founded upon this that there was nothing more just than to bewail the Fault of ceasing to love so Lovely a God Yet she confest that she had run too far to an Extremity in her Mortifications and that so great that she would never tell it but to one and would never advise any to do as she had done but only to yield up themselves to God and suffer themselves to be exercis'd by him and by the Events which he sends them X. Thus she spent whole Nights in Prayer oft repeating Lord what wilt thou have me to do And being one Night in a most profound Penitence she said from the bottom of her Heart O my Lord What must I do to please thee For I have no body to teach me Speak to my Soul and it will hear thee At that Instant she heard as if another had spoke within her Forsake all earthly things Separate thy self from the Love of the Creatures Deny thy self XI She was quite astonish'd not understanding this Language and mus'd long on these Three Points thinking how she could fulfil them She thought she could not live without earthly things nor without loving the Creatures nor without loving her self Yet she said By thy Grace I will do it Lord. But when she would perform her Promise she knew not where to begin finding her self strongly engag'd in the Love of all earthly things which she did not observe before and knew not how to be disengaged Having thought on the Religious in Monasteries that they forsook all earthly things and the Conversation of the Creatures by being shut up in a Cloyster and the Love of themselves by subjecting of their Wills She ask'd leave of her Father to enter into a Cloyster of the discalceated Carmelites but he would not permit it saying He had rather see her laid in her Grave This seem'd to her a great Cruelty for she thought to find in the Cloysters the True Christians she had been seeking but she found afterwards that he knew the Cloysters better than she for after he had forbidden her and told her he would never permit her to be a Religious nor give her any Mony to enter there yet she went to Father Laurens the Director and offered to serve in the Monastery and work hard for her Bread and be content with little if he would receive her At which he smiled and said That cannot be we must have Money to build we take no Maids without Money you must find the way to get it else there is no entry here This astonish'd her greatly and she was thereby undeceiv'd as to the Cloysters resolving to forsake all Company and live alone till it should please God to shew her what she ought to do and whither to go XII The more she entered into her self the more she was enclin'd to abandon all and to retire somewhere without knowing whether her Heart was disengag'd from temporal Goods from worldly Pleasures from all Creatures Yet she did not find her self altogether free nor entirely united unto God for she was apt sometimes to turn again to what she had left She ask'd always earnestly When shall I be perfectly thine O my God And she thought he still answered her When thou shalt no longer possess any thing and shalt die to thy self And where shall I do that Lord He answered her In the Desart This made so strong an Impression on her Soul that she aspired after this but being a Maid of Eighteen Years only she was afraid of unlucky chances and was never us'd to travel and knew no way She laid aside all these Doubts and said Lord thou wilt guide me how and where it shall please thee It is for thee that I do it I will lay aside my Habit of a Maid and will take that of a Hermit that I may pass unknown XIII Having then secretly made ready this Habit while her Parents thought to have married her her Father having promis'd her to a rich French Merchant she prevented the time and on Easter Evening having cut her Hair put on the Habit and slept a little she went out of her Chamber about Four in the Morning taking nothing but One Penny to buy Bread for that Day and it being said to her in the going out Where is thy Faith in a Penny She threw it a way begging pardon of God for her Fault and saying No Lord my Faith is not in a Penny but in thee alone Thus she went away wholly delivered from the heavy Burthen of the Cares and good Things of this World and found her Soul so satisfied that she no longer wish'd for any thing upon Earth resting entirely upon God with this only fear least she should be discovered and be oblig'd to return home for she felt already more Content in this Poverty than she had done for all her Life in all the Delights of the World XIV She knew no way nor whither to go She went out at the Gate that leads to Tournay and came thither about Ten a Clock then past into the Province of Hainault and coming through a Village called Bassec where were arriv'd that Day a Company of Soldiers who were playing in the Market-Place when she had past by them and come to the end of the Village she met a number of Children at their Play who looking on her began to say it was a Maid and crying this so loud to one another the Soldiers ran to know the Fray and then taking Horse they overtook her in the Fields and stopt her asking who she was and whither she went She was surpriz'd but looking before her she saw a Church and hoping there might be some good Pastor there to deliver her she said she was going to the Pastor who would satisfie them The Commander brought her to the next Village Blatton to the old Mayor's House promising to have her to the Pastor's when once his Men were lodged There he thought to have abus'd her by force or enticement but she told him resolutely that he should first kill her or she him and that she believ'd the Earth would open to swallow him up The old Mayor and his Wife defended her and he threatned to burn the House and call'd his Men to Arms about it The Maid of the House got out at a Window and told the Pastor who coming into the Chamber where the Captain was raging like one mad gravely rebuked him and taking her by the Hand he with his Chaplain led her through the Soldiers into his Lodging the Captain sinking into an Astonishment against the Wall without stirring for the Pastor was a grave and vertuous Man of great Age whose Words had struck the Captain and taken away all his Strength and Spirit But when this was over he came with his Men to the Pastour's House to search for her and not finding her and being made believe she was gone they gallop'd toward Mons thinking to overtake her XV. The
does it not deserve that it love him He farther obliges it by more powerful Means For that he might make them see that his Delight is to be with the Children of Men he becomes Man visible and sensible as themselves not being satisfied to have made Man after his Image and Likeness but God is made after the Image and Likeness of Man yea he becomes truly Man to teach them how to love him by material Words and Deeds conformable to their humane Capacities VII Could God testifie more Love for Man than to abase himself yea to annihilate himself to speak according to our Language and to cloath himself with humane Nature What Judgment could conceive greater Testimonies of his Love Or what Means could be fallen upon more powerfully to oblige Man to love him than to become like to Man in Nature to become his Equal in Condition not preferring himself to the meanest Men to converse and be familiar with them as their Brother and Companion yea he subjects himself unto and obeys Man that he might gain his Friendship he serves him even to the washing of his Feet and tho' Man offend him he prevents him always with Friendship le ts a Judas kiss him who contriv'd his Death and at the time he came to deliver him up to his Enemies he even calls him his Friend VIII And for an Evidence that he makes Man his Friend he declares unto him his Secrets and all that he learned from his Father and all this to engage Men to a reciprocal Love He eats and drinks with them draws them by his sweet Conversation teaches them familiarly all the necessary Means to love him gives them a Law all of Love which contains no other thing but the Love of God and our Neighbour All his Gospel contains nothing but the true Means to fulfil this Law of Love He so earnestly presses this Love that he threatens with eternal Damnation if we do not love him with all our Heart with all our Soul and with all our Strength Could he express more powerfully the Desire he has that Man love him while he draws him even by force to his Love IX And to make this Force altogether Lovely he charges himself with the Burthen of Man's Sins resolving out of the Love he bear him to suffer in his own Body the Punishments due for them He suffers Hunger Thirst Weariness travelling through so many Places to seek Man and to help him in his Penitence that he might have no other Care out to love him Is it possible that Man should not acknowledge such a Love Is he so unnatural as not to love such a Benefactor who obliges him by so many so painful Proofs of his Love that they seem to exceed the Bounds of Reason X. Who ever saw Love arrive to such an Excess of Good-will for the Person beloved For a GOD to debase himself to subject himself and to suffer for his Creature that which no Body would do for his Equal and it would be no small Love for one to give his Life for his Friend Which JESUS CHRIST gave for Man who was his Enemy having overcome his Malice by the Excess of his Love And the more that Man is transported to deal hardly with him he is led the more to love him laying down his Life voluntarily the more to oblige him by the Consideration of such a LOVE that surpasses all Vnderstanding that a GOD should be enclin'd to love a Worm of the Earth of which he has no need and which is led even to outrage and offend him instead of being enclin'd to love him XI Ingrate Creature Wilt not thou yield to this LOVE Cruel to thy Self Enemy of thy own Good Wilt not thou bow under this Yoke which is so gentle and lovely It s Captivity is Liberty its Service is a Kingdom its Pains are Delights its Labours are Repose its Griefs are Contentments This LOVE satisfies the Soul fills it with all Happiness comforts it and adorns it keeps it always chearful with its Beloved nothing can offend it What Happiness what Joy what Peace what Delights to the Soul that possesseth this Love It fears nothing it hopes for nothing it seeks nothing it finds nothing Lovely without this LOVE XII How blind and ignorant is he who loves the Wealth the Honours and the Pleasures of this World He is never content nor satisfied For Riches bring along with them a Thousand Cares and Disquiets with an unsatiable Thirst which fastens the Soul to Earth and to Metals and turns it away from God Honours are yet more vain than Riches for they are nothing but Fantastical and Imaginary which give nothing to the Soul that loves them but an empty swelling of Pride which makes the Heart break at the least change of Fortune which vexes and torments them continually with the fear and care of Losing them and tho' they did possess them lawfully and securely yet they are nothing but a Smoak of Vanity since we are nothing and all they who honour us are equally Nothings What Folly is it to look for Glory from all these NOTHINGS and to love Honours so vain and of so short Continuance Pleasures such as they may be give very little Satisfaction to Man in general because they are of so short Continuance in particular for that they are so vile and earthly unworthy of the Nobleness of our Soul which is Divine and Spiritual for to take Pleasure to eat and drink is to level our selves in this Point with the Beasts and often to hurt both Soul and Body seeing these Pleasures do sometimes breed Excesses prejudicial to the Health indisposing both Body and Mind which pay very dear for the Pleasures which they pretend to have in Meat and Drink All the other Pleasures of the Body are always insatiable to him who would please his Five Senses the Eye will never be satisfied with Seeing the Ear with Hearing and so of the rest if Reason do not govern all they will still importune us yea become Insolent and Unsatisfiable To love Play is loss of time to love Hunting is Weariness to love Company is Disquiet The more we would oblige them the more they are dissatisfied And what shall we have after having satisfied all our Senses and given to our Body all the Pleasures that it desires Nothing but Weariness and Remorse of Conscience which will torment the Soul especially at Death We may lawfully use these things but not love them for they are no wise worthy of our Love XIII There is nothing LOVELY and that can satisfie our Soul but GOD ALONE Neither was it created for any other End but to love its god and to cleave to him only All other Goods are false and deceitful Since we cannot live without LOVE Why do we not love this GOD who is ALONE LOVELY So much the rather that he desires it that he has obliged us to it by
after his own Likeness to be his Spouse and not to be his Slave or constrain'd to do his Will for all the other Creatures were subjected under his Will but Man alone was created altogether Free like a little God Sovereign and Ruler over all the other Creatures which God had subjected to Man leaving him Free to use them well or ill according to his Will 3. So soon as Man turn'd away his Affections from God to love himself or the other Creatures he became the Enemy of his God and would not acquiesce in the Designs that God had for Man to take his Delight with him And by this means Man has damn'd himself and by ceasing to love God the Fountain of all Good he is fallen into all sort of Evil which consists in the Privation of all Good 4. Sin coming upon this Master-piece of the Works of God has rendred Man so miserable so infirm ignorant weak that all things over which he ought to rule do master and mischief him 5. Men are now born Children of Wrath and Perdition and are therefore assuredly damn'd by Nature and nothing but the Grace of God can save or deliver them from this Damnation into which they have voluntarily precipitated themselves 6. After that miserable Man had thus destroy'd himself â—esus Christ true Eternal God and true Man comes to intercede for him with his Eternal Father and by his Merits and Intercession has obtain'd for this ingrate Creature the Remission of his Sin and the Grace to do Penitence for it and a time and state of Trial for that End that by a perfect Repentance he may obtain the Favour of God to the End he may return to his Love which he had lost thro' his own Fault since Man was created free to continue eternally in the Love of God without ever falling from it 7. Whereas Man ought to recover this Love of God by his own Choice and his own free Will he must therefore testifie by his Contrition and Penitence the Regret he had to have lost this Love and effectually make use of the Grace obtain'd for him by Jesus Christ employing all the time of his Trial which is this Mortal Life to bewail his Sins and do Penitence for them since by the great Mercy of God he has obtain'd the Grace to do it and has the Means in his hand to fulfil this Penitence in the Curse that the Earth had receiv'd by his Sin so that it must be cultivated and Man must gain his Bread in the Sweat of his Face 8. Man was so corrupted by Sin that he can do no good of himself more than the Devils But Man by the Mediation of Jesus Christ has received this Mercy from God that he may be converted But as long as he follows the Corruption of his Nature he remains in his Devilish State and cannot be saved 9. Man has fallen by withdrawing his Affections from God to place them on the Creatures And no body will be saved but he who returns to the Love of God for which he was created and they who do without this Love do perish eternally 10. Jesus Christ having interceeded with his Eternal Father for Mercy and Pardon to Man became his Pledge and Surety that if his Father would yet allow Man a Time of Trial and Grace he should do Penitence for his Sins renounce his corrupt Nature and return to the Love of God And as Man's Pledge and Surety he took on him our Mortality and voluntarily cloathed himself with our Miseries he bore our Griefs and taking the Form of a Sinner underwent all the Pains due to our Sins as if he himself had been the greatest Sinner and bound to do Penitence tho he was never guilty of the least Sin that by his Merits and Sufferings he might merit for us with his Father the Spirit of Penitence and Conversion which being united to his Sufferings and his Charity which are Sacrifices more agreeable to God than our unclean Offerings and our Works defiled with Sin might be accepted of him 11. Jesus Christ took our Mortality out of the pure Love he bore to Men his natural Brethren that he might withdraw them from Sin and the Way of Predition into which they all walked He became a mortal Man to give us an Example and to teach us by what Means we may recover the Love and Grace of God he did take an infirm Body subject to all sort of Miseries and Death like to ours that he might teach and encourage us to do the Works that he had done in his mortal Body and that we imitating him might enjoy the Pardon and Recovery which his Merits have purchased for us 12. Jesus Christ by his Merits and Intercession has obtain'd Pardon for Man and the Grace of God for all who shall voluntarily embrace his Gospel Law and for no other and therefore none can ever be saved but by the Merits and Intercession of Jesus Christ which will never be applied to any but to his Disciples and Followers 13. Man stands in need of keeping the Commandments of Jesus Christ and the Gospel-Law because of his Frail y and because these are all Remedies of his Evils and by embracing these Remedies he shall recover the Love of God which he had lost thro' his own Fault 14. God is the only Fountain of all Good from whom never any Evil can proceed and Man is the only Fountain of all Evil from whom never any Good can come 15. The only Essential Command is a constant Dependence upon God and the Resignation of our Wills to him and all the other Commands teach us only the Means to attain to this Resignation and how to remove the Hinderances of it 16. The Essence of true Vertue consists in the Love of God and the Essence of Sin in the Love of our selves and of the Creatures 17 All the Actions of God do partake of his three Divine Qualities Righteousness Goodness and Truth and nothing we do can be well pleasing in the Sight of God if it do not partake of the same if it be not just and good and true 18. It is not necessary to Salvation to comprehend in particular the Theory of the Divine Mysteries far less to be wedded to one certain Party rather than another but that denying our selves and turning away our Liberty from the Love of the Creatures and from earthly Things we resign it and all our Faculties into the Hands of God that he may enlighten renew and govern them by his Spirit after which he will produce in the Soul the Light and Graces that he sees necessary for its Salvation This is a Summary of the Essentials of Christianity as they are represented by her and her Morality is a particular Deduction and Application of these Principles to the Hearts and
does from a Fountain She needed not it seems the Buckets of Study and Meditation wherewith to draw out of the broken Cisterns of others but she had within her a Fountain of living Water still springing up to everlasting Life As this is attested by those who were of her particular Acquaintance and all her Manuscripts are still extant written with her own Hand so a particular Account is given given of this by Mr. Francken Merchant at Amsterdam in his Testimony concerning her where among other things he tells That a learned Man of Amsterdam a Doctor of Law said to him one Day that he could not believe but it was some learned Man who had writ these Letters and publish'd them under the Name of A. B. as not being willing to be known and Mr. Francken assur'd him of the contrary but however he not having had long time to converse with her he would take care to inform himself more narrowly so as to be able to convince him as it fell out for some time since after he had told him he had often found her in her little Chamber with a Piece of Deal Board on her Knees writing without any other Thing but the Paper on which she wrote and the Pen and Ink which she made use of and she leaving off to write upon her Discovering that he was in the Room and because she never wrote but with Attention to the Voice of God in the inward Silence and Recollection of her Spirit he would take up the Paper with her Permission to read it and found it was writ so swiftly that there would be yet ten or twelve Lines fresh and wet Having made this Trial of it his Friend he says was perswaded of it as much as if he had seen it himself having full Confidence in his Sincerity from long Experience and Familiarity XXX 15. That which ought greatly to recommend her Writings to us is the Conformity of her Life and Practice It is the general Complaint concerning those who recommend Vertue and a truly Christian Life to others that they do not practice it themselves that they speak by one Principle and live by another and so their Words have little Force and they destroy Christianity one way more than it is possible for them to build it up another I know some have made an ill Use of the Elogies which have been given of her Life and Spirit by those who were Eye-witnesses of all like Spiders sucking Poison from the Flowers where the Bees gather Honey they exaggerate some of their Expressions far beyond the Intent of them and in Opposition to the Testimonies of those who were living Witnesses of her Life they some eighteen Years after she is dead will needs draw a Picture of her that may represent her very ugly with what Equity and Candour will appear in its due Place However any who shall read impartially the Story of her Life and the Testimonies given of her throughout all the Periods of it â— will conceive better Thoughts of her than what the New Narratives would give of them They will see that she liv'd constantly as one travelling towards Eternity and therein studying in all things to conform her Life to that of Jesus Christ in these and such-like Instances She convers'd always with God and no more with Men than her Duty and Charity requir'd she led a Life of continual Penitence mortifying her corrupt Nature and never gratifying her sensual Appetites in any thing Tho' she might have enjoy'd the Pleasures of her Senses the Delights of her Taste and of her other Senses yet she voluntarily depriv'd herself of them to please God Tho' she had lawfully acquir'd Riches yet would never use them but for pure Necessity Tho' she might have been conveniently serv'd and honour'd according to her Condition yet she despis'd these Honours and Services to imitate Jesus Christ loving rather to live unknown and serve herself than to be serv'd There was nothing observ'd in her Actions contrary to the Righteousness Goodness and Truth of God but they appear'd still to be accompanied with those three Qualities deriv'd from the Spirit of God She never recommended to any the Practice of a Vertue which she did not most exemplarily practice herself She was most humble and self-denied always ready to serve others rather than be serv'd by them and to take to her self the meanest and the least of every thing She did not affect to be thought humble by humble Words Gestures Habits c. nor did she distinguish her self from the rest of the World by any singular indifferent Thing but as to Habit Diet c. conform'd her self to the Customs of the Places where she happen'd to be So great was her Charity that she brought up some hundreds of Girls maintaining fifty of them at a time for the space of seven Years on her own Charges what was allow'd by the Founder being only for ten employing her Time Wealth Strength of Body and Mind in Training them up in all Vertuous Exercises and distinguishing herself in nothing from them as to Diet Bread Apparel c. Such was her Love to Men's Souls that she spared nothing to perswade them to the Love of God and to Imitate Jesus Christ and employ'd her Time and Wealth in writing and publishing the Truths of God for that End She suffer'd patiently all manner of Reproaches and Persecutions for the Sake of Jesus Christ She had an invincible Firmness and Constancy in what was Truth Nothing could shake or alter her She did nothing to please Men She had a constant Equality of Mind in all Conditions She discover'd a wonderful Prudence on all Occasions Let any body but read the Testimonies given of her by those who knew her in her Youth in her old Age and in all States of her Life as they are set down in Recucil des Temoignages and particularly that of Mr. Francken Merchant of Amsterdam and they will see how closely she was a Follower of Jesus Christ in Humility and Poverty of Spirit in a Contempt of all earthly Things in a Life of Labour and Penitence and in the true Love of God and the Souls of Men. Now Writings whose Substance and Essence contains such excellent Truths as those I have mention'd in the Account of the Essentials of Christianity and which have such remarkable Qualities and penn'd by one who liv'd so her self ought certainly to meet with some Regard and not to be immediately thrown away and People frighted from looking into them because there are in them some Sentiments which do not relish and seem to us Extravagant XXXI But perhaps it will be said that those Doctrines which she calls Accessories may be dangerous Opinions and damnable Doctrines and that what she seems to build with the one Hand she pulls down with the other that she makes a Mahumetan Paradise Eating and Drinking and Generation in the Kingdom of Heaven How easie a thing is it
to give a hateful Turn to ones Sentiments to make them pass for impious extravagant and ridiculous I shall therefore set down here a brief Summary of her Accessory Sentiments first premising some things that may dispose the Reader to consider them calmly and without prejudice 1. She declares they are reveal'd unto her by God and that now in the End of the World and near the Time of the Restitution of all things many things which were more darkly represented in the Holy Scriptures are now to be manifestly laid open when the Time of fulfilling all is at hand and that such things are now laid before us like a Clustre of Grapes of the Land of Promise to make us conceive something of the Beauty and Glory of the Heavenly Jerusalem 2. She declares as has been said that those Accessory Truths are not necessary to Salvation are not Articles of Faith ought not to be enquired into from a Spirit of Curiosity are not design'd for all but for those who being perswaded of them are thereby stirr'd up so much the more to the Love and Admiration of God and for others they maâ— let them alone XXXII 3. St. Augustin has given us an excellent Rule whereby to judge charitably of Sentiments and Interpretations of the Holy Scripture Whosoever says he so understands the Holy Scriptures or any part of them as that thereby he does not build up the twofold Charity the Love of God and our Neighbour he does not understand them aright But whosoever gives such a Sense of them as is profitable for advancing this Charity and yet what he says is not the particular Sense of the Writer in that place he does not err damnably neither does at all lie And if he err by a Sense which edifies Charity which is the End of the Commandment he so errs as if one by a mistake leaving the Highway should go streight over the Field to the Place whither the Way leads If these Accessory Sentiments then tend to promote the Great End of Religion the Love of God and our Neighbour tho' there were no Evidence for them from the Holy Scriptures they are neither hurtful nor damnable In giving an Account then of her Accessory Sentiments I shall consider them under these Heads Those which relat to 1. The State of the World before Man's Fall 2. The Fall of Man and its Consequences 3. The Methods taken for Man's Recovery by Jesus Christ 4. The Present State of the World 5. The Future State and the Restitution of all things And because the Series and Chain of those Accessory Sentiments cannot be well conceiv'd without some mention of the Essential Ones too I shall not scruple to do it where it is necessary to understand the Connexion of those Sentiments 1. As to the State of the World before Man's Fall the Summ of her Sentiments is as follows 1. VVHEN God created all things at First there was no Deformity in any of his Works all was Beautiful and Luminous no Grossness in the Earth no Whirlwinds and Hurricanes in the Air no Tempests in the Sea no Poison in the Herbs no Venom in Insects The Earth was all transparent throughout in it were to be seen the Plants the Stones and Metals all transparent likewise one might see thorouh it to its Center as easily as through the Air all the Beasts and Plants were all Beautiful in their respective kinds no Deformity in any of them and the Beauty of their Frame and Contrivance was to be seen throughout all being Transparent and Luminous All things were worthy of God and were Representations of his Greatness Magnificence Goodness Beauty Light and Fruitfulness in several ways and according to their different kinds 2. God having resolv'd to form a Creature that should love and enjoy him and in whose Love he would take Delight and Pleasure he creates Man after his own Image endues him with an immortal Soul breathed from himself with Understanding capable to receive him with a Heart to desire and thirst after him and cleave to him with a perfect Liberty and Free-will to do it heartily and freely and without the least Limitation or Constraint And to oblige him the more to love him his most Bountiful God and Lover gives him for an Accessory Felicity and Happiness the whole Creation subjects all his Works to him to be his Servants and to attend upon him puts all things under his Feet that he receiving the Homage and Delight of all the Creatures might return the Praise of all to God in the constant Love and Adoration of so Bountiful a God who would give himself to be lov'd and enjoy'd by him and would take his Delight with him and would give him such a world of beautiful Creatures to serve and attend upon him 3. That Man might partake of this Accessory Happiness and receive the Delight and Homage of all the Creatures and rule over them as their Lord and King he forms to him a Body as the Case and Organ of his Soul by which he might communicate with all the Creatures and rule over them and endues it with Faculties and Senses capable to give them Orders and to take in the Tribute of their Delights and Pleasures the Sense of Seeing to take in their Light and Beauty of Hearing to be entertain'd with their Melody and Musick Smelling to receive their odoriferous Steams and the Taste to relish their Sweetness and Delight the power of Moving of Speech and Gestures whereby to rule and govern them he might go to any place and make known his Will which all obeyed 4. This Body was not created by God after the manner that we see it at present but incomprehensibly more beautiful and more perfect as the Master-piece of all Nature clear subtile agile and transparent its Skin like Moscovy Glass its Flesh like Crystal its Veins like streams of Rubies its Waters like Diamonds its Nerves like the Hyacinth the Substance of the Fruits its Aliment that of all good Odours its Excrements all its Parts within and without its Bones Muscles Sinews Bowels all so bright fram'd with such Art that all the Beauties of the Universe were nothing to the least part of it The Quintessence of all Natural things was the Matter of which it was form'd and all Nature obey'd it If he design'd to go on the Waters they supported him if to the Center of the Earth it yielded to him if through the Air it was a Chariot to him The Sun the Stars the precious Stones and all the Beauties of the Earth were nothing if compar'd with the least Beauty of the Body of Man His Soul was wholly Divine his Understanding clear-sighted penetrating all the Secrets of Nature all things Divine and Supernatural 5. Man when he was created at First was endued with a Principle of Foecundity with a Power to produce his like without the help of another having within
