and for us all MEDITATION III. ANd the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his Gen. 2. 7. nostrhils the breath of life and man became a living soule For when the Angels enriched with such absolute gifts and dowries of nature by occasion of their shining and beautifull nature had lost and lost beyond recovery the fairest beauty under Heaven which is Grace God turning his Omnipotencie to the Creation of man made as if he feared the like inconvenience all that is visible in Him of Earth of base and foule earth Which lest it should continually provoke a loathing he hath changed into a more fine substance covered all over with a fair and fashionable skinne but with a condition of returning at a word and halfe a call from Heaven unto Earth and into Earth That although he might afterwards be lifted up in the scale of his soule hee might be depressed againe presently on the other side by the waight and heavinesse of his body and so might lay the deep and low foundation of humility requisite to the high and stately building of vertue If now God should turn a man busie in the commission of some haynous crime into his first earth that presently in steed of the man should appeare to us an Image of clay like the man and with the mans cloathes on standing in the posture in which the man stood when he was wholly tooke up in committing that high sinne against God Should we not all abominate so vile a man of clay lifting himselfe against the great God of Heaven and Earth And God breathed upon his face rather then upon any other part of his body because all the senses of man doe flourish in his face and because agreeably to his own ordinance in the face the operations of the soule should be most apparent as the signes of feare griefe joy and the like wherefore one calls the eyes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most exact and accurate images of the Damascenus in vita Isidori minde But stay I grant that God in the beginning first rais'd all things by a strange lift out of nothing And I confesse it is true not that which Pythagoras his Schollers had so often in their mouthes Ipse dixit and no farther but ipse dixit facta sunt as the Prophet David singeth God spake the word and all this gallant world rose presently out of nothing as if sencelesse nothing had heard his voyce and obeyed him And I am sufficiently convinced that God brought our first Father from cōmon earth that we cannot touch without defiling our fingers to earth of a finer making call'd flesh But how are we made by him wee come a naturall way into the world And it is not seene that God hath any extraordinary hand in the work Truly neither are the influences of the Sunne and Starres apparent to us in our composition yet are they necessary to it Sol homo generant hominem sayes Aristotle The Sunne and a Arist man betwixt them beget a child The reasonable soule is created by God in the body at the time when the little body now shapen is in a fit temper to entertaine it For the soule is so noble and excellent both in her substance and operations that shee cannot proceed originally from any inferiour cause nor be but by creation And if God should stay his hand when the body is fitly dressed and disposed for the soule the child would be borne but the meanest part of a man And doubtlesse God useth Parents like inferiour officers even in the framing of the Body For if the Parents were the true Authors and master builders of the body they should be endued naturally with a full and perfect knowledge of that which they make They should fully and perfectly know how all things are ordered and fitted in the building They should know in particular how many strings veins sinewes bones are dispensed through all the body in what secret Cabinet the braine is locked up in what posture the heart lyeth and what due motion it keepes what kinde of Cookery the stomack uses which way the rivers of the bloud turne and at what turning they meet what it is that gives to the eyes the principality of seeing to the eares of hearing to the nose of smelling to the mouth of censuring all that passes by the taste and to the skin and flesh the office of touching Nor is this all But also when the body is taken up and borded by a sicknesse or when a member withers or is cut off truly if the Parents were the only Authors of the body they might even by the same Art by which they first framed it restore it againe to it selfe As the maker of a clock or builder of a house if any parts be out of order can bring them home to their fit place and gather all againe to uniformity So that every man naturally should be so farre skill'd in Physick and Surgerie and have such an advantage of power that his Art should never faile him even in the extraordinary practice of either To this may be added that the joyning together of the soule and body which in a manner is the conjunction of Heaven and Earth of an Angell and a beast could not be compassed by any but a workman of an infinite power For by what limited art can a spirit be linked to flesh with so close a tye as to fill up one substance one person They are too much different things the one is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Gregory Nazianzen speaks a ray of the S. Greg. Naz Divinity the other a vile thing extracted from a dunghill Nor is there any shew of semblance or proportion betwixt them And therfore to make these two ends meet is a work which requires the hand and the onely hand of the Master Workman The Divines give three speciall reasons why God joyned a body to a soule First moved by his infinite goodnesse because he desired to admit a body as well as a spirit to the participation of himselfe and all creatures being spirituall or corporall a body could never have beene partaker of blessednesse had it not beene joyned to a spirit Secondly for the more generall exercise of vertue in the service of God for a soule could not have acted many vertues without the aide of a body as the vertues of temperance and chastity For the Devils are not delighted with the sinnes contrary to these vertues but for our guilt Thirdly the perfection of the universe For as there are creatures only spirits as Angels and creatures onely bodily as beasts and trees so it was a great perfection that there should also be creatures both spirits and bodies By which it is evident that God placed man in a middle condition betwixt Angels and beasts to the end he might rise even in this life with Elias to the sublime and superiour state of
singing her owne obsequies but because her skinne the root of her feathers and her flesh and entrals the organs of her musick were black he rejected her as an uncleane creature not worthy to teach the world The Ostrich likewise was esteemed profane and never admitted into Gods holy Temple because notwithstanding all his great and glorious furniture of feathers he cannot lift his dull and drossie body above the ground The Moone shineth but because it doth not heat it is not suffered to shine by day It is the property of good to shrowd and cover it selfe God the chiefest good though he filleth heaven and earth with his glory yet he will not be seene Christ though he was perfect God and equall to his Father yet nothing was ordinarily seene in him but a poore homely man Who ever saw the soul of a man his onely jewell as he is a man Christ said to his Apostles Yee are the light of the world And againe Let your light so Math. 5. 4 Ver. 16. shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in Heaven It must be light and therefore a true light not a counterfeit and seeming light it must be your light every mans owne light it must be a light by which men may see not onely the good light it selfe but also our good works by the light and it must shine onely to the end that our heavenly Father may be glorified All light is commonly said to be derived from the Sun and the cause of all our shining must be alwayes referred and attributed to God And truly when a man for example giveth almes kindled onely with an intention that his neighbour seeing him may glorifie his Father which is in Heaven his intention is cleane and sufficiently good but he must be a man of proofe that giveth place to such intentions for he lieth wide open to the ticklings of vaine-glory and hypocrisie But I feele a scruple Good example is highly vertuous and in some sort worthy of reward especially in persons of eminent quality because good example is more seene more admired and goes with more credit and authority in them and therefore doth more edifie in respect of the high conceit wee have of their wisedome and knowledge Now the hypocrite teacheth as forcibly by example as the sound and throughly vertuous man For we learne in the great Theater of example by what wee outwardly see and the hypocrite is as outwardly faire as the sincere Christian It seemeth now that an hypocrite doth please God in playing the hypocrite Not so because his intention is crooked for he doth not intend to bring an encrease of good to others but of glory to himselfe If good by chance break in upon his action it falleth besides his intention and it belongeth to Gods providence as to it 's proper fountain which crusheth good out of evill As likewise the prodigall man when hee giveth prodigally to the poore doth not intend to fulfill the law of God but to satisfie his owne wilde lust of giving St. John Baptist was a lamp burning and shining Which moved St. Bernard to say Ardere parum lucere vanum lucere ardere perfectum It is S. Bern. in Serm. de nativ S. Io. Bapt. a small thing to burne only a vaine thing to shine onely a perfect thing to both shine and burne Nothing is more naturally proper to the fire then to burne and in the instant in which it first burns it gives light Which is the cause of those golden words in Synesius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is the nature Synes Contra Androm of God to do good as of the fire to heat or burne and of the light to give light CHAP. 17. ANd certainly if we search with a curious and piercing eye into the manners of men we shall quickly finde that false Prophets and Deceivers are commonly more queint more various and more polished in their tongues and publike behaviour then God's true and faithfull Messengers who conforme themselves to the simplicity of the Gospel And if we looke neere the matter God prefigured these deceitfull creatures in the creation for hee hath an admirable way of teaching even by every creature it being the property of a cruell beast called the Hyaena to faine the voyce of a man But when the silly Shepheard commeth to his call he ceases to be a man teares him presently and preys upon him Each Testament hath a most fit example Ioab said to Amasa the head of Absolons Army Art thou in health my Brother Could danger lurk under the faire name of 2 Sam. 20. 9. Brother or could death hide it selfe under health a perfection of life They could and did For Ioab making forward to kisse him killed him and robbed him both of health and life whom hee had even now saluted with Art thou in health my Brother Surely he did not think of Cain when hee call'd him Brother Judas came to Christ and saying God save thee Master kissed him Hee talks of God and of Salvation Math. 26. 49. God save thee Hee confesses Christ to be his Master Hee kisses too And yet in the same act gives him up into the busie hands of his most deadly enemies Wherefore St. Ambrose one that had a practicall knowledge of the great difference of Spirits which hee had seene in their actions disswading us from the company and conversation of these faith-Impostors saith Nec vos moveat quod formam praetendere videntur S. Ambr. humanam nam et si foris homo cernitur intus bestia fremit let it not move you that they beare outwardly the likenesse and similitude of men for without a man appeareth but within a beast rageth And that which St. Hierome saith of a quiet Sea is of the same colour with the conceit of St. Ambrose Intùs inclusum est periculum intùs est hostis the danger is shut up within within is the S. Hier. ep ad Heliodor Enemy like a rock watching under a calme water St. Cyprian adviseth us to betake our selves presently to our feet and fly from them Simus ab eis tam seperati quà m sunt illi de Ecclesia profugi Let us fly as farre S. Cypr. in ep 3. lib. 1. from them as they have flowne from the purity of the Church and that 's a great way St. Cyprian in the same place exhorteth us very seriously not to deale with them not to eat with them not to speake with them O the foule corruption of our Times O for some zealous power that may reforme the abuses mine eyes have seene It is one of the first endeavours of the Papists in England which they exercise towards the society of men to gaine the good wills of Ministers For if they purchase the Ministers good will and good word they clip the wings of the Law hold him fast that hath a great stroke in matters concerning them
