seems to have some pleasure in it seeing there are persons that have no greater pleasure in the world than to eat and drink well and that sense adds somewhat to mans body Yet it is more replenisht with miseries than the other four because it hurts more both the soul and body of man seeing it causes so many diseases and even death by its excesses and also so many souls damn themselves in striving to satisfie the pleasure of Taste which leads them to several other sins and withdraws them assuredly from the love of God who requires to have our affections alone For he is a jealous God and notwithstanding we place them in things vile and corruptible as are meat and drink For what is more naughty than meat and drink They have scarce past the throat but they become putrid and corrupt and especially the more fine and delicate corrupt more than the courser And for all that people love them bestowing pains and travail to attain them which is a gross blindness of mind from which I pray God preserve you that your love may remain in God only and you may know the truth of all salutary things in the desire whereof I remain Your Well-wisher in Jesus Christ ANTONIO BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle 17. Febr. 1672. St. vet THE VII LETTER He that serves the Lusts of his Senses by that same Renounces the Love of God To the same exhorting him to the effects of Humility by the Renouncing of his senses showing him that no man can follow them unless thereby he renounce the Love of God which is the end of our Creation and the essence of true Virtue My Dear Child I Deduced to you in my last how vain and miserable are the Pleasures of the Senses and have shewed you the truth of several things that you might arrive to the Humility of heart which Jesus Christ requires It is much to understand well these things but also you must set about the practice and embrace in good earnest the mortification of your senses following the truths you have known otherways it s a small matter to know the Truth if you put it not in practice knowledge is very good for you cannot practise what you know not but if that knowledge be not fruitful it cannot serve for our Salvation We must needs put to our hand and war against our corrupt nature otherways we must die the eternal Death after the temporal Which may easily be conceived since mans nature is corrupted by Adams sin and hath quitted dependance on God to depend of it self It must then of necessity remain in that corruption and sin until every man for his own particular have overcome that corruption and disobedience which he hath contracted against God or else he abideth in death and dies damned eternally For although Adam had not sinned all men in general and every one in particular could have sinned and corrupted his way by leaving dependance on his God and that because all the men that were or shall be are all created free and can continue in the dependance of God and also recede from it if they please for God forces no person So that he that is arrived to the use of Reason hath the same liberty to sin and retire from dependance on God that Adam had before his sin yet with this difference that Adam at the beginning had not in his nature that frailty and inclination to sin and evil which men have who proceeded from him after his sin for they have contracted that frailty and inclination to evil from their first father and also the infirmities of body which we see in all men and feel in our selves for no person is exempt from the evils which sin hath caused in man's nature Though it is free to all men to follow that inclination to evil which they feel in themselves as also they can by the Grace of God overcome their infirmities and the corruption of their five senses in not following them but fighting against them And it is in that that Jesus Christ says we must take the Kingdom of Heaven by Force and the Violent take it so That is not that we should fight by force to gain the Kingdom for God created it for us and he gives it us freely but it is that we must resist with force the corruption of our nature that we may enter into the Kingdom of Heaven and so that we approve not in us the sin which Adam committed and do not of our own proper will retire from dependance on God Therefore it is the Scripture says Our Life is a continual Warfare For we must continually combat the corruption of our senses without that we can never return to dependance on God from which Adam's sin hath withdrawn us seeing our senses being corrupted beget all sorts of evil and there needs no more but to follow them and their inclination to turn us away from God and remain in the way of damnation For no sooner loose we the reins to our Sight but it pleases it self to behold beautiful or curious things and no sooner have we considered them but we covet them And if we yield to the sense of Hearing the Heart delights in it and the Affection is drawn to it It is even so with Smelling where the sensitive part takes pleasure And if we please our selves in Taste all our care and study are put to search means to satisfie it and that sense is more insatiable than any other and precipitates into all sorts of sins Moreover it excites the sense of feeling for he that pleases his taste seeks also to satisfie his feeling with pleasure and satisfaction Even all the five senses are moved only by the love we carry to our selves and desire of affording our selves pleasure All these things with-draw us assuredly from God and dependance on him and he hath commanded us to love him with all our heart So that he wills not that we fix our heart on things so frail and vile as are the Sight Hearing Smelling Taste and Feeling For it is unworthy of a divine Soul which God hath given us capable of loving an eternal God who desires and commands that we love him with all our heart So that the man that hath affection for his senses quits voluntarily the dependance of God seeing he does not submit himself to his will who demands that we should love him with all our heart And that is from the disorder which the devil hath caused in man's nature when he made it turn the affection upon the creatures which is due to God alone In which consisted the first sin which man committed and thence all other sins draw their origin For nothing can be evil or sin but what is committed against the will of God and there is nothing but that can be evil as nothing can be good but what is done by his will So the Devil laboured violently from the beginning of the world to pervert
not have being nor existence For although man be above all the other creatures yet he cannot give light nor heat to the sun nor sustain the Waters in the firmament nor fructtifie the earth All that must needs be from a supreme cause whom he may know by his operations his understanding can see clearly even by his bodily eyes in contemplating the beautiful order which is in all nature we need but consider the distinction of Seasons the production of Herbs Plants Beasts and of men And though we cannot see the author of all these things yet we can see his works palpably and visibly The savage Pagans did both know and confess that there is a God Author of Nature and there are Christians at present so unnatural that they dare say they know not God because they see him not with their fleshly eyes And from that they will argue that they cannot love him because they know him not They render themselves in that like to the Beasts which have no spirit to perceive other than natural things and see them as though they subsisted by themselves But men having a spirit more noble than beasts comprehend even by their natural spirit that there is a God Author of Nature which engaged some Pagans to set up Altars to the Unknow God Some other of them at the Death of our saviour Jesus Christ said Either nature is a dissolving or the God of Nature suffers These things ought to make the Christians of this time blush for shame who say They cannot love God whom they see not So they shall be more punished in Hell than the Pagans that have applyed their spirit to know God by nature Whereas on the contrary these Christians do not at all study to know him neither by Nature nor by Grace which they have received in the Evangelical Law beside that which God gave to Moses These brutish Christians must neither believe nature nor the Law of God to say they cannot love God with all their heart whom they do not know For though they knew not God by his works which yet they see and touch they should at least know him by the Law of God which would not enjoin to love God if he were not Seeing then there is a God there is consequently an Object amiable above all things and man being full of love ought to be easily carryed to love him for love is always carryed to good and beautiful things so that nothing should be more easie to him than to love God who is the source of all Good and Beauty But all the difficulty man finds now to love him with all his heart comes hence that he doth not apply his spirit to discover and meditate the works and marvelous things of God and so cannot know nor love him but he gives himself to regard the earthly creatures in themselves and attributes to themselves the little of good and beauty that is in them and by that means carrys his affections to love the gross Objects which are visible and sensible to his stupid senses It is difficult for such persons to love God they cannot love heavenly Objects while they regard only earthly ones as they cannot comprehend eternal things because they contemplate only transitory And that is not because of their incapacity seeing God hath made them capable of loving him but because by their free will they choose to love the vile creatures more than him and it is that vitious choise makes them say that it is impossible to love God and themselves make that impossibility They are like persons who staying in a valley full of Snow complain that they are cold and that they cannot be warmed among that Snow which is very true but if they would walk a little to get out of that Snow and get up to the Mountain they should well feel that it is full easie to become warm where the sun bestows his rays It is even so with earthly men who please themselves in the Snow of worldly lustres they say and think it is impossible to be warmed by the Love of God which is also very true so long as they remain in the affections of the pleasures of this valley of tears For nothing can warm them in the love of God while there all is but Snow which cools them He that hath his pleasures in carnal things cannot have them in spiritual and he that puts his affections in perishing goods cannot have them in eternal ones and he that takes his pleasures here in sensualities cannot have them in spiritual things seeing all these things are contraries which can never abide together So long then as a man feels himself cold in the Love of God it is a token that he lives yet in affection to the things of this valley of Snow which are quenchers of the Love of God He cannot then feel in himself other than an impossibility or at least great difficulty to love God with his whole heart But if they would quit their affection to this valley of misery and mount up to the consideration of eternal things they should soon feel the Sun of Righteousness warm our Soul and the Love of God fill our heart which would not only find Facility therein but also Sweetness Pleasure Honour and Profit seeing in effect there is nothing more pleasant than to love God For me I have experienced that all love to the Creatures is bitter and that the Love of God only is sweet and pleasant for when I loved Riches they gave me aboundance of trouble to preserve them when I loved Honours I found there many bitter and piercing displeasures when I was not esteem'd or honour'd as I wished so that sometimes one Sleight caused me more pain than a hunderd Honours had given me contentment When I loved the pleasures and delights of this life I found there great bitterness because there is none of these pleasures that carry not its own pain with it for the pleasures of the taste breed poverty and diseases and are insatiable they never satisfie no more than those of the flesh which resemble Salt-water the more one drinks the more drought I have remarked that in several carnal persons who after having ruined their Body and Health in satisfying their concupiscence used all means to cure their infirmities and that to the end they might wallow yet more in their nasty pleasures And when I have loved any human Creature it was always painful for me to satisfie and please them and the fear of offending or loosing them was unto me a continual anxiety So that there is nothing but God alone whom it is easie and sweet to love Nothing is more pleasant for all other Loves have Grief mixed with their greatest Pleasures we see young people marry with joy there is nothing but mirth Plays and Dances but the Wedding is scarce over and sometimes sooner when we see them sad and afflicted pensive and melancholy Diseases attacque them the Care of
life were with incomparable Purity Evidence Clearness and Solidity in that Soul which thou didst sanctifie and are yet in her holy Writings In truth the way that is there recommended as necessary to Salvation is the only and the true way there is no danger to abandon our selves wholly and entirely in it for it is the very Truth it is the Truth it self It is the pure Truth There is none Lord there can be none other in Heaven nor in Earth There is none other way unto eternal life than that which thou hast put into the Mouth in the Writings and in the Life of thy most holy hand-maid Antonia Bourignon I praise and bless and thank thee O my God that thou gave me to know the same and hast opened and enclined the ear of my heart thereto Give me Grace to love to observe and to maintain that heavenly Truth unto Death Happy he that should lose a thousand lives for so worthy a subject Happy he who shall never for any consideration leave the practice of it Let me by thy divine Grace be of that number that after this short life of Tryal that most certain and most infallible mean make me enjoy my soveraign End which is to have the happiness ever to adore and praise thy great Majesty O Jesus eternal God Creator Saviour and redeemer of the World while with the Father and holy Spirit thou shalt reign Gloriously in all eternity Amen Revelation Ch. 3. He that hath Ears to hear Let him hear THE PREFACE OF THE PUBLISHER THis Treatise consists of two parts whereof the one may be called Extructive which builds or establishes and the other Destructive which destroys or everts For the first ten Letters are adapted to the planting of Virtue and all the rest to evert and root out what may hinder its increase To recommend Virtue is taken the precept of him who is the Master and Example of it by which is made an introduction shewing what Virtues we must in the first place embrace and by what meanstend to them which is by Obedience and renouncing our own will unto the Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart of Iesus Christ see Let. 1 2 3. the Nature of which Humility is explained and the means conducing to the attainment of it viz the knowledge of our Corruption and the Miseries which our Bodys and Souls ly under Let. 4 5 6. Which ought to produce in us the effect of renouncing our natural senses and being content with what is of meer necessity we should flee all Pleasure and proper Satisfaction Let. 7 8. which emptying of our selves will be accompanied with the Love of God which incontinently possesses the Heart from which vitious affections are expelled because of the near relation and sympathy between them as between the Creature and its natural Element In which Love consists the Essence and Complement of all Virtue and all Good Let. 8 9 10. Concerning the overturning and resisting the Impediments and Tentations of Satan is treated Let. 11. whether they be offered to our Imagination or Sensibility even spiritual Let. 12 13. or to the Understanding making us rest in the naked knowledge of the Truth Let. 14. Or exciting us to external acting or internal with Vain Glory or by Dejecting us through immoderate mortifications or in unseasonable good works spiritual or corporal toward our Neighbour Let. 15 16. Or in regard of the Devil accusing him too much or too little of our sins Let. 17 18. Whether these Tentations affect the will whose godly fervour Satan would extinguish by Grief Spiritual Negligence and Self-love as shew Let. 19 20 and to the end There is briefly represente the whole subject handled in this divine Treatise which is more specially noted at the beginning of each Letter that you may kind Reader view as in a Table and beter retain in your memory the divine Instructions therein delivered Moreover you may with us well admire the infamous audacity of some as the Church-men in Holsatia whereby some years ago they caused that these so wholsome instructions while under the Press in the German and Low Dutch Tongues were taken away by force and violence and rent While I consider these obscure enemies of the truth that Scripture offers it self to me that Every one that Doth and will do evil hateth the Light and cometh not to the Light lest his deeds be reproved and this is the Condemnation that Light is come into the world and men Love Darkness rather than Light because their Deeds are Evil. It is far otherwise with him who doth and will do the Truth for he cometh to the Light that his Deeds may be made manifest because they are wrought in God Joh. Ch. 3. I pray the God of Truth that he graciously please to instruct and lead you in the way of Truth that you never refuse to come to the Light Farewell TO THE READER Friendly Reader I Cannot abstain from imparting unto you these twenty four letters which I have written to one of my particular Friends where I shew him what Solid Virtue is because it is a matter so necessary for the present time when we see false virtue reign or such as is only apparent to the eyes of men and while so many persons deceive themselves perswading themselves that they have true Virtue whereas they have nothing but fine Speculations They think themselves Humble when they can talk well of Humility and think they have the Love of God when they desire to have it notwithstanding they have in effect only the Love of themselves and it is but Deceit and Falshood when they say they have the Love of God They do not so much as know the corruption of their Nature seeing they think they may follow that corruption without sinning provided they do no evil reproveable before men and have a will to do well and love God Which notwithstanding is not sufficient to be saved for good desires without effect are nothing before God They are indeed Foundation stones serving to the building of true Virtue For without good Desires we cannot do good Works We must first have the desire and after put it in execution which is wanting to many persons of a good will who content themselves to be of a good will and hope with that all shall go well without considering that the holy Scripture says to all in general Depart from evil and do Good Now the Evil is in our corrupt nature which no person ought to ignore yet few depart from that corruption and most love and follow it thinking they do well which is a great abuse and presumption of spirit for we cannot do good except we depart from evil and he that does not resist that corrupt Nature and renounce it cannot acquire true Virtue which few persons comprehend and thence is it that they have only apparent Virtues and no real ones Therefore is it that I have resolved to cause print these twenty four
