and repented what he had done when the Prophet Nathan published his deliverance and that his sin was taken from him so that he had all reason to assert a contrite and humble heart O God thou wilt not despise St. Ambrose sayes that pennance is as necessary to a sinner as any Balsom or Medicament can be to a dangerous wound For where parts by any hurt are disunited and by separation break off a necessary communication with the blood or vital spirits nature cannot of herself repair those breaches without the supply of remedies ordained in such extremities So likewise in any spiritual distemper which threatens the Souls ruine if the sovereign medicine of contrition whose principal ingredient is gathered in Heaven be not applyed she must needs run a hazzard of destruction Wherefore since pennance is the sole remedy of sin after Baptism this great Doctor exhorts us to make it our Refuge he bids us not to shrink at the face of sufferings but on the contrary fill our Soul with bitterness endure the storms of compunction remember the heart is to be contrite not crooked or broken but shivered into pieces by disgraces confusions tears sighs and acts of humility and when you shall be in these Agonies upon the account of vertue then may you joyn issue with our Holy Petitioner and say a contrite and humble heart O God thou wilt not despise But our Penitent adds the particle of humble to shew that a heart compleatly disposed for God's favourable aspect must have a stroak of humility because this vertue speaks obedience for Eccles Chap. 10. sayes as the beginning of Pride is the Seed of Apostacy from God so humility is a reduction to our duty St. Austin makes no distinction between pride and disobedience nor between humility and obedience but takes them in a manner for the same thing In his Fourth Book of the City of God he declares It is good to keep our hearts aloft not towards our selves for that is pride but unto God which is obedience and a vertue not to be found but in the humble Again on the Eighth Chapter of Gen. our proper will cannot but sink under a great weight of ruine if it prove rebellious to the will of a superiour power this the First Man contemning Gods command found too true and by this he learnt to distinguish between good and evil that is between the good of obedience and the evil of disobedience So that we see the transgression of our first parent sprung from a secret Root of disobedience for puffed up with pride he would be his own Master and scorn to be subordinate to the Lawes of God this made him seise on the forbidden fruit and by that act of disobedience we are all made guilty So that to repair our innocency and begin a new life we must destroy the old man that is pride and self love And as by those unhappy instruments we fell from our righteousness it is by humility and a love to God above all things we must return to Justice and if our Hearts be vested with these noble qualities we shall alwayes have a stock to fashion out to our Creatour a Sacrifice that will not be despised It is feigned by the Poets that the Son of the Earth wrestling with Hercules still as he touched the ground he received a fresh vigour just so the humble minded Man who esteems himself to be but an Imp of the Earth the off-spring of Dust and Ashes in proportion as he bowes himself in acts of lowliness he will be raised and approach nearer to Heaven St. Austin speaking of the Centurions humility who judged himself unworthy to receive such a guest as our Saviour under his roof sayes that by confessing himself unworthy he rendered himself more worthy for there is no disposition so fit for the reception of God as to acknowledge and avow our own unworthiness But you must know there is a humility of the understanding another of the will this gives us a true knowledge of our nothing that brings us readily to submit Now to be humbled by the will and force honour and greatness to stoop this is Heroick and worthy a Prince but to be brought down by adverse fortune this humility carries with it little of wonder there being no great vertue for one that is humbled to become humble This vertue then to render it meritorious and accomplished in all points as to make our Heart a pleasing Sacrifice to God requires that we seriously consider our own faults and imperfections the wants and necessities incident to humane nature and which every one how charming soever in the outside they appear carry about them This will sufficiently evidence that instead of praise and veneration we ought to expect nothing but scorn and confusion from the sense of our own defects and conclude that honour and excellency belong not to us Thus you see the will is carried on by humility to decline all things which raise our hope or appetite above our deserts It is proper then to this vertue to check all excessive attempts in Man after the purchase of greatness and Earthly advantages Nor is it notwithstanding opposite to hope as a Theological vertue nor unto