serpent who made him believe that he should know Good and Evil if he did eat the fruit of the Tree which God had forbid him to eat of He moved him to put his Hand to touch that Apple his Smelling to smell it and his Taste to eat it and by that means the Devil carryed Adam's Heart and affection to the Creatures and turned him away from the Love he owed to God If the Devil could have drawn man's Heart directly to love him he had done it but because he is an invisible spirit he could not move the five natural Senses of man to love him And therefore he served himself of visible and sensible creatures to get himself indirectly loved by man that by moving man to self-love and to use all the other Creatures to satisfie his self-love and consequently withdraw him from the love of God which he hath done with too much success seeing he hath caused Adam and all that were to proceed from him to disobey against God and so made him abandon that dependance that he would no more depend but upon his own will and love nothing but himself Behold the miserable fall into which the Devil caused all men to fall into in Adam And they all in general are born in that misery and disobedience since the fall of Adam and come into the world with that evil inclination to love themselves and follow the corruption of their senses which breeds all sorts of sins because they are now moved by an evil spirit which is the Devil whence no good can proceed for the privation of all good is the possession of all evil So that he that hath rejected the love of God and would not renounce himself hath deprived himself of all sort of good seeing there is no other good but God and is fallen into all sorts of evil that is to say into the privation of all sorts of Good God never created any evil but man produced it when he deprived himself of the Love of God in which alone consists all sorts of Good And that is the thing they call sin which signifies to turn away and desert God who is all good and in the privation of him is all evil So that he that hath withdrawn his affections from God to place them in the love of himself or of any other creature hath abandoned all Good and embraced all sorts of Evil. For there can be no other evil but the privation of all good into which man engages himself when he carrys his love and affections to any thing else than God And what Adam did once by the instigation of the Devil men do it for their own particular as often as they set their affections on any thing beside God only Observe a little my Child how often you have fallen into the same sin with Adam and loved any other thing than God alone and also if you are not actually addicted to your self-love and retired from the love of your God but I am not surprised at it because you never knew that sin consisted in that and no person hath taught you it for the men of this time are ignorant of that truth as well as you and they that are esteemed the most virtuous are full of self-love though they think themselves free from sin so far does the heart of man deceive it self But for your part be wiser for though all men should go to perdition you must endeavour to save your own Soul The great number of damned would not diminish your torments if you should be damned with them but rather augment them by the augmentation of crys blasphemies and noysomeness of Fire and Brimstone which shall augment in Hell with proportion to the number of damned And therefore I counsel you to leave that common tract of the blindness of men which esteem nothing sin but the material things which they have prescribed one to another to be evil Things which God regards little seeing he is a pure Spirit whom not only these gross material things offend as they decifer sins as Drunkenness Robbery Whoredom and other material sins blameable before men but God is offended to see the heart of man cleave to and love things so vile since he created him to love his God only who will delight himself with him And yet man deserts God to delight himself in the satisfaction he takes in eating drinking and cloathing and recreation with any other creature Which hugely displeases God and man becomes his enemy by disobedience while he acts against the designs God had in creating him after his own image and likeness to take his delights with him notwithstanding man against the intention of God delights in himself and the Creatures that are less than himself For whatsoever is created under Heaven is much below man who is as the head and principal of all the works of God and was established over all the other inferiour works of God being made as a little God in his divine nature which is enclosed in his Humanity But the Devil envious of his happiness from the instant of his creation strove to make him lose that part of the divinity which God had bestowed on him he rendered him sensual and earthly to make him leave the love of divine and heavenly things which alone he ought to have loved and by that means he had enjoyed all the other creatures at pleasure as master and Lord of all that was subjected to him But the proud Devil could not suffer man in dominion over the other Creatures he being rejected and banisht from the friendship of God deprived of all good and replenisht of all evil so he by Rage and Envy attempted to destroy man with himself and make him companion of his miseries and seeing man composed of a body and a spirit he insinuated into his spirit endeavouring to unite himself with him under pretext of procuring good to him and so made him imagin that he should know all things as God if he would eat the fruit God had forbid him to eat of and these thoughts being entred into Adam's spirit gained his affection and made him forget the Love and Obedience which he owed to God beginning to love
you read these things curiously or much at a time you should pause and consider what you find there profitable for your soul I would not altogether stop the curiosity you have to read my Writings or those of others who treat of solid Virtue For that Curiosity is necessary at the beginning for you cannot learn if you be not curious to know We must know before we can love If then you knew not the Truths which I write you could not practise them So we may give liberty to that curiosity to know good things You must not read only to nourish or satisfie it but to learn the truth You cannot discover it too much though some natural satisfaction mix it self it shall not hurt you provided you rest not on that pleasure They tell us that Mary Magdalene went to Jesus Christ because they said to her that he was a beautiful man and spoke well Notwithstanding that vain curiosity led her to the knowledge of the truth But after her first curiosity vanishing she gave her self to the practice of the Truths which she had heard from him Do you the same My Son Search curiously the Books which treat of solid Virtue and neglect no occasion to find them seeing they serve as means to know the will of God and because God often speaks to the soul by the means of a good Book moving the heart to the affection of eternal things and contempt of temporal you must only discern whether you read divine things for your own satisfaction or if you do it only to enlighten your soul in the knowledge of the Truth of God If it is for the last there is no evil that you give your self to long reading Stay your self only on the matters which move your heart to the Love of God without going further until you have found means to practise it well I did that in my young years when first I saw the New Testament and when I understood thereby what a Gospel Life was I closed the book for twenty years and exercised my self to practise what is contained in it And so I found the Light of the Holy Spirit without using Books to instruct me In which you may imitate me when you have sufficiently read what may avail to the perfection of your soul Which she wishes to you who remains Your Well-affectioned in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle May 5. 