four Parts V. and VI. The Funeral of false Theologie in four Parts VII The Light of the World in three Parts VIII The Accademy of learned Theologues in three Parts And Confusion of the Builders of Babylon IX A Treatise of Solid Virtue in two Parts X. Advertisment against the sect of Quakers And the persecution of the Righteous XI The Testimony of the Truth first Part. XII A Collection of Testimonies given unto A. Bourignon XIII The Testimony of the Truth second Part. And Innocency avowed and Truth discovered XIV The Touch-stone And the Morning-star XV. The Blindness of the men of this time in two Parts XVI Antichrist discovered in three Parts And the Holy Perspective XVII The renewing of the Gospel Spirit in three Parts XVIII The New Heaven and New Earth And the Stones of the New Jerusalem XIX Wholsome Advices All these Books are originally in French The greatest part of them are translated into High and Low Dutch Solid Virtue 1 Part The Touch-stone and The Gospel Spirit 1 Part are translated into Latin And are all to be sold by Henry Wetstein Bookseller at Amsterdam AD SOLIDAE VIRTUTIS Amicum ejusdemque hostem ALLOQUIUM Totius libelli ideam exhibens DIscere Virtutem Lector sine fraude doloque Vis liber hic monstrat Christum panditque sequendum Pare teque nega mitesce dejice temet Mens ignara tibi est cor pravum corpus iniquum Et cujus pudeat miseri ne tu illius ergo Sensibus indulge satis esto necesse repelle Cetera replet amor vacuas sacer almaque virtus Ast non una manet te crux non pugna reposcit Te semel Assiduos versas o Orce labores Mox sensum mulces mox ludis imagine mentem Jam specie veri noti Jam gloria pellit Te motore animum vis mox in corpore regnet Saevitia utve alios jam passim mens pia curet Jam te astute reum fers intus mox sine culpa Ut lateas fueris Jam mentem sanguine tetro Obruis laxas eam ut aut ignavia perdat Perdat amorve suus Sic sunt fraudesque dolique Orce tui Patet ars tua sic patet modus illam Frangendi Rabiem fundis nec miror in ista Quae docet haec sacro 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 numine virgo THE FIRST LETTER That all Christians ought to learn of Jesus Christ Meekness Mildness Gentleness and Lowliness of Heart Written to one desirous of true virtue Shewing him that to attain thereto we must have submission and obedience by which we may begin to learn meekness lowliness and humility of heart My Dear Child I Perceive you have not yet comprehended well what Jesus Christ teaches saying learn of me for I am meek and lowly and humble of heart because upon occasion you do not exercise it enough but yield loose reins to your nature for when it enclines to anger you speak harshly and sometimes use force and violence to fulfil what you have resolved as well in small matters as in great which does not testify humility of heart seeing the humble heart yields willingly to another in things not evil and does not imagin that another ought to follow our will But it is always willing to follow anothers will in whatever is not contrary to God and the perfection of its own soul I suppose you may well have observed that in me for ordinarily I inform my self of the will of my brethren to Know what they love best in indifferent things and I have more contentment to do any thing after their desires than after my own for that yields me more quiet and inward peace feeling a certain satisfaction to see them content and joyful And even my nature enclines to it by the habit which I 've used to resist my own will in every thing and being overcome it rules over all things and has no grudge for whatsoever comes contrary to it provided it be not against the glory of God or the love of our neighbour All beside is indifferent to me if it is rain or fair weather if I eat harsh meats or sweet when they wrong not my health if I be alone or in company so that the one be as wholesome as the other And finally I 'm as well content to be in one countrey as another providing I have the same occasions to live well And so I am comforted in every event whether I be sick or in health I have no choose in case I honour God as well in one state as in another it is all one to me and I would never choose any thing so that I receive from the hand of God whatsoever comes to pass and so I as always content and joyful If you knew but to learn that method you would be very happy and continually in quiet whereas now fretting and discontent you disquiet and trouble your Spirit and are burthensome to others and so hinder mutual love for a bitter word is pleasant to no body and a mild one mollifies the heart even of a furious person I know your heart is good and that you hate no person notwithstanding to judge by the tone of your voice one would say that you are envious and they that know not your heart think you are in rage you must know that they are not always disposed to bear with you and that may marr the peace and diminish charity which Jesus Christ hath so much recommended to Christians Saying if you love one another thereby shall all men know that you are my disciples I believe you love the brethren in the bottom of your heart but sometimes you speak to them as if you hated them and would not hear them speak If they spoke as you do you would have difficulty to suffer them So you ought to consider that they have much to suffer that you speak so harshly They do very well in suffering you but it is no advantage for your soul for if all the world should bear with you that will not justifie you before God nor will your nature for that change its evil inclinations but be strengthned in them And so you shall be in danger to live and die imperfect which you would regret much before God when too late Therefore it is much better to endeavour now to overcome that bilious humour which is in your nature than be Slave to a wrathful passion which masters you whereas you should govern it and use it only when it concerns the maintaining the truth and defence of the glory of God Then is it that there is place for anger as the scripture also says be angry and sin not But we must never be angry for things indifferent and of small import much less speak harshly because Jesus Christ says we must be meek and lowly of heart That is a lesson he gives to all Christians and exhorts them to learn it of him
man from the will of God who had created him to delight himself with him and willed for that that he should love him with all his heart There cannot be delight but with what is beloved and therefore will God be loved of man with all his heart and that he place his affections in nothing else but in him only The Devil no sooner perceived that but he enticed him by the five natural senses which are as the five windows of our heart to withdraw his heart and affections from God and to place them on visible and sensible things The Devil then first moved Adam's heart to regard the beautiful Creatures which God had created for him he moved also his sense of hearing to give attention to the false perswasions of that old Serpent who made him believe that he should know Good and Evil if he did eat the fruit of the Tree which God had forbid him to eat of He moved him to put his Hand to touch that Apple his Smelling to smell it and his Taste to eat it and by that means the Devil carryed Adam's Heart and affection to the Creatures and turned him away from the Love he owed to God If the Devil could have drawn man's Heart directly to love him he had done it but because he is an invisible spirit he could not move the five natural Senses of man to love him And therefore he served himself of visible and sensible creatures to get himself indirectly loved by man that by moving man to self-love and to use all the other Creatures to satisfie his self-love and consequently withdraw him from the love of God which he hath done with too much success seeing he hath caused Adam and all that were to proceed from him to disobey against God and so made him abandon that dependance that he would no more depend but upon his own will and love nothing but himself Behold the miserable fall into which the Devil caused all men to fall into in Adam And they all in general are born in that misery and disobedience since the fall of Adam and come into the world with that evil inclination to love themselves and follow the corruption of their senses which breeds all sorts of sins because they are now moved by an evil spirit which is the Devil whence no good can proceed for the privation of all good is the possession of all evil So that he that hath rejected the love of God and would not renounce himself hath deprived himself of all sort of good seeing there is no other good but God and is fallen into all sorts of evil that is to say into the privation of all sorts of Good God never created any evil but man produced it when he deprived himself of the Love of God in which alone consists all sorts of Good And that is the thing they call sin which signifies to turn away and desert God who is all good and in the privation of him is all evil So that he that hath withdrawn his affections from God to place them in the love of himself or of any other creature hath abandoned all Good and embraced all sorts of Evil. For there can be no other evil but the privation of all good into which man engages himself when he carrys his love and affections to any thing else than God And what Adam did once by the instigation of the Devil men do it for their own particular as often as they set their affections on any thing beside God only Observe a little my Child how often you have fallen into the same sin with Adam and loved any other thing than God alone and also if you are not actually addicted to your self-love and retired from the love of your God but I am not surprised at it because you never knew that sin consisted in that and no person hath taught you it for the men of this time are ignorant of that truth as well as you and they that are esteemed the most virtuous are full of self-love though they think themselves free from sin so far does the heart of man deceive it self But for your part be wiser for though all men should go to perdition you must endeavour to save your own Soul The great number of damned would not diminish your torments if you should be damned with them but rather augment them by the augmentation of crys blasphemies and noysomeness of Fire and Brimstone which shall augment in Hell with proportion to the number of damned And therefore I counsel you to leave that common tract of the blindness of men which esteem nothing sin but the material things which they have prescribed one to another to be evil Things which God regards little seeing he is a pure Spirit whom not only these gross material things offend as they decifer sins as Drunkenness Robbery Whoredom and other material sins blameable before men but God is offended to see the heart of man cleave to and love things so vile since he created him to love his God only who will delight himself with him And yet man deserts God to delight himself in the satisfaction he takes in eating drinking and cloathing and recreation with any other creature Which hugely displeases God and man becomes his enemy by disobedience while he acts against the designs God had in creating him after his own image and likeness to take his delights with him notwithstanding man against the intention of God delights in himself and the Creatures that are less than himself For whatsoever is created under Heaven is much below man who is as the head and principal of all the works of God and was established over all the other inferiour works of God being made as a little God in his divine nature which is enclosed in his Humanity But the Devil envious of his happiness from the instant of his creation strove to make him lose that part of the divinity which God had bestowed on him he rendered him sensual and earthly to make him leave the love of divine and heavenly things which alone he ought to have loved and by that means he had enjoyed all the other creatures at pleasure as master and Lord of all that was subjected to him But the proud Devil could not suffer man in dominion over the other Creatures he being rejected and banisht from the friendship of God deprived of all good and replenisht of all evil so he by Rage and Envy attempted to destroy man with himself and make him companion of his miseries and seeing man composed of a body and a spirit he insinuated into his spirit endeavouring to unite himself with him under pretext of procuring good to him and so made him imagin that he should know all things as God if he would eat the fruit God had forbid him to eat of and these thoughts being entred into Adam's spirit gained his affection and made him forget the Love and Obedience which he owed to God beginning to love
hour to any thing that is not of God we are for that hour turned from God to the creatures which is sin since we do in that what God hath forbid viz. We cease to love him with all our heart For we ought to love him always without interruption and therefore is it we must refrain our senses and give them laws that they take no other liberty but to follow the will of God We may well use these five natural senses and employ them to the Glory of God who gave them for we cannot be without seeing hearing smelling feeling and tasting but we must not take pleasure in these for our proper satisfaction we must employ them only on things necessary and those that may serve to the Glory of God and the good of our Neighbour For example man is made up of Soul and Body he hath need to employ all his five natural senses for the conservation of the one and th' other he must see and behold all things that may serve him for the perfection of his soul and hear touch taste and feel them loving them as the means of his salvation He must also look upon all things that he needs for entertaining his body to which his natural senses can afford him much help for he must see things necessary as a House to Dwell in Cloathes to cover him food to nourish him all that must be lookt on He must hear the means to obtain them smell them that he take nothing hurtful in his aliments touch and taste them for that same end For all things necessary are good and it can never be sin to use them for necessity But it is always evil to use them to satisfie our sensual pleasures or self-love because that is an affection we carry to our selves and our affection and love ought to be to God alone not to things so base and vile which we may well use but never love seeing God will have our heart entirely Which was figured by the earthly Paradise where God placed man at the beginning of the world He gave him a full liberty to eat of all sorts of Delicious fruit but reserved that of one only tree of which he forbad man to eat and that to let us understand that God does permit us to use all the Creatures which he hath created for us provided we keep our affection for himself only so he forbids us to place it on any thing else as marks the first Command to love God with all our heart that is that our heart ought not to be Divided and parted to something else but be altogether to him But men do not penetrate that as they ought they perswade themselves that it is allowable to love divers other things with God in which they grievously deceive themselves while the Command of God expresses punctually viz. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart if then it had been permitted to love other things with God he had not added with all thy heart We make questions and Disputes upon so many Mysteries of our faith and so many degrees of virtue and we leave behind the principal piece in which consists all faith and virtues For what shall it profit a man to have penetrated all the secrets of Nature and even all the Doctrines of Deep and mysterious Theology if with all that he fulfil not the Command of Loving God with his whole heart and have his heart Divided into many divers affections all his knowledge will profit him nothing we must then fulful that first Commandment to love God with all our heart I know well there are several glosses to explain how we must love God with all our heart one says we must love him above other things and where we have an ounce of love to our Money Honour Pleasures Parents or even our self we must have a pound for God and that so we fulfil that first Command and love God with all our heart Others say we must love him so that if the case were we must lose God or our goods parents or any other thing that we should lose all rather than quit God Others say it is impossible to fulfil that Command And so every one attempts to extinguish in the spirit of man the knowledge of the necessity of loving God with our whole heart which is much to be lamented and afflicts the heart seeing so many men prefer the Glosses and Sentiments of men to so express Ordinances of God He had added in vain the words with all your heart if we might put a part of our affections or of our heart in the creatures Yet God never did any thing in vain If he had not intended to show that men ought to love him with all their affections indivisibly he had not added with all your heart Consider a little my Son with your self by his grace if God does not well Deserve that we love him with all our heart Our being and all that we have is from him that whole heart with which he will be loved he gave it us should not that be great ingratitude to refuse him the heart he gave us himself to the end it might be for himself alone He gives us to enjoy so many Creatures provided we keep our Heart for him which is the only forbidden fruit Is not that the least God could demand of man in bestowing so many benefits on him Ought not man of himself to offer unto God his Heart with all other things although he were not commanded Whatever we have or can have comes immediately from him and consequently all ought voluntarily to be offered unto him without constraint Moreover on whom can we better bestow our heart than on God and who can render it more happy than he If we bestow it on our Parents or Friends they cannot render it happy and content even in this world If we place it in the Riches Honours and Pleasures of this world all these cannot satiate it seeing they are like salt-water the more our heart Drinks the more it is parched And therefore man is very unprovident to place his affections in any other thing than in God There is nothing but him that can satisfie and render us happy and content seeing in God alone is all sorts of Good and out of him all sorts of Evil. Never rest then my Son on mens Discourses for they are Liars and Deceivers and their glosses are invented only to flatter their looseness and that of others who have no internal Light So they say it is impossible to keep that Command of loving God with all our heart and they say so because they have no will to do it But God can never command things impossible beside mans spirit can easily comprehend that it is not impossible to love God with all our heart for there is nothing more natural to man than love and there is no object more lovely than God All that we see and know in nature hath some
will not promise that you shall have in his service sensual Pleasure or worldly Riches and vain Contentment but I promise you assuredly Quiet of Conscience Tranquillity of Spirit an inward Peace and contentment in your Soul Which are things far more estimable than the vain Pleasures and impure Contentments and aboundance of the Riches of this world which can never satisfie our souls being they are spiritual and cannot consequently be satisfied with material things Therefore is it that there was never any man perfectly content and satisfied in this world unless he loved God with his whole heart There is no other but such an one who can be entirely content for only the Love of God is capable fully to satisfie our souls for they are little divinities which cannot be fully contented out of God from whom they proceeded Therefore must you my Child labour to attain to that love for when you have truely found it you shall have all things and you shall reign over all the world having in contempt all that is not God And you have no violence to use with God to obtain his love seeing he gives it liberally and freely to all that desire and ask it and even compels men by an express Command which he hath given them but you must do a little violence to your self to obtain that love because your affections are carried to other things than him so you must reclaim them and constrain them to return to their God and in that you shall have so many combats as you have habitudes to love other things than God If you be then strongly addicted to self-love or Love of other Creatures your combats shall be so much the greater But the business deserves suffering well seeing after we shall enjoy so great Good temporal and eternal we should spare nothing to gain such a Treasure the Pain shall pass swiftly and the Joy endure eternally And therefore you must suffer willingly to retire your affections from earthly things and place them in God alone I have sufficiently shown you in my last that that is good pleasant honourable and profitable It remains for you now to put it in practice Examin once what it is that you love beside God and then detest that love and withdraw from it your heart If you love objects without your self flee from them as the enemies of your good loose from them your heart and desire no more to see them And if your Affections be occupied in Self-love remove them from an object so little lovely to place them in God who only merits your affections and nothing else Protest then against that natural inclination of Self-love and yield no more any thing to that nature but things purely necessary for it is your greatest enemy to which you must not furnish Arms to fight against you the better You must know that corrupt nature wars against the Love of God as far as you yield to it So give it the least satisfaction you can even till you have overcome it withdraw then from it your Affections you must restrain it as a Horse with Bridle that it kick not nor attempt but to serve the master you love Behold the means to render you free to love God with your whole heart for as soon as your affections are retired from all Creatures they will be assuredly carryed to love God their Creator because the Love of God is the element of our Soul in which only it can live recreate and repose it self That Love of God is the true center of our Souls whither they fall of themselves so soon as they are disengaged of other affections which are all vain It is as with a Stone thrown into the Air which will not rest till it fall on the Earth which is its center unless it be retained with bonds or other thing It is the very same with man's Soul which is thrown into the air of the Vanities of this world It cannot find rest there if we did not retain it by Force by Baits and Allurements of Affection for earthly things doubtless it would presently fall into the Love of God which is its center and element where it can rest and recreate it self to satisfaction because the Soul hath nothing more suitable to its nature than God from whom it proceeded and it can never repose till it be returned to him and when it is compelled to remain out of its element it is as a Fish which by Nets and Lines is forced out of the water which is to it very disagreeable and causes to it Death if it be not quickly returned into the water The same happens to the Soul when it suffers it self to be entangled in the nets of earthly Affections it must quickly die because it cannot find there an element suitable to its divine nature and so it languishes withers and dies an eternal death unless it break the nets of earthly Affections to return to its element which is the Love of God You must my Son labour that you may break all the bonds of earthly Affections and so soon as you feel affection for any thing that is not God rescind it quickly for it is a chain which retains you out of your element and though it should be painful for you to loose your heart from any thing to which it enclines these Pains shall quickly change into Consolations for you shall no sooner be returned into the Love of God but you shall bathe in ease and pleasure as fish newly returned to the water which is its element It is for that Jesus Christ says that his yoak is easie and his Burthen Light He calls a Yoak our natural inclinations because we must constrain and retain them and they are troublesom and grievous to bear For if we follow them we precipitate our selves into a thousand Evils seeing nature being corrupted by sin enclines always to evil And these evils are often troublesom and weighty to bear I know well that to us it seems grievous that we may not in any thing follow our natural inclinations but if we take on that Yoak for the Love of God it will become light and easie to us as Jesus Christ hath taught No person can dispence or excuse himself from bearing it since our first Father Adam laid it on the shoulders of all his Posterity all men in general and every one in particular are charged with the miseries which sin brought upon human nature They are all subject to Heat Cold Intemperance of the Air Hunger Thirst Infirmities and Diseases of the Body to Ignorance and Inconstancy of Spirit and the disorderly motions of Passions for sin hath brought all these things upon man's nature which God created altogether perfect but since all men have pertaken of Adam's Sin they are also subject to his Penitence That is the Yoak which God hath given man to satisfie his divine Justice So that all men coming into the world must bear that Yoak will they or not