magnanimity as a Christian vertue For these stirr up to the pursuit of what is great in order to God and humility obstructs not this waving only that greatness which sides with the inordinate interests of the World St. Thomas sayes There is none but may believe and declare himself without a falshood to be the most vile Creature in the World according to the hidden defects he knowes in himself and the gifts of God unknown to him which are or may be in his Neighbour In fine Christ our Lord declared it to be the sole clew leading to Heaven it is the first and last step to bliss For in this life where all is storm and tempest torment war and temptation where nothing is secure and certain humility alone amidst these perills and dangers like so many rocks and shelves can bring us safe off and conduct us to the Haven of happiness Elias in that furious whirlwind terrible Earthquake and dismal Fire wrapt himself up like a bottom of Yarn and lay close to the Earth Job in that general destruction of all his goods rent his garments shaved his Head fell flat to the ground and worshipping said Naked I came into the VVorld and naked I shall return The Lord hath given the Lord hath taken away blessed be his name The tempest afterwards encreasing upon him as boiles botches leprosy worms and a wife he fled to a Dunghill with a piece of potsheard in his Hand making choice of the humblest and safest place Our Holy Penitent likewise in that his persecution by Saul cryed out I was humbled and he delivered me So that he spake not at random but had experience how acceptable unto God is a contrite and humble heart The Scripture attributes two Names unto Christ
mercy than Justice for the one consists in a communicative vertue of what is good and as God is essentially good so he can alwayes breath forth these emanations of his goodness upon us Now Justice though it be equally essential to the Divine Essence with mercy and other Attributes yet in its operations ad extra or exteriour effects it depends upon the obliquity of our actions without which it hath no matter or Subject to work on So that mercy he can alwayes shower down upon us but Justice only when we offend he would not forget how the greater number of Angels stood the brunt of temptations when Lucifer perished with his proud adherents it was this mercy held them up at the instant of their Tryal and though our afflicted penitent found not this innocence preserving mercy yet he hopes to lay hold on that part where he is stiled a purifying mercy Let his Subjects fall from their obedience and throw curses at him let his Children prove unnatural and labour to dethrone him let a pestilential Disease depopulate his Country in fine let the Joy of his Life Absalom be sacrificed by the Hand of his own Souldier with smiles he will pass through all these Tests so they proceed from the hand of this all purifying mercy He values not the mediums but the end he tends to and when he thinks oâ— this he begins afresh to admire this mercy in the reward of the elect he knows not whether it exceeds more in the expectancy and furtherance of a sinners conversion or in those immense felicities he communicates by his presence For here he beholds a God courting his Creatures insensible as it were of injuries and dishonours from them and seconding their least good intents with the powerful succours of grace There he contemplates a God remunerating our small inconsiderable Acts of Vertue with the same Felicity wherewith he himself is blest and made happy For his Beatitude is to enjoy himself and contemplate his own beauty and perfections and this same Beatitude he imparts to us poor worms through the excess of his Mercy But whether our holy penitent more extolls the effects of his mercies in Heaven or Earth I know not yet of this I am sure he is reconciled to make it whilst he hath life the Theam of his Pen Heart and Tongue he will celebrate the praises of his innumerable mercies for all Eternity he hath scarce a Psalm which speaks not his zeal for this subject as if his quill had been dipped in this Fountain of mercies Another branch which growes up amidst the multitude of his mercies is that he distributes his blessings not so much in the measure of his wisdom as love and after his innumerable favours done to his Vineyard he defies the whole Mass of Creatures to tax him of any want on his part For should he reward us according to our actions which he in his praescience and eternal essence foresees will come to pass who of us should be left alive or who of us should be born Only the innocent should then be favoured and rather than it should be so he was willing to put it upon the Tryal how or what we might prove hereafter He foreknew that Lucifer should fall that Adam would sin Saul become disobedient and Judas betray him yet he forbare not for all this to throw his favours upon them to shew his mercy is ever in competition with Man's malice and like a good Physitian if one Medicine work no good he