his Body the Principles of both Natures and in that respect being a compleat and perfect Man which Power was actuated upon ardent Acts of Love to God and a Desire to produce a Creature like himself to love and enjoy his Maker 6. Adam while he was in perfect Innocence did thus produce one like himself who was the First-Born of every Creature the Second Adam and the Son of Man And God being desirous to give to Man a full and perfect Contentment in Body and Spirit and to dwell with him bodily and visibly so that he might Converse with Man as a Friend with his Friend he therefore not only made Man after his Image but he becomes like to Man he unites himself to the Humane Nature in the Second Adam that he might Converse familiarly with Man by an Organ to be seen heard and felt by him conformable to his Nature This is Jesus Christ Eternal God and True Man 7. Notwithstanding of this Adam swimming amidst all sensible Delights the Time of Trial given him being then a State of Delight and Pleasure began to lean too much towards them and to please himself in them without turning his Soul so constranly towards God and so became less sensible of the Motions of God's Light and Love upon his Spirit being taken up too much other ways which encreasing still upon him to prevent his total Degeneracy and that he might not sink so low as to place his Love and Affections on things which were only earthly and material God resolves to make a Help for him he for this end takes one of the Principles of Foecundity out of Man and therewith forms the Woman who being form'd more Beautiful than any of the Creatures and being a more lively Representation of God he might love her in God as God's Image being endued with a Divine Soul as he was and so she might take off his Affections from the other Creatures and raise them towards God 2. As to Man 's total Fall and the Consequences thereof 1. THE Woman who was given for a Help to Man to keep him from a total Degeneracy listning to the Temptations of the Serpent the most subtile and beautiful of all the Beasts turn'd away from God her self and led on Man to do so too both of them shaking off their Dependance upon God and his Will and following their own Wills and breaking a just and easie Command that God had given them forbidding them to eat of the Fruit of one Tree as an Acknowledgement of Homage to their Great Creator and Benefactor and that they held all of him 2. As by turning from the Sun we fall into Darkness and Obscurity so Man much more by turning away from God and setting his Heart upon the Creatures brings an universal Corruption and Misery on himself and on all the Creatures which had been subjected to him Above all Sin corrupted Man's Soul did it the greatest Mischief having damn'd it eternally and made it like unto the Devil For both were created by God to love him and when they both withdraw this Love from God to love themselves or other Creatures they are equally become Devils the one incarnate and the other spiritual depriv'd of all sort of Good and fallen into all sort of Evil. So that if Man will consider himself narrowly he shall find his Soul defil'd with all sort of Sins fill'd with Injustice subject to Lying enclin'd to Covetousness blown up with Pride furious with Anger Lustful Gluttonous Sloathful Negligent with all other sort of Sins which reside in the depth of his Soul Sin so corrupted his Will that he had always a Bent and Inclination to Evil so that all that comes from the Self-will of Man is Sin his Self-will being fill'd with nothing but self-Self-love Sin has also so corrupted his Reason that it is no longer capable of discerning and judging aright of things It has so darkened his Memory and confounded his Understanding that he takes Evil for Good and Good for Evil without Judgment and Reason From the Corruption of his Soul did flow that of his Body all its Humours and Parts being disordered his glorious Body becomes filthy dark and deform'd in every part of it contracts that gross Crust of Corruption which we now carry about with us and which has seiz'd on every the least part of it within and without so that our First Parents were asham'd of themselves sought wherewith to cover their Nakedness and went and hid themselves The Senses also became gross dull and feeble could discern nothing but the outside of things and the whole Body became full of disorder within subject to the ill Impressions of all the Creatures and at last to Dissolution and Death 3. Man by his Fall brought also a Corruption and Deformity upon all the Creatures which had been subjected to him the Earth became gross and dark barren and unfruitful and all the Creatures became hurtful and mischievous to Man and rose up against him who had shaken off his Allegiance to their Bountiful Creator The Air stifles him the Waters drown him the Fire burns him the Earth Corn and Trees deny him their Fruits without his Care and Labour the Stars send bad Influences on him and he is subjected to Cold Heat Hunger Thirst Weariness and innumerable other Evils being deprived of the Dominion he had over all things and subjected unto them 4. All Men in the World are the Natural Off-spring of Adam and do descend from him both as to Body and Soul so that they must partake of the same Qualities with him being all his Living Images and therefore all Men who were in his Loins when he turn'd away from God sinned in him and do inherit his Corruption and Misery both of Body and Mind as if he had not sinned he had produc'd all Men to Salvation as God created them But every Man for himself would have had the same Liberty that Adam had to remain firm in the Love of God or to turn away from it by placing his Affections on himself or other Creatures He might damn or save himself during this Time of Trial and all who had remained faithful to God would have been saved on the contrary all who had withdrawn their Affections from him to love any other thing would have been damn'd and their Posterity would have been in the same State tho' Adam had never sinn'd So free and independent would Men have been during their Time of Trial which is that in which we live at present and must continue till the Day of Judgment And then being confirm'd in Grace as the faithful Angels are they could never fall away being perfectly united to God after this Time of Trial. 3. As to the Means and Method for Man's Recovery 1. ALL Mankind had been thus irrecoverably lost and damn'd as the fallen Angels are if the Son of God our elder Brother had
to his Image we must suffer with him if we would reign with him His was meritorious and expiatory and exemplary ours is absolutely necessary for our Purification By his he obtain'd Pardon and Grace for us and chang'd the Eternal Punishment we deserved into a Temporal Penitence for our Purification and Recovery and to say we cannot undergo this Penitence is to have no Faith in his Merits to believe that it is enough that he did undergo this for us is the greatest Indignity done him and the greatest Cheat that we can put upon our Souls it is to belie and be false to our Surety and our Pledge It is like Bankrupts to swagger and rant it out with our Creditor's Goods because our Surety has paid the Debt for us It is to make Jesus our Slave to suffer all manner of Afflictions Poverty Reproach and Pain for us that we may go to Heaven in the pleasant and broad Way of Honours Wealth and Pleasures It is to be well pleas'd that the Physician has provided wholsome and necessary Physick for our Recovery and has taken it himself for our Direction and Encouragement but tho' we be sick to Death we will not taste it our selves because of the Bitterness of it believing that we shall Recover nevertheless because the Physician has taken it Jesus Christ led this Life of Penitence for us in his visible and mortal Body that he might shew us how ready he is still to undergo it in every one of us by his Spirit 8. God has no need of this our Penitence but we stand in need of it to recover the Love of God He does not covet our Wealth or Honours or Friends or Ease in that he requires of us to be poor in Spirit to deny our selves to take up our Cross and follow Christ to forsake all things since he created all things for Man and would be well pleased he could enjoy them still But Man is become so miserable that he cannot enjoy these things without setting his Heart upon them and turning it away from God and therefore Jesus Christ has given this his Gospel-Law without which no body can recover the Love of God It is a sad Mistake then to think that there is no necessity of good Works but only by way of Gratitude and Thankfulness to God as if he had need of our Acknowledgments or as if we could make him Presents of our Good Works to thank him which cannot be said but in Contempt of the Riches of God who possesses all in himself and seeks nothing without himself and needs not that we should give him any thing all the good Works that Men can do are for no other End but to resist and overcome the Evils of their Corruption And they are as necessary for our Salvation as Bread is for the Life of the Body for we cannot be saved without subduing our Corruption and no Body can do this but by the means of such good Works and such Penitence as stifles and mortifies the Vices and Sins which this Corruption has brought into the Soul 9. It is a Pride to glory in our Penitence since it is enjoined us for our Sins it ought rather to fill us with Humility and Confusion for in the Beginning it was not so God created us to live in all sorts of Delights without any Pain All this beautiful World was created to serve for Pleasures to the Body of Man and God himself was the Delight of his Soul But Sin only has changed that excellent Order and made Man subject to that over which he ought to rule because he had withdrawn his Subjection from God Our Sins have occasioned the Law of Penitence which Jesus Christ came to teach us by Word and Deed. This Penitence does not consist in Undergoing Pennances chosen by our selves and after our Fancy by which the Devil would drive us headlong and excite us to Vain-glory and which usually make Men presumptuous believing themselves to be better than others and that God is obliged to them for their good Works as the Pharisee All this proceeds from Self-love but true Penitence consists in taking patiently whatsoever God permits to befall us either to our Body Estate or Mind and willingly to suffer it in the Spirit of Penitence to satisfie for our Sins for every Moment there falls out Occasions of Suffering and and Submission so that we need not seek for them It is necessary that we practise this Resignation of our Will to God for accomplishing the saving Penitence which he has enjoined us and for the Exercise of all sort of Vertues 10. Since then the Justice of God could not permit that Pardon and Grace should be given to sinful Man but upon Condition that he turn away from Sin to God and in order to that live a Life of Penitence and co-operate with the Spirit of Suffering Self-denial and Mortification which God will communicate to him if he sincerely desire to be saved it is necessary that Man satisfie this Duty which is so just before God and which the Justice of God requires as well as the Nature of the thing it self This is that which she calls Man's Satisfying God's Justice on his Part this is that from which the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ does not procure us a Dispensation for then he had neither been just to God nor us but he merited the Acceptance of it at God's Hands and Grace and Strength for us to perform it and taught us how to undergo it If People are nice and captious and will needs carp at Words and Expressions as Satisfaction and the Satisfying the Justice of God while they understand what is meant by them no body will contend with them about them provided they grant the Truth and Reality of the thing that no body will be saved by the Merits and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ without the Mortification of their corrupt Nature and the Recovery of the Love of God It is good Consideration which is now generally assigned why God thought not fit as Governour of the World to pardon Rebellious Man without the Intervention of an expiatory Sacrifice in the Life and Death of Jesus Christ that Men might thereby see the Evil of Sin and God's infinite Hatred and Abhorrence of it and so might be diverted from continuing in it or returning to it It is for the very same Reason that God thought not fit to pardon Man for the Sufferings of Jesus Christ unless he also follow him in a Life of Penitence and Sufferings for we are not so sensible of what others suffer neither does it breed in us such an Abhorrence of that which has occasioned their Sufferings as when we suffer the like Pains and Evils our selves without which we have as superficial a Sense of them as of the Actings on a Theatre And therefore to give us the more lively Sense of the Sufferings of Jesus Christ and to enflame our Love to him
and to work in us the greater Detestation of Sin and of our corrupt Nature God thinks fit that we should feel in our Souls the Evil and the Bitterness of Forsaking him without which they can never be purified nor come to see God IX There is another Prejudice which has some Affinity to this and which the generality of Protestants are prepossessed with and that is because she affirms that there is a State of Purification after this Life for such Souls as are truly converted unto God and yet are not wholly purified from their Corruption and so are not immediately capable of enjoying God All corrupt Doctrine has generally some Fond of Truth with which they mingle many other things that tend to promote Men's worldly Interests the Wealth of the Clergy and the Dependance of the People Thus in the Church of Rome they have founded a Purgatory in a Place near to Hell where Souls are tormented by a material Fire from whence they are delivered by some Soul-Masses some superstitious Ceremonies the dying in a Cordelier's Habit and a thousand Fopperies of this Nature But that Souls which die truly converted unto God and yet have not attained to such a State of Purity as to be capable of enjoying him shall undergo a State of Purification before they can see God is more than probable The Sum of her Sentiments as to this are 1. That is evident none can enjoy God who are not in a State of so perfect Purity that there remains in them no Degree of Corruption neither Actual nor Habitual For no unclean thing can enter into the Kingdom of Heaven There is no Fellowship between Light and Darkness And they are only the pure in Heart who shall see God 2. It is certain that they who are truly converted unto God are in a State of Grace and Salvation tho' Sin be yet in him and the Old Adam is not yet dead If a Person full of Sins and evil Habits be in his Heart and Desires truly turned unto God he receives him into his Grace tho' his habitual Sins are not yet rooted out much more him who is greatly advanced in the Mortification of his corrupt Nature but has not yet attained to a State of perfect Purity 3. It is as certain that Conversion and Regeneration are not one and the same thing The first being the turning away from Evil to Good from Sin to God the second being the Renovation of the whole Man after the Image of God a Creature altogether new whose Will is wholly resigned to God who lives no longer but Christ lives in it 4. It is in Grace and spiritual things as it is in Nature and bodily things All things advance to their Perfection by Degrees and not in an Instant God does all things in Order in Number Weight and Measure and conformably to the Nature of the Beings he has formed We are first Children before we are Men and we advance by Degrees to the Stature and Wisdom of Men and put away Childish Things But if the Child come forth of the Womb void of the bodily Life it remains so still We are told of Children and Youth and Men in Christ Jesus and we must not think that all these States are attain'd to in an Instant in the spiritual Life no more than in the bodily 5. It cannot be denied but that many who are saved do go out of this World truly converted unto God but yet not throughly renewed and purified and as on the one hand God will not reject and cast away such Souls as seek him with all their Heart so on the other hand in this State of Impurity they are not capable of enjoying him And therefore God in his infinite Goodness Truth and Righteousness will place them in such a State as whereby all their evil Habits may be wholly rooted out all their Corruption subdued all their Filthiness cleansed and they purified as God is pure 6. This so great and so extraordinary a Change cannot be supposed to be wrought in an Instant nor yet without most sensible Pain and Labour to the Soul in whom this Change is wrought The Soul is of a most sensible Nature and when freed of this mortal Body that stupifies it its Sensibilities must be infinitely more lively and piercing and therefore the Sentiment of being deprived of the glorious Presence of God which it ardently thirsts after and of having within it Dispositions repugnant to this Enjoyment which a Ray from God manifests it to cannot but give it unspeakable Pain and Anguish We see here no sensible Being that is in Disorder can be restored to its right State without Pain and Trouble a broken Leg a disjointed Member a Part of the Body ulcer'd corrupt Humours cannot be rectified without Pain and Trouble It all the Parts and all the Members of a Body were dislocated corrupted and disordered the Pain and Trouble that would be felt in the restoring of that Body would be unspeakably greater All this is but a faint Image of the State of the Soul all its Faculties are more corrupted and disordered than it is possible for the Body to be the Restitution of which by the Operation of the Divine Grace cannot be perform'd even in this State of Stupidity without much Pain and Anguish but after this Life when the Soul is fully awakened it is supported by the Divine Grace to undergo this Change but with Dolours beyond Comparison greater No living thing can pass from one State to another without great Sensibility can enter into a new Element unto which it is not entirely conformable without suffering its Impressions with Pain weak and sickly Eyes cannot endure great Light without Pain nor a weak Body strong Nourishment without Trouble So a Soul falling into the Element of Eternity of the Divine Light and of the Fire of the Divinâ— Love if it be yet weak and ill â—sposed if iâ— have yet many contrary Disâ—â—sitions many things to be consumed many Habits to 〈…〉 out this cannot be done without great Sufferings Not that God chastises in Wrath nor that he deâ—â—â—nts to torment the Soul but that the Soul full of contrary Dispâ—sitions full of Darkness cannot receive his Light nor feel the 〈◊〉 of his Love without most sensible and dolorous Sentiments till by the Force and Continuance of these Impressions they have banish'd out all that is contrary to his Divine Light and Love which then transforms the Soul wholly into its own Nature It is unreasonable to oppose that Passage of Scripture that the Blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all Sins for the Meaning of it is not that because Jesus Christ has shed his Blood we ought to be cleansed from our Sins without Mortifications and sufferings but the quite contrary for the Blood of Jesus Christ is the Grace that he has merited by his Blood whereby we may be purified from our Sins by Sufferings and by a Conformity to his Sorrows and Death And
Can any thing fall out against the Will of God and which he has not decreed to fall out As I live saith the Lord I delight not in the Death of a Sinner Let no Man say when he is tempted that he is tempted of God O Israel thy Destruction is of thy self God did not decree that Man should sin nor that he would permit him to sin but took care by all means to prevent it and has spar'd no Mean to recover him from it But Man has wilfully destroyed himself God created him out of pure Love to delight himself in him and therefore to make this Love perfect and compleat he created him altogether Free and Perfect He would not bound nor limit the Will of Man whom he would needs make after his own Likeness to be his Spouse and not his Slave or constrain'd to do his Will as are all the other Creatures But Man was created altogether Free as a little God Sovereign and Ruler over the other Creatures and free to use them well or ill as he would If he had received only a limited Will he would have had no Divine Quality for God to take his Delight with him for that two Beings may find Contentment together there must be a Proportion and Sympathy between them God cannot take his Delight with any Creature of a bounded Will he himself being an infinite God there must be in Man some infinite Quality by which he may unite himself to God and that is an absolute Liberty of willing which nothing can constrain This was the most precious thing that God could give to Man for by it he was made like to God for otherwise he should have been a limited Creature in whom God could not take Pleasure Could God take Delight in a thing so unlike himself Could so powerful a God unite himself to such an impotent Creature that had not Free-will to love him God having no Bounds nor Limits could he take Pleasure in a Creature whose Will was bounded And could a limited Will attain to the Love of a God without Limits This is the only thing that makes Man capable of being united to God We see in Nature the Alliance is not true and agreeable if two Persons be not united in their Wills in God if there be Force Limitation or Constraint on either side the Contentment cannot be compleat This is the Figure of the perfectly Free Union that the Soul ought to have with God and if the Soul were constrain'd or forc'd to this Union God could not take perfect Delight in it Where there is Constraint there can be no perfect Love the Free Consent and Cooperation of two united must necessarily concur to make the Love compleat As God gave this Liberty to Man when he created him so he will never take it from him for his Designs are unchangable all his Works are Eternal and his Gifts are without Repentance Both Devils and Men shall have their Free-will to all Eternity else they could not do Evil for God never retracts what he has once given he will never retake those Divine Qualities the Divine Soul and Eternal Liberty and cannot bound them because he cannot be changeable in his Gifts nor can he take away what he has been pleas'd once to give If it be establish'd among Men to lay no longer Claim to a thing given how much more ought we to hold that God lays no Claim to the Free-will of Devils and Men to whom he voluntarily gave it The Devils and demned Souls will never use their Liberty to do well being so habituated to Evil and in the Element of it as the Holy Angels and Blessed Saints will never use their Liberty to do Evil it being swallowed up in God From hence it is evident that God did not predetermine Man from all Eternity to Good or Evil by any absolute Decree for this is to constrain that which he would have to be Free to ranverse the Order he had so wisely establish'd and to take from man the most precious thing that he gave him If he had made Man a limited Creature he would have predestinated all Men to Salvation so that none of them should have perished For all that God makes absolutely dependent on him is always Good without any mixture of Evil and it can never be that a limited Creature can do Evil since God can create nothing that is Evil. God endued Man with such an unlimited Free-will that he would not only not predetermine him but also not foresee how he should dispose of that Free-will that he might not thereby limit it or oblige Man to do what he had foreseen His Power and Wisdom is as great yea far more conspicuous in forming him thus Free and letting him fully enjoy the Liberty that he had given him than if he had limited him by Fore-sight and Predestination God being Almighty can save or damn as he pleases and no body can withstand him for all are subject to him but he neither does nor ever will do it but in the Ways which his powerful Wisdom and the Love he has conceived for Man have resolved upon whom he would needs create like unto himself by the absolute Free-will he gave him and would neither constrain him to Good nor hinder him from Evil but would have him his by pure Love with the free Consent of his Will that he might delight in him and Man also might voluntarily delight in the Love of his God Thus we see how Sin came into the World and how Man damns himself God neither willed it nor permitted it that he might bring Glory to himself a most blasphemous Sentiment but against the Will of God Man abused the most precious Gift that could be bestowed upon him his Free-will and turn'd away his Love from God and placed it on himself and on the Creature God does not permit Man to do Evil but by all Means restrains him He permits him only to use the Free-will he has given him and having endued him with an immortal Soul and an eternal Liberty he can no more take away this Liberty without destroying his Nature and making him cease to be Man than he can make a Circle to be a Square without destroying the Nature of a Circle God by giving Man Free-will to make him capable of the greatest Good is no more the Cause of Man's Sin and Reprobation than a Cutler would be the Cause of a Lord 's murthering of his Brother because it was done with a Weapon which he had made for him of well-temper'd Steel of a sharp Edge and for good Uses It would be a cruel Malice to accuse the Cutler of the Murther the Malice is infinitely greater to say that God created us for Damnation or is the Cause of it because he has given us Free-will You see saith S. Augustin how much Good is wanting to the Body where the Hands are wanting and yet he makes ill use of his Hands who
this Desire of getting out of his miserable State Unless his rebellious Will do yet resist these sensible Graces and wilfully stifle those Trouble and Fears because it loves the Pleasure of its Sin more than the Love of its God this will harden the Heart and so thicken the Wall of Opposition to Grace making it at last uncapable of being saved It is certain God cannot reprobrate any Man without ceasing to be the Fountain of all Good and Man cannot save himself since he is a Nothing who can do Nothing His Salvation can never come from himself no more than his Damnation can come from God for he created all Men for Salvation and none of them shall perish for want of his Grace who never fails to give to every one what is necessary for his Salvation It is true he sometimes makes particular Elections as of the Blessed Virgin Mary for the Mother of his Humanity St. Paul for his Disciple and some others but he does not encrease his Grace to them but according to their Co-operation with the First with which they strive to resist vicious Inclinations and to break the Wall of Opposition to Grace that they may receive inward Light in greater Abundance which comes into their Souls from the Abundance of his Grace so that they can no longer resist it for their Sins being removed Grace has its full Operation dilating it self into all the parts of the Soul and there it consumes all that is Imperfect yea the least Inclinations to Evil so that Grace dwells and rules in all the Faculties of the Soul without any Impediment and at last deifies it by yielding up entirely its Free-will unto the full Power and Liberty of its God who gave it These are the Souls whom I call the Elect of God because they can no more perish and those whom I call the Elect who have chosen to follow God by the help of his Grace are all others who have chosen to follow Good and to forsake Evil. These last may perish not having entirely resign'd their Free-will into the hands of God nor broken down the Wall of Sins which resist his Grace but they abide in the Possession of this Free-will which sometimes enclines them to Good oft-times to Evil co-operating sometimes with Grace and falling also sometimes into Sin from whence they arise again by the effort they make to break down that Wall of Sin which they know to be opposite to Grace by the Disquiet it brings into the Soul by checks of Conscience and at other times by the Attractions they have to Good and the fear of Damnation which are so many Evidences that they have chosen to follow God by his Grace for if this Grace were not they would not feel Remorse of Conscience nor a desire to return to God after their Sin They are therefore Elect not that they have elected themselves for they could not have chosen God before they had a Being but God who always was may have elected them from all Eternity since all is still present to him both what is past and what is to come but he has chosen them conditionally in case they co-operate with his Grace and no otherwise leaving their Free-will still to act without which he forces no Body But when he has re-taken the Free-will which those first Elect would yield up to him then he constrains them by the force of his Love and of his Grace so that they can no more forsake him This is not of themselves but by the force of his Love which he manifests to them binding them to himself by an inseparable Bond of mutual Love so that the Soul becomes so united to him that it can no more forsake God than he can forsake it without Infidelity which can never be in God nor yet the want of his Grace And if a Soul sin after having received much Grace from God as it sometimes falls out certainly it has not effectually yielded up its Free-will unto its God but only us'd it self to co-operate with his Grace to which if it abide faithful it assuredly works out its Salvation which it has chosen to do by these Graces but if it come in the End to resist them it may perish notwithstanding of much Grace received For this Election is not Absolute but Conditional How many great Saints have attain'd to great Perfection with this Election of obeying God by the help of his Grace Having co-operated with the Talents which they have received and gained by them God has at last set them over all his Goods as he has promis'd in his Gospel to the Faithful and from the Unfaithful he causes to take the Talent to give it to him who will put it to Profit This falls out daily as to our Souls He assuredly gives them his necessary Grace if they correspond to it he encreases it and the more they have the more they shall receive their being faithful to one measure of Grace procures always greater and that infinitely for the Bounty of God is great that he delights continually to give and to encrease his Gifts But if the Soul resist the first Graces it loses them and hinders the effect of others which would have followed had it not been for this Resistance To lay the Blame of this Resistance upon God is a great Injury done him since he gives liberally without being oblig'd to it If he would with-hold the Grace of cooperating with it it were better for him to with-hold the first Grace than to render the second Grace of co-operating therewith useless God does nothing in vain if he give Grace to be saved he gives at the same time Grace to co-operate to this Salvation and if Man resist this Cooperation this is only from his own depraved Will for no Body can damn us but our selves It is true the Devils may tempt us many ways but they can never force our Free-will Wicked Men may advise us to Evil but we are still free not to believe or follow them Nothing can constrain the Free-will that God has given us to choose Good or Evil. We but flatter our selves when we say or believe it He flatters himself yet more who believes it is for want of the Grace of God that he does no Good and works not out his Salvation He deceives himself and believes Falshoods which he may easily discover if he will seriously examine his own Conscience and remark how oft God has prevented him with his Grace which he has resisted How many good Thoughts God has put into his Mind which he has rejected How many secret inward Motions which he has neglected How many good Books and holy Admonitions which might help him to Salvation which he has despised How many occasions favourable for his Salvation which he has us'd for his Damnation So many Prosperities to make him acknowledge the Love and Care that God had for him So many Adversities to recal him from his Sin and to set him
