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 and mine eyes a fountain of teares that I Jer. 9. 1. might weepe day and night O Lord Whom have I in Heaven but thee and there is Psal 73. 25. 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 afterwards taste In our conversation with God wee first taste and then see I speake not of Faith being of another order O taste and see that the Lord is good Holy Scripture will give us matter Psal 34. 8. without end This is a delicious communication of our selves with God our selves when we are present onely with our selves and with God Keepe the double doores of your teeth and lips the forts of silence close that your nimble and busie tongue speake nothing but what some way directly or indirectly pertaineth to Gods glory agreeably to his good pleasure And therefore always before you speak
Judas out of Christs company then follow as one of his Disciples and make the number full With admiration heare his doctrine and be witnesse to his miracles Look upon him in his Transfiguration and admire the beautifull glimmerings of his Godhead Cast thy garments in the way and throw boughes before him strip thy selfe of all and submit both them and thy selfe to Christ Be present in the Chamber wait upon him at the great Supper and communicate in spirit with him and the Disciples And kneeling hold the Towell and Water in the washing of the poore Fisher-mens feet Follow into the Garden and conceive that as Adam and wee were made slaves in a Garden So Christ his Father having promised was took and arrested for the payment of the ransome in a Garden Chide the three Disciples for sleeping and say fie fie can you not watch one houre with your Saviour and then look with a pittifull eye upon him and wipe the sweat of bloud from his browes and cry Alas poore Saviour Go after him when almost all the Disciples flie Goe with him from Pilat to Herod and considering that hee speaks not to Herod even urged by a question Call to mind that Herod had killed his voyce Iohn the Baptist who said of himselfe I am the voyce of one crying in the wildernesse and think his voyce being gone how could he speak And from Herod back againe to Pilat Behold his purple robe his reed his crowne of thrones and ponder what gay robes indeed rich Scepters and crownes of gold and jewells that is robes scepters and crownes of glory and immortality he hath purchased for us Watch with him all the night and feare it will never be day he is so tormented And suppose that thou seest hearest feelest what he saw heard felt and that thou smellest and tastest the sweetnesse of his patience Accompany him the next day and help to carry his heavy crosse to mount Calvary And there as if thou hadst beene frozen hitherto thaw into teares Run with all thy might into his armes held out at their full length to receive thee whilest he hangeth as he did with his back towards the ungratefull Citie Ierusalem Think profoundly that he hath suffered his feet to be nail'd together to demonstrate that both the Jew and Gentile goe now in one path Waigh the matter Because sinne entreth by the senses therefore his Head in which the senses most flourish is crowned with searching thorns O mervailous what King is he or of what Country that weares a crowne of thornes Surely the King of all afflicted people wheresoever they dwell Because the hands and feet are the outward instruments of sin therefore his hands and feet are nail'd to the Crosse for satisfaction Because the heart is the inward Fountaine of ill thoughts therefore his tender heart is pierced for thee And hence learne if thou hast sinned more grievously in any part of thy body or faculty of thy soule with a speciall diligence to estrange that part or faculty from pleasure Wonder that the Thiefe confessed Christ on the Crosse when even the Apostles either doubted or altogether lost their Faith of his Divinity Here unburden thy heart of all the injuries ever offered to thee with a valiant purpose never to speak of them againe Lay downe all thy sinnes at the foot of the Crosse whither the bloud droppeth with a firme confidence never to heare of them againe and say from a good heart with S. Austen Ille solus diffidat qui tantum peccare potest quantum Deus bonus S. Aug. lib. de vera falsa poenitentia c 5. est Let him onely be diffident who can sinne so much as God is good See him as farre as thou canst for weeping shaking and dying and mervaile that thy owne heart shakes not and dye with him by a most exact mortification Looke pale like him when hee was dead with sorrow for thy sinnes Behold him layed in the Sepulcher and though the Jewes hide him and binde him downe with a great stone and a strong chaine over it fastned in both ends to a rock as old History mentioneth and though the foolish Souldiers watch there in Armour yet doubt not but thou shalt see him again even in his body let him not shake thee off by dying Come running and having out-runne thy company finde white Angels in the Grave and pray that by thy Grave thou may'st passe to Angels Be with him even upon the mountaine where hee ascended and there kneele before him mark how his wounds are closed and be glad they are heal'd againe kisse the very print of his feet in the ground looke upon his face talk to him pray for a blessing upon thy selfe and the world confesse thy faults uncover thy weaknesse and say Lord I am very tender in this part begg the divine help then as it were dye for love and ascend with him crying O Lord leave me not hitherto I have followed thee now take me with thee to thy Kingdome and after this give thy selfe gently up into heaven and there see and heare those things which neither eye hath seene nor eare hath heard and especially the things which concerne the entertainment of Christ RULE 8. THat you may proceed with more cheerefulnesse both in your speculations and in the part of practicall performance If you desire to know whether you now be in the grace and favour of God know it by this which is more easie to be knowne whether God be I dare not say in grace I hope I may say in favour with you If he be he can stirre and turne you as he pleaseth and it is your daily care to give him full content and satisfaction If you love God he loveth you for his love is alwayes the first Mover and it commeth from his love of you that you love him Indeed God loveth his Enemies as we likewise ought to doe but his enemies doe not love him neither doth he love his enemies intimately and familiarly as hee doth his friends For there is little commerce little communication which is both the exercise and recreation of love betwixt God and his enemies You love God truly if prompted by the love of him you preferre him and his law in all cases in all causes and when you rightly fit and order the acts of your election not giving place to creatures or sins which as they are sinnes are not creatures before God and in a manner deifie them It would be strange above ordinary and extraordinary that God should command me to love him and stirred by this love to keepe his commandements and moreover to give thanks continually for the spirituall good which by his grace he worketh in me and yet I should never be able to know when I or others did love God though perhaps it might prove a knot in respect of others And certainly he that loveth God truly is highly in his favour For the true love of God
knowledge and practice which otherwise should never either have beene practised or knowne no patience of the best proofe but occasioned by an injury no injury guiltlesse of sinne the cleannest exercise of our Charity towards our neighbour supposes in our neighbour the want of a thing requisite and all want of that generation is the poore childe of sinne the most high and most elevated praxis or exercise of our charity towards God then flames out when we seale our beliefe with our blood in martyrdome no martyrdom but usherd with persecution no persecution free from sinne If we are not sorry that he sinn'd we are not sorry that millions of millions of soules shall now be lost eternally lost never to be found again which if Adam had stood upright had certainely shone with God in Heaven as long as hee And if we are sorry that he sinn'd wee are sorry that Christ joyn'd our flesh and soule to his Divinity expressed his true love to us by dying for us was seene by us here in the world and will feast even the corporall eye in Heaven with the most delightfull sight of his blessed body for ever And howsoever some think otherwise if Adam had not sinned Christ had not tooke our nature for he was not so much delighted with humane nature as hee was desirous to die for mankinde And if wee are not sorry that he sinn'd wee are not sorry that one sinne was the cause of all sinnes and all sinnes the cause of all punishments and that one punishment is behind and waits for us in another world with which all other punishments put together and made one punishment are in no kinde comparable and that I and my neighbours and he that is abroad and perhaps now little thinks of such a businesse are all ignorant how we shall dye now we are borne how wee shall end our lifes now wee are alive now wee are put on how we shall get off and when the Ax is laid to the root which way the Tree shall fall and what shall become of us everlastingly Be wee sorry or not sorry Adam sinned It being done God's will be done And yet because it was but his permissive will his will of sufferance and hee suffers many things against his will not of necessity but because he will I will be sorry that Adam sinn'd that is offended God God made the soule of man as upright as his body and clothed it with the white garment of originall Justice God being the fountaine of all power grace and sufficiencie could have hindred the fall but because he was not his neighbour nor obliged by any law for who should give a law to the first Law-giver and to demonstrate the full extent of his dominion over his creatures he would not and having left man in the hand of his owne counsell and set within the reach of his hand fire and water and man having wilfully plaid foule God strived to make the best of an ill game and therefore hee drew from the fall of Adam besides the former benefits a more ample demonstration of his power wisedome justice providence and chiefly of his charity the triall of reason the triumphs of vertue in all kindes and the greater splendour of his Church It is as plaine as if it were wrot by the finger of God with the Sun-beames which St. Austin saith speaking of God Non sineret malum nisi ex malo sciret Aug. de corrept et grat cap. 10. dicere bonum He would not suffer ill if he did not well know how to strain good out of ill and sweetnesse out of sowernesse O sweet God I have committed a great deale of sower evill come in thy goodnesse and draw good and sweetnesse out of it the good of Glory to thee and the sweetnesse of peace to mee both here and hereafter Thou hast held my hand in all my actions as well evill as good as a Master the hand of his Scholler whom he teacheth to write and in evill actions I have pulled thy hand thy power after mine to evill which was onely evill to me because I onely intended it in good actions thou didst alwayes pull hold and over-rule my hand and truly speaking it was thy good for I of my selfe cannot write one faire letter And I know thou hast not suffered me to run so farre into evill but thou canst turne all to good An infinite wisedome joyn'd with an infinite goodnesse can joyne good in company with evill be it as evill as it can be MEDITATION VII ANd if now I clip away an odd end of ensuing time a little remnant of black and white of nights and dayes a small and contemptible number of evenings and mornings wee strong people that now can move and set to work our armes and leggs and bodies at our pleasure wee that look so high and big withall shall not be what now we are For now we live and pleasing thoughts passe through our heads We runne we ride we stay we sit downe we eat and drink and laugh We rise up and laugh againe and so dance then rest a while and drink and talk and laugh aloud then mingle words of complement and actions of curtesie to shew part of our breeding then muse and think of gathering wealth and what merry dayes we shall enjoy But the time will suddenly be here and it stands now at the dore and is comming in when every one of us from the King God blesse his Majesty to the Beggar God sweeten his Misery shall fall and break in two peeces a soule and a body And the soule be given up into the hands of new Companions that we never saw and be carried either upward or downward in a mourning weed or in a robe of joy to an everlasting day or a perpetuall night which we know there are but wee never saw to be nor heard described by any that saw them And when the body shall bee left behind being now no more a living body no more the busie body it was but a dumb deafe blind blockish unsensible carcasse and now after all the great doings not able to stirre in the least part or to answer to very meane and easie questions as how doe you are you hungry is it day or night and be cast out for carrion it begins to stink away with it for most loathsome carrion either to the wormes or to the birds or to the fishes or to the beasts And when the holy Prophecie of Esay will be fulfilled The mirth of tabrets ceaseth the noise of them that rejoyce endeth the joy Es 24. 8. 9. of the harpe ceaseth They shall not drink wine with a song Nor yet without a song And there shall be no joy but the joy of Heaven no mirth or noise of them that rejoyce no singing but in Heaven O wretched Caine that built the first Citie upon earth because he was banished from Heaven Ille primus in terra fundamentum
