snowes beleeved it was black and the maine point of his doctrine was that sence playd foule with reason and snow was black We are all mortall some of us dye every day and all in a due time Yea saith S. Ambrose Vitae hujus principium mortis exordium est nec prius incipit augeri S. Ambr. lib. 2 de vocat Gent. cap. 8. vita nostra quà m minui Cui si quid ad icitur spatii temporalis non ad hoc accedit ut maneat sed in hoc transit ut pereat The first entrance into this life is the beginning of death neither doth our life begin to be encreased before it beginneth also to be diminished To which if any time be added it doth not come to remaine with us but to leave us and come no more Those who lived in the Age before us our Fathers and Grandfathers are dead and turn'd to dirt and we now in their places we also must shortly dye and turne to dirt and others succeed us and they likewise must take their turne and thus we all turne by turnes one after another into plaine dirt and this is the meane and homely end of all our bravery And yet an infamous sect of Heretikes in St. Justine firmely beleeved they forsooth were immortall and should never dye and this although they saw the brethren of their Sect sicken and dye like other men and then be buried in Graves and there lye still The old Annals of Egipt and Italy tell us that Flouds Trees Mice Cats and Crocodiles were honoured by the Egyptian Sages for gods and when the Cat kill'd the Mouse they said one god in his anger destroyed the other the more great the lesser and as meane creatures by the Roman Senatours And as S. Justine observeth the same creatures were esteemed S. Just Apolog 2. as they were Beasts by some by others used as Sacrifices to please the gods and by a third sort adored as gods Three things S. Austen would have seene if God had so ordered it in his providence Paulum in ore Romam in flore Christum in corpore Saint Paul the divine Oratour in his flourishing time of preaching the Gospell Rome in her flower Christ in his body And in Rome when she was in this pompous estate the Ague was honoured as a Goddesse and there also by ill fortune ill Fortune had her Temple Feare Palenesse what not The Lacedaemonians all the time of their life adored death Amongst another wise Generation of people rich Altars were dedicated to Poverty and old Age. Another grave Tribe beleeving fire to bee a most powerfull God travelled from Country to Country in the reigne of Constantine the great and provoked by a generall Challenge the Gods of other Countries to encounter their God And overcōming them as being compacted of wood or other matter subject to fire they came at last to Alexandria in Egypt where the River Nile by the due spreading of which that Country is fatned was accounted a God The statue of Nile being brought forth as it was hollow and full of water having on every side little holes covered with wax and fitted in all points for the purpose and fire being applied for a set battell the wax melted the water found way and the victorious God Fire was put out and there was an end of the journey And all these people cried up for Gods the things they conceived to be good ut prodessent that they might help and profit them and the things they found to be hurtfull nè nocerent that they might not hurt them CHAP. 6. MAhomet in his Alcoran describing the Turks Paradise saith it is beautified with pleasant Brooks enriched with beautifull fruits adorned with rich hangings and the like We may fitly say of him as Eusebius saith of Cerinthus an old Heretick who thought and taught that the happinesse of the other life consisted in the pleasures of marriage to be enjoyed in the fulnesse of delight for a thousand yeares in Hierusalem Quarum rerum cupiditate ipse ducebatur in eisdem beatam vitā fore somniabat Euseb li. 2. Eccl. hist cap. 22. He dreamed happinesse to be placed in those things with which himselfe was tickled And the Thalmudists the stricter and more rigid part of Jews have stuffed their Expositions with most idle Stories as that God doth punish himselfe at certain times for having beene so rough to them and the like stuffe The Indian Priests were as vaine who instilled this doctrine into all their simple Followers that when a Master should dye the Servants ought all to kill themselves that so they might readily serve him in the other world A grave Author writes of a people so fond that the first thing they saw in the morning was their God for that day and so perhaps they loved as many Gods as they lived days It hath been alwayes the maine plot of the devil to canker and corrupt the world with false opinions and chiefly with the practice of Idolatry For as the understanding is opinionated so the will works and if wee faile in the keeping of one of the two first commandements wee strike at the head of him that enableth us in the keeping of all the rest The devout Christians in the Primitive Church went in great numbers to see the places wherein Christ was borne was conversant and was crucified But the devill had quickly so stirred in the businesse and squared the matter by the power of the Pagan Emperours that the Christians comming afterwards and thinking to finde the crib in Bethleem found the image of Adonis Venus her white Boy and found nothing of the Crib but onely that it was not to be found And turning from thence to mount Calvarie they found the scene chang'd there also and beheld the statue of Venus placed with such evident signes of open warre against Christ and the profession of his name and faith Vt si quis Christianorum Ruffi Eccl. hist. lib. 1. cap. 7. saith Ruffinus in illo loco Christum adorare voluisset Venerem videretur adorare that when the sincere Christian should come with a rectified will to adore Christ his action if not his devotion might goe a wry and honour Venus The devill would faine have taught them to adore an Image which they saw rather then God whom they saw not And even amongst Christians the devill who in other matters is alwayes the wilde Authour of Confusion and Disorder hath yet opposed the Articles of the Creed in order For first Simon Magus Marcion and others strove against the title of God the Father Almighty maker of heaven and earth Secondly Arius in the first generall Councell of Nice in Bithynia laboured against the Divinity of Jesus Christ his onely Sonne our Lord. Thirdly Macedonius planted his Engine against the Holy Ghost and was condemned in the Councell of Constantinople Which observation may be also made plain in the other Articles And because the Holy Ghost
confesses that her place is the doggs place under her Masters Table and all that she desires is that she may lick up the little crums which fall from his trencher But Christ could hold no longer his very bowels yern'd and hee gave her her full desire good measure pressed downe and running over St. Chrysostome a great enemie to Popish impositions shewes plainly that he was not of the Popes Latin Religion in these golden words En prudentiam hujus mulieris non precatur Jacobum non supplicat S. Chrysost hom 12 de Cananca Johannem non adit ad Petrum nec Apostolorum caetum respicit aut ullum eorum requirit sed pro his omnibus poenitentiam sibi comitem adjungit ad ipsum fontem progreditur Behold the prudence of this woman she bends not her prayer to James He begins with James the Lords brother not with Poter and goes on with Iohn the Disciple whom Christ loved and of all that he names Peter is the last she doth not make her Supplication to Iohn shee runnes not to Peter she regards not that the Apostles are all together neither doth she request any of them But in place of all this shee and her repentance goe on to the very fountaine it selfe And againe in the same Homily hee strikes downe the Pope and all his Cardinals at a blow If thou O sinner wouldest have accesse unto God Nihil opus est atriensi servo vel intercessore sed dic miserere mei Dens Is enim te audit quocunque sis loco undecunque invocetur There is no need of any Court-creature or other to intercede for thee but onely say Have mercy upon me O God for wheresoever thou art hee heareth thee and from what place soever he is called upon But the old objection now it comes They goe to God by his Saints as Subjects to their King by his Nobles and Servants And because I have begun to mow up their dry Sophistry with Fathers I will proceed St. Ambrose speaks thus Solent misera uti excusatione dicentes per istos se posse S. Ambr. in Rom. 1. ire ad Deum ficut per Comites itur ad Reges Ideò ad Regem per Tribunos Comites itur quia homo utique est Rex ad Deum autem quem utique nihil latet suffragatore non est opus sed mente devota Vbicunque enim talis locutus fuerit respondebit illi Some are wont to use a miserable excuse saying By Saints they may have recourse to God as by Nobles to Kings We therefore by the Kings Officers and Nobles goe to the King because the King himselfe is a man But to goe to God from whose eyes nothing is hid there is not any need of a spokes-man but of a devout soule For wheresoever such a one crieth to him he will answer her And now this with many others hath crept on and at last stepped out and stood up for a point of faith in the Church of Rome CHAP. 4. IT is my beliefe that the Invocation of Saints is a by-way which the devill hath sought and found to divert man from the due and true service of God All the temptations of the devill saith Nilus are thus and thus ordered to disturb or pervert us in our prayers And we see hee hath already so farre gained ground that where they offer up a hundred prayers they give but ten in the hundred to God And they proclaim it an infallible signe of predestination to flame in devotion to the virgin Mary And where the Church of Christ prayeth in divine Service O Lord open thou our lips they began their Office of the virgin Mary Domina labia mea aperies O Lady open thou my lips and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise till the Pope a shamed of them and their open lips shut up their lips with shame enough And they seldom say praise be to God without a profane addition and to the virgin Mary dividing their praises in the same breath and it is to be suspected they are also quick and many so ignorant most commonly in the same gift of the mind betwixt Christ and his Mother betwixt the Creator and the creature It hath bin openly confessed to me in Spain that the common people there for the most part beleeve that the virgin Mary is as really present in the Sacrament as Christ and some excuse it saying that the flesh of the virgin Mary is there because Christ took his flesh from her And so it is very neere to cerâ—ainty that the ignorant sort especially part equally their praises thaÌ„ksgivings of this coÌ„dition give half to Christ half to his Mother to whoÌ„ I beleeve Christ hath given so much in heaven that she need not part stakes with him here It is the definition of prayer in the Logick of John Damascen 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Prayer is the ascent of the mind to Io. Damasc lib. 3. de fide orthodox cap. 24. God Three things are required to every action that is both perfect and noble First the action must be of a perfect kinde and such a one is the action of ascending Secondly the action must flow from an honourable beginning or principle and such a one is the minde the most pure and most refined part of the soule And thirdly it must tend to an excellent object and God excells all objects but himselfe I cannot perceive how God being so prone of himselfe to goodnesse that hee hath made himselfe in a manner visible in his creatures that he sent his owne deare Sonne from his warme bosome to bleed to death for us there is now the ransome being fully payd so great necessity of mediatours to put the sweetnesse and love of heaven and earth in minde of his promise to Man For they cannot enlarge their own glory by what they doe in Heaven There is yet a strong necessity of prayers and other duties on our part But is there yet need of Saints to blow the coals and to stirre up his halfe-extinguished love to man and all this when the Son of God is also the Son of man both God and man to interpret betwixt God and man and to deale the cause on both sides One Mediator betweene God and men the man Christ Jesus as St. Paul writes to Timothie One Mediatour 1 Tim. 2. 5. both for the maine matter of reconciliation and the continuance of it It is added the man Christ Iesus that we may goe boldly to him we men to the man Christ Jesus It cannot be denied but hee sits at the right hand of God and makes intercession for us and if so why should any be joyned with him in maintaining the continuance of the league betwixt God and man which he made I meane any that we must looke up to and that shall deal the same businesse in the same place and with more assurance of reconcilement then he The Minister is
oyntment in her hand and with her haire hanging readie if need were to wipe his feet againe Then Lazarus with his winding sheet upon his neck And the lame men whom Christ cured carrying their idle crutches under their armes And the blind with the boyes that led them comming after them And then the great streame of devout people shall follow with songs of victory over sinne death and hell And all the mourners shall goe bowing their heads and looking as if they were at hand to give up the Ghost for the name of Christ Hee shall not bee buried without a Sermon and the Text shall bee The good shepheard giveth his life for the sheepe And Ioh. 10 11. in the end of the Sermon not if the time will permit but whether the time will permit or not the Preacher shall take occasion to speake a word or two in the praise of the dead party and say that being God above all Gods hee became man beneath all men the more conveniently to make peace betwixt God and Man that he was of a most sweet nature and that when he spoke hee began ordinarily with Verily verily I say unto you that hee was a vertuous man a good liver for he never sinned in all his life either in thought word or work that hee did many good deeds for being endued with the power of working miracles he lovingly employed it in curing the lame and the blinde in casting out devils in healing the sick in restoring the dead to life and that hee dyed a blessed death for being unjustly condemned mocked spat upon crucified and by those whom he came to redeeme from eternall torments hee took all patiently and dyed praying for his persecutors leaving to them when hee had no temporall thing to give a blessing for a legacie The Sermon being ended and the buriall finished every mourner shall goe home and begin a new life in the imitation of Christ who chose a poore and miserable life when hee had his full choyce of all the life 's in the world And Lord teach mee to goe after him in his steps at least with poverty of spirit CHAP. 8. BEing deepe in the consideration of Christs passion and of the worth and all-sufficiency of it I will declare my beliefe in one point I beleeve that man may merit and I beleeve that men wonder I beleeve it I shall not easily unclasp from this opinion Still I beleeve that man may merit Doe you aske mee what Hell and damnation give leave to the tearme not Heaven or the glory of it But if we merit hell why not Heaven The reason offereth it selfe we merit Hell by doing ill and wee in our owne persons are the onely Authors of ill Sinne is begotten betwixt the malice and corruption of our owne wills But he that is said to merit heaven is likewise supposed to merit it by well-doing that is by the solid acts of Christian vertues and the faire exercise of such vertues proceedeth not from us being sonnes of wrath but from grace in Christ Jesus And therefore by what Art can we merit when that by which we are thought to merit is not wrought and accomplished by us but by the strong and over-swaying force of a superiour power not forcing our will to a good action but sweetly drawing both to it and through it Ate habeo saith S. Austin quicquid boni habeo St. Aug. super Psal 70. What good soever I have I have from thee O Lord from my selfe the evill Yea verily Grace is so truly and so naturally the supernaturall gift of God and every degree of it that a grave Councell condemning the Massilienses or Semipelagians who affirmed that the beginning of salvation was derived from us and did consist in a naturall desire prayer endeavour or labour by which wee procure the help of Grace necessary to salvation saith Si quis per invocationem humanam gratiam Dei dicit conferri Conc. Araus 2. Can. 3. non autem ipsam gratiam facere ut invocetur à nobis cōtradicit Isaiae Prophetae c. Whosoever affirmeth that the Grace of God is given by our prayers and not Grace to cause that it be prayed for by us contradicts the Prophet Esay or the Apostle speaking the same thing to the Romans I was found of them that sought me not I was made Rom. 10. 20. manifest unto them that asked not after mee In verity if the Foure and twenty Elders in Heaven the place of highest perfection threw downe their Crownes before the Throne of God ascribing to him all glory Rev. 4. 10. 11. honour and power the name of Merit in heavenly things as the word in a true sense importeth howsoever they crutch it up handsomly cannot be spoke without a Soloecisme both in phrase and beliefe The man committed a Soloecisme that looked and pointed towards earth when he spoke of Heaven And true Christian humility ought even to speake humbly But even the doctrine of the Papists is bold and venturous Those habits of vertues say they which God the Lord of all spirituall Treasure infuseth into the soule are produced by God without us or our ayde and cooperation but the acts of those habits that is the exercises of vertue are so produced by Grace in us that wee also must freely and readily concurre if we meane to put a price upon them and make them meritorious to their production But the will concurreth not except enabled with actuall grace and the childe I meane the action that is borne altogether resembleth grace as it is a vertuous action and they will not call it a meritorious action but as vertuous and therefore the merit belongs to Grace not to our wills or us and partly to the grace by the motion of which wee concurre with grace And it is the opinion of the prime Divines amongst them that a work though very good and honest and true gold if performed without any paine and difficulty if mingled with no gall no wormwood may indeed merit certaine degrees of blessednesse but shall in no wise be satisfactory For as it is proper say these Doctors to a good work in respect of the goodnesse and honesty of it to be meritorious so it is made proper also by another law to a painfull and toilsome work to render satisfaction for sinne committed And thus they both satisfie for their sinnes which merited hell and by a surplussage of goodnesse merit Heaven And very often the roughnesse asperity with which God handles them is greater they tell us then the satisfaction due on their part which falling betwixt God and man drops into his Treasury of Indulgences whom they make halfe a God and halfe a man there to lye in the same roome with the copious redemption of Christ and be conferred when and to whom his Holinesse shall please who having two Treasuries seldome gives out of one but hee takes into the other They seeme to stand upon
to the Church or to their places in the Church they point to such a Grave and say There lyes a drunkard hee is sober enough now but much against his will And thus his memory is as loathsome to all good people and those who passe by his Grave to their devotions as his rottennesse These representations winned me to think that the Practitioners in this Art of Beastilinesse could not be of any Religion because S. James bindeth Religion downe to practice Pure Religion and undefiled before God and the Father is Iam. 1. 27. this To visit the fatherlesse and widowes in their affliction and to keepe himselfe unspotted from the world But although I had learned in some sort to compound I had not yet learned to distinguish CHAP. 8. MY second Reason of joyning hands with the Church of Rome was because I framed to my selfe the imagination of an excellent Sanctity and a spotlesse Recollection of life in their Orders of Religion And my thoughts fed upon this and the like matter The last end of man and his Creation is Blessednesse being the vision or fruition of God which is an eternall Sabbath or an everlasting day of rest in him And therefore the soule of man which bendeth towards this end chiefly desireth rest For God would not I had almost said could not create man for an end and not imprint in him a strong desire of it Heavey things belonging to earth will not of themselves move towards Heaven nor yet stay loytering betwixt Heaven and Earth unlesse arrested and held by force but haste to the center of the world the earth their true place of being in which and in which onely they take their naturall rest And the nigher they come to the center their soft bed of rest if we may beleeve Philosophy the more hast they make The gentle Dove before the tumult of waters began to settle could finde no place to settle in no sure no solid rest for her foot and the silly thing had not learn'd to swim This tumult of waters in the world will never end till the world ends And therefore O that I had wings like a Dove for then would Psal 55. 6. I flie away and be at rest Not feet like a Dove but wings I have gone enough I have been treading and picking upon dunghills a long while And now I would faine be flying And not hanging upon the wing and hovering over dunghills but flying away And not flying away I know not whither but to the knowne place of rest For then would I flie away and be at rest And not wings like a Hawk or Eagle to help and assist me in the destruction of others but wings like a Dove by which I may secure to my selfe the continuance of a quiet and innocent life I would looke upon the earth as God does from above I would raise my thoughts above the colde and dampish earth and fly with the white and harmlesse Dove when the fury of the waters began to be asswaged to the top of a high mountaine the mountaine of contemplation standing above the reach of the swelling waves above the stroke of thunder and where little or no winde stirreth That as our dearly-beloved Master Christ Jesus prayed upon a mountain that is sent up his flaming heart to Heaven from a mountaine yet farther was transfigured upon a mountaine that is brought downe a glimpse of the glory of Heaven to the top of a mountaine and beyond either of these ascended himselfe to Heaven from a mountaine So I dwelling upon the mountaines of Spices as it is in the Canticles may enjoy a Cant. 8. 4. sweet Heaven upon Earth and sweeten the ayre in every step for the direction of others who shall follow drawne by the sweet savour of my example And standing over the world betwixt Heaven and earth I may draw out my life in the serious contemplation of both singing with Hezechiah I will mourne as a Dove Here will Is 38. 14. I rest my weary feet and wings and my body being at rest I wil set my soul a work I will mourne as a Dove my thoughts having put themselves out of all other service and now onely waiting upon my heavenly Mate and uttering themselves not in articulate and plaine speech but in grones And at last set all on fire from Heaven I may die the death of the Phoenix in the bright flames of love towards God and man and in the sweet and delicious odours of a good life Come my beloved let us goe forth Cant. 7. 11. into the field let us lodge in the Villages Sayes the Spouse to the Bridegroome Come then my beloved O come away let us goe forth there is no safe staying here we must goe forth And pry thee sweet whither into the field you and I alone The field where is not the least murmure of noise Or if any but onely a pleasant one such musick as Nature makes caused by the singing of Birds and the bleating of Lambs that talk much in their language and are alwayes doing and yet sinne not Or if we must of urgent necessity converse with sinners if the Sun will away and black Night must come if sleepe will presse upon us and we must retire to a lodging-place heare mee and by our sweet loves deny mee not let us lodge in the villages out of the sight and hearing of learned dissimulation and false bravery where sin is not so ripe as to be impudent and where plaine-fac'd simplicity knowes not what deceit signifies In the field we shall enjoy the full and open light of the Sun and securely communicate all our secrets of love And when the Body calls to bed and sayes hee hath serv'd the soule enough for one time we may withdraw to yonder Village and there we shall embrace and cling together quietly there wee shall rest arme in arme without disturbance And do'st thou heare when we wake wee will tell our dreames how we dreamt of Heaven and how you and I met there and how much you made of me and then up and to the field againe O did men and women know what an unspeakable sweetnesse arises from our intimacie and familiarity with God and from our daily conversation with Christ What inwardly passes betwixt God and a good soul and how lovingly they talk one to another and how they sometimes as it were whisper sometimes speak aloud sometimes deliver themselves merrily sometimes in a mournfull tone and how prettily the soul will complaine and cry to him and relate her griefes over and over and how orderly Christ keepes his times of going and comming againe and what messengerâ— passe betwixt them in his absence and afterwards what a merry day it is wheâ— they meet and what heavenly matteâ— Christ preaches to the soule and how afteâ— the Sermon the soule condemnes the world and abominates all the vanities of it anâ— would faine be running out of it if it