it I take Cant for a multitude of Words without any True and Divine Sence and not flowing from an inward Life and Spirit and of this there is but too much in the World But the Writings of A. B. are of another Temper and no Body will nauseate them upon this Head but they who have a secret Disgust for the Holy Scriptures God's Ways are not as our ways When we write we seek our selves we strive to discover our Reason and our Learning and study what may please the Curiosity the Fancy and the Niceness of others The Holy Writings are most unlike to ours both as to Matter and Manner and Method and Stile they are not written to please the Learned the Orator the Philosopher the Critick the Curious but to bring down every lofty Imagination and to mortifie our Self-conceit to Comfort the Humble and the Afflicted to give Light and Knowledge to the Poor and Simple and to send the Rich away empty They repeat again and again the great and necessary things of God's Law to mortifie our Niceness and Curiosity and to beat them in upon us by all means while we think it enough to know these things tho' we are not so happy as to do them Now Writings that partake so much of this Spirit will not be despis'd on this Head by any sincere Christian XXVII Some endeavour to render her Sentiments ridiculous concerning the State of the Blessed in the Life to come and they say she establishes a Mahumetan Paradise Eating and Drinking and Generation in the Kingdom of Heaven making the Earth to become that Heaven and that it shall be a Place of all sensitive Delights Vnto the pure all things are pure but unto them that are defiled and unbelieving is nothing pure but even their Mind and Conscience is defiled I would gladly ask such if Adam had continued always in the State of Innocence perfectly Pure and Holy whether they would have called his State a Mahumetan Paradise and a sensual Life If there were no Concupiscence in Man's Nature but a most ardent pure and habitual Love of God the Beauties and Delights of all the Creatures would serve to enflame the Soul still the more with the Love of God There needs no more but to understand her Sentiments to be convinced of the impudent Falshood of their Reproaches She says then That the Earth and all this visible World being wholly renewed and restored to that glorious State in which it was at first formed of which in the First Part shall be the Seat of the Kingdom of God with Men for ever where Jesus Christ God-Man will reign with the Blessed both as to his Divinity and Humanity That Heaven as to the Soul is the Presence of God and we are in Heaven when we are in God and God is in Heaven as he is in the Souls of his Saints as Augustin interprets Our Father which art in the Heavens but as God has given us both a Body and Soul he has given us also a Paradise of both the Soul can have its compleat Paradise in the Presence of God but the Body must have a material and bodily one like it self For this end the Earth and all this visible World and all that therein is were created and for the same Reason God would have become Man tho' Man had never sinn'd that he might live with him both bodily and spiritually and to make his Happiness compleat And therefore he being unchangeable in his infinitely Wise and Good Designs he will certainly make not an imaginary but a real divine and corporeal Reparation of all things to last for ever for his Recompences are Eternal and will purge away from all the Creatures the Malignity and Corruption that Sin has brought upon them And in this State every individual Saint being restored in Body and Soul to the State in which Adam was in his greatest purity before the Woman was formed out of him shall produce his like of himself alone through all Eternity from a Principle of the Love of God and by an ardent Desire that there may be still more Creatures to love and praise the Divine Majesty This then shall not be a corrupt lustful and shameful Propagation like to that of this corrupt World but altogether Pure Holy and Glorious as we see in a manner an earthly Figure of it still in all the Plants and Trees In the Resurrection they neither marry nor are given in Marriage but are as the Angels of God in Heaven Now what is there in all this unworthy of God or unsutable to the State of the Blessed or contrary to the Holy Scriptures or to the Nature of things It is certain none of the Works of God shall perish but all shall be restored to their primitive Perfection The Scripture tells us there shall be a new Heaven and a new Earth Whose Habitation would the Earth have been if Man had never sinn'd and if the Earth had never been accursed And whose Habitation shall it be when it is renewed and made a new Earth When Men fancied all the Works of God to be shut up as it were in a round Sphere and the Earth to be its Centre and the Planetary and Starry Heavens so many firm and solid Orbs moving round about it and the Empyreal Heaven above all this Sentiment about the Earth might have been thought absurd But in the Age we live in wherein is made known the vastness of the Universe and that all the fix'd Stars are probably Suns and Centres of different Systems of the whole and all the other Planets as well as our Earth among which it moves replenish'd no doubt with variety of living and intelligent Beings we have reason to admire the Providence of God in giving Discoveries to a simple unlearned Woman of the State and Habitation of the Blessed sutable to what is now known of the Frame of the Universe which is also fully confirmed from the Holy Scriptures as was shewn in the First Part and does so clearly demonstrate the unchangeable Wisdom and Goodness of God who having created Man in a Pure and Happy State and the Delights and Beauties of this World for his Accessory Felicity and the Devil by his Craft and Subtilty having perverted both and made this Earth for many Ages nothing but Scenes of Wickedness and Misery yet God by his infinitely Wise Conduct and Providence brings about at last the perfect Renovation of Man and of his Habitation the Earth and of all the Creatures and makes it an Eternal Paradise of unspotted Purity and Bliss Whereas on the other Hand it is most unaccountable how infinite Wisdom and Goodness who changes not after he had form'd Man and this World in so excellent a State and both are corrupted by the Devils should continue the Earth for so many Ages to be the Theatre of their Wickedness and then entirely destroy it Might it not then be said as she expresses it That God
that A. B. was Holy and in the Love of God and that to such a Degree that this Love seem'd to flow from her into them and other well-disposed Souls because many are brought by her to abandon their own Wills and the Creatures that they may Love God only and subject themselves wholly to his Will And I am perswaded that her Writings will have such Operations in all those who shall read them with a sincere and hearty desire to find the saving Truth and to endeavour to walk in it in so far as they know it Unless they be so far possest with Prejudices as that they will admit of nothing for Truth but what is consonant to their formerly receiv'd Opinions looking upon every thing that differs from them or seems contrary unto them as Lies and Error This is as if one looking always through a coloured Glass by which all Bodies would appear to him of the same Colour should imagine and affirm that other Men who look with the naked and single Eye are perfectly mistaken when they say that they see clearly that every Body has its own distinct Colour XVIII Unto these Four Evidences of the Sanctity of A. B. this Fifth ought to be added to wit the wonderful Works that A. B. did and the extraordinary Divine Lights that God communicated to her To reckon up all these we behov'd to narrate her whole Life and to adduce all her Writings which are full of such wonderful Works and Light Therefore let every one that loves the Truth apply to these Writings and which soever he shall be pleas'd to peruse he will by them be sufficiently convinc'd of this matter But that some Instance of this may be given it is to be considered that this ought to be look'd upon as a great Miracle in A. B. that she so generously fought against her corrupt Nature that she wholly subdued it not by her own Strength which could do nothing but Evil but by the Grace of God through which the weakest can do all things This Miracle ought to be more esteemed than raising the Dead giving Sight to the Blind and such like which serve only for this present Life and therefore may be performed by Men who are not Holy But to overcome corrupt Nature is an infallible mark of Holiness for the obtaining of which all other Miracles ought to be done otherwise they avail nothing but on the contrary do much hurt Among the innumerable Divine Lights communicated to Antonia Bourignon this is the chief that she had explain'd the Truths of the Gospel more clearly and efficaciously than any has done hitherto demonstrating that an Obedience to them is absolutely necessary for Salvation and rescuing them from the Glosses and false Expositions by which the Learned have so perverted the Truths of the Gospel that almost every Christian promises Salvation to himself although he do not walk according to these Truths XIX Since then it seems to appear sufficiently from what has been said that A. B. was Holy and in the Love of God it will be now fit to consider the Second Question proposed to wit If she was moved by the Spirit of God to write and to enlighten others For answer to this Question there needs nothing be adduc'd but what has been said as to the First Question For it A. B. was Holy and in the Love of God she would not have committed so great a Sin as to pretend that she was moved to write by the Spirit of God if it was false or if she was not certain that it was most true But that I may answer something in particular to this Second Question it is to be considered how we may be assured that any Writing is endited by God In order to this let us enquire how it appears that the Holy Scriptures were written by Men led by the Spirit of God as all Christians do believe XX. That we may proceed aright in this Enquiry it is to be remarked that God gives unto Men Breath and Life and all Things for in him we live and move and have our Being Nevertheless he has given to all Creatures the Faculty whereby to continue in their Being or to exist For God is Eternal and his Gifts are without Repentance therefore his Works do never perish besides they are endued with a Power of multiplying themselves and producing their like It is true many things perish but these are not the Works of God but Corruption and Vanity brought into the World and yet coming into it by Sin and Lust But besides these Faculties of preserving themselves and producing their like God gave to Man the Liberty of turning himself to God that he might be govern'd and ruled by him or of acting by the Strength already given him without asking new Strength from God If he do so he departs from God the Author of all Light and Good and then such a Man of necessity becomes Miserable and is sunk in Darkness as appear'd in the Fall of Adam and is to be seen daily in those who follow their own Wills that is who act by the Strength once given them and will not ask new Strength from God nor yield up themselves to be govern'd by him But if a Man yield up himself to God and ask help from him in every thing he goes about he will find God ready to help him Even as one in a very close Chamber is in the Day-time immediately enlightned by the Sun how soon he permits the Windows of the Chamber to be opened and the more Windows there are opened he receives the greater Light XXI From what has been said it appears that when we say that the Holy Scripture is endited by God we understand thereby that the Holy Men who committed it to Writing did so wholly deny their own Strength whether innate unto them or acquired by Diligence Learning and Meditation that they willingly acknowledged that thereby they could do no good nor any thing that was acceptable to God but did so entirely yield up themselves to be govern'd by God that they no longer lived to themselves but God did live and operate in them Now that we may be assured that the Holy Scriptures were penned by such Men we must examine what Operation the Holy Scriptures have in our Souls When then we experience that the Thoughts of our Hearts are manifested by them which can be done by none but God who alone knows the Heart and if this Holy Scripture be a powerful Mean for loosing our Hearts from the Love of Temporal things and drawing them to the Love of God and of things Eternal For the Word of God is quick and powerful and sharper than any Two-edged Sword piercing even to the dividing asunder of the Soul and Spirit the Joynts and Marrow and is a discerner of the Thoughts and Intents of the Heart overthrowing every Imagination and Thought that exalts it self against God So that an Unbeliever perceiving
which his Highness had granted to the Partners of that Isle that she had nothing to do with the Pastours of Holstein her Enemies that she and 〈◊〉 would let them and their Hearers do and say what â—â—ey pleased that while they gave Offence to no body but liv'd honestly and justly and even brought temporal Advantage to the Inhabitants of the Country and had nothing but just Designs they ought not to oppose them fearing thereby to oppose God That otherwise God would take Vengeance on them and that she was much afraid that he might punish the Country and the Inhabitants in the same Manner that she had been and might yet be treated by them It is like the Discourses of the Pastours made all this vanish but they could not put off what follow'd some Months after However she resolv'd to wait with Patience to see if they would grant her just Requests She applied herself to take a particular Care of forming the Souls of those who were with her according to the Will of God both as to spiritual and temporal She wrote for their spiritual Direction besides many particular Letters one common to them all which is the Second Part of The Renovation of the Evangelical Spirit and for their outward Behaviour began to write the Treatise called Sound Advices and also The Rules of Christians which last is joined to the Treatise called The Stones of the New Jerusalem As she prescrib'd them nothing of herself she ask'd God his Will as to the Government of outward Things for which he gave her particular Rules which are already put into English in the Preface to The Light of the World p. 19. Shortly after this the Court was forc'd to remove the King of Denmark and his Troops passed over all the Country and the President being then secur'd the Pastours applied to the King's Council who then took the Government of the Country to cause her to be seiz'd she immediately after went for Hambourg with one Maid leaving her Friends in the House which she had bought but some Weeks before and the King's Armies came into the Country and ravaged every where and they who would not tolerate a Servant of God who could do them nothing but Good both for Body and Soul were forc'd to suffer private and publick Hardships which were long and severe enough LXXIV She came to Hambourg the last of March 1676. where there was Appearance she might live long enough retiredly in a Place whose Freedom Greatness and Trade keeps them from taking exact Notice of Strangers and private Persons that live there The first Traverse she met with was that she could find no where a free Chamber where she might live retir'd so that after having waited all Day she was forc'd to go lodge in a Soldier 's House who offer'd her a little Chamber where she staid fifteen Months for want of a Retreat elsewhere In the Spring time she applied herself to make a little Garden of a Court which was useless to the Lodging and accommodated it very well and profitably She repaired and whiten'd her Chamber and a Part of the Lodging wash'd her own Linen and serv'd herself in every thing except the Buying of Provisions not daring to go abroad lest she should meet with some of her Acquaintaince She was most exact in all the outward things which Necessity and good Order required and said this pleased God more than the most sublime Contemplations which often gratifies self-Self-love and thereafter gives Occasion of Disorder and Displeasure to the Soul by the Confusion that Negligence has brought in outward things Whereas outward Labour even in the meanest things humbles the Heart simplifies it begets an entire and exact Submission to God a laudable Charity and Care for our Neighbour and a certain Repose and Contentment of Soul which did more satisfie S. Joseph in being a Carpenter than were the Doctors of the Law in preaching in Moses's Chair She told how S. Terese having begun to write one of her sublimest Works and having interrupted it for to Spin when her Religious Nuns begg'd she would continue to write she answered them that she must first have done with her Distaff This A. B. told sometimes smiling to those who would perswade her not to employ her self in outward Labours that she might bestow all her Time in writing spiritual Things LXXV She wrote then the Second Part of Solid Vertue and the excellent Preface to The Renovation of the Evangelical Spirit and the Preface before The Blindness of Men now adays for she resolv'd to prepare all her Writings to be published after that God had made known to her that such was his Will for by them the Gospel of the Kingdom shall be preached thro' all the World There were several Persons who came to her at this time from several Parts and being convinced of the Truth offered her all the Services they were capable of And she offered them always unto God that she might know how to behave with them She was again surrounded with Afflictions on all sides In Sleswick her Friends were robb'd beaten and wounded by the Soldiers and Rabble and forc'd to leave the Lodging and flee into the Woods and from thence thro the Snow into the Town of Kiel In Noordstrand the Peasants stole the Beast and other Goods she had bought with her Money her Friends there neglecting to sue after them She herself at Hambourg was seized with some Fits of Sickness which brought her very low And perceiving that some Friends who were then with her were troubled with the Thoughts of her being to be taken from them shortly by Death she said Why do you make such Reckoning of me I am nothing but a human Creature Fix upon God and cleave to him From him you must call for Help him you must strive to please You are to have no Concern at all for me as to my Person It is to God only and to his Spirit that you must cleave If I come to die what matters it You must not for this leave off in the least to cleave unto God and continue faithful unto him If you trust in me you will deceive your selves I may die as any other Person And if God did not still preserve my Life as by a Miracle amidst so much Weakness and Perils I should have been dead already a thousand times They were so perswaded of this particular Protection of God that it made them too confident that God would yet preserve her Life for a long time One of them said to her I do not believe that you can die so soon whatever Evil befall you And I says she do certainly believe I may die even at this Moment What reason have you to believe the contrary Because replied he God has given you Promises which are not yet fulfilled and we are sure that God will not be wanting in his Word He has promised that you shall have Children who shall imitate you
many vocal words others to Speculations or Meditations of the Spirit which they call Mental Prayers But believe me it is neither Words nor Speculation that makes Prayer But TRUE PRAYER consists in the Conversition of Spirit that Man has with his God when his heart speaks to him and asks the things that he has need of or blesses him and thanks him for his Favours or praises his Greatness Goodness Love and the other Qualities which Man observes in his God This Elevation of Spirit or Conversation that he has with God makes up true Prayer without which there can be no true Prayer tho' they call by this Name many divers things which it were impossible that Man could do continually as Jesus Christ has said that he must always pray and never faint 17. He could not have appointed Man to do impossible things as continual Prayer would be after the manner that they would understand it For if to pray a Man behov'd to be always in Churches all the other things necessary for the support of Life would perish and Man would die for want of them And if to pray he must be always on his Knees the Body could not suffer this continual Fatigue And if he behov'd always to meditate fine Speculations in his Spirit he would break his head or if he must speak Prayers continually he could neither sleep eat nor drink So that it is not to be believ'd that God demands of Man any other continual Prayer but that of the Conversation of his Spirit with God which may be done continually while working drinking eating writing yea even while sleeping seeing he who has entertain'd his Spirit with God all the day long does certainly rest with him while sleeping because the Spirit having walked with its God while awake it reposes it self likewise with him when sleeping And usually the vital Spirits are full of that which they love and that which has been seen and heard in the day time is represented unto the Spirit in Sleep So that he who converses with his Spirit elevated unto God by day loses very little of the same Conversation during the night and even sometimes God communicates himself unto him by Dreams 18. By which it appears that it is very possible to pray continually as Jesus Christ has taught us yea there is nothing more easie and agreeable For my part I could not live without this continual Prayer and Death would be more sweet to me than to be one hour out of it because all sorts of Pleasures without this Conversation are to me Vexations and mortal Afflictions For this cause I abide always in it and I do not think that you have seen me go out of this Conversation to delight in other things By which you may see that it is very possible to pray always and never to cease and that it is even good and pleasant seeing he who is in this continual Prayer is never melancholy which you may also have observed as to me amidst so many different Events and occasions of Grief 19. Give your self therefore to this Continual Prayer and by it you shall overcome both your inward and outward Enemies You shall have Joy and Peace in your self and you shall learn all that you have need to do and avoid Do not apply your self to contemlate the great Wonders of God or his Conduct towards Men nor the other Mysteries of God or of Religion but practise this Continual Prayer according to your need speaking to God continually If you are in Temptation beg his Assistance if you are in Ignorance beg Wisdom from him to fulfil his Will if you are weak Strength and if you receive his Graces bless him and thank him for this Favour done to you a Sinner And thus you shall have continual matter of having your Spirit lifted up to God in which TRUE PRAYER consists By this you shall habituate your self by degrees to speak unto God and to converse with him in Spirit and at last he will speak unto you and you shall be here united unto him looking for a perfect Unity in Eternity Which she wishes you who remains Your very affectionate in Jesus Christ A. B. From the place of my Retreat Apr. 7. 1671. LETTER III. That the Spirit cannot rule where the Flesh rules That to him who has mortified the old Adam in himself it is most easie to imitate Jesus Christ and that it is difficult only to him who would live according to his Natural Inclinations This is the 7th Letter of the Third Part of La lum nee on tenebr My dear Child 1. I Do not wonder that your Friends say It is impossible to imitate Jesus Christ so long as they live according to their Natural Inclinations for it is a certain Truth that a natural Man cannot live according to the Spirit of Jesus Christ He must be regenerated and the old Adam must die in him for the Spirit cannot reign where the Flesh reigns seeing they are two sworn Enemies and cannot agree together no more than Heat and Cold This it is that makes Thunders and Lightnings in the Air when the Cold and Heat meet together the same befalls Souls cold in Charity when they feel themselves touch'd by the Arrows of God's Love or the heat of his Anger 2. If it be said to a carnal Person that he ought to love God with all his Heart with all his Soul and with all his Strength you shall see him presently break out in Words and throw out as it were fiery Flames of Anger to maintain that he loves God while in effect he loves nothing but himself And if it be told him that he cannot love God while he loves himself and the transitory things of this World he well let fly like Claps of Thunder against him who lays before him this Truth because he neither knows nor conceives it and his natural Inclinations cannot take pleasure in loving that which they do not see nor feel such as God and eternal Things which are invisible to his Carnal Eyes 2. We must of necessity die to the Flesh that we may live to the Spirit otherwise we shall never comprehend Spiritual things There are two Natures in us the one is Divine and other Humane The Divine Nature loves things Eternal and the Humane Nature loves things Temporal The Divine respects nothing that is earthly and the Humane respects nothing that is heavenly because each of these tend always to their Centre The Divine part in Man aims and tends to Divine things and endeavours to serve God who is its Principle from whence it comes and the Humane Nature aims and tends always to Earth from whence it takes its Original and cannot be pleased in any other thing This is the Reason why they who live according to their Nature say That it is impossible to imitate Jesus Christ which is most true as long as they will needs continue to live according to their Nature For it was corrupted by