us from it hee would quickly thinke Had I my body and life againe whither would I not goe What would I not undergoe to shun this wofull extremity I would lye weeping upon the cold stones all covered with dust and ashes if it might be suffered a million of yeares for my sinnes I would begge my bread of hard-hearted people in a new world from one end of it to the other I would spend as many life 's in trembling feare and fearfull trembling if I had them as there bee lifes in living creatures I would doe any thing Now my soule doe not grieve that Hell is provided for sinners for such griefe stands so farre under the lowest degree of vertue that it is a sinne but give two teares at least from the eyes of thy body because thou hast sinned against thy good God Such teares are Pearles and rich ones and will in time make thee a rich man The holy Fathers call these teares the jewels of Heaven and the wine of Angels And as the world was a gallant world and there were such creatures and such doings as we now see before I was any thing so it will unlesse God please in the meane time to cut off all by his glorious and second comming remaine a very gallant world and there will againe be such creatures and such doings when I shall lye quietly under ground corrupt and putrifie and by little and little fall away to a few wretched bones and these shall remaine to mocke at what I have beene And he that is now so trim and so much talk'd of shall not be so much as remembred in the world his generation shall forget him and people will speake and behave themselves as if he had never beene CHAP. V. REader beware the Papists are crafty and profound in craft And they will object to relieve their cause one of these two things or both I have beene long trained in the knowledge of their wayes That I owe them thankes for many devout observations Something I have learned of them and I thanke them for it yet little if experience stand aside but what I might have learned in England My friends know that when I was a boy at Eton Colledge I began to scribble matters of devotion And I have seene much unworthinesse in them beyond the Seas not to be imitated which I could not have learned in England But the knowledge which they worke by shall lye dead in me Their other prop will be that my writings come not from the spirit of devotion but of oratorie I am short in these revelations that point at something in me who am nothing Reader thou hast the language of my spirit but I must digge farther into this veine of Meditation or Consideration Consideration 1. THe reasonable soule though now of composition is composed of three faculties the Understanding the Will the Memory All faculties being active have one most proper act or exercise to which they are most and most easily inclinable if not restrained The most proper act or operation of the Understanding is to see or know Truth Of the Will to will and love good Of the Memory to lay up and keepe in it selfe as in a Treasury all profitable occurrences By the sinne of Adam the Understanding is dazled in the sight or knowledge of Truth By the sinne of Adam the Will becomes chill and colde in the willing and loving of good so colde that it wants a fire And from the sin of Adam the Memore hath learn'd an ill tricke of treasuring up evill where it shall be sure to be found againe and of casting aside good where it may be lost with a great deale more ease then it was found Where one part is wounded and one well one part may succour and cherish the other the part well the wounded part In the soule all parts are wounded And therefore there is great neede of Grace and supernaturall helps that strengthened by them wee may recover health and partes deperditas the parts we have lost Lord assist my contemplation with thy Grace Wherefore the holy Apostle speaking of those who in all their adventures were guided onely by the weake directions of nature sayes they became Rom. 1. 21. vaine in their imaginations and their foolish heart was darkned First vaine and then more darke Saint Hieromes Translation speaketh after this manner in Genesis The Gen. 1. 2. earth was vaine and voide and darknesse was upon the face of the deepe What the Eye is in the body the Understanding is in the soule The Eye is the naturall guide of the body the Understanding is the naturall guide of the soule For when we beleeve as well as desire the things we doe not understand even then also we take a naturall direction from the Understanding which he holds a convenience of such things in respect of the motives with beliefe and desire though not with Understanding The Eye sees the outward shape of a thing the Understanding sees both outwardly and inwardly as being advanced more neerely in its degree and therefore also in its making to God The Eye discernes one thing from another the Understanding conceives as much The Eye judges of colours the Understanding judges of white and blacke of good and evill The Eye cannot see perfectly many things at once and such a one is the understanding For the more a power be it spirituall or corporall being finite is spread and divided in its operation the lesse power it hath in every particular The eye sees other things but I cannot turne it inward to see it selfe the Eye of the soule lookes forward but in the body it shall never obtaine a sight of it selfe in its owne essence Indeed the Understanding is a kinde of Eye and the Eye is a kinde of Understanding Such an excellent sweetnesse of agreement there is betwixt the soule and the body which moved to the marriage and union betwixt them Now this Understanding this Eye of the soule is not altogether blinded by the great mischance of originall sinne For omnia naturalia sunt integra as Dionysius sayes of Dionys Areop the fallen Angels all the naturall parts are sound How from being broken not from being bruised This Eye then although darke so farre sees that it sees it selfe lesse able to see somewhat darke in the sight of naturall things and much more then somewhat darke in the sight of spirituall things I may stand betwixt both and clearely behold the different case of the soule before and after the fall of Adam in order to spirituall contemplation and practise if I looke upon the various condition of a man in health and sicknesse in order to the actions and operations of life The sicke man is weake and ill at ease his principall parts are in paine his head his heart He cannot use his minde seriously but his head akes he cannot looke stedfastly nor at all upon a shining object discourse is tedious to
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 S. Just Apolog 1. respect to Christ 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 as being 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. WE 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 it selfe so marvellously plaine and moreover is illustrated with such variety of supernaturall lights whereof some are constant to them some come when they are sent that it representeth many things to them in a faire character and in the lumpe which we are forced to bring together and home to our knowledge by discourse The beasts have no ground fuell or instrument of discourse For their knowledge is darke and besides that it is alone can passe no way but by the common doores of the senses And thus for the defect of sound knowledge not knowing the true depth of any thing
he carries about him into my owne selfe and given him the closet of my owne heart to lodge in Sinne changed the Angels of Heaven from a pure white to a most foule blacke And thus it had altered me I know that some of Gods people had they seene me would have said What ere the matter is you are wonderfully changed And then I might well have answered Truly I am not well I am vexed with a continuall fit of a deadly sicknesse And I am so weakened by it that I cannot distinguish betwixt good and bad I have exchanged God for vile things hypocrisie and superstition which I have preferred before God For he that of two things laid before him chuseth one esteemes that to be the greater good which he taketh and preferreth before the other I know not what I doe For I wound God altogether with his own weapons with the same gifts which I received of him with a condition to serve him having turned all his gifts into the sharp weapons of sinne I wound him with his owne concurse his power by which he doth assist me in all actions agreeable to my nature so that I force God to strike himselfe in very deed with his owne hand as if I dealt with a childe and set God against himselfe as it were causing division in the best and highest unity But now being recovered of the disease my understanding is more cleare and more discerning and knowing God here my Faith and Hope give me a kinde of security that I shall know him more distinctly hereafter and see him face to face Man desiring to know labours to know and because knowledge is honey-sweete the more he knowes the more he labours to know and the more he knowes to labour for knowledge And in his labouring to know one chiefe part of the knowledge he gaines is that although he still labours to know and still knowes and although hee should live a thousand yeeres and still know still amongst the things which may be knowne they would be more which he knowes not then which he knowes And so still it would be though he should live in the world for ever But God did not plant the naturall passion of desire in the reasonable soule with an intention that it should alwayes lie gaping but that it should at length be satisfied when it should close at last with its last end The like effect followes in pursuing other objects of desire If God should have made after his conquest of one another world for Alexander when he had done there he would have beene weeping againe while indeed hee would not have wept for another world but implicitely for God who onecould have filled his boundlesse desire The desire of man is in a manner infinite because it desires one thing after another into infinite And it can never be satisfied in this manner because the things desired come not altogether but ever one after another as the day commeth but successively houre after houre not altogether And therfore it must follow it will follow and it cannot but follow that it must be satisfied with a thing actually infinite which shal alwaies feed and yet alwayes fill the soule with knowledge riches pleasure every good thing ut semper quidem Deus doceat saith S. Irenaeus homo autem semper discat quae sunt a Deo That God may alwayes teach and man may always learn every degree of light opening to the soule a more ample and more cleare sight of God in himselfe or in his creatures Desire and Love tend to union we desire to have and we love to enjoy And therefore the powers desiring and loving strive to bring home the thing beloved where desire ceases and love remaines And thus also in the acts of knowledge For alhough after our manner of knowing in this world because our knowledge is imperfect it is not required that the thing knowne or understood should be joyned to the understanding by which we know but this is contented with a species or picture of it yet when we know and see clearely God and the understanding come face to face they meete in a close union together The Understanding being the first faculty must as it were first touch the divine Essence I must not here imagine that the union of the blessed soule with God is like the conjunction of Christs humanity with his divinity whence resulteth one person which we call Christ but she shall be joyned to him as a child to the mothers brest where indeed it sucks and takes hold with the mouth but the mother holds it fast in her armes supporting it that it cannot fall either to the ground or from the brest And whereas these two faces are very different the Understanding be it Angelicall or Humane and the Essence of God because God cannot stoop in his Essence though he doth in his power and other Attributes the created understanding as being very low is lifted up to the divine Essence that is strengthened with a light which we call the light of glory And this is a true Comment upon the Prophet David In thy light shall we see light It was excellently Psal 36. 9. done of the Father of lights in the creation of the world in the first place to produce light For as it was the first perfect creature so it shall be the last I meane the light of glory He begins with light he goes on with light look else and he ends with light And why so because God is light and because he ever was and is and ever wil be light The soule shall see in God a most exact Unity branched into a Trinity a most perfect Trinity gathered together in an Unity the most excellent independencie or rather priority of the Father because neither doth the Son or holy Ghost in any proper sense depend the most excellent generation of the Son the most excellent procession of the holy Ghost whereof one is not the other and yet they are not three most excellent but one most excellent O Mystery of Mysteries How the Angels in every degree depend upon God and differ one from another How because he could not make a creature as perfect as himselfe he goes in some kinde as farre as he can gives them as much of him as he is able imparting to them unchangeablenesse and eternity though not from everlasting yet for ever and ever How fitly the 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
