worthy to receive power and riches and wisdom and strength and honour and glory and blessing The Earth and all the creatures of the Universe do the like and present themselves before Iesus declare him their Soveraign and protest obedience and service to him I heard saith Saint Iohn every creature which is in Heaven and on the Earth and such as are in the Sea and all that are in them heard I saying Blessing honour glory and power be unto him that sits upon the Throne and unto the Lamb for ever and ever Let us do the same and from the bottom of our hearts say Amen let us adore Iesus Christ in his greatness and acknowledging his Soveraignty live in true subjection to his divine conduct The Continuation CHAP. V. Of the Motives which oblige us to belong to Jesus and to serve him by true piety OF all the Mysteries of our salvation that which ought most humbly to subject us to the will and power of Iesus Christ is the work of our Redemption for in this Mystery of love and mercy Iesus is our Redeemer we are his Purchase and have no longer Right either to our selves or to any creature Ye are not your own saith St. Paul for ye are bought with a price meaning we are Christ's who hath bought us with his most ineffably precious blood But the better to understand this sublime mystery let us derive it from its very source We are then to consider that by the sin of our first parents we should all have perished in him as guilty with him all nature should have been extinct by his sin for from his first offence he ought to bear the execution of the Decree pronounced against him by the mouth of God in these words In the day that thou shalt eat thereof thou shalt surely die And doubtless divine Iustice had annihilated him and in him humane nature and all creatures had perished with the Sinner if the eternall Father beholding his Son designed for the reparation of this offence had not repress'd the rigour of his Iustice. The Father out of the love he bore his Son suspended the execution of this Decree he saved the offender mercy triumphed over justice he granted this sinful man life and the world to live in and consequently humane nature and the world it self which for this sin should have been destroyed were preserved onely in consideration of Iesus Christ for his sake the eternall Father took compassion on us From this first Consideration is easily inferr'd that we owe unto the Son of God all that we are and all that we have and therefore we are as often his as there are moments in our life and as often as we receive any benefit from this bountifull hand of God and therefore all these rights which are innumerable ought to be so many tyes to unite us indissolubly to Iesus Christ. But if we dive further into the contemplation of these truths we shall find that by sin we belong to the Devil we have granted him that right which God by Creation gave us over the creatures we have as it were by sin made over our selves to him Thus by voluntary offence Man who should have commanded the World becomes a slave to the Devill and sels himself to sin I am carnall sold under sin saith St. Paul in the name of all sinners In this quality the Devill hath all manner of right and power over us and assuredly would exercise his malice against us if the divine goodness did not restrain him He would make us even now feel the same rigours which he exerciseth over the damned and dispose of us at his pleasure as he doth of souls eternally cursed of God were it not that Iesus Christ by his death hath forc'd us out of this captivity and devested the Devill of all right and power over us He hath blotted out the hand-writing of Ordinances against us saith St. Paul and taken it out of the way nailing it to the Crosse. Thus the Sonne of God delivering us from this captivity makes us his Captives acquiring by his blood and death a new right and power over us which he will use not with rigour and justice but with love and mercy the state of grace and spirit of piety having nothing but sweetness and indulgence He hath delivered us saith the Apostle from the power of darkness and translated us into the Kingdom of his dear Son For the power of Iesus is all in love and dissolves it self into dearness What Christian seeing so much sweetness will not resign himself to the excess of this goodness to the power of this love To conceive more fully the effects of the grace of the Sonne of God and his rights to us by redemption observe that by the conduct of God and according to the merit of our offences so soon as man is in sin and withdrawes himself from the order and end that God hath prefix'd and proposed to him he is nothing but the object of divine justice unworthy of any favour from Heaven Heaven Earth and Hell bandy against him God is obliged onely to promote the punishment of sin by malediction blasphemy damnation and hell If God stay the stroke of his Iustice if he hath yet some reserve of mercy for this miserable sinner if he suffer him to live and preserve him out of an expectation of his penitence that so he may escape hell it is by Iesus Christ and onely for his sake We must then acknowledge that a sinner owes to Iesus Christ all the motions of his life all the happiness of his soul all the good which may befall him in Heaven or Earth O how many obligations have we then even as many as there are moments as many as we have thoughts as many as we have received benefits from time to time so many rights hath Iesus Christ to our souls so many times do we belong to him Who can number these wonders Can there be any thing in nature able to break these bonds and separate us from Iesus Let us dive yet a little further into this consideration by an examination of particulars let us see how by daily sins we separate our selves from God and shaking off the obedience we owe him become slaves to sin He that sins is a slave to sin saith Iesus Christ so that the sinner by a deplorable blindness withdrawing himself from the sweetness of the Kingdom of the Sonne of God subjects himself to the power of sin which would infallibly exercise its rigour and Tyranny over him if Iesus Christ by his mercy did not suppress its malignity For as sin ruling over the rebellious Angels subjected them to its malice and rigour causing those Angels of light to be to all eternity Angels of darkness and malediction So the sinner from the time he offended should be abandoned to the same Tyranny and left to the fury of sinne which would precipitate him into
true piety is obliged to imitate Jesus Christ. 481 CHAP. XIII The Practice of what hath been proposed in the imitation of Iesus Christ 489 CHAP. XIV Of Temptations and Oppositions happening in the way to perfection and the exercises of Piety 498 CHAP. XV. In what Disposition the Christian ought to be that he yield not to such temptations as occurr in the exercises of piety 507 CHAP. XVI Of Temptations and the advantages a Christian ought to make of them 512 CHAP. XVII Of Resignations in Temptation 519 CHAP. XVIII Divers Uses that may be made of Temptation 525 The End SPIRITUALL TREASURE The first Part. Of the Divine Prerogatives whereunto man is raised by the State and Grace of Christianity The first Prerogative CHAP. I. How by Baptisme Man is appropriated to God and consecrated by the blessed Trinity BE ye perfect even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect These are holy words words of truth pronunced by the Holy of holies the God of Truth words that import the beginning and eminency of the estate which we are to attain words worthy to be engraved not upon the fronts of our house as a celebrious Sentence of the Ancients nor printed in our foreheads in great Characters like the Law of the Iews But in the centre of our souls and bottom of our spirits For in these divine words we behold as in a table brought from heaven what we are and what we ought to be We see that we are the image of God by creation and ought to be his resemblance by sanctification Our soul bearing the image of God is capable of God himself and hath an essence so noble and divine that nothing can satisfie nothing can fill her but an infinite essence Besides we learn that our soul being called to the resemblance of God nothing can ennoble her nothing can perfect her but the greatness and very perfections of the Divinity And to this it is that Jesus Christ invites us when he says Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect This only is the subject of this little Work I would to God that they who are transported with the wonders in Nature who can admire her greatness rare varieties and perfections who willingly confine themselves to the contemplation of the motions of the heavens of the extent of the earth of the depth of the sea of the admirable secret properties of every thing would turn back their sight into themselves to take notice what they are and what they ought to be to contemplate the singular perfection inclosed within their own souls the greatness whereto God will raise them and eminency of that state to which they are called If other Creatures are objects able to ravish our spirits and oblige them to contemplation and admiration with how much more reason ought we to employ our selves in the consideration of our own soul for which all things were created If vertue saith Plato be so beautifull as that her luster is able to transform our hearts and force us to love her what then is the soul of which vertue is but the ornament O soul saith one of the Fathers thou lovest the world yet thou thy self art of more value then all the world Thou admirest the Sun and yet art more beautifull then all the Stars Thou dost contemplate heaven yet art exalted above the firmament Thy God onely is above thee all creatures are under thy feet Let us begin to prepare our hearts to these thoughts let us call back our distracted spirits from so many objects let us withdraw our wandering eyes from so many curiosities and undeceive our hearts charmed by so many vanities that we may apply or selves to the acquisition of this knowledge for in being ignorant of these truths man is estranged from God and himself serves the creatures who were made to serve him makes his vanity an ornament and advances above himself that which ought to be under his feet and farther loosing himself in the curious pursuit of creatures or pernicious affection to the world he no more thinks of himself and which is worse seems no longer to know his God Hence spring all evils which overflow the earth all vices and disorders in the life of man Nor is it strange for how can a Christian serve his God if he esteem not his greatness and be ignorant of his divine adorable perfections and how shall he know them if he seldome or never consider them Beside how is it possible for a Christian to render unto God what he ought and to live as God requires if he take no time to reflect upon himself if he know not what he is whence he comes whither he goes how he lives In this it is he ought to employ his thoughts and time The highest employment of man says Heraclitus is to seek himself and we say the most necessary yet we are not with Democritus to put out our eyes and deprive our selves of the sight of all creatures thereby with more ease and attention to apply our selves to the study of this high philosophy the knowledge of God and our selves we need not go to such an extremity On the contrary let us preserve our eyes and attention to contemplate at leisure the image which I am going to describe unto you It is the pourtracture of a true Christian in which shall be drawn in lively colours the Christian vertues and represented the dispositions actions and piety wherein all Christians ought to live To speak after this manner is proportionable to this subject He that would make a man to see what he ought to be must draw his picture that he may see and contemplate himself therein The soul like the eye sees all things yet not it self unlesse by reflection To make her know her selfe a glasse must be set before her wherein are represented the true beauties of the state of grace the excellencies of Christianity her obligation to perfection her capacity to possesse God that considering all these she may see what she is and what she ought to be to her God Thus seeing her selfe she knows her self knowing her helf she esteems accordingly of her own being life and condition and by these degrees arriving to this esteem she faithfully endeavours to render God the honour love and service due to him careful to lead a life suitable to the condition and dignity whereto God hath called her To represent to the life so great perfection and to acknowlege what the soul is before God to whom she is called and may arrive by the assistance of a supernaturall power We must consider the essence and grace of the Mysteries wrought by the Son of God upon the Earth and what he hath accomplished in Heaven because they are the beginning and source of all Graces wherewith we are inriched they make us know what God requires of us what he will operate in us and by us These then we must propose Behold three which we
as Princes of the Blood And as the Princes of this world do maintain themselves in their Estate and that greatness which their Birth allows them so do you couragiously maintain your selves in all rights due to you by this new divine Birth O how great and sublime is it if you behold it with the eye of Faith The rank you are to hold with the Creatures of heaven and earth is the same with Jesus Christ who accompanies you to his estate and greatness the grace of the Son of God which you receive as a Christian giveth you right to his heritage If children saith Saint Paul then heirs of God and joynt-heirs with Christ. Now the bosom of the eternall Father is the only heritage of Jesus Christ there is his eternall dwelling there his repose there the seat of his delight the Throne of his greatness Even this is the rank you ought to keep there ought to be your repose your delight in the fruition of this onely happiness Remember that the bosom of God is the place destin'd for your eternall dwelling a place of glory and permanent felicity God only is your heritage undervalue not him for transitory vanities of this world forsake him not for the whole world unless you would be for ever miserable Admit this truth farther into your heart believe it not an imagination of a new Piety 't is the foundation of Christianity the ground and principle of the state of Grace which considering intentively you will wonder to see Christians confess these truths and hope for so great a good yet become so blind as to suffer themselves to be deluded by deceitfull vanities and vain illusions of the creatures to sell their birth-right for a mess of pottage and whilest they pretend to be the children of God glorying in so divine a being to live like the children of men thinking of nothing but the earth The second benefit is a great desire of Paradise sighing daily thousands of times after our heritage Heaven bewailing the want of and demanding the liberty promised and due to the children of God In this thought of our Celestiall Sion our sweet Countrey we grieve to see our selves so long in a strange Land It is hard to attend with so great impatience a happy day a good hour an honour which we are made to hope for yet we are without sense in attaining it the true and ineffable joyes of Paradise Great God! can it be that the Manna of Heaven should not cause us to loath the Onyons of AEgypt How long children of men how long shall we have hearts of Adamant insensible toward the things of Heaven yet open for the transitory goods of this cursed earth to love lying to follow vanity to despise eternall truths There cannot be a folly more condemnable Let us open our eyes and grieve to see our selves so fastened to the creature so confident in vanity so little relishing and esteeming heavenly things Let us be ashamed to see the children of heaven eat the food of Swine in a strange land not remembering the abundance of all things in their Fathers House Thirdly we learn that we must live nobly like the children of God Let us take heed we dishonour not our extraction and degenerate from the place whence we came Let us keep the rank we have received in the House of God The Emperor was derided for it who past his time and life away in catching Flyes let not us do so amusing our selves about the creatures and only labouring here for earth since we know all in the world is of less value then a Fly and that in the sight of God the universe is less then the least Atome Let us rather imitate that other Prince who invited by honour and the greatness of his birth would never run nor play but among Kings his equalls Applying this to our Subject let us say that a Christian being the child of God and consequently Prince of Heaven ought to expect no heritage but Paradise to seek no other company but Saints and Angels to take no content but in Iesus Christ endeavouring to follow him in all to imitate him in all since he hopeth to raign with him These Truths deserve to be deliberately considered Saint Cyprian in a Discourse upon the Ascension raises them higher saying That Christians as children of God are obliged to be like God The same is the Doctrine of Saint Paul Be ye followers of God as dear children The reason of this Precept is evident for if as children of God we will enjoy his glory to eternity the possession and the heritage of Iesus Christ and become one with him must we not necessarily be like him in purity in perfection in sanctity If we will possess God in God and live eternally in the bosom of God must not our life be wonderfull our actions holy if we will merit an estate so perfect and holy Nothing is more just Herein appears the Christian estate so great divine and perfect in that making us children of God it gives us right to the heritage of God obliges us to lead a life worthy such an heritage By this principle we see how much they are deceived who think and speak meanly of Christianity or living a life common to the children of the world promise themselves the heritage of the children of Heaven Let us teach them how they ought to live and shew what the actions of their life ought to be who call themselves Christians CHAP. V. What the Actions of Christians ought to be SEeing the state of Christianity is so eminent that it advances the soul to a filiall being so divine it follows that the actions of Christians ought to be eminently devout and perfect This truth is proved not only by the common principles that the life and operations of every thing ought to be conformable to their being but likewise by another maxime of Christianity that a Christian receive all by Christ and in Christ and as the Apostle sayes of him and though him and to him In pursuit of this Principle all the actions of a Christian ought to be done in the Spirit of Iesus and in respect to God which makes them high perfect and holy High as proceeding from Christ its principle Holy as being wrought in him perfect and pure as being wrought for him such actions we truly call Christian. To explicate this more particularly we must observe that a true Christian action must be done in grace in the spirit in the dispositions wherewith Iesus Christ performed his actions during his wayfaring life yet in a different way for the son of God as God and man did act after a divine manner proportioned to the eminence of his estate To work after this manner is proper only to him to this we cannot arrive neither must we aspire unto it but we are obliged to act after a manner very near this and the highest that can be excepting this For the
saw him but did not enjoy him few persons knew him he was not then seen but in his lowness as sayes the Apostle in the likeness of sinfull flesh In the Eucharist we see him by Faith a light as true and more infallible then that of the Sunne it self we do adore him in his greatness in the state of that glory which he hath in the bosom of his Father we handle him we touch him we eat him After this manner he is ours he will have us to be his he is in us and we in him we live of him and for him as he lives for us and the life that he lives in us is so divine that he composes it to the life that he leads in the bosom of his Father Now what more solid union what more intimate society what more divine commerce can be imagin'd what greater can we require of God Secondly During his life here he taught and redeemed Man-kind he dyed and merited for them but he gave nothing or if he gave it was little in comparison of the liberal profusions which he makes of himself in this ineffable Sacrament where he merits no more for it is not the time but gives himself to Christians and with himself all the treasures of grace and holiness This is a Sacrament of Communion and communication whereby the Sonne of God communicates to every one of us a life of grace the seed of glory In a word he communicates himself here as he communicates himself to the Saints in the state of Glory yet after a different manner and conformable to the diversity of the states of the Church militant and Tryumphant Add to this that in the time of the Incarnation Iesus Christ was upon the earth without power covered with our infirmities living in our weakness subject to the empire of death Now we possess and enjoy him in the bosom of his Father in the extent of his power having in his hand the conduct of Heaven and Earth Then he was in the World in poverty and privation but in this Sacrament of Love and communication he enjoyes the fulness of his greatness and is onely here that he may communicate them Thirdly Here on earth during his mortality he was seen but sometimes and that successively for some saw him in his infancy and no more others in his youth some felt the effects of his power in working of miracles many were witnesses of his death and sufferings All this past and was seen but in a small part of the World in Palestine in Ierusalem all the rest of the World was in darkness and saw not this beautiful Sun nor enjoy'd this agreeable light But in the Mystery and Sacrament of the Eucharist Iesus as given to all the World all the people of the Earth enjoy him from the East to the West from the North to the South there is no Nation where the Christians possess not Iesus Christ and in him all the estates and severall Mysteries of his life all that he is and shall be eternally Iesus in his life on Earth was in the quality of a servant as he saith of himself He came not into the World to be ministred unto but to minister also he was subject to Angels to men even to the very devills when he gave them power over his life in the time of his sufferings But in this divine Sacrament he is as in his Empire and in his Paradise we there adore him as our spouse governing his Church like the Sun enlightening our souls like a Prince establishing the Kingdom of his grace and the power of God in our spirits we there acknowledge him as a propitiation for humane kind rendring to the eternal Father the honour that is due to him In brief in this Mystery of Love we behold Iesus Christ as in the throne of his greatness where he receives throughout the World the adoration of his people and the duties of our souls In this manner the Earth is made a Heaven and we have our God with us and in us Let us consider these truths that so we may profit thereby and let us see what this divine bounty will work in us which makes such an abundant communication of it self in this Sacrament CHAP. IX The Design of Iesus Christ upon Christians in this most high Sacrament of the Eucharist WHat think we God requires of us for so powerfull a work of his Love What design can he have upon Christians in so divine a communication so generall a profusion of his gifts First he will change us a happy change for us for he changeth us into himself according to Saint Austin I shall be changed into thee but thou shalt not be changed into me Secondly he does thus change us not so much by a gift or created grace as by his holy humanity and the power of his divinity Thirdly the Son of God effecting this change out of the excess of love make use of this means to unite himself to us and to assume a new power over us as of a thing that belongs to him For having by his body taken possession of our member as his and made us members of his body flesh of his flesh and bone of his bone by his divine sacrament of union love and unity he assumes power over us by a right to him for ever When we shall consider these three Circumstances what can we think or say but that God will have us no longer men but gods He will have us to go out of our selves to be in him and cease to be that which we are to be what he is O how great is this How cleerly doth the holiness of the Christian estate appear seeing then this benefit is so heavenly and the communication so divine and wonderful in this ineffable sacrament we are by consequence obliged to make uses conformable to the thing it self and to the designs of God of which I shall propose some First That your sole contentment be to be with God who takes such pleasure to be with you that all things be unsavory to you that all the pleasures of the world be contrary to your heart renounce all lying and vanity Let even your smallest entertainments and ordinary actions be in him who is in the bottom of your heart who testifies such a singular love unto you This practice and affection will not be difficult if you be truly disposed to vertue for being vertuous it will be hard to take recreation in any created thing not in the least unprofitable word because a perfect Christian takes no pleasure but in God and that which is of God for being a member of Iesus Christ as such he is to act holily he must live of the spirit of Iesus Christ no way recreate himself but in him and in holy and vertuous things Secondly Recollect and form often in your soul a great and continuall desire that God be in you all that he ought to be and that
