defect Fire is good in that it warms and enlightens but evil in that it burns and smoaks Water is good in that it refreshes and quenches thirst but evil in that it is crude and cold the Air is good for respiration and to purge bad vapours but evil in that it hath tempests the Earth is good for producing fruits but evil in that it is miery and that it produces pricking Thorns and Thistles Gold Silver and other Metals are good in that they serve mens commodities but evil for their heaviness and obscurity all the Plants and Fruits of the Earth have something of good and something of evil and also all beasts of the Earth the Air and the Water and man especially is composed of Good and Evil So that there is nothing amiable but God alone since there can never be evil in him and out of him nothing good to be loved all being accompanied or mixt with evil Evil is not an object of Love nor worthy of our affection Man then is created to love and there 's nothing more natural to him than love He must needs love something For he may be as soon without life as without love for there 's nothing but death puts an end to the love of earthly things but the love which is in his nature can never end It is created of God who is eternal it shall also endure eternally but that love can have divers objects one loves good things another evil a-third things mixed of good and evil Now he that loves good things loves God since there is nothing good beside him and all the good that is in the Creatures comes from him He that loves evil things loves the Devil seeing there is nothing evil but what comes from him For God hath not created evil nor any thing evil it is the Devil alone who hath produced all evils in separating himself from all good and is by consequence fallen into all evil which is nothing else but the privation of all good And he that loves the creatures loves an object composed of good and evil for God created them all good but the Devil by his subtil malice hath insinuated the evil into the good when he gained man's will who consented to that mixture of good and evil For God had created man free so he would not hinder him to use that liberty which he had once given him And therefore man is free during this life which is his time of tryal where he may choose one of these three Objects viz if he will love God or the Devil or earthly Creatures Now there is no doubt but God is the most lovely Object who hath nothing of evil Wherefore then should it be impossible to love God with all our heart as he hath commanded there is nothing so lovely as him and beside that love brings us all sorts of good for God is as powerful as lovely and can render man happy in time and in eternity O what Quiet Joy and contentment even in this world hath a person that loveth God and how much shall these Goods be augmented in Eternity What disquiet Grief and Trouble inwardly hath a man that loves the Devil for let him do all the evil he can he is never pleased nor content his Conscience can never be in quiet and his joy can be only false and apparent because of the sadness which sin infallibly brings For evil blinds the Soul fills the Heart with dark and melancholy thoughts dulls the Spirit and tortures the Conscience as soon as the pleasure of the evil is over And after these temporal evils he must look for greater and eternal ones because he hath loved the devil who can give nothing but torments having nothing else in his power So that evil Object is as little profitable as lovely It is the same with the Creatures while we cannot love them without the evils which they carry mixed with the good which God had put in them And all the creatures of whatever nature have no power to render us happy neither in this life nor in that to come For if we love Riches which are so much loved now adays we are their Slaves because of the travail we must use to get them and the care and disquiet to preserve them nor can they afford us more than a little nourishment for our bodies and Cloaths to cover us which the poor can have also and with less trouble and if they think themselves happy because they can satisfie their taste in eating and drinking deliciously that is only a greater misery causing infirmities and diseases from which they that live soberly are free And if we love some human Creature we are yet more miserable seeing we so sell our liberty and become subject to the passions and inclinations of another So that there is no happiness for the man that loves the creatures seeing they have no power to make us happy in this world and far less in eternity And therefore there is nothing but the Love of God which is profitable and amiable for man and no other Object we must then conclude from thence that it is very possible to love him and beside that it is profitable and necessary both for our temporal and eternal happiness which I pray you to believe Your Well-affectioned in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON In Holstein near Gottorp Castle April 20. 1672. St. Vel. THE IX LETTER That it is easier to Love God than any thing else To the same to whom is shown that it is most Easie Profitable Honourable Sweet and Pleasant to Love God and keep his Commands for him that will deny himself It is Blasphemy to say that it is impossible to love God with all our heart My Dear Child NEver suffer your self to be perswaded that it is impossible to Love God with all our heart as these Ignorants falsly say for there is nothing more easie sweet pleasant honourable and profitable than to love God with all our heart First it is most easie seeing man is created to love Love is the strongest passion he hath in his nature so that he can no more be without love than without life consequently it is very easie to follow that natural inclination where there in no need to do any violence seeing the bent and inclination of man tends thither of it self and that its easie to follow a Love which is engraven in all both soul and body No person then need doubt that it is most easie for him to love But some doubt if it is easie to love God being he is an object invisible to nature and we cannot love what we Know not but with great difficulty That sentiment is altogether brutish and cannot be in the mind of a reasonable man who by his reason can see that there is a God Author of all things and that there is no creature that hath not its origine from a supreme cause who is its Author and Creator or else they could
rendet our selves its Slaves And though there were no other Devil but the Corruption of mans Nature we behoved notwithstanding to combat it continually seeing that Corruption is as much an Enemy of our Salvation as the Devil If you will my Son examin well your own self you shall find by experience that you do not one single action which though good in it self is not defiled with self-love and self-seeking and that you speak not one word which you aim not for your own advantage or praise or to excuse and justifie your self For Self-love searches always his own ease and satisfaction and will not have the blame in any thing Yea it would appear innocent in the most manifest faults it commits It speaks to excuse them reasons to maintain its opinions or what it hath fancyed or undertaken to maintain In fine it employs all the forces of body and spirit to disown its guilt So proud is that corrupt nature that it will not be blamed in any thing if it can evite it Now all these things are manifest sins which rob our heart of the Love and Honour of God to make us love and esteem our selves And so infring the Command To Love God with all our Heart while we love our own glory and esteem our selves with all our heart I have often declared that the ressence of sin consists in that man retires his affections from God to place them in any thing else beside him So we must conclude that man falls so often into sin as he turns to love himself And he falls so often into the love of himself as he will justifie or excuse himself since there is nothing just or excuseable in his corrupt nature It is by sin become altogether evil and cannot of it self do any Good spiritual or temporal But is filled with all sorts of evils from which no good can proceed That is a truth to which all the world would readily acquiesce if they were disengaged of self-self-love for then should they see that they are slow to all good and bent to all evil That they are ignorant impotent and in short all that we do in this life is only to be esteemed or to evite the contempt and humiliations that may befal us Which proceeds from that Pride of Life which sin hath planted in the bottom of the hearts of all men that come into the world They bring with them that pride which makes them live in continual sins if they do not resist it continually by Spiritual Diligence and watch not over all their Words and Actions to limit and regulate them by the Law and Will of God Which cannot be done without that Spiritual Diligence which ought to rule all our words and actions if we would attain to Salvation Which she wishes you who loves your soul ANTONIA BOURIGNON Husum Jan. 27. 1674. THE XXII LETTER Spiritual Diligence is necessary to Salvation To the same Exhorting him to Spiritual Diligence because without it none can persevere in the Service of God nor overcome his Corrupt Nature and self-Self-love My Son I Cannot over much explain the worth and necessity of Spiritual Diligence since it does occasion your eternal Salvation and all the good things we attain in this life and that which is to come Consider well that necessity that you may apprehend it and put it into practice since thereupon depends your eternal happiness For though you had acquired several other Virtues yet the Devil could easily ensnare you by Spiritual Negligence and suffer you to do well for a time that he might ensnare you after He hath not been able to hinder you to forsake the world to give your self to the Service of God seeing that was your absolute resolution Neither could he hinder that you have detested sin and undertaken to follow true Virtue But he attends you in the passage that he may stop your course and hinder your perseverance by divers tentations and by occasions which he will excite to withdraw you from your good purpose He will excite men of good will to render your resolution suspect even upon pious pretext Hee 'l make you sometimes doubt if you should not do better to remain in the world and make your Light to shine to others to enlighten them again he will represent to you if you had not better yet merchandise that you might assist your Neigbour out of your superfluity or by your good Example For the Devil tempts by all sorts of means and when he cannot bring us to evil actions he insinuates himself into our good works yea even into our good intentions and mixes therein some of his venom a little when he cannot much He gives sometimes a weariness in the way of Virtue and makes appear burthensom what is in it self light giving the Soul a backwardness or difficulty in well doing or in overcoming it self Also he takes away the Hope of surmounting our imperfections and arriving at true Virtue that he may render our souls slack and lazy because they see not the means whereby to arrive at true Virtue So that he confounds our spirits that they may not discover the truth of things as they are before God but that they should occupy themselves always with apparent Virtues and curious Speculations And therefore is it we have need of continual Prayer and spiritual Diligence if we would persevere in the service of God otherwise the Devil would gain us by the one or other way Let us then watch always that he make not our first Fervour cool and slacken our good resolution of embracing solid Virtue He will attempt even when we have obtained true Virtue to lead us into Spiritual Negligence perswading us that we may well rest at ease seeing we have acquired it and that we cannot advance further I have known such persons as said to me That they were arrived at the highest degree of perfection to which they could attain And they said so because they had read all they could read And so they judged that to read more was but to repeat what they had already read and understood Which was to me a great Pride and a Spiritual Negligence which the Devil had planted in their heart to make them perish by that Negligence For not to advance in Virtue is to fall back and recoil seeing man never attains that perfection that he ought It is written in the holy Scripture Be ye perfect as your heavenly Father is perfect To teach us that we should tend to the perfection of God and never rest in the way of Virtue but always tend to a higher degree of perfection even to the last moment of our life to follow the nearer the perfection of our heavenly father But the Devil envious of our happiness endeavours to his power to divert us He serves himself of spiritual Negligence when he cannot prevail by evil desires and actions It is alike to him by what means he ensnare our souls provided he can in the
life were with incomparable Purity Evidence Clearness and Solidity in that Soul which thou didst sanctifie and are yet in her holy Writings In truth the way that is there recommended as necessary to Salvation is the only and the true way there is no danger to abandon our selves wholly and entirely in it for it is the very Truth it is the Truth it self It is the pure Truth There is none Lord there can be none other in Heaven nor in Earth There is none other way unto eternal life than that which thou hast put into the Mouth in the Writings and in the Life of thy most holy hand-maid Antonia Bourignon I praise and bless and thank thee O my God that thou gave me to know the same and hast opened and enclined the ear of my heart thereto Give me Grace to love to observe and to maintain that heavenly Truth unto Death Happy he that should lose a thousand lives for so worthy a subject Happy he who shall never for any consideration leave the practice of it Let me by thy divine Grace be of that number that after this short life of Tryal that most certain and most infallible mean make me enjoy my soveraign End which is to have the happiness ever to adore and praise thy great Majesty O Jesus eternal God Creator Saviour and redeemer of the World while with the Father and holy Spirit thou shalt reign Gloriously in all eternity Amen Revelation Ch. 3. He that hath Ears to hear Let him hear THE PREFACE OF THE PUBLISHER THis Treatise consists of two parts whereof the one may be called Extructive which builds or establishes and the other Destructive which destroys or everts For the first ten Letters are adapted to the planting of Virtue and all the rest to evert and root out what may hinder its increase To recommend Virtue is taken the precept of him who is the Master and Example of it by which is made an introduction shewing what Virtues we must in the first place embrace and by what meanstend to them which is by Obedience and renouncing our own will unto the Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart of Iesus Christ see Let. 1 2 3. the Nature of which Humility is explained and the means conducing to the attainment of it viz the knowledge of our Corruption and the Miseries which our Bodys and Souls ly under Let. 4 5 6. Which ought to produce in us the effect of renouncing our natural senses and being content with what is of meer necessity we should flee all Pleasure and proper Satisfaction Let. 7 8. which emptying of our selves will be accompanied with the Love of God which incontinently possesses the Heart from which vitious affections are expelled because of the near relation and sympathy between them as between the Creature and its natural Element In which Love consists the Essence and Complement of all Virtue and all Good Let. 8 9 10. Concerning the overturning and resisting the Impediments and Tentations of Satan is treated Let. 11. whether they be offered to our Imagination or Sensibility even spiritual Let. 12 13. or to the Understanding making us rest in the naked knowledge of the Truth Let. 14. Or exciting us to external acting or internal with Vain Glory or by Dejecting us through immoderate mortifications or in unseasonable good works spiritual or corporal toward our Neighbour Let. 15 16. Or in regard of the Devil accusing him too much or too little of our sins Let. 17 18. Whether these Tentations affect the will whose godly fervour Satan would extinguish by Grief Spiritual Negligence and Self-love as shew Let. 19 20 and to the end There is briefly represente the whole subject handled in this divine Treatise which is more specially noted at the beginning of each Letter that you may kind Reader view as in a Table and beter retain in your memory the divine Instructions therein delivered Moreover you may with us well admire the infamous audacity of some as the Church-men in Holsatia whereby some years ago they caused that these so wholsome instructions while under the Press in the German and Low Dutch Tongues were taken away by force and violence and rent While I consider these obscure enemies of the truth that Scripture offers it self to me that Every one that Doth and will do evil hateth the Light and cometh not to the Light lest his deeds be reproved and this is the Condemnation that Light is come into the world and men Love Darkness rather than Light because their Deeds are Evil. It is far otherwise with him who doth and will do the Truth for he cometh to the Light that his Deeds may be made manifest because they are wrought in God Joh. Ch. 3. I pray the God of Truth that he graciously please to instruct and lead you in the way of Truth that you never refuse to come to the Light Farewell TO THE READER Friendly Reader I Cannot abstain from imparting unto you these twenty four letters which I have written to one of my particular Friends where I shew him what Solid Virtue is because it is a matter so necessary for the present time when we see false virtue reign or such as is only apparent to the eyes of men and while so many persons deceive themselves perswading themselves that they have true Virtue whereas they have nothing but fine Speculations They think themselves Humble when they can talk well of Humility and think they have the Love of God when they desire to have it notwithstanding they have in effect only the Love of themselves and it is but Deceit and Falshood when they say they have the Love of God They do not so much as know the corruption of their Nature seeing they think they may follow that corruption without sinning provided they do no evil reproveable before men and have a will to do well and love God Which notwithstanding is not sufficient to be saved for good desires without effect are nothing before God They are indeed Foundation stones serving to the building of true Virtue For without good Desires we cannot do good Works We must first have the desire and after put it in execution which is wanting to many persons of a good will who content themselves to be of a good will and hope with that all shall go well without considering that the holy Scripture says to all in general Depart from evil and do Good Now the Evil is in our corrupt nature which no person ought to ignore yet few depart from that corruption and most love and follow it thinking they do well which is a great abuse and presumption of spirit for we cannot do good except we depart from evil and he that does not resist that corrupt Nature and renounce it cannot acquire true Virtue which few persons comprehend and thence is it that they have only apparent Virtues and no real ones Therefore is it that I have resolved to cause print these twenty four
