1. Tertullian said The greatness of some goods were intolerable the which according to the Prophet Isaias is verified in this Divine good and benefit which we were not able to support Wherefore it is called in holy Scripture The good or the good thing of God because it is a good and a benefit which more clearly than the Sun discovers the infinite and ineffable goodness of God to the astonishment and amazement of a humane heart and therefore the Prophet Oseas sayes Osee 3. They shall be astonished at the Lord and at his Good because his Divine benefit amazes and astonishes the Soul of man to see how good the Lord is and how great the good which he communicates unto us All which tends to no other end than to make us despise the goods of the Earth and to esteem onely those of Heaven which we attain unto by this Divine mysterie For this therefore did Christ our Redeemer institute this most blessed Sacrament that by it we might withdraw our hearts from things temporal and settle our affections upon those which are eternal for which it is most particularly efficacious as those who worthily receive it have full experience §. 3. Wherefore let that Soul who goes to communicate consider Who it is that enters into him and Who he is himself who entertains so great a Guest Let him call to mind with what reverence the blessed Virgin received the Eternal Word when he entred into her holy Womb and let him know it is the same Word which a Christian receives into his entrails in this Divine Sacrament Let him therefore endeavour to approach this holy Table with all reverence love and gratitude which ought if possible to be greater than that of the blessed Mother For then the obligation of Mankind was not so great as now it is For neither she nor we were then indebted unto him for his dying upon the Cross Let him consider that he receives the same Christ who sits at the right hand of God the Father That it is he who is the supreme Lord of Heaven and Earth He whom the Angels adore He who created and redeemed us and is to judge the living and the dead He who is of infinite wisdom power beauty and goodness If a Soul should behold him as when St. Paul beheld him and was struck blind with his light and splendour how would he fear and reverence him Let him know that he is not now less glorious in the Host and that he is to approach him with as much reverence as if he saw him in his Throne of glory With much reason did St. Teresa of Jesus say unto a devout Soul unto whom she appeared after death That we upon earth ought to behave our selves unto the blessed Sacrament as the blessed in Heaven do towards the Divine Essence loving and adoring it with all our power and forces Consider also that he who comes in person to thee is that self same Lord that required so much reverence that he struck Oza dead because he did but touch with his hand the Ark of his Testament and slew 50000 Bethshamits for their looking on it And thou not onely seest and touchest but receivest him into thy very bowells See then with what reverence thou oughtest to approach him The Angels and Seraphins tremble before his greatness and the Just are afraid Do thou then tremble fear and adore him S. John standing but near unto an Angel remained without force astonisht at the greatness of his Beauty and Majesty and thou art not to receive an Angel but the Lord of Angels into thy entrails It adds much to the endearment of this great benefit of our Saviour that it is not onely great by the greatness of that which is bestowed but by the meaneness of him who receives it For what art thou but a most vile creature composed of clay and dirt full of misery ignorance weakness and malice If the Centurion held himself unworthy to receive Christ under his roof and St. Peter when our Saviour was in this mortal life deemed himself not worthy to be in his presence saying Depart from me O Lord for I am a sinful man and St. John Baptist thought himself not worthy to unloose the latchet of his shoe How much more oughtest thou to judge thy self unworthy to receive him into thy bowels being now in his glory seated at the right hand of God the Father The Angels in heaven are not pure in his sight What purity shouldest thou have to entertain him in thy breast If a mighty King should visit a poor Beggar in his Cottage what honour what respects would it conferre upon him Behold God who is the King of Kings and Lord of Lords comes to visit thee not in thy house but within thy self Seaven years did Salomon spend in building a Temple wherein to place the Ark of the Testament Why doest thou not spend some time in making thy self a Temple of God himself Noah was a hundred years in preparing a Vessel wherein to save those who were to escape the Deluge Why doest thou not spare some dayes or hours to make thy self a Sacristy for the Saviour of the World Behold thy own unworthiness and what thou goest a-about Moyses when he was to make an Ark for the Tables of the Law not onely made choice of precious wood but covered it all with gold Thou miserable and vile Worm why doest thou not prepare and adorn thy self to receive the Lord of the Law Consider also what is the end for which thy Saviour comes unto thee It is by communicating his grace to make thee partaker of his Divinity He comes to cure thy sores and infirmities he comes to give remedy to thy necessities he comes to unite himself unto thee he comes to Deifie thee Behold then the infinity of his Divine goodness who thus melts himself in communication with his Creatures Behold what is here given thee and for what it is given thee God gives himself unto thee that thou mayest be all divine and nothing left in thee of earth In other benefits God bestows his particular gifts upon thee but here he gives thee himself that thou mightest also give thy self unto him and be wholly his If from the Incarnation of the Son of God we gather the great love he bore unto mankind passing for his sake from that height of greatness unto that depth of humiliation as to inclose himself in the Womb of a Virgin Behold how in this he loves thee since to sustain thee in the life of grace he hath made himself the true food of thy Soul and comes from the right hand of the eternal Father to enclose himself in thy most impure breast Jesus Christ comes also to make thee one body with himself that thou mayest after an admirable manner be united unto him and made partaker not onely of his spirit but of his bloud That which this Consideration ought to work in the breast of a
make the poor Philosopher to forbear his dinner and not to relish one morsel of the Feast with pleasure Thou then who art no more secure of thy life than he how canst thou delight in the pleasures of the world he who every moment expects death ought no moment to delight in life This onely consideration of death according to Ricardus was sufficient to make us distaste all the pleasures of the earth A great danger or fear suffices to take away the sense of lesser joyes and what greater danger then that of Eternity Death is therefore uncertain that thou shouldest be ever certain to despise this life and dispose thy self for the other Thou art every hour in danger of death to the end that thou shouldest be every hour prepared to leave life What is death but the way unto eternity A great journey thou hast to make wherefore doest thou not provide in time and the rather because thou knowest not how soon thou mayest be forced to depart The People of God because they knew not when they were to march were for forty years which they remained in the Wilderness ever in a readiness Be thou then ever in a readiness since thou mayst perhaps depart to day Consider there is much to do in dying prepare thy self whilest thou hast time and do it well For this many years were necessary wherefore since thou knowest not whether thou shalt have one day allowed thee why doest thou not this day begin to dispose thy self If when thou makest a short journey and hast furnished and provided thy self of all things fitting yet thou commonly findest something to be forgotten how comes it to pass that for so long a journey as is the Region of Eternity thou thinkest thy self sufficiently provided when thou hast scarce begun to think of it Who is there who does not desire to have served God faithfully two years before death should take him if then thou art not secure of one why doest thou not begin Trust not in thy health or youth for death steals treacherously upon us when we least look for it for according to the saying of Christ our Redeemer it will come in an hour when it is not thought on And the Apostle said the day of the Lord would come like a theef in the night when none were aware of it and when the Master of the house was in a profound sleep Promise not thy self to morrow for thou knowest not whether death will come to night The day before the Children of Israel went forth of Egypt how many of that Kingdom young Lords and Princes of Families promised themselves to doe great matters the next day or perhaps within a year after yet none of them lived to see the morning Wisely did Messodamus who as Guido Bituricensis writes when one invited him forth the next day to dinner answered My friend why doest thou summon me for to morrow since it is many years that I durst not promise any thing for the day following every hour I look for death there is no trust to be given to strength of Body youthful years much riches or humane hopes Hear what God sayes to the Prophet Amos Amos 8. In that day the Sun shall set at midday and I will over-cast the earth with darkness in the day of light What is the setting of the Sun at midday but when men think they are in the middest of their life in the flower of their age when they hope to live many years to possess great wealth to marry rich wives to shine in the world then death comes and over-shadows the brightness of their day with a cloud of sorrow as it happened in the Story related by Alexander Faya Alex. Faya To. 2. Ladislaus King of Hungary and Bohemia sent a most solemn Embassage unto Charles King of France for the conducting home of that Kings Daughter who was espoused unto the Prince his Son The chief Embassador elected for this journey was Vdabricas Bishop of Passaw for whose Attendants were selected 200 principal men of Hungary 200 of Bohemia and other 200 of Austria all persons of eminent Birth and Nobility so richly clad and in so brave an Equipage that they appeared as so many Princes To these the Bishop added an hundred Gentlemen chosen out of his own Subjects so that they passed through France 700 Gentlemen in company most richly accoutred and for the greater Pomp and Magnificence of the Embassage there went along with them 400 beautiful Ladies in sumptuous habits and adorned with most costly jewels the Coaches which carried them were studded with gold and enchased with stones of value Besides all this were many Gifts and rich Garments of inestimable price which they brought along with them for Presents But the very day that this glorious Embassage entred Paris before they came at the place appointed for their entertainment a Curriere arrived with the news of the death of the espoused Prince Such was the grief that struck the heart of the French King with so unexpected a news as he could neither give an answer to the Embassage nor speak with the Embassadour or those who accompanied him and so they departed most sorrowful from Paris and every one returned unto his own home In this manner God knows by the means of death to fill the earth with darkness and sorrow in the day of greatest brightness as he spake by his Prophet Since then thou knowest not when thou art to dye think thou must dye to day and be ever prepared for that which may ever happen Trust in the mercies of God and imploy them incessantly but presume not to deferre thy conversion for a moment For who knows whether thou shalt ever from hence forward have time to invoke him and having invoked him whether thou shalt deserve to be heard Know that the mercy of God is not promised to those who therefore trust in him that they may sin with hope of pardon but unto those who fearing his Divine Justice cease to offend him wherefore St. Cregory says The mercies of Almighty God forget him Greg. in moral who forgets his Justice nor shall he find him merciful who does not fear him just For this it is so often repeated in Scripture That the mercy of God is for those who fear him And in one part it is said The mercy of the Lord from eternity unto eternity is upon those who fear him And in anothâ—r As the Father hath mercy on his Son so the Lord hath mercy on these who fear him In another According to the height from earth unto heaven he has corroborated his mercy upon those that fear him Finally the very Mother of mercy sayes in her Divine Canticle That the mercy of the Lord is from generation to generation upon those who fear him Thou seest then that the Divine mercy is not promised unto all and that thou shalt remain excluded from it whilest thou presumest and doest not fear his justice And
the joyes shall be such as neither the eye hath seen nor the ear hath heard nor hath entred into the heart of man O baseness of temporal goods what proportion doe they hold with this greatness since they are so poor that even time from whence they have their being makes them tedious and not to be endured Who could continue a whole moneth without other diversion in hearing the choicest musick nay who could pass a day free from weariness without some change of pleasures But such is the greatness of those joyes which God hath prepared for them who love and fear him as we shall still desire them afresh and they will not cloy us in a whole Eternity §. 2. St. Anselme observes this difference betwixt the goods and evils of this life and the other Anselm lib. de simil that in this life neither of them are pure but mixt and confused The goods are imperfect and mingled with many evils and the evils short and mingled with some good But in the other life as the goods are most perfect and pure without the least touch of any ill and so can never weary us for that were an evil so to the contrary those evils of hell in which there is no good at all are horrible and above all sufferance Eternal glory therefore is great both in respect of its purity being free from any ill and in respect of its perfection being highly and excellently good David said Ps 102. That God had removed our sins from us as far as the East is distant from the West which he hath not onely verified in the guilt of sin but in the punishment which is as tar removed from the blessed as Heaven is from Earth And although the spiritual distance betwixt them be greater than the corporeal yet that we may from hence form some conception of that also we will say as much as our weakness is able to attain unto of this Clavius in Sphae 〈◊〉 1. Our famous Mathematician Christopher Clavius sayes that from the Sphere of the Moon which is the lowest Heaven unto the Earth are one hundred and twenty thousand six hundred and thirty miles and from the Heaven of the Sun four millions thirty thousand nine hundred and twenty three miles and from the Firmament or eighth Heaven one hundred sixty one millions eight hundred fourscore and four thousand nine hundred and fourty three miles Here Plato wills the Mathematicians to cease their enquiry for from hence there is no rule of measuring further but without all doubt it is much farther from thence to the Empyrial Heaven For the onely thickness of the Starry Sphere is said to contain as much as the whole space betwixt that and the Earth In so much as if a Milstone were thrown from the highest of the Firmament and should every hour fall two hundred miles it would be 90 years before it arrived at the Earth The Mathematicians also and some learned Interpreters of the holy Scripture affirm that the distance from the Earth unto the highest of the Firmament is less than that from thence to the lowest of the Empyrial Heaven and therefore conclude if one should live two thousand years and every day should travel a hundred miles he should not in all that time reach the lowest of the Firmament and if after that he should also travel other two thousand years he should not reach the highest of it and from thence four thousand years before he arrived at the lowest of the Empyrial Heaven O power of the grace of Jesus Christ which makes us in a moment dispatch so great a journey That noble Matron who was tormented and put to death in England said unto those with grief and honour that beheld her martyrdome So short is the way which brings us to heaven that within six hours I shall mount above the Sun and Moon tread the Stars under my feet and enter into the Heaven of the Blessed But there was no need of six hours one little instant brings the souls of the blessed thither which being purified from their sins and pains remain further distant from the one and the other than Heaven is from Earth Proportionable unto this distance of place is the advantage which the greatness of Heaven hath above that of Earth and the same holds in their blessings Let us mount then with this consideration thither and from that height let us disspise all this mutable World Ptolom in Praefa Almages since even the Gentils did it Wherefore Ptolome said He is higher than the world who cares not in whose hands the world is And Cicero What humane thing can seem great unto him Tull. in Som. Scip. unto whom eternity and the greatness of the other world are known All the earth seems so little unto me that I am sorry and ashamed of our Empire with which we have onely touched some little part of it All the Kingdoms of the Earth are but as a point and unto Boctius seemed but as a point of a point Bar. 3. But of Heaven Baruch could say How great is the house of God how large is the place of his possession it is great and hath no end high and immeasurable So great is the advantage of things eternal above temporal although they were not eternal O what fools then are they who for one point of Earth lose so many leagues of Heaven who for one short pleasure lose things so immense and durable O the greatness of the omnipotency and goodness of the divine liberality which hath prepared such things for the humble and little ones who serve him St. Austin whose thoughts were so sublime and whose understanding was one of the greatest in the world found himself unable to express them nay even to think of them For being desirous to write of Eternal Glory and taking pen in hand he beheld in his Chamber a great light and felt a sweetness so fragrant as almost transported him and withal heard a voice which said Austin what doest thou mean doest thou think it possible to number the drops in the Sea or to grasp the whole compass of the Earth or to make the Celestial bodies suspend their motion that which no eyes have seen wouldest thou behold that which no ear hath heard wouldest thou conceive that which no heart hath attained nor humane understanding imagined doest thou think that thou onely canst comprehend What end can that have which is infinite how can that be measured which is immense Sooner shall all those impossibilities be possible than thou understand the least part of that glory which is enjoyed by the blessed in Heaven If one who had been ever bred in an obscure dungeon and never had seen other light than that of some dimme Lamp were told that above the Earth there was a Sun which enlightned the whole world and cast his beams far above a hundred thousand leagues in Circumference all the discourses which could be made unto
Crucifix Neither are the Elements left free from such representations Alfonso the first Portugal beheld in the air an Escucheon with the five wounds And the Emperour Constantine the principal Instrument of the Passion the Cross which hath also divers other times appeared But what more gratious and loving demonstration of the memorie which he desires we should still preserve of his torments then the wounds which he hath imprinted upon the persons of many of his servants Blos li. 15. c. 3. Tritem in Crim. ad an 1500. Surius 14. Aprilis Mosc in vita S. Clarae For besides St. Francis who was marked with the most evident signes of his favour the like were received by St. Gertrude and St. Lucia of Ferrara And what more express memorial of the passion of our Redeemer then the heart of St. Clara of Monte Falco in which was found the Image of Christ crucified the Pillar Whip Lance and other instruments of the Passion We should never make an end if we should recount all those several wayes by which Christ our Saviour hath represented unto us his death and passion to the end we should ever have it present and fixt in our memorie But above all the most blessed Sacrament in which divine mystery the lively representation of his death is as often repeated as his holy body is consecrated in the whole world was a great demonstration of his infinite love towards mankind Wherein he gives us to understand that he desires not onely once but a million of times to die for us and that though he cannot now return again to be crucified by reason of the impassibility of his glorifyed body yet his divine charity hath found a way after an unbloody and impassible manner to repeat the Sacrifice of the Cross and the fruit of our redemption How great a gratitude do we owe our Saviour for so infinite an expression of his good will towards us and how can we be grateful it forgetful of so profitable and advantageous a benefit Let not then his Passion depart from our thoughts but let us rather depart from our pleasures and despise all humane felicity since we behold the Lord of the world in such humility Moreover this most blessed Sacrament is not onely a Memorial of the Passion of Jesus Christ but of the Incarnation and wonderful works of God and not onely brings into our memory what Christ did when he suffered for us but what the Eternal Word did when he became flesh for us that immense God unto whom the whole Globe of the Earth serves but as a footstool descending from Heaven and so far lessening himself as to cover that infinite Majesty under the form of a Servant of which this Divine Sacrament is a most excellent and lively representation For in it also the God of Heaven being already incarnate and made man descends from Heaven and vails himself under the accidents of a little bread and wine and there is as it were annihilated for us and become nothing Besides as in the Eucharist we receive Christ crucified so in it also we receive the Word incarnate insomuch as these two great wonders of God the Passion and Incarnation are not onely represented but as it were multiplied unto us in this blessed Sacrament which was a high thought of God and according to what he said by his Prophet David Psal 39. Thou hast made thy wonders many O Lord And there is none who is like unto thee in thy cogitations Here God made his wonders that is his Passion and Incarnation many repeating and as it were multiplying them in this blessed Sacrament Which was a most high thought of him who is the supreme Wisdom nor could it enter into any understanding but that of the Divinity that that which was so extraordinary and so far above the reach of all created capacities as the Son of God to be sacrificed and the eternal Word to descend from Heaven and be made man should become so ordinary and familiar as we daily see it in the use of this Divine Mysterie But God did not onely here make his wonders many but made them great as the same David cries out How magnified are thy works O Lord Psal 91. Thy cogitations are most profound For although the works of the Passion and Incarnation are so great yet they are as it were enlarged and made greater by this holy Sacrament The greatness of the work of the Incarnation consisted in this that God abased himself and was made man and the greatness of that of the Passion in that he humbled himself unto death But in this Sacrament he abases and humbles himself yet lower becoming food for man which is less than to be man or to die which is natural unto man Besides this the general fruit of the Incarnation and Passion is after a most admirable manner particularly applyed in this blessed Sacrament to every one which receives it worthily The Death and Passion of Christ upon Mount Calvarie was no doubt a great work of God but in this Mysterie we behold the same Death Passion and Sacrifice after an unbloody and impassible manner which is certainly the greater miracle and expresses more the Divine power The Incarnation likewise when the Eternal Word entred into the womb of a Virgin was a great work of God but in this Mysterie it is in a certain manner extended and made greater and is therefore called an extension of the Incarnation our Lord here entring into the breast of every Christian and uniting himself unto him These are the marvails of the Law of Grace concerning which the Prophet Isaias said unto the Lord Isai 64. When thou shalt do wonders we shall not sustain them Thou hast descended and the mountains melted at thy presence From the beginning they have not heard nor understood with their ears neither hath the eye seen O God besides thee what thou hast prepared for those who expect thee The Prophet speaks of those wondrous works which were to be seen at the coming of the Messias which wore to be such as the world had never heard of nor had ever entred into any thought but that of God and therefore the Apostle alleadging this place saith That the eye hath not seen nor the ear hath heard neither hath it entred into the heart of man what God hath prepared for those who love him Since over and above those two stupendious wonders of taking flesh and dying for us he hath given himself as food unto those Souls who remain in his grace and love him which is so great and marvailous a work as onely God could think of it and besides God none And as onely God can truly value it so it is not in the power of man sufficiently to acknowledge it No humane heart being able to support the weight of such an obligation and the greatness of the Divine love which shines forth in this wonder of wonders Tertul. li. de Patien cap.
