while after with some Pilgrims who were remiss and negligent a great zeal was kindled in him and he called upon his Guide very earnestly to use his spurs and prick them up to a greater diligence Which motion you will easily think the Good Father was not backward to embrace but drawing a little nearer to them and well observing their careless postures he askt them what the reason might be of that lazy and wretchless life which men of their profession lead Are you not convinced said he of the truth of that Religion which is taught by Christ Do you take Jesus for an impostor and think that he lyes in his grave and never shall come to Judge the World by his Laws Or do you think that he hath commanded impossible things and made a Law which cannot be put in use and practice How then shall he Judge the World in Righteousness Or how came it to pass that you undertook his service if you thought that none can come in his wayes to the happiness of Jerusalem For my part I can see nothing that should make it seem impossible to be so good as Christ hath required but only the lives of a number of such wretches as your selves And lest I should seem to reproach you or my words should not meet with due regard from you hearken I beseech you to the language of one who indeed commands your attention if it be but for the reverence which you bear to his years and the place which he held in the Church of God It is the famous Patriarch of Constantinople which I mean who thus awakens some such drowsie souls as yours Suppose a Gentile saith he should come to thee and say If thou lookest for a Kingdom in Heaven why dost thou mind this World so much Sure thou dost but talk they are but words which thou tellest to us If thou expectest the dreadful tribunal of Christ hereafter why dost thou not despise the most terrible things that threaten thee in this life If thou expectest immortality why do we not see thee laugh at death What answer now wilt thou return to this Objector What wilt thou say for thy self who tremblest at the loss of a little Riches for the Kingdom of Heavens sake and rejoycest at the gain of a farthing as if it were a great prize This is that which scandalizes the Gentiles and makes them mock both at thee and thy Religion too Do not therefore study so much to apologize for it by thy Words as by thy Deeds Let him see such a one as Christ describes not only in thy Books but in thy Self Make it manifest to him that there is such a Religion in being alive in the World and that it lyes not dead in Parchments Suffer it not to be the work of the Scribe or as we now speak of the Printer only but let him read it in thy life Make him confess that the Gospel commands things that may be done and doth not draw a Platonical Common-wealth or describe as we say in these dayes an Eutopian Polity Suppose again that a Gentile should say to thee Good Sir how shall I know that your God requires possible things They look like things which cannot be done and I never saw any Christian such a man Behold thou wast brought up in thy Religion from thy childhood and yet dost no such things with what face then dost thou require them of me who have been long accustomed otherwayes What wilt thou now reply in the behalf of Christianity Perhaps thou wilt point him to others and desire him not to look on thy self Thou wilt bid him cast his eyes upon the Monks and those who live in Wildernesses where he may behold what holy lives they lead O most shameful Apology For he will say what then must I turn a Monk must I live in Mountains and dwell in the Desarts Must I forsake all company but only that of the Beasts This is a strange Religion of which a man cannot be unless he leave the Society of men A Religion that cannot dwell in Towns and Cities A Religion that flyes the light and seeks for Dens and Caves of the Earth That is an enemy to the best of pleasures that banishes good neighbourhood and renders a man an hater of the rest of Mankind I will none of this Religion keep it to your self and do not invite me to your melancholy Piety This truly is a very great disgrace to the Christian profession to make as though it could not inhabit any place and be perform'd by any men There is no excuse to be made for it If it cannot stay with us in Towns and keep us company in business and be the employment of common men away with it it is not for our turn let it be banished the World Show to me a man that hath a wife and children and servants and yet is a Christian. Let me see a man that keeps his shop and buys and sells and yet lives well and keeps the Laws of Christ. Doth not our Saviour say Let your light shine before men but where do we read that it is to illustrate Desarts and make the Mountains glorious Which is not spoken saith he to reproach those persons who chuse to dwell in such places but only to bemoan our Cities that have driven Vertue from among them and thrust it out of their gates into the Wilderness Let us indeavour I beseech you to call it back again Let us bring it to dwell within the Walls of Cities as well as those of Monasteries Let us reduce it into our Families and our shops and our