which it loves and would follow if it can escape the obligation of resisting it and so perswades it self that it does not know the will of God in every thing to do it The heart of man is even so deceitful that it perswades its proper understanding that we know not the will of God and consequently cannot follow it in every thing But that is a deceit invented by Satan to amuse us by false reasons and fine appearances of truth which are in effect but wicked falsities For all Christians can know the will of God if they take pains to inform themselves but for the most part they are willing to be ignorant of it because they have not a mind to accomplish it when they do know it And they do certainly beyond doubt know it but the love they bear to themselves and the little love they bear to God makes them say that they know not his will sometimes they have the confidence to say lying they would do it if they knew it For that is false but mans heart deceives sometimes it self so that it self does not know the deceit and gives it self to believe that its falshoods are truth which causes several to live in quiet believing themselves assured in the midst of perils of their Salvation Therefore we may well desire to discover the truth in a matter of so great concern on which depends our eternal happiness and never sleep upon a false bolster of Deceiving suppositions for he that sins ignorantly goes ignorantly to hell Seeing all Christians are obliged to know the will of God which is also clearly manifested to them by his commands and yet more particularly by the doctrine of J. Ch. for there be few Christians that know not that God hath commanded men to love him with all their heart and their neighbour as themselves and there are yet fewer that observe these commands and with that they say If I knew the will of God I would follow it and so they lie to God and to themselves perswading themselves they speak truth so great is the darkness in which men live at this day in regard of their Salvation We may truly say that it is at this day that they are abandoned to the Spirit of error and wickness and that the Scripture says with good reason that all men are liars seeing they now lie to themselves to the prejudice of their eternal salvation and that sometimes without knowing it For in that they say if they knew the will of God they would follow it is falshood both in the well-intentioned and in the wicked since we see in effect that neither the one nor the other do it in the first command viz. to love God with all our heart and our neighbour as our selves For to love God with all our heart we must love nothing else but him only otherwise our heart were divided and parted instead of being whole in the love of one God so that if we love riches and the pleasures of this life and honour c. we do not love God with all our heart though we know that to be his will And when we envy the happiness of our neighbour and do not assist him in his need we do not love him as our selves and we often do to him what we would not should be done to our selves Wherein we do not the will of God though we know assuredly that his will is that we love our neighbour as our selves and so we do not practice the will of God which we know but we seek beside that so clearly revealed a more particular will in things little needful and neglect to do his will in that which regards our eternal Salvation It is therefore much to be feared that we would not do the will of God in small things though we did know it seeing we do it not in things so great and so advantagious to our eternal salvation So that it were to tempt God to ask what is his will in all things while we do not fulfil it in the principal things as are his express commands and saving ordinances I hear sometimes said that it is a very sweet thing and great happiness to have the will of God discovered in every thing esteeming that a particular grace and extraordinary happiness And yet if that mercy were given them it is to be feared it would turn to their greater condemnation for he that knows the father's will and does it not shall be beaten with many stripes And the reason why God does not communicate himself to all Christians is because they are not ready nor disposed to perform his will when it shall be contrary to their own And therefore every one ought to endeavour to fulfil the will of God which he knows by his commands rather than go to and demand of God particular things so long as he does not perform the principal things as are the commands of God or the counsels of J. Ch. and these counsels explain yet more particularly the will of God than did the commands in general For J. Ch. deduces particularly all what we ought to do and leave to fulfil that command of loving God with all our heart and our neighbour as our selves Saying Learn of me for I am meek and Lowly which teaches the love of God and of our neighbour for the meekness signifies love of the goodness of God and lowliness the Love of our neighbour Meekness or goodness is one of the essential qualities of God which seems to surpass his other qualities it is like oyl among other liquors which swims always above for we see in aâ—l Gods works his goodness superabound over his other qualities though that goodness be never seperated from his justice and truth yet it excels over them For we see in many things where God hath stayed his wrath to give place to his mercy when men would turn as he did to the people of Nineveh who by their sins had justly merited that Gods justice should be executed against them Yea and the truth of God had foretold their destruction within forty days but as soon as that people returned to repentance the goodness of God gets uppermost and swims above his justice and truth and pardons them by his great meekness and goodness So that we may with truth say that the goodness of God is over his other qualities And seeing J. Ch. exhorts us to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect we must labour particularly for that virtue of meekness and lowliness which Jesus Christ teaches to learn of him that we may tend to that perfection of our heavenly father and when we have in the bottom of our soul justice and truth for a foundation to Christian perfection we must build upon that meekness and gentleness seeing that virtue will make us fulfil the command of Loving God with all our heart and our neighbour as our selves wherein the scripture says all the law and the Prophets are contained and
man from the will of God who had created him to delight himself with him and willed for that that he should love him with all his heart There cannot be delight but with what is beloved and therefore will God be loved of man with all his heart and that he place his affections in nothing else but in him only The Devil no sooner perceived that but he enticed him by the five natural senses which are as the five windows of our heart to withdraw his heart and affections from God and to place them on visible and sensible things The Devil then first moved Adam's heart to regard the beautiful Creatures which God had created for him he moved also his sense of hearing to give attention to the false perswasions of that old Serpent who made him believe that he should know Good and Evil if he did eat the fruit of the Tree which God had forbid him to eat of He moved him to put his Hand to touch that Apple his Smelling to smell it and his Taste to eat it and by that means the Devil carryed Adam's Heart and affection to the Creatures and turned him away from the Love he owed to God If the Devil could have drawn man's Heart directly to love him he had done it but because he is an invisible spirit he could not move the five natural Senses of man to love him And therefore he served himself of visible and sensible creatures to get himself indirectly loved by man that by moving man to self-love and to use all the other Creatures to satisfie his self-love and consequently withdraw him from the love of God which he hath done with too much success seeing he hath caused Adam and all that were to proceed from him to disobey against God and so made him abandon that dependance that he would no more depend but upon his own will and love nothing but himself Behold the miserable fall into which the Devil caused all men to fall into in Adam And they all in general are born in that misery and disobedience since the fall of Adam and come into the world with that evil inclination to love themselves and follow the corruption of their senses which breeds all sorts of sins because they are now moved by an evil spirit which is the Devil whence no good can proceed for the privation of all good is the possession of all evil So that he that hath rejected the love of God and would not renounce himself hath deprived himself of all sort of good seeing there is no other good but God and is fallen into all sorts of evil that is to say into the privation of all sorts of Good God never created any evil but man produced it when he deprived himself of the Love of God in which alone consists all sorts of Good And that is the thing they call sin which signifies to turn away and desert God who is all good and in the privation of him is all evil So that he that hath withdrawn his affections from God to place them in the love of himself or of any other creature hath abandoned all Good and embraced all sorts of Evil. For there can be no other evil but the privation of all good into which man engages himself when he carrys his love and affections to any thing else than God And what Adam did once by the instigation of the Devil men do it for their own particular as often as they set their affections on any thing beside God only Observe a little my Child how often you have fallen into the same sin with Adam and loved any other thing than God alone and also if you are not actually addicted to your self-self-love and retired from the love of your God but I am not surprised at it because you never knew that sin consisted in that and no person hath taught you it for the men of this time are ignorant of that truth as well as you and they that are esteemed the most virtuous are full of self-love though they think themselves free from sin so far does the heart of man deceive it self But for your part be wiser for though all men should go to perdition you must endeavour to save your own Soul The great number of damned would not diminish your torments if you should be damned with them but rather augment them by the augmentation of crys blasphemies and noysomeness of Fire and Brimstone which shall augment in Hell with proportion to the number of damned And therefore I counsel you to leave that common tract of the blindness of men which esteem nothing sin but the material things which they have prescribed one to another to be evil Things which God regards little seeing he is a pure Spirit whom not only these gross material things offend as they decifer sins as Drunkenness Robbery Whoredom and other material sins blameable before men but God is offended to see the heart of man cleave to and love things so vile since he created him to love his God only who will delight himself with him And yet man deserts God to delight himself in the satisfaction he takes in eating drinking and cloathing and recreation with any other creature Which hugely displeases God and man becomes his enemy by disobedience while he acts against the designs God had in creating him after his own image and likeness to take his delights with him notwithstanding man against the intention of God delights in himself and the Creatures that are less than himself For whatsoever is created under Heaven is much below man who is as the head and principal of all the works of God and was established over all the other inferiour works of God being made as a little God in his divine nature which is enclosed in his Humanity But the Devil envious of his happiness from the instant of his creation strove to make him lose that part of the divinity which God had bestowed on him he rendered him sensual and earthly to make him leave the love of divine and heavenly things which alone he ought to have loved and by that means he had enjoyed all the other creatures at pleasure as master and Lord of all that was subjected to him But the proud Devil could not suffer man in dominion over the other Creatures he being rejected and banisht from the friendship of God deprived of all good and replenisht of all evil so he by Rage and Envy attempted to destroy man with himself and make him companion of his miseries and seeing man composed of a body and a spirit he insinuated into his spirit endeavouring to unite himself with him under pretext of procuring good to him and so made him imagin that he should know all things as God if he would eat the fruit God had forbid him to eat of and these thoughts being entred into Adam's spirit gained his affection and made him forget the Love and Obedience which he owed to God beginning to love
hour to any thing that is not of God we are for that hour turned from God to the creatures which is sin since we do in that what God hath forbid viz. We cease to love him with all our heart For we ought to love him always without interruption and therefore is it we must refrain our senses and give them laws that they take no other liberty but to follow the will of God We may well use these five natural senses and employ them to the Glory of God who gave them for we cannot be without seeing hearing smelling feeling and tasting but we must not take pleasure in these for our proper satisfaction we must employ them only on things necessary and those that may serve to the Glory of God and the good of our Neighbour For example man is made up of Soul and Body he hath need to employ all his five natural senses for the conservation of the one and th' other he must see and behold all things that may serve him for the perfection of his soul and hear touch taste and feel them loving them as the means of his salvation He must also look upon all things that he needs for entertaining his body to which his natural senses can afford him much help for he must see things necessary as a House to Dwell in Cloathes to cover him food to nourish him all that must be lookt on He must hear the means to obtain them smell them that he take nothing hurtful in his aliments touch and taste them for that same end For all things necessary are good and it can never be sin to use them for necessity But it is always evil to use them to satisfie our sensual pleasures or self-love because that is an affection we carry to our selves and our affection and love ought to be to God alone not to things so base and vile which we may well use but never love seeing God will have our heart entirely Which was figured by the earthly Paradise where God placed man at the beginning of the world He gave him a full liberty to eat of all sorts of Delicious fruit but reserved that of one only tree of which he forbad man to eat and that to let us understand that God does permit us to use all the Creatures which he hath created for us provided we keep our affection for himself only so he forbids us to place it on any thing else as marks the first Command to love God with all our heart that is that our heart ought not to be Divided and parted to something else but be altogether to him But men do not penetrate that as they ought they perswade themselves that it is allowable to love divers other things with God in which they grievously deceive themselves while the Command of God expresses punctually viz. Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart if then it had been permitted to love other things with God he had not added with all thy heart We make questions and Disputes upon so many Mysteries of our faith and so many degrees of virtue and we leave behind the principal piece in which consists all faith and virtues For what shall it profit a man to have penetrated all the secrets of Nature and even all the Doctrines of Deep and mysterious Theology if with all that he fulfil not the Command of Loving God with his whole heart and have his heart Divided into many divers affections all his knowledge will profit him nothing we must then fulful that first Commandment to love God with all our heart I know well there are several glosses to explain how we must love God with all our heart one says we must love him above other things and where we have an ounce of love to our Money Honour Pleasures Parents or even our self we must have a pound for God and that so we fulfil that first Command and love God with all our heart Others say we must love him so that if the case were we must lose God or our goods parents or any other thing that we should lose all rather than quit God Others say it is impossible to fulfil that Command And so every one attempts to extinguish in the spirit of man the knowledge of the necessity of loving God with our whole heart which is much to be lamented and afflicts the heart seeing so many men prefer the Glosses and Sentiments of men to so express Ordinances of God He had added in vain the words with all your heart if we might put a part of our affections or of our heart in the creatures Yet God never did any thing in vain If he had not intended to show that men ought to love him with all their affections indivisibly he had not added with all your heart Consider a little my Son with your self by his grace if God does not well Deserve that we love him with all our heart Our being and all that we have is from him that whole heart with which he will be loved he gave it us should not that be great ingratitude to refuse him the heart he gave us himself to the end it might be for himself alone He gives us to enjoy so many Creatures provided we keep our Heart for him which is the only forbidden fruit Is not that the least God could demand of man in bestowing so many benefits on him Ought not man of himself to offer unto God his Heart with all other things although he were not commanded Whatever we have or can have comes immediately from him and consequently all ought voluntarily to be offered unto him without constraint Moreover on whom can we better bestow our heart than on God and who can render it more happy than he If we bestow it on our Parents or Friends they cannot render it happy and content even in this world If we place it in the Riches Honours and Pleasures of this world all these cannot satiate it seeing they are like salt-water the more our heart Drinks the more it is parched And therefore man is very unprovident to place his affections in any other thing than in God There is nothing but him that can satisfie and render us happy and content seeing in God alone is all sorts of Good and out of him all sorts of Evil. Never rest then my Son on mens Discourses for they are Liars and Deceivers and their glosses are invented only to flatter their looseness and that of others who have no internal Light So they say it is impossible to keep that Command of loving God with all our heart and they say so because they have no will to do it But God can never command things impossible beside mans spirit can easily comprehend that it is not impossible to love God with all our heart for there is nothing more natural to man than love and there is no object more lovely than God All that we see and know in nature hath some