and for us all MEDITATION III. ANd the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground and breathed into his Gen. 2. 7. nostrhils the breath of life and man became a living soule For when the Angels enriched with such absolute gifts and dowries of nature by occasion of their shining and beautifull nature had lost and lost beyond recovery the fairest beauty under Heaven which is Grace God turning his Omnipotencie to the Creation of man made as if he feared the like inconvenience all that is visible in Him of Earth of base and foule earth Which lest it should continually provoke a loathing he hath changed into a more fine substance covered all over with a fair and fashionable skinne but with a condition of returning at a word and halfe a call from Heaven unto Earth and into Earth That although he might afterwards be lifted up in the scale of his soule hee might be depressed againe presently on the other side by the waight and heavinesse of his body and so might lay the deep and low foundation of humility requisite to the high and stately building of vertue If now God should turn a man busie in the commission of some haynous crime into his first earth that presently in steed of the man should appeare to us an Image of clay like the man and with the mans cloathes on standing in the posture in which the man stood when he was wholly tooke up in committing that high sinne against God Should we not all abominate so vile a man of clay lifting himselfe against the great God of Heaven and Earth And God breathed upon his face rather then upon any other part of his body because all the senses of man doe flourish in his face and because agreeably to his own ordinance in the face the operations of the soule should be most apparent as the signes of feare griefe joy and the like wherefore one calls the eyes 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the most exact and accurate images of the Damascenus in vita Isidori minde But stay I grant that God in the beginning first rais'd all things by a strange lift out of nothing And I confesse it is true not that which Pythagoras his Schollers had so often in their mouthes Ipse dixit and no farther but ipse dixit facta sunt as the Prophet David singeth God spake the word and all this gallant world rose presently out of nothing as if sencelesse nothing had heard his voyce and obeyed him And I am sufficiently convinced that God brought our first Father from cōmon earth that we cannot touch without defiling our fingers to earth of a finer making call'd flesh But how are we made by him wee come a naturall way into the world And it is not seene that God hath any extraordinary hand in the work Truly neither are the influences of the Sunne and Starres apparent to us in our composition yet are they necessary to it Sol homo generant hominem sayes Aristotle The Sunne and a Arist man betwixt them beget a child The reasonable soule is created by God in the body at the time when the little body now shapen is in a fit temper to entertaine it For the soule is so noble and excellent both in her substance and operations that shee cannot proceed originally from any inferiour cause nor be but by creation And if God should stay his hand when the body is fitly dressed and disposed for the soule the child would be borne but the meanest part of a man And doubtlesse God useth Parents like inferiour officers even in the framing of the Body For if the Parents were the true Authors and master builders of the body they should be endued naturally with a full and perfect knowledge of that which they make They should fully and perfectly know how all things are ordered and fitted in the building They should know in particular how many strings veins sinewes bones are dispensed through all the body in what secret Cabinet the braine is locked up in what posture the heart lyeth and what due motion it keepes what kinde of Cookery the stomack uses which way the rivers of the bloud turne and at what turning they meet what it is that gives to the eyes the principality of seeing to the eares of hearing to the nose of smelling to the mouth of censuring all that passes by the taste and to the skin and flesh the office of touching Nor is this all But also when the body is taken up and borded by a sicknesse or when a member withers or is cut off truly if the Parents were the only Authors of the body they might even by the same Art by which they first framed it restore it againe to it selfe As the maker of a clock or builder of a house if any parts be out of order can bring them home to their fit place and gather all againe to uniformity So that every man naturally should be so farre skill'd in Physick and Surgerie and have such an advantage of power that his Art should never faile him even in the extraordinary practice of either To this may be added that the joyning together of the soule and body which in a manner is the conjunction of Heaven and Earth of an Angell and a beast could not be compassed by any but a workman of an infinite power For by what limited art can a spirit be linked to flesh with so close a tye as to fill up one substance one person They are too much different things the one is 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as S. Gregory Nazianzen speaks a ray of the S. Greg. Naz Divinity the other a vile thing extracted from a dunghill Nor is there any shew of semblance or proportion betwixt them And therfore to make these two ends meet is a work which requires the hand and the onely hand of the Master Workman The Divines give three speciall reasons why God joyned a body to a soule First moved by his infinite goodnesse because he desired to admit a body as well as a spirit to the participation of himselfe and all creatures being spirituall or corporall a body could never have beene partaker of blessednesse had it not beene joyned to a spirit Secondly for the more generall exercise of vertue in the service of God for a soule could not have acted many vertues without the aide of a body as the vertues of temperance and chastity For the Devils are not delighted with the sinnes contrary to these vertues but for our guilt Thirdly the perfection of the universe For as there are creatures only spirits as Angels and creatures onely bodily as beasts and trees so it was a great perfection that there should also be creatures both spirits and bodies By which it is evident that God placed man in a middle condition betwixt Angels and beasts to the end he might rise even in this life with Elias to the sublime and superiour state of
knowledge and practice which otherwise should never either have beene practised or knowne no patience of the best proofe but occasioned by an injury no injury guiltlesse of sinne the cleannest exercise of our Charity towards our neighbour supposes in our neighbour the want of a thing requisite and all want of that generation is the poore childe of sinne the most high and most elevated praxis or exercise of our charity towards God then flames out when we seale our beliefe with our blood in martyrdome no martyrdom but usherd with persecution no persecution free from sinne If we are not sorry that he sinn'd we are not sorry that millions of millions of soules shall now be lost eternally lost never to be found again which if Adam had stood upright had certainely shone with God in Heaven as long as hee And if we are sorry that he sinn'd wee are sorry that Christ joyn'd our flesh and soule to his Divinity expressed his true love to us by dying for us was seene by us here in the world and will feast even the corporall eye in Heaven with the most delightfull sight of his blessed body for ever And howsoever some think otherwise if Adam had not sinned Christ had not tooke our nature for he was not so much delighted with humane nature as hee was desirous to die for mankinde And if wee are not sorry that he sinn'd wee are not sorry that one sinne was the cause of all sinnes and all sinnes the cause of all punishments and that one punishment is behind and waits for us in another world with which all other punishments put together and made one punishment are in no kinde comparable and that I and my neighbours and he that is abroad and perhaps now little thinks of such a businesse are all ignorant how we shall dye now we are borne how wee shall end our lifes now wee are alive now wee are put on how we shall get off and when the Ax is laid to the root which way the Tree shall fall and what shall become of us everlastingly Be wee sorry or not sorry Adam sinned It being done God's will be done And yet because it was but his permissive will his will of sufferance and hee suffers many things against his will not of necessity but because he will I will be sorry that Adam sinn'd that is offended God God made the soule of man as upright as his body and clothed it with the white garment of originall Justice God being the fountaine of all power grace and sufficiencie could have hindred the fall but because he was not his neighbour nor obliged by any law for who should give a law to the first Law-giver and to demonstrate the full extent of his dominion over his creatures he would not and having left man in the hand of his owne counsell and set within the reach of his hand fire and water and man having wilfully plaid foule God strived to make the best of an ill game and therefore hee drew from the fall of Adam besides the former benefits a more ample demonstration of his power wisedome justice providence and chiefly of his charity the triall of reason the triumphs of vertue in all kindes and the greater splendour of his Church It is as plaine as if it were wrot by the finger of God with the Sun-beames which St. Austin saith speaking of God Non sineret malum nisi ex malo sciret Aug. de corrept et grat cap. 10. dicere bonum He would not suffer ill if he did not well know how to strain good out of ill and sweetnesse out of sowernesse O sweet God I have committed a great deale of sower evill come in thy goodnesse and draw good and sweetnesse out of it the good of Glory to thee and the sweetnesse of peace to mee both here and hereafter Thou hast held my hand in all my actions as well evill as good as a Master the hand of his Scholler whom he teacheth to write and in evill actions I have pulled thy hand thy power after mine to evill which was onely evill to me because I onely intended it in good actions thou didst alwayes pull hold and over-rule my hand and truly speaking it was thy good for I of my selfe cannot write one faire letter And I know thou hast not suffered me to run so farre into evill but thou canst turne all to good An infinite wisedome joyn'd with an infinite goodnesse can joyne good in company with evill be it as evill as it can be MEDITATION VII ANd if now I clip away an odd end of ensuing time a little remnant of black and white of nights and dayes a small and contemptible number of evenings and mornings wee strong people that now can move and set to work our armes and leggs and bodies at our pleasure wee that look so high and big withall shall not be what now we are For now we live and pleasing thoughts passe through our heads We runne we ride we stay we sit downe we eat and drink and laugh We rise up and laugh againe and so dance then rest a while and drink and talk and laugh aloud then mingle words of complement and actions of curtesie to shew part of our breeding then muse and think of gathering wealth and what merry dayes we shall enjoy But the time will suddenly be here and it stands now at the dore and is comming in when every one of us from the King God blesse his Majesty to the Beggar God sweeten his Misery shall fall and break in two peeces a soule and a body And the soule be given up into the hands of new Companions that we never saw and be carried either upward or downward in a mourning weed or in a robe of joy to an everlasting day or a perpetuall night which we know there are but wee never saw to be nor heard described by any that saw them And when the body shall bee left behind being now no more a living body no more the busie body it was but a dumb deafe blind blockish unsensible carcasse and now after all the great doings not able to stirre in the least part or to answer to very meane and easie questions as how doe you are you hungry is it day or night and be cast out for carrion it begins to stink away with it for most loathsome carrion either to the wormes or to the birds or to the fishes or to the beasts And when the holy Prophecie of Esay will be fulfilled The mirth of tabrets ceaseth the noise of them that rejoyce endeth the joy Es 24. 8. 9. of the harpe ceaseth They shall not drink wine with a song Nor yet without a song And there shall be no joy but the joy of Heaven no mirth or noise of them that rejoyce no singing but in Heaven O wretched Caine that built the first Citie upon earth because he was banished from Heaven Ille primus in terra fundamentum
posuit saith St. Gregory S. Greg. qui à soliditate coelestis patriae alienus fuit He first layd a foundation upon earth who had no foundation in Heaven MEDITATION VII THere are I am certaine there are many poore forlorne soules now in Hell and burning in the bottome of it groveling beneath all the crowd and some now at this instant dying and sending out the last groane brought mournfully from the lowest depth of their entralls that would give if they had it all the treasure of a thousand worlds for one houre of life and health to run through all the acts of vertue in But they cannot come back nor shall vvee when we are gon and going vve are every day whither God knowes but certainly to some new and strange Countrey by Death The den of a Dragon is a darke place and full of bones There is a vast and hideous den and the bloody monster that dwelleth in it is called Death In the way to which all the prints of the footstepps looke towards the Den not one backward vestigia nullae retrorsum no comming no sending back to enforme our friends vvhat kind of entertainment vve have had since we left them no sending a description of the place we are in or a relation of the severall passages betwixt us our companions There is no distinction of persons The great Emperor must come downe must he cannot hinder it with the power of all the World The great Emperor must come downe from his imperiall Throne into his Majesties grave and bee covered with earth like that vvee now tread upon And his powerfull Subjects the peers of his land must stand quietly by and see him buried We never yet heard of a souldier so valiant and fortunate in his adventures that he conquer'd Death If Alexander after all his victories could have enjoyed the privilege of not being at last led a way Captive by Death he would have given all his winnings the vvhole World for his ransome But it might not be it could not bee Great Alexander is dead and all his greatnesse buried vvith him And great Alexander for whom one World was too little because hee was so great hath now left to be great and is become little himselfe a little handfull of dust or clay or dirt and is contented with a little a little room under ground or in a worse place O the sweet equality which God as a Creator and a Provider observed in the disposition of humane affairs The Prince and common people doe eate and drink and sleepe and see and heare and smell and taste and touch and speake and laugh and cry and stand and go after the same manner One is made in all parts like the other And all creatures but man give as little respect and yeeld as little obedience to the Prince as to the peasant The Sun doth shine the fire burn the rivers do run equally for al. And both the king subject are sick die the same way their heads and their hearts ake alike And they both dy by giving up the Ghost And they both looke pale and black and groane before they give it And when they are both dead and buried howsoever when they lived their conditions vvere very much different and they scarce ever saw one another their bones and ashes are sociable they will mingle together And then the cleerest eie cannot discerne or distinguish the one from the other no man can truly say this dust is the softer the finer mold looke you this is royall dust MEDITATION IX THe Prophet Jeremy speakes out O Earth Earth Earth heare the word of Ier. 22. 29. the Lord. Stay great Prophet why thrice Earth Earth indeed we are but when you have once call'd us so it is the most yes truly and all you can say You seeme to multiply tearmes and the same tearmes without necessity No I doe not what I seeme to doe Earth thou that wast in the beginning framed of Earth Earth thou that art now compacted of Earth howsoever cast in a new mold Earth thou that must shortly resolve and drop again into Earth Heare the word of the Lord. The second and middle condition of these placed betwixt made of Earth and to be turned againe into Earth is but a meane state to heape up wealth and build faire houses in S. Iohn Baptist was cal'd a voice not that he was like the Nightingale to which one sayes Vox es praetereà nihil thou art a voice and nothing but a voice He was cald a voice as the fore-runner of Christ because in speaking the voice is always heard before the word And so it was when God spake to the world the best words by the best word The voice said Cry And he said what shall I cry All flesh is grasse and all the goodlinesse thereof is as the Esay 40. 6. flowre of the field This voice was not a voice onely for it spake and said Cry An unusuall way of proceeding Sure vvee shall heare of some great and weighty matter Let mee understand holy Scripture with the same spirit with which it was written Hee doth not say as the flowre of the garden For vve know the Garden is commonly hedg'd in and strongly defended from the incursion of beasts well furnished with shades and shelters But as the flowre of the field the wide and open field where the flowre is soon parched and dryed 32. to a powder by heat soone pinched and left for dead by the cold quickly eaten by beasts which know it not to bee a flower quickly cropped by a silly girl to wither in her bosome or if it scape all this at least bruised and trod upon by passengers or which is worse vvith the rough feete of cattell And if Heaven and earth should be still and not afford a danger one betwixt both the middle region of the Aire would knock it downe with hailestones And as the goodlinesse of flesh is like the flowre of the field so flesh it self is as grasse vvhich though it bee somewhat more durable then the flower hath but a very short time to bee greene or to grow Amicitia saith Aristotle quae super inhonesto Arist Ethic. fundatur durabilis non est The friendship which is grounded upon dishonesty cannot endure And the soule and body agreeing in sinne cannot long agree their peace will be quickly broken by sicknesse and then per-haps they part MEDITATION X ANd therefore the memory of death shall stand like a Seale of virgin Wax upon my heart to keepe the World from looking into the secret Methinks I see now here before mee a man lying very sick upon his Death-bead How pale he is He had a fresh and youthfull colour the other day heu quantum mutatus ab illo alas how much hee is changed from the gallant man he was How his breath labours how every joynt shakes for excesse of pain How every veine trembles His skin