is the great directour of the Church and enemie to the devill in his oppositions of it hee still had a blow at the Holy Ghost first in Theodoret who denied the procession of the Holy Ghost from the Son and now in the Grecians But we shall heare more of him anon CHAP. 7. VVHat mervaile now if greene in Age and shallow in experience I gave up my soule into the black hands of errour The causes of my closing with the Church of Rome were three First a consideration of the great sinnes of this Kingdome and especially of that open scandalous and horrible sinne of Drunkennesse which my soule hateth And I weakly argued from a blemish of manners in particular persons to a generall and over-spreading corruption of Faith My thoughts represented a drunkard to me sometimes in this manner What is a Drunkard but a beast like a man or something lower then a beast When he is in his fit no sense will performe his fit office Spectacles in all figures appeare to him hee thinks hee sees more shapes then God ever made A cloud settles in his eyes and the whole body being overflowne they seeme to float in the floud The earth seemes to him to nod and hee nods againe to it trees to walk in the fields houses to rise from their places and leape into the Aire as if they would tumble upon his head and crush him to a Cake and therefore he makes hast to avoid the danger The Sea seemes to rore in his cares and the Guns to goe off and he strives to rore as loud as they The Beere begins to work for he foames at the mouth Hee speaks as if the greater part of his tongue were under water His tongue labours upon his words and the same word often repeated is a sentence You may discover a foole in every part of his face Hee goes like like what nothing is vile enough to suit in comparison with him except I should say like himselfe or like another drunken man And at every slip he is faine to throw his wandring hand upon any thing to stay him with his body and face upwards as God made him Vmbras saepe S. Ambr. lib. de Elia jejunio cap. 16. transiliunt sicut foveas saith S. Ambrose Comming to a shadow of a post or other thing in his way hee leapes taking it for a ditch Canes si viderint leones arbitrantur Idem ibid. fugiunt sayes the same Father if he sees a dogge he thinks it to be a Lyon and runs with all possible hast till hee falls into a puddle where hee lyes wallowing and bathing his swinish body like a hogge in the mire And after all this being restored to himselfe he forgets because hee knew not perfectly what hee was and next day returnes againe to his vomit And thus he reeles from the Inn or Tavern to his house morning and evening night and day till after all his reeling not being able to goe hee is carried out of his House not into the Taverne alas hee cannot call for what hee wants but into his Grave Where being layd and his mouth stopt with dirt hee ceases to reele till at last hee shall reele body and soule into hell where notwithstanding all his former plenty variety of drinks hee shall never be so gracious as to obtaine a small drop of water to coole his tongue Then if it be true as it is very likely which many teach that the devils in hell shall mock the troubled imagination of the damned person with the counterfeit imitation of his sinnes the devils will reele in all formes before him to his eternall confusion In vain doth S. Paul cry out to this wretch Be not drunk with wine wherein is excesse but be filled with the spirit For the same vessell Eph. 5. 18. cannot be filled with wine and with the spirit at the same time In vaine doth hee tell him that wee should live soberly righteously and godly in this present world Sobriè 2 Tit. 12. saith S. Bernard nobis justè proximis pie autem Deo Soberly in our selves righteously S. Bern. in Serm. sup Ecce nos reliquimus omnia or justly towards our neighbours and godly towards God alwayes remembring that we are in this present world and that it is but 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 the present point of Time and but one instant that we enjoy at once And somtimes in this manner my thoughts shewed me a drunken man Hee is a most deformed creature one that lookes like the picture of a devill one who stands knocking at hell-gate and yet it is not able to speak a plaine word and call for mercy one that could stand and goe but now lyes all along in his owne filthinesse one that is loathed by the Court and all the Citizens of Heaven one that for the time doth not beleeve that there is a God or that Christ died for the sinnes of the world one that may be lawfully thought a man of little wit and lesse grace one who is the Ow◠of all that see him and the scorne and abomination even of his drunken companions one who if he should then dye would certainly be a companion of devils in hell fit◠for ever one that is ready to commit adultery murder treason to stab or hang himselfe to pull God out of Heaven or doe any thing that is not good And if it be a firme ground that putting our selves into the occasions of such and such sins we are as guilty of them as if wee had committed them although we did not formally and explicitely intend them how many great sins hath one act of drunkennesse to answer for Drunkennesse is most hatefull to God because it putteth out the light of Reason by which man is distinguished from a beast and all better lights with it and throwes a man beneath Gods creation and therefore drunkennesse is more or lesse grievous as it more or lesse impeacheth the light and sight of Reason Natura paucis contenta Nature is contented with a little quam si superfluis urgere velis saith Boetius which if you shall urge and load with superfluous Boet. things you will destroy And one over-chargeth his stomack and vainely casteth away that for want of which or the like another daily crieth 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 is drunken And the great end of the 1 Cor. 11. 21. 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
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 byit 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 of equality 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 the sides of thine house The vine branch may Psal 128. 3 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 of the Devils and moreover is joyned with Charity but the knowledge of the Devils is not joyned with Charity Justice or other vertues and therefore degenerateth into craft according to that of Plato 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Plat. in Mâ—â—â—xâ—â—◠〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Knowledge not linked with justice and other vertues is not wisedome but craft And the serpent is crafty For if he can passe his head his long traine being lesse and lesse will easily follow Hee will winde and turne any way He flatters outwardly with gawdy scales but inwardly he is poyson Hee watches for you in the greene grasse even amongst the flowers Wee see that
is drawne strait to the bone through all his body His eyes fix constantly upon one thing as if there hee saw the dreadfull sentence of his eternity Two black circles lay seige to his eyes on every side and it seemeth that for feare they are sunke inwards as if they would turn presently and looke upon the deformity of the soule Hearke with what a lamentable accent he grones I remember I have heard some that soon after came to this point sing and laugh heartily Poore man how little all his pleasures have profited him Such a rich purchase the favour of such a noble man such and such a merry meeting what doe they help in this agonie his freinds are present yet of themselves they are miserable comforters they may looke sorrowfully speake mornefully cast themselves upon their knees and pray for him but they cannot doe the deed they cannot helpe him humane power stands amaz'd and can do nothing You do you heare what thinke you now of going abroad and being merry your old companions are at the doore Looke to your goods and your selves your house is on fire not a word And the little life which as yet keeps weak possession is so dull'd and over clouded with the pangs of Death that hee cannot raise from the fog of his body one clean thought towards God or Heaven Hee is ready now to leave every thing but his sinnes lands house friends gay clothes the gold in the box and jewels in the Cabinet and all See see he is going hee stands upon the threshold Death lurkes in yonder corner and aimes at the heart and though it move so fast Death will not misse his marke Hee has beene an Archer ever since the world began There flew the arrow Here is a change indeed His Soul is gon but it would not be seene Not only because it could not but also because it was so black Now dismisse the Physitian and pray him to goe and invent a preservative against the poyson of Death Close up the dead mans eyes hee will see no more Shut his mouth hee has left gaping for aire all is past hee will never give an other crosse word Now cast the beggerly wretch an old sheete and throw him out to the wormes or after three days hee will poyson us and then we shall bee like him It is a true speech of saint Hierom with which hee puts the latter stamp upon the soft heart of Paulinus to whom hee writes Facile contemnit omnia qui se semper cogitat esse moriturum Hee doth easily contemne Hier. ep ad Paul and with a violent hand throw under him all things who thinkes he stands alwayes with one foote in his grave O my soule heare me let me talke to thee in a familiar way The corporall eye this eye of man seeth nothing but figure or fashion and colour no man ever saw a man onely the figure or fashion and colour of a man and these are outward and superficiall things which onely flatter the eye And S. Paul saith worthily The fashion of this World passeth away The man dyeth the lid is 1 Cor. 7. 31 drawn over the eye the fashion or figure disappeareth is not seene The Hous-keeper hath changed his lodging the windows are shut Call him at the doores of his eares tell him that his wife and children are in danger of their lives and that they call to him for help the windows remain shut stil Here is the mind which hath wisdom There is nothing in this great World for a mortall man to love or settle upon Hee that will Reve. 7. 9 love ought to love wisely he that will love wisely ought to love good Good is not good if it be not permanent this World passeth away Nihil tam utile est quod in traÌ„situ prosit saith Seneca nothing is so compleately Sen. â—p 2. profitable as to profit when it only passeth And verily this world hath bin alwayes a Passenger for it hath passed from age to age through so many hundred generations by them and from them to us Adam liv'd a while to eat an Apple and to teach his posterity to sinne and to dye and the world passed by him Caine liv'd a while to kill his honest brother Abel and to bury him in the sands as if God could not have found him or the winde have discovered what was done and afterwards to be haunted with frightfull apparitions and to be the first vagabond and the world passed by him Noah liv'd a while to see a great floud and the whole world sinke under water to see the weary birds drop amongst the waves and men stifled on the tops of Trees and Mountaines and the world passed by him David liv'd a while to be caught with a vaine representation and to commit adultery to command murther and afterwards to lament and call himselfe sinner and when he had done so the world shuff'd him off and passed by him Salomon liv'd a while to sit like a man upon his royall throne as it were guarded with Lyons and to love counterfeit pictures in the faces of strange women and while he was looking Babies in their eyes the world stole away and passed by King Salomon and all his glory Iudas liv'd awhile to handle a purse and as an old Author writes to kill his Father to marry his Mother to betray his Master and to hang himselfe and the world turn'd round as wel as he and passed by the Traytor The Jews liv'd a-while to crucifie him who had chosen them for his onely people out of all the world and quickly after the world weary of them passed by them and their Common-wealth The old Romanes liv'd awhile to worship wood and stones to talk a little of Iupiter Apollo Venus Mercury and to gaze upon a great statue of Hercules and cry hee was a mighty man and while they stood gazing and looking another way the world passed by them and their great Empire The Papists live awhile to keepe time with dropping Beads or rather to lose it to cloath images and keepe them warme and to tell most wonderfull stories of Miracles which God never thought of but as he fore-saw and found them in their fancies and in the midst of a story before it is made a compleat lye the world passes by them and turnes them into a story The Jesuits live a-while 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