and the Evil that I would not that I do and that to show us that there is in us an evil spirit who is the Devil who often acts in us contrary to our will Which is but too true and what every one may experiment in himself provided he will examin himself narrowly For though the Devil be an invisible spirit yet he renders himself visible by his operations And since there is no other Evil but the Devil we must conclude that all the Evils we do against our will proceed from him only For he endeavours always to cause us to sin and to lose the grace of God that he may have us Companions of his miseries by causing us to lose all good which consists in the Grace of God to cause us to fall into all sorts of Evil which is the privation of all sorts of Good The Devil is in that state and so attempts to beget others miserable as himself and that with as much Care Labour and Desire as men can bestow to beget their like Behold the cursed instrument which acts always in man to make him lose the Grace of God Which you must know my Son if you will arrive at true Virtue For if the Devil remain unknown to you he will gain you by one means or other it is all one to him provided he catch men and he hath divers sorts of Snares proper for the condition of every one He spies out the inclinations of every man that he may attaque him where he is weakest When he sees one addicted to covet the Riches of this world he will give him prosperity that he may fix his heart thereon If that succeed then hath he gained the man seeing his affections cannot be unto God so long as as they are in his money Not that the Devil can give men Riches for he is but a poor Wretch who hath nothing but miseries but he hath power over the minds of many men whom he moves to labour and give profit to such as he hopes to gain by addictedness to Riches So that he brings forth occasions to make them prosper by his adherents Now they that know not the Wiles of the Devil think that it is the Blessing of God when they so prosper The Devil so blinds their understanding that they discover not even that these Prosperities cause them to fall into several sins For he that is rich becomes ordinarily proud he exceeds in Pomp Vanity Delicious Fare Idleness Luxury and divers other Excesses which he could not commit before he was rich So it is easie to conjecture that it could not be by the Blessing of God he acquired these Riches But men are at present so blind in that point that they attribute to God what the Devil does to draw them to Hell one by oneway and another by another For he is so subtil that he will be loath to tempt one by things contrary to their inclination If he sees one liberal and that covets not the Riches of the World he will make him exceed in Liberality in giving prodigueing and neglecting what is necessary for himself and so he will make him give his Riches to them that will offend God by what he gives them And if he see another Addicted to Luxury Blasphemies or Drunkenness he is often content with some of these sins and lets him do well in other things For it is enough to the Devil if he hold us bound by one only sin wherein we have our affections that is enough to keep us out of the Graces of God seeing we must not with-draw our heart to place it in any thing but in God alone Yet the Devil always incites man to do all the evil he can But there are many who would not give themselves to many Vices though they be addicted to some one Such sorts of persons are not much molested by tentations of the Devil but he lets them rest quietly in the sin to which he sees them most addicted without tempting them by others When then he hath no hope to carry men to greater Evils he contents himself to keep their souls fast by one Chain until Death that he may after drag them to hell with him The misery is that men will not be aware for they that are not addicted to many sins have always hopes of their salvation I confess says one I'm enclined to Luxury but I bestow much on the poor and will wrong no man Another says It is true I 'm given to Drinking but I am kind and obliging to my neighbour A third It 's true I love Riches and Honours but I also attend the Service of God I go frequently to Church and to Solemnities and Devotions A fourth says I 'm given to feeding and delicacy but I hate no person And so with a thousand Excuses they think to evite damnation and to abtain salvation while they are not addicted to many Vices and Sins But the Devil derides all these Excuses he would have of all sorts of persons in Hell them that commit more sorts of sins and those also that are addicted to one or two sorts For there are in Hell all sorts of states and degrees even as there is in the world where one is of higher condition than another Those that have here committed more sins shall be in greater damnation in Hell than others I pray God deliver you from that unhappiness and remain Your Well-affected in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle 29. April 1672. St. vet THE XIII LETTER Whatever is Sensible to Nature is not the Work of Grace or Virtue To the same to whom is shewn a third Artifice of the Devil whereby he perswades men that they may satisfie their senses in the state of Regeneration and praising God And a fourth by which he affixes their minds to the spiritual sweetness and Delights wherewith they that desire to follow Virtue are affected My Son I Have not yet sufficiently detected to you the Devils cunning craftiness although I have shown you how he useth to tempt men by the things they are most enclined to which I hope you now understand well But you know not yet how he tempts spiritual persons and them that seek after true Virtue he uses more endeavour to gain these than for them of the world for these he leaves to do as they please knowing well that they need but follow their corrupt Nature to damn themselves without his tempting of them much For the corruption of nature comes from the Devil and we need but follow it to become little Devils as if we but follow the Light of God we shall become little Gods for the good spirit and the evil also beget always their like when joyned and united to the soul of man They produce always fruits of their own nature When man 's will then joyns with the Corrruption of his Nature it needs no other Devil from without to tempt it having in it self that little Devil
of Corruption which the great one hath engendered there And when it obeys that Corruption it obeys the Devil himself For the Corruption of Nature and the malice of the Devil are the same thing even as a man's Child is another man Men are grosly ignorant in that they think they are not tempted of the Devil when they do not feel in themselves preter-natural evils and they call the Malice of their Nature a Fragility without having ever seriously considered whence that natural wickedness comes to them God never created evil but he made man altogether perfect and with an inclination and will to Good without knowing any thing of evil and therefore of necessity the wickedness and inclination to evil which man feels in his nature must come from the Devil and it self may be called a Devil seeing there is no other evil but him as there is no other good but God So that they that follow the inclinations of their corrupt Nature march quietly to eternal Damnation And the Devil does not drive such with tentations but stands afar off to see them go on knowing well that they shall become dayly worse if they but follow simply the inclinations of their corrupt nature Which few are aware of but they will find themselves deceived at Death for during their life they think it is no evil to follow their natural inclinations yea say some God created Nature and cannot be offended that we follow it That is one of the greatest Tentations and is a sentiment which opens a door to all sorts of evils It is true God created nature and wills that man use it but the Devil hath so corrupted Nature that man can no more use and follow it without sinning since it is corrupted Man cannot even do any natural function now without sinning against God and that as long as he hath not overcome the corruption of his nature For if the natural man eat and drink he does it with affection now that affection ought to be carryed to God alone so he sins when he turns it elsewhere and when he gives his affection to see hear smell taste or feel he loves something else than God But he ought to love him with all his heart and not place his affections on other things beside him alone and so long as man puts his affection on eating drinking cloathing or lying c. he is turned from all good which is God and turned to all evil which is the privation of all good It is the same if we love our Riches Honours and Pleasures for we are turned from God unto the love of our selves when we love the Pleasures of the flesh and not those of the spirit and that exchange of affection causes us to fall into all evil seeing it deprives us of all good If then we will depart from all evil and possess all good we must of necessity resist and overcome the inclinations of corrupt nature otherwise we shall insensibly fall into all sorts of sin For it is enough to carry us to Hell to follow corrupt nature And therefore my Son you must die to your self first if you would arrive at true Virtue seeing as long as corrupt nature is not entirely mortified in you you cannot live in the spirit of Jesus Christ because for that you must become a new creature and detest that old corruption which the Devil hath intruded into the Works of God for it s that is our Enemy and causes us all sorts of Evil. Notwithstanding the ignorant think it a happiness when they can follow their natural inclinations although it is in effect the source of all Evils Which you may well see by the reasons which I have formerly deduced For although God hath created Nature and ordained that it should be sustained by aliments and also re-produce it self by generation yet he would always have the Heart and Affections of man to himself entirely without parting God willingly permits that man eat and drink and generate and use his five natural Senses for his necessity but he will also that we place not our Affections and Heart on these which he requires to be preserved for himself only indivisibly We may then well use all these things but not fasten our heart on 'em For when in the beginning man was created in Grace he did eat drink generate and use his five natural senses because he could do all that with thanksgiving to God When he tasted of good things he praised God who had made them so savoury for him when he saw beautiful things he praised their Author in admiring those Beauties If he smelled good Odours or heard pleasant Melody or touched smooth and pleasant things he rejoiced in God blessing him in that he had not only given him the things necessary for entertaining his life but also for Pleasure and Delight All these things then served man only to bless their Creator and glorifie him in his Creatures And man desired not Generation but to encrease the Praises and thanksgiving which they owed unto God Behold how man used all these things well before the devil had corrupted his Nature but since he is turned from God to carry his affections to himself as he does at present he desires not generation but for his own satisfaction and not for augmenting the Glory of God but to wallow in concupiscence for they have more inclination to enjoy the Pleasures of the Flesh than to produce Children to glorifie God And when men enjoy the pleasures of their senses and use the beautiful and good creatures it is more to satisfie themselves than to bless and magnifie God who gives them So esteeming more the gift than the giver From all which we see that what served unto man for blessing when he was in Grace serves now as a means of sinning and losing the Grace of God Yet we find men so blinded with self-love that they perswade themselves they can see hear smell taste and feel all that is good and pleasant and praise God in the mean while which is but falshood For since man's Nature was corrupted it no more refers any thing to God but in all these things pleases it self and uses them as if it were worthy of them as it was before sin But that is a gross Error for corrupt nature cannot seek the Glory of God it seeks only its own and hath no intention to bless and praise God for what it posesses This desire of satisfying the five senses is common to all that live according to corrupt nature none excepted Therefore those that say that they know to use good and pleasant things in praising God do but flatter themselves For to do that they must have overcome corrupt nature which they have not yet done since we see them search after good and pleasant things for their satisfaction But if they had overcome corrupt Nature they would no more satisfie it in any thing For that corruption is never so mortified in this life
but it would soon revive if they granted to their nature eases and pleasures But the soul that is regenerated in Jesus Christ knows well that Nature must be kept under subjection and restraint during this short life which is a time of penitence where we must suffer if we will enjoy after Which shews that those who say they may enjoy all beautiful and good things here praising God are very ignorant and deceived by the Devil For they think themselves to be regenerated in the Spirit of Jesus Christ which is false seeing his Spirit doth not teach that we should taste the Pleasures of this life and use all that 's good and pleasant But he teaches penitence and renouncing our selves to be poor in Spirit to forsake all that we have to watch and be sober All that is not to enjoy whatever is good and pleasant For Jesus Christ teaches to take the least and to choose the lowest place If then these persons had but attained however little of the Spirit of Jesus Christ they would be far from saying that they have overcome the corruption of their nature and are renewed in the Spirit of Jesus Christ while they do things quite contrary to what he did and taught For if it were permitted to the Regenerate to take their pleasure and to enjoy whatever is good and pleasant in nature doubtless Jesus Christ would have done so seeing there was never any person regenerated and had overcome the corruption of Nature so perfectly as he And yet he speaks of nothing but suffering becoming poor bearing the Cross and denying our selves These imprudents must think themselves more perfect than he seeing they say they may well taste all what is good and pleasant in nature provided they thank God Notwithstanding our Lord deprived himself of all these things to give us example Do you not see my Son that it is a cunning device of Satan to deceive them that aspire unto Virtue For he fills their Spirit with presumption assoon as he hath got them to digest some curious speculations of the spiritual life They imagin that they are already regenerated in the Spirit of Jesus Christ although they live altogether according to the corrupt nature of the old Adam Such persons are very far from true Virtue And it is to be feared that they shall never arrive at it seeing they think themselves in it already but they are far from it and they had better never have begun to be virtuous than to take up false Virtues These sins are worse than others because of their Hypocrisie They think themselves virtuous and they are yet full of Vices and Sins I despair more of these apparent devout persons than of the persons of the World who have any Fear of God for they have the beginning of Virtue which th'others have not who cannot fear God believing themselves regenerated in the Spirit of Jesus Christ They fancy themselves to be in Assurance and they are in the midst of Perils and Dangers of losing their souls by Presumption and the Delusion of the Devil who attempts always to turn aside them that desire to follow true virtue He first by some inward Consolation and sweetness endeavours to fix them on it by self-love for corrupt nature loves to be comforted But the new Beginner no sooner takes his pleasure in these sensible Sweetness and Consolations but he falls The reason is that he will not mind his duty in resisting the corruption of his nature when he is fastned to these sensibilities But will think he hath already overcome it when he feels delight and consolation in Spiritual things whereas before he felt none but in natural things And that makes him believe that he is already at the height of Perfection though he be not yet at the first degree which is the Tears of Penitence and regret for offending God and the desire to walk henceforth in his Fear which is the beginning of all Virtue But the Devil diverts that Fear and perswades them that they are already virtuous because they desire to become so And so does the Devil amuse those that begin and he would willingly keep them all their life with Sweetness inward Consolations which the Devil can give and also man 's own Nature For as soon as they with-draw from the Vanity of the World they find great quiet since it is a Slavery to serve the World There they torture and rack their understanding by care to maintain themselves well in honour and reputation to be well cloathed and adorned and to be followed and esteemed What Diligence must not a Worldly Person use to please men What Fear of incurring Disgraces How must he dissemble and suffer to have mens Favour and keep it How much toil to gain sufficiently to maintain him honourably What Device and Cunning must he use to get Esteem and to avoid Contempt In fine he that serves the World hath nothing but toil and disquiet but he that hath resolved to quit it to serve God begins to be loosed from the weighty yoak of pleasing the World and to find himself in much more quiet and contentment Which is pleasant to nature but if it please and fix it self upon these Pleasures it will not advance in Virtue but live in self-love instead of the love of God And in that the Devil forwards Nature mightily in augmenting these sweetnesses and inward Consolations to fix the person the more to them God bestows also Sweetness and consolations upon them that begin to draw them the more easily from Earthly Affections to the Love of himself by sensible Consolations which the soul finds in his service But whencesoever they come we must never rest thereon nor take pleasure in any thing that is not God For all Sin came into the World by man's loving the Creatures and taking his pleasure in them And when we take pleasure in Inward Consolation we turn from God in loving that sensibility It is permitted to feel and perceive them since God gives them sometimes but we cannot addict our selves to them without sinning no more than to other things beside God For our whole heart ought to be employed in the Love of God only I know well the Devil attempts to turn us from that Love by all sorts of occasions and he no sooner sees one retire from the Love of the World Riches Honours and Pleasures but he attacques them by the affection of Virtue and inward consolations to with-draw their Hearts thereby from that pure Love of God Be then upon your guard my Son lest the Devil ensnare you under pretext of Virtue Which Care she wisheth you who remains Your Well-affected in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle May 3. 1672. st vet THE XIV LETTER The Devil Transforms himself into an Angel of Light To the same to whom is discovered a fifth and sixth Artifice of the Devil by which he causeth men to apply themselves to the knowledge of