very even tearmes with God or rather to goe beyond him and yet he hath beene alwayes observed to reward above good and to punish beneath evill How does the Scripture hold that we are unprofitable servants if wee satisfie in a fit kinde for what wee have done and if wee satisfie both for our selves and others Here is a faire and rich harvest of profit If satisfaction can be wrought by a man why did not God spare his Sonne and send a creature to dye for us I doe not leane with my whole body upon this argument Here is the pillar it is one of Hercules his pillars beyond which we cannot goe That could not be effected by a creature because it was the great and generall payment of satisfaction and God required the satisfaction to be true and sufficient but this in their opinion can and therefore it cannot take the name of satisfaction without obligation to the satisfaction of Christ and to share the titles and immunities of Christs passion with him is a strange kind of pride from which Christ for ever hereafter defend my soule It is confessed that the merit of Christ is merit in the rigour of Justice because it taketh it's worth and nobility from the dignity of the person and therefore stands not essentially and with both feet upon the favour of him that accepts it But the merit of man cannot oblige God to give a reward For God naturally hath no obligation to make retribution to a creature And whereas they say hee hath struck the stroke and made a bargaine by which hee hath bound himselfe to retribution and this bargaine standing in force our reward is due by Justice this truly is the pretious fruit of the divine liberality and the mercy of God in Christ Jesus whom Synesius calleth viscerum ingentium partum the birth of huge Synes in hymnis bowells who satisfying the infinite Justice of an infinite God for the commission of sinne an infinite evill the cause urged that the merit also should be infinite And if we compare his works being of infinite valour with our works betwixt finite and infinite there is a great some say an infinite distance all say no proportion Hath God took all the wayes that invention can possibly compasse to make up his full dominion over man and to hold and turne all his faculties by a little string at his pleasure to lay him low and make him supple to take the print of Humility and shall hee now merit in any sense not onely a particular blessing be it spirituall or temporall but all that which God professeth hee hath to give Heaven and happinesse and our sound and sweet sleepe in his soft armes for evermore It would be a foolish passage of the worme and it would deserve to be trod upon if it should seeke to goe with it's long traine upwards and it is not sutable with earth to desire the high place of Heaven No pride is halfe so injurious to Gods highnesse as when wee are proud of spirituall Graces And the reason is good mettall The gifts of nature as health strength the readinesse of the senses although they are Gods gifts yet are they naturally due and proper to the body but the gifts of grace are by no law due to the soule for a man is compleat in the state of a man without Grace and Grace if not of free gift is not Grace and therefore to be proud of them is especially grievous because wee are proud of those things which are altogether heavenly and which wholly belong to the King himselfe and which hee bestoweth with his owne hands and which hee most freely giveth and which hee hath set his owne armes upon for the least degree of grace beares the likenesse of God and his holinesse to move in us an acknowledgement of him as the true and onely giver Let S. Austen speak for hee speaks to God Quisquis tibi numerat merita sua quid tibi numerat nisi munera tua Whosoever numbreth S. Aug. in Confes to thee his own merits what doth he number to thee but thy owne gifts In his time the bold use of the word merit taught vaine people to number their merits in the presence of God and to his very face And many hundreds of yeares after even the Councell of Trent forced to deny their owne word in the sense and power of it said of God Cujus tanta est erga omnes homines Concil Trid. sess 6. ca. 16 bonitas ut eorum velit esse merita quae sunt ipsius dona whose goodnesse runnes with such a great streame towards all mankinde that he permitteth his owne gifts to take the title of their merits Away then with the scandalous phrase of speaking It is a wise fish which presaging a storme fastneth it selfe upon a rock Christ crucified is the rock and upon him will I fix my soule and sing with S. Bernard Meritúm meum miserationes Domini The mercies of S. Bern. the Lord are the whole substance of my merit Then let the Sunne be eclipsed the earth tremble let the veyle of the olde Temple teare it selfe and afterwards let the proud Jewes boast of their law and works I shall be secure There is no danger of Spiders under this Canopy he needs not feare a thunderbolt that sleepes in the shadow of a Lawrell CHAP. 9. 1. THe Nunneries in Spaine are not altogether so holy as they desire us to beleeve All the Nunns in one house seated in Madrill were as the Jesuits enformed us discovered to be Witches even when I studied there And yet they had gained such an estimation of sanctity that they were famous for it but all by impostures For they would hang betwixt heaven and earth in the sight of their Novices as if they were caught up from the ground in a rapture or extasie and so full fraught with heavenly thoughts that their soules putting themselves on with much vehemency towards heaven and assisted with Gods helping hand carried their bodies along with them And their holy Nun of Carion as I have bin enformed by a Traveller of worth is proved to have beene a Witch Their famous Nun of Lisbon in Portugall which gave her blessing to the old Spanish Fleet lying there at anchor dyed confessing she had lived a Witch and yet they report that the wall of her cloister would commonly open of it selfe and the Sacrament the King of glory passe through it borne by no visible thing into her mouth One thing I most highly detest amongst them that in their processions on Corpus Christi day they act Playes full of most prophane and base matter and stuffed with most ridiculous passages in the wayes where the Sacrament is brought both before and after it passeth and yet their Players being of both sexes are most wicked and excommunicate persons And at other times when the Sacrament is exposed in the Churches the Country Clownes come trim'd
to speake with a Jusuite at his chamber in London found him earnest in his study behinde a curtaine After the discussion of their businesse the Jesuit stepped hastily downe to give order concerning the entertainment of his friend And in the interim the Frier looked behinde the the curtaine and found before his chair a written book The title of the Chapter which then lay open was By what motives to stirre a widow or other free person to give her estate into the hands of the Church and how afterwards to dispose of her The Frier by whom I was informed named to me a principall man of his Order who then had one of these bookes lying by him Whatsoever the Scribes and Pharises practised I doe not read that they commended the art of devouring widowes houses to writing for the information of their posterity THe fortune of the booke as it was related to me is this The Jesuits dare not print it lest it should at any time slip besides their hands into the world And the Jesuits that are sober natur'd and seriously given are never suffered to heare of this booke it is onely permitted to practical men and at such a time after their entrance into the Order but not before I had formerly heard of this booke and that it was full of damnable conveyances My Reader may see with halfe an eye that I relate things briefely and plainely and that I build upon the testimonies which they give one of another being a sure way The learning of bookes plowes not halfe so deepe Another Frier struck both the Jesuits and the Monks in one turning of his tongue with these words The Jesuits are the daily plotters and actours of businesses which we can never answer And were not the Monks ashamed to give out the other day that a mad man of their Order wrought miracles These Friers have a sleight by which they confirme their young ones They have printed under a picture of Saint Francis Saint Francis obtained of God by his prayers that whosoever dieth in his Order and hath the benefit of confession shall insallibly goe to Heaven The Monks have made the like promise under the picture of Saint Benet But let them unloose this knot without cutting it If their confession come from a penitent heart it will bring them alone to Heaven in the opinion of the Romanists if it come not from such a bruised heart Heaven is denyed to it by all their Doctors The Jesuits are a little more solid They have a picture wherein are printed at large the Prophecies of many Jewish Rabbines foretelling that God would send a religious and learned company of men into the World in the decaying and old age of it as I imagine for the elects sake Now I began to turne my thoughts a seeking againe because I had not yet found what I looked for And therefore I pretended the want of health and loth to continue a begging Frier upon these tearmes freely begged leave to depart CHAP. VII I Was now even cloyed and surfeited with these vanities And I meditated upon a conversion to the Church of England But although I staggered having drunke deepe of the poysoned Cups of Babylon yet my whole heart was never converted neither did I ever apply my selfe with an open profession to the Church of England before this happy time And still my heart gaped for more knowledge of their wayes Wherefore I was commended to an uncloister'd Monk in Paris with whom I lived a while as a stranger and enjoyed the great benefit of a faire Library This Monk communicated with the Church of Rome but inclined very much to the Greeke Church Yet his two Monks for they were all his family inclined every way as they went being seldome sober In Paris I found the fault of Doway that many schollers lived by theft and that men threw themselves into danger of their lives who stirred abroad in the black of night as well neare the Colledges as elsewhere These are not good orders of Universities neither is this a promising and hopefull education of Priests In this Towne I lay at watch for a better occasion You shall have more hereafter Now onely one farewell to the Friers They have many Rules of a strange out-landish nature and condition He that will be rul'd by reason may judge of this Rule A Frier is licensed by his Rule to touch and receive money with his Garment his sleeve or the lappet of his coate but not with his hand He is utterly forbid to touch it with any part of his flesh I see there may be an equivocation committed as well in manners as in words And I saw this Rule kept by a Frier who received a French crowne into a paper In the defiance of this and all other Rules of the like profession I give to him who is pleased to take with his bare hand and heart Rules directory in a Christian life and founded either in themselves or in their grounds upon the received principles of Gods holy word Rule 1. REmember alwayes that God is alwayes with you about you in you and in every part of you and of all his creatures and that when you goe from one place to another you leave God behinde you and yet he goes with you and yet you finde him where you come because he was there before you came And that although not alwayes the same yet some Angels and Devils are alwayes by you watching over you and carefully observing your behaviour yea and oftentimes beholding your heart in outward actions And let your thoughts and tongue bee alwayes running and repeating Shall I commit an act of high treason against so great a King so just and severe a Judge so good so pure a God and in his presence It is he whom Joseph meant when hee said How can I doe this great wickednesse and sinne against God How sweet is God that sendeth his first and most perfect creatures his holy Angels downe from Heaven with an injunction of stooping and attending to the meane and homely affaires of men The Angels are daily conversant with us and yet are never discharged from the glorious vision of God to whom they are united being present with them wheresoever they are such a pretious mixture and composition of good things ought the life of man to be it must be compounded of holy practise and heavenly contemplation The Devill standeth ready to dash out our braines to destroy the body and to devoure the soule to disturbe the peace of nature to confound the elements to mingle Heaven and Earth to trouble all wishing earnestly and earnestly entreating that God would turne away his milde face his gentle eyes and say Goe my Executioner revenge my cause upon the World And yet God will not O the delicacie of the Divine sweetnesse Learne the nature of the Devill In one thing especially the fall of the Angels was like the fall of man For as man was more
from as high a descent as they doe and as they are sinfull I am more perfect and exceedingly more beautifull in the sight of God and all his Angels I doe not marvell now that the holy Psalmist spoke so heartily when he said Iniquitatem odio habui abominatus Ps 119. sum I hated iniquity and my soule had it in abomination Go sinne the Viper shall take place in our bosomes before thee For the Viper that eateth through the tender wombe of the mother never saw the mother before that blinde act of cruelty so that the Viper is onely cruell before he is borne and before he ever saw a gentle creature or this blessed light to which his mother brought him But the sinner sees God in his creatures And the Viper doth but defeate the body to bring a temporall death thou the soule to bring a death drawne out and lengthened with eternity CHAP. XVI TO sinne is to turne our backs with great contempt towards God Towards God standing in the midst of all his Angels and holding up Heaven with one hand and earth with another and to turne our faces and imbraces with great fondnesse to a vile Creature O that a true sight of this like a good Angell might alwayes appeare to us before we sinne As the proud man and woman turne from God the boundlesse treasure of all excellencie and sit brooding and swelling as upon empty shels upon the fraile and contemptible goods of minde body fortune The angry man and woman turne from God the sweetnesse of Heaven and Earth and side with their owne turbulent passions The Glutton and Drunkard turne from God to whom the eyes of all things doe looke up for their meate and drinke in due season and performe their devotions to their fat bodies and bellies quorum Deus venter est whose Phil. 3. 19. God is their belly Which Saint Paul spoke as it appeareth by the verse immediatly precedent even weeping The lascivious man and woman turne from God the Fountain of all true and solid comfort and take in exchange the pleasure of Beasts The covetous man and woman turne from God without whom the rich are very poore and dance about the golden Calfe making an Idoll of their money For Covetousnesse Coloss 3. 5. is Idolatry The envious man and woman turne from God from whom come both 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and not inward only but all outward gifts and stick to a repining at Gods liberality in others The sloathfull man and woman turn from God whose providence is in continuall action exercise and give flesh bones head heart and all to the pillow Judas had thirty pence for Christ but we have little or nought for him All the good gifts of the holy Ghost are struck to the heart by sinne S. John beheld in his Revelation a great red Dragon having seven heads and seven Rev. 12. 3. crownes upon his heads And againe a woman Rev. 17. 