angels They shall be your good comforters such as will triumph in your miseries and your most deadly enemies who will now discover to yee all the deceits and by-wayes by which they led yee captive from mee and give yee every houre new names of scorne and reproach Here will be a noise and clamorous out-crie shall fill all the world with shreeks O the divine excellency of holy Scripture It wil not be long to this time And then the world will be gone or going and all on fire Shall I ever forget this day Shall any idle mirth or vaine tickling of pleasure or profit put mee beside the most necessary thought of this day Shall not the consideration of this day crush out of my heart many good and ready purposes As Lord open my eyes touch them with earth and cure my blindnesse that I may see what I am made of and perceive the truth of things For sure I will here stay and begin a new course in the way of Heaven I will no longer be blinde and senselesse That side in which I am weak and batter'd with Gods holy help I will repaire I will now wash my garment and afterwards hold it up on every side When a Temptation stands up in armes against mee I will fight valiantly under the banner of Michael the Archangel against the Dragon vvhat if the common Souldiers be fearfull and timorous creatures our Generall is a Lyon I will search with a curious eye into my heart and dig up all the roots of sin My soule is continually in my hand saith holy David And my Psal 119. 109. soule shall never be out of my hand that turning it continually I may observe and wipe away the smallest spot and make up every cranny by which the devill enters O Lord hold thy hand now once more forbeare a little and all my study shall be to please thee in all companies in all places I will temember thee And when a sin to which I have been formerly accustomed shall come againe for ordinary entertainement I will fright it away with the remembrance of these powerfull words Depart from mee yee cursed into everlasting fire prepared for the devill and his angels I will ask my self one question and then I vvill have done that I may begin to doe Canst thou dwell vvith eternall fire If thou canst and vvilt doe nothing for love goe on in the old vvay But if thou canst not dwell vvith eternall fire stop here and repent that thou may'st come at last where they are of whom it is said The soules of the Wisd 3. 1. righteous are in the hand of God and there shall no torment touch them For then Tout va bien as it is in the French phrase All goes well I most earnestly commend these Meditations and others in this Booke going under the name both of Meditations and Considerations to all good Christians that they will vouchsafe to make use of one or more of them in a day that the Jesuits and others beyond the Seas may cease for very shame to boast so vainely that none doe frequently meditate upon God and good things but they For their Meditations which treat of true Subjects I commend them sincerely But all their Meditations are onely naked and short poynts as they call them and they leave him that meditates to discourse upon them which many cannot doe and but few can well doe Saint Austen hath given us an order which they observe not CHAP. 14. BEfore I leave St. Omers I must needs give you a gentle touch of the Jesuits Hypocrisie there For besides other follies of that rank they have set up a large picture in a faire roome above staires where the Schollers come every day In vvhich are pictured two ships at Sea and one is taken by the other A ship of Hollanders takes a ship of Spaniards wherein many Jesuits are The Hollanders look fierce and cruelly the Spanish Jesuits have all good and heavenly faces The Hollanders having bound the Jesuits hand and foot and throwne them over-board they sink and dye like men a spectacle full of horrour onely some of them appeare floating upon the water I suppose their galls are broken with faces very like dead Saints But one of them amongst all the rest can neither dye nor sink because he beares a Crucifix in his hands though they are bound and the Painter hath given him a better face then all the rest I would to God these people did either love God truly or not make a shew they love him And their labour is not onely to bring the Schollers in admiration of other Jesuits by false wayes but also of themselves For they had one in their house at that time who had beene stung by the old serpent and was more crafty then religious in the report of all disinteressed persons that knew him Concerning whom part of the zealous Boyes beleeved and whence could this come but from the Jesuits suggestions that he had seen the virgin Mary and that upon a time for so every tale begins shee had appeared to him when hee was hot in his prayers And when their businesse led them to his chamber they would whisper one to another that is the place where the virgin Mary appear'd to Father Wallys and they would observe that corner with reverence The Jesuits have alwayes Secular Priests Adherents to their body stirring men and such as they are sure of whom they keepe warme with a promise to receive them afterwards into their order but will not presently for some ends either that they may stay with them and buy purchases for them which they must not be seene to look after and the like or to deale some other cunning businesses abroad which will not beseeme them to act in their owne behalfe or to write books in their defence or at least to prefix their names before the Books that they may be defended and praised by other men One example will not take up much room A Secular Priest of this quality was sent from England not many yeares agoe into Germany and there presented a petition to the Emperour to which many English Papists had subscribed their names I suppose all Jesuited Papists And the matter was to begg an English Colledge in Germany which might be governed by the Jesuits which appeared a very faire Petition because the Messenger was a Secular Priest Sure the Apostles of Christ had little of this wisedome Such a man there was now at S. Omers who shewed often to the young Frye a prâ—â—ious Relique calling it a feather pluck'd from one of the wings of S. Michael the Archangel I know there hath been a Story related formerly of them somewhat like this And I am certaine that most if not all their tricks are fashioned in the likenesse of things formerly done or said to be done for many reasons Invention is not so happy as it hath beene And all wonders must be like that they
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 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 It is the nature Synes Contra Androm 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 kissed him Hee talks of God and of Salvation Math. 26. 49. 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 vos moveat quod formam praetendere videntur S. Ambr. humanam nam et si 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 the danger is shut up within within is the S. Hier. ep ad Heliodor 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 the Church and that 's a great way St. Cyprian in the same place exhorteth us very seriously not to deale with them not to eat with them not to speake with them O the foule corruption of our Times O for some zealous power that may reforme the abuses mine eyes have seene It is one of the first endeavours of the Papists in England which they exercise towards the society of men to gaine the good wills of Ministers For if they purchase the Ministers good will and good word they clip the wings of the Law hold him fast that hath a great stroke in matters concerning them
the water hid a great part of him gives the Devill very foule tearmes and provokes him twenty times over to come if he durst But coward he durst not come I will not tell all I will keepe some for a deare yeare and a rainy day Yet you may gather from these premisses I could not but see that hypocrisie and malice in their full growth dwelt even here as well as abroad and that here the purity was not to be found the idea of which I bore in my minde Wherefore it was my owne first motion and I left them and became a Frier the Friers professing more strictnesse A man may impute these changes either to variablenesse and inconstancie or to the stirring of good and able motives and to Gods providence that would carry me out of one roome into another and shew me all the inward Chambers of the Church of Rome Take heed judge not But if you do I submit my neck lay what waight upon me you please if you offend not God For I deserve both your judgement and your scorne CHAP. II. THe Monks have one story amongst them and they make it a Pulpit-story A very devout Monke walking one day alone in a wood and I thinke they lose themselves in this wood when they relate the story by chance heard a Nightingale sing and while shee did variously descant upon her song he laid hold upon it as a hand from Heaven by which he was lifted up to Gods eminencie and to the picture and perfection of the Nightingale in him and there he stayed in contemplation catcht from his senses till many yeares were past and all the Monkes of his time dead in the Monastery in which he lived All which time seemed to him very short and to bee merrily passed in hearing the Nightingale Yet say the Monkes this Musitian could not be a Nightingale though his heavenly meditation was indeed begun and sung to some while by a Nightingale But the Monk admiring an excellencie in the creature and being quickly filled with it in the brooke went forward towards the spring and rose to that from which it was taken in the Creatour and there he was easily sung asleepe where he rested a hundred yeares like S. Iohn upon the soft brest of our Saviour This passage is not much unlike the miracle of the Seaven Sleepers that slept in a Cave not as other men doe from the beginning of night to the beginning of day but from the beginning of one age to the beginning of another But as all their stories have their imployment so this both tickleth and serveth to many uses but above all to give us a resemblance of the profound meditation with which God pleased himselfe before the the world It is a high matter Yet I should desire in this and other things to give more satisfaction then a story comes to of a man in a wood that could not finde his way out againe In lieu of their sweete story take a word from me without encroaching upon a secret which God hath reserved to himselfe CHAP. III. THere was a Time if I may say so when there was no Time no world none of all these pretty things we daily see nor yet the light by which we see them no men and women like our selves no living creatures no aire earth sea no Infidell no Jew no Christian no Hell no Heaven no Divels no Angels no God I cannot say For God alone had being before the world as God onely now also hath firme and true being For all other things that be be not of themselves but gaine their being onely by participation from God Et aspexi saith Saint Austin caetera infra te S. Aug. l. 7. Confess c. 11. vidi nec omnino esse nec omnino non esse esse quidem quia abs te sunt non esse autem quia id quod es non-sunt id enim vere est quod incommuntabiliter manet And I beheld the things that are under thee and I saw them neither to have a true being nor altogether to want a being I saw they had a being because they are from thee and I saw they had no being because they are not that which thou art For that truely is which hath a being without change If one of us should wish now prompted by curiosity to have beene before the world it would be an idle wish and with as little ground and foundation of likelyhood to have beene effected as the world then had in effect For no place no little corner had beene wherein to have beene no aire to have received and restored again in breath nothing to have appeared or play'd with the smallest glimmering before the eyes What God did before he built the world although Saint Austin saith wittily he was busie in making Hell for vaine and curious Inquisitours hee meaneth such as will not bee quieted with any reasonable satisfaction yet he well knowes who knowes in what the divine happinesse resteth and how absolute God is of himselfe and free from all necessary connexion with creatures All that which God now does besides the actuall government of the world and the acts consequent to it he did before we know and beleeve that he does now contemplate himselfe For in the contemplation of himselfe For in the contemplation of himselfe consisteth his blessednesse Therefore we may safely know and securely beleeve that he stood still in all eternity in himselfe taking a full view of himselfe and his owne perfections which are himselfe He now sees in themselves to be what before he saw in himselfe would bee Nor was he ever idle before the world otherwise then the Blessed shall be ever after the world And if the Beatificall vision that is the sight of God from which floweth Blessednesse doth so fully and plentifully satisfie the Blessed in Heaven that they cannot turne aside the busied eyes of their understanding the transitory space of one minute from that they see even though they should be enticed and tempted to look aside with all possible delights and therefore most ardently love for the most amiable excellencies discovered in it was not God ever well busied who ever had and hath an infinitely more searching and perfect sight of himselfe then all the Blessed either shall or can ever have together The divine perfections as they have many other so they have also this prerogative that alwayes seene they both are and seeme still most faire and as they lose nought of their substance so they never bate any thing of their beauty Now whereas not onely the perfections of all creatures that are but also of all that are possible are in God and that in a most eminent and boundlesse manner how can it stand that God did not finde matter in himselfe for perpetuall exercise especially since that nothing is come new to him by creatures but their actuall dependance upon him the stile of Creatour and the Government all that which is
