upon my Heart and for that Reason it is upon It that I strike all my blows I subject my Senses I chastise my Body I make a continual Violence upon my Inclinations for to do otherwise were to beat the Air and to lose both Time and Labour Co-operation then is essential to Salvation which is the most essential Duty of the Order of Time and of Eternity and by consequence of our Present State And this Duty ought more to employ us than the care of our Fortunes and the other interests of our Pasions it ought not to give us one moment of Truce it ought to keep us always in Breath it is for that reason that our Saviour expresses it by the Name of Vigilance it ought effectively to be a perpetual Application to Watch and to stir up our Heart to prepare it and put it into a State capable of receiving this Impression of its proper Glory and its proper Felicity which God would make upon those amongst us whom he shall find disposed to finish and consummate his Divine Resemblance which Nature and Grace began and which his Glory only finisheth CHAP. XVII The Duty of a lively and ardent Desire of a Future Life ALtho' the Co-operation of Salvation doth essentially import a Disesteem of the Present Life and a lively and ardent Desire of the Future yet notwithstanding these two Duties are different in their Foundations since the Duty of Co-operation of Salvation ceasing we do not cease however to be obliged to endure the Present Life with some sort of Impatience and to Sigh after the Future with an ardent and expressive Desire It is Essential to observe and to remark That we ought effectively to be enflamed with a lively and ardent Desire of the Life to come by a true Obligation and a true Duty which we cannot omit or violate without rendring our selves infinitely culpable towards God and worthy of all his Anger and all his Vengeance Here is an Obligation very New for almost all Men who do so love the Present Life that they cannot so much as only comprehend that they can love and desire the Future but this Obligation which appears New to the Carnal Tast of our Terrestrial Love is of the same Date in the Soul of Man as the Obligation of Regarding and seeking God only as the Sovereign Good for since it is but in this Future Life that God is possessed it follows that in as much as we are obliged to have this Love of that Holy Thirst and of that Sacred Concupiscence for God that love of Union and of Possession and of Joy the Duty of which hath been already Established so much are we obliged to Love and Desire with an ardent and impressed Desire the Life to come St. Augustin perfectly understood this Principle for it is for that Reason that he said That he that findeth himself well in this World and would always continue here hath not the least spark of the least perfect Love which all Men ought to have for God And it is upon this Principle that all the other Holy Doctors have decided the same thing They have not only determined that it is an essential Duty in the Heart of Man To Groan and Sigh after the Life to come but they have remarked that therein is the most inseparable Character of the Divine Predestination and of the Impression which the Holy Ghost makes in them to whom he bears witness of the Eternal Election and Adoption of the Heavenly Father Those that are Predestinated say they are the bemoaning and desolate Turtle-Doves who sigh without ceasing after the Celestial Spouse who do's not receive these chast Birds to his chast Embraces but in the Life to come They are the Citizens of the Heavenly Country who look upon themselves as banished upon Earth They are the true Israelites who could find nothing good and agreeable in Babylon and who could not propose to themselves any other Pleasure than that of returning to their dear Jerusalem They are the tender and passionate Children who can find no pleasure out of the Presence and House of their Father They are the judicious Travellers who regard the Places where they pass as Places which they ought not to place their Hearts upon as Places whereat their Hearts ought not to stop since they cannot Rest there themselves They are say the Fathers Stones out of their Quarry and a Fire out of its Sphere They continually throw themselves forwards towards him who allures them with a Charm so sweet in this New Life Their Hearts continually say that which the Lips only Pronounce in the Person of Reprobates in the Prayer which our Saviour the King of the Age to come teacheth us Let thy Kingdom come Such are those who are Predestinated the Citizens and the Children of the Kingdom of Heaven Filii Regni They do not long but after the Future Life which is their Kingdom and that of their Heavenly Father The Reprobates on the contrary they love only the Present Life they do not at all know of any other Goods or other Pleasures than those of the Earth The Dove that went out of the Ark returned to the Ark again because she found no place where she could rest her Feet but the Ravens did not return at all because loving Corruption their Impure Tast engaged them to all the dead Bodies which they found in the way He that is Predestinated groans here because he Suffers and he Suffers because he is separated from God and from His Eternal Delights The Reprobate on