therefore well laid of St. Augustine In Ps 45. That all which hath an end is short A hundred years of penance have an end and are therefore short a thousand years a hundred thousand Millions have their end and are therefore in the appearance of what is immense but little and in respect of Eternity no more then an instant In the same manner we are to look upon a thousand years as upon an hour and for it self a long life is no more to he desired then a short since both in respect of Eternity bear the same bulk And as in respect of a solid body a thousand superficies's bear no more proportion then one all of them together being as incapable of making up the least particle of solidity as one onely so in respect of Eternity one year is not less then a thousand nor a thousand more than one And upon all time although it were a Million of ages we are to look as upon an instant and upon all which is temporal as upon a superficies which hath onely an appearance but nothing of substance neither can all time and all temporal goods together make up one onely good of Eternity If the whole earth be but a point in respect of the Heavens which are notwithstanding of a finite and limited greatness what great matter is it if all time be but as an instant in respect of Eternity which is infinite and without limit Betwixt the Earth nay betwixt the least grain of sand and the highest Heaven there is a proportion both have quantity but betwixt a thousand years and Eternity none at all and are therefore less then a point O blindness of men who are so besotted with time that in life they desire pleasure and in death a memorial and both in death and life a fame and renown for what even for a moment for an instant Wherefore desirest thou pleasure in life which to morrow is to end Wherefore desirest thou a vain memory after death which can endure no longer than the world whose end will not be long deferred And although it should yet last for a million of ages it were but short since those also must conclude and all were but as a moment in resped of Eternity As the Immensity of God is in respect of place so is Eternity in respect of time and as in respect of the immensity of God the whole Sea is no greater than a drop of water nor an atome in the air less than the whole world so in respect of Eternity a hundred thousand years and half a quarter of an hour are the same If God then should bestow upon thee this life onely for a quarter of an hour and that thou knowest likewise that the world within an hour after thy death were to end also wouldest thou spend that short time in ostentation and setting forth thy self whereby to raise a fame that might endure that short time after thy life no certainly thou wouldest busie thy self with other thoughts thou wouldest think of providing to die well and not trouble thy self in leaving a vain fame and memory which were so small a time to over-last thee Know then that thou oughtest to do the same although thou wert certain to live a hundred years and the world to endure a hundred thousand after thee For all which hath an end is short and all time in respect of Eternity is but a day an hour a moment Remember therefore the saying of St. John who said his time was in the last hour of the world although there then wanted many years all which in respect of Eternity were but as one hour So then if thou wouldest not be sollicitous of leaving a Name behind thee if the world were to continue but an hour no more oughtest thou to be now although it were to endure for many ages If thou knewest for certain that thou had'st to live a hundred years and that during that time thou shouldest have nothing to eat or sustain thy self but what thou drewest from the store and treasure of some great King and that too in the small space of an hour wouldest thou spend that hour in walking abroad in vain conversation and entertainments certainly no thou wouldest not cease from labouring and making haste to load thy self with those treasures How art thou then so careless knowing that thy Soul is to live for an eternity and that thou hast nothing to sustain it with hereafter but what thou gainest by thy merits within the space of this short life look how short a time is allowed thee to provide for Eternity How art thou then so negligent as to pass it in vain pleasures how comest thou then to laugh and not to weep rather and tear thy flesh with rigid penance and mortifications More is an hour in respect of a hundred years than a hundred thousand are in respect of Eternity And therefore if in that hour because the time appeared but short thou wouldest not be sloathful in furnishing thy self for a hundred years much less oughtest thou to be slow in those hundred years of life to provide for Eternity Consider also what a hundred years are in respect of a million and a million of years in respect of Eternity If for a hundred years spent in torments thou wert to enjoy a million of years in pleasure and content certainly thou hadst a most advantagious bargain since thou receivest ten thousand times more than thou gavest What a purchase hast thou then if not for a hundred years of pain but for a short hour spent in the mortification of some one vain pleasure thou receivest an Eternity of glory in respect of which a million of years are but as air instant See then how short is the space of this life to gain the eternal see how short is all time to merit Eternity Well did St. Augustin say August in Psal 39. For an eternal rest thou wert in reason to undergoe an eternal labour and for an eternal felicity to endure eternal pains How then can the short labours of this life seem tedious unto thee questionless there is no just Soul in Heaven nor damned in Hell that so often as he casts his eyes upon Eternity is not astonisht that so short a thing as this life should be the Key of so long a happiness in the one or misery in the other See then how cheap thou hast an Eternity of glory the which is an infinite for a finite Weigh a thousand years weigh a thousand millions in counterpoise with Eternity they weigh nothing all is bat smoak and straw there is no comparison betwixt infinite and finite betwixt what is real and what is painted Well did Plotinus say that Time wat the Image of Eternity conformable unto which David said That man passes away in an Image as if he should have said he passes away in time The same which is said of Time may be said of Goods and Evils temporal which pass along
and therefore reprehended his Nephew for spending a short time in walking for his recreation telling him that those hours might be better imployed and being present when the same Nephew caused one which in reading pronounced a word with an ill accent to repeat it again admonisht him that too much time was lost in that useless repetition Seneca esteemed time above all price and value and in this manner sayes Redeem thy self unto thy self recover and preserve that time which hitherto hath been taken surprised or slipt from thee For whom wilt thou give me that shall set a price upon time or give a value unto a day who understands himselt daily to die If therefore the Gentils who had no hope by time to purchase Eternity made so great account of it what shall we Christians unto whom it is an occasion of eternal happiness Let us therefore hear St. Bernard Serm ad Scho. There is nothing sayes he more precious than time But out alass nothing at this day is more vilified A day of salvation is past and no man reflects on it no man thinks no man complains that he hath lost a day which shall never râ—â—rn But as a hair from the head so a moment of time shall not perish The same Saint also grieving to see a thing so precious so much mispent speaks in this manner Let no man make a small esteem of the time which is spent in idle words Say some We may yet chat and talk untill this hour be past O wretched speech Vntil this hour be past This being the hour which the goodness of thy Creator hath bestowed upon thee that in it thou mayest do penance for thy sins obtain pardon acquire grace and merit glory O lamentable speech Whilst this hour passes this being the hour wherein thou mayst gain divine mercy and commiseration In another part he speaks much to the same purpose exhorting us to benefit our selves by the time of this life His words are these Serm. 75. in Cant. Whilest we have time let us do good unto all especially since our Lord said plainly that the night would come when no man could work Art thou perhaps to find some other time in the world to come wherein thou mayst seek God and wherein thou mayst do good This being the time wherein he hath promised to remember thee and is therefore the day of mercy because here our God and King hath long agoe wrought thy salvation in the middest of the earth goe then and expect thy salvation in the middest of hell What possibility doest thou dream of obtaining pardon in the middest of eternal flames when the time of mercy is already past No sacrifice tor sin remains tor thee being dead in sin no more shall the Son of God be crucified for thee Once he died and shall now die no more That blood which he spilt upon the earth shall not descend into hell The sinners of the earth have drunk it up There is no part left for the devils or for sinners which are the companions of devils wherewith to quench their flames Once descended thither not the blood but the soul of Christ This only visit made by the presence of the soul when the body hung without life upon the Cross was the portion of them who were in prison The blood watered the dry land the blood was poured upon the thirsty earth and did as it were inebriate it The blood wrought peace for those who were upon earth and those who are in heaven but not for those which were in hell beneath the earth Once only as we have said the soul went thither and made in part redemption speaking of the souls of the Holy Fathers who were in Limbo that even for that moment the works of charity might not be wanting but it passed no farther Now is the time acceptable now is the time fit wherein to seek God And certainly he that seeks him shall finde him if so be he seek him when and where he ought to do All this from St. Bernard § 2. Consider what an eternal repentance will follow thee if thou makest not use of this occasion of time for the purchasing of the Kingdom of Heaven especially when thou shalt see that with so little adoe thou mightest have gained that everlasting glory which to satisfie a short pleasure thou hast lost tor ever In what to fury and madness was Esau Gen. 19. when he reflected that his younger brother had gotten the Blessing of the first born by his own base selling his Birth-right for a dish of Lentils he cried out and tore himself for spite and anger Behold thy self in this mirrour who for one vile and short pleasure hast sold the Kingdom of Heaven If God had then thrown thee into hell what wouldest thou have done but lamented that with eternal tears which in so short a time was lost Cain when he perceived that he and his posterity were cursed and made infamous for not knowing how to benefit himself by that occasion Gen. 9. which was first offered unto him and made use of by his Brother what resentment had he then or ought to have had Measure by this the sense of a damned person who for not making use of the time of this lite shall see himself cursed by God for an Eternity and others far less than himself made blessed and rewarded in heaven The Sons-in-law of Loth when they saw they might have escaped the fire and that being invited they had rejected and laughed at the counsel of their Father-in-law when afterwards they perceived it to rain fire and sulphur upon them and their Cities what grief and vexation had they for refusing the benefit of so fair an occasion offered at their own doors O what sorrow what pain what madness what desperation shall seise upon a damned creature when he shall call to mind how often he hath been invited by Christ to salvation and shall now feel a tempest of fire and sulphur pouring down upon him for ever in hell King Hannon who had so good an occasion to preserve that peace whereunto he was intreated and invited by David when after he saw his Cities ruin'd the Inhabitants burnt like bricks in a furnace some thrasht to death others torn in pieces what would he have given to have made use in time of so fair an offer or of holding friendship with so great a King but what is this in respect of what a sinner shall feel when he shall see himself burnt in hell fire become an eternal enemy of the King of Heaven and deprived tor ever of raigning with his blessed Saints what despite what grief of heart shall he then have The evil Theef who was crucified with the Saviour of the world what doth he now endure for refusing that good occasion which his companion embraced what a repentance hath now the rich Glutton for not laying hold of so great an opportunity offered him at his own home
for him see whereunto thou art obliged For this onely benefit thou oughtest not to move hand nor foot but for the service of so good and gracious a God A labourer who plants a tree hath right unto the fruit and God who created thee hath right unto thy works which are the fruits of man For this reason at the Garment of the High-Priest which represented the benefit of our Creation were hung many Pomgranates which are the noblest fruit of trees and bears a Crown to signifie that the good fruits of holy works which we ought to produce are to be crowned with a perfect and pure intention See then if thou canst do more for God for God could do no more for thee than to create thee for so high and eminent an end as is the possession of himself being no wayes due unto thy feeble and frail nature It being then so great a benefit to have created thee it is yet a greater to have preserved and suffered thee untill this instant without casting thee into a thousand hells for thy sins and offences This grace of conservation our Saviour noted when he said that he compassed and enclosed his Vineyard which was for the preservation of it See then what thy Creatour in this matter of conservation could have done more than he hath done for thee since being his enemy he hath preserved thee as his friend From how many for one onely fault committed hath he withdrawn his preservation and suffered them to die in that sin for which they are now in hell some of them if they had been pardoned would have proved more grateful than thou Behold how many Angels for their first offence he threw head-long down from heaven and expected them no longer and yet still expects thee See if he could do more for thee and see what thou art to do for him Consider that thou owest him for preserving thee as much as for creating thee preservation being a continued creation and more for preserving and suffering thee although his enemy In thy creation although thou didst not deserve a being yet thou demerited it not but in thy preservation thou hast deserved the contrary which is to be forsaken and abandoned But above all what is said is the benefit which thou receivest by the Incarnation of the Son of God which Christ signified when he said that the Lord of the Vineyard sent his Son See if God could have done more for his own salvation than he did for thine sending into the world his onely begotten Son to be incarnated for thee A greater work than this could not be done by the omnipotent arm of God Consider that he did not this for the Angels and yet did it for thee see if then thou canst comply with the love thou owest him with being less than a Seraphin in thy affection Consider likewise that it being in his power to redeem thee by making himself an Angel and onely interceding for thee yet he would not deprive thy nature of this honour but made himself a Man see if he could do more for thy good By making himself an Angel he might have honoured the Angelical nature and have likewise benefited thee but he would not but making himself a Man conferred both the honour and profit upon thee And if it be true which some Doctors say that God having proposed unto the Angels that they were to adore a Man who was also to be God and to be exalted above all their Hierarchies and that because they would not subject themselves unto an inferiour nature they therefore fell and became disobedient see what thou owest unto God for this so singular a favour who would make himself a Man that thou shouldest not be lost although with the loss of so many Angels better than thee Behold from whence he drew thee by this benefit which was from sin and hell and at such a time when thy miserable condition was desperate of all other remedy behold unto what he exalted thee to his grace and â—he inheritance of the Kingdom of Heaven Behold in what manner and with what singular love and affection he did it even to his own loss and prejudice and as the Apostle saith by annihilating as it were himself that he might exalt thee taking upon him thy nature when it was not needful onely that he might conferre an honour upon thee which he would not upon the Angels See what God could do more for thee and see that thou mayest do much more for him and doest not Of the benefit of our redemption by the death and passion of Christ the Lord himself was not forgetful but signified it unto us even before he died saying That the Son whom the Lord of the Vineyard sent was slain in the pretense What could the Son of God do more for thee than die and shed his blood for thy benefit especially when it was not needful for thy redemption In the rigour of justice it was necessary that God should be incarnate or make himself an Angel to redeem thee but to suffer and die not at all But such was his infinite love as he would needs suffer and not with an ordinary death but would die so ignominiously as it seems he could not suffer more Set before thy eyes Christ crucified upon Mount Calvarie see if a Man more infamous be possible or imaginable executed publickly between two Theeves as a Traitor and an Heretick for broaching false Doctrine and making himself King as a Traitor unto Caesar Two crimes so infamous as they not onely defame the person who commits them but stain and infect his whole Stock and Linage Behold in what poverty he died if greater can be thought on to the end thou mayest see if it were possible he should doe more for thee than what he did Whilest he lived he had not whereon to repose his head but yet had cloathes wherewith to cover decently his nakedness but when he died even his garments failed him neither found he one drop of water to refresh his sacred lips even the earth refused him wanting whereon to rest his reverend feet Behold with what grief and pains he expired since from head to foot he was but one continued wound his feet and hands were pierced with nails and his head with thorns All was a high expression of an excessive love and to do for thee what he could see then what thou oughtest to doe and suffer for him who died and suffered for thee what he could and could do what he would After all these benefits consider his giving himself unto thee for food and sustenance in the most holy Sacrament the which was noted by Christ when he said That the Lord of the Vineyard built a Press for the Wine in which he gave his most precious blood It seems that the persons of the most holy Trinity were in competition and strove amongst themselves who should most oblige Man with their benefits and favours Let us express
his neighbours face the image of his own death What fear and horrour shall then possess them when they shall hourly expect the success and dire effects portended by these monstrous prodigies All Commerce shall then cease the Market-places shall be unpeopled and the Tribunals remain solitary and silent none shall be then ambitious of honours none shall seek after pastimes and new invented pleasures nor shall the covetous wretch then busie himself with the care of his treasures none shall frequent the Palaces of Kings and Princes but through fear shall forget even to eat and drink all their care shall be employed how to escape those Deluges Earthquake and lightnings seeking for places of security which they shall not meet with Who will then value his own Descent and Linage who the nobleness of his Arms and atchievements who his Wisdom and Talents who will remember the Beauty he hath once doted upon who the sumptuous Buildings he hath reared who his acute and well-composed Writings who his Discretion and Gravity in his discourse And if we shall forget what we our selves most valued and gloried in how shall we remember that of others what remembrance shall there then be of the acts of that great Alexander Of the Learning of Aristotle and the Endowments of the most renowned men of the world Their Fame shall remain from thence forward for ever buried and shall die with the World for a whole Eternity The Mariners when in some furious Tempest they are upon the point of sinking how are they amazed at the rage of the watry Element how grieved and afflicted with the ruine which threatens them what prayers and vows do they send up to Heaven how disinteressed are they of all worldly matters since they fling their wealth and riches into the Sea for which they have run such hazard In what condition shall be then the Inhabitants of the Earth when not onely the Sea with his raging but Heaven and Earth with a thousand prodigies shall affright them when the Sun shall put on a Robe of mourning and amaze them with the horrour of his darkness when the Moon shall look like blood the Stars fall and the Earth shake them with its unquiet trembling when the Whirlwinds shall throw them off their legs and frequent and thick flashes of Lightning dazle their sight and confound their understanding what shall Sinners then do for whose sake all these fearful wonders shall happen § 2. The fear and astonishment which shall fall upon mankind when the whole power and concourse of Nature shall be armed against Sinners may be perceived by the fear which hath been caused by some particular of those changes which are foretold to happen in the end of the World altogether and every one in great excess Let us therefore by the consideration of the particular judge how dreadful shall be the conjunction of so many and so great calamities And to begin with the Earth the most dull and heavy of all the Elements Cardinal Jacobus Papiensis Jacob. Papiens In Epist writing what happened in his own time reports that in the year 1456 upon the 5th of December three hours before day the whole Kingdom of Naples trembled with that violence that some entire Towns were buried in the earth and a great part of many others were overthrown in which perished 60000 persons part swallowed by the earth and part oppressed by the ruins of buildings what security can men look for in this life when they are not secure of the earth they tread upon What firmness can there be in the World when the onely firm thing in it is unstable From whence may not death assault us if it springs from under our feet Evarg l. 6. c. 8. Vide Niceph lib. 18.3 c. 13. But it is not much that the Earthquake of a whole Kingdom should cause so great a ruine since it hath done as much in one City Evagrius writes that the night in which Mauritius the Emperour was married three hours within night the City of Antioch quaked in that manner that most of the Buildings were overthrown and 60000 persons remained buried in her ruins If the Earth was so cruel in those particular Earthquakes what was it in the time of Tiberius Plin. l. 2. c. 84. when according to Pliny twelve of the most principal Cities of Asia were overthrown and sunk into the earth Sen. nat q. l. 6. And yet more cruel was that related by Nicephorus which happened in the time of the Emperour Theodosius which lasted for 6 moneths without intermission Niceph. l. 4. c. 46. and was so universal that almost the whole circuit of the Earth trembled as extending to the Chersonesus Alexandria Bithinia Antioch Hellespont the two Phrygia's the greatest part of the East and many Nations of the West And that we may also say something of the fury of the Sea even against those who were far distant from the rage of his waves and thought themselves secure in their own houses Most horrible was that Earthquake related by S. Jerome St. Hier in vita St. Hilarion and Ammianus Marcellinus who was an eye-witness of it which happened not long after the death of the Emperour Julian wherein not onely the Earth trembled but the Sea out-past his limits as in another Deluge and turned again to involve the Earth as in the first Chaos Ships floated in Alexandria above the loftiest buildings and in other places above high hills and after that the Sea was calmed and returned into his channel many Vessels in that City as Nicephorus writes remained upon the top of-houses Niceph. l. 10. c. 35. and in other parts upon high rocks as witnesseth St. Jerome But let us hear it related by Ammianus Marcellinus Am. Marcel l. 20. whose words are these which follow Procopius the Tyrant being yet alive the 2◠of July the year wherein Valentinian was first time Consul with his Brother the Elements throughout the whole compass of the Earth suddenly fell unto such distempers and disorders as neither true stories have ever mentioned nor false feigned A little before morning the Heavens being first over-cast with a dark Tempest intermixt with frequent thunders and horrid flashes of lightning the whole body of the Earth moved and the Sea being violently driven back retired in such manner as the most hidden bottom of it was discovered so as many unknown sorts of Fishes were seen stretched out upon the mud Those vast profoundities beholding then the Sun whom Nature from the beginning of the world had hid under so immense a mass of waters many Ships remained upon the Oase or floating in small gullets and Fishes were taken up with mens hands gasping upon the dry sands but in short time the waves of the Sea inraged to see themselves banisht from their natural seats lifted themselves up with great fury against the Islands and far extended Coasts of the Continent and what Cities or Buildings they encountred