applyes another like a gâ—od Husbandman if his Land yield him no Crop one year he cultivates and labours it again the Second and Third by which it often happens that one fruitful season repaires the sterility of divers years past Just so God still goes on and though he sees no hope to stop our malice yet he stops not his mercy this proceeding made St. Austin cry Praise and Glory O Lord be to thee O Fountain of mercies the worser I grew and more perverse so much the nearer thou wast unto me It is said a small proportion of chastisement suffices a Father in order to his Son so God as a kind and loving Father thinks a little punishment enough for his Children St. Chrysostome says that after the Master of the Vineyard had his Servants beaten and slain by the Husbandmen he sent his Son and for all these their outrages required no other satisfaction than to see them abash'd and ashamed of their Cruelties and Ingratitude They will says he reverence my Son so that 't is evident their blushing not their bleeding he desired Whence St. Hierom makes a result of this Parable that in God's Clemency there was no Weight no Number no Measure nor likewise in the others Malice So that our holy penitent beholding in every transaction of God with Man this fulness of Mercy might with reason expostulate and entreat his pardon Secundùm multitudinem miserationum tuarum according to the multitude of thy mercies The Application Let every one examine his life from the time he had the use of reason and I am confident he will find many tyes of obligation to this great mercy nay amongst the mass of Christians I believe there is none but ranks himself a favourite in order to his largesses of mercy For his love is constant and knowes no change this great and good God hath persisted for an infinity of time in the perpetual resolution of gratifying us with his gifts his enflamed heart hath entertained a continual solicitude without any truce for our good Witness the Prophet Jeremy who sayes that God hath loved us with an everlasting Charity His love is eternal having alwayes decreed to enrich us with his favours St. Paul proclaims it that he hath loved us before the World was framed It is disinteressed without any advantage to himself or hope of return on our parts No other motive than the superabundance of his goodness like a fountain which runs over his natural goodness throwes blessings on all Creatures Plutarch speaking of love sayes it takes any occasion be it never so slight to oblige the beloved he wants no baits nor snares carrying about him the matter of his own bondage So God's love never takes leave of a Sinner nay where Man 's impiety extorts as it were from him the darts of his Justice he seems presently to relent and promises as he did after the Deluge to do so no more so that his love being eternal unchangeable and devested of all self ends what can we ask of God that issues not from his mercy wherefore let us with holy David cry have mercy on us O God according to the multitude of thy mercies Amen CHAP. IV. Dele iniquitatem meam Wipe away my iniquity OUr poor Criminal having thus prepared his Judge the next care is to lay open his condition and shew he implores God's purifying Mercy by whose vertue the Chains of our sins are loosened and dissolved Nor did it a
any stop as if the Sage ruler of all things took no cognizance of their actions and which is done parhaps from a foresight they will persevere to the end in wickedness and having performed acts of moral vertues God allowes them a little calm in this life But in our sense when God passes over as undiscerned our faults he remits them without punishment and so seems to have been a stranger to our misdeeds but yet he never doth this that is never turns away his Face from our sins unless we first turn our Face upon them placing them before our Eyes and touched with a horrour at their deformity abjure and protest against them having done this we must then expose that abstract of wonders Christ Jesus before the Eternal Father that his wounded body may serve as a bulwark to defend us and appease his angry looks which implies the aversion of his Face or fury from us Our penitent having in this manner made his way he hopes the effect will follow that God averting his Face in that act will give him an abolition of his crimes that so he may reap the fruit of a Holy penitential fear We kow St. Peter fared not the worse when prompted by a low esteem of himself he requested his Lord to withdraw from him because a sinner No more did the good Centurion lose any thing in acknowledging his little of merit to have his house blessed and made happy by Christ's presence So our Penitent's awful respect in declining the Face of his Creatour springing from a sense of his own unworthiness and believing his sins an object unfit for an Eye so pure and unstained may perhaps draw benedictions upon him and contribute in a large measure to his happiness Wherefore he goes on still repeating turn