Christians I 've sought from my Nativity I liv'd I wrote to shew how such to be Convinc'd the World of â—rrors sins abuses All hate me for 't each one my NAME traduces To death they persecute me every where How should I other Lot than JESUS bear AN APOLOGY FOR M. Antonia Bourignon In Four Parts I. An Abstract of her Sentiments and a Character of her Writings II. An Answer to the Prejudices raised against them III. The Evidences she brings of her being led by the Spirit of God with her Answers to the Prejudices opposed thereunto To which is added A Dissertation of Dr. De Heyde on the same Subject IV. An Abstract of her Life To which are added Two LETTERS from different Hands containing REMARKS on the Preface to the Snake in the Grass and Bourignianism Detected AS ALSO Some of her own Letters whereby her True Christian Spirit and Sentiments are farther justified and vindicated particularly as to the Doctrine of the Merits and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ Non multum Disputandum Nuda enim Veritas seipsam Validissime tutatur probé intellecta genuinâ suâ luce tenebras omnes Dispellit Rob. Leighton Archiep. Glasc Prelect Theol Paraenes p 199 LONDON Printed for D. Brown at the Black Swan without Temple Bar S. Manship at the Ship in Cornhil R. Parker at the Unicorn under the Piazza's of the Royal-Exchange and H Newman at the Grashopper in the Poultry 1699. THE PREFACE I. SVch and so universal are the Prejudices raised amongst all Parties against the Writings and Sentiments of A. B. that the Sight of the very Title Page of this Apology will make some perhaps throw it by which Disdain scorning to look into it others to take it up in Derision and ask What would this Babler say Others to pry into it with an evil Eye with a Design only to carp at it and to pick out here and there some Expressions or Sentiments which differ from the ordinary Systems and put them in such a Dress as may excite the Hatred and Derision of the People II. But being fully perswaded in my Conscience that those Writings do greatly tend to revive the Life and Spirit of Christianity which is acknowledg'd to be so much decay'd and lost amongst all the Parties of Christendom and knowing that there are many well-disposed Persons who are frightned from lookâ—ng into them because of the odious Representations made of them and the Prejudices given them against them who if these Prejudices were remov'd would certainly peruse them with Delight and Profit to their Souls and would sensibly â—eel that the True Doctrine of Jesus Christ and the only way to eternal Life chalk'd out in his Life and Sayings is there plainly and distinctly represâ—nted I shall therefore in all Sincerity without Respect of Parties or Persons write this Apology And I do earnestly beg of Almighty God the Father and Fountain of all Light and Love that he may be pleas'd so to illuminate my Mind with his Heavenly Light and warm my Heart with his Divine Love that I may utter nothing but what flows from or tends to both and that some Rays of both may stream through this Writing to touch the Hearts and Spirits of others III. To dispose Persons to hearken to and to make a right use of an Apology of this Nature it is fit to premise two things First That it needs not prejudice any against A. B. and her Writings so far as not to listen to an Apology for both that they know she is evil spoken of said to be an Enthusiast an Enchantress a Blasphemer a Seducer and the Devil of a Saint that her Writings are said to be full of Heresies Delusions and Errors and that by Persons of all Parties Papists Protestants Lutherans Calvinists Presbyterians Episcopal Persons Anabaptists Quakers and even by the Preachers and Writers and Learned Men of the respective Parties for there is nothing more ordinary than for the most Innocent and the most Vpright to be thus treated Woe to you when all Men shall speak well of you This was the Treatment that Innocence and Truth it self met with our Lord Jesus Christ He was made to pass for a Blasphemer a Sorcerer a Perverter of the Law of God The most Learned and the most Godly in his Age hated him They who in other things stood at the greatest Distance did agree in this Herod and Pilate the Pharisees and Sadducees the Jews and Samaritans So that this may be rather a favourable Prejudice on her behalf at least so far as to allow her a fair Hearing IV. 2. I shall entreat you may not come to read this Apology nor the Writings to which it invites you with an evil Eye They who come to consider Writings or Persons with this Disposition are not capable of understanding them aright themselves or of giving a true Representation of them to others I know no Person tho' never so innocent nor Truth tho' never so clear nor Book tho writ with never so much Plainness Sincerity and Consistency which they who consider with this Spirit may not mistake expose misrepresent and ridicule Nothing more true than our Saviour's Words nothing more confirm'd from daily Experience The Light of the Body is the Eye if therefore thine Eye be single thy whole Body shall be full of Light but if thine Eye be Evil thy whole Body shall be full of Darkness It was from those different Dispositions that our Lord himself and his Doctrine met with such different Entertainment in the World They who were full of self-Self-love and Esteem and desir'd to love God and the World both to please Him and their Appâ—tites too to get and keep that Rank in the Esteem of Men which they thought they merited and hugg'd the Glosses and Sences they had put upon God's Law by which they had reconcil'd it with the following of their own corrupt Inclinations such look'd on all that Jesus said aud did with an evil Eye they never came to hear him but with a Design to catch him in his Words and they found out ways to put a hard Sence upon every thing The Miracles he wrought they said were done by the Power of the Devil they accus'd him of breaking the Sabbath Day and of countenancing it in his Disciples of Blasphemy in calling himself the Son of God of Pride in speaking well of himself of a Design to destroy the Law and seduce the People by his Doctrine and they made him an Enemy to Caesar in calling himself a King But the sincere and the single-hearted who came with a pure and upright Desire and Intention to understand and to follow the Truth did readily embrace the Doctrine of Jesus Christ the entrance of his Words gave them Light and Understanding and they were so fully satisfied of the great things of God's Law that they were not apt to wrest or mistake his Sayings or Actions in things of lesser moment
Religion have to one another This then is certainly a remarkable Property of the Writings of A. B. that they give so distinct a view of the Relation of the several Parts and Duties of Christianity to one another and to the whole How some hold the Place of the end and others of the means some of which are so absolutely necessary in Man's present State that without them he cannot attain the End They make appear that the great end of Christianity is to bring us back to the Love of God and that we can never recover this without the mortifying of our Corrupt Nature and that this cannot be effected but by obeying the Doctrine and following the Example of Jesus Christ so that his Commands are all the necessary Helps of our Frailty teaching us what way to overcome our Corrupt Nature and to return to the Love of God For the End of the Commandment is Charity The Gospel-Law teaches Man Poverty of Spirit to shew Man that Covetousness has withdrawn him from the Love of God and that he cannot recover it without ceasing to covet earthly Goods and it teaches Men to be humble in Heart and to choose the lowest Place because they have lost the Love of God by loving themselves and thinking themselves worthy of Honour and Glory while they merit nothing but Contempt and Confusion Jesus Christ chose a poor and mean State in the World lived in Hardships and Unease in Reproach and Contempt and never did his own Will but the Will of him that sent him to show us what are the things that withdraw us from the Love of God and what are the means we must use to overcome them XVIII 3. The Writings of A. B. do give us most lovely Representations of the Divine Nature such as may serve to enflame our Souls with Love and Wonder when we think on the depth and height and breadth and length of the Love of God in Christ Jesus which passeth all Knowledge They shew us that God's very Nature is Love that there is none Good but God that no kind of Evil comes from him but all Good that it was nothing but Love and Goodness that made him create Man so wonderful a Creature that he might communicate himself to him and dwell in him by his Light and Love and that he might oblige him by the greatness of his Magnificence made a world of beautiful Creatures to attend him and to compleat his Happiness and Contentment would needs become like to him as he had at first form'd Man after his own Image And so far was he from designing that Man should destroy himself that he us'd all means to prevent it and to keep him from abusing the greatest Natural Gift he could bestow upon him Liberty of Will and which he could not in justice take back again for the Gifts of God are without Repentance That Man's Baseness and Fall did not alter God's Love but he resolves to recover him again and continues unalterably his first Design of taking his Delight with him that he accepts of the Intercession and Mediation of Jesus Christ for that End and allows Man Grace and a Time and Means of Penitence that the very Evils that came upon Man and upon the Creatures by his Sin he order'd them all so as that they might tend to his Good and his Recovery thrust him out of a delightful Paradise into an Earth cursed for his sake and bringing forth Throns and Thistles least the Pleasures of the first should now still bewitch his Heart the more and that the Miseries and Vexations of the last might give him Occasions for Penitence and make him return to his God that God has not forsaken Man but Man has forsaken his God that God by all his Works and by his Operations in Man gives him all sort of Occasions to love him That he is not content to send us his Servants and Prophets to enlighten us but he came himself and became in all things like to us yet without Sin that he might redeem and save us That God tempts no Man but every Man is drawn away of his own Lust That he damns no Man for he is the Fountain of all Good and can do no Evil and the Damnation of a Soul is the greatest Evil in the World That he does not permit Sin but permits Man to make use of his Free-will which being the greatest Treasure he could receive it was not just for God to take it back again and if Man abuse it it is for himself so he may do with his Hands and Tongue which are given him for excellent uses That as God is not the Author of any Sin any Moral Evil neither by Influence nor by Decree nor by Permission but it proceeds wholly from Men and Devils by the ill use of the Liberty and Free-will that God gave them so neither is he the Author of any Natural Evil or Malignity that is in the Creatures he having created all Good and Perfect but Sin and the Self will of Man has brought a Malignity into all things and therefore it belongs to Man as being the Works of his Hands That God lets this Malignity continue now in this Time of Trial to withdraw Man from the Love of the Creatures that at the Times of the Restitution of all things he will deliver all his Creatures from the Malignity contracted by the Sin of Man and since it is just to render to each one what belongs to him it is necessary that they who will not return to a Dependance upon their God have for their Portion this Malignity of all the Creatures to all Eternity as being the Work of their own Hands That in the Love of God consists all Good and all Happiness and in the turning away from that Love all Evil and all Misery which Men are not now so sensible of because of the superficial and transient Delights with which the Creatures do amuse and tickle them but upon the removal of that they shall feel it to all Eternity God is not the Author of Death but by one Man Sin entred into the World and Death by Sin and Death has pass'd over all because all have sinn'd It is saith St. Augustine God alone the only Truth the only Salvation of all and the First and Supream Essence from whom every thing is what it is in so far as it is for in so far as it is what it is it is good and therefore Death is not from God For God did not make Death neither does he take Pleasure in the Destruction of the Living for the supream Essence makes every thing to be what it is and therefore it is called the Essence But Death constrains that which dies not to be in so far as it dies for if these things which die should die altogether undoubtedly they would come to nothing But by how much less they partake of Essence by so much they die Now a Body is less
have also the Pencil which is the Word with which Jesus Christ and his Apostles laid on these fine Colours of Vertues in Souls but they want as that Ape the Spirit of that excellent Master which is Jesus Christ They have on Paper the same Words which the Holy Spirit dictated but they have not the same Holy Spirit to apply them in Practice to their own Souls and far less to the Souls of their Hearers XXV 10. Those Writings give us such just and clear Representations of the Truths of Christianity as tend to take us off from Self and from the Creatures and to make us turn unto and depend wholly upon God such as does not favour us in the least Sin and yet encourages the greatest Sinner to turn to God such as leads us to ascribe nothing to our selves but Evil and nothing to God but Good Such as lets us see that nothing can excuse us from obeying the Commands of the Gospel and following the Example of Jesus Christ without which by him tâ—ere is no Salvation It is true of Doctrines as well as Men By their Fruits ye shall know them Such Doctrines as tend to sooth Mens Corrupt Inclinations to teach them how to love God and the World too to gratifie their Appetites here and yet hope to enjoy God hereafter I do not mean in so many express Words but in their natural Tendency such certainly are not of God Now the Doctrines contained in those Writings have quite another Tendency as has been said There we have such true and lively Representations of God as shews us that he is altogether Lovely of his Design in creating Man only to be enjoy'd and lov'd by him without any decree or purpose of damning the greatest part of Mankind as may stir us up to comply with so tender a Love with so generous a Design of the horrid Degeneracy and Corruption of Man now both in Soul and Body as may make us abhor our selves of our Sins their being purely our own deed without any the least Predetermination or Concurrence of God but the contrary as may keep us from excusing our selves or laying the blame on God of the Merits Satisfaction and Intercession of Jesus Christ as may convince us that Pardon and Reconciliation with God and Grace and Means to return to God is to be obtain'd and that only by him of the Necessity and Nature of the preventing concurring and renewing Grace of God as may make us continually seek to him for it and yield up our selves to be guided by it of the Nature and Corruption of our Will as shews the absolute necessity of denying it and yielding it up to God of the Doctrine and Example of Jesus Christ as may convince us that our Corrupt Nature cannot be overcome and we cannot return to the Love of God without obeying his Precepts and following his Example Now Writings of such a Tendency ought not to be despis'd and ridicul'd by the Professors and Preachers of the Religion of Jesus Christ and that they have this Tendency I appeal to any who have read any of them without an Evil Eye XXVI 11. Those Writings do contain also many Divine Explications of the Holy Scripture not after the way of criticizing and reckoning up the several meanings and acceptions of a Word or the various Sences of Inpreters which a Man may be well vers'd in and yet be altogether ignorant of the true sence and meaning of the Holy Scripture where he pretends to Interpret it We see all Sciences have a certain Light by which they are discerned a certain Disposition of Faculties which makes us capable to understand them certain Principles which lead to the Knowledge of them and when these are wanting we grope in the Dark Children and Boys may understand all the Words of a Book of Philosophy of the Propositions in Euclid and yet understand nothing of the Truths contain'd there To understand the Holy Scriptures and the things of God we had need to be endued with the same Spirit and to be in the same Disposition with those who wrote them Now if any will be pleas'd to compare the Expositions given in those Writings of some places of Holy Scripture with the learned Comments of the Interpreters and Criticks of the Age I am perswaded that if they be not greatly prejudic'd they will be convinc'd that her Expositions come from a more Divine Original than than the most of the other that they give a clearer Light more worthy of God and more suitable to the great Ends of Religion that in this the Truth of our Saviour's words is manifest that God hides these things from the Wise and Prudent and reveals them unto Babes and that with great reason she blest God who preserv'd her from drinking in Humane Learning Of all these I shall instance one which deserves a particular Consideration and that is her Exposition of the 24th Chapter of St. Matthew set down in the First Part of La Lumiere nee on Tenebres It is too long to offer to transcribe it here they who are desirous to see it need not want Occasions To this I cannot but subjoin the just Cautions she gives and the excellent Rules for the Interpreting of the Holy Scriptures She makes appear how rash Men are in glossing the Holy Scriptures since the things which concern our Salvation are so plainly set down in them that they need no Glosses and the obscure things cannot be understood but by the same Spirit who endited them and not by Humane Wisdom which is directly opposite to the Wisdom of the Holy Spirit which descends only into humble Souls That they who will needs interpret the Scriptures by Humane Wisdom fall into great Mistakes and understand the Terms quite othewise than the Spirit of God intended Thus it is said that God hardened Pharaoh's Heart the meaning cannot be that he hardens Mens Hearts by making them obstinate in Evil for God can never co-operate to any Evil being the Fountain of all Good But he speaks thus to make us know that he leaves a wicked Man to go on in his Wickedness when he will not be restrain'd But on his part he uses always Goodness towards them that he may convert them both by good Inspirations Admonitions and other proper Means But when their Free-wills are willful to persist in Evil he leaves them to themselves The main Difficulty there is in understanding of the Scriptures arises from this that we do not know the Qualities of God and we are ready to attribute to him such as Men have imagining that he has a Love for some and a Hatred for others And thus every one is wedded to his own Sence and Opinions and will maintain them as the Truths of God But the best Course is still to take the Holy Scriptures in that Sence that draws us more and more to the Love of God and to the Knowledge of our own
seems therefore now that all was not good as he had made it that Man began to abuse the Free Will that God had given him to be less ardent in his Love and Dependance upon God and to lean towards the Creatures and therefore to prevent his total Fall he makes a Help-meet for him gives him a Companion endu'd with an immortal Soul and the living Image of God as himself that in Loving this living Image of the Divinity as himself his Affection might be raised and strengthened in the Love of God 4. That Jesus Christ was come immediately from Adam and that God in him did assume the human Nature before the Fall of Man is insinuated by those Instances in the Holy Scripture that he is call'd peculiarly the Son of Man there being none other so but he the second Adam that he is said to be the First-born of every Creature none of the Creatures having produc'd any of their Kinds before Adam that the Lord conversed familiarly with Adam and spoke with him Face to Face and he heard the Lord walking in the Garden and hid himself Thus it was God in the human Nature Jesus Christ that spoke to Adam to Noah to Abraham to Jacob to Moses to the Patriarchs and the Prophets The Interpretations which by latter Writers are given of those Apparitions are an evident Straining of the Text as to say that it is a created Angel a Simple Creature who says I am the God of thy Father the God of Abraham And Moses hid his Face for he was afraid to look upon God It was he who in Person did lead the Israelites by Day in a Pillar of a Cloud and by Night in a Pillar of Fire out of which he spake to Moses Face to Face as a Friend speaketh to his Friend Thus after the Idolatry of the Golden Calf he threatned not to go up any longer in the midst of them but to send an Angel before them And when Moses desired to see his Glory he was covered with the Lord's Hand while he passed by and permitted only to see his back Parts because he could not see his Face and live the Weakness of our corrupt Nature not being able to behold that Glory without being dissolv'd and yet this Divine Body tho' covered with a Cloud made such Impression by the Rays of its Glory on the Body of Moses as that after forty days Conversation his Countenance did shine And the ancient Fathers were so sensible that all this could not be said of an Angel that many of them were in the Opinion that the Son of God did assume a human Body before he was incarnate and therein appeared to Adam and the Patriarchs so Justin Martyr Tertullian Irenaeus c. A very pious and learned Divine of the Church of England has of late made appear that Jesus Christ immediately after the Fall of Man became the Mediatior and Surety of a New Covenant and so under the most high God and Father did immediately rule and govern his Church and People and that therefore 1. There was a certain extraordinary Angel who frequently appeared and spoke to the Jewish Patriarchs who is sometimes called Jehovah who ordinarily assumed to himself Divine Appellations and to whom the holy Men rendred Divine Honours Vows and Sacrifices and that he appear'd to them in the Form of a Man 2. That he was a Divine Person and no created Being 3. That he was that Divine Person that descended upon Mount Sinai and from thence removed into the Tabernacle and thence into the Temple 4. That he was not God the Father 5. That he was God the Son who appeared to the Patriarchs Joh. 8. 56 58. brought Israel out of Egypt and descended on Mount Sinai Heb. 12. 16. Eph. 4. 8. Psal 68. led them thro' the Wilderness into Canaan 1 Cor. 10. 9. dwelt in the Jewish Tabernacle and Temple Joh. 12. 41. compared with Is 6. 1. and was that Jehovah and Divine Lord and King who under the most high Father presided over the Jewish Church Eph. 5 14. with Is 60. 1. Is 41. 4. and 48. 12. with Rev. 1. 2 17. and 2. 8. and after his coming into the World he still retain'd his Right and Title of King of Israel Matth. 2. 2. Joh. 1. 49. and 12. 13. Zech. 9. 9 14 15. Joh. 18. 33 34 35 36 37. Now it being evident that immediately after the Fall of Man Jesus Christ became a Mediatour and Surety for him that he took the immediate Care of his People and often appeared to them in the Form of a Man is it not as agreeable with the Analogy of Faith and the Holy Scriptures to say he was truly so than to affirm that he took only the Appearance of a Man till he cloathed himself with our Frailty and Mortality Besides this is a wonderful Instance of the infinite Wisdom and Goodness of God that so many of the Angels having fallen from their first State and so all Intercourse between God and them broken off to prevent the Fall of Man or if he should fall that there might be a way for his Recovery and that there might be one for whose Sake and Mediation he might pardon Man and conferr new Graces on him that therefore the Eternal Son of God should unite himself to Man's Nature and become Man while Man was yet in his Integrity and Innocency since afterwards the Divinity would not have united it self to sinful Man and so all Intercourse between God and Man should have been broken off as it is between him and the Fallen Angels 5. That Sin did strangely deform the Body of Man and that it became quite another thing than it was before appears by this that Man after his Sin was ashamâ—d of himself saw his Nakedness and was ashamd of it and sought something wherewith to cover it whereas there was no such Shame before no more than the Sun can be ashamed that his Light and Glory is not covered with Clouds and Darkness 6. That Sin has also deform'd the Creation which is to be restored to its primitive State is expresly pointed out in the Holy Scriptures we being told that the Creature was made subject to Vanity and that the whole Creation groaneth and travelleth in Pain together until now and that it shall be delivered from the Bondage of Corruption into the glorious Liberty of the Children of God 7. That all Men are the Natural Off-spring of Adam as to their Souls as well as to their Bodies seems to be a most just and true Sentiment We see in this visible World God has endued all living Creatures with a Power to produce their like from the meanest Plant to the most perfect Animal All kinds of Birds Beasts and Fishes produce their Off-spring of the same kind of Body Life and Spirit with themselves endued with the same Power of producing their like which Life and Spirit
them believe they are good Christians tho' really in their Hearts they have not one of the Qualities of the Spirit of Jesus Christ For instead of loving Poverty they love the Wealth of this World instead of loving Sufferings they love their Pleasures their Ease and their Contentments and instead of being willing to be despised they desire to be honoured and so of all the rest And in L'Antichrist Decouvert A. B. has made appear beyond all Exception that the Spirit of Antichrist prevails among all the Parties of Christendom and that thereby the Devil has with more Cunning and more irreclaimably possest Men with his Spirit and especially the Well-meaning so that the Harlots and openly Wicked will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven sooner than they because their Wickedness being manifest they are by the Grace of God more readily converted whereas in these the Spirit of the Devil being converted with the Mask of Jesus Christ he still makes them believe that they are guided by the Spirit of God when they are really acted by the Spirit of Antichrist 12. That the Degeneracy of Christendom proceeds from the Degeneracy of its Guides and Pastors is but too evident to be denied and the Evil is more sad and irremedible that they cannot endure to have it told them The Corruption of the other States of Christendom may be spoken of without exciting so much of Mens Indignation but if the Corruption of the Pastors be touch'd a Man must look for nothing but Rage and Resentment This cannot be spoken of but presently it is a Combination against the Priesthood as our Lord was accused as designing to destroy the Law because he exposed the Corruption of the Scribes and Pharisees All Protestants do generally grant that the Degeneracy of Christendom before the Reformation was chiefly owing to the Degeneracy of its Clergy and we being as far from True Christianity now as formerly there is Ground to think the Matter is not much mended We see what a strange Change the Holy Lives and Doctrine of a few simple Men wrought in the Conversion of many Thousands to the Faith and Spirit of Jesus Christ in the Primitive Church and how little is to be seen of this now The reason of this Difference is not because of their working Miracles for these serve only to confirm the Truth of a Doctrine which being once confirmed there is no more need of them but they are as effectual in all After-ages to those who are firmly perswaded of them so that to such as think they would be bettered if they saw such Miracles is applicable that of Jesus Christ If they believe not Moses and the Prophets neither will they be perswaded tho' one should rise from the Dead Neither can this Difference be imputed to the greater Prevalence of Wickedness now the World being highly corrupted also at that time and that to no small Degree It is to be attributed then to the Difference of the Spirit by which they were animated from that by which the Pastors of the Church are now generally led The things of God are not known but by the Spirit of God and where God finds pure and self-denied Souls he delights to communicate himself to them and to make them the Organs of conveying his Light and Spirit unto others who are not capable of receiving it immediately themselves Mens Minds are generally so extraverted and turned towards sensible things that they cannot be affected with the things of the Spirit of God unless they be conveyed to them by means that may affect their Senses and this is the reason of the great Necessity and Usefulness of the Pastoral Office For this Cause the Word was made Flesh and dwelt among Men full of Grace and Truth And when he ascended into Heaven he sent the Comforter who led his Apostles into all Truth and by their means conveyed the same Light and the same Spirit into others and they were filled with the Holy Ghost so that it was not so much they who spoke and acted as the Spirit of God by them and there their Doctrine and Lives had a wonderful effect in the Converting of others even as one Flame kindles another they had a living not a dead and barren Knowledge of Divine Things their fervent Charity did animate all their Words and Actions and there was nothing impossible to such a Faith and such a Charity this made them pray fervently to God for his Divine Grace to others and he would not deny the Requests of such ardent Charity And his holy Spirit encreasing the Vertue and Efficacy of their Prayers and Labours did inseparably join his powerful Operations to awaken convert and purifie the Hearts of others This made St. Paul say When ye received the Word of God ye received it not as the Word of Men but as it is in Truth as the Word of God which effectually worketh also in you that believe And Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the Epistle of Christ manifested by us written not with Ink but with the Spirit of the living God not in Tables of Stone but in fleshly Tables of the Heart This wrought the Conversion at one time of 3000 and again of 5000 at one Sermon of St. Peter This made the Officers who were sent to apprehend Jesus Christ say Never Man spoke like this and the Evangelists of our Lord 's preaching That he taught as one having Authority and not as the Scribes and they were astonish'd at his Doctrine For his Word was with Power or to speak with St. Paul in the Evidence and Demonstration of the Spirit and of the Power of God that is they made the Operations of the Spirit of God to be felt in the Heart Moreover they taught Men by their Deeds as well as their Words the Holiness of their Lives and their Abstraction from all earthly things did procure Belief to all they said and let the World see that they bid others do nothing but what they firmly believed and heartily set about themselves So that the whole Body of the Church was sound when to be a Minister of Jesus Christ it was required only to embrace an Evangelical Life and to give Evidence of the sincere Love they bear unto Jesus Christ and of being led by his Spirit But wicked and worldly Men crept into the Church and their number increasing they got themselves in to be the Pastors of it then under an outward Cover of Piety and Religion Men were turned away from an Evangelical Life and led to Damnation Then the Pastoral Office was turned into a Trade whereby Men might gain Honour or Greatness or Wealth in the World or at least their Living Then Men fitted themselves for the Pastoral Office not by Humility and Purity of Heart but by Study and Learning then the Pastors becoming generally void of the Spirit of God were deprived of the true and living Knowledge of the things of God and