were violently overthrown and evened with the ground in so much as the face of the World changed by the furious discord of the Elements produced many unheard of Prodigies For the vast body of the waters suddenly and unexpectedly returning and entring far into the land many thousands of people were drowned whose dead bodies after the swellings of the waves were asswaged and retired unto their natural and usual bed were found some with their faces downward grovling upon the Earth some upwards looking upon the Heavens and some great Ships the waters left upon the tops of houses as it happened in Alexandria others far from the Sea-shore and as we our selves are witness who saw one as we passed by Methion then old and worm-eaten All this lamentable story is from Ammianus Marcellinus No less fearful is that which is related by Nauclerus and Trithemius that the year 1218. Naucler Gen. 41. sub fin Trit Chron. The enraged Sea entring into Frisia there were drowned in the Fields and in their own houses more than a hundred thousand persons Langus adds that afterwards in the year 1287. the Ocean again reentring the same Province retired not till it had left 80000 persons drowned behind it This mortality is not much in a whole Province in respect of what the Sea hath done in one onely City Surius in his Commentaries of the year 1509. writes that the day of the Exaltation of the Cross in September the Sea betwixt Constantinople and Pera swelled with that rage and fury that it passed over the walls of both Cities and that there were drowned onely of Turks in Coustantinople above 13000. Unto these so certain examples we shall not need to aad what Plato writes Tertul. Apolog. Cap. 39. although Tertullian and many Authors of these times approve it That the Atlantick Island which was seated in that spacious Ocean betwixt Spain and the West-Indies and which was a greater part of the World then Asia and Affrick both together replenished with innumerable people was by an Earthquake and the rain of one onely day and night in which the Heavens as it were melted themselves into water and the Sea over-past his bounds buried in the Ocean with all the Inhabitants and never since appeared But I will not make use of this History to exaggerate the force of the Elements enraged against man The modern Stories which we have related with more certainty are sufficient and by that which happened in Frisia may be seen with what fury the Ocean imprisoned within his proper limits issues forth when God permits it to fight against Sinners What shall be then when the Lord of all shall arm all the Elements against them and shall give the Alarm to all creatures to revenge him upon men so ungrateful for his infinite benefits The Air also which is an Element so sweet and gentle in which we live and by which we breath when God slacking the bridle draws force out of weakness with no less fury ruins and overthrows all it meets It hath been seen to tear up whole woods by the roots and transport the trees to places far distant Ovied In Hist Indic l. 6. ca. 3. Surius in Comment Conrad Argen in Chron. Surius writes that the 28 of June in the year 1507 at midnight there arose such a Tempest in Germany that it made the strongest Buildings shake uncovered Houses rooted up Trees and threw them a great distance off Conradus Argentinas writes That Henry the sixth being Emperour he himself saw great Beams of Timber blown from the roof of the chief Church in Ments as big as the Beams of a Wine-press and that of heavy wood as Oak flying in the air above a miles distance Above all who is not amazed at what Josephus writes in his Antiquities and Eusebius in Praepar Evangel that the Tower of Babylon which was the most strong and prodigious Building of the World was by God overthrown with a Tempest What shall I speak of those fearful Tempests of hail and lightning flying through the air from place to place to chastize Sinners one of which slew all the Flocks and Heards of the Egyptians And in Palestine of another Hail of a strange greatness that slew innumerable Amorites Of latter times in these parts in the year 1524. Clavitellus writes that near Cremona there fell Hail as big as Hens eggs Clav. Fol. 260. Corn. A lap in cap. 9. Exod. Olaus Mag. l. 1. c. 22. Conimb In Meteor c. de grandine Hist Tripart l. 7. c. 22. Ezek. 38. Apoc. 16. and in the Campania of Bolognia in the year 1537. there fell stones or 28 pound weight Olaus Magnus writes that in the North Hail hath fallen as big as the head of a man And the Tripartite cap History that the year 369. there happened such a Tempest in Constantinople that the Hail was as rocks Certainly it is not then much what the Prophet Ezekiel sayes that in the end of the World shall fall huge stones and what St. John writes that they shall be of the weight of a talent which is 125 pounds of Roman weight With what horrible thunder shall that Tempest resound which shall throw a stone of that greatness In Seythia they write that divers persons have fallen dead with the terrible noise of the thunders in those parts What noise then shall those last Tempests make which God shall send in the end of the World All those alterations past of the Elements are no more than skirmishes What shall then be the battel which they are to give unto Sinners when the Heavens shall shoot it's arrows and give the Alarm with prodigious thunders and shall declare their wrath with horrible apparitions Greg lib. 4. dialog Cap. 36. Joan. in Vit. Greg l. 1. c. 37. Zonar in Iren. Plin. l. 1. c. 13. St. Gregory the Great writes as an eye-witness that in a great Pestilence at Rome he saw arrows visibly fall from Heaven and strike many men John the Deacon sayes it rained arrows How shall it the be when the Heavens and Air rain pieces of stars The world was amazed when ill the time of Irene and Constantine the Sun was darkned for 17 dayes together and in the time of Vespasian the Sun and Moon appeared not during the space of 12 dayes What shall it be in the last dayes when the Sun shall hide his beams under a mourning Garment and the Moon shall cloath her self with blood to signifie the wanes which all the creatures are to make with fire and blood against those who have despised their Creator When on one side the Earth shall rouse it self up against them and shall shake them off her back as unwilling to endure their burthen any longer When the Sea shall pursue and assault them within their own houses and the Air shall not permit them to be safe in the fields Certainly it shall be then no wonder if they shall desire the mountains to cover them and the
flourishing and pleasant Orchards consumed without power either to preserve them or themselves All shall burn and with it the World and all the fame and memory of it shall die and that which mortals thought to be immortal shall then end and perish No more shall Aristotle be cited in the Schools nor Vlpian alleaged in the Tribunals no more shall Plato be read amongst the Learned nor Cicero imitated by the Orators no more shall Seneca be admired by the understanding nor Alexander extolled amongst Captains all fame shall then die and all memory be forgotten O vanity of men whose memorials are as vain as themselves which in few years perish and that which lasts longest can endure no longer than the World What became of that Statue of maslie gold which Gorgias the Leontin placed in Delphos to eternize his Name and that of Gabrion in Rome and that of Borosus with the golden tongue in Athens and innumerable others erected to great Captains in brass or hardest marble certainly many years since they are perished or if not yet they shall perish in this great and general Conflagration Onely vertue no fire can burn Three hundred sixty Statues were erected by the Athenians unto Demetrius Phalareus for having governed their Common-wealth ten years with great vertue and prudence but of so little continuance were these Trophies that those very Emblems which were raised by gratitude were soon after destroyed by envy and he himself who saw his Statues set up in so great a number saw them also pulled down but he still retained this comfort which Christians may learn from him that beholding how they threw his Images unto the ground he could say at least They cannot overthrow those Vertues for which they were erected If they were true Vertues he said well for those neither envy can demolish nor humane power destroy and which is more the divine power will not in this general destruction of the World consume them but will preserve in his eternal memory as many as shall persevere in goodness and die in his holy grace for onely Charity and Christan Vertues shall not end when the World ends The sight of those Triumphs exhibited by Roman Captains when they conquered some mighty and powerful Kings lasted but a while and the memories of the Triumphers not much longer and now there are few who know that Metellus triumphed over King Jugurtha Aquilius over King Aristonicus Atilius over King Antiochus Marcus Antonius over the King of Armenia Pompey over King Mithridates Aristobulus and Hiarbas Emilius over King Perseus and the Emperour Aurelius over Cenâ—bia the Queen of the Palmirens If few know this but dumb Books and dead Paper when those shall end what shall then become of their memories How many Histories hath fire consumed and are now no more known then if they had never been Written neither to doe nor write can make the memory of man immortal Aristarchus wrote more than a thousand Commentaries of several Subjects of which not one line remains at present Chrysippus wrote seaven hundred Volumes and now not one leaf is extant Theophrastus wrote thre hundred and sarce three or four remain Above all is that which is reported of Dionysius Grammaticus that he wrote three thousand five hundred works and now not one sheet appears But yet more is that which Jamlicus testifies of the great Trimegistus that he composed thirty six thousand five hundred twenty five books and all those are as if he had not written a letter for 4 or 5 little and imperfect Treatises which pass under his name are none of his Time even before the end of time leaves no Books nor Libraries By the assistance of Demetrius Phalareus King Ptolomy collected a great Library in Alexandria in which were stored all the Books he could gather from Caldee Greece and Aegypt which amounted to seventy thousand bodies but in the Civil Wars of the Romans it perished by that burning which was caused by Julius Caesar Another famous Library amongst the Greeks of Policrates and Phisistratus was spoyled by Xerxes The Library of Bizantium which contained a hundred and twenty thousand Books was burnt in the time of Basiliscus That of the Roman Capitol was in the time of Commâ—dus turned into ashes by lightning and what have we now of the great Library of Pergamus wherein were two hundred thousand Books Even before the end of the World the most constant things of the World die And what great matter is it if those memorials in paper be burnt since those in brass melt and those of marble perish That prodigious Amphitheater Vide Lips In Amph. which Stability Taurus raised of stone was burnt in the time of Nero the hard marble not being able to defend it self from the soft flames The great riches of Corinth in gold and silver were melted when the Town was fired those precious mettals could neither with their hard-resist nor with their value hire a friend to defend them from those furious flames If this particular burning in the most flourishing time of the World caused so great a ruine what shall that general one which shall make an end of the World and all things with it § 5. Let us now consider as we have already in Earthquakes and Deluges what great astonishment and destruction hath sometime happened by some particular burnings that by them we may conceive the greatness of the horror and ruine which will accompany that general one of the whole world What lamentations were in Rome when it burnt for seven dayes together What shrieks were heard in Troy when it was wholly consumed with flames What howling and astonishment in Pentapolis when those Cities were destroyed with fire from heaven Some say they were ten Cities Strabo thirteen Josephus and Lira five that which of faith is that there were four at least who with all their Inhabitants were consumed What weeping was therein Jerusalem when they beheld the House of God the Glory of their Kingdom the Wonder of the World involved in fire and smoke And that we may draw nearer unto our own times when lightning from Heaven fell upon Stockholme the capital City of Sweden and burnt to death above 1600 persons besides an innumerable multitude of Women and Children who hoping to escape the fire at land fled into the ships at Sea but overcharging them were all drowned Imagin what that people felt when they saw their houses and goods on fire and no possibility of saving them when the Husband heard the shrieks and cries of his dying Wife the Father of his little Children and unawares perceived himself so encompassed with flames that he could neither relieve them nor free himself What grief Albert. Krant Suec l. 5. c. 3. what anguish possest the hearts of those unfortunate creatures when to avoid the fury of the fire they were forced to trust themselves to the no less cruel waves when by their own over-hasty crowdings and indiscretion they saw their Ships
at least mortifie our affections for what is promised us hereafter and because it is most agreeable to God and profitable for our selves as may appear by this story related by Glycas Glycas ex eo Rad. in Aula Sancta cap. 12. A certain Anchorite had lived forty years in the desert retired wholly from the world and applying himself with great observance of his profession to the salvation of his Soul A desire at last entred into his minde to know who in the world was equal to himself in mortification Whereupon he besought God to reveal it unto him and it pleased his Divine Majesty to grant his request and it was answered him from heaven that the Emperour Theodâ—sius notwithstanding that he was Master of the greatest glory of the World yet was neither inferiour unto him in humility nor in overcoming himself The Hermite with this answer moved by God repaired unto the Court where he found easie access unto the courteous and religious Emperour unto whom the Servants of God and such as were famous for sanctity of life were alwayes welcome Not long after he found means to speak unto him and know his holy exercises At first he onely acquainted him with common vertues That he gave large Alms That he wore hair-cloth That he fasted often That he observed conjugal chastity and That he caused justice to be exactly observed These vertues seemed well unto the Hermit especially in such a person but yet judged all this to be short of himself who had done those things with greater perfection For he had renounced all and given all he possessed for Christ which was more than to give almes he never knew woman in his life which was more than to observe conjugal chastity he never did injury or injustice unto any which was more than to cause it to be kept to others his hair-cloth and fasts from all sorts of dainties were continual which was more than to abstain some dayes from flesh Wherefore altogether unsatisfied he further importuned the Emperour beseeching him to conceal nothing from him That it was the Divine will that he should acquaint him with what he did and that therefore he was sent unto him from God The Emperour thus urged said unto him Know then that when I assist at the horse-courses and spectacles in the Circus where my presence is required I so withdraw my minde from those vanities that though my eyes be open I see them not The Hermit remained astonisht at so particular a mortification in so great an Emperour and perceived that Scepters and Purple could not hinder a devout Prince from mortification of his affections and meriting much with God Almighty Theodosius further added Know also that I sustain my self by my labour for I transcribe certain parchments into a fair hand which being sold the price payes for my food With this example of poverty amongst so much riches and temperance in the middest of so great dainties the Hermit was wholly amazed and learned that abstinence from ease and pleasures of this life was that which made this religious Prince so gracious and acceptable unto our Lord. Finally so perverse are the delights of the World that though lawful yet they hinder much our spiritual proficiency and if unlawful are the total ruine of our Souls § 4. What shall we then say of the Royal and Imperial dignity which seems in humane judgement to embrace all the happiness of the World Honours Riches Pleasures all are contained in it But how small is a Kingdom since the whole Earth in respect of the Heavens is no bigger than a point and certainly neither Honours Riches or Pleasures are greater or more secure than we have described them Let us hear St. Chrysostome speak of the Emperours of his time Hom. 66. ad pop Look not upon the Crown saith he but upon that tempest of cares which accompany it Fix not thy eyes upon the purple but upon the mind of the King more sad and dark than the purple it self The Diadem doth not more encompass his head than cares and suspicions his soul Look not at the Squadions of his Guard but at the Armies of molestations which attend him for nothing can be so full of cares as the Palaces of Kings Every day they expect not one death but many nor can it be said how often in the night their hearts tremble with some sodain fright and their souls almost seem to forsake their bodies and this in the time of peace But when a warre is kindled what life so miserable as theirs how many dangers happen unto them even from their Friends and Subjects The floor of the Royal Palace is drowned in the blood of their Kindred If I shall mention those which have happened heretofore and now of late thou wilt easily know them This suspecting his Wife tied her naked in the mountains and left her to be devoured by wild beasts after she had been a Mother of divers Kings What a life had that man it being impossible he should execute such a revenge unless his sick heart had been eaten and consumed with jealousie This put to death his onely Son This killed himself being taken by the Tyrant This murthered his Nephew after he had made him his companion in the Empire This his Brother who died by poison and his innocent Son ended his life onely for what he might have been Of those Princes which followed one of them was with his Slaves and Chariots miserably burnt alive and it is not possible for words to express the calamities which he was forced to endure And he which now raigns hath he not since he was crowned suffered many troubles dangers griefs and treasons but in Heaven it is not so After this manner St. Chrysostome paints forth the greatest fortune of the World the Imperial Majesty which must needs be little since it is so unhappy that it suffers not to enjoy those frail goods of the earth in security but makes the possessors oftentimes perish before them But it is far otherwise in Heaven the Palace and House of God where the just without mixture or counterpoise of misery are to enjoy those goods eternal as we shall see in its proper place Lastly let us learn from hence not to admire the greatness of this World nor to desire the benefit of it Which lesson was well taught by St. Spiridion unto his Disciple who accompanying him one time unto the Court of the Emperour suffered himself to be transported with those things which he beheld The greatness and lustre of the Court The rich Garments Jewels Pearls and precious Stones dazled the eyes of the raw and unexperienced youth but above all the sight of the Emperour seated in his Imperial Throne with so much splendour and greatness almost drew him besides himself St. Spiridion willing one day to correct his errour asked him as if he had not known it Which of those were the Emperour His Disciple not reaching his intention
not true and fine gold which she wore but false and counterfeited for although it seemed gold it was but alchimy and yet being gilt she sold it for true gold So the Prosperity of the World comes decked with the goods of the earth which she fells for true goods setting them forth as great secure and lasting when they are nothing less All is but deceit and cozenage which is well exprest by Seneca when he sayes That is onely good which is honest other goods are false and adulterate What greater falshood and deceit than to make those things which are most vile and base to appear so precious and of such esteem that men pretend nothing greater and being more changeable than the Moon to appear constant and secure in so much as we remain so satisfied with them as if they were never to change and being fading and corruptible we seek after them as if they were eternal and immortal remembring nothing less than their end and ours forgetting wholly that they are to perish and we to die It is evident they are false since they promise of themselves what they neither have nor are Those who work in prospective will so paint a room that the light entring onely through some little hole you shall perceive beautiful and perfect figures and shapes but if you open the windows and let in a full light at most you shall see but some imperfect lines and shadows So the things of this World seem great and beautiful unto those who are in darkness and have but little light of heaven but those who enjoy the perfect light of truth and faith finde nothing in them of substance The felicity of this life is but a fiction and a shadow of true happiness and by that name is often qualified in holy Scripture which excellently expresses the nature of it For the shadow is not a body but a resemblance of a body and seeming to be something is nothing The inconstancy also and speedy change of humane things deserves this name because the shadow is alwayes altering and ends on a sodain And as the shadow when it is at length and can increase no further is nearest the end so temporal goods and humane fortunes when they are mounted up as high as the starres are then nearest to vanish and disappear sodainly And therefore one of the friends of Job faid Job 5. I saw the fool that he had taken deep rooting and instantly I cursed his beauty for the more firm he appeared to stand the more near he was unto his fall And David said he saw the Sinner exalted as a Cedar but he endured no longer than he turned his eyes What is to deceive but to publish that for truth which is not and to promise that which shall never be accomplished I leave to the witness of every one how often the issue of their hopes have proved vain not finding in what they desired that content which they expected In riches they hope for peace and repose but meet with nothing but unquietness and cares and many times with dangers and losses For this Christ our Redeemer called riches deceits saying that the Divine Word was choaked with the falshood and deceit of riches He is not content with calling them false and deceitful but calls them falshoods and deceits for what can be more false and perfidious then promising one thing to perform just the contrary The prosperity of this world promises us goods and gives us evils promises us ease and gives us cares promises security and gives us danger promises us great contents and gives us great vexations promises us a sweet life and gives us a bitter With reason it is said in the Book of Job that the bread Job 21. which the worldly man eats shall be converted into the gall of Aspes because that in those things which seem necessary for his life as the bread of its mouth he shall meet his death and when he hopes for pleasure he shall finde gall and no morsel which shall not leave some bitterness behinde it There is no felicity upon earth which carries not its counterpoise of misfortunes no happiness which mounts so high which is not depressed by some calamity For as they anciently painted humane Fancy in the form of a young man with one arm lifted up with wings as if it meant to flye towards heaven and the other weighed down by some great weight which hindred it from rising so humane felicity how high soever it soars hath still something to depress it §. 2. If we will evidently see how deceitfull are the things of this world this is a convincing argument that no man after he hath enjoyed what he most desires is content with his condition which apparently shews their deceit neither doth any man cease to desire more though he possess the greatest and most ample fortune in the world which also argues their falsehood since they satisfie not those who possess them No man but envyes the life of some other and grievs and complains of his own though far more happy Constantine the Great who was arrived at the height of humane felicity Euseb in Orat. de laudibus Constan said his life was something more honourable than that of Neat-heards and Shepheards but much more painful and troublesome Alfonsus King of Naples said the life of Kings was the life of Asses for the great burthens which they bear So as in the book of Job it is said Job 22. that the Giants groan under the waters In which place as Albertus Magnus explicates it by the Giants are understood the mighty ones of the earth upon whom it sends troubles and vexations for so the name of Waters signifie in that place of holy Scripture which makes them groan under the intolerable weight of them They are like the Giants which in great Cities are shewed at their solemn Feasts that which appears is some great and stately bulk covered with Gold and Silks but that which appears not is the little poor man which carries it upon his shoulders sweating groaning tyred and half dead with the weight The Sumpter-mules of the Grandees of Spain at their first coming to Court are loaden with great wealth of Silver Vessel Tissue-Beds and rich Hangings their Sumpter-clothes imbroidered their Winding-staves of silver their Cords of silk with their great Plumes their Bells Bosses and other Furniture But although their load be rich and sumptuous yet in fine it is a load and oppresses them and they are ready to faint and sink under the weight of it So is Honour Empire and Command Even King David confessed as much and sayes That his loyns were as it were disjoynted and he was bruised and wearied with the burthen Some Kings have said that which is particularly related by Stobaeus of Antigonus Stob. Ser. 3. who when he was crowned King of Macedonia said O Crown more noble than happy if men knew how full thou art of cares and
