and carrying the Crosse upon his shoulders The wanton person shall beare the rods and whips wherewith his Master was scourged and fright his flesh The ambitious man shall goe clad in the purple roabe The proud Magistrate follow with the reed in his hand The twelve Apostles shall beare up the corps with one hand and with the other beare every one the instrument of his owne death And the blessed virgin shal goe after sighing weeping and at every other pace looking up to Heaven Then Mary Magdalen divided betwixt love and sorrow with a box of pretious 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 Ioh. 10 11. shepheard giveth his life for the sheepe And 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. quicquid autem mali habeo à me habeo 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 Conc. Araus 2. Can. 3. humanam gratiam Dei dicit conferri non autem ipsam gratiam facere ut invocetur à nobis coÌ„tradicit 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 goâ—d 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
When yee shall have done all those Lu. 17. 10. things which are commanded you say wee are unprofitable servants we have done that which was our dutie to doe Humilitie doth not consist in esteeming our selves the greatest sinners for then it should consist in a lye because we are not all the greatest but in esteeming our selves great sinners and ready to be the greatest if God should pull away himselfe from us and feeble workers with Gods grace Our Saviours case was different for hee was most humble yet could not esteeme himselfe a sinner O Humilitie saith Saint Bernard Quà m facilè S. Bern. vincis invincibilem How easily doest thou conquer him that is invincible For man was made to fill up the now-disturbed number of the Angels which were created some while before the World not long for it is not likely that so noble a part of the World should be long created before the whole to which it belonged They fell downe though not from the possession yet from the title of happinesse by pride Not from the possession for had they beene united to God by the Beatifical Visiō they could not have sinned and therfore not have lost it by sin Wee rising up to the seats prepared for them ascend by Humility rising by falling and falling by rising if wee rise before he raiseth us who being dead and buried was not raised but rose from death to life by his own power Pride and Humility are of contrary dispositions and moreover they worke contrarily upon the subjects in which they are lodged and are in the effect and course of their proceedings contrary even to themselves Pride was the first sin in the Angels and therefore Humilitie is the first vertue in men and all your thoughts words and actions must be steeped in it Other Vertues keepe within a compasse or only now and then goe some of them together or always or direct all Vertues outwardly in respect of the Vertues as Prudence but Humility is an ingredient in every Vertue RULE 4. IN your entrance upon every worke having first examined the motives ingredients and circumstances for one evill circumstance will corrupt the whole lumpe and poyson a good action and it is not vertuous to pray ordinarily in the streets with outward observance though it be vertuous to pray and it being now cleere to you that your intended work falleth in wholly and meeteth in the same point with Gods holy will commend it seriously to GOD. And when you goe to dinner or to bed or turne to the acts and exercises of your Vocation begin all with a cleane and pure intention for the love and honour of GOD. And even the naturall work to which your nature is vehemently carried and by which you gaine temporally being turned towards the true Loadstone and put in the way to Gods glory doth rise above nature and above it selfe and is much more gainfull spiritually as being performed not because it is agreeable with your desire but because it is conformable to the divine will And often in the performance and execution of the worke if it require a long continuance of action renew and if need bee rectifie smooth and polish your intention for being neglected it quickly groweth crooked And when you are called to a difficult work or a work that lyes thwart and strives against the current of your naturall inclination dignifie and sweeten it often with the comfortable remembrance of your most noble end And whereas wee are openly commanded so closely to carrie the good deeds of the right hand that the left hand be not of the Counsell and again to turn so much of our selves outward that our light may shine before men it is in our duty to observe the Golden Mean and keep the middle way betwixt the two Rocks Carry an even hand betvvixt your concealing your good vvorks and your being a light to others You must not conceale all neither must you shine onely Hide the inward but shew the outward not alwayes nor with a sinister intention to the left hand but to GOD and those that will bee edified Every Vertue standeth betwixt two extreames and yet toucheth neither whereof the one offendeth in excesse the other in defect The one is too couragious the other is over-dull but under the Vertue Now the Devill delighteth much to shew himselfe not in his own likenesse but in that extream which is like and more nigh to the Vertue or at least to the appearance of it as Prodigalitie is more like to Liberalitie then Covetousnesse God hath true Saints and true Martyrs which are both inside and outside The Devill hath false Saints and false Martyrs which are all outside like his fairnesse As Prudence is the Governesse of all Vertues so principally of Devotion RULE 5. KEep your heart always calme and suffer it to be stirred onely with the gentle East and West-winds of holy inspirations to zeal and vertuous anger Examine your inward motions whether they be inspirations or no before you cry come in for when God offereth an inspiration hee will stand waiting with it while you measure it by some better known and revealed Law of his And be very watchfull over such Anger For it is a more knottie and difficult piece of work to be answerable to Ephes 4. 26. the rule of Saint Paul Be angry and sin not the Prophet David spoke the same words from the same spirit then not to be angry As the Curre taken out of the kennell and provoked to barke will need an able and cunning hand to hold him And maintaine alwayes a strong Guard before the weake doores of your senses that no vain thing invade the sense of seeing hearing or the rest and use in times of such danger Ejaculations and Aspirations which are short sayings of the soule to God or of things concerning God and are like darts cast into the bosome of our beloved These motions will do excellently at all times when they come in the resemblance of our pious affections As upon this occasion Lord shut the windows of my soule that looking thorow them she may not be defiled O sweet Comforter speak inwardly to my soul and when thou speakest to her speake words of comfort or binde her with some other chaine that busied in listning to thee shee may not heare thy holy name dishonoured And upon other occasions Oh that my head were waters Jer. 9. 1. and mine eyes a fountain of teares that I might weepe day and night O Lord Whom Psal 73. 25 have I in Heaven but thee and there is none upon earth that I desire besides thee Take counsell my soule Commit thy way unto the Psal 37. 5. Lord trust also in him and hee shall bring it to passe Hearke my soule when we taste the thing we taste is joyned to us We neither see nor heare in this manner and having tasted we know And when the Body tasteth wee commonly see first and
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 It followes The Law of the Lord is perfect converting the soule By which he shewes that Vers 7. the knowledge we gather from creatures is imperfect and blurred with spots because the perfections of earthly things are alwayes mingled with imperfections and are much imperfect compar'd with heavenly And therefore the knowledge of God by creatures did not convert the soules of the old Philosophers because they still wanting the sight of the perfections figured brought all to the rule of sense and would not give a necessary step from what they saw to the better things which could not be seene But the Law of the Lord is perfect converting the soule It is the memorable saying of Saint Austin that Socrates a morall Philosopher long before Christ had some respect to Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as being S. Just Apolog 1. in part knowne of him And doubtlesse he points at his knowledge of God in creatures but it was in part he knew him by halfes and therefore the knowledge of halfe God could not save all Socrates and if not all Socrates no part of Socrates It is my part so to contemplate the creature that I doe not stick in it nor stumble at the Imperfection of it but ascend from the creature towards or to the Creatour Towards the Creatour as thus I behold a worme crawling upon the ground what sayes he I may say nothing He sayes as much as I can say He sayes I am a little long thing without any difference or beauty of parts I creep all the day long I eate dirt and that is all my cheere I beare no Image of God but only a small print of his foot-step and therefore I know I was not made for him but for men that follow him in his foot-steps and they looke another way and tread upon me and there I dye and cease to be Gods living creature O man use me as thou pleasest I am thine but let me I pray thee be an occasion to thee of doing God some little service Blesse him at least for my creation and for thy owne more perfect and thanke him heartily that he would give the little worme to creep Had I a tongue as thou hast let me tell thee I would blesse him both for thee and me Had I been made looking upwards how happy should I have beene both here and hereafter To God as thus when I looke upon the Sunne I will comment upon it after this manner The Sunne is one God is one The Sunne enlightens all the World God fils all the Word and all inward light is either of Nature Faith or Grace and this is a threefold excellencie comming onely from the blessed Trinity The Sunne warmes powerfully God comforts efficaciously The Sunne melts the Snow hardens the earth the one is pure the other uncleane God workes diversly upon the just and unjust melting the one and in a good sense hardning the other The Sunne shines equally upon all creatures but some creatures being more clear receive his beams more perfectly God excepts no creature from his protection and ordinary providence but some being apt and disposed to receive more beauties and helps from him The Sunne is not defaced by spreading his beames upon the mire God is not debased by stooping to his work in these inferiour things The Sun is hindered from shining upon us by mists and clouds which rise from the earth The clouds of our sinnes rising from our earthly corruptions keepe off the beames of Gods grace from us The Sunne sets but rises againe God hides himselfe a while but he will not be long absent Heavinesse Ps 30. 5. may endure for a night but joy commeth in the morning And would I require a more exact visible Image of God He that cannot reade can reade in Gods great booke of creatures if he has eyes where the hand is faire and every letter a great one Away with these brazen stony and woodden Images of God Be they silver ones away with them The Sunne is an Image of God of Gods owne making and a more compleat Image of God then the wit or Art of man can frame set in a high place over all the World and to be seene by all almost every day imitating God also in the spreading and distribution of his goodnesse and yet no kinde of law will give us leave to worship and adore the Sunne O but God never appeared in that likenesse Shall I worship a Dove or the Image of a Dove because the holy Ghost appeared in the likenesse of a Dove It exceedingly behoves me to looke about me above me under me before me behinde me on each side of me within me O that I could beate it into my heart Every where I shall finde the wonderfull workes of God wonderfull because not knowne not knowne either in themselves or in that they signifie It is proper to God to ordaine not onely that words may signifie things but also that one thing may signifie another a thing in the World a thing in Heaven or elsewhere a thing present a thing to come The best of us hath but one life to live and that being once ended he shall never see Gods creatures in this order and after this fashion againe Is this a World wherein to be idle and to complaine so often we know not how to spend our time I am amaz'd at my selfe at all people If God should say to me Goe to the end of the World till you can finde no more land or sea that you may be sav'd and goe bare foote and goe upon thornes would I not goe And yet I now stand idle when his creatures come home to me and are with me wheresoever I am Lord teach my hands and my heart to work Consideration 9. VVE are sent hither by the way of Father and Mother being neither wholly intellectuall as Angels nor altogether sensible as beasts but a mixt and compounded thing under the name of reasonable creatures By Reason we perceive with a searching eye what we commonly see heare or otherwise conceive and in some hard things not plaine to the first view of reason we step from confuse to cleare a minus noto ad magis notum from a lesse perfect to a more exact knowledge by discourse The Angels have lesse occasion of discourse then we because their naturall knowledge is