Markets nay into our Taverns and Victualling-houses Let us render it Sociable and fit for Conversation that all men may be the better for it Suffer no place to be void of Religion but make it extend it self like the Divine Presence which is ready to assist men every where Do not say any longer that you cannot be good He never took the business seriously into his thoughts he never gave all diligence who speaks that wicked word And do not say to me neither that you cannot understand the Religion of Christ and know not what to do For see how skilfull the most simple people are in their worldly affairs see what exactness they use how accurate and circumspect they are wont to be in some of their outward concerns Let them imploy the same in spiritual things and I le warrant they shall not be overlookt by the Divine grace nor miss of being wise to Salvation The Sun shines not so clear as the Truth of God Where men have a mind they may easily come to the knowledge of him If they would but attend and not make a By-work of it they would neither be so ignorant nor so impotent as they are For the Gospel was not shut up in Palaestine nor confined to some corner of the World but all shall know me saith the Lord from the greatest to the least and
whatsoever is good we are afraid may perish there whatsoever we receive will be preserved by him that gave it Here there is death and there is nothing but life Here we enjoy what the eye and the ear and our thoughts present unto us but there we shall see what the eye hath not seen and hear what the ear hath never heard and understand what the heart cannot now comprehend And seeing hearing and knowing after that manner we shall rejoyce with joy unspeakable For what kind of joy must that be when thou seest thy self in the company of Angels a partner in the Kingdom of Heaven to raign with the King of the world desiring nothing to possess all things rich without covetousness charitable without mony triumphing without the fear of any barbarous Invaders and living this life without any death O sweet life the more I think of thee the more I love thee the more vehemently I desire thee the more I am pleased in the remembrance of thee I love to speak of thee I love to hear of thee I love to write of thee to confer of thee to read of thee that so I may refresh the pains and the sweat and the dangers of this tedious life by laying my weary head in the bosome of thy secure pleasures For this end I enter into the Garden of the Holy Scriptures I gather there the sweet flowers of Divine Sayings that which I gather I eat that which I eat I chew over again and that which I have tasted I lay up in mine heart that by such sweetness I may allay the bitterness and irksomeness of this miserable life O that my sins were done away O that laying aside the burden of this flesh I might enter into thy ease and quiet To receive the Crown of Life to be associated to the caelestial Singers to behold the face of Christ to see the uncircumscribed light and without fear of death to rejoyce without any end There is the goodly fellowship of the Prophets there are the glorious twelve Apostles there is an innumerable Army of Martyrs there is the holy Company of Pious Confessors there are the Divine Lovers of Solitude and Retirement there are the holy Women that have overcome the infirmities of their sex and the powers of the world there are the brave Youths and Virgins whose holy manners transcended their years there are the Sheep and the Lambs that have escaped the danger of glutting themselves with these earthly pleasures there perfect Charity reigns because God is there All in All. There they see without fear and love without measure and praise without ceasing There loving they praise and praising they love and it is their work to do so alwaies without any interruption But alas Who can tell what a Great Good God is as he proceeds in another place Who can declare how full he is or relate the happiness that he will give us We cannot tell it and yet we cannot hold our peace It is more than can be uttered and yet we cannot chuse but talk of it And if we cannot tell it because of our ignorance and yet cannot hold our tongues because of our joy for what we know in what condition are we which will neither let us speak nor yet be silent What shall we do with our selves if we can neither tell what it is nor yet cease to speak of it I le tell you in two or three words Let us rejoyce Let us praise God Let us keep a perpetual Jubilee here in our hearts thanking him very much that we know so much of this happiness and thanking him more that it is so great that we cannot know it all Here if the Guide had not made a little stop I think the Pilgrim had interrupted him for he had kept his silence thus long with great difficulty and now cryed out with a more than ordinary vehemence Blessed be God that he hath brought me to this place This is none other than the suburbs of Jerusalem this is the Gate of Heaven Happy was the day which let me see your face I heard something of Jerusalem before by the hearing of the ear but now mine eyes see it and I am all inamoured of it You have shown