to the Common-wealth known to posterity But in Heaven there is no need of this artifice because those who are there honoured are immortal and shall have in themselves some character engraved as an evident and clear testimony of their noble Victories and Atchievements The honour of the Just in Heaven depends not like that of the Earth upon accidents and reports nor is exposed to dangers or measured by the discourse of others but in it self contains its own glory and dignity Cuiac ad tit de dignit The dignities in the Roma Empire as may be gathered from the Civil Law were four expressed by these four Titles Perfectissimus Clariffimus Spectabilis Illustris most Perfect most Clear Specious and Illustrious These Honours were onely in name and reputation not in substance and truth For He was often called most perfect who was indiscreet foolish passionate and imperfect He most clear who had neither clearness nor serenitity of understanding but was infected with dark and obscure vices Those specious and beautiful from whom a man would flye twenty leagues rather than behold them and those illustrious who were enveloped in the darkness of vice and ignorance without the least light of vertue That we may therefore see the difference betwixt the honours of Heaven and those of the Earth which are as farre distant from one another as truth from falsehood we must know that in Heaven the Blessed are not onely called most Perfect but really are so both in soul and body without the least imperfection or defect are not onely called most Clear but are so each one being adorned with that gift of brightness that they shall cast out beams more clear than the Sun and if the Sun be the most bright thing in nature what shall they be who seaventimes out-shine it Nor shall they be onely said to be spectabilis or specious and worthy to be looked upon but their beauty and comeliness shall be such as shall not onely draw the eyes of all to behold them but shall stirre up their affections to love and admire them In the like manner they shall not be titularly but really Illustrious for every one with his own light shall be sufficient to illustrate and enlighten many Worlds If one onely false title of those which are truely enjoyed by the Blessed were capable of making the Roman Empire to respect and honour the possessor what shall the truth and substance of them all do in Heaven 1 Mac. 2. With reason did Mathathias call the glory of this World dung and filth because all honours and dignities of the Earth in respect of those in Heaven are base vile and despicable What greater honour than to be Friends of God Sons Heirs and Kings in the Realm of Heaven Apoc. 4. St. John in his Apocalyps sets forth this honour of the blessed in the 24 Elders who were placed about the Throne of God and in that Honour and Majesty as every one was seared in his presence and that upon a Throne cloathed in white and lucid Garments in signe of their perpetual joy and crowned with a crown of Gold in respect of their dignities To be covered in the presence of Kings is the greatest honour they conferre upon the chiefest Grandees but God causes his Servants to be crowned and seated upon Thrones before him and our Saviour in the Day of Judgement makes his Disciples his fellow Judges §. 4. Certainly greater honour cannot be imagined than that of the Predestinate For if we look upon him who honours It is God If with what With no less joy than his own Divinity and other most sublime gifts If before whom Before the whole Theater of Heaven now and in the Day of Judgement before Heaven Earth Angels Men and Devils If the continuance For all eternity If the titles which he gives them it is the truth and substance of the things not the empty word and vain name By all this may appear the cause why eternal happiness being a mass and an assembly of all goods imaginable yet is called by way of excellence by the name of Glory because that although it contain all pleasures contents joyes riches and what can be defired yet it seems the Glory and honour which God bestows upon the Just exceeds all the other The honour which God gives in Heaven to glorious Souls may be seen by that which he gives to their worm-eaten bones upon Earth whereof St. Chrysostom speaks these words Where is now the Sepulcher of the great Alexander In 2. ad Corinth Hom. 26. shew it me I beseech thee and tell me the day whereon he died The Sepulchers of the Servants of Christ are so famous that they possess the most Royal and Imperial City of the World and the day whereon they died is known and observed as festival by all The Sepulcher of Alexander is unknown even to his own Countrymen but that of these is known to the very Barbarians Besides the Sepulchers of the Servants of Christ excell in splendor and magnificence the Palaces of Kings not onely in respect of the beauty and sumptuousness of their buildings wherein they also exceed but which is much more in the reverence and joy of those who repair unto them For even he who is clothed in Purple frequents their Tombs and humbly kisses them and laying aside his Majesty and Pomp supplicates their prayers and assistance with God Almighty he who wears the Diadem taking a Fisherman and a Maker of Tents for his Patrons and Protectors What miracles hath not God wrought by the Reliques of his Servants and what prodigies have not been effected by their bodies St. Chrysostome writes of St. Juventius Chrysost in Serm. de Juven Max. Sever. in Ep. ad Socrum and St. Maximus that their bodies after death cast forth such beams of light that the eyes of those who were present were not able to suffer them Sulpicius Severus writes of St. Martin that his dead body remained in a manner glorified that his flesh was pure as Chrystal and white as milk What wonders did God work by the bodies of St. Edward the King and St. Francis Xavier preserving them incorrupted for so many years and if he do those great things with their Bodies who are under the Earth what will he do with their Souls which are above the Heavens and what with them both when their glorious Bodies shall arise and after the Day of Judgement united to their Souls enter in triumph into the holy and eternal City of God CAP. III. Of the Riches of the eternal Kingdom of Heaven THe Riches in Heaven are no less than the Honours though those as hath been said are inestimable There can be no greater riches than to want nothing which is good nor to need any thing which can be desired and in that blessed life no good shall fall nor no desire be unsatisfied And if as the Philosophers say he is not rich who possesseth much
but he who desires nothing There being in Heaven no desire unaccomplished there must needs be great riches It was also a position of the Stoicks That he was not poor who wanted but he who was necessitated Since then in the Celestial Kingdom there is necessity of nothing most rich is he who enters into it By reason of these Divine Riches Christ our Saviour when he speaks in his Parables of the Kingdom of Heaven doth often express it under Names and Enigma's of things that are rich sometimes calling it the Hidden Treasure and sometimes the Precious Pearl and other times the Lost Drachma For if Divine happiness consist in the eternal possession of God what riches may be compared with his who enjoyes him and what inheritance to that of the Kingdom of Heaven What Jewel more precious than the Divinity and what Gold more pure than the Creator of Gold and all things precious who gives himself for a Possession and Riches unto the Saints to the end they should abhorre those Riches which are temporal if by them the eternal are endangered Let not therefore those who are to die to morrow afflict themselves for that which may perish sooner than they Let them not toyl to enjoy that which they are shortly to leave nor let them with more fervour pray for those things which are transitory than those which are eternal preferring the Creature before the Creator not seeking God for what he is but for what he gives Wherefore St. Austin sayes Aug. in Psal 52. God will be served gratis will be beloved without interest that is purely for himself and not for any thing without himself and therefore he who in invokes God to make him rich does not invoke God but that which he desires should come unto him for what is invocation but calling something unto him wherefore when thou shalt say My God give me riches thou dost not desire that God but riches should come unto thee for if thou hadst invoked God he would have come unto thee and been thy riches but thou desiredst to have thy Coffers full and thy heart empty and God fills not Chests but breasts § 2. Besides the possession of God it imports us much to frame a conception of this Kingdom of Heaven which is that of the Just where they shall reign with Christ eternally whose riches must needs be immense since they are to be Kings of so great and ample a Kingdom The place then which the Blessed are to inhabit is called she Kingdom of Heaven because it is a most large Region and much greater than can perhaps fall under the capacity of our understanding And if the Earth compared with Heaven be but a point and yet contain so many Kingdoms what shall that be which is but one Kingdom and yet extended over the whole Heavens How poor and narrow a heart must that Christian have who confines his love to things present sweating and toyling for a small part of the goods of this World which it self is so little why does he content himself with some poor patch of the Earth when he may be Lord of the whole Heavens Although this Kingdom of God be so great and spacious yet it is not dispeopled but as full of Inhabitants of all Nations and conditions as if it were a City or some particular House There as the Apostle said are many thousands of Angels an infinite number of the Just even as many as have died since Abel and thither also shall repair all who are to die unto the end of the World and after judgement shall there remain for ever invested in their glorious bodies There shall inhabit the Angelical Spirits distinguished with great decency into their Nine Orders unto whom shall correspond Nine others of the Saints Patriarchs Prophets Apostles Martyrs Confessors Pastors Doctors Priests and Levites Monks and Hermits Virgins and other holy Women This populous City shall not be inhabited with mean and base People but with Citizens so noble rich just and discreet that all of them shall be most holy and wise Kings How happy shall it be to live with such persons The Queen of Saba onely to see Salomon came from the end of the Earth and to see Titus Livius Nations and Provinces far distant came to Rome To behold a King issue out of his Palace all the People flock together What shall it then be not onely to see but to live and raign with so many Angels and converse with so many eminent and holy Men If onely to see St. Anthony in the Desert men left their Houses and Countries what joy shall it be to discourse and converse with so many Saints in Heaven If there should now descend from thence one of the Prophets or Apostles with what earnestness and admiration would every one strive to see and hear him In the other World we shall hear and see them all St. Romane at the sight of one Angel when he was a Gentile left the world and his life to become a Christian How admirable shall it then be to see thousand of thousands in all their beauty and greatness and so many glorious bodies of Saints in all their lustre If one Sun be sufficient to clear up the whole World here below what joy shall it be to behold those innumerable Sum in that Region of light From this multitude of Inhabitants the place of glory is not only called the Kingdom of Heaven but the City of God It is called a Kingdom for its immense greatness and a City for its great beauty and population It is not like other Kingdoms and Provinces which contain huge Deserts inaccessible Mountains and thick Woods nor is it devided into many Cities and Villages distant one from another but this Kingdom of God although a most spacious Region is all one beautiful City Who would not wonder if all Spain or Italy were but one City and that as beautiful as Rome in the time of Augustus Caesar who found it of Brick and left it of Marble What a sight were that of Chaldaea if it were all a Babylon or that of Syria if all a Jerusalem What shall then be the Celestial City of Saints whose greatness possesses the whole Heavens and is as the holy Scripture describes it to exaggerate the riches of the Saints all of Gold and precious Stones The Gates pf this City were as St. John sayes one entire Pearl and the foundations of the Walls Jasper Saphire Calcedon Emerald Topaz Jacinth Amethist and other most precious Stones The Streets of fine Gold so pure as it seemed Chrystal joyning in one substance the firmness of Gold and transparency of Chryftal and the beauty both of one and the other If all Rome were of Saphire how would it amaze the world how marvelous then will the holy City be which though extended over so many millions of leagues is all of Gold Pearl and precious Stones or to say better of a matter of farre more value
and peopled with such a multitude of beautiful Citizens as are as farre above any imaginable number as the capacity of the City is above any imaginable measure Some famous Mathematicians say of die Empyrial Heaven that it is so great that if God should allow unto every one of the blessed a greater space than the whole Earth yet there would remain as much more to give unto others and that the capaciousness of this Heaven is so great that it contains more than ten thousand and fourteen millions of miles What wonder will it be to see a City so great of so precious matter The Divines confess the capaciousness of this Heaven to be immense but are more willing to admire it than bold to measure it Joan. Gailer in suo Peregrino Howsoever there wants not one who sayes that if God should make each grain of sand upon the Sea-shore as big as the whole Earth they would not fill the Concave of the Empyrial Heaven and yet this Holy City possesseth all that space and is all composed of matter far more beautiful and precious than Gold Pearl and Diamonds For certain our thoughts cannot conceive so great riches and wonders for which we ought to undergoe all the pains and necessities of this World St. Francis of Assisium being afflicted with a grievous pain of his eyes in so much as he could neither sleep Chron. Frat. Min. p. 1. c. 60. nor take any rest and at the same time molested by the Devil who filled his Cell with Rats which with their Careers and noise added much unto his pain with great patience gave thanks unto the Lord that he had so gently chastized him saying My Lord Jesus Christ I deserve greater punishment but thou like a good Shepherd suffer me not to stray from thee Being in this meditation he heard a voice which said unto him Francis if all the Earth were of Gold and all the Rivers of Balsame and all the Rocks of precious Stones wouldest thou not say that this were a great treasure Know that a treasure which exceeds Gold as farre as Gold does Dirt Balsam Water or Precious-stones Pibbles remains as a reward for thy infirmity if thou be content and bear it with patience Rejoyce Francis for this treasure is Celestial glory which is gained by tribulations Certainly we have reason to suffer here all pains and poverty whatsoever since we are to receive in glory so much the greater riches Wherefore we ought to lift up our souls and weaning our hearts from the frail felicity of these temporal goods of the Earth to say with David Glorious things are said of thee City of God So did Fulgentius who entring Rome when it was yet in its lustre and beholding the greatness beauty and marvelous Architecture of it said with admiration O Celestial Jerusalem how beautiful must thou be if Terrestrial Rome be such A shadow of this was shewed unto St. Josaphat whose History is written by St. John Damascen In vita Josaph Barl. St Josaphat being in profound prayer prostrate upon the earth was overtaken with a sweet sleep in which he saw two men of grave demeanour who carried him through many unknown Countries unto a Field full of flowers and plants of rare beauty laden with fruit never before seen The leaves of the trees moved with a soft and gentle wind yielded a pleasant sound and breathed forth a most sweet odour there were placed many Seats of Gold and precious Stones which shined with a new kind of brightness and a little Brook of Chrystal water refreshed the air and pleased the sight with a most agreable variety From thence he was brought into a most beautiful City whose Walls were of transparent Gold the Towers and Battlements were of Stones of inestimable value the Streets and places shone with Celestial beams of light And there passed up and down bright Armies of Angels and Seraphins chanting such songs as were never heard by mortal ears Amongst other he heard a voice which said This is the repose of the Just this the joy of those who have given a good account of their lives unto God But all this is no more than a dream and a shadow in comparison of the truth greatness and riches of that Celestial Court. In regard that all the Blessed together with Christ are to raign in this most rich City and Kingdom how great shall the riches be who was ever so rich as to have at the entrance of his House a massie large piece of Gold two or three yards long What riches will those be of Heaven because all the Kingdom of Heaven is to be of pure Gold all the Streets and all the Houses of that Holy City and not only Gold but more than Gold The holy Scripture to make us on one part understand the riches of this Kingdom of God and on the other part to know that they are of a higher and more excellent nature than those of the Earth expresses them with the similitude of the riches of this World as Gold Pearl and precious Stones because by these names we understand things of great wealth and value but withall sets them forth for such as are not to be found upon earth so as when it speaks of Pearls it sayes they were so great as they served for the Gates of a City when it speaks of Emeralds and Topaz's it makes them to suffice for the foundatian of high Walls and Turrets when of Gold it makes it transparent as Glass or Chrystal All this is to signifie that in Heaven there are not onely greater riches but of a more sublime and high quality than ours upon Earth And with reason is that Holy City called the Kingdom of Heaven to let us know that the same advantage that Heaven hath above Earth the same have Celestial honours riches and joyes above those which are here below If the whole Earth is no more than a point in respect of the Heavens what can those short and corruptible riches be in respect of the eternal § 3. Of those incomparable riches the Blessed are not onely to be Lords but Kings as appears in many places of holy Scripture Neither is the Celestial Treasure â—or this Kingdom of Heaven less or poorer by having so many Lords and Kings It is not like the Kingdoms on Earthy which permit but one King at once and if divided become of less power and Majesty but is of such condition that it is wholly possessed by all in general and by each one in particular like the Sun which warms all and every one and not one less because it warms many The effects of riches are much greater and more noble in Heaven than they can be upon Earth Wealth may serve us here to maintain our power honours and delights but all the Gold in the world cannot free us from weakness infamy and pain The power of a rich King can reach no further than to Command his Vassals and those
that it may not onely be said to be joyful but joy it self The multitude of joyes in Heaven is joyned with their greatness and so great they are that the very least of them sufficient to make us forget the greatest contents of the Earth and so many they are as that though a thousand times shorter yet they would exceed all temporal pleasures though a thousand times longer but joyning the abundance of those eternal joyes with their immense greatness that eternal B iss becoms ineffable Wherefore St. Bernard sayes The reward of Saints is so great that it cannot be measured so numerous that it cannot be counted so copious that it cannot be ended and so precious that it cannot be valued Albert. Mag. in Comp. Theol. l. 7. c. 8. 1 Cor. 2. Isai 64. And Albertus Magnus to the same purpose So great are the joyes of Heaven that all the Arithmaticians of the Earth cannot number them The Geometricians cannot measure them nor the most learned men in the world explicate them because neither eye hath seen nor ear hath heard neither hath it entred into the heart of man what God hath prepared for those who love him The Saints shall rejoyce in what is above them which is the vision of God in what is below them which is the beauty of Heaven and other corporal Creatures in what is within them which is the glorification of their bodies in what is without them which is the company of Angels and men God shall feast all their spiritual senses with an unspeakable delight for he shall be their object and shall also be a mirrour to the sight musick to the ear sweetness to the taste balsam to the smell flowers to the touch There shall be the clear light of Summer the pleasantness of the Spring the abundance of Autumn and the repose of Winter §. 2. The principal joy of the Blessed is in the possession of God whom they behold clearly as he is in himself For as Honourable Profitable and Delectable according to what we have already said are not divided in Heaven so the blessed Souls have three gifts essential and inseparable from that happy state which correspond to those three kinds of blessings which the Divines call Vision Comprehension and Fruition The first consists in the clear and distinct sight of God which is given to the Just as a reward of his merits by which he receives an incomparable honour since his works and vertues are rewarded in the presence of all the Angels with no less a Crown and recompence than is God himself The second is the possession which the Soul hath of God as of his riches and inheritance And the third is the ineffable joy which accompanies this sight and possession The greatness of this joy no tongue can tell and I believe that neither the Blessed themselves who have experience of it nor the Angels of Heaven are able to declare it Yet it will not be amiss if we as much as our ignorance and rudeness is able to attain unto consider and admire it This joy hath two singular qualities by which we may in some sort conceive the immensity of it The first that it is so vigorous and powerful that it excludes all evil pain and grief This onely is so great a good that many of the Philosophers held it for the chief felicity of man Cicero de Fin. 5. Tuscul And therefore Cicero writes that Jeronymus Rhodius a famous Philosopher and a great Master to whom may be joyned Diodorus the Peripatetick speaking of the chief happiness of man taught that it consisted in being free from grief It being the opinion of those Philosophers that not to suffer pain or evil was the greatest and most supreme good But herein was their errour that they judged that to be the good it self which was but an effect and consequent of it For so powerful is that love and joy which springs from the clear vision of God that it is sufficient to convert hell into glory in so much as if to the most tormented Soul in hell were added all the torments of the rest of the Damned both Men and Devils and that God should vouchsafe him but one glympse of his knowledge that only clear vision though in the lowest degree were sufficient to free him from all those evils both of sin and pain So that his Soul being rapt by that ineffable beauty which he beheld would not be sensible of any grief at all O how potent a joy is that which cast into such an abyss of torments converts them all into consolations How mighty were that fire whereof one spark would consume the whole Ocean There is no joy in this World so intense which can suspend the grief we suffer from a finger that is in sawing off Griefs do more easily bereave us of the sense of pleasure than pleasures do of pains Yet such is the greatness of that soveraign joy in Heaven that it alone is sufficient to drown all the griefs and torments both in Earth and Hell and there is no pain in the World able to diminish the least part of it The other stupendious wonder which proceeds from the greatness of this joy is the multitude of those pleasures which as from a most fruitful root spring from it Who would not be astonisht that the happiness of the Soul should cause so many and so marvelous effects in the bodies of the Blessed So excellent is that beatifical vision which with ineffable joy possesses the spirit that it bursts forth into the body with all the evident demonstrations of beauty lustre and the other gifts of glory We see here that the heart is not able so farre to dissemble a great joy conceived as that it appears not by some signe in the body but that joy is so weak and feeble that it extends no further than to express some little chearfulness and mirth in the countenance But the beatifical Vision is so immense a joy that it wholly changes the body making it beautiful as an Angel resplendent as the Sun immortal as a Spirit and impassible as God himself working great miracles and prodigies in the body by the redundancie of that unspeakable comfort which the spirit feels O if one could place before the eyes of the World the body of some blessed Saint enendowed with the four gifts of glory full of clearness splendor and beauty casting forth a fragrancy infinitely more sweet unto the senses than that of Musk and Amber that men might see by this shadow how immense is that light and joy which thus illustrates and beautifies the flesh O mortals why do ye covet other pleasures with loss of Soul and Body and do not rather seek after these with the profit and glory of both O how different are temporal delights from eternal those especially if they be unlawful blemish and destroy the Soul and weaken and corrupt the body but these beautifie and embellish them both