her own motions To dwell in our selves is to think of our selves to take care of our selves to have a continuall regard to our selves and our self-Interests to use the powers of our souls for our selves and our own satisfaction and not purely to please God To love thus is to wear the maske and false appearance of vertue but not to have the reality By these Principles of piety it is easie to see how dangerously they deceive themselves who speaking of Religious souls who are in a most pure and perfect estate and according to the eminency of their vocation say they ought to be night Christians as Stars in the Firmament and perswade others that they are not obliged to the perfection of inward vertues and that it is enough for them to become punctuall and to live with order and fidelity in their exteriour conduct making them believe that they are capable of no more that this self-desertion is above their strength nay that it were folly so to leave themselves to live in such a general manner of abandoning themselves This is a manifest errour for not onely the religious estate but even that of Christianity obligeth all Christians to the practise of these vertues seeing they are obliged to be perfect according to the Commandement of Iesus Christ as doth easily appear by all the Motives handled in this second Part. Now if all they who aim at perfection in any profession whatsoever must enter into this conduct of grace and subjection if they must live devesting themselves to obey God more perfectly and to live the life of God which is the life of a true christian the true life of grace what ought those souls to do who by particular graces and allurements of speciall favour are called by God cherished and inriched with his gifts O how great will these obligations appeare to those that consider them O how ought such souls to take care and be vigilant to co-operate with the designs of God upon them and to become faithful according to the estate and fulness of grace communicated to them This would require a long deduction for nothing is of more importance or needs a more ample discourse to content our spirits and satisfie our piety But it shall suffice that we shew the fundation and principles thereof of which we shall now speak The conclusion of the second Part. The care and vigilancy which a Soul must have which seeks perfection and would live in true subjection to the grace and conduct of Iesus Christ. WE have cleerly enough deduced and demonstrated by divers motives the obligation all Christans have to seek perfection and wholly to subject themselves to the spirit and conduct of God yet must we not understand this Doctrine so generally but that there is something more to be done and that we fail not in our care and vigilancy to cooporate with the work of God in us and to become faithfull to his conduct and here we will shew what this care and vigilancy ought to be Let us first enter into consideration of the excellencies of our soul that knowing it we may be ravished with its beauty elevated and excited to conserve it carefully in perfection according to the designe of God upon us This knowledge is not easie for the soul is such a lively Image of the Divinity and God hath invested her with so many lights that our spirits are too feeble to sustain the beams thereof and to penetrate the splendor of this beauty If we will speak of her we must say that she so perfectly represents her Prototype God that as we cannot better comprehend God then in averring he is incomprehensible so we cannot enter better into this knowledge of the perfect beauties of our soul then in saying she cannot be known For all that we can say of her is below her so neer doth she approach to the infinite greatness and ineffable perfections of her Creator The highest that we can say of her that seems to imply the last draught of her perfection is that she is a capacity of God an Image wherein the perfections of the Divinity are engraved so as we may compare it to a Seal wherein the Image of a Prince is perfectly and artificially cut As the Seal is capable of receiving the soft wax applied to it and imprints thereon a second Image so our soul which is the Image of God is capable of receiving God and receiving him once she bears a continuall Image of him his true resemblance The soul therefore in as much as she is the Image is also a capacity of God since as the Image she is capable of receiving God And this capacity is the ground of her being and containing in it all her perfections and beauty comprehending all that can be said of her It is not hard to penetrate this truth if we consider the designs of God in the creation of the soul for Faith teaches us that God alone is the end of our soul her fulness that he hath created her to enjoy his greatness to associate her into his glory to communicate to her his divine perfections In pursuit of this designe it was that he gave her so great an amplitude and capacity that she cannot be filled but with God which caused Saint Bernard to say that our soul may be occupated by all things in the world but that she cannot be filled with any but God who created her for himself alone to fill to live in her and to advance her to the enjoyment not of gifts not of grace onely but of glory and of the essence of Divinity All this begins upon earth and is consummated and perfected in heaven indeed it cannot be in heaven if it begin not upon earth since the soul after death enjoyes but what she hath merited in her life for we see that here below the soul receives her God by grace she receives him in his loving communication and she is filled of God by his Spirit which dwelleth in her and in Heaven she possesseth him fully by glory By this possession all her capacity is filled according to all Gods designes upon her Thus Saint Iohn We know that when he shall appear we shall be like to him we shall see him as he is Now we cannot see God and be like to him in glory which is a pemanent estate without possessing him and we cannot possess him but in this capacity which is given us by God which is the foundation of our being and all the perfection of our soul so great a perfection that we conceive it farther then we know the greatness of God For as God is great this capacity is great ample and admirable This deserves profound consideration and may serve to all men as a powerfull motive to sever themselves from all upon the earth and to seek God only for whom alone we are created who alone is our fulness This truth discovers the favour we receive from this infinite
all manner of violence abhomination and misery had not Iesus Christ sustained the yoak of sin and stayd the power of its malevolence So that we are as many times Christ's as he hath preserved us by his divine mercy from severall sins and abhominations If on the other side we consider our actuall sins we must acknowledge that they also serve to bind us to I. Christ for as many sins as we commit so many times do we deprive our souls of the favours and grace which we have received of God by the only merit of Ie. Christ and when Ie. Christ shewes mercy to us or washes us with his blood and withdrawes us from our sins to restore us the graces which we have lost at the same time he takes a new power and acquires as many new rights over us as he pardons sinnes in us By this meanes the sins which God pardons in us oblige and bring us to Iesus Christ. Thus on what side soever we look on our selves we wholly belong to Iesus and consequently are obliged to live in a totall dependance and perpetuall subjection to the conduct spirit and power of Iesus Christ. But if now to what we have said should be added the merits of the Sonne of God we should find our selves infinitely obliged to be united and to appertain to the same Iesus Christ. For his merits being infinite in dignity acquire to him infinite rights over us nay if we consider them particularly we must needs nevertheless acknowledge that Iesus Christ acquires as many rights over us as there are moments in his life since in Iesus all is of infinite merit We are his by his Incarnation by his birth by his teares by his sufferings by his Crosse in a word we are as many times his as he lived moments upon earth as often as he did actions in the world during his life here But if we lift up our eyes to behold him in his glory we shall see him incessantly offering up himself for us to his Father he is entered into Heaven now to appear in the presence of God for us as Saint Paul saith where he by continuall benefits shed upon us forces our acknowledgements that there are so many rights and obligations to appropriate and unite us to him as there are moments in Eternity What remains then but that we consider by what meanes we may satisfie so many obligations to the Sonne of God It is a decree pronounced by him That of him to whom much hath been given much shall be required All our life then must be employ'd in true piety a piety which shall establish us in a supreme honour in a most powerful love and an intire and absolute dependance on Jesus Christ. We must continually begg that as the Sonne of God changed his condition and became man to testifie his love to us and to deliver us from the captivity of sinne and put us into the state of salvation so we may change our condition and disposition to be happily converted into a pure regard of honour and of imitation of his life who is all love all goodnesse If you would desire some practises upon this occasion I would advise the perfect Christian 1. To adore the power of Iesus Christ and all his rights to us accept them by a voluntary subjection and rejoyce therein praysing the Sonne of God in that he hath vouchsafed to assume those powers and rights over us 2. To offer himself to Iesus Christ to bear the effects of this power over us submitting our selves by a true resignation to all that it shall please him to operate in us and by us for his will and glory 3. To pray to Iesus Christ to use his right and power over us and over all that which is ours notwithstanding the opposition that we may have thereto as well by the inclinations and imperfections of our nature as by the effects of our proper malice 4. Being transported by a desire to be Christ's often and continually to implore if it may be done the power of his spirit to annihilate in us and to root out of our souls and from the bottom of our being whatever opposes his right over us and may hinder the effects of his divine will In fine if we have not a sense of the power of Iesus Christ let us at least have in our hearts a violent desire to be his a firm purpose never to be separated from him and a vigilancy to receive with faithfulness what he shall vouchsafe to operate by the influence of his infinite mercy All this reaches no further then the beginnings of piety to Jesus Christ we now proceed to the use and practise of it CHAP. VI. Of the state of Subjection to Iesus Christ considered as the principle of Christian piety IF we make application of what hath been said we shall find that as the Son of God hath infinite rights to us so we are infinitly his we depend on him we have infinite obligations to him which the shortness of our dayes will not give us leave sufficiently to admire nor the weakness of our spirits to comprehend Yet speaking suitably to our meanness we may reduce them to two principles the foundation and prop of all exercises of piety interiour and exteriour The first is an acknowledgement of the soveraignty of Iesus over all creatures and over us in particular confessing that he is our King and Soveraign The first use of piety to Iesus is to acknowledge and adore his supreme authority it is life and happiness to know and to serve Iesus Christ. Therefore the Apostle desires that the Ephesians should know the love of Iesus Christ which passeth all knowledge to the end that they might be filled with all the fulness of God teaching how profitable and necessary this knowledge is The other foundation of piety is a continuation of the first the Christian acknowledging the soveraignty of Iesus Christ enters into a state of relation to and a dependance on him and adoring his soveraignty submits to his power not out of constraint or necessity as Rebells but out of choice love and fidelity which he renders to him as his Prince and Iesus This dependance must not be indifferent but the lowest and most submiss that is possible so that a Christian in this state looks upon himself only as a servant to Iesus and acts in all things only in the spirit of subjection and humility This subjection is an effect of our knowledge of Iesus and that knowledge a fruit of the light of faith and a gift of grace This state of service is proper and essentiall to the creature in regard of God the creature is essentially dependant and subject to the Creator It is an indispensable estate the creature may as soon cease to be as cease to depend on the Creator It is a primitive estate in grace and essential to all Christians the first step of our entry into the Church into faith
is supernaturall because in it there is nothing singular For the grace given to Angels and to man before his fall was also supernatural We must say that the grace of Christianity is a grace made for the Sonne of God and consequently worthy of the greatness of the Sanctity and divinity of the incarnate word this makes it the raiser of an Order and gives it a being much different from the first and from the order meerly supernaturall This gives it a being and order as different from the grace of the Angels as they are from Iesus Christ as the sonne from the servant Now applying what we have said that Actions ought to be conformable to their Principle we conclude that the actions of a Christian being sanctified and enlivened by the grace and spirit of Iesus ought also to be wholly conformable to Iesus Christ their principle being more then humane more then angelicall conformable to the purity and sanctity of the grace of the Sonne of God worthy the Labours of his Crosse and death To this end St. Paul adviseth that ye walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called words that deserve to be considered since that God will demand an account of us of his favours and benefits and will judge our actions and lives according to the dignity of our vocation according to the perfection and sanctity of his Grace in brief according to the life of Iesus Christ which alone ought to be the rule and Law of Christians Furthermore we must consider the rule of God over our Soules wherin we may admire the wayes and meanes whereby the divine bounty and infinite wisdome of God uses to give us graces necessary to accomplish our actions in that perfection and sanctity that he requires I intend not to speak of the secret and unknowne means of the graces inspirations motions and speedy succours wherewith God is pleased to illuminate our Spirits to enflame our wills and to direct all the motions and actions of our life But I desire only to insist upon the consideration of the Sacraments that the sonne of God hath left in his Church as channells by which he continually powers out this grace into us Baptisme consecrates us to the most holy Trinity makes us the children of God members of Iesus Christ Temples of the Holy Ghost and holy Vessells which bear Iesus Christ who dwells in us And the Eucharist which is among the Sacraments as the Sun among the Stars gives God to us and with him all the greatness of heaven elevates us and unites us to God changes and makes us little gods What would ye more Why is God think you so profuse of his gifts of his graces of himself but to operate in you all that I have said to give you a life and actions conformable to the being whereto he hath elected you Let us weigh these truths at our leisure and study to attain to the perfection that God requires of us Let us take care that all our actions be holy and worthy of God and let us not be carryed away by the humour or rather by the infidelity of such as ignorantly despise these important truths and necessary exercises The third Prerogative CHAP. VI. Of the happy Commerce and Society that Iesus Christ will have with Christians by the Mystery of the Incarnation THe holy Trinity having consecrated the Christian by Baptisme adopted and received him as a son enters into a particular society with him and by divers Mysteries which the eternall Word hath operated upon earth God enters into a Communication with men lives and converses with them So Saint Paul speaking to new Christians Ye are no more strangers and forreigners but fellow-citizens with the Saints and of the houshold of God Let us stay here to contemplate this benefit Adam being fallen from the happy estate of grace by his rebellion against God no sooner tasted the Apple of disobedience but he felt the punishment of his sin and was at the same time driven out of Paradise and banished the happy commerce and holy familiarity which he had with God This exile was the greatest rigour wherewith the divine Iustice could take vengeance on his sin This separation made his estate miserable and the condition of his children most unhappy We should in this malediction and just divorse for ever have continued if the Son of God had not come to re-establish all things to return us to God and to restore us with much advantage all other happiness that we lost by sin So that as the Apostle saith where sin abounded grace did much more abound for we enter into a familiarity and communion with God far more holy and divine then that of Adam by Iesus Christ we converse with God go to him are with him worthy the Spirit and Grace of Christianity Few value this truth men who only follow their own wayes nourished with earth onely to whom the delicates of heaven are unsavory can never relish this grace nor be sensible how much the presence of God is necessary Therein appears the corrupt estate of this Age all creatures resent the presence of their Creator Nature it self hath engraven in the bottom of our essence a desire of the presence of God The most barbarous Nations forced only by this instinct in the blindness of their false Religion sought esteemed and desired some visible mark of the presence of those they call their gods None but those of this Age have an indifference to these truths forget God mind onely their own actions in this world and are ignorant of the happiness of Heaven and despise it To awaken and draw us forth of this darkness consider that Faith teaches us that the happiness of the Saints consists in seeing themselves to be in the company of God and the greatest recompense God promises to our travels is to make us partakers of his glory to raise us to his greatness to enter into an eternall communion with us I will saith Christ to his Father that they also whom thou hast given me be with me where I am implying the society and communion of God with us and promising that eternity shall never separate him from him that serves him Now if the happiness of the blessed in their estate of glory consists in the presence and familiarity of God we cannot doubt but the happiness of the just upon earth consists in knowing how to preserve themselves in this desireable familiarity and presence of God The intent of the Son of God at his coming into the world and becoming an Inhabitant thereof was to sanctifie it by his presence and establish his power therein and dwell with us to the end of the world as he promised at his death This is it that he wrought by the mysterie of the Incarnation making himself man to live among men For this cause in the Sacrament of the Eucharist he becomes the food of man communicates to his abundant graces inriches
