himself under the Law and the Gospell Deut. â— 5 Thou love him with all thy heart and with all thy soule with all the strength and faculties thereof For as a great Prince coming to an Inne takes up all the rooms in the house not holding it to stand with his state to have any stranger a sharer with him so is it and much more with God And that again because as S. John saith 1 John 3.20 God is greater then thy heart so that all is too little for him though he hath all And if he will not endure that one Temple shall receive both his Ark and the Idoll Dagon will he be content 1 Sam. 5 in his bed-chamber which is mans heart to endure his enemies the World the flesh and the Devill to have their abode or to lodge there No one saith Christ cannot serve two Masters I am sure not two such that are so contrary and opposite as God is to the Devill the World and the Flesh neither saith S. Paul 1 Cor. 6.14 can light dwell with darknesse nor Christ with Belial The Prophet Elijah saith unto the people 1 Kings 18.21 How long halt ye between two opinions if the Lord be God serve him but if Baal then follow him God will not cannot endure any corrivall much lesse any bedfellow with him in the heart of man Moses tells Pharaoh Exod. â—â— that God will not suffer him to leave so much as an hoof behinde in Egypt when he goes to sacrifice to God for the least possession is a kinde of engagement against God The world or the Devill like the counterfeit mother cries divide it let me have a part t is no matter which living or dead so God hath not all to himselt alone whereas the true mother of the living child â— Kin. 3. will admit of no division but she will have all or none and such is Gods desire for if the heart be divided as Hâ—sea speaks of Israel â—os 10. it is as the childe divided which cannot live to the true Parent But O man consider how reasonable and just God is in requiring thy whole soule and how unjust and unreasonable thou art in denying it him entire or dividing it in parts betwixt him and his enemies Consider I say when he created the goodly universe of this world and so gloriously adorned and furnished it not onely with the fruitfull plants and fragrant flowers but with those bright Lamps in Heaven that he made all this and gave it entire to thee alone making thee the sole Lord thereof in respect of any other creatures over all which also he gave thee temporall power and dominion and as though in this he had shewed but half or indeed but the least part of his love consider that God himself gave himself wholly to thee was incarnate suffered died rose and all onely for thee and not for any other And is not this argument sufficient that the least thou canst return in gratitude should be thy heart entire not to be cut into parcels or shreds some whereof to be given to the giver of all and the rest to his and thine own enemies But some perchance may say though this is just and reasonable which is required yet it is most difficult for man clothed with flesh to performe this duty so strictly commanded to love God with all the affections and thoughts of the soul and these ever to be fixed on him and nothing else neither on parents friends or things of this life In answer hereunto I must tell you that God knoweth what we are and whereof we are made and therefore in this strict command or absolute request of all our love he prohibits us neither to love parents children friends no nor the things of this world so we love them with these two rules or cautions 1. That we love neither friends nor things on earth with such a degree of affection as may alienate or divide our fouls from God And therefore God himself hath not onely commanded us to love our neighbours all our neighbours of what rank or distance soever so they be men and to seek in the second place things necessary for the life and well being of our selves and those who depend on us and for whom we are to provide but hath figured the fame in proportioning our heart which though it hath a large and broad superficies upward to look and dilate it self to Heaven yet it hath but a cone or small point downwards to the things beneath The second caution in our love to any thing besides God is that whatever we thus love it must virtually tend and move to the service and glory of God And in this our love resembles the point of the needle in the Sea-mans Card or the Geometricians paire of compasses the former of which though it be ever moving and as it were casting about to severall parts yet it still returns and reteins its whole setled course to the true pole star and the latter though the one foot of the Compasse circuit and surround the circumference or globe of the earth yet the other stands ever firm and constant to the point which point here as that star before in this our application is God So that God who without any shew of covetousnesse in himself or wrong to thee might require all thy substance all thy actions and all thy time wholly to be dedicated and spent on his immediate holy service yet grants rhee the fruits of thy honest labour thy wealth and bids thee give his poore onely th t which thou mayest well spare and of the fruits of thy increase he takes onely a tenth and from thy worldly travails onely a seventh part and that Love which he wholly and entirely calls for is the affection and love of thy heart Shall I summe up all There is none so ungodly in this world but assents to this generall doctrine that God is to be so loved as he requires but all the question and difference lies in the performance and manner of loving for the most wicked in some sort may be said to love God But how and why for it is but with a carnall or worldly minde and to their own end and behoof as by him to enjoy life health wealth pleasure and delight and so they love God for these things that if he would confirm his letters patents unto them that these they might perpetually enjoy they would readily release unto him all the grant and interest made to them in Heaven On the other side the true lovers of God so love the world as that thereby and therewith they may the better serve him and promote his glory without which they desire neither the things of the world nor long to continue in it They love these things so as a man doth his horse his cloak or garment the one to carry him through his journey to his Inne and the other to keep him warm and
which will and desire each studieth the others good as earnestly and affectionately as his own yea and so far oft-times than he preferreth the outward good of his friend before his own And that such friendship hath been found they tell us of Pylades and Orestes Damon and Pythias Theseus and Pirithous who took upon them to be the persons of their friends imprisoned and in danger of life thereby to hazard their own liberties and lives for the freedome and preservation of their friends To the setling and confirming of this friendship I shall lay down some conditions as necessarily requisite First that there be a kinde of equality betwixt friends which though the learned Roman Tully allows not yet with some Grecians it passed as a Proverb that Amity is Equality which is to be understood not so much in the outward estate and place of wealth honour and office as in the condescension and submission of the reason and will of the one to the other with a due observation to the place and dignity of the other And so Jonathan though the eldest Son of King Saul became a friend to David a shepherd for saith the Text the soul of Jonathan was knit with the soul of David 1. Sam. 1â— and Jonathan loved him as his own soul and in this respect may a King be a friend to his Subject for Christ himself thus calleth his disciples and true followers friends Joh. 15. â—4 15. who although he never did nor could devest himself of the glorious Deity yet to the making good his friendship he became in all things as man sin onely excepted yea as he called these his friends Servants in the Text before so that he might prove himself the more their friend he not onely was found in fashion as a man and as they to be a man of no reputation but more he took upon him the form of a servant â—hil 2. and accordingly shewed it before his passion when he humbled himself to the washing his Apostles feet A second condition requisite to this confirmation of friendship is a community of all communicable goods Plato the great Philosopher held this so necessary not only for friendship betwixt private men but for the general peace in a State that he banished from his Common-wealth this thing called Mine and Thine as the onely bane both of friendship and publick peace which opinion some wise men have approved with this small distinction of possession and use So that though the one friend according to the Law be the Lord and Proprietary of his Lands and Moneys yet the use and benefit thereof in case of necessity or conveniency shall be enlarged to his friend And surely as the Apostle speaks if we have Christ with him we have all things for all things are his so he that hath the soul and the heart of a friend with and by these he cannot but command for his necessary use his temporal goods which as before he that shall deny in so doing he denies himself to be a friend And this condition hath a great part of its ground from this That betwixt friends there must be as before I spake of Jonathan to David but one soul or the soul of the one so knit to tho other that each loveth the other as it were with the same soul This love is exprest to be betwixt the bridegroom and the bride Christ and his Church where she saith My beloved is mine Cant. 2.16 and I am his where first he is made hers by the love of his soul and then I am my well-beloved c. 6.3 and my beloved is mine she first returns her soul and love to him and confirms his to her self and when love hath thus united their souls all the affections and actions of the soul to say will and do the same thing will follow It is storied of two twins That when the one laughed or cried or the like the other did the same and so it should be betwixt friends and such friendship or love is commended unto us in holy Writ not onely by the example of Christs disciples who were said to be of the same minde Acts 2. 4. Rom. 12.15 but by their precept to us as when it is said Rejoyce with them that do rejoyce and weep with them that weep and then in the next words which causeth this mutual compassion Be of the same minde one towards another And not onely have we this precept but Christ hath prayed that we be enabled to the performance hereof when he speaks to his Father Holy Father Joh. 17.11 keep those whom thou hast given me that they may be one as we are one and thus the heart of friends being made one in an honest holy love the one shall not will nor ever bear the sway but they will in some things so submit to the judgement and will of the other that neither shall seem to over-rule the other but at the most they shall seem to rule by turns And love being thus preserved by the unity of an holy soul the fourth condition must take its place That friends must will and desire nothing but that which is just and honest Just betwixt man and man and from man to God and honest that is of good report I have read of one Pericles who being desired by his friend to speak in his cause more then was truth he answered True I am your friend but no further then to the Altar which afterwards become a Proverb among the Grecians and had this sense that when they spake as Witnesses they laid their hands on the Altar which no friend should dare do no not for his friend in a matter of untruth 'T is true that many held this too strict in friendship when they say So much you will do for every man and will you do no more or have you not a case for a friend To which I must briefly say He deserves not to be accounted a friend who of a friend requires more then what is honest and just And from hence ariseth another condition in friendship That the acts and desires of a friend must not solely tend to his own interest and behoof for this is not just but equally or by turns mutually to the good and benefit of each other A picture well drawn looks from its self casting his eyes and countenance and as it were with them following the beholder which way foever he turns and a friend being the image or picture of his friend should in all good desires wishes and actions shew himself like this picture for otherwise he that loves another for himself loves himself and not the other for the end of his love looks inward to himself and not outward to him whom he professeth to love To the better cherishing friendship this sixth condition is somewhat requisite That there should be as much and as often as well may be a mutual interview and conference between friends The
incorruptible What is Musick but an harmony or consonancy of various discordant sounds What 's health but a temper or accord of the elements and parts of the body Some write that the stone Tuces if broken though then lesse weighty sinketh but so long as it is one whole and intire then and so long it swimmeth and keeps from sinking under water and the like power hath love and unity in all other bodies Consider and know that if the Almighty Architect of the world had not breathed or infused a spirit of unity into the upper and celestiall parts with the inferiour elementary that these had soon been scorched and indeed consumed by those Again the inferiour parts ever stand in need and crave the help benefit or influence of those above them as the earth of the water the water of the aire the aire of the fire and the fiery element of the Heavens in which if one Sphere should thwart and not gently yeeld to the others influence or motion they as the inferiour world would suddenly perish and be consumed The great Creator of these and all things in and under them Genesis 1.31 gave not the high praise and title of very good unto them untill himself by his most admirable power and goodnesse Gen. 1.31 had united them by love and so made them all one I cannot but acknowledge the saying of that Philosopher to be good and wise who called this kinde of love the Soul of the world For as the soule gives life and motion unto the body so doth love unto all other things and as the soule cherisheth and enlightens the bodie so doth love beautifie and inrich the world In a word there is no creature nor part of the world either great or small but hath if not all yet the greatest part of its perfection subsistence or continuance from this love But besides this kinde of love hitherto spoken of which in unreasonable creatures may more strictly be called inclination there is a love properly so termed which hath its working in the will both of God Angels and men Parmenides though an Heathen could say That love in God preceded the Chaos or the creation of the world as causing and making both Take this love as in man and then hear another Philosopher call it the Pilot a second the Sun a third the guide and director of the will of man and of all his choice actions CHAP. II. What love is and how it is the cause of all passions THings high and immense having some resemblance to infinity hardly come under the limits of a strict definition which hath caused the ancients to set forth love by Emblemes and Hieroglyphicks Yet so that some have in generall described it by negatives as that it is a thing which is I know not what affecteth and worketh I know not in what manner and which hurteth I know not how S. Gregorie calls it the fire in mans heart which according to the working thereof either cherisheth or destroyeth the Tabernacle of its residence and it may well be conceived that when the holy Ghost descended in the figure or shew of fire Act. 2.3 that that fire signified the love and accord to be amongst the holy Apostles being assembled together in one place which is the complement and blessing of all good Assemblies when they are all of one minde and one heart in a godly innocent love The fire which came from Heaven to consume the Sacrifice God commanded ever to be continued Levit. â— 13 that so it might never be extinguished or put out Isaiah saith Isa 31.9 That God hath his fire in Sion and his furnace in Jerusalem each Symbols of Gods love burning in the temple of our souls Now Philosophy teacheth that love is a passion both of complacency and such as fasteneth the thing or person beloved in the heart of the lover and it addeth That this love is the originall cause of all other passions in man according as they please or displease suit with or are contrary to our love and desire For the soule of man hath two great powerfull faculties called by Philosophers the concupiscible and the irascible In that are love hate desire fear joy and sorrow arising from the presence or absence of something or other which is either truly or apparently good And according as the concupiscible part is affected with grief want or losse of that which is desired so more or lesse the irascible part is inflamed or incensed to the prosecution or revenge of the affronts or bereavings of the souls desire S. Basil compared this passion unto the Shepherds dog more valued by him then many of his sheep not for that the dog hath any wooll or gives any milk but because by his watchfulnesse and barking he defendeth the flock from the wolf and so the concupiscible faculty or part of the soule proposeth to it self matter of delight and content and the irascible removeth or converteth the inconveniences and difficulties which crosse or oppugne this desire And these are the two wings wherewith mans soule flyeth in the pursuit of great Acts and without which she appears as a Galley unoared and a bird unwinged each unable to move or help it self A certain Philosopher hath compared the body of a man to a Coach drawn with two horses Conceive them to be love of good and hatred of evill But considering that they are disorderly and oft-times unruly God hath assigned them a discreet guide that is reason to rule and govern them Seneca the Philosopher calleth this the Guardian and S. Augustine termeth it the Author and Mover of all our actions be they good or evill as having tied at its girdle the keyes of all our wills and affections Betwixt love and concupiscence some put this difference 1. That concupiscense aimeth at a supposed good that is absent but love both at the absent and present 2. Concupiscence after the having and enjoying the thing desired as being satisfied groweth cold or ceaseth for the present to desire whereas love by possessing and injoying increaseth and is more ardent towards the thing beloved For the possession or enjoyment of the thing beloved serveth as fuell to continue and increase the flame or fire whereas things desired by a concupiscence being injoyed die and are often resolved into the smoak of disgrace or the ashes of hate CHAP. III. The power and force of Love SOlomon saith Love is strong as death But if we examine the strength of each we shall finde love to be the stronger â—antic â— 6 T is true that all earthly things submit to the power of death the young as the old the King as the Peasant the rich as the poor the wise as the fool Scepters and spades are both alike to death All know this truth would we did but half so well consider and prepare for it And as the jurisdiction of death so is that of love universall None ever escaped the
Tabor did but typically prefigure the glory of his passion so that here not there the standers by and since that the Christian world proclaimed him Mat. 27.54 what before was believed but by few that he was truly the Son of God Men on earth study to blazon their coats with Dogs Hogs Cats and the like and by these means think to traduce their names as famous to posterity though themselves never in their lives did an act worthy of a Dogs-taile whereas our most blessed Lord Christ who acted all things worthy the Son of the most high God and all for the good of mankind had no other coat-armour but the Crosse which his love procured and wrought and hath thereby made him justly to be adored and worshipped as the God of the whole world CHAP. VII Love transformeth the Lover into the thing beloved NOT onely some choice Philosophers but learned Fathers of our Church have deemed and called a friend a second self the half of the soule or the same And among them one saith he that loveth intirely is dead as to his own body and liveth in that body which he loveth for that love carrieth with it if not the whole substance yet the principall vigorous acting faculties of the soule This position in some sense is made good in the divine Lover by that of S. Paul when he saith Your life is hid Col. 3 3â— with Christ in God where love to God hath mortified the Lover as to the body and to the world and makes him live by and in Christ for truly the soule cannot be thought or said to live but where it appears to move or work Hereupon some wittily have pronounced that the beloved is become an homicide and guilty of murder if he return not love for love but robs the Lover of his soul not returning his again to the Lover And some Philosophers have conceived that the soul of a dead friend by a strange transmigration hath been secretly conveighed into the body of a friend living and there kept alive and operating and all this to be effected and brought to passe by the spirituall power of love S. Augustine comes somewhat neer to these conceits when he saith My love is as the weight in a clock or the magnetick virtue in the load-stone for whithersoever I am moved or caried that it is which carieth or moveth me and my soule Every one therefore it strongly behoveth seriously to consider before he setleth upon what he intends to set his love for if on earth he becomes earthly if flesh fleshly if heaven heavenly which agreeth well with those terms given in holy Scriptures to severall kinds of affectionate lovers Our most blessed Saviour prayeth for us that we may be in him and be one with him Joh. 17.21 as Christ is in and with his Father which holy residence and blessed union must be next to Gods goodnesse the work of love S. Paul saith of himself that he is crucified with Christ Gal. 2.20 neverthelesse saith he I live and yet he adds it is not I that live but Christ liveth in me if you ask him how this can be he tells you in the words following the life which I now live I live by faith this is the instrumentall mean if you enquire into the cause of this life it is there mentioned when he saith by the son of God who loved me and gave himself and all his merits and benefits to work for and in me Our carnall and prophane loose lovers usually court their mistresses with these and the like unhallowed speeches You are my life my heart my soul which oft-times is more true then godly Divinely spoke King David O that we would imitate him God is my light and salvation Plato said that a friend is like a good looking-glasse in and by which the other friend may see himself and be seen by others for so it was in Jonathan and David that who saw the one discerned the other Or you shall find two friends united by true love to be like the mother and the child where if the child smile or weep the mother doeth the like and as the Chamelcon appeareth to be of that colour with the thing to which it is joyned so is it with good and true lovers who like Hippocrates twins looked laughed cried each as the other and were of like colour condition and passion each as other so that the union of friends made by sincere love is well compared and presented by inoculating a bud into another stock whereby it is made one with it Now in man there be three unions and each of them caused or bottomed on love the first is that of the soule and body matched together by a naturall love The second is the union of soules whether as among ordinary friends or as among Christs disciples Act. 2.1 who were of one heart and mind endevouring to keep the unity of the spirit as S. Paul speaks in the bond of peace Eph. 4.3 the former of these is wrought by a naturall the other by a spirituall love The third union is that which is betwixt God and mans soule when as S. John saith God is in the righteous 1 Joh. 4.16 and they in him and the efficient cause of this union is Divine love Which union as of all other and above all things in this world it is to be most desired estemed and preserved so is the separation or divorce the most to be feared grieved for and most carefully to be prevented for as by that blessed union we are made partakers of all the best things that earth or heaven can afford so by that separation we not only lose all the blessings by that union acquired but we purchase to our selves all the miscries vexations and torments that hell the Devils and our owne conscience can afflict us with the cutting off a finger from the hand is painfull of the hand from the arm painfull and damagefull and of the head from the body painfull grievous and deadly but the dividing or divorcing the soule of man from God the life of the soule is a pain grief and losse not to be expressed no nor to be imagined fully no not by them that suffer and feel it Of all separations and divorces O my soule be fearfull and carefull to avoid this and O thou the God of my soule be gracious and mercifull unto me that through blindnesse of understanding or hardnesse of heart I never incurre the dreadfull sentence of such a divorce or separation CHAP. VIII Vehement love causeth extasies making the Lover besides or to rob himself of himself LOve saith the Wise man is strong as death and in this comes neer to death Cant. 5.6 in that it makes the Lover oft-times not to see what he fixeth his eye on not to answer what he hears or what he is demanded and indeed oft-times to put him into such trances as that he seems