of the Meadows the brightness of the Sun the sweet taste of Honey the pleasantness of Musick the beauty of the Heavens the comfortable smell of Amber the contentfulness of all the senses and all that can be either admired or enjoyed To this may be added that this inestimable joy of the vision of God is to be multiplied into innumerable other joyes into as many as there are blessed Spirits and Souls which shall enjoy the sight of God in regard every one is to have a particular contentment of the bliss of every one And because the blessed Spirits and Souls are innumerable the joyes likewise of every one shall be innumerable Ansel de Simil. cap. 71. This St. Anselme notes in these words With how great a joy shall the Just br replenished to accomplish whose blessedness the joy of each other Saint shall concur for as every Saint shall love another equally as himself so he shall receive equal joy from his happiness to that of his own And if he shall rejoyce in the happiness of those whom he loves equally unto himself how much shall he rejoyce in the happiness of God whom he loves better than himself Finally the blessed Soul shall be surrounded with a Sea of joys which shall fill all his powers and senses with pleasure and delight no otherwise than if a Sponge that had as many senses of pleasures as it hath pores and eyes were steeped in a Sea of milk and honey sucking in that sweetness with a thousand mouths God is unto the Blessed a Sea of sweetness an Ocean of unspeakable joyes Let us therefore rejoyce who are Christians unto whom so great blessings are promised let us rejoyce that Heaven was made for us and let this hope banish all sadness from our hearts Pallad Hist ca. 52. Palladius writes that the Abbot Apollo if he saw any of his Monks sad would reprehend him saying Brother why do we afflict our selves with vain sorrow let those grieve and be melancholy who have no hope of Heaven and not we unto whom Christ hath promised the blessedness of his glory Let this hope comfort us this joy refresh us and let us now begin to enjoy that here which we are ever hereafter to possess for hope as Philo sayes is an anticipation of joy Upon this we ought to place all our thoughts turning our eyes from all the goods and delights of the Earth The Prophet Elias when he had tasted but one little drop of that Celestial sweetness presently lockt up the windows of his senses covering his eyes ears and face with his mantle And the Abbot Sylvanus when he had finished his prayers shut his eyes the things of the Earth seeming unto him unworthy to be looked upon after the contemplation of the heavenly in the hope whereof we onely are to rejoyce CAP. V. How happy is the eternal life of the Just BY that which hath been said may sufficiently appear how happy and blessed is the life of the Just But so many are their joys and so abundant that eternal happiness that we are forced to insist further upon this Subject When the Hebrews would express ablessed person they did not call him blessed in the singular but blessings in the abstract and plural and so in the first Psalm in place of Beatus the Hebrews say Beatitudines and certainly with much reason since the Blessed enjoy as many blessings as they have powers or senses Blessings in their understanding will and memory blessings in their sight hearing smell taste and touch Nay their blessings exceed the number of their senses and the very pores of their bodies so as that life is truly a life entire total and most perfect wherein all that is man lives in joy and happiness The Understanding shall live there with a clear and supreme wisdom the Will with an inflamed love the Memory with an eternal representation of the good which is past the Senses with a continual delectation in their objects Finally all that is man shall live in a perpetual joy comfort and blessedness And to begin with the life and joy of the Understanding the Blessed besides that supreme and clear knowledge of the Creatour whereof we have already spoken shall know the Divine mysteries and the profound sense of the holy Scriptures they shall know the number of Saints and Angels as if they were but one they shall know the secrets of the Divine providence how many are damned and for what they shall understand the frame and making of the World the whole artifice of Nature the motions of the Stars and Planets the proprieties of Plants Stones Birds and Beasts and shall not onely know all things created but many of those things which God might have created all which they shall not onely know joyntly and in mass but clearly and distinctly without confusion This shall be the life of the Understanding which shall feast it self with so high and certain truths The knowledge of the greatest Wisemen and Philosophers of the World even in things natural is full of ignorance deceit and apparence because they know not the substance of things but through the shell and bark of accidents so as the most rude and simple Peasant arriving at the height of glory shall be replenished with a knowledge in respect of which the wisdom of Salomon and Aristotle were but ignorance and barbarism Blos de Mon. Spirit c. 14. Ludovicus Blosius reports that a certain simple and silly Maid appeared after death unto St. Gertrude and began to instruct her in many high and sublime matters The Saint admiring such great and profound knowledge in so ignorant a person asked her from whence she had it to whom the Virgin answered Since I came to see God I know all things Wherefore St. Cregory said well It is not to be believed that the Saints who behold within themselves the light of God are ignorant of any thing without them What a content were it to behold all the Wisemen of the World and the principal Inventers and Masters of Sciences and Faculties met together in one Room Adam Abraham Mayses Salomon Isay Zoroastes Plato Socrates Aristotle Pythagoras Hâ—mer Trismegistus Solon Lycurgus Hipocrates Euclides Archimedes Theophrastus Dioscorides and all the Doctors of the Church How venerable were this Juncto how admirable this Assembly and what journies would men make to behold them If then to see such imperfect scraps of knowledge divided amongst so many men would cause so great admiration what shall be the joy of the Blessed when each particular person shall see his own understanding furnished with that true and perfect wisdom whereof all theirs is but a shadow Who can express the joy they shall receive by the knowledge of so many truths What contentment would it be to one if at once they should shew unto him what ever there is and what is done in the whole Earth the fair Buildings so sumptuous all the Fruit-trees of so great diversity
all living Creatures of so great variety all the Birds so curiously painted the Fishes so monstrous the Mettals so rich all People and Nations farthest remote certainly it would be a sight of wonderful satisfaction But what will it be to see all this whatever there is in the Earth together with all that there is in Heaven and above Heaven Some Philosophers in the discovery of a natural truth or the invention of some rare curiosity have been transported with a greater joy and content than their senses were capable of For this Aristotle spent so many sleepless nights for this Pythagoras travelled into so many strange Nations for this Crates deprived himself of all his wealth and Archimedes as Vitruvius writes never removed his thoughts night nor day from the inquisition of some Mathematical demonstration Such content he took in finding out some truth that when he eat his mind was busie in making lines and angles If he bathed and annointed himself as was the custome of those times his two fingers served him in the room of a compass to make circles in the oyl which was upon his skin He spent many dayes in finding out by his Mathematical rules how much gold would serve to gild a crown of silver that the Goldsmith might not deceive him and having found it as he was bathing in a Vessel of brass not able to contain his joy he fetcht divers skips and cried out I have found it I have found it If then the finding out of so mean a truth could so transport this great Artist what joy shall the Saints receive when the Creatour shall discover unto them those high secrets and above all that sublime mysterie of the Trinity of persons in the unity of essence This with the rest of those Divine knowledges wherewith the most simple of the Just shall be endued shall satiate their Souls with unspeakable joyes O ye wise of the World and ignorant before God why do you weary your selves in vain curiosities busie to understand and forgetful to love intent to know and slow to work Drye and barren speculation is not the way to knowledge but devout affection ardent love mortification of the senses and holy works in the service of God Labour therefore and deserve and you shall receive more knowledge in one instant than the wise of the world have obtained with all their watchings travails and experiences Aristotle for the great love he bore to knowledge held that the chief felicity of man consisted in contemplation If he found so great joy in natural speculations what shall we find in divine and the clear vision of God There shall the Memory also live representing unto us the Divine benefits and rendring eternal thanks unto the Author of all the Soul rejoycing in its own happiness to have received so great mercies for so small merits and remembring the dangers from which it hath been freed by Divine favour it shall sing the verse in the Psalm The snare is broken and we are delivered The remembrance likewise as St. Thomas teaches of the acts of vertue and good works by which Heaven was gained shall be a particular joy unto the Blessed both in respect they were a means of our happiness as also of pleasing so gracious and good a Lord. This joy which results from the memory of things past is so great as Epicurus prescribing a way to be ever joyful and pleasant advises us to preserve in memory and to think often of contents past But in Heaven we shall not onely joy in the memory of those things wherein we have pleased God in complying with his holy will and in ordering and disposing our life in his service but in the troubles also and dangers we have past The memory of a good lost without remedy causes great regret and torment and to the contrary the memory of some great evil avoided and danger escaped is most sweet and delectable The Wise-man said the memory of death was bitter as indeed it is to those who are to die but unto the Saints who have already past it and are secure in Heaven nothing can be more pleasant who now to their unspeakable joy know themselves to be free from death infirmity and danger There also shall live the Will in that true and vital life rejoycing to see all its desires accomplished with the abundance and sweet satiety of so many felicities being necessitated to love so admirable a beauty as the Soul enjoyes and possesses in God Almighty Love makes all things sweet and as it is a torment to be separated from what one loves so it is a great joy and felicity to remain with the beloved And therefore the Blessed loving God more than themselves how unspeakable a comfort must it be to enjoy God and the society of those whom they so much affect The love of the Mother makes her delight more in the sight of her own Son though foul and of worse conditions than in that of her neighbours The love then of Saints one towards another being greater than that of Mothers to their Children and every one of them being so perfect and worthy to be beloved and every one enjoying the sight of the same God how comfortable must be their conversation Sen. Ep. 6. Seneca said That the possession of what good soever was not pleasing without a Partner The possession then of the chief good mus be much more delightful with the society of such excellent companions If a man were to remain alone for many years in some beautiful Palace it would not please him so well as a Desert with company but the City of God is full of most noble Citizens who are all sharers of the same blessedness This conversation also being with wise holy and discreet personages shall much increase their joy For if one of the greatest troubles of humane life be to suffer the ill conditions follies and impertinencies of rude and ill-bred people and the greatest content to converse with sweet pious and learned friends what shall that Divine conversation be in Heaven where there is none ill conditioned none impious none froward but all peace piety love and sweetness in so much as Saint Austin sayes Aug. lib. de Spirittu anima Every one shall there rejoyce as much in the felicity of another as in his own ineffable joy and shall possess as many joyes as he shall find companions There are all things which are either requisite or delightful all riches ease and comfort Where God is nothing is wanting All there know God without errour behold him without end praise him without weariness love him without tediousness and in this love repose full of God Besides all this the Security which the will shall have in the eternal possession of this felicity is an unspeakable joy The fear that the good things which we enjoy are to end or at least may end mingles wormwood with our joyes and pleasures do not relish where there is
the light and beauty which he beheld that his heart not being able to contain it it struck forth into his face with a divine brightness what joy shall the blessed Souls receive from the sight of God himself when they shall behold him as he is face to face not in passage or a moment but for all eternity This joy by reason of their strict union their Souls shall communicate unto their happy Bodies Albert. Mag. in Comp. Theol. l. 7. c. 38. which from thenceforth shall be filled with glory and invested with a light seaven times brighter than that of the Sun as is noted by Albertus Magnus For although it be said in the Gospel that the Just shall shine as the Sun yet Isaias the Prophet sayes that the Sun in these dayes shall shine seaven times more than it now doth This light being the most beautiful and excellent of corporal qualities shall cloath the Just as with a garment of most exceeding lustre and glory What Emperor was ever clad in such a purple what humane Majesty ever cast forth beams of such splendour Joseph l. 19. c. 〈◊〉 Herod upon the day of his greatest magnificence could only cloath himself in a Robe of silver admirably wrought which did not shine of it self but by reflection of the Sun beams which then in his rising cast his raies upon it and yet this little glittering was sufficient to make the people salute him as a God What admiration shall it then cause to behold the glorious Body of a Saint not cloathed in Gold or Purple not adorned with Diamonds or Rubies but more resplendent than the Sun it self Put all the brightest Diamonds together all the fairest Rubies all the most beautiful Carbuncles let an Emperial Robe be embroidered with them all all this will be no more than as coals in respect of a glorious body which shall be all transparent bright and resplendent far more than if it were set with Diamonds O the basenese of worldly riches they all put together could not make a Garment so specious and beautiful If here we account it for a bravery to wear a Diamond Ring upon our fingers and women glory in some Carbuncle dangling at their breasts what shall it be to have our hands feet arid breasts themselves more glorious and resplendent than all the Jewels of the World The Garments which we wear here how rich soever are rather an affront and disgrace unto us than an ornament since they argue an imperfection and a necessity of our bodies which we are forced to supply with something of another mature Besides our cloathes were given as a mark of Adams fall in Paradise and we wear them as a penance enjoyned for his Sin And what fool so impudent and sottish as to bestow precious trimming upon a penitential Garment But such are not the Ornaments of the Saints in Heaven their lustre is their own not borrowed from their Garments not extrinsecal without them but within their very entrails each part of them being more transparent than Chrystal and brighter than the Sun It is recounted in the Apocalyps as a great wonder that a Woman was seen cloathed with the Sun and crowned with twelve Stars This indeed was far more glorious than any Ornament upon Earth where we hold it for a great bravery to be adorned with twelve rich Diamonds and a Carbuncle and what are those in comparison of the Sun and so many Stars Yet this is short of the Ornament of the Saints whose lustre is proper to themselves intrinsecally their own not taken and borrowed from something without them as was that of the Womans The State and Majesty with which this gift of splendor shall adorn the Saints shall be incomparably greater than that of the mightiest Kings It were a great Majesty in a Prince when he issues forth of his Palace by night to be attended by a thousand Pages each having a lighted Torch but were those Torches Stars it were nothing to the state and glory of a Saint in Heaven who carries with him a light equal to that of the Sun seaven times doubled and what greater glory than not to need the Sun which the whole World needs Where the Just is shall be no night for wheresoever he goes he carries the day along with him What greater authority can there be than to shine far brighter than the Sun carrying with him far greater Majesty than all the men of the Earth could be able to conferre upon him if they went accompanying him carrying lighted Torches in their hands St. Paul beholding the gift of Clarity in the humanity of Christ remained for some dayes without sense or motion And St. John onely beholding it in the face of our Saviour fell down as if dead his mortal eyes not being able to endure the lustre of so great a Majesty St. Peter because he saw something of it in the transfiguration of Christ was so transported with the glory of the place that he had a desire to have continued there for ever Neither was this much in Christ since the people of Israel were not able to suffer the beams which issued from the face of Moses though then in a frail and mortal body Caesar lib. 12. mir cap. 54. Caesarius writes of a great Doctor of the University of Paris who being ready to give up his ghost wondered how it could be possible that Almighty God could make his body composed of dust to shine like the Sun But our Lord being pleased to comfort and strengthen him in the belief of the Article of the Resurrection caused so great a splendor to issue forth of the feet of the sick person that his eyes not being able to suffer so great a splendor he was forced to hide them under his Bed-cloathes But much more is it that in bodies already dead this glory should appear The body of St. Margaret Daughter to the King of Hungary sent forth such beams of light that they seemed to be like those of Heaven The splendor also of other dead bodies of the Saints hath been such that mortal eyes were not able to behold them If then this Garment of light do beautifie those dead bodies without souls how shall it illustrate those beautiful and perfect bodies in Heaven who are alive and animated with their glorious spirits for all eternity St. John Damascen said that the light of this inferiour World was the honour and ornament of all things How shall then the immortal light of that eternal glory deck and adorn the Saints for it shall not onely make them shine with that bright candor we have already spoken of but with diversity of colours shall imbellish some particular parts more than others In the Crowns of Virgins it shall be most white in that of Martyrs red in that of Doctors of some particular brightness Neither shall those marks of glory be only in their heads or faces but in the rest of their members And therefore
no wayes hinder them they shall therefore in the same manner walk or stay upon Water Air Heavens as upon Earth It was miraculous in St. Quirinus Martyr St. Maurus and St. Francis of Paula that they walked upon waters passed rapid rivers and seas without Vessels but the glorious bodies shall not onely be able to traverse the seas mount into the air but enter into flames secure and without hurt It is said of S. Francis of Assisium that in the fervour of his prayers and contemplations he was seen lifted up into the air and the great Servant of God Father Diego Martines of the Society of Jesus was lifted up in prayer above the highest trees and Towers and hanging in the air persisted in his devotion If God vouchsafe so great favours to his servants in this valley of tears what priviledges will he deny to the Citizens of Heaven To this so notable gift of Agility shall be annexed that of Penetration by which their glorious bodies shall have their way free and pervious through all places no impediment shall stop their motion and for them shall be no prison or enclosure They shall with greater ease pass through the middle of a rock than an arrow through the air It shall be the same thing for them to mount unto the Moon where they shall meet no solid body to oppose them as to pierce unto the center through rocks mettals and the gross body of the earth We wonder to hear that the Zahories see those things which are hid under the earth Let us admire that which is certain that the Saints cannot onely see but enter into the profundity of the earth and tell what minerals and other secrets are contained in its entrails Metaphrastes writes that a certain Goth a Souldier of the Garrison of Edessa fell passionately in love with a Maid of the same City and sinding no other way to enjoy her demanded her in marriage but the Mother and Kindred gave no ear to the treaty trusting little to a Barbarian and a Stranger who carrying her into a Country far distant as his was might there use her at his pleasure The Souldier notwithstanding persisting still in his suit with many promises of good entertainment gained at last the consent of the Maid and her Friends onely the Mother would not be satisfied before they had entred all together into the Temple of the holy Martyrs St. Samona Curia and Abiba and that there the Souldier had renewed his promises by solemn oath and called the holy Martyrs as witnesses which done the Maid was delivered unto him whom he not much after carried into his own Country where he was formerly married and had his Wife yet living There better to conceal his wickedness he fell into a greater and like a wild beast without pity enclosed the poor woman alive in a Sepulcher and there left her She thus betrayed had recourse unto the Saints whom she with tears invoked as witnesses of the Souldiers treachery and breach of faith At the instant the holy Martyrs appeared in a glorious equipage and casting her into a gentle sleep conveyed her the Sepulcher still remaining lockt without hurt into her own Country where they left her The Barbarian ignorant of what had happened and perswading himself she was long fince dead returned a second time to Edessa where convinced of the crime he satisfied it with his life If the Saints then have power to make the persons of others pass through distinct bodies much more are they able to make their own to penetrate them without impediment Finally the Servants of Christ shall be there so replenished with all goods both of soul and body that there shall be nothing more for them to desire And every one even during this life hoping for those eternal goods may say with St. Austin What wouldest thou my Body what is' t thou defirest my Soul There ye shall find all which you desire If you are pleased with beauty there the Just shine as the Sun and if with any pure delight there not one but a whole sea of pleasure which God keeps in store for the Blessed shall quench your thirst Let men then raise their desires unto that place where only they can be accomplished Let them not gape after things of the earth which cannot satisfie them but let them look after those in Heaven which are onely great onely eternal and can onely fill the capacity of mans heart CAP. VII How we are to seek after Heaven and to preferre it before all the goods of the Earth LEt a Christian compare the miseries of this life with the felicities of the other the weakness of our nature in this mortal estate with the vigour and priviledges of that immortal which expects us and let him excite and stir up himself to gain a glory eternal by troubles short and temporary Justinus lib. 1. Cyrus when he intended to invade the Medes commanded his Persians upon a certain day to meet him with each one a sharp Hatchet They obeying he willed them to cut down a great Wood which performed with much toyl and diligence he invited them for the next day unto a sumptuous Banquet and in the height of their mirth demanded of them whether they liked better the first dayes labour or that dayes feast The answer was ready all cried out That dayes entertainment With this he engaged them to make warr upon the Medes assuring them that after a short trouble in subduing an effeminate Nation they should enjoy incomparable pleasure and be Masters of inestimable riches This served him to make the Persians follow him and conquer the Kingdom of the Medes If this motive were sufficient to make a barbarous people preferre a doubtful reward before a certain and hazardous labour why should not a certain reward and infinitely greater than the labour suffice us Christians Let us compare that Celestial Supper of the other life with the troubles of this The greatness of the Kingdom of Heaven with the littleness of our services The joyes above with the goods below and our labours will seem feasts our services repose and the felicity of earth misery and baseness What is the honour of this life which is in it self false given by lying men short and limited in respect of that honour the Just receive in Heaven which is true given by God eternal extended through the Heavens and manifested to all that are in them Men and Angels What are the riches of the Earth which often fail are ever full of dingers and cares and never free their owners from necessity in comparison of those which have no end and give all security and abundance What are their short pleasures which prejudice the health consume the substance and make infamous those who seek them in respect of those immense joyes of glory which with delight joyn honour and profit What is this life of misery to that full of blessings and happiness and what those evil qualities
instead of the burning coals of that eternal fire Neither shall they be Masters so much as of that broken pot wherein to contain a little water if it might be given them Jsai 30. For as Isaias sayes There shall not remain unto them so much as the shread of a broken pot to hold a little water from the pit nor shall there be any found to give it them That rich Glutton in the Gospel accustomed to drink in Cups of Chrystal to eat in Silver and to be cloathed in Silks and curious Linnens can tell us how far this infernal poverty extends when he demanded not wines of Candie but a little cold water and that not in Cups of Gold or Chrystal but upon the fingers end of a Leper This rich and nice Glutton came to such an extremity that he would esteem it a great felicity that they would give him but one drop of water although it were from the filthy and loathsome finger of a Leper and yet this also was wanting unto him Let the rich of the World see to what poverty they are like to come if they trust in ther riches let them know that they shall be condemned to the loss of all which is good Let them reflect upon him who was accustomed to be cloathed in precious Garments to tread upon Carpets to sleep upon Down to dwell in spacious Palaces now naked thrown upon burning coals and packt up in some narrow corner of that infernal Dungeon Let us therefore fear the riches of this World and the poverty of the other §. 4. This poverty or want of all good of the damned is accompanied with a most opprobrious infamy and dishonour when by publick sentence they shall be deprived for their enormous offences of eternal glory and reprehended in the presence of Saints and Angels by the Lord of Heaven and Earth This infamy shall be so great that St. Chrysostom speaks of it in these words A most intolerable thing is Hell Chrys in Math. 24. and most horrible are the torments yet if me should place a thousand Hells before me nothing could be so horrible unto me as to be excluded from the honour of glory to be hated of Christ and to hear from him these words I know you not This infamy we may in some sort declare under the example of a mighty King who having no Heir to succeed him in his Kingdom took up a beautiful Boy at the Church door and nourished him as his Son and in his Testament commanded that if at ripe years his conditions were vertuous and sutable to his calling he should be received as lawful King and seated in his Royal Throne but if he proved vitious and unfit for Government they should punish him with infamy and send him to the Gallies The Kingdom obeyed this Command provided him excellent Masters and Tutors but he became so untoward and ill-inclined that he would learn nothing flung away his books spent his time amongst other Boyes in making houses of dirt and other childish fooleries for which his Governors corrected and chastised him and advised him of what was fitting and most imported him but all did no good onely when they reprehended him he could weep not because he repented but because they hindred his sport and the next day did the same The more he grew in age the worse he became and although they informed him of the Kings Testament and what behooved him all was to no purpose until at last after all possible care and diligence his Tutors and the whole Kingdom weary of his ill conditions in a publick Assembly declared him unworthy to raign dispoiled him of his Royal Ornaments and condemned him with infamy unto the Gallies What greater affront and ignominy can there be than this to lose a Kingdom and to be made a Gally-slave for I do not know which of these things that young man would be more sensible of More ignominious and a more lamentable Tragedy is that of a Christian condemned to Hell who was taken by God from the gates of death adopted his Son with condition that if he kept his Commandments he should raign in Heaven and if not he should be condemned to Hell Yet he forgetting these obligations without respect of his Tutors and Masters who were the holy Angels especially his Angel Guardian who failed not to instill into him holy inspirations and other learned and spiritual men who exhorted him both by their doctrine and example what was fitting for a Child of God But he neither moved by their advices nor the chastisements of Heaven by which God overthrew his vain intentions and thwarted his unlawful pleasures onely lamented his temporal losses and not his offences and at the time of his death was sentenced to be deprived of the Kingdom of Heaven and precipitated into Hell What infamy can be greater than this of the damned Soul for if it be a great infamy to suffer death by Humane Justice for some crimes committed how great an infamy will it be to be condemned by Divine Justice for a Traitor and perfidious Rebel to God Besides this bitterness of pains the damned persons shall also be eternally branded with the infamy of their offences so as they shall be scorned and scoft at by the Devils themselves and not onely Devils but all rational creatures Men and Angels shall detest them as infamous and wicked Traitors to their King God and Redeemer Jsai 13. Facies combustae vultus eorum And as fugitive Slaves are marked and cauterized with burning irons so this infamy by some special mark of ugliness and deformity shall be stamped upon their faces and bodies so as Albertus Magnus sayes so ignominious shall be the body of a Sinner that when his Soul returns to enter it it shall be amazed to behold it so horrible and shall wish it were rather in the same state as when it was half eaten up by worms CAP. IX The Punishment of the Damned from the horribleness of the place into which they are banished from Heaven and made Prisoners in Hell ANother kind of punishment of great discomfort and affliction is that of Exile which the Damned shall suffer in the highest degree For they shall be banished into the profound bowels of the Earth a place most remote from Heaven and the most calamitous of all others where they shall neither see the Sun by day nor the Stars by night where all shall be horror and darkness and therefore it was said of that condemned person Cast him forth into utter darkness forth of the City of God forth of the Heavens forth of this World where he may never more appear into that land which is called in the Book of Job A dark land Job 10. covered with the obscurity of death a land of misery and darkness where the shadow of death and no order but everlasting horror inhabits a land according to Isaias Jsai 34. of sulphur and burning pitch a land of