could not so easily know it to be the way Let a man or an Angel give me the name of a creature in the world which will not afford us many good lessons of instruction concerning the Creatour and his dwelling-place whither we are invited Creatures of the lowest ranke voide of life sense and knowledge worke for an end which evidently appeares because they tend and bend alwayes to that which is most convenient and sutable with their being and proceed in their actions as if they were skilled in the compositions of knowledge The Sunne knowes he must runne all day long or the gratefull variety of darknesse and ease will not succeed in due time The earth knowes it is her part to stand still or she cannot bring forth and beare as she does The Sea knowes hee must still bee stirring or he shall be corrupted Which could not bee that is they could not know without knowledge had they not beene directed in their creation by a most knowing power and this is God Marke that may soule here thou hast found him hold him fast let him not goe till hee blesse thee Nor yet then till he passe his royall word which shall never passe that he will blesse thee and blesse thee and blesse thee againe till at last he ranke thee among the Blessed Consideration 4. FOr what is the reason that Grace hath such marvellous affinity with Glory because Grace is the way to Glory The state of Grace is the waking of the day The state of Glory is the day up and ready The state of Grace is pax inchoata the beginning of peace the state of Glory is pax perfecta perfect peace And therefore many of the workes it is certaine which proceed from Grace are indeed workes which pertaine to glory As Extasies Dionysius discoursing of the love of God faith 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 it causes an extasis a traunce Dionys Areop c. 4 de diu nom and removes the lover from his owne state to a more high and sublime condition O how shall I ascend hither to this high point of love towards God our God my God all the Gods I have There is no way but the untwinding of my heart from all idle affection to these low base things of earth for then I shall rise And as Grace is the true likenesse of Glory so nature is not altogether unlike to Grace For Grace being the perfection of Nature according to the worne axiome of Divinity Gratia perficit naturam Grace perfecteth nature an agreement is required and supposed betwixt nature and Grace and therefore all the chiefe acts of nature in the soule are of themselves inclinable and bendable to Grace and yet not altogether of themselves but by Grace as the naturall stirrings of the Will to Charity Here I have the musicke or harmony betwixt Nature Grace Glory As for the correspondence betwixt Grace and Glory because they are both in a great part hidden this needs a very carefull search to finde it But the corresponcence betwixt Nature and Glory or Earth and Heaven is such that because one extreame is apparent because Earth is apparent and alwayes before our eyes one may be found by the other Heaven by Earth Because the creatures of God in the Earth are plaine even to the dullest of us if they learn the art of using creatures as we doe staires and goe up step after step from the lower to the higher from the lesse perfect creature to the more perfect and if we goe still upwards we cannot misse our way we shall come at last to the most perfect which is the Creatour blessed for ever Stones Trees Beasts Men Angels God the cause of these Againe if we deale with any particular Creature as wee doe with a river keepe by the streame till wee come to the fountaine we shall be sure alwayes as sure as sure can be to finde God in the end of our journey If I aske the flower whence it hath its beauty for I know it is a borrowed beauty because it withers it will perhaps at first be ashamed to confesse how meanely it was borne but it must answer at last from the earth If I turne to the earth and question her whence cam'st thou She will answer quickly and gladly From God Nor could the earth so foule a thing yeeld such a beauty without the strange concurse and helpe of one most beautifull which is God Here I have discovered certaine sparkes of the beauty of God in a flower I will observe now and admire how frequently holy Scripture thrusts us upon this admirable kinde of learning I am the Flower of the field I am a Vine I am the way I am the light of the world If I walke abroad in the fields I have a very faire and moving occasion to lift up my heart to him who is the flower of the field And when I see a faire flower growing in my way I shall doe well to leave it growing still with a desire thar others comming after me may from the sight of it looke up to the beauty of God And another shall not doe ill that shall come and crop the flower and smell how sweete God is As I turne home to my house I am desired to turne my heart to him who is the Vine If I stirre any way I am stirred to thinke of him who is the way If I stirre no way and but onely open my eyes I am exhorted to climbe up to him who is the light of the world If I will shut my eyes and passe through Gods world like a blinde man it is impossible I should behold either the flower of the feld or the Vine or the way or the light of the world The Devill his enemy who is the way and his enemy who is in the way hath wayes to keepe us alwayes busie to possesse our hearts now with joy now with sorrow now with hope now with feare now with love now with hatred now with one affection and now with another that if we consent to it we shall go sliding through the world and at last fall out of it as ignorant of good things as if wee had never beene alive Gods booke of creatures shall be shut and our eyes shut before we have learn'd to know our letters Consideration 5. IT was a principall point in the malicious doctrine of the Manichees a rout of Hereticks very strong on foote in S. Austins time that there were two prime causes of things a faire cause of good things and a foule cause of evill things The unhappy occasion of this opinion was because they discovered many pernicious and hurtfull creatures in the great store-houses of nature which they imagined could not with honour and conveniencie be attributed in him that we call the good God of all goodnesse And Saint Austin hath left behinde him a remarkable story of a Manichee to whom when it was granted that the Flye for its troublesomenesse and
life still running upon the wheel which I dare not wilfully breake Nor yet are all creatures made for the necessary maintenance of life For although the foure Elements are requisite to the due continuance of it yet man may subsist and stay in being man without many creatures in them which God hath provided not to comply with necessity but to conforme with delight if embraced in a fit measure and if we deale in them as Bees traffick in honey diligently observing that our wings be not entangled and catched therewith our wings of prayer and contemplation by which we rise from earth to heaven from the creatures with a great flight to the Creatour And God made many things otherwise then we use them Gold and Jewels were hid in the earth from mans sight as if God had beene unwilling they should be found And therefore Boetius Boet. Metr S. lib. 2. complaines Heu primus quis fuit ille Auri qui pondera tecti Gemmasque latere volentes Pretiosa pericula fodit Alasse what unhappy man was that who first digged up covered Gold and shamefast Jewels that desired to lie hid being pretious dangers And all the shining colours of cloth that so mock our eyes from what a white simplicity are they fallen For to argue with Saint Cyprian Neque enim Deus coccinas aut purpureas oves fecit God made not Sheep S. Cypr. l. de disciplina habituvirginum from which we take our Wooll of a Purple or Scarlet colovr but plaine innocent white And almost all the bravery that wee see in the world was brought by idle Art into fashion But to returne from whence I set forth All things were made for us and our end and we may see though they goe severall wayes how justly they meete all in their end Wee are the onely visible creatures that swarve from the maine end which is God Consid 7 And all things as flames of fire point alwayes upwards and like heavenly signes besides the knowledge of themselves reade us lessons of Gods power And although God became a Creatour to divulge his power and that glory might bee given to him yet God is not proud For therefore we are proud because we exalt our selves above our selves and snatch that glory to us which is due to God and pertaining to him by way of royalty But God cannot lift himselfe above himselfe Nor take from any that is above him because he has the first place And in good sooth this Book of creatures if it may have a name may be entitled a large description of the Divine power Bring me to a Man or a Spirit under God that can create a bramble a small haire of a mans head or an ignorant worme Besides these creatures of God are so strange and admirable in themselves and such plaine emblems of Gods wisedome that although we who are bred up by little and little to them and see them first when we have not the exercise of reason to judge of them are by daily use and the ignorance of our child-hood brought up to a custome of not considering them and their Author as wee ought yet if God should create a man in the ripenesse of perfect age when reason hath gained the Scepter as he did Adam doubtlesse he would be transported with admiration of every thing hee saw so excellent and so perfect is every thing in its kinde He would first admire this light the first faire creature and the first thing that would come in his eyes Thence he would looke up to the Sunne Then quickly spread his dazling eyes upon the heavens and cry O wonderfull Thence fall againe to earth where hee would be exceedingly taken with the strange sight of Trees Birds Beasts Fishes to which a leafe feather haire scale is not wanting of fire and of its active flames which wonderfully beget one another of aire that we take into our bodies and yet see not of water that comes in drops and runs away in flouds of all things of every thing And most of all himselfe would wonder at himselfe His tongue would alwayes be striking the same stroke and he would still be saying Who made these things Where is he that made them I would faine speake with him and behold how excellent he is in his being being so excellent in his wisedome He would marvell how a plant or flower should grow and yet not be seene to grow but to have growne a beast goe pulling up and letting downe his legges in a strange order a bird move and make circles in the aire without falling a fish swim over-head in the water without being strangled how a man should speake and by a little noise from his mouth exactly know the minde of his companion And all things which we doe not admire because we have seene them being children before we could aske what God was this new-created man would not passelightly over as Alexanders foot-man over the sands without leaving the print of his foot-step but would constantly fix and dwell upon and would never stirre from them except in a journey to the Creatour and backe againe For infallibly in their degrees they are all perfect and good all worthy of admiration and had God beene ignorant and not knowne them before he made them he also had admired them but he admireth not himselfe because nothing is strange to him And moreover God made all creatures to demonstrate his perfection all the perfections that are distributed amongst creatures being united in God as the beames of the Sunne though spread upon all the world through Sea and Land yet meet all in the Sunne and never was a beame of the Sunne divided from the Sunne or held from returning to goe on its journey with the Sun And therefore as we for the weaknesse of our eyes can better take a sight of the Suns fairenesse and perfection by looking upon it at second hand on the earth and perceiving the comfortable effects it worketh both in aire water and Earth so likewise for the debility of our understanding wee can better study Divinity in the great volume of creatures then in God himselfe and in his owne originall brightnesse with which our understanding may not consort as it is For in himselfe hee is best knowne to us by not being able to be knowne of us of whom we can scarce say any thing but by way of negation as denying those imperfections to be in him which we finde in creatures at least in an imperfect manner and as they are in them O our Father which art in Heaven I have found thee even in the creatures here on earth Consideration 8. THe Prophet David beginneth one of his Psalmes it is the first stroke in the Musick The Heavens declare the glory of Ps 19. 1. God and the Firmament sheweth his handy worke And by this he declares unto us the Divine doctrine these noble creatures give us both of the Glory and Power of God