us with his gifts that by all these endearments and singular favours he might separate us from the creatures and reduce us to a divine society and communication with him Let us consider these two mysteries of our Faith and Love mysteries which give God to us and cause us to dwell with God The last is the mysterie of the Incarnation a mysterie of Love an eternall mysterie for God shall be man and man God for ever a mysterie causing God to live the life of man and man the life of God which between God and man effects an union and society so divine and intimate that he could not do any thing more holy nor desire any more intimate since it is substantiall and personall and shall subsist eternally Entring further into the consideration of this Mystery we shall see evident signs of this holy Communion God makes here a new World as the Scripture calls it a World of Grace and of holiness a World which he governs by a new conduct and providence For whereas before God confining himself within himself spoke not to the World but by his Prophets now by the accomplishment of this Mystery he comes out of himself speaks to us and instructs us by his Sonne Four thousand years he guided the World and his Church onely by his Angels the Interpreters and Oracles of his divine will Now Iesus guides his Church by himself he infuses holy motions into our souls by his spirit alwayes holy he governs all is present with all and is found by all What presence or commerce with God would you desire greater what greater society then that of the word by the Mystery of the incarnation To know it more particularly consider these Circumstances First in this Mystery God lives the life of man and man the life of God a life of society a life humanely divine and divinely humane for Iesus is God and man in Iesus we adore and acknowledge two lives one of God in man another of man in God Secondly by this ineffable union God communicates himself to man and by this communication appropriates to himself all that is of man with such wonderful wisdom that not dishonouring his divine greatness he takes upon him all the lowness of man and subjects himself so really to our infirmities that we say God is dead God is born c. and man by a happy exchange is lifted up to all the greatness of God inthron'd in the bosom of the eternal Father where he eternally enjoyes the proper glory of God Let every tongue confess that in Iesus Christ by that hypostaticall union accomplished in the Mystery of the incarnation man enjoyes the glory of God his greatness light and life Thirdly As for the life and divine mysteries of the Sonne of God we see he presented it to us the space of thirty three years conversing with us as one of us was an Infant in his first appearing laboured in his youth did live and eat with sinners in his wayfaring life He disdained not to succour the infirm in his miraculous life In a word he resigned himself into the hands of sinners a Sacrifice and was offered a holy offering on the Crosse for the sins of the World O wonderfull he died between two Thieves in the company of men so much pleased with the society and commerce of men What Religion ever had the presence of its God so visible what being was ever advanced to so great an honour To none but the Christian is this great favour granted a Commerce so sacred that it makes man God and God man By the ineffable mystery of the incarnation God unites the Earth to Heaven and Heaven to Earth The God of Heaven dwells upon the Earth according to that of St. Iohn The word was made flesh and dwelt amongst us all nature rejoyced at this happiness St. Iohn transported with love and joy representing to the world the truth and excellency of this benefit saith It is the same God that we have heard that we have seen with our eyes which we have looked on and our hands have handled So true is it that God by the mystery of the incarnation is with us and converses amongst us after a society wholly divine and onely proper to the state of a Christian. CHAP. VII Of the uses Christians ought to make of Grace proceeding from the Mystery of the Incarnation IN pursuit of these proposed Truths what may we judge to be the intentions of God but that his will is that we should enter into a holy and divine society with him and that we should separate our selves from all that may hinder or prophane this holy conversation with him since that Iesus Christ thinks of us converses with us by his divine mysteries unites himself unto us and abaseth himself to be as one of us to be among us we ought likewise to think of none but him to love none but him to converse with none but him and like the Apostle dwelling upon Earth to have our Conversation in Heaven Iustin Martyr shewing what Christians ought to be saith Christians are in the body but they live not according to the body they dwell upon the Earth but their Conversation is in Heaven This God requires of us this we ought to be in the state of Christianity this is the use we ought to make of the spirit and grace flowing from the Mystery of the incarnation But alass it is pitty that Iesus being now revealed unto us living with us and amongst us we apply thereto so little of our selves of our thoughts and of our love and busie our selves in things so small prophane and mean even such as are unworthy of man Let us do like him Love made him forget himself to converse with us let us come out of our selves and forget all things that we may raise our selves to him that all our content may be in him Moreover the state of the Grace of this Mystery obliges us to be holy seeing Iesus Christ with whom we converse is holy The Apostle says as he that hath called you is holy be ye also holy in all manner of conversation speaking walking working and whatsoever you do He that lives after any other manner saith St. Cyprian then holily dishonours the title of a Christian and is a reproach to Iesus Christ. Let such as believe not sanctity necessary for all Christians as well as those who live included in Cloysters consider these words We see in the Mystery of the incarnation that the Sonne of God enters into Commerce and society with us dwells with us is cloathed with our humanity God is made man that man might be made God not by simple denomination as God said to Moses I have made thee a God to Pharaoh and Kings in the Scripture are stiled Gods but really and by a being which deifies them For as they are true Children of God by Grace and as truly children by Grace as Christ is
by Nature so they are Gods by Grace as Iesus is God by Nature And if there be any who find this Truth difficult let him consider with St. Augustin that it is no harder for God to make a man truly God by Grace then it was for him to cause the Son of God to become truly man neither is there less repugnance in making man God by Grace then in making God man by the Mystery of the Incarnation Since then by this Mystery of Love God is made man why by an emanation of the same Mystery may not man be God And as by this society union and life which the Sonne of God hath undertaken the nature of man is the highest most divine and greatest communication that God could give so hath it effects wholly conformable to what it is for as the Mystery was onely operated for God's glory and mans advancement so it produceth infallibly the effects of glorifying God in a manner worthy of God seeing man that is God adores God and advances men to such a dignity as to be able to be Gods and Children of God by Grace Reflecting upon so eminent a truth do we not see clearly how holy and perfect the life of a Christian ought to be being called to so high a dignity a Prerogative onely proper to a Christian if a Christian must with all his power lay hold of this estate whereto God hath advanced him he ought also to have a particular care to become worthy to entertain this grace and to dwell with Iesus Christ in a great union and dependance that he may receive of him all the effects of this divine Mystery by whom all must operate in our souls and he must particularly dispose himself to receive the effects and Graces which uncessantly flow from this Mystery of Love and Communications for on this fidelity of our souls and on our union with Iesus Christ depends the foundation of all Good we can hope for And as all the happiness of the Creature consists in his being confirmed to his God and dependant on him more then the beames on the Sun so all the happiness of a Christian is to be bound and united in a most intimate society with Iesus Christ from whom being separated he becomes unworthy of the estate whereto God hath destin'd him deprives himself of all good and can hope for nothing lesse then a world of mischiefs The greatest pain of the damned is to see themselves separated from God banished his company for ever and the happy communion of the Saints In like manner the greatest evil that can arrive to Christians is to feel themselves far from Iesus Christ separated from him from whom they have all and deprived of the desired effects which they might receive by his conversation Let us take heed we fall not into this mischief and since nothing can separate us from Iesus Christ but sin let us shun sin more then hell it self And since nothing deprives us of the fruits and happy effects which we ought to receive of the society and commerce with Iesus Christ by his divine Mysteries but the Love of the World business and commerce with the Creatures Let us strongly endeavour to separate our selves from it and couragiously quit it at least in our affection if we cannot otherwise for the Love of Iesus Christ and let us quit that for the love of Vertue which we shall one day be constrained to do by the necessity of Death The fourth Prerogative CHAP. VIII Of another kind of Society and Vnion of Jesus Christ with Christians by the Sacrament of the Eucharist NExt the ineffable Mystery of the Incarnation we have nothing more worthy consideration in Christianity then the Sacrament of the Eucharist in which God shewes the last touches of his love and makes us most clearly see the designs he hath on our souls Faith teaches us that by the Sacrament of the Eucharist Love transports Iesus out of himself from the throne of his greatness to our baseness causing him to live with us and in us such is the purpose of Iesus Christ as he himself said as the institution of this divine Sacrament to establish between him and us a mutuall cohabitation that by this Mystery of Love he may enter into a true society with us be united to us and continue his life of conversation among us men to the end of the world He doth perform this promise of dwelling with us and in us by this high Sacrament which according to the Doctrine of the Church is an imitation and extension of the mystery of the Incarnacion to every Christian. This mysterie shews the commerce communion and particular residence which God hath in every one of us For as the communication which the Son of God hath made of himself to our nature united to his divine Person by the mysterie of the Incarnation is an imitation and extension of the supreme communication adorable and sacred society in the holy Trinity among the Persons and consequently is the most high and divine communication that God could do out of himself so the Eucharist which is an extension of the Incarnation in every one of us in the most divine and abundant communication that God can do in the order of grace For Iesus Christ in this ineffable sacrament gives himself wholly to every one of us and advances us and by his vertue draws us wholly to him by his power transforms us into his qualities makes us heavenly and eternall like himself establishes his Throne and dwelling in us by this divine mysterie Moreover by this Sacrament of union God is present with us is amongst us and united to every one of us after a manner so admirable and divine that we being not able to give it a name call it Sacramentall as an Union wholly hid from our eyes and covered under the shadow of Faith neverthelesse a true Vnion an Vnion that contains in it self and settles in us the presence of God makes us to be in God and God in us Thus God is altogether upon the earth in the midst of his People by the Eucharist and he is in Heaven in the midst of the Angells and Saints in the throne of his Majesty filling at the same time both Heaven and Earth with his glory presence and grace Briefly this Sacrament of Love gives us God causes us to live with him and of him puts us into a commerce and society with him and that with so much priviledge and advantage as we say that in this Sacrament of the love and fulnesse of God we enjoy Iesus more happily and more perfectly then the world did heretofore in the time of his Incarnation during his mortall life upon Earth I will more clearly demonstrate it that we may the more esteem so great a benefit and the excellency of the state of Christianity whereto we are called by the mercy of God First They who lived in the time that Iesus conversed visibly upon Earth
end is no other then God whom man must possess Thus by Creation man is not onely in a capacity to love God a most singular favour but hath also for his end the possession of God himself Whence we must conclude that as every thing seeketh its perfection and by a naturall and necessary instinct runs to its last end to enjoy it and repose there so man being created to possess God his ultimate end carries an instinct that drawes him to God and by the same Law whereby he is naturally obliged to seek perfection he is obliged to love and seek God in love and possession in whom consists his perfection This instinct is naturall and proper to him as it is naturall to a stone to tend downward and to fire to mount upward whereby it is evident that we must promise our selves not onely in Heaven the fulfilling of this Law but we must begin it upon earth and from the first use of our reason observe this precept Indeed this capacity of Love is fulfilled and perfected in Heaven onely in the state of glory but we must begin to love here We must resign to God who is our end if in the end we will possess him for whatsoever a Man soweth that shall he also reap saith the Apostle To this God invited us by the benefit of Creation to this he obliges us by an eternall Law a Law which he hath engraved in the Center of our being a Law which can by no meanes be defaced during our life a Law indispenceable For man was onely created to love God and hath no capacity more naturall then that of Love his onely business both in Earth and Heaven is to love God and possess him wherein consisteth perfection Considering these truths it is impossible to conceive to what blindness the corruption of times have reduced the spirits of men who being born for Heaven onely spend all their thoughts on Earth and separating themselves from their God are so strongly fetter'd to the Creature that they know not what perfection is believing they have power to dispence with so holy a Law But can this Law of Love be blotted out of our hearts Can we despise it notwithstanding the many reasons that oblige us to it Is there any thing more reasonable then to love them that love us what greater love could God testifie to us then to make us capable to love him and to create us to possess him even nature obliges us hereto this benefit is an act of Love God loving us to be beloved again we can do no lesse in acknowledgement of this benefit of love but perfectly love him we can never deny we are obliged to this acknowledgement if we would not be convinced of ingratitude nor can we acknowledge it but by loving him God who is all fulness and self-sufficiency can receive nothing of us but love and therefore by the same Law whereby we are obliged to acknowledge him our Creator we are obliged to love and consequently to be perfect since perfection cannot be without love God himself hath engraved this design imprinted this Law of Love in the Center of our souls and bottom of our hearts Therefore as Thomas of Aquin observes the form of our heart beares the image of this Love it is large at the top and pointed at the bottom open to Heaven shut to Earth to shew us that we live onely for Heaven that our heart the seat of Love is open onely to receive and bear the influences of Heaven and not capable to have any besides him who reignes in the Heavens and the form of our body straight and tall tells us that Heaven onely is the object of our sight the subject of ous love The soul by its most sensible inclinations is carried on to this love By the same necessity that the part loves the whole the sonne his Father man is obliged to love his God by Creation his Father his all and were it not that the soul ruines these motions by strange love whereto she tyes her self she would feel her self so powerfully attracted thereby that she would not be able to restrain the violence or to stop the course thereof This is so true that do she what she can though she do suffer her self to be transported with the love of Creatures to the prejudice of the love of God yet can she not root out these resentments of God so deep this Law of acknowledging her God is engraved in her being For when she hath loved all but God she sees that she hath loved nothing she knowes that there is neither firm content assured repose nor true perfection but in the love of her Creator Now though we would disingage our selves from this Obligation yet is it impossible for God who wills that we love him maketh use of all things yea even of our self-love to attract us to his love In loving our selves we love naturally what is good our own good Now God is not onely the true Soveraign good but by creation he would be the onely good of our souls that we might love him in this quality for what is more to man then God The Lord is my heritage and my portion saith David If naturally every thing loves his particular good why should not a man be obliged to love his God who is his true his onely good and if he be obliged to love him he is by consequence obliged to possess him and in possessing him to be perfect which is the scope of this first Motive The second Motive CHAP. V. That Man in as much as he is a Sinner and the child of Adam is obliged to seek God as the only remedy to his evils WE are Criminals the children of death guilty Laesae Majstatis Divinae the World understood aright is but a Prison where we are detained during the excution of the Sentence pronounced against the children of Adam the Offender we being such have forfeited our right we are deprived and made unworthy of all sorts of graces forfeited our priviledges for as children of Adam as sinners as culpable before God we have no more any right our selves to our life to our actions to the world or to any creature but having lost all by Sin we are left wholly to the Iustice of God who by reason of our offence hath reason to dispoyl us of all the gifts of grace and nature and to do with us as pleases him according to the rigour of his equitable Iustice. Moreover as children of Adam we are so miserable that we may truly say there is nothing more unworthy more unprofitable more uncapable then man his unworthiness is so great that he cannot think one thought of God be it never so little if God of his mercy doth not infuse it into him he is unworthy to present himself before his Creator to appear before the Throne of his soveraign Majesty even to demand grace and pardon for his sins This unworthiness arrived
make this point hard to it self I cannot believe that a Christian will oppugne this Truth and lesse imagine that a soul it cannot arrive to the possession of a solid and Christian vertue if she walk not by the way and light of the truths proposed if she do not found her self upon this spirit For if we consider and believe that we are members of Iesus Christ true not imaginary members not of a man or Saint but of Iesus Son of the living God and that in this quality we are truly and immediately united to him if I say we consider our selves as such do we not at the same time see that we are united to God and that by such an union we must be animated by his spirit live by his life and be governed by his conduct This is the first condition whereunto we are raised by Christianity the first grace we receive in Baptisme What vertue and perfection can that soul have which lives not conformable to this estate what doth that soul learn which knowes not his truth To what end is the rest of our practise and this great fabrick of devotion which we propose to our selves if we lay not this first foundation which is so necessary that without it all the rest cannot subsist If we have God for us if we are united to him as members to the head yet if we are not resigned as we ought to his infinite wisdom and loving conduct why do we trouble our selves with all the rest To what end so much care so much prudence and humane providence To what end so many desires He is too covetous whom God sufficeth not What can a soul desire to whom its God and Creator is made all things And if it cannot find rest in this where can it find rest What can content him who is not content with God saith St. Prosper Certainly that soul is very blind and miserable which is not content with providence and the love of Iesus I demand all that you would have of humane prudence in all things we shall find but two many reasons to invite us but a soul brought up in the knowledge of the truths of Christianity and nourish'd in the esteem of God will say with a holy person of our time that the poor Doves are more pleasing to God then the Serpents Let us then raise our selves up to God trust in him adhere to his spirit and beg light of him to penetrate into these truths to bear the effects of them and grace to live faithfully in his wayes There remains one motive more to see the obligations we have to belong to God and to adhere to him if we will arrive at perfection The fourth Motive CHAP. IX That this Precept to love God doth oblige us to perfection and makes us to go out of our selves to be God's COntinuing the designes we have undertaken in this second Part to shew by divers Motives the Obligations all men have to be perfect and to adhere to God and live in subjection and submission to his conduct and grace It remains that we consider in this last Motive the essentiall and indispensable Obligations that we all have to the Precept of Love and consequently to perfection to which end we must consider the two estates in the Church of God the estate of the ordinary Christian and that of the more Religious not to examine them but to behold the abuse of the former too lightly believing that perfection and solid vertue is not for them and losing themselves in this Errour perswade themselves that a Christian as Christian is not at all obliged to interiour life and vertue but that it is a work of supererogation and an unnecessary labour to be busied in acquisition of Christian vertue and possession of inward perfection a manifest Errour the more damageable in that it derogates from the honour of God gives license to the world and blinding their souls looses them and makes them slothfull in the search of the right way to salvation To undeceive our selves then in a matter so important and to secure our salvation which otherwise would remain very doubtfull we must intentively observe the obligations of these two estates that by this knowledge we may know what we ought to be Saint Thomas Aquinas teacheth us that the soul that professeth Religion enters into a stable and permanent estate wherein she seeks after true and solid perfection devesting her self of all that may hinder her arrivall to this perfection By this solemn profession she renounces all things taking in this manner of life as saith Moses the Abbot the wayes instruments and means to attain certainly to this perfection so much commended and recommended by Iesus Christ. For this Reason she makes vowes to separate her self from her self and all other creatures to appropriate her self to God and if she take heed to all the circumstances which accompany this action or if lifting up her eyes to Heaven she considers the will of God towards her in her vocation she knows that by the estate of Religion she enters into a profession which must sever her from the world and whatsoever is in the world to unite her to her God and to place her if we may so say in the bosom of God to live upon earth the life that the Angels live in heaven to lead in a holy communion the life that God leads in his holiness that is to say the life of God in God For as God is busied wholly in the knowledge and love of himself so the soul which desireth to perfectionate her self is not busied in Religion but in a pure and continuall contemplation of God and in acts of love which she doth with great care and vigilancy For for the soul to be as God would have her and arrive to the eminent and divine estate whereto God hath called her must be accidentally and by grace that which God is substantially and by nature This is much in few words to extoll the Religious estate and makes us see how holy it is whereto they are called But we are to understand that what is said extends to all Christians for the estate of Christianity is an estate stable and permanent which calls and leads us to the participation of a divine life an estate permanent and indispensable for it is marked with the character of Baptisme which according to the Principles of our Faith can never be defaced an estate holy and of a particular sanctity which only appertains to Christianity since it is consecrated by the unction of the most holy Trinity confirmed by the grace of adoption and enriched with the fulness of the holy Ghost who is given us by confirmation and conserved by the sacraments an estate permanent seeing it is indispensable for no Christian can go out of or have a dispensation from the obligation he hath to his perfection a perfection not indifferent but Evangelicall and Christian which the Son of God mentions in the