have some Grace from God keep it hid until it be God's will that you should discover it otherwise you put your self in peril of committing several sins while you shall not perceive it For there can easily slip into your heart some Vain-glory when you have received any particular Grace and even when you have only the desire of forsaking the World the better to serve God that can give you to esteem your self more than another heware also of publishing it before you have done it It is best to do and be silent for to speak of these things gives satisfaction to your nature for it is much pleased to speak of good things so it is best not to give it matter of vain complacency but to suffer the good Seed which God hath cast into your Soul to spring up secretly until it bud and send forth branches outward springing from the root within and in the end bear fruit whereof every one may gather without your loss or hurt Which will come when you have overcome all human considerations and Vain-glory and then shall true Virtue appear sufficiently in all your works without needing to make your trade to teach others Then shall your actions teach them and works are much more effectual Sermons than Words For it happens often that they that speak well do evil And for that words effect nothing in the Souls of others though good unless they know that these words come from his heart that pronounces them and then they have more force to work in the Souls of others but to speak of divine things and of Virtue without the practising of them is as tinkling Brass sounding or as a Perroquet that speaks without reason and beside the uselesness of these words to others they endanger their own soul by Vain-glory. For the Ignorant esteem for Virtue virtuous words and praise them as if it were reality though they be not at all estimable for the Devil himself can speak well of divine things as sometimes persons whom he possessed have said unto me I heard a Story how one time the Devil took the form of a Human Body and a Religious Habit and in that equipage came and presented himself to a Monastery where there was kept a great Solemnity and because of the Feast a great concourse of people Now the preacher of the convent fell suddainly sick whereat the Prior was much vexed having no person to preach but at that instant it was that the Devil came in his Religious Habit and knokt at the Gate and asked liberty to lodge in the Convent and when he presented himself before the Prior to have his Blessing as do ordinarily the Religious Strangers he askt the reason of his sadness Who answered It was because of the suddain sickness befallen the Preacher that was to preach at that hour and that he feared the Murmur and Scandal which that might cause because there was no Preacher to supply the want The Devil answered That he would willingly make the Sermon which rejoyced much the Prior thinking God had sent him that Minister in his Necessity The Devil then going up unto the Chair preached so powerfully and so wisely of the judgment of God of the State of the Blessed and that of the Damned that most of the Hearers wept with compunction and were astonished to hear so clear a deduction of all these things But a simple Religious Person of that Convent had a Revelation from God that it was the Devil whereof he advertised the prior who having ended his Functions caused the preacher to come before him and conjured him by God to tell who he was He answered that he was the Devil The prior askt how it was possible that he could preach so beautiful Truths and so profitable for the salvation of Souls To which he answered I reap my advantage by that for those that have heard me speak these Truths can find no more cloak of ignorance I have declared to them the State of the Blessed and that of the Miserable and the just judgments of God and they were all moved But they are so addicted to self-love and the love of earthly things that they will not put into practice what I have taught them but on the contrary will follow their old Customs and forget the Truths which I have preached to them and after that he vanisht like smoak in presence of the Prior and some other of the Religious leaving a noysom Stink behind him This history shews enough that the Devil can well speak the truth and good things when he sees he can make his advantage of it and therefore should we not esteem it a Virtue to be able to talk well of good things Virtue consists only in the practice and so imagin not that you shall do well to study much that you may speak advantagiously of Virtue that would be but Vanity without Profit But endeavour to study well the knowledge of true Virtue to the end you may put it into practice and your practice shall teach others Never read any thing to learn to talk well but read the Books which teach the practice of Virtue such as is that of Thomas a Kempis or other such like For the high and difficult questions cannot make you holy but will inspire your heart with Vanity and Pride Now seeing we ought to evite even the shadow of evil we must consequently beware of reading Unprofitable things or elevating matters of Controversie and hidden Mysteries seeing all these things do no more but fill our Spirit with wind not bringing any profit to the soul but much hurt For as a Vessel filled with some liquor cannot receive any other thing without mixing with what is in it or spilling it over It is the same with our understanding when it is replenished with curious studies of whatever matter For then the light of the Holy Spirit cannot be poured into it pure It is mixed with our proper thoughts and so there is nothing but confusion And in that Confusion as in troubled water the Devil fishes and dissipates quite that Light And therefore it is that so few souls receive purely the light of the Holy Spirit They are not empty but filled with fine speculations of Mystique things Others have their minds filled with Medecine Others with Astrology and so of other studies They cannot comprehend why they should not have the Light of the Holy Spirit as well as some other particular souls which they see and know to possess it But they need not be astonisht at that for the Holy Spirit cannot enter into a soul filled with something else It must be altogether void of it 's own Curiosities before it can be disposed to receive the wisdom of the Holy Spirit It should then desire to know nothing beside what God wills that it should know and consequently should not apply it self to read any Book but such as enlightens the understanding in the knowledge of true Virtue Neither must
before we ask it And if we think to gain time for Prayer by watching the Devil will disturb our spirit for want of sufficient sleep that he may weaken us and in short time destroy us I have experienced all these things and sometimes fallen into so great extremities that if God had not marvelously maintained me I should have been dead long ago by excess in fasting watching and lying hard which God hath since shewen me to be but a disorderly fervour which cannot be long continued and that the Devil finds his advantages in it and easily insinuates therein thoughts of vain-glory because they think themselves better than others while they use these mortifications of the body though they be no more but means to mortifie our Intemperances and Luxury For if we were well disposed we should not need Watchings Fastings and other Macerations of the body It is not our Flesh that can sin but the will only which we must compel more to do well than our flesh seeing this is but as a Horse which ought not to be whipt when he rides willingly which he does as well covered with a Sadle of Leather as with one of Velvet and contrariwise Even so our Heart may be as virtuous when our Body is covered with velvet as when with Leather seeing the outward habit brings nothing to the Soul Beside a simple habit covers often Hypocrisie and causes pride in the Heart And therefore we must never be tyed to these outward things for the Devil thereby finds opportunity But we must be tyed to God alone on whom the Devil hath no power as he hath on all our outward actions even the best For the Devil furrs himself into works of spiritual Mercy and Charity he perswades us that it is well done to instruct the Ignorant and admonish the faulty which in effect profits no more in this miserable time when men perish not by Ignorance but by pure malice For every one would profess to teach virtue and very few will practice it I exercised my self about nine years in teaching of the ignorant without profiting any thing in the salvation of their Souls On the contrary I had the dissatisfaction to hear some of them say to whom I had shewn the Christian Doctrine and Virtue That they could now do greater Evils than they could do before because now they could cover their wickednesses with feigned Virtues which they could not do before they learn't to talk of Virtue So it is not advisable that we distract our selves to go and teach others unless we see that our teaching will be profitable to their Salvation whom we would teach and we must use in this great discretion otherwise the Devil vould amuse us all our life in teaching the Ignorant thinking we did a work of spiritual Mercy which yet should be no profit to others and much hurt to our selves We must indeeâ—â—ave Charity to teach our Neighbour but not exceed therein nor have an indiscreet Zeal toward such as search not after the Salvation or Perfection of their Souls themselves For the Devil himself would feign ignorance and desire of us instruction to distract us from our own perfection I have known persons possessed of the Devil who went continually searching pious Souls to be instructed in Christian Perfection These are such as the scripture calls silly Women ever learning and never come to the knowledge of the Truth For they care not to put it in practice although they knew it but seek only to amuse us and cause good persons to lose their time who cannot advance in Virtue while they are attempting in vain to procure it to others There is the profit the Devil draws from works of spiritual Mercy both in instructing Ignorants and admonishing the Faulty for so evil is our time become that we can no more resist the evil it is enough to endure and suffer it with regret If you should speak to admonish men for their Oaths Whoredoms Robberies Lies and Infidelities and other gross Sins they would leap in your face curse you despise you calumniate and hate you So that instead of doing them any work of Mercy you should excite them to greater sins and put your self in danger of being abused and persecuted without any profit As I have known persons zealous for the Glory of God who could not suffer the wicked in their presence and reproved their Vices and admonished them upon occasions And these have often run the hazard of being killed by them they admonisht the Devil attempting so to extirpate them Which also happened to one of my Friends who was Poisoned for being over-zeaâ—â—â—â— for the Glory of God and over-fervent in opposing Evil And therefore we must in all things use discretion if we would evite the snares which the Devil spreads every where to catch souls Yet we must not therefore neglect to instruct the Ignorant and admonish the Faulty when we find persons disposed to profit thereby Yea we must have in our heart the Charity of St. Paul who wished to be accursed for his brethrens Salvation Which appears to be an excessive Zeal but it proceeded from the Charity of his Heart toward his Neighbour and forgetting of himself For he regarded more the Glory of God than his own Salvation or Advantage seeing he was but one person to glorify God and his brethren a great number So that excess could not come of the Devil seeing he had no interest or profit by it He knows that God does the will of them that he loves and so he might foresee that St. Paul would obtain the Prayer which he made for his Brethren He knew also that God would not damn St. Paul for his great Charity which he carryed to his Brethren offering his own Salvation that they might be saved He could have no extrance there seeing Charity is God himself on whom the Devil hath no power but he hath much over all our external actions when they are done without discretion Therefore was it St. Anthony said Discretion is the greatest of all Virtues seeing they are disorderly when not regulated with Discretion For Fastings Watchings Prayers and Works of Mercy and other Virtues are not good when Discretion is wanting It is good to admonish and instruct our Neighbour in a fit season and when he desires it but when he does not seek it or will not suffer it we must withdraw testifying that their imperfections and sins displease us without going to correct or restrain them authoritatively For God hath not given us our Brother in charge he is left free as well as we so we ought not to help him but by Charity as far as he hath need and desires it not farther God does equally the same with all men he pleased to have them free and so constrains them in nothing Now we must not presume to be more just or charitable than God in willing to obliege our Neighbour to do well by force and forsake his Sins and
that engage them unto sin for it is written Whoso loveth hazard shall perish in it So that he that feels himself so weak in Chastity that he hath not the force to look upon Woman without lust he ought not to look upon one and he that drinks drunk when he hath Wine ought also to abstain from it and so of all other things though in themselves they be not evil because of our infirmity they cause Evil as others occasion Good and Virtue in our Soul when these means of perfection are used for their end 9. For example if you find by a true experience that you are more united to God in going to Church or frequenting the Sacraments you are obliged to use these means as much as possible For every one ought always to seek his own further perfection but if those means effect nothing in your soul you should not use them and if you return better into God in being shut up in your Closet you are obliged to remain there and not divert your self by going to Church and if your Soul feels more union with God in Solitude than when you seek that union by frequenting the Sacraments you ought to keep you solitary and there feast inwardly with your God for a Good Conscience is a Continual Feast where the soul reposes and recreates it self with his God And therefore it hath not always need of external means to excite it self to that Union 10. For often God prevents it with a spiritual joy and Contenrment without that it knows whence that Joy had its origin for God is a Spirit no ways tyed to material things neither to Time Places nor any means whatsoever he being a Spirit and the Soul a Spirit they comunicate in spirit and he that hath need to seek God in different Religions and Fellowships is not very far advanced in the Knowledge of God and knoweth not yet the place where he feedeth at Noon nor where he resteth at Night for if he knew that he would not run from one Religion to another to find God but would remain fixed in himself because the Center of our Hearts is the Palace of Honour where God rests and takes his delights All the Fraternities and Religions in the world cannot give that Union with God we must find it in our selves and though the perfectest Societies may well serve as means to lead us to Christian-perfection yet they cannot save us without the inward Virtues 11. One boasts that he is a Catholique another that he is Reformed others will be spiritual because in Orders or of the Reformation of Menno Truely my dear Brother all those things are not Good and can yield no perfection to our Souls to build our salvations upon any Religions is to deceive our selves seeing none of them can save us without having in our Souls true Christian perfection 12. If the Rules or Statutes of any Religion serve us as Means by which we experiment that they Unite us to God we are obliged to embrace and follow them for we must esteem the means as one would esteem the Sheath of a Sword of grear price but never esteem the Sheath so precious as the Sword which is within seeing it can never serve us to fight against our Enemies nor make them retire from us The Devil the World and the Flesh are our three sworn Enemies which continually attacque our Souls whom we must fight with the sword of Faith and the Buckler of Charity for if we think to overcome them with the outward Sheath of our Religions the Devil should laugh at us we should laugh at a Souldier who would fight his Enemy with the Sheath of his Sword It is yet more ridiculous to see how Christians would gain the Kingdom of Heaven by their Religions which cannot save them without the Love of God and Charity to their Neighbours 13. It is nothing but Amusements and Folly to fix themselves upon such an Order or such a Religion or to believe that they shall be saved for being enrolled in the most perfect Order or Religion in the world If you think to be saved for being of the Catholique Religion without a living Faith Hope in God and Charity to your Neighbour you are deceived for no person is truely Catholique but he that is in the communion of the Saints seeing to be Catholique is nothing else than to be UNITED in heart and will with all the souls that are UNITED in the Spirit of JESUS CHRIST Behold what makes the communion of Saints and the Assembly of Catholiques But if you see and feel that the rules of the Catholiques lead you unto God you must observe them faithfully and rather die than slip from them for as it is certain that he that loves peril shall perish therein so is it certain that he who embraces faithfully the means of his Perfection shall be perfected by reason of the infirmity of our nature it must always be aided and sustained by the means that can strengthen it 14. But if our souls were arrived at UNION with God they should no more need to use any means because then Love is a law unto it self and that union overcomes all the motions of corrupt nature to which we have then no more need to resist by Fastings or other Macerations of the Body which means are good for those that have given loose reins to their sensuality in eating and drinking or have allowed their Body other carnal Pleasures the habit of such ordinarily not yielding but by doing things quite contrary because our Nature is as an undaunted Horse which is not tamed but furious and unruly which we cannot tame after we have let him follow his liberty but by the bridle and spurs of Mortifications of the flesh 15. See there my dear Brother how you may learn to regulate well your Soul and discern wherein perfection consists that you take not apparent Virtue for real for ours is that dangerous time whereof Jesus Christ prophecyed saying that we must take heed and that many false Christs and false Prophets shall arise and shall do great Signs and Miracles I know you are fallen into evil insensibly and by little and little have lost entertainment with God by ignorance and for not having enough hated evil nor known the sins which you can commit in another but you must resume courage and begin anew considering more narrowly in what consists Christian perfection that as Adam did no more fall into sin after he knew the Evil it had brought on him so you fall no more into the sensualities of Nature but follow the conduct of the motions of the Holy Spirit as Adam did when he knew them for his whole life was a continual penitence and regret for having deserted Entertainment with God 16. And if you have that perfect regret it will be impossible for you to relapse again into natural sensualites seeing that they have interrupted yout Communion with God that regret will purge