pestilence and corruption and a land of uncleanness and misery S. Tho. in 4. Sent. St. Thomas sayes that in the last purification of the World there shall be a separation made in the Elements in such a manner as the pure and refined parts shall remain above for the glory of the Blessed and the impure dross and dregs shall be thrown into Hell for the punishment of the Damned Wherefore as every creature is matter of joy to the Blessed so every creature shall add unto the torments of the Damned This appertains unto Divine Justice that as separating themselves by sin from him who is one they placed their ends in material things which are many so from many things they should receive their affliction Into this Sewer and Sink of all the Elements into this land of punishment and torments shall be banished the enemies of God The punishment of Exile was most grievous unto the Roman Citizens when for some enormous fault they were cast forth of the City and banished into some desolate Island or barbarous Nation Ovid when he was sent into Pontus did not cease from lamenting his misfortune still sighing after his own Country And Cicero when he returned from banishment as if he had entred into a new World whereof they had made him Lord cried out with admiration and joy O what beauty is this of Italy what civility of People what Fields what Vines and Crops of Corn what decency of the City what humanity of the Citizens what dignity of the Commonwealth If men were thus transported by the difference betwixt some Countries and others and betwixt some Men and others what difference shall the Damned find betwixt Heaven and Hell and betwixt the conversation of Angels and of Devils What a grief shall it be to see themselves deprived of the Palaces of Heaven the society of Saints and that happy Country of the Living where all is peace quietness charity and joy where all shines all pleases and all parts resound with Alleluja's David being absent from his Country amongst barbarous Nations although his life were preserved by his banishment yet could not choose but resent it as his death And the People of Juda whilst they remained in Babylon thought it impossible for them to sing being an action of mirth whilest they were in a strange Country Certainly if the Damned had no other punishment than to see themselves banisht amongst Devils into a place far distant from Heaven sad as night without the sight or comfort of Sun or Moon for all eternity it were a torment unsufferable Seneca Justin Valerius Suidas It was a great Tyranny in Alexander after he had cut of the nose ears and lips of Calistenes to cast so worthy a person into a Dungeon onely accompanied with a dog A spectacle indeed lamentable to see so discreet a man used like a brute and not have the company of one who might comfort him But the Damned would take it as a favour to have the company of Dogs or Lions rather than that of their own Parents The Tyrants of Japonia invented a strange torment for those who confessed Christ They hung them with their heads downwards half their bodies into a hole digged in the earth which they filled with Snakes Lizards and other poisonous vermin But even those were better companions than those infernal Dragons of the pit of Hell whereunto not half but the whole body of the miserable sinner shall be plunged The Romans when they punisht any as a Parricide Isid l. 5. Etymo c. 47. to express the hainousness of the fact shut him up in a Sack with a Serpent an Ape and a Cock What a horror shall it be in Hell where a damned person shall be shut up with so many malicious spirits Here if a house be haunted with a Goblin none dare dwell in it There they shall be forced to dwell with millions of Devils Here none will live near a Pest-house or ill Neighbours Think upon what neighbourhood is in Hell Cato counselled those who were to take a Farm to have a special care what Neighbours it had And Themistocles being to sell a certain Manour Plutar. in Them caused the Cryer to proclaim That it had good Neighbours How com's one then to purchase Hell at so dear a rate as the price of his Soul having such cursed Neighbours where all scoff and decide him all will abhorre him all will be irksome and troublesome their disquietness and ranting will be insufferable and the very sight and ugliness of them will fright and astonish him How grievous is the banishment into that place where none wishes well unto another where the Fathers hate their Sons and the Sons abhorre their Fathers This may appear by this example which is rehearsed in the lives of the Ancient Fathers of the Desert A Son of an Usurer being converted to penance by a Sermon wherein that vice was reprehended begged of his Father and of another Brother of his that forsaking that infamous vice they would restore all that they had unlawfully gained They not hearkning to him but as they use to say being deaf of that ear he retired into the Wilderness and became a Monk in company of other Servants of Almighty God His Father and Brother died without repentance of their sins The holy Monk was much afflicted for the miserable condition he feared they were in and begged earnestly of Almighty God he would please to reveal unto him their state and condition Being one day persisting in this prayer an Angel appeared unto him and taking him by the hand carried him to the top of a high Mountain from whence he discovered a deep valley full of fire whence having first heard a fearful cry he presently saw his Father who boiled in the fire like a pea in a boiling pot and his Brother swimming as it were in the flames now above and now below The Son spake unto his Father saying Cursed be thou Father for all eternity because by an unjust inheritance thou hast been the cause of my damnation And the Father answered him Cursed be thou Son for to the end I might leave thee a rich Inheritance I stuck not to gain it by unjust means They disappeared and the Monk much astonished returned home to his Monastery where he lived in very rigorous penance till death In other banishments when Parents or Friends meet in a Country far from home they endeavour to comfort one another and even enemies are then reconciled But in this banishment of Hell friends abhorre Friends and Parents hate and are hated by their Children § 2. To this may be added that in this banishment of the Damned the exiles are not allowed the liberty of other banished persons who within the Isle or Region of relegation may goe or move whither they please but not so the Damned in Hell because the place of their exile is also a Prison that so this grievous sort of punishment may be also
added to their other torments Hell is the Prison of God a most rigorous Prison horrid and stinking wherein so many millions of men shall for ever lye fettered in chains for chains or something answerable unto them shall not there be wanting Whereupon St. Austin sayes and is followed by the Schoolmen Aug. l. 1. de Civit. Cap. 10. that the malign spirits shall be fastned to fire or certain fiery bodies from which the pain which they receive shall be incredible being thereby deprived of their natural liberty V. Less de Perfec Divin l. 13. c. 30. as it were fettered with manicles and bolts so as they are not able to remove from that place of mishap and misery It were a great torment to have burning irons cast upon our hands and feet but this and much more shall be in Hell where those fiery bodies which are to serve instead of shackles and fetters are as grave Doctors affirm to be of terrible forms proportionable unto their offences and shall with their very sight affright them Besides the bodies of the Damned after the final Judgement past shall be so streightned and crowded together in that infernal Dungeon that the holy Scripture compares them to grapes in the Wine-press which press one another until they burst Most inhumane was that torment inflicted upon three Fathers of the Society of Jesus by their Enemies at Mastrick They put certain rings of iron stuck full of sharp points of needles about their arms and feet in such manner as they could not move without pricking and wounding themselves Then they compassed them about with fire to the end that standing still they might be burnt alive and if they stirred the sharp points pierced their flesh with more intolerable pains than the fire What shall then be that torment of the Damned where they shall eternally burn without dying and without possibility of removing from the place designed them where whatsoever they touch shall be fire and sulphur into which their bodies shall at the latter day be plunged as their souls at present swim in the middle of that lake or pond of fire as the Scripture calls it like fishes in the Sea which enters into their very substance more than the water into the mouth nose and ears of him who is drowned Neither shall unsavoury smells so proper unto Prisons be wanting in that infernal Dungeon For first that fire of sulphur being pent in without vent or respiration shall send forth a most poisonous sent and if a match of brimstone be so offensive here what shall such a mass of that stuffe be in Hell Secondly the bodies of the damned shall cast forth a most horrible stench of themselves and that more or less according to the quality of their sins It happened in Lions that a Sexton entring into a certain Vault where the body of a man not long before dead lay yet uncovered there issued forth so pestilential a smell that the dead man killed the living If one mans body then cause such a stink what shall proceed from a million of bodies which though alive for their further evil yet are dead in the second death besides as hath been said all the uncleanness and filth of the World when it is purified must fall into that eternal Sink which shall infinitely encrease this noisome quality Paulus Jovius writes that the Enemy of mankind Actiolinus the Tyrant had many Prisons full of torments misery and ill smells insomuch as men took it for a happiness rather to die than to be imprisoned because being loaden with irons afflicted with hunger and poisoned with the pestilential smell of those who died in Prison and were not suffered to be removed they came to end in a slow but most cruel death The Messenians also had a most horrible Prison under earth full of stench and horror into which offenders were let down with a cord never after to see the light But what are these Prisons to that of Hell in respect of which they may be esteemed as Paradises full of Jessemy and Lillies Victor Afric l. 2. de Persec Vandal Victor Africanus relating the torments which the Arian Vandals inflicted upon the holy Martyrs accounts the stench and noisomness of the Prison to be the most hidious and unsufferable of all the rest There were saith he in one Prison 4996 Martyrs which was so straight and narrow that they flung the holy Confessors into it one upon another who stood like swarms of Locusts or to speak more piously like precious grains of Wheat In this want of room they had not place to comply with the necessities of nature but were forced to ease themselves where they stood which caused so horrid a savour as exceeded all the rest of their afflictions One time saith the Author giving a good summe of money to the Moors we had leave whilest the Vandals slept to see them and at our entrance sunk up to the knees in that filth and loathsomness It seems that the stink of Hell could not be more lively expressed than in the uncleanness and stench of this Prison but without doubt all this was but a rough draught and a dead image of that which shall be there in respect whereof this here was Perfume and Amber If one were cast into some deep dongeon without cloathes exposed to the inclemency of the cold and moysture of the place where he should not see the light of Heaven should have nothing to feed on but once a day some little peece of hard barley bread and that he were to continue there six yeares without speaking or seeing of any body and not to sleep on other bed but the cold ground what a misery were this one week of that habitation would appeare longer than a hundred years Yet compare this with what shall be in that banishment and prison of Hell and you shall finde the miserable life of that man to be a happiness There in all his troubles he should not meet with any to scoff and jest at his misfortunes none to torment and whip him but in Hell he shall finde both The Devils shall not cease to deride whip and cruelly torment him There should be no horrid fights no fearefull noyses of howlings groanings and lamentations In hell the eyes and eares of the damned shall never be free from such affrights There should be no flames of fire to scorch him In hell they shall burn into his very bowels There he might move and walk In hell not stirr a foot There he may breath the ayr without stink In hell he shall suck in nothing but flames stink and sulphur There he might hope for coming forth In hell there is no remedy no redemption There that little peece of hard bread would every day seem a dainty But in hell in Millions of yeares his eyes shall not behold a crum of bread nor a drop of water but he shall eternally rage with a dog-like hunger and a burning thirst
tribulation and affliction would be too great to give satisfaction Well may he say I deserved to suffer greater torments and therefore will not complain of this my light suffering Beda de Gest Anglorum l. 5. Venerable Bede doth also write of one to whom the pains and torments as also the joyes and bliss of the other life were shewn and having obtained leave to return to this world again he renounced all he had in this life and betook himself unto a Monastery where he persevered in a most rigid manner of life to his dying day in so much that his manner of living gave perpetual testimony that although he was silent yet he had seen horrible things and that he had hopes to obtain other great ones which did indeed deserve to be thirsted after He entred into a frozen River which was near the Convent without putting off his cloathes having first broke the ice in several places that he might be able to get into the water and afterwards let his cloathes to dry upon his back Some admired that a man's body was able to suffer so great cold in the Winter time And to those who demanded How he could possibly endure it He replyed I have seen colds far greater And when they said unto him How can you so constantly keep such a rigorous and austere manner of life He replied I have seen far greater austerity Neither did he relent in the rigour of his penance even in his decrepit age but was very careful to chastise his flesh with continual fasts and his exemplar conversation and wholsome admonitions were such as he did much good to many and efficaciously stirred them up to the amendment of their lives We must make use of this self-same consideration to encourage our selves to suffer in this life all that can be suffered in regard that in the other we should suffer more than can be suffered Hell certainly is more unsufferable than fasting with bread and water farre more than a rough hair-cloth or a discipline though never so bloody far more than the greatest injuries or disgraces that can be put upon us Let us then suffer that which is lesser to be freed from that which is greater especially being so much greater by how much a living creature exceeds a painted one Let us not complain of any thing that may happen unto us in this life But let us rather be comforted that we who have deserved to be in those eternal flames without profit or hope of reward may by our patient suffering here some temporal afflictions expect an everlasting reward for them in Heaven The Mother of St. Catharine of Siena carried her to certain Baths to divert and recreate her because she was very weak Hist S. Dom. 2. p. lib. 2. and disfigured with leanness But the Saint could find in this entertainment a sharp cross which was that entring into the Bath alone she went to the Bathhead where the water came out in a manner boyling hot and there suffered her self to be scalded to that degree that it seemed impossible for a weak Damsel to have been able to endure it Her Confessarius asked her afterwards How she had so much courage to abide such heat and for so long a space She replyed That when she placed her self there she also placed her consideration in the pains of Purgatory and Hell-fire and withall begged of God Almighty whom she had offended that he would be pleased to change the punishments she had deserved by her sins into temporal pains and sufferings whereby all the pains of this life seemed very easie unto her to suffer and the great heat of the scalding water of the Bath seemed a refreshment to her in respect of the fiery Furnace of Hell in which the damned are for ever and ever to be tormented And in regard holy Scripture calls Hell a Poole or Lake of fire Pet. Damian l. 2. ep 15. ad Desid c. 4. I will here rehearse a story out of St. Petrus Demianus which will give us to understand the terribleness of this torment In Lombardy saith he there was a man cunning and crafty of a notable talking tongue and a friend of breaking jests on all occasions and commonly by reason of his quick wit he came off with credit And if at any time it happened to him otherwayes he knew how to put it off very handsomely In fine he was one of those that knew very well how to live in the world But what end had all his tricks and slights he died for against this stroak he had no defence His body was buried in the Church and his soul in the place which God grant no body may ever come in An holy Religious man being in prayer he saw in spirit a great Lake not of water but of fire which boiled like a Pot and cast flames now and then up into the heavens which sent forth sparks in so great quantity and with such fearful noise that it caused great horrour to hear and see it What would it be to suffer it The miserable foul of this man we speak of did suffer it in all extremity Moreover he saw that the Lake was encompassed round about with fearful Serpents and terrible Dragons which had their mouths open towards the Lake with many rows of sharp teeth to guard the Lake In this confusion of fire and cruel beasts the Soul of the miserable Babler was howling and crying and swimming upon the flames endeavoured to get to the banck and drawing nigh the comfort he found was that a Serpent stretching out a long neck and a wide mouth was ready to tear him in pieces and swallow him He endeavoured to turn another way in the Lake and drawing near the side he lighted upon a Dragon the onely sight whereof made him make more haste back again than he had done to come thither He swam in the Lake burning alive and where-ever he came he found the like encounter but which is worse he shall remain there whilest God is God without any remedy at all And with much reason saith St. Peter Damianus he suffered this punishment of not being able to get out of that Lake of fire in regard he in this life got so cunningly out of any adversity by his many shifts In this manner God Almighty gave to understand by this revelation the extremity of this torment But it is to be noted that it is farre greater than is here expressed because this was not so much to tell us what hell is as to declare by some similitude or representation which may remain fixt in our senses that which indeed exceeds all similitude or resemblance § 3. The pains of the Powers of a damned Soul THe Imagination shall no less afflict those miserable offenders encreasing the pains of the Senses by the liveliness of its apprehension For if in this life the imagination is sometimes so vehement that it hurts more than real evils in the other the torment
shall with great grief remember how often he might have gained Heaven and did it not but is now tumbled into Hell and shall say unto himself How many times might I have prayed and spent that time in play but now I pay for it How many times ought I to have fasted and left it to satisfie my greedy appetite How many times might I have given alms and spent it in sin How many times might I have pardoned my enemies and chose rather to be revenged How many times might I have frequented the Sacraments and forbore them because I would not quit the occasion of sinning There never wantted means of serving God but I never made use of it and am therefore now justly paid for all Behold accursed Caitiff that entertaining thy self in pleasures thou hast for toyes and fooleries lost Heaven If thou wouldest thou mightest have been a companion for Angels if thou wouldest thou mightest have been in eternal joy and thou hast lost all for the pleasure of a moment O accursed and wretched fool thy Redeemer courted thee with Heaven and thou despisedst him for a base trifle This was thy fault and now thou sufferest for it and since thou wouldest not be happy with God thou shalt now be eternally cursed by him and his Angels The Understanding shall torment it self with discourses of great bitterness discoursing of nothing but what may grieve it Aristotle shall not there take delight in his wisdom nor Seneca comfort himself with his Philosophy Galen shall find no remedy in his Physick nor the profoundest Scholar in his Divinity A certain Doctor of Paris appeared after death unto the Bishop of that City and gave him an account that he was damned The Bishop demanded of him if he had there any knowledge He answered That he knew nothing but onely three things The first that he was eternally damned The second that the Sentence past against him was irrevocable The third that for the vain pleasure of the world he was deprived of the vision of God And then he desired to know of the Bishop if there were any people in the world remaining The Bishop asking him the reason of that question he answered that within these few last dayes there have so many souls descended into Hell that me-thinks there should not any be left upon earth In this power of the Soul is engendered tho worm of conscience which is so often proposed unto us in holy Scripture as a most terrible torment and greater than that of fire Onely in one Sermon or rather in the Epilogue of that Sermon Christ our Redeemer three times menaces us with that Worm Marc. 9. which gnaws the consciences and tears in pieces the hearts of the Damned admonishing us as often That their worm shall never die nor their sire be quenched For as the worm which breeds in dead flesh or that which breeds in wood eats and gnaws that substance of which they are engendered so the Worm which is bred from sin is in perpetual enmity with it gnawing and devouring the heart of the sinner with raging desperate and now unprofitable grief still putting him in mind that by his own fault he lost that eternal glory which he might so easily have obtained and is now fallen into eternal torments from whence there is no redemption And certainly this resentment of the loss of Heaven shall more torment him than the fire of Hell Of an evil conscience even in this life St. Austin said Aug. in Psal 45. Quint. Declam 12. Senec. ep 97. that amongst all the tribulations of the Soul none was greater than that of a guilty conscience Even the Gentils knew this and therefore Quintilian exclaims O sad remembrance and knowledge more grievous than all torments And Seneca sayes that evil actions are whipt by the conscience of themselves that perpetual vexation and resentment brings great afflictions and torments upon the Actors that wickedness drinks up the greatest part of its own poison and is a punishment unto it self Certainly it were a great rigour if a Father should be forced to be present at the execution of his Son but more if he should be compelled to be the Hangman and yet greater if the Gallows should be placed before his own door so that he could neither go in or out without beholding that affront and contumely but far greater crueltie if they should make the guilty person to execute himself and that by cutting his body in pieces member after member or tearing off his flesh with his own teeth This is the cruelty and torment of an evil Conscience with which a sinner is racked and tortured amongst those eternal flames not being able to banish his faults from his memory nor their punishment from his thoughts The envy also which they shall bear towards those who have gained Heaven by as small matters as they have lost it shall much add to their grief Those who are hungry if they see others meaner than they feed at some splendid and plentiful Table and cannot be admitted themselves become more hungry so shall it fare with the damned who shall be more afflicted by beholding others sometimes less than themselves enjoy that eternal happiness which they through want of care are deprived of Esau though a Clown having understood that his Brother Jacob had obtained his Fathers Benediction cried out and roared like a Lion and consumed himself with resentment and horror What lamentations shall those of the damned be when they shall see that the Just have gained the Benediction of God not by any deceit or cozenage used by them but that they lost it through their own neglect Those who with opinion of merit earnestly aim at some vacant Dignity if at length they see themselves neglected and with shame put off their grief and indignation swells above measure In like manner I say shall it be with those damned wretches who will be far more afflicted by the consideration of those great goods and eternal felicities which they see themselves have lost and those to enjoy them whom they deemed far inferiour to them in merit Let us now therefore have remorse of conscience whilest we may kill the Worm lest it then bite us when it cannot die CAP. XI Of Eternal Death and the Punishment of Talion in the Damned AFter all this there shall not want in Hell the pains of Death which amongst humane punishments is the greatest That of Hell is a living Death and doth as far exceed this of earth as the substance doth a shadow The Death which men give together with death takes away the pain and sense of dying but the Eternal Death of sinners is with sense and by so much greater as it hath more of life recollecting within it self the worst of dying which is to perish and the most intolerable of life which is to suffer pain And therefore St. Bernard calls the pain of the damned a living Death and a dead Life and Pope Innocent the