Gospel with such high and divine words words not of counsel as many think but of command in cleer and express terms testifying his will words addressed not onely to the Religious but to all Christians Be ye perfect saith he even as your Father which is in Heaven is perfect What can be said more or spoke in more express terms How would we have more cleerly expressed what this perfection ought to be then to say you must be perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect This perfection consists in the union of the soul with God and this union is made and accomplished by pure and perfect love the love of God coming from God above which alone hath power to give God to us and to unite us to God All Christians in generall are called to the union which is made on earth by grace and in heaven by glory Whence I first infer that as all christians are called to this union of the soul with God so are all obliged to that love which makes this union that is to say to a love pure holy and worthy of God a love express'd and lively represented by the mouth of God in these words Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart his words so express it that they speak all the perfection of love so generall that they oblige all to this love I infer secondly that the perfection whereunto the Religious are called is not different from that whereto all christians are obliged wherein many deceive themselves The reason is clear and the deduction of it is easie For if perfection consists in the unity of the soul with God an union wrought by true love and all christians as well as the Religious are called to this union made by grace upon earth and in Heaven by his glory Finally if it be commanded to all christians and to all men as well as the Religious to love God with all their heart that is perfectly and as much as they can in this mortall life by the ayd of grace it followeth evidently that these two estates which appear so unlike are alike in the same obligation of seeking perfection though by different wayes In fine who can doubt so manifest a truth no man can be ignorant that the Commandement of Love is common to all men of what estate soever they be No man can deny but that Love is the bond of perfection so St. Paul calleth it There is no difference then but in the way and means that we are to take to arrive to this perfection There are divers and we must esteem all and regard them with respect But if it be a question to make choice of some way to arrive to this love and if we must have Lawes and Maxims to conduct us thereunto and to conserve us therein it is certain we cannot find them more pure more divine and more assured then in the Gospel where the Son of God himself as Authour of Christianity showes us the way gives us the rule and proposes to us the maxims which we ought to keep to guide us to this love which he commandeth to live in this union and to arrive to this perfection whereto we are called and therefore Christians living according to the rules of the Gospel shall infallibly arrive to this high perfection and enjoy this most desirable union So St. Paul speaking of Christianity In Iesus Christ neither circumcision availeth any thing nor incircumcision but a new Creature and as many as follow this rule grace be unto them and mercy Under the name of Circumcision he teacheth us that nothing in the World no estate is worthy to be esteemed but that of a new Creature Christianity onely giveth us the grace and power thereof wherefore that is the rule whereof the Apostle here speaks Whence we learn the eminency of the state of christianity above all others We see then how true it is that we are all without exception obliged and called of God to love and to perfection This and more which might be said on this subject is true and yet notwithstanding it is certain that christian perfection is as the Sun proposed to all christians in generall the Precept of Love is equally given to all men and consequently all are obliged to the same perfection which is all the Argument wherewith I would undeceive such christians as would exempt themselves from both This granted it rests onely to consider the qualities of love it must be pure perfect and indissoluble the three properties of love in Christianity Pure for it regards nothing but God if it regard any thing else it is not for God nor according to God whence it comes that that which regards pure love doth separate us from our selves from all our interests and alienates us from all creatures as far as they obstruct our love to God This love makes us regard nothing but in the belief that God is there present by his immensity we neither tast nor feel them further then as they bear the presence of God for God being in all things the soul that loveth him enclines to him seeks him and finds him every where This love must also be perfect God saith so expresly We must love him with all our soul and with all our strength There is no need of explicating these words they are too cleer and evidently shew us that God will have us love him with all that which we are that is perfectly This love must lastly be indissoluble no force must separate us from God no violence must tear this love from our hearts no creature in heaven or earth no fear of death or of the loss of all we enjoy no good either present or future must separate us from this love which must be in us more powerfull then death more indissoluble then unity Now making use of all that we have said and reducing to practise all the proposed truths we shall find what we sought in this tract we shall see that by a necessary consequence we are all obliged to divorce and separate our selves truly and strongly from all that hinders us from loving God perfectly We are obliged to be perfect as our heavenly Father is perfect this perfection is not without the true love of God this love cannot be in us but in as much as we are separated from our selves the world and all Creatures Whence we learn that a Christian obliged to the love of God and to perfection cannot arrive to this estate which he seeks and is commanded him if on the one side he be not wholly subjected to God and on the other altogether separated in spirit conduct and love from all the Creatures Therefore he must apply himself earnestly to this exercise of subjecting himself to God and devesting himself of himself for it is certain the soul can never acquire this divine spirit nor arrive to Evangelicall perfection if she stay in her selfe obey her own will and follow
goodness the soul being a capacity of God as also continually regarded by him who sees her yea he sees her and he regards her to raise her to himself to fill her and fully and perfectly to possess her in a manner worthy of God and conformable to his love He will be all things in this soul he will be her life her love her good her confidence her heart her spirit her power and her conduct briefly he will be her All her fulness upon earth by his graces and in heaven by his glory Hence therefore may we take occasion to admire and eternally adore this infinite and inexhaustible bounty which deigns to communicate himself with such an exstreme profusion of himself who by an incomprehensible counsell of his eternall Wisdom hath created man upon the earth onely capable of his divine communications who only is a pure capacity of God who gives him power to receive the abundance of his gifts and to bear the greatness of his Divinity Assoon as we reflect hereupon we shall see the duties of our soul what our care and vigilancy must be For the soul being a capacity of God what remains for her to do but to render her self worthy to possess him and to be filled with him and altogether to abandon her self to his conduct and grace She is obliged to esteem nothing but him to live onely for him being created onely for him and this being the end of her being and life she must have no care upon earth but to suffer her self to be filled with God to be possessed and ruled by his spirit and by his power Thus we are obliged to two things one to have a care and vigilancy to take all away that may separate us from God and make us unworthy of his divine and loving communications The other to have a like vigilancy over our selves over our motions over our desires over our intentions and over our actions that they depend on God and be wholly submitted to his loving conduct Let us yet say this more cleerly if it be possible in two words The soul ought to have no care but that God be in her repose in her dwell in the bottom of her heart fill and possess her according to all the designes that he hath on her This done and the soul living in this care with fidelity God reposing in her as in the Throne of his love will communicate to her what gifts and enrich her with what graces he pleaseth and in fine conduct her in the wayes that he desires the soul having no other desire then that God may be in her and she in God that is after the manner that God ought and will be according to the greatness and excess of his love This is the One thing that is necessary whereof Iesus speaks to Saint Martha the source of all happiness the top of all perfection which Iesus calleth in Magdalen the better part Let us pray to God to place us in this happy estate to make us penetrate his truths Let us give our selves to him to enter therein and banishing all care all thoughts all love let us onely regard Iesus Let us require nothing but Iesus Let us love none but him who loves us above his life Let us cast our selves at his feet like Mary Magdalen and there melt our hearts and consume the poyson that is in them with the beams of this Sun of love that he may replenish us with his grace with his love and with his spirit that we may live onely by Iesus and as another Magdalen seek nothing but Iesus Let us now propose the dispositions necessary to attain so happy and desireable a Being THE THIRD PART Proposing divers DISPOSITIONS and VERTUES necessary for a Christian to arrive to that perfection whereto he is obliged by Christianity CHAP. I. What those DISPOSITIONS are and how necessary they are to the practise of VERTVE IT is now time to enter into the practise of that vertue whereof we treat and that we set our selves on work to acquire the spirit to live the life that God requires of us whereto we were called from the first time that we became Christians To attain this happy estate there is need of continuall Application and travail for we must not think to arrive thereto at one leap but we must bring dispositions suitable to so worthy a subject and labour not onely to attain hereto but also to persevere therein which we must do the more willingly and couragiously in that we are certain this way is the foundation of all our happiness the true way to Christian perfection and makes us live the life of grace whereto we are called The first thing whereto we must bend our study is to know and acquire the inward dispositions necessary to lead us to Christian perfection and to make us live the life of grace which is the true life of a Christian this we are to learn in this third Part. And for as much as this Doctrine is proper for all sorts of vertues we will speak first of it in generall as well that we may the more easily come to the knowledge of the particular as because many seem to seek vertue and frequent the exercises of Christian piety yet think not upon a thing so necessary nor know what this disposition is or wherein the spirit of vertue doth consist which is the soul and form of action So that laying hold onely on the outside of vertue and considering it but as a body without a soul they are deceived in their imaginations and believing they do much they promise to themselves great profit rendring themselves punctuall and taking a great heed to some exteriour practises of vertues which they propose to themselves We see many with much vigilancy every day or week take some vertue to practice they watch if they are wanting to emergent occasions and carefully mark their defaults to accuse and if it be possible to amend themselves but after long practise we see they make small profit because they forget the interiour and put not themselves into the spirit of vertue to practise it with necessary and convenient dispositions To prevent therefore the inconveniences which occur in this subject we must observe that in a Christian life all estates wherein the Christian soul may find it self and all the vertues that she can practise have ordinarily the Dispositions which ought to accompany or precede her and vertue hath a spirit which is as its essence or rather as its soul which as a form doth enliven and perfectionate her The soul that will live the life of grace and will acquire solid and Christian vertues must carefully have regard to such dispositions that she may possess them to do the action which she doth perfectly seeing that in her vertue is exteriour and superficiall She must further acknowledge and seek out what is the spirit of vertue or as some say what is her essence that
regret that a great number of souls shut the door of their hearts to God oppose themselves to Iesus Christ and his grace and by consequence will never arrive to perfection what pains soever they take because they neglect and disesteem the practices of true vertue and slight them to adhere too much to their own sense to love themselves too much and to seek too greedily their proper interests This is that to speak properly which hinders them from resigning themselves to the conduct of God Hence it proceeds that by too much seeking after their own satistaction their profit and the contentment of their spirit they grieve the spirit of God captivate grace and lose themselves in seeking themselves and in stead of uniting themselves to God they separate themselves from him and which is more to be feared they go out of the ordinances of heaven and from the counsels of God to follow their own will their own desires and their own conduct to tye themselves to their own flattering affections It is they must give remedy to their own mishap Let us leave them to speak to souls who will quit themselves wholly to acquire the happy possession of vertues CHAP. II. Severall practises whereof we may make use to attain Christian Vertues SInce the life of a Christian must be a life of grace a life representing the life of God expressing in man the perfections of Divinity it followeth that the actions of a Christian proceeding from such a Principle be great and suitable to such an estate and worthy the spirit of God which dwels in it by the grace of adoption And if the vertues of a Christian are so worthy and rare certainly the dispositions must be also great the way to obtain them singular and the practice extraordinary For as there is great difference between the morall vertues of Philosophy and the supernaturall of a Christian so must the practice hereof be different and extraordinary The wisest of the times past gave Precepts to form man and instate him in the most perfect use of reason they prescribed Laws to overcome and subject the passions to the reasonable will the most noble part of the soul. But all this considered is no more then to make us perfect men that is very reasonable but our business is to make our selves perfect Christians and as it is much more to be Christians then to be men there being a great difference between them so the practises imposed for attaining these two estates are different one as much advanced above the other as the state of a Christian is above that of a man as grace is above nature We must now build upon this foundation and advance the edifice of Christian perfection upon the principles we intend to propose Therefore we must speak and act as Christians not as Philosophers I say then to attain Christian vertues we must before all things have a great desire of Christian perfection and a resolution to labour in the acquisition of true vertues as much as is necessary and as God requires of us This desire must be efficacious and permanent from the bottom of our heart It is good also to awaken if often and to form acts thereof with application of spirit The first means to obtain vertue is prayer The soul that applies her self with perseverance to prayer cannot fail of the possession of vertue Prayer is understood two wayes first as a demand as if we should say that if we demand vertue of God he will give it us If any of you lack wisdom let him ask of God that giveth to all men liberally This Proposition is true in this sense but this demand must be accompanyed with these considerations true desire of vertue perseverance in prayer a vigilancy to become faithful to the grace that God communicates to us otherwise our demand will be without effect our prayer without fruit It is not sufficient for the soul that would be said to arrive at Christian perfection to nourish in it self vertuous desires and to demand them of God if she be not also careful to demand them as she ought and if she doth not with vigilancy labour in the practise and exercise of these vertues God will have us co-operate with his grace and put to our hand to do with him what he will operate in us so that to obtain vertues we must demand them of God but in demanding them we must labour therein Thus we must understand the acquisition of vertues by prayer This Proposition is built upon this truth That we cannot have vertue unless God give it and God gives it not but with an intent that we should co-operate therein and that we should labour on our parts shewing in this co-operation the fidelity of our souls For this end hath God given us free will There is yet another way of obtaining vertues by prayer understanding by prayer meditation or as we say ordinarily mentall prayer The soul which applies it self to this exercise considering the greatness of the Divinity the verities of Faith the beauty and stability of eternall things the inconstancy of temporall the vanity of all in the World easily apprehends the love of Truth and a contempt of vanity two foundations necessary to the perfections of a Christian life the soul by this exercise remaining united and tyed to God receives the rayes of this divine light which is the life and way of our souls and if she persevere with fidelity must at last be wounded with this love which she so contemplates By this means entring into the enjoyment of divine love which is alwayes liberall of Communications she will infallibly receive the Vertues necessary for her and be inriched with most pure gifts agreeable to the greatness of God who will give her more then sufficiently graces convenient for living in the perfection of Christian Vertues wherein appeares the necessity and profit of this manner of prayer which elevates us to God causes us to enter into a conversation with God unites us to him enlightens us transforms us and disposes us to the life of grace and leads us to the acquisition and possession of true Vertues Food is not so necessary to the life of the body as this manner of prayer to the life of the soul and the acquisition of Vertues The second meanes to acquire Christian vertues is mortification which is absolutely necessary to the soul that will live the life of grace that is to say Christianly We must remember and intentively consider that we are all the Children of Adam living his life following the inclinations of the being of Adam to be christian is to be the Child of Iesus Christ to live his life wholly to follow the spirit motions and holy inclinations of Iesus Christ into this state and new-being we are put by Baptisme As many of you saith St. Paul as have been baptized into Christ have put on Christ meaning they are made like the Son of God