1672. St. Vet. THE XV. LETTER The Devil incites to Good that he may bring Evil out of it To the same Discovering to him a seventh Wile of the Devil by which he carries us out of our selves that comparing our works with those of others we may from our Virtue contract vain-glory And an Eighth by which he incites us to immoderate Macerations and Mortifications of the Body And finally a Nineth in which he excites us to immoderation in spiritual good works toward our Neigbour as unseasonably to Instruct Convert Reprove or Correct him My Son I Must discover to you yet another Device of Satan by which he does gain several well enclined persons even such as have a good will who are not only resolved to labour for the knowledge of true Virtue but would also put it in practice For when he cannnot amuse them by fine speculations and curious searches to be capable of talking well of spiritual things because they have discovered that to talk well of and understand well a Virtue is but Vanity when it is not put in practice and that so they have absolutely resolved to fall to the practice in the exercise of good works Then comes he to tempt by virtue it self and by the practice of good works He endeavours to intrude Vain-glory upon true Virtue and secretly justles in Self-esteem and Contempt of others with good works None is exempt from that Vanity at the beginning of their conversion For all men carry in them an inclination to Pride when they come into the world and also every one must combat and oppose it if he would attain to Salvation But this Pride is harder to be discovered when it furrs it self into Virtue lurking in the heart without appearing outwardly as does that which proceeds from plenty of Riches and the honours which men give For that Vanity shews it self sufficiently outwardly for he that is proud of his Riches will shew to the world his Riches and Liberality by Prodigality in several things as in Moveables Cloaths Meat and Drink willing in every thing the best and dearest to satisfie his vain-glory and must also be served with Pages and Servants So that his outward Actions discover sufficiently the Pride of his Heart but spiritual Pride keeps it self hidden even under a cloak of Humility For we see ordinarily beginners in virtue give themselves to Fasting Watching and Prayer to humility in their Cloathes to ly on hard Beds and other Macerations of their Body and also to exercises of Works of Mercy spiritual and corporal Into which the Devil easily intrudes himself for if he can gain nothing by vain-glory in our good works because the man overcomes it by the Grace of God He attaques us by Excesses in them and moves us to fast to excess that it may ruin our health or unfit it for necessary labour and to obliege us after to substantious or delicate food and so precipitate us again into delicacy Lo how the Devil attempts to sway us from one extreme to another and especially him that is not well acquainted with his wiles He hath brought some to death by excess in fasting and maceration of the body I know that is rare in the time we live in when none will embrace penitence most part loving sensuality Yet among the small number of Penitents the Devil insinuates himself causing them to exceed For when he can no more make them fall by ease and sensualities he does it by excess in good Works And Prayer being the best of all he causes them to tye themselves to a number of vocal Prayers to over-charge them and disquiet them when they have not time to wait and fulfil these ordinary Prayers which makes the man sorrowful and dissatisfied thinking he does not please God when he does not fulfil all his ordinary prayers by custom and in that thought he is sad and pensive and uneasie to them he converses with The Devil draws his advantages from excess in prayer for it hurts the head when too vehement and brings often confusion in their affairs and housholding I have known Women so addicted to their prayers and devotions that they neglected their families to go to Church frequently at solemnities and Devotions and with all they thought they did well without discovering the cunning of the Devil who made them sin instead of doing good For God is a God of Order and not of Confusion and he says expresly that our Prayers should not be as those of the Pharisees who use many words seeing the Lord knows what we have need of
before we ask it And if we think to gain time for Prayer by watching the Devil will disturb our spirit for want of sufficient sleep that he may weaken us and in short time destroy us I have experienced all these things and sometimes fallen into so great extremities that if God had not marvelously maintained me I should have been dead long ago by excess in fasting watching and lying hard which God hath since shewen me to be but a disorderly fervour which cannot be long continued and that the Devil finds his advantages in it and easily insinuates therein thoughts of vain-glory because they think themselves better than others while they use these mortifications of the body though they be no more but means to mortifie our Intemperances and Luxury For if we were well disposed we should not need Watchings Fastings and other Macerations of the body It is not our Flesh that can sin but the will only which we must compel more to do well than our flesh seeing this is but as a Horse which ought not to be whipt when he rides willingly which he does as well covered with a Sadle of Leather as with one of Velvet and contrariwise Even so our Heart may be as virtuous when our Body is covered with velvet as when with Leather seeing the outward habit brings nothing to the Soul Beside a simple habit covers often Hypocrisie and causes pride in the Heart And therefore we must never be tyed to these outward things for the Devil thereby finds opportunity But we must be tyed to God alone on whom the Devil hath no power as he hath on all our outward actions even the best For the Devil furrs himself into works of spiritual Mercy and Charity he perswades us that it is well done to instruct the Ignorant and admonish the faulty which in effect profits no more in this miserable time when men perish not by Ignorance but by pure malice For every one would profess to teach virtue and very few will practice it I exercised my self about nine years in teaching of the ignorant without profiting any thing in the salvation of their Souls On the contrary I had the dissatisfaction to hear some of them say to whom I had shewn the Christian Doctrine and Virtue That they could now do greater Evils than they could do before because now they could cover their wickednesses with feigned Virtues which they could not do before they learn't to talk of Virtue So it is not advisable that we distract our selves to go and teach others unless we see that our teaching will be profitable to their Salvation whom we would teach and we must use in this great discretion otherwise the Devil vould amuse us all our life in teaching the Ignorant thinking we did a work of spiritual Mercy which yet should be no profit to others and much hurt to our selves We must indeeâ—â—ave Charity to teach our Neighbour but not exceed therein nor have an indiscreet Zeal toward such as search not after the Salvation or Perfection of their Souls themselves For the Devil himself would feign ignorance and desire of us instruction to distract us from our own perfection I have known persons possessed of the Devil who went continually searching pious Souls to be instructed in Christian Perfection These are such as the scripture calls silly Women ever learning and never come to the knowledge of the Truth For they care not to put it in practice although they knew it but seek only to amuse us and cause good persons to lose their time who cannot advance in Virtue while they are attempting in vain to procure it to others There is the profit the Devil draws from works of spiritual Mercy both in instructing Ignorants and admonishing the Faulty for so evil is our time become that we can no more resist the evil it is enough to endure and suffer it with regret If you should speak to admonish men for their Oaths Whoredoms Robberies Lies and Infidelities and other gross Sins they would leap in your face