me a sight so glorious that it is beyond our thoughts and beyond our desires I was going to say beyond our Faith and beyond our hope Sure you are one of the Angels of God sent from Jerusalem to fetch me thither You had inflamed me with an high Degree of Love before but now you have put me in a fiery Chariot and methinks I am not upon the earth but ascending up to those heavenly Regions Nay you have transported me to the City of God already Methinks I see the Lord of Glory I behold the Thrones that are erected for all the Noble Travellers to that Holy Land I fancy my self in the dear embraces of those Glorious Lovers And I am apt to embrace you as one of the Seraphims that have fired my soul with the same Love I see the blessed Jesus preparing himself for his appearance and begin to think that I am triumphing with him Or if I am but in a dream of these things yet it is so pleasant that I could wish it might last for ever and that nothing might awake me out of such a delightful slumber Not so said his Guide interrupting his speech I love you better than to let you enjoy such a wish and I would rouze you up to demonstrate their reality if I thought you took these things for charming dreams and painted shadows You shall not make such a mean supposal nor content your self with such aiery pleasures for I will make you know at once both that there is such a blessed place as I have described and discover to you more perfectly the way unto it There is another dear name inclosed in those words which I told you must alwaies be sealed upon your heart and that is the Holy JUSUS On whom I do not intend that you should look only as he sits on his Throne of Glory at Jerusalem but as he walked up and down the world and was a Pilgrim like your self travelling to that place He published the Glory of it He brought life and immortality to light He set open the Gates of Jerusalem to all faithful Travellers He run the Race himself wherein you are to follow and for the joy that was set before him when he should come thither he was not ashamed of a poorer habit than the meanest Pilgrim wears If you take a view therefore of his life and trace his holy steps you cannot miss the Rode which I would have you take nor fail to be convinced that it can carry you to no other place but the City of God For Do you not remember that this person hath stiled himself the WAY There is nothing so necessary than in all that sentence as this one word Jesus to have alwaies in your mind whom
I shall now describe unto you as a fair Copy not only of that Humility and Charity which I named before but of all other things that you must resolve to undertake if you mean to come at Jerusalem CAP. XV. A Description of Jesus ' who is the true Way to Jerusalem In which he is propounded to the Pilgrims imitation ANd first I must set this Jesus before your eyes as one that was dead to these outward things while he lived among them and that withdrew his heart from the world while he conversed with it He was not a person cloyster'd and retir'd from the society of men He led not an Anchorets life which obliged him to shun their company Nor did he put on a sullen gravity that should affright men from his fellowship but he used the greatest freedom and treated men with such familiarity that he invited them into it He did eat and drink as other men do he refused not their invitation when they were desirous to entertain him and even at a Marriage he denyed not to be a Guest when his presence was welcome to them He had opportunities of inriching himself as well as other men Honours would have waited upon him if he had pleased without a Miracle It depended upon himself alone to become the greatest man in the world And the pleasures which others seek would have pursued him if he had but given them encouragement Herein he made himself glorious and hath left us a noble example that he was mortified to all these carnal delights when they were ready to thrust themselves upon him that he denyed the desires of wealth when it would cost him no more pains than to receive it and that he refused all the Kingdoms of the world which would have easily disposed themselves to his obedience He walkt into Cities and Towns and was still as unspotted from the world as he was in a wilderness He lived in the thickest of its temptations but none of them could fasten or stick upon him He had power at will and his will set bounds to it when it had none of its own He was a Soveraign Lord but made no advantage thereby save only to be better and to do more good than any of his subjects He used greater moderation in all injoyments than those did on whom he bestowed them He lived in a sense of the Spiritual World while he was a man of this and incompassed about with our infirmities He was a stranger to all the evil manners and customs of men while he was familiar with themselves and he testified against their wicked deeds while he kept them company Nay he purified many by his example remaining uncorrupted by any of theirs And truly such a life it is that you are to lead Your way to Jerusalem lyes through the World You must not think to step into