away thy face from my sins The Application From this discourse we may learn the agitations of a Soul which hath once been defiled with sin sometimes he Figures God unto him as an angry judge and is affrighted to appear before him then again as a purity so compleat and Essential that though he should be conscious of no guilt as having been cleansed and washed as white as Snow he dares not yet stand to the examen Nay on the contrary it makes him petition to have that face which is the joy of Angels to be diverted from him we must then in imitation of our penitent fix only to this comfort that humility repentance and reverential thoughts though they keep us here depressed and under hatches will at last render that face we would now decline through the terrour of our Sins amiable and pleasing into our possession whereon we may gaze and feed our glorifyed Senses for all Eternity Amen CHAP. XX. Et omnes iniquitates meas dele And wipe away all my iniquities ST Cyril of Alexandria saith in the jâ—…stification of a sinner are required certain previous dispositions amongst which he reckons up faith hope repentance and fear Whence I conceive the apprehension of our Holy Penitent lest God should fasten his regards upon his iniquities mentioned in the preceeding verse was initiative and preliminary to his present address That his iniquities may be wiped away St. Austin holds it a thing most rare that any should embrace Christian Religion who have not first received within them an impression of the fear of God That the Ninivites became Penitent and shrowded themselves under a veil of Sackcloth and Ashes The only cause was a fear of vengeance threatned them by the preaching of Jonas St. Hierom upon the First Chapter of Malachy sayes behold O Lord how the fear of punishment diverts us from evil and that the priviledge of being your Children arises from a servile apprehension Our Penitent was not ignorant of this when after a dread conceived of God's judgments he immediately proceeds as if prepared by that terrour to demand an abolition of his crimes Wipe away my iniquities Besides he here explicates himself more fully that in case he do procure the Face of God to be averted then he is confident the sequel will be an expulsion of sin by grace For it were absurd that faith love and other qualities inherent should be necessary to dispose us for pardon and yet the formal effect to be extrinsecal and a justice not ours but imputed to us St. Paul desides this in his Epistle to the Colossians Christ hath freed us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of the love of his Son Where you see the infusion of justice by which a Man becomes pious succeeds to the Remission of sin by which we cease to be impious and just as the Air by the same ray of the Sun hath not only its darkness expelled but also is filled with light so that true Son of Justice communicating unto Man his divine grace doth at once by this gift disperse the Clouds of sin and replenish him with the splendour of inherent Justice The same Apostlâ—… Rom. 5. takes away all doubt in this point saying that the grace of God is diffused into our hearts by the Holy Ghost who is given unto us and that no mistake in this Text may happen St. Austin explicates it in this Sense The charity of God is said to fill our hearts not with that love by which he loves us but by â—heâ—…by which we love him It is then in this fountain of love which springs within us whose over-flowing streams arise from Christ's donation in these we are washed we are sanctifyed and made just by this regeneration we are said to become a new Creature and from an Enemy purchase the title of being the Son of God all which powerfully import a mutation and real change within us St. John in his First Epistle sayes he that doth justice is just Abel was just in that he sacrificed unto God with all the circumstances of homage due unto a supream Being Noah just in that he gave credit unto God feared his judgements and obeyed his commands St. Luke affirms Zachary and Elizabeth to be just from their compliance and obedience to Divine precepts so that it is clear the Principle of their justification was inherent and that nothing extrinsick or imputative can be the formal cause of our actions for if not issuing from something within us we cannot own them to be ours Our Holy Penitent filled with supernatural illustrations was not a stranger to Divine Lawes established in order to Man's conversion Wherefore he knew well his Petition to have his iniquities strook off involved the gift of grace by whose power alone they were to be destroyed Nay even Natural Reason will lead us to this Truth for justification is a motion from sin to justice whence its name is derived as calefaction from heat Now it is evident to expell cold will not be thought calefaction unless the quality of heat be introduced So the bare remission of sin cannot amount to an act of justification without the consecution