AN ADMIRABLE TREATISE OF SOLID VIRTUE Which the Men of this Generation know not seeing they take the Appearance of Virtue for True Virtue taught by JESUS CHRIST in these words Learn of me for I am meek and lowly and humble of heart as well as in the other Salutary Doctrines which he hath given for true Christians BY ANTONIA BOURIGNON Written in 24. Letters to a Young Man who sought after the Perfection of his Soul Teaching him that it Consists in the Knowledge of our selves and the Mortification of our Five Natural Senses Translated from the Original French At AMSTERDAM By HENRY WETSTEIN 1698. which Jesus saith both reveals and judges mens hearts How much of this divine Truth is in these Epistles the more upright the soul is it shall more discover and how much of this upright sincerity is in the soul the same Epistles will detect Here the most earnest hunger shall be adequately satiated and the most stupid inappetency unless it be voluntarily habitual and perversly obstinate may be awakened to an earnest search of that Virtue by the genuine representation of its inestimable value and ravishing beauty and the easie plain and sure means of attaining it here held forth But being a little may be by farr too much in the ordinary yea I had almost said universal way of talking much like a Perroquet of Virture without any living sence of it in the spirit its best not to divert the Reader from that Fountain where it flows living I mean that Speaker who can truely in a most ample sence say with David Credidi propter quod loquutus sum I believed and therefore I have spoken and with the master of Virtue Verba quae loquor non mea sunt sed patris qui me misit the words which I speak are not mine but the Fathers which hath sent me Only this being likely the first that hath appeared in our Language of the Writings of that extraordinary Organ of God's Spirit ANTONIA BOURIGNON it may be both suitable and acceptable to give the curious Searcher of solid Truth some entry into the unparalelled greatness of the thing by a brief recital of some memorable things of that person and of the thoughts of some few of them whose Souls that same Spirit touched by that Person and her Doctrine who was the Spring and Life of both To begin with the last Mr. Grellot an ancient Protestant Minister expresses the sense of his soul first to his friend Mr. P. and then to Mrs. A. B. her self In his to Mr. P. I Have long ago resolved for my self to endeavour to gain my living by the most abject and contemptible Works and Employs in the World and I have reason to lay my acount so for certainly if I preached in a Church where there were persons how ever little more knowing or of more worldly power than here I would never be suffered only because I manifest the deceipts that reign in Religion and in Sects I most willingly leave that precious Soul Mrs. Bourignon to sleep and rest in Jesus Christ therefore I dare not nor will not pray you to salute her in my Name I pray God only ratifie the Salutation and divine Benediction that you tell me she wishes to me I marvel not at what you write of the Spirit of God which is in Mrs. Bourignon that they who are with you will judge and think and cabal with the spirit of Zelots seeing I find no true Knowledge of God nor of his son nor of the Holy Spirit in men Seeing God shews the Mercy and Grace to you and to me to see and feel that the Spirit of God is in her pauci quos aequus amavit Jupiter God give also Grace that it may be for the greater Glory of his Name and to our Souls Salvation Though before I said I durst not nor would not have you to salute that Child of God Mrs. Bourignon from me yet do it if you can conveniently I desire earnestly to see Mrs. Bourignon while she is yet alive for men are not worthy that she should be so long I know not what to make of the ministry I have long deplored the imprudence I had when I engaged in it His Letter to Mrs. BOURIGNON MISTRIS IT is now three years since Mr. P. began to address your Writings to me I had no sooner seen or read them but I judged you were of God I received the Truths of them the rather because God had already told me several like or near unto them Since that time I have been fully perswaded in my interiour and am so dayly more that you are wholly filled with the Holy Spirit and nothing is capable to make me believe the contrary although I were the only person in the world of that mind And I think not strange that you are wholy filled with it seeing you have employed so many years to attain it I mean that you practise Holiness and have given your self to the purifying of your soul and the other things that obtain it from God I see you possess alone all the Truths whereof all the other Sects and Religions of Christians have only a part and that you have them in your Soul and in your Books without any mixture of error whereas on the contrary I see no Sect that hath not more or less of Errors as their Authors did more or less come near to God internally You alone discover fully the false Piety wherein the devout of this World are deceived As I do firmly believe then that being filled with God he wills that you be a Chanel and Conduit through which he will flow into the Souls of them that are disposed and fitted to receive him I desire that he may flow from you into me and that being in me he put there the fruits of his Spirit Adducing the sense of his own abjectness and indignity the multitude of her Letters and Writings already dispersed the Grace and Spirit of God not restricted to particulars as retarding his writing to her he proceeds Yet Mr. P. my Friend among other things he wrote to me from you having saluted me in your name two different times I desired and prayed that these salutations might be ratified by God and thereupon I have resolved to represent unto you something for the good of my soul Which I do most humbly and before God I see also that many good Souls from divers places desire to become yet better some by your Letters and the rest by coming as near unto your Person as they can and that you have the Charity to stretch forth your arms unto all of them I hope also you will hold them forth to me the more willingly because I am afflicted with the sense of my sins and for my not having Love enough to my God and that there be yet many things to be amended in me if I may bear the Image of God or of Jesus as I desire I ought the rather
of God until God appointed her to return to an ordinary way of living while God's extraordinary divine communications to her flowed more and more during all her life like a stream still encreased until its ending a mighty River into the vast Ocean which in the same degree encreased in her soul that Constancy divine Love and all Virtues and Graces as not moved were more established by all the assaults which the craft and malice of Hell did eagerly spue out all her life while she pursued her first search of True Christians which when she could not find any true knowledge of a Christian Life and self-seeking among all the devout and Religious Persons whose earthly-mindedness she easily discovered through all their fair Pretexts she turned the more in to God in her Heart where he trained her in the true Christianity and told her She must not seek it in the World but in her own heart with God and in Solitude whereupon she did over the belly of all Opposition Tentations Allurements of Friends Riches and all worldly advantages most generously and constantly forsake all seeking that beloved solitude where she might enjoy God without disturbance God gave her a Spiritual solitude retiring her Heart and Soul from all that was not himself yet retained her from other to make her a Light to lead other good Souls out of the Egypt of this World into the same Wilderness of heavenly-mindedness The traverses she met with her constant Advance and all the steps of her conduct so signally disposed by the immediate hand and Councel of God as its unaccountable and vast so it is beyond the bounds and design of this short preliminary to insist on who desire a more satisfying Account may be satisfied by the History of her Life written partly by her self partly by a faithful and judicious eye and ear Witness Her desire was to be unknown and unnoticed yet many persons of good-will of several sorts came to her acquaintance who owed and owned unto her as the Instrument of Gods Spirit their Conversion their Enlightening their Inflaming in divine Love their Comforting and Strengthening and their Eternal Life testifying as they were living and standing Testimonies that her Words her Writings her Works and all her Life had an unutterable divine efficacy and power of converting and saving Souls that were well disposed infinitly beyond all the enervate and lifeless Means and Ordinances in the hands of the most elaborate and erudite heads exercising that trade for their dayly bread without the spirit of it under which alas its too visible and by all that have but the least spark of ingenuity confest and of sincerity regreted that we live most part so little or not at all moved from our earthly biass of self which declines us so much to Hell that if we get but a little survey of the Earth we never attain nor it may be seek any true glimpse of heavenly things which gives us to notice the same proportion of illuminating enlivening and invigorating force of painted Preachings to real ones as there is of the sun painted on a board to that in the Firmament Several who with good applause had long exercised the function of conducting and directing Souls as Ministers and Fathers in the Church not of the least erudition but of the most uprightness made it their happiness to learn at this illiterate Maid the empty Vanity of their former fruitless Labours and to begin again from the A B C of Solid Virtue under her direction owning more Solid Light and Divine Life from some few Rays of her Spirit than from all their Schools and Books Studies and Preachings Notice only one notable Matter in the way In an Hospital of poor Girles she charitably governed she discovered them all to be Witches in express compact with the Devil and that a vastly surprising greater part of the world than is usually by the innocent thought are such by evidences satisfying and convictive to the most doubting that will not be obstinate Passing from her first appearance in the World to her first publique appearance to the World On the second of December 1667. she departed from Mechline in Flanders and came to Amsterdam with design to satisfie the solicitation of her friends and God's will of having the Truth promulgate and known by the printing her Writings entituled The Light of the World and at the convenient season of sailing to go for Holstein where in the Isle of Nordstrand she had bought a Farm from Mr. de Cort the Director of the said Isle and Proprietor of most of it who was going with her In honour and imitation of the obscure mean Life of Jesus Christ that she might be unknown she hired a little House by the shore in a very retired place but falling soon into a sore and dangerous sickness she was obliged to yield to Mr. de Corts bringing a physitian of his acquaintance who with another he had told of her coming to know her could not abstain from telling others that quickly her fame was through all the Country and one of her Letters to the Dean of Lille which is the 5 th Letter in the second part of Light arisen in Darkness and is the first of all her Works that was printed coming out in the beginning of the year 1668. made her so famous that every one was earnest to see her and converse with her She seeing it God's will to manifest her resolved to give free entry and audience to all that pleased She was then visited for about a year and a half from all places by persons of all sorts of Professions Religions and Opinions by Theologues Phylosophe's Rabbins imaginary Prophets and all the most curious and expert in all Arts and Sciences Almost all did easily discover in her the divine Light whereby God would revive his love in their Souls with most sensible and convincing Touches and Motions of his spirit but they could not come to the Marriage of the Lamb for their Farms their Merchandises their Offices and Callings their Wives and Children and the Love of the World and the things of the World were in them and stiffled the Love of the Father and all the Protestations they had made to follow Christ forsaking all for him excepting two or three who forsook all and followed the Truth of God in her to death Of the many memorable things passed in these Visits you shall be diverted but with two or three Before she had any Acquaintance or Visits there Mr. de Cort told her that the Anabaptists were good and pious men having a great esteem of the Graces which God bestowed on her and that they protested if they might come to her it should be in Humility as little Children submitting to the Light of God She answered promptly That is not true these are great men who will hardly submit themselves to the truth and become little Children God revealing their disposition to her better than themselves
better temperament For that nature is nothing as to Grace and sometimes he that hath more of Fire will be more Virtuous then he that hath more of Water seeing in case he serve himself of that natural heat to love God he will love him so much the more and if he employ his Anger to defend Justice and Virtue he will do much more good than a phlegmatick person who ordinarily loves only his ease It is the same with them that in the intemperature of their nature have contracted more Air than other Elements for they will always be more subtil to discover Evil and more prompt to do good when they will apply themselves to the search of true Virtue As he that hath more of Earth then other Elements will be more posed and grave and if he apply himself to the service of God he will be more constant and persevering in it than the other three And so every one may be agreeable to God in the state and condition wherein he is produced provided he apply the Talent which he hath received to the Glory of God and the Salvation of his Soul Therefore says David Let all spirits praise the Lord. That â—s not as if he would say that the Devils and wicked men praise the Lord seeing these blaspheme him but he gives to understand that all spirits that will become true Christians praise the Lord though they be all of divers natural complexions seeing God is no Respecter of Persons and does not regard whether we have more of Fire or of Water or Earth or Air in our natures but with what affection every one will love and serve him Which I regard also in writing of Solid Virtue I mean not to make it heavy and difficult I would only make it known to them that will follow and practise it because I love such So I cannot leave them in ignorance nor let them perish amidst their good will for want of knowing wherein true Virtue consists That is it which hath engaged me to deduce that matter at length lest these souls which are so dear to me should perish by ignorance as many have already who thought they had acquired true Virtue while they had only apparent ones or curious Speculations of Virtue not knowing that it consists in the overcoming of corrupt nature in true Humility and voluntary Poverty Though Jesus Christ hath so much taught it by Word and Works yet it is not followed in the practice for want of good Explication and the Light of the Truth Which God having given me I will willingly impart it to others in sending to light this first part of true Virtue And with time and opportunity I shall present more to the Glory of God and the Salvation of souls who aspire after true Virtue and Perfection What I offer them at present is with good heart as a Present come from heaven which shall shew them the light of the Truth and manifest the deceits of false Virtue as also the means to arrive at that which is solid and true This First Part discovers amongst other things how the Devil attempts always to divert Souls from true Virtue by so many Wiles and different means And finally it is a School where you may learn To deny your self take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ As he hath taught unto all that would be his Disciples in the perfect sense and true explication Receive it therefore with as good heart as I present it you by Christian Charity Who remain Friendly Reader Your well-affected in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON INDEX Of the Contents of the First Part. Letter I. WE must learn of Jesus Christ Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart Written to one desirous of True Virtue also all the following are addressed to the same shewing that to attain thereto we must have submission and Obedience by which we may begin to learn Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart Page 1. II. We must learn of Jesus Christ Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart Showing wherein Meekness and Lowliness consists which are fruits of the holy spirit and cannot be obtained unless we renounce our own will submitting to the Will of God p. 10. III. Men can sufficiently know the Will of God if they would perform it Shewing him that perswaded himself that the Will of God is not manifest in every thing that we might accomplish it denying our own that it may be known and is sufficiently manifested in the Commands of God which Jesus Christ proposes so clearly saying Learn of me for I am Meek and Lowly and humble of Heart p. 18. IV. Humility is acquired by the knowledge of our selves Shewing what Humility of Heart is what the Marks of it and how we should endeavour to attain it by the knowledge of the Infirmities and Miseries of our Souls and Bodys and blindness of our Minds p. 25. V. Humility is acquired by knowing Ones self Shewing that the true Knowledge even of things most esteemed by men ought to serve to humble them such as the Honours Riches and Pleasures of this Life That all these are vain disquieting unsatisfying and hurtful p. 32. VI. Humility is acquired by knowing Ones self Admonishing to Learn Humility by knowing the Truth of our corruption and Sin which is the disorder of our Five Natural Senses p. 40. VII He that serves the Lusts of his Senses thereby actually renounces the Love of God Exhorting to the Effects of Humility the renouncing of our Senses shewing that none can follow them but he thereby renounces the Love of God which is the End of our Creation and the Essence of true Virtue p. 47. VIII It is Easier to Love God than any thing else Shewing that we must renounce the abuse of our Senses and that the right use of them should be referred to God that it is possible reasonable and necessary to love God with all our Heart p. 57. IX It is easier to Love God than any thing beside him Shewing that it is most easie sweet profitable and honourable to love God and keep his Commands for him that will deny himself but that it is Blasphemy to say That it is impossible to love God with all our Heart p. 65. X. The Love of God is easie and renders all things easie Shewing that the Love of God is in it self most easie to be acquired whence the difficulties proceed which we find them and how they should be removed That this love admirably makes the inconveniences of this life and the keeping of the Commands of God and the Councels of the Gospel easie and pleasant p. 74. XI We must always proceed in Virtue whatever Impediments occur Giving encouragement in the Way of Virtue although the beginning be difficult because of the Tentations by which the Devil vexes them that have resolved to embrace true Virtue p. 83. XII The Devil the Enemy of True Virtue opposes it by all manner of Devices That it is necessary to know the
that because justice and truth respects God but meekness and goodness respects also our neighbour And although one were just and true before God he must also be meek and good otherways he loves not his neighbour as himself seeing he gives not that testimony of his love which that command requires And because only God knows the heart it is not enough that goodness be in any it must also be testified outwardly by gentleness or else our neighbour should not be edifyed thereby and therefore is it that J. Ch. says we must learn of him meekness and lowliness or gentleness he spoke no superfluous word in distinguishing meekness and gentleness but he gives us to understand that it is not enough to have goodness within us but we must also testify it outwardly by meekness and gentleness toward our neighbour Therefore My Child exercise your self in that virtue and pray to God that you may attain meekness and gentleness he will never be wanting on his part to give you his grace to practise them if you will not be wanting on yours It is one of his commands and he will never fail to afford grace to obey in what he hath commanded otherwise J. Ch. would not bid us Learn of him to be Meek Lowly if he knew not very well that God will surely give these virtues to them that seek and desire them and if you do not feel them yet in your soul it is a token you have not yet enough demanded and desired them And it is perhaps because you have not till now discovered that they are necessary to salvation and contained in the commandments of God and so have not laboured to your power to acquire them but you have simply followed the motions of your nature which does not encline to meekness and gentleness but to harshness and fretting But our nature is as a horse to which sometimes you must use a Bridle sometimes Spurs to make it turn and march where it is needful And though it have repugnance to act contrary to its motions and inclinations we must not for that give it free bridle to go where it pleases because our proper will is always evil since it was corrupted by sin and is no more capable to make one good determination but it ought to be kept in with a bridle and governed by reason as they do a horse with a bridle otherwise it would precipitate our souls into hell Now your reason can easily perceive that you must keep the commandments of God to be saved and follow the counsels of J. Ch. to be a Christian It is then the duty of that reason to bridle and lead your nature into the way of Salvation and sure path of the gospel law seeing you would be a Christian and save your soul You must not then obey the motions and inclinations of your nature but God who hath shown us particularly what is his will by the gospel advices which J. Ch. hath given us saying learn of me for I am meek and lowly and humble of heart he could not better express what God requires of us than by these express terms of meekness and lowliness and humility of heart For every one can understand by these terms what is the will of God and what he requires of all Christians Endeavour first of all to acquire these virtues and after if you need other particular knowledge to discover his will without doubt he will reveal them to you in due time and will never be wanting to reveal to us what we have a desire to obey no more than he will be wanting to give his graces necessary to attain to Christian perfection For he desires our perfection more than our selves do and so is far from refusing his graces that we may arrive at it if we will but ask them with humility of heart For without humility of heart no prayers are acceptable to God and our meekness and gentleness cannot be good if it is not accompanied with humility of heart For one may be meek and gentle by nature dissimulation or hypocricy which is often sin before God in lieu of virtue For that apparent and pharisaticall lowliness is not praise-worthy but before men and J Ch tells us except our righteousness exceed that of the pharisees we shall not enter into the kingdom of God That we might understand that no moral virtues that proceed not from the bottom of our heart and ingendred there by a divine faith can have an eternal recompense and are recompensed only by the praise of men who being material judge by appearance but God searches the hearts and tryes the consciences And therefore it is that Jesus Christ says we must have humility of heart with meekness and lowliness as being three things knit together which cannot be separated one from the other no more than the three qualities of justice goodness and truth which correspond to the three persons in the Trinity and are always joyn'd inseparably in all his works whereof if one were wanting his work would not be perfect Even so meekness and lowlyness should be imperfect if they were separated from humility of heart which should beget infallibly true meekness and lowlyness for an humble heart is always meek and lowly See My Child by that Touch-stone if you are arrived at that humility of heart and endeavour to obtain it of God and then you shall assuredly be meek and lowly which is the desire of Holstein near Gottorp Castle 9 Feb. 1672. stile vel ANTONIA BOURIGNON THE IV. LETTER Humility is acquired by the knowledge of our selves To the same showing him what Humility of Heart is what are the marks of it and how we should endeavour to attain it by the knowledge of the Infirmities and Miseries of our Souls and bodies and the blindness of our Minds My Dear Child I Exhorted you by my last to Humility of Heart but I know not if you understand well what that humility of heart is wherein it consists and by what means you may discover if you have it or not and therefore I have resolved to speak very particularly to you that you may discern in every thing true Virtue from false and only apparent Virtue and to lay in your soul a good foundation of solid virtue without amusing you as do now adays so many persons of good-will with apparent or imaginary virtues which before God are of little or no value You have now sufficiently heard what is that meekness and lowliness which Jesus Christ teaches we must learn of him Endeavour now to discover what is that Humility of Heart which he teaches in that same counsel For I shall show you particularly what it is what need we have to possess it and what profit it brings to our souls that you want it not through ignorance Humility then is the foundation and accomplishment of all virtues and ought to be esteemed above others and so we ought to labour more to attain it