in the streets with a lamentable voyce Good Sir for Gods sake pitty these poore fatherlesse children ready to starve one is hungry and another 1 Cor. 11. 21. is drunken And the great end of the Creator was to supply necessity and the necessity of every creature And Sobriety and Temperance are faire vertues which even the Glutton and Drunkard doe praise and magnifie If wee turne aside into the Church-yard wee shall finde it a dry time there There are no merry meetings under ground no musick no dancing no songs no jesting company Every body sleepes there and therefore there is no noise at all Perhaps indeed as men passe 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 Beastlinesse 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 Heavy 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 Cant. 8. 14. Spices as it is in the Canticles may enjoy a 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
the world or some other inferiour thing provided for the use of man I wil remember the young-man that weeping at the sight of a Toad and being asked by certaine Bishops as they passed in the way where he was the cause of his griefe answered and softned every word with a teare that he wept because he had risen to such a bulk of body and heigth of yeares and never yet given thanks to God for not creating him so foule an object of contempt as the Toad when hee was to God his Maker as willing and easie clay in the hands of the Potter O Lord I thank thee for him and for my selfe and for us all MEDITATION III. ANd the Lord God formed man of the Gen. 2. 7. dust of the ground and breathed into his nostr hils 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 I sidori 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 Arist hominem sayes Aristotle The Sunne and a 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 sit 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 aspirit 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
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 wrethed 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 gone 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 nulla 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 away 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 Ier. 22 29. Earth Earth Earth heare the word of 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 flesb 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 32. where the flowre is soon parched and dryed 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
horrible Yet heavenly Judge a lot to vs some good Comforters whose smooth and gentle words may if 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 sight 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
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 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 â—â—keth 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 partam 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 found 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 Meritum 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
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 sacrifice 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 bespotted 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
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 Angels not descend with Nabuchodonosor to that inferiour and low rank of beasts And by the more frequent operations of the spirit in high things we become more spirituall and indeed Angelicall By the more frequent exercise of the body and the bodily powers in the acts of sensuality we become more bodily and bestiall MEDITATION 4. ANd God gave us a being so perfect in all points and lineaments that lest we should fondly spend our whole lifes in admiration of our selves and at the looking-glasse hee wrought his owne image in us that guided by it as by a finger pointing upwards wee might not rest in the work but look up presently to the workman The image consisteth in this God is one the soule is one God is one in Essence and three in persons the Father the Sonne and the holy Ghost The soule is one in Essence and three in faculties the understanding the will the memory The Father is the first person and begets the Son the understanding is the first faculty and begets the will I meane the acts of willing by the representation of something which it sheweth amiable The Holy Ghost is the third person and proceeds from the Father and the Son the memory is the third faculty and is put into action and being in a manner joyntly by the understanding and will But here is a strange businesse The Sonne the second person came downe into the world and yet stay'd in Heaven The will the second faculty and she onely goes as it were out of the soule into outward action that we may see the soule of a man in the execution of his will and yet remaines in the soule God is a spirit the soule is a spirit God is all in all the world and all in every part of the world The soule is all in all the body and all in every part of the body Phidias a famous Graver desiring to leave in Athens a perpetuall memorie of himselfe and an everlasting monument of his Art made a curious image of Minerva the matter being pretious Jvorie and in her buckler upon which in a faire diversitie hee cut the battails of the Amazons and Giants hee couched his owne picture with such a rare singularity of Art that it could not any way be defaced without an utter dissolutioÌ„ of the Bucklar This did God before Phidias was ever heard of or his fore-fathers through many generations in the soule of man the image of God though not his likenesse remaining in the soule as long as the soule remaineth even in the damned To this image God hath annexed a desire of him which in the world lifts up our hearts to God in Hell begets and maintaines the most grievous paine of losse And to shew that this desire of God is the greatest and best of all desires nothing which any other desire longs after will satisfie the gaping heart but onely the object of this great desire Ad imaginem Dei facta anima rationalis saith S Ber. Ser. de divinis S. Bernard caeteris omnibus occupari potest repleri non potest capax enim Dei quicquid minus Deo est non replebit The reasonable soule being made after the image of God may be held back and stay'd a little dallying with other things but it can never be fully pleas'd and fill'd with them for the thing that is capable of God cannot be filled with any thing that is lesse then God The heart is carved into the forme of a Triangle and a Triangle having three angles or corners cannot be filled with a round thing as the world is For put the world being sphaericall or circular into the triangle of the heart and still the three angles will be empty and wait for a thing which is most perfectly one and three And that wee might know with what fervour of charity and heat of zeale God endeavoureth that we should be like to him he became like to us For although God cannot properly be said like to us as God as a man is not said like to his picture but the picture to him yet as man he may And therefore as hee formed us with conformity to his image in the Creation so hee formed himselfe according to our image and likenesse in his Incarnation So much he seeketh to perfect likenesse betwixt us in all parts that there may be the more firme ground for love to build upon when commonly similitude allureth to love and likenesse is a speciall cause of liking It is the phrase of S. Paul who saith of Christ that he was made in the likenesse of man 2 Phil. 7. MEDITATION V. ANd woman being made not as man of earth but of man and made in Paradise was not taken out of the head that she might stand over her husband nor out of the feet that she might be kickt and trod upon nor out of any fore-part that shee might be encouraged to go before her husband nor yet out of a hinder part lest her place should be thought amongst the servants farre behind her husband but out of the side that shee might remaine in some kinde 〈◊〉 â—quality with him And from his heart side and a place very neere the heart that his love towards her might be hearty And from under his left arme that he might hold her with his left arme close to his heart and fight for her with his best arme as he would fight to defend his heart It is one of the great blessings which the Prophet pronounceth to him that feareth the Lord Thy wife shall be as a fruitfull vine by Psal 128. 3 the sides of thine house The vine branch may be gently bended any way and being cut it often bleeds to death And the wife is a vine by the sides of the house her place is not on the floore of the house nor on the roofe shee must never be on the top of the house But there is a difference the woman must be a Vine by the insides of the House But now begins a Tragedy It is not without a secret that the Devill in his first exploit borrowed the shape of a serpent of which Moyses Now the serpent was more Gen. 3. 1. subtill then any beast of the field The knowledge of the Angels is more cleare compared with the knowledge
encrease their blessednesse For where good and evill meet in combat as now after the dayes of Innocence there is opposition and resistance in the performance of good where is resistance there also is difficulty and where wee discover a difference and diversity as well in the measure as in the manner of resistance there occurre also degrees of difficulties and the greater the difficulty the more pretious the reward If wee are not sorry that he sinn'd wee are not sorry that God was abus'd and his very first command broken If we are sorry that he sinn'd wee are sorry that many faire vertues have entred upon our 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 uprightâ—â— 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 〈◊〉 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. Austen saith speaking of God Non sineret malum nisi ex malo sciret Aug. de corrept et grat cap. 10. elicere 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 ove◠〈…〉 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
turnes them into a story The Jesuits live awhile to be call'd Religious men and holy Fathers to frame a face to be very good and godly in the out-side to vex and disquiet Princes to slander all those whom they cannot or gaine or recover to their faction and the world at length finding them to be dissemblers dissembles with them also and looking friendly upon them passes by them The painted wall tumbles and then Woe to you Hypocrites Wee live a-while a little little while to put our cloathes on and off to shew our selves abroad to be hurried up and downe in Coaches and to be proud that wee passe with such a noise to heare newes and to talk vainly to heap sin upon sinne and the world weary of the burthen passeth by us and presently God heapeth punishment upon punishment Foolish men and women how we sweat and spend our selves we see the spade working and deep graves digg'd every day and yet live as if we did not beleeve we should dye In the streets one goes this way another in hast that way a third crosses the way turnes againe then looks behind him and would faine goe two wayes at once It is wonderfull How stirring and busie wee are about the present things of this world 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so called by the Apostle because nothing is ours but what is present He is a fond and miserable man that pleaseth himselfe in the thought of any thing but God and Heaven Fix here my soule and thou shalt find more true and solid pleasure in one meditation of Heaven though it is absent then in all earthly things although present and before thee MEDITATION XI THe soule being creared for God and bearing his image or stamp God is the most proper end of the soule as the earth if it be lawfull to compare great things with little is the most proper place of a stone And therefore a stone being tossed from the earth as soone as it can shake off vim impressam the impression of the force which mov'd it that being out of breath and spent if there be no stop it presently returnes with all possible haste as it were glad being let goe and set at liberty to the earth which ownes it And so the just soul to God The soule in statu conjunctionis in the state of her conjunction with the body being wedded to it as to a fellow-helper sees by the eyes heares by the eares and in a manner feeles by the body Now the soule having beene created in the body and never yet us'd but to this kinde of knowing by the senses is so busied so kept in continuall work and so amused with the representations of the senses that shee is little urgent in the desire of her end as being tooke up with great diversity of other imployment which being alwayes new and therefore strange begets a zealous attention in the soule and so turnes her from God It is true if she listen to the whisper of an inspiration or heare a discourse of heavenly things she likes it well and feels a pleasant tickling of sweetnesse because it is agreeable with her end and then perhaps the desire of her end awakes sits up but other occurrences calling earnestly for admittance the soule gives way and the desire of the last end lyes fairely down and sleeps again But the soul being now in statu seperationis in her state of seperation from the body they having been newly divorced and missing her body and her accustomed way of knowing by the senses missing the former use of the world and the things she saw and heard in the body thinks presently where am I I am another kind of creature Then being freed from all hinderance she begins to stirre towards her end For now she is like a stone as farre in the ayre as it can goe vvhere it cannot rest but quit of the force gives back and furnished vvith Guides shee flyes vvith all readinesse to God in his Kingdome the place of installment as to her last end Here I have the reason why the Divines say that whereas there are two much different paines in Hell poena sensus the paine of sense caused by the fire of Hell and poena damni the pain of losse by the losse of God the paine of losse is the greatest For the reprobate soul being thrust out of the body and having received her doome in the very place of her expulsion is struck presently with a strong apprehension of her end and of the worth and excellency of it and of her miserable solitarinesse without it from which shee being turned the wound bleeds and shee suddenly cries out wanting a Comforter My end where is my end I misse something the best thing what God O where is God I misse my end And then shee catches at him and misses and missing cries out and catches again and still misses crying I want rest in my end in God Where is my end that is God and God that is my end There is no rest for a soul out of the body but in God as there was no true rest for a soule in the body but in God I have bin long at hard labour now in the end I would rest in my end For I cannot be at rest without my end O my end I while I continue without my end my torment will continue without end O what shall I do Where shall I begin How shall I end without my end And then catching at her end shee is caught her selfe away to hell fire and carried farther from her end Where she shall be alwayes catching and alwayes missing alwayes seeking and never finding alwayes complaining either of her paine or of her losse but most of her losse or of her losse of all but her paine and her losse which she would faine lose but cannot from which most wofull estate God deliver me But the just soule presently after the first apprehension of her end shal be joyned unseperably to it in which end shall be the end of all earthly motion and therefore all rest Blessed are the dead saith Revel 14. 