In order to this he first moves to have a clean heart created in him this shews him a wise and bold beggar that will not be content with scrapps but askes a treasure which may enrich and enable him to give to his Benefactour For this addresse implyes a reformation of all the faculties of his Soul the Scripture expressing frequently by the name of Heart both the understanding Will and Memory So that all these once purifyed and adorned with innocence he will be able to produce Heroick acts of faith and hope and the daily influence of divine favours still rising in his imagination must needs enkindle flames of Charity within him St. Hierom compares sanctifying grace with the essence of the Soul for as the powers and natural faculties which are the instrument of action flow from the essence So from grace are distilled into the powers of the Soul all those vertues by vvhich they are moved and carryed on to what they act Grace then is like a new Being vvhich elevates Man above his natural condition and puts him into a capacity of possessing God who is his supernatural end and by consequence it ought like a noble Queen be attended with a train of infused habits of Vertues The Theological furnish us with wings to fly in a straight Line unto God the Cardinal set us in a just comportment of holiness towards our Neighbour and our selves Nay when Sanctifying Grace shall no more be clogged with the Mass of the Body and relicks of sin her last operation will be to produce unto us the clear vision of God accompanied with beatifick love for the essential part of grace is the same thing with Glory and only distinguished like to what is perfect from that which is less perfect or as a thing begun from what is finished and compleat This Sanctifying Grace then is the fountain our Penitent thirsts after for the purifying his Heart and if once washed in this stream he may justly call it a clean heart witness the Prophet Ezekiel Chap. 6. I will shower down upon you a pure water and it will cleanse you from all your iniquities If this stain consist in a perverse action unretracted Sanctifying grace recalls this perverse action by an habitual conversion unto God and submission to his Holy Will If it speak an offence to God grace repairs this injury and makes that injurious Action no more voluntary If his ugliness spring from an enmity with God grace appeases all his anger and changes it into a love of complacence as a necessary effect not that to love us he hath any need but because a Soul enriched with Grace is just and righteous and whilest it is in such a condition God cannot but delight himself in an object so worthy and deserving If his deformity involves an obligation to eternal punishment grace clears all that score raising a Soul to that degree as she is worthy of Heaven Now 't is impossible that being in a state capable of enjoying him she can be lyable to such a debt wherefore there is nothing so hideous and abominable in a sinner which grace doth not destroy Thus you see what an expedient our Holy Penitent hath pitched upon to arrive by it to his designed purity and if he obtain his demand he knowes his work is done that is the operation of grace is so infallible as the effect is not to be hindred For it is not possible that a Soul at the same time can be innocent and guilty holy and impious have a Right to Heaven and lyable to eternal death So that being once drowned in this purifying Ocean he receives a pledge of all the felicity that either the nature of Angels or Men is capable off But it may be objected that our Petitioner may fall short of his expectation even though he obtain his demand For we see many holy habits introduced with grace to lye as dead within us no wayes disposing us sensibly to supernatural actions Nay on the contrary that persons so enriched are often disturbed and harassed with the insolencies of perverse inclinations Now the reason of this is that the effects of Grace are spiritual and without the Sphere of sense so that these supernatural vertues being of a quite different rank from the vitious propensions of our corrupt nature they do not by their presence necessarily destroy them This position our Penitent admits knowing that God obliges not himself to communicate unto every Soul all kind of supernatural vertues as a necessary dependance on Sanctifying grace but that he distributes to some more to others less in reference either to their want their disposition or the Series of his Holy Providence which deals the measure of his favours according to his will Having weighed all this he recollects his thoughts as to his own particular and remembers how before he defiled himself with sin God had witnessed a satisfaction in the choice of him making him the object of his most obliging liberalities next he considers that when God is pleased to sign his pardon and letters of grace unto a sinner he doth not only free him from eternal punishment for what is past but restores all the treasure he had hoarded up in the sunshine