they are by grace that which Iesus Christ is by nature This truth granted it is easie to comprehend the necessity of mortification If to be christians we must be re-invested in Iesus Christ that is live of his spirit and follow his motions and inclinations then to arrive to this happiness we must uncloath our selves of the spirit and inclinations of Adam and we must to speak in the words of the Apostle Put off the old man and put on the new man this cannot be done but by mortification which is the more necessary in that the inclinations and spirit of Adam are as much different from those of Iesus Christ as the Heaven is distant from the Earth These two spirits are as contrary one to the other as the animal is to the spirituall according to the Apostle who saith The first man is of the earth earthy the second man is from Heaven and cannot accord together Now to argue by the rule of contraries we must say that to establish the one it is necessary to annihilate the other to plant good we must root out evill so he that would love christianity that is according to the spirit and vertue of Iesus Christ must take away and mortifie the spirit and inclinations of Adam which are in all alwayes contrary to Iesus Christ. The Son of God came into the world as Saint Iohn saith to destroy the works of the Devill The spirit of Adam is a sinner and his inclinations are but concupiscences works of the flesh therefore is the Sonne of God come to destroy them We must also labour and co-operate with him to destroy in us and to root out of us all that sin hath put in us wherein mortification assists us This that Divinity which we call mysticall teaches us which requires that a christian to arrive to that perfection whereto God calleth him passeth through the purgative life in the wayes of mortification annihilation and resignation that by this exercise the soul may purge and cleanse it self from all that is in her opposite to grace and the true possession of God This Doctrine is founded on a Truth which most know but consider not sufficiently That the whole nature and being of man is corrupt all his inclinations turned to evill carrying the centre the source and seed of all vice and imperfection in it Now to order it so as that this nature of Adam this being may be possessed of God replenished with vertuous inclinations and that he may have in himself true charity the seed and principle of all Christian vertues he must necessarily take from it the evill that is in it for the good and perfection cannot be there but in taking away and rooting out the corruption and imperfection which cannot be done without a serious and continuall mortification inward or outward Whence we learn that to acquire christian vertues it is not enough to demand them of God by prayer which we call a demand nor to consider them in mentall prayers and to make good resolutions thereon it is not enough to know them and desire them nor to do acts of them and to produce many practises of them but we must also root out of the foundation of our soul all that which is contrary to vertue The man who desires to live a good christian and aspires to true vertue as the onely way to Heaven must not so much busie himself in the acquisition of vertues by the practise of them as he must labour to root out of his heart and pull out of the foundation of his being all oppositions inclinations and customs contrary to true vertue For as soon as he hath emptied his heart of all that is displeasing to God and contrary to him God will from that moment replenish and possess his heart and liberally extend to him the graces and vertues necessary for him but withall according to the measure in which God gives them to him he must be faithfull on one side to correspond with the grace given him on the other he must labour to render himself more and more capable of the spirit and possession of God he endeavouring to cleanse and purify his heart and God continually replenishing and consecrating it for his own dwelling and sanctifying it by his grace By this amorous combate God always gives and is always augmenting his gifts man receives and in receiving disposes himself more and more to receive more abundantly the sweet bounties of God all which is done in the soul proportionably to her purifying and mortifying her self from all that is disagreeable and contrary to the spirit of God By mortification and the purgative life we not onely understand corporall austerities such as affect the sense as macerations fastings and other exercises which rob the sense of what is most agreeable to it which although they be good and profitable and sometimes necessary yet are they not principall but we apply this Doctrine first to interiour mortifications whereby the soul purifies her heart annihilates her sources therein and pulls away the roots of imperfections and of all that is displeasing to God By this exercise she stifles as much as she can the seeds of self-love though hid in every thing she strives to gain a perfect victory over her self her principall care is to annihilate her will her intentions her desires her thoughts and inclinations to those of God choosing in all things that which is most pure most conformable to the spirit of Iesus most opposite and contrary to her own inclinations and unruly affections Hereunto she wholly addicts her self herein she is very vigilant she knows it generally a maxime that the more the heart of man is filled with the creatures and the love and regard of himself the more she is separated from God voyd of his spirit and true vertue Therefore she endeavours to exercise her self in this interiour mortification Another Reason which obligeth us to the spirit and exercise of mortification is that the Devil makes use of our inclinations of our habits of our desires and of our self-love yea he makes use of our selves against our selves and of our nature subjected as well by the sin of Adam as our actuall sins he makes use I say thereof to cast us away and to separate us from God even in things most holy and the most interiour and therefore to avoid the perils and to take the weapons from the hands of our enemie whereof he makes use to undo us we must necessarily pass through the purgative life we must go out of our selves out of the life of Adam to be in Iesus Christ and to live of his life and we must mortifie our selves to make place for God and take from our heart all that may displease him that is opposite to his grace and by this exercise we shall easily arrive to the acquisition of Christian vertues CHAP. III. That the adherence of a Soul to Iesus Christ is the most perfect
the words as all good all wise all mighty this manner is sufficient Therefore we must accustom our selves to make use of that which Faith proposes and after excite in our selves the thought of God and entertain our selves therein not by speculation but by obedience and affection which is that we call an affective thought of God as if we should say in our hearts yea my God thou art wholly wise and wholly good I will leave my self to thy conduct I will submit my self to thy divine will By these frequent thoughts of God the soul unites it self to God adheres to his truths and by little and little ascends to the knowledge of God This manner is not hard neither requires it any rule we must onely be vigilant often to apply our selves thereto when any thing gives occasion thereof To arrive to the knowledge of our selves it suffices not to consider our own impotency our feebleness and our imperfections we see them and know them but too much we make a custom of it and this truth will never lead us to humility but we must elevate our thoughts and make use of the knowledge of God thus The soul must present it self before God and having conceived as well as she can the infinite being and soveraign Majesty of the Divinity before which she is she regards him she adores him then she begins to compare her being with that of God she entertains her self in this thought and in this regard and presently acknowledging the exaltation of the divine essence above her own she accounts her self as if she were not by reason of the infinite distance she sees betwixt God and her and in this view she regards her self rather in a not being and a nothing then in a being The soul filling her self with this thought and possessed with this truth humbles her self in the knowledge of her nothing and abases her self as much as she can For having conceived the greatness of God throughout she sees that she is a meer nothing This truth annihilates all creatures yea the most perfect upon earth and the Saints in Heaven forc'd by this principle humble themselves and make themselves as nothing before the supreme and incomprehensible Majesty of God in respect of whom all creatures together are not so much as one grain of Sand. The soul in the sight of this truth must say in her self If all creatures are nothing before God what am I who am the least And if I am nothing before God can I make my self any thing If before the Creator I find not my self by reason I am so much plung'd into nothing would I to the prejudice of truth appear to be something before the Creature In the consideration of this truth the spirit is vanquished the soul knowes what she is and is constrained to humble her self We must passe farther and enter into the consideration of the totall and absolute dependance wherein the soul is in regard of God a dependance so great that she holds onely of God she subsisteth not nor moveth but in God with so much necessity that the beames subsist not by nor depend more on the Sun then the soul doth on her God O happy dependance which gives us God and binds us to God! In considering this truth the soul finds that she is nothing and that she hath nothing either in the order of the essence created or in the order of grace for all is in God and depend on God in such manner that if God should wholly withdraw himself she should leave to be that which she is and should find her self in her nothing So that if she have any thing she sees that it is in God not in her self in him saith St. Paul we live and move and have our being Reflecting hereupon she saith in her heart If all that I have belong not to me nor is of me but of God and belongs to God then am I nothing nor have any thing Wherefore do I flatter my self and believe my self to be something when in truth I am nothing why do I glorifie my self and please my self in that which belongs not to me wherefore should I attribute to my self the honour contentment and glory which belongs onely to my Lord No no I will keep in my meanness I will hide my self in the abysse of my nothing and if God be merciful unto me and out of his bounty give me something I will hold it of him I will onely keep it for him and I resolve from this time and to all eternity I will live in the dependance that I owe to the regard of my Lord and God Let us not stay here but advance forward to the light of truth and let us cast our eyes upon the need we have of God and we shall find what we are and that we are nothing nor have nothing as having received all of God and we possess nothing either temporall or spirituall in nature or in grace but onely that which God reserves and if he should be pleased to withdraw his gifts or cease to preserve them we should find our selves like Adam naked and poor and should return to our nothing Let us behold our selves then so naked and devested and let us pause upon this thought and upon this consideration and we shall be ashamed to look upon our selves and we shall be forced whether we will or not to humble our selves but with a humility full of love and confidence which shall make us lift up our eyes to Heaven to behold him on whom we so absolutely depend from whose hands we have received all and must yet every moment receive influence conduct grace and stability and that so necessarily that if we happen to separate our selves from him and if he but stop his assistance and his concourse leaving us to our selves we assuredly shall fall and in an instant lose all in what state soever we are of Sanctity and grace O most powerful Truth to humble us if considered a truth that humbles the most holy and just upon earth and which annihilates the Angels and Seraphims in Heaven a truth which makes the glorious spirits Angels and Saints who enjoy God to acknowledge that they have nothing but of the mercy of God and that they have no stability but in God an acknowledgement so strong that it were able to pluck them and unite them to him indissolubly if otherwise they were not ty'd to him by the state of glory This is the very state of a soul of Iesus who knowing the greatness of God and seeing himself his Creature penetrating those truths by a light springing from the personall union of the word a light worthy of the glory of the Sonne of God humbles it self but with a humility that shall be eternall a humility more profound then that of all the Saints and Angels a humility which alone is worthy to honour and adore the infinite Essence and the supreme Majesty of God So that
perfection that we possess nor from solid vertue whereof we have not one grain but from self-love from adhering to our own wills from wamt of mortification and most commonly from secret vanity We fall not into these evils but because we have not sought God purely but our selves and our own satisfactions and for not endeavouring the possession of solid and Christian vertues The remedy of all this you shall find in the Image of a perfect Christian which I here present to your view Consider the vertues which imbellish him labour to attain them see the dispositions wherein he is how pure and solid they are endeavour to enter into them and concern your self therein and I am confident that you shall find a stable peace you shall put a Paradise into your heart you shall find in all that hath been said the foundation of this pourtraict and the interiour of a perfect Christian. THE FOURTH PART Sheweth how we must guide our selves in all occurrences and in all estates of humane life CHAP. I. Of the care a Christian ought to have to perfect his exteriour TO draw the last lines of our perfect Christian we must present likewise his outward appearance for therein also consisteth his perfection The interiour and the exteriour are two estates so conjoyned and dependant one upon another that the perfection of a man cannot be intire if those two estates are not in all things conformable One is the image of the other and as the ancient divine Philosopher said Beauty is a flash of goodness as all flowers and leaves take their beauty from the root so all that is outwardly fair in man is but a beam of his inward goodness the fruits and leaves of his perfect and vertuous actions are but the effects of the root of inward perfection Inward perfection begets the outward one cannot be without the other Good if it be perfect must be such in all parts if one fail this defect takes away its vertue and makes it vicious Man is a whole composed of parts neither all soul nor all body but consisting of both To be good he must be perfect in both in the soul the interiour in the body the exteriour in the actions of the one as the faculties of the other St. Ambrose speaking of the Mother of God the pattern of vertue saith that her exteriour Beauty her demeanour and the actions of her life were images of the vertues and incomparable perfections of her soul and although Iesus Christ by the Mystery of the Incarnation meant to hide the greatness of his Divinity in the lowness of our nature and hid himself thirty years in an obscure life yet it alwayes appeared from time to time nor could he avoid it but that his face his body and actions discover'd what he was Nor indeed could it be otherwise for the exteriour can have no good but what it borrows of the interiour as of its root and the interiour cannot be perfect but the exteriour will bear and manifest the effects thereof Vertue if it be true hath a lustre like the Emerald which sparkles in the obscurest night it can no more be hid then fire can be retain'd in the bosom of the Earth which will force a way to its centre or the light of the Sun be clouded by any shade so thick but its beams will break through So likewise is it impossible for a man to have a good vertuous interiour and the splendor of his vertues not appear to the eyes of men through the most secret of his actions This is the intention of God and a sign that the vertue we have is heavenly for it tends alwayes to its centre And as the needle touched by the Loadstone is in perpetuall motion till it hath found her North So the soul touched by the vertue of Heaven is alwayes in action seeking every where till she have found her God Men light not a Candle to put it under a Bushel God gives not vertue to smother it he will glorifie himself in his Elect. If our vertue be of God it will manifest the effects thereof causing it self to be honour'd and acknowledg'd For this reason they who have any sense of Heaven who love the truth and walk sincerely never approve those who dissemble in the World and appear evill or lesse good not regarding the exteriour so they have a good intention let the rest go as it will It is sufficient they say that God knowes them they alwayes condemn those who out of reasons of state or private considerations outwardly appear either evil or indifferent hide themselves when they pray dare not communicate in publick or do any act of vertue in view of their Neighbours We must not indeed endeavour to be seen much lesse to be esteemed or affect the sight of men but on the other side we must not fear them We are oblig'd to have an exteriour as well as an interiour and we must please and honour God as well by the exteriour as by the interiour Every one will grant that it is not allowed any to be good and to appear evill it is scandalous nay further it is impossible to be good and commit evill actions for a good Tree cannot bring forth evill fruit If we live in the spirit saith St. Paul let us also walk in the spirit he meanes our life is a life of God for spirit with St. Paul signifies God and if our interiour be truly perfect according to Christian perfection whereof we have sufficiently spoken our exteriour actions must also be in spirit and in a divine spirit and must bear the image of God who lives in us This may be more clearly understood by the advice of the same St. Paul we walk not saith he speaking of good Christians after the flesh but after the spirit He then that will be a good Christian must order his outward actions according to the spirit of God who lives in us not after the flesh and the World enemies to the spirit of God To be vertuous and to do acts of vice to have light in the heart and to do actions of darkness to be in the Temple of God and to sacrifice to Baal can neither be comprehended by man nor approved by reason To desire to please the World and to be circumcised and worship the Moon is to be a Samaritan God loves simplicity sincerity and curses the double heart He then that will be a perfect Christian must have his heart in his hands and his hands in his heart if he esteem God truly in his heart he must shew it in his works if he fear God in his soul why doth he not testifie it in his actions what can we love thee well O God of our souls yet make shew to hate thee Can we have thee in our hearts and thy enemy the World in our hands and mouth No no a Christian if he fear God at home in his own house will fear