quickly after she began to faint and suffer a kind of ecclipse of Nature Shee fell into the armes of one of her mayds and she vvas not able to looke upon him or stand before him till hee rose from his throne caught her into his armes and said What is thy request it shall be even given thee to the halfe Est 5. 3. of the Kingdome Farre more vveake and afflicted vvould be the case of a soule appearing in the presence of God did not God himselfe enable her The splendour of his Glory vvould appeare so bright that hee could not be look'd upon The greatnesse of his Majestie vvould shew it selfe so terrible that hee could not be endur'd And therefore hee does as it vvere put out his hand and lift up the soule being fallen before him and then she takes courage and runnes upon him as a pretty little mayd into her Fathers armes MEDITATION XIIII BUt the vvicked besides their present punishments must expect a dreadfull sentence in the Lords day Depart from me yee cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the Mat. 25. 41 devill and his angels What horrour vvhat fearfull trembling vvhat a mighty confusion of severall cries vvhat howling vvhat bellowing vvill there then be how they vvill be tormented even before they are dragg'd to the torment Depart from mee O gracious God perhaps they may reply remember vve are thy creatures and thou canst not but remember for vvee depend now in our being of thee We vvere made by thee and for thee let us not O let us not be divided from our last end for after such a divorce vvee shall never enjoy repose or take any rest vvhich every thing vvith all the bent of nature desires If we should goe from thee now wee should never know vvhere to meet vvith thee again Wee are made according to thine owne image O drive us not from our patterne Shall we part from thee in whom are met the excellencies of all creatures in a most excellent manner purified from all stain of imperfection and in whom all finite perfections are infinite From thee who art the great sea out of which all Rivers run and to which they ow themselves return Wee were the master-peece of all earthly creatures When thou hadst created all the spacious Universe thou diddest draw an abridgement and Epitome of it againe in us and nothing was found in the whole Volume which was not touch'd and mention'd in the Epitome All other creatures were framed looking downwards toward the earth as having nothing heavenly in them or in heaven to hope for thou gavest us faces erected towards thee and heaven And since we have look'd towards thee so long let us be with thee now in the end we beseech thee No Depart from me Yee have no part in me My merits by which yee hope for mercy are so farre from helping yee that they rise in judgement against yee Depart from mee and goe to him yee serv'd demand your wages If then wee must goe and goe from thee at least good Father give us your blessing before we go Set a mark upon us that when we are found by thine and our enemies they may know to whom we belong and spare us for feare of thee Thou that hast so great store of blessings to give we hope hast one yet in store for us We crave but a small blessing O it is a little one Thou art our Father witnesse Gen. 19. 20. our Creation and it is a chiefe property of a Father to blesse his children No. Depart from mee yee cursed In place of a blessing take the full curse of your Father as having beene most prodigall and disobedient children I catch from yee all your title to mee and my Kingdome and because yee have followed him who had my first curse share curses with him If if then wee must goe from thee and goe accursed Yet appoint us blessed God a meet and convenient place for our residence Create a fruitfull peece of ground let a goodly Sun daily shine upon it let it have sweet and wholsome ayre and be stor'd with fruits and flowers of all formes and colours Give us under-creatures in great variety to serve fitly for our uses And because we are enforced to goe from thee the source and fountaine of heavenly sweetnesse afford us plenty of earthly pleasure which may in some sort recompence our paine of losse Speak but the old word Fiat let it be and such a place will presently start up and shew it selfe No Depart from mee yee cursed into fire Though I intended not the burning of spirits and soules For I am faine to lift and elevate fire above it's nature O the wisedome of God! to such an extraordinary way of action because sinners have transgressed the Law of naâ—ure in disobedience You sinned against nature I punish above nature because I cannot punish against nature vvho am the prime Origin of nature and may not proceed against my selfe Fire Alas that ever wee were borne Of all the foure Elements of which the world consisted it is the most active and curious and searches farthest and where it but onely touches a sensible thing it is seconded by a paine unsufferable Thou didst create fire for mans use and shall it now rebell against man as man against thee and become his tormentor Who is able to rest in fire The very thought of it burneth us already we are tormented Come come let us run away but whither Lord God if it be irrecoverably in thy Decree that wee must goe thus naked as we came into the world and went out of the vvorld into fire let the sentence stand but for a very short time quench the fire quickly halfe an houre will seeme a great while there and be alwayes mindfull that they are thy creatures vvho are in the fire that they are men and vvomen whose nature thou hast exalted to a personall Unity with thy Divinity No Depart from mee yee cursed into everlasting fire It was kindled by my breath and it hath this property amongst other strange qualities that it is an unquenchable fire as long as I am God it shall endure and yee broile in it which being the most active and powerfull amongst inferiour creatures hath a charge to revenge the injuries done to God and all other creatures by man O horrible Yet heavenly Judge alot to vs some good Comforters whose smooth and gentle words may iâ— it can be sweeten our torment and somewhat dull the most keene edge of our extremity Let the Angels recreate us with Songs and Hymnes of thee and thy blessednesse that we may heare at least that sweetly deliver'd which others in a full manner enjoy No no to the rich man in the Parable I did not grant one of his requests which he made from hell nor will I meet your desire in any thing Therefore Depart from mee yee cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devill and his
angels They shall be your good comforters such as will triumph in your miseries and your most deadly enemies who will now discover to yee all the deceits and by-wayes by which they led yee captive from mee and give yee every houre new names of scorne and reproach Here will be a noise and clamorous out-crie shall fill all the world with shreeks O the divine excellency of holy Scripture It wil not be long to this time And then the world will be gone or going and all on fire Shall I ever forget this day Shall any idle mirth or vaine tickling of pleasure or profit put mee beside the most necessary thought of this day Shall not the consideration of this day crush out of my heart many good and ready purposes As Lord open my eyes touch them with earth and cure my blindnesse that I may see what I am made of and perceive the truth of things For sure I will here stay and begin a new course in the way of Heaven I will no longer be blinde and senselesse That side in which I am weak and batter'd with Gods holy help I will repaire I will now wash my garment and afterwards hold it up on every side When a Temptation stands up in armes against mee I will fight valiantly under the banner of Michael the Archangel against the Dragon vvhat if the common Souldiers be fearfull and timorous creatures our Generall is a Lyon I will search with a curious eye into my heart and dig up all the roots of sin My soule is continually in my hand saith holy David And my Psal 119. 109. soule shall never be out of my hand that turning it continually I may observe and wipe away the smallest spot and make up every cranny by which the devill enters O Lord hold thy hand now once more forbeare a little and all my study shall be to please thee in all companies in all places I will temember thee And when a sin to which I have been formerly accustomed shall come againe for ordinary entertainement I will fright it away with the remembrance of these powerfull words Depart from mee yee cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devill and his angels I will ask my self one question and then I vvill have done that I may begin to doe Canst thou dwell vvith eternall fire If thou canst and vvilt doe nothing for love goe on in the old vvay But if thou canst not dwell vvith eternall fire stop here and repent that thou may'st come at last where they are of whom it is said The soules of the Wisd 3. 1. righteous are in the hand of God and there shall no torment touch them For then Tout va bien as it is in the French phrase All goes well I most earnestly commend these Meditations and others in this Booke going under the name both of Meditations and Considerations to all good Christians that they will vouchsafe to make use of one or more of them in a day that the Jesuits and others beyond the Seas may cease for very shame to boast so vainely that none doe frequently meditate upon God and good things but they For their Meditations which treat of true Subjects I commend them sincerely But all their Meditations are onely naked and short poynts as they call them and they leave him that meditates to discourse upon them which many cannot doe and but few can well doe Saint Austen hath given us an order which they observe not CHAP. 14. BEfore I leave St. Omers I must needs give you a gentle touch of the Jesuits Hypocrisie there For besides other follies of that rank they have set up a large picture in a faire roome above staires where the Schollers come every day In vvhich are pictured two ships at Sea and one is taken by the other A ship of Hollanders takes a ship of Spaniards wherein many Jesuits are The Hollanders look fierce and cruelly the Spanish Jesuits have all good and heavenly faces The Hollanders having bound the Jesuits hand and foot and throwne them over-board they sink and dye like men a spectacle full of horrour onely some of them appeare floating upon the water I suppose their galls are broken with faces very like dead Saints But one of them amongst all the rest can neither dye nor sink because he beares a Crucifix in his hands though they are bound and the Painter hath given him a better face then all the rest I would to God these people did either love God truly or not make a shew they love him And their labour is not onely to bring the Schollers in admiration of other Jesuits by false wayes but also of themselves For they had one in their house at that time who had beene stung by the old serpent and was more crafty then religious in the report of all disinteressed persons that knew him Concerning whom part of the zealous Boyes beleeved and whence could this come but from the Jesuits suggestions that he had seen the virgin Mary and that upon a time for so every tale begins shee had appeared to him when hee was hot in his prayers And when their businesse led them to his chamber they would whisper one to another that is the place where the virgin Mary appear'd to Father Wallys and they would observe that corner with reverence The Jesuits have alwayes Secular Priests Adherents to their body stirring men and such as they are sure of whom they keepe warme with a promise to receive them afterwards into their order but will not presently for some ends either that they may stay with them and buy purchases for them which they must not be seene to look after and the like or to deale some other cunning businesses abroad which will not beseeme them to act in their owne behalfe or to write books in their defence or at least to prefix their names before the Books that they may be defended and praised by other men One example will not take up much room A Secular Priest of this quality was sent from England not many yeares agoe into Germany and there presented a petition to the Emperour to which many English Papists had subscribed their names I suppose all Jesuited Papists And the matter was to begg an English Colledge in Germany which might be governed by the Jesuits which appeared a very faire Petition because the Messenger was a Secular Priest Sure the Apostles of Christ had little of this wisedome Such a man there was now at S. Omers who shewed often to the young Frye a prâ—â—ious Relique calling it a feather pluck'd from one of the wings of S. Michael the Archangel I know there hath been a Story related formerly of them somewhat like this And I am certaine that most if not all their tricks are fashioned in the likenesse of things formerly done or said to be done for many reasons Invention is not so happy as it hath beene And all wonders must be like that they
without the troublesome connexion of a body But man is stored with a fairer number of perfections albeit those perfections which the Angel hath spread farther in fairenesse then these of man Shall this faire creature the noble work of God worship the meane work of man an Image which is but ashes in the likenesse of an Image and which the Popish Doctors confesse if a Papist or other person be driven with extremity of colde hee may burne to relieve his body Goe now man and worship him who when thy body falleth to the poore condition of a stone or block or of the Image that men would perswade thee to worship and stirreth onely as it is moved by a living power and shall be left not a man but the Image of a man the Image of God being departed with and in the soule shall acknowledge his owne Image if not defaced with the worship of Images or other sinnes and call thy soule and his Image home to his rest CHAP. 3. I Cannot come so nigh but I must needs have one pluck at the invocation of Saints By what device can we invocate the Saints without great injury to Gods glory For the more help we crave and expect from others though with some reference to God the lesse wee seeme to depend upon God and want of dependance be it reall or rationall and onely in appearance breeds neglect And a simple wretch beleeving that in what place soever of the world he is hee is there heard by his Saint and his petition granted and as they teach more easily granted doe you think his heart is not vehemently prompted to deifie his Saint I have heard an Italian say in Rome and hee spoke to me when he said it being transported with a high thought of the Popes greatnes so like the greatnesse of God that hee did exceedingly pitty the poore blind Englishmen who beleeved aright in some things and embraced many verities as that there is one God and three persons and the like and yet did not beleeve so plaine and open a matter that the Pope is God upon earth But they meet me as I goe A vile sinner is unworthy to appeare before God in his owne person Is it so Why then doth Christ make publike proclamation Come unto me all yee that labour and are heavy laden Mat. 11 28 and I will give you rest Wee must come unto him that giveth rest And all must come even they that labour under the waight of a burdened conscience they that are in labour and desire to be delivered of a Hedghog that wounds and teares them in their tender inside The spirits labour when men are upon dying and wee that labour to keepe life and soule together must come to him And it is God who as the Prophet David saith Humilia respicit in coelo in terra looks back upon the humble things of heaven and earth For as the low things of earth are humble in respect of him so also the sublime high things of Heaven But he bowes downe his attention to all as the Sun visiteth with equall clearenesse the garden of flowers the greene medow the field of Lillies and the dirty ditch One example is eminent And behold a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts and cryed unto him saying Have mercy on mee O Mat. 15. 22 Lord thou Son of David my daughter is grievously vexed with a devill Shee was a woman of Canaan but for her unworthinesse her name is concealed And shee came out of the same coasts but what coast or where her house stood or whether or no she had a house wee must not learne And yet shee boldly cries unto him for mercy She gives him his titles by which she acknowledges his power and his gentlenesse For she calls him Lord and the Sonne of David a meek man And shee goes to him for a remedy against the devill that came to destroy the works of the devill Her daughter was possessed with a devill and quod possidetur saith Thomas of Aquine expounding the definition Tho. Aqu. 1. p. q. 10. art 1. of Eternity given by Boetius firmiter quietè habetur We hold fast and quietly the thing we possesse Yet shee hopes and feares and feares and hopes againe and in that hope goes to him couragiously Now certainly hee will come running towards her and meet her above halfe way It is quite otherwise But hee answered her not a word O poore woman why then Ver. 23. the Popish doctrine will appeare probable Christ will not answer a word to a vile sinner speaking in her owne person Had he but look'd upon her with a compassionate eye and said Alas poore woman she would have called him Son of David once again But he answered her not a word And his Disciples came and besought him saying Send her away for she crieth after us She follow'd still and her cries went before her if hee will not see her he shall heare her and he shall know that she is a woman His Disciples begin to think that shee is as much vext with a devill as her daughter shee cries so loud and beseech him to send her away But he answered and said I am not sent but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel Ver. 24. Poore wretch what shall become of her She is lost and lost againe lost in her selfe and lost in her daughter but shee is not of the sheep of the house of Israel And therefore if hee be sent to none but to the lost sheep of the house of Israel hee will never finde her though shee be lost and hee finde what is lost Then came she and worshipped him saying Lord help mee Make roome Ver. 25. give way there now she comes She breaks through the presse and down she falls upon her knees before him shee feares that shee was rejected because she had not worshipped him and now she humbles her heart and her body and lifts up her hands crying Lord help me Is it possible now that Christ should not melt into compassion and thaw into sweet drops of teares and mercy But he answered and said It is not meet to take the Ver. 26. childrens bread and to cast to dogs What a dog If shee be a dog shee is not a curst dog Was ever a dog heard to cry Lord help me I wonder she breaks not out Am I a dog I would have you well know I am not a dog I am a woman You a man sent from Heaven and call a woman dog Had I beene call'd any thing but an unclean dog I had not car'd I doe not remember that I ever bark'd or bit any man And must I now be call'd a dog Her language is of another straine And she said Truth Lord Ver. 27. yet the doggs eat of the crums which fall from their Masters table The woman will be a dog or any thing that hee calls her and shee
who sent a dish of hot meat covered to a Friary the shaved head of a Friar and it was presented to the Friars being at dinner with this Message that such a Gentleman a good Benefactor of theirs had sent them a dish from his Table and many thanks were given with acknowledgment that they were much beholding to him and alwayes bound to him by new favours But the Messenger uncovering the dish began with the other end of his Message and fairely told the Friars that as many of them as came where he was found for he had spared his wife his Master would serve with the same sawce Had this Friar married hee might have died with his head upon his shoulders Upon the last good Friday which I saw in Spain the upper part of a Church fell standing in a Town not far distant from us And as the manner is the women sitting in the body of the Church many of them were oppressed The Preacher seeing it when it first yielded turned to go downe the Pulpit was joyned to a side pillar but he was beaten down and lost the use of both his legs The noise went presently abroad and brought in all sorts of people And the women wearing many Rings they pulled them off and where they came not at the first pull cut off their fingers when many of them were alive and onely stunnied And presently came downe another part of the roof and destroyed them and their crueltie This is the day when the Crosse is adored crept to and kissed and brought into the Pulpit and there spoke to And as my Discourses are altogether occasionall so heere in place of these follies of Devotion I will give matter of Meditation for this and other good times MEDIT. 1. CHrist being promised to the sicke and wounded World in those acceptable words The seed of the woman shall bruise Gen. 3. 15. the Serpents head God in his wisdome suffered the World to walk many hundreds of yeares by the twilight of Nature And then also there was a Church and Melchisedech was a Priest of the most high God The breach of this Law bringing a deluge upon the whole World and an overflow of corruption upon Faith and Manners God gave an addition of the written Law But that likewise little helping to the perfect cureâ— and the World having now fully seene in the Glasse of long Experience that man of himselfe was altogether unable and that there was extream need of a Saviour God sent his own and onely Son in the fulnesse of time the Prince of Peace when the World was setled in a firm peace Esay 9. 6. to promulgate the Law of Grace a Law which bindeth vinculo pacis with the bond of peace And when both the Law of Nature and the written Law passed by the manifold necessities of the miserable world the good Samaritan performed all the businesse with a little Balsam It is generally true which is commonly said that example doth more forcibly move then words For it is not onely true of ordinary words delivered by the tongue the hearts Interpreter but also of that great Word the Son of God by whom wee were not so strongly and efficaciously moved when in the beginning was the Word and the Word was John 1. 1. with God and when he remained invisibly with the Father as when the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us Every man Verse 14. was lost and lost before he was found and lost for ever and a great Father without a Father sent his Son being also a Son without a Son and without a brother for there could not be many such Sons to labour till hee dyed in the recovery And lest vaine men should say God made the World indeed a goodly piece of work but alasse he brought about all this fair diversitie of building with a word or two a word is soon spoken He said let there be this let there be that and both that and this came presently and shewed themselves but hee did not labour he did not sweat in the performance his works are great but they are not painfull Dealing now the great work of our Redemption hee labours to extinguish the flames of sin with teares for hee was often seene to weep but never to laugh with sweat with bloud with sweat of bloud And as the Unicorne is taken in the Wildernesse by laying his head in a Virgins lap and there sleeping till he is bound and carried away with his precious horne the sovereigne cure of poyson So while Christ laid himselfe down in the Virgins lap hee was bound and carried away to be the onely cure of spirituall poyson No marvell now if the whole World favoured the time of his birth and the great Sea was at quiet while the little Halcyon was in building her Nest No marvell if as in his eternall generation he hath a Father without a Mother so in his temporall generation he hath a Father without a Mother so in his temporall generation hee came of a Mother without a Father and from her into the World without opening the doore in his entrance No marvell if the Kings of the East animated with the prophecies of Iob or Balaam came hastily to him under the strange conduct of a new-made Star No marvell though as hee entred into Egypt the trees to which others bowed and gave idolatrous worship bowed themselves to worship him and though the Idols fell in pieces No marvell if Oracles lost their voices and that of Apollo answered Augustus Me puer Hebraeus c. An Hebrew Boy hath silenced mee and no marvell if a false God complained the very day of Christs passion to certaine Mariners at Sea that he was now utterly destroyed For that to which these wonders were directed or from which they were derived was it felfe superlatively wonderfull The Son of the Ever-living God being life it self died for us MEDIT. 2 THe terms of Divinitie are to be taken into the mouth as the Canonists speak cum grano salis with a grain of salt that is wisely tasted and understood otherwise they will not prove good nourishment The Son of the living God was crucified and being God was crucified but God was not crucified Saint Paul saith Had they known it they would not have crucified the 1 Cor. 2. 8. Lord of glory But hee doth not meane that the Lord of glory was crucified For the nature of the Deitie is not passible neither is glory lyable to pain As likewise it is said No man goeth up into heaven but he that came downe from Heaven the Sonne of Man And yet notwithstanding it was onely the Son of God that came down from Heaven for he was not yet the Son of Man In respect therefore of the personall Unitie in Christ the things which are proper to God are sometimes referred to man and the things which pertaine to man are ascribed to the Divinity It is a similitude