13. Dionys Areop in ep ad Joan. in exilio agente Ver 11. St. Iohn whom Dionysius salutes by the name of Divine which dye in the Lord from henceforth yea saith the spirit that they may rest from their labours But of the damned hee sayes confidently in the same Chapter they have no rest day nor night Have I heard a malefactor appointed by judgement to be starved after the gnawing and devouring of his owne armes crying bread bread If I suppose he cryes rest rest it is the voyce of the damned person MEDITATION XII VVE see many times and most commonly men and women lying on their death-beds some little while before their passage or departure in wondrous traunces took away from their senses At which times some look very cheerefully smiling like Angels and send from them shoots of joy and gladnesse
And some looke frightfully and fill their death-chamber with shreeks and clamours We cannot in the generall give the causes of these different effects For the most part it is thus At such a time the soule heares her house crack and now threatning a fall And she sees that after the fall all the house will be so confus'd and out of order that shee will not be able to stirre about or doe any thing belonging to the keeping of a house and that then there will be no reason why shee should rather be in her house then in any other part of the world And in a manner rising to goe and likewise being call'd and also thrust forwards she puts on And going she holds by the heart and stands as it were with one legge in the house and one without and peeps abroad to discover whither she is going as never having been out of the house before And according to the sight of the place she must now take to she frames and alters the body in her departure And certainly in this point of time the man being shar'd betwixt life death betwixt this world and the next the soule sees either a breaking of day or a beginning of night And so turning againe to the body either to bid it farewell if she be happy or with a desire to catch hold againe and stay if unhappy works upon the body according to the apprehension she hath of the place shee goes to gained in the discoverie Here will I wish well to all persons O that they were wise that they understood this Deut. 32. 29. that they would consider the latter end The wise man will understand it and the understanding man will consider it Good Lord Lord God blesse us and give us grace at all times morning and evening day and night in all places abroad and at home in bed and at board to prepare for this dangerous passage When wee must be turn'd going one halfe of us and the halfe wee never saw and yet the better halfe and that alone and be posted out of dores from a fleshly Tabernacle from a house which of all houses of that kinde is onely knowne to us a house which was built for us and which falls when wee goe from it to a new kinde of being which as yet we cannot conceive nor know by any kinde of intelligence When wee shall goe from place to place wee know not how and see wee know not how and expresse our mindes to spirits like our selves wee know not how and receive their mindes meanings again we know not how and doe many other things we know not how nor can any man that never dyde tell certainly O what a joyfull time will it be when wee shall have put off our body and left it amongst our friends as Ioseph his garment in the hands of Potiphars wife and hee left his garment in her hand and fled and got Gen. 39 12 him out and shall have escaped out of this wicked world innocent when our sinnes shall not come crying after us as they do after the wicked soule I am thy drunkennesse I did often drowne thee and wash thee away from God but thou didst never drowne me and wash mee away from thy selfe with teares of Repentance Though I am thy drunkennesse I have found the way after thee I am thy sinne of swearing I was stay'd in the Porch of thy body in thy mouth to thy last houre in the world and I sweare thou shalt not cast me off now I am thy wantonnesse I was thy chamber-sin and I will not now be turn'd abroad I am thy covetousnesse and I did so farre covet to be with thee and thou with mee that Death could never part us I am thy Anger and I am not so angry but I know what I doe I will not be so base after all our great aquaintance to leave thee in my anger when thou hast more use of me For now thou shalt be most outragiously angry with God and all goodnesse I am thy Pride and now I have done my part in the world I am onely proud of thy company it is all my ambition to follow thee But the just soule goes away quietly joyfully and securely guarded with Angels and is troubled with no such noise MEDITATION XIII VVHen a man hath long dwelt in a strange Country divided yea far distant from his deare Father friends and now at length begins to travell homewards how often in his way does he fashion to himselfe in his thoughts the face of his beloved Father his words and gesture Indeed as hee goes hee takes many a weary step hee sweats often hee blowes and is sometimes ready to faint But hee cheeres and cleares up himselfe hee calls up a good heart and thinks when I come home and at the very name of home the poore man looks cheerfully they will run and tell my Father I am come And my Father will presently start rise up and say Are yee sure 't is he I shall heare him before I see him And not staying for an answer he will make hast towards me and seeing me change his countenance and run to me and embrace me with both his arms and if he be able to speak for joy cry aloud welcome childe and then his joy having gone through all the expressions of joy will borrow teares from sorrow and then hee will laugh and then cry againe and then again laugh and the good old man will be so merry And though I be a little wet and weary now this will have a quick end and I shall have warmth and ease enough then We are here poore banish'd creatures in a strange land very farre from our Country wee are travelling homewards or woe to us Wee stick oftentimes in the dirt and stumble in the stony way we are wet and weary wee sweat every bone of us akes heart and all But the comfort is All this will have an end suddenly and when we come home we shall see our Father whom we never yet saw For wee were tooke from him being very young And without the help of a Messenger to carrie the newes hee will know wee are come and rise up without stirring and be with us without running to us and embrace us and hugg us in his armes and cry to that man and to this vvoman vvelcome childe deare childe vvelcome Wee shall looke upon him and hee upon us and at the first sight we shall know him to be our Father though wee never saw him It is very strange but more true Should God conceale and hide himselfe from us vvhen vvee come to Heaven and leave us in his roome the most glorious Angell of them all to looke upon vvee should naturally know the Angell vvere not God The soul out of the body knowes naturally God to be God Angels to be Angels Devils to be Devils as vve naturally know and distinguish men and beasts and as Adam in his
Innocencie knew to call every creature by his proper name The Septuagint or seventy Interpreters in the fift Chapter of Esther Transl sept interp in 5. cap. Est have related the Story of Esthers comming into the presence of King Assuerus seated in state upon his royall throne to whom no man or vvoman might approach but entertain'd with the sentence of death not being call'd more largely then the ordinary vulgar editions have They report that vvhen shee first appeared before him her countenance vvas divided betwixt fear and shamefastnesse First a modest blush ran over all her face and then a palenesse 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 Est 5. 3. it shall be even given thee to the halfe of the Kingdome Faire 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 Mat. 25. 41 cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the 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 nature 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
Priesthood and chayre of Moses striking also at the Priests and high Priest he saith onely Woe unto you Scribes and Pharisees hypocrites The outward acts of divine service being performed in the old Law by way of shadow and figure and with resemblance and relation to the perfection of the new Law and being as it were the first lineaments of perfection we may not think that God would Levit. 11. have excluded the Swan out of the sacred number of his victimes without a firme and solid reason He was not tempted with the choyce cleannesse of her feathers nor with her fore-stalling of death and singing her owne obsequies but because her skinne the root of her feathers and her flesh and entrals the organs of her musick were black he rejected her as an uncleane creature not worthy to teach the world The Ostrich likewise was esteemed profane and never admitted into Gods holy Temple because notwithstanding all his great and glorious furniture of feathers he cannot lift his dull and drossie body above the ground The Moone shineth but because it doth not heat it is not suffered to shine by day It is the property of good to shrowd and cover it selfe God the chiefest good though he filleth heaven and earth with his glory yet he will not be seene Christ though he was perfect God and equall to his Father yet nothing was ordinarily seene in him but a poore homely man Who ever saw the soul of a man his onely jewell as he is a man Christ said to his Apostles Yee are the light of the world And againe Let your light so Math. 5. 4 Ver. 16. shine before men that they may see your good works and glorifie your Father which is in Heaven It must be light and therefore a true light not a counterfeit and seeming light it must be your light every mans owne light it must be a light by which men may see not onely the good light it selfe but also our good works by the light and it must shine onely to the end that our heavenly Father may be glorified All light is commonly said to be derived from the Sun and the cause of all our shining must be alwayes referred and attributed to God And truly when a man for example giveth almes kindled onely with an intention that his neighbour seeing him may glorifie his Father which is in Heaven his intention is cleane and sufficiently good but he must be a man of proofe that giveth place to such intentions for he lieth wide open to the ticklings of vaine-glory and hypocrisie But I feele a scruple Good example is highly vertuous and in some sort worthy of reward especially in persons of eminent quality because good example is more seene more admired and goes with more credit and authority in them and therefore doth more edifie in respect of the high conceit wee have of their wisedome and knowledge Now the hypocrite teacheth as forcibly by example as the sound and throughly vertuous man For we learne in the great Theater of example by what wee outwardly see and the hypocrite is as outwardly faire as the sincere Christian It seemeth now that an hypocrite doth please God in playing the hypocrite Not so because his intention is crooked for he doth not intend to bring an encrease of good to others but of glory to himselfe If good by chance break in upon his action it falleth besides his intention and it belongeth to Gods providence as to it 's proper fountain which crusheth good out of evill As likewise the prodigall man when hee giveth prodigally to the poore doth not intend to fulfill the law of God but to satisfie his owne wilde lust of giving St. John Baptist was a lamp burning and shining Which moved St. Bernard to say Ardere parum lucere vanum lucere ardere perfectum It is S. Bern. in Serm de nativ S. Io. Bapt. a small thing to burne only a vaine thing to shine onely a perfect thing to both shine and burne Nothing is more naturally proper to the fire then to burne and in the instant in which it first burns it gives light Which is the cause of those golden words in Synesius 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Synes Contra Androm It is the nature of God to do good as of the fire to heat or burne and of the light to give light CHAP. 17. ANd certainly if we search with a curious and piercing eye into the manners of men we shall quickly finde that false Prophets and Deceivers are commonly more queint more various and more polished in their tongues and publike behaviour then God's true and faithfull Messengers who conforme themselves to the simplicity of the Gospel And if we looke neere the matter God prefigured these deceitfull creatures in the creation for hee hath an admirable way of teaching even by every creature it being the property of a cruell beast called the Hyaena to faine the voyce of a man But when the silly Shepheard commeth to his call he ceases to be a man teares him presently and preys upon him Each Testament hath a most fit example Ioab said to Amasa the head of Absolons Army Art thou in health my Brother Could danger lurk under the faire name of 2 Sam. 20. 