him abroad in the Kings Palace The devout soul who beholds God in her heart and sees nothing but God there beholds him every where She knowes not that the World sees her she onely knowes her God beholds her and she her God that suffices her If a Christian love his God he will love him every where and not considering men he will say with the spouse my God is mine and I am his The Christian Master St. Paul gives us a good lesson upon this subject and in divers places furnishes us with reasons to perswade us to the care we ought to have of the outward man and of the actions that appear to the eyes of men he sayes that first we owe to God the care of perfecting our exteriour for God will be honoured by our actions This object we must have continually before our eyes this thought must never go out of our souls the reason that the Apostle gives is that we are not our own but Gods whether we live or die we are the Lords saith he and consequently in all our exteriour actions we must have a regard to God as if I should say whether at Court in publick or private in happiness or misfortune in what estate soever I am in of death or life what condition soever I live in I am Gods and therefore must so order my self that in all conditions and estates I may honour God by my actions that my exteriour may be as agreeable to him as my interiour Know you not saith the Apostle that your body is the Temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you which ye have of God and ye are not your own for ye are bought with a price therefore glorifie God in your Body By the first words he shewes the dignity of our bodies seeing that they possess the holy spirit by the rest the obligation we have to take care of our exteriour that it may give God the honour he expects This Doctrine stops the mouth of all the reasons or rather excuses of those who dissemble what they are and not esteeming the exteriour content themselves with good intentions We must say they live among the living we must accommodate our selves to men and a thousand such nicities to which there need no other answer then that of the Apostle you are not for your selves or your own Interests nor for your friends nor for the World give unto God what you owe unto God and to Caesar what you owe unto Caesar. If this reason be not sufficient Saint Paul gives you another taken from the condition of Christians and which they profess holy and perfect As a Gentleman is oblig'd to live like a Gentleman a Prince like a Prince every one according to his quality so a Christian must live according to the quality of a Christian his exteriour life must be conformable to the state of Christianity which he professeth I have shewed you saith St. Paul and prayed you to walk worthy of God who hath called you to his Kingdom and to his glory As the quality of a Christian is most noble that man can be advanced unto in which quality he must appear before the Tribunall of God to receive judgement and recompence of his actions it is but necessary his life and actions his government and conversation be conformable and worthy of so high and divine a quality whereto the same Apostle exhorts us I beseech you that you walk worthy of the vocation wherewith ye are called This is all that is required of a Christian that in what estate condition or manner of life soever he be he live after a manner worthy of Christianity Let this be his first design the subject of his examen let all his care be to profess what he is by his actions The first thing that a Christian must regard in his actions and exteriour is not to see if he be conformable to the rank he holds among men and to his condition in the World but rather to be conformable to the state he professes before God herein consists the fidelity and courage of a Christian. This care of our exteriour is not an indifferent instruction but a Law from Heaven pronounced by Iesus Christ Let your light so shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in heaven He will have us concerned in our neighbours and for love of them strive to live well to be unto them a mirror of vertue This is not therefore an advice but an obligation to give good example and by our good actions to shew others what they ought to do Example by sweetness of attraction wins the heart binds the will captivates the affections if vertuous it makes vertue to be deified it constrains us to love it and by the rule it bears over our hearts innsinuates and instills the vertue which it exerciseth For men said the Morall Philosopher give more credit to their eyes then to their ears From this principle is derived our obligation to let our light shine before men to preserve a vertuous and exemplary exteriour We are a sweet savour of Christ saith Saint Paul teaching us that our exteriour should have the odour of the vertue of Iesus Christ and not only have the savour but be the very savour it self so much God desires the perfection of our works words recreation conversation employments affairs In brief all our actions must savor of Iesus Christ and bear the odor of his vertues we must not pervert this counsel to formall affectation True vertue is masculine and noble every where it rules with modesty the spirit of God walketh with Majesty in humility all that we require is to profess vertue every where not to be ashamed to shew that we are God's that we respect his divine Majesty that we fear his Iudgements He that hath a good interiour let him shew it by the exteriour let him dissemble nothing but walk alwayes in sincerity remembering that he is in the sight of God Angels and men who behold him and shall one day be his Iudges By the same reason that we labour to perfect our interiour we must endeavour to perfect the exteriour for common sense teaches us that by our exteriour we must please God and render him as much honour as by the interiour To recollect and profit by what is said let us learn to perfect our exteriour and have regard to God onely to conform our actions to the state and dignity of Christianity Let us remember that the rule whereby God will judge us at the hour of death will not be that of honour nor of men of the world much less that of our Interests but of his will and his honour we are only in the world for his honour to do his holy will we are his and for him and it is reason we should render to God what we owe him CHAP. II. That in all our Actions we must follow the
be accomplished in every point Now our Question is not only of an action good and just but which is more of a Christian action suitable to the eminence and purity of the state of Christianity of an action worthy heaven and God If it be reall it must have circumstances onely pure and perfect and chiefly it is requisite they have a proportionate object for as actions are specified by their objects so is it necessary that the doing and denomination of a true Christian action be to consider what is it's object which must be proportioned to the dignity sanctity and purity of an action worthy God which being supposed this object can be no other then God himself and therefore we must say that as all the actions of Christians must be conformable to their state all worthy of God so must they have God only for their object and consequently a Christian to live Christianly must have respect onely to God in all his actions and to do nothing but with intention to please him This is the wish of Saint Paul when he prayed to God for the new Christians to whom he writ That you might walk saith he worthy of the Lord as unto all pleasing This counsell ought to be engraven in the memory of men for either they think not of it or are ignorant of it yet is it altogether necessary Let us then suppose this to our perfect Christian that to do acts truly Christian and worthy of God we must regard nothing but God and have no other intent then to please him The reason is from the commandment of love for by the same principle that we are oblieged to love God in all and above all we are obliged also to please him in all and to seek onely his honour glory and pleasure He that knows how to love will easily comprehend the truth of this counsell For love if it be true makes us quit our own Interests and respects to engage us in the interests and respects of the thing beloved Again to love according to the Angelical Doctor is to wish well Now what good what interest can God have in our action but the accomplishment of his will and pleasure God hath no need of us for he is all-sufficient of himself As by our sins we cannot diminish his glory or pleasure so neither can we augment them by the vertue of our actions and that he makes them meritorious worthy the possession of heaven that he receives them as acceptable to the eyes of his divine Majesty it is the effect of his bounty not the power of necessity it is by dignifying not by duty or obligation by love not by interest it is because he vouchsafes to regard them and to be pleased with them it is only because we do in them what his will is we employ our selves in his Ordinances and accomplish his designes This Deduction and Principle being considered we must say that seeing God receives nothing of us or of our actions but the accomplishment of his divine Will it follows that a Christian who will love his God cannot express this love but in performing the works of God in respect to God and employing himself in the duties that God proposes to him He that hath my commandments saith our Saviour and keepeth them he it is that loveth me and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father and I will love him and will manifest my self to him which shews that the duty of a Christian consists in doing the works which God proposes and puts into his hand according to his condition and estate to do it according to the good pleasure of God and with an intent to do the will of God In this the Christian shews his love to God this is the means whereby his actions become worthy to possess God To comprehend this truth we must observe that all the creatures are nothing in themselves they are as but a drop of water drawn up by the Sun Now if all creatures are nothing man is yet less and man being so small a thing his action can be no more but if the creatures if man and his actions are any thing before God it is onely in as much as they regard God and have relation to him For nothing is worthy of God but what is of God and for God Heaven the world the earth are nothing yet are they esteemed worthy of honour because heaven is the throne of God earth is his footstool We may say as much of man although he be nothing in himself or in his actions yet they are most worthy by this relation to God and regard of God For as mean and prophane things are respected being consecrated and dedicated to God so our actions though they be mean and unworthy of God yet being referred and dedicated to his honour and the accomplishment of his will they are raised up and become pleasing to God Whence we acknowledge that all is nothing not our actions if they regard not God in this purity and though they regard God yet they conferre nothing to God they are onely pleasing to him because he vouchsafes to regard them and to take pleasure in them he advanceth and sanctifieth them by this relation such is his good pleasure Herein appears the abuse of those who fill their hearts and perplex their thoughts with severall intentions By this Principle we see how much they separate themselves from their duty who in their actions and devotions seek any thing else but to please God for all our actions are onely worthy of God because they are onely pleasing to him and nothing is worthy of him nor pleasing to his divine eyes but what is of him and for him Therefore one of the greatest faults to be observed in piety which makes us most unworthy of God is want of this regard of God Many instead of referring all things to God seek nothing but themselves labour onely for themselves and in all that they do think onely of themselves and if they should examine themselves as they ought they would find that the end of their life and actions is nothing but their own Interest and going on in the Labyrinth of these confusions they will find that seeking to do their own will they do what God requires not and fail to do that which he commands By this abuse it appeares that such souls design their own health and profit to be their end and the object of their actions By so doing God is no more their ultimate end nor the centre of their life and actions but their own interests and profit take the place of God an errour so manifest that it is easie to perceive and necessary to condemn the same Let us remember a principle very common that teacheth us if there were neither Heaven nor Hell to recompence or punish yet we were obliged to devote our selves wholly to God to fulfill his designes and to render him honour in
every thing This is an indispensable obligation whereto we are bound by the condition of our being for as such we are Gods being Gods we ought to refer our selves wholly to him and be onely for him The fruit is his to whom the Tree belongs if we belong wholly to God our life and actions consequently must be referred to his honour and wholly employed in the accomplishment of his Will In effect none can be ignorant but that we are in the World to do the work that God hath put into our hands according to our vocation and according to the manner that he proposeth and for the end that he hath ordained us Nothing is more evident for what have we to do in this World and what should our soul aim at but to accomplish the will of God and to do all our actions according to the designes and order established by the eternall wisdom why are we in the World if we please not God How shall we please him if we do not his will and live not in the order he hath prescribed To what end serves all the rest whereto are directed all our actions if they are not acceptable to God This is the onely point of our happiness the principall care that a Christian ought to have to regard God in all his Actions and to perform them in a pure desire to please him Let us endeavour onely to content God and God will provide for all the â—est Them that honour me I will honour and they that despise me shall be lightly esteemed saith God to Eliah O how happy shall that soul be which at the houre of death shall be able to say with Iesus Christ My God and my Father I have glorified thee on the Earth I have finished the work which thou gavest me to do Happy is the soul that forgets her self to think onely on God which loseth it self in all concernments to seek onely the pleasure of God Happy are those Christians who can say in all their actions we keep his Commandements and do all things which are pleasing before him For in effect the Christian hath nothing else to do in the World We are obliged thereto by the state of Christianity St. Paul gives us a very evident reason when he sayes speaking of the sonne of God He died for all that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves but unto him which died for them rose again wherein is comprised all the duty of Christianity The Apostle saying that Christians should not live to themselves shewes the obligation they have to live to God that is according to the will of God that in all their actions they ought onely to seek to please him all other thoughts are repugnant to the state of Christianity The Sonne of God himself teaching his Apostles and in them his Church what to demand proposes to us chiefly the sanctification of the name of God the establishment of his Kingdom the accomplishment of his divine will shewing us by this lesson which we ought to repeat daily what our thoughts intentions and prayers should be that we must chiefly desire the glory pleasure and will of God After so divine a precept what have we to seek why so many exercises so many intentions such multiplicity of thoughts Let us seek to please God in all things and take a continuall vigilancy that we do nothing disacceptable to God or that is not conformable to the state and vocation wherein God hath placed us How can so many complaisances accommodations correspondencies affectations of humane prudence tend to piety when they are displeasing to God who loves nothing but purity This is an evill that destroyes the purity of all our actions an abuse that deceives the greatest part of Christians CHAP. IV. Of the complacency and self-satisfaction which drawes us from the pure regard of God and of the purity of intentions which must be in our actions IF thine eye be single thy whole body shall be full of light but if thine eye be evil thy whole body shall be full of darkness saith the Son of God of the dispositions and intentions wherewith Christians ought to do all their actions shewing by the similitude of the eye that the intention must necessarily be pure if the action permit it For as the eye being single makes the body full of light so the intention being pure makes the action pure the end and object is that which advanceth or depresseth the action giving it the quality it beares Now because the intention to be pure and simple must have as we have said no regard but that of God the onely object of its action a regard which seeks onely to please God to accomplish upon the Earth and in Heaven his divine Ordinances desiring no other estate then a bare simple subjection to his loving conduct this is that we call regard of God purity of intention To transgress this regard and purity of intention is to forsake the Sun to go into darkness to destroy the perfection and purity which makes an action truly Christian. We ought therefore to have continually in our heart the prayer of David Turn away mine eyes least they behold vanity as if he should say Lord withdraw my thoughts and intentions which are the eyes of my soul that they may be removed from all Creatures which are but vanity to be employed on thee alone who art the Truth We have reason to require this of God for this purity of intention this pure regard of God is the most beautifull piece the most behovefull to a Christian life it is the onely mark that distinguishes night from day darkness from light In this point alone the greatest part of Christians deceive themselves taking the shadow for the substance vanity for verity this is it we must examine One of the greatest retardments that the soul finds in the way to perfection in any vocation or estate is quitting the pure regard and going out of the purity of intention to seek complacency and satisfaction in something out of God By reason of that complacency and satisfaction the soul can never taste God nor arrive at perfection We need no other proofs of this then the difference between pleasing God and the Creature between the glory of God and our own satisfaction they are two paths so contrary that it is as impossible for them to subsist together as truth and falshood or bitter and sweet without corrupting The soul who seeks her own satisfaction to please her self in her self or any other thing is as far from pleasing God as the Creature is from God Wherein appeares the abuse of those who make no scruple to do their actions in regard of the Creature and have no desire but to please either themselves or some other Reason it self shewes us that those complacencies and self-satisfactions are unworthy a heart that God hath created onely for his pleasure consecrated to his
glory and honour of a heart I say that God will possess and shall possess God to all eternity They are unworthy of God opposite to the purity of his love As God is pure in his entertainments and jealous in his love he never suffers such an evill seeing it is not becoming his greatness to divide his glory and contentment to mingle his honour with self-satisfaction and the complacency of the creature The law of love forbids this division we are obliged to love God with all our heart that is perfectly for as he that loves well cannot love two things so he that will satisfie himself and please the creature cannot satisfie God or conform himself to his divine will The state of Christianity teaches this purity for if we are Gods and love only for God why then all these satisfactions The soul that desires to be saved must onely seek perfection that is God for true perfection consists in the possession and seeking of God she must have no regard but that of God no other intention but to please him The Christian that pleaseth himself and seeketh complacency in any thing besides God does quite contrary he turns from the will of God to seek that of the creature or to satisfie himself and loses the regard to God the most pure employment of his soul to regard the creature to take pleasure in it and from that very time that he suffers himself to be transported with this imperfection he turns from God to turn to the creature which is the greatest misfortune that can befall a Christian. For turning to the creature he makes himself unworthy the favours of heaven and if he continue so it will never be possible for him to taste God or to possess the purity of vertue If I yet saith St. Paul pleased men I should not be the servant of Christ. The word complacency is of great extent it comprehends all that is not God nor of God and includes also the gifts of God naturall and supernaturall of capacity and of grace wherein it is never permitted to please our selves or to seek our own satisfaction The reason is because God dispenseth not his gifts that we should settle our selves upon them or make them the objects of our love or the subjects of our satisfaction and complacency He gives them only because he loves us and would make us worthy of his regard love and favour He gives them to make us capable to love and please him such is the desire of God in this his liberality whence we may thus argue If God gives nothing but to obliege us to love and please him it follows that to use his gifts otherwise be they naturall or supernaturall is to overthrow his intentions and to destroy his work and it is a kind of Idolatry to regard the gift more then the giver In brief it is to make us unworthy of his favours and to stop the course of his divine communications and if we consider well we shall confess that it is the chief reason that oblieges God to withdraw his gifts and graces and to turn away his eyes from us whence we cannot expect less then a miserable fall or to be abandoned of God either for ever or at least for a time So fell Lucifer so was the first man lost and with him all humane nature By the same fault many Christians are fallen from the state and capacity of grace whereto God had elected them The world is astonished when it sees some fall into great enormities others into afflictions intolerable agitations dangerous and insupportable desertions We demand whence these evils proceed who hath precipitated so many souls from the heighth of grace and perfection We may say what we please but assuredly this proceeds not from the ordinary course but onely because we regard nothing but our own satisfaction and quit the regard of God and pure desire to please him to regard the creature to satisfie our selves and take pleasure therein If we weigh this offence we shall find it a great undervaluing of God an injury to his gifts it is to hold unjustly the favours and graces of heaven it is to put God beneath himself and the creature Hence it happens to such souls as at other times it hapned to the wise of the world who when they knew God glorified him not as God neither were thankfull wherefore God also gave them up to uncleaness through the lusts of their own hearts He will do the same to Christians who after they have received so many gifts of God regard rather the gifts then him that gave them and convert them to their own satisfaction which is a greater crime before God then we imagine If it be not permitted to delight our selves in the gifts of God nor to seek satisfaction therein what shall we say of those who make use of them to enter into an esteem of themselves and who glorifie themselves in the endowments which God hath bestowed on them How shall we judge of those who so exceedingly please themselves and who glorifie themselves in the capacity that God hath given them therein in their exercises in their vocation in their happy estate who cannot entertain themselves with any thing else What piety can those souls have who are taken only with those that flatter and praise them and believe none but those that esteem them and study to give them all manner of satisfaction They have all cause to fear for assuredly continuing such they shall never taste God or possess the spirit of true piety Saint Augustine confesseth this with tears saying O Lord I was putrified whilest that I took contentment in my self and endeavoured to please the eyes of men Let us profit by these truths remedy our abuses and establish our selves in solid piety let us lift up our eyes to heaven and recollect what we have said Let us consider that God alone is the centre and end of our souls and that as the inclinations of all creatures tend to their centre and the end drives and moves us to action and is the rest and perfection of the work so let us direct all our inclinations to God and destroy all those that are contrary to him since he alone is our end let him be also our chief regard our first intention the only desire of our souls Let us do all our actions according to our estate and vocation as God shall give us the inspiration and means but in doing them let us regard nothing but God Let us endeavour to have no other intention but to do the work of God to accomplish his holy will to please and satisfie him in all things Let us learn that God regards not whether we do little or much so that what we do be conformable to his will and worthy of his love This is all can be required of those who seek Christian perfection and would make themselves worthy to possess God in heaven CHAP. V. Of