curse you despise you calumniate and hate you So that instead of doing them any work of Mercy you should excite them to greater sins and put your self in danger of being abused and persecuted without any profit As I have known persons zealous for the Glory of God who could not suffer the wicked in their presence and reproved their Vices and admonished them upon occasions And these have often run the hazard of being killed by them they admonisht the Devil attempting so to extirpate them Which also happened to one of my Friends who was Poisoned for being over-zeaâ—â—â—â— for the Glory of God and over-fervent in opposing Evil And therefore we must in all things use discretion if we would evite the snares which the Devil spreads every where to catch souls Yet we must not therefore neglect to instruct the Ignorant and admonish the Faulty when we find persons disposed to profit thereby Yea we must have in our heart the Charity of St. Paul who wished to be accursed for his brethrens Salvation Which appears to be an excessive Zeal but it proceeded from the Charity of his Heart toward his Neighbour and forgetting of himself For he regarded more the Glory of God than his own Salvation or Advantage seeing he was but one person to glorify God and his brethren a great number So that excess could not come of the Devil seeing he had no interest or profit by it He knows that God does the will of them that he loves and so he might foresee that St. Paul would obtain the Prayer which he made for his Brethren He knew also that God would not damn St. Paul for his great Charity which he carryed to his Brethren offering his own Salvation that they might be saved He could have no extrance there seeing Charity is God himself on whom the Devil hath no power but he hath much over all our external actions when they are done without discretion Therefore was it St. Anthony said Discretion is the greatest of all Virtues seeing they are disorderly when not regulated with Discretion For Fastings Watchings Prayers and Works of Mercy and other Virtues are not good when Discretion is wanting It is good to admonish and instruct our Neighbour in a fit season and when he desires it but when he does not seek it or will not suffer it we must withdraw testifying that their imperfections and sins displease us without going to correct or restrain them authoritatively For God hath not given us our Brother in charge he is left free as well as we so we ought not to help him but by Charity as far as he hath need and desires it not farther God does equally the same with all men he pleased to have them free and so constrains them in nothing Now we must not presume to be more just or charitable than God in willing to obliege our Neighbour to do well by force and forsake his Sins and
entertain himself with his heavenly Father free from all distraction And nothing more pure than the intentions of our Saviour He says He came not into the world to accomplish his own Will but the Will of him that sent him Notwithstanding the Devil had the impudence to go to tempt him several times by Vain-glory in presenting to him the Kingdoms of the World as also the Stones to convert into Bread for his Hunger He tempted him also by the Scripture saying That be should throw himself down from the pinacle of the Temple because it is written that the angel shall preserve us c. Are not these full cunning wiles of the Devil while he uses the most holy things to tempt Jesus Christ He attempts to catch him by his Fasts his confidence in God and by glory in presenting him all the kingdoms of the World How then should he leave untempted frail and imperfect Creatures like us For what is man there that must not confess himself far short of the least of Jesus Christ his perfections Who is he that retires to the Desert to give himself to entertainment with God out of the Dangers and Divertisments of the world Who refuses the kingdoms and Riches of the Earth Who is he among the spirituals that does not tempt God by his Temerity and Presumption For they no sooner receive any particular Light or Grace from God but they Glory and esteem themselves beyond others And no sooner do they forsake sin to give themselves to Works of Mercy but they think God is beholding to them and that every body should esteem them Which happens to all that begin to serve God and follow true Virtue excepting none because of the corruption of our nature He that says or believes the contrary is deceived and walks not in rhe Truth and the knowledge of himself For all men in general and every particular brings these natural inclinations with him coming into the world they are all proud presumptuous covetous of honour riches and pleasures Always prefer themselves to others and esteem themselves worthy of all goods and honour Yea they think God oblieged to them for the least good action they do because the Devil hath furred into mans nature that pride of life which inflames the heart of man and hinders him to abase himself and acknowledge his faults We see that even Adam did not humble himself after his sin but endeavoured to excuse it saying The Woman which thou gavest me tempted me to eat of the Apple and she said The Serpent beguiled me All which proceeded from the pride which the Devil had already planted in the heart of our first Parents and consequently in the hearts of all men that were to proceed from them For all are stained with that sin of Pride and so they will not acknowledge their faults but defend them to their power Which also remains with them till death unless they overcome that corruption of nature by true Virtue And when they arrive at that they overcome the Devil For he hath no power but over his own works or the corruption which he hath caused in our nature That being once overcome we revive in the strength of the grace wherein Adam was created And when man finds himself united to God by the love he hath to him then he scorns at the Devil and becomes a new creature And so will no more have any fellowship with that corruption wherein he was born Yet such an one must be upon his guard for the Devil who seduced our first parents when in the state of Grace may well seduce a man that is regenerated in it so long as he lives in his time of tryal which is this miserable life for God will prove mans fidelity to him He created him free that liberty then must needs be proved otherwise it should be constraint For if God had willed absolutely to constrain him to love him he had been happy as Gods slave But he would honour man much more in creating him free that he might entertain himself with him He would then choose the soul of man for his Spouse and not his Slave And therefore it must have a time of proof or advisement to resolve if it would joyn and unite with its God or not Now this time of tryal was this present life in which Adam should have given testimony of his fidelity to his God Notwithstanding he was so imprudent as to break the fidelity he owed to the Spouse of his Soul would go joyn himself to creatures unworthy of his love And so he interrupted the covenant and fellowship which God would make with his Soul even until his sin and infidelity were purged by repentance That is the reason why his time of tryal was turned into one of penitence which Adam underwent faithfully all the time of his life But the pride which his first sin hath planted in our hearts makes us often depise him and wish evil to him because of the hurt he caused us As if he were the cause of our damnation which is a great error For although Adam had never sinned yet other men might always have damned themselves by their own sins during their time of tryal For each one for himself should in this time have given testimony of his fidelity to God since all men and every one in particular were of the same nature and condition and also in the same state with Adam before his sin And there is at present no other difference betwixt the state of man now and that of Adam but that since sin came men are born with an inclination to Evil whereas Adam had inclination to Good only when he was created With that exception we are of the same condition with Adam and created for the same end that our souls should be spouses to God provided we remain faithful to him during the time of our tryal and penitence which we must attend in this life which is full short in regard of that of Adam But if we knew the truth of things and discovered the snares of the Devil to shun and evite them in our good actions we might hope to attain again to an eternal union with God For Adam's sin cannot damn us if our own sins do it not seeing God hath pardoned Adam's sin in case he fulfilled his repentance And he hath also pardoned all other men upon the same condition but the misery of men now adays is that they know not those things and will here enjoy instead of suffering Which is a false perswasion of the Devil who insinuates himself into the holiest things while we perceive it not Which is a truth she exhorts you to believe who is careful of your Soul Holstein near Gottorp Castle May. 8 1672. St. vet ANTONIA BOURIGNON THE XVII LETTER Sin proceeds from Man's Freewill To the same shewing him an Eleventh sort of Tentation whereby we lay the blame of our sins upon the Devil to free our selves where is