weakened by his fall in his will and readinesse to doe good then in his understanding and knowledge of good so the Devill is farre more blunted in his will then blinded in his understanding As for his naturall knowledge it is rather dazled then darkned And by this notable signe you may know that his will is most malignant For although it is plaine to him that for every temptation he stirreth up in man the burden of punishment shall bee laid presently heape after heape upon his shoulders and though he knoweth exactly how many strong ties he breakes by offending perceives more throughly the quality of the offence and sees with a more cleare eye the greatnesse of the Divine majesty offended yet still the perversnesse and faction of his will carries him on through all to mischiefe And if the Devill remaineth yet so perfect in the intellectuall part by knowledge sans doubt he knowes and is versed in all the possible wayes how to invade us which way our inclinations leane which side is most weak and how he may plant his engine with returne of most profit to his owne cause and what will best follow the fashion of our fancie The enemy which we see before us in his owne and knowne shape sense teacheth us to feare and consequently to withstand or prevent him But the Devill we feare the lesse because we see him not because he has the art to goe invisible Thomas Aquinas is of opinion that every man being alwayes accompanied with a good Angel and a bad one some by reason of the foule enormity of their sinnes and desertion of God who never forsaketh before he is forsaken and left alone himselfe may be forsaken for a while or totally by their good Angel But I dare say that never any man was forsaken by hi◠bad Angel the Devill If one of us were but a little while haunted with a Ghost how he would feare and tremble every one of us is haunted continually with a Devill and yet we feare not because we doe not see him No man goeth but the Devil goeth with him no man stayeth but the Devill stayeth with him no man sleepeth here his action changes but the Devill waketh by him And as he is alwayes with us so hee is also alwayes so vigilant about us that although he doth not know the thoughts of the heart in the heart and cannot reade them in that booke of Characters yet he doth oftentimes gather what they are by the language of outward signes and also by outward signes forestall and know even future occurrences depending upon the will of man He is a Tempter by his profession God also may be said to tempt us but how by scattering rubbs in our way to make vertue more bold and more laborious What made all the Conquerours famous but because they conquer'd what was not easily conquer'd But the Devill tempteth with a direct intention to sinne God tempteth with a strong desire of good and of our salvation the Devill with a furious desire of evill and of our damnation God tempteth us not above our strength the Devill would if God would suffer him And as the Roman Conquerour the Queene having escaped carried her image in triumph So because he cannot trample upon God who threw him downe from Heaven he labours to revenge himselfe upon his Image Suspect therefore all his proceedings Facilius illicita Tert. de cultu foeminarum timebit qui licita verebitur saith Tertullian He will more easily feare unlawfull things who will be afraid even of things lawfull Let this joy thy heart Nothing can happen or stirre or be in the world except sin without Gods approbation nor yet that without his permission Please God and you have him your friend that holds all chances all stirrings and the being of all things fast in his hands And lastly begge nothing of man before you first begge it of God Rule 2. DIsingage your selfe from the world mistake me not from the love of it Old Authors observe that the Apostles were all clad outwardly not with Friers coates but with mantles And the mantle is a loose garment which hangs to a man but by a loope If it prove troublesome if it hindereth in your journey put your finger to the loope and the mantle falleth away The Apostles taught even by their garments and the mantles served to demonstrate their neglect of worldly things and to give evidence by what tenure they held them If riches abound set not your heart upon them sayes he that was both Prince and Prophet If they creepe upon you keepe the infection from your heart if they breake in upon the heart they are Luke 14. 33. mortall Except a man shall renounce all which he possesseth he cannot be my Disciple sayes the Prince of Prophets Then O rich man either presently renounce all which thou possessest or else turne out-law and forbeare to thinke thy selfe the Disciple of Christ All. A tearme of universality shuts the doore against every particular This is heavy newes I feare the messenger will bee ill Matth. 11. 30. paid It is not My yoke is easie and my burden is light saith he under whose yoke we labour Renounce the will and affection to riches and thou hast fulfilled the Law The affection of a ragged poore creature may be more closely tyde to an old house and a pewter dish then the will of a great person to a Palace and the revenewes of a Prince And therefore our Saviour speaketh plainely Blessed are the poore in spirit for Matth. 5. 3. theirs is the Kingdome of Heaven For poverty of spirit even rich may have in a rich manner And because they are poore upon earth they shall be rich in Heaven for theirs is the Kingdome of Heaven And the Kingdome of Heaven is not promised to any kind of poverty but the poverty of spirit And to that it is promised wheresoever God finds it It is easier for a Cāel to go through Mat. 19. 24 the eye of a needle then for a rich man to enter into the Kingdome of God that is for a rich man whose love and affection sit brooding upon his riches Some ancient expositors tell us upon this place that there was in Jerusalem a little gate which for its extraordinary straitnesse was called the Needle the passage through it being accordingly named the Needles eye and that when the Camels came loaden to this gate their packs were taken off These Authors insinuating that a rich man cannot enter into the Kingdome of Heaven before he hath laid aside his burden his pack of riches He must be master of them and so manage them that they are not a burden to him he must possesse them as if he possessed them not And these Authors construe it It is casier for a Camell to goe through the eye of the Needle c. With which exposition that other saying of Christ suiteth Strait is the gate and narrow is
are very quick at their worke they live altogether by catching and snatching The French History hath one who Reymond Lullius being full of vaine affection to a vertuous Lady she to cure his Fever uncovered one of her brests and there shewed him a Canker which had eaten deepe into her body and was extreamely hideous to the sight adding these words See vaine man what thou hast loved Hee recovering himselfe from the fall began to lament grievously how vaine he had beene in loving that which he did not perfectly know All fond people would speake in the same phrase if the cloud hanging before their eyes were dispersed What amongst beasts is more fierce then a Lyon And yet a Lyon is a Lamb in respect of a wicked woman What Vide Chry. homil 15. in Matth. tom 2. is more cruell then a Dragon And yet a wicked woman is more a Dragon then the Dragon it selfe What is more devouring then a Whale And yet a Whale is not a Whale compared with a wicked woman Many Lyons spared innocent Daniel in the Den and yet one Jezabel devoured holy Naboth The Dragons and all the great army of poysonous beasts feared S. John Baptist in the the Wildernesse But Herodias and her dancing daughter cut off his blessed head at a blow serv'd it up to Herods table buried it in his Palace that if it should talke againe as one writeth againe being at hand it might be quickly brought to the Axe The whale kept Jonas safe and secure in his belly But Dalilah betrayed Sampson into the hands of those that bored his eyes out I praise the chast and modest woman For it is the nature of contraries that the one is as good as the other bad Goe fond man and visit all the brave women of the last age the great gallants of the Court and City court them in their graves and consider with what a little handfull of bones the vaine people of those times were so exceedingly taken what painted Images of dirt they fighed for about what trifles of flesh and bloud they vainely spent their dearest houres and for what lumps of carrion their weake heads so often aked The Devill striveth to keepe our love at worke upon vaine things because by love onely we are united to Heaven Rule 4. BEare a strong hand over your passions They are mutinous subjects and live within the wals Man is composed of foure contrary elements But they came to this composition upon composition upon faire tearms of agreement But the passions stand yet in the full force of passions There are two great contraries in matters pertaining to morality good and evill The one we naturally desire to obtaine to avoid the other Good considered within the compasse of its owne nature kindles love the prime and master-passion If it be or seem absent it stirreth a desire of it selfe If we desire it and conceive it possible hope begins to grow big and we follow it If impossible despaire starts up if the good was great and good playes the mad-man But when wee fully enjoy it joy smileth in us On the other side if we make a discovery of evill we hate it If it be absent we put wings to our feet and flie from it If it shew it selfe as inevitable we feare it But if it arrest us being present we are chilled with griefe And then anger loves souldier is at hand ready to strike at every turne and to turne all into a tumult And anger fights on both sides for we are angry with the hinderances which occurre in our pursuit of the thing we love We love before wee hate because we hate nothing but as opposite to a thing we love But here is the block of danger when good appeareth in the forme of evill and evill in the shape of good or when one is apprehended as the other no man loving evill but guilded with a pretence of good For then we love evill hate good desire evill flie from good hope for evill feare good rejoyce in the purchasing of evill grieve in the atchievement of good Every thing runs a most unnaturall and disordinate course and all the little world of man is disturbed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Solon apud Phil. Judaeum 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 said the grave Solon The Sea fals rises beates against the rocks and is grievously troubled with the windes but if it be not angred with any loud breath or blustering it is very smooth plaine and gentle When the passions are subject to Reason and Grace the minde of man is the Common-wealth of Plato an even and well-governed State But if one wheele be out of order the rest stand waiting for little purpose all the passions will adhere to the passion then predominant It is recorded that Semiramis was an humble Petitioner to the great King Aelian de var. hist l 7. of the Assyrians whose concubine she was that she might take upō her the government of Asia and command the Kings servants but for the transitory space of five dayes It was granted She came forth adorned with a Princely robe and her first words were O wretch Go take the King kill him And by one venturous step she climbed to a settled state of Imperiall government Semiramis representeth passion Suffer it to enter into your house and it will keepe possession give it once the upper hand and it will claim the course of gift as a priviledge A passion is like fire which is pliable to good uses while we keepe it in the place and office of a necessary instrument but if it passe without a guide it will bring us to an ill passe the passion will turne to action and make a great spoyle of all things In all the uproare of passion keepe the minde calme Yea when anger beginneth to inflame you thrust off the passion by maine strength and compose your selfe in a sweete pleasantnes of minde and face And say inwardly Sweet God how mild art thou that sittest quietly in Heaven when thou seest thy divine Majesty most grievously abused here on earth God doth not require of you to become Stoicks to pull up passion by the roote and to remaine unsensible For passions doe give an edge to vertue and are the supporters of it God desireth onely that in anger Reason should direct and carry us through the croud And that anger should 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 Sisictua custodiantur superflua in quanta seeuritate est anima tua Non perit capillus quem cum tondetur non sentis peribit anima per quam sentis Doe you feare therefore lest you should perish one of whose haires shall not perish If your superfluous things are kept so warily in what a sweete security is your soule Your haire perishewth not which being cut off when you are pold you feele not what hath passed and shall your soule perish by which you feele When you take a staffe in your hand say Thy rod and Psal 23. 