no God or with the Epicure he regardeth not our works below but that we may for all him eat and drink and die These and such like are the great causes of all our sinnes S. Paul professedly hath exprest so much when he saith The Gentiles have given themselves over unto all lasciviousnesse Ephes 4.19 to worke all uncleannesse with greedinesse Whereof the cause is exprest in the verse before when he saith this they did having their understandings darkened through the ignorance that is in them because of the blindnesse of their hearts And the Prophet Hosea saith there is no knowledge of God in the land Hos 4. â— and what then follows but ver 2. swearing lying killing stealing adultery so that blood toucheth blood I may adde another cause or the ingenderer of love which is likeness Like will to like is seen among the beasts among whom sheep flock not with woolves nor will Harts heard with Lions And the like to this in man some Philosophers have attributed it to the complexion in men among whom we finde the company gesture voice and looks of some to be displeasing and distastfull to others for which the person disaffecting at first happily can give no sufficient reason Others and more neerly to reason and truth have given the cause of this love betwixt men to be the likenesse of their qualities and dispositions as the sinner hateth the righteous whatever the alliance is as it was seen in Cain to Abel Ismael to Isaac Esau to Jacob so on the other side the good just and wise love each other S. Paul hath determined this piece when he saith Be ye not unequally yoaked for what fellowship hath righteousnesse with unrighteousnesse 2 Cor. 6.14 and what communion hath light with darknesse and what concord hath Christ with Belial The Pythagorean and Platonique Philosophers were of opinion that the soules of men had a kinde of harmonious concent each to other so that as in musick one string being struck another will quaver and offer to give the like sound though not touched so say they and not improbably fareth it with the souls of many men S. Ambrose giveth another cause or parent of love which is conversation when as he tells us that to this end God walked with man in Paradise and that it is said of Enoch that he walked with God and though God had given Adam all the goods of the aire earth and water yet with none of these or any or all of the Beasts took he any delight but onely in that consort which God gave him as a companion to his body and solace to his soule and to her he cleaves and so of two they are made but one by a loving converse and agreement If any aske how this comes to passe that likenesse and conversation should thus beget continue and increase love the reason is easie and plain for seeing every man naturally loves himself and the rather because he is ever conversant with himself therefore it must needs follow that whatever is neerest to or most like him that he most neerly loveth and most desireth Can any give any other reason why man or woman delights to see their face in a glasse but because it represents them and makes them as it were to see and know themselves by this representative whereby the imagination apprehends it self CHAP. XI Love is onely conquered and repayed with Love LOve that is the inward affection of the heart is the soul as it were of the soul of man yea of the whole world for by it the world continueth and without it it could not stand as was shewed before We thank not the water nor the aire nor any inanimate or animate thing for doing us good it this good proceed from a naturall disposition in themselves without an affection of doing good to us For this latter is it which truly is called love and he that thinks ro requite this with gold or other gifts of price returns scarce drosse for gold Our Saviour and his Apostles have summed up all the Law in this kinde of Love and after all their precepts and counsels call for this love as the fulfilling of all For he that hath this cannot but believe and endeavour to work according to what is required or desired by Christ and his Apostles Our blessed Saviour promiseth heaven to him that gives but a cup of cold water in his Name Mat. 10 4â— and for his sake and can any imagine that heaven is of so mean a value or water so much worth as that heaven should be given for a cup of water no not the cup of water nor all the waters under heaven can be valued with heaven but the cordiall love and affection of the heart this is that God esteems and therefore calls to every one for it when he saith My Son take all earth heaven and all as my gift and for all onely give me but thy heart Prov. 23. â— It was not Abels sacrifice nor the widows mite cast into the Treasury that God so highly prized and commended but the love of the sacrificer and giver which he esteemed more than all the worlds good For all these are his The earth is the Lords Ps â—4 1 and the fulnesse thereof And when we have these or any part thereof we receive and hold them as his gift and for all he onely requires our love which onely is ours to give If you tell me Prov. 21. â— the heart of Kings and so of all men is in the hand of the Lord he turneth it whither soever he will And that without God 2 Cor. 3.5 we cannot so much as think a good thought and therefore not love I answer that though all things in man are of him through him Rom. 11.36 and to him as the Apostle speaks yet of all things in man mans will is most his own and this so lest by God to man that for it when it freely loves God it may return him in recompence as it were his love again The free present of a paire of pigeons with man is more esteemed than the return of 100 l. which was lent and the borrower bound to repay God often expresseth his regard to the love of his servants when he asks them Am I delighted with the sacrifices of goats and bullocks Ps 50.9 and who requires these things at your hands Isa 1.12 and by his Prophet Jeremiah I spake not to your fathers Jer. 7.22 nor commanded them when I brought them out of the Land of Egypt concerning sacrifices to be satisfied or served therewith Save onely by these as outward testimonies of your inward affections which indeed as to me are the onely sacrifice and service And from hence iris that God and man repay love with love For love hath an Adamantine power that is able to draw the hardest heart of iron unto it self by a mutuall love For the very apprehension of
Texts may be understood these or such Angels as God had especially appointed as helps for them and yet not that thence it should necessarily and generally follow that every man hath and is to have his particular Angel But in this I will not be peremptory but submit my opinion to the judgment of the better learned and so from the love of God and Angels I will follow mine Author to speak of the love of man to man CHAP. XXI Of the love which man oweth to his neighbour WHen the Pharisee demanded of our Saviour Christ which was the great commandement in the law Jesus said unto him Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart Mat. 22.36 c. This is the first and great commandement and the second is like unto it Thou s halt love thy neighbour as thy self on these two commandments depend the whole Law and the Prophets whence it appeareth that the love of our Neighbour is next unto and a declaration of that former of our love to God And that it is so farre necessary that when the Pharisee only asked which was the great commandement Christ not only answered him directly to that but thought it requisite to adde what the hypocriticall Pharisee least cared for to know or practise namely what God had commanded touching his neighbour yea and S. Chrysostome addes that in some respects preachers have more cause to inforce this doctrine of love to our neighbour then that of our love to God for that all things which we see feel have and enjoy prompt and move us to this whereas there are many and severall occasions daily offered through our words bargains transactions and private interest to divert or lessen our love to our neighbour and therefore I shall set you down some reasons moving to and confirming the necessity of this duty And the first shall be that our Saviour Christ gave us this commandement which indeed is in the nature of an inestimable legacy even then when he was to depart this life and to leave the world and we usually say and hold it true that the charge or gift of a dying friend sticks and works most in the heart of the friend living and therefore Christ at the last point as it were before his passion speaks unto his disciples and in them unto us saying My time is short and I finde death approaching Joh. 13.34 before which I have one especiall remembrance to give you that you love one another and that in no ordinary way or according to the course of this world but so to love one another even as I have loved you who conversed with you kindly communicated all to you friendly and have truly laid down my life for you Therefore my last Will and Legacy to you is that as I have loved you that even so yee love one another And to strengthen yea to sweeten this gift of command Christ in the words following gives a good reason for saith he by this kind of love among you as by a cognizance or badge all men shall know that yee are my disciples and I this will prove if not in the eyes and estimation of the world yet I am sure in the hearts of all good men in the esteem of Saints and Angels and in the eyes of my heavenly Father a peece of great honour unto you to be know through your mutuall love to be my disciples The brethren of Joseph fearing that he might call to minde and revenge the injuries done unto him by his brethren Gen. 50.16 they sent a messenger unto Joseph who said unto him Thy Father did command before he dyed forgive I pray thee now the trespasse of thy brethren and their sinne which words of his dying Father when Joseph heard he wept faith the text and spake kindly unto them and not only exprest his love by words and tears but he comfortted and nourished them and their little ones and the like love with Joseph if we have any bowels toward so dear a friend our Lord and Master as Christ was we will shew for his sake who dying commanded us so to love one another as he loved us who gave his life for us And yet lest as Christ foresaw and foretold that in the last days as iniquity should increase so charity would wax cold and thereby both our love to such a dead friend and for his sake to our neighbour would grow faint and dye he therefore gives us a second reason to love our neighbours which with man may happily work more then the former because it contains in it the unspeakable benefit and reward acquired by this love to our neighbour and this benefit is no lesse then the kingdome of heaven with the full fruition of all the unutterable and unconceivable joyes with Christ for ever All which are evidently and expresly promised and annexed to this love for when God in the Law and our Saviour in the Gospel have pronounced life and the kingdome of heaven to those that keep and fulfill the law and their commands the Apostle as the Embassadour of God hath plainly pronounced and proclaimed that love is the fulfilling of all this law Rom. 13.10 indeed our Saviour himself spake no lesse and from it this our Apostle might take his Commission when he said Mat. 22.40 on love depends all the Law and the Prophets Neither doeth the reward of our love to our neighbour terminate and end in this great blessing declared but it works before it comes to that and produceth singular and infinite blessings therefore our Saviour before he commends the keeping of this commandement of love to his disciples Joh. 14.14 he prefaceth what ever yee shall aske of God in my name that will I doe then in the next words he subjoyneth as the means to obtain this wonderfull grant and blessing saying v. 15. this is to be performed if yee love me and keep my commandements that is to love one another And yet as though this were not the halfe of that blessed reward which Christ annexeth to this love he goes on saying it you love v. 16. I will give you the Comforter who may abide with you forever even the spirit of truth intimating hereby and that plainly that as by love we receive the comfort of the holy Spirit and truth so without it neither truth nor comfort will or can dwell or abide with us And which is a third reason to incite and stirre us to this love nature it selfe infuseth this love into the heart of man which in this sympathiseth with the sensitive creatures that all so love and agree together according to their severall kindes that they not only fall not out among themselves to hurt each other but feed nourish flock and herd together helping and defending each other against the assaults and hurts of other enemies to their kind And this reason of love drawn from common reason is and
murther under which the Saints and holy ones suffer And to that place more especially of the souls crying How long O Lord dost thou not judge and avenge know that these souls in the 6th chap. v. 9. are the same with them who ch 7.9 clothed with white robes and palm sin their hands cryed with a loud voyce Salvation and herein is no destruction 2. These souls being the same with them cannot be deemed to pray for ought more then what is suitable to Christian doctrine and the kingdom attained by it which cannot be revenge or that such holy ones should desire it but that which they desire is 1. That Gods justice may be seen in his vengeance on those persecutors of his holy Martyrs 2. That God would shorten the time of those ten Roman Persecutions and of the suffering of those Martyrs and hasten his judgement 3. That the kingdom of Sin may be the speedier destroyed and the bodies of the persecuted Martyrs be the sooner glorified and in all this there is nothing that savours of an uncharitable hate or desire of revenge to their enemies CHAP. XXIV Motives and Reasons inducing love to our Enemies AND the first main reason may be drawn from the Author and Maker of this Law which is Christ God blessed for ever Who tells us Matth. 5.14 Ye have heard of old that ye may hate your enemies but I say Follow not all that you have heard but that which I tell and instruct you who am the Way the Truth and Life it self and I say Love your enemies Now concerning mans carriage or demeanour to his neighbour we have three several Laws and Law-makers the one Law is that of a friend to love his friend which though it may and should be from God yet very often it is from the world and worldly respects Christ himself intimateth little less when he saith When thou makest a dinner Luk. 14.12 call not thy friends nor thy rich neighbours as though this were the use or law of the world to love and make much of their friends The second is of an enemy to an enemy each of which hunt and take all occasions to prosecute one another with vexatious law-suits and quarrels and the maker of this law is the Devil who as Christ witnesseth is a murtherer from the beginning The third and last law is this not only of love to a friend John 8.44 but to an enemy and this is Gods when he saith But I say love your enemies It hath ever held as just and reasonable to give reverence and obedience to good Laws partly for the respect we shew to the Justice Wisedome and Integrity of the Law-giver With the disciples of Pythagoras the Philosopher it was enough to say he our master spoke it and this with them was confirmation sufficient of the saying We reade of the Rechabites that because they had obeyed the Commandment of Jonadab their father Jer. 35.18 therefore there should not want a man to stand before God for ever And of Laban it is recorded that when he purposed mischief against Jacob he desisted and changed his enmity into good why for saith he The God of your father spake unto me Gen. 31.29 saying Take heed that thou speak not unto Jacob either good or bad or from good to bad and this authority Laban the Syrian though an Heathen and an Idolater obeyed Now the Author of this precept is no less but the same who spoke unto Laban who now saith I who am the King of kings and Lord of lords I who from the beginning have created and made all I who from the beginning to the end make Laws and punish the breakers of them and none can deliver I even I give you this law to be observed for ever Love your enemies And this being the law of God then whether the law of Duels so understood and practised in these latter and worser times be the law of God or of Devils judge ye and bethink your selves in time whether he the same God that gives this law of Love to out enemies will not judge and severely punish the despisers of his authority and the breakers of this his just and sweet Law with everlasting hell-fire A second reason may be drawn from the love of this Law-giver God unto his enemies and he saith Matth. 5.45 I that give my light to shine upon the good and on the bad and send my rain on the just and on the unjust and so impartially that if my rain of afflictions fall first on the just yet my Suns prosperity doth first shine on the bad And again I who not onely pardoned my persecutors and murtherers but dyed for all my greatest enemies I who have done this and more give you this law wherein if you have any thing of children disciples or Christians in you ye will imitate and obey me for it is I who say and command Love your enemies And see further that when this Law-giver Christ had given this command of love to our enemies but in general in the fifth Chapter of S. Matthew in the next Chapter he teacheth the manner how we should love them when in his most divine Prayer he bade them to forgive them Mat. â— as they wished and prayed that God would forgive themselves and to give them an example not onely in the general which was not yet so sensible to all he shews and gives us a patern of this his love when a night or two before his passion he not onely washeth the feet of Judas but he feasts him with the rest of his Apostles and though he knew him to be a Thief an Apostate and a Traytor yet as though he had forgiven him he calls him friend And it is the. reasonable conjecture of an ancient Father That to the Thief who dyed with Christ and heard him pray for and to forgive his enemies it became an especial motive to his belief and thereby to his Salvation A third reason for this love to our enemies is the benefits redounding thence to our selves For my Names sake that is Isa 48.9 for mine honor's and for my praise saith God I will refrain and not revenge or punish and man loving and pardoning his enemies is made partaker of this honour and praise with God How often Mat. 18.21 saith S. Peter to Christ shall my brother sin against me and I forgive him where the remitter of his enemies injuries is called by the Apostle a forgiver and is not this a great honour and highly to be esteemed to participate in the like title with God to be a forgiver But hear on he that is out of charity and fostereth enmity in his heart is like a man wounded or sick of an hectick Feaver now the first means to cure and recover this infirm person is to wash away the corrupted blood and to purge out the putrefied humor which is the rancor and hatred burning in the soul
just man when he was robb'd of his goods and cattel had his houses burnt his children slain and his body filled with botches and sores neither chargeth these on the Chaldeans Sabeans or Egyptians nor on the fire no nor on the Devil himself but acknowledging the hand of God in all gives God thanks for all saying It is thou Lord who gavest all that hast taken away all and blessed be thy name that is the power and mercy of the Lord and in all this Job sinned not Job 1.21 nor charged God foolishly but wisely and thankfully entertained these sufferings as great benefits and blessings from the Lord. We finde S. Paul vehemently afflicted complaining of the thorn in his flesh 2 Cor. 12.7 and the messenger of Satan buffetting him suppose these to be like unto the wrongs and injuries done thee by thine enemies and then learn by S. Pauls example how to behave thy self in this case where we hear the Apostle praying thrice that is earnestly and often that it might depart from him and though his Saviour had promised that whatever he asked in his name it should be granted yet in this case S. Paul is not heard but his suffering is continued but know why for though the thorn and the devil bâ— not removed yet they are continued for his greater good for by them he hath the presence and assistance of Gods grace for so the Spirit of God answered My grace is sufficient for thee V. 9. and hereupon the Apostle in stead of grieving or complaining most gladly rejoyceth that the power of Christ may rest upon him and for this cause he not onely rejoyceth but as there he professeth he takes pleasure in his reproaches necessities persecutions and distresses and he gives his reason for all When I am weak saith he to the world and the flesh then am I strong and comforted in the Lord Can there be any greater benefit then this redounding to the heart of man while he suffers and revengeth not the hate and wrongs of his enemies whereby saith our Saviour ye are not onely made like to your Father Matâ— 5. â—8 but are made perfect like your Father And this may satisfie the question Whether it be of more merit to love a friend or an enemy which is answered first by that of our Savior to love your friends and those that love you is to do no more then the publicans and sinners do and he that doth but this saith our Saviour hath his reward in returning love for love but to love our enemies saith Christ is to attain the height and perfection of love and so be like and perfect as our Father which is in heaven is perfect The old Proverb with the Heathen was I am a friend till I come to be sacrificed for my friend but then no longer a friend but God saith S. Paul commendeth his love towards us that he would dye for us Rom. 5.8 while we were yet sinners that is as in another place they are called enemies so that the height perfection and merit of Christian love is seen in the love of our enemies more then of our friends We may urge this duty further from the great and eternal reward held forth and promised to the lovers of their enemies in a tempest on the sea when the ship is tossed the best way to keep thy brains steady is to look up to heaven the application is ready at hand and this course took that holy Martyr S. Stephen Acts 7.34 who when his enemies gnashed upon him with their teeth as enraged against him be then saith the Text looked stedfastly into heaven where he â—â—w the glory of God and Jesus on his right hand and this caused him not onely to pray for himself Lord Jesus receive my spirit but to pray for his persecuting enemies saying Lord lay not their sins to their charge It is storied of Abraham that his seed should be strangers in Egypt where they should serve Gen. 1â— 13 and be afflicted 400 years but that nation God saith be will judge and not onely so but that his Israel shall go forth out of Egypt with great substance and after that shall go to their fathers in peace and shall be buried in a good old age so that the patient suffering of the worlds injuries is rewarded with freedom plenty of goods long life honorable burial and peace that peace of God which S. Paul saith passeth all understanding Christ when he gave this law of love to our enemies hath explained and made it Gospel-proof when he saith Hereby ye shall make God your Father and if he be our Father then we are his Sons and if Sons saith S. Paul then also we are heirs with Christ in the heavenly kingdom The last reason to provoke us to this duty may be the example of Christ and the holy ones praying for their enemies and the inevitable necessity that we cannot in this world live without enemies and therefore are to make as we say a vertue of necessity and therein imitate God who draweth sweet out of sowre and good out of evil and by a godly alchymie draw patience from their persecution and praise to God for granting us patience and a greater reward after all our sufferings If some Country as Crete Ireland or the like want poysonous beasts yet no land or countrey is without contentious rancorous men yea no village is without some such for aâ— David said so may we They have compassed me round about and are as bulls and lyons roaring and seeking where and whom to devour I have read of one who foolishly bragg'd that be had never an enemy in the world to whom another more wisely replied saying Then I conceive you have never a friend for sure there is not a man living that hath any thing in him worthy a man but for his wisdome his justice his valour his honour or wealth he shall be envied quarrelled with pursued or persecuted so that he that will think to live free from these must as S. Paul go out of this world In this world saith our Saviour unavoidably ye must and shall suffer tribulation onely be of good comfort saith the same Saviour for I have overcome this world and that by my suffering and leaving this act and suffering of mine as an example to you that as I so ye likewise should suffer For so not onely Moses S. Stephen and S. Paul did suffer and yet pray for their enemies and persecutors but above all let our Lord and Master Christ be as our Law-giver so in this our pattern and example for imitation who descending from heaven and humbling himself to the ignominious death of the Cross for his desperate enemies yet then on the Cross suffering under them prayed for them in these words Father forgive them Luk. 23.34 for they know not what they do their malice hatred and revenge is such that they know not what they do
against themselves nor what they do against me yet Father for this and for this cause that their malice hath so blinded them O Father forgive them And if this cannot work and perswade you to love and not to hate and revenge your selves upon your enemies I know not what to say but to leave you to Gods judgement or which I rather desire upon your repentance to his mercy CHAP. XXVI Of Friendship OUR Saviour Christ commands us to love our neighbours Ioh. 15. and Matth. 5. to love our enemies but I read not that he ever counselled us to love our friends not that he thought them unworthy to be loved as more especially comprised under the title of neighbour but he omitted this precept or counsel for that every one would as most bound love them of their own accord and indeed Christ himself expresseth so much when be saith the Heathen Publicans who are ranged with sinners Mat. 5. â—6 these love their friends But because friendship hath been used and worn as a Cloak to do and cover much deceit and iniquity I will therefore follow the method of the Psalmist Psal 1. where from describing the wicked he makes his way to the godly so here I shall first note the disguises and falsities of counterfeit friends that avoiding these we may the better choose and love the true and good ones And the first rank of these are like Simeon and Levi Gen. 49.5 Brethren or friends so made and joyned together by the cords as the Prophet calls them of iniquity such are they of whom Solomon speaks who cry Come let us lye in wait for blood come let us fill our selves with strong drink and come let us take our fill of lust the world hath and ever will be too full of such conspirators not friends Such were Josephs brethren when they sold him such were the Scribes and Pharisees Herod and Pilate Jews and Romans made friends in a most wicked conspiracy to murther the annointed of the Lord of these I may say as Jacob O my soul Gen. 49.6 come not thou into their secret cursed be their wrath for it was cruel divide them therefore O Lord in Jacob and scatter them in Israel Another rank of false friends are such who under the cover of sheepskins get in and play the Wolves to the spoil and destruction of the simple and innocent-minded man and of this sort was Cain who as some Rabbies spake Gen. 4. â— kindely entreated his brother to walk into the fields and when he had him there alone he flew him and such was Absalom to his brother Ammon Joab to Abner the Pharisees and Judas to our Lord Christ all which under the pretext and colour of love betrayed and murthered the innocent With this rank of men as King David was too well acquainted so he often complains of and prayes against them as being of his counsell and eating of his bread Psa 94. yet while they had butter and oyle in their lips their hearts and tongues were spears swords and very poyson These to David were more dangerous then his publick enemies for of those saith he I could have taken heed but the others I mistrusted not The Thief that robbed in the day if he were killed Exod. 22.3 4. the blood of the killer was to be shed for him but if he robbed in the dark and was slain the killer was not to dye for it so much are the disguises and works of darkness abominable in the sight of God more then apert and open villany Of these I might counsel as the Philosophers and wise-men have done Try before you trust and lâ—â—rn to distrust and seeing all is not gold that glisters eat a bushell of salt with that man whom you purpose to make your friend Sâ—chem paid dear for trusting Simeon and Levi's friendship so did Sampson in relying on the love of Delilah and Abner on the fidelity of Joab The counsel given by the Prophet is seasonable and proper Jer. 5.4 Take heed every one of his neighbour and trust not any brother for they will deceive V. 7. they will tell lies and commit iniquity therefore I will melt and try them saith the Lord. There is a third sort of false friends who make shew of love when all tends to their own benefit or advantage Such are they spoken of by the Prophet Isa 1.23 Every one loveth gifts and followeth after rewards Such were Jobs friends such the Prodigals lovers in the Gospel who like Mice Whores and Swallows make love and frequent your house in the summer of prosperity but in the end prove like Acteons hounds to be your destroyers The wise-man distinguisheth and rangeth this kinde of friendship into a friend for his occasion Ecclus. â— v. 7. v. 10 11. and to a friend at thy table and to a friend in prosperity these are to be tryed as metals not by colour nor weight these are deceitful but by fire and the hammer by the fire of danger and adversity and by the hammer of trouble and persecution If they will endure and burnish and look bright under these take and hold them for good if not reject them as counterfeit The fourth kinde of false friends is that who loves for his own delight be it of thy beauty feature or other outward parts or gifts and these are not unlike to Lice which so long as the body hath sweat and foul matter they continue but no longer and their love is like the Apple of Sodom or the beast called Acucena which in twice handling yields an ill savour We have Gardens Parks and Chambers full of these I would I could not truly say Churches full of such whose love is most seen in being seen touched and tasted But as the flowers of the Garden hold not long their colour or sent so nor this love They cry Let its crown our selves with roses let us eat drink take our fill of love and suddenly they as their love is vanished and their place no where to be found Psa 37. Betwixt these false vitious loves and the true moral friendship there is a natural love engendered fostered and encreased by a similitude in the outward shape or inward qualities and such is that whereof we say Like loves its Like and Birds of a feather will fly together But this being in it self simply neither good nor ill but may prove either as it is applied and used I will pass it by And tell you what the true moral love or friendship is and what is required to the birth and growth thereof Some Philosophers have called a friend another self understanding thereby that although friendship be betwixt two yet that these two had but one soul that is but one will and affection in two bodies so that Tully hath more largely described friendship to be a mutual and reciprocal will and desire betwixt two in all good things divine and humane by