World and laying downe life wee lay downe all and love that layes downe all for one loves one better then all It was an unspeakable act of love not sufficiently utterable by the great Angels of heaven that the most glorious Majesty of God not capable of pain nor yet able with all his power to inflict paine upon himselfe should come down though not in his Majesty and close with a body subject to pain in which hee would experimentally know al that which man could bodily suffer and more then all for no man ever suffered in such a delicate constitution of body and therefore no man ever endured such rage and vehemencie of pain O Lord whither do'st thou come we are creatures yes truly bodily creatures we must be fed cloathed and kept warme we are lyable to paine and shak't with a little pain we turn colour from red to pale Lord the Angels they have likewise fallen and their nature is more noble as being free from grosse and earthy matter What stirred thee to put thy selfe in the livery of our fraile nature thy love thy will thy most loving will Looke upon him ô my soule thou daughter of Jerusalem look upon thy dear Friend who died temporally that thou mayest live eternally and who out of his singular tendernesse would not suffer thee to burn in Hell for a hundred yeeres and then recover thee by which notwithstanding he might have more imprinted in thee the blessed memory of a Redeemer but expresly required in his Articles that if thou wouldest cleave to the benefit of his Passion thou shouldest never come there now look upon him Hee hangs upon the Crosse all naked all torne all bloudie betwixt heaven earth as if he were cast out of heaven and also rejected by earth betwixt two thieves but above them tanquam caput latronum as the Prince of thieves hee has a Crown indeed but such a one as few men will touch no man will take from him and if any rash man will have it hee must teare haire skin and all or it will not come his haire is all clodded with bloud his face clouded with blacke and blue his eyes almost sunk in the swelling of his face his mouth opens hastily for breath to relieve decaying nature the veins of his brest rise beyond themselves and the whole brest rises and fals while the pangs of death doe revell in it Behold hee stretcheth out his armes to imbrace his Persecutors and they naile them to the Crosse that he cannot imbrace them Look you hee sets one leg before another with a desire of comming to them and they naile his legs together that he cannot come Now trust mee hee is all over so pittifully rent I wil think the rest My soule this Christ did for thee and this Christ would have done for thee if thou hadst been the onely Sinner and wanted his help What a grievous mischiefe is sin by which this great great I have not words most great most glorious passion of Christ is trod under foot and spoiled of the latitude of its effect and which maketh Jews of Christians For by sin Christ is every day crucifyed by mee every day forced to bow his head and give up the ghost I have farther to goe If from the price and qualitie of the medicine wee may in reason draw arguments to prove the state and condition of the soare Sin is indeed a grievous wound I never heard of such another Agnosce ô homo saith Saint S. Bern. Serm 3. de Nativit Bernard quà m gravia sint vulnera pro quibus necesse est Dominum Christum vulnerari Acknowledge ô man how grievous those wounds are for which it was necessary our Lord Christ should be wounded He goes on Si non essent haec ad mortem mortem sempiternam nunquam pro eorum remedio Dei filius moreretur Had they not beene even to death and to eternall death the Son of God assuredly had never given his deare life for the remedie If I go to the depth of it the Jewes did not kill Christ sin killed him MEDIT. 4. AS sin killed him so he killeth sin Then let every sinner come my self with them and open his wound and receive his Cure The young of the Pelican are stung by a Serpent and shee bleedeth upon them even the blood wherein her vitall spirits harbour Is a man a Drunkard Let him soberly consider what haste hee makes to purchase a Fever or a surfet which might suddenly passe him away to hell let him ponder how often hee hath drowned reason and grace and quenched the fire of Gods Spirit in himself how often hee hath bowed Gods good creatures and put them besides the just end of their Creation and how often in his cups he hath defiled Gods white and holy Name and beat hard upon his patience and let him now come hither and give all again in teares and cry with the Centurion in the Gospel Lord I am Matth. 8 8. not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roofe For my house is a sink of dregs and lees and loathsomnesse but speake the word onely and my soul shall be healed And truly ô thou that didst complaine of thirst upon the Crosse I will hereafter thirst with thee Is a man a covetous person Let him search the Scriptures and learn what Saint Paul learned in the third Heaven that the love of money is the root of all evill For 1 Tim. 6. 10. what evill will not a man commit to get the money which hee loves and money being ill-got is not well spent and sooner or later The love of money is the root of all evill Let him think how he sweats and breaks himselfe in catching flyes in gathering dirt and trifles which give no setled rest to his desire and to use the words of a good one quibus solutus corpore non indigebit Diodor apud Max. which when he hath laid down his body he shall not have or have need to have And let him now come hither and be fully satisfied with the unvaluable riches of Christ his precious death let him take off his heart from passing riches and betroth it to Christs passion let him looke upon him with the eyes of faith and conceive in what a poore and neglected manner hee hangs upon the Crosse and lament for his owne manifold oppressions of the poore let him pitty the desolate nakednesse of Christ and in his absence cover the naked and let him say Sweet God I doe heere lay downe all my vain and boundlesse desires and wholly desire thee and nothing but thee and nothing with thee but thee Is a man a burning fire-brand of rage and anger let him understand that irafuror brevis anger is a short madnesse and a long vexation that it subverteth the whole work of Peace and all the fabrick of piety in the heart robbeth it moreover of the sweets of life and leaveth
very even tearmes with God or rather to goe beyond him and yet he hath beene alwayes observed to reward above good and to punish beneath evill How does the Scripture hold that we are unprofitable servants if wee satisfie in a fit kinde for what wee have done and if wee satisfie both for our selves and others Here is a faire and rich harvest of profit If satisfaction can be wrought by a man why did not God spare his Sonne and send a creature to dye for us I doe not leane with my whole body upon this argument Here is the pillar it is one of Hercules his pillars beyond which we cannot goe That could not be effected by a creature because it was the great and generall payment of satisfaction and God required the satisfaction to be true and sufficient but this in their opinion can and therefore it cannot take the name of satisfaction without obligation to the satisfaction of Christ and to share the titles and immunities of Christs passion with him is a strange kind of pride from which Christ for ever hereafter defend my soule It is confessed that the merit of Christ is merit in the rigour of Justice because it taketh it's worth and nobility from the dignity of the person and therefore stands not essentially and with both feet upon the favour of him that accepts it But the merit of man cannot oblige God to give a reward For God naturally hath no obligation to make retribution to a creature And whereas they say hee hath struck the stroke and made a bargaine by which hee hath bound himselfe to retribution and this bargaine standing in force our reward is due by Justice this truly is the pretious fruit of the divine liberality and the mercy of God in Christ Jesus whom Synesius calleth viscerum ingentium partum the birth of huge Synes in hymnis bowells who satisfying the infinite Justice of an infinite God for the commission of sinne an infinite evill the cause urged that the merit also should be infinite And if we compare his works being of infinite valour with our works betwixt finite and infinite there is a great some say an infinite distance all say no proportion Hath God took all the wayes that invention can possibly compasse to make up his full dominion over man and to hold and turne all his faculties by a little string at his pleasure to lay him low and make him supple to take the print of Humility and shall hee now merit in any sense not onely a particular blessing be it spirituall or temporall but all that which God professeth hee hath to give Heaven and happinesse and our sound and sweet sleepe in his soft armes for evermore It would be a foolish passage of the worme and it would deserve to be trod upon if it should seeke to goe with it's long traine upwards and it is not sutable with earth to desire the high place of Heaven No pride is halfe so injurious to Gods highnesse as when wee are proud of spirituall Graces And the reason is good mettall The gifts of nature as health strength the readinesse of the senses although they are Gods gifts yet are they naturally due and proper to the body but the gifts of grace are by no law due to the soule for a man is compleat in the state of a man without Grace and Grace if not of free gift is not Grace and therefore to be proud of them is especially grievous because wee are proud of those things which are altogether heavenly and which wholly belong to the King himselfe and which hee bestoweth with his owne hands and which hee most freely giveth and which hee hath set his owne armes upon for the least degree of grace beares the likenesse of God and his holinesse to move in us an acknowledgement of him as the true and onely giver Let S. Austen speak for hee speaks to God Quisquis tibi numerat merita sua quid tibi numerat nisi munera tua Whosoever numbreth S. Aug. in Confes to thee his own merits what doth he number to thee but thy owne gifts In his time the bold use of the word merit taught vaine people to number their merits in the presence of God and to his very face And many hundreds of yeares after even the Councell of Trent forced to deny their owne word in the sense and power of it said of God Cujus tanta est erga omnes homines Concil Trid. sess 6. ca. 16 bonitas ut eorum velit esse merita quae sunt ipsius dona whose goodnesse runnes with such a great streame towards all mankinde that he permitteth his owne gifts to take the title of their merits Away then with the scandalous phrase of speaking It is a wise fish which presaging a storme fastneth it selfe upon a rock Christ crucified is the rock and upon him will I fix my soule and sing with S. Bernard Meritúm meum miserationes Domini The mercies of S. Bern. the Lord are the whole substance of my merit Then let the Sunne be eclipsed the earth tremble let the veyle of the olde Temple teare it selfe and afterwards let the proud Jewes boast of their law and works I shall be secure There is no danger of Spiders under this Canopy he needs not feare a thunderbolt that sleepes in the shadow of a Lawrell CHAP. 9. 1. THe Nunneries in Spaine are not altogether so holy as they desire us to beleeve All the Nunns in one house seated in Madrill were as the Jesuits enformed us discovered to be Witches even when I studied there And yet they had gained such an estimation of sanctity that they were famous for it but all by impostures For they would hang betwixt heaven and earth in the sight of their Novices as if they were caught up from the ground in a rapture or extasie and so full fraught with heavenly thoughts that their soules putting themselves on with much vehemency towards heaven and assisted with Gods helping hand carried their bodies along with them And their holy Nun of Carion as I have bin enformed by a Traveller of worth is proved to have beene a Witch Their famous Nun of Lisbon in Portugall which gave her blessing to the old Spanish Fleet lying there at anchor dyed confessing she had lived a Witch and yet they report that the wall of her cloister would commonly open of it selfe and the Sacrament the King of glory passe through it borne by no visible thing into her mouth One thing I most highly detest amongst them that in their processions on Corpus Christi day they act Playes full of most prophane and base matter and stuffed with most ridiculous passages in the wayes where the Sacrament is brought both before and after it passeth and yet their Players being of both sexes are most wicked and excommunicate persons And at other times when the Sacrament is exposed in the Churches the Country Clownes come trim'd
up and with their best clothes on and dance by the high Altar before it in imitation of David that danced before the Ark and the people stand about them as they doe in our Country Townes at their Summer sports only the Altar-side is cleare And whereas the people were infected with an evill custome of giving reprochfull names one to another as they met occasionally in the high-wayes the Pope hath taught them a Salutation and bound a sufficient Indulgence to it Alabado sea el santissimo sacramento Praised be the most holy Sacrament which words they usually pronounce one to another as they meet But I would he had taught them to say something which he had learn'd of the Primitive Church CHAP. 10. 2. THe Bread and Wine in the Sacrament are signes and figures onely of the body and bloud of Christ broken and powred out for us The tearme figure is used in this matter by Tertullian S. Austen and others of the Latine Church Wisedome hath builded her house saith the Wise-man Pro. 9. 1. By what secret passage can it enter into the heart of man that the Son of God the wisedome of the Father building a house a faire house a Church and building it in the defiance of Paganisme and to the ruine and overthrow of Idolatry under the heavy burden of which all habitable parts of the world all Kingdomes Countries people groaned would now forget his main plot and so institute the master-peece of Religion that his Followers comming to him with a zealous contempt and loathing of Idolatry should be taught presently in the Schoole of Truth to adore the glorious Majesty of Heaven and Earth in the likenesse of a little peece of bread to the great scandall and aversion of all that should beleeve the contrary For what is more frequent at this day in the mouth I cannot say of an uncircumcised but of an unbeleeving Turk when hee mingleth discourse with a Christian concerning God and Religion then to say in a reproachfull manner Alas good man I pitty you you make your God that which I eat at my Table And this Reason though it be drawne but ab improbabili yet urges because besides that nothing is improbable which is God hath ordained probability to be one of the first steps to knowledge If wee goe to the University and ask the Philosophers they will tell us it is requisite to the nature and Essence of a body that every part should have his proper place neither can a body be conceived to be a compleat body without extensive distinction of parts or to be but in a place And it is the exigence of materiall Accidents saith Aristotle as of quantity figure colour to be rooted in a body But here they are supposed to stand by themselves without a prop. And when a reason of these things never thought of in any kind of learning either in themselves or in their grounds is required the greatest schollers in the world on their part can say nothing but wee must goe up with holy Abraham the good old man to the top of the mountaine who having a strong promise that his seed should be multiplyed as the starres of Heaven was yet commanded to kill and sacrifice his onely sonne Isaak and we must leave the servants and the ignorant Asse at the foot of the hill that is the senses and Reason But if the senses be servants they are faithfull ones and are not deceived in the knowledge of their proper objects due order and conditions being kept on both sides and if Reason be an ignorant Asse what distinction is there betwixt a man and a beast They speake on As the Captaines of the Army put off their garments laid them in a heap and setting Jehu upon them cryed Jehu is King So we building a Throne for Faith over Sense and Reason must hold up our hands and pray that Faith may have a long and prosperous raigne over us Vive la Foy long live Faith There was a farre more searching kind of Philosophy taught in the sound and sincere dayes of S. Austen who in his Epistle to Dardanus thus draweth his argument from the deep grounds of true Philosophy Spatia locorum tolle corporibus nusquam erant quia nusquam erunt nec S. Aug. ad Dardan erunt tolle ipsa corpora qualitatibus corporum non erit ubi sint ideò necesse est ut non sint Take away from a body place and the body will be no where and being no where will not be take away from a body the qualities of a body and there wil be no place for the body to reside in and therefore the body must be no body I yeeld that in the part of Divinity which treateth of the blessed Trinity Reason must strike saile and stoope and Reason teacheth us that in the scanning of such high things Reason must be guided by a more certaine though not a clearer light and therefore still we follow the safe conduct of Reason but in materiall things proportion'd to our capacity and confined to their natures by the God of nature I cannot see with the eye of Reason or any other eye why Reason should not be one of the Councell and passe her judgement as shee does and ever did in these inferiour things Answer mee now Doth it not follow and flow out of these principles that the body of Christ in the Sacrament hath the being of a body and the being of a spirit at the same time and that if an Angell should take a particle of the Hoast and divide it continually for all eternity because such a division can never strike something to nothing as likewise no creature can ever lift something from nothing still in that little thing very like to nothing and many thousands of yeares before not perceptible by any sense of man Christ shall be as truly and as plentifully present as hee was in the world and upon the Crosse Answer mee againe Doe not they worship as Christ said to the woman of Samaria they know not what For when the Priest is supposed to be a Ioh. 4. 22. Priest and is not which often happeneth according to their Divinity either for the defect of Baptisme or for want of intention either in the Priest or Bishop or for want of orders in the Bishop then certainly they worship they know not what And it is a fearefull thing to draw the chiefe and most noble acts of Religion within the lists of such notable danger And the law of not administring the Sacrament in both kinds being one of the young handmaids which wait upon this doctrine took earnest first in the Councell of Constance And Pope Gelasius cursed all those who presumed to maime the divine ordinance and to receive it onely in one kinde And Transubstantiation the other feat waighting-maid was hired in the Councell of Lateran By little and little it was made a most huge Monster The bramble groweth
the water hid a great part of him gives the Devill very foule tearmes and provokes him twenty times over to come if he durst But coward he durst not come I will not tell all I will keepe some for a deare yeare and a rainy day Yet you may gather from these premisses I could not but see that hypocrisie and malice in their full growth dwelt even here as well as abroad and that here the purity was not to be found the idea of which I bore in my minde Wherefore it was my owne first motion and I left them and became a Frier the Friers professing more strictnesse A man may impute these changes either to variablenesse and inconstancie or to the stirring of good and able motives and to Gods providence that would carry me out of one roome into another and shew me all the inward Chambers of the Church of Rome Take heed judge not But if you do I submit my neck lay what waight upon me you please if you offend not God For I deserve both your judgement and your scorne CHAP. II. THe Monks have one story amongst them and they make it a Pulpit-story A very devout Monke walking one day alone in a wood and I thinke they lose themselves in this wood when they relate the story by chance heard a Nightingale sing and while shee did variously descant upon her song he laid hold upon it as a hand from Heaven by which he was lifted up to Gods eminencie and to the picture and perfection of the Nightingale in him and there he stayed in contemplation catcht from his senses till many yeares were past and all the Monkes of his time dead in the Monastery in which he lived All which time seemed to him very short and to bee merrily passed in hearing the Nightingale Yet say the Monkes this Musitian could not be a Nightingale though his heavenly meditation was indeed begun and sung to some while by a Nightingale But the Monk admiring an excellencie in the creature and being quickly filled with it in the brooke went forward towards the spring and rose to that from which it was taken in the Creatour and there he was easily sung asleepe where he rested a hundred yeares like S. Iohn upon the soft brest of our Saviour This passage is not much unlike the miracle of the Seaven Sleepers that slept in a Cave not as other men doe from the beginning of night to the beginning of day but from the beginning of one age to the beginning of another But as all their stories have their imployment so this both tickleth and serveth to many uses but above all to give us a resemblance of the profound meditation with which God pleased himselfe before the the world It is a high matter Yet I should desire in this and other things to give more satisfaction then a story comes to of a man in a wood that could not finde his way out againe In lieu of their sweete story take a word from me without encroaching upon a secret which God hath reserved to himselfe CHAP. III. THere was a Time if I may say so when there was no Time no world none of all these pretty things we daily see nor yet the light by which we see them no men and women like our selves no living creatures no aire earth sea no Infidell no Jew no Christian no Hell no Heaven no Divels no Angels no God I cannot say For God alone had being before the world as God onely now also hath firme and true being For all other things that be be not of themselves but gaine their being onely by participation from God Et aspexi saith Saint Austin caetera infra te S. Aug. l. 7. Confess c. 11. vidi nec omnino esse nec omnino non esse esse quidem quia abs te sunt non esse autem quia id quod es non-sunt id enim vere est quod incommuntabiliter manet And I beheld the things that are under thee and I saw them neither to have a true being nor altogether to want a being I saw they had a being because they are from thee and I saw they had no being because they are not that which thou art For that truely is which hath a being without change If one of us should wish now prompted by curiosity to have beene before the world it would be an idle wish and with as little ground and foundation of likelyhood to have beene effected as the world then had in effect For no place no little corner had beene wherein to have beene no aire to have received and restored again in breath nothing to have appeared or play'd with the smallest glimmering before the eyes What God did before he built the world although Saint Austin saith wittily he was busie in making Hell for vaine and curious Inquisitours hee meaneth such as will not bee quieted with any reasonable satisfaction yet he well knowes who knowes in what the divine happinesse resteth and how absolute God is of himselfe and free from all necessary connexion with creatures All that which God now does besides the actuall government of the world and the acts consequent to it he did before we know and beleeve that he does now contemplate himselfe For in the contemplation of himselfe For in the contemplation of himselfe consisteth his blessednesse Therefore we may safely know and securely beleeve that he stood still in all eternity in himselfe taking a full view of himselfe and his owne perfections which are himselfe He now sees in themselves to be what before he saw in himselfe would bee Nor was he ever idle before the world otherwise then the Blessed shall be ever after the world And if the Beatificall vision that is the sight of God from which floweth Blessednesse doth so fully and plentifully satisfie the Blessed in Heaven that they cannot turne aside the busied eyes of their understanding the transitory space of one minute from that they see even though they should be enticed and tempted to look aside with all possible delights and therefore most ardently love for the most amiable excellencies discovered in it was not God ever well busied who ever had and hath an infinitely more searching and perfect sight of himselfe then all the Blessed either shall or can ever have together The divine perfections as they have many other so they have also this prerogative that alwayes seene they both are and seeme still most faire and as they lose nought of their substance so they never bate any thing of their beauty Now whereas not onely the perfections of all creatures that are but also of all that are possible are in God and that in a most eminent and boundlesse manner how can it stand that God did not finde matter in himselfe for perpetuall exercise especially since that nothing is come new to him by creatures but their actuall dependance upon him the stile of Creatour and the Government all that which is