4. thy staffe they comfort me the one serving for correction the other for direction Think at the sight of Bread upon your Table Through how many hands and fortunes hath God brought this good Bread safe to me It was Corne then sowed it dyed lived againe grew was greene washed with the raine brushed with the wind dryed with the Sunne then turned colour it lay abroad many a cold night was reaped threshed winnowed ground into meale and bolted kneaded and made into very good Bread and baked and all for me a sinner Such is the state of a righteous man And when thou art in company others wandering with other discourses let thy reason travell by it selfe and make strange discoveries in the view of some one standing by thee O man who framed that faire Globe of thy head the stupendious fountaine of all thy senses Who decked thy head with haire and a face wherein all parts conspire and meete in a beautifull proportion moving love and admiration Who drew a faire skin over thy flesh Who provided for every sense its proper object delightfull spectacles for the eyes pleasant sounds for the eares flowers for the smelling faculty dainties for the taste and soft things to please the touching power Who made the little bals of the eyes that rich and curious peece of worke to keepe watch and sentinell for the safety of the body and spread curtaines over them to shut out every shadow and shew of danger The eyes are little but see great things Who formed the eares to be the faithfull scouts of the soule and to lye out and lissen on both sides of the fort Who taught the tongue to speak so perfectly that all speech can never sufficiently expresse the excellencie of speaking Who gave a law to the stomacke to send nourishment to every part in a measure fit for the part to which it comes Who ranked the bones in order Who gave strength to the sinewes and confined the wandring bloud to the veines Who fitted the armes and hands for outward action Who shaped the feet to uphold the frame and maintaine it with the face looking towards our Countrey He growes upwards towards Heaven and he is going thither while earth lies under his feete God blesse him in his journey O the wisedome of him that sits upon the Throne in Heaven I will furnish you farther in this kinde afterwards Rule 6. EXercise these Acts as devotion or occasion shall call An Act of Faith Comming into the world as into a strange Countrey and finding people for the most part to beleeve as their Countrey and friends beleeve and as other vaine tyes hold them I doe shake off all these idle obligations in imitation of the Primitive Church and of all holy men in succeeding Ages I firmely beleeve that the Scripture is the word of God and that all things revealed in it are true And I beleeve that as God made the world for himselfe and his glory So and more eminently he directeth his Church to himselfe and his glory That is therefore the pure Church of Christ which casteth all the glory upon God which leaneth and relieth wholly upon the most pretious merits and passion of Christ
I am very wel contented with the sweete condition in which thy wisdome hath placed me Thou art wisdom it self other wisdome is not wisdom but as conformable to thy wisedome And I doe most humbly yeeld up my selse to comply with the ranke and quality in which I am by thy royall appointment And I remaine indifferent to have or to want to be sicke or in health to dye or to live As thou pleasest so be it And if I could learne thy farther and utmost pleasure I would goe through the world to effect it though I should labour to death in the performance An Act of the feare of God O Lord I feare thee because as thou hast made me of nothing so thou canst reduce me to nothing in one turne of an instant Which perhaps would be a greater losse of my selfe then to be lost in Hell Because then I should not be thy creature I should have no being no dependance of thee but should be lost branches tree roote and all It had beene better for Judas that he had never beene borne because then hee should never have tasted of life or being But when he was Judas which was better for him not to be or to be miserable thou onely knowest I feare thee because as thou art infinitely mercifull so thy justice is infinite And because sinne being but a temporall thing quickly committed and past over and sometimes as soone almost forgot as committed a meere flash is answered notwithstanding with eternall punishment as fighting against an eternall God And yet I feare thee not as a slave but as a sonne For I have more love towards thee then feare of thee though I much feare thee And also my hope weighs down my feare And though all this be true teach me to worke out my salvation with feare and trembling with a great feare which may cause trembling An Act of Praising God O God I doe praise thee for thy most infinite goodnesse thy most infinite power and for all thy most infinite attributes and perfections If thou hadst not beene what thou art I had never beene what I am Yet I praise thee for the first although the other had not followed and yet I praise thee because it followed I doe praise thee for all the benefits which have beene or shall be hereafter bestowed upon the humane nature of Christ and upon all thy Saints and Angels one of which is the continuance of glory Upon men women and children from the beginning of the world to the end of it and especially upon thy chosen vessels for all thy benefits upon ignorant persons who did not know thee and therefore could not love thee nor keepe thy commandements for all thy benefits upon wicked persons that would not and upon dumbe and unsensible creatures that could not praise thee And upon me a vile one Thy blessed name be blessed by thy selfe and by thy Angels and Saints for ever and by men women and children while they live and by all creatures till they cease to be creatures And let all the people say Amen We must be seriously carefull that these Acts in their exercise be true and goe to the bottome of the heart not faigned and superficiall Rule 7. WHen any thing comes to you by way of speciall blessing or gift kneele downe in some private place and receive it as immediately from the hands of God saying O God This is not the gift of destiny or chance of men or Angels it is thy gift onely it passes from thee to me by creatures appointed for the just execution of thy good pleasure upon whom in this respect I beg a blessing If thou hadst not first ordained it for me it could not have thus passed from hand to hand and at last beene reached to me From thee therefore I take it O thou sunne sea fountain spring treasure of all goodnesse O thou good and gracious giver of all good gifts and graces O thou good and perfect giver of every good and perfect gift Catch all occasions to speake of God and praise him and stretch out the discourse as farre as you can And be heartily glad when you heare the holy name of God glorified or his goodnesse mercie justice or other excellencies magnified Yea out of the Devils temptations raise occasions to praise God which is a most short and compendiarie way to divert him as when the Devill hammereth evill words and actions into your minde as he doth especially when you are angry to bee used at any times turne upon him and say Blessed be God that keepeth my feete from falling Hallowed be his name who threw downe proud Lucifer from the gates of Heaven And alwayes reserve a time wherein to blesse God privately for the gifts which others do praise in you And being dispraised rejoyce Rule 8. HAve alwayes some pious and short sayings floating upon thy memory at the end of thy tongue and in thy heart like Arrowes in a Quiver which thou mayst at every turne dart into the lap of thy beloved and use upon every call of occasion As at the sight or hearing of anothers misery This very stroke might have bruised me as it hath my neighbour why was not I the man I might have beene as easily found out amongst the crowde as he But I am Gods favorite And I should bee more wicked then he that is most wicked if God should with-draw his grace favour and helpes from me At the sight of a blinde man Lord I see thee daily in thy creatures O thou that art the eye of thy selfe and that lookest through the clouds upon the world I can looke up to thee At the sight of a lame man I might have beene like this poore imperfect creature but now I will bestirre my selfe and goe readily to thy house and there say and not saintly but heartily O Lord O God O Lord God thou art the giver and preserver of all things When thou lookest up to Heaven say That way lies my Countrey wherein God shines out upon his Saints and Angels to whom they now sing with heavenly musicke and most melodious harmony mee thinkes I heare their voices What good power will draw the curtaines of Heaven that I may likewise see their glory And when downe to the earth I doe or can walke daily over the loathsome carcasses and rotten bones of thousands that have beene gallant 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
nature fals under himselfe and workes with every creature or second cause in a manner and measure agrreable to their naturall and ordinary way of working So likewise being the Author of Grace and having never yet for some great reasons best knowne to himselfe made two men with a perfect agreement either of face or nature sendeth Apostles and Preachers who have in their commands a speciall injunction of being 1 Cor. 9. 22 like to him who saith I am made all things to all men that I might by all meanes save some And God himselfe not onely in executing the generall Acts and Decrees of his Providence over his creatures but also and more especially in the more notable praxis and speciall exercise of his providence over his Church from the beginning of the world was all things to all men CHAP. VII GOD hath full power and absolute dominion over all his Creatures because he call'd yea catched them out of nothing and because to speake in the Apostles dialect in him they live move and have their being And therefore hee may lawfully give Lawes to them to the due and strict observation of which they are strongly bound under paine of his high displeasure seconded with most heavie punishment Wherefore giving a Law to the Jewes by the mediation of Moses he beginneth with an argument of his authority and dominion over them I am the Exod 20. 2. Lord thy God which have brought thee out of the land of Aegypt out of the house of bondage This laid for the corner-stone I thus proceed in the building In the infancie and childhood of the world when sinne was not as yet so active so quicke so cunning but dull and clownish and to foreshow the backwardnesse of nature in matters pertaining to Heaven yes to naturall knowledge and even humane society and also that it might fully and plentifully appeare to after-ages how nature is wrought and polished as in materiall things by Art so in spirituall matters by Grace The Law by which God for the most part guided man was onely borne with him was young as he was young and grew as he grew non scripta sed nata lex as the Orator saith being a Law not written and sent in a letter to us from Lycurgus Solon or Moses but borne with us or if written written onely in the soule of man where it continually remaineth in the shape of a light discovering to the view of the Soule the beauty of good and the deformity of evill For Good is faire and amiable and the cleare eye of reason beholdeth in it at the first sight a singular convenience with the will of man and a sympathy with Heaven And therefore they who were bound onely with the looser ties of the Law of nature and who now in strange Countries and in wilde and uncouth places dispense their actions by the light of reason beare a Preacher in their hearts Ill is blacke and deformed and reason in the first glance seeth a loathsomenesse a Toad in it and heareth presently as it were a jarring and disagreement with God and Heaven And therefore the drunkard the lascivious person and others of the same torne and ragged coate loath in deed not by any pious act of Christian vertue but by a deed of nature their owne beastlinesse and can by no meanes endure to be call'd what they are For as the Beast runneth the Bird flieth from danger as the one prepareth his den the other his nest as they looke abroad for daily nourishment provide carefully for their young know what will satisfie their cold of hunger what coole their heate of thirst what complyeth with their different appetites follow the leading of their admirable properties and by a secret instinct cheerefully performe the severall acts of their nature So man since he dealt with the Tree of Knowledge naturally knoweth good as opposed to evill as he naturally distinguisheth light from darknesse Againe some things are good in themselves and not good onely because God commands them to be loved and imbraced and these in the first place the light of nature sheweth to be good And some things are evill in themselves and not evill onely because markt and branded with a prohibition and these chiefely the light of nature showeth to be evill For if the light or law of nature in its owne nature did not make it cleare to Caine that he ought not to have killed his good brother Abel how did he sinne or what branch of law did he breake in killing him sinne being the violation of a law But certainly he trespassed upon that first principle of nature in morality Quod tibi non vis fieri alteri ne feceris what you would that men should not doe unto you doe not you unto them And hither Saint Paul pointeth For when the Gentiles which have not the law doe by nature the things Rom. 2. 14. contained in the law these having not the law are a law unto themselves One step more and we are in the bottome Although the the Sage Aegyptians in Damascius cried out three times in every performance of their heathenish mysteries 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 an unknowne darknesse yet by the plaine and easie search of humane power the old Philosophers found that there was a God and that he was but one in Essence that he was every where that he was omnipotent and the like though verily their knowledge both of God and his workes was rather opinion then knowledge it did so hang waver For the Philosopher opening his minde occasionally concerning the birth of the world sometimes he was and sometimes againe he was not Aristotle In one Arist l. 1. de coelo 1. Top. c. 9. booke hee judgeth absolutely that the world stood in the same state in which now it is in all eternity In another he stops like a man come unawares to a place where the way is divided and doubts which path leads to the truth In a third booke discussing the generation of living things Lib. 3. de generatione animalium c. 11. he sayes a man shall not beleeve amisse who shall take it for certaine that the first man and beast upon supposition that they came of the earth were either produced out of a Worme or an Egge and at length breaking the Egge in long handling concludes it is the most consentaneous to reason that they both drew their first parentage from a Worme And thus hee sought creepingly amongst the Wormes for what hee could not finde though very neere him In like manner he played with the Immortality of the soule It pleased him and it displeased him He tooke it and he threw it off againe And he was more willing in the end to disclaime it then owne it And the flowings and ebbings of his owne braine had he studied inward might have urged him to a greater confusion of thoughts and more trouble of minde then Euripus in which Saint Gregorie Nazienzen teacheth