3. sitting upon a Scarlet-coloured beast having seven heads The seven heads are the seven deadly sinnes which the great red Dragon the Devill begetteth upon the woman the sinfull soule wherewith he resisteth and putteth to flight the seven choice gifts of the holy Ghost I remember the woman whom our Saviour dispossessed of seven Devils and the Leaper that by the Prophets appointment was dipped seven times in the river Jordane The Devill over-commeth the gift of feare The feare of the Lord is the brginning of wisdome with pride and presumption which utterly expell the feare of God With anger he smothereth the gift of knowledge For blinded with anger we judge not according to knowledge With envie he stifleth the gift of piety or godlinesse For by envie we bandy with our thoughts words and actions against our neighbours With lust and luxury he destroyeth the gift of wisedome by which we are made brutishly foolish With covetousnesse hee confoundeth the gift of counsell by which we are violently drawne from all good counsell in the pursuite of base but sweete lucre Covetousnesse being the roote of all evill With Gluttony and Drunkennesse he killeth the gift of understanding by which we are besotted and left altogether unfit to know or understand And with sloth he vanquisheth the gift of Fortitude by which we are made weake and infirme and benummed with feare and sorrow in the search of good things Here is a battell wherein the weake over-come the strong and all because the strong are fallen into the mischievous hands of a most barbarous Traitor a Traitor to God and his owne soule To sinne is to betray Christ and give him over to death and destruction that the sinne that is Barabas the murderer may live Here is a businesse O Lord And to sinne is to banish the holy Ghost with all his gifts to bid him goe go seeke a lodging amongst the rogues beggers And being unwilling to go as he is love it selfe and therefore struggling to stay to thrust him out of the soule by the head and shoulders as desirous in our anger to break a limbe of him if he had one O that we could remember at these times that we are the Devils officers And when sinne is not the privation of Grace because it comes where it is not it the more dimmeth and defaceth nature Sinne is the death and buriall of the soule which onely God can raise againe For as the body dyeth and falleth to the ground when the soule forsaketh it so the soule dyeth and falleth under the ground to Hell-gate when it is forsaken by God O Christian saith Saint Austin non sunt in te charitatis viscera si luges corpus a quo recessit anima animam vero a qua recessit Deus non luges O Christian there are no bowels of charity in thee if thou mournest for a body from which the soule is gone and doest not mourne for the wretched and forlorne estate of a soule from which God is departed One sinne is a greater evill greater above expression then all the evils of punishment that can be inflicted upon us by God himselfe in this world or in the world to come A greater evill beyond all measure then Hell-fire which shall never be quenched One sinne O what have I done many thousand times over It is the truth and nothing but the truth And therfore it is said of the sinne of evill speaking The death thereof is an evill death the grave Ecclesiasticus 28. 21. were better then it The words will beare another sense utilis potius infernus quam illa Hell were more profitable then it And this is proved as easily as written or spokē For the evils of punishment bereave us only of limited and finite goods as sicknesse depriveth us of health death of life But sinne depriveth us of God the onely Good that is infinite And the privation is alwayes by so much the more grievous by how much the good is more good of which
posuit saith St. Gregory S. Greg. qui à soliditate coelestis patriae alienus fuit He first layd a foundation upon earth who had no foundation in Heaven MEDITATION VII THere are I am certaine there are many poore forlorne soules now in Hell and burning in the bottome of it groveling beneath all the crowd and some now at this instant dying and sending out the last groane brought mournfully from the lowest depth of their entralls that would give if they had it all the treasure of a thousand worlds for one houre of life and health to run through all the acts of vertue in But they cannot come back nor shall vvee when we are gon and going vve are every day whither God knowes but certainly to some new and strange Countrey by Death The den of a Dragon is a darke place and full of bones There is a vast and hideous den and the bloody monster that dwelleth in it is called Death In the way to which all the prints of the footstepps looke towards the Den not one backward vestigia nullae retrorsum no comming no sending back to enforme our friends vvhat kind of entertainment vve have had since we left them no sending a description of the place we are in or a relation of the severall passages betwixt us our companions There is no distinction of persons The great Emperor must come downe must he cannot hinder it with the power of all the World The great Emperor must come downe from his imperiall Throne into his Majesties grave and bee covered with earth like that vvee now tread upon And his powerfull Subjects the peers of his land must stand quietly by and see him buried We never yet heard of a souldier so valiant and fortunate in his adventures that he conquer'd Death If Alexander after all his victories could have enjoyed the privilege of not being at last led a way Captive by Death he would have given all his winnings the vvhole World for his ransome But it might not be it could not bee Great Alexander is dead and all his greatnesse buried vvith him And great Alexander for whom one World was too little because hee was so great hath now left to be great and is become little himselfe a little handfull of dust or clay or dirt and is contented with a little a little room under ground or in a worse place O the sweet equality which God as a Creator and a Provider observed in the disposition of humane affairs The Prince and common people doe eate and drink and sleepe and see and heare and smell and taste and touch and speake and laugh and cry and stand and go after the same manner One is made in all parts like the other And all creatures but man give as little respect and yeeld as little obedience to the Prince as to the peasant The Sun doth shine the fire burn the rivers do run equally for al. And both the king subject are sick die the same way their heads and their hearts ake alike And they both dy by giving up the Ghost And they both looke pale and black and groane before they give it And when they are both dead and buried howsoever when they lived their conditions vvere very much different and they scarce ever saw one another their bones and ashes are sociable they will mingle together And then the cleerest eie cannot discerne or distinguish the one from the other no man can truly say this dust is the softer the finer mold looke you this is royall dust MEDITATION IX THe Prophet Jeremy speakes out O Earth Earth Earth heare the word of Ier. 22. 29. the Lord. Stay great Prophet why thrice Earth Earth indeed we are but when you have once call'd us so it is the most yes truly and all you can say You seeme to multiply tearmes and the same tearmes without necessity No I doe not what I seeme to doe Earth thou that wast in the beginning framed of Earth Earth thou that art now compacted of Earth howsoever cast in a new mold Earth thou that must shortly resolve and drop again into Earth Heare the word of the Lord. The second and middle condition of these placed betwixt made of Earth and to be turned againe into Earth is but a meane state to heape up wealth and build faire houses in S. Iohn Baptist was cal'd a voice not that he was like the Nightingale to which one sayes Vox es praetereà nihil thou art a voice and nothing but a voice He was cald a voice as the fore-runner of Christ because in speaking the voice is always heard before the word And so it was when God spake to the world the best words by the best word The voice said Cry And he said what shall I cry All flesh is grasse and all the goodlinesse thereof is as the Esay 40. 6. flowre of the field This voice was not a voice onely for it spake and said Cry An unusuall way of proceeding Sure vvee shall heare of some great and weighty matter Let mee understand holy Scripture with the same spirit with which it was written Hee doth not say as the flowre of the garden For vve know the Garden is commonly hedg'd in and strongly defended from the incursion of beasts well furnished with shades and shelters But as the flowre of the field the wide and open field where the flowre is soon parched and dryed 32. to a powder by heat soone pinched and left for dead by the cold quickly eaten by beasts which know it not to bee a flower quickly cropped by a silly girl to wither in her bosome or if it scape all this at least bruised and trod upon by passengers or which is worse vvith the rough feete of cattell And if Heaven and earth should be still and not afford a danger one betwixt both the middle region of the Aire would knock it downe with hailestones And as the goodlinesse of flesh is like the flowre of the field so flesh it self is as grasse vvhich though it bee somewhat more durable then the flower hath but a very short time to bee greene or to grow Amicitia saith Aristotle quae super inhonesto Arist Ethic. fundatur durabilis non est The friendship which is grounded upon dishonesty cannot endure And the soule and body agreeing in sinne cannot long agree their peace will be quickly broken by sicknesse and then per-haps they part MEDITATION X ANd therefore the memory of death shall stand like a Seale of virgin Wax upon my heart to keepe the World from looking into the secret Methinks I see now here before mee a man lying very sick upon his Death-bead How pale he is He had a fresh and youthfull colour the other day heu quantum mutatus ab illo alas how much hee is changed from the gallant man he was How his breath labours how every joynt shakes for excesse of pain How every veine trembles His skin
oyntment in her hand and with her haire hanging readie if need were to wipe his feet againe Then Lazarus with his winding sheet upon his neck And the lame men whom Christ cured carrying their idle crutches under their armes And the blind with the boyes that led them comming after them And then the great streame of devout people shall follow with songs of victory over sinne death and hell And all the mourners shall goe bowing their heads and looking as if they were at hand to give up the Ghost for the name of Christ Hee shall not bee buried without a Sermon and the Text shall bee The good shepheard giveth his life for the sheepe And Ioh. 10 11. in the end of the Sermon not if the time will permit but whether the time will permit or not the Preacher shall take occasion to speake a word or two in the praise of the dead party and say that being God above all Gods hee became man beneath all men the more conveniently to make peace betwixt God and Man that he was of a most sweet nature and that when he spoke hee began ordinarily with Verily verily I say unto you that hee was a vertuous man a good liver for he never sinned in all his life either in thought word or work that hee did many good deeds for being endued with the power of working miracles he lovingly employed it in curing the lame and the blinde in casting out devils in healing the sick in restoring the dead to life and that hee dyed a blessed death for being unjustly condemned mocked spat upon crucified and by those whom he came to redeeme from eternall torments hee took all patiently and dyed praying for his persecutors leaving to them when hee had no temporall thing to give a blessing for a legacie The Sermon being ended and the buriall finished every mourner shall goe home and begin a new life in the imitation of Christ who chose a poore and miserable life when hee had his full choyce of all the life 's in the world And Lord teach mee to goe after him in his steps at least with poverty of spirit CHAP. 8. BEing deepe in the consideration of Christs passion and of the worth and all-sufficiency of it I will declare my beliefe in one point I beleeve that man may merit and I beleeve that men wonder I beleeve it I shall not easily unclasp from this opinion Still I beleeve that man may merit Doe you aske mee what Hell and damnation give leave to the tearme not Heaven or the glory of it But if we merit hell why not Heaven The reason offereth it selfe we merit Hell by doing ill and wee in our owne persons are the onely Authors of ill Sinne is begotten betwixt the malice and corruption of our owne wills But he that is said to merit heaven is likewise supposed to merit it by well-doing that is by the solid acts of Christian vertues and the faire exercise of such vertues proceedeth not from us being sonnes of wrath but from grace in Christ Jesus And therefore by what Art can we merit when that by which we are thought to merit is not wrought and accomplished by us but by the strong and over-swaying force of a superiour power not forcing our will to a good action but sweetly drawing both to it and through it Ate habeo saith S. Austin quicquid boni habeo St. Aug. super Psal 70. What good soever I have I have from thee O Lord from my selfe the evill Yea verily Grace is so truly and so naturally the supernaturall gift of God and every degree of it that a grave Councell condemning the Massilienses or Semipelagians who affirmed that the beginning of salvation was derived from us and did consist in a naturall desire prayer endeavour or labour by which wee procure the help of Grace necessary to salvation saith Si quis per invocationem humanam gratiam Dei dicit conferri Conc. Araus 2. Can. 3. non autem ipsam gratiam facere ut invocetur à nobis cōtradicit Isaiae Prophetae c. Whosoever affirmeth that the Grace of God is given by our prayers and not Grace to cause that it be prayed for by us contradicts the Prophet Esay or the Apostle speaking the same thing to the Romans I was found of them that sought me not I was made Rom. 10. 20. manifest unto them that asked not after mee In verity if the Foure and twenty Elders in Heaven the place of highest perfection threw downe their Crownes before the Throne of God ascribing to him all glory Rev. 4. 10. 11. honour and power the name of Merit in heavenly things as the word in a true sense importeth howsoever they crutch it up handsomly cannot be spoke without a Soloecisme both in phrase and beliefe The man committed a Soloecisme that looked and pointed towards earth when he spoke of Heaven And true Christian humility ought even to speake humbly But even the doctrine of the Papists is bold and venturous Those habits of vertues say they which God the Lord of all spirituall Treasure infuseth into the soule are produced by God without us or our ayde and cooperation but the acts of those habits that is the exercises of vertue are so produced by Grace in us that wee also must freely and readily concurre if we meane to put a price upon them and make them meritorious to their production But the will concurreth not except enabled with actuall grace and the childe I meane the action that is borne altogether resembleth grace as it is a vertuous action and they will not call it a meritorious action but as vertuous and therefore the merit belongs to Grace not to our wills or us and partly to the grace by the motion of which wee concurre with grace And it is the opinion of the prime Divines amongst them that a work though very good and honest and true gold if performed without any paine and difficulty if mingled with no gall no wormwood may indeed merit certaine degrees of blessednesse but shall in no wise be satisfactory For as it is proper say these Doctors to a good work in respect of the goodnesse and honesty of it to be meritorious so it is made proper also by another law to a painfull and toilsome work to render satisfaction for sinne committed And thus they both satisfie for their sinnes which merited hell and by a surplussage of goodnesse merit Heaven And very often the roughnesse asperity with which God handles them is greater they tell us then the satisfaction due on their part which falling betwixt God and man drops into his Treasury of Indulgences whom they make halfe a God and halfe a man there to lye in the same roome with the copious redemption of Christ and be conferred when and to whom his Holinesse shall please who having two Treasuries seldome gives out of one but hee takes into the other They seeme to stand upon