not have being nor existence For although man be above all the other creatures yet he cannot give light nor heat to the sun nor sustain the Waters in the firmament nor fructtifie the earth All that must needs be from a supreme cause whom he may know by his operations his understanding can see clearly even by his bodily eyes in contemplating the beautiful order which is in all nature we need but consider the distinction of Seasons the production of Herbs Plants Beasts and of men And though we cannot see the author of all these things yet we can see his works palpably and visibly The savage Pagans did both know and confess that there is a God Author of Nature and there are Christians at present so unnatural that they dare say they know not God because they see him not with their fleshly eyes And from that they will argue that they cannot love him because they know him not They render themselves in that like to the Beasts which have no spirit to perceive other than natural things and see them as though they subsisted by themselves But men having a spirit more noble than beasts comprehend even by their natural spirit that there is a God Author of Nature which engaged some Pagans to set up Altars to the Unknow God Some other of them at the Death of our saviour Jesus Christ said Either nature is a dissolving or the God of Nature suffers These things ought to make the Christians of this time blush for shame who say They cannot love God whom they see not So they shall be more punished in Hell than the Pagans that have applyed their spirit to know God by nature Whereas on the contrary these Christians do not at all study to know him neither by Nature nor by Grace which they have received in the Evangelical Law beside that which God gave to Moses These brutish Christians must neither believe nature nor the Law of God to say they cannot love God with all their heart whom they do not know For though they knew not God by his works which yet they see and touch they should at least know him by the Law of God which would not enjoin to love God if he were not Seeing then there is a God there is consequently an Object amiable above all things and man being full of love ought to be easily carryed to love him for love is always carryed to good and beautiful things so that nothing should be more easie to him than to love God who is the source of all Good and Beauty But all the difficulty man finds now to love him with all his heart comes hence that he doth not apply his spirit to discover and meditate the works and marvelous things of God and so cannot know nor love him but he gives himself to regard the earthly creatures in themselves and attributes to themselves the little of good and beauty that is in them and by that means carrys his affections to love the gross Objects which are visible and sensible to his stupid senses It is difficult for such persons to love God they cannot love heavenly Objects while they regard only earthly ones as they cannot comprehend eternal things because they contemplate only transitory And that is not because of their incapacity seeing God hath made them capable of loving him but because by their free will they choose to love the vile creatures more than him and it is that vitious choise makes them say that it is impossible to love God and themselves make that impossibility They are like persons who staying in a valley full of Snow complain that they are cold and that they cannot be warmed among that Snow which is very true but if they would walk a little to get out of that Snow and get up to the Mountain they should well feel that it is full easie to become warm where the sun bestows his rays It is even so with earthly men who please themselves in the Snow of worldly lustres they say and think it is impossible to be warmed by the Love of God which is also very true so long as they remain in the affections of the pleasures of this valley of tears For nothing can warm them in the love of God while there all is but Snow which cools them He that hath his pleasures in carnal things cannot have them in spiritual and he that puts his affections in perishing goods cannot have them in eternal ones and he that takes his pleasures here in sensualities cannot have them in spiritual things seeing all these things are contraries which can never abide together So long then as a man feels himself cold in the Love of God it is a token that he lives yet in affection to the things of this valley of Snow which are quenchers of the Love of God He cannot then feel in himself other than an impossibility or at least great difficulty to love God with his whole heart But if they would quit their affection to this valley of misery and mount up to the consideration of eternal things they should soon feel the Sun of Righteousness warm our Soul and the Love of God fill our heart which would not only find Facility therein but also Sweetness Pleasure Honour and Profit seeing in effect there is nothing more pleasant than to love God For me I have experienced that all love to the Creatures is bitter and that the Love of God only is sweet and pleasant for when I loved Riches they gave me aboundance of trouble to preserve them when I loved Honours I found there many bitter and piercing displeasures when I was not esteem'd or honour'd as I wished so that sometimes one Sleight caused me more pain than a hunderd Honours had given me contentment When I loved the pleasures and delights of this life I found there great bitterness because there is none of these pleasures that carry not its own pain with it for the pleasures of the taste breed poverty and diseases and are insatiable they never satisfie no more than those of the flesh which resemble Salt-water the more one drinks the more drought I have remarked that in several carnal persons who after having ruined their Body and Health in satisfying their concupiscence used all means to cure their infirmities and that to the end they might wallow yet more in their nasty pleasures And when I have loved any human Creature it was always painful for me to satisfie and please them and the fear of offending or loosing them was unto me a continual anxiety So that there is nothing but God alone whom it is easie and sweet to love Nothing is more pleasant for all other Loves have Grief mixed with their greatest Pleasures we see young people marry with joy there is nothing but mirth Plays and Dances but the Wedding is scarce over and sometimes sooner when we see them sad and afflicted pensive and melancholy Diseases attacque them the Care of
will not promise that you shall have in his service sensual Pleasure or worldly Riches and vain Contentment but I promise you assuredly Quiet of Conscience Tranquillity of Spirit an inward Peace and contentment in your Soul Which are things far more estimable than the vain Pleasures and impure Contentments and aboundance of the Riches of this world which can never satisfie our souls being they are spiritual and cannot consequently be satisfied with material things Therefore is it that there was never any man perfectly content and satisfied in this world unless he loved God with his whole heart There is no other but such an one who can be entirely content for only the Love of God is capable fully to satisfie our souls for they are little divinities which cannot be fully contented out of God from whom they proceeded Therefore must you my Child labour to attain to that love for when you have truely found it you shall have all things and you shall reign over all the world having in contempt all that is not God And you have no violence to use with God to obtain his love seeing he gives it liberally and freely to all that desire and ask it and even compels men by an express Command which he hath given them but you must do a little violence to your self to obtain that love because your affections are carried to other things than him so you must reclaim them and constrain them to return to their God and in that you shall have so many combats as you have habitudes to love other things than God If you be then strongly addicted to self-self-love or Love of other Creatures your combats shall be so much the greater But the business deserves suffering well seeing after we shall enjoy so great Good temporal and eternal we should spare nothing to gain such a Treasure the Pain shall pass swiftly and the Joy endure eternally And therefore you must suffer willingly to retire your affections from earthly things and place them in God alone I have sufficiently shown you in my last that that is good pleasant honourable and profitable It remains for you now to put it in practice Examin once what it is that you love beside God and then detest that love and withdraw from it your heart If you love objects without your self flee from them as the enemies of your good loose from them your heart and desire no more to see them And if your Affections be occupied in self-Self-love remove them from an object so little lovely to place them in God who only merits your affections and nothing else Protest then against that natural inclination of self-Self-love and yield no more any thing to that nature but things purely necessary for it is your greatest enemy to which you must not furnish Arms to fight against you the better You must know that corrupt nature wars against the Love of God as far as you yield to it So give it the least satisfaction you can even till you have overcome it withdraw then from it your Affections you must restrain it as a Horse with Bridle that it kick not nor attempt but to serve the master you love Behold the means to render you free to love God with your whole heart for as soon as your affections are retired from all Creatures they will be assuredly carryed to love God their Creator because the Love of God is the element of our Soul in which only it can live recreate and repose it self That Love of God is the true center of our Souls whither they fall of themselves so soon as they are disengaged of other affections which are all vain It is as with a Stone thrown into the Air which will not rest till it fall on the Earth which is its center unless it be retained with bonds or other thing It is the very same with man's Soul which is thrown into the air of the Vanities of this world It cannot find rest there if we did not retain it by Force by Baits and Allurements of Affection for earthly things doubtless it would presently fall into the Love of God which is its center and element where it can rest and recreate it self to satisfaction because the Soul hath nothing more suitable to its nature than God from whom it proceeded and it can never repose till it be returned to him and when it is compelled to remain out of its element it is as a Fish which by Nets and Lines is forced out of the water which is to it very disagreeable and causes to it Death if it be not quickly returned into the water The same happens to the Soul when it suffers it self to be entangled in the nets of earthly Affections it must quickly die because it cannot find there an element suitable to its divine nature and so it languishes withers and dies an eternal death unless it break the nets of earthly Affections to return to its element which is the Love of God You must my Son labour that you may break all the bonds of earthly Affections and so soon as you feel affection for any thing that is not God rescind it quickly for it is a chain which retains you out of your element and though it should be painful for you to loose your heart from any thing to which it enclines these Pains shall quickly change into Consolations for you shall no sooner be returned into the Love of God but you shall bathe in ease and pleasure as fish newly returned to the water which is its element It is for that Jesus Christ says that his yoak is easie and his Burthen Light He calls a Yoak our natural inclinations because we must constrain and retain them and they are troublesom and grievous to bear For if we follow them we precipitate our selves into a thousand Evils seeing nature being corrupted by sin enclines always to evil And these evils are often troublesom and weighty to bear I know well that to us it seems grievous that we may not in any thing follow our natural inclinations but if we take on that Yoak for the Love of God it will become light and easie to us as Jesus Christ hath taught No person can dispence or excuse himself from bearing it since our first Father Adam laid it on the shoulders of all his Posterity all men in general and every one in particular are charged with the miseries which sin brought upon human nature They are all subject to Heat Cold Intemperance of the Air Hunger Thirst Infirmities and Diseases of the Body to Ignorance and Inconstancy of Spirit and the disorderly motions of Passions for sin hath brought all these things upon man's nature which God created altogether perfect but since all men have pertaken of Adam's Sin they are also subject to his Penitence That is the Yoak which God hath given man to satisfie his divine Justice So that all men coming into the world must bear that Yoak will they or not
but it would soon revive if they granted to their nature eases and pleasures But the soul that is regenerated in Jesus Christ knows well that Nature must be kept under subjection and restraint during this short life which is a time of penitence where we must suffer if we will enjoy after Which shews that those who say they may enjoy all beautiful and good things here praising God are very ignorant and deceived by the Devil For they think themselves to be regenerated in the Spirit of Jesus Christ which is false seeing his Spirit doth not teach that we should taste the Pleasures of this life and use all that 's good and pleasant But he teaches penitence and renouncing our selves to be poor in Spirit to forsake all that we have to watch and be sober All that is not to enjoy whatever is good and pleasant For Jesus Christ teaches to take the least and to choose the lowest place If then these persons had but attained however little of the Spirit of Jesus Christ they would be far from saying that they have overcome the corruption of their nature and are renewed in the Spirit of Jesus Christ while they do things quite contrary to what he did and taught For if it were permitted to the Regenerate to take their pleasure and to enjoy whatever is good and pleasant in nature doubtless Jesus Christ would have done so seeing there was never any person regenerated and had overcome the corruption of Nature so perfectly as he And yet he speaks of nothing but suffering becoming poor bearing the Cross and denying our selves These imprudents must think themselves more perfect than he seeing they say they may well taste all what is good and pleasant in nature provided they thank God Notwithstanding our Lord deprived himself of all these things to give us example Do you not see my Son that it is a cunning device of Satan to deceive them that aspire unto Virtue For he fills their Spirit with presumption assoon as he hath got them to digest some curious speculations of the spiritual life They imagin that they are already regenerated in the Spirit of Jesus Christ although they live altogether according to the corrupt nature of the old Adam Such persons are very far from true Virtue And it is to be feared that they shall never arrive at it seeing they think themselves in it already but they are far from it and they had better never have begun to be virtuous than to take up false Virtues These sins are worse than others because of their Hypocrisie They think themselves virtuous and they are yet full of Vices and Sins I despair more of these apparent devout persons than of the persons of the World who have any Fear of God for they have the beginning of Virtue which th'others have not who cannot fear God believing themselves regenerated in the Spirit of Jesus Christ They fancy themselves to be in Assurance and they are in the midst of Perils and Dangers of losing their souls by Presumption and the Delusion of the Devil who attempts always to turn aside them that desire to follow true virtue He first by some inward Consolation and sweetness endeavours to fix them on it by self-love for corrupt nature loves to be comforted But the new Beginner no sooner takes his pleasure in these sensible Sweetness and Consolations but he falls The reason is that he will not mind his duty in resisting the corruption of his nature when he is fastned to these sensibilities But will think he hath already overcome it when he feels delight and consolation in Spiritual things whereas before he felt none but in natural things And that makes him believe that he is already at the height of Perfection though he be not yet at the first degree which is the Tears of Penitence and regret for offending God and the desire to walk henceforth in his Fear which is the beginning of all Virtue But the Devil diverts that Fear and perswades them that they are already virtuous because they desire to become so And so does the Devil amuse those that begin and he would willingly keep them all their life with Sweetness inward Consolations which the Devil can give and also man 's own Nature For as soon as they with-draw from the Vanity of the World they find great quiet since it is a Slavery to serve the World There they torture and rack their understanding by care to maintain themselves well in honour and reputation to be well cloathed and adorned and to be followed and esteemed What Diligence must not a Worldly Person use to please men What Fear of incurring Disgraces How must he dissemble and suffer to have mens Favour and keep it How much toil to gain sufficiently to maintain him honourably What Device and Cunning must he use to get Esteem and to avoid Contempt In fine he that serves the World hath nothing but toil and disquiet but he that hath resolved to quit it to serve God begins to be loosed from the weighty yoak of pleasing the World and to find himself in much more quiet and contentment Which is pleasant to nature but if it please and fix it self upon these Pleasures it will not advance in Virtue but live in self-love instead of the love of God And in that the Devil forwards Nature mightily in augmenting these sweetnesses and inward Consolations to fix the person the more to them God bestows also Sweetness and consolations upon them that begin to draw them the more easily from Earthly Affections to the Love of himself by sensible Consolations which the soul finds in his service But whencesoever they come we must never rest thereon nor take pleasure in any thing that is not God For all Sin came into the World by man's loving the Creatures and taking his pleasure in them And when we take pleasure in Inward Consolation we turn from God in loving that sensibility It is permitted to feel and perceive them since God gives them sometimes but we cannot addict our selves to them without sinning no more than to other things beside God For our whole heart ought to be employed in the Love of God only I know well the Devil attempts to turn us from that Love by all sorts of occasions and he no sooner sees one retire from the Love of the World Riches Honours and Pleasures but he attacques them by the affection of Virtue and inward consolations to with-draw their Hearts thereby from that pure Love of God Be then upon your guard my Son lest the Devil ensnare you under pretext of Virtue Which Care she wisheth you who remains Your Well-affected in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle May 3. 1672. st vet THE XIV LETTER The Devil Transforms himself into an Angel of Light To the same to whom is discovered a fifth and sixth Artifice of the Devil by which he causeth men to apply themselves to the knowledge of