would he be unto so merciful a benefactor He hath done no less for us but much more For if he hath not drawn us out of Hell he hath not thrown us into it as we deserved which is the greater favour Tell me if a Creditor should cast that Debtor into prison who owed him a thousand Duckets and after the enduring of much affliction at last release him or should suffer another who owed him fifty thousand Duckets to goe up and down free without touching a thread of his garment Whether of the Debtors received the greater benefit I believe thou wilt say the latter More then are we endebted unto God Almighty and therefore ought to serve him better Consider how a man would live who should be restored to life after he had been in Hell Thou shouldst live better since thou art more indebted to Almighty God Lib. 4. Dialog cap. 36. St. Gregory writes of one who though he had not been released out of Hell but onely was upon the point of damnation yet led afterwards such a life that the change was admirable The Saint sayes that a Monk called Peter who before he retired to the desert was in a trance for some time as dead and being restored to his senses made this relation That he had had a sight of Hell and that he had seen in it great chastisements and innumerable places full of fire and that he knew some who had been very powerful in the World hanging in the midst of the flames and himself being now at the brink to be cast into the same he saw on the sudden a bright shining Angel who withheld him faying Return to thy body and confider well with what care and diligence it suits with thy profession to lead thy life from hence forwards So it was that being returned to his body he treated it with such austerity of penance watches and fasts that although he should not have spoken a word his manner of life did publish sufficiently what he had seen Secondly we are taught to exercise an invincible patience in suffering the afflictions and troubles of this life that by enduring these thankfully we may escape those of the other He who shall consider the eternity of those torments which he deserves will not grumble at the pains of this short life how bitter soever There is no state or condition upon earth how necesitous how poor how miserable soever which the damned would not endure and think it an infinite happiness if they might change with it Neither is there any course of life so austere which he who had once experienced those burning flames if he might live again would not make more rigorous He who hath once deserved eternal torments let him never murmure at temporal evils let his mouth be ever stopt from complaining of the crosses or petty injuries offered him in this life who hath committed offences worthy the pains of the other From this consideration there was nothing which the Saints would not willingly suffer no penance which they would not undergoe Apoc. 14. Wherefore St. John the Evangelist after he had spoken of the smoke which ascended from the torments of the damned for a world of worlds and and that they did not rest by day nor night presently adds Here is the patience of the Saints because seeing that all the troubles of this life were temporal and the torments of the other eternal nothing that they endured seemed much unto them Chrysost To. 5. Epist 5. ad Theod. So did St. John Chrsostome and advises us to do the like bearing with patience all temporal pains whatsoever with the consideration of the eternal From the consideration of little thing saith he let us frame a conjecture of the great If thou goe into a Bath and shalt find it excessive hot think on Hell If thou art tormented with the heat think on Hell If thou art tormented with the heat of some violent Fever pass unto the consideration of those eternal flames which burn without end and think that if a Bath or Calenture so afflict thee how shalt thou endure that River of fire Homil. 2. in 1. Ep. ad Thess And further the same Saint When thou shalt see any thing great in this present life think presently of the Kingdom of Heaven and so thou shalt not value it much and when thou shalt see any thing terrible think on Hell and thou wilt laugh at it When the concupiscence or desire of any temporal thing shall afflict thee think that the delight of sin is of no estimation and that the pleasure of it is nothing For if the fear of Lawes which are enacted upon earth be of that force that they are able to deterre us from evil actions much more will the thought of things to come and that immortal chastisement of eternal pain If the fear of an Earthly King divert us from many evils how much more shall the fear of a King eternal If the fight of a dead man detain us much more shall the thought of hell and that eternal death If we often think of hell we shall never fall into it We ought also often to call to minde the evils of the next life that we may more despise the pleasures of this because temporal felicity uses often to end in eternal miserie All that is precious in the world honour wealth fame pleasure all the splendour of the Earth is but smoke and a shadow if we compare the small duration of them with the eternity of those torments in the other world Put all the Silver in the world together in one heap all the Gold all the Precious-stones Diamonds Emeralds with all other the richest Jewels all the Triumphs of the Romans all the Dainties of the Assytians c. all would deserve to be of no other value than dirt ignominy and gall if to be possessed with hazard of falling at last into the pit of Hell Let us call to mind that sentence of our blessed Saviour What will it avail a man to gain the whole world if he lose his soul If they should make us Lords and Masters I say not of great wealth but of the whole world we should not admit of it with the least hazard of being damned for ever Let one enjoy all the contents and regalo's imaginable let him be raised up to the highest pitch of honour let him triumph with all the greatness of the world All this is but a dream if after this mortal life he finds himself at length plunged into hell-fire Whosoever should consider the lamentable day in which two Sons and three Daughters and his Wife the Emperess were put to death in presence of the Emperor Mauritius and afterwards himself was bereaved of life by command of a dastardly Coward and vicious fellow no doubt but he would esteem as very vain and of no worth all the twenty years of his Raign in his powerful Empire and Majesty though his punishment was not
corruption and by birth a Slave of the Devil and yet he dares offend his Maker An offence against God were most grievous though from another God if it were possible infinite and equal to himself but that his creature should be so audacious against his omnipotent Lord is beyond amazement But What is that which a sinner does when he offends It is according to St. Anselm an endeavour to pluck the Crown from the head of God and place it upon his own It is according to St. Bernard to desire to murther his God It is according to the Apostle St. Paul to kick and spurn against the Son of God It is to crucifie again the Lord of life If any of these things were attempted against a Majesty upon earth it were enough to make the offenders flesh to be pluckt off with pincers to have him torn in pieces with four horses to pull down his house and sow the place with salt and make his whole Linage infamous If such an offence committed by one man against another betwixt whom the difference is not great being both equal in nature be so hainous what shall it deserve being committed against God the Lord and Creator of all whose immense greatness is infinitely distant from the nature of his creature O good God who is able to explicate what a sinner does against thee and himself he despises thy Majesty razes out thy Law from his heart laughs at thy Justice scorns thy threats despises thy promises makes a solemn renunciation of thy glory thou hast promised him and all to bind himself an eternal slave unto Satan desiring rather to please thine enemy than thee who art his Father his Friend and all his good desiring rather to die eternally by displeasing thee than to enjoy heaven for ever by serving thee Let us now see Where and in What place a sinner presumes to sin and be a Traitor unto his God It is even in his own world in his own house and knowing that his Creator looks upon him he offends him If a sin were committed where God could not see it it were yet an enormous fault but to injury his Creator before his face what an unspeakable impudence If he who sins could go into another world where God did not inhabit and there in secret under the earth should sin after such a manner as onely himself should know it yet it were a temerarious boldness but to sin in his own house which is this world what hell doth it not deserve For a man onely to lay his hand upon his sword in the Palace of a King is capital and deserves death For a sinner then by his sins to spurn and crucifie the Son of God in the house of his Father and before his face what understanding can conceive the greatness of such a malice And therefore David with reason dissolved himself into tears because he had sinned in the presence of God and with a grief which pierced his heart cried out I have done evil before thee Besides this we not onely sin against God in his own house but even in his armes whilest we are upheld by his omnipotency If there were a Son so wicked who whilest he was cherished in his Mothers bosom should strike and buffet her and endeavour to kill her with his poniard every one would think that Child some Devil incarnate How then dares man offend God who sustains preserves and hath redeemed him Certainly that Christian ought to be esteemed worse than a Devil The hainousness of this malice in sin is much augmented by the Helpes which a sinner uses to effect it For he turns those very divine benefits which he hath received from God against him who gave them The sense which men usually have of ingratitude is most apprehensive If to forget a benefit be ingratitude to despise it is an injurie but to use it against the Benefactor I know not how to call it This does he who sins making use of those creatures which God created for his service to offend him and convert his divine benefits into arms against God himself What could we say if a King to honour his Souldier should make him a Knight arm him with his own arms and should girt his sword about him with his own hands and that the Souldier so soon as he was possest of the sword should draw it against the King and murther him This wickedness which seems impossible amongst men is ordinary in man towards God who being honoured so many wayes by his Creator and enriched by so many benefits for as much as in him lies bereaves God of his honour and according to St. Bernard desires to bereave him of his life His understanding which he receiv'd from God he uses in finding out a way to execute his sin with his hands he performs it and with all his power offends him who gave them Besides the impudence of man arrives at that height that he makes God himself assist him to sin This is that which our Lord much complains of when he sayes by his Prophet You made me serve you in your wickedness because God concurring to every action and natural motion of man who without his concurrence could neither move hand nor foot nor tongue man disposing his tongue to murmur and his hand to steal makes use of the concourse of God against God himself Who is so pitiless and inhumane to enforce the Father to assist in the murther of his onely Son compelling the Fathers hand to execute the stroke which is to pierce the heart of his onely begotten Equivalent to this is done by a sinner making God to concurre to an action by which man sinning crucifies again the Son of God What cruelty is this in a sinner who for this onely impiety deserves a thousand deaths But if we shall consider Why man does this it is a circumstance which will amaze us at the malice of sin Why does a sinner give this disgust unto his God Wherefore does he despise his Creator Wherefore is he a Traitor unto the Lord of the World Wherefore does he kick and spurn at Jesus Christ Wherefore does he abhorre his Redeemer Wherefore crucifies he the Son of God What reason hath he for so monstrous a wickedness Is it perchance because the world should not be ruin'd Is it perchance because his salvation stands upon it Is it perhaps to make himself a God Is it perhaps in respect or for love of another God No it is none of these but only for a base and filthy pleasure for a foolish fancy of man because he will and no more O horrid insolence O mad fury of men which without a cause so grievously offend their Creator How is it that the Heavens resolve not into thunderbolts and throw a thousand deaths upon them who do and dare by their sins irritate and offend so good and gracious a God The Manner also of our sinning would astonish any who should seriously consider it It
is with so much impudence contempt of God and such a Luciferian pride After having heard so many examples of his chastisements executed upon sinners After having seen that the most beautiful and glorious of all the Angels and with him innumerable others were thrown from Heaven and made firebrands in Hell for one sin and that onely in thought After having seen the first man for one sin of gluttony banisht from the Paradise of pleasure into this valley of tears dispoyled of so many supernatural endowments and condemned to death After having seen the World drowned and the Cities of Pontapolis burnt with fire from Heaven After having seen those seditious against Moyses swallowed by the earth and with their Children Goods and Family sink alive into Hell After having known that so many have been damned for their offences After that the Son of God had suffered upon the Cross for our sins After all this to sin is an impudence never heard of and an intolerable contempt of the Divine Justice Besides what greater scorn and contempt of God than this that God who is worthy of all honour and love and the Devil who is our professed enemy pretending both to our Souls the one to save them the other to torment them in eternal flames yet we adhere to Satan and preferre him before Christ our Saviour and Redeemer and that so much to our prejudice as by the loss of eternal glory and captivating our selves unto eternal torments and slavery No way of injuring can be imagined more injurious than when by the interposing of some other vile and infamous he who is worthy of all love and honour is put by and slighted The manner also of sinning aggravates the sin as the sinner doth by losing thereby eternal goods Though he who sinneth lost nothing yet the offence against God were great and the affront to Reason it self not inconsiderable But well knowing the great damages and punishments likewise that attend sin and the evident hazard he runs and yet to sin is a strange temerity and impudency If we shall likewise consider When it is that we sin we shall sinde this circumstance no less to aggravate our offences than the former Because we now sin When we have seen the Son of God nailed unto the Cross that we should not sin When we have seen God so sweet unto us as to be incarnate for our good humbling himself to be made man and subjecting himself to death even the death of the Cross for our redemption having instituted the holy Sacraments for a remedy against sin especially that of his most holy Body and Blood which was a most immense expression of his love To sin after we had seen God so good unto us so obliging unto us with those not to be imagined favours is a Circumstance which ought much to be pondered in our hearts and might make us forbear the offending of so loving a Lord. And that Christian who sins after all this is to be esteemed worse than a Devil For the Devil never sinned against that God who had shed his blood for him or who had been made an Angel for him or who had pardoned so much as one sin of his When those sinned who were under the law of nature they also had not seen the Son of God die for their salvation as a Christian hath for which as St. Austin sayes There ought a new Hell to be made for him And there is no doubt but Christians will deserve new torments and greater than those who have not had the knowledge of God nor received so many benefits from him This is confirmed by what is written of St. Macarius the Abbot who finding in the Desert a dead mans head and removing it with his staffe out of the way it began to speak which he hearing demanded Who it was It answered I am a Priest of the Gentils which heretofore dwelt in this place and am now together with many of them in the middle of a burning fire so great that the flames encompass us both above and beneath And is there replyed the Saint any place of greater torment Yes said the dead Greater is that which they suffer who are below us For we who knew not God are not so severely dealt with as those who knowing have denied him or not complyed with his holy will These are below us and suffer far greater torments than we These are the Circumstances observed by Tully and are all found to aggravate the guilt of our sins Neither is that added by Aristotle wanting which is About what About what do we offend God About what happens this great presumption but about things which import not but rather endamage us About complying with a sensual gust which in the end bereaves us of health of honour of substance and even of pleasure it self suffering many dayes of grief for a moment of delight About things of the earth which are vile and transitory and about goods of the world which are false short and deceitful What would we say if for a thing of so small value as a straw one man should kill another No more than a straw are all the felicities of the world in respect of those of heaven and for a thing of so small consideration we are Traitors to God and crucifie Christ again and that a thousand times as often as we sin mortally against him Lastly Against whom we offend much aggravates our sins For besides that God is most perfect most wise beautiful immense omnipotent infinite we sin against him who infinitely loves us who suffers us who heaps his benefits and rewards upon us To do evil to those who make much of them even wilde beasts abhorre it What is it then for thee to injure him who loved thee more then himself who hath done thee all good that thou shouldest do no evil Fear then this Lord reverence his Majesty love his goodness and offend him no more This onely consideration To have sinned against so good a God was so grievous unto David that in his penitential Psalms he exclaims with tears and cries out from the bottom of his heart Against thee onely have I sinned For although he had sinned against Vrias and against all Israel by his ill example yet it seemed unto him he had onely sinned against God when he considered the infinity of his being the immenseness of that love which he had so grievously offended Sin then is on all parts most virulent on all parts spits forth venome Behold it on every side it still seems worse for being the chiefest evil it can on no part appear good all is monstrous all poison all detestable all most evil and therefore deserves all evil And it is not much that that should be chastised with eternal torments which opposes it self unto the sweetness of an infinite holiness § 4. Sin is so evil that it is every way evil It is not onely evil as it is an injury to God but it is
for himself in the Incarnation and Passion for th◠salvation of man was a high expression of his love but yet it was God who was served and who made use of one of the divine persons for the end which he pretends of his glory but that man should make use of God for his own glorie is beyond what we can think What a wonder is it that Christ should equal himself with Water Oyle and Balsome For as we use Water in Baptisme to justify our selves in Confirmation of Balsom to sanctify and fortify our selves of Oyle in extream Unction to purifie our selves so in this Sacrament we may use Christ for the acquiring of greater grace and increase of holiness A great matter then is the salvation of man since for this purpose God who is his End was content to be his Means I know not how the incomprehensible goodness and charitie of God can extend beyond this Let man therefore reflect how much it imports him to be saved Let him not stick at any thing that may further it Let him leave no stone unremoved let him leave no meanes unattempted since God himself becomes a Means of his salvation and to that end subjects himself to the disposition and will of a Creature Let nothing which is temporal divert him since God was not diverted by what was eternal If therefore to quit thy honours deny thy pleasures distribute thy riches unto the Poor be a means to save thee stick not at it since God stuck not at the greatness of his being which is above all but gave himself for thee The blessed Sacrament was also left us as a Pledge of future glory and eternal happiness For when Christ our Redeemer preached unto the world the contempt of temporal goods for the gaining of the eternal and pronounced that comfortable sentence Blessed are the poor in spirit for theirs is the Kingdom of heaven not saying Theirs shall be but Theirs is giving it them in present It was convenient that since they could not then enter into the possession of those heavenly joyes which they had purchased with all they had upon earth that some equivalent pledge should now be given them in the time of their forbearance This pledge is the most blessed Body of our Redeemer Christ Jesus Son of the living God which is of greater worth and value then the heavens themselves Well may we then despise the fading goods of this life when we receive in hand such a pledge of the eternal Well may we renounce the perishing riches and the pleasures of nature when the treasure of grace is bestowed upon us The blessed Sacrament is also out Viaticum here upon earth Whereby we are given to understand that this life is but a pilgrimage wherein we travel towards eternity and that therefore we are not to stay and rest in what is temporal And because we are neither to enjoy the goods of this temporal life nor yet to enter upon those of the future to the end we may better suffer the renuntiation of the one and sustain the hopes of the other this blessed Sacrament is given us as a Viaticum so as the soul wandring in this valley of tears wherein she is not to please or detain her self in the delights of the world since her journey is for heaven might have somthing to comfort her in this absence from her Celestial Country Let us then consider the value of the End whereunto we travel since the journey is defrayd with so precious a Viaticum and that the pleasures of this world are so prejudicial unto our Salvation that this Pledge is given us from heaven to the end we should not so much as taste them The Israelites in their peregrinaon in the wilderness had Manna for their Viaticum which supplyed all their necessities for it not onely served to sustain their bodies but whilest they fed upon it they were not subject to infirmities neither did their garments decay with wearing insomuch as having it they had all things All this is but a shadow of our Divine Viaticum having which we need nothing and being provided of so Celestial a good may well spare what is temporal §. 2. A most principal end also of the institution of this most admirable Sacrament is to be a memorial of the Passion of the Son of God which being so efficacious a motive unto the contempt of things temporal as we have already said our Saviour hath almost in all the things of nature left us a draught of it For this reason in the holy Shrowd Paleot adm Hist de Christi stigmat Adricom 2. par descr Hiero. n. 44. Lansp hom 19. de Passione Andrad in descrip Terraesanctae Petrus de P. A. Consil Reg. Francis lib. 5. in Const in lib. inscrip Fraustus Annus wherein his wounded body was wrapt when they took him from the Cross there remained miraculously imprinted the signes of his Passion For this when loaden with his Cross the pious Veronica presented him with her Vail he returned it enriched with the Portraicture of his sacred countenance And as Lanspergius notes the fingers of the armed Souldier who gave him the blow were imprinted in the same Vail For this when he fell prostrate in the Garden and in a sweat of blood prayed unto his Father he left ingraved upon the stone whereon he prayed the print of his feet knees and hands And not farr from thence is found another stone where after he was apprehended the Souldiers throwing him down upon the ground he left imprinted the end of his toes his hands and knees which stone as Borcardus notes is so hard as 't is not possible to raze or cut any thing out of it even with iron instruments and this to the end the memory of his ineffable meekness and partience should be perpetual In like manner where he past the brook of Cedron he left another mark of his sacred feet as likewise of the rope wherewith they carried him tied So firmly would our Saviour have the memory of his Passion fixt in our hearts that he hath left the signes of it in the very rocks There hath been also seen an Oriental Jasper accidentally found whereon the dolorous countenance of our Saviour hath been exactly formed And blessed Aloysius de Gonzaga walking upon the Sea-shore found with great content of his spirit a pibble whereon were distinctly figured the five wounds of Christ our Redeemer And not onely in stones but in several other peeces of nature Anast Sinaita in Hexamer as St. Anastatius Sinaita observes he hath left us no obscure remembrances of his Cross and Passion In the flower Granadilla are perfectly represented the Nails Pillar and Crown of thorns In dividing the fruit of the tree Musa appears in some of them the Image of a Cross in others of Christ crucified and in Gant they hold in great esteem the root of a beautiful flower brought from Jerusalem wherein is also lively represented a