that talkes thus Another dwelling upon earth hath his dealing in Heaven amongst the Stars and teacheth for a truth that if we are born under such or such a constellation such and such strange things will certainely befall us we shall die suddenly by fire or by water or by a fall of a house or from a house or be the prey of a Lion And this profound man is certaine that if a Starre should loose hold and tumble downeward it would more then cover all the world and then sayes he where should we be And the plaine meaning people are amazed when they heare him say that the Sunne runnes some hundreds of miles in an houre But this heavenly man standeth above himselfe and above the sight of the creatures at hand which first offer themselves to his thoughts and knowes not what is here below Others cast themselves beneath themselves and their soules and are wondrously taken up in the curious inquisition of inferiour matters The wise Physitian is able to reveale the great mysteries of nature and the naturall uses of almost all naturall things but urge him upon a tryall and he cannot prescribe Physicke to his owne sick conscience Where is a Tradesman that doth not understand the secrets of his own Trade far better then the secret state of his own soule These wretched people have tooke a fall and are under themselves they faile in the first ground and foundation of all true learning A man may wisely aske the question Why in the blinde ages before Christ the Devill speaking from the mouths of Images gave to men many good and solid documents The maine hinge upon which the question turneth is The Devill not onely doth evill but also doth altogether intend evill what then hath hee to doe with good I will take the true answer The Devill well knew that the world was even then abundantly stored with grave and wise people who were also morally vertuous and that if he did not answer in some sort to their pious and reasonable expectation he would soone lose the reputation of a God And therefore amongst divers other sound instructions delivered by the Devill in oracles this also was given 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 know thy selfe In which the Devill more willingly dispensed with a shew of sanctity as knowing that his admonition would in the end prove uneffectuall because no man can truely know himselfe without the present assistance of Grace of which the poore Heathenish people were altogether destitute Our blessed Lord whose end was to dissolve the machinations of the Devill doth as strangely as excellently exhort us to the deepe and powerfull knowledge of our selves not in word but in worke in the working of a miracle It is written that he restored a man to sight blinde from his birth How did he restore him by his will onely No◠by his word onely nor so The manner of the cure is uncovered in these words He spat on the ground and made clay of the John 9. 6. spittle and he annointed the eyes of the blinde man with the clay But let me see is it clay touch not my eyes with clay it will rather put them out then cure them Now I understand it our omnipotent Lord here worketh by contraries that it may bee knowne not the thing applyed but the power of him that applyed it wrought the cure while he clearely teacheth us that the knowledge of our selves and of our meane foundation being as Job speaketh earthly with a requisite application to our selves is the onely instrument which openeth the eyes of a man blinde from his birth as we all are And why doth our good Saviour so pressingly stirre and invite us to the knowledge of our selves It is but one step to the reason Knowledge puffeth up saith S. 1 Cor. 8. 1. Paul All knowledge puffeth us up and swelleth us with pride but the knowledge of our selves When we spread our feathers of pride and ostentation if we but glaunce upon the knowledge of our selves our plumes fall and we begin to be humble Meditation 2. MAn considered in his body is a refined peece of dirt A strong one no. For make his image of stone or wood or almost of any vile thing and it will bee more strong more durable then he I will set aside holy Scripture and prove my selfe to have beene made of earth beyond all contradiction Every corruptible thing and I may go to a dead mans grave and finde that I am a corruptible thing when it naturally perisheth turneth into that of which it was made I perishing after a naturall manner turne into earth the conclusion will follow I cannot hold it therfore I was made of earth If I consider man in his birth and life it is the great blessing of God to his great praise be it spoken that he is not ante damnatus quam natus condemn'd before he is borne He is borne with the great paine of his poore mother that beares him and he cannot bee made more naked more poore then he was when he was borne If a man should looke upon him here and know nothing hee would little thinke that the little thing could ever be the wilde Author of so many foule stirres and tumults in the world A child being born is cast out a poore naked thing Plin. in prooem ad l. 7. natali die as Plinie sayes on his birth-day Hee makes his birth-day a day of mourning Procellas mundi quas ingeditur saith Saint Cyprian statim suo ploratu gemitu rudis anima testatur The new-borne S. Cypr. de patientia childe presently gives testimony to the storms of this world by his teares The Emperours children of Constantinople though borne in a chamber called the Purple because on every side adorned with purple through received from the mother so quickly into purple that they seemed to be born in little robes of purple and therefore stiled Porphyrozenites to hide the nakednesse and take away the scandall of nature yet notwithstanding all this shuffling and ruffling of purple they came into the world as other children all naked and with little teares in their eyes to shew they were then upon travelling from their maker Man that is borne of a woman saith Job is of few dayes and full of trouble Every man was borne of a woman but Adam and it was not Gods highest will that he should have been either of few dayes or full of trouble It is a great while before we can goe before we can speake before we can make it plaine that we differ in the maine point from beasts and are reasonable creatures before wee know any thing And then endeavouring to know we learn evill easily good with great paine And in our first lesson which the world giveth us we learne to sinne What is that to breake the Divine Law and forefeit our soules to eternall damnation And yet as it is in Job Man drinketh iniquity like water the
could not so easily know it to be the way Let a man or an Angel give me the name of a creature in the world which will not afford us many good lessons of instruction concerning the Creatour and his dwelling-place whither we are invited Creatures of the lowest ranke voide of life sense and knowledge worke for an end which evidently appeares because they tend and bend alwayes to that which is most convenient and sutable with their being and proceed in their actions as if they were skilled in the compositions of knowledge The Sunne knowes he must runne all day long or the gratefull variety of darknesse and ease will not succeed in due time The earth knowes it is her part to stand still or she cannot bring forth and beare as she does The Sea knowes hee must still bee stirring or he shall be corrupted Which could not bee that is they could not know without knowledge had they not beene directed in their creation by a most knowing power and this is God Marke that may soule here thou hast found him hold him fast let him not goe till hee blesse thee Nor yet then till he passe his royall word which shall never passe that he will blesse thee and blesse thee and blesse thee againe till at last he ranke thee among the Blessed Consideration 4. FOr what is the reason that Grace hath such marvellous affinity with Glory because Grace is the way to Glory The state of Grace is the waking of the day The state of Glory is the day up and ready The state of Grace is pax inchoata the beginning of peace the state of Glory is pax perfecta perfect peace And therefore many of the workes it is certaine which proceed from Grace are indeed workes which pertaine to glory As Extasies Dionysius discoursing of the love of God faith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it causes an extasis a traunce Dionys Areop c. 4 de diu nom and removes the lover from his owne state to a more high and sublime condition O how shall I ascend hither to this high point of love towards God our God my God all the Gods I have There is no way but the untwinding of my heart from all idle affection to these low base things of earth for then I shall rise And as Grace is the true likenesse of Glory so nature is not altogether unlike to Grace For Grace being the perfection of Nature according to the worne axiome of Divinity Gratia perficit naturam Grace perfecteth nature an agreement is required and supposed betwixt nature and Grace and therefore all the chiefe acts of nature in the soule are of themselves inclinable and bendable to Grace and yet not altogether of themselves but by Grace as the naturall stirrings of the Will to Charity Here I have the musicke or harmony betwixt Nature Grace Glory As for the correspondence betwixt Grace and Glory because they are both in a great part hidden this needs a very carefull search to finde it But the corresponcence betwixt Nature and Glory or Earth and Heaven is such that because one extreame is apparent because Earth is apparent and alwayes before our eyes one may be found by the other Heaven by Earth Because the creatures of God in the Earth are plaine even to the dullest of us if they learn the art of using creatures as we doe staires and goe up step after step from the lower to the higher from the lesse perfect creature to the more perfect and if we goe still upwards we cannot misse our way we shall come at last to the most perfect which is the Creatour blessed for ever Stones Trees Beasts Men Angels God the cause of these Againe if we deale with any particular Creature as wee doe with a river keepe by the streame till wee come to the fountaine we shall be sure alwayes as sure as sure can be to finde God in the end of our journey If I aske the flower whence it hath its beauty for I know it is a borrowed beauty because it withers it will perhaps at first be ashamed to confesse how meanely it was borne but it must answer at last from the earth If I turne to the earth and question her whence cam'st thou She will answer quickly and gladly From God Nor could the earth so foule a thing yeeld such a beauty without the strange concurse and helpe of one most beautifull which is God Here I have discovered certaine sparkes of the beauty of God in a flower I will observe now and admire how frequently holy Scripture thrusts us upon this admirable kinde of learning I am the Flower of the field I am a Vine I am the way I am the light of the world If I walke abroad in the fields I have a very faire and moving occasion to lift up my heart to him who is the flower of the field And when I see a faire flower growing in my way I shall doe well to leave it growing still with a desire thar others comming after me may from the sight of it looke up to the beauty of God And another shall not doe ill that shall come and crop the flower and smell how sweete God is As I turne home to my house I am desired to turne my heart to him who is the Vine If I stirre any way I am stirred to thinke of him who is the way If I stirre no way and but onely open my eyes I am exhorted to climbe up to him who is the light of the world If I will shut my eyes and passe through Gods world like a blinde man it is impossible I should behold either the flower of the feld or the Vine or the way or the light of the world The Devill his enemy who is the way and his enemy who is in the way hath wayes to keepe us alwayes busie to possesse our hearts now with joy now with sorrow now with hope now with feare now with love now with hatred now with one affection and now with another that if we consent to it we shall go sliding through the world and at last fall out of it as ignorant of good things as if wee had never beene alive Gods booke of creatures shall be shut and our eyes shut before we have learn'd to know our letters Consideration 5. IT was a principall point in the malicious doctrine of the Manichees a rout of Hereticks very strong on foote in S. Austins time that there were two prime causes of things a faire cause of good things and a foule cause of evill things The unhappy occasion of this opinion was because they discovered many pernicious and hurtfull creatures in the great store-houses of nature which they imagined could not with honour and conveniencie be attributed in him that we call the good God of all goodnesse And Saint Austin hath left behinde him a remarkable story of a Manichee to whom when it was granted that the Flye for its troublesomenesse and
continuall importunity was from the Divell he did easily bring on his argument as it were under-hand and by stealth to other creatures that had a greater substance and a more noble being Give not place to the Devill in small things But if these impious Manichees had but stood a while and rightly considered by what crooked entry hurtfull things came into the world at least with leave to be hurtfull and how all things in the visible world even now after Gods heavie curse upon the earth offer themselves to be guided to good ends and are for the most part used by Physitians in the recovering and conserving of health or if they had but examined and scanned the perfections every thing hath in respect it is honoured with a being they would have thought it no absurdity to call God in the sight of Heaven and Earth Creatorem coeli terrae the Creatour of Heaven and Earth and of all things in them God hath made one thing lesse perfect then another to the end we may more highly esteeme his better things For as contraries though enemies are wont to set out one the other and the Swan seemes whiter when the Crow is in presence so in adversity the lesser things make good the greater And if divers creatures had not wanted their due perfections many long stories of great Miracles had beene cut off and the ignorant world had not knowne that it was hee who made nature by whose power she was restored And perfect men should not have had such open admonishment to reflect upon their owne talents and to praise God for his singular benefits to them If no man had ever beene blinde who would thanke God above an easie and ordinary manner for his eyes the windowes of his soule and if none were deformed who would praise beauty And howsoever Aristotle to bring in the phrase calleth monsters 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the sinnes of nature God was 2 Phys text 82. willing that nature should erre sometimes in the right stroke and looking to his end seemed to erre with nature in the worke And never was any famous picture but the same end was intended by the Painter in the pencilling For monsters doe serve in this great picture of the world like shadowes in pictures to give the eye a fairer view of the fairer colours The darknesse of the night though it hath none in it selfe yet gives a great lusture to the day And Summer is more esteemed because it was usher'd into the world by a wither'd and shaking Winter By which it is manifest that not onely these things passe with change to avoide tediousnesse which hapneth even in the highest ranke of things if they be earthly but also that the meaner sort by onely shewing themselves upon the stage helpe much to the value and estimation of the better O thou delightfull change and vicissitude my thoughts must needs change to praise thee Albeit he made thee who is unchangeable yet he well knew thou wouldest shew well in the world though not in him I will no more to every kinde of change give that soule name Inconstancie I see now that ordered changes are to be desired But in imitation of thee I must change againe It is more certaine then that which is certaine or certainty it selfe that he made all things who moved Dan. 3. in Apocryph the three children in Daniel as well to invite to the praise of God heate fire they being then in the fire cold frost lightning clouds night and darknesse as other creatures though oftetimes they bring in their traine danger and sometimes hurt with S. Aug. sib de nanea benise 6. them which objection Saint Austin bendeth against the Manichees For all creatures by waving towards the end for which God made them praise God The Sunne runnes apace to doe his will Let it goe that many things were not fashioned in the first Creation which after the quality of the earth was altered by the curse were seene to appeare in strange and antick shapes being indeed the children of the curse not of the earth as thornes and brambles which come against us with their pikes in so great a number and most commonly without helpe of tillage or other husbandry or any call or signe from us that a Rose cannot grow but secretly armed with thornes even in the place where it is to be plucked And for living creatures given up to mans use they turne head against man because Adam bore armes against God for whom he was made And by this foule cranny came all the scattered troops of crosses into the world and all hurtfull creatures which were more hurtfull to the Manichees then all other people as being cause of their errour For the Jewes have an ancient tradition that Adam before his fall being seated on an eminent place in Paradise other living creatures passed by him in a decent order and bowed their humble heads in signe of honour and duty at which time hee gave them all names some thinke conformable to their natures Moses singeth of God his Deut. 32. 4. Psal 104. 24. worke is perfect and David playeth to the song O Lord how manifold are thy workes in wisedome hast thou made them all the earth is full of thy riches Consideration 6. GOD as he is infinite in himselfe so he doth certainely steere all his actions to an infinite end which cannot be any thing but himselfe All flouds wander out of the Sea and finding they have lost their way runne hastily another way to finde the Sea These subject creatures are given us to stand in divers places and take us by the hand and so deliver us from hand to hand till at last they leade us to God and put us safe into his hands and to serve us upon supposition that we serve God and therefore I not serving God am a Thiefe and a robber if I take them in my wants to relieve me Since all bread is the bread of children I not being a child cannot use it but I mustabuse it And a true lover of God doth not converse and deale with more creatures then will bring him with just conveniencie to his end nor with any but in a measure proportionable to his end And such a one was Saint Austin after hee had beene the space of nine yeares a Manichean and was now converted who faith S. Aug. l. 10 Confes c. 11 Hoc me docuisti Deus ut quemadmodum medicamenta sic alimenta sumpturus accedam Howsoever I lived before when I lived and yet did not live yet now whereas Filius tantarum lacrymarum perire non potuit according to the prophesie of my great Master Ambrose A sonne of so many teares as Monica my mothershed for me could not perish this thou hast taught me O God to take meate as men doe medicines not for pleasure but necessity to put me another step forward towards thee and to maintaine the thred of my