the contrary do's wallow in Joys he esteems himself happy he is contented with his false Prosperity because he doth not at all think of God and his Immortal Felicities He hath his Satisfaction and Consolation in this World which obliges the King of the World to come to dart out his Curse and his Compassion upon him in these Terms so violent and so terrible Woe be to you that you have had your Consolation in this World To Love then and to desire the Future Life to Sigh after the coming of the Eternal Kingdom and to return without ceasing from the midst of Babylon towards the Heavenly Jerusalem is an indispensable Duty of the Love of God and of that proper Charity which we owe to our selves and if we do not find in us this Love of the World to Come and this Character of the Divine Predestination we ought to begin there by the Co-operation which we ought to contribute to our Salvation to apply our selves without ceasing to contemplate the Beauty and the Charms of the Eternal World and the advantages of the Future Life above the Present to the end that perpetual Contemplation may purifie our Imaginations that so we may hate our Earthly Tast and imprint the Celestial one upon us which will cause that we shall cease to be those Earthly Men of whom St. Paul speaks upon whom remains the Curse of Adam and that we shall become those
us than the perpetual Miracle by which and with which we have seen that God Operates in our Bodies according to the Desires of our Souls I say the Miracle not that that Action by which God transports and moves our Members and our Bodies where we will in the moment that our Souls desire ought to be regarded as a true and proper Miracle since we do not at all call that a Miracle which is made in consequence of the Laws of Nature or the General Will of God But because there is nothing more Divine in all the Miracles that can be than that Regularity whereby the Desires of our Wills are follow'd by the Effective Motion of our Members and of our whole Body at such time as they are not hindred by any Relation or by any Obstruction of the Nerves or by any Dislocation or Fracture of the Bones we may say that this is a perpetual Miracle of Nature which perpetually Preaches to us this Divine Affiance of that Evangelical Faith of which one single Spark like a Grain of Mustard-Seed is able to remove Mountains For as this Eternal Power by the Effect and the Engagement of his General Will by which he makes and entertains the Union of Souls and Bodies applies himself to move and transport our Bodies as we will according to the Laws and the Rules of that Union which he hath resolv'd never to depart from to Act as an Universal Cause as it seems fit to his Greatness and worthy of his Sovereign and Infinite Wisdom So when we unite our selves to him by an entire and perfect Affiance we unite our selves to his Almightiness and we make him sure to do every thing that we expect from him without Doubt and without Uncertainty according to the Sacred Oracles of the Gospel And thus it is that the Saints under the New Law and the Prophets under the Old Law have dispos'd of the Heavenly Almightiness to make it do Wonders and Miracles the Historical Fact of which is the most establish'd and the most incontestable thing in the World almost as we do make use of the Members of our Bodies and the things whereof we have the most free disposition Our Affiance which strictly and intimately unites us by its lively Faith to the Eternal Goodness and Power renders them as it were in some manner united and dependent upon us This Eternal Goodness and this Eternal Power have so great an Inclination to communicate and expand themselves that they only wait for our lively Faith or our Affiance to put themselves into our Hands as it were and to be obedient to our Desires The love of Holy Concupiscence for God But it is above all the Duty of Love whether it be of Complacency and Preference or of Union and Holy Concupiscence which springs and flows sensibly from the Knowledge we have been acquiring of the Sovereign Source of Beauty and of Felicities which that Eternal Essence contains to which we so certainly see that we are able to aspire and to drink eternally of it since at this very hour wherein he doth nothing but make us Combate and keep us in Trial and in Exercise to see if we render our selves worthy of being Rewarded He makes us feel so indubitably the Pleasures and the Delights which he contains and He discovers to us so many Charms and so many Beauties in his Sovereign Nature Brutish Men remove themselves far from God by Pleasure and Pleasure is a Rivulet that flows from that pure and eternal Source by which our Heart ought naturally to mount up again to God The present Pleasure which wholly essentially and immediately comes from God ought to bring us back again to him God doth not give it us but to draw to himself our Hearts to which he hath not given Motion but for Pleasure He hath not given us Love but for Good and Pleasure and he makes us see that the Source of Good and Pleasure is in Him There are some who conceive the Love of Union or of this Holy Concupiscence which I here speak of and whereupon I Establish Duty as a Disorder and Irregularity of Self-love which Reverses the Order of