commits it upon all occasions But he that would evite these Perils should have spiritual Diligence to watch over all his words and actions to resist the corruption which sin hath brought unto human nature which is so corrupted by sin that it can produce no more any good temporal or spiritual since retired from the Love of God wherein is all good it is fallen into Self-love wherein is all evil which produces always its like So that whatever we do by our natural motion it is altogether evil and sin And if you could well comprehend that Truth as it is you should always distrust your self and never dare to do or undertake any thing if you would not do evil and fall into sin But man's rashness and ignorance renders him bold to undertake things spiritual and temporal As if he were wise and free of corruption which often precipitates him into great faults and sins which they do not perceive until after they are committed and so cannot be helpt I believe my Son that you have often experienced that in your self without knowing whence these faults proceeded seeing your will was to do all well believe me they proceed all from spiritual negligence and because you know not yet sufficiently the corruption of your nature which you have followed while in the world you thought your self full wise when you could order your temporal affairs to your profit You have not perceived that the Devil could well help you in that that by procuring you prosperity he might detain you always in the affection of earthly things and that you should neglect eternal ones as other Merchants of your profession do yet Who instead of labouring for the Gospel-pearl labour to follow the will of the Devil the Enemy of their souls without perceiving it Yea they think it a Blessing of God that they prosper in temporal Affairs but it is often a Curse seeing God gives his Friends temporal Adversities and reserves for them eternal Joys But to men that have done some temporal good in this world but have not overcome the corruption of their corrupt natures God recompences the temporal good they have done in this world with temporal prosperities because God leaves no Good without Recompence nor Evil without Punishment Wherefore I pray you my Son to watch over your soul with spiritual Diligence that you let not one word or action escape that proceeds from your corrupted nature seeing it produces all sorts of sins which would finally lead you to eternal damnation But labour to resist manfully the corruption of your nature by a Spiritual Diligence So you must always watch over your words and actions that the Devil gain you not by spiritual Negligence which she wishes you who loves your soul Husum Febr. 1. 1674. S. vet ANTONIA BOURIGNON THE XXIII LETTER Spiritual Diligence is necessary to Salvation To the same To whom is shewn the Necessity of Spiritual Diligence to watch over all the actions of our corrupt nature and proper will and to acquire the Knowledge of our selves Moreover that Spiritual Negligence is a Fountain of all Evils and is alone sufficient to damn us because it renders our soul rude and like to a cursed ground which bears only Thorns and Thistles and so is far from Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart My Son I Have entertained you largely of the Necessity of Spiritual Diligence which we must have in this perilouslife I have shewn you how necessary it is unto Salvation and that without it none can be saved because of the many enemies we have to war against I must now shew you all the Evils which Spiritual Negligence causes It is a Pest in the good Air of Virtue for although you had acquired a great number of Virtues they could not subsist in your soul without Spiritual Diligence seeing in this world we cannot be free of enemies who attacque us continually We might well be for some time in repose in Virtue but that repose should be the most dangerous combat of our souls which thinking to take rest as did the rich man in the Gospel who had his Granderies filled but it was said unto him thou Fool this night thy Soul shall be required of thee and whose shall then these things be The same shall be said to them who think they have acquired so many Virtues and yet have not Spiritual Diligence For they shall find themselves deceived at Death because they have not watched over their Virtues having suffered the corruption of their nature to reign For if you be not Diligent in Virtue to watch and be aware that Vain-glory insinuate not it self it will take away all the force and merit of your Virtue Seeing God says Sacrificespb So he hath no need of our virtue when it is accompanied with esteem of our selves or with Vain-glory as when we artribute any good unto our selves seeing we are truely filled with all evils where is no good For man's nature is so corrupted by sin that there remains to him no good spiritual or temporal So that we may with truth say that there remained nothing in man after sin but ignorance malice and power to do evil I know my Son You have to oppose that man by his nature can do some good as we see the wicked do in regard of their temporal affairs They gain Money and assist their Neighbour One can Write well another make Accompts one can Paint well another is a good Carpenter or other Mechanique which is good and necessary for the present life How then can we say with truth that man can do no good even in temporals It appears necessary that I should explain my self that I be not argued of falshood I know that all men in general and every one in particular believe that they have something good in themselves and that they can do well according to their knowledge Which is also true in regard of some even imperfect before God such are they that have the skill to exercise some Art or Trade which they have learnt I experienced that in the Girles of my Hospital at Lisle for they did very well what I had taught them Though otherways I knew that they had given their souls to the Devil and were joyned to him by explicite compact That did not hinder that they should learn well to sew cleanse spinn read and write and manage Housholdrey and several other things which they did very well So that it would appear not to be true which I averred viz. That man hath nothing good in him and can do no good For we see they do several goods things even to the view of men But you must know that all the good they do proceeds not from them but from God who hath bestowed it on them by particular Grace and Mercy or else they have learnt it of other men For it is a certain truth that man hath not of himself any thing but sin and that he can do no good