other but live at ease without fighting they remain in quiet amidst the danger of their Enemies And which is strange when any would waken them out of that Lethargique Sleep they are grieved and dissatisfied notwithstanding that Sleep will assuredly procure them eternal Death if they do not awake to fight their Enemies We cannot hinder that these Enemies assail us every where but they are unwilling to be discovered because an Enemy discovered is half vanquisht And therefore my Child you ought to rejoyce rather than be sorrowful that God permits that I now discover so many wiles of the Devil For you cannot make that he be not wicked and that all manner of malice proceeds not from him nor can you hinder that he tempt men since our first parents have given him that power and if they had not done it we give him dayly the same power over us which he got over them by the consent of our will to his tentation It being so we must fight or render to him which were lamentable For we were created true Children of God after his Image and Resemblance And we should become by our Sloath Children of the Devil which you must never suffer but endeavour to discover the evil and resist it to your power And bless God also that he sends you his Light that you may know it and beware of it without afflicting your self so much because the Devil hoth power to tempt men For tentations purifie the soul and render it agreeable to God He takes pleasure to see us fight his and our Enemies And he gives us strength and aid if we persevere constantly yea he hath prepared for us Triumphant Lawrels and Eternal Rewards of Victory Therefore you must not give place to that feebleness of spirit to languish because the Devil hath power to tempt men since it is not in you to take it from him he hath too long possessed it For since he made himself the Enemy of God he hath had power to do in himself all the evil he pleased although his evil cannot hurt man unless he consent For man hath full liberty to resist him as the Devil hath full liberty to tempt us If that were not true he could never have tempted Adam our first Father who was altogether holy and perfect at his Creation and had not in his beginning given any occasion to the Devil to tempt him But the Devil being created free as well as man he had power to do all the evil he pleased in himself For he would even be equal with God which is a greater evil than to tempt Adam in his innocence And that of tempting men now is yet far less seeing they are corrupted by the first Sin And it is yet less when he tempts them that have so often consented to him with deliberate will And therefore my Son you have no ground to fret because the Devil hath power to tempt you but you ought truely to regret that you have by your past sins given him so much power over your soul Resolve now to war against him with manly courage and hinder that he get more power over your soul by resisting his tentations for that is a holy and salutary Resolution But that Grief which you conceive because the Devil hath power to tempt you and others comes from him He makes us always desire things impossible and such as are not in our power that he may afflict and discourage us For he knows well that a grieved and discouraged person is not well fitted to resist his tentations and that in that state he can easily lead him from one evil to another And therefore he often causes vain griefs such as is that which proceeds from that the Devil hath so much power to tempt men and also the disturbing grief for our sins past which are no more in our power These are Extremities into which the Devil attempts always to precipitate us It is true we ought to regret that we have willingly given the Devil so much power over us and more lament our by past sins but we must not therefore rest in these griefs seeing they would mar the Graces of God in us It is better to go to God by love and amendment of life than by Melancholies which proceed from the Devil for before his entry there was nothing but all joy in the world and in the heart of man So that sadness is truely a quality of the Devil and so man ought to Despise it if he seeks after true virtue He ought indeed to have a sincere regret from his heart that he hath offended God and beg pardon of him as often as he remembers his sins but he ought never to suffer himself to be overcome of grief since what 's past is not in his power And though he should destroy himself he can never make that what is past should not be He ought then for penitence of his by-past sins endeavour a true conversion to God departing from evil to do good detesting sin to embrace true virtue Which is a true contrition much more solid than tears and immoderate sadness which the Devil ordinarily gives them that begin Of which you must beware my Child for God would be served with a ready and joyful heart And he says that he treats with the converted sinner as if he had never offended him You should then rejoyce for the Grace God hath given you to forsake the World and to turn from Vanity unto the Truth which you now discover and not afflict your self because the Devil hath so much power to tempt men seeing that power cannot be exercised but on those that give or have given him their full consent and that all things turn to good to them that fear God When the Devil tempts you remember that he cannot hurt you without your own consent and your resisting his tentation renders you agreeable to God For your soul must be proved as Gold in the Furnace which grows still the purer by continuing in the fire Even so is a soul purified by long tentation if it remain firm in resisting and nothing can hurt it but sin from which if it abstain it carries the victory over its enemies and all they can do against it are but false allarms which try its Fidelity and Vigilancy And therefore we must not desire that the devils power should be taken from him but earnestly pray to God for strength to resist him and fight until death For Jesus Christ in the prayer which he left to Christians hath not asked to be free from tentation but only not to be led to follow the tentation and to be delivered from evil And since there is no other evil but sin we pray only to be delivered from it and not from tentation which is often profitable and salutary for us yea sometimes necessary to our frailty For our nature is so feeble and corrupted that it could not remain faithful to God out of tribulations
to do so even with great Conviction and Sbame that God hath replenished my spirit with several most rare Graces and unknown Lights which will render me so much the more damnable before him if he have not Mercy on me I own that all the knowledges which God hath for so many years and does continue dayly to pour into my Soul as that of the new Jerusalem of the conversion of Jews and Pagans of the destruction of Antichrist of Satan reigning in all States and Conditions Sects and Religions under the name of Christ the vanity of human literature or that which they call Theologie whether studying or composing Books which I see by the Light of Faith to be meer delusions of Satan and so many other secrets which God speaks often in the ear of my Soul are all nothing in respect of the holiness it must be filled with that it may see God And that if it have not the last though it did divinely possess all these others Satan might well entertain it therein and even teach it more provided he might keep it always captive under one or more sins It was upon that very foundation that I did passionatly love and study human Literature in which Satan would willingly have nourished me and entertained my spirit all my life in detaining me thereby from the search and from the true adoration of God in the Soul So I was already in the profession of the Ministry even for some years that I had not any true knowledge of God and most ignorant of true Religion These things could get no entry into my Vnderstanding finding it so full of prejudices in favour of the reformed religion and against all other Sects as also addicted to Books and worldly Sciences This is it that made me leave the Romish Church in which I was born and lived to the age of 22. or 23. years apprehending that I should perish if I died in it believing also that the Reformed Church was altogether holy I was abused or imposed on therein From one Babylon which I left I 'm come into another If I were yet in that of my Nativity I would no more leave it but with my Soul and Spirit and would sanctifie my self there as well as in so many other Sects which I perceive now to be all but works or Idols of mens hands So many Pantings Prayers Studies and other things which I have employed to attain to the quality of Minister I had employed them to the sanctifying of my soul Also I know that the charge of Pastor which I have exercised more than these ten years is a charge meerly politique and human and that has nothing Divine nor of God but vain in the persons exercising it and in them that yield themselves the subjects of it And although for some years I have preached Truths unknown unto me and also which men cannot nor will not know to wit that God is a Spirit and that he is to be worshipped as such Yet I find it is a subtil Deceit to pretend to sanctifie men without being holy our selves and that these good wills do not always come from the holy Spirit hence I am perswaded that as long as Ministers are not holy God will not work any thing by them and that I do firmly believe that God hath at present in his Anger cursed the Ministers and Ministry of the Reformed Churches I say farther that it is impossible for a good man to exercise it after God without partaking with mens sins This is one of the reasons that oblige me to write to you and because I believe you give no counsel but after God's mind I desire your advice herein and wish God give me Grace to follow it namely the Ministry being both in me and in others such as I have just now described it if I should continue in it or not that is I desire to know by you what is Gods will concerning me many reasons oblige me to leave it off and I cannot tell what other points of conscience do yet retain me in it If it were God's will that I should forsake it it would be in the desire of coming as near unto you as I could especially if I were assured to be in the least usefull to aid you as much in the glorifying of God I mean in carrying that new and everlasting Gospel unto the World as I should hope you would be unto me for my souls welfare Another reason obliging me to write to you is that notwithstanding so many Graces that God hath put into my Soul yet I am not satisfied in my Conscience I am yet wrathful and am carnal in Marriage These two sins have very sore and often afflicted my Soul even I dare not promise unto God that I will not commit them any more for I have promised too often to him and have fallen therein too too often again My Soul has been in great sorrow for it and has learnt thereby to put it self below all gross sinners also God would so humble me thereby that I never reprove sin or sinners nor ever speak of them but I fall into greater my self It is in this and in other things that you shall judge proper that I desire you would give me some rules to lead my Life after God in the things of God and in the things of the World would to God it may be to my Salvation But there is enough said and asked for the first time I am in the bottom of my Soul and desire to be yet more Mrs Your most Humble most Obedient and most Obliged Servant ANTONI GRELLOT Minister of the French Church of Outreberg At Outreberg in the Electoral Palatine the 6-16 Novemb. 1677. She received a Letter from a Gentleman of London the stile and genius giving reason to expound the R. B. that subscribes it to be the famous and honourable Robert Boyle A Vowing her writings most praise-worthy and of so sweet an odour that he caused translate them into English with design to cause print them in that Language and signifying his most ardent desires to know of her State and her other writings so far as God should encline her heart and so rejoyce extremely his spirit because with her a Lover of the holy Truth and of the life of which she gives testimony unto others and to him wishing her all good and loving her in the Love which is life it self R. B. The Inscription To the most noble Virgin Antonia Bourignon in her Lodging Amsterdam See the veneration with bleeding regret of that just penetrating Spirit Sir George Makenzie Late Lord Avocat to his Majesty in a Treatise De imbellicitate ratiocinationis humanae published last year by Grevius at Vtrecht page 49. having said that we should employ our reason in warring against Vice and in attaining to Virtue and that there is nothing more just adds TAnta est ratiocinationis hujus efficacia ut etiam in aetatis diluculo infantes
of God until God appointed her to return to an ordinary way of living while God's extraordinary divine communications to her flowed more and more during all her life like a stream still encreased until its ending a mighty River into the vast Ocean which in the same degree encreased in her soul that Constancy divine Love and all Virtues and Graces as not moved were more established by all the assaults which the craft and malice of Hell did eagerly spue out all her life while she pursued her first search of True Christians which when she could not find any true knowledge of a Christian Life and self-seeking among all the devout and Religious Persons whose earthly-mindedness she easily discovered through all their fair Pretexts she turned the more in to God in her Heart where he trained her in the true Christianity and told her She must not seek it in the World but in her own heart with God and in Solitude whereupon she did over the belly of all Opposition Tentations Allurements of Friends Riches and all worldly advantages most generously and constantly forsake all seeking that beloved solitude where she might enjoy God without disturbance God gave her a Spiritual solitude retiring her Heart and Soul from all that was not himself yet retained her from other to make her a Light to lead other good Souls out of the Egypt of this World into the same Wilderness of heavenly-mindedness The traverses she met with her constant Advance and all the steps of her conduct so signally disposed by the immediate hand and Councel of God as its unaccountable and vast so it is beyond the bounds and design of this short preliminary to insist on who desire a more satisfying Account may be satisfied by the History of her Life written partly by her self partly by a faithful and judicious eye and ear Witness Her desire was to be unknown and unnoticed yet many persons of good-will of several sorts came to her acquaintance who owed and owned unto her as the Instrument of Gods Spirit their Conversion their Enlightening their Inflaming in divine Love their Comforting and Strengthening and their Eternal Life testifying as they were living and standing Testimonies that her Words her Writings her Works and all her Life had an unutterable divine efficacy and power of converting and saving Souls that were well disposed infinitly beyond all the enervate and lifeless Means and Ordinances in the hands of the most elaborate and erudite heads exercising that trade for their dayly bread without the spirit of it under which alas its too visible and by all that have but the least spark of ingenuity confest and of sincerity regreted that we live most part so little or not at all moved from our earthly biass of self which declines us so much to Hell that if we get but a little survey of the Earth we never attain nor it may be seek any true glimpse of heavenly things which gives us to notice the same proportion of illuminating enlivening and invigorating force of painted Preachings to real ones as there is of the sun painted on a board to that in the Firmament Several who with good applause had long exercised the function of conducting and directing Souls as Ministers and Fathers in the Church not of the least erudition but of the most uprightness made it their happiness to learn at this illiterate Maid the empty Vanity of their former fruitless Labours and to begin again from the A B C of Solid Virtue under her direction owning more Solid Light and Divine Life from some few Rays of her Spirit than from all their Schools and Books Studies and Preachings Notice only one notable Matter in the way In an Hospital of poor Girles she charitably governed she discovered them all to be Witches in express compact with the Devil and that a vastly surprising greater part of the world than is usually by the innocent thought are such by evidences satisfying and convictive to the most doubting that will not be obstinate Passing from her first appearance in the World to her first publique appearance to the World On the second of December 1667. she departed from Mechline in Flanders and came to Amsterdam with design to satisfie the solicitation of her friends and God's will of having the Truth promulgate and known by the printing her Writings entituled The Light of the World and at the convenient season of sailing to go for Holstein where in the Isle of Nordstrand she had bought a Farm from Mr. de Cort the Director of the said Isle and Proprietor of most of it who was going with her In honour and imitation of the obscure mean Life of Jesus Christ that she might be unknown she hired a little House by the shore in a very retired place but falling soon into a sore and dangerous sickness she was obliged to yield to Mr. de Corts bringing a physitian of his acquaintance who with another he had told of her coming to know her could not abstain from telling others that quickly her fame was through all the Country and one of her Letters to the Dean of Lille which is the 5 th Letter in the second part of Light arisen in Darkness and is the first of all her Works that was printed coming out in the beginning of the year 1668. made her so famous that every one was earnest to see her and converse with her She seeing it God's will to manifest her resolved to give free entry and audience to all that pleased She was then visited for about a year and a half from all places by persons of all sorts of Professions Religions and Opinions by Theologues Phylosophe's Rabbins imaginary Prophets and all the most curious and expert in all Arts and Sciences Almost all did easily discover in her the divine Light whereby God would revive his love in their Souls with most sensible and convincing Touches and Motions of his spirit but they could not come to the Marriage of the Lamb for their Farms their Merchandises their Offices and Callings their Wives and Children and the Love of the World and the things of the World were in them and stiffled the Love of the Father and all the Protestations they had made to follow Christ forsaking all for him excepting two or three who forsook all and followed the Truth of God in her to death Of the many memorable things passed in these Visits you shall be diverted but with two or three Before she had any Acquaintance or Visits there Mr. de Cort told her that the Anabaptists were good and pious men having a great esteem of the Graces which God bestowed on her and that they protested if they might come to her it should be in Humility as little Children submitting to the Light of God She answered promptly That is not true these are great men who will hardly submit themselves to the truth and become little Children God revealing their disposition to her better than themselves