Doctrine written by his own Disciples and dress him up in such a mock-Robe as might make him and his Doctrine the Object of the Scorn and Hatred of the People I know People flatter themselves with the Opinion that it were impossible for them to have treated Jesus Christ at this rate as the Scribes and Pharisees in our Saviour's Days imagin'd that had they liv'd in the Days of their Fathers they would not have persecuted and kill'd the Prophets as their Fathers did and yet our Lord shews them they have the same Spirit tho' they seem'd to honour the Prophets * by building their Tombs and garnishing their Sepulchres and saying If we had been in the Days of our Fathers we would not have been Partakers with them in the Blood of the Prophets Yet they persecuted those who were then sent amongst them and that the same Temper and Spirit reigns now in the world A. B. makes appear in her Writings and her Enemies did discover it in their Practices V. But it will be said they had good Reason to treat her as they did We come therefore to consider the Prejudices raised against her Doctrine and they have not been wanting to represent her as the Grossest of Hereticks but Wisdom is justified of her Children And 1. They accused her of denying the Holy Trinity and ground their Accusation upon this that she did not approve of the Word Person to express the Distinction of the Trinity and us'd to explain it by Comparisons and Similitudes Whereas she declares That she believes in one Divine Essence the most Holy Trinity the Father the Son and the Holy Ghost that the Essence of God is incomprehensible and so is the Mystery of the Trinity that it is a great Presumption in Men who cannot comprehend that which is in themselves what their Memory Understanding and Will is yet to imagine they will easily comprehend what is in God That our Soul which is nothing but a silly Creature is yet invisible and incomprehensible to us tho' it be in us and tho' we perceive and feel it to act and operate that no Body can comprehend what a Soul is and yet Men are so presumptous as that they will needs know what is in God and what the Three Persons of the Trinity are which are in him and that not for to honour or love him the more but that they may be able to talk and dispute well of them and to draw evil Consequences from them That God made St. Augustin know that this was incomprehensible by any Creature when once walking by the Sea-side and labouring to understand it he saw a Child running to fetch the Water of the Sea in his Hands into a little Hole which he observing and asking the Child what he did he replied he would have all the Water of the Ocean brought into that little Pit at which St. Augustin smil'd saying You can never do this my Child give over this Vndertaking The Child replied I shall sooner do this than you shall understand what you would comprehend with your Vnderstanding and then evanish'd It is true she makes use of Similitudes to express it by as That there is in God the eternal Understanding the eternal Word the eternal Love or Heart as there is in Man the Understanding the Speech and the Heart That there is in Man the Understanding the Memory and the Will which is a Figure of the Holy Trinity that God One in Essence has in himself Three essential Qualities which are diverse Righteousness Goodness and Truth and that nothing can be done by God but with Righteousness Goodness and Truth altogether and if one of these Qualities be wanting it cannot come from Gâ—d who is indivisible in these Three qualities which may be call'd Persons That she does not pretend thereby to give adiquate Notions of the Mystery of the Trinity which she declares is incomprehensible but that instead of the dark dry and barren Speculations of the Schools thereabout we may consider those Three Divine Qualities without which God never does any Work And to find if we are the Children of God we must see if we partake from him of those Three Qualities of the Righteousness Goodness and Truth of God and if we do not find them all Three together in our Souls we ought not to perswade our selves that we are the Children of God for as we approach unto him by Love accordingly those Three Qualities encrease in the Soul and as we find our Souls to be estranged from Righteousness Goodness and Truth accordingly we are estranged from God In using Similitudes thus to express the Holy Trinity she does nothing but what St. Augustin and other of the Ancient Fathers have done and she is far from saying that nothing else is comprehended in the Holy Trinity but that we ought to be taken up with such useful Considerations of what is in God rather than feed our Minds with fruitless Speculations which tend only to nourish Debate and Curiosity And when once some of her Friends told her that the Churchmen accus'd her of making the whole Mystery of the Holy Trinity to consist in the Righteousness Goodness and Truth of God she answered expresly They lye in so saying They said to her that she had said in the mean time more than once that Righteousness Truth and Goodness were the Trinity that was in God she replied I had no design to search into the Depth of this Mystery and to say that all did consist in this but that this was the most profitable and the most saving Consideration that we could have in the matter of the Holy Trinity of which the ordinary Speculations are often rash and unprofitable and for the most part injurious to God She did not desire to use often the Word Person because she look'd on that as a Word proper to created Beings that Jesus Christ is indeed a Person in God being truly Man as we are Yet she sometimes expresses the Mystery by the Word Persons In Temoign de Verite Part 2. p. 199. she says I do not believe that there is any Body living upon Earth who does more honour the most Holy Trinity than I do And I believe firmly One only God in Three Persons as I have done from my Childhood And how could I deny the Divinity of Jesus Christ since it is seen by all my Books that I hold Jesus Christ for True God and True Man both together even from the Beginning of the World which is to honour him more than to believe that he is God and Man only since he was born in Bethlehem and chargâ—d with our Miseries and Sorrows VI. They accus'd her also of denying the Divinity of Jesus Christ tho' there be nothing more False as appears through all her Writings She declares expresly in the Profession of her Faith that she believes that â—esus Christ is True Eternal God and True Man And in
in the way of Salvation How many diverse Accidents have fallen out as to Neighbours which have mov'd him to Contrition as sudden Deaths Slaughters Plagues Fire and other things which no Man can avoid Nevertheless all these Graces and Drawings have met with no Correspondence from Man's Will on the contrary they turning away from the Creator have turn'd to the Creature to love it more than God And which is more they will lay the Blame of all their Damnation upon him for want of his Grace a horrible and insuppertable Abuse That Man is not satisfied to abuse the Grace of God but he will also make him guilty of his Damnation It is an unspeakable Pride when we feel that we resist his Grace every Moment and yet say our Damnation comes from the want of this Grace instead of giving Sentence against our Baseness and Wickedness which we may so sensibly perceive and feel It were better to smite the Breast and condemn our selves than to argue about the Grace of God since our own Conscience is an irrefragable Witness that Grace has been still given us yea even in the midst of our Sins How many amorous pulls has God given our Hearts to withdraw them from Damnation How many new Graces for our corresponding with some small Grace always when we have cast an Eye to God and lifted up our Hands yea a Finger has he not drawn us strongly to himself and forgiven our Sins What Effort did we ever make to resist Sin without feeling immediately his Help and his Grace Who ever call'd on him without being help'd or sought him without finding him No Body can say it without a Lie for he always delights to do us Good Our Prayers are agreeable to him and our Complaints are pleasant He wills not the Death of a Sinner but that he be converted and live If we do not always feel the Effects of his Mercy it is because our Conversion is not sincere and we seek some other thing than God and often think we love him when we love our selves And it is no wonder then that we do not find Grace for we have nothing and can give nothing either to our selves or others God being the only True Good and all that is not God is nothing We are often sorry that we have sinn'd without regarding God but our selves considering the Sins as Evil or disagreeable to Men and this makes us sorry to have committed them on the other side we look on Vertue as beautiful pleasant and honourable this makes us desire it for Good is always Lovely of it self But in these we do not respect God to oblige him to give us his Grace It is rather a self-Self-love that makes us desire it Yet our Wickedness has the Impudence to say that we seek God and do not find him Is it a wonder if such a Soul feels not the Influence of his God so long as it voluntarily Delights in the Creatures in Contempt of the Creator I cannot express the Resentment I have that we would attribute to God the Cause of our Damnation or that it is for the want of his Grace since I have found that God has often prevented and recall'd me even when I would have forsaken him And if he had not prevented me I would have thrust my self into all the ways that lead to Damnation being gone so far as to say to his inward Admonitions I will never have pleasure in thinking always upon this I would have withdrawn from God and he call'd upon me again inwardly to make me remember him and so soon as I return'd to him he receiv'd me lovingly giving me stronger Grace to withstand all that would divert me from him All Men will find this if they would enter into themselves that God has still prevented them with his Grace even tho' they have been most wicked Why then to Men say when they live ill That they have not the Grace of God if he never fail to give it They ought to say It is my Fault for I have certainly resisted his Grace instead of obliging him to give me more by my Correspondence It is true God gives all the Will to do good and to be saved comes from him as also the Courage and Constancy to persevere in it It is God who does all in us Sin only is our Work All Good comes from God who is pleas'd to give it us If we think we have Good of our selves we fall yet into a greater Error than the former for tho' God should not give us Grace he is not obliged to it by us for he has no need of us But to say that we can do Good and work out our Salvation of our selves is most false For how can a Nothing do any thing that 's Good Man in his Nothing was Nothing If he be since Something it is by the Grace of God He who is all Good out of whom there is no Good will not communicate himself to the Soul but with its Consent he first shews it its Good he gives it the desire to desire it thereafter he offers it If the Soul accepts it it enjoys him if it refuse it it remains depriv'd of it For God never gives his Graces by force nor without the Consent of the Soul unless it yield up it self entirely unto him God deals with the Soul as an honest Lover who designs to espouse his Mistress he serves her he courts her he caresses her and by all means endeavours to gain her Friendship If his Love be agreeable to her she loves him reciprocally and fully enjoys his Person and all his Goods If she disdain this Love and all his Offices of Good-will he withdraws and leaves her tho' with regret having employed in vain to the utmost all sort of means to oblige her to love him He endeavours then to forget her and to efface her out of his Memory not that his Love changes or that he is unconstant on his part but because there is no Correspondence or Agreement on the part of his Mistress God loves the Soul as a perfect faithful Lover he shews her the excellency of his Love by Rays of inward Light which do sometimes warm the Soul with Love to him He excites her by good Motions he draws her by some sweet inward Consolation he gives her Desires to love him he prevents her with many Favours shewing her that he seeks her and would give himself to her by the Vexations that she meets with in every other thing that she would love But if after a long course of so many Favours the Soul comes to reject them and to disdain the Friendship of her God to wed her self to some other thing whether the Love of her self or any Creatures God then withdraws from her and leaves her not that on his part his Love changes or can changes but because the Soul disdains his Friendship to which he would have her to correspond that the love he bears
the Apostle says Of our selves we cannot think one good Thought but through Christ that strengthens us we are able to do all things It is true says she if we consider only the Miseries and Weakness of Man corrupted by Sin the Gospel-Law is impossible but not if we have regard to the Power of God's Grace This Jesus Christ intimated to his Apostles when he told as to a rich Man's entring into the Kingdom of Heaven that it was impossible with Men but not with God when a Man shall entirely yield up himself to him to be wholly governed by him God will easily operate in him a Gospel-Life and Jesus Christ has said if you who are evil know how to give good things to your Children how much more will your heavenly Father give his holy Spirit to them that ask him It is false therefore to say that the Gospel-Law cannot be kept since it was given for no other End and Jesus Christ brought it from Heaven as the only Remedy of all our Evils and the only Means of our Salvation and has said I have done these things to give you an Example And God will never enjoyn Man to do any thing but what he will give him Grace to accomplish But such is Man's Wickedness that he would impute to God his own Faults and the Blame of his Damnation on him as if he were severe and cruel by laying on him Burthens of Commands that are insupportable that Man may thus be justified and God condemned tho' truly Man only is worthy of Condemnation For God still imparts his Graces to him and all those Laws are special Instances of his Love to Man that by them he might bring him back to the Love of his God for his eternal Salvation And in many Places of her Writings she shews the Possibility of Obeying God's Commands and the Blasphemy of the contrary Doctrine from the Design of them and the End for which God gave them Open your Eyes says she to see this Light of Truth That never any Body will be saved who dies without the Love of God and that no Body can love God if he do not hate himself These are the Sentences which God has often confirmed to me and given me Assurance that they are true and that all the Laws and Commands which God has given to Men are only so many Means to make them return to his Love Now the whole Doctrine of the Gospel is nothing else but so many Means to withdraw Man from Sin that he may recover the Love of God And when this Law teaches him Poverty of Spirit it is to shew him that Covetousness has withdrawn him from the Love of his God and that he cannot return to it without leaving off to covet earthly Goods And when it teaches him to be humble of Heart and to chuse the last Place it is because he had lost the Love of God by loving himself esteeming himself worthy of Honour and Glory tho' he be worthy of nothing but Shame and Confusion And he not knowing this stands in need of a Doctrine contrary to his Errours and Ignorance to make him return to the Love of God which he had lost by his Pride And when Jesus Christ declares that he came not to do his own Will but the Will of him that sent him it is to teach Men that to fulfil their own corrupt and perverse Wills they have left off to do the Will of God and to love him and that if they do not renounce their own Wills to follow the Will of God and thereby to return to his Love they cannot be saved Behold how Jesus Christ has brought Physick for our Diseases being desirous to cure them by Remedies contrary to our Infirmities and yet these Ignorants would gloss away the Gospel-Law as if it were impossible to observe it as they say it is impossible to keep the Commandments of God tho' both these Laws be nothing else but Remedies for our Diseases Christians she says are guilty of Ingratitude when they say they cannot keep the Commandments of God nor the Laws of the Gospel since all these are only true Means to recover the Love of God For all the Commandments are no other thing but Means to loose Mens Hearts from Self-Love and the evil Inclinations that Sin has brought into their Nature All the Commands import no other thing in Substance but that Man must always resist his Self-Love refusing its Desires because being corrupted by Sin it can desire nothing but what is Evil or tends to an evil End which because Men did not well know God would shew them in particular what they ought to do and forbear that they might recover his Love Now tho' he has given his Commands because of our Frailty yet Man is so ungrate as to say it is impossible for him to keep those Commands because of that very Frailty for the Help of which God has given his Commands as Supports to his Frailty He is Evil in that wherein God is Good and takes for Burthens the Helps that God has given him because of his Frailty For if he had not had any frailty God would never have given him any Laws since the Love he bare to God was a Law to it self and had no need of any other Guide or Directour The Summ of her Sentiments in this Matter is that all the Laws of God are given to Man as Helps of his Frailty as Warnings to shew him what Way he has stray'd from God and as indispensable and necessary Means to recover and bring him back again to the Love of God even as if a Father should give his Son who was become an habitual Drunkard or lewd Person strict Commands absolutely to forbear such Conversation and such Houses which would infallibly intangle and keep him still in his Sins that Jesus Christ has in his own Example as a Man shewn us both the Necessity of this and how possible and easie it is to observe them That no Man can observe them by his own Strength but only by the Grace of God that we are first Children before we are Men and our Falls and Stumbles ought not to discourage us but we must get up and go forward and depend upon God and he will be with us as the Child that is learning to walk must not be discouraged by its Falls but must get up and go forward and hold more closely by its Mother That they who are truly regenerated may live in Obedience to God without Sin but are not impeccable may fall from that State and yet recover it again by the Grace of God that to say the Commandments of God are impossible is to deny the Merits of Jesus Christ the Efficacy of his Intercession the Power of his Grace the Usefulness of his Example to assert the Force of the Devil and corrupt Nature beyond that of God to accuse God of the greatest Cruelty in giving us Laws which it
the Grandeur of Charity or the Love of God that of Reason and that of worldly Empire and Honour Alexander and others have excell'd in the last and seem Great to the Eyes of Flesh Archimedes and others have excell'd in the second and seem Great to the Eyes of Reason Jesus Christ appear'd in none of these Grandeurs had neither Learning nor worldly Greatness and was of no regard neither to the Eyes of the Flesh nor those of the Great Philosophers and of Reason but O! how Great was he in the Eyes of Charity how Meek and Humble and Patient and Self-denied in a Life of absolute Poverty Contempt and Pain for the Love of God and Men. Now all the Writings and Actions of A. B. tending to draw Men into this Kingdom of Charity and the Love of God which is of a quite distinct Rank and Order from that of humane Reason as well as of worldly Greatness it was no wonder that she put no great Value on the one more than the other they being both unspeakable Hindrances in the way to it and the second more than the third She shews that there is in the Soul a Principle for above humane Reason and that is Divine Faith which does not consist in believing only with the understanding the Twelve Articles of the Creed which may be done by a humane Faith as we believe the recital of some History when a Person worthy of Credit relates it this gives not to the Soul any Divine Vertues which God only can operate in us Faith is a Divine Light which God infuses in the Soul which makes us to know and desire Eternal things and despise Temporal It is not a natural Quality as our Reason but a Divine Quality which proceeds from God as the Beams do from the Sun as nothing can make us see the Sun but the Sun himself It was communicated to all Men at their Creation lost by their Fall renew'd by the Merits and Grace of Jesus Christ When it shines in our Souls it warms them with the Love of God and Men who bear his Image and Likeness and produces Charity And this Charity regulates all our Life and gives weight and measure to all our Actions For Divine Faith is always living and operating It partakes of all the Divine Qualities Righteousness Goodness and Truth So that he who has Faith in his Soul cannot be Unjust nor a Liar nor a Deceiver nor Wicked nor seek his own Interest his own Glory his own Pleasure or Satisfaction seeing all these respect time and earthly things Humane Reason is an Inferiour Principle that may indeed convince us that there is a God the Author of Nature who made and sustains all things but this cannot produce in our Souls Faith and Charity Vertues derived immediately from God and not from Nature or the Understanding of Man which is a frail Creature limited to Earth and Time And to think to know or comprehend God by the natural Understanding is a greater Folly than the Heathens committed in worshipping the Sun All Men being now void of humane Faith take up with a humane Belief and divide and dispute and quarrel and hate and despise one another without knowing wherefore and without perceiving that the Folly they have in themselves is more to be despised than what they require in their Brother The active Exercise of our Reason when depriv'd of the Light of Faith serves but the more to confound and darken us it keeps us in a vain Amusement makes us neglect the necessary means of obtaining Divine Faith blows up the Heart with Pride makes us despise the most Divine Truths when they do not accord with our Principles and value our selves beyond others tho' humble ignorant Persons are more to be regarded as being more disposed to receive the Light of Faith than those Learned who have drunk in the Doctrine of Men. She blesses God that preserv'd her from this for then she should have been uncapable of receiving that of the Holy Spirit Jesus Christ call'd the Simple and Ignorant to be his Disciples and Apostles it was they whom he train'd up to instruct and teach others the way to Salvation When a Learned Nicodemus came to him he told him that unless he became as a little Child he could not enter into the Kingdom of God He founded no Colleges nor Academies to train up his Followers in all sorts of Learning but taught them by Word and Deed to deny themselves in all earthly things and to take up their Cross and follow him True Religion is preserved or received by the same means by which it is at first instituted and established They who say in another case that Christ being more faithful than Mâ—ses in all the House of God who yet left not a Pin of the Tabernacle unmade and therefore he surely could not be wanting in ordering what was fit for his Church may examine their own Measures by this Rule She says The Schools and Doctrine of Men have corrupted the true Sence of the Scriptures and by their Learning authorize all sorts of Sins that it seems the Schools are expresly instituted to forge Cases of Conscience capable of leading Men to Hell For what need is there to Gloss the Gospel and the Life of Jesus Christ They are clear Truths which Jesus Christ taught by Word and Deed that we must be poor in Spirit humble in Heart desirous to suffer Persecution for Righteousness sake and to do to others as we would have them do to us but to corrupt all these things the Learned make Glosses that it is not against Poverty of Spirit to labour or trade that we may get Money and make some Fortune in the World and to flatter Men the better to their Ruine they add by Word that we must possess Riches as not possessing them which is a great Deceit for Men are not now so dispos'd as those of the Old Testament who receiv'd Temporal Goods from God as a Blessing to employ them to his Glory not having their Hearts any ways wedded to them as those of our Time who incessantly covet Riches desiring still more and more It is an infallible Truth that all who would be saved must love God with all their Heart And if we ask those Divines if it be not lawful for a Man to love his Father Mother Wife Children Kinsfolk Friends yea his Country Money House Honour Divertisements Meat Drink Cloaths and every other Creature they will answer yes because they love them themselves and yet imagine they fulfil the Command of God of loving him with all their Heart and to disguise this Lie the better they will say We must not love all these things inordinately giving us to understand thereby that our Hearts may be well divided into so many different Affections without sinning which has so authoriz'd the neglect of the Command of loving God with all our Heart that no Body thinks it is needful They live and die in
the Love of all sorts of Creatures and yet think to be saved for their Divines have found out Philosophical Reasons to maintain this Yet she says what she has written of the Learned is not that she will despise Learning or the Study of Sciences and Languages Since all these things may serve for the Glory of God when we will apply them to those Ends and moral Vertues give Advantage to divine Vertues For a well bred Person will still be more docile in the Practice of true Vertue than one ill-bred and one of good Learning will be more able to understand and receive true Vertue than a rude and ignorant Person so that what says she makes me fear that few of the Learned and of the Great shall enter into the Kingdom of Heaven is that I see in effect that very few of them are humble in Heart and that it is impossible speaking naturally that they should not esteem themselves more than another as having more ground for it And unless by Divine Vertue a Learned Person know the Misery and Ignorance into which Sin has plung'd him he can never be without Self-esteem and Presumption of Spirit which things God resists and does not give them his Grace for of necessity they must be humble in Heart to enter into the Kingdom of Heaven But because this Sentiment concerning the Nature of humane Reason is so contrary to the common Opinion of the Learned I shall here briefly represent it in a Light and Method conformable to our ways of reasoning and enquiring into things as it is most rationally and fully accounted for by M. Poiret in his Treatise De Eruditione to which I refer those who desire to enquire farther into it for full Satisfaction 1. The Original Ends of God's creating Man being to enjoy him and all his Works the one as his Essential Happiness and the other as Accessory he therefore gives him an Immortal and Divine Soul and a Material Body and endues these with sutable Faculties capable of enjoying this twofold Happiness the one material and sensible his bodily Senses by which he might take in the Beauty and Delight of all the Creatures and the other Divine and Spiritual his Understanding by which he might be capable of enjoying God and Divine things and of receiving his Light and Love 2. Those Faculties are passive and do not by any activity of theirs produce their Objects but only are laid open and turn'd to them to receive them Our Eyes do not form the Light but only passively receive it and the Beauties of the other Creatures and in the Night tho' we open and turn them about never so earnestly we meet with nothing but Darkness So is it as to our spiritual Faculties and their Objects 3. Those respective Objects when they are present to their respective Faculties do make so strong and vivid an Impression on them that in their Absence we are capable of forming to our selves in our Minds Images and Pictures of them and of compounding or dividing or comparing these Pictures together and of forming Propositions and Consultations about them and according as these passive Faculties have received due and vivid Impressions or faint or none at all from their respective Objects we are accordingly capable of forming true or false Pictures of them And this is the active Faculty which we call Reason 4. The Knowledge we have by the Impressions from the Objects themselves in our passive Faculties is a loving solid real Knowledge making us enjoy the Object and the Delight and Happiness it can give us The Knowledge we have by the Exercise of this active Faculty of our Reason is a dead dry barren superficial Knowledge that communicates nothing to the Soul of the Delight and Reality of the Objects themselves We see what a difference there is between beholding the Sun and forming to our selves Idea's and Pictures of him in his Absence the first enlightens warms delights directs us lets us see the Beauty of all the Creation the other affords nothing of this and if we had still been Blind and never seen the Light even the very Pictures of it we fancy to our selves would be false as well as superficial Now it is just the same as to the spiritual things the natural Man perceives not the things of God they seem Foolishness to him His Idea's and Reasonings about them are like a Blind Man's Reasoning about Colours and tho' they were never so Just yet they cannot make him Happy nor to enjoy the Object themselves no more than a Man's drawing the Pictures of Light Fire Meat and Drink can enlighten warm and nourish his Body Our Souls must be turn'd to God and taken off from all other things And blessed are the pure in Heart for they shall see God The Knowledge we have by Reason then is a superficial barren and dead Knowledge does not bring to the Soul the true and living Knowledge of God They who give themselves up to it do really deny God make their Reason their God are guilty of a more dangerous Idolatry than they who worship the Sun and how universal this Evil is now in the World he that runs may read The true and living Knowledge of God is to be had only from God our divine Faculties must be turn'd to him and turn'd away from other Things that they may be enlightned by him they are in our corrupt State more dead and defiled and vitiated than the weakest or most blinded Eyes and Reasoning will not recover them more than it will give Eyes to the Blind Physick is indispensably necessary to heal them and the Laws and Life of Jesus Christ transcribed into our Hearts and Practice is the only Remedy for them XIX They accused her that she designed to form a new Sect and Party and so to encrease the Divisions and Schisms in Christendom whereas no body did more deplore the Divisions of Christians than she She saw that Schisms and Sects served only to destroy true Charity the Love of God and Men and brought in nothing but Hatred Envy and every evil Work under a Cover of different Forms and Opinions She desired nothing but to reunite Christians in one in the Spirit of Jesus Christ and to have obtained that would have been willing to have spent to the last Drop of her Blood She protested a hundred and a hundred times that she would establish no Party nor draw any after her but send all to Jesus Christ and to the Practice of the Doctrine of the Gospel She shunned the Conversation of Men and liv'd always shut up in a Chamber she wished never to see any Body provided they were all united to God To set up a Sect is to leave a Society and a certain publick Worship where Persons were once Members and to establish another to which they draw by human Motives as many Persons as they can and acknowledge them as Members of it when they make a verbal