the Essential Relation which all Creatures ought to have to God but this is not rightly to comprehend the Free and Voluntary Relation by which we ought to relate our selves to God We do not only relate our selves to God by the Confession of our Dependence and of His Supereminent Excellence over us by which we do acknowledge that we deserve to be Annihilated by him We do no less relate our selves to him by that which we do from the Source of Pleasure and Happiness which we acknowledge in Him only It is no less agreeable for him to be the Source of Happiness and of Pleasure which is as it were the Accomplishment the Perfection and the Crowning of our Being than to be the Source and the Principle of the Foundation of our Being The Love of Union or of this Sacred Thirst which I call Holy Concupiscence doth no less Honor to God than the Love of the most pure and the most disinteressed Complacency God is not so much God by any other way if we may be permitted to say so than in being the only and essential Source and necessary Principle of Happiness and of Pleasure St. Austin saith That Felicity is in God the Summit of his Divinity because his Infinite Felicity is that which is most Divine and most Eminent in Him and we may say That the Advantage of containing and shutting up in Himself Felicity and Pleasure is if we may be permitted to enhance upon the Expression of St. Augustin the Act and the Summit of that very Summit of his Divinity This Love then of Union and of Holy Concupiscence is not only not Evil and Imperfect but it is positively Infinitely Perfect and the greatest Honor that can be rendred to the Supream Being and all the Motions of our Heart ought to be continual and uninterupted Acts thereof Our Heart and our Will in general is not as hath been said but the Love of Good and of Pleasure And as it is God who is the Good and the Pleasure or at least the Source and the Principle of Pleasure since it is He only that causeth it and since it is in Him and by Him that we ought only to Hope for our Soveraign Pleasure All the Pantings of our Heart and all its Agitations for Pleasure ought to be turned and directed towards Him Our Heart ought continually to regard nothing but Him and to search after nothing but Him All its Motion ought to Center in Him This Torrent or this River ought to have this perpetual Course it ought to Flow in this Channel and it ought not to suffer one single Rill or one drop of its Waters to be lost Its Course and its Motion ought never to stand still or be turned aside or diverted from that bound and Center or go never so little out of
Reprobated Souls is a Union of Wrath of Enmity and of Implacable Vengeance They are in God and God say the Holy Fathers is their First and True Hell if it may be permitted to use an Expression so strong Not that there is not an Hell or a Corporeal Place wherein the Bodies of the Wicked Are to be shut up after the Resurrection and where we are to conceive their Souls before hand but we must say that they are in such a Place where God keeps the Fire of His Wrath continually Burning and they are there Effectively after the manner that Spirits are in Corporeal Places as really as it is possible God gives them perpetually the Idea thereof and by the Occasion of that Idea he Impresses on them a dolorous Sentiment of real Burning that is to say The same Sentiment which we have upon the Occasion of Elementary Fire when by its too great Activity it Disranges Agitates and violently Scorches up the Fibres of those Parts of our Bodies upon which it Acts and the Vertue and Efficacy of His Power by his Irrevocable Decree fixeth them there and is a Chain which no force can break and which no length of Duration can wear out but it is always truly said That it is in God who contains Hell as well as Heaven as St. Augustin further saith And who unites Impure Souls to Fire Everlasting in the manner as hath been said that properly and chiefly the Reprobate Souls Are as well as the Holy Souls They are only but Accessorily if I may so say either in Heaven or in Hell within these Material Places and Spaces of which God gives them that lively Idea which renders Them present to them CHAP. VI. Whether Jesus Christ be the Occasional Cause of these Idea's and Sentiments of Holy Souls out of the Body THAT which we have been saying concerning the Fire of Hell might give Occasion here to some to Imagin That it is not perhaps so certain as we would have them believe it to be That the Union of Souls with God and of God with the Souls is Immediate from the Moment that they go out of the Body because They may Imagine That as God unites Impure Souls to Hell Fire Establishing it as the Occasional Cause of that particular Torment and of that That Pain of Burning with which he Afflicts them with so he Establishes also an Occasional Cause of the agreeable Idea's and Sentiments which he gives to the Saints And there are some who would willingly conceive That the Soul of Jesus Christ might very well be the Occasional Cause of all the Ineffable Pleasures of Holy Souls so much the rather because the Analogy of the Divine Conduct inspires us to acknowledge an Occasional Cause of their Joy and their Felicity as there is an Occasional Cause of the Torment of