Spouse such is true love was at little rest while absent from her beloved the whole book of Canticles proves this Where Ch. 1.7 O where art thou whom my soul loveth and Ch. 3.1 2. by night I sought thee whom my soul loveth and I will rise and go about the city in the streets and in the broad wayes I will seek him whom my soul loveth and seeking but not finding how she bemoans her self to the watch-men and having found him she holds him fast V. 4. and will not let him go until she had brought him where she might enjoy him whom she so much loved and desired Absence and silence in friendship are like frost to the waters which deprives them of their flowing and yielding their comfort to those that need them whereas the presence and speech of a friend is to a friend like the light and heat of the Sun I end the conditions requisite to friendship with this That friendship should be without end Enmities among all but especially among friends and Christian friends ought to be mortal every day dying but their loves must be if true and from God immortal Such was Christs love to us Joh 15. as himself professeth saying Whom I love I love unto the end and then as it were by way of Application he saith This Commandment give I unto you That as I have loved you so ye love one another and where he findes not love thus long-lived but temporising he blames it as in the Church of Ephesus with which Church as he begins so in it the onely thing he findes fault with Rev. 2.4 is That she had left her first love for this is the love that he shews to man as by his Prophet he speaks Jer. 31.3 I have loved thee with an everlasting love In conclusion True love most not be like those Creatures spoken of by Naturalists that live and dye in a day or like your Pinks or Tulips flowers of sight and smell delightful but for a few hours but like the Oak the Hart the Elephant which are long lived In a word it should be as our wives till death us depart CHAP. XXVII The comfort and benefit of Friendship TO set forth the good redounding from friendship Tully and others as it were in the manner of proverbiall speeches used these That we had not greater need or use of fire and water then of friendship and to take this away were all one as to take the Sun out of the firmament intimating thereby That man cannot live without friendship Insomuch as what is generally spoken of health may as truly be spoken of friendship That it is such a good as without which nothing can seem good And this good among many others alleviates and lessens our griefs and enlargeth and extends our joyes by the participation and communication of each of them with a friend The wise-man therefore saith Pro. 18. that a friend is better then a brother and according hereunto Christ calls not his disciples brethren but friends And God himself to express the great love he bore unto Moses though his servant saith that he talked with him as a friend To sum up all Exod. 33. Ecclus. 6.14 the wise-man saith A faithful friend is a strong defence and he that hath found such a one hath found a great treasure and in the next verse A faithful friend is the medicine of life V. 15. and his excellency is so unvaluable that nothing doth countervail it But the same wise-man in the same Chapter having pointed out many kinds of counterfeit friends at the 7th verse counsels If thou wouldst get a friend prove him first that is saith another Translation Try and prove him in the time of trouble and be not hasty to credit him that is untill thou hast tryed him And one thing wherein thou art to try thy friend is his goodness and vertue For as the Prophet saith There is no peace to the wicked so may I say Ifa 57 2â— There is no good lasting peace nor agreement with the wicked no more then with a tempestuous Sea to which the wicked is there compared which is never at rest within it self nor suffers others to rest that sail in it There were Nations with whom God forbade his Israel to have any peace or league of friendship And some sins there are which more especially and neerly strike at and destroy the root of true godly love so that we cannot covenant or unite with them In the first Table the breach of the first and third Precept and in the second Table the violation of the sixth seventh ninth and tenth But in brief beware of the man decyphered by the Prophet who walketh in the counsell of the ungodly and standeth in the way of sinners Psa 1.1 and sitteth in the seat of the scornfull that man I say whose study and counsel is sin and maketh it a piece of his trade so that he scorns all just reproof that man avoid as in no condition fit to be a friend Now as Wisdom Humility and Meekness are the vertues in which as in good soils we may sow the seed of love and friendship so Folly Pride and Anger are grounds that will never receive the seed of love to any good encrease not Folly for as a fool cannot judge or rightly value the hidden parts of a wise man thereby to make him his friend so neither can the wise man see any thing in the fool wherefore he should choose to love him A fool may so may a wise man play and make sport with a fool but a fool cannot love a fool much less can a wise man for the Moon changeth not so often as the fool doth for his thoughts are as the spokes in the wheel of a Cart ever moving up and down and the secrets which thou shalt commit unto him are as the wise-man speaks Ecclus. 19.12 as an arrow that sticketh in a mans thigh with which he travels to be delivered of as a woman in labor of a childe Nor Pride for this is apt to beget hate envy and malice whereas Humility as the low and fertile valley is the best ground for friendship Again Pride rejoyceth in it self and as the Pharisee despiseth others if he see a mountain or beam of vertue good in another he would make it appear but as a mote or as a mole-hill whereas on the contrary the humble soul either seeth no faults in his friend or he lessens it all he can to the world and thereby would make his friends errors to be but motes and his vertues beams And when the proud man speaks of his friends good qualities or endowments he doth it with â—n if or a but then the humble doth it categoâ—â—cally and affirmatively but never forgetting how our Saviour commended John the Baptist which was not to his face for this is the mark of a Sycophant or Flatterer but in his
absence when he shall hear least of it A third enemy to friendship is Anger you may observe that when God spake unto Elijah 1 Kin. 19.11 12. there first came a renting wind then a shaking earthquake and after both a burning fire but the Text tells that God the Spirit of meekness and love was in neither of these but in a small still or gentle voyce This this and not rage or fury is the parent of love and therefore Moses who was a meek man is the onely man to be called Gods friend And yet S. Paul teacheth us that there is an anger that may not be sinful for so saith he Be angry and sin not Eph. 4.26 and anger sins not then when it makes sin the object or butt of his displeasure and this anger Moses wanted not when he brake the two Tables wherein God himself wrote his Law but if ye observe this anger was not set against the persons of the people sinning for these be bewailed these he prayed for and with a wonderful measure of love when he wished rather that himself should be blotted out of Gods book then that they should be destroyed but all his anger was bent against sin and that not against a petite out against a most hainous and abominable sin gross Idolatry So that there is an anger in a friend which is not onely tolerable but commendable and it is like that of the Prophet when he saith Psa 141.5 Let the righteous smite me it shall be a great kindeness and let him reprove me it shall be an excellent oyle which will not break my head The Greeks as the Latines have distinguished anger by two words the one is called 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 and iracundia by which is understood an ebullition or boiling of the blood which as it comes from a natural cause so it oft-times and in many is almost as soon gone as it suddenly came and this usually is found to be a consequent of the best dispositions the other anger is termed 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is a setled lasting wrath arising from a malicious heart and a revengeful stomach S. Paul himself seems to allow or favor this distinction when he saith Be angry and sin not Eph. 4.26 let not the Sun go down upon your wrath neither give place to the devil and this latter properly and not that former anger is it which we here speak against as being the deadly enemy to true friendship CHAP. XXVIII Of self-Self-love WE read not that man is expresly commanded to love himself because every one is so inclinable to it that the danger lies in our over-love to our selves yet it is implyed when we are taught to love our neighbour as our self and under this command is likewise implyed what we should not do to our neighbour as not to rob not to kill him We should not defraud our selves of what is justly and necessarily requisite for us much less should we destroy or kill our selves And this tacit precept of loving our selves is so much the stronger because it is natural â—nd ariseth from the first principles infused into man and never becomes vitious or sinful until it transgress or goes beyond the limits prescribed unto it which limits being to love God first above above all things and for himself for that he is the Alpha the first of all the first by whom all things were made and were all made for the exaltation of his glory And the second limit or bounding of our love being to our neighbour who is Gods image and our second self and therefore to love him as our self now when man shall so love himself as that he loves no other but himself then this love is corrupted and forbidden as sinful And into this sin as the first and root of all other sins did our first parents Adam and Eve fall when the devil tempting Eve he told her that by eating the forbidden fruit she should be like God the inordinate love to her own so great a seeming good moved her to desire what was forbidden and thereby to forsake God in disobeying his commands Pride properly was not the first sin in that Adam or Eve would be like God but the love of themselves was the cause of that pride And as Eve was the first that fell into the transgression of not loving God through her self-self-love so very soon after Adam dropt into the same transgression of not loving his neighbour for he when God called him to an account took nothing upon himself nor any way excused Eve but laid all the blame and sin upon her which was not to love her as his friend or neighbour and all this came from self-self-love The devil accusing Job asks God whether Job served or loved him for nought wherein his meaning was That neither Job the upright nor any other loved God as they ought wholly for God but for themselves Jacob vows unto God Gen. 28. â—0 but hear his conditions If God will be with me and will keep me in this way that I go and will give me food and raiment so that I come again to my fathers house in peace then shall the Lord be my God Might not the devil interpose and ask Doth Jacob serve God for nought the like may be said of the mother and the sons of Zebedee whose thoughts when Christ drew near his passion were for honour and precedency above their fellow-Apostles so that self-love seeketh primarily its own good though at the cost and charges of another And so tender-hearted and loving we are to our selves that when God hath poured out all the vessels of wine and oyle of his graces mercies and benefits yet if he require but some small return of a thankful love expressed by some holy exercises in the Church or at home how apt are we to say as the Spouse I have put off my coat how shall I put it on Cant. 5.3 I have washed my feet how shall I defile them small things about our garments or our very feet shall keep us from God or else we will say as in the Proverbs There is a Lyon in the way In our way to God we feign and suppose Lyons dangers of losing liberty or estates and rather then we will lose or hazard any thing for God we will swear backward and forward and serve the devil rather then God and we think we have excused all sufficiently by saying we were forced thereunto for we saw a Lyon in the way when oft-times this Lyon is of our own making or fear rather then that there were any such indeed and all this is the bastard-brat of â—â—lf-love And if you ask me what hath been the Mother and Nurse of all Heresies as that first of Simon Magus of the Gnosticks and Nicolaitans who to be great and to enjoy filthy pleasure were sometimes Jews sometimes Christians at other times Gentiles in their Professions but sure they would never willingly
if he love her he wisnes her well he doth well for her he gives her what in justice and reason she â—n desire he suffers for her more then she would he is carefull not to displease and most willing to give her honour and all good content God when he gives lawes and precepts to man he concludes them all in this Love the Lord thy God and S. Paul Rom. 13 10. love is the fulfilling of the law And to this love as portrayed the husband is bound so saith S. Paul men ought so to love their wives Eph. 5.28 and this expresly proves it to be the husbands duty to love his wife Which S. Paul barely saith not it is his duty though his word as from God were a law and there needed no other confirmation for it but he proves it For the man to his wife is as Christ to his Church and Christ loved his Church and therefore 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so ye husbands ought to love your wives Secondly the wife is not flesh of thy flesh but is made one flesh and one body and as it were one person with thee Eph. 5.28 so Ephes 5.28 and therefore man ought to love his wife And if you ask me how he ought to love her this the Apostle expresseth too and most plainly saying 1. as Christ loved his Church 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so ye husbands ought to love your wives Where note that the Apostle means not by this 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 so to tell the husband that he ought to love his wife in that high measure and degree as Christ did love his spouse the Church this is not possible for man to do but as Christ did truly and heartily love the Church so ought mâ—n to love their wives And a second 〈…〉 should love his wife the Apostle adde in the same place when he saith he ought to love her as hit own and as himself and be it that the man love his wife so the woman covets too much that would desire more then that her husband love her as he doth himself for no man v. 29. except a mad one saith S. Paul hateth but rather cherisheth and nourisheth his own flesh Now S. Basil taking it for granted that the man according to this duty and rule loves the wife more then the wife her husband demands the reason for it and answers it thus That woman was made subject to the guidance of the man and therefore to make a compensation as it were the man by his love is made in some sort subject to his wife so that the husband though he be in his naturall capacity a Lord to his wife as Sarah called her husband yet in a sweet manner he is through his love become her servant so that though God gave the woman long haire which might be as reynes in the mans hand to guide her yet God gave her an eye that her husband may say as Christ to his spouse Cant. 4.9 thou hast ravished or taken away my heart with one of thine eyes and be the man the head of the wife yet the wife by her ravishmâ—nt of the man is become according to the place or part whence she was first taken the heart of the man and hereby it comes to pass that as Christ taught the man is to leave father and mother and cleave to his wife and all this is wrought by mans love to his wife Well therefore did S. Paul Ephes 5. speaking of this loving subject call it a mystery a mystery in nature and a mystery in grace and each applied by the Apostle to the husbands love for as Eve was taken out of Adam so the Church from Christ she from Adam cast into a sleep the Church from Christ sleeping in Death Eve was from the side opened the Church from Christs side pierced Adam therefore was to to love Eve as his flesh and bone Christ his Church as his blood and life and hereupon the Apostle concludes Men therefore love your wives as Adam did Eve and as Christ did the Church For man and his wife are coupled as in the bond of nature so in the covenant of grace and this is the mystery which S. Paul calls the love of man to his wife And another mystery there is couched in the words of the Apostle when be saith that the man and wife being two subjects or persons are made and become one for though two yet but one body and two but one soul and affection to love each other as himself Eph. 5.28 v. 33. so that two should be one in and by love and yet by the power of the same love this one to become two to help each other against all enemies adversaries or opponents and here is the mysterie and such a mysterie as love onely under God can and should make between man and wife Which love as it is strong as Death Can. 8.6 so it feares not nor stoopeth to death but undauntedly encountered for the object be it the wife or the spouse beloved S. Paul tells us it was so in that most divine love of Christ to his Church who gave himself even to death for her and so hath it been in many a man naturall love to do the like for his beloved He touch but one example of Tiberius who finding two snakes in his bed-chamber was told that if he killed the female his wife must die if the male himself whereupon to preserve his wife he chose rather to kill the malâ—â—â—nd himself to die and happy is that conjunction which is so cemented by love that each can say as Castor and Pollux as brethren vive tuo Coujux tempore vive meo live ô my spouse thy terme and live thou mine The Greeks though most abundant in expressions by words yet in this case of husband and wife seem defective and scanty For as Ephes 5. and Col. 3. 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Eph. 5. Col. 1. which is in generall a man stands for husband so 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 which is in generall a woman signifies in the Apostle a wife which defect if it may be so called is supplied by our English when we translate that man and woman by husband and wife and not unfitly from the first creation of both for as the woman was made for the man to be a comfort unto him as a wife Gen. 2.18 so the man being alone and wanting any under God on whom to place his love and delight is to settle these on the woman his wife therefore saith the Apostle husbands love your wives Eph. 5.22 these being the objects of your solace and delight and as they were made helps to the husband Which word husband as it notes the man to be the band of the house and all therein so primarily and principally of his wife by which he is put in minde to keep her from shattering as the band in sheaves or as the band of
ΘΕΙΟÎΕÎΩΤΙΚΟΠA DISCOURSE OF HOLY LOVE By which the SOUL is united unto GOD. Containing the various Acts of Love the proper Motives and the Exercise of it in order to Duty and Perfection WRITTEN IN SPANISH By the learned CHRISTOPHER de FONSECA Done into English with some Variation and much Addition By Sr GEORGE STRODE KNIGHT LONDON Printed by J. Flesher for Richard Royston at the Angel in Ivy-lane 1652. Charitie The Epistle Dedicatory Dear Children THE good old Patriarch Jacob constrained in his later days to live in a strange Country considered the manner how to make himself happy and to bless his Children before his death Such were the thoughts of my heart in these sad distracted times when in the declination of my age I was inforced to eat my bread in forein parts where having abandoned the thorny cares and troubled cogitations of worldly imployments some way to alienate the weight of my pressing afflictions I resolved by studious endevours to find the right and true way to my eternal habitation and heavenly Country as it is manifested in the book of God which although alsufficient every way for mans salvation yet I omitted not to cast mine eyes on such objects as might prove helps to discover the clearest and easiest paths for my better conduct thereunto to which end amongst other books I translated this treatise intituled the Love of God Compiled in Spanish by the learned Christopher De Fonseca This when I had finished and considered that the generall subject of the whole work was love and the severall parts thereof might tend to the better ordering of a Godly Moral and Civil life I knew not unto whom more fitly to recommend it as the Legacy of a dying man then to you my dear children the living Cions of my Corporall stock and the comfortable cares of my drooping age and this I do the rather bequeath unto you as confident that you like Noahs good children will not onely turn your own eyes from your fathers nakedness in this his undertaking but as much as in you is labour to cover the same from others But that which especially invites me to address this tract unto you is that you may not only be put in minde so far as God shall inable you to imitate your father in Holy Love whereby I may seem to revive and live again in you but that making your selves first Scholars and followers and then having your hearts replenished with the Spirit of Love and your feet conducted in the right paths of Charity you may become guides of others unto the heavenly Canaan After which as my soul ever longed move then after all earthly goods worldly contents or fleshly delights so that herein you may imitate and exceed me your father is the earnest desire hearty counsel and most fervent prayer of Your most tender affectionate father GEORGE STRODE The Contents Chapter 1. OF the division of Love into its kindes Fol. 1 Chapter 2. What love is and how it is the cause of all our passions Fol. 3 Chapter 3. Of the power and force of love Fol. 6 Chapter 4. That love is silent yet active Fol. 9 Chapter 5. How love lesseneth or facilitateth things most difficult Fol. 11 Chapter 6. Love extracteth delights and glory out of sufferings and torments Fol. 13 Chapter 7. Love transformeth the lover into the thing beloved Fol. 15 Chapter 8. Vehement love causeth extasies Fol. 19 Chapter 9. Love exchangeth and counterchangeth all with its beloved Fol. 21 Chapter 10. The motives and causes of love Fol. 25 Chapter 11. Love is only conquered and remunerated with love Thus far of love in generall Fol. 29 Chapter 12. The love of God is not to be parrallelled Fol. 33 Chapter 13. By the same means that mans love decreaseth Gods love increaseth Fol. 36 Chapter 14. Gods jealousie Fol. 39 Chapter 15. Gods revealing his secrets unto man is a great demonstration of his love Fol. 40 Chapter 16. God seemeth to be solitary without man Fol. 42 Chapter 17. Charity is the most eminent amongst all the virtues Fol. 44 Chapter 18. Our love to God is to precede all other loves Fol. 47 Chapter 19. God must be loved with the whole heart Fol. 52 Chapter 20. The love of the heavenly Angels unto man Fol. 58 Chapter 21. Of the love which man oweth to his neighbour Fol. 61 Chapter 22. The manner how we are to love our neighbour Fol. 72 Chapter 23. That we ought to love our enemies Fol. 77 Chapter 24. Motives and reasons inducing love to our enemies Fol. 86 Chapter 25. To pardon is a sign of honour and of pusillanimity to revenge Fol. 93 Chapter 26. Of friendship Fol. 102 Chapter 27. Of the comfort and benefit of friendship Fol. 111 Chapter 28. Of self-love Fol. 115 Chapter 29. Temporall goods connot give content Fol. 121 Chapter 30. Temporall goods deserve not mans love Fol. 123 Chapter 31. The brevity frailty mutability uncertainty and misery of mans life abateth the love thereof Fol. 140 Chapter 32. The honour of this world deserveth not mans love Fol. 157 Chapter 33. Pleasures and delights are not worthy of mans love Fol. 168 Chapter 34. Of the love of women Fol. 175 Chapter 35. Of the inordinate love of eating and drinking Fol. 185 Chapter 36. Of the immoderate love of apparel Fol. 195 Chapter 37. Of favorites to Princes and Conquerours in war Fol. 202 Chapter 38. Of the mutuall love of the maried couple Fol. 208 Chapter 39. Of the love of Parents and Children Fol. 247 Chapter 40. Of the love of our native Country Fol. 262 Holy Love CHAP. I. The division of Love into its kinds THat which is most pleasing and delightfull to the Soule and Nature of man next unto God is Love Of which I intending to speak by way of Preface I must tell you that there are two kinds of Love the one metaphorically so termed which is that naturall inclination in things insensate and irrationall whereby they are moved according to that which may most work to their rest or better being By the power and strength of this Love the fire ascends the earth descends the aire and water ever strive to attaine and reach their own Region or place wherein and where never till then they are at rest And I may not altogether improperly call that quality strength or vertue Love which doth so unite and knit all the parts of this great world the Vniverse together that without it both it and all the parts thereof would soon be dissolved and come to nothing of what they are An ancient Philosopher called this kinde of love unity and to this loving unity other Philosophers attributed so much that they conceived the whole world and all in it to be nothing else but that or but one entire thing which though consisting of many various and different natures are yet by Love collected drawn together and knit into one which so long as it holds to be one becomes