is the great directour of the Church and enemie to the devill in his oppositions of it hee still had a blow at the Holy Ghost first in Theodoret who denied the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son and now in the Grecians But we shall heare more of him anon CHAP. 7. VVHat mervaile now if greene in Age and shallow in experience I gave up my soule into the black hands of errour The causes of my closing with the Church of Rome were three First a consideration of the great sinnes of this Kingdome and especially of that open scandalous and horrible sinne of Drunkennesse which my soule hateth And I weakly argued from a blemish of manners in particular persons to a generall and over-spreading corruption of Faith My thoughts represented a drunkard to me sometimes in this manner What is a Drunkard but a beast like a man or something lower then a beast When he is in his fit no sense will performe his fit office Spectacles in all figures appeare to him hee thinks hee sees more shapes then God ever made A cloud settles in his eyes and the whole body being overflowne they seeme to float in the floud The earth seemes to him to nod and hee nods againe to it trees to walk in the fields houses to rise from their places and leape into the Aire as if they would tumble upon his head and crush him to a Cake and therefore he makes hast to avoid the danger The Sea seemes to rore in his cares and the Guns to goe off and he strives to rore as loud as they The Beere begins to work for he foames at the mouth Hee speaks as if the greater part of his tongue were under water His tongue labours upon his words and the same word often repeated is a sentence You may discover a foole in every part of his face Hee goes like like what nothing is vile enough to suit in comparison with him except I should say like himselfe or like another drunken man And at every slip he is faine to throw his wandring hand upon any thing to stay him with his body and face upwards as God made him Vmbras saepe S. Ambr. lib. de Elia jejunio cap. 16. transiliunt sicut foveas saith S. Ambrose Comming to a shadow of a post or other thing in his way hee leapes taking it for a ditch Canes si viderint leones arbitrantur Idem ibid. fugiunt sayes the same Father if he sees a dogge he thinks it to be a Lyon and runs with all possible hast till hee falls into a puddle where hee lyes wallowing and bathing his swinish body like a hogge in the mire And after all this being restored to himselfe he forgets because hee knew not perfectly what hee was and next day returnes againe to his vomit And thus he reeles from the Inn or Tavern to his house morning and evening night and day till after all his reeling not being able to goe hee is carried out of his House not into the Taverne alas hee cannot call for what hee wants but into his Grave Where being layd and his mouth stopt with dirt hee ceases to reele till at last hee shall reele body and soule into hell where notwithstanding all his former plenty variety of drinks hee shall never be so gracious as to obtaine a small drop of water to coole his tongue Then if it be true as it is very likely which many teach that the devils in hell shall mock the troubled imagination of the damned person with the counterfeit imitation of his sinnes the devils will reele in all formes before him to his eternall confusion In vain doth S. Paul cry out to this wretch Be not drunk with wine wherein is excesse but be filled with the spirit For the same vessell Eph. 5. 18. cannot be filled with wine and with the spirit at the same time In vaine doth hee tell him that wee should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Sobriè 2 Tit. 12. saith S. Bernard nobis justè proximis pie autem Deo Soberly in our selves righteously S. Bern. in Serm. sup Ecce nos reliquimus omnia or justly towards our neighbours and godly towards God alwayes remembring that we are in this present world and that it is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the present point of Time and but one instant that we enjoy at once And somtimes in this manner my thoughts shewed me a drunken man Hee is a most deformed creature one that lookes like the picture of a devill one who stands knocking at hell-gate and yet it is not able to speak a plaine word and call for mercy one that could stand and goe but now lyes all along in his owne filthinesse one that is loathed by the Court and all the Citizens of Heaven one that for the time doth not beleeve that there is a God or that Christ died for the sinnes of the world one that may be lawfully thought a man of little wit and lesse grace one who is the Ow◠of all that see him and the scorne and abomination even of his drunken companions one who if he should then dye would certainly be a companion of devils in hell fit◠for ever one that is ready to commit adultery murder treason to stab or hang himselfe to pull God out of Heaven or doe any thing that is not good And if it be a firme ground that putting our selves into the occasions of such and such sins we are as guilty of them as if wee had committed them although we did not formally and explicitely intend them how many great sins hath one act of drunkennesse to answer for Drunkennesse is most hatefull to God because it putteth out the light of Reason by which man is distinguished from a beast and all better lights with it and throwes a man beneath Gods creation and therefore drunkennesse is more or lesse grievous as it more or lesse impeacheth the light and sight of Reason Natura paucis contenta Nature is contented with a little quam si superfluis urgere velis saith Boetius which if you shall urge and load with superfluous Boet. things you will destroy And one over-chargeth his stomack and vainely casteth away that for want of which or the like another daily crieth in the streets with a lamentable voyce Good Sir for Gods sake pitty these poore fatherlesse children ready to starve one is hungry and another is drunken And the great end of the 1 Cor. 11. 21. Creator was to supply necessity and the necessity of every creature And Sobriety and Temperance are faire vertues which even the Glutton and Drunkard doe praise and magnifie If wee turne aside into the Church-yard wee shall finde it a dry time there There are no merry meetings under ground no musick no dancing no songs no jesting company Every body sleepes there and therefore there is no noise at all Perhaps indeed as men passe
to the Church or to their places in the Church they point to such a Grave and say There lyes a drunkard hee is sober enough now but much against his will And thus his memory is as loathsome to all good people and those who passe by his Grave to their devotions as his rottennesse These representations winned me to think that the Practitioners in this Art of Beastilinesse could not be of any Religion because S. James bindeth Religion downe to practice Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is Iam. 1. 27. this To visit the fatherlesse and widowes in their affliction and to keepe himselfe unspotted from the world But although I had learned in some sort to compound I had not yet learned to distinguish CHAP. 8. MY second Reason of joyning hands with the Church of Rome was because I framed to my selfe the imagination of an excellent Sanctity and a spotlesse Recollection of life in their Orders of Religion And my thoughts fed upon this and the like matter The last end of man and his Creation is Blessednesse being the vision or fruition of God which is an eternall Sabbath or an everlasting day of rest in him And therefore the soule of man which bendeth towards this end chiefly desireth rest For God would not I had almost said could not create man for an end and not imprint in him a strong desire of it Heavey things belonging to earth will not of themselves move towards Heaven nor yet stay loytering betwixt Heaven and Earth unlesse arrested and held by force but haste to the center of the world the earth their true place of being in which and in which onely they take their naturall rest And the nigher they come to the center their soft bed of rest if we may beleeve Philosophy the more hast they make The gentle Dove before the tumult of waters began to settle could finde no place to settle in no sure no solid rest for her foot and the silly thing had not learn'd to swim This tumult of waters in the world will never end till the world ends And therefore O that I had wings like a Dove for then would Psal 55. 6. I flie away and be at rest Not feet like a Dove but wings I have gone enough I have been treading and picking upon dunghills a long while And now I would faine be flying And not hanging upon the wing and hovering over dunghills but flying away And not flying away I know not whither but to the knowne place of rest For then would I flie away and be at rest And not wings like a Hawk or Eagle to help and assist me in the destruction of others but wings like a Dove by which I may secure to my selfe the continuance of a quiet and innocent life I would looke upon the earth as God does from above I would raise my thoughts above the colde and dampish earth and fly with the white and harmlesse Dove when the fury of the waters began to be asswaged to the top of a high mountaine the mountaine of contemplation standing above the reach of the swelling waves above the stroke of thunder and where little or no winde stirreth That as our dearly-beloved Master Christ Jesus prayed upon a mountain that is sent up his flaming heart to Heaven from a mountaine yet farther was transfigured upon a mountaine that is brought downe a glimpse of the glory of Heaven to the top of a mountaine and beyond either of these ascended himselfe to Heaven from a mountaine So I dwelling upon the mountaines of Spices as it is in the Canticles may enjoy a Cant. 8. 4. sweet Heaven upon Earth and sweeten the ayre in every step for the direction of others who shall follow drawne by the sweet savour of my example And standing over the world betwixt Heaven and earth I may draw out my life in the serious contemplation of both singing with Hezechiah I will mourne as a Dove Here will Is 38. 14. I rest my weary feet and wings and my body being at rest I wil set my soul a work I will mourne as a Dove my thoughts having put themselves out of all other service and now onely waiting upon my heavenly Mate and uttering themselves not in articulate and plaine speech but in grones And at last set all on fire from Heaven I may die the death of the Phoenix in the bright flames of love towards God and man and in the sweet and delicious odours of a good life Come my beloved let us goe forth Cant. 7. 11. into the field let us lodge in the Villages Sayes the Spouse to the Bridegroome Come then my beloved O come away let us goe forth there is no safe staying here we must goe forth And pry thee sweet whither into the field you and I alone The field where is not the least murmure of noise Or if any but onely a pleasant one such musick as Nature makes caused by the singing of Birds and the bleating of Lambs that talk much in their language and are alwayes doing and yet sinne not Or if we must of urgent necessity converse with sinners if the Sun will away and black Night must come if sleepe will presse upon us and we must retire to a lodging-place heare mee and by our sweet loves deny mee not let us lodge in the villages out of the sight and hearing of learned dissimulation and false bravery where sin is not so ripe as to be impudent and where plaine-fac'd simplicity knowes not what deceit signifies In the field we shall enjoy the full and open light of the Sun and securely communicate all our secrets of love And when the Body calls to bed and sayes hee hath serv'd the soule enough for one time we may withdraw to yonder Village and there we shall embrace and cling together quietly there wee shall rest arme in arme without disturbance And do'st thou heare when we wake wee will tell our dreames how we dreamt of Heaven and how you and I met there and how much you made of me and then up and to the field againe O did men and women know what an unspeakable sweetnesse arises from our intimacie and familiarity with God and from our daily conversation with Christ What inwardly passes betwixt God and a good soul and how lovingly they talk one to another and how they sometimes as it were whisper sometimes speak aloud sometimes deliver themselves merrily sometimes in a mournfull tone and how prettily the soul will complaine and cry to him and relate her griefes over and over and how orderly Christ keepes his times of going and comming againe and what messengerâ— passe betwixt them in his absence and afterwards what a merry day it is wheâ— they meet and what heavenly matteâ— Christ preaches to the soule and how afteâ— the Sermon the soule condemnes the world and abominates all the vanities of it anâ— would faine be running out of it if it