spiritual or temporal since all good comes from God and all evil from man and the Devil But when one hath learnt any good from God he can teach it to his Neigbour But he cannot have that good of himself because sin hath filled him with all evil and deprived him of all good And we cannot bring out of a thing what is not in it For if the Fire were not latent in the Flink it would not come out by striking on the Iron and if Virtue were not in a soul it would not appear upon occasion So as it appeared in Job in the midst of so many tentations For he blessed God saying when he was informed of the Death of his Children God gave them and God hath taken them blessed he his holy Name Which was a Grace which he had received of God It was planted in his Soul and so produced fruit in its reason But he that lives yet in the corruption of his nature can produce nothing but sins and evil since he hath nothing but that in him and no good can proceed out of his soul because there is none in it Therefore man is sottish to believe that he can do good temporal or spiritual seeing in effect he ruins whatever he touches and can do no good but by the particular Grace of God But because man does not sufficiently study spiritual Diligence that he may come to know himself he easily perswades himself that he is wise to do things spiritual and temporal without noticing that his nature is altogether corrupted by sin He speaks works and acts of himself as if he knew to do any good though all that proceeds from the corruption of our nature is evil Man then ought always to have that distrust of himself that he never follow his own proper will for whatever proceeds from it is evil and he that believes not that Truth shall fall into many excesses and sins Therefore is it that Jesus Christ hath taught Christians to deny themselves and more he gives himself an example of that denial Saying I am not come to do my own Will but the Will of him that sent me Now if there could in all the human nature be a good will it was assuredly that of Jesus Christ and we learn in the Gospel that he renounced altogether his own will Saying to his Father Not my Will but thine be done And he said so because he knew that the wills of all men were corrupted by Adam's Sin and consequently cannot be followed without doing evil And therefore Jesus Christ himself would not follow his own Will knowing well that as to his mortal nature his own proper will was evil as are those of all other men unto whom he would make himself like when he put on our Mortality Now if Jesus Christ prays his Father that his proper will be not done how much more ought man corrupted by his own sins beside the corruption of Adam's sin which all men have contracted from him It is thence that their wills are become evil and so produce all sorts of sins which we cannot evite but by a spiritual Diligence watching continually over the motions of our proper will that we may resist sin For if we fall into spiritual Negligence our own will shall always have the upperhand and govern all our words and actions which shall be always evil and so we shall commit continual sins without perceiving it and it is by that spiritual negligence alone that souls perish insensibly and from which all sorts of evil proceed We may see that Truth in temporal and corporal things for when they are neglected they catch always hurt If we neglect a new born Infant it must of necessity die for lack of vigilance If we take not care after to teach it in speaking walking and labouring it shall grow up like a Beast and when it is come to the use of reason it must labour trade or study if it would subsist and have necessary aliment So that all sorts of evils should befal it by that negligence in things corporal and it would even rot and be eaten of Vermin if neglected to be cleansed What evils does not negligence bring in civil matters Countreys and Citties are ruined by want of fore-seeing for if a Lord or Governour of a Countrey be not diligent to watch over what he hath in charge his Enemies will surprise him and he will lose his Honout and Goods while asleep And if the magistrate of a City be not diligent to watch over his Citizens they shall forget their duty and introduce into the Republique evils which after they cannot remedy and that because they have by their Negligence suffered them too long The same is it with the Master of a House or Society If he neglect to watch over his Subjects he shall find himself oppressed with confusion which he cannot redress afterward Negligence in business empoverishes many and loses their Honour by infamous Banquerupts Also by Negligence are lost the Grain and Fruit of the Earth when we do not sow and reap them in due season It destroys the Houshold Provision brings Rust on the Iron Moths in Cloaths and Rotting in Linnens and in fine negligence brings many Rich Men to Poverty Disgraces those that were in Honour and Reputation it brings damage and evil unto every thing even to the smallest things For if but one stitch in your Stockings slip and you neglect to mend it that stitch will quiekly become a great hole and in the end rent the whole stocking which your Diligence might have preserved for some years It is even so with many other things which diligence preserves in good order whereas by negligence they are destroyed and brought to confusion yea it often causes death For if a Disease were well attended at the beginning it were often easily cured but negligence renders it difficult and sometimes incurable as if a Pleuritique be let blood too late he must die and if the nature of the sick be not known to apply timely suitable remedies for his indisposition he must die That is the reason that men now adays live so short a while in regard of Adam and his successors who lived to several hunderds of years because they knew the disposition of nature better each knew what was good and needful for himself on every occasion but now while men are ignorant of Nature they take often Remedies contrary to their evils and neglect such as might cure them But this corporal or civil Negligence though it causes so many evils is nothing in regard of spirituall Negligence Seeing the first causes only temporal and transitory evils and the other eternal ones It deprives man of all sorts of good and subjects him to all sorts of evil which is eternal damnation For he that hath not Spiritual Diligence to watch against the Enemies of his Soul and for the means he should embrace to his Salvation he must perish by that only Negligence
though he committed no other sin for it is of our Souls that the Scripture says in the perfect sense The Ground that is not laboured shall bring forth Thistles and Bryars because the ground of our Souls became cursed by sin and being fallen into that Curse it can no more bear any wholsom fruit without bestowing on it a great Diligence We must trench and till it with the iron of penitence to tilk the Tares and bad Weeds of Corruption which have sprung up in the earth of our souls For if these be not rooted out they shall suffocate always the good grain of true Virtue which should thereby be stifled though sowed in good quantity in our souls we must maintain it by a continual Diligence otherwise it will bear no fruit we must watch over our Enemies we must always resist the inclinations of that corrupt nature and finally we must continually study the knowledge of our selves For he that knows not himself is ignorant of all and cannot arrive at the Virtue to be Meek and Lowly and Humble of Heart which Jesus Christ says we should learn of him No other means can be found than that he that knows not the Miseries Ignorance and Malediction wherein sin hath brought us cannot be meek He shall on the contrary be fierce and arrogant and presume to be worthy of honour and esteem which shall also take away and hinder his Meekness toward his Neighbour and also his Humility of Heart For he that knows not himself thinks he hath need of no person and consequently will not be meek nor kind toward his Neighbour and yet less Humble of Heart which comes for want of knowledge of his Misery and the miserable estate into which sin hath reduced him and so he cannot humble himself according to the Doctrine of Jesus Christ which is so good and salutary unto which I exhort you my Son that you follow it to your eternal Happiness And I am Your well-affected in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Husum Feb. 3. 