flames of this fire not the Supremacy of the King not the holinesse of the Prophet both proved in David not the gravity of the high Priest verified in Eli to his sons not the wisdom of Solomon nor the strength of Samson all owe homage and pay their tribute to Love as unto Death When Solomon compared Loves force to the power of death he so compared it because he could finde no one thing so strong to which he might have likened it And if with the Hebrews there had been in their expressions any comparative degrees I conceive Solomon would as well he might have said That Love is stronger then Death which will easily appear if we compare the powerfull acts of Love with those of Death For the power of Death is seen in that as is before said Kings wise rich strong young all stoop and submit to the stroak of Death Nay it you say further That Death adventured upon yea and prevailed over the Son of God the Saviour and life of the world yet know that all this was done neither could it have been done but onely by the Love of Him who submitted himself to this Death For love it was and onely love that wrestled with God and overcame him in this that he should leave the Heavens and lay down his life submitting himself to that death which had no power over him but through his own unspeakable love So that I may truly say That all Deaths atchievements are but weakeness in comparison of this Love Might I not adde to this that it was love and love alone that brought down God himself from Heaven to be incarnate in the wombe of a woman to suffer all the miseries and hardnesse to which humane nature not sinfull is subject to endure weather travail hunger thirst fear yea the sadnesse of soule even unto death and to a kinde of expostulation with his Father My God why hast thou forsaken me and in conclusion of all to suffer his glorious body to be nailed to the Crosse and there by direfull long tormentings to linger out his life and what were all these sufferings but so many triumphs of his love and may I not cry out O the power of Love triumphing with reverence and in a right sense be it spoken over God himself You have in a glaunce or shadow as it were seen some glimpse of Loves power in God will you now see how it hath wrought on men where to rehearse the many great affronts disgraces persections suffered by S. Peter S. Paul and by other the glorious company of the Apostles and the noble Army of Martyrs were to write Volumes greater then have been seen yet In close of all we must conclude that all those glorious Martyrdoms were performed by the power of Faith through Love It were easie to inlarge the history of Loves power should I tell you that Love oft-times rejecteth the greatest Commands wisest Edicts and best Laws despiseth honour neglects fame wealth health life soul and all yea and perverteth the very course of nature such is the unruly and untamed disposition and power of Love It makes the weak dare and to encounter the strong and the coward the most valiant In a word it turns the hen having chickens to become an Eaglet and a timerous Doe as a couragious Lion Love by many is rightly compared to fire the most active and strongest worker of all the Elements which destroyeth houses Castles Towns Cities which melteth and consumeth the hardest Metals and such is and so oft-times works Love Which as it most takes and works by idlenesse and converse so is it best resisted by the contraries good imployment and the shunning wanton company We reade that one of Darius his servants held 1 Esdâ—aâ— 3. that the King a second that Wine and a third that a Woman is of the greatest power to perswade or overcome man But neither wine nor woman hath or can have this power over man unlesse it first prevaile and get the love of man So that it is not the beauty or inticements of woman but mans love that overcomes inthralls and destroyes man CHAP. IV. Love is silent yet active SCripture and experience teach us that they who love most make the least shew of their love and in this they resemble the most righteous the wisest the noblest and most valiant who rather let others see and judge of their goodnesse and vertue then themselves to become their own trumpets True love hath hands and no mouth whereas the false hath only a tongue to prate but no hands to act Some Ancients therefore portrayed Love with the finger on the mouth as sparing of words but naked as having distributed and given all away unto his very skin And our most blessed Saviour after his resurrection shewed unto his Disciples his side and his hands pierced that by that fountain and these chanels his love might appear to them and to all the world S. John therefore his beloved Disciple 1 Joh. 3.18 and true follower admonisheth his scholars not to love by tongue and in words but in truth and works S. Peter having made large promises though all forsake thee yet I will not and again I will lay down my life for thee Christ upon this puts Peter to it three times questioning him Lovest thou me and as often bidding him to make proof of his love by feeding his sheep Joh. 21.17 the elder and his lambs the younger sort Action and performance is the touchstone and surest triall of true love for which and the cause thereof shewed in anointing Christs head washing his feet and wiping them with her hair one M. Magdalene hath no lesse reward then the forgivenesse of all her sins and all this saith Christ because she loved much Moses the Angel and servant of the Lord had prodigious or wonder-working hands and such as with his rod could draw fountains of water out of the hard and drie rock such as could bring flies frogs and destroying armies of small beasts upon Pharaoh and all the land of Aegypt yet he was a man as it were without a tongue tongue-tied or no man of fluent speech and therefore his brother Aaron Exod. 4.10 was in his stead the mouth Exod. 4.30 and Oratour to deliver the Almighties message unto King Pharaoh Ezâ—kiels living creatures Ezâ—k 1. the representations of Gods Embassadors had wings to flie and soare aloft by contemplation and spreading glad tydings to the world but under these wings they had hands herein expressing the nature and work of true love Love wee see is best seen by works not words and the work of love is such that oft-times it disroabs or takes away that stupidity or incivility which naturally is inbred and by a gentle influence and cultivation infuseth or begets fantasie and manly deportments Plato a great Philosopher was of opinion that the strength of fantafie which was shewed in many high straines of Poësie was kindled and
inflamed by the heat of love And this love though it oft-times want a tongue for outward expression yet this defect it makes good by the eye for as loves palace is the heart so this palace is full of lights through which love makes it self visible and known And as a Chamaeleon or an Actor on the stage is now fearfull then confident sorrowfull and anon joyfull jealous yet secure weak but made strong so love makes one man twenty severall men it makes him all and again a nothing but all working love CHAP. V. Love lesseneth or facilitateth things most difficult LOve hath a participation of the Almighties power able to make the bitter sweet heavy light and the almost impossible things feasible A tast of the Colloquintida in Elisha's pot of portage 2 King 4.41 causeth his guests the Prophets to cry out Death is in the pot to remedy the which Elisha casts meal and then saith the text there was no harm or evil thing in the pot what that meal did Love can doe and more Our most blessed Saviour saith My yoke is easie Mat. 11â— 30 and my burden light now his yoke and burden are the renouncing all that a man hath wealth liberty and life and are these so easie and light yes Truth it self hath spoken it and most true it is that Love makes these both light and easie The traditionall Jewes had branched and summed up the precepts of the Mosaicall law into 793 whereof they made 428 affirmatives 365 negatives but all these and if there were a thousand times more Joh. 15â— 12 Christ hath reduced them all into this one Love and according to this truth S. Paul averreth that the fulfilling of that law which to flesh and blood was impossible is now done and performed by love Love saith he is the fulfilling of the law Rom. 13.10 As love fulfills all and makes all things easie and light so where love is wanting nothing is light easie well done or indeed is done at all or not as it ought to be done for where love is wanting all is too much that is done and where love is all that is done is too little love maketh a beam a straw and contrariwise it can change a straw into a beam He saith Christ that loveth me keepeth my law for where love is the least word is a law and that law is fulfilled by this word Love Some spectacles there are that represent things greater and others lesser then indeed they are and both these spectacles are made of love which makes the virtues of the beloved greater but his vices lesse Jacob loves Rachel and that he may injoy this beloved piece he serves twice seven yeares bearing the heat of the day and cold by night and yet all this seemed to him but as a pleasant act of a few daies Gen. 29.20 for the love saith the text he had to her The truth of this Axiome is made manifest by the mirrour of love Love it self Christ our Saviour who being very God and so impassible yet assumes our nature and then suffers himself to be reviled scornfully used scourged and put to a shamefull and most ignominious death and all for us his open deadly enemies Look upon me O Lord saith David and be mercifull unto me â—s 119.132 as thou usest to doe unto those that love thy name that is as to thy friends and servants whom thou lovest for as Love by the Heathens and Poets is feigned and portrayed blind so indeed where love is it doth not or will not see or censure the infirmities and blemishes of its beloved but takes them to be as Love-spots rather then deformities When Adam laid the blame of his transgression on his Wife S. Bernard seems to blame Adam that he had not taken it upon himself which saith he he would have done had he loved her CHAP. VI. Love extracteth delight and glory out of torments and sufferings I Speak not this of carnall or politick love which is usually changeable and inconstant and accompanied with falsity tending to self-ends but of Divine love and of this I may truly say the greater or lesser the affection is such more or lesse is the perfection acquired The blessed Apostles and holy Martyrs in the primitive times give us ample testimony and proof to this assertion whose revilings and most exquisite tortures begot in them not patience only but delight and pleasure the stones thrown at the Proto-martyr Stephens head he esteemed as so many jewels The fire under Laurence was to him as some pretious balme or soveraigne confection Ignatius who so much longed to be torn in pieces by wild beasts said If they be tame I will provoke them for I am as wheat to be bruised broken and to be served up to my Lords table And S. Paul said that his afflictions 2 Cor. 11.30 temptations and tribulations were his joy and glory so that though pain oft-times might have drawn teares from their eyes or blood from their veines yet the love they bore to their Lord Christ raised content in their hearts and such smiles in their faces as if they had been already with him in heavenly joy And in all this they did but as scholars imitate their Master who as he often delighted to treat of his passion so he profest to his disciples that Luk. 22.15 with desire he desired that is he greatly and earnestly desired to eat the Passover not as delighted to feast with them but to suffer for them and when S. Peter would have disswaded his Lord from his last great sufferings his Lord reproved him more for this then for his deniall of him in the high Priests hall for on this deniall Christ did but cast his eye toward Peter minding him thereby of his high promise made never to deny him but for that he not only bids him avaunt Mat. 16.23 which we only say to Dogs but he calls him Satan as being an adversary or hinderer of his much desired and longed-for Death We read in the New Testament of two Mountains whereon Christ more eminently appeared the one was Tabor where the shine of his glory seemed greater then that of the sun the other was Calvarie where he was beheld as a man despised more then the worst of men Barabbas the thief murderer prefer'd before him and when the sun hid his face ashamed of the horrid fact of putting the God of Heaven to death yet this exaltation on the Crosse in Mount Calvarie took more with Christ then that other of his transfiguration on Mount Tabor insomuch as here he finished the great work of his love for which he came into the world for the redemption of mankind and that all might be saved a pledge of which the thief dying besides him found who upon the word of Christ spoken unto him presently entred Paradise and this suffering on the Crosse in Calvarie substantially proved what the other appearing on
rather a moving trunk of flesh then a living soule and this in part excuseth the words and acts of Lovers as proceeding from men distracted rather then from men in their wits and hereupon the Romans had a law exempting such Lovers from the penalty of death holding them to be no better then mad men This holy phrensie of love hath not escaped the Saints of God on earth S. Paul was neer this when in his extreme love to his Country-men as Moses Exod. 32.32 Rom. 9.3 that wished himself blotted out of the Booke of God so he wished himself accursed from Christ unlesse the Jews his brethren might be pardoned and saved with him so that which is said of Peter ravisht with the glorious apparition on Mount Tabor the like might be spoken of S. Paul in his excessive love to the Jews he knew not what he said or as Felix said unto him Paul thou art surely besides thy self love in stead of learning hath made thee mad And if ever any exceeded in love Joh. 10.20 above all the love that ever was in the world it was Christ who so exceeded herein that the Jews once thought him mad And might not others as well as they have imagined the like of him when in the excesse of his love to his very enemies he would suffer himself to be taken delivered up and shamefully put to death for them Thus far did the love in Christ work him to go or seem to be besides himself and all that he might work us to return to and to look into our selves and up to heaven that as ravisht with the love hereof we might live here in the world as though we were out of the world and that we might so look on these delights below as men blinde and hear of them as deaf and discourse of them as not concerned but as men in part translated to heaven and here become earthly Angels S. Paul made his daily prayers unto the Father of our Lord Christ That he would grant unto the Ephesians the riches of his holy Spirit to be rooted and grounded in love Ephes 3.17 and that they might know the love of Christ which passeth all knowledge where he prayeth for the mutuall love between the head and the members their love to him but his love to them first For without this love of Christ to them they cannot love him He loved his first saith S. John and then without their love to him 1 John 4 1â— they cannot understand the power that love hath ere it is rooted in them For it is able to make things in themselves base and contemptible to be of great price and esteem Might it not seem in our blessed Saviour a blemish and dishonour to his person to be reviled scorned whipt and crucified yet the love of Christ took and accounted all as acts of glory and all that he might prove himself thereby the Saviour of the world It is registred of the wife to the Emperour Theodosius That she as a Nurse-keeper rather than an Empresse attended the sick and weak and made playsters and drest the sores of the poor Hospitallers who when she was by some nice Courtiers gently reproved her answer was That although those offices were below the person of an Empresse yet were they not able to reach and expresse the love which she bore to the poorest members of her Lord and Saviour Christ Jesus who in his unspeakable love did more saith she for me then ever I can in the least deserve or in any measure requite CHAP. IX Love exchangeth and counterchangeth all with its beloved FOr proof of this I could instance in many Lovers Registred in profane Authors as in Pylades and Orestes each of them though but one was guilty took the fact upon himself that he might thereby redeem the life of the other King David when the plague seized on and destroyed the people cries out to the Lord 2 Kings 24.17 It is I Lord that have sinned let me suffer but spare these innocent sheep for what have they done And when the Souldiers came to apprehend Jesus whom they yet knew not and some of his Disciples being present with him he asks Whom seek ye they answered We seek Jesus he roundly and readily answereth I am he And this he did Joh. 18. to the end that he might save his disciples from their arrest and therefore he addeth Ye have me whom you seek therefore let these go their way Reade and consider that of S. Paul Who is weake 1 Cor. 21.29 and I am not weake who is offended and I burn not the troubles infirmities and sufferings of the Corinthians through the Apostles love to them are all become and made his Yea but see a greater power of love manifested in the same Apostle toward the Philippians whom he tells that his death will be gain to him v. 21. Phil. 1. for thereby he shall injoy Christ whereas life to him will prove but labour and pain v. 22. and yet saith he though the difference be so great as is betwixt everlasting joy and glory being with Christ and pain and labour living with you yet my love is such to you more then to my self that I am in a strait not knowing which to choose but concludes Though it be far better for me to die and to be with Christ v. 23. neverthelesse saith he v. 24. to abide in the flesh is more profitable for you and therefore he concludes v. 25. Having this confidence I shall abide and continue with you for your furtherance and joy of faith But S. Paul writing to the Romans seems to go beyond all the bounds of love I and of common reason Rom. 9.8 when he saith I could wish that my self were accursed from Christ for my brethren my kinsmen the Jews Expositors antient and modern generally conclude that this wish or desire of S. Paul was an expression of the most transcendent power of love which might possesse any mortall man but what the full extent and force of the words may be is not so clearly agreed on for some expound the words accursed from Christ wherein all the difficulty lies to intend a temporall affliction or corporall punishment 2. others a spirituall separation or excommumcation from the Church of Christ 3. a third sort will have an eternall separation rejection or casting away from the joyes of heaven to be here understood They who imbrace the first exposition conceive this desire of the Apostle to be like that of Moses saying Lord Exod. 32.32 if thou wilt not forgive the sins of the Israelites in making the golden calf then blot me out of thy book and this blotting out of the book they expound of deposing or casting Moses from his government of that people which was as they would have this in S. Paul to be but a temporall punishment and this they would deduce and inferre from the word accursed which in the
Greek they say may here as elswhere among sacred and profane Writers signifie a separation or setting apart the person of man and beast to suffer death or the like as a sacrifice thereby to expiate the offence of others and if this sense may be admitted then much more cannot be inferred then that S. Paul preferred his Countrey-mens spirituall and eternall estates before his own temporall or before his life which shewes that which we allege for to prove the transcendency of his love Others conceive the words anathema or accursed from Christ to mean Excommunication and this to be like that casting out of Cain Gen. 4.14 where it is said and from thy face shall I be hid Gods face noting typically the Church or visible congregation of Gods servants and this wish or desire in the Apostle though it goe farre yet because it includes not an everlasting separation but such as by Gods mercy and the Apostles repentance may be relaxed it is not so scrupulous and dangerous as The third sense of the words viz that S. Paul hereby should wish his eternall disherisance from heaven for his brethren and Countrey-men which curse separation or disherisance if it be the sense of the words then some answer that the word is I could have wished it So that S. Paul doth not expresly and plainly say I do wish this but I could or my love is such that rather then my Countreymen to whom the Promise and the Covenant is made should perish and they lose the benefit thereof I could finde in my heart to wish that I might be separated But say they he doth not explicitely and in the indicative mood say I do wish But if this answer be not admitted as satisfactory but that S. Paul seems to wish as a dear friend and tender father to be kept from eternall joyes rather then want the company of his children and Countrymen whom he calls by a neer relation brethren the question then will be as it is generally made how far forth this desire may be held justifiable or be accounted sinfull as to himself to wish the privation of his own eternall blisse Which question or difficulty some thus assoile 1. That for the greater promotion and exaltation of Gods glory this may be desired being that this is the first main principall end of mans being made or redeemed to advance the glory of God and that Gods glory should the more appeare by the restoring and saving of the Jews cannot be denied or doubted by any 2. Or as before the Text speaks not that I do wish but that I could so wish and that I could wish may imply that this wish in the Apostle is not so absolute as simply to desire his own damnation for his Countrymens salvation but that it may well comprehend under it at least a tacite condition as Lord I wish it if so it agree with thy will decree and good pleasure for whatever is agreeable to this must be and is justifiable and no waies sinfull 3. S. Paul may be construed thus to meane if for any cause under Gods glory I may desire mine own exclusion from Heaven then I could wish it for my Countrymens benefit and salvation such was the heighth and depth of the love of this blessed Apostle which desires at least to translate all its own good to his beloved CHAP. X. The Causes and Motives of Love I Shall not yet here touch upon the prime and principall cause of Love which is God but of that which is neerest unto God goodnesse which is the true proportionate object of the will and so of our love Insomuch that if the will at any time makes choice of the contrary which is evill this comes to passe by the wills being deceived by a false object and counterfeit colour in appearance of some seeming good For the will in its pure constitution doth not cannot affect or desire that which in it self simply is and so appears to be evill A man blinded in his reason and deceived by the pleasancy of wine or the beauty of women may will the unlawfull company of the one and the inordinate use of the other yet in neither doth he will or desire fornication or drunkennesse as they are evils but as he is ashamed to be termed a fornicator or a drunkard so though he become or be both yet he desires not drunkennesse or fornication but onely the base delight and pleasure in them which hath deceived and cousened his desire under a shew of that which seemed then unto him good For God which made all by weight and measure hath given to our understanding and will certain naturall inclinations which as laws cause them to affect their proper objects which are truth to the understanding and goodnesse to the will So that who is perverted or willingly perverteth the truth this is done by the false colour and shadow of truth and so it comes to passe in the matter of our will which ever desires that which is good and if deceived it is by that which appears at that time so to be Aristotle hath ranged Love into three kinds according to the three severall objects alluring the will and desire The one is love of pleasure and delight which too commonly follows and is entertained by youth Another is the love of wealth and is the servant mostly of old age A third is the love of that which is comely and honest which I fear hath the least part or predominancy in mans will where private interest bears the sway We have read that in ages before us vertue honour and beauty had the mastery in the will but those objects are laid aside and are past away with those times Some ancient Fathers give a reason why our Saviour openly proclaimed his gift of paradise to the Thiefe on the Crosse rather than to the Patriarchs and Prophets and it was say they because he at that time when Christ was publickly disesteemed and contemptuously used by all that he then proclaimed him to be the Messias and the Saviour of the world This singular bounty therefore of our Saviour accompanied that rare piece of faith and love in the Thief to whom at that time when the Thief profest him Christ had shewed no miracle nor done him savour Whereas now adaies few serve or worship Christ unless he honour or serve their turns so that were it not for the benefits he daily bestows on us he might for us live as retired in the contemplation of his own infinite goodnesse with little or no love of the world Next to goodnesse not onely Philosophers but the holy Scriptures have assigned knowledge to be an especiall worker of love Our Saviour saith This is life eternall Joh. 17. â— to know the Father and the Son for from this knowledge ariseth our love and by them both we attain to life everlasting Unbelief ignorance or the forgetfulnesse of this principle as to say with the foole there is