life still running upon the wheel which I dare not wilfully breake Nor yet are all creatures made for the necessary maintenance of life For although the foure Elements are requisite to the due continuance of it yet man may subsist and stay in being man without many creatures in them which God hath provided not to comply with necessity but to conforme with delight if embraced in a fit measure and if we deale in them as Bees traffick in honey diligently observing that our wings be not entangled and catched therewith our wings of prayer and contemplation by which we rise from earth to heaven from the creatures with a great flight to the Creatour And God made many things otherwise then we use them Gold and Jewels were hid in the earth from mans sight as if God had beene unwilling they should be found And therefore Boetius Boet. Metr S. lib. 2. complaines Heu primus quis fuit ille Auri qui pondera tecti Gemmasque latere volentes Pretiosa pericula fodit Alasse what unhappy man was that who first digged up covered Gold and shamefast Jewels that desired to lie hid being pretious dangers And all the shining colours of cloth that so mock our eyes from what a white simplicity are they fallen For to argue with Saint Cyprian Neque enim Deus coccinas aut purpureas oves fecit God made not Sheep S. Cypr. l. de disciplina habituvirginum from which we take our Wooll of a Purple or Scarlet colovr but plaine innocent white And almost all the bravery that wee see in the world was brought by idle Art into fashion But to returne from whence I set forth All things were made for us and our end and we may see though they goe severall wayes how justly they meete all in their end Wee are the onely visible creatures that swarve from the maine end which is God Consid 7 And all things as flames of fire point alwayes upwards and like heavenly signes besides the knowledge of themselves reade us lessons of Gods power And although God became a Creatour to divulge his power and that glory might bee given to him yet God is not proud For therefore we are proud because we exalt our selves above our selves and snatch that glory to us which is due to God and pertaining to him by way of royalty But God cannot lift himselfe above himselfe Nor take from any that is above him because he has the first place And in good sooth this Book of creatures if it may have a name may be entitled a large description of the Divine power Bring me to a Man or a Spirit under God that can create a bramble a small haire of a mans head or an ignorant worme Besides these creatures of God are so strange and admirable in themselves and such plaine emblems of Gods wisedome that although we who are bred up by little and little to them and see them first when we have not the exercise of reason to judge of them are by daily use and the ignorance of our child-hood brought up to a custome of not considering them and their Author as wee ought yet if God should create a man in the ripenesse of perfect age when reason hath gained the Scepter as he did Adam doubtlesse he would be transported with admiration of every thing hee saw so excellent and so perfect is every thing in its kinde He would first admire this light the first faire creature and the first thing that would come in his eyes Thence he would looke up to the Sunne Then quickly spread his dazling eyes upon the heavens and cry O wonderfull Thence fall againe to earth where hee would be exceedingly taken with the strange sight of Trees Birds Beasts Fishes to which a leafe feather haire scale is not wanting of fire and of its active flames which wonderfully beget one another of aire that we take into our bodies and yet see not of water that comes in drops and runs away in flouds of all things of every thing And most of all himselfe would wonder at himselfe His tongue would alwayes be striking the same stroke and he would still be saying Who made these things Where is he that made them I would faine speake with him and behold how excellent he is in his being being so excellent in his wisedome He would marvell how a plant or flower should grow and yet not be seene to grow but to have growne a beast goe pulling up and letting downe his legges in a strange order a bird move and make circles in the aire without falling a fish swim over-head in the water without being strangled how a man should speake and by a little noise from his mouth exactly know the minde of his companion And all things which we doe not admire because we have seene them being children before we could aske what God was this new-created man would not passelightly over as Alexanders foot-man over the sands without leaving the print of his foot-step but would constantly fix and dwell upon and would never stirre from them except in a journey to the Creatour and backe againe For infallibly in their degrees they are all perfect and good all worthy of admiration and had God beene ignorant and not knowne them before he made them he also had admired them but he admireth not himselfe because nothing is strange to him And moreover God made all creatures to demonstrate his perfection all the perfections that are distributed amongst creatures being united in God as the beames of the Sunne though spread upon all the world through Sea and Land yet meet all in the Sunne and never was a beame of the Sunne divided from the Sunne or held from returning to goe on its journey with the Sun And therefore as we for the weaknesse of our eyes can better take a sight of the Suns fairenesse and perfection by looking upon it at second hand on the earth and perceiving the comfortable effects it worketh both in aire water and Earth so likewise for the debility of our understanding wee can better study Divinity in the great volume of creatures then in God himselfe and in his owne originall brightnesse with which our understanding may not consort as it is For in himselfe hee is best knowne to us by not being able to be knowne of us of whom we can scarce say any thing but by way of negation as denying those imperfections to be in him which we finde in creatures at least in an imperfect manner and as they are in them O our Father which art in Heaven I have found thee even in the creatures here on earth Consideration 8. THe Prophet David beginneth one of his Psalmes it is the first stroke in the Musick The Heavens declare the glory of Ps 19. 1. God and the Firmament sheweth his handy worke And by this he declares unto us the Divine doctrine these noble creatures give us both of the Glory and Power of God
weakened by his fall in his will and readinesse to doe good then in his understanding and knowledge of good so the Devill is farre more blunted in his will then blinded in his understanding As for his naturall knowledge it is rather dazled then darkned And by this notable signe you may know that his will is most malignant For although it is plaine to him that for every temptation he stirreth up in man the burden of punishment shall bee laid presently heape after heape upon his shoulders and though he knoweth exactly how many strong ties he breakes by offending perceives more throughly the quality of the offence and sees with a more cleare eye the greatnesse of the Divine majesty offended yet still the perversnesse and faction of his will carries him on through all to mischiefe And if the Devill remaineth yet so perfect in the intellectuall part by knowledge sans doubt he knowes and is versed in all the possible wayes how to invade us which way our inclinations leane which side is most weak and how he may plant his engine with returne of most profit to his owne cause and what will best follow the fashion of our fancie The enemy which we see before us in his owne and knowne shape sense teacheth us to feare and consequently to withstand or prevent him But the Devill we feare the lesse because we see him not because he has the art to goe invisible Thomas Aquinas is of opinion that every man being alwayes accompanied with a good Angel and a bad one some by reason of the foule enormity of their sinnes and desertion of God who never forsaketh before he is forsaken and left alone himselfe may be forsaken for a while or totally by their good Angel But I dare say that never any man was forsaken by hi◠bad Angel the Devill If one of us were but a little while haunted with a Ghost how he would feare and tremble every one of us is haunted continually with a Devill and yet we feare not because we doe not see him No man goeth but the Devil goeth with him no man stayeth but the Devill stayeth with him no man sleepeth here his action changes but the Devill waketh by him And as he is alwayes with us so hee is also alwayes so vigilant about us that although he doth not know the thoughts of the heart in the heart and cannot reade them in that booke of Characters yet he doth oftentimes gather what they are by the language of outward signes and also by outward signes forestall and know even future occurrences depending upon the will of man He is a Tempter by his profession God also may be said to tempt us but how by scattering rubbs in our way to make vertue more bold and more laborious What made all the Conquerours famous but because they conquer'd what was not easily conquer'd But the Devill tempteth with a direct intention to sinne God tempteth with a strong desire of good and of our salvation the Devill with a furious desire of evill and of our damnation God tempteth us not above our strength the Devill would if God would suffer him And as the Roman Conquerour the Queene having escaped carried her image in triumph So because he cannot trample upon God who threw him downe from Heaven he labours to revenge himselfe upon his Image Suspect therefore all his proceedings Facilius illicita Tert. de cultu foeminarum timebit qui licita verebitur saith Tertullian He will more easily feare unlawfull things who will be afraid even of things lawfull Let this joy thy heart Nothing can happen or stirre or be in the world except sin without Gods approbation nor yet that without his permission Please God and you have him your friend that holds all chances all stirrings and the being of all things fast in his hands And lastly begge nothing of man before you first begge it of God Rule 2. DIsingage your selfe from the world mistake me not from the love of it Old Authors observe that the Apostles were all clad outwardly not with Friers coates but with mantles And the mantle is a loose garment which hangs to a man but by a loope If it prove troublesome if it hindereth in your journey put your finger to the loope and the mantle falleth away The Apostles taught even by their garments and the mantles served to demonstrate their neglect of worldly things and to give evidence by what tenure they held them If riches abound set not your heart upon them sayes he that was both Prince and Prophet If they creepe upon you keepe the infection from your heart if they breake in upon the heart they are Luke 14. 33. mortall Except a man shall renounce all which he possesseth he cannot be my Disciple sayes the Prince of Prophets Then O rich man either presently renounce all which thou possessest or else turne out-law and forbeare to thinke thy selfe the Disciple of Christ All. A tearme of universality shuts the doore against every particular This is heavy newes I feare the messenger will bee ill Matth. 11. 30. paid It is not My yoke is easie and my burden is light saith he under whose yoke we labour Renounce the will and affection to riches and thou hast fulfilled the Law The affection of a ragged poore creature may be more closely tyde to an old house and a pewter dish then the will of a great person to a Palace and the revenewes of a Prince And therefore our Saviour speaketh plainely Blessed are the poore in spirit for Matth. 5. 3. theirs is the Kingdome of Heaven For poverty of spirit even rich may have in a rich manner And because they are poore upon earth they shall be rich in Heaven for theirs is the Kingdome of Heaven And the Kingdome of Heaven is not promised to any kind of poverty but the poverty of spirit And to that it is promised wheresoever God finds it It is easier for a Cāel to go through Mat. 19. 24 the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter into the Kingdome of God that is for a rich man whose love and affection sit brooding upon his riches Some ancient expositors tell us upon this place that there was in Jerusalem a little gate which for its extraordinary straitnesse was called the Needle the passage through it being accordingly named the Needles eye and that when the Camels came loaden to this gate their packs were taken off These Authors insinuating that a rich man cannot enter into the Kingdome of Heaven before he hath laid aside his burden his pack of riches He must be master of them and so manage them that they are not a burden to him he must possesse them as if he possessed them not And these Authors construe it It is casier for a Camell to goe through the eye of the Needle c. With which exposition that other saying of Christ suiteth Strait is the gate and narrow is
when you see or heare of the miseries of other people God presents them to your eyes or eares as warnings to you and as copious Theames of his praise And that when your faults are objected against you even by furious and angry persons the objection commeth by way of permission from God intending your benefit And that which is more strange God many times speakes to you by your selfe as when you instruct others Yea by dumbe and unsensible creatures And therefore heare diligently what they say which you may fitly doe in this manner When you see a Lion looke up to the preserver the Lion of the tribe of Judah and downe to the destroyer the roaring Lion with an earnest and urging desire to follow the one and to flie from the other And thinke of the royall mercie and most noble sweetnesse of God couched under the terrour of his Majesty of which they plentifully share even when his justice rideth in triumph that lie prostrate before him by humility When you see a Beare cast your inward eye upon the Beares which devoured the undutifull children because their parents had not performed the very first and most common office of Beares and licked their young into forme Seeing a Hog looke downe upon the prodigal childe a very child lying all along by the trough amongst his fellow swine and take into your minde the base abjection of a sinner wallowing in the filth and mire of his owne lust and carnall desires When you heare a Cocke the bird of day and usher of the morning crowe take Saint Peter by the hand and goe out or in and weepe bitterly When you see a bird say in the private study of your heart It is God that giveth meat pullis corvorum invocantibus eum to the young of the crew calling upon him feeding the little gaping Crowes forsaken of their mother as borne white and which therefore shee doth not thinke to be of her colour with the dew of Heaven When you see a stirring and painefull Ant goe sluggard to the Ant and learne spirituall husbandry When you see a Lilly thinke of him who is the Lilly of the vallies and presently inferre that Gods grace is not confined to a narrow circle and tyde to a certaine sort of persons but open to all suppliants and if it growes any where chiefely it s most usuall place is in the Valleys Seeing all this faire wardrobe and furniture of creatures say heartily What will not he give us in our Countrey who heapeth upon us such plenty in our banishment How faire are the roomes of Heaven within if the outward parts are so gay and so richly deckt with starres We are removed a great way from Heaven and are very nigh to Hell we play as it were upon the tyles on the top of the house and if here we are blest sure if we land in Heaven wee shall make the land Sea and swimme in blessednesse If a haire doth not perish from our head the whole man shall be kept as a choyce peece Times ergo ne pereas saith Saint Austin to a timorous and diffident S. Aug. hom 14. tom 10. person cujus capillus non peribit Sisictua custodiantur superflua in quanta seeuritate est anima tua Non perit capillus quem cum tondetur non sentis peribit anima per quam sentis Doe you feare therefore lest you should perish one of whose haires shall not perish If your superfluous things are kept so warily in what a sweete security is your soule Your haire perishewth not which being cut off when you are pold you feele not what hath passed and shall your soule perish by which you feele When you take a staffe in your hand say Thy rod and Psal 23. 4. thy staffe they comfort me the one serving for correction the other for direction Think at the sight of Bread upon your Table Through how many hands and fortunes hath God brought this good Bread safe to me It was Corne then sowed it dyed lived againe grew was greene washed with the raine brushed with the wind dryed with the Sunne then turned colour it lay abroad many a cold night was reaped threshed winnowed ground into meale and bolted kneaded and made into very good Bread and baked and all for me a sinner Such is the state of a righteous man And when thou art in company others wandering with other discourses let thy reason travell by it selfe and make strange discoveries in the view of some one standing by thee O man who framed that faire Globe of thy head the stupendious fountaine of all thy senses Who decked thy head with haire and a face wherein all parts conspire and meete in a beautifull proportion moving love and admiration Who drew a faire skin over thy flesh Who provided for every sense its proper object delightfull spectacles for the eyes pleasant sounds for the eares flowers for the smelling faculty dainties for the taste and soft things to please the touching power Who made the little bals of the eyes that rich and curious peece of worke to keepe watch and sentinell for the safety of the body and spread curtaines over them to shut out every shadow and shew of danger The eyes are little but see great things Who formed the eares to be the faithfull scouts of the soule and to lye out and lissen on both sides of the fort Who taught the tongue to speak so perfectly that all speech can never sufficiently expresse the excellencie of speaking Who gave a law to the stomacke to send nourishment to every part in a measure fit for the part to which it comes Who ranked the bones in order Who gave strength to the sinewes and confined the wandring bloud to the veines Who fitted the armes and hands for outward action Who shaped the feet to uphold the frame and maintaine it with the face looking towards our Countrey He growes upwards towards Heaven and he is going thither while earth lies under his feete God blesse him in his journey O the wisedome of him that sits upon the Throne in Heaven I will furnish you farther in this kinde afterwards Rule 6. EXercise these Acts as devotion or occasion shall call An Act of Faith Comming into the world as into a strange Countrey and finding people for the most part to beleeve as their Countrey and friends beleeve and as other vaine tyes hold them I doe shake off all these idle obligations in imitation of the Primitive Church and of all holy men in succeeding Ages I firmely beleeve that the Scripture is the word of God and that all things revealed in it are true And I beleeve that as God made the world for himselfe and his glory So and more eminently he directeth his Church to himselfe and his glory That is therefore the pure Church of Christ which casteth all the glory upon God which leaneth and relieth wholly upon the most pretious merits and passion of Christ
which cryeth to God onely for helpe which is throughly obedient for Gods sake to lawfull authority bee it amongst Heathens which doth not permit and countenance sinne by which onely God is dishonoured And she cannot be the cleane spouse of Christ which God and his Truth being infallible performeth the most high and most reverend Acts of religion upon uncertainties As prayeth absolutely for a soule turned out of the body without a certaine knowledge of her being a determinate friend or enemy of God And worshipeth that with the worship of God for God which if the Priest be deficient in his intention or defective in his orders is in her owne opinion a creature And she is not the faire spouse which hath lost her attractive beauty and which all Jewes and Infidels hate and abhorre justly moved at least with a notorious shew of Idolatry And therefore I beleeve that the Church of England is the Spouse of Christ as being free from these blemishes and conformable to Scripture And in the defence of this Faith I stand ready to give up my sweete life and dearest bloud And if I die suddenly to this Faith I commend the state of my eternity An Act of hope in God I doe hope in God because hee is infinitely full of goodnesse and is like a nurse which suffereth pain in her brests till she be eased of her milke because hee is most able and most willing to helpe me because he hath sealed his love with most unbreakable promises and because hee knoweth the manifold changes and chances of the world the particular houre of my death and the generall day of judgement in all which I hope greatly this good and great God will deliver me An Act of the love of God I such a one in perfect health and memory able yet to revell in the world to enjoy wealth and pleasure to scrifice my body and soule to sensuality doe contemne and lay under my feete all goe behinde me Satan sworne enemy of Mankinde and love God purely for himselfe For put the case he had not framed this world or beene the prime cause of any creature in it put the case hee had never beene the Author of any blessing to mee yet excellencie and perfection of themselves are worthy of love and duty and as the object of the understanding is truth so the object of the will is goodnesse and therefore my will shall cheerefully runne with a full career to the love of it Saint Austin S. Aug. hom 38. hath taught me Qui amicum propter commodum quodlibet amat non amicum convincitur amare sed commodum He that loves his friend for the profit he reapes by him is easily convinced not to love his friend but the profit Wherefore although I should see in the Propheticall booke of the divine Prescience my selfe not well using the divine helpes not rightly imploying the talents commended to my charge and to be damned for ever yet still I would love him away ill thoughts touch me not I would insomuch that if it were possible I would even compound and make to meet hands the love of God and damnation For although I were to be damned yet God could not be in the fault and though I should be exceedingly miserable by damnation he would yet remaine infinitely good and great by glory and though I did not partake so plentifully of his goodnesse yet many others would O Lord I love thee so truely that if I could possibly adde to thy perfection I freely would but because I cannot I am heartily glad and love thee againe because thou art so good and perfect that thou canst not be any way more perfect or good either to thy selfe or in thy self And I most humbly desire to enjoy thee that thy glory may shine in mee and that I may love thee for ever and ever It grieves me to thinke that if I should faile of thee in my death I should be deprived in Hell not onely of thee but also of the love of thee Note pray that other vertues either dispose us in a pious way towards our neighbour as justice or doe order the things which are ours and in us as many morall vertues or they looke upon those things which appertaine to God as Religion or they direct us to God himselfe but according onely to one Attribute or peculiar perfection As the vertue of Faith giveth us to beleeve the divine authority revealing to us Gods holy truth Hope to cast Anchor upon his helpe and promises But with charity or the love of God we fasten upon all God with respect to all his perfections we love his mercie justice power wisedome infinity immensity eternity And faith hope patience temperance and other vertues leaving us at the gate of Heaven charity enters with us and stayes in us for ever An Act of Humility O Lord if others had beene stored with the divers helpes the inspirations the good examples the good counsell the many loud cals from without and yet from thee which I have had they would have beene exceedingly more quicke more stirring in thy service Many Acts which I have thought vertues in me were onely deedes of my nature and complexion My nature is be spotted with many foolish humours I am unworthy dust and ashes and infinitely more unworthy then dust and ashes A Sinner I am not worthy to call thee Father or to depend in any kinde of thee to live or to be The foule Toade thy faire creature is farre more beautifull then I a Sinner-Toade Verily if men did know of me what thou knowest or what I know of my selfe I should be the rebuke and abomination of all the world An Act of resignation to the will of God Whither shall I flie but to thee O Lord the rich store-house of all true comfort The crosse which seemeth to me so bitter came from thy sweet will Can I be angry with thy good providence Is it not very good reason that thy royall will should be done in earth as it is in heaven And though perhaps it was not thy direct and resolute will that all my crosses should in this manner have rushed upon me yet the stroke of the crosse being given it is thy direct intention that I should beare it patiently I doe therefore with a most willing hand and heart take Gaule and Vineger delivered by thy sweete hands I doe kisse and embrace both the Giver and the gift And moreover give up my selfe and all that I have to the disposition of thy most sacred will health wealth that which I best love here and liberty and life and all are ready when thou callest Crosses are good signes For the more I suffer now the greater I hope shall be my glory And therefore to thee be the glory An Act of content I am fully and absolutely contented O Lord with thy glory And it is the head of all my comforts that thou art God and doest raign over us And