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 priusquamhae vel aliae Facultates â—s 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 ac 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 seene 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 verbis Christi in eruce 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 Virgin Mary with her breasts running The Bishop in the middle is made with a divided countenance and these words are drawne in a long roll from his mouth quo me vertam nescio I know not to which of these two to turne my selfe either to the bloud of Christ or to the milke of the Virgin Mary And was not this an ignorant Bishop and was his flock like to thrive They lead their people strangely by the eares also They send letters very commonly to their Colledges which are read in the Refectories and recreations as their letters of newes are and
kindes of deformity the filthinesse and deformity of all other sins Which is one of the reasons why it is said in Saint James Whosoever shall keepe the James 2. 10. whole Law and yet offend in one point is guilty of all Another cause is The sinner which breakes charity with God and offends him in one point the way being now open and the reasons why he ought not to offend God violated is ready of himselfe to offend him in another and in all and will if power or occasions be not wanting For he can never give a good reason either taken from something in God or from something concerning himselfe why he should offend God in one point and not in another because he can never give a good reason why he should offend him at all and every offence of God is most contrary to reason Sinne is the chiefest evill or rather all evill and therefore so contrary to God the chiefest good or rather all good that although it is permitted because directed to a good end by his Providence yet neither can it be so much as fathered by his Omnipotence nor suffered by his Justice nor yet approved by his wisedome And is it not a most wicked businesse to commit an act of that soule quality that Gods Providence must presently to worke and turn it to Good or he lies open to a reproach for having suffered evill and there must be that which wee name a thing in the world and God the Creator of all things must not be the cause of it nor have any hand in it and God must be forced to strike with his justice as if he delighted in our destruction And if he will know all and be God he must be compell'd to looke upon that which his wisedome cannot like because it hath no being in him as it is the folly of sinne nor any connexion with his wisdome I am certain I thinke not of all this when I sinne Sinne is the destruction of Grace I have said enough And Thomas Aquinas disputing Tho. Aqui. 1. 2. q. 113. art 9. ad 2. of the difference betwixt the justification of a sinner and the creation of the world in the worth of the Act saith Bonum gratiae unius majus est quam bonum naturae totius universi the good of grace in one man though not raised above one degree is a greater good then all the good of nature pertaining to the world then the Sunne Moone Starres Earth Sea then any thing I ever saw or naturally can see then the soule of man with Gods Image in it though of so pure a substance that it cannot bee seene And Grace in the soule may be fitly compared to the light of the Sunne in the world For as there are degrees and differences of this outward light suiting with the time of the day So there is the light of Nature that is of Reason in us the light of Learning the light of Experience the light of Grace This faire light of the Sunne the light of Grace we in the meane time crucifying and killing Christ is all darkened with sinne as the Sunne it selfe was darkened when Christ hung dying upon the Crosse Sinne is the Consumption of goodnesse the death of the soule mans beter part and that by which he resembles his Creatour and i◠allied to God One evill thought is a secret conspiracie against God and all the triumphant Court of Heaven By every bad word wee scornefully spet in our Saviours face And with every ill action we buffet him This to speake the best of it is Jewish cruelty What a Christian turn'd Jew Now my eyes shut your selves unworthy to behold Gods good light or his Creatures by it whose Maker I have abused and strived to disenthrone though all Creatures and my selfe should have fallen with him With sorrow of heart I will open my owne sinnes before him whether open or secret which must be the more grievous because I was ashamed to act them before men The desperation of Cain shal not come neere me Mentiris S. Aug. in Gen. 4. super major est iniquitas mea Caine saith Saint Austin major est Dei pietas quam omnis iniquitas Caine thou liest Gods mercie is greater then all sin CHAP. XIIII BUt doe not mine eyes runne all this while have not teares opened them True teares of repentance as Chrysologus Chrysol speaketh extinguunt gehennam put out and extinguish Hell-fire which all good men preach to be unquenchable Wee see that when darke clouds cover the Heavens they seeme as it were possessed with horrour and sadnes yet the winde hath no sooner beate upon them shakē them into little drops of Psal 126. 5. rain but the Heavens begin to grow cleare and by little and little to look with a most pleasant face upon the world For they that sow in teares shall reape in joy Because the seed-time was wet and troublesome it shall be faire weather and Sun-shine all the harvest The shedding of teares from the eyes of a true Penitent is a spirituall Baptisme by which the soule is renewed in Christ and when will the Sunne shine if not after so sweet a shower Could I behold such a sweet shower falling from another I hope I should learne to drop my Luke 7. 5. 37. 38. selfe Saint Luke hath an eminent example And behold Behold a watch-word some great matter the Scripture hath to say And behold a Woman in the City A Woman what Woman why she the woman so much talkt of the Sinner A Woman in the City which was a sinner she desires not to be knowne or call'd by any other name but sinner And if you call sinner where are you She is quick of hearing on that part and she knowes you meane her and is ready to answer that 's my name here I come And what with her now she is come Why this Woman the sinner when shee knew that Jesus sat at meate in the Pharisees house brought an Alablaster Box of oyntment Now take a view of her behaviour And stood at his feete She durst not looke higher then his feete and lower she could not looke and she was willing to be trod upon if he pleased Behinde him She did not thinke her selfe worthy that he should look upon her or that she so wretched a sinner and yet not a sinner but the sinner should behold his blessed face 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 ubi sancta peccatrix peccata deposuit induit sanctitatem where the holy sinner Magdalene laid downe her sinnes and put on sanctity What now is to be done I will hereafter be another kinde of Creature a Creature of another world indeed I will But I am too quick With the powerfull and active helpe of the divine Grace I will Create Ps 51. 10. in me a cleane heart O God O pure God O God the Creatour It is thou I call upon Observe my prayer Create in me a clean heart Create it make it of nothing as thou didst the world For now I am nothing but a nothing of uncleannesse And it is a cleane heart I would have for then I shall be cleane all over and cleane in every part And I know it must be a cleane heart if it be newly created by thee For nothing ever that came immediately from thee was sent hither uncleane by thee And although the soule comes hither uncleane it comes not uncleane as comming immediately from thee and as thy Creature but as created in a body and as part of a man which comes from Adam that having been made cleane by thee became uncleane by his own folly both in himselfe and in all his posterity CHAP. XV. IT is not amisse here to take the soveraign counsell of Saint Cyprian to Donat delivered S. Cyprian ep 2. l. 2. ad Donatum in these words Paulisper te crede subduci in ardui montis verticem celsiorem caet Let every one imagine himselfe lifted to the the top of a high mountaine upon which he may take a full view of all the world Here he may see whole Cities suddenly consum'd and emptied by the Plague a disease which having arrested for example one of us and given him two or three tokens of death will scarce allow him time to looke up to Heaven and say Lord bee mercifull unto me a sinner There whole Countries miserably wasted and unpeopled by Famine while men doe walke from place to place like pale Ghosts or living Anatomies and feede heartily upon their owne flesh paying the debt due to the stomach out of their armes and while the hungry mother is enforced as in the siege of Jerusalem to returne her dearest child by pieces into the place from which nature gave it entire Yonder a great part of the world most cruelly devoured by the sword where bloud lies spilt sometimes in greater abundance then water and where is no respect had to feeble old age to weake women or to innocent children but all lie mangled in a heape as if no such thing had beene ever heard of there as mercie Sinne is the wicked actor of all this Here he may behold Fire turning the labours of an hundred yeeres in one small houre into unprofitable ashes and perhaps many a gallant man and woman burnt brought almost to a handfull There Water breaking out by maine strength from the Sea and spreading it self over Towns Countries to the destruction of every living thing but such as God made to thrive in the water while the lost carcasses of poore Christians are carried in a great number from shore to shore from Country to Countrey all swell'd and torne till they are washt
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 strenge 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 where had 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 and understanding Although I creepe in the dirt lick the dust of the earth and draw a long ugly traine after me though under variety of colours and a spotted skinne I shroud poyson it being observed that the Serpent with the brightest scales hideth the most dangerous venome though my life is wedded to such a body as the Devill first abused to appeare in though men are so farre from yeelding me any helpe that they runne speedily from me yet I have the same maker as they and derive the worth of my being
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 Matt. 4. 9. these things will I give thee not over one 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 sorbid 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. bad 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 Vers 5. their apparell their robes of immortality 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 Vers 8. servants which stand continually before thee 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 found 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 her self 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 shee 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 forward but about the City she cannot avoid distraction nor multiplicity of businesse and the Bridegroome will either be neglected or not worthily regarded And so it fell out For she went about the City in the streets where shee met all sorts of idle company a rabble of Night-walkers and some with whom the Communion not of Saints but of sinnes had made her acquainted And now shee was full of businesse and he whom she sayes her soule loveth was forgot And shee sought him in the broad way The way to Hell and perdition