9. Brother or could death hide it selfe under health a perfection of life They could and did For Ioab making forward to kisse him killed him and robbed him both of health and life whom hee had even now saluted with Art thou in health my Brother Surely he did not think of Cain when hee call'd him Brother Judas came to Christ and saying God save thee Master Math. 26. 49. kissed him Hee talks of God and of Salvation God save thee Hee confesses Christ to be his Master Hee kisses too And yet in the same act gives him up into the busie hands of his most deadly enemies Wherefore St. Ambrose one that had a practicall knowledge of the great difference of Spirits which hee had seene in their actions disswading us from the company and conversation of these faith Impostors saith Nec S. Ambr. vos moveat quod formam praetendere videntur humanam nam etsi foris homo cernitur intus bestia fremit let it not move you that they beare outwardly the likenesse and similitude of men for without a man appeareth but within a beast rageth And that which St. Hierome saith of a quiet Sea is of the same colour with the conceit of St. Ambrose Intùs inclusum est periculum intùs est hostis S. Hier ep ad Heliodor the danger is shut up within within is the Enemy like a rock watching under a calme water St. Cyprian adviseth us to betake our selves presently to our feet and fly from them Simus ab eis tam seperati quà m sunt illi de Ecclesia profugi Let us fly as farre S. Cypr. in ep 3. lib. 1. from them as they have flowne from the purity of
Man hath being with a stone is lives and encreases with a plant is lives encreases and is sensible with a beast is lives understands and is spirituall on the surer side with an Angell It is a strange saying but as true as truth An Angell is more perfect then a man but a man is enriched with more perfections then an Angell and comes more nigh to his Maker this way then an Angel David saith of him Thou hast made him a little lower then the Psal 8. 5. Angels The Angel indeed is more compleatly perfect as being of a finer substance and borne with large naturall knowledge and 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 Mat. 15. 22 cryed unto him saying Have mercy on mee O 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 Ver. 26. he answered and said It is not meet to take the 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 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 S. Chrysost hom 12 de Cananea mulieris non precatur Jacobum non supplicat 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 Peter 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 Deus 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 S. Ambr. in Rom. 1. uti excusatione dicentes per istos se posse ire ad Deum sicut per Comites itur ad Reges Ideò ad Regem per Tribunos Comites itur quia homo utique est Rex ad Deum autem quèm 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 ashamed 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 certainty that the ignorant sort especially part equally their praises thaksgivings of this cōdition give half to Christ half to his Mother to whō 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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Io. Damasc lib. 3. de fide orthodox cap. 24. Prayer is the ascent of the mind to 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
Did Christ die It cannot be Yes and more He died willingly like a meeke Lambe sobbing out his life For hee gave up the ghost it was not taken from him And therefore a good man hath not feared to say that Christ held his life by mayn strength some little while beyond the date of nature that it might not seem to bee taken from him by force of armes Greater love hath no man then this that a man lay downe his life for his friends Joh. 15. 13. Life is the last of all our possessions in this 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 not withstanding 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
conceits When I lived in Spaine said he a certaine man was possessed with a Devill and the Priest exorcising him in the Church the people being present a bold Spaniard stepped out and said O Father pray let me see the Devill I would faine see the rogue come out of his mouth But the Devill answered by the mans mouth that if he came out of the mans mouth in whom he was he would go in at the others you may guesse what part the Monk spoke it plainely Whereupon said the Monke the Spaniard immediately betakes himselfe to the holy-water-pot and sitting downe so deepe in it that 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 selvers 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 incommutabiliter 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 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 added being still out of him or derived from that which is not in him and consequently no part of his Blessednesse nor any thing which can throw the infamy of change upon him We may judge what is possible to be done by what is done And if things are possible to be done a power must be which can doe them And they cannot come from him when he does them but because they were first in him For nihil dat quod non habet vel formaliter vel eminenter no Giver giveth but what hee hath either so as it is given or in a better straine And they cannot be in God but as they are himselfe and infinite God doth not depend of the world but the world of God If the world had never yet beene he had still remained the same God most great most glorious A King though without subjects because all things bee they future or onely possible are as actuall and present to him Omnipotent able to make the creatures we now see and farre more excellent to which we are not warranted to say he will ever bend his power For therefore God leaveth many things undone which reason teacheth us may be done to preach this doctrine that creatures are not his upholders Contemplation in us is a most noble exercise because performed by the most honourable faculty of the soule the understanding and by the highest and most elevated acts of the minde What then may we thinke of contemplation in God Synesius having turned his speech to God hath a sweet expression 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 eye Synes in hymnis of thy selfe For his understanding is the great eye with which he throughly sees himselfe Besides the eternall generation of Christ the divine Word of which the Prophet Esay Who shall declare his generation was is and shall be for ever as likewise Es 53. 8. the procession of the holy Ghost Thou art Ps 2. 7. my sonne this day have I begotten thee Hee meanes a long day diem eternitatis the day of eternity a day so long that there is but one of them in all the yeare and yet the yeare is the onely true 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 for it is all and wholly in it selfe and hath neither end nor beginning a day that never yet made roome for night nor shall ever be intercepted with darknesse The Heavens are alwaies in motion the Sun takes no rest Fire is alwayes in action The Sea never sleepes The Soule is alwayes busie in the exercise of her powers The Heart alwayes panting The Eyes are alwayes active when they are open Life keepes the Pulse in continuall beating and the Breath alwayes a passenger comming or going These are numbred amongst the choicest of Gods creatures and therefore beare more likenesse of him in themselves then meaner things These ever worke and was he ever idle CHAP. IV. ANother application of the former story is to give us in a perfect forme the shape of their consideration and contemplation But why must they needs consider and contemplate in a Monastery And if they will contemplate there why is every man disinteressed from a lawfull calling by which he may concurre to the benefit of the Common-wealth Homo nascitur Reipublicae sayes the Civill-Law A man is borne for the Common-wealth And the reason which Aristotle gives why a man may not kill himselfe is because hee may not lop himself from the Common-wealth of which he is a branch They answer with Saint Austin vindicating the Monks upbraided S. Aug. l. 1. de Morib Eccl. c. 31. by the Manichees Videntur nonnullis res humanas plus quam oportet deseruisse non intelligentibus quantum eorum animus orationibus profit They seeme to some men to have forsaken humane affaires more then they ought to have done not understanding how much they exalt them by prayer But without question the Monkes of Saint Austins time were no such idle bodies as now they are For then every man had his practicall course of life to which his education had instructed him and they which had none laboured in Gardens and other plats of ground digging and sowing and eating their bread in the sweat of their brows Nor is it a reasonable discourse that because some few of the old Christians flying from the bloody hands of their persecutors hid themselves in Woods Wildernesses and secret Caves and corners wee shall step over the like cause and take hold of the like action Shall we make to our selves an imitation of the rest of Heaven without undergoing the toyle which goes before it of which toyle the rest of Heaven is the reward And they lose a faire number of waighty occasions which the world affords and which God ministers as the food of vertue and the gates of victory and they are faine to referre all to the first Act of entring into the Monastery or they would be much to seeke When I was a Romane the Pope was solicited by the Embassadours of Spaine to give leave that the great increase of Monkes and Friers in their Countrey might be restrained and the reason was given because it was feared that the warres and the Monasteries pulling severall wayes would unpeople the Common-wealth and deprive the King of subjects necessary to his Dominion If such a grievance may rise from the excesse why may not a reasonable complaint be made of every knowing and able member of a Common-wealth that buries his Talents in a Monastery and seekes onely himselfe In a Christian Common-wealth the good of the Church ought not to be preferred before the good of the Common-wealth when by such an action of preference the Common-wealth is endamaged because by the Common-wealth the Church stands and the Church is but a good part of the Common-wealth And after all why cannot they consider their owne estates and the condition of the world in which they are and contemplate of high things and admire Gods creatures either in their chambers if they were in the world or in the fields as Isaac of whom we reade And Isaac went out to Gen. 24. 63. meditate in the field at the even-tide My Reader shall not want matter for such a purpose if he will be doing Meditation 1. One a man like us labours and straines himselfe to know throughly the nature of the Angels their office their properties and how
one Angel differeth from another in the perfection of nature and glory This learned man presumeth to instruct the world in strange things and to say that there are nine Orders or Quires of Angels and that some out of every Quire fell from God and moreover is bold to tell us that Michael the Arch-Angel in Heaven sitteth above Gabriel and Raphael the Seraphin above them both and that so many Angels may well stand together without much thrustingupon a needles point while the silly creature soaring above himselfe forgets himselfe and the maine point and knowes not what he 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 though received from the mother so quickly into purple that they seemed to be born in little robes of purple and therefore stiled Porphyrogenites 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
partly corporall and outwarly furnished with senses are most commonly taught by things which offer and present themselvs to sense And because the seeing faculty is the most quick and apprehensive the sense of seeing hath more instructions And seeing most like to understanding what is seene may best be understood In all Gods creatures as being the creatures of one God there is a strange kind of consent combination and harmony In earthly things heavenly things are strangely set out and proposed to us For if the way had not some springlings of resemblance with the Country we 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 my 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 saith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it causes an extasis a traunce and removes the lover from his owne state Dionys Areop c. 4. de diu nom 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 field 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 lustre 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 foule 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 the three children in Daniel as well to invite Dan. 3. in Apocryph to the praise of God heate fire they being then in the fire cold frost lightning clouds night and darknesse as other creatures though oftētimes they bring in their traine danger and sometimes hurt with them which objection Saint Austin bendeth S. Aug. lib. de natura boni c. 6. 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 must abuse 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 S. Aug. l. 10 Confes c.