beene so busie and so movable in accomplishing the foule acts of wickednesse shall now be as quick and ready in the performance of workes agreeable to thy sacred will My feete that have carried my body with such nimblenesse in the darke and dirty turnings of mischiefe shall now strive one to goe before the other and be as forward and swift in the faire and direct way of holinesse I let goe the reines and freely consent to all the acts of charity justice patience and other vertues inward or outward in earth or in heaven as farre as heaven is capable of them before now or hereafter performed And I pull up the reines and with-draw my consent from all acts contrary to God and goodnesse Woe to me wretch when I am out of thy favour me thinkes the Lilies are blacke and the red Roses pale The Birds sing idle tunes and the Sunne doth not shine when it shines When the Clock striketh say Lord give me true repentance for the procuring of which this houre is added to my dayes Or Lord give mee grace to redeeme the time Or Lord prepare me for my last houre and let not death rush suddenly upon me unlesse in a time when I am provided for thee and have washed away my last sinne with true repentance When thou goest to bed think of thy Grave and say if sleepe this night should steale away and leave the possession to death as it may easily happen how is my soule affected When thou risest think of the Resurrection and say what if I were now called to an exact and rigid account for all the sinnes and disorders of my life And let the last Trumpet cry alwayes in thine eares with a mournfull sound Surgite mortui venite ad judicium Rise yee dead and come to judgement And let day and night put thee continually in minde of Heaven and Hell And remember that the accounts shall differ according to the differences of talents helps and cals from God For some are by nature more prone to some kindes of sinnes then others And great persons have greater temptations to sinnes that are fed with plenty Rule 9. EVery morning and evening examine your conscience and call your selfe to a strict and severe account how you have offended God that day or night And that you may the better render to your selfe the account of the day think what was your businesse where you were and with whom you conversed Then confesse your sinnes to God procuring by the helpe of his grace sorrow for them returning all possible thankes because you have not waded farther into sinne And at those times cleanse and purifie your heart from the dregs of envie and malice and from the lees of ill desires and vaine affections And so levell your selfe that all who see you may clearely perceive you are in perfect charity with them and with all the world For it is not the last rule of our obligation to forgive our Adversaries privately in our hearts We must likewise unfold open and expresse our selves to them and if they have any thing against us as it is written we must in a pious and reasonable manner cleare the matter And also in every examination of your selfe try your heart whether it goeth forward or backward in the cleane path of vertue For the way to Heaven is Jacobs Ladder you cannot stand still upon it Two speciall things are necessarily requisite to salvation the one pertaining to faith the other to manners First to know I meane what they are and firmely beleeve by a faith given from Heaven the chiefest and most materiall points of Christian beleefe Secondly to banish all complacence and liking of our former sinnes and the close and implicit will of sinning hereafter and to wash away all our sinnes yea the very last I doe not say every one in particular but all considered in the lump if the last be included with true and hearty repentance which is the gift of God and supernaturall and full of difficulties Rule 10. VVHen difficulties in the great affaires of conscience do occur for example how you may give rules to your soule in such a case in a case encircled with such circumstances whether such and such a bargaine or such and such dealing will stand in conformity with justice desire the grave advice of your Pastour or of some other vertuous and learned person As also when you are over-tempted and exercised though not above yet to the full height of your strength flie quickly to your spirituall Physitian and open the secret of your disease For now he supplieth the most high place of God who revealeth no mans weaknesses And he knowing the soare may fit his medicines accordingly and truly worke more effectually then in the Pulpit where for the most part hee doth speake to the present purpose by guesse and where he cannot fit himselfe to the sins of all his Hearers You will urge perhaps my Pastour is not a man of a good life and therefore though his counsell may helpe me his prayers cannot I answer that he is not a man of a good life I am heartily sorry But he beareth two persons in his owne person of himselfe as he is a man and like other men and of himselfe as he hath received holy orders from the Church as he is lawfully sent and commeth in by the doore and as hee representeth Gods person As he is himselfe a wicked man the remembrance of thee will be little acceptable to God in his prayers but as he is a Church-man hee may stand betwixt God and thee and keep off the blow But if he neglect thee or suite not with thy devotion flie to another Rule 11. ENdeavour to learne alwayes by good example Virtuosus saith Aristotle est 10. Eth. c. 5. parwn ante sinem mensura regula actuum bumanorum a vertuous man is a rule of life by which others ought to measure their actions And to pray alwayes by a continuance of good actions and alwayes privately marke how Gods attributes his goodnesse mercie wisedome power providence doe play their severall parts here in the world and how strangely his justice doth oftentimes fall heavie upon sinners and lay them open to the eyes of all men No childe would grow to the ripenesse of a man or woman unlesse upheld daily by the speciall providence of good And observe the miserable ends of drunkards of lewd proud and profane persons and the condition of solitary sins and of sinnes that keepe ill company as Drunkennesse Adultery Murder which are many times found in the same knot And lay up all things in thy heart It hapneth oftentimes that a man killeth his neighbour and by that foule act doth execute the severe justice of God upon the man whom he killeth upon himselfe and upon friends on both sides Learne that men being touched in a soare part are most troubled Rule 12. SPeake not willingly of other mens faults or
reason why they danced to a golden Calfe in the Wildernesse was because they had formerly seene the like sport and practise in Egypt when they were busie as it is recorded of them in raising an Egyptian Pyramis Yet God did often draw here a line and there a figure of this great mystery in the old Testament that it might not seeme to be new doctrine when it should afterwards be delivered with the sound of a Trumpet in the new Testament And questionlesse we shall know in Heaven and behold in every degree and latitude of the beatificall vision many great secrets and priviledged mysteries though not in so high a kinde which God is not pleased ever to reveale out of himself to the world in consideration of humane weaknesse and distraction This thrice high mystery of the blessed Trinity is onely fit nourishment for an understanding thrice purified thrice enlightned that is by the light of Nature the light of the Law and the light of the Gospel And onely we by the onely helpe of Grace can throughly digest it It is our Faith onely which can say with a good courage to these humane sciences that vaunt so much of their clearenesse as the Spouse in the Canticles to the daughters of Jerusalem I am blacke but 1. Cant. 5. comely O yee daughters of Jerusalem I am blacke seeme blacke I le tell you why because the most noble part of my Verities stand over humane capacity the distance in part causing the errour And likewise they seeme not faire not because they are foule but because they are vail'd and discover not their choyce beauty to the dull uncapable and weake eye of reason Yet I am beautifull because the ground of my beaty is good and can never decay and because I and my beauty stand upon a firme Basis and fixe upon the sound and solid verity or veracity of God who can neither deceive others in respect of his infinite truth nor be deceived in himselfe in regard of the infinite light of his understanding from whom I descend by Revelation The Kings daughter is all glorious within Ps 45. 13. sayes the Kingly Prophet She is but glorious within and yet shee is all gloririous And the glory of the Kings daughter of Faith is from within from the Truth of God upon which it secretly anchors Let Moses speake And the Lord Exod. 13. 21. went before them before the children of Israel in their journey towards Canaan by day in a pillar of a cloud to lead them the way and by night in a pillar of fire to give them light Some fit this Text to the comforts and crosses of this life God appearing a cloud in our earthly comforts and light in our crosses and in both a pillar And some to Faith For God was both blacke and comely as our Faith by which we are led towards Canaan is both darke and cleere We may best learne of our Masters and teach our Schollers with Aquinas that whereas there are two chiefe faculties of the Soule the Understanding and Will and with the Understanding we know with the Will we love it is a greater height of perfection to know the things which are under us then to love them but for the things which are above us it is more perfect satisfaction to love them then to know and understand them CHAP. X. BUt here we must encounter a difficulty It is the quaint observation of Saint Bernard that Caine was Fideicida antequam S. Bernar. Serm. 24. in Cant. Fratricida that he killed Faith before hee murthered his Brother As likewise the great Doctor of our Westerne Church Saint Austin saith of Judas that hee first betraied Faith and then his Master For an evill Faith is commonly the lewd and common mother of evill workes And alasse Caine had many children like him in this foule act of killing Faith For till God was pleased after the death of his Sonne to spread himselfe with an equall streame upon Jew and Gentile we read but of one people and some odde persons in the number of whom were holy Job and his friends that were his Why now was not God all things to all men The answer is not farre off He was and gave meate to every sicke and diseased person agreeable with the qualities and disposition of his stomacke supposing his disease I will make it as cleere as the light Saint John speaking of Christ the true light saith That was the true light which enlightneth every man Io. 1. 9. that commeth into the world Every man not every man that is enlightned but every man that commeth into the world Before the comming of Christ God enlightned the Gentiles by many fit helps and competent directions As the three Kings and people of the East by the doctrine and Prophesies of some beleeving Gentiles The Egyptians by an old Record shewing that when a Virgin should bring forth a childe their Idols should fall before him like Dagon before the Arke of God in memory of which they set up in one of their great Temples a faire Image of a Virgin with a childe in her armes The people of Alexandria in Egypt by the Hieroglyphicke of a Crosse mentioned by Ruffinus the interpretation of which Ruffin Eccles Hist l. 2. c. 29. was vita ventura life to come with a Propheticall sequell annexed to the interpretation that their emblems and obscurities shâ—â—ld continue till by the Crosse life should come to the world The great and learned Travellers into Egypt by certaine holy markes of life and doctrine left there as it were imprinted by the Jewes And the whole world by Jewes dispersed here there which gathered many to God and to Jerusalem And there were dwelling saith Saint Luke at Jerusalem Jewes devout Act. 2. 5. men out of every Nation under Heaven As likewise now a great Schoole of holy Fathers teacheth they are all scattered and dispersed that they may daily shew to Infidels the old Prophesies and predictions of what wee preach And also the whole world by the Sibyls who dwelling in Caves under ground were thought to bee filled with a Spirit rising like a dampe from the fruitfull entrals of the earth but were indeed inspired from Heaven and filled like Conduit-pipes with sweete water of which themselves did not partake as not understanding the drift of their owne words And againe all the world by the books of Plató and other divine Philosophers by the strange agreement of the seventy Elders in the interpretation of the old Testament called into Egypt by one of the Ptolomies and by the cleare and clearely Propheticall writings of the Jewish Rabbines For whatsoever is well said 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 S. Just Apolog 1. saith Saint Justin belongeth to Christ and to us Christians The holy Ghost being the holy cause of all caused truth And certainely their eyes used to darknesse would hardly beare more then the small glimmerings of light And
Saint Hierome because he Galat. 2. Hebr. 3. 1. â—â—ls Christ in the same Epistle the Apostle and high Priest of our profession and therefore lest he might seeme to thrust himselfe in the ballance with Christ he concealed his title The third and last is given by the same hand and happily to my purpose because hee most pleaded for the abrogation of the Mosaicall rites of which the Hebrewes though Christians were yet zealous Act. 21. 20. as it is plaine in the Acts of the Apostles And therefore lest the mention of his name should breake the sinewes and weaken the force and energy of his doctrine he is plyable to their passion and in a manner denies his owne name And we know that the wise Apostles in the Primitive Church gave way to the Hebrewes in the use of many legall ceremonies untill the full and plenary promulgation of the Gospell that the Church might with more ease be compacted of Jewes and Gentiles and the parts not stirred close the better Saint Clement writes of Gamaliel the great Pharisee and Doctor of the Law that hee was left being now a Christian by the serious appointment of the Apostles in the Councell of the Jewish Elders to qualifie their heate and mitigate their cruelty And in the Acts he acts his part he doth comply Act. 5. with both sides and reach beyond them all This Milkie way went all the godly Prelates who succeeded the Apostles or their Schollers in all Churches keeping an even hand betwixt innovation and stubbornnesse This ever was and is and ever will bee the knowne course of the holy Ghost even in the soules of men especially as he is to borrow of Synesius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the Giver Synes in hymnis of Graces But I am forced here to play as I am wont when I relate the foule prankes of the Papists and imitate the Painter who endeavouring to shew to the eye a multitude of men discovereth in some onely their faces in some the tops of their heads in others one onely foot and sometimes a cheeke and one eye stands for a man while he leaves the rest for our imagination to paint which truly performeth a faire deale more in the Table then the Painter He that is stung by a Tarantula I write what I have knowne is presently taken with a strong and violent fit of dancing and he is best cured when the Musitian playes aptly with the current of his humour and bending of his fancie But I feare I play to one that is stung and yet will never be recovered because no good musicke hath a note so high as to consort with her greatnesse It is she that saith in her heart I sit a Queene Rev. 18. 7. Every man hath his way of writing and I have mine I am sure this way delights and illustrates and affords to every man something which he loves and also keeps the devout spirit in action both of him that writes and him that reades CHAP. XIII AFter many stormie dangers and dangerous stormes by sea and by land I arrived safe into my deare Countrey little England My soule doth magnifie the Lord for it And me thoughts I came out of the noise and tumults of other Countries into England as into a silent harbour and haven of rest having as it were left the world behinde mee And if my comparison may lawfully bring two different things together as a soule going out of earth comes into Heaven Truely after the first step upon land I kneeled downe and kissed the very sands and gravell on the shore Being come to London I presented my selfe to my superiours and shewing my faculties declared whence I came But they seemed fearfull having heard that I had formerly suspected their wayes Yet that was but a qualme and I was quickly disposed of and my walke assigned to me I was placed in a Parish wherein there were and are many more Papists then there are people in the Parish in which I am now seated And they were many of them both rich and of quality There are all poore and of a low name Any man may beleeve without straining his faith that comming to England so top-full of the knowledge of Romish abuses and corruptions I wanted nothing but the very last degree of heate to the taking of fire I wanted but an occasion to set one wheele a going that all the rest might goe with it I had gathered experience out of all their affaires but onely their dealings in England And I desired a little thence to make up the Talent In the house where I lived all my imployment was my service of God in my way and exercise in my studies I know my enemies will grant to me that no man amongst them followed his studies with more exact diligence then my selfe But my way differed from theirs for I alwayes carried Schoole Divinity and other learning with an even hand before me that the mildnes of the one might temper the asperity of the other and that the soundnesse of the one might fortifie the weaknesse of the other and that one might bring the other downe to the understandings of people to be instructed by me They were all for the deepe of Divinity All for diving Whence it comes that few of them are handy in the conversion of soules otherwise then by sleight and cunning or able in the faculty of preaching In this house I wrought the cure of a wound which many Priests had beene doing with never any brought to a Citatrice but my selfe I reaped the benefit of gifts in the house indeede they were thrust upon me yet not so great but a great Priest the famous Divel-Tamer whom I used in Counsell secured to me the taking of them in justice Yet this kindled a quarrell such was the tenacious nature of the prime Litigant and grew to a parting And this for a parting blow perhaps my Reader may understand it Agnes a tender soft Girle having rejected the love of a noble young Romane to couple with the heavenly Bridegroome called to her Headsman with the voice of a man as Saint Ambrose delivereth it saying S. Ambr. l. 1. de Virginibus Pereat corpus quod amari potest oculis quibus nolo Let the body perish which can be loved with eyes with which I would not it should be loved He that should have heard the words and not seene the speaker would scarce have thought this had beene little Agnes I speake in the clouds and I am loth to come out of them till I am call'd and urged to speake what ought not to be spoke without a command from necessity CHAP. XIIII MY Superiours now sent me and one of them brought me to one of their greatest houses in England being the house of a very noble personage where they were destitute of a Preacher But I repairing to London while the matter was hot in debating rumour had carried to their eares that I