to further his treachery he makes use of our selves of all the Creatures which are as the wise man sayes snares for the feet of fools he offers us pleasure In brief his malice omits nothing that he can make use of to ruine us To those souls that have a little desire of good some fear of God and who have made some progress in vertue he redoubles his circumventions and concealing his aim does not represent to them either sin the World or pleasure for that would advantage him nothing but he proposes change he gives them divers desires he inflames their hearts with fervours and transported Devotions he inspires them with other actions with other exercises with some other manner of living which in appearance carry's some great perfection but look'd into narrowly all their motions and manners will prove to be nothing but deceit and that the Devill strives but to engage the soul in a labyrinth and disorder Those who ordinarily consent to this temptation we find to be rash inconstant and easily drawn aside to quit their vocation self-wil'd adhearing much to their own judgement disturbed in spirit unquiet in brief they are full of perpetuall agitations the marks and effects of a malignant spirit and temptation By these effects we know that the Devill with all his subtleties onely seeks to separate the soul from God and from the peace of the spirit and to draw it from the order and conduct of God that he might lead it as he would knowing the soul being out of the order and conduct of God is in danger and altogether loseth her self or else for some long time estrangeth her self from God For it is a generall maxime that we are nothing but what we are in God and that going out of the order and conduct of God we cannot but fall into evident danger and pernicious disorder And therefore one of the greatest cares the soul must have is to beware of these secret crafts of the Devill to keep her self in the conduct and order of God in what condition or vocation soever she be For as the Devill labours onely to separate us from God our end and perfection seeking continually to annihilate in us as much as may be the works of grace and to draw us from the order of God so must we be very vigilant to please God to receive the effects of his grace his divine operations and to live in the order of God according to our vocation and estate Not onely the Devill deceives us and separates us from God but also the love of our own selves and our own Inclinations This seed of sin which remains in us is the principall Authour of our harm and that which most violently drawes us from the order of God The experience is but too ordinary the reason evident for the order that we ought to follow is an order of grace that advances us above our selves to God Self-love depresseth man and converts him wholly to himself the order of God conducts him to unity for God is unity Self-love leads us into a Labyrinth the works of God are alwayes pure holy and perfect for God is alwayes like to himself he operates in us purity and sanctity for he hath chosen us that we should be holy and without blame before him in love saith Saint Paul The love of our selves destroyes the work of God instills nothing into us but impurity and imperfection By this love Adam went out of the order of God and forfeited the grace which God had given him We do the same and worse for by sin we are enclin'd to our selves and the Creature we are brought to take that in our selves and in the Creature which we ought to take onely in God Our pleasure repose abundance and all other good that we are capable of which we ought to seek in God and receive at his hands we seek in our selves and in the Creatures separating our selves from God who is our end we draw our selves from his conduct we annihilate in our selves all his divine communications and operations of grace to turn to our selves and the Creatures Grace and all the motions of God have no effect in our souls but to unite us to God to draw us from our selves and to separate us from all the Creatures that we might no more love or regard them then according to God and as much as they are in God And the operation of God in us drawes us so to God as it makes us leave and hate as much as is needfull both our selves and the Creatures so that we regard them not but as they are Gods and use them not but as if we had forsaken them according to our Saviour's words If any man come to me and hateth not his Father and Mother and Wife and Children and Brethren and Sisters yea and his own life also he cannot be my Disciple CHAP. VI. What the Directors of souls ought to be FRom all that we have said may be drawn two very considerable documents for those that seek their salvation The first that we must not willingly fill the soul with a multiplicity of desires nor seek to do sometimes one thing sometimes another for all that is well and all that is good is not proper to every person and although it seem good yet is it not alwayes desirable Some will say we must have prudence to make choice but we must express our selves more christianly or clearly and say that when any good is presented us to practise we must lift up our eyes to Heaven and demand of God that he would be pleased to let us know what we should do for to speak properly there is not any good which is pleasing unto God further then in that he takes pleasure that we should do his will and suffer him to act and that we persevere in the order whereto he hath predestin'd us The Christian therefore who would assure his salvation must be disposed to do all sorts of good works His heart must be open to God to receive all divine operations and holy communications but when it is question'd to fettle him in the one exercise or the other he must regard that which is conformable to his vocation and above all consider what is consonant to the state of Christianity for he must more satisfie and regard himself as a Christian then as a Gentleman or Merchant c. he must offer himself to God and do his will and finally receive the motions God shall operate in his soul and accordingly seek alwayes the glory of God never minding his own particular advantage And in as much as great difficulties ordinarily happen herein we take for a second document the necessity we have to ask counsel and to take a Director for this is an affair of very great consequence seeing it acts towards the salvation of the soul. And the chief of this affair consists in conducting Christians in the wayes which God hath established
the satisfaction of their own spirit You shall find their hearts void of God full of self-love their actions inconstant their thoughts in continuall changings In fine they are nothing but disquiets complaints and murmurings Look upon their life and actions it is but a pastime unprofitableness and the vanities of the age and having considered it all it will not be hard for you to know whether those souls have the fear of God and the knowledge of vertue yet in appearance they make a great shew we know not whether is to blame those who are conducted and directed or the Directors But how ever it be the Christian who would be saved must labour herein seriously and neither fear pains nor mortifications but seek to be conducted by the wayes that God hath ordained and passing above all considerations and all sorts of difficulties prove constant and complyant with the order that God hath established over him he must every day renew his good resolutions and pray to God to let him know and be acquainted with the designes he hath upon him and give him grace in every point to follow them and with fidelity to accomplish them And seeing that his fidelity is now in question and that it is altogether necessary to all Christians it were but necessary we made some discourse of it CHAP. VII Of the fidelity of the soul and of its necessity in the wayes of grace and the actions of a Christian. TO speak of Fidelity and to see how much it is necessary to all Christians we must reflect upon the truths already proposed and remember that man was created for God who is his end that God alone can conduct him to this end and that it is the same God who onely operates in him all the good works which are necessary to make him Gods and to arrive at this end which is God From these principles of truth we enter into our subject and presently see that we have not any thing more important in this World then to go to God to co-operate with the works which God does in us to save us and to accomplish with fidelity that which he requires of us and in the spirit and disposition that he desires every one applying himself faithfully to the way that God proposes and the works of his vocation that the Priest live according to the perfection of his estate the Christian as Christian in brief that all men live so as at the houre of death they may say with Iesus Christ My Father I have glorified thee upon the Earth I have finish'd the work thou hast ordained me to do This fidelity which is absolutely necessary must be in our soul from the time we were born Though there were neither Heaven nor Hell we are obliged to live according to the will of our Creator what aversness soever the creature may have it shall be allwayes subject to the order of God either in the way of justice or mercy If we would be saved it cannot be unless we co-operate with the works that God will do in us unless we become faithfull to his graces and follow the order that God hath prescrib'd wherein he will conduct us to salvation and therefore it concerns us more then we think to take heed to the designes that God hath over us and to the vocation whereto he hath called us to the motions and inspirations he gives us to make use with fidelity of the graces he offers least drawing our selves from the order and offer of his mercy we enter into that of his Iustice and one day he say to us in the rigour of his determined Decree as he said to his people I will choose their delusions and bring their feares upon them because when I called none did answer when I spake they did not hear but they did evill in my sight and chose that in which I delighted not Isa. 66.4 When we speak of the vocation and use we are to make of the graces and benefits of God we speak of Paradise to despise them is to neglect salvation Therefore the Christian must consider what he does as well in that which concerns the vocation he must choose as in the use of the graces and favours he receives of God seeing thereon depends all his happiness or misery we must take heed we chuse not what God would not have us nor despise what he would have us to embrace This point is the most important of all in a Christian life yet is it a mystery the most secret of any in Christianity The vocation of a soul is as much hidden as her election which none can know or easily discern by her conduct The wayes of God are as much elevated above ours as Heaven above Earth and yet O wonderfull God wills that we follow his wayes and none shall be saved but according to the vocation whereto God from all time hath called him What remedy seeing on the one side necessity constrains us and on the other the incertainty and obscurity deters us O just God God of all bounty who shall enlighten us in this darkness who shall resolve us in an affaire so doubtfull who shall assure us amidst so many doubts nothing but thy light O God the onely refuge of our souls can conduct us nothing but thy spirit can teach us but thy truth can assure us and but thy infinite mercy can protect us This lets us see in what danger they put themselves who so long neglect the motions graces and favours of God and make such ill use of his benefits From these truths we learn the esteem we ought to have of our vocation and with what circumspection we must make choice thereof and if we will make our selves worthy to receive of God the light and conduct necessary in an affaire of so great consequence for our salvation it will be very profitable to enter into these following dispositions First The Christian must have a pure desire of God and a resolution to do in every thing his divine will being from the bottom of his Heart wholly resigned to his will and conduct Secondly He must have a great sence of his weakness he must be in an estate of humility before God not esteeming himself worthy or capable of any thing for the humble shall never perish and as Esay saith God looketh to him that is poor and of a contrite spirit and trembleth at his word Thirdly He must renounce his own interests and all his particular concernments he must not regard his own safety that he may have no object but the pure will of God yet in such manner that he who resolves to remain so faithfully and constantly in the order and designes of God and proposes to make hereafter use of Gods gifts graces and benefits and regards not perfection advancement vertue not Heaven it self must not content himself with a thought to please God for alas who is worthy thereof but cleansing and purifying his intentions
this is the design of God Or else if by humiliations and interiour or exteriour eversions God will annihilate us let us consent to this annihilation and applying our selves thereto co-operate with the work of God with all the extent and power of our soul and so let us do in all and according to the diversity of the objects This advice is not contrary to the pure regard of God which we must have in all sufferings for in the works of God and in all that he permits we must consider the end for which God does it and the cause that moves him either to permit it or do it The end of the works of God is his honour and glory but the cause that moves him in his operations and divine permissions is the salvation of our souls the establishment and communication of his spirit his graces and his vertues We must here do as before we must suffer having no end but the pure regard of God and of his glory But because God requires fidelity and will establish his Kingdom and power in our souls it is also our duty to co-operate with his intentions and to receive all things not onely because such is his good pleasure but also in the manner that he will and to make use thereof according to his pleasure The perfection therefore of the spirit of sufferance consisteth not in receiving all things indifferently a soul is not perfect though it be insensible of all accidents be they never so sad and miserable Perfection consists not in a Stoicall apathy but if there be a perfection and purity in suffering it is when we receive all things in the spirit and in the holy divine dispositions of Iesus and that we bear them after that manner that God wills and according to the designs and intentions of God And herein consists the first and noblest Disposition which must accompany our sufferings We come now to the second CHAP. XIII How we ought to suffer in the spirit of Christianity IF when you do well and suffer for it you take it patiently it is acceptable to God for hereunto were you called because Christ also suffered for us leaving us an example that we should follow his steps In these words full of efficacy and truth the Prince of the Apostles proposes the motives which obliege us to suffer patiently all adversities and afflictions which occur in all conditions of this life He saith that we are called thereto and that by consequence the proper condition and quality of a Christian binds us to the Crosse. It is not necessary to alledge proofs of this seeing we have said enough already For the spirit grace and conduct of God whereby he uses to save us is no other then that of annihilations and humiliations and afflictions God hath try'd them and found them worthy of him The Crosse and sufferings is then the lot of Christians it is their portion and they must make such use of it as to bear it Christianly But the most powerfull motive the Apostle makes use of to teach us patience is when he sayes that Iesus Christ suffered for us and that we must imitate him and follow his steps after this we cannot in reason find any thing hard If Iesus Christ from his birth to his death hath espoused the sufferings and embraced the Cross wherefore should we refuse being his Children to live and dye as he did we know that the Son of God came from Heaven to Earth to suffer the humiliations and pains due to sins and sinners and that He would by this low estate honour his Father but withall he left upon the Earth the same spirit to honour God that as in Heaven God is honoured by exaltation he might be honoured upon Earth by humiliation In pursuance of this design of Iesus Christ we must as Christians honour God by our lowness and annihilation On the other side seeing the Sonne of God dyed for us we must dye for him if he be the example of our life as the Apostle sayes we must imitate him and if he be born our head according to St. Paul we must as his members bear his spirit and follow his motions In a word if we raign with Iesus Christ we must suffer with him There remains then no more then to know the spirit and dispositions where with we must receive and bear sufferings We have said that the 2 d. Disposition necessary to a perfect Christian to live faithfully in the adversities of humane life is to bear them in a Christian way and according to the spirit of Christianity Now we suffer in Christan ways when we suffer what befalls us as an order of God and as an estate prepared for Christians and by which God will conduct us to the heritage of Christians so that according to this Disposition we make no reflection at all on our sufferings nor upon the estates and overturnings wherein we are our spirit onely remains settled and fastened upon the thought of this truth I am a Christian and as such I belong to Iesus Christ who puts me into what estate he pleases and because I am oblig'd to do his good pleasure I will have no other thought then to resign my self to Iesus Christ to do with me according to his good pleasure By adhering to this truth by this Disposition and interiour estate the soul is united to Iesus Christ as the members are to their head and she remains subject to his conduct without further care or thought then that she is God's because God wills it Herein consisteth the spirit of Christianity and the duty of a perfect Christian. This Disposition is pure and simple and produceth in the soul a perfect peace calm and repose the reason of it consisteth in that the sufferings humiliations and contempts are the centre of the Christian soul as things created have no repose but in their centre so the perfect Christian cannot have the true repose of the soul but in sufferings and in this Disposition they are the centre of Christianity because the eternall Word was pleased to place his estate and whole life in humiliation He was born in poverty he lived in contempt he died upon the cross all the passages of his way-faring life were in continuall sufferings and lowness and also when he was in Heaven in the bosom of the Father in the throne of the greatness of the Divinity he entertain'd thoughts of the cross he consents to death and prepares himself for sufferings when that from all eternity he resolv'd to be made man and to invest himself with the infirmities of our nature so true is it that all the conditions of the Son of God were in sufferings and lowness This also the centre repose and life of a perfect Christian ought to be in the estate and life of Iesus Christ and as the life of Iesus Christ and his estates are contained in adversities in lowness and in the thoughts of the cross it
then of grace The Christian therefore if he seek perfection must take heed hereto and in all things observe as a maxime in Catholique vertues that Christian vertue and true piety consist not in being conformable to reason and to a humane spirit but to the spirit and intention of Iesus Christ who is the infallible rule of our actions This advice is of importance We shall speak of it elswhere when we have convinced the more difficult spirits and made them see the right Iesus Christ hath to us CHAP. IV. The right which the Sonne of God hath to us Motives obliging us to be his and to adhere to him by true piety WHich way soever we consider our selves we belong unto the Sonne of God this is our happiness We belong unto him after a singular manner in the state of nature he hath a right to us all things being as the Evangelist saith made by him In the being of grace we belong to him in the being of glory we are his by him all are raised to glory by a grace springing from the Mystery of the Incarnation and proper to the state of Christianity he is our Head we his Members he is the Father we his Children he our spouse we his heart and delight he our Doctor we his Disciples he our Pastor we his sheep he our Redeemer we his Captives he our King we his subjects he the Sacrificer we his sacrifices in a word he is our All the way the life and the salvation of the World and as St. Paul saith he is our fulness and we are his by the price of his blood and possession of his spirit We are so much the Son 's that we cannot be God's without being first Iesus's who refers us to his Father If the Father accept us and behold us with the eyes of mercy it is in the Sonne in as much as we are his Members and united unto him This union whereby we belong to the Sonne of God is so necessary that as the eternall Father loves us not but for his Sonne 's sake nor regards us but in him so cannot our actions be acceptable to him nor all our exercises of piety please him if they be not done by the conduct of the spirit of his Sonne and by adherence and union to Iesus though they may otherwise seem good and perfect He that is not with me saith Christ is against me and he that gathereth not with me scattereth This property is grounded upon the principles of Faith which teach us that the Sonne of God onely became man not the Father nor the holy Ghost he alone performs the office of Mediator in the redemption of humane nature he alone is our Redeemer our Mediator and our Head In this quality we are his Captives and Members he is the Father of the Ages to come and we are his children for he alone begot us by his blood and death and as a Pelican he gives us life by the effusion of his blood and animates us by the spirit of his Crosse in the Crosse he begot us by his death he giveth us that life we lost by the envy of the Serpent Thus in all the Mysteries of Faith we adore the Sonne of God being of the divine persons the onely incarnate living and dying for us he onely redeeming us from the captivity of our sins being God became man that men might become Gods all the Mysteries of his life accomplished upon Earth were onely to sanctifie us his dying upon the crosse makes him the onely victime and holocaust of our propitiation Are not these motives sufficient to shew us that we are his in a singular manner belonging to him by extraordinary relations Is it not reason we should acknowledge him and by a particular fidelity profess our selves his and carefully endeavour to adhere to him and by true piety to render him the honour love and service that his benefits obliege us to This the greatest part of Christians think not of as being by reason of their impiety ignorant of their benefactor as the Ancients were through their Idolatry of their Creator It is a strange ingratitude that man should be so blind in these dayes as not know his Iesus and passing his life away carelesly neglect to acknowledge him in his greatness to adore him in his works and to honour him in his humane divine life Our business then must be to reform this ignorance and therefore we will propose the principall rights which he hath to us that we may learn with what piety and devotion we ought to follow and serve him and that those souls who neglect or despise this piety may re-enter into themselves and endeavour from henceforth to render to Jesus Christ the honour love and service whereto they are by so many just relations obliged The first right that Jesus Christ hath to man is derived from his Quality of being God-man for such is the Sonne of God not onely in regard of his Divinity but also according to his humanity In this quality Jesus Christ by a power of excellency ought to rule and command all that is and shall be created a power that the eternal Father gave him at the first minute of his Incarnation besides that by this Mystery the Son changing his condition for the glory of his Father and abasing himself to honour him the Father also will needs honour him constituting him from thenceforward the principle of life grace and glory proclaiming him Soveraign of the universe and replenishing his humane nature with all the effects of the Divinity and all the states of glory possibly communicable to him as God and man that as the Sonne honoured his Father in debasing himself so did the Father honour the Sonne in exalting him For this cause he makes him his equall in power greatness and Majesty and invests him from this first moment for evermore with all the power that he hath over his creatures This the beloved Apostle teaches when he saith The Father hath given him all things into his hand and St. Paul beginning to write the greatness of Iesus saith expresly speaking of his mission That the eternall Father appointed him Heire of all things by whom also he made the World Thus by this first Right and by the Mystery of the Incarnation Jesus hath the same power over souls that the Creator hath over his creatures and in relation to this power we give him all that we owe to God and consequently acknowledge in this Mystery Jesus to have a double power over us as God and man This consideration obliges us to adore and serve him acknowledging this power must doubly subject us to his conduct and divine will Heaven and Earth pay this duty and fidelity to this Iesus God and Man Let us hear with a resentment of love how St. Iohn describes the triumphs of our Iesus he tells us that he heard the Angels crying aloud The Lamb who hath been slain is