Clouds agitated by the wind and representing such figures to our eyes It is even so with mens Sciences who fancy themselves wise when they are very ignorant For I do not believe that they have yet truly discovered one science even natural and how can they then in mystical or spiritual things That is what Jesus Christ said to his disciples He that seeth me seeth my father but you know neither me nor the father Notwithstanding we will often search curiously the profound Mysteries and divine Secrets and we know not natural things which we see and handle One will vaunt in being a Doctor of Medicine another in Theology another will be an Astronomer and so of other sciences although they be all alike ignorant of what they profess and think they know well And that proceeds from that airy Pride which the Devil hath inspired in to their Spirit perswading them that they are wise and worthy of honour and esteem though they be in effect ignorant and worthy of contempt We see that Physicians esteem themselves wise because they have read Medicinal Authors and these Authors are often as ignorant as they that read and follow them because all they have written is but vanishing figures which waver in the air of their imaginations and what the ancients have written is followed by their posterity And so they think to cure the sick by remedies coined in the air of mans imagination who seem to have divers Sciences and Remedies while they do but guess and hazard the lives of the sick and I believe the Physicians have killed many more than they 've cured to reckon the most common and ordinary and that because they have not discovered the Secrets of Nature and know not the constitution of man's body nor the origin of his diseases and consequently cannot exhibit proper remedies for them but often give what proves poison to kill men instead of curing them And therefore there is no subject of glorying for being called a Doctor in Medicine but rather of abasement and confusion for their great ignorance to the hurt of the Patient they take care of And as that ignorance is great in regard of bodily medicine it is yet greater in regard of the spiritual which is Theology for it kills many more souls than medicine does bodies and so th' one hath not subject of glorying of his skill more than th' other being they are equally ignorant which do not add nor pare the one from the other having each great ground of humility If Astrologers also knew how far short they are of the knowledge of the heavens they would be ashamed to bear the name and would acknowledge all their wisdom in that to be but folly and fancies of men who have not attained to the truth of that Science and what they have written are but imaginary suppositions far from being truths And upon like imaginations are founded also all other human Sciences which they learn by reading and study For when they are not founded 〈◊〉 the Truth of God they are altogether vain and false and are only fit to deceive men who by them deceive one another and hinder each other to come to the knowledge of the Truth of God and Wisdom of the Holy Spirit which is the only true wisdom and before which all the wisdom of men is but folly to blind our spirits that they should not come to the knowledge of themselves In which consists True Humility of Heart which Jesus Christ says we must learn of him which to do she prays you who loves the perfection of your soul Your Well-affectioned in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON In Holstein near Gottorp Castle Jan. 18. 1672. St. Vel. THE V. LETTER Humility is acquired by the Knowledge of ones Self To the same showing him that the true Knowledge even of things most esteemed by men ought to serve to humble them such as the Honours Riches and Pleasures of this life That all these are vain disquieting unsatisfying and hurtful My dear Child YOu have seen by my last what Humility is where I have shown you that it consists in the knowledge of our selves and that no person can ever be proud but for lack of knowing himself for in knowing themselves they will find subject enough to humble themselves by seeing their infirmities and miseries both of soul and body for he who will reflect seriously upon himself he shall not only discover his own nothingness but will judge himself much worse than nothing and consequently will be far from esteeming and magnifying himself unless he be altogether a fool and void of all reason and understanding For if he judge by an upright judgment what he is he shall see nothing but misery and infirmities in his nature and ignorance and Disorder in his spirit for a Beast knows more than he for the conduct of its life and is more moderate in eating and drinking and other natural things than man and we see him frequently exceed in these things which Beasts do not Thence is it that man is much more subject to diseases than the Beasts because they commit more excesses and Intemperances than they And when man finds himself more disorderly and foolish in the conduct of his life than the Beasts ought he not to humble himself before God and men as worthy of all confusion seeing God hath given him a Spirit more perfect than any Beast and yet he knows not to apply it to rule his passions and appetites which often causes to him great evils and sometimes death Which ought to be a great subject of humility and Contempt of himself he can never knowing that magnify and esteem himself if it is not because he is void of judgment and reason which he looses as soon as he gives entry to the vanities which the devil inspires into his spirit to esteem himself Then he goes from one error to another because fallen from the Light of the Truth and knows nothing but falshood which that evil Spirit makes him believe and inspires into his Spirit that he is worthy of Honour for his Wisdom or Riches or Virtue though he be contemptible even in all these very respects For his Wisdom is but folly before God and his riches are but weighty charges painful to be born and cause trouble and disquiet to preserve them and his Virtue cannot be other than feigned seeing it is not founded on the knowledge of his nothingness and truth of his miseries And Therefore vain-glory and esteem of our selves can never be other than meer folly which Satan inspires and foists into mens spirits seeing there is in them nothing esteemable as to the corrupted nature but aboundance of miseries worthy of Contempt and Scorn So that we may truly call a proud man a very Fool because he glories of his Miseries and judges his Ignorance Wisdom and his Troubles Riches For such are temporal Riches which create continual troubles and disquiet with a thousand cares both to acquire
they would willingly be great and rich that they may have Means to please their Senses and these Pleasures ruin Soul and Body For since Nature was corrupted by sin all the senses of man are become brutish and insolent and know no more what is good or evil for them intemperate without order or measure and therefore the Scripture says that the Eye is never satisfied with seeing nor the Ear with hearing to show how our senses are disordered and insatiable the more the eye sees the more it would see and so the ear hear and they are never satisfied It is the same with the Feeling Smelling and Taste the other three senses For whenever a man gives himself to satisfie his senses he is never fully satisfied nor content For in every place he may find something that smells unpleasantly and though he carry about Musk and Civet that will not hinder that he breath not in the bad Exhalations and Vapours of the Air caused by the corruption and filth of the bodies of Men and Beasts although he had but the stink of his own body since all that proceeds out of it is nasty and putrid which cannot satisfie his smell which desires always good smells and agreeable and in loving that we can never be content nor satisfied And yet less can we satisfie the sense of feeling it being insatiable They would have fine Linnen Silks soft Beds smooth Coverings and other things agreeable to the touch which is not content with things that are sufficient But the sense of Taste exceeds all the others in disorder and intemperance For he that will satisfie his taste and delicacy renders himself miserable and in continual dissatisfaction For when he hath one food that is good he desires another as better the Wine is too sharp or stale for him the Beer is too sweet for his delicate taste he longs always for what he hath not and what he cannot get so insolent are mans natural senses that they often tyrannize over the spirit with a thousand tortures of Desires Intemperances Lusts Excess and Gluttony which bring Diseases Poverty and Death And yet they call him happy who hath the means to satisfie his senses without discovering that they are corrupted by sin and therefore they beget all sorts of Evils which she prays you to discover who wisheth your good Holstein near Gottorp Castle 15. Febr. 1672. St. vet ANTONIA BOURIGNON THE VI LETTER Humility is attained by Knowing our selves To the same who is admonished to learn Humility by knowing the truth of our Corruption and Sin which is the disorder of our natural senses My Dear Child I Cannot entertain you too much of the Corruption of man and the Miseries to which he is subject during this miserable life to prevent your ever placing your affections on it but that you may learn the Humility of Heart which Jesus Christ teaches which will follow upon the knowledge of your self but you shall never attain it unless you examin in retail the miseries and infirmities of your body and spirit since it is that knowledge which should teach you the Humility of Heart which Jesus Christ requires For if you remain in the general ignorance of men you shall never attain to it you will always think you deserve Honour and Esteem seeing others like your self honoured and esteemed and that they also take their pleasures and sensualities more than you do But trust me my Dear Child that conduct proceeds from the blindness of their minds and from the profound darkness in which they are without perceiving it and they blind one another still more by their practice for one thinks he is as good as the other and that he may do what another doth and so one follows another blindfoldly and thinks he doth but what is suitable for an honest man to do But however great the number of blind are that will not help you in particular and that broad way will always lead to perdition tho many tread it The great number of miserables will not lessen your condemnation on the contrary it will augment your pains and miseries far from any ways mitigating them Therefore is it that you must not regard if others be blind and know not themselves esteeming themselves and following their sensualities for you shall not give an accompt for them There shall only your own works follow you at Death and according to them shall you be judged God affords you now the occasion of Discovering the truth of all things beware of neglecting it but bless the Lord for it is a great mercy he shows you beyond so many thousands of persons who perish for want of knowing themselves and for having never discovered the truth of things as they are before God They amuse themselves to look one to another without penetrating into the state of man and what he is whence he is and whither he tends though it is a thing of so great import on which our eternal salvation depends Therefore I exhort you to lay to heart the knowledge of your self seeing that must rule all your actions and make you become humble of heart as Jesus Christ teaches us to be The truth of all things should deliver you from all evil that is also the mistress of virtues for if you possess the Truth of God that shall teach you all virtues and deliver you from all vice for the cause why man is vicious and not virtuous is because he knows not the truth of things and takes the Shadow for the Body the Bark for the Wood and so goes from evil to worse For if he knew truly what sin is and what virtue he would deliver himself from the one to attain the other since he would see clearly that sin is a meer Tyrant which tortures Soul and Body and that virtue is beautiful good sweet and pleasant And so he could not retain himself from hating sin and loving virtue seeing that is good and equitable but for lack of knowledge of things they love what they should hate and hate what is lovely and to show you what sin is know that in it self it is nothing but a disorder of corrupted nature For when God created man he was well ordered temperate and regular in all his natural functions and he might enjoy the pleasure of all his senses without doing evil because all that God made was good and he created beautiful things to please his sight and all the melodies of Beasts Men and all melodious things to afford pleasure to the hearing and all Flowers and pleasant smells for his smelling and all smooth and agreeable things for his feeling and all good and savory things to afford pleasure to his Taste so that he could allowably enjoy the Pleasures of all his five natural senses because all the other Creatures were created for the pleasure and recreation of Man who was so perfect that he used all these things only for his recreation with just order weight and measure
you read these things curiously or much at a time you should pause and consider what you find there profitable for your soul I would not altogether stop the curiosity you have to read my Writings or those of others who treat of solid Virtue For that Curiosity is necessary at the beginning for you cannot learn if you be not curious to know We must know before we can love If then you knew not the Truths which I write you could not practise them So we may give liberty to that curiosity to know good things You must not read only to nourish or satisfie it but to learn the truth You cannot discover it too much though some natural satisfaction mix it self it shall not hurt you provided you rest not on that pleasure They tell us that Mary Magdalene went to Jesus Christ because they said to her that he was a beautiful man and spoke well Notwithstanding that vain curiosity led her to the knowledge of the truth But after her first curiosity vanishing she gave her self to the practice of the Truths which she had heard from him Do you the same My Son Search curiously the Books which treat of solid Virtue and neglect no occasion to find them seeing they serve as means to know the will of God and because God often speaks to the soul by the means of a good Book moving the heart to the affection of eternal things and contempt of temporal you must only discern whether you read divine things for your own satisfaction or if you do it only to enlighten your soul in the knowledge of the Truth of God If it is for the last there is no evil that you give your self to long reading Stay your self only on the matters which move your heart to the Love of God without going further until you have found means to practise it well I did that in my young years when first I saw the New Testament and when I understood thereby what a Gospel Life was I closed the book for twenty years and exercised my self to practise what is contained in it And so I found the Light of the Holy Spirit without using Books to instruct me In which you may imitate me when you have sufficiently read what may avail to the perfection of your soul Which she wishes to you who remains Your Well-affectioned in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle May 5. 1672. St. Vet. THE XV. LETTER The Devil incites to Good that he may bring Evil out of it To the same Discovering to him a seventh Wile of the Devil by which he carries us out of our selves that comparing our works with those of others we may from our Virtue contract vain-glory And an Eighth by which he incites us to immoderate Macerations and Mortifications of the Body And finally a Nineth in which he excites us to immoderation in spiritual good works toward our Neigbour as unseasonably to Instruct Convert Reprove or Correct him My Son I Must discover to you yet another Device of Satan by which he does gain several well enclined persons even such as have a good will who are not only resolved to labour for the knowledge of true Virtue but would also put it in practice For when he cannnot amuse them by fine speculations and curious searches to be capable of talking well of spiritual things because they have discovered that to talk well of and understand well a Virtue is but Vanity when it is not put in practice and that so they have absolutely resolved to fall to the practice in the exercise of good works Then comes he to tempt by virtue it self and by the practice of good works He endeavours to intrude Vain-glory upon true Virtue and secretly justles in Self-esteem and Contempt of others with good works None is exempt from that Vanity at the beginning of their conversion For all men carry in them an inclination to Pride when they come into the world and also every one must combat and oppose it if he would attain to Salvation But this Pride is harder to be discovered when it furrs it self into Virtue lurking in the heart without appearing outwardly as does that which proceeds from plenty of Riches and the honours which men give For that Vanity shews it self sufficiently outwardly for he that is proud of his Riches will shew to the world his Riches and Liberality by Prodigality in several things as in Moveables Cloaths Meat and Drink willing in every thing the best and dearest to satisfie his vain-glory and must also be served with Pages and Servants So that his outward Actions discover sufficiently the Pride of his Heart but spiritual Pride keeps it self hidden even under a cloak of Humility For we see ordinarily beginners in virtue give themselves to Fasting Watching and Prayer to humility in their Cloathes to ly on hard Beds and other Macerations of their Body and also to exercises of Works of Mercy spiritual and corporal Into which the Devil easily intrudes himself for if he can gain nothing by vain-glory in our good works because the man overcomes it by the Grace of God He attaques us by Excesses in them and moves us to fast to excess that it may ruin our health or unfit it for necessary labour and to obliege us after to substantious or delicate food and so precipitate us again into delicacy Lo how the Devil attempts to sway us from one extreme to another and especially him that is not well acquainted with his wiles He hath brought some to death by excess in fasting and maceration of the body I know that is rare in the time we live in when none will embrace penitence most part loving sensuality Yet among the small number of Penitents the Devil insinuates himself causing them to exceed For when he can no more make them fall by ease and sensualities he does it by excess in good Works And Prayer being the best of all he causes them to tye themselves to a number of vocal Prayers to over-charge them and disquiet them when they have not time to wait and fulfil these ordinary Prayers which makes the man sorrowful and dissatisfied thinking he does not please God when he does not fulfil all his ordinary prayers by custom and in that thought he is sad and pensive and uneasie to them he converses with The Devil draws his advantages from excess in prayer for it hurts the head when too vehement and brings often confusion in their affairs and housholding I have known Women so addicted to their prayers and devotions that they neglected their families to go to Church frequently at solemnities and Devotions and with all they thought they did well without discovering the cunning of the Devil who made them sin instead of doing good For God is a God of Order and not of Confusion and he says expresly that our Prayers should not be as those of the Pharisees who use many words seeing the Lord knows what we have need of