light more and more divine and saving mysteries which ript up all his hellish Heresies and Mysteries of Iniquity to the gnawing of his malicious spirit and all the like instruments of his fury while the Bread of Life was aboundantly dispensed to hungry souls whom it shall nourish unto Eternal Life when all the Wicked shall be cut off and the Meek shall inherit the Earth For the more particular Account of her divine Pilgrimage see the History of her Life and take here a short Bill of that heavenly chear now dispensed in her Writings that took up the spare hours of her many diversions at Amsterdam The funerall of false Theologie in the first part of which she shews the Confusion the Ignorance Corruption Insensibility and foundamental Errors of Christians and even of Conductors and modern Divines In the second their Presumption Envy Pride Obstinacy and Head strongness In the third that all their Theorie and Practices are no more but Pharisaical without divine Faith In the fourth that the Devil has great power over men over the wicked and even over the best whom by these other he turns away from following God and engages them to co-operate to the Evil of others and makes them draw back after they have abandoned the World That is a work of singular efficacy and profit Scarce did ever man read it without being touched in his soul even the most wicked who became pale and as struck dead with it Upon occasion of some converse she had with some Cartesian Philosophers she composed The Holy Perspective wherein she shews that Men and particularly Christians have lost the Light of God which is true and divine Faith to be led by corrupt Reason and by a false or most faint Light they draw from nature so perverse brutish carnal and gross as it is become by sin that this is it that has destroyed all Christian-religion and brought it to the Blindness and Darkness wherein it is immersed and that God may restore it its first state there is no other way but to abandon that false Guide of Reason and to resign our selves to God that he may himself revive in us that divine Light of Faith which we have extinguished The New Heaven and New Earth in which is shewn in what Glory the World and Man were created how they have miserably faild from it how they entertain and even encrease their Misery and by what means they ought to return into the disposition God requires to restore them to their first Glory and renew all the world God showed her in Spirit the Glory and Beauty of the first World not supportable by corporal Eyes All was bright transparent shining with Light and unspeakable Glory God's last Mercy in which by a reason enlightened by Faith not perverted by human Studies and Prejudices she leads every man of good judgment to a conviction of the spiritual things which Faith discovers and unto which every man's Reason when conducted by a person that is illuminated by Faith renders so convincing Testimonies that they who will yield themselves to its Touch are moved and pressed to ask of God a saving and divine Knowledge of them by the Light of Faith With all these are intermixed many other divine Lights and profound Mysteries which God had reserved to this end of the last hour able to enlighten to quicken to inflame to strengthen to encourage and to ravish any that have not renounced all interest in heavenly things If any find difficulties in her Writings consider that she having no further human Learning than that having learnt it she did once read the New Testament and finding it the same with what God spake in her Soul she closed the Book to apply seriously to the doing of it seeking no more reading meditation conferring or other study than that of purifying her soul from earthly Affections and sins in following Jesus Christs Doctrine and Example She could not speak after the Rules and with the Cautions of human Literature far less by the pedantry of the Schools it were then most cruel injustice to judge her by them Again we must not suppose when she treats of a matter what she does not mention in that place that she denies it nor require her to treat so fully more than her scope there requires as the Scholastiques who handling a matter at their tour adduce all they can relating to it In the Third place to understand her Writings as all others divinely inspired the Key is a good Will Humility and Prayer to a Malign a Corrupt Proud Self-wise and Self-powerful Reader no entry in them no favour from them but that of Death And the center end and aim of these Writings being the Love of God by renouncing our selves the Creatures and sin the Devil the World and the Flesh the farther we are from this the greater discord and contradiction between these Writings and our corrupt hearts and blind spirits and if ever we will be reconciled it must be by valuing loving esteeming and submitting to them as they are conducive to these ends and the difficulties will all quickly evanish this way the Disciples of Christ of Prophets and Apostles entered into their Masters Doctrine To conclude with the zealous and sincere Author of her Life LOrd thou hast yet manifested the words of eternal Life in these last days and our ears have heard and our hands have handled the word of life which thou hast put into her these words of Life which are originally in thee we have seen and heard them and we bear testimony that thou hast manifested them to us and our testimonie is most true before thee and before whosoever will open the eyes of his Conscience to consider it in thy divine Presence Yes Lord my God Creator and Inspector of my Heart who hast given me to love thy divine Truth more than the Sciences and the Advantages of Egypt thou knowest that I hate lying and falshood and that I would not for any consideration recommend untruth I cannot deny that I have obtained of thy Grace to discern the Truth from Falsehood and that I have done it in this Work thou knowest O Lord. Thou knowest my God that if after all possible application of spirit I could find in the intentions in the end the Writings and the Practice of Antonia Bourignon thy Creature any thing contrary to thy Glory that rendered thee less worthy of the infinite and eternal Adoration Love and Praises due unto thee if any thing favouring Corruption and Sin and that might contradict thy holy Image and the Doctrine and Life of thy Christ if any thing dangerous for mens Salvation thou knowest I would abhor that that I would detest it that I would curse it Is it not true O Searcher and Judge of my Thoughts that this disposition is most really in the bottom of my Soul Is it not in the deepest and final sincerity of my heart that I protest openly that the words of eternal
better temperament For that nature is nothing as to Grace and sometimes he that hath more of Fire will be more Virtuous then he that hath more of Water seeing in case he serve himself of that natural heat to love God he will love him so much the more and if he employ his Anger to defend Justice and Virtue he will do much more good than a phlegmatick person who ordinarily loves only his ease It is the same with them that in the intemperature of their nature have contracted more Air than other Elements for they will always be more subtil to discover Evil and more prompt to do good when they will apply themselves to the search of true Virtue As he that hath more of Earth then other Elements will be more posed and grave and if he apply himself to the service of God he will be more constant and persevering in it than the other three And so every one may be agreeable to God in the state and condition wherein he is produced provided he apply the Talent which he hath received to the Glory of God and the Salvation of his Soul Therefore says David Let all spirits praise the Lord. That â—s not as if he would say that the Devils and wicked men praise the Lord seeing these blaspheme him but he gives to understand that all spirits that will become true Christians praise the Lord though they be all of divers natural complexions seeing God is no Respecter of Persons and does not regard whether we have more of Fire or of Water or Earth or Air in our natures but with what affection every one will love and serve him Which I regard also in writing of Solid Virtue I mean not to make it heavy and difficult I would only make it known to them that will follow and practise it because I love such So I cannot leave them in ignorance nor let them perish amidst their good will for want of knowing wherein true Virtue consists That is it which hath engaged me to deduce that matter at length lest these souls which are so dear to me should perish by ignorance as many have already who thought they had acquired true Virtue while they had only apparent ones or curious Speculations of Virtue not knowing that it consists in the overcoming of corrupt nature in true Humility and voluntary Poverty Though Jesus Christ hath so much taught it by Word and Works yet it is not followed in the practice for want of good Explication and the Light of the Truth Which God having given me I will willingly impart it to others in sending to light this first part of true Virtue And with time and opportunity I shall present more to the Glory of God and the Salvation of souls who aspire after true Virtue and Perfection What I offer them at present is with good heart as a Present come from heaven which shall shew them the light of the Truth and manifest the deceits of false Virtue as also the means to arrive at that which is solid and true This First Part discovers amongst other things how the Devil attempts always to divert Souls from true Virtue by so many Wiles and different means And finally it is a School where you may learn To deny your self take up your cross and follow Jesus Christ As he hath taught unto all that would be his Disciples in the perfect sense and true explication Receive it therefore with as good heart as I present it you by Christian Charity Who remain Friendly Reader Your well-affected in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON INDEX Of the Contents of the First Part. Letter I. WE must learn of Jesus Christ Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart Written to one desirous of True Virtue also all the following are addressed to the same shewing that to attain thereto we must have submission and Obedience by which we may begin to learn Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart Page 1. II. We must learn of Jesus Christ Meekness Lowliness and Humility of Heart Showing wherein Meekness and Lowliness consists which are fruits of the holy spirit and cannot be obtained unless we renounce our own will submitting to the Will of God p. 10. III. Men can sufficiently know the Will of God if they would perform it Shewing him that perswaded himself that the Will of God is not manifest in every thing that we might accomplish it denying our own that it may be known and is sufficiently manifested in the Commands of God which Jesus Christ proposes so clearly saying Learn of me for I am Meek and Lowly and humble of Heart p. 18. IV. Humility is acquired by the knowledge of our selves Shewing what Humility of Heart is what the Marks of it and how we should endeavour to attain it by the knowledge of the Infirmities and Miseries of our Souls and Bodys and blindness of our Minds p. 25. V. Humility is acquired by knowing Ones self Shewing that the true Knowledge even of things most esteemed by men ought to serve to humble them such as the Honours Riches and Pleasures of this Life That all these are vain disquieting unsatisfying and hurtful p. 32. VI. Humility is acquired by knowing Ones self Admonishing to Learn Humility by knowing the Truth of our corruption and Sin which is the disorder of our Five Natural Senses p. 40. VII He that serves the Lusts of his Senses thereby actually renounces the Love of God Exhorting to the Effects of Humility the renouncing of our Senses shewing that none can follow them but he thereby renounces the Love of God which is the End of our Creation and the Essence of true Virtue p. 47. VIII It is Easier to Love God than any thing else Shewing that we must renounce the abuse of our Senses and that the right use of them should be referred to God that it is possible reasonable and necessary to love God with all our Heart p. 57. IX It is easier to Love God than any thing beside him Shewing that it is most easie sweet profitable and honourable to love God and keep his Commands for him that will deny himself but that it is Blasphemy to say That it is impossible to love God with all our Heart p. 65. X. The Love of God is easie and renders all things easie Shewing that the Love of God is in it self most easie to be acquired whence the difficulties proceed which we find them and how they should be removed That this love admirably makes the inconveniences of this life and the keeping of the Commands of God and the Councels of the Gospel easie and pleasant p. 74. XI We must always proceed in Virtue whatever Impediments occur Giving encouragement in the Way of Virtue although the beginning be difficult because of the Tentations by which the Devil vexes them that have resolved to embrace true Virtue p. 83. XII The Devil the Enemy of True Virtue opposes it by all manner of Devices That it is necessary to know the
himself and search the means for his own satisfaction Now God had given man five natural Senses that he might prove all that God had created for him provided he praised and thanked the Creator for so many good things but he began to use his senses to please himself and attribute to himself the Favours and Graces God had bestowed on him as if they had been his own and he the Soveraign independent on God for he pleased himself to see so many beautiful creatures and attributed them to himself and also to hear the pleasant Melody which God produced in nature pleasing himself in hearing them without referring them to God the same did he in smelling taking his contentment in all the good Odours which God had made to show unto man his liberality giving him not only the things neeful for the sustenance of his being but also Delectable things to procure him pleasure as are the objects of Sight Hearing and Smell and man could well have subsisted without the pleasures of these but God would oblige him to love him by excess of benefits and so created so many good and beautiful Creatures only for pleasure to man having created all sorts of delicious fruits for his nourishment and so many other creatures to satisfie his feeling that he might lack nothing for sustenance and pleasures which he could use at pleasure provided he blessed the Lord who had made them for him But ingrate man falls from that acknowledgment of his God and takes all his gifts for his proper satisfaction and so he left the Love of God and hath turned to love himself which hath necessarily rendred him an enemy to God for such ingratitude is insupportable though it were but committed by one man to another For what man would be satisfied to have desired the friendship and fidelity of another having with that aim bestowed his goods on him in abandance and procured him all sorts of pleasures and recreations that he might faithfully keep friendship if that ingrate Wretch forsook his Benefactor to take his pleasure in these same goods which he had so freely received how much more then should God resent the ingratitude of man while he places his love and affection in the things which God hath so liberally bestowed on him to oblige him to love him and yet man hath forsaken him and pleases himself only in self-self-love That you ought to consider well My Child that you render not your self guilty before that great Majesty and Discover if you be not obliged to embrace voluntarily Adam's penitence since you have fallen so often in the same sin in quitting the love and Dependance of your God to love your self and Depend on your proper will So resolve to renounce your five natural senses which are assuredly actuated by the devil for since he got power over Adam's spirit he hath after had it over that of all men and will have it so long as they continue to live in their corrupt nature from which I pray God Deliver you and I remain forever Your Well-wisher in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle 18. Febr. 1672. St. vet THE VIII LETTER It is easier to love God than any other Thing To the same to whom is shown that we must renounce the evil use of our senses and that the right use of them ought to be referred to God also that it is possible equitable reasonable and necessary to love God with all our heart My Son I Will not believe that you are one of those evil advised persons who say there is little evil in following the motions of corrupt nature God created Nature say they and cannot be offended that we follow it Several of my Aquaintance have been of that mind they were given to Lasciviousness and told me That God would not punish them for that seeing himself had given them such a Nature and that it was needful to use it to multiply the world So flattering themselves in their Sins to satisfie their senses and more say they God hath given all these to man and we cannot be without Seeing Hearing Smelling Feeling and Tasting That 's all true but they had not light enough to discern the miserable state into which man is fallen by Sin from that happy one into which God had created him For then in that state man could enjoy the Pleasures of his five Senses provided he loved and blessed God But since he hath fallen into sin he can no more enjoy them without offending God because all the pleasure he now takes in his five Senses is only to satisfie himself for his own Glory and Advantage but before sin was the satisfaction of his Senses served only to bless praise and glorify the Lord for the Benefits and Mercies he received of him So that he no sooner saw these beautiful things but his heart was elevated to praise God who had given him these beautiful Objects these Melodies fragrant Odours delicious Tastes and Feelings So that whatever he saw or perceived good or pleasant was to him matter of blessing God and magnifying him for his Benefits But since man is fallen into sin the same things are to him matter of offending God for if he sees any beautiful thing he covets it to satisfie himself and that Self-love retires him from the Love of God and that is it which makes sin seeing he hath commanded us to love him with all our heart so that we cannot love these beautiful things without infringing that Command seeing all our heart cannot be in the Love of God when a part of it is upon beautiful things fine odours melodies delights of the taste and feeling For that 's a heart divided into as many parts as there are Different things it loves and consequently far from being intire in the Love of God as he hath commanded us But men are so blind and do so blind one another that every one perswades himself that he loves God while he loves only himself It is as if they thought to please God with words in saying with their mouth that they love him but they deceive themselves for as long as they will satisfie their five natural senses they will not love God seeing these being corrupt will engender all sorts of sin and consequently the Death of the Soul Notwithstanding no man values these evils and they think it is allowable to satisfie their senses and so follow them often as much as they can without believing they do evil and not apprehending that there is nothing more Deceitful than the Heart of Man which often flatters it self to its own destruction But you my Child be more wise learn the truth of things without yielding your self to be Deceived by false appearances Never believe that it is allowable to take any pleasure out of God and far less that there is no evil in following your five natural senses since that cannot be without sin for though we give our affections but for an