of his favour nay more conferres an addition of grace in that very penitential act by which he concurs with his merciful call So that he hath reason to hope if he purchase a clean heart that is if it be sprinkled with the dew of sanctifying grace his understanding now stupified in the mists of sin will receive its wonted irradiations his will born down with the weight of earthly affections will breath forth again amorous languishments after eternal delights his memory which now records the ugly species of sensual pleasures will be taken up in the holy entertainments of a spiritual life and in sequel of this he thinks it not presumption to believe he shall find himself in the same if not better condition than before his fall and in possession of all those precious titles the Divine Oracle had once pronounced of him This meditation puts him upon great resolves how to preserve and improve the purity he sues for that it may more strictly unite him to God who is his final end his hope and beatitude wherefore every moment he redoubles his petition Create in me O God a clean heart Another motive of this his Petition is in that the heart is the source of all evil 'T is from thence that Homicide Adultery Theft and other sins arise which gave occasion unto many great wits to assert that internal transgressions alone were punished by God and if at any time the scourge of his anger seems to fall heavy upon external acts it was meerly upon the score of bad example whose consequences are for the most part very pernicious to Mankind Besides as the heart is the fountain of all evil so is it no less of all good For the goodness and malice of every
that grand ballancing of all their good and bad deeds and by this means who knowes whether he hath not only disjoyned and torn the Soul from the Body but even from God for all eternity These dismal thoughts prompt him to fly for Sanctuary and it is no where to be found but at the Throne of God's mercy which he implores Free me from blood c. Again he considers with what a severe Eye God looks upon the sin of homicide commanding in Moses Law that blood alone should be the price and satisfaction for blood nay he extends it even to irrational Creatures that if any happen to be the cause of Man's death the Beast what ever it be should lose its life It was to prevent this unnatural violence that he prohibited the eating of blood so to cut off any practice which might diminish the horrour of it Besides the remorse and tortures of conscience which alwayes attend this sin sufficiently evidences that though in other Crimes his patient Justice seems for a while to lye asleep yet this he alwayes revenges upon the place For if the Thunder-bolts of his anger do not immediately fall upon their heads as to the publick view at least he begins the execution from the first moment of the Fact committed disturbing their sleep with frightful Phantomes and filling their awakened hearts with dreads and terrours that their life is even a burden and Irkesome to them of this are extant innumerable examples both in sacred and prophane Histories too long here to recite It is not unworthy our observation that a murdered Body should bleed afresh as it hath been often experimented at the presence of the murderer It is true many give natural reasons of the thing attributing it to the vital spirits not yet extinguished in the remnants of the blood retreated into several Cranies of the Body which by an Antipathy at the approach of their adversary fall into a Commotion and by this disturbance occasions the blood again to flow Others say it may proceed from a simpathy supposing the murderer to have upon his weapon wherewith he gave the wound or in some other part about him certain dropps of blood of the deceased by which Sympathetick vertue it receives motion in order to its reunion But my design not being to insist on Philosophical disputes I will not labour to weaken the force of their Arguments and only assert my Opinion which is that it speaks simply the extraordinary way of God which he holds sometimes in one kind sometimes in another to manifest and publish offendours of this nature Our Holy Penitent may be brought in for an instance unto whom it was declared by God's own command that notwithstanding all his Artifices in contriving Vriah his Death it should be exposed in the view of the whole World that future ages might see he whom he had chosen as the delight of his heart should have no priviledge in this particular and though he would abate something of his wonted rigour in not exacting his life for a satisfaction yet he would bring it near to his door by the rebellion of his Children with the Enmity and Machinations of many Conspiratours against him and that the Law of retaliation was not executed against him perhaps he owes it to this clause of the petition which he seems with more than usual fervour to have preferred repeating O God God of my Salvation We may here reflect how pernicious a thing