1674. St. vet THE XXIV LETTER Men are Idolaters of their own Corruption and Enemies of Virtue To the same advertising him that the continuation of that Subject is interrupted by the Devils exciting the Wise of this World Enemies of Virtue and Friends of corrupt Nature to distract the mind of the Writer by their disputes Lies and Calumnies and all manner of Persecutions My Son I have yet many things to say to you of solid Virtue but the time is wanting to me at present seeing my Enemies are all earning to hinder it I doubt not but it is the Devil our common Enemy who will not suffer that we speak of solid Virtue Beside he keeps men at present in spiritual Negligence with apparent Virtues and they take them for solid and true ones therefore would he make them rest in the Love of themselves without arriving at solid Virtue Now while he cannot hinder that I should discover it because God discloses it to me he endeavours to his power to hinder its being published He induces divers persons to write against me to take up my time in answering them and to entertain me with matters of Contention instead of that of solid Virtue Which bereaves me of my time and gives me the displeasure of leaving this Treatise of solid Virtue Yet I must apply my self to repel the Calumnies and Lies which they have dispersed against me in divers places As some in England have also done So I was obliged to write a Large advertisment against them for if I did not give testimony to the truth against so many fall accusations and sies which they 've made I should be guilty of the sin which these false accusations produce and should be the cause that good persons did not follow the Truths which I propagate from God For so many false reports would render them suspect the rather when I am not attacqued by the common people but by the ministers and learned which are esteemed worthy of credit These wise and learned strive at present to kill the spirit of Jesus Christ as such like before killed his body you have seen the defamatory treatise which John Berckendal in name of the Ministers of Calvins Reformation in Altena hath composed against me And I was obliged to give testimony to the truth against so many falshoods by a great Teatise whereto are joyned the testimonies of a great many persons yet alive and worthy of credit That work hindered me from writing more to you of solid Virtue though I know that to be very profitable and necessary for you and for all that desire and aspire at becoming true Christian as you do There are at present so many persons deceived by apparent Virtues and who learn always and never come to the knowledge of the Truth They think they are already in true Virtue whereas they are yet altogether in the love of themselves Therefore is the Devil so angry when I write of true Virtue lest the Deceit of the false be discovered by the true But the Devil cannot hinder me to know it since God discovers it to me so he attempts to bereave me of the time to write it that neither you nor other souls that aspire after it should know it That is the cause why he incites divers persons to write against me that so I may not have time to write of solid Virtue He labours to occupy me always in opposing Slanderers But he deceives himself for among the refutations of the calumnies of my Enemies I intermix always something of solid Virtue It ought to be unto you My Son a Discipline to regulate well your life and become a true disciple of Jesus Christ Examin well then all that comes from my pen and you shall always find therein more and more enlightning and wholsom instruction which you shall find principally in the 23 Letters which I have written last to you concerning the words of Jesus Christ Learn of me for I am meek and lowly and humble of heart all that matter shall suffice for aliment to your soul until I can write more unto you which I shall do when I have answered two treatises which the Disciples of Labadie have composed against me I have not yet had leisure to read them but I conjecture that they shall be as the rest full of Errors and Calumnies And that because all they that follow the motions of corrupt nature are in error and falshood and are not in quiet nor at peace with the Truth because these are two contraries which always exclude one th' other And therefore is it that all these learned Schollars oppose the doctrine which I advance It is not such as they have learnt in the Schools besidâ— neither will they approve any thing but what maintains them in Honours Profit Eases and Commodities of this life To which the Doctrine of Jesus Christ is quite contrary For it speaks of nothing but poverty Contempt sufferings and Persecution
reign from our proper Will and nothing else For our diseases are often caused by our intemperance in Eating and Drinking or other Excesses of the body which we commit to satisfie our proper Will which precipitates us sometimes into some state that causeth us a thousand Pains or some Employment or Traffique which lead us into great Troubles of Processes Quarrels Disquiets or other Poverties and Miseries And all that proceeds from that we would not submit our Will unto that of God who would have ruled us as a good Father his Child having loved rather to follow our own Will and undergo all manner of Calamities in this world and be in peril of suffering after greater ones which shall never end because he that will not be guided by God can never be saved seeing our proper conduct shall lead us into abyses of all manner of Evils temporal and eternal because our proper Will is ignorant precipitant never satiated nor satisfied not staying for any sorts of Evils although it discover its Miseries it does not amend them but attributes them unto another to Adam or else to God and so flattering themselves always in their own Will they persist therein until Death which gives beginning unto eternity of Misery because no person can be saved of himself and if they will not give their Will unto God from whom can they expect Salvation It is great blindness Sir not to know these Truths which are so evident seeing we feel our impotency and know that we have received all from God and cannot hope for any thing but from him And with all these considerations we will not abandon our Will into his loving rather to be miserable and perish in the end by following our own We are ingrate unto God and cruel unto our selves For it is very great ingratitude to refuse God the only thing that he requires of our proper Will having given us all the rest and great Cruelty unto our selves in withdrawing from the Dependance of God to subject our selves unto so many sorts of Evils I asked her How it was possible that men should refuse God their proper Will seeing all belonged unto him She said Sir all the world does that by effect and I know not one only person upon Earth who will depend on the will of God because every one will follow his own proper will great and small none excepted will not abandon their will unto that of God but will all depend upon their own Is it any wonder that I have said unto you formerly that none can be saved in the manner that they live at present It is an infallible Truth which none have yet discovered because of the universal Darkness which is at present in the world Every one imagins to himself that he will abandon himself unto God when there is nothing like it for if that were true we should not see men so earnest to negociate or traffique nor run through Cities and Countrys to gather Money nor also to solicit for offices states or benefices because every one remitting himself into the Dependance of God would labour to have only his necessities and no more knowing well that this life is short and that the necessity sufficeth unto a Sojourner who will be loath to burthen himself with things useless or superfluous unto his Voyage which would be a burthen to him All mens Cares Goings Comings or pretensions for things present are as many Witnesses which affirm that they will not abandon their will unto God but will follow their own proper will leaving the penitence which God hath enjoyned to exalt themselves