none but Religious Houses or to fall into no company but that of the Pious much less must you expect to lye immur'd from the spectacles of Vanity and to secure your self from temptations within the inclosure of high walls which they cannot climb over to approach you But your manner of life will lead you through the crowd your way will bring you into open fields and expose you oftentimes to the throng of sensual objects against which you will have no defence but your own valourous resolution You will not be able to refuse them your company or to pass along without their acquaintance It will not be at your choice whether you will see and hear and feel those things that are amiable and delightful nor can you stop your ears so close but you will perceive they invite you to a friendship with them Your skill and your courage therefore consists in this that in imitation of your Master Jesus you live and converse with all these things as a man that is Dead You must keep them company in such a sort that they may find it is but the shadow of you that is among them and that they do not possess your self Let them know that they may as well invite a Ghost to their intemperance uncleanness and greediness of the world as waste their time in solliciting of your affection Make them feel that is but half of you and the worser half which walks among them and that it is impossible they should have the better part Let men have your company but be not partaker with them in their sins Follow your affairs like other folk but take heed and beware of covetousness and watch that you be not overtaken with surfeiting and drunkenness or the cares of this life Let the World understand that you can see it every day and not fall in love with it that you can deal and traffique with it if need be and yet not be unrighteous that you can behold all its honours and not be ambitious that you need not hide your eyes from its beauties and yet retain your own and live in purity of heart Beware of pleasing and humouring any of your senses Suffer them not to feed too greedily upon any object lest your soul be inchanted and cast into a forgetfulness of Jerusalem And remember alwayes that you are to sue all these earthly things rather of necessity then of choice and to afford them your company but not your friendship And this let me tell you is a more excellent and useful life I may add more laborious too then any other though the austerities of Monks and Hermites seem so grievous and horribly affrighting Notwithstanding all the sharpness they injoyn themselves they reap a great deal of ease who are sequestred from publick offices and live without the incumbrance of many affairs Though their Rules to which they are tyed appear so rigorous yet they are neither so many in number nor so thorny in their nature nor have so many faces as those which bind a man of exact integrity in civil life They have but a few things to imploy them and he is ingaged in a multitude and they have the same things to do over again but his rules vary with a thousand circumstances It is a pleasure to avoid the pains of well doing among those that are evil It is a repose to have but few enemies and those such as have been beaten an hundred times These people may have some other glory but that of overcoming difficulties methinks belongs not to them Moderation is a vertue much more toilsome then their Sufferance That hath a thousand several fashions whereas this hath no more then one It is no wonder that a man should be good where he sees nothing that is bad He may well keep his innocence where it is hard to lose it and soon secure his soul when there is nothing offers to rob him of it He is a very unfortunate man as I have heard somebody well express it who drowns himself in that place where he can scarce find water enough to quench his thirst His hap
cut off if they oppose their designs Their very idleness is in action day and night The complements and ceremonies they bestow upon others are a business of greater trouble than the ruling of Provinces and disposing of Kingdoms It may seem strange but there is nothing truer That if a man would climb to the highest place in the world it is necessary he should become lame and breath short and take such little steps as if a long Ague had but just left him to the use of his leggs and in one word seem altogether unfit for the business he designs You know what a glory it is to be the supposed Head of all Christendome And yet they that are well acquainted with the wayes to that office tell us in plain terms that he must keep his Bed and use all the Arts which Physick can assist him withall not to be well but to be ill who hopes to attain that dignity He must put himself into a feavourish heat he must beg the help of defluxions and catarrhs he must procure a pale look and a meagre aspect he must cough as if he was calling for his grave or else he must lose that place which will not come at easier rates And now what think you Are not these fine wayes to Glory Have not they a great mind to trouble themselves that purchase trouble at so great a price For the rising to high places as a wise