proud that wee passe with such a noise to heare newes and to talk vainly to heap sin upon sinne and the world weary of the burthen passeth by us and presently God heapeth punishment upon punishment Foolish men and women how we sweat and spend our selves we see the spade working and deep graves digg'd every day and yet live as if we did not beleeve we should dye In the streets one goes this way another in hast that way a third crosses the way turnes againe then looks behind him and would faine goe two wayes at once It is wonderfull How stirring and busie wee are about the present things of this world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so called by the Apostle because nothing is ours but what is present He is a fond and miserable man that pleaseth himselfe in the thought of any thing but God and Heaven Fix here my soule and thou shalt find more true and solid pleasure in one meditation of Heaven though it is absent then in all earthly things although present and before thee MEDITATION XI THe soule being created for God and bearing his image or stamp God is the most proper end of the soule as the earth if it be lawfull to compare great things with little is the most proper place of a stone And therefore a stone being tossed from the earth as soone as it can shake off vim impressam the impression of the force which mov'd it that being out of breath and spent if there be no stop it presently returnes with all possible haste as it were glad being let goe and set at liberty to the earth which ownes it And so the just soul to God The soule in statu conjunctionis in the state of her conjunction with the body being wedded to it as to a fellow-helper sees by the eyes heares by the eares and in a manner feeles by the body Now the soule having beene created in the body and never yet us'd but to this kinde of knowing by the senses is so busied so kept in continuall work and so amused with the representations of the senses that shee is little urgent in the desire of her end as being tooke up with great diversity of other imployment which being alwayes new and therefore strange begets a zealous attention in the soule and so turnes her from God It is true if she listen to the whisper of an inspiration or heare a discourse of heavenly things she likes it well and feels a pleasant tickling of sweetnesse because it is agreeable with her end and then perhaps the desire of her end awakes sits up but other occurrences calling earnestly for admittance the soule gives way and the desire of the last end lyes fairely down and sleeps again But the soul being now in statu seperationis in her state of separation from the body they having been newly divorced and missing her body and her accustomed way of knowing by the senses missing the former use of the world and the things she saw and heard in the body thinks presently where am I I am another kind of creature Then being freed from all hinderance she begins to stirre towards her end For now she is like a stone as farre in the ayre as it can goe vvhere it cannot rest but quit of the force gives back and furnished vvith Guides shee flyes vvith all readinesse to God in his Kingdome the place of installment as to her last end Here I have the reason why the Divines say that whereas there are two much different paines in Hell poena sensus the paine of sense caused by the fire of Hell and poena damni the pain of losse by the losse of God the paine of losse is the greatest For the reprobate soul being thrust out of the body and having received her doome in the very place of her expulsion is struck presently with a strong apprehension of her end and of the worth and excellency of it and of her miserable solitarinesse without it from which shee being turned the wound bleeds and shee suddenly cries out wanting a Comforter My end where is my end I misse something the best thing what God O where is God I misse my end And then shee catches at him and misses and missing cries out and catches again and still misses crying I want rest in my end in God Where is my end that is God and God that is my end There is no rest for a soul out of the body but in God as there was no true rest for a soule in the body but in God I have bin long at hard labour now in the end I would rest in my end For I cannot be at rest without my end O my end while I continue without my end my torment will continue without end O what shall I do Where shall I begin How shall I end without my end And then catching at her end shee is caught her selfe away to hell fire and carried farther from her end Where she shall be alwayes catching and alwayes missing alwayes seeking and never finding alwayes complaining either of her paine or of her losse but most of her losse or of her losse of all but her paine and her losse which she would faine lose but cannot from which most wofull estate God deliver me But the just soule presently after the first apprehension of her end shal be joyned unseperably to it in which end shall be the end of all earthly motion and therefore all rest Blessed are the dead saith St. Iohn whom Dionysius salutes by the Revel 14. 13. Dionys Areop in ep ad Joan. in exilio agente Ver 11. name of Divine which dye in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the spirit that they may rest from their labours But of the damned hee sayes confidently in the same Chapter they have no rest day nor night Have I heard a malefactor appointed by judgement to be starved after the gnawing and devouring of his owne armes crying bread bread If I suppose he cryes rest rest it is the voyce of the damned person MEDITATION XII VVE see many times and most commonly men and women lying on their death-beds some little while before their passage or departure in wondrous traunces took away from their senses At which times some look very cheerefully smiling like Angels and send from them shoots of joy and gladnesse And some looke frightfully and fill their death-chamber with shreeks and clamours We cannot in the generall give the causes of these different effects For the most part it is thus At such a time the soule heares her house crack and now threatning a fall And she sees that after the fall all the house will be so confus'd and out of order that shee will not be able to stirre about or doe any thing belonging to the keeping of a house and that then there will be no reason why shee should rather be in her house then in any other part of the world And in a manner rising
likewise to give evidence of our faith by our works It is Christian doctrine which Christ teacheth As Moses lifted up the Serpent in the Wildernesse even so must the Son of man be lifted up that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternall life Saint Leo strikes home Effusio pro injustis sanguinis S. Leo. justi tam potens fuit ad privilegium tam dives ad pretium ut si universitas captivorum in redemptorem suum credoret nullum tyrannica vincula retinerent The powring out of the just mans bloud for the unjust was so powerfull by way of priviledge so rich by way of price that if every captive soul had believed in Christ Jesus hel should not have held one damned soule in it Who then can despaire He permitted himselfe to be fastned to the Crosse to proclame that he could not run away from any man Press on boldly hee cannot stirre His feet are sure and therefore you may be sure he cannot run away Nor can he free his feet with his hands for the hands are as sure as the feet And if hee were loose hands and feet poore wounded man he could not go farre for he is now parting with all the bloud in his body And when hee does withdraw himselfe from those that call upon him it is onely that he may give them opportunity to call more earnestly and that hee may be more honoured These are the cunning tricks of Lovers Saint Gregory Nazianzen writing to his Friend Nicobulus objecteth to him 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 you flie when I S. Greg. Naz. ep ad Nicobul follow you loves practitioner to make your selfe more precious MEDIT. 5. O Lord how should a poore man do to passe his life in the due and solid consideration of the great secret of Christs Passion to consider that he would appear to men in a vile and despicable manner that he would weare a Crowne of thornes an old purple Robe and beare a Reed in place of a Scepter to be firme occasions of dispensing his heavenly gifts and ornaments to us to consider how Pilate and Herod joyned hands and met in his destruction 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and contraries concurred to his punishment S. Greg. Naz. as Saint Gregorie Nazianzen wrote of a Martyr burned alive in an old Ship to whose death fire and water did agree to consider how the Sun as Dionysius declareth in his Epistle to his Master Apollophanes in ipsius verae lucis occubitu lucere Dionys ep ad Apolloph non potuit in the setting of the true Sun could not shine to consider that hee did not take a phantasticall body in the Incarnation that hee might seeme to suffer when he did not as some vainly thought and that he did not chase away the bitternesse of his Passion by the power of his Divinity as others imagined but that hee drew up and concealed his Divinitie and gave nature no succour in her pain when hee giveth to his Martyrs power above nature to consider that all the parts of the body in which sins are committed were in him accordingly punished even though the sins were not in him to consider that hee stretched out his armes to imbrace sinners bowed his head low to kisse sinners gave water with bloud to signifie that his bloud was able to make white the blackest and most deformed sinners to consider that hee died Hee died and yet the World stands the earth stirs not and the cruell Jewes are not swallowed alive into Hell O pietie O pittie whatsoever Histories have mentioned Verses have sung Fables have framed is to this a trifle And is he dead Good soule when hee was alive hee was the best man living And when hee died hee died sweetly he bowed his head to all that were about him and so died O the strange inventions of love O the bottomlesse abysse of love Unhappy Jews they sold Christ for 30 pence Titus son to Vespasian the Emperour after the destruction of Ierusalem sold them thirty for a peny they cried they forsooth had no King but Caesar and the Statue of Caligula the Emperour was soon brought set up in their great temple they crucified Christ were crucified thēselves under Florus the President till there was no roome in the fields adjoyning to Jerusalē wherin to raise a crosse The death of his forerunner was in like maner revenged for the body of the dancing-maid slipped under the yce while her head was seene to dance above it And thus God dealt with Leo the Emperour if the Popish Writers doe not juggle with us for having took by violence from the great Church of S. Sophia in Constantinople a pretious Carbuncle Zonar annal to 3. an ulcer rose in his head called a Carbuncle of which hee miserably dyed And shall not vengeance be severely taken of those that murder Christ every houre I will strike my brest with the Publican and cry to my selfe Remember alwayes when thou art brooding sinne in thy heart that then thou art breeding a most bloody and stubborne intention to kill Christ and that thou bloudy man doest to the full extent of thy power actually kill him and therefore thou art a murderer a murderer of Christ and it is a wonder that as thou passest in the streets the stones doe not cry out from under thee stop stop the murderer stop the man that kill'd his Master his Lord his Redeemer his Father his King his God and all at a blow Goe thy wayes ungratefull world thou hast lost a jewell of the sight of which thou wert not worthy Good God how naked the world is now Christ is out of it for when he was in it it was very full O my spirit since he is gone solace thy selfe with his memory and being dead let him live in thee in thy thoughts in thy discourse in thy actions he will be very sweet company And my spirit goe with mee a little Christ being dead it is pitty but he should have a Funerall Let the Usurer come first with his bags of money and distribute to the poore as he goes The drunkard shall follow with the spunge filled with gall and vinegar in his hand and check his wanton thirst Then the young Gallant barefoot-like his master and with the crowne of thornes upon his head Then the factious and angry person in the seamelesse coat and carrying the Crosse upon his shoulders The wanton person shall beare the rods and whips wherewith his Master was scourged and fright his flesh The ambitious man shall goe clad in the purple roabe The proud Magistrate follow with the reed in his hand The twelve Apostles shall beare up the corps with one hand and with the other beare every one the instrument of his owne death And the blessed virgin shal goe after sighing weeping and at every other pace looking up to Heaven Then Mary Magdalen divided betwixt love and sorrow with a box of pretious