11 and was now converted who saith 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 mother shed 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 complaines Heu primus quis fuit ille Boet. Metr S. lib. 2. 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 S. Cypr. l. de disciplina habitu virginum purpureas oves fecit God made not Sheep 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 And all things as flames of fire point alwayes upwards and like heavenly Consid 7. 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 shoudl 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 passe lightly 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
of holy practise and heavenly contemplation The Devill standeth ready to dash out our braines to destroy the body and to devoure the soule to disturbe the peace of nature to confound the elements to mingle Heaven and Earth to trouble all wishing earnestly and earnestly entreating that God would turne away his milde face his gentle eyes and say Goe my Executioner revenge my cause upon the World And yet God will not O the delicacie of the Divine sweetnesse Learne the nature of the Devill In one thing especially the fall of the Angels was like the fall of man For as man was more 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 his 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 mortall Except a man shall renounce all which Luke 14. 33. 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 paid It is not My yoke is easie and my burden Matth. 11. 30. 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 theirs is the Kingdome of Heaven For poverty Matth. 5. 3. 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
stay in his owne home in the inferiour part of the soule and not breake in upon the minde and that in all the stirring Reason should have her principall motion For if passion be first she will blinde Reason and then draw her into her faction change opinion alter judgement worke strangely upon the apprehension turne the discourse and make another man And as anger so love desire joy feare griefe and the rest are all to be wisely tempered Rule 5. KNow that when any thing is well and piously said or done in your presence God speakes to you And that 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 Si sic tua 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 perisheth 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 thy staffe they comfort me the one serving for Psal 23. 4. 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 of 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
men and women and beene carried up and downe in coaches and when I have done all I must die This way lieth hell O the confusion that is there O the darknesse In sorrow How can I be troubled when God and his Angels rejoyce continually In joy I will rejoyce in the Lord againe I say I will rejoyce At other times My tongue and lips which have concurred to speake against thee shall now joyne their forces but what to doe to speake of the marvellous things which thou hast done in our dayes and in the ages before us My hands that have 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. parum ante finem mensura regula actuum humanorum 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
Rome like Smithfield in London I humbly desire all religious people when they talke of this pamper'd man not to think of me He was not a native of this Countrey and in many things he behaved himselfe like an Atheist and an Epicure he was cut out into a Dissembler when he was young for he had beene a Jesuit I never was but abhorre the name In Ligorne a Towne lying by the Mediterranean Sea and subject to the Duke of Florence I saw the man upon whom part of a wall fell and held him to the ground while he was tooke in the act of villany with a Calfe and money had redeemed him And yet notwithstanding it was one of the cherishing stories with which the notable Monke of Doway did ease me of my burden That an Italian Gentleman having sent a wicked Varlot to cut off the nose of his enemy and there are persons both in Italy and Spaine to be hired for such damnable purposes And the deed bein done the wronged person recollected his spirits and desired to know the summe by which he was induced to that foule enterprise Which being told he gave the like summe for the performance of the same exploite upon the other And the same vile instrument in the very same manner upon the same conditions cut off the nose of him that first imploy'd him In Italy they bury altogether in Vaults and in the time of my residence there the Friers had conveyed a Maid under ground and having abused her killed her in her grave Salvianus is a great enemy to these Hypocrites His words in one place are Quid agis stulta persuasio Peccata interdixit Salv. l. 5. de Guber Dei Deus non matrimonia Foolish perswasion what doest thou the Law of God forbiddeth sinne not marriage But why doe I taxe them for killing It is scarce so hainous in Italy to kill a man as to kill a dog When a man is killed in the streets of Rome another perhaps will step to him and looke if he know the face to quiet his thoughts concerning his own friends but he goes his way againe presently and makes no strange matter of murder it is so common The way of the Italians is as the Colledge hath taught me after a quarrell betwixt two one deviseth presently how he may kill his adversary upon this foundation because he must either kill or be kill'd Yet in the execution of a condemned person in Spaine I cannot no I cannot but observe one commendable passage which I could wish that their practice would commend to our imitation Sure it would bee a matter of high and publike concernement The offender being dead immediately standeth up by him hanging or lying as a triumph of justice a Priest or Minister who presently maketh a speech to the people not unlike a Sermon wherein he treats of his offence of the Diabolical delusions in which he was ensnared by little and little of his former life and of the manifestation of the divine justice in his end and death At which time he doth so point to the dead body and so often shew it to the eyes of the people whose hearts are already strucke with the horror of his present ruine and moreover he doth so charge and warne the people by his example and cries so many times looke here you who are alive that indeed he moves exceedingly to good life If I goe on I shall never have done CHAP. III. OUr ghostly Father in the Colledge was an old Jesuit who had said freely amongst his companions that hee had laboured in digging under the Parliment house till every thred of his shirt was wet This man was not a fit Ghostly Father for young Schollers looking towards England The words were proved against him by the titular Bishop of Chalcedon from whose mouth I received them Who shewed me likewise a silver meddall in which Father Garnet was decked with the ornaments of a Saint and joyned with S. Ignatius Loyola I am bound also to his Lordship for the sight of two pictures of Garnets strawe each representing it in a severall forme and one being the second edition when the former had beene formerly reprehended even by me said the Bishop I hope the Jesuits will not deny that I lived warily and piously amongst them and glewed my selfe fast to my meditations when others neglected them and slept their time away who when the seven Sleepers were read in the Martyrologe at supper would merrily put off their caps in honour of them But I will onely take my leave of his Holinesse and then goe from Rome For I was sent hence by the Pope to England to convert soules and I brought out of his Treasure three thousand Indulgences with me which I meane to keepe till they are dearer The Pope is a Bishop and yet a Prince And the reason which Father Fitzharbert gave me why the old Ages payed to the Pope so little honour was because they saw him a Bishop and no Prince If this may stand the chiefe honour is due to him as a Prince and not as a Bishop He is carried in a chaire of state upon the shoulders of men from which chaire his blessing hath often come and sate upon my shoulders Kings and Cardinals may kisse his hands others of what degree soever onely the crosse upon his pantofle He has the keyes of Heaven and Hell and also of Purgatory he can turne the key open and shut when he pleaseth And he doth assure the Priest that saying Masse at a priviledge Altar that is an Altar to which this high priviledge is given by his Holinesse he shall free a soule out of Purgatory He will give you very liberally a plenary Indulgence of all your sinnes and remit all the temporall punishment due to the slaine in Purgatory when the guilt is removed by confession He will untie the Lawes of God and give you leave and freedome to labour in servile works as to plough sow and reap on the Lords day to take for your wife your neare kinswoman to kill the subject of any Prince whom he doth excommunicate You may goe to the Stewes in the full and open view of authority I am able to name the man whom they would have suffered to commit fornication under the pleasing title of a veniall sinne Teaching out of his chaire he cannot erre they meane when he doth instruct the world in matters of faith And though he bee an Arrian a Monothelite or other Hereticke the Spirit of God doth not forsake him for he hath a double portion of his Spirit and one being lost by heresie keeps the other He claimeth to himselfe a supreme Dominion over Princes be they Christians or Infidels and presumeth to disengage their true and lawfull subjects from their obedience to which they are tied by God He cannot be deposed for any crime but heresie he will give you if you please him a peece of sanctified and blessed waxe which shall quiet
in a plaine letter to the Jewes but in characters in a close and covered manner because they first came from Egypt where a multitude of Gods was adored and were afterwards seated in Canaan where the like adoration was performed And if God had talked to them in a familiar way in a worne and beaten phrase of three Persons they moreover being an idolatrous generation their corrupt natures might have easily corrupted the Text and beleeved as many Gods as Persons especially when they were of themselves such waxen creatures so prone and pliant to Idolatry that the onely 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 〈…〉 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 should 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
men Saint Paul to the Jewes under the Law though not a Jew under the Law became as a Jew under the Law To the Gentiles as one of them though not one of them To the weake though not weake as weake The great Interpreters of holy Scripture give three reasons why Saint Paul in his Epistle to the Hebrewes doth not begin after his accustomed manner Paul an Apostle of Jesus Christ The first was given by Theodoret because he was more answerably Apostolus Doctor Gentium the Apostle and Doctor of the Gentiles as himselfe proveth The second by Saint Hierome because he cals Christ in the same Epistle the Apostle Galat. 2. Hebr. 3. 1. and higb 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 as it is plaine in the Acts of the Apostles Act. 21. 20. 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 of Graces But I am forced here to play Synes in hymnis 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
Grace yee are saved through Faith and that not of your selves it 2 Ephes 89 is the gift of God Not of workes lest any man should boast Amongst the Papists their good men all merit and to make the matter sure one meriteth for another And yet as no man can direct an intention to an end but hee must also intend the meanes requisite to the end So no man can truly merit salvation unlesse he likewise merit the meanes necessary to salvation the thing necessary to salvation was the death of Christ therefore if they merit salvation they merited S. Aug. Serm. 8. de verbis Apost likewise the death of Christ But Saint Austin saith Neque enim illum ad nos merita nostra bona sed peccata duxerunt our merits did not draw him to us but our sinnes The Protestants have onely two Sacraments because Christ intended to give life and to maintaine it They have Baptisme to give spirituall life and the Sacrament of the Eucharist or the Lords Supper to keepe and cherish it The Papists have seven Sacraments as there are seven Planets and because there are seven deadly sinnes And yet if every visible signe of an invisible gift be a Sacrament the old Law was exceedingly stored with Sacraments The Protestants give Christ to be eaten by faith the Papists wholly and carnally and in the same manner as he is in Heaven And therefore the sacred institution is maimed and the poore Laity deprived of the Cup because they are beleeved to take all Christ his body ex vi verborum and his bloud soule Divinity and the blessed Trinity it selfe per concomitantiam in regard that Christ cannot be parted The Protestants teach according to S. Paul that a Bishop may be the husband of one wife which the Papists 1. Tim. 3. 