into States Honours and Dignities seeking to live at our ease instead of labouring to fulfil the Penitence due unto our sins We act directly contrary unto the Will of God because we cannot be ignorant that he requires that Submission and Penitence of us And with all that we say by word that we are abandoned unto God and look upon it as a thing impossible that we should refuse him our will which discovers always the more our blindness I said unto her That there was truely horrible darkness over the universal World and that I my self was environed with them in believing that I would be abandoned unto God while I had yet many cares for this life She said Sir you see well that your abandon is not true so long as there are yet cares for this life It were to have great distrust of God that after we were abandoned unto his governing we should yet have Cares for temporal things God who hath created all things for man can he refuse him his necessities when he were abandoned unto him If he nourisheth the Birds of Heaven who labour not should he not nourish men in labouring We are exceeding full of false perswasions which flatter us to our ruin For it is assured that he who hath resolved to abandon himself unto God seeks no more earthly things but those which are eternal God makes him see sufficiently that what is here below are but transitory things which the Servant of God should not touch but with the extremity of his foot because they are unworthy of a Soul dedicated unto God which regards no more any thing but to please him And if you Sir have other Cares believe assuredly that you are not yet abandoned unto him because that abandon consists in a cessation from every thing to receive from God only and the less self acts the more we receive There needs no more but TO CEASE AND TO RECEIVE For all our Cares and Disquiets or activity for the things of this life are all Impediments which extinguish the operations which God would produce in our Soul We must cease and rest to let the Holy Spirit act alone If our will be abandoned unto God he will rule it wisely Let us yield our souls unto his Government and let us labour for accomplishing the penitence due unto our Sins that we may have things necessary for the entertainment of our body and then we may truely say that we are abandoned unto God not before because the States Cares and Affairs of the World are all Impediments unto that Abandon yea even so many divers means of devotion as men practise at present are all great Impediments since there is only that Abandon alone necessary I said unto her That that little word Abandon comprehended great things that it was nevertheless the Philosophers Stone to discover the eternal Treasures unto which I aspired She said Sir that word of ABANDON UNTO GOD comprehendeth all things for he that is abandoned unto him knows him and loves him and knows also true Virtue to follow it and the falsity of Vices to evite them because God abandons himself unto the Soul which is abandoned unto him and the Holy Spirit lives in it and remaining with it replenisheth it with his Gifts to know every thing and with his fruits to entertain it so that all our happiness depends
on abandoning our Will unto that of God and not in many divers things as men imagin There needs no more but that abandon to be reunited in Grace and Favour with God entirely converted unto him and out of all sorts of dangers If you be guilty abandon your self unto God he shall presently receive you and convert you unto himself and if you be in fear of his Judgments and of this dangerous time abandon your self unto him he shall preserve you and save you There is nothing to be done but that alone to abandon your self unto God and remain under his dependance Is not that a thing most reasonable that a Creature remain under the Dependance of its Creator must there be Commandments and Constraints to oblige him unto a duty so just so good and so advantagious There is no right divine human nor civil that can dispense us from so just a thing Notwithstanding we rebel against all manner of rights to adhere unto our proper Will which is so wicked and insolent which percipitates us into so many sorts of evils for all the Miseries which we find in this life proceed from our proper Will and as the abandoning of it unto the Will of God is the accomplishment of all good so the possession of it is the consummation of all manner of Evils so that he who will be converted needs nothing else but to remit his will into the power of God In doing that he fulfilleth all the Law and the Prophets because they teach us nothing else but means to attain to that abandon I said unto her That being supposed as it is most true that in acknowledging always that we depend upon God in every thing we need no other Precept nor Commandment that it was a marvel that she had taught me so many means She said Sir I have spoken to you of the state of the World and of the Church that you refer no more thereto by pious Beliefs I have also told you that we are arrived in the reign of Antichrist lest you should be deceived and also that the world is judged that you flatter not your self by false hopes believing that it shall yet endure to continue in negligence I have also shewed you true Virtue that you be not deceived by that which is only apparent having also declared unto you the sins against the Holy Spirit and them which we commit in another that you might be ignorant of nothing that should hinder your abandoning unto God for the ignorance of Good and Evil would destroy us insensibly and as we are fallen in the time of universal Darkness the common Enemy might very easily deceive you as he doth all the world perswading you that you are abandoned unto God when you lived yet wholly unto your self For that have I explained so many things particularly to you that you might make a good discretion of the Truth from Falshood and that you might assuredly abandon your self unto God according to your desires And as you can never do Good without departing from Evil nor depart from it without knowing it I have therefore laboured to discover unto you the good and the evil which reigns at present in the world to give you the assured marks to know if you are abandoned unto God in truth or not and as the Commandments of God are given us to discover unto us what hinders us to be abandoned unto him and also the Evangelical Law that by means thereof we might remove all the impediments of our abandoning us unto God Voluntary Poverty being the means to disengage our proper Will from desiring perishing Goods Chastity to disengage the same Will from desiring the Pleasures of the Flesh and Obedience to disengage our desire from accomplishing our proper Will so all the other Evangelical Councels which teach us to omit the things that hinder our abandoning our selves unto God So I judged it necessary to declare unto you all the things which give let unto that abandon unto God and also them that may serve us as means to facilitate unto us that abandon which is the only thing essential which God requires of all them who will be saved I asked Her if it was sufficient to resolve absolutely that I will from henceforth absolutely depend upon God and no more use my own proper Will in any thing She said Sir that Resolution is a great beginning but it were to be feared that we should not effectually put it in practice through our evil habits so long inveterated Our proper will having always ruled how can it be entirely subjected unless by the means which Jesus Christ hath denoted us in his Gospel which are as so many degrees or steps to mount unto that abandon for otherwise we might yet make false suppositions as we have done heretofore until now But when we put in practice the Evangelical doctrine we shall thereby discover how far we are advanced in that abandon unto God for if our frailty had not needed these means God had not taken human flesh to come and teach us them because he can do nothing unprofitable You must then stay upon that Sir and take up simply that Evangelical Doctrine which shall teach us all things palpable unto our