vincis invincibilem How easily doest thou conquer him that is invincible For man was made to fill up the now-disturbed number of the Angels which were created some while before the World not long for it is not likely that so noble a part of the World should be long created before the whole to which it belonged They fell downe though not from the possession yet from the title of happinesse by pride Not from the possession for had they beene united to God by the Beatifical Visiō they could not have sinned and therfore not have lost it by sin Wee rising up to the seats prepared for them ascend by Humility rising by falling and falling by rising if wee rise before he raiseth us who being dead and buried was not raised but rose from death to life by his own power Pride and Humility are of contrary dispositions and moreover they worke contrarily upon the subjects in which they are lodged and are in the effect and course of their proceedings contrary even to themselves Pride was the first sin in the Angels and therefore Humilitie is the first vertue in men and all your thoughts words and actions must be steeped in it Other Vertues keepe within a compasse or only now and then goe some of them together or always or direct all Vertues outwardly in respect of the Vertues as Prudence but Humility is an ingredient in every Vertue RULE 4. IN your entrance upon every worke having first examined the motives ingredients and circumstances for one evill circumstance will corrupt the whole lumpe and poyson a good action and it is not vertuous to pray ordinarily in the streets with outward observance though it be vertuous to pray and it being now cleere to you that your intended work falleth in wholly and meeteth in the same point with Gods holy will commend it seriously to GOD. And when you goe to dinner or to bed or turne to the acts and exercises of your Vocation begin all with a cleane and pure intention for the love and honour of GOD. And even the naturall work to which your nature is vehemently carried and by which you gaine temporally being turned towards the true Loadstone and put in the way to Gods glory doth rise above nature and above it selfe and is much more gainfull spiritually as being performed not because it is agreeable with your desire but because it is conformable to the divine will And often in the performance and execution of the worke if it require a long continuance of action renew and if need bee rectifie smooth and polish your intention for being neglected it quickly groweth crooked And when you are called to a difficult work or a work that lyes thwart and strives against the current of your naturall inclination dignifie and sweeten it often with the comfortable remembrance of your most noble end And whereas wee are openly commanded so closely to carrie the good deeds of the right hand that the left hand be not of the Counsell and again to turn so much of our selves outward that our light may shine before men it is in our duty to observe the Golden Mean and keep the middle way betwixt the two Rocks Carry an even hand betvvixt your concealing your good vvorks and your being a light to others You must not conceale all neither must you shine onely Hide the inward but shew the outward not alwayes nor with a sinister intention to the left hand but to GOD and those that will bee edified Every Vertue standeth betwixt two extreames and yet toucheth neither whereof the one offendeth in excesse the other in defect The one is too couragious the other is over-dull but under the Vertue Now the Devill delighteth much to shew himselfe not in his own likenesse but in that extream which is like and more nigh to the Vertue or at least to the appearance of it as Prodigalitie is more like to Liberalitie then Covetousnesse God hath true Saints and true Martyrs which are both inside and outside The Devill hath false Saints and false Martyrs which are all outside like his fairnesse As Prudence is the Governesse of all Vertues so principally of Devotion RULE 5. KEep your heart always calme and suffer it to be stirred onely with the gentle East and West-winds of holy inspirations to zeal and vertuous anger Examine your inward motions whether they be inspirations or no before you cry come in for when God offereth an inspiration hee will stand waiting with it while you measure it by some better known and revealed Law of his And be very watchfull over such Anger For it is a more knottie and difficult piece of work to be answerable to Ephes 4. 26. the rule of Saint Paul Be angry and sin not the Prophet David spoke the same words from the same spirit then not to be angry As the Curre taken out of the kennell and provoked to barke will need an able and cunning hand to hold him And maintaine alwayes a strong Guard before the weake doores of your senses that no vain thing invade the sense of seeing hearing or the rest and use in times of such danger Ejaculations and Aspirations which are short sayings of the soule to God or of things concerning God and are like darts cast into the bosome of our beloved These motions will do excellently at all times when they come in the resemblance of our pious affections As upon this occasion Lord shut the windows of my soule that looking thorow them she may not be defiled O sweet Comforter speak inwardly to my soul and when thou speakest to her speake words of comfort or binde her with some other chaine that busied in listning to thee shee may not heare thy holy name dishonoured And upon other occasions Oh that my head were waters and mine eyes a fountain of teares that I Jer. 9. 1. might weepe day and night O Lord Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is Psal 73. 25. none upon earth that I desire besides thee Take counsell my soule Commit thy way unto the Psal 37. 5. Lord trust also in him and hee shall bring it to passe Hearke my soule when we taste the thing we taste is joyned to us We neither see nor heare in this manner and having tasted we know And when the Body tasteth wee commonly see first and afterwards taste In our conversation with God wee first taste and then see I speake not of Faith being of another order O taste and see that the Lord is good Holy Scripture will give us matter Psal 34. 8. without end This is a delicious communication of our selves with God our selves when we are present onely with our selves and with God Keepe the double doores of your teeth and lips the forts of silence close that your nimble and busie tongue speake nothing but what some way directly or indirectly pertaineth to Gods glory agreeably to his good pleasure And therefore always before you speak
virtually containeth Repentance in which the soule is united by Grace to God and the love of God it selfe is nothing but a close Union of the soule with God And that I may raise my discourse to an infinite height The holy Ghost being the love of the Father and the Sonne is a firme knitting of them together RULE 9. VVHen you see or learne by relation that another is oppressed with sicknesse or misery goe aside presently and as it were take God aside with you and pray for the distressed party And presently if occasion give way visit the party And afterwards when you are gathered up together body minde and all in some private place of Recollection imagine your selfe stuck fast in the like misery or acting the mournfull part of a dying man with a certaine feeling of grievous paine with a serious consideration of the comfortlesse behaviour of your friends of the Physitians weaknesse and wretched ignorance in respect of Death and her power and policy and of the fickle nature and transitory condition of riches and how you poore man shall be carried away in a sorry sheet layd in the cold ground and there left alone while those who accompanied your body will returne cheerefully almost every one to his owne home and now and then talk of your past life and especially your sinnes but little think either of your present solitarinesse desolation or rottennesse And then let your better and more sbulime thoughts triumph and insult over the vanity of the world For alwayes when you would more fully contemplate the greatnesse of Gods benefits take a full sight of his lesser favours and of the persons upon whom the greatest benefits are not bestowed And when thou beholdest one overflowne with drink or otherwise offending God laugh not for laughing is ordinarily the childe of delight but if it be possible looke pale upon him and loath his beastly practises And bee truly sorrowfull that so good a God whom thou lovest and desirest to love above all things should bee so foully dishonoured And let a chiefe part of thy daily griefe be that God is every day so much and so basely injured in all places and hath beene and shall be in all places and in all Ages And whisper to thy selfe in a corner of thy heart Now now wicked men sweare lye prophane Gods blessed Name drink themselves to the base condition of beasts love beastly women more then God These blowes upon the sweet face of God rebound upon my heart I would give my life and all that I have to preserve God's honour And be glad againe because some few doe serve him and because the Saints and Angels in Heaven doe perfectly honour him though not with honour equall to his perfection And say I would no man had ever sinned did now sinne or would sinne hereafter And for you that love God goe on with comfort double the heat of your affection towards him and let the burden of the song still be O God I love thee But beware that in hating a sinner you doe not hate the man lying under the sinner Hate sinne in it selfe and also hate it in such a person but hate not the person You ought to make an incision betwixt the marrow and the bones love the men but hate their manners For thy enemies hate them with a perfect hate and let the highest point of thy sorrow be that they are enemies to God that in being enemies to thee they crook thee to their devices use thee to forward them upon the downfall of eternall damnation It is a sinne as black as the devill to hate the devill if we doe not separate and distinguish the object of our hate from God's white creature in the devill Yet make a broad difference betwixt the imperfections of men and their foule enormities Beare the burden of another's imperfections for so thou shalt fulfill the law of Christ and move God and thy neighbour to beare with thee In a presse of people one giveth way to the other Bricks are made square to lay the pavement even God's dearest children have their imperfections and their skarres even in their faces that they may be humble and acknowledge themselves to bee what they are which imperfections are as it were the drosse and earth of the soule And yet wee may not consort with knowne and professed sinners The Minister is not true to his Religion that is a silent Companion of Popish Priests and it is not a good signe or symptome that Franciscus à Sancta Clara alias Damport admitted him to a perusall of his Deus Natura Gratia before it was printed and yet he so farre went on with that wicked and unworthily insinuating Book that hee suffered it to take it's course without a discovery How can this be characterized but A holding of Counsell with Gods enemies He is my neighbour but the more holy and more excellent Obligation may not be broken to set free and save the meaner when the one in reason and religion inferres the destruction of the other Hee and I are Pastors and Pastors are so called à pascendo because they must feed their flocks Of strangers the Shepherds being admonished frō heaven did first adore the good Shepherd and in the time when the Shepherds watched over their flocks news came to them of a Saviour It is not the Shepherds place where the Wolves haunt except his businesse be to catch them or chase them away RULE 10. HAve a most vigilant care that neither your cloaths ordained onely to cover nakednesse and to put you in minde of originall sin and the first Garment of fig-leaves nor diet bee curious What doth it availe thee whether thy meat or drinke be sweet or bitter It stayeth but a little in the taste Doe not over-load your selfe in eating or drinking but when you are at the Table leave always some speciall thing which indeed you could well and safely eat or drinke but will not because you will understandingly bridle your owne will and sensuall Appetite Let not sleepe hold you long in her armes but shake her off and rise cheerfully to performe the will of him that sent you into the World Let not your recreation be more choice neither flow in a greater measure then due and fit necessitie requireth For so you may please God as truly in the pleasing Acts of Recreation as in the laborious and painfull exercise of solid vertue And the most precious Time which others vainly cast away in drinking feasting gaming sporting and in the pursuit of loose and idle vanities fastning upon earthly things because they are altogether estranged from things heavenly passe thou in feare and trembling in pious meditations and in the thoughts of Angels You must goe always holding up your clean garment that it be not defiled RULE 11. WHen you are put on by a strong and vehement desire towards an indifferent thing by force bow the will another way For in the full
that talkes thus Another dwelling upon earth hath his dealing in Heaven amongst the Stars and teacheth for a truth that if we are born under such or such a constellation such and such strange things will certainely befall us we shall die suddenly by fire or by water or by a fall of a house or from a house or be the prey of a Lion And this profound man is certaine that if a Starre should loose hold and tumble downeward it would more then cover all the world and then sayes he where should we be And the plaine meaning people are amazed when they heare him say that the Sunne runnes some hundreds of miles in an houre But this heavenly man standeth above himselfe and above the sight of the creatures at hand which first offer themselves to his thoughts and knowes not what is here below Others cast themselves beneath themselves and their soules and are wondrously taken up in the curious inquisition of inferiour matters The wise Physitian is able to reveale the great mysteries of nature and the naturall uses of almost all naturall things but urge him upon a tryall and he cannot prescribe Physicke to his owne sick conscience Where is a Tradesman that doth not understand the secrets of his own Trade far better then the secret state of his own soule These wretched people have tooke a fall and are under themselves they faile in the first ground and foundation of all true learning A man may wisely aske the question Why in the blinde ages before Christ the Devill speaking from the mouths of Images gave to men many good and solid documents The maine hinge upon which the question turneth is The Devill not onely doth evill but also doth altogether intend evill what then hath hee to doe with good I will take the true answer The Devill well knew that the world was even then abundantly stored with grave and wise people who were also morally vertuous and that if he did not answer in some sort to their pious and reasonable expectation he would soone lose the reputation of a God And therefore amongst divers other sound instructions delivered by the Devill in oracles this also was given 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 know thy selfe In which the Devill more willingly dispensed with a shew of sanctity as knowing that his admonition would in the end prove uneffectuall because no man can truely know himselfe without the present assistance of Grace of which the poore Heathenish people were altogether destitute Our blessed Lord whose end was to dissolve the machinations of the Devill doth as strangely as excellently exhort us to the deepe and powerfull knowledge of our selves not in word but in worke in the working of a miracle It is written that he restored a man to sight blinde from his birth How did he restore him by his will onely No◠by his word onely nor so The manner of the cure is uncovered in these words He spat on the ground and made clay of the John 9. 