2 would faine turn to one Bishoprick or Benefice but S. Paul cuts them off having his children in subjection with all gravity Both the Verse 4. Bishop and Priest with the Papists professe to live a most Angelicall life and to carry with them out of the world an unspotted robe of chastity And yet while they bring glory to their Church by a compulsive restraint of the Clergy from an honest and lawfull act they ruine the precious soules of many thousands of thousands as appeareth by the great and grievous complaints of many devout persons in the Councell of Trent and by the beaten and ordinary practise of their Priests who by force turned from the true channell runne over all bankes into all beastlinesse And I have from their owne mouths two matters of notable importance First that indeed marriage had beene granted to Priests in the Councell of Trent had they not upon the suggestion of the Jesuits feared poverty and contempt By which it is as cleere as Gods Sunne that they more aime in their adventures at the glory of the Church their visible Mother then of God their invisible Father Secondly that the Jesuits hewed the Councell into this conceit for this end lest because the Jesuits can throw off their habit at their pleasure all their able men should have left them and runne a wiving And it is a great reason of a great rule they have that no Jesuit may be a Bishop or Cardinall without an extraordinary command and dispensation from the Pope because their houses would then be deplumed of Schollers I feare the religious persons of the Church of Rome clad so meanely in the greater part thinke themselves as great as the greatest Tertullian saith of Diogenes Superbos Platonis thoros alia superbia deculcat he kicks the pride of Plato being altogether Tert. Apol. cap. 46. as proud as he The Protestants are alwaies humble suppliants to God for the remission of their sinnes and still laying open before him and recounting the sins of their youth And the uncertainty holds them alwayes in a feare and trembling and in a meeke submission to God The Priest in Confession will give to the Papists a full and absolute forgivenesse of all their sinnes whensoever they please to read or tell them over And yet nothing is more dangerous to an ignorant soule then a deceitfull security they beleeve their sinnes are forgiven and the care is past Confession cannot be necessary necessitate absoluta that is necessary to salvation or in the list of Sacraments For why did the Greeke Church the most devout and most learned Church in the world and the Nursery of our greatest Doctors moved onely with one abuse ushered by Confession abolish it Can the abuse of a Sacrament amongst reasonable creatures and sensible of their owne condition deface the use of it And therefore doubtlesse they held it by the title of a good and pious custome not in the name of a Sacrament Turne another way God who commandeth every servant of his to keepe the dores of his senses and by all honest violence to prevent the entrance of sinne upon the soule will he give a Sacrament wherein the soule shal under the pretty color of sanctity stand open to all kindes of uncleannesse And he that commandeth me to shut my eares against lewd discourses will he now out-goe himselfe and command me to heare them They reply the relations are now in mourning and delivered in a dolorous and humble manner But the disease being catching we cannot be too cautious and it is not likely that God would linke a holy Sacrament with a knowne temptation It is a knowne truth that these confessions and especially of women when they relate the Acts and circumstances of their fleshly sinnes doe make strange motions not onely in the minds but also in the bodies of their Priests which their Authors confesse even out of Confession Confession as they use it is an optick instrument through which they looke neerely upon the soule that according to that sight they may governe And therefore it is one of the private rules amongst the Jesuits that in all their consultations which are many the Bell having rung them together the Ghostly Father especially shall be present and his counsell most observed And although the Generals of their Orders checked by the Popes have given publike commands to the contrary yet they are all but a face and a flourish Confession thought a Sacrament is to many the bane of perfection For leaning heavie upon the pretended strength and efficacie of the absolution they bate much of the sorrow which is the principall part of true repentance The Protestants keepe one day in the weeke holy in obedience to the Commandement given with a Memento Remember the Sabbath day to keepe it holy and other speciall dayes according to an appointment Euod 20. 8. squared by the rule of the ancient Church The Papists have many Holy-dayes and yet doe not seriously observe the Sabbath insomuch that the Jesuits boast their Founder to have complained much of Sabbath-breaking A Councell held under Guntranus Concil sub Guntrano complaines too
Shepheard to feede and preserve not a Wolfe to teare and devoure Give me leave Did the world know how poore my beginnings were I am not ashamed of them in what small helpes I have rejoyced when the Papists vaunted they doubted not to live and see me begge mournfully at their dores for a morsell of bread that my fortunes were carried on the top of the flowing and ebbing waters two yeares from banke to banke before I was fixed and then but weakly setled in a dark nooke Did men know how I have beene used abused forced threatned reviled discomforted they would not be angry that I desired to subsist and to preach the good Gospell of Christ But I will not preach this doctrine till I am call'd CHAP. V. ANd now I thanke the Papists for my unconquerable resolution growing from the grossenesse of their scandals Josephs Brethren were very malicious against him they sold him to slavery the Scene beganne to bee tragicall God came to act his part turned the wheele and made all this malice and misery end in the great benefit not onely of the malicious and undeserving Brethren but of Joseph himselfe his old Father and the whole Kingdome of Egypt Judas sold his Master his Master and the Master of all things for thirty pence the money would goe but a little way he had an ill bargaine When his part was done God entred upon the Stage and by the execrable perfidiousnesse of the Traitour Judas brought about the redemption of mankinde the salvation of the whole world and in effect all the shining that is and ever shall be made by glorious soules and bodies in Heaven I doe not except the soule and body of our Mediatour and Advocate Christ Jesus who though he did not redeeme himselfe because he was not in captivity yet came to be betraied and to redeeme his Betrayer if he would have bin redeemed By this law a prudent Mr. of a family turnes the rough nature of an angry Dog to the benefit and peace of himselfe and his family and a wise Physitian the eager thirst of a bloud-thirsty horseleach to the health of a sick person although indeed these unreasonable creatures of themselves aime at nothing but to satiate their owne wilde natures Saint Austin speaking of evill men saith Ne igitur putes gratis malos esse in hoc mundo nihil boni ex illis metere Deum quia omnis malus aut ideo vivit ut corrigatur aut ideo vivit ut per illum bonus exerceatur Doe not therefore thinke that evill men are suffered to be evill in this world for no good purpose and that God reapes no benefit by them For every evill man either therefore lives that in time he may decline from evill and incline to good or therefore lives that the good man may be exercised and farthered in the practise of goodnesse by him otherwise he should no live There is a course of things within the generall course of this world pertaining to the order to which God brings all straggling chances in the last act of the play which if we did examine as they come and beget experience we should enlighten and enrich the understanding with heavenly matters exceedingly We behold how admirably at this day moved by the sinfull occasion of Heresie and Superstition the Church doth watch and pray and we know that a multitude of soules now crowned in Heaven hath learned to avoid sinne by observing others punished for sinne which could not in justice have beene punished if it had not beene committed and how murderers doe open the gate of Heaven for Martyrs and that the bloud of Martyrs hath beene the seed of the Church for if they had not died bodily many had not lived spiritually And to goe as high as may be Good comes to God by the worst of evils the good of glory by sinne For to speake with Cassiodore Materia est gloriae principalis delinquentis reatus quia nisi culparum Cassio Var. 3. 46. occasiones emergerent locum pietas non haberet The guilt of a Delinquent person is a principall matter that nourisheth glory For if there were no sinne there would be no place for the exercise of mercie which supposeth misery which misery supposeth sinne And though I gather good from the evill of the Church of Rome yet the evill of the Church is to me a sound argument against the Church That rule of Christ Yee shall know them by their fruits Mat 7. 16. is as true a marke as a signe from Heaven For as the Church of Rome was first known by her workes so now likewise shee is knowne by her workes and the workes of her age not being of the same birth and education with the workes of her youth shew her to bee different from her selfe when workes doe alwayes answer in some proportion to Faith and the Tree cannot be good if the fruit be generally evill And as Saint Justine writeth to the Grecians S. Justin Cohort ad Graec. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the solid fruit of pious workes gives testimony to the true Religion I came from the last Popish Colledge of which I was a member as I did from all others fairely and respectfully on both sides Their testimony of me is yet in my hands made strong and authenticall with their owne Seale I will give it here word for word Thomas Fitzherbertus societatis Jesu Collegii Anglorum de urbe Rector OMnibus in quorum manus praesentes venerint salutem in Domino sempiternam Fidem facimus atque his literis attestamur latorem praesentium Reverendum Patrem Franciscum Dakerum for this was the last name by which I was knowne amongst them Anglum Sacerdotem esse nec ullo impedimento Canonico prohiberi quo minus sacrosanctum Missae Sacrificium ubique celebrare possit Cum vero etiam in hoc nostro Collegio sedis Apostolicae Alumnus fuerit modo absolutis studiis in Angliam ad luerandas Deo animas proficiscatur nos quo illum affectu nobiscum morantem complexi sumus eodem discedentem paterne prosequimur omnibus ad quos in itinere devenerit quantum valemus in Domino commendamus In quorum fidem caet Romae ex Collegio Anglorum die 9. Septemb. 1635. Thomas Fitzherbertus manu propria Those with whose understandings this will suite are able to understand it without a translation The Faculties annexed by the Pope to the exercise of my Priestly function were these I have them under their owne hands Ordinariae Facultates Alumnorum Collegii Anglicani 1. FAcultas absolvendi ab omnibus casibus Censuris in Bulla Caenae Domini reservatis in Regnis Angliae Scotiae Hiberniae 2. Vt possint illis quos reconciliaverint dare Apostolicam benedictionem cum plenaria Indulgentia prima vice Catholicis vero congregatis ad Concionem vel ad sacrum in Festis solennioribus Apostolicam benedictionem sine plenaria Indulgentia
3. Vt possint dispensare cum illis qui contraxerint cum tertio vel quarto gradu in foro conscientiae tantum 4. Vt possint commutare vota simplicia exceptis votis Castitatis Religionis in aliud opus pium cum causa 5. Vt possint benedicere vestes alia omnia quae pertinent ad Sacrificium praeter ea quae requirunt Chrisma 6 Vt possint restituere jus petendi debitum conjugale quando ex aliqua causa omissum est 7 Vt possint dare facultatem Catholicis legendi libros controversiarum a Catholicis scriptos in vulgari lingua 8. Quando non possunt ferre Breviarium vel recitare officium sine probabili periculo suppleant aliquot Psalmos dicendo vel alias orationes quas sciunt memoriter 9. Si aliis Facultatibus indiguerint vel dubia circa horum usum occurrerint remittant ad Reverendum Dominum Archipresbyterum Angliae ut illis satisfaciat prout ipsi in Domino visum fuerit eique in omnibus obedire teneantur quod etiam se facturos promittant priusquam hae vel aliae Facultates eis concedantur The Grants of giving Indulgences are either ordinary or extraordinary The ordinary are ordinarily knowne the extraordinary are these their Coppie is yet with me Formulae Extraordinariae Indulgentiarum pro utriusque sexus fidelibus qui penes se habuerint aliquam Coronam Rosarium parvam crucem aut imaginem benedictam caet 1. VT quicunque semel saltem in hebdomada officium divinum ordinarium aut Beatae Virginis aut Defunctorum aut septem Psalmos Paenitentiales aut Graduales aut coronam Domini aut Beatae Virginis aut tertiam partem Rosarii recitare aut Doctrinam Christianam docere aut infirmos alicujus Hospitalis vel detentos in carcere visitare aut pauperibus Christi subvenire consueverit vere paenitens ac confessus sacerdoti ab ordinario approbato sanctissimum Eucharistiae sacramentum sumpserit in aliquo ex diebus infra scriptis nempe Nativitatis Domini Epiphaniae Ascensionis Domini Pentecostes cum duobus sequentibus Corporis Christi Nativitatis Sancti Joan. Bapt. Sanctorum Apostolorum Petri Pauli Assumptionis beatae Mariae semper Virginis omnium sanctorum dedicationis propriae Ecclesiae Patroni vel tituli Ecclesiae atque ea die pie ad Deum preces effuderit pro Haeresium ac schismatum exterminatione pro fidei Catholicae propagatione ChristianoruÌ„ principum concordia atque aliis sanctae Matris Ecclesiae necessitatibus in singulis diebus ejusmodi plenariam omnium peccatorum Indulgentiam consequatur 2. Vt quicunque in prima Dominica Quadragesimae Quadragesimale jejunium salubriter celebrans vere paenitens confessus sacraque communione refectus ut supra oraverit itidem Plenariam 3. Vt quisquis vere paenitens ae si potuerit ut supra confessus sacra communione refectus alioqui saltem contritus in mortis articulo nomen Jesu ore si potuerit sin minus corde devote invocaverit similier plenariam Let the Ministers of England those I meane who dwell at home and not in Tavernes who burne with zeale not smoak with Tobacco and who steere not towards preferment but towards Heaven judge whether the man ought not to be cherished countenanced and exposed in the light and frequencie of people that hath shaken off with great loathing these wretched abuses and the Patrons of them But I poore man for so is the fortune of these times like him in the Comick Poet Vivus vidensque pereo live and while I live perish and perish in darknesse and yet see my selfe perish but am not sâ—â—â—â—e to perish for then sure I should not perish But it cannot be thus long And therefore O all yee Schollers beyond the Seas under whose profession there lie secret thoughts of returning to the Church of England be cheerefull For howsoever the clouds have shadowed me the Sunne will shine out upon you The Church of God hath ever beene subject to outward alterations And you shall be received and clasped round about with the armes of true zeale and charity Gods children in England will acknowledge his children flying from Babylon And every good soule will have a sense of what you feele and a sight of what you want before you can name it They that are great shall be the greatest in godlinesse and in all their greatnesse shall thinke themselves as little as you And the golden age will come againe And therefore once more I say it be of good comfort And for me I hope I shall now sing with the Prophet I will not dye but live and declare the workes of the Lord. CHAP. VI. O What a sweetnesse of heart it was to me when I first entred into the Protestant Churches after my conversion to heare the people answer and see them lissen in divine Service O the poore Countrey people amongst the Papists who not understanding their Service and seldome hearing Sermons live more like beasts then men I have seene of the Galiegos and heard of some Countrey people in Italy who they confessed did not much differ from beasts but in the outward shape And the case of all people in Rome is to be lamented whose ordinary phrase is Come let us goe and heare Musick and the Cardinals boyes sing at such a Church This is to please the sense not God I saw such a representation of Hell and Heaven in a Cardinals Palace and the parts of Saints and Devils so performed with singing and Musicke and the soules in so great a number comming out of the world into Purgatory that it was wonderfull Shewes of this nature are often seene in their Churches Aristotle sayes well Omnis cognitio nostra a sensu initium habet All the knowledge we gather from below begins at the sense And these Scribes and Pharisees doe foole the senses of their people exceedingly I have an old manuscript wrought excellently with gold and painting In which booke there is a prayer with this inscription Oratio venerabilis Bedae Presbyteri de septem verhis Christi in cruce pendentis quam orationem quicunque quotidie devote dixerit nec Diabolus nec malus homo ei nocere poterit nec sine confessione morietur per tringinta dies ante obitum suum videbit gloriosam Virginem Mariam in auxilium sibi praeparatam The prayer of venerable Bede Priest of the seven words or speeches of Christ hanging upon the Crosse which prayer whosoever shall say devoutly every day upon his knees neither the Devill nor any evill man shall ever hurt him neither shall he die without confession and three hundred dayes before his death hee shall see the glorious Virgin Mary in a readinesse to succour him At the Busse in Holland in the Church of S. Peter they have pictured a Bishop in a glasse-window On one side of him hangs Christ upon the Crosse with his wounds bleeding On the otherside stands the