being beloved directs the soul without any force to a return of a love reciprocall And as love mollifies the heart of the beloved drawing from it a return of love so this return of love gives ample satisfaction and reward as it were for that love that was bestowed And so the Spouse in the Canticles Can. 1.2 for her love to her beloved desires some kisses as testimonies for the assurance of his love to her again And neither the first nor the second neither an inviting nor the return'd love are purchased wonne or procured by gifts greatnesse or power These have no force on a generous heart to cause love which is onely begotten by it self through love and this may be well called the mysterie of love that the same thing and nothing else should beget it self And this love being of so rare an extraction so amiable and so much to be desired we shall finde God of all things desiring it and in comparison of it nothing else but our love and therefore useth it as a conjuration to the effecting his will and commands as when he saith John 21.16 If ye love me keep my commandments to Peter thee times as it were in a breath lovest thou lovest thou lovest thou me Peter and then follows three times Peter feed feed feed For this thou canst not chuse but do and keep my 〈…〉 Love as we say breaks through stone walls intimating that nothing is hard to a loving heart but that this tender love as is said of the milke of the Goat is able to mollifie and soften the hardest Adamant God willing to draw man to himself first used his power shewed in the great deluge of the world after that he used his goodnesse bringing his people out of Egypt into a goodly and plentifull Land but when neither power nor goodnesse prevailed he takes the ready course if any could prevail to shew his love unto them in sending his onely Son into the world there to suffer so ignominious a death for them And if this did not he never meant to use other means to draw them to him For if love such love could not then nothing in heaven earth or hell can work or move their conversion Charit as Christi urget nos saith S. Paul 2 Cor. 3 14. the love of Christ this this or nothing doth or can with a sweet delightfull force as it were constrain us Christ sheweth this in the parable of the Creditor and Debtor concluding that to whom most was forgiven that he should and must love most For love freely shewed to the well beloved may be resembled to the depositing or trusting a great Treasure in a friends chest or Cabinet which friend if he return it not when desired deserves the note and estimation not of ungratefull alone but of a false and most wicked man and no friend CHAP. XII The Love of God is not to be parallel'd THe essence or being of God is pure and simple and the infinity of his attributes and perfections are single so that his omnipotency is his mercy his mercy is his justice his justice his goodnesse his goodnesse his love neither is there in these any distinction reall or formall onely mans apprehension conceiteth a variety in this simple unity Now the love of God differeth from the love of man as in many other things so in this that mans love oft times wants power to effect what it loves and desires whereas Gods love is both operative and effective it both works and accomplisheth whatever it will so that to love with God is the same thing as to do us good And this is so large as to do that beyond which nothing more can be done Isaiah expresseth this in Gods person saying Isa â— 4 What could have been done more that I have not done so that if we would enter into and consider all the works of Gods love in creating redeeming sanctifying and glorifying man how can they be fathomed mans soule cannot apprehend it in the least degree To help mans weakensse in this and by shadows as it were to make some appearance of this love Isa 49.15 the Prophet Isaiah tells us of the love of a mother to her childe when he asks the question Can a mother forget her sucking childe that she should not have compassion on the sonne of her wombe Which can she is as much as she cannot but saith God If she could yet such is my love to man that I will not I cannot my love is my self and therefore I may be said as well to forget my self as to forget or deny my love to mine own Image man The Prophet Isaiah seems to go a little farther by a similitude to set forth Gods love when he compares it to the love of a Bridegroome 〈◊〉 62.5 married to a Virgin in whom he is delighted and rejoyceth saith the text where it addeth and so shall thy God rejoyce over thee Nay the Prophet Jeremiah goes farther yet saying If a man put away his wife for her lewdnesse and adultery shall he return unto her again â—eâ— 3.1 But thou Judah lift up thine eyes unto the high places and see where thou hast not been lien with in the waies thou hast sate for them and thou hast polluted the Land with thy whoredoms and with thy wickednesse and yet heare the husband of this wife which is God notwithstanding all this crying out and proclaiming thou hast played the harlot with many lovers yet returne againe to me saith the Lord. Tell me now whether a greater love can be exprest than this in God As the love of God is infinite so might I be in the prosecution of this argument but I contract my self and wish you to remember that as God in holy Writ is parabolically called King Father Husband Physician Shepherd Head of his Church so under all these and many other names and notions his love is manifest unto us for as the head he governs as the Shepherd he leads us to good pastures and defends us from destroying beasts as the Physician he cures and heals our infirmities and soares as an husband he imbraceth and delighteth in and rejoyceth over us as a Father he nourisheth and provideth for us and as a King he not onely protects us from oppression and danger but gives us honours yea makes us heires with his onely begotten Son Christ Jesus to reigne with him in his heavenly Kingdom for ever And is there any love that can be compared to this All that I will adde for close is this love requires love And O my soule though thou wilt not love this thy Father this thy King first yet when he hath so super abounded in his love to thee too flinty hearted I must needs say thou art if thou shalt refuse to return all the love thy heart can affoord or conceive to him again for that infinite and endlesse love which he hath bestowed on thee Chap. XIII By the
same causes and meanes that mans love decreaseth the love of God increaseth SOme Divines have propounded the question why Christ the second Person in the holy Trinity rather than either of the other persons was made man and among other reasons this they give in answer That our first parents sin 1 Cor. 1.24 in desiring to be as God knowing good and evill directly opposeth the wisdome of God which is Christ And to shew the infinite love of God to man that Person who most directly was offended came down from Heaven tooke mans nature and suffered more than man could do and all to redeem man So that he alone God that can draw good out of evill and light out of darknesse used mans sin as an occasion through his love to save mankinde The Prophet Zacbary describes the state of the world Zach. 6. and in especially of the Israelites by foure Chariots the first whereof had red horses which typified the bloody Babylonians the second had black horses which noted the Persians under whom the Jews were neer their utter extirpation the third had white horses by which may be meant the Macedonians who as Alexander and others were gracious and favourable to the Jews the fourth had grizled or horses of divers colours which figured the changeable various and mixed government of the Romans which first or last is destructive to a State And now under this power and rule which contained all the misrule and barbarous usage of the three other Governments came the Messias into the world and this by the Apostle is called the fulnesse of time Gal. 4.4 because when the sin of the world was at the full now was the time of our blessed Saviour to come into the world and by his unspeakable love to redeem it The Prophet Isaiah sets forth Jerusalem thus Their hands are defiled with blood and their fingers with iniquity Isa 59.3 their lips have spoken lies and their tongues perversenesse none calleth for justice nor any pleadeth for truth the act of violence is in their hands their feet run to evill and they make baste to shed innocent blood their thoughts are thoughts of iniquity wasting and destruction are in their paths The way of peace they know not yea judgement is turned backward and justice standeth afar off for truth is fallen in the streets and equity cannot enter and he that departeth from evill maketh himself a prey And the Lord saw and wondered that there was no Intercessor therefore his arm brought salvation For he put on righteousnesse as a breast-plate and vengeance for a clothing and according to their deeds he will repay fury to his adversaries but to Zion shall the Redeemer come And is there any thing in all this that savours but of the love of God to truth and justice to his people though laden with their sins and for this punished and oppressed by their enemies The love of Christ in this kinde is not to be uttered or any way expressed I will summe it up therefore in that one passage of S. Paul the same night that our Lord Jesus was betrayed he instituted the Sacrament of his body broken 1 Cor. 11.23 and of his bloud shed as a sacrifice fully and solely expiatory for the sin of the whole world And while the Jews cried to the Romans Crucifie crucifie him he for them more incessantly praies to his Father Father forgive them and though they said Let his blood be upon us and our children yet he tells them My blood is shed for you and for all that will take and apply it to the forgivenesse of their sins The Psalmist in a wonder and amazement of this excessive love Psal â— 4 exclaims Lord what is man that thou art so mindfull of him or the son of man that thou visitest him for what is there in himself as man but that is to be abhorred his body being at the best but a bag of bones a sinke of foule water and stinking dirt and his soule like a cage of uncleane birds or a forge of wicked imaginations and a storehouse of sinne To the Psalmists question Why Lord hast thou so visited man no other answer or reason can be given then this of the Apostle Job 3.16 So God loved the world that he gave his onely begotten Son to be made saith the Prophet Isay Isa 9.6 as a childe as the Apostle Saint Paul saith as a Servant who emptied himself as it were Phil. 2.7 to a nothing and all this as the effect onely of his infinite incomprehensible Love CHAP. XIV Gods jealousie JEalousie in man is an excesse of love and for the most part is the attendant of some ill condition in him whereas in God it is the quintessence as it were of his love And this riseth in God and moves him to anger and punishment when he finds himself dishonoured or neglected by those he loves Moses not onely tells us Exo. 20.5 that he is a jealous God but adds Exod. 34.14 that his Name is jealous And such is his jealousie that although he suffered the rebellious murmurings of his Israel Exo. 34.14 yet when they committed spirituall whoredome in making and worshipping the golden calf he destroyed 33000. of them and had not his deare servant Moses interceded he had in his jealousie utterly destroyed them all Covetousnesse by S. Paul is called Idolatry Col. 3.5 and when God finds his people worshipping or setting their hearts on these it moves him to jealousie Yea God is jealous of the inordinate or overmuch love of the husband to the wife or of the wife to the husband For these may love each other so much that some part of the love and worship due to God is bestowed on the Creature And for this God oft times turns jealous and in his anger takes the one from the other or bereaves them of their delight which is children And it being so that God hath commanded us to love him with all our heart and with all the strength and powers of the soule the least alienation of our love from God and bestowed on vain delights moves God to jealousie and provokes his anger And as the least withdrawing of our love from God works jealousie in him so when he finds us persist in a daily revolt from him he ceaseth any longer to be jealous See this proved in Israels case where God for Israels multiplied departings from him threatens My jealousie shall depart from them Ezek. 16.42 and I will be quiet and will be no more angry And this is the saddest condition that a soule can fall into for then it is apparent that God hath sent a bill of divorce to that soul and hath removed his love utterly from it for where God loves he cannot but be jealous Chap. XV. Gods revealing his secrets is a great demonstration of his love to man DElilab useth this as an argument Judg. 16.15 that Samson
forces yet no lesse doth she abhor and resist all other sins of the lower rank S. Paul when he saith Charity suffereth long 1 Cor. 13.4 what saith he lesse than that as the impatient man acts against the long suffering Charity so Charity works against all impatience and as Charity that envieth not is assaulted by the envious so Charity fighteth against envy and as Charity that vaunteth not nor is puffed up is opposed by pride so Charity labours to beat down pride And what from S. Paul I have said of those sins mentioned is alike true of those other sins instanced by S. Paul and of all other sins committed in the world And therefore not onely the Apostles but their and our Lord and Master Christ hath taught us this lesson that Charity is the fulfilling of the Law Insomuch as Rom. 13.10 so far as Charity can prevail to the killing of sin Mat. 22.40 which is the transgression of the Law she may well be called the fulfilling of the Law And so high an esteem had our Lord Christ of the great virtue and power which Charity hath in the work of our salvation that when he had largely preached of the whole duty of man and given him many precepts and expositions of the Decalogue necessary to be understood and followed by old and young learned and illiterate for the relief of mans memory and the greater incouragement to his proceeding he summes up all and tells us all the Law and all that God requires of man is nothing else but Charity that is love to God and for his sake love to thy neighbour S. Augustine addeth that as God calls himself Love who is all in all 1 John 4.8 for all things are from him by him and for him so the like in a quailfied and reverend sense we may speak of Love or Charity we say he that hath not houses nor Vineyards nor Lands yet if he hath Money he hath potentially all so may we say of Charity in respect of other graces and endowments of the soul In the place before cited S. Paul speaks that of himself 1 Cor. 13.1 which the best of men may say of themselves with the like truth that could I preach as though I spoke with the tongue of Angels yet this without Charity will make me but like an empty sound of brasse or like the bell in the sleeple that calls others to the Church and so to Heaven while it self hangs without doors Nay do I give all my goods to the poore and my body to martyrdome for the truth and have no charity these will profit me nothing Yea if I understand all the mysteries of God and have all faith saith he and have not Charity observe this he saith not of this last as of the former gifts of preaching martyrdome or goods that these without Charity profit nothing but he saith that although he hath all understanding all knowledge and all saith yet these without Charity make him not onely as a sound or which profiteth nothing but he saith that having these and not having Charity he is plainly nothing nothing as in Gods acceptance and nothing as appertaining to the Kingdome of Heaven The Prophet Isaiah tells the people that God regards not Isa 1. but abhors the sacrifices which he requires of them and that when they lift up their hands to Heaven he will hide his eyes and not see them and when they make many long and loud prayers unto him yet he will not hear them And how or why is God become so averse to his own commands and ordinances the Prophet tells us the cause is want of Charity when he saith Your hands are full of blood your works are full of evill injustice and oppression In a word I see not I hear not saith God but I abhor you and your works because both want Charity Much like this hath the same Prophet Isa 58. taxing the falshood of the Israelites who hypocritically cried out saying Have we not held our Fasts and have we not afflicted our souls yet thou O Lord seest not neither takest thou knowledge of our holy acts To whom the Lord in truth makes answer T is true I neither see nor take knowledge nor pleasure in your sounds and shews of holinesse For in or by these saith God ye exact your labours or things wherewith ye grieve others And ye fast for strife and debate and to smite with the fist of wickednesse and call ye this your fasting saith God no saith he the fast that I have chosen is to loose the bands of wickednesse to undo the heavy burdens and to let the oppressed go free and that ye break every yoak of Taxes Excize and the like these these and not praying preaching fasting with murder robbery and oppression are the works of Charity well pleasing to and required of God Without which no man by his crying Lord Lord Mat. 7.23 shall enter into the Kingdome of Heaven CHAP. XVIII Our love to God is to precede all other loves SUch was the exceeding goodnesse of God to his people that he knowing the many delights and enticements of the world the flesh and the Devill to withdraw mans love from his God that he not onely wrote in the heart of man that he was to love his Creator but that he might never forget it he gives him this as a spirituall Law written in the Tables of stone Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart Deut. 6. with all thy soul and with all thy might In which words not onely the precept is exprest to love him but the reason is annexed because he is the Lord of all and thy God in speciall And that thou mayest keep this commandment it shall be in thy heart And because from the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh therefore thou shalt talk of it sitting walking lying rising that thy children thereby may learne the same and thou shalt binde it on thine hand and between thine eyes and shalt write it upon the posts of thine house and on thy gates I do not remember that any law or precept was so largely and strongly injoyned as this binding heart tongue eyes and all the faculties of the soul to love God Probably some may demand wherefore the Almighty should so earnestly and desirously require our love before or more then any or all things else that are in mans power In answer whereunto I may say that man hath nothing else to present that is so much his own or that is so much worthy of Gods acceptance nor so easie and beneficiall to himself for man to give as his love And therefore that which is least painfull or chargeable and most easie and beneficiall to the giver man and which withall is most pleasing to the Receiver God God the Receiver in his infinite goodnesse hath required of man the giver onely his love If a man were in danger to lose
his life or his understanding or but an eye or any other member of his body how would he love that person who could and would cure free or deliver him and how much more then is he bound to love him who both gave the eye the other members reason and life and not only made them wonderfully but gave them freely with all manner of gracious endowments and not onely so made and so gave them but who hourly so preserveth them from all outward and inward dangers of corruption and destruction can any price or estimate be set sufficient for such a rare workmanship so bounteous a gift and so gracious a preservation and then can we render any thing lesse for them all than love to him that so made so gave and so preserves them all And yet hitherto I have told you but the least of what God hath done for the meanest part of thy self For when I shall adde that when thou hadst destroyed thy soule by sin and forfeited it with thy body and all the faculties and members of both to the Devill and everlasting hell fire that then thy God should descend from Heaven should be disgracefully used shamefully tortured and cruelly murdered and all this only to ransome and free both thy body and soul Can any price be set too high for this or canst thou repay any thing lesse then thy love Should God as he might justly for the least of his mercies and benefits have commanded thee to offer unto him all thy worldly wealth or to sacrifice thy children to him as some Heathens did and as once he tempted Abraham to do or with stripes or fasting to mortifie or kill thy body had it been too much for a compensation or requitall but in lieu of these what a mercy what a goodnesse what a love is it in thy God to require onely that which costs thee least which is easiest performed and is in the power of all sorts of people to give love which if thou keepest back and cheerfully renderest not how canst thou answer thine owne soule without blushing here or without confusion and condemnation of thy self at the last day of judgment If God had required of man almost any thing else but love some or other might have framed at least some probable seeming excuse for not performance as if God had commanded our bounty to Gods poor the poor man might have answered I have it not to give if fasting or labour the sick and infirm if knowledge or contemplation the ignorant or simple might have pleaded these are not in our power to do and therefore Lord I am to be excused But when God requires onely thy love neither the illiterate nor ignorant neither the poore nor the weak nor any other condition or sort of people have any shew or colour of excuse for not performance for it is in every mans power if he will to love I may adde that this sweet return of our love as it is generally easie for all men to give so is it as generally alwaies to be performed in all the actions studies or demeanours of our life Art thou eating drinking recreating thy self buying selling meditating loving of God hinders thee not but furthers thee in all these so in and with all these he hath but justly and graciously commanded thy love God by his Prophet thus reasons with his Israel Isa 43. â—3 as now with us I have not caused thee to serve with an Offering nor wearied thee with Incense but without these Thou hast made me to serve with thy sins and thou hast wearied me with thine iniquities And for all this I ask but that which without expence pain or labour thou mayest easily afford me thy love and for it receive heaven So easie and plain a way and so open a door to everlasting joy hath God prepared for us when he requires from us onely our love The Scripture is plentifull not onely in telling thee O man that God came downe from Heaven and was incarnate for thee but that he suffered died and rose again and all this for thee and it is as often repeated in holy Writ that he is thy Lord thy Father thy King thy God and if God in all be thine 1 Cor. 3. 22 23. the Apostle rightly infers then all that is Gods Angels Spirits and all that is in God power justice mercy all is thine And canst thou possibly think how to make a better purchase then to make God Heaven Earth and all thine wholly and onely by Love And when God is thus made thine then in loving him thou dost but love thine own and this is so common that it is naturall for a man to love what is his rather then what is another mans But further indeed to love God who by love is made thine is but to love thy self who by love art united to God and no man saith the Apostle hates Ephes 5.29 but rather cherisheth and loveth himself S. Paul reckoning up the fruits of Gods blessed Spirit in the first place sets love as being the source and spring of the rest Gal. 5.22 The fruit of the Spirit saith he is love peace joy long-suffering gentlenesse goodnesse faith meeknesse temperance where the first as the parent of all is love From the consideration of somewhat here and elsewhere spoken of love some holy Fathers have profest that nothing can be accounted difficult hard chargeable or painfull to him that truly loves such are the fruits of an hearty active love and such are the sufferings of love from its beloved For if it reprehends it is gently if it burthens it is delightfully if it detains it is pleasantly if it restrains it is courteously if it rewards it is bountifully And therefore well may we with them conclude that love is the pretious pearle mentioned in the Gospell Matth. 13. â—6 for which the wise Merchant sold all to buy it as being of most value of all other pearls or heavenly vertues CHAP. XIX God must be loved with the whole heart GOd requires the heart 2. the whole heart 3. that none other may have part therein 4. no not man himself to use his heart any way against but altogether as tending to Gods service and glory All that God courts and wooes man for is for his heart Prov. 23.26 My son give me thy heart is the summe of his desire Which in another word is explained by that of the King of Sodome to Abraham give me the souls of the people the rest take to thy self Gen. 14.21 And for this as in war for the Citadell or chief place of strength is all the contention that I may so say betwixt the true husband and lover of the soule God and the adulterous and false lovers the world the flesh and the Devill And God to shew how ardently he affecteth this and how jealous he is of it he is not satisfied with thy heart unlesse as he hath exprest
to defend him from the hurt or violence of the weather so that the love of the first is like that of the Strumpets all for reward or what will ye give me and by these means he makes the principall of what he should love God but the accessory to the thing he loves and the accessory indeed the things of the world and flesh he makes the principall part of his love Whereas the true lover makes God the prime originall principall cause and mover of all his love and all things else but subordinate and subservient to this love The regenerate and unregenerate children of God in this world make use of Gods blessings and so return their love to God as Isaac blessed his two sons Jacob and Esau where the father in blessing Jacob ver 28. begins with heaven Gen. 27. God give thee of the dew of heaven yet he after adds the fatnesse of the earth but in blessing Esau ver 39. he begins with the earth Behold thy dwelling shall be of the fatnesse of the earth and of the dew above In like manner God gives his truly beloved Israel the dew the desire and love of heaven in the first place but to the Edomite first the fatnesse of the earth and according as their desires are set so also are their loves this mans to the world and the others to God And by these their loves as by certain and infallible rules ye may know and discerne what they are CHAP. XX. The love of the heavenly Angels unto man IN this Chapter of Angels my Authour is very large and attributes mare unto Angels then I can finde sufficient ground for therefore I shall abbreviate and deliver no more from him then I conceive is warrantable Which is In Scripture we have no mention of an Angel untill the world was above nineteen hundred years old Gen. 16.7 and who that Angell was that appeared and talked with Hagar is questioned By the learned among which many are of opinion that it was God himself for that he said ver 10. I will multiply thy seed and that she answered v. 13. and called the name of the Lord that spake unto her Thou God seest me But if this were not God but a created Angell the question may be wherefore Moses so faithfully and fully speaking of Gods works in that great Creation neither then nor in all the time since till this of Genesis hath any word of an Angell Some are of opinion that Moses writing more especially to his Countrymen the Jews omitted the history of the Angels creation lest the Jews over apt as the most simple people are to Idolatry might by it have fallen into such an esteem of them as to have adored them Or Moses writing his history of the Creation in brief exprest onely what more directly concerned man to know concerning his duty and service to God yet when he finds a just and necessary cause he then omits not to speak of them as in this story of Hagar Now what they are though we have not in Scripture any exact discourse or definition of their natures yet the Psalmist hath exprest the end and office why they are created when he saith God shall give his Angels charge over thee Psame 91.11 to keep thee in all thy waies and this that they may the better do he adds in another Psalme He maketh his Angels Spirits Psalme 114.4 his Ministers a flaming fire or a flame of fire as the Apostle renders it Which summed up the result will be Heb. 1.7 that Gods good Angels are created for the good and benefit of Gods good servants on earth to whom under and from God they are in a kinde of ministery or service as is expresly spoken by the Apostle Are they not all ministring Spirits Hebr. 1.14 sent forth to minister for them who shall be heires of salvation And Psa 34.8 The Angel of the Lord encampeth round about them that feare him and delivereth them And that they may do God service for mans good God hath made them for their activenesse agile and swift as Spirits and for their fervency and zeale in discharge of their office as a flame of fire The Scripture is plentifull in the confirmation thereof therefore when Hagar is blessed in the promise of a great issue Gen. 16. it is done by an Angell and when she and her son were in a famiâ—hing distresse they receive their comfort by an Angel Gen. 21.17 and they were Angels that brought and delivered Lot out of the fire in Sodome Gen. 19. â—15 When King Hezekiah and the people of Judah were in eminent danger to be swallowed up and destroyed by the vast and potent army of the Assyrians 2 Kings 19. then the Angel of the Lord smote of the Assyrians in one night 185000. And we finde the three servants of God cast into the fiery Furnace when God sends his Angell and delivered them that trusted in him then Daniel cast into the Lions Den Dan. 3.28 we see in the same place the Angel of God shutting the Lions mouths Dan. 6.22 that they cannot hurt him And the blessed Babe Christ his Mother and supposed Father being in jeopardy of their lives by that blood-sucker Herod Matth. 2.13 behold the Angell of the Lord counsels and guides them forth from the malice and rage of that tyrant And an Angel of the Lord did as much for Peter Act. 12.8 when he was cast into prison and ready the same night to have been destroyed by another Herod Many rare examples have we of the deliverances of Gods servants out of great and imminent dangers and of other their helps and comforts in time of need and distresse by the hand and help of Gods ministring Spirits the good Angels To shut up all they were Angels who pronounced John the Baptist to be the light and forerunner of the Messias 〈◊〉 1.13 Mat. 1.10 They were Angels who proclaimed the birth of the Son of God Mat. 4.11 our for ever most blessed Saviour Angels they were that ministred unto him after his long fasting Luk. 22.43 and that comforted him in his sad passion Matth. 28.5 and Angels that preached the joy of his resurrection Joh. 20.12 Thus farre we may safely go and with the warranty of Sacred writ pronounce to Gods glory and his mercy the loving offices performed by Angels to Gods dear servants but to say as my Authour and diverse otherwise learned Divines do that every particular man hath his Tutelar guardian Angel to attend guide and protect him I cannot say for the two places by them cited to prove this where it is said of the little Ones Mat. 18 1â— Their Angels in heaven do behold the face of God which is in heaven and that where it is said of Peter It is his Angel Act. 12.15 confirme not their Tenet For by their Angels and his Angel in those two