understand that the Holy Spirit had not yet brought forth his fruits in his soul though he was accounted a Saint For then should he not have needed human Divertisments to be joyful by As for me I know by experience that I have more joy and contentment in my soul in Solitude and far from human divertisments than I have in mens conversation or amongst the most divertising Objects Which gives assurance that my joy proceeds from the Holy Spirit It must needs be that it comes not from human means for it were my Consolation never to come out of my Closet and to hear nothing but in my own heart and inner man But the Joy which proceeds from the evil Spirit terminates and ends always in Sadness and Melancholy with an earning after new Divertisments to divert that Sadness so that it is most easie to Discover if it is the good or evil spirit which dwells in our souls by the Dispositions and operations which we feel in them when we have the desire to do or say any thing we need not so much go to consider if it is in appearance good or indifferent to know if it comes from God as to examin the disposition which that desire brings into our soul to wit if it is in Peace and waits for the effect of its desires with Patience and Long-suffering For that is a sign the Spirit of God hath given us that desire and that it is his will that we effect it but if we perceive that that desire to do or say any thing marr our Peace and disturb our Spirit with impatience and attempt to precipitate us before the time of fulfilling our desires That is a sign that it comes from an evil spirit And if the desire or thing is good in it self it is a sign that the Devil would mix and insinuate himself into that good work to reap his Glory thence However we must not cease to do or speak what is good in it self but we must be on our guards that we suffer not the Devil to insinuate himself in it We must then use continual Prayer to have God's succour and Assistance and Strength to overcome the tentation which the Devil offers us while we are doing good We must never cease from doing Good Works because of the tentation of the Devil For he would gladly always hinder them if he could But we must examin well the inward disposition of our Souls to discover if the Devil does not insinuate himself therein that we may purifie our intentions and beware that the Devil find no advantage therein And if you will know my Son when it is God that inspires any thing to you remark always if it is accompanied with Goodness Benignity Faith Continence and Chastity For God never gives inspirations that are not accompanied with these conditions But the Devil often gives inclinations to do good with Fretting Malice Despite Dispair Inconstance Levity and Impurity I have seen sometimes persons that gave to the Poor by Despite and Fretting upbraiding and reproaching them without any faith of an eternal Reward I have seen others assist at publique Devotions with insolence and lightness And now adays almost all marry by incontinence and impurity All these things though good in themselves are induced and excited by the evil spirit since they tend to an evil end though good in appearance And therefore must we always be upon our guard and watch against so powerful an Enemy who attempts to surprise us in all our actions both good and indifferent that he may render them evil therefore we must study well to discern the good spirit from the evil Which we may do seeing there are assured marks to know them Never say then My son that you know not if it is God or the Devil who moves you to do or omit any thing but rather acknowledge with Humility of heart that you are not vigilant enough and diligent to discover that evil spirit who dazles your understanding that you should not know him For every word you speak or action you do you may discover if it comes of the Devil provided you make a serious reflection upon your self But the misery is that we are distracted and wandering and the Devil makes us forget what we should remember and puts in our mind what we should forget that he may bring confusion in all our behaviour Remark well that Advertisment and you shall find by experience that it is but too well grounded for since the Devil can no more make you fall into manifest sins he will always endeavour to make you contradict the holy spirit which you do not yet know well You have indeed resolved in general to obey him and follow him as you have done in abandoning the World in loosing your affections from earthly goods and desiring to follow Jesus Christ in his Lowness and Humility All that proceeds from the Spirit of God who hath governed you in the most important things and the Devil could not hinder it But now he attacques you in small things and of little import that he may hinder you to do the will of God in every thing and often he gains your will to make it contrary to the will of God in common and ordinary things For if you reflect upon your self you shall find there a certain opposition to whatever I propose to you which comes often even contrary to your will yea you are vexed that you should have so opposed or contradicted me Yet on the first occasion you do it again which cannot proceed of your self since you are displeased at it Now it is a firm and true Rule that whatever Evil we do against our will comes of the Devil and not of our selves I know that Spirit of contradiction which you have against what I desire comes not of your own will For you would gladly obey me in every thing seeing you know that I never desire any evil But you cannot in effect obey me in things good and salutary which comes assuredly of the Devil who is a spirit directly contrary to the Spirit of God which governs me For he moves as soon as I speak and brings some contradiction or opposition to what I propose he is troubled enraged and frets and would cause among us Thunder and Lightning as Heat and Cold do which occur in the air Which you do often and know not to help it because you have not sufficiently Discovered that it is the Devil does it in you against your will For you alledge sometimes reasons as if you would sustain his Quarrel and shew that you have reason to contradict me which you could not do if you believed that I have the Spirit of God from whom no evil can proceed But the Devil makes you forget that and excite in you a spirit of contradiction to which your nature is also enclined which is the cause you Discover not sufficiently that it is the Devil and attribute it to your natural inclination
though he committed no other sin for it is of our Souls that the Scripture says in the perfect sense The Ground that is not laboured shall bring forth Thistles and Bryars because the ground of our Souls became cursed by sin and being fallen into that Curse it can no more bear any wholsom fruit without bestowing on it a great Diligence We must trench and till it with the iron of penitence to tilk the Tares and bad Weeds of Corruption which have sprung up in the earth of our souls For if these be not rooted out they shall suffocate always the good grain of true Virtue which should thereby be stifled though sowed in good quantity in our souls we must maintain it by a continual Diligence otherwise it will bear no fruit we must watch over our Enemies we must always resist the inclinations of that corrupt nature and finally we must continually study the knowledge of our selves For he that knows not himself is ignorant of all and cannot arrive at the Virtue to be Meek and Lowly and Humble of Heart which Jesus Christ says we should learn of him No other means can be found than that he that knows not the Miseries Ignorance and Malediction wherein sin hath brought us cannot be meek He shall on the contrary be fierce and arrogant and presume to be worthy of honour and esteem which shall also take away and hinder his Meekness toward his Neighbour and also his Humility of Heart For he that knows not himself thinks he hath need of no person and consequently will not be meek nor kind toward his Neighbour and yet less Humble of Heart which comes for want of knowledge of his Misery and the miserable estate into which sin hath reduced him and so he cannot humble himself according to the Doctrine of Jesus Christ which is so good and salutary unto which I exhort you my Son that you follow it to your eternal Happiness And I am Your well-affected in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Husum Feb. 3. 1674. St. vet THE XXIV LETTER Men are Idolaters of their own Corruption and Enemies of Virtue To the same advertising him that the continuation of that Subject is interrupted by the Devils exciting the Wise of this World Enemies of Virtue and Friends of corrupt Nature to distract the mind of the Writer by their disputes Lies and Calumnies and all manner of Persecutions My Son I have yet many things to say to you of solid Virtue but the time is wanting to me at present seeing my Enemies are all earning to hinder it I doubt not but it is the Devil our common Enemy who will not suffer that we speak of solid Virtue Beside he keeps men at present in spiritual Negligence with apparent Virtues and they take them for solid and true ones therefore would he make them rest in the Love of themselves without arriving at solid Virtue Now while he cannot hinder that I should discover it because God discloses it to me he endeavours to his power to hinder its being published He induces divers persons to write against me to take up my time in answering them and to entertain me with matters of Contention instead of that of solid Virtue Which bereaves me of my time and gives me the displeasure of leaving this Treatise of solid Virtue Yet I must apply my self to repel the Calumnies and Lies which they have dispersed against me in divers places As some in England have also done So I was obliged to write a Large advertisment against them for if I did not give testimony to the truth against so many fall accusations and sies which they 've made I should be guilty of the sin which these false accusations produce and should be the cause that good persons did not follow the Truths which I propagate from God For so many false reports would render them suspect the rather when I am not attacqued by the common people but by the ministers and learned which are esteemed worthy of credit These wise and learned strive at present to kill the spirit of Jesus Christ as such like before killed his body you have seen the defamatory treatise which John Berckendal in name of the Ministers of Calvins Reformation in Altena hath composed against me And I was obliged to give testimony to the truth against so many falshoods by a great Teatise whereto are joyned the testimonies of a great many persons yet alive and worthy of credit That work hindered me from writing more to you of solid Virtue though I know that to be very profitable and necessary for you and for all that desire and aspire at becoming true Christian as you do There are at present so many persons deceived by apparent Virtues and who learn always and never come to the knowledge of the Truth They think they are already in true Virtue whereas they are yet altogether in the love of themselves Therefore is the Devil so angry when I write of true Virtue lest the Deceit of the false be discovered by the true But the Devil cannot hinder me to know it since God discovers it to me so he attempts to bereave me of the time to write it that neither you nor other souls that aspire after it should know it That is the cause why he incites divers persons to write against me that so I may not have time to write of solid Virtue He labours to occupy me always in opposing Slanderers But he deceives himself for among the refutations of the calumnies of my Enemies I intermix always something of solid Virtue It ought to be unto you My Son a Discipline to regulate well your life and become a true disciple of Jesus Christ Examin well then all that comes from my pen and you shall always find therein more and more enlightning and wholsom instruction which you shall find principally in the 23 Letters which I have written last to you concerning the words of Jesus Christ Learn of me for I am meek and lowly and humble of heart all that matter shall suffice for aliment to your soul until I can write more unto you which I shall do when I have answered two treatises which the Disciples of Labadie have composed against me I have not yet had leisure to read them but I conjecture that they shall be as the rest full of Errors and Calumnies And that because all they that follow the motions of corrupt nature are in error and falshood and are not in quiet nor at peace with the Truth because these are two contraries which always exclude one th' other And therefore is it that all these learned Schollars oppose the doctrine which I advance It is not such as they have learnt in the Schools besidâ— neither will they approve any thing but what maintains them in Honours Profit Eases and Commodities of this life To which the Doctrine of Jesus Christ is quite contrary For it speaks of nothing but poverty Contempt sufferings and Persecution
lawful Husband who descended from heaven unto the Earth to teach her them as well by his Works as by his Words all which things are despised by her who should be his lawful Spouse I have often spoken to you of her Excesses and Adulteries will you yet hold her for the Holy Church while the Devil hath placed his throne in her what weakness of spirit to feel repugnancy to forsake so evil a thing upon frivolous perswasions that it is holy while God hath given us an understanding and reason it is for no other end but that we may discern evil from good that we may not perish blindly and now you would change Gods designs in stifling your understanding and reason to follow evil blindly and seeing it so openly evil you form some foolish imagination that it is yet good That must come only from a meer bewitching of spirit because reason even natural discovers sufficiently unto us that the Romish Church at present is not the Spouse of Jesus Christ because she doth not in any thing follow her husband and that two things so alienated cannot make confederacy How can you have repugnance to leave her who hath forsaken her God If Beasts and insensible Creatures and all the Elements have arisen against man when he did forsake the Dependance of his God how should man so reasonable not arise against that Church which hath forsaken the Dependance of her God to will no more dependance but upon her self we should rather have repugnancy to remain under her than to forsake her or otherwise we have less resentments of the offence done unto our Creator than the Beasts and elements or inanimate things which have always resented the injury done unto their Creator yea at the death of Jesus Christ the Stones did rent and the Sun was darkened Have you less affection for God Sir then these stones in not resenting the continual injuries which that Church doth unto God If a beautiful Angel is become a Devil for having desired in his heart to be equal unto God what shall become of her which preferreth her self unto the same God without willing to him in any thing I regret yet your blindness in that point Sir and cannot believe that your repugnancy cometh from your reason but some habitual sensibility which you have unto the Church For if your Understanding did apply it self to discover the origin of that repugnancy it should see clearly that it cometh from the pious affection which you have for the Church but that you do not take it where it is because men are deluded in that as in other things by terms and words of men and when they hear Rome named the Holy Church that word engenders in us affection for her without penetrating if she be that of which they speak when we would deceive a Child and keep him in fear of his Father we put his Cloak and Hat upon a Fagot in some place somewhat obscure which the Child perceiving he believeth that it is truely he and feareth and respecteth him But if he drew near and lift up the Cloak he should see that he was deceived and that what he held for his Father is only some Wood. Verily Sir in the Darkness wherein we live at present they do the very same with us covering Rome with the Cloak of the Holy Church and cloathing it with the Head of Jesus Christ we fear and respect it as if it were our true Mother the Holy Church authorised by Jesus Christ and his lawful Spouse but when we draw near and lift up that Cloak we shall see that there is nothing but Wood instead of Sanctity which cannot be profitable unto us except to warm us in the Winter Verily Sir we must not be so much Children in what regards our eternal Salvation We must not walk blindly in a matter so important If men apply all their spirit to make a Hose or a Shoe why should they not apply it more to save their Soul It is good to have the simplicity of the Dove in regard of God for he that hath abandoned himself unto him hath no more but to suffer himself to be conducted as a little Child but we must have the Prudence of the Serpent to beware of men who can deceive or be deceived and when they say to us behold the Holy Church we must observe narrowly if it is truely her or if it is a Fagot covered with her Mantle It is for that only that God hath given us an understanding that we may always discern true good from false especially in the matter of our Salvation because all other things are vain and perishing unworthy of a serious application of spirit seeing it ought not to be applyed but unto things eternal for which we are created and our misery proceeds from that we make more serious searches to discover the turns and courses of the affairs of the world than those of our Salvation In which the Scripture hath reason to say that the Children of this world are more prudent than the Children of the Kingdom because before engaging in any State Office or Traffique they will always ponder if it be truely advantagious and profitable and they will be loath to rely upon the Words of men and believe blindly that a thing is good before they have first experienced it If they have so much providence for what regards the Earth how much should we have for what regards Heaven we found our Salvation blindly upon what they tell us that Rome is our Mother the Holy Church and we do not sound that affair which concerns us so much to know if truely she hath the quality of our true Mother and if she is confederated with our true Father who is immutable in all his qualities unto which that Spouse must always be conform We must see if she whom they call our Mother hath the Spirit and Practice of our Father and if we find nothing like it we must renounce her and account her deceitful and lying unworthy of our affection FINIS THE ARMS OF THE CITY OF RYSEL ON THE RIVER OF LYSSE IN FLANDERS (a) Ps 8. (b) Ps 119. (a) Ep. 1 2 3. (b) Ep. 4 5 6. (c) Ep. 7 8. (d) Ep. 8 9 10. (e) Ep. 11. (f) Ep. 12 13. (g) Ep. 14. (h) Ep. 15 16. (i) Ep. 17 18. (k) Ep. 19 20 21 22 23 (l) Ep. 24. * 1 John 12 15. * Which is solidly proved in the 2. part of Solid Virtue letter 6. * Of Religions and external pious exercises †An excellent Rule and Comparison * True Catholiques and their Worship (a) Math. 6. v. 2 3. (b) Rom. 6. v. 4. (c) Heb. 9. v. 27. (d) 1 Cor. 1. v. 19. (e) Mark 10. v. 15. (f) Is 5. v. 13. (g) Ps 37. v. 5. (h) Ezek. 18. v. 23. (i) Rom. 11. v. 29. (k) Luk. 15. v. 24. (l) Deut. 32. v. 6. (m) Prov. 23. v. 26. (n) John 3. v. 8. (o) Ps 8. v. 7. (p) Gen. 3. v. 17 19. (q) Prov. 8. v. 31. (r) Cant. 2.4 (ſ) Luk. 10 42. (t) Ps 81. v. 14 17 (u) Math. 6. v. 26. (w) Ps 73 v. 23 24. (x) Ps 73. v. 25 26. (y) Luk. 15. v. 18. (z) Ps 18. v. 5 7. (a) Ps 37. v. 5 6 7. (b) Is 65. v. 3. (c) Ps 34. v. 15. (d) Is 58. v. 13. (e) Ecl. 12. v. 8 9.12 (f) Matth 3. v. 9. (g) Joh. 15. v. 6. (h) Math. 15. v. 24. (i) Is 29. v. 14. (k) Gen 19. v. 26. (l) Is 58. v. 13 14. (m) Ps 46. v. 3. c. (n) Luk 21. v. 36. (o) Ps 25 v. 14. Math. 11 v. 25. (p) 1 Cor. 8. v. 12. (q) Math. 18. v. 3. 1 Pet. 2. v. 2. (r) Math. 13. v. 44. (ſ) Rev. 5. v 1 9. (t) Is 29. v. 14. (v) Rev. 21. v. 2. (w) Ibid v. 3. (x) Rev. 20 v. 14 15. (y) Math. 18 v 3 (z) Gal. 1. v. 16. (a) Eccl. 37. v. 17 18. (b) Ps 73. v. 25 26 (c) 2 Thes 2. v. 4 (d) Math. 27. v. 51. (e) Math. 10. v. 16. (f) 1 Cor 20. v. 15. (g) Luk. 16. v. 8.