the life of Iesus after what manner he pleaseth This is a principall point of Christian piety The very mysteries of our faith acquaint us with this truth and discover unto us the designes whereby the Son of God would advance us to a participation of his Mysteries and the severall estates of his life The Son of God becoming man by incarnation takes possession of the nature of man of our bodies and of our souls by which he acquires a right to his nature to advance and appropriate it to himself after what manner he pleases as by this work of love he took humane nature upon him assuming body and soul which he appropriated to himself and elevated to all the greatness of the divinity communicating to it for ever the person being life and nature of God In like manner in the works of grace whereby his divine mysteries are honoured Iesus chooseth such souls as he may dwell in by love or after what manner he pleaseth otherwise he appropriates them to himself by his grace he advances them to adherence and union of spirit with him and by a particular indulgence establisheth them in a communication of his greatness To this end he applies and employes his power to which a Christian ought to be most vigilant and attentive that he may alwayes continue in the subjection he owes to Iesus Christ to accept receive and bear the effects of his power This Principle of truth and piety is grounded upon the common doctrine that all that Iesus Christ did he did for us and all that he is he is for us He saith the Apostle became poor for our sakes although he were rich that by his poverty we might be made rich meaning that Iesus being God became man and took upon him our meanness infirmities sufferings death the severall conditions of our life to withdraw us from our meanness enrich us with his divine graces and advance us to a participation of the severall estates of his life blessedness sanctification and salvation Hence we may take occasion to consider the greatness of Iesus he is our fulness in his annihilation in his poverty he sufficeth all for God gathereth together in one all things in Christ both which are in heaven and which are on earth It is the greatness of his mysteries that they are capable of communication to us and can admit the sanctification of our souls as it is our glory and happiness to be able to participate of the grace estate and mysteries of the life of Iesus Christ. This is the first designe God hath upon us when the Son of God living an immortal and eternal life in the bosome of his Father took a new and mortall life in the womb of the Virgin his Mother He desired nothing so much as to give us his immortall life and to abase himself to our estate to elevate us to a participation of his greatness and the rather because as he honoured his Father by the several estates of his new life his hidden life his suffering poverty death cross obedience subjection in all the estates and mysteries of his life so he will have us to honour him in participating of the estate spirit and grace of the same mysteries For this reason in his Church and of all qualities and vocations he chooses souls and calls them to an establishment in the participation of his spirit and a communication of his new life a life of grace such as is wholly singular and proportioned to the eminence dignity and sanctity of a Christian calling All this is an effect of his divine mercies the fruit of his sufferings it is our glory to be called and elevated to this happiness as it is our duty to keep our selves in a disposition and capacity to receive and bear them according to the designes and intentions of the Son of God All those then who are desirous to live according to Christian piety must make it their main business to continue faithfull and humble in this subjection that they may be ready to go when they are called and to receive when they shall be rewarded We come now to the Dispositions whereby this estate may be attâ—ined CHAP. IX Certain dispositions necessary for the devout soul that would participate of the grace and estates of the life of Jesus Christ. THis estate of interiour piety which puts the soul into a subjection to the power of Iesus Christ and a capacity to receive and bear the graces and estates of the life of Iesus is altogether suitable and necessary for those who seek perfection as being proportioned and conformable to the designes and order that God hath established in his creatures In the creation of the visible World adorned and embellished with so many severall creatures God hath created Angels and man to contemplate so perfect a work to admire the excellencies and to honour the Authour of such miraculous productions He hath done the like in the creation of the new World that is the establishment of his Church wherein Iesus Christ chooseth souls and formeth spirits who are employed in considering the works of love operated by him upon the Earth for the salvation of mankind and honouring the Authour of so many Graces As God hath created a great number of Angels different in perfection and order and as some conceive in species also to whom he hath given severall gifts and graces as well as severall ranks in Heaven that they may honour by these diversities of estates perfections the divine qualities and severall perfections of God for the Seraphims as Thomas Aquinas affirmeth adore by estate and by grace and contemplate by the light of glory the uncreated love of God the Cherubims his wisdom the Thrones his Stability and so of the rest The eternall Word having accomplished the ineffable and adorable work of his Incarnation having finished that of our Redemption and created in this naturall World a new World that is the Church puts souls into it who by the conduct of grace are employed in consideration of the works which Iesus Christ operated on Earth And amongst the rest he hath chosen many who by their severall estates and perfections continually honour the severall estates of his life and adore his actions and perfections humanely-divine and divinely-humane This must needs be an undeniable truth for if the Angels and the Church triumphant are continually and eternally employed in admiring and adoring the life estates and Mysteries of Iesus Christ shall not her Sister in the Church Militant have the same rights employments and duties It is not to be doubted and certainly seeing that love hath obliged the Sonne of God to these lownesses and makes him ours for ever for he shall be man eternally and eternally our Iesus our head and our All it is but reason that we be alwayes his and render him perpetuall honour and homage This is he that operates in our souls this is the estate whereto many are called It
exercise of piety that we ought to perswade all Christians to and is grounded upon the principles of Christianity which teach us that all the effects of grace be it of God towards men or of men towards God relate to Iesus as their principall support prop and foundation for it is by him that the eternall Father gives us all in as much as he hath chosen the holy humanity of his onely Sonne as an instrument conjoyned to the Divinity to operate his works of grace in Heaven and upon Earth By him he receives the homage and adorations of his people and of all men in Heaven and Earth Hence it may be inferr'd that all is grounded upon Iesus all subsists by him that all may be united to him and by him to the Father Iesus must be the onely object of our thoughts resentments and obligations Upon this truth we ought to make often reflections for God hath subjected the World to our use and given us his Sonne the Sonne I say out of an excess of incomparable love becomes wholly ours that by a mutuall right we may be wholly his and by him the Father's that we may say to him in piety as he said to his Father in love All that is mine is thine and all that is thine is mine Yea my Iesus thou art mine by thy Incarnation thou art mine by the Mysteries of thy life mine thou gavest me thy spirit in Baptisme thy body in the Eucharist thy glory I shall have in Paradise and thou mayst say truly that what is thine is mine So order it then that I may say to thee with as much truth and fidelity as thou hast expressed affection in giving thy self to me that whatever is mine is also thine my being my life my actions my love all thine but much more truly then my own for it is in me but by thee and for thee I will then from this present and to all eternity be wholly thine and my being my life and my actions all that I am shall be ever referred to thy glory Hence we are to conclude that the first design and intention we are to have in our devotions is to refer all our actions to the glory and honour of the Sonne of God to remember him before we think of our selves to seek his glory before we look upon our own Interests or necessities Herein the greatest part of Christians at this day are deceived not onely those who in the exercises of piety seek the honour and esteem of men and aspire onely to vanity and a fleshly spirit but even those who seem to follow the exercises of piety with most love and purity For they believe they do much in seeking the occasions of merit and employing themselves in what promotes their spirituall advancement and taking some relish and enjoyment therein whenever there is occasion they make it their onely businesse their principall employment it takes up their chiefest thoughts and what is worse they often place their end therein and are perswaded that they have attained a high and perfect degree of piety imagining themselves rich in merits and far advanced in the wayes of perfection and that they may serve God with delight He is blind who sees not the danger those are in who live thus for while they think they serve God they principally mind their own profit and if the business be well examin'd you will find they change the glory of God into their own particular satisfaction the end of their exercises being their own content and interests of whom we may say with the Apostle They love and seek themselves and make a gain of Piety To reform this universall and dangerous abuse we must consider that as the esteem and spirit of true piety consisteth in loving honouring and serving of God in order to an adherence to him and a dependance on his divine will so the motive object and end we are to have in our devotions must onely be the honour love and service of God and a complyance with his amorous conduct The Christian therefore who would live in the exercise of true piety must first by a voluntary subjection adhere to the power and conduct of the Sonne of God as we have already shewed and further refer himself wholly to the honour and glory of Iesus in as much as we are his and by him God's and render to God the honour and service we owe him According to this advice the perfect Christian must have a continuall and vigilant care so to order it that his life and actions may be accounted worthy of Iesus Christ as being such as shall contribute to his glory after the manner he would have it which is to be done thus CHAP. XI The Use and Practice of what hath been proposed WE have elsewhere taught what was to be done to render our actions worthy of Iesus Christ it is not necessary to speak any further of it We are therefore only to remember that all our actions must be Christian to be worthy of the Son of God and consequently must be holy and to be holy they must be accomplished in the spirit and by the principle of grace the Holy Ghost the spirit of Iesus our actions to be Christian must be done in the spirit and dispositions of Iesus It remains onely that we see how we may honour him by our life by our actions and in all things whereof we propose two ways One is in regard of our selves when we live and act in a disposition of will wholly submitted and directed towards God and by right and pure intention referre our selves and all our actions to the Son of God offering our selves so to him as not to live or act any thing but for his honour and glory The other is in regard of the Son of God when he vouchsafes to apply and honour himself in us after what manner he pleaseth causing us to live and act in the power of his spirit making us to bear the effects of divine will in continuing the designs he hath over us to take in us his pleasure and glory According to this later way the soul acteth not but accepts and keeps her self in the regard of the Son of God as the subject of his divine operations and therefore must onely be attentive and faithfull to that which he doth in her and by her obliging her self by a submissive acquiescence to all he doth be it enjoyment or privation rest or pain change or destruction accepting his conduct and consenting to all the effects of his works in her out of a confidence that he will establish all in her for his glory This advice to souls who endeavour to live in the grace of God and seek Christian perfection is of so great consequence that to fail in this point is to fail in all God is in us by grace he is there to operate not onely by himself but by us for he is the common principle of life and
onely exteriour ours interiour the source of all our sins is in the bottom of our cursed and rebellious nature Wherfore let us live in fear and have continuall recourse to him who can perfect us Iesus Christ the Redeemer of our souls who exposed himself to temptations saith the Apostle that he might succour those that are tempted Our fourth enemy is the Devil who endeavors nothing so much as to separate us from God and Iesus Christ he makes use of all creatures even our selves to ruine us The hate he bears to God the envie to our happiness and his obstinate malice makes him watch continually about us to make us sharers in his misery and torments and to separate us for ever from our only felicity Iesus Christ. The more we seek vertue and endeavour to do wel the more he strives to divert us When we are employ'd in good exercises he either withdraws us from them or disturbs us in them and incessantly makes use of all things even vertue if self to make us lose vertue Sometimes as Saint Peter saith he goes about like a roaring Lion to devour us sometimes he comes like a Fox to surprise us He follows us every where and with a malicious subtilty strives to vomit forth his poyson to infect our purest actions In fine he gives not over till he hath gain'd or overthrown us by his violence or enslav'd us by deceit or at the least wearied us out by continuall importunities In a word there is no Artifice he makes not use of no place or employment that he finds not out no sin or action where he is not present with us to ruine or torment us What shall we do then in the midst of so many perplexities Where shall we find a sanctuary and secure refuge How shall we avoyd such manifest dangers and defend our selves from the cruelties of so powerfull an enemy This we must needs know and therefore must not forsake our perfect Christian till we have given him directions how to behave himself in such a condition CHAP. XV. In what Disposition the Christian ought to be that he yeild not to such temptations as occur in the exercises of piety THey are deceiv'd who think piety grows among Lilies that the way to perfection is strew'd with flowers who imagine nothing but sweetness and that a good inclination or an easie nature can bring us thither that devotion is a land flowing with milk and hony and consequently that there is nothing difficult which yet they are the sooner peswaded to in regard that in all their exercises they onely seek certain self-satisfaction using no violence but fastening only upon this That it is sufficient for a man to do what he can There are others on the contrary who look on the exercises of piety as so rigorous painfull and strict that they will hardly hear them spoken of but say of devotion as the sensuall Iews did of the land of promise it is an ill countrey inhabited with giants that devour strangers See here two different sentiments in extremes and consequently faulty both deceive themselves To remedy this we may say that Devotion is indeed a Lily but growing among Thorns Piety hath it's thorns they prick it may be hurt us but these thorns are loden with Roses As Moses found God in the burning bush of thorns so the Christian finds God and piety in travells and conflicts as it is the life of Iesus so it is the life of our souls to believe otherwise were to flatter our selves Devotion hath great privileges piety hath a power to bring us neer to God to honour and serve him but it is with labour Sin sets us at so great a distance from God that we cannot return to him without much pain And yet it is certain there is much content in this travell for the grace and help of God is alwayes present which will never fail us as lang as we dispose our selves to recive it In this respect devotion is all sweetness seeing we are able to do all in him who comforts us St. Paul saw all this and knew the travels we must undergo and the hazard whereto we are exposed when he discovered to the Ephesians their enemies and arms them on every part to defend themselves Ye strive not against flesh and blood but against principalities against powers against the rulers of the darkness of this world against spiritual wickedness in high places Wherefore take unto you the whole armour of God that ye may be able to withstand in the evil day It is to us he speaks the life of a Christian is a perpetuall warfare this world is a land of perpetuall hostility wherein we cannot be secure for Heaven it self was not free from contention in the fall of the Angels nor the Son of God when he dwelt in the wilderness Now to understand the dangers we are in on all sides let us reflect on what was said in the precedent Chapter and we shall find how we ought to stand in fear and are obliged to have a great vigilancy to foresee the designs and discover the sleights of the Devil and to shun the deceit of self-love In a word to overcome the difficulties and temptation which we continually meet with in all exercises of this life in few words thus Humility is the foundation of all vertues the sanctuary of the devout soul in all the hazards and difficulties of this world The first Disposition whereinto we must enter for covert in all dangerous encounters is to keep our selves in profound humility looking on our selves as subject unto all kinds of misery which separate us so powerfully and so continually from God To continue in this disposition of humility we are to consider on the one side the infirmity and inconstancy of our nature on the other the inclination we have to evil This consideration is enough to annihilate us This disposition to of humility keeps us in fear this fear puts us into a vigilancy that we may have an eye open to all things lest we should do any thing that might separate us from God or displease him and by humility we attract the protection of God for the truly humble cannot perish and obtain his grace and light which makes us know and avoyd the temptations and subtilties of our enemies as Saint Paul saith Take unto you the whole armour of God that ye may be able to withstand the deceits of the Devil This Disposition obtain'd which must be continuall in our souls we must demand of God that he would be pleased to annihilate in us the evil inclinations which separate us from him and place in their room a powerfull inclination towards him the centre of our being the life and perfection of our souls for our inclinations proceeding from the old man who is contrary and rebellious towards God can have no power to lead us to God nothing can bring us to him but he himself Now since