obtaining of things eternal without respect to any temporal or earthly commodity are as a sweet savour unto the Lord like that Rod of perfume so much celebrated in the Canticles Cant. 3. composed of incense myrrhe and spices which ascended streight unto heaven Whereupon St. Gregory sayes that prayer is called that little Rod of sweet smoke because whilest it onely supplicates for eternal blessings it mounts directly to heaven without inclining unto any thing that is earthly Well may it be seen how little our Saviour is pleased with earthly petitions by that answer he gave unto the Wife of Zebedeus when she desired that her two Sons might have the honour to sit one at the right hand of his Throne and the other at the left Our Saviour answered They know not what they asked because as St. Chysostome sayes Their petition was for the things temporal and not spiritual and eternal Certainly a fool he is who when he may have heaven for asking trifles away his time in demanding things of the earth A fool he is who when he needs but to demand eternal glory busies himself in praying for temporal honours A fool he is who having but to ask grace from God loses his time in asking favours from men Certainly he knows not what he prayes for who prayes to be rich He knows not what he prayes for who prayes for great Places and Commands Finally who prayes for honours accommodations pleasures or any thing that ends in time knows not what he prayes for because he knows not how little is all that which time consumes §. 2. Paludanus observes three errors in the Petition of the mother of St. James and St. John The first Palud Enarr 1. de S. Jacobo that she did not observe a due order in the petition The second that it was not clear and free from affections of flesh and blood And the third that the subject of it was vain and unprofitable All these errors are sound when not attending unto the eternal we petition for what is temporal For of the first who sees not that he who demands temporal things violates and perverts all order for what more disorderly proceeding than to demand little when we may obtain much to sue for that whereof we have no need and to neglect that which is extreamly necessary The necessities of the body hold no comparison with those of the soul The soul hath more necessity of divine grace than the body of food The soul hath more enemies and stands therefore in more need of the favour and assistance of heaven Gelas contra Pelag. Epis 5. lib. 6. It is against her that the infernal powers have conspired and therefore it is she who stands in most necessity of divine succour Gelasius the Pope speaking of our first Parents saith That when they were in the state of innocency replenished with all those gifts of graces wherewith God had enriched them and that they had not those adversaries which now we have for neither the world nor the flesh were then their enemies Yet because they did not pray for the divine assistance and favour that they fell into sin Having received saith this great Pope such abundance of grace yet because they did not pray as their is no mention that they did they were not secure How needfull is it then for us to pray who want that original justice have our nature weakned and corrupted by sin our flesh rebellious against the soul the World with all its instruments of vanity and deceit and so many occasions and dangers of sinning our enemies and the devil himself irritated by those singular favours exprest towards our nature by the Son of God more fierce against us then before So as it is not possible to declare the great need we have of divine grace And now to forget this great necessity and to forbear crying unto heaven for a remedy from whence we can onely hope it how great a folly and disorder is it If a man in the Dog-dayes were exposed naked in some Desert against the scorching beams of the Sun and ready to perish for thirst and should meet one who were furnished with plenty of cool water would he not ask some to refresh him or if he forbore to ask it would he demand a warm Jacket which were onely useful in Winter and in Summer a burthen and a trouble Certainly a greater madness and disorder cannot be imagined And yet ours is far worse if we demand temporal goods which can onely hinder and entangle us and neglect to pray for the water of divine grace without which we are certain to perish But even in temporal things themselves we know not what order to observe in our demands because we are ignorant which are most convenient for us Who knows whether it be better for him to be sick or in health since it may so happen that being in health he may fall into some grievous sin and be damned and being sick he may repent and be saved Who knows whether poverty or wealth may be more convenient for him since being in abundance he may forget God and being in necessity of all things he may have recourse unto his holy service Who knows whether it be better for him to be honoured or suffer confusion since honour may puff him up in vanity and humiliation may make him prudent and wary No man knows what is good or evil for him That which we desire is oftentimes our ruin and destruction and those evils which we weep for as often turn into our greatest happiness How can there then be any order in our prayers for temporal things whereof we are totally ignorant whether they are good or hurtful The second great errour in our prayers for temporal things is the disordinate affection and want of pure intention which accompanies such petitions whereas our prayers ought onely to proceed from a pure and mortified mind wholly intent upon the service of God To signify this The fire which was to burn the incense was fetcht from the Altar of Holocausts and that our prayers may be acceptable and of a sweet savour unto God they are to spring from an enflamed heart Sacrificed unto his divine Majesty in a true Holocaust of our whole will and affections And he who demands any temporal things from God Almighty after another manner may justly fear least they may be granted for his greater punnishment Therefore St. Thomas sayes St. Tho. 2.2 q. 83. art 19. that our Lord God grants unto sinners what they desire with an evil affection for a Chastizement of their desires So he granted Quails unto the murmuring Isrealites who died with the morsel in their mouths We ought therefore to be cautious in our prayers and tremble at our own desires since their success may prove so dangerous unto us And I wonder not at all that he who desires the goods of this world is often punished in the grant of his petition since
should receive a hundred fold and hereafter life eternal I now find true by experience For this grief and pain which I feel is so sweet unto me out of the hope I have of eternal happiness that I would not lose these pains and this hope not onely for what I have left already but for a hundred times more And if to me who am so great a sinner those pains which I deserve are a hundred times more sweet than any former power and pleasures in the world What are they to a just man and to the zealous and devout religious By this it evidently appears that spiritual joy though but in hope affords a thousand times more pleasure and content than the possession of all the carnal and temporal delights in the world At what this Servant of God said all who were present remained astonisht that an ignorant man wholly unlettered should understand and speak of so high matters §. 2. The joy of the poor in Christ Jesus who have renounced all for his love springs from two causes First from that content which Poverty it self by its freedom from temporal troubles and the imbroilments of life brings along with it And this even the Gentils confessed And therefore Apuleius called it Merry and and chearful Poverty And Seneca would say That a Turf of earth gave a sounder sleep than Wooll dyed in Tyrian Purple And Anaxagoras taught by experience That he found more content in sleeping upon the Earth and feeding upon Hearbs than in Down Beds and delicious Banquets accompanied with an unquiet mind The second cause of this joy is not the nature of poverty but the particular grace of God who rewards them with the pleasures of heaven who have renounced those of earth and fills with spiritual riches those who have left the temporal For in truth poverty is much beloved and priviledged by Christ and therefore he rewards the poor even in this life with many particular graces and favours Besides this the many and great commodities which this contempt of earthly things brings along with it may serve as a reward equivalent to a hundred yea a thousand-fold For if all the world were given to escape the committing of one sin it were not an equal value and by Evangelical poverty and contempt of the world the sins which we avoid are innumerable For by it we not onely pluck up the root but quit the instruments of sinning Take away abundance and you take away insolence arrogance and pride which spring from it as smoke from fire you take away also the means of committing many other sins which riches feed and nourish Neither is the attaining of many vertues which accompany Poverty as Humility Modesty and Temperance of less value than the avoidance of those sins And therefore it is a great truth Homil. 8. in Ep. ad Hebr. which Saint Chrysostome notes and ponders That in Poverty we possess Vertues more easily Neither is it sleightly to be valued That the state of Poverty assists much toward our satisfaction for those sins we have committed according to what is spoken to the just man by Isaias the Prophet I have chosen thee that is I have purified thee in the furnace of poverty It is likewise a great matter to be free and uninterressed in the base and unprofitable employments of the earth whereby the poor have time to exercise vertue to converse with God and his Angels and contemplate Eternity The honour also and dignity to command these things below which is attained by the poor in spirit may well be valued at a hundred-fold For as it is a great baseness in the rich to be slaves to their avarice and to things so vile as riches So it is a great honour to the poor to exempt themselves from this slavery and servitude and to lord it over all and as the Apostle sayes by contemning all to possess all so as there is no Riches no Kingdom comparable to this of Poverty Kingdoms have their limits and boundeties which they pass not but this Kingdom of Poverty is not straightned by any bounds but for the same reason that it hath nothing hath all things for the heart cannot be said to possess any thing without being Lord of it and it cannot be Lord of it without being superiour unto it and not that unless it subject and subjugate it unto it self So as it is by so much more a possessor by how much it is more Lord and Superiour Now he who desires to be rich must needs love those things without which he cannot be rich nor can he love them without care sollicitude and slavery but he who contemns them is not onely Lord but Possessor of them And for this cause St. John Climacus said very well Grad 17. That the poor religious person who casts all his care upon God is Lord of all the world and all men are his Servants Moreover the true love of poverty doth not basely cleave unto these temporal things for all it hath or can have it respects nothing and if it want any thing it is no more troubled than if it wanted so much dung and dirt But above all rewards is that of God who is possest by poverty In Psal 118. and in St. Ambrose his opinion is that hundred-fold which is received for what we leave For as the Tribe of Levie which had no part in the distribution of the Land of Palestine received this promise from God that he would be their Share and Possession of inheritance So with much reason unto those who voluntarily refuse their parts in the goods of the earth God himself becomes their possession riches and all good even in this world and passes so much further as to give them in the other the Kingdom of Heaven Aug. Ser. 28. de Ver. Apost Whereupon St. Austin speaks in this manner Great happiness and felicity is that of a Christian who with the rich price of poverty purchases the precious reward of glory Wilt thou see how rich and precious it is The poor man buyes and obtains that by poverty which the rich man cannot with all his treasures And it was certainly a most high counsel in our Lord God and an act worthy of his divine understanding to make Poverty the price of his Glory that none might want wherewith to purchase it Wherefore many of the Saints have been so enamoured of Poverty that they have purchased it with more eagerness than the rich have fled from it and have had this advantage over them to be more voluntarily poor than the other could be rich CAP. VIII Many who have despised and renounced all that is Temporal SO evident is the baseness of temporal goods and the mischiefs they occasion in humane life so apparent that many Philosophers without the light of faith or doctrine of the Son of God were not ignorant of it and many so deeply apprehended the importance not onely of contemning but renouncing of
France There she taught her Brother how to order a Dairy milk Cows and make Cheeses and after found a way to have him received into a certain Grange of the Cistercians where he performed this office to such satisfaction of the Monks that in a short time he was admitted amongst them a Lay-Brother His Sister Matilda seeing him thus placed said one day unto him Brother certainly a great reward attends us from the Lord for having thus left our Parents and our Country for the love of him But we shall receive a far greater if for the short time of our lives we deprive our selves even of this content of seeing one another and that we so give our selves over to that Divine and Soveraign Majesty that we meet no more until we meet in Heaven where we shall see and converse one with another in true and eternal comfort Here the Brother fell a weeping apprehending this as the greatest difficulty he had hitherto encountred in the whole course of his life But at last he master'd it and they both parted never to see one another more upon earth The holy Virgin went unto a certain Town nine miles distant where she lived retired in a little Cottage and sustained her self wholly by the labour of her hands admitting neither present nor alms Her Bed was the ground or little better she eat upon her knees and in that posture spent many hours in prayer wherein she often was so rapt from her senses that she neither heard the noise of thunder nor perceived the flashes of lightning Alexander was never known whilest he lived But St. Matilda was nine years before her death and therefore attempted often to have left the place but was so strictly watched she could not She wrought many miracles both during her life and after death A certain Monk sick of an Imposthume in his breast offered up his prayers at the Tomb of Alexander and to him the Servant of God appeared more resplendent than the Sun adorned with two most beautiful Crowns The one of which he wore upon his head The other he carried in his hand And being demanded of the Monk what those two Crowns signified he answered This which I bear in my hands is given me for that temporal Kingdom which I forsook upon earth The other of my head is that which is commonly given to all the Saints of Heaven And that thou mayest give credit to what thou hast seen in this Vision thou shalt find thy self according to thy faith cured of thy infirmity In this manner God honours those who humble themselves for his glory CAP. IX The love which we owe unto God ought so to fill our Souls that it leave no place or power to love the Temporal WE have already produced sufficient motives and reasons to breed in us a contempt of the things of this world and to wean our affections from them as well for being in themselves vile transitory mutable little and dangerous as for that the Son of God hath done and suffered so much to the end we should despise them I will onely now add for the conclusion of this matter That though they were of some real worth or value as they are not yet for all this we ought not to love them since so great is that love and affection which is due from us unto God that it ought so fully to fill and possess our hearts that it leave no room for any other affection than it self For if it were commanded in the Law when men had not the obligation which we now have the Son of God not having then died for our redemption that we should love him with all our heart all our soul and all our powers how are we to love him when our debt is so much greater and that we have a further knowledge of his divine goodness If then there ought to be no place for any love but his how can we now turn our eyes unto the creature or set our hearts upon it when a million of hearts are not sufficient for our Creator There is no one Title for which God is amiable but upon that title we owe him a thousand wills a thousand loves and all what we are or can be What do we then owe him for all together Consider his benefits his love his goodness and thou shalt see that though thou hadst as many hearts as there are sands upon the Sea-shore or atoms in the Air all were not capable of that great love which is due unto him How canst thou then divide this one heart which thou hast amongst so many creatures Consider also the multitude and greatness of his divine blessings and deal but with God as one man doth with another If we say of humane benefits that gifts break rocks how comes it that divine benefits do not move a heart of flesh Prov. 22. And if as Salomon sayes Those who give gifts steal the hearts of the receivers how comes it that God robs not thee of thy soul who not onely gives thee gifts but himself for a gift Consider the benefits thou didst receive in thy Creation They were as many as thou hast members of thy body or faculties of thy soul Consider those of thy Conservation Thou hast received as many as there are distinct natures in Heaven and in Earth The Elements Stars and the whole world were created for thy preservation without which thou couldest not subsist Look upon the benefits of thy Redemption They are as many as are the evils of Hell from which they have freed thee Look upon those of thy Justification they are as many as the Sacraments which Christ hath instituted and the examples which he hath left thee Think what thou owest him for having made thee a Christian pardoned thee so often and given thee still fresh grace to renew thee All these and a thousand other benefits and obligations demand and sue for thy love And not onely these benefits from God but even those from men cry out unto thee to love him For there is no benefit which thou receivest from man but comes from God On all parts then and for all things thou art obliged to love God for it is he who does thee good in all and is worth unto thee more than all How comes it then that since he hath done all this for us we yet think not what we are to do for him nor how we shall express our thankfulness for such and so great benefits David was troubled with this care when he said What shall I return unto the Lord for all which he hath given me And yet the Lord had not then given him the Body and blood of his Son nor had his Son then been born or died for him Since then he hath done all this for us why doe we not study how we may be grateful for such infinite and unspeakable mercies But what can we return which we have not received Let us deliver him back our
one day Whereupon St. Austin sayes Such is the beauty of righteousness Augus de libero arb 3. such the joy of that eternal light of that immutable truth and wisdom that although we were not to continue in it above one day yet for so short a time a thousand years in this life replenished with delights and abundance of all goods temporal were justly to be despised For it was not spoken amiss that Better is one day in thy Courts above a thousand So that whereas it is commonly said that for eternal joyes we ought to leave the temporal and frail goods of the earth which are short and transitory St. Austin sayes that if those of heaven were short and these of earth Eternal yet we ought to forsake these for those This is confirmed by that which is written by Thomas de Cantiprato and others Lib. 2. c. 57. N. 67. That the Devil being demanded by an Exorcist what he would suffer to see God answered That he would suffer all that the damned in hell Men and Devils were to suffer until the day of Judgement onely that he might enjoy the sight of him but for some short time How can we then complain of the short troubles of this life which are to be recompenced with the clear vision of God for ever when his professed Enemy would suffer so much onely to enjoy it for an insant Cato having onely read that discourse of Socrates concerning immortality thought it nothing to part with this life and tear his bowels in pieces that he might enjoy that eternal liberty of the Soul freed from the incumbrances and oppressions of the Body Jo. Herol in Promp Exem Heroldus writes that Frier Jordan General of the holy Order of the preaching Friers exorcizing a possest person the Devil amongst other answers to his demands told him That he had never seen the face of God but onely during the twinkling of an eye and that to see it so much longer he would willingly suffer all the pains of his companions until the day of Judgement Frier Jordan remained astonished at this answer and recalling himself a little he said unto him Thou hast said well But declare me his beauty by some similitude or representation Thou hast moved a foolish question replied the Spirit for there is no expressing of it But to give some satisfaction to thy desire I say that if the beauties of all Creatures Heavens Earth Flowers Pearls and all other things that can give any delight to the sight were all comprised in one onely thing if every one of the Stars yielded as much light as the Sun and the Sun shined as bright as all they together all this united so together would be in respect of the beauty of God Almighty as a dark pitchy night in respect of the clearest and brightest day Where by the way it is to be observed that the Devils never saw God clearly as the Angels in glory now behold him but onely by the excellency of their nature attained to some particular and advantagious knowledge of his beauty and divine perfections and joy which resulted from that knowledge And if to enjoy that once again for so short a time they would endure those torments for so long a space what shall it be to behold him clearly in his glory Certainly to be rosted pluckt in pieces with pincers to be burnt alive for a thousand years were well employed to enjoy that felicity but for a day What shall it be to possess it for an eternity when the joy also of each day shall be equivalent to many years Joh. Major Ex. 14. Ex Coll. Psal 89. Wherefore Johannes Major reports that a certain Monk being at Mattins with the other Religious of his Monastery and coming to that verse of the Psalm where it is said A thousand years in the presence of God are but as yesterday which is already past began to imagine with himself how it might be possible and remaining in the Quire as his manner was after the end of Mattins to perfect his devotions he humbly besought the Lord to grant him the true understanding of that place which he had no sooner done but he perceived a little Bird in the Quire that with flying up and down before him by little and little with her most melodious singing insensibly drew him forth of the Church into a Wood not farre off where pearching her self upon a bough she for some short time as it seem'd to him continued her musick to the unspeakable delight of the Monk and then flew away leaving him by her absence no less sad and pensive But seeing she came no more he returned back thinking he had left his Monastery the same morning immediately after Mattins and that it was now about the third hour but coming to the Convent which was near the Wood he found the Gate by which he was accustomed to enter to be mured up and another opened in some other part where calling upon the Porter he was demanded Who he was From whence he came and What was his business He answered that he was the Sacristan of the Church and that having that morning gone abroad after Mattins he found all things at his return changed The Porter demanded of him the name of the Abbot the Prior the Procurator He named them all and wondered he was neither understood nor permitted to enter and why they feigned not to know those Religious whom he mentioned and desired to be brought to the Abbot but coming into his presence neither the Abbot knew him nor he the Abbot whereat the good Monk being much astonished knew not what to say or do The Abbot asked him his name and that of his Abbot and turning the Annals of the Monastery found it was more than three hundred years since the death of those persons which he named Whereupon the Monk making a relation of what had happened unto him concerning the Psalm they acknowledged him and admitted him as a Brother into their profession where having received the Sacraments of the Church he with much peace ended his dayes in our Lord. If the pleasure of one sense did so ravish the Soul of this Servant of God what shall it be when not onely the hearing but the light smell taste the whole body and soul shall be drowned in joyes proportionable to the senses of the one and power of the other If the musick of a little Bird did so transport him what shall the musick of Angels what shall the clear vision of God what shall God himself doe when he makes oftentation if so may say of his omnipotency For as Assuerus who raigned from India to Aethiopia over 170 Provinces made a great Feast for all his Princes which lasted 181 dayes So shall this King of Heaven and Earth make his great Supper of glory which shall last for all eternity for the setting forth of his Majesty and for the honour and entertainment of his Servants where