the Reprobates But this ought not to shake a Truth so well Established and Proved as is that of the Immediate Union of God with our Souls and of our Souls with God from the Moment that they go out of our Body This Union is without doubt Immediate and without the Intervention of any thing and without Dependence upon any Occasional Cause for the Foundation and Essentiality of this New State For tho' there may be some Occasional Cause of the Accessory Pain of Reprobated Souls and of the Accessory Felicity of Holy Souls yet it is certain That there is none at all for their Essential Pain and their Essential Felicity St. Paul speaks it expresly of Holy Souls when he says That God shall be all in them Erit Deus Omnia in Omnibus The whole Scripture says so likewise when it says We shall see God Face to Face for these Expressions do import an Immediate Union of God with us Since it would not at all be to see him Face to Face but to see him thro' a Veil if we did only receive from him Idea's and Lights upon the occasion of some Things that was extraneous to Him Let then the Adorable Humanity of Jesus Christ be with all my heart an Occasional Cause of a thousand Joys and a thousand Accessory Felicities to Holy Souls as St. John says it expresly enough in the Description he makes us of our State out of our Bodies under the Name of the New City or of the Heavenly Jerusalem where the Holy Lamb gives a thousand Pleasures But as to the Foundation of this New State as to the Lights and Idea's the Sentiments and the Joys which constitute it and are the Essence of it they depend not upon any Occasional Cause they come from the Immediate Union of God with the Holy Souls Independently of all Exterior Occasional Determination God penetrates them with His Glorious Light and with the Intimate Impression of His Beatifick Presence and he fills them full with his Ineffable Joys and Pleasures How Impure Souls are united to Hell Fire We need only say The same thing in Proportion of Reprobate Souls Let then the Action of the Terrible Element which God makes to be Serviceable to His Anger be the Occasional Cause of the Accessory Pain of the Wicked for as the Impurity of the Reprobate Souls is a perpetual Object of Horror wherewith the Sovereign Purity of the Divine Eyes is sensibly hurt so it is not improbable That the Terrible Element which naturally Cleanses and Purifies all things should be likewise Employed as an Occasional Cause to a Particular Action by which the Eternal Sanctity applies it self to make them feel the Horror of their Impure State But that do's not at all hinder but that for the Ground of this unhappy State it should be intirely Independent of all sort of an Occasional Cause for it is certain That God is immediately united to the Reprobates by his Anger as He is immediately united by His Love to the Just Souls God is the Principal Fire which burns them and His Anger is the Fire and Brimstone that Feeds their Chief and Principal Torment We commonly conceive very ill That which we call The Pain of the Damned when we conceive it as a simple Privation or a Partition Wall betwixt God and the Reprobated Souls There may well be an Eternal Wall of Separation but there is also an Eternal and Immediate Union There is a Wall of Separation betwixt Gods Goodness and Sinners that is a Wall which stops all the Influences of Mercy of Grace and of Glory but it is likewise an Union which nearly attracts all the Characters of his Anger and his Vengeance God also makes himself to be felt as nearly and as immediately to the Reprobates as to the Saints The Unhappy see God Face to Face but it is only his Terrible Face which they see It is not that Illuminating Face which Enlightens the Just and wherein he promised to Moses to let him see and find All Good It is a Face Sparkling with Thunder which penetrates them with Fear and covers them with Horror and Darkness They are Eternally
in God as in a Rageing Sea which dashes against them and tosses them and threatens them perpetually with its Storms and Tempests And this is All in my Opinion that we can desire to know upon the Principal Head of that which Regards the State of our Souls out of our Bodies Let us conceive with all my heart That there is above those Heavens which we know a Heaven wholly Enlightned and abounding with Joy and overwhelmed with Pleasures wherein the Holy Souls are involved And let us conceive on the other side a Place replenished with Flames and Darknesses with Horror and all manner of Despair which the Criminal Souls do fall into All this is most True and these Places are most Real and Effective but it is in God in whom the Holy Souls do find this Enlightned Heaven and in whom the Criminal Souls do find these Flames and these Darknesses these Despairs and these Horrors It is God who by an Immediate Union of his Almighty Activity causeth in Them this Light and these Darknesses these Sadnesses and these Joys these Pleasures and these Pains all the Paradice and all the Hell Erit Deus Omnia in Omnibus it is by an Immediate Union of God with Them and They with God that they are in Heaven and in Hell Since it is by this Union that they have this Lively Idea thereof which renders these Places present to them CHAP. VII That which makes