man of our own observes is very laborious and by pains men come to greater pains Nay it is sometimes very base and by indignities men come to dignities Perhaps this ambitious fool doth flatter continually those whom he hates He applauds and praises those whom he despises He admires all that is ill done He approves of all that a wicked and debauched appetite desires He speaks against his conscience and smiles on him whom he could bite and fasten his teeth upon with all his heart He dissembles all his resentments and though he love revenge as well as his life yet he is put to the pains of stifling all those passions which are its servants There is a fire in his bones and he dare not give it the least vent that others may feel it as well as himself He swallows all the affronts which a Porter gives him at a Great mans Gate and he bribes those with gifts whom he wishes dead that he might enjoy their places And when he is mounted to the top of his desires I beseech you on what Pinnacles doth he tread Which are so small that there is but a little between him and the danger of a fall and withall so sharp that they wound the feet which tread upon them And did you never perceive the delight that some men take in laughing at the meanness of the extraction of this Meteor The greatest honours are not able to cleanse the blemishes of his family And when he hath done all that he can bold spirits will throw in his face the dirt from whence he is sprung and wound him with a remembrance that he is but a New Man But then if one of these persons chance to drop down to the place where he was before and become the object of scorn in what a sad condition is he When the Play is ended and the high-heel'd Buskins are pull'd off which raised him above others and the gaudy cloths are torn from his back and he returns to his first form he becomes a despicable creature even to himself So mad a thing it is to judge of a man by the height of honour to which he is advanced for it is as if you would take the measure of a statue by the pedestal on which it stands But besides all this the conscience he hath of his crimes will render him still more miserable because it will ever put him in mind that he deserves his misery And as for others it will likewise be a dangerous thing for any man to undertake the protection or comfort of such a person who is known to have merited his misfortune Nay more than this we have heard of such fools that before they had lost all their imaginary happiness have deprived themselves of the remainder out of vexation that it did not continue as great as before So that great glutton Apitius having wasted the best part of his estate and finding but two hundred thousand Crowns remaining imagined himself a Peggar and drunk a draught of poison because he thought he had not sufficient to maintain his ancient riot For which he was soundly jeered by one of the Sages of those dayes who said this was the most wholesome draught that ever he made which put an end to such a dissolute life Thus you see these vitious men are so hated while they are alive and their memory is so persecuted when they are dead that I believe you would not stand in one of their places And the more injuries they have done to others to raise themselves the more odious they grow and the more curses follow them to their graves So toilsome it is to follow those courses that men will not suffer them to rest in peace even in the Sanctuary and common refuge of all the miserable They that did not know how to be revenged on their persons while they were here are wont to fall upon the Phantasm which they have left of themselves in their imagination and to wreak their spleen upon their memory and stab their reputation They please themselves in their greatness for a while and then they pay very dearly for it Nay the time of their pleasure is so small that they come to it by a far longer time of pains and when they enjoy it we scarce know how to distinguish the moments of the one from those of the other for pains are either mingled with their pleasures or presently tread upon the heels of them All which when I consider it calls to my mind the Story of the Fool who passing thorow the Forrest of Ravenna as he came from Rome filled a whole Wallet and a Pillow-bear top full of Flyes Gnats and Hornets of which that place affords good store and of no small bigness to bring them home with him Whither when he was arrived he sent to his friends and kinsfolks round about desiring to see them that he might present them with some rarities and curious things which he had brought from Rome Though they knew him to be a Ninny yet they could not imagine him to be such a Sot as afterward they found him but fancied that he might have light upon something in his Journey which might be worth one of theirs to go and see it But when they were met together and were come into his Chamber after many complements and great expectations he had nothing to entertain them withall but a huge number of those troublesome creatures which he poured out of his baggs upon them thinking because of their various colours that they were precious things