passion is when once it hath got the Mastery and how soon it gets strength with the aid of dangerous occasions Our Penitent knew well that the Divine precept Non occides thou shalt not kill did not only forbid the taking away of our Neighbours life but likewise all rancour or malice towards him all injury by word or deed which may touch upon his honour or person all disputes contest or impetuosity of Choler these are the seeds of that monstrous fruit homicide as St. John sayes who hates his Brother is a homicide For by nourishing within you a little spark of animosity this from the heart appears in the Eyes which are the glass of the inward temper thence it breaks into words and at last sadly ends in his destruction Behold our Kingly Prophet and now an humble petitioner in his own behalf he is said to have been the meekest of Men and in consideration of his lenity and mildness in Government God spun out his reign to the Term of Forty years which was granted to few or none of the Jewish Kings with what patience did he sustain the reproaches and maledictions of Semei with what an admirable temper the long and restless persecution of Saul how tenderly issued he forth his orders touching Absalom that though he were actually in arms against him and thirsted after nothing but his life and Throne yet he commanded a hair of his Head should not be touched Notwithstanding all this upon a suddain seized with a passion of love both his sweet temperament and all his former habits of vertue proved of little use unto him The Christal of his understanding was blemished with gross vapours arising from brutish pleasures the purling stream of his inclinations which was wont to flow softly without noise and from the source of vertue is now grown into a storm of fury it is so deprived of reason as to imagine his own good and safety to depend upon the ruine of his Neighbour and therefore hastens to take vengeance upon him who never gave him the least shadow of real offence O what a Tyranny is the Rule of passion to make us love what is not amiable and hate what is not odious to push us on to desire what we should abhor and fly from vvhat vve ought most to covet Our holy penitent hath served under this oppression and novv petitions a release Free mee from blood c. Novv the Latins not using the vvord blood in the plural Number though the Greeks do hence it is that some infer and with reason that our Penitent aims at the remission of Adultery likewise because all carnal acts unlawful carry along with them a corruption both of flesh and blood this appears in Deut. Chap. 21. Where it is said that rotteness and worms shall be the inheritance of a luxurious person and as the one that is homicide destroyes the species of Man so adultery subverts those rules which are set down for his education a design which nature intends and drives at as well as Generation The one injures his Neighbour in his person the other in his honour and this not only of himself but casts an infamy upon his posterity It is storied of Vlysses that he met in his Travails with Circes the Enchantress vvho promised to make him immortal in case he vvould be naught with her and though he believed she was able to make good her promise yet he refused her less valuing immortality than fidelity to his Wife Susanna far less esteemed of
the one Espouse the other Lord in the one he shews his love in the other the fear which is due unto him in the one the security with which we may come unto him and offer our petitions in the other the respect and reverence we owe to so great a Majesty As our Espouse he hath contracted with us a holy alliance by grace which we have forfeited through our infidelity and therefore to redeem this adulterate action nothing but a pure act of sorrow arising from the source of Charity will suffice to a reconciliation But as he is our Lord we ought were it possible to dissolve into nothing before him in acknowledgement of our guiltiness and satisfaction to his offended greatness So that this Sacrifice of a contrite and humble heart seems to be appropriated to these titles of Espouse and Lord ascribed in sacred writ unto him For love rooted in repentance is the most proper compensation for an injured and abused lover and fear joyned with humility is the best allay to an irritated Sovereign St. Gregory sayes a repenting sinner for the most part beginning his conversion is seised with a terrour and fear which the memory of his treason doth work within him this makes him for a time consume in the sad apprehension of deserved punishment for his crimes and whilst he remains in this plight he heholds God under the notion of a severe Judge but by degrees the bitterness of these terrours wearing off by some glimmering hopes of pardon obtained he still continues his penitential acts yet with this disparity that whereas at first he wept lest he should be brought to Execution now enflamed with a love of spiritual-delights he melts away in Tears lamenting that he