ought much to be strengthned by that bond of naturall propagation for that what God vouchsafed not to other creatures no nor to his good Angels he granted unto man as an especiall bounty and sign of his love that all mankind should proceed from one generall Father Adam that so all his posterity as descending from one and the same root might all love as being in or indeed as all but one I read that when Trajan the Emperor had sent to Pliny Praetor in Sicily to destroy all the Christians there the Praetor forbore the execution and counselled the Emperor rather to cherish then extirpate them for saith he they are a people which live in obedience to law they neither rob nor kill nor injure any but live as hating none but loving all And when I read that of S. Paul love is the fulfilling of the law I finde that the Apostle in the same text by way of command bids to owe no man any thing but mutuall love Rom. 13.18 whence I conclude that love as it is a command from God so from and by God it is held as a debt and so injoyned as that though we daily pay it yet we should never be discharged from it but that we should with our days and years grow yearly and daily more in this debt of mutuall love But there is a fourth reason perswading and urging this love which is stronger then that of nature and this is our spirituall brotherhood as being not so much one from our naturall parents as one by our spirituall birth and regeneration in our baptisme whereby being united to our head Christ we are all become members of Christs mysticall body and this if any thing will inforce our love It was the argument which good Abraham used to Lot Let us have no breach nor difference betwixt us but let us love and live in accord For saith he and he thought he could bring no stronger argument for it then this me are brethren Gen. 13.8 And we Christians may say we are all brethren not by one Father in the flesh but by one Father which is in heaven and by one Mother the chast undefiled spouse of Christ and by these we become heires not of an estate got by force or fraud and which may be taken away by fire theeves injustice or an usurping power but of an inheritance in the heavens where neither theef nor usurper shall ever come to help himself or hurt us When S. Paul had shewed how in Christ we are all become one body 1 Cor. 1â— 1â— he then inferres that no one part can pride it selfe over an other saying I have no need of thee but that as members in the naturall body so much more being members in this mysticall body of Christ we should be tenderly compassionate and not only not to have Schismes and breaches but much more not to hurt or offend but rather to help and defend each other from wrong and oppression and so farre as the law will permit to act as Moses did when he saw his contreymen to be oppressed or wronged Exod. 2.13 S. Chrysostome useth an other metaphor to perswade this love when he tells us that this spirituall brotherhood is as the cementing stones together in an arch or other building where as the one supports the other so all united bind and keep all fast and safe together To which well may that of S. Paul be applyed that love or peace is the bond of perfection and therefore Col. 2.14 Eph. 4.3 keeps the unity of the Spirit in the bond of peace In which texts as love is the bond ligament or hold-fast of the Christians mysticall body so it is the bond uniter and knitter together of all the perfection that man in this world can attain unto You see the great sweet and powerfull effects of this spirituall love begotten by our baptisme into Christ which is much cherished and increased by the Sacrament of his body and bloud It was not only acted by Caliline but long before him and since I would I could not say the like of Christians that they strengthned their leagues and covenants of holding together as it were in one binding each other to defend and keep them though they were covenants with hell and death yet these I say they entred into and strengthned by drinking the bloud either of themselves or others a covenant we have taken and received the Sacrament of the bloud not of beasts or man but of God himself that as we are all members of one body which is Christ so we will love one another In the reall and true performance whereof if we fail S. Paul tells us that we have not only taken that Sacrament unworthily 1 Cor. 11 27. but therein we have taken our own damnation because saith he we did not discern the body and bloud of Christ but did eate and drink these as of course and in ordinary and not considering that if we kept and performed the commandement and covenant of love the seal whereof was the body and the red inke the bloud of Christ that then we should have life everlasting in him but otherwise nothing but infirmities sicknesse and death And whether we finde not these sad and deadly effects to have fallen upon us for the want or breach of Gods commandements and our covenant signed and sealed in the Sacrament of Christs body and bloud judge and seriously think of it while I proceed to The fifth reason why man should love his neighbour which is grounded upon the nature of the Law-giver God for generally such as the legislator is such are his laws So that be the law-maker a bloudy man his laws savour of cruelty and bloud whereas be he of a sweet meek disposition his laws are full of mercy and love Now God being love it self his law or command to man that he love his neighbour relisheth of Gods own nature as flowing from it So that the nearer we come to the fulfilling this law of love the nearer we approach to the nature of God which is love Christ therefore though at first he took not away all legall sacrifices yet he profest that he would have mercy and not sacrifice Mat. 9.13 or mercy rather then sacrifice but so as in the sacrifice of Cain if it were mingled with the hatred of his brother Abel he rejected it and in this or such a sacrifice he saith I will have mercy and not sacrifice and accordingly when the Scribe answering Christ according to his own doctrine that to love our neighbour as our self Mar. 12.13 is more then all sacrifices Christ hereupon finding that the Scribe answered discreetly and to the truth he said unto him Thou art not farre from the kingdome of God which is as much as if Christ had said thus to teach and so to doe is the straight way to the kingdome of God and without it there is no other way In the
Leviticall Law we read that God finding the Jews to be hard hearted and merciless to incline them to better and more loving dispositions he gave them severall Laws wherein he forbids them to eate bloud and to boyle the kid in the milke of the damme and injoyns them to leave the gleanings after harvest for the poor and some grapes for the passenger and that every seventh year the land should have rest and the benefit thereof to accrew unto the poor And although Christ was a zealous and strict observer of the Sabbath as consecrated to Gods service Mat. 12.27 yet for the necessary reliefe of man he is content to dispense with some part of that days service and therefore concludes that the Sabbath was made for man and not man for the Sabbath And according to this law of God and Christ Moses under the law and S. Paul under the Gospel were so zealous in their loves to their brethren that the former desires to be blotted out of Gods book rather then his countreymen should be destroyed Exod. 32 and the latter rather then his brethren in the flesh should not be saved he could wish himself to be separated from Christ Rom. 9. or excommunicated from the Church Some ancient Fathers are of opinion that when Elijah laboured to draw the Israelites from their Idolatry to God 1 King 17.6 and that himselfe was there involved and driven near to famme that God sent Ravens a kind of bird which leaves her young featherlesse and meatlesse to feed him that thereby he might mollifie the heart of the Prophet to be more tender to his countrey-men and by his prayer to obtain rain and the fruits of the earth for them And without conjectures the text is plain that the widow of Zarephah her compassionate love in feeding the Prophet out of her small remainder of her little meal and oyle is recompensed with such an increase 1 King 17.16 that neither her oyle nor her meal failed so long as the famine continued So true is that of our Saviour Be mercifull as your heavenly Father is mercifull and Give Luke 6.37 38. and it shall be given unto you good measure as to the widow last mentioned pressed down shaken together and running over for with the same measure that you mete with all it shall be measured to you again A sixt reason for this law of love is drawn from the end of all good laws which are made that we may live in security enjoy our peace which is accomplished principally by this love to our neighbour The old law given to the Jews by which they conceived that they might hate and kill their enemies Gal. 5.1 S. Paul calls servitude or bondage but the law of grace which commands love to all he terms liberty because as by that law slavery so by this liberty is acquired to every state Again S. Paul building upon the same foundation raiseth his work by bowels of mercies Gol. 3.12 kindnesse humblenesse of mind forbearing one another if any man have a quarrell against any even as Christ also forgave you even so doe ye and above all these things put on Charity which as it is the foundation of all so it is the bond of all perfection S. Jerome writes of S. John that being through age grown so weak that he was carried by his disciples to the Church he ever and anon repeated this saying of our Saviour Love one another and being asked by them why so often he commemorated this text rather then any other he answered that in this they should fulfill the whole law insomuch as none could love God unlesse he loved his neighbour In which others agree saying that the love of God is the center of all our true love on which the heart as on a point of the Compasse being set the other point moves about the whole circumference of the world and indeed he that carefully observeth the tenor of the Epistles of that beloved and loving disciple S. John he shall finde this often insisted upon that the love of God and of our neighbour are so inseparable that he that doth the one cannot but doe the other for that the love of God necessarily produceth the love of our neighbour And therefore when our Saviour before his departure out of the world would set a mark of distinction whereby his disciples should be known from all others the note or mark was not preaching or prophecying for happily Judas Hymeneus Philetus Diotrephes or others might say as those of whom Christ speaks Lord Lord have not we prophecied in thy name Mat. 7.21 22 23 nor was the note of distinction the working miracles or casting out devills for Simon Magus and others in Christs name did the like and of those and such like Christ saith I take you not for my disciples Depart hence I know you not Joh. 13.35 for my mark is love and by this men shall know that ye are my disciples and such as for whom I have prepared a place in my kingdome CHAP. XXII The manner how we are to love our neighbour THe Scripture hath given us three rules by which we are taught how to love our neighbour The first is that of our Saviour Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy self Mat. 22.33 the second is that which Christ likewise prescribes as I have loved you Joh. 13.34.1 Cor. 12 12. so shall ye love one the other the third is that of S. Paul comparing the members of Christs mysticall body to the parts of mans body naturall The loving our neighbour as our selfe is to be understood first as desiring the same graces spirituall and eternall to thy brother as to thy selfe secondly wishing in all things else the like to be done to thy neighbour as thou wishest to be done to thy self And against this first rule of love we find in the world two offenders the one in the excesse the other in the defect and among the former besides some others whom I might touch I may not amisse place some preachers in our times who as some Physitians through covet of gain or other respects so much intend the cure of others that they neglect the health of their own bodies so these by their preaching raise others and lye still themselves in their own sins of whom and such like I may use S. Pauls words Thou art inexcusable O man Rom. 2.1.21 for thou that teachest another teachest thou not thy self ' and likewise wise that of our Saviour Physitian thou that professest to cure others heal thy self The Defective Lover hath one scale wherein to weigh himself and another for his Neighbour which Moses tells us is an abomination before God yet too many such there are Deut. 25. who looking into their neighbors vertues or miseries they see them with diminishing-glasses whereby they seem little or not considerable the first as not to be commended and the latter as not
to be pitied but upon their own sufferings or actions they look with eyes like multiplying-glasses whereby their own actions seem unvaluable and their sufferings intolerable So that what in himself he fees as a beam in his brother it is looked upon as a gnat or a straw whereas did they state their Neighbours case and act to be as their own then they might judge the better and more uprightly and this were to love our Neighbour as our self But before I pass from the first to the second Rule in loving our Neighbour I must observe that there be some who are not capable of this rule to love their Neighbour as themselves because themselves are such who love not themselves And if you wonder who these should be being that S. Paul tells us that no man ever hated himself I must answer you that the sinners are the men that do not love themselves Eph. 5.29 for he who loves and follows that which is his ruine and destruction cannot rightly be said to love himself and therefore if he love his Neighbour as himself that is to make his Neighbour a sinner as himself he may be rather said to hate his Neighbour as himself and not to love him for that by his wicked love he destroys himself and his Neighbour The second Rule in loving our Neighbour Christ gives us Joh. 15.12 saying Love ye one the other as I have loved you and this is that new Commandment which Christ speaks of when he saith A new Commandment give I unto you that ye love one another as I have loved you and this is that makes the Commandment new not the loving of our neighbour for this as before is shewed is as old as the Law of Nature but to love our neighbour as Christ loved us Joh. 13.34 This is new and therefore by Christ called A new Commandment because given in this new manner of loving as Christ loved us Now that we may love according to this rule we must learn how Christ loved us and that is exprest in these words of our Saviour As my Father loved me Jo. 15.9 so do I love you So that now we are to know how God the Father loved Christ his Son and here we shall finde the Father in his love to his Son as Man conferring all blessings graces and endowments upon him and so we shall finde him loving Christ his Son 2. Not for his wealth person or any such like thing but freely 3. That he loved him not in a fit or for a time but as Christ is said where he loves Jo. 13. â— to love unto the end Lastly though God thus loved his Son and more then we can express yet he is content that this Son of his love should dye for the good and salvation of his brethren And thus as the Father loved his Son Christ so Christ hath loved us and as Christ hath loved us so he commands us to love our neighbour and this is the second Rule The third Rule is taken from the comparison made betwixt the members of mans body 1 Cor. 12. and those of the mystical body of Christ And here first we shall consider that as in the former the members of mans body so in the latter the members of Christ there should not be any envy or grudging in any one member be it never so loyw or mean at the good or prosperity of the other For as every member hath its particular office so no one member can say to the other I have no need of thee but God having given them distinct offices whereby the one serveth and helpeth the other there can be no envious or malignant humor among them neither if the members of Christ love as those of the body as they ought can there be any grudging or repining betwixt Christians which are the members of Christ for the honorable rich cannot say to the low and poor We have no need of you for they have need of their prayers their corporal service and other helps and therefore are not to be proud over them nor can the low and poor say they have no need of the rich and honorable for they have need of their defence from wrongs and relief in time of necessity and therefore small cause have they to envy that which affords them defence and relief The eye set on high despiseth not the foot that goes on the ground nor doth the foot that treads on the earth envy the high place of the eye and so ought it to be with the rich and honorable and with the low and needy Secondly in our natural bodies the members each are subservient and mutually assisting each to others the eye by his light guideth the foot from falling and the hand in working and the foot and hand return a reciprocal office to the eye the one in carrying the other in helping and defending the eye The like may be said of the head to the ear and of the ear to the head of the stomach to the rest of the parts and of the rest of the parts to the stomach and so should it be in the body mystical that the members thereof may relieve and help each other in all cases and kindes wherein the members are made or become able to help each other Thirdly in the body natural of man where one member suffers all the members suffer with it 1 Cor. 11.29 and when one member is honored all the members rejoyce with it and so should it be among the members of Christ that each may say as S. Paul Who is weak and I am not weak who is offended and I burn not Naturalists observe That Harts and Hinds swimming over a river or stream the head of the follower is laid on the hanches of the former and this former being weary turns about and is supported by the latter Nay we daily see that the Swine yea and the fearful Deer if hunted or worried by a Dog will shelter or strive to help and defend each other and shall these beasts by the instinct of Nature excel Christians in the mutual help of each other CHAP. XXIII That we ought to love our Enemies TO prove this we need adde no more to the former Chapter then to shew that under our Neighbour Christ understandeth and comprehendeth our enemy And that it is so we need no further proof then that which our Saviour manifested in the parable where when the Lawyer asked Christ Who is my neighbour Luk. 10.29 Christ told him that a poor Jew was robbed and wounded who being neglected by the Priest and Levite yet was comforted and relieved by a Samaritan now the Samaritans and Jews being divided in their Religions as another Gospel hath it have no dealings together witness the same Text where the woman said to Christ How is it that thou being a Jew Joh. 4.9 shouldest so much as ask a cup of water of me that am a Samaritan
upon this Christ by way of satisfaction to the Lawyers question demands of the Lawyer whom he took to be neighbour to the wounded Jew whether the Jew who passed by not helping him or the Samaritan who hated the Jew and the Lawyer as convinced in judgement and conscience readily and roundly answered The Samaritan who helped the Jew whom otherwise he hated was neighbour to the Jew and upon that verdict thus given by the Jewish Lawyer Christ inferreth this doctrine by way of exhortation Go and do likewise that is have mercy and love ' thine enemy And what Christ preached here he practised to the full for had Christ any so great enemies unto him as the Jews who notwithstanding all the good works that he did among and for them yet hated and persecuted him to his death and when they cryed loudly to the Judge Crucifie him he more fervently prayes to his Father to forgive them and when they madly wished that his blood might be upon them and their children he mildly pronounced that his blood should be shed for them and their posterity Could there be any greater signs of the Jews enmity to Christ and could there be any greater evidence of Christs love to the Jews and according to his practice he gives his law As I have loved you even so love ye your neighbour though he be your enemy Notwithstanding this so plain and evident truth there have not wanted who have urged reasons against this position as the Rabbies masters or expounders of the Mosaical Law who feign that though the Commandment of loving our neighbour was written by God in the Tables of Stone delivered unto Moses yet it was written in the heart of man to hate his enemy 2. They urge that of our Lord God to Solomon 1 Kings 3.11 saying Because thou hast not asked long life nor riches nor the life of thine enemies I have given thee a wife heart whence they would infer that revenge on our enemies is as justifiably desired as long life 3. They adde that David of whom not onely himself but God pronounced that he had walked according to his Commandments yet David used many and bitter curses and imprecations against his enemies 4. To perswade us that this is natural to man they will tell us that a childe being offended with any will soon be pleased if another will but strike and revenge him upon the person that gave him the offence 5. They urge some passages of ancient Fathers who deem this hate of enemies to have been permitted to the Jews as that of Divorce for the hardness of their hearts To the first argument I may say That such a Tradition as is alleaged by the Rabbies is not to be regarded but to be rejected as frivolous and falfe But if any adde that it should seem by the words of Christ himself that in Moses's time or at least before Christ there was such a Tradition among the the Jews as that it was permitted to them to hate their enemies for Christ saith Ye have heard that it hath been said of old Mat. 5.43 Thou shalt love thy neighbour and hate thine enemie To this I may answer That the words of Christ It hath been said of old might relate to the perverse interpretation of the Scribes who argued That seeing we are to love our neighbors that is say they our friends therefore we may hate our enemies or because God commanded to make no peace with nor to spare the Canaanites but destroy them therefore we might do the like to all our enemies But to this or that old saying we need say no more then what Christ hath said Ye have heard it said of old V. 44. Thou shalt hate thine enemy but I say unto you Love your enemies bless them that curse you do good to them that hate you But notwithstanding this they urge That by the Law of Moses as much is implyed as the hate of our enemies for it is said Thou shalt not hate thy brother Lev. 19.17 Deut. 15.7 and ver 18. Thou shalt not avenge nor bear any grudge against the children of thy people from which Texts and the like they would infer That they may hate and avenge themselves on all but their brethren and the children of their own people which were the Jews onely and therefore all the rest they might hate as their accounted enemies But to this we answer That it is an implication of their own making without ground from the Text which may be proved from other Texts which command the love of our enemy and the Spirit of God doth not cannot command contradictions Now God commands If thou meet thine enemies beast straying Exod. 23.4 Prov. 25.21 thou shalt bring it back to him that is to thine enemy and Solomon which words S. Paul Rom. 12.20 urgerh to our Saviours sense If thine enemy be hungry give him bread to eat and if he be thirsty give him to drink and the Lord will reward thee Here is no sign nor tittle of hate or revenge to our enemy but quite contrary to shew him the fruits of our love in doing him good And if to any the hate of our enemies seem natural I must say It must be to such as are of a perverse corrupted Jewish disposition and not to the nature of a true Christian for can any man conceive that God who is love and is most delighted with mercy and love should infuse into the heart of man created after his own image hatred and revenge and that against his neighbour his brother who likewise bears the image of his Maker who is Love That David used imprecations against many is not to be denyed but denyed it must be that it was against them because simply his enemies but rather against them as Gods enemies not his 2. The imprecations were not against their persons directly as to the destruction of their soul or body but against them as they were sinners 3. It was for the conversion of sinners and that Gods glory might appear either by their conversion or destruction and not to the satisfying his own revenge Observe I pray with me That David in his Psalms is often said to hate but what sin not the man for so Psal 101. v. 3. I hate the work of them that turn aside Psal 119. v. 104. I hate every false way Ver. 113. I hate vain thoughts Ver. 163. I hate lying and if once as Psal 139. v. 21. he be found to hate them the persons yet observe v. 22. he is said to hate them with a perfect hatred which hate can onely be such when it is against that which God hates the sin but not the person of the man which is an imperfect hatred and against charity and such an hatred God abhorreth Hear David speak as to his rebellious Son Absolom his treacherous Cousin Joab and foul-mouth'd Shimei Psal 7.4 5. If I have rewarded evil to mine enemy let him persecute