their Affairs and Houshold disquiets them Fortune is against them and in the end their Pleasures terminate in divers Griefs the Pleasures of the Flesh in Pains those of the Pallate into Diseases Honour into Contempt and Slights even as Haman's Pleasure when invited to the Queens Banquet changed into Grief when he saw that Mordecai would not render him the honour he desired so do all earthly pleasures terminate in Displeasure and sadness So that we can find no other true pleasure in the world but to love God only which is full pleasant and also honourable for what Honour is man capable of approaching unto that of loving a God so mighty who created Heaven and Earth and all other things and sustains them by his almighty power and who can give unto men eternal Salvation If we count it Honour that we love a King a Prince or other Person in Authority how much ought we to think us honoured that we may love a God who is incomprehensibly good and wise and what Honour is it for a small Worm of the Earth such as man is that he may love God who desires to be loved of him and even commands him to love him with all his heart As if God delighted to honour man by requiring to be loved of him And the honour of loving God is so considerable that it passes all that man is capable of in heaven or on earth Moreover it is also Profitable for him seeing that love can render him happy in this world and to all eternity Whereas all the Creatures together cannot procure us the one nor the other What profit can we draw from the Creatures who are unable to give us a Day yea an hour or even a moments life What could they then to give us Eternal Life All the advantage men can Draw one from another is a little Money Honour or Pleasure which vanish and most part ends in pain and grief as I have before shown And therefore we cannot truely call Pleasures the Advantages and Profits that men cause one to another No more ought we to esteem Honours which are but a blast of wind which vanishes in the air of a small Disgrace and so leaves nothing in the person honoured but a piercing grief that he is no more honoured What profit is it for a man to get of his fellow a little more money It is only a more weighty charge to bear in this world where the richest are the most miserable for they can never have more of their Riches but a little necessary nourishment and cloathing to cover them all the rest is superfluous to them and should serve others seeing he must not take for himself but for pure necessity What 's over gives only the Disquiet Care and Trouble of Dispensing or bestowing it So that a Lacquey is happier than his Master he hath no care but for himself but the Master must care for himself and all under him and see that nothing be wanting to them or else his servants will upbraid or despise him Is not that a poor advantage a little money that men can afford and yet he that receives it is obliged to a thousand thanks and beside to take a more honourable state which brings him more Care and Disquiet than he had before he was so rich That testifies that nothing in this world can advantage man or give him true Honour Pleasure or Content And so there is nothing but God can render man happy in this life and that to come seeing all the advantages men reap one from another serve but for their damnation Their Pleasures retire the Soul from God their Honours cause them to fall into Pride and their Riches into Avarice which leads them to the broad way of damnation and notwithstanding they fancy themselves happy for having the good will of men which is cause of their eternal misery But so great is their blindness that they cannot see these miseries however evident They perswade themselves that they are Happinesses that their Disquiets are Peace and their Displeasures Contentments For how many persons are there in the world who study all the Days of their life to perfect themselves in some Science to be esteemed of men how many that labour travail and put themselves in several hazards to gain a little money and how many that expose riches and life too to preserve their honour Although all these things be vain yet they love and esteem them often more than they do God for we see them not do for him what they do for the Creatures they render to them painful and hard services and imagin to themselves that there is more difficulty to love God than to love the World Notwithstanding the Love of God is easie sweet pleasant honourable and profitable as I have shown but the love of the world is disquieting sad without repose honour or profit for time and for eternity Which you may remark my Child by the reasons I have above deduced to you which should open your eyes to discern Falshood from Truth that you may never give place to the false perswasions which the blinded Christians would establish They say it is impossible to love God with all our heart and so blaspheme against him For God could not command an impossibility but all that he commands is good easie and pleasant And if you consider narrowly his ten commands you shall find but two of action viz. That of loving God and the other to honour Father and Mother The other eight are but prohibitions to do evil as not to kill steal bear false witness and the rest Is it then impossible to abstain from committing these evils that these blinded minds say it is impossible to keep the Commands of God Believe not these falshoods but constrain your self to get out of that valley of Snow which is the Riches and Pleasures of this life and ascend to the Mount of Consideration of things eternal and you shall find it pleasant to love God to which you shall have the helping hand of her who is Your Well-affectioned in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle 25. April 1672. st vet THE X. LETTER The Love of God is easie and renders all things easie To the same to whom is shown that the Love of God is in its self most easie to attain whence proceed the difficulties that occur in it and how to be removed that this love wonderfully lightens the incommodities of this life and renders the observing the commands of God and the Gospel-advices easie My Dear Child BElieve firmly that the words of Jesus Christ are true viz. That his Yoak is easie and his Burthen is Light and take his counsel in taking his yoak which you shall feel to be such if you will take it on I experience it daily more and more believe that you shall experience it as I do if you continue in the resolution to follow Jesus Christ and become his true disciple I
none can evite it And it is a happiness which man hath had above the Angels while he can have Pardon of his sin for a small time of Repentance as is this short life for the disobedient Angels were confined to Hell without remission whereas man is only sent for a small time to this world to do Penitence and after return to God whence he proceeded And therefore men ought voluntarily to embrace that Penitence to satisfie the Justice of God when it is so light and short in regard of eternal Damnation to which the Angels were condemned when they disobeyed God And that Penitence is light and easie when we will bear it as a Yoak which God hath given us for our sins Therefore also Jesus Christ calls it his Yoak and not ours to make us understand that all the miseries of this life are light and easie when we receive them from the Hand of God and to satisfie his divine Justice but that same yoak the same miseries are full heavy and grievous when we bear them grudgingly or seek to be delivered and discharged of them which cannot be in this valley of tears which is only a Prison of Penitence where we must stay until the time of our Penitence be over to some longer then to others according to the sentence of the great Judge But if we will take this Life of Penitence for a time of delights and Pleasure we must make an eternal Penitence which shall never end and begins even in this life For although we should employ all the powers of our spirit and forces of our body to charm our Miseries or evite sufferings they will not leave us for all that And whatever we do or say we must always feel heat and cold diseases of body and troubles of spirit the changing of seasons and revolutions of times and so many other accidents which befal man during the course of his life All that must be troublesome and painful to him if he take it not as the Yoak of God but if he embrace it affectionably as Jesus Christ did all shall be light and easie to him as were unto our Saviour Miseries Persecutions Torment and even Death not that his nature was insensible of the Pains and Torments which they caused him but he suffered all for the Love of God which made the most heavy Burdens and the bitter Gall of his cruel Passion appear to him easie light and pleasant If you will my son be his Disciple and become a true Christian embrace with him all the Miseries of this present life suffer patiently what ever befals you contrary to your will and above all deny and renounce your self as Jesus Christ your Captain taught and practised He warred against the inclinations of corrupt nature in every thing For because they tend always to Greatness and to receive Honour he choosed Meanness and Contempt because they tend always to covet riches he would be poor and because they seek always their ease and Pleasure he chose uneasiness and sufferings So that he always crushed the inclinations of corrupted Nature constraining it by the Bridle and Yoak of the Love of God doing every thing contrary to the inclinations of that corrupted nature Behold your Captain who marches before you and calls you to follow him saying If any man will come after me let him take up his Cross and deny himself and follow me You must not my Son seek any other Master nor hear other Doctrine for men deceive and are deceived who will take another way than Jesus Christ took or will enter into life eternal by means quite contrary to those which he used himself If there were another way of salvation Jesus Christ would have taught us it and had followed it himself seeing all he did upon the earth was to give us an example that we might follow and imitate him If then there were any thing better than to renounce our corrupt Nature doubtless he had taught us it Never go to perswade your self that men are too frail to observe the Law of God and the Gospelcounsels seeing the one and the other was given us only for our frailty for if we had been perfect we had not needed any Laws It is sin which hath brought these Laws upon man Yet you must not believe that the Laws are evil seeing they are very good and are the true means of our salvation For without them man had never known his sins and had insensibly abandoned God living without stop worse than a Beast not feeling nor knowing his misery You must know that Adam was not ashamed to see himself naked before God called him asking him Adam where art thou yet he had sinned and his Wife also in the Absence of God and lived still freely after their sin as they had done before but so soon as God called them they began to fear and tremble and be ashamed which made them flee and hide themselves from him not daring to appear before him as formerly The same effect did the Law of God in mens minds in Moses's Days for then also had they quite forsaken their God and lived without minding their duties giving themselves up to all sorts of sins without knowing them and for that would God give them a Law that by it they might know their sins and so abstain from committing them That Law was composed of ten Commands or ten things that they were to observe It is not a Burthen laid upon men by God as some ignorants say blaspheming God He hath not given them Commands which are impossible for them to observe for these things were to be observed in all times although they were not distinctly commanded or forbidden Natural reason ought sufficiently to have taught man that he should not Kill Steal commit Adultery bear False Witness Covet his Neighbour's Goods nor take the name of his God in vain And that same natural reason was sufficient to show them that they ought to love God with all their heart since they had received of him their being and all other things and received continually benefits for their sustenance The same natural Light was sufficient to show to man that he should Honour his Father and Mother since they have brought us up cared for us nourished and taught us in our tender age For ingratitude is an unnatural thing for even the most savage Beasts acknowledge their Benefactors So that the Law of God hath not charged man with any thing that he was not obliged to in all times For from his creation he was obliged to Love God with all his heart and to honour Father and Mother which are the two things commanded in the ten commands the other eight are only Prohibitions of doing evil which man was always obliged to abstain from and ever shall And the cause why God hath declared these things in form of Commands is man's infirmity who had so forgotten his duty that he committed evil without knowing it and should become
you remain faithful to him And after you shall see that through God you can do all things and shall say with David With my God I leap over walls For so great is the power of true Virtue that it makes appear light the things that are most grievous to nature That is it which Jesus Christ intended by the comparison If you had Faith as a grain of Mustard-seed you should remove Mountains It was not so marvelous a thing to remove Mountains of Sand and Stone seeing that would add nothing to our soul but he speaks of Mountains of difficulties which we find in the acquisition of true Virtue It appears at the beginning as an inhabitable Mountain whither one can never arrive But if the Soul persevere faithfully in its good Resolution it will revive by Faith in the Promises of God and with it will remove all these Mountains of imaginary difficulties since in effect there is no difficulty in the acquiring of true Virtue We have no sooner abandoned earthly Affections but we mount with ease unto true perfection for all the difficulties we apprehend are but false visages which the Devil hath placed as Vizards to frighten them that begin in true virtue But we need not fear for the Mask being taken off we find true Virtue which is sweet pleasant and agreeable And he that hath once discovered and known it finds no difficulty in it afterward but on the contrary much Quiet and consolation Though the Devil will never cease to tempt and pursue us He tempted Jesus Christ and pursued him even to the Desart whither he had gone by the conduct of the Spirit of God Therefore we must not be shaken by the Tentations which the Devil makes us but we must despise him as an Enemy of God and who hath no power over man but what himself gives him otherways the Devil is in his nature meer impotence who could not lift a pile of straw from the ground if man do not permit him So man when he is in the Grace of God may well mock at the Devil seeing then he cannot hurt him He waits and goes about him indeed who is in the Grace of God but cannot hurt him unless he fall from that grace or that he consent to the Tentations and Suggestions of the Devil It is nothing to feel Tentations though they should continue all the days of our lives provided we do not consent to them It is but a smoak which dissipates in the air It is not very agreeable but it cannot hurt him that does not approach it even so is it with the Tentation of the Devil it vanishes if we do not follow it It is the Devil's work to tempt but man's to resist thereto Therefore says St. Peter My Brethren watch and be sober for your enemy the Devil goes about like a roaring Lion seeking whom he may devour Resist him therefore continuing firm in the Faith He says so to teach us that we must not sleep in the Service of God nor give up to follow our Appetites but that we must be sober and watch with perseverance for we have an Enemy who never sleeps We must overcome him by the strength of faith which is able to transport the greatest Mountains of difficulties that can ever present to our understanding And if the Devil should tempt us night and day he cannot hurt our Soul provided it remain in faith which begets Hope in the promises of God He hath said Come unto me all ye that are heavy laden and I will give you rest He excepts none but calls all men in general and every one in particular saying they must come to him if they be heavy laden and he promises to ease us What surer caution would we have we have there the Promise of God himself for he says That he will comfort us if we go to him in need I am willing to believe my Son that you are burthened with Tentations of the Devil for he sees that you seek after true Virtue and so he will not fail to attacque you in the beginning and so much the more as you have given him advantage over your Soul by your former sins He will not quit that fortress but by force seeing he hath so long been Ruler and Governour there You must now then chase him by force it is in that only that the Kingdom of heaven suffers Violence and the Violent take it by Force For we are the Children of God and consequently Heirs of his Kingdom so we have no need to take that Kingdom by force It is given us freely of God But we must use great force to resist the Devil and our corrupt Nature which are the two Enemies of our Salvation who would rob our souls of that Kingdom though it belongs to us as the inheritance of our heavenly Father and that is the reason why he says that the Violent ravish it and that we must take it by force It is not that we must fight with Weapons of Iron to gain that Kingdom for all the bodily force of Nature together could do nothing to the gaining it but we must fight our enemies with spiritual Weapons of which the chief is faith seeing it begets Love and Hope toward God the two Bucklers to defend us against all sorts of Enemies For he that loves God fears nothing seeing Love is strong as Death and he that putteth his trust in God shall never be confounded So that the Devil shall never have power over him that resists him by faith So my son fear nothing persevere in the good resolution of attaining true Virtue Give all your affections to love God and you shall be strong as Death Place your Hope in God alone and you shall never be confounded nor deceived For having these Arms you need not fear the Assaults of your Enemy the Devil He is as a chained Dog and can go no farther than goes the Chain of man's consent If he come to vex you in the night during sleep that cannot hurt you seeing man does not use his free will while he sleeps and so cannot consent to the Tentation of the Devil which he knows full well but he comes to vex man in sleep that he may get him to consent when awakened to evil suggestions which he excited in his spirit while asleep for a man asleep sins not But be prompt to evelate your spirit unto God as soon as you awake and then the tentation shall vanish as smoak But if you begin to agitate in your spirit the things which you dreamed by the Tentation of the Devil and give your consent thereto or take pleasure in it then you fall into sin and shall consent to the Devil who is never more overcome than when we despise him Therefore I advise you never to regard Dreams or Evil thoughts which he represents to you asleep nay nor those which he offers when you are awake because you cannot sin so long as you do not take