light more and more divine and saving mysteries which ript up all his hellish Heresies and Mysteries of Iniquity to the gnawing of his malicious spirit and all the like instruments of his fury while the Bread of Life was aboundantly dispensed to hungry souls whom it shall nourish unto Eternal Life when all the Wicked shall be cut off and the Meek shall inherit the Earth For the more particular Account of her divine Pilgrimage see the History of her Life and take here a short Bill of that heavenly chear now dispensed in her Writings that took up the spare hours of her many diversions at Amsterdam The funerall of false Theologie in the first part of which she shews the Confusion the Ignorance Corruption Insensibility and foundamental Errors of Christians and even of Conductors and modern Divines In the second their Presumption Envy Pride Obstinacy and Head strongness In the third that all their Theorie and Practices are no more but Pharisaical without divine Faith In the fourth that the Devil has great power over men over the wicked and even over the best whom by these other he turns away from following God and engages them to co-operate to the Evil of others and makes them draw back after they have abandoned the World That is a work of singular efficacy and profit Scarce did ever man read it without being touched in his soul even the most wicked who became pale and as struck dead with it Upon occasion of some converse she had with some Cartesian Philosophers she composed The Holy Perspective wherein she shews that Men and particularly Christians have lost the Light of God which is true and divine Faith to be led by corrupt Reason and by a false or most faint Light they draw from nature so perverse brutish carnal and gross as it is become by sin that this is it that has destroyed all Christian-religion and brought it to the Blindness and Darkness wherein it is immersed and that God may restore it its first state there is no other way but to abandon that false Guide of Reason and to resign our selves to God that he may himself revive in us that divine Light of Faith which we have extinguished The New Heaven and New Earth in which is shewn in what Glory the World and Man were created how they have miserably faild from it how they entertain and even encrease their Misery and by what means they ought to return into the disposition God requires to restore them to their first Glory and renew all the world God showed her in Spirit the Glory and Beauty of the first World not supportable by corporal Eyes All was bright transparent shining with Light and unspeakable Glory God's last Mercy in which by a reason enlightened by Faith not perverted by human Studies and Prejudices she leads every man of good judgment to a conviction of the spiritual things which Faith discovers and unto which every man's Reason when conducted by a person that is illuminated by Faith renders so convincing Testimonies that they who will yield themselves to its Touch are moved and pressed to ask of God a saving and divine Knowledge of them by the Light of Faith With all these are intermixed many other divine Lights and profound Mysteries which God had reserved to this end of the last hour able to enlighten to quicken to inflame to strengthen to encourage and to ravish any that have not renounced all interest in heavenly things If any find difficulties in her Writings consider that she having no further human Learning than that having learnt it she did once read the New Testament and finding it the same with what God spake in her Soul she closed the Book to apply seriously to the doing of it seeking no more reading meditation conferring or other study than that of purifying her soul from earthly Affections and sins in following Jesus Christs Doctrine and Example She could not speak after the Rules and with the Cautions of human Literature far less by the pedantry of the Schools it were then most cruel injustice to judge her by them Again we must not suppose when she treats of a matter what she does not mention in that place that she denies it nor require her to treat so fully more than her scope there requires as the Scholastiques who handling a matter at their tour adduce all they can relating to it In the Third place to understand her Writings as all others divinely inspired the Key is a good Will Humility and Prayer to a Malign a Corrupt Proud Self-wise and Self-powerful Reader no entry in them no favour from them but that of Death And the center end and aim of these Writings being the Love of God by renouncing our selves the Creatures and sin the Devil the World and the Flesh the farther we are from this the greater discord and contradiction between these Writings and our corrupt hearts and blind spirits and if ever we will be reconciled it must be by valuing loving esteeming and submitting to them as they are conducive to these ends and the difficulties will all quickly evanish this way the Disciples of Christ of Prophets and Apostles entered into their Masters Doctrine To conclude with the zealous and sincere Author of her Life LOrd thou hast yet manifested the words of eternal Life in these last days and our ears have heard and our hands have handled the word of life which thou hast put into her these words of Life which are originally in thee we have seen and heard them and we bear testimony that thou hast manifested them to us and our testimonie is most true before thee and before whosoever will open the eyes of his Conscience to consider it in thy divine Presence Yes Lord my God Creator and Inspector of my Heart who hast given me to love thy divine Truth more than the Sciences and the Advantages of Egypt thou knowest that I hate lying and falshood and that I would not for any consideration recommend untruth I cannot deny that I have obtained of thy Grace to discern the Truth from Falsehood and that I have done it in this Work thou knowest O Lord. Thou knowest my God that if after all possible application of spirit I could find in the intentions in the end the Writings and the Practice of Antonia Bourignon thy Creature any thing contrary to thy Glory that rendered thee less worthy of the infinite and eternal Adoration Love and Praises due unto thee if any thing favouring Corruption and Sin and that might contradict thy holy Image and the Doctrine and Life of thy Christ if any thing dangerous for mens Salvation thou knowest I would abhor that that I would detest it that I would curse it Is it not true O Searcher and Judge of my Thoughts that this disposition is most really in the bottom of my Soul Is it not in the deepest and final sincerity of my heart that I protest openly that the words of eternal
them as God hath commanded us saying be united together in one will which we do not yet observe for our wills are as diverse as there as different persons of us which testifies a pride of heart in all far from observing the counsels which J. C. teaches viz. to learn of him who is meek and lowly and humble of heart that lesson ought to be well kept and practised upon every occasion We have subject enough for being an assembly of persons that endeavour after perfection there is no fear of doing evil in obeying one another as it often happens in the world where we cannot submit to any person without offending God seeing they are all full of sins and evil inclinations which we must resist rather than obey for many well-enclined persons have lost themselves by endeavouring to please the wicked and by that means had part in their sins We are by the grace of God free of that danger seeing all our company are persons of a good will and labour for the perfection of their souls so that you cannot do it to yield to them in indifferent and principally in good things Examin always if what they counsel or propose be good and when you cannot assuredly find that it is such examin if it is evil if it may do hurt or bring prejudice to any body and if you think so you must excuse your self from yielding with all the mildness you can and so you shall irritate no body though you follow not their will But if you resist them with harsh and piercing words designing to correct or rebuke them you had better hold your peace as speak But I 'm unwilling to believe that such cases will happen in our company because I trust none of them will ever give himself to evil things they may well afford occasion one to another to exercise patience for being all imperfect every one hath his own failing which Christian-charity ought to support and that should perfect you together for if you had nothing to bear with in your brother you should never know how far you have advanced in virtue seeing the heart of man is deceitful and flatters it self always and knows not it self till the emergents and occasions offer which try how much meekness and humility it hath which it would not know other ways And consequenly you should love the opportunities of suffering that you may be exercised in Christian perfection You will not always have so much opportunity as now while all the brethren are yet so imperfect and humility of heart so little put in practice So let not the present occasion escape for what is past is not in your power and what 's to come is uncertain There is only the present moment we have to use for perfecting our selves Look not to the failings of others for every one must labour for his own advancement and not render an accompt of his brother Do so as having nothing else to do but to perfect your soul and fulfil the will of God for there is only that which concerns you for if all the men in the world were Saints and you not their virtues would not in the least profit you and also if you be virtuous and all others vicious that will not diminish your virtue for God will not require an accompt of others from you but will judge every one according to his works So that when you have overcome your self you overcome all the world and nothing can let your perfection for even the faults of others will serve you as a means to exercise your patience and become meek mild and humble of heart as J. Ch. counsels And the virtues of others will excite you to greater virtue so that you shall rule over every one for he that hath overcome his passions is king over all the earth and hath subjected all things to himself not being moved for whatsoever happens Behold a blessed state and yet easie to be attained provided they embrace the means They may overcome one passion at once and so get over them all in the end I counsel you to begin with obedience seeing with it you may overcome divers of your passions at once For I shall frequently order you things which your nature has a repugnancy against and if you perform them without gain saying you shall so overcome its corruption although they be but small inconsiderable matters you obey in for it is the fault of that corruption not to yield willingly to another and would always be in the right and thinks it hath reason in all it imagins which proceeds from the haughtiness of heart that would always have deference and will yield to none It thinks always it self wiser and clearer-sighted than another And from that you must disengage it and oblige it to submit to every one in things good or indifferent As for me I did so and have thence found great advantages for the perfection of my soul I submitted always my self to whomsoever I conversed with and have endeavoured from the beginning to discover their inclinations that I might conform my self to them and I did it so absolutely that sometimes I perceived not the evil that was in them to oppose it but since that God has given me more light I obey not men but in things that are good or indifferent And I exhort you my dear Child to do the same that you may become by little and little agreeable to your heavenly father Which is the earnest desire of her who loves your soul to render it unto God unto whom it belongs In Holstein near Gottorp Castle this 12. Jan. 1672. old stile ANTONIA BOURIGNON THE II. LETTER That all Christians ought to learn of Jesus Christ Meekness Lowliness and Humility of heart Shewing wherein consists meekness and lowliness which are fruits of the Holy Spirit and cannot be obtained unless we renounce our own will submitting to the will of God My Dear Child I Perceive you have not yet comprehended the words of J. Christ where he says that we must learn of him to be meek and lowly and humble of heeart Therefore you must know what that meekness is otherwise you cannot love it for one cannot have a perfect love for what he does not at all know and the reason why true virtue is so little loved is because it is so little known many think it is a visible material and bodily thing and thence is hypocrisie bred in mens hearts who perswade themselves that they are virtuous because of doing some external good works whereas there is nothing of the essence of virtue in them for true virtue is a Spiritual thing which should possess the hearts of men and it cannot be seen nor felt but by the operations it produces springing from the bottom of the heart and if these operations proceed not from that bottom but are only studied or practised to please men or for our proper satisfaction they are but moral and temporary virtues which
add nothing to our souls and cannot have the recompense of eternal life They may indeed be a mean to attain to true virtue when our design is to aspire and arrive at it but the misery is that many rest at these means and external virtues as if that were the end And so they think they have virtue indeed whereas they have it only in shadow not in reality And therefore is it that I teach you what true virtue is and particularly what is that meekness which J. Ch. says we must learn of him It is nothing else but a peace quiet and tranquillity of Spirit which resides in the bottom of our soul and all these are Spiritual qualities which cannot be seen or felt but by their outward operations But the essence of that virtue of meekness is a divine quality and you cannot judge by the outward actions if one possesses it for one may well learn to speak mildly without having the mildness which J. Ch. says we must learn of him We may learn meek words like a Perroquet and speak so perhaps for civility or by hypocricy for I have known persons that appeared most meek in their carriage who inwardly were wicked and arrogant And therefore we must not amuse our selves at that outward mildness which is often deceitful and but natural for there are persons so faint-hearted that they fear to speak a harsh word left it give themselves trouble by as harsh an answer and that Sillyness makes them mild and calm both to good and evil And yet such dare believe that they have the virtue of meekness when it is only a vice of sloath and injustice which makes them yield to the sin of others instead of resisting it with diligence and courage but they will not take so much trouble It is not then that false meekness which I exhort you unto my Child for so you should not learn that which J. Ch. teaches but I would gladly make you comprehend what is that true meekness that you might love and follow it It is then an inward peace a quiet of conscience and tranquillity of Spirit which dwells in the bottom of our soul behold what that meekness which J. Ch. recommends to learn of him contains Himself practiced that meekness all the time of his mortal life and you may observe from that if there be at present any souls possessed by his Spirit that is who have effectually those three qualities in their souls for otherways they cannot be possessed of the Holy Ghost Observe well in me If I have peace in my soul quiet of conscience and tranquillity in my Spirit And if you discover in me these qualities believe assuredly that you may obtain them also for God refuses not his graces to them that ask and desire them and he will be loath to refuse that of meekness when J. Ch. says that we must learn it of him for he will not command us to learn that which is impossible God is just and therefore he hath not taught us any thing by Jesus Christ but what he will readily give us That Spirit of meekness and gentleness is the Holy Spirit which J. Ch. says shall not be refused to any bringing us this comparison to the purpose who is he of you who when his son asks bread will give him a stone or if he demand fish will give him a serpent And he Draws this conclusion If you then being evil know to give good things to your children how much more shall not your heavenly father give the Holy Spirit to them that ask him All the evil consists in that we do not desire him and that desire cannot be great in us as long as we do not know him Many say that the Holy Spirit does not work in souls now adays as he did in the days of J. Christ rand his Apostles because they do not see him in form of a dove as he appeared at the baptism of J. Chr. or as tongues of fire as on the Apostles at Pentecost which is a very feeble argument For the Holy Ghost is not limited to times being an eternal God who gives his gifts and bears his fruits at all times and will do to all eternity seeing he can never be barren nor idle operating always in the souls that are disposed thereto and if we see not now these tongues of fire that dove or other external signs it is because we need them no more now the gospel law and the doctrine of Jesus Christ being sufficiently confirmed at least there is no Christian as I believe that calls it in question Moreover these external forms added nothing to the souls of those that received the Holy Ghost but served only to convince the hard-heartedness of the incredulous And therefore true believers have no need to see external figures to believe that the Holy Spirit dwells yet in the soul of him that is thereto disposed They can well examin it themselves knowing but what the Holy Spirit is what are his gifts what his graces and what his fruits of which the meekness we must learn of Jesus Christ is one And though it be declared in divers places of Scripture yet it is all the same thing For J. Ch. says Learn of me for I am meek and lowly and St. Paul puts among the twelve fruits of the Holy Spirit goodness and benignity which is the same thing pronounced in different words and is in substance the peace quiet and tranquillity of Spirit residing in the soul that hath these three internal qualities These signs are assured testimonies of the habitation of the Holy Spirit For the natural Spirit cannot give true peace nor true quiet nor true tranquility of Spirit as give the meekness and lowliness which J. Christ says we must learn of him I suppose by these My Child you comprehend sufficiently what is that meekness and lowliness which J. Ch. teaches And also that you have remarked enough that I possess it in my soul seeing you see me in inward peace quiet of conscience and tranquility of Spirit without notable change but yet you know not how you may come to feel the effects of that meekness of J. Ch. in your soul I know certainly you love them so far as you know them but you know not how to attain to them Which I shall also teach you if you will give good attention and follow my counsel for it is very easie to obtain the meekness which J. Ch. teaches if you will empty your soul of what hinders it and absolutely become a disciple of J. Ch. and follow his doctrines And if you feel not in your soul true inward peace quiet of conscience and tranquility of Spirit you may believe you have not yet learnt of J. Ch. his meekness and lowliness and so you must embrace the means to attain to it The first and fundamental means is absolutely to will and desire it which I believe by the grace of God you do In the
himself and search the means for his own satisfaction Now God had given man five natural Senses that he might prove all that God had created for him provided he praised and thanked the Creator for so many good things but he began to use his senses to please himself and attribute to himself the Favours and Graces God had bestowed on him as if they had been his own and he the Soveraign independent on God for he pleased himself to see so many beautiful creatures and attributed them to himself and also to hear the pleasant Melody which God produced in nature pleasing himself in hearing them without referring them to God the same did he in smelling taking his contentment in all the good Odours which God had made to show unto man his liberality giving him not only the things neeful for the sustenance of his being but also Delectable things to procure him pleasure as are the objects of Sight Hearing and Smell and man could well have subsisted without the pleasures of these but God would oblige him to love him by excess of benefits and so created so many good and beautiful Creatures only for pleasure to man having created all sorts of delicious fruits for his nourishment and so many other creatures to satisfie his feeling that he might lack nothing for sustenance and pleasures which he could use at pleasure provided he blessed the Lord who had made them for him But ingrate man falls from that acknowledgment of his God and takes all his gifts for his proper satisfaction and so he left the Love of God and hath turned to love himself which hath necessarily rendred him an enemy to God for such ingratitude is insupportable though it were but committed by one man to another For what man would be satisfied to have desired the friendship and fidelity of another having with that aim bestowed his goods on him in abandance and procured him all sorts of pleasures and recreations that he might faithfully keep friendship if that ingrate Wretch forsook his Benefactor to take his pleasure in these same goods which he had so freely received how much more then should God resent the ingratitude of man while he places his love and affection in the things which God hath so liberally bestowed on him to oblige him to love him and yet man hath forsaken him and pleases himself only in self-love That you ought to consider well My Child that you render not your self guilty before that great Majesty and Discover if you be not obliged to embrace voluntarily Adam's penitence since you have fallen so often in the same sin in quitting the love and Dependance of your God to love your self and Depend on your proper will So resolve to renounce your five natural senses which are assuredly actuated by the devil for since he got power over Adam's spirit he hath after had it over that of all men and will have it so long as they continue to live in their corrupt nature from which I pray God Deliver you and I remain forever Your Well-wisher in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle 18. Febr. 1672. St. vet THE VIII LETTER It is easier to love God than any other Thing To the same to whom is shown that we must renounce the evil use of our senses and that the right use of them ought to be referred to God also that it is possible equitable reasonable and necessary to love God with all our heart My Son I Will not believe that you are one of those evil advised persons who say there is little evil in following the motions of corrupt nature God created Nature say they and cannot be offended that we follow it Several of my Aquaintance have been of that mind they were given to Lasciviousness and told me That God would not punish them for that seeing himself had given them such a Nature and that it was needful to use it to multiply the world So flattering themselves in their Sins to satisfie their senses and more say they God hath given all these to man and we cannot be without Seeing Hearing Smelling Feeling and Tasting That 's all true but they had not light enough to discern the miserable state into which man is fallen by Sin from that happy one into which God had created him For then in that state man could enjoy the Pleasures of his five Senses provided he loved and blessed God But since he hath fallen into sin he can no more enjoy them without offending God because all the pleasure he now takes in his five Senses is only to satisfie himself for his own Glory and Advantage but before sin was the satisfaction of his Senses served only to bless praise and glorify the Lord for the Benefits and Mercies he received of him So that he no sooner saw these beautiful things but his heart was elevated to praise God who had given him these beautiful Objects these Melodies fragrant Odours delicious Tastes and Feelings So that whatever he saw or perceived good or pleasant was to him matter of blessing God and magnifying him for his Benefits But since man is fallen into sin the same things are to him matter of offending God for if he sees any beautiful thing he covets it to satisfie himself and that Self-love retires him from the Love of God and that is it which makes sin seeing he hath commanded us to love him with all our heart so that we cannot love these beautiful things without infringing that Command seeing all our heart cannot be in the Love of God when a part of it is upon beautiful things fine odours melodies delights of the taste and feeling For that 's a heart divided into as many parts as there are Different things it loves and consequently far from being intire in the Love of God as he hath commanded us But men are so blind and do so blind one another that every one perswades himself that he loves God while he loves only himself It is as if they thought to please God with words in saying with their mouth that they love him but they deceive themselves for as long as they will satisfie their five natural senses they will not love God seeing these being corrupt will engender all sorts of sin and consequently the Death of the Soul Notwithstanding no man values these evils and they think it is allowable to satisfie their senses and so follow them often as much as they can without believing they do evil and not apprehending that there is nothing more Deceitful than the Heart of Man which often flatters it self to its own destruction But you my Child be more wise learn the truth of things without yielding your self to be Deceived by false appearances Never believe that it is allowable to take any pleasure out of God and far less that there is no evil in following your five natural senses since that cannot be without sin for though we give our affections but for an