6. spittle and he annointed the eyes of the blinde man with the clay But let me see is it clay touch not my eyes with clay it will rather put them out then cure them Now I understand it our omnipotent Lord here worketh by contraries that it may bee knowne not the thing applyed but the power of him that applyed it wrought the cure while he clearely teacheth us that the knowledge of our selves and of our meane foundation being as Job speaketh earthly with a requisite application to our selves is the onely instrument which openeth the eyes of a man blinde from his birth as we all are And why doth our good Saviour so pressingly stirre and invite us to the knowledge of our selves It is but one step to the reason Knowledge puffeth up saith S. 1 Cor. 8. 1. Paul All knowledge puffeth us up and swelleth us with pride but the knowledge of our selves When we spread our feathers of pride and ostentation if we but glaunce upon the knowledge of our selves our plumes fall and we begin to be humble Meditation 2. MAn considered in his body is a refined peece of dirt A strong one no. For make his image of stone or wood or almost of any vile thing and it will bee more strong more durable then he I will set aside holy Scripture and prove my selfe to have beene made of earth beyond all contradiction Every corruptible thing and I may go to a dead mans grave and finde that I am a corruptible thing when it naturally perisheth turneth into that of which it was made I perishing after a naturall manner turne into earth the conclusion will follow I cannot hold it therfore I was made of earth If I consider man in his birth and life it is the great blessing of God to his great praise be it spoken that he is not ante damnatus quam natus condemn'd before he is borne He is borne with the great paine of his poore mother that beares him and he cannot bee made more naked more poore then he was when he was borne If a man should looke upon him here and know nothing hee would little thinke that the little thing could ever be the wilde Author of so many foule stirres and tumults in the world A child being born is cast out a poore naked thing Plin. in prooem ad l. 7. natali die as Plinie sayes on his birth-day Hee makes his birth-day a day of mourning Procellas mundi quas ingeditur saith Saint Cyprian statim suo ploratu gemitu rudis anima testatur The new-borne S. Cypr. de patientia childe presently gives testimony to the storms of this world by his teares The Emperours children of Constantinople though borne in a chamber called the Purple because on every side adorned with purple through received from the mother so quickly into purple that they seemed to be born in little robes of purple and therefore stiled Porphyrozenites to hide the nakednesse and take away the scandall of nature yet notwithstanding all this shuffling and ruffling of purple they came into the world as other children all naked and with little teares in their eyes to shew they were then upon travelling from their maker Man that is borne of a woman saith Job is of few dayes and full of trouble Every man was borne of a woman but Adam and it was not Gods highest will that he should have been either of few dayes or full of trouble It is a great while before we can goe before we can speake before we can make it plaine that we differ in the maine point from beasts and are reasonable creatures before wee know any thing And then endeavouring to know we learn evill easily good with great paine And in our first lesson which the world giveth us we learne to sinne What is that to breake the Divine Law and forefeit our soules to eternall damnation And yet as it is in Job Man drinketh iniquity like water the
us from it hee would quickly thinke Had I my body and life againe whither would I not goe What would I not undergoe to shun this wofull extremity I would lye weeping upon the cold stones all covered with dust and ashes if it might be suffered a million of yeares for my sinnes I would begge my bread of hard-hearted people in a new world from one end of it to the other I would spend as many life 's in trembling feare and fearfull trembling if I had them as there bee lifes in living creatures I would doe any thing Now my soule doe not grieve that Hell is provided for sinners for such griefe stands so farre under the lowest degree of vertue that it is a sinne but give two teares at least from the eyes of thy body because thou hast sinned against thy good God Such teares are Pearles and rich ones and will in time make thee a rich man The holy Fathers call these teares the jewels of Heaven and the wine of Angels And as the world was a gallant world and there were such creatures and such doings as we now see before I was any thing so it will unlesse God please in the meane time to cut off all by his glorious and second comming remaine a very gallant world and there will againe be such creatures and such doings when I shall lye quietly under ground corrupt and putrifie and by little and little fall away to a few wretched bones and these shall remaine to mocke at what I have beene And he that is now so trim and so much talk'd of shall not be so much as remembred in the world his generation shall forget him and people will speake and behave themselves as if he had never beene CHAP. V. REader beware the Papists are crafty and profound in craft And they will object to relieve their cause one of these two things or both I have beene long trained in the knowledge of their wayes That I owe them thankes for many devout observations Something I have learned of them and I thanke them for it yet little if experience stand aside but what I might have learned in England My friends know that when I was a boy at Eton Colledge I began to scribble matters of devotion And I have seene much unworthinesse in them beyond the Seas not to be imitated which I could not have learned in England But the knowledge which they worke by shall lye dead in me Their other prop will be that my writings come not from the spirit of devotion but of oratorie I am short in these revelations that point at something in me who am nothing Reader thou hast the language of my spirit but I must digge farther into this veine of Meditation or Consideration Consideration 1. THe reasonable soule though now of composition is composed of three faculties the Understanding the Will the Memory All faculties being active have one most proper act or exercise to which they are most and most easily inclinable if not restrained The most proper act or operation of the Understanding is to see or know Truth Of the Will to will and love good Of the Memory to lay up and keepe in it selfe as in a Treasury all profitable occurrences By the sinne of Adam the Understanding is dazled in the sight or knowledge of Truth By the sinne of Adam the Will becomes chill and colde in the willing and loving of good so colde that it wants a fire And from the sin of Adam the Memore hath learn'd an ill tricke of treasuring up evill where it shall be sure to be found againe and of casting aside good where it may be lost with a great deale more ease then it was found Where one part is wounded and one well one part may succour and cherish the other the part well the wounded part In the soule all parts are wounded And therefore there is great neede of Grace and supernaturall helps that strengthened by them wee may recover health and partes deperditas the parts we have lost Lord assist my contemplation with thy Grace Wherefore the holy Apostle speaking of those who in all their adventures were guided onely by the weake directions of nature sayes they became Rom. 1. 21. vaine in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkned First vaine and then more darke Saint Hieromes Translation speaketh after this manner in Genesis The Gen. 1. 2. earth was vaine and voide and darknesse was upon the face of the deepe What the Eye is in the body the Understanding is in the soule The Eye is the naturall guide of the body the Understanding is the naturall guide of the soule For when we beleeve as well as desire the things we doe not understand even then also we take a naturall direction from the Understanding which he holds a convenience of such things in respect of the motives with beliefe and desire though not with Understanding The Eye sees the outward shape of a thing the Understanding sees both outwardly and inwardly as being advanced more neerely in its degree and therefore also in its making to God The Eye discernes one thing from another the Understanding conceives as much The Eye judges of colours the Understanding judges of white and blacke of good and evill The Eye cannot see perfectly many things at once and such a one is the understanding For the more a power be it spirituall or corporall being finite is spread and divided in its operation the lesse power it hath in every particular The eye sees other things but I cannot turne it inward to see it selfe the Eye of the soule lookes forward but in the body it shall never obtaine a sight of it selfe in its owne essence Indeed the Understanding is a kinde of Eye and the Eye is a kinde of Understanding Such an excellent sweetnesse of agreement there is betwixt the soule and the body which moved to the marriage and union betwixt them Now this Understanding this Eye of the soule is not altogether blinded by the great mischance of originall sinne For omnia naturalia sunt integra as Dionysius sayes of Dionys Areop the fallen Angels all the naturall parts are sound How from being broken not from being bruised This Eye then although darke so farre sees that it sees it selfe lesse able to see somewhat darke in the sight of naturall things and much more then somewhat darke in the sight of spirituall things I may stand betwixt both and clearely behold the different case of the soule before and after the fall of Adam in order to spirituall contemplation and practise if I looke upon the various condition of a man in health and sicknesse in order to the actions and operations of life The sicke man is weake and ill at ease his principall parts are in paine his head his heart He cannot use his minde seriously but his head akes he cannot looke stedfastly nor at all upon a shining object discourse is tedious to
have done CHAP. VIII HEre I will give certaine formes of Christian duties which in some part belong to me in regard of my former wandrings and which I will not fit onely to my selfe that others may use them upon emergent occasions That God may be glorified and in conformity to his most holy Will the sacred measure of all goodnesse I most heartily forgive all people that have trespassed against me whēsoever wheresoever or howsoever Now I look better upon them I behold my own self in every one of them or another me very like my selfe sent hither into the world the same way upon the same businesse and sweating here in the Vineyard as I doe for the same or like paiment here I doe not meane the Papists and perhaps pleasing God better upon earth by some hidden vertues and to be seated more close to him in Heaven then my selfe Shall I be displeased with any with whom God is pleased to be well pleased Indeed we must be friends for wee hope to live together in one house for ever And more I behold the Image of God in them and our onely Saviour Christ Jesus in the humane nature which he tooke and married to his Divinity and cleerely in the body which he put upon him For his sake I will imitate Saint Stephen the boldest because the first of Martyrs who being oppressed with a showre not of hard words or the like but of stones kneeled downe and cried with a loud voyce His body Acts. 7. 60. was as low as Earth but his voice as high as Heaven and he sent it thither with a good will for he cried with a loud voice and yet he cried not for the help of others helpe helpe or for his owne wrongs but as his wrongs were their sinnes and hee kneeled downe before he was beate down and although they might have beate him from his standing yet they could not beate him from his kneeling before they had beate him from his life nor with most hard stones beate downe his prayer which then was his and now is mine Lord lay not this sinne to their charge One thing I know they were both Gods whips and the instruments of his triall in respect of me And blessed be God in all Eternity that fitted and prepared to my hands so rich so ample and such fine-weav'd occasions of patience and humility I blesse not God for the sinne that it was committed but for his good intention towards me supposing the commission of evill and for the good which he wrought by evill when it was committed O the blindnesse of anger It is impossible to goe or stand or spet or so much as looke handsomely in the troubled judgement of the angry person Anger thinks that we poyson the air when we breath and so is afraid of catching the Plague and that every thing we looke upon we infect with the eyes of a Basiliske and that what we touch is stung by a Scorpion and therefore the part touched must be cut off and that where wee smell thence we have extracted the sweetnesse And the minde of an angry person saith S. Chrysostome is a market-place S. Chrys tom 4. hom 24. full of tumult where is a continuall clamour of goers and commers this man calling that chiding one asking another answering a fifth murmuring a sixth hallowing one here singing one there lamenting and all with different voices the loud crying of Camels the rude braying of Asses a confused noise of all sorts of workemen incessantly knocking on every side with their severall instruments Here is noise enough to make a man lose the right use of his hearing Go my soule to the Philosophers that knew neither Christ nor his Father as we know them to Plato and to his Socrates Aske Cicero if this be the minde of a vertuous man The Stoicks would have thought such a man not a man but the Ship-wrack of a man It is the voice of the Psalmist Righteousnesse and peace have kissed each other Upon Psal 85. 10 which words Saint Austin discourseth S. Aug. super illud Psalmi Justitia Pax. as he uses to doe most excellently and me thinkes he speakes to me Duae sunt amicae Justitia Pax tu forte unam vis alteram non facis Righteousnesse and Peace are deare and neare-united friends you perhaps would have one without the other Which can never be for they are as unseparable as their friendship you shall not finde them parted they are alwayes kissing together You desire the sweets of Righteousnesse but you have no minde to Righteousnesse that is sweet The one is to be done the other to be enjoyed If you will enjoy Peace you must doe righteousnesse Why then Lord I begge of thee not Peace without righteousnesse but the Peace of Righteousnesse that while they kisse together in me I may be kissing too but what thy sacred feete nailed to the Crosse and bleeding for me Under which I cast all my wrongs great and small And for the persons if my wishes were as efficacious as the first words of God in the creation Let there be Light after which immediately Gen. 1. 3. appeared that most gallant creature all in white in the next instant they should all shine in glory with God and his Angels CHAP. IX NOw let me looke inward and search the many turnings and windings of my heart for sores that cannot be salv'd except they be salv'd as well abroad as at home and with different plaisters sores that ake in two places at once They are knowne by this name injuries done to my neighbours And they are like the Serpent which Plinie calleth Amphisbaena headed at both ends and at both ends they dispense their poyson for they not onely wound me with guilt but also in the same blow my neighbours with hurt dammage and losse of some good thing to which they have a just title unjustly taken from them Every good action is tutored by some vertue and the lawfull change of the dominion which every one hath over his owne lawfully made his owne must bee regulated and informed by Justice It is the Doctrine of Saint Austin Non dimittitur S. Aug. peccatum nisi restituatur ablatum The sinne is not pardoned except the thing taken away be restored there being a greater 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and foulenesse of injustice in the keeping and retaining then in the taking away of my neighbours goods the act of retaining them being indeed a continuall taking of them and accompanied with much more deliberation and consequently a most deliberate negation or deniall of sorrow for having taken them and an implicit or close and secret will or love of the same and the like wicked action and verily an utter exclusion of repentance upon this ground Repentance by which we are grieved for the commission of one sinne or more if it include not virtually a sorrow for all our sinnes committed is not