the part of a Minister and a Changeling and a Devill and a Turke at Rome and all in one Comedy of my owne composing you shall ever make any more then a jest of it and but a poore one In our Colledges they were most gracious that most goared the Church of England the fond conceit of which moved mee to turne a Minister by the Alchymy of Action into all strange formes that I might passe more plausible I am Countrey-plaine and still short Certaine religious duties are to be performed of the same print with my present condition and I 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 wheÌ„soever wheresoever or howsoever Now I look betterupon 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 Idoe for the same or like paiment here I doe not meane the Papists and perhaps pleasing God betterupon 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 full of tumult where is a continuall S. Chrys tom 4. hom 24. 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 lond 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 8â— 10 which words Saint Austin discourseth as he uses to doe most excellently and me S. Aug. super 〈◊〉 allud Psalmi 〈…〉 thinkes he speakes to me Duae sunt amicae Justitia Pax tu forte unam vis alteâ—â—m 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 peccatum nisi restituatur ablatum The S. Aug. sinne is not pardoned except the thing taken away be restored there being a greater 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and foulenesse of injustice in the keeping and retaining
Weeping All this while the clouds have beene in gathering now it raines But where fell the raine And began to wash his feete How with what with teares now I understand you she stood but her teares fell and her heart with them With teares With raine-water that never had beene foule never mingled with any kinde of uncleannesse it was a washing raine water that came but even now from Heaven Here is not all And did wipe them with the haires of her head and kissed his feete and anointed them with the ointment and 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 uhi 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 in these words Paulisper te crede subduci S. Cyprian ep 2. l. 2. ad Donatum 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 away into fruitlesse scum which remaineth here and there on the top of the water to obey all tides and to be tossed and tumbled with every winde Invention can assigne no other cause of all this but sinne All the punishments that ever were are or shall be inflicted upon men All the evils which ever did doe now or shall hereafter fall heavie upon Creatures be they sensible or unsensible appointed for mans use draw life breath strength sinewes and all their force from the foule sinnes and superstitions of the world Pause here a little and give place to a pious meditation If Almighty God did so rigorously punish those adulterate Cities of Palestine with Sodome the chiefe head of them that besides the present punishment of a sudden overthrow by fire and brimstone from Heaven as if justice could not stand quiet in such grievous crimes the Countrey which once was a second Paradise another garden of the world now at this day lies so pitifully desolate that nothing is to be seene but black and sutty ground ashes and stones halfe burnt there remaining in the middle a great Lake called by a scornefull name mare mortuum the dead Sea from which a darke smoke continually rises most pernicious to man and every living creature where are no trees but such as are hypocritically fruitfull Apples indeed hang openly and which in the judgement of the eye are ripe but come to them enticed with their colour presse them with the least touch they scatter presently into vaine dust The substance of this we read even in Heathen Authors Solinus Cornelius Tacitus but especially Solinus c. 84. Corn. Tac. l. 5. hist Joseph de bell Jud. l. 5. c. 5. and with a more free addition of circumstances in Josephus the Jew borne and bred up not farre from this unfortunate Countrey Behold here a wofull extremity It was a rainy morning with them and yet wondrous light The were burned to ashes before they could rise either from their beds or their sinnes And because they were such deserving sinners and yet were not quick in going to Hell Hell came to them in fire and brimstone Five great Cities and every part of them were all on fire together and it burnt so violently that all the Sea could not have quenched the flames And was not Gods Anger burning hot me thinkes now I heare the damned in Hell cry from all sides fire fire fire and yet no creature will ever be able to quench the least sparke of it O the goodnesse of God that holds me up over the great Dragons mouth and yet still out of his mouth though he does crave and whine and cry for me If I say God Almighty imprinted with an iron instrument these horrid markes of his anger on the hatefull forehead of one Countrey for the sinnes of some few people what O what will hee doe or in what strange and new kind of anger will he expresse himselfe in the black day of judgement for the sinnes of the whole world Especially since that sinne is now growne exceedingly more diverse both in the species and in the particulars then it was in the infancie or childhood of the world In the day of judgement when the Devill questionlesse as Saint Basil observes will say something before the Bench to aggravate the matter Heare great Lord of Heaven and Hell I created not these people nor could I bring them from nothing Nor did I engrave my great signe and Image in their soules I did not take their nature I did not sweat bloud nor die for them I did not send Apostles and Preachers to signifie my will to them in a most powerfull manner or give grace to effect it I never wrought a miracle to bring waight to my sayings Nor did I promise them a Kingdome or eternall blessednesse But truely prepared for them a dark Dungeon where they shall lie and die with me eternally And yet behold mighty Judge my cursed crew of reprobates is the greatest by infinites whom though I much hate yet I much love their company And if we looke before Sodome God in his dreadfull anger drowned all the world for sinne both man and beast behaving himselfe in regard of mans beastly sins as if he scarce knew which was the man and which the beast Had we beene as we might have beene in the number of those poore lost wretches wherehad wee beene this day Distressed creatures they climed the trees they flew to the tops of the mountaines to save their lives Happy was he or she that stood highest But all in vaine The waters rose by some and by some they waiting with trembling expectation the Floud gat up as high as they the waves tooke them roaring as loud as they and their sinnes sunke them Part of them cleaved to boards plankes and other floating moveables for a while the drunkard to the barrell the covetous man to his chest of mony as very desirous to stay in the world and sinne againe but no creature of God was willing to save his enemy And every one that is like to Vlysses praised by Homer with this elogie 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 hee knew the Cities and manners of many people may quickly give us to understand how strangely the world in many places is defaced and wounded for sinne Vae laudabili vitae hominum saith Saint Austin si remota misericordia discutias eam Woe to the good lives of men if thou O Lord shalt discusse them without mercie We then with our bad lives how many woes shall we undergoe And the rather because it is most true which the same Saint Austin teacheth Multa laudata ab hominibus Deo teste damnantur S. Aug. lib. 3. Confess c. 9. cum saepe se aliter habent species facti aliter animus facientis Many things praised by men are condemned by God because oftentimes the outward barke and appearance of the deed doth not correspond and fall in with the minde of the Doer O Sinne it is a great vertue to hate thee A Toad is a very pretty thing in comparison of thee And now I remember a Toad is Gods good creature and if it could speake might truely say Lord such a one as I am I was made by thee And howosoever I looke blacke and cloudy that I move hate in passionate men yet thou lovest me Yea verily the loathed Serpent might say if it had mans tongue
chosen of God fill up the number of the fallen Angels every one enjoying a different degree of blessednesse their workes and meanes of their salvation having beene different and because of every one it might be said Non erat similis illi qui conservaret legem Excelsi Hee had not his like in keeping the law of the most High because nature differing in all the meanes and courses did answerably differ And whereas in the world she saw God in his creatures she shall now see the creatures in God which she saw which she saw not and which humane eye never saw which shall afford her satisfaction though not perfect her blessednesse according to S. Austin He that sees thee O God and thy workes in thee non propter illa beatior sed propter te solum is not more happy for seeing them in thee but for seeing thee onely She shall see as much as God hath set apart for her blessednesse and though she differ from others in her extension of sight she shall not desire to share equally with them because it is one of her perfections and indeed part of her blessednesse to rest perfectly upon the will of God from whence flowes a blessed peace From this beatificall vision or sight of Gods face shall flame out a most ardent love of God Wee behold in the world but certaine emblems of Gods mercie justice power and the like which are out of God and in creatures and yet the reflection sets us on fire with the love of God How then shall we burne in love towards him when we shall see all we see in God though not all in God in whom all is God Verily this love will have a Property above all loves For the lover of God in Heaven cannot but love him For having once seene him he cannot but look upon him and looking upon him he cannot but love him Many objects in this meane world meane in respect of Heaven at the first sight stirre us to love Looking we love and loving we looke and the more we look the more we love and the more we love the more we looke and we cannot tell for the time whether we looke more or love more Call away the soule that lookes upon God offer her a thousand worlds for the present and ten thousand hereafter Bring all the cunning enticements that the Devill can thinke of or that God can give him leave to forge make here an assurance of all that God can give besides himselfe bring Gods owne hand to it Go to her againe speak aloud tell her of another Heaven where although God is not to be enjoyed yet there are Angels to be seene and delights without number to minister pleasures that cannot be numbred Speake words as faire as the soule you speake to And cry with the Devill All these things will I give thee not over one Matt. 4. 9. world O poore O barren temptation but over as many worlds as God can make if thou wilt turne aside from God but a little a very little or winke out but one moment She will not she cannot not that she will not because she cannot or that she cannot because she will not but shee neither will nor can Nothing but Gods holy will can move her to turn aside or wink and that shee knowes is constant to her Happinesse O the basenesse of this world O the beastlinesse of our lusts and carnall desires O the vilenesse of our pride and filthy bravery How foule how sordid how beggerly they are set in comparison with the fight of God in Heaven What poore things are they to take in exchange for eternall blessednesse Go go presently and sell your part of Heaven your part in God for these base things O the vanities of earthly Courts and kingdomes Give us God him him only him and let all go For in God we shall have riches without care honour without feare beauty without fading joy without sorrow content without vexation all good things not one after one but altogether and without the defects annexed to them in this imperfect world The Husband that loves the Wife of his bosome the Mother that loves the child of her wombe the children that love their Parents whose living Images they are the friend that loves his friend for whom he would endanger his life though he hath but one they may frame a conceit of the tender love of God to the soule and of the soule to God but they cannot entirely and comprehensively conceive it For upon earth we may love one man or woman most yet we may love others though not as the persons we love most and our love of others may have no respect to the person we love most and so our love may bee divided We cannot love two most 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as Plato speakes there is but one best in all kindes one best one best-beloved But in Heaven our love shall settle with all the force it can make upon God where onely one is to bee loved 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 saith Saint Justin for Gods most perfect unity requires the perfection of a Monarchy It is the most perfect government where is one supreme Governour and therefore one God And though in Heaven we love Saints and Angels yet that love is a naturall branch of the love of God We love them because we love God we love them in God wee love God in them we love God for himselfe and we love them altogether for God But where a Trinity of persons is the Giver in the highest gift of all and the end of all other gifts there must appeare a trinity of gifts the sight of God the love of God and a rejoycing in God According to the good we receive and the intimacie of its connexion with us so natur'd is our joy It must then be the greatest joy when we shall perfectly enjoy the greatest good But what if the greatest good be all good shall we have all joy yes I write it with great joy all joy the sight of all all love all joy not that can be given or that can bee received but that we can receive Quicquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur whatsoever is received is received according to the capacity of the receiver And though perhaps some one or some few shall receive all that can be given to such a creature for God now gives himselfe out most freely yet they shall not receive all because no finite can receive an infinite nor all that a more perfect creature could receive It will be no small part of the soules joy that Gods will is done in his Saints in his Angels in the saved in the damned The righteous Psal 58. 10 saith the Psalmist shall rejoyce when he seeth the vengeance There cannot bee a knowledge and possession of God without great joy And will it not afford matter of great comfort to the soule to see in God the dangers of