Profession of this new Worship and are joined to those Persons and their Opinions Now she establish'd no new Worship nor new Exercises nor Laws nor Rules that savour of a Sect but only by her Life and Writings call'd on People to return to the Love of God and to imitate the Life of Jesus Christ in which State they were not and without which they could not be saved In her Letter to M. Reinboth Superintendant in Holstein I am very far says she from making a new Church as some maliciously slander me for I bring no new thing and Novelties are very displeasing to me I am careful therefore not to introduce any but I labour to advance in a Gospel-Life and to practise it And all my Writings and all I said formerly to well-disposed Persons aimed only at this and I forbear now to speak to them because I found it was unprofitable Your Preachers wrong me greatly when they cry out that I draw their People from them for in the ten Months I have been in Holstein I have not made Acquaintance with so much as one Person not so much as with my Landlady so that I give them no ground to say or think that I strive to draw People to form a new Church or teach a new Doctrine seeing that which Jesus Christ left us is the most perfect and the last that God will send unto Men. No new thing needs be invented but we should labour to perfect our selves in it and to put it truly in Practice instead of Disputing about it for all these Disputes are raised by the Devil to bring Hatred Divisions and Discords amongst Christians whereas the Church of God should be united in Peace and Love in the meek Spirit of Jesus Christ and it is now divided in as many Parties as there are different Sects which is lamentable and disturbs the Peace of Christian Souls and makes that they do not love one another tho' Jesus Christ has so earnestly recommended to them to love one another They are all partial and only love the Party which they have undertaken to stand by or defend This proceeds from an Antichristian Spirit and not from the Spirit of Christ XX. They libell'd her that she despised Sermons Sacraments Pastours Priesthood and all Government which were all most horrid Calumnies This says she in her Letter to Dr. Nieman Superintendant in Holstein is a gross Calumny for I wish with all my Heart that both Church and State may continue in Vigour for otherwise there would be no Knowledge of God in the Land nor Commonwealths maintained Seeing Preachings and Sacraments preserve amongst Men the Memory of sacred things and States keep their People in their Duty by Justice or else there would be nothing but Confusion and the Good would be destroyed by the Wicked if there were no Government and Magistrates to rule and govern them I indeed despise the Abuse of Churches and Sermons and Sacraments but not the Use of them nor the Essence of these which are established by God as is also Government and Magistracy And there is a great Difference between the despising a thing in it self and the Abuse that is made of it For it is one thing to say that every Sect abuses the Holy Scriptures and another to say that the Scripture is of no Worth or to despise it because many abuse it Now it seems Buchardus would make People believe that I despise all these Holy Things when I despise only the Abuse of them as true Christians ought to do who lay to Heart God's Honour They ought to lament when they see Men to degenerate as to the Love of God that they seem to hold meerly to the Bark of the things ordained by God without squaring their Lives by them They say I despise the Sacraments and other Offices of Piety while I believe there is no body that esteems them more than I do For the Quakers accused me by their defamatory Treatise That I had an abominable Doctrine sending Persons to Churches Sermons or Sacraments or other outward Solemnities desiring to infer from this that I had not the Spirit of God since I still esteemed those outward Devotions and also incited others to make use of them as Means to approach unto God Your Preachers may read what I have written in that Advertisement upon this Head so that I need not enlarge my self farther here but will satisfie them as to what they say That in effect I despise the Sacraments and other outward Devotions because I do not go my self to the Church nor to the Sacraments and they will needs reject all that I say in the Praise of Holy Things because I do not observe them my self to give an Example to others and would infer from thence That I speak with Dissimulation in praise of Holy Things and not sincerely as I think in my Heart This convinces me that they no ways know me For if they only knew me outwardly they would sufficiently see that I am sincere and not at all feigned or dissembled so that if I had in my Heart a Contempt for the Sacraments and other outward Devotions I would openly declare it by Word and Writ for I have overcome the World and am not afraid to tell the Truth of what I know I have indeed written against the Abuse of the Sacraments and other outward Solemnities but I never spoke against the things themselves seeing they are good and have often serv'd me as Means of Union with God But if I do not go now to the Church or Sacraments it is not out of Contempt of Holy Things but because I have no longer so great need of outward Means of Union with God as I had formerly when the Conversation of Men and the Diversion of the Cares of temporal Affairs did divert my Attention from God I retired then to Churches and approached the Sacraments that I might be the more recollected and united to God But since God has given me the Grace to find this Recollection in my little Chamber and to entertain my self in Spirit with God in Solitude I have not thought it so necessary to use these outward Ceremonies which sometimes would serve me for a Distraction to my inward Recollection This is partly the Reason why I have left them off but this is not all For if I had the Freedom to go to Church I would go to it on the Days commanded and would receive the Sacrament at the Times appointed Since I am under the Ordinances of the Roman Church Jesus Christ teaches me to obey the Laws both of God and Men as he himself did on Earth obeying Caesar and other Superiours tho' they were sometimes evil but their Ordinances good as I have particularly shewn in the said Advertisement But I cannot go to Church without hazard of my Life and it is not lawful for me to expose my self to so evident Dangers and Necessity has no Law There are Persons in the
they will become no less for this Saying and if there are none at least some will be awakened out of their Security and endeavour to become so If A. B. had said that God by an unchangeable Decree from all Eternity had predestinated the greatest part of the World to Damnation it might then indeed be said that she is void of Charity to God and Man But when she declares that God is not willing that any should perish but that all should come to Repentance and yet that all Men were living in a Contradiction to the Life and Spirit of Jesus Christ she could not do them a more charitable Office than to warn them of their Danger Will they say the Psalmist was uncharitable and damn'd all the World because he tells us the Lord look'd down from Heaven upon the Children of Men to see if there were any that did understand and seek God they are all gone aside they are altogether become filthy there is none that doeth Good no not one Every Man ought to weigh the Truth or Falshood of this Saying as to himself and see if he can make this particular Exception to the general Saying There is no True Christians upon Earth let him set at the Foot of it Except I my self And if his Conscience dare not write down this Exception he has reason to thank the Charity that put him to the Trial without regard whether it be true or false as to others which will avail him nothing so long as it holds as to himself And as to the other part of the Prejudice that God will make her and her Writings the Mean of the Renovation of the Gospel Spirit She says It is God who enlightens Understandings who warms Wills with his Love who produces Charity in Souls in short who is the only Giver of all Good without any Creatures being able to cause to be born in the Soul of another the Spirit of Regeneration which is to live again to God and to die to ones self This is a Masterpiece of the Works of God much more rare and precious than the Body of Man and nevertheless he will not do it but by the means of Creatures who shall be subject to him and will hear his Voice who will make others Partakers of the Light which God communicates to them that by it they may be enlightned and know their Errors and the Way to become True Believers The Understanding the Speech and the Hand of such spiritual Mothers is the Matter with which God will beget his True Children making them comprehend his Truths by the Words Writings and Actions of those who shall receive the Word of God immediately who are few in number because Men are now so diverted in the Affairs and Business of this World that they cannot hear the Voice of God tho' he speak continually to their Heart And to supply their Weakness and the Wandrings of their Spirit his great Goodness causes to speak and write by sensible and visible Objects the things which may render all those True Believers who truly desire to become so And that her Writings are of this Nature full of Divine and Saving Truths Simple and Solid Milk for Babes and Meat for strong Men suted for all Capacities and all Ages they manifest themselves as the Light does to those who are not Blind And as to their reproaching her that being a Woman yet she would presume to instruct the World when St. Paul would not suffer a Woman to speak in the Church and therefore calling her in Contempt and Old Wife she said That for her being a Woman she could not hinder it since no Body forms themselves they must ask God if they would know why he created her a Woman and not a Man that she her self had been displeas'd at it but since God made her know it was his Pleasure she was content for she lov'd rather to be a little Atom in the Will of God than a whole World in her own Will And when she began to teach by her Writings it was by an express Command of God which she long resisted for which she begs Pardon for she could not resolve on this because she was a Woman who has never so much Authority in matter of Doctrine as a Man But she came over all humane Respects and expos'd her self to all their Mockeries She says If the Truths of God must be rejected because they are dictated by a Woman all the Great and Learned that ever were in the World ought also to be rejected seeing all are equally come of a Woman Why should they then despise their Origin since God does not despise it but makes use of them to operate his greatest Marvels and always Figures the Church his Spouse by a Woman Women are as capable of receiving the Graces of God as Men there being no difference between their Souls and the bodily difference respecting Nature only in which even Woman ought to be more regarded than Men seeing when God would needs become Man he would have a Woman for his Mother but not a Man for his Father and he has done his greatest Wonders by the means of Women What Triumphant Victory did Judith obtain against Holofernes and Esther in the Deliverance of God's People And whereas it is said it is not permitted Women to teach the Apostle she says ordains the aged Women to teach the younger and to instruct their Children and Family in the fear of God and both in the Old and New Testament we read of many Women-Prophetesses foretelling things to come And the Apostle says it is an honour to a Woman to prophesie with her Head covered She says they ought to let God speâ—k by a Woman if it be his Pleasure since he spoke in former Times to a Prophet by a Beast that he bestows his Graces and Wisdom on whom he pleases and Man ought not to ask him why he does so That before God it is not Man or Woman that signifies any thing but the Spirit of Righteousness and Truth That they ought not to regard whether she be Man or Woman but whether what she says be Just and True That she writes by an express Command of God doing this as secretly as she can shut up in her Chamber That Men are now less dispos'd to receive his Divine Light than Women since their Hearts are blown up with Pride to apply all Glory and Authority to themselves instead of referring it to God and cannot endure that a simple Woman as she should speak of Divine Things least their Learning should be less esteem'd So those Great Philosophers will not let God do his Marvels by the means of a Virgin but will oblige him to operate by Great Divines not remembring that he has said * He has chosen the weak things of the World to confound the things that are mighty and the foolish things of the World to confound the wise and base things of the World and
Esay accuses them that they had said Let us eat and drink for to morrow we must die we have made a Covenant with Death and with Hell we are at Agreement for we have made Lies our Refuge and under Falshood have we hid our selves Malachy It is in vain for us to serve the Lord we will call the Proud Happy c. This was not true in the Sight of Men but it was true in the Sight of God who saw that there were no living Impressions in their Hearts of the Divine Providence of a happy or miserable Eternity of the great Happiness of Vertue c. There are generally two sorts of Principles and Sentiments in Men which do widely differ from one another one by which they reason and discourse and preach and write Books and teach Doctrines and this is their speculative Principle The other is that by which a Man acts and governs both his inward Affections and his Life This last only is a Man's true Sentiments and Principle tho' for the most part this is unknown to the Man himself S. Paul before his Conversion and e'er he was enlightned by the Holy Ghost would have been highly offended with any that should have call'd him a Blasphemer a Persecuter of God and good Men and the Chief of Sinners as imputing to him Crimes and Sentiments of which he not only thought himself innocent but that those very things were Vertues in the Sight of God tho' when God opened his Eyes he found he had been truly such So strange is the Blindness of corrupt Man Therefore when God would deliver Men from Death he stops not at the outward Appearance and what Men say and at their dead Reasonings and Sentiments who may tell him We teach Vertue we preach good Works we recommend Mortification of the Old Man we detest Security and Presumption c. while in effect their Lives are regulated by quite contrary Principles and their Hearts live in another Element and therefore he warns them of that which is hid within them and which they do not yet perceive and tells them that tho' they profess to know him yet by their Works they deny him being abominable disobedient and to every good Work reprobate Now it is according to this Measure that A. B. speaks of Men and Parties and of their Sentiments When a whole Society lives according to Principles the contrary of which they affirm with their Mouths it is certain this may be imputed to that Society When the greatest part of particular Persons in that Society have certain Sentiments as to flatter themselves that they are in the State of Grace or predestinated to Salvation it is certain that the Society in the gross may be said to have these Sentiments If while they live in a worldly and carnal Manner yet they commonly believe they shall be saved by the Use of the Ceremonies and Sacraments this is to be reckoned the real Sentiment of the Society in gross tho' the Speculations of some particular Persons and Doctors do not say so It is the People that makes the Church and not a small Number of learned Heads It is the living and inward Principles Inclinations and Dispositions of the Spirits and Hearts of the People that makes the Sentiments of the Church and not some vain Theories of the Learned which are oft-times dead and barren in their own Hearts When in a Society some particular Persons teach expresly evil Doctrines as the Justifying of horrid Murthers or that we may be saved without the Love of God and direct Souls according to these Doctrines if the whole Body of such a Church knowing this do not openly and loudly extirpate such a Doctrine by their Councils or other proper Means undoubtedly such a Society and particularly they who preside in it are reckoned by God as if they themselves authoritatively taught and maintained these detestable Maxims Now if what A. B. says as to the Principles Sentiments and Evils of Parties or Persons be examined by these Rules it will appear that she imputes nothing to them falsly XXV Another Accusation brought against A. B. is that she gives wrong Explications of several Passages in the Holy Scripture as her applying that of S. Paul We know in part c. to a greater Degree of Knowledge and Illumination than God will give in this last Age of the World Her understanding the Words of our Saviour Joh. 12. 23. of his glorious Appearing in the End of the World when the Context shews it is meant of his Death and Sufferings her singular Exposition of the Lord's Prayer as containing things that we are to obtain only in Perfection when Christ comes to reign in Glory We see what Expositions the Apostles give of the Scriptures of the Old Testament and the Fathers of both the Old and New which oft-times seem very different from the Sence that naturally offers S. Augustin's Rule already mentioned has Place here That whosoever gives such a Sence of the Scripture as serves to promote the Love of God and our Neighbours which is the great End tho' it cannot be made appear that the Pen-man of the Scripture did so understand it in that particular Place he does not err damnably nor does he make a Lye But that other remarkable Rule he gives serves fully to remove this Accusation That as to all the Sences that are given of the Holy Scripture which are not repugnant to the Truth it is to be believed they were intended by the Holy Spirit That when many Sences are given of the same Words if it appear from other Places of the Scripture that they are agreeable to the Truth and to Faith there is no Danger For perhaps the Author of those Writings did perceive the same Sence of them and certainly the Spirit of God who wrought by him foresaw without doubt that this would occur to the Reader and the Hearer yea took care that it should occur For what more liberal and bountiful Provision could be made by God in the Divine Oracles than that the same Words should be understood in many Sences all which the other no less Divine Writings might confirm Agreeable to this we have a Divine Maxim of a pious Writer of the last Age That according to the State that Man is in so he understands the Holy Scripture if he be as yet in the State of Nature he explains it of Natural Things if he have ascended higher he understands it of more sublime Things and the higher State he is advanced to he still finds so much the more sublime Testimonies of things in the Scripture Inferiour things are the Image and Similitude of the superiour If a Man therefore be in the lowest Degree the Scripture proposes low things to him but if he be placed in superiour Degrees it points out to him higher things When Paul says Not in Rioting and Drunkenness not in Chambering and Wantonness c. Rom. 13. 19. this concerns
had created the Earth and so many reasonable Creatures only for the Glory of the Devil and his Adherents if he did not renew the Earth and make it bring forth Fruit for his Glory And as to Man's Propagation of his like to all Eternity if Man had continued Pure and Holy I am sure this would not have been thought a sensual State A Power to produce a Creature that is capable of loving and enjoying God is an astonishing Perfection only Concupiscence has now so polluted our Hearts that we cannot think of this but our Imagination presently defiles it and we joyn it to the sensual Idea's that Sin and Lust have brought into the World and cannot conceive how the one can be without the other judging of things according to our Corrupt Nature and we presently cry out A Mahumetan Paradise Which truly discovers only the Filthiness and Corruption of our Hearts and not the Impurity of the Sentiment but only that to the Impure nothing is pure If there were a Creature perfectly Pure and Holy and if God endued it with a Power of producing its like this Production would be no Act of Concupiscence but an Act of the most ardent Love of God This is the State she says the Saints shall be in to all Eternity which whatever be of the Truth of it is no Mahumetan Paradise and as there are remarkable Places of Scripture cited for the Proof of it so the Reason she assigns is very weighty to wit That all the Works of God are Eternal and his Gifts without out Repentance and if there were no such Production to all Eternity a very small number of Men would bless him for rever whereas so many reasonable Creatures are become Adherents to the Devil It must needs be then that the Generation of the Blessed multiply eternally as the Generation of the Miserable has multiplied temporally from the Beginning of the World And why should we think it absurd to say that Angels do thus produce their like to all Eternity We see here in this visible World that all Creatures who have any Degree of Life from the highest to the lowest are endued with this Power of producing their like all the Plants and Trees all the Beasts Birds Fishes and Insects and the reasonable Creature Man both as to his Soul and Body as has been made appear and you know the Rule of Analogy is of great weight as to all the Works of Nature And therefore unless we should suppose God to act unlike himself as to a higher Degree of living Beings we have all the Reason that the Nature and Analogy of things does suggest to conclude that Angels also do produce their like to all Eternity XXVIII It is not possible to foresee all the Prejudices that People may conceive or that may be suggested to them against the Writings and Sentiments of A. B. far less to Answer them all particularly in this Apology I have considered only the most Remarkable of those which do usually occur and have for the most part set down her own Answers in this the former and the following Parts which tho' it has made it the longer yet I hope it will make it the more useful I am not asham'd to Copy for I write only Narratives and not Originals If others write Originals when they pretend to write Narratives I shall not envy them I am only sorry that some are at such pains to deter Men from perusing those Writings which may be most useful to help them in the way to Eternal Happiness If they will not make that good use of them themselves they need not hinder others from profiting by them Thousands perhaps would be awakened to a deeper sense of the necessity of mortifying and dying to their Corrupt Nature who would never be stumbled at the things which they carp at but pass them over Whatever are her singular Sentiments such as this last mentioned you may look upon them all if you please as Dreams and Romances but since the necessary Duties of Christianity and the plain Way to Eternal Life are so clearly so forcibly and so divinely inculcated and prest in all those Writings and no stress laid on those other things O! that the Love of God and of Men's Souls and our own Salvation may constrain us to the serious practice of them our selves and make us carefully to avoid the being an Offence and Stumbling-Block to others O si tantam ad hiberent diligentiam ad extirpanda vitia Virtutes inserendas sicuti ad movendas quaestiones tunc non fierent tanta mala scandala in populo Tho. Ã Kemp. de Imitat Christ l. 1. c. 3. n. 5. The End of the Second Part. AN APOLOGY FOR M. ANT. BOVRIGNON PART III. Containing the Evidences which she brings that she was led by the Spirit of God With her Answers to the Prejudices against the same To which is added A Dissertation of Dr. De Heyde on the same Subject I. IN the Age wherein we live there needs no greater Prejudice against a Person his Sentiments and Writings than for him to declare that he is immediatly led by the Spirit of God This is enough to make us reject all he can say without any farther Enquiry We presently conclude he is Brainsick Hypochondriack Melancholly and Craz'd at least as to that Point however Rational he may be in other things or otherwise that he is a Knave who designs to put a Trick upon Mankind and that all who esteem him are as much Fools or Knaves as he II. The Wise and the Learned of the World and from them the generality of Men are enclin'd to think so upon different Grounds and Principles 1. Some disbelieve all Revelation from God and conclude that as all other Creatures have natural Powers given them to guide them to the End and Perfection of their Being so has Man and that there is nothing necessary for him to lead him to the End and Perfection of his Being but only the right Use and Improvement of his Reason 2. Others are convinc'd of the shortness and insufficiency of Humane Reason to lead Man to Happiness and of the Truth and Necessity of Divine Revelation But then God having spoken at sundry times and in diverse manners unto the Fathers by the Prophets and in these last Days by his only Begotten Son and all this being consign'd in Writing to be a standing Rule to all Generations and confirm'd by most satisfying Evidences to be from God they conclude that we must not look for any to be thus immediately inspir'd and enlightned by God now by whom he should speak to us and that any who pretend to it are Impostours or Brainsick Persons who will needs ape what they read or hear of in the Holy Scriptures and fancy they are such Persons immediately enlightned by God as they read of in those Holy Writings and to own any now as inspir'd by God is to
promises that if our Eye be Single our whole Body shall be full of Light and if it be Evil it will be full of Darkness For tho' a Soul have not in it self the Holy Spirit yet it shall have the Understanding enlightned to discover him in others provided it behold them with a single Eye without Dissimulation or Surprize but in the Simplicity of a Child as Jesus Christ says we must be in if we would enter into the Kingdom of Heaven They who see me write know well that I do it without any Study or humane Speculation and that it flows from my Spirit as Water flows from its Fountain and that I do nothing but lend my Hand and my Spirit to another Power than mine And God gives yet a more sure Testimony by imparting to me his Righteousness Truth and Charity For these things cannot come from Nature which being corrupted can produce no Good nor any Divine Vertues because I am come of the Corrupt Mass of Adam as all the rest of Men there could not be in me any Righteousness Truth and Charity which are all Divine and Supernatural Vertues which cannot enter into the Soul of Men but by the Work of the Holy Spirit This gives me a sufficient Testimony that I am led by God since the Devil and Nature have nothing of those Vertues And therefore we cannot find a surer Evidence that a Soul is led by the Holy Spirit than when it is possest of the Righteousness Truth and Charity of God For if we desire to see Miracles for a Proof we may be deceived since the Devil can do Miracles or things which seem Supernatural but he can never have in him the Righteousness Truth and Love of God The Good Spirit and the Evil may be known by the Qualities which they have The Spirit of God has in him a Peace and Sweetness that comforts the Soul and draws it to an inward Quiet But the Spirit of the Devil disturbs the Understanding disquiets it and robs it of Tranquility and Rest The Spirit of God acts sweetly and strongly in Peace and Tranquility of Mind All that comes from the Spirit of God is always accompanied with the Qualities of God which are Goodness Righteousness and Truth And that which comes from the Spirit of the Devil carries always the Qualities of the Devil which are Malice Injustice and Lying The Evil Spirit may sometimes move to do a good thing to draw Evil out of it but that seeming Goodness can never be accompanied with Righteousness and Truth which are the inseparable Qualities of God which the Devil may sometimes separately make use of to deceive Men aping the Works of God but he can never do a thing that is Good Just and True altogether since this appertains to God only who cannot be divided in any of these Qualities God does not speak to me by Voices Thundrings and Lightnings as he did of Old to the Prophets or as he spake to Tobit by Angels in the Likeness of Young Men or as he spoke to Jacob in the Vision of a Ladder upon which Angels did ascend and descend or as he spoke to Joseph in a Dream saying to him Take the Child and the Mother and flee into Egypt For I durst not rely upon all these things in which the Devil and the Fancy of Man may mingle themselves and make such things be seen and heard as if they came from the Spirit of God But I fix on the solid Truth of God on his Righteousness and on his Love because in such things the Devil can have no hold I have sometimes had Dreams and Visions coming from God as I may afterwards make appear by Experience but I do not rely on these Dreams and Visions unless the same things that I have seen and dream'd be confirm'd unto me by a secret Notice Intelligence after the manner that I converse ordinarily with God For so soon as the Soul is free of all Image and delivered from the agitation of its Passions and the Imagination ceases to operate then I hear the Voice of God and his Reasoning not with my Ears but with my Understanding And after this manner he makes me see and hear all that I need to know both for my own Conduct and that of others which many have experienc'd and found that I have told them the most secret things of their Hearts which neither Men nor Devils could know Never amuse your self with Discourses Visions or Revelations made to you or others if you do not perceive assuredly that they are accompanied with the Qualities of the Good Spirit of God or otherwise you will be easily deceived Remark always if what you say or do be accompanied with the Righteousness Goodness and Truth of God and then you shall assuredly hear God speak to your Soul For if you walk in these Qualities you will be in God and the Devil can deceive you no longer by Illusions or false Imaginations as he will easily do so long as you do not possess those essential Vertues of the Righteousness Goodness and Truth of God in which you ought always to walk if you would not be seduced by Satan The Devil can give Visions Ravishments or supernatural Extasies to Sorcerers yea make them foretel things to come being a subtile Spirit and foreseeing afar and by conjectures what will come to pass and he may make them fall out by the means of his Sorcerers who being powerful and numerous may by their Power and Authority bring about what has been Fore told Therefore it is fit to receive nothing for Truth but the things which lead us to a more strict Union with God and Denial of our selves These things are always Good even tho' they should come from the Devil himself we cannot be deceived in believing them I can never have the least doubt as if it were an evil Spirit that communicates himself to my Understanding for the evil Spirit could not in my Judgment produce so good and so constant Operations such as the Love of God and the Hatred of ones Self Moreover he could not separate the Soul from the Pleasures of this Life nor remove from it the coveting the Riches and Honours of the World nor give it a full Contentment in the want of all humane Consolation nor yet Joy in Hardships and Contempt All these things cannot come from the Devil for he is too opposite to all these Vertues and leads ordinarily to all sort of Evil tho' at first he cover them with Vertues The End of his Operations make appear sufficiently the Deeds of the Author and make known the Workman by his Works Thus you see how certain Marks she gives whereby to distinguish true from false Enthusiasm the Conduct and Inspiration of the Spirit of God from the Illusions of the Devil or Ones own Imagination and how Men may preserve themselves from being impos'd upon by the last That where a Soul is