prayers If I am altogether unable my spirituall satisfaction shall be the more ample If for an injury in matter of goods no temporall satisfaction be required my satisfaction shall have two feete or two wings and I will satisfie both for the wrong and the curtesie with love prayers and Christian observance Indeed I will be singularly carefull to restore my selfe to God in watching fasting prayer and all that is mine or placed under my care and any way subordinate to mee every thing in its proper way And to make even with my neighbours wheresoever the least shadow or semblance of obligation shall appeare It is the good counsell of Saint Gregory Quales vires habuisti ad mundum S. Greg. tales habeas ad artificem mundi With the strength and courage with which you did pursue the world when you were of the world looking now above the world you must apply your selfe to the Creatour of the world in whom you may see the world without the vanity of the world And Lord give strength and age to the good thou hast begot in me CHAP. X. ANd I am most heartily sorry that I I vile wretch the child of a weake Woman a base clod of earth that having got to live and be a little warme hath learn'd to to goe and speake and to put on cloaths and as soone as it could sinne to sinne have so greatly so grieviously offended a God infinitely more faire then the Sunne in all his glory infinitely more pure then the pure Angels that having stood fast when their companions fell not for want of strength to stand but with a desire to fall because with a will to quit their standing and rise above the firme place where they stood were presently confirmed in all their admirable endowments of Nature and Grace and also beautified with a new and that a compleate and everlasting purity infinitely more good then he that is most good under him I have more to say infinitely more faire pure and good then God with all his art and ability can make a creature By whom the Sunne was taught to runne and commanded not to rest with a promise that hee should never be weary whose powerfull voice the dull and senselesse yet obedient stones borrow eares to heare By whose indulgence the little worme without feete creepe joyfully and the small flies are carried strangely above ground and make very pretty sport in the Sun-shine The first and originall cause of all the Good that ever was is shall be or can be and after all this and infinitely more then I or all the Angels of Heaven can utter my last end O good Prophet and great King lend me thy words and thy heart I have sinned against the Lord. 2 Sam. 12. 13. CHAP. XI DIonysius Areopagita Saint Pauls Scholler and his onely convert at Athens to whom he imparted the knowledge of the third Heaven describes the God of Heaven Dionys Areâ—p de divin nom c. 1 as well as he can 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is a supersubstantiall substance an understanding not to be understood a word never to be spokeÌ„ Against what a sublime and high thing have I offended in a most high manner Against a substance above substance I have opposed a substance of no substance Against an understanding that for its excellencie cannot be understood I have opposed an understanding that for its weaknesse cannot understand And against a word that can never be spoken I have spok words which having spoke I can never speake how bad they were and which I most heartily wish had never beene spoken John Damascen sayes Johan Damasc lit 3. de fide orthodox c. 24 In deo quid est dicere impossibible est In God to say what he is is a thing impossible I have done I cannot say what against I cannot say whom Onely this I can say Father I have sinned against Heaven and Luke 15. 5. 18. 19. before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy sonne make me as one of thy hired servants Because we have Fathers in the world from whom we come and we come from God I can looke up to him and say Father And because by sinne I have forfeited all the joyes of Heaven I can say I have sinned against Heaven and because I cannot sinne or be where God is not I can say and before thee And because I that did once love God with the love of a sonne for himselfe flew wretchedly out of his house both from his children and his servants and now hoping to come into favour againe must stand aloofe off with beginners that first enter into his service and have all their minde upon their wages I can say And am no more worthy to be called thy sonne make mee as one of thy hired servants If God should appeare to me in the meanest robe of his beauty But I speake vainely for his fairenesse is one of the Attributes which equally bestowes it selfe upon all the other all being equally good equally faire But if he should appeare to me in a robe agreeable with our eyes he would be so faire that aided with a gentle gale of his Grace I could not possibly hold from running immediately with all swiftnesse and with all humblenesse into his most delightfull imbraces For it is most true of God which Tully speakes out of Plato concerning Philosophy if it could be seene mirabiles amores excitaret sui The sight of him would stirre up in the beholders a most wonderfull love of him not onely in respect of his beauty but also in regard of the secret conveniencie and agreement betwixt the soule and its last end O Lord what have I done CHAP. XII I and what am I a little creature compos'd of a weak sickly body and a soule and there is all I. A body not taken out of the substance of Heaven lest I should seeme more heavenly then I am nor out of any shining starre lest I should take a starre for my heavenly Father nor from bright fire lest I should be too fiery nor yet from the goodly mines of gold lest my minde should be altogether upon gold nor compacted of precious jewels lest I should thinke my selfe a precious jewell but of earth a dirty filthy foule thing that we and all the beasts of the field go upon and which I wipe carefully every day from my shooes O man of earth bee not so rough wipe it off gently remember thy Creation and part of it perhaps was once part of as tall a body as thine owne And for my soule it was made of nothing and if God should step aside and forsake it one posting minute of time it would presently give backe and fall to nothing and nothing can be so vile as nothing Conservatio say the Philosophers est continuata generatio Conservation is a continued generation and therefore where the continuance of generation is interrupted conservation ceaseth The fire in
kindes of deformity the filthinesse and deformity of all other sins Which is one of the reasons why it is said in Saint James Whosoever shall keepe the James 2. 10. whole Law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all Another cause is The sinner which breakes charity with God and offends him in one point the way being now open and the reasons why he ought not to offend God violated is ready of himselfe to offend him in another and in all and will if power or occasions be not wanting For he can never give a good reason either taken from something in God or from something concerning himselfe why he should offend God in one point and not in another because he can never give a good reason why he should offend him at all and every offence of God is most contrary to reason Sinne is the chiefest evill or rather all evill and therefore so contrary to God the chiefest good or rather all good that although it is permitted because directed to a good end by his Providence yet neither can it be so much as fathered by his Omnipotence nor suffered by his Justice nor yet approved by his wisedome And is it not a most wicked businesse to commit an act of that soule quality that Gods Providence must presently to worke and turn it to Good or he lies open to a reproach for having suffered evill and there must be that which wee name a thing in the world and God the Creator of all things must not be the cause of it nor have any hand in it and God must be forced to strike with his justice as if he delighted in our destruction And if he will know all and be God he must be compell'd to looke upon that which his wisedome cannot like because it hath no being in him as it is the folly of sinne nor any connexion with his wisdome I am certain I thinke not of all this when I sinne Sinne is the destruction of Grace I have said enough And Thomas Aquinas disputing Tho. Aqui. 1. 2. q. 113. art 9. ad 2. of the difference betwixt the justification of a sinner and the creation of the world in the worth of the Act saith Bonum gratiae unius majus est quam bonum naturae totius universi the good of grace in one man though not raised above one degree is a greater good then all the good of nature pertaining to the world then the Sunne Moone Starres Earth Sea then any thing I ever saw or naturally can see then the soule of man with Gods Image in it though of so pure a substance that it cannot bee seene And Grace in the soule may be fitly compared to the light of the Sunne in the world For as there are degrees and differences of this outward light suiting with the time of the day So there is the light of Nature that is of Reason in us the light of Learning the light of Experience the light of Grace This faire light of the Sunne the light of Grace we in the meane time crucifying and killing Christ is all darkened with sinne as the Sunne it selfe was darkened when Christ hung dying upon the Crosse Sinne is the Consumption of goodnesse the death of the soule mans beter part and that by which he resembles his Creatour and i◠allied to God One evill thought is a secret conspiracie against God and all the triumphant Court of Heaven By every bad word wee scornefully spet in our Saviours face And with every ill action we buffet him This to speake the best of it is Jewish cruelty What a Christian turn'd Jew Now my eyes shut your selves unworthy to behold Gods good light or his Creatures by it whose Maker I have abused and strived to disenthrone though all Creatures and my selfe should have fallen with him With sorrow of heart I will open my owne sinnes before him whether open or secret which must be the more grievous because I was ashamed to act them before men The desperation of Cain shal not come neere me Mentiris S. Aug. in Gen. 4. super major est iniquitas mea Caine saith Saint Austin major est Dei pietas quam omnis iniquitas Caine thou liest Gods mercie is greater then all sin CHAP. XIIII BUt doe not mine eyes runne all this while have not teares opened them True teares of repentance as Chrysologus Chrysol speaketh extinguunt gehennam put out and extinguish Hell-fire which all good men preach to be unquenchable Wee see that when darke clouds cover the Heavens they seeme as it were possessed with horrour and sadnes yet the winde hath no sooner beate upon them shakē them into little drops of Psal 126. 5. rain but the Heavens begin to grow cleare and by little and little to look with a most pleasant face upon the world For they that sow in teares shall reape in joy Because the seed-time was wet and troublesome it shall be faire weather and Sun-shine all the harvest The shedding of teares from the eyes of a true Penitent is a spirituall Baptisme by which the soule is renewed in Christ and when will the Sunne shine if not after so sweet a shower Could I behold such a sweet shower falling from another I hope I should learne to drop my Luke 7. 5. 37. 38. selfe Saint Luke hath an eminent example And behold Behold a watch-word some great matter the Scripture hath to say And behold a Woman in the City A Woman what Woman why she the woman so much talkt of the Sinner A Woman in the City which was a sinner she desires not to be knowne or call'd by any other name but sinner And if you call sinner where are you She is quick of hearing on that part and she knowes you meane her and is ready to answer that 's my name here I come And what with her now she is come Why this Woman the sinner when shee knew that Jesus sat at meate in the Pharisees house brought an Alablaster Box of oyntment Now take a view of her behaviour And stood at his feete She durst not looke higher then his feete and lower she could not looke and she was willing to be trod upon if he pleased Behinde him She did not thinke her selfe worthy that he should look upon her or that she so wretched a sinner and yet not a sinner but the sinner should behold his blessed face Weeping All this while the clouds have beene in gathering now it raines But where fell the raine And began to wash his feete How with what with teares now I understand you she stood but her teares fell and her heart with them With teares With raine-water that never had beene foule never mingled with any kinde of uncleannesse it was a washing raine water that came but even now from Heaven Here is not all And did wipe them with the haires of her head and kissed his feete and anointed them with the ointment and