this world both spirituall and temporall which strengthened with a hand from Heaven she fairely passed When she thinkes being now in full security With such a plot the Devill assaulted me at such a time had not God beene in the combate with me on my side I had beene lost Had I runne such a course that runne in my head at such an houre I had runne head-long to Hell Had God call'd for me and for an account at such a day by land by sea when the sea roard the winds blew the rocks watcht for the vessell I was in when the Ship reeld to and fro like a drunken man the Sea-men staggered and trembled I had not beene a blessed soule Through what a strange world did I travell hither how every small corner was beset with snares how the wayes abroad how the houses and streets of Townes and the very Churches were throng'd with evill Spirits which I never saw till now How sweete how mercifull God was to the world divided and distracted with so many errours defiled with so many sinnes How could he suffer men to live out halfe their dayes He that brought the world from nothing to something why did hee not throw it away in his anger from something to nothing againe O sweetnsse goodnesse mercie great exceeding infinite and there she dives In this life no joy goes without a sorrow without its Keeper that our life is like the roofe of the great Temple in Jerusalem which as Villalpandus records out of Josephus shewed flowers growing among guilded prickles and surely in the best day of our lives when wee sung the sweetest if wee sinke into the matter we shall finde that we had a sharpe thorne at our brests But the inside of Heaven is without a cloud Every day though new and fresh and shining is like a Friers weed dishonoured with a patch a badge of our beggery our misery The Romish Canon-law keeps the Popes so close to Religion that none are deposed ipso facto but for the crime of Heresie God the maintainer of this joy can never be stirred and therefore it must needs be a setled joy And of this Countrey I joy to speake because I am now in the way to it I will turn my eyes a little upon the Queen of Sheba She comes from a farre Countrey what 's her businesse Onely to see and speak with Salomon Which being done what sayes she And when the Queene of Sheba 1. King 10. 4. had seene all Salomons wisedome not heard but seene it was not onely wisedome of words And the house that he had built yonder house above Now I shall take of the Text here and there And the attendance of his Ministers his blessed Angels and their apparell their robes of immortality Vers 5. there was no more spirit in her and behold the halfe was not told me thy Preachers Vers 7. could not speake halfe Happy are these thy servants which stand continually before thee Vers 8. and that heare thy wisedome A greater then Salomon is here O Lord so teach me to converse with Christ here that I may dwell with him hereafter CHAP. XVII BY night on my bed saith the Spouse I sought him whom my soule loveth I sought him but I found him not It is very strange For that which the Divines call Gratia prima the first Grace comes alwaies by night It being alwayes darke night and indeed the dead of night before Grace comes And the first Grace doth not finde Grace where it comes For then it would not be the first But the meaning is the Spouse before she was the Spouse or the soule sought God without Grace as the Philosophers of which Saint Paul speakes Rom. 1. sought him without him as the Giver of supernaturall Graces sought him by night sought light in darknesse rejected the sufficiencie of Grace offered to her and thought to doe miracles and worke above nature by the helpe of nature Or if it be a harsh note she sought God without Grace We may say that she was moved by the first Grace to seeke God but because she did not worke with it as farre as the Grace did enable her she wanted the second Grace and did not seeke him aright For shee sought him on her bed sluggishly drousily She sought him onely in a dreame she sought him when the belly was full and the bones at rest betwixt sleeping and waking and therefore by her leave she was mistaken her soule did not love him For if her soule had loved him her soule would have tooke another order with her body and she would have sought him otherwise and might have found him But now she sought him and she sound him not and why She was mistaken both in the time and in the place For he was neither to be found by night in the darknesse of a sinfull life nor on her bed what should he have done there hee neither slumbreth nor sleepeth She should have sought him where he was and would be found Nor can it in reason be imagined that he would come to her come to be found and enjoyed and she neither move hand nor foote nor eye in the search of him but lie all along with her hands and feete spread abroad upon a bed of doune and with her eyes shut and that should passe for a sufficient seeking of all goodnesse to be rewarded with Heaven But though she hath not found him she hath found her errour and she begins againe I will rise now and goe about the Citie in the streets and in the broad wayes I will seeke him whom my soule loveth I sought him but I found him not Now she will rise The first beginning of good to be done on our parts after the kinde entertainment of the inspiration is the purpose of doing it Well She is dressing herself hastily But what will she doe when she is up We shall quickly see For I heard her say I will rise now She will admit of no delay she will fall to worke while the inspiration is warme and before it cooles But what doth shee meane to doe Goe to the City Hitherto she goes well For the Wise-men that came to seeke Christ wisely addressed themselves to the City and there enquired for him And to declare that they tooke a good ordinary way and that extraordinary helpe is ordained to supply the defect of Gods ordinary assistance extraordinary meanes failed them for the new-created starre disappeared In the City she will finde many good people that will gladly tell her good tidings of him whom her soule loveth because their soules have loved him from their childhood and ever since they knew what it was to love God gives her a will and power to rise And because thee rises with him he goes with her to the City Her going with him moves him againe to goe with her But it is not well that shee will goe about the City For if she goe not strait
teaches of all that ever hee taught And what is it that here we have no continuing City but seeke one to come Heb. 13. 14 Could we sinfull creatures fore see our own ends and the lamentable chances that lie watching for us as we passe by such a day and such an houre the hardest of us would weepe let us weepe then for the cause of all our misery our execrable sinnes Christ wept over Jerusalem because he saw the hearts and fore-saw the ends of all the people in the City He saw perhaps one stretched out with pride that should after two months die like a Dog in a ditch He saw another pawning his very soule for honour that should not live out the fourth part of a yeare to enjoy it What silly fooles the Devill makes us Here he saw one catching and scraping for mony that he was certain should be call'd to a strict account and cast into Hell within the short space of a month There another cheering up pampering his flesh with dainties and still the tother cup that the wormes were within lesse then seven dayes to enter upon Here he heard one swearing and tearing God the holy name of God and there presently he heard God also swearing in his wrath that he should not enter into his rest And here another venting as many lies as sentences while he heard God say cut him off let him speake no more it is my course for the longer he lives he will be the more wicked He might see two goe reeling in their drunkennesse one of whom the same night should break his necke from a window and the other be stab'd to death in a riot Two more following the vile motions of their owne filthy lusts and in league with base women that the same weeke should cut their purses and throats together He saw the greatest part of them pursuing earnestly their owne sinfull desires and either diseases gathering to a head inwardly in their bodies or Gods judgements outwardly mustering their forces to send them to Hell out of hand These mournefull passages Christ saw and being very sorry to see them wept He pronounces the sentence of destruction against the City and he weepes while he does it Hine illae lacrymae Hence came those teares He wept not put on with the thought of his owne passion though very nigh but of their destruction And therefore he sayes Daughters of Jerusalem weepe not for mee for whom then Lord but weepe for your selves and for your children Doe we love our children our pretty little Babes let us weep for our sins that we may not weepe for them And can we see Christ weep him that died for us weep and not offer our service to wipe the teares from his eyes Saint Gregorie Nazianzen rapt out of himselfe in consideration of the poore condition of the poore cried out 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 O my dainties and their misery And thus we may cry of the soules in Hell of some of our friends and neighbours that died lately O our joy our quiet and their miserable torments which we ought not to pity which God pities not When I have wrote all I can write I feare all will end here There is a blessed repose in God for good men and a cursed prison for wicked livers But we are so busie in the world betwixt both that we have no time to thinke of either to looke upwards or downewards Yet know that we cannot stay betwixt both for ever We are certainely appointed for one where we must reside for ever and ever Good Reader stand firme against the Devill and against his two Factours the Flesh and the World Beware you that thinke your selves to be morall men and women of little sinnes Of sinnes little in our weake estimation because they canker not our credits nor cast upon us the staine of wicked livers Doe wee give to our endeavours in their commission a command to please God or men Saint Austin speakes like himselfe Noli quotidiana peccata contemnere quia minima sunt sed time quia plura sunt Plerunque minimae bestiae si multae sint necant Doe not contemne thy daily sinnes because they are small but feare them because they are many Small beasts if they bee many many times kill And the smallest sinne that can be committed but once committed troubles exceedingly and offends the most cleane cleare eyes of God If you are still obstinate the Devill is more good then you the blacke Devill of Hell For Grace is not offered to him and therefore he cannot lay hold upon it It is offered to you with entreaties and you refuse it And moreover the Devill is confirmed in his obstinacie you are not God invites you I am sure of it I am sure I came from him The Angels and Saints from Heaven all the chosen of God from all parts of the world pray you as very desirous of your company The holy Church entreats you for I came likewise from her to you Lissen to your thoughts marke there your own poore soules beseech you trembling like the Hart shot neare the heart and strucke with the fear of eternall damnation crying to you we were made for God O put us into his hands Our hearts are very sicke of a very dangerous disease worse then the Plague chilnesse in Gods service Let us write upon the dore in red letters as they doe upon the dores of houses infected with the Plague the pen being dipt in the bloud of Christ Lord have mercie upon us Yes yes have mercie upon us and not for our sakes not for our Fathers sakes not for our Ancestors sakes not for the Saints and Angels sakes not for the Virgin Maries sake but for Jesus Christ his sake CHAP. XIX EXtraordinary occasions require extraordinary proceedings The Copie of a Letter sent to my Lodging in Thames-street Mr. Carpenter AN old acquaintance of yours sends his hand accompanied with his heart to you although he dares not trust you either with his person or name Especially considering that you traduced an innocent man before the Bench as a seducer because he lov'd you and therefore desired you to remember from whence you had fallen and repent of your errour Poore man I pitie you and therefore I pitie you because I love you Whither so fast Looke backe God is a Father still and his Church still a mother and each hath many bowels of compassion You seemed to us a man of a good nature and religiously enclined And I remember when your Pen also was imployed in the behalfe of the Catholike Church And yet I understand that you are not contented to speake but that you have wrote also and are now ready to speake from the Presse the dishonour of her that was your own Mother and is Christs own Spouse Thinke without passion Is not this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 to fight with God And with what weapons when you fight with him can you wound him