is with held from his felicity So that love and fear are still the materials of this Sacrifice which God will not reject This same Doctor observes the several agitations of a Soul in this oblation of love and fear First she calls to mind in the glass of her sins where she was to wit on the brink of Hell Next weighing and affrighted at the Abyss of God's judgments considers where she may be then casting her Eye upon the miseries of this present life sadly reflects where she is Lastly she contemplates the joyes of eternity and filled with sighs and groans laments she is not there Thus you see how a Soul is distracted that hath ever tasted the bitterness of sin If she look back she is affrighted at the ghastly sight of her misdeeds and hath only this comfort which God declared to Ezechias upon his repentance that he had thrown all his sins behind him never to take a further view of them If she look upon what may befall her the judgements of God are unfathomed Abysses into which she cannot dive and the sole buckler she hath to rely on that he will not reject an humble and contrite heart If she fix her Eye upon the present state of things she beholds herself surrounded with dangers from abroad and her own frailties at home against which her only fence is humility and resignation to his blessed will If she raise her thoughts to the end for which she is created she can but languish after it and frame ardent desires for the possession In these distresses our Holy Penitent marches between love and fear his love cimented with fear keeps him from sinking into despair and his humility fortifyed with a true sorrow resolves him to a future constant obedience to God's Lawes Thus armed thus guarded with a train of hope and confidence trusting in God and alwayes distrustful of himself he concludes A contrite and humble heart O God thou wilt not despise The Application We are here instructed how to prevent any repulse in our addresses to Heaven for a heart qualifyed with love and humility God will not reject this is declared in the person of St. Mary Magdalen that her love had purchased a compleat abolition of all her iniquities and Christ hath engaged that he who humbles himself shall be exalted St. Thomas says as there is no attribute wherein God more glories than in his mercy so above all he most delights in the humble it being a vertue which renders Men still capable of his favours and upon the same score he hates the proud because they have not recourse to his mercy as believing they want it not Let us then stick close to our Penitents doctrine and seek no other way to be great than what was practised by our redeemer he stooped even to the death of the Cross and so entered into his glory we likewise must either take up our own Cross or else with love and humility bear that which God shall please to lay upon our shoulders and if we thus sustain our load we need not fear that scornful World I know you not but on the contrary a happy invitation Come yee blessed into the Kingdom prepared as a recompence of your contrition and humility from the Worlds beginning Amen CHAP. XXXVII Benigne fac Domine in bona voluntate tua Sion Deal favourably O Lord in thy good will with Sion THe order of Charity prescribes that in the first place we love God next our selves and then our Neighbour As to God he is the primary and chief object which gives motion unto Charity because a goodness infinite which is the ground-work of our love is found essentially and most perfectly in him He being then the sovereign good of all things there is no goodness in Creatures which is not derived from him as the source and without whom they could not one moment subsist Insomuch as God is to me a greater good than I am to my self For though God be a thing distinct from me yet he is the good on whom both my self and all others depend wherefore I ought absolutely to wish and choose rather that God should be than that my self should be because it is better and more sutable to the inclinations of nature For Man is not carried by any natural propension to love himself more than God such an inclination were perverse and wicked Nay forbidden by the Law of nature that a Being created and imperfect should be preferred before one infinite and increated God therefore whose productions are all good never gave unto Man such a tendency The conclusion then is that we are carryed on by the impulse of nature to love God above all things even above our selves however this inclination be strangely thwarted by our passions and the corruption wrought in us by sin After God we are to love our selves in our spiritual wants and necessities beyond all our Neighbours in the most strict alliance either of blood or friendship Because the aim of Charity is to unite the Subject it informs with God and therefore St. Bernardin of Sienna sayes Whosoever defiles himself with sin under the Cloak of Charity this Charity is impious for that cannot be Charity which destroyes our own Charity