understood them they afterwards despis'd them and would no longer believe them so as to mock and make a by-Word of what the Prophets said to them Even Jeremy himself thought he was much mistaken when he saw not the Effect of the good Promises that God had made to his People Ah! Lord God surely thou hast greatly deceived this People and Jerusalem saying Ye shall have Peace whereas the Sword reacheth unto the Soul The same Difficulty of not being able to comprehend the Word of God according to our way of conceiving it befel the very Disciples of Jesus Christ who had convers'd with him they were mistaken and thought themselves deceived witness the two who after his Death going to Emmaus sad and without hope said We trusted that it had been he who should have redeemed Israel and beside all this to Day is the third Day since these things were done And even when Jesus Christ ascended into Heaven some ask'd him if at this time he would restore Israel The Holy Spirit makes many things be said in another Sense than Men understand it as in what he made Caiphas say concerning Jesus Christ that it was expedient that one Man should die that the whole People perish not which he spoke not of himself and understood in another manner and for a quite different end than that of the Holy Spirit Thus we see we may be easily mistaken by our way of understanding the Words and Revelations of God They are an Abyss and Depth of Spirit which our natural Sense cannot comprehend We must free our Mind from our way of conceiving things and place it in the Liberty of a Faith which may make it reckon its own ways of conceiving obscure and dark There we shall receive the Abundance of the Spirit Wisdom and Understanding proper for conceiving aright the Words of God which no Man that is not Spiritual can comprehend or judge of they being Divine He cannot judge even reasonably of them and if he judge of them according to the outside he is not Spiritual For tho' they be covered with this outside yet he cannot understand them as St. Paul says that the natural Man does not conceive the things which are of the Spirit of God for they are foolishness to him and he cannot understand them because they are Spiritual But the spiritual Man discerns all things It is a rashness therefore to give our selves the Liberty to treat of Divine things by a way of comprehending them naturally when they require a Discerning that is Supernatural to Sense Let us conceive this also by some Examples Suppose a Holy Person sees he is persecuted by his Enemies and God says to him I will deliver thee from them all see Jer. 1. 19. this Prophecy may be true tho' his Enemies kill him as it happened to that Prophet therefore he who should understand this Prediction in a temporal way should be deceived for God might have spoken of the true and chief Deliverance and Victory which is Salvation by which the Soul is victorious and delivered from all its Enemies in a far more true and profitable way than the temporal and outward Deliverance And in this Sense that Prediction was more true and ample than the Man would have conceiv'd it to be if he understood it only for this temporal Life For the Words of God do comprehend always the principal and most useful Sense and Man may understand them after his way according to the less principal Sense and so be mistaken Add that if a Person to whom God has given such a Promise be the Head of a Family or Society bodily or spiritual the Promise may concern his Children or those associated with him bodily and may be fulfilled in them tho' as to the Death of the Head the Promise is annihilated Even so if a Soul desiring to die a Martyr for God receive this Word from him Thou shalt be a Martyr it may fall out that the Person shall not die a Martyr and yet the Promise remain true for it will be accomplish'd according to the principal and essential part God giving him the Love and Recompence of Martyrdom making him a Martyr of Love giving him a Martyrdom lengthned out in Labours the continuance of which will be more troublesome than Death In which he will accomplish both the desire of the Soul and his own Promise for the desire of the Soul was not simply that kind of Death which of it self would signifie nothing without God's Friendship but to render to God the Service and the Love of a Martyr The other because God will give most perfectly the Reality and Recompence of this tho' by other means God has promised to fulfil the Desire of the Righteous because their Desires are just and true If therefore God do not fulfil them during this temporal Life it is certain he will do it after this Life and in a most perfect manner so that the Promises do still remain most true The second Cause why divine Words and Visions tho' always true in themselves yet nevertheless are not always certain as to us is because of the Reasons Motives and Grounds upon which they are built since they may change the Effect does not follow We must therefore believe that these things will infallibly come to pass so long as that shall remain which moves and incites God for Example to punish as if God said Within a Year I will send such a Plague upon this Kingdom the Ground of this Threatning is a certain Transgression which they commit in this Kingdom against God If therefore the Transgression cease or vary the Punishment may also cease or be changed Nevertheless the Threatning was true forasmuch as it was founded on an actual Fault and it would have been executed if the Offence had continued This appears in what happened to the City of Ninevah whither God sent the Prophet Jonah to denounce from him Yet Forty Days and Ninevah shall be destroyed Which nevertheless was not fulfilled because the Cause of this Threatning ceas'd which was the Sins of the People who immediately repented otherwise this Denunciation from God would certainly have taken effect The same thing as to the matter of divine Threatning we see in King Ahab whom God threatned by the Prophet Elias with a great Judgment Him his House and Kingdom But because he rent his Garments with Grief covered himself with Sackcloth fasted and lay in Sackcloth and Ashes humbled and afflicted himself God immediately tells him by the same Prophet that he would not send that Evil in his Days Where we see because Ahab chang'd the Threatning and Sentence of God ceas'd also From hence we must conclude that tho' God reveal or speak affirmatively to a Soul any thing in Good or Evil concerning it self or others this may change more or less or none at all according to the Change of the Affection or Disposition of that or these Souls and according to
lead a Pious and Holy Life 2. If she was moved by the Spirit of God to write for the enlightning of others I. THAT we may know if A. B. did lead a Pious and Holy Life we must first understand wherein true Holiness and Piety does consist to wit in the Love of God only and of those things which are Eternal And seeing two Contraries cannot be lov'd at the same time and the Love of the Creatures and things Temporal is opposite to the Love of the Creator and of things Eternal it is from hence more clear than the Sun at Noon-Day that he who loves God cannot love the Creatures Our Saviour having taught us that no Man can serve two Masters but he must needs hate the one and love the other St. Paul says expresly If ye be risen with Christ seek those things which are above and set not your Affections upon those things which are on Earth And St. John warns us That we love not the World nor the things which are in the World for if we do so the Love of the Father is not in us II. This is likewise confirm'd by the Example of all the Holy Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles as he who reads the Holy Scriptures will find through all so that there is no need to produce Testimonies here But seeing this Love of God and of things Eternal is hidden in the Heart and the Heart is known by God only it is therefore difficult to know if any truly love God This Difficulty is so much the greater that Hypocrites and wicked Persons can so craftily counterfeit the outward Actions which are the Signs and Fruits of this Love that it is hard to distinguish them That this Difficulty may be removed it is to be observed and considered 1. That there are nevertheless sure Signs by which one may be convinc'd of the Holiness of another and that he is endued with the Love of God For we affirm that Abraham Isaac Jacob and the other Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles were Holy and that with so much Assurance that we look upon it as an Example which we ought to imitate But 2. it is to be considered that we cannot know but by Divine Light and not at all by Natural Reason if one be Holy and a Lover of God And this is bestowed on those only who are Holy themselves or at least endeavour in Sincerity of Heart to become so To such God reveals his Secrets in so far as it is fit for them to know them for their own Conduct or that of others as for others who are not in that State but care for and seek after earthly things they really cannot know if any be truly Holy and a Lover of God or not Nevertheless they take upon them to judge magisterially of all things as if they only did possess all divine and humane Wisdom tho' in the mean time they are ignorant of the Essence of things and content themselves with their outside and surface So that their Testimony as to Holiness and the Love of God even of the Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles is founded meerly upon their own Advantage For they judge that to be Good and Holy which advances this but on the other hand they account that to be Evil and Prophane which brings them in no temporal Gain III. It is just of this Matter as it is of the Light of which a Blind Man cannot judge neither can he form the Idea of it because his Eyes by which alone the material Light is perceived are ill disposed for it Yet this does not hinder but that he whose Eyes are well-disposed may be certain that he sees the Light because when he opens his Eyes he discovers many things round about him which without this Light could not be discern'd and withal he can walk and do other Works which would be impossible for him if he were depriv'd of that Light And when he sees other Men walk resolutely and steddily and do their Works by sure Rules he has reason to conclude that these Men do also enjoy the Light This may be easily applied to Spiritual things For tho' the natural Man turning his closed Eyes towards the Divine Light is Blind in Spiritual things neither can he know if one be Holy and have the Love of God yet this does not hinder but that he who has the Eyes of his Mind opened may be assured that he himself and others like unto him are illuminated by God for when the inward State of his Soul is discovered to him and the work of God in his Soul and the means that are to be made use of for the preserving and strengthning of that Work he justly concludes from hence that he enjoys the Divine Light and he walking in that Light and abandoning all the Creatures that he may love the Creator only may be certain that he loves God and is Holy And observing the like in others he concludes that they also do truly love God and are Holy Upon such Grounds is founded that Knowledge by which Holy Men do understand their own State and the State of other Holy Men. And after this manner are they perswaded that the Patriarchs Prophets and Apostles were Holy Men. IV. Some perhaps may reply to all this Altho' Good and Holy Men may mutually know their own and others State yet it is not so with those who has not as yet attain'd to Holiness and the Love of God I answer such imperfect Persons may be of two sorts to wit some know that they are Blind and therefore are desirous of the means whereby they may see and be enlightned others altho' they be more Blind than Moles yet they do not desire to see either because they imagine that they are enlightned and see sufficiently or for that they are so sunk into and carried away by the Love of the Creatures that they have no thought of the Creator and of things Eternal Those of this second kind are so far from being able to know their own State or that of others that they cannot form any Idea of it more than a Blind Man can judge of Light and Colours Hence it would be to no purpose to endeavour to demostrate to such that one is Holy and in the Love of God But as for those of the first sort who know they are Blind and desire the Light they according to our Saviour's Promise shall see And as they are conscious of their own Blindness and anxious about it so God will reveal unto them the Holiness and Illumination of his beloved ones in so far as that may be a Mean of recovering them out of Darkness into Light and from Sin to Holiness So St. Paul was instructed by Ananias Cornclius the Centurion by St. Peter And God in all times has employ'd Holy Men for the enlightning of others and for guiding them by their Examples Words and Writings into the way of Holiness This is the Ground and
only he desired to put in practice the Doctrine of Jesus Chrik and to recover the Love of God LI. When they came to Amsterdam she chose a little House in a very private Place to live solitarily in Conformity to the Private Poor and Mean State of Jesus Christ but a dangerous Sickness seizing her she permitted M. de Cort to bring to her a Physician of his Acquaintance who could not forbear speaking of her to others so that in a little time her Fame went through all the Country and People of all sorts desired to speak with her She thought that God might perhaps by this means open the Eyes of some make them see the miserable State of the World and dispose them to embrace a Christian Life And indeed many were mov'd to this so far as to encline to resolve upon it But it was as in the Days of Jesus Christ one Day one would follow him and a little after withdraw from him without thinking any more on him unless it were it may be to defame him or stone him or cry Crucifie him Every one had Business and Excuses which hindred them from Corresponding with the Calls of God The Anabaptists or Mennonists came to her and seem'd greatly to esteem the Graces of God in her but she no sooner discover'd the Nature and Properties of Hypocrisie and the generality of the Corruption even in the most Holy but finding themselves included they all declared against her She look'd on them as a Set of Persons who under modest and humble Words Cloaths and Gestures did conceal proud worldly and unregenerate Hearts Of them she writes in La Lum neé en tenebres Part 2. Serrarius Famous enough for his Writings and Correspondence at first highly esteem'd her proclaim'd her as a living Gospel And all the time he found her Thoughts agree with his as to the last Plagues the Conversion of the Jews Re-establishment of the Church and the Kingdom of Jesus Christ upon Earth all went well but when he found that she was not for the Re-establishment of a certain Levitical Worship which he fancied nor made any reckoning of an Impostor among the Jews who was risen up in the East he declared against her and studied to effice every where the good Impressions he had given of her She clears her self by a publick Print Tomb. de la fausse Theol. Part 2. Letter 14. At that time Labadie and his Disciples had as much Esteem for her and her Writings as afterwards they conceiv'd an Aversion for both They endeavour'd to bring her over to them by M. de Cort offering great Summs of Money to buy Noordstradt and to go with them but to no purpose She found he had no other Light but what Reading barren Speculations and some Acts of his own Understanding gave him and for a Motive of his Conduct some strong Conceits and Motions of his corrupt Passions without being any ways enlightned by the Spirit of God or govern'd by the calm Motions of the Divine Inspiration Therefore he and his fail'd not to blacken her on all Occasions the most piously and cunningly they could that the People might reckon her to be an Instrument of Satan and abhor her as the Devil himself M. Commenius so Famous among the Learned being then acquainted with her had quite other Thoughts But his Knowledge had not puff'd him up tho' it gave him some Prejudices which made him propose some Difficulties in which she satisfied him On his Death-Bed he bid tell her to give him the last Visit saying O the Holy Maid Where is she May I have the Happiness to see her yet once before I die All the Knowledge and Sciences I have had are nothing but Productions of Reason and of the Mind of Man but she has a Wisdom and Light that comes from none but God alone immediately by the Holy Spirit A. B. said often of him that she never knew a Learned Man who had a better and more humble Heart than he I was visited also says she by the Socinians who do altogether despise Jesus Christ saying that it is Idolatry to worship him And they ask'd me one Day If I believed also in a created God as Jesus Christ was I did not much reason with them because such impertinent Questions deserv'd no Answer telling them only that they ought not to come to me with such impertinent Discourse so they withdrew themselves Yet some affirm that I am of their Sentiments from which I pray God preserve me Many false Prophets and Prophetesses came to visit her One shewing her his Sword half drawn said he was going to behead all the Kings of the Earth and would begin at England and so entring into a little Bark it is not known what became of him Another John Roth had made ready Standards for the Twelve Tribes of Israel whom he was to re establish and some well-meaning People followed him In some Visits he made her she easily discovereded the Illusion and warn'd her Friends to beware of him being expresly told by God that he was a presumptuous Man over whom the Devil had much Power God gave her the same Sentiments of those of his Cabal particularly of one Quirin Kuhlman The Quakers also would try if they could draw her over to their Sect but they soon gave over their Hopes and one wrote against her upon which afterwards when in Holstein she wrote the Advertisement contre les Trembleurs Thus it seems the Devil design'd to distract or seduce her by all these sorts of Persons But God would thereby exercise her and make her know by experience to what height the Folly and Presumption of Man can go when joyn'd with the Illusions of the Devil never letting her be deceived by them He design'd also thereby to let the World see the vast difference between the false Lights of the Devil or the Imagination and the true Light that God sends in a way so solid so clear and so little capable of being suspected since she by whom he communicates it seeks to draw no body after her aiming at nothing but a simple retir'd solitary Life disengag'd from all Pleasures Riches and Honours imitating Jesus Christ without obliging any body to believe any other thing as necessary for Salvation but the Love of God and the denying of ones self looking on all other Knowledge and even things of Revelation as not necessary for those who have not yet Light and Grace enough necessary to receive them In which it is absolutely impossible that Seduction should mingle it self God made her also see how far the best cultivated humane Spirits are blinded and remov'd from the Kingdom of God by some Conversations she had with the Cartesians both Divines and Philosophers particularly with the Professors Heydanus and Burmannus upon which occasion she wrote the Twelfth Letter of the First Part of Tomb. de la fausse Theol. The Philosophers would perswade her that in spiritual things she
that you shall re-establish his Gospel-Spirit upon Earth among Men and Women that a great Number shall follow you to the Desart and out of the Hurry of the World and such like Promises which not being yet fulfilled it follows you cannot die yet since the Work for which God raised you up is not yet done and God will not forsake his Work She answer'd God will not give over his Work neither will he fail in his Promise but I have already seen enough that may save the Truth of his Promise tho' I die I have seen the Accomplishment of it in part by the first Fruits tho' not so perfectly God has already given me several Children I have some of them who are gone to him I have seen some of them follow me in Retiring from the World and hear me with all their Heart and that of all sorts tho' they have neither been in so great Numbers nor so perfect Nevertheless this is enough to have seen by the first Fruits the Truth of the Promises of God which on his Part he never fails to fulfil entirely But when Men do not correspond thereto God leaves them retakes from them his Gifts and seeks out other Subjects fitter to receive the Accomplishment of what he promises Whereas Men at present do render themselves unworthy of it and will not acknowledge nor receive the remarkable Graces that God offers them I greatly fear lest God withdraw his Gifts from them and turn himself to others so I cannot assure you that I shall not die shortly On the contrary when I consider the Ingratitude and Vnthankfulness which Men shew for the Favours of God I doubt if God will not shortly take me out of the World But added she suppose God withdraw me what is your Concern with my Person You ought not for this to leave off to seek God to cleave to him to do the best that is possible for you to enjoy his Spirit and then you shall have no more need of my Person for there is nothing in me to be esteemed nor sought after nor followed but the Spirit that guides me LXXVI So long as her Enemies knew not that she was at Hamburgh she liv'd peaceably enough but it coming at last to the Ears of the Lutheran Pastors they were the more affected with it that one or two of their Hearers relish'd the Truth of her Writings which put them into an extream Jealousie the predominant Passion of Churchmen They set Spies on her Friends who went to see her and having thereby found her Lodging and being certainly inform'd of her being there they assemble in Consistory and conclude to depute two of their number to Morrow Morning to represent this to the Magistrates that they might preserve the City and Religion from being infected with so great an Evil. A. B. was advertised of this and convey'd about Ten a Clock at Night to a little Garret beside a poor Man having sent her Manuscripts before her On the Morrow the Council sent four armed Sergeants to bring her to the Town-House but did not find her She staid fifteen Days in this little Garret from whence she wrote Letters to encourage her Friends But her Enemies persisting in their search for her she resolved to go to Friesland to a Baron who had invited her thither So she parted from Hamburg the 26th of June 1677. LXXVII After several Troubles in her Journey she came at last to the Lordship of Lutzburgh in East-Friesland and being well received by the Lord of the Place sent for her Friends to Sleswick who had endured much from the Rage of the People and Pastors there Reflecting on the Place where she was she judged it proper to live in according to the Designs of God who had already said to her The Perfection that I desire is to have your Heart entirely looss'd from all the Goods of the World 2dly From all the Creatures 3dly From the Love of ones self and to desire nothing but God alone To live in a forgetfulness of all the World To shut up your selves in some Place apart To offer and give up your selves entirely unto God Not to aim at any good things upon Earth To live all in common on the same Revenue and the same Entertainment And that without any other Engagement or Bond but the Love of God and without any other Rule but the Holy Gospel To receive all Souls who are fit and dispos'd for it without regarding whether they have temporal Means or not and this after the same Manner with the Christians of the Primitive Church God had also said unto her formerly upon Occasion of this Petition which she often put up unto him Lord what wilt thou have me to do Separate your selves entirely from Men. Keep silence Possess nothing in Property the Earth is sufficient to maintain your Life Do not entertain your Body but with its own Labour Never give it any thing but its Necessity Let nothing be in the Lodging but that the use of which is necessary Continue always in Simplicity and Poverty of Spirit Have no Priests but for necessity Let nothing be divided among you but let all be common without Preference Manure the Ground Be united as I am with my Father Let it be your only care to loosen Souls from the Earth I will take care of the rest LXXVIII She accepted the Care of a Hospital with which the Baron was charg'd by his Ancestors for a Retreat to Stran ers and the Persecuted and to her great Satisfaction she was freed of this Charge by a Letter from the Baron after having born it about two Years with Trouble and without any Fruit for the Glory of God There came thither some Strangers from Holland Hamburgh and elsewhere to lead as they said a Christian Life with her but really they gave her only much Trouble by bringing Dispositions quite contrary to that Design So they return'd whither they pleas'd While she and hers enjoy'd any Health they applied themselves to the care of Houshold Affairs to a Country Life to Husbandry the feeding of Beasts she sometimes to write and others to translate her Writings or put them in a Condition of being printed She was visited by many Persons even of Quality who came more than once and from several Places to converse with her She wrote here the Letter which makes the Body of the First Part of The Renovation of the Gospel Spirit and the Introduction that is prefixt to it She finish'd there the Second Part which she had began formerly and began the Third which is not finish'd she being employ'd in it when the last Persecutions and Death came upon her she made ready also the best part of her Manuscripts for the Press LXXIX She had there two long Sicknesses the first a continued Fever for some Months and the other a violent Quartan Ague which lasted for sixteen or eighteen Months When she was at the worst two of
Stuffs Linens c. but the coursest and cheapest To these her Lodging and Accommodation were sutable a little Chamber a few old Chairs a little Table and sometimes a piece of Board upon her Knees to write upon her Bed and its Furnituee of the same kind yet all neat and cleanly She always served her self and was never served by others but in case of necessity but most ready to serve others whether Poor or Rich indifferently if this only could be of any Profit to the Soul or if any urgent Necessity called for Help no Service was then too mean for her and to spare others she would readily go and do the meanest Offices even to wash the Dishes scour the Pots take off the Ashes wash the Linen sweep and clean the House not excepting any Employ how low soever provided Health good Order or other Reasons did permit it 4. Yet in all these she never set to her self any particular Rules and advised her Friends never to amuse themselves with particular Rules of some outward Customs of humble Habits and pious Countenances which some Persons and Sects do observe to shew they are Devout and Spiritual as to wear their Apparel only of such a Fashion or such a Colour or such a Stuff or to choose particular Meats or the like whereby they distinguish themselves from the rest of the World as being more Holy and more Vertuous than they This she said begets in such an Esteem of themselves and a Contempt of others is real Hypocrisie and the greatest Pride and far from the Doctrine and Practice of Jesus Christ who could not be distinguish'd from his Disciples by his Enemies when they came to apprehend him without a Sign from Judas of his kissing him nor his Disciples from the rest of the People but when their Speech bewrayed them 5. She was most diligent in her Affairs did all things both for the Body and Soul with Foresight and good Order without letting any thing be spoiled but put all to some good use being always well employed in something and acting in all things with as much care as a faithful Steward and that in little things as well as great She would never undertake a thing hastily nor go about with it Precipitation not to have it soon done but to have it well done She took time first to recommend it to God and being once perswaded that it was agreeable to his Will she did it leisurely but with Perseverance as God she said did all his Works Doucement Fortement this she said was good both for Body and Soul and advanced any Affair better than too much Vehemence 6. She was so little concern'd for to be esteem'd and honoured by Men that their Praises and Reproaches did equally touch her as little as if she had never heard of them seeking nothing in the World but that God might be honoured and the Souls of Men saved Her Business and her Thoughts never aimed to procure Honour Ease Wealth or Pleasures for her self or others All her Pleasure was to delight in God in her Solitude out of the Conversation of Men and to bring to light what he gave her for the Salvatian of Souls This made her stay for the most part Solitary in her Chamber and even when she was taken up in sowing or any other Work she lov'd still to be alone to keep her Spirit always united to God and if the Salvation of her Neighbour had not required it she would certainly have broken off from all Society 7. Tho' Solitude was a thousand times more agreeable to her than any Company yet she would part with it and make her self as it were a State of continual Labours and Cares for the good of others purely for the Love of God and the Salvation of Souls So entire was her Resignation unto God that what she once knew to be his Will tho' contrary to her Inclinations and Quiet tho' she saw she would meet with nothing but Contempt Reproach and Persecution in it yet she made a Sacrifice of all to follow it 8. Her constant Rule was Righteousness not only to render to every one in outward things what appertain'd to them but it extended to all things to those of the Soul as well as of the Body She did not despise the Good that was in her Enemies nor excuse the Evil that was in her Friends She never judged according to Passions but according to Equity She would not be Partaker of other Mens Sins 9. Truth was the Rock on which she stood firm and to which she did adhere and cleave without Respect of Parties or Persons so that they who opposed it might well hurt themselves they could not shake her and tho' all the Learned in the World would have set themselves against her she would have regarded it no more than if they had been Children being so establish'd in the Truth So free was she from all humane and worldly Respects that she would not for all the Wealth Friendship or Terrors of the World omit to declare the Truth if the Glory of God required it 10. The Love of God was the Element in which she lived She delighted in him only despised all earthly things for him and adhered to him so strongly that she would do nothing without his Divine Will 11. All her Life was a constant Proof of her Charity to Men. From this Spirit she employed her Time Labour and Goods for many Years for the Good of the Souls and Bodies of a multitude of Orphans She took all care to communicate to the World even against Mens Will and endeavours to the contrary the Light that God gave her for the Good of their Souls denuding her self of all Accommodations and suâ—fering all manner of Reproaches and Harâ—ships that she might do them the greatest Good and bring them to God 12. And such was her Perseverance and Fortitude in this that all the Scorn and Contempt and Hardships and Persecutions that she met with in a Course of many Years did not shake nor alter her 13. She was so disinteress'd so far from seeking her self that she would never seek for any nor draw any Body over unto her Sentiments and would not let those who were with her strive any ways to draw in others even tho' they by this way had been able to bring over the most Powerful and the most Learned in the World and from whom she and hers might have received â—ore of outward Advantages and Support Her Rules for her self and Friends were Seek none let God operate in Souls otherwise all will be nothing but the Works of Mens hands which will perish As she had no other Butt but to send all to God so she would have no other thing for the Motive and Principle but the being moved by God 14. She had always a serenity and cheerfulness of Spirit a tranquility of Mind and Joy that even appeared outwardly And whatever Emotion she might be seiz'd with