senses which following we shall assuredly arrive at that abandon for that is the true way the most short and most sure way Although God hath in divers times sent Prophets and holy Persons to tell men by what means they might recover that abandon unto God yet have they never done it in such perfection as Jesus Christ when he was upon Earth because he hath omitted nothing but hath taught all so punctually that men shall never need other instructions because that is the last Mercy which God will exercise toward men who must expect nothing after the Doctrine of Jesus Christ and what hath been taught before or since hath been nothing comparable unto that Evangelical Doctrine we must embrace and follow it if we will be saved because it teacheth us all the means of accomplishing the Law of God CONFERENCE XVII Is a Recollection of all the preceding Matters their End and Use I rendered her many thanks for the Goodness which she had to tell me so many things profitable unto my Salvation promising to practise them as much as it were possible for me SHe said Sir in the practise consists your Salvation for it is a very small matter to know all the Conduct of the World with all its Sciences and Secrets if all that do not serve you as means to work out your Salvation all is vanity and delusion yea Wisdom shall be unto our greater Condemnation when we do not put in practice the Good which we know and do not flee and hate what we know of Evil. I had not enlarged to declare to you so many things of Good and Evil if I had not remarked that you desire to put them in practise for to know the
her the text of the gospel with promise to submit my understanding unto the Light of the Holy Spirit entirely to my power She said Sir that Submission is the preparation requisit For if you would act the Doctor or wise learned man you should put opposition unto the Light of the Holy Spirit source of all Wisdom You must always believe and maintain that he is more wise than all the Doctors that ever were in the world and that we learn more by a little ray of his Light than by an hundred years of most assiduous study Therefore render all your Wisdom Ignorances and become as an Infant newly born again that you may receive these new Intelligences which shall give you more light than ever all the Old Fathers together have had because they have never discovered the hidden Treasures because the time was not yet come Every one spoke according to his thoughts and not as it was really because it was a closed Book which none was worthy to open but Jesus Christ himself since he was killed and put to death There is not hitherto any thing accomplished of all the Holy Scriptures but that death which shall disclose the marvellous things of God which have remained hidden until now and begin to be revealed unto them who shall be humble of heart but the wise shall perish with their wisdom Therefore do I exhort you Sir unto Simplicity and Submission that you may receive the Light which begins to soring in our time and see the new heavenly Jerusalem descend adorned as a Bride unto the day of her Nuptials The League and alliance of God with men shall then be accomplished The Earth shall then be renewed All Creatures shall leave their Malignities which shall be confined unto the center of the Earth to torment the Bodies and Souls of all them who would not submit their wills unto God They shall receive there pains according to their sins being over-whelmed with those Malignities which these sins have caused CONFERENCE XXVI Declareth the Necessity of becoming a Child to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven renouncing all Worldly Wisdom and all Human Abuses I asked her How it were possible to leave all Sciences humanly acquired to become a Child when one is an Aged Man SHe said Sir except you do it you shall not enter into the Kingdom of Heaven It is Jesus Christ who saith it and he cannot lie but he urgeth that necessity of becoming Children by Threatenings of not entering into the Kingdom of heaven which were the greatest evil that can befal man It were better never to be born than not to be saved and seeing we cannot be saved without becoming Children we must do it at any rate Would you Sir esteem more the Honour of the World or your acquired Science than the Kingdom of heaven That were very lamentable seeing all the things of this world do but pass as the Bird which cutteth the Air and leaveth no trace of its way after it so we when we shall be passed through this world there shall remain nothing of our Sciences or Studies nor of our Honour and Reputation all endeth with us and if there remain in the spirit of others any reputation that we were wise and learned that is insensible unto us after death If we have pleased our selves therein in our life the sufferings of these complacencies attend us in the other world and instead that it should be a happiness to us that we have been wise it is a great misery to us to have lost the Kingdom of Heaven by the same wisdom Forsake all these human Considerations Sir and become a Child though you be aged You must make the more haste lest time and life escape Never consult flesh and blood for they deceive and corrupt us Let us consult only our divine Soul which is reasonable and it shall tell you that nothing is better nor more reasonable than to abandon our free will unto God who hath given us it and to submit it unto his government as a little Child that on that depends our eternal Happiness and that nothing else can save us because without that Dependance there is no Salvation I said unto her That I knew most clearly that truth that there was no Salvation without the Dependance of God asking how I could now ignore Sciences formerly acquired seeing I could not make my self not to have them She said Sir nothing can hurt you if all be submitted unto God You cannot ignore what you know by means of your Studies but you can well submit all these Sciences unto God and account them as Ignorances as in effect they are Apply no more your spirit unto the study of Sciences and believe them to be all vain in respect of the Wisdom of God You shall know that you are abandoned unto his will when you seek no more any thing upon Earth neither Learning nor Wisdom nor desire to know any thing else but what may render you acceptable unto God For he that is abandoned unto him without Deceit moves himself no more but for what regards his Glory all the rest toucheth him no more If he is wise or ignorant it is indifferent unto him Wisdom serves him for what regards the Glory of God and in no wise to rule upon Earth knowing well that he who is abandoned unto God without Sciences is as great as he who is so with much Learning and even as we may well be Poor of Spirit in possessing Riches so can we possess much learning and withal be simple of Spirit when we have submitted all our Learning unto God he serves himself of it as he pleaseth but so long as we will rely on and make account of them we are not yet become Children to have entry into the Kingdom of Heaven And seeing God sheweth you Sir that there is no Salvation without dependance on him put your self promptly therein without considering if you have Sciences or any thing else For as the Proverb is God makes Mercury of all wood we must not regard our selves but his will who desires that all men of whatever conditions hold themselves under his Dependance remitting their free wills into his power without using the same themselves I said unto her That absolutely and irrevocably I abandoned my self unto God to be a true Child but that I had yet some repugnancy to renounce the Church She said Ha Sir you must never renounce the Holy Church but rather die but you must only renounce the abomination which is crept into the Romish Church of these days Do you not see that she hath falsified her faith unto her lawfull Husband Jesus Christ and hath not remained faithful unto him I should be glad that you could shew me one only point of the Doctrine of Jesus Christ that she observes or one only thing that she practiseth that is not contrary to the Life and Doctrine of her