to his Master desiring that my Parishioners might not be stirred in their service of God or averted from their allegiance to the King inserting these words concerning my selfe Set aside the sweete name of Christ I would rather choose to be a Turke then a Papist I descerned no change in the working of my letter but only that I was defamed through the Countrey and proposed as one that had more inclination to Turcifme then to Christianity in them that part which qualified the proposition set aside the sweet name of Christ being wholly concealed and set aside in the report and my intention evacuated The occasion of my inserting that clause was because the Popish servant had said he was sure that I would quickly bee theirs againe which is alwayes a great part of their plea when the man that commeth from them is circumspect in his life I see that where one notorious abomination dwels all other sinnes are neighbours This my letter was shewed by the Papists to one of my owne cloth and profession But one whom the Papists have bought and seal'd their speciall friend by speciall benefits and entertainments He speaking as affection prompted him not as Religion so farre helped them on both in their opinions and in their depression of me that he perswaded them the proposition which they had chose for the instrument of their abuses Set aside the sweete name of Christ I had rather be a Turke then a Papist to be no other thing but elegant nonsense His reasons were as I received them from his owne mouth First because the sweete name of Christ could not be set aside Secondly because the proposition being resolved into the sense of it if it hath any is this Set aside the sweete name of Christ I had rather be a Turke then a Christian I reply This is the discourse of flesh and bloud or rather of hunger and thirst and wanton appetite Were there the greatest of all connexions betwixt the name of Christ and the Popish Religion I might borrow of the Philosophers an hypotheticall and imaginary separation per impossible But my meaning in the inwards is I doe not conceive there is any mighty businesse of Christ amongst the Papists but his name and that wheresover it is is a sweete name and a name without a thing will easily be removed by an Intellectus agens And therefore it will stand as close as this mans tongue does to the Papists Set aside the sweete name of Christ I had rather bee a Turke then a Papist And his second reason is most injurious to his owe Religion I meane the Religion which he professeth For it comes with a long taile and implies that nothing is signified by the word Papist but Christian they being termini convertibiles and that every tenent of Popery is Christian and derived from Christ But the wonder is that I am forced to defend my propositions and assertions by which I disclaime Popery against a Brother The Father of Heaven in his Sonne Jesus Christ blesse and continue the Parliaments of England or many a faire birth-right will be sold for a messe of Pottage Two things I have learn'd and experience was my Schoole-mistresse speaking to me from the lives of others The first is that to divide and rend our selves betwixt two Religions is the nearest path to Atheisme And the second that men so rent divided are company-keepers lovers of pleasure hunters gamsters caet And by such I shall joyfully be resisted having so good an assurance that I fight Gods battels And that the Papists may rise as high as scandall can mount they have spread into the world that I have tooke one of their Priests by whose hands God hath beene very kinde to me To this I thus answer First that my obligation to my Prince the State and the Parliament being the representative body of the whole Kingdome doth binde me farre more strictly then the private kindnesses betwixt friend and friend Secondly as I desire to be washed with the bloud of Christ I had no hand in the taking of that person nor knowledge of it The man I tooke was one from whom I was utterly disinteressed a scandalous person a scandall-raiser and one by whose practises I am as sicke to the Popish Religion as I would bee dead to its sinnes The other my quondam friend I could have taxed in a fit place of this book for his wily dealings with a maid said to be possessed with a Devill and related that the Devill lurking in a lump of her flesh would runne from part to part and could not endure to be touched with his fingers used in the touch of the consecrated Host But I spared my friend I could be copious if I should not bee tedious in these relations Old wives tales are odious And Saint Gregory Nazianzen taxeth Julian the Apostata for blowing the coales at the Devils Altar with old women How their wisedome is confounded It is vainely done of the Pelican that seeing her nest fired by Shepheards commeth in all haste and thinking to redeeme her young from the danger by the waving of her wings bloweth the fire and encreaseth the flame and at last applying her whole body loseth her wings the safety of her body And these reports are in effect the same The flame of my devotion towards the Church of England is increased and they lose their wings and themselves in the fire when doubtles they thought to scape away like the Fish in the black inke they cast round about them upon their brother O these reports They goe as Demosthenes saies of the waves in the Sea one confusedly tumbling over the back of another without any stop or intermission And he that flyeth from Babylon is like one of the Martyrs in the Primitive Church Church tormented in a brazen Bull. The bellowing and roaring that you heare is in the thing it selfe the voice of the Martyr but much altered by passing through the wide throate of the brazen Bull. The torments of Marcus Arathusius were strange ones described S. Greg. Naz. orat 3 in Julian by Saint Gregory Nazianzen The venerable old man was drawn through the kennels through all sorts of unclean places He was hung up by the armes and tossed from side to side where the boyes stood with Pen-kifes to receive his naked body He was drawne up in a basket in the heate of a burning day and all spread with hony to gather a meeting of Bees upon his body But he was happy And happy were the Martyrs who prayed and meditated walking upon hot fiery coales as upon Roses I complained to one of them of these scandals And it was answer'd that I might be called an Adulterer a Ravisher and the like because I had defiled the Spouse of Christ and turned to a Harlot But why then is the crime delivered without the comment Some dayes after the publication of my closing with the Church of England a Popish
have done CHAP. VIII HEre I will give certaine formes of Christian duties which in some part belong to me in regard of my former wandrings and which I will not fit onely to my selfe that others may use them upon emergent occasions That God may be glorified and in conformity to his most holy Will the sacred measure of all goodnesse I most heartily forgive all people that have trespassed against me whēsoever wheresoever or howsoever Now I look better upon them I behold my own self in every one of them or another me very like my selfe sent hither into the world the same way upon the same businesse and sweating here in the Vineyard as I doe for the same or like paiment here I doe not meane the Papists and perhaps pleasing God better upon earth by some hidden vertues and to be seated more close to him in Heaven then my selfe Shall I be displeased with any with whom God is pleased to be well pleased Indeed we must be friends for wee hope to live together in one house for ever And more I behold the Image of God in them and our onely Saviour Christ Jesus in the humane nature which he tooke and married to his Divinity and cleerely in the body which he put upon him For his sake I will imitate Saint Stephen the boldest because the first of Martyrs who being oppressed with a showre not of hard words or the like but of stones kneeled downe and cried with a loud voyce His body Acts. 7. 60. was as low as Earth but his voice as high as Heaven and he sent it thither with a good will for he cried with a loud voice and yet he cried not for the help of others helpe helpe or for his owne wrongs but as his wrongs were their sinnes and hee kneeled downe before he was beate down and although they might have beate him from his standing yet they could not beate him from his kneeling before they had beate him from his life nor with most hard stones beate downe his prayer which then was his and now is mine Lord lay not this sinne to their charge One thing I know they were both Gods whips and the instruments of his triall in respect of me And blessed be God in all Eternity that fitted and prepared to my hands so rich so ample and such fine-weav'd occasions of patience and humility I blesse not God for the sinne that it was committed but for his good intention towards me supposing the commission of evill and for the good which he wrought by evill when it was committed O the blindnesse of anger It is impossible to goe or stand or spet or so much as looke handsomely in the troubled judgement of the angry person Anger thinks that we poyson the air when we breath and so is afraid of catching the Plague and that every thing we looke upon we infect with the eyes of a Basiliske and that what we touch is stung by a Scorpion and therefore the part touched must be cut off and that where wee smell thence we have extracted the sweetnesse And the minde of an angry person saith S. Chrysostome is a market-place S. Chrys tom 4. hom 24. full of tumult where is a continuall clamour of goers and commers this man calling that chiding one asking another answering a fifth murmuring a sixth hallowing one here singing one there lamenting and all with different voices the loud crying of Camels the rude braying of Asses a confused noise of all sorts of workemen incessantly knocking on every side with their severall instruments Here is noise enough to make a man lose the right use of his hearing Go my soule to the Philosophers that knew neither Christ nor his Father as we know them to Plato and to his Socrates Aske Cicero if this be the minde of a vertuous man The Stoicks would have thought such a man not a man but the Ship-wrack of a man It is the voice of the Psalmist Righteousnesse and peace have kissed each other Upon Psal 85. 10 which words Saint Austin discourseth S. Aug. super illud Psalmi Justitia Pax. as he uses to doe most excellently and me thinkes he speakes to me Duae sunt amicae Justitia Pax tu forte unam vis alteram non facis Righteousnesse and Peace are deare and neare-united friends you perhaps would have one without the other Which can never be for they are as unseparable as their friendship you shall not finde them parted they are alwayes kissing together You desire the sweets of Righteousnesse but you have no minde to Righteousnesse that is sweet The one is to be done the other to be enjoyed If you will enjoy Peace you must doe righteousnesse Why then Lord I begge of thee not Peace without righteousnesse but the Peace of Righteousnesse that while they kisse together in me I may be kissing too but what thy sacred feete nailed to the Crosse and bleeding for me Under which I cast all my wrongs great and small And for the persons if my wishes were as efficacious as the first words of God in the creation Let there be Light after which immediately Gen. 1. 3. appeared that most gallant creature all in white in the next instant they should all shine in glory with God and his Angels CHAP. IX NOw let me looke inward and search the many turnings and windings of my heart for sores that cannot be salv'd except they be salv'd as well abroad as at home and with different plaisters sores that ake in two places at once They are knowne by this name injuries done to my neighbours And they are like the Serpent which Plinie calleth Amphisbaena headed at both ends and at both ends they dispense their poyson for they not onely wound me with guilt but also in the same blow my neighbours with hurt dammage and losse of some good thing to which they have a just title unjustly taken from them Every good action is tutored by some vertue and the lawfull change of the dominion which every one hath over his owne lawfully made his owne must bee regulated and informed by Justice It is the Doctrine of Saint Austin Non dimittitur S. Aug. peccatum nisi restituatur ablatum The sinne is not pardoned except the thing taken away be restored there being a greater 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and foulenesse of injustice in the keeping and retaining then in the taking away of my neighbours goods the act of retaining them being indeed a continuall taking of them and accompanied with much more deliberation and consequently a most deliberate negation or deniall of sorrow for having taken them and an implicit or close and secret will or love of the same and the like wicked action and verily an utter exclusion of repentance upon this ground Repentance by which we are grieved for the commission of one sinne or more if it include not virtually a sorrow for all our sinnes committed is not
prayers If I am altogether unable my spirituall satisfaction shall be the more ample If for an injury in matter of goods no temporall satisfaction be required my satisfaction shall have two feete or two wings and I will satisfie both for the wrong and the curtesie with love prayers and Christian observance Indeed I will be singularly carefull to restore my selfe to God in watching fasting prayer and all that is mine or placed under my care and any way subordinate to mee every thing in its proper way And to make even with my neighbours wheresoever the least shadow or semblance of obligation shall appeare It is the good counsell of Saint Gregory Quales vires habuisti ad mundum S. Greg. tales habeas ad artificem mundi With the strength and courage with which you did pursue the world when you were of the world looking now above the world you must apply your selfe to the Creatour of the world in whom you may see the world without the vanity of the world And Lord give strength and age to the good thou hast begot in me CHAP. X. ANd I am most heartily sorry that I I vile wretch the child of a weake Woman a base clod of earth that having got to live and be a little warme hath learn'd to to goe and speake and to put on cloaths and as soone as it could sinne to sinne have so greatly so grieviously offended a God infinitely more faire then the Sunne in all his glory infinitely more pure then the pure Angels that having stood fast when their companions fell not for want of strength to stand but with a desire to fall because with a will to quit their standing and rise above the firme place where they stood were presently confirmed in all their admirable endowments of Nature and Grace and also beautified with a new and that a compleate and everlasting purity infinitely more good then he that is most good under him I have more to say infinitely more faire pure and good then God with all his art and ability can make a creature By whom the Sunne was taught to runne and commanded not to rest with a promise that hee should never be weary whose powerfull voice the dull and senselesse yet obedient stones borrow eares to heare By whose indulgence the little worme without feete creepe joyfully and the small flies are carried strangely above ground and make very pretty sport in the Sun-shine The first and originall cause of all the Good that ever was is shall be or can be and after all this and infinitely more then I or all the Angels of Heaven can utter my last end O good Prophet and great King lend me thy words and thy heart I have sinned against the Lord. 2 Sam. 12. 13. CHAP. XI DIonysius Areopagita Saint Pauls Scholler and his onely convert at Athens to whom he imparted the knowledge of the third Heaven describes the God of Heaven Dionys Areâ—p de divin nom c. 1 as well as he can 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 he is a supersubstantiall substance an understanding not to be understood a word never to be spokeÌ„ Against what a sublime and high thing have I offended in a most high manner Against a substance above substance I have opposed a substance of no substance Against an understanding that for its excellencie cannot be understood I have opposed an understanding that for its weaknesse cannot understand And against a word that can never be spoken I have spok words which having spoke I can never speake how bad they were and which I most heartily wish had never beene spoken John Damascen sayes Johan Damasc lit 3. de fide orthodox c. 24 In deo quid est dicere impossibible est In God to say what he is is a thing impossible I have done I cannot say what against I cannot say whom Onely this I can say Father I have sinned against Heaven and Luke 15. 5. 18. 19. before thee and am no more worthy to be called thy sonne make me as one of thy hired servants Because we have Fathers in the world from whom we come and we come from God I can looke up to him and say Father And because by sinne I have forfeited all the joyes of Heaven I can say I have sinned against Heaven and because I cannot sinne or be where God is not I can say and before thee And because I that did once love God with the love of a sonne for himselfe flew wretchedly out of his house both from his children and his servants and now hoping to come into favour againe must stand aloofe off with beginners that first enter into his service and have all their minde upon their wages I can say And am no more worthy to be called thy sonne make mee as one of thy hired servants If God should appeare to me in the meanest robe of his beauty But I speake vainely for his fairenesse is one of the Attributes which equally bestowes it selfe upon all the other all being equally good equally faire But if he should appeare to me in a robe agreeable with our eyes he would be so faire that aided with a gentle gale of his Grace I could not possibly hold from running immediately with all swiftnesse and with all humblenesse into his most delightfull imbraces For it is most true of God which Tully speakes out of Plato concerning Philosophy if it could be seene mirabiles amores excitaret sui The sight of him would stirre up in the beholders a most wonderfull love of him not onely in respect of his beauty but also in regard of the secret conveniencie and agreement betwixt the soule and its last end O Lord what have I done CHAP. XII I and what am I a little creature compos'd of a weak sickly body and a soule and there is all I. A body not taken out of the substance of Heaven lest I should seeme more heavenly then I am nor out of any shining starre lest I should take a starre for my heavenly Father nor from bright fire lest I should be too fiery nor yet from the goodly mines of gold lest my minde should be altogether upon gold nor compacted of precious jewels lest I should thinke my selfe a precious jewell but of earth a dirty filthy foule thing that we and all the beasts of the field go upon and which I wipe carefully every day from my shooes O man of earth bee not so rough wipe it off gently remember thy Creation and part of it perhaps was once part of as tall a body as thine owne And for my soule it was made of nothing and if God should step aside and forsake it one posting minute of time it would presently give backe and fall to nothing and nothing can be so vile as nothing Conservatio say the Philosophers est continuata generatio Conservation is a continued generation and therefore where the continuance of generation is interrupted conservation ceaseth The fire in
me thinkes I smell it Nay then she did not stand now doubtlesse she came upon her knees to wipe his feete with the haires of her head And kissed his feete O the sinner hath not as yet forgot to kisse and rather then she will not be kissing shee will kisse the very feete of him she loves And anointed them with the ointment Shee did not annoint them with ointment to make her kissing sweet or him sweeter for that she thought he could not be but to expresse her sweete love Here head and haires and eyes and lips and hands and heart and all were at worke And was not this a sweet shower were not the teares sweeter then the oyntment though the oyntment was passing sweete Now my head and eyes and lips and hands and heart and all can yee be lookers on and not actors and imitators of what yee see I am not worthy to take in or give out the sweete aire of Heaven What said I Was it Heaven I spoke of I am not worthy to name Heaven And yet still I name it as if I did belong to it No no not worthy to be the meanest of Gods creatures a Worme A Worme is a pretty thing of a little thing Not worthy to be a Toad O poore naked miserable what shall I call thee And yet still I live and looke upwards O perfect bounty with all her dimensions length breath and depth I am very heartily sorry that I am no more sorry I would I were as heartily sorrowfull for all my sinnes and for every one in particular as God can make a sinner O my heart be of good comfort be hearty the desire of sorrow is a kinde of sorrow I doe hate and even loath all my most execrable abominations O that I could revoke the filthinesse of my life But foole I wish to do more then a Power which can doe all that can bee done And that is factum infectum facere to make what hath beene done not to have beene done O then that no such filthinesse had ever beene acted by me If I were now againe to make my first entrance upon the yeares of Reason and Discretion I would in the word of a Christian aided by Christ I would stand alwayes like a Watch-man over my selfe I would bee ever awake I would suspect all occurrences that could in reason be suspected and have an eye upon every darke place and upon every corner where a Devill can hide himselfe or his black head O my Saviour crucified for me as truely as if there had not beene another sinner besides my selfe I doe kisse with reverence the wounds of thy feete hands heart And now all my offences as well inwardly as outwardly contracted shall be washed away Hide me O hide me But where shalt thou hide me not in Heaven for that is too cleane a place for me as I am I shall pollute it Nor upon Earth for there thy Fathers anger will will finde me in the places wherein I committed my sinnes which may give him faire occasions to remember my sinnes and to destroy me Nor in the Sea for all the water of the great Ocean cannot make me white But betwixt Heaven Earth and Sea in the clifts of the Rock and especially in the large wound of thy brest that I may lie close to thy heart and sometimes in thy heart as in a retiring chamber and sing aloud that the Angels of heaven may heare me and sing their parts with me in the song Blessed bee Jesus Christ the Saviour S. Bern. Serm. 3. in Cant. of the world for ever and ever and for feare that ever should ever end for evermore All this I begge lying most humbly at thy feet ubi sancta peccatrix peccata deposuit induit sanctitatem where the holy sinner Magdalene laid downe her sinnes and put on sanctity What now is to be done I will hereafter be another kinde of Creature a Creature of another world indeed I will But I am too quick With the powerfull and active helpe of the divine Grace I will Create Ps 51. 10. in me a cleane heart O God O pure God O God the Creatour It is thou I call upon Observe my prayer Create in me a clean heart Create it make it of nothing as thou didst the world For now I am nothing but a nothing of uncleannesse And it is a cleane heart I would have for then I shall be cleane all over and cleane in every part And I know it must be a cleane heart if it be newly created by thee For nothing ever that came immediately from thee was sent hither uncleane by thee And although the soule comes hither uncleane it comes not uncleane as comming immediately from thee and as thy Creature but as created in a body and as part of a man which comes from Adam that having been made cleane by thee became uncleane by his own folly both in himselfe and in all his posterity CHAP. XV. IT is not amisse here to take the soveraign counsell of Saint Cyprian to Donat delivered S. Cyprian ep 2. l. 2. ad Donatum in these words Paulisper te crede subduci in ardui montis verticem celsiorem caet Let every one imagine himselfe lifted to the the top of a high mountaine upon which he may take a full view of all the world Here he may see whole Cities suddenly consum'd and emptied by the Plague a disease which having arrested for example one of us and given him two or three tokens of death will scarce allow him time to looke up to Heaven and say Lord bee mercifull unto me a sinner There whole Countries miserably wasted and unpeopled by Famine while men doe walke from place to place like pale Ghosts or living Anatomies and feede heartily upon their owne flesh paying the debt due to the stomach out of their armes and while the hungry mother is enforced as in the siege of Jerusalem to returne her dearest child by pieces into the place from which nature gave it entire Yonder a great part of the world most cruelly devoured by the sword where bloud lies spilt sometimes in greater abundance then water and where is no respect had to feeble old age to weake women or to innocent children but all lie mangled in a heape as if no such thing had beene ever heard of there as mercie Sinne is the wicked actor of all this Here he may behold Fire turning the labours of an hundred yeeres in one small houre into unprofitable ashes and perhaps many a gallant man and woman burnt brought almost to a handfull There Water breaking out by maine strength from the Sea and spreading it self over Towns Countries to the destruction of every living thing but such as God made to thrive in the water while the lost carcasses of poore Christians are carried in a great number from shore to shore from Country to Countrey all swell'd and torne till they are washt