my soul tread down my life and lay mine honour in the dust And to that of Solomon because God commended and blessed him for not desiring the blood of his enemies from hence to conclude that he might have hated or revenged himself upon his enemies is all one as to say God loves and blesseth the humble the chaste and the sober therefore a man may be proud lascivious a glutton or a drunkard But passing by what is or may be argued in desence of hate or revenge to our enemies it is easie to shew and prove that it is unnatural and against the law of God so to do and that the contrary to love them is not onely commanded and praised as natural but easie to be performed even by the Heathen The royal Prophet David saith Thy law is sweeter and more pleasant to me then honey Psa 19.10 or the honey-comb and our Saviour Christ speaking of his Law which is this to love and not hate our enemies Matth. 11.30 he calls it though a yoke and a burthen yet such as he professeth to be easie and light But we must consider to whom it is such not to the carnal worldling and meer natural man but to his disciple whom he understands to be a new creature born and begotten by the Spirit of grace and then to such a nature it is as natural to love his enemy as it is natural to the other to hate him The reason is for that as the Elements of Earth and Water though of themselves ponderous and heavy yet while they are in their own place they press not nor are burthensom So is the love of an enemy in an heart spiritual And as the armour of Saul before David was exercised in bearing arms was cumbersom unto him but after much use and practise in the war he could wield the great Sword of the Giant Goliah and say as he did to Abimelech There is none like unto that 1 Sam. 21.9 even so fareth it with him who hath practised and exercised himself in this holy duty of loving an enemy which an humble spiritual use and exercise will make not onely tolerable but joyous and delight-full May not this and much more be confirmed by the examples of Joseph who being sold treacherously by his brethren Gen. 45. wept over them feasted them and plentifully provided for them of Moses who being murmured against by his Subjects and grosly slandered by Corah Numb 16. Dathan and Abiram who endevoured to disgrace and dethrone him yet then even then he ceased not to labour with God to preserve them whom otherwise the Lord in his just anger would have consumed of David who not onely would not suffer his Soldiers to knock down that railing Shimei but forgave him and when his unnatural rebellious Son Absolom conspired not only the deposing but the killing him yet he then cryes Spare the life of the yong-man who being slain against his will he with floods of tears bewails his death and as desirous to have saved his life by the loss of his own cryes out Absolom my son my son Absolom 2 Sam. 18. would God I had dyed for thee O Absolom my son my son Now can we conceive that more love then this in Joseph Moses and David to their greatest enemies could have been shewed by any other to their dearest friends So true is this that love of an enemy in a soul purified and exercised with patience proves not onely connatural to it but most easie and delightful Nay further if any shall say these indeed were rare examples of men extraordinarily endowed with heavenly gifts of faith love and patience and to these and such as these it was no hard matter thus to love their enemies To this let me reply and tell you that Heathens who as S. Paul speaks of them know not God yet by the light of reason and by the help of humane patience alone have come near to these most illightned and sanctified men and therefore the art of loving your enemies is not so hard a thing to the naturall man if he would give his minde to it Augustus Caesar that great Conqueror and Commander of the World being in the open streets called Tyrant by an unworthy fellow returned no more then this If I were as thou callest me thon couldst not live to call me so a second time Zino a Conspirator against Julius Caesar was pardoned by him and his estate restored and when he had fallen into the like again yet Caesar again pardoned him saying I will see which of us two shall be soonest weary thou in procuring thy own death or I in pardoning thy life I confess there are ingraffed by God in mans sensitive Soul the concupiscible and irascible faculties the one whereof is soon provoked and the other as soon desires and delights in revenge but on the other side you must know That God hath placed in the reasonable Soul the Understanding and Will so that be thy Passions as wilde horses or curst and cruel as mastiff Dogs yet these two the reasonable Spiritual Soul like the skilful Rider or the Master of the dogs can with the whistle or bridle retrain and keep them in if they will use their own power and authority over them If any ask me May I not sue my neighbour or mine enemy who hath taken or kept away my goods or may I not implead him who hath robbed me of my good name I briefly answer Yes so it be for restitution of the one or reparation of the other and without hate or revenge to his person Nay this thou art bound to do in a triple obligation the one to God for the honour of his Power and Justice in punishing violence and iniquity the second to thy self who art bound to love thy self before thy neighbour the third to thy neighbour be he in this case as in place of an enemy yet thou are bound to sue and implead him that by a moderate and lawful chastisement he may see his faults repent and do no more so and hereby thou shalt in part and as much as in thee is save his soul which is no piece of hate but a great part of love that thou shouldest bear to thy neighbour If it be yet urged that the voyce of the blood of Abel cryeth to God for vengeance Gen. 4.10 and that the Souls of them that were slain for the word of God and for the testimony which they held cry with a loud voyce saying How long O Lord holy and true Rev. 6.9 10. dost thou not judge and avenge our blood on them that dwell on the earth The general answer to the cryes of Gods Saints or holy ones living or dead to God for vengeance is That these as holy ones and Saints desire nothing against but according to his will 2. Not so much or not directly to the torture of their persons as to the destruction of their violence rapine and
be Martyrs or suffer for any May I not say and say truly self-self-love was the mother of all If you ask me how it came to pass that Diotrephes so loved to have the preeminence among the Christians that he received not the Apostles that he esteemed or reverenced them not as they were indeed Bishops set over and above him Can I or you give any better reason for it then his self-love And if I yet be demanded What stirred up Absalom Jeroboam and Jehu to rebel against their lawful Kings and by treachery or force to usurp the royal power Can I give any other answer then that it was their self-love Now if you ask me how it should come to pass that self-love should so far blinde and besot men that by it they should fall into such horrid enormous sins the reason is at hand and plain we say oft-times that a man stands in his own light which makes him that he cannot see no not the Sun and if a man puts his hand upon his eyes no marvel if he cannot see either the object or his hand All this and more doth self-love to the eye of the souls reason for it presents nothing to reason but what it self desires and reason seeing nothing else it offers nothing else to be desired and sought by the will but that which self-love affecteth Self-conceit or an opinion of self-wit knowledge or excellency works in man many and several errors follies and enormities so that the wise-man truly said There is more hope of a fool then of such a man who is wise in his own conceit for he thinking himself wise enough of himself never desires or studies to know more but much more may be said of self-love then of self-conceit insomuch as the Will which is the Captain-General and Commander under Love is stronger then Opinion which is but a lackey to the Soul And from this poysoned spring of self-self-love we have our eyes so blinded vitiated or bewitched that what we should see as to judge our selves we caÌ„nnot will not or do not and what we should not see that is to judge and condemn others that we do So that love spred abroad which by the Apostles rule should cover a multitude of sins in our neighbour this love being locked up in our own breasts covers onely that which is within our selves The righteous man saith the wise-man is the accuser of himself but the man that loves himself is never so just and upright to himself as to accuse or condemn himself This judgement he keeps and executes wholly upon others Judah David and the Pharisees while the case was put in the third person of their neighbour they are for the law that woman that man that adulterer must suffer without mercy Such was Judah his judgement Gen. 38.24 such was Davids 2 Sam. 12. such the Pharisees who brought the woman taken in adultery in the act to Christ But when David was found to be the person and that the Prophet told him Thou art the man and when Judah by his ring and staff was discovered to be the sinner as was David I warrant you have not the like sentence given as 〈◊〉 fore but the case must be said to be altered 〈◊〉 the person and it cannot be deemed otherwise when the same person who commits the fact shall be Judge And as self-love is no upright Judge so it is ever querulous and complaining of other mens justice and good dealing to him The Judge never does him right enough but either he takes that from him which was his or gives him not so much as was due unto him True love and charity saith the Apostle envieth not 1 Cor. 13.4 5. seeketh not her own thinketh no evil but self-love clean contrary thinks no good of others envieth other mens good and seeketh not onely her own but all that is anothers thinking all too little for her self To sum up all I will conclude with that of the Apostle and judge ye how it concerns us in these our Times 2 Tim. 3.2 Know saith he in the last dayes perillous times shall come for men shall be lovers of their oven selves where before I proceed I pray mark that the Apostle in those perillous times wherein charity is grown cold as our Saviour speaks and sin aboundeth hath reckoned up twenty sins some against God such are blasphemers unholy lovers of pleasures more then of God hypocrites having a form of godliness yet denyers of the power thereof 2. Other sins against themselves such are proud without natural affection boasters incontinent heady high-minded lovers of pleasures 3. Sins against their neighbour disobedient unthankful truce-breakers false accusers fierce despisers of others traytors Of these nineteen sins my question is Whether there be any one root or cause and what that cause or root should be and I cannot uprightly say that there is any other sin so properly and naturally the cause of all the ninetine sins meâ—tioned as that Self-love which is set as it wâ—â—â— on purpose in the first place which justly she may challenge as being the mother or originall of all the nineteen in this Chapter to Timothy and of all the seventeen fruits of the flesh Gal. 5.19 reckoned up by S. Paul to the Galatians or of all the sins that have been or ever shall be committed from the beginning to the end of the world CHAP. XXIX Temporall goods cannot content and therefore deserve not mans love THe temporall things wherewith man is delighted as being good are many almost infinite out as all sublunary compounded bodies are made of the four elements so all the goods we speak of may be reduced to these four heads 1 life under which we understand health strength and beauty of body c. 2 honour under which may be comprised titles offices priviledges pompe and retinue 3 Wealth where lands monies revenues have place 4 Pleasure which is as various as there be objects of our senses pleasing to our eye tast touch hearing and smell Now though all these in their kinds ordinately desired and moderately used may be both usefull and lawfull yet in that they are not able 〈◊〉 content and satisfie the soul longer then a â—â—nd or lightning which vanisheth with the appearance man should not indeed truly he cannot set his love upon them What wanted Salomon of all the desirable things under heaven He had 700 wives and 300 concubines he built himself stately palaces orchards gardens he had attendants answerable to his wealth and glory which exceeded any King in those parts yet when he weighed all instead of proclaiming himself happy in these he concludes which are the words of the Preacher and the wisest man on the earth that all is but vanitie of vanities Eccl. 1.2 vanitie of vanities all is vanitie Will you examine King David the man after Gods heart and ask him now thou hast strength to kill the Beare the Lion and the Giant art thou satisfied
And that pleasure is such a vanity consider the little peace and content but the great disquiet trouble and torture that followes it That grief followes pleasure as the shadow doth the body in a sunshine was the saying of Poets as Philosophers For as the itch in the flesh causeth us to scratch and the scratching procureth rawness with pain and after all comes a scab so after fleshly lust succeeds both trouble and shame and after this sin more by many degrees then after any other be it cover of riches honour or the like for after these sins few cry out as S. Paul did Woe is me wretched man that I am who shall deliver me from this body of sin or sin of my fleshly body whereas this sin of pleasure resembles much the woman in the Prophet Zach. 5 7 which in a similitude is said to be in a great pot be it of pleasure or the like but there is a great weight of lead upon the mouth of the pot not only to keep her down in shame and pain but also that she cannot get forth when she is once in and that must increase and double both her shame and pain that which the Prophet speaks of all sin I say 57 21. is most certainly of this That there is no peace to the wicked saith my God whereas the fruits of Gods Spirit abandoning and mortifying these lusts are peace and joy Gal. 5.22 present and aeternall It is storied of Socrates that when he was to declaim against the foulness of this sin of luxury that he covered his face as being ashamed to express that in words which men openly shewed in their actions and it is worthy our observation that the Spirit of God in the pen-men of holy writ taught them to speak of this sin in covert and modest termes and sometimes by circumlocutions that the eares of the godly might not otherwise be offended or the hearts of the wicked be corrupted for as our first parents seeing their nakedness were ashamed so if there be any shame left in man after this sin it will appear S. Paul by way of question proves this when he saith What fruit had ye of those things whereof ye are now ashamed Ro. 6.21 but more plainly saying 1 Cor. 5.1 There is fornication among you and such as for shame is not so much as to be named but most plainly to the Philippians Their God is their belly Phi. 3.19 and their glory is their shame But shame and pain are not the only or the least evill attendants of pleasure but there are worse that follow as the loss or darkning at least of mans best faculâ—ies his understanding and reason and not this to follow alone but to be accompanied with the worm of conscience and after all hell fire Other sins as covetousness ambition lying quicken but this sin being gross and fleshly clouds and stupefieth the understanding the Prophet speaks it plainly Hosea 4.11 whoredome and wine take away or robb man of his heart The wanton Goddess Venus bath her name given by the Greeks as being without an understanding soul and the Philosopher gives the reason hereof for that the immoderate use of Venery sucks and drawes away the purest blood and the cleerest spirits from the brain wherewith the understanding is made lively and quick if you would find an instance in holy writ look upon Salomon who being a man made by God of the greatest understanding and wisdome through this sin became in plain English the greatest sool which most of his actions after did plainly prove It is storied or sabled if you will but the morall will serve our turn that Vlysses his companions were by Circe a witch turned into swine in which condition of being they were so well pleased that they refused to be changed into men again so much were they delighted with the habit and custome of beastly delights the thing applyes it self and of this picture of these betwitched beasts let the Sodomites be the motto or word who over swoln and ready to break with this sin of fleshly uncleanness are by the Angel of God strucken blind and so as for ought we reade Gen. 19.11 they never recovered their sight again and what is spoken of their bodily sight may be as true of the sight in the soul mans reason which by this sin more then any other in all is darkned in many for a time blinded and in some irrecoverably lost And would this were the worst for in the admit of a beastly or swinish man into the place of purity A cleanly man or woman will not suffer a durty nasty clown much less a beast or a swine to enter and much less to stye himself in his adorned chamber and then how can we think that God will suffer a man that walks after the flesh in the lust of uncleaness 2 Pet. 2.10 to enter and set up his aboad and everlasting habitation in the throne of heaven No no saith S. Paul let no man deceive you with vain words Eph. 5.6 of pleading nature naturall infirmity company custome the opinion of Philosophers or practise of otherwise wise and great men all these and the like the Apostle calls vain words which may deceive us but be assured saith he Notwithstanding all these no unclean person hath or can have any inheritance in the Kingdome of Christ and of God And yet after all this I shall not doubt to affirme that as God hath graciously breathed into man a living soul so he was and is as wonderfully pleased co afford him all good means for the preservation of his life and I conceive no reasonable man will deny the use of honest delight pleasure and recreation both of soul and body to be numbred among these Provided that these pleasures delights and recreations be lawfull and of good report and that they be used seasonably and with moderation without which conditions syncerely observed those pleasures and delights which are otherwise lawfull yea and necessary will become sinfull and without the merits of Christ our Redeemer and repentance by forsaking them can be no less then damnable CHAP. XXXIV The love of women and of their beauty hath caused many evills and therefore for themselves alone they are not to be loved THe love of man to woman is naturally implanted ever since God made her an help meet for man Gen. 2.20 For man could not take any comfort and content in beasts either by speech or for procreation of children but being shee is bone of mans bone and flesh of his flesh as Adam spake Therefore saith God A man shall leave father and mother for her Ephes 5.31 and so saith S. Paul they shall be joyned or glewed together and shall become one flesh Hereupon for a man to become a woman-hater was among the heathens as to be called a Monster nature or an unnaturall peece of flesh And this love is
be had to make choice of that woman with whom we would be yoked or joyned in that estate of matrimony till death us depart Now the sour especiall and usuall promoters or workers of mariage are 1. Beauty 2. Wealth 3. Honour 4. Goodness or virtue of which the first three moderately desired are good requisites for the better keeping up the superstructure in this building but the most necessary basis and foundation without which mariage can neither please God nor benefit man is grace and goodnesse And of these four promotors in mariage the 1. Beauty for the most part works upon the carnall man the 2. wealth on the worldly the 3. honour on the proud the 4. grace and virtue moves the desire and works the assent in the heavenly minded and spirituall man virtue I say and not beauty for first consider what beauty is in its nature and being 2. what it is in power and then say whether beauty rather then goodnesse should make the match Now beauty as to its first being whether in man or woman is a delightfull object of the eye appearing from the colour and figure of the body which colour is as a fair blush well mixed with white and red clearly glimmering through a tender skin and arising from an equall temper of the humours but especially of the bloud well tempered and the figure is that comely proportion of all the limmes and members in themselves and with the rest of the parts each to other so that neither are too long nor too short nor too big nor too little but that all and each holds an equall symmetrie which makes the parts and members seem goodly and now though this beauty in colour and figure may be accounted among the common gifts of God and therefore it may serve as often it doeth for a letter of commendation and a superscription of favour as being the signe of a well tempered soul and therefore it never satiates the eye of the beholder yet oftentimes like a tyrant it is not long-lived but short of continuance for if it be blasted with sicknesse or buffeted by Satan it is soon withered like your fairest flowers And yet oft-times beauty is not only deceitfull like a painted Sepulcher or the apples of Sodome which have only a fair superficies yet dust or rottenness within but it is often dangerous both to the Spectator becomming an infectious Basilisk and to the owner as a gilded poyson For in many it is little more then a skin puffed up with a proud love of it selfe and a base envy or contempt of others And yet these beauties as coloured flies or well skinned beasts are most run and hunted after though it prove to the ruin of the huntsman as in Samson and the Son of Shechem and to the hunted as Dinah Lucrece and others For as boyes love to be running after coloured flyes to play with them to their destruction so such coloured flyes delight to be flying abroad to play in the Sun or with a burning light Dinah may serve for a motto of this embleme and David for the word of that Beauty is and hath been both a straggler and a tempter to the destruction of others and a restless peece desirous to be tempted though it prove to its own ruin And besides all this you shall find fair Rachell to sell her husband for mandrakes which such women oft-imes love as well as their husbands Be therefore if you please a well wisher to beauty but the lover and wooer only of grace and virtue without which beauty in an ill woman is like a ring of gold in a swines snout and therefore of it self not to be desired Neither is honour to be loved whither traduced by descent or conferred by the favour of the Prince for though these as branches of choice roots are left to be graffed on and likeliest to bring forth the finest fruit yet even these by time or taint are often so corrupted that they become as blood in an ill dieted or surfeited bodie which is good for nothing but the sewer yea and take honour at the best yet what is it more then a splended phantasme or airy opinion floating or warbling in the brain of the standers by who one day reverenceth the honourable person as thing sacred while the next day perhaps he scorns it as prophane yea and by a vote to be utterly cast away as a thing both useless and dangerous And though money and lands have a more elementary stuff and substance then either beauty or honour and are so far worthily called goods as being instruments to work and do good yet neither are they in themselves good no nor so well able to make or denominate the possessor good as either honour or beauty I find not among all the marriages whereof we reade in the book of God that any of them were made for wealth and for this and many other reasons I cannot but condemn the too too common senseless guise of our times which sends lands or moneys to be or as it were the chief Orators or contractors of marriage or as though the ironicall words of the Poet were now verified Quaerenda pecunia primùm virtus post nummos be he or she rich it is that we most look after and let grace wisdome and other beautles of the soul or body serve but as lackies which we much regard not whereas these are not to be used as contractors of marriage they being at their best but earthly uncertain deceitfull or dangerous and such as of which one may say when marriage is made for these winged creatures that as these take wing and fly out of the door so love that was endeared for them will soon creep out at the window Mary not then for these nor mary with one that is unequall to thy self An oxe and a sheep a lion and a calf will hardly yoke or draw together choose a wise according to thy self said Plutarch and Pittacus the like marry one of thy own quality for 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 equality it is that begets love and love to continue and grow is best planted with the like roots or branches Where I would not be understood that the man or woman exceeding the other in wealth birth or the like is ever to be accounted above the other that hath not the same in the like measure But as the soul is to be preferred before wealth c. so the extraordinary endowments thereof make the persons so qualified superior to those that exceed in wealth honour or power For close wouldst thou man have a good wife or thou wise have a good husband know that as at the first marriage neareness of flesh begat affection in the soul Gen. 2 Gen. 3. for Adam seeing Eve to be flesh of his flesh called her wife so since that the affection in the soul hath begot the nearness in the flesh For first they affected and then they are made one flesh So
which I leave and commend to your reading and meditation A sixth is that the wife be nor apt to resist or crosly to reply against her husband Prov. 15.1 The wise man in generall tells us that a soft answer frangit reads the vulgar breaks anger wherein is a mystery that that which is soft can break and it can be no less then a secret in nature infused by God into the soul of man and note that woman though at first she were made out of a rib yet that is not so hard as some bones and it was out of the husbands rib too that it should not resist him who was the matter of her being Fire we all know will soon break out by the collision or clashing of two hard matters as iron beating on flint but rub a thousand weight of oyle or feathers against twenty flints no fire will issue and lightning and thunder breaks the sword in the scabbard A woman complaining that her husband was so waspish and crosse that she could not contain but reply her neighbour taught her this remedy that while her husband was chiding she should hold water in her mouth till his fit was over which with thanks the woman found to be an especiall remedy I have red that anciently among some Greâ—ks the Bride on the day of mâ—riage was presented with a horse bridled and sadled not to teach that she should be ready to ride and gallop abroad but that she should be as that horse with her tongue bridled and silent at her husbands command In a word that I talk not too much in an argument of silence Prov. 31.26 Bathsheba tells the wife that she must open her mouth in wisdome and that in her tongue must be the law of kindness not sharpness or replies but what ever the husband be kindness must be observed by her as a law and by this law she shall find great ease and no small benefit to her self For the wives gentle meekness which is a seventh necessary requisite is like goats milke to an adamantine husband which as is storied will of it self dissolve the hardest diamond which no iron steel or the like can do For the soul of man as the Pâ—ilosopher observes is a generous and noble piece which though it cannot be drawn or forced yet it may be led and won Or like a strong well fenced Castle it may be mined but not battered S. Paul to win the Thessalonians made himself like a Nurse 1 Th. 2.7 which stills and gaines the love of the Child by lullabies a merry note and the dug and not by curstness 2 Tim. 2.24 25. Gal. 5.22 or blowes And the servant of the Lord who desires to win soules and bring them to Christ must be gentle patient meek for this is the fruit of the holy Spirit which descended on Christ in the figure of a Dove a Dove which as they say hath no gall neither can she chatter though offended but only mourns In a word the Psalmist saith the wife must be as a vine not as a scratching bramble no nor though sweet as a rose yet she must not be pricking as a rose but as the vine which brings not forth sowre but pleasant grapes to make her husbands heart not sad but merry For close of this if the husband be a Naball a churle a fool a distempered person let the wife learn to be an Abigail who would not move or stir him to choler or griefe when he was in heate of wine 1 Sam. 25 36. but after his rest when she found him well tempered then she speaks unto him and gently too I will summe up the duties of a wife with that precept of S. Paul which I will read as the Hebrews Tit. 2.5 backward or beginning with the last first and the last duty here exprest is that she be obedient to her husband and that is to be wrought or caused by the next before it when he commands her to be good that is benign gentle courteous The third duty ascending is that she be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 like the tortoise except on sufficient cause ever in her shell that is an house-keeper or housewife The duty preceding this is that she be chast for this chastity is a great preserver of retiredness when on the contrary gadding abroad is no great friend to chastity The duty first here placed and which is first in repute and esteem is that she be discreet and prudent Which vertue is not only a great help to preserve chastity and to keep the wife at home but an especiall cause or worker of the wives courteous carriage and due obedience to her husband according to that of Salomon Prov. 19.14 Ecclus 26.14 A prudent woman is the gift of the Lord and a silent and prudent woman is the gift of God So S. Paul in setting down the commendable virtues and duties of wives begins with this let them be discreet or wise for without this they will hardly be châ—st Seldome housewives and never good and obedient to their husbands To this observation I may add one more as the last to this point that neither the Apostle nor any other pen-man of God ever commended beauty wealth honour as to be sought after in the choice of a wife But house-wifery chastity gentleness obedience and the crown of all prudence and therefore I should never counsel any to make choice of a woman in mariage who is confident of her wit wealth beauty or birth nor the woman to be maried to that man that presumes on his wisdome wealth power or honour for when these are over valued in either each will undervalue the other to contempt or at least to some discontent I have been long I hope women will not beshrew me for it in setting down the duties of wives to their husbands I shall be shorter and I wish that they would not blame me for it in the duty of the husband because as Christ and the Apostles spake of the law so the whole duty of the husband is comprised in this one word love So that though under love both in the law and the husbands duty many things are required which are not simply and properly called love yet all these flow and stream from this one spring of love and this is the cause that S. Paul only saith Eph. 5. Col. 3. husbands love your wives Now love being 1. naturall 2. carnall 3. politicall 4. divine I may say in a qualified sense that all these loves are commanded the husband under this one word love a naturall love because the woman was of and from man being flesh of his flesh 2. the carnall love because thee shall be 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 into or one flesh 3. politicall for a sweet society and peopling the world 4. a divine love 〈…〉 be in holiâ—â—â—â— such as Câ—â—â—â—â—hawed compriseth all that possibly any woman can require or desire from her husband For