Redeemer of Mankind that none ever was or shall be saved but by his Intercession and Merits that he became their Pledge and Surety and effectively paid the Penalty that he cloathed himself with our Mortality and gave himself in Sacrifice for the Redemption of his Brethren that from his Life his Actions his Sufferings and Death do flow all the saving Means both outward and inward that are necessary for removing the horrid Corruption of Mankind both as to Body and Soul for destroying in us all Evil all Wickedness and the Image of the Devil and for recovering us unto and perfecting us in Holiness and in the Love and Image of God This is the Essence of the true Orthodox Christian Doctrine as to the Merits and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ and the Reason why many of her Expressions are so misunderstood upon this Subject seems to be that she endeavoured to undeceive such as soothed and flattered themselves in the looseness and irregularity of their Lives from the Pretence of the utter Impossibility to keep the Commandments of God and the full Satisfaction of Jesus Christ and the Penalties paid by him by declaring distinctly that as Jesus Christ had done enough on his Part for their Salvation procuring them Pardon and Time to repent and Grace to return to the Love of God so they must do what is required on their Parts repent and return to the Love of God and the Instructions and Commands Jesus Christ left with them are the necessary Means to bring them to it If we would reign with Christ we must suffer with him It is well known that the vulgar way of explaining this Doctrine had too great a tendency to the Flattering of corrupt Nature that the Doctrine of the Antinomians is now owned by many and as to Mens Practices it seems to be the Principle of all What need is there then to caution against so damnable a Principle And grant once that none can be saved by Jesus Christ but they who follow his Life and Doctrine and the Sentiments of A. B. will allow the Doctrine of the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ to be received in the highest Sense that may shew God's Indignation against Sin his Compassion to Sinners his Regard to the Holiness and Authority of his Laws and may lay a powerful Obligation upon Men not to trample upon them In this manner the Doctrine of the Satisfaction has been explained and cleared by the Reverend Dr. Stillingfleet Dr. Outram Dr. Scot and others and I know none who Esteem the Sentiments of A. B. who would not thus cordially embrace it How unjust and injurious the Author is in this Matter to A. B. evidently appears by the 6th and 8th Letters of the Third Part of Lum en tenebres the last whereof is subjoined to this Apology among some others translated into English The Occasions of these Expressions cited by the Author upon which he grounds this Accusation is a peculiar Sentiment of A. B. That such is God's Love to Mankind and his Delight with the Children of Men that he designed to become like to Man as he had made Man like to himself that there might be mutual Contentment in a mutual Likeness and he might live spiritually and bodily with Men to all Eternity even tho' Man had never sinned yea that he united himself to the humane Nature from the Beginning in the first Born in Adam and after that Man had plunged himself into Sin and Misery he became in all things like to him yet without Sin that he might redeem and save them Now the only difference between this and the generally received Doctrine lying in these two that God would have become Man though Adam had not sinned and that he united himself to Man's Nature even in the Beginning which the Author if he pleases may look upon as Dreams since no Body says they are necessary to Salvation she might well have used these Expressions cited by the Author without denying thereby any Satisfaction by Jesus Christ She gives good Reasons for saying that God had no need to become Man to redeem us he is not subject to any Necessity that he might have suffered Man to perish eternally and created a Thousand Adams and a Thousand earthly Paradices with the same Perfections in which he created the first out of Nothing She does not deny that Jesus Christ coming to redeem Man must suffer and so the Texts the Author brings to prove this are needless but affirms that God would have become Man tho' Adam had not sinned And the Reason why she says he would needs suffer and die by Accident for the Instruction and Relief of Men is because she was perswaded that Sin came into the World by Accident by Man's abuse of his free Will against the Will of God and contrary to the first and essential Designs that he had in creating Man which was that he might take his Delight with him and not that Man might sin and thereby give him an Occasion to magnifie his â—ustice and Mercy And God's primary Design in becoming Man was that he might make an eternal Alliance with Man and Manâ—s falling into Sin gave Occasion to his prosecuting his first Design by a State of Humiliation and Suffering that so he might recover Fallen Man Altho' Jesus Christ did highly glorifie God by the Divine Vertues of Meekness Patience Charity c. manifested by him in his Sufferings yet certainly the unworthy Treatment he met with in the World from those whom he came to save must needs be Matter of the greatest Grief and Sorrow to those pious Souls that beheld it and to all that ever knew it and therefore it is no wonder tho' that Day in the beholding whereof the Fathers in the ancient Law are said to rejoyce be interpreted of the Day of his second Coming in Glory and not of his first Coming to Suffer The Author is greatly mistaken in what he calls her second Argument as if she affirmed that none of the Holy Prophets spoke of Jesus Christ's Coming to Suffer for all that she affirms is That if you read attentively the Prophets you will find they speak much more of his Coming in Glory than of that in Reproach And there has been Occasion given of mistaking the Passage cited by the Author in the End of the 22d p. of his Preface by the Trnslation of it for it imports no more in the Original but that of the Holy Prophets who foretold the Coming of Jesus Christ in the Flesh many of them did not speak of his Sufferings X. The Author is most injurious to A. B. in alledging for a 6th Accusation that she joyns with the Quakers in the Design of leading Men from the Vse of the Holy Scriptures The Contrary is most evident in all her Writings as appears from the Apology She thinks the Scriptures contain the true spiritual Food and Nourishment of Souls and the Preservation of them in
they will not be reduced from their supposed Errors by Noise and Banter All to the best of my Understanding that A. B. pretends to is only to be an Instrument in Christ's Hands and that no otherwise than by publishing these Truths that he by his Spirit communicated to her and which his Power and Grace alone was afterwards to make effectual Now let it be supposed but not granted that it was so What Disparagement is it to our Redeemer to make use of a poor contemptible Creature in order to accomplish great Designs Was it any Dishonour to him that his Apostles in his Name and Power converted more to the Christian Religion and wrought more Miracles than he did himself when he dwelt in mortal Flesh V. Perhaps it may be thought I am byassed in Favours of A. B. and therefore not so capable to discern that Latet Anguis in Herba I am sure if I am so my Prejudices are of no old Date they are not yet so rooted but sober and just Reasonings might discuss them and reclaim me from my Mistakes neither I think can it be said that they have been fortified from any prospect of Reputation or worldly Interest But whatever my Prejudices may be I can sincerely declare that what determined me to have an Esteem for this Person 's Writings was a Conviction that they not only recommended the great and essential Duties of the Gospel distinguished them from the Accessories discovered the Mischief of Sects and Parties and the Vanity of laying Stress on nice and airy Speculations but also because they suggested solid Principles which might serve as an Antidote against the Infusions of Atheists and Deists Pelagians and Socinians Antinomians and Fatalists and false Pretences to Inspiration And tho' I met with some things in them that seem'd a little odd and startling yet I choosed rather to suspend my Judgment since even her self does not impose them on any than forego what appear'd to me so very solid and useful Some LETTERS OF M. ANT. BOVRIGNON Whereby her True Christian Spirit and Sentiments are farther justified and vindicated particularly as to the Doctrine of the Merits and Satisfaction of Jesus Christ as is to be seen in the Third and Fourth Letters All of them are most worthy to be perused by those who sincerely love and impartially seek after the Truth and the Salvation of their Souls LETTER I. Concerning the Love of God Written to a Pastor at Mechlin and is the 15th of La lum nec en tenebr Part I. SIR I. I Know not how one of sound Judgment can love any other thing but God seeing there is no created thing that is worthy of our Love as he is being the Fountain of all Good Wisdom the Giver of all Wisdom the Beauty that creates all Beauty the Righteousness of the Righteous the Goodness of all Goodness the Accomplishment of all Perfections in short the only Object worthy of our Love without whom nothing is Lovely neither in Heaven nor in Earth Nothing without him can satisfie our Soul nothing can content it nothing can give it Perfect Pleasure nothing can make it happy neither now nor hereafter It is he who created us it is he who preserves us it is he who will judge us If Good of its own Nature is always Lovely why then does not the Soul employ all its Powers to love the Original the Perfection and the Consummation of all Good which is God II. If Likeness beget Love how can your Soul which was made after the Similitude of God live without loving him What other Lovely Object can it find without God whom only it resembles What Original or Pattern is there among all perishing Things to this Divine and Immortal Soul which cannot find its like but in God himself III. If Benefits do oblige even Nature it self to love its Benefactors how ought the Soul to love its God when he has given it all that it posseseth and has promised infinite and eternal Goods beyond Comparison in the Life to come He has given the Soul which he created of nothing He not only made it after the Similitude of the Angels of Heaven but after the likeness of God himself so that all Souls are by Creation made little Gods Could this God of Love give unto Man greater Goods and Gifts to make himself be loved by him than this Divine Creation of his Soul Immortal as himself The Body which he formed to be the Keeper and Sheath of this Soul could it have more Perfections Is there any thing in Nature more Admirable than the Body of Man animated with all the Powers of the Soul with an Understanding to conceive with a Memory to remember with a Will to act so that the very Body is in some manner an Image or Resemblance of the HOLY TRINITY IV. Could God give unto Man more and greater Gifts than he has done to oblige him to love him For after having given him a Being and Life he upholds and maintains it with all necessary things which he has likewise created for the Entertainment of this Man to whom he has subjected so many Creatures under his Power having made him Superiour over all the living Creatures and given him Authority as the Master-piece of the Works of God the Earth for his Foot-stool the Air to breath in the Fire to warm him the Water to refresh him the Fruits to nourish him the Flowers to recreate him in short all the visible and material things that God created were only for the Body of Man What must he have laid up for his Soul which is beyond all Comparison more valuable as being Divine created after the Image of God If he has made so many admirable Things for the entertainment of the Body which must die and remain for so short a time upon Earth Should not all those Gifts all those Benefits oblige Man to love such a Benefactor Seeing he has not received and can never receive any true Good without this Giver of all Good V. How can he be without loving him when he considers his Love which was not satisfied with having freely imparted unto us so many Gifts but after that this ungrateful Man had abused so many favours by turning away from his Creator to join himself to the Creature valuing the Gifts more than the Giver presuming to merit yet more he rebels against his Orders will needs out of Ambition of Spirit know more than it pleas'd his Creator and breaks his Commandment that he might equal himself unto him This God of Love who in a Moment could have punished all these Ingratitudes by an eternal Damnation unto which he had banish'd the fallen Angels lov'd Man more than the Angels and having more regard to the Love he bear him than to his Disobedience he pardons his Sin and forgives his Fault upon Condition of a temporal Penitence VI. This Testimony of Affection from a God towards his Creature
so many Gifts and that he continues them every Moment and will continue them even to our Death 14. From whom do we look for our Happiness but from God who will judge us If we have served the World it will pay us with Ingratitude if our selves we have nothing but Weakness and Miseries I can see no other Happiness but that of LOVING GOD all the rest is vain and perishing Riches Wisdom Pleasures Honours are nothing but Smoak if they aim at any other End but this of LOVE All the rest is nothing but Emptiness Filtihness and Inconstancy unworthy of being lov'd by a Soul so Noble and Divine the Lawful SPOUSE of GOD and the COHEIRESS of JESUS CHRIST Is it not sad yea Abominable that it should joyn it self or commit Adultery with the Base things of the Earth forsaking its Faithful BRIDEGROOM who loves it so perfectly and who has done such admirable things to engage it to his Love yea to consent only to let it self be loved by him according as he desires but that it should thrust away from him to love and cleave to the Earth Winds Metals Flesh and Blood how depraved is its Judgment Which makes me often sigh when I see this Ingratitude of the Creatures towards their Creator whom I beg that he may open the Eyes of their Souls to see the true Means of their Salvation In the mean time I continue Sir Your most humble Servant Antho. Bourignon Gaunt March 15th 1667. LETTER II. Of PRAYER wherein it consists Of set Prayers and Exercises and their Use Of CONTINUAL PRAYER its Nature the absolute Nec ssity of it for overcoming our Enemies both unvard and outward for obtaining the Grace of God for attaining unto Perfection and how to persist in it without Interruption This Letter is the 7th of Tomb. de la Fausse Theologie Part iv My dear Friend SInce you have resolved to deny your self and no longer to follow your Sensualities you have need of Continual Prayer that you may be enabled to perform you good purposes For when the Devil has once had Power over a Person and made him love and follow his Sensualities he does not easily depart from him not being willing to quit the Fortress of which he has once been Governour but he keeps it by force and against the Inclination of the Person who would thrust him out of it so that he must oppose him by force It is of such Devils that Jesus Christ says That they go not forth but by Fasting and Prayer not that Jesus Christ and his Apostles had not Grace from God powerful enough for casting out all sorts of Devils but when they have once gained a Power over the Will of Man and he has consented to all the Suggestions of the Devil he will not go out but by the force of Fasting and Prayer seeing he has gain'd the Man's Soul by Sensualities and the Neglect of Prayer 2. He must of necessity be thrust out by means directly contrary to those which he has made use of for getting entry into Souls When they have obeyed the Devil in following the Sensualities of corrupt Nature they must afterwards renounce the same Sensualities by Fasting and Abstinence otherwise they will never cast out this sort of Devils And if they have hearkned to the Temptations of the Devil instead of the Inspirations of the Holy Spirit there is a necessity of continual Prayer to cast forth this kind of Devil seeing he has continually entertained the Spirit with vain Thoughts the same Spirit must entertain it self continually with God otherwise it can never thrust out this kind of Devil 3. And therefore I exhort you unto CONTINUAL PRAYER that you may overcome this Enemy of your Soul and chase him out by the help of Prayer which is a powerful Armour against all the Furies of Hell 4. In the mean time I must shew you what PRAYER is before you can perform it aright for we often take some fine words that we have read or heard of others to be Prayer as in this Country they use to read or sing Psalms when they would pray and in other places they say so many Pater Nosters Ave Maria's or some other Prayers written in some Books or they learn the words that they may repeat them when they would pray 5. All this ought not to be termed Prayer since these words and these Psalms may be said without making any Prayer to God and that one may pray in saying Psalms he ought to have the same DESIRES which they had who made them and to say the same words with the same Desire that they had in saying them otherwise this cannot be PRAYER but rather idle Words which do not profit yea by these Words Men do often reproach God or they utter Lies or Mockings For to say a Psalm of David which he uttered when he was penitent when he fasted and prayed washing his Couch with his Tears while they who sing these things are very often fill'd with Wine and delicious Fare spending whole Nights in Riot and Luxury is not this to mock God and to lie in his Presence So do they also who say the Lord's Prayer or any other Prayers without having Desires sutable to the Words which they pronounce 6. They will say that God is their Father without being willing to obey him as Children That his Name be hallowed while indeed they dishonour and despise him loving rather their own Will and Honour than God's They say Let his Kingdom come when they desire nothing but to reign in this World where they would wish still to live if God would give them Prosperity And by word they say His Will be done on Earth as it is in the Heavens while they will not resign themselves to the Will of God in any thing but endeavour to accomplish their own as much as is possible for them And while they pray to have daily Bread they labour and study to have Abundance and maugre God they will needs have more than the daily Bread for which they pray They pray likewise That he would forgive them their Sins while they love them and will needs go on to commit them more and more every day And That he would deliver them from evil while they pursue and do the Evil from which they say they would be delivered And while they pray to God That he would deliver them from Temptation they feed it follow and obey it 7. Behold how Men do mock God by such Prayers and lie in his Presence I do not therefore desire that you pray after this manner for it avails nothing and you cannot thereby obtain the Grace of God but rather a greater Condemnation for God will not be mocked and he takes no pleasure in vain Discourses He only searches the Reins and tries the Consciences being the Searcher of hearts and not the Hearer of our feigned words The Gospel likewise tells us That we must not pray as the
Proposal to the Archbishop of Cambray XXIV Pere du Bois and sâ—me Maâ—â—s esteem her XXV The Jesuits disturâ— her XXVI The Bishop grants her desire XXVII The Clergy incensed against her XXVIII 〈◊〉 Bishop retracts his Permission XXIX She waits on her Mother at her Death keeps her Father's House He marries and she retires XXX Lives in great Solitude at St. Andrew XXXI I disturbed by an insolent Youth XXXII Is forced from thence by the War XXXIII Does the last Offices to her Father and succeeds to her Mother's Goods XXXIV Nothing in this contrary to the Laws of God or Man XXXV St. Saulieu accosts her XXXVI She undertakes the Care of a Hospital of Orphans XXXVII Her frequent Sicknesses there XXXVIII St. Saulieu's Persecution of her XXXIX Her Delivery from him and his end XL. She turns her House into a Cloyster XLI The Discovery of the Childrens Sorceries XLII Their Declarations XLIII No ground to disbelieve this Story or that the World swarms with such XLIV The Parents accuse her to the Magistrates XLV 〈…〉 XLVI Malefices to take a way her Life XLVII She wiâ—hdraws to Gaunt and Mechlin XLVIII Is esteem'd by Learned and Good Men there XLIX Particularly by M. de Cort L. Goes to Holland LI. â— sick at Amderdam and is visited by Persons of all Perswasions Tomb. de la fausse Theol. Part 2. Letter 1. LII Wrote here some of her Books LIII Mr. de Cort cast into a Dun geon by the Jansenists LIV. Her Concern for him and his Deliverance LV. They Peâ—â—n him in Holstein LVI Her long Sickness LVII M. de Cort had left her his Rights to Noordstrand LVIII They persecute her therefore LIX She goes to Holstein LX. The Quakers write and she Answers LXI Some Anabaptists of Friesland come to her LXII Their Behaviour LXIII The occasion of a new Persecution LXIV The Pastours of Holstein are alarmed LXV She is persecuted at Flensbourg LXVI At Husum and robb'd of her Printing Press Books and Papâ—rs LXVII General-Major Vanderwyck appears for her LXVIII The Pastors write against her LXIX She lives in great Secâ—ecy and Hazard at Sleswick the People being inflam'd by the Pastors LXX The scattering the Sheets of her Books discovers the Calumnies of the Pastors LXXI The Court gives her Protection LXXII She gives in a Confession of her Faith LXXIII The Church men prevail LXXIV She goes to Hambourg LXXV Her Exercâ—se and Writings there LXXVI She is persecâ—ted by the Pastors there LXXVII Goes to Lutzburg in Friesland LXXVIII Her Employment and Writings there LXXIX Long Sickness LXXX Persecuted anew by her Servant's Sorcerers LXXXI By those who pretended to protect her LXXXII The Pretence for it and the true Cause LXXXIII Goes to Franeker LXXXIV Her Death LXXXV Her Character Matth. 26. 48. 73. Temoign de Vertie Part 1. p. 146. Tomb. de la fausse Theol. Part 3. Letter 1. nu 17 18. Avis salut lett 133. I. The Occasion of the Letter II. Necessary Qualifications in Writers of Narratives und Characters III. These wanting in the Authours of the Preface to the Snake in the Grass and Bourignanism detected IV. The first Authour's rash and spiteful Charge against A. B. V. A. B. Vindicated from the 1 Of blasphemous Priâ—â— Parole de Dieu p. 127. Temoig de verite Part 2. p. 47. Ibid. p. 59 60. Iâ—id p. 81 â—â— VI. From the 2. That she overturn'd Priesthood c. * Sâ— Is 1. VII From the 3 Of Uncharitableness c. * p. 63 161 c. Gen. 6 12. Ps 14. 3. Mic. 7. 2. b Light of the World Part 1. p. 47. c â—emo igâ— de veâ—iâ—e Part 2. p. 71. VIII From the 4 Of 〈…〉 the Design 〈…〉 IX From the 5 Of her denying the Satisfaction of Jesus Christ * p 86 87 c. * See Apâ—logy p. 59 c. Light of the World p. 139. Light of the World p. 142. X. From the 6 Of her Contempt of the Holy Scriptures * p. 159 c. XI From the 7 Of her wild and barbarous Notions * See the Apology p. 72. c. * Ibid. p. 180. c. XII The undiscreet Treatment of M. Poiret pag. 127 c. XIII The Fury of his Zeal wrong levell'd XIV The Doctor the Author of the Narratives the Occasion of all this Noiseâ— XV. Great Caution to be used in judging of Spiritual Things XVI The Falseness of the Charge of a Sect. XVII His Uacharitableness to his Country-men XVIII In both the Narratives he fights with his own Shadow XIX His Disin genuity in his Narrations XX. Appears in his unjust Way of forming her Character 1. By pâ—ecing together half Sentiments from different Places 2. By borrowing pieces of it from her avow'd Enemies * Nar. 1. p. 75. 3. By obtruding false Translations Rev. 4. 14 4. By affirming things as said of her without giving Evidence * Pâ—eface §. 2. * p. 3. §. 3. p. 5. §. 4. 5. By drawing Consequences contrary to their Principles which their Sayings do not infer and they expresly disclaim Nar. 1. p. 18. §. 10. c. La paix de bonnes ames p. 186 c XXI The Dr's great Mistake as to the Regard required to the Testimony of Men. See Apology p. 14. c. XXII The true Reasons why A. B. was highly esteemed not adduced by the Doctor Nor those adduced sufficiently disproved As 1. her Sanctity * See Apology p. 137. The Doctor not faithful in relating the Proofs of her Sanctity * See Apology p. 42 43. XXIII His Reasons against her Sanctity disproved and she vindicated from 1. That of a light and vain Conversation 2. From following her own Humour without any regard to the Principles of Religion 3. From her Disobedience toâ—her Parents 4. From Covetousness because of her Law Suits a Vie exter â— 49. b 〈…〉 c ibid. n. 57. d Viâ— exter n. 52 54. e ib. n. 5 49 51. f ib. p. 180. g ib. and Part de Dien n. 9. p. 163. h Parole de Dieu p. 67. i Vie exter p. 186. k Avâ—s salut p. 86. l Vie Continuè◠cap. 12. p. 128 129. Temoign de Verite Part 2. p 3â—2 303 * Avertis contre les Tremb p 213 c. XXIV 〈…〉 c. XXV 2. Her Knowledge of secret Thoughts not disproved XXVI 3. Her foretelling things to coâ—e not disproved * Apology p. 230. c. XXVII 4. The Supernatural Means of her Knowledge not disprov'd XXVIII 〈…〉 c. 3â— n. 5 6 〈…〉 XXIX Just Remarks upon what 〈◊〉 of the 〈◊〉 Narra 1. p. 75. Ibid. p 76. XXX Some Remarks upon the Second Narrative 1. He persists in his false Representations 2. In his Curtailings and Glossings Nar. 2. p 4. Light of the World Part 2. p. 84. Light of the World Part 1. p. 92. Nar. 2. p. 5. Light of the World Part â— p. 39. 3. Makes Questions upon a false Supposition 4. He opposeth the Truth and joins with the Pelagians Light of the World Part 2. Conf. 13. p. 85. e 1 Cor. 6 17. D. C. Nar. p. 36 37. 5. A just Character of M Poiret and the Narrator's unchristian dealing with him considered Tem. des S. Ecrit p. 387 388. Ibid. p. 402 4â—3 D. C's Essays part 2. pag. 163 164 165. 6 The Narrator's Mistakes as to the comparison betwixt Jes Christ's First birth and the Renovatioâ— of his Gospel Spirit 7 His rash Censure of things he does not understand Narr 2. p. 49. 8. His 〈…〉 〈…〉 I. The Occasion and Design of the Letter II. Remarks upon Doctor Cock bourn's Letter to his Friend 1. H. judging others condemns himself * Letter p. 2. 2. Unjust 〈…〉 and 〈◊〉 * Pag. 9. c. â— pag. â—â— 3. The Doctor in Danger by becoming hâ—s own Interpreter * Pag. 30. 4. Not just in making of Characters 5. Makes a Controversie where there is none A. B's Writings valuable for their Plainness Simplicity and Disinterestedness 7. The Doctor 's Prenciples not friendly to St. Paul Etoile du Matin p. 23. 8. His Rudeness to A. b's Friends 9. His Rudeness to the Philadelphian III. Remarks upon the second Narrative 1. A. B's Pretences to Sanctity not so high at he describes them for she does not exalt her self above the Prophets c. She does not pretend to be without Sin or Corruption Solid Vertue Part 2. p. 71. She owns her Failings * 1 Narrat p. 49. In that very passage cited by the Author Vie exter p. 150. * Pag. 6. He most injuriously mistakes and translates some of A. B's words Put malicious glosses upon others * Tomb. dela Faus Theol. part 2. let 14. p. 115. Ibid. Ibid. Pag. 7. Pag. 2. 2. A. B. â—as made no Additions to the Essentials of Christianity * a Nar. p. 11. 3. Her Expression about Moses's Chair no mark of Pride * 2 Nar. p. 11. Pierre dâ— Touche p. 286. 4 Her Pretences to Knowledge not such as he describes them 2 Nar. p. 15. 5. That she requires the same respect to her Sayings as to the Scripture is false 2 Nar. p. 20 22. * Lum en ten part i. pag. 2. 6. The Doctor draws unjust and invidicus Consiquences 1. Instance * Light of the World Part 2. p. 85. Matt. 5. 14. 1. Tim. 4. 16. * Pag. 32. Second Instance * Light of the World Part 2. Conf. 17. p. 128 129 7. The Doctor 's Ignorance of A. B.'s Princâ—ples appears 2. Nar. p. 33. n. 7. IV. A 〈◊〉 Survâ—r of the Doctor 's whole Performance with Reflections on his undisercet Zeal 2 Nar. p 55. Letteâ— p. 21. V. 5. The Writer apologizeth for himself I. God alone Lovely Motives to the Love of God 1. He is the Fountain and Accomplishment of all Good II. 2. The Soul's Likeness to him III. 3. Of the Benefits bestowed by him upon the Soul and Body IV. 4. The Provision he has made both for Soul and Body V. 5. His Mercy to become the Saviour of Man VI. 6. His Inacrnation VII 7. His Annihilation VIII 8. His becoming a Teacher and Prophet IX 9. His becoming a Priest X. 10. That he gave his Life even for his Enemies XI 11. The Advantages of Divine Love XII 12. The Vanity of the earthly Love of Riches Honours Pleasures XIII 13. Nothing Lovely but God 14. Without him all is Folly and Misery