of Corruption which the great one hath engendered there And when it obeys that Corruption it obeys the Devil himself For the Corruption of Nature and the malice of the Devil are the same thing even as a man's Child is another man Men are grosly ignorant in that they think they are not tempted of the Devil when they do not feel in themselves preter-natural evils and they call the Malice of their Nature a Fragility without having ever seriously considered whence that natural wickedness comes to them God never created evil but he made man altogether perfect and with an inclination and will to Good without knowing any thing of evil and therefore of necessity the wickedness and inclination to evil which man feels in his nature must come from the Devil and it self may be called a Devil seeing there is no other evil but him as there is no other good but God So that they that follow the inclinations of their corrupt Nature march quietly to eternal Damnation And the Devil does not drive such with tentations but stands afar off to see them go on knowing well that they shall become dayly worse if they but follow simply the inclinations of their corrupt nature Which few are aware of but they will find themselves deceived at Death for during their life they think it is no evil to follow their natural inclinations yea say some God created Nature and cannot be offended that we follow it That is one of the greatest Tentations and is a sentiment which opens a door to all sorts of evils It is true God created nature and wills that man use it but the Devil hath so corrupted Nature that man can no more use and follow it without sinning since it is corrupted Man cannot even do any natural function now without sinning against God and that as long as he hath not overcome the corruption of his nature For if the natural man eat and drink he does it with affection now that affection ought to be carryed to God alone so he sins when he turns it elsewhere and when he gives his affection to see hear smell taste or feel he loves something else than God But he ought to love him with all his heart and not place his affections on other things beside him alone and so long as man puts his affection on eating drinking cloathing or lying c. he is turned from all good which is God and turned to all evil which is the privation of all good It is the same if we love our Riches Honours and Pleasures for we are turned from God unto the love of our selves when we love the Pleasures of the flesh and not those of the spirit and that exchange of affection causes us to fall into all evil seeing it deprives us of all good If then we will depart from all evil and possess all good we must of necessity resist and overcome the inclinations of corrupt nature otherwise we shall insensibly fall into all sorts of sin For it is enough to carry us to Hell to follow corrupt nature And therefore my Son you must die to your self first if you would arrive at true Virtue seeing as long as corrupt nature is not entirely mortified in you you cannot live in the spirit of Jesus Christ because for that you must become a new creature and detest that old corruption which the Devil hath intruded into the Works of God for it s that is our Enemy and causes us all sorts of Evil. Notwithstanding the ignorant think it a happiness when they can follow their natural inclinations although it is in effect the source of all Evils Which you may well see by the reasons which I have formerly deduced For although God hath created Nature and ordained that it should be sustained by aliments and also re-produce it self by generation yet he would always have the Heart and Affections of man to himself entirely without parting God willingly permits that man eat and drink and generate and use his five natural Senses for his necessity but he will also that we place not our Affections and Heart on these which he requires to be preserved for himself only indivisibly We may then well use all these things but not fasten our heart on 'em For when in the beginning man was created in Grace he did eat drink generate and use his five natural senses because he could do all that with thanksgiving to God When he tasted of good things he praised God who had made them so savoury for him when he saw beautiful things he praised their Author in admiring those Beauties If he smelled good Odours or heard pleasant Melody or touched smooth and pleasant things he rejoiced in God blessing him in that he had not only given him the things necessary for entertaining his life but also for Pleasure and Delight All these things then served man only to bless their Creator and glorifie him in his Creatures And man desired not Generation but to encrease the Praises and thanksgiving which they owed unto God Behold how man used all these things well before the devil had corrupted his Nature but since he is turned from God to carry his affections to himself as he does at present he desires not generation but for his own satisfaction and not for augmenting the Glory of God but to wallow in concupiscence for they have more inclination to enjoy the Pleasures of the Flesh than to produce Children to glorifie God And when men enjoy the pleasures of their senses and use the beautiful and good creatures it is more to satisfie themselves than to bless and magnifie God who gives them So esteeming more the gift than the giver From all which we see that what served unto man for blessing when he was in Grace serves now as a means of sinning and losing the Grace of God Yet we find men so blinded with self-love that they perswade themselves they can see hear smell taste and feel all that is good and pleasant and praise God in the mean while which is but falshood For since man's Nature was corrupted it no more refers any thing to God but in all these things pleases it self and uses them as if it were worthy of them as it was before sin But that is a gross Error for corrupt nature cannot seek the Glory of God it seeks only its own and hath no intention to bless and praise God for what it posesses This desire of satisfying the five senses is common to all that live according to corrupt nature none excepted Therefore those that say that they know to use good and pleasant things in praising God do but flatter themselves For to do that they must have overcome corrupt nature which they have not yet done since we see them search after good and pleasant things for their satisfaction But if they had overcome corrupt Nature they would no more satisfie it in any thing For that corruption is never so mortified in this life
you read these things curiously or much at a time you should pause and consider what you find there profitable for your soul I would not altogether stop the curiosity you have to read my Writings or those of others who treat of solid Virtue For that Curiosity is necessary at the beginning for you cannot learn if you be not curious to know We must know before we can love If then you knew not the Truths which I write you could not practise them So we may give liberty to that curiosity to know good things You must not read only to nourish or satisfie it but to learn the truth You cannot discover it too much though some natural satisfaction mix it self it shall not hurt you provided you rest not on that pleasure They tell us that Mary Magdalene went to Jesus Christ because they said to her that he was a beautiful man and spoke well Notwithstanding that vain curiosity led her to the knowledge of the truth But after her first curiosity vanishing she gave her self to the practice of the Truths which she had heard from him Do you the same My Son Search curiously the Books which treat of solid Virtue and neglect no occasion to find them seeing they serve as means to know the will of God and because God often speaks to the soul by the means of a good Book moving the heart to the affection of eternal things and contempt of temporal you must only discern whether you read divine things for your own satisfaction or if you do it only to enlighten your soul in the knowledge of the Truth of God If it is for the last there is no evil that you give your self to long reading Stay your self only on the matters which move your heart to the Love of God without going further until you have found means to practise it well I did that in my young years when first I saw the New Testament and when I understood thereby what a Gospel Life was I closed the book for twenty years and exercised my self to practise what is contained in it And so I found the Light of the Holy Spirit without using Books to instruct me In which you may imitate me when you have sufficiently read what may avail to the perfection of your soul Which she wishes to you who remains Your Well-affectioned in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle May 5. 1672. St. Vet. THE XV. LETTER The Devil incites to Good that he may bring Evil out of it To the same Discovering to him a seventh Wile of the Devil by which he carries us out of our selves that comparing our works with those of others we may from our Virtue contract vain-glory And an Eighth by which he incites us to immoderate Macerations and Mortifications of the Body And finally a Nineth in which he excites us to immoderation in spiritual good works toward our Neigbour as unseasonably to Instruct Convert Reprove or Correct him My Son I Must discover to you yet another Device of Satan by which he does gain several well enclined persons even such as have a good will who are not only resolved to labour for the knowledge of true Virtue but would also put it in practice For when he cannnot amuse them by fine speculations and curious searches to be capable of talking well of spiritual things because they have discovered that to talk well of and understand well a Virtue is but Vanity when it is not put in practice and that so they have absolutely resolved to fall to the practice in the exercise of good works Then comes he to tempt by virtue it self and by the practice of good works He endeavours to intrude Vain-glory upon true Virtue and secretly justles in Self-esteem and Contempt of others with good works None is exempt from that Vanity at the beginning of their conversion For all men carry in them an inclination to Pride when they come into the world and also every one must combat and oppose it if he would attain to Salvation But this Pride is harder to be discovered when it furrs it self into Virtue lurking in the heart without appearing outwardly as does that which proceeds from plenty of Riches and the honours which men give For that Vanity shews it self sufficiently outwardly for he that is proud of his Riches will shew to the world his Riches and Liberality by Prodigality in several things as in Moveables Cloaths Meat and Drink willing in every thing the best and dearest to satisfie his vain-glory and must also be served with Pages and Servants So that his outward Actions discover sufficiently the Pride of his Heart but spiritual Pride keeps it self hidden even under a cloak of Humility For we see ordinarily beginners in virtue give themselves to Fasting Watching and Prayer to humility in their Cloathes to ly on hard Beds and other Macerations of their Body and also to exercises of Works of Mercy spiritual and corporal Into which the Devil easily intrudes himself for if he can gain nothing by vain-glory in our good works because the man overcomes it by the Grace of God He attaques us by Excesses in them and moves us to fast to excess that it may ruin our health or unfit it for necessary labour and to obliege us after to substantious or delicate food and so precipitate us again into delicacy Lo how the Devil attempts to sway us from one extreme to another and especially him that is not well acquainted with his wiles He hath brought some to death by excess in fasting and maceration of the body I know that is rare in the time we live in when none will embrace penitence most part loving sensuality Yet among the small number of Penitents the Devil insinuates himself causing them to exceed For when he can no more make them fall by ease and sensualities he does it by excess in good Works And Prayer being the best of all he causes them to tye themselves to a number of vocal Prayers to over-charge them and disquiet them when they have not time to wait and fulfil these ordinary Prayers which makes the man sorrowful and dissatisfied thinking he does not please God when he does not fulfil all his ordinary prayers by custom and in that thought he is sad and pensive and uneasie to them he converses with The Devil draws his advantages from excess in prayer for it hurts the head when too vehement and brings often confusion in their affairs and housholding I have known Women so addicted to their prayers and devotions that they neglected their families to go to Church frequently at solemnities and Devotions and with all they thought they did well without discovering the cunning of the Devil who made them sin instead of doing good For God is a God of Order and not of Confusion and he says expresly that our Prayers should not be as those of the Pharisees who use many words seeing the Lord knows what we have need of
Vices if he does not of himself entreat us to counsel and admonish him when he fails For one man ought never to go to compel another in what regards his perfection since God hath created us free and will not that we should be Slaves but wills that our souls should be his Spouses to yield themselves voluntarily to his Love But all Constraint is Slavery So we must never use rashness to force men to do well or constrain him to forsake his sins God will have us free during the time of our tryal which is this short life And it is the Pride and Presumption of our selves to go to instruct or correct our Neighbour by authority who is sometimes better before God than our selves though he have not so many moral Virtues or outward Appearance of Good which we often learn and observe that we may be agreeable to men who despise always what is reprehensible before them That is the reason of politique persons abstaining easily from gross and external sins that they may appear good which is often less virtue than that of such as speak rudely and commit open evil The best is to teach and preach to our selves and to have Piety and Charity for others when we think they do evil and we cannot hinder them It belongs to Judges to repress external Malifices to preserve good Policy But you who are a free person take not the charge of others but labour to learn well true Virtue and to put it in practice for the Devil cannot deceive you there as he can easily in the exercise of external Works of Mercy bodily or spiritual which you would do but he insinuates himself more easily in the bodily than spiritual being more sensible and visible and so more praised and applauded of men who esteem nothing more than liberality When then they see one that feeds the hungry gives drink to the thirsty cloaths the naked lodges strangers visits the sick and buries the dead They hold him for a Saint But it is rare to find such now adays in the miserable age wherein we live For generally men are filled with Avarice and Covetousness and seek only their own proper interests without troubling themselves with the necessities of their Neighbour Charity is cold in mens hearts and they esteem him virtuous who gives a little out of his superfluities to the poor or does any other outward merciful work Now the Devil easily furrs himself into all these things and if we discover not his subtilties we may do many works of corporal mercy which shall turn to his honour For he that does these things to be esteemed of men is a Hypocrite as were the Pharisees to whom Jesus Christ so often upbraided their Vice They did truely many works of mercy spiritual and corporal but those did not save them For Jesus Christ despised them calling them so often Hypocrites notwithstanding all their good works And even though we do them not to be seen and praised of men yet the Devil can find his advantage therein by the vain complacency which we take from them within our selves For it is always more honourable to give than to receive And there are some so naturally given to liberality that they will readily give what they have need of themselves only to satisfie their natural inclination Others are so disposed naturally to action that they will willingly incommode themselves to give Meat and Drink to the Hungry and Thirsty to lodge Strangers cloath the Naked visit the Sick and bury the Dead And that by a natural inclination they have to do so And therefore my Son you ought well to discern the Spirit which moves you to do Works of Mercy as well spiritual as corporal For the Devil often moves our hearts to multiply them and do them to excess to distract us from inward entertainment and to hinder us that we may never attain to true virtue And that so we may rest upon Virtues which men esteem such as are external works of Mercy which are generally praised without discernment But they can well be Sins instead of Virtues From such My Son you must keep you well that the Devil deceive you not Which you are advertised of by Your Well-affected in Jesus Christ ANTONIA BOURIGNON Holstein near Gottorp Castle May 5. 1672. St. Vet. THE XVI LETTER The Devil Corrupts our Good Works To the same shewing him a Tenth Artifice of the Devil in our Corporal Good Works taward our Neighbour which he often brings about to his Honour Yet we must not therefore cease from them but joyn Moderation in them and put away human Considerations and Pride which attacque us in this time of Tryal My Son I Believe it surprises you that I said in my last that Works of Mercy are often done to the Honour of the Devil Yet it is most true but for want of thoroughly considering the matter that offends the tender-conscienced and them that by a natural easiness accounts all good they believe blindly that all that 's called Good is so and that all sort of good works are agreeable to God which is false For the Devil insinuates himself into our best actions to render them evil And he hath done so from the beginning of the world bringing evil into all the Works of God which were all created good We may find that in our selves for though God created Man altogether good and perfect yet we feel that he is now evil and imperfect He was created to honour God and most men honour the Devil and obey him in every thing instead of obeying their Creator All judicious persons see that in the conduct of men now adays to be true And yet they will not believe that mens good works are done to the honour of the Devil and so they there that they esteem more their good works than those of God For man though created of God altogether holy and perfect serves to the honour of the Devil And wherefore should we not believe that men's good works serve thereto So such persons though otherways judicious here fail grosly But that is not strange seeing the Devil blinds their understanding that they should not see the truth of things but be led by their own inclinations and simplicity For it is much more agreeable to nature to believe that we do good than to think that we do evil and that our good works serve to the Honour of God and not to that of the Devil For man feels in himself a satisfaction when he does well and he hath an ambition to tend to do what is most estimable Then being more honourable to serve God than the Devil men perswade always themselves that they serve God especially when they apply themselves to Works of Mercy Notwithstanding the Devil reaps often the glory more than God So when the Devil sees any turn from sin and keep himself from evil doing to which he can no more engage him he induces him ordinarily to do many