full of them in which blessing the woman hath not the least share for she is the quiver which keeps and yeelds the blessing of such arrowes as are children Yea S. Paul saith 1 Tim. 2.15 the woman shall be saved in child-bearing if she continue in faith charity holinesse and sobriety Yet because simply and absolutely all children are not blessings therefore to make them such Ps 128. the Psalmist saith they shall be as Olives now the oyle of Olives is not only good to smooth the countenance but to expell poison or poisonous cares from the heart and such shall the children be of the virtuous wife and the good husband and though these Olives must not hold the like place with the wife to be on the side of the house yet they shall be round about the table there ready to wait and serve both father and mother at their call or need in all faithfulnesse and obedience as they are taught by the Apostles S. Peter and S. Paul 1 Pet. 1.14 Tit. 1.6 And yet I cannot promise that this blessing of having children shall overtake all good husbands and wives no nor that all such as have children shall be blessed in them For the Psalmist restrains this blessing of good obedient and faithfull children only to such Parents as fear the Lord Loe thus saith the holy Ghost shall the man be blessed that feareth the Lord Ps 128.4 and I cannot but observe that King Davids were good till he became bad but when once he deflowred Bathsheba the wife and murdered Vriah the husband then his children committed uncleanness and rebelled against him The fear of the Lord in the parents begets and preserves the fear of the Lord in the children and this the parents ought to observe and do not only for their childrens good but that their children may be good and a blessing to their parents CHAP. XXXIX Of the mutuall love and duty between Parents and Children ONe especiall end of mariage is the propagation of children and therefore from mariage and the duties thereof we shall proceed to that between parents and children and herein considering whence children come to see the love and duty of parents to their children and the return of honour obedience and other duties of children to their parents The Hebrews say that God keeps the keyes of the womb and of the grave which agrees with that that he kills and he gives life or more neerly as to our purpose children are the gift and heritage of the Lord but by the agency and instrumency of the parents so that they are as slips or ciences taken from them and this makes the relation between them so neer that some have observed that when God said A man shall leave father and mother for his wife yet he saith not he shall forsake children for his wife for though the man and wife are as the Apostle phraseth it joyned or glewed together as made into one flesh yet except Eve no wife is out of or a part of the mans flesh But I speak not this to lessen the relative love between husband and wife so much as to heighten that which is between parents and children And this is so great even in all sensitive Creatures beasts and birds that not only the Lion Dog and Bear but the Doe the Ewe and Hen will oppose the strongest creature and interpose between them and their young hazarding their own lives to preserve that of their young ones And it hath not been less seen among men for so we read that Octavius Albanius keeping a castle beseiged when one cryed out your son without is in danger to be slain he suddenly sallied out for his rescue though with the loss of his own life an other hearing that his son was sentenced to death for a murder he appeared before Charles the great swearing it was he that slew the man and thereupon was put to death thereby to save his sons life and Agrippina mother of Nero being told that it would cost her life to have her son Emperour answered So he may be Emperour let me die and how much short is the affection of Jacob to his children Joseph and Benjamin or that of David to Absalom Gen. 42.38 when Jacob said If mischief shall befall Benjamin it will bring down my gray haires with sorrow to the grave and he hearing that his son Joseph was dead he rent his clothes put sackcloth on his loins and mourned for him many days and would not be comforted saying I will go down into the grave unto my son Gen. 37.35 and how much short of this was Davids expressions for the death of a rebellious son who though he sought his fathers crown and life yet the father thus passionately laments him 2 Sam. 1 33. O my son Absalom my son my son Absalom would God I had dyed for thee O Absalom my son my son It hath been a question whether the love of the father or the mother be the greater to the child and if we answer by the consideration of examples we shall leave the question unresolved For as we found Jacob and David most tenderly loving so the like we shall see in Rachel Ge. 30.1 who sels her husband to Leah for mandrakes whereby she hoped to get children which she so much longed for that she cries out give me children else I dye and having lost them she weeps for them Jer. 31.15 Mat. 1.8 and would not be comforted because they were not But if we consider the mothers pain in breeding danger in bringing forth and her care and trouble in their first training up we may conceive that her love exceeds especially if we add hereunto that which the Prophet saith if a mother he saith not if a father but if a mother can forget the child of her womb which may seem to intimate that a father may sooner forget the son which he got then the mother which bore him in her womb which womb nature as the Anatomists observe hath filled with most tender affectionate baggs membranes veines and sinewes thereby to make her more loving to the child Gen. 29.32 and if to this we add what Leah speaks who having born a son unto Jacob her husband she saith now my husband will love me Then we may conclude that the mother for her own sake loves the child more tenderly or fondly but the father for the childs sake loves him more wisely and strongly or we may say that the man and the woman love their child as Alexander was said to love his two intimate friends Ephestion and Parmenio who loved the former as a fine delicate man and such women delight in but Parmenio he loved as a brave man for action and such a wise father is pleased with And from hence we may assoile an other question why both father and mother oft-times loves one child better then an other as Rebecca did Jacob the younger more
then Esau the elder I and Jacob affected his two youngest Joseph and Benjamin more then his first born Reuben and Simeon and King David placed the crown on the head of Salomon contrary to the Jews law and custome though he had six sons elder then Salomon and a great part of this act in King David we may ascribe to the affection policy and power of Batsheba the mother as that other the like act of Isaac in preferring Jacob to Esau may be attributed to Rebecca Now from this root of love in the parents shoot out the branches of their care in nursing breeding and providing for their children all which are so naturall and necessary that who neglects the performance of these duties deserves not the name of father and mother nor yet so much as to be called Syre or Damme for beasts and birds generally performe these cares for their young untill they are able to provide for themselves for did we ever know or read that an Ewe a Doe or a Sow put out her young to nurse or would suffer any other to give their young suck but themselves so long as themselves were able to do it and must we conceive that nature hath less power or works less in a woman which hath reason then in a beast or will ye have me think that reason and grace which add unto and strengthen the gifts of nature do both weaken nature in the woman and if not which indeed cannot be thought by any indued with grace or reason why then think we that nature hath given the mother breasts and fountains of milk if not to suckle her young or why think ye that a strange womans milk should be so naturally and properly good for the child as the mothers which brought it into the world and why rather consider you not that as children with the milk draw that humour which makes for the good or ill of their bodies so many by sucking cruell drunken unchast women have become such in quality and condition as their nurses were It may be instanced in Tiberius Commodus Emperors of Rome and divers others but not to be long on this subject remember that Sarah is said to have given her son suck from which act I shall draw no other inference but that of S. Peter 1 Pet 3.6 whose Daughters ye are as long as ye do well doing as she did who gave suck to her child But the mothers duty ends not in this but that she with the husband and each and both must labour with the soonest to administer the spirituall milk of the knowledge and fear of God thereby to nourish the childs soul to everlasting life and this duty lies more straightly and strongly upon the parent in as much as the soul the Temple of God is more excellent of greater esteem then the body which is but an house of clay The father and mother of Samson inquire of the Angell of the Lord saying Judge 13 12. How shall we order the child and bow shall we do unto him and that the child Samuel may be ordered aright his mother brings him very young to the house of the Lord and she lent saith the text or returned him to the Lord 〈◊〉 1 2â—.8 to be his as long as he lived and what follows so good an entrance and beginning I Sam. 2.11 as in the very next chapter that the child according to his matriculation did ever after minister unto the Lord. And what the further duties of parents are in this kind S. Paul intimâ—â—es in one place when he saith I Thes 2.11 I exhort and not only so but I charge you as a father doth his children that ye walk worthy of God who hath called you to his Kingdome and in another text he expresseth it more plainly as a precept to parents fathers bring up your children in the nuâ—ture and fear of the Lord. and if you will have a more especiall and particular account of the severall lessons to be taught this child you may read them set down by the wise man in his Proverbs â—â—ov 4. where that whole chapter contains the full instruction of a child in the ways of godliness and the fruit thereof the parents shall find in the same book where it is said Prov. 23. â—4 The father of the righteous shall have great joy and be shall rejoyce that hath a wise son And that Parents may receive this joy Prov. 22. â— the wise man counsels them Train up or catechise the child in his youth in the way he should go Prov. 23.13 14. and with hold not correction from the child for if thou beatest him with the rod he shall not die but thou shalt deliver his soul from hell Prov. 29. â—5 Whereas a child left to himself brings his mother to shame I have read of a son who on the Gallows called to speak with his father where he bit off his eare telling him that if he had done the part of a Father in training him up with due correction he had never come to that end And was not Eli to blame suffering his sons to behave themselves wickedly when all the correction he gave them was Why do ye so my sons And what was it leste if not more in Lot to drink immoderatâ—ly with his daughters whereby he came to uncover both their nakednesse and Jacob himself deserved to be reprehended for suffering his daughter Dinah to ramble among the strange young men whereby she caught that clap which caused so much bloud-shed the Apostle therefore saith what son is he whom the father chastneth not Heb. 12.7 8 9. yea and if the son be without chastisement then is he a bastard and no son but if chastned he gives his father reverence and the mother saith S. Paul 1 Tim. 5.10 that hath brought up her children in the faith is well reported of whereas the Prophet tells us that it became a proverb Ezek. 16.44 as is the daughter so is the mother which appeared true in David whose children after himself had committed folly and murder were found loose rebellious and murderers And yet to this admonition lest Parents grow too severe and rigid I must give this caution that Parents be not like Rehoboam to threaten or use scorpions that is whips having sharp thongs like points of thorns or stings of Serpents but ever that they remember the counsell of the Apostle Eph. 6.4 Fathers provoke not your children unto wrath lest that as himself speaks they may be discouraged Col. 3.21 correction with discretion and moderation is the chastisement required in a father to his child for that as S. Gal. 4 â— Paul speaks the heir as long as he is a childe differeth not from a servant And yet the duty of the Parent ends not here but extends it self to a further point that he provide for his child the Apostle is expresse herein when he saith
calling which is agreeable to the first foundation and building up of the world Where at first no sooner was the stage of the world reared but that our first father Adam was set to acting that is to speak plainly Adam was set to dress the garden and not only the children of Adam who were heires of the world spent their time in tilling and sowing the earth or in keeping and feeding sheep but the Patriarchs Abraham Isaac and Jacob though Lords of great possessions and masters of many servants and powerfull to fight with and conquer Kings yet these witness the holy writ lived not as our Gentlemen do but as the Apostle counsells and commands us they lived and exercised themselves in honest callings for they knew that as of idleness comes no goodness so he that lives idly to eate drink and play must be sure as the Apostle speaks that the judgement of God is according to truth Row 2.2.5 against them which commit such things and therefore that they do hereby treasure up unto themselves wrath against the day of wrath and the just judgement of God who will render to every man according to his deeds The Greeks as I am taught have a word which signifies to play the Stork whereby they understand that the love of parents to their children should beget in children a reddition and retribution of their duty to their Parents for it is storied of the Stork that as the old one hath been loving and tender to feed defend and cherish their young so the young will feed defend and carry the old when it is unable to help it self Now Christ himself Mat. 6.26 though in another case bids us behold the fowles of the aire and accordingly the Spirit of God by his pen-men grounds instructions to children in their duty to parents as S. Paul doth when he saith Children obey your Parents in the Lord Ephes 6.1 2. for this is right and again Honour thy father and mother which is the first commandement with promise and he adds a reason to his counsell on the childs behalf That it may be well with thee and that thou mayest live long and happy on the earth The Parents of Tobiah called their son implying what children should be to their parents the light of their eyes to guide and direct them Tob. 5.17.10.5 and the staff of their hand in going in and out to defend them and we have a story of a godly Christian Daughter to this purpose who in part rob'd her child that with the milk of her breasts she might nourish her father imprisoned and almost sterved by the merciless Tyrant Nor doth the Childs duty here end Eph. 6.1 but goes on to what S. Paul taught that children must obey their parents in the Lord that is in all just and lawfull things what ever they command so it be not repugnant to the word or law of the Lord which the same Apostle in an other Epistle commands saying Col. 3.20 Children obey your parents in all things that is as before in the Lord for this is well pleasing to the Lord for obeying them in all things in the Lord in so doing the children obey the Lord which commands this obedience And what the sin or punishment of disobedience is Prov. 30 17. the wise man in part hath told us when he saith The eye that mocketh at his father and despiseth to obey his mother the ravens those birds which of all others are least regarded as I told you by the old ones shall pick out and the Eagles shall devour them but the Apostle saying Obey and honour thy father and mother that thy days may be long and happy on earth implies no less then that he who doth not obey and honour them shall have but few or evill days while they live here besides the evill which shall follow after Our blessed Saviour hath pronounced the same plainly and fully saying God commanded Mat. 15.4 Honour thy father and mother and he that doth contrary let him die the death Prov 30.11 And yet such ungodly children have been found of whom the wiseman speaks there is a generation that curseth their father and such saith the Prophet are those who dishonour their parents Mie 7.6 and such was the accursed Cham Ge. 9.22 who proclaimed the nakedness of his father yea monsters of men have there been whom I am ashamed to name Nero who in an inhuman manner ripped up that womb of his mother where himself lay but I will tell you of the sons of Sâ—nacherth 2 King 15.37 who fearing that their father would kill them in hope to prosper thereby as Abraham did in sacrificing his son slew their father Against which sin of paricide or killing parents the wise law-giver Solon provided no law because he thought no man could be so desperately wicked as to kill and destroy him that under God gave him life yet the Romans in detestation of this so unnaturall a sin decreed a death unheard of untill their times which was that such a parent-slayer should be closed up in a leathern sachell together with a viper art ape and a cock and so to be cast into the river to be gnawed upon to be drowned and to be sterved to death When God promised Abraham to be his exceeding great reward he replyed to Godand said Lord God wherein wilt thou reward me or what wilt thou give me seeing I am childless wherein he implyed all temporall goods and blessings were as nothing to him without an heire and then the word of the Lord came unto him saying thou shalt have an heire come forth of thine own bowells Hezekiah likewise when the Prophet told him he should dye wept that he should dye childless And barrenness or want of children is in holy writ often called a reproach yea and pronounced by God as a punishment but on the contrary a great blessing to have children Insomuch that David repining as it were at the prosperity of the wicked he reckons this as one of their greatest Psal 17 24. That they are full of children and that they leave their substance to their babes and in another psalme Ps 115.14 God will bless them that fear him and will increase them more and more them and their children and again Loe children are an heritage of the Lord Ps 127.3.5 and the fruit of the womb is his reward for they are as arrowes in the band of a mighty man and therefore happy is the man that hath his quiver full of them for they shall be able to speak with their enemies in the gate that is in the gate where the Judges sate where their children shall stand up to plead for their father and in the field they shall be as arrowes to defend him against his enemies It is storied that when Croesus was ready to be slain that his son who till that time was dumbe and never could
loved her not because he did not open the secrets of his heart unto her for so she said How canst thou say I love thee when thy heart is not with me and when thou tellest me not where thy great strength lieth When God purposed the destruction of Sodome Gen. 18.17 he saith I know Abraham that he will command his children and his houshold after him to keep the way of the Lord to do justice and judgement Here God rests assured in Abraham's love and service to him and what followeth why this that though God intended a secret and sudden burning of Sodome yet he will not do it before he acquaints Abraham therewith and therefore saith Shall I hide from Abraham that thing which I do We reade the like of God to Moses Exo. 33.9.13 that when God spake face to face with Moses in the Tabernacle that there was a cloudy pillar at the Tabernacle doore so that the people might not see them And at this interview and conference betwixt God and Moses Moses saith unto God If I have found grace in thy sight shew me now thy way The Prophet saith Psa 147.19 20. the Lord shewed his word unto Jacob. And then addeth He hath not dealt so with any Nation but this his beloved And S. Paul saith Col. 1 2◠The mysterie of salvation by Christ Jesus hath been hid from ages and from generations but now is made manifest to his Saints In a word he that loveth me saith Christ John 14 21. shall be loved of my Father and I will love him and 〈…〉 my 〈◊〉 unto him And accordingly he saith unto his Disciples To you as my friends it given to know the mysterie or secrets of the Kingdome of God but unto those that are without all these things are done in parables And why in parables to these that seeing Mark 4◠11. saith Christ they may see and not perceive and hearing they may heare and not understand lest at any time they should be converted and their sins should be forgiven them Whence we may gather and learn that whom God loves to those he reveals his word and will so that they may see and heare and understand it to their conversion and salvation of their souls which none can deny to be an especiall argument of Gods love the fruition whereof the Lord grant unto us in Jesus Christ CHAP. XVI God seemeth to be solitary without man which is an especiall argument of his love to man THe Scriptures tell us of thousands of Angels that attend Christ and in the Gospels we finde them upon all occasions at his birth in his life and at his passion with him how then having such a company of holy Spirits ever with him and at his command can he be said to be alone if without man It is true in respect of the sweet society of Saints and Angels he cannot be truly said to be alone yet in regard that he made man to his own Image and every one loves that which is most like unto himself and that God hath said My delight is to be with the Sons of men in this respect without this his like with whom he is delighted he may well be said to be alone In the parable of the lost sheep Matth. 18.12 it is seen that the shepherd had 99. besides that which was strayed yet he left them all Suppose these to be the Saints and Angels in heaven and all to seek the one that was lost which is man The Prophet saith Psal 33.10 The Lord looked down from Heaven to behold the Sons of men and seeing them captiv'd by the Devill weltring in their filth of sin and therefore lamentably afflicted for them he came down and never rested but underwent all travell hardnesse and death that he might exalt them and bring them where himself was to have his everlasting residence in Heaven God under the Law when he saw his Israel scattered in Egypt he rested not till he brought them together and though in the wildernesse yet there he commanded them to make a Tabernacle and after that a large and glorious Temple that he might be with them and injoy as it were their company there together And Christ God in heaven that he might have the company of man he descended from heaven and as though this were too little to have the more full society of man he took his nature and was made man yea so that as it was spoken of Adam to Eve he was so married to mans nature that he might truly say He is bone of my bone and flesh of my flesh More yet see Christ in his agony and torture on the Crosse and wanting the company of his Disciples and men believing in him he cries out My God! my God! Mat. 27.46 why hast thou forsaken me and as soon as the the Thief on the one hand was converted and prayed unto him Lord Luk. 23.43 remember me when thou comest into thy Kingdome he was so pleased with this that he readily granted his petition and told him This day shalt thou be with me in Paradise and so gently departed and took his new convert with him to Heaven And it is the opinion of many ancient and learned Fathers that the Saints and holy men which rose out of their graves at the time of our Saviours resurrection that they likewise as pleasing company ascended with Christ into Heaven there to be with him and as of the Chore to sing continuall Allelujahs of glory Glory to the Lamb that was and is and ever shall be S. Hierome cries out O ungrateful man to thy God who ever thou art considerest thou not the wonderful and unspeakable love of him the Lord of heaven to be thus delighted and to do and to suffer so much for thee and thinkest thou thy self best when thou art in the company of the wicked blasphemers murderers adulterers drunkards and profane persons return rather Shunamite return and run to him who is delighted with thee and is thy Saviour CHAP. XVII Charity is most eminent among all the vertues EVery vertue hath its proper opposites as liberality hath covetousnesse and prodigality to encounter whereas Charity is enemy to and opposeth not two or more but all vices And if any particular sin be more opposite to Charity then other it is the enmity to God And it being so that there is no sin that man committeth but more or lesse is tainted with this enmity hereby Charity is become a generall enemy and opposer of all sin When David had wickedly deflowred the wife of his faithfull Souldier Vriah and basely slaughtered the husband here were sins of murder adultery scandall and all these sins and enmities against his neighbour but as though these were nothing in comparison of that one sin and enmity to God Psa◠51.4 he saith Against thee alone O Lord have I sinned But although against this sin principally Charity opposeth her