the Difference between the Present and Future State of the Soul IT follows from what hath been said That that which makes the Essential Difference of the manner how our Souls are in our Bodies and of the manner how they are out of our Bodies is That when they are in the Body then they have but Successively the Idea's and the Knowledges of Things from the Occasion of different Impressions which come and arrive to the Brain by the Action of other Bodies which are round about Us and that they have not also the Sentiments and the several Movements of the Appetite but from the Occasion of divers Dispositions of Bodies and when they are parted from the Body they receive immediately from God these Idea's and these Sentiments which is requisite for the Disposition of Vice or Vertue which we otherwise call Merit of Demerit in which they find themselves when they are parted from the Body Now the Body by the divers Impressions which it receives from other Bodies or by the divers Dispositions which are raised formed in it by the Ebullition of the Blood by the Course of the Spirits and by the divers Excesses or Fermentations of Humors is the Occasional Cause of all these Idea's and of all the Sentiments of the Soul because that the Supream Being by which it Lives it Perceives Thinks and Wills for to conserve the Dignity and good Order of its Greatness in acting as Universal Cause was pleased to tye the Determination of these Idea's and Sentiments to those Dispositions of the Body which result from the Laws of Motion by which He moves all the Corporeal Nature and by which he composes and conserves the Visible World with an infinite Wisdom which alone was able to produce so many Prodigious Effects with so much Order and so much Harmony from two or three Immutable Laws by which He moves the Matter of the Universe That in this New State of the Soul out of the Body God is not determined to Act in Them but by a necessary and immutable Love of Order and by their Vertuous or Criminal Disposition God doth not Act but as an Universal Cause with our Souls so long as they are in the Body He doth but follow the Law of Motion of the common Matter of the Visible World which diversly affecting our Bodies necessarily determines him by Vertue of his Immutable Decree to give to the Souls those Idea's and those Sentiments which answer the different Impressions wherewith the Body is affected but when the Soul is out of the Body God doth lay aside the Character of Universal Cause as to this purpose He no longer follows in respect of them the Laws of the Motion of the Universe Souls part with the World in parting with the Body They have no longer any Relation with the Body nor by consequence with the Visible World from that very instant that they have no more to do with their particular Bodies So long as they are in the Body they are united to all the Visible World because that their Thoughts and their Sentiments do depend upon the Laws of the Motion which moves all the Matter of the World it being that which gives them an Essential Relation to all the Parts of it because there is not any one of them which may not be an Occasion of the Determination of these Idea's and Sentiments but after Death all that ceases there is a new Order of things there are no more the same Laws God afterwards follows none but the Law of his Eternal and Inflexible Justice to Punish or to Reward the Souls according as they have made themselves deserving It is no more the Motion of the Universe and the particular Disposition of every ones Temperament which results from it which determins the diversity of our Idea's and Sentiments It is only the Pure and Holy Disposition or the Impute and Criminal Disposition of our Souls which determins the Sovereign and Eternal Justice and Equity to give us the Idea's and Sentiments proper to Reward or Punish our Irregular or our Vertuous Disposition God hath no longer Reason to be willing to mannage and conserve the Dignity and Character of Universal Cause He hath no longer Reason to mannage and conserve the Liberty of our Souls The time of our Trial is ended The time of Merit is past There is no more question to see whether they will make themselves worthy that is over They are fixed in an Immutable State That is Eternity There is no more Vicissitudes or Diversifications no more Instability or Changes no more an Alternativeness or a Passage from Evil to Good and from Good to Evil from Vice to Vertue and from Vertue to Vice The Tree lies where it falls And as the State of the Soul is fixed by this State of Immutability which is properly That which we call Eternity so God fixeth himself to Love or to Hate to Punish or to Reward He Acts thenceforwards as a particular Cause because that He immediately takes in the Ground of His Eternal Love of Order the determination of all these Idea's and Sentiments which he gives to our Souls That is all the Light which we can give to our First Curiosity concerning the State of our Souls out of our Body by which we see that they are not properly but in God and that it is He only who is the Cause and Occasion of all their Idea's and Sentiments We must now proceed and endeavour to Know all that belongs to this State by clear and infallible Lights CHAP. VIII How