entertain himself with his heavenly Father free from all distraction And nothing more pure than the intentions of our Saviour He says He came not into the world to accomplish his own Will but the Will of him that sent him Notwithstanding the Devil had the impudence to go to tempt him several times by Vain-glory in presenting to him the Kingdoms of the World as also the Stones to convert into Bread for his Hunger He tempted him also by the Scripture saying That be should throw himself down from the pinacle of the Temple because it is written that the angel shall preserve us c. Are not these full cunning wiles of the Devil while he uses the most holy things to tempt Jesus Christ He attempts to catch him by his Fasts his confidence in God and by glory in presenting him all the kingdoms of the World How then should he leave untempted frail and imperfect Creatures like us For what is man there that must not confess himself far short of the least of Jesus Christ his perfections Who is he that retires to the Desert to give himself to entertainment with God out of the Dangers and Divertisments of the world Who refuses the kingdoms and Riches of the Earth Who is he among the spirituals that does not tempt God by his Temerity and Presumption For they no sooner receive any particular Light or Grace from God but they Glory and esteem themselves beyond others And no sooner do they forsake sin to give themselves to Works of Mercy but they think God is beholding to them and that every body should esteem them Which happens to all that begin to serve God and follow true Virtue excepting none because of the corruption of our nature He that says or believes the contrary is deceived and walks not in rhe Truth and the knowledge of himself For all men in general and every particular brings these natural inclinations with him coming into the world they are all proud presumptuous covetous of honour riches and pleasures Always prefer themselves to others and esteem themselves worthy of all goods and honour Yea they think God oblieged to them for the least good action they do because the Devil hath furred into mans nature that pride of life which inflames the heart of man and hinders him to abase himself and acknowledge his faults We see that even Adam did not humble himself after his sin but endeavoured to excuse it saying The Woman which thou gavest me tempted me to eat of the Apple and she said The Serpent beguiled me All which proceeded from the pride which the Devil had already planted in the heart of our first Parents and consequently in the hearts of all men that were to proceed from them For all are stained with that sin of Pride and so they will not acknowledge their faults but defend them to their power Which also remains with them till death unless they overcome that corruption of nature by true Virtue And when they arrive at that they overcome the Devil For he hath no power but over his own works or the corruption which he hath caused in our nature That being once overcome we revive in the strength of the grace wherein Adam was created And when man finds himself united to God by the love he hath to him then he scorns at the Devil and becomes a new creature And so will no more have any fellowship with that corruption wherein he was born Yet such an one must be upon his guard for the Devil who seduced our first parents when in the state of Grace may well seduce a man that is regenerated in it so long as he lives in his time of tryal which is this miserable life for God will prove mans fidelity to him He created him free that liberty then must needs be proved otherwise it should be constraint For if God had willed absolutely to constrain him to love him he had been happy as Gods slave But he would honour man much more in creating him free that he might entertain himself with him He would then choose the soul of man for his Spouse and not his Slave And therefore it must have a time of proof or advisement to resolve if it would joyn and unite with its God or not Now this time of tryal was this present life in which Adam should have given testimony of his fidelity to his God Notwithstanding he was so imprudent as to break the fidelity he owed to the Spouse of his Soul would go joyn himself to creatures unworthy of his love And so he interrupted the covenant and fellowship which God would make with his Soul even until his sin and infidelity were purged by repentance That is the reason why his time of tryal was turned into one of penitence which Adam underwent faithfully all the time of his life But the pride which his first sin hath planted in our hearts makes us often depise him and wish evil to him because of the hurt he caused us As if he were the cause of our damnation which is a great error For although Adam had never sinned yet other men might always have damned themselves by their own sins during their time of tryal For each one for himself should in this time have given testimony of his fidelity to God since all men and every one in particular were of the same nature and condition and also in the same state with Adam before his sin And there is at present no other difference betwixt the state of man now and that of Adam but that since sin came men are born with an inclination to Evil whereas Adam had inclination to Good only when he was created With that exception we are of the same condition with Adam and created for the same end that our souls should be spouses to God provided we remain faithful to him during the time of our tryal and penitence which we must attend in this life which is full short in regard of that of Adam But if we knew the truth of things and discovered the snares of the Devil to shun and evite them in our good actions we might hope to attain again to an eternal union with God For Adam's sin cannot damn us if our own sins do it not seeing God hath pardoned Adam's sin in case he fulfilled his repentance And he hath also pardoned all other men upon the same condition but the misery of men now adays is that they know not those things and will here enjoy instead of suffering Which is a false perswasion of the Devil who insinuates himself into the holiest things while we perceive it not Which is a truth she exhorts you to believe who is careful of your Soul Holstein near Gottorp Castle May. 8 1672. St. vet ANTONIA BOURIGNON THE XVII LETTER Sin proceeds from Man's Freewill To the same shewing him an Eleventh sort of Tentation whereby we lay the blame of our sins upon the Devil to free our selves where is
forgetting ordinarily it self in too much Prosperity we see daily among men that he that prospers becomes proud and fixes in the world as in a place of abode and permanent And on the contrary that he that is in Adversity and tribulation becomes humble and hath his recourse to God I speak of such as are well-meaning and pious for to the wicked all turns to evil If they Prosper they offend God the more if they are in Adversity they blaspheme him and despair And all these things arrive in temporal Prosperities and Adversities so do they also to them that seek after true Virtue for not being tried by Tentations and sufferings they should not persevere in Virtue Although they were arrived at the profounest knowledge of divine Mysteries had the Gift of Prophecying and doing Miracles all that should vanish into smoak except they Pass through the furnace of Tentations and Afflictions For we cannot in this life arrive at that degree of Perfection in which Adam was at his Creation who yet fell full sordidly into sin against his God He forgot God and turned himself to the Creatures for he had all sorts of Prosperity Joy Content and Pleasure and knew not evil he could not imagin that his turning from God would render him so miserable having never felt any Misery But after he was tempted of the Devil and saw by experience that earthly Pleasures and Contentments had rendered him so miserable he was loath to stay longer in them and loved rather to embrace Sufferings and Patience as he did all the time of his life as to remain in the pleasures of an earthly Paradise which had made him forget his God by sensible Pleasures And if Adam a Creature so noble so holy and so perfect as God created him could not remain constant in the fidelity which he owed to his Creator before his tryal of tentations as he certainly did after them how should we contemptible and frail Creatures born with a propension to evil be able to remain faithful to God without being proved by tentation Our souls should be like wood silvered on the out-side which rusts with a little rain but we must endeavour to render them Silver or Gold purified by the fire of tentations and afflictions otherwise we can never arrive at true Virtue to which you my Son aspire And therefore rejoyce rather than afflict your self because the Devil hath power to tempt you for his tentations serve to perfect your soul and to acquire true Virtue at which you cannot arrive without passing through the furnace of Tribulations and Tentation of the Devil That Furnace is an Instrument most necessary for the perfection of your soul So Constrain your self to embrace them as St. Andrew embraced the Cross Saying O Good Cross Say also O blessed Tentation seeing by it I shall become more agreeable to God You have perhaps when in the World loved your mistresses Favours or Colours Shew now that you have chosen Jesus Christ for your Lover love and carry willingly his Colours and Livery esteem as love-favours all the Tentations which the Devil gives you because Jesus Christ was cloathed all the days of his life with Tentations and Sufferings both from Devils and Men. You must then wear his Livery if you will be his Servant Do you not feel my Son that the Devil tempts you every day yea every hour and moment and for that you have need to fight and resist continually if you would be saved It is a good sign that you perceive and feel the tentation for many feel it not at all and follow in every thing the tentation of the Devil Would you willingly be seised with that Lethargy and would you wish that the Devil should tempt you no more that were an evident sign that he held you as his own for ordinarily he tempts but little the persons that do his will easily He leaves such in quiet and they are well content not to be vexed with tentations They imagin themselves to be then in a good state though they be in effect in the greatest of all tentations But God hath delivered you from that danger in making you know and feel the tentation So you can no more be ignorant of it For I have shewed you it too plainly and you feel it also upon occasion I see by the eyes of the Spirit that the Devil moves your passions so soon as I open my mouth to speak to you and I feel that your inward motions are stirred up to oppose and contradict mine Which cannot proceed from your self for you have resolved assuredly to follow and hear me because you are convinced in your conscience that the spirit of God governs me And yet you cannot do it upon occasion and you feel fightings against what-ever I propose to you Now if you will not resist thereto you shall always follow the will of the Devil which you desire not to do You must then watch continually and be never weary to resist the Devil no more than he is to tempt you The greatest assault he gives you now is to make you contradict and oppose my will and desires And that because he sees that if you follow my will you follow assuredly the will of God seeing I have no other will but his And therefore it is that he acts continually in you to contradict me and your spirit strives against mine as Gabriel did with Lucifer You must resolve to which you will give the Victory If you will that the spirit which is in you have the Victory that shall be the Devils will But if you will that the spirit which is in me carry it you must combate your own and hold it suspect in every thing For from a spirit that is evil can nothing good proceed Now you cannot doubt but the spirit which is in you is evil seeing it opposes it self to mine and does the things which you would not of your own will do and that you have displeasure from the bottom of your soul that you contradict me and are not conformed to my will For your own will cannot be contrary to it self and cannot will that which it wills not And so we must conclude that it is the evil spirit who acts in you contrary to your own will and since you will not obey him you ought to be very glad that I resist him upon occasion For I hold him for my Enemy and will oppose him with all my power in every one in whom I perceive him all I do in you I am then sure that it is the Devil that evil spirit who gives and inspires in you these oppositions to my will For if it were not he that opposes you would follow all my will and desires with joy Resist then valiently all your proper inclinations and hold suspected all the motion of your corrupt nature to which the Devil is united and by these motions he acts in you But receive my sentiments and follow that which I
13 th of January 1616. of honourable Parents As her Spirit and Tongue began to be loosed from the Sleep and silence of Infancy the first Expression she was capable to give of what impression her Soul received was a grain of admirable and divine Wisdom which fructified unto everlasting Life At the age of four years her Parents having instructed her piously in the Gospel and Life of Jesus Christ she asked still Where are the Christians Let us go to the place where Christians live Where are they whom Jesus Christ taught Take me to them that live as Jesus Christ O most profound and divine They in their worldly Wisdom would undeceive her saying that there in Flanders they were Christians and followed Christ She said That could not be for Christ commended Poverty they were altogether for Riches Christ despised honours and Pleasures choosing meanness and trouble but they were earnest for what he rejected and shunned his choice that they lived no ways like Christ O Great God! Out of the mouth of Babes and sucklings thou hast perfected Praise Thy Words and thy Entertainments enlighten and make wise even Little Children when great Doctors growing old in their Studies with all their Followers are in Darkness blind and naked without knowing it Lo a little Child her eyes and mouth scare opened discerning a worldly Life from a Christian and far beyond the old Philosophy Studied procedure seeking a man among men most natively tattling out where are the Christians amidst Christians men fight and dispute and write and preach and what not who shall have the best Religion and Christianity most pure and flourishing Lo God will bring them to agreement and how he sets a Girle of four years old amidst them and puts in her little Mouth these stammering words where are the Christians Let us go to the Country where Christians live words duely considered of a profound divine Wisdom of more saving light and profit than millions of lifeless Sermons and volums of rational Speculations and this is the Grain of Seed which fructified unto all the fruit of her life which was only a continued urging advancing pressing and increasing that first Thought and Desire It is true in the Old and New Testament that God will perfect his Praise out of the mouth of Babes but in the World we must expect the Truth and Praise of God from a mouth that can speak Latin or even Greek and Hebrew and for the more assurance there must be a great many of these wise Heads assembled to make a Synod or Council not to sleight our Theological Doctoralities and Masterships by giving heed to this babe So they laughed her iterated and earnest Demands to silence yet neither that nor the ruder treatment she met with as it encreased were so far from extinguishing that divine spark God had kindled in her that they served still to encrease its flame for this first repulse made her turn more in to God in her own heart detecting the Vanity of worldly things she sought of him the Grace to live as Christians did and even then every thing was to her occasion of turning to him with different prayers suitable to him who was her only Councellour and Companion until her sister much addicted to the Vanities of the World would needs have her follow she said to every body she had no spirit to converse and accommodate her self to others and by that artifice the Devil prevailed so far as to make her follow the company and mode of the Youth of the World only to please them to shew that she had spirit enough to appear brisk in which she succeeded so well or rather so ill that quickly she obscured her sister gaining the favour and goodliking of all and pleasing her Parents extreamly being of a meek humble affable and jovial Humour and a good Spirit that her Father employed her in his affairs which she managed with a great deal of dexterity and industrie But all this cost her the loss of that communion she had formerly with God as familiar as one Child with another Yet God had pity on that poor Creature wandring from him he gave her often inward invitations even amidst her divertisments and will you then leave me for another shall you find a Lover more perfect and faithful than I am This pierced her heart so as to make her flow into Tears but upon occasions she would charm her serious thoughts and the habit of Vanity and Tentations got the ascendant on her at length God sent more assistance to his call by filling her spirit with the terrible thoughts of Death Judgment and Eternity Sometimes she would regret rent her cloaths and detesting her vanity throw away all her Ornaments of Folly again she would yield to the tentation of company and Divertisments In these conflicts God fortified her she became pierced with so great fear of the Judgment of God that she durst not shut her eyes because of her sins which she thought were so great that no body ever had committed the like not that she had done any evil or unhonest thing after the world whose honesty is consistent with turning away from God and going to all the Devils provided regularly and in form with approbation and priviledge but because she had left her sweet Entertainments with God for worldly Divertisments after she had received so many Graces from him she saw that so great a sin that Hell and all the pains of Hell were not sufficient to punish her ingratitude God seeing her correspond to the tracts of his divine Mercy redoubled them on her that she was swallowed up of contrition passing the whole nights on her knees crying from the bottom of her Soul Lord what wilt thou have me to do Ah! Lord what shall I do that I may be acceptable to thee My God my God! where art thou what shall I do that I may find thee again After she had tasted long and deep of that bitter desolation wherein the soul finds it self as abandoned and rejected of God which they that have tasted call the Pains and Sorrows of Hell as Job and David and other Saints God began to heal The first return she had of God into her Soul was in answer to that continual Prayer Lord what wilt thou have me to do the whole of the Gospel these words Forsake all earthly things separate your self from the affection of the Creatures renounce and deny your self Her Vicissitudes of Desolation and Consolation succeeded until God purified her from all task or stain of her vain conversation and usually these inward piercing afflictions were preparatives to some particular Graces or favours of God And it is incredible what floods of Tears and of Contrition it cost her before she recovered her former Familiarity with God and her no less incredible strict severe Austerity in a mortifying Life which she continued many years by a principle of justice and its first mover was the love